NebulaStarr

You have been the perfect day shift intern for five months. Five freaking months of listening to mostly constructive criticism, five months of adapting and learning on the go with not a single complaint voiced, five months of diligent note-taking, studying, and practice. Five months of weaseling your way into the list of interns-slash-young-doctors that your residents actually respect. Five months of grueling shifts, hard losses, and never saying no when someone needs you to do something.

Five months of being the untouchable, “perfect” intern. Robby’s newest addition to his growing list of “work-wards.”

Five months of unflinching effort and dedication and it took four hours of your third night-shift to reduce you to a miserable, snotty mess on the supply closet floor. Tucked into the space between the two shelves, just the toes of your blood and snot and god knows what else covered shoes peeking out, the rest of you obscured.

Five months, four hours, and back to back fuck-ups that escalated into Dr. Jack Abbot, the man you may or may not have had the hugest crush on since beginning your intern year, removing you from a case. Five months, four hours, and two parents screaming at Dr. Abbot, telling him that you’re not fit to be a doctor.

Tonight isn’t the first night a patient has yelled at you. Tonight isn’t even the first time you’ve been removed from a case. It’s not the first time Dr. Abbot has had to correct you, and it’s certainly not the first time you’ve made a mistake.

You’re an intern. It’s your job to fuck up, learn from it, and keep going. That’s what Dr. Mohan said to one of the other interns awhile back. They’d ended up flunking out, but oh well. It was good advice. It wasn’t meant for you, but hell if you don’t say it to yourself every night like a prayer.

But right now, the usual calming mantra is doing absolutely nothing. You’re stifling ugly sobs into the tops of your knees, arms wrapped around and squeezing as tight as you can, your chest shaking and shuddering with the force of your complete and total freak-out.

The patient isn’t dead. Despite your mistakes, they didn’t die. There’s really nothing to cry about. Nothing to hide in the supply closet for.

And yet, here you are.

Your first mistake wasn’t terrible, but it was ridiculously stupid and incredibly embarrassing. Triage room, emergency measures being taken. And you, tired and off kilter from being so used to the day-shift, broke the sterile field. Like some dumb medical student, not a fairly seasoned intern who’s drilled sterile protocol into her head until it’s muscle memory.

For a scalpel. You dropped a scalpel. Arguably the worst thing to drop. And then, like an idiot, you picked it back up.

And, well. There’s no time to re-scrub, so there wasn’t a need for you in the triage room anymore.

Your second mistake was equally stupid and avoidable, if you’d focused more. Dr. Garcia was kind enough to let you scrub in on an emergency appendectomy.

It was a test. Not your first.

And you ripped the fucking purse strings.

Once again, you were unceremoniously booted from the room (being kicked out of an OR feels a hell of a lot worse than being kicked out of a triage room) and sent back to the pit. Dr. Abbot immediately caught wind of it and demoted you to scut work until “you get your head back in the game.”

And, well. You tried really hard to devote yourself to your new task, but you had to keep blinking tears out of your eyes every five seconds and you absolutely refuse to cry in front of literally any of your coworkers, lest they think you some weak-willed weak-stomached intern who can’t handle some criticism and correction. You’re a hard worker. You’re good at this. You have to be.

So yeah. Crying in the supply closet.

You’ve always been a frustrated cryer, which is annoying on a good day and downright awful on a bad one (case in point.)

You’re just so upset with yourself. You’re better than this. You know you are. You’ve proven that you are. You don’t drop scalpels. You don’t break the sterile field. You don’t rip purse strings.

But you did tonight. And maybe one day you’ll laugh, but today is not that day.

You just don’t get it. Day shift? Incredible. Manageable. You’re on top of things, put together, and worthy of Dr. Robby’s respect.

But tonight? Quite literally the exact opposite.

You can’t be burning out, right? That’s not how burn out works. There’s like, signs, and you start to feel terrible and awful and exhausted and sure you definitely feel all of those things, but that’s because you work in medicine. And you’re an intern. You’re supposed to feel terrible and awful and exhausted. But maybe you’re not? You do enjoy your work, and it’s exhilarating, especially when you try something for the first time and execute it well, because you always do, you always get things right on the first try, obviously, so that means that this can’t be burn out. You don’t burn out. That’s not you. Right? No. Of course not.

You gasp a particularly rough sob into your knees, air feeling like knives as you inhale, making you cough horrendously. You must be quite a sight.

Unfortunately, due to your alternating hacking coughs and dramatic crying, you don’t quite hear the door open.

You do, however, hear the quiet “Oh.” that’s mumbled a few moments later.

Of-fucking-course.

You scramble upright, aggressively wiping at your face and attempting to make it look like you weren’t just crying on the ground.

“Dr. Abbot! I’m so sorry, this is very unprofessional and I know you have me on scut work but I promise I’m still working on it—“

He holds up a hand, and you slam your jaw shut with an audible click.

“Just needed some four by fours, kid.”

Always one to be helpful (especially to the guy you have a crush on who also happens to be your boss, aka the same person who professionally told you to get your shit together about forty minutes ago) you reach beside yourself and hand him the package of gauze, an awkward smile fixed on your face.

“…Those are three by threes.”

Bitch. Motherfucker. Fuck your life.

“Right,” You mumble, dragging your hand down your face. “I’ll just get out of your way. Sorry.”

You turn to walk past him, attempting to go quick enough that he might not notice the new tears shining in your eyes before a hand lands on your shoulder.

“Look,” Dr. Abbot starts. “You’re one of Robby’s adopted interns, right? Robby-Junior?”

“That is one of the rumors Santos has been spreading, yes.”

His hand is on your shoulder. His hand is on your shoulder. (!!!)

You don’t know what to do. He’s looking at you. Your boss doesn’t fluster you. You’re chill. You’re normal. You’re cool as a cucumber, yep yep yep.

“Robby doesn’t adopt interns lightly. Don’t let one bad shift mess you up. It happens to everyone.”

You purse your lips. You should let it go. Take his advice. Thank him.

The all-consuming-guilt and ever-present-need to prove yourself itches too painfully to ignore.

Dr. Abbot seems to notice, and he catches your gaze again.

“What, it doesn’t happen to you?”

A jolt of panic stabs your chest. “No! Of course it happens to me, I didn’t mean to imply that I’m like, above making mistakes or having bad shifts at all—“

Genuinely what is wrong with you. Why the fuck does he do this you. You’re a smart, confident woman who apparently chucks her brain into the garbage bin whenever her boss is around.

Dr. Abbot, probably picking up on a pattern of behavior by now, levels you with another look that shuts you up fairly quickly. He’s got a sort of impish grin on his face, and it shouldn’t be hot, but he’s got his hand on your shoulder and you’re having a ridiculously shitty night. Does anything matter anymore?

“Usually, we try to mix up interns schedules so you don’t get into a rhythm on one specific shift so that when you inevitably switch, the change doesn’t mess up your flow. But I'm sure your knack for keeping your head down and doing good work let you fall through the cracks.”

He takes his hand off your shoulder and shoves it into his pocket, but you almost don’t notice because he said you do good work.

Abbot gives you another grin. “And I didn’t stick you on scut as a punishment. Mindless work tends to be calming, which in turn helps focus your mind.”

“But I ripped the purse strings,” You blurt like a Catholic school girl in a particularly rife confessional, “Like an idiot.”

“You ripped them like an intern doing something for the first time.”

“I practiced hundreds of times to make sure it didn’t happen!”

He tilts his head, almost cat-like. “Did you also practice on a live person in a higher stakes situation while your body is messed up from a sudden and huge sleep schedule change?”

“…No?”

He snorts. “Exactly. Dr. Garcia probably won’t hold it against you. She’ll give you shit for it, but it’s not like she’s never going to give you another chance.”

You wipe the last bit of wetness of your cheeks with the back of your hand, embarrassment heating your face. Despite the awfulness of being caught crying in the supply closet, the beginnings of pleasant warmth is spreading through your chest, Dr. Abbot’s reassurances echoing in your head.

“Thank you, Dr. Abbot. Um. Sorry about the crying. I promise I don’t usually do that.”

Dr. Abbot snorts as he saunters towards the door. “Wouldn’t judge you if you did, kid.”

—

Dr. Jack Abbot is bored.

He has his work, which is great. He became a doctor after being discharged because he’s always been the kind of man that needs something to do. Something to mind, something to watch, something to fix. Robby and him and much the same in this way.

Working at the ED was enough for a while. There was a certain challenge to it, an unpredictability that itch sated, kept him sane. And, well. Now he’s an attending. Night shift lead.

He started to get restless again.

He thought a pet might work. He was going to get a dog, but it didn’t sit right with him to get an animal built for companionship and then leave it at home for over twelve hours a day. Then he thought a cat might do the trick. He looked online first, saw beautiful, well bred felines that could probably compete and win for best in show for whatever the cat equivalent is for the Westminster Dog Show.

And then he made the mistake of going to the shelter and seeing an old, one eared tuxedo cat that stared at him with something in between fear and spite and its eyes. And well. The shelter attendants assured him that the cat in question prefers being left alone and having its own space, but might warm up eventually, and he brought him home that day.

And then it was just Jack, occasionally Robby, and now his asshole cat who might not love him back.

That also worked for a while. Having Charlie was fun. It was nice having another living creature in his house that wasn’t him. Even if he did have a habit of chewing on power cords when left unattended and eventually progressed into attempting to destroy Jack’s stethoscope if he left it anywhere he could find.

Minding the cat gave him something to do that wasn’t tedious, and it was a special sort of bonus to wake up every now and then and see the cat sprawled at the foot of the bed, snoring away. He didn’t actually know cats could snore like that.

Around the time that the itch came back and Jack was considering adopting a second cat from the shelter (well on his path to becoming a crazy cat lady, as Robby said in the park over beers) he met you for the first time.

Sometimes Jack slips quietly into the ED and watches the chaos of day shift’s conclusions. He’s picked up a very special language of gauging what he’s getting into based on the body language and behavior of the rest of the hospital staff. Robby had told him about the latest intern— a motivated, stubborn sort of girl that frequently went toe-to-toe with Santos but without any of the pushback when receiving correction or criticism. He’d heard that you were smart, capable, and well on your way of becoming a great doctor.

Robby failed to mention that you were pretty.

He’d watch you, comparing notes with Mohan with a certain intense focus on your face, worrying your lip between your teeth and repeatedly tucking a piece of hair behind your ear because it’d fallen out of your disheveled pony tail he thinks ‘Oh.’

And then, a few months later, he finds you crying in a closet, subtly confessing fears of failure and falling short of expectations, and then he thinks ‘Well, there’s something to do.’

Jack tries not to think about you, at first. You, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes, bottom lip jutted out just a bit, hugging your knees. He tries not to think about how you’d looked at him when he’d assured you that you did good work, the awkward thank you, and the way that for the rest of the shift, all the annoying menial tasks that get forgotten in the chaos were all mysteriously taken care of.

He tells himself that he’s just going to keep an eye on you. For Robby’s sake. He’d do the same for Whitaker.

The next time you have a night shift, you’re clearly more prepared for the exhaustion, and when he finally sees you in true, proper action, he understands immediately why Robby likes you and Mohan frequently attaches you to her cases. Skill, patience, and focus.

When he watches you trach a patient with a certain ease that only comes from practicing hundreds of times, Ellis shoots him a knowing look. Raised eyebrows and smirk. When she passes him in the hall a few hours later, she jabs her thumb behind her shoulder at where you’re diligently filling out a chart.

“That one yours, then?”

Jack shakes his head. “It’s not like that. You make me sound like a creep.”

Another raised eyebrow. “Sure it isn’t.”

“She’s Robby’s intern.”

“Mhm.”

“She’s way too young.”

Parker shrugs. “She’s good.”

“She is.”

The senior resident cuts a glance back to you. “Think she’ll burn out?”

“Maybe.”

Parker crosses his arms. “Are you gonna let it happen?”

“She’s not my intern.”

Up to three Parker Ellis looks and counting.

“It’s an HR nightmare.”

Parker shrugs. “You just said she’s not your intern.”

He narrows his eyes. “You know what I meant.”

“Do I? It’s been awhile, Jack. No one would really judge you for having some fun.”

“Parker.”

“Jack.”

He shakes his head, walks towards the boards. “You’re the worst.”

Parker just laughs. “Sure I am.”

To your credit, he doesn’t find you crying in a supply closet again to see evidence of you doing so for a solid few weeks. But, like most things in the ED, the peace doesn’t last.

You came into work soaking wet, which is odd, considering the fact that he knows you drive, and the walk to the parking lot isn’t far enough to account how you’re shivering in your freshly changed scrubs. He brushes it off, chalks it up to freakish Pittsburg weather.

Some night shifts are relatively slow and mild. Tonight is not one of those shifts. Patients are extra irritable at late hours, which is to be expected, but what he’s not expecting is to walk by South 15 and see a 50-something year old man slap you.

Jack blinks, and in the next second he’s in the room, standing in between you and the patient.

“Excuse me, what the fuck is going on here?”

Gloria will probably give him shit for his language later, but right now all he can think about is the startled look on your face and the echo that the contact made.

“I said I want a real doctor, not this fucking—“

“Get the fuck out of my hospital.”

Shen peaks his head in. “Security’s on their way.”

Jack reaches behind him to where you’re still standing, your hand covering your cheek, and gently pushes you towards Shen, towards the door. You stumble over your feet a bit, but truly, Jack’s never been more thankful for his residents because then Parker is right there, ushering you out the door with a hand on your shoulder. Jack resolutely ignores your mumbled “I’m fine, really, he just surprised me.”

Thankfully, security doesn’t take that long to get to the room, and the second Jack is finished explaining, he’s out the door and scanning the ED for your face. Nurse Young jerks her head towards the break room, and he thinks he manages to give her what he hopes is a thankful smile before he’s beelining for it.

When he opens the door, you’re sitting on the floor again, holding an ice pack to your cheek with one hand and dabbing at your lip with a paper towel. Like you’ve never heard of medical protocol in your entire life.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

You jerk your head up, a kid caught with its hand in the cookie jar.

“Dr. Abbot!”

Lowering himself to the ground is awkward, physically. Prosthetics don’t lend to much mobility and he’s too old to be doing this, but he just. There are little beads of blood collecting and then sliding down your chin, dripping onto the leg of your scrubs. At the same angle of the split in your lip, there’s a little cut he can see peaking out from under the ice pack.

He reaches forward, fingers itching towards the deep scarlet dripping steadily. He pauses, remembering things like words and questions and sees the wild look in your eyes.

“Can I…?” Jack’s voice trails off, the words clunky and useless in this bubble that’s seemed to form around the two of you, on the probably disgusting floor of the ED break room.

You slowly drop the napkin, let the ice pack lower to your lap and nod.

“He had a ring on. I guess it caught me. I didn’t really notice until I got here.”

“Parker and Shen didn’t notice?”

You look at your lap. “I told them I was fine… And covered it with my hand. There are other patients. It’s just a little cut.”

Jack’s fingers finally reach your face, and he almost takes them back when you flinch on the initial contact, shaking ever so slightly.

But then, with noticeable effort, you relax into his palm, his fingers curling around the side of your jaw. He should grab gloves. He should get up, take his hand off your face.

Anyone could walk in right now and call Gloria on his ass.

His thumb sweeps across your cheekbone, just below the cut, which does have some faint bruising around it. And truthfully, the split in your lip doesn’t look that bad either.

But there’s still little dots and trails of scarlet and he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to calm down until he fixes it. He needs to fix something.

“If I leave you here so I can get supplies,” He starts, voice a little rough, “Can I trust that you’ll stay here and not do anything stupid?”

“Uh, yes? Should I move to a real chair though?”

Jack huffs as he hauls himself to his feet. “That’d be preferable.”

Later, when he’s at home in his bed, he’ll assure himself that the night shift wasn’t truly that busy and he trusts his residents to handle things while he’s busy.

No one stops him on his way to the medical supply closet (the irony of the location is not lost on him) and he makes it back without interruption. Upon opening the door, you have in fact moved to a chair, and it seems the bleeding slowed in his absence.

What he should do is sit down in the chair opposite of you and handle this situation like a professional, like the Dr. Abbot, night shift attending, not Jack who’s got a thing for fixing.

He does try to remove his emotions and feelings from the situation, he really does. It’s something he’s generally very good at —which is where he and Robby differ; Robby would prefer to feel too much and Jack would prefer to feel nothing at all— but you’re looking up at him and there’s something really dangerous in the air and it must’ve gotten into your blood stream or something cause it’s swimming in your eyes and he realizes that removing his feelings is not going to be possible.

He decides he could at least tone it down. You’re an intern. Robby’s intern. So what if you’re bleeding all over the break room? Jack’s just doing his job as the attending to look after the doctors and nurses under his jurisdiction or whatever. That’s all.

“Tilt your head up.”

He sets to work cleaning up the cut and split as detached and clinically as possible, even puts on gloves so there’s no skin to skin contact, just protocol, but he can feel the warmth of your skin through the latex and you keep sucking in these tiny little breathes when something stings and he can’t get the sound of the slap out of his head and it’s all just kind of a lot.

He readjusts his hand on the side of your face, sort of holding your forehead now to have better access and control over the cut on your cheek and wow. Your skin is really warm. It kind of feels like you’re burning up.

Jack tosses the piece of gauze he was using and rests the back of his hand against your forehead. Shit, you are burning up.

He thinks back to you, walking in today, soaked to the bone.

“Did you walk to work today?”

You wince. “My car kind of died? On the way here? I was only a mile away. But I called a towing company, so I didn’t just leave my car in the middle of the road.”

He blinks.

“Your car died, so you had it towed and walked a mile to work, in the rain, late at night, and didn’t tell anybody?”

You just keep staring at him, brows furrowed.

“Yeah? I carry a knife and I’ve taken self defense classes, and my car was just towed back to my place, so. I had a shift to work.”

There’s… a lot to unpack in your answer.

“Kid,” He starts, wondering why Robby never thought to give him a heads up before you started working more night shifts, “What was your plan to get home?”

“Walk, probably. I was thinking about taking the bus. Dr. King knows the bus schedule, so I’m probably going to text her.”

Jack decides to just finish cleaning you up, before he does something stupid like shake you by your shoulders and ask why you didn’t think to let your boss know that your car broke down and you’d be walking home in the rain. Or that when a patient slapped you in the face, his ring cut your face and lip open.

God.

“It’s really fine though,” You say, gesticulating animatedly with your hands. “My place isn’t that far, and it’s not the first time my car’s died. The battery’s kind of shot, but I guess my car has a weird battery, and it’s like, crazy expensive to get a new one, so. Besides, I like walking. I’ve been meaning to catch up on my audiobooks.”

He wishes you’d stop talking so he’d stop hearing things that make him want to do things he can’t and shouldn’t do. Like find out what car you drive so he can buy you a new battery. Or buy you a new car all together.

Christ, you have him wrapped around your fucking finger.

“I’ll drive you home. If you’re fine with that.”

Jack has to fight a grin at how comically wide your eyes grow at his suggestion.

“Oh no, you really don’t have to. I promise I’m—“

“Please stop saying you're fine,” He begs, “You don’t have a working car, a patient slapped you in the face, and I think you’re coming down with something.”

The smile that’s seemed permanently fixed on your face since he came into the break room falters, for a bit.

“Well,” You grimace, hands fisting the hem of your scrub top, “Things certainly aren’t… great, but I’ll survive. I’m not like, incapable, or anything.”

Jacks quiet for a bit, not just mulling over your words but the way you said them; the cadence and tone.

He hums. “Is that what you think? That I or someone else here will think you’re not competent or that you’re weak if you take a break or ask for help?”

Your face falters again. “No, no, of course not I just… I don’t know. I’m an intern. It’s my job, supposedly, to mess up and have to be looked after in case I accidentally kill someone and stuff like that. I just don’t want to be someone that people think they have to worry about. I need— internships are competitive. They’re competitions, really. And I want to win.”

Jack Abbot knows what it’s like to want to win. That need to prove yourself, prove that you’re capable and strong and unfailing.

So Jack also knows how quickly that can all go south.

“You’re a smart kid,” He says, voice ever so slightly soft in the quiet tension of the break room, empty except for the two of you, “And you’re going to make a great resident, and one day, a damn good attending. But none of that means shit if you burn out or get run yourself into the ground before you get there.”

He avoids eye-contact while he carefully applies the bandage to your cheek. “This industry will chew you up and spit you back out if you don’t take care of yourself. I get it. We’re doctors. We make the worst patients. But you got slapped in the face during a shitty day. It’s okay to… not be okay for a minute.”

You huff a watery laugh. “Isn’t that what energy drinks are for?”

He shakes his head. “What, trying to die faster?”

“Anything to shake those student loans. Can’t be in debt if you’re dead.”

“Don’t they just pass it to your family? Next of kin or whatever?”

“I don’t think they can give student loans to a cactus. I mean, I consider her my daughter, but I hardly think it’ll hold up in court.”

Jack mentally files that information away for later. What later is, he isn’t sure.

He stands, pulls off his gloves and tosses all the used gauze and shit in the trash can.

“I gotta get back out there,” He jams his thumb towards the door, “But feel free to take five. No one’s judging you. Matter of fact, as your boss, I’m telling you to take a break.”

You roll your eyes. “Whatever you say, Dr. Abbot. But thank you. For the…”

You gesture to your bandaged cheek and lip. “…And for the advice.”

He shrugs, like taking care of you hasn’t become a persona fantasy he may or may not fall asleep imagining most nights. Like it doesn’t matter, like he’s just doing his job.

“Offer for the ride’s still open. Just let me know by the end of shift.”

And with that, he’s out the door.

It’s the end of shift, and you’re staring at the double doors that lead to the outside world, and beyond that, absolutely fucking miserable weather for walking, a dead car, and cold as shit apartment.

You’re not exactly rushing out the door.

You’re clutching at the strap of your bag, regular clothes on, still damp despite the fact that it’s been over thirteen hours since you originally took them off, begging the universe to strike you down where you stand. Spontaneous lightning bolts happen indoors too, right?

The doors just stare back at you, unchanging in their miserable-ness, and after a solid ten minutes of staring, you feel rather than see Jack sidle up next to you.

“Still raining out there?”

“Yep. Looks worse now.”

“Not great weather to walk in. Especially considering the low-grade fever.”

“Mhm.”

“Did you text Dr. King for the bus schedule?”

“No. I didn’t want to wake her up.”

Jack huffs a breath, then jerks his head towards the doors that lead to the employee parking lot.

“Come on, kid.”

The ride is quiet and awkward. Well. Dr. Abbot probably doesn’t think it’s awkward, because he seems like the kind of man not to be bothered by long stretches of silence. Or silence at all.

He’d been kind enough to turn the heat on full blast (you started shivering the moment you stepped outside) and the radio is softly playing, and it’s only thanks to Sabrina Carpenter’s voice that you don’t feel like completely freaking out.

You mouth along to the lyrics, quietly humming the chorus under your breath.

“—I get wet at the thought of you being a responsible guy—“

“—Treating me like you’re supposed to do, tears run down my thighs—“

By the time you’ve realized that perhaps this isn’t the best song choice to sing along to, considering the situation and who’s car you’re currently riding in, the words “I get wet” have already left your mouth so there’s no real point in stopping.

On a completely unrelated note, Dr. Abbot starts smiling a little bit when you hum.

Pittsburgh traffic is terrible, so the drive kind of drags on. The radio is playing Chappell Roan now. Casual specifically. You’re considering changing the radio station because god.

“So,” You start, just to say anything that drowns out “knee-deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out, is it casual now?”, “Did you… have a good shift?”

That was a terrible question. Jesus. What the hell is wrong with you? How did you get through medical school?

Dr. Abbot snorts. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”

Ah. Right. The Incident.

“I told you I’m—“

“Didn’t I tell you to stop saying that?”

Your lap has never looked more interesting. Wow, is that a loose thread on your sweats?

He continues. “Fine or not, a patient assaulted you. Even if he didn’t leave a mark, that’s still shitty.”

“Have you been hit by a patient before?”

He huffs. “Hell yeah. It happens to everyone eventually. It’ll happen again. You get better at keeping your cool.”

“Sorry you had to step in. I’ve been hit by a patient before and I was fine.”

“Oh yeah?”

You nod. “It was during my Pedes rotation, actually. I’ve always known working with kids probably wasn’t going to be for me, but, well. Kid came in for intussusception, and she was screaming and writhing in pain, and I failed to restrain her properly.”

“What, did she slap you too?”

“Nope. Kicked me in the chin. Ended up biting almost clean through my tongue.”

“Fucking hell, kid. What’d you do?”

You shrug. “Kept my blood in my mouth until we finished sedating the patient. Ended up with three stitches.”

Dr. Abbot lets out a low whistle. “Always the patients you least expect.”

“The importance of proper patient restraint was thoroughly impressed upon me, I assure you.”

The silence after your short conversation is slightly more comfortable, and thankfully the radio station has decided to play less pointed music.

Between the warmth of the car, the smell permeating the seats that smells distinctly like Dr. Abbot, and the drumming of rain outside, it doesn’t take long for drowsiness to begin to overtake you.

Your last thought before falling asleep is that you don’t remember if you gave Dr. Abbot your address or not.

Someone is gently shaking your shoulder, and you feel like shit.

“What?” You attempt to say, but the side of your mouth is pressed against the seatbelt and your shoulder so it comes out sounding like: “Whamfgh?”

Opening your eyes is a herculean task, like someone sewed miniature weights to your eyelids while you were asleep. You’re absolutely freezing, despite the steady hum of the car's heat, still on high, and you vaguely recognize the street the car is currently parked on.

Oh right, your apartment.

“Oh,” You yawn, hauling yourself semi-upright, aiming for woman who has it together, and less disheveled swooning woman in a Baroque painting.

Dr. Abbot is staring at you with equal parts humor and concern.

You rub at your eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Little over forty minutes. You looked like you needed it.”

“It doesn’t take that long to drive to my place, even with traffic.”

Your brain is moving like molasses, so it takes you a second to catch up with the implication of his statement.

“Did you just… park in front of my house? So I could keep sleeping?”

He just shrugs. “Like I said. You looked like you needed it.”

Embarrassment and a touch of something else floods through your body, hot and cold at the same time.

“Sorry. You didn’t have to wait.”

“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t have.”

Still moving slowly, you gather up your bag from where it partially spilled on the floor all over your feet, shoving old receipts and pads and chapstick back in with the reckless abandon of a person who isn’t nearly aware enough of social cues to be in a car alone with their hot boss.

Whilst you're grabbing and shoving, Dr. Abbot reaches into his back seat, rifles around for a bit, and then drops something rather unceremoniously over your head and shoulders. After a quiet “hey” you pull it into your lap, and then that hot feeling is back in full force.

It’s a rain jacket. Clearly Dr. Abbot’s. You can see his name written on the inside pocket. It’s nice too. Definitely not the kind of rain jacket you could afford on an intern’s budget.

“For the next time your car dies,” He clarifies, as if the jacket’s purpose is the thing that’s stupefied you, not the fact that he’s the one giving it to you, “In case of rain.”

“You really don’t have to,” your words are rushed and clunky in your mouth, tumbling over each other in your haste to say something, anything, “I mean, I can just buy my own—“

“First of all,” He cuts you off, voice smooth and rough at the same time, “Do I seem to be the kind of guy in the habit of doing things I don’t want to? And second of all…”

He tilts his head, gaze sharp. “Are you really going to buy one for yourself?”

Your mouth goes dry.

“I was planning on looking online—“

Dr. Abbot interrupts you. “Now you don’t have to.”

Like it’s that easy. Does he want it to be?

“Dr. Abbot, I—“

“Jack.”

His grin goes from mild to shit-eating as you stare at him, obviously radiating confusion.

“Jack,” you start, testing out the name in your mouth, hearing how it sounds in the air. “I can take care of myself. You don’t need to give me your jacket. I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”

“Kid—“

The prickling of perceived weakness makes anger spark in your chest.

“Don’t call me kid like I’m stupid.”

Dr. Abb— Jack seems simultaneously impressed that you interrupted him for a change and vaguely put out.

He holds up a finger, effectively silencing anything else you were thinking of saying.

“I don’t call you kid because I think you’re stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid. You’d know if I thought you were stupid, because I would tell you. ‘Kid’ is a…” He trails off, free hand tapping thoughtful rhythms on the steering wheel, “…Nickname. Term of endearment. Whatever you want to call it, but it’s not derogatory.”

Jack holds up a second finger.

“You have not been taking care of yourself. If you were, you wouldn’t have a low grade fever, and you would’ve called me as your boss or one of your friends to drive you instead of walking after your car died. You’ve been surviving. There’s a difference.”

Shame burns white hot through you— all your recent failings laid out by the person you want least to notice them. Clearly, he has.

Possibly out of pity in response to your no doubt miserable expression, Jack continues.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’d be an honest-to-god miracle if any intern managed to properly take care of themself. Hell, residents don’t do it either, and neither do attendings. Does Robby strike you as the kind of man who takes perfect care of himself?”

“That depends. Is my answer going to make it back to him?”

Jack huffs a quiet laugh. “Exactly. Doctors make the worst patients, in and out of a hospital setting. Knowing better doesn’t actually make us all that inclined to do better. Terrible misconception.”

He nudges the jacket on your lap. “So just take the jacket. One less thing to worry about.”

Emboldened by his recent streak of kindness towards you and the flush of fever running through your veins, you look over to him.

“You worry about me?”

Something dances in his eyes for a split second, gone before you can blink.

“I worry about all the interns and residents on my service, but especially the ones my best friend has taken a liking to.”

Right. Of course. He only cares because of Robby. And Robby only cares so he can add another doctor to the already short-staffed PTMC. It’s not like Jack actually likes you or anything.

You clutch the jacket to your stomach, finally finding the energy to get out of the car. Jack’s car.

“Well. Thanks for the ride, Dr. Abbot. And the jacket.”

“No problem, kid.”

And if later on that evening, in the safety of your tiny apartment, you take in the deep, fresh, almost spicy smell that makes up Jack, lingering on the jacket, that’s no one’s business but yours.

—

From that night on, it feels like Jack Abbot is everywhere.

Whether it’s something he’s doing on purpose or you’ve just developed a heightened sense to his whereabouts— it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s a whiff of his cologne (eerily similar to Dior Sauvage, which makes you shudder. Certainly he didn’t choose a cologne similar to the number one male manipulator scent on purpose?) or seeing his handwriting on a whiteboard or his notes in a chart, he’s there.

You’re being scheduled for night shifts fairly regularly now, in addition to the 24-hour shifts you have the pleasure of being put on as an intern.

Working a double isn’t horrific, really. Exhausting, sure, but Robby and Jack’s solid presence makes the shifts more bearable. Plus, you’re quickly becoming friends with the fresher residents, Whitaker and Santos, plus some of the older residents like Mohan and King. Even Dr. Langdon gives pretty solid advice and mentorship, despite the tension in the air whenever he happens to be working with or near Robby.

Normally, 24 hour shifts are grueling, but not impossible. Somewhere around the 15 or 16 hour mark, the sleep deprivation hits, and you can just coast on stress-induced inertia and a healthy does of energy drinks and mania.

Today, though, has been particularly fucking awful. Maybe it’s the fact that the fever never really went away, or the fact that you started your period the day before (being sick on your period should be illegal.) It’s probably both of those things.

But there isn’t really anything to do but grin and bear it. The day will pass, and you have the next two days off anyways. Just survive the next however-many hours of the shift and then you can go home, dress in exclusively fluffy clothes, and binge watch tv whilst eating heart-stopping junk food.

You’re distracted from your charting, propped up on the counter at the nurses station by a light tap on your shoulder and someone saying your name.

Dr. Langdon has sidled up next you, voice hushed.

“Hey, uh. I just wanted to let you know that you seem to have… bled through.”

If a spontaneous earthquake could open a chasm beneath your feet and swallow you whole, now would be the time.

“Fuck fuck-ity fuck fuck,” You mumble, wiping your hands down your face. “Right. Yeah. Of course. Thank you for letting me know.”

In a moment that is as mortifying as it is kind of sweet, Langdon passes you a hoodie that is clearly his.

“To tie around your waist,” He clarifies, holding the object out across the meager space between the two of you, voice a bit awkward and stilted, like you might decide to spit in his face or something.

You don’t actually know what it is that Dr. Langdon did before your arrival that makes the break room go quiet when he walks in (unless Dr. King is there) but you don’t particularly care. If it was truly something horrific that you should be worried about, he wouldn’t be working here. Robby wouldn’t let that kind of thing slide.

So you take the offered hoodie with a strained smile (can this shift just be over) and speed-walk to the break room, praying no one decides to snag you on the way there.

What you should do is go to your locker where your stash of pads, tampons, spare underwear, and extra scrubs are, and then probably the bathroom to get changed, so you can keep on going but you also just saw Dr. King go into the break room and you just really need a hit of her specific brand of optimism.

The woman in question perks up when she notices your arrival, hastily eating the same snack she always eats around this time— a tiny bag of pretzels.

She watches as you collapse into the chair across from her, letting your head thunk onto the table.

“Bad shift?”

“Bad life,” You grumble. “Dr. Langdon had to give me his hoodie to tie around my waist because I bled through onto my scrubs. Like a middle schooler who doesn’t know what pad sizes are for.”

Dr. King nods thoughtfully. “He asked me if it would be weird of him to let you know and offer his hoodie. To which I replied that periods are a normal bodily function and he’s a doctor.”

“Here here,” You half-heartedly cheer, any actual cheer or enthusiasm severely lacking in your voice. “How did you survive your intern year, Dr. King?”

“We’ve been working together for awhile, you can call me Mel,”

She pops another pretzel in her mouth before answering. “But to answer your question, I mostly just kept telling myself that failing wasn’t an option. Which. Probably isn’t helpful, or good advice, but it worked for me. Something that’s nice is if you have a fellow intern or doctor that you enjoy working with. I know the other two interns who matched into the PTMC dropped out of the course, so it’s just you, but you have Dr. Robby, right?”

You nod, picking absently at a spot on the table and ignoring the way that it wasn’t Robby who popped into your head, but Jack.

Your teeny, ignorable crush on him has become a full-blown thing, with semi-weekly dreams about him in various… situations, and casual daydreams at all hours of the day of what it would be like to just be with him, or hear him, in any capacity that couldn’t be qualified as work or a boss checking on his employee. Intern. Whatever.

Hormonal and fever-ish, you suddenly feel like you’re going to explode and die if you don’t have someone to confide in right this very second. You haven’t heard Mel really talk about anyone you work with outside of professional doctor-to-doctor conversation, not even about Dr. Langdon, who she seems almost suspiciously close with.

“Mel,” You start, voice a little too thick and watery to just be talking about your stupid, annoying, one-sided workplace crush, “Can I tell you a secret?”

She seems to consider the pros and cons first, and looks fairly caught off guard, but she answers. “Um. Sure?”

“Have you ever had a crush on a coworker before? Or like, a boss or mentor?”

Mel sets down her bag of pretzels. “Is this about Dr.—“

“I have the biggest crush on Dr. Abbot and I think it’s ruining my life.”

The words burst out of you all at once, and Mel’s expression goes from shocked, to confused, before finally settling in abject amusement.

