With his other hand, Dean checked his phone, seeing Logan’s message. He had read it. He just brushed it off when you called and asked to have late lunch together. 

‘’That was a serious thing?’’ 

‘’Yes,’’ replied Logan. 

‘’Since when do we do house meetings?’’ 

‘’Since now.’’

Dean glanced at you, then back to Logan. ‘’Can we raincheck? Because we were supposed to—’’ 

‘’No,’’ all three boys said at the same time.

A beat of silence followed and Dean set you down. He didn’t carry you through campus like that. Just up the stairs of the house after you mentioned that you were wearing a brand new lingerie set. 

You looked between them, then back to Dean. ‘’It’s okay. I can go wait upstairs.’’ 

‘’Actually,’’ Garrett cut in. ‘’This is about you too.’’ 

A frown drew between your eyebrows. You didn’t even live there. 

‘’Mostly him,’’ Tucker corrected, pointing at Dean. ‘’But you're involved.’’

Was this about the box of cookies you finished and put back in the cupboards the other night? Or the hair in the shower? Because Logan always complained about the clogged shower drain and having to fix it. As if they didn’t all have hair too… 

Without asking questions, you followed Dean to the couch and sat down.

‘’What did we do?" the latter asked, wanting to get this over with quickly. 

The three roommates exchanged looks.

Then Tucker threw his hands in the air. ‘’You have got to stop treating this house like it's a honeymoon suite.’’

‘’We're all happy you found each other. Great. Wonderful. Love that for you,’’ Logan continued, explaining what Tucker meant. ‘’But some of us would like to walk into our own kitchen without wondering if we're about to see something that’s gonna make us regret that 11pm cereal craving.’’

Dean laughed. ‘’You guys are being dramatic.’’

‘’Am I?’’ Tucker shot back, raising a dark eyebrow. 

‘’You’re worse than rabbits during mating season.’’ 

‘’Don’t compare my girlfriend to a rodent,’’ Dean warned Logan, pointing a finger at him.

You shrugged. ‘’I take no offense. Rabbits are cute and very intelligent little beings.’’ 

‘’And stop leaving doors open,’’ Garrett added. ‘’We already have to see it in the locker rooms, we don’t need more exposure to your naked self.’’

‘’Fine. I’ll close the bathroom door when I shower. Are we done?’’ 

‘’No.’’ 

Dean slouched deeper into the couch, one arm draped around your shoulders. ‘’Fine. Continue your presentation.’’

‘’Thank you.’’ Logan pointed at him. ‘’Second issue: the noise.’’ 

Dean opened his mouth to protest again, but Logan raised a hand, silencing him with the kind of authority usually reserved for coaches and angry mothers.

Garrett nodded gravely beside him like this was an official courtroom testimony. ‘’The noise,’’ he repeated.

You knew the walls were thin, but once you were in the moment you kind of forget about it. And it’s not like there’s innocent ears in the house. You were all adults with an active sex life. You’ve heard girls moaning and their gruntings from all of the bedrooms. 

‘’Don’t act all innocent,’’ you said, your eyes falling on Logan. ‘’Dean’s room is right next to yours. We can hear you too.’’ 

At that, Dean squeezed your thigh proudly. Under your sweet appearance, there was a girl who didn’t bite her tongue. 

‘’Do you want to hear the playback? Because I can—’’ the blond added, loving how the tables had turned around. 

‘’That won’t be necessary,’’ Logan interrupted, making the other boys laugh. 

Dean grinned, that cocky, unbothered smirk he wore like a second skin. ‘’See? She's got a point. We're not the only ones being loud in this house.’’

Tucker rubbed his temples like he was suddenly aging ten years per minute. This house meeting was not going anywhere… 

══════════════════

Hannah had silently wrapped blankets around your shoulders while Logan ordered enough takeout to feed an army, neither of them asking questions because they already knew the truth. They were two of the very few people who knew exactly what kind of man Phil Graham really was. The second time had come during Garrett's sophomore season during a game against Saint Anthony's after he took a brutal hit into the boards and broke his ankle.

So, now, whenever your phone lit up with another 911, every horrifying possibility imaginable crashed into your mind. You didn't remember grabbing your keys. You barely remembered sprinting out of your dorm. The drive to the Briar hockey house became a blur of red lights you definitely should've stopped for and speed limits you absolutely ignored. Your pulse pounded so violently against your ribs that it drowned out the music blasting through your speakers.

Please be okay.

Please let everyone be okay.

By some miracle, or sheer reckless determination, your Jeep screeched into the hockey house driveway in under five minutes. The engine hadn't even finished rumbling before you were out of the car. You bounded up the porch steps two at a time, shoved the front door open without knocking. Your breathing came in short, uneven bursts as your eyes swept frantically across the first floor, searching for blood, paramedics... anything.

Instead you were met with silence. Garrett, Beau, Logan, and Tucker stood shoulder to shoulder around the kitchen island, all four wearing expressions that ranged from concerned to thoroughly exasperated. Not a single one of them looked injured. They all looked far too relaxed. What the hell was happening? "Oh, thank God, she's here." Logan dragged a hand down his face, relief washing over his features.

Before you could demand an explanation, Garrett and Beau crossed the room. You reached your brother first, immediately grabbing both of his forearms. "I got your text," Your voice came out higher than you intended, adrenaline still coursing through your veins as your gaze traveled from his face to his shoulders, down his arms and legs, cataloging every inch of him for any kind of injuries. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?" He shook his head, making you let out a breath you didn't even know you were holding.

"I'm fine," Garrett assured gently, giving your elbows a reassuring squeeze to still your frantic inspection. "Promise." Releasing your wrists he gestured toward the staircase with the exhausted resignation of a man who'd reached his breaking point. "It's your knucklehead boyfriend." That alone was enough to make you wary. Ever since Garrett had become captain of the Briar hockey team, he'd made one rule abundantly clear, none of his teammates were to date his little sister.

He'd delivered the threat with the same intensity he reserved for playoff games, and every guy in the locker room had been smart enough not to test him. Well, everyone except Dean Di Laurentis. By the time the two of you had finally stopped pretending the feelings between you didn't exist, Garrett had nearly blown a gasket. It had taken months of Dean shamelessly kissing his ass, both on and off the ice, before Garrett reluctantly accepted that this wasn't another one of Dean's flings.

Dean had retired his infamous manwhore reputation without a second thought the moment you'd become his girlfriend, and somehow he'd managed to do the impossible: convincing your overprotective brother that he genuinely loved you. That however, still hadn't stopped him from finding new and creative ways to irritate Garrett. Nearly two years later, Dean could still get under Garrett's skin without even trying, especially if it involved anything to do with you.

"Is he hurt?"

"No."

"Did he get into a fight?"

"No."

"Did he piss you off?"

"Yes!"

All four guys answered in perfect unison which made a laugh escape you before you could stop it. Then a raspy coughing fit echoed from upstairs, followed by an aggressively dramatic sniffle that was somehow even louder than the coughing. Garrett squeezed his eyes shut, every muscle in his jaw flexing. "Dean has a cold." Silence settled over the room. After a few moments, you looked from Garrett to Logan. Then Tucker. Then Beau. None of them looked like they were joking.

"You texted me 911 because Dean has a cold?" Beau let out a sharp bark of laughter at your words before scrubbing a hand down his face, frustration evident in his features. "Normally I'd think it's adorable. You know I love you two together, but, Christ…" He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking every bit as exhausted as Garrett. "He's being so fucking stubborn."

Logan nodded before jumping in. "He won't take his medicine unless you're the one handing it to him. Barely touched any food because apparently it doesn't count unless you bring it to him." You had to practically bite your lip in order to stop another laugh that threatened to escape. "He has been like this all day," Garrett grumbled, you could have sworn you saw his eye twitch. "Every five minutes it's 'Where's my girlfriend?' 'Can someone call my girlfriend?' 'I think I'm dying. My girlfriend should know.'"

"I never realized someone could weaponize the common cold." Tucker admitted shaking his head as he stirred what you assumed was chicken noddle soup from the delicious smell. "You should've heard him this morning," Beau added with a dramatic sigh. "'Beau, if I don't make it, tell her I loved her.'" Your heart, traitor that it was, performed a full somersault inside your chest. Even stuffed up, feverish, and completely delirious, Dean still wanted you. Only you.

Garrett pointed toward the stairs. "Please, go deal with your idiot boyfriend." You bit the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from laughing outright knowing it would infuriate Garrett even more. Without another thought, you headed for the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. As you reached Dean's bedroom, you knocked gently with the back of your knuckles. "Go away, G!" His voice carried through the wood, deep and rough from congestion, ending in a wet cough that sounded painful enough to make you wince.

A teasing smile tugged at your lips as you eased the door open, peeking your head inside. "I sure hope you mean my brother and not me," You teased softly. "I'd hate to have come all this way for nothing." Dean, who'd been curled into an impressive mound of blankets, turned sluggishly toward the sound of your voice. The transformation was immediate. His glassy, fever-heavy eyes widened before melting with unmistakable relief, exhaustion giving way to pure adoration.

"Babydoll." The nickname came out as little more than a dreamy sigh. Every ounce of misery on his face seemed to disappear the second he saw you. Well, almost every ounce. Your heart clenched painfully as you stepped fully into the room. Dean looked awful. His usually perfectly styled hair stuck out in every direction, flattened with sweat where it clung to his forehead. His cheeks were flushed a deep pink from the fever, while the tip of his nose had been rubbed so raw it was nearly the same shade.

Dark circles rested beneath bloodshot hazel eyes that struggled to stay open. He was shirtless despite being cocooned beneath two comforters, a sheen of sweat covering the broad planes of his chest and shoulders. A half-empty bottle of water, several packets of cough drops, a digital thermometer cluttered his nightstand. Used tissues surrounded the bed in messy little piles, some tossed toward the trash can with embarrassingly poor aim, others simply abandoned wherever they'd landed.

"Oh baby, you look absolutely miserable." You coaxed, gently shutting the door behind you. "I am miserable." His lower lip actually jutted out. Then, without the slightest hint of shame, he lifted both arms toward you. "Come here." Not a request, a demand. Or perhaps even a plea. Grabby hands opened and closed impatiently in your direction and your smile grew despite yourself. "Big, tough, hockey player, yet here you are being a big baby."

"Don't be mean, I have the plague."

"You have a cold."

A cough interrupted whatever dramatic speech he'd been preparing, forcing him to curl forward and cough into the crook of his elbow. By the time it subsided, he looked even more exhausted. You kicked off your shoes before crossing the room. The instant you were within reach, Dean's hands found your waist. With surprising strength for someone who'd apparently been on death's doorstep all day, he tugged you forward until you stumbled against the side of the mattress.

"There you are, missed you so much." He mumbled, sounding infinitely more content as he placed a chaste kiss to your clothed shoulder. Your chest warmed at the affection, as he buried his face against your stomach with a relieved sigh, wrapping both arms around your waist like he was afraid someone might steal you away. His warm cheek pressed against your shirt, and despite the fever radiating from him, he melted into your touch the moment your fingers threaded through his damp hair.

"Everything already feels better." He whispered, eyes fluttering closed. "You've been giving the guys a hard time, haven't you?" You felt him shrug against you, his face showcasing the perfect picture of innocence. "I've been perfectly pleasant." A loud, disbelieving snort drifted up from downstairs, followed immediately by Garrett's voice. "FUCKING LIAR!" Dean didn't even bother lifting his head. "They're exaggerating." You laughed so hard you had to bite your lip.

"Beau told me you refused your medicine."

"I was waiting for you."

"Logan offered you soup."

"It wasn't your soup."

"Tucker made grilled cheese."

"Grilled cheese isn't Tuck's strong suit."

That was a complete and total lie and you knew he knew it.

"You are unbelievable."

"So I've been told."

His arms tightened around your waist, followed by another sleepy sigh that sounded almost blissful.

"I missed you, babydoll."

"I've only been gone since this morning."

"Longest day of my life."

His voice had gone quieter now, rough with exhaustion rather than theatrics. "I just wanted my girl." The confession, so simple and so genuinely vulnerable, melted of whatever amusement remained. You leaned down to press a lingering kiss against his warm forehead before brushing another across the bridge of his reddened nose. "I'm here now." Dean hummed happily, his entire body relaxing. "Yeah, you are." He murmured, already sounding sleepier than before.

He kisses like an athlete too, which is deeply annoying information to have about him because it makes too much sense. Confident, paced, unfairly good at changing pressure right when she starts thinking she’s adjusted to him. 

One hand is braced beside her head, the other curled around her thigh, thumb pressing absent little circles into skin like he doesn't know it’s making her thoughts get weird and slippery around the edges. He’s still wearing his t-shirt, which feels rude considering she’s in a bra and skirt and whatever dignity survived the trip up the stairs is now lying somewhere dead near his laundry basket. 

