Summer lovin

Dean had always pictured engineering students one way. Scrawny, sleep-deprived, and socially awkward. The kind of guys who wore the same hoodie four days in a row and argued with professors for fun.

So when Y/N mentioned she was meeting her project group almost every afternoon, he never thought twice about it.

“They’re all in my design group,” she’d say, scrolling through pages of CAD drawings on her laptop.

Dean would nod from the couch, one arm stretched across the backrest.

“Cool.”

“Ben reserved a study room.”

“Sounds good.”

“Emma’s bringing coffee.”

“Mhm.”

“Ryan thinks our calculations are wrong.”

“Tell Ryan he’s wrong.”

Y/N laughed, leaning over to kiss his cheek.

“I’ll let him know.”

That was that.

—

A week later, Dean had just finished practice when he decided to surprise her.

He bought her favorite coffee. Grabbed an extra muffin. Walked across campus with that easy confidence he always had.

He spotted her outside the engineering building before she spotted him. She stood in a loose circle with five other students.

Four guys.

One girl.

The girl was explaining something while waving a mechanical pencil around. One guy had safety goggles hanging around his neck. Another balanced a laptop under one arm. The third was tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired… Dean slowed.

“…Huh.”

The last one laughed at something Y/N said and bumped her shoulder lightly.

She bumped him back.

Dean’s eyebrows pulled together.

That…

That wasn’t what he’d expected.

Not even close.

These weren’t the stereotypical engineering nerds he’d imagined.

They looked… normal. Athletic, even.

The tall guy honestly looked like he could’ve been on the basketball team. Dean immediately disliked him. Not for any real reason. Just on principle.

Y/N looked up then. Her face lit up.

“Dean!”

She jogged over, project calculations forgotten the second she reached him.

“You brought me coffee.”

“You forgot to text me back.”

“I was in lab.”

She took the coffee with a grin before looping her arm through his.

“Oh! Guys, this is Dean.”

Dean offered polite smiles as names were exchanged.

“Ben.”

“Ryan.”

“Noah.”

“Emma.”

“And Lucas.”

Lucas.

Right.

Tall Guy.

Dean shook his hand. Firmly.

Lucas smiled. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Finally?

Dean’s eyes flicked toward Y/N.

She noticed.

“Oh, I talk about you all the time.”

Dean relaxed a little.

“…Oh.”

Emma smirked.

“We know way more about hockey than we ever wanted to.”

The group laughed.

Dean laughed too.

But something had shifted.

—

After that he started noticing things he’d somehow missed before.

Her phone buzzed constantly.

Ryan: Can someone check the MATLAB file?

Emma: Meeting got moved to five.

Ben: Don’t forget the presentation boards.

Nothing weird.

Nothing inappropriate.

Just… frequent. Maybe even too frequent.

One evening they were making dinner together when Y/N looked over from the vegetables she was chopping.

“Hey?”

“Mhm?”

“Can you walk me to class tomorrow morning?”

Dean checked his schedule automatically.

“Damn.”

“What?”

“I’ve got early practice.”

“Oh.” She smiled anyway. “It’s okay.”

He hated the tiny flicker of disappointment she tried to hide.

“But…” he continued, “…practice ends around noon.”

She looked back up.

“I can pick you up after your afternoon lab.”

Her smile returned immediately.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d love that.”

Dean leaned over the counter and stole a kiss.

“Done.”

—

The next afternoon, he parked outside the engineering building ten minutes early.

He figured he’d wait.

Maybe they’d grab dinner afterward.

Students poured out of the building in groups.

Then he saw her. Y/N emerged through the doors laughing with her project team. She wasn’t carrying anything. Because Lucas was. Balanced in his arms was a massive prototype made of aluminum and acrylic, easily the size of a microwave. Dean watched Lucas adjust his grip.

Y/N reached to take part of the weight.

“I’ve got it,” Lucas said.

“It’s heavy.”

“So?”

“I go to the gym.”

Dean was already out of the truck.

Y/N looked up.

“Dean!”

Lucas turned.

Dean walked over with an easy smile.

“Hey.”

He glanced at the project.

“Looks heavy.”

Lucas laughed.

“It weighs a ton.”

Dean held out his hands.

“I got it from here.”

Lucas hesitated for half a second before handing it over.

“Careful.”

Dean lifted it.

Definitely heavier than it looked.

“…Yeah,” he admitted. “You weren’t kidding.”

Y/N smiled up at him.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

He carried it all the way to the truck.

Lucas waved.

“See you tomorrow.”

“You too!” Y/N called.

Dean shut the tailgate a little harder than necessary.

—

He tried. God, he tried to be chill. He really did.

When she talked about her classmates, he listened. When she laughed at stories from the lab, he laughed too. When she complained about deadlines, he sympathized.

But then she’d casually say things like:

“Ben and I stayed until midnight fixing the code.”

Or

“Ryan walked me back to my dorm because it was raining. I called to let you know, remember?”

Or

“Emma says Lucas practically lives in the machine shop.”

And every single time something twisted in his chest.

He didn’t like it. He liked it even less because none of them had actually done anything wrong.

Dean lived outside of campus and if y/n waited for him to come pick her up it would have been 40 mins minimum. And Ryan not letting his girlfriend walk alone to her dorm was a solid reason, especially that they talked on the phone beforehand.

Or fixing a code. There was nothing wrong with that. It was just an assignment.

But it still bothered Dean. And he tried his best not to let it.

—

Finally, one Friday, Y/N looked over from her notes.

“We’re all studying in the library.”

Dean looked up.

“Oh?”

“You wanna come?”

He almost said no. Then he heard himself say, “Yeah.”

—

The engineering library was its own universe. Whiteboards covered in equations. Half-built robots sitting on tables. Students arguing over code like it was life or death.

Their group had taken over an entire study room. Dean squeezed in beside Y/N. For the first ten minutes, he understood approximately three words. Then the conversation somehow became even more confusing.

“No, your finite element analysis assumes…”

“It doesn’t if you redefine the boundary conditions.”

“That’s literally not how stress concentrations work.”

“It is if…”

Emma groaned dramatically. “You people are impossible.”

Everyone laughed. Y/N laughed hardest. Dean smiled politely. He had no idea why it was funny.

An hour later, Lucas leaned over Y/N’s shoulder to point at something on her screen. Not in a weird way. Just because they were looking at the same laptop.

Still…

Dean’s jaw tightened.

Ryan reached across her to erase part of the whiteboard. Ben tossed her a highlighter without looking.

Everything was so… comfortable. They had their own rhythm. Their own jokes. Their own language.

Dean suddenly understood what it felt like to be on the outside.

—

The walk to Y/n’s dorm was quiet. Y/N bumped his shoulder.

“You’re thinking.”

“A little.”

“What about?”

He exhaled through his nose.

“I owe you an apology.”

She frowned.

“For what?”

“I didn’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“When girls throw themselves at me after games.”

She stayed quiet.

“I always told you they didn’t matter and they don’t.”

“I know.”

He looked down at the sidewalk. “But… today I spent two hours watching four guys who are smart, funny, attractive…”

She opened her mouth.

“No, let me finish.”

He laughed softly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I spent years assuming engineering was full of awkward nerds.”

“It can be.”

“It is not your group.”

She smiled despite herself.

“They’re… annoyingly well-adjusted.”

Y/n smiled quietly and continued to listen.

“And they’re around you all the time.”

“Dean…”

“I know you love me.”

“I do.”

“I know they’d never disrespect our relationship.”

“They wouldn’t.”

“I know you’ve never given me a reason to doubt you.”

“I haven’t.”

He nodded.

“I know all of that.”

A beat passed.

“I’m still ridiculously jealous.”

Y/N stared at him for a second before breaking into a smile.

“Aww.”

He groaned.

“Don’t ‘aww’ me.”

She stepped closer until their hands brushed.

“You finally understand.”

It was similar to how y/n felt with all the girls circling around Dean at the start of their relationship. After a while she got used to it and continued to fully trust Dean. It’s not like she didn’t before, it was simply complicated to ignore their presence when those girls were part of Dean’s every day life.

“I really do.” Dean reached to hold y/n’s hand.

She laced her fingers with his.

“It sucks, doesn’t it?”

He laughed.

“It really, really does.”

She rested her head briefly against his shoulder.

“For what it’s worth…”

“Hm?”

“The guys all think you’re terrifying.”

Dean looked down at her.

“They do?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

She grinned.

“Lucas asked if it was okay to carry the prototype because he didn’t want you to think he was flirting with me.”

Dean blinked.

“He… what?”

“And Emma told him, ‘Relax, if Dean wanted to punch you, he would have done it a long time ago.’”

He snorted.

“Would I?”

She looked up at him with a teasing smile.

“Probably.”

He considered it.

“…Yeah.”

She laughed.

Then, before she could step away, Dean slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close.

“You’re still walking out of engineering with me whenever I’m free.”

She smiled.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Really?”

“Mhm.”

“Why?”

She leaned up just enough to kiss his cheek.

“Because no matter how smart those boys are…”

She smiled against his skin.

“You’re still my favorite person to come home to.”

And somehow, that made the knot in Dean’s chest loosen just enough to finally let him breathe.

One day you’d be the first person to interview the officer of the latest crime case. Or you’d be the one to break the news of a government scandal. Or even put out such a well written profile of the newest person in the spotlight that people talk about the article more than the person itself.

One day.

Instead you were stuck interviewing cocky athletes because the Briar Pages sports writer, Harry, decided to take a chance on the New Mexican and Thai fusion place. It ended with you getting a text that had you in the hockey arena and Harry’s head in the toilet.

The Briar Pages have been doing a profile on a member of the hockey team every week leading up to their much anticipated Frozen Four game. This week was supposed to feature the one and only, number 22, John Logan. 

It wasn’t that you hated sports journalism. You had respect for the reporters attending games, doing play by plays, and trying to grab an interview after a win or lose. 

You just majorly prefer not to be the one doing it. Especially interview college athletes that already have an ego larger than their bodies. You had done it once, as one of your first assignments at the paper, and the football player was so rude and also did not give any answer of substance that you decided to steer clear of the athletic column as much as possible. The nail on the coffin was your personal bias against hockey, the sport. You much prefer a soccer game rather than trying to track the tiny puck across the ice. But no use in complaining now. If you were going to be a real journalist you would have to cover the hard stories. Not that interviewing a college kid was hard compared to the war stories you read daily but everything in perspective. 

The practice was still going on when you arrived early to the arena. It was weird to come by the place so empty, no fans screaming their heads off, no fighting on the ice. The players were doing basic shooting drills that seemed to be more uplifting and fun rather than harsh. Hopefully that meant John Logan would be in a good mood. You found interviewees more talkative when they had a good day. 

You sat yourself in the front row which was the closest you probably ever been to the ice so you could actually see the puck gliding back and forth. Someone gave a final crack at the puck, making it soar into the net easily causing some cheers from the teammates.

“Nice shot Logan,” the coach approved, “I think we can wrap up practice now.”

You made a mental image of the scene and quickly jotted some notes down on the scenery for your article. The players skated off the ice chatting about their plans and eager to shower off. No one really paid any attention to you except for Dean Dilarentis, number 44, whose head literally swiveled when he spotted you sitting on the bleachers. 

“Are you waiting for someone?” he called out with a grin.

You could not tell if he was being helpful or flirting mainly because of how attractive he was. But you saw the way he acted off the ice. Cocky and arrogant men were another thing you stayed away from.

“I’m here to interview John Logan for the Briar Pages,” you replied.

“Oh shit yeah I did mine two weeks ago,” he said.

You knew that. One because you read every article in the Briar Pages and two because the girl had been secretly hooking up with Dean weeks prior to the interview which was a major conflict of interest that made you and the other editors spiral. Sure she still wrote a pretty unbiased article as a profile could be but the fact she kept her hook ups a secret from everyone was a massive red flag. While some people would think college journalism isn’t that serious, you firmly believed in placing boundaries now. 

You just gave him a nod.

“Well Logan should be out in a bit,” Dean said, “I’ll let him know to hurry up in the shower.”

“Thanks.”

You went over the questions Harry sent you. They were mostly things about how he felt the team was playing, areas of improvement, other competition. You decided to add a few of your own questions out of your own curiosity, hoping it would paint a more colorful image of the hockey team.

Soon you heard feet shuffling and looked up to see the man of the hour. John Logan.

You had to admit that he was a lot more handsome up close. His hair was still a bit damp from the shower, curling at the ends. He was dressed in an all blue sweatsuit with the Briar hawk mascot embroidered on the left pec bringing attention to the hard plane of muscle peaking out from behind the jacket. You blinked, cursing yourself for checking out your subject. 

“You don’t look like a Harry,” Logan joked, his own eyes raking over your figure.

You scoffed and introduced yourself, “Harry’s sick so I’ll be doing the questions today.”

“Fine with me,” he grinned, dropping his duffel bag and taking the seat next to you.

You placed your phone in between the two of you on the bleachers, creating a small barrier in case Logan tried to get too close and balanced your notebook on your lap. 

“Do you mind if I record this?” you asked, standard procedure.

“You’re all good.”

So you hit play and began with your first question.

“So tell me the basics about yourself? Your name, age, major, and position you play I suppose.”

He chuckled and answered, “I’m John Logan but everyone calls me Logan. I’m 21 and a business major. And I’m one of the starting defensemen for Briar’s hockey team.”

“And how do you think your hockey season has been going so far?”

“Great,” he shrugged, “Qualifying for the Frozen Four was definitely a signal that we are one of the top teams in the league. Have you come to any of our games?”

“Umm no,” you admitted, which had Logan’s face flickering in confusion, “But congrats on your qualification in the Frozen Four. What was that like? Describe how you were feeling.”

“I mean it was a lot all at once. I knew we had a fair shot. You know the team is definitely strong but there’s always room for error. I guess it’s hard to explain since you weren’t at the game but the crowd…”

He trails off, clearly itching to speak more but is hesitant.

“So explain it to me.”

“I guess on the ice it’s really easy to get in your head. I mean I’m literally wearing a helmet that limits my vision to only see the puck. So when the buzzer rings, I think that’s when I finally process all the cheering and screaming from the crowd. It’s a pretty awesome feeling especially since it’s all these people who don’t even know you personally but they’re cheering for you. For the school.”

You gave a nod, thinking about his answer and what you were going to ask next.

“When you say people don’t know you personally but still cheer for you, how has being a hockey player affected your experience as a Briar student?”

His eyes flicked to yours in some sort of amusement as if it were a subject that’s been eating him up inside. 

