lu's library @lumi-nescentt - Tumblr Blog

wonderwall - j. woll

summary: after getting heroically defended on a chilly night in downtown toronto, your knight in shining armour has a lot more going on than what meets the eye

pairing: joseph woll x fem!musician reader (described to be more alternative but really think what you want)

word count: 20,820

warnings: alcohol, catcalling, slight violence aka a punch gets thrown and you get grabbed, one small scene of reader getting fingered in a time lapse but not super explicit.

notes:

i dream about toronto..... i will move there one day i promise, but in the meantime please forgive me for any inaccuracies.

he's still a leaf i don't care!

a lot of these scenes were written individually then smushed together afterwards so apologies if it doesn't meld well!

sorry for describing his eyes so often LOL i just love em

reader is described as not knowing SHIT about hockey! she don't gaf! so that's why its described as if you are learning

not proof read!

mandatory beg for likes/reblogs/thoughts in my inbox

The bar smelled like spilled Jager and the ghost of every cigarette ever smoked indoors before 2005, and you loved it. You loved the sticky black stage tape on the floor that never fully came off your boots, the way the single rotating disco light in the corner painted everyone in intermittent streaks of red and gold, and you loved the low, anticipatory hum of a Friday night crowd that was three drinks deep and ready for something louder than the classic rock already bleeding from the house speakers.

Your band—Wolfsbane Theatre, a name your drummer Rusty had chosen at two in the morning and which you'd all been too tired to argue with—was still setting up, cables coiled across the stage like sleeping snakes, your Fender Jaguar propped on its stand while you crouched to adjust your pedalboard. The venue was called The Horseshoe Vault, a long, narrow room with exposed brick and a ceiling low enough that your bassist Kai had once jumped during a set and nearly knocked himself out on a ductwork joint, and tonight it was packed tighter than usual, bodies pressed against the bar rail and spilling into the alcoves near the pool tables.

You didn't notice the table of tall men near the back when you first walked in, because why would you. You were focused on the setlist tucked into your back pocket—seven songs, three originals, four covers rearranged into something that sounded like you, which meant a little grungy, a little dreamy, loud enough to feel in your sternum—and on the fact that your E string had been buzzing for two days and you still hadn't gotten it looked at. Rusty was already behind his kit, adjusting the angle of his crash cymbal, while Kai plugged in his bass and plucked a few low, resonant notes that thrummed through the floorboards. Your rhythm guitarist, Dana, was tuning quietly in the corner, her dark hair curtaining her face, and you could see her mouthing the notes as she twisted the pegs. This was your ritual. This was the part of your life that made the forty-five minutes crammed against the window on the Bloor-Danforth line worth it, the spreadsheets and the fluorescent lights and the coworker who microwaved fish every single Tuesday worth it, every exhausted evening worth it.

Joseph Woll hadn't wanted to come out tonight. He'd had a perfectly good evening planned, actually, which involved the remaining sixteen hundred pieces of the LEGO Technic Lamborghini Sián he'd been building on his coffee table, a glass of peppermint tea, and maybe some quiet time at the piano working out the bridge of a Debussy piece that had been giving him trouble. But Matthew Knies had shown up at his condo at eight thirty with Auston Matthews and William Nylander in tow, Matthew already talking a mile a minute about how Joseph was "turning into a hermit before thirty" and how this was "an intervention, actually, a fun one, but still an intervention," and before Joseph could finish his protest about the Lamborghini's rear axle assembly, he was being ushered into an Uber with his jacket half on. Now he was wedged into a booth at a bar he'd never been to, nursing a beer he was barely touching, his broad shoulders making the booth feel like it had been built for a different species of human entirely, while Matthew and Auston argued about something that had started as a conversation about the power play and devolved into an increasingly heated debate about something he couldn't even decipher.

He was zoning out, genuinely zoning out, his mind drifting back to that Debussy bridge and the way the left hand arpeggios needed to feel more like water than notes, when the stage lights shifted from their idle amber wash to a sharper, cooler white, and a voice came over the crackling house PA—"Hey, we're Wolfsbane Theatre, we're gonna play some stuff for you, try not to throw anything"—and he looked up, and then he kept looking up, and then he forgot where he was entirely.

You were adjusting the mic stand, your fingers wrapped around the cold metal, your guitar already slung across your chest, and when you leaned in to test the levels, your voice cut through the room's chatter with a low, easy "Check, one, two—yeah, that's good, thank you," that made several heads turn. But it wasn't just the voice, though the voice was something—warm, a little raspy at the edges, the kind of voice that sounded like it knew things. It was you. The way you moved on stage with a loose, unbothered confidence, shoulders relaxed, one foot already finding the monitor's edge like you'd done this a thousand times even though your band was still small enough that you loaded your own gear.

You were wearing a mesh, deep purple cardigan over a tight black tube top, and a tiny, pleated leather skirt complimented by artfully ripped up tights, tucked into chunky boots. Your hair was falling in your face just enough to look intentional, and when you smiled at something Rusty said from behind his kit, it was this quick, unguarded flash of teeth that lit up your whole face and made Joseph's hand tighten around his beer bottle for absolutely no reason.

"Jo. Jo. You're staring, buddy." Matthew's elbow landed in his ribs, sharp and deliberate, and Joseph blinked, the back of his neck going warm. "I'm not staring, I'm just—" He didn't have a finish for that sentence. Auston was already grinning, that slow, insufferable grin that meant he'd clocked exactly what was happening and was going to be insufferable about it for weeks.

"You're staring," Auston confirmed, leaning back with his arms crossed, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "The hermit comes out one time and immediately loses his mind over a girl with a guitar. This is poetic, actually."

William, who had been on his phone, finally glanced up and then over at the stage, assessing. "She's good," he said mildly, which from William was practically a standing ovation, and Joseph wanted to sink into the booth's vinyl and disappear, except he also couldn't stop looking at the stage, so disappearing was off the table.

Rusty counted in the first song with four sharp clicks of his drumstick—"One, two, three, four"—and then your guitar erupted into a riff that was dirty and shimmering and impossible to ignore, a wall of distorted sound that filled every corner of the low-ceilinged room and made the beer glasses on tables rattle faintly. It was an original, one of yours, something you'd written on the GO Train commute home from your office job in mid-January, scrawling lyrics on the back of a receipt for a medium coffee while the city streaked past the window in shades of grey and ice. The song was called "Switchblade Sunday," and it opened with a brooding, pulsing verse that let your voice settle into something smoky and close before the chorus blew the whole thing open, your guitar crashing into a bright, aching melody that sounded like heartbreak you could dance to.

You played like you were having a conversation with the room, leaning into the mic for the quiet parts and pulling back for the loud ones, your fingers moving over the fretboard with a practiced, fluid ease, and when you hit the chorus for the first time—voice climbing, raw and soaring, the kind of sound that made strangers stop mid-sentence—something shifted in the crowd. People who'd been talking turned. People who'd been facing the bar turned. The room listened.

Joseph felt it in his chest, that sound, the way you felt a clean save when the puck hit your pad just right and you knew, you knew, before the whistle even blew, that you'd owned it. It was that kind of certainty, that kind of presence. He set his beer down because he'd forgotten he was holding it, and Matthew said something beside him that he didn't hear at all, and it didn't matter because you were already moving into the second verse, your eyes half-closed, your boot marking time on the stage floor, and the stage light caught the side of your face and the worn edge of your guitar and the silver rings on your fingers and Joseph Woll, goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs, six-foot-three, two hundred and twelve pounds, was completely, irreversibly, unhelpfully spellbound.

Between the third and fourth songs, you took a breath, wiping your forehead with the back of your hand, and leaned into the mic. "So that last one was about my landlord," you said, deadpan, and a ripple of laughter moved through the room. "He raised my rent and then asked if I wanted to use his parking spot, so." You paused, adjusting your guitar strap. "This next one is also about my landlord. Different vibe, though." Kai snorted audibly behind you, and Rusty hit a single, ominous drum roll that earned another laugh. You grinned—that same quick, lightning-flash grin—and launched into a cover of "Champagne Supernova" that you'd slowed down and dragged through a filter of reverb and distortion until it sounded like the song was being remembered in a dream, your voice floating over the wall of sound with an ache that felt like November in Toronto, cold and golden and full of longing for something you couldn't name.

"Go talk to her after," Matthew said, and Joseph shook his head immediately, the reflex fast and firm. "I'm not gonna—"

"You're literally not blinking, man. I'm concerned for your ocular health." Auston nodded solemnly in agreement. "It's like watching a nature documentary. The goalie spots the—the what's the female guitarist equivalent of a mate—"

"Please stop talking," Joseph said, his ears red, and William, without looking up from his phone, said, "I will put twenty dollars down right now that you don't talk to her," and Joseph thought about his Lamborghini, and his peppermint tea, and his quiet piano, and he thought about the way your voice had just cracked on the word wonder in the chorus, just slightly, just enough to make it feel real, and he didn't take the bet, which Auston immediately flagged as the most telling non-action of the evening.

The set barreled on. You played another original—"Glass Jaw," faster, punkier, all snarling guitars and propulsive drums—and then a cover of "Kool-Aid" by Bring Me The Horizon that you'd stripped down and rebuilt with fuzzed-out bass and your voice doing things that should have been illegal in a public establishment. Between songs you bantered with the crowd with an easy, dry wit that kept everyone leaning in, trading jokes with Kai and Rusty like you were all hanging out in someone's basement instead of on a stage. "This is for anyone who's ever sent a text they regretted," you said, introducing the sixth song, and someone in the back yelled "THAT'S ALL OF US," and you pointed at them with a laugh and said, "Exactly, so this one's for the whole room," and Joseph watched your fingers find the opening chords—clean this time, shimmering, delicate against the distortion you'd been wielding all night—and he leaned forward without realizing it, his elbows on the table, his whole vast frame tilted toward the stage like you were magnetic north and he was a compass needle spinning helplessly in your direction.

The set ended at eleven forty-three, and by midnight the room had already begun to hemorrhage its crowd in earnest. You coiled cables with numb fingers while Rusty broke down his kit and Dana packed her pedalboard into a case held together with duct tape and optimism, and the three of you moved through the teardown with the wordless efficiency of people who'd done this enough times that every cable had a pocket and every piece of gear had a place in the Tetris of whoever's car was driving tonight.

Kai offered you a ride—he always offered—but you shook your head, telling him the train was fine, you needed the decompress, which was true in the same way that saying you were "kind of tired" was true when you were actually so exhausted you could feel it in the roots of your teeth. What you actually needed was fifteen minutes of cold air and the particular blankness of a late-night subway car to let the set drain out of you, the adrenaline and the noise and the bright hot thing that lived in your chest when you played still buzzing under your skin like a current that hadn't found its ground.

You hugged Dana goodbye, fist-bumped Rusty, told Kai to text you when he got home, and slipped out the back exit into the alley behind The Horseshoe Vault, where the air hit you like a slap of November and you immediately regretted not bringing a heavier layer. The mesh cardigan was good for stage aesthetic and absolutely nothing else, and the wind cut through it like it wasn't there, finding every inch of bare skin between the tube top and the waistband of that ridiculous little skirt you'd worn because it looked good under stage lights and not because it was remotely practical for a Toronto autumn. You wrapped your arms around yourself and started walking, boots clicking on the wet pavement, breath coming out in thin pale clouds, heading east toward Dundas West station because it was closer than Lansdowne and you knew the shortcut through the side residential streets that shaved four minutes off the walk if you cut through the alley behind the furniture warehouse.