His chain has slipped out from under his collar while he kisses her, warm gold catching against the side of her throat every time he grinds down into her and makes her breath come out embarrassingly thin.

“Garrett,” she gets out, though it doesn't have much purpose beyond giving her mouth something to do when his is suddenly leaving it.

He hums like he’s heard her and decided to take it under advisement at a later date. His mouth drifts to her jaw, then lower, slow and pleased and entirely too smug about the way her body moves before she can stop it. 

He kisses down her throat, over the spot where her pulse is doing something humiliating, then lower still, along the top edge of her bra, and she should probably let him. She should probably enjoy the fact that Garrett Graham, Briar hockey captain, walking campus hazard, has decided her chest deserves sustained attention. 

But the second his mouth leaves hers properly, some spoiled little part of her lights up in objection.

“No,” she whines, which is not her proudest moment, and is made worse by the fact that Garrett pauses against her skin like he’s trying not to laugh. She reaches down and gets her fingers in his hair, gentle but insistent, tugging him back up until his face appears over hers again, curls mussed, mouth shiny, eyes bright with the kind of amusement that makes her want to either kiss him harder or shove him off the bed. “Come back.”

His grin spreads slowly. “Bossy.”

“You stopped kissing me.”

“I was kissing you somewhere else.”

She pouts. “Wrong somewhere.”

He gives one of those little laughs that starts in his chest before it reaches his mouth, warm and low and stupidly pleased, and then he comes back happily, because that’s the worst part of Garrett. 

He has all this cocky-boy resistance in theory, all this mouth and attitude and captain-of-every-room energy, and then she asks for him directly and his body gives him away before his ego can file an appeal. He kisses her again, deep enough that the complaint evaporates under her tongue, and for a few seconds she forgets about the chain entirely.

Then he pulls back to sit up on his knees, one thigh planted on either side of her hips, and reaches behind his neck for his shirt.

“Oh,” she says before she can stop herself.

Garrett pauses with the hem already half up his stomach, eyebrows lifting. “Oh?”

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

His teeth catch at his bottom lip. “I was about to ask if you needed a minute to process.”

She narrows her eyes at him, which would probably have more force if she were not lying under him with her skirt bunched around her waist and her hands already drifting up his exposed stomach. “You’re so annoying.”

“Yeah, but you’re still looking.”

And she is. Tragically. Openly. With no legal defence. The shirt comes off the rest of the way and lands somewhere near the chair, and Garrett is there above her in the soft lamplight, shoulders broad from hockey, stomach tight under her palms, chain resting against his chest like it’s been placed there for the express purpose of ruining her life. 

It's not even that fancy. That’s the insulting part. Just a gold chain. Simple. Warm from his skin. Sitting right at the base of his throat.

Her hands slide up his stomach, over the hard shift of muscle when he breathes, and she catches her bottom lip between her teeth without meaning to.

Garrett’s grin softens into something more dangerous because he knows. Because Garrett is many things, but oblivious is not one of them, especially not when a girl is looking at his chest like she’s discovered a new academic field.

“Baby,” he says, amused.

She doesn't answer. She hooks two fingers under the chain and pulls. Garrett comes down with it, one hand shooting to the mattress beside her head, the other catching her waist as he laughs into the space above her mouth. “Jesus. Okay.”

She smiles, breath already uneven again. “Come here.”

“I was here.”

“Closer.”

His mouth hovers over hers, his chain trapped between her fingers, the metal a little warm, a little slick where it’s been resting against his skin. “You always this demanding?”

She tugs again, smaller this time, mostly because she likes the way his eyes drop to her mouth when she does it. “Only when you’re slow.”

Garrett stares at her for one beat, and then the smile goes all bright and helpless at the edges, like she’s pleased him against his will. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs, bending until the chain brushes her collarbone and his mouth is almost on hers again. “That’s gonna be a problem.”

The second time is quieter, though quiet in the hockey house is a relative concept and mostly means no one is actively breaking furniture within their line of sight. They're downstairs on the couch after dinner, the living room dim except for the television throwing blue-white light over everyone’s faces and the standing lamp Tucker keeps insisting gives the room ambience, which Dean keeps calling divorced dad lighting. 

A movie’s on, something Logan picked with the confidence of a man who would be asleep within twenty minutes, and sure enough he’s already slumped in the armchair with his head tipped back and one socked foot on the coffee table, snoring faintly through the loudest action sequence anyone has ever failed to respect.

Garrett’s stretched out behind her on the couch, one arm tucked under her head like a pillow, the other lying heavy over her waist. She’s settled half on top of him, half against him, legs tangled beneath the old throw blanket that smells faintly like fabric softener and Garrett’s laundry detergent and whatever popcorn crime Dean committed earlier. 

The whole room has that late-night, lived-in warmth to it. Empty bowls on the coffee table, Tucker leaning on the other end of the couch with his phone in one hand and his attention somehow still half on the movie, Dean sprawled on the floor with his back against Allie’s legs while she runs her fingers lazily through his hair like she’s rewarding a large, badly behaved dog.

Garrett’s chain has worked its way out again. She doesn't mean to start fiddling with it. Her hand is just there, resting against his chest, and the chain is right under her fingertips, cool at first and then quickly warming up. 

Her thumb catches the tiny curve of one link. Then another. Then she’s sliding it back and forth lightly against his skin, not really thinking, only listening to the movie and the steady sound of his breathing under her cheek and the occasional thud of Dean kicking the coffee table because he refuses to understand where his legs end.

Garrett lets it happen for a while. Long enough that she forgets she’s doing it. Long enough for the metal to move in a tiny, repetitive drag under her fingers, a private little rhythm tucked beneath explosions and the muffled rain starting against the windows. 

His chest rises under her palm. His hand at her waist flexes once, absent, and she shifts closer without lifting her head. Then his fingers close around her wrist. Warm and sure, stopping the motion.

She glances up. “What?”

Garrett looks down at her with the deeply patient expression of a man being tortured in a way he’s not allowed to enjoy too obviously. “You’ve been doing that for ten minutes.”

“Doing what?”

His eyes flick to the chain. Then back to her. “That.”

“Oh.” She looks down at her hand, caught in his like evidence. “Was I annoying you?”

“No.”

“You stopped me.”

“Because,” he says, lowering his voice as Dean makes a disgusted noise at the movie and Allie tells him to stop talking before she smothers him with a cushion, “you keep touching my neck, and I’m trying to be a decent citizen in a communal living space.”

Her mouth twitches. “Your neck?”

“My chain is on my neck.”

She bites back a smile. “That’s very scientific of you.”

“I go to college.”

“For hockey.”

He sucks at his teeth, a grin spreading across his face. “For hockey and the pursuit of knowledge.”

She laughs into his chest, and he immediately looks pleased with himself in that quiet Garrett way, like making her laugh while half the room is asleep counts as a personal win. 

His hand slides from her wrist to her fingers, lifting them to his mouth. He kisses her knuckles once, soft and warm, then again, slower, like he can get away with it because nobody’s looking directly at them. The contact sends a stupid little wave through her, low and gentle, a sudden looseness in her ribs and the sense that her body has settled another inch into his.

“Stop playing with it,” he murmurs against her hand.

“I didn’t know it was an activity with rules.”

“It is now.”

“Sounds controlling.”

“Sounds like you’re too hot for your own good and I’m a responsible man.”

She lifts her head just enough to look at him properly. “You’re so full of shit.”

Garrett smiles like that’s his favourite thing she’s said all day. “A little, yeah.”

Then he threads his fingers through hers and brings their joined hands down to rest against his stomach, trapping her there with him. Garrett’s hand stays wrapped around hers. Firm. Warm. His thumb moves once over the side of her finger, slow enough that it feels accidental and deliberate at the same time.

The third time, she should know something’s wrong with the whole arrangement because Garrett offers it too easily. It's the morning of her exam, a big one, the kind that has lived in the back of her head for three weeks like an unpaid bill and ruined several perfectly good evenings by existing near them. 

She’s already eaten half a banana, stared at her notes until the words lost meaning, changed shirts twice, and accused Garrett of breathing too loudly while he sat on her bed watching her spiral with the sort of affectionate calm that made her want to throw a highlighter at him.

“You studied,” he says, for maybe the fourth time, lying on his side with one elbow propped under him and his curls still damp from the shower. “Like, a disgusting amount. I know because you made me quiz you last night and I learned things against my will.”

She stands in front of the mirror, smoothing her top down and then immediately undoing the smoothing because now it looks too deliberate. “That doesn’t mean I know it.”

“That’s actually exactly what studying means.”

“No, studying means I knew it at midnight in your bed while you were half asleep and kept pronouncing things wrong on purpose.”

“I was keeping morale up.”

She turns to glare at him, and he grins at her from the bed, annoyingly gorgeous and unhelpfully relaxed, his chain sitting against his bare collarbone because he hasn’t put a shirt on yet. Which is also rude. Honestly, the whole morning has been a campaign of emotional terrorism.

“I’m serious,” she says, and the words come out thinner than she wants.

His face changes then. The grin doesn't disappear entirely, because Garrett without some amount of grin would be genuinely concerning, but it settles. He sits up properly, feet hitting the floor, and reaches for her when she comes close enough. His hands land at her hips, warm through the fabric, thumbs pressing once like he’s reminding her she has a body and it's standing here, not drowning somewhere in the imagined future of a badly answered essay question.

“I know you are,” he says. “I also know you’re gonna kill it.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What, kill it?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. You’re gonna… respectfully and academically dominate.”

“Garrett.”

He laughs under his breath and tugs her closer until she’s standing between his knees. Then, with the sudden seriousness of someone remembering an ancient ritual and not a bit he came up with seven seconds ago, he reaches behind his neck and unclasps the chain.

She looks down at it. “What are you doing?”

“Good luck.”

Her eyes lift to his. “What?”

He holds it up between them, gold catching the morning light from her window. “It’s lucky.”

She stares at him. “Your chain is lucky?”

“Extremely.”

“You’ve never said that.”

He looks almost offended. “I don’t tell everyone my deeply personal athletic superstitions.”

“You told Dean you had to wear the same socks for playoffs.”

“That was different. He touched them.”

“That feels like a public health issue more than a superstition.”

Garrett ignores this, and gestures for her to turn around. She does, suspicious but too nervous to fight him properly. He stands behind her, and for a second the mirror catches both of them: her in exam clothes and stress, him shirtless and too calm, chain hanging from his fingers. 

He lifts it around her neck, his knuckles grazing the sides of her throat as he brings the clasp together. The metal lands cool against her skin, heavier than she expects, and something in her chest gives one stupid little pull.

“There,” he says, hands settling briefly on her shoulders. “Guaranteed.”

She touches the chain with two fingers. “Guaranteed?”

“Yeah.”

“If I fail, I’m blaming your jewellery.”

“If you fail, I’ll fake my death and start over somewhere chainless.”

She laughs then, finally, and it comes out shaky but real. Garrett’s eyes meet hers in the mirror, his mouth tipped in a way that’s half smug and half proud of having pulled the sound out of her. 

He bends and kisses the side of her head, quick, easy, like he doesn't know the chain suddenly feels like some ridiculous little anchor against her collarbone.

“Go,” he says. “Ace it. Then come back and be unbearable about it.”

She does ace it.

She walks out of the exam hall two hours later with the weird, floating, slightly manic clarity of someone who knows the questions landed exactly where she needed them to, who wrote until her hand cramped, who remembered the thing from the bottom of page seven that she had absolutely expected to die with no audience. 

She calls Garrett from the sidewalk and says, “I think I nailed it,” and he shouts so loudly through the phone that a girl walking past looks over in alarm.

“Tell the chain I said thank you,” she says later that night, when she’s in his room again, sitting cross-legged on his bed with takeout containers open between them and his hoodie swallowed over her exam clothes because the adrenaline crash has finally arrived and brought a mild existential fog with it.

Garrett looks up from stealing one of her fries. “What?”

“The chain.” She taps it where it still sits at her throat. “Your ancient family luck charm.”

There's a pause. It's tiny. Almost nothing. But Garrett Graham has many gifts, and hiding guilt from his girlfriend while his mouth is full of stolen fries is not one of them.

Her eyes narrow. “Garrett.”

He chews slowly.

“Garrett Graham.”

He swallows. “Okay, before you get mad–”

“Oh my God.” She sits up straighter. “It’s not lucky?”

“It’s, uh, lucky adjacent.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve worn it to some good games.”

“You told me it was extremely lucky.”

“I was trying to get you out of your head.”

“You lied!”

“I motivated.” He points at her with a fry. “And you crushed your exam, so actually, where’s my thank you?”

