S

The dream of becoming a lawyer had started when you were young. It hadn't started glamorously, no single defining moment, no courtroom drama that changed everything. Although you really did have a knack for binge-watching shows like How to Get Away with Murder and Suits. But the real want had started with the slow, accumulating understanding that the world was not fair, and that fairness was something you had to build rather than wait for, and that the people who built it tended to know the rules better than everyone else. You had decided, young and furious, that you were going to know the rules.

Now, years later, it finally felt within reach.

Last summer you had taken the LSAT. When the score came back — 176 — you had screamed so loudly your roommate came running from the other room convinced something had happened. Something had happened. Everything had happened. Applying to Harvard had been a no-brainer after that, the natural conclusion of four years of work that had never once felt like anything other than work. To say it had all been a dream would be a lie. You had earned every grade, every internship, every recommendation letter. Every achievement had come attached to long nights and sacrificed weekends and more cups of coffee than you were prepared to account for.

Still, every now and then, you allowed yourself a moment to appreciate how far you had come.

Then you remembered the Harvard interview scheduled in just a few weeks, and the knot in your stomach returned immediately. It lived there, that knot had been living there for months, through the application and the waiting and the acceptance, through every good thing that should have dissolved it and didn't. You had stopped expecting it to go away. You had just learned to work around it.

What if you stumbled over your words? What if they asked something you couldn't answer? What if four years of work came down to one bad afternoon?

Which was exactly why Professor Whitaker's announcement nearly made you lose your mind.

The second she wrote Semester Project across the whiteboard, a collective groan spread through the lecture hall. Over the next month, students would work in pairs to complete a research project on the evolution of constitutional rights in the United States , a project worth a significant portion of the final grade.

At any other point in your college career, that would have been merely annoying.

Right now it felt catastrophic.

You could not afford for your GPA to slip. Not when Harvard was finally within reach. Not when everything you had worked for was balanced on the edge of these last few months. And that meant you absolutely could not get stuck with a partner who didn't care like a jock who only cared about a sport, someone who would contribute three bullet points to a shared document at the eleventh hour and disappear for six weeks while your entire future quietly collapsed.

The thought alone made you grimace.

So as Professor Whitaker reached for her roster and began assigning partners, you found yourself doing something you almost never did.

Praying.

"The class will be sorted according to performance on the most recent exam," Professor Whitaker announced, scanning the room over her glasses. "That way the workload stays balanced and the pairing is fair for everyone."

A few students groaned.

You sat a little straighter.

Actually, that wasn't terrible. At least now there was a reasonable chance your partner wouldn't be dead weight. You had carried enough dead weight in your academic career to last a lifetime and you were done with it.

Professor Whitaker called your name first. You looked up from your notebook on instinct, even though she already knew exactly where you were. You hated change. You liked knowing where everything was. You liked routines, systems, the quiet reliability of things being where you left them.

More importantly, you liked being good at things.

Which was why hearing that your partner would be someone on your level was oddly comforting. Most of your life had been spent balancing on a very thin line between confidence and crippling self-doubt. On good days, you knew you were intelligent. On bad days, you were convinced everyone else was smarter and better than you. The trick was not letting either version get too loud.

Professor Whitaker glanced down at her roster.

The next five seconds would remain engraved in your frontal lobe for at least thirty years.

"Dean DiLaurentis."

Silence.

Jesus H. Christ.

Your head snapped up. Not because you needed to find him. You already knew exactly where he was sitting. You always knew where he was sitting, a fact you had never examined too closely and were not going to start examining now.

Middle of the sixth row. Today he was wearing a green cardigan over a white t-shirt, looking far too comfortable for someone who had just become the source of your newest academic crisis. He was mid-conversation with Beau Maxwell when his name was called, laughing at something, completely unaware that your entire carefully managed semester had just been handed to him without his consent or yours.

Dean turned around.

Then he smiled.

That smile. The one that belonged on toothpaste advertisements and nowhere else, the smile of someone who had never once in his life worried about whether he was welcome somewhere. It was the kind of smile that assumed the answer before the question had been asked, and it had always, privately, made you want to argue with it.

His eyes found yours immediately.

The realization landed half a second later, oh, you're my partner, and his grin widened, and then, because apparently the universe had a sense of humor that you had never personally found funny:

He winked.

He actually winked.

You stared back at him with the expression of someone who had just been personally wronged by the laws of probability.

You knew Dean. Not personally, god forbid. But you knew of him, the way everyone knew of him. Hockey player. Trust fund. Chronic flirt. The kind of person who walked into a room and somehow became the room. Loud and charming and surrounded by people at all times, the social gravity of someone who had never once had to earn a seat at the table.

Meanwhile, you considered making eye contact with strangers a form of cardio.

This could not be right. There had to be a mistake. How could Dean DiLaurentis possibly have a grade comparable to yours?

You spent your Friday nights in the library. You color-coded your notes by subject, by date, by relevance. You had cried over constitutional law, like actual tears, in the bathroom of the third floor study room, alone at eleven pm because that was what it cost and you had paid it without complaint.

Dean spent his weekends at hockey games and parties.

The math simply wasn't mathing.

Unless.

Oh.

Oh, god.

He was sleeping with the TA.

That had to be it. Everything suddenly made horrifying, perfect sense. The TA was a graduate student from somewhere in the Midwest who had spoken to you exactly three times all semester, and every single interaction had felt like she was being held at gunpoint. If Dean was somehow managing to maintain a functional relationship with her —

Honestly? He deserved the extra credit for that alone.

Three months earlier, it had started.

Professor Whitaker had a specific way of running discussion that you had privately categorized as controlled chaos. She threw a question into the room and stepped back and let whoever was going to talk, talk, with the quiet authority of someone who already knew what she thought and was waiting to see if anyone else did. The lecture hall always felt different during these sessions. Bigger somehow, the overhead lights slightly too bright, the charged quality of a room full of people deciding whether to say the thing they were thinking.

You almost always said the thing you were thinking.

Today the question was about Shelley v. Kraemer.

You had opinions about Shelley v. Kraemer.

"The court got it right," you said, when Whitaker's gaze landed on you. "State enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant is state action. The fourteenth amendment doesn't care that the covenant itself was private — the moment a court steps in to enforce it, the state is complicit. You can't separate the two."

Whitaker nodded — the small, noncommittal nod that meant continue or let someone else.

"I'd push back on that a little."

You turned.

Dean had his pen between two fingers, not quite raised, the posture of someone making a point rather than asking permission. He was looking at Whitaker, not at you, which was somehow more irritating than if he had been looking at you directly. Like the argument was with the room rather than with you specifically. Like you were incidental.

"The ruling is right," he said, "but the reasoning has a ceiling. If state enforcement equals state action, you've created a framework that depends entirely on whether someone decides to litigate. The protection isn't structural, it's reactive. It only exists if someone can afford to fight for it."

The room was quiet for a moment.

You became aware, distantly, that your jaw had tightened.

"That's not a flaw in the ruling," you said. "That's a flaw in the system the ruling exists inside of."

"Sure." Dean looked at you then, for the first time. His eyes were steady, interested in a way that wasn't performative. "But you're writing a decision, not a philosophy paper. The decision has to function in the system it's handed to."

"So your position is that the court should have ruled differently because the system might not implement it correctly."

"My position is that a protection that requires money and access to activate isn't really a protection." He said it evenly, without heat. "I thought that would be something you'd agree with."

The last sentence landed differently than the rest.

Not unkind. Not pointed exactly. Just specific, in a way that implied he had thought about what you would and wouldn't agree with, which was a thing he should not have been thinking about. Which meant he had been paying attention quietly and consistently.

Whitaker moved on.

You looked back at your notes and wrote nothing for the remainder of class. Outside the lecture hall windows the sky was the flat white of a November afternoon, and you sat with the particular discomfort of someone who had just been surprised by a person they had already decided to understand.

That was when it had started. Which meant that three months later, sitting in the lecture hall watching him smile at you like you were a problem he was looking forward to solving, you did not have the excuse of not knowing better.

The lecture hall emptied in a slow, shuffling wave that you had no patience for.

You were already packing your bag when you heard him.

"So." Dean dropped into the empty seat beside yours with the casual confidence of someone who had never once been unwelcome anywhere. He turned to face you, one arm resting on the back of the chair, bringing with him the faint smell of something clean, something woody, or the cold outside air. "Partners."

"Observant," you said, without looking up from your notebook.

He made a small sound, not quite a laugh, not quite not one. You could feel him watching you with that specific brand of unhurried attention that probably worked on most people and was currently working on you in ways you were categorically refusing to acknowledge.

"We should exchange numbers," he said. "Figure out when we can meet."

"I have time Thursday afternoon." You zipped your bag closed. "After three."

"Thursday I've got practice until five." He pulled out his phone, apparently unbothered. "What about evenings?"

"Tuesdays and Thursdays I tutor until nine." You finally looked at him. "Weekends I pick up extra sessions when I can."

Something shifted in his expression, brief, almost imperceptible. Not pity. Something more like recalibration, the specific adjustment of someone updating a model they had been working from.

You watched him process it and kept your face completely neutral, the way you always did when people did the math on your schedule and realized there was no give in it, no free afternoon that existed just for the sake of existing. You didn't need him to feel bad about it. You just needed him to understand that his time was not the only time being managed here.

"Okay," Dean said, and to his credit, he didn't make it weird. "Wednesday? I'm free after two."

"I have a session at two."

"After three, then."

You considered this. "Three. Library. Third floor."

"Done." He held out his hand for your phone with the easy expectation of someone who had never once been told no and somehow, inexplicably, made that feel more like charm than arrogance.

You looked at his hand for exactly one beat longer than necessary.

Then you unlocked your phone and placed it in his palm, your fingers brushing his warm hand briefly.

"Don't put anything weird in my contacts," you said.

Dean smiled and typed with the focused, two-thumbed efficiency of someone taking the instruction very seriously.

He handed it back.

You looked down.

Dean DiLaurentis 🏒 (ur partner deal with it)

You stared at it for a long moment.

"Truly," you said, "a legal mind."

He laughed then , a real one, surprised out of him, and stood to leave, shouldering his bag. He paused at the end of the row and looked back at you with the expression of someone who was about to say something and had decided against it.

"Wednesday, then."

"Wednesday," you confirmed, already looking back at your notes.

You did not watch him go.

You listened to his footsteps until you couldn't anymore and then looked back at your notebook and found the page completely blank.

By the time Wednesday rolled around, you had done the mental gymnastics of calculating exactly how much this project was going to cost you. Not much, you had decided. You were already at maximum stress capacity between the Harvard interview and the end of semester closing in, so there was simply no room left for anything Dean DiLaurentis-related to take up residence.

This was the conclusion you had reached.

You woke up early anyway, restless, and got ready with the focused efficiency of someone who was absolutely not anxious about a study session. In the kitchen, Elisa was at the stove, hair still in a braid from the night before, doing something that smelled like butter and brown sugar.

"Morning, sugar plum." She turned and pointed her spatula in your direction. "Do you want to have breakfast with me?"

Elisa was the easiest person you had ever lived with, which was not something you said lightly. You had moved into her house sophomore year knowing no one and she had made you feel like you had been there the whole time. Wednesdays were her day off no classes, no obligations, and she spent them cooking elaborate things and playing at domesticity in a way that you found deeply comforting. She called them the Tradwife Wednesdays, in a joking manner.

"I can't, I have a class I can't miss." You grabbed your bag from the hook by the door. "Sorry."

"That's okay." She stirred something. "Are you coming back for lunch? I'm trying a new caesar salad recipe I found on TikTok. Caesar 2.0."

"I can't do lunch either. I have a study session at noon."

"Bring your partner. We can all have caesar salad 2.0."

"My partner is —" you paused, already regretting what you were about to say — "Dean DiLaurentis."

Elisa put down the spatula.

"Shut up."

"I'm not going to —"

"No way. You hate him."

"I don't hate him."

"Despise, then."

"Not even that." You pulled on your jacket. "I don't care about him at all. He just exists in the same world as me."

"Sure," Elisa said, in the tone she used when she was humoring you. She picked up the spatula again. "Ask him if he remembers our little trip in the Mystery Machine."