“Wow that’s a good question,” he said, which made you mentally pat yourself on the back. 

You gave him a moment to gather his thoughts before he let out a sigh.

“I mean I’m really lucky. I’m here on a hockey scholarship so I don’t even know if I’d be at a college if it weren’t for hockey. I have so much love and appreciation for the sport and the team. Coach Jenson is truly one of the best and these guys I’ve grown up with since freshman year. So being on the team is an invaluable experience.”

You waited for the but.

“But also I’m just a regular student at the end of day, which maybe sometimes it’s hard to think that especially when my face is plastered everywhere. Sometimes maybe people forget that, even I do, so sometimes it’s hard.”

You were shocked at his vulnerability thinking you were going to have to pry a bit more. You read the article about Garrett, that boy gave next to nothing about his life.

“Can I ask you to elaborate what areas might be hard? Is it work balance or socializing?”

“Oh I guess the university is really good about supporting student athletes. Most of my professors are pretty accommodating. Hockey season is kinda in between semesters so pre-season is rough with all the finals but the actual start of the season is nice since we’re easing into the new semester.”

“About socializing, I mean I got a great social life,” he grinned, “I guess it’s mostly affected my dating life which I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk about?”

“You’re allowed to talk about anything. We’re an independent student newspaper so I won’t purposely censor you,” you said.

You’ve heard stories about the infamous player John Logan was and seeing him in person you had every right to believe them. He sure was handsome and now hearing about his passion for the game and watching him practice you could see why he attracted so many girls. You would not fall victim thought!

“Yeah I guess,” he scratched the back of his neck, “Dating is interesting for sure. You never know if someone wants to be with you because they like you or of the jersey you wear. So I guess that’s made me a bit more conscious of who I surround myself with.”

“Are you dating anyone?” you asked, sort of unsure if that was an appropriate question but you wanted to know if he had a girlfriend as that could change the article.

“Why do you want to know?” he said flirtatiously causing you to slightly recoil.

You remained professional and resisted the urge not to roll your eyes as you explained, “Just wondering if you found people who like you for you.”

“I definitely have. The guys on the team are truly my closest friends. I met a couple other dudes through various classes and parties. So it’s nice knowing people like me for who I am off the ice.”

“And what do you like to do when you’re not playing hockey?”

“I love video games,” Logan grinned, “I love action movies. I do really enjoy hockey though. Sometimes I’ll dabble in some street hockey when it’s warmer out. I’m working at my dad’s garage so I guess I’m also pretty handy.”

You glanced down at his hands, noticing the callouses forming from the hours of work and practice. Huh you didn’t expect him to be a handyman.

“Speaking of family, how do they feel about all your success?”

You notice his body tense at the question. But you waited for him to answer before prying further. You never wanted to make a source feel uncomfortable. 

“My sibling, Jules, is super supportive,” Logan began with a sigh, “They’re always pushing me to be better and hanging with me at the rings when I want to run late night drills.”

You nodded, scribbling a few notes.

“My parents are supportive I guess,” he said, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck, “As supportive as they can be. I don’t really come from a wealthy background like most people at Briar so there are just different expectations for me back home.”

“Can I ask what these expectations are?”

“It’s kind of complicated,” Logan sighed, eyeing your phone that was recording the whole thing.

Well if this were any other story you might dig further but he was just a college student like you. It felt wrong to force him to air out all his problems.

“Understandable,” you nodded, “So what is your favorite thing about hockey? Why choose this sport out of all the others?”

“That’s a good question,” Logan chuckled, clearly a bit more relaxed, “I mean my dad used to take us skating at this small pond in our town. And the sensation of gliding on the ice was no other. There was an after school program called the Hurricanes that I signed up for since my parents worked late and that was my introduction to the game.”

“What’s it like playing hockey? Explain it to someone who has never played,” you said.

“Oh man, it's everything. The rush of skating on the ice while you’re chasing this small puck. Sports are I guess a bit silly but hockey when you’re working with your team and training all up to that moment the puck shoots into the net. There’s no other rewarding feeling.”

“Do you have any top hockey moments? In college and outside of college?”

“I mean this frozen four qualifier was pretty big. I think getting my first collegiate goal is also up there. It made me realize that maybe I do deserve to be here. As for outside of college,” he hummed thinking, “I won my high school championship which I supposed at the moment felt really big. There were a couple games that my friends and I would just play on the weekends and it was always a good time.”

“That’s nice,” you found yourself saying, “You mentioned some of your other hobbies earlier. Are any them close to giving you the same fulfillment to what hockey gives you?”

“You got a hair sticking out,” Logan said, reaching out to tuck it away before you could react.

You felt your cheeks grow hot as his fingers grazed your cheeks. This was totally unprofessional! You cleared your throat, leaning back to create some distance between the two of you so he couldn’t hear how fast your heart was beating.

“Sorry umm I guess? It's a weird thing cause hockey seems like such a separate part of my life. I mean it's my whole life in some ways so I don't think there's really anything that comes to close," he said, "But I guess my hobbies give me other types of fulfillment. The garage work is pretty therapeutic. I like working my own car cause it's something for myself.”

“A handyman,” you hummed, trying not to imagine him all greased up tinkering on a car.

You followed up with a few more questions Harry had written. More about specific plays and how the team was doing. Sports language that you definitely were having Harry translate for you. Logan answered them all with a smile. There were some moments you both shared a laugh about a story you recounted or a quiet rebuttal you threw in to keep the conversation flowing. You were slowly starting to realize why everyone called this man charming. But you needed to stay focused. You were here for business not a boyfriend.

You glanced at your phone. The time read nearly an hour after the two of you started. 

“Oh I guess those were all the written questions,” you chirped, “Do you have anything else you wanna add or ask me?”

“Nah,” he shook his head, “I mean can I ask what’s your deal?”

“My deal?”

“Yeah I mean what you’re studying, what you’re into.”

You couldn’t tell if he was being friendly or trying to flirt so you gave a quick answer.

“I’m studying journalism and I like a lot of things but this interview is about you not me,” you said.

“What if I wanted to get to know you more?” his eyes twinkled, leaning closer so that now you could smell his shampoo.

You leaned back and put your notebook away.

“I would say that would go against the basic laws of journalism,” you sighed, “I don’t like to fraternize with my sources.”

“Oh come on it’s only for the school newspaper,” Logan grinned until you gasp, “Which is a lovely publication.”

“It’s the principle of the matter,” you huffed, tossing your bag over your shoulder and recited the same speech you said after every interview, “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I’ll be sure to send you a copy of the article once it’s out.”

You walked out without looking back even though you really had enjoyed Logan’s company. There was no point in dwelling on the situation. You were a regular student and he was going to be on the front page of your paper. It was best to forget about it all and just write the damn article. And maybe tell Harry to be more cautious of what he consumes.

It was the least welcoming greeting you’d ever received. The word came out as if he were legally compelled to say it — as though someone had a gun to his back, mouthing say the nice thing whilst he white-knuckled his way through the syllable.

You filled your water bottle in silence, fully aware of him watching you before you finally made your escape.

That, as far as you were concerned, was the entire thesis of Bucky: hostile on arrival, aggressive on eye contact, and thoroughly allergic to basic human warmth.

Case closed.

Nothing about the compound gave you any reason to revise that opinion.

Over the following weeks, you accumulated evidence much like a prosecutor building a trial — methodically and without the slightest interest in the defense. He glared at you across the briefing room table, just as he did in the lift. He glowered at you in the corridor while you were simply trying to reach the gym, continuing the routine once you were inside.

On one occasion, he held a door open for you. This might have passed for a kind gesture, had his expression not suggested he was actively weighing up whether to slam it shut on your hand. Passing through quickly, you muttered a thank you, subsequently spending the next ten minutes wondering what you’d done to personally offend a hundred-and-six-year-old super soldier.

To make matters worse, this treatment seemed exclusively reserved for you.

Sam gave Bucky relentless, industrial-grade grief on a daily basis, receiving nothing worse than a tired sigh in return. Natasha spoke to him in brief Russian phrases that made him almost  — almost — soften around the eyes. Steve, naturally, could coax out something adjacent to a smile, provided the lighting was right and the conversation touched on baseball.

You, meanwhile, received the murder stare.

Consequently, you took the only reasonable course of action: you decided to hate him back. Nothing loud or dramatic — you were a professional, after all. Yet if Bucky insisted on looking at you like you were gum on his tactical boot, you were more than happy to match his energy. You ceased saying hello, just as you stopped making eye contact. Whenever his name arose in briefings, your gaze remained glued to the nearest screen, offering nothing beyond what was strictly required.

In your professional opinion, it was a perfectly proportional response. He had started it, after all.

Except, as it turned out, he hadn't started anything at all.

0010 — two

Steve, for all his tactical brilliance, possessed the interpersonal radar of a golden retriever at a dog park. Which is to say: he assumed everyone was having as good a time as he was, believing that if they weren't, they simply required a more intriguing chew toy.

"I want you two running point on Riga," he said, tapping something on his tablet without looking up. "Buck, your ground coverage coupled with their aerial support makes for a clean overlap. No blind spots."

You felt your left eyelid twitch.

"Seems efficient," Bucky remarked from across the table. He spoke in that low, even tone you had long since catalogued as dangerously neutral, which was, in reality, merely his natural way of speaking.

"Incredibly efficient," Steve agreed, radiating the enthusiasm of a man who genuinely loved logistics. "You'll insert here, sweep the perimeter in tandem, and report back. Forty-eight hours, tops."

You opened your mouth to suggest — diplomatically, calmly, and with exquisite professionalism — that perhaps literally anyone else on the roster might prove a better fit. Clint. Wanda. A reasonably trained Labrador. However, Steve was already moving on to exfiltration windows, whilst the moment sailed past like a ship you hadn't boarded.

Bucky glanced at you across the table. Although you didn't look back, you could feel it regardless: the stare. That ever-present, searing, what did I do to you in a past life stare, which you had fully reinterpreted as I am imagining your demise in vivid detail.

Riga was cold and grey, smelling faintly of rain-wet concrete. Bucky crouched behind a low wall, running through the sweep route as though he had memorised every sewer grate in the Eastern Bloc. Which, to be fair, he probably had.

"If we cut through the service corridor on the east side," he said, tracing a line on the projected map between you, "we avoid the camera cluster at the northwest junction. That shaves off thirty seconds and gives us a cleaner sweep."

It was a good call — objectively and tactically sound. Naturally, you hated it.

"Alternatively," you countered, "we take the northwest junction. The camera cluster has a six-second rotation gap offering more than enough cover, whilst saving us from rerouting through a corridor we haven't physically cleared."

Bucky looked at you. There was that look again: that infuriating, immovable expression. "The corridor's been cleared on satellite."

"Satellite isn't boots on the ground, a fact I'd have thought you of all people would appreciate."

A brief pause followed. He blinked once, slowly and deliberately, like a cat processing new information it had already deemed irrelevant.

"Right," he said simply. "Northwest junction. Six-second gap."

There was no argument, no pushback, and no retaliatory escalation. Desperate for him to fight you on it — to give you something concrete to push against — you were met instead with immediate agreement. He adjusted and moved on. You couldn't even determine whether his baseline glare had shifted, as it remained entirely one temperature: a perpetual overcast with no forecast of change.

Infuriating.

Taking the northwest junction proved successful; the six-second gap worked seamlessly. Bucky offered no comment afterwards, a silence you promptly interpreted as resentful, even if, by any objective measure, it was merely quiet efficiency.

By hour thirty, you had swept two-thirds of the perimeter, flagged three points of interest, and exchanged roughly forty words that weren't operationally necessary. Bucky held position whenever required, adjusted without complaint when you called an audible, and covered your flank with the mechanical precision of someone who had been doing precisely that for the better part of a century. 

When you snapped at his suggestion to double back on the north quadrant — "We've already cleared that, so unless you want to walk the same block a third time, let's finish before the century's out" — he studied you for a long moment, uttered a brief "Copy," and carried on.

By every metric that mattered, you worked brilliantly together. That was easily the most annoying aspect of the entire operation.

Steve's check-in crackled through the comms at hour thirty-six. "How's it looking out there?"

"Clean sweep," Bucky reported. "On schedule."

"Good to hear. Really good. You two are a natural fit, so I'm going to keep this pairing going."

The line clicked off before you could object.

Somewhere across the rooftop, Bucky shifted his weight without making a sound, having never once felt the need to fill a silence. You, meanwhile, were mentally drafting a strongly worded letter to Steve regarding the actual definition of the word natural.

The extraction window opened at dawn. It was a simple retrieval — collecting an intel package from a secure drop followed by a confirmation sweep for surveillance, wrapping up before the city woke up properly. It was the kind of job that barely qualified as a mission, resembling more of an errand, assuming your errands typically involved fake passports and a concealed weapon in your waistband.

Bucky moved through the drop site with an efficient, practiced quiet. Covering the perimeter, you tagged two potential cameras before feeding him the all-clear. He retrieved the package, confirmed the seal, and stowed it without ceremony.

"Clean," he reported over the comms.

"Obviously," you shot back, unable to help yourself.

The walk to the vehicle spanned six blocks through early-morning foot traffic. Bucky fell into step beside you — maintaining not a companionable proximity, but rather the tactically sound distance of a partner keeping visual range. Keeping your eyes fixed forward, you occasionally caught the peripheral flicker of him looking over, despite his efforts to look straight ahead as well.

At the fourth block, he spoke. "You did good work on the north sweep."

You nearly tripped. It wasn't a physical stumble, but rather a sudden jolt behind your ribs, as the compliment arrived so entirely stripped of inflection that it took a full three seconds to confirm it wasn't an insult.

"Thanks," you replied, as though the word were costing you money.

He offered a single nod before looking ahead once more. His expression remained entirely unchanged throughout the exchange — neither when he spoke, nor when you responded, nor now. It was the same furrowed brow, the same hard-set jaw, and the same general aura of a man who held a personal grievance against the concept of sunlight.

Walking the remaining two blocks in silence, you climbed into the vehicle and pulled out of Riga without incident.

In the passenger seat, Bucky stared out of the window, thinking about absolutely nothing in particular.

In the driver's seat, you white-knuckled the steering wheel, contemplating how deeply, profoundly, and cosmically unfair it was that Steve had designated your personal nemesis as your ideal work partner.

Bucky glanced over at you once more. You caught it in the corner of your eye — the slight turn of his head and the weight of his attention settling on the side of your face like a physical presence.

He looked away a moment later. Had you been watching, you might have caught a fleeting micro-expression that, on a more animated face, could have passed for confusion: a subtle narrowing of the eyes accompanied by a barely-there tilt of the head. It was the physical equivalent of a quiet huh.