She stares at him for one second. Then another. The chain’s warm now from her skin, and the fact that he made it up should be annoying. It is annoying. 

It's also so Garrett that something in her gives up and goes soft around the edges despite herself, because he saw her standing in front of the mirror two seconds from vibrating through the floorboards and decided the solution was to hand her something of his and make it sound official enough for her nervous system to believe him.

“You’re unbelievable,” she says.

His grin comes back immediately, bright with relief and bad ideas. “But effective.”

“You’re never getting this back.”

“Baby, I look really good in that chain.”

“I look better.”

He studies her for a second, eyes dropping to where the gold sits against the oversized neckline of his hoodie, and his mouth does something slower. 

“Yeah,” he says, voice rougher. “You do.”

Her fingers move to the chain. His eyes track the motion. The takeout goes forgotten between them, steam thinning in the cartons, the lamp laying warm light over his bed and the stupid little lucky-not-lucky object at her throat.

She crawls toward him, slow enough to make his brows lift.

“What?” he asks, though his hands are already moving to her waist when she pushes the cartons aside with the care of someone who doesn't want to get sauce on his sheets but absolutely does want to ruin his evening in other ways.

“You want a thank you?”

Garrett’s mouth opens, then closes. He tilts his head, trying for casual and missing by a heroic distance. “I mean, I’m not gonna say no to gratitude.”

“Good,” she says, and leans in to kiss him once, soft enough that he follows when she pulls away.

His hands tighten on her hips. “Good?”

“Mhm.”

Then she slides off the bed onto her knees between his legs, and Garrett goes very, very still. For once in his life, he doesn't have a comeback ready.

She looks up at him, the chain hanging forward from her neck, gold swinging slightly in the space between them, and his eyes drop to it like he’s experiencing several personal revelations at once.

“Still think it’s lucky?” she asks.

Garrett exhales through his nose, a smile breaking helplessly at one corner of his mouth as his hand comes up to brush her hair back, careful and warm and already a little wrecked. 

“Baby,” he says, voice low with absolute reverence and zero shame, “I’m about to start fucking worshipping it.”

The fourth time is after a home game, which means the hockey house is operating at a volume level that could probably be reported to local authorities if local authorities hadn't long ago made peace with the fact that Briar hockey players were simply going to make too much noise. 

The living room is packed in that loose, post-win sprawl of bodies and beer and boys shouting over one another from distances that don’t require shouting at all. Someone has put the game highlights on the television and every single person in the room is pretending they're not watching themselves while absolutely watching themselves. 

Logan is arguing with a guy from the second line about whether his assist should have been cleaner, Tucker is sitting on the arm of the couch with a beer in hand and the calm expression of a man who played very well and doesn't need to scream about it, and Dean is stretched in the middle of the room like a Renaissance painting sponsored by bad decisions, loudly explaining to Allie that his defensive effort has layers.

Garrett’s on the couch below her, sitting with his legs spread, one arm hooked along the back cushions, hair still damp from the post-game shower and curling messily. He looks good in the obnoxious, lived-in way he always does after a win. Tired under the eyes, mouth lazy with satisfaction, hoodie pushed up at the forearms, chain glinting at his throat every time he turns his head to answer someone. 

There's a faint bruise starting near one cheekbone and stiffness in the way he holds his shoulders that he’s pretending doesn't exist because men who willingly block shots with their bodies have a complicated relationship with the concept of pain.

She’s standing behind the couch with her arms looped around his shoulders, her cheek resting against the side of his head, close enough that when he laughs she feels it before she hears it. The room smells like beer and aftershave and pizza grease and wet pavement dragged in from outside. 

Her chin is tucked near his temple, and his hand comes up every so often to touch her wrist where it crosses his chest, as if checking she’s still there even though she’s been draped over him for fifteen minutes like an affectionate scarf.

“You’re tense,” she murmurs near his ear.

Garrett tilts his head slightly toward her. “I got checked into the boards by a guy built like a refrigerator.”

“I saw.”

“You also yelled ‘get up’ at me.”

“You did get up.”

He huffs. “Supportive.”

“I’m very motivational.”

He smiles, eyes still on Logan across the room. “Yeah, Coach, you’re a real asset.”

She presses her thumb into the muscle at the top of his shoulder before he can get too smug, and his mouth shuts in the middle of whatever he was about to say. There’s a small drop in his posture, a breath leaving through his nose, his head tipping forward half an inch because the pressure hits somewhere useful.

“Oh,” she says softly, pleased. “There he is.”

“Don’t sound so happy about my suffering.”

“I’m happy about being right.”

He hums quietly. “You usually are.”

She starts working at his shoulders properly, thumbs pressing slow circles into the hard knots there, fingers sliding under the edge of his hoodie collar. Garrett tries to keep participating in the conversation around him, because Garrett Graham could be dying and still find time to chirp a teammate, but she feels him lose focus by degrees. 

His answers get shorter. His hand drops from his beer to rest loosely on his thigh. When she presses into the muscle beside his neck, he makes a low sound under his breath that is almost nothing and somehow still deeply satisfying.

Dean notices, of course. Dean would notice a private moment through drywall.

“Oh, that’s cute,” he says from the floor, voice carrying with surgical precision. “Captain’s getting a little spa treatment.”

Garrett doesn't open his eyes. “You jealous, Di Laurentis?”

“Of a shoulder rub? No. Of your girlfriend looking at you like you just returned from war? Little bit.”

Allie leans around him. “He did get slammed pretty hard.”

Dean points at her. “See? This is why I date women. Compassion.”

Tucker takes a sip of beer. “You date Allie because she tolerates you.”

“That too.”

She ignores them, and keeps working her thumbs into Garrett’s shoulders. The only problem is the chain. It keeps getting in the way, slipping under her fingers every time she moves toward the base of his neck, catching lightly against her knuckle, dragging sideways over his skin. She shifts it once. Twice. The third time, Garrett reaches up without looking, catches her wrist, and then lifts his other hand to the clasp.

“Here,” he says.

She pauses. “What?”

He takes the chain off in one smooth motion, turning his head enough to glance up at her with that soft, amused look that always feels worse when other people are around because it's not performative. It's just his face, open for one second before he remembers to make a joke. “Here, baby. Wear it before you strangle me with it.”

The room hears baby. Naturally. The room reacts with the dignity of wolves spotting an injured deer. Logan’s head snaps over. “Oh, wow.”

Dean sits up so fast Allie has to move her knees. “Did he just give her the chain?”

Tucker’s mouth twitches. “Big night.”

Garrett points vaguely at all of them without turning around. “Everybody shut up.”

No one shuts up. That would go against the entire founding philosophy of the house.

She bends down anyway, smiling despite herself, hair falling forward over one shoulder. Garrett lifts the chain around her neck from where he sits, reaching back and up, his fingers careful as they brush the sides of her throat. It's an awkward angle, and he fumbles once with the clasp.

Dean gasps. “He’s putting jewellery on her. In public. Garrett Graham has fallen.”

“I will throw this beer at you,” Garrett says.

“No, you won’t. Your girl’s wearing your chain and touching your shoulders. You’re domesticated now.”

Logan lifts his cup. “RIP to a slut.”

Garrett finally opens his eyes and looks over. “I’m still alive, asshole.”

“Physically,” Logan says. “Spiritually, you’re picking baby names.”

She laughs into Garrett’s hair before she can stop herself, and his hands settle briefly at her collarbone once the clasp is done, thumbs brushing over the chain where it sits against her skin. 

The touch is quick. Almost hidden. But his eyes stay there for a second too long, and the whole loud room blurs slightly at the edges in that private way it sometimes does around him, even when Dean is three feet away preparing to be the worst person alive.

The chain is warm from Garrett’s skin when it lands against her throat. Something about that should not matter as much as it does.

Garrett’s head tips back until he can look up at her. “Good?”

She nods, fingers touching the chain. “Good.”

“Can I have my massage now, or are we hosting a ceremony?”

“Ceremony,” Dean says immediately. “I have a speech.”

“No one wants that,” Tucker says.

“I do,” Logan contributes, raising a hand.

Garrett groans and drops his head forward again, but she can see the grin at the corner of his mouth, tucked away where the boys cannot fully get to it.

She goes back to his shoulders, the chain now resting against her instead of him, rising and falling gently with her breathing as she works the tension out from under his hoodie.

The boys keep going, because of course they do.

“Whipped,” Dean says.

“Tragically,” Logan adds.

“Clinically,” Tucker says, which makes Allie laugh so hard she almost spills her drink.

Garrett lifts one hand just enough to flip them off without opening his eyes. “Keep talking. I’m cutting all of you from the power play.”

“You can’t cut me from the power play,” Dean says. “I am the power play.”

She leans closer, thumbs pressing into Garrett’s neck, and murmurs, “They’re not wrong, you know.”

His eyes open slightly. “Careful.”

“What?” she says, voice innocent near his ear. “You gave me your chain in front of everyone.”

“You were choking me with it.”

“I was massaging your shoulders.”

“Poorly.”

She pinches him lightly.

He laughs, catching her wrist and bringing her hand down just long enough to kiss the inside of it, quick and warm and entirely too natural for a room full of men actively trying to ruin his reputation. Then he lets her go and sinks back against the couch, shoulders finally loosening under her hands.

Across the room, Logan makes a wounded noise. “Oh my God. He kissed her hand. We lost him.”

Dean presses his beer to his heart. “He was so young.”

Tucker, dry as dust, says, “He died doing what he loved. Pretending he wasn’t in love.”

Garrett’s jaw ticks once, but the smile wins. She feels it more than sees it, the small shift under her cheek when she bends down again and rests against him for a second, her arms around his shoulders, his chain warm at her throat, the whole loud, stupid house moving around them.

“Love is a strong word,” Garrett says, which is exactly the sort of thing Garrett says when everyone is looking and the truth has wandered too close to the middle of the room.

She smiles against his cheek. “Mm.”

His hand comes up and covers her forearm, fingers curling there, thumb sweeping once over her skin in a slow little pass that says more than his mouth is willing to risk with Dean waiting to pounce.

Around them, the boys keep chirping, the television keeps replaying Garrett’s goal from the second period, someone in the kitchen shouts about beer pong, and the chain rests against her collarbone like a tiny, ridiculous victory.

Garrett turns his head just enough that his mouth brushes near her temple, hidden from most of the room by the angle of her body.

“You look good in it,” he says quietly.

Her hands pause on his shoulders for half a second.

Then Dean yells, “I can see you whispering sweet nothings, Graham,” and Garrett closes his eyes like he’s begging a very unhelpful God for patience, and she laughs so hard into his hair that the chain jumps lightly at her throat.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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“Have I done something? Please don’t leave, I’d worry myself to death if you left me now.” His voice is familiar and warm, slow, forever mellifluous. You’ll never get sick of the way he talks—it’s one of the reasons you fell in love with him, how he could make anything at all sound like a love note. “What’s making you feel unsure? Tell me what’s going on in there.”

You know that Aaron’s gentle, but he’s gone so sweet so suddenly it has emotion brewing in you that you haven’t earned. You swallow a silly lump and try to smile. “It’s nothing,” you say. 

Aaron slowly cards his hand behind your neck and encourages you into the curve of his neck, his second hand at the small of your back in a perfect fit. Warm and big, stretching over one of your most delicate parts. 

“I don’t know what to think about it, honey. I don’t ever want you to feel like you’d rather be at home than with me. If you need space, you can have it. Of course you can have it, but I’m getting the feeling that that’s not what this is about. Do you trust that you can talk to me?”

You want to cuss, but your throat burns, and all you can force out is a reprimanding, “Aaron.” 

“‘Cos I can fix anything.”

“I know that.”

“Yeah? So let me fix it for you, sweetheart.”

It is perhaps your greatest shame to be near tears in his arms as you plead with him to pretend you never said it. “I was just– I just wondered how you’d react, is all, there’s nothing wrong.” And Aaron doesn’t believe you, still soft as silk, so you tell him about the video you saw and he hums. You’re worried he’ll be rougher with you, then, because it’s not like you’ve earned his sympathy, but he rubs your back slowly and hums pensively, the smell of his skin under your nose. 

“Something still doesn’t feel right, does it?” he asks in a murmur, unaware of the molten heat in your throat and stomach simultaneously. You couldn’t explain it to him if he did notice it. “Did you– was it a surprise, that I wanted you to stay and work things out with me? I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear, that I’d fix anything for you.”

It’s just—it borders being too much, too kind. It’s the ache of biting into something sweet with a bad tooth, how he’s gone this tender, how he hasn’t once pushed you off of his chest. It hits you how willing he is to spend endless minutes reassuring you over nothing, a scenario that you created, and how easily he reads your smallest emotions. 

You’re downed by a video prank, and it’s all your fault. 

