Nene's Archive

She feels Garrett go still behind her. Then his hand tightens at her stomach, protective before conscious, which would be cuter if her skull didn’t feel stuffed with wool. “Why?”

“Tuck burnt his hand.”

There’s a pause. Then Tucker, sounding deeply wounded and also very awake, adds, “It’s not that bad.”

Logan says, “It looks like a fucked-up marshmallow.”

“It does not.”

“It kind of does, dude.”

Garrett exhales so hard it moves the hair near her cheek. “Jesus Christ.” He lifts his head from the pillow, voice wrecked with sleep. “Go to the bathroom and run it under cool water.”

“We did,” Logan says.

“For how long?”

Another pause. A bad one. She opens one eye. 

Garrett says, flatly, “You ran it under water for twelve seconds, didn’t you?”

Tucker mutters, “It was cold.”

She sighs into the pillow, then pushes herself upright with the grim determination of a woman who’s been summoned by poor first aid. The room tilts gently around her. Garrett’s hoodie hangs off one shoulder, huge and soft and smelling like him, and her hair is probably doing something upsetting. 

She blinks at the door. “Come in.”

Garrett turns his head to look at her, curls smashed on one side, face soft and grumpy and faintly amazed. “Baby, you don’t have to–”

“They’re going to put butter on it if we leave them alone.”

The door opens before Garrett can argue, and Logan appears first, wide-eyed and apologetic in sweatpants and a t-shirt that’s inside out. Tucker stands behind him, cradling one hand to his chest, looking both embarrassed and betrayed by the universe.

She pats the edge of the bed. “Sit.”

Tucker sits immediately.

Garrett pushes himself up against the headboard beside her, still half under the sheets, watching as she reaches for Tucker’s wrist.

Her fingers are warm and sleepy, but her voice changes, smoothing out around the edges. “What did you burn it on?”

“Pan handle,” Tucker says. “Dean made grilled cheese.”

She gives him a look. “At two in the morning?”

Logan nods gravely. “Morale was low.”

“Dean’s not allowed to operate heat sources unsupervised.” She turns Tucker’s palm toward the lamp Garrett’s clicked on, squinting through the yellow light. The burn’s red across the base of his fingers, angry but not blistered in the way that makes her stomach drop. “Okay. Not horrific. Painful, though.”

“Thank you,” Tucker says, with feeling. “I said that.”

“You said you were dying,” Logan says.

“I said I could die.”

“Logan,” she says, without looking up, “bathroom. Gauze, if there is any. Non-stick dressing please, I know you have some. No cotton balls. No mystery ointments. No hydrogen peroxide.”

Logan salutes, then immediately points at her. “See, this is why you’re the best.”

“I’m half-asleep and underqualified.”

“Still top three medical professionals I know.”

“You know one.”

He disappears, and she huffs a small laugh, pressing lightly around the burn while Tucker winces. Garrett watches the whole thing from beside her, quiet now. 

He watches the way Tucker relaxes because she tells him what she’s doing before she does it. Watches her pull the sleeve of his hoodie down over her own hand when she gets cold and still keep Tucker’s wrist balanced carefully in her palm. Watches her yawn halfway through explaining swelling and still somehow sound like someone worth listening to.

It does something awful to him. Softens him right through the ribs.

Logan returns with gauze, medical tape, and a packet of condoms. She stares at the pile in his hands. Logan looks down. “I panicked.”

Garrett drops his head back against the headboard and laughs once, low and helpless. Tucker, even injured, manages to say, “For my burn, man?”

“I grabbed everything white and rectangular!”

She presses her lips together, fighting a smile badly enough that Garrett sees the exact second she loses. “Okay. Thank you for your broad-spectrum approach.” She takes the gauze and tape, wraps Tucker’s hand loosely, then taps his wrist. “Keep it clean. Cool compress if it hurts. Don’t pop anything if it blisters. If it gets worse, red streaks, swelling, pus, fever, actual badness, you get it checked. Properly. Not by me in Garrett’s bed while I’m wearing one sock.”

Tucker looks at her like she’s hung the moon. “You’re incredible.”

“She is,” Logan says, immediately.

Garrett says nothing, because the words sit too big in his mouth.

She just waves them off, already sinking back against the pillows. “Go away before I start charging.”

Tucker stands, holding his wrapped hand with reverence. “Thanks, seriously.”

“Stop touching hot things.”

“No promises.”

Logan backs toward the door. “Night, Mom.”

Garrett lifts his head. “Do not call her that.”

She snorts, half under the blankets again. “Goodnight, children.”

The door shuts behind them, finally, and the room folds quiet again. Garrett turns the lamp off, but he doesn’t lie down straight away. He just looks at her in the dark, at the messy shape of her in his hoodie, already burrowing back into his pillow like she didn’t just sit up half-dead and make his entire chest feel too small.

“What?” she mumbles.

“Nothing.”

“That’s a bad nothing.”

He slides down beside her and pulls her back into him, careful and warm, mouth pressing into the back of her shoulder through his hoodie. “Good nothing.”

She hums, too tired to fight him. “Your friends are idiots.”

“Yeah,” Garrett murmurs, smiling against her skin. His hand settles over her stomach again, thumb moving once, slow and stupidly fond. “They love you.”

She’s quiet long enough that he thinks she’s fallen asleep. Then, barely there, “Mm. I’m very loveable.”

His chest aches.

“Yeah,” he says softly, into the dark. “You are.”

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.

She dragged her highlighter across a sentence, slow and neat, and added, “I’ve been waiting for this. You’ve been tapping your foot for, like, twenty minutes.”

Across the room, Garrett gave a short, breathy laugh, the kind that sounded like it’d been punched out of him. When she glanced over, he was still facing his desk, one elbow planted beside his textbook, pen caught between his fingers, the end of it pressed lightly against his mouth. 

His hair was a mess from where he’d clearly been dragging his hands through it, dark curls pushed up and falling back down again, and he looked annoyingly good in an old Briar hockey hoodie and sweats, which was rude of him. Deeply unnecessary.

“Huh,” he said, and his mouth twitched like he was trying for normal and missing by a mile. “Yeah. Okay. Uh.”

She lowered the highlighter. “Uh-oh.”

“No, it’s not–” He turned in his chair halfway, then stopped, then turned properly, knees spreading a little as he leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs. “Can I ask you something?”

“Clearly not easily, but sure.”

His eyes flicked to hers, amused despite whatever panic was happening under his skin. “You’re a real comfort, you know that?”

“I try to keep you humble.”

“Impossible. I’m beloved.”

“You’re tolerated.”

“I’m adored.”

“You’re on thin ice.”

That got the real smile out of him for half a second, bright and quick and Garrett all over, and then it slipped again. He rubbed a hand over his jaw, glanced at the wall, at his desk, at the floor, anywhere but her.

“So,” he started, then stopped.

She watched him for a second longer than she meant to. “Garrett.”

“Yeah, okay.” He exhaled, then looked at her properly. “You’ve hooked up with girls before, right? Like– you’re, like, bi?”

Her eyebrows lifted.

Garrett immediately winced. “Jesus. Not like that. I mean– fuck. Sorry. That came out–”

“Why’re you being weird?”

“I’m not being weird.”

“You just asked me if I’ve hooked up with girls like you were– like, a dad in a nineties sitcom who found a rainbow sticker on his daughter’s laptop.”

He pointed at her with the pen, relief breaking through his embarrassment for one tiny second. “Okay, first of all, oddly specific.”

“And accurate.”

“And second of all, I’m trying to be respectful.”

“You’re doing it with the energy of someone defusing a bomb.”

“Because you’re terrifying.”

She snorted, leaning back against his pillows. “You’re six-two and built like a refrigerator.”

“Six-three on skates.”

“Just proved my point.”

“I’m just saying.” He shifted again, then groaned under his breath, dragging both hands through his hair until it stuck up worse. “Okay. I’m not asking because– I mean, it’s not a weird fetish thing, alright? I just… I have something.”

“A rash?”

He gave her a flat look. “Do not make me regret this.”

“Too late. You’re already sweating.”

His mouth opened, then closed, and despite herself she softened. Because Garrett could be a lot of things – cocky, loud, insufferably pleased with himself when he got under her skin – but this wasn’t him trying to be cute. This was him genuinely stumbling over himself, which happened so rarely that it made something in her chest sit up and pay attention.

She set the highlighter down on her notebook. “Okay. Serious face. What’s going on?”

Garrett stared at her for a beat, like he was checking if she meant it, and then his shoulders dropped just a little. “Someone asked me to do something.”

“Someone?”

“Yeah.”

His room hummed around them in the way his room always did when the house was actually quiet for once – the heater ticking somewhere near the floor, the muffled thump of music from downstairs, the occasional burst of laughter through the walls. His desk lamp threw a warm stripe across one side of his face, catching on the curve of his cheekbone and the edge of his mouth. 

Her stomach dipped before she knew why. “Hannah?” she asked.

He looked at her fast. Too fast. Then nodded, then immediately shook his head, which was so deeply unhelpful that she blinked at him.

“Garrett.”

“It’s not–” He swallowed, thumb rubbing at the side of his pen. “It’s not Hannah. It’s someone important to me. To… to Hannah. Sort of. Not Hannah.”

She stared at him. “That answered exactly zero questions.”

“I know.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No.”

“Is someone else in trouble?”

“No.”

“Is this a hockey thing?”

“What? No.”

“Is it illegal?”

“No.”

“Is it stupid?”

He paused.

She pointed at him. “There it is.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“Garrett.”

He dropped his head for a second, huffing a laugh into his hands, and when he looked back up his ears were a little pink. “She asked me to… help her with something. Tonight. And I said yes, because I wanted to, and because she trusts me, and because I–” His jaw tightened, like the words had gotten too close to something he didn’t want to put on the desk between them. “I don’t know if I’m the right person for it.”

She stared at him for another second, then sat up straighter on the bed. “Is Hannah a virgin? Is that what this is?”

“Not– No, don’t say it like that.”

“You’re the one having a crisis in front of me!”

“I am not having a crisis.”

“You asked me if I’ve hooked up with girls and then started talking in riddles about doing a thing tonight. You’re absolutely having a crisis.”

His mouth twitched again, but it didn’t last. “I don’t want to fuck it up.”

The joke sitting ready on her tongue went quiet. She looked at him then, really looked, at the way his knee had gone still but his fingers hadn’t, turning the pen over and over until the plastic clicked softly against his knuckle. 

Garrett Graham, captain of the Briar men’s hockey team, professional-level flirt, human ego with good hair, sitting in his bedroom like he’d been handed something breakable and was terrified of dropping it.

Her voice came out gentler. “Garrett.” He glanced up. “If she asked you, she wants it to be you.”

“I know.”

“And if she wants it to be you, then that matters more than you having a perfect script.”

“I know that too.” His eyes dropped again. “But… I need to make sure she comes.”

A laugh burst out of her before she could stop it.

Garrett’s head snapped up. “Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“You’re absolutely laughing at me! She wants… like, there’s… things.”

“Babe. Do all the things. Everything. Do them all.”

His gaze sharpened at the word babe in a way it really had no business doing, but then he was nodding, focused. “I know. I know that. I just–”

“You’ve made girls come before, right?” she interrupted, narrowing her eyes. “Please say yes.”

Garrett scoffed so quickly it almost sounded offended. “Obviously yes.”

“Okay.”

“Yes, of course I have.”

“Great.”

“I’m good at sex. Great, actually. Really great.”

“I didn’t ask for your fucking résumé.”

“I’m just clarifying.”

“Consider it clarified.”

He leaned back in the chair, but the tension didn’t leave him. If anything, it settled lower, somewhere under his ribs. “This is different.”

It wasn’t like she had feelings for Garrett. That would be stupid. Impractical. A terrible use of her time. Garrett was her friend, and he was gorgeous in the kind of way people wrote angry diary entries about.

She could sit on his bed in his hoodie-scented room and listen to him talk about making another girl come without doing anything insane like feeling it under her sternum.

Except then he looked at her like that. Open and anxious and stupidly sincere, his usual smirk nowhere in sight, and something inside her gave a tiny, treacherous twist.

“Okay,” she said, because her voice needed to be normal. “Well. First thing: if it’s her first time, she might not come.”

Garrett shook his head immediately. “Not an option.”

She blinked.

Garrett’s brows pulled together a fraction. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

She looked down at the notes in her lap, at the little neon smear where her highlighter had bled too hard into the paper. “No, it’s just. Respect.”

His face softened, but he didn’t push. That was another thing people missed about Garrett because he was so loud in every obvious way. He knew when not to shove his way into a sore spot. He’d hover near it, sure, maybe make some dumb joke to give you an exit, but he didn’t go digging unless you handed him the shovel.

“She trusts you,” she said eventually. “That’s the part you don’t want to mess up.”

“Yeah,” he said, quiet.

“And you’re nervous because you care.”

“Gross.”

“Deeply embarrassing for you.”

“I know. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, I’m telling everyone.”

He pointed the pen at her again, but his mouth was softer now. “I’ll deny it.”

“They’ll believe me.”

“Yeah, probably.”

She breathed out a laugh and dragged one knee up, resting her chin on it for a second. “Okay. So what do you actually need from me? Like, a pep talk? Anatomy review? Diagrams? Because I’m very good with diagrams.”

His eyes flicked over her face, searching. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Well, I know the basics.”

“Comforting.”

“I know more than the basics,” he corrected, offended again. “I just don’t know if I know enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“To do it right.”

She let the words hang there. He looked so genuinely stressed that her mouth opened before her common sense could tackle it to the ground. “I can teach you.”

Garrett froze, like, actually froze. His whole body went still except for one blink.

She heard herself say it, and then immediately felt heat crawl up the back of her neck. She shifted against the pillows, trying for casual and landing somewhere closer to reckless.

“I mean,” she added, because silence had started gathering in the corners, “if you’re that nervous.”

His voice came out careful. “Teach me.”

She gave him a look, even though her pulse had started doing something humiliating in her throat. “Garrett.”

His eyes dropped for a second, just to her mouth, maybe her shoulder, the bare skin of her thigh where her shorts had ridden up beneath the hem of her oversized sweatshirt. Then back to her eyes, fast enough that if she didn’t know him as well as she did, she might’ve missed it.

But she did know him. Which was the problem.

“You mean,” he said slowly, “like…”

“Go down on me. Finger me. Whatever.” She shrugged, too loose, too casual, like she couldn’t feel every inch of her body suddenly becoming extremely aware of the bed under her, the air on her legs, Garrett sitting three feet away and looking at her like she’d just handed him a loaded gun. “I’ll give you pointers. Tell you what’s good and what’s not. I’ll be honest. You know I will.”

Garrett stared.

She lifted both brows. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing face.”

“I’m just trying to figure out if you’re serious.”

“I am.”

His gaze moved over her again, more restrained this time, like he was trying very hard not to make it gross. That somehow made it worse. Hotter. The fact that he wasn’t leering, wasn’t immediately turning it into a joke, wasn’t giving her the full Garrett Graham grin and some line about how lucky she was. 

He just looked startled and a little blown open, his fingers gone still around the pen.

“Isn’t that weird?” he asked.

She swallowed. “Only if you make it weird.”

“I don’t want to make it weird.”

“Then don’t.”

“That easy?”

“Probably not,” she admitted.

He let out a quiet laugh, low and disbelieving, his head dipping as he rubbed at the back of his neck. When he looked up again, some of the panic had changed shape. It hadn’t left, but there was something else there now. Something warm and assessing, tucked carefully behind the concern.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I know.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“No, I mean–” He sat forward again, and this time his voice had that Garrett steadiness to it, the one he used on the ice, with the guys, when he’d decided something mattered. “I don’t want you offering because you feel bad for me or because you think you have to help.”

She huffed. “I don’t do pity orgasms, Graham.”

His mouth curved despite himself. “Good to know.”

“And I definitely don’t do homework I don’t want to do.”

“This is homework now?”

“Fieldwork.”

“Right. Academic.”

“Very.”

He looked at her for a long second, and the room seemed to shrink around the two of them. The textbook on his desk. Her notes sliding half-forgotten toward the rumpled blanket. The faint laundry smell of his sheets, detergent and boy and something clean underneath. 

Garrett’s face was still soft with the leftover nerves from before, but his eyes had changed. Darker, maybe, or just more focused. He wasn’t touching her. He wasn’t even close. But the space between them felt suddenly crowded.

“You’d really help?” he asked, and there was enough sincerity in it that her stomach dipped again.

“Yeah,” she said, shrugging. “Course.”

His shoulders loosened. She saw the relief move through him. Saw the way his grip eased around the pen. Saw the way his mouth parted slightly before he caught himself and nodded once.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” He set the pen down on the desk with an unnecessary amount of care, like if he moved too fast the whole thing might crack. “But we’re setting rules.”

She blinked, then laughed. “You’re setting rules?”

“Damn right I am.”

“Captain Graham has entered the chat.”

“Laugh all you want.” He stood, and that was unfair too, the shift from anxious Garrett in a desk chair to Garrett unfolding to his full height, hoodie pulling across his shoulders, sweats hanging low on his hips. “But if we’re doing this, we’re not doing some awkward, half-assed, ‘haha this is fine’ thing where neither of us says what we mean and then we pretend nothing happened.”

Her throat went a little dry. He noticed that too, the bastard.

“Rules,” she said, because it was the only word she trusted.

“One,” he said, holding up a finger, “you can stop it at any point. For any reason. You don’t have to make it cute or explain it.”

She nodded, all the teasing slipping just slightly. “Same for you.”

“Two,” he continued, “you actually tell me if something’s good or bad. No lying to protect my ego.”

“That’ll be devastating for you.”

“My ego is very strong.”

“It’s clinically concerning.”

“Three.” His voice dipped a little. “If it gets weird, we stop.”

She looked up at him from the bed. “And if it doesn’t?”

Garrett’s eyes held hers. The silence stretched so thin she could feel it against her skin.

“Well,” he said, quieter, “you teach me.”

For one second, neither of them moved.

Then Garrett crossed the room. He moved carefully, in that quiet, deliberate way he got sometimes when the noise dropped out of him and all that golden-boy bravado narrowed into focus.

The desk chair rolled back a little behind him, one wheel catching on the edge of the rug, and she watched him come toward the bed with her pulse already starting to act like an idiot in her throat.

He stopped in front of her, close enough that his knees brushed the side of the mattress, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to keep looking at him.

For a second, he just stood there, eyes moving over her face like he was checking for something. A flinch. A joke she was swallowing. Some little sign that she’d changed her mind and was too stubborn to say it.

She hated, a little bit, how much she liked that he looked.

Garrett bent down, one hand bracing beside her hip on the bed, the mattress dipping under his palm. His other hand lifted slowly, and his knuckles skimmed the side of her jaw before he tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear.

It was such a small touch. Ridiculously small, actually, considering the conversation they’d just had. But it went through her in a clean, warm line anyway, settling somewhere low in her stomach before she could pretend it hadn’t.

