A scrapbook of my obsessions

You understood this in the first week. The girl who came before you, Liana, had walked you through everything: cameras, angles, schedules, the way the athletics department liked their content formatted. But had failed to mention that the players would not look at you so much as look through you at first. Like you were part of the furniture. A tripod with a heartbeat.

In a way, that was fine. Being invisible was a perfectly good way to do the job. Players acted more naturally when they forgot the camera was there, and natural content was always better than posed content. This was something you had understood instinctively from the beginning.

You had been doing this job since the beginning of fall semester. It had come to you not accidentally but not exactly sought either, you had always followed the team, always been a genuine fan. Liana, the former social media girl, was a friend from a very boring Thursday morning class you had both suffered through together. When she came close to graduating she recommended you for the job. You had been working the library circulation desk before that. When the athletics department called it had seemed like a no-brainer.

A few months in, you knew the inner workings of the team the way you knew the layout of your own apartment. Their training schedule, their game schedule, the subtle social architecture of a group of people who spent most of their waking hours together. You knew which players were camera shy and which ones had a natural appeal and actively enjoyed being filmed — cough Dean cough — and by now you knew everyone's best angle, best light, best moment.

Which brought you to Logan.

You were also, which was a separate and entirely unrelated issue, completely down bad for one of the players.

It had not happened all at once.

You had known who John Logan was before you got the job, everyone who followed Briar hockey knew who he was, which was most of the campus, but knowing of someone and being in the same building as them four times a week were different things entirely.

You had known about his escapades too. His romantic history was the kind of thing that Olivia, your friend and a woman of genuinely exceptional gossip quality, had mentioned more than once with the relish of someone who considered this information a public service. Before the job, you had laughed about it the way you laughed about things that had nothing to do with you.

Now that you actually knew him, not knew knew him, but saw him daily, which was its own specific category, you thought about his former, and hopefully past, escapades and felt something uncomfortably close to jealousy.

The crush had consolidated gradually and against your will, the way water finds its way through things. A practice here. A post-game there. The specific way he looked when he was focused on something, the way he talked to his teammates, the way he sometimes looked directly into your camera with an expression that suggested he had briefly forgotten it was there and was just looking.

And then there was the other thing, which was honestly the worst part: he was so unfairly polite. He said good morning and good afternoon. He smiled when he caught you filming something. He said goodbye when he left and apologized if the puck flew in your direction, which it occasionally did, and each time he said sorry about that with the specific sincerity of someone who actually meant it.

You knew you had a crush on him. Obviously. That part was not new information.

What was new information was the following Tuesday, late after practice, the rink mostly empty, you sitting in the stands with your laptop open and the tiredness of someone who had been on their feet for three hours. The players were filtering out through the doors and you were reviewing footage on autopilot, not really watching, when you looked up without thinking about it.

You were looking for Logan before you had decided to look for him.

When you found him, he was at the boards, removing his helmet and pushing a hand through his hair.

Fuck me, you thought.

And then it seemed like he had heard you, because he lifted his eyes and looked straight at you across the empty rink and smiled.

You smiled back and closed your laptop.

Time to go home and think about John Logan in bed.

You reached for your camera on the tripod — force of habit, you always checked the last few shots before packing up — and opened the gallery.

Logan drinking water. Logan laughing at something Garrett said. Logan tying his skates. Logan high-fiving Tucker after a good drill. Logan making a face directly at the camera, having clearly just noticed you filming him, looking entirely unbothered about it.

You stared at the screen.

Oh.

Oh no.

The real problem came later.

The game was at Harvard, which meant the bus, which meant a situation you had been successfully avoiding for six months. You never took the team bus, too much male energy, too many large people occupying space in a way that made you feel like you had accidentally wandered into someone else's environment. You usually went with the student bus, which was fine, which was your preferred option.

The student bus had a mechanical issue and couldn't make the drive in time.

So you, along with the other team staff, boarded the team bus with approximately forty hockey players and the quiet resignation of someone who had lost a negotiation they hadn't known they were in.

The game itself went fine, nothing groundbreaking, but Briar won, which was all that mattered. You packed up your equipment and joined the line filing back onto the bus, looking for the same seat you'd had on the way there.

You were making your way down the aisle when you spotted Logan sitting alone.

You slowed down. Made the calculation. Gave yourself approximately four seconds of internal encouragement.

A freshman defenseman sat down next to him before you could finish the thought.

You did not pout. You were a professional.

"Aw, look who it is." Dean's voice came from the seat directly behind Logan. He was sitting in the aisle seat, legs stretched out, watching you with the expression of someone who had seen everything. "You can sit with me."

"Sure," you said.

"Geez, don't look so happy about it." He pulled his legs in so you could slide past. "I even let you have the window."

"What a gentleman," you said, settling in and pulling your laptop from your bag.

"Are we watching a movie?" Dean pointed at the laptop.

"No. I'm working."

"Bummer," he said, shifting in his seat to get comfortable. Dean was a broad person and the seats were not designed with broad people in mind, which meant that when you sat down you were immediately, unavoidably in contact, arms pressed together, shoulders touching. You had briefly considered putting the armrest down for some personal space, but Dean seemed completely unbothered by the proximity, which somehow made it easier to be unbothered yourself.

This was the thing about Dean that had surprised you most when you first started the job: there had never been an awkward phase. No stiff introductions, no careful professional distance, no period of working out who you were to each other. He had simply decided you were friends and proceeded accordingly, and somehow six months had passed and it felt like you had known each other much longer than that.

You connected your camera to the laptop and started pulling up photos from the game. Selected the best ones. Started uploading them to the shared drive.

"Uh oh," Dean said, leaning over. "That's not my best angle."

You looked at the photo. He was facing almost entirely away from the camera.

"Shut up," you said, lightly slapping his hand away from the screen. "What do you mean not your best angle? Are you not proud of your very nice backside?"

This was a callback, and Dean knew it. He had said something similarly direct about you at a party two months ago in the shameless way that Dean said most things, and you had decided that the only appropriate response was to give the same energy back.

 "I am," he said, "but the front is much better. You should check it out sometime."

"Are you referring to your face as the front of your backside?"

Dean repeated the question back to you in a mocking tone.

You opened the photos and started scrolling through them, and approximately three seconds later you noticed the pattern and began praying, quietly and sincerely, that Dean would not notice it too.

Too late.

"Why do you have so many pictures of Logan?" He was looking at the screen with his eyebrows raised. "There are like ten Logan pictures for every one of anyone else."

"Logan just photographs well."

"He photographs well."

"Yes."

"That's your explanation."

"That's my explanation."

Dean looked at you with the expression of someone assembling a conclusion. "You have the hots for Logan."

"The hots? Dean, what is this, a Disney Channel movie? And no. I don't."

"Yeah? Explain the hundred photos of him drinking water. Sorry, but you can't use those for Instagram." He paused. "Unless you're using them for something else. Like, I don't know. Your spank bank."

You gasped and punched his arm. "Shut up."

"Admit it."

"I plead the fifth."

"That's not how that works."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You have to. I'm your best friend."

"No you're not. It's Olivia."

"On the team, I meant."

"It's probably Tucker."

"Tucker?" Dean looked genuinely wounded. "Tucker? Don't try to change the subject."

You closed the laptop.

"Go to sleep, Dean."

"This conversation is not over."

"Yes it is."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is."

"No it's not," he said, adjusting himself against the seat with the decisive energy of someone settling in for a nap. You let your head fall back against the window. A moment later his head dropped onto your shoulder with the comfortable weight of someone who had decided this was acceptable.

"Do not drool on me," you said.

"I bet if it was Logan you wouldn't mind," he said, eyes already closed. Of course not.

"Don't be disgusting."

"And by the way —" he opened one eye "— he has the hots for you too."

"Oh my god," you said. "Stop talking like this is iCarly."

He closed his eye again.

The bus moved through the dark and you sat there with Dean's head on your shoulder and the laptop closed on your knees and tried very hard not to look at the back of Logan's head in the row in front of you.

Oh no, you thought, again, for the second time that week.

A couple of weeks later, Dean found you setting up the tripod in the corner of the film room before pre-game interviews.

"So," he said, appearing at your elbow with the energy of someone who had been waiting for the right moment. "I saw that you didn't RSVP to the invitation for mine and Beau's birthday bash. And it's tomorrow."

You winced. You had been avoiding this topic.

"I have a thing," you said, very casually, adjusting the tripod height without looking at him.

"A thing." He repeated it back with the tone of someone who found this deeply insufficient. "What thing could possibly be more important than my birthday?"

"They painted a new wall in the hallway of my apartment so —"

"Shut up," he said, moving closer. "You're coming. Also —" he said it with the specific energy of someone deploying their strongest argument "— Logan is going to be there."

You kept your eyes on the tripod. "I would assume so. Since you live together."

"You know what I mean."

"I really don't."

"Yes you do."

"I'm working tomorrow night," you said.

"It's a Saturday."

"Content doesn't take weekends off."

"You literally schedule everything in advance and you know it." Dean leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. "Come to the party. Talk to him. He's going to be right there."

"I talk to him all the time. It's my job."

"Yeah, but when you talk to Logan you do the thing."

You looked up for the first time. "What thing."

"The thing." He gestured vaguely at your face. "The thing where you forget to be normal."

"I am always normal."

"You called his assist last Tuesday 'genuinely cinematic.'"

"It was a good play."

"To his face."

"As a professional observation —"

"He smiled about it for the rest of practice." Dean looked at you steadily. "Come to the party."

You turned back to the tripod.

"I don't think Logan has the hots for me, you know," you said. "He's like a hot athlete. And I'm like the social media nerd."

Dean stared at you with the expression of someone who had just heard something that offended him on multiple levels simultaneously.

"Geez," he said. "You're not the girl in every romcom who doesn't know she's pretty." He paused. "Also you may be a nerd but — with all due respect to you and to my buddy Logan — you're pretty hot."

You pushed his shoulder and muttered a low stop.

"I'm being sincere!" He caught himself on the wall, laughing. "Party. Tomorrow. Eight o'clock. Logan will be there." He pointed at you one more time. "You will also be there."

He walked away before you could respond.

You looked at the camera. The camera looked back at you.

Genuinely cinematic, you thought, mortified.

You were definitely not going to that party.

The thing about watching two people be completely oblivious to each other was that it was, at first, entertaining.

Dean had found it genuinely funny in the beginning, the way you would track Logan across a room without realizing you were doing it, the way Logan would find reasons to be wherever you were without announcing that was what he was doing. It was like watching a nature documentary.

It had been funny for approximately three weeks.

It was now week seven and Dean was losing his mind.

It was a Thursday practice, nothing special about it. Dean was on the ice going through drills with Tucker when he caught it, the peripheral awareness of someone who had been watching a situation develop for too long.

You were in your usual spot in the stands, laptop open, camera on the tripod, doing the thing you always did where you looked like you were reviewing footage but were actually, if you knew what to look for, tracking Logan across the ice without moving your head.

Logan, for his part, was doing the thing he always did where he skated past your section of the stands more than was strictly necessary for any drill that had been assigned.

"He's done that four times," Tucker said, appearing at Dean's elbow.

"Five," Dean said. "You missed one while you were talking to the coach."

Tucker watched Logan complete another unnecessary loop near the boards. "Are they ever going to do something about that?"

"Apparently not," Dean said.

On the ice Logan slowed near the boards not stopping, that would have been too obvious, just slowing and said something up toward the stands. You looked up from your laptop and said something back. Logan smiled. You looked back at your laptop immediately, in the specific way of someone using a screen as a shield.

Logan skated away looking slightly more cheerful than he had thirty seconds ago.

"It's painful," Tucker said.

"It's excruciating," Dean agreed.

"Wow, that's a big word" Tucker said mocking Dean and skating away.

After practice Dean was still thinking about it in the locker room.

He was unwrapping his tape when Garrett sat down across from him.

"You have a face," Garrett said.

"I'm thinking."

"About what."

"Logan and the social media girl, or as I call her, (Y/N)"

"So her name—" Garrett replied.

Garrett looked at him with the mild, steady expression he used when he was waiting for someone to either say something sensible or stop talking. "And?"

"And they've been doing this for like seven weeks and nothing is happening and I'm tired of watching it."

"So tell him to do something about it."

"I've told him." Dean had, in fact, told Logan approximately six times in varying tones of directness. "Telling doesn't work. Logan needs a push."

"A push," Garrett repeated.

"A significant push."

Garrett looked at him for a long moment. "What kind of push."

"A financial one," he said.

"Dean —"

"Hear me out."

"I don't think I want to."

"A thousand dollars," Dean said. "I bet him a thousand dollars that he won't ask her out. He needs the money, he likes her, this solves both problems simultaneously. It's elegant."

Garrett stared at him. "It's really not."

"It gets him to do the thing he already wants to do."

"By paying him."

"By incentivizing him."

"Those are the same thing."

"Garrett," Dean said, in the tone of someone who had considered the counterarguments and dismissed them. "They have been doing this for weeks. At this rate they'll still be doing it at graduation. I'm helping."

Garrett looked at the ceiling briefly. "You shouldn't do this," he said finally.

"Noted," Dean said.

He did not change his mind.

Logan came in from the showers to find Dean sitting on the bench across from his locker with an expression that meant something was coming.

Tucker was in the corner pretending to check his phone. Garrett was lacing his shoes with more focus than the task required.

"What," Logan said.

"I have a proposition," Dean said.

Logan looked at Tucker. Tucker looked at his phone. Logan looked at Garrett. Garrett looked at his shoes.

"What kind of proposition," Logan said.

"A thousand dollars," Dean said. "All you have to do is ask her out."

He didnt't have to specify who the her was.

The locker room was quiet.

Logan opened his locker. Got his jacket. "No."

"Logan —"

"No, Dean."

"You like her."

"That's not —"

"You've skated past her section of the stands five times today during drills that don't require you anywhere near the boards." Dean's voice was completely even. "I counted."

Logan said nothing.

"You check her posts before anyone else on the team," Dean continued. "You know her schedule better than your own. You said sorry to her last Tuesday when the puck went near her even though it didn't come close to actually hitting her." A pause. "You apologized preemptively."

"I was being polite."

"You were being in love with her," Dean said, simply. "Which is fine. Great, actually. And fixable. With one conversation and a thousand dollars."

Tucker made a small sound that was not quite disapproval and not quite agreement.

Garrett said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.

Logan looked at his jacket in his hands. He thought about the time that had passed, the practices and bus rides and the specific way you closed your laptop when you were trying to hide something. He thought about his bank account, which was having a difficult semester. He thought about the rent that was due. The equipment he needed.

He thought about asking you out, which he had been meaning to do, which he had been telling himself he was going to do, which he had not done.

I was going to do it anyway, he told himself. The money doesn't change what I was going to do anyway.

"Fine," he said.

Tucker made the sound again, slightly louder.

Garrett looked up from his shoes for the first time. His expression was not angry, not exactly. More like a person watching a decision being made and knowing already how it was going to cost someone.

Dean produced a check from somewhere — written on the back of a receipt, which was so Dean that Logan almost laughed — and held it out.

Logan took it.

He folded it once and put it in his jacket pocket and did not look at Garrett again.

I was going to do it anyway, he thought.

He almost believed it.

The subject of the party was a sore one.

Part of you wanted to go and part of you didn't, and the two parts had been arguing since Dean walked away from the tripod, and by the time you got back to your apartment you had resolved nothing except that you needed to talk to Olivia about it.

Olivia listened to the full recap of the Dean conversation with the focused attention of someone taking notes. When you finished she was quiet for approximately three seconds.

"We're going," she said.

"I said I wasn't sure —"

"I've made up my mind. You were invited so you need to go, and I'm coming with you because—." She looked at you with the expression of someone who had already decided the fun they were going to have and was simply waiting for logistics to catch up. "What's the theme?"

"Dynamic duo."

"Perfect for us." She was already opening her laptop. "I know exactly what we're wearing."

"I don't even know what to wear," you breathed out, dropping flat onto your bed and staring at the ceiling. "What kind of theme even is that? Dynamic duo? That's so vague."

"It's not vague, it's versatile." She turned the screen to face you. "Clueless. Cher and Dionne. The plaid."

You looked at the screen. You looked at Olivia.

"Obviously," you said.

You walked into the party in matching plaid ,short skirt, blazer, the whole thing and felt immediately, objectively, like you had made the right costume choice. Olivia walked in beside you with the confident energy of someone who had never had a bad entrance in her life.

The house was full and warm and smelled like every college party you had ever been to. You did a quick scan of the room in the completely professional way of someone who was not looking for anyone specific.

You found him in approximately four seconds.

Logan was in the kitchen with Dean, drink in hand, laughing at something. He was wearing a sleveless gray shirt with a pair of wings.

You gave a small wave in their direction. Dean spotted you first and his face did something immediately, and then he clapped a hand on Logan's back and pushed him in your direction with the subtlety of a person who had never heard the word subtle.

Logan crossed the room.

"Hey —" His eyes moved over you and something in his expression shifted slightly. "Clueless?"

"Yeah," you said, nodding perhaps a few more times than necessary.

Beside you, Olivia made a sound that she converted, barely, into a cough. She had been documenting your inability to form complete sentences in Logan's presence for approximately three months and found it genuinely hilarious.

"You look very pretty," Logan said.

"Oh — thanks." The blush arrived before you could do anything about it. Compose yourself.

Logan seemed to remember that you were not alone. "You too, Olivia."

"Yeah, right," Olivia laughed. "I'll go get a drink."

She disappeared into the crowd. As she passed behind Logan she turned to face you and mouthed make a move with the enormous unsubtle energy of someone who had been waiting three months to say it.

You looked back at Logan.

"I'm glad you came," he said. "Dean mentioned you weren't sure."

"I had some content to edit," you said.

"This is more important," he said, lightly, like a joke, but with something underneath it that wasn't entirely a joke.

"Yeah," you said.

And then you were both just standing there. Drinks in hand, the party moving around you, talking the way you had discovered you talked when you were alone together, which was easily, which was the specific ease of two people who had been in the same orbit long enough to have figured out each other's rhythms without officially acknowledging it.

"So what are you supposed to be anyway?" you asked, taking the opportunity to look at him properly. The gray shirt. The wings. The arms, which were — you looked at his face instead. "Jacob Elordi in Saltburn?"

Logan laughed — a real one, surprised and warm. "Bird and the bee. I'm the bird. Tuck's the bee."

"Oh," you said. "That tracks."

"Does it."

"The bee has better energy," you said. "No offense to you."

"I'll tell Tucker you said that."

"Please don't."

Dean chose this exact moment to appear between you.

"Hello, you two." He looked between you with barely concealed delight. "What are we talking about?"

"The birds and the bees," you said, and watched Dean's eyebrow go up in real time.

"Oh, I like where this is headed."

"No — I mean his costume," you said quickly. "What are you supposed to be?"

"Maverick." He pointed across the room to where Beau was talking to a very beautiful brunette. "Beau's Goose."

You considered this. "Was there not a dynamic duo where one of them didn't have a tragic ending? You could have been Ice."

"Ice and Maverick hated each other," Dean said.

"No they didn't! In your own words they had the hots for each other."

Dean opened his mouth. Closed it. Pointed at you. "That is actually a fair point."

"Thank you."

"You're insufferable," he said, smiling. He looked between you and Logan one more time. "I'm going to go find Beau. You two —" he gestured vaguely at the space between you "— continue."

He disappeared back into the crowd.

You looked at Logan. Logan looked at you.

"He's not subtle," you said.

"No," Logan agreed. "He really isn't."

The party continued around you. At some point you had moved slightly closer together. Neither of you had announced it. At some point his hand had found the small of your back, briefly, when someone pushed past in the crowd. It had stayed there a moment longer than strictly necessary. You had not moved away.

At some point Olivia had caught your eye from across the room and given you a look of such unrestrained triumph that you had been forced to look at the floor to keep from laughing.

"So —" Logan started. He stopped. Tried again. "I've been thinking. For a while actually." He looked at you with the expression of someone abandoning a rehearsed script entirely in favor of just saying the thing. "Would you like to go out? With me. On a date."

Inside your chest, something that had been very carefully managed for months made a sound like:

YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES —

"Yes," you said, with great composure. "I'd like that."

Something settled in his expression warm and certain. "Good. I was hoping you were going to say that."

"I was hoping you were going to ask," you said.

He smiled. Not the polite one, not the team-photo one the real one, the one you had forty-seven saved clips of and only eleven of them were for work.

Across the room, completely uninvited into this moment, Dean let out a noise of triumph loud enough that Tucker turned around to look.

You and Logan both looked at Dean.

Dean pointed at both of you, then at himself, then gave two thumbs up with the energy of a man who had absolutely no shame about any of this.

"He planned this," you said.

"Obviously," Logan said.

You looked at Dean, who was now saying something to Beau that was making Beau look confused and Dean look extremely pleased with himself.

"I'm going to delete all his content," you said.

"Probably," Logan said. "But maybe tomorrow."

You looked back at him.

"Yeah," you said. "Maybe tomorrow."

What you did not know — what you would not know for three months — was what had happened two hours before that conversation.

The first date was a Tuesday.

Logan had asked on a Saturday and then spent the intervening three days being completely normal about it, which meant he had checked his phone approximately forty times and suggested three different restaurants to Dean who had not asked for his opinion and had given it anyway.

He picked you up at seven. You had worn something simple and he had looked at you the way he sometimes looked into the camera, direct, unhurried, like you were something worth paying attention t, and said you look great in the specific voice he used when he meant things, and you had said thanks, so do you and meant it, and the evening had been easy in the way that things were easy when they had been building for a long time and had finally found the right outlet.

You talked for three hours. Not about anything important about the team, about your job, about the things you had noticed about each other without ever saying so. He told you about the preemptive puck apology before you could bring it up and looked slightly embarrassed about it, which you found endearing in a way you did not make him aware of. You told him about the forty-seven saved clips and watched his expression do something warm and complicated.

He walked you back to your dorm. He kissed you at the door — soft and unhurried, the specific patience of someone who had been waiting a while and had decided that arriving was enough for now.

You went inside and stood in the hallway for a moment.

Oh, you thought. Not oh no this time. Just — oh.

What followed was three months that assembled themselves quietly and completely, the way good things tended to do when you stopped trying to manage them.

You learned the specific rhythm of being with Logan, which was different from the rhythm of being near Logan, which you had spent seven months memorizing from behind a camera. Being with him was easier. Less careful. The things you had noticed from a professional distance — the way he focused, the way he was with his teammates, the particular quality of his attention when he was genuinely listening were the same up close, just without the glass between you.

He remembered things. That was the detail that accumulated the most weight over three months small things you had said once, in passing, that he filed away and produced later in the specific way of someone who had been listening more carefully than you knew. The coffee order. The fact that you hated the overhead lights in the film room. The name of the professor whose class you had shared with Liana.

You told Olivia about the coffee order detail on a Thursday night and she looked at you with an expression that said everything she was choosing not to say out loud.

"Don't," you said.

"I'm not saying anything," she said.

"You have a face."

"I have my normal face."

"Olivia."

"I'm just glad," she said simply, and went back to whatever she was doing, and you sat with that for a moment and found that you were too.

Logan was also, three months in, still thinking about the check.

Not constantly. Not the way he had in the beginning, when it had surfaced at inconvenient moments, the first dinner, the first time you laughed at something he said, the first time you fell asleep on his shoulder watching something neither of you were paying attention to. Those early weeks it had been a persistent background noise, a low-level static of something he should have said and hadn't.

But the weeks had passed and the static had gotten quieter, the way noise does when you choose not to listen to it long enough. He had paid his rent. He had replaced the equipment. He had told himself, again and again, that he had been going to ask you out anyway, that the money had been incidental, that what they had built in the three months since was real regardless of how it started.

All of that was true.

The part that was also true, the part he didn't let himself look at too directly, was that you didn't know. And not knowing was its own kind of thing, a thing that existed in the space between you without you being aware of it, that he was aware of every time you said something honest to him, every time you looked at him the way you looked at him.

He had meant to tell you. In the beginning. There had been a window, early on, when it would have been a small thing — by the way, Dean made a bet, it's a whole thing, I was going to ask you anyway—. He had rehearsed it. He had not said it. The window had closed, and then it had been a week, and then a month, and then three months, and now saying it felt like dropping something large into a quiet room.

So he didn't say it.