Luckily, Aaron doesn’t seem to mind at all. He tips your head back with your ear against his shoulder, looking up at him from his chest all wide-eyed and in love as he leans down for a slow kiss. “Do you want to go home?” he asks quietly. 

You shake your head, worried your voice will wobble and betray you if you speak, so Aaron leans down again to press another kiss to your mouth, this time very purposefully misaligned, so as to kiss right under your nose. 

“What can I do to make you feel better?” he asks, like you haven’t just deregulated yourself by accident. 

“I’m okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry.” He gives your back a good rub, like he’s waving his hand into your spine. “How’s that? Is that helping?”

“Little more,” you tell him. You don’t mention going home again. 

Garrett tried. He tried to stretch the muscles in his face, crack his neck. Loosen up. For the most part, he succeeded. The way the neck of the beer bottle remained imprinted into his fingers, his palm, told him he wasn't really relaxed.

He hadn't moved all night. He planted himself in his living room, his hip against his couch. Standing. The thought had crossed his mind, to sit, to watch in comfort, and then a guy had approached you before Garrett could even send a smile your way and he knew he needed to stand. He was only 5 strides away from you that way.

"You can't lay claim to her, G, especially when she isn't yours." Logan said, rubbing salt into Garrett's metaphysical wound.

It wasn't the first time Logan had bought it up. That Garrett "doesn't do girlfriends" Graham can't have it both ways. Can't have her and not have her fully. Can't expect her to do the same. But Logan didn't understand, she wasn't some random puck bunny. She wasn't a fling or a friend-with-benefits. They had started talking in a plague history class, they started passing notes back and forth in a lecture about how fucking boring it was. She had bought him a coffee in the next lecture claiming he looked worse than when he had gotten a puck to the face last March. Garrett took her to that bar downtown when they both passed their midterm. He helped her take her washing to the laundromat for fucks sake.

They only fucked for the first time last week. Garrett hadn't even thought of anyone else since that first lecture.

"She's mine," Garrett grumbled into the lip of his beer. "In the ways that count."

You flung your head back, laughing at whatever the preppy asshole had said. Graham took another swig of his pre-approved beer. Fuck, it was torment. Hearing you make the sounds that he thought he lured from you. You laugh at his jokes like that. Nothing this guy could've said was worth such a genuine reaction.

You wore a sweater with a high neck. That was the first thing that Garrett noticed when he saw you tonight. Hiding what he left on your skin the night prior. That had bought a smirk to his lips finally.

For the millionth time this evening, you caught Garrett's eye-line over this douche's shoulder. The sparkle that caught in your eyes was trouble. Like the sun on rippling water, it was too inviting, to easy to drown.

He would drown willingly, if you gave him the time.

"Come on dude get another drink with me and stop sulking." Dean said, wrapping his arm around Garrett's shoulder. It took little convincing to get him to move. Drinks were in the kitchen. As were you. Dean had been drinking since the early afternoon and was hardly conscious of the fact that he was leading Garrett straight to the source of his sulk.

Garrett fought against curving his hand around your hip, fought against placing it in the groove of your lower back that he knew all too well. He fought against touching you at all. He didn't want to be that guy, you weren't dating, you didn't owe him anything. He was more than whatever this caveman, neanderthal need was. He knew he was a jealous guy, he knew that. But this? This burning, cramping, possessive need? It was stifling. That was new. He had never felt this way before. He had also never helped a girl do her fucking washing in a laundromat, either.

"What're you drinking man?" Slurred Dean. The man was practically head first in the fridge and Garrett's crisis of self was hardly on his radar.

Don't listen in. Don't look. Those were the two simple rules Garrett had set himself, walking into the kitchen.

Don't listen in. Don't look. Don't listen in-

"So are you seeing anybody?"

Garrett couldn't help himself. He turned around and stared. The arrogant fucking prep, who was most definitely in pre-law, Garrett decided, didn't even notice.

His heart lodged in his throat as you turned to look at him. Full smile, full lips. The sparkle in your eye quickly burnt to a glint, mischievous and Garrett felt it right in the pit of his stomach. He tried to ignore the clenching feeling around his ribs. Around his heart. He had taken her to the fucking Laundromat, of course he was gone! He would do anything she even fucking thought about asking him.

You pulled away your sweater, claiming that you were 'hot all of a sudden'. A tiny little black tank with the smallest straps Garrett had ever seen was all you had on underneath. That, and your neck and shoulders and chest- you were covered. He hadn't quite realised how much of a mark he left on you.

"Graham, baby, can you take that upstairs next time you're going?" You held the sweater out to him across the kitchen island. The quirk of your eyebrow mixed with the way you called him 'baby'. Garrett was done.

He was done. So fucking done.

Truth be told, Garrett knew he was done as soon as he saw that you put little hearts above your i's and that you pass notes in lectures like a kid.

Taking the sweater from your outstretched hand, he threw it over his shoulder, all the while taking your hand to his mouth. He kissed up your arm as he made his way around the kitchen. Garrett Graham was drawn to you, magnetically. He kissed up your neck to your hairline. His hands finally found purchase on your hips as his chin rested on the top of your head.

"Sorry Lou," She said to the prep. "What were you saying?"

The pre-law clenched his jaw, mumbled something and practically fled the scene. It was like witnessing a castration. Up close. In HD.

Garrett could feel his heart beat louder in his chest, his cock growing hard as you melted into him. You giggled sweetly as Garrett nipped the shell of your ear.

"That wasn't very nice baby." Garrett's voice was husky, indicating that he didn't particularly care that you had led on Lou.

"I'm only nice to you, Garrett."

"Keep it that way." He mumbled, bringing his mouth to yours.

A/N: This was fun omg sorry its so shorttttttttt

one of his hands was resting on your knee, his thumb tracing slow, lazy circles through the fabric of your jeans, creating a soothing, radiating warmth.

every couple of minutes, he would shift, tilting his head up just enough to press a soft, lingering kiss to your bare wrist, or whatever patch of skin was closest to his lips, humming contentedly against your skin.

"tuck," you murmured.

you glanced around the sunny campus grounds, your shoulders tensing slightly as a group of students walked past. "you're doing it again."

he looked up at you, a lazy, utterly content smile spreading across his handsome face. "doing what?" he asked, his voice smooth, gentle, and thick with affection.

"you know what i mean," you said, as you could feel a familiar embarrassment coming over you once again. "we're outside. literally anyone could walk by."

see, thing was it wasn't that you didn't love him.

you loved him fiercely, but you also inherently preferred the quiet corners of life.

you kept your head down and preferred to keep your personal life strictly personal. it wasn't some dramatic defense mechanism, nor did you think you were superior for being low-key.

you liked your privacy. it was your way of life.

any sudden influx of attention made you instinctively guarded, and tucker's open, unashamed affection was honestly a lot to adjust to.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

truthfully, his intensity was the exact reason you had been so reluctant to have anything to do with him in the first place.

you had met at a mutual friend's birthday dinner at a diner off-campus. you had been trying to quietly eat your burger and chat with the girls next to you when tucker sat across from you, completely throwing you off balance.

you would’ve liked to say it was because he lacked charm but it wasn’t that because he had too much of it. he was effortlessly sweet, attentive, and so insanely attractive that it made you nervous.

when he asked for your number at the end of the night, you had actually hesitated, gently telling him that you didn't think you were his type.

you assumed his interest was a passing whim and you didn't particularly want to get swallowed up by his massive social world.

unfortunately for you, tucker had been relentlessly patient. he didn't push, but he didn't disappear either.

he would prove, look by look, that he was willing to learn your boundaries if it meant getting close to you. he respected your wishes, but he also made it clear with every sweet text and gentle smile that he wasn't necessarily going to be going anywhere.

little by little, those boundaries started to soften. you found yourself looking forward to his goodnight texts, and your heart would do a dangerous little skip whenever you saw his name pop up on your phone.

you were falling for him and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it.

as it turned out, tucker was in the exact same boat. for all his easy confidence, he had been entirely helpless against how deeply he was tumbling for you, completely enchanted by the grounding presence you brought into his world.

a few weeks later he had offered to walk you to your car after a long afternoon of studying, and right before you got in, he gently pulled your heavy class textbook out of your arms.

you watched in confusion as he opened it up to the exact page you had bookmarked, sliding a custom, glossy card stock bookmark inside.

right in the center of the it you read: i know i'm not your usual type, but will you let me be your boyfriend anyway?

below it, tucker had checked a tiny box next to the words 'yes', 'definitely yes', and 'ask me again after practice'.

when you looked up, the athlete was flushing a faint pink, holding the textbook out to you like a nervous kid handing over a valentine.

you had taken a pen from your bag and checked 'definitely yes' on the spot.

but the first real test of your tolerance for exposure had happened a couple of weeks into dating, during a weekend beach trip.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

the beach was beautiful, but it was vast and incredibly loud.

the shoreline was dotted with young adults, families, and tucker's rowdy teammates playing an aggressive game of beach volleyball a few yards away.

you weren't particularly miserable, but you were definitely feeling the pressure of your surroundings.

you were sitting near the back of the sand, your knees pulled casually to your chest, with a large pink beach towel completely wrapped around your shoulders.

your sunglasses covered your eyes, acting as a kind of protective barrier between you and the crowded shoreline.

"hey, we're heading down to the water, do you want to come?" allie asked, jogging up to you with a bright smile, her sunglasses pushed up into her wavy hair.

you offered her a genuine, easy smile, pulling the pink towel just a little tighter around your shoulders.

you liked allie immensely, but you simply didn't have the energy to engage in socialising just yet. "go ahead without me. i'm actually good right here. just taking it all in."

"are you sure?" allie checked, looking at you closely to make sure you weren't just being polite. "i don't want you feeling left out."

you reassured her that it was okay, your tone warm and entirely steady.

"alright, but i am stealing you for food later." she called out with a laugh as she turned back toward the water.

you watched her go, satisfied with your spot, until a shadow fell over you.

tucker had just jogged over from the volleyball game, glistening with sweat and sea spray, his curls damp and wild. he looked vibrant, perfectly at ease in his own skin, and entirely in his element.

he dropped to his knees on the sand next to you, kicking up a tiny spray, completely unbothered by the chaos around him.

"you're missing a legendary comeback, sweetheart," he breathed, flashing a bright, dimpled grin as he reached for his water bottle.

his eyes scanned your posture—from the pink towel clutched tightly at your throat to the slight tension in your jaw. his smile softened instantly into something incredibly tender. "hey. you doing okay out here?"

"yeah," you said, your voice steady, though you kept your eyes on the horizon. "it's nice. just a lot of people."

without a word, he smoothly shifted his body, positioning his broad frame directly between you and the crowded shoreline, effectively blocking out the rest of the beach.

it was a deliberate, protective move, creating a physical wall of privacy just for you.

he reached out, his cool, damp hands gently nudging your ankles, encouraging your legs to uncurl from your chest.

you gave him a dry look, but the steady, patient humor and warmth in his eyes made you yield.

you guided your legs out straight, and he immediately laid down right beside you, propping his head up on his hand, his shoulder firmly and comfortingly pressed against yours.

"talk to me," he murmured, his thumb brushing over your ankle. "are the guys being too loud?"

"the guys are fine," you whispered, adjusting your sunglasses. "it's just... never mind."

tucker looked at you for a long moment, his chest rising and falling with a slow, deliberate breath.

he reached over, his fingers gently sliding your sunglasses down the bridge of your nose just enough so he could look directly into your eyes.

there was no pity in his gaze, only an immense, grounding warmth that felt entirely safe.

"look at me," he asked softly, to which you did.

"who's on this beach right now?"

"garrett, dean, allie, logan... a million other people." you sighed.

"no," tucker interrupted, a small, heart-melting smile tugging at his lips. he leaned a fraction closer, shutting out the rest of the world. "right here. in this particular square foot of sand. who is here?"

"just you," you whispered.

