steph's library

You sat across from the fire pit in the boys’ backyard, elbows resting on the armrests of your chair while the flames cracked softly in front of you both. The night air had turned colder hours ago, but neither of you had gone inside. Dean kept talking and you kept letting him or trying to.

Every time he opened his mouth, you exhaled slowly through your nose as if physically releasing air might stop you from interrupting him.

“He’s an arrogant son of a bitch,” Dean repeated for probably the fifth time that night. He took another drag from the blunt before passing it toward you, smoke curling past his lips as he leaned back deeper into the chair.

“That’s what pisses me off the most,” he continued, staring hard into the fire like your ex-boyfriend personally offended him. “He had no clue what he was doing in the relationship from day one and still had the confidence to ask you out.” His jaw tightened slightly. “Usually I respect delusion like that, but that guy’s a fucking disaster.”

You accepted the blunt with a quiet sigh.

Dean had been ranting for nearly a week straight now. Anyone overhearing him would’ve assumed he’d been the one publicly dumped in the cafeteria instead of you but he’d been there when it happened, front row seats to your ex fumbling through excuses while half your friends sat frozen around the table pretending not to listen. Maybe that was enough for Dean.

Now, instead of being out partying with the rest of the team, he sat outside with you night after night, sharing weed and acting personally victimized by your breakup.

“Dean,” you finally interrupted, tone firm.

He stopped talking immediately.

You inhaled slowly before looking over at him through the smoke, holding his gaze while you exhaled. “It’s okay.”

Dean’s expression flattened instantly. “We have very different definitions of okay.”

His eyes drifted back toward the fire for a second, replaying the memory again. You could practically see it happening behind his eyes, the cafeteria, your expression and your ex stumbling through his speech.

“You should’ve let me talk to him,” he muttered.

“What good would that have done?” You brought the blunt back to your lips, inhaling before handing it over again. “It’s not his fault.”

Dean’s head snapped toward you so fast he nearly dropped the thing. “The fuck does that mean?”

You almost rolled your eyes at the offense in his tone. Instead, you looked away toward the fire again, watching orange light flicker against the patio stones.

“I’m lost here,” he scoffed. “Is being wrapped around another girl at a party three hours after dumping you not a dick move now?”

A laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it. “Dean,” you said gently, finally turning your head toward him again. “I think I’m the only person who wasn’t surprised by the breakup.”

His brows furrowed.

You shrugged one shoulder lightly. “He just beat me to it.”

“Oh.” The word left him quietly. Dean looked away immediately afterward, dragging a hand over his mouth while he gathered his thoughts before glancing back at you. “That’s the first time I’m hearing about that.”

He passed the blunt over again.

You took it carefully, staring down at it between your fingers for a second before answering.

“Yeah, well...” You inhaled deeply, smoke burning pleasantly in your lungs before you let it back out slowly. “You’ve got other business to worry about.”

Dean huffed out a laugh instantly. “You are my business.” The certainty in his voice made your lips curl before you could stop them. “So start talking.”

He always did that. Dean had this way of making honesty feel inevitable. The two of you talked about everything, always had. He knew things about you your closest friends didn’t. Hell, he’d bought condoms for you the first time you planned on sleeping with someone because you’d been too embarrassed to walk into the store yourself.

You moved deeper into the chair, pulling one leg beneath you while you searched carefully for the right words. “Um…” You inhaled again, then blurted it out before your brain could stop you. “I suck at the sex thing.”

Dean’s face twisted immediately in disagreement as you passed the blunt. “Bullshit.”

You laughed softly. “No, seriously. I do.” You rubbed awkwardly at your neck before continuing. “Turns out not being able to cum eventually becomes an issue when your partner realizes you never actually have with them.”

Dean’s expression changed instantly. Every conversation you’d ever had about sex clearly started replaying in his head at once because confusion hit him violently.

“But you told me–”

“I lied.” The words came out easier than expected. You shrugged lightly, though your stomach still tightened. “I’ve been lying for years...Faking it until I got tired of faking it and started bruising egos.” A humorless smile tugged briefly at your mouth. “Including mine.”

Dean stayed quiet now so you stared into the fire instead.

“I just…” You exhaled slowly. “I don’t think sex is really my thing.” Your shoulders lifted. “I like the idea of it. I enjoy parts of it…but everyone talks about this huge explosive ending and I just…” You shook your head. “Don’t get there…naturally people stop believing you when you say it was still good.”

Dean watched you carefully. “Was it?”

“The sex?” You let the silence drag for a second before shrugging again. “I think so.” Your lips twitched faintly. “It was good enough to build better stories around afterward.”

Dean stopped smoking entirely after that. The blunt burned slowly between his fingers while he stared down at it, suddenly looking far more sober than either of you probably were. He looked like he was trying to organize his thoughts before speaking again.

“How about alone?” The question came softly, carefully.

If you didn’t know him so well, you might’ve mistaken the look on his face for pity. Thankfully, you did know him, which meant you recognized concern immediately.

You shook your head slowly. “That’s why I’m saying it’s not his fault.”

“It’s not yours either,” Dean argued as he flicked the rest of the blunt into the fire pit before continuing. “It just hasn’t happened yet.” His voice softened further. “Doesn’t mean it never will.”

You let out a slow breath, eyes closing briefly as the weed finally started loosening the tension sitting on your shoulders. “It’s definitely not from lack of trying.”

You could feel him staring at you even with your eyes closed.

The silence stretched comfortably after your confession, softened by the crackling fire and the distant chorus of crickets surrounding the backyard. The flames had started dying down, wood collapsing inward with quiet snaps while smoke drifted lazily into the cold night air.

Dean still hadn’t looked away from you. “So what now?” he asked finally.

You swallowed slowly, still keeping your eyes shut. For a second or maybe an entire minute, Dean genuinely thought you’d fallen asleep mid-conversation.

Then your lips twitched. “Celibacy.”

The offended sound that tore out of him made your smile widen. You heard him trying to hold it back too, which honestly made it funnier but this was Dean. Subtle outrage had never once existed in his body.

“Think I’d look hot as a nun?” you asked lazily.

“You’d look hot in a banana costume wearing clown shoes six sizes too big,” he replied instantly. “And you’re absolutely not dropping out of Briar to become a nun. End of discussion.”

His tone came out firm enough to sound ridiculous considering he had absolutely no authority over your life whatsoever.

You finally peeled your eyes open to look at him. The weed had settled into your bones now, leaving you heavy and relaxed against the chair. Dean looked hazy too, hair falling perfectly while the firelight flickered warm across his face.

“You’re not giving up because some five-eleven idiot couldn’t be patient long enough to figure you out.”

You grinned. “He’s six-one.”

Dean scoffed. “He tried out for the Hawks freshman year. Trust me, he’s five-eleven.”

Your brows lifted. Dean kept going without needing encouragement, already slipping into that protective streak he pretended wasn’t there. He always collected information about people around you, quietly filing it away for future use whenever he deemed necessary.

“He was wearing lifts during tryouts,” Dean added smugly. “One bad pivot and the guy almost snapped an ankle.”

A laugh escaped you softly.

“If you wanna stop having sex altogether, God forbid–”

“You should become a priest,” you interrupted.

Dean barked out a laugh, tipping his head back. “Yeah,” he nodded. “It’d probably take a year and a half to cleanse my sins.” He pointed toward himself loosely. “And that’s assuming I don’t burst into flames the second I walk into a church.” His eyes drifted back to you. “Can I continue now?”

“Yes, Father,” you replied through a chuckle.

Dean shook his head, smiling despite himself before settling deeper into his chair again.

“If you really wanna do the celibacy thing, fine.” He shrugged dramatically. “I’ll support you. We’ll find support groups together and hold hands through the trauma.” His mouth twitched. “Though personally, I’d go through withdrawals first.”

“How solidary of you.”

He nodded solemnly. “Exactly. Plus I can probably add it to my extracurriculars somehow.”

You laughed harder at that, shoulders shaking slightly as you leaned back into the chair. “You’re so fucking stupid.”

Dean watched you carefully while you laughed. The sound came out lighter than anything he’d heard from you all week, chest rising and falling unevenly while your eyes squeezed shut again for a second and suddenly the conversation stopped feeling funny to him.

Because underneath the jokes, underneath the weed and the teasing, he kept thinking about what you’d actually said earlier. About you trying and nothing happening.

Dean loved sex. Everyone knew that much about him but you did too or at least you loved wanting it, loved feeling desired, loved the intimacy, the heat and everything wrapped around it and now all he could think about was how frustrating that must’ve been for you. Wanting something everyone else talked about so easily only for your body not to cooperate no matter how hard you tried.

The thought sat badly in his chest. Dean looked down at the dying fire for a second before his eyes lifted back to you.

“Use me,” he blurted out.

Your laughter faded gradually after his words, the smile still lingering at the corners of your mouth while your eyes settled back on him even more carefully this time. 

“What do you mean?”

Dean didn’t even hesitate. “I’ll be your last resort,” he repeated easily, like he’d already thought this through far more than he probably had. “Aren’t you always telling me to make myself useful?”

You narrowed your eyes, blinking slowly through the haze settling heavier behind them.

“What exactly are you suggesting?” You rubbed at one eye with the heel of your hand. “Because I’m starting to think I hallucinated that sentence.”

“I hold my weed better than you,” he reminded you smugly.

That part, unfortunately, was true. Dean leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting against his knees now, all lazy amusement gone strangely sincere beneath the teasing.

“You wanna quit? Fine.” He shrugged. “Quit when you’re actually out of options.”

A quiet huff left you, somewhere between disbelief and laughter. “Didn’t realize Six Flags counted as an option.” Your lips twitched faintly. “I hate rollercoasters.”

Dean nodded decisively. “Then I’ll go out of business.”

“You’ll close the park?”

“I’ll shut the whole thing down,” he promised solemnly. “Just so you can ride the teacups.” The grin spreading across his face warned you half a second too late. “Remember when you threw up on the–”

“Yes,” you cut him off immediately, flat and horrified. “I remember.”

Dean laughed anyway. Full-bodied, warm and entirely too pleased with himself as he pointed at you. “You were crying,” he accused through the laughter. “You kept saying your stomach hated you–”

“I was fifteen.”

“And dramatic.” He added. “But so cute…less mouthy too.”

“You held my hair while I threw up into a trash can behind the funnel cake stand.”

Dean’s laughter softened slightly at that memory. Back then he’d been genuinely terrified something was wrong with you. He’d hovered beside you the entire night looking pale enough to pass out himself while you recovered on a bench wrapped in his sweatshirt. Now he just looked fond.

You glanced away first, eyes dropping back toward the dying fire while your thoughts started turning over his earlier suggestion again despite yourself.

It could go horribly. Actually, no, it would go horribly. There were at least seventeen reasons this crossed every boundary imaginable. You already hated rollercoasters, hated fast turns and hated giving up control over literally anything involving your body and Dean…Well, Dean was Dean.

Confident, experienced, annoyingly good-looking and unarguably good at sex if campus rumors counted for anything and unfortunately they definitely did. You hadn’t exactly conducted research firsthand but after years of hearing stories from girls around campus, the reviews were embarrassingly consistent.

“You really think that highly of your dick?” you asked finally.

Dean shrugged lazily against the chair. “Nobody said anything about using it.”

That made your eyes snap back to him fully. “And if nothing works?” you asked quieter this time.

The question slipped out more honestly than intended because suddenly you weren’t thinking about sex anymore. You were thinking about aftermaths, about what happened if this ruined things between you. Dean had woven himself into your life years ago so naturally that imagining him gone felt impossible now.

You genuinely didn’t know how you’d survive losing him too.

Dean studied you for a second and for once the confidence in his face softened into something steadier. “Then we fail,” he decided.

You swallowed.

His grin returned slowly afterward, softer around the edges. “Fail with me,” he corrected. “Fail better.” He pointed between you both lazily. “Fail together.”

A laugh escaped you despite every effort not to give him one.

You rolled your eyes hard enough to make him grin wider, shaking your head while the weed continued smoothing the sharp corners off your thoughts. The night air no longer felt cold against your skin and embarrassment had slowly stopped existing somewhere during the conversation. Maybe that was the dangerous part and not Dean’s suggestion but how easy it suddenly felt to consider it.

You didn’t bring it up again for the rest of the night and neither did Dean.

When the rest of the guys stumbled back into the house loud and half-drunk sometime after midnight, he changed back into normal so smoothly it almost irritated you. He made sure you had food, water, your charger and then bullied one of the sober freshmen into driving you home while standing outside by the car until you pulled away like he always did.

You slept absurdly well afterward.

A heavy sleep and dreamless night, the type that glued you to the mattress the next morning until sunlight was already cutting aggressively through your blinds. By the time you shuffled out with an oversized hoodie you were certain was your ex’s, your phone was buzzing with unread texts from Dean sent hours earlier, probably before morning practice.

You ignored every single one and it wasn’t because of regret. Embarrassment simply crawled into your chest somewhere between the first and third spoonful of cereal and decided to settle there permanently.

The entire conversation replayed so clearly now that you were sober. “Use me,” You nearly groaned into the bowl.

Three hours of class helped, at least temporarily. You sat near the back of the massive amphitheater classroom while your professor rambled enthusiastically about the new book he’d conveniently written himself and would definitely require students to purchase before midterms. You probably would’ve absorbed more information if you weren’t scrolling mindlessly through Instagram the entire lecture.

The doors behind you opened quietly midway through class.

You barely paid attention at first since nobody descended the stairs toward the lower rows and a second later the seat beside you groaned softly under someone’s weight.

You recognized the cologne immediately.

“How hard do you think you need to scrub for that scent to leave your skin?” you whispered without looking up.

Dean grinned beside you, leaning closer enough for warmth to brush your shoulder as his eyes dropped toward your phone screen.

You locked it quickly and finally looked at him. “You’re not in this class.”

“I see your phone works perfectly fine,” he replied.

The professor thankfully dismissed class early before you could answer, students immediately growing louder as backpacks zipped and people exited the space.

You stood quickly and started gathering your things. “Did you need something, Di Laurentis?” you asked flatly.

Dean remained seated on purpose, forcing you to awkwardly climb past him to leave the row. The asshole looked entirely too pleased with himself while you muttered under your breath and stepped over his legs.

The second you reached the aisle, he stood and followed.

You walked fast, actually, aggressively fast. Dean almost struggled to keep up at first, his legs clearly still wrecked from morning practice while you marched out of the building like escape itself was the objective. He finally caught you outside near the steps leading toward the quad.

“We need to talk.”

You slowed at last before turning toward him. “What we need is space,” you corrected, motioning firmly between your bodies.

Dean looked down between you both thoughtfully, then took exactly one step backward.

You almost laughed, especially because he looked unbearably smug afterward, standing there grinning in the middle of campus like he deserved a reward for basic listening skills.

“You’ve gone to New York with me enough times to know I don’t need more space,” he pointed out. “But fine.” His expression softened slightly afterward, amusement fading as he studied your face more carefully. “What’s going on?”

Of course, he was right. Dean practically crawled into people’s personal bubbles recreationally, so the fact he’d backed off at all made it harder to flee the conversation entirely.

You exhaled slowly. “We said stuff last night.”

He nodded once, blinking at the tension written all over your face. “Yeah. That’s usually how conversations work.”

“Stuff you might regret,” you clarified.

Dean’s brows lifted before a quiet laugh escaped him. “Regret?” He pointed toward himself loosely. “C’mon. It’s me.”

His voice gentled slightly after and the worst part was he looked relieved, because apparently the phrase ‘stuff you might regret’ translated in Dean’s brain to ‘good, she’s not upset’.

“I would’ve said that sober,” he assured you.

His eyes stayed fixed on yours while your attention darted briefly around campus before returning to him again exactly like he knew it would. Dean stepped closer instinctively, lowering his voice enough that the passing students around you blurred into background noise.

“You want me to repeat it?” he asked quietly. “Let me help you cum.”

Your stomach tightened at his tone of voice. “It might not work,” you reminded him softly.

You hoped your face conveyed the actual problem because this had never been about his ego. Dean could survive failure, he’d probably laugh through it, so that wasn’t what scared you.

Dean shrugged anyway, maddeningly calm. “What if it does?”

“And what if it doesn’t?” Frustration finally slipped into your voice. “Dean, I don’t want us to get weird.” You shook your head hard once. “I don’t need ‘optimistic Dean’ right now,” you muttered. “I need ‘realistic Dean’, so pull him out of your ass.”

“You already are weird,” Dean corrected easily, smiling down at you. “I accepted that years ago.” His grin widened then. “Actually, I encourage it.”

You rolled your eyes, though the corner of your mouth betrayed you.

“Let me try,” he insisted again, the confidence in his voice should’ve irritated you more than it did.

Instead, you found yourself studying him in silence, searching for something off in his expression. Some sign this was ego, curiosity or boredom disguised as concern but he just looked…earnest. Enthusiastic, sure, because he was Dean and apparently incapable of approaching anything halfway but not creepy about it and maybe this was partially your own fault.

You’d spent years talking openly with him about sex, relationships and attraction. About wanting something good someday instead of tolerable, about how when you were old and exhausted with kids running around, you still wanted a partner who looked at you and wanted you back because you were almost certain you’d still want them too.

Dean remembered everything you said…unfortunately.

You sighed heavily. “We need rules.”

“Fine.” He agreed so fast it almost startled you. Dean straightened afterward, nodding once with ridiculous seriousness like the two of you were entering business negotiations instead of whatever disaster this actually was.

You almost reconsidered your next words. Almost.

“No kissing.”

Dean’s shoulders visibly dropped. “Why?”

“Because!” you hissed. “And if we’re doing this, you don’t get to question the rules.”

His face twisted in disbelief. “We’ve kissed before.”

You crossed your arms tighter. “That was different.”

Dean scoffed softly. “We were literally each other’s first kiss.”

Again, he was right. You weren’t just each other’s first kiss either, a few firsts existed between you both scattered through years of friendship and growing up side by side, all except for sex. There was awkward teenage curiosity, truth or dare disasters and one regrettable spin-the-bottle incident Garrett still occasionally referenced against your will.

Which was exactly why kissing now felt dangerous. This couldn’t spiral into some ‘why didn’t we do this sooner’ conversation. It needed boundaries and structure, something detached enough that neither of you accidentally ruined the friendship orbiting underneath all this and selflessly, you also didn’t want the group dragged into the fallout if things exploded.

“We’re adults now,” you said firmly. “So no kissing.”

Dean stared at you for another second before exhaling dramatically. 

“Okay,” he relented…Too easily, which immediately made you suspicious he’d already started planning arguments against it for later.

“I’ve also thought about what you said last night,” you continued carefully. “About Six Flags.”

Dean’s brows lifted.

“And shutting down the entire park feels unfair to you,” you explained. “Potentially devastating, honestly.” Your lips twitched slightly. “So you can still hook up with other people if you want. I genuinely don’t care.”

Dean actually looked offended. “Didn’t realize I needed permission.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.” His voice sharpened for the first time since the conversation started. “But no thanks.” He shrugged once. “It makes this more exciting anyway.” A grin tugged briefly at his mouth again. “I’ve got one ride right now and that’s all I need.”

Your face scrunched at his words. “Does weed somehow make you an even bigger asshole?”

Dean ignored that completely. “I’m not doing anything with anyone else until we’re done here,” he repeated firmly. The teasing disappeared entirely from his voice that time and there was no smugness either, just certainty.

You quieted automatically when a group of students passed nearby, a few of them recognizing Dean instantly and greeting him as they crossed the quad. He responded absentmindedly without taking his eyes off you once.

The second they moved far enough away, you continued. “Why?”

Dean’s expression softened at the question. “Because I need you comfortable,” he answered simply. “And I need you to trust me more than you already do.”

You groaned. “Oh my God,” you muttered, dragging a hand down your face. “You’re making this weird.”

He grinned at your reaction while you grabbed his sleeve and started pulling him further across campus before more people stopped to talk to him. Dean let you drag him along without resistance, looking far too entertained by the whole thing.

“We don’t even know how long this will take,” you pointed out.

“My fist works perfectly fine in the meantime,” Dean decided easily.

You looked up at him so fast your neck almost hurt.

Dean pressed his lips together, visibly trying not to laugh at the pure disbelief written across your face. His head tilted slightly, hair strands falling over his forehead while he watched you stare at him like he’d just confessed to tax fraud.

Your gaze dropped away first.

Contrary to what everyone on campus believed, Dean didn’t actually need constant hookups to survive. He liked the reputation, liked exaggerating it even more whenever it annoyed you enough to argue back or laugh at him but underneath all that, he could handle himself perfectly fine.

Unfortunately for you, he seemed almost smug about proving that now.

“Can I add rules too?” he asked.

You sighed dramatically. “Sure.”

The two of you kept walking through campus side by side, your pace slower now that the conversation had moved on from terrifying to merely humiliating.

“No scheduling things specifically for this,” Dean decided. “If it happens, it happens.”

You blinked once before nodding slowly. “Yeah. Okay.” Relief actually loosened something in your chest at that. “That’s good. I’ll stress less.”

Dean glanced sideways at you, probably pleased you agreed so quickly…Except his rule immediately created entirely new problems.

“Uh…” Your steps slowed slightly. “How do you…” You scratched awkwardly at your eyebrow. “Take it?”

Dean stopped walking altogether. “How do I take what?” he asked carefully. “My coffee?”

You groaned. “No.” Your hand motioned vaguely between the two of you in a series of gestures that explained absolutely nothing. “Like…how do you like it?”

Dean’s brows lifted as realization hit him almost visibly.

You looked away at once. “Fuck,” you muttered under your breath. “Do I need to be clean shaven constantly or not?” Your voice lowered progressively through the sentence while your eyes darted around campus to make sure nobody nearby overheard you discussing grooming preferences in broad daylight.

Dean stared at you for half a second too long before answering.

“Y/n.” The seriousness in his tone made your eyes flicker back toward him. “The day I tell you what to do with your body, you better knock me unconscious.”

Your mouth parted slightly.

“I’ll literally kneel for it if that makes it easier,” he continued firmly. “Do whatever makes you comfortable.”

And he meant it. Dean would enjoy it either way, obviously, but that wasn’t what mattered to him here. What mattered was getting you out of your own head long enough to actually enjoy yourself instead of performing comfort for someone else.

You blinked slowly at him because suddenly your ex’s comments replayed in your head with uncomfortable clarity. Little preferences disguised as jokes and suggestions repeated enough times to become expectations and judging by the expression tightening briefly across Dean’s face, he’d realized exactly where your question came from too.

That only made you feel worse somehow. Your attention drifted toward the students moving around campus nearby.

You suddenly wondered if people would notice eventually. The same way older women always claimed they somehow knew when girls became sexually active. Weird comments about posture and confidence, wider hips and glowing skin that sounded fake until suddenly you became the target of them too.

Your stomach tightened faintly. “What are we supposed to tell people?”

Dean barely hesitated. “To mind their own fucking business.”

You snorted softly.

He looked over at you again, entirely serious despite the amusement still lingering around his mouth. “Just like I’m doing mine.”

The rest of the week passed almost painfully normal.

There were parties, late-night food runs, afternoons sprawled around the boys’ house while someone yelled at a video game in the background and hockey games while Dean acted exactly the same as always. You spent time with Hannah and Allie between classes and after them, listened to Garrett complain dramatically about assignments he’d started twelve hours before they were due, watched Tucker cook enough food for six grown men while Logan disappeared upstairs with company more often than not.

Nothing changed.

Dean still touched your shoulder when he walked past you, still stole fries off your plate and still looked at you too long whenever you laughed at something stupid and somehow that made the entire thing worse because half the time you genuinely convinced yourself you’d imagined the whole conversation by the fire pit entirely.

Maybe the weed had made you both insane and none of it was real.

You sat curled up on the floor of the boys’ living room later that week with your knees tucked to your chest, a notebook balanced across your thighs while formulas blurred together across the page. Your back rested against the couch and the TV played quietly in the background though neither of you actually paid attention to it.

Dean sat opposite you in the armchair, long legs spread comfortably while he hunched over his own notebook with far more concentration than anyone would expect from him or maybe not because he took hockey so seriously. He took school seriously too, despite pretending otherwise whenever possible but unfortunately for you, he also looked unfairly good doing homework.

You tried focusing on your own work, tried hard. Instead, your eyes kept lifting toward him between equations, your brain repeatedly snagging on the memory of everything he’d said days earlier and the fact neither of you had taken any of it back…or done a single thing about it.

“What’d you get for number three?” Dean’s voice pulled you from your thoughts but still didn’t look up from his notebook.

You blinked down at your own page, trying to remember where your brain had abandoned the assignment entirely.

“C,” you answered eventually. “But I’m not confident about it.”

Dean hummed thoughtfully. “I’ve done the math twice and I keep getting B.”

You reread the problem slowly, trying to force your attention into place. “Then it’s probably B.”

Dean finally looked up at that, one brow lifting. “You’re admitting you’re wrong?”

You snorted softly. Honestly, it was extremely possible. Your brain hadn’t functioned properly all week because you kept thinking about him offering himself up like some absurdly confident science experiment. 

“Don’t need to dig through my family tree to know I’m not descended from Isaac Newton.”

A smile tugged slowly across Dean’s mouth as he leaned back in the armchair. “If you are,” he said, eyes dragging over your face, “I’m glad the ugly recessive genes skipped you.”

Your nose scrunched instantly. “What kind of compliment is that?”

“The kind I’m hoping gets you over here to help me.” He motioned you closer lazily with his pointer and middle fingers.

You sighed before setting your notebook on the coffee table and padding across the room toward him. The house was quieter this late afternoon, though not empty. Hannah was upstairs with Garrett, Logan had disappeared into his room hours ago and Tucker was outside training.

“Let’s see,” you murmured.

You bent slightly over Dean and the notebook resting on the armrest, attention dropping fully to the equations scattered across the page. The movement loosened the collar of your shirt enough for cool air to brush your skin.

Dean noticed and his throat cleared quietly.

Your attention remained on the notebook while his eyes betrayed him completely, dropping for one dangerous second to the visible lace of your bra before forcing themselves back upward toward your face instead.

Dean had promised himself he’d take this slow and naturally because the second he acted weird about it, you would too. You’d overthink every movement, every look and accidental touch and unfortunately for him, you’d always been terrifyingly good at reading him.

He moved the notebook slightly farther from you as one hand settled carefully against your hip, guiding you.

You reached automatically for the notebook before he moved it entirely out of reach, successfully grabbing it just as he tugged you forward enough for your balance to tip. A second later you settled directly onto his lap, knees falling naturally to either side of his thighs.

You blinked once. “Smooth,” you muttered, adjusting yourself carefully without looking at him. “I’ll give you that.”

Dean grinned openly now. You balanced the notebook against his chest like it was a table and reached backward for the pen loosely held in his free hand. His fingers brushed yours before letting go.

“Should be a five,” you corrected while marking over the equation. “Not a seven.” Your brows furrowed slightly. “Your handwriting’s gotten worse over the years.”

“You still read it.”

“I’m not the one grading you.” Your eyes lifted straight into his.

You’d sat on Dean’s lap before, during packed car rides, group trips and random stupid moments over the years where proximity stopped mattering because he was just Dean. This didn’t feel like that, not even close.

“Not in math,” he said quietly.

Only one of his hands touched you still, resting warm and steady against your hip like he was making a conscious effort not to overwhelm you. Whether it was intentional or not, it worked. His eyes drifted downward slowly toward your mouth.

“You should be rating everything else though.” A grin ghosted briefly across his lips. “Pretty sure Six Flags has customer surveys.”

You shook your head once, slow enough that your hair brushed lightly against your cheek. “No ride, no survey.”

Dean’s mouth twitched. His legs spread slightly wider underneath you then, subtle enough that you still felt the change as the apex of your thighs aligned more directly with his. The hand on your hip tightened enough for you to notice. “Go on then,” he murmured.

Your gaze dropped before you could stop it, down to the visible tent pressing insistently against the front of his sweats. Heat climbed your throat immediately.

“Interesting moment you picked,” you muttered softly, eyes flicking briefly toward the rest of the house.

You felt comfortable there. Comfortable enough to leave clothes behind, to wander into the kitchen without asking and to nap on the couch when you got tired during movie nights but knowing the others were still around somewhere made your pulse jump harder instead of calming it.

Dean noticed. “Just focus on me,” he instructed quietly.

Not ‘look at me’, just ‘focus’ which you could do.

You looked at him, seeing the genuine curiosity and lack of judgment in his eyes and for the first time, the wall you'd built around your sexuality felt more like a shield and less like a cage.

Slowly, tentatively, you moved as the gravity of the moment pulled you toward him. You settled your weight directly onto him, feeling the distinct, blunt shape of his cock through the layers of your clothes. He wasn't fully hard yet, just a semi-firm pressure against your clothed pussy but it didn't make you recoil. In fact, it sent a low thrum of anticipation through your nerves.

The air between you grew thick, charged with a tension that felt heavy enough to touch. You remembered your own rule: no kissing. So, you kept your face inches from his but you didn't close the gap. Instead, you focused on the sound of his breathing, which had hitched the moment you sat down. You could feel the warmth of his breath ghosting over your lips, a teasing, invisible touch that made your skin prickle.

Dean’s hand still hovered near your waist, trembling slightly but he didn't grip you. He seemed to be fighting every instinct to pull you closer, respecting the fragile boundary you had set.

