Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
The first morning of training camp in 2027, you woke up before your alarm.
For a few seconds, you didn’t move.
The room was still dim, soft blue light pressing against the curtains, Megan asleep beside you with one arm thrown across your waist like she had known you’d try to sneak out of bed before your thoughts got too loud. Your body knew what day it was before your mind fully caught up.
First official skate back.
First season back.
First time your name would be on the roster again after missing the entire prior season on maternity leave, then postpartum recovery, then slow, careful training that made you learn your body all over again.
You stared at the ceiling and listened to the baby monitor hum.
Not a baby anymore, not really.
Just over a year old now, bright-eyed and stubborn, walking in wobbly little bursts when she felt brave enough, babbling with full confidence, and still deeply convinced Noemi was the most important person in any room.
Megan stirred beside you. “You’re thinking too loud.”
You turned your head. “I’m not thinking.”
“You’re lying too loud too.”
You smiled despite yourself. “Good morning to you too.”
Megan opened one eye, then reached for you, tugging you closer until your forehead bumped her shoulder. “You okay?”
You had been asked that so many times over the last year that the words should’ve lost meaning. They hadn’t, not from her.
“I think so,” you said.
“That’s not a yes.”
“It’s not a no.”
Megan’s hand slid over your back, warm and steady. “You don’t have to prove everything today.”
“I know.”
“You say that like you’re agreeing, but your face says you’re about to try and win a roster spot you already have.”
You groaned softly. “I hate that you know me.”
“I love that I know you.” She kissed your temple. “And I love that you’re coming back.”
Something in your chest tightened.
Coming back had sounded simple when people said it. Reporters had said it like a headline. Teammates had said it like a celebration. Fans had commented it under every offseason post, filling your notifications with heart emojis and “can’t wait to see her back.”
They meant well.
But coming back hadn’t been one thing.
It had been pelvic floor appointments and strength sessions that humbled you. It had been your first jog ending in tears in the parking lot. It had been pumping between workouts, icing your hips, learning how to trust a core that felt rebuilt from scratch. It had been watching games from the couch with your daughter tucked against your chest while your whole body ached to be on the ice and begged you not to move at the same time.
You hadn’t missed a season because you wanted a break.
You had missed a season because your body had done something massive, and healing had taken longer than pride wanted to admit.
From the nursery, your daughter let out one sharp, offended sound.
Megan smiled. “Management is awake.”
“She heard us talking about the roster.”
“She’s very involved.”
“She’s mostly involved with stealing socks.”
“And Noemi.”
You rolled your eyes. “Don’t start.”
“I’m her mother,” Megan said, already sitting up. “Noemi walks into a room and our child acts like royalty has arrived.”
“She likes calm people.”
“I’m calm.”
You looked at her.
Megan narrowed her eyes. “I can be calm.”
By the time you got to the Fleet facility, your daughter had already thrown one sock somewhere in the car, rejected a banana pouch, demanded the banana pouch back, and screamed with joy when Megan handed her the tiny stuffed hockey puck Noemi had bought her “for hand strength,” which everyone agreed was an absurd excuse for buying a baby toy.
You stood outside the locker room with your gear bag on your shoulder and your stick in your hand.
Megan had offered to carry both.
You had said no.
She had looked personally wounded.
Your daughter sat on Megan’s hip, wearing a tiny Fleet hoodie, soft sneakers she kept trying to kick off, and one sock because the other had disappeared somewhere between the parking lot and the front door.
“You sure?” Megan asked now, softer than before.
You looked at the door.
Last time you had walked through it as a player, you had been pregnant and pretending your oversized sweatshirts were fooling anyone. Then you had come back with a three-week-old in a Fleet beanie that swallowed her whole. Then visits had become routine, your daughter passed carefully from teammate to teammate until she decided Noemi was the only person worth trusting with her very serious infant thoughts.
Now you were here to work.
To sweat.
To take contact.
To stop being the player who used to be there.
You shifted your gear bag higher. “I’m sure.”
Megan’s expression softened. “Still you.”
You swallowed.
She had said it through everything. Through pregnancy. Through labor. Through the first night home when you cried because your body didn’t feel like yours. Through the first time you put skates on again and had to sit down after ten minutes because your hips trembled.
Still you.
You opened the door.
The locker room erupted, but carefully, because everyone had learned Baby Fleet did not appreciate sudden chaos unless she was the one causing it.
Haley clapped both hands over her mouth. “She’s back.”
Aerin lifted her coffee. “About time. We’ve had nobody to complain correctly.”
“I’ve been gone one season,” you said.
“Exactly,” Sophie said. “A whole season of weak complaining.”
You laughed, and the sound loosened something in you.
Then your daughter gasped.
It was dramatic. Loud. Completely disproportionate to what was happening.
Noemi had stepped out from behind her stall.
She wasn’t doing anything special. She never did. She was just standing there with her water bottle in one hand, hair still damp from an early workout, face calm in that serious way that made people assume she wasn’t paying attention when really she was catching everything.
Your daughter pointed both hands at her.
“No,” she said, which was what she called Noemi most of the time, despite everyone’s best efforts.
Megan froze. “Unbelievable.”
Haley pointed. “Favorite aunt confirmed.”
“No,” Noemi said at once.
Your daughter pointed again, delighted. “No!”
Aerin grinned. “She’s literally calling for you.”
“She calls many things No.”
“Mostly you and actual no,” Sophie said.
Noemi looked at you, as if you might save her from the accusation.
You did not.
“She knows who she wants,” you said.
Megan turned toward you. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“A little.”
Your daughter began leaning out of Megan’s arms with full toddler confidence and absolutely no concern for gravity.
“Okay, okay,” Megan said, pulling her closer. “Don’t launch yourself.”
Noemi sighed like she was being forced into something deeply inconvenient, but she set her bottle down and held out her hands. “Fine. Come here.”
Megan handed her over with the reluctant dignity of someone surrendering a trophy.
The second Noemi had her, your daughter settled.
Completely.
One tiny hand gripped Noemi’s jacket collar. Her cheek dropped to Noemi’s shoulder, and she let out a satisfied sigh that made Haley actually bend at the knees.
“I can’t do this,” Haley whispered. “I can’t handle this.”
Noemi patted the baby’s back once, firm and practiced. “You lost a sock.”
Your daughter lifted her foot like she understood the accusation.
“Yes,” Noemi said seriously. “Again.”
“She talks to her like she’s reviewing a penalty kill,” Aerin said.
“She responds well to structure,” Noemi said.
Megan crossed her arms. “She responds well to betrayal.”
You leaned up and kissed Megan’s cheek. “She loves you.”
“She’d better.”
Noemi adjusted your daughter on her hip, completely at ease now, though she would deny it if anyone said so. “Go get dressed.”
You blinked at her.
“What?”
“You’re here to play,” Noemi said. “She’s fine.”
The words hit harder than you expected.
You looked at your daughter tucked safely against Noemi, then at your stall.
Your nameplate was still there.
For a second, the room blurred at the edges.
Megan noticed first. Of course she did. Her hand brushed the small of your back, not pushing, just grounding.
Under your nameplate, someone had taped a note.
WELCOME BACK, MOM.
Underneath it, in Haley’s unmistakable handwriting, someone had added:
BABY FLEET APPROVED.
You laughed, but your eyes burned.
“You guys.”
Haley sniffed. “Don’t look at me. I’m fragile.”
Aerin shrugged. “We needed the note. For morale.”
Sophie smiled. “For yours or ours?”
“Yes,” Aerin said.
You set your bag down in front of your stall.
Your stall.
For the first time in more than a year, you pulled your gear out for an official team skate. Shoulder pads. Elbow pads. Socks. Jersey. The familiar routine felt strange and sacred all at once.
Behind you, Noemi said, “No, you cannot eat the zipper.”
Your daughter protested loudly.
“No,” Noemi repeated. “Bad choice.”
Megan muttered, “She listens to her.”
“She listens to you too,” you said.
“She laughs when I say no.”
“That’s because you say it with less conviction.”
Megan looked offended. “I play defense for a living.”
“And yet our child has identified your weakness.”
Noemi, without looking up, said, “She is the weakness.”
The locker room went quiet for half a beat.
Then Haley made a strangled noise. “Noemi.”
Noemi frowned. “What?”
“You love her.”
“I did not say that.”
“You basically did.”
“I made an observation.”
Your daughter patted Noemi’s cheek with one soft hand.
Noemi’s face changed.
Barely.
But it did.
Her eyes softened. Her mouth pressed into the smallest smile.
You looked at Megan.
Megan was looking too.
Noemi caught both of you staring and immediately straightened. “Get ready.”
The first skate back was not graceful.
It was good.
But it was not graceful.
Your lungs burned earlier than you wanted them to. Your legs felt strong, then heavy, then strong again. Your timing was half a beat late in the first rush drill, and you overskated a puck so badly Aerin tapped the boards with her stick and called, “Vintage.”
You flipped her off with your glove.
Haley cheered. “She’s really back.”
Still, there were moments.
A puck came around the wall, fast and ugly, and your body moved before doubt could interfere. You read the bounce, caught it clean, shifted your weight, and sent a pass across the ice.
Tape to tape.
Megan caught it in stride.
For one perfect second, the whole rink felt exactly the way you remembered it.
Then Megan looked back at you with the biggest grin on her face.
You grinned too, breathless and aching and alive.
Behind the glass, your daughter slapped both hands against the window from Noemi’s arms.
“Mama!” she shouted, or something close enough to it that your chest nearly cracked open.
Haley gasped from the bench. “She knows.”
“She does not know,” Aerin said automatically.
Your daughter slapped the glass again, bouncing in Noemi’s hold.
Noemi looked down at her, then back at the ice. “She knows.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Megan pointed her stick at the glass. “So when Noemi says it, it’s true?”
“Yes,” Noemi said.
Your daughter squealed and pressed her tiny palm flat against the glass.
You laughed so hard you had to put a hand on your knee.
Megan skated over and bumped your shoulder gently. “How’s it feel?”
You took a breath.
Your body was tired. Your hips were going to complain later. Your chest ached from effort, and your legs felt like they were remembering something old while becoming something new.
But your stick felt right in your hands.
Your team was loud around you.
Your wife was beside you.
Your daughter was behind the glass, safe in the arms of the most serious woman in the building, who had somehow become her favorite person after her moms.
You looked at Megan. “Like I’m not trying to go back anymore.”
Her face softened. “No?”
You shook your head.
For so long, you had thought returning meant finding the player you had been before pregnancy. Before labor. Before sleepless nights and milk-stained hoodies and the strange loneliness of healing while the season moved on without you.
But you weren’t that exact person anymore.
You were something fuller now.
Player.
Wife.
Mother.
Still you, but expanded.
The whistle blew for the next drill.
Behind the glass, Noemi lifted your daughter’s hand in a tiny wave, her expression perfectly serious.
“Baby Fleet says go,” Haley yelled.
Your daughter kicked one sneaker against Noemi’s side and shouted, “Go!”
The whole bench lost it.
Noemi looked down at her, unimpressed and completely fond. “Yes. Go.”
You smiled, pushed off, and skated back into line.
The first morning of training camp in 2027, you woke up before your alarm.
For a few seconds, you didn’t move.
The room was still dim, soft blue light pressing against the curtains, Megan asleep beside you with one arm thrown across your waist like she had known you’d try to sneak out of bed before your thoughts got too loud. Your body knew what day it was before your mind fully caught up.
First official skate back.
First season back.
First time your name would be on the roster again after missing the entire prior season on maternity leave, then postpartum recovery, then slow, careful training that made you learn your body all over again.
You stared at the ceiling and listened to the baby monitor hum.
Not a baby anymore, not really.
Just over a year old now, bright-eyed and stubborn, walking in wobbly little bursts when she felt brave enough, babbling with full confidence, and still deeply convinced Noemi was the most important person in any room.
Megan stirred beside you. “You’re thinking too loud.”
You turned your head. “I’m not thinking.”
“You’re lying too loud too.”
You smiled despite yourself. “Good morning to you too.”
Megan opened one eye, then reached for you, tugging you closer until your forehead bumped her shoulder. “You okay?”
You had been asked that so many times over the last year that the words should’ve lost meaning. They hadn’t, not from her.
“I think so,” you said.
“That’s not a yes.”
“It’s not a no.”
Megan’s hand slid over your back, warm and steady. “You don’t have to prove everything today.”
“I know.”
“You say that like you’re agreeing, but your face says you’re about to try and win a roster spot you already have.”
You groaned softly. “I hate that you know me.”
“I love that I know you.” She kissed your temple. “And I love that you’re coming back.”
Something in your chest tightened.
Coming back had sounded simple when people said it. Reporters had said it like a headline. Teammates had said it like a celebration. Fans had commented it under every offseason post, filling your notifications with heart emojis and “can’t wait to see her back.”
They meant well.
But coming back hadn’t been one thing.
It had been pelvic floor appointments and strength sessions that humbled you. It had been your first jog ending in tears in the parking lot. It had been pumping between workouts, icing your hips, learning how to trust a core that felt rebuilt from scratch. It had been watching games from the couch with your daughter tucked against your chest while your whole body ached to be on the ice and begged you not to move at the same time.
You hadn’t missed a season because you wanted a break.
You had missed a season because your body had done something massive, and healing had taken longer than pride wanted to admit.
From the nursery, your daughter let out one sharp, offended sound.
Megan smiled. “Management is awake.”
“She heard us talking about the roster.”
“She’s very involved.”
“She’s mostly involved with stealing socks.”
“And Noemi.”
You rolled your eyes. “Don’t start.”
“I’m her mother,” Megan said, already sitting up. “Noemi walks into a room and our child acts like royalty has arrived.”
“She likes calm people.”
“I’m calm.”
You looked at her.
Megan narrowed her eyes. “I can be calm.”
By the time you got to the Fleet facility, your daughter had already thrown one sock somewhere in the car, rejected a banana pouch, demanded the banana pouch back, and screamed with joy when Megan handed her the tiny stuffed hockey puck Noemi had bought her “for hand strength,” which everyone agreed was an absurd excuse for buying a baby toy.
You stood outside the locker room with your gear bag on your shoulder and your stick in your hand.
Megan had offered to carry both.
You had said no.
She had looked personally wounded.
Your daughter sat on Megan’s hip, wearing a tiny Fleet hoodie, soft sneakers she kept trying to kick off, and one sock because the other had disappeared somewhere between the parking lot and the front door.
“You sure?” Megan asked now, softer than before.
You looked at the door.
Last time you had walked through it as a player, you had been pregnant and pretending your oversized sweatshirts were fooling anyone. Then you had come back with a three-week-old in a Fleet beanie that swallowed her whole. Then visits had become routine, your daughter passed carefully from teammate to teammate until she decided Noemi was the only person worth trusting with her very serious infant thoughts.
Now you were here to work.
To sweat.
To take contact.
To stop being the player who used to be there.