“Ah,” She says, sliding the pretzels across to you. “Um. Well I personally don’t have a crush on Dr. Abbot, but I think I understand the sentiment.”

You bury your face into your hands and groan. “It’s awful. It’s so cliche. It’s so fucking Grey’s Anatomy.”

“I’ve never actually seen that show. Becca likes it though.”

Mel allows you a few moments of wallowing and pretzel eating before she speaks again.

“Have you… acted on it?”

“No!” You snap your head up. “I mean. No, I haven’t. I’m not naive enough to think that he would reciprocate. He’s an attending and I’m an intern.”

She leans in. “But…?”

“But sometimes… I wonder? I don’t know. I’m probably crazy. He drove me home the other day, cause my car died, and it was raining, and I got slapped by a patient, and that was when I first came down with this stupid fever, and like, that’s normal, right?”

Mel nods. “Fr— Langdon drives me to work when we share shifts, and sometimes when we don’t. I think Dr. Santos and Dr. Whitaker carpool too. So maybe?”

“Right. Yeah.”

She takes the pretzel bag back. “Is there more evidence that makes you feel crazy?”

Your skin flushes hot at the memory alone.

“He gave me his rain jacket. To keep.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Mel once again takes a few minutes, and the rest of her pretzels before responding.

“I’m honestly not the best person to ask for advice about this. I’ve been told I can be… dense when it comes to romantic endeavors.”

You shrug. “You’re a great listener, and you haven’t steered me wrong in the past.”

She brightens. “That’s good! I think my advice would be to talk to Dr. Mohan. She has experience with your… particular situation.”

Mel tosses the empty pretzel bag and heads toward the door. “I’ll let Robby know you’re taking ten, so don’t worry about someone looking for you while you’re changing.”

“You’re the best. I love you.”

The resident flushes at your gratitude, and then ducks out the door, leaving you alone to stew on her advice.

—

Talking to Dr. Mohan proves difficult, at first. How exactly do you start that conversation? “Hey, I heard you had advice on having a world-ending crush on your boss, got any tips?”

Additionally, she’s kind of hard to track down. You greatly respect Dr. Mohan’s work ethic and truly aspire to her unflinching devotion to patient care at the PTMC.

After a few days (which turns into a few weeks, because you are an emotional coward) of trying (and failing) to find a moment to talk, Dr. Mohan actually ends up finding you.

“Hey!” She jogs up to you as you’re walking to your car, a too-bright smile on her face for the fact that you both just got off a fourteen hour shift.

“Sorry to be that annoying coworker who talks to you in the parking lot, but I wanted to catch you before you left. Mel said you wanted to talk to me?”

“Right!” You stammer, slightly mortified. You admire Dr. Mohan so much and really want her to think you’re capable but you really need some advice on Jack Abbot as a whole, and it sounds like she’s the only expert around. “Yes. That. It’s a really normal question, you know.”

Dr. Mohan just nods, a smile still fixed on her face, like this is a totally normal conversation. “Uh, sure?”

There’s a beat of silence where you both stare at each other, and then she gasps.

“This is about Abbot, isn’t it?”

You groan, throwing your head back in defeat. “Am I that obvious?”

She laughs goodnaturedly. “No. Probably not. You’re just the only intern in the ED right now so I try to make it a habit to keep an eye on you. Plus, Mel is literally the only person in the world who knows about my now-dead crush on him, so. I just connected the dots.”

“He’s so hot, Dr. Mohan. I feel like I’m dying.”

She makes a noise of sympathy. “He is. It’s fucking annoying, at a certain point.”

“Thank you!” You shout, “Like it’s just so there. It should be illegal to just walk around and look like that. I should be focusing on like, studying and learning, but instead I’m just harboring this stupid crush on an attending.”

“Have you ever seen Grey’s—“

“Yes. I know. I can’t be Meredith. Meredith was like, always a mess. Am I a mess?”

Mohan purses her lips. “Well. You did just say you felt like you were dying.”

“I know,” You sigh. “It makes me feel… shallow. I like being a doctor. I was so excited to get matched into the PTMC, and this stupid crush is throwing me off my game.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“On my first night shift rotation I dropped a scalpel, picked it back up, and then ripped the purse strings on my first appendectomy.”

She winces. “Oh. That’s not… great.”

Your hand finds its way to your comfort necklace. “He found me crying in the supply closet like some medical student, and then he comforted me. It was terrible.”

Mohan starts ambling towards the direction you assume her car is in. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I’ve been caught crying in the supply closet several times. I think it’s a right of passage. And as for that second part…”

She shrugs. “Abbot gives credit where credit is due, but he won’t coddle you. If he actually offered real comfort or advice or whatever, then he meant it.”

“That’s what he said. It just didn’t really help the whole crush-on-him part. And then there was the slapping incident, and he drove me home, and now I have his rain jacket in my backseat in case my car dies again.”

Mohan actually looks taken back.

“Okay. It sounds to me like this is a situation that is in serious need of wine. Do you drink?”

“Whenever I have a spare twenty dollars.”

She grins. “I happen to have a couple bottles at home that might do the trick. Follow me back to my place?”

“Yes please.”

Wine and, eventually, takeout at Samira’s is much more enjoyable than you expected— considering the fact that you’re an intern and she’s a resident. She confides that she doesn’t have very many friends outside of the ED and was excited at the opportunity to have “real girl-time”.

She shares how she weathered her own seemingly life-ending crush on Jack, gasps and screams at the appropriate times when you tell her about the slapping, the events that occurred in the break room afterwards, the drive home, and the jacket.

You leave her apartment feeling lighter than ever. Like life might be worth living. Like you could survive your intern year.

Maybe everything will be okay.

—

Everything is not okay.

You’re now two full weeks into a never-ending fever, you keep getting stuck with shitty shifts (how many times a month can one person possibly be scheduled to work a double?) and top it all off, you’ve been pissed on not once, but twice in the same fucking shift.

Santos snorts when she sees you go by in your third set of scrubs for the day.

“Careful. You’re gonna replace Huckleberry pretty soon.”

You shoot her a look. “Supportive as ever, Dr. Santos.”

“I try.”

You sink into the chair next to hers, taking a moment to press the heels of your hands into your eyes and maybe, like, take a thirty second nap.

It doesn’t help much.

There’s a particular misery in watching the day-shift rotation handoff with the night shift and not being able to join in the process. Because you’re still there. And will be, until you see them again for your handoff, in twelve fucking hours.

Patients tend to get bitchier the later it gets, and it’s one of those nights where every patient bleeds into the next in a never-ending sea of complaints, pain, and fixing.

The fixing is fine. You like the fixing.

You’re just… having a hard time keeping up with everything while the fever perpetually runs you down. It’s the kind of thing where no amount of sleep can help you. Unless it was for 48 hours straight and then you got another 48 hours off after that to relax while you’re awake, and then another 48 hours to be productive.

A vacation. A week off. You’re describing taking a week off work. It’s comical, actually. Imagine requesting a week off from work. Gloria or whoever it is would never grant that. Not as an intern.

You notice Jack lingering around your general vicinity, which is fairly normal on a night like tonight. Technically, as the only intern on shift, you’re the only liability he has to really worry about.

Somewhere around the eighteen hour mark, he slides into the chair next to you while you’re charting.

“You’re flagging.”

Your eyes burn as you tap information into the tablet, then check on the computer in front of you. “I’m fine. I just need a Redbull or something.”

He slides the tablet out of your hands. “Part of being a good doctor is knowing when to take a break. Can’t be a good doctor if you’re falling asleep during the exam, right?”

“I would never fall asleep during an exam.”

He shrugs. “I’ve seen it happen.”

Jack jerks his head towards the break room. “Take five. Get an energy drink or whatever. Then I want you on chairs for at least an hour.”

“Yes sir.”

He rolls his eyes. “Get going.”

Chairs don't prove to be as uneventful as you (and probably Jack) hoped it would be. You get vomited on by a teenage girl, who apologizes profusely when she finally manages to stop throwing up, narrowly avoid a swing from a patient that quickly becomes a behavioral case, and become an unwilling participant in another patient’s doctor fantasy.

Security had to get involved with that last one. It was. Something.

Your shift ends with little fanfare. It’s honestly a miracle you survived. You’re exhausted, achey, and still feverish. The only thing you can think about is crawling into your bed, indulging in a rare expense of turning your heat up, and sleeping until your next shift.

Walking into your apartment ends up being a slap in the face. First of all, it’s fucking freezing. As if you left every single window open while you were gone. Secondly, it’s dark. Like, not even the clock on the microwave is on.

“Fuck,” you mumble under your breath, tears beginning to burn with unshed tears digging through your bag and fumbling with your phone, about to text your landlord when you see that he’s already texted.

Eric (Landlord): Power and AC is down. Might take some time to fix. Power should be back on by tonight.

And that’s just the last straw, really.

You slam the door behind you, not even bothering to go inside your apartment at all, chest tight and face hot, you race down the stairs, trying to find Samira’s contact through blurry eyes. When you think you’ve found it you click call, collapsing on the curb with your body doubled over, crying like a crazy person into your knees, at something like nine in the morning.

The phone rings for a bit, and you’re about to give up when the line finally stops and somebody picks up.

“Hello?”

It’s not Samira who answers. It’s Jack.

You sniffle. “Why are you answering Samira’s phone?”

“I didn’t. I answered my phone. Because you called me. Are you okay?”

“Oh,” You decide to ignore his question, “I meant to call Samira. Sorry.”

“Wait,” Jack’s voice comes out all rough and tinny through the speaker, but even distorted through a phone, you could listen to it for hours, “Answer the question. Are you okay?”

Your bottom lip wobbles dangerously.

“The power’s out in my building. And the heating went out too. My landlord said the power won’t be on until tonight, and I just wanted to go to sleep, but it’s cold and I'm tired and this stupid fever won’t go away.”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

Always a man of action, Jack is.

You shrug, then make a non-committal noise when you remember he can’t see it. “I was supposed to call Samira and see if she’d let me sleep on her couch.”

“I have a guest bedroom.”

The statement hangs in the crisp morning air. You think of Jack’s encouraging advice, Jack’s steady presence, Jack’s warm car and his nice smelling rain- jacket. Jack, Jack, Jack.

“Jack?”

“Yes?”

“What’s your address?”

The drive over involves bawling your eyes out to Vienna by Billy Joel. It’s just that kind of day.

You have no problems finding parking (miraculously) and no one stops you as you head up to Jack’s apartment as directed.

It’s… fancy. Like, polished floor lobby, lounge area adjacent to the front desk fancy.

The actual building itself isn’t very tall, nothing like a skyscraper, so it’s not exactly surprising that Jack’s apartment is the penthouse. It’s just suddenly very awkward standing in front of the door, in the same sweatshirt you’ve had since high school, sweats that have seen better years, looking exactly like the kind of girl who sobbed on the ride over to Billy Joel.

Jack opens the door almost immediately after you knock, and.

If seeing him in scrubs was bad, it doesn’t hold a fucking candle to him in a tight, army green shirt and grey sweatpants. Grey sweatpants. That couldn’t have been intentional, right? Is he online enough to know these things? God.

His features soften when he takes in your tear-streaked face and disheveled appearance.

He makes a low noise in his throat.

“Oh, you poor thing. Come here,”

Jack had actually been gesturing to the apartment, saying ‘come inside’ but the dam breaks the moment he says “poor thing” and you don’t have the wherewithal to think anything more complex than “Jack=Comfort and Safety".

Your bag drops with a dull thud onto the ground and then you’re crashing into him, face pressed into his chest and arms wrapped around his middle. You can barely find it within yourself to be embarrassed.

Jack doesn’t react at first, going completely stiff in your hold, and you think maybe you’ve gone and fucked this up too, like everything good in your life, but right when you move to pull away a hand finds its way to the back of your head, and another rubs circles on your back.

“Poor girl,” he murmurs, voice a soothing rumble with your ear close to his chest, “They been running you ragged?”

You nod uselessly, feeling raw and cut open— like you’ve been smashed against a rock and everything you keep tucked inside is spilling out and you can’t stop it.

“I’m so tired.” You half-mumble-half-sob into him, a sentiment that feels too light to convey everything that’s happened since you became an intern at the PTMC, and everything else you don’t talk about that happened before.

“I know sweetheart, I know,” Jack is solid beneath your cheek and arms, a lifeboat in a storm. “How about we get you inside and get you warm, huh? That sound nice?”

At the promise of warmth you finally detach from him, shame burning through you when you eye the wet spot on his shirt.

“Sorry,” You say, voice barely above a whisper. “I think I got snot on your shirt.”

“Trust me kid, it’s seen worse.”

He grabs your bag before you can even make a move for it, and you trail behind him into his apartment, attempting to ground yourself by looking around his apartment.

It’s nice. Lived in, not sterile. It doesn’t, actually, look the inside of a dentist’s office, like you were half expecting. Most new apartments have that doctor’s office lobby feel. Not exactly comfortable when you’re a doctor and the goal of home is to not remind you of your job.

Jack hangs your bag on a hook by the door, right next to his own. Something twinges in your chest at the sight.

There’s a feeling under your skin you can’t place as you shuffle into his apartment, something warm and skittish that aches for this to not be a one time thing, to be able to compare the pale morning light you’re watching now to late afternoon sun. To know where he keeps his mugs, what drawer the silverware is in, if he’s got a junk drawer with random shit in it, and what the random shit is. What it feels like to be in his kitchen, shoulders brushing.

But that’s a lot of complicated things to name or voice just past the threshold of the foyer, so you wrap your arms around yourself and toe your shoes off, then pad quietly after him.

Jack is— inviting, or maybe enticing; all those words that beckon the skittish thing closer and it feels just on the tip of danger to obediently sit on the couch he ushers you to.

“By the way,” Jack says somewhere behind you, maybe in the kitchen? “I have a cat. His name is Charlie. He probably won’t come near you, but be warned, he’s an asshole when he wants to be.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I like cats. Especially the asshole ones.”

“That explains a lot of things.”

His statement is kind of loaded, chock full of subtext you don’t care to parse through at the moment.

“Um,” You start, feeling a bit unsteady, “Is— Do you mind if I shower? I kind of smell gross probably, and I feel… grimy. Your apartment seems clean and I’d hate to get my hospital grime on anything.”

Jack just chuckles. “One, I wouldn’t care if you got ‘hospital grime’ on anything because that would be a very hypocritical thing to care about, and two, of course you can shower. Do you have spare clothes?”

“I might’ve forgotten to grab those.”

Another huffy laugh. “That’s fine. You can borrow some of mine. I’ll leave them on the bed.”

That’s like. Wow. Yeah. You’re just gonna borrow some clothes from him. From Jack. You’re going to shower in Jack’s shower and use whatever bodywash he has (hopefully not 5-in-one) and then put on his clothes and you are totally capable of being Completely Normal about these things.

“I already started on dinner when you said you were coming over. Should be done by the time you get out of the shower. Chicken noodle okay?”

Damn Jack Abbot and damn your shitty emotional regulation and damn your life for putting you in these situations.

“Yeah,” You croak, thinking about things like soup and family and being cold and strong and alone, “Yeah that’s fine. Thank you.”

Jack politely does not comment on the fact that soup is reducing you to a tangled heap of emotions and tears, and instead directs you to where his shower is and says to use whatever you want and take however long you want. He says want, not need. You’re not sure if there’s an intention behind the word choice.

Once in the shower, you allow yourself time to cry, to feel awful and self-pitying and all those things that are terrible to go through in front of another person. His shower is expensive and the water is warm and he does not have 5-in-one. There’s a litter box nestled next to the toilet, and it’s not funny, but it kind of is, because Jack would be the kind of guy to look at a litter box and put it right next to the toilet. Everything in its place.

Maybe that’s your problem. You haven’t felt like anything is in the right place in years.

You want to stay in the shower, in the bubble of protection it provides, but the idea of running up Jack’s water bill is enough to guilt you into getting out. You shiver, dry, aggressively attempt to make yourself look less like a wreck at the sink, and then tip-toe into the attached bedroom and carefully pull on the clothes Jack left for you on the bed; a faded, oversized college shirt, and a comfy pair of sweatpants.

They smell like him. You smell like him, like his body wash. The house smells like him. Everything you take in is a pleasant assault of Jack, Jack, Jack.

Enough guilt to fuel an entire room of ex-Catholic’s is the only thing keeping you from snooping around his room. The idea of stumbling upon something private or hidden away makes you feel slimy and gross, so you exit the bedroom and pretend like you don’t feel like a foster dog on its first night home from the shelter.

(Do shelter dogs miss the shelter? Do they miss its familiarity? Do dogs miss anything at all?)

The apartment smells of more spices and good smelling food than you privately thought Jack capable of. You’d read him as the kind of guy to subsist on takeout and maybe like, protein bars. But he’s dutifully stirring a metal pot with all the diligence of the military man that he once was.

Quietly, as if he might throw the wooden spoon he’s stirring with if you make too much noise or take up too much space, you carefully pull out a barstool in front of his kitchen island, the one closest to the door, and haul yourself onto it.

He gives you an examining glance over his shoulder, turns a knob on the stove, then rests his forearms on the island counter across from you. His rather delicious looking forearms, you might add.

“Feeling better after your shower?”

You hum an affirmation, folding your arms and resting your chin on them.

“Isn’t it kind of weird to make soup for breakfast?”

He shrugs. “It’s dinner for us. Or, well, me. I’m not sure your body knows what meal it is.”

He taps a pointer finger rhythmically on the counter. “Any word from your landlord?”

“No. Sorry for… all of this. I know you’re tired.”

“I wish you’d stop apologizing for things I don’t mind doing for you.”

You don’t really know how to respond to that, or what to do with how it makes you feel, so you elect to save it for later. Good at compartmentalizing, ED doctors are.

You clear your throat. “I can call Samira whenever. She’d probably be excited to have girl time. So you know. Don’t feel like— I have other options. If or when you want me to leave.”

“Do you want to leave?”

You wish he’d stop asking questions you don’t want to answer.

You try to play it off, smother your fear and exhaustion with humor. Robby’s kid, through and through.

“Well, I can’t have you getting sick of me. You’re the only person I know who has a very rob-able house if this whole internship doesn’t pan out.”

Jack straightens, shoulders pulling and flexing. “Who said I’d get sick of you? Maybe I like the idea of you in my house.”

“Do you?”

You ask the question before you’re aware of how terrified you are of the answer. But you’ve already said it, and it feels nice to be the one asking the hard question instead.

Jack, likely experienced in this sort of thing, doesn’t look outwardly bothered by it, but he gets a sort-of-sad look on his face, almost like he’s disappointed that you had to ask.

“Have I given you any reason to think otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” You look down, picking at a hangnail to avoid his expression and his eyes and his everything, “I don’t want to assume anything.”

“You’ve already assumed quite a bit.”

You scrunch your face. “That’s different. Those are safe assumptions.”

“Are they?”

“Obviously, it’s safer to assume that you don’t want me to stay here, or at least not for very long, because if I assume that I do I’ll bother you and I want you to—“

You cut yourself off, jaw shutting with a firm click, but the end of the sentence hangs in the air unspoken anyways. It’s not hard to figure out what you were going to say.

I want you to like me.

Jack sighs, and alarm blares are going off in your head and your chest starts to feel tight and cold despite the warmth of his apartment, and then he’s rounding the island and you turn your body to follow him —never turn you back, never let your guard down— and then he’s standing in front of you, over you, and you’re not sure if you want to run or metaphorically curl up at his feet, tail tucked.

It’s pathetic. It’s embarrassing. It’s impossible to ignore.

(What does a shelter dog think, on that first night? Do they hope? Do dogs hope?)

He raises a hand, slowly, giving you a chance to lean away, and when you don’t, it comes to rest on the side of your face, his thumb swiping at the barely-there wetness from earlier tears.

It’s cleaning the cut from the slap, it’s a kindness you can curl into, and it might be a threat. Might be bad, might turn harsh and painful, might leave without a word.

Unlike that day in the break room, there’s no fluorescent lights to suck any heat out of the room and no gloves as a barrier; as a reminder of who he is, of what you are, of how things work.

It’s just you and Jack, in Jack’s apartment, wearing Jack’s clothes, and pretty soon you’re going to eat food that Jack made. Just for you.

And you think maybe, possibly, if he stops here you could kind of hold onto this moment for the rest of your life and it would get you through being alive and strong and alone, and you’d make it through this, whatever this is, if he stops here.

He doesn’t. He starts talking.

“I like knowing that you’re safe. That you’re taken care of. I like knowing with certainty that these things are true because I’m the one making sure of it.”

Your breath hitches in your chest.

“That’s kind of a lot of work, though.”

He hums. “It is. Luckily, I just so happen to be a pretty hard worker.”

Everything about the current situation is a lot and your nerves are over-taxed and dialed up to hundred, so it’s not surprising that you start crying again.

Jack brings up a second hand to the other side of your face and gently wipes away the tears as they come. It feels sort of like the physical version of everything he’s been doing for you since that day in the supply closet.

“You don’t have to do anything, or say anything, or make any kind of decision right now, okay? We can do whatever you want. I’ll do whatever you want.”

There’s the word choice again; want, not need. Is there a difference? What does the difference mean to him? What does he mean? Why is he doing any of this?

Jack's phone goes off in his pocket, and he steps back, drops his hands, and goes back to the stove.

Jack said you don’t have to make a decision right now, but you kind of feel like if you don’t do something you’re going to be sick with everything that’s swirling and clawing inside you, threatening to burst. Like the very essence of you is going to explode, and your soul will be painted on Jack’s perfectly decorated walls.

That would be something, wouldn’t it.

You stay seated at the island, turning to stare at Jack’s back while he adds the final touches to the soup. He doesn’t talk anymore, but he keeps looking back every few minutes, like he’s making sure you’re still there.

Eventually Jack turns the stove off, dishes up a bowl of soup for you, and sets it gently in front of you. He uses his pinky to cushion the placing of the bowl, so there’s no loud clinking noise when he sets the bowl down.

There’s a tiny sprig of parsley on top of the soup, right in the center. Like a Panera ad for soup in September.

You start crying again, in earnest.

“I’m sorry,” You gasp, pressing the heels of your hands into your eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m— I don’t know. I don’t know.”

You’re hoping the last sentence encompasses an entire lifetime of events, accidents, mistakes, and memories that have never been able to find a place in your head except dead center, at the forefront of your mind at all times, stamped on your forehead for anyone with eyes to see.

Your life hasn’t been wants or choices for a very long time. And here Jack is, giving you an array of both, and saying things like he wants you to want.

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Hey, hey hey hey, shhh,” Strong arms wrap around you, tucking your head into a warm chest, effectively shutting off all sensory input that isn’t Jack. “You’re okay, you’re safe, you’re okay, I got you.”

He rubs circles into your back, then switches to tracing shapes, and he lets you cry into him again and he doesn’t tell you to stop, or to calm down, or you’re being too much too fast.

“You’re okay, you’re gonna be okay sweetheart. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

—

You, embarrassingly, fall asleep right there, sitting at the kitchen island over a bowl of soup and twenty-something years of holding up your life with hands that never quite seemed big enough to do it.

You wake up in Jack’s bed, his comforter pulled up to your chin and the clock at the bedside table reading 8:17 p.m. There’s the muffled sound of several voices coming from beyond the door.

Holy shit. What the fuck.

Deciding to ignore the implication that Jack carried you to bed, you mentally take stock of what’s around you.

In front of the clock is your phone (plugged in to charge), a glass of water, and a note with Jack’s handwriting on it.

Kid-

I’ll probably be in the ED for the night shift by the time you wake up. I called Mohan (who called Mel, who was with Langdon, for reasons unknown) to go to your place and grab you some things. There may be people in the apartment when you wake up. You are in no way obligated to interact with them. They have to leave eventually.

Charlie is in the room with you because he hates strangers, but he probably won’t leave the bathroom. Probably. Drink water and eat something, if you can. Text me if you need anything.

The voices beyond the door are, more than likely, the aforementioned individuals who have now seen the glorified closet you call home. It’s not ideal, but you’re wrung out and don’t have the energy to really care. Besides, Samira and Mel are too nice to judge you that hard (you hope) and from what you’ve heard, Langdon isn’t really in a place to say anything.

On one hand, going out there requires socializing. Which, ew. On the other hand, Samira and Mel are the best. Langdon is maybe okay.

Before you can talk yourself out of it, you shuffle out of bed and then continue shuffling to the door, hoping that whatever you look like isn’t too terribly awful.

Samira, Mel, and Langdon are standing around the kitchen island, various takeout containers and bottles of alcohol littering the space. For some reason, Trinity, Dennis, and Robby are also present.

Samira and Langdon are engaged in what looks to be a rather animated discussion-slash-argument, and Mel is standing just a little closer to Langdon than what could be considered normal for friends. Trinity is very obviously ignoring Langdon’s general existence, bickering with Dennis on the couch, and Robby is seated in the armchair by the window, nursing a beer and watching both conversations unfold.

You sniff aggressively, and all heads snap to you.

“There are more of you here then there’s supposed to be,” You grumble, scrubbing at your face. “Why are you all here?”

Mel is the first to speak.

“It was Frank actually!” Trinity rolls her eyes, and part of you wants to share the sentiment, “He figured Trinity would be upset that something happened to you and he knew and didn’t tell her, so Trinity decided that me and Samira would get your stuff while everyone else stayed here in case you woke up before we came back!”

Wow, okay, that’s. A Lot.

You squint. “That doesn’t explain why you’re all here. I mean it does, but only like, why you’re here physically.”

Robby frowns. “We heard that you were going through a rough time and you had to stay with Jack, so we came.”

Trinity snorts on the couch and Dennis, next to her, looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.

Robby shoots her a look, but continues. “We care about you. We— I don’t want you to feel like you have to do everything on your own. In or out of the ED.”

Trinity blows out a loud sigh and low whistle. “Jee-zus Robby, give the woman some time to wake up before trying to induce tears again.”

Robby does look a little apologetic, maybe a teensy bit chastised (and annoyed that Trinity was the one doing the chastising) and turns his deep brown eyes back to you.

"Sorry. Can't help these Dad tendencies, you know."

Your face gets hot, maybe a tiny, wet prickle behind your eyes forms while Robby smiles, and the tension leaves the room all in one go, and you start to think that maybe things are in the right place.

–

At the ED, Jack Abbot, who's been checking his phone whenever he gets a free moment like a highschooler with a crush, opens the first text that pops up on his screen after hours of waiting.

It's a picture from Robby. You, with your head thrown back in a cackle of a laugh, not a single bit of stress evident in any of the lines of your body. There's one text accompanying the picture:

Please don't make me give you a shovel talk. I think you already know what's at stake here.

Jack snorts and pockets his phone, because yeah, he does.

–

When Jack finally gets back to his apartment, he's half-expecting to see the kind of mess that a large grouping of obnoxious people leave behind. Trash, maybe a few red solo cups, empty takeout containers, someone asleep on his couch, someone passed out on the floor.

He's not expecting to see a clean space. The only evidence that people were there at all is some rearranged pillows, a half-empty bottle of wine on the counter, and some new takeout menus on his fridge.

And then there's you. You're lying on the couch, eyes glued to the TV, watching a show he doesn't really recognize. There's a well-loved backpack on the floor, just under the coffee table. The shocking bit is Charlie, his resident asshole, is 'loafing' right on your chest, purring away.

You lift your head when you hear the jingle of his keys, a smile immediately brightening your face. He mentally takes a picture, right there, so he can remember this exact moment forever.

"What'd you bribe him with?" Jack says instead of something much more neurotic, like 'You don't have to go back to your place when the power comes back on.'

You shrug, unaware of his emotional and romantic pain. "You were right. He came out from under the bed after everybody left. He kind of growled at me for a little bit, but once I settled down here he just kind of... came right up."

You plant a little kiss to the top of his head, right in between furry ears. Great, now Jack's jealous of a senior cat with one ear who licks his own butt. "How could I resist this face? I see why you brought him home."

Jack rounds the end of the couch, shuffling by, and Charlie opens his eyes just enough to shoot him a look that Jack takes to mean: If you make her get up and move me, I will kill you in your sleep.

Jack does not disturb his cat as he sits down on the couch. There's a moment when things almost get hairy- you pull your legs back when he goes to sit, slightly jostling The Asshole, who pins his only ear back in annoyance.

Jack solves this problem by taking your legs, clad in some soft flannel pajama pants and pink fuzzy socks, and lays them across his lap. There. Problem solved.

The warmth of your legs on his lap and the look on your face is reward enough for him. He can't think of a way he'd rather spend his time.

Jack, in a rare show of mercy, does not tease you, and decides that you've probably had enough excitement for one day.

"So," He says instead, looking up at the TV and grimacing at the mutilated corpse on the screen, "What are we watching?"

He watches you shrink into yourself. He hates it when you do that. He hates that you feel like you have to.

"Uh, Bones. I can turn it off, though. I'm sure you don't want to watch this."

He doesn't answer the question you've not-subtly voiced, instead choosing to redirect the conversation.

"Why did you put it on?"

You start chewing on your lower lip. Your signature 'I don't want to answer this question so I'm going to think really hard about it' move.

"It's kind of my comfort show? I don't know. I watched it a lot growing up. We didn't have cable, but the hotels I stayed at sometimes did. I'd wait until my dad fell asleep and then I'd turn on the TV and watch from the sci-fi or drama channels. Watched a lot of Bones. Supernatural too, and sometimes Doctor Who, if it was on. But Bones was my favorite."

The characters on the screen are involved in some sort of car chase now, police siren flashing on a black SUV. Jack isn't paying attention to that at all, because this is the first time since the day you walked into the PTMC and introduced yourself that he's ever heard you talk about your childhood.

"How come?"

"I don't know. I've always liked procedural shows. Had a huge House MD phase. Death and bones and corpses and stuff has never really grossed me out, which is part of the reason I became a doctor. But also..."

You point to the male character. "You see him? That's Booth. Seeley Booth. They all have kind of crazy names. He's an FBI agent, and his partner is that woman there. Temperance Brennan. Booth calls her Bones."

"She doesn't look like an FBI agent."

You smile. "She's not. She's a forensic anthropologist, but she consults on murder cases and stuff like that because she's kind of a genius. She's smart, strong, and capable. She and Booth don't always get along, because they both can be headstrong and stubborn. But he respects and trusts her, implicitly. No matter what. They love each other."

Your throat bobs, but your voice is steady when you speak.

"And when Brennan needs him, if she's in trouble or she needs him by her side, even if she doesn't know she does, he's always there. He always saves her."

Jack can picture it, in his mind. You, small and alone, watching these characters on some shitty hotel TV and getting it into your head that this kind of thing only exists in TV shows. He pictures you dreaming of having a Booth, of having someone to be there for you, to pick you up when you fall. He thinks of you crying in the supply closet and how quietly you'd done it. Almost silent.

He thinks of what happens to a person to make them learn how to cry without making a sound.

He rests a hand on your ankle, fingers instinctively drifting towards the pulse point there- posterior tibial. He keeps two fingers on it, even though he can't feel it through your fuzzy socks. With his thumb he makes circles, because he's seen how you lean into Robby's shoulder grabs, how you preen at physical and verbal praise, how you'd slumped like a marionette with its strings cut into his arms just yesterday.

"Jack?" Your voice is tentative, unsure.

"Hmm?"

"Am I..." You start chewing your lip again, "Are you— I don't to assume anything. So if I fuck this up and make you uncomfortable—"

"I want to kiss you."

Jack has learned how to speak fluent you. He knows how to stop an incoming spiral, how to soothe old wounds rearing their heads.

He continues when you don't speak.

"I want you to wear my clothes. I want to take care of you. I want you, in whatever way you'll let me."

"Oh."

"I was laying it on pretty thick, kid."

You look away from him, and this is another moment he'd like to keep forever.

"I thought I was just reading into things!"

"Do you think I call every intern sweetheart?"

Jack is positive Charlie's presence on your stomach is the only thing keeping you from actively squirming in place.

"I thought maybe you were just one of those guys. Samira said it was possible!"

He rolls his eyes. "You can't ask Mohan for romantic advice. She's you in a different font."

"I'm going to take that as a compliment."

You turn back to your show, losing yourself in the plot for a while. When the murderer has been caught and the credits are playing, you look at him again.

"We don't. Um. Can we just keep doing this? For now?"

For the first time since meeting you, Jack gets to say exactly what he's thinking.

"We can do this forever. We can do whatever you want."

He looks at you like you’re something he’s not supposed to touch, always seconds away from getting walked in, but that's half the fun at this point. He takes his time looking you over, his hand lifting to turn his hat from the front to the back with a lazy flick.

He’s on you in a second, big hands sliding around your hips as you straighten up; his body pressing into yours.

“Holy shit,” he murmurs against your skin, his voice rough with sleep—the kind that always gives him away when he’s stayed up too late the night before and woken up too damn early. “What are you doin’ down here, huh?”

“I made your coffee,” you murmur and he groans.

“Saw your text,” he hums, grazing his mouth over your cheek. “You’re too good to me.” His chain brushes your collarbone when he leans in, cool against your skin.

Garrett lets you go, reluctantly, and you start to walk toward the counter. His eyes trail up the length of you.

“It’s just coffee and toast, baby,” you smile, tilting your head slightly.

“Considering everything you did for me last night… I should be the one making breakfast—you don't owe me anything.”

Your cheeks burn, suddenly shy under all this attention as he walks closer. His hands rest on the counter on either side of your hips just as you lean over the counter, reaching for the butter, your ass arching back, right onto his lap. On purpose. You don’t even try to pretend it wasn’t.

“Oh, shit,” he breathes, his voice low and amused as he plays along with the accidental contact, his bag falling heavy to the floor, looking over his shoulder for his roommates. “Real sorry, baby.”

You let out a bubbly laugh as he grabs your body and turns you toward him, lifting you up to set you down on the cool counter.

“What if the boys see you down here, huh?”

His smile’s smug; the man stepping between your thighs as his hands slide up the back of his jersey. His rough thumbs slip under the band of your panties, gripping your hips in his big hands.

Garrett reaches up a little higher, squeezing your breasts before his thumbs brush softly against you. “And what if they did?”

“See you?” His grin widens. “Coach’s daughter wearin’ forty-four and not much else.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, arching into him a little more.

“Well, damn,” he murmurs, looking at you like he’s just remembered he has somewhere to be. “I’d be fucked—I mean, it's pretty risky. I could stop,” he grins against your skin.

“No, you couldn't,” you dismiss it with a teasing laugh.

“No shit. Wearin’ my jersey. No bra… Panties. Textin’ me telling me you made me coffee and breakfast. You honestly think I wasn't gonna thank you a little. Thank you, baby,” he breathes as he leans in, pulling the fabric up, his mouth finding your breast.

He circles it once with his tongue, then again before sucking down, rough enough that your breath hitches and your fingers thread through his dark hair, his curls tangling between your fingers as you hold him there.

“Wish we lived alone,” he grumbles, turning his face further into your chest as his curls tickle your skin.

“Yeah?” You ask breathily as your thighs widen on the counter.

“Whole house to ourselves?” He says, letting the words vibrate against your skin.

He tilts back in, greedy mouth following the curve of your neck as his hands clutch your thighs, holding you open as he leans in close.