"I'm gonna keep my hands off," he whispered, his voice strained and rough. "You just keep moving. Take whatever you're comfortable with."

He pulled his arms back, resting them flat against the seat beside him, leaving you in complete control. The sudden lack of physical contact made the friction between your pelvises feel even more intense. You knew what you were doing, you had enough experience to know how your body worked, even if the 'explosive ending' always eluded you. You began to rock, a slow, tentative grind that pressed your pussy firmly against the length of him as a sharp, jagged exhale escaped his lungs. 

You felt him react instantly, the semi-firmness beneath you surged, his cock thickening and hardening rapidly against your center. You rolled your hips in a circular motion, aiming for the sweet spot, feeling the dampness beginning to soak into your underwear. You were getting wetter, the friction creating a sliding, sensual heat that radiated upward into your stomach.

"You still okay?" he breathed out, voice barely a murmur.

You simply nodded and tried to focus entirely on him, wanting to give him something perfect, something that would leave him breathless. You pushed down harder, grinding your clit against the hard ridge of his dick. You watched his face, head falling back against the headrest, leaving his throat exposed and pulsing but he forced his eyes to stay open. He wanted to see you. He wanted to witness the way your expression changed as you found a rhythm that worked.

The intimacy was suffocating in the best way. There was no kissing to distract you and no wandering hands to break the spell, just the raw, rhythmic pressure of friction. You could feel the heat radiating off his thighs, the way his chest heaved in time with your movements as your own breathing became ragged, mirroring his, the sound of your synchronized gasps filling the quiet space.

You felt a small, involuntary moan escape your throat, a soft sound of pleasure that made Dean’s hips jerk upward instinctively, trying to meet your descent. You pressed closer, your mind racing, trying to synchronize your pleasure with his but as the tension built, a familiar frustration began to creep in. You were so close to that peak, that elusive edge but the more you focused on his perfection, the more you felt yourself slipping away from your own. You wanted it, you wanted to break through the ceiling you'd lived under for years and the frustration made you grind harder, more desperately.

You were just beginning to lose yourself in the friction, your body humming with a desperate, electric need, when the spell was shattered.

The heavy thud of footsteps hit the wooden porch outside, then came muffled voices.

Tucker.

The sound slammed into you like ice water dumped straight down your spine.

You jolted backward instantly, panic snapping through your body so violently that your balance disappeared completely. The friction, the heat, the dizzy haze clouding your brain shattered in one humiliating second as you scrambled away from Dean in pure instinct.

Dean’s hands had actually stayed off, so when you lurched backward, there was nothing anchoring you in place, no arm catching your waist or grip steadying you. You slipped right off his lap in a graceless tangle of limbs and landed hard beside the chair with a muffled curse, your pulse hammering violently against your ribs.

Dean moved at the same time you did. One hand grabbed the nearest couch pillow and yanked it straight into his lap while the other instinctively reached toward you, fingers brushing empty air because you were already halfway onto your feet.

The front door opened and you froze.

Your breathing came embarrassingly uneven as you tried forcing your body back under control, thighs trembling faintly from the abrupt stop, nerves buzzing so hard beneath your skin it almost hurt. Dean leaned back into the chair with his head tipped toward the ceiling for one brief second, chest rising sharply beneath his t-shirt while tortured frustration flashed openly across his face before he forced himself together enough to look toward the entryway.

Tucker walked in distractedly, phone pressed to his ear while he kicked the door shut behind him with his shoe.

“–No, because that’s not what I said,” he argued into the phone before finally glancing up.

Dean’s voice came out rough and annoyed. “Can't you knock?”

The irritation in it made your eyes widen and before thinking better of it, you reached over and smacked lightly at his arm which made him look offended for half a second.

Tucker’s brows pulled together slowly as his gaze moved between the two of you…You standing there awkwardly and Dean spread out in the armchair with a pillow aggressively covering his lap.

The TV was still playing, forgotten in the background too.

“Wait,” Tucker muttered into the phone, eyes narrowing slightly. “Hold on.” He lowered the phone away from his ear and motioned vaguely around the living room. “I live here,” he pointed out flatly. “If you two wanna study in complete silence maybe turn the TV down or go to the library.”

Your mouth pressed into a painfully tight smile.

“Hey, Y/n.” he greeted, much more gently.

“Hi,” you replied weakly with an awkward nod.

Tucker gave you one more lingering look before wandering toward the kitchen, already returning to his phone conversation while opening the fridge like absolutely nothing life-altering had just occurred in his living room.

The second he was no longer looking, your eyes snapped back toward Dean, his were already on you, wide and still dark with frustration and lingering heat and approximately ten other emotions you absolutely did not have time to unpack right now.

You hurried toward where you’d abandoned your bag near the couch and started shoving your things inside far too quickly.

Dean muttered a curse under his breath behind you as the fridge door opened again. “Wait, wait, wait,” he whispered urgently.

You ignored him completely, nearly dropping your belongings while trying to zip your bag shut.

“You don’t have to leave,” he continued quietly, unable to stand for reasons both of you were painfully aware of. The pillow remained trapped over his lap while he leaned forward slightly, voice dropping lower. “Stay for dinner.” Then louder, “Right, Tucker?”

From the kitchen, still mid-conversation, Tucker lifted a distracted thumbs up without even looking over. Of course you could stay, you were always welcome there and it somehow made this infinitely worse.

“Y/n, c’mon,” Dean tried again, even softer this time.

You finally looked at him, at his flushed face and the way he still looked wrecked from you despite the interruption.

Your stomach flipped painfully. “You can text me that survey of yours,” you muttered.

Dean groaned quietly at the reminder, watching as you grabbed your bag and headed straight for the front door before your embarrassment could physically consume you alive.

You didn’t say goodbye or looked back. You slipped outside into the cold early evening air and shut the door behind you, immediately dragging in one huge breath like you’d been underwater too long.

Fresh air hit your lungs sharply, cool and tensionless.

Your legs felt weird as you walked down the porch steps and somewhere beneath the embarrassment sat an even more irritating realization. You needed to change your panties and somehow, you still hadn’t come.

For the first time in your academic career, you were thankful exam week existed.

The chaos of midterms had given you and Dean something else to focus on besides the fact you’d nearly climbed him in the middle of his living room while Tucker casually walked through the front door. Between study sessions, essays, last-minute cramming and the general emotional collapse that overtook Briar every semester, things had settled back into something manageable.

You and Dean had talked afterward, though absolutely not alone.

He’d insisted on meeting in a crowded coffee shop near campus where old women typed aggressively on laptops and students cried quietly over textbooks in the corner booths. Dean had spent most of the conversation reassuring you Tucker didn’t know anything, swearing repeatedly that if Tucker had known, the entire hockey house would’ve heard about it within twelve minutes. More importantly, he’d made sure you still wanted this and despite the embarrassment, the frustration and how badly your body still reacted whenever he looked at you too long, you did.

“Are you seriously not coming?” Allie paced dramatically across the apartment while speaking, changing outfits for what had to be the fourth time in under an hour. Both you and Hannah tracked her movements from the couch like spectators at a tennis match while she disappeared into her room only to emerge seconds later wearing something slightly tighter each time.

Hannah finally peeled her attention away from Allie to look at you instead.

“She’s right,” she agreed. “Exams are over. Maybe partying would actually help.”

You smiled lazily from your spot curled into the couch cushions, blanket draped across your legs while exhaustion sat heavy behind your eyes.

“What’ll help me is eight uninterrupted hours of sleep,” you informed them. “Which I plan on pursuing aggressively the second both of you leave.” Your mouth twitched slightly. “Now see some boys and make questionable use of your mouths elsewhere.”

Allie barked out a laugh loud enough to echo while Hannah groaned.

“When are we finding your rebound?” Allie asked as she finally settled on an outfit and bent down to tug on her boots.

“It’s too soon,” you decided immediately.

“It is,” Hannah agreed with a firm nod. “She doesn’t wanna think about men right now and we’re respecting that.”

You pointed gratefully toward her. “See? Emotional maturity.”

“Sure,” Allie snorted. “I’m still passing your Instagram around tonight though.” She grinned wickedly while crossing toward the couch. “You can decide what to do with the options later.” Before you could answer, she leaned down and squeezed you tightly against her side. “Don’t wait up for us.”

You watched them drag out the goodbye process intentionally, moving toward the door with exaggerated slowness like they expected you to suddenly change your mind and throw on heels at the last second.

You sighed and stood from the couch, physically herding them toward the exit. “Just go,” you laughed while they protested loudly.

“We tried,” Hannah reminded you with a smile while Allie opened the apartment door. “We’ll send you the address anyway.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

“You say that now...”

You waved them off anyway and finally shut the door behind them once they disappeared down the hallway already talking excitedly about shots and music and whatever terrible decisions the night would inevitably produce.

Silence settled across the apartment immediately afterward.

You exhaled slowly…now what? You considered your options while wandering aimlessly through the living space. You could curl up on the couch with your laptop and a movie or crawl into bed and disappear beneath blankets for twelve straight hours like a Victorian woman with mysterious exhaustion. Or…Your thoughts drifted elsewhere automatically, toward your room and the drawer beside your bed.

You grimaced slightly. Maybe tonight was the night you tried again, actually committed to figuring yourself out instead of giving up midway through frustration like usual. You’d bought enough toys over the years based entirely on optimistic reviews and late-night curiosity alone.

Were they even charged? You were approximately two steps away from your bedroom when knocking sounded at the front door.

You groaned at the sound. “Did you guys forget your condoms again?” you called out while turning toward the entrance. Honestly, it happened often enough that the assumption came naturally now.

You unlocked the door and pulled it open. Then blinked at who you saw. “Dean.”

Dean stood casually in the hallway wearing a baseball cap and dark sunglasses despite the fact it was nighttime indoors, which might’ve worked better if he wasn’t also carrying an enormous black bag beside him.

“I always carry condoms,” he informed you smugly.

Your face scrunched instantly as his answer only emphasized how thin the apartment walls actually were. You narrowed your eyes at him while glancing suspiciously down the hallway. 

“Why aren’t you at the party?”

Dean lowered the sunglasses enough to properly look at you over the frames.

You looked soft tonight, comfortable. Wearing sweatpants and an oversized shirt, hair messier than usual from lying around all day. The sight quickly made something warm settle low in his chest.

“Because I’m here with you.”

“No,” you corrected. “You wanted to be here with me.” You pointed vaguely toward campus. “Past tense…You should currently be at that party.”

“No can do.” Dean slipped smoothly past you before you could stop him, nudging the apartment door shut behind him with his foot.

Only then did you fully notice the bag. It was large, rectangular, black and rigid with no visible branding whatsoever. It completely ruined the whole incognito outfit.

Your eyes narrowed harder while Dean looked far too pleased with himself.

“I come bearing gifts,” he announced, then he walked straight toward your bedroom like he paid rent there.

“How did you know I didn’t go to the party?” you asked while following him toward your bedroom.

Dean set the bag carefully onto your bed before finally turning around, fingers hooking beneath the brim of his cap as he pulled it off. The sunglasses followed next, revealing eyes already fixed on you with far too much satisfaction.

“I have my sources.”

You grimaced again. “That sounds vaguely threatening.”

“Hannah asked me the other day to convince you to come out tonight.” He shrugged casually. “I didn’t.”

You crossed your arms. “Who says I would’ve agreed anyway?”

Dean smiled instantly. “Me.” The confidence in his answer came without hesitation. “I’m very persuasive.”

You rolled your eyes before your attention dragged back toward the massive black bag sitting suspiciously at the foot of your bed. “What is that?”

Dean glanced over his shoulder toward it. “Our entertainment for tonight.” His mouth twitched slightly. “Well…mine.”

You narrowed your eyes harder at him before stepping around him toward the bed. The bag gave nothing away from the outside, rigid and sleek and annoyingly mysterious.

Cautiously, you reached inside and your fingers brushed lace first. You blinked then slowly pulled the item free into the light between you both, pinching it delicately between two fingers like it might suddenly attack you.

“Lingerie?” you asked, genuinely confused.

Dean nodded once. “I had to get rid of the boxes,” he explained. “Turns out Agent Provocateur packaging isn’t exactly subtle.”

Your eyes widened immediately. “Agent Provocateur?” You stared at him in disbelief before looking back into the bag. “Are you insane?”

One by one, you started pulling more pieces out. Black lace…cream silk and tiny straps. Things so soft they barely felt real against your fingertips.

Dean watched your growing expression carefully and only then seemed to realize he may have gone slightly overboard. “I got lost on the website,” he admitted. “And then there was free shipping after a certain amount which felt financially irresponsible to ignore.”

You straightened slowly, still clutching one lace bodysuit in your hands while looking at him like he’d lost his damn mind.

“Explain to me,” you said carefully, “how exactly this counts as entertainment.”

“Besides the obvious?”

Your stare sharpened. Dean exhaled quietly before answering, his tone softening as the teasing faded from his expression.

“When you were on my lap the other day…” His eyes flickered briefly toward the floor before returning to you. “You stopped focusing on yourself after a while.”

Your fingers tightened slightly around the lace.

“You started trying to get me there instead,” he continued gently. “Like you were more worried about proving something than actually feeling good.”

Heat crept onto the nape of your neck because he was right. Dean noticed everything.

“And I get it,” he added quickly, voice staying careful. “Probably instinct. You wanted me to enjoy it.” His mouth twitched faintly. “Which I definitely did, by the way. Don’t start doubting that part.”

You stayed quiet while watching him and actually listened instead of acting on your urge to flee.

“Tonight,” he said after a beat, nodding lightly toward the lingerie scattered across your bed, “the lingerie can be for me.” His eyes moved back to yours. “So the rest can just be yours.”

The room went quiet afterward. The plan had probably sounded more coherent in Dean’s head at one in the morning while online shopping half-awake with his laptop balanced on his stomach but somewhere beneath the absurdity of it, you understood what he meant.

Lingerie wasn’t only about someone else seeing you in it, women bought it for themselves too, to feel pretty, desired and confident. Sometimes just to stand in front of the mirror and reclaim something private but eventually, with partners, it often became performative too, something shared and visual. Dean was trying to remove that pressure from everything else.

Your gaze drifted slowly back down toward the pile of lace but you still weren’t entirely sure what happened next. You tried things on and then, what?

Your voice lowered slightly. “What kind of mind games are you playing?”

You hoped it didn’t sound accusing because it wasn’t meant to. You were just struggling to process the fact Dean had seen through you so clearly after one failed attempt, that he’d gone and actually thought about it, considered it and returned with something tangible instead of empty reassurance and blind confidence.

Dean shook his head immediately. “No games.” His voice stayed soft and patient, ready to leave the second you told him this was too much. “Let’s just give it a shot.”

Silence stretched again before you finally reached for a pair of panties instead. The lace slid smoothly through your fingers as you lifted the panties between you both for further inspection.

Dean’s eyes dropped instantly and despite himself, one very clear thought crossed his mind.

‘Yeah. Definitely one of my favorites.’

“How do you even know these will fit?” you asked honestly. The fabric looked expensive enough to disintegrate if handled incorrectly, soft lace brushing against your fingertips while you inspected the tiny details stitched into it.

Dean opened his mouth…closed it and opened it again. “I’m…observant?”

Even he sounded unsure of the answer.

Your lips twitched as you bit back a laugh while digging through the pile until you found the matching bra, then gathered both pieces in your hands.

“Observant and persuasive,” you mused while backing toward the bathroom. “Let me know when there’s something substantial to add to that list.”

Dean nodded solemnly like you’d given him serious criticism to reflect on. “Will do.”

The bathroom door clicked shut behind you and the second it did, Dean exhaled sharply and looked down at himself...for fuck’s sake.

He adjusted himself miserably through his pants while staring at your closed bathroom door in defeat. Lately everything about you affected him differently, your voice, your teasing and the way you looked at him for half a second too long depending on the day.

It was becoming genuinely embarrassing.

Dean barely moved from the spot you’d left him in.

He stayed planted near the foot of your bed, one hand dragging occasionally through his hair while his eyes remained fixed on the bathroom door like staring hard enough would somehow let him see through it. Every few seconds he twitched awkwardly in his pants, dealing unsuccessfully with the consequences of occasionally hearing your hums through the thin wall while knowing exactly what you were changing into behind it.

Inside the bathroom, you stood frozen in front of the mirror for far longer than necessary.

You tried very hard not to think about how closely Dean must’ve paid attention to you over the years to somehow get the sizing exactly right because it fit perfectly.

The lace sat snug against your skin without pinching anywhere, soft black patterns curling over your chest and hugging your hips beautifully. The bra lifted your breasts enough to make your posture straighten instinctively while the matching panties rested low against your hips, delicate enough to feel expensive but comfortable enough not to make you tug at them every two seconds.

You looked good, not just tolerable under dim lights or acceptable after strategic positioning and reassurance and maybe that was what scared you most because now you had to walk back out there and let someone else see it too.

With one last glance toward your reflection, you finally reached for the doorknob and stepped back into your room.

Dean looked up immediately, the reaction was almost embarrassing.

He stopped breathing for half a second entirely, eyes dragging over you slowly enough to make heat climb straight into your throat. He barely blinked while following your movement across the room as you drifted toward your full-length mirror, fingertips lightly tracing the lace resting over your shoulders before moving lower toward the small details connecting the cups together.

The silence stretched thickly.

You kept looking at yourself mostly because looking directly at him felt dangerous right now, even as he moved behind you slowly without touching. He was just standing there close enough for warmth to gather along your back while his eyes followed yours through the reflection. Wherever you looked, he looked too, until eventually your gazes met in the mirror.

You swallowed. “What do you think?”

Dean inhaled deeply through his nose. “I think,” he said slowly, “Six Flags might be going out of business soon.”

Your brows lifted immediately before a quiet laugh escaped you despite yourself.

You turned around to face him fully then, stepping closer until only inches separated you both. Your hands settled carefully against the center of his chest, fingertips brushing lightly against the fabric of his shirt while you looked up at him.

Dean held your gaze steadily, too steadily, sometimes it genuinely felt like he could read your thoughts if he stared long enough. “What do you think?” he echoed softly.

You hummed quietly, eyes flickering downward toward his mouth before lifting back up again.

“I think…” Your hands began sliding slowly down his chest, fingertips grazing over the hard planes beneath his shirt one inch at a time. “Maybe…” Your voice softened further as your palms drifted lower. “I could show you something I actually know how to do.”

Dean’s jaw tightened as your fingers brushed the bulge straining against his pants.

“With my mouth,” you finished quietly.

You didn’t move afterward and neither did he.

In your head, the logic made sense. Dean already thought you were beautiful, so you didn’t need him witnessing your frustration firsthand too. You could give him something good instead, something you knew how to control.

For one dangerous second, he looked like he was genuinely considering it. Then Dean exhaled sharply and turned you around instead, guiding you gently back toward the mirror until your back rested against his chest.

A startled breath caught in your throat as your ass pressed unintentionally against the hard outline of his erection.

Your eyes met his again through the reflection.

“I don’t doubt you can do those things,” he murmured near your ear. “All of them.”

One of his hands settled carefully against your waist while the other slid slowly downward, fingertips brushing beneath the waistband of your panties enough to make your stomach tighten. 

His eyes never once left yours in the mirror. “So why do you?”

The reflection showed the two of you, a study in tension and longing. You could see the intensity in his eyes, the way he watched you not just with desire but with a focused, intentional kind of devotion.

His hand didn't push further, he stopped before his fingertips brushed the outer lips of your pussy, leaving a teasing spark of contact. He held himself there, gaze locking onto yours in the mirror, waiting. He wasn't going to take a single inch more without your explicit permission.

You felt your heart hammer against your ribs, chest heaving. You looked into his eyes and gave a small, shaky nod.

The moment you did, he slid deeper. His fingers glided through the slick already gathering between your thighs, parting you with a gentle pressure that could’ve made your toes curl. He didn't rush, he navigated the wet lips until his fingertip found the small, swollen bud of your clit. He began to circle it slowly with agonizingly steady rotations that sent ripples of electricity shooting straight to your core.

"Tell me what you see," he whispered, voice a low and gravelly vibration against your ear.

You swallowed hard, voice trembling as you focused on the reflection. "You...you touching me," you breathed.

As you spoke, you watched your own body react. Your breathing picked up, turning into shallow, jagged gasps. In the mirror, you saw your breasts heaving, the nipples peaking and hardening into tight, sensitive points through the lace of your bra. As if reading your thoughts, Dean’s other hand reached around, his fingers finding one breast and gripping it. He massaged the hardened peak, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger and you let out a sharp, involuntary swallow, head tilting back slightly.

"And what's at the end of me?" he asked, voice humming with a dark, sensual curiosity.

"Me," you whispered, the word barely leaving your lips.

"What else?" he pressed, fingers continuing that relentless, circling motion. He was forcing you to stay present, stripping away your ability to hide in your head or focus on his pleasure. He wanted you trapped in your own skin.

You stared at yourself, hyper-aware of every inch of your anatomy. "Beauty marks," you murmured, noticing the small moles on your thighs and torso that you usually ignored.

"And here?" he asked, his thumb flicking the tip of your nipple.

"Hardened nipples," you gasped, eyes fluttering.

"And on your skin..." he prompted, his fingers quickening their pace, the friction against your clit becoming more insistent and demanding.

"Goosebumps," you whimpered. You could see them breaking out across your shoulders and arms, a physical manifestation of the arousal peaking within you.

The sensory overload was dizzying. Every time you named a part of yourself, the pleasure seemed to intensify, as if acknowledging your own body was unlocking a door you'd kept bolted shut. Dean’s fingers were no longer just circling, they were fluttering, vibrating against your most sensitive spot with a precision that made your hips instinctively buck back against him. You felt the wetness flooding out of you and coating his fingers, making the sounds of his touch wet and explicit in the quiet room.

You tried desperately to keep your eyes locked on his in the mirror but as the pleasure climbed, the world began to blur. Your eyelids grew heavy, the edges of your vision darkening as the sensation centered entirely on the point where he was rubbing you. You started to moan, the sounds raw but still shy, escaping your throat without your permission. You pushed your backside harder against the rigid length of his erection, craving the friction, the completion.

The tension in your lower belly coiled tighter and tighter, a spring winding up to the point of snapping. You were right there, on the precipice, the beginning of an orgasm shimmering just out of reach. Your breath became a series of broken sobs as your body trembled in anticipation. Was this it?

"I think...I–" you started, voice breaking as the first wave of a climax seemed to form but just before it solidified, just as you were about to believe it would, Dean abruptly pulled his hand away.

The sudden void was shocking. You gasped, body jolting from the abrupt loss of stimulation, the orgasm denied at the very last second of creation. You were left vibrating, aching and halfway undone but before you could process the frustration, he gripped your waist and turned you around in his arms so you were facing him. 

Your eyes were wide, glazed with lust and confusion, chest heaving as you looked up at him.

"What the hell are you doing?" you asked, voice a breathless wreck.

Dean didn't answer immediately. He just looked at you, taking in the desperate hunger in your eyes. He gripped your hips firmly, knuckles white and began backing up toward the bed, pulling you with him.

"Trusting you to do it first," he murmured.

As the back of his knees hit the mattress, he let himself fall back, laying flat on his back and spreading his arms wide, leaving himself completely open and vulnerable to you.

You climbed over him, your movements determined, fueled by a desperate, humming need that had been wound tight in the mirror. You braced your knees against his sides, feeling the hard muscle of his thighs beneath you and planted one hand firmly on his chest. Beneath your palm, you could feel his heart hammering a frantic rhythm, a mirror to your own. With a renewed sense of determination, you slipped your other hand beneath the fabric of your panties, your fingers finding the slick, swollen heat of your pussy.

As you began to touch yourself, you closed your eyes for a moment, repeating the litany he had forced you to acknowledge in the mirror. You focused on the hyper-awareness he had instilled in you, turning that mental lens inward. You found your clit, already engorged and sensitive and began to circle it. Your breathing became ragged, each exhale a shaky shudder that vibrated through your entire frame.

You opened your eyes and looked down at your hand on his chest. You watched the way his pectorals heaved under your touch, his skin flushed and warm. Then, you felt his hands slide up your legs, his large palms gripping your thighs firmly. The sheer intensity of his gaze, the way he watched your every movement with a hunger that felt almost tangible, made a low moan escape your throat.

You had never reached this point before, never felt this close to the edge of something so profound. The pleasure was a rising tide, threatening to pull you under.

"Be patient," Dean breathed, his voice a low, grounding rumble that seemed to vibrate through the mattress and into your bones. "Listen to your body."

You nodded, eyes locked onto his and focused entirely on the sensation. You ignored the noise in your head, everything except the friction of your own fingers. You kept your hand working at a speed you liked, a steady, rhythmic pressure that built a coil of tension in your lower belly. You began to squirm, hips rocking in a slow, undulating motion against your own hand, chasing the spark.

In your haze of arousal, you shifted, pressing your soaking wet clothed cunt directly onto the rigid length of his erection through his pants. The sudden, blunt pressure against your clit sent a shockwave of pleasure through you and you let out a loud, uncontrolled moan. Dean groaned in response, a sound of pure, tortured restraint as he kept his hips from jerking upward to meet you.

You quickly lifted your hips again, holding them high in the air, body arching as you fought to maintain the rhythm.

“Holy fuck,” You were so close now, the world was narrowing down to the point where your fingers met your flesh.

"Attagirl. That's it," Dean whispered, voice thick with praise. "You're doing so good. Just like that...look at you, taking it all in. So fucking worth it."

His words were like fuel to the fire. The praise made you bolder and movements more frantic. You pressed harder, your fingers fluttering with an urgency that bordered on desperation until the tension reached a breaking point, a white-hot spark that suddenly ignited into a roaring flame.

The orgasm hit you like a physical blow. Your head snapped back, your spine arching as the first wave of pleasure crashed over you. Your lips parted and an unreal, unabashed sound, a high, keening cry of release slipped out of you, echoing through the room. It was your first time ever coming and the sensation was overwhelming. It didn't just peak and fade, it rolled through you in long, rhythmic pulses that seemed to last forever, shaking your entire body, leaving your muscles twitching and your mind a complete blank.

Dean didn't move. He looked at you, completely mesmerized, eyes wide and unblinking. He watched the way your throat worked as you gasped for air, the way your breasts heaved and the way your body shuddered under the aftershocks. Beneath you, his cock throbbed and twitched painfully against the constraint of his pants, a visible manifestation of the agony and ecstasy of watching you shatter.

As the waves finally subsided, leaving you limp and floating, you collapsed onto his chest with a sultry whine, skin damp with sweat and breathing heavy and synchronized with his as you caught your breath.

The silence of the room was thick, charged with the lingering electricity of the moment.

You swallowed hard while still catching your breath, voice a mere whisper against his skin. "Is it too soon to say that was the best orgasm I've ever had?"

Dean let out a heavy, uneven breath beneath you, the sound shuddering straight through his chest and into yours. Only then did his hands finally leave your thighs. Slowly, almost cautiously, they slid upward along your sides until his palms settled against your back.

Gone was the restraint that had kept his fingers tense and controlled earlier. Now he touched you lightly, almost reverently, fingertips drifting along the curve of your spine over the lace while he tried to steady his breathing. Every few seconds his hands flexed against you instinctively, like he still couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

“Definitely the best one I’ve ever had,” he murmured.

His voice sounded wrecked, dizzy, like simply watching you come apart on top of him had pushed him somewhere dangerously close to losing it himself.

You lifted your head slowly from where it rested against his chest, pushing up enough to properly look at him.

Dean blinked up at you lazily, pupils completely blown.

You swallowed once. “Did you…?”

The question barely finished forming before Dean’s expression morphed into something sheepish and amused all at once. He swallowed too before nodding once against the mattress.

Your eyes widened slightly as his hand slid upward from your back, fingertips brushing softly along your jaw while he looked at you with an expression so openly fond it almost hurt to hold eye contact with him.

“Am I still not deserving of a kiss?” he asked quietly. Half joking, half absolutely not.

You hummed thoughtfully like you were genuinely considering it. “You want a cookie and a gold star too?”

Dean’s grin spread slowly across his face, matching yours instantly despite the pleasure still weighing down his features. “Better than the survey.”

You laughed softly through your nose before finally leaning down the rest of the way.

The kiss was warm, searing and long overdue.

Dean’s hand moved instantly to the back of your head, holding you in place like he’d been waiting weeks to finally do exactly this. It started slow for approximately two seconds, soft lips parting against yours carefully, almost disbelievingly, before weeks of tension snapped apart all at once.

You melted into him with a breathless sound as his mouth pressed harder against yours.

Dean kissed like he did everything else, thoroughly.

His thumb pushed lightly beneath your jaw, tilting your head back enough for him to deepen the kiss, tongue sliding against yours slow at first, exploratorily, before the restraint he’d been clinging to all night dissolved completely. The taste of him, the warmth of his mouth and the low groan that rumbled out of his chest when you kissed him back with equal desperation made your stomach tighten all over again.

The kiss quickly turned messy, hungry. You could barely catch your breath between them, mouths reconnecting instantly every time you pulled apart for air like neither of you could tolerate the distance anymore. Dean’s grip tightened on your hair as his other hand spread wide against your back, dragging you flush against him while his tongue swept against yours again, deeper this time, making heat rush straight through your body.

So much for rules.

