Bork Bork

He has one hand locked around her waist and the other flattened low on her back, guiding her down against him, not that she needs much guidance. She’s doing it on purpose now. Slow, mean little grinds that drag the seam of her panties over him through his sweats and make him lose a bit more of his mind every time. 

He’s hard enough that it’s almost painful, hot and trapped and pressed right up against her. Her mouth curves against his when he groans, like she’s won something.

“You’re so loud,” she murmurs, nipping at his bottom lip.

Garrett’s fingers dig into her hip. “You’re sitting on my dick.”

“Barely.”

“You want me to apologise?”

“I want you to do something useful.”

He huffs a laugh, except it comes out rougher than he means it to because she grinds down again at the same time, and his head knocks back against the wall behind his bed. “Jesus Christ.”

She leans forward and kisses the sound out of him, messy and open-mouthed, teeth catching, tongue sliding over his like she’s trying to shut him up and make him worse at the same time. 

It’s very effective. Annoyingly effective. Everything with her is like that. A fight. A dare. A little bit of blood under the nail. She kisses him like she’s still pissed about something he said three hours ago and intends to take payment directly out of his spine.

Her mouth leaves his and drags down his jaw. Garrett feels her smile against his skin right before her teeth sink into the side of his throat.

“Hey.” His hand tightens at her waist. “Don’t.”

She hums, entirely unbothered, and sucks harder.

“Seriously?” he says, voice strained because it’s difficult to sound authoritative when her hips are still moving and her mouth is hot on his neck. “You’re gonna make me look like I got attacked.”

She pulls back just enough to look at the mark blooming under his jaw, pleased with herself in a way that makes his stomach go tight. “You did.”

“By a girl who keeps saying she’s not my girlfriend.”

Her eyes flick to his. “You keep saying that.”

Garrett’s mouth opens, then closes, because he hates when she does that. He hates it even more because she doesn’t look hurt. She looks smug and hot and a little too bright around the eyes, like she’s waiting to see if he’ll flinch first.

So he does what he always does when she gets too close to the thing under the thing. He smirks.

“Yeah, well,” he says, sliding both hands under her skirt now, palms spreading over the backs of her thighs. “You keep leaving claw marks on my back, Kitty.”

Her whole face changes.

Garrett feels the satisfaction of it before she even speaks, because she goes still over him for one sharp second, mouth parting in outrage, eyes narrowing. “Don’t call me that.”

He grins. “What? Thought Dean said it was cute.”

She punishes him immediately by grinding down harder. His fingers flex, dragging her closer, and her expression tips from smug to hungry so fast it almost makes him dizzy.

“Yeah,” she whispers, mouth brushing his. “That shut you up.”

“You’re such a brat.”

“You love it.”

Garrett wants to deny it. It’s sitting right there, easy and obvious, the kind of thing he could toss back without thinking. Except her nails scrape lightly down the back of his neck, enough to remind him she could, and the truth moves through him in a warm, humiliating rush. 

He does. He loves the mouth on her. Loves the attitude. Loves that she’ll glare at him from across a room like she wants to throw something at his head and then end up in his bed twenty minutes later making that soft, ruined little sound into his mouth.

He settles for kissing her again, because that feels safer than saying any of it. She melts for about half a second before biting his lip.

“Fuck,” he mutters, laughing into the kiss. “You’re impossible.”

“You’re slow.”

“I’m trying to be nice.”

“Don’t.”

His hand slides between them then, and that finally steals the next smart thing out of her mouth. Her breath catches against his cheek as his fingers find the damp heat of her through her panties, and Garrett goes a little quiet. 

For all his cocky bullshit, for all the easy flirting and the grin that gets him out of most trouble he doesn’t deserve to escape, there’s a second when he touches her like this where the performance drops clean off his face. Like the fact that she wants him still catches somewhere under his ribs.

Her hips twitch into his hand.

“Oh,” he says, low, smugness returning because he’s Garrett and therefore deeply committed to being unbearable. “That’s why you’re being mean.”

She grabs his jaw. “I’m always mean.”

“Not like this.”

“Garrett.”

“Yeah?”

Her voice thins at the edges, but her glare stays intact, which is honestly impressive. “If you tease me right now, I’ll kill you.”

His thumb presses in a slow circle that makes her lashes flutter. “You say that a lot for someone currently trying to fuck me.”

“Trying,” she repeats, breathless and furious. “Exactly. And yet here we are. Discussing.”

Garrett’s mouth twitches. “Fair.”

He hooks his fingers into the edge of her panties and tugs them aside, and the room seems to shrink down to the tiny space between their bodies. Her hands slip from his jaw to his shoulders. 

Her mouth opens but nothing comes out. He can feel how wet she is, how hot, how close she already is to losing patience completely, and it does something stupid to him. Something possessive and bright and not casual at all.

She lifts on her knees when he guides her up, one hand braced against the wall beside his head, the other still on his shoulder, nails biting. He shifts beneath her, pushing his sweats down just enough, breath already jagged.

“C’mon,” he murmurs. “There you go.”

Her chin drops, her forehead nearly touching his. “Garrett.”

“I’ve got you.”

Her mouth twists like she wants to say something bitchy and can’t quite find it. That gets him more than anything. Her quiet. Her body trembling over his. The scrape of her nails at his shoulder, the hickey pulsing warm under his jaw, her skirt bunched around her hips, his name barely holding itself together in her mouth.

He lines himself up, one hand gripping her thigh, the other holding her panties aside, and she starts to sink down.

The fire alarm screams.

For one whole second, they both freeze in absolute, biblical disbelief.

Then Garrett flinches so hard his head smacks the wall. She jerks over him with a gasp, grabbing his face like she can hold the moment in place with both hands and sheer fucking will.

“No,” she says.

Garrett blinks at her through the shriek of the alarm. “What?”

“No.” Her grip tightens on his jaw, eyes wide and glassy and furious, her whole body still hovering right above him. “No, Garrett. Please. Please, ignore it.”

He stares at her. “Ignore the fire alarm?”

She nods eagerly. “Yes.”

Downstairs, Tucker yells, “OH, FUCK!”

Garrett’s eyes close.

She immediately shakes his face. “No. Look at me. Tucker says that when he finds expired hummus.”

“Baby.”

She whines softly. “Don’t baby me. We’re busy.”

“Someone might be on fire.”

From below them comes Logan’s voice, ragged with panic and laughter. “WHY IS THERE A PLATE IN THE OVEN?”

Then Tucker again, louder and more horrified. “WHO PUT A PLASTIC PLATE IN THE OVEN?”

Garrett exhales through his nose like he’s trying to summon a version of himself with morals. Unfortunately, the version of himself under her right now is hard, half-undressed, and seriously considering whether smoke inhalation is that bad.

She makes a wounded sound and drops her forehead to his shoulder. “I hate this house.”

“I know.”

“I hate your friends.”

“I know.”

Downstairs, Dean screams, “IT’S NOT MY PLATE!”

That finally does it. Garrett groans, deeply and from the soul, and helps her off his lap before one or both of them dies in the least sexy way possible.

She climbs off him with all the grace of a furious cat, yanking her skirt down, hair wrecked, mouth swollen, and Garrett nearly walks into his dresser trying to pull his sweats up over an erection that has every right to file a formal complaint.

She points at him with one trembling finger. “If this is Logan’s fault, I’m putting his head in the oven.”

“Maybe don’t threaten murder while the fire alarm’s going off.”

“I’ll be quick.”

They make it to the hallway half-dressed and murderous. Smoke curls faintly up the stairs. Dean’s halfway up already, looking delighted until he sees her crooked skirt, Garrett’s flushed face, the hickey darkening under Garrett’s jaw, and the general aura of interrupted sex radiating off both of them like a gas leak.

Dean’s mouth opens. Garrett points at him. “Don’t.”

Dean looks at the hickey. Then at her nails. Then at Garrett’s sweats. His whole face lights with reverent horror. “Oh my God.”

She points at him. “I will push you down these fucking stairs.”

Dean steps aside immediately. “Understood.”

The second time, Garrett locks the bathroom door with such focus that she almost feels bad for him.

Almost.

He twists the little button on the knob, tests it once, then tests it again, jaw set like he’s securing a submarine hatch instead of the upstairs bathroom in a house where the towel rack’s been broken since October. 

She stands near the sink in one of his Briar shirts and nothing else, watching him with her arms crossed and her mouth doing the thing it does when she’s trying not to laugh at him and failing beautifully.

“Wow,” she says. “You’ve grown so much.”

Garrett turns. “I’m being proactive.”

“You’re being traumatised.”

“By your inability to finish a sentence without insulting me?”

“By your idiot roommates.”

He points at her. “You like them.”

“I like Tucker. Logan’s useful for entertainment. Dean’s a cautionary tale with hair product.”

Garrett tries not to laugh and loses. “That’s mean.”

The bathroom is full of steam, the mirror fogged at the edges, the bathwater high and hot and carrying the faint clean smell of whatever body wash she stole from him because, according to her, his was annoyingly good and therefore community property. 

Garrett’s gone a little overboard, which she will absolutely make fun of him for later if she survives the night with any dignity left. Candles on the sink. Towels stacked near the tub. His phone facedown on the counter like he doesn’t trust it not to ruin his life.

It is, despite everything, kind of sweet.

Which is dangerous. Sweetness always is with him. It sneaks up under the banter and the hooking up and the stupid public insistence that they’re not dating, and then suddenly he’s making a bath, checking the lock twice, putting her water bottle on the sink, and setting Douglas on the folded towel beside the tub like that’s not the most damning piece of evidence in the entire room.