You didn't think about the guy from the bar. You should have, maybe, but you'd been doing this long enough that you'd developed a kind of selective amnesia for hecklers, a mental filing system that sorted crowd noise into categories—enthusiastic, drunk, genuinely into it, creepy—and then deleted the ones that didn't serve you. There had been a guy near the front, off to the right, broad and red-faced and drinking something amber from a glass, who'd started loud enough to be funny and then gotten quieter and more specific in a way that wasn't funny at all, leaning toward the stage with his phone up and his mouth moving around words you couldn't hear over your own monitors but could read well enough from the shape of his lips and the way the women standing near him had shifted away.

Rusty had given you a look. You'd shaken your head barely, a millimeter of movement, the universal signal for I've got it, leave it, and you'd launched into the next song and let the distortion swallow whatever he'd been saying. That was your move. Play louder. It had always worked before.

Joseph had left the bar ten minutes before you, which meant he was maybe a block and a half ahead on the same street, walking in the same direction, and he hadn't noticed. He was thinking about the set—not in a predatory way, not in the way Auston would tease him about later, but in the way his brain latched onto things that moved him, turning them over like puzzle pieces, trying to understand why. The way your voice had cracked on that one word. The way your hands looked on the guitar strings, sure and quick and completely certain. He'd wanted to stay, had actually been angling for a way to naturally linger without it being weird, but Matthew had gotten an Uber with Auston and William had peeled off toward Yorkville, and the group had dissolved the way groups do, everyone scattering into the night with claps on shoulders and see-you-at-practice murmurs, and Joseph had been left standing on the sidewalk outside the bar thinking I should go back in and tell her the set was good, and then immediately thinking that's insane, you don't know her, she doesn't need your validation, go home, work on the Lamborghini, and so he'd started walking toward Dundas West because the subway was grounding, the rhythm of it, the way it shook under your feet, and he needed something to do with his body that wasn't replaying the sound of your voice singing about a landlord.

He had his hood up and his hands in his jacket pockets, his long stride eating up the sidewalk at a pace that was barely above a walk but still somehow faster than everyone around him, and he was maybe two hundred meters from the station entrance when he heard it—a voice, male, slurred and aggressive, coming from somewhere close and to the right, and then a second voice, yours, sharp and clipped and carrying the tension of someone trying very hard to sound unbothered. He registered it the way you register a puck leaving a stick blade—before conscious thought, before decision, somewhere in the deep wiring of pattern recognition and reflex—and his feet had already slowed before his brain caught up, his hood turning, his eyes finding the scene in the alley in front of him like a spotlight finding a stage.

You were backed against the brick wall of the furniture warehouse, the alley shortcut mouth maybe ten feet to your left, and the guy from the bar—the red-faced one, the one whose lips you'd read from the stage—was standing in front of you with one hand on the wall beside your head, leaning his bulk into the space you were trying to occupy. He was bigger than you'd realized, thick-necked and barrel-chested, a former-frat-boy build gone slightly soft around the middle, and he was talking in a low, wet voice that carried the particular menace of someone who thought they were being charming. "Come on, don't be like that, you were looking at me all night," he was saying, and you had your arms crossed tight over your chest, shoulders drawn up, chin lifted in defiance even as your back pressed harder into the brick.

"I wasn't looking at you at all," you said, your voice steady in a way that cost you something. "I was on a stage. Doing my job. Excuse me." You tried to step left and he shifted to block you, his free hand coming up to grip your elbow, thick fingers closing around the bare skin of your upper arm where the cardigan offered nothing, and you felt the squeeze, felt the pressure of it, felt your stomach drop through the sidewalk.

"Hey." Joseph's voice came from behind the guy, level and calm and carrying the kind of quiet authority that came from spending years in a position where you had to be the most composed person on the ice at all times. "Hey, man, she asked you to move. Let her go."

The guy turned, and there was a beat where the two of them sized each other up—the guy taking in Joseph's height, the breadth of his shoulders under the hoodie, the way he stood with his weight centered and his hands still in his pockets, deliberately non-threatening—and you watched the calculation happen behind the guy's bloodshot eyes, the drunken risk assessment wobbling between back off and make it worse. "Mind your business, big guy," the guy said, and his hand was still on your arm, his fingers digging in, and you tried to pull free but his grip tightened. "She's fine. We're just talking."

"She's not fine, and you know that," Joseph said, and his voice didn't waver, didn't rise, stayed in that same steady register that was somehow more unnerving than yelling. He took a step closer, held both hands up, palms out. "Look, I don't want any trouble. Just let go of her arm and walk away, and we'll all go home. That's it. Nobody needs to do anything stupid tonight." He meant it. Every word. He would have let the whole thing dissolve right there, would have watched the guy stumble off into the night and never thought about him again, would have walked you to the station and probably said something awkward about your set and then ridden the train in silence and gone home to his Lego and his tea and been perfectly, genuinely happy with that outcome.

The guy laughed. It was a ugly sound, drunk and contemptuous, and he looked you up and down with a leer that made your skin crawl, then turned back to Joseph with a grin that split his red face like a crack in pavement. "What, you want her for yourself? Is that it? Gotta save her so she'll—what, thank you properly?" He made a gesture with his free hand, crude and explicit, and then he yanked your arm harder, pulling you toward him, and you gasped—actually gasped, the sound torn out of you before you could stop it—and something in Joseph's face changed.

It wasn't dramatic. There was no cinematic shift, no thunderclap, no slow-motion. It was more like a door closing. Like every exit, every off-ramp, every reasonable and measured and patient pathway he'd been building in his mind for the last ninety seconds just—shut. All at once. His blue eyes, which had been warm and open and carefully non-threatening, went flat and bright and cold, the colour of lake ice in January, and his jaw set with an audible click, and the hand that had been holding the guy's arm was suddenly holding the guy's collar, and Joseph Woll—who hadn't been in a fight since ever, who mediated, who de-escalated, who was described by every coach he'd ever had as the calmest person in any room—pulled the guy away from you and hit him once.

It was a clean punch. Mechanical, almost. The kind of punch that comes from a body trained to track moving objects at a hundred miles an hour and intercept them with precision, the kind of punch that starts in the legs and travels through the core and arrives at the fist with the full force of two hundred and twelve pounds behind it. It connected with the guy's jaw with a sound like a dropped melon, and the man's eyes went blank before his body even registered the impact, and then he was falling—straight down, like a puppet with cut strings, like every bone in his body had simply dissolved—and he hit the sidewalk with a heavy, final thud and did not move.

Silence. Total, ringing, absolute silence, the kind that fills the space where noise just was like water rushing into a void. You stood with your back against the wall, your arm still raised where his grip had been, the ghost of his fingers already blooming into a tenderness you'd feel for days, and you stared at the man on the ground and then at the man who'd put him there, and your mouth was open and nothing was coming out. Joseph stared at his own fist like he'd never seen it before, like it belonged to someone else, like it had acted without consulting him, and for three full seconds neither of you moved or spoke or breathed.

Then Joseph dropped to his knees on the cold wet pavement beside the unconscious man and the spell broke, not into triumph but into panic—raw, white-faced, shaking-hands panic, the kind that made your chest tight just witnessing it. "Oh God. Oh no, no, no—hey, hey buddy, can you hear me?" His voice had gone high and thin, stripped of every ounce of that pre-punch composure, and his enormous hands were suddenly gentle and frantic on the man's face, turning his head carefully, tilting his chin up to clear his airway.

"Can you hear me? Hey. Hey." He pulled his phone from his pocket with shaking fingers, fumbled the flashlight app on, and aimed the beam directly into the man's eyes, leaning in close, watching the pupils with the terrified concentration of someone who had possibly just ruined his own life. "Pupils are reactive, they're reactive, okay, okay that's good, that's—" He exhaled a breath that shuddered out of him like he'd been holding it since birth, and then he was pulling open the man's jacket, pressing two fingers to the side of his neck, counting silently, his lips moving around numbers you couldn't hear.

"He's breathing, his pupils are equal and reactive, I think he's—" He pressed his ear to the guy's chest, listening, and you watched the back of his hooded head rise and fall with each enormous breath he was taking, his shoulders still trembling with the kind of adrenaline dump that makes your hands useless and your brain loud.

"Hey." You crouched down next to him, your knees on cold pavement, and put your hand on his arm. Under the jacket sleeve, his bicep was rock-solid, shaking like a plucked string. "Hey. Look at me." He turned, and up close his eyes were even more absurdly blue, even more wide and panicked and pretty, like a spooked husky trying to perform emergency medical care. "You didn't do anything wrong. That guy grabbed me. You asked him to stop. He didn't. You defended me. That's the whole story, and it's a good one, so can you please stop trying to be his doctor?"

He blinked at you, and his mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again. "I think his breathing is shallow."

"His breathing is fine. He snores. Listen." You tilted your head, and sure enough, a wet, rattling snore was emanating from the unconscious man on the sidewalk, the kind of deep, contented snore that suggested he was having a better night than either of you. "See? He's sleeping great. He's having the time of his life down there."

Joseph stared at the snoring body. Then at you. Then at the body again. "I punched him."

"You did."

"In the face."

"Very squarely, yeah."

"And he's..." He gestured vaguely at the man's sleeping form, at the slow rise and fall of his barrel chest, at the thin trail of drool already connecting his lip to the pavement. "He's snoring."

"He's snoring." You stood up, brushing off your knees, and looked down at him, this enormous, gentle, clearly devastated human still kneeling on the wet sidewalk in his hoodie like a very large and contrite golden retriever who'd knocked over a trash can. "We can't leave him here."

"I know."

"So let's move him."

He looked up at you. "Move him where?"

You glanced down the street. Two blocks east, the fluorescent glow of a Circle K sign buzzed against the dark sky like a beacon of bad decisions. "There. Convenience store. Someone there can keep an eye on him, maybe call someone to pick him up."

"He's going to wake up and not know where he is."

"He grabbed a woman's arm on the street after harassing her all night. I genuinely do not care if he wakes up confused." You extended your hand down to him, and he took it, and his hand swallowed yours completely as he pulled himself up, his weight shifting as he stood to his full height, which was considerable, close up, tall enough that you had to tip your chin to look at him properly. "Come on. Grab his arms."

"I should grab under his—"

"Arms. I'll get his feet. Let's go before someone sees this and calls the cops and we both have to explain why a two people are carrying unconscious body through the streets of Toronto at midnight."

He winced but complied, bending down to hook his hands under the guy's armpits, while you grabbed both ankles—god, his legs were heavy, everything about this guy was heavy—and together you shuffled down the sidewalk at the pace of a very slow, very absurd funeral procession. The man's head lolled back against Joseph’s chest, mouth open, still snoring, and a couple walking a golden doodle on the opposite sidewalk slowed to stare. "He's fine!" you called over, bright and convincing. "Just had a little too much! We're getting him home!" The couple sped up. The dog looked concerned.

The Circle K was one of those narrow, over-lit, perpetually humming convenience stores that existed in the same aesthetic dimension as hospital waiting rooms and airport lounges at three a.m.—fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead, racks of chips and energy drinks casting long shadows, a linoleum floor so aggressively polished it reflected the ceiling. The cashier was a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain and the bone-deep weariness of someone who had seen things in this store that would fill a novel, and she looked up from her phone as the automatic doors slid open and the two of you carried a snoring, unconscious man through the entrance like a very poorly constructed piece of IKEA furniture.

"Can I help you," she said. It was not a question.

Joseph stepped forward, and you watched him assemble what he clearly believed was a competent, trustworthy expression, and what was actually the face of a man whose heart was still hammering at a hundred and sixty beats per minute. "Hi. Hi, sorry. We, um." He looked at you. You raised both eyebrows. He looked back at the cashier. "We found him."

"Found him," the cashier repeated.