Seems like Six Flags had just been privatised for a single Agent Provocateur wearer…indefinitely.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

“No offense, but you’re not really my type.”

The words that left your lips caused a brief pause in the small, private room of one of your newest friends, Daniel Blake. There was a small smile on your face, your lips pressed together in an apologetic way as your eyes locked onto Buck Cashman, who was looking at you in a rather… puzzled and caught-off-guard manner.

It had become a ritual these past few days for you to meet with Daniel during your lunch breaks. He was the only one in City Hall close to your age, and the two of you had bonded rather quickly. It was one of those rather sunny Mondays where everyone felt the drag of a new week. You loved talking with Daniel—he seemed like a total sweetheart, and you never felt awkward during conversations, as he always made things easier.

And then there was his other friend, whom you weren’t very familiar with. A tall brunette man with a rather serious expression whenever you saw him with Mayor Fisk. You were pretty sure you had never seen him alone before, to be honest—until today, when he joined you both for lunch, or rather, was forced into it by Daniel, who was desperately trying to set the two of you up.

That’s how the conversation evolved—between bites of your hot dogs, you sitting on the chair next to Daniel at a respectful distance, and Buck perched on the edge of Daniel’s desk, only half of him resting on it. One leg was slightly raised, just enough for his neat, meticulously ironed trousers to ride up, revealing the strip of skin above where his black sock ended.

It was Daniel who did most of the talking, while you were more reserved in the presence of someone new—not exactly shy like a teenager, but carrying that quiet introversion of meeting someone you’ve seen often yet never properly spoken to. Still, with Daniel’s help, you were slowly stepping out of your comfort zone—until he commented on how cute of a couple you and Buck would be.

Your answer came out impulsively, in a moment of vulnerability, meant to joke and ease the atmosphere into something more lighthearted. Buck tilted his head slightly to the side. He didn’t look offended—not at all—but rather intrigued.

“Am I not?” he asked. His thick accent was present even in the three words he rolled so smoothly off his tongue. The weight in his gaze stole your breath for a moment. You weren’t afraid—just affected by the intensity of those brown eyes, as if they could see straight through you, reaching the deepest, darkest parts of yourself that you couldn’t even acknowledge.

Without waiting for your answer, the left side of his lips curled upward, amused. The very prominent dimple of his—even without a full smile—became more pronounced as he spoke.

“Who’s your type exactly, if I may ask?” he said, crossing his arms over his chest as the tip of his tongue traced the curve of his upper lip for a brief second. His head remained tilted to the side, as if he were deeply invested in your answer.

You had known this man for barely twenty minutes—which only reminded you how little time you had left before your boss, Sheila, would inevitably intrude to remind you to get back to work—and yet he had already left an impression on your thoughts, even if you claimed he wasn’t your type.

“Um…” you hummed, your fingers finding the edge of your skirt as you tugged it down nervously. Being asked a question you weren’t sure how to answer made you hesitate. You took a deep breath, glancing around the room before your gaze landed on Daniel, who seemed far more entertained than he should have been, his fingers playing with his lower lip as his elbow rested on the arm of his chair.

“I don’t know. Maybe someone like Matt Murdock?” you said, the first name that came to mind, shrugging lightly. You sensed a sudden shift in the room, a faint coldness you couldn’t quite explain. “I mean, he saved Mayor Fisk from getting shot, right? He seems like a decent person.”

Your explanation didn’t quite land with either of them. Daniel let out a nervous chuckle, glancing between you and Buck, while Buck himself looked completely unfazed, an easygoing smirk settling on his lips.

“Indeed,” Buck replied. Something flickered in his eyes, though you couldn’t quite name it. “But is he actually your type, or do you simply have a fondness for heroic acts?” he asked.

You had just opened your mouth to respond when the door to Daniel’s office was knocked on rather impatiently a few times before opening. Sheila Rivera stepped inside, her expression tight with impatience. She called your name in a warning tone.

You rose from your seat, quietly grateful for the interruption as you offered a polite smile.

“I believe in the power of action,” you said, before adding a soft, “Gentlemen,” as you crumpled the napkin that had rested on your lap—spread there to keep your skirt clean while eating—and tossed it into the bin beneath the desk. “It was a nice conversation. A pleasure meeting you again, Mr. Cashman.”

Buck, ever the well-mannered man, was already on his feet the moment Mrs. Rivera entered the room. He extended his hand for a handshake before you could.

A warmth rose from your chest to your neck as you placed your hand in his. For a moment, you couldn’t help but notice that no matter how large your own hand might have seemed, his was large enough to make yours feel small as his fingers wrapped around it. The contact lasted no more than two seconds, but you registered how soft his hands were—for a man, at least—and how warm his palm felt, noticeably warmer than your own.

You left the room with your heart beating rapidly, and the brunette man watched the spot where you had disappeared for a few lingering seconds. Even if he hated to admit it, he enjoyed how the scent of your perfume still lingered in the air, how your hair had bounced softly with every step as you walked away. It was Daniel’s muffled giggle that finally pulled him out of that brief trance.

He wasn’t exactly pissed off, but your words had dealt a small blow to his ego. And the way the young man sat there in his chair, wearing a wicked yet boyish smile as if it were all terribly amusing, irritated him in the most peculiar way.

“Shut up, Daniel,” he said, a subtle smirk woven into his voice.

His tongue ran along the surface of his teeth as he slipped his hands into his pockets, his gaze drifting back to the door you had just walked through. His lips pressed together slightly—a quiet tell of the thoughts beginning to take shape in his mind, and of what he intended to do next.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

It was Tuesday. After the lunch break you couldn’t have with Daniel—or even Buck, whom you couldn’t quite get out of your head for the rest of yesterday evening—things felt oddly quiet. He hadn’t been at City Hall, out with Mayor Fisk for the upcoming public announcements, trying to repair his reputation after the smear campaigns circulating online.

You sat at your small desk in the corner of the office you shared with Mrs. Rivera as her assistant. The room was empty; she was out with the mayor as well. It was usually quiet like this anyway, leaving you to handle most of the paperwork for your boss, who reviewed everything before submitting it to the big boss—Mayor Fisk himself.

The work was stressful. There was no room for mistakes, no allowance for anything less than perfect, and that constant pressure rested heavily on your shoulders. But at the moment, you weren’t doing any of that.

You had been given a new assignment—one that pulled you away from routine entirely. You were to find the person who had leaked footage of Daredevil to The Northern Star. There wasn’t much to go on beyond access logs: reviewing everyone’s computer data, tracing inputs and outputs, and checking for any undeclared external device activity.

You heard voices outside, realizing people were returning to City Hall. The door to your office opened, and two figures stepped inside. One was Sheila. And the other—

“I heard you were looking for the leak,” Buck said, his gaze fixed directly on you as he began walking in your direction.

Sheila walked over to her desk, gathering a few paper files from the surface before slipping them into her bag. She took her coat from the hanger and turned to you before you could properly focus on the man now standing behind your desk—right next to you—as he looked down at your computer screen.

“I’m calling it a day,” she said, then spoke your name as she slipped on her long wool coat. “You can leave whenever you want. That’s all for today.” She pulled her hair free from the neckline of her coat before glancing toward the tall man beside your chair.

“See you tomorrow, Mr. Cashman. Don’t keep my assistant under surveillance,” she added, her tone edged with snark.

A small smile settled on his lips, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes, as you said your goodbyes to Mrs. Rivera.

The second the door closed, Buck moved. He stepped closer, towering over you, both hands planted on the surface of your desk, effectively caging you into the small space. You could barely reach your keyboard and mouse without brushing against his arms.

“Let’s see what you’ve found so far,” he murmured, his voice low, resonant from deep in his chest. His chin barely brushed the hair at your temple as he leaned in, his head tilted just slightly downward.

For a moment, you forgot everything. Your breath hitched as the warmth from his body seeped through his jacket and crisp white shirt, even without him fully touching you. The proximity was overwhelming, his scent wrapping around you like a thick haze. His cologne blended with the freshness of aftershave—something he likely used daily, judging by the faint shadow of his beard against his skin, like a permanent trace.

You swallowed, feeling as though minutes had passed, even though it had only been a few rapid heartbeats. Clearing your throat softly, you reached for the mouse.

A quiet hum left your lips as your tongue brushed over them for a brief second. Your arm grazed his as you guided the cursor across the screen, explaining everything you had found so far, your voice carefully steady despite the effect he had on you. He listened.

Every so often, he responded with a low hum—subtle vibrations from his chest that signaled his approval.

At one point, his hand slid over yours where it rested on the mouse. Without hesitation, he guided it across the screen, clicking open a file as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Your whole body felt like it was on fire, a heat burning under your skin for no clear reason, which only made you panic internally even more. What was wrong with him? He could have simply asked you to open the file—or at the very least, gently nudged your hand aside—but no. He chose to cover your hand with his—larger, warmer—and then, as if that wasn’t enough, he left it there for no reason at all.

You tilted your head slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse of his face and the way his eyes were fixed on the screen. His bottom lip was caught between his teeth as his gaze moved across the lines of text, and you were suddenly, acutely aware of his scent—stronger now, drifting from his neck and filling your senses completely.

Your teeth clenched as you swallowed hard, your grip tightening ever so slightly—on the mouse, on your lap, on anything that might ground you.

When he finally looked down at you, a flicker of panic surged through you at the thought that he might notice your state—but instead, he acted as if nothing had happened.

“Well done,” he said, then spoke your name—instead of the usual “Miss” followed by your surname. The hand that had been resting over yours lifted, only to come to rest briefly atop your head, giving you a soft, almost absentminded pat.

With his face so close, you could feel the cool brush of his breath against your chin. And if you had been breathing normally, you were certain he would have felt yours just as clearly.

“I’ll let HR know about your hard work.”

Then he stepped back. Just like that, he gave you space—adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves as if nothing unusual had happened—before turning and walking away, leaving you alone with a restless mind and unsteady breath.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

Wednesday was the day where things started to get hard both in the city-hall and in your own mind. You were constantly lost in thought, thinking about him and it made your heart beat differently that made you sigh every few seconds as you felt sorry for yourself. Has it really been that while for you to get effected by a few minutes of proximity where nothing really even happened.

You were going up and down in the building, mostly using stairs instead of elevator as it was pretty occupied all the time and you didn’t want to stop moving in order to not think too much. But everywhere you went, you saw a glimpse of him somehow and you weren't sure if it was coincidence or not anymore.

He was there in the file room, when you went there to grab something. He was on the cafeteria when you got yourself a coffee, you saw him almost everywhere but near Fisk which was odd on its own.

It was late in the afternoon, when you had just stepped out of one of the smaller meeting rooms down the corridor, a folder tucked under your arm and your mind still half-occupied with the notes you had taken. The hallway was quieter than usual— most people were either in meetings or lingering near the main offices, and for once, you allowed yourself to walk without watching every step.

That was your first mistake.

You turned the corner too quickly. And ran straight into something solid— or rather, someone. The impact knocked the air out of you for a second, your balance tipping forward before a pair of hands caught you firmly by your arms, steadying you before you could even think to react.

“Careful.”

His voice came low, controlled, right above you.

You froze. Your fingers tightened around the folder as your breath stalled somewhere in your throat, your eyes lifting—slowly, cautiously—only to meet his. Buck. You could swear you never met someone with eyes like his as if it was a dark hole and you were caught in its orbit, pulled into it without putting up a fight with the knowledge of it was useless.

Of course it was him of all people you’d run into.

His hands were still on you, not loosely, not as if he had just caught you and was about to let go. It was firm, grounding even as his thumbs pressed just enough into your sleeves to remind you exactly where he held you.

You swallowed, your pulse suddenly loud in your ears.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you.’’ you started, but your voice came out thinner than you intended and that cause you to frown at yourself internally.

“I gathered that.” he replied, almost mildly but he didn’t move, didn’t step back and definitely didn’t release you.

Your back was dangerously close to the wall now— close enough that if you leaned even an inch, you’d be pinned between it and him. And he… he was too close. Close enough that you could see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the way his gaze lingered not just on your face—but on you, like he was assessing something you couldn’t quite name.

Your breathing betrayed you first, it was too shallow and quick. His eyes flickered just slightly, noticing the state of you and enjoying it without letting you know.

“Rushing somewhere?” he asked, quieter now.

You shook your head, a little too fast. “No, I was just heading back to—”

His grip shifted, not tighter but not gone either. One hand slid just slightly, adjusting its hold as if to steady you better—though you were already perfectly still as if he just wanted an excuse to have the pleasure of keeping your words at bay.

“Then slow down,” he murmured, your stomach twisted at the tone alone. For a second—just a second—you thought he might lean closer but his gaze held yours a moment longer before he finally, finally let go. The absence of his hands felt just as noticeable as their presence had and he stepped back as if nothing had happened, straightening his cuffs with practiced ease.

“Try not to injure yourself in the hallway,” he added, almost dryly. And then he walked past you. Leaving you standing there, back nearly against the wall, heart beating far too fast for something that had lasted only seconds and it brought a sense of déjà vu that left you completely fucked in the head.

By the time evening settled in, most of the building had begun to empty. The steady noise of the day faded into something quieter, hollower—footsteps echoing farther, voices fewer and more distant when you were getting ready to leave. Sheila was there with you in the office, telling you which files should be ready by tomorrow morning and all the boring things that you took a note on the small notebook of yours that you brought with yourself everywhere.

‘’Leaving already?’’ the voice came from the already parted door of the room; your head snapped to the owner of that voice that haunted your mind endlessly and he took a look at you for split second before handing Mrs. Rivera something that you didn’t see, as you looked away.

You checked your desk instead, it was finally cleared, your tasks completed for the day with the kind of precision that left no room for correction. You exhaled softly, reaching for your coat draped over the opposite side of the room and you moved to brush passed by him in a few steps. Seeing where you were headed, he moved on first and grabbed your coat before you.

Your hands paused mid-motion, fingers still caught in the lining of your sleeve as his warmth approached your back with your coat in his hands.

“Hold still.” The words were low, near your ear as your breath hitched. His hands came into view a second later —large, precise— as they reached for the collar of your coat. He adjusted it with careful, deliberate movements, smoothing the fabric down over your shoulders like it had been bothering him personally as he helped you get into your own coat like it was so casual.

You didn’t move, couldn’t really as every nerve in your body felt suddenly aware and you felt embarrassed with the possibility of Mrs. Rivera taking this gesture in a rather different way.

“You missed this,” he added quietly as his fingers brushed the back of your neck just barely but enough for your spine to be straightened instinctively, a sharp inhale catching in your chest as the sensation lingered far longer than it should have.

He didn’t rush, didn’t step away immediately but instead, his hands remained there for a moment— resting lightly at your shoulders, as if testing whether you’d move.

You didn’t, you weren’t even sure if you could as your grip tightened on the front of your coat when you stared ahead, pulse climbing again, that same heat from earlier creeping back under your skin.

Then—just as suddenly—

He stepped back and the absence of him hit you all over again.

“There,” he said, tone returning to something more neutral, as if he had simply corrected a minor detail. “Presentable.”

You turned slightly, not fully facing him with a composure thinner than you liked.

“Thank you,” you managed, quieter than intended and his gaze lingered enough for you to feel it even without looking directly.

“Mm.”

A pause.

Then, almost as an afterthought—

“Try not to run into anyone on your way out.”

Your stomach dropped at the faint edge in his voice.

And before you could even think of a response, he was already moving past you, just like before—controlled, composed, leaving nothing behind but the echo of his presence and the lingering weight of his touch as he bid good evenings to Mrs. Rivera.

The hallway felt colder when you finally stepped into it.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

Wednesday morning was rather difficult for you, mostly due to the lack of sleep you had gotten the night before. You had spent hours tossing and turning, his image etched into your mind like something carved in stone. His scent lingered in your memory—intoxicating, heavy, yet never unpleasant or suffocating. It suited him far too well, and you found yourself irritated at how much you had dwelled on it, to the point of losing sleep.

The middle of the week was always one of the busiest times, second only to Monday, which bore the weight of the weekend’s backlog. Wednesdays rarely allowed you to remain seated; instead, you spent most of the day moving up and down the stairs, carrying files that needed to be corrected, signed, or reprinted before they could be presented to the mayor by the end of the week. From there, he would approve or reject them over the weekend—and then the cycle would begin again.

The lack of sleep had gifted you a dull but persistent headache. Still, you refused to take any painkillers, stubbornly denying yourself even that small relief, as if it were some kind of punishment for the thoughts you had entertained. In a way, the discomfort helped—it distracted you, kept your mind from drifting back to him too often. But by the time lunch came and went—missed entirely due to the workload—the ache had worsened, doubling in intensity. You silently cursed yourself for not taking the pills earlier; now, it felt far too late, and you found yourself wishing you had listened to Daniel.

Distracted, irritated, and slightly dazed, you stepped into the elevator for what felt like the hundredth time that day. The weight of your work kept your thoughts occupied—until you heard a familiar voice to your left.

“You seem distressed.”

The thick, heavy accent in his voice startled you. Your eyes widened as you turned toward him, clutching the file to your chest a little tighter. The sudden movement let in more light, sending a sharp spike of pain through your head. You groaned softly, tilting your head back against the mirrored wall of the elevator, eyes closing.

“And you seem way too fine,” you murmured.

Silence settled in the elevator. You didn’t immediately realize the double meaning of your words—not until the elevator chimed and came to a stop.

Your eyes snapped open, a flicker of panic crossing your face as you looked at him. He was already stepping out, a pleased smirk tugging at his lips, his dimples deepening in a way that felt almost permanent. He turned just slightly, now standing outside the elevator with his hands tucked into his pockets, his gaze fixed on you—something dangerously amused flickering in his expression.

“I didn’t mean—”

“A thank you would be sufficient, I hope,” he interrupted smoothly, his eyes trailing over your flushed, slightly feverish face as the doors began to close. “You look fine yourself as well.”

A dumbfounded look settled on your face as you let out a quiet groan, dragging a hand over it in frustration. After everything you had already gone through that day, did he really have to mess with your head again by calling you fine?

You glanced at your reflection in the metal surface of the elevator from the corner of your eye. You were certain you looked nothing close to fine—yet his words still left you feeling oddly giddy, enough that the hint of a smile threatened to form on your lips.

You stepped out of the elevator and made your way to the file room—a space noticeably colder than the rest of the building. You had a stack of papers to stamp before getting them signed by the supervisor.

Quiet. Isolated.

Only the soft rustle of paper and the dull, repetitive sound of the stamp hitting the surface filled the room as you worked through the documents, slightly hunched over a desk that never quite matched your height.

A few minutes passed before the heavy door opened as if it weighed nothing.

You tilted your head back—and there he was. The current source of your unrest. The sight of him made your heart leap, only to drop straight into your stomach.

“You should listen to people more, you know,” he said.

That was when you noticed the bottle of water in his hand. He stepped closer, unscrewing the cap before holding it out to you.

“I heard from Daniel that you refused to take painkillers,” he added, as if explaining the confusion written across your face.

You took the bottle from him, but before you could pull your hand away, his other hand came up and wrapped lightly around your wrist—as if you might spill it, though your grip was steady despite the way your heart trembled.

“I like to test my limits,” you murmured, almost teasing.

A faint smirk flickered across his face for a split second—one you didn’t quite catch, your attention instead drawn to the small pill still wrapped in its foil. He popped it free himself.

You lifted your palm, expecting him to drop it there—but instead, the back of his fingers brushed your hand aside.

His fingers curled loosely around your wrist, then traced upward, grazing along your arm over the thin fabric of your shirt, stopping just above your elbow. His touch was slow, deliberate.

“Open your mouth,” he said, his voice low, steady.

Your stomach tightened.

You didn’t even pause to question it—didn’t stop to wonder why you were obeying now, after refusing all day. Why you were letting him do this. Why you weren’t pulling away.

You should have questioned it. You should have refused.

But you didn’t.

You were letting him.

With a flutter of your eyelashes that met his gaze without breaking eye contact, you parted your lips slightly wider. Somewhere in the back of your mind, a distracted thought flickered—if he had nothing better to do, like handling whatever questionable matters Mayor Fisk kept buried, things you had no desire to dig into or understand.

But the intensity in his eyes told you otherwise. It was as if nothing in the world mattered more in that moment than making you swallow the pill. The pill, of course.

The small white tablet held between his fingers moved closer to your lips, and nothing about this situation felt remotely normal. A faint, uneasy thought crossed your mind—you might cringe later if you let yourself think too deeply about it.

And yet, at that moment, you felt strangely suspended in it, almost mesmerized. Too aware of him, too aware of yourself, too aware of the space between his hand and your mouth. It left you slightly breathless in a way you didn’t want to examine too closely. You let him do it without question, which you knew—some distant, rational part of you insisted—was dangerous.

But that was a thought for later.

Your mind went briefly blank the second his fingers brushed your lips, warm and steady, as he placed the pill inside your mouth. The contact alone made something in your chest tighten unexpectedly, a small, betraying fluster rising up your neck before you could stop it.

You almost forgot to drink the water when his hand at your elbow guided your own upward, bringing the bottle closer as he spoke again—his tone no longer casual, but controlled, deliberate.

“Swallow.”

And you did. The pill went down.

“See? That wasn’t so hard,” he said, his hand withdrawing as he tilted his head slightly, studying you with an assessing gaze. “Taking care of yourself. Isn’t it?”

You nodded, quickly looking away as you handed the water bottle back to him. The heat in your face lingered longer than you wanted it to. “I doubt it will help at all, but—thank you.”

He closed the bottle and set it beside the files you had been working on, as you continued, quieter now—less steady than you intended.

“I didn’t mean what I said… back in the elevator, I mean.”

He was inspecting the files, his fingers still hovering over the edge of the pages as he pursed his lips in thought when you spoke. You were facing his broad back, his posture slightly strained as he leaned over your desk. His suit jacket was doing its job—perfectly tailored, perfectly put together.

“I know,” he said.

The words eased your wandering thoughts for a brief moment. You exhaled softly—but that relief didn’t last.

“I did, though.”

Buck looked at you over his shoulder, the line of his black suit jacket framing the movement as he studied you for a second before turning away again. Then, as if nothing significant had happened at all, he walked toward the door.

You watched him go, your expression tightening with something unsettled—almost frustration, almost confusion. For a split second, irritation flared in your chest, sharp and uninvited.

What you didn’t see was the way he subtly adjusted the contents of his pocket as he left—the crumpled aluminum wrapping from the pill still caught between his fingers for a moment before he tucked it away, the same fingers that had just brushed your lips.

A faint, satisfied smirk tugged at his mouth as he walked.

You weren’t pushing back. Not really.

And that, he thought, was useful.

That evening, when you returned to the house you shared with two other people—because, well, rent was far too high for a two-room apartment to survive alone—you were fuming.

Mostly at yourself. For letting your guard down so easily with a man you had only met that Monday. It wasn’t clever, and you hated how you had come across. The uncertainty gnawed at you—whether he had formed the wrong impression of you, whether he thought you were easy.

You shook your head as you let your hair down and shrugged off your jacket. Why should his opinion matter anyway? He could think whatever he wanted. What mattered was how you felt about yourself—and right now, you needed a mental reset.

You dropped onto your bed, your button-up already discarded on the floor along with your skirt, not bothering to change properly before showering. You stared up at the popcorn ceiling, trying to clear your mind.

But it didn’t work.

The memory of his fingers lingered—how they had felt against your skin, how his presence had filled the room so completely it seemed to press against you from all sides. The way he had leaned in, close enough that his chin brushed your temple. The way his hand had covered yours, grounding it, controlling it, as if it belonged there.

And worse—the scent of him. Still vivid. Still too close in your memory.

God, you were losing it.

You had never wanted someone like this before, and the realization alone made your stomach tighten unpleasantly. You let out a frustrated groan, kicking the mattress beneath you.

It was attraction. Clearly. But not just because of how he looked. It was the way he carried himself, the control in his movements, the quiet certainty in his presence—and those stupid brown eyes you couldn’t stop thinking about, the ones you irrationally wanted to see undone, wrecked of all composure.

And that was worse than a simple crush because this wasn’t just emotional anymore. It was physical and that made it harder to ignore than anything else.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

On Friday, you went back to work with a determined mindset of ignoring him as much as you could. You were faced with your desire to ruin that man and make him break under the amount of pleasure you were denying him, but you realized you couldn’t do that at all. It was a true disappointment, really. Especially when your mind went south every second you didn’t distract yourself.

Every time your thoughts slipped—every time your mind wandered even for a second—it went right back to him. Not to the frustration, not to the irritation, but to the other thing. The one you refused to name properly. The one that sat low in your stomach and twisted every time you remembered the way he looked at you, the way he spoke to you, the way he touched you like it meant nothing and everything at the same time.

You hated it. Hated how your mind betrayed you, hated how your body followed. You wanted to ruin him for it. Strip that composure off his face, make him lose the control he carried so effortlessly. Deny him whatever game he thought he was playing with you and see how long he could keep that same calm tone, that same unreadable expression.

But you couldn’t. And that—more than anything—was the real frustration. Because no matter how much you tried to twist it in your favor, you knew it wasn’t you in control here, not even close. And the thought of it kept you on edge, because that was unacceptable. You would not obey and submit to him just because he felt like it and then leave you standing there like nothing had happened. Even if you had in the past, you wouldn’t do it anymore.

The tension in your shoulders was heavy; you spent the day moving between carrying stacks of files and your desk, keeping yourself busy—your mind, your hands, anything. And you were in a rather good mood, because Mayor Fisk would be out of town—as far as you knew—and that meant Mr. Cashman wouldn’t be around either. At least it kept him out of your head for a few minutes at a time. The thought alone made your mood lighter. Not good or relaxed, but manageable.

With a bag containing your lunch in hand, you made your way to Daniel’s office. It had been a busy week for him as well, with all the fuss about finding the mole, and you hadn’t been able to catch up for a few days. And to be fair, you had tried your best to avoid sharing space with the man who kept you on edge, unconsciously, and you missed that normalcy more than you cared to admit. Something simple, something unaffected, something that didn’t come with tension sitting under your skin.

You knocked lightly before pushing the door open—

“I brought the—”

You stopped. A sharp inhale caught in your throat, your body going rigid at the sight in front of you. Him?

“What are you doing here—?” you asked, clearing your throat a little too sharply as you stood in the doorway with the paper bag still in your hand.

His eyebrows lifted slightly, as if calculating the audacity of your question about his presence.

“I believe I do work here,” he said, then added your name as he took a few slow, unhurried steps closer, hands in his pockets. He stopped in the middle of the room, his eyes moving over you without shame.

After yesterday—when he’d gotten the green light, he seemed to be waiting for—there was something different in the way he looked at you now, as if he had already learned something about you over the past few days. Something he wasn’t supposed to know yet.

“I thought you’d be out of town—with the mayor,” you said, stepping inside quickly and skirting around him before he could close the distance. You placed the bag on Daniel’s desk, putting something—anything—between you.

“You thought of me?” he said. The shift in his tone was immediate—lighter, sharper, and playful in a way that made your teeth clench.

You turned back to him, irritation flaring faster this time.

“No, that’s not what I—why are you always twisting my words?” you said, flustered and frustrated as you looked back at him. Your eyebrows knitted together as you forced a deep breath.

You were standing just as he was, your posture a little more rigid than his, your eyes locked on him as the subtle movement at the corner of his mouth deepened, his dimples sinking into that smooth skin of his.

“I do not,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “You seem a bit tense today.”

“I am not,” you said, your words betraying you after his earlier comment, and you hated how easily you fell into keeping up with him. You sighed, fingers brushing through your hair as the heat in the room felt even more unbearable with the frustration building inside you. “Where is Daniel?” you asked.

“Not here,” he said. That made you roll your eyes.

“Yeah, no way,” you muttered, taking off your jacket and dropping it onto the desk beside the brown paper bag you had been so eager to eat from moments ago. Now your stomach felt tight for an entirely different reason.

You moved toward the door again—quick, decisive—because you weren’t doing this. Not today. Not ever again.

But this time, he didn’t let you pass. His hand caught your elbow, firm enough to stop you mid-step, pulling you back just enough that your balance shifted—and suddenly you were too close.

Your breath hitched as your chest brushed his, the contact brief but enough to send heat rushing through you, making your frustration spike even higher.

“That was disrespectful,” he said, his voice low as his gaze moved over your face. And for a moment—just a moment—you almost gave in to his charm, almost forgot why you were angry. But it came back just as quickly, sharper and stronger.

“You know what is disrespectful?” you said, your chest rising and falling with a sudden heat of confrontation. “This game you’re playing.”

“I am not quite sure of your implication.”

“Don’t,” you cut in, shaking your head slightly. “Don’t play dumb with me, Cashman. Until Monday we didn’t even know each other, and now it’s like you’ve made it your personal mission to—what? Linger? Hover? Touch whenever you feel like it?”

“Why would I do that when I know I’m not your type at all,” he said—and something in his tone shifted. The teasing you were used to thinned out, replaced by something sharper.

Your lips parted, a soft scoff caught between a laugh and surprise as they curved upward slightly.

Oh.

So that was it.

A slow breath left you, your tongue pressing briefly against the inside of your cheek as your eyes stayed locked on his—really looking at him this time. Not avoiding, not dodging.

“You’re unbelievable,” you muttered, though there was no real bite to it—just heat and frustration, with something dangerously close to amusement creeping in where irritation had been. Your head tilted slightly as you mirrored him.