Yet you were not watching. You were driving, nursing your resentment, and dreading the next mission you would inevitably be shackled to him for.

Bucky turned his gaze back out of the window.

Feisty, he thought, though not in explicit words. It was more of a general registration of facts: Teammate. Competent. Annoyed for some reason. Right then.

He let the matter drop.

0011 — three

The second phase of Riga went sideways on account of Bucky, and he had the decency to admit it — which made the entire situation infinitely worse.

It should have been straightforward. The intel package retrieved from the drop site pointed to a secondary location: a warehouse on the industrial fringe of Vecriga, flagged for potential weapons caching. Steve wanted confirmation before committing a full team, meaning it remained just the two of you — still purely recon, still strictly a matter of looking and reporting.

Bucky took the south entrance whilst you took the north — a standard split providing clean coverage without anything overly elaborate. Having swept your half in twelve minutes and tagged two points of interest, you reported clearly, subsequently waiting for his confirmation.

It failed to arrive.

What came instead was the muffled crack of a door being forced open from the inside. This was followed by three seconds of silence that felt significantly longer, before Bucky’s voice cut through the comms, clipped and flat: "Contact. Four hostiles, south corridor. I tripped a sensor."

You were already on the move. "You tripped a sensor?"

"There was a secondary grid. It wasn't in the schematics."

"So check for a secondary grid!"

"I'm aware of the oversight." A brief pause ensued, accompanied by the sound of distant, contained gunfire. "Heading to you. Thirty seconds."

He burst through the connecting corridor like a freight train with security clearance — fast, controlled, without a single wasted movement, yet carrying four exceptionally motivated hostiles funnelling in behind him. He had dropped two already, though the remaining four had evidently summoned reinforcements.

"An oversight," you hissed, falling into position beside him behind a concrete support column. "You call six armed hostiles an oversight?"

"I call the sensor an oversight; the hostiles are merely a consequence." Checking his magazine with a mechanical click, he remained as calm as a man sorting his morning post. "I ought to have caught it. That's on me."

There it was: no excuse, no deflection, and no complaints about incomplete schematics or how it could have happened to anyone. It was simply a clean, unvarnished admission of fault, delivered with the same flat affect he applied to everything else — as though accountability were merely another line item on the operational checklist.

You wanted to strangle him.

You wanted to seize him by the front of his tactical vest and shake him until something other than that granite composure gave way, purely because he had no right to be so utterly reasonable about it.

How dare he own his mistake with quiet professionalism when you had been actively gearing up for a proper row?

You had an entire speech prepared — reckless, sloppy, typical — only for him to dismantle it in two short sentences by simply agreeing with you.

"I'm going to kill you," you said.

"After the hostiles," he replied, which might have passed for a joke, had his face offered any confirmation.

They advanced in pairs. The warehouse consisted entirely of long sightlines and sparse cover — a layout ill-suited for defence and even worse for retreat, leaving forward progression as the sole option. 

Bucky moved left, drawing fire toward the heavier cover near the loading bay, whilst you veered right to utilise the elevated walkway for a tactical angle. For thirty seconds, the response was clean and coordinated — the precise sort of synchronisation Steve would have had framed and hung on a wall.

Then the third pair flanked wide, resulting in one of them getting behind you.

You heard it before you saw it: the scrape of a boot against the metal grating of the walkway — far too close and coming from the wrong direction. Spinning round, you fired and caught him in the shoulder, yet his momentum carried him forward as a burst from his automatic weapon chewed through the railing to your left.

Dropping off the walkway to avoid the spray — rolling through a two-metre fall purely on instinct — you came up in the open on the warehouse floor, stranded between two columns of cover with nothing but concrete dust and bad options.

The remaining hostile on the upper level held the high ground. You could see him repositioning, his barrel swinging round to track your movement. Meanwhile, the nearest cover stood four paces away, which was roughly two paces more than you had time for.

At that moment, Bucky hit you from the side like a wall with a pulse.

It wasn't a tackle, nor was it a shove. It was something altogether more deliberate: his arm wrapping round your waist as his body pivoted to place himself between you and the muzzle flash, dragging you both behind the nearest column in a single, brutal motion that briefly lifted your feet off the ground. Your back struck the concrete just as his chest slammed against yours. His left arm braced against the wall beside your head, his metal fingers digging shallow grooves into the surface with a sound guaranteed to haunt your next several attempts at sleep.

He fired over your shoulder without once looking away from you. Two shots rang out, followed by the heavy thud of something hitting the floor above.

Silence settled over the warehouse like dust after a demolition.

You were breathing heavily; he was not.

His heartbeat against your collarbone remained steady, measured, and offensively calm — the resting rhythm of a man whose circulatory system simply refused to acknowledge combat as a cardiovascular event. His face sat inches from yours as he scanned past you, his eyes tracking the upper walkway, the exits, and the corners, conducting a very focused threat assessment.

You, on the other hand, could register nothing else.

He was warm, which served as your first entirely unhelpful observation. Beneath the Kevlar, the grime, and the faint metallic tang of discharged rounds, he felt warm, broad, and solid in a manner resembling architecture rather than a person.

Your hands were resting on his vest again — a recurring habit you genuinely needed to address — and from this distance, you could see that his eyelashes were dark and unreasonably long. Furthermore, a small scar sat at the corner of his jaw that you had never previously noticed, owing to the fact that you had never been this close, alongside the small detail that you hated him.

You hated him — that remained vital. You were furious.

He had tripped a sensor, dragged you into a firefight, and then possessed the sheer audacity to throw himself in front of a bullet meant for you as if it were nothing. Protecting your body with his was apparently just another Tuesday to him, and now he stood there with his arm caging you in, his ridiculously muscled chest pressed against yours, leaving you absolutely, categorically, and without question hot, bothered and —

"Clear," Bucky said, looking down at you.

The stare remained identical to always — completely unreadable — except that from seven centimetres away, it felt less like I want you dead and more like I am looking at you because you are here and I am thorough. "You good?"

"Peachy," you managed.

Stepping back, he holstered his weapon. He offered you a single, efficient once-over — not lingering or appreciative, but rather a simple field check akin to inspecting a piece of kit after a drop — before turning to clear the rest of the warehouse.

"Sorry about the sensor," he called over his shoulder, already moving away.

You stood there for a moment, back pressed against the column, vest askew, with your heart executing something architecturally unsound in your chest. Your face felt hot, your hands felt foolish, and somewhere amidst the wreckage of your higher reasoning, a small, traitorous voice pointed out that pure American muscle was not a phrase you ought to be associating with a man you'd spent months despising.

You instructed the voice to shut up. Naturally, it refused.

By the time you caught up with him at the south exit, you had reassembled your composure into something functional, if not entirely convincing. Bucky crouched by the door, checking the exterior. As you approached, he looked up with that exact, unchanging, immovable expression and said, "We should report the secondary grid to Steve. My error; I'll log it."

"Damn right you will," you replied, albeit with significantly less venom than intended.

He nodded once before turning his attention back to the door, completely failing to notice that your ears were bright red — because Bucky, as a rule, simply did not notice things like 'ears'.

0100 — four

The safehouse was Steve's idea, because of course it was.

"Sit tight," he instructed over comms, speaking with the serene authority of a man issuing orders from a heated facility several countries away. "The firefight flagged local attention, so I need twenty-four hours to reroute extraction without drawing eyes. There's a safehouse logged in the system — Bucky, you know the one off Avotu iela?"

"I know it," Bucky replied.

"Great. Supplies should still be stocked from the last rotation. Hunker down, stay off the radar, and I'll have you out by tomorrow evening."

The line went dead. You stared at the comm in your hand as though it had personally betrayed you.

Twenty-four hours. In a safehouse. With Bucky Barnes.

Steve would answer for this. Not today, nor tomorrow, but one day, in a time and place of your choosing, Steven Grant Rogers would look you in the eye and reckon with the cumulative consequences of his logistical enthusiasm.

The safehouse was a third-floor walk-up in a residential block that looked like every other on the street — beige concrete, narrow windows, and a front door requiring a keycode that Bucky punched in from memory without hesitation.

Inside, it was sparse in the way all safehouses were sparse: functional furniture, blackout curtains, a bathroom with aggressive water pressure and no hot water, a kitchen stocked with tin cans and dry pasta, alongside, inexplicably, a full spice rack.

There was only one bedroom. However, you had yet to discover that detail.

Bucky executed a sweep of the flat in under two minutes — checking windows, exits, sightlines, and the building's stairwell — before returning to the main room with a nod that signified clear and absolutely nothing else.

Having taken up position at the far end of the kitchen counter with your arms crossed, you watched him move through the space with the efficiency of someone who had spent a great deal of time in rooms he didn't wish to be in.

"I'll make something," he said, already opening cupboards.

"I'm not hungry."

Your stomach growled with immaculate comedic timing. Bucky paused, hand on a cupboard door, yet he offered no comment and made no attempt to smile. He simply resumed opening the cupboard, which was somehow far worse than if he had laughed outright.

He proceeded to make soup.

You didn't know what you had expected — something perfunctory, perhaps, assembled with the same grim pragmatism he brought to everything else. A tin of broth heated in a pot, perhaps with some pasta thrown in for caloric necessity.

Instead, Bucky stood at the narrow safehouse cooker and diced an onion with a knife never intended for onions, moving with the quiet focus of someone who knew precisely what he was doing and had no intention of explaining why.

He sautéed garlic — actual garlic, peeled and minced, from a bulb he had found in the crisper drawer alongside potatoes that had no right being that fresh in a safehouse. He added tinned tomatoes, a selection of dried herbs from the inexplicable spice rack, the potatoes cut into even cubes, and a splash of something from a bottle bearing a Czech label that might have been vinegar, wine, or lighter fluid.

It smelled incredible.

You watched this unfold from your position at the counter — still with arms crossed, still glaring — feeling the mounting indignation of a person whose nemesis was failing to behave according to the established narrative.

Enemies did not make soup. Enemies did not dice onions with careful, practised hands. Enemies did not stir a pot with a wooden spoon, taste from the rim, and subsequently add more salt with the measured consideration of someone who understood that soup was a dish worth getting right.

He set a bowl in front of you without ceremony before sitting down across the narrow table with his own and picking up his spoon.

You glared at the soup. The soup failed to glare back, sitting there instead and steaming gently, smelling like something a grandmother would make if she’d happened to have a vibranium arm and the emotional range of a concrete wall.

You ate the soup.

It was — and you would take this to your grave before admitting it aloud — delicious. The potatoes were tender without being mushy. The broth possessed depth — actual depth, featuring layers of flavour that had no business existing in a meal assembled from safehouse scraps by a man who looked as though he were being forced at gunpoint to participate in civilian life.

Across the table, Bucky ate in silence, just as you ate in silence. The only sound was the scrape of spoons against ceramic alongside the distant hum of Riga's evening traffic filtering through the blackout curtains.

You were glaring at him over the rim of the bowl.

You knew you were glaring and found yourself unable to stop. Every spoonful felt like a personal offence — not owing to the soup, which was infuriatingly above reproach, but purely on principle. He had no right to be good at this. He had no right to sit there, eating soup he had made with his own two hands — one of which was made of metal and had attempted to kill multiple heads of state — looking for all the world like a man entirely at peace with his evening.

He wasn't at peace with his evening; he was simply eating soup.

Yet he did notice you were quiet — quieter than usual, which was quite a feat given that your usual baseline around him sat somewhere between terse and legally admissible silence. Glancing up once, he caught the edge of your expression, filing it away as he filed most things about you: without reaching any conclusions whatsoever.

Rough day, he thought. The warehouse was a lot. The sensor business rattled them. Fair enough.

It had not occurred to Bucky, at any point in the preceding months, that your hostility towards him was personal.

Having considered and dismissed several theories — that you were private, focused, cold towards everyone, or merely adjusting to the team — he had landed on the most generous possible interpretation every single time. The notion that you simply didn't like him, specifically as an individual, had never crossed his mind, as Bucky did not assign himself enough importance in other people's emotional landscapes for that to feel plausible.

You finished the soup, as did he. Taking both bowls to the sink without asking, he washed them by hand, thorough and unhurried, whilst you sat at the table staring at the back of his head, trying desperately to maintain the structural integrity of a grudge that was developing hairline fractures.

He dried the bowls, put them away, and wiped down the counter.

You hated him — obviously. However, the soup had been exceptionally good, and the counter was immaculate.

"I'll take the first watch," he said, settling onto the couch with a clear sightline to the front door.

"Fine."

"Get some rest. Tomorrow's going to be a long extract."

"I know."

He looked at you. You looked away first — a new development, and one that neither of you chose to examine.

0101 — five

The bedroom situation revealed itself with the slow, inevitable horror of a punchline that ought to have been obvious from the start.

There was a single bed: full-sized, pushed against the far wall, and made up with military corners alongside a single wool blanket that looked as though it had been government-issued during a war — quite possibly the one Bucky had personally fought in. Accompanying it were a single pillow, one nightstand, and an overhead light with a pull chain that lent the entire space the ambience of an interrogation cell.

You stood in the doorway whilst Bucky remained directly behind you. Neither of you spoke for a long, damning moment.

"I'll take the floor," he offered.

"No."

"It's not a problem. I've slept on worse."

"I said no." Turning round — a mistake, as it turned out, given his proximity — you had to look up to meet his eyes, which were performing their usual trick of boring into you as if you owed him money. "I'll take the floor. You take the bed."

Bucky's brow furrowed. Or rather, it furrowed further — it was already permanently set that way by default, yet it deepened to a degree you hadn't previously known was architecturally possible. "That doesn't make sense."

"It makes perfect sense."

"You're smaller than me. The bed is more efficient for —"

"I don't care about efficiency, Barnes. Take the bed."

"I'm not going to let you sleep on the floor."

"You're not letting me do anything. I'm choosing the floor. Independently. Of my own volition."

This was — a fact you were distantly aware of even in the moment — not actually about chivalry, comfort, or any rational metric of who ought to sleep where.

It was entirely about the fact that Bucky had suggested the bed, and you would rather lie on cold hardwood until your spine fused than accept a single accommodation from a man who had spent months staring at you as if you were a code he was trying to crack, only to decide you weren't worth the effort.

Bucky looked at you, and you looked back at him. The standoff held for a stretched, ridiculous beat — two highly trained operatives with a combined century of combat experience, thoroughly deadlocked over a mattress.

"We could —" He stopped, recalibrated, and started again carefully, in the manner of a person approaching a suggestion they already know will go badly. "We could share it."