Garrett’s busy pretending to adjust the temperature of the water, one hand under the tap, jaw set in that deeply masculine way men get when they’re doing something domestic and hoping no one points it out. 

So she leans her hip against the sink, arms crossed, and says, “This is a lot of effort for a girl you’re not dating.”

Garrett stills. Barely. The tiniest pause of his hand under the water, the flicker of his eyes toward Douglas on the towel, then to her, then away again like that tiny purple traitor has exposed him.

“That’s not effort,” he says, turning the tap off. “That’s preparation.”

She raises an eyebrow. “For the girl you’re not dating.”

“For the girl who keeps complaining that my house is ruining her life.”

“It is ruining my life.”

“You’re welcome to leave.”

She lifts her brows.

Garrett looks at her, at the shirt falling high on her thighs, at her bare legs, at the mouth he’s already kissed swollen twice tonight, and immediately seems to regret giving her any kind of exit option. His jaw shifts. “Just… not right now.”

A smile pulls at her mouth. “Use your brain next time.”

“Bossy.”

“Proactive.”

His mouth curves despite himself as he steps into her space, hands finding her hips under the shirt like they belong there, like they’ve mapped the exact place his thumbs should sit and neither of them is going to talk about what that means. “You gonna keep running your mouth, or are you getting in?”

“You made a whole setup. I’m appreciating the ambience.”

He tilts his head. “You’re mocking me.”

“I’m moved.”

“You’re a liar.”

She grins, and he kisses it off her before it can get any worse, mouth warm and open against hers, one hand sliding up the side of her waist. For a second the room narrows to steam and skin and the soft press of his thumbs beneath her ribs. Then her nails drift down his back, slow and deliberate, catching over the raised scratches she left there last time. Garrett’s whole body gives one sharp, quiet reaction against hers.

“Careful,” he says, voice lower.

She smiles into his mouth. “Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Good.”

“Jesus.” He pulls back just enough to look at her, incredulous and turned on and visibly annoyed about both. “You’re insane.”

“You keep inviting me over.”

“Yeah, well.” His eyes drop to her mouth. “I’m stupid.”

“Finally, common ground.”

He mutters something under his breath that she doesn’t catch before he kisses her again, rougher this time, like he’s punishing her for being right. His hands slip under the hem of the shirt and drag it up her body, and the second it’s over her head, Garrett forgets how to finish whatever insult he’d clearly been building toward. 

It happens so plainly she almost laughs. His eyes drop, throat working once, hands settling at her waist like he needs somewhere safe to put them before they get him into trouble.

She tilts her head. “You okay?”

His eyes flick up. “Fine.”

“You look pained.”

“Because you’re naked and still talking.”

“That usually upsets you?”

“It does when the talking is happening instead of the bath.”

She glances toward the tub, then to Douglas, still waiting innocently on the towel. “You brought him out and everything.”

Garrett’s face tightens in immediate betrayal. “Don’t make it weird.”

“Weird?” She looks offended. “That’s Douglas.”

“I know his name.”

She grins. “You should. You helped name him.”

“I said it as a joke.”

“And then it stuck. That’s how naming works.”

“I didn’t think I’d be standing in my bathroom months later listening to you talk about him like he’s a close personal friend.”

“He’s been very supportive.”

Garrett gives her a flat look. “He has a charging cable.”

“He has stamina.”

“I have stamina.”

She lets her eyes drag over him, slow and deeply unfair, until his expression shifts by a fraction. “Do you?”

Garrett’s hands tighten on her waist. “Get in the bath.”

She laughs, and he guides her in with both hands like he knows full well she might climb right back out just to spite him. The water closes around her hot enough to pull a sigh out of her, and a second later Garrett is sliding in behind her, knees bracketing her hips, chest warm against her back. 

For a second, she lets herself settle. Lets her head tip back onto his shoulder. Lets his hands move over her stomach under the water, slow and broad, like he’s smoothing out every sharp edge she keeps trying to put between them.

Then he reaches past her for Douglas. She opens one eye. “Be respectful.”

Garrett’s mouth brushes the side of her neck. “I’m always respectful to Douglas.”

“You called him a tiny homewrecker last time.”

“He knows what he did.”

“You were jealous.”

He scoffs. “I was not jealous of a vibrator.”

“You sulked.”

“I was catching my breath.”

“You glared at him.”

“He was smug.”

She laughs, and Garrett bites gently at her shoulder, enough to make the laugh catch. The vibrator hums to life in his hand, a low, familiar buzz that has heat pulling through her before he even touches her with it. She knows he feels the shift in her body, because his arm slips across her waist and his mouth settles at her ear.

“Still talking?” he murmurs.

She swallows, already hating how much rougher her voice sounds. “Still waiting.”

His smile presses into the side of her throat. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Poor baby.”

She turns her head just enough to glare at him. “Don’t start.”

Garrett drags Douglas slowly up the inside of her thigh, nowhere near where she wants him, the absolute bastard. “Thought you wanted me to use my brain.”

“I want you to use your hand.”

“That’s demanding.”

“That’s proactive.”

His laugh is low against her ear, and then his mouth drops to her shoulder, open and warm, as he finally guides the vibrator higher.

“Fine,” he murmurs, voice gone rough in that way that makes her thighs want to part before she’s decided to let them. “But if you’re gonna keep defending him, I’m making him earn his place in this relationship.”

She goes still against him. Garrett goes still too, just for a second. The word hangs there in the steam, soft and stupid and too close to something neither of them has agreed to say out loud.

Then she clears her throat, eyes fixed very hard on the fogged mirror. “That what we’re calling it?”

His mouth brushes her shoulder again, slower this time. “Don’t get cocky.”

“I think Douglas should know where he stands.”

Garrett exhales a laugh against her skin, and when he speaks again, his voice is lower, threaded through with heat. “Right now? Between your legs, if you stop arguing with me.”

The words skim hot along her wet skin, and the laugh she tries for comes out smaller than planned, caught somewhere between her throat and his mouth on her shoulder.

His arm slides across her middle, dragging her back more firmly against him, the hard line of his chest pressed to her spine, his thighs bracketing hers under the water while Douglas traces a slow, maddening path up the inside of her leg.

He’s being awful about it, of course. Deliberate. Patient in a way that feels less like restraint and more like cruelty, brushing close and then away, letting the vibration skim over places that make her stomach tighten before he eases off again.

His mouth keeps moving along her neck, open and lazy, kissing beneath her ear, then the hinge of her jaw, then the spot just below it he knows makes her lose half a thought if he gets his teeth there.

She tries very hard not to squirm, because letting Garrett Graham know he’s getting to her is basically handing a loaded weapon to a man who already thinks he’s hot shit with a sniper rifle.

Unfortunately, her body has no loyalty. Her thighs shift under the water. Her fingers curl against his forearm where it’s locked across her stomach. Garrett feels both. His mouth curves against her neck.

“Garrett.”

“Mm?”

“Stop playing.”

“I thought you liked playing.”

“I like finishing.”

His breath catches against her ear in a laugh, low and rough enough to make her toes curl beneath the water. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “I’ve heard.”

She reaches back to smack his thigh, but he moves Douglas exactly where she needs it and her hand clenches instead, nails scraping into his skin beneath the water.

The sound that leaves her is immediate and humiliatingly soft, and Garrett goes still for half a second behind her, like he wants to feel it all the way through. Like he wants to press pause on the exact moment she stops being difficult and starts melting.

“There,” he says, lips brushing her ear. “That what you wanted?”

She refuses to answer, mostly because she can’t.

Garrett’s free hand drifts up her stomach, slow and wet and broad, palm sliding over her ribs like he has all the time in the world.

She feels the shape of his fingers before he reaches her chest, the heat of his hand closing over her, and her head tips back against his shoulder before she can stop it. His thumb brushes once, almost lazy, and her whole body answers so sharply that water laps over the edge of the tub.

“Oh,” he murmurs, much too pleased. “There too?”

“Shut up.”

His mouth presses to her temple, soft enough to be insulting under the circumstances. “You’re so easy to annoy.”

“You’re so easy to hate.”

“Yeah?” His hand tightens over her breast, enough to make her breath hitch. “This feel like hate?”

She would love to say something devastating. She has, in theory, a whole personality built around saying something devastating. But Douglas is buzzing steadily between her thighs, Garrett’s hand is warm and sure on her chest, and his mouth is at her ear, and the only thing her body manages is a thin little sound that makes him groan like it’s done something to him too.

He turns the setting up one notch. Her hips jerk. Water spills over the side again, hitting the tile in a soft slap. Garrett’s arm tightens across her waist, holding her there against him, not forcing, just grounding, making it impossible for her to arch away from the pressure even when it starts to burn low and bright through her stomach.

His fingers knead at her chest, thumb dragging in a rhythm that has her eyes rolling back before she can even pretend she’s above it.

“That’s it,” Garrett murmurs, voice gone thick. “Good girl.”

Her eyes squeeze shut.

He notices immediately, because he notices everything when it comes to getting under her skin. “Oh, you liked that.”

“Don’t.”

“You did.” His mouth brushes the shell of her ear, smug and breathless at once. “Fuck, baby, you really liked that.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” He shifts Douglas slightly, pressing it in tighter, and her whole body jolts against him. His hand slides from her breast to her throat for half a second, just holding her there, tipping her face back enough that his mouth can drag over her jaw. “You’re dripping all over my hand.”

The sound she makes would be embarrassing if she had enough air left to care. The steam has gone thick around them, clinging to her skin, turning the mirror to a blur.