He told himself it didn't matter because it hadn't changed anything real.

He was getting better at believing that.

It was a Saturday afternoon in February, the specific grey-white quality of a winter afternoon that had given up pretending it was going to improve, and you were in Logan's room doing nothing in particular.

This had become one of your favorite things — the doing nothing in particular. You had a tendency, left to your own devices, to fill time with productivity, with scheduled content and edited footage and the general sense that unoccupied time was time being wasted. Logan had, over three months, introduced you to the concept of lying on a bed on a Saturday afternoon and simply existing, which you had resisted and then accepted and now found genuinely necessary.

He was on his back, one arm behind his head, reading something on his phone. You were beside him, legs tangled, working your way through a Cosmopolitan from 2003 that you had found at the thrift store the previous weekend when you had gone with Allie. It had a younger Jennifer Lopez on the cover and approximately forty pages of advertisements for perfumes that no longer existed, and you had bought it for fifty cents because something about it felt like an artifact.

"Listen to this," you said.

"Mm."

"It's a quiz." You held up the magazine. "Is your relationship ready for the next level? I feel like we should take it."

"I feel like that magazine is older than some of our teammates."

"That's what makes it valuable." You turned back to the page. "Okay. Question one. When you picture your future, does your partner feature prominently? Options are: always, sometimes, or only when I'm feeling optimistic."

"Always," Logan said, without looking up from his phone.

You looked at him sideways. He was still reading, expression neutral, like he had answered a question about the weather.

"Okay," you said, and looked back at the magazine, and did not make anything of it, because making something of it would have required acknowledging that it had landed somewhere specific and stayed there.

You worked through several more questions — about communication, about conflict, about shared values — Logan answering in the same unhurried, matter-of-fact way, like the answers had already been decided and he was simply reporting them.

And then you got to the last one.

"Okay, last question." You shifted onto your side to face him. "If your partner made a serious mistake — something that hurt you — what would it take to make things right? Option A: a heartfelt conversation and genuine apology. Option B: time, space, and proof of change. Option C —" you paused, because option C was very 2003 "— a grand romantic gesture. Flowers, candlelight, the whole thing."

You said it like it was funny. You said it with the lightness of someone reading from an old magazine on a Saturday afternoon.

Logan put his phone down.

He looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then he turned his head and looked at you with an expression that was doing something complicated underneath the surface.

"What would you pick?" he said.

You considered it. "Honestly? C, but private. Like not in front of everyone. Just — showing up. With flowers, or peonies, they are my favorite. And meaning it." You paused. "The meaning it is the important part."

Logan looked at the ceiling again.

"Many flowers," he said. His voice was even. Carefully even.

"Like an unreasonable amount," you said. "Like someone made a decision about it."

"Right," he said.

He was quiet for a moment. You looked at him — at the careful evenness of his expression, the specific stillness of someone sitting with something — and almost asked what he was thinking about.

Then he turned back to you with the warm unhurried expression you knew, and kissed your temple.

"Good to know," he said.

You looked back at the magazine. Jennifer Lopez looked back at you, unbothered.

You did not know, lying there on a grey February Saturday, that you had just handed him the exact shape of something he was going to need.

Logan knew.

He stared at the ceiling after you looked away and thought about a check written on the back of a receipt and a conversation in a locker room and the specific, settling weight of something that had been waiting a long time to be said.

Too many flowers, he thought. Private. Meaning it.

He closed his eyes.

I have to tell her, he thought.

He did not tell her.

Allie had not been looking for information.

She had been in the kitchen at the off campus house on a Wednesday evening, waiting for Dean to finish getting ready so they could go to dinner, scrolling through her phone with the patience of someone accustomed to waiting for Dean to finish getting ready. She was not listening. She was not paying attention to anything except the particular injustice of being told seven-fifteen and it being seven-thirty-two.

And then Dean's phone rang on the counter.

She glanced at it automatically. Logan.

Dean came out of the bathroom still pulling on his jacket and picked it up. "Hey. What's up."

Allie went back to her phone.

"What do you mean you need to tell her." Dean's voice had shifted into something lower, more careful. "What's — Logan. Logan, have you not told her yet?"

Allie looked up.

Dean had his back to her, one hand pressed to the counter, the specific posture of someone having a conversation they hadn't prepared for. "It's been three months, man. How have you — okay. Okay, calm down. Just — tell me what happened."

A pause. Dean listening.

"So tell her," Dean said. "Just — tonight. Call her and tell her. It's been long enough, she'll —" another pause "— Logan, I know it's not going to be easy but you can't just — yes I know you actually love her, that's not the — okay, listen —"

Allie set her phone down on the counter very carefully.

"What," she said.

Dean turned around.

The expression on his face moved through several things in quick succession — surprise, recalibration, and then the specific, flattening look of someone who understood exactly what had just happened.

"Allie —"

"What did you do," she said. Not a question.

Dean lowered his phone slowly. On the other end Logan was saying something, unaware.

"Dean." Her voice was very even. "What did you do."

He told her.

He told her all of it — the bet, the thousand dollars, the locker room — and Allie stood in the kitchen and listened with the stillness of someone who was getting progressively more furious in a way that had not yet found its exit.

When he finished she said nothing for a moment.

"She's my friend," she said finally.

"I know —"

"She is my friend and you let her date him for three months without telling her."

"It wasn't supposed to —"

"Dean." She picked up her keys from the counter. "Do not follow me."

"Allie, please just —"

"I have to tell her," she said. "She's my friend. I'm not going to —"

"Please," Dean said, and his voice had lost all its usual confidence, stripped down to something that was just — asking. "Please just give me a chance to fix it. I'll tell Logan to tell her tonight. Just give me —"

"You had your chance to fix it three months ago," Allie said. "And two months ago. And last month." She looked at him for a long moment. "I love you. And you did something really wrong. And she needs to know."

She left.

Dean stood in the kitchen alone and listened to Logan's voice still coming from the phone in his hand.

He put the phone to his ear.

"She already knows," he said.

You were in your aparment when Allie knocked.

She told you everything standing in your doorway, quickly and directly, the way Allie did things — no preamble, no softening, just the facts arranged in order. The bet. The thousand dollars. The locker room. Three months.

You stood very still while she talked.

When she finished you said nothing for a long moment.

"Get your keys," you said.

"(Y/N) —"

"Get your keys, Allie."

The drive to the off campus house took four minutes. You did not speak. Allie drove and you looked at the road ahead and felt cold clarity of someone who had moved past the part where things hurt and into the part where they simply had to be dealt with.

The lights were on when you pulled up. Of course they were.

You didn't knock.

You walked in and Logan was already in the hallway, like he had heard the car, like some part of him had known — and the expression on his face when he saw you was the expression of someone who had been waiting for this and was still not ready for it.

Dean was behind him. Tucker and Garrett further back, in the doorway of the living room, with the expressions of people who understood the room and had decided to stay very still.

"Hey —" Logan started.

"Did you take a bet," you said, "to ask me out."

The hallway was very quiet.

"Yes," Logan said.

The word landed.

"How much," you said.

"A thousand dollars."

You looked at him. This person. This person whose coffee order you knew, whose preemptive apologies you had found endearing, whose smile you had forty-seven saved clips of and only eleven of them were for work.

"You had to be paid," you said. Your voice was very quiet. "Someone had to pay you. To ask me out."

"It wasn't —"

"A thousand dollars," you said. "That's what it cost. That's what asking me out was worth to you. A thousand dollars and someone else's idea."

"That's not —"

"I told you I loved you." The words came out steadier than you expected. "Three weeks ago. In your room. I told you I loved you and you said it back and the whole time —" you stopped. Started again. "The whole time there was a check. There was a check and you knew and you said it back anyway."

"I meant it," Logan said. "I mean it. I love you, that has nothing to do with —"

"It has everything to do with it." Your voice cracked slightly and you pushed past it. "Because maybe you do. Maybe you actually do love me. But I will never know that now. Do you understand that? I will never know which part was real and which part was a thousand dollars because you didn't tell me. You had three months to tell me and you didn't."

"I was going to —"

"When?" you said. "When were you going to tell me? After another month? After a year? Were you ever actually going to tell me or were you just going to keep it and hope I never found out?"

He said nothing.

"That's what I thought," you said.

You turned to Dean.

Dean was standing very still with an expression that had none of his usual ease in it, stripped down, uncomfortable, genuinely ashamed in a way that you recognized as real and that made it worse rather than better.

"I thought you were my friend," you said. Your voice was different now, not cold, something more broken than cold. "I thought — you were supposed to be my friend. I told you things. I told you how I felt about him and you used it. You turned it into a transaction and then you watched me fall in love with him and you said nothing."

"I know," Dean said. His voice was very quiet. "I know."

"I taught you how to use the camera," you said, which was not what you meant to say but came out anyway, and somehow it was the most honest thing — the small specific intimacy of it, the way you had shown him the angles and the settings and he had been genuinely interested and you had thought this is what a friend looks like. "I showed you everything. I thought you were —"

"I was," Dean said. "I am. I'm so sorry."

"Don't." You picked up your bag. "Don't apologize right now. I can't — I need you to not talk to me right now."

You looked at Logan one more time. He was standing in the hallway with his hands at his sides and the open, devastated expression of someone who had run out of words and knew it.

"Please," he said. Just that. Just the word, quiet and without any of the composure he usually wore like a second skin.

"I have to go," you said.

"Please just let me —"

"Logan." Your voice broke on his name, just slightly, and you steadied it. "I have to go."

You walked to the door. Behind you you heard him take a step.

You opened the door.

"You two fucking suck," you said, to the hallway, to both of them, to the three months of Tuesday practices and bus rides and magazine quizzes and I love you said and meant and received by someone who was keeping a check in his jacket pocket the whole time. "Never talk to me again."

You walked out.

Allie was waiting by the car. She took one look at your face and said nothing, just unlocked the doors, and you got in, and she drove, and the campus moved past the windows dark and quiet and entirely indifferent.

You did not cry until you got back to your aparment.

And then you did, for a while, with Olivia sitting beside you saying nothing because there was nothing to say, just being there the way people who actually loved you were there when things went wrong.

You had to be paid, you thought, in the dark.

A thousand dollars.

The house was very quiet after you left.

Tucker and Garrett had retreated to the living room. Nobody was saying anything.

Dean sat on the bottom step of the stairs and put his head in his hands.

Logan stood in the hallway where you had left him and looked at the closed door and thought about everything — the check, the locker room, the first dinner, the magazine quiz on a grey February Saturday, too many flowers, private, meaning it — and underneath all of it, constant and quiet, the thing he had known for three months and had managed to convince himself didn't matter:

You had deserved to know.

You had deserved to know from the beginning and he had chosen not to tell you and you stood in his hallway and said I will never know which part was real and he had had no answer because there was no answer that fixed that.

Garrett appeared in the doorway of the living room. He looked at Logan for a long moment.

"I told you not to," he said. Not unkindly. Just said.

"I know," Logan said.

"From the beginning. I told you."

"I know, Garrett."

Garrett looked at him for another moment. Then he went back to the living room without saying anything else, which was somehow the most devastating response available.

Logan sat down on the floor of the hallway with his back against the wall and stared at nothing.

I have to fix this, he thought.

He had absolutely no idea how.

The email to the athletics department went out the following morning.

It was professional and brief — you cited personal reasons, thanked them for the opportunity, offered to train your replacement, gave two weeks notice. You sent it before you could think about it too hard, before the part of you that loved the job could talk the other part out of it.

You were not going to sit in that rink anymore. You were not going to film those practices or those games or stand in that corridor outside the locker room with your tripod and your equipment bag and pretend that everything was the same as it had been before.

Your phone had messages from Logan and Dean by noon. You read none of them.

The football team's social media coordinator reached back out by the end of the day.

You started the following Monday.

The football team was different from the hockey team in ways that were both obvious and unexpected. Louder, in some ways. Different rhythms, different energy. The guys were nice and the work was interesting and you were good at it, because you were good at this, that had never been in question.

You were fine.

You were getting finer by the day, which was either progress or a very convincing impression of it.

Allie texted. Garrett texted — I'm sorry, for what it's worth I told him not to — which you appreciated more than you could say. Tucker sent a single text that just said I tried to talk him out of it and you believed him and told him so.

You did not respond to Logan.

Logan's days had a new shape to them and he hated it.

Practice was the same, same drills, same ice, same team, but the stands were wrong. The spot where you always sat, third row back on the left side, was empty now, and he knew it was empty without lookin. He looked anyway. Every practice, every morning skate, every film session, he looked, and the spot was empty, and he looked away.

Logan texted you every three days. Not long messages, just checking in, just your name sometimes, just I know you don't want to hear from me right now but I'm sorry. He did not expect responses. He sent them anyway because not sending them felt worse.

He watched your football content. Every post, every reel, every behind-the-scenes clip. He watched the way you filmed the new team — the same eye, the same instinct for the right moment, the same ability to make something look like something worth watching — and felt the specific, particular ache of someone who understood what they had lost because they had been paying attention to it the whole time.

He had always been paying attention.

That was the thing that made it so much worse.

Three weeks after you left, the hockey team got a new social media person.

Her name was Jade. She was a sophomore, enthusiastic, slightly overwhelmed, and she had asked you to walk her through the setup on a Tuesday morning when the team had a late practice, which meant you were in the rink, with your old equipment, showing someone else how to use the angles you had spent seven months learning, when the team came off the ice.

You had not planned for this. You had assumed they would be gone by the time you were done.

They were not gone.

You heard them before you saw them, he familiar noise of the team coming out of the locker room corridor and then Tucker saw you first and stopped walking so abruptly that Garrett walked into him.

"What —" Garrett looked up. Saw you. His expression did something complicated.

The rest of the team filtered out around them, and then Dean, and then Logan, and the corridor went through a specific collective recalibration.

You kept your face completely neutral. "Hey," you said, to the general group. "This is Jade. She's taking over the social media. I'm just showing her the setup."

Jade waved cheerfully, unaware of the atmospheric pressure of the corridor.

"Taking over?" Tucker said slowly.

"Yes," you said. "I moved to football." You said it simply, like it was information and not anything else. "Jade is great, she's going to do a really good job."

The team was looking at you with various expressions. Tucker looked pained. Garrett looked like he was doing math.

Dean was looking at the floor.

Logan was looking at you with the expression of someone watching something leave that they had already lost and were only now understanding the full shape of. You could feel it without looking directly at him. You had spent seven months learning the specific weight of his attention.

"You're actually leaving," Tucker said. "Like permanently."

"I already left," you said. "This is just the handover."

"But —" Tucker started.

"Tuck," you said, gently. "It's fine. Jade is great."

Jade smiled again.

"We kind of made you leave," Tucker said, in the specific tone of someone who had been holding something for three weeks and had finally said it out loud.

"Tucker —"

"No, like —" he stopped. Looked at Dean. Looked at Logan. Looked back at you. "We made you leave. That's what happened. And I just — I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say but I'm sorry."

The corridor was very quiet.

"You didn't make me leave," you said carefully. "You tried to talk him out of it. I know that."

Tucker nodded. Still pained.

"Right," Garrett said finally, in the tone of someone deciding to be graceful about something painful. "Good luck with football."

"Thanks," you said.

You turned back to Jade and kept going with the walkthrough, and the team filed past, and you did not look at Logan as he walked by even though you could feel him slowing down, even though you could feel him wanting to say something.

"Hey," Logan said. Very quietly. Just that.

You kept your eyes on the camera settings you were showing Jade.

He stood there for a moment. Then his footsteps continued down the corridor.

You exhaled very quietly and kept talking to Jade about angles.

Behind you, fading, you heard Dean say something low and urgent to Logan that you couldn't make out. And Logan's response, quieter still:

"I know."

Logan started showing up.

Not to you, he respected the never talk to me again enough not to push himself into your space. But he started showing up in the ways that were available to him.

He fixed the tripod mount in the storage room that had been broken since October — the one you had mentioned once, months ago, in passing, because it made the camera angle slightly off and you had learned to compensate for it. He left a note on it that said finally fixed it. sorry it took so long. No signature. He didn't need one.

He started showing up to the football team's games.

Not every game. Not in a way that was dramatic or obvious. Just there, in the stands, with the quiet patience of someone who had decided that if the mountain wouldn't come to him he would go to the mountain and sit in the stands and watch from a respectful distance.

Olivia told you the second time it happened.

"He was there again," she said carefully.

You said nothing.

"He's not doing anything," she said. "He's just — there. Watching."

You said nothing.

"I thought you should know," she said.

You knew.

You knew because you had clocked him the first time — third row back, left side,— and you had kept filming and not said anything and thought about it for three days.

He texted you after the third game.

logan: you got a good shot of the QB in the third quarter. the one right before the play call. it was good.

You stared at the message for a long time.

yn: how would you know

logan: i was there

A long pause.

logan: i'll keep coming if that's okay. i won't bother you. i just want to be there.

You put your phone down.

You picked it up.

yn: it's okay

Dean did not sleep the night you found out.

He lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about the specific expression on your face when you said I thought you were my friend — not angry, which would have been easier, but broken, which was not easier at all.

At four in the morning he picked up his phone.

dean: allie

allie: i'm awake

dean: i know i really messed up

allie: yes

dean: i don't know how to fix it

A long pause.

allie: you start by not trying to fix it. you start by just being sorry.

dean: i am

allie: i know. she needs to hear it from you. not a text. not through anyone else. you.

dean: she said never talk to her again

allie: i know what she said. give her time. and then go.

Dean put his phone down.

He stared at the ceiling until it got light outside.

You took your own sweet time.

Not to feel better, you were not operating under the illusion that time fixed everything, but to feel what you needed to feel without an audience. You went to classes. You went to work. You filmed the football team's Tuesday practice and focused on the angles and the light and the professional satisfaction of a job done well, and you did not think about hockey, and you did not look at your phone when certain names appeared on the screen, and you let Olivia bring you food and watch bad television with you without making you talk about it.

On the fourteenth day Dean was waiting outside your lecture hall.

He looked terrible. Not dramatically terrible — Dean was constitutionally incapable of looking terrible — but tired.

You stopped when you saw him.

He held up both hands. "I'm not here to make excuses," he said. "I know you said never talk to me again. I know. I just — five minutes. And then I'll go and I won't bother you again if that's what you want."

You looked at him for a long moment.

You stepped to the side of the path, out of the flow of people. He followed.

"Say what you have to say," you said.

Dean looked at you with the expression you had never seen on him before, no performance, no charm deployed at the right moment, nothing managed. Just a person who had done something wrong and knew it and was standing in front of the person he had done it to.

"I've never had a friend like you before," he said. "Like — actually. I have guy friends. I have girls I've hooked up, almost dated or whatever. But I've never had a girl who was just — a friend. Who I talked to and who talked to me and who I could be around without it being anything else." He paused. "And I took that and I made it into a scheme. And I told myself I was helping and maybe part of me was but part of me just — didn't think far enough ahead. Didn't think about what it would mean to you if you found out. Didn't think about you at all, honestly, which is the thing I'm most sorry about." He held your gaze. "I thought about Logan being in love with you and I thought about the bet being clever and I didn't think about you being a person who deserved to know the truth. And I should have. You should have been the first thing I thought about."

The path had mostly emptied. A bird somewhere was doing something aggressively cheerful.

"I miss my friend," Dean said. "I know I don't get to just say that. I know. I just needed you to know that it's real. You are actually my friend and I actually miss you and I'm actually sorry, not sorry like I feel bad, sorry like I understand what I did."

You looked at him.

You thought about the bus and his head on your shoulder and on the team, I meant and the way he had looked genuinely wounded when you said Tucker was probably your better friend on the team.

"It's going to take time," you said finally.

Something in his expression shifted — careful, not quite hope yet.

"I know," he said.

"You don't get to just be normal yet. We have to rebuild that."

"I know."

"And you have to actually be different," you said. "Not just sorry. Different."

"I will be," he said. "I already am. Or I'm trying to be." He paused. "Is that enough to start with?"

You looked at him for a long moment.

"It's enough to start with," you said.

The careful-not-quite-hope became something more than that.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

"Don't thank me yet," you said. "We have a long way to go."

"I know," he said. "I'll go as slow as you need."

You looked at the path ahead.

"I have class," you said.

"I know. Go."

You went.

It was a start.

Logan was harder.

Not because you were angrier at him — you were, if you were being honest, angry at both of them in equal measure, just differently. Dean had betrayed a friendship. Logan had betrayed something larger, something that had your name on it, something you had handed him on a grey February Saturday when you said I love you and meant it with everything you had.

You saw him at the football games. Third row back, left side, every time. Not looking at you directly, just there, present, with the quiet patience of someone who had decided that showing up was the only thing available to him and had committed to it without reservation.

He sent you a text after every game. Not about him, not about them, about your work. Good shot in the second half. The one where you caught the receiver right before the snap. The slow motion reel you posted was really good. The timing was perfect. Small specific things that said I was paying attention without saying anything else.

You read them all.

You responded to some of them.

Small things. Thanks. I almost didn't post that one. Nothing that opened a door, just acknowledgment. The acknowledgment of someone who was not ready and was not pretending to be and was also not entirely gone.

He was not pushing. That was the thing you noticed most. He had shown up to three football games and fixed a broken tripod mount and sent careful specific texts about your work and he had not once asked for anything in return. Had not once said I think we should talk or please give me a chance or any of the things that would have made it easier to keep the door closed.

He was just — there.

Being different.

The grand gesture arrived on a Thursday, five weeks after the fight.

You were in the football team's equipment room going through footage on your laptop when someone knocked on the door. One of the managers looked in.

"There's someone outside asking for you," he said, with the specific expression of someone who had seen something and found it notable.

You went outside.

The path outside the athletics building was where you found him — Logan, in the cold, with flowers. Not a bunch. Not a normal amount. An amount that represented a decision — sunflowers and peonies and something small and white, wrapped loosely in paper, assembled with the specific intention of being too many, more than one person could reasonably carry, held in both arms with the careful energy of someone who had thought about this and decided it was not enough and added more anyway.

You looked at the flowers. You looked at him.

He looked tired in the same way he had looked tired since the night you left — not dramatic, not performing it, just genuinely worn down in the way of someone who had been carrying something for five weeks without putting it down.

"You said private," he said. "Too many flowers. Someone made a decision." He paused. "I made a decision."

Your throat did something inconvenient.

"Logan —"

"I'm not asking you to forgive me today," he said. "I just you said meaning it was the important part. And I needed you to see that I mean it. That's all. I'm not asking for anything."

You looked at the flowers. Peonies. He had gotten peonies specifically.

"You remembered the peonies," you said.

"You mentioned them once," he said. "A long time ago."

"You were paying attention," you said.

"I was always paying attention," he said quietly. "That was never the problem."

You stood there in the cold outside the athletics building and thought about I will never know which part was real and the third row left side and the texts about your work and five weeks of him being different without being asked to prove it.

"This isn't enough," you said.

Something flickered in his expression.

"I know," he said.

"I need more than flowers."

"I know," he said again, steadily. "Tell me what you need. Whatever it is. I'll do it."

You looked at him for a long moment.

"I need time," you said. "Real time. Not rushing. Not us going back to how things were because it was comfortable and we missed each other. Actually starting over and doing it right."

"Okay," he said.

"I need you to keep showing up," you said. "Not just when it's easy. When it's hard and uncertain and you don't know if it's working. You keep showing up anyway."

"I will," he said.

"And I need you to understand that I might get angry again," you said. "Even after I've forgiven you. It might come back and I might need to say something and you have to let me say it without shutting down."

"I will," he said. "I'll listen. Every time."

You looked at him.

"The texts," you said. "About my work."

"Yeah."

"You were at every game."

"Yeah."

"Third row back. Left side."

He looked at you quietly.

"I know," you said. "I noticed."

Something in his expression shifted.

"I was always going to ask you out," he said. "I need you to know that. Not as an excuse. Just as a true thing. The money didn't change what I felt. It just — it gave me a reason I shouldn't have needed and I took it and I'm sorry. But what happened between us was real. Every single part of it was real."

"I know," you said, which surprised you slightly, because you hadn't known you knew until you said it. "I know it was real. That's what made it hurt so much."

He nodded.

"Give me the peonies," you said.

He carefully extracted the peonies from the arrangement and held them out. You took them.

"The rest you can take home," you said.

"Okay."

"And Logan —" you paused. "The showing up. Don't stop."