You shifted your gear bag higher. “I’m sure.”
Megan’s expression softened. “Still you.”
You swallowed.
She had said it through everything. Through pregnancy. Through labor. Through the first night home when you cried because your body didn’t feel like yours. Through the first time you put skates on again and had to sit down after ten minutes because your hips trembled.
Still you.
You opened the door.
The locker room erupted, but carefully, because everyone had learned Baby Fleet did not appreciate sudden chaos unless she was the one causing it.
Haley clapped both hands over her mouth. “She’s back.”
Aerin lifted her coffee. “About time. We’ve had nobody to complain correctly.”
“I’ve been gone one season,” you said.
“Exactly,” Sophie said. “A whole season of weak complaining.”
You laughed, and the sound loosened something in you.
Then your daughter gasped.
It was dramatic. Loud. Completely disproportionate to what was happening.
Noemi had stepped out from behind her stall.
She wasn’t doing anything special. She never did. She was just standing there with her water bottle in one hand, hair still damp from an early workout, face calm in that serious way that made people assume she wasn’t paying attention when really she was catching everything.
Your daughter pointed both hands at her.
“No,” she said, which was what she called Noemi most of the time, despite everyone’s best efforts.
Megan froze. “Unbelievable.”
Haley pointed. “Favorite aunt confirmed.”
“No,” Noemi said at once.
Your daughter pointed again, delighted. “No!”
Aerin grinned. “She’s literally calling for you.”
“She calls many things No.”
“Mostly you and actual no,” Sophie said.
Noemi looked at you, as if you might save her from the accusation.
You did not.
“She knows who she wants,” you said.
Megan turned toward you. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“A little.”
Your daughter began leaning out of Megan’s arms with full toddler confidence and absolutely no concern for gravity.
“Okay, okay,” Megan said, pulling her closer. “Don’t launch yourself.”
Noemi sighed like she was being forced into something deeply inconvenient, but she set her bottle down and held out her hands. “Fine. Come here.”
Megan handed her over with the reluctant dignity of someone surrendering a trophy.
The second Noemi had her, your daughter settled.
Completely.
One tiny hand gripped Noemi’s jacket collar. Her cheek dropped to Noemi’s shoulder, and she let out a satisfied sigh that made Haley actually bend at the knees.
“I can’t do this,” Haley whispered. “I can’t handle this.”
Noemi patted the baby’s back once, firm and practiced. “You lost a sock.”
Your daughter lifted her foot like she understood the accusation.
“Yes,” Noemi said seriously. “Again.”
“She talks to her like she’s reviewing a penalty kill,” Aerin said.
“She responds well to structure,” Noemi said.
Megan crossed her arms. “She responds well to betrayal.”
You leaned up and kissed Megan’s cheek. “She loves you.”
“She’d better.”
Noemi adjusted your daughter on her hip, completely at ease now, though she would deny it if anyone said so. “Go get dressed.”
You blinked at her.
“What?”
“You’re here to play,” Noemi said. “She’s fine.”
The words hit harder than you expected.
You looked at your daughter tucked safely against Noemi, then at your stall.
Your nameplate was still there.
For a second, the room blurred at the edges.
Megan noticed first. Of course she did. Her hand brushed the small of your back, not pushing, just grounding.
Under your nameplate, someone had taped a note.
WELCOME BACK, MOM.
Underneath it, in Haley’s unmistakable handwriting, someone had added:
BABY FLEET APPROVED.
You laughed, but your eyes burned.
“You guys.”
Haley sniffed. “Don’t look at me. I’m fragile.”
Aerin shrugged. “We needed the note. For morale.”
Sophie smiled. “For yours or ours?”
“Yes,” Aerin said.
You set your bag down in front of your stall.
Your stall.
For the first time in more than a year, you pulled your gear out for an official team skate. Shoulder pads. Elbow pads. Socks. Jersey. The familiar routine felt strange and sacred all at once.
Behind you, Noemi said, “No, you cannot eat the zipper.”
Your daughter protested loudly.
“No,” Noemi repeated. “Bad choice.”
Megan muttered, “She listens to her.”
“She listens to you too,” you said.
“She laughs when I say no.”
“That’s because you say it with less conviction.”
Megan looked offended. “I play defense for a living.”
“And yet our child has identified your weakness.”
Noemi, without looking up, said, “She is the weakness.”
The locker room went quiet for half a beat.
Then Haley made a strangled noise. “Noemi.”
Noemi frowned. “What?”
“You love her.”
“I did not say that.”
“You basically did.”
“I made an observation.”
Your daughter patted Noemi’s cheek with one soft hand.
Noemi’s face changed.
Barely.
But it did.
Her eyes softened. Her mouth pressed into the smallest smile.
You looked at Megan.
Megan was looking too.
Noemi caught both of you staring and immediately straightened. “Get ready.”
The first skate back was not graceful.
It was good.
But it was not graceful.
Your lungs burned earlier than you wanted them to. Your legs felt strong, then heavy, then strong again. Your timing was half a beat late in the first rush drill, and you overskated a puck so badly Aerin tapped the boards with her stick and called, “Vintage.”
You flipped her off with your glove.
Haley cheered. “She’s really back.”
Still, there were moments.
A puck came around the wall, fast and ugly, and your body moved before doubt could interfere. You read the bounce, caught it clean, shifted your weight, and sent a pass across the ice.
Tape to tape.
Megan caught it in stride.
For one perfect second, the whole rink felt exactly the way you remembered it.
Then Megan looked back at you with the biggest grin on her face.
You grinned too, breathless and aching and alive.
Behind the glass, your daughter slapped both hands against the window from Noemi’s arms.
“Mama!” she shouted, or something close enough to it that your chest nearly cracked open.
Haley gasped from the bench. “She knows.”
“She does not know,” Aerin said automatically.
Your daughter slapped the glass again, bouncing in Noemi’s hold.
Noemi looked down at her, then back at the ice. “She knows.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Megan pointed her stick at the glass. “So when Noemi says it, it’s true?”
“Yes,” Noemi said.
Your daughter squealed and pressed her tiny palm flat against the glass.
You laughed so hard you had to put a hand on your knee.
Megan skated over and bumped your shoulder gently. “How’s it feel?”
You took a breath.
Your body was tired. Your hips were going to complain later. Your chest ached from effort, and your legs felt like they were remembering something old while becoming something new.
But your stick felt right in your hands.
Your team was loud around you.
Your wife was beside you.
Your daughter was behind the glass, safe in the arms of the most serious woman in the building, who had somehow become her favorite person after her moms.
You looked at Megan. “Like I’m not trying to go back anymore.”
Her face softened. “No?”
You shook your head.
For so long, you had thought returning meant finding the player you had been before pregnancy. Before labor. Before sleepless nights and milk-stained hoodies and the strange loneliness of healing while the season moved on without you.
But you weren’t that exact person anymore.
You were something fuller now.
Player.
Wife.
Mother.
Still you, but expanded.
The whistle blew for the next drill.
Behind the glass, Noemi lifted your daughter’s hand in a tiny wave, her expression perfectly serious.
“Baby Fleet says go,” Haley yelled.
Your daughter kicked one sneaker against Noemi’s side and shouted, “Go!”
The whole bench lost it.
Noemi looked down at her, unimpressed and completely fond. “Yes. Go.”
You smiled, pushed off, and skated back into line.
Hi! I have a request for Megan Keller x reader fic where reader and Megan are together on the same team and during a game an opposing player starts doing flirty chirping at reader and Megan gets a little jealous and takes it out on the player on the ice.
Back Off!
Summary: A player on the opposing team flirts with you, Megan doesn't like that... at all.
A/N: Honestly I'm kinda nervous for writing this one, since people aren't too keen on the idea of writing about pwhl players. Ever time I see I have a notification I just get anxious now(hence why I now turn my asks off unless requests are open). Will say that I appreciate the support some anons have given me, thank you all. It really had made me feel better with my stance on this.
I don't have anyone in mind that is flirting with reader, I gave them a random name. She's weird in this fic. And gross so don't go rooting for this character.
Comments and reblogs are always appreciated!
Tags - @lushberrys. Wanna join the taglist? Click here!
Gameday was always a thrill, especially when you get to play with Megan.
You and the team were facing the Sirens.
She laced up her skates beside you.
You were putting your pads on before pulling your jersey over your gear.
Abby placed the tape she borrowed back into your stall, you thanked her with a nod.
"Game time," Jamie nudged you. "Let's do this."
After warming up, and the anthem. The game was officially about to start.
You took the ice for the center faceoff, the player across from you winked at you.
You, of course brushed it off and waited for the referee to drop the puck.
With the faceoff won, the puck slid down to Haley.
Minutes later, Jessie scored the first goal for the Fleet, a tip in.
And the game went on. It was fast, it was rough.
Some time down the line, you had to take an offensive draw.
The same sirens player from before looked at you with a smirk.
"Not interested." You said.
They chuckle, that only puts you more on guard.
"Not even a little bit? We could have some fun after this." She smirks.
You held your stick, ready to take the puck.
"Cmon, sweetheart live a little." She whispered.
Something so small yet made you lose your focus completely and you lost the faceoff.
This wasn't a shocking revelation to anyone, you lose faceoffs from time to time.
But to you? You were mostly disappointed in yourself.
After your shift ended and you sat on the bench, Megan next to you chatting to Zoe about some of the plays.
The player swings by your bench while heading to hers... and has the nerve to wink at you again.
Megan and Zoe shared a glance.
The name 'Hollander' and the number 24 appears on the back of her jersey.
Megan made a mental note to remember that.
She then turned to look at you. "Why did she wink at you?"
You shrugged. "Keeps trying to flirt, I try to pay her no mind."
You sprayed water over your face, cooling yourself off.
Unaware of how Megan's jaw clenched at your words. She didn't like that, she didn't like that one bit.
"I'll take care of it." Megan put her cage back off and hopped off the bench, Zoe followed her right after.
Ironically, Hollander also came off the bench.
You stayed where you were, as the fourth line hasn't made it far into their shift yet unlike the defenders.
You took the opportunity to catch your breath and watch the game.
The Fleet were up 2 - 0 on the Sirens with only 5 minutes in the 3rd.
Hollander shot the puck at Frankel and swatted at her pads.
An action that didn't go unnoticed by Megan.
Megan pushed her away from Aerin.
Hollander pushed her back as a response, Megan shoved her to the ground.
Other teammates joined into the scrum before the referees blew the whistle.
Megan got sent to the penalty box for roughing, Hollander in the other box.
"What the hell is your problem?" Hollander asked.
Megan ran her fingers through her hair. "You."
Hollander scoffed. "It's just part of the game, you need to relax."
"So flirting with one of my players is just part of the game?" Megan narrowed her eyes.
Hollander roll my eyes. "You know how it is. I'll have them in my bed at the end of this game."
"You won't." Megan snapped. "You flirt with one of my players again, your fate will be worse than this penalty box."
On the other side of the ice, you and the rest of the team kept it moving.
Being on the penalty kill at the same time is almost infuriating, luckily you're good at your job.
You were handed the puck from Abby then passed it Jamie as you were moving into the offensive zone, a rush.
Jamie faked a shot and passed it back to you once you were in a good shooting position.
You shot the puck hard as Osborne that your stick broke after it released.
Osborne nearly had the puck, it went over her arm.
The crowd roared with excitement as you scored.
You did your celly before hugging your teammates who were on the ice.
You smiled with your teammates and went down the fistbump line.
Megan skated out of the penalty box, you made your way towards her.
Your helmet bonked with hers, something you only did with her.
Hollander skated back the bench in realization and embarrassment, not like either of you cared though.
"I was thinking alfredo tonight." She told you.
You smirked. "Yeah, we can do alfredo."
"Nice goal by the way," Megan whispered in your ear. "If it weren't for these cages, I'd probably kiss you."
"Hey, lovebirds get ready for the face off." Zoe shook her head.
You glanced at Zoe before looking at Megan. "We can kiss later. Let's win this game."
"Already on it." Megan smiled softly at you, only reserved for you.
After winning the game, you and Megan headed home together.
You rested your head against Megan's shoulder.
"You didn't have to do that, you know." You spoke softly, keeping your voice low.
Megan glanced at you. "I know, but you were uncomfortable and I had to do something."
She laced her hand with yours and squeezed it tight.
"I'd always protect you." She kissed your temple.
You couldn't help but tease her. "Like how you protect Aerin during the games?"
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Hey gorl, can I request a Megan Keller x reader with the line “If you steal the blankets, I’m going to put my cold feet on you”? You can expand or not as much as you want! There is just NOTHING for my girl!!!
Don't Even
Summary: Megan threatens you a little as you tend to take the blanket away in your sleep
A/N: This is a blurb, I've been doing blurbs on my sideblog and I like doing those. And in a way, you all don't have to wait on me for months!
Comments and reblogs are always appreciated!
Tags - @lushberrys, @flashreader2021, and @ilocuras24. Wanna join the taglist? Click here!
It's late at night, you're curled up against Megan's side.
Watching a episode of 'Heated Rivalry' ironically.
"I can't believe he said that," Megan mumbles.
"You were the exact same when we started going out." You pointed out.
Megan rolled her eyes. "I was not."
"You so were." You snorted.
Megan's cheeks flushed at your observation.
When you and her had started seeing each other originally, Megan would freak out internally.
Being a public figure would make you want to treasure whatever's left of your personal life.
Most people never saw this version of Megan, the Megan who always looked behind her back for a threat.
Who would always think before speaking, she'd be careful even changing even just a fraction of her face.
She was always so composed on the outside, she had no choice but to be.
Megan was brought out of her thoughts when she saw you smoothing out the blankets.
Her expression softened almost immediately.
She scratched an itch. "If you even think about taking the blanket tonight, I'll put my cold feet on you."
You glanced at her. "Well I love every bit of you, but don't even. I'll sleep on the couch."
"You wouldn't, you'd miss me too much." Megan
You leaned over and pressed a kiss on your cheek, another, and another.
"You're an idiot." Megan snickered.
"I'm your idiot, now go to bed." You kissed her head.
Oooooo can I do the prompt “skin sticky with sunscreen” with my wife Megan Keller? Maybe it could be a lil spicy if you wanna 🫶🏻🤪🤭
Megan’s pink under the shade of the canopy over the boat’s steering wheel. You told her to wear sunscreen before you climbed aboard, and she assured you she had. You’re at the back of the boat, reapplying your own sunscreen.
“Megs,” you call out. You crook your finger at her as she looks over. Dutifully, she comes to you. You tug at the band of her swim top and pull her to stand between your legs. You grab the tube of sunscreen from beside you. Megan wrinkles her nose.
“I’m fine,” she says.
“You’re not,” you answer, “you’re already getting burned.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be a lobster tomorrow and you’ll ruin the plans I made.”
Despite her protests, Megan stands still as you rub the sunscreen over her skin. You’re only human, and your girlfriend is sculpted by the gods, so it’s not your fault that you linger over her chest and her abs and her thighs. You look up at Megan, your fingers tracing up and down her inner thigh. She’s pinker now unrelated to the sun.
