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[atwingeofenvy]

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[pucksandpower]

half a heartbeat

Dean Di Laurentis x Maxwell!Reader

Summary: grief doesn’t ask permission before it moves … and neither does Dean. When the passenger seat that should’ve been yours is suddenly empty in every sense of the word, he becomes the only thing standing between you and the void, one milkshake, one held hand, one impossible morning at a time. But comfort has a way of turning into something neither of you meant to feel, and admitting it means risking the one person who’s still standing when everything else has fallen down

Warnings: you’re going to need tissues

Dean tugs at the collar of his suit. Usually, he feels like a million bucks in this thing. Today, it feels like a straightjacket.

He sits in the second row of the church, staring at the polished mahogany casket resting at the altar. The scent of hundreds of white lilies is thick and cloying in the air, mixing with the sharp smell of floor wax. It makes his stomach churn.

“Dean, honey,” his mother whispers, her hand gently covering his. “Are you holding up?”

He looks to his left. His mother’s eyes are red-rimmed, her makeup flawlessly intact but her expression completely shattered. Beside her, his father sits with a stoic, grave expression, his jaw tight. They are high-powered attorneys, people who rip apart witnesses for a living and negotiate million-dollar deals without breaking a sweat. But right now, they just look like two devastated parents grieving a boy who practically lived at their house over the summer.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Dean lies, his voice a low, raspy gravel.

“You don’t have to be fine,” his father murmurs, leaning in slightly. “Not today. Not for a long time.”

Dean swallows hard and looks away. He isn’t fine. Beau is in that box. His best friend. His blood brother. Briar University’s star quarterback, the guy with the golden arm and the shit-eating grin.

Dead.

The word still doesn’t make sense in his brain. It’s a typo. A bad joke. Dean knows a lot of things. He knows how to throw a party, how to close down a bar, and how to charm his way out of a parking ticket. He knows how to live. He doesn’t know how to do this. He doesn’t know how to look at a wooden box and accept that his best friend is never going to throw a football at his head again.

“Hey,” a low voice says from the pew behind him.

Dean turns his head. Logan, Garrett, and Tucker are sitting right behind him, all wearing dark suits, looking equally as wrecked.

“You see her yet?” Logan asks, keeping his voice strictly to a whisper.

Dean shakes his head. “No. Have you?”

“Joanna walked in a few minutes ago,” Garrett says, rubbing the back of his neck. “She said they were right behind her. Beau’s dad is in a wheelchair. Neck brace. It’s … it’s bad, man.”

Dean exhales a shaky breath, turning his attention to the front row. The family pews. Empty so far.

His chest tightens at the thought of you.

You and Beau. Beau and you. The Maxwell twins. You were glued to the hip from day one. When Dean met Beau freshman year, he met you by extension. As a cheerleader, you were always around the athletic department, but even without the pompoms, you would have been there. The three of you became inseparable.

Dean closes his eyes, a memory hitting him so hard it physically aches.

***

“Dude, she’s my twin. You can’t look at her like that,” Beau says, tossing a crumpled-up napkin across the booth at Malone’s

“Like what?” Dean deflects, catching the napkin with one hand and smirking. “I’m looking at her like she’s hoarding the last order of chili cheese fries.”

“I am hoarding them,” you say, pulling the greasy basket closer to your chest. “And if you try to take them, Di Laurentis, I’ll stab you with this plastic fork. I’m not playing around.”

“Fierce. I like it,” Dean laughs, leaning across the table.

“Stop flirting with my sister,” Beau groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Seriously, Dean. You have a new girl in your room every night. Leave this one alone.”

“I’m not flirting,” Dean argues, kicking your shin lightly under the table. “I’m just appreciating her aggressive approach to saturated fats.”

“You’re a pig,” you tell him, though you’re trying not to smile. You spear a fry and point it at him. “And for the record, Beau, I can handle Dean. He’s all talk.”

“I am definitely not all talk,” Dean says, winking at you.

“Gross,” Beau deadpans. “Both of you. Gross. Eat your fries, Y/N, before I steal them myself.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” you gasp.

“Try me,” Beau challenges, his eyes lighting up with that familiar, competitive fire.

***

The heavy oak doors at the back of the church open, snapping Dean back to the present. The low murmur of the packed church falls completely silent.

Dean turns.

You are walking down the center aisle.

His breath catches in his throat. You look completely empty. Your spine is rigidly straight, holding you up purely on autopilot. You are wearing a simple black dress, your face pale and completely devoid of makeup. There are dark, bruised-looking circles under your eyes. Beside you is your older sister, Joanna, gripping your arm, and behind you, your mother is pushing your father in a wheelchair.

Dean watches as you walk right past his pew. You don’t look at him. You don’t look at anyone. You are staring straight ahead at the casket, your eyes locked onto the polished wood like it’s the only thing keeping you anchored to the floor.

He wants to reach out. He wants to grab your hand, pull you into his lap, and hide you from the hundreds of pitying eyes staring at you. But he stays frozen in his seat.

You sit down in the front row. Joanna sits beside you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. You just sit there, perfectly still.

The service begins. The pastor steps up to the podium, his voice echoing through the massive sanctuary. He talks about God, about mysterious ways, about Beau’s bright light. Dean tunes it all out. It’s all bullshit. There is no mysterious reason for a deer to sprint across a dark Wisconsin road. There is no divine plan for black ice. It’s just a stupid, senseless accident.

“And now,” the pastor says softly, stepping back. “Beau’s sister has asked to say a few words.”

Dean’s head snaps up. He watches as Joanna whispers something in your ear. You nod once, a sharp, jerky movement.

You stand up.

A ripple of uneasy tension sweeps through the church. You look fragile, like a stiff breeze could snap your bones in half. You walk up the three small steps to the altar. You don’t look at the casket as you pass it.

You step up to the wooden podium and grip the edges. Your knuckles instantly turn white.

You stand there for a long time. The silence stretches, thick and agonizing. Dean leans forward, his hands braced on his knees, every muscle in his body coiled tight.

“Hi,” you whisper into the microphone. It squeals slightly, and you flinch.

You take a shaky breath, looking out at the crowd. Your eyes sweep over the sea of dark clothing.

“I’m … I’m Beau’s sister,” you start, your voice trembling. “His twin sister.”

You stop, swallowing hard.

“Most of you know Beau as the quarterback,” you say, your voice gaining a tiny fraction of strength. “You know him as the guy who threw the game-winning pass in the championships. You know him as the guy who was always smiling, always laughing. The guy who threw the best parties.”

A few soft, sad chuckles ripple through the Briar football team sitting on the right side of the church.

“But that’s just … that’s just the stuff he let everyone see,” you continue, staring down at the wood of the podium. “Beau was … he was my other half. We shared a womb. We shared our childhood. We shared everything.”

You look up, and for the first time, your eyes meet Dean’s.

Dean feels a sharp, physical pain in his chest. Your eyes are completely shattered.

“He was the most fiercely protective person I’ve ever known,” you say, holding Dean’s gaze. “If I was sad, he wouldn’t just ask what was wrong. He would rip the world apart trying to fix it. He loved his friends. He loved his family. He loved his life.”

You look away, your gaze drifting down to the front row, resting on your dad in his wheelchair.

“We went to Wisconsin for my grandma’s birthday,” you say. The tremble is back in your voice, more pronounced this time.

Dean’s jaw clenches. He knows this part. Beau had texted him right before they left the house. 

“My dad was driving,” you say softly.

Your father bows his head, his shoulders shaking in the wheelchair.

“It was snowing,” you whisper. You let go of the podium with one hand, wrapping your arms tightly around your own waist. “A deer ran out. Dad swerved. He hit black ice. The car spun and hit a tree.”

You stop. You take a breath, but it hitches, turning into a wet, jagged gasp.

“Take your time, sweetheart,” the pastor says gently from behind you.

“No,” you say, shaking your head rapidly. “No. You don’t understand.”

You grip the podium again, leaning into the microphone. Your breathing is speeding up, erratic and panicked.

“I stayed behind,” you say, your voice cracking loudly over the speakers. “My grandma … she asked me to stay a little longer. For another slice of pie. Just a stupid piece of cherry pie.”

“Y/N,” Joanna whispers loudly from the front pew, standing up.

“If I hadn’t stayed,” you say, your voice rising in volume, cracking with a sob. “I would have been in the car. I always sit in the passenger seat. Always. It’s my seat.”

Tears start spilling down your cheeks, fast and heavy.

“Beau took my seat,” you cry out, the sound echoing off the high vaulted ceilings. “He sat in the passenger seat because I wasn’t there.”

Dean is already moving. He doesn’t consciously decide to stand up. He just does.

“Y/N, honey, please,” your dad chokes out from his wheelchair, reaching a hand toward you.

“It should have been me!” You scream, your voice completely breaking. You grip the podium like it’s the only thing keeping you from floating away. “The impact was on the passenger side! It snapped his neck! It should have been my neck!”

“Oh my god,” Dean’s mom whispers behind him, covering her mouth.

“I want to trade!” You sob, looking up at the ceiling, looking at the casket, looking anywhere. “Please, God, let me trade! I’ll take his place! It’s supposed to be me! Put me in the box, please, please let him out!”

You let go of the podium to cover your face, and the moment you do, your legs give out.

You collapse.

You completely fold in on yourself, crumbling to the floor of the altar like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Y/N!” Joanna screams, rushing forward.

But Dean is faster.

He clears the row of pews, shoving past the pastor and dropping to his knees on the hard marble floor right beside you.

“I’ve got her,” Dean barks at Joanna, his voice sharp and authoritative enough to make the older sister freeze. “Give her air. Back up.”

Dean reaches out and gathers you into his arms. You are violently shaking, gasping for air in short, panicked bursts. You are having a full-blown panic attack right in the middle of the altar.

“Y/N,” Dean says, keeping his voice steady despite the absolute terror racing through his veins. He pulls you flush against his chest, wrapping his arms securely around your trembling frame. “Look at me. Hey. Look at me.”

You thrash against him weakly. “No! No, Dean, it’s my fault! It’s my fault!”

“It is not your fault,” he says fiercely, grabbing the sides of your face with both hands. His thumbs brush roughly over your tear-soaked cheeks. “Do you hear me? It was a fucking accident. It is not your fault.”

“I want him back!” You scream against Dean’s chest, burying your face into his expensive suit jacket, your hands fisting in his lapels. “Dean, please, please bring him back. Tell him to get up.”

Dean feels something hot and wet slide down his own cheek. He doesn’t care who sees him crying. He doesn’t care about the hundreds of people staring at them. Right now, there is only you. You are the only piece of Beau he has left, and he will be damned if he lets you fall apart on this floor alone.

“I know, baby,” Dean whispers, his voice cracking as he presses his lips hard against the top of your head. He pulls you tighter, rocking you slightly. “I know. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

“I can’t breathe,” you gasp, your fingers clutching his shirt tight enough to rip the buttons. “Dean, I can’t breathe. My chest hurts. Make it stop.”

“Follow my breathing,” he commands, forcing his own erratic lungs to slow down. He exaggerates the rise and fall of his chest. “In and out. Come on, Y/N. In and out.”

“I can’t live without him,” you sob, the sound so broken it physically tears at Dean’s heart. “I don’t know how to be a person without him.”

“You don’t have to figure it out today,” Dean murmurs, resting his cheek against your hair. He keeps his arms wrapped like a vice around you, shielding you from the eyes of the crowd. “You just have to breathe right now. That’s all you have to do. Just breathe for me.”

Joanna is hovering nearby, crying into her hands. The pastor is awkwardly standing off to the side. The entire church is dead silent, save for the agonizing sound of your sobs echoing off the walls.

“He would have hated this,” you whisper hysterically, your forehead pressed against Dean’s collarbone. “He would have hated everyone looking at us.”

Dean lets out a wet, genuine laugh, the sound rough with grief. “Yeah. He would’ve called us dramatic.”

“He would’ve thrown a football at your head,” you add, letting out a broken sob that sounds half like a laugh.

“And told me to stop holding his sister,” Dean adds softly.

You grip his jacket tighter, burying your face deeper into his chest. “Don’t let go, Dean. Please don’t let go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Dean promises. And he means it. He means it more than he’s meant anything in his entire twenty-two years of life. Beau trusted him. Beau loved him. And Beau loved you more than the sun.

“I’m right here,” Dean whispers into your hair, completely ignoring the pastor trying to resume the service. “I’m right here, and I’m not leaving. I swear to god, I’ve got you.”

***

Briar University looks exactly the same, and Dean hates it.

He stands in the middle of the quad, his hockey duffel slung over one shoulder, staring at the brick buildings and the swarms of students rushing to class. The sun is shining. Someone is throwing a frisbee near the library. A group of freshmen are laughing too loudly by the fountain.

It makes him sick to his stomach.

How can they just keep going? How is the bell still ringing? How is the cafeteria still serving terrible eggs? Beau is gone. The loudest, brightest, most invincible guy on this campus is in the ground, and Briar is just … moving on.

Dean adjusts his grip on his bag and forces his legs to move. He has to go to his Development of Sociological Thought elective. He doesn’t want to. He hasn’t wanted to do anything but lock himself in a dark room and drink until his liver gives out, but he can’t. He has to go to class. Because you are supposed to be in that class.

He walks into the lecture hall and immediately zeroes in on the fourth row, middle section.

Empty.

Dean’s jaw clenches. He drops into the seat next to yours, ignoring the sympathetic glances from a few girls in the row ahead. He stares at your empty desk for the entire fifty-minute lecture. You haven’t been to class all week.

“Hey, Dean?”

Dean blinks, snapping out of his daze as the lecture hall empties out. He looks up. Lacey, the co-captain of the cheer squad, is standing awkwardly by his desk. She looks nervous, her manicured fingers twisting the strap of her tote bag.

“What’s up, Lacey?” Dean asks, his voice flatter than he intends.

“It’s about Y/N,” Lacey says quietly, glancing over her shoulder as if she’s sharing state secrets. “Have you talked to her? Seen her?”

“No,” Dean admits, a cold spike of anxiety hitting his chest. “I texted her a few times, but she hasn’t answered. I figured she just wanted space. The funeral was … it was a lot.”

“I know,” Lacey says sympathetically. “But she hasn’t shown up to practice all week. Coach is starting to ask questions. I tried knocking on her door yesterday, but she didn’t answer. I’m just … I’m worried about her, Dean. She shouldn’t be alone right now.”

“She’s not answering her door?” Dean asks, standing up sharply.

“No,” Lacey shakes her head. “And her roommate moved into her boyfriend’s frat house for the week to give Y/N some privacy, so nobody has actually been inside the room since she got back from Wisconsin.”

“Fuck,” Dean mutters, dragging a hand through his hair. “Okay. Thanks, Lacey. I’ll handle it.”

He doesn’t wait for her response. He grabs his bag and takes the stairs two at a time, bursting out the doors of the academic building.

The walk to your dorm takes exactly eight minutes. Dean does it in four.

His heart is hammering against his ribs in a chaotic, uneven rhythm. Space is one thing. Grief is one thing. But radio silence for days, locked in an empty room? That isn’t just taking time to adjust.

He hits the third floor of the dorm building and strides down the hall, dodging a couple of guys tossing a lacrosse ball. He stops in front of Room 314 and knocks. Three sharp raps.

“Y/N? It’s Dean. Open up.”

Silence.

He knocks again, louder this time. “Come on, I know you’re in there. Lacey said your roommate is out for the week. Open the door.”

Nothing. Not a shuffle of feet, not a rustle of blankets. Nothing.

Panic, cold and sharp, slices straight through his veins.

Oh god. He digs frantically into his pocket, his fingers fumbling with his keychain. He, Beau, and you all swapped emergency keys sophomore year. He shoves the brass key into the lock, twists it, and throws the door open.

The room is completely pitch black. The heavy blackout curtains are drawn tight, blocking out every ounce of midday sun. The air is stale, thick, and smells faintly of sweat and something metallic.

“Y/N?” Dean asks, his voice cracking.

He flips the light switch.

You are a small, unmoving lump in the center of your bed.

Dean stops breathing. For one terrifying, heart-stopping second, his brain jumps to the absolute worst conclusion. You are too still. The silence in the room is too heavy. Did you take something? Was it on purpose? Did the grief finally swallow you whole and tell you the only way out was to follow your twin?

“No, no, no,” Dean chokes out, dropping his bag. He practically tackles the bed, his knees hitting the mattress hard. “Y/N! Hey!”

He grabs your shoulder and flips you onto your back.

Your eyes are open.

A massive, shuddering wave of relief crashes over Dean, making his head spin. You are breathing. The shallow rise and fall of your chest is there.

“Jesus Christ,” Dean gasps, pressing his forehead against the mattress beside your arm. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to stop his hands from shaking. “You scared the absolute shit out of me.”

But you don’t respond.

Dean lifts his head, his relief evaporating instantly. You are staring straight up at the ceiling, but you aren’t looking at anything. Your eyes are completely vacant. Empty. Dead.

Your lips are chapped and peeling, your skin a sickly, translucent pale. There are deep, bruised hollows under your cheekbones, and your hair is tangled in a chaotic, matted mess around your face. You look like a ghost.

“Hey,” Dean whispers, his voice softening into something incredibly tender. He reaches out, gently brushing a strand of hair off your forehead. “I’m right here. I’m right here.”

You don’t blink. You don’t acknowledge him.

Dean’s heart physically aches. He knows exactly what this is. He’s been dancing on the edge of this exact void since the funeral. If it wasn’t for you — if it wasn’t for the desperate need to make sure you were okay — he would be face down on a sticky frat house floor right now, so high or so drunk he wouldn’t know his own name. He would be self-destructing in spectacular fashion.

But he can’t. He has to anchor you, which means he has to anchor himself. You are the only living piece of Beau he has left in this world.

Without hesitating, Dean kicks off his sneakers. He crawls fully onto the bed and lies down beside you. He wraps his arm securely around your waist, pulling your stiff, unresponsive body flush against his side. He tucks your head beneath his chin, wrapping his leg over yours to cage you in.

“I know,” Dean whispers into the crown of your head. He rubs his hand up and down your spine, feeling every single vertebrae through the thin cotton of your t-shirt. You’ve lost weight. In just a week, you’ve withered away. “I know it hurts. I know it feels like you can’t breathe.”

You blink slowly, but you don’t speak.

“I miss him too,” Dean says, his voice thickening. A tear slips down his cheek and lands in your hair. He doesn’t bother wiping it away. “God, I miss him so much I feel like I’m dying. But you’re not dying. I’m not going to let you.”

He lies there with you for a long time. The dorm room is silent except for the harsh sound of his own breathing and the agonizingly slow rhythm of yours. He traces soothing circles on your back, letting the warmth of his body seep into yours.

“Alright,” Dean finally says, his tone shifting. He sits up, gently untangling his limbs from yours. “Party’s over. You can’t rot in this bed forever.”

You don’t protest. You don’t do anything.

Dean grabs your hands and pulls you up into a sitting position. You flop forward like a ragdoll, your head resting against his chest.

“Come on,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around you to keep you upright. “You need to get dressed. And you need to eat before you pass out and I have to call an ambulance. I don’t think either of us wants to deal with the Briar medical center today.”

He stands up, pulling you to your feet. Your legs buckle instantly.

Dean catches you effortlessly, lifting you slightly so your feet are barely touching the ground. “Whoa, okay. Easy. I got you.”

He guides you toward your closet. You lean heavily against his side, your bare feet dragging on the carpet.

“What do we want to wear?” Dean asks, opening the wardrobe. He talks to keep the silence at bay, forcing a casual lightness into his voice that he absolutely does not feel. “Sweatpants? Yeah, sweatpants feel right. High fashion is overrated anyway.”

He pulls out a pair of grey joggers and turns to look at you. You are staring blankly at the bottom of the closet.

“Okay, here,” Dean says gently. He crouches down. “Step in.”

He physically dresses you. He guides your legs into the sweatpants, pulls them up, and ties the drawstring. It’s intimately tragic. Two weeks ago, you would have slapped his hands away and called him a pervert for even being near your clothes. Today, you just let him maneuver you like a mannequin.

He stands up and reaches into the closet for a shirt, but your hand suddenly shoots out.

Your fingers, cold and trembling, latch onto the sleeve of a piece of clothing hanging in the back corner.

Dean freezes.

It’s a grey hoodie. Briar Football printed on the front. Beau’s hoodie.

Dean feels like someone has taken a baseball bat to his ribs. The sight of the fabric, the memory of Beau wearing it just a few weeks ago at a bonfire, laughing with a beer in his hand, is suffocating.

He wants to put it back. He wants to hide it. But he looks at your face. For the first time since he walked into the room, there is a flicker of emotion in your eyes. It’s raw, bleeding desperation.

“Okay,” Dean whispers, his voice completely wrecked. He reaches past you and unhooks the hoodie from the hanger. “Okay. Raise your arms.”

You lift your arms, and he pulls the heavy fabric over your head. The hoodie is massive on you. It swallows you whole, the sleeves hanging past your fingertips. The moment it’s on, you bring your knees to your chest and bury your nose in the collar, inhaling deeply.

A tiny, broken sob escapes your lips.

Dean swallows down the giant lump in his throat. He grabs a pair of your Ugg boots and slides them onto your feet.

“Let’s go,” he says softly.

He puts his arm around your waist, supporting most of your weight, and walks you out of the dorm.

***

Malone’s is packed. It’s prime lunchtime for the Briar athletic crowd, the air thick with the smell of cheap burgers, fryer grease, and loud conversations.

The moment the bell above the door jingles, announcing their arrival, heads turn.

Dean ignores them. He keeps a tight grip on your waist, steering you through the maze of tables toward a private booth in the far back corner. He slides you onto the vinyl seat, pushing you gently toward the wall so you’re tucked away safely, before sliding in right next to you. He doesn’t sit across the table. He sits beside you, his thigh pressed warmly against yours.

“Hey, Dean,” a waitress says, popping her gum as she approaches the table. Her eyes flick to you, her expression turning immediately sympathetic. Everyone on campus knows. “What can I get you guys?”

“Two waters,” Dean says, not looking at the menu. “And an order of loaded fries. The big basket. And a vanilla milkshake.”

“You got it,” she says softly, walking away.

Dean turns slightly in the booth to look at you. You are staring at the scuffed surface of the table, your hands tucked into the oversized sleeves of Beau’s hoodie.

“You’re going to eat,” Dean states. It’s not a question. “And you’re going to drink the entire milkshake. I’m not leaving until you do.”

You don’t respond.

A loud burst of laughter erupts from a table of frat guys a few booths down. One of them, a guy Dean vaguely recognizes from a business seminar, stands up to stretch and looks directly at your booth. He stares, his eyes lingering on your pale face and the oversized football hoodie. He nudges his buddy, pointing openly.

Dean’s blood turns to absolute ice.

“Hey,” Dean barks, his voice slicing through the diner chatter like a knife.

The frat guy blinks, looking at Dean.

Dean leans forward, his eyes narrowed into a lethal, terrifying glare. “Take a picture. It lasts longer. Or keep staring, and I’ll come over there and break your fucking nose. Your choice.”

The frat guy pales, quickly sitting down and turning his back. The surrounding tables suddenly get very quiet, everyone suddenly fascinated by their own food.

Dean exhales sharply, rolling his shoulders to bleed off the adrenaline. He turns back to you. You haven’t moved. You didn’t even flinch at his shouting.

The waitress quickly drops off the fries and the milkshake, avoiding eye contact with Dean before scurrying away.

“Alright,” Dean says softly, his voice dropping completely from the dangerous growl of a moment ago. He grabs a fry, dipping it in ketchup.

He holds it up to your mouth.

“Open,” he says.

You keep your lips pressed together, your eyes fixed on the table.

“Y/N, look at me,” Dean says, his tone firm but incredibly gentle.

Slowly, agonizingly, you lift your eyes. The emptiness in them is starting to crack, replaced by a deep, hollow exhaustion.

“I know everything tastes like ash right now,” Dean murmurs, holding the fry steady. “I know you don’t care if you starve. But I care. Beau cared. He would beat my ass if I let you waste away. So, open up. For me.”

You stare at him for a long, heavy second. Then, your lips part slightly.

Dean places the fry in your mouth. You chew mechanically, your jaw moving without any enthusiasm. It takes you an eternity to swallow.

“Good girl,” Dean whispers, grabbing the milkshake. He pushes the straw past your lips. “Drink.”

You take a small sip.

They sit there for an hour. Dean doesn’t touch a single fry for himself. He patiently, methodically hand-feeds you piece by piece, sip by sip, ignoring the curious and pitying stares from the rest of the diner. Whenever someone’s gaze lingers a little too long, Dean shoots them a look so murderous they immediately look away.

“I’m tired,” you whisper. It’s the first time you’ve spoken since the funeral. Your voice is raspy, unused, and incredibly fragile.

Dean’s heart stutters. He sets down the milkshake, moving his arm to wrap it around your shoulders. He pulls you against his side, tucking you into the crook of his arm.

“I know,” he says gently, resting his cheek on the top of your head. “I know, baby. I’ve got you.”

“He’s gone,” you say, a tear finally escaping and tracking through the dust on your cheek. “Dean, he’s really gone.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, his own throat burning. “He is.”

“What are we supposed to do?” You ask, turning your face to press into his shoulder. Your fingers grip his shirt, twisting the fabric. “How do we do this?”

“I don’t know,” Dean admits honestly, holding you tighter. He kisses your temple, his lips lingering against your skin. “I have no fucking clue. But we’re going to figure it out. Together. I promise you, Y/N. You are not doing this alone.”

And sitting there in the middle of the crowded diner, smelling like grease and grief, Dean realizes it’s the truest thing he’s ever said. You are his tether to the world now. And he will burn the entire campus down before he lets you slip away.

***

The sharp click of the lock tumbling in the door echoes through the quiet dorm room.

It’s eight in the morning, the sun brutally bright as it forces its way through the crack in your blackout curtains. You squeeze your eyes shut, pulling the heavy comforter up over your head. You don’t want to be awake. Being awake means remembering.

“Rise and shine, sweetheart,” a bright, unapologetically loud voice announces.

The comforter is suddenly ripped away, exposing you to the cold morning air. You shiver, curling into a tighter ball, pulling Beau’s oversized hoodie down over your hands.

“Go away, Dean,” you croak. Your voice sounds like sandpaper.

“Not a chance,” Dean says cheerfully.

The mattress dips as he sits down near your knees. You peek out from under your arms. He’s already fully dressed in dark wash jeans and a Briar Hockey t-shirt, his blond hair perfectly styled, looking infuriatingly awake.

“I brought a peace offering,” he says, holding up a plastic cup with a green siren logo. Condensation drips down the sides.

You blink at it. “What is that?”

“Icy, caffeinated heaven,” Dean replies, shaking the cup slightly so the ice clinks. “Venti iced brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso. Exactly the way you like it. I even bullied the barista into adding the extra cinnamon you always ask for.”

Your stomach gives a hollow twist, but the smell of the espresso wafting toward you does something to cut through the fog in your brain.

“I don’t want it,” you lie, turning your face into the pillow.

“Bullshit,” Dean counters smoothly. “Sit up, Y/N.”

“Dean, please,” you whisper, the exhaustion heavy in your bones. “I just want to sleep.”

“You slept all yesterday afternoon and all night,” Dean says, his tone shifting from playful to firm. “You’re getting up today. We have lecture in forty-five minutes.”

“I’m dropping that class,” you mutter into the pillow.

“No, you’re not.”

Before you can protest, Dean’s hands are on your arms, hauling you upright. You flop against his chest, dead weight. He chuckles softly, his chest vibrating against your cheek, and uses one arm to hold you up while he grabs the coffee with his free hand.

“Drink,” he orders, pressing the green straw to your lips.

You glare at him through half-open eyes, but you part your lips and take a sip. The hit of cold espresso, sweet brown sugar, and sharp cinnamon is incredible. It wakes up a tiny part of your brain that has been completely dormant for a week.

“There we go,” Dean praises, a satisfied smirk pulling at his mouth. He pulls the cup away. “Now, up. Go brush your teeth. Put on pants that don’t have a stain on the knee.”

“These are my depression sweatpants,” you argue weakly, looking down at the grey joggers he forced you into yesterday.

“They’re a tragedy to fashion, is what they are,” Dean deadpans. “Up. Now. Or I’ll literally carry you to the bathroom and brush your teeth for you. Do not test me, because I will do it.”

You look at him. His jaw is set, his green eyes completely serious despite the light tone. He isn’t going to let you rot. He is going to drag you back to the land of the living, kicking and screaming if he has to.

“Fine,” you sigh, pushing yourself off the bed on shaky legs. “You’re a tyrant.”

“I’m a visionary,” Dean corrects, handing you the coffee. “Ten minutes, Y/N. I’m timing you.”

***

The lecture hall is packed, the air thick with the smell of cheap body spray and stale coffee.

Dean steers you toward the middle row, his hand resting securely against the small of your back. You keep your head down, acutely aware of the glances thrown your way. You haven’t been back to class since the accident. You feel raw, like you’re walking around without a layer of skin.

You drop into your seat, pulling Beau’s hoodie tighter around yourself. Dean sits right next to you, his thigh pressing against yours. He slung his arm over the back of your chair the second he sat down, acting as a physical shield between you and the rest of the room.

“Just breathe,” Dean murmurs, leaning in close so only you can hear. “You’re doing great.”

Professor Higgins walks in a moment later, dropping a massive stack of papers onto his podium. He’s a terrifying, tenured man who takes his sociology lectures way too seriously.

“Alright, settle down,” Higgins barks, turning on the projector. “Last week, we discussed the functionalist perspective on societal norms. Who can summarize Durkheim’s concept of anomie?”

Silence descends over the room. Everyone suddenly avoids eye contact with the professor.

Higgins scans the room, his hawkish eyes darting from row to row. And then, horrifyingly, his gaze lands directly on you.

“Miss Maxwell,” Fowler says, his voice booming through the microphone. “Perhaps you can enlighten us. How does anomie relate to sudden structural changes in a person’s life?”

The air is instantly sucked out of your lungs.

Your heart hammers frantically against your ribs. Over two hundred students turn in their seats to look at you. The room feels incredibly small, the walls closing in. You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. Your brain is entirely blank. A sudden structural change. The sudden, violent severing of your other half. The irony of the question is so sharp it physically hurts.

Panic starts to rise in your throat, choking you.

Under the desk, a large, warm hand slips over yours.

Dean intertwines his fingers tightly with yours. He gives your hand a firm, grounding squeeze. His thumb strokes the back of your knuckles, a steady, rhythmic motion.

“You know this,” Dean whispers, his voice barely a breath against your ear. “You explained it to me last month when I almost failed the quiz. Normlessness. Disconnect.”

The sheer, solid weight of Dean sitting beside you, his hand anchoring you to the present, cuts through the rising panic. You swallow hard, forcing air into your lungs.

“Anomie,” you start, your voice trembling slightly before you force it to steady. “It’s … it’s a state of normlessness. Durkheim argued that when society experiences rapid change or disruption, the normal rules and social structures break down. People feel disconnected from their community and their sense of purpose, leading to psychological distress and a breakdown of social order.”

Professor Higgins stares at you for a long moment. Then, he gives a sharp, approving nod.

“Exactly, Miss Maxwell. A textbook definition,” Fowler says, turning back to the whiteboard. “Now, to apply this to modern institutional structures …”

The spotlight is off you. The students turn back around.

You let out a shaky exhale, slumping slightly in your chair.

Dean doesn’t let go of your hand. He keeps his fingers laced with yours for the entire fifty-minute lecture, his thumb lazily tracing circles on your skin. Every time you start to drift into the dark, pulling back into your grief, he gives your hand a gentle squeeze, reeling you back to him.

***

When classes finally end for the day, you walk out to Dean’s car expecting him to drive you back to your dorm.

Instead, he takes a left at the campus gates, heading off campus.

“Where are we going?” You ask, watching the familiar streets of Briar disappear.

“My place,” Dean says smoothly, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the radio.

“Dean, I just want to go to bed,” you protest, closing your eyes and leaning your head against the cool glass of the window.

“You’ve been in bed for a week,” Dean counters. “It’s bad for your muscles. Atrophy, Y/N. Science says so. Besides, Tucker is making his famous chicken parm for dinner, and if I don’t bring you, he’ll hold back my portion.”

“I don’t want to see people,” you whisper, the anxiety spiking again.

“They aren’t people, they’re just our idiot friends,” Dean says softly, throwing a quick glance your way. “They know what happened. Nobody’s going to ask you stupid questions or give you the pity eyes. I already threatened Logan with physical violence if he makes things weird.”

You let out a tiny, breathless huff that almost sounds like a laugh.

Ten minutes later, Dean pulls into the driveway of the off-campus house he shares with three of his teammates. The house is a chaotic mess of hockey gear, empty beer boxes, and mismatched furniture.

Dean unlocks the front door and ushers you inside.

“We’re here!” Dean yells, tossing his keys into a bowl by the door.

“In the kitchen!” A deep voice calls back.

Dean guides you down the hall and into the massive, open-concept kitchen. Tucker is standing at the stove, an apron tied over his t-shirt, stirring a pot of marinara sauce that smells absolutely divine. Logan and Garrett are sitting at the kitchen island, arguing over something on Logan’s phone.

They all stop when you walk in.

There’s a split second of heavy silence. You tense, waiting for the awkward condolences, the tilted heads, the sad smiles.

But then Garrett simply raises a hand. “Hey, Y/N.”

“Hey,” you manage to say, your voice quiet.

“Good, you’re here,” Tucker says, gesturing with a wooden spoon. “Tell Logan that a hotdog is legally considered a sandwich. He’s being deliberately ignorant.”

“It’s a piece of meat surrounded by bread,” Garrett argues immediately, pointing at Logan. “By definition, it’s a sandwich.”

“It’s a tube of mystery meat in a bun!” Logan protests, throwing his arms up. “A bun is not two slices of bread! If you ask for a sandwich and someone hands you a hotdog, you’d be pissed!”

“I would be thrilled, actually,” Dean chimes in, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and handing it to you. “Hotdogs are elite.”

“You’re all idiots,” you murmur, leaning against the counter beside Dean.

Logan grins, a completely normal, easy expression. “See? Y/N agrees with me. The tie-breaker has spoken.”

The tension you didn’t even realize you were holding completely bleeds out of your shoulders. Dean was right. They aren’t treating you like a piece of fragile glass. They’re just treating you like … you.

Tucker dishes out massive plates of chicken parmesan and pasta, forcing the largest portion directly in front of you. You manage to eat half of it, which is the most you’ve eaten in over a week. Dean sits beside you the entire time, seamlessly intercepting any questions directed your way if you take too long to answer, covering for you without making it obvious.

After dinner, you all migrate to the living room. It’s dominated by a massive, obscenely expensive leather sectional couch that Dean definitely paid for.

“Alright, hand over the remote,” Dean demands, vaulting over the back of the couch to land next to you.

“We were watching the game,” Garrett protests from the recliner.

“We’re watching something else,” Dean says, snatching the remote from the coffee table. He navigates to a streaming service and pulls up The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

“Dude, really?” Logan groans, falling back onto the other end of the couch. “It’s Tuesday. Can we at least watch a movie?”

“Shut up, Logan,” Dean says comfortably, hitting play. “This is high-stakes drama. You learn a lot about human psychology from these women.”

“You just like watching rich people yell at each other at dinner parties,” Tucker points out, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch.

“Exactly,” Dean says, smirking.

He shifts on the couch, sprawling out and kicking his feet onto the coffee table. He casually drapes his arm along the back of the sofa, right behind your shoulders.

The episode starts, filled with immediate, ridiculous conflict about a stolen dress and a charity gala. It’s loud, colorful, and completely mindless.

“Wait,” Logan says ten minutes in, pointing at the screen. “Why is she mad? Didn’t she invite the other lady to the party?”

“She invited her as a formality,” Dean explains, not looking away from the TV. “She didn’t actually expect her to show up. It’s a power move.”

“That’s so passive-aggressive,” Garrett mutters, shaking his head. “Just drop the gloves and fight it out.”

“You can’t body-check someone at a charity gala, G,” Tucker laughs.

You sit quietly, listening to four massive, intimidating college hockey players aggressively analyze the social dynamics of middle-aged reality stars. The sheer absurdity of it chips away at the cold, dark wall surrounding your heart.

You let out a soft, genuine laugh when Logan vehemently defends one of the housewives for throwing a glass of wine.

Dean immediately looks at you. His eyes are soft, the corners crinkling just slightly. He doesn’t say anything, but his hand drops from the back of the couch, resting his palm warmly against your shoulder.

As the evening wears on, the exhaustion of the day finally catches up with you. The adrenaline of surviving classes and the heavy, carb-loaded dinner hit your system all at once.

The mindless arguing on the screen turns into a soft hum. The warmth of Dean sitting so close to you is intoxicating. Slowly, unconsciously, you tilt sideways. Your head comes to rest heavily against Dean’s shoulder.

Dean freezes for a fraction of a second. Then, he shifts his body entirely, angling himself to give you better access. He wraps his arm securely around your shoulders, pulling you firmly against his side.

You bury your face into his neck, the scent of his cologne — cedarwood and something uniquely, cleanly Dean — filling your senses. It’s so safe. It’s the safest you’ve felt since the phone call that destroyed your world.

Your eyes flutter shut, and for the first time in a week, you fall asleep without crying.

***

Dean wakes up to the quiet roll of the end credits playing on the TV screen.

The living room is empty. Garrett, Logan, and Tucker must have quietly headed upstairs to their rooms at some point, leaving just the soft glow of a lamp in the corner.

He looks down.

You are fast asleep against his chest. Your face is pressed into the crook of his neck, your soft breath puffing steadily against his skin. One of your hands is fisted loosely in his t-shirt. You look incredibly peaceful, the lines of grief completely smoothed out from your forehead.

Dean stares at you for a long time. His heart aches in a way that has nothing to do with Beau, and everything to do with you.

He gently shifts, sliding his arm under your knees and his other arm around your back. He stands up smoothly, lifting you against his chest. You are criminally light.

You stir slightly, mumbling something incoherent, but you don’t wake up. Your head falls against his shoulder, your face turning into his neck.

“I’ve got you,” Dean whispers, turning off the lamp with his elbow.

He carries you up the stairs, navigating the hallway to his bedroom at the end of the hall. He kicks the door open with his foot and steps inside. His room is surprisingly neat, a contrast to the rest of the house, dominated by a massive king-sized bed.

He walks over to the bed and gently lowers you onto the mattress. You immediately curl onto your side, pulling Beau’s hoodie tightly around yourself.

Dean pulls the heavy duvet back and tucks it over your shoulders. He stands by the edge of the bed, watching you sleep. He should go to the guest room. Or he should sleep on the couch downstairs. He knows that’s what a normal, respectful friend would do.

But Dean feels nothing close to normal right now. The thought of leaving you alone in this dark room, waking up in a panic not knowing where you are, makes his skin crawl.

Quietly, Dean strips off his jeans and his t-shirt, leaving just his boxer briefs.

He walks around to the other side of the king-sized bed and slides under the covers.

He keeps a respectful distance, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. The room is dead silent, save for the soft, rhythmic sound of your breathing. It’s a soothing, constant reminder that you are here, that you are breathing, that you are alive.

About twenty minutes later, a soft rustle comes from your side of the bed.

Dean turns his head.

You are seeking warmth. Still completely asleep, you roll across the mattress until you hit his side. You throw one leg over his, tangling your limbs together, and press your face flat against his bare chest. Your arm drapes over his stomach.

Dean’s breath hitches. He goes perfectly still, terrified of waking you.

But you just let out a soft sigh, settling deeper into him.

A heavy sense of peace washes over Dean. He slowly lifts his hand, wrapping his arm around you, resting his hand gently on your back. He pulls you just a fraction closer, letting his chin rest on top of your head.

He closes his eyes, matching the rhythm of his breathing to yours. And for the first time since he lost his best friend, Dean finally falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.

***

You wake up to the absolute pitch black of an unfamiliar room.

For a span of three seconds, your brain is blissfully, mercifully blank. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what day it is. You are just a person waking up in a warm bed, wrapped in heavy, expensive-feeling sheets, with the steady rhythm of someone breathing beside you.

Then, the fourth second hits.

The memories do not trickle in; they crash over you like a tidal wave of ice water. The screech of tires. The polished mahogany casket. The smell of floor wax and white lilies. The suffocating, gaping hole in the center of your chest where your twin brother used to be.

Your breath hitches, a sharp, ragged sound that cuts through the silence of the room.

You open your eyes fully, staring up at the dark ceiling. You are in Dean’s room. You remember the diner. You remember Tucker’s chicken parmesan, and the ridiculous Housewives argument, and falling asleep on the couch.

And now, you are in Dean’s bed.

You turn your head slowly against the pillow. Dean is lying right beside you, on his back, his face turned slightly toward yours. In the faint sliver of moonlight slipping through the gap in the blinds, he looks completely different. The cocky, effortless charm is smoothed away by sleep. His jaw is relaxed, his blond hair completely mussed. One of his arms is draped casually across your waist, his large hand resting warm and heavy against your ribs.

The sheer intimacy of it should be jarring, but it isn’t. It just feels like a lifeline.

You swallow hard, fighting the familiar, toxic burn of tears building in the back of your throat. You don’t want to cry again. You are so tired of crying. Your eyes are swollen, your head is pounding, and every muscle in your body aches from the physical exertion of pure grief.

But the silence of the room is too loud. In the quiet, your brain starts supplying the highlight reel. Beau throwing a football perfectly spiraled directly into your hands. Beau laughing so hard beer came out of his nose at a frat party. Beau putting you in a headlock because you stole the last slice of pizza.

He’s gone. He’s really gone. The thought circles your mind, a relentless, vicious predator. You try to take a deep breath to quell the rising panic, but your chest feels too tight. It feels like someone is sitting on your lungs.

You need to anchor yourself. You need the noise to stop.

“Dean,” you whisper.

The sound is barely louder than a breath, incredibly hesitant. You shouldn’t wake him. He has done so much for you today — he fed you, he clothed you, he protected you from the stares on campus. He deserves to sleep.

You try to pull back, intending to slip out of the bed and go to the bathroom until the panic attack passes, but the moment you shift your weight, the heavy hand on your ribs tightens.

“I’m awake,” Dean says instantly.

His voice is rough and gravelly with sleep, but there is no grogginess in it. He opens his eyes, blinking rapidly for a second before his gaze locks onto yours in the dark. He shifts closer, his brow furrowing.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, his tone immediately dropping into that fierce, protective cadence. “Are you sick? Do you need water? What do you need?”

“No,” you say quickly, your voice trembling. “No, I’m … I’m okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Dean lets out a short, dismissive breath. He rolls onto his side, propping his head up on his hand so he’s looking down at you. His other hand moves from your ribs to gently brush a tangled strand of hair away from your cheek.

“Don’t ever apologize for waking me up,” he says, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room. “Never. If you need me, you wake me. Understand?”

You nod, biting your lower lip hard enough to taste copper.

Dean studies your face in the shadows. He doesn’t press you. He just waits, his thumb gently tracing the line of your jaw, letting you find the words at your own pace.

“I woke up,” you finally whisper, your voice cracking completely, “and for three seconds, I forgot.”

Dean’s hand stills against your cheek.

“I forgot he was dead,” you continue, the tears finally spilling over, hot and fast down your temples and into your hairline. “I thought I was in my dorm. I thought tomorrow I was going to call him and complain about Professor Fowler. And then … and then I remembered.”

“Yeah,” Dean breathes out, the word sounding like it was scraped from the very bottom of his lungs.

“It happens every time,” you sob, bringing your hands up to press against your eyes, trying to physically hold the tears back. “Every time I fall asleep and wake up, I have to lose him all over again. I have to relive it every single morning. I don’t know how many more times I can do it, Dean. I can’t do it.”

“Hey. Look at me,” Dean says, gently but firmly pulling your hands away from your face. “Look at me, Y/N.”

You open your wet eyes.

Dean’s face is entirely stripped of the Briar hockey star persona. There is no smirk, no arrogant confidence. He just looks completely broken. His eyes are shining in the dim light, wet with his own unshed tears.

“It happens to me too,” Dean whispers, his voice thick with emotion. “I wake up, and my first thought is always to text him. Yesterday, I saw a stupid meme about Tom Brady, and I literally pulled up his contact in my phone before my brain caught up with reality. I stared at his name for twenty minutes.”

You let out a jagged, broken sound, your fingers wrapping tightly around Dean’s wrist.

“It’s not fair,” you cry, the anger finally bleeding into the grief. “It’s not fucking fair, Dean.”

“I know,” he says, his voice breaking.

“He was twenty-two!” You say, your voice rising in the quiet room. You don’t care who hears you. You don’t care if you wake up Tucker or Garrett or Logan. You just need to get the poison out of your system. “He was twenty-two years old! He was supposed to get drafted! He was supposed to play in the NFL and buy our parents a stupidly huge house and get married and have annoying, athletic little kids! He was supposed to be here!”

“He was,” Dean agrees, a tear finally tracking down his own cheek. He doesn’t bother wiping it away.

“Why him?” You sob, your chest heaving with the force of your breakdown. “Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have been … I don’t know, anybody else? Why did he have to get in the passenger seat?”

“Stop,” Dean says softly, sliding his arm completely under you and pulling you flush against his chest. “Stop doing that to yourself. You can’t play the what if game. It’ll eat you alive.”

“I want to trade,” you repeat the same desperate plea you screamed at the church, burying your face into his bare chest. “I’d give anything. I’d give my own life right now if it meant he could come back.”

“Don’t say that,” Dean chokes out, his arms wrapping around you like a vice. He buries his face in your hair, his own shoulders starting to shake. “Don’t ever fucking say that, Y/N. I can’t lose you too. I can’t.”

The raw, desperate agony in his voice shatters whatever remaining defenses you have.

You break.

You fully, completely break down. The quiet, polite sobbing of the last week turns into ugly, chest-heaving wails. You fist your hands in the sheets behind Dean’s back, clinging to him like he is the only solid object in a world made of quicksand.

And Dean breaks right along with you.

The guy who always has a joke, the guy who never lets anything touch him, the guy who floats through life on charm and trust funds, finally lets the dam burst. He cries against your neck, harsh, racking sobs that shake his entire massive frame.

You hold him, and he holds you.

You mourn the boy who was supposed to be your forever partner in crime. He mourns the brother he chose.

You cry for the empty seat at graduation. You cry for the Thanksgiving dinners that will never be the same. You cry for the locker room that will be entirely too quiet, and the passenger seat that will always be empty.

You cry until your throat is completely raw and your eyes burn like fire. You cry until there are physically no more tears left in your body, leaving you hollow and incredibly light-headed.

The room is filled only with the sound of your combined, ragged breathing.

Dean slowly pulls back just enough to look at you. His eyes are bloodshot, his cheeks streaked with wetness. He sniffs deeply, wiping his face with the back of his hand before reaching out to gently wipe the tears off your cheeks with his thumbs.

“You’re right,” Dean says, his voice a raspy whisper. “It isn’t fair. It’s the most unfair, fucked up, bullshit thing that has ever happened. And it sucks. It completely, totally sucks.”

You let out a watery, exhausted laugh. “It really does.”

“I’m so angry,” Dean confesses, his jaw tightening. He traces the shell of your ear, his touch grounding. “I’m so fucking angry at the world. I’m angry at the snow. I’m angry at that stupid deer. I’m angry at people walking around campus laughing like the world didn’t just end.”

“Me too,” you whisper, closing your eyes and leaning into his touch. “I hate them all right now.”

“We can hate them together,” Dean says without missing a beat. “We’ll be terrible, bitter people. We’ll throw things at happy couples. We’ll key cars. Whatever you want.”

You laugh again, the sound weak but real. It feels bizarre to laugh. It feels like a betrayal, but at the same time, it feels like the first full breath of air you’ve taken in a week.

Dean’s face hardens, his expression turning completely serious. He shifts closer, pressing his forehead gently against yours.

“Listen to me,” Dean says, his voice dropping an octave, carrying a weight that completely demands your attention. “I know I can’t fix this. I know I can’t bring him back, and I know I can’t make it stop hurting.”

You look into his eyes, inches from your own.

“But you are not doing this alone,” Dean vows, his words fiercely determined. “You hear me? You are stuck with me, Y/N. For as long as it takes. For the rest of our lives, if that’s what you need. I don’t care if it’s three in the morning and you need to scream, or if it’s middle of the day and you need someone to just sit in the dark with you. You call me. I will always answer. You will always have me.”

The sincerity in his eyes is blinding. It’s not a platitude. It’s not empty comfort. It’s a blood oath.

Your heart, bruised and battered, swells painfully in your chest.

“Okay,” you whisper, your voice trembling with a new wave of emotion.

You slide your hands up his chest, wrapping your arms around his neck, and pull yourself closer until there is absolutely no space between you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck, breathing in the scent of him.

“And you have me,” you promise, your words muffled against his skin but entirely resolute. “I know you’re hurting too, Dean. You don’t have to pretend to be strong all the time for my sake. When you need to break down, you come to me. Okay? Promise me.”

Dean lets out a long, shuddering exhale, his arms wrapping tightly around your waist, locking you against him.

“I promise,” he murmurs into your hair.

The heavy, suffocating weight that has been crushing you since the accident doesn’t disappear. You know it won’t. The grief is going to be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. It’s a scar you will carry forever.

But lying there, tangled in the sheets with Dean, the weight shifts. It stops feeling like a boulder crushing your chest, and starts feeling like something you can actually carry. Because you aren’t carrying it alone anymore.

“Go back to sleep, Y/N,” Dean whispers, his hand lazily stroking up and down your spine, a repetitive, soothing motion. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

“Don’t let go,” you murmur, your eyes heavy with emotional exhaustion.

“Never,” Dean replies instantly.

You close your eyes, listening to the steady, strong beating of his heart under your ear. The fear of waking up to the nightmare is still there, but the terror is gone.

For the first time since the world ended, you drift off to sleep feeling entirely, completely safe.

***

Grief is not a straight line.

It doesn’t slowly fade out like the ending of a sad movie. It comes in waves. Some days, you wake up and the air feels light, and you can almost convince yourself that things are normal. Other days, the ghost of your brother is so heavy you can barely pull yourself out of bed.

But as the brutal winter bleeds into a messy, slushy spring, the good days slowly start to outnumber the bad ones. And the main reason for that is the six-foot-two hockey player who absolutely refuses to let you sink.

Dean is a constant. He is the first text you read in the morning and the last voice you hear at night.

The buzzer blares through the Briar ice arena, signaling the end of the second period. The crowd erupts into a deafening roar.

You stand up, cheering along with the rest of the student section as the Briar Hawks skate off the ice. Down below, Dean pulls his helmet off. His blond hair is soaked with sweat, his face flushed with adrenaline. He glances up toward the stands, his green eyes scanning the sea of blue and white until they lock onto you.

He shoots you a quick, cocky wink before disappearing into the tunnel.

A warm flutter erupts in your stomach. It’s a new feeling, one that has been slowly building over the last few months, completely distinct from the safe, platonic comfort he offered in the beginning. You actively try to ignore it, terrified of ruining the most important relationship you have left, but Dean makes it incredibly difficult.

“He’s staring again,” Lacey says, nudging your shoulder as you both sit back down on the cold bleachers.

“He’s just making sure I didn’t leave to get nachos without him,” you deflect, pulling your jacket tighter around yourself.

Lacey raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Right. Because guys totally look at their platonic friends like they want to devour them whole on center ice. Sure.”

“Shut up,” you laugh, shoving her arm playfully.

“I’m just saying,” Lacey sing-songs, leaning back. “It’s been four months. You practically live at his house. Everyone sees it, Y/N.”

You look down at your hands, tracing the seam of your jeans. “It’s complicated, Lacey. We’re just … we’re surviving together. We lost Beau.”

“I know,” Lacey’s voice softens instantly. She reaches out and squeezes your knee. “And I’m not minimizing that. But you’re allowed to live, too. You’re allowed to be happy.”

You nod slowly, your eyes drifting down to the empty ice.

Happiness feels like a complicated concept these days. It used to be so simple. It used to be standing on the sidelines of the football turf, shaking pompoms while Beau threw a perfect spiral down the field.

You haven’t touched a pompom since the funeral.

The first time you tried to go back to a cheer practice, they were holding it on the indoor turf. You took one step onto the artificial grass, saw the goalposts, and immediately threw up in a nearby trash can. The panic attack that followed lasted for two hours. The realization was sharp and undeniable: you could not cheer for a football team that didn’t have Beau Maxwell leading it. It felt wrong. It felt like a betrayal.

So, you quit.

It broke your heart a little more, losing another piece of your identity, but Dean was right there to pick up the pieces.

***

“You don’t have to do it,” Dean had said, sitting on the floor of your dorm room while you cried over your folded uniform.

“But I love it,” you hiccuped, wiping your eyes aggressively. “I love tumbling. I love the girls. I just can’t look at that field.”

“So tumble somewhere else,” Dean said simply, taking the uniform from your hands and tossing it onto the desk. “Briar has an Acrobatics and Tumbling team. They do meets in the gym. No turf. No footballs. Just you guys flipping around like ninjas. I saw a flyer by the athletic office today. Tryouts are next week.”

You had looked at him, completely stunned by the casual, practical solution. “You read flyers?”

“Only when they involve girls in spandex,” he smirked, the joke landing perfectly, pulling a wet laugh out of you.

***

He went with you to the tryouts. He sat in the top row of the bleachers, doing homework while you flipped and vaulted across the mat. When you made the team, he bought you a celebratory milkshake and forced Logan, Tucker, and Garrett to listen to him brag about how high you could jump.

The third period of the hockey game ends with a resounding Briar victory.

You wait outside the locker room twenty minutes later, leaning against the cinderblock wall. The door swings open, and a blast of hot water, damp towels, and cheap body wash rolls out.

Dean steps into the hallway, a heavy black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He’s wearing dark jeans and a tight black t-shirt, his hair still slightly damp from the showers. The moment he sees you, the tired line of his shoulders relaxes.

“Hey,” he says, stepping into your personal space. He reaches out, casually tugging on the zipper of your jacket. “Did you see my assist in the third?”

“I did,” you smile, tilting your head up to look at him. “It was almost as impressive as the way you completely face-planted into the boards in the second.”

Dean scoffs, pressing a hand to his chest in mock offense. “That was a tactical maneuver. I was distracting the goalie.”

“Right. Very stealthy,” you laugh.

“Come on,” Dean says, sliding his hand down your arm to casually interlace his fingers with yours. It’s a natural, effortless movement. He does it all the time now. “Tucker has a celebratory brisket in the crockpot. If we don’t hurry, Logan is going to eat half of it and feed the rest to the stray cat he refuses to admit he’s adopted.”

You let him pull you down the hallway, the warmth of his hand seeping into yours.

The house is already loud when you walk in. Music is playing from a Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen, and the smell of slow-cooked meat fills the air.

“The king has arrived!” Logan shouts from the living room, holding a beer in the air.

“And he brought Y/N, so try to use polysyllabic words tonight, Logan,” Garrett quips from the kitchen counter.

“I know big words,” Logan argues, tossing a throw pillow at Garrett. “Photosynthesis. Boom.”

You laugh, dropping your bag by the door. You walk into the kitchen, immediately moving to the island where Tucker is slicing brisket. Without asking, Tucker plates a massive portion and slides it across the counter to you.

“Thanks, Tuck,” you say, grabbing a fork.

“Eat up,” Tucker says, giving you a warm smile. “You got a meet on Saturday. Need fuel.”

“Wait, the meet is Saturday?” Logan asks, jogging into the kitchen. “What time?”

“Two o’clock,” you answer through a mouthful of food.

“I’m in,” Logan says, grabbing a beer from the fridge. “I love watching you throw people in the air. It’s violent. I respect it.”

“We’re all going,” Garrett adds, stealing a piece of brisket off your plate. “We don’t have a game until next weekend.”

You look around the kitchen at the massive, intimidating hockey players who have somehow adopted you as their own over the last four months. They don’t walk on eggshells around you anymore. They treat you like a little sister, relentlessly teasing you, eating your food, and showing up unconditionally when you need them.

You catch Dean’s eye across the kitchen. He is leaning against the refrigerator, watching you with a soft, affectionate expression. He raises his beer bottle to you in a silent, private toast.

You smile back, the flutter in your stomach returning full force.

Hours later, the house finally quiets down.

Garrett went to his girlfriend’s dorm, and Tucker and Logan retired to their rooms after a highly competitive, aggressively loud game of Mario Kart that you ultimately won.

You and Dean are left alone in the living room.

The TV is playing a muted rerun of a sitcom. You are sitting on the floor, your back pressed against the front of the leather couch, your legs stretched out over the rug. Dean is sitting on the couch right behind you.

“I think Logan actually cried when you hit him with the banana peel,” Dean muses, his voice low and raspy in the quiet room.

“He deserved it,” you say, resting your head back against the cushion. “He bumped my kart into the lava on Bowser’s Castle. I hold grudges.”

Dean chuckles. You feel the vibration of it against the back of your head.

Slowly, his hands come up to rest on your shoulders. He begins to gently massage the tense muscles at the base of your neck. You let out a soft groan, your eyes fluttering shut as his thumbs press into a particularly tight knot.

“You’re tense,” he murmurs, shifting closer so his knees are bracketing your waist.

“Acro practice was brutal yesterday,” you sigh, leaning entirely into his touch. “We’re working on a new pyramid. I got dropped twice.”

Dean’s hands pause. “You got dropped?”

“Onto a mat,” you clarify quickly, opening your eyes and tilting your head back to look at him upside down. “It’s fine, Dean. It’s part of the sport.”

His green eyes are dark, his brow slightly furrowed in that protective way you’ve grown to recognize instantly. “Tell your bases to stop dropping you, or I’m going to show up to practice and have a polite conversation with them.”