"Yeah, he was just—on the sidewalk. Out cold. We don't know him. We were just walking by and he was lying there, so we thought we'd bring him somewhere safe, somewhere with light, where someone could maybe keep an eye on him until he wakes up." He delivered this entire speech with the conviction of a man who had never lied about anything in his entire life and was therefore catastrophically bad at it, his voice cracking on the word found and his hands doing something strange and hover-y at his sides, like he wanted to gesture but couldn't remember how.

The cashier looked at the unconscious man, who was now propped against a rack of Doritos, his head tilted at an angle that suggested he'd be sleeping in the chip aisle whether anyone wanted him to or not. She looked at Joseph. She looked at you. She looked at the man's very obviously punched jaw, already swelling into a deep, ugly purple. "You found him," she said again.

"On the sidewalk," you confirmed, nodding. "Just lying there."

"And his face was already like that."

"Must have fallen," Joseph said quickly. "Before we found him. He fell. On the sidewalk. Which is where he was. When we found him."

The cashier took a long, slow breath, adjusted her reading glasses, and looked at the two of you, deciding exactly how many fucks she had left to give at twelve-fifteen on a Friday night. The answer appeared to be zero. "I'm calling a cab for him," she said, reaching for her phone. "You two need to leave."

"Thank you so much," you said, already grabbing Joseph's sleeve and pulling him toward the door, "thank you, you're doing God's work, have a great night," and then you were both back on the sidewalk, the cold air hitting your faces, the automatic doors closing behind you with a soft hiss, and you looked at each other for one beat—two—three—and then you were both walking, fast, not running but walking with purpose, your boots and his sneakers hitting the pavement in a rapid syncopation as you put distance between yourselves and the Circle K like two people who had definitely not just abandoned an unconscious man in a chip aisle.

"That was terrible," he said, half-laughing, half-hyperventilating. "That was the worst lying I've ever done. She knew. She absolutely knew."

"She knew the second you said found him with that voice."

"What was wrong with my voice?"

"Everything. You sounded like a kid telling a teacher the dog ate his homework." You were smiling now, really smiling, the adrenaline and the absurdity of the whole night catching up to you in a wave of giddy, slightly hysterical energy that made your cheeks ache. "I found him, officer, he was just lying there, on the sidewalk, with a fist-shaped bruise on his jaw, it was crazy—"

"Okay, okay." He was laughing too, a real laugh now, bright and startled and warm, the kind of laugh that cracked open his whole face and made him look younger, less like a guy who'd just knocked someone unconscious and more like a guy who couldn't believe any of this was happening. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing his hood back, and the streetlight caught his face properly for the first time—soft jaw, straight nose, those ridiculous blue eyes still a little wild with leftover adrenaline—and you thought, distantly, irrationally, oh, he's actually—

You shook it off. You turned left, orienting yourself. Dundas West was four blocks north, and if you hurried you could catch the last eastbound train, and you could be home in twenty minutes, and you could shower off this entire night and crawl into bed and process nothing about it until tomorrow, preferably with a large glass of wine. You pulled your cardigan tighter around yourself again, and started walking that direction.

"Where are you going?"

"Train."

"No." His voice changed, not sharp but firm, the same way it had sounded when he'd told the guy to let go of your arm, steady and certain and built on a foundation that didn't wobble. He caught up to you in two strides, his long legs making your brisk walk look like a leisurely stroll. "I'm not letting you get on a train right now."

You stopped and turned to look at him. "You're not letting me?"

"That came out wrong." He paused, rubbed the back of his neck, and the gesture was so genuinely awkward, so completely at odds with the squared-off solidity of his frame, that something in your chest did an inconvenient little flip. "I just mean—it's late, it's freezing, you're not dressed for the cold, and that guy is back there. What if he wakes up and comes looking for you? What if he—"

"What if he what? Tracks me through the subway system using his incredible powers of drunken observation?" But even as you said it, you knew he had a point, and he could clearly see that you knew, because he gave you a look—patient, steady, a little bit pleading. "I'll be fine. I take this train three nights a week."

"And tonight's different, and you know it." He already had his phone out, thumbs moving across the screen. "I'm calling you an Uber. It'll be here in four minutes. Please just—let me do this."

You opened your mouth to argue. Closed it. Opened it again. He glanced up from his phone, his eyes catching yours, and there was something in them that wasn't pity or white-knight posturing or any of the things you'd braced for—it was just concern, real and unguarded and slightly desperate, the look of someone who needed to know you were safe almost as much as you needed to be safe. You exhaled, a long pale cloud dissolving into the dark.

"Fine," you said. "If you insist."

He smiled, then turned the phone screen toward you briefly—the Uber app, a car four minutes away, a little sedan icon creeping toward your location on the map—and then pocketed it and shoved his hands back into his jacket, rocking on his heels. Silence settled between you, not uncomfortable but charged, the kind of silence that happens when two strangers have shared something too big for small talk and too weird for silence. You stood on the sidewalk under a streetlight, your arms wrapped around yourself, his frame casting a shadow that practically reached the other side of the street, and the night moved around you—distant sirens, a dog barking somewhere, the muffled bass of music from an apartment window.

"Thanks," you said. "For back there. I had it under control, but... thanks."

"He had his hand on you." Something flickered across his face, a shadow of that earlier coldness, quickly suppressed. "You shouldn't have had to handle that. I should've gotten there sooner."

"You don’t know me. You got there exactly when you needed to." You looked up at him, meaning it, and his expression shifted into something softer, something that made the sharp planes of his face go gentle in the streetlight. Headlights swept across the street—a white sedan, pulling up to the curb, a phone glowing on the dashboard. "That's me."

"Yeah." He stepped back, giving you space, and lifted one hand in a small wave that was so earnestly dorky it almost broke your heart. "Get home safe. Please."

"Thanks," you said, and pulled open the Uber door, slid into the backseat, and closed it behind you. The heat was blasting, the radio was playing something soft and acoustic, and the driver, a middle-aged man with a neat beard and kind eyes, glanced at you in the rearview mirror.

"Rough night?"

"Long one," you said, leaning your head against the cool window. The city slid past outside—streetlights, closed storefronts, the occasional late-night walker hunched against the cold—and you watched the last glimpse of the tall man standing on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, watching your car until it turned the corner and he disappeared from view. You closed your eyes. The adrenaline was draining out of you like water from a cracked glass, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion and the phantom warmth of a huge, steady hand on your arm and a voice that said get home safe, please like it actually meant it, like it was the most important sentence in the world.

The driver glanced at you in the rearview again, and you caught the movement, your gaze refocusing on the interior of the car—the neat dashboard, the phone in its mount showing the route, a small air freshener shaped like a pine tree swinging gently from the rearview mirror. He seemed nice. He seemed like the kind of person who would answer a question without making it weird.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" You sat up a little straighter, pulling your arms tighter around yourself.

"Of course." His eyes flicked to the mirror, then back to the road.

"The person who booked this ride—the account holder—you see their name on your end, right?"

He nodded, slowing for a red light. "First name, yeah. That's all they give us."

"What is it?"

The light turned green. He glanced at the screen on his dashboard, tapping it once with his index finger to wake it from its dim standby, and read it off with the casual disinterest of a man who saw hundreds of names a week and didn't think twice about any of them.

"Joseph," he said.

You're only half-listening to Rusty and Kai’s conversation, chin propped on your fist, sipping the same beer you've been nursing for twenty minutes because you haven't eaten since noon and Rusty's already told you twice not to get "pre-game sloppy." Dana is next to you scrolling through her phone, occasionally holding up photos of pedal configurations from some forum she's obsessed with, and the four of you are settled into the kind of comfortable, scattered orbit that happens before a gig, when your bodies are here but your minds are already on the stage, already running through intros and transitions and the one part in a song where Kai always comes in a half-beat late and you have to turn around and glare at him.

The game is just noise. It's always just noise—some fast-moving blur of color and motion on the screen above the bar, the play-by-play voice droning in that cadence sports commentators have, simultaneously urgent and monotonous, like a man narrating his own house fire. You don't dislike hockey. You just don't watch it. It exists in the same category of things-you-don't-think-about as fantasy football, cryptocurrency, and whatever Rusty's opinion on hot dogs is: technically present in the world, functionally irrelevant to your life.

Dana holds up her phone. "What about this fuzz pedal? The green one."

"I don't know what I'm looking at," you say, squinting.

"It's a fuzz pedal."

"Yeah, I got that part. What's the question."

"Should I buy it?"

"Buy whatever you want, Dana, you're a grown woman."

She pulls the phone back, mutters something about unsupportive bandmates, and you let your eyes drift. Just the idle, screen-tired wander of someone whose brain needs a landing pad that isn't another pedalboard photo, and your gaze travels across the shelf of liquor bottles, past the cluster of guys in jerseys two stools down who are groaning about something, and lands on the television screen mounted above the bar.

It's a goalie. That much you can parse from the visual—a player in full goalie gear, crouched in his crease, painted blue and white from mask to pads, settled into that particular ready stance that looks almost meditative, weight forward, glove open, eyes tracking something out of frame. The camera is tight on him, close enough that the broadcast is clearly building a moment around him—a save sequence, maybe, or an intermission package—and the shot holds, and you look at him the way you look at anything on a bar TV, with the passive, consuming blankness of someone who is watching without seeing.

And then you see.

It's the eyes. It's stupid that it's the eyes, because you can barely see them through the cage of his mask, just these two smudges of color visible through the bars, but they're bright, absurdly bright, even on a screen, even through broadcast feed and a goalie cage, and they're the kind of blue that doesn't look real, that looks like someone picked a color from a painting and gave it to a person. The shape of them, the way they're set in his face, the quality of focus—calm, patient, alert without being anxious—it tugs at something. Something deep and recent and very specific. You sit up a little straighter.

The camera tightens further. The mask comes off.

Brunette hair, pushed back, damp with sweat. A soft jaw clean above the bulk of his chest protector. A mouth that's set in a serious line but somehow looks like it's two seconds away from smiling, like the seriousness is a costume and the smile is what's underneath. And those eyes, freed from the cage now, blinking once in the arena light, sweeping the ice, settling—

Your stomach drops through the floor.

"Hey," you say, but it comes out strange, too quiet, aimed at no one. Kai and Rusty have moved on from a hot dog debate to something about set break timings and neither of them hears you. Dana is still staring at her phone. You reach out and grab her arm.

"Ow—what?"

"Look at the TV."

She glances up, assesses the screen with the same indifference you'd had thirty seconds ago. "Hockey," she says, like she's identifying a species of insect. "Cool."

"No, look at the—the goalie. The goalie, Dana, look at his face."

She squints. On screen, the goalie takes a drink from his water bottle, tips his head back, and the camera catches him in profile—the line of his nose, the slope of his jaw, the way his throat moves when he swallows—and then he lowers the bottle and his face is front-on again and those blue eyes are right there, right there, and you can feel your pulse in your fingertips where they're gripping Dana's arm.

"He's cute," Dana says, which is so monumentally unhelpful that you almost let go of her. "Is he—do you know him?"

"I don't know him. I met him. Maybe. I think I met him. He was—" You stop. You don't know how to explain it. You don't know how to say a few weeks ago a very tall, very gentle stranger punched a man unconscious for me and then panicked about it and then called me an Uber and then stood on the sidewalk watching me leave like a golden retriever watching its owner drive away without sounding like you've lost your mind. "He might be someone I met."

Dana's eyebrows climb her forehead. "You met the goalie? How do you meet a goalie?"

"I didn't know he was a goalie! He was just a guy! He must've been at The Vault the night we played, and then after, there was this—there was an incident, and he—he was there, and—" You're staring at the screen so hard your eyes ache. The goalie stretches his legs in his crease, rolling his neck, and there's something in the motion, in the particular way he carries his shoulders—huge and deliberate and careful, like he's always aware of how much space he takes up—that lands in your memory like a key sliding into a lock. You know those shoulders. You stood next to those shoulders. Those shoulders carried half an unconscious man to a Circle K while you carried the other half and lied badly about finding him on the sidewalk.