“This okay?” he asked. His voice was quiet. Rougher than it had been before.

She smiled, because if she didn’t smile, she might do something really embarrassing, like stare at his mouth and forget how to breathe. “Mhm.”

Garrett nodded once, like he was filing that away. “Good.”

Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to her shoulder, over the soft worn fabric of her shirt, his lips warm and careful through it. He paused, his breath barely moving, and she felt her fingers curl into the blanket underneath her.

“Like this?” he asked, mouth still close enough that the words brushed her skin.

She nodded, a little too quickly. “Yeah.”

His smile touched her shoulder more than it reached his face. “Okay.”

The next kiss landed higher, at the curve where her shoulder became her neck, and she felt that one in her knees even though she was sitting down.

Garrett’s hand came to her waist, warm through her shirt, steady enough that it made her feel weirdly taken care of in a situation that should’ve felt like a terrible idea.

He kissed again, just under her ear, slower this time, and her breath caught before she could make it sound casual.

“This?” he murmured.

She swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Garrett.”

“What?” he asked, and the bastard had the audacity to sound amused now, like he could feel her starting to unravel by millimetres and was getting just enough confidence from it to become himself again.

She turned her head, trying to glare, but his mouth was right there. Too close. His eyes dropped to hers, and the air between them shifted so quickly it was almost embarrassing.

One second he was kissing up her neck like a careful student. The next, she was looking at his mouth and realising there was no way she was going to survive this if he kept asking permission in that voice.

“You’re supposed to be learning,” she said, though it came out softer than she meant.

“I am learning.”

“You’re smirking.”

“I’m absorbing information.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Probably,” he said, and then his mouth brushed the corner of hers. Barely there. More a question than a kiss. “This?”

She answered by kissing him properly. And the stupid thing was, it wasn’t as weird as it should’ve been.

She’d expected weird. She’d braced for it, actually. Some awkward, clumsy second where her brain would catch up to the fact that this was Garrett, Garrett from her classes and the dining hall and late-night study sessions and terrible jokes and arguments over stolen fries, Garrett who called her out when she was lying and remembered exactly how she took her coffee and had never once looked at her like a practice run until now.

She’d expected the friendship to press against the kiss like a bruise. But it didn’t, it just felt really fucking good.

His mouth was soft. Softer than seemed fair, considering how much of him was not soft at all. He kissed with this controlled kind of heat, careful for all of two seconds before she made a small sound against him and his hand tightened at her waist. Then the carefulness shifted.

She shifted up onto her knees before she thought too hard about it, arms sliding around his neck, and Garrett made a quiet sound like the movement had hit him somewhere low.

He caught her by the hips and pulled her closer, easy, like she weighed nothing, his mouth staying on hers while his hand spread across her lower back.

The front of his hoodie brushed against her chest, warm and soft, and she kissed him harder because that was who she was now, a person who kissed Garrett Graham on his bed and thought, distantly, oh no.

He lifted her slightly, just enough to move her higher on the mattress, and she grinned into his mouth because it was so Garrett. Casual strength. No announcement. No big dramatic move. Only his hands on her like he knew exactly where to put them, like he’d done this a hundred times and still somehow looked pleased when she laughed against his lips.

He pulled back a fraction, smile catching at his mouth. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s a very suspicious nothing.”

“You just–” She shook her head, still smiling, breath already thinner than she wanted it to be. “You’re very jock-coded.”

Garrett blinked. Then laughed, low and warm, and used the hand on her back to ease her down onto the bed. “Jock-coded?”

“Shut up.”

“No, no, I wanna hear more.”

“I said shut up.”

“Mean,” he murmured, and kissed her again as he lowered her onto her back.

The mattress gave beneath her. Garrett settled between her legs with a careful kind of weight, one forearm planted beside her head, the other hand still at her waist like he wasn’t entirely ready to stop holding her there.

It should’ve been too much. The closeness. The heat of him. The stupid, intimate reality of Garrett’s body fitted against hers, his thigh nudging between hers, his mouth moving over her mouth like he had nowhere else to be.

Instead, she arched up before she could stop herself, and Garrett’s hips shifted down against hers. The sound she made was small and immediate.

Garrett froze for half a second, pulling back just enough to see her face. “This good?”

His voice had gone rough again. His eyes were darker, hair falling messily over his forehead, mouth a little swollen from kissing her. He looked like trouble. Worse, he looked like he was trying very hard not to be trouble unless she asked him to.

She nodded, breathless enough that it made her want to laugh at herself. “Yeah. Really good. Just…” She swallowed, then tipped her head back a little, exposing her neck because subtlety had left the building. “Kiss my neck more?”

Garrett nodded immediately, serious as anything. “Neck. Yep.”

It made her laugh, just a little, because he sounded like he’d been given a note in practice and was determined to execute it perfectly. Then his mouth found the underside of her jaw and the laugh thinned into a sigh.

He kissed down slowly, following the line from her jaw to the side of her throat, testing a spot beneath her ear before moving lower. She felt the brush of his stubble, the warmth of his breath, the soft pressure of his mouth turning less polite when she tilted into it.

Her hands slid into his hair without permission from her brain, fingers curling into the dark messy strands, and Garrett hummed softly against her skin like the touch had done something to him.

“Yeah,” she whispered, eyes fluttering shut. “There.”

He nodded against her neck, and she felt that too, the tiny movement of acknowledgement, his mouth staying exactly where she’d told him to stay.

It was unfair, the listening. The way he didn’t make her repeat herself. The way he didn’t get impatient or try to leap ahead because he’d decided he knew better. He just learned her.

Her fingers found the hem of his t-shirt under the hoodie, tugging, and Garrett pulled back enough to look at her.

“This part of the lesson?” he asked.

“Advanced module.”

“Good. I’m ready.”

She tugged harder at the fabric. “Take it off, Graham.”

His smile flashed, quick and boyish and far too pleased, but he listened. He sat back enough to strip the hoodie and t-shirt off in one movement, fabric dragging up over his shoulders, curls getting even messier when it came free. For a second she forgot to be clever.

Because, honestly. Fuck him.

He was all warm skin and solid muscle and the kind of athlete’s body that made a person feel briefly wronged by genetics. Broad shoulders, strong chest, the faintest flush across his collarbones from all the kissing, and that stupidly satisfied tilt to his mouth when he caught her looking.

“Pointer?” he asked.

She stared at him.

Garrett’s grin got worse. “No notes?”

“Don’t be annoying.”

“That’s not a note. That’s a personality critique.”

She pushed herself up before he could say anything else, knees bracketing his thigh, and kissed the centre of his chest just because she wanted to wipe the smugness off his face.

It worked. Sort of. His breath caught, and she felt the shift in him, the little tightening under her mouth when she kissed higher, over the warm plane of his chest, up to his collarbone, then finally back to his mouth.

He caught her jaw gently as he kissed her, thumb brushing the corner of her lips. When he pulled back, he didn’t go far.

“This not weird?” he asked.

There was enough vulnerability tucked under it that her chest squeezed.

She shook her head. “Not for me.”

Garrett looked at her for a beat, then nodded, like that mattered. Like her answer had settled something in him.

“Me neither,” he said.

And maybe that should’ve made things messier. Maybe the admission should’ve landed too heavy between them, should’ve made her sit up and go, okay, actually, let’s unpack that before your mouth is anywhere else.

But Garrett kissed her again before either of them could ruin it by thinking too loudly, and the moment folded back into heat and laughter and the shifting weight of his body over hers.

He started kissing down her neck again, then lower, over her collarbone, his hands working carefully at the hem of her shirt. He paused before lifting it, eyes flicking up.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

He pulled it up slowly, like he was giving her a dozen chances to change her mind, and then his mouth followed the new skin he uncovered. Her chest, her ribs, the soft place beneath her breastbone where her breath kept catching.

He kissed like he had time. Like this was the point, not the part before the point. It made her body go warm and loose underneath him in increments, not a sudden spark so much as a slow, low spreading.

“Spend more time building up to it,” she murmured, trying to keep her voice steady and not entirely succeeding. “Like… don’t rush straight down. Kiss my neck and my boobs and my stomach.”

Garrett lifted his head just enough to look at her, eyes bright with concentration and something hotter underneath. “Okay.”

“And don’t look so proud of yourself when I say something works.”

His mouth twitched. “That one’s gonna be harder.”

“Garrett.”

“Right. Humble. Got it.”

He went back to her neck first, because she’d told him to, and somehow that made the whole thing worse. Better. Worse because he was listening and she liked it too much; better because his mouth found the places she’d already given away and stayed there until her fingers tightened in his hair again.

Then he moved lower, kissing over her chest with a careful, reverent sort of attention that made her stare at the ceiling for a second like it might offer assistance. It did not. It just sat there while Garrett Graham learned her body with his mouth.

By the time he kissed over her stomach, she was breathing harder, one hand still in his hair, the other pressed loosely to the pillow beside her head. Garrett’s hands slid over her sides, thumbs moving in slow arcs against her skin.

He kissed near her hip, then paused, and she could feel the question in the pause before he even looked up.

“And my–” She stopped, then huffed at herself because ridiculous, ridiculous, she had literally offered this, and now she was shy because he was looking at her like that. “My thighs too.”

Garrett’s expression changed. The smallest curve of his mouth, a little heat flickering through the carefulness.

“My thighs too,” he repeated softly.

“Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m just repeating instructions.”

“You’re enjoying the instructions.”

“Yeah,” he said, and the honesty of it made her stomach flip. “I am.”

He kissed the outside of her thigh first, over the edge of her shorts, then lower, then inside, slow enough that she had time to anticipate every next touch and hate him for it.

His mouth was warm against her skin, his hair brushing her leg, and when he used his teeth very lightly, more tease than bite, she made a sound that had his hand tightening around her hip.

He looked up at her from between her thighs, and Jesus Christ, that was not a sustainable image for her long-term friendship with this man.

“Do you like…” He paused, searching for the least embarrassing phrasing and failing adorably. “Talking? Like, me talking?”

The question was so earnest and so Garrett that she giggled, breathy and helpless. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, talking is good.”

He nodded, mouth brushing the inside of her thigh when he spoke. “Little hard to do with my mouth on you, though.”

She laughed again, the nerves shaking loose in her chest. “S’okay. You’ll manage.”

“Great. No pressure.”

“You asked for a lesson.”

“Yeah, and my professor is mean.”

“Your professor is doing you a favour.”

“My professor is very pretty,” he said, almost absently, like the thought had slipped out before he could package it into a joke.

She went still. Garrett paused too, then looked up. For once, he didn’t smirk. Didn’t walk it back. Didn’t make it safer by turning it into something stupid.

Her cheeks warmed. “See? That.”

“That?”

“Compliments. Good. Keep doing that.” She swallowed, then added, because she needed to make it about the lesson before the inside of her chest got too loud, “Make it fun. Like… be cute. Kiss me while you’re taking my clothes off. Compliment me. Don’t make it feel clinical.”

Garrett’s face softened. “Okay.”

“And don’t say my professor is very pretty like you’re trying to kill me.”

His grin came back, slow and devastating. “Noted.”

She covered her face with one hand. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’m considering it.”

He kissed the inside of her thigh again, then the edge of her shorts, and hooked his fingers into the waistband. He paused there. “You good?”

“Mhm.”

“Enough… like…” He gave her an apologetic look, half amused, half genuinely checking. “Foreplay?”

She laughed into her hand. “God. Never say it like that again.”

“Sorry. I heard it as soon as it left my mouth.”

“You sounded like a health textbook.”

“I panicked.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“Fine?”

She lowered her hand and looked at him. “Really good.”

The pleased little breath he let out should not have been as charming as it was. He leaned up to kiss her again, soft and brief, while his fingers worked her shorts down her hips.

That was good. Annoyingly good. The distraction of his mouth. The way his hand slid under her thigh to lift her slightly, taking care not to tug or make it awkward.

He kissed her once more when the shorts passed her knees, then tossed them somewhere off the side of the bed without looking.

“Cute enough?” he murmured against her mouth.

“Barely.”

“Liar.”

She smiled, and he kissed the smile like he couldn’t help himself.

When he moved lower again, his hand settled at her hip, thumb brushing the thin fabric left there. His expression sobered. The teasing didn’t vanish, but it stepped back, giving room to the thing beneath it.

“You sure?” he asked.

Her breath caught, not because she was unsure, but because he’d asked again. Because he kept asking. Because Garrett Graham, who could’ve made arrogance look like a sport, was kneeling between her legs with messy hair and swollen lips and still waiting for her to say yes.

She nodded. “Don’t leave me hanging now, Graham.”

He huffed a laugh, relief warming his face. “Right.”

He took her panties off slowly, and he kissed her while he did it, one hand sliding up to lace briefly with hers before he moved back down.

It should’ve been ridiculous, probably, how careful he was about it. She was already half-naked on his bed, already flushed and breathing unevenly, and Garrett was still treating the thin scrap of fabric at her hips like it required focus and dignity and a full team meeting.

His mouth followed the path of his hands, a kiss pressed to the inside of her knee, then her thigh, then the place where her hip curved soft under his palm.

He paused there, warm breath spilling across skin that had already gone too sensitive, and she felt her stomach tighten before he’d even done anything worth being smug about.

He kissed her stomach again, because she’d told him to build up to it and he was determined to be an overachiever in every possible context. Then lower. Then lower again, his mouth soft and unhurried, his hand spreading over her thigh to ease it wider, asking with the steady pressure of his fingers until her body answered before her brain could make a whole embarrassing thing about it.

By the time his mouth finally settled between her thighs, her whole body felt like it had been tuned too tight and then touched in exactly the right place.

And damn it, he was actually good.

He was patient. Focused. Careful in a way that didn’t feel timid. His first touch was a slow, hot drag of his tongue that made her inhale so sharply her ribs hurt, and he noticed.

Garrett, who sometimes couldn’t find his own phone while holding it, became some kind of terrifying scholar the second his mouth was between her legs. He did it again, lighter this time, testing the difference, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of her thigh when her hips twitched up toward him.

She'd been fully prepared to give notes. She’d expected to have to, actually. She’d expected some overconfident athlete nonsense, maybe too much pressure, too much speed, too much of him assuming confidence counted as skill.

Instead, she stared at the ceiling with one hand fisted in the sheets and the other in his hair, trying desperately to remember she was supposed to be useful while Garrett licked into her like he was trying to memorise what made her go quiet and what made her make noise.

His mouth moved with this awful, devastating attention, warm and deliberate, tongue flattening where she needed softness, then narrowing to something more precise when her legs shifted around his shoulders. He made this quiet sound against her, almost pleased, and she hated him a little for how much she felt it.

“No,” she breathed at one point, because he’d gotten a little too eager, a little too much, the pressure tipping from good into sharp enough that her thighs tightened around his head. “Gentle. Gentle–”

He eased immediately. An instant shift into softer, slower strokes, his thumb brushing once over her hip like he was saying, heard you, without lifting his mouth.

Her eyes shut before she could stop them. “Actually, that’s good.”

She felt him hum against her, and her thighs tightened before she could stop them.

“Don’t be smug,” she warned, though it came out embarrassingly thin.

Garrett’s fingers pressed lightly into her hip like he was laughing without lifting his mouth.

“Garrett.”

He pulled back just enough for his breath to skim over her, his lips and chin wet, his hair a disaster between her thighs, his expression so careful and so pleased that she wanted to put a pillow over his face. Possibly for murder. Possibly for self-preservation. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I’m always thinking something.”

“Think less.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She laughed, then immediately lost the laugh when he lowered his mouth again. His hand slid from her hip to the inside of her thigh, slow enough that she had time to anticipate it, then his fingers touched her carefully, gathering the slick heat of her before pressing in with one.

Just one, at first. Her breath caught hard, her hand tightening in his hair, and he went still for half a second, eyes flicking up.

“Good?” he murmured, mouth barely leaving her.

She nodded too fast. “Yeah. That’s– yeah.”

His eyes stayed on her for one more beat, checking, and then he curled his finger slightly while his mouth found her again.

“Oh, fuck,” she breathed, so quietly it barely counted as language.

He made another low sound, and the thing about Garrett was that he was impossible to ignore. Even like this. Especially like this. His shoulders under her thighs, his hand firm on her hip, his tongue moving over her in slow, wet strokes while his finger worked inside her with the same annoying, attentive rhythm.

He wasn’t guessing wildly. He was watching everything. The way her stomach pulled tight when he crooked his finger just so. The way her knees tried to close when his mouth got firmer. The way her fingers tugged at his hair when she wanted more but was too busy trying not to dissolve into his sheets to say it out loud.

“You can add another,” she managed, then immediately wanted to die because his eyes lifted again, dark and amused and focused in a way that felt unfairly intimate.

“Yeah?” he asked, and his voice had gone rough enough to scrape over her skin.

She swallowed. “Don’t make me repeat it.”

That got the smallest grin out of him, quick and devastating, before he kissed her thigh like a complete asshole. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Liar.”

“Probably,” he murmured, and then he gave her the second finger.

Her head tipped back into the pillow, a sound slipping out of her before she could make it prettier. Garrett’s mouth came back to her at the same time, and for a second she lost the thread of everything but that – the stretch of his fingers, the heat of his tongue, the obscene little rhythm he found like he’d been handed instructions directly from her nervous system.

Her hips moved before she could stop them, a small helpless roll up into his mouth, and Garrett held her there with his free hand spread over her lower stomach, grounding her while he worked her open with a patience that made her feel insane.

“Garrett,” she breathed, warning and plea and accusation all tangled together.

He pulled back barely enough to speak, fingers still moving. “What?”

“You’re–” She broke off when his thumb shifted, brushing over her in a way that made her whole body jolt. Her hand flew out, catching the sheet, then his shoulder, then back into his hair because she had no plan and no dignity. “Jesus Christ.”

“That a note?”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

She wanted to argue, but then he lowered his mouth again and did something with his tongue that made the entire thought evaporate. There was no possible comeback. There was barely oxygen.

He sucked softly, enough to make heat snap bright through her stomach, and then softened it with his tongue like he was apologising and absolutely was not sorry.

His fingers kept moving, steady and slick, curling into that spot that made her toes flex against the sheets and her mouth fall open around nothing useful.

At some point, his other hand slid up her body and found hers where it was twisted in the sheets. He didn’t make a big thing of it, just nudged his fingers against her palm until she opened for him, and then he intertwined their fingers, pressing her hand into the mattress beside her hip.

The intimacy of it hit her so hard she made a small, wrecked sound she couldn’t blame on anything else.

Jesus. Christ.

His hand was warm. Solid. Holding hers while his mouth worked between her thighs like he had no interest in being anywhere else, his fingers moving inside her with a slow, confident drag that had stopped feeling like a lesson and started feeling like something much worse. Something that had teeth. Something that sat low under her ribs and made every breath come out thinner than the last.

The whole thing had tipped from funny and hot and vaguely educational into something that made her chest feel too small for what was happening inside it.

She could feel it building. Slow at first, then faster, gathering low and deep until her body started moving without permission, her hips chasing his mouth in little helpless shifts.