“You’ve been doing all of this…” you gestured vaguely between the two of you, stepping closer instead of away, closing the space yourself “…because I said you’re not my type?”

It was your turn to take in the moment now, even if you were still irritated that he had been toying with you. The tension between you burned louder than anything else.

He didn’t step back—because of course he wouldn’t. His gaze dropped briefly to your lips, just for a second, but you caught it this time and didn’t let it pass.

“That bothered you that much?” you pressed, your voice softer now, almost coaxing.

“It did not.”

“It did,” you shot back immediately—but you didn’t step away, didn’t break eye contact, and if anything, you stepped closer.

Close enough now that the air shifted, and you could feel the warmth of him without touching. Your pulse picked up, but you didn’t retreat, because you saw the way his lips parted slightly—and how he swallowed tightly afterward.

Your hand moved lightly and deliberately before you could overthink it, fingers catching the front of his tie just enough to keep him there, this close.

“You want me to want you,” you said, not as a question but as a statement.

Your grip tightened slightly—not enough to wrinkle the fabric, but enough to make the gesture intentional.

“And that’s the game, isn’t it?”

“You said you believe in the power of act,” he said, his voice a low murmur. “I merely followed it.”

Silence stretched between you, thick, heavy, and charged as your breaths mingled. His eyes dropped again—slower this time—taking in the way your hand held him, the way you hadn’t stepped away, the way you were the one closing the distance now. And for the first time, he didn’t look entirely in control.

That realization sent something sharp through you. Something bold and reckless enough to make your thoughts scatter.

Your breath hitched as you pulled him a fraction closer—not enough to crash into him, just enough to erase the last inch of space—before you crashed your lips against his. A muffled sound escaped him, and you moved with him as you took a step forward, pressing him back against the wall.

This was reckless. Dangerous. Anyone could walk in, could see the state of you, and how his hands couldn’t stay still—one at your waist, the other sliding upward until it tangled in your hair, pulling just enough to make you gasp.

One of your hands was still gripping his tie, now wrapped around your wrist as you tried to hold onto control after days of being toyed with. That frustration made your other hand move to his neck, fingers pressing lightly at the sides of his windpipes just enough to make him light-headed as you nibbled at his lip, earning a low, breathy sound that you swallowed eagerly before pulling back just enough to meet his eyes.

But he was impatient.

With a shift of his arm around your waist, he turned you, pinning you against the wall instead—this time with you trapped beneath him.

“Are you aware what kind of self-control it took for me to not cram you into places where no one could hear you?” he said, his voice slightly unsteady, his lips glossy from your kisses. He looked desperate—on the verge of snapping, of asking for more. His head dipped, helpless in a way that made it clear how much he wanted you, and you could feel it in the way he breathed you in.

His lips pressed just under your ear, against the tender skin, leaving an open-mouthed kiss that made your back arch slightly against the wall despite yourself.

Your fingers tightened around his tie instinctively.

His breath was warm—too warm—spilling across your skin as he lingered there, not rushing, not taking more than he already had. And somehow, that restraint made everything worse. Made you worse.

A shaky exhale slipped past your lips, your grip on his throat loosening just enough to slide down to his collar instead, bunching the fabric between your fingers as you tilted your head back against the wall.

“You’re the one who started this,” you murmured, though your voice lacked the bite it had earlier—softer now, pulled thin by how close he was, how overwhelming he felt without even doing much at all.

He looked so composed, yet so undone at the same time.

A quiet sound left him, something between a breath and a restrained laugh.

“Did I?” he whispered, his lips brushing just beneath your ear again—not quite kissing this time, just close enough to drive you insane.

Your stomach tightened. Your hands moved again—one still tangled in his tie, the other sliding up to his jaw, forcing his face up just enough so you could look at him properly. Really look.

His composure wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t untouched either. His breathing was heavier now, his lips slightly parted, his gaze darker than you’d seen before—all that control still there, but strained at the edges.

And that made you laugh softly.

‘’This is so stupid,’’ you whispered, smile still etched on your face and the sight of you almost brought a smile into his own face.

And that made you laugh softly.

“This is so stupid,” you whispered, a faint smile still etched on your lips, though your breathing hadn’t quite settled. The sight of you almost pulled a smile from him too—almost, but not quite.

Instead, his gaze lingered on you, heavier now, slower, like he was trying to memorize the exact shape of your expression. His thumb brushed absentmindedly against your jaw where your hand still held him, grounding you there as if he had no intention of letting go.

“Is it?” he murmured, voice lower than before, less teasing now and something closer to restrained.

Your smile faltered slightly at the shift, your fingers tightening again around his tie without thinking.

“You’re still doing it,” you said quietly, though it came out softer than you intended. Less accusation, more awareness.

His eyes flicked to your mouth again— brief but unmistakable.

“Doing what?”

You huffed a small breath through your nose, shaking your head slightly as if that would clear the haze between you.

“Acting like you’re in control,” you said. “When you clearly aren’t.”

That caused a subtle shift in him—barely there, but enough. His jaw tensed for a second, breath catching like he’d been hit with something he didn’t quite expect you to say out loud. And then, slowly, his hand at your waist tightened certainly.

“Careful,” he murmured, closer now again, his voice brushing against your skin more than your ears. “You keep talking like that and I might cause scandal.’’

Your breath hitched slightly, but you didn’t look away. If anything, you leaned in a fraction closer, like you were testing him.

“Is that a threat?” you asked softly.

His gaze dropped to your lips again. ‘’I have a feeling you would rather it is.’’

Your stomach churned and clenched once again; the desire taking its toll on your veins. Your grip on his tie tightened slightly, but the sound of approaching footsteps broke through the tension before either of you could respond.

Daniel.

Your eyes widened just slightly, breath catching as instinct took over before thought. You pushed him by his chest, too quickly for it to look casual, fingers slipping from his tie as if it had burned you. Buck didn’t move immediately—just watched you for a second longer, like he was deciding whether to keep you there anyway. The tips of his ears were still red, his lips slightly swollen from your kisses and nibbles, and when you pushed him away, the space between you suddenly felt too loud.

You ran a hand through your hair quickly, smoothing it down as if that could erase the last few seconds, tugging your clothes into place with a sharp, distracted motion. Your heart was still too fast, too obvious in your chest. He adjusted his sleeves next, slow and deliberate, as if nothing had happened at all. Except his eyes—his eyes stayed on you, sharper now, quieter in a way that felt almost worse, as if now he knew how you felt, how you tasted.

The door handle turned as you were already by the side of Daniel’s desk—further away from Buck—as you tried to regain some self-control, stepping aside and grabbing the nearest excuse of normality you could find: your posture, your breath, your expression.

Daniel’s voice came in right after, casual, unaware.

“I see you two get on well,” said Daniel, his slight lisp softening his words and a sweet, wicked smile on his face.

His words sent a subtle wave of panic through you. Did he see? No, he couldn’t have. It was impossible. Was there a camera in the room he could check from his phone? That was ridiculous. The last thought that lingered was that he might have heard something—but even that unraveled when Buck began speaking, smoothly taking control of the conversation and making it clear Daniel was simply… mocking.

“Miss Charming is rather reserved, as I perceived,” said Buck, not breaking eye contact with you as his thumb slowly brushed across his bottom lip, as if wiping something away, a smirk forming that only you could understand the weight of.

You remembered the exact moment because your brain had genuinely stopped functioning for a second. He was laughing at something one of his teammates said, broad shoulders stretching beneath a dark grey shirt, hair messy like he’d been running his hands through it all night. Effortlessly attractive in the kind of way that almost irritated you immediately.

Then Summer yelled, “Dean!” across the room, and suddenly his attention shifted toward you.

“This is my friend,” she explained once he reached you both. “Try not to flirt with her.”

Dean’s mouth curved slowly into a grin. “No promises.”

Your face burned instantly while Summer groaned dramatically that should have been your second warning. The first warning had been the fact that he was Dean Di Laurentis. Everybody knew who he was. One of Briar’s hockey stars, he was rich, cocky, and charming. The kind of guy girls obsessed over even when they knew better. Especially when they knew better. You heard stories about him constantly. Dean hooking up with girls after parties. Dean leaving bars with someone new every weekend. Dean flirting with literally anything that breathed. And honestly? You weren’t stupid.

Guys like Dean didn’t fall for girls like you. At most, you figured you’d become another temporary distraction before he moved on to someone prettier, louder, more exciting. So, you buried the crush immediately beneath layers of common sense and convinced yourself it didn’t matter. It became easier once you and Summer got closer.

By sophomore year, she was your best friend, which meant Dean became impossible to avoid. You saw him constantly after that. At family dinners when Summer invited you over because she “didn’t want to deal with Dean alone.” At hockey games where he’d smirk at you from the ice whenever he caught you watching. At parties where he somehow always ended up next to you, stealing drinks from your hand or teasing you until you rolled your eyes.

“You know,” he said one night while leaning against the kitchen counter beside you, “you’d be a lot nicer to me if you admitted I’m your favourite Di Laurentis.”

Summer snorted from across the room. “He’s not even my favourite Di Laurentis.”

Dean clutched his chest dramatically. “That’s cold, Summers.”

You laughed despite yourself, and Dean looked at you immediately like the sound had pulled him in automatically. That happened a lot. Little moments that didn’t mean anything. At least, they weren’t supposed to. Like Dean always sitting beside you instead of across from you. Or the way he’d casually drape an arm over your shoulders during movie nights like it was instinctive. Or how he always greeted you first whenever you walked into a room.

But Dean was naturally affectionate and naturally flirtatious. You saw him act charming with everyone, so you trained yourself not to read into it. Even when your stupid heart wanted to, especially then, because underneath the attraction was something worse: comfort. Dean made people feel seen. That was the dangerous thing about him. He paid attention in ways you didn’t expect from someone with his reputation. He remembered tiny details you mentioned in passing. Your coffee order. The classes that are stressing you out. The fact that crowded parties sometimes overwhelmed you after a while.

One night during junior year, you were sitting on the porch outside a packed hockey party trying to breathe through the beginnings of a headache when Dean stepped outside holding two bottles of water. Without a word, he handed you one before sitting beside you on the steps.

“You disappeared,” he said.

“You noticed?”

“You act like I don’t always notice.” The comment hit harder than it should have. You stared down at the bottle in your hands while your pulse skipped awkwardly in your chest. Dean leaned back on his elbows beside you, completely relaxed. “You okay?”

“Just needed quiet.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I figured.”

And there it was again, that stupid warmth in your chest, the kind that made you forget yourself for dangerous seconds at a time. But then you’d see him leaving with another girl later that night, laughing against her mouth as they stumbled upstairs together, and reality would settle back into place. Because Dean liked attention. He liked flirting. He liked women. And you were just there, you were safe and Summer’s best friend, you were practically family after all these years.

And honestly, that thought should’ve comforted you. Instead, it became the exact reason you started pulling back a little during senior year. Not enough for anyone to notice, but just enough to protect yourself. You stopped lingering after movie nights. Stopped texting Dean back immediately. Stopped letting yourself get too comfortable during moments that felt too intimate. You told yourself it was necessary because somewhere along the way your harmless crush had become something much more embarrassing. Real feelings, which was ridiculous. You knew better than to fall for someone emotionally unavailable. Still, it hurt more than expected when Dean noticed the distance almost immediately.

“You mad at me or something?” he asked one afternoon while walking beside you across campus.

You looked over in surprise. “What?”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I have not.”

“You absolutely have.” His tone was teasing, but there was confusion underneath it.

You shrugged casually. “You’re imagining things.”

Dean slowed slightly, studying your face hard enough to make you nervous. “You know,” he said carefully, “most girls usually try to spend more time with me.”

You snorted despite yourself. “Tragic for your ego.”

“There she is,” he murmured.

The fondness in his voice made your stomach twist painfully. So, you did the only thing you could think to do. You changed the subject. Because if you let yourself believe Dean might actually care about you beyond friendship, you’d ruin everything. Your friendship with Summer. Your place in their lives. The stability you’d built around yourself.

And for what? A guy with commitment issues and a reputation that practically followed him down hallways? No thanks. You ignored the ache in your chest and kept your feelings buried exactly where they belonged.

At least until the night everything started changing. It happened during winter break at a small bar near Briar. Summer had dragged you out after finals, determined to celebrate surviving another semester. The place was crowded and warm, filled with tipsy college students escaping the cold, and you’d just returned from ordering drinks when you spotted Dean across the room. He was leaning against the bar beside a pretty blonde girl whose hand rested on his arm while she laughed at something he said. Your stomach sank instantly, which was stupid, you’d seen this before a hundred times. Still, something sharp twisted painfully beneath your ribs, and before you could stop yourself, you turned around and headed back toward your table.

Unfortunately, Dean spotted you. You heard your name over the noise seconds later. You pasted on a smile as he approached.

“There you are,” he said easily. “Summer said you disappeared.”

“She sent you to find me?”

Dean frowned slightly. “No. I wanted to.”

Your heart betrayed you immediately, before the pretty blonde appeared beside him.

“Dean,” she interrupted sweetly, touching his shoulder again. “Are you coming back?”

And there it was, reality.

You stepped back automatically. “You should go.”

For a second, Dean looked strangely conflicted. Then he glanced between you and the girl waiting beside him, brows pulling together slightly like he didn’t understand why the decision suddenly felt complicated. You didn’t stay long enough to find out what he chose, because for the first time since meeting him, you realized you genuinely couldn’t keep doing this to yourself anymore.

You barely made it outside before the cold hit you. The winter air bit sharply against your flushed skin as the noise from the bar dulled behind the heavy door, music turning into a muffled thump somewhere in the background. Snow lined the sidewalks in uneven piles, the streets glowing gold beneath the streetlights, and for a moment you just stood there trying to breathe around the embarrassing ache lodged in your chest.

God, you felt stupid. You were the one who had convinced yourself not to fall for Dean Di Laurentis. You knew exactly who he was. In fact, everyone did. So why did seeing him with another girl still feel like someone had physically squeezed your heart in their hand?

You shoved your hands deeper into your coat pockets and started down the sidewalk before you could think too hard about it. You made it maybe half a block before you heard the door of the bar swing open again. Before you heard someone yell, “Hey!”

It was Dean. Of course, it was Dean. You closed your eyes briefly before turning around. He jogged toward you through the cold, jacket half-zipped and breath visible in the freezing air. His hair was slightly messy like he’d run a hand through it on the way out, and there was something unsettled about his expression that made your stomach twist immediately.

“What are you doing?” you asked before he could speak.

Dean frowned. “Following you?”

“You should go back inside.”

“I don’t want to.” The answer came too quickly. It felt too honest.

You looked away first.

“Well,” you muttered, forcing a shrug, “your pretty blonde looked like she was having a great time.”

Something flickered across his face then. Frustration maybe. “Seriously?”

You crossed your arms tighter against yourself. “What?”

“That’s what this is about?”

You laughed softly, but there wasn’t anything amused about the sound. “Dean, it’s fine. You don’t owe me anything.”

“Would you stop saying things like that?” The sharpness in his voice startled you enough to finally look back at him properly. Dean stepped closer, snow crunching beneath his boots. “You walked out like you were upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Bullshit.” The word came out rough and immediate.

For a moment neither of you said anything. The cold air wrapped around you both while people drifted past on the sidewalk, laughing drunkenly as they headed toward bars and parties and warm apartments. But the longer Dean looked at you, the harder it became to keep pretending you were unaffected. Because his expression wasn’t casual anymore. There was no teasing smile or flirtatious grin. There was something intense enough to make your pulse stumble.

“You know what the worst part is?” you asked quietly before you could stop yourself.

Dean’s brows furrowed slightly. “What?”

“I told myself for years not to be that girl.” His face softened almost instantly. “The girl who falls for someone she knows she can’t have,” you continued, your voice embarrassingly unsteady now. “And I really tried not to, Dean. I did. Because you’re Summer’s brother and you’re…” You let out a weak laugh. “You.”

He stared at you silently.

“You have girls throwing themselves at you constantly,” you said. “You flirt with everyone. You never stay with anyone for more than five minutes.” Your throat tightened. “And I didn’t want to ruin things with Summer over some stupid crush, so I just—”

“You think this is a crush?” The interruption caught you off guard. Dean was looking at you like you’d said something ridiculous.

You blinked. “What?”

He dragged a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply into the cold night air. “Jesus Christ.”

“Dean—”

“No, seriously,” he cut in, almost laughing now, except there was nothing amused about it. “Do you really not know?” You stared at him blankly, because you genuinely didn’t know what he meant, you gave a small shrug. Something in Dean’s expression cracked like he was suddenly exhausted from holding something in for too long.

“You wanna know why I hook up with random girls all the time?” he asked quietly.

You immediately wished he hadn’t brought that up. “Dean, I really don’t need details—”

“It’s because of you.”

The world seemed to stop moving. Your breath caught visibly in the cold air. Dean took another step closer, close enough now that you could see the tension in his jaw, the uncertainty sitting beneath his usual confidence.

“I’ve liked you for years,” he admitted softly. “And you’ve been completely untouchable the entire time.”

You just stared at him. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s really not.”

“But you—” You shook your head helplessly. “Dean, you literally leave parties with different women every weekend.”

“Yeah,” he said grimly. “Because none of them are you.”

The ache in your chest turned painful. Dean looked down briefly before meeting your eyes again.

“You think I didn’t notice you pulling away from me this year?” he asked. “You think I didn’t notice you stopped texting me back the same way? Stopped staying after movie nights?” His voice lowered slightly. “I thought maybe you finally got tired of me.” Your heart shattered a little at the honesty in his voice.

“No,” you whispered immediately. “I was trying to get over you.”

Dean actually looked stunned for a second, and then he laughed softly under his breath, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We are unbelievably stupid.”

A watery laugh escaped you before you could stop it. The tension between you shifted then. It softened but somehow also became even more dangerous because Dean was still standing too close. Looking at you too intensely. And now that everything was finally out in the open, there was nothing left to hide behind anymore.

“You really thought I saw you like a sister?” he asked quietly.

You winced. “Well… yeah.”

Dean groaned immediately. “That might be the most offensive thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Despite yourself, you smiled. And God, the way his face changed when you did that, like he’d been waiting for it.

Dean’s eyes dropped briefly to your mouth before lifting back to your gaze. “You have any idea how hard it’s been not to kiss you?” Your pulse jumped violently.

“You flirt with everybody,” you whispered weakly.

“Not like this,” he admitted.

The words wrapped around you slowly. Your heart was pounding so hard now you could barely think straight. Dean reached for you carefully then, like he was afraid you might pull away, his fingers brushing against yours before intertwining your hands together. The warmth of his skin against yours sent heat rushing through you despite the freezing air.

“I’m so tired of pretending I don’t want you,” he admitted softly.

Every ounce of common sense disappeared after that. You kissed him first. It happened almost accidentally, like your body moved before your brain could catch up. One second you were staring at him, overwhelmed and breathless and terrified, and the next you were pulling him toward you by the front of his jacket. Dean made a quiet sound against your mouth like he’d been caught off guard. Then he kissed you back hard.

One hand slid to your waist instantly while the other cupped your jaw, and suddenly years of tension crashed into place all at once. The kiss was warm despite the cold surrounding you, overwhelming in the way only something long-awaited could be. Dean kissed like he felt too much, like he’d been holding himself back for a very long time and finally couldn’t anymore.

When you finally pulled apart, both of you breathing unevenly, Dean rested his forehead against yours and laughed softly under his breath.

the two of you had been hooking up for a while now, but it was . . . casual. he was too busy for a girlfriend and you were too busy to try and change his mind.

sighing, you drummed your fingers against your thighs impatiently, waiting for garrett to come downstairs.

"is he even here?" you ask tucker, settling on talking to the most "normal" one out of all of them.

you had plans to meet garrett at his house today, but he wasn't exactly known for his top notch timekeeping skills.

he nodded, slapping deans hand away when he tried to reach for the spread of food that was being arranged on the table.

"dude, why do you keep making food if we're not even allowed to eat the damn stuff" dean huffed, throwing himself down on the couch next to you in defeat.

the blonde haired trouble causer turned to you with a big grin on his face, "so, what's the deal with you and graham? that boy doesn't tell us anything"

"i find that hard to believe. you're all his bro's or whatever aren't you?" you say, using your fingers to put air quotes around the word "bro's".

instead of answering, dean went on to pepper you with more invasive questions.

you huffed out a laugh despite yourself, "you're awfully nosey, you know that?"

dean's hand slapped against his chest in mock disbelief, "you're lucky that graham loves you because otherwise i would be-"

"he what?" you cut him off, not sure if you just heard him correctly.

"ohhh, shit" dean says.

the whole room went silent. tucker stopped chopping vegetables, logan paused his video game, and dean stared at you with wide eyes like a child that had just been caught sneaking candy.

a creak on the stairs broke the painful silence and you glanced up to see garrett stood there, his arms folded across his chest.

"what the actual fuck is going on down here?" garrett says, not moving from his spot on the stairs.

dean pursed his lips in thought, "i just told y/n that you love her"

okay, maybe it wasn't in thought at all. jesus christ this guy had no filter.

not knowing what to say, you chuckled awkwardly and pointed towards towards the door, "sooo, i'm just going to go"

you scooped up your bag and dashed out of the door before anyone could try to stop you, shutting it tightly behind.

even through the heavy wooden door you could hear the sudden arguments.

"jesus christ, dean. you're with a new girl every day and suddenly you can't have a normal conversation with one just because she doesn't want to fuck you?" garrett yelled.

the rest of the conversation became incoherent but you were sure you heard dean say, "how do you know she doesn't want to fuck me?"

your head was a mess as deans accidental confession actually started to sink in.

you didn't have a chance to make it off the porch before the door swung open again, revealing garrett stood on the other side.

dean popped his blonde head around the frame, "he has plans to kill me later so if you-"

someone decided to have mercy on you and dragged him back inside the house, the door slamming shut behind them.

here he was in all his glory. he had messy hair from the nap he clearly took not long ago and basketball shorts low his hips, toned abs on full display.

"see something you like?" he smirked, leaning back against the wall, the tension melting with every word he spoke.

you shrugged indifferently, "do you mean like or do you mean love? because who knows the difference these days"

he let out a long sigh of frustration, dragging a hand down his face, "listen, take no notice of that idiot. i never do"

"how come you don't invite me to your games? i mean, we've been seeing each other for months now and i haven't been to a single one" you say, frustration bubbling in your gut as words spill out of your mouth before you can stop them.

"i'm going to kill that little bastard- fine. i don't invite you to my games because you distract me. i can't focus on anything else when you're in the room and i can't risk being distracted out on the rink"

was that a compliment? it sort of sounded like one.

you nodded slowly, "so why couldn't you have just said that? why does everything have to be a mystery with you garrett"

"this was meant to be a casual one time thing, and suddenly you're in my house and you're talking to my friends" he says.

scoffing, you jabbed a finger against his bare chest, "you're the one who asked me to come over garrett and despite what you're clearly used to, i didn't beg to see you"

the audacity of men would never fail to amaze you. they ask you to come over and then wonder why you're suddenly in their house.

"can i finish my sentence?" he says, raising his eyebrows in amusement at your persistent rebuttals.

you shrug and gesture for him to continue, "if you must"

"jesus, what i'm trying to say is that it doesn't feel casual anymore. i see you more than i see those fuckers in there and i live with em'" he says.

"i'm not saying i'm in love with you ─ because shit, we've never even been on a date. unless fucking in a frat house full of other guys counts as a date to women"

"it does not" you add.

"i don't do girlfriends. you know this as much as every other girl knows this" he says.

the words taste bitter in his mouth. it wasn't a lie, he doesn't do girlfriends, but everything was telling him to break his own rules.

"wow, garrett, does this type of flattery usually work on these lucky girls?"

he grinned smugly, hands in the pockets of his shorts, "damn straight it does, baby"

your phone buzzed in your pocket and you internally groaned when you glanced at the time. you were only meant to be staying for an hour because you promised allie you would help her study for midterms.

"look, i've gotta go. i promised allie i would help her with the upcoming exams. we're all good, graham. casual it is!" you say brightly, jogging down the steps before he can respond.

garrett watches on until you disappear around the corner before going back inside to be met by the disappointed stares of his three friends.

"dude, really? i don't do girlfriends?" logan says, repeating garrett's earlier words.

dean sighed dramatically and shook his head, "yeah, you really fucked that one up"

garrett points a finger at dean accusatorially, "it's your fucking fault, dipshit. this is the last time i ever tell you anything" he says, breezing past everyone as he grabbed a beer from the fridge.

"practice is tomorrow" tucker says in concern, nodding towards the beer in garrett's hand.

"lay off, tuck" he says, jaw tense as he sat in his usual spot on the couch.

logan being the more empathetic one of the group, decided to take over the conversation before it got out of hand.

"so, you do love her then?" he says carefully, not wanting to end up on garrett's shit list along with dean.

garrett cursed and leaned back against the couch, "yeah? no? how am i meant to know if i love someone or not"

"the fact that you're instrested in more than just sleeping with her is answer enough" logan says, knowing garrett hasn't given this much time or thought to one person before.

"fuck this ─ someone pass me another beer" garrett muttered, needing a way to turn his mind off for a couple of hours.

a hungover practice it was.

She’s murmuring to herself under her breath, quiet enough that he can’t catch every word, but enough that pieces drift across the table anyway.

“Cephalic vein,” she says softly, tapping her own forearm. “Lateral. Basilic is medial. Median cubital…”

Garrett glances up without meaning to. She doesn’t notice. She’s too busy turning her arm over, then back again, trying to angle it like the diagram in her textbook. Her brows knit together. She traces from her wrist toward the inside of her elbow, then huffs when she has to twist awkwardly to see the spot she wants.

It’s a small sound. Barely anything. Garrett looks at her for about three seconds too long, then reaches across the table and lays his arm in front of her, palm up.

She blinks down at it. Then at him. “What are you doing?”

He keeps his face neutral, which takes actual effort. “You can use mine. Easier than trying to dislocate your shoulder.”

Her eyes narrow slightly, like she’s searching for the joke. Fair, probably. He’s not earned the benefit of the doubt. “You’re offering me your arm?”

“Generous, I know.”

“Wow. For science?”

“For science,” he says solemnly.

That gets the smallest smile out of her, there and gone fast enough that she probably thinks he misses it. He doesn’t. Garrett notices things, especially with her.

He notices the way she bites the inside of her cheek when she’s trying not to laugh, the way she taps her pen twice before writing something down, the way she pretends she’s not cold in his room until he throws a hoodie at her and she acts like accepting it is some great sacrifice.

She reaches for him carefully, fingertips landing first at his wrist, and okay, that’s fine. Totally fine. Garrett Graham has taken hits from defensemen twice his size. He can survive a girl touching his forearm in a library. Probably.

“Radial pulse,” she murmurs, pressing lightly with two fingers. Her touch is clinical enough that it should not feel the way it does. “Thumb side. Here.”

He looks at her face instead of his arm. It seems safer for about half a second, then immediately worse.

She’s focused, lashes lowered, mouth moving faintly around the words as she works through them. Her hair has slipped forward over one shoulder, and there’s a pen tucked behind her ear that looks like it’s going to fall any second.

She looks tired in that nursing-student way she gets sometimes, like her brain has been running twelve separate tabs all day and at least three of them are playing music she can’t find.

Still pretty, though. Annoyingly pretty.

“Cephalic vein,” she says, drawing her finger slowly up the outside of his forearm. “Runs lateral. Superficial. And then basilic is…”

She moves to the other side of his arm, and Garrett lets her. Keeps still. Keeps quiet, which is very mature of him, actually, considering the fact that her fingers are warm and light and dragging over his skin like this is just another Tuesday and not an event his body has decided to file somewhere deeply inconvenient.

“Basilic,” she continues. “Medial side.”

“Medial,” he repeats.

Her eyes flick up. “Are you actually listening?”

“Yeah.”

“Because I’m not teaching you this.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“You repeated it like you were being quizzed.”

“I’m supporting your process.”

She gives him a flat look. “You’re bored.”

“I’m reading philosophy,” he says. “Of course I’m bored.”

That makes her laugh under her breath, soft and quick, and Garrett feels ridiculously pleased with himself for it. Like a fucking idiot. Like a guy who has not been very clear, to himself and to everyone else, that he does not do girlfriends.

He likes her. He’s not blind or dead. He likes her in his bed, likes her on his couch, likes the way she steals his fries and then denies it with salt still on her fingers. Likes the little crease that appears between her brows when he pushes inside her, the soft shocked parting of her mouth, the way her hands grab for him. But liking someone and making it a thing are two different sports, and Garrett has never been in the mood to lace up for the second one.

Except she’s sitting across from him in the library with anatomy notes spread everywhere and her fingers on his arm, and he’s not thinking about easy. He’s thinking about how natural she looks there. Which is bullshit.

So he says, “That one got a name too?” because making his mouth be useful is usually safer than letting his brain continue unsupervised.

She follows his gaze to where her thumb rests near the base of his. “Anatomical snuffbox.”

Garrett pauses. “That’s bullshit.”

“Nope. Real.”

“No way.”

“I promise.”

“Anatomical snuffbox sounds like a bar Tucker would swear has the best wings in Massachusetts.”

She presses her lips together, fighting it, and he grins.

“It’s a landmark,” she says, still trying to sound serious. “For the scaphoid.”