"Goodbye, Elisa."

"Caesar salad is on the table if you change your —"

You closed the door.

session one

He was already there when you arrived.

That was the first thing that threw you off, small and inconvenient, the kind of detail that shouldn't matter and did anyway. Dean DiLaurentis, sitting at the table you had specifically chosen because it was tucked into the back corner of the third floor, away from foot traffic and group study noise and every possible social distraction. You had chosen it because it was your table, the one you came to when you needed to actually work, claimed over three years of afternoons and late nights. The carpet near the window had a worn patch from your chair. You knew which overhead light buzzed slightly and had learned to tune it out.

He was sitting in your chair.

He had a coffee on each side of the table.

Two coffees.

You stopped.

"I didn't know your order," he said, not looking up. "So I got you black. You seem like a black coffee person."

You were a black coffee person.

You sat down without commenting on it and pulled out your laptop.

"I started an outline," Dean said. "Sent it to your email."

You opened it without responding. It was actually structured. Clean headers, logical progression. You stared at it for a moment longer than you intended, turning it over, looking for the flaw. There wasn't one.

"You cited Marbury v. Madison in the intro," you said.

"It's foundational."

"It's also the first thing every professor expects to see. It makes us look like we opened the textbook once and called it a day."

He looked up then. "So where would you put it?"

"Section three. After we've established the framework."

Dean looked at the outline. Then back at you. "...Yeah, okay."

You pulled it up on your own screen and started restructuring. He watched for a second, then turned back to his own laptop without making it a thing, and something about that: the absence of wounded ego, the lack of argument, the simple yeah, okay, was quietly unexpected.

You worked in silence for a while. A real silence, the functional kind, punctuated only by typing and the occasional ambient noise of the floor around you, someone whispering two tables over, the elevator arriving and departing, the hush of a library in the afternoon when the day outside has gone grey.

At some point he shifted in his seat and his foot knocked against yours under the table. He pulled it back immediately, said a distracted sorry without looking up, and kept typing.

You looked back at your screen.

Ten minutes later it happened again his foot finding yours under the table, settling against it with the absent, unthinking quality of someone who wasn't paying attention to their own body. This time he didn't notice. Or didn't move. You couldn't tell which.

You didn't move either.

You looked at your screen and read the same sentence four times and told yourself it was nothing, the table was small, it meant nothing at all.

His ankle was warm against yours for the rest of the session.

An hour passed, and then another. The coffee went cold. The light through the window shifted from afternoon grey to early evening grey, and you were deep enough in the due process section that you had stopped noticing either.

"Take a break," Dean said, without looking up.

"I don't need a break."

"You've reread that page four times."

You looked up. He was still looking at his notes, which meant he had been paying attention to you without appearing to pay attention to you, which was somehow worse than if he had just been watching you openly.

You closed the case study.

"Fine," you said. "Break."

Dean leaned back in his chair all the way back, with the easy, unhurried comfort of someone who had never had to fight for a seat at any table he wanted to sit at. You had noticed that about him early, the specific posture of someone for whom things had always been available, every room an environment that had been pre-adjusted to suit him. It was the kind of thing that was difficult not to notice when you had spent your entire life doing the opposite.

"You know," you said, mostly because the silence was starting to feel companionable in a way you weren't ready for, "you hooked up with a friend of mine once."

Dean looked up. Something shifted in his expression mild interest, maybe the faintest trace of wariness. "Oh really."

"Daphne."

A pause. He turned the name over, and you watched the moment he didn't find it.

"I don't remember," he said.

"She was dressed as Daphne for Halloween. You were, surprisingly, dressed as Fred."

Something cleared in his expression. "Halloween two years ago?"

"That would be the one."

He considered this with the equanimity of someone who had made peace with a certain kind of personal history. "Can I ask why you're bringing this up?"

"No particular reason." You picked up your cold coffee. "Can you even remember her name?"

"I just said I couldn't."

"Right." You set the coffee back down. "Well. For the record."

Dean looked at you for a moment with the expression you were already starting to recognize the one that meant he was deciding whether to say the thing he was thinking. He usually said it.

"You know," he said, "you hooked up with a friend of mine too."

You kept your expression very neutral. "Did I."

"Garrett."

"We made out at a party freshman year," you said, with the patience of someone correcting a factual error. "Did he tell you we hooked up?"

"He didn't say anything." Dean's mouth curved slightly. "I saw you two leaving and made an assumption."

"A wrong one."

"Clearly." He tilted his head. "So. Has Daphne said anything? About her experience."

You considered the question with the gravity it deserved.

"She tried to tell me," you said. "I didn't want to hear it."

"So she didn't give a great review."

"Ravishing," you said pleasantly. "It almost made me want to sleep with you too." You paused. "But then I remembered I have something called self-respect."

Dean laughed a real one, sudden and unguarded. It was, you noted with some irritation, a genuinely good laugh. Warm and surprised, the laugh of someone who had not seen it coming and was delighted by that fact. The kind of laugh that made you want to have caused it again.

"That's funny," he said.

"I know."

He was still smiling when he looked back down at his notes. You looked back at your case study. The library settled back into its particular silence the low buzz of the overhead light, the distant elevator, thirty people pretending they weren't exhausted but something had shifted in the quality of it. Imperceptibly, the way temperature changes in a room before anyone acknowledges it's warmer.

You didn't say anything about it.

Neither did he.

Twenty minutes later he slid his notes across the table, pointing out something you had missed without making it feel like a correction. You leaned in to look without thinking about leaning in and then you were close, closer than you had been all session, his shoulder warm against yours, and you could see the slight curl of his handwriting on the page and the way his finger traced the line he was pointing to, and you became aware very suddenly of his hands. How big they were. How deliberate.

You had not thought about his hands before. Or you had thought about them in passing and moved on. But up close, right now, pointing at a citation on a page they were careful and unhurried, the kind that did things with attention.

You looked at the citation.

"You're right," you said. "Good catch."

He glanced at you sideways, briefly, with that expression.

You both looked back at the page.

Neither of you moved away.

It was near the end of the session when it happened. You were flagging sources, half your attention on the screen, the room around you reduced to the low hum of concentration, when Dean said, mostly to himself, still reading:

"You always sit in the same seat."

You glanced up. "What?"

He seemed to catch himself, just barely, a slight tensing around his jaw. "In Whitaker's class. Third row, right side, second from the aisle. Every lecture."

The air shifted in a way that was difficult to name. Outside the library window the sky had gone fully dark, the glass reflecting the room back at you, two people at a table, closer than they had been three hours ago, the space between them negotiated down to nothing without either of them signing off on it.

"I like consistency," you said, after a beat.

"Yeah." He looked back at his screen. Something in his jaw had gone slightly careful. "I know."

I know.

Two words. Completely neutral on the surface and yet carrying the specific weight of something that had not been meant to be said out loud. Not an admission exactly. More like a door opened a half-inch before he caught it and eased it shut , slowly enough that you both knew it had moved.

You looked at him for a moment.

He did not look back up.

"We should finish the first amendment section," you said.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Probably."

You both looked at your screens.

Neither of you said anything else about it.

You packed up at eight-fifteen, twenty minutes later than planned. The third floor was empty by then, the overhead lights on their late setting. You walked to the elevator in a silence that had become, somewhere in the last six hours, a different kind of silence entirely, not neutral, not loaded, just inhabited.

In the elevator he stood beside you with his shoulder against yours, the same way it had been at the table, and neither of you shifted. The floor numbers climbed down. You looked straight ahead.

His ankle had been warm against yours for three hours and you had not moved away once.

You filed that under the place where you kept everything you weren't ready to examine yet.

session two

The second study session had started with considerably less hostility than the first, which you were choosing not to read into.

It was late afternoon again, the library emptying out around you as people made the reasonable decision to leave, and you and Dean had been working for three hours straight with the focused efficiency of two people who were both too competitive to be the first to suggest stopping. The case briefs were spread across the table in a system that was half yours and half his and somehow, irritatingly, better than either would have been alone. Your color-coded tabs and his margin notes. Your precision and his instinct for where an argument wanted to go.

You had noticed that yesterday too. Filed it away.

What you had not filed away or had tried to and failed was the moment an hour into the session when he had reached across you to grab a case brief from your side of the table without asking, and his arm had crossed in front of you close enough that you felt the warmth of it before it was gone. He hadn't noticed. He had grabbed the brief and gone back to his side of the table and kept reading, completely unaware.

You had read the same paragraph for twelve minutes after that.

"Okay," Dean said, dropping his pen and leaning back. "Break."

"We just had a break."

"That was an hour ago."

You looked at the time. It had been an hour and twenty minutes, which meant you had lost track of time, which meant you had been absorbed enough in the work — in the conversation around the work, the back and forth of it, the way he argued a point and actually listened when you argued back — that the time had disappeared without asking permission.

You put your pen down.

"Fine," you said. "Break."

Dean stretched his arms above his head with the unselfconscious ease of someone completely comfortable in his own body, the cardigan riding up slightly, a sliver of skin at his waist, the line of his shoulders, the way his head fell back for a moment, which you observed in a purely detached and analytical capacity and then looked at the ceiling.

"So," he said. "Harvard Law."

"What about it."

"That's the goal?"

"That's the goal," you confirmed.

He nodded slowly, with an expression that was hard to read. Then, in a voice of complete casual confidence: "What, like it's hard?"

You turned to look at him.

He was already smiling.

"That's the second time today," you said, "that you have made a Legally Blonde reference."

"Is it?"

"You quoted it earlier when I said the admissions rate was three percent."

"I don't remember that."

"Dean."

"It's a great film."

You looked at him for a moment. "Is it your favorite movie?"

"Top two," he said, without hesitation. "Just after Top Gun."

You stared at him. Dean DiLaurentis. Hockey player, pre-law, top of the class, sitting in the library surrounded by case briefs, whose top two films were Legally Blonde and Top Gun.

"God," you said.

He laughed. "What?"

"Nothing." You picked up your pen. "It explains a lot actually."

"Does it."

"The confidence," you said, gesturing vaguely at him. "The hair. The complete inability to walk into a room without knowing exactly how you're going to be received." You paused. "You've watched both of those films a concerning number of times, haven't you."

Dean pointed at you. "Elle Woods and Pete Mitchell are two of the most —"

"Please don't finish that sentence."

"— compelling character studies in the history of American cinema."

You laughed and put your head down on the table.

His laugh was warm and close and you could feel it more than hear it, and when you looked up he was leaning on his elbow facing you — close, comfortable in the way he had gotten over the past two sessions, close enough that you could see the specific color of his eyes in the library light, and the way they crinkled at the corners when he was actually amused rather than performing it. The late afternoon light was doing something completely unreasonable to his face — the angles of it, the warmth of it, and you looked back at your notes with the focused energy of someone making a deliberate choice.

"Back to work," you said.

"Back to work," he agreed.

But he was still smiling when he turned back to his notes, and you were very carefully not smiling, and the library was quiet around you in that way it had been yesterday, warmer than it should have been, the silence between you easier than it had any right to be.

Top two, you thought, against your will. Just after Top Gun.

God help you.

You made it another forty minutes before it went sideways.

It started, as these things often did, over something small.

Dean wanted to include a law review article you thought was analytically weak. You had said so. He had disagreed. It had escalated with the particular efficiency of two people who were very good at arguing and had been carefully not arguing for weeks, the pressure of it finding the first available exit.

"It's not a weak source," Dean said, for the second time. "You just don't like the conclusion."

"I don't like the conclusion because the methodology doesn't support it. There's a difference."

"You've said that. You haven't explained it."

"I sent you three paragraphs —"

"You sent me three paragraphs about why you were right," he said. "That's not the same thing."

You looked up from your laptop. He was looking back at you with the expression that meant he was done being patient, and something about that, the specific quality of it, the fact that he was allowed to be done being patient when you had been managing your frustration for weeks —

"You know what, it doesn't matter," you said. "Include it. It's fine."

"Don't do that."

"Do what."

"Shut down and say it's fine when it's not fine." He closed his laptop halfway. "If you have a problem with the source, say it."