“What?” You ask, playing dumb.
“You know what you’re doing,” Megan says.
“And what am I doing?”
Megan doesn’t answer. She pushes your hand away and crawls into your lap, her knees on either side of your hips. You rest your hands on the top of her thighs. She wraps her arms around your neck and pulls you into a kiss.
Her lips taste like Gatorade and salt water. It’s only the two of you on the boat, the only two in sight on the water, so you slide your hands up her thighs until you’re playing with the edges of her swim bottoms. She breaks the kiss and kisses along your neck. Her tongue pokes out and you can feel it hot against your pulse point. Then Megan pulls back abruptly.
“You taste like sunscreen,” she says, her face twisted.
“It’s probably the sunscreen.”
“I hate you,” she rolls her eyes.
“No you don’t.” You reach up to tug her hair out of its elastic, letting it fall in waves against her shoulders. You run your fingers through it, untangling the knots, then pull Megan back down to your lips.
pairing: megan x fem!athletic trainer!wife!reader!
cw: fluff & a little angst
anon asked: Hey girl, can I please request a Megan Keller x reader fic where the reader works in some capacity for the Fleet and they announce the readers pregnancy to the team during like a team meeting or something along those lines? You can do something else if you can think of a cuter way for them to announce!
nobody tells you that trying for a baby is going to be the loneliest kind of hope you've ever carried.
you and megan had been married two years and dating four before that, and somewhere in the third year of marriage you'd started talking about it seriously, not the daydream kind of talking, the kind where you actually took the vitamins and downloaded the app and started tracking things you'd never thought about tracking.
megan had cried a little the night you told her you wanted to start trying for real, she'd pressed her forehead to yours in the kitchen, both of you still in your going-out clothes from somebody's engagement party, and said, "yeah? really?" like she didn't trust the good thing being handed to her.
that was fourteen months ago fourteen months is a long time to hope on a schedule you'd learned the vocabulary fast luteal phase, cervical mucus, the exact chemical shape of disappointment printed on a plastic stick.
you'd learned which pharmacies were quietest at ten at night so you could buy tests without small talk you'd learned that megan, for all her ease on the ice, went perfectly still every single month in the bathroom doorway, watching your face instead of the test, because your face always told her the answer before you said anything.
there had been one positive nine weeks in, back in march, you'd let yourself believe it megan had put her hand on your stomach every night like she could will something into staying and then, at a routine scan, there had been a silence in the ultrasound room that neither of you had needed translated.
you didn't talk about march much anymore not because you'd healed exactly, but because talking about it too long made megan’s jaw do the thing it did before a fight broke out on the ice that clenched, protective stillness that meant she was holding something in so it wouldn't spill onto you.
so this time, you were careful you didn't buy prenatal vitamins in bulk or let yourself write anything down. you told yourself, sternly, in the bathroom mirror, that a late period was just a late period.
you told yourself that for four days before you finally bought the test you took it before megan woke up, which in hindsight was probably a form of self-protection or if it was bad news, you wanted the first wave of it in private.
the timer went off soft and polite, like it had no idea what it was about to do to you.
two lines.
you sat with it for a long moment, not trusting your own eyes, and then you cried hard, the kind that comes from somewhere underneath the actual news, relief and terror in the same breath.
you didn't tell megan that morning, you told yourself it was because you wanted to be sure underneath it was the truer thing; you were scared, scared of her face doing the hopeful thing again, unguarded, only for it to fall apart a second time.
you thought maybe if you carried the fear alone a little while, you could protect her from it as it took eight days, two more positive tests, and one very awkward phone call with your ob before megan found you sitting on the bathroom floor, tests lined up on the counter like evidence she sat down next to you, knee to knee, and waited.
"i wanted to be sure," you said, voice wrecked. "i didn't want to do that to you again, watching your face and then having to—"
"hey." her hand found yours on the tile. "look at me." you did as her eyes were wet, but she looked steadier than you expected, like she'd been braced for this exact conversation for months.
"i know what march was," she said quietly. "but you don't get to carry this alone to protect me from something that might not even happen but we agreed to do this together. all of it."
"i'm terrified," you admitted. "me too. but i'd rather be terrified next to you than protected and alone." she pressed her forehead to yours. "okay?" you nodded, and she kissed you, salt and all.
you didn't tell anyone else right away you went to every appointment together, megan rearranging practice without saying why, just "family thing" in a tone that didn't invite questions.
you held your breath through the six-week scan and the eight-week scan and didn't exhale properly until twelve weeks, when the doctor turned the screen and there it was fast, insistent, undeniably alive.
megan made a sound you'd never heard her make before, gripping your hand hard enough to leave a mark you were secretly glad for. "that's a heartbeat," she said. "that's ours."
in the car after, she didn't start the engine right away. "i want to tell the team," she said. "not today. i just — i want to stop pretending nothing's different when everything's different. i want to celebrate this one out loud. only if you're ready."
you thought about march, about how quietly you'd grieved it, how tired you were of holding hope like something that might break if anyone looked at it too closely. "i'm ready," you said. "let's tell them loud."
megan, once given permission to be excited out loud, turned out to have apparently been planning this for weeks already. "you've had a pinterest board," you accused her, scrolling her phone at eleven at night.
"i have a vision board."
"it has forty photos of tiny hockey skates on it, meg."
"they're relevant." she snatched the phone back, grinning the exact grin she wore before an overtime goal. "i want them to learn to skate before they learn to walk. family tradition."
"we don't have a family tradition, we've been trying for fourteen months."
"exactly. so we're allowed to make one up."
you let her have it you let her enlist hannah and zoe, swearing them to secrecy so severe that hannah started bringing you ginger ale "just in case" subtlety that fooled no one but you, somehow, for almost a month.
what you didn't let yourself do, even now, past the point doctors call a good sign, was stop being a little afraid.
the fear didn't leave because the joy arrived as it sat there next to it, quiet, the way grief and hope had learned to share a house since march you'd stopped trying to evict it, you'd just started letting the joy be louder the room was arranged wrong with chairs in a horseshoe, little white lights strung along the whiteboard rail hannah’s fingerprints, obviously.
"sit," megan said, steering you into the center chair. "meg. what is happening."
"patience." she was already failing at her own advice, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
coach méthot cleared her throat. "before line changes, brandt asked for five minutes."
megan crouched in front of your chair and took both your hands, and the room going quiet made your throat tighten in the good-bad way it had been doing for months. "so," she said. "you've probably noticed everyone's been acting weird around you."
"i had noticed, yes."
she reached into her jacket and produced, from her closed fist, a pair of skates small enough to sit in your palm, a number stitched crooked onto the tongue. five her number.
your brain took a full two seconds to catch up, same as it had the first time, except now there was a private history underneath it that only the two of you knew the weight of.
march sat there too, quiet, not gone, just no longer the loudest thing in the room behind megan, tessa hit a button and the projector flickered on with stolen photos you asleep on the bus, mouth open; you in the training room, hand resting on your stomach without meaning to; you crying at a car commercial as the last slide was just text: coming to boston, 2027.
the room clapped before you'd found any words you looked at the tiny skates, then at megan’s face, soft in the way it only went when she thought nobody but you was watching. "you knew," you managed. "you've known for months."
"since the day you did. i wanted to tell them right away, and you weren't ready, and i have never in my life waited patiently for anything."
"she would not stop talking about it," hannah confirmed. "during drills. during a power play."
"that's a lie," megan said, with no real conviction. "it's really not," said three teammates at once.
you laughed and it broke something loose that had been holding on tight since march, and then you were crying for real, unafraid of it this time megan stood just enough to kiss your forehead, then your mouth, right there in front of the whole horseshoe of chairs.
"team's excited," she murmured. "i'm excited. you carried this — both times — mostly by yourself, longer than anyone in this room understands, and i've never loved you more than i do right now."
"you're not supposed to make me cry harder."
"no promises." she pressed the skates into your hands. "figured they should learn to skate before they learn to walk."
"that's not a family tradition."
"it's about to be." she kissed your knuckles. "we're starting one thursday afternoon in a meeting room that smells like icy hot. i'd say that counts."
around you the room dissolved into chaos cupcakes appearing from wherever they'd been hidden for days, coach méthot giving up entirely on reclaiming her own meeting you sat in the middle of it holding impossibly small skates with megan’s hand warm at the back of your neck, and let yourself think, finally, without flinching: this one is going to stay.
it wasn't a promise the universe had technically made you. but for the first time in fourteen months, you let yourself believe it anyway. "for the record," you told her, once the room quieted, "i was going to tell you properly. candles. something cute."
"you cried on the bathroom floor with three positive tests lined up like evidence, my love."
"i was building up to the candles."
"sure you were." she kissed you again, laughing into it, and behind you zoe started a slow clap the whole room picked up until it was loud, and warm, and entirely too much, in the exact way that meant it was exactly enough.
anon asked:Omg we finally got a new writer for the PDUB 🤩! Thank you for being here! Can I please request a Megan Keller x reader smutty fic where the reader and Megan celebrate her golden goal and the US win when things settle down and she finally gets back home? I know when they got back the fleet played on the road but I can’t remember the timing so if it works to write it before the Olympic break ended it could be that or save it for when they played the TD Garden and they could be celebrating that too 😉 TIA 🫶🏻
you watched the goal from a hotel room in milan because the arena had sold out of standing room three days before the gold medal game, and because megan had begged you, actual words, please don't come to this one, i need to know you're safe and not fighting for a spot behind the glass, and you'd listened, because it was the olympics, and because when megan keller asks you for something in that low, steady voice she uses when she actually means it, you don't argue.
so you watched from a bed that wasn't yours, in a country that wasn't yours, holding a room service menu you never ordered from, watching the clock bleed into overtime.
three periods of nothing, sixty minutes of two goalies playing like the net behind them was the only thing keeping the world spinning correctly and then two minutes and forty seconds into overtime, megan keller five foot eleven, thirty years old, more comfortable on a blue line than she has ever been in her own skin standing still pinched down from the point on a play she had no business pinching down on, took a feed from the half wall, and one-timed it top shelf over a glove that got there half a second too late.
the building didn't just cheer it came apart at the seams you didn't hear the broadcast call it you were already crying, the good kind, the kind that comes up from somewhere under your sternum before your brain has caught up to what your eyes just watched happen, and you were on your feet on the hotel bed like an idiot, screaming at a television that couldn't hear you, and somewhere four miles away megan keller was being buried by nineteen other women in white jerseys, helmet gone, hair everywhere, laughing so hard she looked like she might throw up.
you didn't see her again for six hours there was a medal ceremony, there was an anthem, and you watched her sing every word of it with a gold medal sitting heavy against her chest and tears cutting clean lines through a face that hadn't been off the ice long enough to stop being flushed there was a mixed zone, a hundred cameras, a flag draped over her shoulders like a cape she hadn't asked for but had clearly earned.
there was a locker room celebration you weren't in, a bus back to the hotel you weren't on, a team dinner you weren't invited to because it was a team thing and you understood that, you did, even as you sat alone in a hotel room in a country that wasn't yours doing the math on how much longer you'd have to wait.
by the time the door finally opened, it was almost one in the morning, and you had fallen asleep with the lamp still on, still in your clothes, your phone resting on your chest where you'd been holding it the way you might hold something that reminded you she was still real.
you woke up to the sound of the card reader clicking green and the door easing open slow, like she was trying not to wake you, like she hadn't already failed at that the second the lock disengaged.
"hey," she said, quiet, from the doorway still in the team tracksuit gold medal still around her neck, because apparently nobody had told her she was allowed to take it off yet, or maybe she just hadn't wanted to. "didn't mean to wake you."
"you didn't." you sat up, rubbing your eyes, and the sight of her hair a disaster, mascara that had been reapplied at some point and had still given up somewhere around hour four, medal sitting crooked against her collarbone hit you somewhere you weren't braced for. "meg. you did it."
"i did it." she said it like she was still checking the words for accuracy like she needed to hear herself say them out loud to believe the tape was real and not something her brain had built for her out of adrenaline and wanting. "we did it."
you were off the bed before you'd decided to be, and she met you halfway, and the medal pressed cold and hard between your bodies when she wrapped you up, face going straight into your neck, and you felt her exhale go shaky in a way it hadn't on any broadcast, in any mixed zone, in front of any camera.
"hey," you said again, softer this time, hand coming up into her hair. "hey. i've got you."
"i missed you the whole time," she mumbled into your skin. "scored the biggest goal of my life and the whole time i was under that pile i kept thinking, she's not here, she's watching this on a hotel tv by herself and i can't even go find her yet."
"i watched every second of it," you told her. "i screamed so loud the people in the next room probably called the front desk."
that got a laugh out of her, wet and small, muffled against your throat. "good. i want everyone in this hotel to know i've got a girl losing her mind over me somewhere in this building."
"you've had a girl losing her mind over you since pwhl preseason two years ago. this isn't new information."
she pulled back enough to look at you, and up close the exhaustion was written into every line of her the kind that isn't about being tired, it's about spending six months building toward one single night and then having that night actually arrive and having to figure out how to be a person again on the other side of it her eyes were glassy in a way that wasn't just the medal ceremony catching up to her.
"i'm engaged to a gold medalist," you said, and reached up to tuck a piece of hair back off her face. "how's that feel?"
"feels like i finally have something worth the ring," megan said, and reached down to find your left hand, thumb running over the band there like she needed to check it was still where she'd left it. "feels like maybe i earned my spot on this side of the bed."
"you earned that a long time ago, keller."
"say that again."
"you earned that a long time ago."
"no — the last name. say it again." her mouth had gone crooked, something dangerous sliding into it under the exhaustion. "i like hearing you call me that when you're looking at me like you want to ruin me."
"meg." you laughed, but it came out lower than you meant it to. "you just won a gold medal six hours ago. you should be sleeping."
"i've been sitting through a medal ceremony, a mixed zone, and a team dinner where coach made everyone do a toast, thinking about exactly one thing," megan said, walking you backward without ever really deciding to, hands finding your hips like they'd been waiting all night for permission. "and it wasn't sleep."
"yeah?" your back found the edge of the mattress. "what was it."
"you know what it was."
"say it anyway. i want to hear you say it after the year you just had."
something in her face went soft and reckless all at once, the medal still swinging gently between you, catching lamp light. "wanted to get back to this room and get my hands on my fiancée. wanted to feel something that wasn't adrenaline for the first time in about eighteen hours. wanted—"
she leaned in, mouth ghosting the shell of your ear "—wanted you to tell me i did good. wanted to hear it from you specifically, because everybody in that arena was screaming my name tonight and none of it landed the way it lands when it's you."
"you did so good," you told her, voice already unsteady, hands finding the zipper of her tracksuit jacket. "best game of your life. best goal i've ever seen. i'm so proud of you i don't even know what to do with it."