Something broke open in his expression — not dramatically, not loudly, just quietly and completely, the expression of someone who had been holding something for five weeks and had finally been given a place to put it down.

"I won't," he said. "I promise."

You looked at him for one more moment.

"Slow," you said.

"As slow as you need," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

You went back inside.

You stood in the equipment room with the peonies and thought about everything — the check and the bet and the fight and five weeks of third row left side and too many flowers on a Thursday afternoon in the cold.

You were not okay yet.

But you were standing with peonies, which was somewhere.

It was enough to start with.

The getting back together did not happen all at once.

It happened the way the crush had happened — gradually, against nobody's will this time, the way things did when they had been building for a long time and had finally found the right conditions.

The first time you went back to the rink it was not for work.

It was a Saturday game, mid-March, the kind that mattered for standings, and you had told yourself you were going because Allie and Hannah were going and Olivia was going and it was a group thing and had nothing to do with anything else.

You brought your camera.

Not the work camera your personal one, the smaller one you used when you were filming for yourself rather than for a content schedule. You told yourself it was habit. You told yourself you just liked having it.

You sat third row left side.

The thing about watching hockey when you actually knew what you were looking at was that it was a completely different experience from watching hockey when you were just there for the atmosphere. You knew the plays. You knew the patterns. You knew which moments were about to become something before they became something, the specific pre-motion stillness that preceded a good play, the way certain players telegraphed their intentions without knowing they were doing it.

You knew Logan's tells better than anyone.

Which was why you had your camera up and ready when he got the puck in the second period the slight shift of his weight, the way his head came up a half second before anyone else's, and then the play unfolding exactly the way you had known it would, clean and fast and entirely worth watching.

You got the shot.

Forty-three seconds of it, actually.

You lowered the camera and looked at what you had captured and felt something settle in your chest that was warm and quiet and entirely familiar.

Genuinely cinematic, you thought, and smiled at the ice.

Briar won.

The team filtered out of the locker room in the usual way in ones and twos, loud and post-game, spilling into the corridor where the usual group had gathered. Allie found Dean. Hannah found Garrett. Tucker found someone to complain to about a call in the third period.

You were reviewing footage on your camera when you felt someone stop beside you.

You looked up.

Logan was still in half his gear, hair damp, and he was looking at you with the expression you had forty-seven saved clips of — the real one, the one that had nothing managed about it — except that now you were allowed to look at it directly, which was still something you were getting used to.

"You came," he said.

"I came," you confirmed.

"You brought your camera."

"I brought my camera."

He looked at it. He looked at you. "Did you get anything good?"

You turned the camera around and hit play. The second period play unfolded on the small screen — the weight shift, the half second of stillness, the clean fast movement of something that knew exactly where it was going.

Forty-three seconds of it.

Logan watched it. Something in his expression went soft in the specific way it did when he was actually feeling something and had decided not to manage it.

"That's —" he started.

"Genuinely cinematic," you said.

He looked at you.

You looked back at him.

And then he kissed you right there in the corridor.

It was warm and certain and tasted like relief of something that had been a long time coming and had finally, simply, arrived.

When you pulled back he was smiling the real one, the one you had been filming without quite admitting why for seven months.

"So," he said.

"Yeah," you said. "We're back together." You pointed at him. "Don't fuck up."

Logan laughed a real one, surprised and warm, the kind that carried down the corridor and made Tucker laugh too without knowing why.

"I won't," he said.

"I mean it."

"I know you mean it."

"Good." You tucked your camera back into your bag. "Buy me food. I've been at a hockey game for two hours and I'm starving."

"Done," he said immediately.

You started walking and everything was different from before, which was the whole point, which was exactly what you had asked for.

Better. Not the same. Better.

Behind you, fading, you heard Tucker say something to Garrett.

"Called it," Tucker said.

"You called nothing," Garrett said.

"I said they'd get back together —"

"You said that last week —"

"Which was a call —"

"Tucker —"

You and Logan kept walking.

"Do they ever stop?" you said.

"No," Logan said.

"Good," you said. "I missed it."

He looked at you sideways. That expression.

note: i may or may not do a part two, my motivation fluctuates! hope you enjoy because this was super sad to write.

He’s looking at her.

His arm rests along the back of the couch, the sensation of it familiar enough that you barely notice it anymore. Every few minutes, when someone says something particularly funny, his hand shifts and his fingers brush against the exposed skin of your shoulder blade. It’s casual, absent-minded contact. It means nothing to him and everything to you.

Around you, the boys’ house is lively. Tucker is arguing with Birdie about the game they’ve been at for hours on the TV. Every once in a while, someone tells them to shut up. They do that for a total of five minutes before someone inevitably raises their voice, leading the other to do the same.

You should be finishing up your story. It was a stupid tale, one about falling asleep during a lecture.

Instead, you’re watching him.

Or rather, you’re watching where he’s looking.

His gaze drifts across the room so often that you’ve begun anticipating it, finding yourself following the path before he’s even finished turning his head. It happens during conversations. During periods of silence. During moments when he’s supposed to be paying attention you.

His eyes always find the same person.

You wonder if anyone else notices.

Maybe they don’t. Maybe they haven’t spent nearly ten years studying every version of John Logan.

Ten years.

Long enough to remember the cracked sidewalks of your hometown and the suffocating certainty that neither of you belonged there. Long enough to remember sitting on the roof of his garage at thirteen years old, passing back and forth what was always bag of Hot Cheetos while making promises far too big for kids your age.

You had been determined to leave.

And somehow, against every odd stacked against two middle-schoolers with seemingly unattainable dreams and no real plan, you did.

You earned your place through a STEM scholarship that had consumed countless nights and enough caffeine to raise alerts towards your cardiovascular system. He earned his through hockey, through early mornings and bruises and a relentless dedication that you supported him all throughout.

Different roads, same destination.

For nearly a decade, the two of you had existed side by side.

And for six of those years, you’ve loved him.

You weren’t sure when you realized it, but once you did, it felt as though things finally clicked into place. There had always been that speculation from others that you two were something beyond a mere friendship—but there was no weight to it. Not while it wasn’t true, anyway.

You thought it may have been the puberty. John was no longer a scrawny kid who you hovered over. He’d grown into himself as the years passed—taller, stronger, more confident. It was a simple crush that came as a result of change, you told yourself.

But you had began to think it was more than that, that it always had been. Once the feeling arrived, it made no effort to fade—settling into the empty spaces between inside jokes and late-night phone calls, between shared victories and devastating failures. It lodged itself so deeply within your bond that you stopped looking for where friendship ended and something else began.

Maybe that was your mistake.

Across the room, Hannah laughs.

The sound is soft enough that most people would miss it beneath the chatter, but John hears it.

Of course he does.

Hannah Wells has a way of drawing attention effortlessly. Her smile comes easily, brightening her entire face like a Christmas tree. Honey-brown hair spills over one shoulder as she speaks. Her deep cerulean eyes crinkle when she laughs. Hearing her sing for the first time made it no better.

And she is so kind.

She remembers your birthday, she asks you questions on a subject you think had long been over. She makes you feel seen.

It’s impossible to blame him for looking.

The problem is that lately, he hasn’t seemed capable of looking anywhere else.

His fingers brush your shoulder again, mindlessly.

Across the room, Hannah says something to Allie that you can’t quite make out.

Logan smiles.

And suddenly, despite his arm around you and his knee pressed lightly against yours and nearly ten years of friendship sitting comfortably between the two of you, you’ve never felt further away from him.

Tucker notices your shift in mood before Logan does. You like Tuck the most out of all of Logan’s friends. He’s a year below the rest of you, though you like to say he’s the most mature out of all of them. He’s observant, you learned.

He tilts his head at you, silently asking if you’re okay. You send him a half-hearted thumbs up. Something clicks for him and he accepts your answer, redirecting his attention to the game.

You think Tucker knows about your crush on John. A part of you hopes he doesn’t, but another part of you knows that he does.

At some point, Logan notices you’ve stopped talking. By the time he has, you’re fiddling with your bracelet. He frowns, glancing at his own matching one on his left wrist. You were both surprised they had never broken. Logan enjoyed referring to it as a testament to your long-standing friendship. The blue and purple embroidery of both your bracelets have become a halo of fuzz, but they remain intact nonetheless.

Logan glances back at you, studying you once again—knit eyebrows, lip tucked between your teeth. You’re upset.

“What’s wrong?”

You meet his doe eyed gaze and hate yourself for thinking about drowning in them. He knows you as well as you know him. So much so that you can’t lie and pretend you’re okay. He’s read you and he’s decided that you’re not.

So you do the next best thing.

“It’s just stuffy in here,” you reply passively, maintaining a poker face when you push off the couch and his fingertips leave your shoulder blades. “I’m gonna get some air.”

The cool evening air hits you the second the front door clicks shut, but it does nothing to clear the sudden suffocating weight in your chest. You walk over to the edge of the porch, gripping the wooden railing just to have something solid to hold onto.

Behind you, the front door opens and shuts. Familiar footsteps thud against the wood. You don’t need to turn around to know it’s him, you’d know the specific cadence of his stride anywhere.

"Hey," Logan says softly, stepping up beside you, jacket in his hand. He leans his forearms against the railing, his large frame blocking out the slight breeze. "You left your jacket inside. It’s freezing out here."

You make no effort to retrieve the coat from his grasp. You don’t look even at him. Instead, your eyes fixate on a tiny, industrious spider crawling across the top of a plastic patio chair a few feet away. It is small, frantic, and entirely unaware of the shifting plates of your universe, completely consumed by the monumental task of weaving a web between two cheap slats of faux-wicker. You envy it. You want to be anything else—a spider, a piece of dust, a thread on your frayed bracelet—anything but the girl standing under the porch light, slowly unraveling.

"I'm fine," you tell him, the words slipping out easily, rehearsed from a decade of practice.

"You're not fine," he insists softly. It’s not an accusation. It’s a statement of fact.

"I am fine," you repeat, but your voice is uneven.

You always are, somehow. It’s a reflex by now. Burn the midnight oil until your vision blurs, crash through exams on three hours of sleep, watch the boy you’ve loved for six years slip through your fingers like water—the answer is always the same: I’m fine.

"Don't do that," Logan mutters, turning his head to look at you. His eyes are swimming with an earnest yet frustrating concern that always makes you want to spill your guts. "We don't do that. Talk to me. Did someone say something inside? Did I do something?"

You let out a breath that cuts like a laugh, though there’s no humor in it. You look out at the dark front yard, at the dead leaves scattering across the pavement.

You finally turn your head to look at him. You note the exact way the yellow porch light catches the bridge of his nose, the slight shadow of stubble along his jawline. You know every iteration of this face. You know the childhood version, the teenage version, and this current, devastatingly handsome collegiate version.

And yet, looking at him right now, he feels like a stranger wearing your best friend's skin.

"That's just it, Logan. You haven't done anything." Your voice drops, stripped of its usual warmth. "You haven't been doing anything. Not with me, anyway."

He blinks, a small, defensive crease forming between his eyebrows. "I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t,” you murmur.

“Then explain it to me.”

"It means you’re pulling away," you say directly, the words tasting like copper in your mouth, but you force them out anyway. You don't mention Hannah. You don't have to bring up the way his eyes track her, or the way his laugh sounds higher when she’s in the room. This isn't about her. This is about him. This is about the space where your best friend used to be. "You’re always somewhere else. I talk to you, and it’s like I’m throwing words into an empty room. You look right through me lately. You’re right here, and it feels like there’s a thousand miles between us."

Logan stiffens. For a second, his mouth opens to deny it, the knee-jerk reaction of a guy who prides himself on being loyal. But as he looks at you—at the tight line of your jaw, at the way you're holding onto your own arm like you’re trying to keep yourself from falling apart—you can see the fight slowly leave him.

The silence stretches, punctuated only by the joyous yells of your friends inside.

"I didn't. . .” Logan starts, his voice dropping an octave. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, looking down at his shoes. "I didn't realize I was making you feel like that. I swear to God, I didn't."

"Well, you are." Your voice trembles just a fraction, and you hate yourself for it, pulling your shoulders back to overcompensate. "I know that friends drift. But I don’t wanna be background noise in your life.”

Logan steps closer, closing the small physical gap between you. He reaches out, his large hand wrapping around your forearm—right over the frayed threads of your bracelet. You pray he doesn’t notice the hitching of your breath.

"You're not background noise," he says sincerely, his desperate eyes searching yours. "You could never be. I'm sorry. Seriously. I've had. . . I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately, and I’ve been distracted. I’ve been a shitty best friend, and there’s no excuse for it. I’m so sorry."

You look at his hand on your arm. You look at the genuine regret pulling at the corners of his eyes. He doesn't know that the distraction is killing you for an entirely different reason. He just knows he hurt his person, and he wants to fix it.

You swallow the ache in your throat, nodding slowly. You let the anger go, because holding onto it hurts worse than forgiving him does.

"It’s okay," you assure him. "Just don’t forget about me, dork.”

"Never," he promises, squeezing your arm before letting go. A small, relieved smile tugs at his lips, the tension leaving his shoulders. He makes no effort to back away from you. It’s all the more suffocating. "I promise. Hey, you still have that big winter showcase coming up in two weeks, right? For your department?"

"Yeah," you say, a genuine spark of nervousness lighting up your stomach. "It’s the Friday after this upcoming one."

"I'll be there," Logan says instantly, his voice full of the certainty that usually makes you feel safe. "Front row. I'll even wear a stupid button-down shirt so your professors think I'm respectable. Deal?"

You look at him, wanting so badly to trust the boy who used to share bags of Hot Cheetos on a garage roof.

"Deal," you agree.

The fluorescent lights of the auditorium are blinding. It is 5:30PM. The STEM showcase had officially kicked off at five, the culmination of sleepless semesters, data sheets that blurred into meaningless code by three in the morning, and enough stress to permanently alter your brain chemistry.

Your phone sits completely dark and powered down in the bottom of your tote bag. You hadn't sent Logan a reminder text today. You hadn’t wanted to seem needy, and besides, you figured he’d remember.

He knew what this meant to you. He’d been the one to hold you on the floor of your bedroom a week ago ago when the overthinking caught up to you, his large hands rubbing slow circles into your back while you sobbed into his chest, terrified that it wouldn’t be enough. He’d promised then, just like he’d promised on the porch, that he’d be here.

Last night, you had even swung by the hockey house, your presentation slides printed out and shaking in your hands, just looking for a final bit of reassurance to quiet the jitters. But Logan wasn't there. He’d been at Malone’s, helping Hannah setup tables and banners for the upcoming weekend showcase she offered to host for music majors.

It was fine, you told yourself. It really was. He was trying to be better, and you could see the effort. The crush was still a persistent ache in your ribs, but he hadn't let it bleed into your friendship the way he had before. You understood what it was like to be at someone’s beck and call—hell, you’d been at his for six years. You couldn't blame him for falling under Hannah’s gravitational pull.

Logan hadn't been there last night, but Tucker had.

Tucker had stopped chopping vegetables, wiped his hands on a dish towel, and sat you down at the kitchen island. He listened to you stumble through your abstract, giving you a supportive nod when you finished. When you told Tucker he didn't have to worry about coming tomorrow since it was so last minute and Logan would be there anyway, Tucker had just given you an easy smile.

“Then you’ll have two of us cheering you on," he’d promised.

Now, standing by your trifold and your laptop, the nerves are a sickening weight in your stomach. You’ve just finished presenting to the final round of judges. Your mouth is dry, your throat tight, but you’d gotten through it just fine.

Tucker had slipped into the back of the room right before your time slot, his broad shoulders cutting a reassuring silhouette against the crowded aisle. Seeing his familiar face had kept your knees from buckling.

But Logan’s seat in the front row—the one he’d promised to occupy in a stupid button-down shirt—remained completely empty.

It hurts. A sharp, localized sting right beneath your breastbone. You hadn't told anyone else in your life about the showcase because public speaking made you feel entirely naked, meaning Logan and Tucker were your only safety nets.

Everyone else would most likely be at Malone’s. You didn’t want them to choose between you and Hannah, because you knew they’d try to compromise, complicating things. You didn’t want a whole crowd, you were okay with just one person being there.

But you swallow the lump in your throat and smooth down the fabric of your slacks. It’s fine. Logan probably just got caught in campus traffic, or he had a handyman gig that kept him late. He missed the actual presentation, yeah, but there’s still time. The showcase goes until eight.

As long as he shows up before the winners are announced, it’ll be fine. He’ll still be there to celebrate with you. He has to be.

Two hours later, the auditorium is a blur of echoing applause and bright flashing cameras.

When the department head speaks your name into the microphone, announcing you as the first-place recipient of the showcase, the room erupts. Your peers are cheering, clapping you on the back as you walk up the stage, but the sound feels like it’s happening underwater.

Even the heavy glass they hang around your neck and the oversized novelty check—grant money that will entirely fund your next semester of research—do nothing to lift the leaden weight in your chest.

Tucker maneuvers through the crowd as soon as you’ve left the stage, a massive, proud smile lighting up his face as he pulls you into a bone-crushing hug. He hoists you slightly off your feet, laughing, telling you he always knew you had it in the bag.

But when he pulls back, his smile falters. He looks at your eyes, watery and strained, and the pride in his expression softens into a deep concern. He knows. He can tell exactly how badly you're hurting.

But even now, with a first-place medal heavy against your sternum, you find yourself building a fortress of excuses for John Logan.

You give him the benefit of the doubt, because the alternative is unendurable. He’d never do this intentionally. Not after last week. Not to you. Something had to have happened. A family emergency with his mom. Something with Jules. Maybe he’d taken a brutal hit at practice and was sitting in the training room with a concussion, his phone locked away. He had to be hurt. He had to be incapacitated.

"Let's get you out of here," Tucker says softly, his hand settling on the small of your back, shielding you from the lingering crowds as you pack up your laptop. "I can walk you back to your dorm."

"Actually," you say, your voice tight as you zip your tote bag, "can you take me back to the house? Honestly, after the day I’ve had, I’m dying for a home-cooked Tucker special. I need some real comfort food."

You try to make it sound like a casual request, but Tucker’s hand goes entirely still against your back. He doesn't laugh it off. Instead, an uncomfortable hesitation washes over his features. He looks away, his jaw tightening as he stares out at the emptying auditorium.

In that single beat of silence, a cold and sickening realization dawns on you.

Perhaps Logan isn't sick. Perhaps he isn't hurt. He isn't in a hospital or dealing with a family crisis. Tucker knows exactly where he is.

He forgot.

The thought devastates you, a physical blow that leaves you in theoretical agony, but right on the heels of the sadness comes a sharp, blistering wave of fury. You’re a winner. You just secured your future for the next semester. This should be one of the greatest nights of your life, and yet Logan has latched himself so deeply into the fabric of your existence that he can still ruin it without even being in the room. You hate yourself for letting him have that much power over you.

"You sure you want to go to the house right now?" Tucker asks, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, laced with a warning he isn't entirely voicing.

You stop, staring at him. Your chest heaves. "Why? Is he there?"

Tucker looks at you, his brown eyes full of a grim, reluctant pity. He stays silent. He doesn't say a word, but his silence tells you everything you need to know. He's there. He's perfectly fine, at the hockey house while you were standing on a stage alone.

A hot, dangerous spark ignites in your blood.

"Take me there," you say, your voice dropping all the compliance, hard as flint. He begins to say your name, but you don’t allow him to. "Tucker. Take me to the house."

The ride to the hockey house is quick, though you believe that’s a product of the heavy thrum of your own pulse. Tuck keeps one hand on the steering wheel, your grim mood proving itself to be contagious.

Every few minutes, his voice breaks through the quiet of the truck, telling you to take a breath, telling you to try to calm down. But you can hear the sharp undercurrent of his own anger fueling the engine. He’s pissed on your behalf, but you don't have the capacity to appreciate it right now. You just stare straight ahead.

When the truck comes to a stop in the driveway, you don't wait for Tucker to kill the ignition. You throw the door open and march up the steps, completely ignoring him as he calls your name.

You push the door open, not so much that it was disruptive, but it was noticeable nonetheless.

The warmth of the house hits you first, along with the loud, easy cacophony of a Friday night wind-down. The TV is on, and everyone is scattered across the living room. Allie, Garrett, Dean, and Hannah.

And Logan.

The sheer normalcy of the scene feels like a slap to the face. You stand in the entryway, the first-place medal swinging slightly against your chest, dressed in the gray slacks and blouse you’d picked out so carefully. For a fraction of a second, looking at their relaxed posture and happy faces, you feel entirely microscopic. Like an ant on the back of someone’s boot, completely insignificant to the world revolving around them.

Then, the room goes quiet.

Dean is the first one to look up from the couch. His eyes take in your sharp posture, the formal attire, and finally, the heavy piece hung around your neck catching the ambient light. A grin breaks across his face, completely ignorant of the storm cloud rolling off your shoulders.

"Look at that," Dean announces, raising his cup in a mock toast. "The prodigal daughter returns!"

He’s trying to be supportive. Under any other circumstance, you’d smile, you’d thank him through narrowed eyes. You know he doesn't know. He has no idea what Logan promised, or what it cost you to stand on that stage alone.

But you don't look at Dean. You don't look at Garrett or Allie or Hannah.

Your eyes lock onto Logan.

He’s sitting on the edge of the cushions, and the exact moment your gaze finds his, the color drains completely from his face. It’s like watching a man realize he’s stepped off a cliff. His eyes drop to the medal on your chest, then snap back up to your face, wide and absolutely crushed. The realization of what he’s done hits him in a ton of bricks.

Usually, that look on his face would undo you. Usually, seeing John Logan look that miserable would trigger every protective instinct you’ve harbored for him, making you want to soften the blow, to tell him it’s fine, to smooth it over.

But tonight, you feel absolutely nothing.

The reservoir of sympathy has completely dried up, replaced by a fury that has been bubbling beneath the surface for months.

He hadn't just missed a presentation. He had broken a promise. He had lied to your face on the porch, sworn he was back, and then willfully chose to be somewhere else.

You stare at him, the silence in the room turning suffocatingly loud as the others finally catch onto the tension, and the only thought roaring through your mind is how completely invisible you’ve been to him.

That look of shame is enough gratification for you. If he can feel only a fraction of the pain you’d allowed yourself to endure these past few years, that was good for you. You couldn’t stand staring into the eyes of the man you once thought you knew anymore.

You turn your heel against the floorboards, every instinct screaming at you to walk out that door, to erase John Logan from your life, and to leave him standing in the wreckage of a ten-year friendship.

"Wait," his voice cracks through the silence of the room as he calls your name. "Please wait. I’m sorry. Just—please, just wait!”

You halt entirely. Your flats glue themselves to the floor, the medallion thudding against your chest like a pendulum swinging into a dead stop.

Sorry?

The word tastes rancid just hearing it bounce off the walls of the hockey house. You hadn't known what you wanted him to say when you walked through that door.

You hadn't known if there was a combination of vowels and consonants in the English language that could possibly fix this. But hearing his apology serves as nothing other than gasoline thrown directly onto a grease fire.

Slowly, you turn back around.

Your friends look horrified. You almost feel bad that they’re forced to witness this. You almost want to turn around and leave, leaving this argument for when you’re less heated, less hurt.

But you can’t. He needs to hear you. If not last week or the week before that, now.

Logan takes a step toward you, his hands raised slightly as if approaching a wild animal. "I lost track of time. The showcase at Malone’s—"

"Shut up," you say quietly.

The words aren't screamed. They are quiet, sharp, and dripping with an edge that makes Logan freeze in his tracks.

"Just. . . shut the hell up, Logan." You take a step forward, your shoes clicking against the hardwood. "Don't you dare use that as an excuse for being a pathetic, spineless coward."

He glances at the group that has gone dead silent. You don’t know if what he says next is for your sake or his, but you can’t bring yourself to care.

“Let’s go outside,” he offers, his tone resembling something of a plea. “We can—“

“No!” you spat harshly. “You’re gonna listen to me.”

You’d never spoken to him this way. Not in such a venomous tone, stripped from all warmth. For once, Logan does exactly what you’ve asked of him—to listen. His lips part but no words escape them.

"You sat on the porch two weeks ago," you continue, your voice rising now, the heat finally breaking through the ice. "You held my arm, and you looked me in the eyes and promised me you’d change. Do you have any idea what today was?"

