bagpipe’s sideblog

if you see this, i’m already spamming your artwork

[itneverendshere]

definitely, undeniably, googly-eyed - john logan.

You woke in the narrow confines of your off-campus apartment, sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains you had chosen for your ethereal quality, casting the room in a forgiving glow. It made even the cluttered stacks of dog-eared novels and half-finished linguistics notes feel like the opening chapter of some delightful, meandering adventure.

Humming a barely remembered tune, you padded across the creaky floorboards in oversized socks, brewing a cup of early grey while mentally rehearsing your seminar presentation on the fluidity of emotional lexicons in modern prose. Your reflection in the bathroom mirror earned an approving wink.

Not bad.

You gathered your scattered belongings, laptop brimming with annotations, textbooks, and stepped out into the crisp air.

The drive started splendidly, windows cracked to let in the breeze that carried hints of blooming lilacs and distant lawnmowers. The old sedan had its quirks, unreliable but endearing. It had faithfully ferried you through countless late-night library runs and spontaneous road trips-

Today, though, as you turned onto the quieter residential street shortcutting toward Briar University, the engine began to falter. A sputter here, a hesitant cough there.

You coaxed it gently at first, patting the dashboard like a finicky old friend.

“Come now. Don’t do this to me."

But fate, ever the mischievous author, had other plans.

The car gave one final, theatrical shudder and fell silent altogether, coasting to a stop along the curb of a tree-lined street dotted with handsome houses. You simply sat there, blinking at the dashboard as if it might apologize and restart on its own.

No. No, no, no. You had a presentation. You could not afford to be the girl whose car died dramatically on the side of the road.

A disbelief bubble of laughter escaped your lips first before the frustration took its place. You turned the key again and again, the clicks mocking you with their empty rhythm.

“You gotta be kidding me,” You groaned, leaning back against the headrest with a dramatic sigh that bordered on theatrical.

Your phone battery hovered at a precarious twenty percent, and the campus still beckoned from beyond the next hill, you allowed yourself a few minutes to simply feel it—the absurdity of the situation.

Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes from that overwhelming rush of “why me, right now?” blended with a strange amusement at your own misfortune. You rested your forehead against the steering wheel.

The street around your felt curiously serene, those large houses suggesting a lively collegiate ecosystem you rarely brushed agains.

You could handle this. Call for assistance, transform the delay into an opportunity for people-watching or jotting down observations.

Before you could reach for your phone to summon roadside assistance—battery be damned—a knock sounded against the driver’s side window.

It made you jump so hard your knee slammed into the steering column.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” The words flew out of your mouth as you whipped your head around, eyes wide, one hand pressed to your chest as if that would calm the adrenaline surge. “What the actual fuck—”

Your heart was executing a fluttering pirouette as you swiped at your cheeks and smoothed the stray tendrils of hair framing your face.

Through the glass, a tall figure loomed, broad-shouldered and casually commanding, with a backward baseball cap taming dark, slightly tousled hair. Striking doe brown eyes met yours directly, carrying a blend of concern and easy amusement.

He wore a faded hoodie, the sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms corded from what you could only assume were hockey drills.

John Logan of all people.

He looked a little startled by your reaction but raised his hands slightly, trying not to spook you further. Even in your rattled state you registered that he was stupidly attractive up close.

Oh my god, he saw the forehead-on-wheel moment.

You cracked the window an inch, catching your breath.

“Sorry—shit, you scared the hell out of me. I didn’t hear you coming at all.”

He blinked at you, those striking eyes narrowing in concern and what looked like amusement.

You’d seen him around campus before, usually surrounded by the rest of the hockey crowd, but never this near.

Never while you were mid-meltdown with tear tracks probably still visible on your cheeks.

“No worries. Didn’t mean to give you a cardiac event."

You let out a watery giggle, trying to slow your racing pulse.

“That’s… an apt nomenclature for it.” You immediately winced, heat rushing to your face. “I mean—yeah. It just died. Stopped working. Sorry."

Logan’s eyebrows rose, that half-smile deepening as he tilted his head.

“Nomenclature? Damn. You okay if I take a look, or do you want me to call it something fancier first?”

"...Take a look?"

Logan's grin twitched. "Yeah."

"At the car?"

"That's generally what breaks down."

"Right, but..." You frowned. "Why?"

For the first time, he looked genuinely confused.

"Because it stopped running?"

"No, I understand the sequence of events. Car dies. Tragic. Very moving." You pointed at him. "I'm asking why you are volunteering."

His eyebrows climbed. "Why?"

"You're a hockey player."

"Okay?"

"That's all I've got."

"That's all you've got?"

"And you're in some of my general education classes." You shrugged helplessly. "But none of that screams automotive expertise."

Logan stared at you for a second before shaking his head. “That’s not usually a disqualification for basic car knowledge. Pop the hood."

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me."

"People who say 'trust me' are statistically responsible for a significant percentage of bad decisions."

He leaned one forearm on the roof of your car, ducking to meet your eyes better through the cracked window. "Pop. The hood."

You hesitated. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"Yes."

"Actually?"

"Yes."

You narrowed your eyes playfully. "Or in the way every guy who has watched three YouTube videos suddenly thinks he can rebuild an engine?"

Logan laughed outright.

"I know what I'm doing. I’ve been fixing cars since I could walk."

You hesitated, biting your lip as you searched his face.

“If you break it more, I’m going to cry in front of you, and that would be the ultimate humiliation.”

His expression softened, the cocky smirk becoming gentler.

“I won’t break it. Are you gonna keep interrogating me while your car stays dead?”

You let out a defeated huff, reaching down to pull the hood release.

“Sorry. Yes, please. That would be incredibly helpful."

Logan gave you a quick, reassuring nod.

“No problem. Sit tight.”

He moved to the front of the car as you watched through the windshield. He lifted the hood and propped it open as the morning light poured over him—faded hoodie stretched across a strong back, sleeves shoved up to reveal corded forearms dusted with faint scars and engine grease already smudging his skin.

The backward cap shadowed his eyes, but the sharp line of his jaw and the focused set of his mouth were impossible to ignore.

Oh. You swallowed hard, suddenly very aware of the warmth blooming in your body.

That was… that was a fine man.

You hadn't voluntarily noticed a man in months—possibly years—and yet here you were, cataloging the exact width of his shoulders as if you were annotating a particularly attractive stanza.

Logan leaned over the hood, one hand braced on the frame as he studied the engine bay. His brow furrowed in concentration, a small frown of thought crossed his face as he reached in and touched something, his fingers moving with surprising dexterity.

He looked completely in his element

You pressed your cool fingers to your flushed cheeks, trying to will the warmth away. Thank God he was completely focused on the engine and not looking at you right now. If those doe-brown eyes turned your way while you were blushing, you’d probably dissolve into the driver’s seat.

You would not get flushed over random hockey players who looked like they could carry both the heroine and the entire third-act climax without breaking a sweat.

You moved in your seat, pretending to check your phone even though the battery warning was glaring at you. Anything to keep from openly ogling the hockey player currently saving your morning.

After a minute, Logan straightened, still leaning over the engine.

“Looks like your alternator belt is shot,” he called out, voice muffled by the hood. “It’s pretty frayed. That’s why she died on you.”

You leaned toward the open window, trying to sound normal. “Alternator belt, right."

He let out a low chuckle and wiped his hands on his hoodie, finally glancing over the hood at you. Your eyes met for a brief second, and your stomach performed an unflattering somersault worthy of a Brontë heroine.

Abort. Abort. Maintain dignity.

“Want me to call a buddy?” he offered, “He’s got a shop nearby. Could tow it and fix it cheaply. Save you the drama.”

You stared at him, equal parts grateful and mortified.

“You really don’t have to do all that,” you said, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear in a futile attempt at composure. “You’ve already done more than enough."

Logan’s grin returned, crooked and far too charming.

“I don’t mind." He pulled his phone from his back pocket, thumbs moving across the screen. “He owes me a favor anyway. I’ll have him swing by with the tow truck. Shouldn’t take long.”

You hesitated, pride and practicality wrestling in your chest. The seminar clock was ticking louder by the second.

"I’m not trying to be a charity case for the Briar hockey team.”

Logan glanced up from his phone, one eyebrow arched. “Did I say anything about charity?”

“No, but… you have that helpful-athlete vibe. It’s suspicious.”

“Suspicious,” he repeated, entertained. He leaned against the side of your car, arms crossed over his broad chest, the faded hoodie pulling tight across his shoulders. “You always this cynical?"

You looked away, pretending to check the time on your dying phone.

“I— linguistics major. We’re trained to question everything. Especially smooth-talking men with tool knowledge.”

Logan’s smile widened dangerously. “Smooth-talking. I’ll take it.”

You groaned, covering your face with both hands for a second. “I’m going to stop speaking now.”

“It’s cute.”

Before you could spiral about his casual comment, he pushed off the car. “You got somewhere to be, right?”

“Seminar. I’m presenting.” You winced.

“Tell you what,” he said, tilting his head toward the row of pretty houses across the street. “My place is right there. The third one with the shitty basketball hoop out front. You can wait inside, charge your phone, and grab some coffee. No pressure.”

You stared at him.

He shrugged, almost boyish despite the six-foot-something of pure athletic competence. “Or you can sit here and stress. Your call.”

The logical part of your brain screamed stranger danger. The rest of you—the part currently cataloguing the way his forearms flexed when he crossed them again—voted yes immediately.

You hesitated, fingers tightening on the strap of your bag.

“I appreciate the offer, but… I don’t know. I can wait out here. I don’t want to impose.”

Logan kept his respectful distance.

“I get it. Random guy invites you into his house after your car dies? Sounds like the opening to every cautionary tale your mom ever told you.”

You let out a surprised laugh, and some of the tension in your shoulders eased.

He continued, rubbing the back of his neck in a boyish way that somehow made him even more disarming.

“But here’s the truth: it’s just me and three other idiots right now. One’s in class, the others are probably still passed out. The door stays unlocked the whole time. You can leave whenever you want.”

He shrugged, that half-smile softening into something sheepish. You searched his face. There was no pushiness or over-the-top flirting. He seemed like a genuinely decent guy.

You exhaled slowly.

“Okay. Yeah. That sounds really nice. Thank you.”

Logan’s smile brightened, but he didn’t make a big deal out of your acceptance, simply nodding toward the third house across the street.

“Cool. C’mon.”

That was your cue. You finally pushed open the car door and stepped out into the crisp morning air, slinging your bag and laptop over your shoulder. Logan waited patiently on the sidewalk, hands back in his hoodie pockets.

He kept pace beside you as you crossed the tree-lined street, maintaining a polite distance—close enough to talk comfortably, but never crowding. The morning sun filtered through the leaves, catching on his backward cap. You tried (and mostly failed) not to notice how good he looked doing absolutely nothing.

As you reached the steps of the third house, he unlocked the door and held it open for you with an easy gesture.

“After you. Fair warning, it’s a hockey house."

The place was surprisingly livable, with a worn couch, a decent kitchen, and a living room that smelled like fresh coffee and laundry.

Nothing smelled bad or screamed “frat hell.” It felt… normal.

Logan moved into the kitchen, “Phone charger’s right there on the counter if you need it. Help yourself. Coffee’s still hot, I made it before my run.”

He poured you a mug without asking twice and slid it across the island, black and simple. Then he stepped back, giving you plenty of space as he leaned against the opposite counter.

You wrapped your hands around the warm mug, feeling the last of your nerves settle. You took a sip of coffe purely to avoid looking at him.

Unfortunately, that only gave you more time to be aware of him. The problem wasn't that Logan was attractive, plenty of people were attractive.

The problem was that he was sitting three feet away from you, looking unfairly good while doing absolutely nothing.

"So."

You were busy trying not to stare at his forearms, a losing battle, if you were being honest. Your gaze darted away the second you realized where it had landed.

You looked up cautiously.

"So," you echoed.

A corner of his mouth twitched. "You know who I am."

You nearly choked on your coffee. "What?"

"You knew I played hockey before I said anything."

"Oh."

"That means you know my name."

"Yes."

The realization hit him at the exact same time it hit you. You knew his name, that he played hockey, that he lived in this house. You knew his teammates' names and that he'd scored twice in the championship game last year because half the campus wouldn't shut up about it.

Meanwhile—

You had never actually introduced yourself.

"But I don't know yours."

A horrified sound escaped your throat, causing Logan to bark out a laugh. "Holy shit."

You groaned. "Oh no."

"There it is," he said.

"There what is?"

"The look."

"What look?"

"The one where you realize something embarrassing."

You covered your face, pointing at him from behind your hands.

"You also never introduced yourself!"

His eyebrows lifted. "I didn't think I had to."

You could tell by his face that it hadn't occurred to him that an introduction was necessary because you'd already known exactly who he was.

Which should have been annoying.

You snorted, "That's a crazy thing to say."

Normally, it would've driven you insane.

Male athletes had a very specific brand of confidence that usually made your eyes twitch. Half of them on campus walked around like they were personally responsible for the invention of oxygen. Every conversation somehow circled back to their stats, their workouts, their game schedule, their importance to society.

You typically found it exhausting and pretentious. Yet somehow—

"It is?"

When Logan said it, it didn't sound like ego. It sounded like confidence.

Your brain should have filed him neatly into the same category as every other cocky athlete you'd met. Instead, your brain had apparently decided: this one's hot.

To save yourself, you gave him your name.

"That's a pretty name."

The compliment was such a ridiculously low bar that you hated yourself a little for getting flustered for the millionth time. Then again, the bar for men was historically buried somewhere beneath the Earth's crust.

You murmured a thank you into your coffee mug before your dignity could stage a protest.

Logan's grin widened. "You're a linguistics major, right?"

You blinked. "How do you know that?"

"You said it."

"Oh, right."

His smile somehow got bigger. "Oh?"

"I say a lot of things."

"I noticed."

Wonderful, you were being perceived. You hated being perceived, especially by attractive men who seemed to find your awkwardness entertaining instead of alarming.

Logan took another sip of coffee, still watching you over the rim of the mug. "Emotional lexicons."

"What?"

"That's what you were talking about when I walked up."

"Oh my God."

"What?"

"You heard me talking to myself."

A laugh escaped him and it sounded so nice it made it impossible not to smile back.

"You were sitting alone in a dead car arguing with your steering wheel."

You groaned so hard your soul nearly left your body. "Please stop."

"Wait," he said suddenly. His eyebrows pulled together. "What is your presentation about?"

You lowered your hands. "Linguistics."

"That's not an answer."

"It is technically an answer."

"No."

You laughed. "No?"

"No."

He pointed at you. "What specifically?"

You rolled your eyes, though you couldn't stop smiling.

"The fluidity of emotional language in modern literature."

"Okay, say that again but like you're explaining it to a normal person."

"Wow. That was rude."

"It was honest." He looked genuinely curious.

You'd spent years explaining your major to people whose eyes glazed over halfway through the first sentence. Usually the conversation went:

What's your major?

Linguistics.

Oh cool. How many languages do you speak?

And then you had to spend ten minutes explaining that linguistics wasn't actually the study of learning languages.

You shifted on your stool. "It's basically about how people use language to communicate emotions."

His expression sharpened. "Like psychology?"

"Adjacent."

"English?"

"Adjacent."

"Made-up word science?"

"That one hurt."

His grin appeared immediately. "So basically yes."

You shook your head.

"I study how people choose words. Why certain phrases become popular. Why language changes. Why different people communicate emotions differently."

Logan nodded slowly. "Huh. That's actually kinda cool."

The sincerity caught you off guard. Everything about this man kept catching you off guard because you expected hockey-player responses, the typical disinterest.

Logan rested his forearms on the kitchen island. "So what do you wanna do with that?"

You srunched your nose in reply.

"What?" His forehead creased.

Somehow, you'd gone from talking about your dead car to discussing your future plans with a man you'd known for less than an hour, which felt oddly intimate.

You shrugged, tracing the rim of your mug with a fingertip as if the ceramic held the answers to your entire post-grad existential spiral.

“I’m not entirely sure yet,” you admitted, the words tasting surprisingly honest on your tongue. “Part of me wants to chase a PhD—dissect semantic shifts in emotional discourse across cultures, maybe publish something. The other part wants to teach, or write, or… I don’t know, help people find better ways to say the things they feel.”

Logan listened without that glazed, polite detachment you’d come to expect from most guys. His doe-brown eyes stayed on you, turning your words over in his mind instead of waiting for his turn to speak.

“That sounds important,” he said after a beat. “People suck at saying what they mean. Especially the important shit.” He gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. “I’m better at hitting a puck than hitting the right words most days.”

You smiled into your coffee, warmth blooming somewhere behind your ribs that had nothing to do with the caffeine. He’s not performing humility, your brain noted.

“You seem pretty articulate for someone who allegedly only speaks hockey,” you teased lightly.

“Give me twenty minutes and I’ll run out of big words. I save my limited vocabulary for important stuff. Like convincing pretty linguistics majors not to cry over dead alternator belts.”

Your cheeks heated instantly. Abort. Do not catalog the way he said ‘pretty’. You were level-headed enough to know this was probably standard charming-athlete protocol, but your traitorous heart did not.

“Flattery won’t fix my car,” you said, aiming for dry.

“Wasn’t flattery,” he replied simply, shrugging one broad shoulder. “Just stating facts.”

Oh no. He’s lethal.

Before you could spiral further into semantic analysis of that particular sentence, the low rumble of a tow truck sounded from outside.

Logan glanced toward the window. “That’ll be my buddy. I’ll go talk to him real quick—make sure he doesn’t overcharge you or anything.”

You nodded, watching as he headed out. The second the door clicked shut behind him, you let out a long, shaky breath and pressed your forehead against the cool kitchen island.

Get it together. You are a grown woman with a working knowledge of twelve linguistic frameworks. You are not going to develop heart palpitations because a hockey player has kind eyes and competent forearms.

Logan returned a few minutes later, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

“All set. He’ll tow it to his shop, replace the belt, and text you when it’s ready. Gave him my number as backup so you’re not stuck if anything goes sideways.”

You stared at him, gratitude and disbelief filling your chest. “Logan… seriously. Thank you so much."

Your phone buzzed on the counter, still low battery, but enough life left to show a text from your seminar group chat asking where you were.

Shit.

“I should get to campus,” you said reluctantly. “I’m already cutting it close.”

Logan straightened. “I can drive you. My truck’s out back. No big deal.”

You opened your mouth to protest—stranger danger, independence, etc.—but the offer felt so uncomplicated coming from him.

“If you’re sure,” you said carefully.

“Positive.”

The drive to campus was just as effortless as the conversation in his kitchen. Windows down, September air rushing through the cab, a quiet indie playlist humming low. You talked about everything and nothing—his upcoming hockey season, your hatred of semicolons in academic writing, the absurdity of off-campus parking.

By the time he pulled up near the humanities building, you felt giddy, a fizzy feeling you hadn’t experienced with a guy in years.

“Thanks again,” you said, unbuckling. “For everything. I owe you one. Seriously.”

Logan rested his wrist on the steering wheel, looking over at you with those warm brown eyes.

“You don’t owe me anything. But if you wanted to grab coffee sometime—when your car’s not actively trying to ruin your life—I wouldn’t say no.”

Your stomach did that stupid Brontë somersault again.

“Yeah,” you said, smiling before you could overthink it. “I’d like that.”

You were definitely, undeniably, googly-eyed.

[puckingcuckbunny]

🜼 — 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐕𝐘

thank you @pinkyups for the gif <3

A soft, slow-burn romcom about a girl who makes everything feel alive, a boy who fixes things because it is easier than saying how he feels, and the cherry-red Chevy that started it all.

𝟎𝟏 . 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐊

release date : 5/06/2026 ; word count : 4,3 k

𝟎𝟐 . 𝐌𝐄𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐂 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐒

release date : tbd ; word count : N/A

𝟎𝟑 . 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐎

release date : tbd ; word count : N/A

𝟎𝟒 . 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒

release date : tbd ; word count : N/A

𝟎𝟓 . 𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐀𝐃𝐕𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐄

release date : tbd ; word count : N/A

𝟎𝟔 . 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐃𝐒, 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐒 & 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐏

release date : tbd ; word count : N/A

𝟎𝟕 . 𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐇 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

release date : tbd ; word count : N/A

𝟎𝟖 . 𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐈𝐍, 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆

release date : tbd ; word count : N/A

𝟎𝟗 . 𝐄𝐋𝐌𝐖𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐊

release date : tbd ; word count : N/A

𝟏𝟎 . 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐮𝐬 : 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝟏𝟏 . 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐮𝐬 : 𝐜𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 : @harls-sturn, @https-dandelion, @watergirl85, @brianna28483, @irishone11, @anyasthoughts, @kmc1989, @norrisidous, @glorveina, @zophiathefirst, @outpostsworld, @yomamaslays4lyfe, @babblegumgirl101, @itmekelpy, @strengthandstay, @run-for-the-hills, @eviemae5864, @tabisswag, @reveries01, @gojodaddy1029 @lukeyoumeanit, @ashloveshockey, @fandom-princess-forevermore @thewrxith05 @jemimah-b99, @themarvelousbee, @roisebear, @bootyliciousbutterfly, @clarittys, @mossmydarling, @ilovejohnny-knoxville, @yttafahtiwyvas, @gobiiiyob

[conradsmirrorball]

The Deal With The Devil | John Logan x Fem! Reader

Summary: Y/n is tired of her friends keep assuming she has a crush on Garrett Graham, her best friend's boyfriend. Her best solution? Make everyone believe she’s dating John Logan.

pairings: John Logan x Fem! Reader

warnings: Sexual themes implied. John Logan and the reader can’t stand each other. Some spoilers ahead. English isn’t my main language so excuse any mistake.

authors note: haven’t seen lots of x reader for off campus so i decided to write a little john logan imagine in honor of off campus eve.

Y/n wished things could be simple. She liked to consider herself a simple girl. But life didn’t want to hand her anything on a silver platter. Her love life couldn’t be a silly love story. She was cursed with the worst love trope known to man kind, unrequited love.

God, did it suck. Twenty guys in the Briar U Hockey team, yet she only had eyes for one. She wished she would’ve fallen for her best friend’s brother, that would have been easier than whatever she was feeling now. But no, here you were with a “crush” on your best friend’s boyfriend, Garrett Graham.

Y/n L/n had known Hannah Wells since freshman year. Both of them got assigned to the same dorm and after that, they instantly became friends after Hannah spotted Y/n’s One Direction posters covering her side of the dorm. Y/n and Hannah were tight so imagine Y/n’s surprise when she dropped the bomb that she didn’t like Justin Kohl anymore and that she was dating Garrett Graham.

At first, Y/n didn’t trust Garrett. He was a player. Word around Briar U got around quick and Hockey players didn’t have the best reputation when it came to relationships. You wanted a one night stand? The hockey boys were your guys. You wanted a serious commitment relationship? maybe check in the history department.

But after Hannah begged Y/n to hang out more with the couple, she started to enjoy his presence. She knew Garrett was attractive, at this point it was a requirement for the hockey team to be jacked, hot and have luscious hair. But Garrett wasn’t her type, at all. Maybe it was how Hannah spoke so highly of him or how she would see them together cuddle up by the common room couch wishing it was her that she picked up on the fact that she had a little crush on Garrett Graham.

She felt so guilty. Hannah was her best friend. Why did she have a crush of her best friend’s boyfriend? Yes, he was attractive but so were his roommates. Why couldn’t she have a crush on Dean, Tucker or even Logan.

She thought she had everything under control. One night after hearing them have their second round of sex, Y/n pulled up her notes app to come up with a plan to shake off her feelings. First, avoid one on one time with Garrett and Hannah. Second, try not to gawk when Garrett is around. Third, don’t daydream about watching a movie with Garrett. Don’t daydream about Garrett in general.

For Y/n, her crush on Garrett wasn’t obvious. But for everyone around her it was as clear as day. When she saw them together she would sprint the other way. Which made Dean comment and on the regular that maybe Y/n should consider joining the track team with how fast she would sprint out of that situation. She would also avoid eye contact with Garrett, rambling random excuses to not speak with him. Everyone knew about her little crush, even Hannah and Garrett, themselves.

So after much discussion with Hannah. She had convinced Allie Hayes to speak to you.

“Y/n, come on. I won’t judge. But the first step to overcoming this is admitting you have a problem.” Allie says sitting on the small twin size bed. Y/n forcefully laugh her eyes still glued on the computer in front of her, her physiology midterm essay glaring back at her.

“Allie, are you reciting an addict intervention script? I don’t need to overcome anything, like I said before, you are insane. Why would I have a crush on Garrett? First, he’s Hannah’s boyfriend. Second, he’s not my type? Third… I can’t think of a third because of how ridiculous this sounds.”

“You can’t think of a third because you are clearly lying and are in denial. Look, I won’t judge you Y/n. Garrett’s an attractive guy. But you need to accept that he’s in love with Hannah, so you can move on this pathetic little crush you have. You can’t avoid spending time with all of us forever.”

“I can since I'm here to get my degree. I’m not here to get shit wasted at a stupid frat party or to get accused about liking some guy by my friend. I’m not going, not because I'm avoiding Garrett and Hannah, I'm actually busy doing things?” Y/n replies shutting her computer. Allie scrunches up her face thinking of ways to deescalate the situation.

“You are starting to sound like Logan”

It was ironic. While Y/n was crushing badly on Garrett. John Logan, Garrett’s best friend, was crushing on Hannah. A full soap opera moment if you will. Y/n picked up on Logan’s crush, not because he told her, but because it was pretty fucking obvious with the way he acted around her. Then Y/n would wonder if she was also that obvious, but she would shake it off.

There were two possible options for Logan and Y/n. They could continue with their sad high school crush and avoidance, it would eventually work on the couple making them break up and date the two. or they could date each other to end each other's suffering. When the thought passes through her head Y/n doesn’t think about it twice. That’s how she found herself in John Logan’s room on a Friday night at 10:30pm.

“You told Allie what! No scratch that. How the hell did Allie believe you? You barely even speak to me.” Logan said looking down at Y/n with a stressed look on his face.

“I’m speaking to you right now, Logan.” Y/n claps back as she reads one of Logan’s notes from an Econ class.

There was a small problem with the little white lie Y/n had told Allie. Y/n L/n and John Logan, don’t get along at all. John Logan got along with loads of people, but Y/n was one of the girls that didn’t stick for him. One time she had insulted his form after a game in front of the guys and that was the start of his dislike towards her. They would constantly bicker and to the blind eye, people would consider that there was pent up sexual tension between the two, even if they both denied it.

“You know what I mean. We barely talk to each other and when we do it’s to fight about something stupid.” John replied back clearly annoyed at your comments.

“So, you admit that the things you usually say are stupid? See we are starting to get along already.” Y/n force a smile as she turns to look at the man pacing in front of her.

“How the hell would you tell her that we are together. She has to know you're lying. You clearly aren’t my type.” Logan sat in the chair in front of you tugging his hair frustrated.

“Gee thanks. Don’t worry I don’t go for condescending assholes. She always says we have this pent up sexual tension and that we should work on it. So my best bet was to say I was dating you for it to make some logic. I was helping you out because Tucker has been calling you out on your crush on Hannah and…”

“I don’t have a crush on Hannah.” Logan cuts you off. Slapping his hand on the table in front of him.

“ and I don’t have a crush on Garrett but if we work together we could put those fake rumors to rest.” Y/n replies in the same tone as him. John Logan stands up and leans toward you.

“Fine, it’s a deal. I’m not going to enjoy this. We are doing this under my rules” Logan’s hand rests between your knees pushing them apart.

“Fine.”

“First rule. If they are going to think we are together they need to hear us hooking up” Y/n feeezes, she starts nervously rambling but he chuckles. “ I don’t mean actual sex. We can fake it. Like I said, you aren’t my type.”

“Oh, really? I thought you fucked everything that has a skirt on.” Y/n replied sarcastically.

“I have my exceptions.”

Logan grabs the bottom of the bed and pushes it against the wall. He pushes it again, doing the same action repeatedly as the headboard hits the wall.

“They aren’t going to believe it if you don’t moan. Come on, I know you’re a screamer” Logan says making Y/n glare at him.

“You are a pig. That’s what you tell all your hook up’s to fake their moans?”

“Actually, I work for it. I have an impressive form when it comes to sex.”

“Just like your impressive form in hockey”

“L/n. I wasn’t the one that lied to our friends. If you want to keep this act up and make our friends believe it. No scratch if you so desperately wanted to be in a fake relationship with me, you need to put in the work. Now let me hear you.” He whispered in her ear, still continuing the moments with the bed. His arm would occasionally bump with your knee.

“Why would I be the only one moaning. You need to moan too!”

“I don’t moan.”

“Bullshit. I’ve heard you and you are pretty vocal. Come one John. Hannah and Garrett are next door. You want them to stop bothering with the crush? you better start moaning.” Logan let out a fake but impressive loud moan.

“Damn. Y/n” He let out a breathy moan. You hold in your laugh trying to take the situation as seriously as possible.

“Do I need to go down on you to hear you moan? Because I like a challenge, L/n.”

[finalgirlfiction]

OFF THE RECORD MASTERLIST

You are in love with Garrett Graham BUT he's your bestfriend's boyfriend. You did'nt wanted everyone to know so one evening when your friends cornerned you about your love life, you lied about dating John Logan. As he is in love with Hannah you made the deal to play pretend so everyone could get off your both backs.

NEW CHAPTER EVERY SATURDAY ♥️

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

[puckbunnywrites]

worth the fall part 2 | john logan

john logan x reader!female

summary: in which you take quite a bad fall while snowboarding on a mountain trip, luckily a handsome hockey player is there to take care of you. the only problem? you're the media manger for his team.

part 1

warning: mention of concussion

word count: 1,9k

authors note: had to spoil you guys with a part 2 😝 you guys seem to like john logan but luckily for you guys so do i !!!. i have another john logan request in the works along with a little something for our angel boy beau, i haven’t gotten time to finish it up because i’ve been prioritising my requests, i love getting requests as a new writer so please don’t be shy!!!