“Please don’t,” you laugh softly. “A polite conversation with you usually involves a terrifying glare and a subtle threat of physical harm.”

“It’s highly effective,” Dean points out, his hands resuming their slow, rhythmic massage.

The room lapses into a comfortable, thick silence. The only sound is the low hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the quiet dialogue from the muted TV.

You stare up at the ceiling, feeling an overwhelming sense of peace. You miss Beau. The ache is still there, a hollow cavity in your chest that will never fully close. But it doesn’t consume you anymore. It doesn’t stop you from breathing.

“Thank you,” you say quietly into the dimly lit room.

Dean’s hands slow down. “For what?”

“For this,” you say, gesturing vaguely around the room. “For making them go to my meet on Saturday. For checking on me. For … just not letting me drown.”

Dean goes entirely still. Then, he shifts, sliding off the couch to sit on the floor right beside you. He folds his long legs, turning his body so he’s facing you completely.

The playful, relaxed energy that was hovering between you dissipates, replaced by something suddenly heavy and incredibly charged.

“I didn’t do it as a favor, Y/N,” Dean says, his voice losing any trace of humor. He looks at you, his gaze intense and searching. “I did it because I wanted to. Because you’re important to me.”

“I know,” you whisper, suddenly acutely aware of how close he is sitting. You can feel the heat radiating off his body. You can smell the mint of his toothpaste and the faint trace of his cologne.

“Do you?” Dean asks, leaning slightly closer. His eyes drop down to your lips for a fraction of a second before snapping back up to your eyes.

Your breath catches in your throat.

The air in the room suddenly feels entirely too thin. The platonic line you have both been carefully walking on for months is suddenly nowhere to be found. It’s been erased, completely obliterated by the intense, burning look in his eyes.

“Dean,” you breathe out, his name sounding more like a question than a statement.

He reaches out, his large hand gently cupping the side of your face. His thumb traces the line of your cheekbone, his touch feather-light but sending a violent shockwave of electricity straight down your spine.

“I’ve been trying to be good,” Dean whispers, his voice dropping into a rough, strained register. His eyes are locked onto yours, completely vulnerable. “I’ve been trying so damn hard to just be the guy you need. The friend. The shoulder to cry on.”

“You are,” you say quickly, your heart hammering against your ribs.

“But I want more,” Dean confesses, the words tumbling out like he can’t hold them back anymore. He leans in closer, his forehead almost resting against yours. “God, Y/N. I look at you, and it’s all I can think about. I want to hold your hand, and I don’t want to let go. I want to take you on terrible, cliché dates. I want to kiss you so badly I’m losing my mind.”

You stare at him, completely paralyzed.

For months, you convinced yourself that the small touches, the lingering looks, the fierce protectiveness was just trauma. It was just two broken people clinging to each other because they were the only ones who understood the pieces.

But looking at him now, feeling the frantic, desperate pounding of your own heart, you realize it’s not trauma at all. It hasn’t been for a long time.

“Then kiss me,” you whisper.

Dean exhales a sharp, shaking breath. He doesn’t hesitate.

He leans the rest of the way in, his lips brushing against yours. It’s incredibly gentle at first, a soft, hesitant question. You close your eyes and let out a tiny gasp, your hands coming up to grip the front of his henley.

The moment your fingers twist into his shirt, the hesitation vanishes.

Dean groans, a low, guttural sound, and pulls you flush against his chest. His hand slides into your hair, tilting your head back to deepen the kiss. It’s messy and desperate and completely overwhelming. The taste of him is intoxicating. Every ounce of suppressed emotion, every stolen glance over the last four months, pours into the space between you.

You kiss him back just as fiercely, wrapping your arms around his neck, anchoring yourself to him. He tastes like mint and beer and something distinctly, perfectly Dean. His other hand drops to your waist, gripping you tightly, pulling you so close you can feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat against your own chest.

It feels like waking up. It feels like stepping out of a freezing room and into the sun.

When you finally break apart, you are both gasping for air.

Dean rests his forehead against yours, his eyes closed, his chest heaving. His hand remains tangled in your hair, his thumb stroking behind your ear in a repetitive, soothing motion.

“Wow,” you whisper, completely breathless.

Dean lets out a short, rough laugh. He opens his eyes, looking down at you with an expression so open and raw it makes your chest ache.

But then, the smile fades. He pulls back just slightly, creating an inch of space between you. His jaw sets, a serious, almost anxious look crossing his features.

“Y/N, listen to me,” Dean says, his voice completely level. “I need you to know something. And I need you to actually hear me.”

You blink, confused by the sudden shift in tone. “Okay.”

Dean brings both his hands up, framing your face delicately. “I didn’t do this because I’m sad. I didn’t do this because I’m confusing grief with something else, or because you’re Beau’s sister, or because we bonded over a tragedy.”

You swallow hard, holding his intense gaze.

“I did this because I like you,” Dean states firmly, articulating every single word. “I like you. I like how fiercely you argue about reality TV. I like how you refuse to give up when things get hard. I like that you joined a completely different sport just so you wouldn’t have to quit entirely. You are the strongest, most incredible person I’ve ever met.”

Tears, completely unbidden, prick at the corners of your eyes. But this time, they aren’t tears of grief.

“I’m not trying to replace him,” Dean whispers, his thumb brushing a stray tear off your cheek. “I know neither of us ever can. But I want to be here for you. As yours. If you’ll have me.”

The absolute sincerity in his voice strips away any lingering doubts. He isn’t holding onto you to keep a piece of his best friend alive. He’s holding onto you because he wants you.

You reach up, placing your hands over his where they rest on your cheeks.

“I’m not doing this out of grief, either,” you tell him, your voice steady and incredibly sure. “You didn’t just save me, Dean. You made me want to actually live again. I look forward to waking up because I know I’m going to see you.”

A breath shuddering out of Dean’s chest, his shoulders dropping a massive weight.

“I like you,” you confess, a bright, genuine smile finally breaking across your face. “I’ve liked you for a really long time. I was just too terrified to admit it.”

Dean’s trademark, cocky smirk slowly returns, lighting up his entire face. “Well, to be fair, I am incredibly charming. It was only a matter of time.”

You roll your eyes, slapping his chest lightly. “And the arrogance ruins the moment.”

“I haven’t ruined anything,” Dean laughs, leaning in again.

He kisses you softly, lingering on your bottom lip before pulling back just enough to speak against your mouth.

“I’m going to take you on a date,” he murmurs. “A real one. I’m going to open doors and pay for an overpriced dinner and everything.”

“I look forward to it,” you whisper back.

“Good,” Dean says. He wraps his arms completely around you, pulling you into his lap. You go willingly, curling against his chest, tucking your head under his chin.

He holds you tightly, resting his cheek against the top of your head. The TV drones on in the background, the house perfectly quiet around you.

For the first time in months, you don’t think about what you lost. You don’t think about the empty passenger seat or the quiet dorm room.

You just sit there, wrapped in the arms of the boy who held you together until you were strong enough to hold yourself, and realize that out of the absolute worst tragedy of your life, you somehow found your future.

***

“Hold still, sweetheart. Your tassel is completely tangled.”

Your mother’s hands are warm, slightly trembling, as she fusses with the black mortarboard on your head. You stand in the middle of your dorm room suffocating under the heavy, unforgiving polyester of your graduation gown.

“Mom, it’s fine,” you say gently, reaching up to cover her hands with yours. “It’s just going to blow around in the wind anyway.”

Your mother stops. She looks at you, her eyes already shining with unshed tears. She offers a tight, fragile smile and smooths her hands down your shoulders. “I know. I just want it to be perfect. You look so beautiful.”

“She looks like a giant bat,” Joanna announces from the doorway, leaning against the frame with a cup of coffee in her hand. “A very smart, educated bat, but a bat nonetheless.”

“Ignore your sister,” your dad says, walking into the room. He’s been out of the neck brace for over a year now, though his movements are still careful and deliberate. He looks sharp in a navy suit, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he takes you in. “You look perfect, kiddo. I am incredibly proud of you.”

You swallow down the sudden, thick lump in your throat. “Thanks, Dad.”

The front door swings open without a knock, the hinges squeaking loudly.

“Delivery for the graduate!” A bright, booming voice calls out.

Dean strolls into the living room, completely bypassing the concept of personal boundaries, as usual. He is also wearing his graduation gown, though he wears it unzipped over a tailored charcoal suit. He holds a massive bouquet of blush pink peonies.

“Dean, honey!” Your mom gasps, immediately stepping away from you to pull him into a tight hug. “You look so handsome.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Maxwell,” Dean says smoothly, hugging her back with one arm and handing her the flowers with the other. “I clean up alright. Though the hat is doing terrible things to my hair.”

“Your hair is indestructible, Di Laurentis,” Joanna snorts, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Jealousy is an ugly color on you, Jo,” Dean shoots back with a perfectly executed smirk.

He steps past your mother and walks right up to you. The playful arrogance drops from his face the second he meets your eyes. He reaches out, his knuckles brushing lightly against your cheek.

“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice dropping an octave, meant entirely for you.

“Hey,” you whisper back.

“You doing okay?” He asks, his eyes searching yours for any sign of a crack.

Graduation day. The day you and Beau talked about since you were freshmen. The day you were supposed to take thousands of ridiculous pictures together, throwing your caps in the air and spraying cheap champagne on the lawn.

“I’m okay,” you say honestly, giving him a small, reassuring smile. “It’s heavy. But I’m okay.”

Dean leans in and presses a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead. “I’m right beside you today. Every step.”

***

The football stadium is packed. Thousands of parents, grandparents, and siblings fill the bleachers, fanning themselves with commencement programs under the late spring sun.

You sit in the folding chairs on the field, surrounded by a sea of black gowns. Dean is twelve rows ahead of you, seated in the D section, but he turns around every five minutes to catch your eye and flash a ridiculous, exaggerated thumbs-up.

The heat is sweltering, and the speeches drag on. The valedictorian talks about the future, the dean of students talks about perseverance, and the university president talks about the legacy of the graduating class.

You tune most of it out, your fingers twisting the fabric of your gown.

Then, the tone of the ceremony shifts. The university president steps back up to the podium, adjusting his glasses. The low murmur of the crowd immediately quiets down.

“Before we begin conferring the degrees for the graduating class,” the president says, his voice echoing through the massive stadium speakers, “Briar University would like to take a moment to honor a student who is not sitting on the field with us today.”

Your breath hitches. Your heart starts hammering a frantic, heavy rhythm against your ribs.

“Beau Maxwell was a vibrant, exceptional part of our campus community,” the president continues. “He was a leader on the field, a dedicated student in the classroom, and a beloved friend to many. Though his time with us was tragically cut short, his impact on this university remains profound.”

A heavy, solemn silence blankets the stadium.

“Today, we are honored to award Beau Maxwell a posthumous honorary degree,” the president announces. “Accepting on his behalf is his sister.”

The crowd erupts into applause.

It isn’t polite, golf-clap applause. It is thunderous. Down in the front rows, the entire Briar football team stands up, their cheers echoing across the turf.

You stand up, your legs trembling so violently you aren’t sure they will hold you.

“You’ve got this,” Lacey whispers from the seat next to you, giving your hand a tight squeeze.

You step out into the aisle. The walk to the stage feels like walking underwater. The applause roars in your ears, a beautiful, devastating sound. You keep your eyes locked on the wooden stairs leading up to the platform.

You walk up the steps, the heat of the sun beating down on your black cap. The university president meets you halfway across the stage, holding a leather-bound diploma cover.

He hands it to you with a gentle, sympathetic smile. “Congratulations, Miss Maxwell. He would be very proud.”

“Thank you,” you whisper, clutching the leather tightly against your chest.

You turn to face the crowd. You look down at the front row of the bleachers. Your dad is crying, unabashedly wiping tears from his cheeks while your mom holds onto his shoulder, openly sobbing. Joanna has her hand over her mouth.

Then, you look down at the graduates on the field.

Dean is standing up. He is the only one in his section on his feet, clapping entirely entirely too hard, staring at you with an expression of such raw, overwhelming pride it completely knocks the breath out of your lungs.

A single tear slips down your cheek. You grip Beau’s diploma, close your eyes for a fraction of a second, and send a silent, desperately aching thought up into the sky. We did it, B.

You walk down the opposite set of stairs.

You don’t even make it back to the aisle before Dean is there. He slipped out of his row, ignoring the ushers, and meets you at the bottom of the steps.

He doesn’t say a word. He just pulls you into his chest, wrapping his arms securely around your shoulders. You bury your face into his neck, letting out a single, shaky breath against his collarbone.

“I’ve got you,” Dean murmurs, kissing the top of your head. “I’m right here.”

***

The rest of the ceremony moves smoothly.

You sit back in your seat, holding Beau’s diploma in your lap, watching the Ds get called.

“Dean Di Laurentis,” the announcer booms.

Dean struts across the stage like he completely owns the space, flashing a blinding, camera-ready smile as he shakes the president’s hand. From somewhere near the back, Logan, Garrett, and Tucker let out a series of deafening, aggressive whoops.

“That’s our boy!” Logan screams at the top of his lungs.

Dean laughs, grabbing his diploma and pointing directly at the hockey section before his eyes scan the field, finding you. He winks.

Thirty minutes later, they hit the Ms.

You walk across the stage for the second time today. This time, the weight on your chest is lighter. You accept your own diploma, smiling genuinely for the photographer. As you walk down the stairs, you hear Dean’s voice cutting through the crowd.

“Yeah, baby! That’s my girl!”

You shake your head, laughing under your breath as you walk back to your seat.

***

Dinner that night is a spectacular, chaotic collision of your two worlds.

Dean’s parents booked a massive private dining room at a high-end Italian restaurant downtown. The mahogany table easily fits both your family, the Di Laurentises, and somehow, Logan, Garrett, and Tucker, who simply invited themselves and refused to take no for an answer.

“I’m just saying,” Logan argues loudly, waving a breadstick at Dean’s father, “if you’re a corporate lawyer, you basically argue for a living, right?”

Peter Di Laurentis throws his head back and laughs loudly. “That is a severe oversimplification, Logan, but yes. Essentially.”

“See? I’m practically a lawyer,” Logan declares, biting into the breadstick.

“You failed Business Ethics twice, Logan,” Garrett points out dryly, taking a sip of wine.

“Ethics are subjective,” Logan dismisses immediately.

You sit between Dean and your dad, watching the beautiful chaos unfold. Your mother is deep in conversation with Dean’s mother, discussing the horrors of trying to find good tailoring, completely bonded over their shared fussiness. Joanna is mercilessly roasting Tucker for his terrible taste in country music, and Tucker looks completely thrilled by the attention.

Dean slides his hand under the table, resting his palm warmly against your bare thigh. He traces soothing, absent circles with his thumb, completely relaxed as he leans back in his chair.

“This is nice,” you murmur, leaning closer to him.

Dean turns his head, his green eyes soft in the dim lighting of the restaurant. “Yeah? Not too overwhelming?”

“No,” you say truthfully, looking around the table. “It’s exactly what I needed. It feels … full.”

Dean’s gaze drops to your mouth for a second before he looks back into your eyes. He squeezes your thigh affectionately. “Good.”

“Dean, pass the burrata, will you?” Your dad asks from your other side.

“Absolutely, sir,” Dean says, leaning forward to hand the plate over.

“And drop the sir, kid,” your dad adds, smiling warmly. “I think we’re past that.”

Dean smiles, a genuine, uncocky expression. “You got it, Mr. Maxwell.”

Your dad chuckles, accepting the plate.

The dinner lasts for hours, filled with multiple toasts, entirely too much wine, and endless storytelling. They toast to your graduation, to Dean’s, to the future. And halfway through the night, your dad raises his glass, his hand perfectly steady.

“To Beau,” your dad says, his voice thick but strong. “He’s the brightest star in the sky tonight.”

“To Beau,” the entire table echoes, raising their glasses.

You clink your water glass against Dean’s wine glass. You don’t cry. The ache is there, a phantom limb that you will always carry, but surrounded by the people who love him, the love you feel for your brother completely overshadows the grief.

***

By eleven o’clock, the families have gone back to their respective hotels, and the hockey boys have gone out to terrorize a local bar.

You are sitting in the passenger seat of Dean’s car, completely exhausted but utterly content. The streetlights wash over the interior of the car in rhythmic, yellow flashes.

Dean pulls up to a red light and shifts the car into park. He turns to look at you.

“You look tired,” he observes softly, reaching over to run his knuckles down your cheek.

“I am,” you admit, leaning into his touch. “It was a long day. A good day, but long.”

“Do you want to go home?” He asks, his thumb brushing over your bottom lip. “I can take you back to your dorm. Or my place.”

You think about the quiet of your dorm, or the massive emptiness of his house without the roommates there. Neither sounds right.

“Actually,” you say, a slow smile spreading across your face. “I’m kind of hungry.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You just ate half a pound of handmade pasta.”

“I stress-ate pasta,” you correct him. “Now I’m actually hungry. For garbage.”

Dean barks out a laugh, shaking his head as the light turns green. He shifts back into drive. “Garbage, huh? Your wish is my command.”

Ten minutes later, Dean pulls into the familiar, pothole-riddled parking lot of Malone’s.

The neon sign is buzzing loudly in the cool night air. The diner is practically empty at this hour, save for a couple of truckers in the booths by the window and a tired-looking waitress wiping down the counter.

You walk inside, the bell jingling above the door. Dean doesn’t even hesitate. He walks straight to the back corner, sliding into the exact same vinyl booth you sat in all those months ago. You slide in right next to him, pressing your hip against his.

It feels like a lifetime has passed since that day.

The waitress walks over, pulling a notepad from her apron. She does a double-take, looking at Dean in his tailored suit and you in your nice dress, a contrast to the hollowed-out versions of yourselves she saw in the winter.

“Well, don’t you two look fancy,” she says, popping her gum and smiling genuinely. “Graduation?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean smiles back, flashing his trademark charm.

“Congratulations,” she says. “What can I get you? The usual?”

Dean looks at you, his eyes dancing with amusement. “What do you think, baby? The usual?”

“Two waters,” you say, perfectly deadpan, reciting the order from memory. “And an order of loaded fries. The big basket. And a vanilla milkshake.”

Dean bursts out laughing, throwing his head back. The waitress chuckles, writing it down quickly. “You got it. Be right back.”

As she walks away, Dean wraps his arm entirely around your shoulders, pulling you firmly against his side. He presses a kiss to your temple, lingering there.

“You’re a brat,” he murmurs against your skin.

“You literally forced me to drink a milkshake against my will,” you remind him, resting your head on his shoulder. “I think I’m allowed to tease you about it.”

“I was keeping you alive,” Dean argues playfully, resting his chin on your head. “I was a hero.”

“You were very bossy.”

“And you loved it.”

You smile, tilting your face up to look at him. “I did. I really did.”

The playful banter fades, replaced by that heavy, magnetic pull that always seems to exist between the two of you. Dean’s eyes darken, dropping to your mouth.

The waitress suddenly appears, dropping the basket of fries and the milkshake onto the table before quickly retreating to give you privacy.

Dean looks at the fries, then looks back at you. A slow, wicked smirk completely takes over his face.

He reaches out, plucking a single fry from the basket. He dips it entirely too aggressively into the ketchup.

He holds it up to your mouth.

“Open,” he says, his voice a perfect, gravelly mimic of that terrible day.

You laugh, swatting at his hand. “Dean, stop. I can feed myself.”

“I don’t know,” he teases, pulling the fry back an inch. “You look pretty helpless right now. I think you need me to hand-feed you.”

“I will bite your finger,” you threaten, though you’re smiling so hard your cheeks hurt.

“Promises, promises,” Dean fires back, holding the fry steady. “Come on. For old times’ sake. Open up.”

You roll your eyes, but you lean forward and bite the fry off his fingers. You chew deliberately, maintaining direct eye contact.

“Good girl,” Dean whispers, his voice suddenly losing every ounce of humor. The teasing drops away, leaving only raw, burning affection.

Your breath hitches.

Dean drops his hand, grabbing the milkshake. But instead of offering you the straw, he sets it aside entirely. He reaches out, cupping your jaw with both hands, and pulls you flush against him.

He kisses you. It isn’t tentative or gentle. It is a deep, consuming kiss that tastes like salt and ketchup and everything you’ve ever wanted. You melt against him instantly, your hands coming up to grip the lapels of his expensive suit jacket, kissing him back with everything you have.

When you finally break apart, you are both breathing heavily, your foreheads resting against each other.

“I love you,” Dean whispers, the words slipping out into the quiet diner like they’ve been waiting there all along.

You freeze.

Your heart stops completely, then restarts at double the speed. He has never said it before. You have danced around it, you have shown it in a thousand different ways, but the actual words have remained unspoken.

Dean pulls back just enough to look you directly in the eyes. There is no hesitation in his gaze. There is no fear. There is just absolute, unflinching certainty.

“I love you,” Dean repeats, his voice incredibly steady. “I loved you when you were completely broken, I loved you when you started putting yourself back together, and I love you right now. I am entirely, completely in love with you.”

The air completely leaves your lungs.

You look at the beautiful, complicated, endlessly loyal boy sitting beside you. The boy who dragged you out of the dark. The boy who held your brother’s memory in one hand and your heart in the other.

“I love you too,” you whisper, the truth of it swelling in your chest until it feels like it might burst. “I love you so much, Dean.”

Dean’s entire face lights up. The breathtaking smile that breaks across his features is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. He lets out a ragged exhale, burying his face in your neck, wrapping his arms around you tightly enough to bruise.

You hold him back just as fiercely, closing your eyes and breathing him in.

You survived the absolute worst day of your life. You walked through the fire, and you didn’t burn to ash. You are still here.

And as you sit in the corner booth of Malone’s, surrounded by the smell of cheap fryer grease and holding onto the boy you love, you realize something profound.

The world didn’t stop turning when Beau died. It kept going. And finally, for the first time in a very long time, you are incredibly grateful that you get to keep going with it.

***

The smell of burning toast is what finally wakes you up.

You groan, burying your face deeper into the mountain of pillows you’ve constructed around yourself. At twenty weeks pregnant, sleep has become less of a biological necessity and more of a strategic, highly negotiated truce with your own body.

“Damn it,” a voice mutters from the kitchen, followed by the loud clatter of a pan hitting the stove. “Okay. Pivot. We’re pivoting to pancakes.”

You crack one eye open. The morning light is streaming through the massive windows of the master bedroom you share with Dean.

It’s been five years since graduation. Five years of navigating adulthood, careers, and the beautiful, messy reality of building a life together. You’re married now, but the core of it all is exactly the same. It’s just you and Dean, fiercely guarding the peace you fought so hard to find.

You push the heavy duvet off your legs and slowly maneuver yourself out of bed. Your hand instinctively rests on the undeniable, rounded swell of your stomach.

You pad barefoot down the hallway of your shared house, the hardwood floors cool against your feet. You stop in the doorway of the kitchen, leaning against the frame.

Dean is standing at the island, wearing grey sweatpants and a backwards cap, looking extremely focused as he whisks a bowl of batter. There is flour on his cheek.

“You’re making a mess, Di Laurentis,” you point out, your voice still thick with sleep.

Dean’s head snaps up. The moment he sees you, the intense concentration completely vanishes, replaced by that soft, devastatingly bright smile he reserves exclusively for you.

“Hey,” he says, abandoning the whisk. He crosses the kitchen in three long strides, wrapping his arms around your waist. He pulls you in, careful of your stomach, and kisses you deeply. “Good morning, Mrs. Di Laurentis.”

“Good morning,” you smile against his lips. “I smell casualties.”

“The toast didn’t make it,” Dean admits, completely unbothered. He drops to his knees, his face suddenly level with your stomach. He presses a gentle kiss to the center of your t-shirt. “Good morning to you, too, little menace. Please let your mother eat these pancakes without kicking her in the bladder.”

You laugh, running your fingers through the hair sticking out from the back of his cap. “The baby doesn’t take orders, Dean. Much like its father.”

“The baby is going to be perfectly behaved,” Dean argues, standing back up. “Sit. Eat. We have a big day today. The anatomy scan is at eleven.”

Your heart immediately does a familiar, anxious flutter.

The pregnancy wasn’t exactly planned, but the moment you saw the two pink lines on the plastic stick, your entire world shifted. Dean had completely short-circuited. He had stared at the test for five straight minutes, asked you if you were absolutely sure, and then picked you up and spun you around the bathroom until you both fell over laughing.

He has been a hovering, overprotective nightmare ever since. He reads every baby book. He vetoes anything that even vaguely resembles a soft cheese. He treats you like you’re made of spun glass.

“I know,” you say softly, tracing the rim of the empty coffee mug he sets in front of you. “I’m nervous.”

Dean stops pouring the batter. He sets the bowl down and walks around the island, stepping into the space between your knees. He takes both of your hands in his.

“Hey,” he murmurs, his green eyes locking onto yours. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. The doctor said everything was perfectly on track last month. Heartbeat is strong. You’re healthy.”

“I know,” you sigh, leaning your forehead against his chest. “It’s just … it makes it all very real. Today we find out if it’s a boy or a girl. It’s an actual person, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, his voice thick with a sudden rush of emotion. He wraps his arms around your shoulders, holding you tight. “It’s our person. Half you, half me. We’re going to be okay, Y/N. I promise you.”

***

The ultrasound room is dark and freezing cold.

You lie on the crinkly paper of the exam table, your shirt pulled up to expose your stomach. Dean is sitting in the plastic chair right beside you, completely ignoring the lack of space. His chair is pulled so close his knees are practically touching the table, and he hasn’t let go of your hand since you walked into the clinic.

“Alright, let’s take a look at this little one,” the ultrasound technician, a kind woman named Dana, says cheerfully.

She squirts a massive dollop of freezing blue gel onto your stomach. You flinch.

“Cold, sorry!” Dana laughs, pressing the wand against your skin.

You turn your head to look at the monitor. At first, it’s just a blurry, static-filled screen of greys and blacks. But then, Dana moves the wand, and suddenly, there it is.

A perfectly formed, tiny spine. A little head. Two small arms waving sluggishly in the amniotic fluid.

Your breath completely catches in your throat.

“Oh my god,” Dean whispers loudly, his grip on your hand tightening to the point of pain. He leans forward, his eyes absolutely glued to the screen. “Y/N. Look.”

“I see it,” you breathe out, tears instantly pricking the corners of your eyes.

“There’s the heartbeat,” Dana says, clicking a button on the keyboard.

The room is suddenly filled with the rapid, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of your baby’s heart. It’s the most beautiful, incredible sound you have ever heard in your entire life. It sounds like a galloping horse. It sounds like a miracle.

Dean lets out a wet, choked sound. You look over at him.

He is crying. He doesn’t even try to hide it. The arrogant, charming, impenetrable Dean Di Laurentis is sitting in a dark clinic, openly weeping at the sight of a grainy black-and-white monitor. He brings your knuckles up to his lips, pressing a desperate, reverent kiss against your skin.

“It’s perfect,” he whispers, his voice shaking. “You’re perfect.”

“You guys are doing great,” Dana smiles, clicking a few more buttons to take measurements. “Baby is measuring exactly at twenty weeks and three days. Everything looks incredibly healthy. Ten fingers, ten toes.”

A massive wave of relief crashes over you, washing away the anxiety that has been building all morning.

“Now,” Dana says, pausing the wand and looking between the two of you with a knowing smirk. “Did you two want to know the gender today?”

You look at Dean. He looks back at you, his eyes still shining.

“We want to know,” you say, nodding. “But … can you write it down? We want to open it at home. Just the two of us.”

“Absolutely,” Dana says. She turns the screen away slightly so you can’t see, clicking a few buttons before pulling out a small, white envelope. She writes something on a card, slips it inside, and seals it tight.

She hands the envelope to Dean.

Dean takes it like he’s being handed a live explosive. He stares at the white paper, his jaw tight.

“Thank you,” you say, grabbing a paper towel to wipe the gel off your stomach.

“Congratulations, you guys,” Dana says warmly. “I’ll see you in four weeks.”

***

The car ride back to the house is agonizingly tense.

The small white envelope is sitting completely undisturbed in the center console. It is the loudest object in the vehicle.

Dean is gripping the steering wheel with both hands, driving five miles under the speed limit, his eyes darting between the road and the envelope every thirty seconds.

“Stop staring at it,” you laugh, resting your head back against the leather seat.

“I’m not staring at it,” Dean lies immediately. “I’m focusing on the road. Because I have precious cargo in the car.”

“You’ve looked at it twelve times since we left the clinic,” you point out.

“It’s mocking me,” Dean mutters, tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel. “It knows that I have zero patience. It’s a test of my willpower.”

“Do you have a preference?” You ask softly, turning your head to look at his profile.

Dean is quiet for a long moment. He signals, turning into your neighborhood.

“No,” he says honestly. “I really don’t. If it’s a girl, I’m going to spoil her so completely that she’ll be an absolute terror to society. I’m going to buy her a pony. I don’t care where we put it. And if it’s a boy, I’m going to teach him how to throw a football before he can walk, and I’m going to teach him how to treat women like absolute royalty.”

You smile, your heart swelling painfully in your chest. “You’re going to be an incredible dad.”

“We’re going to be incredible parents,” Dean corrects you, pulling into the driveway and shifting the car into park.

He kills the engine. He turns in his seat, looking down at the center console. He takes a deep breath, reaches out, and picks up the envelope.

He hands it to you.

“Let’s go inside,” he says, his voice low and raspy.

You walk into the house together. It’s quiet, the afternoon sun spilling across the living room rug. You walk over to the massive, obscenely expensive leather sectional couch and sit down.

Dean sits right next to you, completely invading your personal space. He drapes his arm over your shoulders, pulling you firmly against his side.

You look down at the envelope in your lap.

“Okay,” you whisper. Your hands are actually shaking.

“We do it together,” Dean murmurs, resting his cheek against your hair. He reaches down, his large hand covering yours, his fingers resting over the flap of the envelope.

“On three,” you say.

“One,” Dean counts.

“Two,” you whisper.

“Three.”

Together, you slide your fingers under the seal and rip the envelope open. You pull out the small, stiff piece of cardstock.

There are only three words written on the card in Dana’s neat, cursive handwriting.

It’s a boy!

The world completely stops spinning.

You stare at the words. The letters blur together as a fresh, overwhelming wave of tears immediately fills your eyes. A boy. You are having a boy.

Beside you, Dean goes perfectly, rigidly still.

“A boy,” Dean breathes out, the sound barely more than a whisper.

“It’s a boy,” you repeat, a wet, hysterical laugh escaping your lips.

Dean suddenly moves. He takes the card out of your hand and tosses it onto the coffee table. He wraps both of his arms around you, burying his face into your neck. He holds you so incredibly tight you can feel the frantic, heavy pounding of his heart against your ribs.

“A little boy,” Dean says against your skin, his voice cracking completely. “God, Y/N. We’re having a son.”

You wrap your arms around his shoulders, holding him back just as fiercely. You are crying freely now, happy, completely unburdened tears. You survived the absolute worst thing the universe could throw at you, and now, you are sitting in your living room, holding the man you love, creating a brand new life.

When Dean finally pulls back, his face is a mess of tears and the biggest, most breathtaking smile you have ever seen.

He drops one of his hands down to rest flat against your stomach.

“We need to talk about names,” Dean says, his thumb gently stroking back and forth over your t-shirt.

You look at him.

For months, you have avoided the topic of baby names entirely. It felt like bad luck to talk about it before the anatomy scan, before you knew for sure that everything was okay. You haven’t bought a single book. You haven’t made a single list.

But looking into Dean’s eyes right now, you realize you don’t need a list.

There is no discussion. There is no debate. There is no what if.

“We don’t need to talk about names,” you say softly, placing your hand over his where it rests on your bump.

Dean searches your eyes, his breath hitching slightly. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life,” you promise him, your voice completely steady.

Dean swallows hard, his jaw clenching as he fights back a new wave of emotion. He looks down at your stomach, his hand trembling slightly under yours.

“Beau,” Dean whispers.

Hearing the name out loud — speaking it not in grief, not in mourning, but in absolute, pure joy — sends a shockwave of electricity straight down your spine.

“Beau,” you agree, the name feeling perfectly, incredibly right on your tongue.

Dean lets out a long, shuddering exhale. He leans forward, pressing his forehead gently against yours.

“He would be so arrogant about this,” Dean laughs, a wet, choked sound. “He would absolutely never let us live this down.”

“He would tell everyone we named him after the greatest quarterback Briar University ever saw,” you laugh through your tears, the memory of your brother suddenly incredibly vivid, bright, and completely devoid of pain.

“He would demand to be the godfather,” Dean adds, closing his eyes. “Even though he’s a terrible influence. He would have bought the kid a tiny, obnoxious football jersey before he was even born.”

“He would have loved him so much,” you whisper, the truth of it swelling in your chest.

“He still does,” Dean says fiercely, opening his eyes to look at you. “He’s up there right now, watching us, and he is completely insufferable about it. I guarantee it.”

You let out a watery laugh, leaning forward to press your lips against Dean’s. It’s a slow, deep kiss, completely anchored in the reality of the life you have built together.

When you break apart, Dean shifts back. He moves down again, dropping to his knees on the rug right in front of the couch.

He rests his chin on your thighs, looking directly at your stomach.

“Hey, little Beau,” Dean says, his voice incredibly soft, dropping into a tone of pure, unconditional reverence. “It’s your dad.”

You cover your mouth with your hand, completely undone by the sight of him.

“You’re making your mom cry again, so we’re going to have to work on that,” Dean tells your stomach, a small, teasing smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. “But I need to tell you a few things before you get here.”

Dean reaches up, resting both of his large hands on either side of your bump.

“First of all, you are so incredibly loved,” Dean promises, his voice completely serious now. “You have no idea. You hit the absolute jackpot with your mom. She is the strongest, most amazing person in the world, and you are going to listen to everything she says.”

He pauses, taking a deep breath.

“And secondly,” Dean murmurs, his thumb tracing a slow circle over your skin. “You’ve got a big name to live up to, buddy. You are named after my best friend. The best guy I ever knew. Your uncle Beau.”

A single tear slips down Dean’s cheek, but he is smiling. It is a genuine, peaceful smile.

“He was fearless,” Dean tells your son, his voice thick with a love that has never faded, only evolved. “He loved to laugh, he loved his family more than anything, and he always, always took care of the people he cared about. And that’s what we want for you. We just want you to be happy. And brave.”

Dean leans forward and presses a long, lingering kiss to the center of your stomach.

“I’ve got you, Beau,” Dean whispers against your skin, repeating the exact same promise he made to you on the floor of the church all those years ago. “I swear to god, I’ve always got you.”

He rests his forehead against your stomach, closing his eyes.

You sit there on the couch, your hands gently resting in Dean’s hair. The afternoon sun washes over the two of you in a warm, golden glow.

The grief is still a part of you. It always will be. It is woven into the very fabric of your history, a scar that proves you loved someone entirely too much to let them go without a fight.

But as you look down at the man kneeling before you, and feel the tiny, miraculous flutter of your son moving inside of you, you realize that the story didn’t end with the crash. It didn’t end in the dark dorm room, or at the altar of the church.

It continued.

It grew into late-night dinner runs, and stolen kisses in the kitchen, and a love so fierce and protective it physically takes your breath away. It grew into the life you are living right now.

You survived the end of the world, and you found something completely beautiful in the ashes.

“I love you,” you whisper down to Dean, your heart completely, entirely full.

Dean turns his head, resting his cheek against your stomach, and looks up at you with eyes full of a bright, unbreakable future.

“I love you too,” he says softly. “Both of you.”

[junezsq]

Beau Maxwell x F! Reader where Beau gets hurt in a game and reader is worried about Beau ! I’m thinking like Coach Beau part 2

“i couldn’t see you”

beau maxwell x fem!reader

summary: beau always gets up when knocked down on the field. always. except for today … and you don’t know what to do

established relationship

standalone fic. can also be read as a part 2 to “coach beau”

warnings: f!reader is in a state of panic, otherwise it’s pure fluff, beau being a sweetheart

word count: 3.1k

a/n: tysm for the request, i hope this is up to your expectations!! i loved writing “coach beau” so seeing you request this as a p2 made me super excited and motivated to write it :))

── ᵎᵎ ✦

the first thing you thought was that beau had taught you too much, which was a stupid thought. completely irrational, actually, considering that a month ago you’d sat in these exact stands with only the vaguest understanding of what was happening on the field below you.

back then, football had been simple. find number sixty-one, watch number sixty-one, cheer when number sixty-one looked happy. everything else had been background noise: the whistles, the flags, the formations beau had tried explaining to you at midnight under the stadium lights. none of it had mattered as much as finding him on the field.

you’d gotten good at that long before you’d gotten good at football.

your eyes always seemed to know where to look, picking him out among dozens of nearly identical uniforms without any conscious effort on your part. now, unfortunately, you understood enough of the game to know when something was wrong.

the game had been ugly from the beginning. not bad, necessarily. briar was ahead by four points with less than six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, and the student section around you had been vibrating with nervous energy for the better part of an hour. but the other team was physical, aggressive in a way that made every collision look slightly worse than the last, and every play seemed to end with bodies hitting the turf harder than they needed to.

you’d noticed it. so had beau.

you could tell because you knew his habits well enough by now to recognize the shift in him. game-day beau had always been different from the one you knew off the field. there was an intensity to him that still caught you off guard sometimes, especially when you were so used to the version of him who was rarely still for longer than a few minutes.

at home, he was always touching you somehow. a hand resting on your knee while he talked, his fingers playing absentmindedly with the ends of your hair, his head dropping into your lap whenever he decided he was tired, regardless of whether you were trying to study. on the field, all of that restless energy sharpened into something focused and purposeful.

you’d learned to recognize the signs. the way he rolled his shoulders beneath his pads before an important play, the way he tugged once at the bottom of his jersey after getting into position, the slight tilt of his helmet toward the sideline when he was listening for a call. you knew he bounced twice on the balls of his feet when he was nervous and flexed his left hand when he was frustrated.

you also knew that during timeouts, no matter where he was on the field, he looked toward the student section. he denied this, of course.

right then, his helmet turned in your direction, and your heart did the same stupid little thing it always did. you were too far away to see his expression, but you knew the exact moment he found you because one gloved hand lifted briefly at his side.

you lifted yours in return. allie and dean, who were seated next to you, didn’t even notice, and that was what you liked about it. the gesture belonged only to the two of you.

then beau turned away as the whistle blew and the players moved into position. the noise around you swelled again, hundreds of voices blending together until you could barely distinguish one from another. you leaned forward without realizing it, elbows resting against your knees as your attention settled on the field.

on beau, mostly. always beau.

the ball was snapped, and everything happened quickly after that. beau broke into a run, and the pass went up. for one brief second, excitement sparked through you because you actually understood what was happening.

you recognized the route. beau had taught you this.

the memory flashed through your mind unexpectedly: him standing on the empty practice field, tracing an imaginary path across the turf with one hand while you pretended not to be distracted by the way his hair kept falling over his forehead.

beau threw the ball and you watched as it raced through the air. the student section erupted around you, and you were already halfway out of your seat when you shouted, “that’s my boyfriend!”

you didn’t care who heard you. you never did.

beau pivoted and ran, and your eyes followed him automatically. one yard, then another, then another.

then someone hit him. hard.

the sound of the collision carried all the way into the stands, sharp enough that you felt yourself flinch even from that distance. your smile disappeared as beau hit the ground.

for half a second, nothing felt wrong. football players got tackled. you knew that now, at least. you’d learned enough not to panic every time someone knocked him down, and you waited for the familiar sight of beau rolling onto his side or pushing himself up with one arm.

he didn’t.

the stadium changed around you, though not immediately. the crowd was still reacting to the play, voices overlapping as people argued about the hit and someone behind you started shouting at the referee. you didn’t hear any of it clearly. your eyes remained fixed on the field, on the place where beau had fallen, waiting for movement that didn’t come.

players began gathering around him, and your stomach tightened.

he always got up. you’d watched him take hits before, some of them hard enough to make you wince, but he always got back to his feet. sometimes quickly, sometimes slower, but he got up. occasionally, he’d even glanced toward the stands afterward, as though he knew you needed the reassurance. this time, he didn’t.

your fingers curled around the cold metal railing in front of you, though you didn’t remember reaching for it. “come on,” you whispered, your eyes straining to find some sign of movement among the players gathering around him.

for one hopeful second, you thought he was moving. then one of his teammates knelt beside him. your heart started beating too hard, “why isn’t he getting up?”

you didn’t realize you’d said it aloud until dean turned toward you. his answer was calm and reassuring, something about them checking him and giving him a minute, but you barely heard him because medical staff were already running onto the field. running.

the sight sent something cold through your entire body. suddenly, you were standing. you didn’t remember making that decision either. one second you’d been sitting, and the next you were on your feet, straining to see past the players surrounding him.

you couldn’t.

there were too many people. helmets, jerseys, coaches. you caught flashes of green turf between them but no beau, and your chest tightened until every breath felt too shallow.

you hated this. you hated not being able to see him, the strange hush falling over the crowd, the whispers moving through the rows around you. most of all, you hated that there was absolutely nothing you could do.

your body moved before your brain caught up, carrying you one step toward the aisle and then allie’s hand closed gently around your wrist, “wait.”

“i need to—” the words died in your throat almost as soon as you said them.

need to what? run onto the field? push past the coaches? demand someone tell you what was happening? you were his girlfriend, not a doctor or a trainer. there was nothing you could do for him from there, and the realization made you feel sick.

your eyes burned suddenly. you blinked hard, refusing to cry when you didn’t even know what had happened yet, and forced yourself to look back toward the field.

the group around him shifted, and your breath caught. beau was sitting up.

the air left your lungs so quickly that your knees almost buckled. you pressed one hand against your mouth, a muffled, “oh, thank god,” escaping before you could stop it.

he was sitting. sitting was good. you decided that immediately. sitting was very, very good.

one of the medical staff crouched in front of him while another spoke to him from the side. even from that distance, you could tell beau was responding. more than responding, actually. his hands were moving as he talked, and you almost laughed because, of course, he was arguing about something.

you didn’t know what, but you would’ve bet everything in your bank account that he was insisting he was fine.

the thought should’ve annoyed you. instead, relief made your eyes sting all over again.

after what felt like an hour but was probably only a few minutes, beau got to his feet and the stadium erupted. you didn’t join in. you couldn’t. your fingers remained locked around the railing as you watched him walk toward the sideline under his own power, his helmet tucked beneath one arm and a trainer beside him.

you watched every single step. only when he disappeared from view did you realize you were shaking.

briar won, but you barely noticed.

normally, you would’ve been celebrating. beau would’ve found you afterward wearing that bright, triumphant grin, still buzzing with leftover adrenaline. he would’ve wrapped his arms around you despite your complaints about how sweaty he was, and you would’ve pretended to be annoyed while hugging him back anyway.

that night, the final whistle felt almost meaningless.

your phone remained stubbornly silent. you knew that was normal, logically. beau’s phone was probably sitting in a locker somewhere while he was with his coaches, and surely someone would tell you if something were seriously wrong.

at least, you thought they would.

the thought sent you back to your phone. still nothing.

by the time the stadium began emptying, your battery had dropped below twenty percent. you said goodbye to allie and dean, made your way toward the restricted hallway near the locker rooms and waited, the adrenaline that had carried you out of the stands slowly fading and leaving something heavier behind.

every time the door opened, your head snapped up.

a staff member walked through first, followed several minutes later by two players you vaguely recognized. an assistant coach came through after that. none of them were beau.

you folded your arms tighter across your chest. his hoodie, the same one he’d thrown at you before your midnight football lesson weeks ago, suddenly didn’t feel warm enough.

you checked your phone again, even though you already knew there wouldn’t be anything there.

you were beginning to consider stopping the next person who walked through that door when it finally opened again. beau stepped into the hallway, and everything inside you went quiet.

he’d changed out of his uniform and into grey sweatpants, a black hoodie, and sneakers. his hair was damp from a shower, curling slightly at the ends, and he looked tired. paler than usual, maybe.

but he was standing. he was walking. he was there.

his eyes swept the hallway, searching, and you knew who he was looking for before he found you. the moment he did, his entire face changed. not dramatically, just enough for you to notice the tension around his mouth ease and his shoulders drop slightly, “there you are.”

you moved before you thought about it. one moment you were standing against the wall, and the next you were crossing the hallway toward him so quickly that beau barely had time to react.

at the last second, you stopped yourself.

the memory of the hit flashed through your mind, and your eyes moved instinctively over his body. you didn’t know where he was hurt or how badly, and suddenly you were afraid to touch him.

beau noticed the hesitation. of course he did. something in his expression softened, and without saying anything, he opened his arms.

that was all it took.

you stepped into him carefully, wrapping your arms around his middle. the second your cheek touched his chest, some tightly wound part of you finally gave way.

his arms closed around you immediately, one circling your shoulders while the other hand settled against the back of your head, his fingers slipping gently into your hair. for several seconds, neither of you said anything. you listened to his heartbeat instead, steady beneath your ear, while his hand moved slowly over your hair. “hey,” he murmured eventually.

you tightened your arms around him, “don’t.”

his hand paused briefly against the back of your head, “don’t what?”

“talk yet.”

there was a tiny movement beneath your cheek, the beginning of a quiet laugh, but he listened. he didn’t make a joke, didn’t tell you that you were overreacting, and didn’t immediately start insisting that he was fine. he just held you, and somehow that made you want to cry more than anything else had.

eventually, when you were reasonably sure your voice wouldn’t betray you, you pulled back just enough to look at him. your eyes immediately began cataloguing everything they could find.

no cuts. no obvious swelling. his eyes looked normal, you thought, though you had no idea what normal pupils were supposed to look like and suddenly wished you’d paid more attention in health class.

beau watched you inspect him without teasing you for it.

“are you okay?” you asked quietly.

“i’m okay.”

the answer came too quickly, causing your eyes to narrow, “you were on the ground for a long time.”

his expression shifted, not toward annoyance but something closer to understanding, “i know.”

“they took you back here.”

“precaution.”

you continued staring at him. beau sighed softly, and when he spoke again, his voice was slower and steadier, “i’m okay.”

this time, he wasn’t brushing you off. he was reassuring you, and some of the tension finally left your shoulders.

you asked him what had happened, and he explained that he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him and had taken most of the impact through his shoulder. your gaze immediately dropped toward it.

he noticed, “it’s fine.”

“does it hurt?”

he hesitated, and that was answer enough, “beau.”

“a little.”

you kept looking at him until his mouth twisted. “more than a little,” he admitted, “but nothing’s broken.”

before you could ask anything else, he reached for your hand. his fingers slipped between yours with the same familiar ease they always did, and his thumb began moving over the back of your hand.

the same thing he always did without realizing it.

you looked down at your joined hands and felt your throat tighten. he was comforting you. he’d been the one lying motionless on a football field less than an hour ago, and somehow he was standing there trying to calm you down.

“i hated that.”

his thumb stilled.

you swallowed, keeping your eyes fixed on your hands. “i couldn’t see you.”

beau didn’t interrupt, so you kept going.

“i know you get tackled. i know that’s part of it now.” your fingers tightened slightly around his, “but you always get up.”the hallway felt strangely quiet around you, “and you didn’t.”

your voice caught slightly on the last word. you hated that it did, but beau didn’t draw attention to it. his fingers only tightened around yours before he gently pulled you closer, his free hand settling at your waist, “i’m sorry.”

you looked up immediately, “you don’t have to apologize for getting hurt.”

“i know.”

“then don’t.”

the corner of his mouth lifted faintly, “okay.”

you studied him for another moment before lifting your free hand to his face. your fingertips brushed lightly over his cheek, and beau went still beneath the touch. his skin was warm. you traced your thumb once beneath his cheekbone, needing the reassurance of something tangible beneath your hand, “you scared me.”

something in his expression changed. the hint of a smile disappeared, and he turned his face slightly to press a quiet kiss into your palm, “i know.”

you closed your eyes briefly, then let out a long breath. “i don’t like football anymore.”

a surprised laugh escaped him and you frowned, “i’m serious.”

“last month you didn’t understand football.”

“exactly. things were better then.”

his mouth twitched, “you liked the lessons.”

you looked at him, “i liked the teacher.”

the words left your mouth before you could reconsider them, and beau went quiet. his eyes softened in a way that immediately made you regret giving him the satisfaction, “don’t.”

“i didn’t say anything.”

“you’re about to.”

“i’m really not,” a grin crept into his face.

“you’re smiling.”

“i smile a lot.”

“not like that.”

his grin widened, and when you tried to pull your hand away, he didn’t let you. instead, he lifted your joined hands and pressed a kiss against your knuckles.

the gesture was so gentle that your irritation disappeared before it had a chance to become convincing.

for a moment, he simply looked at you. then his expression shifted, and you recognized the look immediately. he’d thought of something, and you already knew you weren’t going to like it, “what?”

“nothing.”

“beau.”

he tried to look innocent. it didn’t work, “i was just thinking.”

you raised your brows in anticipation. then he said, “you knew that was a good catch.” you stared at him as he nodded seriously, “before the hit.”

“beau.”

“i’m just saying.” his mouth twitched, “the lessons worked.”

you closed your eyes. unbelievable. absolutely unbelievable. you’d spent the last hour imagining every possible terrible scenario, and beau was standing there looking pleased with himself because you’d understood one play.

“coach beau knows what he’s doing,” he added.

you opened your eyes to see he was grinning now. relief moved through you so suddenly and intensely that you didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. a laugh won, quiet at first and then helpless as all the tension you’d been carrying finally began to unravel.

beau’s grin softened as he watched you.

you stepped forward again and wrapped your arms carefully around his waist. he didn’t hesitate before pulling you close, his chin settling lightly on top of your head as you rested your cheek against his chest.

his heartbeat was steady beneath your ear.

you listened to it while his thumb traced slow, absent circles against your back. neither of you said anything else for a while, and you didn’t need to.

maybe you’d never get used to watching him play. maybe some small part of you would always hold its breath when he hit the ground, and maybe knowing more about football had only given you more things to worry about.

but right then, none of that mattered.

beau was there, his arms were around you, and when he pressed a quiet kiss to the top of your head, you closed your eyes and let yourself finally breathe.

[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ keep it down.

pairing – garrett graham x kitty!reader summary – garrett’s closed bedroom door offers absolutely no protection from the fact that tucker sleeps on the other side of the wall. warnings – 18+, explicit smut, swearing, spit kink, scratching/biting, praise, dirty talk, rough sex, noisy sex, roommate overhearing. notes from me – this is just pure smut idk man. but as requested here!!! we love kitty!!!!! word count – 3.1k

navigation – masterlist |

The hockey house has learned nothing from history, which is probably why Garrett’s room is still directly beside Tucker’s and why Garrett, for all his captain-brain discipline and deep, tragic commitment to acting like he has self-control, currently has one hand braced beside her head and the other hooked under her thigh like the entire world begins and ends between her knees.

The room is too hot. That’s the first thing she notices when she can notice anything outside the slick, heavy pressure of him moving over her.

Too hot, too dark, the lamp beside his desk throwing gold across his shoulder and catching on the curls at his forehead every time he drops his head to kiss her again. 

His sheets are twisted under her back. His comforter is half on the floor. Her skirt is somewhere near the door because Garrett had yanked it down one leg and she’d kicked it away with such violent commitment that he’d laughed into her mouth and said, “That was aggressive,” right before she’d grabbed his face and told him to stop talking.

He’s not talking much now. Which is really for the best, because when Garrett Graham gets too smug, she starts wanting to bite him. And when she bites him, he gets this ruined little hitch in his breathing that makes her feel extremely normal and mentally well about the whole thing.

Her legs are wrapped around his waist, ankles locked low at his back, pulling him in harder every time he starts to get too careful. He keeps trying to kiss her like it will quiet her down, which is stupid for several reasons, mainly because she’s never once in her life been inspired toward silence by Garrett’s mouth. 

If anything, it makes her worse. Messier. Hotter under the skin. More likely to drag her nails down his back until he hisses through his teeth and his hips snap forward hard enough to make the headboard complain behind them.

“Fuck,” Garrett grits out, breaking the kiss just enough to breathe against her mouth. “Baby, your nails.”

She smiles, but it comes out shaky because he rolls into her at the same time, deep and slow and mean, and the sound that leaves her is nothing like the clever thing she had planned. 

It spills out raw and open, caught in the back of her throat before it turns into his name. Her fingers flex against his shoulders anyway, nails finding the hot, damp skin there. “You love my nails.”

“I love my skin attached to my body.”

“Liar.”

His laugh breaks halfway through when she drags her nails down again, lighter this time but still enough to make his whole back tighten under her hands. He drops his forehead to hers, breath shaking, mouth brushing hers without properly kissing. “You’re evil.”

“You’re inside me and still complaining.”

“That’s multitasking.”

“That’s annoying.”

“That’s rich coming from the girl who bit my jaw ten minutes ago because I said please.”

She turns her head just enough to see the mark under his jaw, dark and pretty and entirely her fault. Heat licks through her again, stupid and proud. “You sounded cute.”

Garrett’s eyes narrow, but whatever comeback he has dies when she clenches around him on purpose. His mouth falls open against hers. The hand under her thigh tightens, fingers digging in, and his next thrust comes rougher, less polished, all the practiced control slipping for one hot second. 

She loves when it happens. Loves the little cracks in him. Loves how Garrett can be cocky all night downstairs with half the campus orbiting him like he hung the moon in Briar blue, but in here, with her ankles locked behind his back and her nails in his skin, he gets messy. He gets honest in ways he doesn’t always know how to say.

“There,” she breathes, laughing softly even as her eyes start to flutter. “That shut you up.”

His mouth curves against hers, smug even ruined, which is frankly inspirational in the worst way. “You’re so fucking mouthy for someone who’s been moaning for ten minutes.”

She gasps, offended, except it gets dragged sideways into a moan when he shifts his angle and hits something low and bright that makes her hips jerk. “Garrett.”

“Yeah?” He kisses the corner of her mouth, then her cheek, then the place under her jaw where her pulse is going stupid. “What, baby?”

Her nails scrape up into his hair, tugging hard enough that his head lifts. His eyes are dark, half-lidded, heat blown wide through them, and he looks so good above her that it annoys her. It always annoys her. 

He has no right looking like that in a room this messy, with a scratch blooming red over one shoulder and his mouth swollen from hers, like some rich athletic nightmare built specifically to make her standards embarrassing.

She pulls him down until his mouth is almost on hers again. “Spit in my mouth.”

Garrett stills for half a second. A tiny pause, one blink, his eyes searching hers with the last scrap of sense either of them has brought into this room. “Yeah?”

She nods, breath already catching because he hasn’t moved again and her body is throwing a private, furious little tantrum about it. “Yeah.”

Something shifts in his face. His thumb presses into the soft skin beneath her thigh, his mouth hovering over hers, his voice dropping into that low, careful place that still sounds filthy because it’s Garrett and he’s looking at her like he wants to ruin his own life with both hands. “Open, baby.”

Her stomach flips so hard it almost feels like falling. She opens her mouth, and of course he chooses that exact second to thrust again, slow and deep enough that a moan pushes right out of her, helpless and wet and humiliatingly perfect. 

Garrett’s eyes drag over her face like he’s memorising it for later, like he’s going to be insufferable about this for the rest of time if she gives him even an inch. Then he leans closer, lips parted, and spits into her mouth.

The sound she makes is obscene.

Garrett’s breath catches. His jaw flexes as he watches her swallow, and for one second all his stupid golden-boy polish goes clean out the window. He looks wrecked. Actually wrecked. Mouth open, eyes gone dark and stunned, hips pressing into her like he forgot what rhythm was supposed to be because her tongue just flicked over her bottom lip and that was the final thing his brain could survive.

“Fuck,” he says, low and rough, almost to himself. “You’re gonna kill me.”

She smiles up at him, dazed and pleased and hot all over. “Don’t be dramatic.”

He laughs once, without humour, and kisses her so hard the back of her head presses into the pillow. It’s sloppy after that. His tongue pushes into her mouth and she lets him, opens for him, pulls him closer with her legs until he groans into the kiss and his hips start moving again, faster now, the bed shifting beneath them with every thrust. 

She can feel him everywhere. In her hips, her thighs, the bruising grip of his hand, the sweat-slick slide of his chest against hers, the dizzy little ache where he fits so deep it makes the entire room blur at the edges.

She gets loud because there’s no point pretending she won’t. Garrett knows it. The house knows it. The drywall has probably developed trauma. His mouth keeps catching hers between sounds like he’s trying to swallow them, like he wants them and also knows Tucker is on the other side of the wall silently considering a transfer.

“Baby,” Garrett mutters, but it sounds more like a plea than a warning.

“What?” she breathes, all fake innocence and no air. “Too loud?”

His hand slips from her thigh to her waist, then lower, dragging her harder into the next thrust. “No.”

She laughs, but it breaks apart when he does it again. “You’re so bad at pretending to be responsible.”

“I’m extremely responsible.”

“You’re fucking me through your mattress.”

“That’s private captain business.”

She makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a moan, and Garrett kisses it off her mouth, smiling like an idiot against her lips. It’s too warm suddenly, too close to something sweet, so she scratches lightly down his back again to ruin it. He hisses and pulls back, eyes flashing.

“Roll over,” he says.

Her breath leaves her in a rush. There’s a beat where she just looks at him, because she likes him like this. Bossy but not cold. Rough around the edges but still watching her face, still making sure she’s with him, still Garrett under all that heat. 

She lifts one brow because surrendering immediately would be bad for her brand. “Say please.”

His mouth parts, incredulous. “You want manners now?”

“I’m classy.”

“You just asked me to spit in your mouth.”

“And you did.” She smiles sweetly. “So maybe don’t act above the table manners portion of the evening.”