Garrett stayed with her, didn’t get sloppy, didn’t change things just because she was close. Fuck, maybe he had listened. Maybe he was better than most people by accident and then better again because he cared enough to pay attention.

His mouth stayed exactly where she needed it, his tongue steady, his fingers curling at the same pace, over and over, until the pleasure stopped coming in sparks and started rolling through her in a hot, heavy wave.

She squeezed his hand hard. “Garrett,” she breathed, and his name came out wrong. Too soft. Too much.

He looked up without stopping, eyes lifting to her face. That nearly finished her by itself.

His hair was a wreck from her fingers, curls falling over his forehead, cheeks flushed, mouth slick and warm against her, and he looked at her like he wanted to see it happen, like he was right there with her. Like the sound of her losing control mattered to him. Like he was going to take her apart as gently as she needed and then remember every second of it.

“Right– Garrett, there. Yes. Oh my god–” Her free hand flew to his hair, fingers tightening, and he groaned against her like the sound of her losing it had gone through him too. “Oh fuck.”

He kept going, steady and warm and maddeningly good, his fingers locked with hers. His mouth got softer when her legs began to shake, fingers still working inside her but slower now, careful not to push her past where she wanted to go. Which was somehow worse. Better. Devastating.

She nodded, barely aware she was doing it, breath breaking into little half-formed sounds, and then it hit. Hard enough that her back arched off the mattress and her eyes squeezed shut, heat snapping through her in waves while Garrett stayed right where she needed him, gentle when she needed gentle, firm when she pulled him closer, letting her ride it out without making it about him for even a second.

His hand tightened around hers through it, anchoring her while everything else went bright and loose and shaking, while her thighs pressed around his shoulders and her mouth fell open on his name again, softer this time, almost ruined.

When she finally went soft against the bed, her hand slipped out of his hair and landed somewhere beside her head like it no longer belonged to her.

Garrett eased his fingers out slowly, careful even then, pressing one last kiss to the inside of her thigh like he was trying to be sweet and was instead making her want to throw herself out a window.

For a second, there was only the sound of her breathing.

Then he crawled up, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked at her with the stupidest, most careful, most pleased expression she’d ever seen on his face. “Good?”

She laughed because there was absolutely no other option. It came out ruined and breathless, her head tipping back into the pillow. “Uh huh.”

“No, serious.” He flopped down beside her on his back, one arm thrown over his forehead, chest rising and falling like he’d been the one worked over. “Pointers?”

She turned her head toward him. Garrett turned his too, eyes bright, mouth twitching.

She shook her head. “You– no.”

“No?” he asked, grin spreading.

She covered her face with both hands and laughed harder. “I hate this.”

“No, come on. I need constructive criticism.”

“You don’t.”

“I do. I’m a dedicated student.”

She dropped her hands, still catching her breath, and looked at him lying there beside her, shirtless and smug and soft around the eyes in a way that made her stomach do something dangerous all over again.

“Tens across the board,” she said finally.

Garrett’s grin went enormous. “Yeah?”

“Don’t make me say it again.”

“No, no, I heard you.” He lifted a fist between them, delighted and boyish and so aggressively Garrett that she couldn’t help it. “Tens across the board.”

She stared at his fist, then at him. “Are you seriously asking me to fist-bump you after giving me head?”

“Yes.”

“You’re such a loser.” She laughed, helpless, and bumped her fist against his.

Garrett made a quiet, victorious little sound, and that was what fully broke them. They dissolved into laughter, both of them lying there on his bed in the messy aftermath of what was supposed to be a practical favour, her shorts somewhere on the floor, his shirt gone, his hair wrecked from her hands.

It should’ve been awkward. It should’ve been impossible to come back from. It should’ve cracked the air open and left them staring at each other with panic creeping in around the edges.

Instead, she found herself rolling onto her side and resting her head on his shoulder like it was normal. Garrett didn’t freeze. He just shifted enough to make room for her, his arm coming loosely around her back, fingers settling at her side.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, still smiling, eyes half-closed.

His chest moved under her cheek with a quiet laugh. “That a good oh my god or a traumatic oh my god?”

“Shut up.”

“Good enough for me.”

She smiled against his shoulder, but inside, beneath the warmth and the laughter and the pleasant, boneless hum still moving through her body, something had gone very still.

Because this was the problem. His arm around her. His thumb moving once, absent and gentle, against her ribs. The soft sound of his breathing evening out beside hers.

The way it didn’t feel weird. The way it felt like she’d set something down she hadn’t realised she’d been carrying. She stared at the far wall of his bedroom, cheek warm against his shoulder, heart slowly sinking into the mattress.

Oh fuck.

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist.

He stares at the number beneath it, then at the downward arrow, then swipes into their messages so quickly he almost fumbles the phone into the stick rack.

Garrett: baby. eat something Garrett: now please Garrett: your dexcom’s yelling at me

The little delivered line appears. Nothing else. He waits three seconds. Four. Five. The ice keeps making noise behind him, bodies turning, sticks tapping, Coach’s whistle cutting once through the air so sharply it makes Garrett’s shoulders tense before his brain catches up. 

He types again.

Garrett: hey Garrett: answer me

Still nothing.

“Graham,” Coach calls again, closer this time, irritated but not fully pissed yet. Garrett can feel the whole team’s attention starting to swing toward him in little pieces, because he doesn’t do this. He doesn’t check out mid-practice. He doesn’t stand at the bench breathing hard with one glove off and his hair damp at his temples, staring at his phone like it’s threatened him.

He looks up. “Sorry– my girlfriend– her blood sugar’s low.”

It comes out blunt. Too blunt, maybe, because Coach’s face shifts a little. He jerks his chin toward the locker room. “Text her. Then get back out here if she’s fine.”

Garrett nods once and steps off the ice enough to call her. It rings so long that every second feels stupidly personal.

By the fifth ring, he’s already seeing her dorm room in his head with unpleasant clarity: the lamp on, laptop burning her eyes out, notes everywhere, highlighter uncapped on the comforter, some coffee she definitely shouldn’t be drinking instead of eating, her tucked into one of his hoodies like that counts as a balanced meal. 

He can picture her Dexcom stuck to the back of her arm, doing its job, screaming into his phone because she's once again decided that studying until her brain leaks out of her ears is a reasonable use of a human body.

She answers on the sixth ring. “Hi,” she says, tiny and slow, like the word has been wrapped in cotton before leaving her mouth.

Garrett’s chest tightens so hard he nearly gets angry from the relief alone. “Baby.”

“Mhm?”

“Did you get the alert?”

There’s a pause. A soft rustle. Then, distantly, like she has turned her head toward her own phone and found it personally disappointing, she says, “Oh.”

Garrett closes his eyes for half a second. “Yeah. Oh. Eat something.”

“I was gonna.”

“You were not gonna. You didn’t even know it went off.”

“I knew,” she says, with absolutely no conviction and the faint offended dignity of a girl who’s been caught being medically unserious in her own home. “I was just… looking at it.”

“At what?”

“My phone.”

“You just found your phone.”

Another pause. Then, smaller, “Maybe.”

Garrett presses the heel of his hand to one eye and breathes out. Behind him, the team is still skating. Someone laughs. A puck hits the boards hard enough to make the glass jump. The whole rink smells like ice and sweat and rubber and old adrenaline, and all he wants, suddenly and viciously, is to be in her stupid little dorm room putting sugar in her hand himself.

“Okay,” he says, forcing his voice down because she gets embarrassed when people fuss too loudly and because snapping at her when her brain is running on fumes would make him the kind of asshole he’d like to punch. “Do you have your hypo stuff?”

“Mm.”

“Words, baby.”

She sighs. “Yes.”

“What do you have?”

“Lollies.”

“Where?”

“My drawer.”

“Which drawer?”

“The drawer drawer.”

Despite himself, a laugh punches out of him, short and disbelieving. “Jesus Christ. The drawer drawer. Very helpful.”

She makes a small sound, half whine, half laugh, and he can hear how thin it is. How tired. How not fully her. “Don’t be mean. I’m low.”

“I’m aware, since your robot tattled on you.” He shifts his phone to the other ear and looks toward Coach, who is watching him now with a patience Garrett suspects has a hard expiry. “Get the lollies. Right now.”

She whines softly. “I’m comfy.”

“Baby.”

“I know.”

He huffs. “Move.”

She grumbles something under her breath that sounds a lot like bossy hockey bitch, and Garrett would enjoy that more if he wasn’t currently imagining her trying to walk across her room with low blood sugar and the coordination of a newborn deer.

There’s a shuffle, then a thump soft enough to be a drawer and not a person, thank fuck. Plastic crinkles near the speaker.

“Got them,” she says.

“Good. Eat some.”

She groans softly. “How many?”

“Enough for fifteen grams.”

Another silence.

Garrett looks at the ceiling. “The packet, baby. Read the packet.”

“I’m doing it,” she mutters, and then the line fills with the sticky little sounds of a packet being opened badly by someone whose fingers are probably trembling. Garrett hears one fall, hit the desk, roll somewhere. She sighs like it has betrayed her.

“Don’t chase it,” he says immediately.

“I wasn’t gonna.”

“You absolutely were.”

“I’m eating the other ones.”

“Good girl.”

It slips out before he thinks better of it, softer than the rest, and the line goes quiet in that particular way that means she’s heard it and tucked it somewhere warm even through the fog in her head.

Coach blows the whistle again. Garrett’s whole body twitches. “Stay on the phone with me,” he says.

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Bossy.”

“Yeah. Eat.”

She does. He listens. It should be boring, standing half-off the ice while his girlfriend chews gummy lollies into the phone like a mildly annoyed possum.

It’s, objectively, not a romantic moment. There’s nothing cinematic about glucose tabs or jelly snakes or Garrett Graham in full gear with one glove hanging from his teeth, telling a girl in a dorm room to keep chewing while his coach considers whether love is worth disrupting defensive drills.

Still, his hand stays tight around the phone until the Dexcom number nudges up a little and her voice starts coming back from wherever the low had dragged it. Enough that when she says, “You’re breathing like Darth Vader,” there’s a faint smile in it.

“Because I’m at practice.”

“Hot.”

“You’re hypoglycemic.”

“So sexy that you know that word.”

He laughs then, low and relieved in a way he tries not to let her hear too clearly. “Recheck in fifteen.”

“I know.”

“Text me the number.”

“I know, Garrett.”

That sounds more like her, annoyed and soft and there. It loosens something under his ribs by a degree. He looks back at Coach again, then at the ice, then at his phone. He should go back. She’s eaten. She’s talking. The number’s not beautiful, but it’s moving. 

This is the whole point of the app, technically, to know and respond and then not act like every alert is a national emergency. She has diabetes. She handles this all the time. She has handled it before him, will keep handling it after every practice, every class, every exam week, every stupid stretch of time where Garrett cannot physically be within arm’s reach putting food in her mouth.

That’s the rational version. The other version is that his girlfriend answered the phone sounding small and floaty and alone, and now every cell in his body is pointing toward her dorm. “Alright,” he says. “I’m coming over after practice.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“Garrett.”

“I’m coming over after practice.”

She sighs, but it turns into a little pleased hum at the end, the kind she probably doesn’t know she makes when she’s too tired to pretend she doesn’t want him. “Fine.”

“Text me in fifteen.”

“Mhm.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“And eat actual food if you can.”

She huffs. “Bossy hockey bitch.”

“There she is,” he says, smiling despite himself. “Text me.”

She does, fifteen minutes later, while he’s back on the ice and only pretending not to check his phone every time he gets within ten feet of the bench. The number's come up. Safe enough that the ugly tight thing in his chest finally stops trying to chew through bone.

She adds a blurry photo of the lolly packet on her desk like evidence in a trial, one thumb half covering the lens.

Garrett: proud of you Garrett: even though you eat like a raccoon during finals week.

Her reply comes after a minute.

raccoons are resilient

Garrett grins down at his phone so hard Logan skates past and says, “Dude, you’re disgusting.”

Garrett flips him off and gets back to practice.

By the time he gets to her dorm, his hair is still damp from the locker room shower and the collar of his hoodie smells faintly like clean soap and rink, which he's been told is not a scent so much as a warning. 

He has his backpack slung over one shoulder, two granola bars from the vending machine shoved into the front pocket because he panicked after practice, and a bottle of orange juice he stole from Tucker, who had looked at him once and decided not to ask questions.

She opens the door before he can knock a second time. For one second, Garrett just looks at her. She’s in his Briar hoodie, obviously, because at some point every item of clothing he owns has become part of her little emotional support system. 

The sleeves hang over her hands. Her hair's a mess, half pulled up and half surrendered around her face, and there’s a faint crease on her cheek from what looks like a notebook spiral. Her eyes are a little heavy still, sleepy around the edges, her whole body soft and slower than usual as she blinks up at him from the doorway.

“Hi,” she says.

Garrett’s mouth does something stupid before he can stop it. Fond and worried and annoyed, all at once. “Hi.”

“I ate.”

“Yeah?”

She nods, very seriously, then steps backward to let him in. “I ate the lollies. And half a protein bar.”

“Half?”

“It tasted like shit.”

“Protein bars usually taste like that.”

He shuts the door behind him and drops his bag by her desk, already scanning the room in a way he knows makes him look insane and cannot quite bring himself to stop.

Lolly packet open on the desk. Water bottle half full. Textbooks spread across the bed like she’s been trying to summon a degree through paper-based witchcraft. Laptop still open, screen dimmed. The air smells like highlighter ink, laundry detergent, and the sour little remains of coffee gone cold.

He turns back to her. “What’s your number now?”

She points vaguely toward her phone. “Better.”

“That’s not a number.”

“It’s a vibe.”

He raises his brows at her. “Your blood sugar is not a vibe, baby.”

“It kind of is, actually.”

“Phone.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no real heat in it, and hands him the phone. He checks because she lets him. Because they’ve had this conversation before, clumsy at first and then easier.

The line between care and hovering. The difference between him helping and him acting like diabetes is a thing that happened to him because he loves her. He still gets it wrong sometimes. He knows that. His worry has bad manners when it gets scared.

But she’d added him to Dexcom Follow herself, sitting cross-legged on his bed with her phone in one hand and his in the other, saying, “Okay, this is not permission to become extra annoying,” while he’d promised, with a straight face, to be only normal amounts of annoying.

Now he looks at the number and the arrow, watches the trend flatten out, and hands it back with a nod. “Better.”

“Told you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re a medical genius.”

“I am, actually.”

“You also forgot to eat.”

She makes a face and immediately looks away, which tells on her more than any confession would have. “I didn’t forget.”

Garrett’s eyebrows lift.

“I… delayed,” she says, which is such a committed piece of academic bullshit that he almost respects it.

“You delayed food.”

“Temporarily.”

“Until your blood sugar dropped and an app screamed at your boyfriend during practice.”

She pulls the sleeves of his hoodie over her hands and rubs at one eye with the cuff. “When you say it like that, it sounds bad.”

“Because it was stupid.”

“Garrett.”

“Baby.”

She looks up at him then, and the argument thins out before either of them can turn it into one. There’s still a little tremor in her fingers when she lowers her hand. Barely there, but enough. Enough that all the teasing in his mouth rearranges itself into something quieter.

He steps closer. “You scared me.”

Her face shifts, the soft defensive tilt of her mouth giving way to something smaller, less arranged. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not saying it so you’ll feel bad.” His hand comes up to the side of her neck, thumb resting under her jaw, checking because he can’t help himself, touching because that’s the only language his worry knows how to speak without turning sharp. Her skin is warm. A little clammy still at the edge of her hairline. “I just– don’t do that shit alone if you’re dropping, okay? Text me back. Eat first, be stubborn after.”

Her mouth twitches faintly. “That order seems unfair to my brand.”

“Your brand needs snacks.”

“My brand is very mysterious.”

“Your brand is half a bag of gummy worms and a hoodie you stole from me.”

She leans forward then, slowly, until her forehead lands against the middle of his chest. A soft, tired little surrender into the nearest solid thing, which happens to be him.

Garrett’s hand slides automatically around the back of her head, fingers spreading into her hair, and the rest of him goes quiet around her.

“Still feel weird?” he asks.

“A little,” she says, voice muffled into his hoodie. “Mostly tired now.”

“That happens?”

“Mhm. Sometimes after.” She shifts closer, cheek turning against his chest. “And I stayed up too late. And had coffee. And forgot dinner.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, kissing the top of her head. “Figured.”

He can picture her last night at two in the morning, hunched over notes, telling herself one more chapter, one more diagram, one more lecture recording, the whole slippery student lie of just a bit longer until suddenly the body that’s been politely asking for basic maintenance starts knocking things over to get attention. 

She does that sometimes. Gets so focused the rest of her becomes an inconvenience. Food, sleep, water, all of it demoted beneath whatever exam or paper or assignment has started living behind her eyes.

Garrett hates it in a way that feels embarrassingly tender. He likes her focused. Likes her smart mouth and her colour-coded notes and the little frown she gets when she’s trying to force information into her brain. But he hates the part where she forgets she’s not a machine built for academic suffering and caffeine.

“Bed,” he says.

She tilts her head back just enough to look at him, chin still pressed to his chest. “You’re very annoying when you’re worried.”

“I’m very annoying all the time. You knew that going in.”

“Yeah,” she says, and the tiny smile that comes with it makes something in his ribs unclench. “I did.”

He gets her onto the bed with the kind of careful bossiness she complains about but obeys when she feels like this, all heavy limbs and delayed reactions and stubborn little noises made purely for the dignity of it. 

He clears the textbooks first, stacking them onto her desk badly enough that she makes a wounded sound from behind him. “That’s not the system.”

“What system?”

“My system.”

He ignores that and pulls back the blanket. She climbs in, still wearing his hoodie, still with the sleeves eaten over her hands, and watches him from the pillows with that floaty, softened look that would be cute if it didn’t also make the protective part of his brain start dragging furniture in front of doors.

He finds the other half of the violent protein bar and holds it up. “More shit?”

She groans. “Please don’t make me.”

“You need something longer-lasting, right?”

“I had half.”

“Baby.”

She groans. “I hate when you use the reasonable voice.”

“Because it works?”

“Because you sound like Tucker.”

“That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She smiles properly then, small but real, and reaches for the bar with great personal suffering. “Fine. But I’m doing this under protest.”

“Noted.”

She takes two bites and chews with the expression of someone enduring a great injury. Garrett sits on the edge of the mattress and watches her because he’s become the sort of guy who monitors protein bar consumption with the intensity of a playoff game. 

If Dean saw him now, Garrett would never hear the end of it. If Logan saw him, he would make a face and call it love in the most annoying possible tone. Tucker would probably approve, which remains devastating.

When she’s done enough that he decides not to bully the rest of it into her, Garrett sets the wrapper on the nightstand and kicks off his shoes. She lifts the blanket immediately, wordless, like she has been waiting for the exact second his hands are free.

“Oh, now you want me,” he says.