"just me," he agreed firmly.

he reached out and gently nudged the edges of the large pink towel away from your chest, his movements slow, deliberate, and free of any rush.

he peeled the fabric back from your shoulders, letting the warm sun hit your skin.

your instinct was to pull it back around yourself, but tucker immediately placed his warm palms flat against your collarbones, smoothing down over your bare shoulders, melting your tension away.

he shifted, draping his large, heavy arm over your waist and pulling your back flush against his chest, tucking you perfectly into his side while the pink towel now draped loosely over both of your laps.

all wrapped in his scent and his heat, the crowded beach completely faded away.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

but even after that afternoon on the sand, navigating his complete lack of a filter when it came to affection was still a daily exercise.

just yesterday, you had been waiting for him in the stands after hockey practice. you had chose a seat a few rows up, fully expecting to just wave, wait for him to change, and walk out together like normal.

but tucker had spotted you instantly. he didn't care that he was still half-dressed in his gear, or that the rest of the team was skating by.

he had jogged right up the bleachers, his skates clacking loudly and heavily, drawing everyone's eyes right to your row.

when he reached you, he had wrapped his arms around you, planting a lingering, unapologetic kiss right on your cheek, murmuring how glad he was that you came.

you had frozen up as you felt the weight of his teammates' teasing glances from the ice. you could hear garrett shouting a joke over his shoulder, and while you knew it was all in good fun, you wished he would have just saved the enthusiasm for the privacy of the car.

tucker had noticed your sudden stiffness then, his expression shifting to something more mindful, but the self-consciousness of the moment had lingered.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

tucker noticed that same familiar, reserve taking over your features right now against the tree on the campus lawn.

the playful smirk faded from his lips, replaced by a gaze so soft and fiercely tender it made your breath hitch.

he didn't move away. instead, he rolled over completely, propping his elbows on either side of your thighs so he was hovering over you, creating a little bubble just for the two of you.

he reached up, his knuckles lingering against your flushed cheek, rubbing a gentle circle there. his deep brown eyes held yours with absolute certainty.

"let them look," tucker said softly, addressing the silent hesitation from yesterday. "i just care about you."

"it's just a lot sometimes. not you, tuck. just... yesterday at the rink, i felt like i was part of a show," you sighed, looking down at his collarbone because looking into his eyes felt too intense.

tucker understood completely. he knew you valued your privacy and that it took time for you to let someone into your space, and he wanted nothing more than to make sure you felt secure.

he made it his personal mission to meet you halfway and make sure you always felt safe with him.

he gently caught your chin, tilting your face back up. when you looked at him, his smile was so sweet, so full of pure, unadulterated adoration, that your heart did a clumsy flip.

"i'm sorry about yesterday, i got ahead of myself," he promised, leaning up to press a soft, slow, lingering kiss to your lips. completely private and entirely for you.

"but i'm never gonna stop wanting to show you off. you're the best thing in my life. you're allowed to be held, you know. anywhere." he whispered.

a soft, amused laugh escaped you, the lingering tension in your chest finally unraveling into pure warmth. "you're actually so ridiculous."

"i'm crazy about you, there's a difference," he grinned, his beautiful dimples flashing.

he shifted, laying his head back down in your lap, but this time he took your hand, intertwining his fingers perfectly with yours and resting them directly over his racing heart. "see? look at that smile. i love seeing you happy."

you let out a soft breath, finally relaxing completely against the tree. you didn't look around to see if anyone was watching. you just looked down at tucker, whose eyes were closed as he contentedly soaked up your presence like.

you hesitantly brought your free hand up to slide your fingers through his soft curls, gently twisting the thick strands and massaging his scalp.

tucker let out a low, pleased hum, burying his face closer into your thigh, pressing a sweet, hidden kiss there.

because you weren't one for big declarations or public displays, you poured your love for him into the quiet, invisible details of his life.

tucker loved purely and loudly, but you loved him intentionally.

he didn't know it yet, but you were the one who always made sure his favorite gatorade flavor was stocked in the fridge.

you had also quietly started reading up on hockey regulations just so you could fully understand the plays he talked about with such wild passion.

you showed up for him in the background, anchoring him while he took center stage.

behind closed doors, away from the crowds and the watchful eyes of the campus, your own form of affection came alive.

it had taken you a while to get there, a steady building of trust as tucker proved time and time again that your boundaries were safe with him.

but when it was just the two of you in the quiet, cozy sanctuary of his bedroom, you didn't hold back.

you were the one who would pull him down by his collar, losing yourself in deep, unhurried kisses that left him completely breathless and reeling.

in those private hours, you would map the line of his spine with your fingers, holding his heavy body close against yours, letting him know exactly how deeply he was wanted.

you just preferred saving the best parts of your love for an audience of one.

"stay like this for a bit?" he mumbled, his voice thick with a sudden wave of sleepiness, his chest rising and falling in a steady, comforting rhythm beneath your intertwined hands.

"i have chapters to read, tuck," you teased softly, though your fingers didn't stop moving through his hair, untangling the stubborn knots with gentle, loving precision.

"the book can wait. i can't," he murmured, tightening his grip on your hand just a fraction and pressing closer to you.

you smiled, the last remnants of your apprehension melting away into the warm, quiet afternoon.

"ten minutes," you bargained softly, though your fingers didn't stop their soothing rhythm through his hair. "and then i'm turning the page. if your head is in the way, i'm using your forehead as a bookrest."

tucker let out a low, vibrating chuckle against your thigh, his eyes remaining closed, a soft smile playing on his lips. "deal. you're ruthless, you know that?"

"someone has to keep you in line," you murmured.

you leaned your head back against the rough bark of the tree, finally letting the rest of the campus blur into completely irrelevant background noise.

you didn't need to change who you were to fit into his world, and he didn't need to dim his light to fit into yours.

“M’not seducing,” he mumbles, warm and beer-sweet against the side of her jaw. His hands have found her waist like they were put there at birth and he’s now too drunk to question destiny. “This is romance.”

“This is a concussion waiting to happen.”

He lifts his head at that, offended in the loose, unfocused way of someone whose pupils are doing their best but not their finest work. His curls are a disaster, flattened on one side from wherever Logan had shoved a backwards cap onto him earlier and then stolen it back, and his mouth is shiny from the sloppy kisses he keeps missing by half an inch. “I don’t get concussions. I’m elite.”

“You tried to drink from a bottle of barbecue sauce ten minutes ago.”

“Protein.”

“It was Sweet Baby Ray’s.”

“Baby,” he says, with sudden, devastating sincerity, like he’s just remembered she exists and is furious about how much he likes it. He drops his forehead against hers, close enough that they’re breathing the same dumb, alcohol-warm air, and because they’re practically eye to eye like this, she gets the full force of his ridiculous drunk softness without having to tilt her chin back very far. “You’re so pretty it’s actually pissing me off.”

She bites the inside of her cheek because smiling will only encourage him, and he’s already plenty encouraged, big hands sliding around to her back, dragging her in until her knees knock lightly into his. 

“Sit down,” she tells him, guiding him toward the bed. “Before you compliment me into manslaughter.”

He goes, but only because she goes with him, folding down onto the mattress beside him as he immediately lists sideways and tries to crawl halfway into her lap. It would be less absurd if he weren’t built like someone engineered in a lab to win face-offs and ruin lives. Instead, he’s heavy and clingy and muttering nonsense into her collarbone while she pries off one of his shoes with her heel.

“Dean said I’m embarrassing,” Garrett says, scandalised.

“Dean watched you tell Tucker’s ficus it had nice vibes.”

“Mean plant.”

“You’re done talking.”

He hums, unconvinced, then presses a kiss somewhere near her shoulder, misses, and gets the strap of her top instead. “Stay?”

She smooths his hair back from his forehead, feeling the heat of him, the party still humming through the floorboards downstairs, boys yelling, bass thudding, the whole house alive and messy around them. Garrett’s eyes are half shut now, his cheek mashed against her chest like he’s found the only safe place in Massachusetts.

“Yeah,” she says, quieter, letting her thumb drift over his brow. “I’ll stay.”

His mouth curves, smug even half-asleep. “Knew it.”

She looks down at him, at the golden boy of Briar hockey currently drooling very delicately on her shirt, and huffs a laugh through her nose.

“Romance,” she mutters.

Garrett, already gone, squeezes her once like he agrees.

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.

However, ever since he brought you a new game for your Nintendo Switch, a purchase he now sorely regretted, you’ve barely paid him any attention.  

Outside, the world was dark and quiet. Inside, the room was dimly lit by the colourful glow of your Switch, and the harsh white glare from Dean’s phone. The soft click-clack of your thumbs pressing buttons and moving the joysticks was the only sound breaking the silence.

“Alight,” Dean sighs, “explain this game to me again.”

The cushions shifted as Dean tossed his phone aside and got up. He walked over to your side of the sofa, scooting in right behind you. Without a word, you wiggled back into the warm space between his legs, leaning back against his broad chest. You lifted the Switch up, propping your elbows on his knees just high enough so you could both see the screen.

“Tell me about this thing you’ve been running for three days straight,” he whispered, his voice tickling your neck. He wrapped his arms loosely around you, trapping you against him in the best way possible. “I’m starting to get jealous of the attention your villagers, or whatever they’re called, are getting.”

When you didn’t respond immediately, too focused on the drama happening with two of your Miis, he leant in and blew a warm puff of air directly into your ear. A shiver ran down your spine, and you laughed, turning your head to look at him.

Dean was already smiling, but his smile grew when you looked up at him. His blue eyes bright in the dark room. He smelt faintly like the cologne he always wore and the shampoo he’d used from his shower after his afternoon practice.

Before you could lean in to smell him, he leant forward and pressed a chaste kiss to your lips.

“Hey,” you smiled, your heart doing that familiar little flutter it always did when he focused all his attention on you.

“Hey,” he said back.

You turned your attention back to the glowing screen. Dean hooked his chin over your shoulder, the stubble on his jaw scratching lightly against your skin as he leant in to peer at the game you were playing.

On the screen, you were hovering over the apartment complex. Around the town, chaos was happening. Dean let out an amused huff against your neck, his chest vibrating against your back. “What the hell is going on?”

“The game is just random like that,” you laughed, tapping the joystick to pan to the other side of the island. “They have a life of their own when you’re not directly influencing it.”

You showed him a few more things on the island, a fight had now broken out between Tucker and a random Mii and you were separating them.

“I made us all,” you grinned.

Dean’s arms tightened slightly around you, his interest fully piqued. “Oh really? What are we doing? Are we fucking?”

You snorted, nearly dropping the console. “Dean! No, it’s a Nintendo game please.”

“Lameeee,” he mumbled in your ear. “Fine. Am I at least as smooth and handsome as I am in real life?”

“You can judge that for yourself,” you chuckled, scrolling until the camera was over his apartment building. “Let’s check on you first. You live on the top floor, obviously. I gave you boyband hair, do you like it?”

Dean’s Mii, with perfectly styled swoopy hair and wearing a fancy robe, was in the corner of his room, hands slamming on the piano keys. You had customised his apartment with a load of expensive looking items, it was for Dean after all.

Humming proudly, Dean pressed a sloppy kiss to your neck. “I’m GLORIOUS!”

“I knew you’d like it,” you said.

“Now show me your Mii, I want to see what my gorgeous girlfriend is up to.”

Zooming back out, you scrolled until you saw your apartment. You clicked onto yourself, your Mii was sat on the floor with a pink bubble.

“What does that mean?” Dean asked.

You giggled to yourself, knowing that Dean was about to be in for the shock of his life.

“Let’s find out together.”

You clicked on the bubble and turned your head to watch Dean’s face drop as a speech bubble appeared over your Mii:

“I can’t hold back my feelings for Garrett Graham. I need to tell him how I feel.”

Dean went completely rigid against you. You could see his eyes widening as he stared at the screen, trying to process this betrayal.

Slowly, his jaw dropped.

“Urmmm, what the FUCK.” He lifted his head off of your shoulder, leaning back so he could look you dead in the eye. “Who the fuck is Garrett Graham?”

Your body jerked as you tried to suppress your laughter. “Well, it’s this kinda hot guy, he’s the captain of the hockey team and-.”

“No,” Dean interrupted, “I know who he is but, we’ll circle back to that kinda hot comment later, who is he to you there.” He emphasised that with an accusatory point to your Switch screen.

You turned back to the screen and tapped the bottom right corner. “He’s my crush, silly.”

Mii you was in the far right, with a pink arrow pointing to Garrett’s Mii with the words ‘ready to risk it all’ written inside. Above your digital head, was the word ‘crush’ in bold. Garrett’s Mii mirrored yours, his arrow having ‘head over heels’ written inside.

“Oh, so you’re ready to risk it all, are you?”

He pinched your sides and then moved his hands to where he knew you were most ticklish. You shrieked, finally letting out the laugh you’d been swallowing. Your entire body shook against his as he launched into a full tickle assault.

The Switch fell out of your hands, tumbling somewhere between your bodies, but you were too busy twisting and squirming in an attempt to escape him to care.

“Dean! Stop it,” you gasped, face flushing warm as tears of laughter pricked at the corners of your eyes.

You twisted a bit too far and tumbled right off the edge of the sofa. Dean followed you down without breaking his hold, his body instantly hovering over yours on the floor.

“This is the price of infidelity,” he said. He leant in and bit at the sensitive skin of your neck, leaving a deliberate and possessive hickey there. “My girl.”

You swatted at his chest. “Yes, you caveman.”

“Who is your favourite?” Dean threatened, his fingers hovering over your ribs again. “Answer quickly and correctly.”