"Oh my god," you whisper.

"What? What happened?"

"Nothing, I just—" You point at the screen, jabbing your finger toward the glass like you're trying to physically reach through it and confirm what you're seeing. "I need to know his name. I need the TV to tell me his name right now."

Right on cue, as if the universe has decided to stop being coy, the broadcast cuts to a graphic—his stats, presumably, though you don't read numbers, you read the text at the bottom of the screen, the clean white caption block that appears beneath a replay of him making a glove save, and the letters assemble themselves into a name, and the name reads Joseph Woll.

"Joseph Woll," you read aloud, and the name sits on your tongue differently now. Not just a word an Uber driver read off a screen at twelve-thirty in the morning but an actual, verifiable, captioned, broadcast-on-live-television name belonging to an actual person who plays an actual sport for an actual living, and you are staring at the screen with your mouth slightly open and your beer completely forgotten.

"Joseph Woll," Dana repeats, testing it. She looks at you. Looks at the screen. Looks at you again. "And you met him."

"I met someone. I think. I'm not sure it's him."

"You just said you thought it was him."

Rusty has turned around now, drawn by the specific frequency of two women having a conversation that sounds like it's about a guy, his interest piqued like a dog hearing a treat bag rustle. "Who are we talking about? What's happening?"

"Nothing's happening."

"She met a hockey player," Dana says, cheerfully throwing you under the bus.

"I didn't meet a hockey player. I met a guy outside Dundas West after a gig a few weeks ago. He might be—" You gesture vaguely at the screen, where Joseph Woll has settled back into his crouch, mask back on, just a shape now, just pads and posture and those eyes hidden behind the cage again. "That guy. Maybe. I don't know. It was dark."

Kai leans forward, elbows on the table, his conversation fully abandoned. "Wait, outside Dundas West? Like, after that show where we were—"

"After that show, yes."

"And you didn't mention this? You've been sitting on this for weeks?"

"There's nothing to sit on. He helped me out with a thing, walked me to an Uber, and I left. That's it. I didn't even know his last name until right now. I still don't know anything about him other than his first name and the fact that he apparently catches pucks for a living."

"What kind of thing did he help you out with?" Rusty asks, and the question is casual but his eyes sharpen, because Rusty is the oldest of you and has known you since you both worked at the same dish pit in university and he can read your deflections like sheet music.

You take a sip of your beer. It's warm. You swallow it anyway. "Some guy was being a creep after the show. He stepped in. End of story."

"End of story," Rusty echoes, unconvinced.

"End of story, Rusty."

He holds your gaze for a moment, and you can see the gears turning—questions about whether you filed a report, whether you're okay, whether he needs to find someone and have a conversation about appropriate behavior toward women leaving venues at midnight—but you give him a look, small and firm and private, the look that says I handled it, I'm fine, drop it, and after a beat he nods and turns back to his discourse with Kai.

Dana is harder to shake. She leans into your space, voice dropping to a murmur. "He's really cute, though."

"I didn't notice."

"Fine." She holds up her hands in mock surrender, but she's grinning, that insufferable knowing grin that means the conversation is paused, not over, and she'll be circling back to it at the worst possible moment, probably mid-set. She goes back to her phone, and you exhale slowly, quietly, into the neck of your beer bottle.

On the screen above the bar, the period ends. The broadcast cuts to a wide shot of the arena, players filtering off the ice, and for a split second the camera catches the goalie at the bench, pulling his mask off again, shaking sweat from his hair, and he smiles—quick and reflexive and bright—at something a teammate says, and it hits you like a wrong note, sharp and unmistakable, because you know that smile. You saw it once, on a dark sidewalk, aimed at you, and it looked exactly like that, and then you looked away, and then you got in a car, and then you went home, and the whole time he was this. This person on a screen in an arena full of thousands of people, this person whose name is captioned and whose stats are tallied and whose face is recognizable enough to be identified by a broadcast graphic, and he was standing on a sidewalk in a hoodie at midnight punching a guy for you.

"Set's in two hours," Rusty says, checking his phone. "We should do a soundcheck by nine."

"Yep," you say, and your voice sounds normal, and your face is calm, and your hands are steady around your bottle, and somewhere behind your sternum something is rearranging itself quietly, a small private renovation that you do not have the time or the inclination to inspect right now, not with a gig in two hours and a setlist to finalize and a stage to get on. Later, maybe. Later you'll pull out your phone and search the name and sit with whatever you find. But not now. Now there are songs to play and cables to coil and a room full of sticky floor and cheap beer that needs someone to sing at it, and that someone is you, and you have work to do.

The game ends while you're doing your final soundcheck, a 4-2 win that you know nothing about because you've been on stage adjusting your mic stand and arguing with Rusty about the order of the middle three songs for the last twenty minutes. By the time the room starts filling, the bar's regulars have been supplemented by a post-game crowd—looser, louder, several people still in jerseys—and you file that away the way you always do, reading the room, calibrating your energy to match what's in front of you.

You count in the opener with a sharp nod to Rusty, and the first riff splits the room open like a crack in glass—something angular and driving that you wrote in the back of a coffee shop in August, all jagged rhythm and propulsive bass, your voice coming in low and tight before the chorus detonates into something loud enough to rattle the glasses on the bar rail. The set is tight tonight, sharper than usual, and you can feel it in the way the room locks in early, the chatter at the back dying by the second song, heads turning, bodies drifting closer.

You play a new one for the first time—something slow that builds into a wall, your voice carrying the melody over Dana's shimmering chords—and then shift into a cover you've been workshopping, something that started as an acoustic ballad and that you've rebuilt into a snarling, fuzzed-out thing that barely resembles the original. Kai's bass is locked in all night. Rusty doesn't rush a single fill. It's one of those sets where the alchemy works and you can feel it humming through the floorboards and up through the soles of your boots and into your blood, and by the time you hit the final song—a short, brutal, two-minute burst of pure adrenaline that ends on a single sustained chord—you're breathing hard and smiling and the room is loud, the good kind of loud, the kind that means you did your job.

You hop off the stage feeling an intense buzz that comes after a set where nothing went wrong, the warm, wrung-out hum of a body that just spent forty-five minutes converting adrenaline into sound. Your first instinct is water, so you weave through the crowd toward the bar, squeezing between bodies with a murmured stream of sorry, excuse me, sorry, and when you finally plant yourself at the rail you lean both elbows on the sticky wood and catch the bartender's eye with a raised finger. "Just water, please. Big one if you've got it."

You don't scan the room. You don't look for anyone. The set is still vibrating in your bones and your ears are ringing in that muffled way that means you'll need to sleep with one ear pressed into the pillow to hear your own thoughts, and all you want is cold water and maybe a spot to sit for five minutes before you help break down the gear. The bartender slides a pint glass across the bar, ice clinking, and you wrap your hand around it and drink half of it in one long pull, eyes closed, throat working, and you're wiping your mouth with the back of your hand when a voice lands beside you.

"Set was really good."

The sound of it hits before the words do. Low, steady, warm, with the quality of someone who isn't trying to project, just speaking at a volume calibrated for proximity, and every nerve in your body fires at once because you know that voice, you've heard it exactly twice—once on a dark sidewalk, steady and calm above the sound of your own racing heart, and once on a television screen during an intermission interview, muffled and distant through bar speakers—and your body reacts before your brain catches up, your shoulders jerking, your hand tightening on the glass, your head snapping sideways so fast something in your neck clicks.

He's right there. Right there, standing at the bar less than two feet from you, taller than you remember, which shouldn't be possible because you already remember him being absurdly tall, but up close and in person and not in the adrenaline-blurred chaos of a midnight sidewalk, he's somehow more—broader in the shoulders, longer in the arm, his frame occupying the space next to you with a quiet, unhurried solidity that makes the bar feel smaller. He's in a dark jacket over a plain grey henley, no hood tonight, and his hair is pushed back and his face is exactly the face from the television, except real, except three-dimensional, except aimed at you with those eyes and the expression you remember—gentle, a little amused, maybe the faintest trace of something cautious underneath, like he wasn't entirely sure he should come over and is gauging your reaction to the fact that he did.

"Jesus," you say, your hand flat against your own sternum. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry." He doesn't sound sorry. He sounds like he's trying not to smile. "Didn't mean to sneak up. You were—sorry."

"You keep saying sorry."

Now he does smile, a real one, quick and slightly crooked, pulling to one side of his face in a way that the television didn't capture because the television only caught the bright, reflexive version. This one is slower, more private, the kind of smile that knows it's being witnessed and doesn't mind. "Can I buy you a drink? Soda counts, but I mean something with a little more going on, if you want."

You look at him. You look at your water. You look at him again. "You want to buy me a drink."

"That's the idea, yeah."

"You—the guy from the sidewalk."

"The guy from the sidewalk," he confirms, and the smile widens a fraction, and there's a warmth in it that you don't know what to do with, so you take another sip of your water and set it down and turn to face him properly, because apparently this is happening.

"Okay," you say. "Sure. Whatever you're having."

"I'm not having anything, actually. Early morning tomorrow. But whatever you want is on me." He flags the bartender with an easy lift of his hand, the gesture natural and unhurried, and when you order a gin and tonic because it's the first thing that comes to mind, he nods and pulls out his card without looking at the total and hands it to the bartender with a thanks that sounds like he means it. While the drink is being made, he leans one elbow on the bar, and the angle brings him closer, not invasive but present, and he looks at you with those blue eyes and says, "I didn't know you'd be playing here tonight. I came with a friend and his wife, and I saw the setup and thought, okay, live music, could be good, and then you walked on stage and I thought—"

"That it was me."

"That it was you." He nods slowly. "Took me about three seconds."

"Three seconds is fast."

"You're pretty recognizable."

"Straight from a hockey game?"

The words are out before you can think about them, light and reflexive, just a flick of humor, and you watch his face carefully for the reaction. There isn't much of one. His expression shifts—barely, a slight lift of the eyebrows, a fractional pause—but he recovers immediately, rolling with it the way someone rolls with a compliment they've already accepted, easy and unbothered.

"So you looked me up," he says.

"The Leafs tend to be televised. I was at a bar. The TV was on."

"Fair." He takes the card back from the bartender, signs, pockets it. "What gave me away, the name or the face?"

"Both. The face first, then the name confirmed it."

"That's flattering, I think."

"Don't let it go to your head." You accept the gin and tonic from the bartender, the cold glass sweating against your fingers, and take a sip. It's strong. You're grateful for it. "Who's the friend?"

He glances over his shoulder, toward the back of the room, and you follow his gaze to a table near the wall where a very large man—huge, actually, somehow even broader than the man standing next to you, with a thick dark beard and the general build of a refrigerator someone taught to walk upright—is sitting with a woman who looks like she's telling a very animated story, her hands moving, her face bright. The large man is watching her with the particular soft expression of someone who has heard this story before and will happily hear it a hundred more times. "That's Tony," he says. "And his wife, Jenna. I brought them because my other friends would've—" He pauses, searching for the word. "Made it a whole thing."

"A whole thing."

"If they knew I was here to see you play, they would've—" He stops himself, shakes his head. "It would've been a lot of chirping. Teasing. I didn't want to deal with that tonight."

Something about the way he says it—plain, unguarded, like he's explaining a practical decision and not confessing that he deliberately brought backup to avoid being roasted by his friend group—makes you want to laugh. "So you brought a ringer."

"Tony doesn't chirp. Tony is the most unbothered person alive. You could tell him the building was on fire and he'd finish his drink first."

"You brought the chillest guy you know so you could come watch a band without getting made fun of?"