Logan swallows hard, his brown hues welling with a desperate, pathetic panic. "It was the department showcase."

"It was the biggest night of my academic career!" you explode, the anger tearing out of your throat. "I have spent months working on this! I broke down sobbing over this because of how tired I was, and you were the one who held me! You knew exactly how terrified I was. You knew I didn't invite anyone else! What would’ve happened if Tuck wasn’t there?"

You gesture wildly to the medal around your neck.

"I stood on that stage alone, John. I scanned that auditorium for two hours, giving you the benefit of the doubt. I thought something had happened. I thought you were lying in a ditch somewhere or bleeding out in a hospital, because that is the only reason the John Logan I grew up with would ever miss this!"

A tear escapes his eye, rolling down his tanned cheek. "I messed up. Fuck, I know I messed up. Let me make it up to you, please—"

"You didn't mess up, you chose!" you hiss, stepping right into his space, forcing him to look down at the fury burning in your eyes. "You’ve made it perfectly clear where I rank on your list of priorities."

"I am wearing a first-place medal," you continue, your voice trembling with a devastating mix of triumph and agony. "I just won enough grant money to pay for my entire next semester of research. This should be the happiest night of my life. But all I can think about is how my best friend couldn’t show up when I needed him.”

"Please," Logan chokes out, reaching a trembling hand toward your shoulder, his fingers twitching to make that familiar, absent-minded contact. "Just—“

You snap your shoulder back, avoiding his touch as if his hand were coated in acid.

But as you jerk away, the zipper of his jacket catches on the frayed, fuzzy threads of your embroidered bracelet. There is a sudden rip. The threads give out all at once, unraveling in a split second as the broken token of your childhood slips from your wrist and flutters uselessly to the floor.

Logan freezes, his eyes dropping to the colorful, ruined heap of strings resting on the hardwood between you two.

It’s symbolic, you think.

"Don't touch me," you say, your voice dropping into a flat, dead register. You stare at him, washing away every ounce of the six years of love, every ounce of the ten years of friendship, until there is absolutely nothing left between you but a void.

"Don't talk to me. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. You’re dead to me, John."

You turn on your heel and march straight out the front door into the freezing night air.

Logan doesn’t even think before stepping forward to follow after you, but Tucker shuts the door, preventing him from doing so.

He doesn't yell. Instead, he steps into Logan’s space, grabs a fistful of his shirt right at the collar, and shoves him backward into the hallway leading toward the bedrooms. Logan doesn't even try to fight it—he stumbles back, his eyes wide and vacant, completely numb from the fallout.

Tucker slams the door of his room shut, but he doesn't bother locking it. He doesn't need to.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Tucker demands, his voice a growl that vibrates through the walls. He isn’t screaming, but he’s not exactly whispering. “Because right now, I’m having a hard time recognizing one of my best friends.”

“Tuck, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen—”

“You made her a promise, man!” Tucker cuts in sharply. “You told her you’d be there. You looked her dead in the eye and gave her your word. Do you have any idea what today was like for her?”

“I lost track of time. Hannah—”

“Don’t do that,” Tucker says, his eyes narrowing. “Don’t make this about Hannah. This is about you. You screwed up. You’ve been taking that girl for granted for long enough, and she’s been in your corner through every stupid decision you’ve made. Last night, I was the one sitting with her while she practiced that presentation because you were too busy being handyman.”

“She stood on that stage tonight. Every time those judges walked up to her, she checked those doors. Every damn time. She thought something happened to you, because that’s the only reason she could come up with for why you’d break your word to her. And the whole time, you’re moving tables at Malone’s? That’s your excuse?”

“I know I messed up,” Logan chokes out. “I know. I’ll fix it. I’ll talk to her—”

“No, you won’t,” Tucker says immediately. “Not today. Not anytime soon.”

He takes a step back, folding his arms across his chest.

“She told you to stay away. So for once, stop thinking about what you want and listen to what she asked for. You made this mess. If you actually want a shot at fixing it, give her some space and hope she decides you’re worth talking to when she’s ready.”

“Tuck—”

“I’m serious, Logan. Leave her alone. The last thing she needs right now is you showing up trying to make yourself feel better.“

You didn't really think about it, the first time it happened. You'd been halfway through a chart, awareness pitched somewhere behind you in case someone needed you — someone always did, eventually — and when you heard the name Sharkbait, you knew instinctively Santos was talking to you. She's always giving out nicknames like that, and you didn't have one yet, and people had taken to dragging you over to present for Park the Shark, because apparently you were the only one who could handle him without getting your head bit off.

You didn't really get what the big deal was. It wasn't hard to figure out how to deal with him — that's what you do, after all, assess people and then figure out how to deal with them. He wants clear, concise answers, and respect, so you give him both. Easy.

He's not the kind of person you'd joke with, or get chummy with, not unless he crossed that line first. Even then, best to tread carefully.

But he's not complicated, and he's certainly not scary the way everyone seems to think he is — though you would categorize him as intense. Focused. It's what makes him such a good surgeon.

And sure, maybe he trains his laser focus on you more than anyone else in the ED. Maybe his attention is less sharp when it settles and finds you on the receiving end.

It doesn't mean anything, surely, but that didn't stop Santos from noticing, and it didn't stop her from making a shitty nickname, and if you were thinking a little more clearly, you'd have realized that you should've shut that shit down. Park is your much older, much more attractive, incredibly no-nonsense indirect boss, not to mention, you actually kind of like the guy. He probably wouldn't take lightly to everyone going around implying he's trying to get in your pants, and even if Santos is mean, she's not evil. She'd back off if you needed her to.

But you'd been tired, and distracted, and you hadn't really thought about it that hard. And when she called out "Sharkbait, get over here!" you hadn't corrected her.

Instead, you'd tapped out the last line of your sentence and carelessly called back, "Sharkbait, ooh-haha." It wasn't even a conscious decision.

It's from some fuckass movie you watched when you were eight, and you hadn't thought about it in years, but apparently that one word had been enough to trigger the call and response you learned in second grade. It shouldn't have stuck, either, but then Whittaker had called you Sharkbait while you were talking to a patient, and you'd muttered it under your breath, and now you just can't stop.

Everywhere you went, people called you Sharkbait. Even Robby does it sometimes, when he's calling you over to observe procedures. And you, in a true show of human adaptability, do not stop to think about why it's such a mistake. You hadn't caught it the first time, and you hadn't caught it the second time, and by the third it simply became another thing in the background. Another name, another title, none of them really you.

Everywhere you went, you'd parrot it back. Mostly it was an announcement, a way to say I'm here, I'm paying attention, tell me what you need, without quite so many words. In the more serious situations, it was a half-whispered thing under your breath, a reminder that there would be time where things weren't falling apart, and you would be capable of joy and whimsy again.

Either way, it always came.

Unless Brendan Park was in the room. The Shark walked in, and suddenly everyone was calling your full name like you're George fucking Bush. Even the mention of a consult from him was enough to dissuade the use of it for a few minutes.

All of which led to twenty minutes ago, when you'd been hunched over a trash can, shoveling a granola bar down your throat with such ferocity that you felt simultaneously like a starved horse and the kind owner feeding it.

You'd caught a glimpse of Park gliding through the ED like Moses parting the Red Sea, and had stuffed the last of your precious calories into your mouth in a desperate bid to be done by the time he reached you. Even when you weren't called over to present, he rarely came down without stopping by, so you'd gotten used to putting on your best face on a dime.

You could see that Dennis was going to call you over before he actually did it, so you'd already been shuffling over to the hand sanitizer when you it happened. "Sharkbait! Whittaker says you should present this one."

Your mind knew it was a bad idea — tried to stop your mouth from following through — but habit is a bitch. "Sharkbait, ooh-haha," you fired back, just loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise of the ED.

For a half-second, everyone froze.

Park turned to you, molasses slow. Arched an eyebrow. "You like that stupid nickname?"

You'd blinked at him. Refused to shrink under his gaze, or his tone, or the way it all made your blood sing and your skin burn. Forced your voice smooth and even, just as unbothered as he sounded about... well, everything. "I haven't really thought about it all that much, honestly. Mostly just reflex by now."

Maybe he genuinely believed you. Maybe it's because you've always been honest and efficient. Maybe he just doesn't think you have the balls to lie to him. Whatever it is, he hadn't commented on it further, so you didn't either.

You both pretended it never happened, right up until he disappeared back upstairs, and you allowed yourself a single moment to acknowledge the fact that you may have just lost all your goodwill with the best orthopod in the hospital.

What you don't know is that Park had been the one to start it with an offhand comment to Garcia about the ED dangling you in front of him like sharkbait every time he went down there. She'd repeated it to Santos, and soon it had spread like wildfire. Not what he'd intended, and he'd considered snapping at the mousy boy when he'd drifted by and heard him calling you that a few weeks ago — only to be stopped dead by your sweet little call-and-response, like you were fucking taunting him. Practically begging him to come bite.

The fact that you had the balls to do it with him right in front of you — and then look him dead in the eyes and call it reflex — has just cemented what everyone else already knows.

He wants you.

he hadn't been playing a game.

you had just seen right through the defense mechanism he had been using his entire life.

the heavy front door thudded open behind him, letting out a brief burst of blaring music before closing again.

two sets of footsteps crunched on the gravel.

"hey, man."

a heavy hand came down on his shoulder.

dean flinched, snapping his head around to see tucker standing there, his face tight with a mixture of pity and disappointment.

right next to him was beau maxwell. his arms crossed over his chest and his usual laid-back energy completely gone, replaced by a rare, dead-serious frown.

"i told you, dean," tucker said quietly, looking down the empty road. "i warned you that she doesn't do the whole half-in, half-out thing."

"i wasn't half-in," dean snapped, his voice suddenly raw, a dangerous edge cracking through his usual easy-going demeanor.

he ripped his shoulder away from tucker's grip, running a frantic hand through his blonde hair. "i was going to tell her tonight. i was waiting for the house to clear out so i could ask her to stay. permanently."

beau let out a low, heavy sigh, shaking his head. "then why didn't you say it in front of everyone? why did you let her watch you flirt with some sophomore if she's the one you wanted? you can't treat a girl like a secret and then expect her to treat you like a priority."

tucker nodded in agreement. "beau's right. you let her think she was just another hookup that half the campus has already been with. you can't blame her for cutting you off."

dean quickly opened his mouth to defend himself.

he wanted to explain that the girl by the keg meant absolutely nothing, that it was just muscle memory.

it just the casual persona he put on so nobody looked too closely at how much he actually cared.

but the words died in his throat.

i know when someone is just trying to win over a crowd.

you had called it.

every single bit of it.

he had been so terrified of admitting, even to himself, that he had finally found the right girl. the one he had been passively waiting for his entire life.

but he had treated her like a secret and in doing so, he had completely destroyed the only real thing he had.

"i fucked up, guys," dean whispered, his voice dropping into a register they had never heard from him before.

it was entirely stripped of pride, heavy with a terrifying, sudden desperation. "i really, really fucked up."

beau looked at tucker, then back at dean, his expression softening into something deeply sympathetic. "yeah. you did. and if i know her? she's not the type to give you a second chance just for the sake of it. you're going to have to actually work for this one."

dean didn't go back inside the party.

he walked straight up the stairs to his room, locked the door, and sat on the edge of his bed in the dark.

the scent of your coconut shampoo still lingered faintly on his pillow.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

the hum of the tires against the asphalt was the only sound inside suni's car for the first three miles.

after the oppressive, vibrating bass from earlier, the silence inside the sedan felt less like an absence of noise and more like a physical weight, settling deep into your bones.

you blankly stared out the passenger window, watching the streetlamps bleed past in long, blurry streaks of amber.

"do you want me to say it?" suni asked quietly, her brown eyes fixed on the dark road ahead.

her hands were gripped tight on the steering wheel, still vibrating with that protective adrenaline.

"say what?" you murmured, your forehead resting against the cool glass.

"that you are an absolute fucking badass," she said, a small, fierce smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

"i mean it. people don't just walk away from dean. girls usually dissolve into a puddle when he looks in their general direction, and you just destroyed him on his own driveway."

you let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sigh, feeling the tight knot in your chest loosen just a fraction. "i don't feel like a badass. i feel hollow."

"that's just the detox," suni promised gently, reaching over to give your knee a supportive squeeze before putting both hands back on the wheel.

"it's the sugar crash after two months of eating nothing but empty calories. it'll pass."

she was right.

it was a crash.

but as you pulled up to your apartment building, the relief you expected to feel was shadowed by a lingering, dull ache.

you had drawn the line. you had won the argument.

so why did it feel like you were the one recovering from a blow?

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

four days passed in a tense, quiet limbo. you stayed away from the standard student hangouts.

you kept your head down, and entirely avoided the athletic side of campus.

which was much easier said than done.

it was actually hannah wells who broke the radio silence when you bumped into each other at work.

you two weren't particularly close outside of your shifts, but you had always been good coworkers, and she gave you a sympathetic look the second she saw you.

she admitted right off the bat that garrett had practically begged her to feel you out and see if you would be willing to hear dean's side of things.

but hannah made it clear she wasn't actually pushing his agenda.

you let her know, gently but firmly, that you just didn't want to hear him out right now.

she nodded immediately, completely understanding.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

you were halfway through your shift at malone's when the bell over the front door chimed and beau maxwell walked in from the cold.

the dinner rush hadn't started yet, leaving the restaurant washed in a warm, lazy quiet.

soft music drifted through the speakers. behind the bar, hannah was busy polishing glasses, while allie was sitting in one of the booths near the window. she was seemingly looking over her homework but clearly tuned into the room.

you looked up from the hostess stand and immediately narrowed your eyes.

beau rarely came here unless dean dragged him.

and judging by the guilty, deeply uncomfortable look on his face, this definitely wasn't a social visit.

"it's that bad, huh?" you asked dryly before he could even open his mouth to speak.

beau blinked. "what?"

"you drew the short straw." you crossed your arms. "dean sent you to talk to me."

hannah stopped wiping her glass, an amused smirk spreading across her face. the fact that beau's expression instantly gave him away nearly made you laugh.

"oh my god," you said, an incredulous smile finally breaking across your face. "he did."

"to be fair," beau said carefully, raising his hands in surrender, "i volunteered. mostly because i couldn't take another night of him pacing the living room floor like a caged animal."

allie leaned out of her booth slightly. "wait. dean di laurentis is sending representatives now?"

hannah leaned her elbows on the bar, looking entirely entertained. "please tell me he at least prepared a speech."

beau groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. "you people are evil."

"no," you corrected lightly, grabbing a stack of menus from the counter beside you, "he's pure evil."

that earned you a reluctant laugh from beau. he shoved his hands into his pockets, looking both amused and slightly helpless.

"okay," he admitted. "maybe this does look a little pathetic."

"a little?" allie echoed from her booth, shaking her head. "beau, i don't know why you're doing this for him."

hannah pointed a bar towel at you. "his approval ratings are in the toilet."

you pressed your lips together, fighting another smile.

it was ridiculous.

dean was apparently moping around because you stopped answering his texts.

a month ago, the idea would've satisfied you.

now it mostly just felt surreal.

beau's expression softened as your smile faded slightly. "i've known dean a long time," he said quietly. "and i've honestly never seen him like this before."

you focused on straightening the menus in your hands even though they were already perfectly aligned. "beau—"

"no, seriously." he leaned against the hostess stand, dropping his voice. "the guy is a disaster. garrett says he's playing like crap at practice because he's distracted all the time. coach yelled at him so hard yesterday his face literally turned purple.”

“and logan threatened to throw dean's phone into a lake because he keeps checking if you texted him back every thirty seconds. he doesn't sleep. he just... he stares at his phone."

a reluctant laugh slipped out before you could stop it, but it died quickly.

"this is insane," you muttered, covering your face briefly with your hand. "he's literally running a pr campaign."

"that's actually exactly what tucker called it," beau admitted.

the amusement faded entirely after a second, though, something heavier settling back into your chest. because underneath all the ridiculousness... there was still hurt.

a deep, aching bruise left by a boy who thought everything in life came easy.

you slowly lowered your hand. "did he send you because he thinks if enough people tell me he's miserable, i'll magically forget why i left?"

the teasing atmosphere immediately evaporated. beau straightened slightly, his voice turning serious.

"no." he shook his head.

"i came because he knows he hurt you. and because for once in his life, he's too scared to make it worse. he's terrified that if he pushes you, you'll completely erase him."

that caught you off guard.

even hannah went quiet behind the bar, returning to her glasses. you looked down at the menus in your hands, tracing your thumb absentmindedly along the edges.

beau hesitated before continuing. "he's not trying to charm his way out of this anymore," he said carefully. "honestly? i think that's freaking him out the most. he doesn't know how to exist without his armor."

before you could respond, the front door opened again and a group of customers entered, breaking the moment apart. hannah immediately pushed off the bar, professional mode clicking back in. "right, back to it before della catches us."

allie slid back into her booth to give the customers room. beau stepped away from the hostess stand, giving you one last careful look. "i'm not saying you should forgive him," he said gently. "that's your call. but i do think losing you finally forced him to become a person instead of just a personality."

and annoyingly enough, that line stayed with you long after he left.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

by the end of the week, the hurt had hardened into a reckless, heavy spike of anger.

suni practically forced you out the door to the pre-game mixer at the phi kappa house. "you need to show up, look stunning which isn't hard for you, and prove you aren't hiding in your room crying over a some hockey player," she insisted.

the house was a sensory overload—a wall of thumping bass, sticky floors, and sweat-fogged windows.

it took exactly five minutes for the room to feel subtly dialed into your arrival. across the crowded living room, the hockey team was gathered near the back patio.

and right in the center was dean.

he looked exhausted, his gaze drifting aimlessly until logan nudged him, pointing in your direction. the moment dean's blue eyes locked onto yours, his entire posture changed.

his chest rose sharply, and he took an instinctive step forward, completely abandoning his conversation.

his eyes flared with a sudden, desperate hope.

you felt the invisible weight of the room watching, waiting for the classic fallout. a dark, defiant spark ignited in your chest.

dean had spent months keeping your relationship a secret, acting like a casual observer while he entertained a crowd.

two can play that game.

you deliberately tore your eyes away from him, turning your gaze toward liam. liam was a handsome football player who had been hovering in your orbit since the start of the academic year.

he was tall, built, and more than happy to have your sudden, undivided attention.

out of the corner of your eye, you saw dean freeze. the hope on his face shattered.

you leaned in close to liam, letting your laughter trail off into something softer, low and intimate.

you stepped directly into his space, your hand sliding deliberately up his arm to rest against his shoulder, your fingers brushing the nape of his neck.

liam's eyes darkened instantly with surprise and heat. his hand came up, wrapping firmly around your waist and pulling you flush against him.

across the room, dean looked like he had been physically struck.

you could see his jaw clenching so hard a muscle jumped in his cheek, his knuckles turning stark white as his grip tightened around his red cup.

garrett muttered something in his ear, placing a grounding hand on his shoulder, but dean brushed him off as his eyes burned into you with a raw, bleeding agony.

you didn't look back at him. instead, you leaned up on your toes, your eyes dropping to liam's lips.

"you're incredibly beautiful tonight," liam murmured, his voice thick, his thumb sliding beneath the edge of your top, tracing the bare skin of your hip.

"thank you," you breathed out, tilting your head up slightly. "liam?"

"mhm?"

"kiss me."

he didn't hesitate. liam leaned down, slanting his mouth over yours.

he didn't hold back at all. his lips were warm and demanding, his hand pressing firmly into the small of your back to hold you tight against his chest.

you let your eyes close and leaned into the weight of him, wrapping your arms around his neck, deepening the kiss into something slow, deliberate, and deeply sensual.

you made sure it lingered, playing your part perfectly for the crowd.

and for the specific boy breaking apart by the doors.

a low ripple of whispers washed through the immediate room. the kiss was thick with heat, but it didn't ignite that familiar, electric ache you only ever felt with a certain stupid idiot.

when you finally pulled back, liam was breathing heavily, a dazed, smug smile tugging at his lips.

you offered him a quiet, heavy-lidded smile before finally looking past his shoulder.

the satisfaction immediately turned to ash in your throat.

dean looked physically ill. the fierce, possessive anger had completely drained out of him, leaving behind a hollow, entirely defeated devastation.

his face was completely pale, his eyes wide as he stared at you. it was like he was looking at the end of his life.

watching you give someone else that kind of intimacy had entirely undone him.

dean's fingers slacked. his cup slipped from his hand, clattering against the floor and splashing beer across his shoes, but he didn't even notice.

he turned on his heel and blindly pushed through the crowd, fleeing out the back doors into the freezing night air.

beau shot you a heavy, disappointed look before turning to follow him out.

you stood frozen beside liam, the adrenaline completely evaporating, leaving behind a bitter, hollow ache in your chest. you had hurt dean exactly the way he hurt you.

so why did you feel like throwing up?

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

dean didn't find you until two weeks later. it took him two full weeks after that party to gather the courage to approach you again. when he finally did, it wasn't at a party, or in his bedroom, or under dim lights where he could press his mouth against yours and make you forget.

it was the middle of the afternoon in the campus library.

you were sitting cross-legged in one of the armchairs near the back windows, a stack of annotated articles spread across the table beside you.

for a long minute, he just stood at the end of the aisle.

god, he looked awful. the sharp jawline you used to trace was covered in a rough, uneven stubble. his signature silver-tongued confidence was entirely absent.

you sensed him before he even spoke. your eyes lifted slowly from your laptop. no warmth or softening. just... nothing.

dean flinched. "hey," he said, his voice raw and stripped of its usual smooth cadence.

you looked back down at your laptop screen, your voice flat. "dean."

he swallowed hard, stepping closer, his hands shoved deep into his pockets as if to keep himself from reaching out. "can we talk for maybe a second? please. just... two minutes. i'll leave right after, i swear."

"i'm really busy right now, dean."

"i know. i know you are." his voice cracked. he hesitated, his eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp spike of residual pain from the party. he swallowed hard, trying to keep his composure, but his voice shook. "are you... are you seeing him? liam?"

you didn't even look up from your screen. "that's really none of your business."

"none of my—" dean let out a bitter, breathy laugh, his eyes swimming. he leaned slightly over the table, his voice dropping to a harsh, desperate whisper. "that was low, you know. even for you. putting on a show like that in front of everyone just to rub my face in it?"

you finally shut your laptop softly, leaning back in your chair and crossing your arms.

you scoffed at him, a cold, mocking sound that cut right through his defense.

"low?" you repeated, your voice slicing through him. "you should worry less about who i'm kissing, dean, and worry a lot more about yourself. you don't get to lecture me about public displays when you practically pioneered them."

the reality of your words hit him like a physical punch to his ribs. he actually took a half-step back, his chest heaving as the hypocrisy collapsed on him.

he was desperate to know if you were talking to liam. he was paralyzed by the thought that you had moved on, but he knew he had no right to ask.

"i'm sorry," he whispered, the defensive edge completely evaporating, leaving him entirely exposed. "you're right. i have no right. i just... i think i genuinely don't know how to handle this."

"i think you genuinely don't understand why you hurt me in the first place," you countered calmly, the honesty of it cutting deeper than your anger ever could.

"you understand that i left. you understand that your bed is empty and your ego is bruised. but i don't think you actually understood what it felt like to stand next to you and constantly feel temporary. to feel like a placeholder until someone better, or flashier, caught your eye."

dean went completely still.

"i liked you so much, dean," you admitted quietly. it made you almost sick to say it. the words tasted bitter and heavy as they left your tongue, but unfortunately it was true.

"it was enough to make excuses for things i normally wouldn't tolerate. i let myself believe you actually cared, and you made me feel stupid for it. you treated my feelings like they were disposable. i'm not doing it anymore. i'm done."

"please," he whispered, his voice dropping to a raw, desperate plea. "don't say it's over. just give me something to fix. tell me what to do."

"there's nothing to do," you said, your heart aching behind the wall you had built, but you forced your voice to remain steady. "i just need you to leave."

he stood there for a long, agonizing beat, looking at you like a man watching his life sentence being handed down.

finally, he closed his eyes, took a shaky, ragged breath, and nodded.