"show me," megan said against your jaw, and you did the jacket came off first, then the medal, which she set with more care than she'd shown any other piece of clothing that night, laying it gently on the nightstand like it might bruise, before her hands came back to you with none of that same carefulness at all.
she kissed you like the last six hours of restraint had been a debt and she meant to collect on all of it at once one hand fisting gently in your hair, the other sliding under the hem of your shirt to find bare skin, and you felt her sigh into your mouth when she did, like touching you was the first thing all night that had actually let her exhale.
"missed this," she breathed, pulling your shirt over your head between kisses. "missed you. six weeks is too long, i don't care what the schedule says."
"you're here now."
"i'm here now," she agreed, and got you flat on your back on a hotel bed in milan, gold medal glinting on the nightstand like a witness, and set about proving it.
she took her time with you first, always did, always had, ever since the very first night this had started, some rookie-season habit of hers that she'd never broken, this insistence that she wasn't finished with you until you'd fallen apart at least once before she let herself have anything.
mouth trailing down your throat, over your collarbone, pausing to bite gently at the curve of your shoulder in a way that made your hips jump up off the mattress looking for any friction at all.
"meg—"
"i know." her hand slid down your stomach, fingers hooking into the waistband of your shorts. "i've got you just let me look at you a second."
"you've had six weeks to look at me on facetime."
"not the same," she said, low, and peeled your shorts down, and whatever teasing patience she'd had left in her seemed to run out at the sight of you already wet for her, because her next exhale came out ragged. "god. you weren't kidding about the screaming thing."
"told you."
she kissed down your stomach, over your hip bone, settled between your thighs like she'd never once in her life wanted to be anywhere else, and when her mouth finally found you, flat and slow at first before curling into something with real intent behind it, your hand flew into her hair and stayed there, and the noise that came out of you was nothing you'd have wanted the room next door to hear either.
"meg—" your back arched, heel digging into the mattress. "right there, don't stop, don't you dare stop—"
she didn't she worked you with the same focus she brought to every shift she'd ever played, methodical and unhurried until she found exactly what made your thighs shake, and then she stayed right there, one arm braced over your hips to keep you from squirming away from the intensity of it, until you were coming apart around her mouth with her name breaking in your throat and both hands fisted hard in her hair.
"there she is," megan murmured, pressing one more kiss to your inner thigh before crawling back up your body, mouth wet, eyes dark and pleased with herself in a way that should have been infuriating and was instead unbearably hot. "that's the sound i wanted to hear tonight better than the anthem."
"don't let usa hockey hear you say that."
"usa hockey isn't in this bed." she kissed you, slowly, letting you taste yourself on her tongue, and you felt her shudder when your hand slid down between your bodies to find her, still fully dressed from the waist down, achingly wet through the fabric when you pressed your palm flat against her.
"off," you managed against her mouth. "now. i've waited six weeks too."
she didn't need to tell you twice.
when she finally settled over you, nothing left between you, she paused, forehead dropped to yours, breathing unevenly, gold medal glinting six feet away in lamp light like it was standing witness to something else entirely and said, quiet, almost like it surprised her to say it out loud.
"best night of my life and you're not even talking about the medal."
"i'm not," you agreed, hooking a leg around her waist, pulling her the last inch down into you until you both went still with the fullness of it, breath catching in both your throats at once. "i'm talking about you. always you, meg."
"say my name again."
"megan." you said it like a vow, hips already rolling up into hers, urging her into a rhythm that started slow and did not stay that way. "megan, megan—"
she moved over you like she'd been waiting all season to get back here, one hand braced by your head, the other finding yours and lacing your fingers together against the pillow, ring catching lamp light the same way the medal had, two golds in one room.
every stroke of her hips pulled a sound out of you that had nothing careful left in it, and she chased the sound like it was the only score that mattered anymore, breath ragged against your throat, murmuring your name and fiancée and mine into your skin in a broken litany that undid you faster than her mouth had.
"i've got you," she said again, when you were close, when your grip on her hand had gone bruising and your back had bowed up off the mattress. "i've got you, come on, let go, i want to feel it—"
you did hard, and loud, and with her name in your mouth, and she followed you over barely a minute later with her face buried in your neck and your name breaking against your skin like something she couldn't hold onto any other way.
afterward, tangled together in sheets that smelled like an italian hotel and sex and the last six hours of the biggest night of her career, megan reached over without lifting her head off your chest and pulled the gold medal off the nightstand, laying it gently across your collarbone instead of hers.
"what are you doing?"
"you earned half of this," she said, simple, like it wasn't a big deal, like it wasn't the most megan sawyer thing she could possibly have said. "six weeks apart, every facetime at four in the morning your time because of the time difference, flying out here even though i told you not to fight for tickets, sitting alone in a hotel room screaming at a tv. this medal's got your name on it same as mine."
"meg."
"i mean it." she kissed your shoulder, settled back against you, medal cool between you where it had been warm around her neck all night. "gold looks good on you."
"everything looks good on me. i'm engaged to an olympian, i have to keep up appearances."
that got the real laugh out of her the one that came from somewhere unguarded, the one you'd fallen in love with two years ago in a hallway outside a pwhl locker room before either of you knew what you were doing about it and she pulled you in tighter, and for the first time in six hours, maybe the first time in six months, megan felt like she could finally exhale all the way.
"home in four days," she murmured against your hair, already half asleep. "then boston plays before the break's even over. you coming to that one too?"
"try and stop me."
"wouldn't dream of it."
the thing nobody warns you about is that gold medals don't come with an off-switch as megan flew home four days after the ceremony looking like a woman who'd aged a year in a month, adrenaline long gone and exhaustion sitting in its place, and you'd had exactly thirty-one hours with her real hours, apartment hours, hours where she fell asleep on the couch at 7 p.m. with her head in your lap and you didn't wake her because some things a body just needs before the team reconvened and flew out for the two road games that had been circled on the calendar since before the olympic break had even started.
you'd gone to neither work, mostly, and the quiet understanding between the two of you that not every game needed you in the building, that sometimes the biggest support you could give her was a home that felt like home when she finally got back to it.
but td garden td garden was different td garden was the first game back on home ice since megan had scored the goal that got played on every sports highlight reel in the country for a week straight, and the second the schedule confirmed it, you'd bought a ticket before she'd even asked.
you didn't tell her you were coming that had been the plan from the start megan’s brother in had helped you get the seat, close enough to the glass that megan would be able to see you if she looked, but not so close that she'd notice before the puck dropped and her focus locked in the way it always did.
the arena had a banner up before warmups even started. not an official one those would come later, there'd be a ceremony, there'd be a video board tribute, there'd be a moment where twenty thousand people stood up and screamed her name during a stoppage in play that made her visor fog up in a way she'd deny on record afterward but somewhere in the upper bowl, a group of fans had strung up a bedsheet with megan 🥇painted across it in gold letters, and the second megan skated out for warmups and saw it, her whole face cracked open into something helpless and young, nothing like the composed defenseman the league had built its olympic marketing campaign around for the last six weeks.
she found you in the second period it wasn't a long look a stoppage in play, a tv timeout, her gaze sweeping the crowd the way players do out of habit more than intent but it caught on you the way it always did, like her eyes knew where you were before her brain had finished processing the rest of the building, and something shifted across her face, soft and surprised and unguarded for exactly the length of a commercial break, before the whistle blew and she had to go back to being a professional athlete again.
boston won 4–1 megan didn't score, but she had two assists and a plus-minus that made the analytics guys on the broadcast use words like complete and whole different level since milan, and when the final horn sounded, the arena did the thing again stood up, all twenty thousand of them, and screamed her name until the sound system genuinely couldn't compete with it, until the gold medal ceremony they ran between the second and third period felt almost like an afterthought next to the noise the crowd made completely unprompted.
you waited for her outside the family room after, the way you always did, and when she came through the door hair still damp, medal from the actual in-arena ceremony now looped over her the same too-careful way as the one in milan, cheeks still flushed from three periods of adrenaline she hadn't fully burned off yet she didn't say anything at all. just crossed the space between you in about four strides and picked you up like you weighed nothing, spinning you once before setting you back down, both of you laughing.
"you came," she said, into your hair. "you actually came."
"wouldn't miss it."
"i looked for you the second i skated out and i didn't even know i was looking until i found you."
"i saw." you pulled back to look at her, thumb catching a bead of sweat at her temple. "you almost lost it during that tv timeout. very unprofessional, keller. there were cameras."
"there's always cameras when it's you," she said, easy, like it wasn't even a confession, just a fact she'd made peace with a long time ago. "you want to know something? i thought about milan the whole third period tonight. kept thinking, we're gonna get home and it's gonna be like that again, except this time nobody's flying out in the morning."
"no 6 a.m. flight this time."
"no 6 a.m. flight this time," she agreed, and something in her voice went low and certain in a way that made your stomach flip the exact same way it had in a hotel room a country away three weeks ago. "you still up for it? even after watching me get hit into the boards twice."
"you barely felt those."
"i didn't feel anything all night except you looking at me," megan said, quiet, honest, forehead dropping to yours the same way it had in milan. "c'mon. let's go home."
home was a fourth-floor walk-up in the north end that still had a duffel bag of olympic gear sitting half-unpacked by the door, and the second that door shut behind you, megan had you pinned gently against it, medal still around her neck, mouth finding yours like the last three weeks apart had been sitting on her chest the whole time waiting for exactly this.
"i've been thinking about this since the plane landed," she murmured against your jaw, hands already working at the button of your jeans. "every single road game. every hotel room that wasn't ours."
"yeah?" your hands found the hem of her jersey, tugging it up and off, medal swinging loose against your fingers when you set it aside on the entryway table with the same reverence she'd shown it in milan. "tell me."
"thought about getting you exactly like this," she said, walking you backward through the apartment, mouth trailing down your throat while your shirt disappeared somewhere between the hallway and the bedroom door. "against a door. on the counter. doesn't matter where, i just needed my hands on you the second i was allowed to have them there again."
by the time you hit the bed, there wasn't much left of either of you in the way of clothes, and megan settled over you with none of the exhaustion from milan in her this time road-trip energy instead, pent-up and hungry, three weeks of nothing but facetime and time zones behind every touch.
"missed you," she said again, the same two words from three weeks ago, except this time they came out lower, rougher, punctuated by her hips grinding down against yours until you were both gasping. "missed you so much, baby, you have no idea."
"show me instead of telling me," you managed, and she huffed a laugh against your collarbone before doing exactly that working you open with fingers first, unhurried despite everything she'd just said about being hungry for it, until you were writhing under her and begging in a way that had her name coming apart in your mouth long before she ever gave you what you actually wanted.
"megan, please—"
"i know, i know, i've got you." she kissed the words into your skin, replaced her fingers with her hips, and the first slow drag of her into you had both of you groaning at once, three weeks of distance dissolving into nothing the second your bodies remembered each other. "god, i missed this. missed you like this."
she built the pace slow and let it climb, forehead pressed to yours, breath mixing between you, and every roll of her hips pulled you further apart in the best way, her hand finding yours on the mattress and lacing through it the exact same way it had in milan, ring catching the bedroom lamp light instead of the hotel's.
"gonna marry you," she breathed, hips stuttering when you clenched around her, close and getting closer. "gonna marry you and i don't care that the season's not even close to over, i want everyone to know—"
"meg—" your back arched, thighs shaking around her waist. "i'm close, don't stop, please don't stop—"
"not stopping," she promised, voice wrecked, pace picking up just enough to tip you over the edge, and you came apart around her with her name breaking out of you into the quiet of the apartment, no arena, no crowd, no cameras, just the two of you and the sound of her own name in your mouth pulling her over right behind you, face buried in your neck, both of you shaking through it together.
afterward, tangled up in sheets that actually belonged to you this time, in an apartment that actually was home, megan traced idle patterns against your shoulder and let out a long, slow breath like she was finally, actually, fully exhaling for the first time since the puck had crossed the goal line in milan.
"two golds in three weeks," she said eventually, nodding at the medal glinting on the nightstand, catching the streetlight through the window blinds. "the olympic one and the one from tonight's ceremony. i don't know where to put them both."
"put one on the mantle and give the other one to me," you said. "consider it a wedding gift to yourself."
"you're already the best thing i brought home from this whole tournament," megan said, and pulled you in closer, medal light spilling gold across the both of you. "the medals are just souvenirs. you're the actual prize."
"that's disgustingly sweet for a woman who just got done railing me into the mattress."
"i contain multitudes," megan said, grinning against your temple, and for the first time in six weeks, with the season stretching back out ahead of her and a ring on your finger and a gold medal on the nightstand, she finally, completely, let herself rest.
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Warnings: Smut. Angst. Keller being a bad girlfriend at the start
Summary: After Boston gets eliminated from the playoffs, Megan lets her anger get the better of her and takes it out on her girlfriend. Can their relationship be fixed or is it too late?
A/N: sorry? hope you don't hate me?
Title from the Justin Bieber song
AO3 Link
You’re in shock when the final horn goes off. You lost. You lost the game, you lost the series, and now it’s over. Your season, over, just like that. You had the best team, you thought, the right pieces, all falling into place. You clinched so early, barely missed out on first place. Still, you felt there was no one better than you. You could taste the Walter Cup in your grasp for weeks at the end of the season.
And you lost.
It’s over.
Another early exit, another missed chance. You lost in the finals in season one, didn’t even make the playoffs in season two, and you got upset in round one of season three. No matter what you do, it doesn’t matter. It’s not enough.
You’re sitting on the bench, staring out onto the ice, mouth open. It’s over. You blink. Blink again. And again. And again. And again. As if you’re going to open your eyes and the game will just be starting, you’ll have another chance, and it won’t be over. Ottawa is celebrating on the ice and you can’t help thinking it should be you. It was never supposed to be this way.
Megan says something in the locker room. Something about loving the team, about being proud, about the trophy not being everything, about the season being a success despite the result. Her words are hollow, you know this. She’s crushed as much as you are. The season means nothing without the Cup in the end.
The bus ride back to the hotel is silent. Everyone processing the loss in their own way. You want more than anything to sit with Megan, to cry on her shoulder, to have her hold you and tell you it’ll be okay. But that’s not what Megan needs. Megan needs space, needs the bus ride to get to a place of acceptance with the loss. You can give her space.
Everyone breaks off to their own rooms. You have a flight tomorrow back to Boston. You were supposed to be getting on that flight and prepping for game five. Instead you’re flying back to Boston with nothing and you’ll have to wait another season before you get another shot.
Megan doesn’t even look at you.
Not when you disembark the bus, not when you walk through the front doors into the lobby, not when you pile into the elevator with a handful of your teammates, not when you follow a step behind her towards her room. She doesn’t look at you as her hand shakes as she tries to swipe her room key, or as the light flashes red over and over.
“Meg,” You try. You try to get her to look at you, to acknowledge you. “Let me do it.” She doesn’t. “Meg.”