————————————————————————

watching the boys snowboard made it look easy. unfortunately, the moment you decided to try it yourself, you realized it wasn't.

you spend a few minutes watching the boys effortlessly glide down the mountain before clipping your own board on and giving it a try, eventually you got the hang of it, surprising even yourself.

“you okay there bambi” dean says teasing as he spots you.

you roll your eyes at his comment.

after a few more minutes of testing the waters, you decide to pick up a little speed, catching yourself laughing with the boys. dean being the only one who had noticed your mood, happy to see that his plan had worked.

“see y/n/n! i told you it would be fun.”

you roll your eyes while not being able to hold back you smile any longer.

for the first time all day, you weren't thinking about work. you weren't thinking about logan. you weren't thinking about the awkward tension that had followed you onto the trip.

you were just having fun.

"I knew this was a bad idea."

the thought flashed through your mind as your snowboard caught an edge. one second you were laughing at something a player had shouted from further down the slope and suddenly , the ground disappeared beneath your feet.

then came the impact.

pain exploded through your side as you tumbled through the snow.

you could hear the laughter between the boys quiet down, a hum of one the boys saying oh shit, and the snow crunching as someone runs towards you. your eyes feeling heavy as you hear someone ordering for ski patrol to be called.

the first thing you felt was the cold, then the feeling of your head pounding, throbbing, pulsating, like a rhythmic ache that mirrors a heartbeat or a drum beat. the pain may felt explosive, you could feel a pulsing sensation affecting your entire head along with your temples.

you could feel someone move you closer, even though it was freezing you could still feel body heat radiating through their snow suit.

a familiar voice causes your eyes to flutter open while squinting and groaning from the pain that felt as if it was now in your eyes as well.

“there she is” says dean while a soft but guilty smile.

next to him you see what looks like the whole team surrounding. a voice causes everyone to take what looked like 10 steps back

"back up. give her some room, to breathe”

you could see dean gently pulled tucker back when he tried to hover over your shoulder.

"but—"

"tucker."

"right. sorry." he said feeling just as guilty as dean did

logan barely spared them a glance, his attention fixed entirely on you.

"hey," he said softly. "can you hear me?"

“can you tell me your name?” he asked even softer than

you blinked up at him, your head spinning.

“john logan,” you mumbled.

his eyebrows shot up, while as face had concern written all over it

“that’s me,” he said, a nervous laugh slipping from his lips. “try again.”

you frowned, still struggling to focus, his voice sounding like an echo in your ears.

“i know.”

the concern look still painted across his face.

“okay, that’s not exactly the answer I was looking for.”

“you’re john logan,” you repeated stubbornly.

despite the situation, a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“good to know you remember me,” he said. “now how about you tell me your name?”

before you could reply a voice cut off your train of thoughts

“ski patrol should be here soon, you should probably go with her.” garret told logan while his concerned gaze shifting from logan to yours.

“was planning on it”

logan turns his attention back to you, his facial expression still not relaxing.

“how many fingers am i holding up?” he asked.

you squinted at his hand, taking a second longer than it should have to answer.

“four.”

it was two

“do you know what-“ is question cut off as he hears a vehicle, a look as relief flashes on his face.

he slowly picks you up, supporting your head as you groan in pain.

“i got you baby”

it felt as if your mind had shut off. one second you were laying on the snow, the next your opening your eyes to a bright light and voices of what sounds like logan speaking to what your guessing was a doctor or a medical professional of some sort.

“is she okay?” logan asked.

the doctor nodded. “she has a mild concussion, but she should be fine with plenty of rest over the next few days.”

logan let out a breath of relief.

“we’d like someone to keep an eye on her for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” the doctor continued.

“I’ll do it.”

the words left logan’s mouth before he could stop them.

the doctor raised an eyebrow.

“ i mean, I’ll take care of her,” logan corrected quickly.

the doctor smiled. “then make sure she gets plenty of rest and let us know if anything changes.”

logan nodded, glancing back toward hers, seeing her now awake state.

“got it.”

“my head hurts” you practically whisper afraid that your own voice would make the pounding in your head and ringing in your ears worse

the doctor sends you a soft smile while letting you know he has a bag of meds ready for you and that your free to go home whenever your ready.

as the doctor steps out logan slow walks towards the hospital bed.

“ready to go?” he asks quietly

“where?”

“i’m taking you back to the hotel room, to take care of you.”

before you can say anything he beats you to it

“doctors orders”

“logan you don’t have to do that”

“i do” he says with a soft smile “i want to”

as you guys make it back to your room, you notice his bags littered on your floor. the only problem? there’s one bed, no pull out couch, actually no couch at all, only a chair that sits infront of a vanity table.

that’s tonight’s problem you tell yourself

you leads you towards the bed and tells you to point him towards your bag. as you do he opens the bag to see no warm clothes. without a word he goes to open up his bag pulling out a briar u hockey hoodie along with matching bottoms.

“change, i’ll wait in the bathroom” he walks away without hesitation

as you hear the door click shut you immediately start changing while thinking to yourself, this is so not professional.

you call him out when your done. his eyes do a slow sweep up and down, taking in his clothes on you body. he hands you your meds with a bottle of water telling you to get rest, and that he’ll be back in a hour.

a thought flashes through your mind, wondering if you should’ve asked him to say, the thought long forgotten as you feel your eyes flutter close.

you wake up to the smell of food, slowly turning your head towards the sound of the door clicking closed you see logan walk in with a brown paper bag.

after you guys had finished eating it was quiet, not a bad silence, it was more comforting, almost like you both had something to say but didn’t know how to say it.

logan glances towards you, catching your attention.

“can i ask you something?”

“sure” you answer with a soft smile

“when we were driving to the medical facility, you said something.” he lets out a breathy laugh “and i can’t seem to get it out my head.”

as those words leave his mouth it was like a flicker of memory came to your mind, almost as if you were hungover remembering something you did the night before

“logan”

“i’m here” he says while holding your hand

“i lied”

he hums to let you know he’s listening while brushing the hair out your face and tucking it behind your ears.

“i was mad when i saw you and that girl in the classroom” you whisper out so softly almost, logan not even sure how he managed to hear that.

before he can ask you anything your eyes flutter closed leaving him alone with his thoughts”

you let out an “oh” as you start to remember

he scans your face taking in your expression while letting out a slow breath

“she meant nothing to me, that whole thing was nothing”

your suprised to hear yourself let out the words “didn’t look nothing”

he turn so his body is fully facing yours

“she wasn’t important”

you finally meet his gaze maintaining eye contact

“why do you care so much if i believe that?”

he lets out a breathy laugh, it was more like a nervous laugh.

“because the only person whose opinion I care about is yours”

“logan…”

the room felt silent

your pounding head long forgotten, the only thing you feel is your heart racing.

“i’m serious”

he shook his head

“i was trying to convince myself to move on.”

his laugh was humorless.

“I tried to ignore it, i tried to ignore every long stare every longing smile. I tried to move on. It didn’t work.”

the look in his eyes made your breath catch.

“because it’s you. It’s always been you.”

“logan…”

his name came out as little more than a whisper.

the look in his eyes made your stomach twist.

“this can’t happen and you know that”

or the first time all evening, he looked away.

“I know.”

“then why are you looking at me like that?”

the question slipped out before you could stop it.

his jaw tightened.

“because I’ve been trying not to for months.”

your breath caught.

the room suddenly felt too small.

you should’ve stopped or pushed him.

instead, you found yourself unable to look anywhere but at him.

“this is a bad idea,” you said.

a small smile tugged at the corner of Logan’s mouth.

“probably.”

neither of you moved.

meither of you looked away.

then logan leaned in even closer, your noses touching.

“if you want me to stop,” he said quietly, “tell me now.”

every sensible thought in your head screamed at you to do exactly that.

but the words never came.

his eyes flickered to your lips for the briefest moment.

then he closed the gap between your lips.

the kiss was soft, almost hesitant, like he couldn’t quite believe it was happening either, you felt yourself freeze and pull away only to smile and find yourself leaning back into the kiss.

for a second, everything else disappeared, the rules, the job, the reasons this shouldn’t happen.

there was only logan.

when you finally pulled apart, both of you were breathing a little harder.

“still a bad idea?” logan asked.

you stared at him for a moment.

“definitely.”

his grin returned.

immediately leaning back in.

“yeah.”

neither of you sounded very convinced.

authors note: and that’s a wrap yet again, this might actually be my favourite so far. if you enjoyed this and love logan, stay tuned as i am working on another request for him

don’t forget requests are open!

taglist: @mrsjohnnysuh

[dilaurentispuckbunny]

John Logan Masterlist

Tiny Librarian

P1, P2, P3

Summary: You were stranded at the library in the pouring rain, the last shuttle bus had left just as you got there, you text your brother, Garrett Graham, if he could pick you up after practice. You'll never guess who he sends instead.

Warnings: none, just fluff, flirting

Between Us

P1, P2, P3, P4

Summary: They were never nothing—but John Logan made sure they were never something either. Until the night he sees her with someone else... and realises too late what he let slip away.

Warnings: none :)

Taglist {open}: @notsosweetcreature @dina2223 @haydee5010 @rexit-mo @kmc1989 @mads-writes-vibes @superbfishhumanoidweasel @brianna28483 @m3lodyxo @antisocialfiore @sunshinevansh @girlidekanymore @nihoshi17 @em1ly57 @jellybaby17 @jamesmackreideswife @ralilda @k3nz13a @wilmonyibo7 @solstice-333

[urawizardharry]

Locket

John Logan X F!Reader

Summary: Logan and Y/N were best friends for as long as they could remember. They did everything together; they knew one another inside and out. Especially after they decided to become friends with benefits. What happens when the feelings become a little to real for Logan?

This was inspired when listening to Madison Beer's new album :) Especially after listening to Lovergirl and the Locket Theme

Warning(s): Angsttttt, Mentions of smut, Self-doubt, swearing, fluffy fluff fluff fluff!!!

John Logan used to know exactly where to find Y/N.

Either being curled up on the couch of the hockey house, his hoodie on her figure while Dean complained about having to take care of kitchen clean-up this time. Her laughs echoing across the house. Or when she was outside with them all, encouraging their lift sessions as she joined in.

Or he could find her in the passenger seat of his truck during midnight drives. The nights where he could find her waiting for him after practice with a sarcastic comment, and leftovers from Malone’s she swore she wasn't buying specifically for him.

For years, she was his person. His absolute best friend. Garrett couldn’t compare to her.

Y/N was his favorite girl. His favorite mistake.

She was the girl he called when he couldn't sleep. She became the girl whose bed he'd climb into after parties. She became the girl he kissed when friendship stopped being enough, but commitment felt too terrifying.

They never put a label on it, and deep down, that was Logan's first mistake.

Because somewhere between late-night study sessions, tangled sheets, and whispered secrets, Y/N fell in love with him. She didn’t realize it until one night, tangled up in his sheets after quite a few rounds, his biceps wrapping around her naked figure. The way he would cover her up so she wouldn’t get goosebumps along her skin.

It was the way they held deep conversations during the night when everyone else was asleep around them. Logan kissed her like she was the only one.

The problem?

Logan did too, and he was just too much of an idiot to realize it.

So when another girl showed interest, something flipped. He didn’t know how else to put it. He didn’t want to admit he was in denial. So he said yes to her. The new girl was someone easy, uncomplicated, someone who didn't make his chest tighten every time she smiled. He convinced himself that was what he wanted.

Something simple.

Something safe.

So, Logan started seeing her. But instead of being honest with Y/N, he did something worse. He did something he knew he would never be able to take back.

He disappeared.

There was no explanation, conversation, or even a warning.

One day he was in her bed laughing at some stupid movie, cuddled up next to her like it meant nothing. Knowing it meant every fucking thing. Then the next, he stopped answering texts.

Logan stopped showing up. He even stopped looking at her.

Y/N had spent weeks wondering what she'd done wrong. She remembered sitting with Allie, Dean and Hannah, tears rolling down her face as she tried to figure out what she did wrong. 

The courtyard at Briar had buzzed with the usual lunchtime chaos. Students crossed between buildings, laughter drifted through the warm spring air, and somewhere nearby a group of freshmen were throwing something back and forth.

Y/N barely noticed any of it.

She sat at the picnic table with her untouched plate in front of her, Allie had set it down knowing she hadn't eaten much in a few days. Her eyes fixed on the wood grain beneath her hands. Tears slid silently down her cheeks despite her attempts to stop them.

Across from her, Hannah looked heartbroken, while Allie reached over and squeezed Y/N's hand. While Dean had been chewing his own food, he had looked furious.

"Okay, no." He leaned back in his seat and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, but this is bullshit."

Y/N let out a shaky laugh that sounded more like a sob. "Dean."

"No." He shook his head, setting his fork down. "Seriously. One day you two are inseparable and then the next he acts like you don't exist? What the hell is that?"

She swallowed hard, sniffling lightly.

"That's what I don't understand,” Her voice cracked, as the table fell silent. Y/N stared down at her lap, picking the nail polish off of her fingertips.

"We have always been so close, we’ve always communicated when something was wrong," Her chest tightened. "We weren't officially together, but everyone knew what was happening."

Hannah nodded carefully.

"Everyone thought you guys were heading somewhere."

"Exactly, like fuck,” Y/N laughed bitterly.

"Then one morning he was just," She snapped her fingers. "Gone."

Allie frowned, running her thumbs over her friend’s hand. "He never gave you a reason?"

Y/N shook her head.

"Nothing?"

"No."

"Not even a text?"

"Nope."

The single word came out flat, and Dean muttered a curse under his breath.

"Dick."

"He stopped answering my messages." Y/N wiped at her face. "Stopped showing up. If I ran into him on campus he'd suddenly have somewhere else to be. He doesn’t come near me in class, I always catch him sitting with Beau or another one of the Hockey guys,” she explains, the hurt in her voice made all three of them wince. "I kept thinking maybe I did something-"

Allie immediately shook her head. "Don't."

"But what else am I supposed to think?" Y/N asked quietly, her tone sounding hopeless, eyes red and puffy as her lip quivers. "What if I said something wrong? What if I got too attached? What if he realized he doesn’t need me anymore?"

Dean's jaw tightened, watching Y/N’s body shrink down, shoulders sagging with a lack of hope.

"That's not it,” he mutters, shaking his head while playing with his lip.

"You don't know that."

"I know Logan."

Y/N looked up, and Dean sighed.

"I've known him for years, Y/N/N,” he says. “Living with the guy, and playing Hockey with him 25/8 kind of does that.”

"Then explain it to me, because apparently I don’t know a thing."

He opened his mouth, and then closed it. Not because he wanted to, but because he couldn't. Which made her hurt even worse.

“See?” Y/N laughed humorlessly, as Dean looked miserable.

Because the truth was he had noticed Logan acting strange. He was more withdrawn. More distracted. Every time Dean asked, Logan brushed him off. Left the house without another word. 

Now, Y/N was sitting in front of him crying. Dean hated it.

"He still looks at you,” The words came softly from Hannah. Everyone turned toward her, while Y/N frowned.

"What?"

Hannah shrugged, with a slow nod. "I've seen it."

"When?"

"Everywhere."

Y/N blinked, and Hannah leaned forward.

"The library. Parties. Hockey games."

"He avoids me."

"He avoids talking to you," Hannah corrected.

Y/N stared. “Han, he’s avoiding me altogether. Like I don’t even exist.”

“He’s avoiding something more,” Hannah continued. "But whenever you're around, he notices."

Something flickered across Y/N's face. Slight Hope. She still felt completely fucked up, and tired, but that hope was dangerous.

"If he notices me, then why won't he talk to me?"

Nobody had an answer, because that was the question. It was the one that didn't make sense. Yet, it was also still the one that had been tearing Y/N apart for weeks. She lowered her gaze again.

"Maybe he met someone,” Y/N frowns to herself, her eyes darting between her and Allie’s linked hands on the table.

The possibility tasted like poison, and Dean immediately shook his head.

"No."

"You don't know that."

"Y/N, I do."

"How?"

"Because if Logan had a girlfriend, Tucker would've accidentally announced it to the entire campus within twelve minutes."

That earned a small laugh from Hannah, and even Y/N managed a weak smile.

It came as quick as it disappeared, her face filling with heavy hurt and mental exhaustion.

"I just wish he'd tell me why. I swear I would have understood. I’ve known him for too long not to," Her voice was barely above a whisper.

The three of them exchanged glances.

Because that's what made it so awful. It wasn’t the ending, or the silence, or unanswered calls and messages. It was the not knowing that killed her most. Y/N lowered her head as fresh tears spilled onto her cheeks.

"I miss him."

The confession hung in the air. It was raw and honest. Her heart filled with breaking pain.

Across the courtyard, standing near the entrance of the student union with a hockey bag slung over his shoulder, Logan froze. Because he had heard every single word.

For the first time since he'd walked away from her, he had looked absolutely devastated.

But Hannah suddenly sat up straighter. "Wait."

Y/N sniffled, looking back over at Hannah. "What?"

Hannah's eyes lit up.

"You should write about it,” she conjures up, grabbing her songbook and a pen. Y/N laughed through her tears.

"Write what? A strongly worded email?"

"No." Hannah grinned. "Write how you’re feeling. In a song,” she admits, nodding at Y/N. “I’ve been needing ideas on how to start a melody, and finding someone to perform it with Justin being busy with his band. We can put a melody together tonight, and write up lyrics.”

Dean pointed immediately.

"Yes,” he said immediately while Allie nodded.

"Oh my goodness, yes. You’ve been in a songwriting funk, and I think this would be a perfect way to help explain your feelings throughout all of this,” Allie admits, squeezing Y/N’s hands. She gives them a sheepish look.

“I haven’t performed any of my music for anyone outside of that auditorium, Han.”

"And your voice is beautiful. Your songwriting is breathtaking. Listen,” she sighs before reaching over to place her hand over Y/N and Allie’s conjoined ones. “You're hurting," Hannah said gently. "And you're carrying all of it around because you never got closure."

Y/N looked away while Hannah continued.

"So let's make your own,” she smiles at Y/N, Allie nodding as Dean sat forward.

"And then sing it at open mic night,” he adds, going to place his hands on top of all of their’s. “I felt FOMO not holding all of your hands,” he says, making them all let out a slight chuckle. Y/N nearly choked.

"Absolutely not."

"Absolutely yes," Allie corrected.

"You know how to sing."

"That doesn't mean I want to sing about my emotional damage in front of strangers,” Y/N says. Dean shrugged, and she eyed him with a squint. 

"Technically they'd be Briar students, not strangers."

"Dean."

"What? I'm helping."

For the first time all afternoon, Y/N actually laughed a real laugh.

Hannah smiled. "Come on, I will help you out with this one."

“What about date night with G?”

She pulled out her notebook, swatting at her. “He can wait, or better yet he can come listen. Be an outsider hearing it. You know he will give you an honest opinion.”

Y/N looks at them all, seeing the agonizing wait for her answer. She rolled her eyes with a sigh, wiping her tears. “Fine.”

The girls had taken over Hannah and Allie’s place for the night. Takeout containers covered the coffee table, and a half-finished bottle of wine sat between them. Sheets of notebook paper were scattered across the couch cushions as Hannah and Y/N worked on refining the song.

Allie sat cross-legged on the floor with a red pen, pretending to be some kind of music producer.

"You repeat that too many times here," Allie said, pointing it out as she chews on the edge of the pen.

"It's literally the point of the song,” Y/N chuckles, scribbling part of it out. 

"I know. I'm just saying maybe make the last one hit harder."

Y/N rolled her eyes, and Hannah laughed.

"She's right."

"Traitor,” Y/N scoffed playfully, before sticking her tongue out at them both. 

"Thank you,” Hannah gasps with a giggle. The mood was lighter than it had been all day.

It wasn’t healed, or good. Just light Y/N was reading over a revised verse when Allie suddenly gasped.

The room froze. Hannah looked up from her laptop, pushing her headphone to the side.

"What?"

Allie's eyes were glued to her phone, then slowly turned up to Hannah’s in horror. Y/N frowns.

“Allie?”

That single word made Y/N's stomach drop. "What?"

Nobody answered immediately, which was answer enough. Y/N slowly sat upright.

"Allie,” she says a bit more firmly. Allie winced.

"Oh no,” Hannah’s voice cuts in, her eyes glued to her laptop. Y/N shakes her head in confusion. “Oh fuck."

"Hannah,” Y/N trails off as Hannah looks horrified, and Y/N feels her pulse start racing.

"What?"

The girls exchanged a glance, then looked at Y/N. That’s all it took. Y/N knew. Her frown slowly turned into pure sadness. Her face contorted into sadness, pain, anger, shock, confusion. She knew before she even reached for the phone.

"No."

Nobody spoke.

"No."

Allie slowly handed it over, and Y/N did not hesitate to look.

Instagram. A close friend's story. One of the hockey guys had posted it from the ongoing party. There were people laughing, music playing. 

Then, there it was. She was standing beside Logan.

A girl.

Pretty. Breathtaking. Looking at Logan like he was the world. Y/N’s eyes scanned the whole thing.

Her arm wrapped around his. His hand resting on her waist. The image had blurred instantly, but not because of the screen.

Because tears filled Y/N's eyes, as the room stayed silent. The kind of silence that hurts.

Y/N found herself going back and staring at it again. And again. And again.

The same image was proof for her. It was an answer. 

After weeks of wondering, of weeks being confused. Of weeks blaming herself for doing something wrong that she didn’t realize.

There was another girl. There always had been.

A sharp laugh escaped her. It was a broken laugh, filled with humiliation.

"Oh."

Nobody knew what to say, and Y/N swallowed hard.

"So. That was why,” Her voice cracked, handing the phone back. “Y/N-”

"I get it now."

Her chest hurt, like physically hurt. It felt as if it were caving in.

"He found someone else,” she sniffles, letting her head fall as she began to scribble every word she once had written. Hannah’s face faltered slightly, looking at Allie, who looked just as distraught. "You don't know that."

Y/N laughed bitterly, shaking her head. "I literally have eyes, Hannah,” she sighs.  "He couldn't even tell me."

The realization hit harder than the picture itself. Not that he might have moved on, it was the fact that he never respected her enough to tell her.

He had simply vanished, and left her searching for answers. While apparently moving on with somebody else. She pursed her lips, tearing out the page in the book, crumpling it and throwing it across the room. 

"I was sitting around wondering what I did wrong,” she bitterly laughs, going to write again. Her voice had broken with every word as she spoke. "And he was just-"

She couldn't finish the sentence as the apartment door opened.

"Hey babe, I brought-" Garrett stopped mid-sentence, his smile disappeared immediately. The hockey captain took one look at Y/N crying and set the grocery bag down.

"What happened?"

Nobody answered. Garrett looked toward Hannah, and then toward Allie. Hannah pans her laptop his way, watching as his face darkened. Because he knew exactly who the picture involved.

"So there you go,” Y/N sniffled, running hands through her loose pony. Garrett frowned.

"What?"

"That's why he disappeared,” she says, throwing her hands up in the air defenselessly. His expression tightened.

"You don't know that."

Y/N laughed bitterly, scoffing at him. "It kind of looks that way."

Garrett didn't answer right away, which was unusual. Because Garrett Graham always seemed to know what to say.

Finally he sighed. Garrett was usually the calm, responsible and level-headed one. Right now he not only looked ready to kill one of his teammates, but also he looked completely lost. 

"I don't know what's going on in Logan's head,” he grumbles, running a hand through his hair. The honesty surprised everyone. "But I know him."

Y/N looked at him with a frown. "And?"

"And whatever this is, it doesn't make sense."

“Oh, it makes perfect sense, G,” She almost laughed.

"No,” Garrett shook his head, chuckling darkly. "Not to me."

"Did he tell you why?" Y/N asked quietly, and watched Garrett shake his head.

"No."

"Did you know?"

"No."

He didn't hesitate, not even for a second. Somehow that made her believe him.

Garrett sighed. "If I had known he was doing this, I would've called him out weeks ago,” he admits, before his eyes dropped to the notebook on the coffee table. "What's this?"

"The song," Hannah said.

"The one she's writing for open mic night."

Garrett blinked, and then immediately looked interested.

"No way."

“Garrett, please,” Y/N groaned.

It was already too late, because he was already grabbing the pages. The apartment fell silent while he read a few pages that still had some lyrics circled, he squinted as he read them. 

A few moments passed.

Then a few more.

Finally he reached the end, and looked up. Then Garrett pointed at the notebook.

"Okay,” he huffs, as he hands her back the notebook. Everyone waited. "That's going to absolutely destroy people. These little mental lyrics you’ve written. This feels real."

She swallowed hard. "Because it is,” she assured him, and Garrett nodded.

"That's why it works."

His eyes drifted briefly toward the picture displayed, but also partly being hidden behind the garage band icon on Hannah’s laptop. Then back to the lyrics.

He paused on one section. "But if you put these all together, they may work. But it's still missing something."

Allie sat up, a shit-eating grin on her face. "Oh, I knew it."

Garrett nodded.

"The whole song is making statements about you. How you love, and how you are,” he explains, and Y/N frowned.

"Okay,”

"But now, you need to make it into how he made you feel throughout everything. From start to finish," he explains, and she tilts her head. Hannah smirks, knowing she would definitely be giving Garrett shit later about his songwriting smarts. 

The room grew quiet, as everyone knew exactly what answer he meant. 

"You don't need to make it angry,” he said as he looked at her carefully. "You just need to make it honest."

Y/N stared down at the page.

At the lyrics she'd spent hours writing, scribbling and retrying over and over again. She stared at the hurt she'd poured into every line. Suddenly she realized Garrett was right. The song wasn't about Logan leaving. It was about what finding that picture felt like.

The bar is packed. Dean, Tucker, Garrett, and Logan are crowded into their usual booth. Allie and Hannah had told their boyfriends that they would be coming with Y/N as emotional support. She had been rehearsing the song day in and day out.

She even had Justin help her through it, through the emotional side of it. He helped her figure out when to breathe, when to make it feel the pain she felt as she sang it.

Y/N’s eyes didn’t miss the way Logan’s new girl was sitting right next to him. She didn’t bother to dissect that he had zero interest in her advances. She just saw him with her, and that was enough.

Beside her, Hannah squeezed her shoulder. "You've got this."

"I absolutely do not,” she chuckles dryly, Allie coming up to squeeze her tight. "You do."

"I might actually throw up."

Allie laughed. "You'll be fine."

On stage, Justin finished the final song with his band, the crowd erupted into cheers and hoots. Justin grinned into the microphone.

“Thank you for all the love tonight,” he chuckles, and then eyes dart over towards Y/N. He nods at her, and her eyes widen. She let out a puff of breath.

Then his expression shifted, slowly softening. "Before we take off, I want to introduce the next performer. This next song is a little different. It was written by somebody who probably doesn't realize how talented she is."

Y/N wanted the floor to open and swallow her whole, as Justin looked toward the side of the stage at her. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "And from what I've heard, she wrote this one from a very real place."

Then he pointed toward the side of the stage, giving her a warm welcome.  "Everybody give it up for one of Briar U’s brightest singers, and also my dear friend, Y/N L/N."

The applause started immediately, not thunderous, but completely supportive. It was enough to make her heart pound harder. Y/N stumbled onto the stage slowly, the spotlight hit her instantly.

And suddenly every person in Malone's seemed to turn and look at her. Her pulse roared in her ears, where the microphone stood waiting. She could barely breathe. Then she spotted her friends.

Hannah smiling, Allie practically bouncing in her seat, Garrett giving her a reassuring nod, and Dean raising his drink in support. Tucker and Beau let out a few hoots and cheers for her. She smiles softly at them.

For a moment, everything felt manageable. Then her eyes moved farther back, because her eyes met his own. Logan was standing by the exit of Malone’s, as if something stopped him from leaving. He was looking up at her with a frown. The girl by his side, pulling him to leave with her.

Logan couldn’t find it himself to want to leave. Not now. Logan looked confused. Curious. Almost nervous as if he suddenly realized this song might be about him.

Y/N swallowed hard, finally pulling herself back, she looked away. The room quieted completely. Finally, she spoke.

"This song starts off slow, like an intro." she explains softly. “It’s called locket theme,” she says, and then clears her throat. “The intro is very personal, and goes into this song I wrote. The song is called Lovergirl.”

The titles alone seemed to catch Logan's attention, making him walk slowly back into the crowd, and his expression changed immediately. Y/N saw it.

So did Garrett, and suddenly his jaw tightened. Because for the first time all night, Logan looked like he might finally understand exactly how much damage he'd done. Y/N wrapped her fingers around the microphone.

The first chord rang through Malone's, and every eye in the room turned toward her as she began to sing.

For Logan, the entire room disappears. The lyrics aren't subtle, they're raw.

Did you miss me? I like to pretend you did. Was crying nightly, I know you can picture it

All our memories safe in my locket, I carry it.

I know I missed you, I’m not gonna lie ‘bout that. I had to leave you be and see how I felt ‘bout that

If you don’t hear from me, it don’t mean I loved you less. Had to get this off my chest

I’ve been searching, but the answer’s right in front of me. My protection’s so divine and now I see

Pain on a necklace, set it down, I’m weightless

Everything I need is within me

Every word feels like a punch to the ribs, and Logan can't breathe. She poured out everything in that intro, and he didn’t know if he would be able to handle hearing what she wrote in the song. He wasn’t just hearing lyrics, he was hearing memories. She kept every single one tucked away, because he pushed her away.

The music began to transition into a new low melody. It sounded like pain, heartbreak and yearning, turned into something deeper. Prettier.