He looks at you, and there's a beat where you can see him decide whether to be embarrassed or just accept it, and he lands on accept, his shoulders relaxing a fraction, that sunny smile returning. "Basically, yeah."

"Mmhm."

"Your set was great, by the way. Different from last time."

"You already said that. You remember last time?"

"I remember everything about last time." He says it without bravado, without performance, just a statement of fact delivered in that same steady, even voice, and the plainness of it is what makes it land harder than any clever line could have. He gestures vaguely toward the stage behind you. "The fast one you opened with, that was new. And the slow one in the middle, the one that built up. I liked that one a lot. There was something in the second verse where your voice dropped down and it almost sounded like—" He stops, frowning slightly, like he's reaching for a word he can't quite catch. "I don't know how to describe it. Like something cracking. In a good way."

You stare at him. He stares back, blue eyes steady, clearly unaware that he's just described a vocal choice you agonized over for three weeks during the writing process, the specific moment where you pull back from the mic and let the note thin out until it almost breaks, because you wanted it to sound like a hairline fracture, like something on the edge of splitting open. "So I'm guessing you're a bit of a musician yourself?" you say.

"Piano," he says. "A little. Not like you, not—yeah. Piano."

"That's why you said it like that. The cracking thing. That's a musician thing to notice."

He ducks his head, just slightly, and you catch the faintest flush along the tops of his ears, barely visible in the bar light, and it is so unexpectedly endearing that your grip tightens on your gin and tonic for reasons you choose not to examine. He recovers fast, lifts his head, meets your eyes again, and says, "The last song was intense. I really liked it."

"Thanks." You take a sip of your drink. He shifts his weight, his elbow still on the bar, and the closeness of him registers again—the sheer physical presence of him, the warmth radiating off his arm where it rests near yours, the low ambient hum of his breathing. He's not doing anything. He's just standing there, solid and patient and unhurried, and somehow that's worse than if he were trying, because it means this is just how he is, naturally, this is the resting state, and the resting state is a lot. "So," you say, because the silence is doing something to your chest that you don't appreciate. "Joseph."

"Most people call me Woller. Or Jo."

"Which do you prefer?"

"Joseph's fine."

"Joseph." You test it again, the way you tested it in the back of the Uber, except this time it has a face and a voice and a body standing next to you at a bar, and it sounds different in your mouth. Warmer. "Okay, Joseph. I have a question."

"Go ahead."

You swirl the gin and tonic, letting the ice clink against the glass. Then you tilt your head, let your mouth curl into something sharper, and level your gaze right at him.

"Why did you really come see me tonight?" Your voice drops, steady and dry. "Shouldn't you be exhausted after a game? Don’t you guys come off the ice drenched and heroic and dehydrated or whatever?"

His eyebrows jump, and then he breaks into a laugh, a low, warm sound that makes your pulse jump just a bit. "Well, I showered."

"Good to know." You lean your elbow on the bar, angle yourself toward him, make it impossible for him not to notice the way your gaze drifts down his chest and back up slowly. "But that doesn’t answer the question."

You hold his eyes—God, they're steady—and he blinks once, slow. There’s a flush creeping up his neck now, like he’s trying to decide what to risk and how much to say, and you watch the moment he lands on the truth. His arms fold loosely across his chest, not defensive but grounded, and the corner of his mouth lifts as he leans in a little closer.

“I wanted to see you again.”

You let that hang between you, your throat going dry even though you’ve got a drink in hand. You take a sip just to give yourself something to do, then tilt your chin up, enjoying the way he’s looking at you now, direct and earnest and the tiniest bit wrecked.

“You get hit with slapshots for a living but coming to a dive bar to watch me is your idea of a thrill?”

“It wasn’t that complicated.” He swallows hard, shakes his head. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. The show. How you looked up there. So I figured—if I had a shot to see that again, I should take it.”

Heat flares in your cheeks and you tamp it down with sheer force of will, giving him your slowest smile. “That’s a better answer.”

He looks relieved, a little breathless even though all he’s doing is standing there and telling you he thinks you’re cool. Your gaze drops to his hands, fingertips drumming lightly on the bartop, and you shift your weight toward him, letting your knee graze his thigh. Neither of you pretends it didn’t happen.

“You know,” you say, voice barely above the hum of the room, “you could’ve just asked.”

“Yeah?” He dips his head, smiling now, softer than before.

“Mhm.” You sip your drink, eyes never leaving his. “Could’ve walked up after the show and said, ‘Hey, I’m the guy who knocked out a creep and called you an Uber, can I see you again?’”

His laugh is smaller this time, tighter at the edges. “Would that have worked?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

He shifts his weight, and the movement brings him a half-inch closer, close enough that you can feel the warmth coming off his chest. His tongue touches his lower lip—a quick, unconscious thing—and he squares his shoulders like he's bracing for something.

"Can I take you out sometime? Like, not here, not after a gig, just—" He pauses, rubs a hand along his jaw. "Dinner, maybe. Or coffee. Or whatever you'd actually want to do. I'm not picky."

You let the question sit for a beat, watching him, the way his fingers have gone still on the bartop and his breathing has gone just slightly shallow, and then you lean in, closing the distance between you until you can smell him—something clean and warm, cedar maybe, undercut with the faintest trace of whatever soap he uses—and you drop your voice to a murmur that lands somewhere right below his ear.

"Joseph."

"Yeah?"

"You don't just want to take me home right now?"

The sound he makes is not a word. It's somewhere between a laugh and a cough and a sound a man makes when all the blood in his head tries to relocate south at the same time, and the flush that was creeping up his neck floods into his face in a hot, sudden wave that turns his cheekbones pink and makes the tips of his ears go red. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

"No—no, no, I didn't—that's not—" He runs a hand through his hair, pushes it back, drops the hand, picks it up again, and you are enjoying this so much it should probably be illegal. "I mean, I would—not that I'm saying—I didn't come over here to—I just want to get to know you better, that's all, I swear, I'm not trying to—"

"Joseph."

"—I mean, obviously you're—" He gestures at you vaguely, a helpless encompassing wave that takes in your whole body, and the gesture is so genuinely overwhelmed that something in your chest clenches hard. "You're incredibly—you're so—" He cuts himself off, presses his lips together, and stares at the ceiling for a full two seconds like he's asking it for strength. "Yes. I mean, yes, obviously, I would—not that I'm expecting—I just—" He blows out a long breath through his nose and looks back at you, and his face is so open right now, so completely undefended, every thought playing out across his features like a ticker tape, and he says, "I think you're amazing. And I think you're beautiful—" He stops. Swallows. The Adam's apple bobs. "But that's not why I came over here. I came over here because a few weeks ago I knocked a guy out, and I met this really, really cool girl, and I want to take her to dinner and listen to her talk about her music for three hours and maybe make her laugh the way she was laughing with her bandmates earlier, and if that's all I get, that's enough."

You stare at him. The bar noise rushes back in—the clinking of glasses, someone feeding quarters into the pool table, the muffled thump of Rusty's kick drum as he tests a pedal behind you—and none of it registers, because this enormous, flustered, blue-eyed man just said beautiful and enough in the same breath without seeming to understand that the combination might be the most devastating thing anyone has ever said to you in a bar at eleven o'clock on a Wednesday night.

"Okay," you say, and your voice comes out softer than you intend, stripped of the teasing edge, and you watch him register the shift.

"Okay?"

"Dinner. Yes. Give me your phone."

He blinks. Reaches into his back pocket. Hands it to you, unlocked, and his fingers brush yours during the handoff and neither of you pulls away fast enough, and the contact is small and electric and lingers. You open a new contact, type in your number, save it under a name you know will make him laugh, and hand it back.

He looks at the screen. His mouth twitches. Then he laughs—full, bright, real—and turns the phone toward you so you can see what you typed: Girl from the sidewalk with a skull emoji after it.

You pick up your gin and tonic, take the last sip, set the empty glass down, and lean in close enough that your lips nearly brush his ear. "Text me, Joseph. Don't make me find you on TV again."

His breath catches. You pull back, give him your widest smile, and walk away toward the stage where Rusty is already coiling cables, your pulse hammering against your ribs the entire way, your back straight, your chin up, and you don't turn around, but you can feel him watching you go.

The date is fine.

That's the word you keep coming back to, turning it over in your head on the train ride home, examining it from different angles like a stone that might reveal something hidden if you hold it up to the light long enough. Fine. He picks a restaurant in the Distillery District—warm, low-lit, the kind of place with exposed brick and candles in amber glass and a menu that doesn't have prices on it in any font size you can read without squinting—and he's already there when you arrive, standing near the host stand, and when he sees you his whole face does that thing, that immediate unfurling of warmth, like you're the answer to a question he's been holding all day. He hugs you hello and it's brief and careful, one arm, a respectful distance, his hand landing flat between your shoulder blades and lifting away almost before you register the weight of it.

Dinner is two hours. He asks about your music—when you started, why guitar, what your writing process looks like—and he actually listens, not the performative nodding thing most people do while waiting for their turn to talk, but real listening, his fork pausing halfway to his mouth when you say something that catches him, follow-up questions that prove he was paying attention. You ask about the piano, and he lights up, telling you about the bridge he's been stuck on, and then he tells you about the Lego Lamborghini like it's a perfectly normal hobby for a grown professional athlete to have, and you laugh, and he grins, and the conversation moves easy and natural from one thing to the next without either of you forcing it.

He pays. You try to split it and he says "absolutely not" with such calm finality that you don't argue, and when you tell him you'll get the next one he nods, and the fact that he doesn't make a joke or push or assume anything about what "next one" means registers quietly in the back of your mind. He walks you to the station. You talk about nothing notable, and when you reach the entrance he stops, shoves his hands in his coat pockets, and looks at you with those blue eyes and says he had a great time, and you say you did too, and it's true, and then there's a pause, a breath of space where something could happen, and he says "get home safe," and you say "goodnight, Joseph," and you go down the stairs and through the turnstile and you don't look back because there's nothing to look back for.

It was fine. It was nice. He was a perfect gentleman, attentive and warm and genuine, and you felt comfortable the entire time, never once reaching for your phone or scanning the room for an exit, and the conversation was good and the food was good and he smelled like spice and cold air when he hugged you goodbye, and you ride the train home with your earbuds in and your head against the window and you think: that was a nice date with a nice guy who is not going to call you again because there was no spark, no moment, no electricity, just two people eating dinner and being pleasant, and that's okay, not every connection has to be a thing.

You're wrong about that, it turns out. He texts you the next morning—had a great time last night, hope you got home safe—and you reply, and he replies, and the texting continues in a low, easy rhythm over the next few days that you don't overthink because it's just texting, it doesn't mean anything, it's just a nice guy being nice. You tell yourself this firmly. You tell yourself this while typing back a response in under thirty seconds. You tell yourself this while saving a song he'd asked about to a playlist labeled Stuff for Jo that you absolutely do not overthink the naming of.

And then it's Friday, and you're at a different venue, and you're doing your pre-show ritual, tuning, adjusting pedals, running through the setlist in your head, when Rusty nudges you with his elbow and nods toward the door.

"Your boyfriend's here."

"Shut up. I don't have a boyfriend."

"Cute tall guy, blue eyes, looks like he could bench press the bar. That one."

You glance toward the door, casual, disinterested, just a reflexive check to confirm whatever random stranger Rusty has mistaken for your personal life, and your hand stills on your tuning pegs.

He's coming through the door. Joseph. In a brown jacket and a beanie pulled down over his hair, scanning the room with the slightly wide-eyed expression of someone who has never been in this venue before and is trying to figure out the layout without bumping into anyone. He's alone tonight—no refrigerator-sized friend, no teasing teammates, just him, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched against the cold still clinging to his jacket, and he finds you on the stage within about four seconds, and his face does that thing again, that full-body softening, that quiet there you are that hits you from across a crowded room like a frequency only you can hear.