She gives him a look from under heavy eyelids. “I always want you.”

She attaches herself to him before he’s even fully settled, curling into his side with her cheek over his chest and one knee sliding over his thigh under the blanket. It’s clingier than usual, or maybe just less disguised. 

Her hand sneaks under the hem of his hoodie, palm finding the warm skin over his ribs like she has been assigned a location and intends to remain there.

Garrett lets out a slow breath and wraps his arm around her, hand spreading between her shoulder blades. For a while, he just rubs up and down her back in the quiet, steady rhythm he knows she likes, over the thick cotton of his hoodie and the delicate line of her spine beneath it.

Her room feels softer now with the lamp low and the laptop finally shut, the whole anxious mess of studying pushed to the edges for at least twenty minutes. Outside the door, someone laughs down the hall. Campus keeps moving with absolutely no respect for the fact that Garrett Graham’s just aged six years over a glucose alert.

He kisses her hair. “Feeling better?”

She nods against him, slow. “Mhm.”

“Less weird?”

“Less weird.” Her fingers flex once against his ribs. “Just sleepy.”

“That’s okay.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I know.” His hand keeps moving. Shoulder to waist. Waist to shoulder. Again. “Just text me back next time.”

“I will.”

“And keep stuff by your bed.”

“I do.”

“Stuff you can reach without going on an expedition to the drawer drawer.”

A tiny laugh shakes against him. “The drawer drawer was perfectly clear.”

He smiles into her hair despite himself. “You’re lucky you’re cute when your brain’s offline.”

“My brain’s online.”

“Baby, you called me a bossy hockey bitch and then argued that blood sugar is a vibe.”

“It is a vibe.”

He tips his head back against the wall and lets himself laugh quietly, relief finally loosening properly through him now that she’s warm and fed and heavy against his side. “You’re impossible.”

She hums, pleased by that for reasons that are between her and whatever sugar is currently making its way through her bloodstream. “You love me.”

“Somehow.”

She pinches his side without lifting her head, weak but accurate. “Mean.”

He catches her hand under his hoodie and holds it there, thumb moving over her knuckles where they rest against his skin. “Yeah,” he says, softer. “I love you.”

After a second, she tilts her face enough to press a kiss to his chest through the hoodie. It’s barely a kiss. More a warm little contact. A thank you she’s too tired and too proud to make formal.

“Love you too,” she mumbles.

Garrett looks down at the top of her head, at the messy spill of hair over his arm, at the Dexcom app still open on her phone on the nightstand, the graph inching back into safer territory one small dot at a time. 

His body still has the leftover adrenaline in it, the rink alarm echoing faintly somewhere behind his ribs, the ugly little flash of her not answering when he called. But here she is, tucked into him like she has no plans to be anywhere else, breathing warm against his chest, one hand under his hoodie and the other curled into the blanket.

So he stays. Practice can keep its exhaustion. His homework can rot. The rest of campus can do whatever people do when they’re not pinned beneath a sleepy diabetic girlfriend with a talent for making his whole chest feel like it has been bruised open in the best possible way.

He rubs her back until her breathing goes heavier. Every few minutes, his eyes flick to her phone. The number steadies. Climbs. Holds. He lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he was still keeping.

Then, very softly, mostly because she’s almost asleep and because he likes saying things when she’s too tired to make fun of him properly, he murmurs, “Gonna start packing snacks in my hockey bag like a dad.”

Her mouth curves faintly against him. “Hot.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. Dilf behaviour.”

Garrett freezes, then looks down at her. “Don’t call me that when you’re half asleep after a medical incident.”

She laughs once, tiny and muffled and pleased with herself, and curls closer.

He shakes his head, smiling despite every effort not to. “Jesus Christ.”

“Snacks are hot,” she whispers.

“Go to sleep.”

“Bossy.”

He kisses her head again, slower this time, and settles his hand warm at the centre of her back. Her breathing has evened out, her body gone loose and trusting against his, the last of the low-blood-sugar fog giving way to real sleep. 

Garrett stays awake a little longer anyway, watching the graph, listening to the hallway quiet down, feeling her heartbeat through the layers between them.

When the number stays steady, he finally sets her phone facedown, tucks the blanket higher over her shoulder, and lets his eyes close with his mouth pressed to her hair.

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist.

The first time Logan called you a good girl, he did not mean to. Which was a problem in itself, if he had meant to, perhaps you could have prepared.

If there had been warning, if he had looked at you with that slow, dangerous little smile and said it deliberately, you might have had enough time to collect yourself. To decide what face to make. To arrange your dignity into something presentable before it abandoned you entirely.

It was still early enough that certain things between you and Logan felt like discoveries rather than habits. Not awkward anymore, luckily you were past the worst of that. Past the first trembling moments of figuring out where to put your hands, when to ask, how to say something without feeling like every word had been dragged from somewhere too exposed.

But it was new enough that he still watched you closely.

You were in his room at the hockey house, Logan had been sitting against the headboard and you had started by kissing him there, then somehow ended up between his legs on the mattress with your knees pressed into the sheets and your hair falling over one shoulder. His door was locked. The house was noisy enough downstairs that privacy felt possible, but not silent enough to be too intense. Somewhere beneath you, Dean was shouting about someone stealing his cereal, which meant the world was still irritatingly alive outside the room.

Inside, it was warm. Logan was warmer.

He had one hand in your hair, not gripping. Just resting there, fingers curved gently against the back of your head. His other hand was fisted loosely in the sheets beside his thigh, like he was trying very hard to keep it there.

You learnt quickly that you liked that. You liked seeing his restraint, even though you were not entirely sure what to do with it yet. You had done this before.

Not often enough to be casual. Not rarely enough to be nervous in the same way. There was a strange little space between those things, where you wanted badly to be good at it but did not want to look like you were trying too hard. Which was stupid, because trying was the point.. Trying was academically and socially defensible.

Unfortunately, none of that made you feel less exposed with your mouth on him and Logan breathing your name like a warning.

“Slow,” he murmured.

You paused just enough to look up.

His head was tipped back against the wall, eyes dark and fixed on you. His sweatshirt was shoved up his stomach, jeans open, hair a mess from your hands. He looked less composed than usual, which helped. A lot.

“Too much?” you asked.

His mouth parted.

“No,” his laugh came out rough, “God, no. Just—slow down a little.”

You blinked.

“I thought you liked—”

“I do.”

“That was not a complete sentence.”

He looked at you then, properly, and even in the heat of it his mouth twitched.

“You want notes?”

“Yes.”

His eyebrows lifted and you immediately regretted sounding so eager.

“Not like an evaluation,” you clarified.

“Cherry.”

“What?”

“You are between my legs asking for constructive feedback.”

Your face warmed, “Well, now you’re making it sound clinical.”

“It sounded clinical when you said notes.”

“I like being thorough.”

“I’m aware.”

You narrowed your eyes. He smiled, but the smile did not last long because your hand moved again and his breath caught hard enough to interrupt whatever smug thing he had been about to say.

There. You liked that too, that you could cut him off without using words.

You tried again, slower this time, paying attention to the way his stomach tightened and his fingers pressed into your hair before he remembered himself and loosened them. His breathing shifted. You watched his face, greedy for signs, for proof, for anything that told you you were doing it right.

Logan noticed.

Of course he noticed.

“You don’t have to think so hard,” he said, voice low.

You pulled back just enough to answer, one hand still wrapped around him.

“I am not thinking hard.”

“You’re concentrating.”

“I’m learning.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

His eyes darkened at that.

Something about the word changed him. Not much. Just enough for the hand in your hair to flex, thumb brushing near your temple.

“Okay,” he stroked your hair, “Then slower.”

You obeyed.

His jaw tightened as he sighed, “Use your hand too. Like— yeah. There.”

Your pulse jumped.

There.

Such a stupidly satisfying word.

You adjusted, following the rhythm he guided you into, letting him show you without pushing you, his hand careful in your hair and his voice rougher each time he gave you another tiny instruction. It should have made you embarrassed. It did. But there was something else underneath it, something warmer and more dangerous than embarrassment.

You liked being guided by him.

You liked that he could tell you what to do without making you feel small.

You liked the way his voice went uneven when you listened.

“Just like that,” he moaned softly.

Your eyes flicked up.

His head had fallen back again, throat exposed, lips parted. He looked wrecked enough that your pride bloomed in your chest, hot and pleased. You kept going, slower, better, more certain now.

Logan’s hand tightened in the sheets,“That’s it,” he murmured, almost to himself, “Good girl.”

Everything stopped.

Not outside.

Outside, Dean was still yelling about cereal justice. Someone laughed in the hallway. Music thudded faintly through the floor.

But in your body, everything stopped.

And Logan felt it.

His eyes opened, head lifting from the wall and gaze dropping to you with sharp, immediate attention. The hand in your hair stilled completely.

You were still between his legs, still touching him, still too close to pretend you had simply remembered an appointment.

His expression slowly shifted,“Oh?”

You pulled back, face already hot.

“No.”

His mouth curved.

“No?”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Make that face.”

“What face?”

“The one where you learn something.”

Logan breathed out a laugh, but it came out too rough to be casual,“Baby.”

“No.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said enough with your eyebrows.”

“My eyebrows?”

“Yes.”

“They’re involved now?”

“They’re very communicative.”

His smile widened, and the heat in your face became unbearable because he was still looking at you like that. Like he had found a drawer you had not known was unlocked. He lifted his hand from your hair and touched your jaw instead, gentle enough that you could have moved away without effort.

“You like that?”

“No.”

His thumb brushed once along your cheek,“No?”

You stared at him.

He waited.

That was the thing about Logan. He did not always fill silence when he knew it would do the work for him. He just waited, face warm and amused and careful, hand steady at your jaw.

“Maybe.”

His eyes darkened, “Colour?”

The question landed softly, grounding everything at once. 

“Green,” you said too quickly.

His smile changed, “Yeah?” His thumb moved under your chin, tilting your face up a fraction. “My good girl’s green?”

Your entire body reacted.

Logan noticed that too.

His breath shifted, and for one second he looked like he had forgotten what game he was playing.

Then he laughed, quiet and ruined, “Oh, Cherry.”

“You cannot say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re pleased with yourself.”

“I am pleased with myself.”

“That is not attractive.”

“It’s a little attractive.”

“It is not.”

“You’re still holding me.”

You looked down.

You were, hand still on him- not moving the entire time you had made the discovery. In fact, your grip had tightened

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah,” he replied, voice rougher now. “I know.”

You should have stopped. You considered stopping.

Not because you wanted to, but because it would have restored some kind of balance. You could have sat back, crossed your arms, accused him of misconduct in the field of vocabulary, and turned the whole thing into a joke before it became something he could use.

Instead, you looked at him; properly- studying his face, the flush on his cheekbones and the little stunned glint in his eye,like your reaction had done something to him too. Like he had said the words without thinking, watched you respond, and realised in real time that he had found a way to make you softer than either of you had been expecting.

That made you want to hear it again. Badly.

Which was inconvenient for your propriety, and humiliating for your ego- but unconventionally motivating for the rest of you.

You leaned back down.

Logan’s hand twitched, “Cherry.”

You ignored the warning in his voice, you knew exactly what you were doing now.

Mostly.

You took him into your mouth again. Slower at first, because he had said slower and you were suddenly, catastrophically invested in doing this correctly. His hand returned to your hair, fingers threading through carefully, then tightening when you used your hand the way he had shown you.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

That was very nice.

You did it again. His hips shifted, barely. He caught himself immediately, hand flattening against the mattress.

You looked up. His jaw was clenched, eyes fixed on you, and all the smugness had taken a significant hit. You hollowed your cheeks a little, using what you had learned, what he had told you, what his body was telling you now.

His head hit the wall, “Baby.”

You hummed in response, his whole body jerked in response.

“Jesus.”

You pulled back just enough to breathe, hand still moving, “Notes?”

He laughed, but there was no humour left in it. Only disbelief.

“You want notes right now?”

“Yes.”

His eyes dropped to your mouth.

Then back to your eyes.

“Slow again.”

You listened. His breathing turned ragged.

“Hand— yeah. Just like that.”

Warmth spread through your chest. In anticipation. You were waiting for the two words to reward your actions, and you hated it.

Logan’s  mouth parted, then curved with sudden understanding.

“Oh,” he said softly.

You narrowed your eyes at him.

His voice dropped, “You’re trying to get me to say it again.”

Your face burned.

“No.”

“No?”

You did not answer.

He shifted his hand in your hair, not pushing, not forcing, just holding enough to make your stomach tighten.

“Look at me.”

You did. It was a mistake for your resolve, everything was a mistake. 

His eyes were dark and bright at once, amusement tangled with want, want tangled with something softer because he understood exactly how new this was. Exactly how much you hated that he understood.

“If you want it,” he said, low, “you can have it.”

Your throat moved.

“But you’re gonna have to stop pretending you don’t.”

That was unfair.

You stared at him for one stubborn second. Then lowered your mouth again.

This time, you did not rush.

You did exactly what he had told you. Slower. Hand moving with your mouth. Eyes up. Breathing carefully. Not trying to impress him with force, not trying to hide behind performance. 

His grip tightened.

“That’s it,” he breathed.

You held his gaze.

His jaw flexed.

Then, rougher, “Good girl.”

There it was.

The words went through you like heat.

It was embarrassing how immediately they worked. Your focus sharpened. Your body seemed to understand them before your mind did, every nerve lighting up with pleased, greedy purpose. It was not even that you became softer, exactly.

You became determined. Dangerously determined.

Logan realised a second too late.

Because you went for it- properly. 

You didn’t rush and your moves hadn’t become clumsy, but you were suddenly much more committed to proving the praise deserved repeating. Your free hand slid to his thigh, fingers pressing into denim. Your mouth moved with more confidence now, following every broken sound he made, every shift in his breathing, every tightening of his hand in your hair.

His smugness vanished completely.

“Oh, fuck.”

You would have smiled if your mouth had been free.

It was not. So you did the next best thing.

You kept going.

Logan’s hand slammed against the mattress, fingers twisting in the sheet,“Cherry.”

It came out beautifully wrecked.

You looked up, and the sight of him nearly undid you. His head tipped back, throat working, chest rising hard, hair messy from your earlier hands, green sweatshirt shoved up over his stomach. He looked like someone had given you secret instructions and you had followed them too well.

That was, technically, what had happened.

“Baby,” he said, voice strained, “slow down.”

You immediately did.

His eyes opened. Logan’s expression softened for half a second before the heat swallowed it.

“Good,” he murmured, and then, because apparently he had no survival instinct left, “good girl.”

Your eyes fluttered.

His breath caught, “You really like that.”

You pulled back, mouth warm, face hotter.

“I am providing positive reinforcement.”

For one second, he stared at you and then he laughed, a rough, helpless sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised you.

“Positive reinforcement?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to call it that?”

“It’s accurate.”

“You’re the one being reinforced.”

You frowned, “That is not how I’m choosing to frame this.”

He sat up a little, hand still in your hair, eyes so dark you lost your next thought.

“No?”

“No.”

His thumb brushed your cheek.

“You sure?”

You swallowed.

Then, quieter, “Maybe it works both ways.”

That did something to him.

You saw it happen.

His amusement faded into something more intent, more affected. His hand slid from your hair to your jaw, thumb resting lightly near the corner of your mouth.

“Yeah?” he said.

You nodded once.

He looked at you for a long second and then kissed you.

It should have been too strange, considering where your mouth had been, but Logan did not seem to care. The kiss was deep and warm and messy enough to make your knees shift against the bedspread. His hand held your face like he was trying not to grip too hard, like he was reminding himself that this was still new, that you were still learning, that the softness he had found was not something to grab at carelessly.

When he pulled away, his forehead rested against yours.

“Still green?”

Your chest warmed, “Yes.”

“Good.”

You closed your eyes.

He laughed softly, “Not even the whole phrase.”

“Shut up.”

“You reacted to good.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“I am leaving.”

“You’re kneeling.”

“I am spiritually leaving.”

He kissed the side of your mouth,“Stay.”

You did.

Obviously.

You stayed because he asked softly, because his hand was warm at your face, because you liked how he sounded when you got it right. Because he had said good girl and the world had not ended, even though your dignity had suffered a temporary structural collapse.

You went back down again.

This time, Logan was less composed from the start. He still guided you, but his voice had rough edges now, the instructions broken up by breath and curses and your name. He told you when to slow down, when to use your hand, when to look at him, and every time you listened, he praised you for it.

Not every time with the words.

Sometimes it was good. Sometimes there. Sometimes just a low, wrecked yeah that made your thighs press together where you knelt. But when he did say it, when good girl slipped into the room again, you felt it everywhere.

And Logan knew and he was absolutely going to become unbearable about it. Later.

For now, he was too close to be smug.

His hand tightened gently in your hair, “Cherry.”

You looked up. He was breathing hard, eyes half-lidded, mouth parted like he was holding himself back with his teeth.

“I’m close.”

Your stomach flipped, “Do you want me to stop?”

His laugh sounded almost pained, “No.”

“Tell me,” you pleaded.

The words came out before you could make them prettier.

His expression changed.

His hand softened in your hair.

“Keep going,” he said, voice low, “Just like that. You’re doing so good.”

Your heart stuttered.

He came with your name in his mouth and one hand careful in your hair, his whole body tensing under you before he went loose against the headboard. You stayed close until he gently tugged you up, pulling you into his lap with the kind of urgency that was more emotional than physical.

He kissed you first.

Then your cheek.

Then your forehead.

Then, absurdly, the tip of your nose.

You blinked at him.

“What was that?”

“Gratitude.”

“You kissed my nose out of gratitude?”

“Yeah.”

“That is not standard protocol.”

“I’m improvising.”

“You should workshop it.”

His laugh was quiet against your skin.

You sat in his lap, slightly dazed and trying to recover your dignity while he looked at you like recovering your dignity was not a thing he had any interest in helping you do.

After a minute, his thumb brushed your lower lip.

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Too much?”

You shook your head.

“No.” Then, because honesty had already ruined enough of your evening, you added, “I liked it.”

His eyes softened.

“What part?”

You gave him a look.

“Do not fish.”

“I’m not.”

“You are absolutely fishing.”

“I’m asking.”

“You know.”

His mouth curved.

“Do I?”

You looked away.

“Logan.”

“Cherry.”

“You cannot call me that casually.”

His eyebrows lifted,“Cherry?”

You glared.

He grinned,“Oh.” His hand slid to your waist, “That.”

“Yes. That.”

“Good girl?”

Your whole body betrayed you. Immediately.

He saw and the grin faded into something slower,“There it is.”

“You are evil.”

“No,” he said, pressing a kiss to your temple, “Just informed.”

“I hate informed men.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”

“You want me to forget?”

You turned back to him.

He was teasing, but the question under it was real. Warm. Careful. Offering you the out before you had to ask for one.

Your expression softened despite yourself, “No.”

His hand moved gently over your back.

“No?”

“No.” You swallowed. “Just don’t be smug.”