I care too much all the time, love so hard it makes me cry

No, it's not worth it to deny. 'Cause when it's good, it's so good, it's so nice

One look right into your eyes, One touch and I'm yours tonight

I, I just can't help that I'm a lovergirl. Why not embrace the simple pleasure? Let me hold you close

And we can take off all our clothes. I, I thank God I found you in this lonely world

Why would we ever stop ourselves from doing what feels good? Baby, if we can, we should

I've flown too close to the sun. And I've been burned far more than once

But it still hasn't stopped me from doing it again, I'm doing it again

One look right into your eyes, One touch and I'm yours tonight (tonight)

I, I just can't help that I'm a lovergirl. Why not embrace the simple pleasure? Let me hold you close

And we can take off all our clothes. I, I thank God I found you in this lonely world

Why would we ever stop ourselves from doing what feels good? Baby, if we can we should

I, I just can't help that I'm a lovergirl. Why not embrace the simple pleasure? Let me hold you close

And we can take off all our clothes

Logan’s mind began to hit him with realization. With memories. With every single fucking thing he had been denying. The memories filling in one after another.

The night she fell asleep on his shoulder after finals. The way she'd laugh when he got jealous. The mornings he'd wake up beside her and pretend it didn't mean anything. The look on her face the last time she texted him asking if she'd done something wrong.

The messages he never answered.

Across the table, Garrett slowly lowers his drink, and Dean goes completely silent.

Tucker mutters, "Oh, fuck,” with a hiss after, because everyone knows exactly who the song is about.

And then Y/N sings the final verse, not angry, or bitter. Just with hurt. So much hurt. The kind of hurt that comes from loving someone who never chose you. The kind that sounds devastatingly permanent. For the first time in his life, Logan realizes the truth.

He never stopped loving her.

Not once. Not when he dated someone else. Not when he avoided her. Not when he convinced himself she deserved better.

Not even now.

He loves her. He's always loved her.

And he's spent months watching her slip through his fingers because he was too scared to admit it. Now, he couldn’t breathe. It was all making him feel dizzy. Because standing there watching her sing her heart out, he couldn't imagine a future that didn't include her.

Couldn't imagine another girl making him laugh the same way. Couldn't imagine another girl understanding him the way she did. Couldn't imagine another girl hurting this much because of him.

It hit him so quickly. Almost like a lightning strike. Logan understood what Dean had been trying to tell him for months.

He wasn't protecting himself, he wasn't protecting her. He'd just been terrified. Terrified of how much she meant.

The final chord faded.

Silence.

One second. Then two.

Then the entire bar erupted.

Applause.

Cheers and hoots.

Whistles.

People rising to their feet, and Y/N's eyes widened in shock. She smiled widely, thanking them politely as she stepped off the stage, hugging Justin, Allie and Hannah tight.

Logan barely heard anything, because he was too busy staring at her, realizing he might have completely screwed this up.

She disappeared into the crowd almost immediately after breaking apart from their hugs. Logan instinctively started moving.

He needed to talk to her.

Tonight.

Right now.

Immediately.

He was stopped abruptly when hand grabbed his shoulder. Hard. He turned, and was face to face with Dean.

He was not smiling. Not joking. Just staring.

"Sit."

Logan frowned. "Dean-"

"Sit. Down,” his tone was something that did not hesitate to make him listen. A few moments later Logan found himself back at their table.

Garrett sat across from him, and Tucker beside him.

Beau leaned against another chair, and now none of them looked happy.

That was unusual. Especially for Tucker and Dean. Tucker was normally incapable of looking serious for more than thirty seconds. Now he looked annoyed.

“What?” Logan sighed, and this caused Dean to laugh. A short, humorless laugh as he rubbed at his jaw.

"What?"

Garrett folded his arms, nodding at Logan."That's your question?"

Logan looked between them. Nobody answered, but nobody looked away.

That was when he suddenly had realized. They knew. They all knew, every single bit. Dean leaned forward first. "Do you have any idea how many nights she cried over this?"

Logan's stomach dropped, but Dean continued. "Do you?"

No answer. He stayed quiet, only gulping, because he didn't. Garrett shook his head.

"You ghosted her, Logan,” he says, his tone sounding defeated as he crosses his arms, making  Logan immediately look away.

"Garrett-"

"No,” Garrett cut him off. "You don't get to brush this off,” he snaps, and the table goes quiet. It was a rare sighting for Garrett to be putting Logan in place, when it was usually the exact opposite. "She spent weeks wondering what she did wrong."

Logan closed his eyes with a sigh, as every word felt worse.

"You didn't even give her a reason,” Dean pointed out, making Logan nod. "I know."

"You just disappeared."

"I know."

Dean scoffed. "No, I don't think you fucking do. Because if you understood what that did to her, you would've fixed it already."

Logan rubbed a hand over his face as Tucker spoke up next. Which somehow felt even worse.

"Man, she looked miserable,” he admits, talking about how he had seen her moping around campus for weeks. Her being around the house less and less. The way she looked so pained while singing in front of them. Logan's chest tightened, and Tucker shook his head. "And she still defended you."

That surprised him enough to snap his gaze back up, frowning in confusion. "What?"

"Every time."

The table fell quiet again, and Beau nodded. "She's never once talked badly about you,” he adds, trailing off and Logan looks down at the wood tabletop because somehow that hurt the most.

After everything.

After disappearing. Avoiding her. Leaving her with nothing. Y/N still hadn't tried to destroy him.

Dean sighed heavily. "What were you thinking?"

“I fucking wasn’t. That was the issue, Dean,” Logan laughed bitterly. Dean’s eyes sharpened at his friend’s tone.

"Clearly."

Another painful silence, but then Garrett leaned back as he let his expression softened slightly.

"Do you love her?"

That was when Logan froze.

The question hung there.

It was so simple, yet so terrifyingly direct. The one question he had ignored for months. Keeping it buried away. Locking it for far too long, or just pretended it wasn't true.

But after hearing that song? After seeing her on that stage? After realizing she'd been hurting this entire time? There wasn't really a point in lying anymore. So quietly, he answered.

"Yeah,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair as all of his emotions break through. They shattered completely. “Yeah. I really fucking do.”

Nobody looked surprised. Dean immediately rolled his eyes. "Oh, for fuck’s sake."

Tucker threw both hands in the air, pursing his lips, leaning back into the booth cushions. "I knew it."

"Everyone knew it,” Beau laughed, and Garrett pointed at him.

"Literally everyone,” he agrees, and Logan groans.

"Great."

"No," Dean said, shutting it down completely. "Not great."

The table quieted again, because out of every single one here, surprisingly Dean was right. Knowing the truth didn't magically fix what happened. It didn't erase weeks of pain.

It didn't undo the damage.

A few moments later, Hannah and Allie approached the table, both immediately noticed Logan sitting there. Neither looked impressed. Especially Allie, as she folded her arms.

"Seriously?" she hissed, not missing how Logan winced. Garrett slid over so Hannah could sit beside him, while Allie took the empty chair next to Dean. The tension was instant.

Logan looked around. "Where's Y/N?"

Hannah glanced toward the front doors.

"Outside."

His heart immediately sank.

"She okay?"

Allie laughed, but not kindly. It was a pointed and sharp toned laugh. "You don't get to ask that,” she shot back. “Where’s your girlfriend anyway?”

Logan looked away, before letting out a huff. “I never made it official with that girl. I couldn’t, something in me couldn’t.”

“Something as in your love for Y/N? Maybe?” she retorts, making him close his eyes because she wasn't wrong.

The table fell silent. Outside the windows, the spring night stretched across campus. Somewhere beyond those doors, Y/N was standing alone. Trying to catch her breath after singing her heart out in front of an entire room.

While inside, for the first time in months, Logan was finally being forced to confront the truth.

Not that he'd hurt her. He already knew that. The truth was worse.

Because sitting at that table, surrounded by the people who cared about both of them, Logan realized something he'd been trying not to admit for a very long time. Losing Y/N hadn't made things easier.

It had made everything harder.

Now? Knowing that there was a very real possibility that he was too late fucked his entire body up. Logan is on his feet before he even thinks.

"Logan-" Dean starts to call out, Allie’s expression softening as they watch him sprint out, but he's already gone.

The rain had started sometime during the last chorus. Not enough to send people running, but just enough to leave the pavement shining beneath the streetlights. Y/N stood outside Malone's with her arms wrapped around herself.

The cool air felt good against her overheated skin. Inside, everyone was celebrating. The buzz of her music, of her song. Justin’s band had gone back up for a couple of covers from what she could hear. 

She couldn't handle any of it right now. The emotions were too close to the surface. The tears were too close, glossing over her eyes.

The rain dampened her hair as she stared across the empty parking lot, slowly beginning to walk out from under the cover from the rain. Then the door behind her opened, closing quickly as feet padded behind her as if trying to catch her.

"That song was about me."

Not a question, but a statement.

Y/N laughed bitterly, not needing to turn to know who it was. "You figured that out all by yourself?" she snaps back, whipping back to face him with a cold stare, Logan flinches.

Good, she wanted him to.

"You have no idea what you put me through,” Her voice shook lowly, the cold rain starting to make her shiver lightly. The anger she'd been holding in for weeks finally surfaced.

Logan swallowed hard. "I know-"

"No,” she stood still, rain droplets clung to her eyelashes. The hurt in her eyes nearly destroyed him.  "You don't. You don't get to say you know."

His chest tightened.

"Y/N-"

"I spent weeks blaming myself,” Her voice cracked as she talked over the rain, teeth chattering. "Weeks, Logan."

Logan looked away, unable to hold her gaze. The rain began to pour down hard, drenching them both.

"I thought I wasn't enough. I-I had thought I scared you away,” another tear slipped down her cheek. "I thought maybe I imagined the whole thing,” she laughs to herself, hugging herself to keep any warmth she had left. The rain hid some of the tears falling freely, but not all of them.

Logan felt sick, because he remembered every text he ignored. Every hallway he'd avoided. Every opportunity he'd had to fix it. Every time he'd chosen not to.

"I never stopped caring about you,” The words escaped before he could stop them.

Y/N stared at him, and then laughed. It was her broken laugh. "Seriously?"

"I'm serious."

"You have a funny way of showing it."

She wasn't wrong, not one bit. Logan closed his eyes briefly, because there was no defense. No excuse. There was nothing he could say that would make it better. When he looked at her again, his voice was quieter.

"I got scared, Y/N."

Y/N scoffed.

"Of what?"

"You."

That made her heart stutter for a second. Something in her paused. For the first time all night.

The rain continued falling around them, and Logan stepped closer.

"I was fine when it was casual,” His voice shook, nerves coming out with each word. "I was fine when I could convince myself I wasn't falling for you."

Y/N's heart started pounding.

"But then suddenly every time something happened, you were the first person I wanted to tell,” He laughed bitterly. "Every good day,” Another step closer. "Every bad day,” Another. "You were the person I looked for."

Y/N's eyes began filling again. His bottom lip quivered as he spoke once more. "And it scared the hell out of me, Y/N."

The confession hung between them. It was raw. Honest. Painful.

Logan ran a hand through his wet hair. "So I did what I always do."

"What?"

"I screwed it all up,” he admits. “I fucking ran like a coward. Denied every single fucking feeling you were making me feel,” his voice cracked, a tear mixed with the rain on his cheek.

Y/N froze. Because Logan wasn't just emotional. He was crying.

Actual tears. Logan almost never cried.

His voice broke. "I thought if I walked away first, it wouldn't hurt as much,” The next laugh that escaped him sounded miserable. "Turns out that was the dumbest fucking decision I've ever made."

Y/N stared.

Because she'd imagined this conversation a thousand times. None of those versions involved Logan looking completely shattered. The tension snapped.

Not completely. But enough. It was enough for all the hurt beneath it to finally surface.

Logan stepped closer again. This time neither moved away. Rain soaked through both of them now. Neither cared.

"I. Love. You."

The words came out suddenly. Unplanned. Unfiltered.

Y/N stopped breathing, and Logan looked terrified the second he said it. He didn't take it back.

"I love you, Y/N," His voice cracked, another tear sliding down his face. "I think I've loved you for a long time. I just didn't realize how much until I lost you."

Y/N felt her entire world tilt. Weeks of anger. Weeks of heartbreak.

Weeks of missing him.

All crashing together at once. Her own lips began to quiver again. "You don't get to say that now,” she squeaked out, the words came out weak. Because that part of her wanted to hear them again.

"I know,” he nods, biting his bottom lip as it keeps quivering. 

"You don't get to disappear and then tell me you love me."

"I know."

"You broke my heart,” she sobs, the tears returned immediately. Logan nodded his tears were continuous too.

"I know,” His own voice broke. "And I'm sorry."

Y/N stared at him. Stared at the boy she'd loved for so long. The absolute fucking idiot who had shattered both of them.

At the person she'd spent weeks trying to forget.

Her shaking hand coming up to cup his face, he lets out a stuttered sob at the contact, taking her wrist softly in his hand as he leaned his cheek into her touch. "I hate you,” she says, her eyes still glossy and red, but full of love.

Logan laughed through tears, nodding. "I know."

"I really hate you."

His eyes never left hers.

"I know."

The space between them disappeared. One second they were arguing.

“But I still love you,” she admits, making him smile sadly at her as he cried with her. “So fucking much, John Logan,” The next moment, Y/N grabbed the front of his jacket, and pulled his neck down to kiss him hard.

Angry.

Months of frustration pouring into it. Logan made a sound somewhere between relief and heartbreak as he kissed her back. The rain fell harder around them.

Neither noticed, and neither cared.

All the words they'd never said.

All the feelings they'd buried.

All the hurt, and the love.

It all collided at once beneath the streetlights outside Malone's. Thunder sounding in the distance, the music inside blaring softly. Their lips moving together like puzzle pieces that were meant for one another. Hands wandering wherever they could grab and hold.

For the first time in months, neither of them ran.

[folkloure]

⭑.ᐟ your head on my shoulder

john logan x reader

warning: mentions of sexual harrasment.

summary: angst/hurt comfort. logan finds you crying in the bathroom during a party. short fic. requested here and here!

Logan isn’t there when it happens, but he certainly hears the commotion around it through the grapevine. The whispers dancing around the party, spreading the news of a girl slapping a Sig Tau frat’s face after he tries (or rather, forces) a move on her, your name mixed within them.

He shares a brisky look with Tucker, who quickly mumbles something among the lines of “I’ll take care of it. Go.” before pushing him back inside the house. Logan runs through the crowd of people, eyes scanning every face, then up the stairs storming a bunch of rooms occupied by couples who definitely should’ve locked the door. He only finds you when he starts banging on the locked doors of the upstairs bathroom.

“Go away!” You yell from the other side. 

“It’s just me.” He answers, loud enough for you to hear but never to scare you, “Would you open the door, please?”

There’s a beat of silence, then the sound of the lock turning.

Logan opens the door to find you sitting on the bathroom floor, hiding your face behind your hands. “I’m so embarrassed.” You say, voice muffled by your own palms, “I didn’t know he’d– I didn’t mean to–”

“Hey, no– You’re good. You did nothing wrong, ‘kay?” He cuts you off, crouching down to sit by your side on the floor, hand going for your shoulder in a comforting move, asking in a lower voice, “Wanna tell me what happened?”

You lift your head up, and Logan sees your tear-streaked face and wobbly underlip, feeling almost light-headed with the sudden flush of emotions. He feels ready to go out there and give a proper finish to the damage you’ve started on the guy’s face, yet, he knows that there’s no way in hell he’d ever leave you alone in those cold bathroom floor tiles — especially when he feels your hand curving around his upper arm, seeking his assurance. 

“I was just grabbing a drink.” You say, voice cracking in such a way that makes his ribs hurt. “In the kitchen. Then this guy– I don’t know, I turn around and suddenly he’s too close, and– And he’s trying to push me against the wall, so I–”

You start growing antsy and take a moment to breathe, eyes closing. You drop your head into his shoulder, “I wasn’t thinking. I just had to get him away from me.”

“You did good.” Logan repeats himself, his arm tentatively going around your shoulders, careful not to startle you. You curl up against him, and he goes on saying, his low voice a litany of assurances, “You got him away, yeah? That’s what matters. You did great, honey.”

You breath in, staying still where your head lands on his shoulder, and Logan won’t dare to move either until you do. A knock on the door is the sole reason for your disturbance.

“Occupied.” Logan says, but the voice that comes out the other side is from Garrett.

“Everything okay there?”

“Fine.” You say, “Just– Yeah. We’re good.”

“Okay. Uh, the girls are waiting in the car. We’re, uh, ready to leave if you are.” His voice says.

Logan turns to face you, your eyes blinking slowly like you’ve just been pulled out of sleep. “You ready to go?” He murmurs.

You nod, “Yes, please.” 

He lifts himself off the floor, offering you a hand. 

When he opens the door, Garrett isn’t the only one on the other side. Dean and Tucker stand there, one on each side of him, all three standing like guards waiting for orders. Logan’s eyes fall down to their hands, and if you notice the redness around each their knuckles, you don’t mention it. None of them really say a word other than a quick “c’mon” and know that you understand it exactly as they mean to — as in “We got you too.”

It’s a quiet drive in the backseat of Garrett’s car. 

There’s a silent agreement, reinforced by you saying that you don’t wanna go to your dorm, that everyone’s staying the night at the boy’s house, and Logan doesn’t care if he has to sleep on the couch, or rather force Garrett out of his own room so you can share the bed with Hannah, but he knows is that you’re not staying alone tonight. 

You keep your head on Logan’s shoulder, hands intertwined with his. He closes his eyes, focusing solely on the softness of your fingers as he calms himself down. There’s a lot of emotions to unpack and possibly hard conversations to get through in the following days. Right now, all he cares about is keeping you safe by his side, fast asleep on the road home. 

notes: quick psa, if you or anyone you know has ever been affected by sexual harrasment, please know that it's not your fault and finding support is always the best choice. thank you for reading <3

john logan masterlist

[puckingcuckbunny]

𝐀+ 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞 ✪

𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞 : john logan x fem! bio student! reader

𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 : panic attack-esque breakdown but isn't mentioned explicitly, academic pressure leading to burnout induced meltdown.

𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : Being a biology student was no easy feat, especially when every single one of your classes for the past week had decided to not only give you tests on crucial topics, but also make them count towards your final grade. It's the end of said demon-week, and you only have one test left, but when you've been working on a prayer and a concerning amount of coffee, what happens when it just doesn't work anymore?

𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐜𝐞 : 6k words

𝐛𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐲’𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫 : Sooooo, this was a request as well!! a little bit of comfort for everyone going through it right now! You guys got this and if you dont, lock in and then read this to cure the burn out, the briar U gang and I believe in you. Thank you @pinkyups for the gif and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump for the dividers !

𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 : I would really appreciate if you could send in an ask to be on my taglist, it's easier for me to manage and make sure everyone is added!! here is the post of my current taglist. Also, if your user is bolded, I'm going on a prayer that youve been tagged but Tumblr wouldn't let me properly do so. I would recommend checking your privacy settings to allow other people to tag you.

If only a few months ago, someone told you that you’d be sitting on the kitchen island of briar u’s infamous hockey house. You would’ve spat in their face and thrown out witch allegations. But, as it so happens, you were currently proving yourself wrong since you were in fact sat at said kitchen island, at 2 in the morning.

What was especially life altering was the fact that the hockey house at two in the morning felt fundamentally different from the version people saw during the day.

Quieter, obviously.

There was still the low hum of the refrigerator somewhere behind you, the occasional groan of pipes in the walls, distant traffic bleeding through the kitchen windows in soft waves. Someone upstairs snored loud enough that it periodically rattled the ceiling and every so often the house settled with little creaks that sounded almost human in the dark.

You had been staring at the same paragraph for twenty-three minutes, and you’re pretty sure the windows loading screen was implanted into your brain in that time.

From the outside, you still looked productive enough. Your notes were spread methodically across the kitchen island in organised little piles, colour coded tabs sticking from textbooks, highlighters lined neatly beside your laptop alongside enough empty coffee cups to medically concern most people. Your laptop screen glowed brightly against the otherwise dim kitchen, lecture slides open beside three different quizlets and a half-finished practice paper that had slowly become your mortal enemy sometime around midnight.

Your knee bounced aggressively beneath the stool.

One of your hoodie sleeves had been pulled over your hand completely, the cuff half-chewed from absentminded stress while your other hand tapped your pencil rhythmically against the counter.

Tap tap tap.

Pause.

Tap tap tap.

You reread the sentence again, hoping the information would magically inject itself into your brain. Still nothing.

Your eyes skimmed over the words, recognising them individually but refusing to process them collectively, which somehow felt even more insulting considering this was material you’d already revised twice.

You exhaled slowly through your nose, pressing your temples in an attempt to settle the dull ache behind your eyes.

Fine. Whatever. Maybe your brain just needed a second.

You sat up straighter on the stool and reached for your coffee, immediately grimacing when the cold bitter liquid hit your tongue. It truly was a miracle what a red bull and coffee could produce if brewed together. Thankfully, nobody would know of your creation since you cleaned up the evidence and were currently drinking through the undeniable urge to gag it all out.

Your planner sat open beside you, pages covered in your handwriting so intensely neat it bordered on threatening. Every hour of the week had been scheduled down to frightening precision - lectures, revision blocks, assignment deadlines, office hours, reading lists.

And still somehow, the tasks outweighed the hours- the day you made the schedule was the day you cursed those who didn’t warn you that at Briar, everyone here had already been the smartest person in the room somewhere else.

You had spent most of your life being good at things naturally enough that effort felt almost embarrassing to admit to. High school had been manageable. Predictable.

Briar was different, at Briar, everyone was either born with the syllabus out of the womb or could somehow use textbook pages to roll and smoke a joint- still managing to come out with a 4.0 GPA. Which just meant every mistake, no matter how tiny, felt absurdly catastrophic.

You clicked your pen repeatedly while rereading the practice question in front of you.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Your eye twitched.

“Okay,” you muttered quietly to yourself, dragging a hand down your face. “No, because actually what the fuck is oxidative phosphorylation.”

The kitchen answered you unhelpfully with silence, bar the occasional drip of the sink- which didn’t help since it added another item to you todo list, “tell Logan to fix the kitchen sink”. You prayed your brain would remember it for longer than 20 seconds, but given that it could barely splutter together the material you swore was genetically implanted into your DNA , you didn’t have much hope.

Alright, new strategy- you turned your focus to your laptop. You’d make this test your bitch, one way or another. 

The diagram on your laptop stared back at you smugly. 

Or not. You glared at the behemoth of a biological diagram, weird, blob-like shapes were sprayed across the screen with equally sharp, taunting labels and colours that honestly, should never be used in association with the human body.

Your phone buzzed from somewhere across the large island, most likely beneath a pile of flashcards- you barely broke eye contact with your goliath. It was probably Allie. Or Hannah. Or someone in your intro to human biology class freaking out about the test. 

The notification popped up in the corner of your screen, it was both of them. Teaming up to tell you to go to sleep before your body gave out and somebody had to physically remove you from campus again.

You swiped it away dismissively. Not happening.

You still had two chapters left to revise, one practice paper unfinished and exactly nine hours before the test. Which in theory, sounded manageable. In practice however, you would willingly let Dean teach you about anal sex and somehow understand it better than the words in front of you. Your brain was buffering dramatically against your task list. 

You rubbed hard at your eyes before leaning back over your notes again, trying desperately to force yourself into focus.

“Just lock the fuck in.” You whispered to yourself, frustrated with the way your shoulders slumped tiredly and legs began to numb from where they were awkwardly folded beneath you.

Just focus.

Your pencil tapped faster, eyes burning as you forced them to read the same line four more times.

Nothing.

An annoyed groan left your lips, because you could feel yourself slipping. 

Feel your concentration dissolving around the edges while your body keeps trying to push forward anyway. Your thoughts felt sluggish and overcrowded at the same time, every tiny unfinished task pressing against the inside of your skull until even breathing felt vaguely unproductive.

And still, you scolded your weary body and brain- convincing them to just keep going. One more hour. One more minute.

Because the alternative was stopping, and you wouldn’t dare consider it. Stopping meant acknowledging that maybe you physically couldn’t keep up with the pace you’d set for yourself- and the mere hypothetical made something uncomfortable curl in your chest.

You reached for another flashcard.

Read half of it and… forgot what it said immediately. 

A near hysterical laugh escaped you before you could stop it, fingers curling around the innocent card-stock. You wacked yourself with the flimsy thing before pausing with it pressed against your forehead, squeezing your eyes shut for a second longer than you deemed necessary.

You were fine, it's just a little stress. Everyone at Briar was stressed, and you refused to be the coward who was complaining about a little sleep deprivation and one difficult exam. 

Your eyes opened again and landed on the digital clock glowing faintly on the microwave, the numbers slightly blurry. 

2:07 AM.

You stared at it for a moment.

Then immediately looked back down at your notes like refusing to acknowledge the time would somehow stop it existing.

Tap tap ta-

The pencil snapped clean in half, one side stayed clasped in your hand whilst the other rolled uselessly away from you. At least something was escaping this revision nightmare. You froze, staring longingly at the traitorous piece of wood, scoffing in a kind of exhausted disbelief normally reserved for personal betrayals.

Then you laughed again, burying your face in your hands. 

Dangerously close to tears.

The kitchen light had been on long enough that Logan eventually noticed it in his sleep, not at first, just distantly, somewhere beneath the heavy haze of exhaustion and late-night dreams, his brain registered the thin strip of warm light cutting underneath his bedroom door which made him subconsciously shuffle around the bed, eyebrows furrowing when he sensed a change in the environment around him.

Because you were supposed to be upstairs.

More specifically, you were supposed to be asleep beside him.

Logan woke slowly, one arm stretching instinctively across the mattress before meeting cold sheets instead of your body. For a second he just blinked at the ceiling, disoriented in that miserable way people were at two in the morning, before finally pushing himself upright with a tired groan.

He sat up, swaying tiredly as his eyes adjusted to the rude awakening, his room was dark besides the faint orange glow of campus lights bleeding through the blinds and your side of the bed was empty.

Not recently empty either, the sheets had settled and emanated a chill that suggested you’d been gone for a few hours.

Logan scrubbed a hand down his face and began to search for something to cover up with. He already knew where you’d be.

The same place you always ended up when your brain refused to let you rest.

He shoved himself out of bed and reached blindly for the pair of grey sweatpants abandoned somewhere near the desk chair, dragging them on low over his hips before stumbling toward the door. His Briar hockey team hoodie hung half-off the back of the chair and he tugged it over his head without much thought, still too sleepy to care that it was inside out.

The stairs creaked under his weight, making him grimace and shift his feet experimentally- trying to make his way down quietly without disrupting the hushed atmosphere. The house was dead, Tucker wasn’t flopping around the couch yelling at a video game, Dean wasn’t raiding the protein powder cupboard, Garrett's old classic rock wasn’t blaring out of the speaker. It was just silent. 

Then you came into view, and it was like seeing a zombie in a graveyard. Logan stilled in his tracks.

It was exactly as he’d pictured you, hunched over the kitchen island, hair fluttering out the braid you’d messily done, probably when you first fled from the bedroom- your legs were pretzeled beneath you as you stared at your laptop, frozen in time with notes covering every inch of the island around you.

The stool you sat on vibrated from the force of your knee bouncing, even the empty coffee cups and highlighters jolted considerably; from what Logan could make out, almost seven different tabs were open across your screen, the garish light illuminated your face as you glanced up a few times, your hoodie sleeve covering half your hand while you aggressively annotated something in the margins of your textbook with enough force to threaten the integrity of the page itself.

He carefully treaded towards you, close enough to make out the look on your face. Sheer exhaustion plagued your features, not the normal version either, you didn’t have a lick of sleepiness on your face, it was probably wrung out from how wound tight you were. This kind of exhaustion settled beneath your skin and turned every small inconvenience into a potential psychological breakdown

Logan paused briefly for a second, just watching you. His chest tightened a little, because this had been your life for the past week. Barely eating unless necessary, sleep was just a polite grievance that you gave into once in a while when you weren’t studying into the night until your eyes were glassy. And somehow, you still thought people would believe you when you insisted that you were fine.

You muttered something under your breath at your laptop before aggressively clicking your pen- the sound was sharp enough to bring Logan back into the scene that laid out before him. 

Click.Click.Click.

“Baby?” He came up behind you, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and pressing his hand against your back. You startled so hard that the pen slipped from your fingers.

Logan immediately felt a little bad when you spun toward him with wide eyes, before you expression settled into something defensive. 

“I’m studying.”

Logan’s brows lifted as he unscrewed the bottle slowly,

“Yeah,” he said slowly, voice still rough with sleep, “I gathered that.”

You huffed quietly and looked back down at your notes, this close up, he could see how much worse you looked. There were faint shadows beneath your eyes, and you posture had curled inward, hostile in that specific way when you were overwhelmed but trying to hide it

“When did you come down here?”

“Like…” You squinted at the microwave clock, “Midnight?”

Logan blinked.

“Baby, it’s two in the morning.”

“I know what time it is.”

The sharpness in your voice surprised the both of you, mainly you, since you recoiled back and tightened your face apologetically. 

“I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay.”

Logan cut you off gently before you could spiral into apologising. He shifted closer, resting one hand against the counter beside your thigh while looking over the mess of notes in front of you.

Biochemistry.

Jesus Christ.

“You should come to bed.”

“No.”

You didn’t even look up from the equations scribbled onto the paper in front of you, dismissing the idea entirely, like the suggestion itself stressed you out. 

You rubbed hard at your eyes before looking back down at your laptop screen.

“I still have so much left.”

Logan studied you quietly for a second. Normally, he would’ve pushed harder. Normally, he’d already be halfway through physically carrying you upstairs while you complained dramatically over his shoulder.

But this version of you would’ve gouged his eye out without thinking if he dared something like that. This version of you was overstimulated, overworked and balancing precariously on a thread built by your psyche. 

So instead, Logan just moved beside you, dragging a stool closer so he could slide in and rest a hand on your thigh absentmindedly, leaning lightly into your shoulder. 

You exhaled shakily through your nose, when he ghosted his nose against your cheek, nuzzled delicately.