“You! It’s you, obviously!” You laughed, your hands clutching at his shoulders to hold him back.

Dean finally stopped his attack, though, he didn’t move away. He stayed hovering over you, his eyes sparkling with amusement as you took in deep, ragged breaths, your chest heaving against his.

He dropped down to his forearms, trapping you beneath him, his face just inches from yours.

“Good answer,” he murmured, slamming his lips against yours in a rough kiss. You sighed, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him closer, but he pulled back with a smug grin. “I’m not letting you off the hook that easily.”

Right then, a chime echoed. Dean looked down at you, a single eyebrow lifting, while your eyes widened in pure horror. You were going to get in so much trouble for this.

Dean reached blindly up to the sofa, patting around until he found the Switch. He held it so you could both see what was happening.

On the screen, the game was still running, the Mii having made the decision as you took too long to choose an option.

Your Mii was officially heading out to meet Garrett’s Mii to confess her love.

Though to be fair, things with Logan are not bad. That's the thing people don't understand when they hear situationship from hell. On the contrary, things with Logan are very good. Too good. Too good to look at directly without feeling something inconvenient shift behind your ribs, which is precisely why it's bad. Because he had been so genuinely, almost aggressively nice about the whole thing. He had found you at the edge of that party and sat next to you and talked to you for hours like you were the most interesting thing in the room, and he had made a real effort not to look at your boobs while you were talking, which in that particular environment was either extremely respectful or a sign that he was raised correctly, and either way it had done something to you.

And then you had woken up on his chest the next morning. His warm skin and steady heartbeat, the sort of light that meant it was too early to be awake, and done the awkward post-hookup shuffle of words, and heard: I'm not really looking for anything serious.

A bucket of cold water dropped directly on your head would have been less effective. More merciful, probably.

What else could you have done except agree? For god's sake, he was sitting there in black boxers holding a cup of coffee, extending it toward you like a peace offering, brown eyes looking at you with an expression that was genuinely, unfairly soft for seven in the morning. You took the cup. He readjusted against the headboard and looked at you with those eyes and said, simply: "So?"

So. So what? What were you supposed to say?

"Sure," you heard yourself say. "I'm interested in that too."

Sure. I'm interested in that too. Your internal voice repeated it back to you with the tone of a younger sibling trying to get a rise out of you. That was, objectively, the least true thing you had ever said out loud. You had been raised on Bridget Jones and every famous rom-com ever committed to film. You believed in love, in its inconvenience and its necessity and its complete refusal to be reasoned with. Casual did not cut it for you. It never had.

But god. If Bridget could have seen John Logan in that particular light, with that particular bed head, she would have understood completely.

So you agreed. And after that came the encounters.

At first they were private, almost secretive, you telling your friends you were going for a run and then actually running, just in the wrong direction entirely. Logan telling his that he was going to study somewhere, which was technically true, depending on your definition of anatomy. It gave everything a specific kind of thrill, the pleasant urgency of something that existed slightly outside the normal rules, and for a while that was enough.

But time has a way of dissolving things like that. Gradually, without either of you deciding to, you stopped hiding. And that was when the real problem arrived.

You and Logan became friends.

Not the convenient, surface-level kind, the real kind, the kind that builds without you noticing until one day you look around and realize that this person has become load-bearing in your life. You were always at the house. You knew the full taxonomy of Dean's recent romantic encounters, the specificity of Garrett's current problems, the ongoing narrative of Tucker's various endeavors. You didn't just know about them, you helped. You were involved. You had opinions and history and context, and they knew it, and they came to you with things.

And it went the other way too. Logan had gotten so close to your friends that he would voluntarily drive Marissa to her therapy appointments in Boston without being asked, would send Benny reels about topics they'd talked about the week before, remembered details that even you sometimes forgot. He had threaded himself into the fabric of your life so completely and so quietly that you could no longer locate the seam.

And finally, finally, things had started to feel like they were moving in the right direction. The direction they probably should have been heading since the morning after Halloween. Maybe the casual arrangement had just been a detour — a scenic route to the same destination. All's well that ends well.

And then you and Logan would go to Malone's, and a waitress would glance between you with a smile and say what a nice couple you made, and Logan would laugh in that easy, noncommittal way of his and say: we're just friends.

And there it was. Bucket of cold water. Every time, without fail, like a reset button neither of you had agreed to keep pressing.

Every single time.

Which brings you to now.

You are sitting on Logan's couch, draped over him, legs intertwined, peppering kisses down his neck while he makes a valiant and increasingly unsuccessful effort to tell you about the new episode of some reality show he has gotten inexplicably invested in. Something about traitors in a castle. Who cares. Not you. Not when Logan smelled like that and the house was quiet and his hands were doing that thing where they moved without him seeming to notice.

You sank further into him. The kisses started to linger. His words got sparse.

"Are you even listening to me?" Logan murmured, his voice coming out considerably less steady than he had probably intended.

You hummed against his pulse point by way of answer.

The front door opened.

You both startled, pulling apart with the practiced efficiency of people who had been interrupted before, but the moment you registered it was Dean you settled back into exactly the position you'd been in. Dean didn't care about PDA. He actively encouraged it.

He dropped onto the opposite couch, looked at the ceiling briefly, then at you.

"Okay, I have a question," he said. "Logan, dude, this is for science, please don't be weird about it."

At this point you were sitting upright, Logan's arms still looped around you, his chin finding your shoulder, using you as a very comfortable shield against whatever Dean was about to say.

"Shoot," you said.

Dean took a breath with the energy of someone preparing to say something they had already decided to say regardless of the response. "Do you think I should buy a vibrator for a friend of mine?"

Logan laughed against your neck. You shivered slightly at the warmth of his breath.

"Are you the friend?" you asked. "Are you buying a vibrator for yourself?"

"What? No. I'm a man."

"That doesn't mean anything. Men are allowed to have vibrators."

"I know that. It's not for me."

"I really think you should get one though. For yourself. If you want to be the Samantha of the group you have to commit to the bit."

"I am the Samantha," Dean said, with genuine offense. "And it's not for me."

"Have you even watched Sex and the City?"

"Yes. I'm from New York, for god's sake and you're being such a Carrie right now."

You settled back against Logan's chest, his arms tightening around you automatically, like a reflex, like something he did without thinking about it anymore.

Yes, you thought. And my own Mr. Big is currently holding me on this couch.

Garrett and Hannah came down the stairs in what you assumed were their stay-at-home outfits: sweatpants, hockey jersey, the specific comfort of two people who had stopped performing around each other. The moment they came into view you felt Logan's hand still. Not move away just still. And then he shifted from behind you to sitting beside you, technically still touching but the warmth of it had changed completely. It was less person you are tangled up with and more person you happen to be sitting next to on public transport.

You knew that shift. You had felt it before.

The first time, you had told yourself you were imagining things.

It was a Tuesday, nothing special about it, the kind of evening that had become completely ordinary, you at the house, Logan beside you on the couch, his thumb making absent circles on your knee while Dean argued with Tucker about something that didn't matter. Hannah had stopped by to pick up something she'd left there the week before, and the moment the door opened Logan's hand had stilled. Not moved away. Just stilled. Like an animal that had heard something.

You hadn't said anything. You'd filed it away in the part of your brain reserved for things you weren't ready to look at yet.

The second time was at one of Garrett's games. You had been standing with Logan at the edge of the rink afterward, his jacket half around your shoulders the way it always ended up, and Hannah had appeared through the crowd. Logan had straightened. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, but you felt it the slight shift in his posture, the way his jacket had slipped back off your shoulders without him seeming to notice he'd let it go.

You'd picked it up off the floor and handed it back to him without a word.

The third time you stopped counting.

Malone's on a Friday night had a particular energy loud enough to feel festive, familiar enough to feel like home. Your usual table was in the corner, the big one that fit all of you without anyone having to pull up an extra chair, and the evening had been good. Genuinely good, the kind that reminded you why you had agreed to this arrangement in the first place, Logan's knee against yours under the table, his arm finding the back of your chair sometime around the second round of drinks, the easy warmth of being somewhere you belonged.

You were mid-story , a good one, the kind that had the whole table leaning in and you could feel it landing, the timing was right, and Garrett was already laughing before you got to the punchline and Dean had that look on his face that meant he was going to steal this story and tell it as his own later, and Tucker was—

You glanced at Logan.

He wasn't laughing.

He was looking across the table at Hannah with an expression you recognized because you had spent the better part of a year learning every single detail of his face, and what was on it right now was something soft and slightly helpless the expression of someone watching something they had decided they couldn't have.

The story finished without you. Somewhere far away, the table laughed.

You picked up your drink. Set it down. Picked it up again.

"I'm going to step outside," you said. "Just — smoke a bit."

"You don't even smoke, (Y/N)!" Tucker replied, laughing, and it killed you because all of Logan's friends had come to know you so well.

"You okay?" Garrett asked.

"Fine. Just air."

You were already standing. Already reaching for your jacket. Logan was on his feet before you made it two steps.

"I'll come with you," he said.

The parking lot outside Malone's was cold and poorly lit. You got about twenty feet from the door before you stopped walking. The noise from inside filtered out muffled and distant, everyone still laughing, completely unaware.

Logan stopped beside you. Waited. He had always been good at waiting, which was one of the things you had loved about him and one of the things that had slowly, quietly driven you insane.

"Don't," you said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't do the thing where you stand there and wait for me to calm down." You turned to face him. The cold air hit your face and you were glad for it. "I'm not going to calm down. So just talk to me. Tell me the truth. Please. Don't bullshit me right now, Logan, I am asking you to not bullshit me right now."

"Baby—"

"Don't baby me, Logan. Not right now"

He looked at you with that steady, unhurried patience of his, which tonight felt less like a quality and more like a weapon.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

"I want you to tell me if you have a crush on Hannah." The word crush felt absurdly small for the moment but you couldn't bear the weight of the more accurate alternatives.

Something shifted in his face. Not guilt exactly, something deeper than that. The specific expression of someone who had been quietly hoping a question wouldn't arrive and had known, somewhere underneath the hoping, that it always was going to.

"It's not—" he started.

"Logan."

He exhaled. Looked at the ground briefly. Looked back at you.

"It's not serious," he said. "It's nothing. She's with Garrett. It's not like I would ever—"

"Oh my god." The laugh that came out of you had nothing to do with anything being funny. "Oh my god, you actually do. You actually have a crush on her."

"It's not a big deal—"

"You have a crush on your best friend's girlfriend and it's not a big deal." You repeated it back to him slowly. "I have been right here, Logan. For almost a year I have been right here, and you have a crush on Hannah."

"It's just a feeling. It doesn't mean anything." His voice had an edge to it now, something defensive sharpening underneath the calm. "And you don't get to be mad at me for it."

"Excuse me?"

"You don't get to be mad at me for having feelings." The words were coming faster now, the composure cracking in a way you almost never saw from him. "We said casual. That was the agreement. I can't be accountable to you for things I feel when you are not my girlfriend."

The word landed like a slap.

Girlfriend.

"Right," you said. Your voice had gone very quiet. "I'm not your girlfriend."

"That's not what I—"

"No, you're right. I'm not." You looked at him. Really looked at him — this person whose coffee order you knew by heart, whose nightmares you had talked him through at two in the morning, whose hand had reached for yours in his sleep so many times you had stopped counting. "Can I ask you something? And I need you to actually answer me. Not just wait until I stop talking."

He said nothing, which you took as a yes.

"What did you think this was?" Your voice was still quiet. Controlled. "Not what we agreed on in the beginning. What did you think it was last week? Last month? What did you think it was tonight when you had your arm around me at that table? When you picked me up from my house and kissed me in your truck?" You took a breath. "Because I need to understand how you look at what we have been doing and see something casual. I genuinely need you to explain that to me."

"It's complicated—"

"It's not complicated. It's actually very simple. I just need you to say it out loud."

"You knew what this was when we started—"

"I know what it was when we started. I'm asking what it is now." You crossed your arms against the cold. "Because from where I'm standing it looks a lot like a relationship. It looks like you drive my friends places and remember things about them they never told you twice, and I know every single thing about your life, and we spend more nights together than apart, and you reach for me when you're asleep like I'm something you don't want to lose." Your voice cracked slightly and you pushed past it. "So you'll have to forgive me for being confused about the casual part."

"I can't—" He stopped. Started again. "It's not about not wanting to. It's about what I can actually give right now. Hockey takes everything. My family, my mother, I don't have money, I don't have stability, I don't have any of the things that—"

"I'm not asking you for stability. I'm not asking you for money." Something in your chest had cracked open and you were past the point of closing it. "I'm asking you to admit what this already is. That's all."

"I am being honest—"

"Then be more honest." Your voice broke on the last word and you kept going anyway. "Because I'm in love with you."