When she finally gets it, she barely opens the door enough for herself and tries to close it quickly behind her. You jump quickly, good reflexes even through the physical and mental exhaustion, and manage to get your shoulder in the way so she can’t close the door. You know she doesn’t want to be alone. She thinks she does, but she doesn’t. Or you don’t. It doesn’t matter. She won’t want you to be alone if you don’t want to be. She’d be upset later if you left and didn’t tell her you needed her.
You squeeze your way in, and Megan huffs and throws her key card down on the desk. She paces, moving around the room, moving things that don’t need to be moved, running a hand through her hair every few seconds. She still won’t look at you.
“Meg.”
You’re not letting her do this. You’re not letting her spiral.
“Megan.”
You step in front of her when she doesn’t respond. She walks into you. You stumble back and she doesn’t catch you. You stay in her path, in the way. You’re not letting her do this.
She doesn’t do what you expect her to do. You expect her to break down, to cry, collapse. You expect her to start yelling. You expect her to start going over the game, or rationalizing why Ottawa was better, why you lost, explaining what needs to change for next year. She doesn’t do any of that. She keeps stepping forward, and you keep stepping back, until your lower back hits the edge of the desk. She keeps moving until she’s pushing you against the desk. You expect her to kiss you.
“You have one fucking job on this team. Put the puck in the back of the net. Why the fuck can’t you do your job when it fucking matters?”
Megan’s right, that’s the worst part. You had a terrible series. No goals in four games. You barely managed to scrape out one measly assist in game three. Not that it mattered. You lost game three anyway. You lost the series anyway. You don’t even want to look at your plus/minus in the playoffs. You didn’t do very good two seasons ago either, but nobody noticed because the rest of the team stepped up. You made the finals, almost won, so it didn’t matter how you played. It matters now, now that you got upset, now that you’re not playing for the Cup, now that you’re standing in front of your captain and girlfriend and having to answer to why her team fell short again.
“What’s the point of all your stats if you can’t get it done when it matters?”
You feel like you might start crying. You wanted to win so bad. You let the team down. You let Megan down. You know what everyone said after season one, what they’re going to say now, what they’ve already been saying after the first three games. Regular season merchant. Cracks under pressure. Never getting a Cup. Should’ve been benched. You see it, you’ve had to answer for it before, after season one, before this series started. You’ve had to try to explain away your inability to produce on the biggest stage.
Megan has never asked you to. Never once treated your performances as something to be explained, or justified. She’s never asked you to justify your spot on the team after your worst games. She’s asking now, and you don’t think you have an answer.
Megan’s not even fucking looking at you.
When she drags you to bed, you go willingly. It’s your penance. For letting her down, for playing bad, for keeping her from a championship for the third year in a row. You push aside your needs for hers. You can be what she needs. You couldn’t do it on the ice, but you can do it here.
She’s tearing your clothes off before you can even settle in bed. You reach for her and she slaps your hand away. You try again, try to pull her shirt over her head, and again she slaps your hands away. You keep trying, keep trying to make it feel like you’re doing something, that you’re contributing, that you’re not just her puppet. After the last of your clothes hit the floor, Megan grabs your wrists and pins them to the bed with one hand.
“Meg…”
She’s holding you so tight that you’re sure you’ll have bruises in the shape of her fingers against your wrists. She doesn’t waste any time. She immediately plunges three fingers into your cunt and you cry out at the intrusion.
Megan loves foreplay. She loves getting you ready. She loves your tits, and your thighs, and your stomach, every part of you she can touch that draws noises of you. Most of the time she doesn’t even go inside until after you’ve cum at least once. She’ll drag things out until you’re dripping onto the sheets below you and begging for it. It’s never like this.
She kisses you, rough and hard. You can’t keep up. It takes a moment for your body to catch up, for the slight burn from the stretch to turn to pleasure. Despite everything, the anger and disappointment, Megan still knows your body like the back of her hand. She knows exactly what to do to bring you pleasure. There’s fury behind it, almost like she’s angry at herself for knowing you, for not being able to fuck you without making it good for you.
When Megan’s not kissing you, she’s not looking at you. She stares up at the wall, or at the pillow over your shoulder, or she’s staring at her own arm above you.
You’re not looking away.
When you cum, or rather, when Megan pulls an orgasm from you, she leaves her fingers inside you for a moment. You think she’s going to keep going, and you can, if she wants, but she pulls her fingers out unceremoniously. You think that’s it, that she’s gotten it out. She’s breathing heavy over you, hand still pinning yours down. And then she lets go, and she’s shoving you over, onto the other side of the bed, and laying down beside you with her back turned.
You’ve never felt more used in your life.
That’s it. Megan got what she wanted from you and now she’s done. There’s no aftercare, no asking if you’re alright. She’s not once asked how you’re doing after the loss. You know she’s struggling with it, and you want to help her, but you also want her to care about you too. Tears prick at the corner of your eyes. You cry silently. Megan doesn’t want you to cry. Megan doesn’t want to have to comfort you.
When you’re sure Megan’s asleep, you pull yourself out of bed. You find your clothes on the floor and dress yourself. Megan doesn’t move. You look at her and she’s out cold, with a crease in her eyebrows still. You feel the urge to brush it away, to run your fingers over it until she settles in her sleep. Megan doesn’t want that from you, though, so you don’t.
The hallway is empty when you shut the door behind you. The lights are blindingly bright and you have nowhere to go. You slide down the wall beside the door and tuck your head against your knees and cry.
You don’t know how long you sit there for. You let it all out. Everything you’ve been feeling since the horn went, since the final horn went in season one. The pain, the disappointment, the feeling of letting your team down, letting the fans and the city down. Letting Megan down. Whatever you did to make Megan not even be able to look at you. Whatever you did to kill the part of Megan that loves you unconditionally.
The door cracks open. You don’t lift your head.
There’s a hand on your arm, tugging at you. You don’t have strength left to fight it. She pulls you back inside. She hugs you and you don’t hug back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Megan whispers, “Why are you hiding in the hallway?”
You want to laugh. You want to ask Megan, genuinely, what part of her behaviour tonight made it seem like she wanted that? How were you supposed to believe you could tell her how upset you are and have her comfort you? You don’t, because there’s nothing to fight about tonight. There’s no point in it. You gave Megan what she needed. It doesn’t matter if she didn’t give you what you needed. Not tonight, at least.
She pulls you back to the bed, to the bed where she fucked you like she hated you, and she pulls you down to lay on top of her. She’s holding you, not letting you go, and when you try to shift, she holds you tighter. Arms, legs, everything of hers wrapped around you, keeping you close.
This is about her too.
She needs this, and you’ll give it to her, even if you don’t think you need it anymore.
-
On the way back to Boston, you spend your time with anyone but Megan. If your teammates notice, they don’t mention it. You woke up still in Megan’s arms, and you extracted yourself immediately. You left for your own room before Megan could even wake up fully, and you haven’t spoken to her since. Today is about you, you decide, what you need. And what you need right now is not to be with Megan.
She gives you space.
You wonder what would’ve happened last night if you’d just given her space.
There’s still a general haze over the group, everyone still depressed and in disbelief. It’s the most somber plane ride you’ve ever had. There’s no laughing, no joking. You sit with Ratty since you know she won’t ask about last night, or why you’re not sitting with Megan.
When you get home, you take your bags into the bedroom. Megan doesn’t follow. You don’t unpack yet, still exhausted from everything that’s happened. You sit heavily on the bed. On your bed. On the bed that still smells like Megan’s shampoo. That has strands of Megan’s hair on the pillows. Where Megan made love to you for hours until you were shaking and soaking the sheets after game one. Where you felt unstoppable.
You don’t get up for hours, going over every moment in your head that happened since that night after game one. You only come out of your trance by your stomach growling painfully. You hadn’t eaten since you forced down dry protein bars in the airport.
Megan’s nowhere to be found when you head into the kitchen. Her bags aren’t at the front door. It’s dark outside but the lights are on in your apartment. You told Megan once that you hated a dark apartment, you hated walking around in the dark, and she always kept a light on for you. You have no energy to make anything, so you scrounge around in the cupboards until you settle on a bag of Goldfish crackers. You can barely taste them as you eat, but they do enough to quell your hunger. You go back to your bedroom and collapse face first on the bed and fall asleep.
-
You wake up in the morning and Megan isn’t in bed with you. You haven’t seen her since you returned to your apartment the day before. You drag yourself out of bed and you’re greeted in the kitchen with a bouquet of flowers and breakfast plated for you. You snag the card out of the flowers.
I’m so sorry
I love you
You read it, once, twice, flip it over, read it again, then toss it on the counter. You sit and eat the food. It’s a little warm still, but cooled enough that you know Megan made this a decent amount of time ago and left it for you. You want to be touched, you want to feel like you used to when Megan did things like this for you. You’re not.
Megan doesn’t come home all day.
You know you could text her, or call her, and ask where she is. You don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong. You shouldn’t be the one fixing it. Megan needs to fix it. You know the flowers and the food are her way of fixing it, but it’s not enough for you. Which she would know if she was here.
-
The next day you wake up to a new bouquet and another breakfast.
You toss the note with the other one – I love you more than anything – and eat. You spend the day unpacking and packing up your hockey gear for the season. There’s no point in leaving it all out. You won’t be using it for a while.
Megan doesn’t come home.
-
Next day the same thing.
You are my best friend and my whole world
-
The next day – My darling, I don’t deserve you – you make a decision. If Megan is too cowardly to face you, you’ll make her.
You park yourself on the couch, determined not to let her sneak in or out without you noticing. Your phone has been blowing up ever since you got back to Boston. Mostly your family offering condolences and asking when you’ll be coming home, or your teammates asking how you’re doing and inviting you to hang with them. Plus the one single message from Ratty: Hey, everything okay with you and Megan? Understand if you don’t want to talk about it but I’m here for you if you need anything.
You don’t respond, and you don’t think you’re going to.
You actually have no idea where you and Megan stand. You have no idea if you’re ready to forgive her yet, or if she even knows what she’s apologizing for.
You’re starting to doze off against the arm of the couch when you hear a door creak open. You open your eyes and you’re staring at Megan’s form tiptoeing out of the guest bedroom. She notices you on the couch and freezes like a deer in the headlights. For a moment, neither of you move. Then, slowly, Megan steps backwards into the guest room again. As soon as she does you surge from the couch and march towards her.
“Did you think flowers and food and avoiding me is going to fix everything?” You push through the door.
It’s a mirror to before, with you backing Megan up until her knees hit the messy, unmade bed.
“I was giving you space,” Megan answers with a mumble.
“You were giving me space? Did I tell you I wanted space?” Megan shakes her head no. “Has it ever occurred to you to ask me what I want instead of assuming for me?”
“You didn’t seem like you wanted anything to do with me.”
“And who’s fault is that?”
Megan flinches. She’s staring at the floor. You can’t take it anymore.
You give Megan one solid shove in the chest. “Fucking look at me!” You screech.
You’ve pushed Megan multiple times before. On the ice, in practice and in games when you used to be on different teams. In the gym when she won’t get out of your way and let you work out in peace. At home when she’s in the way of you cooking dinner. Every time, every single time, Megan doesn’t even move. She’ll smile condescendingly at you and ask if that’s all you got. She’s stronger than you, has better balance, and she enjoys teasing you. So she never moves.
Megan stumbles back and falls onto the bed. She catches herself on her forearms and like you asked, she looks up at you. There’s tears pooling in her eyes that she won’t let fall. She looks broken. You probably look the same.
“Do you even know what you did?” You ask, suddenly calm.
“I hurt you.”
“How?”
“Baby-"
“How?”
Megan swallows. Her eyes flick down for a moment, then quickly back up at you. “I didn’t mean what I said. I was mean. I was upset and angry and I took it out on you. I wasn’t angry at you, I was angry at myself.”
“That’s it?” You laugh incredulously, “That’s all you’re sorry about? What about holding me down? What about fucking me like it was the last thing in the world you wanted? What about treating me like a worthless whore five seconds after it was over?”
The tears start to fall from Megan’s eyes. Yours have already been falling. You can see it on her face, can see that she knows exactly what she did, exactly how she hurt you, and she’s been avoiding you because she can’t face it.
“I needed you,” You say, “I needed you to be my girlfriend. To be the kind and caring person you are and to make that night not feel like the world was ending. And you weren’t that person. You were different. You made everything my fault. And maybe it is, maybe it is all my fault that we lost.” Your voice cracks, but you keep going. “Maybe you would’ve won if I wasn’t on your team. But you’re not the one who’s supposed to tell me that.”
You turn around and leave before Megan can answer. You go into your bedroom, shut the door behind you, and cry.
When you calm down a bit, when you’re able to see through your tears, you look around the room. This is your bedroom. The bedroom in the home you’ve made with Megan. Her clothes are in the closet, her toothbrush in the bathroom. There’s a shelf in the fridge filled of foods only Megan eats, and one for you. Your eyes find the photo wall above the dresser. Pictures of Megan, of you and Megan. You made it, you printed so many photos from over the years and carefully organized them in the right order.
Megan is competitive. In all things. When you first started dating, you took her to a board game night at a local café. She sat, jaw clenched, as you racked up points to win, until you reached over and touched her arm and told her she doesn’t need to let you win. A switch flipped and she wiped the floor with you. She smiled in a way she hadn’t before.
Every game, practice, scrimmage, she has to win. It doesn’t matter the stakes, if there’s something to win, she’ll win it. She gloats when she wins against you, and then when you beat her she refuses to talk to you for an hour. She won’t play video games with you because she always loses. She takes every kind of loss as a personal affront to herself, as if it’s a moral failing on her part that she didn’t win.
You love her so much. You have loved her in every moment of your relationship.
She hurt you. She hurt you worse than you have ever been hurt before. She made you feel so small, like an ant beneath her shoe, like you were nothing but a burden to her. You had never felt as awful as she made you feel.
And still, you loved her all the way through it.
And you will love her all the way through this as well.
You’ll never not love her.
You go back to the guest room. Megan hasn’t moved from where you left her. You take her hand and you pull her with you into your bedroom. She follows you willingly.
“I’ll follow you anywhere.”
“Even to the worst team in the league?”
“I’ll go wherever you go.”
You sit her on the bed, and you climb into her lap, knees on either side of her hips. You put her hands on your hips, and you tilt her chin up so she’s looking at you.
“I love you,” You say, because it’s true. “I’m so angry with you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”
“I know.”
“I want you to make me feel better. I want you to take the pain away.”
She swallows heavily. You can tell she’s fighting to keep her eyes on you.
“Kiss me?”
She does. Softly, barely any pressure. You take her bottom lip in yours and tangle your fingers in her hair. This is what you wanted, after the game, this is the version of Megan you wanted.
She kisses you, lets you lead, and she doesn’t move her hands until you reach down and pull them under your shirt. She touches you reverently, like she can’t believe you’re with her. When you tug your shirt over your head, she doesn’t even glance down at your chest, she stays looking you in the eye. It’s almost overwhelming, but it’s Megan, and you love Megan, so it’s not.