“I’d lift up the back—bend you over the counter.” His fingers shift around your body, tracing down your spine, landing on your ass, kneading your flesh.

He smiles against your lips, snapping the waistband of your panties against your skin. “Couldn’t have put on some shorts, or somethin’?”

“More comfortable like this,” you whisper, turning his words back on him when you say, “I mean, it's pretty risky. I could run upstairs and put some on.”

“No, you wouldn't,” he hums. “You did this for me and I fuckin’ love it. Just walkin’ around here like you own the place. What if Tuck and Logan see you, huh? Dean?”

“Oh, Dean?” You ask, because suddenly this conversation makes a lot more sense.

“Don’t start,” he scoffs. “You know he likes you.”

“None of you are subtle,” you answer and he lets out a laugh.

“Yeah, well you got no idea how many conversations I’ve sat through, baby.”

Then his hand slips forward, grazing over the thin material between your legs, pressing soft little circles onto your clit until your hips twitch at his touch.

“They think they know what it’d be like to be with you—they got no fucking clue,” his voice breaks a little when he softens it. “How perfect you are—how much you do for me. To me.”

You hook a hand around the back of his neck, thinking about how easy it would be to have him press himself in and lay you out across the counter, but the both of you would never recover from being caught like that.

You pull him closer and his lips suck down on your neck, rough enough to leave a mark.

“Kept my mouth shut. Haven't said shit. It kills me…” He breathes over your collarbone right where the collar of the jersey meets your skin. “I've been such a good boy for you.”

“So good,” you whisper. “And yet, you stopped telling what we would do if this house was ours,” you breathe, nails tracing over the thick bulge in his shorts.

He laughs, liking the sound of that. “Got you bent over this counter. One hand on your hip, the other gripping this jersey in my fist while you cry out that name on your back.”

His fingers trail even lower, dipping just barely between your folds, right above your entrance, the barrier of fabric only adding to the ache between your thighs. So much for all that teasing he accused you of. He’s worse.

“Too bad you have a workout.” Your fingers card through his dark hair. “We could stay back.”

He grins as he chuckles warmly against the column of your neck, dragging your panties to the side. “Fuck, you wanna get me in trouble, huh? Won’t be able to play tonight if I don’t show—you know that. After the game, though. Boys’ll go to the bar,” he breathes as his fingers mimic the tempo of his words.

His breath catches in his broad chest as your finger slips under the band of his shorts, pulling him closer before you slide your hand inside.

“Christ,” he grits through a smile as your fingers wrap around his cock, finding him hard and heavy. You stroke and he hums deep against your lips about all the things he wants to do to you when you're alone.

“Trying to get me all worked up just to send me off,” he whispers. “That’s fucked, pretty.”

He works you with his long thick fingers, slow enough to tease. “How fast do you think I could get you off, huh?” He chuckles, his laugh buzzing against your lips. “Pretty close right now, huh?”

Garrett breathes those words against your jaw. Your hand slaps over your mouth, muffling the sound of his name.

Your pussy squeezes around his fingers and you lose the rhythm of your strokes, but he doesn't, leaning into the counter a little more. The wet sounds of his hand darting in and out suddenly, too loud but it's replaced by the pounding of your heart in your head.

“Come on, baby… Cum on my hand,” he mutters, teeth scraping your neck and your body releases, fluttering around his fingers.

Your thighs squeeze together as he keeps going, whining against your hand, before he slows his pace.

He brings his fingers to his mouth, cleaning them with his heavy gaze locked on yours, the watch on his wrist glinting.

“Fuckin’ perfect,” he mumbles as you slip off the counter and into his arms. “I love you—”

“I love you too,” you whisper as your lips find his again, hands sliding down his chest. Your hands slip lower. His shorts are already halfway down his hips, cock trapped beneath the waistband.

“What are you up to, huh?” He asks like he doesn’t already know as you back him into the counter. “Yeah?” He laughs softly. “Bet you won’t.” That challenge barely leaves his mouth before he kisses you again, eyes flicking toward the stairwell mid-kiss before dropping back to you as you sink to your knees.

“In my jersey,” he mumbles as he tilts back, hands resting on top.

He sucks in a sharp breath when the air hits him, shivering when your tongue glides up the side of his cock, tossing back his head as he bites down on his lip, holding back a moan—BANG!

“Fuck me,” he hisses, hanging his head between his shoulders when a bag drops in Logan’s room above you.

Your tongue swipes against his tip and he blows out a sharp breath through his nose, his sticky wet precum catching on it.

“Just—Just a little more,” he mutters, holding your head, following you as you take him in your mouth. You bob back and forth and his grip tightens, eyes fluttering shut—THUMP!

You draw away when you hear some more motion upstairs. He shakes his head, laughing under his breath, watching as you kiss the tip.

“That’s how we’re playin’ this, huh?” Looking back at you in playful frustration, he tugs you up fast, muttering bitterly under his breath as you tug his shorts in place.

“Sorry, baby,” you smile.

“Teasin’ me, baby. Just wait until later,” he warns with a smile, grabbing his workout bag, walking with you back up to his room.

His fingers find yours automatically as the two of you step into the hallway.

Garrett walks a half-step behind you, his thumb rubbing back and forth across your knuckles. You glance over your shoulder and catch him already looking. He drags a hand across his mouth, trying and failing to hide his smile.

You step up one stair, and by the third he already knows he’s in trouble. His number stretched across your back. His last name stamped over your shoulders. The curve of your ass peeking out each time you take a step higher.

The intrusive thoughts win without effort. His other hand reaches out for you, pulling you back and into his strong arms. “Garrett Graham!” You whisper-scream and his deep laugh echoes through the stairwell.

“You are drivin’ me fuckin’ crazy,” he mumbles like he's pissed—smiling like he's in love. “I’m just a man, alright? What do you want from me?” Your arms curve loosely around his neck, your legs wrapping around his waist as he holds you, carrying you the rest of the way. “Plus you were walkin’ up the stairs too slow, you needed my help.”

“My hero.”

“Good thing I'm riding by myself. I need some time alone with my thoughts.”

“You’re dramatic,” you cut in, but that only encourages him.

“You know one hand on the wheel, the other doin’ what you started and didn't finish… you're lucky you're gorgeous.”

“So are you,” you smile and he scowls.

By the time he sets you down inside his room, he’s smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, shutting the door before anyone can see. “I mean…” Garrett shifts his bag higher on his shoulder. “Maybe I could stay.”

You give him a look. A long look. And his shoulders slump.

“I know,” he mutters. “Goddamn, baby. You run a tight program.”

“Workout,” you whisper.

“Yeah.”

“Hockey,” you remind him.

“Mmm… Mhmm,” he hums, so dreamily you laugh. “Fuck, I love when you boss me around—”

“We’ll have all night—”

“How am I supposed to focus now? All I can think about is how pretty you looked trying not to make a sound.” His finger hooks under your chin, lifting your lips to his. “But you... you gotta be careful, baby. These boys are gonna hear you one of these days. They could have caught us down there.”

You look up at him through your lashes ever so slightly and he melts.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, blowing out a tired breath. “You own me—don’t even know why I try.”

He reaches out, grabbing the jersey on your body, pulling you closer. His nose brushes against yours—his lips doing the same, drawing back and leaving you chasing them just enough to notice before he kisses you.

“You don't have class until ten, yeah?” He murmurs between kisses.

“Yeah,” you breathe. “Wishin’ you were me right now, huh?”

“Wishin’ a lot of things honestly.”

Garrett groans, dropping his forehead to yours, his voice dripping honey-sweet as he takes a different approach. “Shit, baby… what about your coffee? I should probably go get that for you, hmm?”

“Seriously—”

“Then, I don’t know…” He continues when that doesn’t work. “Maybe not get my ass beat at the gym. Sweat here instead. Do something better with my time.”

“You’re gonna be late—”

“And, I wonder why,” he cuts in. “Running out of excuses.”

“What are you gonna tell him, Captain?”

He thinks about it for a moment, stalling still. “Pretty thing. Wears my number. Torments me. Tells me I have to stay or else—”

“Or else, huh?” You giggle, and his eyes fall to your lips. “She sounds like a bitch, baby.”

“—Don’t talk about her like that. That’s my girl.”

“Such a charmer, Garrett Graham,” you hum, twirling one of his curls with your finger. “Leave—” Smack! His hand claps against your ass, the mesh barrier, just another reminder that he can't have you how he'd like.

He batts his hand against the door handle, still unwilling to let you go for another moment.

“Send me a picture or somethin’,” he mumbles against your lips. “You know, for the car ride there.”

“I don’t know, baby. You look extra pretty when you suffer,” you whisper, and he chuckles deeply, the sound going straight through you.

“Gonna ruin you later.”

“M’counting on it…” You smile and his groan breathes against your lips when he pushes open the door.

“Jersey stays on.”

The Briar hoodie is half-zipped over his chest, his hair still shower-wet at the ends, his cheek faintly red where someone’s glove or shoulder had caught him in the third period.

He has one beer in his hand within twelve seconds of entering the room and Dean yelling something obscene into his ear within fifteen.

She watches all of this from the couch with Monique’s thigh pressed warm against hers and Lucy leaning forward to shout over the music about some guy from their psych elective.

She should probably be listening better. She had been, before Garrett came in and changed everything about the room by existing in the doorway with that stupid easy grin.

She knows who he is, obviously. Everyone knows who Garrett Graham is. Briar hockey captain, star forward, walking campus landmark. She’d known he was hot before tonight in the same abstract way a person knows water is wet and clinical paperwork is designed by sadists, but there’s a difference between seeing someone across campus in athletic gear with three teammates around him and seeing him walk into his own party already smiling, already loose, already being wanted by half the room and not looking especially pressed by it.

She’s not blind. She’s also not a nun, despite the fact that clinical rotations have recently made celibacy feel less like a choice and more like an accidental lifestyle outcome.

Garrett Graham is hot. Objectively. Annoyingly. In that golden-boy hockey-player way that should be too obvious to work but does anyway because he carries it like he’s in on the joke.

Broad shoulders, sharp grin, dark curls, the kind of body built by early mornings and ice and being slammed into boards often enough to develop either resilience or brain damage. Probably both. 

He looks like someone who knows exactly how many girls at this party have already thought about his mouth tonight, and the worst part is that he doesn’t even seem smug in a lazy way. He seems amused. Like everyone else is playing a game he learned years ago and can still win drunk, tired, and half-distracted.

She would fuck him. This isn’t a moral failing. This is simply data.

She’s heard enough girls talk about Garrett to know he’s not one of those men whose reputation has been inflated by proximity to a jersey.

Girls talk, and they talk worse in bathrooms when they think no one useful is listening. She’s heard things. Good things. Very specific things, actually, some of which had made her stare very hard at her own reflection while washing her hands because there’s a difference between knowing a man is attractive and finding out from a girl in a tiny red top that he knows what to do with his mouth and doesn’t need to be coached into caring whether you come.

Useful information, frankly. And he doesn’t want a girlfriend, which is also useful.

That part matters more than it probably should. Garrett Graham not doing girlfriends is practically printed on the campus map at this point, tucked somewhere between the rink and the library. 

It makes other girls roll their eyes or take it as a challenge, like every charming emotionally unavailable athlete is secretly a lock waiting for the right girl to break the mechanism. She doesn’t have that kind of schedule.

She has labs and placement and a care plan due Monday and a pharmacology quiz she’s pretending not to think about while sitting on this couch in a top that shows more cleavage than her anatomy professor would probably consider academically relevant.

She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She had one. Recently enough that her body still occasionally goes tight around old memories it refuses to finish processing at convenient times. Shitty is one word for him. Incredibly shitty is closer.

The kind of ex who leaves behind little dents in the way a person reacts to praise, touch, questions, silence. The kind she has no interest in unpacking at a hockey house party while Metallica plays and some guy in the kitchen attempts to open a beer bottle with the edge of the counter.

So, no. She doesn’t want anything complicated. She wants a good time. She wants stress relief. She wants to remember that her body can be a place something nice happens, instead of just the thing she drags between lectures, placement, the grocery store, and bed. 

She wants to kiss someone who won’t ask about her five-year plan. She wants to be touched without being studied for damage. She wants, in the blunt private part of herself she’s not interested in dressing up, to get fucked properly and go home with a story she doesn’t have to turn into anything.

Then Garrett changes the music to Metallica, and she mouths along to the first verse without meaning to. That’s, apparently, where the trouble starts.

He notices from across the room. He’s standing near the speaker with Dean and Logan, taking a pull from his beer, and his eyes cut across the couch almost casually, like he’s just sweeping the room. They land on her mouth. She knows they land there because she feels it. A tiny hot flick of awareness across the skin, ridiculous and immediate. She stops mouthing the words half a second too late.

Garrett’s grin changes.

“Oh, God,” Monique says beside her, not subtle at all. “Captain America has spotted you.”

“He’s not blond,” Lucy mutters.

She should look away. She doesn’t. Garrett lifts his beer toward her in what could technically pass as a toast if everyone involved were committed to pretending subtlety still exists, and she raises her own cup back before taking a sip that tastes like cranberry vodka and bad decisions.

Five minutes later, he’s in front of the couch.

“Didn’t peg you for Metallica,” he says, because apparently Garrett Graham opens conversations like he’s already halfway through them.

She tilts her head back to look up at him, which is unfair because he’s even better from this angle. Taller than expected, warm from the room and the game, cheeks still a little flushed, curls drying messy over his forehead. “You didn’t peg me as anything. You don’t know me.”

His grin widens, delighted by the correction. “That’s true.”

“Strong start, though.”

“I’m usually better.”

“Are you?”

“Yeah.” He drops onto the couch arm beside her like he’s been invited, one knee bent, beer balanced loosely in his hand, his body angled toward her in a way that feels casual until it doesn’t. “Give me a minute.”

She should be annoyed by the confidence. She is, a little. Unfortunately, it’s working on several very humiliating levels.

Monique and Lucy, traitors with excellent survival instincts, last another thirty seconds before manufacturing a reason to leave. Something about drinks. Something about the bathroom. Something about how they’ll be right back, delivered in voices that mean the opposite so loudly that even Garrett looks amused as they disappear into the crowd.

“Subtle friends,” he says.

“Deeply. They’ve been trained in espionage.”

“Good girls.”

“Mm. Not always.”

His eyes flick to her mouth again. It’s not long. Barely a second. Just enough to tell on him before he brings them back to her eyes with that smooth athlete recovery, like a player who knows exactly how close he came to losing the puck and still wants credit for keeping it. She feels the look sit low in her stomach, warm and spreading, and tries very hard not to smile like an idiot.

They talk for twenty minutes. It should be less easy than it is. Garrett’s exactly as cocky as expected, but not in the dull way. Not in the way men get when they think confidence can substitute for listening. He actually listens. He asks what she’s studying and then makes a face when she says nursing, like the word has exhausted him.

“Brutal,” he says, leaning back into the couch, one arm stretched along the back behind her without touching yet. “You guys are always carrying, like, seven textbooks and a haunted look.”

“That’s pretty accurate.”

“Clinical rotations?”

“Yeah. Labs too. Exams. Placement. Occasional will to live, but it’s inconsistent.”

He laughs into his beer. “So this is your night off?”

“This is me making questionable choices for balance.”

“That what I am?” His mouth curves. “A questionable choice?”

She looks at him for a beat too long, because his mouth is right there and because his gaze has dipped again, this time lower, to the neckline of her top where the fabric is doing exactly what she hoped it would do when she put it on. He catches himself, eyes bouncing back up, but she saw it. 

“Maybe,” she says.

Garrett’s grin goes slower. “Maybe’s not bad.”

“Maybe’s generous.”

“Wow. Mean.”

“You look like you can handle it.”

“Usually.”

There’s a little heat under the word, tucked neatly enough that anyone else might miss it. She doesn’t. Her fingers tighten around her cup. Somewhere across the room, Dean’s shouting about something. The music hits a heavier part of the song, guitar thick and grinding through the floorboards. 

Garrett’s knee is close to hers now. Close enough that if she shifted by an inch, denim would touch bare skin. She wonders, briefly and terribly, if he kisses the way people say he does. If he’s all that controlled heat up close. If the girls in the bathroom were exaggerating or simply too stunned to provide complete peer-reviewed data.

Garrett’s eyes move over her face again, slower now, his grin fading into something more focused. “You always stare like that?”

She lifts her brows. “Like what?”

“Like you’re deciding something.”

“I’m a student nurse. I’m assessing risk.”

His mouth twitches. “And?”

“High.”

“Yeah?”

“Probably worth monitoring.”

He laughs, and that stupid pleased warmth moves over his face when she gives him something back. Like he likes the push. Like girls probably giggle and touch his arm all night, but he likes when she makes him work half an inch for it.

He takes another sip of beer, but his eyes stay on her. “Did you wanna go upstairs?” he asks, so casually that it almost loops around into politeness. “It’s quieter.”

It’s not subtle. It doesn’t need to be. Her body answers before her brain finishes enjoying the question. A small, sharp tightening low in her stomach. Her pulse suddenly obvious in her throat, wrists, mouth. 

She glances toward the kitchen as if Monique or Lucy might materialise with moral guidance, then remembers both of them would probably give her a thumbs-up and ask for details later with the focused attention of scientists documenting a rare event.

Garrett waits. He doesn’t lean closer. He doesn’t put a hand on her thigh. He just watches her with that half-smile softened at the edges, giving her just enough room to say no that the yes in her body feels like hers.

She nods. “Yeah.”

His grin flashes. “Yeah?”

“Don’t make me say it twice.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He stands, then holds a hand out to her.

It’s such a small thing and so annoying that it works. His palm is warm when she takes it. Big, callused in places, rough along the fingers in a way she doesn’t need to notice as much as she immediately does. He helps her up like he has no doubt she can stand on her own and also no intention of missing an excuse to touch her.

Garrett leads her through the party without rushing. Past the kitchen, where Logan’s leaning over the counter laughing at something Tucker says. Past two girls in Briar shirts who watch Garrett’s hand around hers with expressions that make her feel, briefly and shamefully, like she’s won something. Which is ridiculous. He’s not a raffle prize. He’s a man with commitment issues and a very nice mouth.

Still.

The stairs are narrow and crowded, bodies shifting around them, someone sitting halfway up with a cup balanced on one knee and the glazed expression of a person who has either made peace with gravity or lost to it. 

Garrett looks back once as he starts up, his thumb brushing over her knuckles. “You good?”

The question lands warmer than it needs to. She nods. “Yeah.”

“Cool.”

Cool. As if his hand isn’t wrapped around hers. As if she’s not staring at the back of his neck, because the skin there disappears under messy curls and she’s just enough imagination to picture putting her mouth there. As if her heart isn’t doing something deeply stupid for a woman who had, thirty minutes ago, been very clear with herself about wanting uncomplicated stress relief.

The hallway upstairs is dimmer and hotter, muffled by shut doors and bodies and the thump of music through the floor. Garrett guides her past a bathroom with light spilling under the door, past a half-open bedroom where someone’s sitting on the floor scrolling through a phone, then stops at the end of the hall.

“Just in here,” he says, pushing open a door.

His room is more Garrett than she expects, which is an insane thought because she doesn’t know him well enough to know what more Garrett means. Still, it fits. Clean enough in the places that matter, messy in the places that don’t. 

Textbooks on the desk. Hockey tape on the dresser. A hoodie thrown over the chair. A laundry basket in the corner with one sleeve hanging over the side. The bed’s unmade, navy sheets twisted toward the wall, pillow dented. It smells like detergent, cold air from the cracked window, and him under it, soap and deodorant and boy.

Garrett closes the door behind her.

The party drops to a dull animal pulse beyond the walls. The air in the room shifts around the two of them. She’s standing just inside his door, Garrett’s hand still warm around hers, and he turns toward her with that easy, almost careful look again, like he’s about to say something. Maybe ask if she wants a drink. Maybe make another joke. Maybe do the polite ramp-up that men do when they think women need a few more seconds to pretend they’re less eager than they are.

She doesn’t have the patience for it. She steps into him and kisses him first. It’s immediate and a little hungry and probably reveals far too much about the state of her semester, her dry spell, and her ability to make impulsive decisions while wearing a low-cut top at a hockey party.

Garrett makes a small sound against her mouth, surprised enough that his hand tightens once around hers before he lets go and catches her waist instead. Then he gives it back.

Oh.

That’s the first clear thought she has, and it’s barely a thought at all. Just oh, because Garrett kisses like he doesn’t need to prove he knows how and somehow proves it anyway. 

His mouth opens over hers, hot and confident, one hand sliding to the small of her back while the other cups her jaw, fingers gentle but sure as he angles her face up to him. He tastes like beer and mint gum and the night air still caught somewhere in him from coming home after the game. His lips are softer than they have any right to be. His body is not.

She fists both hands in the front of his hoodie and pulls him closer, and Garrett laughs once into her mouth, low and pleased, before the sound turns into something rougher when her teeth catch his bottom lip.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

It goes straight through her. Then his hands are on her ass, full and shameless, pulling her tight against him as he walks her backward. She bumps into something hard at hip height – his desk, she realises distantly – and Garrett keeps her there, pressing in, enough to make the edge of it bite lightly into the backs of her thighs.

“Jesus,” he says against her mouth, breathless enough to sound almost impressed. “You always do that?”

“Kiss people?”

“Attack people.”

She laughs, and it comes out unsteady because his hands are still on her and his hips are right there and the front of his body is warm and solid between her thighs. “You invited me upstairs.”

“I did.”

“So.”

“So,” he repeats, and kisses her again like that has settled the matter.

The kiss goes messier fast. There’s no delicate way around it. Garrett’s hand slips from her jaw to her throat, resting there with his thumb along the line beneath her chin so he can guide her where he wants her. 

The touch should probably make her think of her ex. The fact that it doesn’t, not really, not in any way that sticks, feels so good it almost scares her. Garrett’s hand is warm and confident and easy to move away from if she wants, but she doesn’t want. She tips her head back into it, letting him tilt her face up, and his mouth gets deeper, slower, his tongue sliding over hers until her knees go embarrassingly soft.

“That okay?” he asks, barely pulling back, his thumb still at her throat.

She nods too fast. “Yeah.”

His eyes flick over her face. He looks a little darker like this. Less golden-boy from across the room, more flushed and close and focused, mouth wet from hers, curls falling forward. “Yeah?”

“Garrett,” she says, because if he makes her explain how okay it is while he’s standing between her legs looking like that, she’s going to lose whatever remains of her dignity.

His grin comes back, but there’s heat under it now. “Right.”

He kisses down her jaw before she can say anything else, and her head tips sideways on instinct. His mouth is warm against her skin, open and unhurried at first, then less so when she makes a small sound. His lips find the tender spot beneath her ear, then the line of her throat, then lower, over the place where her pulse is doing something embarrassing.

One of her hands slides into his hair. It’s a mistake. His curls are soft, still damp at the ends, and when she tugs lightly Garrett’s hips press into hers on reflex. The pressure of him between her thighs makes her breath leave in a short, broken little exhale.

“Careful,” he murmurs.

She wants to laugh at him. She really does. Instead she pulls his hair again, a little harder.

Garrett’s hand tightens at her waist. “Okay,” he says, voice dropping. “So not careful.”

“Not really my brand.”

“Good to know.”

Then he lifts her onto the desk. It happens so smoothly that she doesn’t even have time to make a sound until she’s already seated on the cool wood, thighs spread around his hips, her hands flying to his shoulders. 

A pen clatters off the edge and hits the floor. Something else – a notebook, maybe – slides sideways under her palm. Garrett doesn’t look away from her face. He steps in close, hands bracketing her hips, and tugs her forward until the edge of the desk meets the backs of her thighs and his body fits between them.

“Is this your study desk?” she asks, breathless, because her mouth has decided humour is the only thing standing between her and complete personal collapse.

“Sometimes.”

“That feels unsanitary.”

His grin flashes. “You wanna stop?”

She looks down between them, at his hands on her thighs, the press of him against her, the way her own knees have already hooked loosely around his hips. Then she looks back at his face. “No.”

“Great,” Garrett says, and kisses her again.

The desk is a terrible place to make good decisions. It puts her at the perfect height for him to get too much of what he wants too easily. His mouth on hers, his hand at her jaw, then her throat again, tilting her back enough that she has to trust the desk and his arm around her waist. His thumb strokes once along the side of her neck, and the touch sends a slow heat down her spine, pooling low and insistent.

He kisses like he’s paying attention, not just kissing because a girl is in front of him and willing, but noticing what makes her breath catch, what makes her nails press into his shoulder, what makes her knees tighten around his hips.

He kisses her mouth until she’s soft and open, then drags his lips back to her throat when she starts getting too loud, like he enjoys the cause and also the management of the effect.

She had thought, coming upstairs, that it would be fun. Hot. Simple. Garrett Graham’s room, his hands, his reputation tested for accuracy. She hadn’t accounted for him being this present. This annoyingly good at making her feel like the only thing in the room even while a party shakes the floorboards below them.

She rolls her hips once, mostly because the need to relieve the pressure has become unbearable. Garrett’s breath breaks against her neck. His hands flex on her thighs.

“Fuck,” he says again, softer this time. “You’re gonna be a problem.”

She smiles, half-drunk on the compliment, half too turned on to pretend she doesn’t love it. “You brought me up here.”

“Yeah, well.” He lifts his head and looks at her mouth like he’s considering biting it. “I make bad calls sometimes.”

“On the ice too?”

His eyes flick up. “You watch hockey?”

“I like hockey.”

The interest on his face is immediate and deeply male. “Yeah?”

“Don’t look so touched.”

“I’m not touched.”

“You are. You look very moved.”

“I’m just glad you have taste.”

She laughs, and he kisses the sound out of her, smiling into it for half a second before the heat takes over again. His hand slides under the hem of her top, palm finding bare skin at her waist, and she sucks in a breath at how warm he is. 

His fingers spread over her like he’s been waiting to get under fabric since the couch. Maybe he has. Maybe every glance at her mouth and cleavage, every casual sip of beer, every easy line had been leading here, to his desk and his hand on her skin and his hips pressing forward just enough to make her forget which sentence she had been about to use.

Then his mouth is at her throat again, moving lower, lips dragging over the hollow above her collarbone, and the whole thing starts to tilt too fast toward something that needs saying before their clothes are all over his floor.

“Just so we’re clear,” she says, breath coming unevenly, one hand still in his hair. “I don’t want a boyfriend.”

His mouth pauses against her neck, warm and damp, and then he lifts his head just enough to look at her. His pupils are blown wide, his lips swollen, his breathing not quite steady. The sight of him like that almost makes her forget what point she’s making, which is probably dangerous and exactly why the point needed making.

He blinks once, then nods. “Great.”

She nods too. “Great?”

“Yeah.” His hand is still under her top, thumb resting at her ribs. “I don’t want a girlfriend.”

“Good.”

“Perfect, actually.”

“Perfect.”

They nod at each other like two extremely reasonable adults who are definitely not flushed and panting on a desk while Metallica plays downstairs. Garrett’s mouth twitches first. She bites her lip, which is a mistake because his gaze drops there immediately.

“Glad we cleared that up,” he says.

“Me too.”

“Very mature of us.”

“Incredibly.”

His hand moves higher by an inch. Her breath catches. Garrett’s grin fades again, attention narrowing in that way that makes the air feel warmer.

“Take off your clothes,” he says, low and direct, and somehow not crude because he’s looking at her like he wants to watch every second of it.

Her body answers before modesty can even pretend to be useful. She reaches for the hem of her top and pulls it over her head. 

Garrett’s eyes drop. There’s no smooth recovery this time. No quick bounce back to her face. He looks. Properly. At the dark lace of her bra, at the curve of her breasts above it, at the way her breathing is making the cups shift slightly because she cannot seem to get enough air into her lungs. 

His jaw goes a little slack for half a second before he catches himself, but not fast enough. The attention hits her like touch. Hot, visible, almost embarrassing in how much she likes it.

“Well,” he says, voice rougher. “Fuck.”

She laughs, but it gets caught halfway when his hands slide up her sides, thumbs tracing the line beneath her bra. “That’s your review?”

“I’m still drafting.”

“You’re usually better?”

“Give me a minute,” he says, echoing himself from downstairs, but his mouth is already on her before she can answer.

He kisses her over the lace first, which is unfair. Completely unfair. His lips press to the top of one breast, then the other, warm and open-mouthed, his hands steady at her back while she grabs at the edge of the desk and tries very hard not to make a noise loud enough for the hallway. 

He looks up at her once from under his lashes, and the expression on his face is so smugly pleased that she would call him annoying if his tongue had not just dragged over the skin above her bra and wiped her brain clean of language.

“Garrett,” she manages.

“Yeah?”

“That door locks, right?”

He pauses. His eyes lift toward the door, then back to her, and for one terrible second she thinks he’s going to say no. “It does,” he says, and steps back only long enough to turn the lock.

The click lands in the room like permission. He pulls his hoodie off on the way back to her, and then his shirt underneath, and she has a brief, stupid moment of gratitude that she’s sitting down already. Because the rumours, as it turns out, didn’t fully prepare her for the reality of Garrett Graham shirtless. 

The broad shoulders. The cut of his chest. The flat, hard plane of his stomach. The light bruising near one rib from the game, purple at the edge, proof of something brutal and physical that only makes him look more like himself. She must stare too long, because Garrett lifts his brows.

“Assessing?” he asks.

She swallows. “Risk is increasing.”

His grin is immediate. “Worth monitoring?”

“Extremely.”

He steps back between her thighs, and this time when he kisses her, there’s skin everywhere. Her palms spread over his chest, warm and hard under her hands, and Garrett makes a low sound when her nails drag lightly down his stomach. It’s small, almost bitten back, but she hears it. Feels it. Files it away with an internal satisfaction so bright it borders on unprofessional.

He reaches behind her for the clasp of her bra, then pauses. “Okay?” he asks.

The word is simple. A check, low and rough, his hands warm at her back. Something in her chest goes tight and then loosens.

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

The clasp gives under his fingers. The straps slide down her arms, and then her bra is somewhere on his floor, and Garrett’s looking at her again like he’s briefly forgotten every line he has ever used on another girl.

“Still drafting?” she asks, because the silence is making her feel too naked in a way that has very little to do with clothing.

His eyes come back to hers. Darker now. Warmer. “I think the review’s gonna be positive.”

She laughs, breathless, and his mouth finds hers at the same time his hands cup her breasts.

The sound she makes is small and immediate, caught half in her throat, half in his mouth. Garrett groans like that did something to him. Like her not being composed is its own reward. His thumbs move slowly, then with a little more pressure when her back arches, and he breaks the kiss only to lower his mouth to her chest.

It’s too much in the best way. His mouth hot over her nipple, his tongue, the graze of teeth careful enough to make her gasp and grab his hair. His hands hold her steady when her hips roll forward again, searching for friction, and this time he gives it to her, pressing himself between her thighs until the seam of her shorts and the hard line of him make her head tip back.

“There?” he murmurs against her skin.

She nods, but that’s not enough for him because he lifts his head, one hand coming back to her jaw.

“Words,” he says, not stern, but sure. Captain voice, some tiny traitorous part of her brain supplies, and that absolutely doesn’t help.

“Yes,” she says, a little too quickly. “There.”

His smile is slow enough to be mean. “Good.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re proud of yourself.”

“I am proud of myself.”

“You’ve done very little.”

That’s a lie. They both know it. Garrett’s eyebrows jump anyway, delighted, and then his hand slides from her jaw to the back of her neck, pulling her in until his mouth brushes hers.

“Yeah?” he murmurs. “That a complaint?”

“No.”

“No?”

She shakes her head, their lips almost touching. “More of an observation.”

“Smart girl.”

The phrase shouldn’t hit like it does. It’s probably the nursing student in her, exhausted and overpraised only by rubrics and under-caffeinated professors, or it’s the fact that his hand is at her neck and his body is between her legs and he’s just called her smart like it belongs in the same room as wanting her. 

Whatever the reason, it goes through her hard and warm. Garrett notices. His eyes sharpen slightly, like he’s just watched a puck change direction.

“Oh,” he says softly, and that is dangerous.

“Don’t.”

He grins. “Didn’t say anything.”

He kisses her again before she can answer, and it’s rougher now, heat biting through the teasing. His hands go to the button of her shorts, then pause again with his fingers tucked at the waistband. She nods against his mouth before he can ask. Garrett exhales like he felt the answer in his own body.

They come off awkwardly because shorts are not romantic and his desk is not, in fact, designed for efficient undressing. She nearly kicks him in the thigh. He laughs. She tells him to shut up. He catches her ankle and kisses the inside of it, which is so unexpected and stupidly hot that the next insult evaporates right off her tongue.

Garrett drags her closer by the backs of her thighs, and the laugh disappears from both of them at the same time. Because now she’s in just her underwear on his desk, and he’s shirtless between her legs, and the party downstairs may as well be happening on another campus. 

His thumb traces the edge of the lace at her hip, slow enough that her stomach trembles. His gaze follows the movement. She watches his throat work once.

He hooks one finger beneath the elastic. “These?”

She looks at him. The room is warm. Her skin feels too awake. There’s a tiny voice in the back of her head that sounds unfortunately like caution, but it’s not saying no. It’s just noting the size of the moment because it’s been a while, because the last person who touched her left behind shadows she does not feel like introducing to Garrett Graham on a desk. Because wanting this and being ready for it are not always the same thing, except right now, in this room, they seem close enough to touch.

She reaches for his belt instead of answering directly. Garrett’s breath catches. That feels good. Better than good. It puts something back in her hands.

“Yeah,” she says. “Those.”

His eyes hold hers for one more second, checking for something beyond the word. Whatever he sees must satisfy him, because his mouth comes down on hers again and the rest of their clothes become a problem they solve badly and with a lot of breathing. 

His belt. His jeans. His boxers. Her panties. His laugh when her fingers fumble once. Her muttered, “Don’t be smug,” followed by his immediate, deeply smug, “Never.” The condom from his drawer, because at least one man in this house has prepared for something besides protein intake and chaos. His hands on her hips. Her legs around his waist.

He carries her from the desk to the bed like she weighs nothing. Hockey player, she thinks dizzily, arms locked around his neck, mouth pressed to the side of his jaw because she cannot stop kissing whatever part of him is closest. He drops her onto the mattress with more care than the gesture suggests, following her down before the bounce has settled.

For a second, with him above her and the room dim and the house still loud beneath them, the pace breaks. Garrett’s forearm braces beside her head. His other hand slides over her waist, then her thigh, then back up again like he’s mapping what he has been trying not to stare at since the couch. 

She looks up at him and catches a strange little flicker in his expression. Something aware, like he’s realised she’s not just some girl in his bed, even if that’s technically and conveniently what both of them are agreeing to make this.

She doesn’t know what to do with that. So she hooks her leg higher over his hip and says, “You always this slow?”

Garrett’s face clears into a grin so bright and wicked that relief moves through her right alongside the heat.

“Baby,” he says, dipping his head until his mouth is at her ear, “you have no idea how nice I’m being.”

Her breath catches. “Then stop.”

He goes still enough that she feels it. His mouth grazes her cheek when he pulls back, eyes searching hers. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, softer this time. “I mean, don’t be a dick about it. But yeah.”

His laugh is a low breath against her mouth. “Got it. Very clear instructions.”