“What are you working on?” he asked softly, tilting his head to squint his eyes at the paper that twitched under your fingers.

“Oxidative phosphorylation.”

Logan stared at you.

“Gesundheit.”

Despite yourself, your mouth twitched slightly.

“There are literally ATP synthase pathways in my nightmares now.”

“That sounds fake.”

“It’s not. I wish it was”

Logan hummed sympathetically like he understood literally any of what you were saying. He didn’t, but he knew enough to know that when your voice sounded too tight, the content was hammering around in your brain with the elegance of a troll. 

You clicked your pen again.

And again.

And again.

Logan’s gaze drifted slowly across the kitchen, the empty coffee cups he had noticed before now seemed to be stained an odd ochre colour, definitely not coffee but he wouldn’t question what concussion you had brewed to stay awake. He stopped himself from scolding you about the untouched granola bar beside your laptop and instead focussed on the way your notes depicted the journey of your mental state unravelling, starting out neat and ending up in frantic scribbles.

He squeezed your thigh once, “You eat anything?”

A pause.

Your pencil stopped moving and you bit your lip as you thought. Not a good sign.

“Yeah.”

Logan waited for you to elaborate. 

“…today?”

You glared at him weakly.

“That feels judgemental.”

“It’s meant to feel concerning.”

“I had coffee.” You looked over to the sea of cups beyond your materials, blinking at the odd colour their insides seemed to have picked up. That’s not a good sign for your stomach, a problem for future you entirely, “...which I brewed with redbull”

“Baby.”

“I know.”

The words came out as an exhausted sigh.

Logan’s thumb rubbed slowly against your thigh.

“You can’t study properly if you’re running entirely on some demon-drink and the hatred of your TA.”

You let out a short laugh at that, then immediately regretted it when your head throbbed. Logan’s frown deepened when you pressed your fingers against your temple. 

Your breathing had changed slightly, thinner, more aware of the toll this was taking on your body. Every inhale was getting caught halfway down and each exhale came out shaky. 

He watched you stare at the same page for several long seconds without turning it, watched your eyes scan the same line repeatedly, your fingers tightening in your hair where they were buried- cradling your head.

Your knee bounced harder against the stool.

“Hey.”

You didn’t answer immediately, instead your jaw tightened. 

“Baby.”

This time you looked at him, and Logan felt his chest tighten at the shiny film over your eyes. As if you were teetering on the edge of crying, and the only thing blocking the dam was your insistence to continue studying.

You looked away almost immediately, shoulders pulling tighter.

“I’m fine,” you muttered quietly.

Logan, had stopped pretending to believe that about ten minutes ago.

He stayed beside you, one hand still resting lightly on your thigh, thumb moving in slow, grounding circles like he was trying to keep you anchored in the room. He didn’t speak much anymore. Just watched. Quietly observant in that way of his that always felt slightly unfair, like he could read the parts of you that you hadn’t even admitted existed yet.

You didn’t realise you leaned into him but your head had come to rest on his shoulder as you continued to highlight pages. But when you hit a certain word with the electric blue ink, you paused, re-read it and frowned.

“Wait,” you muttered under your breath, you immediately sat up straight and flipped the page back, then forward again, then back. 

Logan didn’t say anything, but his thumb had frozen against your leg, his eyes darting worryingly between how fast your fingers were flicking the pages and your face, that was starting to crumple with realisation.

You scanned the entire paragraph again. Then the page. The words weren’t changing, but they might as well have been. They blurred together at the edges, refusing to hold shape properly no matter how many times you forced your eyes over them.

Your stomach tightened.

“No,” you whispered quietly, more to yourself than anything else, your fingers flying to check the lecture slides, then your revision guide. A slow, sinking realisation started to form in your chest.

“No, no, no,” you said again, this time sharper, somehow sitting up straighter as if posture alone could fix the situation.

Logan’s voice came gently from beside you, but you could barely hear it. A rush of panic roared in your ears and it felt as though you were drowning and he was standing above you- trying to communicate through litres of pitch black water.

“What’s wrong?”

You didn’t answer immediately.

Your eyes darted everywhere, from where you were flipping pages with increasing urgency, to scanning headings, rereading annotations you had definitely written yourself but suddenly didn’t recognise as useful.

This wasn’t the right topic.

You had spent hours on the wrong section.

Hours.

Your entire brain stalled for a second, like a car that had been slowly, painfully screeching up a hill- and at the last minute some unknown force engaged the hand brake and you were now rolling down at a speed you couldn’t stop even if you tried

Then, as if somehow slamming on the breaks would help, it tried to compensate by speeding up.

“That can’t be right,” you said quickly, breath thinning slightly. “I swear I already did this. I- I literally did this two days ago.”

Logan leaned forward slightly now, “Baby-”

“No, no, it’s fine,” you cut in immediately, too fast again, the rubber was burning as the wheels grinded against asphalt. “It’s fine, I can fix it. I just need to- I just need to switch it and then I can catch up, I still have time I just-”

Your laptop trackpad clicked aggressively as you opened another document.

Logan watched as your hands shook violently with each click, your breathing shallowed and shoulder tightened even more than before- your knee was bouncing so fast that it felt like your entire leg was vibrating against his hand. It was like you were slowly collapsing into yourself, and all he could do was watch with a concerned expression on his face.

“Hey,” he said again, softer this time. “Look at me.”

“I am looking at you,” you snapped automatically.

Your voice cracked at the end of your sentence and you froze- letting silence interrupt your world speeding to an untimely end. 

You swallowed, and then tried to laugh. Maybe if you could trick your body into thinking this was all just one big joke, it would stop trembling like you were in an active war zone. It didn’t come out right, more like a choked sob. 

“I’m just being stupid,” you muttered, turning back to the screen too quickly. “It’s fine. I can still revise it, I just lost time but I can make it up if I-”

Your eyes wouldn’t focus entirely, and when your cursor hovered in the wrong place guided by your fingers, that were quaking so uncontrollably, you ended up deleting the entire window. 

Your stomach dropped.

“Oh my god,” you whispered.

Then again, louder.

“Oh my god.”

Logan straightened slightly, his hand moving to hover over your forearm- but dropped it back to the familiar place on your leg, “Baby.”

“No, I’m fine,” you said immediately, too quickly again, voice shaking now whether you wanted it to or not. “I’m fine, I just messed up a bit, it’s not- it’s not a big deal I can fix it I just need to-”

You tried to re-open the tabs, but your laptop spluttered hopelessly, lagging out in front of you. Your breath caught when the entire screen went black and rebooted, the forced update screen blinked cruelly at you. And then you felt something in your chest whimper and crumple, like a house of cards met with the softest breeze. 

“No,” you said again, but this time it wasn’t frustration, it was fear that made your voice waver as your hands stilled over the keyboard

“I can’t- I can’t do this,” shaking your head you brought a hand over your mouth, almost disbelievingly, like you were hearing someone else say it.

Logan’s hand immediately left your thigh.

“Hey,” he said firmly now, moving closer. “Hey, look at me.”

You didn’t. Couldn’t. You were transfixed by the slow spinning pinwheel over and over and over- like it was hypnotizing you into staying upright in your seat. 

“I’m so behind,” you said quickly, words spilling out now that the dam had broken. “I’m actually so behind I don’t even understand how I’m supposed to catch up and I thought I was doing okay but I’m not and I just wasted so much time and I don’t- I don’t have time for this-”

Your voice broke properly at the end, and then the tears finally fell. You didn’t sob, just heaved heavy breaths that were interrupted by copious floods of salty liquid barrelling down your face. It wasn’t dramatic the way you fell apart, it was like throwing a pebble down a ravine, and waiting to hear the sharp sound of it dropping to the floor, you could only notice it if you listened very carefully.

You blinked hard immediately.

Once.

Twice.

Angrily.

As if that would fix it.

“No,” you said again, wiping at your face quickly with the back of your sleeve. “No, no, I’m fine, I’m literally fine I just- this is stupid I shouldn’t be crying I just need to fix it-”

You went to reach for your textbook and pen, you’d do it the old fashioned way then. 

Logan stopped you immediately, both hands wrapped around yours, gentle but firm. He pulled the pen and textbook out of your grip, dropping them somewhere on the table.

The thud echoed too loudly in the quiet kitchen.

You froze, staring at him like he had just pulled the plug of your life support. Your breathing became uneven now, chest tightening in a way that made speaking harder. 

“I need that,” you said, voice small but urgent. “Logan, I need that.”

“No,” he said softly.

You face crumpled in exhausted confusion, finally spilling over the edges of your carefully curated container of anger and frustration. 

“I don’t have time for this,” you whispered, voice breaking again. “I don’t have time to fall apart right now.”

Logan’s expression shifted, something within him went still as he rubbed your knuckles, 

“Baby,” he said quietly, and there was something different in his tone now. Less concern about the work. More about you. “You’re not falling apart.”

You let out a broken laugh and gestured to the minefield of study materials in front of you.

“Yeah,” you said shakily, wiping your face again. “Yeah, I am.”

Logan waited for you to continue, as if he didn’t see any evidence for your argument. The silence wrapped around you, compelling you to speak- your voice softer, smaller than before, 

“I can’t mess this up.”

Logan barely hesitated, he reached up and cupped your face gently, forcing your attention away from the table and onto him.

Your hands were still trembling slightly where they hovered near your lap. Logan’s palms were on your cheeks, steady and warm, keeping you anchored in place like he was afraid that if he let go you would dissolve back into the kitchen air.

And you just stared at him, not really able to focus on his eyes properly, like your brain hadn’t fully caught up to the fact that the panic had nowhere left to go.

Logan’s thumbs moved lightly under your eyes, brushing away the last of the tears before they could fully settle.

“Hey,” he said again, quieter now. “You’re okay.”

You nodded immediately, a sharp pang in your chest hit you like a ton of bricks, you felt guilty for taking up precious revision time- and for the fact that Logan had dragged himself out of bed because of you. 

“I’m fine,” you whispered, but it came out thinner than you meant it to. “I just- I just messed it up.”

Logan didn’t respond right away, just looked at you, how your eyes kept flicking from him to the notes and back to him. Like you were gauging how long you’d be away from them. He couldn’t wrap his head around how you could be sitting in front of him and still think this was about the notes on the table.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” you said suddenly.

Your gaze stayed fixed on the kitchen island, as if the mess of colour-coded organisation and half-finished revision sheets could still be fixed if you just looked at them long enough.

“No,” you corrected quickly, shaking your head slightly. “No, I am doing this, I just- I just need to focus I just lost time and I can’t afford to lose time right now because if I lose time I fall behind and if I fall behind I-”

Your voice cracked halfway through, your eyes widened and you blinked hard, already angry at yourself.

Logan’s hand didn’t falter, instead they rubbed soothingly along your cheekbones,

“Baby,” he said gently.

But you weren’t listening anymore, the words spilling out now that your restraint had snapped, “I’m not supposed to be like this,” you said, voice breaking around the edges. “I’m not supposed to be the person who can’t handle it. I can handle it, I always handle it, I just need to fix it I just need to-”

Suddenly the tears were back, springing up to your lash line and bubbling down your face, you blinked immediately, wiping at your face like it was instinct rather than thought.

“No,” you whispered again, frustrated now. “No, stop, I can’t do this right now-”

Logan pulled you forward, a gentle tug on both your shoulders- you stumbled off the stool, kicking it back slightly until your forehead dropped against his chest, like your body finally gave up pretending it could hold itself upright alone.

Your hands curled into the fabric of his hoodie, tight at first, as though you were trying to hold yourself together through him- because you weren’t looking at the screen anymore, meaning there was nothing left to organise the chaos with.

“I’m sorry,” you said immediately, voice muffled against him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just being stupid I don’t know why I’m crying I just need to fix it I just-”

“Hey.”

Logan’s voice cut through gently but firmly.

“Hey. Stop.”

Your breath stuttered, and Logan thought that maybe he finally managed to get you to pause. You tried again anyway,

“I just messed up a whole section and I don’t have time and I thought I was doing okay but I’m not and I’m- I’m behind and I can’t be behind, I can’t-”

Your voice blubbered completely on the last word, you pressed your face harder into his chest like that would erase your stumble. Logan’s armed tightened around you, a slow exhale contracting his chest in relief, that he finally managed to create a boundary between you and everything else. 

You tucked your face into his neck and loosely wrapped your arms around him, you wished you could hold him just as tight- but your limbs were exhausted. “You’re not behind,” he murmured into your ear. You let out a shaky laugh that turned halfway into a sob, Logan somehow held you harder against him. 

“Yes I am.”

“No,” he repeated, firmer this time. “You’re overwhelmed.”

You stilled for half a second, torn by the accuracy of what he said- you couldn’t fully tell if a weight had been removed for your chest or if it had been pierced by his words. Either way, your breathing hitched again. 

“I can’t be overwhelmed,” you said quietly, like it was an unspoken rule you were breaking. “There’s too much to do.”

Logan lowered his head slightly, pressing a kiss against your forehead.

“You’re allowed to be overwhelmed,” he mumbled into your skin. 

You wished he hadn’t said that, because it had been the right thing. Or wrong thing. To make your shoulders shake once. And the minute the first racking sob emerged from your throat, you were crying properly the next. Deep, exhausted crying that you had clearly been holding back for far too long, you clutched his hoodie tighter, fingers curling like you were afraid of falling if you let go.

“I don’t know how to stop,” you whispered, voice breaking. “I don’t know how to stop doing this.”

Logan hummed, slowly dragging his hand up and down your back, rubbing soothing warmth through your clothes and against your spine.

“You don’t have to stop,” he said softly. “You just have to breathe for a second.”

You shook your head pitifully against him.

“I can’t waste time.”

That made him pause, then pull back, just enough so he could tilt your face up to meet his eyes. 

“Look at me,” he said gently.

You were stubborn to hold onto the one piece of dignity you had left, but the way the words were said so firmly in the space between you two, you couldn’t stop yourself from following his gentle command. 

Eyes still wet and red, your expression crumpled in a way that you would normally never let anyone see. Nevermind watch so up-close, letting them look at you the way he was, like you weren’t something to fix, or scold into productivity, just you. 

Like a prized possession that had started collecting dust on the same old shelf, and someone had picked you up and dusted you off- Logan studied you like it was the easiest thing in the world for him to love you.

“I do not care about your GPA right now,” he said quietly.

A laugh slipped out of you again, broken at the edges, “That’s easy for you to say.”

“No,” he said immediately. “It’s not.” His hands pressed into your face more firmly, as if he could permeate his intentions deeply into your pores. 

You blinked at him, owlish and tired- vision jumping with each uneven breath.

Logan wiped under your eye with his thumb again, slower this time, like he wasn’t in a rush to move past any of it, “You don’t have to earn being okay,” he said.

You leaned back into him without thinking, forehead pressing into his shoulder as your breathing slowly started to even out in small, uneven waves. He held you there, one hand stroking your hair, the other spread across your back- keeping you close so you could safely fall apart. 

You didn’t realise when the crying faded into soft hiccups and ebbed into soft breathes but the feeling didn’t resolve itself into manageable, malleable calm. Instead it changed shape, less sharp around the edges but stretched thin all over your body, planting its roots into your chest.

You had moved to the kitchen floor at some point, your head resting on Logan's shoulder as he stroked your hair. The kitchen was finally quiet, peacefully coexisting in the nightly hush with the rest of the house.

The microwave blinked at you. “3:30 AM”

For some godforsaken reason, your body decided to remember everything you were holding back, bottling up, choosing to bring it back all at once. 

Your breath catches in your throat, high enough to make you stutter while your eyes begin to flutter with unshed tears. Logan froze with his hand buried in your hair, pulling away to analyse your face when he felt your fingers tighten in the fabric of his sweater. His hand shifts at your back, not rushing you, just adjusting like he’s already bracing for whatever direction this takes.

“Hey,” he calls softly.

You open your mouth, but it was as if you had inhaled a whole packet of tear stained tissues- your answer doesn’t come out cleanly, instead it's broken, cracked around the edges instead. 

“I thought I was done,” you whisper.

The tears come again, but differently this time. Less explosive. More like something that had been waiting politely in the background and finally got permission to exist again. You press your forehead back into him automatically, like your body already knows where to go when it stops trusting your head.

“I hate this,” you say, quieter now, words muffled against his chest. “I hate that I can’t just… be normal about it. I hate that I turn everything into this thing I can’t control.”

He doesn’t interrupt, instead he tightens his arms around you, tucking you further into the grooves of his body. You try to match the way his chest rises and falls, your breathing coming out shaky, broken.

“I was doing so well,” you add, like that matters, like it somehow redeems the fact that you aren’t now, “I don’t want to be like this,” you admit, the words spilling faster now that they’ve finally been let out. “I don’t want to be someone who breaks down over a test question or loses control over nothing and makes it everyone’s problem I just- I just want to be okay without it being this complicated thing I have to manage all the time.”

You press your lips together, a sinking feeling filling your stomach- you begin to pull away, accepting the fact that you shared too much, felt too much, hurt too much, for him to still willingly sit with you on the kitchen floor. 

But Logan doesn’t falter, his arm stopping you from going too far. He brings one hand up to the side of your face again, gently guiding you back to him before you can disappear into yourself.

“Don’t do that,” he says quietly.

Your eyes are wet again.

“I’m embarrassed,” you whisper.

“No,” his voice is hushed but the word shoots out harshly. Like he couldn’t believe that you were still worried about how strong you forced yourself to be. 

“Yes I am.”

“You’re overwhelmed,” he corrects again, softer this time, but firm in the way that he refuses to let you rewrite it into something cruel.

Your jaw tightens, because you know he's right and you can’t argue with it. If you couldn’t rebuild your shattered armour, you’d wipe it clean- and salvage what was left by wiping your tears away harshly with the back of your sweater.  Logan catches your wrist gently before you can.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “Stop trying to erase it.”

His eyes dart between yours, watching how you slumped in paralyzing relief. Relief that you didn’t need to think about the armour, that you didn’t need to present yourself as infallible.  

“I don’t know how to not be this,” you admit quietly.

Logan’s eyes steel protectively, “You don’t have to know that,” he says.

You shake your head slightly, still crying, still trying to steady yourself like it’s something you can logic your way out of, “I do,” you insist. “I do because I can’t keep- I can’t keep doing this where I fall apart and everyone has to-”

Your voice breaks again which prompts him to pull you in, firm arms bracketing around your body, a hand sliding into your hair with the other pressing steadily into your back, holding you in place while you shake.

He kisses your hair, “You’re not doing anything wrong,” 

“I don’t feel like I’m okay,” you whisper.

“That’s fine,” he replies immediately. “You don’t have to feel okay to be okay.”

You let out a small, broken sob against him like your system is finally losing the argument it’s been having with itself all night. Logan shifts slightly, guiding your head up to look at you properly, your face is flushed, messy, completely uncontrollable in a way that terrified you. His thumb comes up to brush away the fresh tears.

“I’ve got you,” he says quietly.

Your body eventually begins to loosen, your breath reaching a slower equilibrium- hiccuping in between but your shoulders begin to drop and your fingers let his sweater out of their death grip.

“I didn’t mean to ruin the night.”

Logan closes his eyes briefly like he’s trying not to react too strongly to that sentence, then he opens them again and shakes his head down at you, “You didn’t ruin anything,” he says.

You give him a look, a look that says, “Sure buddy, and those aren’t crater sized bags beneath your eyes”. Logan leans forward and presses his forehead gently to yours, “No more fixing yourself tonight,” he says quietly. “Okay?”

The air hangs heavy around you as you hesitate, pressing your lips together until you nod, slowly, hesitantly. And ever since this had started, your breathing finally didn’t feel like a chore to push out of your lungs, instead it flowed gently from your mouth in placid waves. 

Logan stays with you like that for a long time, intertwining your fingers together and cradling you against his chest, running his knuckles along your cheekbone until your eyes flutter shut. 

𝐭𝐚𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭: @harls-sturn, @https-dandelion, @watergirl85, @brianna28483, @irishone11, @anyasthoughts, @kmc1989, @norrisidous, @glorveina, @zophiathefirst, @outpostsworld, @yomamaslays4lyfe, @babblegumgirl101, @itmekelpy, @strengthandstay, @run-for-the-hills, @eviemae5864, @tabisswag, @reveries01

[jacksabbotts]

. ⋆ ⁺₊ ❅ .   NO HOCKEY PLAYERS

━━ john logan x graham!reader ; wc 3.5k tw ; mention of parental abuse ( phil graham ) , secret relationship/brothers best friend , kissing , unedited part one \ part two \ part three

You should have been asleep. 

Honestly, you had every intention of staying asleep.

You'd barely stirred when Logan carefully untangled himself from around you a few hours earlier. The second Logan's warmth disappeared from around you, sleep had abandoned you completely. You remembered the sleepy press of lips against your temple, remembered him whispering something about emergency practice before disappearing back through the bathroom with more effort than a six foot hockey player should have needed to move quietly. 

You had laid there for nearly twenty minutes staring at the ceiling while cold air slowly replaced the heat his body had left behind. That had been the end of sleep.

Eventually, you gave up and grabbed your laptop instead. 

Which was how you ended up cross legged in the middle of your unmade bed at six in the morning, drowning in English literature notes while wearing one of Logan's old briar jerseys like a sleep shirt. 

The sleeves hung past your wrist, and the stitched hem brushed against your thighs whenever you shifted beneath the blankets. Your laptop sat balanced on your knees in front of you while color coded note card littered the comforter around your legs in chaotic little piles. 

The room smelled faintly like vanilla coffee creamer and Logan's cologne. The thought probably should have bothered you more than it did. Garrett would lose his fucking mind if he saw this. 

The thought flickered through your head so automatically it barely registered anymore. By now sneaking around with Logan had become muscle memory. You were half way through rereading your notes on gothic symbolism when the bathroom door connecting your room to his clicked softly. 

You barely looked up. That alone probably should have been alarming. But the only people who used that bathroom were you and Logan.

He paused halfway through the doorway, one hand still resting against the door knob as surprise crossed his face. His dark hair was damp from a rushed shower after practice, curling slightly at the ends, and he’d traded his gear for gray sweatpants and a black Briar Hockey hoodie that looked like he’d pulled it on without fully drying off first.

“You’re awake?" His hockey bag hit the bathroom floor softly behind him as he nudged the door shut with his foot.

You hummed absently, eyes still scanning the highlighted paragraph glowing on your laptop screen.

A beat of silence passed.

“Tell me I didn’t wake you when I left.”

That finally dragged your attention toward him.

You scrunched your nose automatically, guilt flashing across his face the second he saw it.

“Oh, baby,” he groaned quietly. 

You shrugged one shoulder, trying to dismiss it, but Logan already looked annoyed with himself as he crossed the room.

The mattress dipped beneath his weight when he dropped onto the bed beside you, close enough that his thigh pressed against yours immediately. Warmth radiated off him in sleepy waves, carrying traces of cold winter air, clean soap, and lingering hockey equipment beneath it all.

“I’m sorry.”

"You're loud," you mumbled, teasingly. 

"I was not loud."

"You're, like, genetically incapable of being quiet."

"That is offensive."

“What’d they drag you guys in so early for anyway?” you asked, eyes drifting back toward your screen.

Logan rested his chin against your shoulder, close enough that his voice vibrated lightly through your skin when he answered.

“Cody got drunk at a frat and fell off a table. Dislocated his shoulder.”

You snorted softly.

“And you have a game tomorrow,” you murmured, piecing it together out loud. “Hence the emergency practice.”

He hummed against your shoulder in confirmation, the vibration making you shiver slightly before his mouth followed after it, pressing a lazy kiss against the fabric stretched over it.

Then another.

Then another higher up near your neck where the oversized collar slipped low against your skin.

Your fingers paused over the keyboard.

“Come on,” Logan mumbled against your throat. “Take a break?”

You ignored him on purpose.

It was almost impossible to study with Logan around. Not because he was obnoxious about it but mostly because he wanted your attention with the same attention he wanted ice time, and when John Logan wanted something, he tened to throw his whole body at it. 

Which, unfortunately for your GPA, usually worked. 

He sighed dramatically.

“Baby.”

“Logan.”

His mouth curved against your skin at the warning in your voice.

Logan lifted his head just enough to pout at you, and unfortunately for your concentration, he looked unfairly good like this—fresh from practice, slightly sleepy, soft around the edges in a way nobody else ever got to see.

He knew it too.

“I missed you,” he added, pouting still. You laughed quietly before you could stop yourself, turning your head enough to look at him properly. Logan immediately brightened like he’d won something. “You were at practice for like two hours.”

“Hey,” he said, nudging your knee with his. “Don’t be mean just because I like you.” The teasing grin lingered for only a second before something softer settled over his face.

His hand slid over your thigh absentmindedly, thumb brushing against the bare skin beneath the hem of his jersey. “I’m serious, though,” he said quietly. “I really like you.”

The words still did strange things to your chest no matter how many times he said them. Not because you doubted him. But because part of you still wasn’t entirely used to being wanted this gently.

You looked at him fully. “I know,” you said softly. “I like you too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

His entire face changed.

It hit you suddenly sometimes, how different he was with you compared to everybody else downstairs. The version of Logan most people got was loud laughter, easy flirting, cocky one-liners, and chaotic energy spilling into every room he entered.

With you, he was soft in a way nobody would believe if they only knew him from hockey games and party stories and whispered puck bunny gossip around campus.

This version belonged only to you.

Before you could process the thought too deeply, Logan reached over and closed your laptop. “Hey,” you protested immediately. “I’m studying.”

“Nuh uh.” He grabbed the laptop before you could reclaim it and set it carefully on the nightstand. “Break time.”

“Logan.”

But he was already gathering your note cards into one messy stack, ignoring your increasingly offended expression entirely.

“You are the worst,” you informed him.

“Mm. Keep talking. Gets me all hot.” He tossed the final stack of cards aside before turning back toward you fully. Your pout barely lasted two seconds before he kissed you.

Heat crept into your face immediately. You hated how easily he could still do that to you. Logan was your first relationship.

Briar had been your first real school, your first time living around people your age instead of watching normal life through windows and secondhand stories from Garrett. 

Your first sememster had felt like everybody else had recived some invisible handbook you'd somehow missed entirely. Parties, flirting, hookups, dorm drama, it all seemed to come naturally to everyone exept you. 

Especially hockey culture. 

You still remember Garrett standing in the kitchen before the semester started, arms crossed while Dean snickered into a beer beside him. "No hockey players," Garrett had said flatly. 

You remember rolling your eyes so hard it hurt. Dean had immediately pointed at himself and Tucker. "What about us?"

"You especially," Garrett had laid the law. At the time, you'd thought it was stupid, embarrassing overprotective older brother bullshit. You'd assumed Garrett simply didn't want to hear locker room stories about his little sister from his teammates. 

Now, with Logan's mouth brushing yours softly while morning light spilled gold across your tangled bedsheets, it almost felt funny. 

Logans kisses were slow, not rushed the way your kisses sometimes became when you were sneaking around the house trying not to get caught.

This kiss felt like exactly what he’d said earlier.

I missed you.

Your fingers curled automatically into the front of his hoodie as he kissed you deeper, patient and unhurried as he pulled you closer across the mattress. 

Even now, months into sneaking around, it still caught you off guard sometimes—the way he touched you carefully without making you feel fragile, the way he held your waist like it belonged beneath his hands naturally, the way he kissed you like he genuinely missed you after only a few hours apart.

Your hands slid into his damp hair as he shifted closer, and suddenly your laptop and exam and notecards felt impossibly far away. “Missed you so much,” he mumbled again against your mouth.

You smiled helplessly into the kiss. “Needy.”

“For you? Yeah.”

Somewhere between one kiss and the next, you ended up in his lap.

One second he was beside you and the next his hands were spread warm against your waist, guiding you over his thighs while your knees pressed into the mattress on either side of him. The position pulled a quiet sound from him, one that made your pulse jump embarrassingly fast.

The jersey had ridden dangerously high up your legs by now.

Logan noticed. His hands slid carefully from your waist to your hips, fingertips brushing beneath the hem just enough to make your breath catch against his mouth.

The look he gave you afterward nearly unraveled you completely.

Your heart hammered hard enough to make your chest ache. Maybe this would be the moment. The thought arrived suddenly and stayed there.

Heat bloomed low in your stomach when Logan kissed you again, slower this time, one hand slipping up your spine while the other settled low against your hip.

The knock at your bedroom door barely registered. You froze. Neither of you had time to move before the door opened.

Garrett stepped inside.

For one horrible second, nobody moved.

His gaze swept across the room slowly. The abandoned study notes, Logan’s practice bag at the foot of the bed, your bare legs over Logan’s lap, his jersey hanging off your body, Logan’s hands still spread across your body.

The silence turned suffocating.

You scrambled off Logan immediately, yanking the jersey down your thighs as heat flooded your face. Garrett looked stunned until his expression twisted. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

The words cracked through the room so sharply that it felt like the temperature dropped with them.

Garrett stood frozen in the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame completely, hockey hoodie half-zipped. His eyes moved once more across the scene in front of him like he still couldn’t quite make sense of it.

You in Logan’s jersey.

Logan sitting on your bed.

His practice bag on your floor.

Your flushed face.

The way Logan’s hands had only just left your body.

You and Logan began speaking at the same time. "Garrett—"

"G—"

"No," Garrett snapped immediately, voice rough enough to cut skin. "Don't 'Garrett' me right now." Logan stood slowly from the bed to stand beside you. 

Garrett laughed once under his breath, but there was nothing amused about. "How long?" The question was simple enough but neither of you answered fast enough. 

Garrett looked at you then. Anyone else might have mistaken his expression for just pure rage, but you could see the fear in his eyes. "You promised me."

Your stomach twisted. Because you remembered it. You remember Garrett standing in this exact house, telling every guy under this roof to stay away from you and more importantly you had promised, no hockey players. 