“Sure.”

“It is.”

“I believe you. You know what you’re talking about,” he says, and that comes out a little less joking than he meant it to.

Her fingers still. Only for a second. Barely even that. But he catches it anyway, the same way he catches small movements on the ice before they become something bigger.

She looks up at him, and for one weird, quiet moment, neither of them does anything. The library hums around them. Someone turns a page too loudly a few tables away. A chair scrapes. Garrett’s textbook sits open beside his elbow, neglected and deeply unhelpful.

Her hand is still on his, her thumb near the hollow at the base of his, and the space between them feels suddenly much smaller than a library table has any right to feel.

Then she lets go. “Okay,” she says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. The pen falls out immediately and lands in her lap.

Garrett’s mouth twitches.

“Don’t,” she warns.

He bites his bottom lip to hold back a grin. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You looked like you were about to.”

“I have a very expressive face.”

Her eyes narrow. “You have a very annoying face.”

“Hasn’t been a problem for you before.”

Her cheeks go faintly pink, and Garrett, because he’s a good person occasionally, lets her have that one. He just pulls his arm back and reaches for his pen, even though the skin she touched still feels a little too awake.

“Thanks,” she says, quieter now, eyes already dropping back to her notes.

“Yeah,” he says. “Anytime.”

It’s nothing. It’s one word. Casual. Easy. The kind of thing he can say without making anything heavier than it has to be. Then she goes back to her textbook, and Garrett goes back to pretending Plato is the most confusing thing at this table.

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

Now, years later, it finally felt within reach.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right now it felt catastrophic.

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

The thought alone made you grimace.

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

Praying.

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

A few students groaned.

You sat a little straighter.

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

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

More importantly, you liked being good at things.

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

Professor Whitaker glanced down at her roster.

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

"Dean DiLaurentis."

Silence.

Jesus H. Christ.

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

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

Dean turned around.

Then he smiled.

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

His eyes found yours immediately.

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

He winked.

He actually winked.

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

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

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

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

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

Dean spent his weekends at hockey games and parties.

The math simply wasn't mathing.

Unless.

Oh.

Oh, god.

He was sleeping with the TA.

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

Honestly? He deserved the extra credit for that alone.

Three months earlier, it had started.

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

You almost always said the thing you were thinking.

Today the question was about Shelley v. Kraemer.

You had opinions about Shelley v. Kraemer.

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

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

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

You turned.

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

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

The room was quiet for a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

The last sentence landed differently than the rest.

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

Whitaker moved on.

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

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

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

You were already packing your bag when you heard him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I have a session at two."

"After three, then."

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

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

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

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

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

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

He handed it back.

You looked down.

Dean DiLaurentis 🏒 (ur partner deal with it)

You stared at it for a long moment.

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

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

"Wednesday, then."

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

You did not watch him go.

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

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

This was the conclusion you had reached.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elisa put down the spatula.

"Shut up."

"I'm not going to —"

"No way. You hate him."

"I don't hate him."

"Despise, then."

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

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

"Goodbye, Elisa."

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

You closed the door.

session one

He was already there when you arrived.

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

He was sitting in your chair.

He had a coffee on each side of the table.

Two coffees.

You stopped.

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

You were a black coffee person.

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

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

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

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

"It's foundational."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You looked back at your screen.

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

You didn't move either.

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

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

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

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

"I don't need a break."

"You've reread that page four times."

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

You closed the case study.

"Fine," you said. "Break."

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

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

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

"Daphne."

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

"I don't remember," he said.

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

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

"That would be the one."

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

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

"I just said I couldn't."

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

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

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

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

"Garrett."

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

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

"A wrong one."

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

You considered the question with the gravity it deserved.

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

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

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

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

"That's funny," he said.

"I know."

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

You didn't say anything about it.

Neither did he.

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

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

You looked at the citation.

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

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

You both looked back at the page.

Neither of you moved away.

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

"You always sit in the same seat."

You glanced up. "What?"

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

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

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

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

I know.

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

You looked at him for a moment.

He did not look back up.

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

"Yeah," Dean said. "Probably."

You both looked at your screens.

Neither of you said anything else about it.

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

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

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

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

session two

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

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

You had noticed that yesterday too. Filed it away.

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

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

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

"We just had a break."

"That was an hour ago."

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

You put your pen down.

"Fine," you said. "Break."

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

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

"What about it."

"That's the goal?"

"That's the goal," you confirmed.

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

You turned to look at him.

He was already smiling.

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

"Is it?"

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

"I don't remember that."

"Dean."

"It's a great film."

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

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

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

"God," you said.

He laughed. "What?"

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

"Does it."

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

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

"Please don't finish that sentence."

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

You laughed and put your head down on the table.

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

"Back to work," you said.

"Back to work," he agreed.

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

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

God help you.

You made it another forty minutes before it went sideways.

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

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

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

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

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

"I sent you three paragraphs —"

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

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

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

"Don't do that."

"Do what."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence.

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

"Say what you mean," he said quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

You opened your mouth.

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

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

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

Not about the source.

About him.

"Dean —"

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

You looked at him for a moment.

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

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

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

You stared at the cursor and said nothing else.

Neither did he.

session three

The third session was on a Tuesday.

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

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

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

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

Dean was already there.

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

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," you said back.

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

He did not comment on the seating arrangement.

That was somehow worse than if he had.

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

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

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

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

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

"I haven't checked yet."

"It's good."

"Okay."

Silence.

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

An hour passed like that.

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

You looked up.

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

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

"It was sitting there," you admitted.

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

"Dean —"

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

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

"I know."

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

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

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

You said nothing.

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

"Back to work," you said.

"Back to work."

You heard her before you saw her.

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

The heels stopped at your table.

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

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

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

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

We. You noted the word and kept reading.

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

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

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

"Dean —"

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

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

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

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

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

"It's literally five minutes —"

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

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

Then she left.

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

From across the table, nothing.

You turned a page.

More nothing.

You looked up.

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

"What," you said.

"Nothing."

"Say whatever you're going to say."

"I'm not going to say anything."

"Dean."

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

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

"Completely understandable."

"I would have done the same for anyone."

"Of course."

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

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

You looked back at your notes.

I would have done the same for anyone.

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

That one had convinced neither of you.

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

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

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

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

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

The doors opened.

"Wednesday," you said.

"Wednesday," he confirmed.

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

You were going to need a very good cake.

session four

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

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

Things had been a little strange since the fight.

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

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

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

"So," you started.

Dean looked up from his laptop.

"I would like to apologize."

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

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

Dean looked at you for a long moment.

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

"That doesn't make it okay."

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

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

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

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

"I brought us a snack."

"A lemon cake wrapped in foil."

"We've been here three hours."

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

"Good?" you asked.

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

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

Dean didn't say anything.

But he didn't look away.

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

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

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

You looked at your screen.

His knee stayed where it was.

Fine, you thought. Fine.

You did not move away.

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

You looked down at his hand on yours.

You looked up at him.

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

You turned your hand over under his.

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

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

You didn't move.

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

You had kissed people before.

This was categorically different.

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

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

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

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

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

Dean — you heard yourself saying. Dean, Dean —

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

A loud, deliberate cough came from the doorway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So."

"Don't."

"I was just going to —"

"I know what you were going to say."

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

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

"The cake was really good," he said.

"Shut up, Dean."

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

You were both smiling though.

session five

The fifth session was on a Wednesday.

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

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

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

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

You worked.

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

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

You were not examining that.

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

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

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

"It's good," he said.

"I know."

Another silence. He wasn't reading anymore.

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

"Doing what."

"You know what."

"Dean —"

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

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

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

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

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

"Okay." He waited.

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

"By me," he said.

"By anything."

He was quiet. "That's fair."

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

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

"What have you heard," he said.

"Dean."

"No. Specifically."

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

He held your gaze.

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

"And now?"

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

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

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

Just resting there. Like a question asked very quietly.

"Four more pages," you said.

Dean was quiet for a beat.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

You both looked at your screens.

You finished the project.

Professor Whitaker announced the grades on a Thursday morning.

You were in your seat when she read them out.

A plus.

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

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

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

"A plus," you confirmed.

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

"That was my idea."

"I agreed with it enthusiastically."

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

"Enthusiastically," he repeated.

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

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

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

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

You hugged him.

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

The hallway moved around you. Neither of you moved.

When you pulled back he was still looking at you.

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

You nodded. Looked at him for one more second.

Then you walked away.

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

oh.

oh no.

And kept walking anyway.

the wednesday after

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

Elisa looked at you. You looked at Elisa.

"Are you expecting someone?" she asked.

"No."

"Should I get it?"

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

You opened the door.

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

You stared at him.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"I heard the interview went well."

"How did you hear that."

"Beau knows your roommate apparently."

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

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

You took them. "And the DVD."

"Also for you."

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

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

"So this is."

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

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

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

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

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

"I did."

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

"If that's what you want."

"Most people would have just texted."

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

You stepped back from the door.

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

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

"I love caesar salad," he said.

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

"What's wrong with Steak Tartare?"

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

You had made it approximately eleven minutes into the film.

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

Dean went still.

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

A beat of silence.

"Harvard," he said.

"Harvard," you confirmed.

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

"I knew you would," he said.

And then he kissed you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I told you," he said.

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

You let out a slow whistle.

Hockey had been very, very good to him.

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

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

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

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

"Absolutely not —"

"Focus," he said.

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

"Stop teasing," you whined.

"Not so funny anymore, is it."

"Please, Dean —"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fuck — Dean —"

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

"Be a good girl and come for me."

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

"Dean — oh my god —"

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

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

You felt him against your thigh.

Oh. He was — yes.

"Breathe, honey."

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

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

"I need you inside me, Dean —"

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

"Please — Dean — please, please —"

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

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

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

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

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

"Do not finish that sentence —"

"— tits. I could spend all day here."

Your walls tightened around him as the second orgasm built.

"I'm gonna come —" you breathed.

"I know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You pulled his arm tighter around you.

You still couldn’t understand what had possessed you to agree to this in the first place, getting completely naked in a shared house and climbing into the bathtub with a guy you were barely starting to know, all because you were determined to stop being so uptight now that you were away from home. 

You also didn’t know when you’d started thinking out loud or why you’d picked this exact moment to bring it up in conversation anew.

"Explain it to me again," he murmured, flicking the vibrator to life, one he’d stolen from your dorm, making a point to drag the buzzing tip in a feather-light path along the sensitive skin of your neck, letting the vibrations sink in slowly to relax you and hopefully distract you.

A shiver raced down your spine even though the bathwater stayed hot, bubbles cresting just below your collarbones as you leaned back against the solid wall of his chest.

"What part? The ‘casual is all we’ll be’ speech or the part where I told you not to snoop in my drawers?" Your words came out clipped but your body betrayed you by melting further into him. 

He continued trailing the vibrator lower, now submerging it underwater and tracing lazy circles around each nipple, the low hum making the peaks tighten and ache. His mouth followed, pressing open kisses along your throat, sucking lightly at the sensitive spot just below your ear while one hand cupped the weight of your breast, squeezing the soft mound.

"Couldn't hear your rant about the drawer mid-sex," he whispered against your damp skin. "Your moans took over and I'm pretty sure you stopped speaking English at some point. So...the former." 

You let out a soft, humorless chuckle that dissolved into a moan when he focused the vibrator on one nipple, buzzing toy tormenting the peak with relentless and slow circles, while he pinched the other between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it with firm pressure and tugging just enough to draw a helpless gasp from your lips.

"I'm not sure what there's to explain," you managed, squirming as he guided the toy lower, skimming it over your stomach now. Bubbles hid everything below the surface, but you felt every inch of its progress. Your thighs parted on instinct when the vibrator finally reached between your legs but instead of pressing where you needed it most, he teased along the inner skin of your thighs, drawing slow lines that made your hips twitch.

"Humor me," he insisted, voice low and calm.

You looked to the water even though the bubbles didn’t allow any visibility and swallowed, trying to gather your thoughts. "Guys don't look at me in my country–"

"You should check the blindness statistics then," he cut in, a mix of seriousness and dry humor in his tone as his free hand moved to cup both breasts fully, squeezing with just enough force to make the flesh spill between his fingers. "I know you're not worried about it, but someone should be." 

The vibrator hovered near your pussy now, the steady vibrations a maddening promise just out of reach.

He’d decided so the moment he first saw you on campus, because the second you stepped into his line of sight, his eyes had locked onto you. He still couldn’t believe an entire country had somehow overlooked your beauty.

"Hilarious," you replied flatly, though your breath hitched hard as the toy brushed your outer lips. He circled without touching your clit, keeping the pressure light and teasing. "Uh...this is merely me learning how to be okay with being seen, touched…and... and–"

Your words fractured when the vibrator edged closer to your swollen bud. Dean's grip tightened on your breasts again, kneading slowly while he waited.

"Go on," he prompted.

"And getting to do what all of my friends got to do in high school," you finished, voice breathy. "This isn't a relationship…or fuck forbid, a situationship."

"Right," he agreed easily, no trace of resentment in his words. He lowered his hand to your stomach and pressed you back against him as he finally settled the vibrator's tip directly on your clit. The sudden focused buzz made you whimper and drop your head to his shoulder as water rippled around your spread thighs. "Because you're only here for a total of ten months," he continued, voice steady. "You wouldn't want to waste your time with me."

"Fuck...yes," you moaned, hips rolling instinctively toward the toy. "Yeah…yeah–that’s it." He pulled it away at once, tracing your pussy lips with maddening patience instead. "Please, Dean–"

"I'm trying to focus," he said, a grin audible in his voice. One hand shamelessly claimed your breast again, squeezing and lifting the weight while his thumb brushed the stiff nipple. "This is a serious conversation...can't have you moaning and ditching English altogether."

"The conversation's over. Get back to work," you demanded, though the words shook despite your best effort. “Isn’t this what you’re good for?”

“So bossy,” He chuckled behind you, the sound vibrating through his chest into your back as the vibrator hovered once more, circling just outside your clit without granting full contact. “I’m sure there’s more to this conversation, considering how eager you were to bring it up again.”

The warm water sloshed softly against the sides of the tub as Dean's fingers adjusted the vibrator once more, the low buzz sending ripples straight through your swollen folds. 

"Um…" You blinked hard, struggling to focus while the vibrations teased the edges of your puffy clit without granting any real relief. "Uh okay, yeah…the second I catch feelings I’m out. We’re done."

"Oh really?" His voice stayed calm, almost conversational but he pressed the buzzing head firmly against your clit this time. The sudden pressure made your hips jerk forward, a sharp moan tearing from your throat as you nodded against his shoulder. Your eyelids fluttered shut, lashes damp from the steam.

"I need to…learn how to be casual about things," you managed between shaky breaths. The denial from earlier still throbbed through you, leaving your body hypersensitive and desperate.

"This having an expiration date should already make it casual," he noted, thumb circling the stiff nipple in slow strokes that matched the vibrator's teasing pace. He obviously didn’t mention how often the thought of your eventual departure slipped into his mind or how frustrating it was that you refused to let yourself get used to his attention, too afraid of missing it once you left the country.

"'S not enough," you shivered, a whimper escaping as your thighs tensed around his wrist. Your pussy clenched around nothing, aching for more at the thought of what his dick could offer.

Dean clicked the vibrator up to the next speed. The stronger pulses dragged a broken mewl from you that went straight to his hardening cock pressed against your lower back. "Better?"

"Didn’t mean that, fuck…" Your voice cracked, hips rolling instinctively toward the toy as your hands gripped the edge of the tub for leverage.

"What did you mean then?" He pressed the question while dragging the vibrator in tight circles over your clit, never letting it settle long enough for you to build real momentum.

"I need to see other guys," you admitted, voice breathy and strained. “...and sleep with them casually.”

He immediately slowed the vibration back to the previous setting, the sudden drop in intensity making you whine in frustration. 

"But not on the hockey team."

You shook your head, fingers digging into his thigh. "Dean, we can talk about this later…just let me come."

He ignored the plea entirely, instead kneading your breast harder, pinching the nipple between his fingers until it ached. "Actually, it’s even better if he’s not a hockey player at all."

"Fuck…okay! Dean. Can you–" You tried to ask for steady pressure, anything to push you over but he kept the toy moving in lazy patterns across your clit and down your slick lips, denying you the focus you craved.

He shook his head. "I can’t know who he is. I can’t vouch for what I’ll do if I see you with some–"

"Nobody knows about me and you. I can keep a fucking secret," you gasped between moans, grinding your hips upward in a futile attempt to chase more friction. Water splashed over the edge as your movements grew frantic. “Dean, come on.”

You felt his gaze burning into you as he pulled the vibrator away again and a needy whine slipped out of you. "No dates."

"Why would I–?I don’t even have dates with you." you replied flatly, arching your back away from his chest in protest. The moment you did, he brought the toy right back to your clit with perfect pressure and your body melted instantly with a shuddering sigh, thighs spreading wider under the water.

"No talking about them either when we’re together."

You moaned louder, head tipping back as your body began tensing, preparing for its release. "I won’t moan their names during sex, don’t worry."

"I’m serious. Not even as a joke…you can badmouth them, sure." He felt you nod but from the way you bit down on your lip to hold in the sounds, he knew he had room for one more demand. His hand left your breast only to return with a firmer grip, lifting and massaging the weight while the vibrator circled your swollen bud. "But I do wanna know about the sex."

"Why?" The word came out as a drawn-out moan, your pussy fluttering with every denied pulse.

"I wanna know how I can make it better for you."

"That won’t keep me from looking elsewhere." Your eyes snapped open as he removed the vibrator completely. Your hand shot out to catch his wrist, desperation clear in your grip. "Okay okay!…you arrogant prick."

Your breath hitched sharply as he pressed the vibrator back on your clit again, harder this time. 

"Did I make myself clear?" He watched your chest heave, lips parted and glistening, your hand tightening on his wrist as he ramped up the speed once, then twice. Your breath hitched sharply with each increase, body trembling on the edge.

"Crystal," you breathed, voice breaking. Your body tensed hard, back arching as the orgasm finally crashed through you. A raw cry escaped your lips while your pussy clenched and pulsed rhythmically against the buzzing toy. Dean kept it pressed firmly against your clit through every wave, drawing out every last shudder until you finally sagged boneless against his chest, your grip on his wrist going slack.

"That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?" he grinned, switching the toy off at last.

“No, but I’m sure you are...” You breathed heavily, chest rising and falling, body still trembling from the intense orgasm. "Asshole," you panted, sliding down and fully submerging yourself beneath the bubbles.

He let out a slow breath, trying to push down the frustration tightening in his chest because…he was good at casual. 

He only did casual, so why the hell was this getting under his skin so easily?

Dean kept one arm draped over the edge of the bathtub, gripping the vibrator tightly in his fist as if it could anchor him. His other arm rested along the opposite rim, fingers clenched white-knuckled against the porcelain. He was trying, really fucking trying, not to reach for you, not to pull you up and bury himself inside you.

Still, restraint be damned. His free hand slipped beneath the water, fingers slowly gliding over your submerged shoulder and along your collarbone, savoring the warm, slippery skin. 

Just as he forced himself to pull back, your fingers wrapped firmly around his throbbing cock forcing a low, involuntary groan to tear from deep in his chest.

His head dropped back, eyes squeezing shut in anticipatory pleasure.

Oh, he was so fucked.

“This is the last time,” you moaned into Dean’s mouth. You were serious this time. You had to be serious this time.

“You’re the insatiable one,” Dean said, giving you a loud wet slap to the ass.

He wasn’t lying, you couldn’t get enough of him and the cocky bastard knew it. You had come over with the intention of completely platonic studying. You concentrated better when he was around, you had told yourself.

You were sitting on his bed, having used the spare key he had given you, when he arrived back from the gym. He was pleased to see you; he loved coming home to find you waiting for him on his bed even if it was for ‘platonic’ reasons.  

“Just going for a quick shower,” he had called as he stripped down in front of you.

10 minutes later, you were moaning in his arms against the slick tiles of the shower.

He dropped to his knees in front of you, the shower water was hot enough that the room was steaming but that didn’t stop the goosebumps forming at his missing warmth.

Dean gently lifted one of your legs over his shoulder, mindful of the slippery floor beneath you.  

Your eyes fell shut as Dean worked you with his mouth. He took his time with you, tonguing you where you were most sensitive. He worked a few fingers into you, speeding up his usually long wine and dine process. He was conscious the water would soon be running cold. He needed you to cum before that.

His own arousal stood painfully between his legs. He couldn’t think about that, not when he had the taste of you on his lips. His entire focus on the way your head was thrown back, lips parted as you moaned.

You ran your hand through his, now tangled, blonde hair. The water was hitting him directly from above and you wondered how he was breathing down there.

He’d probably tell you he’d die a happy man between your legs. He was always so eager to be between them.

His fingers curved in you in just the right way at the same time as he circled your clit. You came with a strangled moan of his name, walls tightening around his fingers.

He talked to you as you rode the waves of your orgasm. He looked up and showered you with praises, telling you how pretty you were and how good you were for him.

Once he felt your body settle, he took your leg from his shoulder, ensuring you were able to stand firmly before kissing his way back up your body. He pressed a few kisses to your mouth; you could taste yourself on him and it was getting you worked up again.

You pushed him back against the wall, fully intent on repaying the favour when the doorknob jiggled. You raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

“I don’t know,” Dean mouthed back. Nobody was supposed to be home for another hour.

“Dean, you in there?” It was Garrett. Dean’s best friend didn’t know that you guys were fucking, and really you wanted to keep it that way, but the panic in Dean’s eyes had your lips curving to a smirk, a playful idea forming.

You stood on your tip toes to reach Dean’s ear, “Answer him.”

Now it was your turn to drop to your knees. You immediately went to work, taking his dick in your hand. Your tongue swirled around the tip before dragging it along the prominent vein on the underside of his shaft. Your actions were deliberately slow; he liked being teased and you liked to hear him whimper.

The doorknob jigged again. “Dean,” Garrett called impatiently.

You looked up at him through curved lashes, raising both eyebrows in question as you slowly licked the leaking slit. Dean obliged your command, wanting to play your game.

“What’s up bro?” Despite Dean’s obvious attempt at keeping his voice levelled, it came out breathy. In reward for answering, you took more of him in your mouth, sucking around the head. Your other hand came up to play with his balls, he hissed as you fondled him. You loved how sensitive he was.

Garrett didn’t seem to notice.

“Open the door man, Hannah’s left her scrunchie in there and she needs it.”

“I’m…shower.” Dean was really trying to stay composed, bless him.

He put his hand on your head trying to urge you on. He was careful not to tug on your hair, he knew you hated that.

“What?”

Dean’s entire body twitched as you finally took him in fully, bobbing up and down his length. He couldn’t take his eyes off of you, loving the way your lips stretched around him.

He had forgotten where he was, his mind consumed with how you were working him. You couldn’t make sense of anything he was mumbling, a good sign that he was close. He whimpered, loudly, as he thrusted back into your mouth.

“Ew, dude, are you jerking off in there?”

Dean didn’t answer him. You looked up and saw he was biting into his arm, trying to suppress another loud moan.

You took that as a challenge.

You flicked your tongue over the head in the way that you knew he liked. Then took him in fully again. With hollowed cheeks and a flick of the wrist, warm, ropey, cum came shooting down your throat. Your nails dug into the skin of his ass as he held you in place. He wanted to see you swallow it all.

“God, I love you.” Dean never came quietly.

“Sure… love you too, I guess,” Garrett’s confused reply pulled your attention away from the orgasm-induced confession. You hadn’t realised Garrett was still on the other side of the door.

Dean groaned as you quietly giggled around his dick, the vibrations hitting his sensitive tip. You hoped you were laughing quiet enough that Garrett couldn’t hear you. Tickled with the knowledge that he thought Dean’s words were directed at him.

Dean pulled you up to stand, pinching your sides, which only made you laugh harder.

You smiled to yourself while typing. "Mine's worse now that I'm pregnant. Yesterday he tried to meal prep for me."

"Oh?" Santos asked from the next computer. "How'd that go?"

"He labeled every container by protein count."

"Sounds intense," Santos muttered.

"He is intense," you agreed easily. "But he means well."

Nobody thought much about it then. Because everybody in the ER about your husband.

Well, sort of. They knew he existed. They knew he packed your lunches sometimes. That he texted reminders for vitamins. That he apparently folded laundry with terrifying precision. That he hated when you worked overtime but still stayed awake until you got home anyway.

They knew he rubbed your swollen feet after shifts. They knew he was "ridiculously overprotective." They knew he called you "doctor" sarcastically whenever you forgot to take care of yourself.

They knew you adored him, but they didn't know his name.

And somehow, over months of working together, nobody ever asked. Or maybe they had once and gotten distracted by a trauma alert halfway through.

That was the thing about the ER. Conversations happened infragments.

So your husbands became this faceless mythical man everyone pieced together from tiny details.

And because you were basically sunshine in human form (You were the warmest, most patient, endlessly kind person), everyone imagined your husband accordingly.

Probably some sweet elementary school teacher. Or a soft-spoken accountant. Or maybe a stay-at-home husband who baked sourdough and wore cardigans.

Definitely not Brendon Park. Absolutely not him.

The first time most of the ER really met Brendon was during a motorcycle trauma.

The ortho pager had gone off twenty minutes earlier and everyone was already stressed. The patient had multiple fractures, a discolated shoulder, and enough road rash to make the interns pale.

Then he walked in. Tall, broad-shouldered. No greeting, no wasted movement, just immediate assessment,

"X-rays," his voice cut through the chaos.

Someone handed them over. Brendon studied them for maybe three seconds.

"We'll prep OR two. I want vascular on standby."

Ogilvie beside him started talking. "So we were thinking—"

"No," Brendon interrupted without even looking at him. "You were guessing."

Silence. Ogilvie visibly shrank.

"Comminuted tib-fib fracture with displacement. If you'd waited another hour, he'd lose perfusion."

The room went still. Not because he was wrong, but because he was terrifying.

Then his eyes shifted toward you. And the entire atmosphere changed so subtly that nobody noticed it except maybe Santos.

Your shoulders relaxed just slightly. Brendon's expression remained unreadable, but his gaze lingered on you for half a second too long.

"You've been here since morning," he said flatly.

"Hello to you too."

"Did you eat?"

The room paused.

You looked midly defensive. "Yes."

"You're lying."

"I had crackers."

"That's not food."

Ogilvie who'd just been verbally executed stared between you both in confusion. The Shark did not do conversation, yet here he was arguing with you about crackers.

You rolled your eyes. "I'm busy."

"You're pregnant."

"And?"

"And you require actual nutrition."

Santos coughed to hide a laugh. Brendon ignored everybody. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and placed a protein bar beside your keyboard without saying anything else.

Then he turned and walked away. No goodbye or no explaination. He just left.

The ER collectively stared at the protein bar. Then at you. Then back at the protein bar.

Santos finally broke the silence. "...What the hell was that?"

You unwrapped the bar casually. "He gets grumpy when I forget to eat."

"You know Park the Shark?" Santos asked slowly.

You looked confused. "Brendon?"

The entire station froze at the first-name basis.

"What do you mean, Brendon?" Santos asked.

"That's his name."

"No one calls him Brendon."

"Oh," you took a bite of the protein bar. "I do."

After that, people started noticing things. Little things.

Like how Brendon only ever lingered in the ER when you were there. How he answered everyone else with clipped professionalism but always gave you full sentences.

How you somehow never seemed intimidated by him. Everyone else treated Brendon like a shark circling bloody water, you treated him like an annoyed housecat.

One afternoon, during a particularly miserable shift, you were sitting at the station rubbing your lower back.

"God," you muttered. "My husband bought six different pregnancy pillows."

Dana laughed. "Six?"

"He said the first five didn't have the right feeling."

"What does that even mean?"

"I don't even want to know."

Then Santos frowned. "Wait. Wasn't Park carrying a giant package into the parking lot yesterday?"

You didn't look up from your charting. "Probably."

"And didn't he get irritated at at someone who bumped into him because it caused him to drop it all?"

"Oh, that was ours."

Silence.

You blinked up. "What?"

Santos stared at you carefully. "You and Park live in the same building?"

"Oh." You smiled absentmindedly. "Yeah."

Another silence. Santos looked deeply concerned now.

"You're... close with him?"

You laughed. "I mean, I would hope so."

Nobody knew what to say to that. Because there was no way. No way.

You were married, pregnant even. Completely in love with your husband, whoever he was.

And Brendon Park looked at most human interaction like it personally offended him.

Yet somehow he kept appearing around you like a shadow, like it was gravity.

The rumors exploded after an incident at the cafeteria. You had been off your shift for exactly eleven minutes when Brendon walked into the cafeteria still in his scrubs.

And everyone noticed that. Because Brendon never went to the cafeteria (He barely seemed to consume food). He scanned the room once and found you immediately. THen walked over carrying a tray.

Without asking, he switched your coffee with a different one.

"You can't have that much caffeine."

You looked offended. "It was half-caf."

"It was basically battery acid."

"You tasted it?"

"You left it on the counter this morning."

Brendon sat across from you naturally, like this happened every day.

You pointed at his tray. "You got fries?"

"You wanted fries."

"I mentioned fries once."

"You cried about it."

"I was emotional that time."

"You threatened divorce."

The tables surrounding you stared. The conversation sounded disgustingly domestic.