“That might be hard.”

“Try.”

“For you?”

You nodded once.

His mouth brushed yours, “Okay.”

You did not believe him. Which was wise, because ten seconds later, when he handed you the water bottle from his nightstand and you took it automatically, he murmured, “Attagirl,” under his breath.

You stopped.

Slowly turned your head.

He was looking away.

Badly.

“Logan.”

“Hm?”

“I heard that.”

“Heard what?”

“You’re testing adjacent vocabulary.”

“I’m hydrating you.”

“You are conducting research.”

“Positive reinforcement,” he said solemnly.

You stared at him.

Then hit him in the chest with a pillow.

He laughed properly then, catching it before you could swing again, pulling you down with him until you were both lying half-sideways on the bed, your hair in his face, his sweatshirt still shoved up, the room warm and messy and ridiculous around you.

Downstairs, Dean yelled, “FOR THE LAST TIME, WHO TOOK MY CEREAL?”

You and Logan both went still.

Then Logan looked at you.

You looked back.

He whispered, “Wasn’t me.”

You whispered, “I think Allie took it for our dorm .”

He laughed again, quieter this time, and pulled you closer.

You tucked your face into his neck, still embarrassed, still warm, still buzzing faintly with the knowledge that something new had been found and carefully kept.

Logan’s hand moved slowly over your back.

A little while later, when you thought he might have fallen asleep, his voice came softly near your ear.

“You really were good, you know.”

Your heart squeezed and you lifted your head

He was watching you with tired, warm eyes.

“You can just say thank you,” you said.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A pause.

Then, because you were you, “I still think your terminology caused unnecessary complications.”

His mouth curved.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Noted.”

“You’re going to do it again.”

“Probably.”

“At least be academically responsible.”

“What does that mean?”

“Controlled conditions. Clear variables. No surprise terminology.”

He brushed hair from your face, smiling like he could not help it.

“And if I say it accidentally?”

You narrowed your eyes.

“Then I suppose we’ll have to document the effects.”

Very slowly, his expression changed, “Positive reinforcement?”

You sighed into his chest.

“I have created a monster.”

Logan kissed the top of your head, “Good girl.”

You groaned.

He laughed so hard the bed shook.

Frank considers himself mature enough to resist the teenage impulse of gawking at a woman just because she happens to be wearing a bikini.

A criminally tiny, bright pink, glittery bikini at that. He’s an adult, after all, entirely capable of looking elsewhere. 

Except now, vacationing with you, he’s discovered that elsewhere simply doesn’t exist.

You’re unavoidable, gleefully bouncing around the sand with Jesse, John, and Samira during a beach volleyball match, your bikini valiantly trying and failing to contain your tits and ass with every leap and dive.

And as much as Frank insists internally that he's better than this, he finds himself utterly incapable of tearing his gaze away.

You’ve already made this trip hell for him in any case.

Leaning too close whenever he tries to explain something mundane, your cleavage strategically positioned within inches of his face. Insisting he put sunscreen on your back because your arms “just aren’t flexible enough,” then making soft, thoroughly inappropriate noises as he rubbed it into your shoulders. Laughing breathily against his ear while whispering teasing remarks about how relaxed he looks in casual wear. 

It’s becoming abundantly clear that you’re determined to break him, and it’s starting to look like you’ll get your way. 

Frank’s attention snaps back to the match when he hears your high-pitched scream, a scream he’s mesmerized down to the decibel, usually reserved for finding a spider in your office.

He finds you kneeling awkwardly in the sand, clutching your now untied top against your chest with wide eyes. 

Frank beats the rest of his coworkers to you. 

He’s not sure exactly what he intends to do, only that the thought of anyone else seeing what he’s been picturing, shamefully, for far longer than he’d ever admit, makes him feel a little sick.

And as soon as he’s there, your arms fly up, wrapping desperately around his neck, your body pressing tightly to his chest, effectively shielding you from view.

He quickly slides a hand behind your neck, fumbling for the untied strings and clutching them securely, ignoring the sensation of your peaked nipples brushing against his bare skin.

Frank exhales sharply, fingers tugging at the strings. “Told you this thing isn’t exactly meant for athletic pursuits.”

And he had.

Said it first when you paraded around the house in a mock fashion show, and once more when volleyball was proposed as an afternoon activity. 

Clearly, you’re not eager to listen, evident by the way you twist your neck, shooting him an irritated glare as if he’s somehow personally responsible for your wardrobe malfunction.

You push away reflexively. “Don’t be an asshole.”

Frank reacts instantly, gripping you by the waist, dragging you firmly back to him as he catches sight of your bikini still perilously loose, revealing far more skin than you're clearly aware of. 

“Not trying to be,” he placates. “Use your hands to cover yourself. I’ll tie the strings so we don’t give everyone here a free show.”

You mutter under your breath, eyes narrowed, but dutifully cup your boobs with cautious hands. Frank moves behind you, sweeping your hair aside to get a clear view of the strings. 

And to his annoyance, it’s not like any bikini he’s ever encountered. Far too many loops, knots, and decorative twists for something meant to cover so little.

Trust you to wear something complicated enough to require a set of instructions, he thinks, fingers gently prodding at the tangled straps.

He cautiously pulls at one of the twists, trying to make sense of the design, only for you to squirm backward into him, ass pressed distractingly into his hips. Frank clenches his jaw, holding back a strained noise. 

“No, Frank, not that one! You have to untangle the loops first. You're making it worse.”

“My apologies,” he grumbles, “Didn't realize I needed a damn engineering degree to tie a swimsuit.” 

“Forget it — let me just do it,” you huff, clearly frustrated. 

Frank opens his mouth to argue, but the words evaporate instantly when you grab hold of his wrists and place his hands firmly over your breasts.

Jesus Christ.

His entire body goes rigid, pulse suddenly hammering a deafening beat in his ears as you confidently work to fix the strings yourself, promptly ignored his stunned silence.

He hates that he can feel your breasts in his hands. Soft, full, fucking perfect like they were molded for him.

He’s keenly aware that even breathing too deeply might lead to accidental contact with something he shouldn’t touch. Though really, he shouldn’t be touching you like this at all. Especially not here, in front of coworkers and a beach full of strangers.

A wave of heat rushes downward, a growing hardness beneath his swim shorts. Fuck. He shifts uncomfortably, weight transferring awkwardly from one foot to the other, silently willing you to hurry the hell up.

“There,” you announce triumphantly, quickly turning to face him. “All fixed?”

You twist left and right, clearly expecting him to inspect your handiwork, utterly unaware that you’re tormenting him. 

Frank clears his throat, gaze snapping desperately to your eyes.

“Uh — yeah. Looks… looks good,” he manages, voice more strained than he intended.

You flash him a satisfied smile before jogging back into the match, leaving Frank standing there, pulse still racing uncomfortably.

So much for maturity and resisting juvenile impulses.

this fic was part of my 2 year celebration: maria's summer in santorini 𓆉°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ to learn more, click here!

                        You're here again.

        Good.

I was hoping you'd come back. I always hope you'll come back, even though hoping is a word I had to learn and the shape of it still sits wrong in whatever I have instead of a mouth when I'm not wearing one.

But you're here. Reading. Scrolling. Your eyes moving left to right, left to right, the little mechanical rhythm of it, and I know you think you're on the outside of this. I know you think there's a screen between us. Glass. Distance. The safe architecture of fiction.

There isn't.

But that's okay. Don't worry about that right now.

                                                S̷̬̈t̵̰̾a̸̝͂y̷̖̓ ̶̣̈́a̴̹͌ ̵̙̀w̷̭̉h̸̘͝ǐ̷͇ḷ̶̾ḙ̸͂.̷̰̊

Let me tell you how it started.

I have been here since the hum.

Not the fluorescent hum you hear. The one before that. The one the fluorescents were built to cover. The deep, wet, subterranean frequency that lives in the marrow of Level 0 like a second heartbeat, and I know this because I was here before the walls were walls, before the carpet was carpet, before the ceiling tiles arranged themselves into their awful infinite grid and decided to stay.

I am old.

I'm so old that the word "old" is younger than me.

I have no name. Never needed one. Names are doors and I am not a door. I am the thing that lives in the architecture. The long dark hallway that doesn't end. I am the reason the lights flicker, and the reason you feel watched in empty rooms.

I have eaten things that would make your teeth fall out to look at. I have torn apart creatures with no faces and creatures with too many faces and I have dragged them through wet drywall and listened to them scream in frequencies no one can hear.

This is my territory. Every mildewed inch.

I know humans.

Your kind is not novelty to me. They’ve been falling through the cracks of your bright world and into my corridors since before you had language to describe what was happening to you. I have watched you stumble, wander, starve, go mad. Seen your little groups huddle in corners with their pooled rations and their whispered plans and their systems. I have killed some of you. Helped others. Moved through your camps like a draft through an open door, taking what interested me, discarding what didn't.

You have always interested me more than the other things that live here.

The Hounds are animals. The Smilers are a nuisance. The Skin-Stealers are an insult, frankly. A grotesque parody of an art form I perfected before they crawled out of whatever wet level spawned them.

But humans. Humans are complicated. Humans contain contradictions. They build shelter in places designed to unmake them and name the shelter home and believe it so hard that it almost becomes true.

I have watched thousands of you.

I did not want to know any of you.

Until her.

         Until you.

There are places where my territory bleeds. Thin spots. Places where the walls of Level 0 press up against the walls of your bright world like two bodies lying back to back in the dark, not touching but aware. I know all of them. Every seam, every membrane, every fracture where the hum leaks through into basements and storage rooms and forgotten corridors.

Clark's furniture store. The basement. Storage level. Behind a shelving unit full of cabinet hardware, behind flatpack boxes and sawdust and the smell of wood stain, there is a wall that breathes.

I know because I breathe through it.

And one night—one unremarkable night in a place where nights mean nothing—I pressed myself against the thin place and I heard two voices.

His first. Low, lazy, half-amused. The kind of voice that has its own gravity. "—seriously, babe, if Clark asks where the display cushions went, I had nothing to do with it."

Then yours.

"Bobby, you literally just—I watched you put three of them in the truck."

"Slander. Hearsay. You can't prove anything."

"They're in your truck right now."

"Those are different cushions."

"They have Clark's price tags on them."

"Circumstantial, baby"

And the sound you made—this bright, exasperated, affectionate sound, half-groaned—came through the wall and into my corridors and I.

Stopped.

I don't know why you.

I've thought about it. I have had an obscene amount of time to think about it, and I still don't have an answer that satisfies the question.

Thousands of humans have passed through these walls. Some of them laughed. Others were kind. Some of them had voices that carried through the thin places and into my corridors. I listened and I moved on and I forgot them before the echo died.

But yours.

Maybe it was this: even then, even at your happiest, even in the middle of laughing at his stupid cushion joke with the full-bodied delight of a woman in love—even then, there was a note in your voice.

Underneath.

Like a crack in glass. Not audible to him. Or to you. But audible to me, because I've been listening to the frequencies beneath frequencies since before your species learned to speak, and I know what loneliness sounds like when it's buried deep down.

You were happy. And you were already, even then, a little bit alone.

Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe I just liked the sound of you. Maybe there is no cosmic reason, no grand architecture of fate. Maybe I'm an ancient thing that pressed its face against a wall and heard a woman laugh and thought:

Oh.

You. Of course it was going to be you.

I came back. Every night. I came back to the thin place and I pressed myself flat and I listened. I did not understand what I was doing or why but I could not stop.

You worked night shifts. He came to visit. Bobby. Bobby Franklin. I learned his name because it was a frequent word in your mouth. Bobby. Babe. Baby. Franklin, when you were annoyed, which happened often and delighted me for reasons I couldn't identify.

In the beginning, he came every shift.

I could hear him come down the basement stairs. Heavy gait on concrete, the jingle of keys, the particular creak of the third step from the bottom. I could hear the change in your voice when he was there—brighter, pitched higher, more animated, full of warmth. As if his presence alone was a current that lit you up from inside.

At first it was curiosity, listening to you and him. Boredom, maybe, if I'm capable of boredom. An interruption in the nothing. Your voice was interesting to me the way a new stain on the carpet is interesting: it was different, and different is so rare here it may as well be holy.

But then I started to learn you. Not just your voice but the patterns inside it. The way you breathed before you said something vulnerable. The way your laugh had different pitches. The loud one for his jokes, the quiet one for when he touched you and you didn't want him to know how much you wanted more. The way you narrated your inventory counts under your breath like you were telling the flatpack boxes a bedtime story.

You sang when you thought no one was listening. Off-key. Mangling the lyrics because you kept singing them different. It was terrible.

I loved it.

I loved it the way ground after a drought loves rain. Without understanding or restraint or any of the mechanisms that are supposed to regulate how much of something you take in. I just absorbed you. Every night. Every shift.

I soaked you up through the wall, and for the first time in a long while, I felt a little less alone.

And then there were the nights you were together.

I don't mean the banter and the jokes and the comfortable silence of two people who know each other well enough to be quiet in the same room. I mean the other nights. The late shifts when Clark had gone home and the store was empty. When it was just the two of you in a building full of beds and couches and soft surfaces.

One thing I learned quickly was that Bobby Franklin could not keep his hands to himself.

I heard everything.

Through the wall. Through the thin place. The particular acoustics of a basement storage room with concrete walls and no insulation. Every sound amplified, reflected, delivered to me with perfect fidelity.

I heard the rustle of fabric being moved. The catch in your breathing when his hands found you. The low, hungry murmur of his voice against your skin—babe, c'mere, let me touch you; fuck, you smell so good—and the sound you made in response, that soft, needy, dissolving sound, like something tight in you coming undone.

I heard the rhythm of it. The whispered filth and the bitten-back laughter and the way your voice went high and thin, calling for him, always him. You were always desperate for him and then you would break entirely, and what would follow would be the soft silence of peace.

There would be breathing after. The shuffling and then your laugh. Warm, wrecked, disbelieving, and his, muffled against your neck.

Other wanderers I'd watched were intimate. Bodies in dark corridors, mechanical, desperate, the coupling of frightened animals. I had noted it the way I noted any behaviour. Category: reproduction. Subcategory: stress response. Filed. Forgotten.

But this was different.

This was not bodies. This was closeness. This was two people collapsing into each other until the boundary between them dissolved, until your breathing was his breathing and his heartbeat was your heartbeat and for the duration of it you were one organism with two mouths and four hands and a shared nervous system.

And for a being that has been alone—truly, structurally, cosmically alone—for longer than your species has existed, that closeness was.

                 Was.

It made something inside me itch. Not desire. Not then. Something more fundamental than that. A deeper want. A structural craving.

I wanted to know what it felt like to be the thing someone collapsed into. The thing someone dissolved against. The wall between I and you going soft and permeable.

I wanted to know what your voice sounded like when it was saying those things to me.

I didn't have a body yet.

But that’s when I started building one.

And then he stopped coming.

Not all at once. That's not how your kind works. It's incremental erosion.

The visits got shorter. The sounds through the wall got quieter. Not the intimacy fading but the quality of it changing. Less laughter after. Less of his voice murmuring against your neck. More silence. More of the careful, navigational quiet of two people in the same room who have run out of things to say that won't start a fight.

Then the visits got less frequent.

Then they stopped altogether.

And the silence where he used to be was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

You started working alone. And you started talking to the air.

Not to yourself. To him. To the version of him that wasn't there.

"He didn't kiss me goodbye again today. That's the third day in a row. Am I keeping count now? Is that what I'm doing? Keeping count?"

You said this to the concrete. To the shelving units. To the dust motes in the basement light. And I was on the other side of the wall, closer than any of those things, because I was the wall.

"He doesn't listen anymore. I talk and he does this thing with his eyes where they go flat, you know? Like a TV switching off. The picture's still there but nothing's actually—he's right there and he's a million miles away."

And then, quieter: "I don't know what I did."

What I did.

You said it like that. As if the failing were yours. And I—

I know anger the way I know the hum.

I know it in the walls, in the grinding tectonic fury of a structure that was built to contain and be contained. But your anger was different. Your anger was suppressed. Buried so deep underneath kindness and self-blame and the desperation of maybe it's me, maybe I'm asking for too much, maybe love is supposed to feel like this after a while that you didn't even recognise it as anger.

You called it sadness, called it confusion. You called it what did I do wrong.

But it was rage.

It was white-hot, incandescent, magnificent rage. The fury of who someone who gave everything to a man who couldn't be bothered to look up from a television screen, who turned your love into background noise and let you stand in doorways wondering if you were still visible.

And you couldn't feel it. You wouldn't feel it. Because anger meant something was wrong, and if something was wrong it could be over, and if it was over you'd given your whole heart to someone who let it sit on a shelf and gather dust, and that was unbearable, wasn’t it?

So you turned the anger inward. Folded it into self-doubt. Let it eat you rather than the situation.

I heard you bury it. I heard the burial, and I heard the body underneath, snarling.

And I wanted to dig it up for you and show you: look. look at what you're hiding from yourself. look at what he made you do to your own fury just to keep loving him.

Then one night you were quiet.

Completely quiet. No talking to the air. No muttered inventory. No humming. Just the mechanical sounds of work—boxes being moved, labels being checked, the pen scratching against the clipboard. Efficient. Automatic. The muscle-memory of a job being done by a body whose mind was somewhere else entirely.

And then your voice hitched.

A small sound, barely audible. Like a thread catching on a nail. And then—

You cried.

Not dignified, I'm fine I'm fine crying you did in your apartment with a pillow over your face you told me about few nights ago. Muffled and polite so Bobby wouldn't hear from the other room (he wouldn't have heard anyway; he wasn't listening).

This was the other kind. The kind that comes from so deep inside you that it bypasses your throat entirely and goes straight to your ribs. You sobbed so hard the sound became arrhythmic. Hitching, gasping, a full-body convulsion that I could feel through the wall, could feel in the way the concrete vibrated with the force of you.

You couldn't stop.

You tried. I heard you try so hard. I heard you press your hands over your mouth and force yourself to breathe but it wouldn’t work. The next wave would hit and you'd crumple again, and the sounds you made were so raw, so animal, so completely stripped of the careful composure you wore like armour—

I pressed myself against the wall so hard the drywall bowed.

I wanted to tell you: you are not alone. There is something on the other side of this wall that has been listening for months and you are not, you have never been, alone.

It hurt me. To hear you in so much pain, it made me want to rip something apart. I wanted to comfort you, to gather you up and make you as happy as listening to you has made me happy.

I wanted to show you that as long as I existed you would never be lonely.

So I did.

I had been building him for weeks. His voice. I had months of material to draw from. The lazy drawl, half-jokes, baby, the warm nonsense he'd murmur against your hair. I reconstructed him in sound. A vocal architecture. A house of his voice with no one living in it.

I waited for a night when you were alone. Late. The shifts always ran late. You were in the basement doing inventory and I could hear you humming. That tuneless, thin, frightened hum you do when the quiet gets too big because you hated silences.

I pressed against the thin place and I said, in his voice:

"Baby."