"G, listen, man—"

"Do not call me that right now!" Garrett barked. The force of it made silence slam back into the room. Then Garrett looked at Logan fully for the first time since walking in, betrayal twisting ugly across his face. 

"Out of every girl at Briar," he started harshly, "you just had to pick my baby sister to get you fucking dick wet?"

"What the fuck, bro?" And again, you and Logan spoke simultaneously. "Garrett, back off!"

The second the words left your mouth, Garrett went still. Something flickered across his face so quickly most people probably wouldn't have caught it, but you knew Garrett too well not to. 

It was shock. Not because you had yelled but because you had defended Logan. And suddenly Garrett was looking at the two of you like a pissed off older brother anymore. 

Logan stepped forward slightly. "I swear it's not like that, man," his voice was strained now, confused and defensive all at once, "we haven't had sex."

You actually thought, for one horrible second, that maybe that would help. Maybe if Garrett understood that this wasn't just some reckless hookup, he'd calm down. Maybe if he understood that Logan cared about you, really cared about you, the situation would stop spiraling so fast. 

Instead Garrett covered his whole face with both hands. "Jesus fucking Christ."

You chest tightened, you hated what this secret had done. "I really care about her, G," Logan confessed. 

Garrett dropped his hands slowly, then he laughed. Not because anything was particularly funny, but because he knew he was on the brink of loosing control. The sound had come jagged and breathless and it had made a knot form in your throat. 

"You care about her?"

Logan frowned immediately, he was really trying to not get worked up. But his defensiveness got the better of him as he yelled, "Yeah," he shot back. "I really fucking do."

The volume of it bounced off the bedroom walls. You recoiled, but the only person who saw was Garrett because Logan stood in front of you. The motion had practically confirmed every fear that Garrett was trying to prevent. 

And then suddenly he wasn’t standing in your bedroom anymore.

You could see it happen in real time.

His eyes stopped focusing properly. His jaw locked so tightly a muscle ticked there. Whatever Garrett was seeing now wasn’t you and Logan anymore—it was memory layered over reality until he couldn’t separate the two.

“What happens after a bad game?”

“Garrett—”

“What happens when your pissed off and she the only one home?”

Your blood ran cold. Logan's brows furrowed in confusion. “Garrett.” You try to pull his attention to you, anything to get him to stop talking, but his sights are solely set on Logan. “What happens when you start drinking too much and she says the wrong thing—”

“Garrett!”

The shout ripped out of you loud enough to sting your throat.

Garrett sucked his top teeth with his tongue hard enough for you to hear it. It took him a second to drag his glare away from Logan and back toward you.

Beside you, Logan had gone very still.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

But Garrett wasn’t even looking at him anymore.

Your palms were slick with sweat now. Your heart hammered so violently it made your ribs ache. Logan was standing right there. Right there. And Garrett was too angry to stop talking and Logan was far too smart not to put the pieces together eventually.

One more sentence.

That was all it would take and the one person in the entire world you tried to shield this from, would know everything. 

“You think dad walked around acting like a monster all the time?” Your stomach dropped. “Stop it, Garrett!” You stepped forward until you were standing in front of Logan, closer to Garrett. You don't know what you were going to do, but some insane part of you wanted to shield Logan even though he probably already understood what was happening. 

“You think mom didn’t love dad once too?” 

The room tilted. You made the mistake of glancing toward Logan and immediately regretted it because there it was.

That look.

Your entire body flushed hot with humiliation so intense it almost made you dizzy.

“Fuck you, Garrett!”

“Woah, baby—” Logan started but he was quickly cut off by Garrett.

“Fuck me?” Garrett snapped, pointing at himself before swinging that same finger toward Logan. “No, fuck him!” If not for pointing at Logan, you might have thought the him he was refering to was your father. 

Your chest hurt.

You suddenly couldn’t stand the way Logan was looking at you. Couldn’t stand the fact that he knew now. Maybe not every detail, maybe not every ugly memory, but enough.

Enough to understand.

“I watched mom make excuses for him for years—”

“I know,” you fired back instantly, voice shaking now. “I was there too.”

Garrett’s expression cracked for half a second. Then hardened again. “Then why are you making the same mistakes she did?”

“Shut up!” The words tore out of you so violently they almost sounded broken. Silence crashed over the room. Nobody moved. Your breathing sounded too loud. So did Logan’s.

Garrett stared at you like he wanted to say more and knew he shouldn’t. Logan looked like somebody had knocked the air out of him entirely. You suddenly felt sick standing in Logan’s jersey.

Like your own skin didn’t fit correctly anymore. “Get out,” you whispered. Garrett hesitated.

“Get out!”

The shout echoed off the walls.

Something ugly flashed across Garrett’s face then, anger winning over reason for one disastrous second. He slammed his fist into the hallway wall hard enough to shake the framed picture hanging beside your bedroom door.

The sound cracked through you instantly. You flinched before you could stop yourself. Tears burned your eyes immediately afterward, humiliation following close behind them. Because Garrett saw it. You knew he saw it.

Garrett looked horrified for exactly half a heartbeat. Then he walked out. The bedroom door stayed open behind him. Silence swallowed the room again. 

Logan moved first, slowly and carefully, as if approaching a wounded animal. “Baby—” You stepped backward immediately.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, shaking your head before he could touch you. “Just please get out.”

He stopped a few feet away from you, chest still rising hard from everything that had just happened. His eyes flickered over your face quickly, like he was trying to figure out which version of this situation he was standing in now.

The girl he’d been kissing five minutes ago.

Or this one.

The one standing barefoot in the middle of her bedroom looking like the floor had dropped out from beneath her.

“Baby,” he said carefully, voice quieter than you had ever heard it. “Please just let me—”

“Get out!” Your breathing shook. Logan froze completely.

Heat crawled viciously up your throat. You suddenly couldn’t stand the feeling of the jersey against your skin anymore. Couldn’t stand standing there wrapped in something that belonged to him while he looked at you like that.

Before you could stop yourself, your fingers hooked beneath the hem of the oversized Briar jersey and yanked it harshly over your head.

Logan’s eyes widened instantly.

The cold air hit your skin all at once, leaving you standing there in nothing but your bra and underwear, chest heaving unevenly.

For one horrible second, nobody moved. Then you threw the jersey at him.

The fabric smacked against his chest before falling halfway down his arm, and Logan caught it automatically out of reflex more than anything else.

The expression on his face wrecked something inside you further. He was in complete and utter shock. Not because you were half-dressed, he’d seen you in less before.

Shock because he understood what you were doing.

Your eyes burned. “Take it,” you snapped, voice trembling despite your best efforts. “Take your shit and just go.”

“Baby—”

“No!”

Your gaze caught on the hockey bag sitting at the foot of your bed. Still sitting exactly where he'd dropped it after practice because he had come straight here. Like this room had become home to him too. 

The thought made something sharp twist painfully in your chest. Before you could think better of it, you grabbed the strap and hurled the bag toward him. It hit the floor beside his feet heavily with a dull thud, one skate shifting loudly inside the bag from the force.

Logan stared at it for half a second.

Then at you.

You hated how careful he looked now, how cautious. That look was exactly what you had spent your entire relationship terrified of.

Your throat tightened painfully. “Please,” you whispered this time, weaker now. “Just leave.”

Something else flickered across his face but it wasn't pity like you expected. God, somehow that would have been easier, you think. 

It was the look of pure heartbreak. Which was way way worse. Logan swallowed hard once before bending slowly to pick up his bag. He gathered the jersey after it, fingers tightening around the crumpled fabric for a brief second.

At the bathroom door, he hesitated but you couldn’t look at him anymore so you kept your gaze on the floor. 

A second later, the door shut softly behind him.

[andy-15-07]

Sleepy

Pairing: John Logan  x Reader

Word Count: 1478

Request open!

Off campus masterlist

John was clingy when he was tired in a way that was almost unfair.

When he was fully awake, he acted like he had his life together. He was calm, easygoing, a little too charming for his own good, and just smug enough to be annoying when he wanted to be.

But when he was half asleep, all of that disappeared.

What was left was soft, warm, and deeply attached to you.

You discovered this on a Sunday morning when you tried to get out of bed before he woke up.

The room was still dim, the blankets tangled around your legs, and John was sprawled out beside you in one of those ridiculous positions that somehow looked comfortable only to him. His hair was a mess against the pillow, his face turned toward you, one arm draped over your waist like he had been holding on all night without letting go.

You moved carefully, trying not to wake him.

It almost worked.

You had one foot on the floor when a hand caught the back of your shirt.

You froze.

“Where are you going?” John mumbled.

His voice was rough with sleep, low and thick and far too cute for someone who had already decided to ruin your escape plan.

You looked back at him. “I was getting up.”

His eyes were barely open, just a sleepy sliver of blue looking at you like you had personally offended him. “No, you weren’t.”

You blinked. “Yes, I was.”

John groaned and tightened his grip on your shirt just enough to make his point. “It’s too early.”

“It’s nine.”

“That is early.”

You tried not to smile. “You have practice in an hour.”

He made a sleepy sound that was halfway between a sigh and a complaint. “I know.”

“Then you should get up.”

John opened his eyes a little more, looked at you for one long second, and then shook his head against the pillow. “Absolutely not.”

You laughed quietly. “John.”

He reached for you with the hand that had been holding your shirt and hooked it around your waist instead, tugging you back toward the bed with slow, sleepy determination.

You let out a surprised sound as your balance shifted. “John, hey,”

But he had already succeeded.

He pulled you back against him until your back hit his chest and his arm settled across your middle like that was where it belonged. Then, without even opening his eyes all the way, he pressed a soft kiss to your shoulder.

It was so gentle and so absentminded that it nearly made you melt on the spot.

“Five more minutes,” he mumbled.

You let out a laugh. “You always say that.”

“Because it always works.”

“It does not always work.”

John hummed, clearly unconcerned by the truth of that statement. His hand slid over your stomach once, then settled there, warm and steady. “It works on you.”

You turned your head just enough to look at him over your shoulder. “That is manipulation.”

He smiled against your shoulder without opening his eyes. “That is love.”

You gave him a scandalized look that he absolutely did not see. “You are impossible.”

John’s answer was a sleepy kiss to the back of your shoulder blade.

You made a helpless noise, half laugh and half sigh, and he took that as permission to cling harder. One of his legs tangled with yours under the blanket, and suddenly there was no chance of getting up unless you physically fought him for it.

Which, judging by the way he was holding onto you, would have been a losing battle.

“John,” you said, trying for stern and failing a little, “you need to let me get up.”

He buried his face for a second against the top of your shoulder. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

You twisted a little in his arms so you could look at him properly. “You are acting like a giant sleepy baby.”

That got his attention.

John blinked at you, still very much half asleep, then frowned with all the seriousness he could manage while looking like he had just woken from the deepest nap of his life.

“I am not a baby,” he said.

“You’re pouting.”

“I’m not pouting.”

“You are absolutely pouting.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re mean in the morning.”

You laughed and reached up to smooth his hair back from his forehead. “You’re the one refusing to let go of me.”

He caught your hand before you could pull away and pressed a kiss into your palm, eyes still heavy with sleep. “You’re warm.”

That made your expression soften immediately.

John noticed, because of course he did. Even half asleep, he was still annoyingly good at that.

He tightened his hold around your waist again and added in a much smaller voice, “And you were gone.”

You paused.

Gone.

It was such a simple thing to say, but it landed in your chest with quiet force.

You looked at him. “I was just getting up.”

“I know.”

His thumb moved absently against your side. “Still.”

That made the teasing in your expression ease away. “Still?”

John opened one eye just enough to meet yours, and there was something so soft there it made your throat go a little tight.

“Yeah,” he said. “Still.”

You let yourself relax back into him then, your hand settling over his where it rested at your waist. For a moment the room was quiet except for the sound of breathing and the faint noise of the city outside the window.

Then John sighed dramatically and pulled you closer with both arms this time, like he had finally decided subtlety was overrated.

“Okay,” he muttered into your hair. “Maybe five more minutes.”

You smiled into the pillow. “Only five?”

He was quiet for a second.

Then, very seriously, he said, “Maybe ten.”

You laughed. “That is not what you just said.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You’re negotiating in your sleep.”

“I’m very persuasive.”

You turned your head again and glanced at him. “You are very sleepy.”

“That too.”

He kissed your shoulder once more, this one lingering a little longer than the others, and you could feel the warmth of it right through your skin.

There was something impossible about the way John got like this when he was tired. He was still John, still quietly funny, still handsome in that unfair way that made you stare at him when you thought he wasn’t looking, but the edges were softer. Needier. More honest somehow.

Like sleep took away the part of him that tried so hard not to need anyone.

You reached back and let your fingers run lightly through his hair. “You know you’re being clingy, right?”

His answer was a sleepy grunt. “Mm-hm.”

“And you don’t care?”

Another kiss landed against your shoulder.

“Nope.”

That made you grin.

You shifted a little, just enough to face him, and found him looking at you with one eye open and the most stubborn expression you had ever seen on someone who was technically barely awake.

“What?” he asked.

You smiled. “Nothing.”

He clearly did not believe you. “That means something.”

“I just think it’s cute.”

John stared at you for a beat, then went entirely still.

That was your first warning.

The second was the way his mouth twitched.

The third was when he suddenly reached out, grabbed you around the waist, and hauled you fully back into bed with him in one smooth motion.

You let out a startled laugh as he rolled closer, one arm pinning you gently against him while his face buried itself in the crook of your neck.

“John!”

“Too late,” he mumbled.

You were laughing harder now, trying and failing to push at his shoulder. “You are ridiculous.”

He made a low sleepy sound that was suspiciously close to a hum of contentment. “Mm. You love me.”

Your laughter softened.

You looked down at him, at the way his eyes had drifted shut again, at the way his arm stayed tight around your waist as if he was afraid the world might steal you away if he loosened his grip.

He was so obviously half asleep, and yet somehow he still managed to sound completely certain.

You brushed your fingers over his cheek. “Yeah,” you said quietly. “I do.”

John’s eyes opened just enough to catch your face, and something warm and lazy spread across his expression.

Then, because he was apparently determined to ruin every attempt you made at being coherent, he pressed one final kiss to your shoulder and sighed like he had finally found exactly where he wanted to be.

“Good,” he murmured. “Now stay.”

And with that, John closed his eyes again, held you tighter, and went right back to sleep like keeping you in bed was the most natural thing in the world.

[g0ldendesiree]

Things Unsaid | John Logan

summary: you're in love with logan, but what happens when you think he doesn't feel the same way?

request: yes/no

warnings: swearing, drinking

word count: 2.80k

authors note: the amount of people that requested this concept acc shocked me like I have like another thing like this coming out soon because so many people love this concept. hope you all enoy it though and I really don't have much more to say beyond that.

For someone as smart as Logan could be, he could also be the stupidest man alive. 

Because as Hannah went up after Beau for karaoke, all Logan could focus on was the girl singing. 

The look he gave her made your stomach churn as it was the same look you often gave him. 

It was one full of love and hope, not for the person in front of them but for what the two of them could become together.

You had been Logan’s best friend since your first day in your freshman year. 

He needed a pen and when you offered up several different colours to him, something just clicked for the two of you. Leaving you inseparable ever since. The puck bunnies always asked why you had never done anything with Logan as his friends always asked if he was hiding that you were more to each other than the rest of the world knew. 

While you were always left being forced to smile and nod along when those questions came your way as you swore you two were just friend, you had to admit that it was starting to hurt you. 

Somewhere along the way you stared to like John, as more than just a friend. 

At first you played it off as something silly, but by the time you actually decied to rip off the bandaid and tell him how you felt. 

It was too late, not because Logan was taken but instead because he was looking at Hannah like she already had his heart. 

And tonight just reminded you of that as you were forced to sit there and watch as Logan looked at her like she was performing to a room of just him and her “I hate love.” You grumbled as you shook your head when you felt the seat next to you get taken.

Beau went to comfort you “shit,” he yelped as he drunkenly fell off of his chair. 

Your hand immediately clasped over your mouth “you good?” Your words were muffled as you tried to hold your other hand out to help him back up. 

The boy laughed, finally making you break too “ow.” He groaned as he stood back up. 

You shook your head “idiot.” You elbowed the boy who sent you a grin “at least I wasn’t just complaining about a guy.” He stuck his tongue out at you. 

A laugh left your lips again as your cheeks turned red “watch it or else I’ll push that chair.” Your warning made Beau grin as he sat on his chair again. 

When your eyes went back to Logan you saw him looking right back at Hannah. 

From that night you decided that you needed a break. 

A chance to pull yourself out of the situation. 

A moment to gaslight yourself into thinking that maybe you were wrong and Logan wasn’t in love with Hannah. 

And the only way you knew how to do that was to avoid him entirely. 

So that was exactly what you did.

And Logan realised something was seriously wrong when you stopped coming to the house entirely.

At first, it had just been smaller things.

Skipping movie nights. Leaving group chats on read. Suddenly always “busy” when the boys invited you over.

But now?

Now it had been almost two weeks since he’d properly seen you.

And Logan hated how much he noticed.

The house felt off without you in it.

Too quiet.

Nobody stealing fries off his plate. Nobody yelling at Dean for putting empty milk cartons back in the fridge. Nobody curled into the corner of the couch in one of his hoodies while pretending not to fall asleep during movies. Yet always ending up with a blanket wrapped around you

It irritated him more than it should have “she’s avoiding me,” Logan muttered finally one night when he walked from a run.

He thought the fresh air would clear his mind, but instead, he just found himself craving your company even more.

The boys all looked up from the living room at the exact same time.

Dean paused mid-scroll on his phone.

Garrett blinked slowly.

Tucker looked like he was trying not to laugh “what?” Logan asked immediately.

Dean stared at him for a long moment “you’re kidding.” He looked at the other guys to see if anyone else found it so funny.

“About what?”

Garrett physically set his drink down “oh my god, he actually doesn’t know.” He brought his hand to his mouth.

“Know what?”

Tucker laughed under his breath, “this is painful.” He mumbled making the blonde nod in agreement.

Logan frowned harder “can one of you just explain what the hell you’re talking about?”

Dean pointed at him dramatically “she likes you, idiot.” He was done waiting for Logan to get on the same page as everyone else.

Logan blinked.

“What?”

The room went dead silent.

Then Dean actually threw his head back laughing as Garrett looked personally offended “no way.” Logan stared at them. 

“No she doesn’t.”

All three of them groaned simultaneously as they hit their heads with their hands “yes she does,” Dean said immediately as he knew Logan was on a losing side of this battle.

What made it sad was that Logan was unaware of it all “massively,” Tucker added.

Garrett leaned forward “it is genuinely impossible to miss.” He pointed out as he rolled his eyes.

Logan looked between them almost nervous, “you’re messing with me.” He didn’t want to believe that they were all right.

Dean barked out a laugh “Logan, she literally follows you around this house like a lost puppy.” He didn’t even mean it in a bad way, it was just the truth. You just loved being around Logan.

“She does not.”

“She absolutely does,” Dean cut in.

Logan opened his mouth to argue again, but Garrett beat him to it “she sits beside you every single time we watch movies.” Without fail, your legs always landed up in his lap.

“That doesn’t mean-”

The blonde pointed his finger into the air “she does it because she loves getting a chance to cuddle you!” Dean interrupted as he shook his head.

Logan frowned slightly.

Beau pointed out as he walked into the house, “she also laughs at jokes that are objectively not funny when you make them.” Logan felt like the most unamusing person in that group half the time.

“That’s not true.”

One of the boys threw something at Logan as if it would knock some sense into him “dude,” Garrett deadpanned as he sent Logan an unimpressed look“you made a joke about a burnt grilled cheese last week, and she laughed so hard she cried.” Logan hesitated because maybe that one was fair.

Dean was already on a roll now.

“She brings you a thing of berries because she thinks of you.”

“She remembers your practice schedule better than you do.”

“She knows your coffee order.”

“She looks at you like you’re the only dude in this house half the time.”

Logan stared at the blonde, who continued to list things off

His stomach was starting to feel weird “she does not look at me like that.” He shook his head as the three of them exchanged a look.

Then Dean leaned back against the couch cushions dramatically “oh my god he’s stupid,” he muttered as he rubbed his face with his hand.

“Hopelessly stupid,” Garrett corrected.

Dean pointed toward the kitchen “last month you walked in wearing that grey hoodie she likes, and she genuinely forgot how to use a microwave.” Logan blinked as he swore that he never had that effect on you.

“What?”

Tucker nodded solemnly “tragic, honestly.” Not knowing if he was talking more about you or Logan in that moment.

Garrett laughed as he thought back to his favourite memory of you trying to hide your crush “and every time you touch her,” he did his best to hold back a laugh, “she goes completely silent for like ten seconds.”

Logan frowned harder, trying to think back.

Little moments suddenly started replaying differently.

You getting flustered when he threw an arm over your shoulders. How pink your face got whenever he complimented you. The way you always seemed to brighten the second he walked into a room “oh,” Logan said quietly.

Dean pointed at him again “there it is.”

Logan looked genuinely stunned now, like his world had stopped in that moment.

“She-”

“Yep,” Beau interrupted him immediately, not giving Logan a chance to come up with something wrong.

Silence quickly fell over the room as the boys waited for Logan to say something, “for how long?” Logan asked, his cluelessness made everyone else laugh.

Garrett shook his head “months, man.” Dean nodded in agreement as he ate his food.

Logan sat back slowly against the couch cushions.

And suddenly, karaoke night replayed in his head, too.

A switch had flipped in your brain, and you were stoic towards him after Hannah’s song. The way you barely looked at him afterwards. How you’d practically vanished from his life the next day.

Logan looked back at them “she stopped coming around because she likes me?” It was as if the penny dropped for him in that moment.

Dean’s expression softened slightly “she stopped coming around because she thought you liked Hannah.” Logan and Garrett all made awkward eye contact.

Logan blinked as he cocked his head “yep.” The boys all nodded in agreement before Logan had a chance to question it.

Logan ignored him completely as he stood up “oh, you are an idiot,” Garrett words were so quiet but still Logan heard everything he said.

Because the boys were right.

Days later, you didn’t know how you ended up at the boys place after a win. 

Well that was a lie, Beau and Dean practically dragged you out of your dorm after believing that you were becoming a decoration within your own room.

It was hard to say no to either of them when they started guilting you “I should go home.” You announced at the front door when the boys tightened their hands on your shoulders. 

Dean shook his head “look just have fun with us.” Beau mumbled into your ear. 

You sighed as they walked you into the house. Music echoed in your ears as people flooded around the first floor “we’ve got your back.” Beau added as he watched your eyes land on the boys. 

More specifically, Logan. 

The boy looked tired as he listened to Tucker recount a story that had him being overly expressive with his hands. 

His under eyes were dark as Logan looked almost like he wasn’t there anymore, at least not mentally. 

But when he finally saw you, he smiled. It was this soft, sweet one that almost looked delicate, like he was worried if he gave you anything more, that he was worried you’d run away. 

Your eyes drifted somewhere else in the room as you felt your heart throb.

It was killing you to not talk to Logan, but when you saw how Hannah smiled at something that Garrett said, you knew it was all because you could think about was what you didn’t have “c’mon let’s get you a drink.” Dean patted your shoulders as he pushed you in the direction of the kitchen. 

The boys kept on replacing your drinks every time you finished them. 

And you were doing a good job of throwing each newly refilled cup back like it was nothing. 

Song after song. 

Drink after drink. 

Every effort to avoid Logan went successfully. 

Time slipped away and the night grew older.

And before you knew it, you were drunk. 

Not the cute kind of giggly that wine got you. 

But the stubborn and determined drunk that tequila got you. And that’s when you decied that you had enough.

The air was cold when you finally left the party. 

You had decided that avoiding Logan was getting too much, so you left. 

The fall weather should have left your cheeks cool when the night breeze drifted past you, but instead, you felt like you were on fire. 

All your focus was on putting one foot in front of the other so that, by the time you made it to the sidewalk, the front door opened. 

You had created enough distance between you and the house “are you fucking serious right now?” Logan scoffed when he let the door shut with a slam behind him. 

Footsteps pounded behind you as you kept on walking fast. Which for someone who was as drunk as you were, wasn’t very fast at all “don’t,” you grumbled, knowing that he was steps behind you. 

Your fists clenched “what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Logan almost laughed as he furrowed his eyebrows. 

“It means just leave me alone!” 

Logan finally reached for you as you stumbled over your feet “I won’t.” He ended up in front of you forcing you to stop. 

A harsh sigh escaped from your lips “I’m fine.” You slurred, feeling your head spin. 

Alcohol tainted your tongue as Logan could smell it, “you’re so far gone.” He shook his head when he frowned. 

Your lips formed a pout “well aren’t you observant?” You stuck your tongue out at him as he laughed. 

You tugged your body back “so let me go home.” Your voice came out harsher than intended, and you were so drunk that you didn’t notice. 

He glared at you and you glared right back. 

And somehow that little moment sent the two of you over the edge “you know you have been avoiding me for damn weeks.” Logan was hurt and even if he tried to hide it, it still seeped through his voice. 

You rubbed your cheeks with your hands “not this shit again.” You groaned as you shook your head. 

“Yes, this again.” 

Logan wasn’t going to stop until he had a reasonable answer from you “you disappeared and acted like it was nothing!” He tugged his fingers through his hair. 

You finally looked at the boy’s eyes “look you didn’t even notice.” Your voice was barely above a whisper. 

It made the boy frown “of course I noticed when you weren’t around.” Logan clicked his tongue “hell you’re the first person I always look for in a room, even if I know you won’t be there.” His confession made your stomach churn. 

You shook your head “you don’t get to do this.” You raised your hand to stop him “look it’s bad enough you don’t like me back but don’t lie to me.” 

Logan crossed his arms “I am not lying jesus,” he scoffed as if he was offended that you even thought it. 

You looked up at the sky as you licked your lips “you love Hannah-” he tried to cut you off but you stopped him. 

Your hands wrapped around yourself, “and I need to learn to accept that you just don’t love me how I love you.” Your words came out and it was as if you had opened a can of worms. 

“In a way that makes me fine when you eat the last cookie or wait at the rink after games just so that I can be the first one to congratulate you or hug you, and god it’s in an unfortunate way that makes me hate you for not seeing me how I see you.” 

Silence followed your words as you felt your throat constrict, “oh god.” You groaned as you pushed Logan away from you, leaning into the dirt next to him. 

His hands immediately went to your hair as you threw up “let it out.” He cooed, rubbing your back as you whined. 

“I’m gonna die.” You groaned weakly, making him laugh “no you won’t.” 

You looked up at him in betrayal “I told you I love you and you are laughing at me?” You grumbled as you sent him a scowl. 

He shook his head “absolutely not.” He forced his lips shut “okay maybe a little bit.” 

Logan went back to rubbing your back “for the record I love you too.” The words slipped from his lips making you stand up. 

Your eyes were wide “you do?” Your voice was barely a whisper. 

He nodded “I was trying to stop it because I wanted to keep you as a friend rather than lose you altogether.” Logan let his hands fall to your hips. 

You melted into his touch “now please never leave me like that again.” Logan pressed a kiss against your forehead as you nodded. 

Logan smiled as he could smell your perfume on you again and not just on his clothes “can we go back to your room?” You asked as he let his hand slot into yours.

[toonice113]

we had it all. (J.Logan)

Pairings: John Logan x fem!reader

Summary: Logan realizes his crush for Hannah isn't actually a crush, but is it too late? or, you realize that Logan has a crush on Hannah through little interactions and decide to distance yourself only for Hannah to make Logan realize his mistake and try to get you back before it's too late.

Word count: 5.4k

⋆˚࿔ tina's note 𝜗𝜚˚⋆ I've always been a Logan girl so here we are. I used a bit of Hannah and Logan's actual scene of realizing he's not actually into her but adapted it a little to fit this story. This is the first time in a while that I write this much so fast so hopefully its good I did not proofread or edit and the ending kinda sucks but oh well.

You weren't dating, not really, John Logan didn't do relationships, but you were together in all the ways a relationship conveys without the formality of a title. You cheered for him on game day, he would call you every time he had a bad day, you would always find each other at parties and at some point along the way you'd found yourself a spot at the hockey house.

The change started slowly, so slow it was almost unnoticable at first. Your first significant meet with Hannah outside of Malone's was at the block party, you'd been having drinks with the guys and a few girls who had joined in hopes of scoring a hookup when Logan noticed how detached Garret had been from the party. That was the first time you noticed the longing glances, but they still didn't register fully because he still spent the rest of the party on your side and you still ended up in his bed that night.

"Lo I think someone's knocking" Tonight a bunch of people were over at the hockey house, it wasn't a party per se, but the entire hockey team plus a few other friends were around. You were currently sitting on the couch watching the guys play a hockey videogame.

"No one ever knocks" Logan replied not taking his attention off the tv.

"Exactly" You pointed out making it clear that if someone was knocking there must have been a reason.

"Fine" He sighed and handed you his controller, he started walking away and then turned back around "Wait no, she'll score an own goal, pause it!" But you were already moving your little guy around the ice, in circles really instead of actually playing the game.

He didn't seem to pay much attention to Hannah that night, just an extra look when a half naked, straight out of the shower Garrett took her upstairs.

Your next encounter with Hannah was Beau and Dean's party. You had coordinated outfits with one of your friends, Logan was a bird aliongside Tucker's bee and you were all throwing shots when she walked in. Hannah looked amazing in her head turning bunny costume that made Garretts magician make sense now.

In all honesty, you wouldn't have noticed anything weird with Logan if it hadn't been for the way his hold on your waist had instantly dropped when he noticed her. You played it off as nothing when Tucker appeared next to you and dragged him away for their little tradition, but your brain filed it away anyways.

"Mmm we're late" You mumbled into Logan's lips, you were parked on a lonely dark street a few streets away from Malone's because he, verbatim, had said 'you look too good I'm not making it the whole night without a taste'

"Mmhmm" He mumbled against your lips grinding his hips up to you "Don't care"

"Oh come on" You separate a little, he follows as if you were connected by a string, chasing your lips "Karaoke night is my favorite"

"You won't even sing" He complained pushing his forehead against yours.