Her body feels loose and tight at the same time, everything warm and wet and pulled so sharply toward the ache between her thighs that she can barely keep track of where she ends and Garrett starts. 

His chest is hard behind her. His breath is hot against her ear. His hand returns to her chest, greedy now, less patient, fingers squeezing and stroking like he’s finally losing the thread of his own control.

“Garrett,” she whimpers, and hates him a little for the way his breath catches when she does.

“Yeah, baby.” His voice drops even lower, rough enough to scrape. “I know. I’ve got you.”

“No, you don’t.”

A laugh breaks out of him, bitten off and dark. “You’re arguing with me right now?”

“You’re being smug.”

“I’m being useful.”

She tries to glare at him over her shoulder, but he presses Douglas just right and her face crumples before she can get the look properly arranged. Garrett’s mouth catches at her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, kissing whatever broken little sounds spill out of her as her thighs start to tremble under the water.

“There we go,” he murmurs. “That’s it. Let me have it.”

Her fingers claw at his thigh. His breath hitches hard.

“Careful,” he grits out, and she can feel exactly how much he means it by the way his hips shift behind her, the hard press of him against her lower back, his control fraying in quiet, satisfying little pieces.

She would absolutely mock him for that if her body didn’t choose that exact moment to climb right to the edge. Everything narrows. The bath, the steam, his mouth, his hands, the buzz pressed exactly where she needs it. 

Heat coils so tight in her stomach it almost hurts, her back arching against him, chest pushing into his palm as her head falls to his shoulder. She hears herself moan, high and helpless, and Garrett makes this ruined sound against her neck like it’s taken something out of him.

“Oh, baby,” she gasps, the words slipping out before pride can catch them.

Garrett’s hand tightens on her breast. “Fuck. Say that again.”

“No.”

“Brat.”

“Garrett–”

“I know.” He kisses beneath her ear, voice low and filthy-soft, all smugness burned down to want. “I know. You’re right there, aren’t you?”

She nods because words have become unreasonable.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, pressing Douglas in that tiny, perfect angle that makes her whole body go taut. “There you go. Come on. I’ve got you. Just like that.”

Her nails dig into his thigh hard enough that he swears under his breath, but he doesn’t stop. If anything, he holds her closer, mouth at her ear, hand on her chest, the other steady between her thighs, dragging her right up to the edge with a patience that feels like punishment and devotion at the same time.

“Garrett,” she gasps.

“I know. I know. There you go–”

A knock hits the door once, and the handle turns, and then Dean walks in.

The scream she lets out isn’t human.

Garrett shouts at the same time, jerking so hard the vibrator slips from his hand and disappears into the bath with a traitorous buzzing splash.

She lunges upright, foot sliding, hair going completely under for half a second before Garrett grabs her around the waist and hauls her back against him. 

Water sloshes everywhere. The candles flicker. Dean stands in the doorway with one hand over his eyes, which would be more useful if he had done it before seeing both of them naked and morally compromised.

“OH FUCK– I’M SORRY, DUDE– AH– FUCK!”

“DEAN!” Garrett roars.

She spits bathwater out of her mouth and whips around with her hair plastered over one eye. “WHY WOULD YOU WALK IN?”

“I KNOCKED!”

“YOU OPENED WHILE KNOCKING!”

“I THOUGHT IT WAS EMPTY!”

“THE DOOR WAS LOCKED,” Garrett yells, voice cracking with the kind of rage that only comes from a man interrupted twice in one night.

Dean’s hand remains over his eyes. His entire body is angled away from them in a panic. “IT WASN’T!”

Garrett looks at the lock. The little button has popped out. For a second, the three of them stare at it.

Dean backs up, shoulder hitting the doorframe. “I didn’t see anything.”

“You screamed ah fuck,” she snaps.

“I saw movement!”

“You saw tits, Dean.”

“I saw–” Dean stops himself, visibly choosing life. “I saw nothing. I’m blind. I have never had eyes.”

“GET OUT,” Garrett and she yell together.

Dean slams the door behind him.

The bathroom goes silent except for the steady drip of water onto the tile and Douglas buzzing somewhere under the surface like the last surviving member of a shipwreck.

She sits upright between Garrett’s legs, soaked, furious, hair in her face, chest heaving. Her skin is hot from the bath and hotter from embarrassment, every inch of her buzzing with a need that has nowhere to go now except rage. 

Garrett’s arm is still locked around her waist. His other hand is braced on the tub like he’s trying not to lose his mind. Then she feels his shoulders shake. Slowly, she turns her head.

Garrett presses his lips together.

“Don’t,” she hisses.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You’re laughing with your whole stupid body!”

That does it. One laugh gets out of him, low and helpless, and she stares at him with the flat, dead-eyed fury of a woman who has been edged and then waterboarded by bathwater in front of Dean Di Laurentis.

Garrett tries to kiss her shoulder. “Baby–”

“No.”

He attempts another kiss. “I’m sorry.”

“No.”

“I’ll kill him.”

She glares at him. “That doesn’t help me now.”

His mouth twitches again.

She points toward the door, hair dripping onto his arm. “I hate this fucking house.”

The third time, they try the porch because both of them have started confusing desperation with creativity.

The house is quiet behind them for once, and that should be the first warning. Nothing good ever comes out of the hockey house being quiet. It means someone is dead, asleep, or about to emerge at the exact wrong time with cereal. 

But the back porch has the fire pit going, the night air is cool, and she’s tucked sideways against Garrett on the outdoor couch wearing his sweatshirt and a little skirt because she decided to wear it specifically to make his life worse.

Now the firelight is moving over her bare thighs, over the cuffs of his sweatshirt swallowed around her hands, over the dark mark on his jaw that he’s already checked twice in his phone camera and complained about three times. 

Complained is maybe generous. He keeps touching it like he’s annoyed, then glancing at her like he wants her to do it again.

So she does. She leans in while he’s mid-sentence about practice and puts her mouth under his jaw. Garrett stops talking immediately.

Her lips curve. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing.”

“No, keep going. I’m listening.”

“You’re not listening.”

“I’m multitasking.”

He tilts his head back despite himself when she kisses lower, teeth grazing his throat. His hand slides from the back of the couch to her thigh, warm palm settling under the hem of the sweatshirt where it’s ridden up. “Don’t leave another one.”

She sucks at the skin just beside the first mark.

“Jesus.” His fingers dig into her thigh. “You’re doing it on purpose.”

“Obviously.”

“Why?”

She pulls back, eyes flicking over the fresh bloom of colour. Possessive satisfaction warms under her ribs, sharp and embarrassing, so she hides it behind a shrug. “You’re pretty when you’re marked up.”

Garrett stares at her. “That might be the most concerning compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I have a game this week.”

“Wear a turtleneck.”

“I’m a hockey player.”

She laughs and kisses him properly, swallowing whatever else he was going to say. His mouth opens under hers instantly, because for all his complaining, Garrett kisses her back like an addict with a grudge. 

One hand hooks around her waist and pulls her closer until she’s half in his lap, her thigh over his, her body angled toward him in the warm orange spill of the fire.

It had started innocent. They were supposed to be sitting outside because she’d dramatically announced she needed air that didn’t contain Dean. 

Garrett had brought her his sweatshirt without saying anything, which was annoying because it made her chest feel soft in a way she didn’t want to examine. They’d been fine for maybe ten minutes. Fifteen, if she was generous.

Then he’d stretched his arm behind her, all broad shoulders and lazy mouth and stupid sweatpants, and she’d remembered she had hands. Now one of those hands is slipping down his stomach.

Garrett catches her wrist before she reaches the waistband. “Here?”

She blinks at him. “You shy?”

“No.”

“Private?”

He gives her a look.

“Right.” Her mouth twitches. “Stupid question.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m coping.”

“You’re coping by jerking me off on the porch?”

“I’m resilient.”

Garrett’s laugh breaks when she twists her wrist out of his grip and palms him through his sweats. His head falls back against the couch, jaw going tight, and the sight of him like that – exposed throat marked up by her mouth, hair messy, lips parted around a breath he clearly doesn’t want to give her – makes her feel a little vicious. A little drunk, even though she isn’t.

“There he is,” she murmurs, kissing the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t get smug.”

“Too late.”

“You’re such a brat.”

“You keep saying that like it’s going to hurt my feelings.”

“It’s not supposed to hurt your feelings.” His voice drops as her hand slips under his waistband. “It’s supposed to make you behave.”

She wraps her hand around him properly, and Garrett’s hips lift a fraction into her palm before he can stop himself. She smiles. “How’s that going?”

“Fuck.”

“Not well?”

“Shut up.”

She kisses his neck again, softer this time, then ruins the softness by dragging her teeth over the mark she made. Garrett’s hand flies to her hip, gripping hard enough to pull a pleased little sound out of her. He hears it. His eyes open, dark and focused.

“Come here,” he says.

“I am here.”

“No.” His hand slides to the back of her thigh. “Here.”

She lets him drag her into his lap because she’s generous and because her patience has been burned down to ash by this house. Her knees bracket his hips, skirt riding up, the fire hot at her back and Garrett hotter under her. 

His hands shove beneath the sweatshirt, finding bare skin, and his mouth catches hers with none of the carefulness he sometimes tries to pretend he has.

They kiss hard and messy, the kind of kiss that tastes like irritation and wanting and the leftover sweetness of the soda she stole from him earlier. She strokes him slow just to hear the way his breath catches, and Garrett bites gently at her bottom lip in retaliation.

“Inside,” he mutters against her mouth.

“No.”

His brows pull together. “No?”

“We go inside, someone walks in.”

“We stay outside, someone walks out.”

“Then be quick.”

