soliloquy for me

“You’re hot.” Liam’s face is completely serious as he pulls a chair behind my desk to burst my personal bubble.

I blink.

“I –,” Just add another inappropriate coworker interaction to my file, please. “Thank you?”

Liam swipes open his tablet to show a string of comments on one side of a split screen and a Twitter thread on the other.

“From creepy dudes. Obviously.” Liam scrolls down to the latest thread. “But there’s a bunch of guys saying they’d punch the asshole or Kovac to be with you.”

Excellent. Public takeaway: assault, but make it chivalrous. The dark romance books are justified now, right?

“Because I’m ‘hot’.”

Liam nods. Yes, thank you for not verbally saying something stupid. He swipes again, pulling up a different screen.

“Someone on Instagram is breaking down your outfit with links to buy it.”

Oh yay, I’m content.

At least let me run it. The influencer is probably blocking it terribly.

“Great, so I can be a Halloween costume later.”

“We cannot,” he says. His voice is roughened into something almost unrecognizable. “We will not.”

I remain half-braced against the table, lips parted, hands empty now, as though the room has altered shape too quickly for my body to follow.

“Faramir –,”

“If you wish it, I will see you safely to your door, but –,”

“I will not tempt us so.” The words leave me before I know I have chosen them.

He freezes, eyes pressing tight like my words are torture for him. Like he knows I’m right.

“I can return as I came,” I say, my voice quieter now, frayed at the edges. “Carefully.”

The silence that follows feels old as stone.

My bed shouldn’t feel this unfamiliar. I shift again, rustling the covers, trying to settle. It’s not working.

Seb texts me mid-pillow battle, the blue glow cutting through the darkness.

Seb: Home.

Seb: Too quiet.

Yeah. I don’t type what I want. Instead, I drop my phone onto the pillow beside me, close enough to feel its warmth near my cheek.

The tension in my shoulders finally loosens, sinking into the mattress. My eyes close before I can fight it. They don’t open again until my phone buzzes next to me, sunlight streaking in through half-drawn curtains.

Seb: Good morning.

I swear they coordinated it.

A second later, Rachel bursts into my room with zero hesitation, halfway across it before my eyes adjust.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/74833491/chapters/214996576#workskin

https://archiveofourown.org/works/74833491/chapters/214998706#workskin

https://archiveofourown.org/works/74833491/chapters/214999696#workskin

“I’ll find you after,” I say against his lips.

“They don’t let family on the ice or the locker rooms,” he reminds me, forehead pressed against mine.

“Good thing I have a press badge that won’t get me there either.” I step back, then another toward the street. If I don’t now, I never will.

“I’ll find you after,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

He wants to step to me. He wants to kiss me again and drag me against the wall. He wants to walk in together and he doesn’t care who knows it.

Not now. Not before the game he says doesn’t rattle him.

So he looks down at his feet, shuffles them like he’s already on skates and digs his hands into his pockets.

“Sebastian.” He looks up at me with a look that makes me want to run straight back to him. “Win.”

His mouth curves into that familiar smirk. And he nods – small, simple, final. A promise.

When I step onto the sidewalk, the wind the alley blocked shoots through me, but I’m still on fire from where his hands were on my sides, my cheeks, the back of my neck. One last glance, one last tilt of his head and I round the corner –

Reporters start to shuffle behind us. I scoot forward on instinct, knee bumping into the half wall. Seb pulls his hoodie lower. If anyone would recognize Sebastian Kovac, it’s hockey media.

When the last of the press box squeezes out and it’s just us and another reporter on the far end of the box, I whack his shoulder.

“You cannot do that while I’m working.” I shoot a sideways glance at him while I gather my things. “Tonight? Yes. Encouraged. Not while either of us are working.”

Seb’s head tilts a fraction. “That would be difficult while I’m working,” he says looking down at the player's bench. “It’s already tight down there. An extra body would stick out.”

“I can hold up signs. You can learn Russian for foreplay.”

“That’d be awkward as hell with Petrov, though.”

“Worth it.”

The look he gives me sends a shiver down my spine. Then his phone buzzes in his pocket. I get the boxscore dinged to mine.

Work.

Pulling us back in.