"I have a problem with a lot of things," you said, and it came out with an edge you hadn't entirely intended. "I have a problem with the fact that I have no idea how much of this grade I'm actually carrying."

The air in the room changed entirely. The low buzz of the overhead light was suddenly very audible.

Dean went very still. "What does that mean."

It means I've been doing this alone my whole life and I don't know how to stop assuming I'm about to have to do it again. That was what it meant. That was not what came out.

"It means," you said, and your voice was measured in the way it got when you were saying something you couldn't take back, "that I don't actually know how you scored high enough on that exam to get paired with me."

Silence.

Dean looked at you. Something moved behind his eyes, not hurt exactly. The thing that came just before.

"Say what you mean," he said quietly.

And because you were frustrated and tired and the Harvard interview was in two weeks and you had been holding this assumption for long enough that it had started to feel like fact —

"I thought maybe you were sleeping with the TA."

The silence that followed was a different kind entirely. Heavy and still, the kind that has a shape.

Dean sat back. He looked at you for a long moment with an expression you had never seen on him before — not the easy charm, not the careful attention, not the almost-smile. Something stripped of all of that, all the way down.

"I got a ninety-four on that exam," he said. "I got a ninety-four because I studied for it. I study for all of them." A pause. Each word placed with precision. "I know you think I'm here because of my last name or my hockey stats or whoever you've decided I'm sleeping with. I know that's easier than just —" he stopped. Exhaled slowly. "I've been doing the work. I've been here every session. I don't know what else you want from me."

You opened your mouth.

"And the TA," he said, " she has a girlfriend. So."

He opened his laptop again. The sound of it was very loud in the quiet room.

You looked at your screen. The cursor blinked in the document you had been sharing for two weeks, both your names in the top corner. You were acutely, uncomfortably aware of the specific kind of wrong you had just been.

Not about the source.

About him.

"Dean —"

"First amendment section," he said. Not cold. Not cruel. Just done. "Let's just finish."

You looked at him for a moment.

"Yeah," you said quietly. "Okay."

The Legally Blonde conversation felt like it had happened in a different library entirely.

Top two, he had said, and laughed, and looked at you like you were something worth looking at.

You stared at the cursor and said nothing else.

Neither did he.

session three

The third session was on a Tuesday.

You knew because Tuesdays you tutored until nine, which meant you had come straight from the library's second floor where you had spent an hour and a half walking a freshman through the commerce clause, and you were tired in the specific way of someone who had been performing competence for other people all day and had very little left over for themselves.

You had also been thinking about what you said for five days straight.

Not continuously. Like something that sits in the back of your mind and surfaces at inconvenient moments — in the shower, between tutoring sessions, at two in the morning when you should have been sleeping and instead were staring at the ceiling cataloguing every assumption you had ever made about Dean DiLaurentis and finding most of them wanting. I thought maybe you were sleeping with the TA. The words had a particular quality in retrospect, the quality of something that could not be unsaid, that existed now in the permanent record of things he knew about you.

You pushed open the door to the third floor reading room and told yourself you were fine.

Dean was already there.

Of course he was. He was always already there, with his laptop open and his notes spread out in the handwriting you had become, against your will, familiar with, slightly left-leaning, inconsistent spacing, somehow completely legible. He looked up when you came in. The room smelled like old paper and the particular warmth of a space that had been occupied for a while, and the overhead light buzzed its familiar note.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," you said back.

You sat down. Not beside him, you took the chair across the table, the one you had started in, back when the table felt like a neutral territory that required a border. You pulled out your laptop and opened the shared document and did not look at him.

He did not comment on the seating arrangement.

That was somehow worse than if he had.

You worked. The session had the functional efficiency of two people who were both too professional to let personal things affect the work, which meant the work was fine and everything around it was not. He passed you sources without commentary. You flagged edits without explanation. The back and forth that had become almost conversational — the small arguments, the digressions, the way he said okay when you made a point he couldn't refute — was gone.

The overhead light buzzed. Someone turned a page three tables over.

Around the forty-minute mark he said, "the due process section needs another source."

"I know," you said. "I'm looking."

"I found one this morning. Sent it to your email."

"I haven't checked yet."

"It's good."

"Okay."

Silence.

You checked your email. The source was good. You added it to the document without saying so and heard, very faintly, the sound of him exhaling.

An hour passed like that.

You had just pulled up a new case brief when Dean leaned back in his chair and said, to no one in particular, "I don't actually care about the TA."

You looked up.

He was looking at the ceiling, not at you, with the expression of someone who had decided to say a thing and was committed to the delivery. "I just want you to know that. In case it was still sitting there."

Outside the library window, the campus was dark and wet with recent rain, the paths lit amber under the streetlights.

"It was sitting there," you admitted.

"Yeah." He brought his gaze down to his notes. "I figured."

"Dean —"

"You don't have to." He said it simply, without edge. "I'm fine. I just didn't want it to be weird for the rest of the semester."

"It's already a little weird," you said.

"I know."

Another silence — but this one had more air in it, the quality of a silence that had been cleared rather than accumulated.

"I'm going to apologize properly," you said. "I just haven't figured out how yet."

Dean was quiet for a moment. Then, very carefully, not quite a smile: "Does it involve food."

You said nothing.

"It does," he said. "Okay."

"Back to work," you said.

"Back to work."

You heard her before you saw her.

The click of heels on library floor that had nothing to do with studying, moving with the purposeful energy of someone who had a destination and knew exactly what they wanted when they got there. You didn't look up. You were in the middle of a paragraph and you had a system and you were not going to lose your place.

The heels stopped at your table.

"Hey." Not directed at you. You turned a page. "I've been looking for you."

"Hey." Dean's voice, easy and careful. "Didn't know you were on campus today."

"I wasn't. Now I am." A pause with a specific texture. "Come outside for like five minutes."

"I can't right now, we're working."

We. You noted the word and kept reading.

"Five minutes," she said again. "It's not a big deal."

"I know it's not. I just can't right now."

You turned another page. The paragraph was about tort law and you had read the same sentence three times and retained nothing.

"Dean —"

"Seriously." His voice was still easy but there was something underneath it now, something with weight. "I'll text you later, okay?"

A silence. The kind that meant she was deciding something.

"Who even is she?" The question was directed at you. You looked up for the first time, because that was directed at you, and you had opinions about being spoken about in the third person by someone standing four feet away.

The girl was pretty in the specific, polished way of someone who had never had to try very hard at it. She was looking at you with an expression that was more curious than hostile, which somehow made it worse.

"His project partner," you said pleasantly. "We have a deadline."

"It's literally five minutes —"

"We're aware of how long five minutes is," you said, in the tone you had been practicing for courtrooms. "He said he'll text you. The reading room is a shared space and we're trying to work, so." You smiled. "Thank you."

The girl looked at you. Looked at Dean. Looked back at you with an expression that had shifted into something more speculative, something that said she understood more than you had intended to reveal.

Then she left.

The heels clicked back across the library floor and faded, and the room settled back into its particular silence, and you looked back at your notes with the focused energy of someone who had not just done what they had just done.

From across the table, nothing.

You turned a page.

More nothing.

You looked up.

Dean was looking at his notes with the carefully neutral expression of someone using every available resource not to smile.

"What," you said.

"Nothing."

"Say whatever you're going to say."

"I'm not going to say anything."

"Dean."

"I'm just —" He pressed his mouth closed. The not-smile was winning. "Thank you for your help."

"I didn't do it for you," you said immediately. "She was interrupting. It was annoying."

"Completely understandable."

"I would have done the same for anyone."

"Of course."

"It had nothing to do with —" You stopped. "We have three more pages to get through."

"We do," Dean agreed, in the voice of someone being very, very agreeable.

You looked back at your notes.

I would have done the same for anyone.

You were a pre-law student. You were supposed to be good at arguments.

That one had convinced neither of you.

You packed up at nine-fifteen, later than planned, and Dean walked out with you the way he had started doing without either of you deciding he would.

"She's no one," Dean said, when the elevator arrived. Not defensive. Just offered.

You stepped inside. "You don't have to explain yourself to me."

"I know." The doors closed. "I wanted to anyway."

You looked at the floor number climbing. He looked straight ahead. The elevator was small and you were standing close , his arm against yours, the cedar smell of him in the enclosed space, and something about the cleared air of the session, the I'm going to apologize properly, the we he had said without thinking, settled between you like something that had decided to stay.

The doors opened.

"Wednesday," you said.

"Wednesday," he confirmed.

You walked out into the night and did not look back.

You were going to need a very good cake.

session four

It was week four of the project, and Dean had gone back to sitting beside you, in the most inconspicuous way possible.

It had been gradual and deniable at every individual step. First the chair had been angled slightly toward yours. Then it had migrated. Now your thighs brushed every time either of you shifted, and you were acutely, unhelpfully aware of the warmth of his forearm against yours, the cedar-and-cold-air smell of him that you had catalogued in the first session and had been trying unsuccessfully to un-catalogue since.

Things had been a little strange since the fight.

The fight you had caused. With assumptions you had made. About a TA who, it turned out, had a girlfriend.

You had settled, eventually, on cake — specifically the lemon cake Elisa had made that morning, wrapped in foil and sitting on the table between your laptops like a small citrus-scented olive branch, which Dean had looked at when you arrived and had not yet commented on.

You had not told him it was Elisa's. You were not going to examine why.

"So," you started.

Dean looked up from his laptop.

"I would like to apologize."

He held your gaze for a moment. Something in his expression shifted — careful, like he was deciding how much to give you. "It's okay."

"It really isn't, Dean." You turned to face him, which was a tactical error because it meant you were now very close to him, close enough that you could see the dark blue of his eyes in the library light, and the soft fabric of the cardigan where your knee was almost touching his. "I made assumptions. I think the worst of people sometimes and I let it get ahead of me. You've been doing the work. I knew that and I said it anyway. That wasn't fair."

Dean looked at you for a long moment.

"It's truly okay," he said quiet and uncomplicated, completely without performance. "I get it. I know what it looks like from the outside."

"That doesn't make it okay."

"No," he said. "But it makes it understandable."

You looked at him. He looked back at you. The study room was very quiet, the overhead light doing its particular low buzz, the air carrying old paper and coffee and the warm-wool smell of his cardigan.

"The cake is Elisa's," you said, because you needed to say something. "My roommate. She made it this morning and I brought it."

Dean's mouth curved. "You brought me a peace offering."

"I brought us a snack."

"A lemon cake wrapped in foil."

"We've been here three hours."

"That," he said, "is the most you thing I've ever heard." He reached over and broke off a piece without ceremony, and you watched his hands doing it those careful, deliberate and huge hands of his, and felt something tighten somewhere that you immediately filed under irrelevant.

"Good?" you asked.

"Really good." He looked at you with the quiet expression, the one that sat closer to the surface. "Tell Elisa thank you."

"Tell her yourself," you said, and then realized what that implied, and looked back at your laptop.

Dean didn't say anything.

But he didn't look away.

You worked. The tension in the room had changed quality, no longer the awkward residue of an unresolved argument, something else now, something that had been building for four weeks and was running out of places to go. You were aware of him the way you had been aware of him since that first session, the warmth of his arm against yours, the sound of his breathing in the quiet room, the way he tucked the pen behind his ear when he was reading something carefully.

You were looking at your screen. You were not reading anything on it.

He shifted beside you. His knee pressed against yours under the table, not accidentally, not with the absent quality of the foot under the table in session one, but deliberately, with the specific patience of someone making a point without words.

You looked at your screen.

His knee stayed where it was.

Fine, you thought. Fine.

You did not move away.

Another twenty minutes passed like that, both of you working, neither of you acknowledging the point of contact, the room very warm and very quiet. And then Dean reached over, not for a case brief this time, his hand finding yours on the table, covering it, not grabbing, just resting there. Still. Like a question asked very quietly.

You looked down at his hand on yours.

You looked up at him.

He was already looking at you and he didn't say anything, didn't push, just held your gaze with the patience of someone who had been waiting for a while and had decided to stop waiting quietly.

You turned your hand over under his.

Something shifted in his face. Not the smile, something more careful than that, something that meant more.