"Absolutely not."

"It's a full. There's room."

"There is not room."

There was, objectively, room.

A further eleven minutes of negotiation ensued — eleven minutes that could have been spent sleeping, maintaining perimeter awareness, or doing literally anything other than arguing about a bed with a man whose face hadn't changed expression once throughout the entire exchange.

In the end, the solution was reached not through compromise, but through mutual exhaustion: you on the left side, him on the right, with a gap between you wide enough to accommodate a respectably sized third person, or possibly a coffin, which felt appropriate.

You lay on your back, rigid, arms at your sides, staring at the ceiling. The blanket covered you to mid-chest. Although your boots were off, everything else remained on; you were certainly not changing clothes in a safehouse with Bucky on the other side of a bed you were sharing against every instinct you possessed.

He lay on his back, equally rigid, with hands folded over his stomach as he too stared at the ceiling. The blanket covered him to the waist. Having removed his jacket and gloves but nothing else, the plates of his left arm caught the ambient glow of the streetlamp outside in the dim light filtering through the window.

Silence followed — a long, heavy, weighted silence.

Steve Rogers, you thought, with the focus and clarity of a prayer, I am going to find you, and I am going to make you understand what you've done. When the history books document your demise, they will note that it was thoroughly deserved.

Somewhere beyond the curtains, Riga hummed its quiet nighttime hum. A car passed, a dog barked, and the kitchen refrigerator cycled on with a low rattle that settled into white noise.

Bucky shifted. Not towards you — if anything, he pressed further into his own edge, as though attempting to grant the gap between you additional square footage through sheer force of will. The mattress dipped slightly with the movement before settling into stillness once more.

More silence followed. You could hear him breathing — a steady, measured rhythm suggesting either deep calm or trained control. Unable to tell which, it bothered you that you were listening closely enough to wonder.

"Can I ask you something?"

His voice was quiet. It wasn't soft — Bucky didn't do soft, or if he did, you had never been granted access to it — yet it was low and careful. He directed his gaze at the ceiling, speaking in the manner of someone who had determined that eye contact would prove a tactical error.

"What?" you said, flat and with your guard firmly up.

A pause followed while he chose his words with the deliberation of a man disarming a device he didn't fully understand — which, in a sense, he was.

"Why do you glare at me?"

The question landed in the dark between you like a stone dropped into still water: simple, direct, and genuinely, painfully confused. It was neither accusatory nor hurt, but merely curious — like a puzzle he had been turning over in his hands for months and had finally decided to open here, in the dark, lying on his back and addressing the ceiling, having apparently calculated that looking at you while asking would make whatever was already wrong significantly worse.

You didn't answer immediately, far too blindsided by the fact that he had noticed. This was insane in retrospect because, of course he had noticed — you had been glaring at the man with the intensity of a sustained laser for the better part of six months.

"Why do I glare at you?" you repeated, as though the question had been delivered in a language you didn't speak.

"Yeah." Still staring at the ceiling, still careful. "I've been — I don't think I've done anything to you. I've tried to run through it, and I can't find the point where I —" He paused. "I've been professional. I've followed protocol, and I've done everything by the handbook. Yet you look at me like I've murdered your cat."

"Because you glare at me!"

It came out louder than intended. You felt the bed shift as he reacted —not flinching, but merely offering a slight turn of his head, which he immediately corrected back to facing the ceiling. "You've glared at me since my first day at the compound. You looked at me like I'd committed a federal crime simply by walking into the kitchen. Every briefing, every corridor, every — you just stare at me, Barnes, as if I've personally wronged your bloodline. So yes, I glare back. What did you expect?"

Silence.

A long, heavy silence.

The sort of silence that possessed a distinct shape.

"Oh," Bucky said.

A single syllable, loaded with the slow, dawning weight of a revelation he hadn't seen coming, precisely because it had never once occurred to him as a possibility.

You heard him exhale through his nose — neither a sigh nor a laugh, but something in between that sounded like a man arriving at a destination he wished he hadn't.

"That's —" He stopped, then started again. "That's just my face."

"What?"

"That's how I look." His voice had grown careful again, though in a different register now — less disarming-a-bomb and more confessing to a crime he hadn't realised he'd committed. "Sam told me about it last year. He said I — the word he used was intense. I've been working on it."

A beat passed.

"Apparently, I have not been successful," he added, with the quiet devastation of a man confronting a failed self-improvement project. "My sincere apologies."

You lay there motionless, staring at the ceiling Bucky had been using as a conversational safe harbour, feeling the entire scaffolding of the last six months begin to buckle.

That was simply his face.

The glare, the stare, the flat, searing, unblinking hostility around which you had constructed an entire narrative of enmity — it was merely his face. It wasn't directed at you, nor was it directed at anyone else. It was simply the natural resting state of a man whose features had been frozen, thawed, wiped, reset, and reassembled enough times that they had settled on murder as their factory default.

He had been working on it. Sam had told him, and he had tried. He had been making an active, conscious effort to look less like he was plotting the downfall of everyone in his immediate vicinity, yet the gap between his attempt and his result was apparently so microscopic that you hadn't detected a single pixel of difference.

"Barnes," you said slowly.

"If it helps, I — it's not intentional. It's not — I'm not thinking hostile thoughts when I look at you. I'm usually not thinking anything specific. I'm just..."

"Looking."

"Looking. Yeah."

Another silence descended, though this one differed markedly — less loaded and more bewildered, representing the shared quiet of two people arriving at the same understanding from opposite ends of a very long, highly unnecessary misunderstanding.

"I owe you an apology," you said, the words tasting like something you ought to have uttered months ago, which made them harder to get out, not easier.

"You don't."

"Barnes, I've been horrible to you."

"You've been direct." He said it as though he meant it — not being generous or diplomatic, but simply accurate, by his measure. "I've had worse."

"That's not a particularly high bar."

"It's an honest one."

You lay there with that thought for a moment, letting the recalibration settle.

Every interaction — every terse exchange, every ignored greeting, and every pointed refusal to acknowledge his existence beyond operational necessity — replayed in fast-forward with the new context overlaid. Each one landed differently, and considerably worse. He had held doors open for you, complimented your sweep work, and made you soup. In return, you had met every gesture with the warmth of a closed fist, simply because his eyebrows didn't move the way you thought they should.

"I should also probably tell you something," Bucky said, still addressing the ceiling.

His voice had shifted once more, and had you not been lying close enough to hear the minute changes in his breathing, you might have missed the new tension within it. It wasn't discomfort or reluctance, but rather something closer to the careful steadying of a person about to step off a ledge they had been standing on for longer than planned.

"What?"

"I like you."

The words hit the dark ceiling and hung there, suspended, whilst your brain ran them through several rounds of processing, returning an error every time.

"I —" He cleared his throat. "I like working with you. Your tactical instincts are — the northwest junction call was good. It was better than my call. Furthermore, the way you handle aerial overwatch possesses a precision that — it makes my job easier, which isn't something I say about many people. I actually like that you argue with me, too. Most people don't; they either defer or avoid, whereas you just — " He made a vague gesture towards the ceiling with his right hand. "You come straight at it."

He was rambling.

Bucky — who usually communicated in sentence fragments, silences, and single-word affirmatives — was rambling. The words spilled out in a steady, almost helpless stream, as if he had uncorked something he didn't know how to reseal. The ceiling received the full force of it, given that he still hadn't looked at you and, at this point, probably couldn't.

"And the — the attitude. I know it was directed at me, and I understand that now, but even before I understood it, it didn't bother me. I thought it was simply how you were with everyone. I thought, they’re sharp, they’re focused, and they doesn't waste words, and that's —" He paused, swallowing hard. "I like that. I like all of it. And — you're not going to believe this — the glaring. Even the glaring. You commit to it. There's a — you're very —"

He stopped, breathing out as the sentence died a merciful death somewhere between his intention and his ability to articulate it.

"I don't care if you snap my ears off," he said quietly. "I never have."

On your side of the bed, behind the safety of the gap that now felt less like a demilitarised zone and more like the only barrier preventing you from doing something irreversible, you stared at the ceiling as the universe rearranged itself.

He liked you.

He liked you.

Bucky — whom you had spent six months hating with the dedicated focus of a doctoral thesis, whom you had categorised, filed, and sealed under enemy with absolute certainty — liked you.

He had liked you, quite possibly the entire time. He had appreciated your tactical calls, your aerial work, your stubbornness, and your glaring — which he had apparently found more charming than threatening.

This recontextualised every single moment you had ever shared into something so fundamentally different from what you had believed that your brain was essentially executing a factory reset in real time.

The Big Bang, as they said, originated from a single point of infinite density before expanding outwards in every direction at once. This felt remarkably similar, except the point of infinite density was Bucky saying I don't care if you snap my ears off in the dark, whilst the expansion represented every assumption you had ever made about him detonating simultaneously.

He had gone quiet. The ramble had passed itself, leaving him lying there, still aimed at the ceiling, presumably regretting every word he had spoken while steeling himself for whatever you were about to throw back at him.

The gap between you felt enormous — and suddenly, completely absurd.

0110 — six

You rolled over.

Not gradually, nor cautiously, and certainly not with the measured calculation of someone who had spent the last several hours maintaining the maximum possible distance from the man beside them.

You simply turned, crossing the gap as though it had never existed, before propping yourself up on your elbow on his side of the bed — close enough that your shadow fell across his chest.

Bucky went very still: the sort of still that had nothing to do with training and everything to do with the fact that his entire operating framework for this interaction had just been upended without warning. He had been braced for a multitude of possible responses — silence, anger, dismissal, or a scathing deconstruction of every word he had just uttered — yet certainly not this. He had not anticipated you being right there, leaning over him and looking down at him with an expression he had never before seen on your face, leaving him without a filed reference for it.

You were smiling.

It broke something in him — not loudly or dramatically, but with the quiet internal shift of a gear slipping into a position it hadn't known existed. He had seen you focused, furious, mid-combat, mid-argument, and mid-glare. He had catalogued every version of your face that you had ever shown him, yet none of them — not a single one — had included this. Open and bright, your eyes creased at the corners whilst your mouth curved in a way that made you look like an entirely different person, or perhaps the exact same person with a wall removed.

"Are you serious?" you asked.

He blinked. "About what?"

"Barnes. Are you serious? You like me?"

"I — yes. I just said —  I spent a significant amount of time just saying —"

"You like me." You said it again, not because you required confirmation, but rather because the words were new and you wished to feel them in your mouth a second time. A grin spread across your face—wide, uncontrolled, and entirely without your permission — and you couldn't have stopped it had national security depended on it.

Bucky stared up at you, his lips parting, closing, and parting again. The ramble that had poured out of him minutes ago had emptied his tank entirely; confronted with the direct, beaming, up-close reality of you smiling at him, he was left with nothing.

Every word he had ever learned in two languages, alongside a handful of operationally acquired phrases in four others, had vacated the premises.

"Yes," he managed, the word sounding as though it had been dragged out of him with a hook.

You laughed.

It wasn't at him, but rather at the situation, at yourself, and at six months of wasted hostility collapsing in real time. The sound landed on Bucky like something physical, making his chest shift beneath it. You watched his throat work through a swallow, observing his eyes as they tracked across your face with the bewildered focus of a man seeing a new colour for the first time and not yet trusting that it was real.

"You absolute idiot," you said, as your hand found his jaw.

His breathing changed. You felt it — the catch, the skip, and the barely perceptible hitch of someone whose body had just been informed of a development his brain hadn't authorised. Your fingers rested against the edge of his jaw, your thumb lying along his cheekbone. His skin felt warm beneath your hand — warmer than you had expected, which was a foolish thing to have expectations about, given that thirty seconds prior you had still been on your side of the demilitarised zone pretending to hate him.

"You —" he began.

"Shut up. I'm having a moment."

Your other hand landed on his shoulder — not in a grip or a shove, but in simple contact. With your palm resting on the curve of muscle through his shirt and your fingers settling against the junction of his neck, you felt him tense beneath you. He didn't pull away, but held himself in the rigid stillness of someone who didn't trust himself to move, having not yet determined what the correct movement ought to be.

You were slightly draped across him now, with one hand on his jaw, the other on his shoulder, and your weight shifted onto his side of the bed. You were close enough to see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes and the way his pupils had widened in the low light. This was uncharted territory for both of you, obviously.

Yet watching it happen to him was something else entirely: observing the composure that had survived decades of ice, combat, and reprogramming falter over the simple, devastating fact that you were touching his face and smiling about it.

"Hi," you said, foolishly.

"Hi." His voice had dropped into a register you hadn't heard before—rough at the edges and quiet in the middle. His right hand came up slowly and carefully, as though reaching for something he expected to be snatched away, hovering near your elbow without quite landing. "You're — this is — I thought you hated me."

"I did hate you."

"And now?"

"Now I'm re-evaluating my methodology."

His hand landed. Gentle and uncertain, his fingers wrapped round your forearm with a pressure so light it was barely there, as if holding something he had been told was fragile without being informed where the cracks were.

You watched his eyes search yours — back and forth, quick and unguarded, stripped of the flat intensity you had been misreading for half a year. He wasn't glaring, nor was he staring; he was simply looking at you. For the first time, you could see what was actually present beneath the granite: a banked, cautious want, held at arm's length for so long he had forgotten he was doing it.

"For the record," you said, "the soup was incredible."

A sound escaped him — not quite a laugh, nor quite a breath, but something in the middle. It was an involuntary noise that seemed to surprise him as much as it did you. The corner of his mouth moved; it wasn't a full smile, nor even half of one, but a subtle shift — a fracture in the architecture — that transformed his entire face in a way that made your stomach drop pleasantly into your shoes.

"Noted," he said.

"And the business where you threw yourself in front of a bullet for me —"

"Standard protocol."

"It wasn't, actually."

"It felt standard."

"Barnes."

"Yeah."

You leaned down and kissed him.

It wasn't graceful, as the angle was wrong. You were still propped half on your elbow and half on his chest, your hand sliding from his jaw to the side of his neck as you closed the gap, your nose bumping his because geometry refused to cooperate with the urgency of the moment. Yet his mouth was warm, and when he took a full second to respond, you almost pulled back — nearly retreating to your side of the bed to die of mortification in peace — before his hand tightened on your arm. His other hand came up to the back of your head, and he kissed you back with a quiet, focused intensity suggesting he had been considering this for significantly longer than the duration of your conversation.

He kissed in the same manner he did everything else: thoroughly, unhurriedly, and deliberately, without a single wasted movement. His fingers slid into your hair whilst his thumb traced the line behind your ear, tilting his head to fix the angle problem you had created.