"Maybe tonight I will" You tell him.

"You're telling me if I drive us to Malone's right now you'll actually sing tonight?" You nod, it's not true, you're most definitely not singing tonight, but you know if you're any late you're gonna fall victim to Dean, Tucker and Beau's incessant teasing the whole night "You're on baby"

When you get to Malone's you get the great surprise of Tucker on stage singing Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy "Holy shit" You gasp hitting Logan's arm.

He chuckles, Jules walks up to you with the song request clipboard "I'll put you and Garrett up for Summer Nights" They say already scribiling down the words.

"I know that's a joke but I would kill Sandy" Logan replies "Anyways, put this one down for Shake It Off"

"Noted" Jules writes down your name and song.

"Do not" You say but Jules smirks and walks away "Jules!"

They don't even turn around, just puts their hand up and waves approaching another group of people, Logan laughs "Come on, let's get a drink" He guides you to the bar, Tucker's voice flowing through the place with the crowd joining in every chorus.

Garrett and Hannah are at the bar, Hannah seems to be enjoying herself as she says hi to you all giggily sipping on what seems like a piña colada "I'll take one of those please" You call out to the bartended who nods getting to prepare the drink.

"Logan!" Hannah exclaims after pulling you into a drunken hug "You fixed my car" She points at the man, Logan nods with a strained 'yeah'. The girl turns to Garrett "He fixed my car"

Garrett looks confused "You have a car?"

The brunette gives him a weirded out look "No"

You stiffle a laugh at her response and squeeze her a little when you notice her somber expression "Had a car" Logan clarifies "Great car"

"I'm buying you a very special thank you drink" Hannah announces then "And you, for being a new friend" She turns to you, then there's confusion in her eyes "We can be friends right?"

"Yes Hannah, we can be friends" You chuckle, she beams.

"Great!" Then she leans over the bar and whispers something into the bartender's ear "Okay you're gonna love it!"

"Hannah has discovered the piña colada tonight" That explains the girl's drunken state, she's probably had too many but thankfully he is with Garrett who is probably the most responsible guy in this bar tonight.

"I've only had one, or four" Hannah laughs, she seems to be having fun.

"Is that what I'm getting too?" Logan asks, you don't miss the way he says 'I'm' but you ignore it, for now.

"Mmm nope" She turns back to you and Logan just as the bartender sets your piña colada and two very bright blue drinks "Okay, for my mechanic, and my new friend, I call this the bluebaru"

She hands you each a glass, you look behind her at Garrett as if asking for help but he just looks amused "Oh! It looks like wiper fluid" Logan says as he inspects the drink.

You take a sip, your face scrunching up at the taste of it at the same time as Garrett says "That might actually be wiper fluid"

"It's mostly blue curacao" Hannah explains "With the secret ingredient" She leans in closer to you and Logan "More blue curacao"

"Oh! I'm so excited" You laugh at Logan's clear suffering at the simple thought of drinking this, you already know you're handing this to either Dean or Beau the moment you see them, those two will drink pretty much anything.

You've just found Dean and Beau, the latter being occupied with his tongue down a redhead, when Hannah's name is announced. "Here have this" You shove the drink into Beau's hand and slip into the seat next to him.

"What's this?" He asks but is already taking a big gulp of it "Fuck!"

You smirk "Hannah Wells' creation, the bluebaru"

"You've got some competition" Beau nods at Logan who is staring intently at Hannah as she performs, that's the first time you really notice it.

"Oh hell no" Dean speaks making you realize the redhead's gone.

"She's with Garrett" You point out.

"Right" Beau nods but the damage is done, for the rest of the performance you can't stop noticing the way Logan looks at her like she's the most interesting thing in the planet and how his look changes to a more somber one when Hannah starts serenating Garrett more openly.

"Kinda sweet isn't it" Jules approaches their brother when they notice the looks he's been giving the girl performing "Garrett being serious about someone"

"You think he's serious?" Logan asks.

"Everyone on fifth line seems to think so" Jules replies "They get more likes than anything else I post" When their brother doesn't say anything they sigh knowing the conversation isn't going anyways "Not that you should care or anything"

"What are you talking about?" He asks, Jules doesn't reply, instead they nod to the booth where you and Beau are watching Hannah sing and Logan can't help but to feel a pinch of guilt in his gut.

You don't sing that night, and you're surprised when, after a few hours of him hanging out with everyone but you, Logan comes over and asks if you're ready to go. Your roomate is out and Logan takes full advantage of that giving you multiple orgasms, you don't think about why he's being so good to you, he'd already shown how interested he was earlier, but he can't help but think he has to make it up to you all night long.

The last thing Logan wanted tonight was to end up talking about Hannah with Garrett but here he was because he couldn't help himself but to ask, and he hated himself for the relief he'd felt when Garrett basically confirmed they weren't together "Hannah was just a distraction"

"Yeah, I mean, sometimes you don't get everything what you want" Logan said "But… you're Garrett Graham, alright? Things are gonna work out for ya okay? They always do"

Garrett chuckled "Yeah well for you too man, I mean, you've got the girl, and you make it look so easy" Logan felt a pang of pain at the mention of you and his friend's perspective of your relationship, things there weren't easy, hell he'd been ignoring you for a few days now, giving you dumb excuses as to why he couldn't see you and it all was because he couldn't get his friend's 'girl' out of his head "And it's me and you in the bruins, that's the plan, right?"

Another lie he was keeping, the one where he was pursuing hockey alongside Garrett when he graduated "Yeah, that's the dream"

The next few weeks are like torture for Logan, you eventually wear him down enough for him to start hanging out with you again but he's distant every single time. In the meantime, he's trying his hardest to stop thinking about Hannah while the girl spends every free moment she has in their house because apparently, her and Garrett are officially together now. Every few nights he has to actually leave the house and stay over at your dorm because he can't stand the sound of his best friend hooking up with Hannah and his headphones are not enough.

Thanksgiving had been, surprisingly nice, Garrett and Hannah had gone to his father's to celebrate, Dean was away in New York and that left Tucker, Logan and Jules, the last one inviting you over even before the invitation had been extended to everyone who didn't have a place to go.

"He's gonna burst something" You mumble into Logan's ear, the man being surprisnigly affectionate today.

"Hey, he wanted to do all this" Logan replies squeezing your waist as he hugs you from behind making you giggle.

"Yo lovebirds, get to work" Tucker points at you with the knife he was holding making both of you to put your hands up in surrender before moving to do whatever you were appointed to do.

Logan ends up leaving with Jules a while later, they go to visit their mom at rehab even though that's the last place he wants to be and you stay behind with the rest of your friends. The turkey, much to Tuck's dismay, ends up being a disaster and you all migrate to the rink instead.

You suck at skating but you manage to stay upright enough to glide around as the group plays hockey using parts of the charred turkey as a puck. You've found yourself in the middle of the rink, with the help of Kendall, when Logan and Jules return with their marshmallow attack. You shriek as one hits you square in the chest and glide your way to them as good as you can but you end up slipping and falling straight into the arms of Logan who laughs as he helps you up.

"What are you guys doing?" You ask laughing as your friends in the rink shriek when the siblings keep pelleting them with marshmallows as they skate around.

"It's a Logan thanksgiving motherfuckers!" Jules screams and continues their attack.

"Let's call G and Dean" Tucker suggests, pulling his phone out.

That's where your night changes drastically, when the illusion that you'd been keeping up shatters, because while you'd spent today in Logan's arms whispering jokes to each other and sneaking in kisses here and there the moment Hannah and Garrett's faces appear in Tucker's screen he drops your hand and his expression falters.

Your hand immediately feels cold at the loss of touch and you can't concentrate on the words being exchanged, you smile through it and then when they hang up you unlace your skates and replace them with your shoes and get the hell out of there.

Logan doesn't notice until Jules mentions it.

You stop reaching out to him, your replies come out short when he texts and you always have an excuse as to why you're busy or he can't come to your dorm. In just a week you've shifted your entire friend group from the hockey team to the football team. They greet you in with open arms, you've hang out with them before and Beau adores you, you also find out that the football girlfriends are real good friends who you can girl talk with even though you haven't been close for too long.

"Honestly, good for you" Mia, one of the wide receivers girlfriend's says, you're telling them the story of why you've ended up hanging out with them more lately while trying not to freeze your ass off while you watch the team practice "For having a backbone"

"Men can be so dense" Lily shakes her head "I bet you he's still wondering what he did to piss you off"

"I think he's taken the hint" You shrug "He's stopped spamming me at least"

"Sooo now that he's out of the picture… you and Beau?" Mia asks suggestively wiggling her eyebrows.

"Nope" You deny immediately "Been there, done that, we're friends and that's where we're staying"

"Wait you've hooked up before?" Lily's eyes are so impossibly wide "Okay share!"

You chuckle "We were freshmen, it happened a few times and then we figured out we enjoyed hanging out with each other but neither of us wanted a relationship so it kinda fizzled out" You shrug "But I also became friends with the hockey boys and Dean and Beau come as a package so we just stayed friends"

"I've always wondered" Mia trails, her eyes following Beau as he runs drills "When people say they come as a package, do you guys think they like… have threesomes and shit?"

You choke on nothing, heat rising up your neck "Oh. my. God" Lily jumps pointing at you "You dirty slut" But there's no real judgement in her voice, just curiosity.

"Would you look at that? I think I better go work on my psych paper" You stand up ignoring the girls asking you to come back behind you.

Malone's is packed by the time you make it in, Mia and Lily insisting they needed you there so here you were. You knew the hockey guys would be here, it was after all their fundraiser, Logan is at the entrance when you arrive "Hey you came" He looks surprised about your presence.

"Yep" You nod "Here I am"

The air is only awkward for a few seconds before your savior, Beau Maxwell, steals you away with a quick comment at Logan and soon enough he has you at the bar with a drink in hand.

"Hey!" Hannah greets you, you haven't seen her since before thanksgiving either and although she is, unknowingly, the reason why you and Logan fell out, there's not a single cell in your bone that resents her "Great party right?"

"It always is" You nod with a smile "Although I kinda like this venue better than the usual one"

Hannah curtsies "Thank you, all my idea. Have you met Allie?"

You nod and wave at Allie who's behind the bar "Yeah, hi"

"Hey" She smiles back but then her eyes track someone behind you. You turn to see who it is and your mouth falls agape when you find Dean walking by, a smirk on his face as he squeezes your waist and continues in. You look back at Allie who looks exactly like someone who's been caught doing something they shouldn't be doing "I-"

You chuckle and shake your head letting her know she doesn't need to give you any explanation, thankfully for her Hannah had been too distracted with the band on stage to notice.

"Give it up for after hours everybody" Dean says once he's up on stage "And a big round of applause to my buddy John Logan for putting on this killer event" You clap alongside everyone, for all his faults John Logan really cares about the Little Canes and has always pulled through for them "Look at him, doesn't get any more good looking than that. And he's single ladies" The crowd of girls around the room cheer, you chug your drink.

Allie gives you a look sliding another drink in front of you before going back to paying her full undivided attention to Dean "I thought you and Logan were…" Hannah says confused.

"Nope" You reply taking your drink and walking away to find either Mia and Lily or Beau.

"Ugh look at him" You grumble staring at Logan's smile as he talks to Hannah, you're now a few drinks in and your filter is running thin "Like her boyfriend is not his best friend who also happens to be 5 steps away lik get a grip dude"

Mia and Lily chuckle, you've found yourself in the middle of them while each of them has their boyfriend with them, luckily for you, because as upset as you are you don't want Logan's crush on Hannah being public knowlege, the guys are too busy engrossed on a conversation about how awful their season is going.

"I think" Lily says "You need a little distraction"

"Mhm" Mia agrees scoping the crowd out "How about… him?" She points at a brunette guy.

"Too complicated, he's on the hockey team" You tell them.

"That would just make things more interesting" You shake your head "Fine, no athletes then" She thinks about it for a few more seconds "How do you feel about artists"

You look the way she is, her gaze locked onto Justin Kohl "That… I might consider" The girls giggle next to you.

You do end up talking to Justin once his set is done and find yourself entertained enough to consider leaving with him. Key word: consider because when you are getting your coat while he waits by the door to join him Logan stops you.

"Hey can we talk?" He grabs your arm, soft enough to not hurt you but strong enough so you can't just slip away.

"Uh I gotta go" You say "Someone's waiting for me"

"What- I mean, what happened?" You give him a raised brow "We don't even talk anymore and I just need you to help me understand what happened"

"Logan come on, you're not that dumb" The dumb comment doesn't affect him but you calling him Logan makes him recoil. You never call him Logan, it's always Lo or John.

"Please" He says "I- I thought we were good" You scoff "What?"

"You're in love with your best friend's girlfriend Logan" You deadpan, if you had had one less drink tonight you probably wouldn't have said anything, but here you are.

"What? No I'm not" He argues.

"Yes you are!" You tell him "And honestly? That's a problem for you and them because you and I weren't even together"

"Don't say that" He shakes his head.

"Don't say what? It's the truth. We had fun while it lasted but now you clearly have your sights set on someone else and I think that's something you really have to deal with soon because it's not fair for anyone" You look at him for a few seconds, waiting for your words to sink in and then you say goodbye and walk away no longer in the mood to hook up with Justin.

It takes Hannah and Garret to breakup, fighting and then making amends with Garrett and Hannah and Garrett getting back together for Logan to start to accept his feelings, and once again, he hates himself for it. You were right the night of the fundraiser, this crush he had on hannah wasn't fair to anyone.

"Okay no, this is ridiculous and we need to talk" Hannah stops him as he tries leaving the kitchen as soon as she entered it even though he was halfway through making a sandwich. Something he'd been doing for weeks, avoiding her at all costs "Garrett said to ignore it, that it would eventualy go away, but I can't keep doing this"

"Wellsy I don't know what you're talking about" He tries to lie.

"Stop that!" She points at him with that scary authority the guys had come to know and fear "Do you have a thing for me?"

"Well, this has been fun, but I think I'll go upstairs and kill myself now" He says attempting to walk away but her voice stops him.

"Sit down" He does so because although Hannah is comparably smaller to him, she's scary.

"There's no point talking about this Wellsy I think we both know what the answer to your question is" He sighs.

"Just… answer it"

"Fine" He huffs "Yes I have a thing for you"

"Why?" She asks after a few moments of silence that felt like hours to him.

"I- What?"

"I'm so not your type and we both know it" She lets out.

"You don't know that" He accuses.

"Oh yeah? Prove it, what is it that makes you have a thing for me?"

"I'm tired of the parties and hookups and hopping from girl to girl, you made me realize that, you with your movie nights full of cuddles and cheering at our games and cooking dinner and the looks you give Garrett-" She snorts then interrupting his rant "Why are you laughing?"

"Because you're not hearing yourself, Logan… you don't want me, you want my relationship" Hannah tells him.

"I'm not into polygamy" He defends.

"No thats… thats not what I'm saying you idiot" She sits next to him "You say you're tired of hookups and hopping from girl to girl but tell me, how many girls have you slept with this year?" He thinks about it and the answer is easy, one, you're the only one he's slep with in over a year "You want cuddles and movie nights and someone cheering for you at your games and someone to cook you dinner and give you loving looks well I'm sorry to break it up to you pal but you had all that already" The 'pal' should've hurt but it just gets lost in the middle of the rest of the words as Logan realizes the truth in Hannah's words "Logan… you had the girl and you let her go and for the longest time I kept wondering why because it made no sense and here it is, the reason actually makes no sense"

"Shit" He cursed dropping his head onto the counter.

"Yeah, shit" The girl patted his back.

"Wellsy did you get lost on your way to the popcorn? Because- oh what happened?"Garrett entered the room.

"Logan here just realized he's been a bit of an idiot" Hannah explains and although he can't see them, Logan knows the couple is communicating with stares.

"Oh" Garrett lets out "Is this about…"

"Yeah"

"I've lost her haven't I?" Logan mumbles looking up to his friends.

"Uhhh" Garrett looks at Hannah for help.

"Noooo" But her tone doesn't sound sure "I mean… surely there's something we can come up with to help you get her back"

Logan groans and drops his head once more.

"Woah, what's with all the somber in here?" Dean walks in with Tucker trailing behind.

"Girl trouble" Garret lets out.

"Oh shit, finally got your head out of your ass huh?" The blonde slaps Logan on the back making him jump up.

"Dude" Tucker scolds him "Okay so… what are we doing? How are you fixing this?"

"I don't know" Logan admits.

"Right" Dean nods and pulls out a notepad and pen from one of the drawers "Operation GLGB starts now"

"GLGB?" Tucker questions.

"Get Logan's Girl back" Dean says in a 'duh' tone.

"You could've just said that" Garret argues.

"Well yeah but Logan here is always making up these terms so I thought it was fitting" The blonde counters.

"Okay whatever you wanna call it just… anyone has any ideas?" Hannah stops the argument before it gets too far.

It takes the group two whole weeks to come up with a plan and execute it.

"Beau I swear to God" You complained, Beau had come to your dorm earlier and dragged you out with no reason even when you complained you were working on an essay "If I don't get to finish my essay because of you I will cut your season short"

"You'd be doing me a favor honestly" He grumbles "Team's still doing so shit"

"Maybe because you spend your free time dragging girls out of their dorms instead of practicing" You point out sarcastically.

"Usually I don't have to drag them, they come on their own"

"Yeah cause you don't know how to get them there" You tease.

"Oh you know damn well I can" He smiles back.

"Ew no" You make a face, you'd rather leave those days in freshman year.

"Anyways, wait here" You're standing under a big tree in the middle of campus where the block party is usually held.

"Why?" You question.

"Just… stay" He pleads.

"Woof" You retort he chuckles and jogs away.

You sigh looking around, there's nothing Beau could be remotely interested in here, just people walking to and from classes and or dorms which your friend tends to stay away from as much as possible.

"Hey" You hear that familiar voice behind you, you don't turn, instead you're planning an escape that he doesn't let you complete as he stands in front of you.

"Hi"

"I'm sorry" He lets out "About everything, and I know you don't want to listen to me but please just hear me out"

"I can't" You try to say "I have an essay I need to finish, I'm just waiting for-"

"Beau" He interrupts you "Yeah, I know, I needed someone to lure you out of your dorm" You scoff running your hands through your hair "Please don't go just… just let me get this out and if you decide you want nothing more to do with me I promise I'll never bother you again"

"Two minutes" He nods.

"This is where I saw you for the first time, block party, freshman year, you were standing right here on your own" He motions to the spot you're standing in now "There were fairy lights on the tree and they glowed all around you like a halo. Garrett caught me staring, he told me to make a move, and I did, and honestly? I thought the most I was getting out of it would be a hookup but then we started talking and I knew that I needed you to be in my life as more than that"

"We didn't hook up in freshman year" You tell him "We barely spoke after that"

"True" He nods "Because you had that thing going on with Beau, and Beau was Dean's best friend and I didn't want to cause any drama within the team. But then one night we were out and he mentioned you two were just friends and I thought okay this is it, this is my chance" The two minutes are close to being over but you don't mention it "Sophomore year I realized no other girl made me feel the way you did, I stopped hooking up with random girls, I had no one night stands and I found myself looking for you in every room I walked into. And I've been the biggest idiot, I got in my head, I have a million things going on right now and the only good ones are you and hockey, in that order" He points at you "You and then hockey, but I let myself get wrapped up on the mentality of the other guys, the one where I couldn't possibly have a girlfriend because that meant leaving hockey behind"

In the entire time you've known John Logan you've never known him to be someone who can stand still for too long, a hockey player trait probably because all the guys are the same, but through this entire exchange he's stood right in front of you staring you in the eye as if he will spook you if he moves too much, the distance between you is a couple steps and it's probably the furthest he's stood since the night you met right here.

"But then, Garrett stated dating Hannah, Garrett Graham, the guy whose determination when it comes to hockey is so strong he's shaped his entire world around the sport, got a girlfriend, and he was doing great, he was thriving, he was happy. And seeing him like that made me jealous because I wanted that, I wanted to have the happy relationship and I confused that with wanting Hannah" He takes one step then, so small it makes nothing to decrease the distance "But I didn't, I didn't want Hannah, and I realized it too late. I realized that I had all that, I had it all with you I was just too much of a coward to call it what it was"

"Lo-" He cuts you off.

"Please" You've never seen him this broken "Please don't call me by my last name, I can't stand you calling me Logan"

You nod "John I don't know if I can just… move on from all this like it was nothing. We were together for over a year and never made it official, and it was okay back then because it was what we both wanted, but I'm not sure that's what I want anymore"

"But-" You put your hand out stopping him.

"I hear what you're saying, but what's to say we get back together and you realize it really is not what you wanted?"

"It is" He's basically pr¡leading my now, sure he said if you wanted to he would dissapear from your life, but he's sure as hell not going to do it without putting up a fight first "I know it is because we already had it and I loved it" He stops then and something flashes in his face, recognition "I love you"

Your eyes widen "Lo"

"I do, I love you" He chuckles shaking his head and gone is the man who stood still for so long because he's now cut down the distance and standing so close he's blocking your view of anyone else "I love going to parties and having you by my side the entire time, I love going to sleep with you in my arms and waking up to you basically on top of me, I love late nights snacking on Tuck's leftovers and I love seeing you in the stands at my games, I love you"

You're smiling now because you can tell he's being serious.

"I never had a crush on Hannah, baby you're the only one I've wanted so please, please cut me out of my misery and say you'll be mine again" His brown eyes bore into yours and you can't help but to pull him down by the neck and kiss him.

"Only if we do this right" You say once you separate, not that he let you go far, his hands are on your waist pulling you flushed against him and his forehead is on yours "No more situationship or casual or whatever it was"

He nods "It was never casual" And he pulls you in for another kiss.

You break out of the kiss when you hear your friends cheering behind you.

"Hell yeah I did that motherfuckers!" Beau exclaims clapping loudly.

"The only thing you did was take me away from my essay" You tell him "And the threat still stands" He puts his hands up in surrender chuckling.

[seafoammm]

plowed down!

*⁀➷john logan x fem!reader

➷ summary: you’re the captain of the briar girl’s volleyball team, leading your team through the ncaa volleyball semifinals in the hopes of reaching the championship. and you do achieve that, but not after experiencing the most insane introduction with john logan, a man you hadn’t known to exist until now

➷ word count: 5464

➷ warnings: cursing, sexual references kind of (no smut), probably inaccurate volleyball because i literally have never played and don’t know anything about it (i was researching as i wrote this, so i'm genuinely so sorry if it’s completely wrong. also, for the sake of plot making sense, we’re gonna say the ncaa volleyball tournaments take place in march because i want hannah and garrett, and allie and dean to be together)

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

It was nearing the end of the 5th set, and yet, still, both Briar U and Harvard’s girl’s volleyball teams were tied. Fucking 24 points each, both having two winning sets beneath their belts. Meaning, whoever got the last two points– the points that both teams desperately needed– would get a ticket straight to the NCAA Championship.

And you, the libero on the team, the captain, were fucking livid.

Your team, as well as yourself, had been playing sloppy– or at least, it felt like you had– and you really had no clue why. You guys had been perfect during practice, together as one team. Hell, the first two sets had been great, too. Wipeouts. 

But then, of course, because it was fucking Harvard, they won the third set. And then the fourth.

And now you were on the fifth and final set of the NCAA Semifinals, tied 24 points each.

It had to be the most intense game you had ever played in your 15 years of volleyball. 

It didn’t help that Harvard was absolutely, 100%, targeting your ass. You guess it made sense– since your freshman year, you’d been talked about. A prospect that sports sites couldn’t stop talking about. Your name had been in their mouths since your first game at Briar U, and it hadn’t left since.

And that’s because you– to be totally, completely humble– were a really fucking amazing libero. 

Your defensive moves and tactics were the highlights of many games, the Briar U volleyball account literally reposting edits that fans have made of your best saves. You didn’t let it get to your head, of course. You couldn’t, even if you had tried. You weren’t like that– you could never be like that, because in all honesty, you knew the only reason you had gotten as good as you had was because of past coaches and teammates. As well as current ones.

So yeah, you were good, maybe even great as some of the sports sites put it, but it was all through the effort of others.

And, to be honest, right now, you didn’t feel great.

Or good.

You felt completely, utterly, horrible, because during this set– despite it being in the beginning– you had failed to save two hits, the spikes from the opposing team smacking the center of your side of the net. This meant that Harvard had earned two points because you couldn’t get your shit together, and it was driving you fucking nuts.

You felt like you had the pressure of this win on your shoulders, and it really didn’t help that the stands were filled to the brim with students. Harvard students, yes, but mostly Briar students, since it was ‘Briar Blackout’ tonight, a term coined for any sports event when they were wanting to fill the stands, especially now, since it was semifinals, which were held in an arena very close to campus. And boy, were they filled. Which made this all that much worse. God, did it feel like you were letting them down right now. It was embarrassing. Every time Harvard got a point, the disappointed groans of your supporters met your ears, and the usual smile that you wore on your face as you played had been completely wiped from your features during the third set. Because genuinely what the fuck?

This game had been disappointing on so many levels to the point that you were now actively listening to the chants from fellow students and supporters, something you never did. You always tried to block them out, to focus on yourself, but right now, you needed the support.

And it helped a bit, hearing the chants of your name, as well as the other names of girls on your team, shouting how you guys totally ‘got this’.

The people sitting in the courtside seats were the loudest.

In the chairs to your right sat people who had actually bought tickets, while the courtside seats to your left was the Briar boys volleyball team. And, in the courtside seats directly behind you sat the Briar U boys hockey team. Which was new.

You’re pretty sure it was because they had won nationals, so they were here to support the girls volleyball team as they fought for their place. Which you were dreading may be coming to a dead-end tonight.

But you couldn’t be thinking about the hockey boys right now– you couldn’t be thinking about any of this, not when you watched as Luisa Elliot, your best friend, your outside hitter, stumbled as her hands tapped the ball, sending it in the completely wrong direction. Instead of it going back over the net like it was meant to, it had been hit completely off course.

It flew over your head, and was heading straight for the stands directly behind. 

That was no good.

You sprint with not an ounce of hesitation towards the ball, following its movement with your eyes and legs, and you knew there was no way in hell you were going to make it– not when you were coming horribly close to the hockey boys. And, if you ran into them before you sent that ball back where it was meant to go, then you might not get the point, or, worse, Harvard could get the point.

And, fuck, you really couldn’t have that.

So you did what you always did– you leaped, quite literally throwing yourself forward in a dive, right arm pointed straight out, desperate to hit that ball back to your teammates. And you felt it, the ball smacking against the fleshy part of your hand below the knuckle of your thumb. 

You figured it went as planned, your eyes watching as the ball went back over your head– and, when a loud, collective, deafening cheer sounded from your side of the stands, you were positive that your play had gone perfectly, the ball going exactly where it was supposed to be.

However, you were not where you were supposed to be.

No, you were currently dangling over one of the Briar hockey boys.

In the save that may have kept Briar in the game, you had sacrificed your dignity, because here you were, body pressed against and over a man you had never once spoken to– hell, you didn’t even know which hockey player was beneath you. All you knew was that you could feel his face pressed into the fabric that covered your stomach, the rest of your upper body draped over the top of his head. The only reason why you hadn’t flipped completely over the man was because his right arm had instinctively secured itself around the back of your thighs, keeping you in place.

To your left, you heard the loud cackle from one of the boys, and to your right, you heard another one of the guys react with a shocked, “Oh, shit!”

You tried to move quickly, hearing the game continuing behind you as the ball was passed between the Harvard girls. Your hands, which had previously been held out in front of you, trying to balance yourself, now were being grabbed by the two other hockey players beside you, who helped tug you to an upright position as quickly as they could.

As they do this, you feel the arm of the guy that you are currently straddling slide away from your thighs, and he holds his hands back, palms facing you as if he was surrendering to something.

You only get a quick glance of the guy’s baffled– but heavily amused– eyes before your left hand quite literally presses against his face, using it as leverage to push yourself off him, where you start at a sprint back towards the game that had your entire focus. And, it’s lucky you did that, because just as you were about to make it back to the court, the middle hitter of the Harvard team had spiked the ball straight to the floor on your side of the court. 

Again, you dove to the ball, slamming your hand down on the polished wood floor just in time. Instead of the volleyball making contact with the planks of wood, it ricochets off the back of your right hand, moving upward where another one of your teammates– Liliana Amato– bumps it up and over to Louisa.

Louisa, the fucking amazing hitter that she is, spikes the ball with the palm of her hand, sending it straight to the back corner of Harvard’s side of the net. 

Their libero isn’t fast enough. 

No one on their team is fast enough, because the ball hits the wood with a loud smack, resulting in the entire room to vibrate with the loud cheers and screams of Briar students and fans.

You jump up quickly when you hear the whistle from the referee, and you swear you could cry from pure glee when the ref announces that, yes, the point did count, despite the Harvard team trying to claim that your pancake move hadn’t actually saved the ball. 

This causes another wave of loud cheers to erupt in the room, and you move to Louisa and Liliana, a giant grin on your face as you three high five, but not before each of you took a running headstart, jumping as you met in the middle, your shoulders colliding in a celebration of glee. It was something you always did, the three of you, because, as fate had it, you three were the ‘big three’. You guys moved with an efficiency like no other, and as it turned out, sports websites loved it.

All you needed now was one point.

One point, and you would be two points ahead, and then you’d win.

If you guys got this point, you’d make it to the NCAA Championship, something that Briar girls volleyball hasn’t been to in over ten years.

The arena gets quiet again as the two teams get ready, and from the corner of your eye you watch as Macey Cameron, your team's setter, tosses the ball up into the air, using her palm to serve it to Harvard.

And, like that, another intense battle ensues. You swear to God you’ve lost at least twenty pounds through this game because the Harvard girls really were putting you to work– the ball had gone over the net and back three times in the last thirty seconds, and each time, you’ve had to dive to save the ball from one of the girls' vicious spikes.