Garrett stares at her for a second, then laughs under his breath, shaking his head like she has personally ruined every plan he had for being a normal man. “Please roll over before I lose my fucking mind.”

“See?” she says, already moving because her body has no interest in maintaining a bit when his voice sounds like that. “That wasn’t hard.”

“No, but I am.”

She chokes on a laugh as he pulls out, and then he’s got his hands on her hips, helping her turn, warm palms sliding over her waist and stomach and thigh in little unnecessary touches that make it very clear he’s not, actually, as impatient as he’s pretending to be. 

The mattress dips. The sheet twists under her knees. She gets one elbow beneath herself, then pushes her hips back because she knows what she’s doing and because the groan Garrett makes behind her is worth any amount of lost dignity.

“Jesus,” he mutters.

She looks back over her shoulder, hair falling into her face, mouth swollen, breathing still ruined. “What?”

His hands settle on her ass, thumbs pressing in, and his eyes move over her like he’s having a serious private conversation with every bad decision he’s ever made. “Nothing.”

“You look pained.”

“I’m admiring.”

“You’re staring.”

“Same shit.”

She laughs and starts to say something else, but Garrett bends before she can, pressing his mouth to her ass in a hot, open kiss that steals the thought clean out of her head. Her fingers grip the sheet. He does it again, slower, then bites just lightly enough to make her jolt.

“Garrett.”

“Mm?”

“Are you making out with my ass?”

His laugh brushes warm over her skin. “You sound mad.”

“I’m impatient.”

“Yeah?” His mouth moves up, kisses dragging over her lower back, then higher, slow and warm and unbearable. “Poor baby.”

“Don’t poor baby me when your dick is literally begging to be inside me.”

He breaks. Actually laughs against her back, low and helpless, and the sound sends something soft and molten through her before she can stop it. Then his hand slides up her spine, palm smoothing over the place her body has gone tense with need, and his mouth follows: her back, her shoulder blade, the slope of her shoulder, the side of her neck. 

By the time he’s over her again, chest pressed to her back, one arm braced beside her and the other guiding her hips, she’s trembling in a way she would deny under oath. His mouth brushes her ear. “You good?”

The question is quiet. Almost swallowed by the heat of the room, the house noise underneath them, her own heartbeat. She turns her face into the pillow and nods. “Mhm.”

“Words.”

She huffs, but it comes out soft. “I’m good, Garrett.”

His mouth presses to her shoulder, a kiss that lingers half a second too long. “Good.”

Then he pushes back in, and she forgets every single language she has ever used to be difficult.

The moan that leaves her is loud enough that Garrett’s hand flexes at her hip and his forehead drops briefly to her shoulder like he’s either praying or laughing at his own funeral. 

She falls forward into the pillow, fingers twisting in the sheets, ass still tipped up because pride may be dead but instinct is thriving. He starts slow for approximately three seconds, which is very noble and completely unsustainable. Then she pushes back against him, and whatever thread of control he’s holding snaps with a sound low in his throat.

“There she is,” he murmurs, voice rough. “Fuck, baby.”

She says his name into the pillow, muffled and useless, and Garrett’s hand slides around the front of her throat, holding her there while his mouth presses beneath her ear. It makes her eyes roll shut. It makes every sound worse. The angle is deeper like this, sharper, each thrust sending heat licking up through her stomach and down the backs of her thighs until her whole body feels loose and overlit and almost too full of him to stay attached to itself.

The first bang on the wall is so hard the lamp flickers. They both freeze for one startled, ridiculous second.

Then Tucker’s voice comes through the drywall, flat and furious and deeply traumatised. “KEEP IT DOWN.”

Garrett goes completely still behind her.

She turns her face out of the pillow, eyes wide. For one silent second, the room holds. Then Garrett’s breath hits her shoulder in a shaky laugh, and she loses it too, a breathless little giggle that immediately makes her hide her face again because there’s nothing dignified about being naked on all fours while Tucker yells through the wall like the world’s saddest RA.

“Oh my God,” she whispers.

Garrett’s shoulders shake against her back. “We’re gonna get evicted.”

“You own nothing.”

“I live here.”

“Not for long if Tucker kills you.”

Another bang hits the wall. “I CAN HEAR YOU LAUGHING TOO.”

She lifts her head, trying to sound sincere and absolutely failing because Garrett chooses that moment to shift inside her, just barely, and her voice wobbles. “SORRY–”

Garrett thrusts again. The apology breaks apart instantly, turning into a moan she has no chance of catching. Her head drops back into the pillow, fingers gripping the sheet as Garrett buries his laugh against her shoulder and then, because he’s a bastard and a deeply unserious man, does it again.

Tucker groans through the wall. “I HATE THIS HOUSE.”

Garrett kisses her shoulder, still laughing, but his hips keep moving now, slow and deliberate and mean in a way that makes the humour dissolve back into heat far too quickly. “You apologised so nicely,” he murmurs against her skin.

“Shut up.”

“You want to try again?”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” His hand tightens at her waist, pulling her back to meet him, and her whole body answers before she can decide not to. “You’re clenching.”

“Garrett.”

“Yeah, Kitty?”

“Don’t call me that when I’m trying not to scream.”

His mouth curves against her neck. “That sounds like a you problem.”

She reaches back blindly and smacks at his thigh. He catches her wrist, pins it gently against the mattress beside her head, and the movement does something awful to her stomach. 

His chest is hot over her back, his breath ragged at her ear, his body moving harder now, less careful with every little sound she fails to swallow. She can’t bring herself to care about anyone else in the house. Not when Garrett’s other hand slides around her hip and down, fingers finding her with the kind of precision that makes her bite into the pillow.

“Oh,” she gasps, muffled. “Fuck.”

Garrett groans. “Yeah. There?”

She nods because words are a scam. His fingers keep moving, slick and firm, and his rhythm falters for the first time. That gets her. The fact that he’s not as controlled as he sounds. The way his hand tightens around her wrist. The way his mouth presses to her shoulder and stays there while his breathing falls apart in little pieces against her skin.

“Baby,” he says, and it’s not smug now. It’s rough and low and almost gone. “You’re so fucking good.”

Her eyes squeeze shut. The praise lands too deep, curling hot behind her ribs, and she tries to arch away from it, from the feeling, from how quickly it pulls her apart. Garrett follows, hips pressing in deep, fingers steady, mouth at her ear.

“Don’t hide,” he murmurs. “Let me hear you.”

“Tucker will kill us.”

“Tucker’s already dead inside.”

She laughs, or tries to, but it turns into another moan when he changes the angle again, and Garrett makes a sound like that one got under his skin. “There,” he says. “That’s it. Fuck, that’s the one.”

Her body goes tight all at once, heat winding so hard through her stomach that she stops caring about the wall, the house, the fact that she is absolutely going to have to walk downstairs later and look Tucker in the eye. 

Garrett’s fingers keep moving. His hips keep dragging her under. His mouth is on her neck, then her cheek, then the corner of her jaw, messy little kisses that don’t match how filthy everything else is, which is honestly rude.

“Garrett,” she gasps.

“I know.” His voice breaks around it. “I know, baby. Come on. I’ve got you.”

“I’m gonna–”

“Yeah.” His hand releases her wrist so he can wrap his arm around her middle, pulling her tighter against him, holding her through the sudden, helpless shake of her body. “There you go.”

She comes hard enough that the room blanks at the edges. Her face presses into the pillow, one hand flying back to grip his hip, nails digging in wherever she can reach. Garrett swears against her neck, deep and ruined, hips stuttering as she tightens around him.

He fucks her through it with no finesse left, just heat and breath and his hand locked over her stomach like he’s keeping her from coming apart completely.

By the time she comes back to herself, he’s still moving, slower now, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, breath ragged and damp over her skin. She turns her face out of the pillow, cheeks hot, mouth swollen, eyes bright with leftover heat and laughter. Garrett looks down at her, curls wrecked, shoulders scratched, face flushed and soft in all the places he keeps pretending he isn’t. She smiles before she can stop herself.

“Poor Tucker,” she whispers.

Garrett’s mouth curves, and his hand slides possessive and warm over her hip. “Poor Tucker should buy earplugs.”

She bites the pillow to hide another laugh.

He leans down, mouth brushing her ear, voice dropping back into heat like it never left. “Now be nice and keep your apology quiet this time.”

She turns her head just enough for her mouth to graze his jaw. “Make me.”

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[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ manwhore.

pairing – garrett graham x kitty!reader summary – garrett graham is used to girls giving him their names. tonight, one girl in a leopard print skirt decides to make him work for it. warnings – party setting, alcohol mentions, flirting, swearing, sexual references, garrett being humbled. notes from me – hi babes!! finally wrote kitty & garrett meeting! thank u to all the lovely ppl who requested this!! word count – 0.7k

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The hockey house was already too loud by the time Garrett saw her, which was probably why it took him a second to realise he didn’t know her. He knew most people who came through his house. 

In the loose, campus-famous, hockey-captain way where girls knew his name before he’d even decided whether he wanted to know theirs, and guys he’d never spoken to clapped him on the shoulder. The house moved around him like that every Friday, warm beer and cheap perfume and too many bodies pressed under bad lighting, everyone familiar enough to blur.

She didn’t blur.

She stood near the back of the living room in a tiny leopard print skirt and a black top that did absolutely nothing generous for his attention span, one hip tipped against the wall, boots planted like she’d picked the spot and expected the room to adjust. 

Her nails were long, glossy, sharp-looking things wrapped around a red cup, and when she laughed at something the girl beside her said, Garrett’s eyes dropped to her mouth before he could pretend they hadn’t.

He made it about three minutes before he crossed the room. “Hey,” he said, leaning one shoulder into the wall beside her. “Madison, right?”

Her laugh stopped. Slowly, like she was letting the stupidity settle properly before she decided what to do with it.

She turned her head, eyes moving over him from his messy curls to the Briar Hockey sweatshirt stretched across his shoulders, then back up to his face. “Uh,” she said. “Are you talking to me, hockey boy?”

Garrett blinked. Then he laughed, because it surprised him, and because her face didn’t move when he did. “Hockey boy?”

“You’re wearing your own merch.”

“You’re in my house.”

“And you have no idea who I am.” She tilted her cup toward him, eyebrows lifting. “You don’t even know my name.”

Garrett opened his mouth. Shut it again. “Well, I–”

“You can ask.”

His smile pulled wider despite himself. She was pretty in a way that felt vaguely dangerous up close, all shiny eyes and bare legs and that unimpressed mouth that made him want to say something worse just to see what she’d do with it. “Usually I don’t have to.”

“No,” she said, and this time she laughed properly, soft and mean and delighted. “God, I bet you don’t.”

His eyebrows rose. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you have manwhore energy.”

Garrett stared at her for a beat, then laughed again, louder this time. “Manwhore?”

She looked him over again, slower and much less accidental, and something hot slipped under his ribs. “I’m assuming you’ve heard worse.”

“Not usually from girls who want me to buy them a drink.”

“I didn’t say I wanted that.”

“But you do.”

Her eyes narrowed, amused now. “Do I?”

Garrett leaned a little closer, just enough that her perfume cut through the beer-sweat heat of the room, something sweet and warm that made his focus go briefly, embarrassingly clean. “Can I get you a drink?”

Her mouth curved. “You really won’t ask my name?”

“You really won’t just tell me?”

“Nope.” She pushed off the wall, the edge of her shoulder brushing his arm as she passed, and Garrett had the incredibly stupid urge to catch her wrist. He didn’t. Barely. She glanced back once, smile sharp enough to leave a mark. “Good luck, hockey boy.”

It took him forty-seven minutes and three separate conversations to find out her name.

When he found her again, she was in the kitchen, reaching past some sophomore for a bottle of vodka with the confidence of someone who had never once considered asking a man to move. Garrett came up behind her, close enough that his mouth was near her ear when he said her name.

She went still for half a second. Then she turned, and the look on her face made the whole stupid search worth it. “Hi.”

Garrett grinned. “Hi.”

“You asked around about me?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s embarrassing for you.”

“Little bit,” he admitted. “You’ve got a reputation.”

Her eyes flicked down to his mouth. Back up. “So do you.”

“Yeah?” He shifted closer, and this time she didn’t move away. “Hope mine’s good.”

Her smile went slow. “Depends who you ask.”

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[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ communal space.

pairing – garrett graham x kitty!reader summary – four attempts, four interruptions, one very cursed hockey house, and garrett learning that privacy might be the real fantasy. warnings – 18+, smut, interrupted sex, semi-public sex, car sex, use of vibrator, hickeys, dirty talk, praise, jealousy/possessive behaviour, strong language notes from me – THIS WAS SO FUN i love kitty!! based on this ask, thank u so much babe!!! word count – 8.2k

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The first time, Garrett genuinely thinks he might die in his own bedroom, which feels dramatic until she rolls her hips down again and his entire nervous system gives up on dignity.

She’s in his lap with one knee planted on either side of him, skirt shoved high around her thighs, one hand fisted in the front of his shirt and the other buried in his hair like she’s not kissing him so much as trying to make a point with her mouth. 

His room is dark except for the lamp on his desk, this warm, lazy spill of gold catching on the damp shine of her lips every time she pulls back to breathe.

Somewhere downstairs, the house is being stupid in the way the hockey house is always stupid after midnight – doors slamming, Logan laughing too loudly, Dean yelling something that sounds legal in no state, Tucker probably trying and failing to impose order – but Garrett can barely hear any of it through the blood thudding in his ears.

He has one hand locked around her waist and the other flattened low on her back, guiding her down against him, not that she needs much guidance. She’s doing it on purpose now. Slow, mean little grinds that drag the seam of her panties over him through his sweats and make him lose a bit more of his mind every time. 

He’s hard enough that it’s almost painful, hot and trapped and pressed right up against her. Her mouth curves against his when he groans, like she’s won something.

“You’re so loud,” she murmurs, nipping at his bottom lip.

Garrett’s fingers dig into her hip. “You’re sitting on my dick.”

“Barely.”

“You want me to apologise?”

“I want you to do something useful.”

He huffs a laugh, except it comes out rougher than he means it to because she grinds down again at the same time, and his head knocks back against the wall behind his bed. “Jesus Christ.”

She leans forward and kisses the sound out of him, messy and open-mouthed, teeth catching, tongue sliding over his like she’s trying to shut him up and make him worse at the same time. 

It’s very effective. Annoyingly effective. Everything with her is like that. A fight. A dare. A little bit of blood under the nail. She kisses him like she’s still pissed about something he said three hours ago and intends to take payment directly out of his spine.

Her mouth leaves his and drags down his jaw. Garrett feels her smile against his skin right before her teeth sink into the side of his throat.

“Hey.” His hand tightens at her waist. “Don’t.”

She hums, entirely unbothered, and sucks harder.

“Seriously?” he says, voice strained because it’s difficult to sound authoritative when her hips are still moving and her mouth is hot on his neck. “You’re gonna make me look like I got attacked.”

She pulls back just enough to look at the mark blooming under his jaw, pleased with herself in a way that makes his stomach go tight. “You did.”

“By a girl who keeps saying she’s not my girlfriend.”

Her eyes flick to his. “You keep saying that.”

Garrett’s mouth opens, then closes, because he hates when she does that. He hates it even more because she doesn’t look hurt. She looks smug and hot and a little too bright around the eyes, like she’s waiting to see if he’ll flinch first.

So he does what he always does when she gets too close to the thing under the thing. He smirks.

“Yeah, well,” he says, sliding both hands under her skirt now, palms spreading over the backs of her thighs. “You keep leaving claw marks on my back, Kitty.”

Her whole face changes.

Garrett feels the satisfaction of it before she even speaks, because she goes still over him for one sharp second, mouth parting in outrage, eyes narrowing. “Don’t call me that.”

He grins. “What? Thought Dean said it was cute.”

She punishes him immediately by grinding down harder. His fingers flex, dragging her closer, and her expression tips from smug to hungry so fast it almost makes him dizzy.

“Yeah,” she whispers, mouth brushing his. “That shut you up.”

“You’re such a brat.”

“You love it.”

Garrett wants to deny it. It’s sitting right there, easy and obvious, the kind of thing he could toss back without thinking. Except her nails scrape lightly down the back of his neck, enough to remind him she could, and the truth moves through him in a warm, humiliating rush. 

He does. He loves the mouth on her. Loves the attitude. Loves that she’ll glare at him from across a room like she wants to throw something at his head and then end up in his bed twenty minutes later making that soft, ruined little sound into his mouth.

He settles for kissing her again, because that feels safer than saying any of it. She melts for about half a second before biting his lip.

“Fuck,” he mutters, laughing into the kiss. “You’re impossible.”

“You’re slow.”

“I’m trying to be nice.”

“Don’t.”

His hand slides between them then, and that finally steals the next smart thing out of her mouth. Her breath catches against his cheek as his fingers find the damp heat of her through her panties, and Garrett goes a little quiet. 

For all his cocky bullshit, for all the easy flirting and the grin that gets him out of most trouble he doesn’t deserve to escape, there’s a second when he touches her like this where the performance drops clean off his face. Like the fact that she wants him still catches somewhere under his ribs.

Her hips twitch into his hand.

“Oh,” he says, low, smugness returning because he’s Garrett and therefore deeply committed to being unbearable. “That’s why you’re being mean.”

She grabs his jaw. “I’m always mean.”

“Not like this.”

“Garrett.”

“Yeah?”

Her voice thins at the edges, but her glare stays intact, which is honestly impressive. “If you tease me right now, I’ll kill you.”

His thumb presses in a slow circle that makes her lashes flutter. “You say that a lot for someone currently trying to fuck me.”

“Trying,” she repeats, breathless and furious. “Exactly. And yet here we are. Discussing.”

Garrett’s mouth twitches. “Fair.”

He hooks his fingers into the edge of her panties and tugs them aside, and the room seems to shrink down to the tiny space between their bodies. Her hands slip from his jaw to his shoulders. 

Her mouth opens but nothing comes out. He can feel how wet she is, how hot, how close she already is to losing patience completely, and it does something stupid to him. Something possessive and bright and not casual at all.

She lifts on her knees when he guides her up, one hand braced against the wall beside his head, the other still on his shoulder, nails biting. He shifts beneath her, pushing his sweats down just enough, breath already jagged.

“C’mon,” he murmurs. “There you go.”

Her chin drops, her forehead nearly touching his. “Garrett.”

“I’ve got you.”

Her mouth twists like she wants to say something bitchy and can’t quite find it. That gets him more than anything. Her quiet. Her body trembling over his. The scrape of her nails at his shoulder, the hickey pulsing warm under his jaw, her skirt bunched around her hips, his name barely holding itself together in her mouth.

He lines himself up, one hand gripping her thigh, the other holding her panties aside, and she starts to sink down.

The fire alarm screams.

For one whole second, they both freeze in absolute, biblical disbelief.

Then Garrett flinches so hard his head smacks the wall. She jerks over him with a gasp, grabbing his face like she can hold the moment in place with both hands and sheer fucking will.

“No,” she says.

Garrett blinks at her through the shriek of the alarm. “What?”

“No.” Her grip tightens on his jaw, eyes wide and glassy and furious, her whole body still hovering right above him. “No, Garrett. Please. Please, ignore it.”

He stares at her. “Ignore the fire alarm?”

She nods eagerly. “Yes.”

Downstairs, Tucker yells, “OH, FUCK!”

Garrett’s eyes close.

She immediately shakes his face. “No. Look at me. Tucker says that when he finds expired hummus.”

“Baby.”

She whines softly. “Don’t baby me. We’re busy.”

“Someone might be on fire.”

From below them comes Logan’s voice, ragged with panic and laughter. “WHY IS THERE A PLATE IN THE OVEN?”

Then Tucker again, louder and more horrified. “WHO PUT A PLASTIC PLATE IN THE OVEN?”

Garrett exhales through his nose like he’s trying to summon a version of himself with morals. Unfortunately, the version of himself under her right now is hard, half-undressed, and seriously considering whether smoke inhalation is that bad.

She makes a wounded sound and drops her forehead to his shoulder. “I hate this house.”

“I know.”

“I hate your friends.”

“I know.”

Downstairs, Dean screams, “IT’S NOT MY PLATE!”

That finally does it. Garrett groans, deeply and from the soul, and helps her off his lap before one or both of them dies in the least sexy way possible.

She climbs off him with all the grace of a furious cat, yanking her skirt down, hair wrecked, mouth swollen, and Garrett nearly walks into his dresser trying to pull his sweats up over an erection that has every right to file a formal complaint.

She points at him with one trembling finger. “If this is Logan’s fault, I’m putting his head in the oven.”

“Maybe don’t threaten murder while the fire alarm’s going off.”

“I’ll be quick.”

They make it to the hallway half-dressed and murderous. Smoke curls faintly up the stairs. Dean’s halfway up already, looking delighted until he sees her crooked skirt, Garrett’s flushed face, the hickey darkening under Garrett’s jaw, and the general aura of interrupted sex radiating off both of them like a gas leak.

Dean’s mouth opens. Garrett points at him. “Don’t.”

Dean looks at the hickey. Then at her nails. Then at Garrett’s sweats. His whole face lights with reverent horror. “Oh my God.”

She points at him. “I will push you down these fucking stairs.”

Dean steps aside immediately. “Understood.”

The second time, Garrett locks the bathroom door with such focus that she almost feels bad for him.

Almost.

He twists the little button on the knob, tests it once, then tests it again, jaw set like he’s securing a submarine hatch instead of the upstairs bathroom in a house where the towel rack’s been broken since October. 

She stands near the sink in one of his Briar shirts and nothing else, watching him with her arms crossed and her mouth doing the thing it does when she’s trying not to laugh at him and failing beautifully.

“Wow,” she says. “You’ve grown so much.”

Garrett turns. “I’m being proactive.”

“You’re being traumatised.”

“By your inability to finish a sentence without insulting me?”

“By your idiot roommates.”

He points at her. “You like them.”

“I like Tucker. Logan’s useful for entertainment. Dean’s a cautionary tale with hair product.”

Garrett tries not to laugh and loses. “That’s mean.”

The bathroom is full of steam, the mirror fogged at the edges, the bathwater high and hot and carrying the faint clean smell of whatever body wash she stole from him because, according to her, his was annoyingly good and therefore community property. 

Garrett’s gone a little overboard, which she will absolutely make fun of him for later if she survives the night with any dignity left. Candles on the sink. Towels stacked near the tub. His phone facedown on the counter like he doesn’t trust it not to ruin his life.

It is, despite everything, kind of sweet.

Which is dangerous. Sweetness always is with him. It sneaks up under the banter and the hooking up and the stupid public insistence that they’re not dating, and then suddenly he’s making a bath, checking the lock twice, putting her water bottle on the sink, and setting Douglas on the folded towel beside the tub like that’s not the most damning piece of evidence in the entire room.

Garrett’s busy pretending to adjust the temperature of the water, one hand under the tap, jaw set in that deeply masculine way men get when they’re doing something domestic and hoping no one points it out. 

So she leans her hip against the sink, arms crossed, and says, “This is a lot of effort for a girl you’re not dating.”

Garrett stills. Barely. The tiniest pause of his hand under the water, the flicker of his eyes toward Douglas on the towel, then to her, then away again like that tiny purple traitor has exposed him.

“That’s not effort,” he says, turning the tap off. “That’s preparation.”

She raises an eyebrow. “For the girl you’re not dating.”

“For the girl who keeps complaining that my house is ruining her life.”

“It is ruining my life.”

“You’re welcome to leave.”

She lifts her brows.

Garrett looks at her, at the shirt falling high on her thighs, at her bare legs, at the mouth he’s already kissed swollen twice tonight, and immediately seems to regret giving her any kind of exit option. His jaw shifts. “Just… not right now.”

A smile pulls at her mouth. “Use your brain next time.”

“Bossy.”

“Proactive.”

His mouth curves despite himself as he steps into her space, hands finding her hips under the shirt like they belong there, like they’ve mapped the exact place his thumbs should sit and neither of them is going to talk about what that means. “You gonna keep running your mouth, or are you getting in?”

“You made a whole setup. I’m appreciating the ambience.”

He tilts his head. “You’re mocking me.”

“I’m moved.”

“You’re a liar.”

She grins, and he kisses it off her before it can get any worse, mouth warm and open against hers, one hand sliding up the side of her waist. For a second the room narrows to steam and skin and the soft press of his thumbs beneath her ribs. Then her nails drift down his back, slow and deliberate, catching over the raised scratches she left there last time. Garrett’s whole body gives one sharp, quiet reaction against hers.

“Careful,” he says, voice lower.

She smiles into his mouth. “Does it hurt?”

“A little.”

“Good.”

“Jesus.” He pulls back just enough to look at her, incredulous and turned on and visibly annoyed about both. “You’re insane.”

“You keep inviting me over.”

“Yeah, well.” His eyes drop to her mouth. “I’m stupid.”

“Finally, common ground.”

He mutters something under his breath that she doesn’t catch before he kisses her again, rougher this time, like he’s punishing her for being right. His hands slip under the hem of the shirt and drag it up her body, and the second it’s over her head, Garrett forgets how to finish whatever insult he’d clearly been building toward. 

It happens so plainly she almost laughs. His eyes drop, throat working once, hands settling at her waist like he needs somewhere safe to put them before they get him into trouble.

She tilts her head. “You okay?”

His eyes flick up. “Fine.”

“You look pained.”

“Because you’re naked and still talking.”

“That usually upsets you?”

“It does when the talking is happening instead of the bath.”

She glances toward the tub, then to Douglas, still waiting innocently on the towel. “You brought him out and everything.”

Garrett’s face tightens in immediate betrayal. “Don’t make it weird.”

“Weird?” She looks offended. “That’s Douglas.”

“I know his name.”

She grins. “You should. You helped name him.”

“I said it as a joke.”

“And then it stuck. That’s how naming works.”

“I didn’t think I’d be standing in my bathroom months later listening to you talk about him like he’s a close personal friend.”

“He’s been very supportive.”

Garrett gives her a flat look. “He has a charging cable.”

“He has stamina.”

“I have stamina.”

She lets her eyes drag over him, slow and deeply unfair, until his expression shifts by a fraction. “Do you?”

Garrett’s hands tighten on her waist. “Get in the bath.”

She laughs, and he guides her in with both hands like he knows full well she might climb right back out just to spite him. The water closes around her hot enough to pull a sigh out of her, and a second later Garrett is sliding in behind her, knees bracketing her hips, chest warm against her back. 

For a second, she lets herself settle. Lets her head tip back onto his shoulder. Lets his hands move over her stomach under the water, slow and broad, like he’s smoothing out every sharp edge she keeps trying to put between them.

Then he reaches past her for Douglas. She opens one eye. “Be respectful.”

Garrett’s mouth brushes the side of her neck. “I’m always respectful to Douglas.”

“You called him a tiny homewrecker last time.”

“He knows what he did.”

“You were jealous.”

He scoffs. “I was not jealous of a vibrator.”

“You sulked.”

“I was catching my breath.”

“You glared at him.”

“He was smug.”

She laughs, and Garrett bites gently at her shoulder, enough to make the laugh catch. The vibrator hums to life in his hand, a low, familiar buzz that has heat pulling through her before he even touches her with it. She knows he feels the shift in her body, because his arm slips across her waist and his mouth settles at her ear.

“Still talking?” he murmurs.

She swallows, already hating how much rougher her voice sounds. “Still waiting.”

His smile presses into the side of her throat. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Poor baby.”

She turns her head just enough to glare at him. “Don’t start.”

Garrett drags Douglas slowly up the inside of her thigh, nowhere near where she wants him, the absolute bastard. “Thought you wanted me to use my brain.”

“I want you to use your hand.”

“That’s demanding.”

“That’s proactive.”

His laugh is low against her ear, and then his mouth drops to her shoulder, open and warm, as he finally guides the vibrator higher.

“Fine,” he murmurs, voice gone rough in that way that makes her thighs want to part before she’s decided to let them. “But if you’re gonna keep defending him, I’m making him earn his place in this relationship.”

She goes still against him. Garrett goes still too, just for a second. The word hangs there in the steam, soft and stupid and too close to something neither of them has agreed to say out loud.

Then she clears her throat, eyes fixed very hard on the fogged mirror. “That what we’re calling it?”

His mouth brushes her shoulder again, slower this time. “Don’t get cocky.”

“I think Douglas should know where he stands.”

Garrett exhales a laugh against her skin, and when he speaks again, his voice is lower, threaded through with heat. “Right now? Between your legs, if you stop arguing with me.”

The words skim hot along her wet skin, and the laugh she tries for comes out smaller than planned, caught somewhere between her throat and his mouth on her shoulder.

His arm slides across her middle, dragging her back more firmly against him, the hard line of his chest pressed to her spine, his thighs bracketing hers under the water while Douglas traces a slow, maddening path up the inside of her leg.

He’s being awful about it, of course. Deliberate. Patient in a way that feels less like restraint and more like cruelty, brushing close and then away, letting the vibration skim over places that make her stomach tighten before he eases off again.

His mouth keeps moving along her neck, open and lazy, kissing beneath her ear, then the hinge of her jaw, then the spot just below it he knows makes her lose half a thought if he gets his teeth there.

She tries very hard not to squirm, because letting Garrett Graham know he’s getting to her is basically handing a loaded weapon to a man who already thinks he’s hot shit with a sniper rifle.

Unfortunately, her body has no loyalty. Her thighs shift under the water. Her fingers curl against his forearm where it’s locked across her stomach. Garrett feels both. His mouth curves against her neck.

“Garrett.”

“Mm?”

“Stop playing.”

“I thought you liked playing.”

“I like finishing.”

His breath catches against her ear in a laugh, low and rough enough to make her toes curl beneath the water. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “I’ve heard.”

She reaches back to smack his thigh, but he moves Douglas exactly where she needs it and her hand clenches instead, nails scraping into his skin beneath the water.

The sound that leaves her is immediate and humiliatingly soft, and Garrett goes still for half a second behind her, like he wants to feel it all the way through. Like he wants to press pause on the exact moment she stops being difficult and starts melting.

“There,” he says, lips brushing her ear. “That what you wanted?”

She refuses to answer, mostly because she can’t.

Garrett’s free hand drifts up her stomach, slow and wet and broad, palm sliding over her ribs like he has all the time in the world.

She feels the shape of his fingers before he reaches her chest, the heat of his hand closing over her, and her head tips back against his shoulder before she can stop it. His thumb brushes once, almost lazy, and her whole body answers so sharply that water laps over the edge of the tub.

“Oh,” he murmurs, much too pleased. “There too?”

“Shut up.”

His mouth presses to her temple, soft enough to be insulting under the circumstances. “You’re so easy to annoy.”

“You’re so easy to hate.”

“Yeah?” His hand tightens over her breast, enough to make her breath hitch. “This feel like hate?”

She would love to say something devastating. She has, in theory, a whole personality built around saying something devastating. But Douglas is buzzing steadily between her thighs, Garrett’s hand is warm and sure on her chest, and his mouth is at her ear, and the only thing her body manages is a thin little sound that makes him groan like it’s done something to him too.

He turns the setting up one notch. Her hips jerk. Water spills over the side again, hitting the tile in a soft slap. Garrett’s arm tightens across her waist, holding her there against him, not forcing, just grounding, making it impossible for her to arch away from the pressure even when it starts to burn low and bright through her stomach.

His fingers knead at her chest, thumb dragging in a rhythm that has her eyes rolling back before she can even pretend she’s above it.

“That’s it,” Garrett murmurs, voice gone thick. “Good girl.”

Her eyes squeeze shut.

He notices immediately, because he notices everything when it comes to getting under her skin. “Oh, you liked that.”

“Don’t.”

“You did.” His mouth brushes the shell of her ear, smug and breathless at once. “Fuck, baby, you really liked that.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” He shifts Douglas slightly, pressing it in tighter, and her whole body jolts against him. His hand slides from her breast to her throat for half a second, just holding her there, tipping her face back enough that his mouth can drag over her jaw. “You’re dripping all over my hand.”

The sound she makes would be embarrassing if she had enough air left to care. The steam has gone thick around them, clinging to her skin, turning the mirror to a blur.

Her body feels loose and tight at the same time, everything warm and wet and pulled so sharply toward the ache between her thighs that she can barely keep track of where she ends and Garrett starts. 

His chest is hard behind her. His breath is hot against her ear. His hand returns to her chest, greedy now, less patient, fingers squeezing and stroking like he’s finally losing the thread of his own control.

“Garrett,” she whimpers, and hates him a little for the way his breath catches when she does.

“Yeah, baby.” His voice drops even lower, rough enough to scrape. “I know. I’ve got you.”

“No, you don’t.”

A laugh breaks out of him, bitten off and dark. “You’re arguing with me right now?”

“You’re being smug.”

“I’m being useful.”

She tries to glare at him over her shoulder, but he presses Douglas just right and her face crumples before she can get the look properly arranged. Garrett’s mouth catches at her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, kissing whatever broken little sounds spill out of her as her thighs start to tremble under the water.

“There we go,” he murmurs. “That’s it. Let me have it.”

Her fingers claw at his thigh. His breath hitches hard.

“Careful,” he grits out, and she can feel exactly how much he means it by the way his hips shift behind her, the hard press of him against her lower back, his control fraying in quiet, satisfying little pieces.

She would absolutely mock him for that if her body didn’t choose that exact moment to climb right to the edge. Everything narrows. The bath, the steam, his mouth, his hands, the buzz pressed exactly where she needs it. 

Heat coils so tight in her stomach it almost hurts, her back arching against him, chest pushing into his palm as her head falls to his shoulder. She hears herself moan, high and helpless, and Garrett makes this ruined sound against her neck like it’s taken something out of him.

“Oh, baby,” she gasps, the words slipping out before pride can catch them.

Garrett’s hand tightens on her breast. “Fuck. Say that again.”

“No.”

“Brat.”

“Garrett–”

“I know.” He kisses beneath her ear, voice low and filthy-soft, all smugness burned down to want. “I know. You’re right there, aren’t you?”

She nods because words have become unreasonable.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, pressing Douglas in that tiny, perfect angle that makes her whole body go taut. “There you go. Come on. I’ve got you. Just like that.”

Her nails dig into his thigh hard enough that he swears under his breath, but he doesn’t stop. If anything, he holds her closer, mouth at her ear, hand on her chest, the other steady between her thighs, dragging her right up to the edge with a patience that feels like punishment and devotion at the same time.

“Garrett,” she gasps.

“I know. I know. There you go–”

A knock hits the door once, and the handle turns, and then Dean walks in.

The scream she lets out isn’t human.

Garrett shouts at the same time, jerking so hard the vibrator slips from his hand and disappears into the bath with a traitorous buzzing splash.

She lunges upright, foot sliding, hair going completely under for half a second before Garrett grabs her around the waist and hauls her back against him. 

Water sloshes everywhere. The candles flicker. Dean stands in the doorway with one hand over his eyes, which would be more useful if he had done it before seeing both of them naked and morally compromised.

“OH FUCK– I’M SORRY, DUDE– AH– FUCK!”

“DEAN!” Garrett roars.

She spits bathwater out of her mouth and whips around with her hair plastered over one eye. “WHY WOULD YOU WALK IN?”

“I KNOCKED!”

“YOU OPENED WHILE KNOCKING!”

“I THOUGHT IT WAS EMPTY!”

“THE DOOR WAS LOCKED,” Garrett yells, voice cracking with the kind of rage that only comes from a man interrupted twice in one night.

Dean’s hand remains over his eyes. His entire body is angled away from them in a panic. “IT WASN’T!”

Garrett looks at the lock. The little button has popped out. For a second, the three of them stare at it.

Dean backs up, shoulder hitting the doorframe. “I didn’t see anything.”

“You screamed ah fuck,” she snaps.

“I saw movement!”

“You saw tits, Dean.”

“I saw–” Dean stops himself, visibly choosing life. “I saw nothing. I’m blind. I have never had eyes.”

“GET OUT,” Garrett and she yell together.

Dean slams the door behind him.

The bathroom goes silent except for the steady drip of water onto the tile and Douglas buzzing somewhere under the surface like the last surviving member of a shipwreck.

She sits upright between Garrett’s legs, soaked, furious, hair in her face, chest heaving. Her skin is hot from the bath and hotter from embarrassment, every inch of her buzzing with a need that has nowhere to go now except rage. 

Garrett’s arm is still locked around her waist. His other hand is braced on the tub like he’s trying not to lose his mind. Then she feels his shoulders shake. Slowly, she turns her head.

Garrett presses his lips together.

“Don’t,” she hisses.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You’re laughing with your whole stupid body!”

That does it. One laugh gets out of him, low and helpless, and she stares at him with the flat, dead-eyed fury of a woman who has been edged and then waterboarded by bathwater in front of Dean Di Laurentis.

Garrett tries to kiss her shoulder. “Baby–”

“No.”

He attempts another kiss. “I’m sorry.”

“No.”

“I’ll kill him.”

She glares at him. “That doesn’t help me now.”

His mouth twitches again.

She points toward the door, hair dripping onto his arm. “I hate this fucking house.”

The third time, they try the porch because both of them have started confusing desperation with creativity.

The house is quiet behind them for once, and that should be the first warning. Nothing good ever comes out of the hockey house being quiet. It means someone is dead, asleep, or about to emerge at the exact wrong time with cereal. 

But the back porch has the fire pit going, the night air is cool, and she’s tucked sideways against Garrett on the outdoor couch wearing his sweatshirt and a little skirt because she decided to wear it specifically to make his life worse.

Now the firelight is moving over her bare thighs, over the cuffs of his sweatshirt swallowed around her hands, over the dark mark on his jaw that he’s already checked twice in his phone camera and complained about three times. 

Complained is maybe generous. He keeps touching it like he’s annoyed, then glancing at her like he wants her to do it again.

So she does. She leans in while he’s mid-sentence about practice and puts her mouth under his jaw. Garrett stops talking immediately.

Her lips curve. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing.”

“No, keep going. I’m listening.”

“You’re not listening.”

“I’m multitasking.”

He tilts his head back despite himself when she kisses lower, teeth grazing his throat. His hand slides from the back of the couch to her thigh, warm palm settling under the hem of the sweatshirt where it’s ridden up. “Don’t leave another one.”

She sucks at the skin just beside the first mark.

“Jesus.” His fingers dig into her thigh. “You’re doing it on purpose.”

“Obviously.”

“Why?”

She pulls back, eyes flicking over the fresh bloom of colour. Possessive satisfaction warms under her ribs, sharp and embarrassing, so she hides it behind a shrug. “You’re pretty when you’re marked up.”

Garrett stares at her. “That might be the most concerning compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I have a game this week.”

“Wear a turtleneck.”

“I’m a hockey player.”

She laughs and kisses him properly, swallowing whatever else he was going to say. His mouth opens under hers instantly, because for all his complaining, Garrett kisses her back like an addict with a grudge. 

One hand hooks around her waist and pulls her closer until she’s half in his lap, her thigh over his, her body angled toward him in the warm orange spill of the fire.

It had started innocent. They were supposed to be sitting outside because she’d dramatically announced she needed air that didn’t contain Dean. 

Garrett had brought her his sweatshirt without saying anything, which was annoying because it made her chest feel soft in a way she didn’t want to examine. They’d been fine for maybe ten minutes. Fifteen, if she was generous.

Then he’d stretched his arm behind her, all broad shoulders and lazy mouth and stupid sweatpants, and she’d remembered she had hands. Now one of those hands is slipping down his stomach.

Garrett catches her wrist before she reaches the waistband. “Here?”

She blinks at him. “You shy?”

“No.”

“Private?”

He gives her a look.

“Right.” Her mouth twitches. “Stupid question.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re enjoying this.”

“I’m coping.”

“You’re coping by jerking me off on the porch?”

“I’m resilient.”

Garrett’s laugh breaks when she twists her wrist out of his grip and palms him through his sweats. His head falls back against the couch, jaw going tight, and the sight of him like that – exposed throat marked up by her mouth, hair messy, lips parted around a breath he clearly doesn’t want to give her – makes her feel a little vicious. A little drunk, even though she isn’t.

“There he is,” she murmurs, kissing the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t get smug.”

“Too late.”

“You’re such a brat.”

“You keep saying that like it’s going to hurt my feelings.”

“It’s not supposed to hurt your feelings.” His voice drops as her hand slips under his waistband. “It’s supposed to make you behave.”

She wraps her hand around him properly, and Garrett’s hips lift a fraction into her palm before he can stop himself. She smiles. “How’s that going?”

“Fuck.”

“Not well?”

“Shut up.”

She kisses his neck again, softer this time, then ruins the softness by dragging her teeth over the mark she made. Garrett’s hand flies to her hip, gripping hard enough to pull a pleased little sound out of her. He hears it. His eyes open, dark and focused.

“Come here,” he says.

“I am here.”

“No.” His hand slides to the back of her thigh. “Here.”

She lets him drag her into his lap because she’s generous and because her patience has been burned down to ash by this house. Her knees bracket his hips, skirt riding up, the fire hot at her back and Garrett hotter under her. 

His hands shove beneath the sweatshirt, finding bare skin, and his mouth catches hers with none of the carefulness he sometimes tries to pretend he has.

They kiss hard and messy, the kind of kiss that tastes like irritation and wanting and the leftover sweetness of the soda she stole from him earlier. She strokes him slow just to hear the way his breath catches, and Garrett bites gently at her bottom lip in retaliation.

“Inside,” he mutters against her mouth.

“No.”

His brows pull together. “No?”

“We go inside, someone walks in.”

“We stay outside, someone walks out.”

“Then be quick.”

Garrett makes a sound like that suggestion has physically hurt him. “You’re killing me.”

“You’ll live.”

“Barely.”

“Good.”

He laughs, rough and gone, and his hand slides higher under her skirt. She shivers so hard he feels it. The cocky look on his face softens for half a second, not into anything sweet exactly, but something lower, warmer, more dangerous to her than smugness.

Then the sliding door opens.

“Ugh,” Tucker says from behind them. “Are you kidding?”

They freeze. Tucker is standing in the doorway in sweatpants and a hoodie, holding a bowl of cereal like a man who’s walked into war with Cheerios as his only weapon. His face isn’t shocked, it’s tired. Deeply, spiritually tired.

Garrett’s eyes shut. Her hand is still down his pants. Tucker looks at it.

She removes it very slowly, with as much dignity as a person can have while straddling a not-boyfriend on patio furniture.

“Tuck,” Garrett says, voice strangled.

Tucker points his spoon at them. “No.”

“Go away,” she says.

“This is a communal space.”

“It’s currently occupied.”

Tucker gestures with his spoon. “It’s the porch.”

“Then close your eyes on your way through.”

“I live here.”

“So do I,” Garrett snaps.

Tucker looks at Garrett’s lap, then at her skirt, then at Garrett’s neck, where the hickeys are now definitely visible in the firelight. His expression goes flatter. She reaches for the nearest cushion and throws it at him. Tucker dodges it with annoying ease.

“I’m just trying to eat cereal,” Tucker says.

“And I’m trying to get laid,” she fires back. “We all have dreams.”

Garrett makes a choked sound that might be a laugh and might be him giving up on life.

Tucker blinks at her. Then, because he’s Tucker, he actually considers this with more empathy than the situation deserves. “Yeah, okay. But maybe not where we keep the grill.”

“It’s off.”

“That is not the point.”

Garrett drags a hand over his face. “Can you just go inside?”

“I came outside because Logan fell asleep on the couch with a plate of nachos on his chest and Dean is trying to convince him it’s a weighted blanket.”

She stares. “I’m moving out of this house and I don’t even live here.”

Tucker nods once, like this is fair. “Valid.”

Garrett looks murderous. “Tuck.”

“I’m going.” Tucker lifts the cereal bowl in surrender. “I’m going. I’m just saying, there are other locations.”

“We tried the bathroom,” she says sweetly.

Tucker winces. “Right.”

“And the bedroom.”

“Also right.”

“And now, apparently, the porch is under federal protection.”

Tucker pauses at the doorway, thinking. Then he says, “Car?”

Garrett goes still. She turns her head toward him.

Tucker shrugs. “What? I’m problem-solving.”

The fourth time, Garrett parks at the back of the west lot behind the rink, under a dead light near the far fence where nobody has any reason to be unless they’re committing a crime, hiding a body, or making the sort of sexual decision that can only come after being interrupted three times by men with no respect for romance.

Garrett cuts the engine. The car settles into darkness. For a second, neither of them moves.

Then she starts laughing. It comes out half-hysterical, half-furious, her head tipping back against the passenger seat while Garrett sits behind the wheel with one hand still on the keys and the other over his mouth like he’s trying not to join her. 

The rink’s dark behind them, the lot mostly empty, rain shining faintly on the blacktop. It smells like cold air and leather and the faint mint of the gum Garrett had been chewing before she leaned across the console at a red light and ruined it for him.

“This is insane,” she says.

Garrett looks at her. “We can go back.”

She stops laughing immediately. “Don’t be stupid.”

His mouth curves. “There she is.”

“I swear to God, Garrett, if you call me Kitty right now, I’ll leave.”

“No, you won’t.”

She glares at him.

He grins wider, because he’s very brave for a man one wrong word away from dying in his own car. “You’re too horny to leave.”

Her mouth drops open. “I’m too horny?”

“Yeah.”

“You dragged me to a parking lot like a criminal.”

“At Tucker’s suggestion.”

She gestures vaguely. “Which makes this worse.”

“You got in the car.”

“You said please.”

“I said please once.”

“You said it twice.”

His expression shifts, smile sharpening. “You counting?”

She unbuckles her seatbelt. “I’m about to start counting how many times you don’t make me come tonight.”

Garrett’s face changes so fast it’s almost worth the entire miserable evening. The grin drops. His eyes go darker, mouth parting around a breath he doesn’t quite take, and then his hand’s on her thigh, tugging. “Come here.”

She makes him wait three seconds purely because she can.

His jaw ticks. “Baby.”

“Oh, now you’re polite?”

“Now I’m desperate.”

That does something terrible to her stomach. She climbs over the console and knees him in the thigh, because his car isn’t designed for dignity and neither of them has any left anyway. 

Garrett catches her with both hands around her waist, laughing into her mouth until she bites his lip and he groans, the sound low and immediate and so satisfying she almost forgets to be mad.

“Back seat,” he says.

“If you make me climb again–”

“I’ll do the work.”

“You better. Captain.”

His eyes flash at that, because she knows exactly what she’s doing, and he does too. He gets them into the back with slightly more athleticism than the situation deserves and significantly less grace. His shoulder hits the door. Her boot catches on the seatbelt. She laughs breathlessly and calls his car a hostile environment. He tells her she’s the hostile environment. She tells him he loves it. He doesn’t answer quickly enough.

That silence is loud. She looks at him in the dim.

Garrett looks back, his face close, one hand braced beside her head and the other on her waist, thumb slipped under the hem of her shirt. His hickey-dark throat moves when he swallows. There are faint red marks at the side of his neck where her nails had caught earlier, and the sight of them makes something low in her go hot and possessive.

“Don’t look so proud,” he mutters.

“I made those.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

She bites her lip. “They look good.”

“I look like I fought a raccoon.”

“A hot raccoon.”

Garrett stares at her. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“I’m under pressure.”

He laughs, and she kisses him before it can turn into another thing, because if they start bantering too long, something will explode. Possibly her. Possibly him. Possibly the car. 

His mouth opens under hers, and suddenly all of it comes rushing back: his bedroom, the fire alarm, the bath, Dean’s scream, the porch, Tucker’s spoon, every almost, every ruined edge, every time she had been right there and yanked back by this stupid house and its stupid men and their stupid timing.

She pulls at his shirt. Garrett helps, yanking it over his head and tossing it somewhere near the front seat. Her hands are on him immediately, palms over his shoulders, down his chest, nails scraping just enough to make his breath catch.

“Careful,” he says, but it comes out weak.

She kisses beneath his jaw. “You keep saying that.”

“You keep not listening.”

“You keep liking it.”

His hand tightens on her thigh. “You’re gonna be impossible after this.”

“After what?”

He drops his forehead to hers, breathing hard. “After I finally fuck the attitude out of you.”

For once, she has no immediate comeback.

Garrett notices. His mouth curves, slow and devastating. “Oh?”

“Don’t look smug.”

“You got quiet.”

“I’m thinking.”

“No, you’re not.”

She kisses him hard enough to knock his head back against the seat. It turns rougher after that, hotter, both of them finally too impatient to make a performance out of pretending they’re not. Clothes get pushed aside instead of properly removed. Her hand slips between them, his fingers dig into her hips, the windows fogging at the edges while the cold presses black and distant outside. 

Garrett keeps kissing her like the world might interrupt again if he lets go for even a second. She keeps marking whatever skin she can reach – his jaw, his throat, the hinge of his shoulder – because some ugly, honest part of her wants evidence. Wants him walking into that locker room tomorrow with her mouth on him whether he calls her his girl or not.

He hisses when her nails drag down his back. “Fuck, baby.”

She stills, looking at him through the dark. “Too much?”

His hands pause on her waist. It’s the first real pause of the night, the first careful thing either of them has done since he locked the bathroom door. His breathing is uneven, eyes searching her face.

“No,” he says, quieter. “Just– fuck.”

Her mouth softens before she can stop it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His thumb strokes once along her hip, almost absent. “You’re good.”

The tenderness of it is so rude she has to kiss him again. Garrett pulls her closer, and this time, when he shifts beneath her, when he guides her hips and she sinks down onto him at last, the sound that leaves both of them is wrecked enough to fog the whole car.

For a second, neither of them moves. She stays braced over him, forehead pressed to his, mouth open around a breath she can’t seem to finish. Garrett’s completely still underneath her, every muscle locked, hands gripping her like he’s afraid the universe is going to reach through the roof and drag her away.

“Oh,” she whispers, and then hates herself for how small it sounds.

Garrett’s eyes shut. “Yeah.”

“Garrett,” she whimpers.

“I know.” His voice is rough, almost unrecognisable. “I know, baby. Fuck, I know.”

She starts to move and his head tips back against the seat, throat exposed, all those marks dark against his skin. It makes her dizzy. Or maybe that’s him. The heat of him. The fullness. The way his hands guide her down into the rhythm like he’s been thinking about it all night because he has, because they both have, because every interrupted moment is suddenly living under her skin at once.

“Finally,” she breathes, half laugh, half moan. “Holy fuck.”

Garrett laughs too, but it breaks when she rolls her hips. “Yeah. Finally.”

“You feel–” She cuts herself off, nails digging into his shoulders.

He lifts his head, eyes dark and focused. “Say it.”

“No.”

“Brat.”

“Don’t call me–”

“Wasn’t gonna.” His mouth brushes hers. “Not this time.”

That lands somewhere stupid and soft in her chest, which is inconvenient, so she moves harder. Garrett groans, low and filthy, hands sliding down to grip her ass and pull her into him. The car rocks faintly.

Her palm slaps against the fogged window for balance, leaving a streak through the condensation. He kisses her neck, then her jaw, then her mouth, swallowing the sounds she doesn’t bother holding back anymore.

“God, I missed you,” he says, like it slips out before he can check it.

Her hips falter for half a beat. He looks up at her, breathing hard, hair messed by her hands, mouth swollen, hickeys blooming along his throat like a confession neither of them has to make out loud.

She swallows. “You saw me two hours ago.”

“Not like this.”

The answer moves through her like heat. She kisses him because she doesn’t know what else to do with it, and Garrett kisses her back with both hands pulling her down, his body meeting hers in this desperate, perfect rhythm that makes the whole night narrow to his mouth and his hands and the slick slide of them finally, finally getting what they want.

“Come on,” he murmurs against her lips, voice ragged. “That’s it. Take it.”

Her fingers twist in his hair. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

His laugh turns into a groan when she clenches around him. “You sure?”

“Garrett.”

“Yeah, baby.” His hand slides up her back, holding her close. “I’ve got you.”

She’s so close it’s almost mean. Her body tightens around it, breath breaking, forehead falling to his shoulder. Garrett’s hand presses at the base of her spine. His mouth is at her ear, saying things too low and filthy and soft to survive outside the car, and her nails rake down his back hard enough that he swears.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “There’s my girl.”

The words hang there between them, fogging up the windows, pressed into the leather, warm and reckless and absolutely not casual. Then she lifts her head, eyes narrowed even though her mouth is swollen and her breathing is ruined. “Your girl?”

Garrett stares at her.

She can feel him still inside her. Can feel the tremor in his hands where they hold her. Can see him deciding, right in front of her, whether to deflect or deny or be brave for once in his stupid life. His jaw shifts.

Then someone knocks on the window, three sharp taps. Everything in the car dies. Her whole body locks on top of him. Garrett’s eyes close like he’s been abandoned by God.

Through the fogged glass, a flashlight cuts white across the back seat. Another knock.

A muffled voice says, “Campus police.”

She drops her forehead onto his shoulder. Garrett’s hands are still on her hips. His breathing is still rough. The car is still hot and fogged and full of every terrible, unfinished thing between them.

For one long, awful second, there’s only the sound of rain dripping off the roof and the distant electrical buzz of the dead parking lot light.

Then she lifts her head just enough to look at him, hair falling around her face, cheeks flushed, mouth swollen, eyes wide with disbelief and the last remaining thread of her patience snapping clean in half.

Garrett swallows.

She whispers, very softly, “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

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[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ careful, kitty.

pairing – garrett graham x kitty!reader summary – garrett says they're not dating. kitty decides to make the consequences of that very, very clear. warnings – arguing, jealousy, sexual references, casual relationship, strong language, garrett being dumb asf notes from me – based on this request!! thank u anon, we love a jealous girly 🙂‍↕️ word count – 2.7k

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The hockey house always got stupid on Fridays. There were different kinds of stupid, obviously. There was early-night stupid, when everyone still had most of their balance and someone was pretending the kitchen counter was a DJ booth even though the speaker kept cutting out every time the bass hit too hard. 

There was midnight stupid, when beer pong had become a recognised sport in the dining room and three girls from Kappa were screaming over a Nicki Minaj verse like it had been written specifically for them. 

And then there was the late, sweaty, wall-leaning kind of stupid, where the whole downstairs smelled like spilled beer, cheap perfume, deodorant giving up under pressure, and whatever Tucker had put in the oven forty minutes ago and then forgotten about because Logan had challenged him to quarters.

She was posted near the mouth of the living room with a red cup she hadn’t sipped from in twenty minutes, one hip against the doorframe, watching Garrett Graham be very, very irritating.

He was on the couch in the far corner, one long leg stretched out, the other bent, beer bottle loose in one hand, shoulders relaxed beneath a faded Briar Hockey hoodie because he had a game tomorrow and one beer was the tragic little line between responsible captain and washed-up campus cautionary tale. 

His hair was still damp from whatever shower he’d taken after practice, curls drying messy over his forehead, and he had that clean, warm, unfair look on his face that made girls drift toward him like someone had put out a bowl of candy.

One of them had drifted. She was perched on the arm of the couch beside him, angled in with her knees turned toward him, laughing at something Garrett said like he’d invented humour personally for her benefit. 

She had glossy hair and a tiny top and the kind of pretty, easy confidence that came from never having to wonder if people wanted you in a room. Her hand landed on Garrett’s arm once, light and quick. Then again, longer this time, fingers curling around his bicep like she was testing the merchandise.

The red cup crinkled slightly in her hand.

Garrett laughed. A low huff through his nose, mouth tilting, eyes dropping briefly before coming back up. It was the kind of laugh that looked private from across the room even if it wasn’t. The kind of laugh that made something hot and awful crawl up the back of her neck and settle behind her ears.

She took one sip from her cup and tasted nothing but melted ice and bad decisions.

“Careful, Kitty,” Dean said beside her. “Clench your jaw any harder and you’ll crack a tooth.”

She didn’t look at him. “Don’t call me that.”

Dean hummed into the rim of his beer. He’d appeared at her side sometime in the last five minutes, because rich boys had stealth settings when there was drama nearby. 

He wore a white t-shirt that probably cost more than her whole outfit and looked entirely too comfortable watching her quietly consider homicide. “It’s a cute nickname.”

“It’s not my name.”

“Yeah, but nicknames usually aren’t.”

She finally turned her head just enough to glare at him. Dean looked delighted, which made her want to shove him and also, unfortunately, made her feel a little less insane. 

He had that big, bright, nosy expression on his face, the one that said he had absolutely no intention of helping and every intention of narrating the crash if she drove herself into a wall.

“Mm,” she said flatly. “Whatever.”

Dean followed her gaze back to the couch. The girl was laughing again, leaning so far into Garrett’s space that her hair brushed his shoulder.

Garrett didn’t move away. He didn’t lean in either, which was probably supposed to mean something mature and rational, except her body was not currently accepting evidence from the defence. 

Her stomach had gone tight. Her tongue sat sharp behind her teeth. Every inch of her skin felt stupidly aware of how many times Garrett’s hands had been on her that week alone.

His fingers on the back of her neck while he kissed her in the kitchen. His mouth against her ear upstairs. His hoodie shoved into her arms when she’d complained about being cold, like he hadn’t cared, like he hadn’t watched her pull it on and then gone a little quiet around the eyes.

Casual. That was the word he liked so much.

Casual, apparently, meant making space for her at the counter without being asked. It meant texting her u up? and then getting pissy when she said no because she had an early class. 

It meant his hand sliding under the back of her shirt while they watched a movie with the guys and him acting like that was somehow normal. It meant his mouth on her throat and his stupid voice saying baby like he’d been born knowing it would make her softer, then turning around two days later and saying, very calmly, very publicly, that they weren’t dating.

Which was true. Technically.

Unfortunately, technically did not stop her from wanting to throw her drink at the girl’s stupid shiny little head.

Dean’s shoulder bumped hers, barely. “You could go over there.”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know. Bite her?”

She gave him a look.

“What?” Dean said, lifting both hands. “I’m workshopping.”

“I’m not jealous.”