He raises one hand in a small wave.

You raise your pick hand back.

"What did I tell you," Rusty mutters. "Boyfriend."

"I will fire you from this band."

"You can't fire me, I own the van."

You don't have a comeback for that, because the truth is you don't own the van and Rusty is unfireable and also because your attention has been hijacked by the way Joseph is weaving through the crowd toward the bar, nodding politely at people, his height making him easy to track even in a packed room, and you watch him order something—you can't see what, his back is to you, but you watch the line of his shoulders under the jacket, the way he leans one elbow on the bar while he waits, and something tugs at you, something you don't want to name yet, something that feels less like a spark and more like a slow, steady accumulation of heat, like a pilot light you didn't know was lit.

You don't go over to him. You can't—you have a set to play in twenty minutes and your guitar is half-tuned and your in-ear monitor is acting up and Dana needs help with her strap. So you stay on stage and he stays at the bar and he doesn't try to come over, doesn't wave again, doesn't make it weird, just settles onto a stool with his drink and turns to face the stage like a man who is here for exactly one reason and is content to wait for it.

And when you count in the first song—four clicks of your drumstick against the mic stand, one-two-three-four—you're looking at the stage, at your hands, at your band, at the room full of people who came to hear loud music on a Friday night. But somewhere in the back of your mind, in the place where songs come from, in the dark tender space between the notes where the real stuff lives, you can feel him there, watching, steady and patient and warm, and your voice comes out stronger than it has all week.

He keeps showing up. That’s the thing that catches you off-guard, his figure becomes a fixture at the edge of the crowd, tall and easy to spot, half-shrouded in a hoodie or a ballcap, always standing back just enough to let the music fill the space between you. After your sets, he never makes a scene. No dramatic gestures, no flowers or fanfare, just a warm smile, a little wave, a “Hey, you sounded great tonight,” and sometimes, when you’re brave enough or he’s tired enough, a hug that lingers. He keeps it simple. He keeps it safe. You never know if he’s coming until you catch him standing by the bar—sometimes alone, sometimes with his friend Tony, sometimes just nursing a ginger ale and watching the stage with that quietly focused energy you’ve started to crave.

You don’t talk about it with the band, not really. Rusty teases you in passing, Dana raises her eyebrows every time she sees him in the crowd, but it settles into the background of your life like a motif in a song—always there, humming along, building quietly. One night he brings you a coffee after a late set, the lid already scribbled with your name and a smiley face, and you sip it on the curb together, knees brushing, talking about nothing and everything while the city winds down around you. Another night he stands in the rain outside the venue holding an umbrella, waiting for you to finish packing up, and you let him walk you to the station, your hands jammed deep in your pockets so you don’t accidentally reach for his.

You tell yourself it’s not a thing, that it’s just a nice guy who likes your music and maybe likes you a little, that you’re not waiting for him to show up every week, that you’re not scanning the crowd for his height, his shape, the way he stands with his arms crossed loosely over his chest, always looking like he’s holding back something bright. You tell yourself that, and you almost believe it.

And then, one week, he’s not there.

You notice it before you even step on stage. The crowd is thinner than usual, the lighting weirdly harsh, and for the first time in months, you feel exposed—like there’s a gap in the audience where something should be, an anchor you didn’t realize you’d gotten used to. You play through the set, your voice tight, your fingers fumbling a chord change in the second song, and after, you go through the motions: coil your cables, thank the crowd, hug Dana goodbye, ignore Rusty’s jokes about your “missing number one fan.” You check your phone, but there’s nothing from him, not even a “good luck” text, and you tell yourself it shouldn’t matter, but you walk home with your fists clenched, fingernails digging into your palms, the night pressing in around you, heavier than usual.

You get home and drop your bag by the door, tossing your jacket on the back of a chair, and you’re halfway through reheating leftover noodles when your phone rings. The name that flashes on the screen makes your heart stop so abruptly you nearly drop the bowl.

You answer on the third ring, voice steady, “Hello?”

There’s a pause, then his voice, rich and familiar, fills the line. “Hey. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

You slide down into your kitchen chair, fighting the smile that tugs at your mouth. “No, you didn’t wake me. You forget where you were supposed to be tonight?”

He groans, low and sheepish, and you can hear the rustle of fabric, the background hum of a hotel HVAC unit. “Shit. I know, I know. I’m in Boston right now. Road game. I should’ve told you—”

You go quiet for a beat, embarrassment warming your cheeks as the reality crashes back in—of course he’s not just some guy, of course he has a job that takes him out of the city for days at a time. “Right. Hockey. Duh. That makes sense. I… forgot.” You close your eyes, letting your head tip back against the wall. “I thought maybe you’d just gotten bored.”

He laughs, a deep, teasing sound that makes your stomach do a small, traitorous flip. “Bored? You? Not possible. You miss me or something?”

You bristle, but it’s playful, the words tumbling out before you can stop yourself. “Don’t get cocky. Maybe I just missed the free coffee.”

He hums, the sound sending a little shiver down your spine. “Sure. That’s all it is, huh?”

You roll your eyes, even though he can’t see it. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Mmm. Too late,” he says, voice velvet-smooth, and you can hear the smile in it. “You’re the one who called me out. Didn’t think you even liked me.”

You let the silence stretch, then admit, quieter, “Maybe I don’t. You’ll have to find that out for yourself.”

He chuckles, then he’s silent for a long moment, then he lets out a slow breath. “I’ll be back in the city tomorrow morning. Early. If you want me to come over, I will.”

Your heart thuds, slow and certain. You swallow, suddenly unsure of your voice, but you make yourself ask, “You want to?”

“I do,” he says, and there’s no hesitation now, just soft certainty. “Tell me when and I’m there.”

You close your eyes, smile blooming, the weight in your chest lighter than it’s been in days. “I’ll text you my address.”

“I’ll bring coffee,” he promises, and the call lingers, neither of you willing to hang up first, the two of you suspended in the warmth of the line, the distance between you already shrinking, already feeling like nothing at all.

You sleep through your alarm.

This isn't unusual. You've never been a morning person, and after last night's gig your body has apparently decided to reclaim every hour of sleep you've stolen from it over the past week, dragging you down into a dense, dreamless dark that swallows your phone's tinny chirping whole. You're face-down in your pillow, one leg kicked free of the blankets, hair a disaster across your face and the sheets, wearing an old t shirt so washed-out soft the print has dissolved into a ghost of itself and a pair of shorts you don't remember putting on. The room is warm and dim, curtains drawn, and you are so deeply, thoroughly unconscious that when the doorbell rings, it enters your awareness not as a sound but as a distant annoyance, something happening in a different dimension that has nothing to do with you.

It rings again.

You groan into the pillow, mash your face deeper into it, and consider the possibility of ignoring it entirely. Then it rings a third time—insistent, patient, the kind of measured pressing that belongs to someone who is not going away—and you rip the blanket off with a grunt, shove yourself upright, and yell, voice cracked and raw with sleep, "It's open! Just come in!"

You assume it's Dana. She has a key. She's the only person who shows up unannounced on a Saturday morning, usually because she got a match on Hinge and needs a second opinion or because she's hungover and wants company while she eats breakfast. You hear the front door open and close, the shuffle of someone removing their shoes in the entryway, and then footsteps—heavier than Dana's, you register distantly, but your brain is still swimming up through layers of fog and doesn't flag it—and you drop back onto the mattress, pulling the pillow over your head.

The footsteps travel down your hallway. They reach your bedroom door, which is ajar, and they stop, and there's a pause, a beat of stillness that lasts just long enough for something to feel wrong, and then the door pushes open all the way and the footsteps resume, softer now, careful, and the edge of your mattress dips under a weight that is decidedly, absolutely, not Dana.

You freeze. Pillow still over your face. One eye cracking open beneath it.

"I didn't know what kind of coffee you like, so I just got you a double-double. That's okay, right? I can run back out if you want something else."

You rip the pillow off your head.

Joseph is now sitting on the edge of your bed, near your knees, one long leg stretched out and the other bent at the edge of the mattress, looking like he was assembled in a factory specifically for the purpose of sitting on beds in the early morning. He's in grey sweatpants and a dark hoodie, unzipped halfway over a white t-shirt, his hair still damp from what must have been a post-morning-flight shower, beanie gone, and he's holding a Tim Hortons cup in one enormous hand, angled toward you like an offering.

His cheeks are flushed from the cold outside, pink across the bridge of his nose, and his mouth is curved in a smile he's clearly trying and failing to suppress—not his usual bright, reflexive grin but something smaller, more contained, almost private, like he's savoring something he doesn't want to startle away. His eyes move over your face, your wrecked hair, the bunched-up collar of your shirt, and the look in them is so openly, devastatingly fond that your stomach executes a full gymnastics routine.

"Oh my god," you say, yanking the blanket up to your chin. "Oh my god."

"Hi."

"I thought you were Dana."

"I'm getting that impression."

"What time is it?"

"Nine forty-five."

"You were supposed to—you said morning, I didn't think you meant—" You scrub both hands through your hair, which does nothing to improve the situation, and stare at him with what you can only imagine is the expression of a person who has been caught completely, irreversibly off-guard in their natural unguarded state. "I look horrible."

"You look—" He pauses, bites the inside of his cheek, and the smile wins, spreading slow and wide across his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. "You look like you just woke up."

"Thank you for that observation, Joseph."

"I like it."

"You like people looking at you when you just woke up?"

"I like looking at you like this." He says it simply, without grandstanding, without a clever follow-up, and the directness of it silences you more effectively than anything clever could have. He lifts the coffee cup, waggling it gently. "Double-double. Still warm. You want it?"

You reach for it with one hand, the other still clutching the blanket to your chest like a shield, and he hands it over, his fingers brushing yours during the exchange, and the contact sends a jolt through you that has no business being as strong as it is at ten in the morning when you haven't even brushed your teeth. You take a sip. It's hot and sweet and exactly right, and you cradle it against your sternum while he sits there, patient and warm and solid, his hip against your shins through the blanket, looking around your bedroom with open curiosity.

"Your place is nice," he says, glancing at the posters on your wall, the overflow of cables and gear in the corner, the stack of setlists and notebooks on your nightstand. "Smaller than I pictured."

"I can't afford whatever you're picturing."

"Fair." He looks back at you, and his gaze is different now, softer, the teasing edge melted into something quieter and more intent. He shifts his weight, turning toward you more fully, and his hand comes up—slow, deliberate, giving you every chance to pull away—and his fingertips brush your temple, catching a strand of hair that's stuck to your cheek, peeling it back, tucking it behind your ear with a gentleness so careful it makes your throat tight. His fingers linger at your temple, tracing the line of your hairline back, and the pad of his thumb grazes the shell of your ear and the sensitive skin just below it, and you forget to breathe.

"You missed a spot," he murmurs, still smoothing hair back from your forehead, his touch featherlight. "Right here."

"That's just my face."

"Mm. Nice face."

"I haven't brushed my teeth."

"Don't care."

"You should care. I'm gross right now."

His laugh is low and quiet, more of a breath than a sound, and his hand drops from your hair to the mattress, landing near your hip, his fingers curling loosely against the sheet. He's close enough that you can smell him again, and the presence of his cologne is doing things to the part of your brain responsible for decision-making, things that are not helped by the way he's looking at you, all soft and amused and quietly thrilled, like he can't quite believe he's sitting on your bed on a Saturday morning and you're in a ratty band shirt with pillow creases on your cheek and he's happy about it, genuinely, radiantly happy, the kind of happy that lives in the set of his mouth and the ease of his shoulders and the way his body has settled onto your mattress like it was always supposed to be there.