“I’m good at instructions.”

“Good.” He kisses her once, slower than before, then again, deeper, and when he shifts against her, the joke leaves her body in one clean sweep, because there’s the heat of him against her, and then there’s the sight of him reaching for the condom.

Garrett sits back on his heels for half a second, tearing the foil open with his teeth because he’s decided to be exactly the kind of cliché that works because he looks like that while doing it, bare chest flushed, curls falling into his eyes, mouth still red from hers. 

His shoulders move under the warm bedroom light as he rolls it on, one hand braced briefly at the base of himself, jaw tightening around a breath he doesn’t quite let out.

She watches like an idiot, like a woman who’s forgotten she has eyelids. like the last several months of not being touched have gathered into one tight, humiliating knot under her ribs and are now watching Garrett Graham’s hand move with the focused awe of a medical student witnessing a miracle and a crime at the same time.

He glances up and catches her. His mouth curves slowly. “You good over there?”

She has enough dignity left to close her mouth. Barely. “Don’t start.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You looked like you were about to.”

“I was just checking on you.” His grin widens, far too pleased with himself, and he crawls back over her with the easy, controlled strength of someone who’s spent most of his life learning exactly what his body can do. His hands slide along the outside of her thighs, over the backs of her knees, spreading her wider as he settles between them. “Very caring of me, actually.”

“You’re a humanitarian.”

“I’ve been told.”

“By who?”

“Many women.”

She groans, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling, but it comes out thin and breathless because he’s right there, all heat and weight and hard muscle, his hips nudging hers, his mouth finding the corner of her jaw like he can feel the exact moment she needs him close enough to stop thinking. “God, you’re annoying.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, and kisses the spot beneath her ear. “You keep saying that.”

“You keep being annoying.”

“You’re still naked in my bed.”

She would argue harder if he weren’t sliding one hand under her thigh, lifting her leg a little higher against his waist. The movement opens her more, changes the angle before he’s even inside her, and her breath catches so sharply that Garrett’s teasing drops out of his face. 

His forearm braces beside her head. The other hand stays at her hip, thumb moving once over the skin there, a small grounding stroke that lands in a place embarrassingly deeper than skin. “Hey,” he says, lower now. “Still good?”

She nods, too quickly, then remembers his thing about words and tries not to hate how much she likes that he’s already made it a thing. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Garrett.”

His grin flickers at that, warm and wicked. “Bossy.”

“Please don’t make me regret having standards.”

“Oh, I love standards.” He dips his head and kisses her, softer than the words, mouth warm and slow until her fingers loosen from their death grip in the sheet and climb back to his shoulders. “Big fan.”

Then he shifts, and the first press of him makes the whole room narrow to the exact place where their bodies meet. Her hands clamp down on him immediately. Nails catching at his shoulders, then sliding over his back, trying to find somewhere to put the sudden overwhelming fact of him. Because she had known. She had seen. She had made reasonable visual estimates. She had spent the last five minutes pretending not to be deeply affected by the evidence.

Knowing is different from this.

Garrett pushes in slowly, so slowly it feels almost mean, his jaw locked and his eyes fixed on her face like he’s studying every flicker, every caught breath, every tiny shift of her mouth. It stretches her open in increments, heat and fullness and pressure blooming through her so intensely that her head tips back into the pillow and the sound she makes is barely a sound at all, more like her body dropping something fragile.

“Oh my God,” she breathes, and her hands move on him again, one to his bicep, one dragging down his back, not sure whether she wants to pull him closer or push him away or just leave marks somewhere to prove she survived this.

Garrett stills instantly. “Too much?”

“No.” The word comes out fast, almost offended, because even overwhelmed she has priorities. She opens her eyes and finds him above her, brows drawn, mouth parted, the cocky set of him interrupted by genuine restraint. “No. Just– fuck. You’re…”

His mouth twitches despite the tension in his jaw. “I’m what?”

“Do not make me compliment your dick right now.”

A laugh breaks out of him, rough and startled, and the movement shifts him a fraction deeper. Her whole body tightens around him in response, a gasp punching out of her as her fingers dig into his shoulder.

Garrett’s laugh dies in his throat. “Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t laugh,” she gets out, though she’s not sure if she’s scolding him or begging him.

“I’m not. I’m really fucking not.” His forehead drops close to hers, breath warm against her mouth. He slides his hand from her hip to the side of her face, thumb brushing her cheekbone with a steadiness that makes her body, traitorous and desperate, loosen by half a degree. “Relax. You got it.”

She makes a sound that’s probably meant to be sarcastic and ends up nowhere near language.

His mouth grazes hers. “Atta girl. Just breathe for me.”

The praise goes through her so hard she clenches again before she can help it, and Garrett’s eyes almost roll shut. His hand tightens briefly at her jaw.

“Oh, you like that,” he murmurs, voice gone darker, rougher around the edges.

“Shut up.”

He hums, pecking her lips once. “Yeah, you do.”

“Garrett.”

“I know. I know.” He kisses her before the argument can build properly, mouth soft and deep, and keeps pressing in by slow degrees, stopping whenever her breath catches too sharp, moving again when her hips shift up like some impatient, greedy part of her has decided the stretch is worth the ache. “So good. You’re doing so good.”

Her brain doesn’t survive that intact. It simply doesn’t. The words, his weight, the steady patience of him, the heat between her thighs, the fact that he’s watching her like this is not just sex but some very important game he has every intention of winning by learning her properly. 

All of it gathers and gathers until he finally bottoms out and her body takes him all at once, full enough that her mouth opens around a gasp she can’t swallow. For a second, neither of them moves.

Garrett’s face is close above hers, flushed and tense, his eyes darker than they were downstairs by the couch, his breathing held too carefully in his chest. She can feel the restraint in him. Feel the way his hips want to move and don’t. Feel the tiny tremor in the arm braced beside her head.

It does something horrible and hot to her. Something almost worse than if he’d just been cocky through all of it.

She kisses him. It’s clumsy at first because she’s still adjusting, still catching up to her own body, but Garrett kisses her back immediately, like the waiting has cost him something and her mouth is the first permission he can take.

His hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers spreading there as he deepens it, and then he shifts her leg a little higher against his waist.

The angle changes. She moans straight into his mouth.

Garrett freezes, then exhales a sound that’s almost a laugh and almost a groan. “There?”

She nods, breathless against his lips.

His nose brushes hers. “Can I move?”

The fact that he asks it like that, low and rough and barely holding together, with his body already buried in hers and his thumb stroking once at the side of her neck like he’s giving her every chance to stay in control, makes some foolish, tender, inconvenient thing move under all the heat.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “Move.”

Garrett nods once, like the word has landed somewhere physical in him.

The first few strokes are slow. Almost careful. Deep enough to make her breath hitch each time, steady enough to let her body catch up around him. He watches her face at first, eyes flicking between her mouth and her eyes and the little furrow that keeps appearing between her brows when the pleasure goes sharp. 

He kisses her there once, right between them, which should be too sweet for the fact that he’s currently inside her, except somehow it only makes the whole thing feel hotter. More specific. More dangerous.

She can feel him everywhere. The stretch, the drag, the warm weight of him above her. His chest sliding against hers, the muscles in his back moving under her palms, the faint bite of his breath near her jaw. 

The bed creaks under them, not loudly enough to compete with the party downstairs, but enough that the sound keeps catching in the corner of her awareness and making her body tighten around him with the absurd knowledge of where they are. 

Garrett Graham’s room. His bed. Music beneath the floorboards. People laughing downstairs. His door locked.

He presses his mouth to her neck when her breathing gets uneven, and she turns into it, one hand in his hair, the other clawing lightly down his back when he hits that same place again.

“Fuck,” she gasps, not meaning to be so loud.

Garrett’s hips stutter. “Careful.”

She would very much like to care. Unfortunately, he does it again. Her head tips back. “Oh–!”

His hand comes up, covering her mouth for half a second, more instinct than command, and the gesture sends such a vicious little spark through her that her body tightens around him before either of them can process it.

Garrett groans, low and wrecked. “Holy shit.”

Her eyes go wide over his hand. His grin appears slowly, and it’s filthy. Delighted. Almost boyish, if boyish can include the kind of look that makes her entire nervous system offer its resignation. 

He takes his hand away and replaces it with his mouth, kissing her hard enough to swallow the next sound. “Didn’t peg you for loud,” he murmurs against her lips.

“I’m trying to be quiet.”

“You’re doing a terrible job.”

“It’s been a while,” she snaps, or tries to, except it comes out too breathy to have any real bite.

His eyes flick over her face again, sharper now, catching the edge of what she’s said and whatever sits underneath it. Not pity, not that, if anything, it’s satisfaction braided with focus, like he’s just been handed another piece of the puzzle and intends to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

“Yeah?” he says, voice lower. “That why you’re so worked up?”

She glares at him, but it’s less effective when her legs are wrapped around his waist and she can barely breathe. “Don’t sound so pleased.”

“Baby, you pounced on me.” His hips roll again, slower this time, deeper, and her nails scrape down his back. “I’ve been pleased.”

“Asshole.”

“Yeah.” He kisses the corner of her mouth. “You want it harder?”

The question is so blunt it punches the air out of her. She stares at him for a second, cheeks hot, body hotter, and for reasons she’s absolutely going to blame on the dry spell, the music downstairs, and Garrett’s stupid mouth, she cannot quite make herself answer.

His grin softens into something more controlled. “Use your words.”

She huffs a laugh, embarrassed and turned on and annoyed by the exact ratio of both. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Garrett.”

“What?” He kisses under her jaw, smugness warm against her skin. “I’m being thorough.”

“Yes,” she says, louder, fingers tightening in his hair. “Harder.”

“There we go.”

He builds into it, like he’s testing how much she actually wants, how much her body can take before the noises change shape. But Garrett is big, and strong, and horribly aware of both facts, and once he understands that she likes the weight of him, likes the pressure, likes the way he can pin her open without making her feel trapped, he stops treating her like something breakable and starts treating her like something he wants to make a mess of.

Her body loves it. The harder rhythm. The way his hips snap into hers with enough force to push her up the bed until he has to hook an arm under her and drag her back down. The way he catches her knee and pushes it higher, opening her up until every thrust hits deep enough to make the room flash at the edges. The way he murmurs little things against her mouth, against her throat, half praise and half self-control unraveling.

“Fuck, that’s it.” His voice is rough, breathing uneven now. “That’s what you needed, huh?”

She cannot answer. Truly, it’s not her fault. The words are somewhere, presumably, but Garrett keeps hitting that place inside her with such awful precision that all she can do is cling to him and gasp like language is a skill she once had in high school and then abandoned.

He seems to take that personally, in the best and worst way. “Yeah,” he says, almost to himself, mouth at her jaw. “Thought so.”

It feels too good. It’s been long enough that she had forgotten sex could be this much body. This much sound. This much heat spreading under her skin until she feels flushed everywhere, sensitive everywhere, the old tightness in her chest and shoulders dissolving into the messy slap of skin and the creak of the mattress and Garrett’s breath catching every time she drags her nails down his back. 

He keeps finding it. That spot that makes her toes curl and her stomach pull tight and her voice come out higher than she means it to. Again. Again. Again, like he has a map and a grudge.

“Garrett,” she gasps, louder than she intends.

His mouth crashes over hers immediately, but he is smiling into it. “You trying to let the whole house know?”

“I’m trying to survive.”

He groans, forehead dropping to hers for half a second. “Jesus, don’t say shit like that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m trying to last longer than six minutes.”

The laugh that breaks out of her is so startled and breathless that it turns into a moan halfway through when he thrusts again. Garrett laughs too, low and rough and proud of himself, then kisses her until the humour melts back into heat.

And it’s fun. Even like this, even with her body slick and strung tight and his jaw clenched from holding back, there’s laughter under it. There’s Garrett being smug and her telling him to shut up and both of them failing to pretend they don’t like the other one’s mouth. 

There’s nothing heavy in the room, nothing sharp-edged enough to draw blood. Just want, and sweat, and stupid little jokes bitten into kisses, and Garrett Graham proving several pieces of bathroom gossip correct in a way she may have to send a formal thank-you note for later.

Then he changes the game entirely. One second he’s above her, solid and hot and driving into her until her thoughts are slippery, and the next his arm locks around her waist and he rolls them. 

She gasps, clutching at his shoulders as the room flips, and then she’s on top of him, knees braced on either side of his hips, hands planted against his chest.

“Oh my God,” she breathes, because the angle is different, the fullness shifting deeper, heavier, making her thighs tremble before she has even moved properly.

Garrett lands beneath her with a grin that should be illegal. His curls are spread over the pillow. His chest is rising hard, skin flushed, mouth swollen, eyes taking her in like the view has improved his quality of life.

“Hi,” he says.

She stares down at him, panting. “Hi?”

“Still with me?”

“Barely.”

His grin widens. “Good.”

He sits up enough to get his mouth on her chest, one arm looping around her back to hold her to him, and the movement forces her down around him in a slow, helpless grind that makes both of them swear at the same time. 

His hands find her waist, then her hips, guiding her into a rhythm before she can overthink the mechanics of it. Which is good, actually, because her thighs are already shaking and her brain has moved most of its remaining resources to the single overwhelming fact of him inside her from this angle.

She wraps her arms around his shoulders and moves. It’s messy at first. Too eager, not smooth enough, her knees sliding on the sheet, her breath catching every time she sinks down too fast and takes him deeper than she’s prepared for. 

Garrett doesn’t seem to mind. Garrett seems, if anything, violently invested. His hands flex at her hips, helping without taking over, his mouth moving over her breasts, tongue hot and deliberate until her back arches and her rhythm falters.

“Fuck,” she pants, fingers tangling in his hair. “Feels so good.”

He lifts his head, eyes dark, mouth wet. “I know,” he says. His hands tighten at her waist, guiding her down harder. “Fuck, you feel incredible.”

It’s breathless and blunt and dragged out of him by the look on his face, by his hands pulling her closer, by the way his hips keep lifting to meet hers when his restraint slips. It makes something bright and hot flare under her ribs. 

She drops her forehead to his, riding him with her arms locked around his neck, panting into the small space between their mouths while he kisses her in pieces whenever either of them gets close enough.

The party downstairs disappears. The whole world goes down to the slide of him in her, the ache in her thighs, his hands dragging over her back, her body moving because stopping feels impossible now. 

Garrett’s teeth graze her jaw. His mouth finds her throat. He says something that might be her name or might just be a curse and it makes her clench around him so hard his fingers dig into her hips.

“Shit,” he groans. “Okay. Okay, hold on.”

She blinks at him, dazed. “What?”

His grin comes back, strained at the edges. “Trust me?”

That’s a stupid question to ask a girl he met properly forty minutes ago. Worse, her body answers yes before her brain can come online.

Garrett rolls them again. This time there’s no mistaking the strength in it. He shifts her under him like it’s nothing, like she weighs nothing, like the bed and her body and the entire hot mess of the room are things he can arrange exactly how he wants. Firm and sure and so fucking hot that the sound she makes when her back hits the mattress is almost embarrassing.

“Yeah?” he asks, already reading her face.

She nods quickly, breath wrecked. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Then he hooks her legs over his shoulders. Her eyes almost roll back before he even moves. The stretch, the angle, the sudden deep press of him when he leans forward – it’s obscene. Actually obscene. 

Her hands fly to his forearms, then the sheets, then back to his arms, needing something to hold while he looks down at her with a grin spreading slow across his face like he knows exactly what he’s done.

“There?” Garrett asks.

She makes a sound that’s not a word.

His grin gets worse. “That a yes?”

“Right there,” she gasps, finally, because pride has lost all funding and vacated the building. “Don’t stop.”

Garrett’s expression flashes with satisfaction so intense it should annoy her. It does annoy her. It also makes her clench around him again, so her body has betrayed the cause.

He doesn’t stop. He fucks her like that, deep and hard and focused enough that the air keeps leaving her in broken little sounds she cannot control. The angle is devastating. Every thrust hits the same place, the one that makes her vision go soft and her fingers claw at his forearms, the one that pulls heat tight and fast through the low centre of her body until she can barely keep her eyes open. 

Garrett watches her through all of it, flushed and breathing hard, curls falling over his forehead, mouth open around rough little curses every time she tightens around him.

“That’s it,” he says, voice thick. “Fuck, that’s it. Right there, huh?”

She nods, frantic now, legs shaking against his shoulders. “Don’t stop. Garrett, don’t–”

“I’ve got you.” His hand slides between them again, thumb finding her clit with the kind of precision that makes her sob, actually sob, one sharp little sound punched out of her before she can catch it. “Come on, baby. Let me have it.”

The words hit at the exact wrong time, or the exact right one. There’s no way to tell. Her body pulls tight, tighter, every nerve narrowing to him, his voice, his thumb, the brutal perfect drag of him inside her, and then it breaks open.

She comes hard enough that the room blanks at the edges. Her back arches. Her hands scramble for him, one locking around his wrist, the other twisting in the sheet. Garrett groans above her, hips losing rhythm for the first time as she clenches around him, and the sound of him nearly tips her into another wave before the first has finished. 

He keeps moving through it, not as controlled now, more desperate, his face dropping toward her thigh where it rests near his shoulder, mouth pressing there in a hot, messy kiss like he needs somewhere to put the feeling.

“Fuck,” he grits out. “Fuck, you’re–”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He follows her with a broken groan, hips driving in deep once, twice, then stilling as he comes, shoulders tense and shaking slightly under her hands. His head dips, breath hot against her skin, and for a second all she can hear is the rush in her own ears, the muffled thud of music downstairs, the violent uneven breathing of both of them trying to become people again.

Garrett eases her legs down carefully. That’s the first thing she notices when thought starts returning in pieces. The care of it. His hands sliding her calves from his shoulders, lowering them to the mattress, his palms moving over her thighs like he’s checking she is still attached to herself. 

Her legs feel boneless. Her whole body does, really. Warm and damp and used in the best possible way, heart still pounding hard enough that she can feel it in her fingertips.

He leans down and kisses her. It’s slow. Almost ridiculous after everything. His mouth presses to hers with a softness that makes her chest do something inconvenient, and she kisses him back because she has no energy left to pretend anything. His lips move over hers once, twice, then he pulls back just enough to breathe against her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she says, because that’s the official post-Garrett Graham vocabulary.

He laughs, low and pleased and exhausted. “Yeah?”

She turns her head slightly into the pillow, smiling despite herself. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said yeah like you were fishing.”

“I was absolutely fishing.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“Only after sex.”

She laughs again, breathless and hoarse, and Garrett’s grin softens as he looks down at her. For a second it’s quiet. Too quiet, maybe. The kind of quiet that could become something if either of them were stupid enough to let it.

He pulls out carefully, and even that makes her inhale, sharp and oversensitive. Garrett’s hand comes to her hip at once, thumb brushing there. “Sorry.”

She shakes her head. “It’s fine.”

He gives her a look.

She huffs. “Good fine. Not bad fine.”

“Important distinction.”

“Very.”

He deals with the condom, tying it off and disappearing just long enough to toss it in the bin by his desk with impressive aim, which he absolutely notices himself doing. When he comes back to the bed, still naked and smug and far too pleased with his own athleticism, she lifts a weak hand.

“Do not brag about that.”

He points at the bin. “That was clean.”

“Garrett.”

“What? You like hockey. You should respect accuracy.”

“I respect silence.”

“Liar.”

He climbs back onto the bed, and she expects him to flop down beside her, maybe make some obnoxious comment, maybe reach for his jeans. Instead he pulls the sheet up first, dragging it over her hips, then higher until it covers her stomach and chest. The gesture lands somewhere soft and private, made worse by the fact that Garrett seems to do it without thinking.

She watches him through the loose fall of hair over her face. He notices that too, because Garrett Graham’s most irritating quality isn’t the mouth or the abs or the competence with which he has just rearranged her understanding of casual sex, but the noticing.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Bad nothing or good nothing?”

She gives him a look. “You’re very invested in categories.”

“I like knowing where I stand.”

“On top of your own bed, mostly naked.”

His grin flashes. “Good place to stand.”

Then he kneels beside her and pushes her hair off her forehead, fingers brushing damp strands back with a gentleness that feels wildly out of proportion to what they’ve just done. His thumb traces once near her temple. Her eyes close before she can stop them, her body willing to embarrass her in every available genre tonight.

“You good?” he asks, quieter now.

She nods, eyes opening again. A smile pulls at her mouth, lazy and stupid and completely beyond her control. “So good.”

Garrett’s face changes. The grin goes less showy, more pleased in a way that looks almost boyish. Like he’s been praised for something that mattered. Which is absurd, because they’re adults and this isn’t a skills assessment, except part of him still looks like he’s put that answer somewhere important.

“Yeah?” he says.

She groans. “You’re fishing again.”

He catches the back of her neck and pulls her up just enough to kiss her. It’s not like the kiss by the door. Not like the desk or the one right before he moved inside her. This one is slower, warm and indulgent, his mouth smiling faintly against hers until she gives in and smiles back. 

His fingers stay at her nape, holding her there with easy pressure, and when he pulls away, he doesn’t go far.

“That was so fuckin’ good,” he murmurs.

The words move through her in a slow, heated wave, different from before now that her body is loose and satisfied and embarrassingly receptive to praise. She looks up at him, still close enough that their noses nearly brush. “Yeah?”

Garrett nods, eyes flicking over her face, down to her mouth, back up again. “Yeah.”

There’s something too bare in that little pause after. A room after thunder. A body after adrenaline. The seconds after a joke has been made and neither person has found another one fast enough. 

She can feel the shape of the thing they agreed this wouldn’t become sitting somewhere near the foot of the bed, patient and smug and wearing his hockey number.

So she does the sensible thing and pokes his chest with two fingers. “Good review?”

Garrett’s grin comes back so fast it almost looks like relief. “Five stars.”

“Oh, gross.”

“Would recommend.”

“You’re never speaking to another woman again if that’s your line.”

“Probably for the best.” His hand slides under the sheet to rest on her waist, warm and heavy, casual like he has every right to be there. “I’m retired now.”

She snorts. “After one round?”

His eyebrows lift. The room changes again. Instantly. She feels it in the hand at her waist. In the way his gaze drops to her mouth and lingers. In the fact that her own body, traitorous little thing, gives a faint, interested pulse despite being wrecked and oversensitive and probably in need of water.

Garrett’s thumb moves once over her skin. “One round?” he repeats, voice dropping into that dangerous, amused register.

She realises too late what she has done. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“I meant… eventually.”

“Sure you did.”

She blinks. “I have friends downstairs.”

“They abandoned you twenty minutes ago.”

“I have dignity.”

“That one’s debatable.”

She laughs, and Garrett kisses her again, quick and warm and infuriatingly pleased, before drawing back with that bright golden-boy grin doing entirely too much damage in the low light of his room.

“Relax,” he says. “I’ll get you water first.”

She stares at him. Garrett’s grin widens. And watching him climb off the bed with all the unbearable confidence of a man who knows exactly what he just did and fully intends to do better next time, questionable might have been underselling it.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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The credits of the movie you and Garrett had been watching rolled across your laptop screen, pizza box at the foot of the bed and empty plates on his nightstand.

Garrett himself was in a huge, major predicament. Somewhere between the final action scene and the ending, you’d fallen asleep against his side. His heart felt like it was beating right out of his chest, thoughts racing at a mile a minute.   

He couldn’t believe you were here, in his arms, like this.

You’ve been friends for as long as Garrett could remember in his college days, being there for each other through thick and thin. Somewhere along the way, the line between friends and something else had blurred in his head, making it almost impossible to be around you without becoming anxious and wishing so desperately that you were his.

He closed the laptop with one arm, leaving the other around you and shifting lower on the bed. He wrapped himself around you from behind, willing himself to relax and sinking deeper into the bed upon smelling your perfume.

How do you tell your best friend you’re so in love with them that it feels like you can’t breathe when they’re not around?

That’s a question he so wished he’d be able to answer- and soon.

“I just don’t understand all these equations and shit. History is where it’s at for me.” Garrett groaned from his spot across from you in the library.

The two of you both had been forced to take a math class as a prerequisite, choosing to put it off for as long as you could before taking the course together.

“I know, but at least you’ve got me here to help you with it.” You laughed softly. “What would you do without me?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t even want to think about it.” He meant that much more than you thought he did. There wasn’t a single universe where he didn’t want you right by his side in whatever way he could have you.

“Me, either.” You gave him a soft smile that turned his legs to jelly, looking back down at your textbook as he tried to control his breathing.

He’d tell you how he felt soon, he swore it.

The bass of the song coursing through the speakers rattled Garrett to his core. Normally he wouldn’t be bothered by such things, but when he was feeling a twang of jealousy deep within himself, every little thing added up to piss him off more.

You were also at this party, but you found yourself happily chatting it up with one of the guys on the football team instead of him. You normally stuck to Garrett’s side at parties, and while he knew he didn’t control you, he’d be a fool to say it didn’t hurt a little to see you with another guy.

He took one last swig of his beer, setting it down a little too forcefully on the counter before heading your way.

“Hey, gorgeous, there you are.” Garrett smirked, sliding up next to you so you were shoulder to shoulder. “Missed you back there. James, right? Good to see you, man.”

“It’s Jordan.” The man grumbled back, clearly annoyed at his conversation with you getting interrupted.

“Right, John.” He turned his attention fully on you, bumping your shoulder. “Hey, I was thinkin about heading out of here soon. You coming with me?”

You glanced between the two of them nervously. “Uh, Jordan and I were talking. I’ll probably head out a little later with Allie or something.”

“Oh, alrighty then.” He tried desperately to ignore the nagging instinct to just sweep you up and tell you how he really felt. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later, then.” He clapped Jordan on the shoulder he passed. “Have a nice night, Jimmy.”

As Garrett exited the frat house and headed toward his jeep, he couldn’t help but to mentally kick himself. If he had just told you how he felt sooner, you wouldn’t be so close to Jack-Joseph-Jordan right now. You’d be close to him.

He ran a hand through his curls frustratedly as he slid into the driver’s seat, vowing that tomorrow would be the day he’d express how madly in love he is with you.

Tomorrow came around and Garrett had chickened out.

The two of you were on a grocery store run, picking up food and other necessities for both your shared dorm with Hannah and Allie and his shared house. As you shopped, you happened to stumble across one of the female freshmen in the cereal aisle.

“Oh my gosh!” she squealed, running closer. “It’s you two! One of the hottest pairs on campus! You two are so couple goals.”

“Oh, we’re not-“

“Thanks so much-“

The two of you responded simultaneously, shooting each other confused glances at the vastly different answers.

You laughed awkwardly, but the freshman was already backing away before you could answer again.

“Well, I should leave the two of you alone now.” She smiled, whipping her phone out to no doubt text her friends that she had seen the Garrett Graham and Y/N Y/L/N in public together. “Have a great night!”

Garrett turned to face you, trying to read your expression, but your head was buried in the written shopping list.

“So, now we need to go grab some eggs.”

He trailed behind you like a lost puppy, heart at war with his head. If he told you he loved you, would you run away? Or would you be willing to stay?

His thread of barely held restraint snapped one night after a particularly brutal hockey practice. Garrett came home bruised on every available inch of skin, sore muscles aching and feet desperately screaming for rest.

As he climbed the steps to his bedroom, his interest piqued. Lights were on in his room, the faint scent of what seemed to be lavender or something soothing wafting toward him. He also caught the sound of running water faintly from the direction of his bathroom.  

He opened his door cautiously, relief seeping into every fiber of his being at the sight of you. You seemed to have that calming effect on him- like a balm that covered all his worries and troubles.

“What’s all this?” Garrett called out softly.

You jumped, startled at the voice of the man you hadn’t heard enter due to the running water. “Garrett! Don’t do that to me! I could’ve had a heart attack or something.”

“That’s highly unlikely.” He responded, stripping himself of all his hockey attire. “Missed you so much. What’s all this?” He gestured toward the bathroom and at the various supplies covering his bed.

You blushed. “Oh, this is nothing. I just know you’ve been pushing yourself extra hard lately, and even captains deserve to be pampered. I’ve got an Epsom salt bath running with some lavender candles lit, your favorite takeout is staying warm in the oven, I brought some ointments and first aid supplies to help with any particularly severe injuries.” You shrugged. “Least I could do.”

Garrett felt the rush of a hundred different emotions hit him all at once. Love, awe, adoration- nothing but pure joy at the thought of his favorite girl doing so much for him without batting an eye.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he stood abruptly, dropping everything in his hands to stand mere inches away from you.

“You’re the greatest woman I’ve ever met in my life. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have found you. It all makes sense now.”

He grabbed the edge of your jacket, pulling you in so the two of you stood chest to chest.

“I can’t wait anymore. When I’m older and these days are behind me, there’s one constant I see in my future. It’s you, baby. I may not have been your very first kiss, but will you let me have the honor of being your last first kiss?”

Your grin nearly blinded him. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?”

You pulled him down to you by the back of his neck, joining your lips in what was sure to be the first of many, many kisses together.

That’s fine. Honestly, it makes sense. Her whole body has been giving up in installments for two days, first the sore throat, then the chills, then the cough. This is probably the part where the afterlife gives her Garrett Graham in a hoodie with damp post-practice hair because her brain is basic and under-medicated.

She lies still for another second, blinking at the wall while her body attempts to boot up. Everything feels far away and too close at the same time. Her skin hurts against the sheets. Her eyes feel hot. There’s a weird ache in her hips like she’s done a full leg day instead of lying in bed sweating through cotton and making pathetic little noises every time she has to swallow.

“Hey,” Garrett says through the door, gentler now. “You in there?”

She pushes herself up on one elbow and immediately regrets every choice that has led her to this moment. The room tilts, it makes her stomach roll and her head pulse behind her eyes. 

“Yeah,” she croaks, then coughs so hard her abs ache with it.

“Can you open the door?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m outside it.”

She frowns at the blanket like that might explain the flaw in his logic. “That’s stupid.”

Garrett laughs once under his breath. Soft and relieved and a little disbelieving. “Yeah, okay. Good to know you’re still mean.”

The insult gets her out of bed on principle. It takes longer than it should. She has to sit up first, then sit there breathing like she’s climbed ten flights of stairs, then shove the blankets away while her body complains. 

Her sock slides halfway off on the way to the door. She catches her reflection in the little mirror beside her wardrobe as she passes and stops for half a second, because holy fuck. 

Her hair is twisted into something that might once have been a bun but has clearly lost its will to live. Her cheeks are flushed too bright. Her lips are dry. Her eyes look glassy and annoyed, which is probably the only part of her still operating at baseline.

The knock comes again, lighter this time, and she unlocks the door mostly to make it stop.

Garrett’s standing in the hallway in grey sweats and a Briar hockey hoodie, one hand braced high on the doorframe, curls damp and messy from the shower, cheeks still a little pink from the cold outside and practice. 

He has his gear bag slung over one shoulder and his phone in his other hand, and for one very weird second, all she can do is stare at him.

He stares back. 

The easy, teasing set of his mouth drops. His brows pull in. His eyes move over her face, her hoodie, the blanket marks on her cheek, the tissue in her hand, the way she’s gripping the door.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, stepping in before she even moves out of the way. “Jesus, baby, are you alright?”

She opens her mouth to answer and sneezes three times in a row instead. One of those full-body, medically humbling sneezes that bends her forward and makes her eyes water instantly, and by the third one her head is throbbing so badly she actually groans.

Garrett’s hand lands at her shoulder, warm and immediate. “Okay. Yeah. Great. That answers that.” He kicks the door shut behind him with his heel and drops his bag near the desk without looking. “C’mon. Back to bed.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you got run over by a Zamboni.”

She blinks at him, offended but too slow to make it useful. “That’s mean.”

“That was me being nice.” His hand slides from her shoulder to her back, steady pressure between her shoulder blades as he starts walking her carefully across the room. 

She coughs again, the nasty deep kind that drags up from her chest and leaves her breathless at the end of it. Garrett’s whole body goes still beside her. His hand tightens once before he gets her to the bed and peels back the blankets like he’s done this before. 

He hasn’t, as far as she knows. Garrett Graham’s sick-care experience probably begins and ends with telling Logan to stop being dramatic about food poisoning and then driving him to urgent care when he turned green.

Still, he gets her tucked in with alarming competence. Blanket up. Pillow fixed. Water bottle shifted closer. Tissues within reach. 

He crouches beside the bed when she sinks back into it, knees bent, forearms resting on the mattress, his face much closer now and much more serious than she’s emotionally equipped to deal with right now.

She frowns at him.

Garrett reaches up and smooths his thumb over the tight space between her brows. “What’s that face?”

Her eyes slip shut for half a second because his hand is cool against her skin. Or maybe she’s just too hot. Everything in her body is confused and dramatic. 

“Why’re you…” She has to stop because the cough comes back, rough and ugly, tearing through her chest until she has to roll halfway into the pillow and ride it out with one hand pressed uselessly over her sternum. 

By the time it eases, Garrett’s gone quiet in a way that makes the room feel smaller.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “That sounds awful.”

“It’s super fun, actually.”

“Yeah, sounds like it.” He waits until she can breathe properly again, then brushes the hair off her damp forehead with the backs of his fingers. “What were you asking me?”

She has to think about it. The thought floats away from her, then returns with the annoying brightness of something she probably should’ve been more embarrassed to ask. “Why’re you here?”

“You haven’t texted me back in two days.”

She blinks. “Have I not?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Her eyes drift toward the dark phone on her nightstand like it’s a separate, mysterious artefact from another life. “I was sleeping.”

“I figured.” He tries to make it casual. He really does. The problem is Garrett has never been as casual as he thinks he is when it comes to her. He can do cocky. He can do lazy grins and half-lidded looks and smug little comments that make her want to throw something. But this, sitting beside her bed in his practice hoodie with worry sitting badly under his skin, doesn’t pass as casual for even a second. “Wanted to make sure you were alright.”

She hums, which is easier than finding a sentence. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah, I’m a sweetheart.” His hand comes to her forehead again, palm settling there properly this time, then sliding down to her cheek, then her neck. His brows tighten. “You’re burning up.”

“I know.”

“You taken anything?”

She nods automatically, then frowns. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I dunno.” She swallows and immediately makes a face because her throat feels like someone has lined it with sandpaper. “I had some.”

“When?”

Her frown deepens. “Time is fake.”

“Right.” Garrett exhales through his nose. He reaches for her phone, glancing at her for permission. “Can I?”

She waves one hand, then lets it flop back onto the blanket with the full weight of her exhaustion. “Don’t look at anything weird.”

His brows lift as he taps the screen awake. “Now I’m definitely worried.”

“I have a lot of photos of wound dressings.”

“That tracks.” He glances down at the lock screen, and his face flattens. “You’ve got a reminder from three hours ago. Due for meds.”

“Oh.” She closes her eyes. “I was sleeping.”

“Yeah, I got that.” His voice gentles at the edges. “You should’ve had more three hours ago.”

“Oops.”

“Big nursing student energy.”

She cracks one eye open to glare at him, but it’s weak and probably mostly watery. “Don’t bully the sick.”

“I’m not bullying you. I’m making observations.” He picks up the packet on her nightstand, scans the label, then checks the other blister pack beside it with a kind of exaggerated seriousness that would make her laugh if her chest didn’t feel like an elephant was sitting on it. “You’ve been eating?”