Brendon pushed the fries toward you first before touching his own food. You stole half of them and he didn't complain.

Actually, he watched you eat with this faintly distracted expression that nobody had ever seen on his face before. Like he was making sure you were really eating.

Then your phone buzzed. You checked it and groaned.

"The husband says I forgot my appointment tomorrow."

Brendon immediately said, "Ten-thirty."

You looked at him. "I know."

"You forgot."

"I remembered eventually."

"You remembered because I reminded you."

The silence at the table became defeaning, like somehow everyone was staring at you. Brendon glanced around once, clearly unimpressed by the collective lack of intelligence.

Then his pager went off. And before leaving, he reached down and adjusted you chair closer to the table because you'd been sitting awkwardly with your belly.

The movement was instinctive, like he'd done this a million times. And it was weirdly intimate.

The second he disappeared, Langdon sat on the seat that Brendon just occupied.

"Oh my God."

You frowned. "What?"

He leaned forward carefully. "Are you having an affair with Brendon Park?"

You nearly choked on a fry. "What?"

"That man practically tucked you in!"

"He's just—"

"You literally just talked about threatening him with divorce!"

"My husband!"

"Exactly!"

You stared at him in disbelief before realization dawned.

"Oh my god."

"So, you are!"

"No I'm not, Frank."

"Then why does The Shark know your OB schedule?"

"Because he made it."

Silence. "...Made it?" Langdon repeated weakly."

"He color-coded the whole calendar."

He didn't speak. Then you laughed, actually laughed. Because suddenly the misunderstanding was hysterical. But before you could explain, a trauma alert blared overhead and the conversation died instantly.

Unfortunately for you, the rumor did not.

Within a week, the entire ER thought you were secretly involved with Brendon.

Not openly. Nobody confronted you directly again because you seemed so genuinely confused by the accusation.

But people whispered. The evidence kept piling up. Brendon carrying your bag without asking, appearing whenever you mentioned cravings, glaring at anyone who stressed you out, standing suspiciously close during procedures if you looked tired.

And worst of all? The way he looked at you when you weren't paying attention.

That's what really convinced people. Because Brendon looked at everyone else like they personally wronged him. He looekd at you like you were something precious.

Then one night, the ER was hell. Every bed was full, three ambulanced inbound, a drunk patient screaming in triage.

You were exhausted, hormonal, and dangerously close to crying. Then one of the newer interns snapped at you.

"Can we get another attending to handle this? Dr. L/N clearly isn't keeping up."

The station went silent. Your exhaustion sharpened into humiliation. And before you could answer, a voice cut through the room.

"No."

Everyone turned. Brendon stood near the doors, having apparently arrived seconds earlier. The intern straighted nervously.

"Repeat what you said."

The poor intern paled. "I didn't mean—"

"You questioned an attending physician with ten years of emergency medicine experience while you can barely place an IV."

The room became deathly still. Brendon's voice never rose which somehow made it scarier.

"You will either assist competently or get out of her department."

Her department. The possessiveness in those words hit everybody like a truck.

The intern muttered an apology. Brendon didn't even look at him again. Instead, he turned to you.

"You're shaking."

"I'm fine."

Brendon's hand briefly touched the underside of your belly as he adjusted your position from the station edge.

It was gentle. So different from the cold surgeon everyone knew.

And suddenly Santos understood. Not the affair, but something else. Something much bigger.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

Dennis looked at her. "What?"

But she was staring at Brendon. At the wedding band hidden beneath his gloves as he reached for the chart. At the identical band you wore on a chain around your neck because pregnancy swelling made your fingers ache.

At the way you entire body relaxed when he was near. At the way he knew every tiny thing about you.

Not like a lover, like a husband.

"Oh my god," Santos repeated louder.

You looked up. Brendon looked annoyed already, like he sensed where this was going.

Santos pointed between the two of you. "You're married."

You blinked. "Yeah?"

Brendon closed his eyes briefly like this was exhausting.

You looked genuinely baffled. "Who else would we be married to?"

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

"You let us think she was cheating on her husband?!" Santos yelled at Brendon.

Brendon looked unimpressed. "That sounds like a you problem."

"You never said—"

"Well, nobody asked."

"You literally acted like you hated each other!"

You burst out laughing. "What? No we don't."

Brendon looked down at you. And for the first time ever, in front of the entire ER, his expression softened completely.

Not subtly or barely there, but fully. Warm eyes. Affection. Something that was gentle.

Park the Shark was apparently somebody's husband. Somebody's incredibly devoted husband. And somehow that was more shocking than if he'd announced he killed people.

And somehow, from that day on, things became infinitely worse. Because now everyone noticed everything.

The quiet touches. The instinctive teamwork. The fact that Brendon always knew where you were in the hospital. The way he softened only for you.

The way you could make the scariest surgeon in the building carry your snacks and hold your coffee and rub circles into your back between traumas.

And worst of all?

Now the ER knew that every horrifyingly domestic story you told about your husband had been all about Brendon Park all along.

Which completely destroyed their ability to fear him properly anymore. Especially after they heard him answer your phone one day with:

"Baby, why are you calling me from upstairs?"

The room smelled like sex and his stupidly expensive sandalwood cologne. 

Every thrust shook the bedframe and you were pretty sure Tucker was going to murder Dean later for risking structural damage. But right now? Neither of you cared. 

Dean leaned over your back, lips grazing your shoulder as he growled in that low, rough voice — the one only ever used for you, the one that made your stomach flip. ‘’You feel so good, babydoll. You love getting dicked down by me, uh?’’ 

He bit down on your earlobe — gentle but claiming — and then his hand slid around to grip your chin, turning you slightly so he could kiss you. Messy. Hungry. 

You were arching into him, your breathy little moan going straight to his spine.

Dean had had plenty of girls before this moment.

But none who looked at him like they saw straight through the act. None who wore his jersey just to piss him off. None whose brother would actually kill him if he found out what was happening behind closed doors right now.

That thought should’ve scared him more than it did — but all it did was make Dean move harder into you, almost making you lose your balance and fall off the bed.

This little thing between you and Dean had been going on since Halloween. You hadn’t been able to resist him in that unbuttoned aviator suit. There had been a few drunk kisses before that night, but you had never been to his room — other than to drag his sleeping  ass to Beau’s car one Saturday morning. 

‘’Harder, fuck me harder,’’ you begged, your eyes getting blurry as you got close. He slammed himself further into you, hitting places that made your back arch. ‘’Yes! Right there!’’ you cried out, clenching around him and reaching your high.

Although you were finished, Dean didn’t stop, following a few thrusts later as he let out a deep, raspy sigh, the feeling of him releasing inside of you making you shudder.

Your whole body gave out as he pulled out, feeling completely exhausted. Dean collapsed onto his back beside you, one arm flung over his eyes as he tried to remember how to breathe normally. Sex was never boring with him. 

You turned his head slightly toward him, his messy blond hair splayed across the pillow and his toned chest glowing with a sheen of post-sex sweat. God, that man was beautiful. Your eyes lowered to his neck, finding a red mark from your lips. The corner of yours curled at the sight. This was your mark on him. If you sit close enough, you should be able to see it from the stands at the game tomorrow. Unfortunately, this won’t be enough to ward off the puck bunnies…

Around you, the bed looked like a warzone, sheets tangled beyond recognition and pillows missing. How did you manage to do that?

A slow grin crept onto Dean’s face — the kind of stupidly satisfied smile only Dean wore after doing something incredibly reckless and wildly hot at once.  ‘’Turned out to be a good thing practice got moved,’’ he said, laughing.

You joined in the laughter, only to be interrupted by Dean’s phone going off. He picked it up from the nightstand, answering without checking the ID.

The second Beau’s voice crackled through the speaker, Dean glanced at you, then cleared his throat before speaking. ‘’Hey,’’ he said casually, propping himself up on one elbow. 

‘’Dude! Where are you?’’ your brother’s voice asked through the speaker, making you tense. ‘’I went to the rink to catch you before heading to Malone’s, but Logan said practice had been moved up and you left one hour ago.’’

Dean winced internally. ‘’Yeah. Coach had a call to make, and the ice was free so.’’ 

‘’Right. Well, I’m picking up my sister at her dorm and then going to Malone’s. You coming?’’

Shit. You completely forgot that you agreed to join the boys tonight. Hannah and Grace were going to be there and you hadn’t seen them in a long time. 

What were you going to wear? You wanted to look sexy, but too sexy would get you called out by your brother. And how were you going to make it to your dorm before Beau got there? It was mission impossible. 

While you were zoning out, Dean stroked a hand along your naked thigh, making you slap his hand away as it got close to your cunt. Absolutely not! 

“When do I ever miss a night at Malone’s?” 

They hung up and you smacked Dean’s chest, hard. ‘’What the hell is wrong with you?’’ You stood up and began hurriedly looking for your clothes. ‘’Answering my brother’s call while I’m right there. Naked. Are you fucking insane? Do you have a death wish because—’’

‘’He didn’t see shit through the phone, calm babydoll.’’ 

You found your panties in the tornado of clothes and slipped them on, but the rest was still missing. 

“You’re missing the point!’’ you said, spotting your shirt and jeans near the desk, right by Dean’s gym bag. ‘’If he finds out we’re seeing each other behind his back…”

“He won’t,” Dean assured, sitting up in his bed and watching you move around the room. 

Jumping in your jeans, you pushed that worry to the back of your mind and searched for an excuse knowing Beau will get to your dorm before you. Even if you were a fast runner — which you were not —, there was no way you would get there before him. 

‘’And where the fuck is my phone?’’ you grumbled in a panic, not seeing it anywhere.

To help retrieve it, Dean called you from his…and the loud sound of Britney’s voice filled the room. 

“WOMANIZER, WOMAN-WOMANIZER—”

Dean froze.

You froze.

‘’Really? Womanizer?!’’ 

Your face burned as you bent at the foot of the bed where your phone was blaring loudly and turned it off. ‘’Now is not the time, Dean.’’ 

You set this song as his ringtone a long time ago. A long long time ago. You were sitting with Jules, watching Dean making out with Kendall on the kitchen counter shamelessly. They had seen him kissing another girl earlier that night and, as a joke, said this song was written about him. As the night went on, you got drunker and ended up setting Womanizer as his ringtone. And you just never changed it. 

‘’What song should I give you? It’s only fair you get one too, right?’’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘’How about…Ah!’’ A grin broke on his face.  

‘’Baby, I can make that pussy rain, often. Often, often, girl, I do this often. Make that pussy poppin', do it how I want it. Often, often, girl, I do this often—’’

══════════════════

The second was when he assumed he’d be okay when you actually listened.

Maybe it’s because you were hurt, more maybe it’s because you wished it didn’t. Because it wasn’t like you had been dating him. There were no labels, promises or even declarations of love.

There was just Dean.

Dean, who had to get smuggled into your building past curfew at two in the morning when he ‘couldn’t sleep.’

Dean, who dragged you into his lap during movie nights at his.

And most importantly, Dean who kissed you like he meant it.

But none of that was enough to make the blonde want something real. So rather than putting up a fight, you left. Disappeared from the house and his life as if yours depended on it.

So gone were the movie nights, and sitting on his lap as the boys argued about whatever video game they were playing. Your naps on his bed while you waited for him to finish studying drills also vanished, just like his focus.

Because after eight days of radio silence, he was miserable and people noticed “this is getting weird.” Garrett announced on the ninth afternoon from where he sat eating lunch.

Logan glanced up from the couch “what is?” He furrowed his eyebrows a little confused, “she hasn’t been over in a week.” Garrett didn’t even need to say your name.

Dean froze as he grabbed a water from the fridge, knowing that they were talking about you. Nobody acknowledged how his whole body tensed, “actually where is she?” Tucker frowned as he basically lost his sue chef with your departure.

Garret couldn’t help it when he finally laughed, seeing the blonde, “oh my god.” It made Dean shut the fridge harder than usual “what did you do?” The captain added seeing how his teammate gripped his fingers around his water bottle.

Dean’s face formed a scowl “I didn’t do anything.” He grumbled, making all the boys sigh.

Logan made his way into the kitchen “that tone means you definitely did something stupid.” He pointed out as his hands rested on his hips.

The blonde rolled his eyes “guys just drop it.” He made his way to the living room, hoping the boys wouldn’t follow.

But of course they did “no seriously where’s your girl?” They knew him for far too long to know what was up “she’s not my girl.”

The words slipped from his lips too fast and too defensively, making all three boys visibly wince, “oh you definitely did something to fuck it up.

Dean’s jaw tightened as he knew they were right “I just told her I wanted to keep things casual.” It made everyone cringe when he threw himself onto the couch.

Silence took over the room as the boys sighed “you really said that to her?” Logan rubbed the back of his neck.

The blonde frowned immediately “what’s wrong with that?” He asked as the boys looked at him like he was clinically stupid “Dean.” Garrett groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Dean shrugged, “what’s wrong?” His arms crossed as he grew a little annoyed, “you know she practically lived here right?” The boys didn’t say it as a bad thing even, they loved having you around.

“And?”

Logan rolled his eyes “and you looked at her like she hung the moon.” He grumbled as if the blonde had fucked up everything for himself.

Dean scoffed but there wasn’t much conviction behind it “we were just hanging out.” He argued back as his arms crossed.

Tucker made a face “she wore your hoodie for like three days in a row.” When Dean went home once for a break the boys saw you live in the blondes clothing as it smelt like him.

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

Garrett swore in that moment that if Dean wasn’t his friend, he’d hit him “you are so stupid it’s wild.” He muttered as he shook his head.

It made Deans irritation flare instantly, “she said she was fine with casual!” He grumbled, growing annoyed that he was the only one getting interrogated.

Logan let out a snort, “yeah cause every girl loves hearing that from the guy they like.” The boy had seen how you watched Dean when he went off on these tangents about hockey, it was as if his words were gold.

Dean opened his mouth to argue before he closed it again. Because that part had been obvious, hadn’t it?

You liked him, hell, Dean liked you too. Which is exactly why he panicked.

Things with you stopped feeling casual weeks ago. Somewhere between the late-night conversations and memorising how you took your coffee to waking up with you curled up against his chest. Dean realised he was in trouble.

Real trouble, where his stupidity may have lost you, and that would actually hurt.

So rather than talking through it, he tried to put distance between you both before he could get too attached. Except now you were actually gone.

And the house felt like it wasn’t a home anymore. It was far too quiet.

Dean hated how he noticed that.

He hated how he kept glancing to the front door, hoping you’d walk through it as you spoke about your day before you kissed his cheek.

Hated how nobody sat on the counter as Tucker cooked anymore.

Hated that the berries in the fridge you used to eat straight out of the punnet with Garrett were now being put into smoothies so they didn’t go off.

Hated how nobody sat handing Logan his tools as he fixed things around the house.

Most of all, though, he hated that you actually meant it.

Because usually you’d be back after a day, roll your eyes as you called Dean an idiot before you kissed him.

But this time there was nothing.

No texts, or random appearances, you were gone.

Garrett watched Dean’s expression carefully “you miss her.” His words came out slowly as his face softened.

Dean immediately glared at the brunette, “shut up.” He shook his head as there was a gasp, “you actually do.”

“I said shut up.”

Tucker couldn’t help it when he laughed, “are we witnessing Dean have actual feelings?” He teased as Logan nodded “think I’m gonna be sick.” He pretended to gag.

It made the blonde sink further into the couch “can everyone get off of my ass?” He groaned, dragging his hand down his face.

Garrett was quick to scoff “no because if you chased her off permanently, we will never let you live it down.” In a weird way, the only thought in Deans head was that if he dated you and you broke up, the boys would take your side.

Dean groaned “just fuck off guys!” He grumbled as he headed back up to his room, not wanting to talk to them anymore about it.

But that night he couldn’t fall asleep in his bed as he found himself staring at your contact. The picture was one he took of you when you convinced him to accompany you on a late-night Dairy Queen run.

You had this grin that was contagious as you held your blizzard in your hand.

The memory should have made him smile as that night turned into a make-out in the parking lot after Dean got ice cream on your nose.

But instead, he found himself staring at the fact that you hadn’t sent him any new messages. The last text sat painfully untouched.

You: thanks for tonight

Dean: glad you made it back in one piece

That should have been his first warning sign when you said you’d walk yourself back to your dorm.

It was at lunch that he ruined everything “I think we should keep things casual.” It was said with such ease that it almost made you feel sick.

He said it like it didn’t change your expression entirely. Dean remembered how your smile faltered, and the way you recovered too quickly, “oh.” You looked at your salad that all of a sudden didn’t look appetising, “okay.” Your voice was soft as his hand reached for your knee.

Like an idiot, he carried on talking, “I just don’t want things to get complicated.” He shrugged and you swore you were about to laugh.

Like things hadn’t already gotten so complicated, like Dean didn’t already know what your laugh sounded like in a crowded room. As if he didn’t sleep better, knowing you were next to him. As if he didn’t almost let “I love you” slip from his lips two weeks ago when you fell asleep on his chest.

Dean couldn’t help it when his head hit his wall as he groaned; he had royally screwed up.

By day 13 of ignoring Dean, you were finally forced to see him again. You weren’t intending on coming along to Beau and Dean’s birthday but when the former cornered you in the cafe and begged to come, you couldn’t say no. Not when he said he wanted you there because he missed you and then proceeded to apologise for whatever his friend did.

You knew that you should have said no, you should have put everything you had in yourself to keep on avoiding Dean. But when your friends found out that you were all going, that’s how you ended up in the little red dress and devil horns.

Dean’s strategy that night was to try to focus on any girl around him. The distraction worked for the first fifteen minutes, until you walked in.

The blonde swore the music stopped, “shit.” Garrett patted the boy’s back as he smirked. You looked good in those thigh high boots that Dean always used to get so frustrated trying to take them off.

Dean swore you looked so good that he forgot the conversation he was in.

You hadn’t even bothered to look at him, far too busy laughing at something your friend said. And that seemed to finally make the culmination of what Dean felt the last few days hit him like a tidal wave. He realised he let go of a breath that he had been holding in when you finally looked at him.

Dean swore his body was finally calm again when you looked at him. Through the crowd of people, it should have felt like there were more people around. But out of nowhere, you smiled, it was the sweet one which knew how to make him weak in the knees.

He was ready to walk over to you and talk this all through, but instead, you walked away. Drowning into the crowd as come boy got your attention.

Garrett laughed as he shook his head, “you didn’t think that this was going to be easy right?” The captain shook his head as he went back to get another drink.

You played Dean’s game just as he did. As he flirted with girls, you let guys pull you closer as you danced against them. Because after all, if Dean was going to set what you guys were, you were going to listen.

Which meant that when you ended up playing beer pong with some guy who looked far too happy to be with you. Dean looked like he was ready to snap the guy in half “she’s doing this on purpose.” Dean grumbled as he left some girl to go and talk to Logan instead.

It made the brunette roll his eyes “genuis, she moved on because you told her not to expect anything.” He spoke in a duh tone as he sighed.

Dean hated that sentence because the truth was that he really didn’t expect you to do it. He thought you’d still be his.

Which was stupid and selfish.

Because he had gotten used to you. Used to the late-night calls, the way your legs tangled with his, and the way your eyes used to immediately find his in a crowded room.

But now you were smiling at someone else. Letting someone else touch you. And that made something ugly crawl up in Dean’s throat.

He knew he had no right to care, but he missed you, and honestly, as you bit your glossed lip, Dean knew the taste of like it was like water, he was going to be damned if he sat around and let someone else think that you were up for the taking.

So Dean moved through the crowd before he could even think about it “oh shit.” Logan let his eyes grow wide as he looked at Garrett “should we stop him?” He asked as the older boy shook his head.

They knew they should stay close to each the blonde though, in case something did happen.

You looked up when Dean came over, “can I talk to you?” He asked as he gripped his solo cup.

You blinked slowly “I am in the middle of something.” You turned your attention back to the brunette in front of you.

Dean laughed “should I go?” The boy asked from next to you.

“Yes.”

“No.”

Both of you looked at each other “I’ll just go.” The boy nodded to himself as he had a feeling that something was going on that he didn’t want to get into.

You sent Dean a glare, “no Dean here will leave.” You nodded as your eyes narrowed at the blonde.

Dean thought about it for a minute, “fine.”

His hand wrapped around yours as he pulled you away from the younger boy, “you cannot be serious Dean!” You grumbled as you tried to plant your feet “either you come with me and we talk.”

He turned around as he licked his lips “what if I don’t?” You raised your eyebrows as you raised your eyebrows.

It taunted him like a challenge, “I’ll throw you over my shoulder and then everyone can watch us have this conversation.” The warning made your thighs squirm, knowing that he was serious.

So instead, you opted to be quiet as you finally listened to him.

He pulled you into the bathroom as he shut the door behind him “you seemed pretty comfortable out there.” Dean crossed his arms as you leaned against the counter.

His words made you roll your eyes “you could say the same damn thing to you.” You shot back knowing that you were going to regre this.

You sucked at your teeth “you’re just mad because I didn’t get upset when you decided I wasn’t worth making yours.” You stepped closer to the boy “so you don’t get to sit here and get pissy that I look good tonight.”

The words were true, and boy did Dean wish you weren’t right “that’s not what happened.” He sighed as he stepped back against the door when you stepped closer to him.

He had the perfect sight of your boobs that made the dress look perfect “so you didn’t tell me you didn’t want me?” You pressed your finger into his chest.

Dean sighed “I didn’t want to screw things up with you.” His confession made him feel small “god I fucking think about you all the time and you’re not mine.” His cheeks felt warm as he was setting all of his cards out in front of you.

It made your expression soften slightly “I was always yours, you idiot.” You grumbled as you shook your head, letting out a defeated laugh “all you had to do was say the word.” You were it was dangerous when you fell for him, but somehow you still let yourself do it.

Dean smiled “you really mean that?” His hands reached for your hair but he was careful to not touch you “unfortunately, I do.”

Dean felt his heart pound in his ears “if I let you back in you better not fuck it up.” Your warning made him nod as he finally let his hands rest on your hips.

He licked his lips “trust me, the boys would kill me.” If the last week was meant to tell him anything, it was that the boys had favourites. And in the competition between you and him, you won by a country mile.

It made you laugh, “they missed you.” His confession brought a smile to your lips; you had missed those boys a lot more than you thought you would.

“just them?”

The question lingered in the air as the boy tucked your hair behind your ear “if you weren’t here tonight, it would have killed me.” His words made you feel better because, as much as you tried to avoid it, you had felt the same as him.

You ran your fingers over his jumpsuit. Top Gun was a movie you introduced him to as it was in your top ten list of all time greats, “Goose or Maverick?” You asked as you pulled the boy closer by his suit.

Dean swore he almost forgot how to speak “whichever one you want me to be honey-” you cut him off with a kiss.

It was needy as you pulled him forward when you arched your back, “well then, take me to bed or lose me forever.”

By the time you realized Dean Heyward-Di Laurentis was flirting with you, it was already too late to do anything about it.

Not because he was subtle, because he absolutely was not, but because Dean flirted with everyone in a way that made him difficult to read at first. He smiled too easily, leaned too close during conversations, carried this effortless warmth around with him that made people naturally gravitate toward him without even realizing they were doing it. Most girls at Briar noticed him immediately, and most of them reacted exactly the same way whenever he walked into a room.

You hadn’t.

That alone seemed to fascinate him more than it should have.

The first time you met him had been at a party during your sophomore year, one of those overcrowded hockey house parties where the music was too loud and the floors were sticky from spilled alcohol, where bodies moved shoulder to shoulder through dim lighting while somebody shouted along terribly to music in the kitchen.

You’d been standing near the back porch trying to escape the heat inside when Dean stepped out beside you holding two beers.

At the time, you only knew of him as one of Briar’s hockey players, though that was nearly impossible not to know considering how often everyone at this damn school talked about that team.

“You look miserable,” he’d said casually, offering you one of the beers.

You glanced at it before looking back at him. “You offer drinks to unhappy strangers at all of your parties?”

“Only the pretty ones.”

You had laughed then despite yourself, mostly because he’d said it so naturally that it didn’t even sound rehearsed.

“That line probably works on a lot of people.”

“It works better when they don’t immediately insult me after.”

“You survived.”

“Barely.”

There was something unfairly likable about him up close. Maybe it was the confidence that was accented by dimples, or maybe it was the fact that unlike some of the other hockey players, Dean actually listened when people spoke to him. Conversations with him felt easy in a dangerous sort of way, the kind that slipped by too quickly without you noticing.

You ended up talking with him for nearly an hour that night.

Then somehow he started appearing everywhere afterward.

Sometimes it was accidental. Other times it very obviously was not.

You’d find him outside one of your lecture halls leaning against the wall waiting for Garrett or Logan only for him to fall into step beside you afterward, like it was the most natural thing in the world. He’d steal the seat next to yours in class despite it being a lecture hall with plenty of open seats.

He'd distract you while you studied, complain dramatically whenever you refused to help him with assignments he definitely could have done himself if he tried hard enough.

And slowly, without either of you acknowledging it outright, he became part of your life.

It happened in pieces so small you barely noticed them.

Dean texting you first whenever something funny happened.

Dean showing up at your apartment with coffee because you mentioned once that you hated mornings.

Dean touching the small of your back absentmindedly when he moved around you in crowded rooms.

Your friends noticing the shift long before you did.

“He likes you,” your roommate had told you one night while you got ready for bed.

You rolled your eyes immediately. “Dean likes everyone.”

“No,” she drawled carefully, “I think he really likes you.”

At the time, you brushed it off.. mostly because the idea felt ridiculous.

Dean Heyward-Di Laurentis was charming in a way that belonged to everyone around him. He laughed with everybody, flirted with everybody, made people feel wanted so effortlessly that it was hard to imagine any of it meaning something deeper.

And maybe that was the problem.

Because you never realized how serious it had become for him.

Not until much later.

Not until the night everything finally cracked open between you.

It happened in late November after one of Briar’s home games, when the campus had already started settling into winter, and the air outside the arena carried that sharp cold that made your lungs ache when you breathed too deeply.

You waited near the parking lot while students poured out around you in loud groups, bundled in jackets and scarves while snow flurries drifted lazily through the streetlights overhead.

You had almost decided to leave by the time Dean finally emerged from the arena.

The parking lot outside Briar’s hockey rink had thinned considerably over the last fifteen minutes, the loud clusters of students slowly disappearing into the snowy dark while the cold deepened around you in sharp, biting waves.

The game had ended almost half an hour ago, but postgame celebrations always dragged on longer after a win, especially when the team played the way they had tonight. They were fast and aggressive and good enough to keep the crowd screaming well into the third period.

You stood near the edge of the sidewalk with your hands shoved deep into your coat pockets, shifting your weight occasionally to keep warm while snowflakes drifted steadily from the sky overhead. They gathered in the sleeves of your coat and melted against your skin, dampening pieces of hair near your face while your breath curled visibly in the freezing air.

Your phone screen lit briefly in your hand.

11:42 PM.

You should probably go home at this point. Plus, why stick around anyway? The only people who stuck around this long were family, significant others, and girls who were hoping to get lucky with a player. You were none of the above.

That thought had crossed your mind at least four times already, especially considering Dean had no idea you were even waiting for him out here in the first place. You could still leave now before he came outside and preserve at least some of your dignity, because standing alone in a freezing parking lot after nearly midnight waiting for a boy who smiled at you a little too nicely was not behavior you were particularly proud of.

Still, your feet stayed planted where they were.

Which was embarrassing to unpack if you thought about it too hard.

The arena doors finally swung open again a few seconds later, releasing another burst of noise and warmth into the cold night air as several players filtered out alongside a few students lingering near the entrance. You looked up automatically, more out of instinct than intention.

Then you saw him.

Dean Heyward-Di Laurentis, himself, walked out laughing at something one of his teammates said, hockey bag slung over one shoulder while exhaustion visibly weighed through the line of his posture. His damp hair curled slightly from sweat beneath the harsh overhead lights, and even from a distance, you could see the fatigue sitting heavily across his face after the game.

Then his eyes landed on you.

And his entire expression changed.

It was subtle enough that most people probably would not have noticed it unless they were looking carefully, but you did.

The exhaustion softened first.

Then his shoulders loosened slightly beneath the weight of his bag, tension easing from him in real time as warmth spread slowly across his features. The tiredness didn't disappear entirely, but something gentler replaced it now, something so immediate and instinctive that it sent an annoying little flip through your stomach before you could stop it.

“There you are,” Dean said once he reached you, his voice roughened slightly from yelling over the game and the freezing night air.

Something about the familiarity of it settled strangely in your chest.

Not the words themselves, but the way he said them, easy and certain, like he had expected to find you waiting for him outside the arena all along. Like your presence beside the rink after every home game had become something reliable to him, something normal.

You tried not to think too hard about why that affected you as much as it did.

Instead, you shoved your hands deeper into your coat pockets and forced yourself to sound casual when you said, “You played decent tonight, Di Laurentis.”

Dean immediately looked offended.

“Decent?” he repeated, adjusting the strap of his hockey bag higher onto his shoulder while he stared at you in disbelief. “That’s what I get after scoring twice? And defending my goalie after he got knocked? And pointing to you after I scored? And cheering G up in the locker room?”

You shrugged, though his grin was already making it annoyingly difficult to hold onto your composure for very long. “You want me to lie and say you were amazing?”

“Yes, actually, that would be nice.”