"I can't believe you're in my bed right now," you say, and it comes out more honest than you intended.

"I can leave, if you want,"

"Don't you dare."

The words are out before you can stop them, stripped of irony, stripped of the cool distance you've been maintaining, and his eyebrows lift—not in surprise, exactly, but in recognition, like you've just confirmed something he already knew but wasn't pushing. His hand finds your knee through the blanket, palm flat and warm, fingers curving around the shape of it, and he squeezes once, light and grounding.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says. "Drink your coffee."

You melt into his touch, the lazy way his broad palm settles at your knee and his thumb draws little circles through the blanket. It’s like your body’s been waiting for this—his hand, the warmth of him at your side, the gentle brush of his fingers sweeping your hair back, and you can’t help the involuntary, contented sound you let out, a quiet, throaty hum that lives somewhere between a sigh and a purr. Your lashes flutter, and you lean into his hand before you can stop yourself, letting the comfort of it wash over you. He notices—you can tell by the way the corners of his mouth tug up, the way his thumb slows and lingers.

You open one eye, fixing him with a look that’s half sleepy, half sly. “You know, you should really give me a heads up when you’re going to be out of town. Just so I don’t get my hopes up, or wait around for you like an idiot.” Your tone has a little bite, but the edge is softened by the way you’re curled up under his attention, the blanket bunched around your waist, your coffee cradled in both hands.

He laughs, the sound low and easy, and he nudges your knee with his. “Alright. I’ll keep you posted. Better yet—maybe you should come see me play sometime. That way you’ll know exactly where I am.”

You snort into your cup, arching an eyebrow at him. “That’s a pretty big ask. Isn’t that, like… a girlfriend thing?”

He shrugs, still smiling, his hand slipping from your knee to your shin, fingers tracing back and forth in a way that sends warmth radiating up your leg. “I come to your shows all the time. I thought that was just a ‘liking someone’ thing.”

You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling too, your cheeks warming under the attention. “That’s different. My shows don’t involve a giant arena and tickets and… whatever else happens at hockey games.”

He leans in a little, voice softer now, his eyes never leaving yours. “It’s the same. Just you doing what you love, me doing what I love. I like watching you. You could try watching me, just once.”

You take another sip of the double-double, letting the warmth spread through your chest, and look at him over the rim. He's waiting, patient as always, his thumb still drawing those slow arcs along your shin, and you can feel the fight draining out of you because there was never really much of a fight to begin with. You wanted to go. You've wanted to go since you saw him on that bar TV, crouched in his crease with those bright eyes tracking the puck, you just didn't want to admit what it meant.

"Fine," you say. "One game. I'll come to one game."

His face does something complicated and wonderful, a flicker of surprise quickly smothered into composure, like he wasn't actually expecting you to say yes and is now trying very hard not to look as thrilled as he is. His hand stills on your leg, fingers pressing gently through the blanket, and he nods once, slow and deliberate. "Yeah?"

"Don't make it a thing."

"I'm not making it a thing." He's making the face of a man who just won something he's been quietly, patiently angling for, and the effort it's taking him to keep his expression neutral is visible in the tightness at the corners of his mouth and the way his jaw is working slightly, like he's physically biting back a grin.

You finish your coffee in two long swallows and set the cup on your nightstand, next to the pile of setlists and the tuner you keep meaning to replace. The warmth of it sits in your stomach, layered now with the warmth of him beside you, and you pull the blanket up to your chin again, burrowing deeper into the mattress with the boneless contentment of someone who has no intention of moving for the next several hours.

He watches you do this. Lets a beat pass. Then his hand leaves your leg and finds the edge of the blanket, tugging it down an inch. "Okay, sleepyhead. Get up."

"No."

"You've been asleep for—I'm assuming—nine hours."

"Respectfully, I don't care. I'm warm and you're here and the bed is doing everything I need it to do right now."

"Come on." He tugs the blanket again, firmer this time, and when you grab it and hold fast he laughs under his breath and stands up from the mattress, the absence of his weight and warmth registering immediately against your side like a small loss. He stretches, arms above his head, his hoodie riding up to expose a strip of stomach that you absolutely do not look at, and then he extends his hand down to you, palm open. "Let's go on a walk."

You think about fighting back again, but you're already sitting up, legs swinging toward the floor, because the thing about Joseph is that his suggestions never feel like demands, never carry that pressuring edge that makes you want to dig your heels in out of spite. He just offers, plainly, like here's a thing we could do, and the choice is always yours, and somehow that makes you want to say yes more than any persuasive argument could.

You take his hand. His fingers close around yours and he pulls you to your feet with an ease that reminds you, absurdly, of how little physical effort things take him—he's so strong, so solidly built, that hauling you upright is probably the equivalent of lifting a coffee cup—and you stand in front of him in your ratty shirt and your shorts and your disaster hair, and he looks down at you with that quiet, open fondness, and his thumb strokes across your knuckle once before letting go.

You go to your first game and you understand nothing.

The arena is louder than any venue you've ever played, a full-throated roar that vibrates in your molars and makes your chest rattle, and the pace of the sport is bewildering—players cycling in patterns you can't decode, whistles blowing for reasons you can't parse, the puck disappearing into scrums of bodies and then shooting out the other side like a pinball. You spend the first period squinting at the jumbotron and trying to figure out which one is him, the goalies looking the same in their masks and pads, and then the second period starts and he makes a save—glove hand, quick and clean, the puck disappearing into his mitt with a soft thud—and the crowd surges to its feet and the jumbotron flashes his name and you feel something crack open in your chest, pride, you think, or something close to it, something warm and startled, and you clap your hands over your head and yell with everyone else even though you still don't understand icing.

You go to a second game. A third. By the fourth you can identify a forecheck and a breakout and you know what a butterfly save is, and you've started to notice the things about his play that feel like him—the patience, the economy of movement, the way he reads the play with a stillness that reminds you of the way he listens, fully and without fidgeting, tracking the conversation with his whole body. He's quiet in the crease. Controlled. Even when the puck takes a weird bounce or a forward crashes the net, he resets with a steadiness that makes your stomach flip because you recognize it, you've seen it before on a dark sidewalk when his voice stayed level and his hands stayed open and he asked someone to walk away three times before he made them.

After the third game, you end up in the back of his car.

It's not planned. It's never planned with him. He's driving you home from the arena, his hand on your knee at a red light, and you lean over the center console and kiss him for the first time—really kiss him, not the careful goodbye press of lips at a train station but a real one, your hand fisting in the collar of his jacket, your mouth opening against his—and he makes a sound against your lips that detonates something low in your belly, and he pulls the car into a dark corner of a parking structure near the waterfront and kills the engine and climbs into the backseat with you in a tangle of long limbs and urgency.

His hands are everywhere. Those enormous, careful, goalie hands, spanning your waist, cupping your jaw, sliding under the hem of your shirt with a slowness that's almost unbearable, his fingertips tracing the line of your ribs like he's memorizing the architecture of you. You pull him down over you on the backseat and his weight settles between your thighs and the sheer size of him, the density and heat and breadth of his body pressing you into the leather, pulls a sound out of your throat that you don't recognize. He kisses your neck, slow and open-mouthed, and his hand slides down your stomach, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of your pants, and you arch into his palm because you want it, you want his hands on you, and when his fingers find you, he groans against your mouth, low and rough, and the vibration of it travels through your lips and into your teeth.

He takes his time, touches you like he has all the time in the world, like there's nowhere else he needs to be, like the feeling of you against his fingers is something he wants to study and learn and get right. He finds a rhythm—slow, deliberate, the pad of his middle finger tracing circles that make your hips buck—and he watches your face, reads you the way he reads the ice, adjusting pressure and pace based on the sounds you make, the way your breath catches, the way your fingernails dig into his shoulders through his shirt. When he slides two fingers inside you, his thumb still working that devastating circle, your back arches off the seat and you say his name in a voice you've never heard come out of your own mouth, broken and raw and needing, and he says "I've got you, I've got you" against your jaw, and he does, he does, and you come apart underneath him in the back of a parked car in a concrete structure near the lake with one hand fisted in his hair and the other braced against the fogged-up window.

It's the best you've ever had, and you hate that it's the best you've ever had.

You keep seeing him, keep sleeping with him—in his car, in your apartment, once in his condo on a bed with a duvet so soft you almost cried—and you keep telling yourself it's casual, that you're not his girlfriend, that you're just two people who like each other's company and happen to have incredible physical chemistry and that's it, that's all it is, a nice arrangement between two adults who are busy and independent and definitely not falling for each other. You say this to yourself firmly. You say this to yourself while making him dinner at your apartment because he mentioned he hadn't eaten properly in three days. You say this to yourself while wearing his hoodie to band practice because it smells like him and you couldn't sleep without it. You say this to yourself while watching him on TV from your couch with your knees pulled up and your lower lip between your teeth, tracking his every movement in the crease with an intensity you've never applied to any sport in your life.

Because that's happening now. You watch hockey. Not just his games—all of it, or at least enough of it that you start to recognize other players, start to understand the standings, start to have opinions about power play formations that you keep to yourself because the moment you voice them out loud you will have to accept what you've become. You watch at home, alone, your phone in your hand, texting him things like nice glove save in the second and watching the three dots appear as he types back from whatever locker room or team plane or hotel he's in, and you tell yourself this is normal behavior for someone who is definitely, categorically, not in a relationship.

He doesn't push. That's the worst part, the thing that makes it so hard to maintain your distance—he never pushes, never asks for more than you're giving, never applies pressure or guilt or the quiet manipulation of someone trying to lock you down. He just keeps showing up. Keeps being warm and steady and present, keeps touching you like you're something worth being careful with, keeps watching your sets from the back of the room with that quiet intensity that makes you play harder, sing louder, as if the sound could reach him specifically, as if every note is a sentence in a conversation only the two of you are having.

And then one night, sitting on the train home from your office, the city sliding past the window in streaks of grey and early dark, a melody lands in your head. Not the usual kind—not the angular, driving riffs you write for the band, not the fast punk-influenced bursts of energy that make up most of your catalog. Something slower. Something that breathes. A chord progression in a minor key that unfolds like someone opening a door they've been standing in front of for a long time, and a lyric fragments itself across your mind in pieces, not words yet but feelings, shapes—the warmth of a hand on your knee in a dark car, the sound of your own name in a voice gone rough with want, the quiet certainty of someone who keeps showing up without asking for anything, the terrifying tenderness of being known by someone you haven't given yourself permission to need.

You pull out your phone and open the voice memos app and hum the melody into it, low and rough, your voice barely above a murmur against the rattle of the train, and an older woman across the aisle glances at you and you don't care, because the song is already forming, already building itself in the space behind your sternum where you keep the things that matter too much to say out loud. It's moody and deep and aching in a way you haven't written before, more exposed than anything in your catalog, and you know—even as you hum it, even as the chords arrange themselves in your head—that this one is going to be hard to sing, because it's about him, all of it, every note, and you haven't even told him what he is to you yet.

You save the voice memo. You title it nothing. You put your phone away and watch the city go dark through the window, and the melody stays with you, lodged behind your ribs like a second heartbeat, patient and steady and impossible to ignore.

You text him on a Tuesday. The show is a Saturday, a slightly bigger venue than usual, a room you've been trying to get booked into for over a year, and the fact that they finally said yes means this matters, this is a step, and you want him there for it. You keep the text casual because that's still the game you're playing, even though the rules have been blurring for weeks.

Playing on Saturday. 9pm. Bring the boys if you want, make a night of it.

His reply comes fast. Wouldn't miss it. I'll round them up.