Then his hand came up slowly, fingers brushing your jaw, turning your face toward his unhurried, giving you every opportunity to move.

You didn't move.

His eyes met yours — a question, patient and certain — and you answered it by closing your eyes and leaning in, and then his mouth was on yours.

You had kissed people before.

This was categorically different.

It started soft and then didn't stay that way. His hand slid into your hair and yours found the front of his cardigan — soft wool under your fingers, the solid warmth of him underneath — and when his tongue met yours you made a sound you were going to spend considerable time not thinking about.

The kiss was unhurried. Calculated in the best possible way. Dean kissed you like he had all the time in the world, and when air became a necessary concern he pulled back smiling, pressed a soft peck to your lips, and began a slow trail of kisses along your jaw and down your neck.

His mouth was warm on your neck, lips dragging slow enough to make your breath catch, and his hand slid down your thigh with a deliberate patience that made it very clear he was in no hurry whatsoever.

You pulled his hair and got a low, rough sound against your skin in return, and then his hand found your waist and pulled, dragging you onto his lap until you were straddling him and there was no distance left to negotiate.

You could feel exactly what four weeks of thighs brushing and careful silences had done to him.

Dean — you heard yourself saying. Dean, Dean —

Your hands had found their way under his shirt, palms flat against his stomach, and when you dragged your nails lightly down his skin he smiled against your mouth and rolled his hips up into yours with a slow, pointed pressure that dissolved whatever thought you'd been forming completely.

A loud, deliberate cough came from the doorway.

Mrs. Miller, the night librarian, stood in the entrance with the expression of a woman who had seen too much and was being paid nowhere near enough.

You scrambled back. Dean straightened. A beat of absolute silence.

"We're leaving," you said, with as much dignity as the situation permitted. "We're so sorry, Mrs. Miller."

Mrs. Miller said nothing. She held the door open with the energy of someone who had made peace with humanity's worst impulses but did not have to enjoy them.

You gathered your things in record time. Dean had the audacity to look almost completely composed, which was deeply unfair given the state of his hair, which was your fault. You looked away.

Outside in the hallway you made it three steps before he said:

"So."

"Don't."

"I was just going to —"

"I know what you were going to say."

A pause. Then, with great personal restraint: "Okay."

You made it to the elevator before you looked at him. He was already looking at you.

"The cake was really good," he said.

"Shut up, Dean."

He laughed. The elevator doors closed. You stood in the small lit space of it with your shoulders touching and said nothing else the whole way down.

You were both smiling though.

session five

The fifth session was on a Wednesday.

You had been avoiding him since the awkward encounter with Mrs. Miller.

Not obviously, you were too disciplined for obvious. You had shown up to every class, done every piece of work, responded to every text within a reasonable time. You had simply pulled back the parts of yourself that had started, over four weeks of thighs brushing and functional silences and one extremely ill-advised study room incident, to lean toward him without permission.

You were good at pulling back. You had been doing it your whole life.

The third floor smelled like old paper and the warmth of a space occupied all day, the radiator ticking in the corner, the last of the evening light grey through the windows. Dean was already at the table. He looked up when you came in. You sat across from him, the original position, the border re-established, and he looked at it and then looked at his laptop and said nothing.

You worked.

The project was almost finished. This was the last session, a conclusion, a bibliography built jointly over five weeks, your color-coded tabs and his margin notes. It was good work. You were going to get an A on this project.

You were also going to have no reason to sit in this library with Dean DiLaurentis after next week.

You were not examining that.

"We need to talk about the conclusion," Dean said, around the hour mark.

"I know. I drafted something last night, it's in the doc."

He found it. Read it. Was quiet for long enough that you looked up.

"It's good," he said.

"I know."

Another silence. He wasn't reading anymore.

"Are you going to keep doing this," he said, "or."

"Doing what."

"You know what."

"Dean —"

"Because I can." Simply, without heat. "If that's what you want, I can pretend that kiss didn't happen and we finish the project and that's it. I'm not going to make it weird." A pause. "Weirder."

You said nothing. Outside the window the campus was dark and wet, the paths amber-lit below.

"But I'd like to know," he said, "so I can stop waiting for you to tell me."

The library was very quiet. The radiator ticked. The overhead light buzzed.

"It's not that simple," you said finally.

"Okay." He waited.

"I have the Harvard interview in four days. I have a GPA I cannot let slip. I cannot afford to be distracted by —" you stopped.

"By me," he said.

"By anything."

He was quiet. "That's fair."

"And you don't —" you stopped. Started over. "You don't do this. Whatever this would be. I've heard enough to know that's not something you do. Rollercoaster ride or something like that."

Dean looked at you then. Fully, the way he didn't always let himself — all the way, no management.

"What have you heard," he said.

"Dean."

"No. Specifically."

You met his gaze. "That you don't do relationships. That it's always casual. That you're consistent about that."

He held your gaze.

"That was true," he said. "For a long time that was true."

"And now?"

He looked at you like the answer was obvious and he was simply waiting for you to arrive at it, with the patience of someone who had been waiting for a while.

You looked back at your laptop. Your chest felt tight. You had spent five weeks building a careful wall and he had just put his hand flat against it and pushed, gently, without drama, without raising his voice.

The same way he had put his hand over yours on the table.

Just resting there. Like a question asked very quietly.

"Four more pages," you said.

Dean was quiet for a beat.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

You both looked at your screens.

You finished the project.

Professor Whitaker announced the grades on a Thursday morning.

You were in your seat when she read them out.

A plus.

You looked up. Dean was already looking at you from the sixth row, and the smile on his face was the quiet one, the one you had catalogued in week two and had been trying not to think about since. It crossed the room and landed somewhere specific.

You gathered your things after class with the focused efficiency of someone with somewhere to be, and you almost made it to the door.

"Hey." He fell into step beside you in the hallway, easy and unhurried, bringing with him the cedar smell. "A plus."

"A plus," you confirmed.

"Told you the Marbury placement was better in section three."

"That was my idea."

"I agreed with it enthusiastically."

"You said yeah, okay and went back to your laptop."

"Enthusiastically," he repeated.

You stopped walking. The hallway moved around you, students flowing past, and Dean stopped too, and you were standing in the middle of it looking at him.

You had done it. You had actually done it. Four years of work and one extremely stressful semester and a project partner you had spent the first two weeks convinced was going to ruin everything, and you had gotten an A plus and the Harvard interview was tomorrow.

The knot in your stomach, which had lived there so long you had stopped noticing it, was gone.

Dean was looking at you with an expression that had gone soft in a way you weren't ready for.

You hugged him.

You weren't sure you had decided to. Your arms were around him and his were around you a half second later, one hand flat between your shoulder blades, and he was warm and solid and smelled so good, and you stayed there for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

The hallway moved around you. Neither of you moved.

When you pulled back he was still looking at you.

"Good luck tomorrow," he said quietly. "You don't need it. But good luck."

You nodded. Looked at him for one more second.

Then you walked away.

You made it to the end of the hallway before you thought —

oh.

oh no.

And kept walking anyway.

the wednesday after

The Wednesday after the interview, you were in the kitchen with Elisa when the doorbell rang.

Elisa looked at you. You looked at Elisa.

"Are you expecting someone?" she asked.

"No."

"Should I get it?"

"I'll get it," you said, in the tone of someone who had a feeling.

You opened the door.

Dean DiLaurentis was standing on your porch in a green cardigan — of course he was, he owned approximately nine of them — holding grocery store flowers and a DVD copy of Legally Blonde.

You stared at him.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"I heard the interview went well."

"How did you hear that."

"Beau knows your roommate apparently."

You were going to have words with Elisa. "It went well," you confirmed.

"Good." He held out the flowers. The stems were slightly damp from the cold outside. "These are for you."

You took them. "And the DVD."

"Also for you."

"Dean." You looked at him. "I don't own a DVD player."

Something flickered in his expression, that almost-smile. "I know."

"So this is."

"A reason to invite me in," he said simply. "So we can watch it on your laptop. If you want."

"My laptop also doesn't have a DVD player."

He made a gesture as if to throw the DVD across the lawn, which made you laugh despite yourself.

You looked at him standing on your porch and thought about five weeks of sessions, the foot under the table, the arm reaching across you, the knee pressed deliberately against yours, the hand resting over yours on the table, quiet as a question.

"You drove here," you said, "with a DVD."

"I did."

"That's extremely old fashioned. You might as well stand under my window with a boombox playing George Michael."

"If that's what you want."

"Most people would have just texted."

"I'm not most people," he said, simply, without needing anyone to confirm it.

You stepped back from the door.

"Elisa made caesar salad," you said. "She's been waiting for an excuse to feed someone new."

Dean stepped inside. The warmth of the house closed around him.

"I love caesar salad," he said.

"I know you do," you said, closing the door. "It's very you. That and like, Steak Tartare."

"What's wrong with Steak Tartare?"

Elisa lasted forty-five minutes before she announced she was going to her boyfriend's and picked up her keys with the energy of someone who had orchestrated something and was not going to pretend otherwise. You did not look at Dean when she left. You heard the door close and the house settle into quiet and then it was just the two of you on the couch with the TV on and Elle Woods on the screen, his arm warm along the back of the cushion behind you, close enough that you could feel the heat of it without it quite touching.

You had made it approximately eleven minutes into the film.

"I got in," you said, to the screen.

Dean went still.

"The interview —" you stopped. The room was very quiet. The lamp on the side table cast everything amber, warmer than the library had ever been. "They called this morning. I got in."

A beat of silence.

"Harvard," he said.

"Harvard," you confirmed.

Another beat, long enough that you turned to look at him. He was already looking at you.

"I knew you would," he said.

And then he kissed you.

It felt like something he had been waiting to do since the door opened, like Elisa leaving had simply removed the last obstacle between the moment and itself. His lips were on yours immediately, and Dean tasted like mint, and you found yourself wondering distantly if he had come here prepared for this, if this was always how tonight was supposed to end.

He didn't kiss like a careful person. His tongue was thorough and consuming and somewhere in the back of your mind you remembered that cliché about tongues fighting for dominance, that was what Dean was doing, except you found you had absolutely no desire to fight him for it. You would give him whatever he wanted.

Your hands found his shoulders. His found your waist, your thighs, and then settled, decisively, with intent, on your ass. An ass man, you noted, which tracked completely. He pulled you closer and you went willingly, swinging one leg over his knees until you were straddling him. He groaned in satisfaction, his hands pulling you flush against him, his hips rising to meet yours.

Air became a problem. You pulled back, opening your eyes, and found Dean with his eyes still closed, already searching for your mouth again. You gave him a small peck, then made a slow path of kisses from his mouth to his ear to his neck.

On his neck you bit him, lightly, experimentally, and the response was immediate. His hand came down on your ass in a sharp reflexive slap that startled a breathless laugh out of you. Through your skirt and his jeans you could feel exactly how much he was enjoying this, and you rolled your hips deliberately. The sound that came out of him made you stop entirely.

God. You wanted to hear that sound on repeat for the foreseeable future.

He seemed to resurface from wherever he had gone, and then he was standing, actually standing, with you in his arms, your legs wrapping automatically around his back.

"So," he started, eyes dropping to your mouth in a way that was frankly unfair. "Where's your bedroom?"

"Up the stairs, first door on the left," you answered against his neck, punctuating it with another bite.

"Stop teasing me or I'll drop you."

As a direct response you attempted to suck a mark into his neck. He fake-stumbled dramatically on the first step, which made you shriek and then immediately muffle it, and he laughed, low and warm and entirely too pleased with himself.

"I told you," he said.

You made it to your bedroom, and you silently praised the rare burst of energy that had led you to tidy it the night before. He dropped you onto the bed and you propped yourself up on your elbows and watched him pull off his cardigan and then the white shirt underneath.

You let out a slow whistle.

Hockey had been very, very good to him.

"Has anyone ever told you you're kind of annoying?" he said, dropping to his knees at the foot of the bed and pushing your legs open. His eyes went to your underwear. Something in his expression softened. "Cute underwear."

"Only this blond guy I'm sort of into," you said, focusing very hard on something other than what was about to happen. "And I wasn't planning on sleeping with anyone today, hence the polka dot Snoopy panties."