Distantly, in the remaining functional portion of your brain, you thought, Ah, so this is what it's like when he isn't on the other side of a room looking as though he wants to murder me.

It was better — categorically, unreservedly, and across every imaginable metric.

You broke apart just far enough to draw breath, his hand remaining in your hair while yours stayed on his neck. The gap between you had been reduced to practically nothing, leaving the wool blanket as a lost cause somewhere around both your waists. He was looking at you with an expression that, for the first time since you had known him, you could actually read.

"Just to be clear," he said, his voice slightly hoarse, "this means you don't hate me."

"This means I don't hate you."

"Right." His thumb moved against your scalp — slowly and absent-mindedly, as though he were doing it without realising. "Good. That's — yeah. Good."

You kissed him again — because he had said good like a man who had just been told the war was over, because his hand was tangled in your hair, and because his voice was wrecked.

You had six months of hostility to make up for, and you intended to be exceptionally thorough about it.

0111 — seven

Steve opened the safehouse door at 0600 with his shield strapped to his back, a cereal bar in hand, and the calm, satisfied expression of a man who had successfully rerouted an extraction under pressure — feeling, frankly, rather pleased with himself.

"Rise and shine, I've got us a window —"

He stopped dead.

You were on the bed, and Bucky was on the bed.

More accurately, you were on top of Bucky — your fingers tangled in his hair, his arm hooked securely round your waist, and your mouths occupied in a manner that had absolutely nothing to do with a mission debrief. The wool blanket had been kicked onto the floor at some point during the night, alongside, apparently, every professional boundary either of you had ever maintained.

Steve stared.

Breaking apart, Bucky's hand remained precisely where it was. You looked at Steve, Steve looked at you, and Bucky looked at Steve with the exact same unreadable expression he always wore — which, given the context, was doing a spectacular amount of heavy lifting.

The cereal bar lowered slowly to Steve's side.

"I —" Steve began.

"Morning," Bucky said.

"You —" Steve pointed at you, then pointed at Bucky, before pointing at the non-existent space between you. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. The strategic mind that had orchestrated the fall of HYDRA and the defence of three continents was, for the first time in recorded history, attempting to process something it had failed to anticipate.

"This is —" He took a step backwards. "I'm going to — I'll be in the — you have ten minutes."

The door clicked shut, followed by footsteps retreating down the corridor at a pace that could only be described as fleeing.

You looked at Bucky, and Bucky looked back at you. His hair was a disaster, whilst your shirt was untucked. Neither of you had slept for more than two hours, both of you looked it, and somewhere on the other side of the door, Steve was having a private reckoning with the direct consequences of his own tactical genius.

"He's splitting us up," you said. "You realise that, don't you? After this, he'll never put us on the same mission again."

Bucky's mouth executed that familiar movement — the subtle shift, the fracture in the architecture, the not-quite-smile that remade his entire face and caused your chest to do something structurally inadvisable.

"Yeah," he said softly. "Probably."

He didn't sound remotely bothered by the prospect.

From the corridor, muffled and vaguely traumatised, came Steve's voice: "Ten minutes, Buck!"

You kissed him again — partly because Steve had set a deadline, and mostly because spite had always been your love language.

$ tag @twentytomidnight @i-gotta-go-so-much-bigger @elarapheonix @hisokamywaifu @froggibus @axtira @rosemint-tea @sheriff-bodecker

$ join taglist

People around campus generally knew who you were. Why? Well, it's one thing to have rich parents that, for some reason, settled for only one child and putting all the pressure of legacy and success on them, but there's also having rich parents and a mother who was running for mayor. "Go For Gold!" As they say. You only ever see your mom's face and big bright smile plastered on posters around town and sometimes around campus. It made you sick.

You'd think that the daughter of a known and beloved rich politician would be all over being in as many clubs as possible, having a bunch of friends that might be using her for money, hell, even majoring in poli-sci...but no. You were "boring."

You didn't party. You didn't have many friends. And the ones you did didn't attend Briar U. They couldn't afford to. Well, you managed to befriend a girl in your ethics and classical music class, Hannah, and her party hardy roommate Allie who you've accidentally seen naked one too many times when you visited them.

You sure as hell could dress though.

You weren't noticed by the people that "mattered," according to your mother. You were supposed to befriend any and everybody who would give a damn about politics enough to be swayed to vote for her. You believed in her and her campaign, sure, but you didn't want to be the girl that was solely known for boosting her mother's popularity by simply existing.

At the very least, you had a 4.0 GPA. Which led to you somehow getting approached by the blonde blue eyed hunk that was Dean Di Laurentis after class. Of course you knew who he was. And he, unfortunately, knew who you were. In passing, of course.

"Yo! Goldie!"

Sigh.

You kept walking. He followed you outside. You could picture the grin on his face. Those stupid dimples with those stupid pretty teeth. You briefly help one jock on one stupid quiz and suddenly that unlocked the even stupider nickname due to who you were related to.

"I'm just gonna keep following until ya until you turn around, Goldie!"

You picked up your walking speed, which only led to him laughing and jogging just fast enough to get ahead and stop in front of you.

"C'mon, helping me on that oral presentation can't be that bad."

You huff in frustration. "The word 'oral' coming from you should be a sin."

"Oo, burn, ya got me there. Truly. Sooo, is it a yes or a yes?"

"No."

You rounded him to try and get away but he stopped you by gently grabbing your arm with both hands. Giving you false pleading eyes. Ooh you could just smack that pouty lip off his face-

"Pleaseeee?"

"No."

"I'll be good!"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Ask one of your 47 girlfriends to help you."

"I would but that would be a different kind of oral presentation."

You rolled your eyes and yanked your arm away, he stepped in front of you again.

"Okay, okay, that was in poor taste...a little funny, but in poor taste," he said. "Just- I need your help, alright? Help me with this one little thing and I'll leave you alone."

"No, you won't."

"...I won't, but..."

You blink. "...but?"

"Yeah, I got nothin'. C'mon, Goldie."

"Stop calling me that."

"I'm kinda obligated to..."

"Dean."

"I'll try not to if you help me."

"What's it in for me?"

He paused to think...and came up with nothing. Again.

"Pfft, uh...I'll make out with you," he joked. He couldn't stop himself from making such a stupid joke that he knew would make you walk away again.

"...okay."

He paused again. "...what?"

"Deal."

"Wait, pause," he chuckled in disbelief. "I was joking. I was thinking like carrying your bag or getting you coffee before class."

You gave a genuine dejected look. "Oh..."

This really confused him.

"Then I won't help you."

"Wha- you were actually going to...make out with me in exchange for tutoring me? I just don't follow how this would benefit you."

"I hear you brag all the time about how girls are itching to sleep with you."

"I mean, they are, but I highly doubt you, of all people, would do that. So...what gives?"

"Look, if you don't want to kiss me it's fine."

"I did not say that," he gave a short laugh and ran his fingers through his hair. "You know what? It's whatever. You help me study, we make out, seems simple enough. Deal?"

You held out your hand and shook his firmly.

"Deal."

"Cool, so... when do we start?"

-

5 p.m.

Three knocks. Nothing.

Three more. Nothing.

Five seconds later, the door opens.

"Hi," you say to a guy who is definitely not Dean. A long haired guy you've seen around but can't ever remember his name.

"Sup. You must be Dean's tutor."

"I am."

"Alright, well... welcome in."

You came in, trying to appear less stiff in the presence of the other guys chilling in the living room. No sign of Dean.

"Yoo, Di Laurentis! Might wanna pull out already!"

Wow.

You clutched your bag tighter and stood at the door awkwardly. After about 30 seconds, you heard movement upstairs and then proceeded to see a woman who looked absolutely nothing like you prance down the steps half-naked, ignoring you but looking back over her shoulder to wink at blondie before she left. He came halfway down the steps and leaned on the railing in a muscle shirt, biceps just catching the light perfectly.

Don't do that, brain!

"Ready when you are."

You glanced at the others who quickly looked away from your direction and moved to go up the steps to avoid any more attention. He let you go in front of him and followed you up to his room, which had air freshener permeating the space. At least he had the decency to do that.

"Sick jacket," he said as he grabbed a seltzer from his mini fridge. You offered a small smile and sat on the edge of the bed. Huh, it was made up. Like it hadn't even been used.

"Thank you," you said and grabbed your laptop out your bag. "It's my dad's old Navy jacket."

"Like the place or the military?"

You blinked. "What?"

"Old Navy..."

"Why would I...military, Dean."

"Hey, just trying to make conversation to loosen you up a bit."

You adjusted your glasses and cleared your throat. "I'm fine."

"You're sitting on the bed like the rest of it is lava."

"I don't know what you could've been doing on this bed before I got here."

"Oh, we weren't on the bed," he flashed a smile.

".......okay."

"So, does the making out come before or after the flash cards I see sticking out your bag?"

"After."

"Yeah, that's probably better."

You looked at him as he slid a beanbag chair up and sat in front of you.

"Alright," he rubbed his hands together and leaned on his knees after popping open his drink. "Teach me."

-

He actually...paid attention. No phone, no glancing at the door like he expected someone else to show up. Just focused on you explaining the concepts, nodding occasionally like he was really trying to retain the information.

"You'd be a hot teacher."

You looked up from your laptop. Ignore your heart almost leaping out of your chest!

"You know you don't need to do that, right?"

"Do what?"

"Flatter me. I already agreed to the deal."

"I wasn't flattering you, it's called being honest. You would be a hot teacher."

"Can we finish the session?"

"Nooo I'm so tired of studying, can we make out already?"

"We've gotten through like 3/4th of my notes."

"Exactly," he said as he got up and stretched. "Perfect time to kiss those pretty lips."

You scoffed and closed your laptop halfway then stood with him. "What did I say about flattery?"

No response. All he did was carefully remove your glasses, watching your eyes flutter and adjust to the blurriness. Then, next thing you know, one of his big, warm hands is cupping your cheek and he's kissing you. It wasn't aggressive but it wasn't soft either. It was confident. It was Dean Di Lau-fucking-rentis.

Your brain took a second to catch up but once you did your hands slid up his chest and anchored on his shoulders. He deepened the kiss by tilting your head just enough to take on a new angle and you swear you almost lost your breath.

His tongue tasted citrusy from the seltzer. Lips so warm and soft. He kissed so good it was unfair. Ugh.

This went on for at least another minute and a half before you pulled away. A tiny spit string connecting between your lips breaking shortly after.

"Uh..." you cleared your throat and wiped your mouth with the back of your hand. "Yeah, that works."

The next few days have been just that. Tutoring him, taking a break to lock lips, then finishing your notes.

But then...you got a little curious. A little...greedy.

"What are you thinking about?"

He nudges you playfully and you snap out of your thoughts before closing your notebook. It didn't help that you were sitting in bed with him because it's what sparked you zoning out in the first place.

"I want you to give me a hickey."

The words just slipped out before you could think about how to word it better. Honestly, he wouldn't have it any other way.

"Yeah?"

Well, you couldn't take it back now!

"I haven't...experienced one before," you added. "But you don't have to make it some sentimental 'aw, this is her first time' thing. I don't need all that. Just... getting one is fine."

"Totally get that," he said, leaning a little to continue teasingly. "It'd be easier if we were standing."

You both stood, you lightly tossed your laptop on his blanket and got in front of him.

"Do you know how some hickeys start?"

"No."

"With making out," he grinned. "Something you're really good at. So let's start there, yeah?"

Dean held the side of your face and kissed you without second thought. You might be crazy but it felt like he put just a little more umph in this. His other hand slid onto your hip. That was new, but you didn't mind. If anything it helped you relax those nerves more.

Mission accomplished.

A quiet noise left your lips unintentionally. He smiled and kissed you deeper...Woah.

Then his lips left yours to start kissing along your jaw to your neck to your shoulder. Without asking he's very sure you'd want it some place where nobody could find it. You usually dressed more conservatively but today you had on a loose blouse that didn't dip too far below your cleavage. It was perfect.

Meanwhile you're dazed and holding onto his biceps to keep yourself grounded in reality. Also not helping. They were massive!

When he began sucking on the skin where shoulder meets neck, it didn’t hurt. Just felt weirdly warm and tingly at first as his mouth worked against you. His hand came up to tilt your head slightly, giving him better access while his other arm wrapped around your lower back to keep you steady in place.

The little sting made you jolt slightly since you weren't expecting it. He licked a slow circle around it to soothe whatever pain he might've caused and left a small kiss as a silent apology.

He lifted his head slowly so he could admire his work. That was one pretty mark. He gestured to his mirror over his dresser with a proud smile.

"Like that?"

You tried not to stumble over to his mirror--you can't give him that much satisfaction--and looked at the mark he left. Running your finger over it out of sheer curiosity.

"Yeah," you said. The more you looked at yourself, the more ideas you were getting. "Like that."

Over the next two days, you'd ask for them in different places to see how they'd look and how they'd feel. One was on your neck from behind. Under your jaw, the column of your throat. Your thigh... your other thigh...

Now was just about four days away from his exam. He was doing well. A lot better than you anticipated but you knew he wasn't dumb. Nowadays he'd be eager to get everything done quickly and efficiently so he could give you whatever you wanted that night.

But today, of all days, wasn't a session. You were supposed to be relaxing back at your dorm and wait for tomorrow to come. The sun was setting when you showed up to their door in a skirt. A skirt shorter than usual and an expensive cardigan you got for your birthday last year. Your bag that held only your laptop for show was clutched in your grip.

The door opened, it wasn't Dean. It was Garrett.

"...hi?" He greeted you with confusion. "You're Dean's tutor right?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know he had a session today."

He noticed the shorter skirt the second he opened to door but didn't want to make it obvious. Dean swears you two haven't been fucking, the boys are only half convinced given that you carry yourself a lot differently than most of the women that are in and out of this house.

"He said he'd be busy tomorrow and told me I should come today."

That was a lie.

"Oh...okay," he shrugged. "Come on in. Please, don't mind the mess. We're still cleaning up from last night's party."

Garrett spotted Dean passed out on the couch. Shirtless. Hair a little messy. Fuck. He lightly slapped Dean's arm to wake him up.

"Hey, up. Your tutor's here."

Dean stirred awake and stretched before sitting up to rub his eyes.

"Tutor...?" He said. When his eyes fully open and land on you, he can't stop himself from looking you up and down. "Right...my tutor...I will see you guys later."

He calmly followed you up the steps, using every fiber of his being to not look up your skirt. Once you two were out of view, the other three exchanged looks.