She takes her time with you, touching every part of your exposed skin with her hands, and then with her mouth when you appreciative sounds. She doesn’t look away from your face. When she finally shifts, lays you down on the bed, you can almost imagine the other night didn’t happen, that this is the first time she’s touched you since the horn went.
She makes no move to remove the rest of your clothes. She touches you, kisses you. You know Megan, you know she would be happy to just do this. To just kiss you and touch you above the waist and do nothing else. You don’t even need to touch her back. But you need more.
“Please Meg.” You tug your own pants down. She pauses.
“Meg.” You stop. You cup her cheek. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” As she speaks, a tear falls from her eye. It lands, cold and wet on your collarbone.
“You’re not going to hurt me.”
“I did,” She says, “You said so. I hurt you so bad. I can’t ever make it better. I can’t undo what I did. I can’t make the pain go away.”
“Maybe it won’t,” You admit, “But I love you more. I love you more than the pain. I want to fix it.”
Megan finally breaks eye contact when she lets her head drop onto your shoulder. You can feel her tears hitting your skin, her shoulders shaking with each sob she lets out. You hold her and you don’t say anything. When she stops crying, she lifts her head up. You use your thumb to catch some of the linger wetness under her eye.
“Is it…” Her voice is thick. “Is it okay if… Is it…”
“Tell me,” You encourage her.
“Is it okay if I don’t… If I don’t go inside? If I…”
“Yes,” You interrupt. “I’m not asking you to fuck me Meg. I want you to make love to me.”
She pulls your pants the rest of the way off, then your underwear. She runs her hand up and down your thigh, everywhere except where you need her and this is Megan. This is your Megan.
“Can I use my mouth?” She asks.
“Yes. God yes, Megan, yes.”
She takes her time kissing down your body, making sure you feel every press of her lips against your skin, every pass of her tongue. She’s worshipping you. It’s everything you wanted from her. When her mouth finally finds your pussy, you almost feel like you could’ve cum from her mouth on your hips alone. Her tongue touches every part of you, savouring every drop of your slick. Your hands grip her hair, pull her harder against you. She moves to focus on your clit and your thighs clamp around her head. You worry a little that you might suffocate her, but she just presses herself tighter against you.
When you cum, she eases you down, backing off slowly. She kisses your thighs, licks up the wetness that has seeped onto your inner thighs. You let out heaving breaths. You bring one hand across your chest, feeling your heart racing beneath your palm.
“Good?” Megan asks.
“Uh huh.”
“Can I go again?” She’s staring up at you from between your thighs. She’s panting slightly, tongue just cresting over her lips. She reminds you of a dog, waiting for orders from her master.
“Fuck.” You groan. “Yeah, yeah Meg, yeah, you can go again.”
Her mouth finds you again, sensitive from your first orgasm. Her tongue presses against you firmer this time, but she avoids your clit. When you cum again, she suctions her lips around your entrance and licks up the escaping slick. Again, she pulls back and brings you down slowly. And again, asks if she can go again.
You lost track of how many times you cum, how many times Megan has asked “Can I go again?”, until she asks again and you can’t speak. You shake your head no. Megan, looking at you, not having taken her eyes off you since you started, kisses her way up your body.
Her face is a mess. The lower half of her face is soaked with your wetness and you can’t find it in yourself to be embarrassed. She kisses you, and you can taste yourself on her lips.
“I’m getting you all wet,” Megan says when she pulls back, wiping up the slick that she’s left around your lips. You want to say that you got her wet first, but you don’t really have the energy for words. She wipes her face on her upper arm.
You throw your one arm around her shoulders. She has one arm holding herself up over you and the over she uses to rub up and down your side. You can feel yourself still trembling.
“Good baby?”
You nod.
Megan kisses your lips again, then your cheeks and chin and your nose and forehead. You let her, let her care for you. You fall asleep with Megan’s hand on your hip and her lips on your hairline.
-
In the morning, you wake up to flowers and breakfast waiting for you, but this time Megan sits across from you at the table. She washes the dishes when you’re done. She cleans up the guest room, unpacks her suitcases, while you hover in the doorways to be near her. At night, she lays you down in bed and puts her mouth on you, asks you “Can I go again?” and you say yes. Every pass of her tongue, every touch of her hands, starts to erase what happened before. The painful memories replaced with your hands in Megan’s hair, her mouth on your hips, her hands on your thighs. This time when she asks “Can I go again?”, you can barely remember what she’s apologizing for.
anon asked: Meghan x reader; Where Meghan is away at her game and reader is back home. So while watching tv readers phone kept buzzing so she sees her mom’s name and answers and basically it was a picture with Meghan and another girl. Reader knows Meghan wouldn’t cheat but with all the voices telling and stating their mind to her. Reader packs a bag and leaves to a hotel (after the break)
the tv is on but you're not watching it you haven't been watching it for maybe twenty minutes, if you're honest, which you don't really want to be right now some rerun of a show you used to love is playing at a volume just low enough that it's more company than content, a low hum to fill the apartment while megan's away, and you've got your knees pulled up under one of her old practice hoodies and a mug of tea gone cold on the side table and a night that was supposed to be easy.
these nights usually are easy, actually, or they have been all season the particular quiet of an empty apartment on a game night has its own rhythm you've come to like, almost you make something simple for dinner, something megan would tease you for calling a meal, you leave the tv on for noise more than content, some familiar show you've seen enough times that missing whole stretches of dialogue doesn't matter.
you check the score on your phone between episodes, more out of habit than nerves, because you trust the team, because you trust her, because three years in you've stopped white-knuckling every road trip like it might be the one where something goes wrong.
she's in minnesota a road game, second one of a back-to-back, and you'd texted her good luck around six with a picture of the two of you from thanksgiving because you know she likes having something dumb and warm to look at in the tunnel before puck drop, and she'd sent back a single heart and then nothing else, which is normal, which is how it always goes on game nights.
you don't expect to hear from her again until after, maybe a blurry post-game selfie in the locker room, maybe just a call once she's back at the hotel and untangled from interviews and ice baths and whatever passes for a wind-down on the road so when your phone buzzes against your thigh you assume it's her it's not.
it's your mom's contact photo, the one from christmas two years ago where she's got a paper crown slipping off her head, and that alone doesn't mean anything your mom calls you all the time, mostly to talk about nothing, mostly because she likes the sound of your voice on a weeknight except she calls again four seconds after you let it ring out, and then a third time before you've even processed the first two, and there's a particular kind of dread that comes from someone calling back immediately it doesn't wait for you to be ready it just arrives.
"hi, what's wrong," you say instead of hello, because something clearly is.
"nothing's — i don't know if it's wrong," your mom says, in the voice she uses when she's already decided it's wrong and is trying to be fair about it anyway. "i just. someone sent me something and i wanted you to see it before you saw it from someone else."
"see what."
there's a pause, the sound of her fumbling with her phone, and then your phone buzzes again a text this time, a photo and you pull it away from your ear to look at it while she's still talking, her voice gone small and far away against your leg.
it's megan it's clearly megan, the away jersey half-changed out of, her hair still damp and pushed back, and she's laughing at something, her head turned toward a woman standing close to her, closer than you'd like if you're being scored on a rubric you didn't ask to be handed, one hand resting on the woman's shoulder like it's the most natural thing in the world.
the angle is bad, it's the kind of photo a stranger takes without meaning to catch anything, thirty feet away with a phone held at chest height, and it makes everything look more like something than it probably is. "who sent you this," you ask, and your voice comes out flatter than you feel.
"someone in the family group chat, i don't even — i think it's from some fan account, someone's cousin follows one of those minnesota game recap pages, i don't know, honey, i just didn't want you finding out from a stranger's screenshot before you heard it from me."
"heard what. it's a picture. it's not — mom, it's not anything."
"i know, i know, i just wanted to check on you." you say something reassuring, you think, though you're not entirely sure what, because your eyes are still on the photo, on the tilt of megan's head, on the woman's hand that you now notice is resting lightly against megan's forearm, and something in your chest has gone very quiet and very loud at the same time.
you know megan you have known megan for three years, you have watched her turn down drinks from strangers at her own draft party because she wanted to call you instead, you have seen the particular careful way she holds herself around anyone who isn't you or her family or her teammates, like affection is a currency she doesn't spend loosely you know this.
you also know what a photo like this does to a phone in your family's group chat, which is apparently already doing its work, because your phone buzzes a third time, and it's your cousin now, a single line—wait is this real—and then your best friend from home, who doesn't even really watch hockey, sending a ??? who is this with three question marks that feel louder than they should.
you put the phone face down on the couch cushion like that will do anything it doesn't it buzzes again almost immediately, face-down, a dull insistent knock against the fabric, and you sit there with your mom still talking in your ear about nothing in particular now, filling space, and you think; i know she wouldn't.
you think it clearly, once, the way you'd state a fact you were sure of and then you think it again, quieter, with a question mark starting to grow at the end of it that wasn't there the first time.
your mom is still going something about how she almost didn't send it, how she went back and forth for ten minutes first, how she just didn't want you blindsided by strangers online and you make the right sounds in the right places, it's okay, mom, i know, it's fine, on autopilot, while some other part of you is already turning the photo over again in your head like a stone you can't put down. you notice things you didn't notice the first time.
the way megan's hand isn't just resting on the woman's shoulder but curled slightly into it the way neither of them seems aware of the camera, which should read as innocent nobody performs for a candid but somehow reads, tonight, in this particular chemical cocktail of your own making, as evidence of something unguarded.
you think about the road trip schedule sitting in the fridge, the one megan printed out at the start of the season because she likes having something to point at when she explains where she'll be.
minnesota tonight back to boston tomorrow afternoon, then four days home before the team flies out again. you think about all the cities on that schedule you've never once questioned, and you hate that tonight is the night your brain decided to start. "i should let you go," your mom says eventually, softer now, having run out of things to fill the silence with. "you sound like you need to think."
"i'm okay," you say again, and you almost believe it.
"call me if you need anything, okay? and — honey, i really don't think it's anything. i just didn't want it to be a surprise."
"i know. thank you. i love you."
you hang up and the apartment goes quiet in the particular way it only does after a phone call ends, the tv rerun suddenly too loud in the new silence, some laugh track cackling at a joke you didn't hear the setup to.
you turn it down you don't turn it off and you sit there with your knees still pulled up under megan's hoodie, the one that still smells faintly like her, like the detergent she uses that's different from yours, and you think about the very first time she ever had to talk you down from a version of this feeling nearly two years ago now, an early-season road trip, a photo of her at some bar with teammates and a stranger who'd clearly bought the whole table a round, and how you'd texted her something small and anxious about it, and how she'd called you the second she saw it, not defensive, not annoyed, just steady. that's alina's cousin, he was celebrating his birthday, i promise you it's the most boring story in the world.
you remember how relieved you'd felt, how embarrassed, how she'd never once made you feel stupid for asking that's the version of you that knew how to ask. you don't know, sitting here now, where that version went.
there's a version of this feeling you recognize from before megan, from an ex who used to disappear for stretches of a weekend and come back with stories that never quite lined up, who taught you, over two bad years, that a bad feeling in your stomach was usually right about something.
you'd promised yourself, after that, that you'd never let paranoia calcify into a personality you'd watched it happen to a friend of yours, watched her turn every silence into evidence, watched the men she dated after resent her for a crime someone else had committed and for three years with megan you've been proud, quietly, of how little that old instinct has had to work.
megan has never once given you a reason to run the old tape tonight the tape starts playing anyway, uninvited, dragging up every old bruise like it's relevant, like the two of them are the same kind of person just because your body remembers the same kind of dread.
you don't remember deciding to hang up with your mom, you remember saying you were fine, and you remember her not quite believing you, and you remember the particular tenderness in her call me if you need anything, okay? that made your throat go tight for reasons that had nothing to do with her.
what you remember more clearly is sitting on the couch afterward with the tv still murmuring and your phone still buzzing in irregular little bursts, and the sensation of your own house growing too loud for how quiet it was.
it isn't that you think megan is cheating on you, you want to be precise about that, even now, even with your pulse doing something uneven in your throat, you don't think that you know the difference between what you know and what you're afraid of, most days but knowing something and feeling safe in it are apparently not the same muscle, and tonight the second one has gone slack in a way you didn't sign up for.
you pick your phone back up more texts your cousin again—okay i looked closer, could be nothing, sorry for freaking out—which should help and somehow makes it worse, the could be sitting there like a door left open a crack.
your best friend has sent a screenshot of the original post, the fan account caption underneath the photo reading something like megan keller with a mystery girl after tonight's win 👀 and you hate, actively hate, the tiny emoji doing its tiny insinuating work.
you don't text megan you tell yourself it's because she's still probably in the locker room, still doing media, still riding the bus back to the hotel, and texting her hey who's this would be needy and small and exactly the kind of thing you've promised yourself you wouldn't become, one of those partners who requires an accounting for every hour she's not in your sightline.
you've watched what that does to people you've watched teammates' girlfriends get talked about in group chats you're not supposed to know about, the exhausted way megan describes some of the guys' partners back when she still played mixed league in college—she checks his location like it's her job—and some old, stubborn part of you would rather sit in this feeling than become that.
so instead you sit in it, you sit in it while the show on tv loops through its rerun without you following a single line of dialogue you sit in it while you reread the caption four more times like it might change. you sit in it while you think about all the road trips this season, all the cities, all the hours you don't get a play by play of because you don't ask for one, because you trust her, because trust was supposed to mean you didn't have to sit here doing this and the thought arrives, unbidden and ugly, dressed up as concern: what do you actually know about the hours you don't ask about.
you know that's not fair you know it the second you think it you think it anyway your phone buzzes once more, and this time it's not family it's a name you don't recognize in your group chat with two of the girls from your old work someone's forwarded the post there too, apparently, hockey twitter's little ecosystem doing what it does, and one of them has written, with the kind of breezy cruelty people only manage over text, if my girlfriend's picture was making rounds like that i'd be asking questions.
you put the phone down again you pick it back up you do this three times in the space of a minute, like the fourth time might be different it's not someone else in the chat has added a laughing emoji under the first comment, which somehow lands worse than the comment itself, like your private worry has already become a bit, a piece of gossip with a punchline, and you have the distinct, nauseating sensation of being watched from several directions at once your family, your friends, strangers on an app you don't even use that often, all of them looking at the same fifteen square inches of a photograph and drawing their own conclusions, and none of those conclusions are yours to control.
you think about texting back, you don't know her, she's not like that, and you don't, because some small vain part of you doesn't want to be the girlfriend defending her partner in a group chat, doesn't want the story of tonight to become a thing people discuss the way they're discussing the photo itself.
so you say nothing, and the nothing sits there, and one of the girls sends a single-word follow-up—update??—twenty minutes later like you owe her a report on the state of your relationship, and you mute the conversation without responding, which feels like a small, hollow victory that doesn't actually fix anything.