"No, I genuinely think they're cute," he said, and pressed a kiss to your clothed center that made your breath catch. "But they do have to go."

He hooked his fingers in the waistband and pulled them down, and then — you watched, incredulous — tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans.

"Absolutely not —"

"Focus," he said.

"You're so wet," Dean murmured, his gaze on you in a way that made you feel simultaneously embarrassed and triumphant. He kissed the inside of your knee, your inner thigh, everywhere except where you needed him. "All from just kissing?"

"Stop teasing," you whined.

"Not so funny anymore, is it."

"Please, Dean —"

"Please?" He looked up at you, and the expression on his face was criminal. "So you're telling me I spent weeks and months putting up with you being rude to me, when I could have had you this polite just by bending you over a table?"

The image that produced made you moan before you could stop yourself.

"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do this," he said, voice low. "To taste you."

His tongue pressed flat against your center and you moaned so loudly you were immediately grateful Elisa had left. He explored you with single-minded thoroughness, his tongue parting you, learning you, the sounds filling the room obscenely, the wet heat of his mouth and your increasingly frantic responses.

When his mouth found your clit your hands flew to his hair, pulling, trying to bring him impossibly closer.

"You taste so fucking sweet," Dean said against you.

"Fuck — Dean —"

The feeling built and crested and his hand came down across your stomach to hold your hips in place as they jerked. Your thighs trembled. He felt the way you clenched around nothing and knew.

"Be a good girl and come for me."

The orgasm hit like a wave breaking — sudden and total.

"Dean — oh my god —"

He worked you through it, his tongue slowing gradually until he finally pulled back. When he stood you were completely wrecked, sprawled across the bed, unable to form a sentence, staring up at him. His chin was wet. He looked insufferably composed.

He removed his jeans and helped you out of your dress, then came down over you on the bed, his weight settling between your thighs. He kissed you slowly, his hands cradling your jaw with a tenderness that was almost absurd given what had just happened, sweet and careful and at complete odds with the rest of the evening.

You felt him against your thigh.

Oh. He was — yes.

"Breathe, honey."

It was annoying how well he could tell when you'd stopped.

Your hips rolled up against him instinctively, looking for him.

"I need you inside me, Dean —"

"So demanding," he said, cutting you off with a kiss. His hand slid down between you, pressing the length of him against your folds, and the sound you made was not dignified in the slightest. He tapped the head of his cock against you and you dug your nails into his back.

"Please — Dean — please, please —"

He finally gave you what you were asking for, positioning himself at your entrance. The thick head breached you slowly, stretching you out, and you tried to pull him deeper faster.

"Oh fuck —" you moaned as he bottomed out.

"God damn," he breathed. "You're so tight."

His hips pulled back and snapped forward and then he was properly fucking you, hard, deep, everything you had imagined during different library sessions. His mouth found your collarbone, your chest, and then he took one nipple between his lips and you arched off the bed.

"You really do have the most absurd —" he said against your skin.

"Do not finish that sentence —"

"— tits. I could spend all day here."

Your walls tightened around him as the second orgasm built.

"I'm gonna come —" you breathed.

"I know."

He moved back up to your mouth, kissing you as you fell apart, and at the last moment he pulled out, the warmth of him spilling across your stomach. He stood and disappeared into the bathroom, returning with a cloth to clean you up. He discarded it somewhere, then lay down beside you and pulled you against his chest without ceremony, your legs tangling together.

The room was quiet. The lamp was still on. Outside the window the November street was dark and still.

"So," you said finally, staring at the ceiling. "You really are an overachiever."

"Shut up, (Y/N)," Dean said, and kissed you.

You stayed like that for a while, his heartbeat under your cheek, the lamp casting everything amber, the particular quiet of a house when everyone who needed to leave has left.

You had spent four years not allowing yourself anything that wasn't useful. Not a detour, not a distraction, not a single afternoon that didn't have a purpose.

Dean DiLaurentis, you thought, had been the worst possible use of your time.

You pulled his arm tighter around you.

Victoria’s killing a bit of time in the main foyer before her shift starts one day when the two of you arrive. 

Dennis pulls the door open for you, as usual, holding it while you walk inside. He does the same with the inner door, despite having to speedwalk in order to get there before you. She notices that he’s carrying your backpack, the strap slung over the opposite shoulder from his own. He reaches out as you walk towards the elevators, fingers pinching the side of your shirt, gently pulling you closer to him. It’s subtle, and Victoria’s certain she’s the only one who notices that your hands now brush against eachother’s as you move. 

“You coming up?” You ask, reaching forwards, hitting the button. 

He checks his watch, then nods. “Still got time.”

You bite back a smile as you step into the elevator, doors closing behind you, blocking you from Victoria’s probing eyes. The ICU floor is much quieter than the ED, especially since it’s still early, most of the patients still sleeping as the hospital starts to wake up. You swipe your badge against the sensor, and then step through the double door together, like you always do. 

Dana’s standing at the central desk when you come in, talking to the charge nurse there, trying to get some boarders moved before dayshift officially takes over. She clocks both of you immediately, her sentence coming to a stop when she hears your soft laughter. She turns around, watching as you approach, smiling at her. 

“Dana,” You greet. “Are you finally leaving the ER to join us up here?”

“You wish,” She says, looking past your shoulder, where Dennis is waiting a half-step behind you. “Whitaker, fancy seeing you here.”

The ICU charge scoffs, laughing a bit. “What do you mean? He’s up here every morning.”

Dana raises an eyebrow, a tiny smirk on her face. “That so?”

He shrugs, cheeks flushing a light shade of pink, both bags on his back lifting with the motion. “Pretty much, yeah.”

You, wanting to save him from any further embarrassment, turn around and give him an opening. “I can take my bag, you can head downstairs.”

He frowns, shaking his head. “I got it, I’ll be right back.”

He walks over to the locker room, his figure disappearing through the door. One of the nightshift RT’s comes out of a room, and Dana doesn’t miss the way his eyes light up at the sight of you. He ignores everyone else at the desk as he approaches, saying your last name with way too much enthusiasm for six-thirty in the morning. 

“You should’ve seen this patient last night,” He starts, diving into the story as soon as your eyes are on him, a small smile on your face as you genuinely listen. 

Dennis comes back out of the locker room just as he takes your wrist in his hand, turning your arm so your palm faces the ceiling, gesturing to your forearm as he explains the IV situation the patient had. He mimes the action of fluids spewing, retelling the moment it came loose as he was in the middle of intubating. 

Your face scrunches, but you’re still smiling, and he’s pretty sure you say ‘oh, gross!” before slowly pulling your arm away, tucking both hands into your pockets. He comes up behind you, setting your stethoscope and water bottle on the desk. The other RT loses all steam at the sight of him, and he immediately takes a step back, stuttering over his words for a second. You feel a single finger twist into your waistband, making you look over your shoulder, seeing Dennis and your belongings. 

“Thank you,” You say, fully spinning around. He drops his hand back to his side, nodding. 

“Yeah, uh, no problem,” He says. “I’ll see you later?”

“Hopefully,” You say. “Good luck down there.”

“You too,” He says, then he heads back through the doors and down the hallway. You loop your stethoscope over your shoulders and put your water bottle by your workstation before returning to the nightshifter, a tablet in hand now. 

“Catch me up,” You say, the rest of his story long forgotten. 

Dana follows Dennis out, still smirking, putting both hands on his shoulders as she comes up beside him. 

“You’re a sweet kid, you know that?"

Around eleven that morning, the higher-ups send donuts down to the ED as a ‘thank you’ for all their hardwork. Robby’s in the breakroom when Dennis walks in, admiring the spread, trying to decide if he actually wants one or not. 

“Anything good, boss?” He asks, stepping closer to the tables, looking for something specific. 

Robby shrugs. “Would be nicer if they could just pay my staff what they deserve.”

“Oh, definitely,” Dennis says, spotting what he’s looking for, grabbing one of the napkins nearby. “Gotta’ take advantage though, right?”

He picks up a donut, setting it neatly on top of the napkin and putting it down on the table. He opens the fridge, pulling out his lunch and unzipping the bag. Robby watches as he places it on top of whatever’s in there, then puts it back in the fridge, brushing his hands off and closing the door. 

“Worthy of saving for later?” Robby asks, slightly teasing. Dennis lets out a small laugh, already halfway out the door. 

“Yeah, uhm, trying to be optimistic about getting a break today,” He jokes, stumbling over the words. He’s still getting used to joking around with his boss.

Robby shakes his head, following him back outside. “Oh, you know better than that by now, Whitaker.”

They step out just as the ambulance bay doors open, revealing two paramedics wheeling a gurney in. They both rush over as Dana directs them to an open trauma room, examining the patient while one of the paramedics gives handover. 

“Twenty-three year old male, motorcycle versus guardrail,” She says. “Helmet off at the scene, significant facial trauma, breathing on his own for now, but it’s not pretty.”

They swing the door to the trauma room open. Nurses flood in behind them, taking their usual spots around the room, clicking monitors on and hooking them up to the patient. 

“Hey, can you open your eyes for me?” Dennis asks, shining his penlight into them when he gets no response. “Pupils equal and reactive, GCS six.”

“Sats eighty-seven and falling,” Mateo says. 

“Bag him,” Dennis instructs, setting his stethoscope against his chest, moving it around. “Decreased breath sounds bilaterally.”

“This is gonna’ be a complex airway,” Frank says, having come in a moment after them. “Let’s get respiratory down here.”

You’re adjusting some vent settings for one of your patients when your pager goes off, making you pluck it off your scrub pocket, glancing down at the tiny screen. 

EMERG. DEPT. TRAUMA #3 - STAT PAGE

You shove the pager back into place, already running out of the room, calling for the other RT on shift to finish with your patient as you fly by. You take the stairs down to the ED, shoving the door open at the bottom, gripping your stethoscope in your hand so it doesn’t fall. You grab a pair of gloves before opening the trauma room door, trying to assess the situation as best you can in a few seconds. You can’t even see the patient from how many people are in there, crowding around the bed. 

“Sats down to seventy-nine,” Perlah says. Garcia already has sterile gloves on, holding her hands up and shaking her head as she looks over Dennis’ shoulder. He’s holding the laryngoscope, watching the monitor, trying to get a good view of the anatomy. 

“We need to crike,” She says. 

“Woah, hey, I’m here, what’s going on?” You say, grabbing a gown, shifting towards the head of the bed. You look towards the patient’s face, or what’s fucking left of it, exhaling sharply. “Jesus.”

“Motorcycle versus guardrail,” Frank says. “His jaw’s completely unstable, we couldn’t get a seal with the mask, he’s bleeding like crazy.”

“Move, please,” You say, kind but firm, needing to get a closer look. Dennis pulls the tool out, stepping back, his hands up so they don’t get caught on any of the IV lines. Mateo holds the suction as you do your exam, running through options in your head. He’s already using the biggest suction that he can, and the patient's sats are still falling. 

The room seems frozen around you as you think, everyone waiting on your next move. You nod to yourself when you decide on the best course of action, a small way to hype yourself up. 

“I’m going in through the nasal passage,” You say.

“Blind?” Frank asks. “That’s-”

“No, not blind,” You correct. “I need a lubricated three-point-five.”

The tube is placed into your hand five seconds later. “I’m gonna’ try and advance just past the tongue, see if I can use it as a guide.”

You glance up, making eye contact with Frank, then Robby, waiting to see if either will object to your plan. Robby gives you an affirmative nod. 

“Do it.”

You look to Dennis, who’s already watching you. “Could you listen for breath sounds please, Dr. Whitaker?”

“Oh, Dr. Whitaker,” Garcia repeats. “Is that what you call him in the bedroom?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” You shoot back, smirking. 

“Behave,” Robby says, but you don’t need to look at him to know that he’s fighting a smile. Dennis gets into place as you use your free hand to put your own stethoscope in, settling the diaphragm against the patient’s neck, moving it around until you hear what you’re looking for. Then, you slowly advance the tube through the nostril, eyes flicking towards the chest every few seconds to check for rise. 

You start to get some resistance at fourteen centimetres, and the chest twitches. You hear a small amount of air pass.