"They're fucking," Logan said.

"I concur," Tucker said. "He barely even looked at other girls last night."

"Boy's whipped," Garrett said while taking a piece of food off Tucker's plate.

His door shuts and he turns around to face you with a coy look.

"And what is this all about?" He asked while slowly walking up to you. You placed your bag on his bed and faced him with a little nervousness. "We don't have a session today."

"I know...I, uh..."

"..wanted to see me?"

His fingers hooked around your belt loops and pulled you closer, to your surprise. His other arm snaked around your back like it had some days ago. You had no words at the moment. Other than "yeah, I wanted to see you." But even with the amount of times he's had you this close you've never seen him shirtless before.

"Nod if yes," he added softly. You nodded.

"Did you have a particular request in mind this evening?"

This was harder than you thought.

"...headlock."

He didn't bother hiding the amusement on his face. "Headlock?" He asked. Letting you go and switching places with you so you'd be looking in the mirror. "Like this?"

You gasped as his arm carefully wrapped around your neck. Biceps seemingly larger than life. There goes that involuntary whimper again.

"Yeah," you said. Much quieter than usual.

"That all you wanted from me?" He asked. His tone was giving away that he was well aware this wasn't all.

You shook your head with the limited space you had. "No."

He hummed. Free hand sliding down your waist to your hip to the hem of this little skirt.

"Does it possibly involve me lifting this cute little skirt of yours that you wore for me?"

You subconsciously rubbed your ass against his bulge like a wet cat in heat. Only able to nod because it was really embarrassing how much you've thought about him-

"Fucking you from behind?"

...

"I need your words, pretty girl."

"Yes."

He smiled and leaned down a little to slip his hand under your skirt and play with the waistband of your panties. Pulling them down slowly.

"Y'know," he murmured. "I love when a woman knows what she wants."

He had you bent over with one purpose: you have to finish. He never treats the prospect of a good nut like it's nothing!

Dean didn't fix your crooked glasses because it just looked so cute. Even cuter that you were trying to be quiet while he was driving his hips forward with intention. He was just how you imagined. Long, thick, and knew how to stroke that shit.

"4.0 student with nothing to say?" he whispered. "That's new. All those big words you keep correcting me with is out the window. Hm? Have I finally received the honor of making you go dumb?"

"Dean..." you moaned pathetically quietly. Clenching around him the more dizzy you got from the lack of air. Your short pants and hushed whines was music to his ears. That and the wet sound of skin contact he's been trying to keep at a minimum.

"Little Miss Straight A's stuck with the dumb jock," he continued, tightening his hold just a fraction upon request earlier. "Only to be reduced to...this..."

Your body went cold and hot all over at the same time.

"Look at you," he cooed. "Even wore a camisole to show off those pretty tits. All for me. You shouldn't have."

Your vision got blurrier the more your climax built and it was only a matter of time. The sight of your brows upturning and eyes rolling was enough to know.

"C'mon, you can do it," he encouraged condescendingly. "You're a smart girl, right? You can cum for me?"

You nodded and bit your lower lip to stay as quiet as possible.

Then it hit you.

You moved your head to bite down on his arm, eyes crossing as your orgasm stuck through you. Talk about a mess.

Then he had the nerve to reach down and work you through it by rubbing fast circles around that sensitive bud that almost made you scream. Oh, that was so mean.

"Oo, there she is..."

He pulled out in time, his seed getting on your legs and the back of your thighs, but again, he was more concerned about your release. And it was clearly much needed because it wouldn't stop for the next ten seconds.

By the time you both calmed down, he offered up his shower for you to use and he'd hop in after. You were deciding if you were going to spend the night since it was a Friday...

"I hope that wasn't too much," he said as he came in with his towel around his waist, chest damp while he dried his hair. "The whole 'dumb' thing."

You sat on the edge of his bed in your clothes, hands on your neck as you could still feel his strong arm.

"Not at all," you said as you watched him.

"Spend the night," he suggested, tossing his towel aside--phew, he had on boxers. He sat next to you and looked at you with those same pleading eyes from when he first asked you to tutor him. "Please?" He added. "I've been told I'm great at cuddling."

How can anyone say no to that?

Next week comes. Exam day was a few days ago. You know you aced it. Piece of cake. You're walking down the same path in the quad when you hear your name. Like, your first name, called out from behind.

The second you turn around you're getting picked up and spun around.

"We did it!"

"Woah! Okay-"

Dean spun you twice then put you down. Putting you down, with a kiss. In front of the surrounding people in the area. And it was a lot but he wasn't paying attention to that.

"I got a B! Thanks to you- what?"

"You just kissed me..."

"I did."

"In public..."

"...yeah...?"

You gave him a look.

"I didn't know we were, like...a thing."

"Oh. Well, we can be. Go for Goldie, am I right?"

You rolled your eyes as he held your hand.

"No."

"He walked in—"

"Yes."

"You screamed?"

"Yes."

"He saw the whole concert?"

You dropped your head into your hands. "Yes."

"Hairbrush microphone and everything?"

"Especially the hairbrush microphone."

Both girls dissolved into laughter.

"Oh my God," Allie wheezed, leaning against your desk for support. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry but that is objectively hilarious."

"It wasn't hilarious," you mumbled into your pillow.

"It kind of was."

"It was traumatic."

"It'll be funny in, like, three days."

"Maybe thirty years."

Allie crossed the room before sitting beside you on the bed, gently cupping your cheeks between her hands.

"Babe."

You looked up reluctantly.

"It really isn't that bad."

You stared at her. "It absolutely is."

"No, listen." She smiled reassuringly. "At least he didn't walk in during that skincare phase where you looked like you were auditioning for a horror movie."

Hannah gasped dramatically. "The charcoal face mask!"

"And the coconut hair mask at the same time," Allie added.

"You looked... moist."

"I hate both of you."

"We're just saying," Hannah laughed as she plopped down beside you, "it could've been way worse."

You flopped backward dramatically onto the bed. "I'm never showing my face again."

"Oh my God," Allie laughed. "You're so dramatic."

"No, I'm realistic."

"You are absolutely dramatic."

You hugged one of your throw pillows tightly against your chest with a defeated groan. "That was literally the hottest guy I've ever seen, and I was jumping around my room pretending a hairbrush was a microphone."

"You also screamed at him."

"I accused him of breaking in."

"He technically did break in."

"With permission!"

You buried your face deeper into the pillow. "I've ruined my life."

There was a brief silence.

Then Allie's eyes widened. "Wait."

You looked up cautiously.

"You think John Logan is hot?"

You pointed a finger at her. "That is completely beside the point."

"No, no, no." Hannah sat up straighter, grinning from ear to ear. "That is absolutely the point."

"It is not."

"Y/N." Hannah grabbed your shoulders dramatically. "We’ve gone to Briar for three years?"

"Yeah?"

"And have you shown any interest in literally any hockey player?"

"...No."

"Any football player?"

"No."

"Any lacrosse player?"

"No."

"Any guy?"

You hesitated. "...Not really."

Hannah looked triumphantly at Allie. "Exactly!"

"You think John Logan is hot!" Allie practically squealed.

"Oh my God."

"This is huge."

"It is not huge."

"It is for you!"

You sighed heavily. "It doesn't matter."

Both girls stopped smiling.

"It really doesn't," you continued quietly. "He probably thinks I'm a complete weirdo."

"He doesn't."

"You don't know that."

"We kind of do."

"You guys have seen me dance."

"Yeah?"

"It's... not exactly graceful."

"It has personality," Hannah offered.

"It has enthusiasm," Allie corrected.

"It has something."

"It has embarrassment."

Allie nudged your shoulder. "Okay, but what if he doesn't care?"

You blinked.

"What if," she continued, "he thought it was cute?"

You gave her the flattest look imaginable. "You're delusional."

"No, I'm optimistic."

"I vote delusional," Hannah chimed in.

"Traitor."

You sighed again. "You two seriously need to let this go. I'm not getting a boyfriend anytime soon, so we can all just move on."

Allie stared at you. Then rolled her eyes so dramatically you thought they might actually get stuck.

"Y/N, you are being so self-deprecating that it's starting to annoy me."

You frowned.

"You're gorgeous."

"Allie—"

"No, let me finish."

She pointed directly at you.

"You're funny, you're smart, and honestly?" She shrugged matter-of-factly. "You have amazing boobs."

Hannah immediately burst out laughing.

"That is... definitely one of your stronger selling points."

"Oh my God."

"I'm just being honest!"

"What if he's an ass guy?" Hannah asked thoughtfully.

Allie gasped. "Impossible."

"There are ass guys."

"There are, but Logan?"

"Hmm..."

The two of them immediately launched into a full-blown debate about whether John Logan was an ass guy or a boobs guy, pulling in increasingly ridiculous pieces of "evidence" based on absolutely nothing.

You decided it was healthier not to participate. Instead, you reached into your pocket for your phone. The screen lit up. Your eyes widened.

"...Oh my God."

"What?" Hannah asked, still halfway through arguing that hockey players appreciated athletic thighs.

You stared at the time again. "...Oh my God."

Without another word, you practically launched yourself off the bed.

"What are you doing?" Allie asked as you hurried to your closet.

"I completely forgot!"

You yanked on a pair of low-rise jeans before pulling a fitted black long-sleeve shirt over your head. It stopped just above your waistband, leaving a thin strip of skin visible. You shoved your feet into your Uggs before rushing over to the vanity, quickly twisting your hair into a messy bun.

Not perfect. Good enough.

"Uh..." Hannah watched you sprint around the room. "Should we be concerned?"

"I have to be at the rink in fifteen minutes!"

Both girls blinked.

"The rink?" Allie repeated.

"My photography internship starts today!"

"Oh!"

You hurried over to your camera equipment, breathing a sigh of relief when you remembered charging everything the night before. One camera body. Backup batteries. Memory cards. Lenses. Laptop. Everything was quickly stuffed into your oversized tote bag.

"Wait," Hannah said. "Today's your first day?"

"Yep!"

"And you forgot?"

"I was a little distracted!"

You slung the bag over your shoulder before grabbing your keys. "I'll see you guys later!"

Before either of them could respond, you were already halfway out the door.

A second later, the front door shut behind you. Silence settled over the apartment. 

Hannah slowly turned toward Allie. "...Maybe we should've told her."

Allie grinned mischievously. "Nah."

She leaned back against the couch with a smirk. "It's way more fun this way."

Hannah laughed. "Poor Y/N has absolutely no idea."

"And neither does Logan."

Something told them this was going to be very entertaining.

—

Coach Jensen had been talking for what felt like an eternity.

Five minutes in, Logan had completely checked out, and judging by the glazed-over expressions on most of his teammates' faces, he wasn't the only one. The entire team stood on the ice in full practice gear, sticks resting against the surface as Coach Jensen continued pacing along the bench.

"I need every single one of you to keep your heads in the game this season," Jensen continued. "I can't have anyone slacking off, and I definitely can't have anyone assuming talent alone is enough to win hockey games."

Logan absentmindedly shifted his weight from one skate to the other. Beside him, Garrett let out the quietest sigh imaginable. Tucker was twirling his stick. Dean was looking everywhere except at Coach.

Nobody was listening anymore.

"I expect every one of you to—"

Coach Jensen stopped mid-sentence.

The sharp sound of hurried footsteps echoed through the otherwise quiet rink. Nearly every player instinctively turned toward the entrance.

Logan did too.

A girl hurried down the stairs leading to the bench, an oversized tote bag bouncing against her side and a camera hanging around her neck. She looked like she'd sprinted across campus to get there, strands of hair already escaping the messy bun she'd clearly thrown together in a rush.

Logan recognized her immediately. A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Well...

This was unexpected.

You slowed to a stop beside Coach Jensen, still catching your breath.

"Hi, Coach Jensen," you said with an apologetic smile. "I'm so sorry I'm late. I promise it won't happen again."

Jensen waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about it. We were just about to get started."

You let out a quiet breath of relief. "Thank you."

Coach Jensen turned back toward the team.

"Alright, listen up for a second."

The players' attention shifted from him... to you.

"This is Y/N," he announced. "She'll be our team photographer for the rest of the season. She'll be covering games, events, and she'll also be around for practices every now and then."

Every set of eyes landed on you.

You offered an awkward little wave. "Hi."

A few of the guys nodded politely.

Someone in the back gave you a quiet, "Hey."

Trying not to feel intimidated by the twenty-something hockey players staring at you, your eyes drifted across the lineup.

One face. Then another. Then—

Oh.

Your stomach dropped.

John Logan.

Your eyes widened ever so slightly.

Of course. How could you forget that? 

Your smile faltered for the briefest second before you quickly looked back toward Coach Jensen.

Maybe if you pretended not to notice him—

Curiosity got the better of you. You glanced back.

Big mistake.

Logan was already looking at you. And smiling. Not laughing. Not smirking. Just smiling. Like he was just as amused by the coincidence as you were horrified.

Heat immediately crept into your cheeks. It definitely wasn't because of the cold air inside the rink.

Logan noticed. Of course he noticed. He had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from grinning even wider.

She remembered him.

Cute. Very cute.

You, on the other hand, were seriously considering whether it was too late to quit your internship.

"Alright," Coach Jensen called, clapping his hands together. "Let's get to work. First drill."

That finally pulled Logan's attention away from you.

Beside him, Garrett gave his shoulder a playful shove. "Quit staring and get moving."

Logan scoffed. "I wasn't staring."

Garrett gave him a look that very clearly said sure you weren't before skating off toward the shooting drill that had already been set up.

With a small shake of his head, Logan pushed off after him, skating backward across the ice while casually glancing over toward the bench. He watched as you spoke quietly with Coach Jensen for another minute, nodding along while he pointed out a few things around the rink.

Then you hurried over to one of the seats in the front row, right against the glass.

Setting your oversized tote bag down beside you, you carefully pulled out your camera body and lenses, double-checking your settings before attaching the zoom lens. After a quick test shot of the empty net, you frowned slightly.

The glass. It was going to cause reflections.

Thinking it over for a second, you picked everything back up and walked down toward the players' bench instead, where you'd have a much clearer view of the ice.

Much better.

You adjusted the camera strap around your neck before lifting the camera to your eye, testing the framing as the team got into position for drills.

Then, almost without thinking, you looked up.

Logan was already looking at you. Again.

This time, though...

You didn't immediately look away. You held his gaze for a second. Long enough to feel the familiar warmth creeping into your cheeks.

Long enough for him to notice.

The corner of Logan's mouth lifted into an easy smile.

He raised one gloved hand in a small wave.