"okay," he sighed, his shoulders hunched in complete defeat. "okay. i'm sorry."

he turned around and walked away, his heavy footsteps fading down the library aisle, leaving you alone with a crushing, heavy silence.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

two more weeks passed. then three.

if dean's initial reaction to the "breakup" was a loud, messy public moping tour, his reaction to the library confrontation was a total blackout.

the campus gossip machine slowed down because dean stopped giving them material.

he wasn't partying.

he wasn't hovering at the edges of your vision.

but he hadn't given up instead he had just changed his tactics.

the loud gestures were replaced by quiet, undeniable consistency.

every tuesday and thursday morning—the days you had an 10.00 am seminar on the opposite side of campus—there was a large vanilla latte waiting for you at the barista counter, already paid for.

no note.

just your exact, complicated order.

when you tried to refuse it, the barista just shrugged. "he said if you don't take it, i have to throw it out. every day."

you left it on the counter the first three times.

by the fourth time, the cold winter air bit too hard, and you took it.

it tasted like an apology.

then came the hockey games. suni dragged you to the friday night game against yale.

you sat twelve rows up, determined to look indifferent.

but the moment the team skated onto the ice, it was clear dean wasn't playing for the scouts or the crowd anymore.

he played with a brutal, self-punishing intensity. and when he scored the game-winning goal in the third period, the stadium erupted.

normally, dean would skate a lap, flashing his devastating smile to the student section, soaking in the god-like adoration.

instead, he skated straight to the center line, stopped, and looked directly up into the stands. right at you.

he didn't smile. he just held your gaze for three agonizing seconds, chest heaving, before skating back to the bench.

"okay," suni muttered beside you, watching him go. "that was... actually kind of miserable. he didn't even wink at the girls."

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

the next afternoon, you were heading out of the science building when a shadow fell over you.

you braced yourself, expecting to see blue eyes and a desperate expression, but when you looked up, it was tucker.

he stepped right into your pace, unceremoniously slinging his heavy arm over your shoulders, pulling you briefly into his side to shield you from a sudden blast of freezing wind.

"hey," tucker said quietly, giving your shoulder a firm, reassuring squeeze before letting his arm drop back to his side. "you got a minute? i'm not here on his orders, i swear. he doesn't even know i'm talking to you."

you didn't walk away, but you still kept your guard up. "tucker, if this is about dean—"

"it is," he interrupted gently. he gestured toward a quiet bench under a bare oak tree.

once you both sat down, he leaned his elbows on his knees, looking at you with complete sincerity.

"i'm not here to tell you he's miserable, because you already know that, and honestly, he deserves to be. but he's always been the guy who keeps one foot out the door because he thinks if he doesn't fully commit, nothing can actually hurt him."

you let out a bitter, breathy sigh, looking down at your boots. "so i'm just supposed to wait around while he plays psychologist with himself?"

"no," tucker said firmly, catching your eye.

"absolutely not. you did the right thing by walking away. you forced him to look in a mirror, and he hated what he saw. but what i'm trying to tell you, as your friend he's not trying to trick you back. he's genuinely terrified because he realized his own cowardice cost him the only real thing he's ever wanted."

tucker leaned back slightly against the bench. "i've never seen dean look at a girl the way he looks at you. he's not trying to smooth things over anymore, he's just trying to figure out how to be a man you could actually trust. i'm not asking you to take him back. i'm just asking you not to completely write him off before you let him speak."

you sat in silence for a long moment, the weight of tucker's words sinking deep into your chest.

tucker wasn't an enabler. he was your friend, and he was the moral compass of that friend group.

if he was defending the sincerity of dean's change, it had to mean something.

"thank you, tuck," you murmured softly.

he gave you a brief, supportive nod, standing up from the bench. "just think about it, okay? see you around."

you watched him walk away, your mind a chaotic blur.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

a few days later, you were sitting on the couch in your apartment, staring blankly at a textbook, when suni dropped a mug of tea onto the coffee table in front of you.

"you're thinking about him," she said flatly, crossing her arms as she leaned against the back of the chair.

you let out a long sigh, rubbing your temples. "i don't want to be. but it's been a month, suni. he's not stopping. every time i turn around, there's a coffee, or he's clearing out of a room the second i walk into it so i don't feel uncomfortable. and his friends are trying to reason with me. it's infuriating."

"why is it infuriating?"

"because it's working," you admitted, your voice cracking. "it's making me remember why i fell for him before he started acting like a coward. but i'm terrified. if i let him back in, what happens when he gets bored of making amends? what happens when the crowd calls his name again?"

suni searched your face, seeing the deep, defensive armor you had built. she slid onto the couch next to you, pulling your hand into hers.

"then you make him earn the right to even ask that question," suni said softly, squeezing your fingers.

"you don't fold just because he's acting like a human being now. that's the baseline expectation, not a reward. if you want to talk to him, talk to him. but don't let him off the hook until you are 100% sure he knows he's lucky to breathe the same air as you."

just promise me you walk away if he slips back into his old habits." she sighed holding onto your hands.

"i promise," you whispered, a sudden wave of clarity washing over you.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

you didn't go to the rink to find him.

it was close to midnight when you found yourself walking toward the athletic center to drop off a borrowed, heavily annotated textbook for hannah.

but as you stepped into the corridor, the muffled, echoing thwack of a puck against boards drew you toward the main arena doors.

armed with suni and tucker's advice echoing in your head and a tug in your chest you couldn't ignore anymore, you pulled open the heavy side doors of the rink.

the stadium was dark, except for the bright, stark floodlights illuminating the pristine white sheet of ice.

dean was alone.

he was stripped down to his practice jersey and skates. there was no crowd to impress, no scouts watching, no teammates to joke with.

it was just him, a puck, and a net.

he was doing suicide drills—skating full sprint to the blue line, stopping hard enough to spray a cascade of ice shavings, skating back, and doing it again.

he was panting, his blonde hair soaked with sweat, his movements driven by a furious, desperate energy.

he was trying to skate away from his own head.

you stood by the player's bench, your arms crossed, watching him coolly.

"you're slacking on your defense di laurentis," you called out. your voice echoed sharply in the cavernous, empty arena.

dean froze.

his skates dug into the ice with a harsh screech, breaking the silence.

he snapped his head around, his chest heaving as he stared at you.

for a second, he looked entirely paralyzed, as if he thought he was hallucinating.

"you're here," he breathed, slowly skating toward the boards. he stopped a few feet away, looking up from the ice.

"i'm here," you said softly, your tone steady, giving him absolutely nothing to work with. no smile or softness. you unlatched the heavy wooden door of the player's bench. "i think you've done enough pacing around campus, dean. come here."

before he could answer, you took a tentative step out onto the ice. you were wearing regular winter boots, completely unequipped for a freshly zambonied sheet of ice.

"wait, wait, hold on—" dean warned, his eyes widening in alarm.

naturally, you didn't listen. your heel hit a patch of smooth ice, and your balance instantly vanished. your arms flailed as you slipped backward, a short gasp escaping your throat.

but you didn't hit the ice.

dean moved with the terrifying speed of a professional athlete. in a fraction of a second, he closed the distance, his strong gloved hands catching you right around the waist. he hauled you against his chest, his skates digging hard into the ice to anchor both of your weights.

you gasped, your hands automatically flying up to grip his broad shoulders. you were pressed flush against him, the cool scent of the ice and his familiar cologne enveloping you completely.

"gotcha," dean whispered, his breath puffing white in the cold air.

he didn't let go.

his hands stayed firmly clamped around your waist, pulling you so close that you could feel the rapid, thumping beat of his heart against your chest.

he was looking down at you like you were the only thing left in the entire world, his eyes intense, wide, and bright with unshed tears.

no armor. just dean.

but even wrapped in his arms, you kept your gaze sharp.

you didn't melt….. just yet.

"you're a fucking idiot," you murmured, your voice level and direct. "you really messed up, dean."

"i know," he whispered, his voice cracking as a tear finally slipped down his cheek, cutting through the sweat on his face. he didn't even try to brush it away.

"i'm the biggest idiot. i ruined everything. the night you left... i sat in my room and i realized i've spent my whole life making sure nobody could ever reject me by making sure i never fully committed to anything.” he continued.

“and then i met you. and i was so terrified of how much power you had over me that i tried to make you small so i could feel big."

he took a shaky breath, his grip tightening around your waist as if you might vanish if he let go.

"seeing you with liam? it nearly killed me. but the worst part wasn't jealousy. the worst part was realizing i was the one who drove you into his arms. i am so sorry. i am so, so sorry for making you feel like a secret. i swear to god, i love you. i don't want anyone else. i just want you."

you stood steady in his hold, letting the weight of his words hang in the freezing air.

your heart was pounding, but you kept your hands firm against his shoulders, maintaining your boundary.

"words are easy for you, dean," you said quietly.

"you've always been good with a crowd. you've always known exactly what to say to smooth things over. i don't want a public spectacle. i care about what this is."

"this isn't a performance," he choked out, his shoulders hunching in complete defeat, entirely exposed to you. "tell me what to do. anything. i don't care how long it takes."

you looked at him for a long moment, watching the genuine, stripped-back desperation in his eyes. only then did you let a very small, guarded smile touch your lips. it wasn't a total surrender, but it was a crack in the ice.

"i'm not ready to give you a second chance," you told him firmly, your voice unwavering.

"and i'm definitely not ready to forget how you treated me. but i am willing to stop running so if you want to try and earn my trust back, you can start by taking me on a real date. next friday. and if you slip back into your old habits even once? i'm gone. do you understand me?"

a breathless, stunned laugh escaped dean's lips. it wasn't his usual confident chuckle.

it was a sound of pure, unadulterated relief, heavy with the realization of just how close he had come to losing you.

"yes," he whispered fiercely, his eyes shining as he looked down at you. "yes, absolutely. whatever you want. however long it takes. i'll be exactly who you need me to be."

you let your eyes drop to his lips, then back to his eyes, finally allowing yourself to relax against his chest. "show me."

dean didn't hesitate.

he leaned down and captured your lips in a deep, desperate, passionate kiss.

it wasn't the smooth, practiced kiss of a guy trying to charm his way into a girl's room.

it was heavy with weeks of longing, raw with the terror of almost losing you, and overflowing with a profound, aching relief.

he poured everything he couldn't put into words into the press of his mouth against yours, his fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of your neck, holding you to him as if he could bind your paths together right then and there.

when he finally pulled back, just an inch, his forehead rested against yours. both of you were breathing heavily, the white puffs of your breath mingling together in the cold air.

dean let out a soft, shaky laugh, a brilliant, breathtaking smile finally spreading across his handsome face—the first real smile he had had in weeks.

"so," dean murmured, his thumb gently tracing your jawline, though his eyes still held that cautious, vulnerable edge. "does this mean my approval ratings are finally going up?"

you let out a genuine laugh, but you didn't let him entirely off the hook. "don't push your luck, di laurentis. you are still on probation."

"i'll take it," he whispered, before leaning right back down to kiss you again, your laughter echoing beautifully in the empty arena.

“Logan drives like he learned in Grand Theft Auto.”

Garrett smiled slightly before pressing the keys into your palm.

“You just need it for groceries, right?”

“And coffee.”

“And coffee,” he repeated patiently.

You grinned before kissing his cheek quickly.

“Thank you, baby.”

That alone made it worth it.

Garrett watched you leave through the front door a second later, his stupid smile still stuck on his face.

Tuck noticed immediately from the couch.

“Oh, he’s in love.”

Garrett flipped him off while sitting back down beside Logan with his controller.

“She called me baby.”

Tucker looked blankly at him. “You’ve been dating for eight months.”

“Yeah,” Garrett sighed happily. “Still nice though.”

Logan physically gagged.

The game resumed.

Twenty minutes later the front door slammed open hard enough to shake the walls.

Dean stumbled inside, breathing hard. Garrett looked up immediately.

“…woah D, what’s wrong? Why do you look like that?”

Dean looked weirdly pale.

And suddenly something cold twisted low in Garrett’s stomach.

“Dude,” Dean said quickly. “Oh thank God you’re here.”

Garrett sat up straighter immediately.

“What happened?”

“We just drove past what I thought was your Jeep in like a horrible accident and I tried calling you but-”

Garrett didn’t hear another word.

Not one.

The controller hit the floor loudly as he was already moving.

His chest seized violently before his brain could even catch up.

“GARRETT,” Logan yelled after him.

The front door slammed behind him hard enough to rattle.

Then he was running.

Actually running.

Straight down the street toward the flashing police lights visible from blocks away.

His heartbeat thundered violently in his ears.

Every worst-case scenario imaginable crashed through his brain all at once.

You crying.

You hurt.

You trapped.

Dead.

His lungs burned by the time he reached the intersection.

Then suddenly there it was.

His Jeep. Or what was left of it.

The entire front end was crushed inward violently.

Glass everywhere.

Metal twisted almost beyond recognition.

Garrett stopped dead in the middle of the street.

His whole body went numb, because that was your side.

Somebody was talking nearby.

Police radios crackled.

People stared.

Garrett couldn’t hear any of it over the blood rushing in his ears.

The Jeep was destroyed. Absolutely destroyed.

And for one second, Garrett genuinely thought he might throw up right there in the street.

“Sir?”

A paramedic touched his arm lightly.

Garrett yanked away immediately.

“Where is she?”

“Sir, I need you to-”

Then he heard you.

“I said I’m okay.”

His entire body nearly gave out from relief.

He turned so fast it almost hurt.

Sitting in the back of the ambulance wrapped in a blanket.

Garrett physically stopped breathing for a second.

The second you saw his face, fresh tears filled your eyes immediately.

“Oh my God.”

Garrett climbed into the ambulance before anybody could stop him.

His hands grabbed your face instantly. “You okay?”

You nodded shakily. “I’m okay.”

“You hurt?”

“No.”

“Anywhere?”

“No, Garrett, I’m okay.”

You looked devastated though.

“Garrett,” you whispered tearfully. “I’m so sorry.”

His brows pulled together immediately.

“What?”

“The Jeep. I wrecked your car.”

Garrett stared at you for a second like he genuinely couldn’t process what you were saying.

Then immediately:

“Don’t.”

“Don’t apologize right now.” His voice shook slightly. “Jesus Christ, baby, thank God you’re okay.”

Fresh tears spilled down your cheeks immediately. “It’s totaled.”

“I don’t care.”

“You love that car.”

“I love you.”

You physically froze.

So did Garrett honestly.

Because okay, maybe neither of you had technically said that part out loud yet.

But sitting there looking at you alive and crying and safe while his destroyed Jeep sat outside in pieces, nothing had ever felt clearer in his life.

Your bottom lip trembled. “You’re not mad?”

Garrett looked horrified by the question. “Mad?”

“I crashed your car.”

“Baby, if that car did its job and kept you safe, then I couldn’t care less what happened to it afterward.”

Garrett brushed shaky fingers through your hair carefully.

“I thought…” He stopped briefly, swallowing hard. “Dean said horrible accident and I thought…”

“Oh, babe...” You reached for him immediately.

Garrett folded into you without hesitation, arms wrapping around your waist so tightly it almost hurt.

His face buried into your shoulder while he exhaled shakily against your neck.

“I’m okay.”

“I know.”

But his grip tightened anyway.

Outside the ambulance, Logan, Tuck and Dean finally caught up, all breathing hard from apparently chasing Garrett down the street.

Dean looked into the ambulance carefully.

“Oh thank God.”

Logan stared at Garrett hugging you before glancing toward the totaled Jeep.

“…he’s taking this shockingly well.”

Garrett didn’t even look up. “Shut up, dude.”

You laughed wetly against his shoulder.

Garrett pulled back just enough to look at your face again.

“You sure you’re okay?”

You nodded softly. “The airbags went off.”

Garrett’s eyes flicked briefly toward the wreck outside then back to you.

“That Jeep did good then.”

You brushed your fingers lightly against his jaw.

“I’m really sorry, G.”

Garrett leaned into your touch automatically.

.

Clark’s suit was still damp with the couple’s blood when he peeled it off.

He worked methodically, the way he always did after a bad day. Boots off. Belt unhooked. Cape folded along its seams. He slid the soiled suit onto a hanger above the tub, eyeing the brown-black stains crusted along the S, the streaks down one sleeve where he’d braced the gurney.

Gary’s got his work cut out for him, he thought, faint and tired.

After a long, scalding shower, Clark pulled on a T-shirt and sweats, toweling his curls dry as he turned to face his TV.

It was near midnight, and every channel was the same. Footage from the disaster looped—smoke, twisted metal, the tram hanging at a bad angle. Superman landing. The Justice Gang. Bodies on stretchers. A dozen angles of the moment he’d stepped between you and the crushed couple.

A talking head gestured at a freeze-frame of his cape blocking the camera’s view of you.

“—and the question on everyone’s mind tonight: did Superman deny care to two critically injured civilians?” she pressed, sharp wtih outrage. “Was this about medical ethics, or was this about control?”

He changed the channel. The crawl at the bottom had already burned into his brain.

SUPERMAN REFUSES MIRACLE HEALER — TWO CRITICAL TRANSPORTED INSTEADJUSTICE GANG FRACTURE? LORDTECH SILENT ON ‘ROGUE CALL’IS METROPOLIS’ GREATEST HERO PLAYING GOD?

Another channel. A man in a suit leaned toward the camera.

“Look, all I’m saying is, you’ve got this metahuman medic on scene—which, by the way, nobody’s even started unpacking—and Superman says no?” he argued. “I didn’t think he could make calls like that on a team he’s not even part of.”

Another cut. Another angle.

“In the footage, it’s clear Hawkgirl and Mister Terrific back Superman’s call,” this anchor noted. “Could this be a deeper rift inside the Gang? A sign of new leadership?”

LordTech’s logo flashed at the bottom with the words NO COMMENT.

Clark scrubbed a hand over his face. Every clip felt like sandpaper. Not because they were wrong about the conflict—he had yelled at Guy in the middle of a crowd with his crest on—but because none of them showed what he’d seen when all eyes were on you.

Your shoulders locking. Your hands shaking. The way your heart sounded like it was trying to kick its way out of your chest.

A chyron scrolled by: SUPERMAN: SAVIOR OR LIABILITY?

He snorted, humorless. “Why not both? Why stop there?” he muttered, rolling his eyes as he lowered the TV volumn.

His phone buzzed on the coffee table.

Ma & Pa.

He stared at the name for a moment, biting back a groan. They’d have seen the coverage. Of course they had. Maybe Pa had already muted the TV, too, muttering about pundits who didn’t know the first thing about their son.

As he reached for the phone, there was a knock.

Not a neighbor’s half-hearted tap or the building manager’s impatient rap. Three quick, familiar knocks—your rhythm. 

His hand froze over the screen.

His hearing had clocked your heartbeat the second you stepped off the elevator, if he was honest. He’d felt your presence on the edge of his awareness, moving down the hallway, hesitating a fraction outside his door.

He hadn’t believed it. Not until the knock.

“Clark?” Your voice, muffled through wood. “It’s… it’s me.”

He grabbed the phone, thumb flying over the screen.

Can I call you guys back? he typed. Everything’s okay.

Three dots bubbled up, then:

We love you, Clark. Call when you can.

He swallowed, turned the ringer off, and set the phone down. Then he crossed the room and opened the door.

You stood in the hallway, drenched.

Rain had soaked your jacket and scarf through, fabric clinging to your shoulders. Your hair stuck to your cheeks in dark, wet waves. Your cap and sunglasses were gone; dust still lingered in the edges of your lashes, in the lines of your throat. You held your arms tight around yourself, shivering.

It hit him all at once: you at his door. On purpose.

“Hey,” you managed, clearing your throat. “Um. Sorry, it’s late, but I wanted to….”

“Come in,” he blurted, stepping back before you could change your mind. You kicked off your damp shoes by the door.

It was the first time you’d been here since before everything broke apart. He saw the moment it landed—your gaze flicked to the bookshelf where your paperbacks still perched, to the corner where your shoes used to pile up. Your shoulders drew in, like the room had hands.

He shut the door gently as you walked to the center of his living room.

“I was just watching the news,” he offered as he came up behind you, because the silence felt like it might swallow him.

“I know.”

You were already facing the TV. The screen showed the tram wreck from above, smoke and twisted metal, then cut to the tight shot he’d become familiar with: his cape flared as he planted himself in front of you and the bleeding couple. The frame that caught Guy pointing, veins standing out in his neck. 

Over all of it, the pundit’s lips moved soundlessly—questions and accusations he’d already heard in every possible wording.

You didn’t flinch. You didn’t look away. Your eyes tracked the images with a still, intent focus that made his stomach knot.

“They’re… intense,” you concluded finally, gaze still pinned to the screen.

“Putting it mildly,” he managed.

You turned then, slowly, peeling yourself away from what you’d just seen, and looked back at him. He felt the weight of your eyes as you studied his face, as if you were searching for the man in the footage and checking whether he matched the one standing in front of you now.

“Standard question, but are you okay?” you asked, teeth catching your lower lip.

He almost laughed. It came out more like an exhale. “I’m… adjusting,” he answered, mouth twisting. “To being the villain of the week.”

You made a small, wounded noise at that. “You’re not the villain,” you answered earnestly immediately.

“Could’ve fooled half the city.” He huffed. “They think I let someone almost die because of… pride. Or ego. Or some turf war with the Gang.”

Bitterness crept into his voice, sharp and sour. He heard it, winced at himself, and cut off before it curdled further. His hand scrubbed down his face, palm rasping over stubble.

Focus. Not on the footage. On you.

His hands came up again, hovering over your shoulders, your arms, close enough to feel the cold radiating off your jacket but not quite landing.

“Are you hurt?” he pushed, the worry cracking straight through whatever composure he’d managed. “Any debris? Burns? You were in the middle of it—I saw you with that guy, the head wound. Are you okay?”

You let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. “You always worry too much, Clark. I’m fine.”

The phrase cracked something open in him.

His hands dropped for a second, then surged back up before he could overthink it. This time they didn’t stop hovering—his palms cupped your face, large and steady, thumbs brushing the cold, damp skin just under your eyes.

“You scared me,” he confessed, the words roughened at the edges. “I could’ve really lost you. Seeing you there. Hearing Guy—”

Your eyes flicked up to his. Rain clung to your lashes, making your gaze look even darker, deeper.

“I’m okay,” you repeated, softer now, voice wobbling. “I promise. No lingering fractures. No new holes.”

But you held his stare a beat too long, and he saw it—the way something tight and complicated rippled behind your eyes.

“I was terrified,” you admitted, the words shrinking in volume but growing in weight. “When Guy called me up to the plate. When that man begged—for him, for his wife. When everybody was staring at me like I was… the answer.”

His stomach dropped. “I know,” he whispered. “I know.”

His thumbs swept along your cheekbones again, more to soothe than to check this time. Up close, he could see the faint tremor in your mouth, the clench in your jaw you got when you were holding yourself together by force.

“For a second,” you said, swallowing, “I was back in that bathroom with Jimmy freaking out. Or on the gala floor, kneeling over Lois. Everything in me went straight to that place it always goes: you can fix this, you can take it, you’re supposed to be quiet and just do it.”

You swallowed again, throat bobbing against his fingers, your voice trying to steady and not quite making it.

“And then I thought about Dr. Foster,” you went on. “About all the hours we’ve spent talking about my body. My boundaries. How my worth is not measured in how much pain I can swallow for other people.” Your fingers slid up, wrapping around his wrists, grip tightening like you needed something solid to hang onto. “I thought about you, too.”

His chest pulled tight. He matched your next inhale without meaning to, lungs syncing with yours the way they always did when things got too big.

“And I froze,” you said, the admission dropping between you like a stone. “Because I could hear all of it at once—the old script and the new one—and I almost said yes again. Because that’s who I’ve been. That’s how I’ve survived. By saying yes and being quiet and letting my body take the hit.”

Clark’s jaw flexed, anger on your behalf flaring and curling into his fists where they cradled your face.

“For half a second, my mouth was ahead of me again,” you went on. “I felt myself about to step forward, to put my hands on her. And I knew that if I did, I’d knock myself back in therapy by… months. Maybe years. If I even survived it.” A brittle laugh scraped out of you. “One reflex, and I’d undo so much work.”

You looked up at him then, dead-on, like you were pinning him in place.

“And then you put yourself in front of me.”