The laugh that slipped out of you came easier than you intended, soft and visible in the cold air between you.

For a second, Dean just looked at you.

Not in the careless, charming way he usually looked at people, but openly because your amusement was something worth paying attention to. Snow caught lightly in his light hair and along the shoulders of his jacket, while the harsh lights from the parking lot reflected faintly across his face. Despite the exhaustion still lingering around him after the game, there was some playful warmth creeping back into his eyes.

The look on his face made your chest tighten in a way you were trying very hard not to examine too closely.

Without really discussing it, the two of you started walking toward Malone's together.

The arena noise slowly faded behind you with every step, swallowed by the quiet stillness settling over Briar this late at night. Snow crunched softly beneath your boots as you moved side by side down the sidewalk, your shoulders brushing occasionally whenever one of you drifted too close. The roads nearby had mostly emptied by now, leaving only the occasional headlights cutting through the dark or the distant sound of voices carrying across campus.

The snow had started sticking properly sometime during the third period.

Now it dusted across the ground in thin white layers and gathered along Dean’s hair in uneven flakes, catching briefly in his lashes whenever he glanced over at you. The cold had turned the tip of his nose pink, though somehow it only made him look more unfairly attractive.

“You waiting long?” he asked after a moment.

“Not really.”

“Bullshit. That's a total lie.”

You glanced sideways at him despite yourself. “Fine, maybe a little.”

His mouth twitched immediately, like he was trying not to smile too hard at that answer.

Then something in his expression shifted. The teasing faded first.Then the easy confidence.

What replaced it was quieter somehow, more focused, and the sudden intensity of his attention made your stomach tighten unexpectedly.

“You came to every game this month,” he said.

The observation landed softly between you, but your pulse reacted instantly anyway.

You forced yourself to shrug. “I support Briar athletics, I love that my tuition money goes towards the team throwing free shirts into the stands and paying for your overpriced locker room. I figured I should get my money's worth.”

“Bullshit, again.”

You looked away too quickly, trying to hide the smile already pulling at your mouth, but Dean noticed anyway. Of course he did.

“That smile means I’m right.”

“You’re so annoying after wins.”

“I’m annoying all the time.”

“That’s... Actually, yeah, that's true.”

His laugh came low and warm beside you before he nudged his shoulder lightly against yours.

The contact lasted barely a second.

Still, warmth spread slowly through your chest anyway, familiar now in the worst possible way.

Because that had become the real problem with Dean lately.

Not the flirting.

Not the confidence.

Not even the fact that nearly every girl at Briar looked at him like he personally hung the moon.

The problem was that he made everything feel like more than it was. Truthfully, that could have been because, in your heart, you didn't want to believe you'd fall for an athlete's charm so easily. But based on what everyone around you said, you weren't delusional in thinking that it was more than it seemed.

Every glance lingered slightly too long. Every touch carried enough softness behind it to leave you thinking about it afterward. Even his attention felt different from other people’s somehow, steady and deliberate in a way that slowly worked its way beneath your skin before you even realized it was happening.

Being around Dean felt dangerously similar to standing too close to a fire in the middle of winter.

Comforting at first.

Then overwhelming before you noticed yourself getting burned.

And lately, whatever existed between the two of you had started drifting dangerously close to becoming something real.

Neither of you talked about it.

Maybe because acknowledging it aloud would ruin the fragile balance you’d fallen into together.

Or maybe because both of you were too afraid the other person didn’t feel it too.

“You know,” Dean said eventually, quieter now, his gaze fixed ahead on the snowy sidewalk instead of on you, “Tuck thinks I’m in love with you.”

Your entire body nearly short-circuited.

You missed a step slightly before catching yourself again, your head swiveling in a double-take. “Sorry.. what?”

Dean let out a huff of a laugh under his breath, though this time there was tension underneath it that hadn’t been there before.

“That reaction’s making this just a little harder for me.”

You stopped walking for half a second before hurrying to catch up beside him again. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

The simplicity of the answer made your stomach twist sharply.

Snow continued drifting lazily around the two of you while silence settled heavily between your footsteps. Your pulse suddenly felt uneven beneath your ribs, loud enough that you were half convinced Dean could hear it if he stood any closer.

For several long seconds, neither of you spoke.

Then finally, carefully, you looked over at him. “And what did you say?”

Den exhaled slowly through his nose.

The faint smile that touched his mouth this time looked different from his usual ones somehow, smaller and quieter, almost disbelieving.

“I told Tuck he was an idiot.”

“That sounds more believable.”

“Yeah,” he murmured softly. “Except I think he might’ve been right.”

Everything inside you seemed to still at once.

Not dramatically.

Not like movies where music swelled and the entire world stopped turning.

Just enough that suddenly every detail around you became painfully sharp all at once.

The sound of snow beneath your boots. The cold wind brushing against your face. The uneven rhythm of your breathing. The way Dean was looking at you now.

And maybe the strangest part of all was realizing he looked nervous.

Dean Heyward-Di Laurentis, who could walk into any room and immediately own it without trying, who flirted effortlessly and smiled without hesitation, looked genuinely nervous standing beside you on a dark, snowy sidewalk.

Like you had the ability to hurt him.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he added quickly after the silence stretched too long, his voice quieter now, rough around the edges in a way you had never heard from him before. “Seriously, I just…” He broke off briefly, glancing away before laughing once under his breath. “I got tired of pretending this feels casual to me when it doesn’t. And trust me, it's just as crazy for me to say that as it is for you to hear that.”

Your chest tightened painfully at the honesty in that.

Because suddenly the last few months rearranged themselves inside your head into something entirely different.

Dean waiting outside your classes even when his own were across campus.

Dean memorizing your coffee order after hearing it once.

Dean always finding you first in crowded rooms.

Dean texting you every night before playing an away game.

None of it had been accidental.

None of it had ever been casual.

And maybe the worst part was realizing yours hadn’t been either.

“You fall hard, huh?” you asked quietly.

A surprised laugh escaped him then, softer than before, carrying something almost embarrassed underneath it.

“You got no idea.” He drawled, his hands pushing his hair back in more of a 'I-Don't-Know-What-To-Do-With-My-Hands' way than anything else.

The honesty of it hit you harder than anything else had tonight.

Because Dean wasn’t teasing now. Wasn’t flirting. Wasn’t charming his way through another conversation with that easy confidence everyone associated with him.

He meant it.

And standing there beside him while snow gathered slowly across the shoulders of his jacket and melted into your hair, you realized with sudden, terrifying clarity that somewhere along the way, without meaning to, you had fallen hard too.

← MLIST. ᝰ.ᐟ edawgz 2025.

You knew it would be a total mistake coming to this party.

The flashing lights did nothing to calm the headache you’d been staving off all day, and the frat house was packed full of drunk college kids bumping and grinding into each other. If it were any other day, you’d be down for a drink and some dancing, but tonight was just not your night.

Hannah had convinced you that it would somehow be a good idea to go to a frat house tonight. Garrett and his roommates would be there, including Dean, your crush of the past 6 months. She’d teased you gently about it because she knew you’d be unable to resist if you knew he was coming.

Your unlikely friendship with Dean began on complete accident. He’d bumped into you in the courtyard on campus while talking to Beau, causing your drink to spill all over your white tank top. He offered to buy you a new shirt before attempting to seduce you with his boyish charms, and much to his chagrin, you never fell for them despite his best efforts.

Or so he thought.

From there, you begin to hang out outside of classes. He’d invite you over to his shared living space with his friends, you’d watch a movie together or hang out, and you found the conversation to flow much easier than you’d expected it to. At some point, you noticed you caught butterflies in your stomach whenever he’d smile at you, and if you were brave enough to ponder his potential feelings, you’d convince yourself he felt the same. You never discussed inclusivity, but it almost felt like the two of you were slowly becoming a thing.

Somewhere along the way, Dean stopped seeing other girls. He’d seek you out at parties and social events, striking up conversations every time he found you and staying practically attached to your side. He started showing a softer side when it was just the two of you, and Beau swore he saw a change in his best friend after meeting you.

“Hey!” You shouted over the noise at Logan, who had slipped into the kitchen area for a beer. “Have you seen Dean anywhere? I kind of wanted to talk to him for a minute.”

Logan took a moment to think, scratching his head before responding, “Last I saw him, he was headed upstairs to use the bathroom. Maybe check the rooms to see if he got lost somewhere?”

You quickly thanked him before beginning your ascent upstairs. The lights were dimmer upstairs, with the noise fading slightly as you climbed the steps. Perfect location for couples to find some privacy or loners to sneak away from the noise and crowds.

Once you reached the top step, you noticed Garrett standing in front of a door to the far left. You headed toward him to say hello, quickly noticing the panic flooding his eyes and the way he tensed up immediately.

“Hey! Y/N! I totally wasn’t expecting to see you tonight.” His eyes flickered wildly back and forth between you and the closed door he seemed to be guarding. “W-what, uh, what are you doing here?”

Your suspicion at his sudden tenseness was growing by the second. “Hannah dragged me along and promised it would be fun. Plus, with all the studying for finals I needed a break. Have you seen Dean anywhere?”

“Dean? Dean Di Laurentis? My buddy Dean? No, no, haven’t seen him anywhere.” He rambled. “Matter of fact, have you checked downstairs?” Garrett gripped the doorknob tight in his hand behind him, looking like if he held on any tighter, he’d rip it from the door.

“Dude, why are you grabbing the door like that? You’re acting super fucking weird right now. Let me see what’s going on in there.” As you approached the door, you could hear a consistently loud thumping noise and what sounded to be girly, high-pitched moans.

“Wait! Don’t go in there!” Garrett desperately tried to keep the door shut, but to no avail. “Y/N, seriously, you don’t want to go in there.”

A busty blonde was perched atop a tall, muscular man, riding him into oblivion. You would’ve just turned around and forgotten what you’d seen until you noticed the head of hair and unmistakable voice. Wait, was that Dean? Your Dean? The guy who seemingly gave up casual hookups for you? Dean’s head popped up at the commotion before realizing it was you. The second his eyes met yours, all traces of drunken desire left his body. His eyes widened, hastily moving the blonde over and off him and scrambling to get off the bed.

“Hey, wait! I can explain! I swear!” Dean’s words fell on deaf ears- you were downstairs and out the door in seconds.

It had been a week since the incident, and you had yet to return any of Dean’s seemingly endless messages and calls.

baby please talk to me

I’m so sorry you had to see that

I thought it was fine to see other people since we aren’t a thing

are we a thing?

I miss you so much

please call me when you have a chance

You avoided him on campus like the plague. Garrett, Logan, and Tucker all attempted to talk to you and explain Dean’s side of things, but you turned and walked away any time they got close. Dean himself tried to wait for you every day after classes, but you went in the other direction.

You kept convincing yourself that you’d be fine, that you were just overreacting and you’d get over it soon. After all, Dean was right, you were just friends. No strings attached. You really didn’t have any reason to keep him from hooking up with girls other than the feeble hope that he’d fallen for you like you’d fallen for him.

After your self-declared ‘wallow in self-pity week’ you were ready to start fresh and get over Dean once and for all.

“You sure you don’t want to come out with me tonight? We can go to Malone’s together or catch that new movie you wanted to see.” Hannah was attempting to get you out of the house to start the weekend off right, but you felt more like staying in for the night.

“I’m sure, Han Han. Go have fun! Tell the guys I said hey for me.”

She shot you one last sympathetic look before walking out the door. You had all of your favorite snacks set up around you, you were freshly showered, and ready to binge shitty reality TV to your heart’s content before inevitably falling asleep. No more worrying about stupid Dean, his sexy body, his handsome face, his perfect personality….no, no, no! You were better than this!

You made it about 5 minutes into the show before the sound of a knock rang through the dorm. You ignored it, figuring they’d just go away, before the knocks became more persistent.

“Fine, fine! I’m coming!” You opened the door to find none other than Dean Di Laurentis himself gazing deep into your eyes, “Dean, what are you-”

“I need to get this off my chest before I lose the nerve,” He interrupted. “September 13th, the day I spilled your coffee on your tank top and accidentally embarrassed the hell out of you. The day I swore I’d make things right after seeing your gorgeous face and knowing I wanted to get to know you better.”

“September 22nd, the day you agreed to hang out with me and talk. That was the day I knew something was special between us, because every time you’d laugh or smile, I kept wanting to do it over and over just to make you happy.”

“October 31st,” he continued, “The day you came to the Halloween party wearing the sexiest cop costume I’d ever seen. Beau and I were prisoners and we happened to match each other. I had people telling me how good we looked together and desperately tried to ignore the way my heart raced every time I looked at you.”

“November 7th- the day you accidentally fell asleep on my shoulder for the first time, and I wished it could happen every night. November 11th- the night we went to see a movie together and I barely paid attention because I couldn’t stop staring at you.” He pops open his phone case and inside is one of the tickets from that day.

“November 18th, the day you went out with that business major and I couldn’t stop my stomach from lurching at the thought of you being with anyone other than me. November 24th- the day I went home for Thanksgiving and missed you so much it hurt. You were on my mind the whole time.”

He takes a deep breath, “…December 3rd- the day I realized I was completely, irreparably gone for you. My heart made the leap for me and decided to be tethered to you for the rest of my days.”

“You remember that?” You whispered.

“Baby, how could I ever forget anything about you?” He scoffed. “I know we’ve been dancing around our feelings for a while now, and I don’t deserve your forgiveness for leading you on like that. I realized my feelings and it completely freaked me out. I don’t do relationships. For you, though, I’d do anything you asked me to. I’m in love with everything about you and I’m so sorry I never told you. Go ahead and rip my heart out if you want to; it was always yours for the taking anyway.”

Your silence freaked Dean out. “Or I could just leave right now, actually. I didn’t mean to put all of this on you last minute and I just feel like-“

He was cut off by your sarcastic laughter. “You idiot! You slept with another girl because you love me?”

Dean winced, “Well, when you put it like that, it does sound kind of lame.”

“I can’t believe you’d do something like that.” Your sly grin broke any of Dean’s lasting tension and replaced it with pure, unadulterated joy.

“Okay, make fun of me all you want. I’m still gonna kiss you now.”

He leaned forward and your lips connected in a passionate kiss. One of his hands held your waist to keep you steady while the other snaked into the back of your neck, making you feel held and secure. The butterflies in your stomach had increased tenfold because of how happy you were.

Eventually the need for oxygen overruled your need to kiss each other and you broke away. Neither of you strayed far, however, sharing soft smiles and giggles while resting foreheads against each other.

“I guess you need to add another date to remember now.” You teased.

“What’s that, baby?”

“Today- the start of forever.”

Throughout Andrew’s life, many people have come and gone through the doors of Smurf’s house. It would take another lifetime just to count them all. 

The parties started when he was young and never ended. The faces blurred together for Andrew now, not that he could really bring himself to care all that much in the first place. Just like Craig’s girlfriends or Smurf’s boyfriends, nobody was ever really a permanent fixture in Andrew’s life. Not if they weren’t family.

He knows that everyone thinks that he’s different. That he’s weird. He notices their looks when he lingers around the pool, in the kitchen, when he’s just sitting on the couch. His own brothers even, a lot of the time. Everyone eyes him like a ticking time bomb, just waiting for him to go off.

Andrew doesn’t really mind, though. Or, if he did, he'd become numb to the feeling a long time ago. In fact, he’s probably become numb to a lot of feelings. But Andrew doesn’t know any other way to be. He’s just Pope and he has been for a very long time.

This party in the Cody household wasn’t different from any other. Booze, drugs, and a big mess Andrew would definitely have to clean up later. The music is loud, bass turned up too high, and Craig is attempting to jump off the roof into the pool again. Amidst the cheers, Andrew thinks about the rest of his brothers and wonders for a moment where exactly it went so differently for him, or if he was just simply born that way.

His brothers seem okay with being in the spotlight. Even his nephew seemed to fare better than him, assimilating perfectly into every situation that arose, especially when people were involved. Andrew was never like that.

J must have gotten it from Julia.

Andrew was never a people person. He was always out of place, like the Cody that just didn’t quite belong, all jagged edges. The parties always send him into the corners of his mind that he didn’t really like venturing into.

The pounding of the bass is getting to him.

He pulls open the door to his bedroom hoping for a moment of silence, when he’s greeted with a pair of bare feet hanging off the edge of his bed. The figure doesn’t stir when he enters, so he creeps in further and shuts the door quietly. He turns his head, scanning now that he has a better view of who exactly is in his room.

You’re laid on his bed, eyes shut, hugging your phone to your chest like a stuffed animal. You’ve clearly come to escape the crowds of the party, same as him. Andrew can’t help as his eyes drag up your legs all the way up to where your short dress shows just a little too much of your thighs. He notices your heels as well, placed nice and neat beside the bed.

“Who are you?” It comes out a bit more gruff than Andrew anticipated and your eyes finally flutter open. It takes you a minute to notice him but when you do you’re shooting up to your feet, spine rigid. It’s cute, he thinks, the way you panic. You startle like a small puppy.

“Oh my god,” you squeak, clearly embarrassed. Your hands fall to adjust the hem of your short dress, much to Andrew’s disappointment. He gives you a once over; it’s half assessing what exactly you’re doing in his room and half just taking you and your skimpy outfit. “I’m so sorry. Is this your room?”

Andrew gives a small nod and you wring your hands nervously. You’re taking him in now, a Cody brother here in front of you, live and in the flesh.

“So which one are you?” you ask, head cocked. Now that you know this is his room, he notices you assessing him in a different light. People always do —it didn’t bother Andrew much anymore but with you he feels a twinge of shame in his stomach. “Deran? Or, um…”

Andrew knows that you’re searching for his name. His nickname. It had to be since there was a short list of people who called him by his real name. Pope Cody is known by everyone in Oceanside. Andrew Cody, on the other hand, is not.

“Andrew.” he supplies, voice softer than before. Now you’ve been added to that very exclusive list. You repeat his name back to him, voice a little warm, no doubt from one of the many drinks that the Cody’s provided. Then you introduce yourself and Andrew attempts to burn your name into his memory.

“Okay, Andrew. Are you hiding too?” Now that he hasn’t kicked you out, you take a seat on the edge of his bed. He notices the compression of where your body laid just a few minutes before on his neatly made and pressed sheets but doesn’t say anything. He likes the sound of your voice too much to interrupt you. “Or just making sure nobody is defiling your room.”

“I’m not hiding,” he replies, crossing his arm over his chest. The strap of your dress falls and Andrew tries not to get distracted. “This is my house. I’m free to go where I please.”

“Fair enough. I’m hiding,” you shrug. A beat of silence passes and you pat the spot next to you, inviting him to sit on his own bed. Andrew is curious enough to oblige, sitting on the other end of the bed, putting distance between you. He doesn’t miss how your shoulders drop slightly in disappointment. “My friend is here with Craig and they’ve conveniently disappeared... I don’t even want to know what they’re doing.”

“I have a few guesses.” Another one of Craig’s girlfriends. The giggle of a girl coming from Craig’s room that Andrew had heard when he was walking by suddenly made a lot more sense. 

He wills himself not to flinch when you scoot closer to him, closing the distance he deliberately put between the two of you. Andrew was interested, too interested, and that worried him.

Pope Cody wasn’t allowed to want.

“Is it okay if I stay here with you?” you ask, and Andrew’s heart flips. He clears his throat, hoping that you don’t see the blush that’s creeping it’s way up his neck. “I’m just not really sure how long it’s going to take and I would much rather be in here.”

With you, hangs unspoken in the air.

“Sure.” Andrew likes the way you smile when he answers, a small flash of teeth. You scoot even closer and tuck your bare feet under you. You’re so close now that your knee is nudging his thigh. He can smell your perfume from here and it’s heavenly compared to the sweat and chlorine laced air outside. “I don’t really want to be out there either.”

“So, Andrew,” His name sounds like honey when it’s falling from your lips and he wonders how often he can make you say it. The feeling that settles in his chest when you say it is too addicting for him to live without it now. “Not really a party person?”

“No. But my brothers are.” He gestures vaguely to the door, the music pounding on the other side of the wall and then his hands retreat back to his lap. He can feel your eyes on him, but not in the usual way he always tends to notice. You scan him with a kind of curiosity that he hasn’t felt in a long time.

“I’m not really a party person either,” you agree, glancing at the door he had just gestured towards. You look a little sad, even. It makes Andrew’s fingers twitch.“My friend said she needed some moral support coming to meet this guy. So I came, and then she ditched me like an hour ago.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a shitty friend.” Andrew says plainly and he’s caught off guard when you let out a laugh. 

“Yeah, I guess,” You shrug, shoulders still shaking with remnants of laughter. Andrew has turned his head fully now to look at you but he doesn’t really understand why you’re laughing. “But maybe it’s like fate, or something.”

“Fate?” Andrew echoes, even more confused than before. You lock eyes with him and he has to resist the urge to break it, enthralled enough by your gaze to ignore the awkward feeling settling in his chest.

“Yeah. Like maybe it’s fate that she left? Because then I wouldn’t have hidden in a cute guy’s room and got to talk to him.” He can tell that your mind is elsewhere, but his eyes are still on you. There’s a dreamy look painted on your face and he’s so distracted he almost misses the fact that you called him cute. Almost.

He opens his mouth to respond but your phone beats him to it, the shrill sound of your ringer filling the empty room. You look at him sheepishly and turn your head to answer as if that would give you the privacy you were looking for. It doesn’t work because as soon as you hit accept, he can hear what he assumes is your friend’s voice on the other side of the line. 

You get up and he watches you nod along to the conversation. You’re not doing a lot of talking, but your friend definitely is; he can tell by the murmur of her drunken chatter and the sound of the music pulsing on the other side of the line. You’re kind enough to let her continue on for a bit longer before you let her know that you’re coming, don’t move! 

Then you’ve turned back to Andrew, tapping your phone on your palm as you try to find the right words to say. You look genuinely apologetic —for what, Andrew doesn’t know. The silence stretches long, and Andrew is the first one to break it.

“You don’t have to stay,” he says plainly. You don’t really owe him anything, although the look on your face makes him feel otherwise. You take a step closer, poised like you want to take a seat next to him again. Andrew wants you to, but he won’t admit that part out loud.

“I know. I want to-” you start, but your phone starts buzzing like it’s possessed, cutting you off. A quick glance is all it gets; you’re quickly scanning the messages before returning your attention to him. Your phone doesn’t stop vibrating. “It’s hard to leave when you’re looking at me like a lost puppy.”

Andrew chooses to ignore that comment, instead turning to grab your shoes from the side of the bed next to him. He offers your heels to you, arms outstretched, closing the distance between you just like you had before. You give him a small smile as you take them from him, fingers brushing his just a beat too long. The way it sets his nerves alight is also something that he chooses to ignore.

“Thank you,” you say, slipping your strappy heels back on. Andrew looks everywhere but you as you bend down to tie them up, feeling the blush creeping up once again. Once you’re straightened up he gives you a small smile in return, watching as you pull your phone back out again. “Sorry for messing up your bed. I’ll make it up to you next time.”

You say it so definitively, like you somehow know there will be a next time. Before he can reply, you’re giving him a shy wave goodbye, sliding out the door. The music leaks in for a moment when you open it, blending in with the cheers of partygoers outside. When you close it he’s back to the silence of his room, alone. He had come in there looking for a moment to himself but now that you’re gone, he can’t help but want the opposite.

Andrew really hopes that there will be.

—

The next time Andrew met you, it was in Deran’s bar.

He could count on one hand the amount of times he actually sat at Deran’s bar for any other reason besides work. It was rare that he ever got to enjoy a beer, much less have a moment of free time. But between Deran’s insistence and Craig’s staggering frame, Andrew agreed to stay for one drink.

He’s on the dregs of his beer when he notices Craig straighten up in his seat and saunter over to the front door of the bar. Andrew’s head turns and suddenly he’s glad he came, perking up the same way his brother had just moments ago. A girl comes out to greet Craig, looking like his usual type, and he slings an arm over her shoulders, steering her towards the bar with a sly smile.

Then you walk in and Andrew almost falls off his stool in surprise. You’re dressed differently than when he first met you, softer and more casual. Both of you look like you’ve just come from the beach, donned in shorts and tanks, hair curled from the salt water in the air. It makes his heart skip a beat.

You walk in far more hesitantly than your friend, like you’re not too sure if you belong or where to put yourself. Andrew can empathize with the feeling. He watches as you scan the bar; maybe for your friend, or maybe for another place to hide. You lock eyes with him once you finally notice his presence at the bar and you begin to make your way over. Andrew isn’t sure if he should break eye contact but he can’t help it, eyes darting away before they make their way back to yours.

“Fancy meeting you here,” You take the seat next to him, flashing him a grin. Andrew mumbles something under his breath, but you’re not deterred. In fact, you scoot your stool closer to his. You’re laying it on real thick, but he has to admit that he kind of likes it. “You come here often?”

“You know Pope?” The moment is interrupted by Deran, who sets down a full glass of beer in front of you. He’s got a bemused look on his face, eyes darting between you and his brother. Andrew tries his best not to frown, especially at the use of his nickname when you only know him by Andrew. From the expression on your face, he can tell that he’s failing. Your eyes flicker with some kind of recognition, like you were suddenly recalling the name that you had forgotten the last time you met.

“Yeah, I do,” you nod, not even acknowledging the fact that his own brother had just called him by a completely different name. You gesture to his empty glass, the one that he had set aside to fully focus on you when you approached. “And I think I owe him a drink.”

“You do?” It slips out of both Deran and Andrew’s mouths, disbelief on both their faces. It comes out a bit rougher for Andrew, while Deran inquires like you just told him that unicorns were real. You handle both questions with grace.

“Well, I said I’d make it up to you next time,” You smile, pulling the glass that Deran set down closer to you. His brother leans in closer, clearly interested in what exactly was going on between the two of you. Andrew tries to shoot his brother a glare before you look back at him but he doesn’t have enough time. “So, are you going to have a drink with me, or what?”

“Yeah.” Andrew says, perhaps a bit too eagerly as Deran snickers under his breath. He slides him a beer as well, a knowing look painted all over his features. Andrew takes it with a scowl, but his expression softens when he looks back at you. You bring the beer to your lips with a smile and Andrew can’t help but smile back. 

Two and a half beers later, Andrew’s face is a lot warmer and you are a lot closer. You’re so close that he can feel your shoes scuffing the edge of his newly polished boots, but he can’t bring himself to care. He likes when you giggle at his jokes; the way that your eyes shine. Andrew can feel his brothers’ eyes on the two of you; he even catches his nephew looking his way a few times. 

But for the first time in a while, Andrew doesn’t really want to shrink away. He’s tuned out the background noise, even your friend’s obnoxious drunk laughter at Craig’s pretty mediocre jokes. Because, in reality, Andrew is not the type of guy that a lot of girls like. And Pope especially, is not. But here with you, he lets himself believe that maybe just this once, he’s allowed to have something just for him.

“I like your smile,” You break the silence the two of you were sharing once the conversation you were having earlier came to an end. Andrew hadn’t even realized that he was smiling. He had really just been using the silence to soak in your presence; you still smell the same as you did when you met the first time. Wearing the same perfume that you left on his sheets and pillows just a few weeks ago. He didn’t want to admit how many times he shoved his face into them, chasing your scent before it faded. “It’s cute. I like your teeth.”

There it was again. That word. Cute. It’s not a word anyone used to describe Andrew, probably not since childhood. Or possibly maybe never. He almost wants to swing his head around to see if the rest of his family had heard.

“You really think I’m cute?” He can’t help but ask. It might be the beers or the way you look at him or the fact that he can feel your body heat, but his brain is a bit fuzzy. You look over at him, eyes a bit glazed over from the alcohol. Now he can feel you examining him again, looking him up and down.

“I guess cute isn’t really the word for a guy like you.” His heart sinks at that, wondering what you really think about him now that you know Pope and not just Andrew. He knows the stories that circle around Oceanside about him and he’s not sure if he’s ready to hear the ones that you’ve heard.

“A guy like me?” Andrew echoes, trying his best not to sound so sad. His mood perks up when he feels the heat of your gaze taking him in, seemingly a bit unguarded, presumably from all the alcohol.

“Yeah. You’re all built and…” You look around, trying to place a word to describe him. Then you lay a hand on his arm and Andrew stiffens for a moment but he softens quickly, leaning into your touch. You look pleased that he allowed you to do that, smiling like you’re ready to take a bite of him right then and there. “I don’t know. Strong. Thick. Handsome.”

Andrew is sure that he’s red all the way up to the tips of his ears. He’s also pretty sure that he saw Craig choke on his drink at your comment a few stools down from you, but he decides that’s a later problem. 

“Thanks,” he says gruffly and it’s really the only word that he can get out of his mouth, embarrassingly. You shoot him a smile, and it’s all sweet and a little too enticing. Andrew wouldn’t be surprised if he was leaning into you, ass halfway off his stool.

“Sorry, I’m being a bit forward, aren’t I?” you say, swirling whatever was left of your beer. He tries to shrug nonchalantly but it doesn’t really work. “I just get flirty when I’m tipsy.”

“So you don’t think us meeting again is fate?” He’s teasing, half smile tugging on the edge of lips. You giggle and Andrew basks in the sound. He can’t remember the last time someone made him feel like this. The last time he wanted to be so close to someone.