Dean blinked at her. Then he looked back at Garrett, then at her again, slow and theatrical. “Oh, okay.”

“I’m not.”

“Right.”

“I just think it’s tacky.”

“Her?”

“Both of them.”

Dean nodded, deeply solemn. “Of course. This is an etiquette issue.”

“It is.”

“Very Miss Manners of you.”

She made a soft, mean little sound and looked away, because if she kept watching him smile at that girl, something was going to snap clean through her. The party kept moving around her like nobody else could feel the pressure building in the walls. 

Logan was somewhere near the dining room yelling, “No, no, house rules, you drink on a bounce,” like he was presiding over the Supreme Court. 

Tucker walked past with a plate of burnt pizza rolls and paused just long enough to assess her face, then Dean’s face, then Garrett’s corner of the couch.

“Oh,” Tucker said.

Dean nodded. “Yeah.”

Tucker looked back at her, kind but not soft enough to be annoying. “You good?”

“I’m amazing,” she said.

Tucker’s mouth twitched. “That sounded convincing.”

“I’m having the best night of my life,” she snapped. 

“Cool.” Tucker took one pizza roll off the plate, bit into it, immediately regretted it, and still swallowed because he was committed to dignity. “Just checking.”

She watched him go, jaw working.

Dean leaned closer, lowering his voice. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s doing anything.”

That made something in her chest pull tight, because Dean wasn’t joking now, and that was worse. She could handle him being an idiot. She had built up a tolerance to Dean’s particular strain of idiocy. But concern made the whole thing embarrassing in a way she could feel under her skin.

She kept her eyes on the opposite wall. “He can do whatever he wants.”

“Sure.”

“He’s single.”

He shrugged, lips turning down. “Technically.”

She turned on him. “Don’t do that.”

Dean’s brows lifted. “Do what?”

“That little voice.”

“My voice is beautiful.”

“The thing where you all act like I’m his girlfriend when he’s the one walking around with a public service announcement that I’m not.”

Dean’s face shifted, amusement easing out at the corners. He looked over at Garrett again, and she hated how much she wanted him to tell her she was wrong. 

How much she wanted anyone to say Garrett was just being stupid, that everybody could see it, that she wasn’t standing there making herself sick over a guy who would go upstairs with someone else while she was still in the room.

Dean took a slow drink. “Yeah,” he said finally. “He’s an idiot.”

“That wasn’t helpful.”

“Wasn’t trying to be helpful. Just accurate.”

Across the room, Garrett stood, and the girl stood too.

For one second the party muffled itself around her, all the music and laughter and clattering cups dulling under the sudden hard rush of blood in her ears. 

Garrett said something to the girl, head tipped down so she could hear him over the noise. The girl smiled up at him, bright and satisfied, then touched his arm again. A small stroke of her thumb over the sleeve of his hoodie.

Her stomach dropped so sharply it almost felt physical, like missing a step in the dark.

Garrett started toward the stairs and the girl followed.

“Oh,” Dean said under his breath, and there was no humour in it this time.

She didn’t move at first. Her hand was still wrapped around the cup. Her mouth felt dry. The room had tilted a little, or maybe she had. She could see Garrett clearly as he cut through the living room, tall and easy and completely unaware that she was standing there with something vicious crawling around inside her ribs. 

Or maybe he did know. Maybe that was worse. Maybe he knew exactly where she was and had still decided to walk past her with another girl trailing after him toward the stairs that led to his room.

Casual. Cool. Fine.

She lifted her cup to her mouth and realised it was empty.

Garrett noticed her when he was close enough that it was too late to pretend she hadn’t seen. His gaze flicked from her face to Dean, then back again, and something changed in his expression. Confusion first. A little crease between his brows, mouth settling, shoulders still loose but no longer careless.

The girl came up beside him, close enough that her arm brushed his. Garrett looked at her, nodded toward the stairs, and said, “I’ll meet you up there.”

She nodded, smiling, then slipped around him and went upstairs.

Dean made a noise into his beer that sounded like a man trying very hard not to choke on stupidity.

Garrett watched the girl disappear, then turned back. “What’s wrong?”

Dean coughed. “Brother.”

Garrett’s eyes cut to him. “What?”

Dean shook his head and took one step back. “Nothing. I just love when you’re dumb.”

Garrett ignored him, attention coming back to her. “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him. He was close now. Close enough that she could see the little damp curls around his hairline, the faint bruise yellowing near his jaw from last weekend’s game, the stupid dark sweep of his lashes when he blinked down at her like she was the one being difficult. 

Like he hadn’t just sent another girl upstairs to wait in his room. Like her body wasn’t reacting to the whole thing with an ugly, nauseous twist that made her want to either laugh in his face or claw her way out of her own skin.

“What’s wrong?” she repeated.

Garrett’s brows drew tighter. “Yeah.”

She smiled. It didn’t feel nice on her face. “Don’t be stupid.”

His jaw shifted. “Okay. What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dean took another tiny step away, then immediately stopped because his survival instinct was at war with his need to witness the entire thing.

She set her empty cup on the nearest bookshelf with such careful precision that Garrett’s eyes followed the movement. Then she looked back at him and kept her voice light. Sweet, almost. “If you fuck her, you’re never touching me again.”

Garrett blinked. Dean inhaled so sharply he almost whistled. 

For a second, no one said anything. Someone screamed with laughter in the kitchen. A bass-heavy song rattled through the floorboards. 

Garrett’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “What?”

She tipped her head, widening her eyes in a cruel little imitation of him. “What?”

His face hardened by degrees. That familiar Garrett switch where something got too close to an exposed nerve and he decided arrogance was quicker than honesty. “We’re not dating.”

Dean made a strangled sound. “Oh, man.”

Garrett pointed at him without looking away from her. “Stay out of it.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Dean said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m incapable. You don’t fuck someone else in front of her, dude.”

Garrett glared at him. “I said stay out of it.”

She laughed once, sharp enough to make Garrett’s eyes snap back to hers. “No, no. Let him talk. He’s making sense for once.”

Dean pressed a hand to his chest. “That felt backhanded, but I’ll take it.”

Garrett’s nostrils flared slightly. “I wasn’t–” He cut himself off, dragging a hand over his mouth, then looked down at her again. “You don’t get to make rules for me.”

That landed worse than she wanted it to, because every part of this was built on nothing solid enough to hold. No title. No promise. No soft, stupid conversation in daylight where either of them admitted what they were doing. 

She kept smiling anyway.

“I’m not making any rules.” Her voice was calm enough that even Dean looked at her twice. “You can do whatever you want, Garrett. I’m not your girlfriend. You’ve made that incredibly fucking clear. So go upstairs. Have fun. I’m not going to tackle her in the hallway.”

His face flickered. Just once.

She stepped in a fraction closer, because if she stopped now, she might actually start shaking, and she would rather die in the hallway with Dean watching than give Garrett that. 

She tipped her chin up, all teeth around the edges of her smile. “But it’s simple, baby. Stick your dick in her, and you never get to stick it in me ever again. Okay?”

Dean stared at the ceiling like he had just seen God. Garrett went very still.

His eyes dropped to her mouth, then came back up. His hand tightened around the neck of his beer bottle. For all his cocky, golden-boy bullshit, for all the easy girls and easy smiles and campus-wide Garrett Graham mythos, he looked briefly like she’d shoved him hard enough to make him feel where the edge was.

“Okay,” he said. It came out low.

She blinked. “Okay?”

His jaw worked once. “Yeah. Okay.”

Dean’s head whipped toward him. “Wow. Love personal growth.”

Garrett shot him a look that should have melted paint off the wall. “Dean.”

“I’m going, I’m going.” Dean lifted both hands and backed up another step, but not before looking at her with open admiration. “For the record, Kitty, that was terrifying.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Yeah, no, for sure.” He nodded, still backing away. “Very scary. Loved it.”

He disappeared toward the kitchen, probably to tell Logan and Tucker immediately.

Garrett looked at her for another second, then glanced toward the stairs. Something in her body tightened again, bracing. Waiting for him to go up anyway. Waiting for him to prove the whole thing meant less to him than it did to her.

Instead, he turned and shoved his beer onto the bookshelf beside her cup. “Stay here.”

Her laugh came out before she could stop it. “Excuse me?”

“Just–” Garrett stopped, visibly swallowed the first version of whatever he wanted to say, and tried again. “Don’t leave.”

It was a little rough around the edges, a little too quick, like the thought of her walking out had gotten under his skin before he could pretend otherwise.

She crossed her arms. “Why?”

Garrett looked at her like she was exhausting, which might have been more effective if he hadn’t just made a girl wait in his room and then told the girl he wasn’t dating not to leave. “Because I’m going upstairs to tell her to go.”

She hated how much that loosened something in her chest. She crossed her arms tighter, because if she didn’t, she might do something embarrassing, like believe him too quickly. “Fine.”

Garrett’s eyes stayed on hers. “Fine?”

“Go.”

He nodded once, then hesitated, hand flexing at his side like he wanted to touch her and knew better. “She’s leaving,” he said.

“She better.”

His mouth twitched despite everything. “Yeah, Kitty.”

“Don’t call me that.”

But this time, she didn’t sound nearly mean enough.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ mountain lion.

pairing – garrett graham x kitty!reader summary – garrett graham doesn’t do girlfriends. unfortunately for him, the entire hockey house has ears, opinions, and very strong evidence to the contrary. warnings – suggestive content, implied smut, post-sex intimacy, arguing, strong language notes from me – oh to have make up sex with garrett graham. based on this request! thank u anon xx word count – 5.1k

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The downstairs of the hockey house had entered that specific late-night stage of male occupancy where every surface had acquired either a controller, an open bag of chips, a damp ring from a beer bottle, or a sock that absolutely did not belong in a shared living space and yet had been accepted by the ecosystem. 

The TV threw blue-white light over the room in sharp, violent flashes while some first-person shooter none of them were pretending to understand strategically anymore barked gunfire through the speakers. Logan was sunk so low into the couch he was practically part of it, one socked foot hooked under the coffee table, thumbs moving on instinct and jaw working around the last of a slice of cold pizza. 

Tucker had claimed the armchair like a man with enough common sense to keep his spine functional past twenty-five, one ankle crossed over his knee, controller balanced comfortably in his hands, expression calm in the way that made it ten times more annoying when he killed everyone else. Dean was sprawled half sideways on the rug with his back against the couch, beer loose in one hand, controller in the other, looking like someone had designed a rich boy in a lab and then forgotten to install shame.

Garrett was upstairs. Which, in itself, was not strange. Garrett being upstairs with her was also not strange, not anymore, no matter how many times he said, with the full stubborn confidence of a man lying directly to everyone’s faces, that it wasn’t like that. It was casual. They were hooking up. 

He was busy. Hockey, classes, captain shit, the usual revolving door of women who used to come and go before she’d started appearing in the kitchen in his sweatshirts and stealing the last banana off the counter with the lazy comfort of someone who knew exactly which drawer the forks were in.

Garrett denied all of it. Continually. Aggressively, even. Like if he said the words she’s not my girlfriend often enough, the universe would stop presenting evidence to the contrary.

Unfortunately for him, the universe was a petty bitch, and so were his friends. Dean had been killed by Tucker for the third time in under two minutes and was halfway through an appeal to basic human decency when the first noise came from upstairs.

Not a bed thump. Not laughter. Not the usual muffled, morally concerning sounds that made Tucker reach for the remote and Logan yell, “Bro, volume,” without looking away from the screen.

This was a voice, her voice. And it was furious. “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, GARRETT?”

Every thumb in the living room stopped moving at once. Onscreen, Dean’s character was immediately shot in the head.

Nobody cared.

There was a half-second where the whole downstairs seemed to hold its breath around the TV static and the low hum of the fridge from the kitchen. Logan lifted his head first, slow and delighted. Tucker’s brows went up. Dean turned, beer paused halfway to his mouth, eyes brightening with the reverent attention of a man who had just heard the opening note of live theatre.

Upstairs, something moved hard enough to creak through the ceiling. A footstep. Maybe two. Then Garrett’s voice came down, rough and defensive and very much not using his captain voice. “What? Jesus Christ, I looked at my phone.”

“You were snapping a puck bunny right before you fucked me!”

Dean’s mouth fell open. Logan’s eyes went huge. Tucker closed his eyes once, like a man hearing a disaster he could have warned someone about if anyone in this house respected wisdom.

“Oh, rookie error,” Logan said solemnly, pointing one finger toward the ceiling without taking his eyes off the stairs. “That’s a rookie error.”

Dean nodded, gravely, as if Garrett had failed a sacred code. “Yeah, no. You can’t do that.”

Tucker set his controller down on his knee. “You absolutely cannot do that.”

From upstairs, Garrett snapped, “I wasn’t snapping a puck bunny.”

“Oh, fuck you, Garrett!”

“Oh, fuck me?” Garrett shot back, voice rising now, indignant in that very particular Garrett Graham way where he sounded personally offended that reality had chosen to disagree with him. “Fuck me? Are you shitting me? I go on my phone for, like, two seconds and you freak out?”

“I was straddling you, you asshole!”

Dean made a strangled sound and pressed his fist to his mouth, eyes shining. “God, she’s good.”

Logan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fully abandoning the game now. His abandoned character stood motionless on screen while someone named xXSlayerBoiXx unloaded an entire magazine into his chest. “Yeah, no, I’m with her on that. That’s insane. You don’t check messages mid-straddle.”

“It’s about respect,” Dean said, sudden and earnest, like the spirit of an Italian grandmother had entered his body. “You gotta keep that shit separate, man. Girls know when you’re mentally in the room. They can feel it.”

Tucker looked at him.

Dean looked back. “What?”

“No, I agree,” Tucker said after a beat, which somehow made it funnier. “I just didn’t expect you to be the one bringing emotional literacy into this house tonight.”

Dean lifted his beer in salute.

Upstairs, her voice came again, closer this time like she’d moved toward the door or maybe toward Garrett, which somehow made the whole thing worse and better. “You literally smiled at your phone.”

“I smile at shit!”

“You smiled like a slut!”

Logan lost it. He folded forward, laughter punching out of him so hard he had to slap one hand over his mouth. Tucker’s mouth twitched. Dean pointed up at the ceiling with the beer bottle, triumphant.

“That,” Dean said, “is a woman with language.”

Garrett barked something they couldn’t quite catch, then louder, “It was a team thing.”

“Oh my God, don’t lie to me with hockey. That’s so insulting.”

“I’m not lying with hockey!”

“You’re always lying with hockey. It’s your little emotional support sport.”

Dean wheezed. “Oh, she’s killing him.”

“She’s not wrong,” Tucker said, and picked up his controller again only to realise no one else was playing. He set it down with the soft resignation of a man accepting that the night had changed shape. “He does use hockey as a legal defence.”

Logan wiped under one eye with his thumb. “Your Honor, I couldn’t text back because we had a power play.”

“Exactly,” Dean said. “And the jury’s like, damn, compelling.”

The argument upstairs hit a sharper pitch then, the words overlapping enough that downstairs only fragments came through: Garrett saying her name in that strained, warning way; her cutting over him with something about half the campus knowing exactly what your stupid little smirk means; Garrett snapping back that she didn’t get to act like he’d done something when he hadn’t done anything; her laugh, sharp and humourless enough to slice through the floorboards.

The thing was, from downstairs, it was hilarious. It was the kind of fight you listened to with one hand over your mouth and the other hovering near your beer because you didn’t want to miss a word.

But even through the ceiling, even with Dean’s face lit up like Christmas, there was something hot and real in it. Garrett could say casual until his voice gave out. The guys had seen him check every time the front door opened on a Friday night in case it was her. They had seen him turn down girls without making a production of it and then act like he didn’t know he’d done it. They had seen him stand in the kitchen at nine in the morning holding two mugs of coffee, one black and one with the stupid oat milk she liked, and still somehow insist he was not, under any circumstances, doing relationship shit.

Upstairs, something thudded, like someone had shoved a door or dropped a shoe or Garrett had knocked into his own dresser while gesturing too aggressively for a man who claimed to be calm.

“Don’t walk away from me,” Garrett said, clearer now.

“Oh, now you care where I am?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That– that thing where you make it sound like I don’t give a shit.”

There was a pause after that. Barely a pause. Downstairs, all three of them went quieter without meaning to.

Then she said, voice still furious but lower now, scraped around the edges, “You were smiling at another girl with my thighs around your waist, Garrett.”

Logan’s face changed first. The grin softened out of it by a fraction. Tucker looked down at his beer. Dean, for all his many sins, at least had the sense to stop laughing for a second.

Garrett didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice had lost some of the heat. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

“Baby–”

“Oh, do not baby me right now.”

Dean inhaled through his teeth. “Tough room.”

“Deserved,” Tucker murmured.

Garrett said something too low for them to make out, then louder when she clearly answered over him, “I’m not trying to make you look stupid!”

“You don’t have to try, you’re doing great.”

Logan made a tiny, appreciative noise. “Goddamn.”

Dean leaned back against the couch, eyes narrowed in thought now, as if evaluating odds at a racetrack. “I got ten bucks on Kitty.”

Tucker turned his head slowly. “Kitty?”

“Yeah.” Dean said it like this was obvious, like the naming of women based on their probable combat style was an established household tradition. “Kitty.”

Logan frowned. “Why Kitty?”

Dean looked offended by the lack of memory. “Because she scratches the shit out of him. You didn’t see his back last week?”

“Oh shit,” Logan said immediately, pointing at Dean. “That’s right. In the locker room. I thought he got attacked by a raccoon.”

“Exactly.” Dean spread one hand, pleased with his own case. “Kitty.”

Tucker’s brows drew together. “Nah. She’s hotter than a housecat.”

Dean tipped his head, considering. “I didn’t say housecat.”

“You said kitty. That implies housecat.”

“She’s not a housecat,” Dean said seriously.

Logan leaned back, very invested. “Cheetah?”

“No,” Tucker said. “Cheetahs are too sleek. She’s got more… attitude.”

“Mountain lion,” Dean said, snapping his fingers.

The room went quiet in collective consideration.

Logan nodded first. “Mountain lion works.”

Tucker lifted his beer. “Yeah. Respectfully.”

Dean tipped his bottle toward the ceiling. “Ten bucks on Mountain Lion.”

Upstairs, Garrett’s voice rose again, but not in the same way now. “You think I’m sitting there trying to get with somebody else while you’re literally in my room?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, Garrett, because you keep telling me this is nothing.”

That hit the downstairs like somebody had turned down the TV and let the actual room in. Logan’s mouth went a little flat. Dean’s eyes flicked toward Tucker, then away. Tucker exhaled through his nose and leaned back in the chair.

Garrett said nothing. She laughed again, quieter this time, and it was worse than the yelling. “Right. Yeah. Exactly.”

A door creaked upstairs. A floorboard shifted.

Garrett’s voice came out rough. “That’s not fair.”

“No, what’s not fair is you acting like I’m insane for being embarrassed when you keep making sure I know I’m not allowed to be anything else.”

“Jesus. That’s not–” Garrett stopped, frustrated enough that they could almost see him dragging a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

Another silence. Dean, who had somehow turned from smug spectator into anxious civilian in under thirty seconds, whispered, “Say something good, dumbass.”

Tucker shot him a look. “You whispering isn’t helping him.”

“I know, but, like, he can sense my spirit.”

Garrett finally spoke, lower. They couldn’t catch the first part. Only the end. “…don’t want you thinking I’m messing around with other girls.”

“But you are.”

“I’m not.”

“You were.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were smiling at your phone like–”

“I was smiling because Logan sent me a video of Dean eating shit in the driveway.”

Tucker stared at both of Dean and Logan, disgusted. “This house is an ecosystem of idiots.”

Upstairs, there was a beat of silence. Then her voice, much flatter now. “What?”

Garrett said, louder, with the rushed relief of a man finally locating evidence in his own defence, “It was Dean. It was the video of Dean slipping on the ice by the cars. I was laughing at that.”

Dean pointed to himself, touched. “I saved his situationship.”

Logan leaned over and slapped his shoulder. “Your pain had purpose.”

“I told you I’m important to this team.”

The floorboards creaked again. Upstairs, she said something too low for them to catch. Garrett answered, also too low, his voice doing that thing it did when he was trying not to sound soft and failing just enough for people who knew him to notice.

Then she snapped, suddenly audible again, “That still doesn’t fix the fact that you’re weird about me.”

Garrett’s answer came immediate and defensive. “I’m not weird about you.”

All three guys downstairs went still. Then, as one, they looked at each other. Dean’s face went blank with disbelief. Logan’s mouth opened. Tucker’s eyebrows lifted toward his hairline.

“He’s so weird about her,” Logan whispered.

“Incredibly,” Dean agreed.

“He once made me Venmo her for mozzarella sticks because I ate the ones she left in the fridge,” Tucker said.

Logan turned to him. “He made you Venmo her?”

“She didn’t even ask. She was asleep.”

Dean nodded solemnly. “That’s husband behaviour.”

Upstairs, she said, “You got mad at Tucker for eating my leftovers.”

Tucker lifted both hands as if personally vindicated by God.

Garrett shouted, “Because he knew they weren’t his!”

“They were in a communal fridge!”

Dean clutched his chest. “Oh my God.”

Logan dropped his head back against the couch. “He’s cooked.”

“Burnt,” Tucker said.

Upstairs, the argument blurred again into movement, voices crossing, Garrett’s frustration and her hurt colliding in the messy, intimate rhythm of two people who knew each other well enough to know exactly where to press and not enough to stop themselves from pressing there anyway. 

There was another thud, softer this time. Something fabric-heavy hitting the floor. Maybe the edge of a comforter. Maybe one of Garrett’s hoodies being launched with intent.

Then she said, sharp but trembling around it, “I’m not asking you to marry me, Garrett. I’m asking you not to make me feel stupid for liking you!”

The living room went dead silent. Even Dean didn’t joke.

For a second, there was only the muted TV, the distant rush of heat through the vents, the soft electrical buzz of the lamp beside the couch. Tucker looked away first, because there were some things a man wasn’t supposed to witness even through drywall. Logan rubbed a hand over his mouth. Dean’s face did something strange, caught between sympathy and the reflexive horror of sincerity arriving without warning.

Garrett’s voice came low enough that they had to strain for it. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

She answered, quieter too. “You act like I am.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Yeah, well.” Her voice wavered, barely. “You’re really good at it anyway.”

There was another pause, longer this time. Then Garrett said her name, and it sounded so unlike the way he said it when he was teasing her downstairs, so stripped of performance, that even Logan stopped breathing loudly.

“I’m busy,” Garrett said, and immediately Dean made a face like he wanted to climb through the ceiling and tackle him. But then Garrett kept going, rougher, faster, like if he didn’t get it out in one rush he’d lose the nerve. “And I’m not– I don’t do this shit. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to stop hiding behind that.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“Garrett.”

Silence. Then, quieter, from him: “Maybe a little.”

Dean’s eyes widened.

Logan whispered, “Progress.”

Tucker nodded once. “Huge.”

Whatever she said next didn’t reach them. It was softer, swallowed by the ceiling and the old pipes and the house settling around all of them. Garrett answered in the same register. For a minute, the boys could hear only the shape of it: his voice low and trying; hers still hurt but no longer slicing; a murmur, a footstep, another smaller sound that might have been a laugh or might have been her telling him he was an idiot in a tone that had lost most of its blade.

Dean leaned slowly toward the ceiling, listening so hard his beer tilted dangerously in his hand.

“Are they making up?” Logan whispered.

Tucker held up one finger. “Wait.”

The upstairs went very, very quiet. A bedframe creaked once. All three of them froze.

Then, clear enough to cut through the entire house, came a high, breathless little squeal that immediately dissolved into a muffled laugh and Garrett saying something low that none of them could make out but absolutely did not sound like an apology anymore.

Dean nodded once, satisfied. “Yup.”

Logan picked up his controller. “They’re fucking.”

Tucker reached for the remote and turned the TV volume up three notches with the resigned precision of a man who had lived in this house too long. “Good for them.”

Dean lifted his beer toward the ceiling. “Mountain Lion won.”

“You don’t win a fight by sleeping with Garrett after,” Tucker said.

Dean considered this. “Depends on the fight.”

Logan unpaused the game and immediately got shot. “I still think Garrett lost.”

“Oh, he definitely lost,” Tucker said.

Dean grinned, settling back against the couch as the game roared back to life and the upstairs became, blessedly, a problem the TV volume could mostly handle. “Yeah, but he’s not gonna know that until morning.”

From above them came another muffled thump, followed by Garrett’s laugh, low and pleased and stupidly gone.

Logan shook his head, respawning. “He’s so fucked.”

Tucker’s mouth curved faintly as he lifted his controller again. “Yeah.”

Dean, eyes on the screen now, smile still wide, said, “But in his defence, did you guys see her in that little skirt earlier?”

Tucker killed him instantly in the game.

Dean stared at the screen. “Wow.”

“Respect women,” Tucker said pointing at Dean, calm as anything.

Logan laughed so hard he missed his next shot, and upstairs, Garrett Graham continued very loudly pretending he didn’t have a girlfriend.

The room has gone quiet in the aftermath, the sort of quiet that arrives after a small, localised weather event has torn through and left evidence everywhere for later people to pretend not to see. 

Garrett’s comforter is half on the bed and half dragged toward the floor, one corner caught under her knee. A pillow has somehow ended up near the closet. Her shirt is inside out beside the desk chair. One of Garrett’s socks is on the nightstand, which makes absolutely no sense, but the whole room has taken on that loose, wrecked, airless quality of a place where nothing had been put down so much as flung away in the service of more urgent priorities. 

The lamp throws soft gold over the wall and across the pile of clothes at the foot of the bed, and under it all the house is still making noise downstairs: gunfire from the TV, somebody laughing too loud, a dull male groan of defeat that is probably Dean dying in the game again.

She’s sprawled on her stomach across Garrett’s chest, bare skin warm against bare skin, one leg tangled in the sheet and the other hooked lazily over his thigh like she has no intention of giving his body back to him anytime soon.

Her chin rests over his sternum, and she traces nonsense patterns over his chest with the tip of one finger, slow little loops through the faint sheen still drying there, feeling the hard, steady thud of his heart under her cheek when she tilts down. 

It’s stupid, really, how quickly the fight has gone soft at the edges now that they’ve burned through it. Her throat still feels a little raw from yelling. Her body feels heavy and loose and humming in places she’s absolutely not going to name out loud. Garrett’s hand sits at the base of her spine, thumb moving every now and then like he keeps forgetting he’s doing it.

For a while neither of them says anything. Which is probably for the best, because words have been historically risky in this room tonight. Then the floorboards creak somewhere downstairs and Logan’s voice carries faintly up, followed by Dean’s laugh, bright and stupid and unmistakably delighted by his own existence.

She stills. Garrett’s hand pauses on her back.

Her eyes lift to his face. “Do you think the guys heard us?”

Garrett looks down at her for half a second, mouth already fighting the kind of grin that means he’s decided honesty will be funniest if delivered without mercy. His hair’s a mess from her hands, curls pushed in every wrong direction, face flushed in that warm, post-sex way that makes him look softer and smugger at once, which should be illegal on a man who already has enough advantages.

“Think the whole campus heard us,” he says.

She lets out an offended little laugh and drops her forehead against his chest. “Shut up.”

“No, seriously.” His voice is lazy now, rough around the edges, pleased with himself in a way that makes her want to bite him. Again. “Pretty sure the women’s soccer team knows you’re mad at me. And now... not so mad at me.”

“Oh my God.” She presses her face harder into his chest, but she’s giggling now, because the alternative is imagining Logan, Tucker, and Dean downstairs, all three of them going dead silent and absolutely listening like the worst little creeps in Massachusetts. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I literally do.”

“You’re naked on top of me.”

She grins into his chest. “That’s unrelated.”

“Feels related.”

She lifts her head just enough to glare at him, which doesn’t work at all because he’s grinning at her like she’s the funniest, most inconvenient thing that has ever happened to him.

That look gets under her skin in a way she hates. The part where his amusement goes warm and stupid around the eyes because he’s not just entertained. He’s happy she’s there. Happy she’s still touching him. Happy in the middle of a room that looks like a crime scene made of laundry and bad decisions.

His hand slides up her back, slow and broad, then comes around the side of her neck with the kind of easy confidence that makes her body go annoyingly still. His fingers resting lightly beneath her jaw, thumb brushing once along the side of her throat while he tips her face up.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, and kisses her before she can say something defensive.

It’s quick, technically. Barely more than a press of his mouth to hers, warm and lazy and smug at the corner because he can probably feel the way she melts by half an inch the second his hand settles there. 

But it does something ridiculous inside her anyway. Something bright and helpless and fluttering low in her stomach. She kisses him back without meaning to make anything of it, but he smiles against her mouth, and that’s somehow worse.

When he lets her go, she blinks down at him. “You’re very annoying after sex.”

“Before too.”

“True.”

“During, though?”

She pauses, letting her eyes move over his face with theatrical consideration. “Tolerable.”

Garrett’s eyebrows lift. “Tolerable?”

“Mhm.”

“That’s crazy, considering the volume you were using ten minutes ago.”

She gasps and shoves at his chest, but he catches her wrist before she gets far, laughing low in his throat, the sound moving under her palm. “Garrett.”

“What?”

“You’re so full of yourself.”

“Evidence-based confidence, baby.”

She rolls her eyes, but the baby lands anyway, soft and warm and stupidly effective in the middle of all that cocky shit. Which is exactly the problem. Garrett could say something that made her want to smother him with his own pillow and then two seconds later say baby like it belonged in his mouth, like he hadn’t even had to think about it.

He gives her ass a lazy pat and exhales, long and reluctant, glancing toward the clock on the nightstand. “I gotta get up.”

Her brows draw together. “Why?”

“Because I told Coach I’d be at the rink early.”

“It’s nighttime.”

“I'm captain.” He shifts under her, and she makes a small noise of protest before she can stop herself, which makes his mouth twitch again. “Don’t start.”

She pouts. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You made a sound.”

“I’m allowed to make sounds.”

“Clearly.”

She narrows her eyes at him, but Garrett’s already moving, careful and slightly awkward with the sheet and her limbs and the fact that she has absolutely no interest in helping. 

He sits up, easing her off his chest and onto the mattress, and she flops onto her back with the kind of boneless indignation only a girl who has just been thoroughly ruined and then abandoned for hockey can really commit to.

The air cools instantly where his body was, and she hates that too. Hates the little absence of heat along her side. Hates, more than anything, the fact that she notices.

Garrett gets out of bed naked, completely unbothered by the fact that he looks like that in lamplight and has the audacity to walk away from her with broad shoulders and hockey-built thighs and his back scratched to hell. 

She hadn’t realised she’d done quite that much damage. There are red marks dragged down over the muscle beside his spine and along one shoulder blade, bright against his skin, some already fading, some very much not. The sight sends a hot little pulse through her, equal parts pride and embarrassment and something so pleased it probably needs to be medically reviewed. She bites her bottom lip to stop the grin. It doesn’t work.

Garrett bends to grab his boxers from the floor and pulls them on, then glances back over his shoulder because he feels her looking. “What?”

She shrugs against the pillow, still grinning. “Nothing.”

His eyes narrow slightly. “That face is obviously not nothing.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You look way too proud of yourself for nothing.”

“I’m just lying here.”

“Yeah,” he says, turning enough that she gets the full benefit of his expression now: amused, suspicious, a little too aware of his own effect on her and absolutely not above using it. “That’s the problem.”

She lets her gaze drag over him again on purpose this time, slow enough to be rude, from the messy curls to the bare chest to the low waistband of his boxers, then back to his face. Garrett watches her do it. 

His mouth parts like he’s about to say something, then closes again. His jaw shifts. He looks briefly toward the ceiling, as if appealing to God, Coach, or whatever patron saint governs self-control in sexually compromised hockey players.

She giggles. “What?”

Garrett exhales through his nose. “Nothing.”

“No, what?” She props herself lazily up on one elbow, sheet slipping down just enough that his eyes drop despite his clear attempt to be a disciplined athlete with somewhere to be. “What did I do?”

He gives her a look.

She widens her eyes, all fake innocence and bare shoulders and hair messy around her face in ways she knows are not helping him. “I’m not doing anything!”

“You look like that,” Garrett says, accusingly.

She glances down at herself like this is new information. “Like what?”

“Like that.” His hand moves vaguely in her direction because apparently language has left him. “All…” He stops. Swallows. Drags a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.”

The grin takes over her whole face now, slow and delighted. “Garrett Graham. Are you objectifying me?”

“I’m trying very hard not to.”

“How noble.”

“I’m a good guy.”

“You’re currently staring at my boobs.”

His eyes snap up. “I’m flawed.”

She laughs, and the sound loosens something in his face. For one second he just looks at her, standing there beside the bed in his boxers with scratches down his back and his hair wrecked by her fingers, caught between leaving and crawling right back over her. 

The room feels warmer for it. Smaller. The mess of it suddenly not messy so much as lived-in for one strange little slice of time – her clothes with his, her phone on his nightstand, his handprint still warm somewhere on her hip, the argument hanging around but no longer sharp enough to cut.

Then he sighs like she’s personally ruined his life. “I’m gonna be late.”

She frowns immediately, because the words take a second to land in the right order. “No, you’re not.” She rolls onto her side and reaches for her phone on the bedside table, fingers searching blindly until they close around it. The screen lights her face blue for a second. “You have plenty of– oh.”

The oh comes out because Garrett’s moved while she was checking the time. Fast. Smooth. Infuriatingly athletic, even in boxers, which feels unfair given the circumstances.

One second she’s looking at the screen. The next his hands are around her thighs, warm and sure, tugging her down the mattress until her hips slide to the edge of the bed and the phone slips from her hand. She drops it with a soft thump into the sheet, breath catching in a little startled laugh as he steps between her knees.

“Garrett.”

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

He lifts one of her ankles first, then the other, setting them over his shoulders like he has all the time in the world and not a single intention of using it responsibly. His hands settle against her thighs, thumbs pressing in just enough to make her stomach flip.

The lamplight catches on his grin when he looks down at her, all cocky mouth and dark, focused eyes and the kind of heat that makes every smart thing she might have said disappear before it reaches her tongue.

“I’m gonna be late,” he says.

For a second she just stares at him. Then her smile spreads, helpless and bright and already half-breathless. She lets her head fall back against the mattress, laughter spilling out of her as her fingers curl into the rumpled comforter. “You’re gonna be late.”

Garrett’s mouth curves, pleased, and his hands slide a little higher on her thighs.

“Yeah,” he says, like this is simply what the night has decided and who is he to argue with circumstances. “Definitely.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ sit still.

pairing – garrett graham x princess!reader summary – the hockey house gathers for garrett’s punishment piercing, complete with heckling, brownies, and one very distracting sweater neckline. warnings – piercing with a needle, minor pain, teasing/banter, suggestive humour, strong language notes from me – saw this request come through and immediately had to write SOMETHING. so so fun, thank u babe!! xx word count – 0.6k

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The bet had been stupid, which was how Garrett ended up in the middle of the hockey house kitchen with an ice cube pinched to his earlobe and three of his friends watching like this was pay-per-view.

“I’m just saying,” Garrett says, for maybe the seventh time, jaw tight, shoulders squared like he’s about to take a hit instead of get one tiny hole put in his ear, “there are professionals for this.”

She stands between his knees with one of her little gold hoops held carefully between her teeth while she wipes the needle down again, mostly because he keeps looking at it like it broke into his house. “God, you’re such a baby.”

“I’m not a baby. I’m cautious.”

Dean, sprawled across the counter with a brownie in one hand, snorts. “You let Logan cut your hair sophomore year.”

“That was different.”

“That was traumatic,” Logan says, mouth full.

Tucker, from the other side of the island, shakes his head like the whole room has disappointed him morally. “I still think this violates, like, twelve health codes.”

“Thank you,” Garrett says, vindicated.

She points the needle at him. “You lost.”

Garrett’s eyes flick from her face to the needle, then down, and that’s where the problem starts, because she’s bent over him a little too far and the neckline of her sweater is making itself known at exactly eye level. He shifts in the chair. Clears his throat. Then shifts again.

“Oh my God, Garrett, sit still.”

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all.

She freezes for half a second, follows his line of sight, then straightens with a sharp exhale. “Jesus Christ.”

“What?” Garrett says, palms up, ice still pressed to his ear, grin trying to happen despite the fear. “They’re right there.”

Dean makes a wounded noise. “Can we not make this weird while I’m eating?”

“You make everything weird,” Logan says.

She glares down at Garrett, heat crawling up her neck in a way she refuses to give him the satisfaction of noticing, then bends again with her mouth set. “Three, two, one.”

He yelps.

“Oh, please,” she says, already sliding the little hoop through with careful fingers while he sits there looking betrayed by both her and modern jewellery. “You’ve taken slap shots to the ribs.”

“That was different,” he says again, higher this time.

“There,” she murmurs, turning the hoop once until it sits right. “Done.”

And it’s deeply unfair, actually, how good he looks. The gold catches against his skin, small and bright and stupidly perfect, doing something dangerous to the shape of his grin when she hands him his phone so he can look at himself in the front camera.

Garrett tilts his head, eyes narrowing. “Oh.” His mouth curves. “I kinda like it.”

Across the kitchen, Logan looks up from the plate. “Dude, these brownies are insane.”

Dean nods seriously. “Like, marriage-level brownies.”

Her attention snaps over, grateful and pleased in a way that makes her whole face soften before she can stop it. “Oh! Good. It’s a new recipe. More chocolate.”

“Keep doing that,” Tucker says.

Garrett’s hand lands at her hip, warm and familiar, patting twice, nudging her back so he can stand. She moves automatically, then finds him right there, too close, gold hoop glinting, grin gone absolutely unbearable.

“Thanks, princess.”

She rolls her eyes, even though her stomach has gone a little useless. “I told you I don’t like that nickname.”

Garrett only smiles wider, reaching past her for a brownie. “Uh huh,” he murmurs. “I heard you.”

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[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ white tank.

pairing – garrett graham x princess!reader summary – best friends with no boundaries should probably think harder about thin white tank tops and unrestricted dorm access. warnings – sexual tension, nipple piercing mention, strong language, suggestive references notes from me – two glasses of wine in and finished this 🥴🥴 based on this ask!! this was so fun to write lmao. nothing i love more than garrett being whipped! word count – 1.7k

navigation – masterlist |

It’s an objectively terrible idea to be braless in a white tank top when Garrett Graham has unrestricted access to your dorm room.

This isn’t information she’s had occasion to seriously consider before, mostly because Garrett having unrestricted access to her dorm room has been a fact of life for so long now that it no longer registers as a boundary issue and more as an annoying environmental condition. Like humidity. Or campus squirrels.

Garrett comes and goes because he’s Garrett. Because they’ve known each other since freshman year orientation, when he spilled iced coffee down the front of his own shirt and still somehow managed to flirt with the girl handing out student ID lanyards. 

Because he’s carried her laundry basket up three flights of stairs without being asked, eaten half her cereal with his hand in the box, fallen asleep facedown on her rug during finals week, and once let himself in at one in the morning because she texted him that she thought there was a weird sound in the hallway and he arrived in grey sweats and slides with his hockey stick in hand, and the kind of serious expression that made her forget to be embarrassed for a full eleven seconds.

So, no. She doesn’t think about the tank top.

She thinks about philosophy notes and the fact that her car’s being held hostage in the hockey house driveway while Logan fixes it, which so far seems to involve standing over the open hood with Tucker, a YouTube video, and the blind male confidence of men who have never met an engine problem they couldn’t make worse. 

She thinks about the rink, because Garrett’s supposed to take her there before his late skate and she’s supposed to sit in the stands with her laptop and pretend she doesn’t secretly like the smell of cold air and rubber mats and hockey boys yelling obscenities at each other.

She’s hunched over her desk in jeans and the white tank, hair clipped messily up off her neck, one bare foot tucked under her thigh, when the door opens behind her with exactly zero hesitation.

“Okay, so Logan says your car’s making this noise,” Garrett says, already halfway inside, “and I told him that’s not a fucking diagnosis because cars make a lot of noises, and then he got offended like I was disrespecting his craft, which is rich because his craft is apparently–”

He stops. He stops like someone’s walked into the room and slapped the sentence directly out of his mouth.

She looks over her shoulder, pen still between her fingers. “What?”

Garrett’s standing just inside her doorway in his Briar hoodie and track pants, duffel bag hanging off one shoulder, curls still damp from a shower or the snow outside or whatever irritatingly athletic thing he was doing before this. His mouth is slightly open. His eyes are very much not on her face. 

They flick down again, fast and guilty and not guilty enough. “Dude,” he says.

Her eyebrows pull together. “What?”

“When the fuck did you get your nipples pierced?”

For a second, the room goes very still around the heater rattling under the window. Then she looks down at herself. And, okay. Fine. The tank top is thinner than she remembers. 

The little metal bars are pressing faintly against the cotton, visible enough now that he’s said it, and her whole body does this annoying internal jump, not embarrassment, because Garrett has seen her in bikinis and sick and wearing a face mask that made her look like a swamp creature. 

But it’s something. A hot little awareness under her skin, as if the room has suddenly learned a new angle. She turns back around too quickly and scoffs, because dignity is mostly just committing to a tone before your pulse can betray you. “Months ago.”

Garrett nods once. Slowly. Like he’s received devastating news from a doctor with poor bedside manner. “Months ago.”

“Yes?”

“So for months you’ve just…” He looks at the ceiling, then the wall, then her face, where he very clearly intends to remain through force of character alone. “Right. Right. Cool.”

She narrows her eyes. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing.”

“What?” he says, and the innocence would be more convincing if his ears weren’t faintly pink. Garrett Graham, Briar hockey captain, man who has smiled his way out of consequences that would have ended lesser men, is standing in her dorm room looking like his entire operating system has crashed over a white tank top.. “I’m just processing information.”

“You’re being weird.”

He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “I am being so normal right now.”

“You walked in here, stared at my chest, and short-circuited.”

His gaze drops for half a second again, involuntary and hopeless, before snapping back up. “Because you weaponised casual nudity.”

“I’m wearing a shirt.”

“That’s a suggestion of a shirt.”

She barks a laugh before she can stop herself, sharp and disbelieving.

He points at her like that proves something. “See? You know.”

“I know you’re an idiot.”

“I know a lot of things,” he says, still looking pained. “Unfortunately, I now know one more.”

There’s no reason for that to make heat crawl up the back of her neck, except that Garrett has shifted against the door without seeming to realise it, shoulders broad enough to make the frame look underprepared, one hand gripping the strap of his duffel. 

He’s trying very hard to turn this into a bit. She can see the effort in the slant of his mouth, in the way his eyes keep dragging back to hers like he’s hauling them up with a rope.

She stands from the chair, mostly because sitting there suddenly feels weirdly vulnerable and also because she genuinely does need to change before they leave. “I’m not going like this. Relax.”

He exhales through his mouth, cheeks puffing slightly. “Thank God.”

Her eyes narrow again. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

She crosses her arms across her chest, which does nothing for his cause. “No, go on. Thank God why?”

He lifts both hands, palms out, the duffel sliding down his arm. “Because I wasn’t in the mood to fight someone tonight.”

She stares at him. He stares back, dead serious for about two seconds before his grin starts sneaking in around the edges, all stupid golden-boy charm and teeth and the unbearable confidence of a man who knows exactly how often he gets away with saying things like that.

“Oh my God,” she says flatly. “You are so annoying.”

“I’m protective.”

“You’re annoying.”

“Those overlap.”

“They don’t.”

“With me they do.”

She rolls her eyes so hard it almost hurts and walks past him toward her bedroom, close enough that her shoulder brushes his arm. It’s nothing. It’s normal. They’re always touching in ways that don’t count, or didn’t count, maybe, before Garrett noticed her piercings and temporarily lost access to the English language. 

But now the brush of him feels too present, the warmth of his hoodie against her bare upper arm registering with an irritating amount of detail. She pulls a jersey over the tank first because it’s closest, the fabric falling big over her hips and smelling faintly like laundry detergent and that cold rink smell Garrett always carries around like a second cologne. Then she grabs a jacket from the chair, shoves her arms through it, and gives herself exactly half a second in the mirror to look normal.

She looks normal. Mostly. Her face is a little too warm, but Garrett doesn’t get to know that.

When she comes back out, he’s leaning against the wall near her door, scrolling on his phone with an expression of intense concentration that’s almost definitely fake. He looks up when she enters.

And then just looks. His eyes move over the jersey, the jacket, her face, the way she’s tucked her hair back from her cheek with the annoyed efficiency of someone pretending she’s not just changed clothes with a man in the next room thinking about her nipples. His mouth does something small and private before he catches it.

“What?” she says.

He shakes his head once. “Nothing.”

“You keep saying nothing in a way that feels suspicious.”

“That’s because you’re paranoid.”

“That’s because you’re being weird.”

He pushes off the wall and opens the door for her. “I’m never weird.”

“You’re being weird right now.”

“I’m being gentlemanly.”

“You let yourself into my dorm.”

“Gentlemanly after the felony.”

She snorts and walks past him into the hall. His hand lands at the small of her back as she goes. Warm through the jacket. Familiar enough that she shouldn’t notice it. She does anyway.

Garrett closes the door behind them and, as they head down the hall, slings his arm around her shoulders like he’s done a thousand times before. Heavy and easy and a little too smug. 

She groans immediately, mostly for self-preservation. “You’re very touchy tonight.”

He hums, pleased with himself in a way she can feel through his ribs against her side. “Mhm.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

She tips her head back enough to glare at him. He’s already looking down at her, grin lazy now, but his eyes are still doing that thing. Brighter, sharper, like something ordinary has been tilted a few degrees and he’s pretending he hasn’t noticed the whole room slide.

“You’re unbearable,” she says.

“I’m driving you to the rink out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Because Logan broke my car worse.”

“Allegedly.”

She shoots him a look. “Garrett.”

“Fine. Probably.”

She huffs, but she lets herself lean into him by half an inch because the hallway is cold and because his arm is warm and because, irritatingly, he smells good. He squeezes her shoulder once, casual enough to be deniable, except his thumb brushes the side of her neck afterward, small and absent and not absent at all.

They make it to the stairwell before he says, “So. Months, huh?”

She stops on the top step and slowly turns her head. He’s staring straight ahead now, mouth twitching.

She points at him. “Do not.”

“I’m not doing anything!”

“You’re thinking loudly.”

“I’ve suffered a shock.”

“You saw the outline of jewellery through a shirt.”

“Exactly. I’m suffering here.”

“You’re such a loser.”

“Maybe,” he says, then glances down at her, all grin and trouble and something warmer under it that makes her stomach dip in a way she fully intends to ignore until death. “But I’m your ride, so be nice to me.”

She starts down the stairs before he can see her smile. “I liked you better when you couldn’t speak.”

“Yeah,” Garrett says behind her, voice rough with laughter. “Me too, actually.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ good first impression.

pairing – garrett graham x reader summary – garrett graham shows up with sex on his mind and gets introduced to a six-month-old in a duck onesie instead. warnings – established relationship, fluff, garrett holding a baby, domestic softness, suggestive opening, teasing notes from me – just a little blurb based on this ask!! someone give garrett graham a baby immediately. word count – 3.8k

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The thing about Garrett Graham showing up at her apartment with sex clearly, tragically, heroically on his mind was that he didn’t know how to be subtle about it.

He thought he did. He thought turning up in grey sweats and a Briar hockey hoodie with his curls still damp from a shower and that one shoulder leaned into her doorframe counted as casual. 

He thought the lazy grin, the lowered voice, the slow drag of his eyes down her body before he even got a full hello out, were all normal boyfriend behaviours and not, in fact, the sort of entrance that made her immediately aware of every inch of her own skin beneath leggings and an old sweatshirt with spit-up already drying near the shoulder.

He had texted twenty minutes ago. you home?

She had said yes.

He had sent back, good.

Which, in Garrett language, meant one of two things. Either he was hungry and about to arrive with enough takeout for three people, or he was in one of those post-practice moods where his body had not quite left the ice yet and all that leftover adrenaline needed somewhere to go. 

Judging by the way he looked at her when she opened the door, hair messy, mouth curved, one hand already reaching for her waist like the rest of the evening had been mutually agreed upon by fate and grey sweatpants, it was very much the second.

“Hey, baby,” he said, warm and low, stepping inside before she could fully decide whether to warn him.

“Hi,” she said, and shifted the baby higher on her hip.

Garrett’s hand stopped halfway to her waist. His eyes dropped. For one perfect second, the great Garrett Graham, Briar’s captain, top-line centre, walking highlight reel, man who could read a defender’s shoulder from half a rink away and decide how to ruin his life in under two seconds, stared at the tiny six-month-old baby in her arms with the blank, careful horror of someone who had walked into an exam for the wrong subject.

The baby stared back. She had one fist shoved in her mouth, cheeks round and flushed from her bottle, dark lashes blinking slow and judgmental like she, too, had expected better situational awareness from him.

Garrett’s gaze flicked from the baby to her face. Then back to the baby. Then back to her. “Uh,” he said.

She bit the inside of her cheek.

His brows pulled together. “Did I… miss something?”

That broke her. A laugh came out before she could make it pretty, bright and helpless enough that Pippa startled, then smiled around her wet little fist like laughter was a game she had just invented and expected royalties from.

“No, idiot.” She bounced the baby once when Pippa’s legs kicked happily against her stomach. “This is my niece. Pippa.”

Garrett blinked. “Your niece.”

“Yes.”

“Right.” He nodded too many times, visibly reorganising the entire evening in his head. The door clicked shut behind him with his heel. “Yeah. Obviously. I knew that.”

“You absolutely didn’t.”

“I did.” His eyes dropped to Pippa again, his mouth doing something strange, not quite a grin yet, like he was afraid any sudden facial expression might commit him to childcare. “I just didn’t know she was gonna be… here.”

“She lives a very busy life.”

“Looks like it.” He leaned a little closer, cautious in a way she had literally never seen from him. Garrett Graham had taken hits from men built like refrigerators and grinned blood off his teeth. But faced with one damp, sleepy baby in a yellow onesie covered in tiny ducks, he suddenly looked like he was approaching an unexploded device. “Hi, Pippa,” he said, voice dropping into this awkward, overly polite register. “Nice to… meet you.”

Pippa took her fist out of her mouth with a soft pop and blew a bubble at him.

Garrett’s eyebrows lifted. “Yeah. Cool.”

She laughed again, softer this time, because he looked so stupidly sincere about the whole thing. “Garrett, she’s a baby.”

“Okay, sorry I’m being respectful.” He shot her a look, then glanced back at Pippa, who had started patting her own chest with one open palm like she was applauding the conversation. “I don’t know her yet. I’m making a good first impression.”

“You came over to hook up and now you’re networking with an infant.”

“I’m versatile.”

“You’re scared.”

His head snapped up. “I’m not scared.”

“Babe.”

“I’m not.” He straightened a little, like the accusation had challenged his captaincy. “I’m just being careful. She’s tiny.”

Pippa made a happy little shriek at the exact same moment, startling herself so badly her eyes went huge. Garrett froze. She immediately shoved her fist back into her mouth and drooled down her wrist with the calm recovery of someone who had no idea she had just almost sent a six-foot-two hockey player into cardiac arrest.

Her whole chest went warm. Garrett standing in her entryway, still built for sex and hockey, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands because there was a baby in the room and the baby was looking at him like he might be interesting if he proved himself.

She shifted Pippa higher, the baby’s warm little body settling against her side, one socked foot digging into her thigh. “My sister’s anniversary dinner ran late. She asked if I could take her for a few hours.”

Garrett nodded, still watching Pippa like she might evolve in real time. “Right. Cool. Yeah. That’s cool.”

“You can go, you know,” she said, amused, because it was easier than admitting how weirdly sweet he looked standing there trying to adjust. “I know this probably isn’t what you had planned.”

His eyes lifted to hers at once, and the grin finally arrived, crooked and familiar and much easier to recognise. “Depends. Is she gonna be here the whole time?”

She stared at him. He lifted both hands. “I meant for hanging out. Jesus. Don’t look at me like that.”

“You had exactly one thought when you walked in.”

“I’m a man of focus.”

“You’re a man of grey sweatpants and bad timing.”

His grin widened. “You noticed the sweatpants.”

“I have eyes.”

He sucked at his bottom lip. “Good ones.”

“Don’t flirt with me in front of my niece.”

“She doesn’t know.”

Pippa squealed again, louder this time, and slapped her hand against the front of her sweatshirt hard enough to leave a damp little print.

Garrett looked at her. “Okay, maybe she knows.”

“She’s very advanced.”

“Clearly.”

She moved toward the living room, and Garrett followed, slower than usual, his bag dropped near the door, hands shoved into the front pocket of his hoodie like he did not trust them unsupervised. Her apartment had been fully taken over in the last hour by things that were not hers. 

A soft blanket on the rug. A half-collapsed baby gym with dangling animals in colours nature had never intended. A bottle cooling on the coffee table. A diaper bag open on the couch, packed with enough wipes, tiny clothes, and unidentified pastel objects to suggest Pippa was planning a weekend away rather than a three-hour visit.

Garrett stopped beside the play mat and looked down at it. “She comes with gear.”

“She does.”

Pippa watched him over her fist, drool shining on her chin. Garrett watched her back. His mouth twitched. “She’s kind of staring me down.”

“She’s deciding if she likes you.”

“Important process. I respect it.”

“She usually likes everyone.”

His head turned toward her, offended. “Don’t say that. I wanna earn it.”

That got her again, the laugh catching lower this time, softer around the edges. She set Pippa down carefully on the blanket, one hand supporting the back of her head until she was settled on her tummy. Pippa made a small grunt of effort, immediately kicked both legs, and then began the serious business of trying to eat a cloth giraffe.

Garrett crouched beside the mat, forearms resting loosely on his knees, the size of him absurd next to all that baby softness. Big hands. Broad shoulders. Hoodie stretched over muscle. Hair falling slightly over his forehead. He looked like someone had dropped a golden retriever into a nursery and told it to act natural.

Pippa lifted her head, saw him closer, and smiled so wide her whole face folded into it. Garrett went still. “Oh,” he said, quieter.

She felt the sound more than heard it, tucked under the faint hum of the dishwasher and the cartoonish crinkle of the giraffe toy. His face had changed. His eyes had gone a little softer, caught on this tiny person who had decided that he wasn’t a threat and maybe even funny-looking enough to enjoy.

“She smiled at me,” he said.

“She did.”

“Like, on purpose?”

“Probably.”

“Okay.” He nodded, trying very hard to look normal about this development and failing badly. “Yeah. She’s smart.”

“She likes the ceiling fan too, so don’t get cocky.”

Pippa drooled onto the giraffe. Garrett pointed. “Is that… fine?”

“That’s fine.”

“She’s eating it.”

“She’s gumming it. It’s made for babies.”

“Oh.” He looked down at the giraffe again, then at Pippa. “Carry on, then.”

She lasted maybe eight more minutes before Pippa decided the play mat was a cruel prison and began making the small, offended little sounds that meant she wanted to be upright, involved, and possibly worshipped. 

She picked her up first, mostly on instinct, rubbing a hand over Pippa’s back while the baby huffed against her shoulder, warm cheek pressed to the collar of her sweatshirt. Garrett watched from the couch, elbows on his knees now, all that earlier awkwardness hidden under interest he was clearly trying to pretend was casual.

“You wanna hold her?”

The question hit him like a puck to the sternum. His eyes lifted. “Me?”

“No, the other enormous hockey captain in my living room.”

He looked at Pippa, then at his own hands, like he was reassessing whether thumbs were enough. “I mean. Yeah. I can.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I didn’t say I don’t want to.”

“You look like I just asked you to defuse a bomb.”

“That’s dramatic.” He sat up straighter, shoulders squaring. “Give me the baby.”

She paused. “Never say it like that again.”

He rolled his eyes, but there was a nervous edge under it that made her smile before she could stop herself. “Okay, fine. May I please hold Pippa, the baby, respectfully?”

“Better.” She stepped between his knees and shifted Pippa carefully in her arms. “Okay, put your arm like this.”

Garrett’s hands came up, big and hesitant. He had beautiful hands, which was an annoying thing to think right now, but also true. Hands that knew sticks and steering wheels and the back of her neck in the dark. Hands that could be careless with his own body but were suddenly so careful around Pippa that her throat did something strange.

“Support her head,” she said softly, guiding his palm under the baby’s neck. “Yeah. Like that. And this arm under her bum. There you go.”

Pippa transferred over in a warm, squirming little bundle, and Garrett’s whole body went rigid. Alert. The way he got before a faceoff, only if the puck had chubby thighs and one sock sliding off.

“Oh my God,” he said under his breath.

She laughed, one hand still hovering near Pippa’s back. “You’re fine.”

“She’s moving.”

“She does that.”

“Cool. Great.” Garrett stared down at the baby now nestled against the crook of his arm, his voice lowering like volume itself could destabilise her. “Hey, Pippa. We’re good, right? You and me?”

Pippa stared up at him, serious for one second, then reached out with one damp fist and grabbed the string of his hoodie. 

Garrett looked at her. “Strong grip.”

“She likes strings.”

“She can’t have it if it’s dangerous, right?”

“Right.”

He immediately tucked the other string away with his free hand, jaw set in concentration. “No choking hazards. I know that.”

“Look at you.”

He glanced up at her, smugness making a brave return despite the fact that he was still holding Pippa like she was made of glass and university liability. “Told you I got this.”

“You’re sweating.”

“I’m post-practice.”

He carefully adjusted Pippa higher, the movement clumsy for half a second before his instincts caught up and his hold settled into something sturdier. The baby’s cheek turned into his hoodie. Her little fist stayed locked around the fabric near his chest, and Garrett looked down at her with such focused, faintly stunned attention that the joke waiting on her tongue dissolved before it could leave her mouth.

Pippa made a sleepy sound and rubbed her face into his chest.