“Crackers.”

“Plural?”

She gives this due consideration and moves her hand in a little so-so gesture. 

Garrett pauses, packet in hand, and looks at her. “That’s a no.”

“Well, I had soup yesterday.”

“Yesterday when?”

“God, you’re nosy.”

“Yeah, apparently when girls go silent for forty-eight hours and then answer the door looking like Patient Zero, I get curious.” He stands, taking the water bottle with him. “I’m getting you meds and something that isn’t… three sad crackers.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I know.” He grabs the mug off the nightstand and makes a face at whatever is inside it. “This tea is fucking freezing.”

“Be nice to her. She was warm once.”

Garrett’s expression softens so quickly she almost misses it. “Okay, fever girl. Stay put.”

“Was gonna run laps.”

“Don’t tempt me, I’ll tie you to the bed.”

“Mmm. Fun, but inappropriate patient care.”

“Write me up later.”

She means to answer. She really does. Something about reporting him to whatever governing body handles smug hockey players with boundary issues. 

But Garrett moves around her room like he belongs there, picking up the cold mug, the empty tissue box, the discarded hoodie from the floor, and her brain snags stupidly on the sight of him in the middle of all her mess. 

His gear bag by her desk. His damp curls. His broad shoulders taking up half the room. The quiet little frown still on his face when he thinks she isn’t looking.

The thought is warm and dangerous and immediately too much work to hold. Her eyes close. 

When she wakes again, it happens slowly and in pieces.

There’s sound first. Low, tinny voices from her laptop, turned down so far they blur into background noise. Then warmth, heavier on one side than the blanket, human and solid and so much better than the weird fever heat burning uselessly under her skin. 

Her head isn’t on her pillow anymore. It’s resting somewhere firmer, the side of her face pressed into soft cotton and the warm line of a thigh beneath it. There’s a hand on her shoulder, broad and absent, fingers curved over the blanket like it landed there a while ago and forgot to leave.

She blinks. Garrett is sitting up against her headboard, one leg stretched out, the other bent slightly so she can lie half-curled against him with her head in his lap. 

Her laptop is balanced near his knee, playing some sitcom she vaguely remembers putting on and then abandoning somewhere in the wreckage of yesterday.

There’s a bowl on the nightstand with a spoon in it, crackers on a plate, a fresh bottle of water, and the thermometer she bought during freshman year after a girl on her floor convinced herself she had meningitis because WebMD said so.

Garrett looks down the second she stirs, like he’s been waiting for it. Like some part of him has been tracking her breathing under the dialogue and the fan and the stupid little coughs that keep catching in her sleep.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

Her eyes drag over his face. He’s softer from this angle. Or maybe she’s just cooked. His hoodie is wrinkled where she’s been lying against him. His hair is mostly dry now, curling messily around his forehead, and there’s a faint line between his brows that makes him look less like the terrifying Briar captain every freshman stares at in the dining hall and more like a boy sitting in her tiny dorm bed because she forgot how phones worked.

She looks at him for a long second. “You’re pretty,” she says.

Garrett goes still. Then his mouth curves, surprised first, then delighted because unfortunately he’s still himself. “Oh yeah?”

She nods, which makes her head throb a little, so she stops. “Mhm.”

“Finally awake, and that’s what you’re telling me?”

“You have a nice face.”

“Thank God.” He settles his hand more carefully against her shoulder, thumb moving once through the blanket. “I was starting to worry the fever had affected your judgment.”

“No, it’s always been bad.”

He laughs, soft enough not to shake her. “Yeah, that checks out.”

She should probably be embarrassed. She can feel the shape of it somewhere far away, waiting for her temperature to drop and her dignity to come back online. 

Right now, everything is too floaty for embarrassment to stick. Her body feels heavy and loose, the edges of the room blurred by sleep and fever and whatever cold medication Garrett must have coaxed into her while she was only half-conscious. 

Her mouth is dry. Her thoughts are slow. But Garrett’s hand is on her shoulder, and his other hand comes up to push her hair back from her forehead, and the touch goes through her in a soft, aching line. Her eyes sting for no reason.

Garrett notices, because Garrett notices everything when she least wants him to. His smile fades. “Hey,” he says, quieter. “What hurts?”

She frowns up at him. “Am I not good enough to be your girlfriend?”

The words leave her mouth before she even knows they’re arranged that way. They just slip out, small and cracked and awful, and then they’re sitting in the room between the laptop dialogue and the fan noise and the miserable little wet sound of her breathing.

Garrett freezes. His whole face shifts like the question has hit him somewhere he didn’t have padding. His hand stops moving in her hair. His throat works once.

“What?” he says, barely above a breath.

She stares at the drawstring on his hoodie because his face is suddenly too much. “Nothing.”

“No.” His voice is careful now, and that scares her a little, because Garrett being careful usually means something is bleeding. “Baby, what did you just say?”

She presses her cheek more firmly into his thigh, like that might hide her from the consequences of being conscious. “Forget it.”

“I’m not gonna forget it.”

“That’s annoying of you.”

“Yeah, well.” He lets out a rough little breath, his hand sliding from her hair to the side of her face, thumb resting near her temple. “I’m annoying. We know this.”

She closes her eyes. The room rocks a little behind her eyelids, hot and dark. “It’s fine.”

“It doesn’t sound fine.”

“It’s just the fever.”

“Okay.” He says it like he’s willing to accept that and also absolutely not accepting it at all. “Then fever-you can tell me what that means.”

She opens her eyes again, and Garrett’s looking down at her with something so openly worried on his face that it makes her want to laugh and cry and cough herself into a new dimension. 

“I dunno,” she whispers.

His jaw flexes. “That’s not–” He stops himself, visibly, dragging the sentence back before it can come out wrong. When he tries again, his voice is softer. “That’s not how I think about you.”

“How do you think about me?”

The question is too honest. She hears it after she says it and hates herself immediately. If she were well, she would have turned it into a joke. She would have flicked his drawstring and told him to stop looking constipated. 

She would have found a way to walk the whole thing back with enough sarcasm that neither of them had to stand under the full weight of it. But her throat hurts and her body aches and she’s tired in places she didn’t know could get tired, and she cannot find the energy to save him from answering.

Garrett looks down at her. His hand is still against her face. His thumb moves once, slow and restless.

“I think about you all the time,” he says.

Her chest goes tight. He seems to realise, a second too late, how much that sounds like something real. Panic flickers across his face, quick and bright, and then he starts talking again because he’s Garrett and the solution to an emotional landmine is to skate directly over it at speed. 

“That’s not– I mean, I’m not saying it like– fuck.” He tips his head back against the headboard for half a second, staring at the ceiling. “I’m so bad at this.”

“At what?”

“This.” He gestures vaguely between them, then winces like the gesture itself is embarrassing. “You. Us. Whatever the fuck I’ve been pretending isn’t us.”

The laptop keeps playing at the end of the bed. Someone on screen laughs. The sound feels insane in the middle of this.

She swallows carefully. “You don’t do girlfriends.”

His eyes come back to her.

“No,” he says slowly. “I don’t.”

Something inside her sinks, dull and expected, and she hates that it still hurts when she saw it coming from the other side of campus.

Garrett’s hand tightens gently at her jaw before she can turn her face away. “Hey. Don’t do that. I’m not done.”

“You paused.”

“I paused because I’m trying not to be an idiot.”

“Ambitious.”

A laugh breaks out of him, quiet and helpless and a little wrecked. “See? You’re dying and you’re still mean.”

“Efficient.”

“Yeah.” His smile flickers, then fades again. “I don’t do girlfriends because I’m busy, and because hockey eats my entire life, and because most of the time that’s been a pretty convenient excuse to not have to be responsible for anyone else’s feelings.” He exhales, eyes dropping to where his thumb is brushing carefully over the hot skin at her cheek. “And you’re busy. You’re busier than me half the time. You’ve got placement and exams and shifts and you scare grown men with your colour-coded notes. I thought…” He stops again, and this time his mouth twists. “I thought this was what you wanted too.”

She looks at him for a long moment. Her vision blurs a little at the edges, which is deeply inconvenient, because she would like to appear less pathetic during whatever this is. “I don’t know what I want.”

Garrett’s face changes. Worried, like he heard the wrong part first. “Hey– baby. What? What do you mean? Do you not wanna do this anymore?”

She sighs, and it shakes on the way out. Her whole body feels wrung out, too hot and too heavy and too open. “No– yes– I don’t… I dunno.” Her fingers curl weakly in the fabric of his hoodie. “I want you.”

His expression cracks so fast it makes her chest ache. “You have me,” he says, immediate and rough, like the answer is obvious enough to hurt him.

She frowns and shakes her head a little. It makes the room sway, so she stops. “Not really.”

Garrett goes very still. She means to say more. There’s more somewhere. It’s sitting behind her ribs, swollen and fever-soft and hard to name. 

She doesn’t want some grand declaration from Garrett Graham like a man being dragged to public execution. She doesn’t want him to suddenly become someone who buys roses at the campus store and says the right thing because he thinks it’s what she wants to hear.

She wants the thing that already exists to stop pretending it doesn’t.

She wants the car doors and the hospital pickups and his hand finding hers when he thinks she’s asleep. She wants the sleepovers that aren’t called sleepovers. She wants him showing up because she didn’t text back. 

She wants to be able to want those things without feeling like she’s the only one stupid enough to notice them.

She wants to say that. Instead her eyes close.

Garrett’s thumb strokes once over her cheek. “Baby?”

She hums faintly.

“Hey. Stay awake with me for a second.”

“Can’t,” she mumbles, already slipping under again. “Too hot.”

“Okay. I know. I know, I’ve got you.” His voice is close now, low and strained and trying so hard to be steady that even half-asleep, she can hear the effort. “Just sleep, okay? I’m right here.”

“Don’t leave.”

His hand settles over hers where it’s twisted in his hoodie, warm and firm. “I’m not leaving.”

She falls asleep to the feeling of his fingers threaded through hers, and her fevered brain doesn’t have the energy to argue.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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His hair was still damp at the edges from his post-game shower, curling slightly where he’d shoved his hand through it too many times, and the dark blue Briar letterman jacket had stayed on for maybe twelve minutes before the house got too hot and he dumped it over the back of a chair.

He was, by every reasonable standard, doing great. His girlfriend was not. His girlfriend had arrived at the party with Allie and a plan that had included one drink, maybe two, and absolutely no consideration for the fact that girls pouring vodka cranberries in hockey houses tended to treat measurements as a loose concept. 

Garrett had been across the living room when she’d taken the first one. He’d been in the kitchen with Tucker when she’d finished the second. By the time he saw her again, she was standing near the bottom of the stairs with one hand wrapped around a red cup, smiling at something Allie said with the bright, floaty concentration of a girl whose whole body had started operating on a two-second delay.

He could notice a winger drifting out of formation from half a rink away with two guys trying to take his head off. He could absolutely notice his girlfriend blinking too slowly under the hallway light, her cheeks warm from alcohol and the heat of too many bodies packed into the house, her mouth glossy and parted slightly like she kept forgetting whether she was meant to be talking or laughing. 

She looked happy, which helped. Loose and giggly and pleased. But she also kept shifting her weight like the floor had become more wobbly than usual, and Garrett had not fought for his life against Harvard’s second line that afternoon just to let his girlfriend get taken out by hardwood.

So he left Logan mid-sentence. Logan didn’t even pretend to be offended. He just followed Garrett’s line of sight, saw her trying to drink from the cup and missing her mouth by half an inch, and winced. “Oh, buddy.”

Garrett pointed at him without looking back. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was gonna say she looks graceful.”

“Die.”

Garrett crossed the room with the easy confidence of someone everyone automatically moved for, red cup of water in hand because Tucker, thank God, had seen the situation unfolding and passed it over like a medic on a battlefield. 

She didn’t see Garrett coming. She was too busy nodding very seriously at Allie, who was holding both her hands and saying something that involved the words no, babe, I’m so serious and eyebrow blindness.

Garrett stepped into her space, close enough that his knee brushed hers. “Hey, baby.”

She turned toward him. For one beautiful second, her face went blank. Then her entire expression rearranged itself into scandalised horror.

“Excuse you,” she said, pulling herself up to her full height, which was less effective than usual because she swayed slightly at the top and had to catch Allie’s wrist. “I have a boyfriend.”

Garrett blinked.

Allie made a noise like she’d swallowed a firework. Garrett looked at his girlfriend. His girlfriend looked back at him with genuine, drunken offence, like he’d approached her in a bar wearing a leather bracelet and too much confidence.

“Uh huh,” he said slowly, because there were moments in life that required leadership and moments that required not laughing directly in the face of the girl you loved while she was doing her best. “That’s great.”

“It is great,” she said, lifting her chin. “He’s very tall.”

Garrett’s mouth twitched. “Good for him.”

“And he plays hockey.”

“No shit?”

“And he’s, like, really good at it.”

Allie had turned away now, one hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking. Garrett refused to look at her because if he did, he was going to lose it, and that felt like the sort of thing his girlfriend would interpret as disrespect from a strange man at a party, which apparently he was now.

He held out the cup. “Can you drink some water for me?”

Her eyes narrowed. Suspicious. Wobbly. Deeply loyal to the absent boyfriend currently standing less than a foot in front of her. “Why?”

“Because you’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Baby.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Don’t call me baby.”

“Right. Sorry.” He pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek, nodding with a level of solemnity he absolutely did not feel. “My bad.”

“My boyfriend calls me baby.”

“Does he?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds annoying.”

“He’s not annoying.” She frowned at him with such force that it seemed to briefly take all her balance with it. Garrett’s free hand shot out to her waist before she could tip sideways into Allie. She looked down at it, then back up at him, appalled. “Don’t touch my waist.”

Garrett removed his hand at once, palms lifting. “Alright.”

Allie, still dying, leaned in and said, “Babe, maybe just drink the water.”

She looked betrayed. “You’re taking his side?”

“I’m taking hydration’s side.”

Garrett offered the cup again. “Just a couple sips.”

She stared at him for another second, clearly weighing the moral implications of accepting water from a man who looked suspiciously like her boyfriend but who she had, for reasons unclear to everyone except the vodka, decided was not. 

Finally, she took the cup with great caution, like he might use the transfer to propose something criminal, and drank.

Garrett watched her swallow three obedient little sips, then nodded. “Good girl.”

The look she gave him could have killed a weaker man. “Nope.”

“Right. Yep. Forgot.”

“My boyfriend says that.”

“Bet he does,” Garrett muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She handed the cup back, pleased with herself and still indignant, and then immediately turned toward Allie like the conversation had been handled.

Garrett stood there for half a second, holding the water, staring at the side of her face.

Dean appeared beside him like he had been summoned by humiliation itself. “Hey, man.”

Garrett didn’t look over. “Do not.”

Dean’s grin was audible. “She knows you’re her boyfriend, right?”

“She’s drunk.”

“She just told you she has a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, Dean, I was here.”

Dean leaned around him to look at her, delighted. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Garrett finally turned his head and gave him a flat look. “That’s sad.”

“No, what’s sad is getting rejected by your own girlfriend.” Dean clapped him once on the shoulder and immediately stepped out of reach. “Tough shift, captain.”

Garrett pointed at him. “I will put you through a wall.”

“Wow.” Dean called over his shoulder, already retreating. “Her boyfriend would never.”

Garrett took a slow breath through his nose and looked back at her. She was laughing at something Allie said now, one hand pressed to her own chest, head tipping forward so her hair fell around her face. 

She looked ridiculous. Beautiful and unsteady and way too warm in the cheeks, standing under the hallway light like the world had gone pleasantly fuzzy and she trusted it not to hurt her because she hadn’t yet noticed Garrett had been replaced by some guy bothering her with cups.

His annoyance softened before it could become anything real. Fine. He could work with this.

For the next twenty minutes, Garrett kept orbiting. That was the only word for it. He didn’t hover, because hovering would get him accused of being controlling by Dean, and probably by her if she remembered how to form an argument. 

He orbited. Close enough to keep an eye on her, far enough that she didn’t look up and accuse him of trying to steal girlfriend privileges from Garrett Graham, who was both beloved and missing.

She danced with Allie in the living room, mostly from the waist up because her coordination had started giving its two weeks’ notice. 

She complimented Tucker’s shirt with extreme sincerity even though Tucker was wearing the same plain black t-shirt he wore to every party. 

She told Logan he looked so tall tonight, which made Logan look down at himself like height might have happened recently and without his permission.

Garrett found her again near the back door, rubbing both hands over her bare arms.

The house was hot, but the door kept swinging open whenever someone stepped out to smoke or yell into the yard, letting in cold spring air that slipped over her skin and made her shoulders inch up toward her ears. 

Garrett saw the little shiver move through her before she did. He grabbed his letterman jacket off the chair and came up behind her, careful this time, no hands first. Just the jacket, warm from the room and heavy with him, settled over her shoulders.

“There,” he said, low near her ear. “You’re cold.”

She froze.

Garrett closed his eyes for one second. “Please don’t.”

She shrugged the jacket off so fast it nearly hit the floor. Garrett caught it by the collar.

“Nope,” she said.

“Baby.”

Her head snapped around. “I said no.”

Garrett looked at the ceiling. The ceiling offered no help. “You’re shivering.”

“I only wear my boyfriend’s jacket.”

“This is your boyfriend’s jacket.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It literally has my name on it.”

She squinted at the embroidered Graham on the chest like letters were a personal challenge. “Lots of people are named Graham.”

“Not on this team.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. I’m the captain.”

Her face twisted with immediate doubt, like that was exactly the sort of lie a jacket predator would tell at a party. “You’re the captain?”

Garrett stared at her. “Oh my God.”

From the couch, Logan made a strangled sound into his beer.

She pointed at Garrett’s chest, very serious now. “My boyfriend is the captain.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard great things.”

“He’s very hot.”

“Is he?”

“So hot,” she said, and then sighed, soft and dramatic and so genuinely fond that Garrett’s irritation had nowhere to land. “Like, stupid hot. It’s actually kind of annoying.”

Garrett’s face moved before he could stop it, warmth pulling at his mouth. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “And he has really nice hands.”

Logan choked.

Garrett didn’t look away from her. “Good hands are important.”

“They are,” she agreed solemnly. “And he’s not some random guy trying to give girls jackets.”

“Right.” He held up the jacket between them, helpless now. “Can I just–”

“No thank you.”

“You’re gonna freeze.”

“I’ll wait for Garrett.”

“You do that,” he said, because love was standing in a hockey house holding your own jacket while your drunk girlfriend faithfully rejected you on your own behalf. “Sounds like a plan.”

She smiled at him then, bright and polite. “Thank you for understanding.”

Garrett looked at her for a long moment, then at the jacket, then back at her. “Anytime.”

He walked away to the sound of Logan losing the fight against laughter so badly he had to bend over his own knees.

“You’re not helping,” Garrett said.

Logan wiped under one eye. “I’m sorry, man, but she’s loyal as hell.”

“She thinks I’m a stranger.”

“She thinks you’re a stranger with bad intentions. There’s a difference.”

“Great. That makes it better.”

Tucker came up beside them, looking far too amused for somebody usually committed to being the reasonable one. “You know, technically, this is a very good sign for your relationship.”

Garrett gave him a look. “Don’t start.”

“She’s hammered and still refusing men for you.”

“She refused me.”

“Exactly. Nobody is safe.”

Dean reappeared then, because joy, unfortunately, had a way of finding him. “I just heard she wouldn’t wear your jacket.”

Garrett’s jaw tightened. “You heard wrong.”

Dean grinned. “Did I?”

“I’m gonna kill you before playoffs.”

“No, you’re not. You’re too busy getting friend-zoned by your girlfriend.”

Garrett shoved him in the chest. Dean laughed all the way into the kitchen.

By the time Garrett found her again, she had somehow migrated to the old armchair near the stairs, sitting sideways with her knees tucked up and Dean perched on the arm like some kind of terrible emotional support animal. 

Her bare arms were folded tight over her chest now, because she was still cold and still deeply committed to jacket monogamy. Her face had changed too. Gone softer around the edges, bottom lip pushed out, all the earlier moral outrage curdled into something wounded and grumpy.

Garrett stopped a few feet away. Dean saw him first and his grin turned wicked. “Oh, thank God.”

She frowned up at Dean. “What?”

“Nothing.” Dean patted the top of the chair. “Your night’s about to improve.”

She slumped deeper into the cushion, still looking at Dean. “I haven’t seen Garrett all night.”

Garrett blinked.

Dean pressed his lips together so hard his whole face went strange.

She kept going, mournful now, eyes glossy from alcohol and the kind of drama that only really existed after midnight in a crowded house. “He’s, like, disappeared.”

Garrett slowly looked at Dean.

“He had a game,” she said, to no one in particular, or maybe to Dean’s knee. “And I wanted to tell him he played really good.”

“He knows,” Dean said, voice suspiciously tight.

“No, but I wanted to tell him.” She rubbed at one eye with the heel of her hand, then stopped halfway as if remembering makeup existed. “And there’s this guy who keeps talking to me.”

Garrett’s eyebrows went up.

Dean made direct eye contact with him and looked like he might actually pass away.

“He keeps calling me baby,” she muttered. “And trying to make me drink water.”

Garrett bit the inside of his cheek.

“Sounds awful,” Dean managed.

“So annoying,” she said. “Like, okay, hydration police. I have a boyfriend.”

Garrett stepped closer then, because there were only so many times a man could be called the hydration police by the love of his life before he had to intervene. “Hey, baby.”

Her head lifted. The transformation was immediate and almost violent. Her whole face opened, bright and relieved and suddenly so happy to see him that it genuinely knocked the joke sideways in his chest. “Garrett!”

He froze. “Hi?”

“Baby!” She reached both arms out toward him from the chair, nearly tipping herself forward in the process. Garrett crossed the last step fast and caught her by the hands before she could slide off the cushion. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said again, slower this time, looking down at her. “You recognise me now?”

She frowned like he’d said something deeply strange. “What are you talking about?”

Dean made a sound that might have been a cough if he had not immediately turned away with his shoulders shaking.

Garrett stared at her. “Nothing.”

She squeezed his face, delighted and fully unaware of the damage she’d caused him tonight. “I missed you.”

His mouth softened despite himself. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” She tugged at him, needy and uncoordinated, until he stepped properly between her legs where she’d moved to sit properly in the chair. Her knees bracketed his thighs, her fingers curling in the front of his shirt like now that she had found him, she intended to physically prevent further abandonment. “You were gone for so long.”

Garrett looked at her for one second, then over her head at Dean, who was wiping tears out of the corner of his eye. “I was around.”

She shook her head, very firm. “No.”

“No?”

“No. There was just this guy.”

Garrett nodded, face serious. “Right. The water guy.”

She gasped softly, looking up at him with genuine alarm. “You saw him?”

Dean slid off the arm of the chair. “I need to go tell Logan something immediately.”

Garrett didn’t even try to stop him. His hands had settled at her waist now, thumbs pressing lightly over the fabric of her top because she was still swaying in tiny increments even while sitting down. “Yeah, baby, I saw him.”

“You should talk to him.”

“Oh, I should?”

“Yes.” Her voice dropped into a whisper that wasn’t remotely quiet. “He was flirting with me.”

Garrett’s eyes flicked over her face. “Was he?”

“He kept calling me baby.”

“That’s crazy.”

“And he tried to give me his jacket.”

“What a dick.”

She nodded, relieved that he understood the severity. “I know.”

Garrett’s grin finally broke free, slow and helpless. He stepped closer until her forehead could tip against his stomach, and when it did, she sighed like the entire night had been restored to its proper axis by the smell of his shirt. 

He looked down at the crown of her head, at the way her hands had found the hem of his t-shirt and held on loosely, and brushed his fingers once over the back of her hair.

She had rejected him all night. She had accused him of being a stranger, declined his water on principle, refused his jacket with the ferocity of a woman defending a sacred oath, and still somehow the inside of him went soft at the way she leaned into him now, trusting and warm and gone enough to be ridiculous but not gone enough to forget where she wanted to end up.

“Baby,” he murmured.

“Mhm?”

“You wanna get outta here?”

Her head lifted at once. “Yes, please.”

“Yeah?” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, watching the way her eyes followed his face now with no suspicion at all. “You done?”

“So done.” She nodded, then winced faintly at the motion like her brain had moved one direction and her skull another. “Can we go home?”

“Yeah, we can go home.”

“And maybe get McDonald’s?”

Garrett laughed under his breath, and the sound made her smile like she’d won something. “Sure, baby.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But you gotta stand up first.”

She looked down at her own legs with sudden doubt. “Okay.”

“Confident.”

“I can do it.”

“I know you can.” He took both her hands and backed up half a step, giving her room. “Come on. Up we go.”

She stood with the intense focus of someone attempting a field sobriety test on a ship. Garrett’s hands went to her waist at once, steadying her as her knees straightened and her body tipped forward into his. 

He didn’t make a show of it. Didn’t laugh when she grabbed his forearms and blinked hard at the room. He only held her until she found the floor again, fingers spread warm and firm at her sides.

“There we go,” he said softly. “You good?”

She nodded, then thought about it. “Mostly.”

“Mostly works.” He leaned around her just enough to grab his letterman jacket from the back of the chair “Can I put this on you now, or are we still being loyal to your boyfriend?”

She looked at the jacket. Then up at him. Then back at the jacket.

“That’s yours,” she said, like he was the one struggling to keep up.

Garrett pressed his lips together. “Yeah.”

She smiled, sweet and pleased. “Okay.”

He slid it over her shoulders. This time she pushed her arms into the sleeves with immediate enthusiasm, even though they swallowed her hands completely. 

Garrett zipped it halfway because she was too busy smelling the collar with a happy little hum that did absolutely nothing for his ability to remain normal.

“You smell good,” she told him.

“Thanks.”

“Like Garrett.”

“Crazy coincidence.”

She nodded, accepting that, and slipped her hand into his when he offered it. Her fingers were warm and clumsy between his, squeezing twice like she was checking he was real. He squeezed back once and started guiding her through the house.

The party kept moving around them. Someone called his name from the kitchen and Garrett lifted his free hand without stopping. Logan appeared near the doorway, took one look at them, and grinned.

“She found you,” he said.

Garrett pointed at him. “Not a word.”

She turned toward Logan, solemn and slightly off-balance. “There was a guy bothering me all night.”

Logan’s mouth opened. Closed. He looked at Garrett, then back at her. “No way.”

She nodded. “Way.”

Garrett kept walking. “Let’s go.”

Behind them, Logan said, “Hope your boyfriend handles that.”

She turned around while still moving, which forced Garrett to catch her by the waist and redirect her like a shopping cart with a bad wheel. “He will!”

“I’m sure he will,” Logan called, voice cracking around laughter.

Outside, the cold hit her properly. She shrank into the jacket at once, shoulders rising, Garrett’s hand still wrapped around hers while they moved down the front steps and along the path toward his car. 

The night was damp and dark around the edges, grass glittering faintly under the porch light, the music dulling behind the shut door until it became a pulse more than a song. She walked close to him, not quite straight, occasionally bumping into his side and then apologising to his arm.

“Baby,” she said halfway down the walk.

“Yeah?”

“That guy was so annoying.”

Garrett glanced down at her. “Still thinkin’ about him?”

“He was talking to me all night.”

“Sounds like a loser.”

“He was kind of hot, though.”

Garrett stopped walking.

She stopped too, delayed, then looked back at him with wide innocent eyes. “What?”

He stared at her. “Hot?”

She nodded, very serious. “But not as hot as you.”

“Uh huh.”

“And he had your jacket.”

“My jacket?”

“Yeah.” Her brows pulled together. “Actually, that was weird.”

Garrett looked up at the sky for patience. “So weird.”

“You should talk to him, baby. I’m serious.”

“Oh, I will.”

“Good.” She nodded once, satisfied, and started walking again. “Don’t fight him though. You had a game.”

His mouth twitched. “Right. Wouldn’t wanna overdo it.”

“And you already won.”

“I did.”

“You were really good,” she said, and the words came out softer now, slipping under the joke with no warning at all. Her fingers tightened around his. “I forgot to tell you.”

Garrett’s steps slowed by a fraction. He looked down at her, at her messy hair and flushed cheeks and his too-big jacket hanging off her shoulders, at the careful way she was watching the pavement. “Yeah?”

“Mhm. You did that thing.” She lifted their joined hands vaguely, as if the thing might be available in the air somewhere. “Where you went really fast and then the other guy was stupid.”

Garrett laughed, warm and surprised. “That was my favourite play.”

“It was good. I’m real proud of you.”

“Thanks, baby.”

She leaned into his arm, pleased. “You’re welcome.”

At the car, he opened the passenger door and turned her gently by the hips before she could attempt entry at a dangerous angle. “Alright. Watch your head.”

“I always watch my head.”

“You don’t.”

“I have one.”

“Having one and watching it are different.”

She ducked into the car with exaggerated care, one hand on the roof, one hand still gripping his. Garrett waited until she was seated, then crouched slightly and drew the seatbelt across her. 

She looked down at him while he clicked it into place, her expression suddenly soft and sleepy. “Baby.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m so glad I found you.”

His hand paused on the belt for half a second.

She sighed, sinking back into the seat, eyes half-lidded now that the car’s quiet had started wrapping around her. “I missed you tonight.”

Garrett looked at her in the blue dashboard glow, and something in his chest pulled tight and fond and a little ridiculous. “Missed you too.”

“There was this guy–”

“I heard.”

“–and he kept trying to give me water.”

“So rude.”

“Exactly.” Her head tipped against the seat, eyes closing for one beat before opening again. “Can you get me nuggets?”

Garrett smiled and brushed his thumb over her knee before standing. “Yeah, babe. I’ll get you nuggets.”

“And fries.”

“Obviously.”

“And a Sprite.”

“You need water.”

She made a face. “The guy said that too.”

Garrett leaned one arm on the open door and looked down at her, trying very hard not to smile too much because she would see it and accuse him of something. “The guy sounds smart.”

She frowned. “Don’t compliment him.”

“My bad.”

“You’re my boyfriend.”

“I am.”

“And I love you.”

The words came out simple and softened by vodka and sleepiness and the warm cocoon of his jacket around her, but real enough that Garrett felt them land under his ribs.

He bent and kissed her forehead. “I love you too.”

She smiled, eyes closed now. “Good.”

“Good,” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face before shutting the door. 

He walked around the front of the car with a grin he couldn’t quite get rid of, hearing the muffled thump of the party behind him and the faint sound of her shifting around in the passenger seat like she was trying to get comfortable in sleeves three sizes too big. 

When he got in, she was already curled toward his side, cheek against the seat, looking at him with heavy eyes and total, trusting recognition.

Garrett started the car. She reached blindly for his hand. He gave it to her.

For a minute they sat there in the dim quiet before he pulled away from the curb, her fingers woven through his, his thumb moving once over her knuckles. Then she inhaled like she had remembered something important.

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re gonna talk to that guy, right?”

Garrett smiled at the road, the house falling behind them, McDonald’s glowing somewhere ahead like a drunken little lighthouse.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll give him a stern talking-to.”

“Good,” she mumbled, already drifting. “Tell him I have a boyfriend.”

His grin widened.

“Trust me, baby,” Garrett said, squeezing her hand once as he turned out onto the street. “He knows.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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Not nicely, always. Figure skating had never been gentle, no matter what people thought from the stands when the dresses were pretty and the music swelled and everybody politely forgot that most of the sport was just girls repeatedly hurling themselves at the ice until one day the hurling started looking graceful. 

Her body had always hurt somewhere. Ankles, arches, hip flexors, the backs of her knees, the little bruises on her thighs from falls she’d stopped counting years ago. 

Pain had been background noise. A language, almost. Something she could interpret and bargain with and, on good days, ignore.

This is different. This is her body becoming a locked door.

“Again,” Cam says.

She looks at him through the mirror. He has the clipboard tucked against his chest and the calm, mildly sympathetic face of a man who has chosen professionally to ruin people’s afternoons through controlled movement. “Cam.”

“One more set.”

“You said that last set.”

“I lied.”

She lets out a breath that’s too close to a laugh to count as actual protest and steps back onto the little foam pad. It dips under her weight. Her ankle wobbles. Her knee, traitor, considers doing something stupid. She fixes it fast, jaw tightening before her face can give too much away.

Cam notices anyway, because Cam is awful.

“Good,” he says. “That’s better.”

“It feels bad.”

“It’s supposed to feel hard.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I know.”

She hates that tone. Cam is one of those deeply inconvenient medical professionals who knows exactly when not to give you the easy reassurance, which means she can’t even be properly irritated with him without feeling immature about it. 

He doesn’t say you’ll be back before you know it. He doesn’t say you’re young, you’ll heal fast, as if youth is a warranty and not just another thing that can get snapped in half during a bad landing. 

He just says again, and better, and not yet, and lets the rest of the room sit there around it.

She finishes the set with her hands hovering slightly away from her sides like she might be able to balance through prayer, then steps off the pad and pretends the relief doesn’t go all the way through her.

Cam scribbles something down. “That’s enough for today.”

Her breath leaves her in one piece. “Thank God.”

“Don’t sound so grateful.”

“I’m trying to make you feel valued.”

“That was your version?”

“It was implied.”

He smiles faintly and reaches for the roll of athletic tape on the table. “Ice tonight if it gets cranky. Don’t push the stairs. And don’t go on the ice.”

She looks down at her bag too quickly. Cam pauses. The silence is horrible.

She lifts her eyes back to him with as much blank innocence as she can assemble while sweaty and standing in one shoe. “What?”

He gives her a look.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

“I know I’m not cleared.”

“Great.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You were thinking it in your Cam voice.”

“My Cam voice?”

“The one where you sound nice while accusing me of crimes.”

That gets a small laugh out of him, which she counts as a win even though he immediately ruins it by pointing at her with his pen. “No ice.”

The words land flatter than the joke leaves room for. She nods, because nodding is easier than speaking when the answer has gone somewhere tight under her ribs. 

No ice. Two tiny words. Perfectly reasonable. Clinically correct. Devastating in the way small, practical sentences often are when they’re the ones standing between you and the only place your body has ever made proper sense.

She sits on the bench to change back into her other sneaker, unwrapping the brace strap with careful fingers. There’s a damp patch at the collar of her shirt and another under the elastic of the brace, and she can feel the dull, complaining warmth in her knee beginning to spread now that the session is over and adrenaline has stopped being useful.

The door opens while she’s shoving her water bottle into the side pocket of her bag, and Garrett Graham steps in.

He comes in the same way he always seems to come into rooms, even injured. He just has that stupidly natural presence that takes up space before he’s done anything to earn it, all broad shoulders and damp dark curls and Briar Hockey hoodie with one sleeve pushed higher than the other. 

His gym bag is slung over one shoulder, his phone in his hand, and there’s a strip of white tape disappearing under the edge of his shorts near his thigh, which she tries very hard not to look at for too long.

She knows him, technically, Briar ice athletes overlap. They know the same rink schedule, the same sharp smell of resurfaced ice, the same ugly fluorescent tunnel between the locker rooms. 

She knows Garrett Graham because everyone knows Garrett Graham, but she also knows him in the more specific way of someone who has seen him skate when he thinks only hockey matters. Fast, controlled, mean in the cleanest possible way. Good hands. Good edges, for a hockey player, which she had once made the mistake of saying near one of the other figure skaters and had been accused of sounding weirdly horny about crossovers.