A simple, almost teasing little hi.

You couldn't help it. You smiled back before giving him an equally small wave with the hand that wasn't holding your camera.

It lasted maybe two seconds.

Then—

Clack!

Garrett smacked the blade of his stick against Logan's.

"Hey, Romeo."

Logan looked over.

"The puck," Garrett said, nodding toward the drill. "It's over here."

A few of the guys nearby chuckled.

Logan rolled his eyes. "Relax."

"I'm perfectly relaxed."

"Mhm."

Garrett skated ahead with a grin. "You've looked at the photographer more than you've looked at Coach all morning."

Logan simply shoved Garrett's shoulder as he caught up to him.

"Shut up."

Garrett only laughed harder.

—

The two-hour practice flew by. To your surprise, you actually had a lot of fun.

By the end of it, you'd filled multiple memory cards with photos. Hockey was so much faster than anything you'd photographed before, and while you'd definitely missed a few shots early on, you'd started getting the hang of tracking the players through your lens.

By the final drill, you were actually proud of some of the photos you'd captured.

As Coach Jensen blew the whistle to end practice, the players quickly skated toward the tunnel, chatting amongst themselves as they headed for the locker room.

You stayed behind on the bench, carefully packing away your equipment. Camera body. Extra lens. Memory cards. Batteries. Everything had its place.

You had just slung your oversized tote bag over your shoulder when a familiar voice spoke up.

"Get any good shots?"

You looked up.

John Logan was leaning casually against the boards, one arm resting across the top as he looked down at you.

You blinked. You hadn't even noticed he'd stayed behind. Your face warmed almost instantly.

Get it together, Y/N.

You forced yourself to smile. "I think so."

"You think so?"

"I won't really know until I look through all of them."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Fair."

You adjusted the strap of your camera bag.

"But yeah," you added. "I think I got some good ones."

"Good." He smiled. "Would've been a shame if you froze your ass off in here for nothing."

You let out a small laugh. "I wasn't freezing."

"You weren't?"

"No."

You shifted your tote bag higher onto your shoulder, trying your best to sound convincing. "Not at all."

Logan raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

"Really."

He looked you up and down for a second. Not in a way that made you uncomfortable. More like he was gathering evidence.

Finally, he smiled. "You spent the entire practice hiding your hands inside your sleeves."

You instinctively looked down.

Sure enough...

Your hands had disappeared into the sleeves of your sweatshirt again.

You immediately tugged them back out.

"I..."

Logan laughed.

"I wasn't cold."

"Mhm."

"I wasn't!"

"You absolutely were."

"I just like oversized sleeves."

"Oh, that's what it was?"

"Exactly."

He nodded slowly, pretending to believe you. "Totally unrelated to the fact that it's, like, twenty-five degrees in here."

You crossed your arms. "It's called fashion."

He laughed again, shaking his head. "Right. My mistake."

"It was."

"You know..." he said, pushing himself off the boards, "for someone who claims she wasn't cold..."

"What?"

"...your nose got red."

You instinctively reached up and covered it. "It did not."

"It did."

"It absolutely did not."

He grinned. "I've got pretty good eyesight."

"You're making that up."

"I play hockey."

"Congratulations?"

"My vision's great."

You couldn't help laughing. "You are unbelievable."

"So I've been told."

There it was again. That stupidly charming grin. The one that made it incredibly difficult to stay embarrassed around him.

You rolled your eyes, unable to stop yourself from smiling. "I should probably go edit these."

"You probably should."

You took a few steps toward the exit before turning back.

"...Thanks."

"For what?"

"For not making the whole..." You awkwardly gestured between the two of you. "...apartment thing even more embarrassing than it already was."

Logan's expression softened just a little. "I thought it was kind of funny."

You groaned. "Please don't remind me."

"I'm serious."He shrugged. "It was cute."

You stared at him. "...Cute?"

"Yeah." He smiled. "I've definitely seen people embarrass themselves in worse ways."

Your heart did an annoyingly dramatic little flip.

"Besides," he added, taking a few steps backward toward the locker room, "you've got good taste in music."

You laughed, shaking your head. "I don't know if that's supposed to make me feel better."

"It should."

He flashed you one last grin. "See you around, photographer."

Before you could think of a witty response, he disappeared through the tunnel toward the locker room.

You stood there for another few seconds. Then let out a slow breath. He somehow managed to be even more attractive when you actually talked to him.

—

"These are really impressive for your first time shooting hockey, Y/N."

A genuine smile spread across your face as your photography professor clicked through the photos from yesterday's practice on your laptop.

"I mean it," he continued, pausing on a shot of Logan taking a slap shot. "Sports photography has a steep learning curve. The pace is fast, the lighting isn't always great, and hockey is one of the harder sports to shoot."

You smiled proudly. "I definitely figured that out."

He chuckled. "But you've got a good eye. You know where to be, and you're already anticipating the action instead of reacting to it."

He closed the laptop before handing it back to you. "I think with a little more experience, you're going to be very good at this."

"Thank you."

You carefully slid the laptop back into your backpack.

"I struggled a little at the beginning of practice, but I think I started figuring it out toward the end."

Your professor nodded. "It shows."

"And there's a game tonight," you added excitedly. "Hopefully I'll come back with even better photos."

"I'll be looking forward to seeing them next week."

"Thanks, Professor."

With one last smile, he moved on to another student's work.

You packed the rest of your things, still smiling to yourself. It felt good. Really good.

You'd been nervous about taking on the internship. Sports photography wasn't something you'd ever done before, and walking into that rink yesterday had been intimidating enough without realizing John Logan played for Briar.

But hearing your professor praise your work...

Maybe you really could do this. The thought stayed with you as you left the building and stepped outside.

The bitter winter air hit your face immediately. You instinctively hunched your shoulders and buried your chin deeper into your hoodie as fresh snow crunched beneath your Uggs with every step.

"I hate winter," you muttered to yourself.

Still...

You couldn't stop smiling. You kept replaying your professor's comments in your head as you made your way across campus, so caught up in your thoughts that you didn't notice the three hockey players walking toward you from the opposite direction.

Garrett was in the middle of telling some story that had Tucker laughing so hard he nearly walked into a snowbank.

Logan, however, wasn't paying much attention.

"...and then the professor actually believed him," Garrett finished with a laugh.

"No way," Tucker said, shaking his head.

"Swear."

Logan wasn't really listening anymore. His attention had drifted across the crowded sidewalk.

Then he spotted you. Walking by yourself. Head down. Smiling to yourself.

Without even thinking about it, he slowed to a stop.

Garrett and Tucker took another few steps before realizing Logan wasn't beside them anymore.

"Hey," Garrett said, turning around. "You coming?"

Logan's eyes never left you.

"Uh..." He gave them a quick pat on Garrett's shoulder as he started backing away. "Yeah, I'll catch you guys later."

Garrett frowned. "What?"

"I'll see you guys at the rink."

Before either of them could ask another question, Logan turned and jogged across the snow-covered path toward you.

The two of them watched him disappear into the crowd.

Garrett blinked. "...What was that about?"

Tucker followed the direction Logan had run. A few seconds later, he spotted you.

"...Oh."

Garrett looked where Tucker was looking. "Oh."

The corners of Garrett's mouth slowly lifted into a grin.

Tucker snorted. "I give him two days before he's asking Hannah for her number."

Garret shook his head. "I'll give him until after tonight's game."

"Hey, photographer!"

The familiar voice pulled you out of your thoughts.

You turned around to see John Logan jogging to catch up, a crooked grin already spread across his face. Despite yourself, you smiled back.

He finally came to a stop in front of you, letting out a small breath as if he'd run just enough to catch you before you got too far ahead.

You shoved your hands into the front pocket of your hoodie, partly because of the cold and partly because you suddenly didn't know what to do with them.

"I do have a name, you know."

"I know." He nodded thoughtfully. "But photographer is more fun."

You raised an eyebrow. "Is it?"

"I think so."

"I disagree."

"Well..." He shrugged, that annoyingly charming smile never leaving his face. "Good thing I'm the one saying it."

You rolled your eyes. "Okay, sure."

The two of you started walking again, falling into step beside each other as you made your way across the snowy campus.

After a moment, Logan glanced over at you. "I see you finally dressed for the weather today."

You looked over at him, confused. "What?"

He motioned toward your outfit.

"Hoodie. Jacket." His eyes flicked down to your Uggs before looking back up at you. "Actual winter clothes."

You laughed. "I was wearing winter clothes yesterday."

"Were you?"

"Yes."

He gave you a look. "You spent two hours at the rink trying to make that long sleeve feel like it was warm."

"I wasn't."

"You absolutely were."

"I just like oversized sleeves."

"Mhm."

"And for the record," you added, trying to defend yourself, "I survived."

"Barely."

You gasped. "I did not barely survive."

Logan laughed. "You had your hands hidden inside your sleeves the entire practice."

"They were comfortable."

"They were freezing."

"They were not."

He shook his head, smiling. "I don't know... I think today's outfit is a much better strategy."

You nudged his arm lightly with yours. "Are you always this annoying?"

"Only when people lie to me."

"I wasn't lying."

"You were."

"I was being... optimistic."

He grinned. "Well, I'm glad to see our team photographer is appropriately dressed today."

You smiled despite yourself. "How thoughtful of you."

"I have my moments."

A comfortable silence settled between the two of you as you continued walking.

Then Logan glanced over again.

"So," he asked, "how'd the photos turn out?"

A smile immediately returned to your face. "My professor actually loved them."

"He did?"

You nodded, your smile growing bigger as you talked. "He said they're really good for my first time shooting hockey. He said I have a good eye for where the action is going to happen."

Logan watched the way your entire expression changed.

Yesterday, you'd been so embarrassed around him that you could barely look at him for more than a few seconds.

But now...

You were completely different. Your eyes lit up when you talked about photography, and there was this excitement in your voice that he couldn't help noticing.

She's cute when she's happy.

The thought came so easily that it almost caught him off guard.

Actually...

She was cute all the time. But seeing you talk about something you clearly loved?

Yeah. That was something else.

"I told you they'd be good," he said, a small smile pulling at his lips.

You glanced over at him. "...You literally never saw them."

"I didn't have to."

"Oh?"

"Nope."

He shrugged. "You cared enough to stand out in a freezing rink for two hours taking pictures. I figured they'd turn out pretty good."

The confidence in his answer made you laugh before you could stop yourself.

"There it is," Logan said, pointing at you triumphantly.

You looked over. "What?"

"You laughed."

"So?"

"So..." He grinned. "Yesterday you looked like you wanted to crawl under the ice every time I talked to you."

Your cheeks warmed. "I did not."

"You kinda did."

"I was just embarrassed."

"I noticed."

You groaned. "Thanks for reminding me."

"Anytime."

You nudged his shoulder again. "You're the worst."

"Nah."

He looked over at you, smiling. "If I was the worst, you wouldn't be laughing."

Another laugh escaped you.

"There it is again."

"Oh my God."

"Twice in one conversation."

"You've been counting?"

"I've got to keep track of my victories somehow."

"You call making me laugh a victory?"

"Absolutely."

You shook your head, smiling. "You are unbelievable."

"I've been told."

The two of you walked a little farther, the conversation feeling surprisingly easy.

And maybe that was the weirdest part. Yesterday, you'd been convinced John Logan walking into your dorm was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to you.

Now...

You were walking across campus with him, laughing like you'd known him longer than a day.

"Don't let this go to your head," you finally said.

His grin only widened. "Too late."

The two of you eventually reached the building where your next class was located.

You slowed to a stop outside the entrance, motioning toward the doors. "My class is here."

A small blush crept onto your face as you said it, mostly because you suddenly felt weirdly aware that this was the end of your little walk together.

Logan noticed. Of course he noticed. But instead of pointing it out, he just smiled down at you.

"Well..." he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "I'll see you later then."

You nodded. "Yeah. See you."

You turned toward the steps, starting to walk toward the entrance.

You'd barely made it a few steps before—

"Hey, Y/N!"

Your entire body froze. You slowly turned around.

A few students nearby had already looked over at the sound of Logan's voice. Of course they had. Because apparently John Logan had no concept of speaking at a normal volume.

You looked back at him, trying not to laugh. "Yeah?"

This time, your voice was noticeably quieter.

Logan's grin widened. He absolutely knew what he was doing.

"You coming to the game later?"

The question was much less dramatic this time, his voice finally at a normal volume.

You smiled. "Yeah. I'll be there."

His face lit up slightly. "Good."

He started walking backward, still facing you.

"See you there then!"

You stared at him for a second. Then, because you didn't know what else to do, you gave him a thumbs up.

A thumbs up.

Out of every possible response...

A thumbs up. You immediately regretted it.

The people nearby were definitely looking now.

Logan noticed too. And judging by the laugh that escaped him, he found your embarrassment incredibly entertaining.

You rolled your eyes, trying to hide your smile. "Bye, Logan."

"Bye, photographer."

You shook your head but couldn't stop yourself from smiling as you quickly turned and walked into the building.

The second the doors closed behind you, you let out a quiet breath. You had no idea why your heart was beating a little faster.

It was just John Logan.

That was it.

Nothing more.

At least that was what you told yourself as you walked toward class, desperately trying not to think about the warm feeling settling in your chest.

—

"Are you serious?"

Allie stared at you in disbelief.

"...What?"

You instinctively looked down at yourself, trying to figure out what she was talking about.

You'd gotten to the rink early so you could get settled before warmups started, making sure all your camera gear was ready to go. A few minutes later, Allie had texted asking you to meet her and Hannah in the lobby before they headed to the stands.

Apparently...

She had opinions.

"That shirt," Allie said, pointing dramatically. "It's hideous."

You looked down at the oversized blue long-sleeve Briar Hockey shirt you were wearing.

Okay. It wasn't exactly fashionable. It hung almost halfway down your thighs, the sleeves were far too long, and it looked like someone had handed you the first shirt they found in the equipment room.

But...

"Coach Jensen told me to wear something with Briar Hockey on it."

"So you picked the least flattering thing they own?"

"I didn't pick it."

"Babe." Allie stepped closer, grabbing the excess fabric around your waist. "You're gorgeous. We can work with this."

She tugged the material back, trying to see what it would look like tied. "There."

"Allie."

"It has potential."

You laughed, gently swatting her hands away. "I'm working."

"I know."

"So I'm not tying hockey merch into a crop top."

"You could."

"I won't."

"It'd be cute."

"It'd get me fired."

Allie rolled her eyes dramatically before throwing her hands into the air. "Fine."

She sighed. "But I'm finding you something cuter for next game."