Garrett’s eyes lifted to hers, quieter now. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah.” Her voice came out softer than she meant it to. She cleared her throat. “She likes you.”

His mouth curved. “Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Smart girl.”

“She also likes licking table legs.”

“Still smart.”

She shook her head, smiling, and sat beside him on the couch, close enough that her thigh pressed into his. Garrett didn’t move away. If anything, he tilted slightly toward her, careful not to jostle Pippa, letting the baby’s weight settle between them like something neither of them had expected and both of them were, in their own ways, trying not to overreact to.

The TV was on low, some episode of a show neither of them was watching moving blue light across the room. The apartment smelled faintly like baby lotion and Garrett’s soap and the pasta she’d eaten standing at the counter before Pippa’s bottle because babysitting had made time weird and dinner had become whatever she could fork into her mouth while bouncing a tiny person with opinions. 

Somewhere outside, a car rolled down the street with music thudding faintly through closed windows. Normal stuff. Little stuff. The kind of evening that would not have felt dangerous at all if Garrett didn’t look so unexpectedly right with a baby tucked into his arm.

She hated that, a little. The sweetness of it. The way it slipped under her skin without asking. Garrett glanced over and caught her staring.

His grin appeared immediately, soft and unbearable. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing face.”

“I’m just watching you panic.”

“I’m not panicking. I’m thriving.”

She laughed and leaned her head lightly against his shoulder, careful of Pippa between them. Garrett’s cheek tipped down for half a second, brushing the top of her hair. It was so absent, so automatic, that it made her chest tighten more than if he’d said something sweet on purpose.

Pippa’s eyelids started to droop. Her fist loosened in Garrett’s hoodie, fingers uncurling one by one. He noticed before she did. “She’s doing something.”

“She’s getting sleepy.”

His voice dropped even lower. “Oh.”

“You can breathe, babe.”

“I am breathing.”

Pippa sighed then, a full-body little sound that ended with her mouth falling slightly open against Garrett’s chest. Garrett went still again, but differently this time. Less fear. More wonder trying very hard not to show up as wonder because he was still a twenty-one-year-old hockey player in grey sweats who had come over intending to get laid and had instead been promoted, temporarily, to furniture for a sleeping infant.

His hand shifted carefully over Pippa’s back, one broad palm almost covering the whole of her. He rubbed once, slow, then looked at her for confirmation.

She nodded. “That’s good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

His mouth softened. He looked back down at the baby. “She’s tiny.”

“She’s actually chunky for her age.”

“She’s tiny,” he repeated, like this wasn’t up for debate, and there was something in his voice that made her stop teasing.

For a second, she wondered if he was thinking about his own family. Sometimes, when something gentle entered the room too suddenly, she could see the way he didn’t quite know where to put his hands around it. Like softness needed instructions. Like if he held it wrong, someone might blow a whistle somewhere only he could hear.

So she didn’t say anything too big. She only reached over and fixed Pippa’s fallen sock, tugging it back over one tiny heel, and let her fingers brush Garrett’s thigh on the way back. “You’re doing good,” she said.

His eyes came to her face. For once, he didn’t grin immediately. “Yeah?”

“Mhm. Natural.”

That made him huff. “Liar.”

“A little,” she admitted, smiling. “But you’re cute, and very brave.”

“I know.” His grin came back, smaller now. “Might put it on my résumé. Can hold one baby under supervision.”

She scoffed softly. “Barely.”

“Successfully.”

“For seven minutes.”

“Still undefeated.”

She laughed softly, and Pippa stirred against him, face scrunching. Both of them froze. The baby sighed and settled again. Garrett exhaled through his nose, triumphant and silent, like he’d just won a championship in not waking up infants. She had to press her lips together to keep from laughing again.

He looked at her, eyes bright. “Did you see that?”

“I saw.”

“Handled.”

“You did.”

“Captain material.”

She leaned into him a little more, her shoulder tucked against his arm, the warmth of him spreading through the old sweatshirt she was wearing. His body was still keyed underneath the stillness, all coiled athlete forced into gentleness, but his breathing had slowed. 

Pippa’s small back rose and fell beneath his hand. The room seemed to soften around the three of them, domestic in a way she didn’t want to name because naming it would make it too real and maybe too much.

Garrett was quiet for a while. He didn’t rush to fill the space with some joke about her baby-trapping him or ask if this meant his original plans were permanently cancelled or make one of the million stupid comments he could have made to rescue himself from looking soft. He just held Pippa and let his thumb move, once, twice, barely there over the baby’s back. Then, very quietly, he said, “She smells good.”

She looked at him.

He glanced back. “What?”

“Nothing.”

His brow furrowed slightly. “Don’t make it weird.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking something.”

She smiled, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “I was thinking you just discovered babies smell nice.”

“Well, I didn’t know.” He looked down again, faintly defensive. “I don’t hang out with a lot of babies.”

“Your loss.”

“Clearly. Pippa and I are boys now.”

“She’s a girl.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

He nudged her knee with his. “Don’t start.”

She smiled down at Pippa, asleep against the big Briar captain like this was a perfectly reasonable place for a nap. Her cheek was squished into the soft cotton of Garrett’s hoodie, one hand curled near his collar, one sock already trying to escape again. Garrett followed her gaze and, with great seriousness, adjusted the sock before it could fall.

Her stomach did something deeply stupid. His eyes flicked to her face, and the grin that spread this time was slow. Warm. A little cocky around the edges, because Garrett Graham could hold a baby for ten minutes and immediately become insufferable about it.

“What?” he asked.

“You look very pleased with yourself.”

“I am.”

“Because you’re holding a sleeping baby?”

“Because I’m good at it.”

“You were shaking when I handed her to you.”

“Yeah, and now look at me.” He nodded down at Pippa with all the confidence of a man who had survived one diaper-free interaction and was ready to write a parenting manual. “Growth.”

“She’s asleep. That’s mostly her doing.”

“Team effort.”

“Sure.”

His grin widened, then softened again when Pippa moved, tiny mouth working against the fabric of his hoodie. Garrett’s eyes dropped, and his hand stilled until she settled. He looked ridiculous. Gorgeous and too big for the couch and smug over the smallest possible achievement, with a baby asleep in his arms and his original plans for the night lying somewhere dead in the entryway beside his gym bag.

She leaned up and kissed the corner of his jaw.

Garrett’s eyes cut to hers, interested immediately despite Pippa, because he was still Garrett and there were some instincts not even a sleeping infant could fully neutralise. “Careful.”

She smiled against his skin. “What?”

“You start kissing me while I’m holding a baby, and I can’t do anything about it.”

“That’s tragic for you.”

“That’s cruel.”

“It’s one kiss.”

“Yeah, that’s how it starts.”

She laughed under her breath, and Pippa didn’t wake this time, only snuggled closer into Garrett’s chest like she had decided he was acceptable and possibly permanent. 

Garrett watched her for a second, then looked back at the girl beside him, his mouth softer than his voice when he spoke. “So,” he said. “How long until your sister gets back?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Garrett.”

“What?” He looked almost offended, except his grin was doing too much damage. “I’m asking because I care about Pippa’s schedule.”

“You are so full of shit.”

“I’m deeply invested in her routine.”

“Her routine is bottle, nap, diaper, maybe scream at a lamp for no reason.”

“Sounds like Dean.”

She pressed her face into his shoulder to muffle the laugh, and Garrett smiled down at her, his hand still steady over Pippa’s back. For a while, they stayed like that. Pippa asleep. Garrett pretending not to be proud. Her tucked into his side with one hand resting lightly on his thigh, feeling the warmth of his body, the slow rhythm of his breathing, the tiny rise and fall of the baby between them. The evening hadn’t gone where he wanted. Not even close.

But when her phone buzzed twenty minutes later with a text from her sister saying they were on their way, Garrett looked down at Pippa, then at her, and frowned. “Already?”

She stared at him.

He shrugged, defensive. “What? We were hanging out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“You like her.”

“She likes me.”

“She’s asleep.”

“Exactly. Trust.”

She smiled so hard she had to look away. His knee knocked gently into hers, and when she looked back, he was watching her with that soft, stupid, dangerous warmth that always made her feel like she’d missed a step coming down stairs.

“What?” she asked, quieter.

He shook his head once, eyes dropping briefly to Pippa before coming back to her. “Nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing face.”

“Yeah,” he said, and leaned in carefully, Pippa still asleep between them, to kiss her once. Soft. Quick. Warm enough to make her toes curl against the edge of the rug. “But you like it.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling when he pulled back, and Garrett, holding her sleeping niece like he’d been trusted with the Stanley Cup and maybe something more important, looked far too pleased to be proven right.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

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[wh1msymaddy]

emergency contact | dean di laurentis

a/n: so sorry for taking a couple of days to upload this, i wanted to make sure it was perfect!! this is my longest project to date and i'm so proud of it i love them sm. 💗.

pairing: dean di laurentis x childhoodbsf!reader

w/c: 5.2k (😭)

warnings: swearing, mentions of trauma (not detailed), drinking, alcohol consumption, hospital setting, injuries, hurt/comfort

summary: in which an on-ice accident brings fifteen years of hidden feelings to light in a boston hospital room

Hockey was a dangerous sport. Dean knew that, and he still chose to play. He skated his way through elementary school, high school and now college. 

Most people believed his trips outside at night were to the rink, that hockey was what calmed him down when he couldn’t sleep, or when he had too much on his mind and the world felt too loud. But hockey wasn’t what served that purpose, it was you. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

15 years ago

You and Dean met at age seven, in New York city. Both of your families had penthouses in the same building, which caused you to run into each other often.

Your friendship bloomed during a Christmas dinner that same year. Mother had instructed you to buy a lengthy list of products at the bodega next to the complex, and Dean’s mother had done the same. 

The two of you bumped into each other and got the grocery lists mixed up, causing you to buy the wrong ingredients for your families. When your mother realized what had happened, she went to Dean’s family flat in hopes of sorting things out. 

Instead of simply exchanging the products and leaving, Dean’s mother and her decided to host the dinner together, immediately clicking. That night, they both spent their time chatting while you two snuck out of the room, and went someplace else. 

“How many drinks in do you think they are?” he asked you, moving the horse on the board and killing one of your bishops. 

“I’d say about halfway through the second bottle, knowing my mother,” you answered, a huff coming out of both of your mouths. 

“Check,” he announced. 

“Not so fast, Di Laurentis,” you countered, bringing your queen to trap his king to the edge of the board. “Checkmate.” 

He saw it, your king would deliver the final blow, and he’d lost. For the first time, Dean Di Laurentis had been beaten by someone at chess. 

Despite being annoyed at himself for not predicting your move, he was glad to see your mouth shape into a grin, even if you bragged about the win for the following week. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

7 years ago

After that night, you and Dean declared that you were to be friends. Not just friends– best friends. So, even as the years passed, you two remained constants in each other’s lives. He told you everything, and you did the same. 

New York was your city, the space where you could just be the two of you. No outside pressure, no drama, and no complications. Christmases evolved into spring breaks and summer breaks as soon as you two had the power to decide where you wanted to go, which was around the start of high school, due to the lack of attention you received from your parents. 

Whenever people wondered if distance put a strain on your relationship, you both laughed. One of the best parts of being reckless teenagers was that you often took trains to see each other, stealing the apartment keys from your parents and spending weekends in the flats, switching penthouses every night. 

“Mine or yours tonight?” Dean asked you, putting the tray of blueberry muffin batter in the oven’s middle rack. 

“We did yesterday here, so switching it up would be nice, don’t you think? Plus, I think my mom left some of her good liquor over there,” you giggled, raising your brows and smiling. 

“Would you look at that? Her first good act of the decade,” he laughed.

“Tell me about it.” 

“I’ll bring our bags over there then. Should we go buy chips from the bodega or something?” he inquired, after opening the snack cabinet and seeing there weren’t any left. 

“Sure, but why don’t we go on a dinner picnic to prospect park or something, that’d be cool,” you suggested, putting the remaining dirty baking dishes in the dishwasher. 

“You are a genius, pretty girl, let’s go,” he said, grinning and placing a kiss to the top of your head.

“The muffins, idiot!” 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

This fall

Dean called you after every important thing in his life, because you were the most important person in it. Even if you two fought, which you didn’t do very often, you found your way back to each other, back to New York. 

Ever since you started college, you two saw each other often. With you studying at Harvard and him studying at Briar, the distance that separated you was smaller. 

That was why you’d showed up to every single game the Hawks played since the start of college. The boys often wondered who that girl in the opposing team’s stand wearing a Di Laurentis jersey that looked like it was years old was. They knew of you, but they’d never actually met you.

God, Dean never shut his mouth up when it came to you. 

“Y’know, G, she would have never mixed my white laundry with my colors,” Dean said, observing the disaster Garrett had created. 

“You will never shut up about her, won’t you?” Garrett asked him, and Dean shook his head.

“How do we know she’s even real? You talk about her like she’s an angel who fell from the sky,” Logan added.

Beau was quick to offer a response. “Oh, she’s very real. If you met her, you would think the same thing. Except Dean’s reaction is exaggerated because he's whipped.”

“See, that’s funny, because she’s my best friend,” Dean said, denying the last thing Beau said. 

“These things happen in Hannah’s romance books all the time, dude,” Garrett pointed out and all of the other boys started laughing at him. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

5 years ago

“My mom wants us to move to this really big but ugly house in Winchester, which is unfortunately very far away from where we live now, as you may have noticed,” you told Dean, turning around on the king bed to face him, the New York skyline illuminating your face.

“You don’t seem sad at all,” he mentioned, facing you as well.

“That’s because Winchester is way closer to the city, and closer to Connecticut, than where we are now. And that’s what matters,” you said.

“Does this mean we can make New York a monthly thing or?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“This means we can come every two weeks,” you said, a big grin plastered on your face. 

Dean pulled you close to him on the king bed and, in an attempt to hug you, ended up rolling both of you off the bed.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Present day

Finals week had been eating you alive. It was always bad, but this semester had been especially tough, due to your classes being graduate-level electives. 

You told Dean that you wouldn’t be able to attend the week’s game through FaceTime, and he wasn’t even mad. Dean could sometimes act very immature-like, but that never happened with you. He understood you needed to prioritize your studies. Plus, you’d been to every single game since Freshman year. 

That particular game was against an especially aggressive team, but the Hawks knew what to do. They had practiced drills to evade certain attacks over and over again, and they were more than prepared. Or so they thought. 

The opponents had turned out to be even worse than the team had expected, throwing illegal punches left and right, but Dean managed to stay away from the ones he deemed to be the most violent for the better part of the game. 

But when he saw a clear goal opportunity, he took it. Because he was Dean goddamn Di Laurentis, and he wasn’t scared of a couple state university players who had to throw everyone on the floor just to gain control of the puck. 

Skating quickly through the ice, Dean was too focused on what was ahead that he missed the player coming up behind him. 

Suddenly, he was on the floor, his ears ringing and his eyes unable to open. 

“Call her,” he said, unaware of the fact that nobody could hear his whispers.

When everything went to black, the only thing on his mind was you. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

13 years ago

“Dean, you’re going to get yourself killed!” you yelled at him as he skated through Wollman rink with astounding speed. 

“I got it, pretty girl!” he yelled back from the rink, grinning at you. 

After being bribed with hot cocoa, you agreed to go with Dean to the ice rink so he could practice his skating. He’d become obsessed about hockey, and even though he’d always loved the sport, you’d never seen him this dedicated. 

“If you’ve got it, push harder, come on! We don’t want you slacking, Di Laurentis,” you joked, moving your hand in circles. 

“On it,” he echoed, speeding over to where you were from the other side. 

“Y’know, it wouldn’t hurt you to try,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Just so you can check me into the boards and write it off as ‘practice’? No thank you, I’ve learned my lesson.”

“That was one time!” 

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!”

“I’ll convert you one day, you’ll see,” he determined, making you roll your eyes sarcastically. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Present day

The call came in at seven pm. You wondered why the local Boston hospital was calling you, but picked up nonetheless.

“Hello ma’am, this is Dr. Abbott, we have you listed as Dean Di Laurentis’ emergency contact. Is this information correct?” the doctor asked, and your heart sank.

Dean. The hospital. A game. 

“Yes, that’s right,” you responded, standing up from your chair and going to fetch one of your coats. 

“We regret to inform you that we have Dean over in our emergency department”

A pit formed in your stomach. The emergency department. 

“He has been seriously injured and we request your assistance to the hospital to discuss things further”

“Is he awake?” you inquired, barely able to hold tears back.

“Not at the moment, I’m afraid,” said the doctor.

“’ll be there in thirty minutes”

After hanging up, you grabbed your keys and raced outside the house. The clothes you were wearing didn’t even cross your mind, for it was far too busy shifting through the possible injuries that could land Dean in the ER. 

Running down the stairs of your apartment building, another name appeared on your screen, calling you. 

Beau beep 🌾

You slid your finger through the cold screen, answering the call as fast as you could. Beau’s face popped up on the screen, and you felt a tiny sense of relief once you saw he was already in the hospital. 

“I assume they’ve called you already,” he said when he noticed that the oversized hockey jersey you were wearing, which was obviously Dean’s, sat under a big coat. 

“Yeah, they have. Who’s there already?” you wondered, finally reaching the lobby. 

Beau answered, but all sound felt muffled as you ran towards your car, rushing to get inside and be on your way to the hospital. 

Memories flooded your brain as you pressed your body to the car seat, which only made you want to get to Dean more. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

6 years ago

It was the last game of sophomore year, and you had taken a three and a half hour train to surprise Dean inside of the rink. Suited up in your Di Laurentis jersey, you waited for twenty more minutes until the players came into the ice. 

As soon as he spotted you leaning next to the box, he dropped his stick and ran to hug you, ignoring the comments he got from his coach and teammates. 

“What are you doing here, pretty girl?” he asked, a wide smile crowding his face. 

“I wanted to surprise you today. You kept mentioning how excited you were for this game, and I decided to buy a train ticket over,” you replied, mirroring his own smile. 

“Does your mom know you’re here?” his tone shifted, not concerned, just curious.

“We’ve been approved for a three day sleepover,” you reassured. 

“Di Laurentis, get into the rink!” his coach yelled, beckoning him inside. 

“Go get ‘em, Dean,” you told him, tapping the spot in his jersey that was over his heart. 

The game was going very well, Dean’s team leading by five goals. The crowd was cheering like crazy, screams echoing throughout the rink. Then came gasps, followed by a thick wave of silence. 

Dean had been knocked onto the floor with an insane amount of force, leaving him unresponsive. 

You ran from your spot in the stands to where they were carrying him out of the rink faster than the speed of light, pushing people off your way if you needed to. 

“Excuse me, young lady, you can’t be here. We’re escorting him to the hospital,” said the team medic. 

“I’m family,” you stated, standing your ground. 

After a moment of hesitation, the medic nodded and allowed you to go with the rest of the personnel. They placed Dean on a gurney inside an ambulance, and you interlocked your fingers with his during the journey to the hospital. 

You were terrified. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Present day

The feeling of terror inside you wasn’t any different this time. A cloud of dread rested above you on your way to the hospital, during which you’d remained on call with Beau. 

“What happened?” you asked him once your mind was as clear as it would get. 

“He lost consciousness after getting checked into the boards. The doc said he had a pretty severe concussion and the usual hockey injuries, but they put him into observation because his breathing was odd” Beau replied, trying to keep his tone as steady as possible to alarm you as little as he could. 

You didn’t know what to say. You just kept driving, your eyes on the road, your mind on Dean. 

“You know he’ll go on and on about how you’re his lucky charm and that’s the reason why he got hurt, right?” Beau joked, getting a small laugh out of you. 

“I can already hear him say it,” you said, the corners of your mouth turning up. 

Parking in the hospital lot took less time than expected, so you headed out of the car with shaky hands and stood in front of the automated doors of the ER, which allowed you to enter. 

Bright LED lights blazed into your eyes, and the sharp smell of sterile cleaning products, iodine and latex gloves penetrated your nostrils. Nurses rushed up and down the hallways, their hands busy at all times. The place was filled with despair and hope overlapping with one another, infinite possibilities streaming out of every patient.

The woman at reception shot you a pitiful look before setting the mug on her hand down and focusing her full attention onto you. 

“Who are you here for, sweetheart?” she kindly asked, turning to type your response into the database.

“Di Laurentis, Dean,” you responded, fiddling with the charmed bracelet on your right hand. 

“He’s in the observation unit at the end of the hall. There’s a crowd of people outside, so you’ll see it,” she remarked, making you huff. 

Despite never having met them, you had a pretty good idea of who the people may be. Dean had told you all about his friends from Briar. Garrett, Logan, Tucker, Hannah and Allie. 

So, you had a pretty good idea of which group they were when you spotted them. Beau was also there with them, and his expression fully shifted when he saw you. Relief spread through his features, and he came over to give you a hug. 

“They wouldn’t let us see him because we’re too many and not his–” 

“Emergency contacts,” you finished the sentence for him, hugging him back. 

Handing your coat over to him, you looked for the nearest nurse to notify her of your appearance and ask her to let you into the room. 

“Is that..?” Logan asked Beau, raising his eyebrows. 

“Yeah, she is,” Beau responded, sitting down on a chair. 

“That isn’t Dean’s Briar Hockey jersey,” Hannah pointed out, observing the details of the embroidered 66 on your back. 

“It was his senior night jersey, Dean gave it to her so he could spot her at games in college,” Beau explained, mentally preparing himself to answer the flood of questions that he was sure would come. 

Before any of them could ask anything else, you came back with a nurse, room keys in hand. 

“Nice to meet you all, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’ll be right back,” you stated in a poor attempt to hide the shaky tone in your voice. 

All of the fear slowly melted away when you saw Dean laid down on the hospital bed, and you let out a breath you didn’t even realise you were holding. 

You stepped into the room and immediately sat on the chair next to his bed, lacing his uninjured fingers with yours. 

Suddenly, a rough, gravelly voice laced with painkillers spoke for the first time. “I know I’m handsome, but your gaze will burn through my face if you keep staring at me like that”

A bruise was starting to form on his jaw, and his hair was messy. His eyes, red from the painkillers the medical staff had given him, were entirely focused on you. 

“You idiot. You absolute, utter, stubborn idiot!” you exclaimed, your voice catching in your throat as you heard his own. You knew you couldn’t stay mad at him for long, you’d never been able to. 

Despite your tone, he simply smiled, his thumb tracing patterns on the back of your hand. The asshole was soothing you while he was getting lectured. 

“Missed you in the stands today. I didn’t have anyone to look at after scoring, it was kind of pointless,” he said, the corners of his lip tugging at his stitches, and he winced slightly at the feeling. 

“Do not joke right now, Di Laurentis. A doctor and Beau called me from the hospital–” your voice broke, tears threatening to spill from your eyes, “they said you got checked, hard, and you weren’t responding. They said your breathing was off.”

“Hey,” he squeezed your hand and pulled on your sleeve, waiting for you to get closer to him. “C’mere”

Once you moved the chair as close to the hospital bed as you could, Dean’s good hand came up to wipe one of the slow tears that had come out of your eyes. 

“I’m okay, pretty girl,” he reassured, interlocking his fingers with yours again. His fingers grazed your knuckles, softer than usual. “I’m here, I’m okay” 

Despite being in pain, Dean’s only preoccupation was to make the tears in your face disappear, because if he was asked to name the thing that he disliked most in the world, his answer would be seeing you hurt. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

2 years ago

The doorbell in Dean’s New York apartment rang, and Dean raced downstairs, expecting to encounter one of the packages he’d ordered. However, when he opened the door, he saw you. 

Clothes soaked, sobs shutting the sound of heavy rain out from the apartment. Without asking, he pulled you flush to him. 

“You’re okay. You’re with me,” his voice and warmth grounded you, reminding you that you were safe because you were with him. 

Dean ran his hands through your wet hair until your breathing evened out and you were ready to talk. “I trusted my mom when she said she’d changed, when she asked me to go down to their place for thanksgiving. But when I got there, she was only nice for twenty minutes. Then, she started screaming at me and telling me just how much of a failure I was and how she regretted me all together”

“She was drunk, wasn’t she?” he asked, looking down at you with eyes full of understanding.

You gave him a small nod, and he sighed in defeat. He’d known your mom as long as he’d known you, and there had always been a bottle of some sort alongside her, as a mandatory accessory. After your gesture, he pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead, and you two stood enveloped in each other in silence for quite some time.

There was nothing he hated more than seeing you suffer, whether that may be physical or mental. A close second, though, was seeing you cry. The moment tears were involved, Dean just wanted to hold you and run his hands through your hair to soothe you and prove you were safe when he was alongside you. No matter what.

That night, Dean and you curled up on the couch to watch one of your comfort movies, a nightly ritual you both did before playing a couple of games of chess and then going to bed. 

“What are we watching tonight, pretty girl?” he asked, arm around your shoulder, pulling you into him. 

“Will you cry again if I put The Notebook on?” you questioned, scrunching your nose up at him. 

“You know I will,” he affirmed, a raspy laugh coming out of his throat. 

“That is not very d1 hockey player and fraternity brother of you, Di Laurentis,” you teased, poking his side to get control of the remote. 

“There you are, thought you’d vanished on me”

“I could never vanish if you’re with me, you know that,” your voice grew quieter, more serious.

“And you know that I’m not the way you described while I’m with you,” his tone matched yours as his hand traced lazy patterns on your shoulder.

“Yeah, you’re yourself here,” you deadpanned, and Dean didn’t even dare deny it. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

3 years ago

Nobody had warned you and Dean about how nostalgic you would feel right before going off to college on your own. 

You and Dean had picked Harvard and Briar to be closer together than you’d ever been while not being in New York, but you couldn’t deny that you wished college wouldn’t stop you from driving out to the city every other week. 

It was your last night in the city before officially becoming college students, and you were both more scared than you’d let on. So, logically, you’d decided to go out and get pizza at the 24-hour pizza joint you had next door. 

“Should we dress up or just go like this?” you thought out loud, looking down at the oversized hoodie you were wearing, which you’d stolen from Dean.

“It’s 2 AM, no one will see us on the street,” he said, snorting at your comment. 

The walk to the pizza place was filled with laughs and memories, recalling the times where you’d showed up to his school and he’d showed up to yours, sometimes unannounced but never less welcome. 

Once you reached the joint, Dean went ahead and ordered both of your pizzas without asking. He knew your order off the top of his head. 

Emilio, the man at the register, smiled at the sight of you and Dean, unable to contain his happiness. He’d seen you two grow up and change together, and the way you two enchanted him was visible in his face every time you stepped into his shop late at night.

“Don’t stop coming by during holidays, kids! I’ll be expecting you this Christmas,” Emilio said as he handed you two your pizzas. 

“We’ll never stop coming here, Emilio,” You told the man and glanced at Dean, who was nodding. 

“Not when you make the best pizzas in New York,” Dean said, his mouth beginning to water. 

You and Dean ate your pizzas, sharing half of yours with the other person. The only thing left to do was walk back home. 

Even if the joint was just a couple of blocks from your apartments, it was easy to get distracted while walking around the city, especially if you were with Dean. Walking backwards while eating a slice of pizza, you didn’t notice you were about to fall into a puddle. 

Dean grabbed you by the collar of your hood and pulled you flush to him, preventing your fall. Suddenly, the air felt like it had thickened up, partially because of how Dean was looking at you. He was studying your face like it was his favorite subject and he never wanted to stop learning.

Dean’s hand moved to the nape of your neck and he opened his mouth to say something, your heart racing. Just when he was about to say it, a speeding taxi passed by next to you, shutting Dean up. 

“I’m gonna miss messing with you, pretty girl,” he said, moving you to his side by your waist and then letting you go. 

The tone in his voice was filled with things unsaid, things you were too scared to put out into the air. Because once they were out there, they couldn’t be reeled back in.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Present day

“You scared the shit out of me, Dean,” you whispered, staring at the boy you had known forever, the one who had been with you through everything, who you knew would never let you go. 

The knot in your throat did not seem to want to loosen unless you spoke  and mentioned what was truly on your mind, what you’d longed to say to him ever since you saw the hospital was calling you. 

“For a second, I wondered what would happen if you didn’t make it, what my life would look like without you in it. And I didn’t like it one bit. Because I don’t know who I am without you, Dean. Without you, I’m half of myself, you took the rest the moment we met, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you, Dean. I think I always have”

Dean’s eyes were locked into yours, his breathing heavy and uneven. With your words, you’d completely shattered his facade, leaving him unfiltered. 

“When everything went black, death didn’t scare me. The only thing on my mind was you. Because if I left it all behind then, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how I’ve felt all of these years,” he said, and your eyebrows furrowed out of instinct. 

“You think I’ve been looking at you like this for fifteen years just because you’re my best friend? No, pretty girl, it’s because you’re my entire world. It’s always been you, ever since we played that damn chess game during Christmas break. I love you too”

The two of you let out a small laugh at the same time, one of the tiny habits you’d picked up from each other over the years. 

“Now come closer, if the nurses see me leaning in to kiss you, I might not make it out of this hospital after all,” he joked, making your face shift into a grin.

Careful of the beeping monitor beside you, and the wires attached to him, you closed the remaining distance between the two of you. His good hand escaped your grasp to settle on your jaw, and your own hands moved to the nape of his neck, fiddling with the blond hair that was there. 

The atmosphere didn’t completely change, it simply revealed what it had truly been all along. It was a reminder that all of the stolen glances, the gentle touches and the quiet nights filled with charged silence hadn’t been for nothing. 

Dean’s breath caught in his throat the moment your lips grazed his, and he couldn’t bear to wait any longer. Tentatively, he pressed your lips to his, tangling you in a kiss. It was hesitant at first, as if he couldn’t believe this wasn’t just one of his dreams, as if he wasn’t sure if you were even real. 

After letting out a sigh of relief, he kissed you like the world owed him something for keeping you away from him for so long, like it came as natural to him as breathing, like he never wanted to let your lips split from his ever again. 

When you finally pulled back, your forehead resting against his, you two kept your eyes closed for a few seconds. He opened his before you did, so you caught him looking at you like you’d just fulfilled his biggest dreams with a kiss. 

“So, does this mean you’re officially my girl now?” he whispered, his signature grin finally appearing on his face.

“I’ve been your girl for a while, Di Laurentis”

By the time you’d finished that sentence, Dean was already tugging you closer to him with his good hand to kiss you again, which made you giggle. Both of you had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and you wanted to make the most of it. 

Suddenly, there was a creak at the door.

“D, we come bearing gi– What the fuck!” yelled Logan, almost dropping the things he’d brought over from the vending machine. 

Garret came into the room and just stared at you two, flushed faces and intertwined hands. His face was a completely blank look, jaw hung ajar. 

You cleared your throat, running a hand through your messy hair and moving to stand next to Dean.

“What’s going on in there, G?” asked Beau from the door, making his way in. Once he saw your joined hands, messy hair, and the grin on Dean’s face, he quickly put the pieces together. 

“Fuck yeah, D! Finally! Took you long enough, idiots,” Beau said, beginning to clap. 

“The rest of you do not understand what a pain all of these years have been. I’ve had to wait since high school. This is such a big moment for me,” he continued, his face shifting onto a smirk. 

Tucker, hearing the commotion that was coming from inside, also decided to step in. “So this is pretty girl, huh? Nice to meet you too”

The boys laughed, but the flush on your face only deepened. 

“Guys, you’re ruining a moment!” yelled Hannah and Allie in unison from behind the boys. 

“Okay, okay, we’ll leave the two lovebirds be,” Logan replied, shooting Dean a knowing smile before leaving the room. 

The Hawks and Beau walked out, leaving you and Dean alone again. Beau’s cheers were audible, and he was telling every member of the group the story of your lives. 

Dean pressed a gentle kiss to your knuckles, and then looked at you again. It was the same look he’d been giving you since you were kids, but you saw it under a different lens now. 

His fingers, still interlocked with yours, traced patterns on the back of your hand. “Y’know, the second I get let out of here, we’re going straight to the city again”

“Are you feeling homesick, Di Laurentis?” you teased. The smile that cracked through your lips broke your act, though.

“If you’re with me, I’ll never feel homesick,” he retorted, leaving you puzzled.

“New York’s not my home, pretty girl. You are”

i'm making a dean taglist (finally) so lmk in my inbox (or in the comments) if u wanna be added!!

[wh1msymaddy]

emergency contact | dean di laurentis

a/n: so sorry for taking a couple of days to upload this, i wanted to make sure it was perfect!! this is my longest project to date and i'm so proud of it i love them sm. 💗.

pairing: dean di laurentis x childhoodbsf!reader

w/c: 5.2k (😭)

warnings: swearing, mentions of trauma (not detailed), drinking, alcohol consumption, hospital setting, injuries, hurt/comfort

summary: in which an on-ice accident brings fifteen years of hidden feelings to light in a boston hospital room

Hockey was a dangerous sport. Dean knew that, and he still chose to play. He skated his way through elementary school, high school and now college. 

Most people believed his trips outside at night were to the rink, that hockey was what calmed him down when he couldn’t sleep, or when he had too much on his mind and the world felt too loud. But hockey wasn’t what served that purpose, it was you. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

15 years ago

You and Dean met at age seven, in New York city. Both of your families had penthouses in the same building, which caused you to run into each other often.

Your friendship bloomed during a Christmas dinner that same year. Mother had instructed you to buy a lengthy list of products at the bodega next to the complex, and Dean’s mother had done the same. 

The two of you bumped into each other and got the grocery lists mixed up, causing you to buy the wrong ingredients for your families. When your mother realized what had happened, she went to Dean’s family flat in hopes of sorting things out. 

Instead of simply exchanging the products and leaving, Dean’s mother and her decided to host the dinner together, immediately clicking. That night, they both spent their time chatting while you two snuck out of the room, and went someplace else. 

“How many drinks in do you think they are?” he asked you, moving the horse on the board and killing one of your bishops. 

“I’d say about halfway through the second bottle, knowing my mother,” you answered, a huff coming out of both of your mouths. 

“Check,” he announced. 

“Not so fast, Di Laurentis,” you countered, bringing your queen to trap his king to the edge of the board. “Checkmate.” 

He saw it, your king would deliver the final blow, and he’d lost. For the first time, Dean Di Laurentis had been beaten by someone at chess. 

Despite being annoyed at himself for not predicting your move, he was glad to see your mouth shape into a grin, even if you bragged about the win for the following week. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

7 years ago

After that night, you and Dean declared that you were to be friends. Not just friends– best friends. So, even as the years passed, you two remained constants in each other’s lives. He told you everything, and you did the same. 

New York was your city, the space where you could just be the two of you. No outside pressure, no drama, and no complications. Christmases evolved into spring breaks and summer breaks as soon as you two had the power to decide where you wanted to go, which was around the start of high school, due to the lack of attention you received from your parents. 

Whenever people wondered if distance put a strain on your relationship, you both laughed. One of the best parts of being reckless teenagers was that you often took trains to see each other, stealing the apartment keys from your parents and spending weekends in the flats, switching penthouses every night. 

“Mine or yours tonight?” Dean asked you, putting the tray of blueberry muffin batter in the oven’s middle rack. 

“We did yesterday here, so switching it up would be nice, don’t you think? Plus, I think my mom left some of her good liquor over there,” you giggled, raising your brows and smiling. 

“Would you look at that? Her first good act of the decade,” he laughed.

“Tell me about it.” 

“I’ll bring our bags over there then. Should we go buy chips from the bodega or something?” he inquired, after opening the snack cabinet and seeing there weren’t any left. 

“Sure, but why don’t we go on a dinner picnic to prospect park or something, that’d be cool,” you suggested, putting the remaining dirty baking dishes in the dishwasher. 

“You are a genius, pretty girl, let’s go,” he said, grinning and placing a kiss to the top of your head.

“The muffins, idiot!” 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

This fall

Dean called you after every important thing in his life, because you were the most important person in it. Even if you two fought, which you didn’t do very often, you found your way back to each other, back to New York. 

Ever since you started college, you two saw each other often. With you studying at Harvard and him studying at Briar, the distance that separated you was smaller. 

That was why you’d showed up to every single game the Hawks played since the start of college. The boys often wondered who that girl in the opposing team’s stand wearing a Di Laurentis jersey that looked like it was years old was. They knew of you, but they’d never actually met you.

God, Dean never shut his mouth up when it came to you. 

“Y’know, G, she would have never mixed my white laundry with my colors,” Dean said, observing the disaster Garrett had created. 

“You will never shut up about her, won’t you?” Garrett asked him, and Dean shook his head.

“How do we know she’s even real? You talk about her like she’s an angel who fell from the sky,” Logan added.

Beau was quick to offer a response. “Oh, she’s very real. If you met her, you would think the same thing. Except Dean’s reaction is exaggerated because he's whipped.”

“See, that’s funny, because she’s my best friend,” Dean said, denying the last thing Beau said. 

“These things happen in Hannah’s romance books all the time, dude,” Garrett pointed out and all of the other boys started laughing at him. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

5 years ago

“My mom wants us to move to this really big but ugly house in Winchester, which is unfortunately very far away from where we live now, as you may have noticed,” you told Dean, turning around on the king bed to face him, the New York skyline illuminating your face.

“You don’t seem sad at all,” he mentioned, facing you as well.

“That’s because Winchester is way closer to the city, and closer to Connecticut, than where we are now. And that’s what matters,” you said.

“Does this mean we can make New York a monthly thing or?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“This means we can come every two weeks,” you said, a big grin plastered on your face. 

Dean pulled you close to him on the king bed and, in an attempt to hug you, ended up rolling both of you off the bed.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Present day

Finals week had been eating you alive. It was always bad, but this semester had been especially tough, due to your classes being graduate-level electives. 

You told Dean that you wouldn’t be able to attend the week’s game through FaceTime, and he wasn’t even mad. Dean could sometimes act very immature-like, but that never happened with you. He understood you needed to prioritize your studies. Plus, you’d been to every single game since Freshman year. 

That particular game was against an especially aggressive team, but the Hawks knew what to do. They had practiced drills to evade certain attacks over and over again, and they were more than prepared. Or so they thought. 

The opponents had turned out to be even worse than the team had expected, throwing illegal punches left and right, but Dean managed to stay away from the ones he deemed to be the most violent for the better part of the game. 

But when he saw a clear goal opportunity, he took it. Because he was Dean goddamn Di Laurentis, and he wasn’t scared of a couple state university players who had to throw everyone on the floor just to gain control of the puck. 

Skating quickly through the ice, Dean was too focused on what was ahead that he missed the player coming up behind him. 

Suddenly, he was on the floor, his ears ringing and his eyes unable to open. 

“Call her,” he said, unaware of the fact that nobody could hear his whispers.

When everything went to black, the only thing on his mind was you. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

13 years ago

“Dean, you’re going to get yourself killed!” you yelled at him as he skated through Wollman rink with astounding speed. 

“I got it, pretty girl!” he yelled back from the rink, grinning at you. 

After being bribed with hot cocoa, you agreed to go with Dean to the ice rink so he could practice his skating. He’d become obsessed about hockey, and even though he’d always loved the sport, you’d never seen him this dedicated. 

“If you’ve got it, push harder, come on! We don’t want you slacking, Di Laurentis,” you joked, moving your hand in circles. 

“On it,” he echoed, speeding over to where you were from the other side. 

“Y’know, it wouldn’t hurt you to try,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Just so you can check me into the boards and write it off as ‘practice’? No thank you, I’ve learned my lesson.”

“That was one time!” 

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!”

“I’ll convert you one day, you’ll see,” he determined, making you roll your eyes sarcastically. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Present day

The call came in at seven pm. You wondered why the local Boston hospital was calling you, but picked up nonetheless.

“Hello ma’am, this is Dr. Abbott, we have you listed as Dean Di Laurentis’ emergency contact. Is this information correct?” the doctor asked, and your heart sank.

Dean. The hospital. A game. 

“Yes, that’s right,” you responded, standing up from your chair and going to fetch one of your coats. 

“We regret to inform you that we have Dean over in our emergency department”

A pit formed in your stomach. The emergency department. 

“He has been seriously injured and we request your assistance to the hospital to discuss things further”

“Is he awake?” you inquired, barely able to hold tears back.

“Not at the moment, I’m afraid,” said the doctor.

“’ll be there in thirty minutes”

After hanging up, you grabbed your keys and raced outside the house. The clothes you were wearing didn’t even cross your mind, for it was far too busy shifting through the possible injuries that could land Dean in the ER. 

Running down the stairs of your apartment building, another name appeared on your screen, calling you. 

Beau beep 🌾

You slid your finger through the cold screen, answering the call as fast as you could. Beau’s face popped up on the screen, and you felt a tiny sense of relief once you saw he was already in the hospital. 

“I assume they’ve called you already,” he said when he noticed that the oversized hockey jersey you were wearing, which was obviously Dean’s, sat under a big coat. 

“Yeah, they have. Who’s there already?” you wondered, finally reaching the lobby. 

Beau answered, but all sound felt muffled as you ran towards your car, rushing to get inside and be on your way to the hospital. 

Memories flooded your brain as you pressed your body to the car seat, which only made you want to get to Dean more. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

6 years ago

It was the last game of sophomore year, and you had taken a three and a half hour train to surprise Dean inside of the rink. Suited up in your Di Laurentis jersey, you waited for twenty more minutes until the players came into the ice. 

As soon as he spotted you leaning next to the box, he dropped his stick and ran to hug you, ignoring the comments he got from his coach and teammates. 

“What are you doing here, pretty girl?” he asked, a wide smile crowding his face. 

“I wanted to surprise you today. You kept mentioning how excited you were for this game, and I decided to buy a train ticket over,” you replied, mirroring his own smile. 

“Does your mom know you’re here?” his tone shifted, not concerned, just curious.

“We’ve been approved for a three day sleepover,” you reassured. 

“Di Laurentis, get into the rink!” his coach yelled, beckoning him inside. 

“Go get ‘em, Dean,” you told him, tapping the spot in his jersey that was over his heart. 

The game was going very well, Dean’s team leading by five goals. The crowd was cheering like crazy, screams echoing throughout the rink. Then came gasps, followed by a thick wave of silence. 

Dean had been knocked onto the floor with an insane amount of force, leaving him unresponsive. 

You ran from your spot in the stands to where they were carrying him out of the rink faster than the speed of light, pushing people off your way if you needed to. 

“Excuse me, young lady, you can’t be here. We’re escorting him to the hospital,” said the team medic. 

“I’m family,” you stated, standing your ground. 

After a moment of hesitation, the medic nodded and allowed you to go with the rest of the personnel. They placed Dean on a gurney inside an ambulance, and you interlocked your fingers with his during the journey to the hospital. 

You were terrified. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Present day

The feeling of terror inside you wasn’t any different this time. A cloud of dread rested above you on your way to the hospital, during which you’d remained on call with Beau. 

“What happened?” you asked him once your mind was as clear as it would get. 

“He lost consciousness after getting checked into the boards. The doc said he had a pretty severe concussion and the usual hockey injuries, but they put him into observation because his breathing was odd” Beau replied, trying to keep his tone as steady as possible to alarm you as little as he could. 

You didn’t know what to say. You just kept driving, your eyes on the road, your mind on Dean. 

“You know he’ll go on and on about how you’re his lucky charm and that’s the reason why he got hurt, right?” Beau joked, getting a small laugh out of you. 

“I can already hear him say it,” you said, the corners of your mouth turning up. 

Parking in the hospital lot took less time than expected, so you headed out of the car with shaky hands and stood in front of the automated doors of the ER, which allowed you to enter. 

Bright LED lights blazed into your eyes, and the sharp smell of sterile cleaning products, iodine and latex gloves penetrated your nostrils. Nurses rushed up and down the hallways, their hands busy at all times. The place was filled with despair and hope overlapping with one another, infinite possibilities streaming out of every patient.

The woman at reception shot you a pitiful look before setting the mug on her hand down and focusing her full attention onto you. 

“Who are you here for, sweetheart?” she kindly asked, turning to type your response into the database.

“Di Laurentis, Dean,” you responded, fiddling with the charmed bracelet on your right hand. 

“He’s in the observation unit at the end of the hall. There’s a crowd of people outside, so you’ll see it,” she remarked, making you huff. 

Despite never having met them, you had a pretty good idea of who the people may be. Dean had told you all about his friends from Briar. Garrett, Logan, Tucker, Hannah and Allie. 

So, you had a pretty good idea of which group they were when you spotted them. Beau was also there with them, and his expression fully shifted when he saw you. Relief spread through his features, and he came over to give you a hug. 

“They wouldn’t let us see him because we’re too many and not his–” 

“Emergency contacts,” you finished the sentence for him, hugging him back. 

Handing your coat over to him, you looked for the nearest nurse to notify her of your appearance and ask her to let you into the room. 

“Is that..?” Logan asked Beau, raising his eyebrows. 

“Yeah, she is,” Beau responded, sitting down on a chair. 

“That isn’t Dean’s Briar Hockey jersey,” Hannah pointed out, observing the details of the embroidered 66 on your back. 

“It was his senior night jersey, Dean gave it to her so he could spot her at games in college,” Beau explained, mentally preparing himself to answer the flood of questions that he was sure would come. 

Before any of them could ask anything else, you came back with a nurse, room keys in hand. 

“Nice to meet you all, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’ll be right back,” you stated in a poor attempt to hide the shaky tone in your voice. 

All of the fear slowly melted away when you saw Dean laid down on the hospital bed, and you let out a breath you didn’t even realise you were holding. 

You stepped into the room and immediately sat on the chair next to his bed, lacing his uninjured fingers with yours. 

Suddenly, a rough, gravelly voice laced with painkillers spoke for the first time. “I know I’m handsome, but your gaze will burn through my face if you keep staring at me like that”

A bruise was starting to form on his jaw, and his hair was messy. His eyes, red from the painkillers the medical staff had given him, were entirely focused on you. 

“You idiot. You absolute, utter, stubborn idiot!” you exclaimed, your voice catching in your throat as you heard his own. You knew you couldn’t stay mad at him for long, you’d never been able to. 

Despite your tone, he simply smiled, his thumb tracing patterns on the back of your hand. The asshole was soothing you while he was getting lectured. 

“Missed you in the stands today. I didn’t have anyone to look at after scoring, it was kind of pointless,” he said, the corners of his lip tugging at his stitches, and he winced slightly at the feeling. 

“Do not joke right now, Di Laurentis. A doctor and Beau called me from the hospital–” your voice broke, tears threatening to spill from your eyes, “they said you got checked, hard, and you weren’t responding. They said your breathing was off.”

“Hey,” he squeezed your hand and pulled on your sleeve, waiting for you to get closer to him. “C’mere”

Once you moved the chair as close to the hospital bed as you could, Dean’s good hand came up to wipe one of the slow tears that had come out of your eyes. 

“I’m okay, pretty girl,” he reassured, interlocking his fingers with yours again. His fingers grazed your knuckles, softer than usual. “I’m here, I’m okay” 

Despite being in pain, Dean’s only preoccupation was to make the tears in your face disappear, because if he was asked to name the thing that he disliked most in the world, his answer would be seeing you hurt. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

2 years ago

The doorbell in Dean’s New York apartment rang, and Dean raced downstairs, expecting to encounter one of the packages he’d ordered. However, when he opened the door, he saw you. 

Clothes soaked, sobs shutting the sound of heavy rain out from the apartment. Without asking, he pulled you flush to him. 

“You’re okay. You’re with me,” his voice and warmth grounded you, reminding you that you were safe because you were with him. 

Dean ran his hands through your wet hair until your breathing evened out and you were ready to talk. “I trusted my mom when she said she’d changed, when she asked me to go down to their place for thanksgiving. But when I got there, she was only nice for twenty minutes. Then, she started screaming at me and telling me just how much of a failure I was and how she regretted me all together”

“She was drunk, wasn’t she?” he asked, looking down at you with eyes full of understanding.

You gave him a small nod, and he sighed in defeat. He’d known your mom as long as he’d known you, and there had always been a bottle of some sort alongside her, as a mandatory accessory. After your gesture, he pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead, and you two stood enveloped in each other in silence for quite some time.

There was nothing he hated more than seeing you suffer, whether that may be physical or mental. A close second, though, was seeing you cry. The moment tears were involved, Dean just wanted to hold you and run his hands through your hair to soothe you and prove you were safe when he was alongside you. No matter what.

That night, Dean and you curled up on the couch to watch one of your comfort movies, a nightly ritual you both did before playing a couple of games of chess and then going to bed. 

“What are we watching tonight, pretty girl?” he asked, arm around your shoulder, pulling you into him. 

“Will you cry again if I put The Notebook on?” you questioned, scrunching your nose up at him. 

“You know I will,” he affirmed, a raspy laugh coming out of his throat. 

“That is not very d1 hockey player and fraternity brother of you, Di Laurentis,” you teased, poking his side to get control of the remote. 

“There you are, thought you’d vanished on me”

“I could never vanish if you’re with me, you know that,” your voice grew quieter, more serious.

“And you know that I’m not the way you described while I’m with you,” his tone matched yours as his hand traced lazy patterns on your shoulder.

“Yeah, you’re yourself here,” you deadpanned, and Dean didn’t even dare deny it. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

3 years ago

Nobody had warned you and Dean about how nostalgic you would feel right before going off to college on your own. 

You and Dean had picked Harvard and Briar to be closer together than you’d ever been while not being in New York, but you couldn’t deny that you wished college wouldn’t stop you from driving out to the city every other week. 

It was your last night in the city before officially becoming college students, and you were both more scared than you’d let on. So, logically, you’d decided to go out and get pizza at the 24-hour pizza joint you had next door. 

“Should we dress up or just go like this?” you thought out loud, looking down at the oversized hoodie you were wearing, which you’d stolen from Dean.

“It’s 2 AM, no one will see us on the street,” he said, snorting at your comment. 

The walk to the pizza place was filled with laughs and memories, recalling the times where you’d showed up to his school and he’d showed up to yours, sometimes unannounced but never less welcome. 

Once you reached the joint, Dean went ahead and ordered both of your pizzas without asking. He knew your order off the top of his head. 

Emilio, the man at the register, smiled at the sight of you and Dean, unable to contain his happiness. He’d seen you two grow up and change together, and the way you two enchanted him was visible in his face every time you stepped into his shop late at night.

“Don’t stop coming by during holidays, kids! I’ll be expecting you this Christmas,” Emilio said as he handed you two your pizzas. 

“We’ll never stop coming here, Emilio,” You told the man and glanced at Dean, who was nodding. 

“Not when you make the best pizzas in New York,” Dean said, his mouth beginning to water. 

You and Dean ate your pizzas, sharing half of yours with the other person. The only thing left to do was walk back home. 

Even if the joint was just a couple of blocks from your apartments, it was easy to get distracted while walking around the city, especially if you were with Dean. Walking backwards while eating a slice of pizza, you didn’t notice you were about to fall into a puddle. 

Dean grabbed you by the collar of your hood and pulled you flush to him, preventing your fall. Suddenly, the air felt like it had thickened up, partially because of how Dean was looking at you. He was studying your face like it was his favorite subject and he never wanted to stop learning.

Dean’s hand moved to the nape of your neck and he opened his mouth to say something, your heart racing. Just when he was about to say it, a speeding taxi passed by next to you, shutting Dean up. 

“I’m gonna miss messing with you, pretty girl,” he said, moving you to his side by your waist and then letting you go. 

The tone in his voice was filled with things unsaid, things you were too scared to put out into the air. Because once they were out there, they couldn’t be reeled back in.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Present day

“You scared the shit out of me, Dean,” you whispered, staring at the boy you had known forever, the one who had been with you through everything, who you knew would never let you go. 

The knot in your throat did not seem to want to loosen unless you spoke  and mentioned what was truly on your mind, what you’d longed to say to him ever since you saw the hospital was calling you. 

“For a second, I wondered what would happen if you didn’t make it, what my life would look like without you in it. And I didn’t like it one bit. Because I don’t know who I am without you, Dean. Without you, I’m half of myself, you took the rest the moment we met, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you, Dean. I think I always have”

Dean’s eyes were locked into yours, his breathing heavy and uneven. With your words, you’d completely shattered his facade, leaving him unfiltered. 

“When everything went black, death didn’t scare me. The only thing on my mind was you. Because if I left it all behind then, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how I’ve felt all of these years,” he said, and your eyebrows furrowed out of instinct. 

“You think I’ve been looking at you like this for fifteen years just because you’re my best friend? No, pretty girl, it’s because you’re my entire world. It’s always been you, ever since we played that damn chess game during Christmas break. I love you too”

The two of you let out a small laugh at the same time, one of the tiny habits you’d picked up from each other over the years. 

“Now come closer, if the nurses see me leaning in to kiss you, I might not make it out of this hospital after all,” he joked, making your face shift into a grin.

Careful of the beeping monitor beside you, and the wires attached to him, you closed the remaining distance between the two of you. His good hand escaped your grasp to settle on your jaw, and your own hands moved to the nape of his neck, fiddling with the blond hair that was there. 

The atmosphere didn’t completely change, it simply revealed what it had truly been all along. It was a reminder that all of the stolen glances, the gentle touches and the quiet nights filled with charged silence hadn’t been for nothing. 

Dean’s breath caught in his throat the moment your lips grazed his, and he couldn’t bear to wait any longer. Tentatively, he pressed your lips to his, tangling you in a kiss. It was hesitant at first, as if he couldn’t believe this wasn’t just one of his dreams, as if he wasn’t sure if you were even real. 

After letting out a sigh of relief, he kissed you like the world owed him something for keeping you away from him for so long, like it came as natural to him as breathing, like he never wanted to let your lips split from his ever again. 

When you finally pulled back, your forehead resting against his, you two kept your eyes closed for a few seconds. He opened his before you did, so you caught him looking at you like you’d just fulfilled his biggest dreams with a kiss. 

“So, does this mean you’re officially my girl now?” he whispered, his signature grin finally appearing on his face.

“I’ve been your girl for a while, Di Laurentis”

By the time you’d finished that sentence, Dean was already tugging you closer to him with his good hand to kiss you again, which made you giggle. Both of you had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and you wanted to make the most of it. 

Suddenly, there was a creak at the door.

“D, we come bearing gi– What the fuck!” yelled Logan, almost dropping the things he’d brought over from the vending machine. 

Garret came into the room and just stared at you two, flushed faces and intertwined hands. His face was a completely blank look, jaw hung ajar. 

You cleared your throat, running a hand through your messy hair and moving to stand next to Dean.

“What’s going on in there, G?” asked Beau from the door, making his way in. Once he saw your joined hands, messy hair, and the grin on Dean’s face, he quickly put the pieces together. 

“Fuck yeah, D! Finally! Took you long enough, idiots,” Beau said, beginning to clap. 

“The rest of you do not understand what a pain all of these years have been. I’ve had to wait since high school. This is such a big moment for me,” he continued, his face shifting onto a smirk. 

Tucker, hearing the commotion that was coming from inside, also decided to step in. “So this is pretty girl, huh? Nice to meet you too”

The boys laughed, but the flush on your face only deepened. 

“Guys, you’re ruining a moment!” yelled Hannah and Allie in unison from behind the boys. 

“Okay, okay, we’ll leave the two lovebirds be,” Logan replied, shooting Dean a knowing smile before leaving the room. 

The Hawks and Beau walked out, leaving you and Dean alone again. Beau’s cheers were audible, and he was telling every member of the group the story of your lives. 

Dean pressed a gentle kiss to your knuckles, and then looked at you again. It was the same look he’d been giving you since you were kids, but you saw it under a different lens now. 

His fingers, still interlocked with yours, traced patterns on the back of your hand. “Y’know, the second I get let out of here, we’re going straight to the city again”

“Are you feeling homesick, Di Laurentis?” you teased. The smile that cracked through your lips broke your act, though.

“If you’re with me, I’ll never feel homesick,” he retorted, leaving you puzzled.

“New York’s not my home, pretty girl. You are”

i'm making a dean taglist (finally) so lmk in my inbox (or in the comments) if u wanna be added!!

[pucksandpower]

your hands are safe (part two)

Garrett Graham x Phil Graham’s ex!Reader

Summary: Garrett hasn’t set foot in his father’s house in years, and one Thanksgiving dinner reminds him exactly why … except this time, there’s a stranger sitting in his mother’s old seat, wearing his father’s same practiced cruelty like a shadow. He walks away telling himself it isn’t his fight anymore. Three weeks later, fate puts you back in front of him with a needle in your hand and a bruise you can’t quite hide, and Garrett realizes he can’t walk away from you again

Warnings: 18+ content and domestic violence

Read part one here

The ambulance violently jerks to a halt.

Before the vehicle even fully settles, the heavy back doors are thrown open from the outside. The harsh, biting December wind sweeps into the back of the rig, instantly swallowed by the blinding, chaotic floodlights of the emergency bay.

“Incoming!” The paramedic shouts, already releasing the heavy latches on the stretcher. “Female, twenty-three, massive blunt force trauma to the head and abdomen. Heart rate is erratic, pressure is dropping. Let’s move!”

Garrett is shoved backward as a swarm of people in scrubs and high-visibility jackets descends on the back of the ambulance. He trips over his own heavy boots, his shoulder colliding hard with the metal frame of the door, but he barely feels the impact.

He is completely numb.

He watches, trapped in a terrifying, out-of-body disassociation, as they pull the stretcher out into the freezing night.

You are entirely swallowed by the chaos. The yellow backboard, the rigid plastic brace locked around your neck, the tangle of IV lines and monitor wires — it all looks so incredibly wrong. You are small. You are fragile. You are supposed to be safe in his kitchen, laughing at Dean and stealing Logan’s hoodies.

You are not supposed to be bleeding out on a gurney.

“Sir, step back!” A voice yells, but it sounds like it’s underwater.