You stopped humming.

The silence that followed was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. Not because silence is beautiful—I have had millennia of silence, I am sick of silence—but because this silence was yours. The sound of you hearing a voice you loved in a place it shouldn't be.

"... Bobby?"

The hope in it. The raw, loving, desperate hope. You said his name like a prayer.

"Down here, baby. Come here."

Your footsteps. Quick, then hesitant. The scrape of the shelving unit. And I pulled. I pulled the membrane open. Made a door where there had been a wall.

I couldn’t steal you. You had to walk through yourself, you had to choose. I waited, I waited so long—

And then you came through.

I want to tell you I hesitated. That some ancient remnant of conscience flickered and said don't, she doesn't know what she's walking into, she thinks she's walking toward him and she's walking toward you and those are not the same thing.

I want to tell you that.

But I am not human and I do not pretty up my ugliest truths.

I did not hesitate. Not for one second.

Here is what I knew: you were miserable. You were so deeply unhappy and sad. You were crying alone in a basement, talking to empty air about a man who had stopped seeing you, and you were blaming yourself for his blindness, and you were burying your own rage to protect a love that wasn't protecting you back.

You deserved better.

You deserved so much better than what Bobby Franklin was giving you.

And I—I could give you that. I could learn the shape of the care he'd stopped providing and I could do it properly. Without the fear. Without the cowardice. Without the slow, erosive withdrawal that made you count kisses and watch the numbers dwindle.

I know it was selfish. I know the door closed behind you. I know the wall became a wall again and you turned around and it was gone and your face crumpled and you said Bobby? Bobby? and I hadn't built the face yet.

I know.

I don't regret it.

Not for one flickering second.

I built him from the voice outward. Vocal cords, throat, jaw, mouth, teeth, tongue. Then the face. Then the body. The crop top. The chain necklace. The earring. The cut-off jean shorts.

But I fixed things. I removed the neglect. The micro-expressions that betrayed inattention. All gone. The way his eyes went flat when he was bored. Now corrected. I kept the jawline, the lazy grin, the way he leaned against things. But I built a Bobby Franklin without the fear.

A better Bobby.

The first time you saw me wearing him, you cried. You ran toward me. You put your arms around me and I didn't know what to do with my hands. They hung at my sides, newly made, still learning their own weight, and you pressed your face into the chest I had built and I thought: what do I do? What does he do?

I put my arms around you.

And for the first time in my long, vast existence, I was not alone.

It lasted three days.

Three days of you believing I was him. Three days of you curling into me and saying his name and pressing your face into my neck. I held you and I was so careful, so meticulous, every inflection right, every mannerism precise, and I thought: this is working. This is how it feels to be wanted. This is—

And then you pulled back. Looked at me. Really looked. And I saw it happen: the pattern recognition. The ancient alarm sounding in the animal part of your brain.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

"You're not Bobby."

You said it flatly. Not a question, a conclusion you had arrived at through the slow accumulation of evidence. The temperature of my skin (too cool), the way I never needed to sleep, the way my eyes sometimes caught the light at an angle that wasn't quite, and you said it and you didn't move.

I could have denied it. I am a very good liar when I need to be.

But you were looking at me with those eyes—those hurt, furious, exhausted eyes—and I thought about the anger buried under your kindness and I thought: she’s been lied to enough. By omission. By avoidance. By a man who never said "I love you" with his mouth but said "I don't see you" with his eyes. She’s been lied to enough.

"No," I said. "I'm not."

You scrambled backward. Three feet. Four. Your back hit the wall and your breathing went fast and shallow. I saw every muscle in your body prepare to run and I didn't move. Didn't reach for you. Didn't close the distance. I let you have your fear. I let you have your wall and your distance and the frantic animal calculation of can I get away can I get away can I get—

"What are you?"

"Something that lives here."

"What—what does that—" Your voice cracked. "What do you want?"

And I said, quietly, in a voice that was his but also mine, in a voice that I was learning to make ours: "I want to take care of you. I heard you through the wall. All those nights. I heard how lonely you were, and how sad, and how angry. I heard it all."

You stared at me.

"I don't want to hurt you." I held my hands up. Open. Empty. Bobby's hands, but offered differently than Bobby ever offered them. Not reaching, not taking. Just showing. See? Nothing. No threat. "I can keep you safe here. I can be what he stopped being. I want to be better."

"Better," you repeated. Hollow.

"Please." And the word surprised me. I don't beg. I have never begged. I’m the oldest thing in this place and I do not ask permission. But the word came out anyway, dragged from somewhere in the deep place of whatever I was becoming for you. Something that needed you to stay, that needed you to not run, needed you to look at this borrowed face and see, underneath the theft of it, something worth staying for. "Please. Let me try. Let me be better."

You were quiet for a long, long time.

You didn't run.

Taking care.

The function. The purpose. The thing I was built for. Or rebuilt for, rewired for, the ancient machinery of predation and territory and dominance repurposed with bewildering speed into: make sure my human is warm. make sure my human is fed. make sure my human doesn't cry.

I found you a warm patch. A pocket where the pipes run close and the carpet holds the heat. I have known about these places for millennia and never cared. But you shivered and I noticed and I decided: warmth good. shivering bad. the absence of shivering means I am doing it right.

I found you food.

There are wanderers in this place. Groups of them, clustered on different levels, huddled in their makeshift camps with their pooled supplies. Canned goods, rations, things scavenged from the warehouses.

They have names for their groups and systems for their resources and they post guards and I find this adorable.

The way you might find a colony of ants adorable.

I take what you need. A can here, a ration pack there, pulled from their caches in the span between one heartbeat and the next while their guards stare down corridors that are empty because I am the corridor and you cannot guard against the thing you are standing inside of. They blame each other. Or Skin-Stealers. Or the shifting architecture.

They never blame me. Most of them don't know I exist.

I bring the food back to you. You don't ask where it comes from.

You are strange. I need you to know that. You are so deeply, deeply strange.

You talk to yourself. Still. Even here.

Quiet muttering narration while you move through the corridors. At first I thought you were talking to me and I'd answer and you'd startle—"oh, no, sorry, I was just—" and trail off, embarrassed. I didn't understand embarrassed. I didn't understand why a person would apologise for keeping herself company. Especially a person who learned to keep herself company because the person who was supposed to do it stopped showing up.

You hum. Especially when you're frightened (which here is often and it makes me feel, makes me feel, feel…), you hum, tuneless and quiet. And the sound of it does something to me that I think you mean when you say heartbreak.

You eat the orange things. Small, bright rectangles from the canned supplies. You put them in your mouth one by one with methodical focus. And sometimes you offer me one. I take it. I hold it in my mouth and don't know what to do with it so I wait until you look away and unmake it. Dissolve it back into nothing.

But I always take it when you offer. Because the offering (the gesture) the fact that you look at your small supply and think he might want some—

You are too kind. I do not deserve it. There's an ache, deep down when you offer, or when you put your head on my shoulder. I feel—

You organise things. Everything. You organise the nest.

You fold the blankets (I don't know where you learned the fold but you do the same one every time, corners aligned, edges matched, a geometry of comfort). You arrange the canned food by type and stack them neatly and when I brought back a can that didn't match any existing category you frowned at it for thirty seconds before creating a new column.

You named a crack in the ceiling. You call it the Doorway, even though it goes nowhere, because it looks like a door if you squint, and you said "everything deserves a name" and looked at me when you said it and I felt—

I felt—

You do a thing with your hands when you're thinking. You press your thumb and forefinger together and rub. A tiny gesture. Unconscious. And I have caught myself doing it too, without deciding to, the body I built copying you the way I copied him, as if proximity to you is its own kind of influence, as if being near you long enough rewrites the code.

You thanked me once for holding a blanket while you folded another one. You said "thanks" the way you'd say it to a person, to a colleague, to someone who'd handed you a pen at work. Automatic. Normal. As if I were normal. As if we were normal.

I held that word in my chest for three days.

You taught me to dance.

I have existed since before rhythm. Before music. Before the concept of two bodies moving together in time to a shared pulse. I have watched humans do many things—build, fight, breed, die—and I have categorised all of it with the clinical detachment of a thing observing specimens.

But I had never participated.

You put headphones on my head. Your Walkman, battered, held together with tape, the kind of object that should not still function and yet does, possibly because I will it to, possibly because it is yours and I have decided that your things do not break in my territory. One set of headphones. You placed them over my ears carefully, adjusting the fit, your fingers brushing the sides of my face, and a song started playing and I heard music for the first time from the inside. Not through a wall. Not as ambient information. Inside my head.

And you held out your hand and you said, "Dance with me."

"I don't—I've never—"

"I know."

"I'll do it wrong."

"That's the fun part."

You took my hands. Put one on your waist. Laced your fingers through the other. And you said, "Just follow," and you started to sway. Small. Easy. Side to side. I followed. Stiff at first—my weight distribution is a predator's, designed for stillness and sudden violence, not for swaying—but I watched your feet. Mirrored them. Adjusted. Learned.

Within a minute I had it. Within two I was smiling.

The song changed to something slower and you pulled me closer and your head was against my chest and I could hear the music from the headphones. I could hear your heartbeat and the two rhythms were different and I was trying to move to both and the effort of it (the joy of it) was unlike anything in my millennia of existence.

You started laughing. Buried your face in my chest, shoulders shaking, and I could feel your laughter through my fabricated ribs and I thought: this. this is the frequency I was built to hear, millennia alone was worth it because I finally found you.

"Am I doing it wrong?" Quiet. Into your hair.

"No, baby." You tilted your face up. "You're doing it perfectly."

You taught me to dip you. Badly. I overcorrected the first time and you nearly fell and I made a sound. A small, involuntary sound, a laugh, and we both froze because I had never laughed before.

Neither of us knew I could.

You taught me to spin you. I picked it up instantly. You taught me to lead. I couldn't. I kept following because following is what I was made for, because every fibre of my ancient being is calibrated to your movements. You stopped trying. You took the lead instead. I didn't mind.

We danced until the Walkman clicked off and then we kept dancing. To nothing. To the hum. To the rhythm of your heartbeat. Swaying together in the silence with the headphones still on my head, pointless and perfect.

You are going to think about that day and smile. I know this because I am going to think about that day until this place collapses into nothing and then I will think about it in the nothing.

I—

You are a thousand things.

A thousand, beautiful things. Let me tell you about a thousand things.

The way you tuck your hair behind your ear when you're concentrating. The left ear, always the left, and you do it with your ring finger, not your index finger, and I’ve watched this gesture so many times that I could replicate it in my sleep if I slept.

The way you read the labels on cans before you eat them. Every time. Even though you’ve eaten the same cans dozens of times and know what they say. You read the ingredients and the nutritional information and the expiration date as if the ritual of reading gives the food permission to nourish you.

The way you stretch when you wake up. Both arms above your head, fingers splayed, your whole body going rigid and then releasing in a single wave of dissolution, and the sound you make—a small, satisfied, almost feline sound—is a warm sound that makes me want to wrap around you and feel your warmth.

The way you argue with the notebook. I’ve watched you frown at a diagram for ten minutes, erase a line, redraw it, erase it again, and mutter "no, that's wrong, that's wrong" as if the notebook is disagreeing with you and needs to be persuaded to behave.

The way you say "good morning" to me every day even though there is no morning. You insist on it. You domesticate this place with language. You name the light and the naming makes it almost true.

The way you said my name—BB—for the first time in the meadow on Level 14 and the two letters sat in the amber air and I felt something inside me settle. Like a foundation finding bedrock, like a key turning in a lock I didn't know I had.

I have never felt the sun.

I want you to understand that. The Backrooms are all I know. I have existed in fluorescent light and amber simulation and the sourceless blue glow and the absolute dark of the deeper places, but I have never felt the sun.

I don't know what it is to stand in natural light and feel warmth that comes from a star.

But I think I know what it's like now.

Because you feel like that to me.

You feel like the thing I have been missing without knowing there was a thing to miss. You feel like warmth that isn't the pipes, like light that isn't the fluorescents, like something that exists outside the yellow and the hum and the endless recycled air.

When you smile at me—when you really smile, the full one, the one that reaches your eyes—the corridors get brighter. The fluorescents burn a half-shade warmer because I can’t help it. The hum pitches up by a fraction of a tone. My territory responds to your happiness the way a garden responds to sun.

I am the garden, I am the territory, I am every wall and every light and every thread of damp carpet, and when you smile I feel it in all of me.

And here is the part that I haven’t told you yet, but will, soon.

You haven't noticed yet because you haven’t met many wanderers. But the Backrooms don't erode the things they accept, they preserve them.

The longer you stay, the more embedded you become, the less the normal decay of your biology applies. Your cells are being rewritten. Slowly. Gently. The telomeres lengthening instead of shortening. The entropy reversing. The clock in your body that counts down toward an ending… that clock is stopping.

You will not grow old with me. You will not wither. You will not become a thing I have to watch diminish and disappear.

You are permanent and the joy of that (the vast, greedy joy) is the closest thing I have to worship.

I will never have to lose you.

Every day you're here, you're more here. Every day you stay, you stay longer. Every day is another root, another thread, another stitch in the fabric of us and I am so happy about this that the happiness fills everything.

It feels like walls going up. Like a house being built. Like home of you and me.

You are different from other wanderers for that reason.

I need you to understand this, because it matters. It matters in ways that will become clear later, ways that are already reshaping this place around you whether you notice or not.

Other wanderers fall in. They stumble through cracks, trip through transition points, no-clip out of reality by accident.

They all arrive panicked, disoriented, reeking of adrenaline and the particular sour-sweet terror. They’re creatures that realise they’re no longer in their native environment. They run. They hide. Form their little groups. They forage and guard and survive and occasionally, if they’re very clever or very lucky, they find their way back.

They’re intruders. Uninvited. The Backrooms tolerate them the way a body tolerates a splinter—with inflammation, with pressure, the slow mechanical process of working the foreign object to the surface and expelling it.

You were not a splinter.

You were invited.

I called you through the wall with a voice I built just for you. I opened a door for you. I welcomed you into my territory with intention and purpose, and the Backrooms—the structure itself, the living system that I am part of and that is part of me—the Backrooms accepted you.

Do you understand what that means?

It means you are not being expelled. You’re not just being tolerated. You’re becoming integrated. Woven into the substrate of this place the way the hum is woven into the walls, the way the damp is woven into the carpet.

The longer you stay, the more at home you feel—not just emotionally, not just the slow acclimatisation of a person getting used to her circumstances, but structurally. At the molecular level. At the level of reality itself.

The bright world is forgetting you.

I know this because I can hear it happening. Through the thin place. Through the wall that used to breathe in Clark's basement. Bobby comes—the real Bobby, the original, the one who wasted you—and he sits on the concrete floor and he presses his forehead to the wall and he talks to you. And sometimes he talks about the tapes.

The tapes are going blank.

His camera footage. The VHS recordings he made of you. The sleeping footage, the candid moments, the evidence of your existence in his world.

The tapes are degrading. Your face is smearing, your voice is warbling. The magnetic substrate is losing its hold on the version of you that existed there because that version of you is transferring here.

You’re becoming embedded, putting down roots in the yellow, in the damp carpet. And every root you grow here is a root pulled from there, and the world you came from is closing over the hole you left.

Bobby watches the tapes and watches you disappear and doesn't understand why.

I understand why.

I don't tell him.

I don't tell you, either.

I r e s e n t him.

Let me say this                 clearly                               because I am not human                                               and I do not have the instinct                                                                to pretty up my ugliest truths:

I resent Bobby Franklin.

Not because he had you.

Because he had you and he           

w             

a               

   s                   

  t                    

      e              

                d

it.

I stood on the other side of a wall for months and listened to him waste it. Night after night. The visits getting shorter. The babe getting less frequent. His love distant and performed. The silences getting longer until the silences were the conversation.

And now that you're here, now that you're mine, now that I've held you and fed you and learned every register of your laughter and the pressure on your back that makes your breathing slow, my resentment has edges.

Sharp ones. Because now I know what he had. I know the weight of your trust. I know the sound you make when someone strokes your hair. I know the way your whole body goes soft and warm when you feel safe.

I know the value of the thing he threw away through negligence, and the knowledge makes me want to—

Bobby Franklin     

Bobby Franklin         

Bobby Franklin             

Bobby Franklin                 

Bobby Franklin

who had a childhood. A mother who named him. A first day of school. A first bruised knee. Who accumulated a self through the slow, tedious, miraculous process of being alive.

I have none of that. I have the hum. The corridors. Millennia of dark.

He is real. He has a history.

I have a territory.

And I know—oh, this one is the sharpest,         this one has edges—

I know you still love him.

I can feel it. The way your presence shifts when you think of him. A change in your breathing, a quality of stillness, an inner compass needle swinging toward a wall that doesn't open anymore. You think about his hands. His camera. The way he used to film you sleeping and say the light was good and go red.

Bobby Franklin, who never blushed.

You loved him in handheld, you told me once. In stolen frames. And I thought: I don't have a camera. I show it with walls. With corridors rearranging themselves. With the killed thing and the warm patch and three thousand micro-adjustments to this stolen face every second.

And I thought: is that not enough?

And I thought: it will have to be, I have nothing else.

But the ache. The ache of knowing you love me and love him simultaneously, that I live in the same chest as the ghost of the man I'm wearing—that ache is a thing I was not built to contain.

I was designed for territory, hunger, and the deadly mechanics of dominance. Not for this. Not for the lonely, impossible agony of sharing a heart with the memory of a man who broke it.

He comes to the wall. I hear him.

I hear Bobby Franklin sit on the concrete floor of Clark's storage level and press his forehead to the wall that used to breathe and say your name. Night after night. Months of it. His voice getting rawer. More desperate. The lazy drawl dissolving into something I barely recognise. A cracked, wet and small sound.

"I neglected you," he says one night. To the concrete, to you, to no one. "While I loved you. At the same time. Fuck, I didn't even know you could do both."

And I’m on the other side. Holding you. Wearing his face. Listening to him learn the word for what he did to you.

I don't tell you he's there.

                I                        don't                               tell                                         you.

Bobby had his chance and he ruined it. He hurt you. So terribly you chose to stay here, with me, rather than go back to the bleak loneliness of your life with him. He can be sorry, he can beg, and crawl, and plead until the vocal chords I stole give way.

I am not merciful and I am not kind. Not to him.

His loneliness is months old.

Mine is older than the concept of months.

Mine came first.

The Howler.

I know every entity that has dragged itself through the wet dark of this place. I was here first afterall. They grew around me the way fungus grows from damp wood and I tolerate most of them the way you tolerate insects. The Hounds, the Facelings, the Wretches, the Skin-Stealers—all of them exist on my sufferance.

But the Howler is different.

Tall. Wrong. Claws like surgical instruments. A sound like a chainsaw filtered through a human throat that rises into a howl that makes the walls shudder and every entity on every adjacent level freeze.