you keep coming back to the plainest version of the thought, though, turning it over and over like it might wear smoother with enough handling: you know her you know the low, private way she laughs at her own jokes before anyone else gets them. you know she still calls her mom every sunday without fail, an hour-long call that leaves her in a better mood every time.
you know the exact face she makes when she's nervous before a game, a stillness that isn't calm so much as focus, and the exact different face she makes when she's actually scared of something the last time you saw that one was when her grandfather went into the hospital, and she'd come home and put her head in your lap and not said anything for twenty minutes, and you'd just held her, no fixing, no talking, just weight and presence, because that's what she'd needed and you'd known it without being told.
you know all of this it should be enough to drown out a stranger's caption and a cousin's half-formed doubt and a coworker's cheap one-liner for a while, it almost is you sit there with the tv droning and the duffel bag not yet pulled down from the closet, holding the knowledge of her like a small steady flame cupped in both hands, and you think, i am not going to let this ruin a perfectly good night and then your phone buzzes one more time, and it's your cousin again, not with more doubt this time but with something almost worse a screenshot of the same photo, cropped tighter now, someone else's zoomed-in version circulating with a new caption underneath: anyone know who this is? asking for a friend 👀and you notice, in the tighter crop, a detail you hadn't clocked before megan's other hand, out of frame in the wider shot, resting at the small of the woman's back, just for a second, just in the one frame someone happened to catch and the flame in your hands gutters, just slightly, just enough.
you know there could be a hundred explanations for a hand at someone's back you know this but knowing and feeling have stopped talking to each other tonight, and it's the feeling that gets up off the couch first, that walks to the closet, that pulls megan's old duffel down off the shelf before your mind has caught up enough to stop it.
it's not that any single voice convinces you of anything it's that there are so many of them now, all arriving at once, all with slightly different shapes of the same doubt, and none of them are megan's voice, and megan's voice is the only one that's ever actually made you feel safe about this and she isn't calling.
she isn't calling because she doesn't know anything is wrong, because to her this is a wednesday, a road game, a stranger's photo she probably hasn't even seen yet but knowing that doesn't stop the small mean thought that surfaces anyway: if it were nothing, wouldn't she already feel like she had to explain it? you know that's not how it works you know the guilty don't always explain and the innocent don't always know they need to.
you stand up anyway you're not sure, later, if it's a decision or just something your body does while your mind is still arguing with itself, but you find yourself in the bedroom pulling megan's old duffel down from the closet shelf not even your own bag, hers, the beat-up one with her college number still sharpied on the tag, which feels significant in a way you don't examine and you start folding things into it without really choosing what.
a sweater, your charger, the book you haven't finished you move through the apartment collecting pieces of a life you don't know how to be inside of right now, and every text that comes in during it adds one more thread to the pull, until the pull is stronger than the part of you that keeps saying, quietly, underneath all of it: you know her. you know her. you know her.
you don't turn the tv off you just leave, the door clicking shut behind you on a rerun no one's watching, and you sit in your car in the parking garage for four full minutes before you can make yourself put the key in the ignition, because some last honest part of you knows that once you drive away from this apartment tonight, you're choosing the voices over her, and you don't have a good enough reason for that, and you do it anyway.
the hotel you pick is fifteen minutes away, not far enough to feel like a real departure and not close enough to feel like nothing, and you don't examine that choice either you check in with a card that isn't the joint one, because some instinct in you wants this to not show up anywhere she'd see it first, which is its own small, shameful admission of what you're doing.
the room is generic in the particular way of business hotels; a bed too neatly made, a desk no one will use, a window looking out at a parking lot and, past it, a strip of highway lit orange there's a paper folder on the desk with the hotel's logo on it, a laminated card about checkout times, a coffee maker with two sealed pods and a stack of paper cups, all the small anonymous furniture of somewhere nobody stays for long, and you find yourself absurdly grateful for how little personality the room has, like a space that doesn't ask anything of you is exactly what you need right now.
you unzip megan's duffel out of some restless need to have something to do with your hands, and find, on top of the sweater and the charger and the unfinished book, one of her practice socks that must have gotten swept in with everything else, an ordinary grey athletic sock with a small hole starting at the toe that she keeps meaning to throw out and never does, and the sight of it so plain, so hers, so entirely unrelated to anything happening tonight makes something crack open in your chest that the photo somehow hadn't managed on its own. you sit there holding a sock in a hotel room you booked to get away from her and think, not for the first time tonight, that you might be handling this badly.
you sit on the edge of the bed with the duffel still open at your feet and your phone in your hand and you don't call anyone you think about calling her you get as far as opening the contact, her name over the photo of her mid-laugh from your friend's wedding last spring, thumb hovering over the call button, and then you think about what you'd even say—hey, are you cheating on me, a stranger's photo made me leave our apartment—and the sentence is so ugly out loud in your head that you can't make yourself send it into the world.
so you text instead, because text feels like it has more room in it for you to control how unhinged you sound. you type and delete four different versions. what you finally send is short, and even as your thumb hits send you know it's the version that tells her the least and worries her the most: i needed some space tonight. i'm okay. i'll explain tomorrow.
you turn your phone face-down on the nightstand like you did on the couch, like distance from the screen will do anything about the distance you've actually created, and you lie back on a stranger's bed in a stranger's room, and you let yourself cry for exactly as long as it takes for the shame to catch up with the fear, which is not very long at all.
somewhere in the middle of it you almost call your best friend from college, the one who isn't in any of the group chats currently dissecting your relationship, the one who's talked you down off smaller ledges than this one before.
you get as far as opening her contact, thumb hovering, and then you think about how you'd have to explain the whole thing from the beginning the photo, the calls, the leaving and how saying it out loud to someone else would make it a real, documented event instead of something you could maybe still take back if you turned the car around in the next ten minutes.
you don't call her, you put the phone down instead, and some small, still reasonable part of your brain notes, almost clinically, that this is the third person tonight you've decided not to be honest with, including yourself.
you think about turning the car around you think about it seriously, for almost a full minute, picturing yourself walking back into the apartment and hanging the hoodie back on its hook and pretending none of this happened, and you don't do it, because some stubborn, wounded piece of you has already decided that leaving was a stance, a statement, and going back now would mean admitting the statement was wrong before you'd even gotten an answer.
so you stay, you sit with the unfairness of that logic even as you're following it, aware of the contradiction and unable, tonight, to talk yourself out of it because underneath the hurt and it is hurt, real and specific, the particular ache of imagining someone else's hand where yours usually is there's another feeling starting to surface, slower, quieter, and much less flattering: you know her. you have always known her.
you know the way she double texts you did you eat if you go more than four hours without checking in, you know she still gets nervous before every single game like it's her first, you know she cried actual tears the day you told her you loved her back, not performed tears, real ones, the kind she was embarrassed about after. you know all of this, and you let a screenshot from an account called something like pwhlgossip_247 undo it in under an hour that's not megan's failure, that's yours.
you don't let yourself off the hook for it, sitting there in the dark with the tv remote you haven't touched and a duffel bag full of evidence against your own better judgment but you also don't get up and drive home, not yet, because shame is apparently not the same thing as courage, and you're tired, and some small cowardly part of you would rather sit in a hotel room feeling guilty than go home and have to say out loud, to her face, i didn't trust you for one night and i don't have a good reason why.
your phone lights up on the nightstand you don't turn it over it lights up again and again you know, somewhere underneath the exhaustion, that this is the part where you find out what you've actually done.
megan finds out something is wrong the way most road-trip disasters find their way to her late, and secondhand, and in the worst possible order.
the third period had ended the way she likes them to, boston up by two, the bench loose and loud in that particular way a team gets when a road win is basically already banked, and she'd spent the last five minutes doing what she always does in that stretch talking calm into her d partner's ear, tracking clock instead of chasing the puck, the unglamorous captain's work of making sure nobody does anything unnecessary.
postgame she'd done the handshake line, done a two minute stand-up with the beat reporter who always asks the same three questions, signed a stick for a kid pressed against the glass by the tunnel because the kid's dad looked like he might cry about it, and none of it had felt any different from any other wednesday on the road.
her phone had sat in her stall through all of it, screen dark, the way it always does on game nights, because whatever's happening in the world can wait ninety minutes by the time she gets to her stall and unlocks it, it's already lit up with more notifications than a wednesday game usually produces.
she assumes, at first, that it's about the game she'd had a good one, an assist and a takeaway that'll probably make the highlight package and it's not until she's three texts deep from teammates she wasn't expecting to hear from that the shape of it starts to come into focus.
hey u good? from her d partner, sent with a bewildered little emoji.
not my business but ppl are talking about a photo from another one.
by the time she finds the actual post someone's finally sent it to her directly, mercifully, instead of making her go looking she understands two things almost simultaneously: one, that the woman in the photo is claire, her old college roommate from boston college, who'd surprised her by driving up from where she lives now just to catch the game, who'd hugged her in the hallway afterward because claire's dad had just gotten good news from a scan they'd all been worried about for months and she was crying about it, happy-crying, the kind you hold someone through; and two, that whatever this photo looks like to a stranger scrolling past it, it does not look like that to anyone who doesn't already know the context, and you, megan realizes with a drop in her stomach that has nothing to do with the game, do not have the context.
she calls you before she's even out of the tunnel, jacket half-zipped, bag still on her shoulder it rings out she calls again rings out again she texts—hey i saw what's going around, that's claire, i can explain everything, please call me—and watches the delivered mark sit there undisturbed for four minutes that feel considerably longer, and then your text arrives, the one about needing space, about explaining tomorrow, and something in megan's chest goes cold in a way that three periods of hard hockey hadn't managed.
she doesn't scream at her phone, though she wants to she's not a screamer what she does is go very quiet in the way her teammates have learned to read as worse than yelling, and she stands in the hallway outside the locker room with her bag still on her shoulder while alina, walking past, takes one look at her face and says, "hey. you okay?" and megan says, "i don't know yet," which is the most honest thing she's said all night.
she thinks, standing there, about every road trip this season, every hotel room, every late bus ride back from an arena in some city that isn't home, and how she's never once thought of any of it as something she needed to account for, because you'd never asked her to.
that had felt, until about eleven minutes ago, like one of the steadiest things about the two of you that trust wasn't a thing either of you managed, it was just the ground you both stood on she doesn't know yet how to feel about the ground, apparently shifting on a wednesday in minnesota over a photo of her hugging her college roommate, but she knows she doesn't have the luxury of feeling anything about it right now except urgency.
haley, her d partner, falls into step beside her in the hallway, still half in her gear. "what's going on?"
"long story. i need to get home tonight."
"tonight, tonight? we've got shootaround at ten."
"i know." megan is already scrolling for a car service, thumb moving fast, not looking up. "i'll be there. i just—i can't explain it right now, i need to go." haley studies her for a second, the particular look of a teammate deciding whether to push, and then just nods. "go. i'll cover for you with sparre if it comes to that."
it doesn't come to that, in the end megan's text to her coach is short and gets a short reply back, understood, see you at 10, the kind of grace a captain earns after three seasons of never once needing it before and by the time the car pulls up outside the arena's players' entrance, megan is already composing the story in her head, trying to find the fastest, clearest way to say it's not what it looks like without it sounding like every guilty person's opening line.
the drive is long enough for her to call your mom, and long enough afterward for her to sit in the back seat with her phone gripped so tightly her knuckles ache, watching the highway lights slide past the window, running through every version of the conversation she's about to have.
she doesn't rehearse excuses she rehearses the truth, over and over, because the truth is simple and she just needs you to hear it before the noise gets any louder than it already has she calls your mom next, which she's never done before without you on the line already, and your mom picks up on the second ring, worry already loaded into her hello like she's been waiting for someone to call.
"i think i did something," your mom says, before megan can even get a full sentence out. "i sent her a photo, i didn't mean to—i just didn't want her blindsided—"
"it's claire," megan says. "the woman in the photo. she's my friend from college, her dad's been sick, i was just — i was hugging her because she got good news. that's it. that's the whole thing." there's a pause on the line, and megan can practically hear your mom recalibrating, the particular guilt of a mother realizing she's set something in motion she can't take back from three states away.
"she left," your mom says quietly. "she texted me a little while ago. i think she went somewhere for the night."
"where."
"i don't know. she didn't say." megan closes her eyes in the hallway of an arena in minnesota, a thousand miles from wherever you are, and does the math on flights and drives and whether there's anything faster than either, and comes up with almost nothing, because she is on a road trip with a team and a schedule that doesn't care what's happening in her personal life, and the next flight home isn't until morning with the rest of the group.
she calls a car instead, straight from the arena, and texts her coach something short and true family emergency, i need to head back tonight, i'll be at morning skate and doesn't wait to see if that's a problem, because right now it isn't the kind of thing she's willing to weigh against anything else.
alina catches her by the bus, still in half her gear. "go," is all she says, when megan tries to explain. "we've got shootaround tomorrow, we don't need you until then. go fix it."
you don't sleep, not really you doze in fragments with the hotel tv on low, some late night infomercial glow flickering against the ceiling, and every time you surface you check your phone like it might have rearranged itself into something less painful while you weren't looking.
it's a little after one in the morning when there's a knock on the door as you go still it's not the kind of hotel where anyone should be knocking, and for one absurd second your mind supplies a dozen unlikely scenarios before it lands, with a jolt that goes straight through your chest, on the actual likely one.
you look through the peephole and it's her, she's still half in her travel gear, hair damp from a shower she must have taken between the arena and wherever she found a car this fast, and she looks like she hasn't breathed properly in hours.
you open the door and neither of you says anything for a second, the two of you just standing there in a strip of hallway light with a hotel door between the rest of the world and this very small, very fragile moment. "how did you find me," you say, which is not what you meant to lead with.
"your mom had the hotel chain you always pick for work trips. i called every one within twenty minutes of the apartment until someone confirmed a booking under your name." she says it like it's obvious, like of course she did that, like there was never a version of tonight where she didn't come find you. "you drove."
"i got a car. i didn't drive, i was in no state to drive." a beat. "can i come in?" you step back and let her in, and the door clicks shut behind her, and for a second you both just stand there in the dim hotel light not touching, the duffel bag still sitting open and half-packed on the end of the bed like evidence neither of you wants to name yet.
"claire," megan says, before you can say anything, before the moment can curdle into something defensive. "her name is claire. we roomed together freshman and sophomore year at bc. her dad's been getting scans for months, they thought it might be something bad, and tonight she found out it wasn't, and she drove three hours to surprise me at the game and tell me in person, and i hugged her in the hallway because she was crying, and someone thirty feet away took a picture of the world's least romantic hug and turned it into a caption." she says all of it fast, like she's been rehearsing it in the car, like she needs to get every fact out before you can build a wall around any of it.