Like now.

You had just gotten to your feet again when Harvard’s middle hitter sent a completely fucking lethal spike your way. It was going down and over your head with a speed you didn’t even know was possible, and you tossed yourself backwards, right hand out to save the ball from hitting the floor. As it flies up, your body rolls on top of itself, and you’re pretty sure you’ve done some sort of fucking backward sumersault, because one second you’re on your back, and the next you’re on your knees, panting as you rise back to your feet, watching as Liliana sends the ball back over the net.

You watch as the ball flies near the back of the court, hitting the polished wood planks before any of the girls can get it.

But the room stays deathly silent because was that out?

It couldn’t be out.

There was no way you guys just did all that shit for the fucking ball to go out.

Everyone’s eyes are on the ref, who’s talking to the other referees. They’re huddled in a group, and after thirty seconds, they step apart. You watch, and you feel like it’s in slow motion as the man points to your team, nodding.

It had gone in.

The ball had gone in, meaning that Briar had just won the second point needed.

Meaning you were going to the fucking NCAA Championship.

In an instant, the room erupted in cheers so loud that it vibrated through the ground, reaching your feet as you and your team jumped up and down, your coaches– who have yelled at you more times than you could count this game– joining in. You’re so ecstatic that you don’t even think to apologize to the hockey boy that you had run down just minutes prior.

The hockey boy that is now watching you as he cheers, a soft, intrigued smile on his face.

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

Typically after volleyball games, you went straight home, where you would take a shower and then slump into bed, passing out before you could even question if you were comfortable. It was a ritual at this point; you play a game, you go home and sleep immediately after.

But tonight was different.

Tonight, you and your team had made it to the fucking NCAA Volleyball Championship, which Briar hadn’t done since you were still in elementary school. So, yes, you would fight through your exhaustion for one night, and head to Malone’s for a late night meal with three of your teammates– your best friends– and you would have a great time despite desperately wanting to get comfy in your bedsheets.

Which is how you found yourself now, at 10:30 p.m., entering Malone’s with Louisa, Lililiana, and another girl on the team, Jade, at your side, the four of you walking through the doors of the popular diner. 

You were chatting with Louisa who walked directly next to you, and you laughed at something she said, the soft sound carrying through the diner over the group you had yet to notice. The group you had yet to ever meet.

“Holy shit, it’s her!” Dean hissed, leaning across the table to nudge Logan in the shoulder from where he sat beside Garrett. “She’s literally right there–”

“Yeah, I have fucking eyes and ears, man,” Logan responded back quickly, voice terse as his eyes sideglanced you and your group, watching as the four of you walked past the table that currently held six people, including himself, without any knowledge that you were being watched. He looked back to Dean, eyes narrowed, “Can you be quiet?”

“Why?” Dean asked with a smirk, leaning back against the booth chair, his arm still hung comfortably around Allie, who was grinning with Hannah. “You’ve been aware of this girl for four hours now, and it’s obvious you already have a massive crush on her.”

“I don’t–”

“You’ve been stalking her Instagram since the game ended,” Garrett interrupted with a snort. “I’m pretty sure you’ve scrolled down to her sophomore year of high school.”

Hannah laughs into her drink at that, sharing a look with Tucker who had been snacking on the basket of fries that sat in the middle of the friend group. 

Logan feels his face heat up at that, and he promptly shuts off his phone, pressing it face down onto the table. Then, he picks up his drink, taking a large sip as he shrugs, speaking into the glass, “She’s interesting.”

“Yeah, interesting because she practically gave you a lap dance mid-game,” Tucker snickered, which, as a result, caused Hannah and Allie to erupt into fits of laughter. 

Logan glared harshly at Tucker, “That’s not why I find her interesting.”

“Sure,” Dean drawls out.

“Dude, I’m serious,” Logan huffs, taking a fry and chucking it at the blonde’s head. Then, he leans back against his seat, crossing his arms over himself, “She’s good at her sport. It's fun to watch."

“I think he’s so intrigued because she has no idea who he is,” Hannah butts in with a grin, laughing as Garrett nods along, his arm resting firmly around her, his fingers rubbing against the fabric of her cardigan. “And that’s new for any Briar hockey boy.”

“Oh, definitely,” Garrett agrees.

Logan only stays quiet with a sharp roll of his eyes. But he doesn’t deny it. He can’t deny it, because it’s true. 

Just hours ago, after your amazing win, you had been asked for a post-game interview by Briar’s sports media team. And you had said yes, because why would you not? It was better than having to deal with the glares and snarky comments from exiting Harvard fans.

Now, one thing about you was, you didn’t do hockey. Like, at all. You’ve never been to a game before. You didn’t understand how the stupid little ice game worked. Which, very fucking embarrassing for you, was discovered by the entire internet just hours prior.

It was discovered by John Logan hours prior.

The questions had been basic; they always were. Just repeats of the same things, such as certain plays, how you felt winning, yada, yada, yada. However, tonight, the last question had been different, directly tied to the man you had plowed down hours ago. The man who you didn’t know a fucking thing about, because you seriously didn’t do hockey.

“Alright,” the reporter, Sammy, had said, moving onto the next question. “Now, kinda venturing off… we actually wanted to talk about a specific save tonight.”

You smiled your practiced smile, the type that was sweet and polite and all the right ways, “Oh yeah?”

“John Logan. How are you feeling about that?” The reporter stated the question like you were supposed to know who the fuck that was. And maybe it was because your brain was practically mush from the brutal game, paired with the fact that you were running on pure adrenaline post game, but you couldn’t for the life of you connect that the guy you had run down was John Logan. Again, whoever the hell he was.

“Sorry, who?”

Yeah, you couldn’t have picked a worse fucking response.

But, in John Logan’s eyes, that was the perfect fucking response. When he watched the interview on the way to Malone’s after the game– because he was intrigued with volleyball, that was the only reason– he couldn’t help the amused but giddy smile that laced his face.

The reporter’s smile faltered, and she looked back to the camera that was videotaping the entire thing for the school’s media, before her gaze returned back to you like you guys were in an episode of The Office, “Uh… John Logan?”

“Yeah, um... I’m really sorry, I have no clue who that is.”

“The guy you ran into. When saving one of the passes.”

“Oh,” you respond. And because for some fucking reason you can’t help but embarrass yourself tonight, the situation finally clicks in your head, and you say the worst thing humanly possible: you smile, and say, “Hockey boy.”

Like a fucking idiot.

Or, in John Logan’s eyes, like a fucking angel.

“...Right. He plays right wing for Briar men’s hockey,” she explains. And then, she looks back at the camera as she asks, “You didn’t know the hockey team was behind you, watching tonight?”

And, of course, because for some reason your brain’s goal is to get you to make a complete fool out of yourself, you answer an even worse answer.

But, no, you weren’t a fool in Logan’s eyes. Not even close. You were the complete opposite and it had his heart going like a freight train was headed straight for him.

“I knew they were here. I just don’t have a clue who they are.”

“You don’t know Garrett Graham?”

“Uh… nope? I don’t think so.”

“Dean Di Laurentis?”

“Not ringing a bell, sorry.”

“John Tucker?”

“The guy I ran into?”

Logan had laughed at that, making up a quick excuse to Tucker, who had been sitting next to him in the car back when Logan had first seen the video.

“What? No– no, that was John Logan.”

“Right.” You shake your head and you laugh, “Too many John’s, am I right?”

The reporter was watching you like you had grown another head; she did not laugh. You felt a swell of embarrassment creep up in your chest, but you pushed it away, trying to finish the interview as quickly as possible. And you had.

Jesus Christ, Logan practically ate the thing up. He’d played it back, telling himself it was for educational volleyball purposes, when really it was to watch as your eyebrows furrowed in confusion when asked who he was.

And not caring when finding out who he was.

Which is how he ended up searching your name on Instagram, scrolling through your feed, post by post like some weird stalker, according to his friends. Who, presently, were watching him, because he had turned on his phone yet again, eyes flickering down to the screen, watching an old volleyball practice video you had posted.

“Just go talk to her, dude,” Garrett finally said after another thirty seconds of watching Logan silently yearn at your Instagram profile. “She’s two tables down.”

Logan followed Garrett’s gesture, his head turning a fraction, his eyes catching your form as you hovered over a laminated menu, talking pleasantly with the girl who sat beside you. You pointed at something on the menu, wiggled your eyebrows at the girl across from you, and then snorted at what you had said while your three friends gave you bored expressions.

God, he hadn’t even spoken to you and he was positive he was in love.

“No,” he finally says, twisting his head back to his friends.

“Okay, this is painful,” Dean finally said, throwing his hands up. “Give me that–”

Dean had reached forward, plucking Logan’s phone from his loose grip.

“What– dude, stop– give it back–” 

But Dean had stood in the booth, holding Logan’s phone out of reach, and he scrolled all the way back up to the top of your Instagram. He wasted no time, clicking the follow button with a sigh of content before shutting off the device and tossing it back to Logan.

And, oh, if looks could kill.

“Are you fucking–”

“Shhhh, thank me later.”

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

“No way.”

“What?” Louisa had said, smiling at the waitress as she brought out the four Cokes that you guys had ordered. She took a long sip, staring at you from over the rim, “What’s up?”

You silently turn your phone, showing your three best friends your most recent notification.

John Logan has requested to follow you.

“Holy fuck,” Jade gapes. Then, she snatches your phone from your grip, and you reach forward, trying to snatch it back. However, she’s already leaning far away from you, “Oh, we are accepting this right now–”

“No! No, we are not,” you respond, voice stern as you stand to try and reach for your phone again. “He literally just followed me. If I accept now, he’ll think me plowing into him was intentional or something, so give–”

“And, accepted! Alrightly, follow back… and look at that, he already approved it!”

“I hate you,” you groan.

“Bro,” Liliana said, gesturing to your phone, “he was the one who followed you first. Which means that after you ran him down, he looked you up on Instagram. Which means he has been debating following you for four hours now. Which means he has the hots for you.”

“You guys are all delusional,” you respond, but not before quickly thanking your waitress, who brings over the four burgers and fries you guys had ordered just a bit ago. The food had come quickly, and you know it’s because Malone’s is relatively empty tonight. Only three tables are taken, including the one that you and your friends occupy.

“I don’t think you’re grasping the severity of this situation.”

“‘The severity of the situation’?” You repeat Jade’s words. “The hell does that mean?’

“That you have one of the hottest guys at Briar, a hockey player, following you almost immediately after you straddled him–”

You feel your face burn, “I did not straddle him.”

“Babe,” Louisa interjects, “you absolutely straddled him. Wanna see a video?”

You groan, “They already posted it?”

“Girl, they posted it three minutes after it happened,” Liliana said. She grabbed her phone, typing quickly, and then slid her phone across the table. You steadied it in front of you, leaning over to watch. And, yeah, you definitely straddled the guy. But not after you fucking launched yourself at him like a rabid squirrel, nearly flinging over his shoulder– you only hadn’t because he had held you against him. 

“Oh,” Louisa says from beside you, pointing to the phone. “So that’s Garrett Graham,” she points to the guy who was on your right, the one who had vocalized his surprise when it had happened, “and that’s Dean Di Laurentis,” and then she points to the guy who had cackled. You watch as her finger points to the man next to Dean, “That’s John Tucker. The other John. They all live together. They throw the best parties, too, out of all the hockey boys.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Literally everyone does except you, apparently.”

“Okay, whatever.”

Jade groans loudly, “Can we return to the issue at hand here? John Logan thinks you’re hot.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Girl, look at his smile after you push your hand against his face.”

Jade leans over, using two fingers to zoom the video on the guy’s face, and sure enough, after you push off against his face, sprinting to save the volleyball once more, he watches you with what looks to be a dazed grin, his bottom lip tucked beneath his teeth.

Fuck, it was kinda hot.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” you choose to say instead.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jade groans. “Look, whatever. Do you at least find him attractive?”

You shrug, lying, “I dunno. Didn’t get a good look at him.”

“Alright, Liliana, pull up the edit.”

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘the edit’?” You question, absolutely baffled. “This guy has edits made for him?”

“He’s a college hockey player, and he’s fucking amazing. And really fucking hot. So, yeah, he’s got edits– but this one is like, top tier. Really gets you going, if you know what I mean–”

“You guys are disgusting.”

“Here,” Liliana says, clicking a video in her liked posts. She shifts her phone towards you, turning up the volume with the pad of her thumb, and you watch as the song “Do I Wanna Know?” by Arctic Monkeys sounds through her phone, an extremely well crafted edit of John Logan both on the ice and in interviews playing before you.

“Okay,” you say once the edit finishes, “he’s hot. I get it.”

“See!” Jade grins, “He’s hot, and he’s definitely interested in you after tonight, which means that–”

But you all pause. All four of you freeze, because two tables down, you hear the sound of your voice on full blast, coming from someone’s phone. It’s you answering a question after a relatively successful game, followed by a song. Meaning that somewhere in this fucking diner, someone was watching edits of you.

“Shit! Dean, turn it down–”

It was too late, though.

You and your friends’ heads snapped in the direction of the noise, only to be met with the eyes of six others– five who seemed absolutely thrilled that you had noticed, while the sixth definitely looked like a deer in headlights.

The sixth being John Logan.

You can’t even react accordingly, because Louisa is grinning like a madman, shaking your shoulder and pointing very obviously at the group that’s only two tables away, “Holy shit, he’s right there, oh my God–”

“I can see that, Louisa,” you hiss, pushing her hands off you. Then, you turn back to John Logan, watching as he whispers heated words to his friends before standing. And holy fuck, he’s making his way over to you. Before he even reaches the table, Liliana, Louisa, and Jade are standing, gathering their things and food, and your eyes widen with an alarmed expression, and you hurriedly whisper, “Where the fuck are you guys going?”

“To a different table so we don’t block his cock.”

“Oh my–”

You can’t even finish your words, because your friends are gone. And John Logan is standing right in front of you, a small, gentle smile on his face as he watches your friends scurry over to the table he had just come from. They shove themselves into the booth next to Logan’s friends, acting as if they knew the people they now sat with, which they did not.

Logan’s friends didn’t seem to care, though. They looked just as eager, making room so your three obnoxious teammates could sit comfortably.

You fight the urge to audibly sigh, looking back at the man in front of you. You match his smile, and you really don’t know what’s with your fucking head today, but the first words that leave your mouth aren’t something sweet. They aren't cute. They make you look like a dipshit.

“My victim.”

You immediately want to get up and leave, because genuinely what the fuck were you on today?

But you don’t leave, not when John’s smile widens, and you can see his pretty teeth. He looks thoroughly amused, excited even, and he nods along with your words as he responds, “My attacker.”

“I wouldn’t call it an attack–”

“What would you call it?” He asks with his gentle grin, and he pulls out the chair where Jade had just been, sitting directly across from you.

“A collision on the playing field,” you offer with a hint of playfulness, which he catches onto instantly. “I’m sure you’re used to those. With hockey and everything.”

“So you know who I am now?” He asks, his eyes sparkling with something exciting.

“Hard not to when our video is already making its way through social media. Have you seen it?”

“Absolutely,” he says with a nod, and his tone is serious in a joking way. He’s got his arms now on the table, leaning forward as he speaks to you. He’s still grinning, and you conclude now that this guy is insanely good at keeping eye contact. It's really hot. “You tackling me, me catching you–”

“Straight out of a sports romcom,” you conclude. Then, you shake your solemnly, “What a waste, am I right? If we had some good dialogue, we would’ve gotten a ticket straight to the Oscars!”

“Oh, I know,” he says, and he throws his hands up dramatically. “We’ve been snubbed.”

Fuck, he was fun to banter with.

All the nerves you felt when you first realized he was walking over had vanished into thin air, because you guys got along good. You clicked instantaneously, falling into an easy back and forth that had you leaning forward as you spoke to him, words playful as he nodded along, eyes wide in a way that showed he was having just as much fun as you were.

You guys had been so invested in your many conversations about literally whatever the fuck came up that you didn’t even realize when your friends left. Or when his friends left. Or when you two were the only people left in Malone’s, except for the staff.

And, through the long, witty, playful conversations you were having with John, you two somehow ended up staying at Malone’s until close. It was late out, just past 2 a.m., and John offered to walk you home, which you refused at first, worried about keeping him out too late. But the man pouts dramatically, a playful expression as he told you there's nothing else he'd rather do, and you can’t help but agree.

Which is where you found yourself now.

Pushed up against the front door of your apartment, lips pressed against his, hands threaded through his hair while his fingers held your waist, thumbs rubbing over your hipbones with the type of gentleness that made your heart ache. 

He presses more kisses to your lips. They’re firmer, eager, and it’s now that you know you have to break the news to him.

“Wanna know another thing about me, John?” You grin, tilting your head back as he presses kisses down your neck.

He hums against your skin, sucking gently at your pulse point before smoothing it over with his tongue, pressing once final kiss to the skin. He moves his way back up your neck and jaw with soft kisses, pressing one final kiss to the softness of your lips, “What?”

“I don’t do hook-ups. Or casual.”

You expect him to falter, to pull back with a face of disappointment. You figured that’s what would happen, but you didn’t necessarily care. Sure, it was going to suck, having to end this short-lived thing with the hottest guy you ever met, but you weren’t going to change your rules for a guy you had just met. 

But, no, Logan doesn’t react how you were expecting at all.

No frown, no hint of irritation. He does something else, something that catches you off guard in the best way possible.

He grins. 

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

[alierecss]

Landslide | John Logan

summary: The thing about Logan is that he always knew what to say. He just kept finding reasons not to say it.

or: the five times Logan almost confessed and the one time he did.

notes: hii!! lazy sunday inspiration, this one is like sabrina short and sweet, hope you guys like it! enjoy your reading!!

warnings: childhood friends to lovers, fluff, happy ending.

word count: 4k

I've been afraid of changing because I've built my life around you

You had met Logan at a rink.

This was, in retrospect, the most inevitable thing about you, that two people who had built their entire lives around ice would find each other on it. You had been eleven, in the middle of a spin sequence that wasn't working, frustrated enough that you had stopped and put your hands on your hips and glared at the ice like it had personally wronged you. He had been eleven too, sitting in the penalty box with his helmet off, watching you with the focused attention of someone who had forgotten he was supposed to be somewhere else.

"Your left shoulder drops," he said.

You had looked at the penalty box. At the boy in it. At the hockey gear he was still wearing.

"Did I ask?" you said.

"No," he said. "But it does."

You had glared at him for a long moment. Then you had tried the sequence again with your left shoulder deliberately up and it had been better. Significantly better.

You had not told him that.

You had skated to the boards and looked at him.

"Why are you in the penalty box?" you said.

"Coach," he said, simply.

"What did you do."

"Argued a call."

"Was the call wrong?"

"Obviously," he said.

You had looked at him for another long moment.

"I'm (Y/N)," you said.

"Logan," he said.

Ten years later you were still talking.

one — the competition february, sophomore year

The thing about watching you skate was that it was completely impossible to be indifferent to.

Logan had been to enough of your competitions by now that he had developed what he privately considered a professional appreciation for figure skating, he understood the technical elements, the edge work, the difference between a clean landing and one that cost points. He had opinions about judging. He had once gotten into a fifteen-minute argument with Tucker about the scoring system.

He was, in other words, not watching you the way a normal person watched figure skating.

He was watching you the way he had been watching you for approximately five years without doing anything about it, which was with focused attention of someone who had accidentally learned the exact shape of their own feelings by observing them in a controlled environment and then never done anything with the information.

You were in the middle of your free skate program.

The arena was quiet, something that happen only when a competition in progress, a few hundred people all holding the same breath and you were in the center of the ice in a deep red costume that caught the light when you moved, and you were moving the way you always moved when you were doing this properly, like you were constantly sure of all the decisions and it was up to everyone else to accept it.

The triple axel was coming. Logan knew your program better than his own game tape.

He watched your set up for it and then you were in the air and rotating and landing clean, one blade, no stumble, the crowd exhaling around him in something close to relief.

Logan exhaled too.

You finished the program and stood in the center of the ice with your arms out and your chest heaving and your face doing something close to relief and the thin line with triumph.

He knew that face. He had photographs of that face going back five years.

Logan was completely gone.

After the scores were posted — first place, which was not a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention — Logan found you in the corridor outside the changing rooms, still in the costume, skates exchanged for boots, medal around your neck that you kept touching like making sure it was real.

You saw him and couldn't help but to smile.

"You came," you said.

"I always come," he said.

"I know." You were smiling the real one, not the competition smile, not the public smile. "How was the axel?"

"Perfect," he said. "Clean landing, good height, the rotation was exactly right."

"You sound like my coach."

"Your coach is correct."

You laughed and walked toward him and he opened his arms because that was what happened after competitions you walked into them and he held on and you smelled like the rink and some body lotion that he has been trying to steal for a long time, he had his chin on top of your head and everything was exactly the same as it always was.

Except that his heart was doing something extremely inconvenient.

"I have something to tell you," he said, into your hair.

"Mm?" You didn't move.

He had the words right there. Had been carrying them for approximately two years, which was when he had stopped being able to pretend to himself that what he felt was just friendship, had been practiced and ready and —

"You dropped your left shoulder in the step sequence," he said. "Third section. It cost you."

You pulled back and looked at him. "You can not be serious right now, Johnny."

"It's a small thing, but —"

"I just won," she said.

"I know. You also dropped your shoulder."

You stared at him for a long moment with a watchful expression.

"I hate you," you said.

"No you don't," he said.

"Maybe I do" you looked at him "No I don't," you confirmed.

You took his hand and pulled him toward the exit to find the others, and Logan walked behind you and thought about what he had almost said and hadn't. Logan had decided for once, to store away this information, maybe soon would come in handy.

two — the lazy day april, sophomore year

It was a Sunday in April, a Sunday that had decided to be warm for the first time all year, and you were lying on the floor of Logan's room with your legs up on his bed because the floor was cooler than the bed and you had been at the rink since six in the morning and every single part of you ached.

Logan was on the bed, technically reading something for class, practically staring at the ceiling.

You had been in this exact configuration approximately four hundred times over ten years. The comfortable silence of two people who had run out of things to say and were fine with that.

"My coach wants me to change the music for nationals," you said, to the ceiling.

"What's wrong with the current music?"

"She says it doesn't show enough range."

"What does she want instead?"

"Something more emotional apparently." You paused. "She used the word vulnerable which made me want to scream."

Logan made a sound that meant he was listening.

"I'm not un-vulnerable," you said. "I'm just — I show it differently."

"You show it on the ice," Logan said. "Anyone paying attention can see it."

You turned your head to look at him. He was still looking at the ceiling.

"That's a nice thing to say," you said.

"It's a true thing to say." He turned his head and looked at you. From this angle, floor to bed, you were looking at each other sideways, and there was something about the afternoon light coming through the window that was doing something to his expression, making it more open than usual, less managed.

"I've been thinking," he said.

"About what."

He looked at you for a moment. The open expression doing something more complicated.

"About —" he started.

Your phone went off.

The ringtone you had assigned to your coach, which you had made deliberately annoying so you couldn't ignore it. You grabbed it off the floor and sat up and mouthed sorry at Logan and answered.

Your coach talked for eleven minutes about the music change.

When you hung up Logan was reading again, or pretending to, and the afternoon light had shifted, and whatever the moment had been it had passed.

"What were you thinking about?" you said.

"Nothing," he said. "Doesn't matter."

You looked at him for a second longer than necessary.

Then you put your legs back up on his bed and went back to staring at the ceiling.

three — the boys september, junior year

The thing about you was that you were, objectively, extremely easy to be around.

Dean had arrived at this conclusion independently and over time, through the accumulated evidence of approximately a year of you being at various team events and group hangs and spontaneous Malone's trips, and it was not a controversial conclusion, Tucker had said the same thing, Garrett had nodded in agreement.

You were funny and direct and had opinions and didn't perform interest you didn't have, which was rarer than it should have been. You also had the unselfconscious ease of someone who had been comfortable on a competitive stage since you were fourteen, which meant you walked into rooms the same way you walked onto ice like you had already decided you belonged there.

Dean had been thinking about this for approximately three weeks when he cornered Logan after practice.

"Your figure skater friend," he said.

Logan looked at him over his equipment bag. "Her name is (Y/N)."

"Is she single?"

The locker room continued around them. Tucker was unwrapping tape. Garrett was checking his phone. Nobody appeared to be paying particular attention.

Logan's jaw did something.

"Yeah," he said. "She's single."

"Nice." Dean leaned against the locker with the easy confidence of someone who had made a decision. "Do you think she'd be open to —"

"She's focused on skating," Logan said. "Nationals are in February. She doesn't have time for —"

"I'm not talking about anything serious," Dean said. "Just —"

"She's busy," Logan said.

Dean looked at him.

Logan looked at his equipment bag.

"Sure," Dean said, slowly. "Right. Busy." A pause. "You sure you don't have a —"

"She's my best friend," Logan said. "Can you just — not."

Dean looked at him for a long moment with the expression of someone doing math.

"Okay," he said. "Sure."

He went back to his own locker.

Tucker caught his eye across the room and raised his eyebrows. Dean gave the smallest possible shrug, which in their particular shorthand meant: you are seeing what you think you're seeing.

Tucker looked at the ceiling briefly and then went back to his tape.

Logan texted you that night.

logan: what are you doing

yn: stretching. my hip flexors are staging a revolt. what's up

logan: nothing. just checking in

yn: at 10pm on a tuesday

logan: is that suspicious

yn: a little

logan: go stretch your hip flexors

yn: i am. you could come over and suffer with me

A pause. Longer than usual.

logan: be there in twenty

He showed up with food and sat on your floor and watched you stretch with the expression he sometimes had when he was thinking about something he wasn't saying. You didn't push. You had learned, over ten years, the difference between Logan processing something and Logan ready to talk about it.

You stretched your hip flexors.

He was quiet beside you.

It was, somehow, exactly enough.

four — the party november, junior year

Hannah had a very simple theory about Logan and you that she had shared with Allie approximately four months ago and had been collecting evidence for ever since.

The theory was: you were both completely in love with each other and were going to keep not doing anything about it until one of them finally cracked or they both graduated and went their separate ways, which would be a tragedy.

Allie's theory was identical, arrived at independently, and they had spent four months running what amounted to a covert observation project with no intervention component because, as Allie had said, correctly , very time anyone said anything to Logan he went quiet and every time anyone said anything to you, you laughed and changed the subject, and the only thing that was going to fix this was one of them actually doing something.

The party was in November, someone's house, the kind that happened naturally when enough people were in the same place with nothing specific to do. Allie and Hannah had come together. Logan and you had come separately and found each other within four minutes, which was, Hannah noted, always how it went.

You were in the corner of the living room now, in the configuration you always occupied at parties, close enough that yourshoulders touched, talking in the way you talked when you were somewhere loud, which was slightly lower and slightly more direct, leaning in.

"He's doing it again," Hannah said.

Allie, beside her, followed her eyeline. "The shoulder thing."

"He always does the shoulder thing when he's about to say something."

They watched. Across the room, Logan's shoulder had indeed done the thing, a slight forward tilt, the specific posture of someone turning toward something rather than standing beside it.

You were looking up at him with the expression you had when you were actually listening to someone, which was different from your polite listening expression and your processing expression and was reserved for maybe three people in your life.

"He's going to do it," Hannah said.

"He's not going to do it," Allie said.

"He's leaning in —"

"He never does it."

"There's always a first time —"

Someone across the room called Logan's name. Loudly. Urgently. Something about a game in the kitchen that required his participation immediately.

Logan closed his eyes very briefly.

Then he straightened up and said something to you — one second probably, or back in a minute — and went toward the kitchen.

You watched him go with an expression that lasted approximately two seconds before you reorganized it into something neutral.

Allie looked at Hannah.

Hannah looked at Allie.

"I'm going to lose my mind," Hannah said.

"Same," said Allie.

They looked at each other.

"We're not intervening," Allie said.

"We're absolutely not intervening," Hannah agreed.

They watched you drift toward the snack table looking slightly like someone who had been about to hear something and hadn't.

"We're not intervening," Allie said again, more firmly.

"Right," said Hannah. "Definitely not."

allie: okay so

hannah: i KNOW

allie: the shoulder thing

hannah: and her FACE when he left

allie: someone needs to do something

hannah: we said we weren't intervening

allie: i know what we said

hannah: allie

allie: i'm just saying

hannah: we are not telling them

allie: fine

hannah: fine

allie: ...fine

hannah: goodnight allie

allie: if they're still doing this at graduation i'm saying something

hannah: GOODNIGHT ALLIE

five — the almost january, senior year

You found out about the Dean thing entirely by accident.

You had been in the kitchen at the off campus house, making tea because it was January and you were cold and your coach had banned coffee during competition prep, and Tucker had come in and started making a sandwich and you had been coexisting peacefully until Tucker said, entirely unprompted and clearly without thinking:

"By the way, for what it's worth, I told Dean not to."

You looked at him. "Told Dean not to what."

Tucker looked at his sandwich. Then at you. Then at his sandwich again with the expression of someone who had realized, too late, that they had said something.

"Ask about you," he said finally. "Like — ask Logan if he could pursue you. I told him it was a bad idea."

You put down your tea.

"Dean asked Logan if he could pursue me," you said.

"Back in September. Logan said you were busy with skating." Tucker picked up his sandwich. "Which was — I mean, you are busy. But also —" he stopped. "I probably shouldn't have said anything."

"Probably," you said.

Tucker took a bite of his sandwich and left the kitchen with the energy of someone removing themselves from a situation.

You stood at the counter with your tea and thought about September and Logan showing up at your apartment at ten on a Tuesday for no reason, sitting on your floor, being quiet beside you in a way that had felt like something without ever becoming something.

She's busy, he had apparently said.

You looked at the doorway Tucker had disappeared through.

You looked at your tea.

Hm, you thought.