The parking lot went completely silent.

Logan stared at you. The words sat between you in the cold air like something that had changed the temperature.

"What?" His voice came out barely above a breath.

"I'm in love with you." Steadier the second time. "I have been for a long time. And I know that's not what we agreed on. But I can't stand here and pretend I don't while you tell me it's not a big deal that you have feelings for someone else." You looked at him. "We are already a couple, Logan. In every single way that actually matters, we already are. The only thing missing is you admitting it."

Something moved across his face — something large and unguarded and almost frightened.

"It's not that simple," he said, quieter now, the defensiveness gone out of it.

"I know it's not simple. I know about hockey. I know about your mom. I know all of it, Logan, because you told me, because that's what we do. But none of that changes what I just said." You took a breath. "So just tell me. Do you have feelings for me? Yes or no. That's all I'm asking."

Logan looked at you.

And said nothing.

The silence stretched between you, long and terrible. His jaw was tight. His eyes moved across your face like he was looking for something he either couldn't find or couldn't say, and the longer the silence went on the more clearly you understood that the silence was itself an answer.

"Wow," you said finally. Very quietly. "Okay."

You picked up your bag. Straightened your jacket. Looked at him one more time this person you had spent 338 days loving in whatever form he would accept.

"Don't follow me," you said.

He didn't.

You walked back toward the warm light spilling out of Malone's windows, past your friends still laughing, past the table that an hour ago had felt like home, and you kept walking. Past the door, past the window, down the street, into the cold.

Too angry to cry. Too tired to pretend. Too done to look back.

Behind you, in the parking lot, Logan stood very still and said nothing which was the thing he was best at, and the thing that had finally cost him everything.

It had been a hard couple of days. But the upside of a not-breakup in college was that you didn't get to wallow, no watching rom-coms until the wee hours, no doing the Bella, watching the months pass from your bedroom window. Life was as it had always been, minus the space Logan had occupied in your weekly schedule. Not a metaphysical space, a literal one. When you opened your Google Calendar you found his game days still blocked out in blue, his training days still marked, everything still there like a calendar that hadn't gotten the news yet.

Pathetic, you thought, and deleted them.

Your days now belonged entirely to yourself, which should have felt like freedom and mostly felt like a lot of unscheduled Tuesday afternoons. No more disappearing in the middle of the day, no more make-out sessions in the library during lunch break. Just you and your own company and the slow, unglamorous work of being fine.

You weren't fine. You were something adjacent to fine that required daily maintenance and the careful avoidance of certain songs.

Marissa had noticed, she called it being under the weather, which was such a specific and old-fashioned way of putting it that in the beginning you had found it strange and now found it completely endearing. Your own personal nanna, showing up with iced coffee and terrible ideas at exactly the right moments.

The terrible idea this time was an underground bar in Boston she had found, which was a surprise since Marissa was fundamentally a sports bar person. You had a strong suspicion the entire excursion was engineered entirely for your benefit and the benefit of your appetite for expensive, colorful drinks, and you loved her for it and didn't say so.

The drive took exactly long enough to hype yourself up.

I'm pretty. I'm smart. I'm a catch.

The bar was dimly lit in a way that felt intentional rather than neglected, all low ceilings and good music and the general atmosphere of a place that didn't need to try. You, Marissa and Benny settled into a corner booth and approximately ninety seconds later Benny's elbow was in your ribs.

"Cute guy. Nine o'clock," he said, in what he apparently believed was a whisper.

You glanced toward the bar. Tall, white jacket, the kind of easy posture that meant he wasn't thinking about his posture at all.

"I'm not really looking for anything," you said.

"You're single. He's cute. The bar has drinks. What exactly is the problem?" Benny tilted his head. "Go order our drinks and make some poor decisions. You've earned it."

"I didn't bring my ID."

Benny stared at you. "You came to a bar without your ID?"

"I forgot." You shrugged.

"(Y/N)." His voice had the specific tone of someone choosing their words carefully. "What is wrong with you. Go. Drinks. Now. The ID thing is a you problem, figure it out."

You slid out of the booth before he could say anything else.

The guy at the bar was, up close, even more irritatingly attractive than he had been from across the room. He glanced over when you appeared beside him, and then glanced again in a way that was not subtle and didn't try to be.

"You look like you're deciding something," he said.

"Whether to admit I forgot my ID at a bar."

He looked at you for a moment. Then he smiled easy and genuine. "Hunter," he said, and held out his hand.

"((Y/N))."

"I'll vouch for you," he said. "If you tell me what you're drinking."

You told him. He ordered both without being asked, which was either presumptuous or exactly right, and you decided it was exactly right.

By the time you made it back to the booth with four drinks and Hunter's number in your phone, Benny was looking at you with the expression of someone who had orchestrated something and was very pleased about it.

You didn't tell him he was right. But you didn't have to.

The thing about Hunter Davenport was that he was genuinely, irritatingly likeable.

You had not been thinking about Logan when you said yes to Hunter's suggestion of getting coffee. You had not been thinking about Logan when the coffee turned into a walk, and the walk turned into two hours of easy conversation that asked nothing from you and gave something back.

That was the point.

You had gotten very good at not thinking about Logan in the weeks since Malone's. It was a skill, like any other, it required practice and the occasional forcible redirection of your own brain, but you were nothing if not disciplined when the situation called for it. You had been showing up to things. Laughing at the right moments. Sleeping through the night, mostly.

You were fine. You were getting finer by the day, which was either progress or a very convincing impression of it, and right now you weren't examining the difference too closely.

Hunter was easy. That was the thing about him. He was warm and uncomplicated and he looked at you like you were worth looking at, which was something you had apparently needed more than you realized.

It was nothing serious. You had been very clear about that with yourself. You were not ready for serious. But his hand was warm when it found yours walking back from the coffee place, and you let it stay there.

You were almost believing it.

The team was at the rink for an open practice, one of the informal ones that sometimes drew a small crowd of friends and the generally affiliated. You had come with Marissa, which gave you plausible deniability about why you were there, and you had sat in the third row and watched without watching, which was a skill you had also been practicing.

Hunter had waved at you from the ice. You had waved back.

You had not looked at Logan. You had been extremely disciplined about not looking at Logan, which meant you were also extremely aware of exactly where he was at every moment without technically looking at him, which was its own kind of exhausting.

After practice, Hunter had come off the ice still in half his gear and found you immediately, easy and unhurried, and said something that made you laugh. Your hand had gone to his arm the way hands do when you're laughing at something someone said, and it had stayed there for approximately four seconds.

Four seconds.

You knew it was four seconds because you had counted them, which meant some part of you had been paying attention to something you were pretending not to pay attention to.

The locker room door swung shut behind Logan without him looking back.

You found a quiet corner of the rink lobby while Hunter went to get his bag. You were looking at your phone, not reading anything on it, when you heard footsteps and looked up.

Logan.

He had changed out of his gear. His jaw was doing the thing: the tight, controlled thing that meant something was happening underneath the composure that the composure was working very hard to contain. His eyes moved from your face to the door Hunter had gone through and back.

"Hey," you said carefully.

"You and Hunter," he said. Not a question.

"That's not really your business."

"You're spending a lot of time with him."

"Logan—"

"I'm just making an observation." His voice was very even. The voice he used when he was the least controlled.

"Make it somewhere else."

He laughed short and humorless. "Right. Okay." He looked at the floor. Looked back at you. "I just didn't think you were the type."

You went very still. "The type to?"

"To go after a guy because of who he plays for." Quiet. Measured. Like he had chosen this version of the sentence carefully. "I didn't think that was your thing."

The lobby was very quiet.

You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to make sure you had heard what you thought you'd heard. Long enough to see something flicker in his expression, the immediate, unmistakable recognition that he had gone too far.

"Say that again," you said softly.

"I didn't mean—"

"No." Your voice was calm in a way that had nothing to do with being calm. "Say it again. I want to make sure I understood you. Are you calling me a puck bunny?"

Logan said nothing. The flicker had become something closer to horror.

"Because that's what you just said." You tilted your head slightly. "After everything. That's what you went with."

"I didn't — that's not what I meant—"

"Then what did you mean?" You took a step toward him. "Because I have been patient, Logan. I have been so patient with you. I said the most honest thing I have ever said to anyone in that parking lot and you said nothing back, which I am trying. I am actively trying to make my peace with. But you do not get to say that to me. You don't get to do that."

"I know." His voice had lost all its evenness. "I shouldn't have—"

"Why did you say it?"

He looked at you.

"Tell me why." Your voice cracked slightly and you kept going. "Because it wasn't an observation. So tell me why."

Something moved across his face the composure fracturing in a way you had only seen once or twice in all the time you had known him.

"Because I can't—" He stopped.

"Can't what?"

"Because I can't watch you with him and not—" He stopped again. Pressed his mouth shut. Looked at the ceiling briefly.

"Not what?" Your voice was barely above a whisper.

He looked at you. Right at you. And for one unguarded, terrible second you could see everything, all of it, the whole enormous weight of everything he hadn't said in the parking lot outside Malone's, sitting right there on his face with nowhere left to hide.

And then he looked away.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It was wrong."

You looked at him for a long moment.

"Yeah," you said. "It was."

You picked up your bag. Hunter had reappeared at the far end of the lobby, jacket on, easy smile, completely unaware of the wreckage he had wandered back into. You walked toward him and did not look back at Logan.

But you heard him the sharp exhale of someone who had just watched something leave that they weren't sure was coming back.

Good, you thought.

And hated that you thought it.

Here was the thing about being called a puck bunny: it wasn't the word itself that got to you.

Puck bunnies weren't the worst thing a person could be.

Men were allowed their types, allowed to prefer blondes or brunettes or redheads, to only date younger women, to have a thing for accents, to announce their type to anyone who will listen like it’s a personality trait, to want someone tall or short or with a specific laugh, or say things like "I have never been with a Brazilian before". They were allowed to say these things out loud, to Tinder-filter by height, and if it was possible they would do by weight too, to have opinions about bodies that they shared freely and without apology.

But god forbid a woman had a type. God forbid a woman found hockey players attractive or musicians, or academics, or anyone with a specific quality she was drawn to. Then she was something to be named and categorized and looked down upon. Then she was a bunny.

You were not offended by the word.

You were offended that Logan, who had been silent while you poured your heart out in a cold parking lot, who had said nothing when you asked him the most direct question you had ever asked another human being , had found his voice again specifically to say that. That of all the things he could have finally said to you, after all the silence, this was the one he chose.

That was what got to you.

Not the word. The timing. The source. The specific, devastating irony of a man who couldn't say I have feelings for you finding it very easy to say something that small.

You didn't tell anyone what he said.

That was the first decision you made, walking out of that rink lobby with Hunter's hand in yours and Logan's exhale still somewhere in your chest. You were not going to tell Dean, who would say something devastatingly accurate about it. You were not going to tell Marissa, who would want to talk about it for three hours. You were not going to tell anyone, because telling someone meant turning it over, examining it, and you were not ready to examine the specific shape of what Logan had said to you and what it meant that he had said it.

You knew what it meant. That was the problem.

You had known the moment you saw his face, that flicker of something before the composure reassembled itself, the way his eyes had moved to Hunter and back to you with an expression that had nothing casual about it. You had spent 338 days learning the map of Logan's face and you knew exactly what that look was. You had just also heard what came out of his mouth immediately afterward, which meant that what Logan felt and what Logan was willing to do about it were, as always, two completely different countries.

You were done trying to travel between them.

The week that followed was quiet and it felt different from the other times you had gone quiet. Before, the silence had always been temporary, a held breath. This felt more like an exhale. Like something had finally, after a very long time, finished.

You went to class. You had coffee with Hunter on Tuesday, which was easy and warm and asked nothing from you. You went to Marissa's on Thursday and watched something forgettable on her laptop and fell asleep on her couch, and she put a blanket over you without waking you up, which was the kindest thing anyone had done for you in recent memory.

You did not go to the house off campus. You did not text Logan. You did not check if he had texted you, which required leaving your phone face-down on your desk for approximately four days straight, which was its own kind of discipline.

You were fine. You were getting finer.

You were also absolutely not fine.

Dean found you on a Wednesday.

Not dramatically, he just appeared at the coffee shop near your building where you went on Wednesday mornings, which you had mentioned to him exactly once four months ago, which meant he had remembered it and filed it away and was now using it, which was such a Dean thing to do that you almost smiled.

He sat down across from you without asking if it was okay and stole a sip of your coffee before saying anything.

"He told me what he said," Dean said, without preamble.

You looked at your coffee. "Okay."

"He feels terrible."

"Good."

"I mean genuinely terrible. Like, I've known Logan for three years and I've never seen him—" Dean stopped. Seemed to decide something. "He's not sleeping. He's barely eating. He showed up to practice yesterday and coach pulled him aside after because his head wasn't in it, which has never happened, not once in three years."