"you've mentioned her before," you say slowly, the name surfacing from somewhere a story about a road trip to a tournament junior year, a joke about claire's terrible taste in freshman-year boyfriends, a birthday card megan still keeps in a drawer that you've never once thought twice about. "the one who talked you out of quitting hockey that one semester."
"that's her." something in megan's shoulders eases slightly, like it matters to her that you remember, that the name has context in your life too and isn't just a stranger conjured out of a bad photo. "she's the reason i'm still playing at all, honestly. she noticed i was burning out before i noticed it myself, made me talk to someone, sat with me through the worst of it. i'd do anything for her. i just never thought a hallway hug was going to end up being the thing i had to explain to you at one in the morning."
"i wish i'd known that context existed before i saw a stranger's photo of it," you say, and it comes out quieter than you mean it to, more sad than accusing.
"i know. i wish i'd texted you the second she surprised me, told you the whole story before anyone else got a chance to make up their own version of it. i didn't think i needed to, because it didn't feel like anything worth reporting on my end, it felt like a good moment in a friend's hard year, not a thing that needed a disclaimer." she exhales, long and tired. "i think that's on me a little too. not everything, but some of it. i should've known a photo like that could travel before the context could catch up to it."
"i know," you say, and your voice cracks on it in a way that surprises you. "i mean — i didn't know the details, but i knew. i knew you wouldn't. i knew it the second i saw the picture, before anyone said a single word to me, i thought she wouldn't, and then everyone kept texting and calling and adding their own little doubts on top of it, and i let it drown out the one thing i actually knew for sure."
megan's jaw does something complicated, somewhere between hurt and relief. "so you knew," she says, "and you still packed a bag."
"yeah."
"why." it's not an accusation, not really, though it lands like one, sharp and fair you sit down on the edge of the bed because your legs don't feel entirely reliable, and you look at the duffel her duffel, you realize now, with something like embarrassment, that you grabbed her bag instead of your own without noticing and you try to find the honest answer instead of the easy one.
"because it's never just one voice," you say slowly. "it's my mom, worried. it's my cousin, half joking. it's people i barely talk to anymore weighing in like they have a right to. and none of them know you. none of them have three years of you double texting me to make sure i ate, or crying when you told me you loved me, or turning down every single person who's ever hit on you at a bar because you'd rather text me something dumb instead. none of them have that. i have that. and i let all of their noise get louder than what i actually know, and i am so sorry, because you didn't do anything wrong tonight except comfort a friend, and i still left."
megan is quiet for a long moment, standing there in the middle of a hotel room that neither of you chose for this, and when she finally sits down next to you on the bed, close enough that her knee presses into yours, some of the tension goes out of her shoulders like she's been holding a held breath the entire drive over.
"i'm not mad that you had a feeling," she says quietly. "i get it, okay? i've seen the photo, i know what it looks like out of context, i'm not going to pretend a stranger wouldn't wonder. i'm not even that mad you left, honestly, if leaving is what you needed to do to not sit there spiraling in our apartment all night."
she takes your hand, turns it over in both of hers like she's checking it's real. "what scares me is that you didn't call me. you texted me i'll explain tomorrow like i was something you had to manage instead of someone you could just say it to. i would've told you everything in thirty seconds if you'd called. i would've put claire on the phone if you needed to hear it from her."
"i know that now," you say. "i think i knew it then, too, honestly. i just the second the thought what if got in, it brought every other voice in with it, and yours was the one voice i didn't reach for, which doesn't even make sense, because yours is the only one that's ever actually helped."
"it doesn't make sense," megan agrees, gently, no bite in it. "but i get how it happens. i've watched it happen to other people guys on other teams, girlfriends who start out solid and get worn down one photo at a time until they don't trust their own read on things anymore. i never wanted that to be us. i still don't think it has to be, if we're honest about tonight instead of just moving past it."
"i don't want to just move past it either," you say. "i want to actually figure out why i went from i know she wouldn't to packing a bag in under an hour. that's not really about you. that's something in me that got loud tonight and i let it drive."
megan is quiet for a moment, thumb tracing slow circles over the back of your hand. "for what it's worth," she says, "i don't think it's nothing that you knew, first. before anyone weighed in, before the group chats, you had it right. i think that matters more than the part where it wobbled later. everybody's is going to wobble sometimes, especially with this many people watching from the outside and getting to have opinions about a life they're not actually living. i just need you to wobble toward me next time, not away from me."
"toward you," you repeat, like you're making yourself a promise instead of just repeating her words. "okay."
she pulls you in then, properly, your face tucked against her collarbone, still damp from her rushed shower at the team hotel, still smelling faintly of the arena underneath it, and you let yourself sit there for a long moment just breathing her in, feeling the steady, unhurried rise and fall of her chest under your cheek, so unlike the frantic hour you'd just put yourself through. neither of you says anything for a while.
it doesn't feel like it needs saying it just feels like the two of you, finally in the same room, finally telling each other the truth instead of managing it from a distance, and for the first time since your phone buzzed with your mom's name, the quiet in the room feels like relief instead of dread.
"i know," you say, and it's the truest thing you've said all night. "i think i was scared that if i said it out loud — if i said are you cheating on me — it would make it real somehow, even though i didn't believe it. saying nothing felt safer than asking and being that person."
"you're never going to be that person to me," megan says, and there's something fierce underneath the tiredness in her voice. "ask me anything. call me from the middle of a spiral if you have to. i would rather get a three a.m. call asking me to explain a bad photo than find out you left the apartment because you didn't think you were allowed to ask."
you feel your eyes go hot again, a different kind of crying than before. "i'm sorry," you say again, because it feels like it needs saying more than once. "i'm sorry i let the noise win tonight."
"you drowned it out eventually," megan says. "you said it yourself — you knew, before anyone weighed in. that's not nothing. that's the part i actually trust." she brings your hand up, presses a kiss to your knuckles in the specific gentle way she only does when she's trying to put you back together. "we'll work on the part where you call me instead of a hotel."
you don't leave the hotel room that night there's something almost funny about it, later, the two of you curled up on top of the comforter of a room you booked to get away from her, megan still half in her travel clothes because neither of you thought to bring her a change, your phones both face-down on the nightstand for once by mutual, wordless agreement.
"i have shootaround at ten," she mumbles into your shoulder, sometime past two, voice already halfway into sleep. "i know. go."
"i don't want to."
"you have to. i'll be here when you're done or i'll come to the rink, i don't care, i just i want to see you off right this time. not like tonight." she huffs something that might be a laugh against your collarbone. "you booked a room fifteen minutes from the apartment. you weren't running that far."
"i wasn't trying to run from you," you admit, quiet, into the dark. "i think some part of me knew i'd need you to be able to find me." megan is quiet for a second, and then she pulls you in closer, her chin tucked over the top of your head.
"good," she says. "i will always come find you. i don't care what city i'm in or what time it is, just call first next time, okay? save me the twenty minutes of calling every hotel in a five-mile radius like a maniac at midnight." you laugh, actually laugh, for the first time since your phone buzzed with your mom's name hours and what feels like a lifetime ago. "deal."
you wake before her, the room gone gray-blue with early light through cheap hotel curtains that don't quite meet in the middle, and you spend a few minutes just watching her sleep, one arm still slung heavy across your waist like she doesn't trust you to still be there if she lets go, even unconscious. you think about how many times you've watched her sleep like this over three years and how close you came to not being in this bed at all this morning, and you have to look away from her face for a second, out at the strip of parking lot and highway beyond it, to get your eyes to stop stinging.
she wakes with the particular groan of someone who's had four hours of sleep after a hockey game and a two-hour car ride, and the first thing she does, before she's even fully upright, is check that you're still there, a hand patting the mattress beside her like she's confirming a fact. "hey," she rasps. "hey."
"i have to be at the rink in an hour."
"i know. go shower, i'll figure out coffee." there's no clean change of clothes for her, her bag is still at the team hotel across town, checked out from under her in the middle of the night by a very confused night manager she'd apparently apologized to profusely on her way out so she pulls on your leggings, which fit her fine through the legs and look absurd on her taller frame, and one of your shirts that's too small everywhere, and finally gives up and digs through the duffel at the foot of the bed, the one still half-packed with the things you grabbed without thinking last night, and pulls out her own hoodie instead, the one you'd been wearing on the couch when this whole thing started, and laughs, short and disbelieving, when she realizes what it is. "you packed my hoodie."
"i wasn't really making good decisions last night."
"clearly," she says, but gently, and pulls it on anyway, and it looks right on her in the way it never quite did on you, and something in your chest settles at the sight of her back in her own clothes, back in something that fits.
in the lobby she buys you both terrible hotel coffee from a machine that dispenses it in a thin, apologetic stream, and you walk the six blocks to the rink together in the cold morning air, not saying much, just her hand finding yours somewhere around the second block and not letting go for the rest of the walk.
she does go to shootaround, hair still damp from a two-minute shower, wearing your hoodie underneath her jacket because it was the closest clean thing to hand, and you sit in the stands with a coffee you don't really want just so she can look up between drills and find you there. claire texts you sometime around noon megan must have given her your number, or maybe you'd had it all along and just never used it a simple, warm hey! sorry my dumb happy tears started a whole thing lol, hope you're doing okay with a photo attached of her dad giving a thumbs up from what's clearly a hospital waiting room, and you type back something grateful and a little embarrassed and mean every word of it.
you don't tell your mom everything right away you tell her enough that it wasn't what it looked like, that you're okay, that you love her but you need her to maybe not forward things from group chats before checking them first and she's quiet on the phone in a way that tells you she's already turning it over in her head, already deciding to be more careful next time, and you let that be enough for now.
that night, back in your own apartment, the tv rerun long since ended and the duffel bag unpacked and put back on its shelf, megan pulls you into her on the couch and says, into your hair, "for the record. next time someone sends you a picture that scares you, i want the middle of the night call. i want the are you cheating on me text, ugly and unfiltered, straight to me.
i would rather answer that a hundred times than find out you drove somewhere alone to sit with it by yourself."
"okay," you say, and you mean it, and some of the noise from last night your mom's worry, your cousin's half-joke, the stranger's cruel little aside has finally gone quiet enough that you can hear, underneath all of it, the one voice that was right the whole time it sounded a lot like your own.
it takes about a week for the story to stop feeling like something you're carrying and start feeling like something that happened claire texts you a few more times after that first message, easy and unbothered, the way people are when they've genuinely got nothing to feel guilty about a photo of her dad home from his last follow-up appointment looking tired but grinning, a joke about how she's never letting a stranger photograph her hugging anyone ever again, and by the end of the week you've somehow ended up in an actual group chat with her, megan rolling her eyes fondly at her phone one night and saying, "you two are going to be worse than the twitter account that started this whole thing," which makes you laugh so hard you have to set your own phone down.
your mom calls on sunday, the way she always does, and this time she doesn't lead with anything careful. "i talked to your aunt," she says. "told her not to forward things like that again without checking first. i felt terrible about it, you know. i didn't mean to start anything."
"i know, mom. it's okay. it actually turned into a good thing, weirdly."
"how do you figure that." there's a note of genuine curiosity in her voice, the kind she gets when she's bracing to hear something she thinks might still be bad news dressed up kindly for her benefit.
"because i found out i still trust her not just in theory actually, in practice, in the middle of a bad night, i found out the thing underneath the panic was still true." you pause, watching megan through the doorway, tasting the sauce off a wooden spoon with a face like she already knows it's not quite right. "i don't think i would've known that for sure if nothing had ever tested it."
your mom is quiet for a second. "you sound like you've been thinking about this a lot."
"i have. megan and i talked about it for like two hours the day after. actually talked, not just smoothed it over and moved on. it was good for us, i think. uncomfortable, but good." you think about it for a second, megan's laugh drifting in from the kitchen where she's making dinner badly and cheerfully, some song playing too loud on her phone propped against the toaster.
"i think i needed to find out i still know how to trust her, even after a bad night," you say. "i wouldn't have found that out if nothing had ever gone sideways." your mom is quiet for a moment, and then, warmly: "she's a good one. i'm glad she came and got you."
"me too."
the fleet's next home game falls exactly ten days after minnesota, and you're in the stands at agganis with a coffee you don't really need and your phone tucked away in your bag instead of your pocket, on purpose, because you've been trying deliberately, imperfectly to notice the difference between an actual reason to worry and just a loud room full of other people's opinions. megan finds you in the crowd during warmups the way she always does, a small private moment neither of you make a big show of, and lifts her stick in your direction, and you lift your coffee back, and it's such a plain, unremarkable exchange that it almost undoes you a little, how much you'd nearly thrown away over a stranger's blurry photograph.
she scores in the second period, an assist really, a perfect saucer pass that alina buries, and the whole building comes up out of its seats, and you're on your feet too, screaming with the rest of them, and megan finds your face in the stands again on her way back to the bench, and this time she doesn't just lift her stick.
she points, once, right at you, unmistakable, the kind of gesture that isn't for the cameras or the crowd or anyone circulating anything anywhere it's just for you after the game, waiting by the players' family entrance the way you have a hundred times before, you watch her come through the doors still damp-haired and jacketed, scanning the small cluster of people until she finds you, and the smile that breaks over her face when she does is the same one from three years ago, the same one from the wedding photo on your phone, the same one you'd let a screenshot and a chorus of other people's doubt try to convince you wasn't real.
"good game," you tell her, when she reaches you, and she wraps an arm around your shoulders and presses a kiss to the top of your head, unhurried, in front of anyone who might be watching, in front of anyone with a phone who might catch it and post it somewhere with a caption of their own.
"let them," she says, when she catches you glancing, half out of old habit, at a stranger nearby with a phone half-raised. "i don't care what story anyone else tells about this. i only care about the one we tell each other." you nod, and you believe her, and for the first time in ten days the quiet in your own head feels like peace instead of the held breath kind of quiet that comes right before a storm.
on the drive home, your phone buzzes once, and instead of your stomach dropping you just glance at it, easy, unbothered it's your cousin, of all people, sending a photo from tonight's broadcast, megan mid-celly with alina, captioned simply: she's so good, i'm sorry again about before, love you guys.
you type back a heart and put the phone away, and reach over instead for megan's hand on the console between you, and she laces her fingers through yours without even looking over, like it's the easiest, most obvious thing in the world, because for the two of you, it finally is again.
the streetlights slide past the windshield in slow, familiar intervals, the same route you've driven a hundred times before, and you find yourself thinking, not for the first time this week, about how close you came to not being in this car at all tonight to still being somewhere fifteen minutes and a lifetime away, sitting with a duffel bag and a version of the truth that wasn't the whole truth.
you don't dwell on it the way you might have a week ago, turning it over and over until it wears a groove in you. you just notice it, the way you'd notice a scar healed enough to stop being tender, and let it go.
back at the apartment, megan makes tea for both of you without being asked, the same mug you'd left cold on the side table ten days ago now clean and back on its shelf, and you curl into her on the couch with the tv on low, some other rerun this time, neither of you really watching it, and for once your phone stays in your bag by the door the entire night, untouched, unmissed.
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