She wasn’t. Mostly.

He knows of her too. She knows this because he’d said her name once in the rink hallway last semester when she’d nearly collided with him coming around the corner with her skate bag, and because he’d watched the last ten minutes of one of her practices from the boards with Logan and Tucker a few months ago, both of them still in half their gear, while she ran the footwork section of her short program three times in a row until her lungs burned and her coach finally stopped looking like she might start throwing things. 

Garrett had leaned his forearms on the boards and said something she couldn’t hear. Logan had laughed. Tucker had looked politely impressed in the way nice men look when women do difficult things they understand enough not to interrupt.

So, first-name basis. Vague orbit. Mutual ice awareness.

Not whatever this is, which is Garrett walking in right as she’s sweaty and sore and trying to get her sneaker on without making the tiny injured-person grunt she has grown to hate in herself.

Cam looks over his shoulder. “One second, Garrett. I won’t be long, man.”

Garrett nods, easy. “All good.”

His eyes move from Cam to her, and she braces, because she’s been doing a lot of that lately, bracing. For pity. For questions. For the little sympathetic wince people do when they’ve heard about the injury but don’t know what to say after sorry, that sucks, so they fill the air with optimism until she wants to bite through her own tongue.

Garrett doesn’t wince. He gives her one of those small, quick smiles instead. 

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

He shifts his bag higher on his shoulder, glancing once at the brace and then back at her face so quickly she almost appreciates the politeness of it. “I heard you got hurt. That’s… yeah. Fucking sucks.”

It shouldn’t help, except it does. The bluntness. The lack of inspirational packaging. The fact that he says it like someone who knows exactly how unhelpful it is when people try to make being benched sound like a spiritual growth opportunity.

She nods and looks down for half a second at the zipper on her bag, pulling it closed even though it’s already closed. “Yeah. It’s pretty shit.”

His mouth moves, not quite a smile. “Yeah.”

“I heard about yours too,” she adds, because it’s only fair and also because looking at him directly for too long feels slightly like standing too close to a heater. “I’m sorry.”

He makes a small shrugging motion. It’s casual, but not quite enough to hide the little tightness that passes across his face when the movement pulls at something. “Could be worse.”

She looks at him. Garrett looks back.

Then he huffs a quiet laugh. “Sorry. That’s such an asshole thing to say to someone injured.”

Her mouth lifts before she can stop it. “It’s okay. Everyone says it.”

“I know. I keep wanting to fight them.”

“Have you?”

“Not yet. Cam said it would slow my recovery.”

“He’s very anti-violence for someone who hurts people for a living.”

Cam, from the cabinet, says, “I can hear both of you.”

Garrett’s grin appears then, quicker, brighter, and for one strange second it makes the rehab room feel less ugly. 

Cam comes over with his clipboard tucked under one arm and gives Garrett the tired look of a man who has known hockey players long enough to consider them a hazard. “Ready?”

Garrett nods, but his eyes flick back to her. “See you.”

It’s a small, stupid, future-tense thing. See you. Like it’s already assumed there will be another time. Like she’s not just passing through the doorway of his appointment with her bag on her shoulder and her knee taped into submission, but someone who exists in the shape of his week now.

She nods. “Yeah. Bye.”

Then she leaves before her face can do anything unhelpful.

After that, they keep seeing each other. That’s the whole problem with schedules. They make coincidences stop being coincidences and start becoming routines before anyone has to be brave enough to choose them. 

Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Her appointment first. Garrett after. The first few times, it’s only hey and how’s it going and Cam making deeply unimpressed noises when Garrett leans in the doorway instead of waiting properly outside like a normal person.

By the following Wednesday, Garrett’s sitting on the bench in the hallway when she comes out, elbows on his knees, hoodie sleeves shoved up, one hand wrapped around an iced coffee that looks mostly melted. 

He glances up as the door opens, like he’s been reading something on his phone and not listening for it, which is a performance she respects enough not to challenge.

“You survive?” he asks.

She shifts her bag higher on her shoulder. “Barely.”

“Bad?”

“Cam made me do step-downs.”

Garrett’s face changes with immediate, serious recognition. “Oh, Jesus.”

“Right?”

“No, those are evil.”

“They look so stupid. That’s what makes it worse. Like, I’m standing there trying not to die on a four-inch box.”

“Yeah, and Cam’s like, great, now control the descent.”

She laughs, and then looks down because the laugh comes out too easy. Too relieved. “He says it like that too.”

“Of course he does. He has a script.”

From inside the rehab room, Cam calls, “I still hear you.”

Garrett raises his coffee vaguely toward the door. “We’re bonding through shared suffering. It’s part of the process.”

“It’s not billable,” Cam says.

Garrett looks back at her, and there’s that little curl at the corner of his mouth again, but softer than she expects. “You got class after this?”

She blinks. “Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Psych. Levin.”

He pauses. “Wait, the eleven-thirty?”

“You’re in that class?”

His expression shifts into something almost sheepish, which is such a strange look on him that she forgets for a second to be awkward about her own surprise. 

“I sit in the back,” he says. “Very engaged. Quietly academic.”

“I have literally never seen you.”

“That feels like a you problem.”

“It feels like an attendance problem.”

Garrett presses a hand to his chest like this has wounded him. “I’m injured and you’re attacking me.”

She laughs. “You started it.”

“I asked about class.”

“Menace behaviour.”

He laughs at that, quick and low, head ducking for half a second. Then he stands because Cam calls him in, and he’s suddenly very close in the narrow hallway, close enough that she has to tilt her face a little to keep looking at him. 

His smile stays, but the volume of it drops. “See you in Levin, then?”

She should say maybe. Or sure. Or something easy and noncommittal that keeps the moment from feeling too visible.

Instead she says, “If you show up.”

His eyebrows lift. “That a challenge?”

“No.”

“Sounded like one.”

She doesn’t know what to do with that, so she adjusts her bag again, which has become a humiliating little habit around him. 

Her hands always need a task before her face gives her away. “Go do your step-downs, Graham.”

He smiles properly then, pleased. “Yes, ma’am.”

She walks away before Cam can witness the way her mouth betrays her.

Garrett does show up to class that day. He comes in two minutes late, because punctuality would have damaged the brand, and slides into the seat beside her with his laptop under one arm and a coffee in his hand. 

There’s a row of empty seats behind them. Several, actually. He ignores all of them.

She looks over as he sits. “Subtle.”

“What?”

“You could have sat literally anywhere.”

He opens his laptop. “This seat has a good view.”

“Of the lecture?”

He glances at the front of the room, where Dr. Levin is fighting with the projector and slowly losing. “Sure.”

She looks down at her notebook because smiling at her paper is less incriminating than smiling at him. 

Garrett doesn’t push it. That surprises her a little, though by then maybe it shouldn’t. He jokes, yes. He has the kind of natural charm that makes silence around him feel almost rude. 

But he’s not constantly filling space just to hear himself in it. He seems to know when to let a moment breathe, which is worse, somehow. Much worse. Because it means the attention is not accidental.

He takes notes badly. Not because he’s stupid, she learns that very quickly. Garrett isn’t stupid in the way some people like to assume athletes are stupid when they would rather not admit physical talent can exist alongside a working brain. 

He just takes notes like a man who believes future him will remember the context through sheer confidence. Half sentences. Arrows to nowhere. One bullet point that just says dopamine??? and then, underneath it, ask her.

She catches it while he’s typing and looks at him.

He doesn’t look back, but his mouth moves. “Don’t judge my system.”

“That’s a system?”

“It works.”

“It says ask her.”

“Yeah.” Now he glances over, and his eyes are warm enough that her stomach does something small and deeply unhelpful. “See? Efficient.”

She lets out a breath through her nose and turns back to her own notes. “You’re ridiculous.”

After that, the talking becomes easier because it has somewhere to go. Rehab into class. Class into walking halfway across campus. Walking into texts, eventually, though the number exchange happens in the most Garrett way possible, which is to say he makes it sound practical even while looking far too pleased with himself.

They’re leaving psych one afternoon, the sky low and grey over campus, both of them moving slower than the stream of students around them because neither of them can walk at full speed without paying for it later. 

Garrett has his hood up against the cold and his bag slung over one shoulder. She has one hand wrapped around the strap of her own, the other holding her phone, thumb hovering over a message from her coach she hasn’t opened because she can see the first line in the preview and already knows it will make her feel like peeling her skin off.

Garrett notices. 

“Coach?” he asks.

She looks over. “What?”

He nods toward the phone. “I know the face.”

She looks down at the screen again. The preview says, no pressure, just wanted to check in about competition timeline, which is exactly the kind of text people send when there is pressure and everyone knows it but nobody wants to be rude enough to name the animal in the room. Her thumb locks the phone before she can read the rest.

Garrett doesn’t say anything for a few steps. He doesn’t immediately try to fix it. Doesn’t ask if she’s okay in a tone that makes okay feel like a performance. 

He just walks beside her, slower than campus wants him to, shoulder occasionally close enough to brush hers when the path narrows.

Finally, he says, “I hate those texts.”

She glances at him.

“The check-in ones,” he says. “Like they’re being nice, and they are, but it’s also like… hey, just wondering if your body has stopped ruining the plan yet.”

Her throat tightens so quickly she has to look away.

Garrett’s voice stays even, low enough that the people passing them don’t get any of it. “The hockey staff keep doing it too. Not in a shitty way. They’re trying to be normal. But every time someone asks how recovery’s going, I’m like, I don’t know, man. I miss my life and my hip feels fucked up. You want the official answer or the weird one?”

She laughs, but it comes out thin. Still, it comes. “My knee feels fucked up.”

They walk a little farther. The cold air catches under the hem of her sweatshirt and sneaks up her back. Somewhere across the quad, a group of boys are laughing too loudly near the library steps. A bike bell rings. The world continues in its very rude way, all motion and noise and healthy knees.

Garrett clears his throat. “You can send me those, if you want.”

She looks up at him.

“The annoying texts,” he says, and now he does seem a little more careful, eyes flicking to hers and away again. “Or just, like… complain. If you don’t want to answer normal people nicely.”

Something in her chest shifts. “Normal people?”

“You know.” His mouth tips. “Healthy civilians.”

“That’s dark.”

“It’s accurate.”

She looks at her phone. Then at him. “Are you giving me your number so I can forward you texts from my coach?”

He shrugs, but his ears go just slightly pink from the cold or the question. “I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds weird.”

“It is weird.”

“You want it or not?”

She does. Immediately. Stupidly. Enough that she has to make herself take a second before answering. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” She opens a new contact and hands him the phone before she can overthink the fact that her fingers feel too warm. “For fucked up knee purposes.”

Garrett takes it, smiling down at the screen while he types. “Obviously.”

He saves himself as Garrett, then, after one tiny pause she absolutely notices, adds a hockey stick emoji. When he hands it back, she looks at it and raises her brows.

“Subtle.”

Her first text to him, sent that night after staring at her coach’s full message for eleven minutes and then lying face-down on her bed in a silence so complete her roommate had paused in the doorway and then wisely kept walking, is just a screenshot.

Garrett replies three minutes later.

Garrett: jesus. “no pressure” should be illegal.

She types, right????

Garrett: they put it at the front like a tiny little lawyer.

She laughs into her pillow hard enough that the pressure behind her eyes changes shape.

After that, it’s embarrassingly easy.

She’s slower to warm, more cautious, more likely to tuck herself back inside her own head the second a feeling starts getting too large to hold naturally. 

Garrett seems to understand that without making her explain it. He doesn’t crowd. He doesn’t demand a constant version of her that knows how to be charming back on command. 

He sends her a picture of Logan asleep sitting up on the couch with an ice pack balanced on his shoulder. 

Garrett: warrior down. 

She sends back, is he alive? 

Garrett: unclear. tucker says we should wait and see.

Sometimes they talk a lot. Sometimes it’s only a stupid photo, a class complaint, a how’s the knee? sent at nine p.m. that makes her chest go warm because he remembers which days hurt more. 

Sometimes she doesn’t answer for hours because the whole day has been too much and she’s gone quiet in that way that makes even typing feel strangely exposed. 

Garrett never punishes the delay by getting weird about it. He just picks the conversation back up wherever she left it, like the space is allowed.

He’s not always gentle. She wouldn’t like him as much if he were. Garrett’s gentleness works because it’s threaded through the rest of him, through the easy confidence and the dry little comments and the occasional captain voice that slips out when Cam tells him to stop overdoing it and he says, “I’m not,” with the exact expression of someone absolutely overdoing it. 

He still chirps Logan across the room. Still gives Dean shit when Dean swings by the rehab hall one afternoon and announces, loudly, “Damn, this is where they keep all the broken hot people,” before Tucker drags him back by the hood and says, “Don’t flirt with the injured. It’s unethical.”

Garrett, sitting beside her on the hallway bench with an ice pack on his thigh, doesn’t even look embarrassed. He only rubs a hand over his mouth and mutters, “I’m so sorry.”

She presses her lips together to keep from laughing. “Are they always like that?”

“No,” Garrett says. Then, after half a second, “Yes.”

Dean, from down the hall, calls, “She seems nice, G!”

Garrett closes his eyes briefly.

Tucker says, “Keep walking.”

Logan’s voice drifts back too, amused and bright. “Garrett made a friend!”

Garrett opens his eyes and looks at her with an expression so tired and resigned that she actually does laugh then, full and surprised and too loud for the hallway. His face changes when she does. Only for a second. It softens, almost helplessly, before he covers it by looking down at his ice pack.

“Yeah,” he says. “They’re always like that.”

By the second month, Cam starts pairing them for parts of rehab because, as he puts it, “You both complain less when you’re trying to look normal in front of each other.”

Garrett looks offended. “I always look normal.”

Cam doesn’t even glance up from the clipboard. “You asked me yesterday if your hip mobility was ‘giving washed-up uncle.’”

She bites down on a smile.

Garrett points at her. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I was not.”

“You were thinking it.”

She looks down at the resistance band looped around her ankle, cheeks warm. “I mean. A little.”

Garrett’s mouth twitches. “Unbelievable.”

Rehabbing together is both better and worse. Better because Garrett makes the room less lonely without trying to fill it too brightly. Worse because now she has to be perceived while doing the ugliest exercises known to sports medicine. 

There’s nothing romantic about hip bridges. There’s nothing elegant about controlled lunges when your knee is shaking like it’s received bad news by telegram. 

There’s  no world in which she wants Garrett Graham to watch her do glute activation with a yellow band around her thighs while Cam says, “Good, hold that,” in the background like a man actively trying to end her life.

Garrett, to his credit, doesn’t make it weird. He makes other things weird, obviously. He’s still Garrett. When she wobbles on the balance pad, he says, “Very artistic,” and when she glares at him, he lifts both hands and says, “I’m appreciating the performance.” 

When Cam tells Garrett his form is getting sloppy, she murmurs, “Washed-up uncle,” under her breath and Garrett looks at her like he can’t decide whether to laugh or throw a towel at her. 

When she has a bad pain day and goes quiet halfway through, Garrett stops joking entirely and starts matching her pace so subtly she doesn’t realise until later. He finishes his reps slower. Takes longer between sets. Asks Cam a question he probably already knows the answer to, giving her thirty extra seconds to breathe without anyone looking directly at her.

That one stays with her for a while. It’s easier to let someone flirt with you than it is to let them notice you’re struggling and not make you feel small about it.

Garrett is cleared for the ice before she is. He tells her after a Friday session, standing outside the athletic building with his hands shoved into the pocket of his hoodie, campus cold moving around them in little grey gusts. 

He looks happy, but it’s careful happiness. Muted. Like he knows the news is good and still doesn’t want to set it down too loudly between them.

“Cam said I can start controlled skating next week,” he says.

Her heart does something complicated.

“Oh,” she says, and hates immediately that it comes out too small. So she fixes it fast, or tries to. “Garrett, that’s great.”

“Yeah.”

“No, really. That’s… that’s so good.”

His eyes stay on her face. “I know.”

“You don’t sound like you know.”

“I do.” He looks away for a second, toward the parking lot, where a bunch of hockey guys are piling into someone’s car and yelling about food. “It’s just weird.”

She nods before he has to explain. Being allowed back into the place you’ve been aching for isn’t cleanly joyful when someone else is still outside the door. Especially when that someone has been sitting beside you for weeks, teaching you through sheer proximity that your particular kind of misery is not as uniquely embarrassing as you thought.

“I’m glad,” she says.

Garrett looks back at her, and the softness in his face makes her wish she had phrased it better, or maybe worse. “You’ll get there.”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“I know you know that. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I just–” He stops, rubs one hand over the back of his neck, and for once the confidence seems to snag on something real before it can make the sentence smoother than it should be. “It sucks being the one still waiting. I know.”

Her throat tightens. She looks down at the crack in the pavement between them. “I hate that I’m jealous.”

Garrett’s quiet for half a second, in a surprised-by-her-honesty way. Then he says, “Yeah.”

She winces. “That was not my best quality.”

“It’s not a crime.”

“It feels ugly.”

“A lot of this feels fucking ugly.”

She looks up at him then, and his face is open in that simple, steady way of his that keeps undoing her. 

“Yeah,” she says. “It does.”

He nods once, like they’ve agreed on something important and awful. Then his mouth shifts, small and careful. “I’ll tell you if it sucks.”

She huffs a laugh. “Your first skate back?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I’m offering solidarity.”

It does suck, apparently. He texts her after the first session. 

Garrett: felt good for ten seconds then my body filed a formal complaint.

She stares at the message for a long time, then replies, rude of it.

Garrett: yeah. HR nightmare.

She sends, did it feel nice though?

The typing bubbles appear. Disappear. Reappear. The finally he replies.

Garrett: yeah. too nice. kind of wanted to stay out there forever and also throw up.

Her eyes sting so fast it embarrasses her, even alone in her room. She types, yeah. i get that.

Garrett: i know.

When her clearance comes, it’s a Saturday morning in the third month of rehab, and she almost doesn’t believe Cam when he says it.

Controlled ice work only. Edges. Slow laps. Nothing clever. Nothing she would describe later as just seeing how it felt, because that sentence has been the downfall of many athletes before her. She nods through all of it with her hands folded tightly in her lap.

Cam stops talking. Her eyes are fixed on the corner of his clipboard.

“You okay?” he asks.

She nods, once. Too fast.

He waits. A laugh comes out of her, tiny and breathless and nothing like humour. “Sorry. I just… yeah. I’m good.”

Cam’s face softens. “You’re ready for this part.”

She gets to the parking lot before she texts Garrett.

cleared for controlled ice work.

He calls her. 

She stares at the screen for one full ring, startled enough that she almost drops the phone, then answers with a voice that comes out much quieter than planned. “Hi.”

“Holy shit,” Garrett says, and the happiness in his voice is so immediate and unfiltered that she has to close her eyes for a second. “That’s huge.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s really fucking good.”

“I know.” She laughs softly, but it shakes. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Also valid.”

“Cam said I can go tomorrow morning. Just controlled stuff.”

“I’ll come.”

The answer is so quick she doesn’t know what to do with it. She sits in her parked car with the keys still in her hand and looks out through the windshield at the athletic building, the brick and glass blurred slightly by the cold. “You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“You probably have… hockey things.”

“Can’t do hockey things yet.”

“Team things.”

“They’ll survive one morning without me standing there being inspirational in a hoodie.”

She smiles despite herself, and because he can’t see it, she lets it happen properly. “You’re very important.”

“Thank you.”

“I was joking.”

“I wasn’t.”

That gets a real laugh out of her, and Garrett is quiet for the smallest beat after it, like he’s letting himself hear it. 

Then his voice lowers a little. “Seriously. I’ll come. If you want.”

She swallows. The car is cold. Her knee aches faintly from the session. Her phone is warm against her ear.

“Yeah,” she says. “I want.”

The rink is almost empty the next morning. It’s early enough that the building still has that half-asleep feeling, the lobby lights too bright over the old carpet, the vending machines humming like they’ve been up all night thinking about their choices. 

Someone has left a stack of orange cones by the boards. The ice is clean from a fresh resurface, glossy and unmarked under the white lights, and the sight of it hits her so hard she stops walking halfway down the tunnel.

Garrett notices after two steps and turns back. He’s in a Briar hoodie and dark athletic pants, skates dangling from one hand, hair curling damply near his forehead because he’s showered before dawn like a lunatic. 

He looks less like campus Garrett here. Less like the guy everyone waves at in the dining hall, less like the captain with half the hockey program orbiting him. In the rink, he’s quieter. Familiar with the cold. Part of the architecture in the same way she is, or was, or is trying very hard to become again.

“You good?” he asks.

She looks past him at the ice. “Yeah.”

It’s very obviously not convincing.

Garrett doesn’t call her on it. He only nods and shifts his skates to his other hand. “We can sit for a minute.”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

She looks at him then, and the gentleness of his face makes something in her twist. Garrett, thankfully, seems to understand that pity would make her walk directly into traffic. This is something else. Space, maybe. Offered without making her ask for it.

So they sit. Long enough for her to lace her skates with fingers that feel strangely clumsy. Long enough for Garrett to tie his own and then pretend very hard not to watch her checking the tension of hers twice, then three times, then pressing her thumb along the side of the boot like it might offer reassurance if handled correctly.

“Do you want me to say something helpful or shut up?” he asks eventually.

The question startles a laugh out of her. It comes out small, but real. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. I can do medium.”

“Medium?”

“Yeah. Light talking. No motivational speech. No silence so intense it feels like a funeral.”

She looks over at him. “You’ve thought about this.”

“I’m a thoughtful guy.”

“You’re something.”

His smile appears, quick and warm, but he doesn’t chase the joke. “I know it’s weird.”

Her hands go still on the laces.

“I mean, I don’t know exactly,” he says, looking out at the ice now instead of directly at her, which helps. “It’s different for you. But I know the part where you miss it so much that getting it back even a little feels…” He pauses, searching for the word and apparently deciding not to dress it up. “Fucked.”

“It feels like if I step wrong, everything starts over,” she says.

Garrett nods slowly. “Yeah.”

“And I know that’s not how it works. Like, technically. I know Cam wouldn’t have cleared me if he thought I’d immediately explode.”

“Probably not.”

“Probably.”

“I mean, I don’t want to overstate his kindness.”

She laughs again, and this one stays longer. Garrett’s mouth softens at the sound, but he looks down to adjust his skate before she can catch too much of it.

They step onto the ice together. At first, all she can feel is terror. The blade settles under her weight. The ice takes her. Her knee doesn’t collapse, doesn’t scream, doesn’t turn into the moment it all went wrong. It only exists. Present and warm and strange inside the brace, part of her and not part of her, a little guarded corner of the body she used to trust without needing to narrate the trust to herself.

Garrett steps on beside her and turns with the easy balance of someone who’s been on skates since before he had any say in the matter. He doesn’t reach for her immediately. His hands are there, ready but not assuming, and the restraint of it makes her want to cry more than if he had grabbed her.

She takes one small push. Then another. It’s awful. It’s fine. It’s the most familiar thing in the world and completely foreign.

Her breath catches, and Garrett moves in closer without crowding her. “There you go.”

“Don’t say it like I’m a toddler.”

“I was saying it like you’re someone doing something hard.”

She glances at him, caught by the simplicity of it.

He gives her a tiny smile. “But if it helps, I can say it like you’re a toddler.”

“Please don’t.”

“Cool. Good note.”

She looks back at the ice and manages another slow stride. Her shoulders are too high. She can feel that. Her arms don’t know where to go with none of the old choreography to place them, none of the speed, none of the music. 

She's spent years making skating look like instinct, and now every movement has to be discussed internally before it happens, which is both boring and humiliating and almost funny if she gets far enough away from wanting to scream.

Garrett skates beside her, slightly behind, matching the tiny pace without comment. A hockey player skating slowly is a strange thing. Like seeing a dog heel when you know it wants to run. 

Garrett is all contained energy, all strength kept deliberately soft at the edges. Every so often she catches him adjusting to her without making the adjustment visible enough to feel like management. He doesn’t hover, he just stays close enough that the air seems to know where he is.

After half a lap, he says, “For what it’s worth, you still look like you know what you’re doing.”

She lets out a shaky breath. “That’s because you’re used to hockey players.”

“Rude.”

“You guys do look like you’re being chased a lot of the time.”

“We are. By other hockey players.”

They make it once around the rink. Then again. The second lap isn’t easy, but it’s less impossible. Her breath begins to settle into the cold. The first hard spike of fear loosens by degrees and leaves something else behind, raw and bright and almost worse. 

The ice under her blades. The sound. That delicate scrape she used to know better than her own alarm clock. Her body, cautious but moving. Her knee, not perfect, not forgotten, but holding.

She doesn’t realise she’s started crying until the cold hits the wet under one eye. Garrett sees it, but he doesn’t stop abruptly or make a face or ask if she’s okay in that terrible alarmed voice people use when crying becomes an event.

He only slows with her and says, “We can take a second.”

She laughs once, embarrassed, wiping under her eye with the heel of her hand. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“It’s stupid.”

“It’s really not.”

She looks at him, and the rink lights catch in his eyes. He’s close enough now that she can see the rough edge of stubble he probably missed shaving, the way his hair has started curling more as the cold gets to it. He looks like Garrett, but not the campus version. Just a boy on skates, injured and healing and kind enough not to make her crying about a slow lap into something she has to survive on top of everything else.

“I missed it,” she says, and it comes out barely above a whisper.

His face changes. “Yeah.”

“I know I’ve said that. But I don’t think I knew how much until right now.”

Garrett nods once, slow. “Yeah,” he says again, and there is so much understanding in it she has to look away.

They stand there near the boards for a while, the quiet rink around them, her hand resting lightly on the rail. Garrett doesn’t touch her. He just stays beside her while she gets herself back into her body.

Eventually, she breathes in and lets it out. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

They start again. It goes better for maybe seven minutes. She’s still too careful, still too aware of every shift and edge and tiny correction. But there are moments now, little flashes where the fear drops half a step behind the movement and something older comes through. 

A turn of the ankle. A cleaner glide. Her body remembering a thing before her brain can interfere. Each one lands small and huge at the same time.

Garrett notices those too. He doesn’t cheer. Thank God, if he cheered, she might actually skate into the wall on purpose. 

He only smiles a little and says, “That one looked nice,” or “Yeah, that was better,” in the same low voice he uses when he’s telling her something true and not trying to make a moment out of it.

Maybe that’s why she gets stupid. A little more confident than she was three minutes earlier, enough that she lets herself push into a slightly longer glide coming out of the curve. Barely anything, nothing she would once have even counted as skating. Her blade catches anyway.

It’s tiny. The smallest wrongness. But her body doesn’t know the difference between small and catastrophic yet. Her stomach drops, knee locking in fear before pain can even arrive, and suddenly the whole rink tilts in one bright, awful flash.

Garrett catches her before she falls. One second he’s beside her, and the next his hands are on her waist, tugging her in with a controlled little scrape of blades that brings her straight against him.

Her hands land on his chest, fingers grabbing at the front of his hoodie. The impact is soft because he makes it soft, knees bending with hers, one arm braced properly around her back before she has even fully processed the fact that she’s upright.

“Hey,” he says, breath close. “I’ve got you.”

Her heart is punching so hard she can feel it in her palms where they’re pressed to him. “I’m okay,” she says automatically.

“I know.”

“I just slipped.”

“I know.”

“It was small.”

“I know.”

She lets out a breath that shakes on the way out and hates it, then hates that she hates it because Garrett is looking at her like the shaking is allowed, like none of this is embarrassing enough to require apology.

For the first few seconds, there’s only the aftershock. Ice, fear, the violent little replay of what if. Then the world begins to come back in pieces, and Garrett comes back with it. His chest under her hands. The warm line of his arm across her back. His face closer than it has ever been without the excuse of class or rehab or a crowded hallway. The smell of him, cold air and clean laundry and something faintly minty from gum.

His gaze drops to her mouth. It’s so quick she almost thinks she invented it. Then he looks back at her eyes, and the air between them changes so completely it feels like the rink’s gone quiet on purpose.

She should move. That would be the normal thing. Step back. Laugh it off. Say thanks. Return to the careful, slow lap. Keep everything in the safe category it’s technically belonged to for months, even as the edges have gotten less and less believable.

She doesn’t move. Garrett doesn’t either. His thumb shifts once at her waist. Small. Barely there. But she feels it through the layers anyway.

“You good?” he asks, and his voice is lower now.

She nods. His eyes move over her face with that same checking look, except now there’s something else threaded through it. Something less clinical. Less controlled. 

He’s still giving her an out. She can feel that. It’s in the stillness of him, the way his hand doesn’t pull her closer even though it could, the way his mouth is soft but not smiling, for once, like even Garrett knows this is not a moment to be smoothed over with charm.

She looks at his mouth. This time, neither of them can pretend he doesn’t notice.

His breath changes. Just slightly. “Careful,” he murmurs.

Her fingers tighten in his hoodie. “I’m not doing anything.”

Her face feels warm despite the rink. Everything does, actually. Her hands, her throat, the place under her ribs where fear had been sitting all morning and has now made room for something much more dangerous.

Garrett dips his head a fraction, then stops. The restraint of it is the thing that finally makes her brave. She lifts up on her toes, just barely, because they’re on skates, and kisses him.

He kisses her back, soft at first, because of the ice, because of her knee, because of the months of carefulness that have led them here. His mouth is warm in a way that feels almost shocking against the cold. 

She makes a small sound, and Garrett’s hand slides more securely around her back as the kiss deepens by degrees, still careful but less polite now. Like something in him has unclenched. Like every hallway conversation, every text, every slow walk to class, every time his hand almost touched and didn’t, has found the same narrow place to go.

Her arms go up around his shoulders before she thinks about it and he smiles against her mouth.

She feels it and pulls back an inch, breathless. “Are you smiling?”

Garrett’s eyes open, bright and warm and closer than seems legal. “No.”

“You are.”

“No, I’m being very serious.”

“You’re not.”

“I am.” His mouth brushes hers again, once, because he’s already become comfortable enough with this to be unbearable about it. “This is an important rehab milestone.”

She stares at him, and then she laughs, properly this time, startled and light and so relieved by the sheer stupid Garrettness of it that it breaks the last of the fear in her body loose. He laughs too, she feels it under her hands.

“You’re so annoying,” she says.

“I know.”

“I can’t believe you just said rehab milestone.”

“Was it too much?”

“It was awful.”

“Okay.” He nods like he’s accepting professional notes, but his hands are still at her waist and his face is still soft in a way that makes the joke land somewhere tender instead of sharp. “I’ll workshop it.”

“Please don’t.”

“Got it.”

They stand there smiling at each other like idiots, and she hates how much she likes it. Hates, a little, how easily the rink has shifted around them. The ice is still under her blades. Her knee still exists, still healing, still not ready for everything she wants. But Garrett’s hands are on her body and his mouth is kissed-soft and he’s looking at her like the morning has done something to him too.

Then he glances down at their skates, back up at her, and says, quieter, “You scared?”

She doesn’t know which thing he means. The ice. The kiss. The way those have somehow become tangled enough that the answer fits both.

She nods once.

Garrett’s face doesn’t fall. He only nods back, thumb moving once over her side. “Yeah. Me too, a little.”

That surprises her enough that she looks at him properly. 

He huffs a breath, almost a laugh, but not quite. “Don’t look so shocked.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I just…” She swallows, eyes flicking over his face. “You don’t seem scared of much.”

Garrett looks at her for one more second. Then he kisses her again. This one is easier. Warmer. Still careful, but with laughter caught at the edges now, his mouth curving every time she makes the smallest noise because clearly he’s going to be deeply smug about kissing her, which she should have anticipated. 

He keeps one arm around her waist and lets the other hand come up to her cheek, thumb brushing near her jaw, and her whole body goes strangely loose and awake at the same time.

When she presses closer, he makes a soft sound under his breath and shifts them without thinking, turning just enough that his body blocks hers more fully from the open rink, as if there is anyone there to see them besides the empty seats and the unbothered scoreboard.

She pulls back because she’s smiling too much to keep kissing properly.

Garrett looks very pleased with himself. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s a suspicious nothing.”

“You look smug.”

He shrugs. “I feel a little smug.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“You kissed me first.”

Her mouth falls open. “Barely.”

“Still counts.”

“I was emotionally vulnerable.”

“I know.” His smile softens before it can become too much of a tease.

She looks down, overwhelmed in a way that’s not bad but still requires a second. Garrett lets her have it. Then, because he’s Garrett and because tenderness with no escape hatch would probably kill them both, he says, “For the record, I had a very cool plan to do that eventually.”

She looks up again, grateful despite herself. “Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“What was the plan?”

His nose scrunches. “Still developing.”

“So... no plan.”

He tilts his head. “A flexible plan.”

“Right.”

“Probably would’ve walked you to class. Said something devastatingly charming. You would’ve swooned.”

“I don’t think I swoon.”

“You might have. We’ll never know.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“There she is,” he says softly, and then seems to realise he’s said it in a way that gives too much away.

She glances toward the boards, then back at the stretch of ice ahead of them. The fear is still there, but quieter now. Less teeth. Her body feels wrung out and bright, like it’s survived two separate kinds of firsts before breakfast and does not know where to put the information yet.

Garrett follows her gaze. “You want to keep going?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But maybe…”

He’s already holding out both hands before she finishes. She looks at them, then at him.

He shrugs, casual and not casual at all. “Just for a bit.”

She puts her hands in his, and they start slow again. His fingers lace with hers this time. His hands are warm around her cold ones, and he skates backward at a careful pace, eyes mostly on her face, checking without hovering. The rink is still too bright. Her knee is still not perfect. Cam would probably have a clipboard-related opinion about the emotional developments currently occurring during controlled ice work.

But she’s upright. She’s moving.

Garrett’s thumbs brush once over her knuckles. “Good?” he asks.

She looks at him, at the ice, at the long clean stretch of it opening ahead. And for the first time in months, the answer does not feel like a lie.

“Yeah,” she says, a little breathless, a little shy around the smile she can’t fully stop. “Good.”

Garrett’s grin is small, real, and absolutely devastating. “Yeah?”

She nods.

His hands tighten lightly around hers, and he keeps moving backward, slow and steady, like he has nowhere else to be and no reason in the world to rush her. “Okay,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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Not nicely, always. Figure skating had never been gentle, no matter what people thought from the stands when the dresses were pretty and the music swelled and everybody politely forgot that most of the sport was just girls repeatedly hurling themselves at the ice until one day the hurling started looking graceful. 

Her body had always hurt somewhere. Ankles, arches, hip flexors, the backs of her knees, the little bruises on her thighs from falls she’d stopped counting years ago. 

Pain had been background noise. A language, almost. Something she could interpret and bargain with and, on good days, ignore.

This is different. This is her body becoming a locked door.

“Again,” Cam says.

She looks at him through the mirror. He has the clipboard tucked against his chest and the calm, mildly sympathetic face of a man who has chosen professionally to ruin people’s afternoons through controlled movement. “Cam.”

“One more set.”

“You said that last set.”

“I lied.”

She lets out a breath that’s too close to a laugh to count as actual protest and steps back onto the little foam pad. It dips under her weight. Her ankle wobbles. Her knee, traitor, considers doing something stupid. She fixes it fast, jaw tightening before her face can give too much away.