Garrett makes a sound like that suggestion has physically hurt him. “You’re killing me.”

“You’ll live.”

“Barely.”

“Good.”

He laughs, rough and gone, and his hand slides higher under her skirt. She shivers so hard he feels it. The cocky look on his face softens for half a second, not into anything sweet exactly, but something lower, warmer, more dangerous to her than smugness.

Then the sliding door opens.

“Ugh,” Tucker says from behind them. “Are you kidding?”

They freeze. Tucker is standing in the doorway in sweatpants and a hoodie, holding a bowl of cereal like a man who’s walked into war with Cheerios as his only weapon. His face isn’t shocked, it’s tired. Deeply, spiritually tired.

Garrett’s eyes shut. Her hand is still down his pants. Tucker looks at it.

She removes it very slowly, with as much dignity as a person can have while straddling a not-boyfriend on patio furniture.

“Tuck,” Garrett says, voice strangled.

Tucker points his spoon at them. “No.”

“Go away,” she says.

“This is a communal space.”

“It’s currently occupied.”

Tucker gestures with his spoon. “It’s the porch.”

“Then close your eyes on your way through.”

“I live here.”

“So do I,” Garrett snaps.

Tucker looks at Garrett’s lap, then at her skirt, then at Garrett’s neck, where the hickeys are now definitely visible in the firelight. His expression goes flatter. She reaches for the nearest cushion and throws it at him. Tucker dodges it with annoying ease.

“I’m just trying to eat cereal,” Tucker says.

“And I’m trying to get laid,” she fires back. “We all have dreams.”

Garrett makes a choked sound that might be a laugh and might be him giving up on life.

Tucker blinks at her. Then, because he’s Tucker, he actually considers this with more empathy than the situation deserves. “Yeah, okay. But maybe not where we keep the grill.”

“It’s off.”

“That is not the point.”

Garrett drags a hand over his face. “Can you just go inside?”

“I came outside because Logan fell asleep on the couch with a plate of nachos on his chest and Dean is trying to convince him it’s a weighted blanket.”

She stares. “I’m moving out of this house and I don’t even live here.”

Tucker nods once, like this is fair. “Valid.”

Garrett looks murderous. “Tuck.”

“I’m going.” Tucker lifts the cereal bowl in surrender. “I’m going. I’m just saying, there are other locations.”

“We tried the bathroom,” she says sweetly.

Tucker winces. “Right.”

“And the bedroom.”

“Also right.”

“And now, apparently, the porch is under federal protection.”

Tucker pauses at the doorway, thinking. Then he says, “Car?”

Garrett goes still. She turns her head toward him.

Tucker shrugs. “What? I’m problem-solving.”

The fourth time, Garrett parks at the back of the west lot behind the rink, under a dead light near the far fence where nobody has any reason to be unless they’re committing a crime, hiding a body, or making the sort of sexual decision that can only come after being interrupted three times by men with no respect for romance.

Garrett cuts the engine. The car settles into darkness. For a second, neither of them moves.

Then she starts laughing. It comes out half-hysterical, half-furious, her head tipping back against the passenger seat while Garrett sits behind the wheel with one hand still on the keys and the other over his mouth like he’s trying not to join her. 

The rink’s dark behind them, the lot mostly empty, rain shining faintly on the blacktop. It smells like cold air and leather and the faint mint of the gum Garrett had been chewing before she leaned across the console at a red light and ruined it for him.

“This is insane,” she says.

Garrett looks at her. “We can go back.”

She stops laughing immediately. “Don’t be stupid.”

His mouth curves. “There she is.”

“I swear to God, Garrett, if you call me Kitty right now, I’ll leave.”

“No, you won’t.”

She glares at him.

He grins wider, because he’s very brave for a man one wrong word away from dying in his own car. “You’re too horny to leave.”

Her mouth drops open. “I’m too horny?”

“Yeah.”

“You dragged me to a parking lot like a criminal.”

“At Tucker’s suggestion.”

She gestures vaguely. “Which makes this worse.”

“You got in the car.”

“You said please.”

“I said please once.”

“You said it twice.”

His expression shifts, smile sharpening. “You counting?”

She unbuckles her seatbelt. “I’m about to start counting how many times you don’t make me come tonight.”

Garrett’s face changes so fast it’s almost worth the entire miserable evening. The grin drops. His eyes go darker, mouth parting around a breath he doesn’t quite take, and then his hand’s on her thigh, tugging. “Come here.”

She makes him wait three seconds purely because she can.

His jaw ticks. “Baby.”

“Oh, now you’re polite?”

“Now I’m desperate.”

That does something terrible to her stomach. She climbs over the console and knees him in the thigh, because his car isn’t designed for dignity and neither of them has any left anyway. 

Garrett catches her with both hands around her waist, laughing into her mouth until she bites his lip and he groans, the sound low and immediate and so satisfying she almost forgets to be mad.

“Back seat,” he says.

“If you make me climb again–”

“I’ll do the work.”

“You better. Captain.”

His eyes flash at that, because she knows exactly what she’s doing, and he does too. He gets them into the back with slightly more athleticism than the situation deserves and significantly less grace. His shoulder hits the door. Her boot catches on the seatbelt. She laughs breathlessly and calls his car a hostile environment. He tells her she’s the hostile environment. She tells him he loves it. He doesn’t answer quickly enough.

That silence is loud. She looks at him in the dim.

Garrett looks back, his face close, one hand braced beside her head and the other on her waist, thumb slipped under the hem of her shirt. His hickey-dark throat moves when he swallows. There are faint red marks at the side of his neck where her nails had caught earlier, and the sight of them makes something low in her go hot and possessive.

“Don’t look so proud,” he mutters.

“I made those.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

She bites her lip. “They look good.”

“I look like I fought a raccoon.”

“A hot raccoon.”

Garrett stares at her. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“I’m under pressure.”

He laughs, and she kisses him before it can turn into another thing, because if they start bantering too long, something will explode. Possibly her. Possibly him. Possibly the car. 

His mouth opens under hers, and suddenly all of it comes rushing back: his bedroom, the fire alarm, the bath, Dean’s scream, the porch, Tucker’s spoon, every almost, every ruined edge, every time she had been right there and yanked back by this stupid house and its stupid men and their stupid timing.

She pulls at his shirt. Garrett helps, yanking it over his head and tossing it somewhere near the front seat. Her hands are on him immediately, palms over his shoulders, down his chest, nails scraping just enough to make his breath catch.

“Careful,” he says, but it comes out weak.

She kisses beneath his jaw. “You keep saying that.”

“You keep not listening.”

“You keep liking it.”

His hand tightens on her thigh. “You’re gonna be impossible after this.”

“After what?”

He drops his forehead to hers, breathing hard. “After I finally fuck the attitude out of you.”

For once, she has no immediate comeback.

Garrett notices. His mouth curves, slow and devastating. “Oh?”

“Don’t look smug.”

“You got quiet.”

“I’m thinking.”

“No, you’re not.”

She kisses him hard enough to knock his head back against the seat. It turns rougher after that, hotter, both of them finally too impatient to make a performance out of pretending they’re not. Clothes get pushed aside instead of properly removed. Her hand slips between them, his fingers dig into her hips, the windows fogging at the edges while the cold presses black and distant outside. 

Garrett keeps kissing her like the world might interrupt again if he lets go for even a second. She keeps marking whatever skin she can reach – his jaw, his throat, the hinge of his shoulder – because some ugly, honest part of her wants evidence. Wants him walking into that locker room tomorrow with her mouth on him whether he calls her his girl or not.

He hisses when her nails drag down his back. “Fuck, baby.”

She stills, looking at him through the dark. “Too much?”

His hands pause on her waist. It’s the first real pause of the night, the first careful thing either of them has done since he locked the bathroom door. His breathing is uneven, eyes searching her face.

“No,” he says, quieter. “Just– fuck.”

Her mouth softens before she can stop it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His thumb strokes once along her hip, almost absent. “You’re good.”

The tenderness of it is so rude she has to kiss him again. Garrett pulls her closer, and this time, when he shifts beneath her, when he guides her hips and she sinks down onto him at last, the sound that leaves both of them is wrecked enough to fog the whole car.

For a second, neither of them moves. She stays braced over him, forehead pressed to his, mouth open around a breath she can’t seem to finish. Garrett’s completely still underneath her, every muscle locked, hands gripping her like he’s afraid the universe is going to reach through the roof and drag her away.

“Oh,” she whispers, and then hates herself for how small it sounds.

Garrett’s eyes shut. “Yeah.”

“Garrett,” she whimpers.

“I know.” His voice is rough, almost unrecognisable. “I know, baby. Fuck, I know.”

She starts to move and his head tips back against the seat, throat exposed, all those marks dark against his skin. It makes her dizzy. Or maybe that’s him. The heat of him. The fullness. The way his hands guide her down into the rhythm like he’s been thinking about it all night because he has, because they both have, because every interrupted moment is suddenly living under her skin at once.

“Finally,” she breathes, half laugh, half moan. “Holy fuck.”

Garrett laughs too, but it breaks when she rolls her hips. “Yeah. Finally.”

“You feel–” She cuts herself off, nails digging into his shoulders.

He lifts his head, eyes dark and focused. “Say it.”

“No.”

“Brat.”

“Don’t call me–”

“Wasn’t gonna.” His mouth brushes hers. “Not this time.”

That lands somewhere stupid and soft in her chest, which is inconvenient, so she moves harder. Garrett groans, low and filthy, hands sliding down to grip her ass and pull her into him. The car rocks faintly.