Saturday arrives cold and clear, the kind of Toronto evening where the sky goes violet over the rooftops and the streetlights flicker on early and every breath comes out visible and sharp. You get to the venue at seven-thirty because you need time—the stage is small but elevated, the room is long and narrow, the acoustics are different from anywhere else you play, and you want to feel out the space before it fills with bodies. Rusty is already inside, assembling his kit, and Kai is coiling a cable near the monitors while Dana tunes in the corner, her foot tapping an idle rhythm against the stage floor.

You're crouched over your pedalboard, adjusting the trim on your delay with a small screwdriver you keep in your gig bag, when you feel him before you see him. A shift in the air, a warmth at your back, and then a hand—large, warm, steady—settling on the small of your back, and you know it's him the way you know a key change, instant and physical, your whole body recalibrating around the point of contact.

"Hey," he says, close, his voice pitched low under the ambient noise of the room filling up around you.

You straighten up and turn, and he's right there, close enough that you have to tip your chin up, and he's smiling—not the big public smile but the private one, the quiet one, the one that starts at his mouth and ends somewhere in his eyes and makes your ribs feel too small. Behind him, loitering near the bar with varying degrees of subtlety, is a small crowd of enormous men.

"They all came," you say, lifting your eyebrows.

"I told them it was a good show. They wanted to see." His hand is still on your back, his palm warm through the thin fabric of your top, and his thumb traces a small arc against the ridge of your spine, absent and grounding. "You nervous?"

"No."

"Really? You look nervous."

"Shut up." But you're smiling, and he catches it, and his hand presses a fraction firmer against your back, pulling you a half-step closer, not a hug, just a drawing-in, a gravitational tug that your body follows without consulting your brain. He ducks his head, bringing his mouth near your temple, and his breath is warm against your hair when he speaks.

"You're going to kill it. You always kill it. This room is going to love you."

"You're biased, though…"

"Incredibly." His lips brush your cheek—the corner of your mouth, almost, but not quite, landing instead on the high plane of your cheekbone, warm and soft and lingering for a beat longer than friendly. Your eyes close. His hand stays on your back. The noise of the bar—the laughter, the clinking glasses, Matthew saying something loud to Auston about the setlist written on the chalkboard near the door—fades to a dull hum at the edges of your awareness, and for a second it's just this, the pressure of his mouth on your skin, the steadiness of his hand, the smell of him, clean and warm, and the feeling that lives in your chest when he's close, the one you've been calling something else for weeks because calling it what it is would mean admitting you were wrong about what this is.

He pulls back, gives you one more look, steady and warm and certain, and squeezes your hip once before letting go. "Go do your thing."

You watch him walk toward his friends, greeting Tony with a shoulder bump, nodding at the others, settling into the group with the easy comfort of someone who belongs exactly where he is. Matthew says something to him and he responds with a shake of his head and a shove that the younger man absorbs with a grin, and then they're all facing the bar, drinks in hand, a wall of broad shoulders and NHL paychecks ordering round after round, and you turn back toward the stage.

You stand there for a moment. Your hand drifts up to your cheekbone, where the ghost of his mouth still lingers, warm as a fingerprint. Then you drop it, square your shoulders, and climb the two steps to the stage.

"Hey," you say, and your voice sounds strange to your own ears, tighter than usual, thrumming with something you haven't named yet. Rusty looks up from his cymbal stand. Dana glances over mid-tuning. Kai is already plugged in, his bass humming a low idle note through the monitor. "I want to change the set."

Rusty's eyebrows lift. "Change it how?"

"Drop something from the fourth slot. Move everything up. And—" You pause, your heart hammering against your sternum, because this is the part where it becomes real, where the melody you hummed on a train weeks ago and refined in your bedroom and practiced with the band exactly twice becomes something you perform in front of a room full of people, including a man who doesn't know it's about him. "Remember that new one we've been working on? The slow one."

Dana straightens. "The slower one?"

"Yeah."

"You want to play it here? Tonight?" Rusty's voice is careful, measured, the voice of a man who knows you well enough to hear what you're not saying. "We've only run it twice."

"I know. But it's ready. I can feel it." You look at each of them—Dana with her hand still on her tuning pegs, Kai with his bass silent against his hip, Rusty behind his kit, all of them watching you with the focused attention of people who've played with you long enough to recognize the specific certainty in your voice. "I want to close with it."

Rusty holds your gaze for a long beat. Then he nods, once, and reaches behind him to rearrange his setlist tape on the floor drum. Dana plugs the new chord progression into her memory and starts quietly fingering the opening, her head tilted, listening to the shape of it in the room. Kai finds the root note on his E string and lets it ring.

"Okay," Rusty says. "Let's do it."

When the set winds toward its close, the crowd thick with heat and anticipation, you’re running on adrenaline, every nerve strung tight as wire. Your fingers ache from gripping the neck of your guitar, your voice is a little raw from pushing it over the wall of sound, but your head is clear—crystal, sharp, a trembling line of focus that holds you upright at the mic. The band falls quiet behind you, last song written in marker at the bottom of your setlist, and you let the silence settle over the room.

You find him instantly: Joseph, right where he said he’d be, half-shadowed by the low light at the back, leaning forward on the edge of his seat, surrounded by teammates who seem to shrink beside him, even in a crowd of giants. He doesn’t notice anyone else. He’s locked onto you, blue eyes steady and open, his lips parted like he’s about to say something but can’t, not with the music about to start.

You strum the first chord, low and slow, the sound blooming through the speakers and spilling into the crowd, and you can feel the room shift, the attention settling on you in a way that feels different from every other show you’ve played. Your band falls in behind you, Rusty’s brushes soft on the snare, Dana’s guitar weaving a counter-melody, Kai’s bass a heartbeat under it all. The song is darker, deeper, more vulnerable than anything else you’ve put out in the world, and you feel every word in your chest, every line scraped out of the rawest part of you.

You sing, and you stare at him—really stare, every note, every lyric an arrow aimed straight at his heart. He meets your gaze, not flinching, not looking away. There’s a gravity in the space between you, as if the rest of the world has faded to black and you’re performing only for him, only for this one pair of eyes that have watched you with patient devotion, match after match, night after night. Every verse is a confession you never spoke aloud, every chorus a plea you’re only just admitting to yourself.

Your voice is low, husky, breaking at the edges, and the lyrics spill out—about wanting, about needing, about the ache of being seen and the terror of letting yourself be known. You pour it all into the song: the way he holds you in the morning, the way his hands make you come apart, the way you count the days he’s on the road and pretend you aren’t. You let yourself feel everything, let it burn through you, and you don’t blink, don’t break the connection, singing directly to him like there’s no one else in the room.

You see it in his face—something unguarded, something bare. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, fingers threaded together, jaw tight, and you realize that you’re both holding your breath, both suspended in this impossible moment, the band and the audience and the clatter of glasses at the bar all falling away, the only thing left the thread running between you.

You reach the final verse, and your voice drops to a whisper, almost lost under the instruments, and it’s just you and him and the truth you’ve been writing in your bones for months: that you’ve never felt this way, that you don’t believe anyone else could feel this way about him besides you, that the world could be on fire and you’d still find him in the smoke, that the whole of you is lit up with wanting, aching, needing him, and that you don’t know what to do about it except sing.

When the last note dies, you let the silence stretch, your eyes on his, your chest heaving, pulse thrumming wild under your skin. The crowd erupts—applause, cheers, whistles—but it all feels far away, muffled by the pounding of your heart and the weight of his gaze. He’s still staring, stunned, a slow smile curling at his lips, and you know—without words, without anything else—that he heard every single thing you meant.

You come offstage shaking, breath shallow and chest tight, the blood in your veins still singing with every note of that song. The crowd’s noise is a wild, hungry thing in your ears, but you barely register applause or the blur of faces—just the echo of every word you sang, the ache in your hands from gripping your guitar, the way your knees threaten to give with every step. Dana is at the mic, laughing, thanking the crowd, promising to see them next time, her voice bright and sure where yours would have cracked. You slip away through the back, skirting the edge of the green room, needing space, needing quiet, your head full of static and your heart hammering so loud you swear the whole city can hear it.

You’re moving on some half-conscious instinct—just get away, just breathe, just don’t fall apart in front of everyone—when a familiar warmth finds you. A hand, broad and steady, lands on the small of your back, pulling you out of your daze. You freeze, then lean into the touch without thinking, let it anchor you. His fingers press through the fabric of your shirt, grounding, and then he’s there, right behind you, so close you can feel his breath stir your hair.

“Baby,” he says, voice low and soft, one word that melts everything inside you. “Hey. I’ve got you.”

You turn, slow, your body still humming with adrenaline, and Joseph’s smiling at you—smiling like you just handed him a secret he’s been waiting for, like you just gave him the world. He’s flushed from the crowd and the noise, his hair a little mussed, his eyes shining, and he doesn’t let go, just keeps his hand at your back, thumb rubbing slow circles, coaxing you to stay present. You realize you’re trembling, that your legs really might give, and you clutch his forearm to steady yourself.

He takes it all in, doesn’t rush you, just keeps you close, his free hand coming up to brush your cheek, thumb gentle at your jaw as he tilts your face toward his. “You okay?” he asks, smile still lingering. “That was… that was incredible.”

You laugh, shaky, the sound catching and breaking, and you bite your lip to keep from spilling everything at once. Still, the truth comes out in a rush, voice ragged, eyes stinging. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I meant all of it, every word, I just—” You swallow hard, searching his face for any sign that you’ve gone too far, that you’ve exposed too much. “I can’t breathe when you’re not there. I feel like I’m coming apart when I see you in the crowd. I wrote that song because I didn’t have another way to say it. You make me feel more than I thought I could. I think I’m—” The word teeters on your tongue, just out of reach, too soon and too raw. “—falling in love with you.”

He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look surprised, not really. That smile—the one that always comes on slow, that starts at his mouth and then glows through the rest of his face—just deepens, soft and sure, as if he’s only been waiting for you to catch up. He cups your jaw with his other hand, cradling your face like you’re something precious, and leans in, his forehead brushing yours. His breath is warm and steady, and when he speaks, his voice is lower, softer, threaded with a kind of wonder that makes your knees threaten to buckle all over again.

“I know,” he says, and it isn’t smug, it isn’t teasing, it’s just the truth—quiet and certain, like a secret kept safe until you were ready to hear it. “I know. I feel it, too. I’ve felt it since the first time I saw you.” His thumb smooths across your cheekbone, gentle, and you can hear the smile in his words. “You wreck me, you know that? I watch you up there and I think, ‘That’s mine. I get to love her.’ And it’s wild. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

You let out a shaky laugh, relief and disbelief mingling in your chest. The tension drains from your shoulders, and you move closer, pressing your brow to his, your hands finding his waist, gripping his shirt like you need to anchor yourself to the world. “Oh my god. I thought I was insane.”

He grins, eyes closed, letting out a low, contented sigh as he wraps both arms around you, pulling you in until there’s not a hair of space left between your bodies. He kisses your cheek, then the corner of your mouth, then your jaw, slow and careful, like he never wants to stop. “Come home with me,” he murmurs, voice intimate and playful against your skin. “Let me thank you properly. Let me take care of my beautiful, brilliant, unbelievably sexy girlfriend tonight. Please.”

Your heart stutters at the word—girlfriend—because it’s the first time he’s said it out loud, and somehow it feels bigger and more right than anything else. You nod, laughter caught in your throat, and he beams, bright and easy, as if the whole world has just fallen into place.

He takes your hand, fingers threading with yours, and leads you toward the back door, away from the crowd, away from the noise, into the quiet night where the city feels wide open and every possibility is yours. You follow, your legs finally steady, your heart lighter than it’s been in years, knowing that tonight, you get to let him love you with the same certainty you’ve been singing about all along.

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