Apologies left Clark like a flood, barreling past every dam he’d tried to build.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, the word too small for the weight behind it. “I’m so sorry I made a choice for you again. In front of everyone. In front of the Gang. I know what that looked like, and I—”

“Clark—”

“I told myself I wouldn’t do that anymore,” he rushed on, tripping over his own voice. “Wouldn’t decide for you, wouldn’t step in unless you asked. I just—there were cameras, and Guy was yelling, and people were bleeding, and you looked—”

His throat closed up. The next word scraped out. “Honey, you looked so scared.”

Your hands rose, slow and careful, and wrapped around his wrists. Your fingers were icy against his skin, a sharp contrast to the heat roaring in his chest.

“I wasn’t scared of them,” you murmured, gaze dropping briefly. “I was scared of… me. Of what it would do to me if I laid my hands on them.”

He tightened his grip on your face just enough to steady himself, thumbs still resting against the chill of your cheeks. His hands were shaking; yours steadied them.

“I know,” he answered, softer now, the urgency shifting into something rawer. “I was worried too. They didn’t know. They didn’t see it the way I did.”

You blinked hard, lashes spiking with damp, a shuddering breath escaping you. “Clark, I—”

“I’m sorry if I made you mad,” he cut in, because the words were already tumbling and he didn’t know how to stop them. “I’m trying so hard to be better,” he insisted. “For me, not just for you—I know that matters, I know I can’t make you my project—but I keep thinking I’m backsliding, that I’m still this… mess you have to manage, and the last thing I want is for me to be another problem you’re stuck healing, and—”

His chest heaved. He was too warm, too close, every feeling he’d been trying to file neatly away bursting out of the drawer at once.

“I love you, and I—”

The world stopped.

The words hung there, heavy and undeniable, like he’d carved them into the air.

Your fingers tightened around his wrists, nails digging in just enough that he felt it.

Heat rushed up his neck, into his face, mortification slamming into fear and relief so hard it made him a little dizzy. “I’m… sorry,” he croaked, the apology automatic, reflexive. “I didn’t mean to dump that on you, I just—”

You moved.

Not away. Forward.

You stepped into him, closing the last useless inches between your bodies, and wrapped your arms around him.

It wasn’t polite. It wasn’t cautious. It was full-body, decisive, like you were trying to climb under his skin and lock yourself there. Your cheek pressed firmly against his chest, right over his racing heart. One hand slid flat between his shoulder blades and stayed, fingers curling in the fabric. The other hand climbed higher, curving around the back of his neck, fingertips settling at the warm, vulnerable spot just under his hairline.

Every muscle in him seized, then gave out.

He hadn’t realized how much he missed this—missed you—until it was happening. Your warmth, your weight, the quiet.

His arms came down around you slowly, like he was afraid a sudden move would spook you. One hand spread wide over your back, fingers feeling the damp cling of your sweater, the rise and fall of your lungs. The other curved protectively around the back of your head, palm cradling your skull, fingers threading gently into your wet hair.

His shoulders shook once, hard. He squeezed his eyes shut. A sound that left his throat wasn’t a sob, exactly, and not a laugh. It was something in between relief and grief and longing all tangled up, and he pressed his mouth into your hair to muffle it, holding on to you.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, the words muffled into your hair. They felt useless and necessary all at once. “I didn’t mean to make tonight harder. I just—I’m trying, I swear, I’m trying—”

“I know,” you murmured into his shoulder.

Your voice wobbled, the sound a little frayed at the edges. Your breath warmed the damp patch on his shirt where your cheek was pressed. One of your hands shifted, fingers spreading wider between his shoulder blades like you were trying to cover more of him, to hold him together from the outside.

“I see you,” you went on, quieter. “I notice how hard you’re working. I see the way you are with Lois now. The way you check on me without hovering.” You swallowed; he felt the motion against his chest. “…I came here to say thank you.”

He stilled in your arms, and you somehow held him tighter, refusing to let him pull away.

“I’ve been wondering,” you said, words barely above a whisper now, “what you’d do. What you’d choose when you were scared and someone was begging you and the easiest option was right there.”

His throat closed. He couldn’t look at you yet, so he nodded against your hair, a jerky little movement that felt inadequate to the weight of what you were saying.

“You chose me,” you breathed.

The words went straight through him.

“Against your image,” you continued, each clause another hit. “Your reputation. Maybe even that couple’s future opinion of you. You chose to save me from bleeding for a stranger, even when it would’ve been the simpler narrative—for them, for LordTech, for the cameras. You did that, for me. When no one else did.”

His vision blurred, and for a second he thought he might actually fall to his knees. 

“You’re… thanking me,” he managed, voice cracking, “for getting you dragged on national television alongside me? For making it look like I let people almost die because I—because I overstepped your decision to help? For—”

“For stepping in when I couldn’t find my voice,” you cut in, gentle but firm enough to stop his spiral dead. For taking the hit that was going to be mine,” you went on. “For proving, to both of us, that the next time someone says, ‘I don’t care what it does to her,’ your answer is ‘I do.’”

His eyes stung. Tears spilled over before he could blink them back.

“I don’t want you to have to wait forever,” he confessed, the sentence tearing its way out of him. “I keep thinking you’re going to wake up one day and decide you’re done waiting around. That you’ll… you’ll realize I’m too slow, too broken, not worth the—”

You pulled back just enough to get a hand on his cheek, your thumb swiping away his tears.

“I’m not waiting for you to be perfect,” you told him. “I’m waiting for you to be honest. And today? You were. In front of everyone. You didn’t hide behind being Superman. You were just… Clark. Stubborn, caring, trying-his-best Clark, and....and that’s the man I fell in love with.”

The words were soft, but they slammed into him like ten semi-trucks.

His breath caught. He pulled back just enough to actually see you, his hands still framing your face like he needed visual proof you were the one who’d said it.

“What?” he blurted with disbelief and shock.

Your lips quirked, wet and wobbly. “Don’t make me say it twice, Clark,” you muttered. “It’s been a long day.”

A broken laugh punched its way out of him.  “You… you still— You can’t—”

“Yes, I can.” You didn’t let him wriggle out of it. “I told you months ago how I felt about you,” you reminded him, eyes holding his. Your hands slipped higher, cupping his jaw now, thumbs brushing away fresh tears as quickly as they gathered. “You’re not the only one who gets to be honest.”

He leaned into your touch without even trying to play it cool.

“I’m here to say thank you,” you repeated, voice steadier. “For choosing me. For… making me see the truth.”

He swallowed hard, brows pinching. “What truth?”

Something flickered across your face—pain, resolve, fear. Whatever it was, you kept it to yourself.

Instead, you dropped your gaze for a heartbeat, lashes lowering as you looked at his lips.

He watched you swalllow. Watched your fingers flex where they still held his jaw, like you were bracing yourself against him. Then you looked back up and rose onto your toes, closing that last bit of distance he’d been trying not to think about.

You leaned in.

Your nose brushed his, a soft, bump that made his breath stutter. Your hands slid a fraction higher, fingertips curving around his ears. Your lips hovered a whisper away from his, close enough that he could feel the shape of them without touching—close enough that your exhale ghosted over his mouth, shaky and warm.

Every nerve in his body screamed yes.

Every instinct, every second of missing you, every night he’d lain awake staring at the ceiling replaying your laugh, the way you said his name, the feel of your skin under his hands—all of it surged up at once, reaching for you like a tide.

You stopped.

It was tiny. A catch in your movement. A falter in your breath. That barely-there moment where your momentum died a half-inch short. Your fingers twitched away from his jaw. Your brows pinched a second.

Old Clark—the one who believed he could fix anything by doing more, giving more, being more—would’ve closed the distance. He would’ve swallowed that hesitation with his mouth, convinced that if he just kissed you hard enough, gentle enough, right enough, it would erase the doubt.

This Clark—this version who spent Tuesday evenings in a small office picking apart his reflexes, talking about consent, about safety, about not asking the people he loved to climb ladders they weren’t ready for—felt the drag in your body and forced himself to breathe.

“Sweetheart, you’re not ready yet,” he rasped.

Your eyes opened, surprised, a little guilty and a lot pained.

It hurt. Of course it did. It landed in the same place as every bruise he’d earned over the last few months. But it didn’t feel like a door slamming. He let out a careful breath, loosening his grip enough to give you space.

He offered the smallest, saddest smile. “It’s okay,” he added quickly, before you could pull away or trip over an apology. “You don’t have to be. Ready, I mean. I’m not… I’m not going to take a half-second of courage and turn it into a decision you’re stuck with.”

Your shoulders slumped, relief and frustration tangled together. “I’m sorry, Clark,” you whispered anyway. “So sorry. I keep—”

He shook his head, thumbs sweeping gently under your eyes, catching the damp there. “Don’t,” he urged. “Don’t say you’re sorry for taking the time you need to feel safe.”

You inhaled, shaky but deeper this time. “You’re… thank you. For looking out for me,” you said, like you weren’t entirely sure how that made you feel.

“I try,” he replied. It was all he could offer without overpromising. “I’m going to keep trying. Whether you ever call me anything more than your friend again or not. I’ll always be here for you.”

“You could never be just my friend,” you blurted, the word just practically a curse.

He blinked, thrown. “No?”

You huffed out a wet little laugh, like you couldn’t believe he needed that spelled out. “Have you met you?” you asked. “You’ve been my… everything since moving here, Clark. Friend and partner and pain in my ass and… and more. So much more. There’s no version of you where you’re just the guy I get coffee with.”

His heart climbed into his throat.

“Okay,” he managed. “Then… whatever I’m allowed to be, I’ll try to be the healthiest version of it I can.” He drew a breath. “I’ll be ready when you’re ready to tell me what the truth is. Or if you never are. I’m still going to keep doing the work. For me. Not as a… down payment on us.”

Your eyes shone, sniffling. “I'm really proud of you, you know that?” you murmured, tipping your head toward the direction of Dr. Foster’s office.

He smiled, tired and proud. “Gold star worthy?”

You brushed your thumb along his cheekbone again, like you couldn’t quite stop.“Definitely gold star,” you said, a watery laugh catching at the end.

There was a pause, a tiny pocket of quiet where it felt like the whole apartment was holding its breath with you.

“Can I…” You swallowed. “Can I stay? Tonight. Not to… do anything more. Just… be here. With you. I don’t want to be alone with my head, and I don’t want you to be alone with yours.”

He stared at you. Heat flared in his chest, immediately followed by a disciplined, careful calm. He thought of every boundary conversation, every warning about using intimacy as a bandage.

But you weren’t asking for escape. You were naming what you needed, clearly, quietly: company. Presence. A place to exist where your brain wouldn’t eat itself alive.

“Yeah,” he answered softly. “Of course. You can stay.”

You let out a breath you’d been holding.

He cleared his throat. “Do you… want to shower? Or borrow something dry?”

A faint, real smile tugged at your mouth. “I won’t say no to dry.”

He nodded, finally forcing his hands to leave your face. They slid down reluctantly, fingertips trailing over your jaw, your shoulders.

“I’ll grab you some clothes. You… still have some here,” he said, turning toward the bedroom. “Towels are under the sink. Shower knows you by now.”

“Shower and I go way back,” you agreed.

He walked to his bedroom, heart pounding, and pulled open the drawer where he’d tucked your abandoned clothes. Soft T-shirts. Leggings. Shorts with tiny lightning bolts. The sweater you’d “borrowed” once and never returned—he hesitated, then grabbed that and a pair of leggings.

On his nightstand, the folded scrap of paper with your half-finished sentence sat where he’d left it. He glanced at it, then shut the drawer a little harder than he meant to.

Later. That was a later problem.

.

You disappeared into the bathroom with a small, tired smile and a murmured, “Thanks, Clark.”

The door clicked shut. The faint rush of water followed a second later, pipes rattling in the walls.

He stood in the middle of the living room for a beat, hands empty, heart pounding. Part of him wanted to lean back against the door and slide down it like someone in a movie. Instead, he headed for the kitchen.

Busy hands were safer.

He filled the kettle, set it on the stove, and clicked the burner on. While it heated, he wiped nonexistent crumbs off the counter. Straightened the dish towel. Re-aligned the salt and pepper shakers. Anything that required motion and not thought.

His brain ignored that memo and replayed the way you’d almost kissed him anyway—the warmth of your breath on his mouth, the moment your body leaned in, the tiny hitch when you stopped. The way it had felt to say you weren’t ready and not have you flinch away.

He shook his head, reached for mugs.

Your crab mug for you, obviously. His chipped Metropolis U mug for himself. Muscle memory took over as he dropped teabags in each, squeezed honey into yours, sugar into his. The kettle whistled softly; he killed the flame and poured, watching the steam curl up into the quiet apartment.

By the time the bathroom door opened, the mugs were cooling on the coffee table.

You stepped out, hair damp and curling around your face, sleeves of his sweater hanging well past your wrists. The fabric swallowed you in a way that made something in his chest loosen by degrees he could almost feel.

You looked… at home.

There was water still beading on your collarbone, your bare feet leaving faint prints on the hardwood, his sweater hanging off one shoulder because that’s how you always wore it. It hit him with a jolt—this was a sight he’d convinced himself he didn’t get to see anymore.

More than he deserved. But here.

You padded over to the couch and let yourself flop down with a tired, ungraceful groan, like gravity had finally won.

He picked up your mug and followed, handing it over.

“Careful, it’s hot,” he warned automatically.

You snorted, fingers wrapping around the warm ceramic. “You say that like I don’t touch scalding things for a living,” you muttered. Even so, you blew on it before taking a sip.

He sat back down, his own mug in hand.

For a minute, neither of you spoke. The TV flickered in front of you, the news crawl scrolling past more shots of twisted metal and talking heads you ignored. You tilted your head after a few sips, eyes finding his over the rim of your mug. You studied him like you were checking for cracks.

“Do you know how they are?” you asked. “The couple.”

He sank into the cushion beside you, leaving a careful inch of space—a tiny strip of upholstery that felt like a canyon and a tightrope at once.

“Stable,” he said. “Last I heard from MetroGen. Surgery went well. They’re talking prognosis and physio now, not… not memorials. Doctors are optimistic, but cautious. It’s going to be a long road.”

Your shoulders dropped. A slow, visible uncoiling of a weight you were still carrying all evening.

“Oh,” you breathed. “There’s hope.”

He watched your face soften around the word.

“You don’t regret it?” he asked before he could talk himself out of it. “For what I did?”

You looked down into your cup. The steam fogged the lower half of your face, curled around your lashes, blurred you at the edges for a second.

He waited. His hand tightened a little around his own mug, porcelain creaking faintly.

“No,” you said finally. “I’m… grateful,” you went on. “And traumatized. And… seen. All at once. It’s a lot. Do you regret it?”

You kept your eyes on the tea as you spoke. He could hear the layers in that. Gratitude for him, anger at the situation, pain from everything that had come before tonight. It made sense. It still hurt.

He nodded, throat tight. “No,” he confessed. 

You leaned back against the couch, tipping your head so it rested on the cushion. Your eyes slid shut, mug still cradled in both hands against your chest.

“Wake me up if I start screaming,” you mumbled, exhaustion leaking into every word.

He huffed a soft laugh. “We’ll take turns,” he promised.

That tugged the corner of your mouth up, just a little. You didn’t open your eyes.

The TV’s low murmur turned into background noise, all harsh angles smoothed out by the volume drop. At some point he stopped tracking the footage and let the light wash over the room instead.

His head tipped back against the couch too. Your shoulder brushed his.

He could have moved. The safe thing—for his brain, for his heart—would’ve been to shift an inch away and keep that careful gap intact.

He didn’t.

A minute later, your fingers slid across the cushion. They brushed his where his hand rested, a light, tentative touch.

He didn’t know if it was deliberate or just gravity and fatigue. He also didn’t move his hand.

Your fingers stayed warm, real, and present against his. 

He let his eyes drift shut. His breathing slowed, matching the cadence of yours without him trying. Inhale when you did. Exhale when you did. A rhythm they’d fallen into so many times before, in so many rooms.

It felt dangerously, achingly like old times—the good parts, the quiet hours no one else saw. Two people on a couch at the end of the day, holding hands half by accident, refusing to say out loud how much they needed each other there.

You were both still bleeding, in your own ways, but you were also both still here.

In the same room. Breathing the same air. Letting yourselves lean, just a little, without asking what it meant.

Clark let that be enough for the night.

.

Clark woke to sunlight.

For one disorienting second, he thought he’d dreamed it—the knock, the hug, the way your voice had cracked on that’s the man I fell in love with.

Then he smelled coffee.

The couch was empty when he blinked fully awake, a blanket he didn’t remember fetching draped over his legs. The TV was off. The apartment was quiet in that early-morning, post-storm way.

You were in his kitchen.

You stood barefoot by the counter, hair pulled into a loose knot, still in last night’s clothes—his sweater, your leggings. Sunlight from the window caught the steam from your mug, turning it into a pale, twisting column. The mug itself was familiar: the crab one stamped WORLD’S MOST MEDIOCRE MORNING PERSON.

You hadn’t used it in months.

On the coffee table sat your old peacock plate. One piece of peanut-butter toast waited there, cut diagonally.

“Morning,” you called over, turning with an easy little half-smile, like this was any Wednesday. “I stole your peanut butter. And your bread. No regrets.”

His chest did something stupid and warm. “You’re forgiven,” he managed.

You crossed the room and dropped onto the couch beside him, close enough that your knees brushed. You handed him half the toast. 

For a while, you just… existed. You sipped coffee; he chewed toast. The cheap local news station flickered silently on screen, but neither of you really watched. It was the kind of quiet you used to fall into without thinking—no pressure to fill it, no fear of what the other person was thinking if you didn’t talk for thirty seconds.

He didn’t push. Didn’t reach for labels or promises. He just watched the way the light hit your face in his apartment again, the way your shoulder leaned into his like muscle memory that hadn’t quite learned it was supposed to stop.

Eventually, you drained your mug and set it down with a soft clink.

“I should go soon,” you said, drawing the words out, reluctance threaded through every word. “I have a… thing.”

The hesitation around “thing” snagged at him. He tamped down the instinct to ask, to pry.

“Yeah, okay,” he replied instead.

You rose and disappeared into his bedroom to change, door left half-open the way you always used to, like you trusted him not to look and trusted him enough that it wouldn’t matter if he did.

He busied himself with the coffee maker again, pretending his first cup hadn’t been fine. The drip and hiss of it filled the space where his thoughts wanted to spiral.

When you came back out, you were in the clothes you came in with. His sweater was folded over one arm, your fingers curled around it like you weren’t ready to let go of all of it at once. He followed you to the door, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his sweats, because if he didn’t give them something to do, they’d reach for you. And if they reached for you, you might stay for the wrong reasons—or feel like you had to go for the same ones.

You slipped your shoes on, tugged your coat tighter, then turned.

“Clark,” you said.

His name in your mouth like that—quiet, full—made his heart stumble. 

“Yeah,” he answered, voice coming out softer than he meant.

“I…” You started, stopped. Your gaze dipped to his mouth, then climbed back up. “I’m… I need to tell you that I—”

“I’m…” You blew out a small breath, some other sentence dying on your tongue. “I’m so grateful,” you finished, for what felt like the hundredth time—but this one landed deeper. “For last night. For… everything.”

He shook his head. “No. Thank you,” he countered. “For coming over. For… letting me be there with you. For being here with me, too.”

For a heartbeat, you looked like you might say something else—something big and heavy and irreversible. Instead, you stepped in and pressed your forehead to his chest, right over his heart.

He closed his eyes, resting his chin lightly on your crown, and let himself have that, just that.

“I’m here if you need anything,” he murmured when he could trust his voice, easing back enough to look at you.

You nodded against him, squeezing once more before you let go. Then you opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

"Hey!” he called before you got too far. "I'll see you Monday?"

You tured and stared past him for a beat, eyes unfocused, like you were looking at something far away. Then you nodded. “Yeah,” you answered. “I’ll see you around, Clark.”

Around landed… oddly.

He searched your face, brows knitting. “Okay,” he nodded with a small smile when you smiled at him first. “I’d like that.”

You held his gaze another second, then turned and walked down the hall, the soft pad of your footsteps fading toward the elevator.

The apartment felt bigger when the door clicked shut behind you. Emptier, but not in the old, hollow way. More like a space waiting for an answer he hadn't heard yet.

He stood there for a second, hand still resting on the knob, listening to the quiet. Then he exhaled, turned, and drifted back toward his bedroom to get properly dressed.

The dresser drawer stuck when he pulled it. He frowned, jiggled it, then yanked it open. His T-shirts sat where they always did. So did his sweats, his running shorts, the sweater you’d “borrowed” and never really returned.

His nightstand, though, was different.

The folded scrap of paper wasn’t on it anymore.

He blinked, startled, then spotted it—no longer tucked half under a book, no longer easy to ignore.

It lay on top of Little Women, smack in the center of the cover like a deliberate bookmark.

He picked it up carefully, smoothing the crease with his thumb. Blue eyes scanned the familiar scrawl.

When I’m with Clark I feel…

Still blank after the words. Still no answer he could hold up to the light.

But it had moved.

You’d seen it. Touched it. Chosen not to shove it in a drawer or crumple it into the trash. You’d placed it somewhere visible, on top of something you only reached for when you needed comfort.

Clark stood there in the thin, bright light of morning, the city just starting to stir outside, and let himself hope—not wildly, not recklessly, but quietly, all the way to the bottom—that someday, when you were ready, you’d pick up a pen and finish the sentence.

Until then, he folded the paper back along its creases, set it gently on the book where you’d left it, and went to make himself another piece of toast.

It was going to be a long weekend. He could at least start it the way he had this one—with peanut butter, sunlight, and the memory of your shoulder pressed against his, a reminder that whatever “around” meant, it wasn’t nothing.

.

Monday started absurdly bright.

Clark woke before his alarm, sunlight spilling across the bedroom floor like the city hadn’t watched him fight with his own team in the street forty-eight hours ago. The slip of paper was still on top of Little Women where you’d left it. He brushed his fingertips over it once Sunday evening and left it there.

Shower. Slacks. Glasses. Tie that mostly cooperated. Coffee in his chipped Metropolis U mug. For a few minutes, it almost felt like the universe had shifted an inch in the right direction. He buttoned his dress shirt, caught his own stupid, hopeful smile at the thought of you in the mirror, and rolled his eyes at himself.

“Calm down,” he muttered. “It’s Monday. It’s just work.”

Still, he walked to the Planet a little faster than usual.

The bullpen was already buzzing when he stepped out of the elevator. Clark’s gaze went straight to your desk, hoping to see you, to walk by and say good morning.

Your plant was gone.

The pale blue pot that had become his unofficial mood ring—the leaves he checked whenever he needed to reassure himself that some things were quietly thriving—wasn’t there. No pot, no plant, no little painted smiley stone.

Your desk was… neat. Neater than usual. Stacked pens, closed laptop, a small pile of sticky notes lined up like they’d been considered and culled.

A cardigan draped over the back of your chair. A mechanical pencil stuck behind your monitor.

Not cleared out, but not lived-in, either.

Clark stopped dead in the middle of the bullpen, traffic flowing around him.

Across the room, Jimmy lobbed a rubber band at Steve’s head. Lois rifled through a stack of printed pages. Cat was mid-story at someone’s desk, hands slicing through the air.

No one else seemed to notice the glaring absence where your plant should’ve been.

He made himself move. Two steps toward your desk, heart thudding, then—

“Kent! Lane! Olsen! Everybody with a pulse and a paycheck!”

Perry’s voice boomed across the room.

The bullpen quieted in that specific, wary way that meant the Editor-in-Chief was about to deliver news, either good or terrifying.

Clark tore his eyes away from your empty corner and joined the loose circle forming around Perry’s office door. Jimmy materialized at his side, coffee in hand, eyes bright with curiosity. Lois slipped in on the other, arms folded.

Perry stepped out, glasses low on his nose, paper in hand. His jaw looked tighter than usual.

“First order of business,” he barked. “We’re not the only circus in town today, but we are the only one I care about, so listen up.”

A ripple of dry chuckles moved through the crowd.

Clark’s gaze snagged past Perry’s shoulder to your desk again. The missing plant felt like a missing tooth. He forced his eyes back.

“As of this morning,” Perry went on, “we are short one copy editor on the day shift.”

Clark’s throat cinched. His eyes jerked back to your desk, then to Jimmy.

Jimmy was already looking at him, expression shocked and confused. He gave a helpless shrug. She never said anything to me. I got nothing!

Perry continued. “She has taken a leave of absence, effective immediately. She’ll be off the schedule for the foreseeable future.”