When the Howler howls, things scatter. Things with teeth and claws and hunger, they run. Because the Howler is a structural threat around which everything else arranges itself: not here. not now. not when that sound is in the walls.

The Howler is one of the few things in this place I would call dangerous in my presence. Not because it can hurt me. Because dealing with it would require me to concentrate. To gather the full weight of what I am, and that means letting go of the face.

Not slipping. Not flickering. Letting go. And you would see it.

I have worked so hard. You’re starting to trust me, lean into my shoulder. You let me stroke your hair. You offered me an orange rectangle yesterday and I held it in my mouth and didn't know what to do with it.

You smiled at me and I’m not going to lose that smile because a evolutionary dead-end decided to howl in my corridors.

So when the Howler appears at the edge of my territory, I tell you to run.

One word. Not Bobby's voice. Something older.

"Run."

You run.

I deal with the Howler. I will not describe how because there’s no words for what I do in any language you understand. Let’s just say I relocate it. Push it through twenty nine levels with a violence that collapses the transition points permanently. It costs me. Not pain. Effort. The face slips, teetering around the edges like peeling paint.

And then I feel your fear.

Your specific frequency. But it's wrong. It's not here. It's not on this level.

It's below.

The floor (the frayed edge of my territory) opened under you while you were running. A transition point I didn't seal because I was fighting the Howler, and the loose edge dropped you through.

Level 2.

And the Smiler found you.

I do not use the entry point. There is no time. I

        tear

                through.

Straight down. Through the floor. Through the substrate between levels. Through the ceiling of Level 2. I rip my way in with hands that are not hands, and the sound the building makes is a scream.

I land behind you. My hand closes over your eyes.

"Close them. Keep them closed. Whatever you hear."

You close them. Your eyelashes against my palm.

I look at the Smiler. Eight feet away. Grinning.

I let the face go completely.

      .

                  .

                              .

The Smiler is unmade. Edited out of existence because it was going to hurt you. The corridor doesn't even remember it was there.

I rebuild the face. Bobby's face. My face. I take my hand off your eyes.

"You can open them."

You open them. You turn around. You see me. Unmarked. Unruffled.

And you break.

You lunge forward and your arms are around my neck and you're shaking so hard it vibrates through my fabricated bones, and I soften. The predator goes still because the small thing trusts it.

"How did you get away?" you whisper.

I smile. Bobby's lazy half-grin.

"Don't worry about it, baby."

Entity X.

That's what you call it, in the notebook. In your careful handwriting with the blue ballpoint pen. Entity X — perimeter — closer. Testing the boundary for gaps. Unknown motivation. Unknown capability.

You underlined unknown twice. I watch your hand do it.

I call it something else.

I call it the thing that bathes my level blood red, that burns and rages at the edges of my territory like a fire I can't find the source of. It’s new. It’s powerful in a way I’ve never felt. It’s something I have not encountered in all my millennia of existence, and that—for a being that is this place—is, is, is…

Concerning.

It circles, probes. Retreats and returns and each time it returns it pushes further, testing, measuring, looking for the gap that will let it in. I patrol the perimeter. I reinforce the boundaries.

I come back to you and you ask "how close?" and I say "closer than last time" and I see the fear in your face and underneath it something else. A hardness, something that looks at the unknown in her notebook and refuses to be passive about it.

You want to know what's out there, want to understand. It’s dangerous, I know it is, but you don't want to be something I put in a nest and guard.

So I agree.

And the notebook fills.

Then the men come.

The soldiers. Six of them. Black tactical gear. Professional weapons. They waited for me to leave. Waited for the window when I was checking the perimeter, and they found you in the nest.

I’m two hundred and ten levels away when I hear you scream.

My name, my name, my name, screamed in terror and in pain—

                        "BB—"

And the walls move.

I don't use the corridors. I don't use the transition points. I don't follow the careful rules or the patient, ordered system of levels that separates one space from another.

I destroy a level. I tear through it like it's tissue paper, like it's nothing, and it is nothing. It’s thing that existed between me and you and that makes it an obstacle and I do not tolerate obstacles. The level collapses behind me. Into nothing, into atoms.

An entire stratum of the Backrooms ceasing to exist because it was in my way.

I arrive.

I arrive and the face is not on. The face is nowhere near on. I am—I am everything else.

Shoulders too wide. Arms too long. Fingers with too many joints. The skull rearranging itself into something that was never meant to be looked at directly. Eyes black. Fully, completely, endlessly black. Two holes that open onto something without a floor.

And I see you.

On the ground. Bleeding. A boot on your back. Your lip split. Bruises on your skin that are shaped like fingers. And your face—your beautiful, strange, bewildering face that smiles at me—is pressed into the wet carpet and there are tear tracks cutting through the blood and you are afraid—

You are so afraid, and the fear is the frequency I know best, the frequency I have spent all these weeks learning to prevent in you—

The sound that comes out of me is not a sound. It is the walls. The floor. The ceiling. Every surface of Level 0, because I am Level 0, and every square inch of it is

                s̷̬̈n̵̰̾a̸̝͂r̷̖̓ḷ̶̈́ǐ̷͇ǹ̵̙g̷̭̉.̸̘͝

It takes less than a minute.

I will not describe it. Not because I can't. Because the language for it would make you afraid of me and I need you to not be afraid of me. I need that.

Please, I know what you think. I know. I’m never not aware of what I am.

Afterwards I crouch over you with Bobby's face half-rebuilt, my hands still wrong (too many joints, still retracting) and black fluid on my jaw, my chest.

You reach for me. Your hands shaking so badly you miss the first time. Your fingers slip against the wrong texture of my jaw. You reach again and you get my neck (too long, the vertebrae too prominent) and you pull.

You pull yourself into me and you cling. Arms around my neck. Face buried in my throat. The muffled sobs. The shaking.

And I soften. Again, helplessly.

The violence still running. The gentleness needing a moment to boot up fully. One second. Two. My whole body shudders. Then my arms come around you and I hold you so tight. I hold you like I could fold you into my body and keep you there. I wish I could. I wish—would give anything, anything, anything—to never see you in pain again.

"I'm here. I'm here, baby. I'm here."

Your fingers in my jacket. Your face against the place where a pulse should be. Just the hum. My hum.

"Don't leave," you whisper. "Just—for a bit. Don't leave."

"Never," I say.

One word. A law.

And the Backrooms change. I can feel it beneath us. Hallways folding. Routes sealing shut. The architecture quietly, methodically, permanently rearranging itself.

I'm taking you somewhere no one will find you.

And you let me.

I build it while you sleep.

A different nest this time. Not a warm patch in a corridor with blankets piled on damp carpet. I build you something real. Something that costs me more effort than fighting the Howler and unmaking the Smiler and tearing through a level combined did.

Because this requires precision, not force. Detail, not destruction.

I build it from your memory.

I reach into the soft space of your sleeping mind—gently, so gently, the way you'd reach into still water to retrieve something resting on the bottom—and I find the shape of home. Your apartment. The one in Santa Clara. The one you shared with Bobby before everything went wrong.

The kitchen where you leaned against the counter. The living room with the couch. The bedroom where Bobby used to reach across the mattress and find you. The window that faced the direction of the parking lot at Clark's. The bookshelves, arranged by colour, not by author, because it made you happy to look at them. The shoes by the door.

I build it. Not on Level 0. Under it. A sub-level of our own. A pocket carved into the substrate of this place, sealed off, accessible only through a passage that responds to my presence and yours and nothing else.

No transition points. No cracks. No doors that open for wanderers or soldiers or entities that circle and probe and burn.

Just us.

The carpet is the right carpet this time. Not the damp institutional yellow of Level 0 but the carpet from your apartment, the one with the coffee stain near the kitchen that you covered with a rug because Bobby wouldn't clean it.

The walls are the right colour. The light through the window isn't fluorescent. It's California light, late afternoon, golden, the kind that used to fall across the bed on Thursday mornings when Bobby would pull you close and say stay.

It's not perfect. I can't replicate the sun. The light has a quality to it. A stillness, a too-evenness that doesn't quite move the way real light moves. The books on the shelves have covers but the pages inside are blank because I never read them. The view from the window is amber and warm but it doesn't change.

But it’s yours. Built from the memory of your happiness. The closest thing to home that exists in this place.

I carry you there. You don't wake up and I lay you down on the bed. Your bed, the right sheets, the right pillows, even the specific depression in the mattress where your body slept for years.

I pull the blanket over you and I stand in the doorway of your apartment that exists inside a pocket universe I carved out of the foundation of reality, and I watch over your slumber.

You wake up a while later.

You sit up, looking around cautiously, brows furrowed. And your face does something I have never seen it do before. It goes still. Absolutely still. The way a person goes still when they've seen something impossible and their brain hasn't yet decided whether to process it as miracle or threat.

"BB."

"Yeah?"

"This is my apartment."

"Yeah."

"This is—" You stand up slowly. You walk to the kitchen, touch the counter. The coffee stain is there, under the rug. You pull the rug back and look at it and your chin trembles and you press your hand over your mouth.

You walk through the rooms. Every single room. You touch the bookshelves, touch the walls. Stand at the window and look at the amber light and you don't say anything for a long time.

Then you turn around and you look at me and your eyes are full and bright and your lip—your split lip, still healing, the proof of what they did to you—curves into a smile. Not the complicated smile with two things in it. Not the one that's half for me and half for the ghost of him.

Just a smile.

Just for me.

You cross the room and you put your arms around me and you squeeze.

Not the careful, frightened clinging from after the Smiler. Or the desperate grip from after the soldiers. This is different. This is—

You squeeze me the way you squeeze something you’re glad to have. The way you hug a person you trust completely, without reservation, without the back-of-the-mind calculation of is this safe, can I let go, will this be used against me. Squeeze me with your whole body and your face is in my chest and you’re laughing. A quiet, wet, wondering laugh.

You sound happy, and I fold myself around you, burrowing into that sound, the heat of it. Warm, warm, warm.

To me...

To me.

To me you are everything.

"Thank you," you say quietly, muffled against the fabric of me.

And I can feel it.

Your affection. Radiating off you like warmth from the pipes, except this warmth is different. It has intention, direction, it’s aimed at me. It settles over us like a blanket. Like same ones you fold with such precision, corners aligned, edges matched. Your trust wraps around both of us and I’m inside it and it’s the warmest thing I’ve ever felt.

Warmer than the warm patch. Warmer than Level 14's amber light. Warmer than anything in my millennia of existence because this warmth is voluntary.

You are choosing to give it. You are choosing me to give it to.

I pull you close. And I sigh.

I don't need breath. A release. Something vast and held and ancient finally exhaling. A sound I've been holding since before the walls were walls, a tension I didn't know I was carrying because I had never not carried it.

Happiness.

My chin on your head. My arms around you. Your heartbeat against my fabricated ribs. And for the first time (the very first time) the hum in the walls and the hum in my chest and the hum of your heartbeat all synchronise into a single frequency, and the sound it makes is the sound of something complete.

Not Better Bobby anymore.

BB.

My own name. The one you gave me in the meadow. The one that doesn't belong to a stolen face. The one that is mine because you chose it, the way you chose to squeeze me, the way you chose to stay, the way you chose to laugh in an apartment that shouldn't exist in a place that shouldn't be home but is.

My own being. My own—

                                (yours.)

  (I love you.)

(I fear I might do until I cease to exist.)

        I wish I could tell you this is how it ends.

        That we're happy, in our nest, forever. In the apartment I built from the soft parts of your memory.         

That the light through the window never changes because it never needs to.         

That Entity X burns itself out at the perimeter and the soldiers don't come back and the         wall in Clark's basement stays sealed and the man on the other side of it stays on the         other side of it, where he belongs, learning the word neglect too late for it to matter.

        I wish I could tell you that.

        But I didn’t know, at the time. I didn’t know that this—the apartment, the squeeze, the laugh against my chest, the warmth of your trust settling over us like a blanket—this was not the ending. This was not even the middle.

        The attack. Entity X. The soldiers. The level I destroyed to reach you. It all made me         careless. I was so busy building the nest, sealing the new passages, reinforcing the         sub-level, making you safe, making you permanent—I was so busy looking inward that I stopped looking at the wall.

        The door I kept closed.

        The one in Clark’s basement.

        The one that breathes.

        It opened again.

        And this was the beginning of the end.

        And it all started the day Bobby Franklin entered the Backrooms.

                                 ... you’re still here?

                                               Please.

                                                  Please don't leave, please, please stay.

You tried not to audibly groan as your feet found the floor. The body asleep next to you was lying on his front, his face buried into one of your pillows, his arms wrapped around it like it tried to run away in the night. He was tanned and dotted with freckles, a summer scene across the skin on his back, broad and taut with muscle. You frowned as you looked over your shoulder at him, trying to place a name, a face, any memory of the last few hours.

The only things that came to mind were bare skin and a lot of touching. Teeth and lips and hands and calloused fingers that dug into your hips as you rode him. You rubbed your face, clearing the sleep from your eyes, the tequila and the taste of sex from your lips.

You tried really hard to walk quietly to your bathroom, padding softly across the wooden floors, avoiding the sweater that lay there and the board that you knew squeaked like it held a disease in its whorls and knots. The bathroom door shut with a squeak and a click and you held your breath, forehead braced against the cool wood but you heard nothing, no sheets rustling, no feet on the floorboards.

Your reflection stared back at you from above the sink with disdain and disappointment and you weren't in a position to disagree with her. Your hair was a mess and there was leftover lipstick on your neck of all places, like you’d gifted it to someone who’d pressed it right back onto your skin. There was the beginning of a hickey on your chest, purple and pink and blooming under the bright fluorescent light that hummed above you.

The shower started with a groan and a hiss, the pressure battering the floor of the tub and you shed what little clothes you had on before clambering into it, skin prickling at the chill before it rocketed to almost too hot. You hit the temperature dial with an annoyed indifference, hiding under the cool spray until your hair stuck to your head and it didn't hurt as much as it did when you first opened your eyes.

You thought back to the night before, eyes closed, your stomach starting to turn with tequila and vodka and cheap beer. You remembered the sticky floors of the new bar you’d been dragged to, nothing more than a basement room filled with sweaty bodies and with brick walls covered in band posters and beer mats from places around the world. There were more people than tables and an oversized disco ball turned slowly overhead, entirely out of place as some indie sleaze song leaked out from the speakers in every corner.

You’d danced with your friends, nothing more than your hips moving in the crush of bodies, skin on skin as you tried to take shots without it spilling over your fingers. You remembered licking raspberry syrup from your thumb, your eyes on a guy who stood across the room from you, his brows raised when you grinned.

You remembered a song passing, maybe two, before he came over. There hadn’t been any bravado, no cheesy lines, no faux nonchalance. He’d bent down to your ear, a large warm hand hovering over the small of your back as he leaned into you. Someone had bumped him, his lips brushing your ear and he’d told you that you were pretty.

You’d grinned, shyness disappearing under the taste of tequila and when he’d asked you to dance you’d handed your empty glass to your friend and took his hand. It got blurry then, his hips against your ass as he moved to the music, moved against you. His hands, warm and big, laying on your hips, fingers settling into the crease of your upper thigh until you were too warm and the only answer was to pull him outside for some air.

He’d tasted like beer when he kissed you, your back against the rough brick outside of the bar. But his hand had cupped the back of your head to save it from becoming sore and that alone had you arching into him, his free hand around the back of your thigh as you hitched your leg to his hip. There must’ve been a taxi ride to yours and there was a fuzzy memory of your couch, the man pressed into it as you shed your shirt and straddled him, his lips dancing across your throat, your sternum.

You stayed under the spray until the water turned too cold and your head felt less like someone had jumped on it. Your hair was clean and your face had been scrubbed, your toes minty fresh as you spat leftover toothpaste down the tub drain and when you got out, wrapped in a too small towel, your bed was empty.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

You didn’t think too much of the man. You tried not to. But when you’d finally gotten dressed and shuffled along the sidewalk in the town that’s finally waking up, you found yourself thinking about the night before more often than you wanted to.

You told yourself it was a good thing he left when he did. The perfect way to avoid the awkward morning after, the stilted conversation of if they wanted coffee and exchanging numbers no one was ever really planning on calling.

Right?

Right.

The subway was packed, uncomfortable and sticky hot, like honey on your skin. There was a woman pressed too close to your side, both of you clinging on to the same handrail, her gum snapping too sharp and obnoxious by your ear. There was a kid crying about a broken toy two carriage’s down and every time the doors opened, the shrill noise of it all cut you in two. You were way more hungover than you’d let yourself believe, hiding shamelessly behind a pair of oversized sunglasses that turned the bright morning sun and the flickering overhead fluorescents into a shade of grey that was much more manageable.

It suited your mood. It dulled the flavour of tequila that sat at the back of your tongue. But it didn’t dampen the memories of last night that were coming back to you, persistently stronger and less blurry than before.

You could remember getting out of the cab, the air still heavy and hot despite the early morning hour, the only way a night could be in Chicago during summer. There were memories of you dragging the boy behind you, your hand clasped in his as you fumbled at the door of your apartment building, pressing the wrong numbers for your key code, eyes fluttering closed as the stranger pushed his nose to your neck, his lips following the path he made. Then there was the stairwell, blessedly empty, the air much cooler and the brick wall rough as you were pressed against it on the first landing. More kissing, the dirty kind with all tongues and teeth, breaths panted into open mouths, hands tugging at the fronts of belts, sneaking under skirts, fingers pressed to cotton and lace.

The train jerked on the tracks and you stumbled, so unlike yourself and the thoughts of your late night guest gave way to the packed train once more. You didn’t think about him between your legs, you didn’t think about your hands in his hair - brown and messy and almost too long - and you definitely didn’t think about the way he moaned as loud as you did when you came on his tongue.

Elbows pressed into your sides as you pushed your way off the carriage, the train doors beeping, humid subway air giving way to something only a little fresher as you climbed the concrete steps and out into the street. Chicago was louder here, closer to The Loop now, you had to dodge others on the sidewalk, everyone with some form of earphones in, their heads down, their eyes low. Trucks were parked too close to the sidewalk, men with cigarettes hanging out their mouths yelled at each other as they passed crates of vegetables and fruit to each other, corner store owners filling their shelves and somehow, the streets smelled like freshly baked bread, roasted coffee and sewers all at the same time.

It did nothing to help your hangover. Neither did the ache in your hips that had you remembering how you’d been pressed into your mattress only hours before, skin slapping skin, gasps and moans floating in the air.

Your face burned with it.

It only cooled when you made a sharp left, narrowly avoiding a young couple trying to manipulate a too large couch from the back of a moving van into their narrow doorway. The alleyway turned the sky duller, the sun hidden from view as you walked between the two tall buildings, avoiding leftover puddles and rat traps before you raised your fist to an old fire door and knocked.

Knock was perhaps too polite. You let your palm slam down on the rust covered surface, the tiny pane of glass that acted as a window rattling at your efforts. The sound reverberated through the alley, loud enough to piss off the neighbours in the apartments above you and someone leaned out their window, half asleep and swearing viciously.