Garrett stumbles out of the ambulance, his boots hitting the pavement of the ambulance bay. He blindly follows the chaotic rush of medical personnel pushing your stretcher through the automatic sliding glass doors.

The emergency room is a madhouse. Phones are ringing, people are shouting, monitors are beeping in a discordant, terrifying symphony.

“Trauma Bay One is prepped!” A male nurse shouts, jogging backward as he helps guide your stretcher down the wide linoleum hallway. “What’s her status?”

“She’s tachycardic, GCS is a seven and dropping,” the paramedic barks, practically running to keep up with the rolling bed. “She briefly regained consciousness on the scene but she’s been unresponsive for the last eight minutes.”

They wheel you past the triage desk. They wheel you past the crowded waiting room.

And then, it happens.

A young nurse, wearing the same standard-issue hospital blue scrubs you usually hate, is walking out of a supply closet with a stack of clean towels. She glances casually at the incoming trauma rushing past her.

Her eyes lock onto the stretcher.

The stack of towels slips from her hands, hitting the floor with a soft, muffled thud.

“Oh my god,” the young nurse gasps, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. Her eyes go completely wide, pure, unadulterated horror stripping the color from her face. “Is that … is that Y/N?”

The question cuts through the noise of the ER like a knife.

The male nurse pushing the foot of your stretcher looks down. He really looks. The heavy blood, the swelling, the terrifying distortion of your features makes it hard, but underneath the violence, the recognition clicks into place.

“Fuck,” the male nurse curses loudly, his voice cracking with panic. “It’s Y/N! Hey! It’s one of ours! It’s Y/N!”

The shift in the room is instantaneous and absolute.

A hospital emergency room is trained to handle trauma. They deal with tragedy objectively, separating their emotions from the physical mechanics of saving a life.

But not this time.

The objective professionalism shatters into a million pieces. The name echoes down the hallway, passed from nurse to doctor to orderly like a devastating electric shock.

It’s Y/N. The pediatric nurse. The girl with the patterned scrubs who stays late to hold the preemie babies.

“Get Dr. Gardner down here right fucking now!” A voice screams from down the hall.

“Page trauma surgery! Page neuro!”

Garrett trails behind the stretcher like a ghost. People are running past him, sprinting toward Trauma Bay One. The urgency has multiplied tenfold. This isn’t just a patient anymore. This is their family.

They push the stretcher into the large, glass-walled room of Trauma Bay One. The doors slide shut, but the chaos inside only amplifies.

Garrett hits the glass.

He slaps both of his hands flat against the cold pane, his face pressing close, his dark eyes wide and terrified as he watches them transfer you from the stretcher to the hospital bed.

There are at least ten people crowded around you.

“On my count!” Dr. Gardner, the same doctor who stitched Garrett’s forehead a month ago, yells over the din. He looks completely frantic, his usual calm demeanor entirely gone. “One, two, three!”

They lift the backboard and slide you over. Your arm flops limply off the side of the bed. A nurse immediately catches it, her own hands shaking as she secures the IV line.

“Someone get me the portable ultrasound!” Dr. Gardner barks, grabbing a pair of trauma shears from the counter. “We need to check for internal bleeding. Her abdomen is rigid. I need two units of O-negative blood, stat!”

Garrett presses his forehead against the glass. He is trapped on the outside, a helpless, useless spectator to the most terrifying moment of his entire life.

He feels a heavy hand land firmly on his shoulder.

Garrett flinches violently, spinning around with his fists instantly raised, ready to fight, ready to destroy whoever is touching him.

But it’s not a threat.

Standing in front of him is a short, stocky older woman in dark blue scrubs. Her silver hair is pulled back into a tight bun, and her name tag reads Helen - Charge Nurse. Her face is lined with years of exhaustion and ER stress, but right now, her eyes are blazing with a fierce, terrifying intensity.

“Lower your hands, son,” Helen says. Her voice is calm, gravelly, and brooks absolute zero argument.

Garrett slowly lowers his fists, his chest heaving as he fights for air that doesn’t seem to exist. “I-I have to …”

“You have to stay out of their way,” Helen says firmly, stepping directly into his line of sight, forcing him to look at her instead of the bloody scene behind the glass. “They are doing everything they can. You being in there will only distract them, and she needs every single ounce of their focus right now.”

Garrett’s jaw trembles. He looks down at his hands.

They are coated in your blood. It has dried into the creases of his knuckles, stained the cuffs of his black Henley, and smeared across his palms. The sight of it sends a fresh, violent wave of nausea rolling through his stomach.

“Come here,” Helen murmurs, her tone softening marginally.

She grabs him by the bicep. For a woman half his size, she has a grip like a vise. She pulls him a few feet away from the glass window, steering him toward a small alcove near the nurses’ station that offers a sliver of privacy.

She pushes him down into a plastic chair.

“Sit,” she orders.

Garrett collapses into the chair, his elbows coming to rest on his knees. He buries his face in his bloodstained hands, a ragged, broken sob tearing its way up his throat. He can’t hold it back anymore. The adrenaline is crashing, leaving behind nothing but the agonizing, crushing reality of what just happened.

Helen doesn’t offer him empty platitudes. She doesn’t pat his back or tell him everything is going to be okay. She’s an ER nurse; she knows better than to make promises she can’t keep.

Instead, she turns to a nearby sink, wets a thick stack of brown paper towels with warm water, and walks back over to him.

“Give me your hands,” Helen says.

Garrett slowly lifts his head. He drops his hands to his lap.

Helen kneels in front of him, entirely uncaring about the linoleum floor. She takes his massive, shaking hands in her own and begins to methodically wipe the drying blood from his skin.

“You were in here a month ago,” Helen says quietly, her eyes focused entirely on the task of cleaning his knuckles. “I remember you. The hockey player with the concussion.”

“Yeah,” Garrett rasps, his throat burning.

“She was terrified that night,” Helen continues, scrubbing a stubborn patch of crimson from his palm. “I’ve been a nurse for forty years. I know what a victim of domestic abuse looks like. I knew what she was going home to. I tried to get her to talk to me, but she wouldn’t. She protected him.”

Garrett closes his eyes, the memory of that night in the exam room flashing vividly behind his eyelids.

“She left with you,” Helen says, tossing the bloody paper towels into a nearby biohazard bin and grabbing a fresh, wet stack. “I watched her walk out of those sliding doors with you, and for the first time since she started working here, she looked like she had a sliver of hope.”

“I told her I’d protect her,” Garrett chokes out, the guilt a physical, crushing weight on his chest. “I promised her she was safe. I moved her into my house. We were careful. We were so fucking careful.”

“Careful doesn’t matter when you’re dealing with a monster,” Helen says bluntly.

She finishes wiping his hands, tossing the last of the towels away. She doesn’t stand up. She stays kneeling in front of him, forcing him to meet her steely, hardened gaze.

“What’s the story?” Helen asks, her voice dropping to a dangerous, deadly whisper. “And don’t you dare lie to me. Who did this to my girl?”

Garrett looks at her. He sees the absolute, uncompromising love this woman has for you. He sees the fury vibrating in her jaw.

“My father,” Garrett says, the words tasting like poison on his tongue. “Phil Graham.”

Helen’s eyebrows twitch, a brief flash of recognition crossing her face, but she doesn’t seem to care that the man is a famous athlete. She only cares that he is a monster.

“He tracked her down,” Garrett continues, the words pouring out of him in a disjointed, frantic rush. “She went to the grocery store after her shift. He must have been waiting. He must have followed her. We found her in the alley out back. He beat her, Helen. He beat her until she couldn’t stand, and then he just left her there to die.”

Helen’s expression hardens into something akin to carved stone. She slowly stands up, smoothing down the front of her scrubs.

“The police are already on their way,” Helen says, her voice cold and absolute. “Protocol for assault victims. They’ll be here any minute to take a statement.”

She steps closer to him, leaning down slightly so her face is inches from his.

“You tell them everything,” Helen orders, pointing a stern finger at his chest. “You tell them about tonight. You tell them about the bruises you saw a month ago. You give them his name, his address, and the make of his car if you know it.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Garrett whispers, the terrifying, homicidal calm returning to his blood. It’s not a threat. It’s a promise.

“No, you are not,” Helen snaps, her voice cracking like a whip. “You are not going to throw your life away for a piece of garbage like that. You are going to let the police arrest him, and you are going to make damn sure that whoever did this to sweet Y/N never sees the light of day again. You bury him with the law. You don’t let him ruin your life too.”

Garrett stares at her, his jaw locked tight. He doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t argue.

“I need to get back to my floor,” Helen says, stepping back. Her eyes flick toward the glass window of Trauma Bay One, a flash of profound sadness breaking through her tough exterior. “You sit right here. You don’t move until the doctors come out to speak with you.”

“Is she …” Garrett swallows hard, terrified to even ask the question. “Is she going to make it?”

Helen looks at him, her eyes softening with a deep, tragic sympathy. “She’s young. She’s strong. And she has the best trauma team in the state working on her right now. But Garrett … it’s bad. Prepare yourself.”

Helen turns and walks away, disappearing back into the chaotic flow of the emergency room.

Garrett is left alone in the plastic chair.

He turns his head, his eyes immediately locking back onto the glass wall of the trauma bay.

It looks like a warzone inside.

Dr. Gardner is standing on one side of the bed, his white coat stained with your blood, shouting orders. Two nurses are frantically hanging bags of blood and clear fluids, the plastic lines tangling together in their rush.

Someone is cutting away your dark jeans, exposing the pale skin of your legs.

“We have fluid in the abdomen!” Dr. Gardner yells, staring at the screen of a portable ultrasound machine. “She’s bleeding internally. We need an OR prepped right now! Call the surgical team, tell them we’re coming up!”

Garrett stands up, drawn magnetically toward the glass.

He watches as a respiratory therapist pushes through the crowd, holding a terrifying array of plastic tubes and a metal laryngoscope.

“Her airway is swelling!” The therapist shouts. “She’s not getting enough oxygen. I need to intubate!”

“Do it!” Dr. Gardner barks. “Push the propofol and rocuronium. Get her under.”

Garrett presses his hands against the glass again. He watches in pure, unadulterated agony as they tilt your head back. He watches them slip the metal blade into your mouth, forcing your jaw open, slipping a plastic tube down your throat to breathe for you because your broken body can no longer do it on its own.

It is the most violated, terrifying thing he has ever witnessed.

He feels like his heart is being slowly, methodically crushed in a vise. Every time the monitor beeps — a frantic, irregular sound — he flinches. Every time a new drop of blood hits the white hospital floor, a piece of his soul breaks off.

This is his fault.

The thought is a toxic, pervasive cancer in his mind. He brought you into his world. He challenged a man he knew was a volatile, violent psychopath, and he arrogant enough to believe he could just walk away. He thought a locked door and three college hockey players were enough to stop a monster with decades of experience in terrorizing people.

He underestimated Phil. And you are paying the ultimate, agonizing price for his mistake.

“Garrett!”

The frantic shout cuts through the noise of the ER.

Garrett turns his head.

Bursting through the main sliding glass doors are Logan, Dean, and Tucker. They look entirely unhinged. Dean’s face is stained with tears, Logan’s eyes are wild and frantic, and Tucker is deathly pale, his jaw locked tight.

They spot him standing by the glass and immediately sprint across the waiting room, completely ignoring the protests of the security guard at the desk.

“Where is she?” Logan demands, grabbing Garrett’s shoulder. “Is she okay? What are they saying?”

Garrett doesn’t answer. He just turns his head back toward the glass window.

The boys follow his gaze.

They freeze. All three of them, these massive, imposing athletes who fear absolutely nothing on the ice, stop dead in their tracks.

Dean lets out a broken, horrifying sob, covering his mouth with his hand. He turns away instantly, unable to look at you with the tube down your throat, your face a swollen, bloody mess. He leans against the wall, his shoulders shaking violently.

Tucker closes his eyes, a tear escaping to run down his cheek. He reaches out and grips Garrett’s shoulder, a silent, desperate attempt at grounding them both in a reality that feels completely surreal.

Logan doesn’t look away. He stares through the glass, his eyes tracking the frantic movements of the doctors, the blood on the floor, the terrifying array of machines keeping you alive.

“He’s dead,” Logan whispers. The words are utterly devoid of emotion. They are a statement of fact. “Phil Graham is a dead man.”

“Get in line,” Garrett rasps, his voice hollow.

Suddenly, the doors to Trauma Bay One slide violently open.

“Move! We’re moving!” Dr. Gardner yells, running alongside the bed as two orderlies push the stretcher out into the hallway. “Clear a path to the elevators! OR 4 is waiting!”

Garrett steps forward automatically, trying to get to you, trying to grab your hand one more time.

“Stay back!” Dr. Gardner shouts, not unkindly, but with absolute urgency. “She’s bleeding internally. Her spleen is ruptured and we suspect a severe traumatic brain injury. We are taking her to surgery right now.”

“Can I …” Garrett chokes on the words. “Can I come up?”

“You wait in the surgical waiting room on the third floor,” Dr. Gardner says, the stretcher already moving rapidly down the hall. “We will find you when we know more. Just pray, boys. Just pray.”

And then, they are gone.

The stretcher rounds the corner toward the surgical elevators, disappearing from sight, leaving behind nothing but a smeared trail of blood on the linoleum floor and a terrifying, ringing silence in Garrett’s ears.

Garrett stands in the middle of the hallway, staring at the empty space where you just were. He feels completely hollowed out. There is nothing left inside him but a cold, desolate wasteland of terror and guilt.

“Garrett Graham?”

A deep, authoritative voice echoes from behind them.

Garrett turns slowly.

Standing a few feet away are two uniformed police officers. They look grim, their hands resting on their utility belts, their eyes scanning the four massive hockey players standing in the middle of the trauma wing.

“I’m Garrett,” he says, his voice flat.

The older of the two officers, a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a heavy mustache, steps forward and pulls a small notebook from his breast pocket.

“I’m Officer Miller, this is Officer Davis,” he says, his tone strictly professional but carrying a weight of understanding. “We were called in regarding the assault victim that just came through here. Y/N. The charge nurse said you were the one who found her.”

“I found her,” Garrett confirms.

“We need to ask you some questions, son,” Officer Miller says gently. “Can you tell us exactly what happened tonight? And do you have any idea who might have done this to her?”

Garrett looks at the officer. He thinks about Helen’s words. You bury him with the law. You make damn sure he never sees the light of day again.

He thinks about the way you looked in that alleyway, curled into a ball, apologizing to him while your face bled onto the asphalt. He thinks about the violent, terrifying reality of his father.

Logan steps up to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Garrett, a silent, imposing wall of support. Tucker moves to his other side. Dean wipes his face and steps up right behind them.

They are a united front. They are your family.

“I don’t just have an idea,” Garrett says, his voice ringing with a terrifying, absolute clarity that echoes in the quiet emergency room. He locks eyes with the police officer. “I know exactly who did it.”

Officer Miller clicks his pen. “Who?”

“Phil Graham,” Garrett says, the name echoing like a death sentence. “He’s my father. And I want him put in a cage for the rest of his miserable life.”

***

“I want to make sure I have this entirely straight, son,” Officer Miller says, his pen hovering over the small spiral notebook. The harsh fluorescent lights of the emergency room hallway cast deep, exhausted shadows under the cop’s eyes. “You are accusing your father, Philip Graham, former professional hockey player, of this assault.”

“I’m not just accusing him,” Garrett says. His voice is dangerously calm. He sits rigidly in the plastic waiting room chair, his elbows resting on his knees. “I’m telling you it was him.”

Officer Davis, the younger cop, shifts his weight. “And you said you witnessed him abuse her previously?”

“Thanksgiving,” Garrett answers without missing a beat. “I went to his house in Connecticut for dinner. It was the first time I met her. She reached across the table, and her sleeve slid up. She had finger-shaped bruises all over her bicep. The exact same size and shape as the bruises I just saw on her arm in the ambulance.”

Officer Miller frowns, jotting down the notes rapidly. “Did you report the abuse then?”

“No,” Garrett grits out, the admission tasting like ash in his mouth. “She begged me not to. She was terrified. She told me it was her fault for dropping a glass. I got in my face with him, told her to run, and I left. But three weeks later, she ended up in this ER as my nurse. He had beaten her again because my exit embarrassed him. So I took her home with me.”

“She’s been living with us for almost a month,” Tucker interjects. He is standing right behind Garrett’s chair, a solid, immovable presence. “In our off-campus house. We’ve been keeping the doors locked. She bought a burner phone so he couldn’t track her GPS. She was terrified he would find her.”

“But he did,” Logan adds, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his blue eyes hard as ice. “She texted us at 6:05 PM that she was clocking out and going to the Market Basket down the street. When she wasn’t home by 7:15, Garrett tried to call. It went to voicemail. So we tracked her Life360 location to the parking lot.”

Officer Davis looks up from his own notepad. “You found the car first?”

“Row G,” Dean says. His voice is shaky, completely lacking its usual arrogant bravado. He looks sick to his stomach. “Driver’s side door was wide open. Groceries all over the ground. Her phone was smashed on the pavement. Garrett told us to split up.”

“I took the back alley,” Garrett takes over, staring blankly at the far wall. “Behind the hardware store and the loading docks. That’s where I found her.”

“Did you see anyone else in the alley?” Miller asks. “A vehicle leaving the scene? Anyone fleeing on foot?”

“No,” Garrett says. “It was empty. He was already gone. But I’m telling you, it was him. Check the security cameras at the grocery store. Check the traffic cams at the intersection. You’ll see his car. He drives a black BMW.”

Officer Miller closes his notebook with a definitive snap. “We have units at the Market Basket securing the scene right now. They’re pulling the surveillance footage as we speak. We’re also dispatching state troopers to Phil Graham’s residence to bring him in for questioning.”

“Questioning isn’t going to be enough,” Garrett says, finally looking up to meet the officer’s eyes. The dark, lethal promise in Garrett’s gaze makes the older cop pause. “He nearly beat her to death. He left her in an alley to die. If you don’t lock him up, I will handle him myself.”

“Garrett,” Tucker warns quietly, his hand squeezing Garrett’s shoulder.

Officer Miller exhales a long, heavy breath. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, son. Let us do our jobs. If what you’re saying lines up with the evidence at the scene, Philip Graham won’t be seeing the outside of a jail cell for a very, very long time. Attempted murder is a heavy charge.”

The words ring in the air, echoing violently in Garrett’s skull.

“We’ll be in touch,” Officer Davis says gently. “Don’t leave the hospital without letting the front desk know. We might need a formal written statement later tonight.”

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Logan says flatly.

The two officers turn and walk away, their heavy boots squeaking against the polished linoleum.

As soon as they are out of earshot, the last of Garrett’s adrenaline completely evaporates. It leaves behind a crushing, suffocating exhaustion that makes his bones ache. He leans forward, burying his face in his hands, his fingers tangling roughly in his dark hair.

“This is my fault,” Dean whispers from a few feet away.

Garrett lifts his head. Dean is pacing a tight circle near the vending machines, his hands tugging at the roots of his blonde hair.

“Dean, stop,” Logan says tiredly, rubbing his eyes.

“No, think about it,” Dean insists, his voice cracking. He looks at the three of them, completely devastated. “She asked if we needed anything. I asked for the damn Bagel Bites. If I had just kept my mouth shut, she would have driven straight home. She wouldn’t have stopped. He wouldn’t have caught her.”

“Don’t do that,” Tucker says firmly, stepping away from Garrett’s chair to intercept Dean. He grabs Dean by the shoulders, forcing the pacing to stop. “Listen to me. Do not do that. Phil Graham is a predator. If he found her at the grocery store, it means he was already watching her. He probably followed her from the hospital. If she hadn’t stopped at the store, he might have tried to pull her out of her car at a stoplight, or ambushed her in our driveway.”

“Tuck’s right,” Logan agrees, stepping up beside them. “This isn’t on you, Dean. It’s on Phil. And we are going to make sure he pays for it.”

Garrett listens to his friends, but the words just wash over him. Dean can blame himself for the grocery list all he wants, but Garrett knows the real truth.

It’s his fault.

He is the one who dragged you into this mess. He is the one who provoked Phil. He is the one who arrogantly assumed he could play the hero and save you from the dragon, without realizing the dragon would simply burn the whole castle down in retaliation.

The waiting room clock ticks loudly on the wall.

It’s 11:42 PM.

You have been in surgery for over three hours.

The surgical waiting room on the third floor is suffocatingly quiet. The ER was loud, chaotic, and terrifying. But this room is worse. It’s just beige walls, uncomfortable chairs, old magazines, and the agonizing, stretching silence of not knowing.

“I’m getting coffee,” Logan announces, pushing himself up from the stiff couch. “Garrett? You want anything?”

Garrett shakes his head silently. He hasn’t moved from his chair in hours. He hasn’t washed his hands again. There is still a faint smear of your blood on his left cuff. He can’t bring himself to scrub it out. It feels like throwing away a piece of you.

“Get him a black coffee,” Tucker tells Logan. “And get Dean some water.”

Logan nods and slips out the door.

Dean drops onto the couch across from Garrett, staring blankly at his phone screen. “How long does a surgery take? It’s been hours.”

“As long as she needs,” Tucker says softly, taking the seat next to Garrett.

Silence falls over the room again.

Garrett closes his eyes. Every time he does, he is trapped in a horrific highlight reel.

He sees your open car door. He sees the shattered marinara sauce. He sees you lying in the dirt, curled into a ball, your face beaten beyond recognition.

He said you couldn’t keep me. He said I belonged to him.

Your weak, agonizing whisper tears through his mind, shredding his sanity.

Garrett leans his head back against the wall, his jaw clenching so tight his teeth ache. He doesn’t just want you to survive. He needs you to survive. He needs you to wake up so he can look you in the eyes and tell you everything he’s been too cowardly to say for the last month.

He wants to tell you that the house feels empty when you aren’t in it. That he purposefully sits on the edge of the couch just so his leg can brush against yours. That the sound of your laugh when Dean makes a stupid joke is the only thing that actually settles the dark, anxious noise in his brain.

He is falling in love with you.

He knows it with a terrifying, absolute certainty. He has been falling since the night you walked into his exam room in those ridiculous pink scrubs and touched his face with hands so gentle they made him want to cry.

“Garrett Graham?”

Garrett’s eyes snap open.

Standing in the doorway of the waiting room is Dr. Gardner.

The surgeon looks entirely exhausted. He has changed out of his blood-stained white coat and is wearing fresh green surgical scrubs. A blue surgical cap is still tied around his head, and his face is deeply lined with fatigue.

Garrett shoots up from his chair so fast it tips backward, crashing loudly against the floor.

Tucker and Dean are on their feet a split second later. Logan jogs back into the room, holding a cardboard tray of coffees, freezing in his tracks at the sight of the doctor.

None of them speak. The air is completely sucked out of the room. Garrett feels his heart climb directly into his throat, beating a frantic, terrifying rhythm.

Dr. Gardner looks at the four massive hockey players. He lets out a slow, measured breath.

“Before I say anything,” Dr. Gardner starts, his voice low and serious, “I need you to understand that legally, I am not supposed to give you this information. You aren’t family. You aren’t her emergency contacts.”

Garrett’s chest caves in. “Please.”

It’s the only word he can manage. It’s a broken, desperate plea.

Dr. Gardner holds up a hand, his expression softening into profound empathy. “However. I have worked with her for over a year. And for the last three and a half weeks, she has not shut up about the four hockey players she lives with. She talks about how Tucker cooks better than a five-star chef. How Dean is a menace but means well. How Logan is secretly a giant softie.”

The doctor turns his gaze directly to Garrett.

“And she talks about you,” Dr. Gardner says softly. “She talks about how you saved her life. So, as far as I’m concerned, you boys are her family. And you deserve to know what’s going on.”

“Is she alive?” Garrett asks, his voice trembling so violently he barely recognizes it.

“She is alive,” Dr. Gardner confirms immediately.

The collective exhale in the room is staggering. Dean literally sags against the wall, burying his face in his hands. Tucker grips the back of a chair, his eyes dropping to the ceiling in silent prayer. Logan sets the tray of coffees down on a side table with shaking hands.

Garrett feels his knees threaten to buckle, but he forces himself to stay standing. “What happened? How bad is it?”

Dr. Gardner rubs the back of his neck, shifting into his clinical, professional mode. “It’s bad, Garrett. I won’t sugarcoat it. The blunt force trauma she sustained was severe.”

Garrett braces himself. “Tell me.”

“When she arrived, her blood pressure was plummeting due to internal bleeding,” Dr. Gardner explains, keeping his voice steady. “We rushed her into surgery and discovered a Grade 4 laceration to her spleen. It was ruptured beyond repair. We had to perform a full splenectomy to stop the bleeding. She’ll have a compromised immune system moving forward, but she can live a full life without it.”

“Okay,” Garrett nods rapidly, processing the information. “Okay, what else?”

“She has three broken ribs on her left side, and two cracked on the right,” the surgeon continues. “The defensive bruising on her forearms is extensive, but luckily, there are no fractures in her arms or wrists.”

“And her face?” Logan asks, his voice thick with anger. “She was completely unrecognizable.”

Dr. Gardner’s jaw tightens. “The facial trauma was significant. She has a severe orbital blowout fracture on her left side — the bone underneath the eye socket was crushed. We had an oral and maxillofacial surgeon come in to set a titanium plate to rebuild the floor of the socket and save her vision. Her nose is broken in two places, we reset it in the OR.”

Garrett feels a fresh wave of violent nausea wash over him. The visual of his father taking his massive, heavy fists and crushing the delicate bones of your face is enough to make him want to put his fist through the waiting room drywall.

“What about her brain?” Tucker asks gently. “She was unconscious when the paramedics took her.”

“That is our primary concern right now,” Dr. Gardner says, his expression turning grave. “She suffered a severe concussion. We did a CT scan before taking her up to the OR. There is no active brain bleed, which is a massive relief, but there is significant swelling. A traumatic brain injury.”

“So what does that mean?” Garrett demands, stepping closer to the doctor. “When does she wake up?”

“Right now, she is heavily sedated and intubated in the ICU,” Dr. Gardner explains. “We are keeping her on a ventilator to protect her airway while the facial swelling goes down, and to keep her brain resting. We will slowly wean her off the paralytics and sedation over the next twenty-four hours to see how she responds.”

“But she’s stable?” Garrett pleads.

“She is in critical but stable condition,” Dr. Gardner corrects carefully. “She made it through the surgery. That was the hardest part. Now, we just have to wait for her body to heal.”

“Can I see her?” Garrett asks instantly. He doesn’t care about ICU rules or visiting hours. If Dr. Gardner tells him no, he will tear this hospital apart barehanded to find you.

Dr. Gardner looks at Garrett, taking in the bloodstained clothes, the wild, desperate exhaustion in his dark eyes.

“ICU protocol says immediate family only,” Dr. Gardner says quietly. He reaches into his scrub pocket and pulls out a visitor pass. “But like I said. As far as I’m concerned, you’re family. Just you, Garrett. The rest of the boys can come in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Garrett breathes, taking the pass. “Doc, I … thank you.”

“Room 219,” Dr. Gardner says. “She looks worse than she did down in the alley, Garrett. The swelling from the surgery is peaking. Brace yourself.”

Garrett doesn’t hesitate. He turns to the guys.

“Go home,” Garrett tells them. “Get some sleep. Bring some fresh clothes tomorrow.”

“We’re not leaving, G,” Logan says firmly, already walking over to the waiting room couch and throwing his jacket down like a blanket. “We’ll sleep right here.”

“I’m not leaving without seeing her,” Dean adds stubbornly, crossing his arms.

Garrett looks at his best friends. He doesn’t have the energy to argue, and honestly, knowing they are right outside the ICU doors brings him a strange sort of comfort.

“Okay,” Garrett whispers.

He turns and walks out of the waiting room.

The Intensive Care Unit is a completely different world from the emergency room. The lights are dimmed, casting a quiet, clinical hush over the wide hallways. There is no shouting, no running. Just the rhythmic, terrifyingly steady beeping of heart monitors and the mechanical whoosh of ventilators keeping people alive.

Garrett walks down the hall, his boots silent against the floor.

He stops outside Room 219.

The door is made of heavy glass. He can see right inside.

He puts his hand on the metal handle, but for a second, he can’t bring himself to push it down. Dr. Gardner warned him. But nothing could have prepared him for the reality of seeing you like this.

He pushes the door open and steps inside.

The room is freezing cold, designed to keep bacteria at bay. It smells like sharp antiseptic and iodine.

You are lying in the center of the room, completely surrounded by machines.

Garrett walks slowly to the side of your bed, his heart breaking into a million jagged pieces.

You look incredibly small. The heavy hospital blankets are pulled up to your chest, hiding the bandages from your surgery and the wrap around your broken ribs. But he can’t hide from your face.

Dr. Gardner was right. The swelling is horrific. Your entire face is bruised, puffed, and distorted. Your left eye is completely swollen shut, covered by a white sterile patch protecting the newly placed titanium plate. A heavy plastic brace encompasses your neck, keeping your spine perfectly still.

And sticking out of your mouth, taped securely to your cheek, is the thick, ribbed plastic tube of the ventilator.

The machine beside your bed hisses and clicks, forcing air into your lungs, making your chest rise and fall in a harsh, mechanical rhythm.

“Y/N,” Garrett whispers.

He reaches the side of the bed. He wants to touch your face, to stroke your hair, but he is terrified of hurting you. He is terrified of adding even a fraction of an ounce of pain to what you are already enduring.

He looks down at your right hand. It rests on top of the blue hospital blanket. There is an IV port taped to the back of your hand, wires running from your fingertips to the monitor above your head.

But your palm is open.

Garrett sinks into the hard plastic chair beside your bed. He slowly, carefully reaches out and slides his large, calloused hand under yours.

Your skin is cold. The contrast to the vibrant, warm girl who was teasing him about grocery shopping just six hours ago is devastating.

He gently wraps his fingers around yours, securing your small hand safely within his grip. He avoids the IV lines, mindful of the bruises painting your forearm.

He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and brings your knuckles to his lips.

He presses a long, agonizingly gentle kiss to your bruised skin.

He closes his eyes, letting the tears fall freely now. They slip down his cheeks and soak into the fabric of the hospital blanket.

“I’m so sorry,” Garrett cries softly, his voice breaking in the quiet room. “I should have gone with you. I should have made sure you were safe. I promised you he wouldn’t get near you again, and I broke my promise.”

The ventilator hisses. The heart monitor beeps. You don’t respond.

Garrett keeps your hand pressed tightly against his mouth. He breathes in the faint scent of the surgical soap they used to wash you, desperate to find even a trace of the vanilla shampoo he knows so well.

“But I’m making a new promise,” Garrett whispers into the quiet room. He lifts his head, his eyes locking onto your battered face.

The homicidal rage from the alleyway is still there, burning like a low, hot coal in his chest, but right now, it is entirely eclipsed by his love for you.

“I’m not leaving,” Garrett vows, his voice steadying, hardening with absolute resolve. “I am going to sit in this chair until you wake up. I don’t care if it takes a day, or a week, or a month. I’m right here.”

He gently runs his thumb over the unbruised patch of skin on the back of your hand.

“And when you wake up,” Garrett says, fresh tears filling his eyes, “I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure you never look over your shoulder again. You hear me? You’re mine now. And nobody touches what’s mine.”

He leans forward again, pressing another soft kiss to your knuckles.

“Just come back to me,” he pleads. “Please, Y/N. Just come back.”

Garrett settles back into the uncomfortable plastic chair. He doesn’t let go of your hand. He keeps his thumb brushing back and forth over your skin, his eyes locked on the steady rise and fall of your chest.

Outside the glass doors, the hospital continues its chaotic rush. Outside the building, the police are hunting down the monster who did this.

But inside Room 219, there is only the quiet, desperate vigil of a boy who finally realizes what he has to lose, and the slow, mechanical breathing of the girl he intends to save.

***

Time in the Intensive Care Unit does not exist.

There is no day, no night. There is only the harsh, unnatural glow of fluorescent lights, the rhythmic, hissing plunge of the ventilator, and the agonizingly slow crawl of the digital clock on the wall.

It has been forty-eight hours since the paramedics wheeled you through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room.

Garrett has not left the hard plastic chair beside your bed.

He is a ghost of himself. The charismatic, untouchable captain of the Briar Hawks is gone, replaced by a terrified, hollowed-out boy. His dark hair is wild and greasy. A thick, dark layer of stubble covers his jaw. He is wearing the same black t-shirt and dark jeans, though Tucker managed to sneak a clean Briar Hockey hoodie over his shoulders at some point during the first night.

The boys have been a constant, rotating presence. Logan slept on the waiting room floor the first night. Dean spent yesterday pacing a groove into the linoleum hallway outside the ICU doors. Tucker has been acting as a ruthless gatekeeper, bringing Garrett black coffee and forcing him to eat half a stale hospital sandwich every twelve hours.

But none of them can reach him.

Garrett’s entire world has shrunk to the three feet of space between his chair and your bed. His eyes are perpetually locked on the steady, artificial rise and fall of your chest. His large hand remains wrapped tightly around your cold, limp fingers, a desperate physical tether keeping you grounded to the earth.

“Garrett.”

The soft voice comes from the doorway.

Garrett doesn’t turn his head. He just blinks, his red-rimmed eyes burning with exhaustion.

Dr. Gardner steps into the quiet room, holding a tablet. He looks slightly more rested than he did two nights ago, but his professional demeanor is still laced with deep concern.

“We need to talk about the sedation,” Dr. Gardner says quietly, moving to the foot of your bed.

Garrett finally looks up. His chest tightens. “Is something wrong? Did the swelling get worse?”

“No,” the doctor reassures him immediately. “Actually, the swelling in her brain has stabilized. Her intracranial pressure is holding at a safe level. Her vitals are strong. She’s fighting, Garrett.”

Garrett lets out a ragged, trembling exhale, closing his eyes for a split second. “Okay. That’s good. Right?”

“It’s very good,” Dr. Gardner nods. “Which means it’s time to take her off the paralytics and lower the propofol. We need to see if she can breathe on her own. We need to extubate her.”

Garrett grips your hand a fraction tighter. “Will it hurt?”

“Taking the tube out is uncomfortable,” the surgeon admits honestly. “Her throat is going to be incredibly raw, and waking up with a broken ribs and a shattered orbital floor is going to be a shock to her system. We have her on a heavy morphine drip for the pain, but the disorientation is going to be severe. She might panic.”

“I’ll keep her calm,” Garrett says instantly. His voice leaves absolutely zero room for doubt. “Just do whatever you have to do to get that thing out of her throat.”

“Alright,” Dr. Gardner says. He turns to the cluster of machines. “I’m going to dial back the drip. A respiratory therapist will be in shortly. Once the tube is out, it might still take a few hours for her to fully wake up. Be patient.”

The doctor adjusts the monitors, checks your chart one last time, and quietly leaves the room.

Garrett turns his attention entirely back to you.

The wait is excruciating. The respiratory therapist comes in, performs the awful, gag-inducing procedure of pulling the thick plastic tube from your airway, and replaces it with a simple oxygen cannula resting under your broken nose.

You cough weakly during the process, a terrible, wet sound that makes Garrett want to put his fist through the wall, but you don’t open your eyes. You just slip right back into a deep, drug-induced sleep.

So, Garrett waits.

Another three hours pass.

The silence in the room is different now. The mechanical hissing of the ventilator is gone, replaced by the soft, shallow sound of your own natural breathing.

Garrett leans forward, resting his forehead against the edge of your mattress. His thumb traces a slow, methodical circle over the back of your hand.

“Come on, baby,” he whispers into the quiet room, his voice cracking with raw desperation. “Please. Just open your eyes. I need you to open your eyes.”

And then, a miracle happens.

Your fingers twitch.

It’s a tiny movement, barely a flutter against his palm, but Garrett feels it like a lightning strike.

His head snaps up.

“Y/N?” He breathes, his heart launching into a frantic, violent rhythm against his ribs.

He stands up, hovering over the side of the bed.

You groan. It’s a low, raspy, agonizing sound that scrapes against the rawness of your throat. Your head shifts a fraction of an inch against the

pillow, immediately halted by the rigid plastic of the cervical collar locked around your neck.

“Don’t move,” Garrett says instantly, his free hand flying up to hover gently over your shoulder, terrified to actually touch you and cause you pain. “Don’t try to move. You’re in a neck brace. You’re safe.”

Your uninjured right eye flutters. The eyelashes tremble against your swollen cheek.

It takes an agonizingly long minute, but slowly, fighting against the heavy weight of the sedatives, your eye opens.

The world is a blurry, confusing mess.

The light is too bright. The room is too cold. A localized, blinding agony radiates from the left side of your face, completely shielded by a thick white patch. Your chest feels like someone dropped an anvil on it, every shallow breath sparking a sharp, stabbing fire in your ribs.

Panic, thick and immediate, begins to claw its way up your throat.

Where are you? Why can’t you move your neck? Why is it so hard to breathe?

The heart monitor by your bed begins to beep faster, matching the sudden, terrified spike of your pulse.

“Hey,” a voice says.

A shadow blocks the harsh overhead light.

You blink, trying to force your single open eye to focus. The blurry shape above you slowly sharpens into recognizable features.

Dark hair. Broad shoulders. Eyes so impossibly warm that they anchor you to the earth.

Garrett.

He is leaning over you. He looks terrible. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a year. His eyes are bloodshot, his jaw covered in scruff, his face pale and tight with an anxiety so profound it practically vibrates off him.

But he is here.

“I’m right here,” Garrett whispers. His voice is a rough, gravelly rasp, trembling with unshed tears. “I’ve got you. You’re in the hospital. You’re safe.”

You try to swallow, but your throat feels like it’s coated in broken glass. You let out a small, pained whimper.

Garrett’s face crumbles. “I know. I know it hurts. God, I know. You had a breathing tube in. Don’t try to talk.”

You look at him. You really look at him.

The panic slowly begins to recede, beaten back by the heavy, comforting weight of his hand wrapped around yours.

The memories hit you in disjointed, terrifying flashes.

The dark alleyway behind the Market Basket. The blinding pain. The suffocating terror of Phil’s massive hands. The feeling of the cold asphalt pressing into your cheek as you waited to die.

You squeeze your eye shut as a tear escapes, hot and stinging against your battered skin.

“Hey, look at me,” Garrett pleads softly. He reaches up with a trembling hand and gently, so incredibly gently, wipes the tear away with his thumb. “He’s gone. The police arrested him at his house in Connecticut yesterday morning. He’s locked up, Y/N. He can never, ever hurt you again.”

You open your eye, staring up at the beautiful, broken boy standing beside your bed.

He caught the monster. He kept his promise.

Garrett lets out a shuddering breath, his broad shoulders suddenly caving inward as if the structural integrity of his entire body has just failed.

He drops to his knees beside your bed.

He presses his forehead against the mattress, right next to your hip. He doesn’t let go of your hand; he brings it to his lips, kissing your knuckles over and over again, completely uncaring that his tears are soaking into your skin.

“I am so sorry,” Garrett chokes out. The words are a broken, ragged sob, torn from the deepest, most wounded part of his soul. “I am so fucking sorry.”

You frown, confusion cutting through the heavy haze of the morphine.

Why is he apologizing?

“Garrett,” you try to say.

It comes out as a harsh, breathless croak. It hurts. It burns your throat and pulls at the muscles in your neck.

Garrett’s head snaps up. “Don’t talk. Please, baby, save your strength.”

He just called you baby. Not in the casual, teasing way the college guys at Briar throw the word around. He said it with a devastating, reverent kind of love.

“I did this to you,” Garrett cries, the guilt pouring out of him like blood from a severed artery. He shakes his head frantically, his dark eyes wide and tortured. “This is my fault. I brought you into my mess. I thought I could just walk into his house, scream in his face, and walk away. I thought I was protecting you by taking you to my house, but all I did was paint a target on your back.”

You stare at him, completely horrified by the words coming out of his mouth.

He actually believes this. He has been sitting in this miserable, freezing hospital room for two days, convincing himself that he is the villain. Convincing himself that Phil’s violence is a direct result of his own actions.

“If I had just kept my mouth shut,” Garrett spirals, the tears tracking freely down his face, cutting paths through the exhaustion. “If I hadn’t humiliated him in front of you. If I had driven you home myself instead of letting you go to the store alone. I promised you were safe, and I left you alone.”

He drops his head back to the mattress, a harsh, guttural sound of pure self-hatred tearing from his throat.

“I’m a monster,” Garrett whispers into the blankets. “I’m just like him. I destroy everything I touch.”

The words hit you harder than any physical blow Phil landed in that alleyway.

The physical pain radiating through your body is excruciating. Your ribs scream every time you breathe, your head is pounding with a blinding, concussive pressure, and your throat is on fire.

But none of that matters right now.

What matters is the man weeping beside your bed. The man who gave up his bedroom for you. The man who stood between you and his teammates like a human shield. The man who is currently drowning in a sea of toxic, misplaced guilt.

You tighten your grip on his hand. You don’t have much strength, but you squeeze his fingers as hard as you possibly can.

Garrett lifts his head, his eyes immediately searching your face. “What? Does something hurt? Should I press the call button?”

You slowly, painstakingly, shake your head. The movement jostles the neck brace, sending a fresh spike of pain down your spine, but you ignore it.

You look him dead in the eye.

“Not,” you whisper.

The single word tears at your raw vocal cords. It sounds terrible. But you don’t stop. You force the breath from your bruised lungs, pushing past the agonizing pain in your ribs.

“Your,” you croak, your voice shaking with effort.

Garrett stares at you, his chest heaving, his eyes wide. “Y/N, stop. Please.”

“Fault,” you finish.

The three words hang in the quiet air of the ICU, heavier than gravity, louder than a gunshot.

Garrett freezes. He completely stops breathing.

He looks at you, taking in the horrific swelling of your face, the white patch over your eye, the thick plastic collar, the wires snaking across your chest. You have been beaten to within an inch of your life. You have had an organ removed. Your face has been rebuilt with titanium.

And the very first thing you do when you wake up is comfort him.

You don’t ask for pain medicine. You don’t ask what happened. You don’t complain about the agony you are in.

You look at the boy who thinks he ruined your life, and you use your incredibly limited, agonizing strength to absolve him.

The absolute, uncompromising selflessness of it shatters the very last defense mechanism Garrett possesses.

The wall he has spent twenty-one years building — the wall that survived his father’s fists, the wall that survived his mother’s death, the wall that made him the ruthless, untouchable hockey captain — crumbles into dust.

Garrett breaks. He completely falls apart.

A sob rips its way out of his throat. He practically collapses against the side of your bed. He buries his face in the space between your arm and your ribcage, mindful not to put any weight on your actual injuries, but needing to be as close to you as physically possible.

His massive shoulders shake violently. He weeps. Hard, ugly, breath-stealing sobs that wrack his entire frame.

“God,” Garrett cries, his voice muffled by the hospital blankets. “God, I love you. I love you so much it feels like I’m dying.”

Your single open eye widens slightly.

He loves you.

The confession is messy, desperate, and completely lacking any sort of romantic, cinematic polish. It is delivered in a freezing ICU room, smelling of iodine and fear, by a boy who is actively having an emotional breakdown against your arm.

And it is the most beautiful thing you have ever heard.

You can’t move much. Your left arm is restricted by the IV lines, and your ribs scream in protest when you try to shift your torso.

But you manage to lift your right hand.

Your fingers are shaking, weak and uncoordinated from the sedatives. But you slowly guide your hand up, past the heavy blankets, until your palm finds the back of his neck.

Your fingers tangle in the dark, greasy hair at his nape.

Garrett gasps at the touch. He shudders violently, leaning heavily into your weak caress as if your hand is the only thing keeping him from falling off the edge of the earth.

“Shh,” you manage to whisper. The sound is barely a breath, but he hears it.

You stroke his hair. It’s a slow, repetitive motion. You don’t have the strength to do anything else.

Garrett cries for what feels like an eternity. He cries for the terrifying night in the alleyway. He cries for the hours spent staring through the glass of Trauma Bay One. He cries for his mother, for the little boy who couldn’t save her, and for the man who almost lost the only other woman he has ever truly loved.

He pours all of his poison, all of his trauma, all of his fear out onto the sheets of your hospital bed.

And you just hold him.

You let him break. You let him fall apart, completely and totally, because you know that for the first time in his life, he has someone who is going to help him put the pieces back together.

Eventually, the violent shaking of his shoulders begins to slow. His ragged, torn sobs quiet into deep, stuttering breaths.

He doesn’t lift his head right away. He just lies there, his face buried in the blankets, his hand still locked in a death grip around yours.

“I’m sorry,” Garrett mumbles, his voice thick and exhausted. He sniffles loudly, a very un-captain-like sound. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you. I’m not supposed to be falling apart on your bed.”

You let out a tiny, breathy sound that is meant to be a laugh, but quickly turns into a wince as it pulls at your ribs.

Garrett’s head snaps up instantly, panic flaring back to life in his eyes. He wipes his face roughly with the back of his sleeve, smearing tears and exhaustion together.

“Did I hurt you?” He asks frantically, hovering over you again. “I put too much weight on the bed. I’ll get the nurse-”

“Garrett,” you croak, stopping him before he can hit the call button.

He freezes. “Yeah. Yes, baby, I’m here.”

You swallow hard, fighting the sandpaper dryness in your throat. You look at his red, swollen eyes. He looks completely wrecked. But the dark, heavy shadow of toxic guilt that has been suffocating him for the last forty-eight hours has lifted.

“I love you, too,” you whisper.

The words are weak. They are raspy. They lack volume.

But they hit Garrett with the force of a freight train.

He stares at you. His lips part, his dark eyes searching your face as if he’s afraid he hallucinated the sound.

“You do?” He asks, his voice cracking on the question. It’s the most vulnerable you have ever seen him. The arrogant hockey star is nowhere to be found. He is just a boy, desperate for love, terrified of rejection.

You give him a tiny, incredibly slow nod, mindful of the neck brace.

“Since the ER,” you admit, the truth slipping out easily, despite the pain it takes to speak.

Garrett lets out a sound that is half-laugh, half-sob.

He leans down. He is incredibly careful, treating you like you are made of spun glass. He supports his own weight on his forearms, ensuring he doesn’t press against your chest or your injured side.

He bypasses the heavy white patch over your left eye. He avoids your broken nose and your split lip.

Instead, he presses his mouth gently against the unbruised skin of your forehead, right at your hairline.

His lips are warm, soft, and trembling. He lingers there, breathing you in, pressing all of his relief, all of his devotion, and all of his love into that single, agonizingly gentle kiss.

“I am never letting you go,” Garrett whispers against your skin, his breath fanning across your face. “Do you understand me? You’re stuck with me. Forever.”

“Good,” you whisper back, your eye fluttering shut as exhaustion begins to drag you back under. The morphine is heavy in your veins, pulling at your consciousness.

Garrett pulls back just far enough to look at your face. He sees the heavy droop of your eyelid, the sluggish blink.

“Go to sleep, baby,” Garrett murmurs, his thumb resuming its gentle stroke across the back of your hand. “You’re safe. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?” You mumble, the word slurring slightly.

“I swear to God,” Garrett says fiercely.

He settles back into the uncomfortable plastic chair. But he doesn’t look like a terrified ghost anymore. He looks like a man who has just been handed the entire universe.

You let your eye close.

The pain is still there. The road to recovery is going to be incredibly long, terrifying, and grueling. There will be police statements to give, trials to attend, physical therapy to endure, and nightmares to fight.

But as the steady rhythm of the heart monitor lulls you back to sleep, and the warm, calloused hand of the boy who loves you holds you tight, the paralyzing fear that has dictated your life for the past year is finally gone.

Because Phil Graham is in a cage.

And you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

***

The sound of the door clicking open pulls Garrett from a light doze.

It has been two hours since you fell back asleep. Garrett hasn’t moved an inch. He is exhausted down to the marrow of his bones, but his heart is lighter than it has been in years.

He turns his head.

Standing in the doorway of the ICU room are Logan, Dean, and Tucker.

They look terrible. They are all wearing Briar Hockey sweats, their hair messy, their faces drawn with exhaustion. Logan is holding a cardboard tray with four coffees. Dean is clutching a small, stuffed teddy bear wearing a miniature nurse’s uniform.

They freeze in the doorway, staring at you.

“Hey,” Garrett says softly, not wanting to wake you.

The three massive hockey players snap their attention to Garrett. They take in the change in his posture. He is no longer hunched over like a man waiting for an execution. He is sitting back in his chair, a small, weary, but incredibly genuine smile touching the corners of his mouth.

Tucker’s eyes widen. “Garrett …”

“She woke up,” Garrett whispers.

The reaction is instantaneous.

Dean drops his head back against the doorframe, a loud, shuddering breath escaping his lips. “Oh, thank God. Thank fucking God.”

Logan sets the coffee tray down on a nearby rolling cart with a hand that is visibly shaking. He walks over to the bed, stopping on the side opposite Garrett. He looks down at your bruised, swollen face, the white eye patch, the heavy neck brace.

“Is she …” Logan swallows hard. “Is she okay?”

“She’s hurting,” Garrett says honestly. “She can barely talk. But she knows where she is. She knows we’re here. And she knows they caught him.”

“Good,” Tucker says, stepping into the room. He looks at you, his expression softening into that familiar, protective warmth. “Because if they hadn’t caught him, I was going to buy a shovel and take a road trip.”

“You wouldn’t have gone alone,” Dean mutters, walking over and placing the small stuffed nurse bear gently on the nightstand next to your bed. “I brought her a friend. Figured she could use another nurse on duty.”

Garrett looks at the ridiculous little bear, and then back at his best friends.

These guys didn’t hesitate. They didn’t ask questions. They took you in, they protected you, and they sat in a miserable hospital waiting room for two days because you are family.

“Thanks, guys,” Garrett says, his voice thick with emotion. “For everything.”

Logan waves him off. “Shut up, G. We didn’t do shit.”

“You did,” Garrett insists. He looks back down at your sleeping face. “You kept me from losing my mind. And you gave her a home.”

“She gave us a home,” Tucker corrects softly. He pulls a chair over from the corner of the room and sits down. “This house was a disaster before she started organizing the triage center and making Dean eat vegetables.”

Dean nods solemnly. “I miss the vegetables. I really do.”

Garrett actually laughs. It’s a quiet, rusty sound, but it feels incredibly good.

The four of them settle into the room. It’s cramped, it’s cold, and it smells like antiseptic.

But as Garrett sits there, surrounded by his brothers, holding the hand of the girl he loves, the ICU room doesn’t feel like a hospital anymore.

It feels like the beginning of the rest of his life.

***

Two and a half years.

That is how long it takes to put the shattered pieces of a life back together.

It takes months of grueling physical therapy, a second surgery to adjust the titanium plate beneath your left eye, and countless hours sitting on the worn couch in the off-campus house, letting Garrett, Logan, Dean, and Tucker simply exist around you until the phantom footsteps in the hallway no longer make your heart race.

It takes Phil Graham being sentenced to fifteen years in a maximum-security prison without the possibility of early parole, his legacy as an NHL player erased by the horrifying reality of his domestic abuse convictions.

And it takes time.

But as you stand in the tunnel of the TD Garden, the phantom roar of eighteen thousand fans vibrating through the concrete floor beneath your feet, you know every single agonizing second was worth it.

You watch the ice through the glass.

Garrett is a blur of black and gold. He wears number seventeen, his broad shoulders easily carrying the weight of the iconic spoked B on his chest. He skates backward, his eyes scanning the play, and intercepts a pass with a fluid, effortless grace that makes the crowd erupt into a frenzy.

He is twenty-three years old, newly graduated from Briar University, and currently the most beloved undrafted free agent the Boston Bruins have signed this century.

The whistle blows, signaling the end of the morning skate. The players begin filing off the ice, their skates clattering against the rubber mats of the tunnel.

Garrett takes his helmet off, running a gloved hand through his sweat-dampened dark hair. He is joking with one of the veteran defensemen, a relaxed, brilliant smile lighting up his face.

Then, he sees you.

The smile softens, turning instantly intimate. He breaks away from the pack and skates straight toward the open gate where you are standing.

“Hey,” Garrett breathes, stepping off the ice. He smells like fresh sweat, cold air, and athletic tape. It is the best smell in the world.

“Hey yourself,” you smile, reaching out to rest a hand on the solid plastic plating of his chest pad. “You looked good out there. Your line is clicking.”

“We’re getting there,” Garrett says, leaning down to press a quick, cold kiss to your lips, uncaring of the equipment managers and staff rushing past. He pulls back and traces his thumb gently over your cheekbone, right over the faint, pale scar that rests beneath your eye. “You ready to head back to the apartment? The guys are coming over for dinner tonight. Tuck’s making lasagna.”

“I’m ready,” you nod. “Go shower. You stink.”

Garrett laughs, a deep, rich sound that settles deep in your chest. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

You watch him jog down the tunnel toward the locker room, your heart swelling with an overwhelming, terrifying amount of love.

Life is good. It is safe.

But safety, especially when you are suddenly thrust into the blinding spotlight of professional sports, is a fragile illusion.

***

The shift happens later that afternoon.

You and Garrett are sitting at the kitchen island of your new, shared off-campus apartment. It’s a massive upgrade from the chaotic Briar hockey house, though you only live three blocks away from the guys. You are currently chopping vegetables for Tucker’s impending lasagna invasion, while Garrett is sitting on a barstool, scrolling casually through his phone.

Suddenly, Garrett freezes.

The easy, relaxed posture of his shoulders vanishes, instantly replaced by rigid, coiled tension. The color drains completely from his face, leaving his skin a sallow, ashen gray.

“Garrett?” You ask, putting the knife down. You wipe your hands on a dish towel, your heart rate spiking in response to his sudden shift. “What is it?”

He doesn’t answer. His dark eyes are locked onto the screen of his phone, scanning the text with a terrifying, absolute stillness. His jaw ticks violently.

“Garrett, talk to me,” you urge, stepping around the island and placing a hand on his shoulder. His muscles feel like solid rock under his t-shirt. “What’s wrong?”

Garrett slowly lowers the phone. He looks at you, and the sheer, unadulterated fury in his eyes makes you take a half-step back. He isn’t angry at you — he could never be angry at you — but the violent, protective rage practically bleeding off him is suffocating.

“They found a picture,” Garrett says. His voice is a low, deadly rasp.

“Who?” You ask, confusion clouding your mind. “A picture of what?”

Garrett looks down at his phone again, his thumb hovering over the screen as if he wants to crush the glass into dust. Without another word, he turns the phone around and slides it across the granite counter toward you.

You look down.

It is an article from a notorious, sleazy sports gossip blog. The headline is blazoned in bold, aggressive text.

BOSTON’S NEW GOLDEN BOY AND HIS TWISTED FAMILY SECRET: IS GARRETT GRAHAM DATING HIS DAD’S EX?

The air in your lungs vanishes.

Below the headline is a split-screen image. On the left is a recent, high-definition photo of you and Garrett walking out of the TD Garden, holding hands, laughing at something he said.

On the right is a photo you haven’t seen in three years.

It’s a blurry, poorly lit paparazzi shot from a charity gala in New York. You are standing next to Phil Graham. You are wearing a stiff, uncomfortable evening gown, your face pale and hollow, your smile tight and forced. Phil has a heavy, possessive hand gripping your waist.

The text of the article is sickening.

Bruins rookie sensation Garrett Graham has been winning over the hearts of Boston with his stellar play and squeaky-clean image. But sources have recently uncovered a highly questionable skeletons in the Graham family closet. The mystery brunette Garrett has been parading around the city? That’s Y/N. A twenty-five-year-old nurse who, just a few short years ago, was playing arm candy for Garrett’s disgraced, currently-incarcerated father, Phil Graham.

Talk about keeping it in the family. While the details of Phil’s sudden imprisonment remain strictly sealed under state records, one has to wonder if this twisted love triangle had something to do with the NHL legend’s sudden fall from grace. Did the son steal the father’s girl? Or is Boston’s new golden boy just picking up his dad’s leftovers?

You stare at the screen, your vision blurring as a cold, terrifying numbness spreads from your chest all the way down to your fingertips.

The world begins to tilt.

The smell of the chopped basil on the cutting board makes you violently nauseous. You hear the phantom, heavy thud of Phil’s boots on the stairs. You feel the cold, sharp bite of the asphalt against your cheek.

“Hey,” Garrett’s voice cuts through the rising panic, firm and immediate.

His large, warm hands grip your arms, physically anchoring you to the present moment. He pulls you away from the phone, stepping into your line of sight so all you can see is his face.

“Look at me,” Garrett demands softly. “Y/N, look at me.”

You force your eyes to focus on him. You are trembling. The phantom pain in your ribs, a ghost from three years ago, suddenly flares hot and bright.

“They put his face on the internet next to mine,” you whisper, your voice cracking completely. “They think … Garrett, they think …”

“I know what they think,” Garrett says, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles over your biceps. His eyes are blazing with a terrifying intensity, a ruthless, protective fire that burns away the shadows in the room. “And it doesn’t matter. They don’t know the truth. They’re bottom-feeding scum looking for clicks.”

“Everyone is going to see this,” you sob, the panic finally breaking through. “The team. The fans. Your coaches. They’re going to think you’re involved in some sick, twisted drama. I’m going to ruin this for you.”

“Stop,” Garrett says instantly. He gives your arms a gentle, bracing shake. “Do not do that. Do you hear me? You are not ruining anything. You are my life. I don’t give a flying fuck what some garbage blog says. I don’t care what the fans think. I only care about you.”

He pulls you flush against his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around you, burying his face in your hair. You grip the fabric of his t-shirt, burying your face in his neck, drawing in deep, desperate breaths of his cedarwood scent.

Suddenly, Garrett’s phone buzzes on the counter. Then it buzzes again. And again.

Garrett doesn’t let go of you. He reaches out blindly, grabs the phone, and checks the screen.

“It’s Logan,” Garrett murmurs. “The guys saw it.”