“Minimal movement,” Dennis says, focusing on what he’s hearing. 

“Bag it,” You instruct, and Jesse does, squeezing. The patient’s chest rises again, and Dennis looks back at you, nodding, confirming that he can hear at least some remnants of breath sounds. 

“Sats up to eighty-five,” Perlah announces. 

You shine your penlight into his mouth, studying the passage that the nasal tube is barely revealing, committing the location of his tracheal opening to memory each time the suction clears enough blood for you to see it. 

“I can intubate now,” You say.

“Are you sure?” Frank asks, taking a look himself, seeing nothing but blood and a small clearing where the tube sits. “You still can’t visualize most of the landmarks.”

“I don’t need all the landmarks,” You counter. “Do you want a real airway or not, Dr. Langdon?”

Dennis’ breath catches in his throat, eyes wide. You’re looking at Frank expectantly, waiting for a decision. He steps back, nodding. Garcia smirks, speaking before he can. 

“Blade to hot shot, please.” You take the tool in your hand, turning on the light and sliding it into place. You don’t bother looking towards the monitor, knowing that you won’t be able to see where you’re going. 

“Seven tube,” You say, reaching for it once it’s passed over, positioning it where the nasal tube already sits. You wait for the suction to expose the clearing again, not hesitating when it does, sliding the tube into the airway. You’re almost certain that it’s in the right place based on how it feels as it clears the epiglottis. “I’m in.”

The cuff is inflated, and Jesse moves the bag from the nasal tube onto the new one, nodding. “Yellow on end-tidal.”

“Good breath sounds bilaterally,” Dennis adds. 

“Sats up to ninety-four,” Perlah says. The tension in the room fades as you look at Dennis, failing to contain a grin when you make eye-contact. He gives you a tiny, proud smile and a subtle nod, silently saying ‘nice work.’

You don’t realize that everyone else catches it, too. 

“I’ll get him up to CT,” Garcia announces. “Glad you were here, hot shot.”

“Excellent work,” Robby says, followed by your last name. The patient is wheeled out of the room, and you’re all left behind, pulling off gowns and gloves. 

“Thanks,” You say. “It’s what I’m good for.”

Dennis holds the door for you as you leave, exhaling once you’re out. Frank holds his fist up. 

“Sorry for doubting you,” He says. You smile, tapping your knuckles against his. 

“No harm, no foul,” You insist, waving him off. The adrenaline of the trauma starts to wear off as you move towards one of the computers, wanting to get the charting out of the way before you go back to the ICU—as long as none of your patients crash. Goosebumps splinter over your arms, despite the long-sleeve you’re wearing under your scrub top, making you shiver. 

Dennis is shrugging his fleece off before you even sit down, handing it to you, already focused on the board to figure out where he should head first. He’s about to walk away when he remembers, spinning back around and leaning towards you over the desk. 

“Oh, hey, there’s something for you in my lunch,” He says, voice quiet, but everyone in the vicinity hears him. They started watching the second he passed you his jacket without a single word. “You can grab it before you head back up, if you want.”

You close your hand around his fleece, trying to get your brain to function again. All work is abandoned by the people around when, for the first time possibly ever, you’re speechless. Not because this is unusual behaviour, just because he’s never done it so…publicly before. 

“Okay,” You finally say, the single word breathy and faint. “Thank you.”

Everyone is staring at the two of you like it’s their favourite TV show. 

“Yeah, ‘course,” He says.

He walks off, you take a seat, pulling the fleece over your head and sticking your badge to the front pocket before logging on to the computer. Your heart is racing, but you do your best to hide it from your colleagues.

“You ever wonder how they ended up together?” Frank asks, watching the interaction from afar, the question aimed at Mel, who has no idea what he’s referring to.

“Who?” She asks, barely looking up from her tablet. 

“Whitaker and Hot Shot,” He clarifies. Mel looks up now, still confused. 

She says your real name like it’s a question. Frank nods. 

“Yeah, Hot Shot,” He emphasizes. 

Mel shrugs. “I didn’t know everyone called her that, I thought it was just Garcia.”

“Doesn’t matter,” He says, moving on. “Labs back for twelve yet?”

Trinity comes back into the department twenty minutes later, having gone outside for a breather, stopping just behind your chair as she walks by. She squints, realizing that you’re definitely wearing Whitaker’s quarter-zip, the one he wears pretty much every single day once it starts getting colder. She goes straight to Victoria, who’s talking to Cassie while they wait for one of their patients to get back from CT. 

“He gave her his fucking fleece,” She says, eyes drifting towards you. Victoria and Cassie look over. 

“Oh my god, that’s so cute,” Victoria says, pouting slightly. “He’s so sweet to her.”

“Have you seen her?” Trinity asks, rhetorical. “He’s got to be in order to keep her around.”

Cassie raises an eyebrow. “I think it’s probably just because he loves her.”

“Or he knows he’s punching above his weight,” Trinity counters. “I love the kid, but she’s practically a supermodel.”

“Well, maybe that’s what drew her to him,” Victoria suggests. “You know, she’s so used to people tripping over themselves to impress her, maybe she liked the fact that he doesn’t make a fool out of himself to get her attention.”

Trinity thinks about that for a second, cocking her head slightly as she looks at you. “Huh. Never thought about it like that.”

“Has no one considered the idea that she just thought he was attractive?” Cassie asks. “He’s a good looking guy!”

Victoria shrugs. “Doesn’t matter either way, they clearly love eachother.”

You barely even realize that your head’s starting to hurt before a pill cup and your favourite donut are placed on your desk. You tug your eyes away from the screen, almost done with your charting, blinking a few times to clear your fuzzy vision. There’s two ibuprofen tablets in the cup, and you see Dennis standing beside you, holding his water bottle out. Robby watches from his workstation a few feet away, smiling, remembering how he watched Dennis set that donut aside a couple hours ago. It wasn’t for him, it was for you. 

"Headache?" He asks.

“How…?” You ask, taking the bottle from him and opening the lid. 

“You’re blinking more than usual,” He says, as though anyone would’ve picked up on it.

“Oh,” You say. “Yeah, it's not too bad, though. Thank you.”

You take the pills and a few extra sips of water before passing it back to him. He sets it on the counter, folding his arms over his chest as he leans back. 

“You should eat something,” He suggests. 

You nod. “I’ll eat this in one second, thank you so much, Denny.”

Robby looks towards Dana, mouthing ‘Denny?’ to her, and she mouths ‘I know!’ back. 

Dennis nods, taking a seat at one of the computers across the hub. You finish your own charting a few minutes later, standing up and walking over to one of the nearby sinks, washing your hands thoroughly. You pick up the donut when you get back to the desk, tearing it in half, holding one side out towards him. 

He’s so wrapped up in his work that he barely glances up when he takes it, then he does a double take, brows furrowing before he looks at you. He’s about to protest when you give him a look, one that let’s him know that you’re well aware he hasn’t eaten since his shift started. He keeps his half raised up, tilting it towards you, and you tap your own portion against his. You both take a bite at the same time, and Princess raises an eyebrow. 

“Did they just…cheers with a donut?” She asks. 

“You haven’t seen ‘em do that before?” Dana asks. “They do it with everything—granola bars, apple slices, sandwiches. It’s sweet.”

“I saw them do it with goldfish once,” Mateo says, spinning around in his chair to face them. “Pretty sure they made them kiss.”

You stretch your arms above your head a few minutes later, leaning against the back of your chair. A few people glance over, hoping to get a glimpse of something, but Dennis’ fleece keeps everything covered. You gather a portion of your hair in your hands, reaching towards your wrist for a hair tie. 

It snaps when you go to loop it around, making you frown.

“Ow,” You murmur, dropping your hair. Victoria goes to offer you a new one, but she’s cut off by Dennis pulling one off his own arm, slingshotting it across the hub, a solid twenty feet or so. You catch it in your palm like it’s second nature, sticking it between your teeth, smoothing your hair back again. 

She malfunctions for a second, trying to see if anyone else witnessed that. Most people have gone back to work, eyes focused on screens or notepads, including Dennis. 

“I…how did you do that?” She asks. 

Dennis doesn’t even look over. “Do what?”

“The—the hair tie thing,” She stutters. He shrugs. 

“She’s always losing them,” He says, as if that remotely answers her question. She’s close enough to see his screen, catching a new secure chat rise to the top of the list that he’s working through answering. It’s your first and last name followed by ‘RRT,’ the profile photo you in scrubs, standing against a white wall.  

heading back up

She glances over at you, still sitting across the hub. You’re looking at your computer, scanning some new orders for your ICU patients, face neutral as you mess with your necklace. She looks back at Dennis’ screen. 

He signs the note he's working on before opening the conversation. 

Come here a second

You log off of the computer, pick up your stethoscope and walk over to him. It’s casual—comfortable. His hand lifts from the keyboard once you’re close enough, reaching over and flipping the collar of his fleece out from where it’s folded in on itself. You raise an eyebrow as he pats it twice, the simple touch of his palm to your collarbone intoxicating. 

“How long has that been bothering you?” You ask, teasing and quiet. The volume has picked back up in the department, so Victoria shuffles a bit closer to try and hear the conversation. 

He pretends to think, glancing at his watch. “How long ago did you put it on?”

You laugh under your breath. “I didn’t realize I was causing you such distress.”

“Yeah, you should probably be more careful,” He says, the corner of his mouth twitching up, but his eyes are wide with concern. “Are you warm enough? I think I have a long sleeve in my bag if you want it.”

You do want it, but not because you’re still cold. 

“No, I’m okay, thank you,” You say, trying to get your feet to move, but his presence is sucking you in. You’re tempted to wedge yourself into his side, knowing that he’d probably respond automatically, arms wrapping around you and his lips brushing your temple like they would at home. 

“Okay, just come grab it if you change your mind,” He says. Your pager beeps from your pocket, and you grimace, face scrunching up in disappointment. 

“I will,” You say, checking it quickly before putting it back. You’re still hesitating, not taking a step away from him. He smiles. 

“Go,” He insists, softly. “They need you.”

You look at him for another second, pursing your lips. “Yeah, alright, going now, Dr. Whitaker.”

Victoria’s eyes widen as she rereads the same line on her tablet for the millionth time. A blush blooms on Dennis’ neck, and he brings a hand up to try and cover it immediately, his blue eyes following you as you get closer to the doors, filled with adoration. 

He gets another secure chat five minutes later. Victoria squints to see what it says. 

made it :) don’t work too hard while im gone

He types back right away. 

Yes ma’am

Victoria gasps. Dennis glances back at her. 

She brings her elbow up to her face, pretending to cough a few times, clearing her throat once she’s done with the performance. 

“Sorry, dry in here today,” She says, trying to give him a reassuring smile. He nods once, unconvinced, but he doesn’t press her on it. 

Her own secure chat lights up. 

TRINITY SANTOS, MD smooth, crash

Seven finally rolls around, signalling the end of your shift. You go back downstairs, waiting outside the ER, like usual, backpack on and changed out of your scrubs. Dennis comes out ten minutes later with Trinity and Victoria trailing behind, his eyes softening when he sees you. 

“Hey, ready to go?” He asks, making you look up from your phone. You nod, greeting his friends before falling in step beside him, bumping your shoulder against his. 

“Oh, gross,” Trinity says, frowning at the heavy rain that’s pouring outside. “You want a ride, Crash?”

“Yes, please,” Victoria says, already bracing herself as Trinity opens the door, turning back to you and Dennis for a second. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” You both say, giving her a tiny wave as they step out into the rain, running to Trinity’s car. 

Dennis pulls his keys out of his backpack, squeezing your wrist quickly. “Stay here.”

You smile. “I know.”

He goes outside, rounding the corner and speedwalking away from the doors. You stay inside, waiting, until you feel someone stop beside you. 

“Waiting for Whitaker?” Robby asks. “I swore he left a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, yeah, he did,” You confirm. “He went to grab the car.”

Robby hums, chuckling. “Of course he did.”

You laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugs, hands in his pockets. “He just really loves you, is all.”

Your chest and neck start to heat up, making you look towards the ground, scuffing your shoes against the floor. “Yeah, he does.”