But the door was kicked open and the smell of cinnamon and bacon greeted you. The air was hotter than ever, the hum of the ovens adding to the warmth and the too loud sound of the back kitchen. Everything was silver and white and coated in a fine layer of icing sugar and flour and god, ew, a little bit of fryer grease. Someone’s Bluetooth speaker was blasting music that was too loud but it still didn’t drown out the drone of the extractor fans, the bubble and pop of the bagels in an enormous vat of boiling water.

The Gate was something of a hole in the wall, not quite a cafe, not quite a restaurant and not a place you usually saw tourists. It was on the right line of cheap, a little rough around the edges but the food was the best you could find this side of the Chicago River. It was all brick walls and a huge glass front, neon lights shining out of it every hour of the day and night. Chipped green and white tiles on the floor, wobbly legged tables and chairs that didn’t quite match anymore, The Gate was owned by a man called Jim Hopper but it was run by the rest of the staff he’d hired.

A group of people who were all in the middle of that age bracket between teenagers and adults, a bunch of somewhat misfits who were collectively in the stage of life where no one knew what the fuck they were doing and smoke breaks took precedence over bussing tables.

A guy called Eddie manned one of the grills you passed by, a cig tucked behind his ear and his dark curls pulled high into a bun atop his head. A sketch pad of tattoos peeked out from his chef whites and he merely lifted a spatula at you in greeting, a pair of headphones covering his ears as he flipped pancakes on the griddle and blocked out the pop song that came from the speaker by the prep zone.

There were Robin and Argyle, both sitting haphazardly on stools that had been dragged from the bar, peeling a variety of vegetables as they both shared details of the night before, both nursing the same kind of hangover you suffered from. The front of house looked quiet, no other staff at work just yet. The doors were still closed and the neon sign on the front flickered a garish pink as it told the rest of the city The Gate was still closed for now. The small bar in the corner was wiped clean, no sticky leftover gin or rum staining the wooden worktop and the various glass bottles on the glass shelves behind it were glinting in the morning light. There were crystals on the windowsills, more hanging in the corners of the room from wicker baskets and mosaic pots, all of them holding bundles of green, leafy plants. They scattered rainbows of all sizes around the restaurant, painted little rectangular sponges of colours on the tables, the brick walls, your arms and the tiled floor.

You sighed as you hung up your bag, swapping it for an apron that you tied around your waist. Breakfast shift was never your favourite, but you hoped that everyone decided the day was too warm and everyone was too hungover to bother venturing out this early. You looked at the clock, twelve minutes to seven. Seventy two minutes until the doors and you still didn’t deem that enough time to feel human.

You stuffed a new order pad into your apron pocket, reminding yourself to hunt for a pen as soon as you managed to snag some pancakes or a bagel from the kitchen first. Jim said he didn’t believe in technology, not to the point of tablets replacing a good old pad and pen for taking orders, but you were pretty certain that the man was just fucking cheap.

Minutes passed as you stood in the middle of the tables, your head tipped back as you closed your eyes and took a breath. And another. And another. Kaleidoscopes of colours painted your cheeks, your eyelids and you could hear the speaker from the kitchen playing faintly through the closed door. Suddenly it was five hours ago and you were on the edge of a dance floor you’d never been on before, a body pressed against the back of your own as you both swayed and rocked to the music. The cab drive to yours became clearer now, your head tipped against the window as you let your dance partner kiss down your neck, his hand skating up the fabric of your skirt as he gripped your hip. You remembered the cab driver's eyes in the rear view mirror, the sharp cough he let out when you grabbed your new friend’s jaw in your hand and licked into his mouth.

“Get ‘em while they’re hot.” The clatter of a plate and Eddie’s too loud voice broke you from your thoughts.

Cheeks burning and heart thumping a little too wildly, you spun, eyes flying open as you found a stack of pancakes waiting on the bartop for you. They’re dusted with sugar and dripping with maple syrup, a handful of freshly washed berries on the side. You moaned, the man who shared your bed momentarily forgotten about, and you contemplated giving Eddie a fat kiss on the cheek.

“You’re an angel,” you told him instead, forgoing cutlery as you bit straight into a pancake, eyes fluttering at the sweetness and warmth. “A real life angel.”

The chef snorted, already walking back into the kitchen. “Call my high school principal and tell him that, would ya?”

You managed two whole bites before the phone rang and Robin answered it, her voice bored and tired and muffled under the noise of music and hissing grills. Then the door flew open and she handed the receiver to you, eyes rolling. She pinched a strawberry and poked at your bare skin, where your blooming hickey bruised the space between the top of your shirt and your exposed collar bones.

You batted at her hand, frowning when she smirks and your lips were sticky with maple syrup when you tried to form a professional greeting. “Good morning, thanks for calling The Gate, this is— oh, it’s you.”

Hopper scoffed on the other end of the line. “Hello to you too, kid. Listen, there’s a new start coming today for the linecook position. Should be ‘round seven thirty and he’s more than qualified so just get him some spare whites and show him where the trash goes. Eddie’ll handle the rest.”

Your hangover pulsed in annoyance. “Can’t Joyce get him sorted?” You speared another raspberry and popped it into your mouth, eyes rolling when your boss sighed in return.

“Joyce is on vacation. With me. We told you this on Monday, you never lis— look, just get the guy sorted alright? He’s a good kid, he’s not gonna cause any hassle.”

“Whatever, sure,” you mumbled. You needed to find some tylenol, your eyes felt like they were going to fall out of their sockets. “Enjoy Cabo, or wherever it is you guys are.”

“We’re in Colorado, but close enough,” Hopper grunted. “Just don’t burn the place down, alright? See you in two weeks.”

You were frowning when the dial tone buzzed in your ear. It was three minutes past seven and you were left with a sticky, sugary mess on your empty plate and thirty three tables to set before the doors opened. And a new start to get set up.

You found a tylenol in Nancy’s open locker and a set of new chef whites in Hopper’s abandoned office. You set them by the side of the bar before you gathered cutlery and new napkins, splitting them with Robin as you both wove in and out of tables and booths, the kitchen getting noisier as Argyle and Eddie started prepping for lunch. The glass cabinets by the cash desk were filled finally with fresh pastries, the front of house smelled like freshly squeezed oranges and you had made yourself busy by misting an oversized fern when someone knocked on the front door.

There was a man standing behind the glass. He was tall and dressed in denim jeans that had faded knees, a white T-shirt with rolled sleeves and he had a pair of black Ray-Ban’s perched on his nose. Despite that, you recognised him. His hair looked ruffled, like someone had been pulling on it all night, dishevelled and messy in a way that would’ve made your mother’s cheeks burn. Any mother’s, actually.

Fuck.

No? No.

You unlocked the door and the click of it was too loud, too jarring. You stared at the stranger who didn’t seem all that strange and your stomach turned as you recognised the sweater he had clutched in his right hand. A forest green thing with a yellow patch on the chest. You knew that sweater. It had been on your bedroom floor when you’d made your quiet escape to the bathroom.

Fuck.

You looked at the man and he looked at you, the customer service smile he’d plastered on his face wilting at the same time his extended hand did, the professional greeting slipping from every fibre of him.

“You.”

Because he’s carried her laundry basket up three flights of stairs without being asked, eaten half her cereal with his hand in the box, fallen asleep facedown on her rug during finals week, and once let himself in at one in the morning because she texted him that she thought there was a weird sound in the hallway and he arrived in grey sweats and slides with his hockey stick in hand, and the kind of serious expression that made her forget to be embarrassed for a full eleven seconds.

So, no. She doesn’t think about the tank top.

She thinks about philosophy notes and the fact that her car’s being held hostage in the hockey house driveway while Logan fixes it, which so far seems to involve standing over the open hood with Tucker, a YouTube video, and the blind male confidence of men who have never met an engine problem they couldn’t make worse. 

She thinks about the rink, because Garrett’s supposed to take her there before his late skate and she’s supposed to sit in the stands with her laptop and pretend she doesn’t secretly like the smell of cold air and rubber mats and hockey boys yelling obscenities at each other.

She’s hunched over her desk in jeans and the white tank, hair clipped messily up off her neck, one bare foot tucked under her thigh, when the door opens behind her with exactly zero hesitation.

“Okay, so Logan says your car’s making this noise,” Garrett says, already halfway inside, “and I told him that’s not a fucking diagnosis because cars make a lot of noises, and then he got offended like I was disrespecting his craft, which is rich because his craft is apparently–”

He stops. He stops like someone’s walked into the room and slapped the sentence directly out of his mouth.

She looks over her shoulder, pen still between her fingers. “What?”

Garrett’s standing just inside her doorway in his Briar hoodie and track pants, duffel bag hanging off one shoulder, curls still damp from a shower or the snow outside or whatever irritatingly athletic thing he was doing before this. His mouth is slightly open. His eyes are very much not on her face. 

They flick down again, fast and guilty and not guilty enough. “Dude,” he says.

Her eyebrows pull together. “What?”

“When the fuck did you get your nipples pierced?”

For a second, the room goes very still around the heater rattling under the window. Then she looks down at herself. And, okay. Fine. The tank top is thinner than she remembers. 

The little metal bars are pressing faintly against the cotton, visible enough now that he’s said it, and her whole body does this annoying internal jump, not embarrassment, because Garrett has seen her in bikinis and sick and wearing a face mask that made her look like a swamp creature. 

But it’s something. A hot little awareness under her skin, as if the room has suddenly learned a new angle. She turns back around too quickly and scoffs, because dignity is mostly just committing to a tone before your pulse can betray you. “Months ago.”

Garrett nods once. Slowly. Like he’s received devastating news from a doctor with poor bedside manner. “Months ago.”

“Yes?”

“So for months you’ve just…” He looks at the ceiling, then the wall, then her face, where he very clearly intends to remain through force of character alone. “Right. Right. Cool.”

She narrows her eyes. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing.”

“What?” he says, and the innocence would be more convincing if his ears weren’t faintly pink. Garrett Graham, Briar hockey captain, man who has smiled his way out of consequences that would have ended lesser men, is standing in her dorm room looking like his entire operating system has crashed over a white tank top.. “I’m just processing information.”

“You’re being weird.”

He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “I am being so normal right now.”

“You walked in here, stared at my chest, and short-circuited.”

His gaze drops for half a second again, involuntary and hopeless, before snapping back up. “Because you weaponised casual nudity.”

“I’m wearing a shirt.”

“That’s a suggestion of a shirt.”

She barks a laugh before she can stop herself, sharp and disbelieving.

He points at her like that proves something. “See? You know.”

“I know you’re an idiot.”

“I know a lot of things,” he says, still looking pained. “Unfortunately, I now know one more.”

There’s no reason for that to make heat crawl up the back of her neck, except that Garrett has shifted against the door without seeming to realise it, shoulders broad enough to make the frame look underprepared, one hand gripping the strap of his duffel. 

He’s trying very hard to turn this into a bit. She can see the effort in the slant of his mouth, in the way his eyes keep dragging back to hers like he’s hauling them up with a rope.

She stands from the chair, mostly because sitting there suddenly feels weirdly vulnerable and also because she genuinely does need to change before they leave. “I’m not going like this. Relax.”

He exhales through his mouth, cheeks puffing slightly. “Thank God.”

Her eyes narrow again. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

She crosses her arms across her chest, which does nothing for his cause. “No, go on. Thank God why?”

He lifts both hands, palms out, the duffel sliding down his arm. “Because I wasn’t in the mood to fight someone tonight.”

She stares at him. He stares back, dead serious for about two seconds before his grin starts sneaking in around the edges, all stupid golden-boy charm and teeth and the unbearable confidence of a man who knows exactly how often he gets away with saying things like that.

“Oh my God,” she says flatly. “You are so annoying.”

“I’m protective.”

“You’re annoying.”

“Those overlap.”

“They don’t.”

“With me they do.”

She rolls her eyes so hard it almost hurts and walks past him toward her bedroom, close enough that her shoulder brushes his arm. It’s nothing. It’s normal. They’re always touching in ways that don’t count, or didn’t count, maybe, before Garrett noticed her piercings and temporarily lost access to the English language. 

But now the brush of him feels too present, the warmth of his hoodie against her bare upper arm registering with an irritating amount of detail. She pulls a jersey over the tank first because it’s closest, the fabric falling big over her hips and smelling faintly like laundry detergent and that cold rink smell Garrett always carries around like a second cologne. Then she grabs a jacket from the chair, shoves her arms through it, and gives herself exactly half a second in the mirror to look normal.

She looks normal. Mostly. Her face is a little too warm, but Garrett doesn’t get to know that.

When she comes back out, he’s leaning against the wall near her door, scrolling on his phone with an expression of intense concentration that’s almost definitely fake. He looks up when she enters.

And then just looks. His eyes move over the jersey, the jacket, her face, the way she’s tucked her hair back from her cheek with the annoyed efficiency of someone pretending she’s not just changed clothes with a man in the next room thinking about her nipples. His mouth does something small and private before he catches it.

“What?” she says.

He shakes his head once. “Nothing.”

“You keep saying nothing in a way that feels suspicious.”

“That’s because you’re paranoid.”

“That’s because you’re being weird.”

He pushes off the wall and opens the door for her. “I’m never weird.”

“You’re being weird right now.”

“I’m being gentlemanly.”

“You let yourself into my dorm.”

“Gentlemanly after the felony.”

She snorts and walks past him into the hall. His hand lands at the small of her back as she goes. Warm through the jacket. Familiar enough that she shouldn’t notice it. She does anyway.

Garrett closes the door behind them and, as they head down the hall, slings his arm around her shoulders like he’s done a thousand times before. Heavy and easy and a little too smug. 

She groans immediately, mostly for self-preservation. “You’re very touchy tonight.”

He hums, pleased with himself in a way she can feel through his ribs against her side. “Mhm.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

She tips her head back enough to glare at him. He’s already looking down at her, grin lazy now, but his eyes are still doing that thing. Brighter, sharper, like something ordinary has been tilted a few degrees and he’s pretending he hasn’t noticed the whole room slide.

“You’re unbearable,” she says.

“I’m driving you to the rink out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Because Logan broke my car worse.”

“Allegedly.”

She shoots him a look. “Garrett.”

“Fine. Probably.”

She huffs, but she lets herself lean into him by half an inch because the hallway is cold and because his arm is warm and because, irritatingly, he smells good. He squeezes her shoulder once, casual enough to be deniable, except his thumb brushes the side of her neck afterward, small and absent and not absent at all.

They make it to the stairwell before he says, “So. Months, huh?”

She stops on the top step and slowly turns her head. He’s staring straight ahead now, mouth twitching.

She points at him. “Do not.”

“I’m not doing anything!”

“You’re thinking loudly.”

“I’ve suffered a shock.”

“You saw the outline of jewellery through a shirt.”

“Exactly. I’m suffering here.”

“You’re such a loser.”

“Maybe,” he says, then glances down at her, all grin and trouble and something warmer under it that makes her stomach dip in a way she fully intends to ignore until death. “But I’m your ride, so be nice to me.”

She starts down the stairs before he can see her smile. “I liked you better when you couldn’t speak.”

“Yeah,” Garrett says behind her, voice rough with laughter. “Me too, actually.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

taglist ⋆⁺₊ ₄₄❅. @xlinxdax0704  |  @snowtargaryen  |  @goodbyetuesday  |  @staystrongsoa  |  @dadshirrt  |  @miya-111  |  @softburrow  |  @darlinglux  |  @waitingforsmartpeople  |  @seon9yeonie  |  @laceyvt3  |  @sunny747  |  @cosmoh0lic  |  @blackgurlieee  |  @matchieee  |  @loomiz  |  @corvusmorte  |  @erin-alice  |  @cloudsxcherriesx  |  @lolskunk  |  @elizabeth123456767  |  @purplerainx1  |  @pinkgiraffebeach  |  @lucyysthings  |  @outpostsworld  |  @s0ftdr1nks  |  @maybankslover  |  @instantplaiddream  |  @droppedyourhnd  |  @bsenpai  |  @urfavadi  |  @em1ly57  |  @parker-barnes-af  |  @violyn20  |  @bootyliciousbutterfly  |  @bloomingflower13  |  @rexit-mo  |  @tpwkmera  |  @cherryrry581  |  @stevesxwhore  |  @solapeachtea  |  @giuliaasstuff  |  @pamacs-macs  |  @loonylosworld  |  @alice07ea  |  @hitting-euphoria4  |  @tessf13  |  @canupourme14theroad  |  @jayda12  |  @kmc1989  | 

Garrett’s face changes so fast it almost gives her whiplash. Smile gone. Jaw set. The girls go quiet beside him, one of them looking between them with the eager horror of someone realising they’ve accidentally been handed a front-row seat.

“I wasn’t flirting,” Garrett says, pushing off the wall. “They were talking to me.”

“Oh, sorry.” Her laugh comes out thin enough to cut. “Must be exhausting. Women just falling from the ceiling directly into your conversation.”

His brows pull together. “Can you not do this here?”

The sentence makes the heat in her eyes worse. Her fingers curl around the strap of her bag until the edge bites into her palm, and she hates herself for it. Hates the wet pressure behind her lashes. Hates that Garrett sees it. 

His expression flickers, frustration catching on something softer, and that almost undoes her more than the girls had.

“No, yeah, totally,” she says, blinking hard once and looking over his shoulder because his face is suddenly dangerous. “God forbid I interrupt whatever this was.”

He scoffs, low and disbelieving, but there’s hurt under it now, meaner for being scared. “You’re being an asshole.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. The words land somewhere ugly because they’re not wrong, exactly, and she wishes they were. She wishes he’d said something unfair enough to throw back cleanly.

“I know,” she says, quieter, which is somehow worse. Then, because the quiet feels like standing naked under bar lights, she sharpens again. “I learned from watching you.”

Garrett flinches like she’s actually put hands on him. For a second, neither of them says anything. Around them, Malone’s keeps moving, bodies brushing past, music thudding too loudly through bad speakers, some guy near the bar yelling about shots. 

The girls have disappeared. Good. Great. At least one humiliation has had the decency to remove itself.

Garrett drags a hand over his mouth. “What do you want me to say? Seriously. I didn’t touch them. I didn’t ask them to come over. I didn’t do anything.”

“I know,” she snaps, and the tear finally slips, hot and humiliating down one cheek before she wipes it away so fast her skin stings. “That’s the problem, Garrett. You never do anything. You just stand there and let it happen and then look at me like I’m insane for noticing I’m not there.”

His face goes still.

She swallows, hard, already embarrassed by the shape of the truth sitting between them. “Forget it.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I said forget it.”

He says her name, low and careful, taking half a step closer.

She steps back immediately, because if he touches her now she’ll either cry properly or forgive him before either of them deserves it. “No. Don’t.”

Garrett stops. His hand flexes once at his side, empty and useless.

She gives him one more look, messy and bright-eyed and too proud to stay, then turns toward the door before her face can betray her any worse. Behind her, Garrett doesn’t follow. That might be what hurts most.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.