"Dean." You looked up at him. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you deserve to know that it cost him something." His voice was straightforward, without manipulation. "I'm not asking you to forgive him. What he said was awful and he knows it. I'm just, you spent a long time showing up for him and I don't want you to think that none of it landed. It all landed. It's landing right now. It's just landing a little late."

You were quiet for a moment.

"A little late," you repeated.

"Okay, very late."

"Dean." You wrapped your hands around your cup. "He called me a puck bunny."

"I know." Dean had the grace to look genuinely pained. "He said it because he was jealous and scared and he handled it in the worst possible way and there is no defense for it. I'm not here to defend it."

"Then what are you here for?"

Dean looked at you across the table, this person who had been in your corner since before you had any idea how much you would need someone in your corner, and his expression was very honest.

"I'm here because he's my best friend and he's falling apart," he said. "And you're also my friend. And I hate watching both of you be miserable when I know exactly why you're miserable." He paused. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just wanted you to know."

You looked out the window. The street outside was grey and unremarkable, the specific flatness of a Wednesday in November.

"How long has he known?" you asked quietly. "That he has feelings for me. How long has he actually known?"

Dean was quiet for a moment.

"A while," he said carefully.

"How long is a while, Dean."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"Since pretty much the beginning," he said.

You closed your eyes briefly. Opened them.

"Okay," you said.

"(Y/N)—"

"I'm not angry." And you weren't, which was almost surprising. You were something quieter and more tired than angry. "I just needed to know." You picked up your coffee. "Tell him I said he needs to sleep."

Dean looked at you. "That's it?"

"That's it." You met his eyes. "I'm not ready for anything else right now. But tell him to sleep."

Dean nodded slowly. He finished stealing your coffee and stood up and put his jacket on, and then he stopped with his hand on the back of the chair.

"For what it's worth," he said. "The Hannah thing. It was never real. He told me that too. He said he thinks he latched onto it because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening."

You didn't say anything.

"Okay," Dean said. "I'll see you around."

He left. You sat there with your cold coffee and the grey Wednesday street outside and the specific, exhausting weight of loving someone who had known the whole time and chosen, over and over, to say nothing.

Since pretty much the beginning.

338 days. And he had known since pretty much the beginning.

You sat with that for a long time.

It had been raining since noon.

Not the dramatic, cinematic kind of rain that arrived with thunder and purpose, just the steady, grey, unrelenting kind that soaked through your jacket in the first thirty seconds and didn't apologize for it.

You were on your way back from the library, hood up, head down, thinking about nothing in particular, which you had gotten very good at recently. The art of thinking about nothing. Occupying your own brain with the immediate and the logistical the paper due Thursday, the coffee you were going to make when you got home, the question of whether you had remembered to charge your phone.

You had not been thinking about Logan.

You were almost at your building when you heard him.

"(Y/N)."

You stopped walking.

He was standing at the bottom of your building's front steps, which meant he had been waiting in the rain for some amount of time, which was evident from the state of him soaked through, hair flat, jacket dark with water. He looked like someone who had arrived with a plan and abandoned it somewhere on the walk over and was now operating on something more basic and less manageable.

He looked, for the first time in all the time you had known him, completely unguarded.

"Logan." Your voice came out carefully. "What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you."

"It's raining."

"I know."

"You're soaked."

"I know." He took a step toward you. "I've been standing here for forty minutes trying to figure out what to say and I still don't know, so I'm just going to say it badly and hope that counts for something."

You looked at him. The rain came down steadily between you.

"You have two minutes," you said.

He exhaled. Ran a hand through his wet hair. Looked at you with the expression of someone stepping off a ledge they had been standing on for a very long time.

"I have been in love with you," he said, "since pretty much the beginning."

The rain was very loud suddenly.

"I knew it when we agreed to casual. I knew it when we stopped hiding. I knew it every time I reached for you in my sleep and every time a stranger called us a couple and I laughed it off, and I knew it in that parking lot outside Malone's when you told me the truth and I stood there and said nothing back." His voice was steady but only barely, the steadiness of someone gripping something very hard. "I said nothing because I was terrified. Not of you. Never of you. Of what it meant. Of what I would owe you if I said it out loud. Hockey takes everything I have and my family situation is a disaster and I don't have money or stability or any of the things that a person is supposed to have before they ask someone to—" He stopped. "But Dean said something to me last week. He said that I was losing you anyway. That all my careful management of the situation had achieved was losing you slowly instead of all at once, and somehow I had convinced myself that was the better outcome."

You said nothing. The rain soaked through your hood and you didn't move.

"And then I said what I said to you at the rink." His jaw tightened. "I have replayed that moment every day since it happened. There is no version of it that I can make okay. I said it because I saw you with Hunter and something in me just broke. Not a good break. Not the kind that leads anywhere useful. Just — I broke, and I said the cruelest thing I could think of, and I aimed it at you, and I have hated myself for it every single day since." He looked at you. "I'm not telling you that to make you feel sorry for me. I'm telling you because you deserve to know that it was never about you. It was never about who you are. It was about me being terrified and handling it in the worst possible way, and I'm sorry. I am so sorry."

The rain fell between you, steady and indifferent.

"You knew since the beginning," you said finally. Your voice came out quieter than you intended.

"Yes."

"A year."

"Yes."

"And you said nothing."

"Yes." He didn't flinch from it. "I said nothing, and I let you carry it alone, and I told myself I was protecting you from the complications of my life, but I think I was just protecting myself. From having to be as brave as you were in that parking lot." Something moved across his face. "You were so brave. You said the true thing and I just stood there. And I have thought about that every day since. About what it cost you to say it and what it cost me to say nothing back."

You looked at him. This person. Soaked through and unguarded and finally, finally saying the thing he had been not saying for 338 days.

"The Hannah thing," you said.

"Wasn't real." Immediate. Certain. "I think I needed it to be real because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening. She has what you and I have, what you and I were and I think I confused wanting that with wanting her. It was never her." He held your gaze. "It was always you. It has only ever been you."

The rain had soaked through your jacket completely now. You were cold in a way that had stopped being uncomfortable and become simply the condition of the moment.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me tonight," Logan said. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just needed you to know that I heard you in that parking lot. I heard every word. And I should have said this then, and I'm sorry that I didn't, and I'm saying it now because Dean was right, I am losing you anyway, and I would rather lose you having finally told the truth than keep you at a distance by staying silent." He paused. "I love you. I have loved you for a long time. And I'm sorry it took me this long to be brave enough to say it."

The street was very quiet under the rain.

You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to turn it over. Long enough to feel the full weight of 338 days, of every almost-conversation and loaded silence and reset button and bucket of cold water. Long enough to remember his hand going still when Hannah walked in, and the parking lot, and the rink lobby, and the specific sound of his exhale when you walked away.

Long enough to remember, underneath all of it, a Halloween party and a wall and two people waiting out the night from the edges of it, talking like they had nothing to prove to each other.

The beginning, before it got complicated. Before it got careful.

"You're an idiot," you said.

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite hope. Something more tentative than hope.

"I know," he said.

"You made everything so much harder than it needed to be."

"I know."

"I carried that alone for a very long time, Logan."

"I know." His voice broke slightly on it. "I know you did. I'm sorry."

The rain came down. You looked at him this soaked, unguarded, finally honest person standing at the bottom of your steps and felt something in your chest that had been braced for a very long time slowly, carefully release.

"You should have just said it," you said. "In the beginning. You should have just said it."

"I know." He took a step closer. Close enough that you could see the rain on his face, the wet dark of his hair, the expression underneath all the composure that had finally run out of places to hide. "I know. I'm saying it now."

You looked at him.

"Say it again," you said quietly.

"I love you." No hesitation. No composure. Just Logan, standing in the rain, finally saying the true thing. "I love you. I have loved you since pretty much the beginning and I am done pretending I don't."

The rain fell between you and neither of you moved and the street was quiet and everything was very still.

Then you closed the distance.

You kissed him in the rain, which was cold and slightly impractical and nothing like the careful, managed version of Logan you had spent 338 days trying to navigate. This was different. This was him kissing you back with both hands and no hesitation and none of the holding back, and it felt finally, finally like the true thing. Like the version of this that had been waiting underneath all the other versions the whole time.

When you pulled back you were both soaked and breathing slightly unsteadily and his forehead dropped to yours in the rain.

"I'm still mad at you," you said.

"I know." His arms tightened around you. "I know you are."

"The puck bunny thing is going to take a while."

"I know. Whatever it takes."

"And you have to tell me things." Your voice was muffled against his jacket. "When you're scared, when it gets complicated, when your brain does the thing where it decides silence is the safe option. You have to tell me instead."

"I will." He said it simply, without qualification, which was how you knew he meant it. "I will."

You stood there in the rain outside your building, soaked through and slightly ridiculous, and you thought about Halloween and 338 days and parking lots and rink lobbies and all the long, complicated distance between the beginning and right now.

Worth it, you thought.

He finds you in that very same resting place, except your head is on Allie’s lap while she holds the ice pack for you. Dean, who’s bandaging your ankle on the end of the couch, immediately stands up and walks over to Logan’s direction,

“Dude, I swear to god that it was an accident.”

Logan takes a look at you over Dean’s shoulder, “What the fuck happened?”

“Me and Garrett were playing soccer when she got here looking for you.” Dean starts talking, “Then she asked us if she could join and I obliged, of course, ‘cause– Well, I wouldn’t I? Can you imagine how misogynistic that sounds if–”

“Dean, get to the fucking point!”

“Right, sorry– She tripped on my foot while we were playing and hit her head. It wasn’t too bad, I managed to catch her. But–” Dean motions his head to you, awake and murmuring something to Allie neither the boys can hear. 

Logan moves in your direction, kneeling by the couch, “Hey, honey. How you feeling?”

You can’t see him, ice pack covering your eyes as well as your forehead. Still, your lips quiver up when you listen to his voice, “I’m good. They’re all being dramatic.”

He looks up at Allie, gesturing for him to take her place on the couch. Allie carefully holds your head as she moves from under you, letting his hands hold you instead before she let go. You lay your head on Logan’s thigh, nuzzling as he presses a gentle kiss on the corner of your mouth. There’s a small cut on your chin, covered by a pink band-aid. His hands move to your cheek, drawing circles as he caresses your face, “You hurt your chin?”

You hum, and Allie speaks up, “Her arms are a bit scratched too. But we already cleaned them, and Garrett is on his way to the rink with Hannah. He said you guys keep a full first aid kit in the locker room.”

Logan hums, “Did you eat anything?” he murmurs to you. 

“Tucker made me a smoothie.” You answer, then your hand moves to remove the ice pack. Logan sees a purple-tinted bump on your forehead, but your eyes are shiny and smiling, “Baby, I’m fine. Really. Don’t get too worried, handsome. Hannah and Allie patched me up, and Dean said he’s sorry a thousand times already.”

Your boyfriend looks up, watching Dean’s apologetic face turn into a pout. Logan rolls his eyes at him, a tiny smile on his lips as he feels disarmed. He’s a little ashamed now, being so ready to pick an argument with his friends a second ago for letting you get hurt, yet there you are, laying all pretty on his lap, tended and smiling as Logan’s heartstrings pull a little.

He gives you a grin, “Do you want paracetamol or something?”

Dean raises his hand and gives his most prideful look, “Already had her take one, boss.”

“Alright. You’re good, man.” Logan says before adjusting your ice pack back to its place, pressing a quick peck on your cheek, “And you keep icing your head, there’s a bump right under your hairline. Allie, take my place?”

You stir, “I can lay on the couch just fine by myself.”

“No, no. We’re keeping someone by your side for the next twenty four hours.” Allie says, already taking Logan’s seat, “We gotta make sure you don’t have a concussion and choke on your own vomit.”

“Geez,” you sneer, “So dramatic.”

He stands from the couch, moving in Dean’s direction, “And you are helping me make dinner,” he drops his arms over his friend’s shoulder, muttering, “Thanks for helping take care of her.”

Dean beams at his friend, “That was nothing. The least I could do for almost killing her, really.” He jokes, squeezing Logan’s shoulder, “She’s all yours now, dude. And I’d say a little TLC is much needed.”

He looks back at you, giggling with Allie on the couch, “I think she’s in good hands.”

“I meant for you.” Dean says, “I know you love when you get to fuss over her, you softie.”

“Well, yeah. Like you said,” Logan shrugs, “Who am I to deny some tender loving care over my oh so hurt and in need of care girlfriend?”

“I can hear that,” you shout from the couch.

“And I don’t hear you complaining, babe.”

notes: thank you for reading! requests are open! likes/reblogs/thoughts are appreciated! <3