“Well, have a good night,” He says. 

You smile. “Goodnight, Robby.”

He walks off just as Dennis pulls the car in front of the doors, shifting it into park as he leans over, gripping the inside handle of the passenger side door. You tense up the moment you’re outside, rain pelting against you, thankful that you still have his fleece on as you run to the car. He opens the door right before you make it so you can just jump inside, slamming it shut behind you, wiping some water off your face. 

You’re both soaked, him more than you, obviously—but he doesn’t care. He leans over the centre console, hand looping around the back of your neck and pulling you close, kissing you. You kiss him back, smiling into it, wrapping your fingers around his wrist. He kisses your forehead after, then pecks your lips again for good measure. 

“Love you,” He says. 

“I love you,” You echo, still smiling. 

A/N - i love that u guys love dennis and hot shot bc i think about them constantly

tags:

@ironinc

🔞 Distracted You decided to take a break from your day and play a online game with your friends, but before you can even start, it's impossible to concentrate when your boyfriend, Peter Parker, is being so distracting. He offers to let you sit on his lap while you play, not realizing his intentions aren't nearly as innocent as he pretends they are.

@boxofbonesfic

🔞 Play Pretend You play dumb to get help from some nerd in your Stats class, but end up biting off more than you can chew. 

@thollandsgirl2013

🔞 Love Stained You surprise Peter with kisses to test your new lipstick, leaving him covered in maroon marks. 🔞 His Favorite Breakfast Peter wakes up horny and needy in the morning and he takes you on the kitchen counter. 🔞 No Nut November Challenge It's November, Peter and Ned decided to join no nut November, it's a disaster for Peter.

@yasministration

🔞 am i doing this right? could i request summer, smut with peter. and the prompt “am i doing this right”

@alsofoundinpeas

🔞 A Little Tied Up When Spider-Man offers a surprisingly unconventional alternative to an ice pack, you find yourself agreeing, only to discover there's more to his touch than just superhuman strength.

@uhhhj13iguess

🔞 what you asked for teasing peter parker while he's patrollingggggg 🔞 the stages of us peter parker starts an internship at oscorp, matched into a robotics team led by you — you, who has peter believing in love at first sight. and despite every instinct in his body, peter can't help but fall further and more helplessly in love with you... even if you happen to have a boyfriend.

@iridescentparkers

🔞 lessons in sexting warnings: very suggestive! (18+)

You still weren't sure how you ended up here, in the office of the club where you'd come to drink your heartbreak away, being fucked silly by your best friend.

Not that you were complaining.

A week ago, you had broken up with your boyfriend. You had been dating for a year, but the lack of effort from his side made you come to the decision to break it off. It wasn't like you hadn't tried to make it work. You'd prompted going on cute dates, communicated your wants and needs, and yet somehow it still wasn't enough for your boyfriend to prioritize you.

Apparently, he had no problem prioritizing other girls, because earlier this evening, he posted a picture on his story of him and another girl, at a restaurant you had been begging him to go to for the past three months.

So naturally, you called your best friends, asked them where they were, and got ready.

No more than an hour later, you entered the busy dive bar. Immediately, you spotted the booth where her friends were sitting. Even as you made a beeline towards it, you were still stopped on your way to the table.

A tall man, blond hair and broad shoulders, stepped in front of you with a smile.

"Hey." He said, his voice higher than you had expected. You smiled at the man, subtly eyeing the table behind him.

"Hi."

"Can I just say you're fucking stunning." He said, his eyes shamelessly raking down your body. You glanced at the booth again, but no one had seemed to notice your presence yet.

"Thank you." You responded politely, wanting to step around him, but he was quick to block your path again.

"Let me buy you a drink." He said. His words were more a statement than a question, and didn't allow you any space to say no to him. That wouldn't stop you from doing it anyway, though. But before you could, a familiar voice beat you to it.

"Not tonight mate." Your friend, Harry appeared beside you, sneaking his hand around your waist and pulling you into him. You suppressed a smile, trying your best not to blow the cover.

The man looked a bit dazed, but he was surprisingly quick to accept his defeat, only giving Harry a nod before turning back to the bar. You scoffed, a tiny bit offended on how fast he gave up, and turned around to the friend that had saved you.

You and Harry had been friends for a little over a year now. You had never felt as comfortable around a person as you did with him, not even your ex boyfriend.

Harry truly never judged; you had never encountered someone that transparent before. While others sometimes struggled with his well thought-out answers and silent observations, you were absolutely fascinated by it, loving the way he moved through life with such care and grace.

You not only understood, but you admired it; that's was made you guys quite close.

The friendship had started out very flirty, and your first intentions with each other weren't friendly at all. It was clear from the get go that you and Harry were attracted to each other, but a mix of different factors withheld the both of you from ever crossing that line. You were both proud people, you didn't want to fuck up the friendship group dynamics, and above all, Harry's most famous trait was his inability and unwillingness to be in a relationship. He was known for his flighty escapades and one night stands. No one ever lasted longer than a week.

Despite all that, you never stopped being a bit flirtatious with each other.

You noticed that Harry looked especially good tonight, better than usual for some reason. He was wearing a black dress shirt, with the top buttons unbuttoned. He always had this aura of ease around him, as if everything just came to him smoothly. It was attractive—you had been aware of that since the start of your friendship—but something about tonight made him a bit more magnetic.

"You okay?" He asked, handing you a white wine; your standard order. You nodded, accepting the glass and taking a sip.

"And about your... recent situation? How are you feeling about that?" Harry asked carefully, and you snorted a laugh.

"You can call it a break-up. It's not some world class tragedy." You said with a smile as you two made your way over to the booth where the rest of your friends were sitting. You turned her head to him. "But yeah, I'm good. It was my decision anyway."

"It was?" Harry's brows shot up, seeming almost intrigued by your answer. You swallowed down the insinuation your mind was making; he probably didn't mean it like that at all.

"Yes, are you surprised by that?"

"I mean, I don't know. I guess so?" He shrugged. "It just seemed to be going well so I assumed you wouldn't just break up with him."

"Yeah... well, appearances can deceive, my friend." You said, your tone a bit bitter, and sat down next to one of her friends before greeting the rest.

The rest of the time in the bar, you didn't really talk to Harry one on one anymore, but you kept catching him staring at you. He wouldn't even look away; he'd just keep his eyes on you without even a hint of shame. You'd tilted your head at one point, trying to figure out what his goal was, but he just smirked and looked away.

Three cocktails later, you were dying to pee. The rest of the group was hounding you because the uber to the club had arrived, but you couldn't help yourself. You hurried to the bathroom, only to find a line of five people in front of you. You were so irritated that it took ten minutes until you finally got your turn, and by the time you hurried back to the booth, everyone was gone. Your heart sank in disappointment.

Had they just left without you?

Suddenly, you felt a piece of clothing being draped around your body. Looking around, you found Harry beside you, putting his jacket over your shoulders.

"They insisted on canceling the uber, but I told them I'd wait and we'd get one together." He explained, instantly soothing the worry that your friends had abandoned you. It wasn't like them at all to just leave. "The car is actually outside right now, so we should go."

"Thanks." You said, and Harry just smiled before leading you towards the exit. You followed suit, staying close so you could follow the little road he was making in this busy bar. It was so crowded that you kept getting pushed left to right and unconsciously began holding onto Harry's arm whenever you would almost fall. Without looking back, he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you closer, his hand on resting on your lower back as he kept guiding you to the door.

When you finally made it outside, you were glad to wear Harry's jacket, because it was colder than you'd expected.

Ever the gentleman, he helped you into the car before entering on the other side himself. You put your arms through the sleeves of the jacket as you asked: "how long is the ride?"

"Fifteen minutes." Harry replied as he buckled his seatbelt. "Excited to go clubbing? I feel like we haven't gone in forever."

You nodded vigorously, throwing your head back. "Yes! Lord knows I need it after the day I've had."

Harry turned to you. "Seriously, what did this guy do? Do you want me to break his nose?"

"Could you?" You asked, looking over at him with a playful glint in your eyes. He smiled at you.

"I'd do anything for you Y/N, you should know that by now." He responded casually as if that didn't just send a wave of butterflies straight to your lower stomach. "Tell me what he did."

You let out a big sigh.

"He just... didn't put in any effort at all. He didn't actually care about me, he only liked the idea of me." Your voice was soft as you confessed, still feeling hurt over the facts that you couldn't ignore.

"What makes you say that?" Harry asked carefully, his tone matching yours. He stroked your arm, trying to comfort you as you aired out all your feelings.

"Well, I've had to beg him to take me on dates the entire relationship, and now one week after our break-up he's taken a girl to a restaurant I'd asked him to book us for our anniversary."

"Fuck, Y/N..." Harry said, shaking his head. His voice was stern and he was clearly irritated.

"It's just— It feels like he's just rubbing it in my face that he didn't find me worthy enough to put in the effort." You explained, looking down at your fiddling hands as a tear slipped from your eye. You were quick to wipe it away, but Harry still saw it.

"He's a piece of shit." He grabbed your face, forcing you to look at him. You offered him a strained smile, trying your hardest not to focus on how good his touch felt. "You are worth all the effort and the right man knows that. He was just a boy."

"Thank you." You whispered, softly closing your eyes for a few seconds as you leaned into the touch of his hand, despite knowing that was the last thing you should be doing right now.

When your eyes opened, you were slightly surprised at the proximity of his face to yours. He was so close, how had you not realized that? Heat began building in your stomach as you looked him the eyes. You saw the switch in his pupils. Somewhere along those few seconds, that wholesome comfort had turned into something way less innocent, and there wasn't a bone in your body that didn't want to jump his right now. Fuck, were you a bad person for this?

The corner of Harry's lip quirked up ever so slightly, and for some reason, it made you throw all logic out the window. Before you knew it, you leaned forward and planted your lips on his.

The kiss had a quick, sudden start, but you melted at the relaxed rhythm he guided you into. It was sensual and slow and the way his tongue danced with yours told you he had been waiting to do this for quite some time. There was so much determination in the way his lips moved and the places his hands roamed. It drowned out everything around you.

The music of the radio was nothing but a distant muffled noise as Harry's hand traveled up from your collarbone, wrapping around your neck. Your lower stomach tensed up at the tight grip he held, your head feeling a bit light from all the sensations. This was the best kiss you'd ever had.

You both jerked forward a bit when the car came to a sudden stop. Thanking the driver, you quickly got out of the car in embarrassment. You had completely forgotten that you two weren't alone in that car... the poor man.

Your teeth chattered instantly as you were waiting for Harry to step out the car. You hugged yourself tightly as Harry walked around the car and threw an arm around you. Your eyes widened at the line outside the club. It was so incredibly cold, you would have to crawl into Harry's skin to be a bit warm. But Harry wasn't heading for the line.

"Uhm, what are you doing?" You asked, a bit dumbfounded as Harry led you to the entrance.

"The owner's my friend. You remember Mikey, right?" He said casually, quietly greeting the bouncer with a nod before walking through the door.

Right, this was one of the few cons you had weighed back when you were considering Harry as an option to date: his ties to the nightlife. He was an investor, and he liked investing in entertainment. It was a bit on the edge, and sometimes you wondered if everything about him was legal and safe, but that once red looking flag was now as green as the led lights that lit up the noisy club.

It didn't take long to find your friends, who greeted you with excitement, hugs and a shot of tequila. You took it gladly, knowing it would be fuel for whatever was about to happen tonight.

You were a little bit confused, as it seemed that Harry had taken his distance again. He was talking with some of the guys while you took to the dance floor with your best friends. You tried not to let it get to you, but you were aching for him everywhere. It was pathetic, all things considered, but you were too far gone to care. You had gotten a hint of what he felt like, there was no way you could back down now.

Giddiness filled you when the boys finally joined, your friends immediately shifting their focus on their boyfriends. Despite that leaving you somewhat alone, you didn't mind at all, because it gave Harry the opportunity to get closer without being noticed.

A rush shot through your entire body when his snaked around your hips and he pulled you into him. Much like forbidden fruit, the feel of his touch only made you want more. It was as if a spell had come over you, one that rid you of caring if anyone could see, and only made you see him.