He answers the call and puts it on speaker, tossing the phone back onto the island.

“Tell me you saw it,” Logan’s voice barks through the speaker. He doesn’t sound like his usual laid-back self; he sounds absolutely homicidal.

“We saw it,” Garrett says, his arm tightening around your waist.

“I’m going to burn their server room to the ground,” Dean chimes in, his voice vibrating with rage. “I have a buddy who knows a guy in cyber security. We can take the whole site offline.”

“We are not committing a federal crime, Dean,” Tucker’s voice cuts in, calm but completely deadly. “Garrett, is she okay?”

You pull your face away from Garrett’s neck. You lean toward the phone, forcing your voice to steady. “I’m okay, Tuck.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Tucker says softly. “We’re on our way over. We’re bringing the lasagna, and we are locking the doors, and we are ignoring the internet for the rest of the night.”

“The team’s PR director just texted me,” Garrett says, picking up his phone and swiping down to read the notification. His jaw clenches. “They want me at the facility tomorrow morning for a media availability. They want to get ahead of the narrative before the game tomorrow night.”

“What are they telling you to say?” Logan demands.

“They want me to decline comment,” Garrett reads the text out loud, a harsh, bitter laugh escaping his lips. “They want me to say it’s a private family matter and redirect to hockey.”

“Bullshit,” Dean spits. “You can’t let them drag her name through the mud like that. They called her leftovers, G. If you don’t say something, I’m going down there to the press pit myself.”

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Garrett says. His voice is dangerously quiet. It is the voice of the captain who dragged a broken team to a national championship. It is the voice of a man who watched the woman he loves nearly die in an alleyway.

“I’m handling this tomorrow,” Garrett promises, his dark eyes locking onto yours. “I’m ending this. Permanently.”

***

The media room at the Bruins’ practice facility is packed.

It is usually a routine, boring affair. A few beat reporters asking about line chemistry and power-play percentages. But today, the room is buzzing with a chaotic, electric energy. The gossip blog post went viral overnight, picked up by mainstream sports outlets who are desperate to uncover the details behind the squeaky-clean rookie’s scandalous private life.

You are not at the hospital today. You called out.

Instead, you are sitting on the couch in your apartment, flanked by Logan on your left and Dean on your right, with Tucker standing behind the couch, his arms crossed.

The four of you are staring at the massive flat-screen TV, watching the live feed of the press conference.

Garrett walks up to the podium.

He is wearing a sharp, tailored black suit, a crisp white shirt, and a dark tie. He looks incredibly handsome, but his face is completely devoid of its usual easy charm. His posture is rigid. His eyes are cold, dark, and utterly merciless.

The Bruins’ head of PR, a nervous-looking man in his late forties, steps up to the microphone first.

“Good morning, everyone,” the PR director says, holding up a hand to quiet the murmuring reporters. “Garrett will take a few questions regarding tomorrow night’s matchup against the Devils. We ask that you keep all questions strictly related to hockey. Garrett will not be commenting on any personal matters or internet rumors at this time.”

The PR director steps back, gesturing for Garrett to take the podium.

Garrett steps up to the microphones. He looks out over the sea of flashing cameras and hungry reporters.

A reporter in the front row, a guy notorious for asking sleazy, boundary-pushing questions, immediately raises his hand and speaks without waiting to be called on.

“Garrett, Terrance Reilly from Boston Sports Daily,” the reporter says loudly. “Your PR guy said no personal questions, but the fans want to know. The article that dropped yesterday regarding your girlfriend and your father, Phil Graham — can you confirm the timeline of that relationship? Is it true you started dating her while she was still involved with your father?”

The PR director immediately lunges forward, reaching for the microphone. “I said no personal questions, Terrance. We’re moving on-”

“No.”

Garrett’s voice cuts through the room like a crack of thunder.

He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t raise his voice. But the absolute, lethal authority in that single word makes the PR director freeze in his tracks, his hand hovering over the mic.

The entire press room goes dead silent.

Garrett leans forward, resting his hands on the edges of the podium. His knuckles are white. He stares directly at the reporter, his gaze so intense the reporter actually shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“I’m going to answer that question,” Garrett says, his voice vibrating with a dark, controlled fury. “And I am only going to say this once. So I suggest you all make sure your recorders are on.”

Back in the apartment, Logan leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes glued to the TV. “Give it to them, G.”

“The woman in that photograph,” Garrett begins, his voice carrying clearly through the speakers, “The woman this city has seen me with for the last two years, is my girlfriend. She is an incredible, brilliant pediatric nurse who spends her life taking care of sick children. And she is the bravest person I have ever met.”

Garrett pauses, taking a slow, measured breath. He is dismantling his privacy, tearing down the walls he spent years building, all to protect you.

“The article implies that my father’s imprisonment and my relationship with her are part of some scandalous love triangle,” Garrett continues, the disgust heavy in his tone. “It implies that she was playing us against each other. That is a lie. It is a disgusting, misogynistic piece of fiction designed to sell clicks.”

The reporters are furiously typing, completely silent, captivated by the raw, unscripted emotion pouring from the rookie.

“The truth,” Garrett says, his eyes turning hard as obsidian, “is that Phil Graham is not a hockey legend. He is a violent, cowardly abuser.”

A collective, shocked gasp ripples through the press room.

You suck in a breath on the couch, your hand flying up to cover your mouth. He is doing it. He is laying it all out there.

“He abused my mother until the day she died,” Garrett states flatly, refusing to shy away from the horrific reality of his past. “He abused me for eighteen years. And when he moved a young, vulnerable woman into his house, he abused her, too.”

Garrett’s jaw ticks. He looks out at the sea of cameras, but you know, deep in your bones, that he is speaking directly to you.

“I met her at a Thanksgiving dinner,” Garrett says, his voice softening just a fraction, the memory clearly visible in his eyes. “I saw the bruises he left on her arm. I told her to run, and I left. But she was trapped. She didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Garrett grips the podium tighter, leaning closer to the microphones.

“Three weeks later, I ended up in the emergency room at the hospital with a concussion,” Garrett says. “She was my nurse. And when she walked into my room, I saw what he had done to her. I saw the bruises on her face. I saw the terror in her eyes. I refused to leave that hospital without her. I moved her into my house, and I swore I would protect her from him.”

Garrett pauses, the heavy, suffocating silence of the press room hanging on his every word.

“He tracked her down at a grocery store a month later,” Garrett says, his voice dropping to a harsh, gravelly rasp that makes the hairs on your arms stand up. “He beat her so badly she required emergency surgery to rebuild her face and remove a ruptured organ. She nearly died in an alleyway because she had the courage to escape him.”

A reporter in the second row lowers her phone, her eyes wide with horror, a hand resting over her heart.

“Phil Graham is sitting in a maximum-security prison right now because he is a monster,” Garrett declares, his voice ringing with absolute finality. “He isn’t a victim of a love triangle. He is a domestic abuser who tried to murder the woman I love.”

Garrett stands up straight, stepping back from the podium slightly. He looks directly at Terrance Reilly.

“So, to answer your question,” Garrett says, his tone dripping with lethal contempt. “No, I didn’t steal my father’s girlfriend. I pulled a victim out of a nightmare. She is the strongest person I know, and I spend every single day thanking God that she survived. The only scandal here is that a garbage blog decided to re-traumatize a survivor of domestic violence for a headline.”

Garrett doesn’t wait for another question. He doesn’t look at the PR director.

He turns his back to the cameras, steps off the podium, and walks out of the press room, the heavy wooden door shutting firmly behind him.

The television broadcast cuts to a stunned anchor sitting at a news desk, fumbling for words.

Dean hits the mute button on the remote.

The apartment is dead silent.

You are crying. The tears are falling freely down your cheeks, hot and fast. You aren’t crying from fear, or from the trauma of the memories. You are crying because you have never felt so completely, unconditionally protected in your entire life.

Tucker reaches over the back of the couch and gently squeezes your shoulder. “He loves you. He loves you so damn much.”

“He just nuked his own privacy for me,” you whisper, wiping at your cheeks. “His past with his mom, his own abuse … he never talks about it. And he just put it on national television to defend me.”

“Because you’re worth it,” Logan says firmly, turning his head to look at you. “You’re his entire world, Y/N. He would burn the whole league to the ground if it meant keeping you safe. You know that.”

You do know that.

***

It takes Garrett forty minutes to get through the Boston traffic and back to the apartment.

When the front door unlocks and swings open, the guys are already gone. They left five minutes after the press conference ended, claiming they needed to go secure the perimeter, but really, they knew you needed to be alone with him.

Garrett walks into the apartment.

He looks exhausted. He has taken the suit jacket and tie off, his white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled up to expose his muscular forearms. He drops his keys onto the console table, closing the door behind him.

He looks up, and his dark eyes lock onto you standing in the middle of the living room.

The tension that was radiating off him during the press conference is completely gone. He just looks incredibly vulnerable, his chest heaving with a deep, shaky sigh.

“You saw it,” Garrett says quietly. It’s not a question.

“I saw it,” you whisper.

You don’t wait for him to take his shoes off. You cross the living room in three rapid strides and throw yourself at him.

Garrett catches you effortlessly. His massive arms wrap around your waist, hauling you flush against his body, lifting your feet off the hardwood floor. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, his breath ghosting hot across your skin.

You wrap your arms around his neck, tangling your fingers in his dark hair, holding him as tightly as your healed ribs will allow.

“I’m sorry,” Garrett murmurs into your skin, his voice thick. “I’m sorry it got out. I’m sorry you had to see his face again.”

“Don’t apologize,” you cry softly, pulling back just far enough to cup his face in both of your hands. You look into his beautiful, tortured dark eyes. “Garrett, don’t you dare apologize. What you did today … what you said up there …”

“I meant every word,” Garrett says fiercely, leaning into your touch. He slides his hands up your back, resting them gently on your shoulder blades. “I wasn’t going to let them paint you as some sort of villain. You survived him. We survived him. And I am so damn proud to be yours.”

You trace your thumb over his cheekbone, your heart overflowing with a love so absolute it feels like gravity.

“You told the whole world about your mom,” you whisper, the magnitude of his sacrifice settling heavy in the quiet room. “You protected her memory, too.”

Garrett’s eyes soften, a sheen of tears making them shine in the afternoon light. He rests his forehead against yours, closing his eyes.

“He doesn’t get to control the narrative anymore,” Garrett says, his voice steadying, finding peace in the truth. “He doesn’t get to hide behind his hockey stats or his money. The world knows exactly what he is now. And more importantly, the world knows exactly who you are.”

“Who am I?” You ask softly, a watery smile touching your lips.

Garrett opens his eyes. The darkness, the fear, the shadows of the past — they are all completely gone, replaced entirely by the bright, unyielding warmth of the future you have built together.

“You’re the girl who fixed my scrambled brain,” Garrett smiles, a genuine, breathtaking curve of his lips that reaches all the way to his eyes. He leans down, brushing his nose gently against yours. “You’re the center of my universe. And you’re never getting rid of me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” you whisper.

Garrett kisses you.

It isn’t frantic or desperate like the kisses in the hospital room two years ago. It is deep, slow, and devastatingly certain. It is a promise written in skin and breath, a vow that the nightmare is truly, finally over.

You kiss him back, pouring every ounce of your love into the man who stood in front of the world and fought for you.

When you finally pull away, resting your head against his chest, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart, you look around the quiet, sunlit apartment. You think of Logan, Dean, and Tucker, who are probably arguing over who gets to beat up Terrance Reilly first.

You think of the long, terrifying road that led you from a cold alleyway to this exact moment.

Garrett holds you tight, his chin resting on top of your head, swaying you gently back and forth in the quiet apartment.

The monsters are locked away. The shadows are gone.

You are safe. You are loved. And for the very first time in your life, you are truly home.

[pucksandpower]

your hands are safe (part one)

Garrett Graham x Phil Graham’s ex!Reader

Summary: Garrett hasn’t set foot in his father’s house in years, and one Thanksgiving dinner reminds him exactly why … except this time, there’s a stranger sitting in his mother’s old seat, wearing his father’s same practiced cruelty like a shadow. He walks away telling himself it isn’t his fight anymore. Three weeks later, fate puts you back in front of him with a needle in your hand and a bruise you can’t quite hide, and Garrett realizes he can’t walk away from you again

Warnings: 18+ content and domestic violence

Read part two here

Garrett kills the engine of his Jeep, but he doesn’t take his hands off the steering wheel. He sits there in the driveway, staring through the windshield at the massive, imposing stone facade of his childhood home.

He hates this house. Every square inch of it.

“Just a few hours, Graham,” Garrett mutters to the empty car. “In and out. Eat the damn turkey and leave.”

He drags a hand down his face, feeling the tension already knotting in his shoulders. Being the captain and star center of the Briar University hockey team means he handles pressure for a living. He faces down two-hundred-pound defensemen who want to separate his head from his neck on a nightly basis, and he does it with a smirk. But this? Coming back here? It makes his chest tight.

He grabs his duffel bag from the passenger seat, shoves his door open, and steps out into the biting November chill. The Thanksgiving air is crisp, biting at his cheeks as he walks up the long driveway.

Before he even reaches for the doorbell, the heavy oak door pulls open.

Phil Graham stands in the doorway. He’s a big man, built like a brick wall, still holding onto the bulk from his days as an NHL star defenseman for the Rangers. He’s wearing a crisp button-down shirt and a fake, easy smile that doesn’t reach his cold eyes.

“Garrett,” Phil booms, clapping a heavy hand on Garrett’s shoulder as he steps inside. “You actually made it. I was starting to think you’d find an excuse to stay on campus.”

“I said I was coming,” Garrett says, his voice flat. He steps out of his father’s grip as quickly as politely possible, shrugging off his jacket.

“Well, I’m glad you did. Come on in. Y/N is finishing up the last of the food in the kitchen.” Phil turns and gestures down the wide, sterile hallway. “Y/N! He’s here!”

Garrett follows his father into the living room, his jaw tight. He doesn’t want to meet the new girlfriend. He doesn’t want to know anything about the woman who is willingly spending her time with a man like Phil.

Then, you step out of the kitchen.

Garrett stops dead in his tracks.

You’re wiping your hands on a small dish towel, a nervous but warm smile on your face. You’re wearing a soft oversized sweater and dark jeans. But that’s not what makes Garrett’s stomach drop.

It’s how young you are.

You can’t be more than twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. You’re barely older than Garrett himself. The realization hits him like a physical blow, a sudden, sickening wave of nausea washing over him.

“Hi,” you say, your voice soft, almost hesitant as you step forward. You extend a hand. “I’m Y/N. It’s so great to finally meet you, Garrett.”

Garrett forces himself to take your hand. Your grip is light, your skin warm. “Yeah. Nice to meet you too.”

Phil wraps a thick, possessive arm around your waist, pulling you against his side. Garrett watches the way you subtly stiffen, the way your smile falters for a fraction of a second before recovering.

“She’s been cooking all day,” Phil says, leaning down to kiss the side of your head. “Wanted everything to be perfect for the big college star.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Garrett says, looking directly at you, trying to ignore his father entirely.

“I wanted to,” you say quickly. “I love cooking. And Phil’s told me so much about you. Your season is going really well, right? Undefeated so far?”

“Yeah,” Garrett says, surprised you actually know that. “We’re having a good run.”

“She’s a nurse,” Phil interrupts, waving a dismissive hand. “Works crazy shifts at the hospital. I tell her she works too much, but she won’t listen.”

“I like my job,” you say gently, stepping out of Phil’s hold under the guise of gesturing toward the dining room. “Dinner is ready. We should sit before it gets cold.”

The dining room table is groaning under the weight of the food you prepared. A massive turkey, bowls of mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, roasted vegetables — it’s a feast. A feast for three people. It feels excessive. It feels like you’re trying too hard to impress.

Garrett takes a seat at the far end of the table, putting as much physical distance between himself and his father as possible. You take the seat next to Phil, directly across from Garrett.

“So,” Phil says, carving the turkey with sharp, aggressive strokes. “How are your grades, Garrett? Still scraping by with those easy electives so you can stay on the ice?”

Garrett’s grip on his fork tightens. “I’m a history major, Dad. My GPA is a 3.8.”

“History,” Phil snorts, tossing a slice of dark meat onto Garrett’s plate. “Right. Because that’s going to pay the bills when you blow out your knee and your hockey career is over.”

“Phil,” you say softly, reaching out to touch his arm. “Don’t say things like that. Garrett has a very bright future.”

Phil glances at you, his eyes narrowing slightly. “I’m just being realistic, Y/N. Someone has to keep the boy grounded.”

You give Garrett a sympathetic, apologetic look across the table. He ignores it. He doesn’t want your sympathy. He wants to know what the hell you’re doing here.

“So, Y/N,” Garrett says, leaning back in his chair. “A nurse. That’s a tough gig. ER?”

You perk up, eager for the change in subject. “Pediatrics, actually. I love it. The kids are incredibly resilient.”

“That’s awesome,” Garrett says. And he means it. You seem genuine. You seem kind. Which makes your presence in this house all the more confusing and disturbing to him. “Have you been doing it long?”

“Just over a year,” you say, passing the bowl of mashed potatoes across the table. “I graduated last spring.”

Garrett does the math in his head. Just over a year. Barely out of nursing school. She’s twenty-three. His dad is forty-eight.

“She gets too emotionally attached,” Phil chimes in, loading his plate with stuffing. “Comes home crying half the time. I keep telling her she needs a thicker skin if she wants to survive the real world.”

“It’s not a weakness to care about my patients, Phil,” you say, your voice dropping a fraction in volume.

“I didn’t say it was a weakness,” Phil snaps, his tone instantly sharper. “I said you need a thicker skin. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

The temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees. Garrett watches you carefully. You look down at your plate, your shoulders hunching slightly.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur. “You’re right.”

Garrett’s stomach twists. The dynamic is terrifyingly familiar. It’s the exact same tone, the exact same manipulative pivot his father used to pull on his mother. Make her feel crazy. Make her apologize for his bad behavior.

“It takes a lot of strength to care about sick kids,” Garrett says loudly, breaking the sudden, suffocating silence. He locks eyes with his father. “I think it’s badass.”

Phil glares at him, his jaw ticking. “Eat your turkey, Garrett.”

The rest of the meal is agonizing. It’s a masterclass in awkward, strained tension. You try your best to keep the conversation going, asking Garrett about Briar, about his teammates, about his classes.

“Do you have a girlfriend, Garrett?” You ask, trying for a bright, casual tone as you take a sip of your water.

“No,” Garrett says. “No time. Between practice, games, and classes, I’m pretty booked.”

“He just hasn’t found a girl who can put up with him,” Phil chuckles, but there’s no humor in it. “He’s just like his mother. Stubborn. Thinks he knows everything.”

Garrett freezes. The mention of his mother feels like a live wire in the room. His mother, who battled lung cancer while living in this hellhole. His mother, who took the brunt of Phil’s rage for years before Garrett became the primary target.

“Don’t talk about her,” Garrett says, his voice deadly quiet.

“I’ll talk about whoever I want in my own house,” Phil shoots back, leaning forward, his massive frame intimidating. “You think because you play a little college puck you can come in here and give me orders?”

“I said,” Garrett repeats, every muscle in his body coiled and tight, “don’t talk about my mother.”

“Please,” you interrupt, your voice shaking slightly. You look panicked, your eyes darting between Garrett and his father. “Please, let’s just have a nice dinner. I made pumpkin pie. I can—I can go get it right now.”

You push your chair back, moving a little too quickly.

“Sit down, Y/N,” Phil says sharply. “We’re not finished eating.”

“I just wanted to get the pie,” you stammer, already half-standing.

“I said sit down!” Phil’s voice echoes off the dining room walls.

You flinch. It’s a small, violent jerk of your shoulders, a conditioned reflex.

Garrett sees it. He feels the anger boiling in his veins, hot and volatile.

You slowly lower yourself back into your chair, your eyes glued to the tablecloth. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll wait.”

“Good,” Phil says, picking up his fork again as if nothing happened. “Now, pass the gravy.”

You reach across the table for the gravy boat. As you extend your arm, the loose sleeve of your oversized sweater rides up, pushed back by the edge of a serving bowl.

Garrett’s eyes lock onto your wrist.

High up on your forearm, just below the elbow, is a cluster of dark, purplish-black bruises. They aren’t random smudges. They are distinct, unmistakable ovals.

Finger marks.

The shape of a large hand gripping violently tight.

Garrett stops breathing.

The dining room fades away. The smell of the roasted turkey, the clinking of Phil’s silverware against the china — it all vanishes. All Garrett can see is that bruised skin.

He knows those bruises. He used to have them on his own arms, his own ribs. He saw them on his mother’s pale skin, hidden under long sleeves in the middle of July.

Phil never changed.

The monster who terrorized Garrett and his mother for years is sitting at the head of the table, pretending to be a normal man, and he’s doing it to this poor, young girl.

Garrett stands up.

He moves so fast, so violently, that his heavy wooden chair tips backward and crashes into the hardwood floor with a deafening bang.

“Garrett!” Phil barks, startled. “What the hell is your problem?”

Garrett doesn’t look at his father. He can’t, because if he looks at him right now, he will reach across this table and kill him.

He looks at you.

You’ve quickly yanked your sleeve down, your face pale, your eyes wide with terror as you realize what he just saw.

“I’m leaving,” Garrett chokes out. His chest is heaving. He wants to vomit. He actually feels the bile rising in his throat.

“You just got here!” Phil yells, throwing his napkin onto the table. “Sit your ass back down!”

“No,” Garrett says, his voice shaking with a dangerous, barely controlled fury. “I’m done. I’m done with you. I’m done with this fucking house.”

He turns on his heel and storms out of the dining room.

“Garrett!” Phil roars, the sound of a chair scraping loudly behind him.

Garrett doesn’t stop. He stalks down the hallway, his heart pounding in his ears. He reaches the coat rack by the front door and snatches his heavy jacket off the hook, nearly ripping the hook out of the wall in the process.

Footsteps hurry down the hall behind him. Light footsteps.

“Garrett, wait!”

He pauses, his hand on the brass doorknob. He turns around.

You are standing a few feet away, wringing your hands together. You look terrified. Phil is looming in the doorway of the living room behind you, his face red with rage.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Phil demands. “You ungrateful little punk.”

Garrett ignores him. He focuses entirely on you.

“Garrett, please,” you whisper, stepping closer to him, keeping your voice low so Phil can’t hear over his own ranting. “Please don’t go like this. It’s … it’s my fault. I made him mad earlier. I dropped a glass and I shouldn’t have talked back. It’s not what you think.”

The words hit Garrett like a physical blow. The excuses. The self-blame. It’s a script he has heard a thousand times before.

He lets go of the doorknob and steps toward you. You shrink back slightly, anticipating anger.

But Garrett isn’t angry at you.

“Stop,” Garrett says, his voice remarkably steady now, cutting through your panicked excuses. “Stop talking.”

You snap your mouth shut, tears brimming in your eyes.

Garrett looks you dead in the eye. He needs you to hear this. He needs you to understand.

“It is never your fault,” Garrett says, emphasizing every single word. “Do you hear me? Never.”

“You don’t understand,” you shake your head, a tear spilling over your eyelashes. “He just gets stressed, and I pushed him-”

“I understand perfectly,” Garrett cuts you off, his tone fierce. “I lived in this house for eighteen years. I watched him do it to my mother. I watched him do it to me.”

Your breath hitches. Your eyes widen in shock, glancing back at Phil, then back to Garrett.

“He is an abusive piece of shit,” Garrett says loudly, making sure his voice carries down the hall to where his father is standing in stunned silence. “And he will never stop. He will never change. I don’t care how much he cries and pretends to apologize after every time he hurts you. He will do it again.”

“Garrett, shut your damn mouth!” Phil shouts, taking a step forward.

“Fuck you, Phil!” Garrett roars back, the raw, unadulterated hatred pouring out of him.

He turns back to you. Your face is crumpled, the illusion shattered. You’re trembling.

“Get the hell away from him,” Garrett tells you, his voice lowering to an urgent, desperate plea. “Before it’s too late. Please.”

He doesn’t wait for your response. He can’t stay here another second.

He yanks the front door open, steps out into the freezing night, and slams the heavy door shut behind him. The sound echoes across the quiet suburban street like a gunshot.

He practically runs down the driveway to his Jeep. He rips the door open, throws himself into the driver’s seat, and jams the key into the ignition. The engine roars to life.

Garrett throws it into reverse, peels out of the driveway, and hits the gas, desperate to put as much distance between himself and that house as possible.

He drives for ten minutes before he finally pulls over on the shoulder of an empty highway.

He shoves the car into park.

And then he loses it.

He slams his hands against the steering wheel. Once. Twice. A scream of pure, visceral frustration tears from his throat. The horn blares into the dark night.

He rests his forehead against the leather of the steering wheel, his chest heaving, his breathing ragged.

He closes his eyes, but all he sees are those bruises. Those dark, brutal marks on your pale skin.

You’re a nurse. You’re sweet. You smiled and baked a damn pie and you are trapped in a house with a monster. A girl who can’t be much older than he is, taking the hits that his mother used to take.

Garrett grips the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white. He told you to get away. He hopes to God you listen. But as he sits there in the cold, dark car on the way back to Briar, a sickening feeling settles deep in his gut.

He knows this isn’t over. He can’t just walk away and leave you there.

***

The hit comes out of nowhere.

One second, Garrett is flying down the center of the ice, the puck a familiar, comfortable weight on the blade of his stick. The Briar arena is deafening, thousands of students screaming as he crosses the blue line. He spots the opening. He sets up the shot.

The next second, a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound defenseman from Harvard blindsides him.

The elbow catches Garrett right under the edge of his helmet. The crack is sickeningly loud, echoing in his own skull before the ice rushes up to meet him. He hits the frozen surface hard, sliding into the boards in a tangled mess of limbs and composite sticks.

The whistle blows shrilly. The crowd erupts into angry boos.

Garrett lies there for a few seconds, staring up at the blinding stadium lights. His head is ringing. A high-pitched, sustained whine blocks out the sound of his teammates rushing to his defense. There’s a sharp, burning pain right above his left eyebrow, and when he blinks, something warm and wet runs down his face.

“Graham! Hey, Graham, don’t move.”

Robby, the Briar athletic trainer, is suddenly leaning over him, his face pinched with concern.

“I’m fine,” Garrett groans, trying to push himself up on his heavy gloves. The ice tilts precariously. “Just a scratch. Get me back out there. We’re on a power play now.”

“You’re not going anywhere near a puck tonight, kid,” Robby says, gripping Garrett’s shoulder to keep him down. Robby presses a thick wad of gauze against Garrett’s forehead. Garrett winces as white-hot pain flares. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, and your eyes are rolling. We’re going to the locker room, and then you’re going to the hospital.”

“Hospital?” Garrett snaps, instantly irritated. “Robby, come on. Just glue it shut. Do the concussion protocol. I know what month it is.”

“I need imaging, Garrett. That hit was dirty, and your helmet shifted. I’m not playing games with your brain. Up you get. Slowly.”

Forty-five minutes later, Garrett is sitting on the edge of a crinkly, paper-covered bed in a sterile room at the local emergency department. He’s still in his bottom gear — his bulky hockey pants, his skates replaced by slide sandals Robby grabbed from his locker, and his Briar hockey hoodie pulled over his t-shirt.

He smells like sweat, ice, and metallic blood. He feels like a caged animal.

Robby did the initial check-up and handed him off to the triage nurse, who promised someone would be in shortly to clean the wound, stitch him up, and get him down to CT. That was twenty minutes ago.

Garrett taps his foot impatiently against the linoleum floor. His head throbs in time with his heartbeat. He hates hospitals. He hates the smell of antiseptic, the stark white lights, the feeling of vulnerability.

Most of all, he just wants to go to sleep.

He leans back, closing his eyes and trying to breathe through the dull nausea rolling in his stomach.

The heavy wooden door to his exam room clicks open.

“Sorry for the wait,” a soft, hurried voice says, followed by the squeak of rubber-soled shoes. “It’s a zoo out there tonight. Full moon or something.”

Garrett opens his eyes, a sarcastic remark already loaded on his tongue about how long it takes to get a needle and thread in this place.

The words die instantly in his throat.

You are standing by the rolling metal cart, pulling on a pair of purple nitrile gloves. You’re wearing scrubs. Not the standard-issue, depressing hospital blue, but a light pink top covered in tiny, cartoonish stethoscopes and smiling Band-Aids. It’s undeniably cute. It’s the kind of uniform designed to make terrified kids feel safe.

You snap the second glove onto your wrist and finally turn around to look at the patient.

You freeze.

Your hands hover in mid-air. The professional, welcoming smile you walked in with vanishes so fast it’s like it was never there. The color drains completely from your face, leaving you looking like a ghost in the harsh fluorescent lighting.

“Garrett,” you breathe, the name barely a whisper.

Garrett stares at you. His heart does a strange, painful stutter in his chest.

Of all the hospitals. Of all the nurses.

He hasn’t stopped thinking about you since Thanksgiving. It’s been three weeks. Three weeks of replaying that disastrous dinner in his head, hearing his father’s booming, aggressive voice, and seeing those dark, finger-shaped bruises on your arm.

He had hoped, with a desperate kind of optimism, that you had listened to him. That his dramatic exit had been the wake-up call you needed. He hoped you packed your bags, walked out of Phil Graham’s massive, oppressive house, and never looked back.

But as you stand there, clutching a clipboard to your chest like a shield, Garrett’s stomach sinks.

“What are you doing here?” Garrett asks. His voice is hoarse, the concussion making him sound rougher than he intends. “I thought you worked pediatrics.”

You blink rapidly, seemingly trying to reboot your brain. You take a cautious step back, closer to the door, as if preparing to bolt.

“I do,” you say, your voice remarkably shaky. You clear your throat and try again, fighting for a professional tone. “I do work pediatrics. We’re … we’re short-staffed down here tonight. A nasty flu bug wiped out half the ER nurses. They floated me down because I’m the newest on my floor.”

“Right,” Garrett says, his eyes locked on you.

The tension in the tiny exam room is thick enough to cut with a scalpel. Neither of you moves.

“I can,” you stammer, your eyes darting from the bloody gauze taped to his forehead to his skates-less feet, avoiding direct eye contact. “I can go get someone else. Another nurse. If you’re … if you’re uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Garrett says immediately.

He doesn’t want you to leave. He needs to know what happened after he drove away. He needs to know if you’re okay.

You hesitate, your grip on the clipboard turning your knuckles white. You bite your bottom lip, a nervous habit that sends a jolt of protective instinct straight through Garrett’s chest.

“Okay,” you finally whisper. You force yourself to take a step forward, slipping into nurse-mode like a protective second skin. “Okay. Let’s … let’s take a look at that cut, Mr. Graham. The doctor will be in shortly for the stitches, but I need to clean it and do a standard neuro check first.”

“It’s just Garrett,” he mutters, hating the formal ‘Mr. Graham’. It makes him think of his father.

“Garrett,” you correct yourself softly.

You pull a rolling stool over to the side of his bed and sit down. You’re close now. Close enough that he can smell the faint, clean scent of your vanilla shampoo over the harsh hospital antiseptics.

“Can you look straight at me?” You ask, pulling a small penlight from your scrub pocket.

Garrett turns his head. He looks straight at you.

And that’s when he really sees it.

The harsh, unforgiving overhead lights of the ER leave nothing in shadow. You are wearing makeup. A lot of it. Far more than you wore at Thanksgiving. The foundation is thick, expertly applied to look matte and flawless.

But it’s not flawless.

Underneath the heavy-duty concealer on your left cheekbone, there is a distinct, yellowish-green discoloration. The fading remnants of a severe bruise. And when you lean forward to shine the light in his eyes, the v-neck of your cute, patterned scrub top gapes just a fraction.

Right on your collarbone, peeking out from the fabric, is a mottled patch of dark purple and black. It looks fresh.

Garrett’s breath hitches.

“Follow the light with your eyes, please,” you say softly, your brow furrowed in concentration. “Without moving your head.”

Garrett tries. He really does. But his eyes drop from the penlight to your cheekbone. Then down to the edge of your collar.

A wave of nausea hits him, so intense and violent he actually grips the edges of the exam table to ground himself. It’s not from the concussion. It’s from the crushing, suffocating weight of guilt.

He did this.

He knows he did this.

He remembers the look on his father’s face when he slammed the door. He remembers the rage, the wounded pride. Phil Graham doesn’t just get yelled at in his own house by his son and let it go. Phil Graham retaliates. He takes his anger out on whatever is closest. On whoever is weakest.

At Thanksgiving, that was you.

Garrett left you alone with a monster he had just purposely provoked.

“Are you feeling dizzy?” You ask, misinterpreting his sudden rigidity. You click the penlight off, your eyes scanning his face with genuine concern. “Do you feel like you’re going to be sick?”

“Yeah,” Garrett whispers, his voice cracking. “Yeah, I feel sick.”

You immediately stand up, reaching for a plastic basin on the counter. “Okay, lean forward. Deep breaths-”

“Not because of my head,” Garrett interrupts.

He reaches out and grabs your wrist.

He does it gently. He’s incredibly aware of his own strength, of the sheer size difference between them. His large hand loosely encircles your delicate wrist over the purple nitrile glove.

You freeze instantly. Your entire body goes rigid, a startled gasp slipping from your lips.

“Garrett, let go,” you whisper, panic suddenly flaring in your eyes. You glance frantically at the closed door.

“He did this,” Garrett says, his voice thick with a rage that threatens to choke him. He doesn’t let go, but he doesn’t squeeze, either. He just holds you there, forcing you to look at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say automatically. The denial is fast, practiced. You tug your arm, trying to pull away. “Please, I need to clean your wound.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Garrett pleads. He lets go of your wrist, raising his hand to point a shaking finger at your face. “The makeup. Your cheek. Your collarbone. I can see it, Y/N.”

You flinch as if he struck you. You immediately reach up, your gloved hand self-consciously covering your collarbone, pulling the fabric of your scrubs higher. You look away, your jaw trembling.

“It’s nothing,” you say, staring fixedly at the rolling cart. “I’m clumsy. I bumped into an open cabinet door in the kitchen.”

“A cabinet door doesn’t grab your collarbone,” Garrett says, his voice dropping to a harsh, heartbroken whisper. “A cabinet door didn’t leave finger marks on your arm at Thanksgiving. Stop protecting him.”

“I’m not protecting anyone,” you snap, finally looking back at him. Your eyes are bright with unshed tears, defensively angry. “You don’t know anything about my life, Garrett. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know my father,” Garrett fires back, leaning forward, ignoring the throbbing pain in his head. “I know exactly what he is. I lived with it for eighteen years. You think you’re the first person he’s done this to? You think you’re special? My mother used to use the exact same brand of heavy concealer you’re wearing right now.”

The words hit you hard. Your defensive anger crumbles in an instant, leaving behind a raw, terrified vulnerability that makes Garrett want to punch a hole through the wall.

A single tear escapes, cutting a track down your powdered cheek. You quickly swipe it away with the back of your wrist, smudging the concealer and revealing more of the fading bruise beneath.

“Why didn’t you leave?” Garrett asks, the desperation bleeding into his tone. “I told you to get away. I told you what he was. Why are you still there?”

You let out a shaky, bitter laugh. It’s a terrible sound. “Leave? And go where, Garrett? He moved me into his house. My name isn’t on the lease of my old apartment anymore. I have student loans that are drowning me. When I met him, he … he was so generous. He offered to help me get on my feet. He bought my car.”

Garrett closes his eyes. He feels sick all over again. Classic Phil. Financial control. Isolate the target. Make them dependent so they feel like they can’t survive on their own. It’s a textbook maneuver, and Garrett hates himself for not realizing it sooner.

“So you’re trapped,” Garrett states flatly, opening his eyes to look at you.

“I’m managing,” you say stubbornly, though your voice lacks conviction. “He’s just … he’s been under a lot of pressure lately.”

“Bullshit,” Garrett practically growls.

“Don’t yell at me!” You whisper-shout, looking panicked at the door again. “I’m at work, Garrett. Please. I can’t do this right now. If my charge nurse hears …”

Garrett forces himself to take a deep breath. He forces his muscles to uncoil. You’re right. This is your place of work. You’re already terrified, and him losing his temper — even on your behalf — is only making you more scared.

“Okay,” Garrett says softly, gentling his tone. “Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t yell.”

You let out a trembling sigh, your shoulders slumping slightly. You reach for a sterile saline wipe from the tray. Your hands are shaking.

“I have to clean the cut,” you murmur, keeping your eyes down. “It’s going to sting.”

“Do it,” Garrett says, sitting perfectly still.

You lean in close again. You gently press the saline wipe against the gash above his eyebrow. It burns like a bitch, but Garrett doesn’t even flinch. He is completely hyper-focused on you.

Up this close, he can see the exhaustion etched around your eyes. He can see the faint tremor in your fingers. He can feel the anxiety radiating off you in waves.

“He took it out on you, didn’t he?” Garrett asks quietly, the words meant only for the two of you. “After I left on Thanksgiving. I made him furious, and I walked out the door, and he took it out on you.”

Your hand pauses. The saline wipe hovers over his cut. You don’t look at his eyes; you just stare blindly at his forehead.

“Garrett, please,” you whisper, your voice breaking completely. “Don’t.”

“I need to know,” he insists, the guilt gnawing at his insides like acid. “Did he hit you because of me?”

You swallow hard. A fresh tear falls, splashing softly against the plastic bib covering Garrett’s chest.

“He was mad,” you finally admit, your voice barely audible over the hum of the hospital air conditioning. “He said I embarrassed him in front of you. That I was stupid for engaging with you.”

Garrett closes his eyes. He feels like he’s been sucker-punched by that Harvard defenseman all over again. Only this time, the pain is a thousand times worse.

“I’m so sorry,” Garrett breathes. The apology feels entirely inadequate, but it’s all he has. “Y/N, I’m so fucking sorry. I thought … I thought if I called him out, if I showed you I saw it, you’d realize it wasn’t normal and you’d run. I didn’t think about the fallout. I left you alone with him.”

“It’s not your fault,” you say automatically, returning to cleaning the wound. Your touch is incredibly gentle, a stark contrast to the violence you go home to. “You were right. Everything you said was right. I just … I didn’t know how bad it was going to be.”

“How bad did it get?” Garrett asks, his chest tight.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say quickly, tossing the bloody wipe into the biohazard bin and reaching for a fresh one. “I’m fine. He apologized the next day. He cried. He promised he’d never do it again.”

“And you believed him?” Garrett asks, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

You finally look him in the eyes. The profound sadness in your gaze breaks his heart.

“No,” you whisper. “I didn’t believe him. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Silence falls over the small exam room. It’s a heavy, suffocating silence. Garrett stares at you, a fierce, protective determination hardening in his chest.

He doesn’t care that he only met you once. He doesn’t care that you’re technically his father’s girlfriend. All he cares about is the fact that you are a kind, gentle person who spends your days taking care of sick kids, and you are going home to a nightmare.

A nightmare Garrett knows intimately.

“You’re not going back there,” Garrett says suddenly.

You pause, looking at him with utter confusion. “What?”

“When your shift is over,” Garrett says, his voice firm, leaving no room for argument. “You are not going back to his house.”

“Garrett, be reasonable,” you sigh, shaking your head. “I have to. All my stuff is there. My life is there.”

“I don’t give a shit about your stuff,” Garrett says. “Stuff can be replaced. You can’t. If you go back there, he’s going to kill you, Y/N. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, he will cross a line he can’t uncross. You know it, and I know it.”

“You’re scaring me,” you whisper, taking a step back from the bed.

“Good,” Garrett says intensely. “You should be scared. You should be terrified. Because he is dangerous. And I am not letting you go back to him.”

“You can’t control what I do,” you say, a spark of defiance finally flaring in your eyes. “You don’t get to order me around. You’re just as bossy as he is!”

The comparison stings, but Garrett takes it. He deserves it. “I’m not trying to order you around. I’m trying to save your life. Because I couldn’t save my mother’s, and I’ll be damned if I sit back and let him do it to someone else.”

You stare at him, the defiance melting away, replaced by shock. You didn’t know the full extent of it. Phil certainly wouldn’t have told you the truth about his marriage.

“Garrett …” you start, but you don’t know how to finish the sentence.

“I have a house,” Garrett says, the plan forming rapidly in his mind. “Off-campus. I live with three of my teammates. We have a couch. It’s not fancy, and it constantly smells like hockey gear and stale pizza, but it’s safe. He doesn’t know where it is. He doesn’t have a key.”

Your eyes go wide. “You want me to … to come home with you?”

“Yes,” Garrett says, without a second of hesitation.

“I can’t do that,” you say, shaking your head frantically. “I can’t impose on you and your roommates. I barely know you. Phil would lose his mind if he found out.”

“Phil is going to lose his mind anyway when he realizes you’re gone,” Garrett counters. “Let him. Let him tear the house apart. By the time he realizes you aren’t coming back, you’ll be gone. And you won’t be alone.”

“Garrett, this is crazy,” you whisper. You look around the room, as if expecting Phil to jump out of the medical supply cabinet. “I have a shift until 7 AM. I can’t just leave with you.”

“I’ll wait,” Garrett says stubbornly.

“You have a concussion!” You argue. “You need to rest. You need to be monitored.”

“I’ll rest in the waiting room,” Garrett fires back. “I’m not leaving this hospital without you.”

“You are impossible,” you say, but there is a distinct lack of heat in your voice. You look incredibly tired. The kind of tired that seeps into your bones and makes it hard to stand.

“I’m stubborn,” Garrett corrects, echoing his father’s insult from Thanksgiving, but reclaiming it. “Just like my mother.”

Before you can argue further, the heavy wooden door swings open.

A tall, exhausted-looking doctor with a clipboard steps into the room. “Alright, Mr. Graham. Sorry for the wait. Let’s get a look at that-” The doctor stops, glancing between Garrett and you. The tension in the room is palpable, even to a stranger. “Is everything alright in here, Y/N?”

You jump slightly, instantly stepping back from Garrett’s bed and smoothing down your scrub top. You plaster that fake, professional smile back on your face.

“Everything is fine, Dr. Gardner,” you say brightly. “Just finished cleaning the laceration. He’s all ready for you.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Gardner says, stepping up to the bed and clicking on a bright overhead surgical light. “Alright, Garrett, let’s get you stitched up so we can get you down to CT. Y/N, can you prep a local anesthetic tray, please?”

“Right away, Doctor,” you say.

You move mechanically, pulling supplies from the cart, avoiding Garrett’s gaze entirely.

Garrett doesn’t say a word as the doctor numbs his forehead. He doesn’t flinch as the needle pierces his skin to pull the wound shut. He keeps his eyes locked on you the entire time.

He watches you hand the doctor the scissors. He watches you dispose of the bloody gauze. He watches the way your shoulders stay rigidly tense, the way you constantly glance at the clock on the wall.

You are terrified. You are trapped.

But not anymore.

Garrett made a mistake at Thanksgiving. He let his anger blind him to the consequences. He walked away to protect himself, and he left you in the line of fire.

He isn’t walking away this time.

Dr. Gardner finishes the final stitch and snips the thread. “There you go. Seven stitches. We’ll get a bandage on that, and an orderly will be in shortly to take you down to imaging.”

“Thanks,” Garrett grunts.

“Y/N will get you bandaged up,” Dr. Gardner says, already heading for the door. “Keep an eye on him, Y/N. If he gets nauseous again, let me know.”

“I will,” you say softly.

The door clicks shut. You are alone again.

You pick up a square white bandage and peel off the backing. You step back up to Garrett’s side, keeping your eyes meticulously focused on his forehead.

“Hold still,” you murmur, pressing the bandage carefully over the stitches.

“I’m serious, Y/N,” Garrett says quietly, his voice vibrating with absolute certainty.

Your fingers pause against his skin. You finally look down into his eyes.

“When your shift ends,” Garrett says, holding your gaze, refusing to let you look away. “I will be sitting in the waiting room. And you are walking out of those doors with me.”

You stare at him. Your bottom lip trembles. The professional mask you’ve been clinging to finally cracks, and for the first time, Garrett sees a tiny, desperate flicker of hope in your eyes.

You don’t say yes.

But you don’t say no, either.

You just finish pressing the edges of the bandage down, your touch lingering for a fraction of a second longer than necessary. Then, you step back, grab your clipboard, and hurry out of the room without another word.

Garrett watches the door close behind you. He leans his head back against the wall, ignoring the throbbing pain, and settles in to wait.

He isn’t going anywhere.

***

The drive from the hospital to the house is agonizingly silent.

Garrett keeps his eyes glued to the dark roads of Briar, his hands gripping the steering wheel of his Jeep at ten and two. The white bandage over his left eyebrow stands out starkly in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. He hasn’t said a word since you both walked out of the sliding glass doors of the ER.

You sit rigidly in the passenger seat, still wearing your pink patterned scrubs, your coat pulled tightly around your shoulders. You stare out the window, watching the streetlights blur past, a million thoughts racing through your mind at a frantic, dizzying pace.

What are you doing? You just walked out on a shift. You just got in a car with your abusive boyfriend’s estranged, concussed son. You are heading to a house full of college hockey players you’ve never met.

You are terrified.

But as you steal a glance at Garrett’s hardened profile, you realize something else. For the first time in months, you aren’t terrified of the person sitting next to you. You’re terrified of the fallout, of what Phil will do when he finds out you’re gone. But Garrett makes you feel inexplicably safe.

Garrett pulls into the driveway of a large, slightly weathered off-campus rental house. A couple of other cars are parked haphazardly on the pavement. The porch light is on, illuminating a rogue red Solo cup resting on the railing and a pair of muddy sneakers near the welcome mat.

Garrett kills the engine. He doesn’t immediately move. He just sits there, his chest rising and falling with a deep, bracing sigh.

“We’re here,” he says quietly, his voice raspy.

You look at the house. It looks huge, chaotic, and entirely intimidating. “Garrett, I really don’t think this is a good idea. Your roommates …”

“My roommates are fine,” Garrett interrupts, turning his head to look at you. His dark eyes are serious, the bruising around his cut already turning an ugly shade of purple. “They’re idiots most of the time, but they’re good guys. They aren’t going to care that you’re here. The only thing they’re going to care about is making sure you’re okay.”

You swallow hard, your fingers twisting the fabric of your scrub top. “They don’t even know me.”

“They know me,” Garrett says simply. “And that’s enough for them. Come on.”

He pushes his door open and steps out into the crisp night air. You take a shaky breath and follow suit.

Garrett leads you up the porch steps. He doesn’t knock. He just pushes the front door open, stepping aside to let you enter first.

The inside of the house is exactly what you would expect from four college athletes. It smells faintly of stale beer, citrus cleaner, and the undeniable musk of hockey gear. The living room is massive, dominated by a huge sectional couch, an enormous flat-screen TV, and a coffee table littered with empty pizza boxes and video game controllers.

Despite the late hour, the house isn’t asleep.

The TV is on, playing some sports highlight reel at a low volume. A guy with dark hair and striking blue eyes is sprawled across the couch, tossing a lacrosse ball into the air and catching it. Another guy, blonde and built like a Greek god, is sitting on the floor leaning against the couch, a game controller in his hands.

From the kitchen, the sound of sizzling bacon and the smell of coffee drift out.

The dark-haired guy catches the ball and sits up as the front door closes. “Look who finally decided to show up. We saw the hit on Twitter, man. Robby texted the group chat and said you were getting stitched up.”

“I got stitched up,” Garrett says flatly.

The blonde guy pauses his game and looks back over his shoulder. He takes one look at Garrett’s face and winces. “Damn, G. You look like you went ten rounds with a meat grinder. How many stitches?”

“Seven,” Garrett mutters, toeing off his slides.

“Is he alive?” A third voice calls out from the kitchen. A tall, broad-shouldered guy walks out, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He has a kind face and a calm demeanor that instantly sets him apart from the other two. “Because I’m making breakfast at 2 AM and if he’s dead, I’m not making him eggs.”

“I’m alive, Tuck,” Garrett says, stepping further into the room.

As Garrett moves, he reveals you standing nervously behind him in the entryway.

The dynamic in the room shifts instantly.

Logan, the dark-haired guy, freezes with the lacrosse ball in his hand. Dean, the blonde, drops his controller entirely. Tucker stops wiping his hands, his eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline.

They stare at you. You stare back, feeling painfully out of place in your cartoon-stethoscope scrubs and heavy winter coat.

A slow, wicked grin spreads across Dean’s face. He lets out a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Logan starts to laugh, shaking his head as he pushes himself up off the couch. “Only you, Graham. Only you could get a level-three concussion, go to the emergency room bleeding from the head, and somehow manage to pull the hottest nurse on the floor.”

“I didn’t even know they made scrubs that cute,” Dean chimes in, leaning back on his hands, his eyes raking over you with playful, unabashed appreciation. “Hi there. I’m Dean. If you’re looking for a second opinion on that head injury, I’m practically a doctor.”

“You’re a poli-sci major,” Tucker points out dryly, though a slight, amused smile tugs at his lips. He looks at you. “Ignore them. They’re animals. I’m Tucker.”

Under normal circumstances, you might have blushed or laughed. They are objectively gorgeous, charismatic guys, and the banter is effortless.

But there is nothing normal about tonight.

You don’t smile. You just shrink back slightly, crossing your arms tightly over your chest, hyper-aware of the dark bruise blooming on your collarbone hidden beneath your coat.

Garrett doesn’t laugh, either.

His body goes entirely rigid. He steps in front of you, physically blocking Dean and Logan’s view of you. The protective instinct is so sudden and absolute that it changes the entire temperature of the room.

“Shut up,” Garrett snaps.

His voice is quiet, but it cracks like a whip. It lacks any of his usual playful arrogance. It’s hard, sharp, and deadly serious.

Logan’s smile vanishes. Dean sits up a little straighter, his playful demeanor evaporating. Tucker frowns, immediately reading the heavy, suffocating tension radiating off his captain.

“Whoa,” Logan says, holding his hands up defensively. “Relax, man. We’re just messing around.”

“I’m not,” Garrett says, his jaw ticking. He looks at his three best friends, his teammates, his brothers. “Turn the TV off. Sit down. All of you.”

Dean scrambles up from the floor and takes a seat on the couch next to Logan. Tucker slowly walks out of the kitchen, tossing the dish towel onto a chair, and sits down on the loveseat.

Nobody says a word. The house is completely silent except for the faint hum of the refrigerator in the other room. They watch Garrett, waiting.

Garrett turns back to you. His expression softens marginally. “Take off your coat,” he murmurs. “Sit down.”

You shake your head slightly. “I prefer to stand.”

Garrett looks like he wants to argue, but he nods. He doesn’t sit, either. He stands in the center of the living room, a defensive barrier between you and the rest of the room.

He runs a hand through his messy, blood-matted hair, wincing as he brushes too close to the bandage. He takes a deep breath.

“You guys know about my dad,” Garrett starts.

It’s not a question. It’s a statement.

Logan nods slowly. “Yeah. Phil Graham. NHL legend. Played for the Rangers. Hardass.”

“Right,” Garrett says, the word dripping with pure, concentrated venom. “The legend. The great Phil Graham. The guy everyone thinks hung the moon because he could check a guy through the glass.”

Garrett starts pacing, just a few short steps back and forth, the nervous energy impossible to contain.

“Everything you think you know about him is a lie,” Garrett says, his voice thick with years of repressed anger. “He’s not a hero. He’s not just a strict, demanding hockey dad.”

Tucker leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Garrett, what’s going on?”

“He’s a monster,” Garrett says bluntly. He stops pacing and looks directly at Logan. “You know how I never go home? You know how I stayed here over the summer? How I only went back for Thanksgiving because he threatened to cut off my tuition if I didn’t show my face?”

Logan nods again, his expression growing darker.

“It’s because he used to beat the shit out of me,” Garrett says.

The words drop like a physical weight into the room.

No one breathes.

Dean’s mouth falls open slightly. Logan’s hands clench into tight fists on his knees. Tucker closes his eyes, a muscle feathering in his jaw.

You stand by the entryway, your heart pounding in your throat. You didn’t know the extent of it until tonight, but hearing him say it out loud, in front of these people, feels incredibly raw.

“He did it to me,” Garrett continues, his voice unwavering now, the dam finally breaking. “And he did it to my mother. For years. He’d get drunk, or he’d get angry that a game didn’t go his way, or his food was cold, and he’d take it out on us. He broke my mom’s wrist when I was twelve. Told everyone she fell down the stairs.”

“Jesus,” Dean whispers, looking physically ill.

“Garrett,” Tucker says quietly, pain lacing his tone. “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”

“Because it’s my shame,” Garrett spits back automatically. Then he catches himself, shaking his head. “No. That’s what he wanted me to think. Because nobody believes that the great Phil Graham is a wife-beating piece of shit. Because I thought I left it behind when I came to Briar.”

Garrett stops. He turns slightly, his eyes finding yours across the room. The pain in his gaze is profound, but there is also a fierce, unyielding resolve.

He turns back to the guys.

“When I went home for Thanksgiving,” Garrett says, “He forced me to have dinner so I could meet his new girlfriend. He wanted to show off. Play the happy family.”

Logan looks confused. “Okay. What does this have to do with …” His voice trails off. His eyes slowly shift from Garrett to you.

The realization hits the room in waves.

You can literally see the progression on their faces.

First, Logan. His brow furrows, his eyes widening as the math clicks into place in his brain.

Then, Dean. He looks at you, really looks at you this time, taking in the youthful softness of your face, the fact that you can’t be more than a year or two older than them. He physically recoils on the couch.

“No,” Dean says, the word slipping out as a breathless exhale. “No fucking way. She’s … she’s a kid. She’s our age.”

“She’s twenty-three,” Garrett confirms, his voice turning cold and clinical. “And my dad is forty-eight.”

The guys glitch.

It’s the only word for it. Their brains visibly short-circuit trying to process the information. The cognitive dissonance of the beautiful, young nurse standing in their hallway and the aging, massive, abusive NHL enforcer is too much to compute.

“Are you serious right now?” Logan asks, his voice dropping an octave, a dangerous edge creeping into his tone. He isn’t angry at Garrett. He’s furious at the situation. “That’s … Garrett, that’s sick.”

“It gets worse,” Garrett says.

He closes the distance between himself and you. He stands right beside you. You shrink back slightly, instinctively grabbing the lapels of your coat, holding it tighter around your neck.

“At dinner,” Garrett says, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper that commands the entire room. “She reached for the gravy. Her sleeve slid up. And she had bruises all over her arm in the shape of a hand.”

A heavy, violent silence descends on the living room.

Tucker stands up. He doesn’t say anything, but his entire posture changes. The calm, relaxed guy who was making bacon two minutes ago is gone, replaced by a wall of silent, protective fury.

“I called him out,” Garrett continues, the guilt bleeding heavily into his words. “I yelled at him. I told her to run, and then I left. I got in my car and I drove back here. I left her there with him.”

Garrett turns to you. He reaches out, his large hand hovering over your arm. He doesn’t touch you. He asks for permission with his eyes.

You stare at him. You are trembling, a fine, uncontrollable shake that you can’t suppress. But you slowly nod.

You let go of your coat.

Garrett gently hooks his fingers under the lapel of your jacket and pulls it back just a few inches. He gestures to your neck, to the v-neck of your scrub top.

Under the harsh, bright lights of the living room, the heavy concealer you applied in the hospital bathroom doesn’t stand a chance. The yellowish bruise on your cheekbone is visible. But worse is the dark, mottled purple bruise peeking out from the collar of your scrubs, covering your collarbone.

Logan curses. It’s a harsh sound. He stands up so fast he knocks the coffee table with his shin, completely ignoring the impact.

“He did that tonight?” Logan demands, pointing a finger at your collarbone, his eyes blazing with a protective rage that genuinely shocks you.

“No,” you say, your voice remarkably small in the large room. “He … he did it after Garrett left on Thanksgiving. Because I embarrassed him.”

Dean puts his head in his hands, burying his face in his palms. “Jesus Christ.”

“She was floated to the ER tonight,” Garrett explains, stepping in front of you again, shielding you from their intense stares. “She was my nurse. He didn’t know I was coming in. If I hadn’t taken that hit tonight, I never would have seen her again. I never would have known.”

“So you brought her here,” Tucker says softly. It’s not an accusation; it’s a confirmation.

“I brought her here,” Garrett nods firmly. “Because if she goes back to that house, he’s going to put her in the hospital as a patient, not a nurse. Or worse. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Garrett looks at his three best friends. The vulnerability in his eyes is something they have never seen before. Garrett Graham doesn’t ask for

help. He doesn’t show weakness. He leads the team, he carries the weight, and he never complains.

“I’m keeping her here,” Garrett says, his voice leaving absolute zero room for debate. “She takes my room. I’ll sleep on the couch. But I need to know you guys are with me on this. Because Phil is going to figure out she’s gone, and he’s going to lose his goddamn mind.”

Logan doesn’t even hesitate.

He walks around the coffee table and stops directly in front of you. He is tall, broad, and imposing, but when he looks down at you, his blue eyes are completely devoid of the mischievous glint they held earlier. They are dead serious.

“Nice to meet you, Y/N,” Logan says, extending a massive hand.

You look at his hand, then up at his face. You slowly reach out and shake it. His grip is firm, but incredibly gentle.

“I’m Logan,” he says softly. “And no one is laying a hand on you ever again. You understand me? That guy steps foot on our property, he’s going to have to go through all four of us. And I promise you, we fight a hell of a lot dirtier than he does.”

“He’s a washed-up, geriatric bully,” Dean says, walking over to join Logan. He doesn’t smile, but there’s a ruthless kind of confidence in his posture. “We’re in our prime. Let him come. I could use the target practice.”

Tucker is the last to approach. He stops beside Garrett, looking at you with a gentle, fatherly sort of warmth.