Before you could answer, another voice joined the conversation.

"What is that?"

You turned just in time to see Hannah walking over.

She took one look at your shirt.

"...Oh."

You groaned. "Not you too."

Allie pointed triumphantly. "See? She gets it!"

Hannah tilted her head. "...Why is it so big?"

"I don't know," you defended. "I didn't exactly spend twenty minutes looking through all the options. Jensen just told me to wear Briar Hockey stuff, and this was clean."

"But..."

You crossed your arms. "It's warm."

Hannah nodded thoughtfully. "Fair."

Then she frowned again.

"But why not a hoodie?"

You sighed. "Because the hood gets in the way when I've got my camera strapped around my neck."

"...Okay, that's actually a good point."

"Thank you."

You looked between the two of them.

"Besides, it doesn't matter."

Both of them raised an eyebrow.

"I'm just taking pictures."

"So?"

"No one's going to be looking at me."

Allie snorted. "You've met hockey players, right?"

You ignored her.

"You two, on the other hand..." You pointed between them with a smile. "Actually look cute."

Allie grinned.

"Aww."

"Thanks."

Then she immediately pointed back at your shirt.

"But I'm still finding you something less hideous."

"What exactly is less hideous?"

The familiar voice made all three of you turn around. John Logan stood a few feet away, hockey bag slung over one shoulder as he made his way toward the locker room.

He'd clearly caught the end of the conversation.

"Noth—"

"Oh, nothing," Allie interrupted before you could finish.

She smiled far too innocently. "We were just telling Y/N that Coach Jensen made her wear Briar Hockey merch, and Hannah and I think the long-sleeve is... well..."

"Horrendous," Hannah supplied.

"A little tragic," Allie corrected.

"And she'll probably freeze in the rink."

You shot Allie a look that practically screamed, Are you serious?

She pretended not to notice.

Logan's eyes shifted from Allie...

...to Hannah...

...before finally settling on you.

A slow smile spread across his face. "Oh, is that right?"

You immediately shook your head. "I'm fine."

"She's not," Allie answered for you.

"I'm literally standing right here."

"And I'm literally helping."

Logan chuckled.

"I wasn't cold yesterday either," you muttered.

He raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Oh, don't start."

"I distinctly remember someone insisting they weren't freezing."

You pointed at him. "I knew bringing that up would come back to haunt me."

"It absolutely was."

Before you could come up with another comeback, Logan quietly set his hockey bag on the floor. Without saying another word, he shrugged off his tan Carhartt jacket.

You frowned. "...What are you doing?"

He held it out toward you. "Wear this."

Your eyes widened. "What?"

"You said the shirt's warm."

"It is."

"But the lobby isn't and neither is the rink."

You looked between him and the jacket. "I can't take your jacket."

"Sure you can."

"I'll give it back before the game."

He shrugged.

"I've got about twenty pounds of hockey gear to keep me warm."

You still hesitated. "I don't know..."

Logan smiled. "Humor me."

For a moment, neither of you moved.

Then, with an exaggerated sigh, you reached out and took the jacket.

It was warm from where he'd been wearing it. "...Thanks."

"You're welcome."

He picked his hockey bag back up before taking a few steps toward the locker room.

Halfway there, he looked back over his shoulder.

"See you in there."

You smiled despite yourself. "See you."

The second he disappeared down the hallway, the silence lasted all of three seconds. Then Allie slowly turned toward you with the biggest grin you'd ever seen.

"Oh..."

Hannah was grinning just as much.

"My..."

You closed your eyes. "...Don't."

"God," Allie finished anyway.

"You are never hearing the end of this."

You groaned, pulling Logan's jacket on as the sleeves swallowed your hands. "...I hate both of you."

"No, you don't," Hannah laughed.

You looked down at the jacket, unable to stop the tiny smile tugging at your lips.

"...Yeah," you admitted quietly.

"I really don't."

—

The game had gone surprisingly well for Briar.

By the start of the third period, they were already up by three goals, and the energy inside the arena was electric.

You'd quickly realized one thing, though. You definitely did not understand hockey as well as you thought you did.

Every few minutes the crowd would suddenly erupt around you, whistles would blow, or everyone would start booing for reasons you couldn't quite figure out.

More than once, you found yourself looking over at Hannah with a confused expression.

"What happened?" you'd mouthed through the glass.

She'd either yell, "Offside!" or "Penalty!" while making some gesture that honestly didn't clear anything up.

You'd just nodded like you understood. Truthfully, it didn't really matter. You weren't there to analyze the game. You were there to capture it. And judging by the thousands of photos sitting on your camera's memory card already, you were doing exactly that.

You'd managed to catch huge saves, hard checks along the boards, celebrations after goals, and even a couple of shots of Coach Jensen yelling from the bench that you were pretty sure he'd either love... or absolutely hate.

The guys had also figured out pretty quickly where you were stationed. Every now and then, someone would skate past the bench, notice your camera pointed in their direction, and shamelessly pose before rejoining the play.

Tucker had pointed dramatically at the camera after scoring. Garrett had flashed an exaggerated thumbs-up while waiting for a faceoff. Even Dean had somehow managed to wink at your camera before skating away.

You couldn't help laughing every single time.

They really were impossible.

But your favorite photo so far...

That belonged to Logan.

After scoring his first goal of the night, he'd skated toward the glass with a huge grin, throwing one fist into the air before pointing toward the Briar student section as his teammates swarmed him.

You'd managed to catch the exact moment.

His smile. The excitement. The spray of ice beneath his skates.

It was easily your favorite shot of the night. You couldn't wait to edit it later.

As the third and final period got underway, you lifted your camera back to your eye, adjusting your settings one last time before the referee's whistle echoed through the arena.

The game only got better from there. Briar came out flying, adding three more goals to the scoreboard before the final buzzer sounded.

6–3.

A pretty successful first game, if you did say so yourself.

You stayed focused even after the clock hit zero, snapping photos of the team celebrating at center ice before they broke apart to skate around the rink.

A few players tossed pucks over the glass to kids in the front rows. Others waved to family and friends in the stands. Garrett somehow managed to get Coach Jensen laughing. Dean was pretending to sign an imaginary autograph for one of the freshmen in the student section.

The whole atmosphere felt lighter now that the pressure of the game was gone.

Once you were sure you'd gotten everything you needed, you finally lowered your camera.

Time to pack up.

You settled onto the front-row bench behind the glass, setting your camera in your lap as you carefully detached the lens before placing both back into your padded camera bag. Extra batteries. Memory cards. Lens cloth. Everything had its place.

You were so focused on packing that you barely noticed the players still skating around the ice.

Tap.

You looked up. Logan was standing on the other side of the glass.

He had one glove off and was tapping the glass lightly with his knuckles, his helmet tucked under one arm and his hockey stick resting against his shoulder. His hair was damp with sweat, sticking up in every direction after taking his helmet off, and despite looking exhausted, he still wore that same easy grin.

You couldn't help smiling back. Still holding your camera, you continued packing while looking up at him.

"Good game!" you called through the glass.

He leaned in slightly so he could hear you better. "Yeah?"

You laughed. "I mean it."

You pointed toward him. "You okay? You got hit pretty hard a couple times."

Logan looked down at himself before shrugging. "Nothing I can't handle."

You smiled. "I figured."

He nodded toward the camera sitting in your lap.

"You get some good shots?"

Your face immediately brightened.

"Some really good ones."

His eyes lingered on you for a second.

There it was again. That smile. The one that always seemed to appear whenever you started talking about photography. It made him smile too. He liked seeing you excited.

Before he could say anything else—

"Logan!"

Garrett's voice echoed from near the tunnel.

"Hurry up!"

Logan glanced over his shoulder.

"One sec!" he called back.

Garrett groaned dramatically before disappearing toward the locker room.

Logan looked back at you.

"So..."

He rested his forearms on the top of his stick.

"We have a party at the off-campus house every time we win."

You tilted your head. "Oh?"

He nodded. "You gonna come?"

A teasing smile spread across your face. "Is that an invitation?"

Logan laughed softly. "If you want it to be."

You pretended to think about it for a second.

"Hmm..."

He pushed away from the glass, beginning to skate backward toward the tunnel. For a second, you thought that was the end of the conversation.

Then he called back across the ice.

"Come!"

A few nearby teammates looked over at the sound of his voice.

Logan either didn't notice or didn't care. "I want you there!"

The smile that spread across your face was impossible to hide.

"I guess I have to go then!"

"You do!" He flashed you one last grin before turning toward the tunnel.

Just before disappearing inside, he glanced back over his shoulder.

You were still standing exactly where he'd left you. Still smiling.

He smiled to himself before finally heading into the locker room.

So you took full advantage of it.

You finally tackled the mountain of clothes that had been steadily growing on your bedroom floor because, honestly, between classes and work, you hadn't had the energy to care. The laundry still wasn't folded, but at least everything was off the floor.

Then, after staring at the stack for weeks, you finally caved and organized the massive record collection you, Hannah, and Allie had accumulated. Alphabetical order. Artist first, then album. It was weirdly satisfying.

By the time you finished, the apartment actually looked...clean.

For once, there weren't any assignments hanging over your head. No papers due at midnight. No readings you'd procrastinated until the last second. You could finally breathe.

Headphones settled comfortably over your ears, you cranked up Just Like Heaven by The Cure until it drowned out everything else. Within minutes, you were dancing around the apartment.

Barefoot. Baggy gray sweatpants hanging low on your hips. A black lace bralette that was comfortable enough to lounge in.

Not another soul around to judge you.

You wandered from room to room with your eyes closed, singing every lyric from memory, using a wooden spoon as a microphone before eventually swapping it for your hairbrush. You spun dramatically through the living room before launching yourself onto your bed, performing for an audience that definitely did not exist.

Completely lost in your own little concert, you never heard the knock at the front door. Or the second one. Or the sound of someone trying the doorknob.

Outside, John Logan frowned.

"Hello?" he called through the door, hearing movement somewhere inside.

He knocked again.

"Hannah?" he called louder. "Garrett said to grab his jersey! He left it here!"

Nothing.

He waited another few seconds before sighing.

Garrett's text was still open on his phone.

If they're not there, spare key's under the mat. The one that says "Go Away Please."

John had been hoping someone would answer. Breaking into his friend's girlfriend's apartment, even with permission, felt a little weird. But Garrett had practice, wanted his jersey back, and apparently trusted the girls enough to leave a spare key outside.

John shrugged.

"If I get murdered," he muttered to himself, fishing the key out from under the mat, "I'm haunting him."

The lock clicked open. He stepped inside carefully, closing the door behind him. The apartment was empty.

Well...

Mostly.

He could hear footsteps somewhere down the hallway.

And...

Was that singing?

"Hannah?" he called cautiously.

Nothing.

"Allie?"

Still nothing.

The singing only got louder. John stood awkwardly in the entryway for another second before taking a few hesitant steps farther inside. Then someone came spinning out of the hallway.

You.

Eyes closed.

Hands running dramatically through your hair as you belted out the chorus with absolutely zero concern for the outside world.

John froze. He should probably say something.

Instead...

He watched.

Not in a creepy way.

Just...

You looked so genuinely happy. You were dancing around like no one was watching, which, until about ten seconds ago, had been completely true.

A grin slowly spread across his face. He'd never seen you before, but judging by how comfortable you looked, you obviously lived here.

And...

You were really pretty.

Like...

Really pretty.

Then your eyes opened. You froze mid-spin.

Your brain took approximately half a second to register the fact that there was an unfamiliar six-foot hockey player standing in your living room.

You screamed. "What the fuck?!"

John nearly jumped out of his skin.

"It's okay!" he said immediately, throwing both hands into the air. "I'm not robbing you!"

You stared at him. He stared back.

Neither of you moved.

"I—"

"You literally broke into our apartment!"

"I used the key!"

"That's somehow worse!"

"No, wait—"

You grabbed the nearest object you could find, a throw pillow, and pointed it at him like it was a weapon.

"Explain."

John couldn't help the nervous laugh that escaped him.

"Garrett sent me."

Your eyebrows pulled together.

"...Garrett?"

"Yeah." He nodded quickly. "Garrett Graham. Hannah's boyfriend?"

You blinked. "I know who Garrett is."

"Right. Good. That would've been awkward."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"He left his hockey jersey here and texted me to come grab it because he's already at the rink. Said there was a spare key under the mat."

You stared at him for another few seconds.

Then...

Very slowly...

Your shoulders relaxed. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"...I almost hit you with a pillow."

"I've taken body checks harder than that."

A reluctant laugh escaped you. "Don't get cocky."

"Oh, I absolutely am."

You rolled your eyes despite yourself.

Silence settled between you for a second.

Then John smiled. "I'm John, by the way."

"The John Logan?"

"The one and only."

You couldn't help smiling. "I'm Y/N."

"Nice to officially meet you."

You smiled politely before noticing his eyes flick downward for the briefest second. Following his gaze, you looked down. Black lace bralette. Bare shoulders. Barefoot. Hair sticking out in every direction from your one-woman concert.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Heat rushed to your face so fast it actually made your ears burn. You immediately folded your arms across yourself.

"I—"

John's own face turned red almost instantly. "I wasn't—"

"Nope."

"I wasn't trying to—"

"I know."

"I swear."

"I know!"

He looked genuinely horrified with himself. Which somehow made the situation even funnier. Trying to recover what little dignity you had left, you cleared your throat.

"Hannah's room."

John blinked. "What?"

"The jersey."

You pointed toward the hallway.

"It's probably in Hannah's room."

"Oh."

Right. The reason he'd come over.

"Thanks."

He disappeared into the bedroom, leaving you enough time to dramatically bury your face in your hands.

"Oh my God..."

Of all days...

Five minutes later, John reappeared holding Garrett's jersey triumphantly. "Found it."

"Nice."

Neither of you seemed entirely sure how to end the conversation.

John scratched the back of his neck. "Well..."

"I should probably..."

"Yeah."

He reached for the doorknob before pausing.

Turning back toward you, that signature Logan grin spread across his face.

"Oh."

You looked up.

"Great song, by the way."

Your eyes widened.

"You could hear that?"

"You were kinda killing your eardrums with those headphones."

You groaned, dropping your head into your hands. "Oh my God."

"And," he continued, clearly enjoying himself now, "your air guitar technique?"

"No."

"Pretty impressive."

"No."

"Eight out of ten."

"You need to leave."

John laughed. "Fair."

He opened the door. "See you around, Y/N."

Before you could think of anything remotely clever to say back, the door clicked shut behind him. The apartment fell silent again. You stood there for several long seconds.