Cam notices anyway, because Cam is awful.

“Good,” he says. “That’s better.”

“It feels bad.”

“It’s supposed to feel hard.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I know.”

She hates that tone. Cam is one of those deeply inconvenient medical professionals who knows exactly when not to give you the easy reassurance, which means she can’t even be properly irritated with him without feeling immature about it. 

He doesn’t say you’ll be back before you know it. He doesn’t say you’re young, you’ll heal fast, as if youth is a warranty and not just another thing that can get snapped in half during a bad landing. 

He just says again, and better, and not yet, and lets the rest of the room sit there around it.

She finishes the set with her hands hovering slightly away from her sides like she might be able to balance through prayer, then steps off the pad and pretends the relief doesn’t go all the way through her.

Cam scribbles something down. “That’s enough for today.”

Her breath leaves her in one piece. “Thank God.”

“Don’t sound so grateful.”

“I’m trying to make you feel valued.”

“That was your version?”

“It was implied.”

He smiles faintly and reaches for the roll of athletic tape on the table. “Ice tonight if it gets cranky. Don’t push the stairs. And don’t go on the ice.”

She looks down at her bag too quickly. Cam pauses. The silence is horrible.

She lifts her eyes back to him with as much blank innocence as she can assemble while sweaty and standing in one shoe. “What?”

He gives her a look.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

“I know I’m not cleared.”

“Great.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You were thinking it in your Cam voice.”

“My Cam voice?”

“The one where you sound nice while accusing me of crimes.”

That gets a small laugh out of him, which she counts as a win even though he immediately ruins it by pointing at her with his pen. “No ice.”

The words land flatter than the joke leaves room for. She nods, because nodding is easier than speaking when the answer has gone somewhere tight under her ribs. 

No ice. Two tiny words. Perfectly reasonable. Clinically correct. Devastating in the way small, practical sentences often are when they’re the ones standing between you and the only place your body has ever made proper sense.

She sits on the bench to change back into her other sneaker, unwrapping the brace strap with careful fingers. There’s a damp patch at the collar of her shirt and another under the elastic of the brace, and she can feel the dull, complaining warmth in her knee beginning to spread now that the session is over and adrenaline has stopped being useful.

The door opens while she’s shoving her water bottle into the side pocket of her bag, and Garrett Graham steps in.

He comes in the same way he always seems to come into rooms, even injured. He just has that stupidly natural presence that takes up space before he’s done anything to earn it, all broad shoulders and damp dark curls and Briar Hockey hoodie with one sleeve pushed higher than the other. 

His gym bag is slung over one shoulder, his phone in his hand, and there’s a strip of white tape disappearing under the edge of his shorts near his thigh, which she tries very hard not to look at for too long.

She knows him, technically, Briar ice athletes overlap. They know the same rink schedule, the same sharp smell of resurfaced ice, the same ugly fluorescent tunnel between the locker rooms. 

She knows Garrett Graham because everyone knows Garrett Graham, but she also knows him in the more specific way of someone who has seen him skate when he thinks only hockey matters. Fast, controlled, mean in the cleanest possible way. Good hands. Good edges, for a hockey player, which she had once made the mistake of saying near one of the other figure skaters and had been accused of sounding weirdly horny about crossovers.

She wasn’t. Mostly.

He knows of her too. She knows this because he’d said her name once in the rink hallway last semester when she’d nearly collided with him coming around the corner with her skate bag, and because he’d watched the last ten minutes of one of her practices from the boards with Logan and Tucker a few months ago, both of them still in half their gear, while she ran the footwork section of her short program three times in a row until her lungs burned and her coach finally stopped looking like she might start throwing things. 

Garrett had leaned his forearms on the boards and said something she couldn’t hear. Logan had laughed. Tucker had looked politely impressed in the way nice men look when women do difficult things they understand enough not to interrupt.

So, first-name basis. Vague orbit. Mutual ice awareness.

Not whatever this is, which is Garrett walking in right as she’s sweaty and sore and trying to get her sneaker on without making the tiny injured-person grunt she has grown to hate in herself.

Cam looks over his shoulder. “One second, Garrett. I won’t be long, man.”

Garrett nods, easy. “All good.”

His eyes move from Cam to her, and she braces, because she’s been doing a lot of that lately, bracing. For pity. For questions. For the little sympathetic wince people do when they’ve heard about the injury but don’t know what to say after sorry, that sucks, so they fill the air with optimism until she wants to bite through her own tongue.

Garrett doesn’t wince. He gives her one of those small, quick smiles instead. 

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

He shifts his bag higher on his shoulder, glancing once at the brace and then back at her face so quickly she almost appreciates the politeness of it. “I heard you got hurt. That’s… yeah. Fucking sucks.”

It shouldn’t help, except it does. The bluntness. The lack of inspirational packaging. The fact that he says it like someone who knows exactly how unhelpful it is when people try to make being benched sound like a spiritual growth opportunity.

She nods and looks down for half a second at the zipper on her bag, pulling it closed even though it’s already closed. “Yeah. It’s pretty shit.”

His mouth moves, not quite a smile. “Yeah.”

“I heard about yours too,” she adds, because it’s only fair and also because looking at him directly for too long feels slightly like standing too close to a heater. “I’m sorry.”

He makes a small shrugging motion. It’s casual, but not quite enough to hide the little tightness that passes across his face when the movement pulls at something. “Could be worse.”

She looks at him. Garrett looks back.

Then he huffs a quiet laugh. “Sorry. That’s such an asshole thing to say to someone injured.”

Her mouth lifts before she can stop it. “It’s okay. Everyone says it.”

“I know. I keep wanting to fight them.”

“Have you?”

“Not yet. Cam said it would slow my recovery.”

“He’s very anti-violence for someone who hurts people for a living.”

Cam, from the cabinet, says, “I can hear both of you.”

Garrett’s grin appears then, quicker, brighter, and for one strange second it makes the rehab room feel less ugly. 

Cam comes over with his clipboard tucked under one arm and gives Garrett the tired look of a man who has known hockey players long enough to consider them a hazard. “Ready?”

Garrett nods, but his eyes flick back to her. “See you.”

It’s a small, stupid, future-tense thing. See you. Like it’s already assumed there will be another time. Like she’s not just passing through the doorway of his appointment with her bag on her shoulder and her knee taped into submission, but someone who exists in the shape of his week now.

She nods. “Yeah. Bye.”

Then she leaves before her face can do anything unhelpful.

After that, they keep seeing each other. That’s the whole problem with schedules. They make coincidences stop being coincidences and start becoming routines before anyone has to be brave enough to choose them. 

Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Her appointment first. Garrett after. The first few times, it’s only hey and how’s it going and Cam making deeply unimpressed noises when Garrett leans in the doorway instead of waiting properly outside like a normal person.

By the following Wednesday, Garrett’s sitting on the bench in the hallway when she comes out, elbows on his knees, hoodie sleeves shoved up, one hand wrapped around an iced coffee that looks mostly melted. 

He glances up as the door opens, like he’s been reading something on his phone and not listening for it, which is a performance she respects enough not to challenge.

“You survive?” he asks.

She shifts her bag higher on her shoulder. “Barely.”

“Bad?”

“Cam made me do step-downs.”

Garrett’s face changes with immediate, serious recognition. “Oh, Jesus.”

“Right?”

“No, those are evil.”

“They look so stupid. That’s what makes it worse. Like, I’m standing there trying not to die on a four-inch box.”

“Yeah, and Cam’s like, great, now control the descent.”

She laughs, and then looks down because the laugh comes out too easy. Too relieved. “He says it like that too.”

“Of course he does. He has a script.”

From inside the rehab room, Cam calls, “I still hear you.”

Garrett raises his coffee vaguely toward the door. “We’re bonding through shared suffering. It’s part of the process.”

“It’s not billable,” Cam says.

Garrett looks back at her, and there’s that little curl at the corner of his mouth again, but softer than she expects. “You got class after this?”

She blinks. “Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Psych. Levin.”

He pauses. “Wait, the eleven-thirty?”

“You’re in that class?”

His expression shifts into something almost sheepish, which is such a strange look on him that she forgets for a second to be awkward about her own surprise. 

“I sit in the back,” he says. “Very engaged. Quietly academic.”

“I have literally never seen you.”

“That feels like a you problem.”

“It feels like an attendance problem.”

Garrett presses a hand to his chest like this has wounded him. “I’m injured and you’re attacking me.”

She laughs. “You started it.”

“I asked about class.”

“Menace behaviour.”

He laughs at that, quick and low, head ducking for half a second. Then he stands because Cam calls him in, and he’s suddenly very close in the narrow hallway, close enough that she has to tilt her face a little to keep looking at him. 

His smile stays, but the volume of it drops. “See you in Levin, then?”

She should say maybe. Or sure. Or something easy and noncommittal that keeps the moment from feeling too visible.

Instead she says, “If you show up.”

His eyebrows lift. “That a challenge?”

“No.”

“Sounded like one.”

She doesn’t know what to do with that, so she adjusts her bag again, which has become a humiliating little habit around him. 

Her hands always need a task before her face gives her away. “Go do your step-downs, Graham.”

He smiles properly then, pleased. “Yes, ma’am.”

She walks away before Cam can witness the way her mouth betrays her.

Garrett does show up to class that day. He comes in two minutes late, because punctuality would have damaged the brand, and slides into the seat beside her with his laptop under one arm and a coffee in his hand. 

There’s a row of empty seats behind them. Several, actually. He ignores all of them.

She looks over as he sits. “Subtle.”

“What?”

“You could have sat literally anywhere.”

He opens his laptop. “This seat has a good view.”

“Of the lecture?”

He glances at the front of the room, where Dr. Levin is fighting with the projector and slowly losing. “Sure.”

She looks down at her notebook because smiling at her paper is less incriminating than smiling at him. 

Garrett doesn’t push it. That surprises her a little, though by then maybe it shouldn’t. He jokes, yes. He has the kind of natural charm that makes silence around him feel almost rude. 

But he’s not constantly filling space just to hear himself in it. He seems to know when to let a moment breathe, which is worse, somehow. Much worse. Because it means the attention is not accidental.

He takes notes badly. Not because he’s stupid, she learns that very quickly. Garrett isn’t stupid in the way some people like to assume athletes are stupid when they would rather not admit physical talent can exist alongside a working brain. 

He just takes notes like a man who believes future him will remember the context through sheer confidence. Half sentences. Arrows to nowhere. One bullet point that just says dopamine??? and then, underneath it, ask her.

She catches it while he’s typing and looks at him.

He doesn’t look back, but his mouth moves. “Don’t judge my system.”

“That’s a system?”

“It works.”

“It says ask her.”

“Yeah.” Now he glances over, and his eyes are warm enough that her stomach does something small and deeply unhelpful. “See? Efficient.”

She lets out a breath through her nose and turns back to her own notes. “You’re ridiculous.”

After that, the talking becomes easier because it has somewhere to go. Rehab into class. Class into walking halfway across campus. Walking into texts, eventually, though the number exchange happens in the most Garrett way possible, which is to say he makes it sound practical even while looking far too pleased with himself.

They’re leaving psych one afternoon, the sky low and grey over campus, both of them moving slower than the stream of students around them because neither of them can walk at full speed without paying for it later. 

Garrett has his hood up against the cold and his bag slung over one shoulder. She has one hand wrapped around the strap of her own, the other holding her phone, thumb hovering over a message from her coach she hasn’t opened because she can see the first line in the preview and already knows it will make her feel like peeling her skin off.

Garrett notices. 

“Coach?” he asks.

She looks over. “What?”

He nods toward the phone. “I know the face.”

She looks down at the screen again. The preview says, no pressure, just wanted to check in about competition timeline, which is exactly the kind of text people send when there is pressure and everyone knows it but nobody wants to be rude enough to name the animal in the room. Her thumb locks the phone before she can read the rest.

Garrett doesn’t say anything for a few steps. He doesn’t immediately try to fix it. Doesn’t ask if she’s okay in a tone that makes okay feel like a performance. 

He just walks beside her, slower than campus wants him to, shoulder occasionally close enough to brush hers when the path narrows.

Finally, he says, “I hate those texts.”

She glances at him.

“The check-in ones,” he says. “Like they’re being nice, and they are, but it’s also like… hey, just wondering if your body has stopped ruining the plan yet.”

Her throat tightens so quickly she has to look away.

Garrett’s voice stays even, low enough that the people passing them don’t get any of it. “The hockey staff keep doing it too. Not in a shitty way. They’re trying to be normal. But every time someone asks how recovery’s going, I’m like, I don’t know, man. I miss my life and my hip feels fucked up. You want the official answer or the weird one?”

She laughs, but it comes out thin. Still, it comes. “My knee feels fucked up.”

They walk a little farther. The cold air catches under the hem of her sweatshirt and sneaks up her back. Somewhere across the quad, a group of boys are laughing too loudly near the library steps. A bike bell rings. The world continues in its very rude way, all motion and noise and healthy knees.

Garrett clears his throat. “You can send me those, if you want.”

She looks up at him.

“The annoying texts,” he says, and now he does seem a little more careful, eyes flicking to hers and away again. “Or just, like… complain. If you don’t want to answer normal people nicely.”

Something in her chest shifts. “Normal people?”

“You know.” His mouth tips. “Healthy civilians.”

“That’s dark.”

“It’s accurate.”

She looks at her phone. Then at him. “Are you giving me your number so I can forward you texts from my coach?”

He shrugs, but his ears go just slightly pink from the cold or the question. “I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds weird.”

“It is weird.”

“You want it or not?”

She does. Immediately. Stupidly. Enough that she has to make herself take a second before answering. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” She opens a new contact and hands him the phone before she can overthink the fact that her fingers feel too warm. “For fucked up knee purposes.”

Garrett takes it, smiling down at the screen while he types. “Obviously.”

He saves himself as Garrett, then, after one tiny pause she absolutely notices, adds a hockey stick emoji. When he hands it back, she looks at it and raises her brows.

“Subtle.”

Her first text to him, sent that night after staring at her coach’s full message for eleven minutes and then lying face-down on her bed in a silence so complete her roommate had paused in the doorway and then wisely kept walking, is just a screenshot.

Garrett replies three minutes later.

Garrett: jesus. “no pressure” should be illegal.

She types, right????

Garrett: they put it at the front like a tiny little lawyer.

She laughs into her pillow hard enough that the pressure behind her eyes changes shape.

After that, it’s embarrassingly easy.

She’s slower to warm, more cautious, more likely to tuck herself back inside her own head the second a feeling starts getting too large to hold naturally. 

Garrett seems to understand that without making her explain it. He doesn’t crowd. He doesn’t demand a constant version of her that knows how to be charming back on command. 

He sends her a picture of Logan asleep sitting up on the couch with an ice pack balanced on his shoulder. 

Garrett: warrior down. 

She sends back, is he alive? 

Garrett: unclear. tucker says we should wait and see.

Sometimes they talk a lot. Sometimes it’s only a stupid photo, a class complaint, a how’s the knee? sent at nine p.m. that makes her chest go warm because he remembers which days hurt more. 

Sometimes she doesn’t answer for hours because the whole day has been too much and she’s gone quiet in that way that makes even typing feel strangely exposed. 

Garrett never punishes the delay by getting weird about it. He just picks the conversation back up wherever she left it, like the space is allowed.

He’s not always gentle. She wouldn’t like him as much if he were. Garrett’s gentleness works because it’s threaded through the rest of him, through the easy confidence and the dry little comments and the occasional captain voice that slips out when Cam tells him to stop overdoing it and he says, “I’m not,” with the exact expression of someone absolutely overdoing it. 

He still chirps Logan across the room. Still gives Dean shit when Dean swings by the rehab hall one afternoon and announces, loudly, “Damn, this is where they keep all the broken hot people,” before Tucker drags him back by the hood and says, “Don’t flirt with the injured. It’s unethical.”

Garrett, sitting beside her on the hallway bench with an ice pack on his thigh, doesn’t even look embarrassed. He only rubs a hand over his mouth and mutters, “I’m so sorry.”

She presses her lips together to keep from laughing. “Are they always like that?”

“No,” Garrett says. Then, after half a second, “Yes.”

Dean, from down the hall, calls, “She seems nice, G!”

Garrett closes his eyes briefly.

Tucker says, “Keep walking.”

Logan’s voice drifts back too, amused and bright. “Garrett made a friend!”

Garrett opens his eyes and looks at her with an expression so tired and resigned that she actually does laugh then, full and surprised and too loud for the hallway. His face changes when she does. Only for a second. It softens, almost helplessly, before he covers it by looking down at his ice pack.

“Yeah,” he says. “They’re always like that.”

By the second month, Cam starts pairing them for parts of rehab because, as he puts it, “You both complain less when you’re trying to look normal in front of each other.”

Garrett looks offended. “I always look normal.”

Cam doesn’t even glance up from the clipboard. “You asked me yesterday if your hip mobility was ‘giving washed-up uncle.’”

She bites down on a smile.

Garrett points at her. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I was not.”

“You were thinking it.”

She looks down at the resistance band looped around her ankle, cheeks warm. “I mean. A little.”

Garrett’s mouth twitches. “Unbelievable.”

Rehabbing together is both better and worse. Better because Garrett makes the room less lonely without trying to fill it too brightly. Worse because now she has to be perceived while doing the ugliest exercises known to sports medicine. 

There’s nothing romantic about hip bridges. There’s nothing elegant about controlled lunges when your knee is shaking like it’s received bad news by telegram. 

There’s  no world in which she wants Garrett Graham to watch her do glute activation with a yellow band around her thighs while Cam says, “Good, hold that,” in the background like a man actively trying to end her life.

Garrett, to his credit, doesn’t make it weird. He makes other things weird, obviously. He’s still Garrett. When she wobbles on the balance pad, he says, “Very artistic,” and when she glares at him, he lifts both hands and says, “I’m appreciating the performance.” 

When Cam tells Garrett his form is getting sloppy, she murmurs, “Washed-up uncle,” under her breath and Garrett looks at her like he can’t decide whether to laugh or throw a towel at her. 

When she has a bad pain day and goes quiet halfway through, Garrett stops joking entirely and starts matching her pace so subtly she doesn’t realise until later. He finishes his reps slower. Takes longer between sets. Asks Cam a question he probably already knows the answer to, giving her thirty extra seconds to breathe without anyone looking directly at her.

That one stays with her for a while. It’s easier to let someone flirt with you than it is to let them notice you’re struggling and not make you feel small about it.

Garrett is cleared for the ice before she is. He tells her after a Friday session, standing outside the athletic building with his hands shoved into the pocket of his hoodie, campus cold moving around them in little grey gusts. 

He looks happy, but it’s careful happiness. Muted. Like he knows the news is good and still doesn’t want to set it down too loudly between them.

“Cam said I can start controlled skating next week,” he says.

Her heart does something complicated.

“Oh,” she says, and hates immediately that it comes out too small. So she fixes it fast, or tries to. “Garrett, that’s great.”

“Yeah.”

“No, really. That’s… that’s so good.”

His eyes stay on her face. “I know.”

“You don’t sound like you know.”

“I do.” He looks away for a second, toward the parking lot, where a bunch of hockey guys are piling into someone’s car and yelling about food. “It’s just weird.”

She nods before he has to explain. Being allowed back into the place you’ve been aching for isn’t cleanly joyful when someone else is still outside the door. Especially when that someone has been sitting beside you for weeks, teaching you through sheer proximity that your particular kind of misery is not as uniquely embarrassing as you thought.

“I’m glad,” she says.

Garrett looks back at her, and the softness in his face makes her wish she had phrased it better, or maybe worse. “You’ll get there.”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“I know you know that. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I just–” He stops, rubs one hand over the back of his neck, and for once the confidence seems to snag on something real before it can make the sentence smoother than it should be. “It sucks being the one still waiting. I know.”

Her throat tightens. She looks down at the crack in the pavement between them. “I hate that I’m jealous.”

Garrett’s quiet for half a second, in a surprised-by-her-honesty way. Then he says, “Yeah.”

She winces. “That was not my best quality.”

“It’s not a crime.”

“It feels ugly.”

“A lot of this feels fucking ugly.”

She looks up at him then, and his face is open in that simple, steady way of his that keeps undoing her. 

“Yeah,” she says. “It does.”

He nods once, like they’ve agreed on something important and awful. Then his mouth shifts, small and careful. “I’ll tell you if it sucks.”

She huffs a laugh. “Your first skate back?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I’m offering solidarity.”

It does suck, apparently. He texts her after the first session. 

Garrett: felt good for ten seconds then my body filed a formal complaint.

She stares at the message for a long time, then replies, rude of it.

Garrett: yeah. HR nightmare.

She sends, did it feel nice though?

The typing bubbles appear. Disappear. Reappear. The finally he replies.

Garrett: yeah. too nice. kind of wanted to stay out there forever and also throw up.

Her eyes sting so fast it embarrasses her, even alone in her room. She types, yeah. i get that.

Garrett: i know.

When her clearance comes, it’s a Saturday morning in the third month of rehab, and she almost doesn’t believe Cam when he says it.

Controlled ice work only. Edges. Slow laps. Nothing clever. Nothing she would describe later as just seeing how it felt, because that sentence has been the downfall of many athletes before her. She nods through all of it with her hands folded tightly in her lap.

Cam stops talking. Her eyes are fixed on the corner of his clipboard.

“You okay?” he asks.

She nods, once. Too fast.

He waits. A laugh comes out of her, tiny and breathless and nothing like humour. “Sorry. I just… yeah. I’m good.”

Cam’s face softens. “You’re ready for this part.”

She gets to the parking lot before she texts Garrett.

cleared for controlled ice work.

He calls her. 

She stares at the screen for one full ring, startled enough that she almost drops the phone, then answers with a voice that comes out much quieter than planned. “Hi.”

“Holy shit,” Garrett says, and the happiness in his voice is so immediate and unfiltered that she has to close her eyes for a second. “That’s huge.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s really fucking good.”

“I know.” She laughs softly, but it shakes. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Also valid.”

“Cam said I can go tomorrow morning. Just controlled stuff.”

“I’ll come.”

The answer is so quick she doesn’t know what to do with it. She sits in her parked car with the keys still in her hand and looks out through the windshield at the athletic building, the brick and glass blurred slightly by the cold. “You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“You probably have… hockey things.”

“Can’t do hockey things yet.”

“Team things.”

“They’ll survive one morning without me standing there being inspirational in a hoodie.”

She smiles despite herself, and because he can’t see it, she lets it happen properly. “You’re very important.”

“Thank you.”

“I was joking.”

“I wasn’t.”

That gets a real laugh out of her, and Garrett is quiet for the smallest beat after it, like he’s letting himself hear it. 

Then his voice lowers a little. “Seriously. I’ll come. If you want.”

She swallows. The car is cold. Her knee aches faintly from the session. Her phone is warm against her ear.

“Yeah,” she says. “I want.”

The rink is almost empty the next morning. It’s early enough that the building still has that half-asleep feeling, the lobby lights too bright over the old carpet, the vending machines humming like they’ve been up all night thinking about their choices. 

Someone has left a stack of orange cones by the boards. The ice is clean from a fresh resurface, glossy and unmarked under the white lights, and the sight of it hits her so hard she stops walking halfway down the tunnel.

Garrett notices after two steps and turns back. He’s in a Briar hoodie and dark athletic pants, skates dangling from one hand, hair curling damply near his forehead because he’s showered before dawn like a lunatic. 

He looks less like campus Garrett here. Less like the guy everyone waves at in the dining hall, less like the captain with half the hockey program orbiting him. In the rink, he’s quieter. Familiar with the cold. Part of the architecture in the same way she is, or was, or is trying very hard to become again.

“You good?” he asks.

She looks past him at the ice. “Yeah.”

It’s very obviously not convincing.

Garrett doesn’t call her on it. He only nods and shifts his skates to his other hand. “We can sit for a minute.”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

She looks at him then, and the gentleness of his face makes something in her twist. Garrett, thankfully, seems to understand that pity would make her walk directly into traffic. This is something else. Space, maybe. Offered without making her ask for it.

So they sit. Long enough for her to lace her skates with fingers that feel strangely clumsy. Long enough for Garrett to tie his own and then pretend very hard not to watch her checking the tension of hers twice, then three times, then pressing her thumb along the side of the boot like it might offer reassurance if handled correctly.

“Do you want me to say something helpful or shut up?” he asks eventually.

The question startles a laugh out of her. It comes out small, but real. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. I can do medium.”

“Medium?”

“Yeah. Light talking. No motivational speech. No silence so intense it feels like a funeral.”

She looks over at him. “You’ve thought about this.”

“I’m a thoughtful guy.”

“You’re something.”

His smile appears, quick and warm, but he doesn’t chase the joke. “I know it’s weird.”

Her hands go still on the laces.

“I mean, I don’t know exactly,” he says, looking out at the ice now instead of directly at her, which helps. “It’s different for you. But I know the part where you miss it so much that getting it back even a little feels…” He pauses, searching for the word and apparently deciding not to dress it up. “Fucked.”

“It feels like if I step wrong, everything starts over,” she says.

Garrett nods slowly. “Yeah.”

“And I know that’s not how it works. Like, technically. I know Cam wouldn’t have cleared me if he thought I’d immediately explode.”

“Probably not.”

“Probably.”

“I mean, I don’t want to overstate his kindness.”

She laughs again, and this one stays longer. Garrett’s mouth softens at the sound, but he looks down to adjust his skate before she can catch too much of it.

They step onto the ice together. At first, all she can feel is terror. The blade settles under her weight. The ice takes her. Her knee doesn’t collapse, doesn’t scream, doesn’t turn into the moment it all went wrong. It only exists. Present and warm and strange inside the brace, part of her and not part of her, a little guarded corner of the body she used to trust without needing to narrate the trust to herself.

Garrett steps on beside her and turns with the easy balance of someone who’s been on skates since before he had any say in the matter. He doesn’t reach for her immediately. His hands are there, ready but not assuming, and the restraint of it makes her want to cry more than if he had grabbed her.

She takes one small push. Then another. It’s awful. It’s fine. It’s the most familiar thing in the world and completely foreign.

Her breath catches, and Garrett moves in closer without crowding her. “There you go.”

“Don’t say it like I’m a toddler.”

“I was saying it like you’re someone doing something hard.”

She glances at him, caught by the simplicity of it.

He gives her a tiny smile. “But if it helps, I can say it like you’re a toddler.”

“Please don’t.”

“Cool. Good note.”

She looks back at the ice and manages another slow stride. Her shoulders are too high. She can feel that. Her arms don’t know where to go with none of the old choreography to place them, none of the speed, none of the music. 

She's spent years making skating look like instinct, and now every movement has to be discussed internally before it happens, which is both boring and humiliating and almost funny if she gets far enough away from wanting to scream.

Garrett skates beside her, slightly behind, matching the tiny pace without comment. A hockey player skating slowly is a strange thing. Like seeing a dog heel when you know it wants to run. 

Garrett is all contained energy, all strength kept deliberately soft at the edges. Every so often she catches him adjusting to her without making the adjustment visible enough to feel like management. He doesn’t hover, he just stays close enough that the air seems to know where he is.

After half a lap, he says, “For what it’s worth, you still look like you know what you’re doing.”

She lets out a shaky breath. “That’s because you’re used to hockey players.”

“Rude.”

“You guys do look like you’re being chased a lot of the time.”

“We are. By other hockey players.”

They make it once around the rink. Then again. The second lap isn’t easy, but it’s less impossible. Her breath begins to settle into the cold. The first hard spike of fear loosens by degrees and leaves something else behind, raw and bright and almost worse. 

The ice under her blades. The sound. That delicate scrape she used to know better than her own alarm clock. Her body, cautious but moving. Her knee, not perfect, not forgotten, but holding.

She doesn’t realise she’s started crying until the cold hits the wet under one eye. Garrett sees it, but he doesn’t stop abruptly or make a face or ask if she’s okay in that terrible alarmed voice people use when crying becomes an event.

He only slows with her and says, “We can take a second.”

She laughs once, embarrassed, wiping under her eye with the heel of her hand. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“It’s stupid.”

“It’s really not.”

She looks at him, and the rink lights catch in his eyes. He’s close enough now that she can see the rough edge of stubble he probably missed shaving, the way his hair has started curling more as the cold gets to it. He looks like Garrett, but not the campus version. Just a boy on skates, injured and healing and kind enough not to make her crying about a slow lap into something she has to survive on top of everything else.

“I missed it,” she says, and it comes out barely above a whisper.

His face changes. “Yeah.”

“I know I’ve said that. But I don’t think I knew how much until right now.”

Garrett nods once, slow. “Yeah,” he says again, and there is so much understanding in it she has to look away.

They stand there near the boards for a while, the quiet rink around them, her hand resting lightly on the rail. Garrett doesn’t touch her. He just stays beside her while she gets herself back into her body.

Eventually, she breathes in and lets it out. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

They start again. It goes better for maybe seven minutes. She’s still too careful, still too aware of every shift and edge and tiny correction. But there are moments now, little flashes where the fear drops half a step behind the movement and something older comes through. 

A turn of the ankle. A cleaner glide. Her body remembering a thing before her brain can interfere. Each one lands small and huge at the same time.

Garrett notices those too. He doesn’t cheer. Thank God, if he cheered, she might actually skate into the wall on purpose. 

He only smiles a little and says, “That one looked nice,” or “Yeah, that was better,” in the same low voice he uses when he’s telling her something true and not trying to make a moment out of it.

Maybe that’s why she gets stupid. A little more confident than she was three minutes earlier, enough that she lets herself push into a slightly longer glide coming out of the curve. Barely anything, nothing she would once have even counted as skating. Her blade catches anyway.

It’s tiny. The smallest wrongness. But her body doesn’t know the difference between small and catastrophic yet. Her stomach drops, knee locking in fear before pain can even arrive, and suddenly the whole rink tilts in one bright, awful flash.

Garrett catches her before she falls. One second he’s beside her, and the next his hands are on her waist, tugging her in with a controlled little scrape of blades that brings her straight against him.

Her hands land on his chest, fingers grabbing at the front of his hoodie. The impact is soft because he makes it soft, knees bending with hers, one arm braced properly around her back before she has even fully processed the fact that she’s upright.

“Hey,” he says, breath close. “I’ve got you.”

Her heart is punching so hard she can feel it in her palms where they’re pressed to him. “I’m okay,” she says automatically.

“I know.”

“I just slipped.”

“I know.”

“It was small.”

“I know.”

She lets out a breath that shakes on the way out and hates it, then hates that she hates it because Garrett is looking at her like the shaking is allowed, like none of this is embarrassing enough to require apology.

For the first few seconds, there’s only the aftershock. Ice, fear, the violent little replay of what if. Then the world begins to come back in pieces, and Garrett comes back with it. His chest under her hands. The warm line of his arm across her back. His face closer than it has ever been without the excuse of class or rehab or a crowded hallway. The smell of him, cold air and clean laundry and something faintly minty from gum.

His gaze drops to her mouth. It’s so quick she almost thinks she invented it. Then he looks back at her eyes, and the air between them changes so completely it feels like the rink’s gone quiet on purpose.

She should move. That would be the normal thing. Step back. Laugh it off. Say thanks. Return to the careful, slow lap. Keep everything in the safe category it’s technically belonged to for months, even as the edges have gotten less and less believable.

She doesn’t move. Garrett doesn’t either. His thumb shifts once at her waist. Small. Barely there. But she feels it through the layers anyway.

“You good?” he asks, and his voice is lower now.

She nods. His eyes move over her face with that same checking look, except now there’s something else threaded through it. Something less clinical. Less controlled. 

He’s still giving her an out. She can feel that. It’s in the stillness of him, the way his hand doesn’t pull her closer even though it could, the way his mouth is soft but not smiling, for once, like even Garrett knows this is not a moment to be smoothed over with charm.

She looks at his mouth. This time, neither of them can pretend he doesn’t notice.

His breath changes. Just slightly. “Careful,” he murmurs.

Her fingers tighten in his hoodie. “I’m not doing anything.”

Her face feels warm despite the rink. Everything does, actually. Her hands, her throat, the place under her ribs where fear had been sitting all morning and has now made room for something much more dangerous.

Garrett dips his head a fraction, then stops. The restraint of it is the thing that finally makes her brave. She lifts up on her toes, just barely, because they’re on skates, and kisses him.

He kisses her back, soft at first, because of the ice, because of her knee, because of the months of carefulness that have led them here. His mouth is warm in a way that feels almost shocking against the cold. 

She makes a small sound, and Garrett’s hand slides more securely around her back as the kiss deepens by degrees, still careful but less polite now. Like something in him has unclenched. Like every hallway conversation, every text, every slow walk to class, every time his hand almost touched and didn’t, has found the same narrow place to go.

Her arms go up around his shoulders before she thinks about it and he smiles against her mouth.

She feels it and pulls back an inch, breathless. “Are you smiling?”

Garrett’s eyes open, bright and warm and closer than seems legal. “No.”

“You are.”

“No, I’m being very serious.”

“You’re not.”

“I am.” His mouth brushes hers again, once, because he’s already become comfortable enough with this to be unbearable about it. “This is an important rehab milestone.”

She stares at him, and then she laughs, properly this time, startled and light and so relieved by the sheer stupid Garrettness of it that it breaks the last of the fear in her body loose. He laughs too, she feels it under her hands.

“You’re so annoying,” she says.

“I know.”

“I can’t believe you just said rehab milestone.”

“Was it too much?”

“It was awful.”

“Okay.” He nods like he’s accepting professional notes, but his hands are still at her waist and his face is still soft in a way that makes the joke land somewhere tender instead of sharp. “I’ll workshop it.”

“Please don’t.”

“Got it.”

They stand there smiling at each other like idiots, and she hates how much she likes it. Hates, a little, how easily the rink has shifted around them. The ice is still under her blades. Her knee still exists, still healing, still not ready for everything she wants. But Garrett’s hands are on her body and his mouth is kissed-soft and he’s looking at her like the morning has done something to him too.

Then he glances down at their skates, back up at her, and says, quieter, “You scared?”

She doesn’t know which thing he means. The ice. The kiss. The way those have somehow become tangled enough that the answer fits both.

She nods once.

Garrett’s face doesn’t fall. He only nods back, thumb moving once over her side. “Yeah. Me too, a little.”

That surprises her enough that she looks at him properly. 

He huffs a breath, almost a laugh, but not quite. “Don’t look so shocked.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I just…” She swallows, eyes flicking over his face. “You don’t seem scared of much.”

Garrett looks at her for one more second. Then he kisses her again. This one is easier. Warmer. Still careful, but with laughter caught at the edges now, his mouth curving every time she makes the smallest noise because clearly he’s going to be deeply smug about kissing her, which she should have anticipated. 

He keeps one arm around her waist and lets the other hand come up to her cheek, thumb brushing near her jaw, and her whole body goes strangely loose and awake at the same time.

When she presses closer, he makes a soft sound under his breath and shifts them without thinking, turning just enough that his body blocks hers more fully from the open rink, as if there is anyone there to see them besides the empty seats and the unbothered scoreboard.

She pulls back because she’s smiling too much to keep kissing properly.

Garrett looks very pleased with himself. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s a suspicious nothing.”