Harry was more careful than you, pulling you away from the group and guiding you to the middle of the dance floor. It was there, under no threat of supervision from anyone you knew, that his hands really began to wander.

His rough finger dug into your skin as you moved your hips in circles, teasing him while also staying as close to him as possible. Your eyes shot wide open when he suddenly moved your hair from your neck and began to leave kisses, hiking closer to your ear. Your movements slowed, too entranced in his touch to do anything else, the ringing in your ears muffled the music to such a degree that it felt like you had noise canceling headphones on. He drowned out every single noise with the touch of his lips.

Steadily, his fingers began lowering towards your thigh, then moving up again and taking your dress with it. When he'd almost hiked it up too far, your hand shot to his arm, keeping him from showing this entire club your panties. You quite literally felt him smirk against your ear.

"Not in the mood for a little show?" He teased, his hand sliding back to your waist. You shook your head, then turned around to face him.

"Not in the mood for an audience."

Harry's jaw clenched, but he didn't say anything as he turned around and dragged you along with him. You made your way through the sweaty crowd and led him lead you upstairs and into a hallway you had never been before, despite having been to this club a lot of times. Harry stopped at the end of the hallway, reaching into his pocket and taking out what looked to be like keys, and jamming them into the door in front of you. You looked behind you, but it was empty here, no one to witness the two of you sneaking off.

You gasped in shock when he snatched you by your waist and pushed you into the room. Looking around you, you observed the room you were about to have sex in.

You were in an office.

You looked at the desk in front of you, and spotted a nameplate.

You were in Mikey's office.

The familiar click of a locked door rang through the room like a starter pistol. You turned around, nerves growing as Harry slowly began to walk over to you with nothing but a primal lust in his eyes.

You didn't even have time to properly look around more in the fancy room before he launched at you. Stumbling back, you sat down on the desk. You were quick to wrap your legs around him, pulling him closer by his shirt as he kissed you like his life depended on it. You moaned when he began moving down to your neck.

"Fuck, please..." you whined as you held on to his shoulders and his hair, and he groaned when you pulled at his roots.

"Shit—" Harry croaked out as he pulled back and pushed you further onto the desk until you were sprawled out beneath him. The sight was so intimidating, having him hover over you like that. "Are you so desperate to come?"

You nodded your head, enjoying the dominant tone in his voice. You had been waiting for someone to just take the reins and take care of you. "So greedy... acting like you haven't had an orgasm in forever."

Harry laughed a bit, and your mouth pulled up a bit awkwardly, looking down at his chest. "I... I haven't, actually."

Harry's laugh faded. He looked a bit surprised, but stern as he asked: "How long?"

You shrugged, but he didn't accept that non-verbal answer, so you spoke. "Uhm... like six months."

Harry looked like he was calculating it in his head. "But you were together for like a year.”

"I— I used to finish myself off, you know... after. But he found out and he didn't like it. Said it was disrespectful to him." You cringed as you spoke, only now realizing how ridiculous that sounded. Harry clearly thought the same, because he pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a deep breath that was clearly filled with frustration. "He tried to be rougher but it just hurt, so I started faking it instead. But I felt too guilty to do it myself. Every time I tried I couldn't come because I didn't want to cause problems."

Harry's jaw clenched, but when he opened his eyes they were very soft. He cupped your face in his hand.

"I'm sorry he made you feel that way." He said, his head tilting. "Forget about him, alright? I want you to come, and I'm gonna make you come."

You nodded, and Harry sank to his knees.

This was the first time someone had ever gone down on you, but you were sure it wouldn't ever get much better than this. As soon as Harry had pushed up your dress and thrown your panties to the side, he began ravishing you like a madman. You had never felt more than desired by someone than by Harry groaning as he dug his tongue and nose deeper into your pussy, stimulating you in ways you had never dared to dream of.

After a while of sucking and licking, he began to focus on your clit. You had already felt like you were getting closer to the edge when he decided to stick two of his fingers inside of you. Your hips bucked off the table, taken aback by the sudden intrusion, but Harry forced you back into your position again. It was one thing to have him suck on your clit as he drove his fingers in and out of you again and again, but when he began to give little licks in addition, you exploded.

Fire rippled through your entire body, your orgasm nothing but a pure heatwave. Your voice was hoarse as you screamed out, but you hadn't noticed you had been making all that much noise before. Harry didn't slow down as your high consumed you, making it even more intense than it already was.

You were writhing and twitching by the time he stood up, your chest heaving as you tried to catch your breath. Harry scanned your face, smiling subtly at your fucked out face. Of course he relished in the fact that he had taken such a toll on you already.

But Harry was still that forbidden fruit, and with every bite he gave to you, you only began craving more and more.

"Please, fuck me." You begged, because you seriously felt you were going to have a heart attack if he didn't put his cock inside you as soon as possible. There was nothing you wanted more than for him to stretch you out. You knew he would reach spots that no one had ever before, and you just wanted another orgasm.

"So greedy... and I can't even fucking blame you." He responded with a slight smirk as he unbuckled his pants while you took off your panties. You glanced down at his cock, the sight of it not surprising you in the slightest.

You'd heard stories about Harry; he got around pretty well. It had kind of become a mutually agreed upon victory to have slept with Harry. He was so handsome and good in bed that the women in the city were all just proud of each other whenever one of them would hook up with the man.

Nevertheless, you shook the thought away. You had no desire to think about him with other women. He was here just for you right now.

Harry lined himself up with your pussy and slowly began pushing in. You worked on controlling your breathing, closing your eyes to relax as much as possible in order to get used to his size. This certainly was something to adjust to.

"Fucking hell, you're tight." He groaned, pushing further while you tried not let it get the wind knocked out of you. You shook your head.

"No. You're big." You countered, earning a chuckle from the man who was splitting you apart with his cock at the moment. He stayed still inside you, pushing some strands of hair out of your face.

"You okay?" He asked, holding your face. You opened your eyes and nodded.

"I'm good. Just make me come again please." You said, running your hand down his chest. Harry grinned.

"Like I said, greedy."

He still did what you said. He began thrusting into you slowly, but with a significant force that had you holding onto the desk for dear life. There was no time to pay any mind to the objects that began falling off the desk; you were too busy focusing on not combusting around Harry's thick cock.

You had been fantasizing about getting fucked like this for months, and every time you tried getting your boyfriend to do this, he'd fail expeditiously. So, to be finally getting what you'd been wanting was like a miracle.

You whined out when Harry began to pick up his pace even more and grabbed onto your hips to keep you in place. In turn, you wrapped your legs closer around his hips in order to pull him closer.

"Finally getting fucked like you deserve, don't you darling?" He sounded arrogant as he spoke, and it was the hottest thing you'd ever heard. Your stomach swirled and you immediately croaked out a 'yes'.

"Need it." You added on dreamily, and you felt Harry's nails dig into your sides as soon as you had spoken.

Harry groaned, speeding up his pace even more. "Yeah? You need it? You needed me to fuck you like your ex-boyfriend couldn't?"

"Yes, yes, yes..." You blabbered in agreement. The recoil of his thrusts were so severe that your tits had spilled out of your top, and your head was hanging off the desk.

"Good girl. No more wasting time on shitty guys. From now on, you come to me when you need it." Harry demanded, slapping your thigh as he spoke and earning a nod from you, but that wasn't enough. He leaned forward. "That wasn't a question. Understand?"

"Yes, Harry." You responded, finding his eyes as you verbalized your obedience. Harry cursed under his breath before he grabbed your leg, threw it over your shoulder, and began to pound into you with baffling strength.

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as Harry hit your sensitive spot over and over again. Every stroke still stretched out your walls more and more and you had never liked the stingy feeling as much as you did right now. When he began to rub your clit as well, you knew you were a goner.

"You gonna come for me baby?" Harry asked, as if he didn't feel it sparking underneath him, as if he didn't feel you clenching around his cock.

Your jaw was slack as you felt all the built-up tensions in your stomach be released from your body. The climax was surprisingly slow for how explosive it was. You had never experienced an orgasm this intense before. Harry's words of encouragement echoed in your brain as you wetted his dick even more than you already had.

"Very good..." Harry praised. You yelped when he pulled his cock out and turned you around, now laying on the desk with your stomach. He leaned over, his hands placing yours on the edge of the desk, silently instructing you to grip them, before shoving himself inside of you again. "You can take another one, don't you?"

You were going to say yes anyway. You would say yes to as many orgasms this man was willing to give you, but he began fucking into you before you even had the chance to agree.

"O— oh! Harry! Oh my god!" You said, clinging onto the desk that was now moving more and more towards the wall behind you solely because of Harry's erratic movements.

"Fuck— scream my name." He ordered, pulling you up when his hand settled around your neck. Your third high was already near; you could feel it everywhere.

"Ha— oh fuck! Harry!" You followed his orders, and it sent him over the edge. Letting out a string of curse words, Harry began to come inside of you. He quickly began rubbing your clit while he tried to keep his thrusts at the same pace, making sure you'd still be able to come.

But the sound of him falling apart like that. His skin erratically slapping against yours and the small moans that fell from his lips between praises; that was enough for you to come again.

"Oh, Harry..." you whined out as you fell apart around him. He was breathing heavily, clearly still coming down from his own orgasm, but nonetheless he stroked your back, leaving kisses on your shoulders.

"Was that good compensation?" He asked when you had finally turned around to face him, a slight smirk on his face. You chuckled, nodding you head.

"I mean, to really compensate, this would have to happen at least three more times." You joked, but deep inside you were serious. Of course you weren't stupid. Harry wasn't really a man of commitment—especially when it came to women—but you couldn't let this be the last time you hooked up with him.

Slowly, Harry pulled himself out of you, taking off the condom and throwing it in the bin before pulling you to sit up straight on the desk. He leaned forward and planted a kiss on your nose.

"Are you very sure about that?" He raised a brow, seeming to challenge you. You hummed, taking the bait.

"It doesn't have to mean anything, if that's something you'd be worried about." You offered. The truth was, you secretly wanted it to mean something. But the other truth was that you'd just broken up with your boyfriend, and jumping from one guy to another really was not the way you should be moving after a break-up. Then again, Harry wasn't just any guy...

"I fear it will anyway." He said calmly, and you frowned at his stoicism. Why was he being so nonchalant about this? Was the sex not that good for him? He probably sensed your insecurities, because he was quick to follow up on his words. "I tend to get jealous. That's why I only do one-night-stands."

"You can get jealous over me." You shrugged, deciding to take the leap. You were pretty sure it was the high still talking.

"Trust me, I have been." He muttered, but you were so close to him that you would've been able to hear the softest whispers fall from his lips.

"What? When?" You titled your head. Harry looked away, letting out a deep sigh before turning back to you.

"I don't know... When did you start dating your ex?"

A year ago.

"You've been jealous for a year?" You reiterated.

"I've been jealous of everyone who's gotten to date you, ever, if I'm being honest. Really bugged me that it hasn't been me so far." He confessed casually, as if he wasn't currently turning your world upside down by saying the words you didn't know you had been waiting for.

"Fuck... I just got out of a relationship Harry." You said, sighing in defeat. You knew it would be wrong to just move on to Harry immediately. You knew the problems it would eventually cause. It was vital that you worked on yourself first before jumping into another relationship, even if you'd wanted to be in that relationship since the first time you saw him a year ago.

"I know. I just didn't want you to think I'd be shooting down a casual arrangement because of disinterest." He said sweetly, and you melted at his words.

"I want you." You sighed, and Harry only hummed as he held your face in his hands. "But I owe it to myself to take some time to process the break-up."

"I know, darling. That's okay." Harry smiled at you, but you didn't miss the slight pain in the edges of his mouth. You looked him in the eye.

"Yeah, but I'm too greedy. Isn't there some way I can do both?" You offered with your innocent doe-eyes. You couldn't live without Harry's hands now that you'd experienced what they felt like. Harry laughed softly.

"You know what. You can call me when it gets too much. I'll take the edge off as many times as you want, like a temporary fix, until you're ready. But you can only call me when you really need me. How's that for a compromise?" He suggested. Your mouth cracked into a smile, nodding your head vigorously.