Her palm slaps against the fogged window for balance, leaving a streak through the condensation. He kisses her neck, then her jaw, then her mouth, swallowing the sounds she doesn’t bother holding back anymore.

“God, I missed you,” he says, like it slips out before he can check it.

Her hips falter for half a beat. He looks up at her, breathing hard, hair messed by her hands, mouth swollen, hickeys blooming along his throat like a confession neither of them has to make out loud.

She swallows. “You saw me two hours ago.”

“Not like this.”

The answer moves through her like heat. She kisses him because she doesn’t know what else to do with it, and Garrett kisses her back with both hands pulling her down, his body meeting hers in this desperate, perfect rhythm that makes the whole night narrow to his mouth and his hands and the slick slide of them finally, finally getting what they want.

“Come on,” he murmurs against her lips, voice ragged. “That’s it. Take it.”

Her fingers twist in his hair. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

His laugh turns into a groan when she clenches around him. “You sure?”

“Garrett.”

“Yeah, baby.” His hand slides up her back, holding her close. “I’ve got you.”

She’s so close it’s almost mean. Her body tightens around it, breath breaking, forehead falling to his shoulder. Garrett’s hand presses at the base of her spine. His mouth is at her ear, saying things too low and filthy and soft to survive outside the car, and her nails rake down his back hard enough that he swears.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “There’s my girl.”

The words hang there between them, fogging up the windows, pressed into the leather, warm and reckless and absolutely not casual. Then she lifts her head, eyes narrowed even though her mouth is swollen and her breathing is ruined. “Your girl?”

Garrett stares at her.

She can feel him still inside her. Can feel the tremor in his hands where they hold her. Can see him deciding, right in front of her, whether to deflect or deny or be brave for once in his stupid life. His jaw shifts.

Then someone knocks on the window, three sharp taps. Everything in the car dies. Her whole body locks on top of him. Garrett’s eyes close like he’s been abandoned by God.

Through the fogged glass, a flashlight cuts white across the back seat. Another knock.

A muffled voice says, “Campus police.”

She drops her forehead onto his shoulder. Garrett’s hands are still on her hips. His breathing is still rough. The car is still hot and fogged and full of every terrible, unfinished thing between them.

For one long, awful second, there’s only the sound of rain dripping off the roof and the distant electrical buzz of the dead parking lot light.

Then she lifts her head just enough to look at him, hair falling around her face, cheeks flushed, mouth swollen, eyes wide with disbelief and the last remaining thread of her patience snapping clean in half.

Garrett swallows.

She whispers, very softly, “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

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

“Tuck burnt his hand.”

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

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

“It does not.”

“It kind of does, dude.”

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

“We did,” Logan says.

“For how long?”

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

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

Tucker mutters, “It was cold.”

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

She blinks at the door. “Come in.”

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

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

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

She pats the edge of the bed. “Sit.”

Tucker sits immediately.

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

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

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

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

Logan nods gravely. “Morale was low.”

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

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

“You said you were dying,” Logan says.

“I said I could die.”

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

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

“I’m half-asleep and underqualified.”

“Still top three medical professionals I know.”

“You know one.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I grabbed everything white and rectangular!”

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

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

“She is,” Logan says, immediately.

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

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

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

“Stop touching hot things.”

“No promises.”

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

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

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

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

“What?” she mumbles.

“Nothing.”

“That’s a bad nothing.”

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

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

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

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

His chest aches.

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

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She looks pretty tonight in that slightly dangerous way she gets when she’s made herself look casual on purpose. 

Little skirt. Sweater slipping a little off one shoulder. Gloss on her mouth that he’s been trying not to stare at too obviously because she gets shy when he looks at her like that in public, even though she had been in his lap thirty minutes before they left, kissing him stupid in his bedroom while wearing that exact same gloss and making very few arguments about public decency then.

That’s the thing, she isn’t shy with him. Not when it’s just them and his door is closed and she’s stealing his shirts and talking shit from the middle of his bed like she owns both him and the mattress.

She can be bossy, ridiculous, soft in that greedy sleepy way after sex when she tucks herself under his chin and mumbles half-formed complaints about his cold feet even though his feet aren’t anywhere near her.

But out here, with everyone watching and liking her and wanting a piece of her, she gets quieter. She makes herself easy to need. Easy to ask. Easy to lean on. She smiles before she’s decided if she means yes. She nods while her fingers have already gone tense around her straw.

And Garrett, unfortunately for everyone, has started noticing. It happens three times before he says anything.

First, a girl from one of her classes slides up to the booth and asks if she can send over her notes from Tuesday because she missed half the lecture and you always write everything down so neatly, babe, you’re literally a lifesaver.

Garrett feels her knee press a little harder into his under the table. She smiles, quick and sweet, and says, “Yeah, of course, just text me,” even though she’d told him in the car she hadn’t even finished her own summary yet because the week had been brutal.

Second, some guy from a group project appears beside them holding a beer and a sheepish expression that Garrett immediately doesn’t like. “Hey, sorry, I know you’re out, but could you maybe fix the slides before Sunday? You’re just better at making them look, like, less shitty.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. Garrett watches the pause happen in her body before anyone else would catch it. The tiny lift of her shoulders. The way her thumb rubs once over the condensation on her glass. Then she says, “Yeah, I can look at them,” and the guy grins like he’s just successfully outsourced guilt.

Garrett’s jaw clicks. Dean’s eyes flick to him. Because Dean, for all his crimes against taste and door-knocking etiquette, has predator-level instincts for upcoming drama. His mouth twitches around the rim of his drink.

“Don’t,” Garrett mutters.

Dean lifts both hands. “Didn’t say anything.”

The third one is the one that makes Garrett set his beer down a little too carefully. A puck bunny named Kelsey, who’s sweet enough in a mostly harmless, very shiny way and has been around the hockey house enough to know better than to flirt with Garrett anymore, bounces up with her phone already in her hand. 

“Oh my God, there you are. Can you please help me with something? My roommate’s birthday thing is tomorrow and I told her you’d probably make those little cupcakes you brought to Tucker’s party because they were so cute, and I know it’s last minute, but you’re so good at that stuff.”

Tomorrow is Saturday. Tomorrow she has a paper to finish, a brunch with her friends she already tried to cancel once, and plans with him that he has been looking forward to with what he would personally consider a normal, chill, masculine amount of anticipation. 

He hasn’t been mentally organising the entire day around keeping her in bed until noon and then taking her to that diner she likes where she steals his hash browns. That would be insane. He’s very normal about his girlfriend.

She smiles anyway. “Um,” she says, soft enough that Garrett’s attention sharpens around it. “Yeah, maybe. I can probably–”

“Nope,” Garrett says.

The table goes quiet in the satisfying way a table does when the captain voice comes out without warning.

She turns her head toward him, eyes widening. “Garrett.”

He doesn’t look at her yet because he knows if he does, she’ll do that thing where she says his name like she’s embarrassed and fond and mortified all at once, and he’ll be tempted to soften before the point lands. So he looks at Kelsey instead and gives her his nicest, most public-facing smile, the one that has made professors extend deadlines and girls forgive him for sins he’d absolutely committed.

“She’s not making cupcakes tomorrow,” he says easily. “She’s busy.”

Kelsey blinks. “Oh. I mean, it’s totally fine if–”

“She’s busy,” he repeats, still pleasant. “Sorry, Kels.”

Kelsey looks a little surprised, then shrugs and laughs it off with a, “No, yeah, totally, sorry, babe, don’t worry about it,” before drifting back into the crowd with her phone still in hand, probably already searching for another girl with a functioning oven and weaker boyfriend security.

But beside him, his girlfriend has gone very still.

Dean’s grin spreads slowly across the table. “Wow.”

Garrett points at him without looking. “Shut up.”

“I’m just saying. Very brave. Very feminist of you, speaking over a woman like that.”

“Dean,” Tucker says mildly.

“What? I’m processing.”

Logan appears at the edge of the booth, because the scent of Garrett doing something emotionally revealing has summoned him from the bar. “What’d I miss?”

“Garrett just became her secretary,” Dean says.

Garrett leans back, arm still behind her. “I became her union rep.”

Tucker nods like this is fair. “Better benefits.”

She makes a tiny sound then. She looks down at her drink, and Garrett feels the heat of her embarrassment without needing to see her face properly. It moves through her in little tells he knows too well now: fingers to the straw, mouth pressing together, knee shifting away and then back again like her body can’t decide whether to hide from him or lean into him.

Garrett’s humour softens before his mouth does. He ducks his head closer, voice dropping under the noise. “Baby.”

She gives him a look from under her lashes. “You can’t just say no for me.”

“I can, actually. Felt pretty natural.”

“Garrett.”

“What?” He lets his fingers slide from her hair to the back of her neck, thumb rubbing once under the edge of her sweater where her skin has gone warm. “You were about to spend your Saturday making cupcakes for some girl’s roommate because she called them cute.”

“She was being nice.”

“She was asking for free labour.”

Her mouth twitches before she can stop it, which feels like a personal win.

“I could’ve said no,” she says, but there’s not enough force behind it to convince either of them. Her gaze drops again, softer now, landing somewhere near his collar. “I just didn’t want to make it awkward.”

Garrett looks at her for a second. The whole bar keeps moving around them, bodies and noise and sticky light, but the booth seems to pull inward a little, shrinking down to the line of her shoulder against his ribs and the careful way she’s not looking at him too directly.

“Babe,” he says, low enough that Dean’s nosy ass has to pretend very hard not to listen. “You are allowed to make things awkward.”

She snorts, quiet and reluctant. “Easy for you to say. You make everything awkward on purpose.”