“I never said that,” You’re hiding a cheeky grin behind your glass and Andrew desperately wishes that he could see it. “You do believe in fate then?” 

Andrew has to think about it for a moment. He’s not sure, really. Lots of fucked up shit has happened in his life and it would be cruel world if that was the fate that the universe had in store for him. Then again, he’s done some terrible things as well, so maybe it was what he deserved.

“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully. Andrew stares into his drink and reflects on all of the things he’s done, the crimes he committed. Julia. Cath. They swirl around in his mind, weighing on his conscience. Then he looks at you and they all seem to float away. “Maybe.”

“Well, let me know when you decide.” He thinks that you can probably sense his hesitancy or the spiral that it sends him down when he thinks about it too hard, so you pump the breaks. He almost can’t stand the way you’re looking at him, eyes wide open and curious. Andrew is unsure of which version of him that you’re seeing or what exactly is going through your head. He doesn’t have the courage to ask.

“Okay.” he says, a bit too distracted by the pieces of hair that have fallen in front of your face as you turned to take another sip, shielding his view. His hand flexes as he resists the urge to push them away.

Then, like you could read his mind, you tuck them behind your ear and shoot him another look. You open your mouth to say something, but you’re interrupted by Craig, who is steering your friend in your direction. Andrew’s hand flexes again as this time he suppresses the urge to hit Craig for cutting in.

“She just puked in the plant over there, and I’m pretty fucked up, so…” Craig isn’t subtle in what he’s asking and Andrew notices the worry flicker across your face as you take in your friend, who can barely stand up on her own without his brother gripping her shoulders. You mutter under your breath and he thinks he hears you basically cursing out Craig.

“Okay, just… take her outside. I’ll be out in two minutes.” you say, and Craig stumbles off, your friend in tow. Then you turn to Andrew, an apologetic look on your face that’s becoming all too familiar to him now.

“Is she going to be okay?” His gaze wanders to the door swinging shut behind the pair. You wring your hands nervously, standing up from the stool. Gathering your things a little frantically, you shrug. Andrew deflates a bit as he watches.

“Yeah, I think so. She’ll probably just puke into her purse on the way home or something,” Once you’ve gathered everything in your arms you give a deep sigh, turning your full attention towards him. He notes that you seem a little deflated too, but he’s not sure if it’s because you’re leaving him or because your friend and Craig seem to be deeply irresponsible individuals. “I’m sorry. Again.”

“It’s okay.” Your lips curl with a small smile, still tinged with a bit of anxiety. It’s cute when you lift your free hand up in a small wave, the same way you did last time, and then you’re gone. Your perfume is still lingering in the air when Andrew turns back around and it’s his turn to smile. It melts when he sees Deran standing behind the bar, a smug look on his face.

“You got it bad, man.”

—

After that, Andrew sees you a lot more often.

Your friend and Craig seemed to have made things very exclusive, because now she’s basically living at Smurf’s house. Which means that, since you’re her best friend, she invites you over quite frequently.

You two haven’t been able to have a moment alone since that night at the bar, much to Andrew’s disappointment. The brothers have been busy planning a job, which meant that he was in and out pretty often. His mind was elsewhere though, distracted by the way you brushed arms in the hallway on his way out or when your eye contact lingered longer than usual.

So, maybe that was why the job went a little awry.

They got what they needed to, but not without a fight. The boys trail into the backyard one after the other, everyone bruised and cut up. It always annoyed Andrew when his brothers were impulsive; he was the one that was always suffering the consequences.

He quickly notes that you’re laid out next to the pool in your swimsuit, your body shimmering with sweat under the sweltering sun. Andrew watches a bead of sweat drip from your neck to the valley between your breasts. Time slows as he watches, licking his lips. He barely has time to drag his gaze away before Deran is wheeling on Craig. 

“Why are you always pulling this crap?” Deran almost has a finger in his face, gesturing angrily. Craig just rolls his eyes in response, pushing past him and giving him a glare. Andrew can see the tension tight in their shoulders as they both seethe.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude.” Craig shoots back, making his way back to the house. Tension has been high between the two lately, just like always, trapped in a toxic cycle.

It seems to snap for Deran, especially after the job, and he jumps on Craig’s back, knocking him over. The commotion is loud, Craig hitting the ground with a loud thud. Deran throws the first punch and Craig’s skull cracks hard against the pavement. Craig is quick to recover though, probably due to his size, and it’s a full blown fist fight in seconds.

The two exchange blows for a minute before Andrew and J rush forward to pull the two of them apart. They don’t put up much of a fight and the two of them stalk off in different directions; Craig into the house and Deran out of the yard. J shakes his head and follows after Craig, hands shoved into his pockets.

A quick glance proves that the pool chair you were on just moments ago is left empty, your drink still sitting on the ground next to it. He assumes that you snuck out once his brother hit the floor, probably wise enough to know how the situation was going to unfold. He can see your figure in the window padding around the kitchen, blurred from the distance.

Andrew closes the sliding door behind him when he enters the kitchen and he finds you there, skimpy bikini and all. You’re rummaging through the fridge and he takes the opportunity to take in the view before you shut the door.  

You’re holding the carton of orange juice when you turn, finally taking in Andrew’s state. The cut on his eyebrow, the bruise beginning to bloom on his cheek and his torn up knuckles. You make your way towards him, your brow furrowed in concern.

“Are you okay?” He hides his hand instinctively when you ask, which you definitely notice. You rub the back of your neck with your free hand, a bit sheepish. “I heard, uh, your brothers fighting.”

“Oh.” Andrew frowns as embarrassment clouds his thoughts. Will this deter you from coming back? He really hopes not. He’s silent as his eyes follow you as you grab yourself a glass and begin pouring.

“Yeah, oh.” You shoot a glance in the direction of J and Craig’s rooms, eyebrows raised. “So, back to my question. Is everything okay?” 

Andrew contemplates his answer for a second, not sure how much detail to go into. You eye him in the same way that you always do and he is suddenly keenly aware that this is the first moment alone you’ve had together in ages. Pushing that thought aside, he settles on two words: “It’s complicated.”

“Right,” you scoff, making your way around the kitchen island. Andrew can’t help but watch you move, all bare shimmering skin and he shifts a little as all his blood flows downwards. He sucks in a sharp breath as you settle in beside him, resting your arm on the counter. Your sweat and tanning oil smears all over the stone island but he’s too focused on how close you are to be bothered by it. “That’s why you guys all look like shit. Did you guys get in a fight or did you guys do that to each other?”

“Like I said, it’s complicated,” he repeats and you set your glass down, a serious look on your face.

“Andrew, I know who you guys are,” you say and now he’s shifting uncomfortably instead, the sentence shattering any sort of lust filled haze he was just on the precipice of falling into. “I can keep a secret, don’t worry. I just… want you to be careful, okay? That’s all.”

“I’m always careful,” he replies and you huff in disbelief, but it also seems like you can’t help but smile. It’s a nice sight and it even makes him brave enough to take a step closer to you, finally being the first to lessen the gap between you two.

The proximity and the way you look up at him has the haze settling in once more. Andrew wants to reach out and toy with the strings of your bikini bottoms but he thinks better of it. His tongue darts out to wet his lips and he almost has to physically shake his head to rid himself of the thought.

“I’m sure you are,” You scan him up and down, examining his cuts and bruises. Though, Andrew swears that he can feel your gaze linger on his arms and his chest. It makes a shiver run down his spine. “But if this is you careful, I’d hate to see when it gets messy.”

“I don’t do messy,” he emphasises, his mind wandering back to the oily smudge you’ve left on the counter. You give a familiar giggle and your hand comes to rest on his arm, and he immediately forgets all about it again. This is the first time you’ve broken the touch barrier between the two of you on purpose and Andrew’s stomach flips at the thought. The heat of your hand is searing through his shirt and he’s glad you can’t feel the goosebumps that are rising under your palm.

“I know, Andrew. I’ve watched you clean,” you joke. Andrew loves hearing you say his name, his lips parting as you do so. He tries to pull his mind away from all the different things he would do to you to keep hearing it slip from your lips. 

“Where’s your friend?” he asks, desperate to change the topic to anything but him and his family’s line of work. You let out a sigh, making your way back to the fridge. The door swings open and you start rummaging through the freezer like you lived at the house. Really, at this point, you kind of do.

“I’m not sure,” you say, voice a bit muffled from behind the freezer door. “Her and Craig are probably doing lines off each other’s chests or something.” 

You pull out a bag of frozen vegetables, shutting the door behind you and approaching Andrew once more. You hold it out to him and he cocks his head in confusion. Rolling your eyes, you grab his bad hand and place the bag on top of his knuckles, still bloody. The cold dulls the stinging that Andrew had learned to ignore too early on in life.

“Why do you hang out with her?” He all but blurts out, but he can't help it. There was plenty of time for Andrew to watch you two interact when you were over, and you seemed more like a tired mother than a best friend. Plus, Andrew figured that if he could keep you distracted with conversation, you wouldn’t let go of his hand just yet.

“She’s been my best friend since, well, forever…” Pressing the bag into his knuckles further, your hand grips his gently and he can’t help but look at you while you fiddle with the frozen bag. “And if I don’t take care of her, who will?” 

“I know the feeling.” Andrew says sincerely. He can’t remember a time in his life when he wasn’t a protector, an enforcer, a guard dog. You look up at him now, eyes soft. He feels his gaze soften in return, lips parting.

“I can see that,” you hum like you’re contemplating his words. “Is there someone taking care of you?” The question catches him off guard and he almost jerks his hand back reflexively.

“I don't need anyone to take care of me.” It's a statement that doesn't fully ring true; he thinks about the people who have tried and what he’s lost. It's better off this way, perhaps. But he also thinks you probably wouldn't like that answer.

“Everyone needs someone, Andrew.” Coming from anyone else, he thinks he would refuse. But from you, he feels a bit more inclined to agree. You sound sincere, he feels. Or he just likes you too much to think about disagreeing.

Maybe he does need someone, but no one was ever up for the job. At least no one that knew him —all of him.

A door slams in the distance and you flinch at the loud noise. Not a moment later your friend is rushing past the pair of you, clad in a similar bikini to yours. She’s crying though, mascara streaking as she pushes her way into the backyard. Andrew watches as your head turns to follow her, eyebrows pinching in concern. She sits down on one of the lounge chairs outside, shoulders shaking as she cries silently. You look back at Andrew with a frown and just like always, he knows you have to go.

Maybe his fate is that the universe just wants to cockblock him forever?

“She and Craig probably got into another fight,” you sigh, chewing your lip. You take his uninjured hand and place it on top of the bag, looking up at him. Your face is stern as you speak, like he’s a dog that got caught chewing on the couch legs. “Keep it iced, okay? I’ll talk to you soon.”

You pat his hand gently, soft smile on your lips. You always say that. Soon. Like you know that you're going to cross paths again. That he’s a permanent fixture in your life.

He watches you walk away, eyes on your swaying hips in your cheeky swimsuit bottoms. He’s still staring when you sit down next to your friend, rubbing her back comfortingly. 

Andrew stands alone in the kitchen, half hard, frozen bag of vegetables still pressed to his torn knuckles. The worst part is, he’s not even sure what exactly had made him hard; the sight of your body in your tiny swimsuit and the feeling of your hand in his or watching you take care of your friend so tenderly.

Yeah, Deran was right. He is so fucked.

—

If Andrew thought that he couldn't get you off his mind before that afternoon, now you were all he thought about. 

When he was making lunch, when he was cleaning his guns, when he was fisting his cock in the shower, trying to keep quiet. All he could think about was you. Your perfume, your smile, your body. Your touch. He wanted to feel it all over his body, soft skin against the raised bumps of all his scars. 

So the fact that you weren’t around as often anymore made things more difficult for him. Your friend and Craig seemed to be on the rocks, which means she was around less and less. Which means that you were barely around.

You said you’d talk to him soon and then promptly stopped being invited around, and the thought of how exactly he would get to see you again had him pacing. He didn’t want to scare you off, so he had to pivot towards more conventional methods. Which meant waiting around until Craig had finally got bored enough to start texting your friend back again. 

Weeks passed and he rarely saw you, just in flashes; by the pool, walking through the front door, lounging on the couch. He barely had the chance to look in your direction lately, much less have any type of conversation with you. The distance made him hungry, desperate enough to try to flip the odds in his favour.

“What about a party?” He suggests to his family one afternoon, all of the Cody’s crowded in the living room. All three of them turn their heads, looking at him like he’s grown an extra limb. The room is silent as they all try to process the words that came out of his mouth. “What?”

“Pope wants to throw a party.” Deran states, like saying the words out loud may help him truly understand them. “Why?”

“Don’t worry about it,” He crosses his arms over his chest, aware that he’s become a bit too defensive just a beat too late. All pairs of eyes are still on him and he shifts on his feet uncomfortable. “Just do it.”

“You won’t hear me complaining, man.” Craig says on his way out, clapping a hand on Andrew’s shoulder before he goes. The remaining Cody’s watch him go, and then eyes are back on him. He doesn’t want to answer any other questions, so he turns on his heels before they can ask any and follows his brother out.

So that’s how he ended up here.

This party was the same as the rest. Andrew wasn’t around for most of it; he had some loose ends to tie up for his family and he always elected to be out of the house whenever there was something going on, especially now that he had the choice. When he returns, he sees the same damage as always; trash in the pool, people passed out on the lawn, empty solo cups and wet footprints littered across the hardwood floors.

And Andrew does what he always does. Starts cleaning up. He wasn't really sure what his plan was, if he's being honest. He knew you always liked to linger once the parties were done, to make sure your friend was okay. Andrew was hoping that you were a creature of habit with this idea. Seems like right now, it's just delegated him to the role of janitor with no reward.

He starts out by the pool; toeing the stragglers to wake up and get off his property, sifting the garbage out of the pool and throwing the random discarded bikini tops into the trash bag right after it. It’s already the late hours of the morning when he finishes up outside. The neighbourhood is silent besides the sound of the chlorine water softly lapping at the tiles of the pool. Then he makes his way inside and starts tossing out everything in the kitchen, trying not to think about exactly what was occurring when he was gone to make this sort of mess.

“Do you need some help?” A small voice asks and he whirls around on instinct. He turns to face you and he almost wants to drop the black trash bag he’s holding out of shock. Andrew gives you a once over and you look so similar to the first night that he met you that it makes his heart skip a beat in his chest. A short dress and barefoot, except this time your heels are nowhere to be seen. You seem a bit groggy, dark make up smudged around your eyes. He oscillates between dwelling on how beautiful you are and wanting to get on his knees to see exactly what you got on under your dress.

“It’s late.” Is what he says instead, continuing his job of cleaning up. There’s a thousand unsaid things with those two words and it seems like you somehow know him well enough to answer all of them.

“Craig said I could crash on the couch,” you say, beginning to collect some of the empty cans off the kitchen counter. Andrew tries to level a look at you, to let him do it, but you give him a look straight back and continue. “And I want to help you. Doesn't seem like anyone else is.”

He accepts that and you two clean in silence for a few moments, working alongside each other. His eyes can’t help but follow you as you flounce around the kitchen, picking things up and tossing them into the bag into his hand. And then you speak. “So, why am I the only one helping you?”

He furrows his brows, pausing for a second as your words catch him off guard. Andrew glances over at you once more and you’re looking at him expectantly. He can’t help but feel compelled to answer, although your big fluttery eyes may play a small part in that. Trying to ignore the blood rushing downwards, he answers. “What do you mean?”

“Um, I mean there’s like, at least two or three other people who live in this house,” He can basically hear your frown as you speak, unceremoniously throwing another piece of trash into the bag. “Why am I the only one helping you clean up? The mess of a party that they threw?”

Andrew has never really thought about it before. He supposes this has always been his role, cleaning up after his family. Solving their problems. Making the bad things go away. Doing the messy work.

“I don’t need any help,” he says simply, voice gruff. He tries to ignore the heat of your disappointed eyes on him as he turns around, but he can still hear your loud sigh. You notice that he’s trying to avoid your gaze, so you catch his forearm in your hand. His muscles twitch under your touch, warmth seeping through your skin. Andrew slowly drags his gaze up from your hand on his arm to your face and he can’t help but soften. “I got it.”

“I just meant that you’re always taking care of everyone else, Andrew,” you explain, hand still on his arm. Your voice is soft in the way that he likes; a tone that seems to be reserved just for him. “Cleaning up after everyone. Making sure they don’t kill each other. Craig’s told me that you’ve bailed him out plenty of times.”

Andrew frowns. He doesn’t like the idea of his brothers talking about him when he’s not around, especially to you. He scowls at the thought, tying off the full garbage bag and placing it aside. He tries to pull away to grab another bag and continue, but your grip tightens on his arm.

“I’m serious. Just leave it for them to deal with for once,” You pull him back towards you, but he feels conflicted. He doubts anyone would actually do it if he left it for them to do —he’s seen the state the house gets into when he’s gone. Andrew hesitates for a moment, but all thoughts fade from his mind when your hand slips from his forearm into his palm, fingers twining with his. All he can do is stare while his brain tries to catch up to what’s happening. “Come on.”

You pull him along and it doesn’t take much effort to have him following. Continuing to stare, he’s got half a mind to hope that his mouth isn’t hanging open. He realizes where you’ve taken him in Smurf’s just a beat too slow as he enters the room.

His room.

He turns to face you slowly and the expression on your face is unreadable as you shut the door behind you. It reminds me of the first time that he saw you all that time ago. The room is silent for a moment as you two take each other in. Andrew hopes that you can’t hear the shaky breath that he lets out from across the room.

“Sit,” you command, gesturing to the bed. Andrew doesn’t waste any time obeying, sitting on the edge of the bed, feet planted firmly on the floor. His hands rest on his thighs, clenching and unclenching anxiously. You approach him slowly, closing the distance until he’s face level with your torso. The position has him blushing —he’s sure his face must be red. He tilts his head up to look at you and you take one step closer. His legs part naturally to accommodate you, bracketing your figure.

“Will you let me take care of you, Andrew?” you ask, hand sliding into his hair. He struggles to not let out a groan, blood rushing straight to his dick. He’s so distracted by the feeling of your nails scratching along his scalp as he leans into your touch that he barely even registers the question.

“Okay.” It comes out quiet and breathy, but it feels loud in the silent room. He watches the ends of your lips curl up into a smile, his eyes fluttering. You take the hands that were settled on his thighs and place them on your hips. Taking the opportunity to appreciate your body, his hands run over your curves slowly as he sucks in a sharp breath. He doesn’t break eye contact with you as he does so, too enraptured to take his eyes off you. It makes him twitch in his jeans when you lean a little closer, breath fanning over his face.

A few moments pass as you let him feel your body; he’s practically drooling at the feeling. Once you’ve decided he’s had his fill you climb into his lap, straddling him. He’s sure you can feel how much he wants you, the heat of your clothed pussy on his jeans making him all the more hard.

You barely give him a second to breathe before you’re catching your lips in his, your mouth parting instantly. The kiss is slow and sensual and it has him letting out a broken whimper into your mouth. That seems to spur you on, fingers gripping the front of his shirt to kiss him even deeper. 

Andrew doesn’t even know how many times he imagined doing this with you. At this point he’s lost count, but this was beyond anything that his mind could ever put together. The smell of your perfume envelopes him and your body is so warm under your thin dress that it sets his nerves alight.

He can’t help just taking a bit more, big hands gripping your hips and grinding you against him. The small moan you let out as he does so has his hips bucking. Hands still roaming, he instinctively slips his tongue into the kiss. The fact that you continue to rock your hips against his once he lets go of your waist makes him dizzy. The kiss is wet and desperate and all Andrew wants is to get closer, greedy hands grabbing.

Then he feels your fingers drift to the hem of his shirt and he lifts his arms, allowing you to pull it off. The sensation of your nails dragging across his chest sends a shiver down his spine. His hands had settled on your thighs, gripping so tight that he’s sure he’s leaving marks. He feels bad, but then he decides that he’ll kiss them as an apology later, if you’ll let him.

You stop grinding and scoot backwards a little, moving further down his lap. He opens his mouth to ask why, but then your hands are at his belt buckle and the words die in his throat. You’re quick to undo his jeans, wasting no time in pulling him out and taking him into your hands. Your hands are much softer than his rough and calloused ones, warm against the hot flesh of his length. His head tips back as you begin to stroke him slowly, eyes to the ceiling as he lets out another shaky breath.

He had always imagined what your touch would feel like wrapped around him like this, letting himself imagine it was you touching him instead of himself when he was alone. The way you twist your wrist languidly, like you know exactly just how to get him going, has his mind going blank.

“Do you like that?” You mutter, tucking your face into his neck now that he’s made the space. The way you kiss slowly up the sensitive skin of his neck makes his mind fuzzy. He can’t seem to get the words out, so he gives a slow nod instead. “Good.”

The praise makes his hips stutter, fucking into your fist. You let out a small laugh, presumably at how desperate he is for you. A low moan escapes his mouth as you swipe your thumb over the head of his cock, swiping away the precome leaking from the tip. Your touch disappears for a moment and he tips his head back forwards to you, looking at you through hooded lids. He watches as you spit into your palm and resume your actions, his jaw dropping open ever so slightly. Andrew feels drunk, the slick shlick of you stroking him filling the room.

He thinks you can tell that he’s getting close. He knows that his hips won’t stop rising to meet your touch: a dead giveaway. It’s almost embarrassing how fast you get him there, cock leaking in desperation as he whines. Your hand slips away and he groans out loud at the loss of sensation. His mind is still fuzzy and he almost misses your fingers wrapping around his wrist, guiding his hand across your body and under your dress. Looking down at where your hands meet, his breathing almost stops when you dip his fingertips past the waistband of your lacy panties.

“Don’t you want to feel how wet I am for you, Andrew?” you breathe into his ear. The words affect him deeply and he lets out a strangled noise, but he can’t bring himself to be embarrassed with you on top of him like this.

“Yes,” he says, voice hoarse. He sounds absolutely wrecked as he swipes a finger along your wetness, sickly slow, brows furrowing as he watches your lips part at his touch. You’re dripping for him; he can feel the wet patch you’ve left on your panties against his knuckles as he slides a finger into you. It’s your turn to moan, and he swears at the sound, “Fuck.”

He pumps his finger in and out slowly, basking in the feeling of you sucking him right in. You surge forward and capture his lips in yours, kissing him breathlessly. You let out a whimper into his mouth as he slips another finger alongside the first. His breath catches in his throat as he feels you flutter around his digits, velvet walls pulling him in even deeper.

Andrew loves having you like this, your dress bunched around your hips, giving him a full view of your pussy covered in lace as you grind your clit into the palm of his hand. It’s all too much for him; he drops his head to your shoulder, breathing in the scent of your perfume. He thinks of all the times he’s touched himself to the scent of you; whether that be from the sheets from the first time he met you or the way that it lingered in his room after a conversation with you, long after you’ve gone.

His pace quickens and he can feel your legs shaking against his while your hips buck, practically riding his hand. You’re mewling now, coming apart on his fingers the same way you do in his dreams. He feels you clamp down around him and he can tell you’re going to cum seconds before you tell him. He can barely hear it, words lost in your soft whimpers. A rush of wetness is slick against his palm as you let out a moan so loud that Andrew remembers there are other people in the house.

Eyes never leaving yours, he pulls his fingers out from your panties and brings them to his mouth. The way you taste has his eyes almost rolling back into his head, licking up the cum that had dripped down his fingers. He wants to get his head between your legs real fucking bad and eat you until the sun comes back up or until you’re begging him to stop. His cock aches with the desperate need to fuck you, eyes trailing down to your chest as you pull off your dress and toss it aside. He decides to save it until later. Maybe round two?

He’s appreciated your body countless times as you tanned by the pool, but the view of you on top of him, being able to touch you the way he wants, has his blood running hot in his veins. He could die under you right now and he’d die a happy man.

You push him down onto the bed with a soft push and his back lands against his freshly pressed sheets. Lifting your hips, you pull his jeans and boxers down, leaving them to pool at his ankles where his feet are still planting firmly on the floor. He kicks them off and moves further up the bed, loving how you giggle as he jostles you.

Your tongue swipes across your lips and you settle yourself into position, the lace of your panties scratching intoxicatingly against his cock. Mesmerized, he watches as you hook your fingers into your panties and pull them aside, not even bothering to remove them before lowering himself down onto his length.

The two of you let out a needy noise as you sink down, taking him to the hilt. You look absolutely beautiful, the sight of you absolutely fucked out for him making his cock impossibly harder. His hands fly to your hips as you begin to grind again, much like you were earlier.

He lets out a sharp inhale through his nose, eyes hungry. You’ve spread your cum across the short hairs at the base of his dick, whining as you chase your high. You get tired of the grinding and lift your hips, bending forward and resting your forehead against his. His eyes are on yours as you slam your hips back down, eyes fluttering shut.

The pace you set is brutal, hips pistoning as you ride him. The force of it has the frame of his bed swaying, headboard making impact with the wall every time you drop your hips. That combined with the volume of both the noises you two make as you ride him is more than enough to hear through the wall or the door. 

“So good, baby. Feels so fucking good,” he coos, lost in the way you fuck him. The wet slap of skin on skin is absolutely sinful, echoing in the room and mingling with the heavy breaths you let out. He’s got one hand on your ass and the other on your breast, overwhelmed with the need to memorize every part of your body. “Been fucking dreaming about your pussy.”

“Oh my god, Andrew,” you whine, hips moving fast. He can feel you clenching around him, trapping him in your cunt like a vice. He can barely keep his eyes open, lids low from the pleasure. You’re squeezing him so fucking tight that he swears his vision is going white. You straighten up and place a hand on his broad chest, using it as leverage to hit a whole new angle.

Andrew feels himself brush against your walls and it has his jaw dropping open as his entire body shaking at the feeling. He’s close but you’re closer, nails digging into his flesh and your moans grow more high pitched, picking up the pace. You don’t stop moving your hips when you cum around him, barely able to keep yourself upright. The feeling of you tightening around him and the sight he catches of your cum glistening around the base of his dick has him moments away from falling over the edge.

“M’gonna cum,” he slurs, hands around your waist to hold you in place as he fucks up into you now. Still sensitive from your second orgasm you squeal, falling even farther forward into his chest. Soft grunts are punched from his chest every time his hips meet yours, taking what he needs from you.

“I want it so bad,” you babble mindlessly, voice dripping with pleasure. He’s never heard you like this before, but now he can’t imagine ever living without it. His thrusts are messy now, determined to hear you beg some more. “Please, I need it.”

“Yeah?” He barely even notices himself speak, too busy fucking into your pussy to think of anything else. He’s so close that his arms are shaking, thick muscles twitching in anticipation. He almost wants to cry, overwhelmed by the way he’s buried so deep inside you. “You want me to pump you full of my cum, baby?”

“Please,” you whine, voice cracking with need. The sound of it has Andrew’s hips faltering as he does exactly that, swearing sharply as he does so. His entire body jerks from the feeling, so wracked in pleasure that he can’t control it. You let out a moan alongside his as he fucks him cum back into you, nice and slow. Once the overstimulation gets to him his hips come to a stop, sweat beading on his forehead.

You fall limp on top of him, the deep rise and fall of your chest matching his. He wraps his two big arms around you instinctively, pulling you closer against him. Andrew basks in the quiet, punctuated by nothing other than your quiet breathing, closing his eyes.

“You okay?” Your voice is muffled against his chest, warm breath fanning over his skin. He’s got a hand running absentmindedly up and down the bare skin of your back, still sticky with sweat. “That wasn’t too much?”

“No,” he rumbles, voice soft. His fingers are still skimming as allows himself to take in the moment for just a beat longer. Then he’s got you under him, flat on your back. He loves the way you look up at him, legs still wrapped around his waist. He noses his way into your neck, noticing that his scent is intermingling with yours the more time you spend with him. His hands begin to roam once more and he can feel his blood rush downwards when you look at him with your big curious eyes. “Not enough.”

If Andrew had any say in it, you two were in for a long night.

—

In the morning, Andrew is the first to wake up. He always had trouble getting to sleep, sometimes staring at his ceiling for hours in the night, but the warmth you brought to his bed had pulled him under within minutes.

He turned his head to face you, eyes flicking over your face as the amber light of the sun painted your face. You were clad in one of his shirts, the plain black looking much better on you than it ever did on him. Andrew shifts slowly so as to not wake you and slides out of bed.

The walk to the kitchen is quiet, like it usually is in the morning considering the fact that the rest of his family regularly kept late hours, so he was surprised to find Craig, already seated at the bar, tucking into a bowl of cereal. He looks up and sees who it is, his face twisting into something much more smug as he takes another bite. 

Andrew is quick to pull a face back, not interested in hashing out his night with Craig, who clearly wants to hear all the details. Instead, he starts to clear the mess that his brother had left out while he assembled his breakfast. Craig waits a beat, like he expects him to change his mind, but Andrew stays silent.

“Pope, man-” he starts, but a door creaks shut in down the hall that distracts him, leaving the unfinished sentence in the air. Then you turn the corner, still only in his shirt, and Andrew realizes that it wasn’t the noise that caught Craig’s attention. Your hair is still mussed and you’re rubbing the sleep out of your eyes when you approach him. You wrap your arms around his wide torso and his arm settles at your waist. Natural as if you’ve done it a million times before. Andrew allows himself to smile at the feeling, not even caring that his brother is watching with a shit eating grin on his face.