“You look smug.”

He shrugs. “I feel a little smug.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“You kissed me first.”

Her mouth falls open. “Barely.”

“Still counts.”

“I was emotionally vulnerable.”

“I know.” His smile softens before it can become too much of a tease.

She looks down, overwhelmed in a way that’s not bad but still requires a second. Garrett lets her have it. Then, because he’s Garrett and because tenderness with no escape hatch would probably kill them both, he says, “For the record, I had a very cool plan to do that eventually.”

She looks up again, grateful despite herself. “Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“What was the plan?”

His nose scrunches. “Still developing.”

“So... no plan.”

He tilts his head. “A flexible plan.”

“Right.”

“Probably would’ve walked you to class. Said something devastatingly charming. You would’ve swooned.”

“I don’t think I swoon.”

“You might have. We’ll never know.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“There she is,” he says softly, and then seems to realise he’s said it in a way that gives too much away.

She glances toward the boards, then back at the stretch of ice ahead of them. The fear is still there, but quieter now. Less teeth. Her body feels wrung out and bright, like it’s survived two separate kinds of firsts before breakfast and does not know where to put the information yet.

Garrett follows her gaze. “You want to keep going?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But maybe…”

He’s already holding out both hands before she finishes. She looks at them, then at him.

He shrugs, casual and not casual at all. “Just for a bit.”

She puts her hands in his, and they start slow again. His fingers lace with hers this time. His hands are warm around her cold ones, and he skates backward at a careful pace, eyes mostly on her face, checking without hovering. The rink is still too bright. Her knee is still not perfect. Cam would probably have a clipboard-related opinion about the emotional developments currently occurring during controlled ice work.

But she’s upright. She’s moving.

Garrett’s thumbs brush once over her knuckles. “Good?” he asks.

She looks at him, at the ice, at the long clean stretch of it opening ahead. And for the first time in months, the answer does not feel like a lie.

“Yeah,” she says, a little breathless, a little shy around the smile she can’t fully stop. “Good.”

Garrett’s grin is small, real, and absolutely devastating. “Yeah?”

She nods.

His hands tighten lightly around hers, and he keeps moving backward, slow and steady, like he has nowhere else to be and no reason in the world to rush her. “Okay,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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His shoulders sagged slightly, and there were faint shadows beneath his eyes despite the victory tonight. A smile tugged at your lips as you tried to get his attention. "There he is, my favorite boy."

Garrett looked over at you and immediately groaned like he seemed the idea off of you. "Please don't ask me to do anything." You laughed at his words, shaking your head. "I wasn't going to, I swear."

"Good." He pointed toward the bed dramatically. "Because that's where I'm dying." Without another word, he shuffled forward and collapsed face-first onto the mattress, the entire bed bounced beneath his weight. You shook your head once again, a little smile on your face at his attitude. "You’re soooo dramatic."

"I'm an athlete," he replied into the pillow. "It's basically part of my job."

"You won." You voiced at him, to which he simply hummed an answer into your pillow, so you spoke again. "You scored twice." And he hummed again, not caring to move an inch from his position, making you smile to yourself. "The crowd was chanting your name." That finally earned a response, Garrett rolled his head enough to look at you with one eye.

"Okay, but did the crowd get checked into the boards three separate times?" You snorted and shook your head at him. "No, they didn’t." You answered your boyfriend softly. "Exactly." His face disappeared back into the pillow, the movement shifted his position slightly, exposing the tattoo stretched across his upper back.

Nullum Gratuitum Prandium.

Your smile softened immediately.

Garrett only had one tattoo, and despite how simple it was, you had always loved it, maybe because it was one of the few things about him that felt private. Most people saw Garrett Graham the hockey star: the confident captain, the guy who always seemed larger than life but moments like this were yours. Quiet moments with the real Garrett.

You scooted closer and lightly traced one of the letters with your fingertip. Almost instantly, his shoulders relaxed. "I was waiting for this," he murmured into the pillow. "Uh? For what?" You voiced, curious about what he was talking about.

"The post-game treatment." You laughed softly at the words leaving his mouth, almost rolling your eyes at him. "Oh, is that what this is?"

"Absolutely."

Your fingers continued tracing the tattoo and Garrett practically melted beneath your touch, and honestly, it was adorable. You watched as his eyes lifted up to your face, his own still into your pillow, nose taking your smell.

For a guy who spent most of his time throwing himself into six-foot-tall defensemen and taking body checks without complaint, he was surprisingly needy when it came to affection. You leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss against the beginning of the sentence.

Garrett's eyes closed immediately and another kiss of yours followed. Then another; slow, soft and patient. Each one lingering for just a second longer than the last.

A quiet sigh escaped him. "I love when you do that." He said quietly, you smiled against his skin. "Kiss your tattoo?" Your question was said so softly that he could have missed it with how relaxed he was at the moment. "Yeah." His voice sounded sleepy now. You rested your chin lightly against his shoulder, skin against skin.

"Why?" Garrett was quiet for a moment, long enough that you thought he might not answer but then, he finally shrugged. "I don't know."

"That's a lie."

"It is." You laughed at his words and Garrett turned his head slightly, enough to glance back at you. "It just feels different." He ended up saying, eyes focusing on your face and trying to remember all the edges and shapes. "Different how?" You asked then, curious about how he currently felt, about how he saw the moment happening. 

His gaze softened, then he whispered. "Because it's you." The simple answer made your chest ache.

You looked down at him for a moment before brushing a hand through his damp hair. "You're sweet." He shook his head then, the tiniest smile on his face before replying, amused. "No, I'm exhausted." His words made you chuckle and you shook your head too, amused. "Same thing, I think." A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth again.

"Maybe."

For a while, neither of you spoke—the room settled into a comfortable silence as your fingers rubbed circles across his shoulders. Every now and then you'd lean down and press another kiss against the tattoo, earning another content sigh from Garrett. It amazed you how quickly the tension disappeared from him; the rigid muscles, the stress, the adrenaline from the game.

Little by little, it all faded beneath your hands and eventually Garrett rolled onto his back and reached for you, without resistance, you let him pull you into his lap. His arms wrapped around your waist automatically, holding you close as if he'd done it a thousand times before (which he had).

You brushed a hand across his cheek. "Tired?" He hummed, nodding at you. You can see the sleepiness in his eyes, something he either tried to hide or brush off.  "A little." He shrugged but you knew better than that. "A little?" You repeated to him.

"A lot." You laughed at the words escaping his mouth, almost proud of yourself for that one. "Thought so."

Garrett tilted his head upward and captured your lips in a soft kiss. There was no urgency behind it; he was not teasing, he was not playful, there was just so much affection in his action. The kind that came naturally after months together, the kind that made home feel less like a place and more like a person. When he pulled away, his forehead rested lightly against yours.

Then his eyes narrowed slightly. "Turn around." He asked, voice quiet and soft. Still, you blinked at the demand and your eyebrows furrowed. "What?"

"Turn around." He says again, moving on the bed so you’d shift your position too. "Why?" You still ask, and Garrett’s expression softens, looking at you with tender eyes. "Just trust me." Suspicious, you tell yourself but you shift anyway. The moment your back faced him, you felt Garrett's hands settle gently on your waist.

Then his lips brushed against the tattoo hidden near your shoulder blade. Your breath caught immediately; the kiss was soft and lingering. A second followed, then a third and Garrett smiled against your skin.

"There." You looked over your shoulder when he spoke. "There what?" You end up asking, almost smiling at the kisses he had left on your skin.

"Now we're even." Your heart nearly melted at that.

For someone who spent most of his life being loud and confident and impossible to miss, Garrett always seemed to save his softest moments for when nobody else was looking. 

You shifted in his lap until you were facing him again and the movement earned a small smile from him, one that looked softer than any expression he ever wore in front of cameras or reporters. "What?" he asked quietly and you shook your head as you replied. "Nothing."

"Liar." A laugh escaped you; soft but loud just like your boyfriend liked it. Garrett reached up, letting his fingers trail down your cheek. The touch was gentle enough to make your chest ache. "You keep looking at me like that." He spoke again, eyes focusing on your face and the expression you had on.

"Like what?" His smile grew when you asked that, like you damn-well knew what he was talking about.

"Like I'm something special." You immediately rolled your eyes. "Garrett Graham, captain of Briar hockey, adored by half the campus, thinks I'm the one acting ridiculous?" Your words were said with amusement, making your boyfriend smile.

"Yeah."

"You're impossible."

"Maybe." His thumb brushed against your cheekbone as he shrugged. The teasing slowly faded from his expression then, replaced by something quieter, something honest. Garrett swallowed. "I mean it, though." He said, quietly, fondly. You frowned slightly. "Mean what?" You could only reply to him, curious.

His eyes held yours. "I love you." The words came easily, no hesitation in his voice. As though he had thought them a thousand times before and finally decided to say them out loud.

"I love you when you wait up for me after games. I love you when you steal my hoodies. I love you when you pretend not to care about hockey but somehow know all my stats." His smile returned briefly. "And I definitely love you for the tattoo kisses." A surprised laugh escaped you, though your eyes were already beginning to sting.

"You're such a dork." You said, voice trembling a little at the words that had left his mouth. "Yeah, but I'm your dork." The fondness in his voice nearly undid you.

You reached up, cupping his face between your hands. "I love you too." Garrett's expression softened immediately. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." You leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "I love how competitive you are." Another kiss found the tip of his nose. "I love how much you care about people even when you pretend you don't." A third landed softly against his lips. "And I love you."

Garrett's eyes closed for a moment, all content and comfortable with all the kisses. When he opened them again, there was something almost boyish in the smile he gave you. "Good." He nodded his head and you laughed. "Good?"

"Yeah." His arms tightened around your waist, pulling you closer until there wasn't an inch of space left between you. "I'd be in a really awkward position if you didn't."

"After that speech?"

"Exactly." Your laughter filled the room again, and Garrett couldn't help smiling along with you.

As the evening stretched on around you, with the noise of the hockey game finally fading into memory, he settled deeper into your embrace. Your fingers found his hair, his cheek rested against your shoulder, and for the first time all day, he felt completely at peace.

Wins were nice, championships would be nice too.

But sitting here with you wrapped in his arms, hearing your heartbeat beneath his ear and knowing you loved him back?

Garrett was fairly certain nothing could ever top that.

"Ninety-four? Tough break, sweetheart. I’m sure there’s a tutor center somewhere that handles remedial reading."

She didn’t even have to look over to know exactly who was talking. She turned, her eyes narrowing as she met Garrett Graham’s gaze. He was leaning back in his chair, holding his own exam paper towards her to show her his score. The 98 stared back at her and she rolled her eyes, annoyed.

"It’s not remedial reading, Graham. Unlike you, I don't need to dedicate my entire existence to a GPA just to feel superior." she snapped.

The class was over and students were packing their bags for the next lecture.

That infuriating, lopsided smirk that he always saved for her, had smoke coming out of her head from how angry she was. He tucked his exam into his bag. "Well, some of us prefer winning to whatever it is you do. I saw you with your boyfriend at the union yesterday. Does he help you with your history notes, or does he just carry your books so your delicate arms don’t get tired?"

Her jaw tightened. He knew exactly which buttons to push, and he’s been doing this since freshman year. "Leave Jackson out of this, Graham. Just because you have a stick up your ass doesn't mean you have to take it out on my relationship."

"Relationship? Is that what we’re calling it?" He snorted, standing up. He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes glinting with a mocking amusement. "I’m just saying, it must be exhausting dating a guy who probably thinks the Emancipation Proclamation is a brand of protein shake. I’m surprised you have survived three years with him."

"He’s a good person who actually has a personality, unlike your brand of 'I-play-hockey-therefore-I-am-god.' Seriously, do you ever get bored of being a cliché?" she countered. It seemed like that spike of adrenaline only ever happened when she was around him.

Garrett chuckled.

"I’m never bored, sweetheart. But think about it, you’re just lucky I’m generous enough to keep you on your toes. Without me, who would you have to be better than?"

"I don't need to be better than you, I am competing with myself. And I’m doing just fine."

"Keep telling yourself that," he said, pushing off the desk and straightening his jacket, though he didn't walk away immediately. His gaze drifted over her face as if he were trying to memorise the way her eyes sparked when she was angry. "Say hi to your golden boy for me. Tell him if he ever wants to learn how to handle a real sport he knows where to find me."

He turned and sauntered toward the exit, leaving Y/N seething. She watched him go, her fingers clutching the edge of her 94-grade exam until her knuckles turned white.

It was always like this. It had always been this constant, exhausting dance of insults and intellectual jabs. It seemed like they were perpetually locked in a rivalry. She shoved her books into her bag, her mind already racing with the next comeback she should have thrown at him. He was arrogant, he was insufferable, and he was absolutely the most irritating person on this campus. But as she walked out into the crisp afternoon air, she couldn't ignore the way her skin felt like it was humming like a residual electricity left behind by his proximity. She hated Garrett Graham. She hated the way he dismissed Jackson, and the way he hovered, or the way he made her feel like she had to be perfect just to earn his attention. But as she rounded the corner and saw the hockey rink in the distance, she couldn't help but look for his black sedan in the parking lot.

It was a sick, twisted game they played, a cycle of antagonism that kept them both hyper-aware of each other’s every move. If she got an A, he had to get an A-plus. If she was seen at a study group, he had to crash it. If she laughed at a joke in class. There was this constant bickering between them, this back and forth they both seemed to enjoy(?) for some weird reason. And don't even get her started on how much he seemed to hate her boyfriend. And he never shied away from telling her that either. He knew what the touchy subjects were and how he could push her buttons so that he could get her to snap back.

The debates in the class were on a whole another level. The professors knew that it would be a great debate if they were placed in the opposing teams because they were both intelligent and competitive. It had even bordered on a screaming match once.

She tucked the exam into her bag, walking toward the football field where she knew Jackson would be practicing. She hoped the sight of the football team would settle her nerves.

"He’s just a jerk," she whispered to herself, stepping onto the grass.

But even as she said it, she knew it wasn't that simple. Garrett Graham wasn't just a jerk. He was more like an obsession. And the worst part was that she had a sneaking suspicion that for him, the feeling was mutual.

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A month later, her world was flipped upside down, taking her with it. It all went down with a sickening chime on her phone that had divided her life into a before and after. Jackson had decided that if he couldn't have her, he would destroy her, after he was caught by her in bed with another girl. He had apologised to her over and over again but Y/N could not take him back. Not after three whole years of being each other's, not after the betrayal. Jackson was angry that she didn't take him back and hurled some curses at her before walking away. In Y/N’s mind, this was the worst thing that could happen to her, and she spent her weekend in her dorm with a tub of ice cream, wallowing in sadness. Until she got a message from Rori, her friend, on Sunday, that a private video of Y/N was leaked. Apparently someone had shared it in a group chat under a fake name. Y/N didn't even have to think who would have leaked it, because the only other person who had it was none other than her now-ex, Jackson. The video was private, a relic of a time she had been foolish enough to trust him. But now? Her privacy had been violated and she was treated like commodity. The video was shared in group chats and whispered about in lecture halls. It was plastered across the screens of strangers who didn't know anything about her.

Y/N could not handle the humiliation, she felt like she had nobody who could console her. She had stayed holed up in her dorm, the curtains drawn tight against a world that had suddenly turned predatory towards her. Every time her phone lit up with a notification, she flinched as though it struck her like lightning. She didn't dare check social media. She knew what was there, and she couldn't handle the slurs and the slut-shaming yet. Was this what she was to them? Was she nothing more than a scandal? A headline? Was that all she was worth?

The silence of her room was deafening. She spent her days staring at the ceiling, wondering how quickly "being the smart girl" turned into "being the girl in the video." Her friends, or at least the ones who claimed to be, had been hesitant and awkward. They didn't know how to look at her anymore, and truth be told, she didn't know how to look at herself. It felt like she had lost the thread of her own life. The exams, the history debates, the sharp, witty comebacks she used to fire at Garrett… they all felt like memories from a different lifetime. She wasn't an academic weapon anymore. She was just the girl who had been burned alive, and it felt like everyone was still watching the embers glow.

On Monday, after a whole week of being holed up in her room, she finally forced herself out. But it turned out there were people who were out to get her. She was booed and called names until she had to run to a washroom where she sobbed and sobbed, earning a few sympathetic looks from some of the girls. After spending more than half an hour in the washroom, waiting until she was certain no one was outside, she slipped out with her head bowed and the hood of her oversized sweatshirt pulled low. She walked straight to the library, finding a dark corner to hide. But as she sat there, staring at a page of text she couldn't comprehend, she eventually sensed a familiar presence approaching. She didn't need to look up to know it was Garrett. The scent of his signature cologne was unmistakable, cutting through the dusty smell of old books. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Of course. It had been a week, and he was the only one who hadn't taken a dig at her yet. The king of the jabs, the master of the insult. He was probably there to deliver the final blow. She braced herself, the tears she’d been holding back for seven days threatening to finally spill. She was ready for him to tear her apart. She kept her eyes fixed on the textbook in front of her, waiting for him to be done with whatever cruelty he was gonna throw at her. She was tired of everything. And when he stayed silent, she let out a shaky laugh, "Well?" she asked, her voice barely rising above a whisper. He didn't reply. She swallowed hard, the lump in her throat feeling like a stone. "Aren't you going to say anything? Isn't this the part where you tell me how pathetic I look? How I’ve finally managed to live down to your expectations?"

She finally looked up at him, bracing for the smirk. But it wasn't there. Garrett was standing over her, one hand hooked loosely around the strap of his backpack. His posture was rigid. And for the first time in the three years she’d been engaged in this war of attrition with him, he didn't look amused or like he was sizing up a challenge. But, he looked furious, like he wanted to burn the building down around them.

"Everyone else already had their turn," she continued, her voice trembling despite her best efforts. She gestured vaguely to the rest of the library, where she knew people were watching and waiting for her to break. "Might as well let you have yours. The captain of the hockey team wouldn't want to miss the main event, would he?"

His jaw tightened, a muscle pulsing in his cheek. "What?"

She let out a bitter, wet laugh. "Oh, come on, Graham. Drop the act. You don't have to pretend you're a decent person today. Just get it over with so I can go back to hiding."

"I'm not pretending anything," he bit out.

"Really?" she challenged, her eyes burning with unshed, angry tears. "Because you've spent three years finding new, creative ways to make my life difficult. Why stop now when I’m already at rock bottom? Isn't that the dream?"

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, the curse sharp enough to make her flinch.

His expression shifted instantly. He didn't soften, but it looked like his anger was replaced by something that resembled guilt.

Y/N looked away, unable to bear the intensity of his gaze. "I know what everyone is saying. I know what they think of me. I’m the punchline."

"Stop."

She blinked, startled by the sheer force behind that command. "What?"

"I said stop. I don't want to hear it." His voice wasn't loud, but it carried weight.

He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. The wood scraped against the floor.

"What are you doing?" she whispered.

"Sitting."

"No, I mean, why are you here? Did someone tell you I finally crawled out of my hole? Did you come to see the trainwreck for yourself?"

He looked at her. His eyes were dark and unreadable. It was true, though.He’d heard she was back on campus. Somebody had mentioned seeing her near the quad, and he had spent the last hour pacing, scouring the library until his chest felt like it was going to collapse.

"Go ahead," she challenged, her voice breaking. "Call me a slut. Isn't that what you're gonna say?"

His face went completely blank and it was terrifying. Y/N looked down at her desk, her eyes stinging. "That's what everyone else is doing."

He moved leaned forward, invading her personal space. His eyes were scanning her face, the way she was shaking like a leaf.

"Who called you that?" he asked.

"What?"

"Who? Give me names."

"Why would you care?"

"Because I asked," he growled.

"I don't know," she whispered, exhausted. "It doesn't matter."

He nodded, a single, sharp motion. But he kept his gaze locked on hers. "Have you eaten today?"

She was bewildered. Who is this Garrett?

"What?"

"Food. When was the last time you had a decent meal?"

"You came all the way here to play nutritionist?" she asked, a hysterical note entering her voice.

"You look like shit."

“Gee, thanks.” She muttered. It wasn't funny, but the absolute lack of pretense in his voice made it impossible to do anything else.

Garrett looked marginally relieved and his shoulders dropped a fraction at her reply.

He stood up, his gaze heavy. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"Cafeteria."

"No," she said, her tone final. "Absolutely not."

Garrett sighed, a sound of pure frustration. "Y/N."

He had never called her by her first name before, not once. It was always her surname, or sweetheart or genius.

"You need to eat," he said. "I'm not asking."

"Why?Why are you doing this?”

she asked, the question slipping out before she could catch it. Garrett looked away for a split second, his jaw working. When he looked back, he looked utterly miserable, but at the same time, entirely determined.

"We can talk about that later," he said. It wasn't a confession, but it was a promise. And as she looked at him, she felt relieved. In his presence, she somehow found solace. She stood up, her legs wobbly, and let him lead the way.

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The walk to the cafeteria with Garrett was surprisingly comfortable. It was bizarre because the boy who had spent three years turning Y/N’s life into a competitive sport was now walking beside her, carrying her backpack. He had just taken it from her shoulders without a word, and she’d been too exhausted by the last week, to even protest.

They were halfway down the corridor when a shout echoed off the lockers.

"Graham!"

Garrett groaned. A hockey teammate was jogging towards them.

"I'll be right back".

Y/N went to stop, her instinct to retreat kicking in. "No, it's fine. I'll be there in a minute," he interrupted, not breaking stride.

So she kept walking, her heart beating fast against her ribs. In the cafeteria were people laughing, eating, living lives that hadn't been shredded into pieces.

She kept her head down and joined the sandwich line. The girl behind the counter offered a sympathetic, tight-lipped smile. Y/N pretended she hadn't seen it. She just wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole. She paid for her sandwich, her hands trembling as she turned around, and that was when she heard it.

"Look who finally decided to show her face."

Her stomach dropped. It was Tyler, one of Jackson’s teammates, flanked by a group of football players who were watching her like vultures circling a carcass.

Tyler stood up, leaning against the table with a sneer. "You happy now, huh?"

She froze, her brow furrowing. "What?"

"You got him kicked off the team," he spat.

"Tyler what are y—"

"No, seriously," he laughed, a jagged, ugly sound. "You ruin his life and then come strolling in here like nothing happened? Like you’re the victim?"

Y/N’s throat tightened. She could feel tears glazing her eyes. "He ruined his own life."

Tyler’s nostrils flared, and he scoffed at her like she was a disgusting creature. "You're unbelievable. What did you expect, anyway? You send videos like that and then act shocked when people see them?"

A ripple of uncomfortable silence moved through the surrounding tables. Tyler leaned in, his voice dripping with venom. "God, you're such a—"

The rest of the sentence died in his throat as a hand snatched the front of his shirt hard. The sound of a chair clattering to the floor echoed like a gunshot. Y/N’s breath hitched. It was Garrett.

Tyler slammed back against the nearest wall and the cafeteria went silent.

Garrett’s voice was booming. "What the fuck did you just say?"

Tyler looked like he wanted to dissolve into the floorboards. "Graham—"

"What."

"I... I didn't know you were—"

"What. Did. You. Just. Say." He growled.

Y/N hadn't seen Garrett angry before. It was scary. Tyler’s bravado shattered, his face draining of color. "Sorry."

Garrett let out a humorless laugh. "Sorry?"

Tyler nodded frantically, his eyes wide. "Yeah, man. Sorry."

Garrett tightened his grip and pulled Tyler closer until they were eye-to-eye. "I told every single one of you not to say a fucking word to her."

Y/N blinked, the room spinning. He told them what?

"Didn't I?" Garrett prompted, his voice dangerously low.

"Y-yeah."

"And yet here we are."

"I'm sorry, man," Tyler squeaked.

"You do it again, and you'll wish Coach was the one dealing with you. Do you understand me?" Garrett whispered.

Tyler looked ready to pass out. "It won't happen again."

"Damn right it won't."

Garrett shoved him off, and Tyler stumbled backward, turning and practically sprinting out of the cafeteria. Nobody moved, everyone looked shocked to see the altercation. Garrett turned to the rest of the room, his eyes scanning the tables angrily. "What the fuck are you all looking at?"

The room collectively snapped back to attention. Conversations resumed, but they were hushed.

Garrett turned to Y/N, his expression shifting instantly. The rage vanished, replaced by concern.

"Come on."

He led her to a booth in the back, far from the prying eyes of the crowd. He sat across from her, his presence shielding her, but for a long moment, neither of them spoke.

"What was he talking about Jackson getting kicked off?" she finally whispered.

Garrett sighed and down at his hands, his jaw tightening. "I talked to their Coach."

Y/N felt a chill wash over her. "You got him kicked off the team?"

"I didn't get him kicked off," Garrett corrected, his voice hardening. "He leaked a private video. He—"

"Garrett—"

"He got himself kicked off, Y/N. He chose to be the kind of person who does that. That’s on him,” he said, looking up, his gaze intense.

Y/N looked away, the weight of the last week, the shame and humiliation crushing down on her again. She felt exposed and vulnerable.

Garrett’s hand moved across the table, his fingers grazing her wrist before he pulled back, as if afraid to overstep. "Don't do that, Y/N."

She looked up, startled. "What am I doing?"

"Please don't look at yourself like that."

The words made her realise that the wound was still raw. A single tear escaped her eyes, tracing a hot line down her cheek. "Why are you doing this?" she asked, her voice cracking. "We’ve been rivals for years. You’ve spent three years trying to get under my skin."

Garrett leaned back, looking uncomfortable. It was as if he were wrestling with his own internal monologue. "I never hated you."

"You sure had a funny way of showing that," she retorted, a ghost of a smile touched her lips despite the tears.

"Yeah," he admitted, his voice dropping into a rough, vulnerable register. "I'm sorry…I just... I didn't know how to talk to you. I didn't know how to bridge the gap."

He leaned forward, his focus absolute. "And about what that asshole did… What happened wasn't your fault. You don't deserve any of this."

It was the first time anyone had said those words to her. It was the first time someone had stripped away the judgment and just offered the truth. She nodded, unable to say anything because she was sure she would just break down if she opened her mouth to speak. And for the first time after that horrifying incident, Y/N felt like she had someone. Which was weird because it was none other than someone she was sure hated her guts.

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The next day was better. Nobody shouted things at her from across the hallways, though people stared at her occasionally. It was strange. And Y/N was happy that Hannah was there.

By lunchtime, Y/N found herself sitting across from Hannah in the cafeteria, who was finally back after spending the entire week in another town for a major singing competition. Hannah always had a soft spot for Y/N. She was Garrett’s best friend and Justin’s girlfriend. She looked at Y/N with a mix of fierce protectiveness and sorrow as she’d heard bits and pieces of the nightmare as soon as she’d stepped back onto campus.

For a while, the conversation stayed safe as they talked about classes and other stuff and for the first time in days, Y/N felt like she was actually breathing again. That was when Hannah made the mistake of getting too comfortable.

"Honestly, if Garrett hadn't stepped in so fast, it would've been so much worse.”

she said, tapping her fingernails against her water bottle. Y/N froze, the sandwich hovering halfway to her mouth. "What?"

Hannah’s eyes widened, the realization hitting her like a freight train. She bit her lip, looking everywhere but at Y/N.

"Oh, shit," Hannah breathed.

A sinking, heavy feeling settled deep in Y/N’s stomach. "What do you mean, if Garrett hadn't stepped in?"

"Nothing," Hannah deflected, reaching for her bag. "I just meant... Uhhh…you know. It’s a big campus."

Y/N set the sandwich down. Her voice was dangerously steady. "Hannah. Look at me."

Hannah looked like she wanted to be anywhere else.

"I thought he told you, Y/N."

"Told me what?"

Hannah sighed, a long, defeated sound. She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper that barely carried across the table. "After that video leaked... Garrett lost his mind."

Y/N was confused. "What?"

"I'm serious. I was out of town, but I heard the stories the second I got back. He went on a tear. He was going around to the fraternity presidents, the hockey captains, the football leads and everyone who holds any sway on this campus."

Y/N stared at her, her heart beating out of her body, "What for?"

Hannah looked at her, her expression unreadable. "To shut everyone up. He told them if he caught a single person sharing that video or even mentioning your name in a derogatory way, they’d be answering to him personally. And he wasn't exactly asking nicely."

"He did all that? Why?"

Hannah laughed, a short, sharp sound. "Are you kidding? Because he’s been obsessed with you since like forever, Y/N."

Y/N’s breath hitched. "What?"

Hannah sat back, her eyes wide as she realised what she’d just let slip. "Oh my God."

"What?" Y/N pressed, leaning over the table.

"You don't know."

"Know what, Hannah?"

Hannah slapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes darting around to see if anyone was listening. She shook her head violently. "Nope. Absolutely not."

"Hannah, don't you dare do this to me. Tell me."

"I am not touching that with a ten-foot pole," Hannah said, grabbing her tray and standing up with a panicked energy. "Garrett would actually end my life if he knew I spilled that."

"Spilled what? Hannah!"

Hannah was already walking away, pausing only to look back with a smirk that was entirely too pleased with herself. "Talk to Garrett, Y/N. Talk. To. Garrett."

And just like that, she was gone, leaving Y/N sitting alone in the middle of the crowded cafeteria, her head spinning with a question she was terrified to ask.

Y/N stared at the spot where Hannah had disappeared long after she was gone.

The cafeteria buzzed around her, but it all sounded muted, like she was submerged in deep water because she could only think about what Hannah said a few minutes ago.

“Because he’s been obsessed with you since like forever, Y/N.”

No. That wasn't possible, there's absolutely no way. Garrett Graham didn't have the capacity for obsession. If anything, he was a creature of conflict, a walking, talking thorn in her side who had spent three years turning every interaction they had into a blood sport. He was infuriating and arrogant. And yet, as she sat there, the memories began to play in her head like a reel of film. Garrett showing up at her sophomore study group, despite not being invited, just to argue about her notes, or him appearing out of thin air every time she mentioned a competition or a presentation, his eyes glinting with intensity. Garrett hating on Jackson all the time like he had done something personally to him. Garrett making jabs on Jackson any moment he gets. Maybe Hannah wasn't completely insane? Which meant Garrett might be? She needed answers, and there was only one person on this entire campus who could give them to her.

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The history section of the library was a ghost town. Most students favored the lower floors because they were the ones with better lighting and easier access to the vending machines. But it appeared that Garrett preferred the silence of the stacks. She found him in his usual corner. He was reading through a heavy textbook that lay open in front of him; and there was a half-finished coffee cooling beside his laptop.

For a moment, she just stood in the shadows of the shelves, watching him. She was trying to see him differently, just to see if she could find the man Hannah had described. The man who had spent a week playing bodyguard when she wasn't even looking; the man who had apparently threatened half the fraternity system on her behalf.

Garrett must have felt the weight of her gaze because he looked up after a few seconds. The second his eyes locked with hers, he went still.

"Hey," he said.

Y/N crossed her arms, leaning against the bookshelf. "We need to talk."

His expression shifted instantly. "What did I do now?"

The familiar response almost made her smile. "You tell me."

Garrett slowly closed his textbook, his fingers lingering on the cover. "I don't like that tone."

"Well, too bad."

His eyes narrowed, flicking over her face. "That bad, huh?"

Y/N pulled out the chair across from him and sat down.

"Hannah told me something," she said, cutting straight to the marrow.

The color visibly drained from Garrett’s face. He let out a sharp breath. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Despite the tension, Y/N let out an incredulous laugh. "That's your response?"

"Because Hannah has the survival instincts of a goldfish," he muttered, raking a hand through his hair.

"So it's true?"

Garrett groaned and leaned back, his chair creaking. "What did she tell you?"

He dragged a hand down his face, and Y/N suddenly realised that Garrett was nervous. His leg was bouncing under the table.

"You went around threatening people," she pushed.

"I wasn't threatening people," he countered defensively.

"You literally intimidated Tyler yesterday."

"That was different because he deserved it."

She stared at him, daring him to continue. Garrett stared back, raising a brow. Finally, he sagged, his shoulders losing their rigid tension. "Fine."

"So you did it?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Garrett looked away instantly, his gaze fixing on a point on the wall behind her.

"Hannah also said something else," she whispered.

His entire body went rigid. "Y/N." The warning in his voice was thick, but it only fueled her resolve.

"What did she mean?"

Garrett rubbed the back of his neck, clearly wishing he could be anywhere else on the planet. "She talks too much."

"What did she mean, Garrett?"

Garrett suddenly became fascinated by the steam rising from his coffee.

"Garrett."

"Y/N, don't ask questions you already know the answer to."

"Hannah said you’ve been obsessed with me."

Garrett closed his eyes slowly.

"Oh my God," the words slipped out before she could catch them.

He opened his eyes, and despite the gravity of the moment, he looked genuinely, deeply offended. "Well, obsessed is a strong word."

Y/N let out a disbelieving, jagged laugh. "You threatened half the campus, Garrett!"

"Okay, fine," he conceded, his voice dropping.

A genuine laugh escaped her. Garrett’s expression softened.

Garrett looked down at the table, traced the lines on the wood with his finger and then looked back up, his eyes twinkling .

"I like you," he said.

The words settled between them and she could sense the sincerity of his words.

"You like me," she repeated, trying to wrap her mind around the reality of it.

"Yeah."

"For how long?"

His wince was immediate, a physical reaction to the question. Y/N’s eyes widened and the realisation hit her like a cold bucket of water being sloshed down her head.

"No."

"Yeah."

"Garrett—"

"I know," he interrupted, his voice thick.

She sat in stunned disbelief. Three years. Three whole years of wasted time, and of battles fought in the wrong war. Every debate, every insult, every ridiculous, manufactured competition, everything they had between them... it hadn't been about winning. It had been about proximity. He just wanted to be close to her this whole time?

"Oh my God," she breathed again.

"That seems to be your favorite phrase today," he quipped, though the bite was missing.

"I’m just... I’m trying to catch up."

Garrett watched her, his expression a strange mixture of hope and fear.

After a few moments, she asked him

"So, what happens now?"

Garrett leaned back, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. "I don't know, I mean... nothing has to happen. I didn't tell you because I expected something. Honestly?" He offered a small, crooked smile. "Right now, I just want my rival back."

A strange happy feeling bloomed in her chest.

"You haven't argued with me properly in weeks," he added, gesturing toward her textbook.

A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. But his smile faded suddenly, his voice dropping an octave as he moved into the territory that actually mattered. "What happened to you was awful, Y/N. And I know you're hurting."

He tapped his fingers nervously against the table.

"But if you'll let me, I'd like to help. Maybe remind you to get food occasionally. Or stop you from hiding. Help you remember who you were before all this," he said, his voice careful.

Y/N felt her throat tighten.

"And when you're okay again, if you'll have me, I'd like a chance. But if you don't..." He shrugged, though his gaze remained fixed on hers. "We'll stay friends? Or maybe academic rivals? I'm sure you'll keep trying to beat me academically."

"I do beat you academically," she shot back, a spark of her old fire returning.

"Delusional."

"And you'll continue being obnoxious."

"There she is, the Y/N I missed."

For the first time in weeks, Y/N laughed.

“I think I'd like that.”

Thank you so much for reading, lovelies. Feedback is very much appreciated. If you have any requests, feel free to send them in! And if you want me to tag you, please lmk.