“Yeah, and look at me. Thriving.”

“You’re not thriving. You got banned from the student union coffee cart for arguing about oat milk.”

“That was a misunderstanding.”

She actually laughs, small but real, and some of the tightness leaves her shoulders. Garrett’s hand stays at the back of her neck, warm and steady. He watches her fight with the smile on her mouth like she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction, which is fine. He has plenty of satisfaction. He’s rich in it. Obnoxiously wealthy, really.

He bends closer, lips brushing her temple because he can get away with that in public and because he likes the way she tilts into him even when she’s trying to be cross. “Let me be the asshole sometimes.”

She turns her face slightly, just enough that her cheek brushes his jaw. “You’re already the asshole sometimes.”

“Exactly. I have experience.” His thumb moves again, slow over the delicate knobs at the top of her spine. “You don’t have to say yes to everybody just because they like you.”

She stares at the table for a second too long, at the fries, the damp glasses, the little chaos of napkins Dean has somehow shredded into a pile. When she speaks, her voice comes out quieter. “I know.”

Garrett doesn’t push. He’s learning that with her. The same way he’s learned that she gets overwhelmed at parties before she admits it, that she says I’m fine in a tone that means please notice but don’t make me explain this in front of people, that she can be the girl everyone loves and still go rigid when too many expectations hook into her at once.

So he keeps it simple. Keeps it warm and a little teasing because that’s where she can breathe. “Here’s the system,” he says. “You look at me. I say no. They get mad at me because I’m a huge dick. You stay perfect and beloved.”

She rolls her eyes, but her shoulder settles more fully into his side. “That’s not a system.”

“It’s a great system.”

Across the table, Tucker lifts a fry. “For what it’s worth, I support the system.”

Dean nods gravely. “Same. Mainly because watching Garrett politely tell people to fuck off is one of the few joys he provides.”

Logan slides into the booth beside Tucker with a fresh beer. “Wait, are we weaponising Garrett’s resting captain face? Because I’ve been saying we should do that for years.”

She groans and covers her face with one hand, but she’s laughing now, soft and helpless behind her fingers. Garrett feels it against his ribs and smiles down at her like an idiot, though he would deny the idiot part in court.

“See?” he murmurs, kissing the side of her head again. “Whole team effort.”

She drops her hand and looks up at him at last, eyes warm and slightly embarrassed and full of something that makes his chest go a little stupid. “You’re annoying.”

“Yeah,” he says, grinning. “But you picked me.”

Her mouth curves. “I did pull Garrett Graham.”

Dean gags immediately. “Please don’t say his full name during couple foreplay. Some of us are eating.”

Garrett flicks a fry at him without looking away from her. “You did,” he says, smug and soft at the same time because with her, apparently, he can be both and survive it. “So use me.”

Her eyebrows lift.

“Not like that,” he says, then pauses because, false advertising helps no one. “Also like that. But right now I meant for saying no.”

She laughs again, brighter this time, and tucks herself closer under his arm, her hand finding his knee beneath the table and squeezing once. Her fingers stay there afterward, warm through the denim, like some part of her has put down a weight she didn’t realise she’d been carrying.

A few minutes later, when the group project guy circles back and starts with, “Hey, sorry, one more thing–” she doesn’t answer right away.

She looks at Garrett. 

Garrett smiles. “Nope,” he says, cheerful as hell. “She’s off the clock.”

The guy blinks. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, no problem.”

He leaves.

She stares at Garrett for a second, then bites her lip around the smile trying to happen. “You enjoyed that way too much.”

He leans in, brushing his mouth over hers once, soft and quick and shameless enough to make her cheeks go pink. “Baby,” he says, voice low, grin right there against her lips. “You have no idea.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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“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.

You were the embodiment of ‘off limits’.

A PR and communications student assigned to the hockey team to learn the ropes, glued to a camera, phone or a laptop half the time, always lingering somewhere between the locker room and the rink with that little furrow between your brows whenever the boys gave you trouble. 

And worse, you were the coach’s goddaughter, practically raised by the man and threaded into Briar hockey long before Dean had ever pulled on the jersey. 

You attended Sunday dinners at his house and there probably were childhood photos stacked in dusty albums somewhere in his office. Those were years of trust Dean had absolutely no business threatening.

Off. limits.

Dean repeated it to himself constantly over the last year, as if repetition alone could beat the impulse out of him. He did so in empty equipment rooms when you brushed past him carrying stacks of media packets, in hotel lobbies during away games when you sat cross-legged on a couch editing footage at two in the morning while the rest of the team got drunk upstairs and during practices when he’d glance toward the bleachers and immediately regret it the second he spotted you there, bundled in team colors, chewing absently on the cap of a pen while watching the ice with sharp, attentive eyes.

It wasn’t harmless anymore and that was the problem.

At first he’d told himself it was mere attraction…temporary and easy to bury, but months kept passing and somehow every woman he brought home blurred together because none of them were you, none of them looked at him with restrained annoyance whenever he pushed too far and none of them straightened his collar before interviews with distracted but perfectionist little tugs of your fingers.

Hell, he couldn’t even get it up anymore and the few times he tried sleeping with someone else ended badly enough to bruise his ego.

You hadn’t even touched him yet and somehow you’d ruined him completely.

You hadn’t shown up to practice that afternoon, choosing instead to camp out in your godfather’s office to finish assignments, legs curled beneath you on the couch while the muffled sound of pucks slamming against boards echoed through the walls. By the time practice ended, you’d gathered your folder and headed out to finish your actual responsibilities before the boys disappeared for the night.

You caught Garrett first on the way toward the showers, then Logan and Tucker, who exchanged immediate shit-eating grins before inevitably dragging Dean into it. Completely wrecking your original plan of quietly emailing him the document later and pretending not to care when he probably ignored it for three whole days.

The hallway outside the locker room had mostly emptied by the time he appeared.

Dean strode toward you lazily, sweaty hair sticking slightly to his forehead, gear half removed, skates still carving heavy sounds against the rubber flooring. The second he noticed how empty the corridor was, his mouth tilted upward slowly, something pleased and dangerous settling into his expression.

“Did you need me, Hawkeye?” he asked as that grin widened once he stopped directly in front of you…far too close.

Only then did you realize your mistake, standing near the wall like an idiot, leaving nowhere to go once his frame crowded the space. He towered over you already and the skates only made it unfair. Heat rolled off him fresh from practice, sharp cologne mixing with sweat and cold air from the rink.

“You need to stop calling me that,” you said flatly, immediately looking anywhere but directly at him.

Dean’s eyes fixed on your face with infuriating patience. “Why?” he asked lightly. “Thought your whole job was noticing everything.”

You finally looked at him then, holding his stare in what you hoped translated to ‘behave yourself for once’.

His expression barely changed but something darker flickered behind his eyes anyway.

A quiet sigh left him. “What’d you need me for?” he asked softer this time, voice dropping into that maddening tone he reserved only for you. Gentle and careful, like he was handling something delicate instead of actively making your life harder.

It only got worse when he stepped closer.

Instinctively, you stepped back. Your shoulders nearly hit the wall, breath catching painfully in your lungs at the sudden lack of space. You straightened afterward, forcing your posture taller like it would somehow help. It obviously didn’t because Dean was already bigger than you, even more when he was standing there in skates, looking down at you like he had all the time in the world.

“You need to approve the questions for the next team interview,” you told him, pulling a printed sheet from the folder you carried.

Dean glanced down at the paper briefly but made no effort to take it. His eyes found yours again, gaze lazy and unwavering. “I don’t need to,” he said. “You wrote them.”

“It’s protocol.” You insistently lifted the page higher between you both.

“It’s you,” he replied, like that alone justified everything.

Your expression flattened. “So if someone asks you ‘how many strokes it takes you to nut’ mid-interview, you’re just gonna roll with it?”

A grin spread slowly across his face, brow lifting. “Depends.” He mirrored your earlier shrug casually, though his attention never once left your face. “Will you be the one asking me the question?”

You glanced down the hallway again before answering. “I won’t be there.”

“Then no,” he decided immediately.

“It would still be bad,” you stressed, pushing the page against the center of his chest. The paper bent slightly over the hard padding beneath his gear. “My entire job is making sure things like that don’t happen. Read them and approve at least three.”

Dean looked down at your hand where it rested against him but his own still didn’t move.

“I’m a hockey player,” he reminded you solemnly. “Reading’s already asking a lot from me.”

“Email me your pick.” You pressed the page harder against his chest when he still refused to take it, annoyance sharpening your movements enough to wrinkle the paper more under your palm.

“Can’t,” he replied easily. “She’s standing right in front of me.”

“Of the questions,” you clarified firmly which finally earned a quiet laugh from him.

Dean took the page at last, fingers dragging against yours for a second too long before pulling away. It was entirely intentional, you knew that much from the way his mouth twitched afterward.

“Then I’ll text you.”

“You’ll send your answers to my school email,” you corrected quickly. “Texting is unprofessional and it’ll get you blocked.”

You conveniently left out the real issue, which was that the two of you absolutely should not be texting each other in the first place because every interaction already lingered too long and every conversation slipped somewhere dangerous eventually.

Dean studied you for a moment, his expression soft and voice quieter underneath the teasing. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

You nodded once because denying it would’ve been pointless. “I’ve been busy.”

His head tilted slightly, lips pressed in a tight line. “With what?”

“Avoiding you.” The smile that pulled at your mouth betrayed how true the answer was. “The world doesn’t revolve around you,” you continued. “If I get one bad grade, I lose this job and you are the epitome of a distraction.” You paused, letting the silence stretch as you waited for his answer. “Epitome means–”

“I know what it means,” he cut in, grinning wider now. “Your godfather’s not gonna fire you.”