The bullpen shifted, chairs creaking, low murmurs starting up. Someone swore under their breath near Metro.

Lois’s head snapped toward Clark. “Clark,” she murmured, his name a soft warning.

He barely heard her.

Leave of absence. The phrase echoed, too close to that awful Monday after the gala—Perry offering you time, breathing room, and you shaking your head, insisting you were fine, you could work, you needed to work. That was months ago.

Perry kept rolling. “In the meantime, anything that would normally go across her desk gets routed to backup staff. That means if she usually proofed you, you triple-check your own work and then send it to Morales or Avery. We will not let standards slide just because we are down one hawk-eyed heartbreaker of dangling modifiers.”

A strained ripple of laughter went around the circle.

Clark’s heart was pounding loud enough he was half-surprised no one commented.

Leave of absence. After staying over. After that’s the man I love. After toast and coffee and your paper on the book.

He looked at Jimmy again. He was openly worried. He shook his head once, small and sharp. No heads-up. No late-night text. Nothing.

Perry moved on to assignments—op-eds about the tram disaster response, LordTech comment-chasing—but Clark’s brain had stopped translating words.

When Perry finally landed on, “Kent, Lois, you’re on the ethics angle of the superhero dogfight. I want clean, I want fair, and I don’t want any anonymous source crap. We clear?” Clark just nodded on autopilot, not caring what he was being asked to do.

“Good,” Perry concluded. “Back to work, people. This paper doesn’t put itself out.”

The circle dissolved. Clark didn’t.

“Clark,” Lois tried again, closer now. Her brows pinched together, her mouth soft in a way it rarely was. “Hey. Look at me.”

He forced his eyes to hers.

“You didn’t know?” she observed.

He swallowed. “Did you? Jimmy didn’t.”

She shook her head. “No. I knew she was… weighing some stuff. But this?” She flicked a glance toward your desk. “This is new.”

His stomach twisted. He set his jaw, turned on his heel, and headed straight for Perry’s office. He rapped on the glass harder than he meant to.

“Come,” Perry called.

Clark pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Perry didn’t look up right away. He finished scribbling something on a legal pad, underlined it twice, then capped his pen with unnecessary care.

“Whatever you’re about to ask me,” he remarked finally, “the answer might be ‘none of your business.’ So choose your words.”

“Where is she?” Clark blurted as professional and neutral as he could.

Great, Kent. So much for choosing.

Perry’s eyes lifted, pinning him. There were a thousand things in that look—annoyance, concern, the bone-deep tired of a man who’d shepherded too many young lives through too many disasters.

“She’s on leave,” Perry replied evenly. “You heard me tell the room.”

“I know,” Clark forced out, hearing the edge in his own voice and sanding it down. “I mean— Is she with family? Out of the city? Is she—” He stalled on the word safe and veered. “Is she coming back?”

Perry exhaled through his nose. “From what I understand? She’s as okay as anyone can be after… all this. And yes, the door’s open. How long she stays on the other side of it is up to her.”

Clark’s jaw flexed.

“She… decided this when?” he pressed, voice thin. “Out of nowhere?”

Perry snorted. “Nothing like this is out of nowhere. I offered her time months ago, remember? Monday after the gala. She finally took me up on it. That’s all.”

It didn’t feel like all. It felt like the floor shifting under his feet.

“Did she… give a reason?” he pushed, hating himself a little for it.

“She said she’s got things to deal with,” Perry replied. “Life, health, the usual reasons people step back. She didn’t owe me details, and I didn’t ask.” His brows knitted. “Does she owe you details?”

The question landed harder than any of the others.

Clark opened his mouth, then shut it again. “I…” He swallowed. “I just… I want to make sure she’s…alright.”

Perry let out a long, tired breath and leaned back in his chair, eyes never leaving Clark’s face.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “You running in here right now—is this about making sure she’s alright? Or making sure you are? Because those aren’t the same thing.”

Heat crawled up Clark’s neck. He sounded like Dr. Foster.

He thought of waking up with you in his sweater on his couch, of the paper on your book. Of the plant missing from your desk. His thoughts started to loop, ugly and fast.

She regretted it. She freaked out. She ran. You pushed too much. You scared her off. 

His pulse kicked. His palms went damp.

“Both,” he admitted quietly. “I’m… worried about both.”

Perry’s expression softened a fraction. “She needs time,” he replied. “She asked for it. You hunting for a forwarding address so you can swoop in and ‘fix’ whatever she’s working through?” He shook his head.

Clark flinched like the word had teeth.

“I’m not saying don’t care,” Perry added, voice gentling. “I’m saying sometimes caring looks like sitting on your hands and trusting the other person to know what they need. You got that in you, Kent?”

Clark wanted to say yes. His brain supplied a list of arguments instead.

What if she regrets it and thinks she can’t come back? What if she’s hurt and no one knows? What if this is her way of pulling away for good and you just stood here and watched it happen?

Perry must’ve seen some of that panic on his face, because his mouth flattened.

“Look,” he went on. “I like you, Kent. I like her. I’ve watched you two orbit each other for months. You don’t have to tell me this isn’t easy.” He tapped his pen against the desk. “But—if she wanted you in the loop, you’d be in the loop. You following?”

The words stung. But they didn’t feel wrong.

Clark stared at the edge of the desk, jaw clenched, waiting for the freefall in his chest to stop.

It didn’t. But it slowed enough he could breathe around it.

“Yeah,” he managed finally. “Yeah. I… get it.”

Perry studied him another beat, then nodded once. “Good. Now either go write the piece I assigned you, or take a walk around the block and pull yourself together. I don’t particularly care which happens first. But I do care that you’re not useless to me the rest of the day.”

A humorless puff of air escaped Clark. “Yes, sir.”

Perry jerked his chin toward the door. “Out.”

Clark obeyed.

He didn’t go straight back to his desk. The bullpen felt too loud, too bright, too full of the potential for someone to ask are you okay? and crack the thin layer he’d just poured over the panic.

He veered into the stairwell instead. The heavy door swung shut behind him with a thud.

The echo swallowed the newsroom noise. In the concrete quiet, his heartbeat sounded huge.

He wrapped his fingers around the railing, knuckles whitening, and let the spiral have a minute.

She left because of you. She finally looked deeper into the news, the fight, saw a preview of a life where you’re always a problem. She panicked. She grabbed the plant, the only living thing you ever gave her, and got out.

She regretted saying she still loved me this deep into her healing. She regretted staying. She moved the paper so you’d see it and read into it, and then she left so you’d know better than to hope.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

The thoughts kept coming. Familiar grooves. Easy ruts to slide into.

You’re too much. Too loud. Too dangerous. Too dramatic. If you’d just been smarter, better, she wouldn’t need time off from her own life just to recover from you.

His chest tightened. He realized he was holding his breath, shoulders locked.

Stop.

It wasn’t a gentle word. It was a hard one, hurled like a rock into the middle of the whirlpool.

He forced himself to inhale.

In. Two. Three. Four.

Hold.

Out. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Again.

The railing dug into his palm. The concrete under his feet stayed solid and unmoving. Somewhere above him, a door opened and shut on another floor. Life went on.

He thought about last night. About you on his couch, saying he could never just be your friend. About you asking to stay, not for sex or distraction, but because you didn’t want either of you alone with your thoughts.

About the way you’d said ‘that’s the man I fell in love with’ like it had been waiting at the back of your throat for months.

You’d known about the leave when you’d walked out his door this morning. You hadn’t been sleepwalking through your own choices.

You’d still put the paper on the book. You’d still stolen his toast. You’d still given him that small, tired smile.

Could something have shifted between there and here? Yeah. It could. Life was mean like that.

But was it really fair—was it really respectful—to assume the worst? To decide your choice to step back was secretly about him, about regretting him?

He let out a rough breath.

“Trust her,” he muttered to the echoing stairwell. “You promised you’d trust her.”

Trust you to know what you needed. Trust that if he’d hurt you, you’d tell him when you were ready. Trust that your world did not orbit his schedule, his comfort.

He opened his eyes, staring at the scuffed metal of the steps.

He couldn’t make the fear vanish. The tight, sour worry that you were slipping through his fingers again sat heavy in his gut.

But he could decide what he did with it.

He could let it shove him into old habits—chasing, hovering, demanding reassurance—or he could carry it and walk back into the bullpen and write his damn story.

He unclenched one fist, then the other.

“Okay,” he breathed, to no one and to you and to himself. “Okay.”

He pushed off the rail, squared his shoulders, and shoved the stairwell door open.

The newsroom noise washed over him again—keys clacking, phones ringing, Steve loudly accusing someone of stealing his lunch. Conversations rose and fell, threaded with the ever-present hum of deadlines.

Clark walked back to his desk. Lois glanced up, concern flickering across her face; Jimmy half-rose from his chair like he was going to intercept him. Clark lifted a hand in a tiny, reassuring not-now gesture and kept moving.

He dropped into his chair. Your empty desk tugged at his vision like gravity. He let himself look once. Let the ache punch through his ribs, sharp and clean. Then he dragged his gaze back to his keyboard.

He pulled his notebook out of the drawer, flipped to a clean page, and wrote the date at the top. Under it, in neat block letters:

Moments I chose differently (for me)

He tapped the pen against the margin, chest tight.

He wanted to write: She took the time off she needed. I’m scared, but I’m not turning that into her problem.

His fingers trembled. The words felt too big, too generous to himself. He didn’t quite believe them yet.

Instead, he wrote:

I didn’t go after her.

I’m scared. I’m still letting her go.

He stared at the lines for a long moment, then underlined her twice.

It wasn’t the sentence he wished he could write. But it was true, for now.

He set the pen down, exhaled slowly, and turned back to his article. The cursor blinked in the empty document, patient, indifferent.

Clark flexed his hands once over the keys.

Then he started to type.

.

Clark got through the day on autopilot until five o’clock: he wrote the first half of the ethics piece with Lois, sat through one meeting with Perry, pretended not to stare holes at your empty desk every time he looked up from his screen.

He filed his draft. He shut down his computer. He told Jimmy and Lois he’d see them tomorrow.

Then he walked out of the Planet, turned down an alley, and headed for the Hall of Justice with a sonic boom.

He told himself he was going to apologize to Guy. That was the line he repeated as the city blurred under him, as he clipped the tops of buildings and rode a current of cold air toward the bay.

It wasn’t entirely a lie. He meant to apologize. He’d dragged a private argument into a public circus, and no matter how right he felt about you, he knew he’d screwed up the way he did it.

But under that sat the real reason, heavy and undeniable.

If you weren’t at the Planet, maybe you were here. If they’d sent you on assignment, maybe one of them would say so, mention where. If you were working, if you were in a med bay teasing Rex or sharing snacks with Kendra, if you were anywhere in this building, he’d know. He’d feel some knot unclench.

He told himself all of that as the Hall came into view. He’d flown toward it a thousand times, each one with a different kind of urgency in his chest.

This time it felt like walking into the principal’s office and a hospital waiting room at once.

He dropped speed as he approached, landing on the main terrace with a gust that rattled the flagpole. The huge doors slid open before he could knock.

Inside, it was quieter than usual. No alarms, no frantic techs sprinting between consoles. Just the low hum of machinery and the murmur of distant voices.

He followed the sound to the main operations deck.

Guy was there, boots up on a console, chair tipped back precariously. His ring glowed faintly on his hand, cycling through constructs like it needed something to do—sword, shield, random giant cartoon fist that punched nothing but air.

Rex was at a side station, browsing something on a holo-screen and trying very hard to look like he wasn’t doomscrolling. Kendra perched on a railing, filing her nails. Michael stood at the central table.

All heads turned as Clark’s boots hit the deck.

Guy’s chair thunked back onto all fours. “Well,” he drawled. “If it isn’t Mr. Prime Time.”

Clark winced with a wave. “Hey, Guy.”

Michael lifted a hand, forestalling the next comment he could see forming on Guy’s tongue. “We’re just about done with the weekend’s media fire,” he said. “Please tell me you didn’t come to give us a new routine with this knucklehead.”

“No, no,” Clark’s eyes widened quickly. “I came to apologize.”

Guy snorted. “Which part? The ‘no, my girlfriend’s not a tool in your utility belt’ part or the ‘I’m God damn Superman, I know best’ part?”

Kendra threw a crumpled ball of paper, “Guy, shut up.”

“You know I didn’t say any of that,” Clark scoffed, hands on his hips. “I was in the wrong. I shouldn’t have shouted at you in the middle of a rescue. Or let it get personal. That’s on me.”

Guy opened his mouth, probably to argue, then seemed to think better of it. He grimaced and scrubbed a hand over his face, rubbing his jaw.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered. “We’ve all had a week.”

Clark glanced between them. “So… we’re… okay?”

Guy’s jaw worked. “I still think you’re wrong,” he said. “On the ground, in that moment? I’d make the same call every time. But…”

He flicked a look toward Michael, then Kendra. Something bristly in him deflated just a little.

“…I get that I didn’t know the whole story,” Guy finished. “So I’m gonna stop acting like I did.”

Clark blinked. “The whole story of… what?”

Silence stretched for a beat. Rex shifted his weight. The holo-screen in front of him flicked off with a soft chime. Kendra inspected her nails, eyes sliding away.

Guy stared at him, impatience flaring again. “Great,” he grumbled. “He doesn’t know?”

“Know what?” Clark asked, a cold knot forming in his gut. “Did something happen?”

Guy blew out a breath, and said your name carefully. “She quit.”

The words landed like the floor had dropped out from under him.

Clark’s throat went dry. “What? When?”

Michael stepped in before Guy could say anything sharper.

“Night of the incident,” he started calmly, “we debriefed that evening. Standard procedure. Considered calling you in, but…that couple. We also had… a conversation we should’ve had months ago.”

Clark looked from one of them to the other. “About…?”

“Her powers,” Kendra answered quietly.

Clark’s pulse kicked. He almost swore. 

Michael folded his arms, expression unreadable. “She sat us down in the med bay,” he started. “Told us what you already knew apparently?”

“Wound transference?” Clark murmured.

Michael nodded once. “Not just ‘accelerated healing.’ Not ‘mystery magic.’ Transfer. Take from one, give to another. Cost attached. She laid out the mechanics. Limits. What happens when she overextends. Long-term risks.”

He spoke clinically, like reading off lab results, but there was an edge under it.

Rex cleared his throat. “She, uh…” He looked down at his hands like they’d done something wrong. “She demonstrated.”

Clark’s stomach lurched. “Demonstrated how?”

Rex hesitated, then tugged his sleeve up just enough to show a faint, thin scar along his forearm. 

“She asked me to nick myself,” he said. “Just a little. Paper cut stuff. Would’ve been healed in an hour anyway, me being me.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “She stood there and told us to watch. She… took it.”

Clark’s mouth went dry. “Rex—”

“It was nothing,” Rex said quickly. “To me. A slice. But when she did it? It was like someone had shoved the knife straight into her arm. Timing was off, pain response was all… wrong.” He shook his head.

Clark stood there, wide-eyed. That…that didn’t sound right. Usually the wound, the injury, the pain would be replicated. This sounded far exaggerated. 

“She’d been doing it in the field, sure, but never laid it out like… that. Not with scales and charts and her own body as the visual aid.”

Kendra’s jaw was tight. “She pulled up pictures,” she said. “Scans. Old injuries. Told us what she’d taken and when. Some of those were from before we even met her, and a lot were during. Not sure how she was able to get these all recorded under Michael’s watch.”

“Regardless, we acted without understanding the cumulative effect,” Michael added. “Because we didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell.”

Clark swallowed, throat thick with anxiety. 

“First healer we get and we knew just enough to get excited and not enough to be responsible,” Michael continued bluntly. “LordTech . They did not, as far as I can tell, run a full moral hazard assessment on ‘pain alchemist with no off switch.’”

Guy shifted, guilt flashing across his face and vanishing under defensiveness. “We saw her patch people up and walk away,” he said. “I figured… yeah, it took energy, but she could handle it. She did handle it. Every time. Until Friday night when I realized I’d been treating her like a walking med pack with nice bedside manner.”

“Guy,” Kendra sighed, but it was all sympathy.

Clark stared at them. “So you… You disciplined her? Punished her for not giving you a full PowerPoint the first day?”

“No,” Michael said. “We told her we needed to re-evaluate field use. That until we understood what repeated high-load transfers actually do to her, she’d have to be benched from live crises. No more on-the-spot demands from panicking Lanterns with savior complexes.”

Guy flinched like the words had teeth. “Okay, ow,” he muttered.

“We also had to loop in LordTech,” Michael went on. “Liability. Ethics. All the fun parts. They’d want to review. There was a strong chance she’d be temporarily suspended from the initiative while they did because she also withheld the truth.”

Clark’s heart hammered against his ribs. “Suspended,” he repeated.

Kendra met his eyes. “She… didn’t wait to find out.”

There it was. The rug, fully yanked.

“She listened to us,” Kendra said. “Quiet, all the way through. No jokes. No deflection. Asked a couple questions. Then she said, ‘Okay. If those are the conditions, I’m out, I’m done.’”

Rex nodded, jaw tight. “Signed the exit papers before we could blink.”

“She said she never wanted anyone in this position of choosing between civilian lives and her body again,” Michael said. “Said she’d lived enough years with other people making that choice for her. She wasn’t going to keep pretending it didn’t cost her anything just because it made the rest of us feel better.”

It was like being slammed back into that tram wreck. Except this time, he could see the entire collapse unfolding in slow motion.

Your question at the coffee shop: How would you feel if I wasn’t a hero anymore?

The ethics story flashed again—perfect city, one suffering child, doors at the edge of town. What if she’s the one who gets to walk away?

Your face in the street, covered up, shaking under the scarf. Your voice in his apartment: Thank you for choosing me. For making me see the truth.

He’d thought you meant something abstract. The truth about his patterns. About how he’d treated you. He hadn’t realized you meant this concrete, this immediate.

“How long ago?” he asked, barely recognizing his own voice. “When exactly did she… quit?”

Kendra answered. “That night. Just before midnight.”

Clark swayed, just a fraction. Before midnight. You’d quit the team, walked away from the place that brought you to Metropolis, walked away from your teammates, and then come to his apartment before midnight. Sat on his couch. Asked to stay. Slept in his sweater. 

You already walked out of one life before you walked through his door.

Michael’s eyes were on him, sharp and assessing. “So you didn’t know anything at all?”

I’m here to say thank you, you’d told him.

He’d thought you meant thank you for the choice in the street. With dawning horror, maybe you also meant thank you for forcing me to look at what this is doing to me. Maybe thank you for making me admit the truth to them and to myself. Maybe thank you, and please don’t try to talk me out of it.

The thoughts left him breathless.

He shook his head, numb. “She… there was an incident months ago. She pushed herself beyond her limit and I found out the truth. I…asked if she told you—when she told you—I’d be there. I’ve crossed so many boundaries with her. I coudn’t—”

“We understand, Clark,” Kendra murmured, “Not your story to tell, right? I told her we could fight LordTech. Argue for accommodations. Change what we asked of her. She said she didn’t want to fight for a seat at a table that kept demanding her blood as a cover charge.”

Guy’s jaw twitched. “She told me,” he muttered, “that I made it too easy for myself to call her in instead of calling an ambulance. That I liked having a living redo button.” He stared at the floor. “She wasn’t wrong.”

He blew out a breath. “So,” he said gruffly. “You wanna be mad at me for how I treated her? Get in line. Just don’t put yourself at the front of it like you’re the only one who screwed up.”

Clark barely heard him.

“She’s really done?” Clark asked, because some dumb hopeful part of him wanted someone to say no, just a hiatus. “Just like that?”

Michael exhaled. “She resigned from LordTech. She’s off the Justice Gang roster. What she does with the rest of it—that’s her call.”

Guy shifted his weight, ring dimming. “For what it’s worth,” he muttered, “I told LordTech if they try to spin this like she did something wrong, I’m shoving their PR department into orbit, Red Lantern territory.”

Kendra nodded. “We’re not letting them hang this on her,” she said. “We pushed. We benefited. We’re the ones who should’ve asked more questions.”

Clark heard that. He appreciated it. He filed it away. 

But the part of him that was still just a man who loved you, not a cape or a symbol, was already somewhere else.

Your desk at the Planet, empty of your plant with the smiley-faced rock.

You’d quit the Gang. You’d taken a leave from the Planet. Piece by piece, you were stepping away from the life that had been slowly bleeding you out in public. You’d done it before coming to him. Before reminding him that you loved him. Before sleeping beside him. You were making choices that had nothing to do with him, even if they rearranged his entire world.

Clark’s hands trembled at his sides. He muttered something that might have been thanks, or an apology, or both, and turned.

“Clark,” Michael called after him. “Wait. Don’t—”

He didn’t wait to hear the end of the sentence. He was already moving, already punching through the air.

Because you hadn’t waited for anyone’s permission either. You’d just decided you weren’t going to be the child in the basement anymore.

.

Clark told himself he was not backsliding.

He repeated it like a mantra as he cut across the city: You’re not backsliding. You’re not that man anymore. You’re not going to circle the whole skyline like a rabid dog.

He wasn’t flying around scanning every inch of Metropolis for a glimpse of you. He wasn’t hovering outside Dr. Foster’s building, counting the minutes between appointments just to see if your shadow crossed the frosted glass. He wasn’t loitering above the sidewalk where you sometimes “coincidentally” lingered on Tuesdays, or stalling over the coffee shop roof to check if your favorite window seat was taken.

He aimed himself in a straight line toward one place.

The place you always went back to when the world got too loud. The one fixed point in the messy orbit of your life. The apartment where you might be packing, or sleeping, or lying on your back staring at the ceiling, wondering if you’d just set everything on fire and walked away from the blaze.

He flew faster than he meant to, cape snapping, jaw clenched.

Don’t kick down the door, he ordered himself. Don’t x-ray the walls. Don’t tear through her privacy just because you’re scared.

He landed in the alley instead of the fire escape, letting the chill of the dusk air bite his skin.

From there, he changed and walked.

By the time he stepped into your building, Superman was gone. Just Clark again—shirt slightly rumpled from a too-fast change, tie loosened, satchel strap biting into his shoulder.

He took the stairs, not the elevator.

Up the stairwell, dress shoes whispering over concrete, his bag bumping rhythmically against his thigh. Past Mrs. Gonzales’s door, where someone had taped up a new recipe clipping—empanadas, in curling black print. Past the apartment with the always-barking dog which—for once—was silent, no claws scrabbling at the other side of the door, no high-pitched yapping announcing stranger, stranger.

The whole floor felt wrong. Too still.

He stopped in front of your door.

It looked exactly the same as it had the night you’d broken up with him. The night he’d walked away because you’d asked him to, and then come back and pressed his head against this same patch of wood listening to you try not to sob too loud.

Same number screwed slightly crooked into the frame. Same offset peephole you’d refused to let the landlord “fix” because you said it gave the place character. Same faint scuff at the bottom, where his shoe had hit when he’d misjudged his speed getting you inside after the hospital—too impatient, too worried, too much.

His fingers twitched, remembering the way they’d dug into the doorjamb that other night, knuckles white, holding himself in place instead of ripping the door off its hinges.

Then, there had been sound.

Your muffled crying, trying to be quiet and failing. A choked little curse when you’d dropped something in the kitchen. The gurgle of the tap as you’d run water and splashed your face, like that could erase how he’d made you feel.

He’d stood here and listened, every ragged noise cutting straight through him.

Now, there was nothing.

No stifled sobbing. No music bleeding under the crack—no playlist, no comfort movie. No muttered where’s my phone as you checked the same three places you always did. No soft thump of your feet crossing the floor, no clink of a mug being set down too hard.

He lifted a hand, hovering inches from the door, then curled it into a fist and knocked.

Three solid raps.

“Hey,” he called, pitching his voice low so it wouldn’t bounce down the hallway. “It’s me. Clark.”

The sound faded. Nothing answered. No sudden scrape of chair legs. No startled coming! through the door. Not even the tiny shift of weight he knew you made when you moved barefoot across the boards.

He swallowed, knocked again.

“I heard about… the Gang,” he tried, words snagging on his tongue. “And the Planet. I—I’m not here to yell. Or… fix anything. Or question you. Okay, well—maybe one question.” His breath left him in a weak, humorless huff. “I just… wanted to know you’re okay.”