Logan found you twenty minutes later in the living room, already in his jacket, apparently on his way out.

"Hey," he said. "You good?"

"Fine," you said. "Where are you going?"

"Skate rental shop. I need new laces." He paused. "Do you want to come? We can get food after."

You looked at him.

"Sure," you said.

You got your coat.

one — the one time he did january, senior year.

The skate rental shop was quiet on a January afternoon, the mundane warmth of a place that smelled like rubber and old equipment, and Logan found his laces in approximately four minutes and then stood in the aisle for another ten not moving, which you had learned to recognize as Logan making up his mind about something.

You looked at a display of blade covers that you did not need.

"Tucker told me," you said, to the blade covers.

A pause.

"Told you what," Logan said.

"About Dean. In September."

The aisle was very quiet.

"She's busy," you said. "That's what you said, apparently."

Another pause. Longer.

"You were," Logan said. "You were in nationals prep."

"Logan."

"What."

You turned to look at him. He was looking at the laces in his hands with the expression he got when he was trying to decide something and hating that he had to decide it.

"Why did you say she's busy," you said. "Instead of — anything else."

He looked up. His jaw did the thing.

"Because," he started.

"Because why."

He looked at you. Really looked at you, the way he sometimes did when he thought you weren't paying attention, except you were paying attention and he knew it and he still wasn't looking away.

"Because it's you," he said. "And I couldn't just — I didn't want Dean to —" he stopped. Started again. "I didn't want anyone to."

The skate rental shop was very quiet.

"Okay," you said.

"Okay?" he said.

"That's — I needed to know that." You looked at the blade covers. You looked at him. "I also needed you to know that I'm not busy. I mean — I am. But I'm not. Not for — not for this."

Logan looked at you for a long moment.

"Not for this," he repeated.

"Not for you," you said, which was the more honest version, which you had decided to say because you were twenty-two and you had been doing this for five years and Tucker had accidentally said something in a kitchen and it was January and you were tired of not saying things.

The laces in Logan's hands had been thoroughly analyzed.

He put them back on the shelf.

"I was going to tell you after your competition," he said. "In February. Your sophomore year."

"You talked about my shoulder."

"I know," he said. "I know I did."

"And on the Sunday in April —"

"Your coach called."

"And at the party in November —"

"Dean," he said, simply, and you almost laughed.

"Five times," you said.

"Probably more," he said. "I stopped counting."

You looked at him. This person who had been in the penalty box when you were eleven and had told you your shoulder dropped and had come to every competition and had stood in a locker room in September and said she's busy when what he meant was something else entirely.

"So say it now," you said. "We're in a skate rental shop in January. There's nobody here. Say it now."

Logan looked at you.

"I love you," he said. Not dramatically just simply, the way he said true things, like it was information that had been waiting a long time to be delivered and was relieved to finally arrive. "I've loved you since you told me I didn't ask and then tried the spin again anyway. I love you and I'm sorry it took me this long."

The blade covers blurred slightly.

You reached up and took the lapel of his jacket in your hand.

"You talked about my shoulder," you said.

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

"I'm going to bring that up for years."

"I know," he said. "I deserve that."

You pulled him down by the jacket.

He kissed you in the skate rental shop in January, between the blade covers and the laces display, with nobody watching and nothing to interrupt, and it was warm and unhurried and tasted like something that had been a long time coming and had finally, simply, arrived.

When you pulled back he had the expression you had been trying not to notice for five years — open and certain and entirely unmanaged.

"For the record," you said, "my shoulder doesn't drop anymore."

"It really doesn't," he said. "You've completely fixed it."

"I know," you said. "I'm very good."

He laughed and pulled you back in, and the skate rental shop continued to be entirely quiet around you, indifferent and perfect.

You told Allie and Hannah together, which was the only way to do it.

You had barely gotten the words out before Hannah made a sound that could only be described as vindicated, and Allie said I told you to Hannah at the same moment Hannah said I told you to Allie, and then they looked at each other and then at you and both started talking at the same time.

"The shoulder thing at the party —"

"In sophomore year when you called after the competition —"

"The thing in September with Dean —"

"We knew," Hannah said. "We have known for so long."

"How long," you said.

They looked at each other.

"Since the first time we saw you two in the same room," Allie said.

You looked at them. "And you didn't say anything?"

"We said we weren't going to intervene," Hannah said, with the dignity of someone honoring a commitment.

"You could have said something to me," you said.

"We said we weren't going to intervene," Allie said, equally dignified.

You looked at them both.

"I cannot believe," you said.

"You're welcome," they said, simultaneously.

Logan told the team at dinner.

Or rather, Dean asked where you were and Logan said she's coming later and Tucker said she's coming? is she — and Logan said yeah in the even tone that contained a lot of information, and Dean looked at Tucker and Tucker looked at Dean and Garrett looked at his food and the table continued exactly as it always had except that something had shifted in the specific, settled way of something that had always been heading here finally arriving.

When you got there Logan moved over without being asked and you sat beside him and his shoulder was warm against yours and everything was exactly the same as it had always been.

Except that his hand found yours under the table.

And this time he didn't let go.

allie: so

hannah: SO

allie: we called it

hannah: from the beginning

allie: the penalty box story is the most romantic thing i have ever heard

hannah: RIGHT

allie: eleven years old

hannah: her shoulder dropped

allie: her SHOULDER DROPPED

hannah: i'm going to think about this forever

allie: same

allie: we did good

hannah: we didn't do anything

allie: we observed supportively

hannah: that's true

allie: that counts

hannah: it really does

[chanelnara]

off limits | part 2

Paring: John Logan x Graham!reader

Summary: Logan knows better than to fall for his best friend’s little sister.

wc: 2.26k; tags: graham!reader; figure skater!reader; reader is inspired by alysa liu; brother’s best friend; hockey player x figure skater; mouthful reader; multiple chapters fic;

Previous parts

The boys house was unusually quiet. Which probably meant nobody was at home or just too busy to entertained her.

Y/N sat cross-legged on Garrett’s bed with three textbooks spread around her, highlighter between her teeth while she reread the same paragraph for what felt like the tenth time.

Sports psychology should not be that difficult. But it was after a four-hour skating practice.

Garrett had texted her twenty minutes ago saying he ran late and to just wait in his room, so that’s what she was doing. And attempting to study too. Attempting being the key word.

The room smelled faintly like laundry detergent and hockey gear, which should’ve been a terrible combination but somehow wasn’t. Her brother’s room had always weirdly felt safe. Even growing up.

Especially growing up.

Y/N pushed the thought away before it could linger too long and reached for her coffee again only to realize the cup was empty.

She groaned dramatically and fell backward against Garrett’s pillows.

“Studying?” a male voice echoed through the room.

Y/N lifted her head immediately. Logan stood in the doorway wearing gray sweats and a black Briar hockey shirt, hair still damp from the shower.

fuck, she cursed mentally.

“Unfortunately,” she sighed. “Education is ruining my life.”

Logan smirked slightly and leaned against the doorframe. “Thought figure skaters were supposed to be disciplined.”

“We are. That’s why I’m suffering academically instead of just quitting.”

He walked into the room without asking, grabbing something from Garrett’s dresser.

Y/N narrowed her eyes immediately.

“You just casually walk into my brother’s room and take his stuff?” she asked in a teasing tone, sitting up and crossing her arms.

“We literally live together.”

“Still…”

Logan snorted softly.

Y/N watched him for a second. Then forced her attention back to her textbooks.

The thing about Logan was that he was objectively annoying. Everybody knew it. He flirted too much, smiled too easily, invented the most ridiculous acronyms known to mankind, and carried himself with the effortless confidence of someone who had never once been embarrassed a day in his life. Except Y/N didn’t fully buy it.

Because underneath all the jokes and lazy grins and shameless flirting, there was always something else there. Something quieter. Harder to catch. Logan was good at performing version of himself people expected.

Funny. Charming. Easygoing. The guy who could walk into a room and make everybody laugh within five minutes. And he did it so naturally most people never looked past it.

But Y/N did.

She noticed the way his smile sometimes lingered a second too long, like he was making sure it still looked convincing. The way he always deflected whenever conversations got too personal. The way he could spend years surrounded by people and somehow still keep the important parts of himself completely hidden.

It was strange, honestly. Her brother had lived with Logan for years. The team practically treated him like family. And yet Y/N was almost sure none of them truly knew what went on underneath all that confidence and charisma and stupidly pretty hair.

Logan made people feel like they knew him without ever actually letting them get close enough to. A talented liar. Or maybe just a talented actor. Either way, she saw through him more than he probably realized.

Which, unfortunately, only made him more interesting. He was also handsome and charismatic. Which made tolerating him easier than it should’ve been.

“You’re staring again,” Logan said casually.

Y/N blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You get this little judgmental wrinkle between your eyebrows.” He pointed lazily toward her face. “Means you’re thinking mean things.”

“I’m always thinking mean things,” she joked.

He chuckled and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, but these seemed personal.”

She gasped quietly. “You think I’d bully you?” she said sarcastcally.

“I think you always bully me,” he replied immediately. “And I think you actually enjoy it.”

“That’s because you make it so easy.” she winked and turned her attetion back to her textbooks.

Logan laughed under his breath while opening Garrett’s mini fridge. Y/N watched him steal one of Garrett’s protein drinks without hesitation.

“Wow,” she said. “Imagine if he knew you were touching his stuff.”

“He’d survive.”

Logan twisted the cap open before glancing toward the textbooks around her. “What class?”

“Sports psych,” she groaned in frustration.

“That bad?” he chuckled.

“And I’d rather let somebody hit me with a car.”

“Dramatic"

“You should see chapter six.”

Logan chuckled and moved closer then, dropping into Garrett’s desk chair backwards so his arms rested across the top of it. Too comfortable. All the boys were always comfortable around her, honestly. “You need help?” he asked.

Y/N stared at him. Then slowly closed her textbook. “…John Logan,” she said carefully, “offering tutoring?”

He looked offended. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“I never said stupid. I implied academically challenged.”

He rolled his eyes, but there was amusement there. “Mean,” he said. "I actually got straight A’s in that class, just so you know.”

She chuckled as he moved closer to get a look at her other notes.

And for a few minutes, the room settled into something easy. Discussing sports psychology theory together.

Comfortable.

Y/N sitting on Garrett’s bed in oversized hoodie with leggings and messy practice hair. Logan half-turned toward her in the desk chair.

Afternoon light spilling through the windows.

It felt weirdly domestic. Neither of them noticed it. Or maybe they did. Which was probably worse.

Then the bedroom door suddenly swung open. Garrett stopped dead.

His eyes moved from Y/N on his bed.

To Logan in his chair.

Back to Y/N.

Silence.

“Why,” Garrett asked slowly, “does this look illegal?”

“Hey, Gare,” Y/N said brightly the second Garrett walked in.

Before he could even react, she jumped off the bed and practically launched herself at him.

Garrett caught her automatically with a grunt as she wrapped herself around him easily, arms around his shoulders while he steadied her by the waist out of pure instinct.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “why would you launch yourself at people?”

“That’s because I’m graceful and delicate skater.”

“You kicked someone with a skate last month.”

“Again… she deserved it,” Y/N said, annoyed.

Logan snorted from the chair.

Y/N ignored him completely. She pulled away from the hug and stepped back, turning around to look at Logan.

“Johnny here is helping me with Sports Psych.”

The room went silent. Logan visibly choked on the protein drink. Garrett looked horrified. Y/N smiled wider.

Because there were very few things funnier in this world than calling John Logan ‘Johnny.’

Especially knowing he hated it.

“Absolutely not,” Logan said immediately.

“Oh, relax, Johnny,” she teased.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why? It’s cute.”

Garrett looked between the two of them suspiciously. “Why’re you even in my room?”

“You told me to wait here.”

“Well… not him.” Garrett pointed at his friend.

“I live here,” Logan pointed out.

It was unconscious, the way Garrett’s hand immediately touched the back of her head briefly as she stepped away.

Protective. Automatic. Years old.

Logan noticed it before he could stop himself. And maybe that should’ve been enough to keep his brain functioning normally. Because Garrett didn’t just act like an older brother around Y/N. He acted like someone who’d spent half his life making sure nothing bad ever touched her.

Which meant Logan should definitely stop noticing stupid things.

Like the way Y/N’s eyes crinkled when she smiled.

Or how her hair was falling out of its ponytail after practice.

Or the fact that she kept stealing Garrett’s hoodie sleeves to hide her hands inside them.

Dangerous territory.

“Wait,” Garrett said suddenly, narrowing his eyes. “Why’s Logan helping you study?”

Y/N answered immediately. “Because unlike you, he actually passed the class.”

Logan looked smug for approximately two seconds before Garrett said:

“I didn’t take Sports Psych,” he explained before looking at Logan. “You failed Intro to Biology twice.”

“Okay, first of all,” Logan pointed defensively, “that class was trying to ruin my life. And second… this isn’t Biology.”

Y/N burst out laughing. Actually laughing.

Head tipped back slightly, shoulders shaking, completely unfiltered amusement.

And Logan—

Logan stared for half a second too long. Because that laugh was unfair.

Logan immediately looked away.

“…anyway,” Y/N said, still grinning as she climbed back onto the bed, “one of you is buying me food because studying is making me emotionally fragile.”

“You’re emotionally fragile all the time,” Garrett replied.

“But now I’m hungry too.”

Garrett rolled his eyes like he wasn’t about to do exactly that.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, already pulling his phone out. “What do you want?”

Y/N looked up from her notes innocently. “Love and financial stability.”

“You’re getting pizza.”

“Close enough.”

Garrett ignored her and started typing into his phone while Y/N reorganized her textbooks across the bed, stuffing loose papers back into folders with the exhausted movements of somebody one inconvenience away from academic collapse.

A second later Garrett shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“I ordered for all of us,” he announced. “Even your weird broccoli one.”

Y/N gasped softly. “See? This is why you’re my favorite brother.”

“I’m your only brother.” and She winked at him.

Across the room, Logan slowly locked his own phone and slid it back into his sweatpants pocket.

Quietly. Slowly.

Because thirty seconds earlier, he had been halfway through ordering the exact same thing.

Broccoli, extra cheese, no olives. Her stupidly specific favorite pizza.

He hadn’t even thought about it. That was the problem. It had been automatic.

Y/N kept talking, completely oblivious. “Dean cried last time I made him try it.”

“That’s because broccoli doesn’t belong on pizza,” Garrett argued.

“It literally does.”

“It literally doesn’t.”

Logan barely heard them. Because suddenly his brain was stuck on one deeply unfortunate realization:

He knew Y/N’s order. Not just vaguely. Exactly.

He knew she hated olives. Knew she liked extra cheese. Knew she drank coffee like sleep was optional. Knew she preferred green apple Gatorade after skating practice because “the blue one tastes like chemicals.”

None of that information should exist in his head. At least not in the amount of detail it apparently did.

Logan leaned back in Garrett’s desk chair slowly, watching Y/N argue dramatically with her brother about pizza toppings while absentmindedly braiding and rebraiding the end of her ponytail.

And for one very brief, very dangerous second, it hit him. Not hard. Not enough to fully understand it yet. Just enough to feel something shift slightly underneath his ribs.

Y/N looked toward him suddenly. “Johnny, back me up.”

Logan looked up confused, met Garrett and Y/N already staring at him, and answered automatically. “Yeah… broccoli pizza’s good.”

Garrett looked betrayed. Y/N looked victorious.

“See? Johnny gets it,” Y/N said smugly, shoving the last notebook into her bag.

Logan groaned immediately. “Stop calling me that.”

She only grinned wider as she swung the bag over her shoulder and hopped off the bed.

“At least someone in this house has taste,” she continued dramatically, looking directly at Garrett. “Which is impressive considering testosterone levels around here.”

Garrett looked unimpressed. “I’ve been here for only ten minutes and you’re already annoying me.”

“And yet you’d miss me if I died.”

“I’d appreciate the silence.”

Y/N gasped quietly like he’d wounded her deeply, then walked over and kissed his cheek quickly anyway. Then Y/N turned toward the doorway, already pulling the hoodie sleeves over her hands again.

“I’m gonna shower before the pizza gets here,” she said casually. “Don’t eat my slices or I’ll report all of you to the NCAA.”

“Nobody wants your vegetable pizza,” Garrett called after her.

“Liar.”

She pointed accusingly toward Logan as she backed into the hallway.

“Johnny likes it.”

“Stop calling me Johnny!” he shouted back.

Y/N laughed, bright and effortless, as she disappeared down the hall toward the bathroom like she belonged there just as much as the boys did.

The room fell quiet the second she left.

Garrett moved toward his dresser without much thought, tossing his practice shirt onto the floor.

Logan stayed where he was in the desk chair. Still oddly aware of Y/N’s laugh echoing faintly from down the hallway. Dangerous. Very dangerous.

Garrett suddenly looked over at him.

“…what?”

Logan blinked. “What what?”

“You’re being weird.”

“I’m literally just sitting here.”

“Yeah, weirdly.”

Logan scoffed. “You are weird.”

Garrett narrowed his eyes slightly like he was trying to solve a puzzle. Then—

“Don’t flirt with my sister.”

The sentence came completely out of nowhere. Logan stared at him.

“Jesus Christ,” he laughed incredulously. “Where did that even come from?”

Garrett shrugged once, but there was something watchful underneath it.

“You flirt with everybody.”

“Yeah, because it’s fun.”

“It won’t be fun with her.”

Something about the way he said it made the room feel heavier suddenly.

Not aggressive. Not threatening. Just honest. Protective in a way Garrett never tried to hide.

Logan leaned back slower this time, forcing himself to roll his eyes casually.

“Oh, come on, G,” he said in an exaggeratedly seductive tone. “You know you’re the only Graham I have eyes for.”

He winked at Garrett, who immediately threw a pillow at his head.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Logan laughed, catching the pillow easily and hugging it against his chest.

And somehow that should’ve made him feel better.

Instead, for reasons he absolutely did not want to examine, it didn’t.

an: thank you so much for all the love ! thanks to you I'm inspired to make this a multiple parts series. i hope you like it :) next chapter only next week by the way

[chanelnara]

off limits | part 1

Paring: John Logan x Graham!reader

Summary: Logan knows better than to fall for his best friend’s little sister.

wc: 2,2k graham!reader; figure skater!reader; reader is inspired by alysa liu; brother’s best friend; hockey player x figure skater; mouthful reader; multiple chapter fic

Their house smelled like beer and sweat. Which meant the party was dying.

Bodies still crowded the living room, music still thumped through the speakers, and someone was loudly arguing about video game hockey in the kitchen, but the energy had shifted hours ago, from drunk and chaotic to lazy and half-dead.

Logan leaned back against the couch with a bottle hanging loosely from his hand while Dean flirted shamelessly with two girls near the staircase.

Typical.

Tucker was passed out in an armchair.

Also typical.

And Garrett… “Get your damn feet off my table,” he said, glaring across the room at a freshman defenseman currently ignoring him completely.

Logan snorted into his beer. “Y’know,” he drawled, “you get more aggressive every year.”

Garrett flipped him off without looking away from the kid. “I’m two seconds away from murdering half this team.”

“Only half?” Logan asked, smirking.

Before Garrett could answer, the front door swung open hard enough to hit the wall. Cold air rushed inside.

And then:

“Jesus Christ, this place smells disgusting,” a familiar female voice said dramatically.

Logan looked up automatically.

Y/N Graham stood in the doorway wearing leggings, an oversized Briar hockey hoodie (which was, by the way, stolen) and the kind of expression that suggested she’d rather be literally anywhere else. Still… she was here.

Her duffel bag slid off her shoulder as she kicked the door shut behind her.

“Oh, thank God,” Dean said immediately. “An attractive person finally showed up.”

Y/N rolled her eyes. “Still using that line?”

“Still working?” he winked.

“It’s really not,” she said casually.

Garrett frowned from the kitchen. “What are you doing here?”

She stared at him blankly. “Hello to you too, sunshine,” she said sarcastically as she moved to give him a light kiss on the cheek.

“Weren’t you at practice?” he asked as he leaned down to receive it.

“Yeah… like three hours ago.” She checked her phone for the time. “I texted you.”

Garrett pulled his phone out, checked it, then shoved it back into his pocket. “Didn’t see it.”

“No way,” she deadpanned. “You mean you ignored your phone during a party? That’s so unlike you.”

Logan huffed out a laugh before he could stop himself.

Y/N’s eyes flicked toward him briefly. Just for a second. Like she only now acknowledged he was there.

Then she walked straight past the couch and headed for the kitchen like she owned the place. Which, honestly, she kind of did at this point. Especially when Dean instantly grabbed her bag from the floor and took it to the living room like second nature.

Nobody questioned it anymore.

Not when she’d been hanging around the team since their freshman year. Not when she knew all their names, their habits, their schedules. Not when she walked into their house without knocking and immediately started stealing their food.

“Is that my pizza?” Dean yelled, watching her take a container out of the fridge.

Y/N opened the takeout container. “If you have to ask, they’re not yours anymore.”

“That’s stealing,” he complained.

“That’s survival,” she replied, already placing the leftovers in the microwave.

Dean pretended to be annoyed about it. But not really, already accepting the terrible fate that his leftover pizza didn’t belong to him anymore.

Garrett, meanwhile, was still watching his sister with narrowed eyes like she might spontaneously set the house on fire if left unsupervised for too long.

She was too much like Garrett. Same sharp mouth, same stubborn confidence, same tendency to look at people like she already knew exactly how to win the argument before it started.

It made her annoyingly difficult to intimidate.

Logan had learned that pretty quickly.

The first time they met, she’d looked him up and down and said:

“You definitely look like a hockey player,” she said.

Logan laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The hair. The ego. The vacant expression. Very on brand.”

That had been two years ago.

And now she was just… always there. Curled up on their couch during movie nights. Stealing all their hoodies. Yelling at the TV during games. Bullying Dean with terrifying efficiency. Part of the furniture, basically.

Y/N hopped onto the kitchen counter and pointed at Logan’s bottle. “Is that the last Diet Coke?”

“No…” he lied, looking away because he knew she’d fight him for it.

“Give it to me,” she ordered.

Logan held the bottle out lazily. “Then come take it, Graham.”

Her eyes narrowed immediately.

Garrett didn’t even look up from his phone. “Don’t encourage her.”

“Too late, man,” Dean said.

Y/N slid off the counter and walked over. Logan expected her to snatch the bottle and leave.

Instead, she stopped directly in front of him.

Close enough for him to notice the cold flush in her cheeks from outside. Close enough to smell winter air and something faintly sweet underneath it.

She tilted her head and pouted cutely.

Logan grinned slowly. “That’s not gonna work on me, princess. I’m not your brother… or Tucker.”

“But… there’s only beer left in the fridge,” she said sadly.

“Come on, Johnny,” she said softly. “You’re really gonna let Garrett’s little sister die of dehydration?”

Logan grinned slowly.

“Pretty sure Coke does the opposite.”

“Wow,” she said, unimpressed. “And they let you into college.”

Dean barked out a laugh somewhere behind them.

Logan looked down at her, still smiling, and willingly handed over the bottle. She smiled and grabbed it before moving to the living room with his soda and Dean’s pizza.

But across the room, Garrett was watching the entire interaction with narrowed eyes.

He knew hockey players couldn’t be trusted around his sister.

Good thing Logan agreed.

And he had nothing to worry about.

“So… what are you doing here, Baby G?” Tucker asked sleepily, barely lifting his head from the armchair as Y/N practically threw herself onto the couch with Logan’s stolen Coke still in hand.

“My roommate’s having her boyfriend over tonight,” she said easily, stretching her legs across the cushions. “She asked me to disappear for a few hours.”

Dean looked offended on her behalf. “And your first thought was to come here?”

Y/N took another sip of the soda. “Well, yeah. You idiots always have food.”

“That’s weirdly touching,” Dean admitted.

“It’s not meant to be.”

Garrett pointed at her from the kitchen. “You’re not sleeping here.”

Y/N blinked at him. “I literally wasn’t asking permission.”

“You should,” he replied.

“Fine,” Y/N said dramatically. “I’ll just sleep in some motel then.”

Garrett looked horrified. “Absolutely not,” he practically shouted.

She smirked immediately, seeing he’d fallen for her teasing.

“You are not staying alone in some random motel.”

Y/N threw her hands up. “You seriously need to stop acting like I require constant supervision.”

Garrett stared at her blankly. “Y/N…”

“What?” she asked knowingly.

“Two days ago you got suspended from practice for fighting another girl.”

Y/N scoffed immediately. “She deserved it.”

“Wait, what?” Dean perked up instantly.

Y/N scoffed again. “Some girl at practice kept acting like I stole her routine or something.”

“You did steal her routine,” Garrett muttered.

“She wasn’t performing it correctly,” she said, offended.

“And you threw a skate guard at her.”

Her jaw dropped dramatically. “It barely hit her.”

Logan barked out a laugh. Tucker and Dean joined immediately.

Y/N pointed at them. “Thank you.”

Garrett looked exhausted. “I hate all of you.”

“That’s not true,” Y/N said sweetly. “You love me.”

“I tolerate you because we share DNA.”

“Aww.”

She leaned back deeper into the couch cushions, entirely too comfortable for someone who technically didn’t live there. Not that anyone was surprised.

At some point over the years, Y/N had stopped being Garrett’s little sister visiting campus and started becoming part of the house itself.

Logan sat on the end of the couch and looked at her.

She looked exhausted.

There was still faint glitter near her eyes from practice, her hair messy from being shoved into a rushed ponytail, oversized hoodie sleeves covering half her hands.

Cute.

The thought came and went so fast Logan barely registered it.

Garrett’s sister.

Mouthy figure skater. Professional thief of their food. Human headache.

Nothing more.

“Hey,” Y/N suddenly said, tossing a pretzel at his chest. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Logan caught it automatically. “I’m trying to figure out how Garrett and you came from the same genetic pool.”

“Easy,” she replied. “I got the personality. He got the anger issues.”

Garrett flipped her off from across the room.

“See? I’m right.”

Y/N smiled proudly.

“Anyways,” she said, taking another sip, “you boys don’t mind me. Just finish your party. I can sleep on the couch.”

She sounded completely unconcerned about it already, like the decision had been made hours ago and everyone else was just catching up.

Before Garrett could argue again, she shifted deeper into the cushions, grabbing one of the throw pillows and shoving it under her head.

Logan snorted softly.

“She’s nesting,” Tucker said.

“I do not nest,” Y/N mumbled, eyes already half-closed.

“That’s my pillow, by the way,” Dean pointed out.

“Communism.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how communism works,” he replied.

Garrett crossed his arms. “You’re not sleeping down here while the house is still filled with people.”

Y/N cracked one eye open to stare at him. “Garrett. I grew up with you. Trust me when I say none of your friends scare me.”

“That’s because you have terrible survival instincts.”

She smiled lazily. “Maybe. But I’m tired enough not to care.”

And honestly, she looked exhausted.

The dark circles under her eyes were faint but there, her voice rough with sleepiness after what was probably hours at the rink.

Figure skating looked elegant until you actually watched the training. Then it just looked painful.

Logan had seen enough practices to know that much.

Y/N shifted again until her sock-covered feet ended up in his lap without warning.

He looked down at them. Then at her.

“…seriously?” he asked, annoyed.

“You’re warm,” she said simply, not even bothering to move.

Garrett rubbed a hand down his face like this entire room was raising his blood pressure by the second.

Within minutes, her breathing evened out.

Asleep.

Even with the music and chatting around her.

Dean noticed first. “Wow. She’s actually dead.”

Garrett immediately grabbed the nearest blanket and tossed it over her without a second thought.

Something in Logan’s chest tightened strangely at the sight.

Not because Garrett was protective, that part was expected. But because Y/N relaxed almost instantly after the blanket covered her. Like she trusted, without even thinking about it, that her brother would always take care of her.

Garrett glanced toward Logan then. “Don’t let anyone wake her up.”

Logan frowned. “And why am I responsible for that?”

“Because I know you won’t anyway,” Garrett said, clapping Logan’s shoulder once before heading off to probably end the party.

It wasn’t even said like a warning.

That was the worst part.

It sounded like trust.

Dean followed right behind him, still muttering something about his stolen pillow, while Tucker dragged himself upstairs looking half-conscious.

And then suddenly, the living room was quiet.

And Y/N was asleep beside him.

Or technically… on him.

Logan looked down carefully. Her feet were still in his lap, tangled under the blanket Garrett had thrown over her earlier. One of her hands was tucked under her cheek, hair falling across her face messily.

She looked peaceful asleep.

Softer.

Not like the sharp-mouthed girl constantly arguing with everybody in the house.

Just tired.

Logan shifted slightly, testing to see if he could leave.

Y/N immediately made a small sound of protest and moved closer unconsciously, pressing her legs more firmly against him like she was searching for warmth in her sleep.

Logan froze.

Completely froze.

“…seriously?” he muttered under his breath, throwing his head back.

Because now if he moved, she’d wake up.

And somehow that felt illegal considering how exhausted she looked.

He leaned his head back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling with the exhausted resignation of a man realizing the universe hated him personally.

This was ridiculous.

The same girl who once laughed at him for walking into a glass door.

The same girl who stole his fries every single time she came over.

The same girl who called him “Johnny Boy” specifically because she knew it annoyed him.

There was absolutely no reason for him to suddenly be hyper aware of the weight of her legs across his lap. Or the heaviness of her breathing. Or the hair falling across her face.

And yet—

His eyes dropped back to her face.

A strand of hair had fallen over her cheek. Without thinking, Logan reached over slightly to move it away.

The second his fingers brushed her skin, Y/N frowned softly in her sleep before relaxing again almost immediately.

Trusting. Comfortable.

Like she never once considered he could be anything except safe.

Something twisted strangely in his chest.

Logan pulled his hand back fast.

“Yeah,” he muttered quietly to himself, staring back at the ceiling again. “This is exactly how people die.”

Next part