“No,” you corrected, poking a finger into his chest. The impact hurt you far more than him against all that equipment. “Your coach will. Then he’ll give me some speech about loving me and wanting what’s best for my future, which honestly makes it worse because he’ll be right.”

Something changed in Dean’s face as the grin began fading. “I missed you,” he admitted quietly, the words slipping out before he could stop them.

You saw it happen in real time too, the brief regret flashing behind his eyes after saying it aloud but it was already there now, hanging heavily between you both.

“We’re already stuck doing this…” He gestured vaguely between your bodies, frustration roughening his voice. “‘Almost’ thing and now you wanna disappear too?” He shook his head once, jaw tightening. “We need to figure something out because I can’t think when you’re around.” His eyes dragged slowly over your face before settling back on your eyes again. “And somehow I can’t think when you’re gone either.”

Your brows pulled together, trying very hard to stay serious despite the smile threatening at your mouth. “Can’t fix the lack of a brain, Di Laurentis.”

“Funny,” he murmured flatly, nodding once. “No, actually, that was hilarious. I almost believed you didn’t care for a second there.”

Your mouth opened with a rebuttal ready, but voices suddenly echoed further down the hallway and they got progressively louder and closer. Dean reacted instantly. His hand found your waist before you could protest, firm and warm even through layers of clothing, steering you quickly down the hall toward the nearest side room. 

Once you entered, the door shut softly behind you both.

Your nose scrunched. “What the–,” you whispered harshly. “It fucking stinks in here.”

Your eyes adjusted enough to make out scattered hockey equipment piled around the cramped storage room. Gloves, pads and jerseys that, judging by the smell alone, hadn’t been cleaned recently.

Dean stood directly in front of the door, broad shoulders blocking it almost entirely. “It was either this or getting caught.”

“Oh, so you are aware there’s an issue here.” You nodded slowly. “That’s amazing progress for you, actually.” You pointed toward the door behind him. “Can I go now?”

He shook his head once, decisive even in the cramped, sour-smelling storage room. “I wanna see you tonight.”

You let out a breathy laugh before you could stop it, the sound slipping out lighter than you intended. “I’d like to see me too,” you decided, adjusting your grip on the folder like it could anchor you back into something sensible. “I’ve got things to turn in. Between that and this job I’m trying very hard to keep and deserve despite the obvious nepotism allegations, I barely have time to do anything else.”

“Perfect,” he said, as if you’d just agreed with him. “So I’ll be your distraction.” He paused, then carefully added, “From a…appropriate distance.”

Your brows pulled together. “Are you even listening to me?” You reached up on instinct, tilting his head down slightly like you were physically trying to redirect his attention. “Didn’t know hockey required ear plugs.”

Dean’s grin turned sharper. “You know exactly what hockey requires,” he countered, voice low. “You just wanted to touch me.”

His hand softly caught your wrist halfway before he seemed to remember himself and let go as quickly as he’d taken it. Still, he stepped closer right after, restraint only applying in pieces. Your breath caught on the way in, shallow and inconvenient, as his nose nudged yours gently, forcing your gaze up.

“An hour,” he murmured softly, almost in a begging tone. “Two tops…I’m going through withdrawals here.”

You huffed out a quiet laugh, the word choice alone almost ridiculous enough to cut through the tension. “I don’t think that’s medically accurate,” you said.

“You wouldn’t want to be the one explaining it to the coach,” he continued, unfazed, “or posting it on socials.”

“No,” you agreed, lips twitching despite yourself. “It wouldn’t get the right statistics. It’s bad rep for the team.”

The humor didn’t quite hide the way your breathing slowed, attention narrowing until it was just him, too close in a room that suddenly felt smaller than it should’ve. You breathed him in without meaning to, realizing it was the first time you’d allowed yourself the space to notice everything without immediately stepping away. 

So for one weak second, you indulged in it…and if something happened because of it, if lines blurred and boundaries slipped, you’d blame the idiot currently brushing his nose against yours like he had no self-preservation instinct whatsoever.

You swallowed. “It’s a bad idea.”

Dean shrugged, entirely shameless. “I’ve had plenty of those before.” His lips curved. “Came out alright every time.”

You exhaled and this time your hand came up to his chest pushing lightly to create space. To his credit, he allowed it, always did when it mattered. “You can’t get it up,” you reminded bluntly, “there’s nothing ‘alright’ about that.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, head tilting like he was recalibrating you, yet amusement still flashed across his face. “How do you know that?”

“Voices carry in these hallways,” you replied, momentum making it worse instead of better. “And it’s suspicious when the team’s resident roller coaster suddenly stops offering rides to every girl with a pulse.”

His grin only widened. Fuck, he was enjoying this…and worse, so were you.

“So maybe it really is withdrawals,” you decided.

“Then help me with it,” he added, as the simplest solution in the world.

Silence followed immediately after as you held his gaze while the seconds stretched painfully long, until even the smell of old gear faded, drowned out now by the overwhelming presence of him.

You eventually cleared your throat, stepping back carefully until your shoulder nearly brushed a stack of equipment. “I’m gonna go now,” you announced, voice steadier than you felt. “I’ll go one way–” you gestured vaguely toward yourself, then the door, drawing boundaries in the air. “And you’ll go the opposite way.”

“And then what?” His voice matched yours, it was quiet and careful.

There was no teasing left in it anymore. Dean was used to this part, used to you pulling away at the last second, both of you pretending restraint still meant control but even now, he stepped aside from the door without argument, giving you space to leave because as badly as he wanted this, he wanted you to want it too.

You moved toward the exit slowly, fingers wrapping around the cold handle before glancing back at him one last time. “I’ll see you around,” 

You opened the door and stepped back into the hallway, letting cold, clean air replace everything that had been pressing in on you.

The door clicked shut behind you as Dean exhaled hard through his nose and stayed exactly where he was because the worst part of the entire interaction wasn’t the rejection, it was the reminder that he wasn’t broken at all…the unmistakable hardening tent in his hockey pants made that painfully obvious.

Dean stayed home that night.

For probably the first time in months, he skipped the party the team had been planning all week. The excuse came easily enough, he’d faked discomfort in his ankle the second he got back to the locker room after you left, enough grimacing and irritation to keep the guys from questioning him too hard. 

By the time everyone headed out, the house had finally gone quiet and now he sat alone on the edge of his bed staring at the blank wall across from him with the concentration of a man trying not to lose his mind.

His phone rested facedown on the desk a few feet away, intentionally dead. He had watched the battery drain without plugging it in, convincing himself this counted as effort…progress or even detox. Maybe if the phone died, the temptation would too. This way he couldn’t text you or call, or even stare at your contact until his self-control caved in around midnight like it usually did.

You had become a habit too quickly…worse than a habit honestly, because Dean had given up plenty of things before. Bad grades, classes and women whose names he should’ve remembered to moan instead of yours, but trying not to reach for you felt violent in comparison.

A frustrated breath left him as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, glaring toward the dead phone anyway. Fucking hell, even silence tempted him.

He could already picture it perfectly if the phone still worked, he would send one stupid text, something harmless enough to start things off. You’d reply annoyed within minutes with sharp little responses pretending indifference while still answering too fast. Then eventually one of you would push too far and suddenly the conversation would drift past every boundary you both kept swearing mattered.

Dean scrubbed a hand down his face roughly then froze when a noise sounded outside his window.

For half a second he thought he imagined the house creaking or branches scratching against the siding just as your head appeared outside his second-story window.

You shoved the unlocked frame forward with visible irritation, balancing dangerously on the ladder propped against the house. “Are you gonna help me,” you hissed, “or just fucking stare while I die?”

Dean moved instantly and crossed the space in seconds, grabbing the window and holding it wider as he reached out for you. The original intention probably involved helping you climb inside normally, maybe by steadying your arm or something. Instead, the second his hands landed on your waist, instinct completely took over and he hauled you inside too quickly.

Your balance disappeared entirely and the both of you toppled backward onto the bed in a mess of limbs and startled noises. You landed squarely on top of him hard enough to knock a grunt from his chest.

Dean looked up at you already grinning while you were certain your eye twitched with annoyance so visibly he almost laughed again.

“Hurt ankle, my ass,” you muttered, pushing yourself upright swiftly and moving off him, sitting cautiously on the edge of the mattress for approximately two seconds before your expression changed.

A look of sudden reconsideration crossed your face making you stand right back up.

Dean watched in amusement as you wiped your palms against your jeans, glancing around the room instead of at him.

“Fuck knows what’s happened on that bed.” You mumbled under a breath.

“You came to check on me,” he said instead, smile widening as he propped himself up on his elbows. “Thought you didn’t do house calls.”

You shrugged lightly, immediately reaching for technicalities the way you always did whenever you crossed one of your own rules. “I didn’t call,” you pointed out. “Or text.”

Dean’s grin softened at that. “Did you get my email?” he asked, weirdly proud of himself.

“I did.” You finally looked at him properly again…with annoyance, of course. “Though signing it ‘Big Dick Dean Di Laurentis’ felt incredibly tasteless.”

He sat up fully now, visibly delighted. “That was obviously a typo.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

Dean climbed to his feet slowly, attention locked entirely on you as he stepped closer. “You could’ve used the front door,” he pointed out. “There’s no one else here.” His gaze dropped pointedly toward where you still hovered beside the bed instead of sitting. “And it’s clean,” he added. “Thought you knew all about how little play I get these days.”