The sentence hung there, thin and ridiculous, in the quiet hallway.

He leaned in, palm flattening against the cool wood, fingers spreading, as if he could feel your pulse through it if he just tried hard enough. He let his forehead tip forward until it touched beside his hand, the pressure grounding and a little painful.

He knew he shouldn’t.

You don’t get to barge into every silence, he told himself. You asked her to wait. You begged her to trust you. You don’t get to rip the walls down every time you’re scared.

But old reflexes were wired deep, deeper even than his bones.

His hearing stretched before he could haul it back, reflexive and hungry. It slipped under the door, seeped through plaster and studs, searching for you.

Footsteps on hardwood. The rustle of blankets. The hiss of the shower. The soft, steady, familiar thump of your heartbeat.

Nothing. No TV murmuring in the background. No click of a light switch, no scrape of a drawer. No quick, guilty inhale from someone standing on the other side of the door, holding their breath and willing him to go away.

Just the distant hum of plumbing in the walls—a neighbor running a bath. The faint, muffled jazz somebody two floors up thought the whole building needed to hear. The elevator cables whining as the car dragged itself between floors.

You were either not home… or you were there and had managed to shut everything down, even the parts of yourself his senses knew by heart.

Both options made his stomach twist.

He yanked his hearing back like he’d touched a hot pan.

Using his powers on your space without permission was a line. Always had been. He’d already let fear drag one toe over it; he was not going to stomp across and smash whatever fragile trust you’d put back in his hands.

“Okay,” he murmured, more exhale than word, and let his hand fall away from the door.

He stepped back a pace, shoulders squaring, and raised his voice just enough to carry through the wood without broadcasting it to the whole floor.

“You… asked me once how I’d feel if you weren’t a hero anymore,” he said, the memory sharp now—your face across the coffee shop table, your fingers worrying at your cup. “I never got to finish answering.”

His throat tightened. He forced the rest out.

“I’d feel scared,” he admitted, the word raw. “But only if you were. I’d feel relieved, because it’d mean you weren’t… bleeding for everyone all the time.” His mouth twisted. “And… most of all, I’d be proud. So proud of you for choosing yourself. Maybe a little selfish, too, because I still want you in my life in any way you’ll have me. Hero, friend, colleague who gets to mark up my drafts in red pen.”

His voice shook on the last bit. He ducked his head, blinking hard.

Somewhere deeper in the building, a pipe thumped as someone turned off a tap. A door slammed on another floor. A kid laughed, the sound echoing faintly up the stairwell. Distant sirens wailed somewhere out in the city, Dopplering away. The world kept going.

He let the quiet sit between him and the door until it stopped feeling like a test he was failing.

“I’m here for you,” he whispered last. “When you’re… ready. For whatever you want me to be.”

The words were simple. They felt like ripping a piece of himself out and leaving it on the welcome mat.

“I’ll see you around?” he added, voice catching on the question you’d started asking him repeatedly, starting at the hallway outside Dr. Foster’s office.

He could almost hear your echo from that day, the way you’d looked back over your shoulder and given him that small, brave smile.

So he answered himself, because there was no one else to do it.

“I’d…I’d like that,” he whispered with a broken exhale.

The door stayed dark and quiet. The hallway light above him flickered once, buzzing, then steadied again. Someone down below yelled at their TV. A dog barked twice and went silent.

He stared at the number on your door until the brass blurred.

Then he turned. One step away felt like treason. Two felt like freefall. By the third, his legs were moving on their own, muscle memory dragging him toward the stairwell even while everything in his chest clawed backward.

At the end of the hallway, he stopped.

He braced one hand against the wall, fingers splayed over chipped paint, and listened one more time—not focusing, not narrowing in, just… hoping. If there was a heartbeat on the other side of that door, it stayed hidden in the building’s bigger pulse.

He drew in a sharp breath that hurt all the way down, lungs protesting, and let it out slow.

Dr. Foster’s voice slid in at the edges of his thoughts anyway, uninvited: You’re not the child in the basement, Clark. You’re one of the people upstairs, deciding what kind of city you live in.

For a long time, he’d heard that and seen you down there instead—alone in the dark, hurting so everyone else could be happy. A miracle in a locked room. A cost no one wanted to look at.

Friday night, under the torrent of rain, he’d refused to send you back down those stairs.

Now the door in front of him was closed, and the awful, twisting truth was that he didn’t know where you’d gone.

Had you walked out of Omelas altogether—out of the Gang, out of LordTech, out of the life that kept demanding pieces of you? Were you somewhere he couldn’t picture, some place that didn’t need a medic in the basement at all?

Or were you just deeper in the city, somewhere he couldn’t hear, trying to catch your breath and decide whether to stay?

He had no right to that answer. Not yet.

He squared his shoulders, closed his fingers around the stairwell handle, and opened it. He took the stairs down, one careful step at a time, feeling every inch of distance stretch between your hallway and the night outside.

This, he told himself as he descended—this strange, hollow not-knowing—was what trusting you looked like now: not storming into the basement to drag you out, not hammering on the city’s doors until you came back, but walking away from the threshold and letting you decide which way to go, praying that wherever you’d chosen, it was somewhere safer than the place he’d found you last.

.

Chapter 1: The Life Line

In a city of heroes, some sacrifices are invisible. You can heal anything—but at a cost no one suspects. When a gala turns deadly, you must decide how far you’ll go to save the people you love, even when it breaks your heart. Clark thought he knew you. He was wrong. You tried again, breath shaking. “Clark. I'm serious. I’ve never healed—like this,” you said, voice thin. “Through the chest. I’d never—this could kill me—” “I don’t care!” he snapped, louder than you’d ever heard him. “Just fix her! Please, please, I can’t— I can’t lose her—"

Chapter 2: Alcestis

Three weeks of silence after the gala, and neither of you have learned how to speak without reopening the wound. Clark loves you—he swears he does—but guilt makes him clumsy, overprotective, unbearably gentle. You love him too, but love doesn’t heal like you do. It bruises. It scars.

Chapter 3: Trouble

Clark loves you. He doesn’t love Lois. Saying it is easy; living it is work. While you keep your distance—copy edits, closed doors, strict boundaries—Clark spirals into the sky. He needs to learn the difference between being good and being forgiven. If there’s a future, it won’t be because you waited. Waiting has terms.

Chapter 4A: Omelas

Clark is trying—therapy, boundaries, small choices that don’t hurt you just to save everyone else. Little by little, you start to let Clark back into your orbit: coffee runs, plant check-ins, quiet talks about what your healing really costs you. A public disaster forces the Justice Gang to demand your powers in front of the city, and Clark, as Superman, has to make an impossible call under live cameras.

Chapter 4B: Omelas

Clark peels off his blood-soaked suit as he listens to the city turn on him. He opens his door to the one person he’s most afraid of losing. A rain-soaked night becomes a string of confessions. Love. Want. Wait. "I'll see you around?" "I'd like that."

It began as some garbled talking thirty minutes ago, which was usually tolerable. It felt like you were listening to a podcast or television show in the background as white noise. You didn’t mind it at first—maybe he was on call with friends, but why did they choose something heated and intense?

Unable to bear it any longer, you decide to knock on the wall separating your rooms, hard enough that you’re sure he’s going to hear. 

And, it…works? He stops talking for a few moments before resuming at a bearable volume.

Satisfied, you lean back into your pillow, tugging your blanket closer to your body. Huh. That wasn’t so-

Another string of loud curses follows. Instantly, your eyes shoot open, and you sit up, enraged. 

If this were another day, a less sleep-deprived you might have walked over to his apartment and calmly told him to keep it down. However, after working a few hours of overtime to cover for an incompetent officemate? You eventually decide that the best course of action is: “Hey, shut the fuck up!”

Your voice cracks a little from the sudden burst of volume, but you can’t find it in yourself to care. 

“It is two AM, and I have to wake up in four hours for a whole day of work. I don’t know who the hell you’re talking to, or what you’re doing, but have some respect, dude!”

Your throat immediately feels tight when you finish, but at the very least, the frustration has rushed out of your body. You prepare for your neighbor to yell back or retort, if not apologize, but you’re met with silence.

You breathe steadily, ready to verbally defend yourself, but nothing comes. Did it work?

Five minutes pass. Ten minutes. Fifteen…

You lose track of time, lulled to sleep by the peace and quiet.

The next few days, you no longer hear any noise from your neighbor at the ungodly hours. Sure, maybe you hear the accidental bump of whatever furniture is positioned against your shared wall, but nothing more.

You want to celebrate a little, considering that you’ve probably driven your point home. Even better, that officemate of yours had been fired. It turns out that the one time they forced you to cover for them was the last straw for your boss. Apparently, they had taken advantage of the fact that you were a newcomer who had no idea of their work ethic. 

That sucked, but at least you don’t have to worry about them anymore. You just want to celebrate the first two weeks you’ve spent at your new apartment. 

To your luck, you get an opportunity to do so when you enter the lobby after a tiring workday.

“Hi, darling!” A middle-aged lady greets you enthusiastically. “Are you the new girl from 203?”

You stop in your tracks, trying to remember if you’ve seen her before. With how chummy she seems to be with the lobby staff, you figure she’s also a resident. “Good evening, yes, I am.”

“Great! I live in 206, just a few rooms away. I heard about a new tenant moving in from the manager, so I just wanted to welcome you.”

“That’s great, um…” You pause. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name…?”

“Shimura-san! Sorry, I can’t believe I forgot to introduce myself. I live with my husband and son down the hall,” she chuckles. “Anyway, we like to invite the second-floor residents over for dinner. We have monthly potlucks sometimes, if we’re not all that busy. Since you’re new, we’d like to invite you over sometime this week, if you’d like. Heck, if you’re hungry, you could come over in an hour!”

Your eyebrows shoot up. Come to think of it, you recall the apartment manager talking about a certain Shimura-san. This must be her, then.

“In an hour?! Oh, I don’t want to trouble you-” 

Your stomach growls, cutting you off. Shimura-san laughs as your face heats up. 

“Hm, I don’t know about that.” She shakes her head. “Looks to me like you’re in need of a good meal. We’re already preparing for dinner, anyway, so it’s not much trouble.” 

“You’re sure?”

“Yes! I’ve got my son helping out, don’t sweat it.” She waves a hand. “Seems like you just came from work, so go and freshen up, okay?”

You’re almost taken aback by this woman’s personality, but you smile, thinking about how she somewhat reminds you of your own mother. So, you nod and accept her invitation.

“Okay, see you later! I’ll just go to the konbini to buy a few things.”

With that, she waves goodbye, and you make your way to the staircase leading to the second floor. Hm, maybe you’ve got some pretty lovely neighbors, too.

When you arrive at the Shimuras’ place, you’re welcomed warmly.

“Welcome! Please make yourself comfortable.” She opens her arms wide. “My husband just had some overtime tasks to deal with this evening, so he’ll be coming a little later. My son’s over in the kitchen.”

You nod, taking in their living space. It definitely seems very lived in, with all the personal belongings and decorations.

“Hey, Takashi! Come say hello to our guest!”

His head pops out from the corner, and he gives a small wave. 

“Ah, that boy.” Shimura-san snorts. “He’s sometimes shy with strangers, but he’ll warm up quite fast if he decides he likes you.”

“I see.” You smile as he disappears back into the kitchen. “I used to be that way.”

“Ah, then you understand. Great!” She waits until you’ve taken your shoes off and points to the spare slippers at the side. “You know, a part of me wishes that the boy from 204 would warm up too. He has yet to come over for dinner. I’m just glad that he accepts any leftover food we bring to him.”

“204?” You whip your head up.

“Yes, your neighbor. Have you met him?”

You nearly make a face. Sort of. 

“No…”

“I see. The other neighbors haven’t seen him much either. But, of course, he could just be a really cautious and shy person.” 

Didn’t seem that way when he was crashing out!

“So, whatever the reason, we just give him the space he needs.” Shimura-san sighs. “Anyway, enough of that, let’s eat!”

You’re guided to the dining area, where a fresh spread of colorful dishes lines the table. 

“Wow!” You can’t hide the surprise that hits you. “That’s…aw, I haven’t had a homemade meal like this since moving here.”

“I figured.” She directs you to your seat. “Work takes a lot of energy, and so does cooking. That’s why I chose the latter for our family.”

You smile at her. “And you do it really well.”

“Do I get credit for boiling the edamame and popping them out?” Her son pipes up as he brings a final dish to the table, drawing out a laugh from you. 

“Yeah, of course you do!” Shimura-sun ruffles his hair as he takes a seat. “Anyway, this is Takashi. He’s in his last year of junior high school.”

“Oh, so you’re about fourteen now?”

He nods in response. For some reason, his eyes linger on you for a while, only stopping when his mother asks him another question. You pretend not to notice, though; maybe he’s just trying to figure out if you’re someone he’ll get along with well.

You say thanks for your meal before trying a bit of each dish.

The rest of the hour goes by quickly without you realizing. There’s really something magical about Shimura-san’s cooking and Takashi’s assistance; you tell them so.

“Finally, someone who remembers!” Takashi comments, raising his hands in the air, while Shimura-san swats him playfully. “I think he has a favorite,” she comments. 

“By the way, we do have some extra desserts. They were gifts from my husband’s clients, but there’s still too much for us to finish. You can pick whatever you like and take them with you.”

“What? Are you sure?” Your eyes widen.

“Yes, very sure.” She stands to get them. “I’ll bring them over, just give me a moment to gather the new ones.”

As she leaves the dining area, her son suddenly turns to you. “Sorry if this is a really random question, but I just wanted to ask…” 

You tilt your head at him. “Um, sure.”

“Can you say this suuuper specific phrase for me?” 

“Super specific phrase.” You blink at the teen, trying to process his request. “Okay, um, what is it?”

Takashi grins at your agreement. “Say this.” He pauses for a moment before continuing. “‘Can you shut the heck up, it’s two in the morning!’”

Hang on.

A silence fills the kitchen, but it’s broken by Shimura-san’s gasp. “Son?”

“Wait, okaasan! I swear she sounds like the girl in Kodzuken’s stream. There’s this video that went viral this week!”

Kodzuken’s stream?

Takashi pulls his phone out, seemingly forgetting about his request for you. 

“Hey! Go over there! Get the shields up so you can distract- agh, Tighnari!”

You stiffen at the familiar voice.

“Are you kidding me? Move! Then hit the- I need to aim!”

“Sorry, sorry!”

Whoever’s saying sorry doesn’t sound one bit apologetic.

“Dude, we are not defeating the boss like this! Come on!”

You sit there awkwardly as the mess of sounds from the game continues to play from Takashi’s phone speaker.

“This is stressing me out!” Kodzuken groans as his partner laughs. “Why did I agree to a co-op with you?!”

“Hey, shut the fuck up!” 

And…oh god. That is your voice. That’s how audible it was?

Kodzuken goes silent, and his co-op partner immediately starts laughing. “Wait? Who is that? Is that coming from you?”

“What the,” you hear a whisper as your anger-fueled tirade continues in the background. “Uh-”

“Yo! You have a woman at home?”

“No, I don’t.” Kodzuken hisses. You can hear the sounds of his game continuing, and by the sounds of the characters, they sound like they’re getting hit in succession.

Kodzuken’s partner continues giggling. “Did you piss someone off? Oh! Hey, where’d you go? Guys? Guys, Kodzuken just left the stream? What the hell? Who was that?” 

The video ends, and you want the ground to swallow you whole. Shimura-san looks back up at you with a shocked expression.

I’m not making a very good first impression here, am I?

“That’s…the kid that lives in 204. And that does sound like you…”

Takashi blinks. “Wait.”

“Uh, that’s…” You start, clearing your throat. There was literally no way you could lie to her about this. “It was a bad time. I’m not usually like that. Um-”

“Well, wow, I didn’t know you had that in you!” Shimura-san cuts you off, but she doesn’t seem extremely bothered. Maybe. You don’t know. “You did sound really mad though, when did this happen?”

“A few days ago,” you sigh nervously. “That was right after I was roped into overtime.”

“Oh, because of that officemate.” She grimaces, recalling your tale from earlier. “Yeah, my husband can get cranky when something like that happens. I get it.”

You sigh. “I cannot believe that got recorded. I really just thought he was calling his friends or something, not streaming to a public audience.”

“Huh, you’re not the only one that’s surprised.” She huffs. “Hard to think a kid like him did those kinds of video things. Maybe that’s why he’s so private.”

“That…would make sense.” You glance over at Takashi, who looks like he’s about to explode. “Hm. Maybe I should’ve been nicer about asking him to keep it down.”

Shimura-san pauses to think. “Well, it’s not too late to talk to him, if you want to sort things out. You had a point, after all. It would be good to set some rules since you’ll be neighbors for some time.”

You nod, considering her suggestion. “Yes. I think I’ll do that. Thank you, Shimura-san.”

“You’re welcome. Oh, to be young.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, don’t forget about picking out your desserts-” 

“Okaasan, you’re telling me the Kodzuken lives down the hall?!”

For the rest of the evening, you couldn’t stop overthinking the incident. What was meant to just be one moment between you and your neighbor has apparently been publicized to the entire world. 

Honestly, you’re just thankful Shimura-san didn’t seem to think of you any differently after that. She still sent you off with a few boxes of desserts and sweets, and an invitation to come over another time. 

You even found yourself apologizing to Takashi—you knew how teenagers could be with their favorite celebrities. Luckily, he just laughed it off, finding it cooler that you were able to personally “interact” with Kodzuken.

But, that had you wondering…you weren’t in the wrong for reprimanding him, right? No one should be disobeying the noise level rules in this apartment.

Still, your insides twist when you think about how you handled it. You never really liked the person you were when you were angry. Considering that you haven’t even met your neighbor face-to-face, you’ve probably soured things with him.

Oh god, what if he’s secretly plotting something to get back at me…

You sigh into your couch cushions, feeling a pit of regret forming in your stomach.

With nothing better to do, you check Kodzuken’s socials, curious if he’s said anything about the matter.

That was the only post he’s made since that day. You scroll a bit further, and all you see are some random thoughts he has shared and a bunch of announcements.

Sighing, you check the replies under his latest announcement. If that clip went viral, then other people definitely had something to say. 

Suddenly, you don’t know if checking was a good thing or not; now you feel restless.

Is he getting hate because of you? The handful of replies you checked were just a fraction of everything. Not to mention, all the opinions people shared about your actions—whether in favor or not—made your chest tighten.

They’re just strangers. They didn’t know the full context. It shouldn’t matter.

Yet, it bothers you. You throw your phone towards the opposite end of your couch and slump even further.

His name rings in your head—no, not his streamer name, but his real one. 

Kozume Kenma.

It’s an odd feeling, really. Shimura-san thinks of him as the shy boy from 204. Her son knows him as a streamer. To you, he’s your apartment neighbor.

What were you to him? The apartment neighbor who could potentially ruin his career?

“Nononono,” you groan, rubbing your hand over your face. 

He could bounce back, right? Would people forget? It’s not like he committed a crime…

Is he waiting until things blow over? What if he really got sick? And did he get sick from the stress? That I caused-

No. It’s not like I intended to…

Ugh!

The itch in your bones won’t go away. You need to fix this.

Retrieving your phone, you sigh in disbelief. How ironic that you feel like losing sleep over this silence. 

And so, you do the last thing you ever expected to do in your life.

Your Sunday is dedicated to running to the grocery store and hoping that you don’t burn your kitchen down. 

Yeah, you could’ve bought an apple pie to save you from the hassle, but there’s something about the sincerity in a homemade pastry that convinces you. (Shame on you if you didn’t learn a thing or two from the Shimuras yesterday.)

It takes you the entire afternoon and an emotional support call from a friend, but eventually, you make something that looks and tastes pretty delicious.

When evening arrives, you’ve placed half of the pie in a small container that your neighbor can keep. You set another half aside, a gift of gratitude for the Shimuras.

Psyching yourself up, you make your way to 204’s front door, cradling your peace offering to your chest. After maybe a few minutes of just standing there, you eventually gain the courage to knock.

It’s not long before the door opens, revealing the figure of someone who seems to be close to drowning in their hoodie and sweatpants. 

Kozume-san looks awful.

“Hello,” he says in a meek voice, as he rubs his eyes. When you look behind him, you notice the rest of his living space is dark, save for some colored lighting from an assortment of lamps. “Have we…met?”

Instantly, there’s a wary look in his eyes once he realizes that you’re a stranger. You immediately clarify your purpose of being here, not wanting him to think you’re some stalker fan that has finally figured out his address.

“Hey. I’m, uh…your neighbor from 203. Just moved in two weeks ago.” You also tell him your name, hoping that it could make you seem more trustworthy in the meantime.

Though you’re not surprised when his eyes widen—he almost looks like a startled cat. He hides behind his door a little more, prompting you to speak up. 

“I just wanted to apologize-”

“I’m sorry for disturbing you-”

The two of you freeze at your simultaneous apologies.

“Um, sorry, you first-”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt-”

And again, you both go silent. Thankfully, it breaks some of the tension in the air. 

“Wait, why are you apologizing to me?” He opens the door a bit more.

“Because I should’ve talked to you politely, instead of resorting to more aggressive measures. Sorry.” You scratch the back of your neck. “And, I didn’t know you were a streamer either. I didn’t realize that my yelling would end up making you go viral…for better or for worse.”

“It’s…” He starts, but he seems unsure of how to continue. “It’s okay. If I were you, I think I would have gotten angry too. I was just used to 203 being empty, so when I got really worked up, I didn’t realize you were…well, there.”

He shrugs, trying his best to make eye contact with you for a few seconds, before his eyes dart away. “I’m really sorry. I wasn’t trying to disturb you on purpose.”

With the way things are going, you’re honestly so glad that you made the decision to talk it over with him. 

“I understand now…so, you had no idea that I had moved in at all?”

“No, sorry. I don’t really stay updated with things around the apartment. Safety. And, well, people can be a lot…if you can believe it.”

You nod. “I can. It’s okay. As long as it doesn’t happen again.”

“It won’t.” He shakes his head, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “Um, actually, if you don’t mind me asking…”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have a preferred schedule for absolutely no noise? Besides late evening or early morning…”

“Oh, hmm.” You tap your chin, vaguely reminded of his last announcement on social media. To be honest, hearing his voice wasn’t all that bad.

“You know, when you’re not yelling at someone, you actually have a pretty nice voice.”

He blinks at you. “What?”

“There were a few times I could hear you talk through the wall at a bearable volume. It felt like listening to those podcasts or audiobooks, you know?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. So, I guess it depends on what you’ll be doing. If you do end up streaming at odd hours, all I ask is that it’s something calm. Anything crazy would be best in the afternoon or evening.”

“Are you…sure?” He tilts his head.

“I mean, the whole gaming and streaming thing is your source of income, right?” You shrug. “It seems unfair to just impose everything on you. We can compromise or find a win-win solution.”

The corners of his lips tug up a bit. “Thank you for understanding. Again, I am really sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it.” You wave a hand dismissively. “Anyway, I hope this isn’t weird, but it’s true that you like apple pie, right?”

“I…yes?” His eyebrows furrow a little. “Why?”

“Um, I baked some earlier as an apology.” You hand the small container out to him.

“You…what? You-” He sputters, hesitating to take the pie from your hands. “Really?”

“Yes. I had to look it up online, after finding out who you were and realizing what had happened. I didn’t mean to cause all this mess for you.”

He slowly takes the container, his fingers brushing against yours for a few seconds. “Oh, um…thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Kozume-san. I hope it’s to your liking.”

He peers inside the transparent container.

“I…” He presses his lips together. “You…”

“Me?”

“You can, um, call me Kenma.”

You gasp. “What? Just like that?”

“It’s always been weird when people call me by my surname.” He grimaces. “The other option is Kodzuken, but…”

“It feels more like your work persona?”

“I guess so.”

“Alright,” you exhale. “Kenma-san.”

“No honorifics, either.”

“Oh?” You laugh. “Okay. Okay. I got that. Kenma.”

His shoulders sag a little in relief. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Anytime.” You bow at him in preparation to leave. “By the way, if you’ve got any comments on that pie, let me know. I need to master the recipe.”

“Comments?”

“Yep. No one better than the pie lover to tell me what I can improve on.”

“Okay.” He hums. “Do you want me to…slip a note under your door?”

“You could yell through our wall.”

And for the first time, you hear Kenma laugh out loud.