That comment earned him a look, one of those quiet staring contests the two of you somehow kept having lately, where neither person moved first because both of you wanted the other to crack beforehand.

Eventually, you sighed and sat down on the bed properly.

Dean dragged his desk chair around and dropped into it, hands resting on his evidently muscular thighs as he faced you.

“Should we unpack that a little?” you asked teasingly, your tone mischievous. “I almost majored in psychology.”

“There’s nothing to unpack.” Dean leaned back in the chair, watching you carefully while he spoke. “Everything works perfectly fine.”

The pause afterward felt challenging. You held his gaze stubbornly at first, refusing to give him the satisfaction of reacting but eventually your eyes betrayed you, flickering downward despite yourself and straight to the growing outline beneath his sweatpants and judging by the smug look spreading across Dean’s face the second it happened, he noticed.

You dragged your eyes back up to his face with visible effort. “Well,” you started carefully, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from your jeans, “I won’t ask what the issue is then.” Your mouth curved. “Wouldn’t wanna embarrass you.”

Dean let out a quiet laugh through his nose, low and knowing. “You won’t ask because the issue is sitting right in front of me.”

The words settled heavily between you both.

His gaze dropped briefly as you shifted on the mattress, one leg crossing slowly over the other without much thought. Unfortunately for him, the movement dragged the fabric of your jeans tighter across your thighs.

Dean’s jaw flexed once as his eyes lingered there for a second too long before he forced them back upward. “You’re torturing me,” he rasped. “And the worst part is you know exactly what you’re doing.”

You said nothing, you couldn’t, not when he looked at you like that.

Your attention stayed locked on him completely, unwilling to miss even a second of whatever this had become. The room felt smaller now, warmer somehow despite the cold night air drifting through the still-open window behind him. Every tiny movement seemed louder, from the creak of the desk chair when he leaned back, to the faint rustle of fabric when you adjusted your legs again and the quiet exhale Dean took afterward like he regretted noticing.

“Why are you here?” he asked suddenly.

You shook your head once. “I don’t know.”

Dean watched you for a long moment, expression unreadable for approximately half a second before he gave a small nod, already deciding you were lying and unfortunately, he was probably right.

“You do,” he corrected, eyes never leaving yours. “You’re lying to me…and normally I’d let you get away with it,” he continued. “But not when you’re sitting on my bed rubbing your thighs together.”

Your breath caught at the change in his tone. He spoke each word gently, letting them land with intent as his gaze dipped again, tone turning sultry while his hand slid down and disappeared into the waistband of his sweatpants. “You need something from me,” he decided.

The sentence barely sounded like teasing anymore. Your pulse thudded painfully hard against your throat and between your legs as the silence stretched. You uncrossed your legs in response, your fingers inching toward the button of your jeans.

“Something,” he continued carefully, not wanting to rush this. “to take the edge off.”

The air thickened as you popped the button open, the soft rasp of the zipper following as you drew it down slowly. Your jeans parted enough to reveal the edge of your lace panties, the fabric already damp against your skin. 

Across from you, his hand moved inside the cotton of his sweatpants, the outline of his cock thickening under his palm as he began to stroke in long, unhurried pulls. 

The mere sight of it sent a fresh pulse of heat between your thighs.

You slipped your hand beneath the waistband of your panties, fingers gliding over the slick heat of your pussy. A quiet sigh escaped you as you traced your folds, circling your clit with firm pressure while he watched every motion, his own hand working steadily as the head of his cock peeked above the waistband with each upward stroke. 

Precum glistened at the tip, catching the low light as he smeared it along his length. 

Your fingers moved in slow circles, spreading the wetness that coated your sensitive skin, each pass making your hips twitch involuntarily on the bed's edge.

His breathing grew heavier as he adjusted his grip, pulling his sweatpants lower to expose more of his shaft. The veins along his cock stood out prominently under the firm strokes of his fist, the skin stretching taut with every upward motion.

You could see the way his thumb brushed over the head on each pass, gathering more of that shiny fluid to ease the slide. The visual made your own touch quicken, your middle finger pressing firmer against your swollen clit while your other fingers teased at your entrance.

Drawn by the growing ache, you leaned back until your shoulders met the mattress. The sheets carried his scent of warm musk and faint soap, filling your lungs and making your clit throb harder under your circling fingers. 

You spread your knees wider, jeans still hugging your hips as your hand worked faster inside the panties. Every inhale pulled more of him into you, fueling the slick glide of your fingertips over swollen flesh. The mattress dipped slightly under your movement and you turned your head to press your cheek against the sheets, breathing deeper to draw in that intoxicating aroma. It wrapped around you like an invisible touch, making your nipples tighten against the fabric of your shirt.

He stroked himself openly now, full length exposed to your gaze, firm grip twisting at the head with each slow pass as his eyes landed on your noticeably hardened nipples. 

You pictured him rising from the chair, crossing the space between you to bury that thick cock deep inside your aching pussy, stretching you open with one thrust. The fantasy burned even hotter because you were both holding back, letting the forbidden tension build instead. Your fingers dipped lower, parting your lips to press inside, the wet motion of your touch mingling with the rhythmic slide of his fist. He groaned softly, the sound vibrating through the room as you felt your walls clench around your own fingers in answer.

Your free hand clutched the sheets, twisting them as your hips rocked lightly to meet your own touch. Wetness coated your fingers, dripping down to the fabric inside your jeans while across the room Dean’s breathing grew ragged, eyes half-lidded while he watched your body arch and tremble in his bed. The scent of him made your head spin, your pussy fluttering around nothing as you finally thrust two fingers deeper, curling them against that sensitive spot inside. Every curl sent sparks of pleasure radiating outward, your thighs trembling as you imagined the weight of his body pressing you down, his cock replacing your fingers in one smooth motion.

The pressure coiled tighter in your core, every stroke of your clit sending sparks up your spine as you watched his cock twitch visibly in his fist, a bead of cum welling at the slit before he spread it down his length again. 

You moaned, the sound raw and needy and his pace quickened in response. Your jeans restricted your movements enough to heighten the friction, the denim pressing against the back of your hand as you worked yourself closer to the edge. The room filled with the soft sounds of your mutual pleasure, his low grunts mixing with your gasps.

You allowed yourself to keep your eyes locked on him, watching intently as his fist pumped steadily along the rigid length, the skin sliding taut over the swollen and pinkish head with each upward pull.

Below, his balls hung full and heavy at first, swaying slightly with the motion of his strokes but as the tension kept building, they began to draw upward, the loose skin tightening and wrinkling as the muscles contracted. You watched the way they pulled closer to the base of his cock, tensing visibly with every twist of his wrist. 

His thighs flexed in the chair as he spread them wider, offering an unobstructed view of the entire scene. 

The veins along his cock stood out even more now, pulsing in time with his quickening strokes, the skin pulling smooth and firm as his breathing grew shallow and urgent, mirroring your own. 

The sight pushed you harder against your own fingers as his body locked, balls pulling up completely into a tight, rounded shape at the root of his cock. A restrained groan tore from his throat as the first thick rope of cum surged free, jetting over his knuckles in a hot, white arc that landed across his clothed stomach. His balls pulsed visibly with each spurt, contracting and releasing in waves as more cum erupted, splattering higher and dripping down his shaft.

Your orgasm hit shortly after. Your back bowed off the bed, thighs quaking as your pussy pulsed and gushed around your fingers, sending waves of pleasure rolling through you in hot, liquid surges that left you quivering and whimpering on his bed watching as immediate relief hit the both of you.

His grip loosened slightly, cock jerking uncontrollably while his balls finally relaxed, emptying in long, forceful pulses that left him trembling and spent. Thick strands continued to ooze from the tip as the last tremors faded, his hand slowing to gentle strokes that milked out every last eager drop.

As relief and pleasure eased through your spent forms, you both were left boneless and utterly relaxed. You slowly withdrew your hands from between your thighs, the evidence of your arousal glistening on your fingers as they lingered for half a second like your body hadn’t fully caught up to your brain yet. Staring up at the ceiling, you caught your breath, while he gazed forward, both of you panting as though you had just sprinted straight through every boundary you’d spent months trying to maintain and were only now realizing there was no finish line waiting on the other side.

Neither of you spoke because what exactly was there to say?

Congratulations on making things infinitely worse?

You sat up slowly and met his eyes briefly in the heavy silence before looking away, your hand moving to zip and button your jeans as you tried to act like nothing extraordinary had occurred. You pushed yourself to your quivering legs, balance threatening to betray you for a second before steadying. You stepped towards him as his gaze tracked you the entire way.

Standing in front of him felt strangely so, even more intimate after everything else, which honestly seemed ridiculous considering what had just happened. Still, your throat tightened slightly when he looked up at you flushed and wrecked, pupils blown wide enough to swallow the blue in his eyes almost entirely.

Your hand lifted toward his face before you could think too hard about it and his lips parted faintly against your palm the second you covered his mouth. You pretended not to notice him inhaling the scent of your essence deeply as you pressed a slow kiss to the back of your own hand, right over his lips. 

"I’m glad that question won’t be asked," you murmured, straightening up. Dean’s brows furrowed slightly, still dazed enough that it took him a second. "Couldn’t keep count of the strokes." 

With that, you crossed the bedroom, opened the door and disappeared into the hallway before he could answer, your pulse still hammering against your ribs.

Behind you, Dean licked slowly over his lips where your hand had been, head dropping forward afterward as a quiet curse left him under his breath.

His cock throbbed and began hardening again, muscle starting to draw upward once more with renewed tension, the loose skin tightening as his shaft swelled visibly under the fresh surge of arousal.