“You’re safe here,” Tucker says, his voice deep and soothing. “You can stay as long as you need. No rent, no questions asked. We’ve got plenty of space.”

He pauses, sniffing the air, and then gestures toward the kitchen. “Now, I’ve got bacon burning. Have you eaten anything tonight?”

The sudden shift from intense, life-or-death protection to breakfast food gives you mental whiplash. You blink rapidly, staring at the three massive hockey players who just promised to violently defend a girl they met five minutes ago.

“I … um,” you stammer, completely overwhelmed. The tears you’ve been fighting all night finally break free, hot and fast down your cheeks. “No. I haven’t eaten.”

“Right,” Tucker nods, clapping his hands together once. “Logan, grab some blankets. Dean, go make up Garrett’s bed. Use the clean sheets, you animal, not the ones from the laundry pile.”

“On it,” Dean says, immediately jogging down the hallway.

“I’ll get the good pillows,” Logan says, heading for the stairs.

Tucker turns and heads back into the kitchen. “Garrett, sit her down. Coffee or tea?”

“Tea,” Garrett calls out.

Suddenly, the living room is empty, leaving just you and Garrett.

You stand there, a tear slipping off your chin, completely stunned by the whirlwind of the last five minutes.

Garrett turns to you. The intense, hardened captain who just laid down the law with his team is gone. He just looks incredibly tired, his shoulders slumping slightly.

“Hey,” he murmurs, reaching out to gently catch a tear on your cheek with his thumb. His touch is impossibly light. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“They didn’t even ask questions,” you whisper, your voice thick with emotion. “They just … they just accepted it.”

“They’re my family,” Garrett says, a small, genuine smile finally touching his lips. “And when someone messes with family, we circle the wagons. You’re part of the wagon now.”

He gently takes your coat by the lapels and slides it off your shoulders. He drapes it over the arm of the couch, then guides you by the elbow to sit down on the soft cushions.

“Wait here,” Garrett says softly. “I’m going to go help Dean make sure my room is actually clean. Then you’re going to sleep for a week.”

You look up at him, the heavy, crushing weight of the last few months suddenly lifting just a fraction off your chest.

“Garrett?” You ask as he turns to leave.

He pauses, looking back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Thank you,” you whisper.

The words feel woefully inadequate, but Garrett understands the weight behind them.

He gives you a slow, solemn nod. “We’ve got you, Y/N. I promise.”

And as he walks down the hall, leaving you in the warmth of the living room with the smell of bacon drifting from the kitchen, for the very first time, you actually believe it.

***

It’s been three and a half weeks since you walked through the front door of the Briar hockey house in your pink patterned scrubs, terrified and trembling.

In that time, a lot has changed.

The heavy, suffocating fear that used to dictate your every waking moment — the constant anxiety of checking your phone, of listening for the heavy tread of Phil’s boots — has slowly begun to thaw. It hasn’t vanished entirely. You still jump when a door slams too loudly, and your phone remains powered off and stuffed in the bottom of your duffel bag, replaced by a cheap burner phone Tucker bought you at a gas station.

But the house itself is a sanctuary.

It turns out that living with four massive, Division I hockey players is exactly the kind of chaotic distraction you needed.

The front door bangs open, followed instantly by the sound of heavy equipment bags hitting the hardwood floor of the entryway with synchronized thuds.

“I’m telling you, the ref was blind! He was looking right at the guy when he tripped me!” Dean’s voice echoes down the hallway, dripping with dramatic outrage.

“You tripped over the blue line,” Logan retorts, his voice rougher, exhausted. “Nobody touched you. It’s on tape. Stop trying to rewrite history.”

“My ankle is practically shattered,” Dean argues, dropping his keys onto the console table. “I need medical attention. Stat.”

You are already waiting for them in the kitchen.

The large kitchen island has been temporarily converted into what Logan affectionately calls “the triage center.” You have a large first-aid kit open on the granite counter, flanked by instant ice packs, athletic tape, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a stack of clean towels.

You lean against the counter, wearing an oversized Briar Hockey hoodie that Tucker practically forced over your head on day three. You cross your arms and wait as the boys drag themselves into the kitchen.

They look terrible. It was a brutal, incredibly physical Friday night game against Cornell, and the evidence is written all over their bodies.

Dean dramatically limps into the room first, clutching his chest as if he’s taking his final breaths.

“Y/N,” Dean gasps, leaning heavily against the island. “I am a broken man. Patch me up, Doc. Tell me I’ll walk again.”

You roll your eyes, a genuine, easy smile breaking across your face. “Sit on the stool, Dean. You look fine.”

“Fine?” Dean squawks, hoisting himself onto a barstool with a wince. “I took a slash to the calf that would have felled a lesser man. And I think I pulled a muscle in my back.”

“You pulled a muscle reaching for the last slice of pizza in the locker room,” Tucker says dryly as he walks into the kitchen. He opens the refrigerator and pulls out a massive jug of water. He looks over at you, his expression softening into a fond, older-brother smile. “Hey, Y/N. How was your night?”

“Quiet,” you say, tossing an ice pack to Dean, who catches it clumsily. “Put that on your calf, you big baby. How’s the rib, Tuck?”

Tucker lifts the hem of his t-shirt, revealing a nasty, yellow-purple bruise blossoming over his lower ribs. He played through the pain, but the grimace on his face betrays him.

“Stiff,” Tucker admits, taking a seat at the island next to Dean. “Took a stick right under the padding in the second period.”

You immediately step forward, all business. You pull a fresh roll of wide athletic tape from your kit. “Stand up. Let me wrap it. It’ll give you some compression and keep it from aching when you breathe.”

“You are an angel sent from heaven,” Tucker groans, standing up and raising his arms so you can wrap the heavy tape tightly around his torso.

“She’s not an angel, she’s a tyrant,” Logan grumbles, shuffling into the kitchen last.

Logan looks like he got the worst of it. There is a fresh cut high on his cheekbone, held together by a hasty butterfly bandage from the team trainer, and he’s favoring his left shoulder heavily. He drops into the stool on the opposite side of the island and rests his head against the cool granite counter.

“Don’t be a baby, Logan,” you scold gently, finishing the wrap on Tucker’s ribs and snipping the tape with a pair of medical scissors. “Let me see the shoulder.”

“It’s just bruised,” Logan mumbles into the counter.

You walk around the island and gently smack the back of his head. “Sit up. Shirt off. Now.”

Logan groans, but he obeys instantly.

This is the routine. Somewhere around the end of week one, when they all came home from a particularly brutal practice nursing various ailments, your professional instincts kicked in. You couldn’t sit on the couch and watch them clumsily apply ice packs and struggle to bandage their own cuts.

Before you knew it, you had practically adopted them. Or, more accurately, they had adopted you.

The dynamic shifted rapidly. The awkwardness of your arrival faded, replaced by an easy, familial banter. Dean stopped trying to casually flirt with you after Logan pulled him aside and threatened to rearrange his teeth. “She’s our sister now, bro,” Logan had told him. “Keep your dick in your pants or I’ll cut it off.”

And they mean it. The protective instinct they showed on that first night has only deepened. If you walk to the campus library to return a book, one of them is walking with you. If you need something from the grocery store, Tucker goes to get it. They screen every call to the landline, and they keep the front door double deadbolted.

They are your brothers.

You pull Logan’s t-shirt over his head, being careful of his left arm. His shoulder is already swelling, the skin hot to the touch.

“Ice,” you declare, cracking another instant cold pack and pressing it firmly against his shoulder joint.

Logan hisses sharply. “Fuck, Y/N, warn a guy.”

“Language,” you chide automatically, holding the ice pack in place. “Twenty minutes. If you take it off early, I won’t make those chocolate chip pancakes you asked for tomorrow morning.”

“You fight dirty,” Logan mutters, reaching up with his good arm to hold the ice pack himself. But he looks at you, his blue eyes warm with affection. “Thanks, kid.”

“Anytime,” you smile.

You wipe your hands on a towel and look toward the entryway. The house is suddenly very quiet.

“Where’s Garrett?” You ask.

The atmosphere in the kitchen shifts almost imperceptibly. Dean clears his throat, focusing intently on his phone. Tucker takes a long sip of his water.

“He’s coming,” Logan says carefully. “He stayed back to talk to Coach for a minute. Took a pretty bad hit into the boards in the third period.”

Your stomach tightens immediately. “Is he hurt?”

“He’s fine,” Tucker says quickly, though his eyes meet Logan’s for a fraction of a second. “Just got the wind knocked out of him.”

It’s a lie. You know it’s a lie. You’ve learned to read the micro-expressions of these three guys over the last month, and right now, they are hiding something.

Before you can interrogate them, the heavy front door opens and clicks shut.

Footsteps sound in the hallway, slower and heavier than usual.

Garrett walks into the kitchen.

He looks exhausted. The dark circles under his eyes stand out sharply against his pale skin. He’s wearing his Briar hockey sweats and a grey t-shirt, his gym bag slung over his right shoulder. But it’s the way he holds himself that catches your attention. He’s stiff, his posture unnaturally rigid, as if moving too quickly will shatter him.

He stops in the doorway, his dark eyes instantly locking onto yours.

The air between you crackles, thick and heavy with an unspoken, unresolved tension that has been building since the night he brought you here.

With Logan, Dean, and Tucker, the boundaries are clear. They are the overprotective older brothers. You are the little sister they never had. The relationship is simple, platonic, and incredibly healing.

With Garrett, there is nothing simple about it.

He is the reason you are here. He is the one who saved you. He is the one who gave up his own bed to sleep on the uncomfortable living room couch for almost a month, refusing to let you sleep anywhere else.

But he keeps his distance.

He watches you. You catch him staring at you when he thinks you aren’t looking — when you’re making coffee in the morning, when you’re laughing at one of Dean’s stupid jokes, when you’re simply reading a book on the couch. His gaze is always intense, brooding, and unreadable.

He doesn’t banter with you the way the others do. He speaks to you softly, carefully, as if you are something fragile that might break if he raises his voice. He treats you like precious glass, and while the respect is a beautiful contrast to Phil, the physical distance he maintains aches in a way you don’t fully understand.

“Hey, G,” Dean says, breaking the heavy silence. “You alive?”

“Barely,” Garrett grunts, his eyes finally dropping from yours. He walks over to the refrigerator, moving with a distinct lack of his usual fluid grace.

“Sit down, Garrett,” you say, your voice shifting back into its authoritative, nurse cadence.

Garrett pauses, his hand on the handle of the fridge. He looks over his shoulder at you. “I’m fine, Y/N.”

“No, you’re not,” you fire back, crossing your arms. “You’re moving like an eighty-year-old man with arthritis. Come sit at the triage center.”

Logan snorts a laugh, instantly wincing as it jostles his shoulder. “Listen to the boss, man. Don’t fight it.”

Garrett sighs, a heavy, resigned sound. He lets go of the fridge and walks slowly over to the only empty stool at the island, directly in front of you. He sits down, resting his forearms on his thighs, looking up at you from beneath his dark lashes.

“Where does it hurt?” You ask, stepping closer.

You are close enough to smell the familiar, masculine scent of his cedarwood body wash mixed with the sharp tang of sweat. Your heart does a ridiculous, completely unprofessional flutter against your ribs.

“Lower back,” Garrett admits quietly. “Got cross-checked into the boards. Hit the edge of the gate.”

You nod, keeping your expression neutral. “Shirt off.”

Garrett hesitates.

He has watched you patch up his roommates dozens of times. He has seen you casually pull off their shirts, wrap their ribs, ice their shoulders. But whenever it comes to him, he balks. He has spent the last month actively avoiding any physical contact with you. If you pass each other in the narrow hallway, he flattens himself against the wall to ensure you don’t brush shoulders.

“Garrett,” you prompt gently. “I can’t see the bruise through the cotton.”

He swallows hard, his jaw clenching. He reaches down, grabs the hem of his t-shirt, and pulls it over his head.

You hear Dean suck in a breath through his teeth.

“Jesus, G,” Tucker mutters.

You bite the inside of your cheek hard to keep from gasping.

The bruise is massive. It covers the entire right side of his lower back, stretching from his spine to his hip bone. It is an angry, mottled tapestry of black, deep purple, and swollen red. The skin is visibly raised, the impact point raw and ugly.

“You played the rest of the period with this?” You ask, your voice tight with professional disapproval and a sudden, sharp spike of personal concern.

“Yeah,” Garrett says simply, staring straight ahead at the granite counter.

You don’t say anything else. You reach into your kit and pull out a large tube of arnica cream and a heavy-duty ice pack.

“Lean forward,” you instruct softly. “Rest your arms on the counter.”

Garrett complies, leaning forward and resting his head on his crossed arms. The muscles in his broad back tense tightly under his skin.

You squeeze a dollop of the cooling arnica cream onto your fingers. “This is going to be cold.”

“Okay,” he whispers.

You press your fingers against the unbruised skin just above the swelling, gently working the cream into his muscles before moving down toward the agonizingly tender center of the bruise.

The moment your skin makes contact with his, Garrett flinches violently.

A full-body shudder violently rips through his frame. He sucks in a sharp, jagged breath, his hands gripping the edge of the granite counter so hard his knuckles turn white.

You freeze instantly, yanking your hands back as if you burned him.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp, panic flaring in your chest. “I’m so sorry, Garrett, did I press too hard? I know it’s tender-”

“No,” Garrett grits out, his voice incredibly strained, his eyes squeezed shut. “No, you didn’t press too hard. You’re fine.”

You stare at his back, your hands hovering uselessly in the air. “Garrett, you practically jumped off the stool.”

“I’m fine,” he repeats, harsher this time. He slowly opens his eyes and sits up, turning his head to look at you. His dark eyes are wild, storm-tossed, and completely overwhelmed. “Just put the ice on it.”

You swallow hard, hurt flashing hot and fast through your chest. You grab the instant cold pack and crack it, handing it to him without a word.

He takes it, pressing it clumsily against his lower back.

The silence in the kitchen is suddenly deafening. The easy banter from ten minutes ago has vanished completely.

Logan, Dean, and Tucker exchange a highly loaded, silent conversation over Garrett’s head.

“Alright,” Tucker says smoothly, standing up and stretching. “I need a shower. The smell of Dean’s whining is making me nauseous.”

“Hey!” Dean protests, but Logan immediately reaches out with his good arm and grabs Dean by the collar of his t-shirt, hauling him off the stool.

“Shower time,” Logan says firmly, dragging Dean toward the hallway. “Leave the nurse alone. She’s off the clock.”

“My calf!” Dean yelps as he’s dragged away.

Within seconds, the three of them are gone. The sound of their bedroom doors shutting echoes down the hall, leaving you and Garrett entirely alone in the brightly lit kitchen.

The air is practically vibrating with tension.

You stand on one side of the island; Garrett sits on the other. He keeps the ice pack pressed to his back, staring intensely at a spot on the granite counter near your hand.

You reach out and slowly begin packing up the first-aid kit. You zip the bag shut, the sound obnoxiously loud in the quiet room.

“I’m sorry,” Garrett says suddenly.

His voice is low, rough like gravel. It stops you dead in your tracks.

You look up at him. “For what? Being injured?”

“For snapping at you,” Garrett says, finally lifting his head to meet your gaze. The vulnerability in his eyes makes your breath hitch. “I didn’t mean to yell. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Then why did you flinch?” You ask quietly, the question slipping out before you can stop it. You cross your arms, suddenly feeling incredibly small in the oversized hoodie. “You avoid me, Garrett. You’ve been doing it for weeks. You won’t even sit on the same couch as me.”

Garrett closes his eyes, a muscle feathering wildly in his tight jaw. He lets out a long, ragged breath, letting his head fall back in defeat.

“I don’t avoid you because I don’t want to be near you,” he confesses, the words sounding like they are being ripped out of his chest.

“Then why?”

Garrett drops the ice pack onto the counter. He stands up. He doesn’t put his shirt back on. He walks slowly around the kitchen island, closing the physical distance between you until he is standing just inches away.

You have to tilt your head back to look at him. His chest is broad, marked with pale scars and the faint remnants of old bruises. He is an imposing, powerful force, but as he looks down at you, he looks completely broken.

“Because my brain is scrambled,” Garrett whispers, lifting a hand as if to touch your face, before violently forcing it back to his side, his fingers curling into a fist. “Because every time you walk into a room, I can’t breathe.”

You stare at him, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. “Garrett …”

“You are so gentle,” he continues, his voice cracking, the raw emotion finally bleeding out. “You touch Logan and Dean and Tucker, and you fix them. You’re so good. And I am …” He chokes on the word, shaking his head. “I am my father’s son.”

The words hit you like a physical blow. You physically recoil, shock radiating through your entire body.

“No,” you say instantly, your voice fierce and immediate. “No, you are not.”

“You don’t understand,” Garrett argues desperately, taking a half-step back, trying to maintain the wall he has built between you. “You saw the violence in that house. You lived it. And I have that same blood in my veins. I play a violent sport. I get angry. I lose my temper.”

He runs both hands through his messy hair, pulling at the roots.

“When you touched my back just now,” Garrett admits, his voice dropping to an agonizing whisper, “when I felt how soft your hands were … it made me sick to my stomach. Because I know what my father’s hands did to you. I know what he did to my mother. And I am terrified that if I let myself get close to you, if I let myself touch you, I will somehow taint you. I will ruin you just like he did.”

Tears well up in your eyes, hot and blinding.

The profound, crushing weight of his guilt is devastating. He isn’t avoiding you because he doesn’t care. He is avoiding you because he cares too much. He is punishing himself for the sins of his father, terrified of a phantom inheritance he doesn’t even possess.

“Garrett Graham,” you say, your voice shaking but absolutely resolute.

You close the distance between you. You don’t ask for permission. You reach out, placing both of your hands flat against his bare chest, right over his rapidly beating heart.

He gasps, a sharp intake of air, his entire body going rigid under your touch. But he doesn’t pull away.

“Look at me,” you demand softly.

He slowly opens his eyes. A single tear escapes, cutting a clean track down his cheek.

“You are nothing like him,” you whisper, holding his gaze with everything you have. You press your hands firmly against the solid warmth of his chest, refusing to let him flinch away from your touch. “Do you hear me? Nothing. You are the man who pulled me out of a nightmare. You gave up your bed for me. You protect me. You gave me a home.”

“Y/N …” he breathes, his hands trembling at his sides.

“Phil controlled me through fear,” you say, the absolute truth of it ringing clear in the quiet kitchen. “You gave me back my life. Your hands …” You slide one of your hands up his chest, resting your palm against his cheek. His skin is hot, the scruff of his beard slightly rough against your sensitive fingers. “Your hands are safe.”

Garrett leans into your touch, his eyes fluttering shut. A broken, shuddering sigh escapes his lips, the sound of a man who has been holding his breath for twenty years finally exhaling.

He slowly, hesitantly, raises his own hands.

He doesn’t grab you. He doesn’t pull you in. He just gently, reverently, rests his large hands on your waist. His grip is impossibly light, his thumbs brushing lightly against the fabric of the oversized hoodie.

It is the first time he has truly touched you since the night in the emergency room.

“I want you,” Garrett whispers into the quiet space between you, the confession heavy and undeniable. He opens his eyes, staring down at your lips before meeting your gaze. “I’ve wanted you since the second you walked into that ER room and I realized I had a chance to get you out.”

Your breath hitches. The professional boundaries, the nurse-patient dynamic, the complicated tangle of his father — it all fades into the background, leaving only the undeniable, electric connection thrumming between you.

“I want you too,” you breathe back, the truth terrifying but exhilarating.

Garrett’s eyes darken. The tension in his jaw shifts from anxious to something entirely different, something intensely focused and overwhelmingly male.

His hands tighten marginally on your waist, pulling you just a fraction of an inch closer. You can feel the heat radiating off his body, the heavy, rhythmic thud of his heart beneath your palm.

He leans down, his face so close to yours that his warm breath fans across your lips.

Suddenly, the harsh, shrill ring of the phone on the kitchen counter shatters the silence.

You both jump violently.

Garrett pulls back, his eyes wide, his chest heaving as if he’s just run a marathon.

You spin around to look at the phone. It sits on the granite counter, ringing incessantly. The caller ID screen glows with a bright red, blocked number.

The heavy, suffocating reality of your situation crashes back down onto you like a physical weight.

You aren’t just a girl flirting with a guy in a kitchen. You are a girl hiding from a monster. And that monster is still out there.

Garrett stares at the phone, his expression hardening instantly. The vulnerable, open man from a moment ago vanishes, replaced entirely by the fierce, protective captain.

He steps in front of you, shielding you from the ringing phone as if it can physically hurt you.

“Don’t answer it,” Garrett says, his voice cold and deadly serious.

You don’t need to be told twice. You stare at the flashing red light, your heart pounding a frantic, terrifying rhythm.

The phone rings a fifth time. Then a sixth.

Then, it stops.

The kitchen is plunged back into silence, but it is no longer the intimate, charged silence of a moment ago. It is a tense, vigilant quiet.

Garrett turns back to you. He reaches out and gently cups your face, his thumb stroking your cheekbone, right over the spot where the yellow bruise has finally faded away completely.

“I’ve got you,” Garrett promises, his voice a fierce, unyielding vow. “He’s never getting near you again.”

You lean into his touch, drawing strength from his steady presence. The threat is still out there, looming in the shadows of blocked calls and unanswered questions.

But as you look up into Garrett Graham’s determined eyes, surrounded by the quiet walls of a house filled with four guys who would literally fight for you, you know one thing for absolute certain.

You are exactly where you are supposed to be.

***

The air in the house has been different since the night the phone rang.

There’s a new, fragile understanding between you and Garrett. The invisible wall he built between you is gone, replaced by a magnetic, undeniable pull that hums in the background of every interaction. He doesn’t avoid you anymore. If you’re on the couch reading, he sits on the other end, his foot casually resting against your leg. When he hands you a cup of coffee in the morning, his fingers linger against yours.

But the threat of that blocked caller ID still hangs over the house like a dark cloud. The boys are doubly vigilant. Someone is always awake. The doors are always locked.

Which is why leaving for your Tuesday day shift feels like a military operation.

“I’m just going to the hospital,” you say, laughing as Tucker practically inspects the locks on your car doors. “I work in a building filled with security guards and police officers, Tuck. I promise, I’m safe.”

“Humor me,” Tucker murmurs, leaning against your driver’s side window. “Text the group chat when you get into the breakroom. Text us when you leave.”

“I will,” you promise.

You look toward the front porch. Garrett is leaning against the wooden railing, his arms crossed over his broad chest. He’s wearing a fitted black Henley that makes his shoulders look impossibly wide, his dark hair messy from sleep. He catches your eye, and that familiar, intense heat flares between you.

“I’m stopping at Market Basket on the way home,” you call out to the porch. “Do you guys need anything?”

The front door flies open. Dean leans out, a piece of toast in his mouth. “Bagel Bites! The pepperoni kind, not the cheese kind. And some of those sour gummy worms!”

“Protein powder,” Logan yells from somewhere inside the house. “Chocolate peanut butter!”

“Actual food,” Tucker corrects, shooting Dean a dirty look. “Grab some chicken breasts and a bag of spinach. I’m making stir-fry tonight.”

You smile, pulling a small notepad from your scrub pocket and jotting it down. “Bagel Bites, protein, chicken, spinach. Got it.”

You look back at Garrett. “What about you? Anything you want?”

Garrett pushes off the railing and walks slowly down the steps, not stopping until he is standing right outside your open car window. He rests his hands on the roof of your car, leaning down so his face is level with yours.

“Just come straight home after,” Garrett says, his voice low, meant only for you. His dark eyes scan your face, taking in the soft, natural makeup you started wearing again now that there are no bruises to hide. “Don’t loiter in the aisles.”

“It’s a grocery store, Garrett,” you tease gently, the corner of your mouth tipping up. “I’m not exactly going to be partying in the produce section. I get off at six. I’ll be home by seven.”

Garrett reaches through the open window. He gently tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear, his knuckles grazing your cheek. The simple, affectionate gesture makes your heart skip a beat.

“Seven,” he repeats firmly. “Text me when you leave the hospital.”

“I will.”

“Drive safe.”

The shift is brutally busy. A nasty strain of RSV is making its way through the local elementary schools, and the pediatric ward is overflowing. You spend eight hours running from room to room, charting, soothing terrified toddlers, and administering breathing treatments.

By the time six o’clock rolls around, your feet are aching, and all you want is a hot shower and Tucker’s chicken stir-fry.

You pull your burner phone out of your locker and shoot a quick text to the group chat: Clocking out. Heading to Market Basket. See you animals soon.

Four immediate replies light up your screen.

Dean: BAGEL BITES

Tucker: Drive safe

Logan: Jif > Skippy

Garrett: See you at home

You smile, shoving the phone into your bag, and head out into the crisp, darkening December evening.

***

7 PM comes and goes.

Garrett is sitting on the edge of the living room coffee table, his elbows resting on his knees, his phone loosely gripped in his hands. The TV is playing a muted hockey game, but he hasn’t looked at the screen in twenty minutes.

He taps his thumb rhythmically against the edge of his phone case.

“Relax, G,” Logan says from the couch, tossing a lacrosse ball up and catching it. “The grocery store is probably packed with people buying milk because the weather channel threatened a flurry.”

“She said she’d be home by seven,” Garrett says, his voice tight.

“It’s 7:15,” Tucker points out reasonably from the kitchen, where he’s chopping vegetables. “She had to get Dean’s processed garbage and Logan’s overpriced chalk powder. Give her a minute.”

Garrett stands up, the nervous energy impossible to contain. He starts pacing the length of the living room. “I’m calling her.”

He hits your contact name and puts the phone to his ear.

It rings twice, and then goes straight to voicemail.

Garrett stops pacing. The blood turns to ice in his veins. “It went straight to voicemail.”

Dean pauses his video game, the playful atmosphere in the room instantly evaporating. “Maybe her battery died? Those cheap burner phones Tucker bought have terrible battery life.”

“She charged it this morning,” Garrett snaps, the panic beginning to claw its way up his throat. “I saw it plugged into the kitchen wall.”

He hits redial.

“Fuck,” Garrett breathes, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looks at his three best friends. “Something’s wrong.”

Tucker sets his knife down on the cutting board. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell Garrett he’s overreacting. He just reaches for a dish towel, wipes his hands, and grabs his keys from the counter.

“Let’s go,” Tucker says.

The drive to the local Market Basket is a blur of reckless speeding and suffocating silence. Garrett is in the passenger seat of Tucker’s truck,

his knee bouncing violently up and down. Logan and Dean are crammed in the back, both holding their phones, constantly refreshing your location on the Life360 app they forced you to download last week.

“Her dot hasn’t moved,” Logan says, his voice grim. “It’s showing her right at the Market Basket parking lot. Has been for forty minutes.”

“Step on it, Tuck,” Garrett grits out, his hands clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists.

Tucker runs a red light, swerving around a slow-moving sedan, and takes the turn into the shopping plaza so fast the tires squeal in protest.

The parking lot is moderately full, but not packed. The bright, fluorescent lights of the grocery store spill out onto the pavement, illuminating the rows of cars.

“There,” Dean points from the backseat. “Row G. Under the light.”

Tucker slams on the brakes, throwing the truck into park before it even fully stops.

Garrett is out of the door before the engine cuts off.

He sprints toward your small, sensible sedan. From a distance, it looks completely normal. But as Garrett gets closer, the horrifying details snap into sharp, devastating focus.

Your driver’s side door is wide open.

“Y/N!” Garrett shouts, his voice tearing through the quiet parking lot.

He reaches the car. You aren’t inside. The keys are still in the ignition. Your hospital badge is resting on the center console.

But it’s the ground outside the car that makes Garrett’s stomach drop out from under him.

Groceries are scattered across the black asphalt. A plastic Market Basket bag is torn open. A box of Dean’s Bagel Bites is crushed under the tire. A jar of marinara sauce has shattered, the red liquid pooling on the ground, looking terrifyingly like blood in the dim light.

And right next to the shattered glass is your burner phone. The screen is spider-webbed with cracks, completely dead.

“Oh, god,” Logan breathes, coming up behind Garrett.

Dean and Tucker arrive a second later. They take one look at the abandoned car, the scattered groceries, the open door, and the reality of the situation hits them like a freight train.

“Split up,” Garrett barks, the sheer, primal terror hijacking his brain and turning it into pure, unadulterated adrenaline. “Check the store. Check the bathrooms. Logan, with me. We take the back alley.”

Garrett doesn’t wait for a response. He turns and sprints toward the dark, narrow alleyway that runs between the Market Basket and the neighboring hardware store, leading back toward the loading docks and dumpsters.

It’s dark back here. The streetlights from the parking lot don’t reach the alley. The only illumination is the faint, yellow glow of a single security bulb high above the receiving doors.

“Y/N!” Garrett screams again, the sound raw and desperate, echoing off the brick walls.

“Garrett, over here!” Logan yells from somewhere near the dumpsters.

Garrett pivots, his heavy boots pounding against the pavement. He rounds the corner of a massive green dumpster.

And then he stops.

His brain simply refuses to process what his eyes are seeing. It’s too much. It’s too horrific. The cognitive dissonance is so severe that for a fraction of a second, the world goes completely silent and still.

You are lying on the cold, dirty asphalt, shoved up against the brick wall.

You are crumpled into a fetal position, your pink scrubs stained dark with mud and something much, much worse.

“No,” Garrett whispers, the sound completely broken.

He closes the distance in two massive strides and drops to his knees on the hard pavement, completely ignoring the sharp sting as his skin scrapes against the ground.

“Y/N,” he chokes out, his hands hovering over your body, terrified to touch you, terrified to cause more pain.

You don’t move.

The security light catches the side of your face, and a violent, sickening wave of nausea rolls through Garrett.

You are unrecognizable.

Your face is a swollen, bloody mess. Your lip is split open, still sluggishly bleeding. Your left eye is completely swollen shut, the skin around it already blooming into an angry, terrifying black-and-purple mass. There is a deep, jagged cut across your cheekbone, and your nose is visibly broken, pushed off to an unnatural angle.

But it’s not just your face.

Your scrub top is torn at the shoulder. Your arms are wrapped defensively around your torso, but Garrett can see the dark, brutal bruises forming on your forearms — defensive wounds. Someone kicked you. Someone beat you until you couldn’t stand, and then they kept going.

“Call 911!” Garrett roars, turning to Logan, who is standing frozen in pure shock. “Logan, call 911 right fucking now!”

Logan snaps out of it, fumbling for his phone, his hands shaking so violently he almost drops it. “I got it. I got it.”

Garrett turns back to you. His heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s going to shatter his ribs. He strips off his heavy winter coat, uncaring of the freezing temperature, and gently, so incredibly gently, drapes it over your trembling body.

Because you are trembling. A violent, terrifying, full-body shudder.

“Y/N,” Garrett begs, his voice breaking into a sob. He carefully rests a hand on the side of your uninjured face. Your skin is like ice. “Baby, please. Please look at me. Open your eyes.”

You don’t open your eyes. But a weak, agonizing whimper escapes your lips.

“I’m here,” Garrett says, the tears hot and fast down his own face now. “I’m right here. I’ve got you. The ambulance is coming.”

“They’re on their way,” Logan says loudly, his voice tight with panic. He crouches down on the other side of you. “Tucker and Dean are directing them to the alley.”

Garrett doesn’t acknowledge Logan. He can’t look away from you.

He carefully slides his hand down your neck, pressing his two fingers against your carotid artery. Your pulse is there, but it’s weak, thready, and far too fast.

He shifts slightly, trying to pull the coat tighter around your shoulders to trap whatever body heat you have left, and as he does, your arm falls limply to the side.

Your scrub sleeve slides up.

There, stark against your cold skin, are the fresh, dark shapes of a massive handprint gripping your bicep.

The exact same size. The exact same shape.

Garrett’s breath stops.

The terror, the frantic panic that has been driving him for the last thirty minutes, suddenly crystallizes. It hardens into something cold, sharp, and infinitely dangerous.

It wasn’t a mugging. Your purse is still lying three feet away, your wallet sticking halfway out. It wasn’t a random attack.

It was Phil.

Garrett looks down at your broken, bleeding body. He remembers the bruises on his mother. He remembers the nights she would cry quietly in the bathroom, applying ice packs to her ribs. He remembers his own broken bones, the split lips, the concussions.

But it was never, ever this bad.

Phil hit them to control them. He hit them to establish dominance. He hit them to instill fear.

He didn’t do this to instill fear. He did this to punish.

You escaping, slipping through his fingers, finding refuge with his own son — it must have enraged Phil to a point of sheer, psychotic violence. This was retaliation. This was a message. This was Phil trying to beat the defiance out of you permanently.

A dark, terrifying rage explodes in Garrett’s chest. It is a violent, primal urge that eclipses everything else.

He wants to kill him.

The thought isn’t an exaggeration. It isn’t a figure of speech. As Garrett kneels on the freezing asphalt, the blood of the woman he is falling in love with staining his hands, he feels a terrifyingly calm certainty settle into his bones.

He is going to find his father, and he is going to beat him to death with his bare hands. He is going to commit patricide. And he doesn’t feel an ounce of remorse about it.

“Garrett,” Logan says, his voice cutting through the ringing in Garrett’s ears. Logan reaches out and grips Garrett’s shoulder hard. “Hey. Look at me.”

Garrett slowly turns his head. His dark eyes are completely void of any humanity. They are pitch black, lethal, and terrifying.

Even Logan, who faces down two-hundred-pound defensemen every night, flinches slightly at the look on his captain’s face.

“Don’t do it,” Logan whispers, reading Garrett’s mind with the terrifying accuracy of a best friend. “Don’t go there right now. She needs you here.”

“He did this,” Garrett says. His voice doesn’t sound like his own. It’s a low, guttural rasp that sounds like it’s vibrating straight from hell. “My father did this to her.”

Logan looks down at you, his own eyes filling with tears. “I know. I know he did, G. And we will deal with him. I swear to god, we will deal with him. But right now, you have to keep her awake.”

The wail of sirens cuts through the night air, growing louder, closer.

Red and blue lights begin to bounce off the brick walls of the alleyway.

“Garrett,” you whisper.

The sound is so quiet, so weak, Garrett almost misses it over the sirens.

He snaps his attention back to you instantly. The murderous rage is shoved violently into a box in the back of his mind, locked away for later. Right now, there is only you.

“I’m here,” Garrett says frantically, leaning in closer, pressing his forehead gently against your uninjured temple. “I’m right here, baby. Don’t try to talk. Just breathe.”

Your uninjured eye flutters open. The pupil is blown wide, completely unfocused. You look incredibly confused, your gaze darting around the dark alley before finally landing on his face.

A fresh tear slips out of the corner of your eye, cutting a clean path through the blood on your cheek.

“He found me,” you sob, a weak, wet sound that shatters whatever is left of Garrett’s heart. “Garrett, he found me.”

“I know,” Garrett chokes out, grabbing your cold, trembling hand in both of his, pressing it to his lips. He kisses your knuckles, tasting salt and copper. “I know, Y/N. I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“He said …” You have to stop, gasping for a shallow breath. Every movement clearly causes you immense agony. “He said you couldn’t keep me. He said I belonged to him.”

“You don’t belong to him,” Garrett says fiercely, his voice vibrating with absolute conviction. “You hear me? You are not his.”

“Hurts,” you whimper, your eye fluttering shut again. “Garrett, it hurts so bad.”

“I know it does,” Garrett cries, completely uncaring that Logan is watching him break down. “Stay with me, Y/N. The paramedics are right here. They’re going to give you something for the pain. Just hold on for me. Please, baby, just hold on.”

Footsteps thunder down the alleyway.

“Over here!” Dean’s voice yells, completely frantic. “She’s over here! Bring the bag!”

Two paramedics round the dumpster, carrying heavy trauma bags and a backboard. Tucker is right behind them, his face deathly pale.

“Sir, you need to step back,” the first paramedic says, a no-nonsense woman who immediately drops to her knees on the other side of you.

“No,” Garrett says, his grip on your hand tightening. “I’m not leaving her.”

“You don’t have to leave, but you need to give me room to work,” the paramedic insists, already pulling a penlight and a pair of heavy trauma shears from her pockets. “What’s her name?”

“Y/N,” Garrett says, his voice trembling. “She’s a nurse. She’s twenty-three.”

The paramedic flashes the light into your eyes. You moan in protest, trying to turn your head away from the beam.

“Pupils are sluggish,” she barks to her partner. “Significant facial trauma. She’s guarding her abdomen. I need a C-collar and an IV setup, stat. Let’s get her on the board. She’s critical.”

The word rings in Garrett’s ears like a gunshot.

Logan hooks his hands under Garrett’s armpits and hauls him backward, pulling him away from you so the paramedics can work. Garrett fights him for a second, a pure, instinctual need to protect you taking over, before logic finally pierces through the panic.

He stands there, supported entirely by Logan, as they cut away your blood-soaked scrub top. He watches as they secure a rigid plastic collar around your neck, as they stick an IV into your bruised arm, as they carefully roll your broken body onto the hard yellow backboard.

“We need to go,” the paramedic says, strapping you down. “She’s dropping.”

They lift you up and start moving fast toward the waiting ambulance.

Garrett stumbles forward, breaking out of Logan’s grip. “I’m riding with her.”

“Only one person in the back,” the paramedic shouts over her shoulder, not breaking stride.

“It’s me,” Garrett says, leaving zero room for argument.

He turns back to the guys. Dean is crying openly. Tucker looks like he’s about to be sick. Logan looks like he’s ready to go to war.

“Follow us to the hospital,” Garrett says, his voice flat and dead. “Call Robby. He knows one of the trauma surgeons.”

“We’re right behind you, G,” Tucker promises, his voice thick.

Garrett turns and sprints after the stretcher. He climbs into the brightly lit back of the ambulance, the harsh fluorescent lights illuminating the true horror of your injuries.

He takes a seat on the small bench by your head as the ambulance doors slam shut.

The siren wails, a deafening, terrifying sound, as the vehicle lurches forward.

The paramedic is working frantically, attaching heart monitors, pushing fluids through your IV, checking your vitals.

Garrett reaches out, his trembling fingers gently finding yours amidst the tangle of wires and straps. He holds your hand, his eyes locked on your pale, battered face.

You are barely conscious, fighting a losing battle against the pain and the shock.

But as the ambulance races through the dark streets, Garrett makes a silent, unbreakable vow.

If you survive this. When you survive this.

Phil Graham is a dead man.

Read part two here

[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ wanted you.

pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader summary – after a head injury at clinical, garrett graham gets to be the one doing the looking after for once. warnings – head injury, concussion, facial bruising, blood, medical care, patient aggression, emotional distress, caretaking, strong language notes from me – we're getting somewhere my loves!!!! based on this ask, hope u enjoy! <3 word count – 11.9k

navigation – masterlist |

The car smells like hospital hand sanitiser and Maria’s vanilla air freshener and the coppery, unpleasant trace of blood she’s pretty sure is still stuck somewhere under her nose.

She sits very carefully in the passenger seat with her bag clutched in her lap and the discharge papers folded into the front pocket because Maria had put them there for safekeeping after watching her try to read the same paragraph three times and then ask, quietly and with genuine confusion, whether nausea was spelled with an o. The answer is no. Apparently. She knows that. Usually.

Her head throbs with every tiny vibration of the road, a dull, spreading pressure behind her eyes and across the bridge of her nose, pulsing in time with her heartbeat like her skull has decided to develop a second career as a bass drum. The split in her lip keeps reopening every time she moves her mouth too much, which is rude, considering she would very much like to continue pretending this is all fine and fine people generally require functional lips for lying.

There’s dried blood under her nose. She can feel it there, tight and flaky against her skin, the way she can feel the swelling beginning to gather beneath both eyes, heavy and hot and humiliating. 

Her scrub top is folded in a plastic bag somewhere near her feet because the front of it’s torn and streaked with blood from the first few awful seconds before anyone could get to her, before security and Maria and Steph from triage had managed to pull her backwards by the waist while the patient screamed so loudly the whole department seemed to go airless around it.

It wasn’t his fault, not really. He was frightened and out of it and nobody expected him to come up that fast, one second curled tight on the bed with his voice climbing, the next swinging blind and hard enough that his elbow caught her straight across the face. 

She remembers the crack of pain before she remembers making a sound. Then her own cry seemed to set him off worse, his hand catching a fistful of her scrub top before she could step back, the brutal pull forward, the bed rail coming up too fast.

Her nose had hit first. Or her mouth. Or her forehead. It’s all a little rearranged now, bright flashes and metal and Maria shouting her name and someone saying, “Security, now,” with enough force to make the whole bay move.

She knows it wasn’t anyone’s fault. She knows psych presentations can turn quickly, knows agitation isn’t always a straight line with warning signs and a polite little interval where everyone gets to reposition themselves safely. 

She knows all the rational things. She also knows her face hurts badly enough that thinking in full sentences feels like pushing through wet cement, and she is, medically speaking, having a really fucking shit time.

Beside her, Maria drives like a woman who’s spent twenty years transporting compromised student nurses and actual glassware with equal care. One hand on the wheel, eyes on the road, her voice soft enough not to scrape against the inside of her skull when she says, “How’s the head, honey?”

She exhales through her nose and immediately regrets it because her nose doesn’t wish to be involved in breathing at this time. “Super normal. Love having one.”

Maria makes a small sound that could be a laugh if it wasn’t wrapped so tightly in concern. “Nausea?”

“Not worse.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She lets her head rest back against the seat and keeps her eyes on the blurred glow of streetlights sliding across the windscreen. The movement makes her stomach roll faintly, but not enough to tell Maria about, because Maria has already done enough. 

Maria had stood in the consult room while Dr. Patel checked her pupils and her nose and the swelling around her cheekbones, one warm hand resting between her shoulder blades every time she tried to make a joke and ended up going quiet instead. 

Maria had found her spare hoodie from the locker room and helped her into it when lifting her left arm made pain streak down through her shoulder. Maria had said, very gently, you’re not catching the bus after getting your bell rung in my department, like that settled the matter.

“A little,” she admits. “But I’m not going to vomit in your car.”

“Kind of you.”

“I’m very thoughtful.”

“You’re concussed.”

She sighs softly. “Also that.”

Maria’s eyes flick over her in the dim light, quick and practised. “You remember what Dr. Patel said?”

She does. Mostly. The words have been looping vaguely around the edges of her head since he handed her the paperwork. Mild concussion. No fracture. Neuro obs stable. X-ray clear. Rest. No driving. No placement until reviewed. Come back if vomiting, worsening headache, confusion, unusual drowsiness, changes in vision, weakness, seizure, or if anything feels wrong enough that you’re trying to talk yourself out of seeking help.

No being alone tonight.

That last one had landed harder than the rest, somehow. Maybe because the ED had been too bright and too busy and she had been sitting there with a wad of gauze under her nose, feeling like a leaking appliance. Maybe because the doctor had said it in that professional, non-negotiable way that made arguing feel childish. Maybe because the idea of someone watching her because her brain had been knocked around made her feel suddenly, horribly small.

“Wake me every few hours,” she says. “Check I’m not getting weirder.”

Maria’s mouth tips. “You said weirder.”

“That’s the clinical term.”

“It’s not.”

“It should be. Easier to spell than altered level of consciousness.”

Maria actually laughs that time, but it fades quickly. “You can’t be home alone.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not going to pretend you’re fine and sit in your dorm by yourself because you feel embarrassed?”

Her eyes drift shut for half a second, then open again when the darkness makes her head swim. “I’m not embarrassed.”

Maria’s silent.

She sinks a little lower in the seat. “Okay. Maybe a normal amount.”

“There is no normal amount of embarrassed after being assaulted by a patient at work.”

“It wasn’t assault.”

Maria sighs. “Honey.”

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” she argues.

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t get hurt.”

Her mouth twitches before she remembers her lip is split. Pain snaps bright and sharp through the swollen skin. “Ow. Fuck.”

Maria’s hand lifts slightly off the wheel like she wants to reach over, then thinks better of it. “Don’t smile.”

“That’s bleak advice.”

“Currently medical advice.”

She presses her tongue carefully to the inside of her lip and tastes blood again. The whole evening keeps arriving in pieces. The patient’s arm. The bed rail. Maria’s face above hers, too close and too worried. Someone cutting away the torn edge of her scrub top. 

Her own hands shaking in her lap while she tried to tell everyone, very reasonably, that she could finish the shift if they just gave her a second. As if she hadn’t been bleeding on her own shoes.

The thought makes heat rise under the bruising in her face, which is unfair because her face has already suffered enough. “God,” she mutters. “Everyone saw.”

Maria sighs, not impatient, but close to something sad. “Yes, everyone saw that you got hurt.”

“I’m the student.”

“Yes,” Maria nods.

“I’m supposed to be useful.”

“You were useful all day.”

“I ended the shift with a concussion and a bloody nose.”

“You ended the shift injured because an unpredictable situation escalated. That’s not a performance review.”

She knows that. She does. She would say that to anyone else. She would put her hand on another student’s shoulder and mean it completely. She would tell them they were in the wrong place at the wrong second and that sometimes you can do everything right and still get hurt because hospitals are not made of lesson plans and perfect outcomes.

Unfortunately, she’s not another student. She’s herself. And herself currently has blood in her hoodie sleeve because she keeps forgetting not to touch her face.

They hit a bump in the road, not even a large one, but it sends pain blooming through her skull with such immediate nastiness that she sucks in a breath through her teeth and grips the strap of her bag.

Maria notices. “Almost there.”

She opens her mouth to ask where there is, and then remembers campus, her dorm, her room, the bed with the old sweatshirt shoved under the pillow, the roommate who is not there. Her stomach drops so abruptly it makes the nausea worse. “Shit.”

Maria glances over. “What?”

“My roommate’s not home.”

“Tonight?”

“She’s at her sister’s. Like, hours away.” She closes her eyes, then opens them again because the inside of her head does not enjoy visual privacy right now. “Fuck. I forgot.”

“Okay.” Maria’s voice stays calm. That is possibly the worst part. “Do you have someone else? A friend you could stay with?”

She thinks of Lucy first, because that’s the correct answer. Lucy would absolutely let her stay. Lucy would probably panic and then overcorrect into a level of cheerfulness that could qualify as a secondary head injury. Monique would be better, quieter, but Monique has an exam tomorrow and lives across campus in a building where the lift is always broken, which feels like a personal attack under current conditions.

Then her brain, unhelpfully and immediately, supplies Garrett.

Garrett’s room with the lamp on. Garrett’s hand at the back of her neck. Garrett’s voice low in her ear telling her to stop studying and sleep. Garrett sitting on the edge of her bed taking off her shoes after a bad shift. 

Garrett looking at her like competence is something he can be proud of even when she feels like she’s wearing it badly. Garrett, who has been hit in the head enough times that concussion protocol is probably written somewhere in his bones.

Garrett, who’s not technically her boyfriend, except the technicalities feel very stupid when her head is throbbing and her lip is bleeding and she wants him so badly it makes her chest ache worse than her shoulder.

“Yeah,” she says, and her voice comes out softer than she means it to. “Uh. Yeah. I have someone.”

Maria doesn’t look smug. That’s probably part of why she is a good preceptor. “Address?”

She gives her the hockey house. The words feel bigger in the car than they should. Maybe because saying his address out loud to Maria feels like she’s accidentally handed over evidence. Maybe because the last time Maria saw Garrett, he’d been standing in the ED hallway with panic sitting badly under his skin while Logan asked what day it was for the third time. 

Maybe because Maria now knows exactly where to take the concussed student nurse with the split lip and the ruined scrubs, and that place is apparently Garrett Graham’s house.

Maria only nods and changes lanes.

The hockey house is lit up when they pull onto the street, every downstairs window glowing warm and yellow into the cold, the porch light flickering faintly over the steps. There are cars out front, some vaguely familiar. The sight of it loosens something in her chest. At least someone’s home. At least there’s a couch, and people who know what pupils are supposed to do, and Garrett somewhere inside if the universe has decided to be kind after all the other things it did tonight.

Maria puts the car in park and turns toward her. “Wait. I’ll help you.”

“I can walk.”

“I didn’t ask,” Maria responds.

She huffs, which hurts less than smiling. Maria gets out first and comes around, opening the passenger door before she can argue again. The cold hits her face and instantly makes her nose ache in a new and innovative way. 

She climbs out slowly, one hand braced on the car door, shoulder protesting when she reaches for the strap of her bag. Maria takes it from her without comment.

“Rude,” she murmurs.

“Concussed.”

“Everyone keeps saying that like it explains everything.”

“It explains a lot.”

The walk up the path feels longer than it should. The porch steps require more concentration than she likes, which annoys her because she’s watched drunk freshmen navigate these steps while carrying open cups and zero dignity. Her sneakers scrape lightly over the boards. 

Somewhere inside, someone yells something that might be, “You’re cheating,” followed by Dean’s voice saying, “It’s not cheating if the game lets me do it,” which feels like an argument that has existed in this house for generations.

She knocks once because lifting her hand twice seems excessive. There’s a crash inside. A hockey house crash. Male voices overlap, loud and irritated and completely unaware of the fact that sound is currently a weapon. She winces before she can stop herself, one hand coming up toward her temple and hovering there uselessly.

Maria’s mouth tightens. “You okay?”

“Yep.”

The door opens on Logan in sweats and a faded Briar shirt, hair a mess, controller in one hand, expression halfway to annoyed until he sees her. Everything drops out of his face.

He says her name once, startled and low, and then, “What the fuck happened?”

The room behind him seems to quiet in stages. Maybe because of his voice. Maybe because she’s standing on the porch looking like an ED discharge summary with legs. 

She becomes suddenly, viciously aware of herself: the bruising already shadowing beneath her eyes, the swollen bridge of her nose, the blood dried under it despite Maria helping her clean up, the split lip, the hoodie zipped crooked because raising her shoulder hurts. She hadn’t thought much about how she looked in the car because looking required mirrors and mirrors required courage she didn’t currently possess.

Then Garrett appears behind Logan, and the whole night rearranges itself around the look on his face. He must have been in the living room. His hair’s damp at the edges like he showered not long ago, curls loose over his forehead, sweatpants low on his hips, a dark t-shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. 

He steps into the doorway with his mouth already forming some question, probably a chirp, probably something warm and annoying about why she’s showing up with supervision. He sees her, and all the colour leaves his face, as if something has reached into him and taken it by the roots.

His eyes move over her once, too fast and not fast enough. Nose. Mouth. Bruises. Hoodie. The stiff way she’s holding her shoulder. Maria beside her with the bag and the paperwork. Back to her face, where his attention catches and stays.

She tries to smile. It’s a mistake immediately. Pain sparks through her lip, and she winces instead, which feels like the saddest possible version of flirting. “Hi,” she says.

Garrett doesn’t answer.

Logan steps back at once. “Jesus. Come in. Fuck. Come in.”

Warmth and sound and the smell of boys and pizza and laundry detergent roll over her as she steps into the house. The living room lights make her eyes sting. Dean and Tucker are on the couch, controllers in hand, the TV paused mid-game like they’ve both forgotten the concept of winning. Dean’s mouth opens. Tucker’s face changes quietly, which somehow feels worse.

“Holy fuck,” Dean half-yells.

The words hit too loud. She flinches before she can make herself not do it.

Tucker moves instantly. “Dean, get the lights, man.”

“What? Oh. Shit, yeah.” Dean scrambles for the lamp with the guilty urgency of a man who’s suddenly remembered inside voices exist. The room drops into a dimmer yellow, the overhead going off, the TV brightness turned down under Tucker’s quick hand. It changes the whole house at once, softens the edges, takes the blade out of the light.

Maria watches all of it with a look that would be approving if she weren’t still too professional to be obvious about it. 

“She’s had a head injury,” she says, voice calm, eyes moving to Garrett because everyone’s eyes move to Garrett, because this is his house and not-his-girlfriend has arrived at his door concussed and bleeding. “Mild concussion. X-ray was clear, no nasal fracture, but she needs monitoring overnight. No alcohol, no driving, no being alone. Keep the lights low, noise down. She can sleep, but someone needs to check on her as per the discharge instructions. If she starts vomiting, gets more confused, can’t be woken, worsening headache, vision changes, weakness, anything that feels off, take her back in.”

Garrett nods slowly. He’s still staring at her.

Logan, maybe because Garrett looks like he’s briefly lost access to language, reaches out and takes the paperwork from Maria. “Yeah. We’ve got it.”

Maria turns back to her, and her face softens in that way that makes the back of her throat go tight. “I’ll see you in a couple days, honey. Not tomorrow. Rest tomorrow.”

She nods carefully. Even that tiny motion makes pressure throb through her skull. “Thanks for driving me.”

“Text me when you wake up.” Maria’s eyes flick toward Garrett again. “And listen to them for once.”

That almost makes her smile. She resists, heroically. “No promises.”

Maria gives her shoulder the gentlest squeeze, nowhere near the painful side, then lets herself out. Logan closes the door softly behind her, like the whole house has been put on medical quiet time. 

For half a second, nobody moves. Then Dean says, much quieter this time, “Who the fuck did that?”

She lets out a breath that doesn’t quite make it to a laugh. “Hi to you too.”

Dean’s on his feet now, controller abandoned on the couch, all his usual lazy beauty sharpened into something pissed and bright. “I’m serious.”

“I know.” Her head’s beginning to pound harder now that she’s standing still. The adrenaline from getting out of the car, climbing the steps, seeing Garrett’s face, all of it drains down through her body and leaves her feeling oddly hollow. 

Garrett notices, his hand comes to her elbow, barely touching at first like he’s afraid pressure might break something. The warmth of him lands through the hoodie and her body, traitorous and exhausted, turns toward it before her pride has any say.

She steps into him. She leans forward and presses her forehead against his chest because the angle is the only one that doesn’t put pressure on her nose, one hand curling weakly in the soft fabric of his shirt. 

Garrett tenses under her for a fraction of a second, like seeing her had knocked him out of himself and her touching him is what pulls him back in wrong. Then his arms come around her.

Careful. So careful it almost makes her cry. One hand settles at the back of her head without pressing, fingers spread wide over her hair, the other around her waist, holding her there with a gentleness that feels nothing like the boy who body checks men into boards for sport and everything like the one who once took her UGGs off because outside shoes didn’t belong in bed.

She closes her eyes, just for a second. Garrett’s voice, when it finally comes, is rough enough that she feels it against her cheek. “Baby.”

“I’m okay,” she says into his shirt, because she’s decided to start lying as a hobby.

His hand flexes once at her waist. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m not actively dying.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

She manages a weak shrug. “Clinically significant distinction.”

Logan exhales behind them, shaky in a way he probably wishes nobody noticed. Tucker moves around them quietly, collecting controllers, turning the game off properly, lowering the TV volume until the room becomes mostly the hum of the refrigerator and distant campus noise through the windows. Dean’s still standing there looking like he needs something to hit and has, unfortunately for everyone, found only furniture.

Garrett pulls back enough to look at her, but not far enough that she loses him. His eyes scan her face again, slower now. It’s almost worse than the pain. The way his gaze catches on the swollen bridge of her nose, the blood at one nostril, the split in her lower lip. He looks wrecked by it. Offended, almost, like her body has done something behind his back.

“Come sit down,” he says.

She wants to make a joke about his captain voice. She really does. It’s right there, familiar and easy. Unfortunately, her brain loses the sentence halfway through assembling it, and by the time she finds a piece of it, Garrett’s already guiding her to the couch.

Dean moves a cushion out of the way. Tucker places another behind her back. Logan stands nearby with the paperwork in one hand, reading it with a frown so intense it looks like he’s preparing for finals in head trauma. 

They all shift around her with this strange, quiet purpose that makes her chest feel too full and her face feel too sore to hold whatever expression she wants. Garrett crouches in front of her and reaches for her sneakers.

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

His mouth barely moves. “Taking your shoes off.”

“I can take my shoes off.”

He looks up at her, and there is something in his face so taut and helpless that the argument falls apart in her lap. “Can you let me?”

Oh. That’s not fair. That’s wildly not fair.

She swallows and looks away first. “Yeah.”

Garrett unties her sneakers one at a time, slow with the laces, careful of the way moving her leg pulls faintly at her shoulder. He sets them neatly beside the coffee table. When her feet are free, she curls her legs up onto the couch without thinking, tucking herself sideways into the cushions because upright feels like an idea designed by people whose skulls are not currently full of angry bees.

Garrett’s hand hovers near her knee, then settles there. “Did you want water?”

She nods, then instantly regrets the movement. Pain washes across her forehead, hot and thick. Her eyes squeeze shut. “Ow. Fuck. Yes, please.”

Garrett rises. Her hand moves before she decides to move it, fingers catching the loose fabric of his sweatpants at the thigh, barely enough to stop him if he wanted to go. But he does stop. Immediately. She opens her eyes. Garrett’s looking down at her hand on him. Then he looks at Logan.

Logan’s already moving. “I’ve got it.”

Garrett sits beside her instead. He does it carefully, couch dipping with his weight, his thigh warm along the outside of her curled legs. He doesn’t crowd her face. Doesn’t pull her in too fast. Simply sits close enough that she can feel him there, his hand returning to her knee, thumb still because even his restless touching has gone cautious.

Dean hasn’t let the original point go. He sits on the edge of the coffee table across from her, elbows on his knees, all dramatic cheekbones and very real anger. “No, seriously. Who the fuck did this?”

She opens her mouth. The first answer is too long and falls apart before she can get to it. Her head gives one hard pulse. She shuts her eyes briefly, tries again. “A patient.”

Dean stares at her. “A patient did this to your face?”

“He was really agitated,” she explains as Logan comes back with water. He hands it to Garrett, not her, which would be annoying if her hands didn’t feel vaguely unreliable. “It escalated. He didn’t mean it.”

Dean’s expression says that this isn’t helping his blood pressure. “He didn’t mean it.”

“No.” She lets Garrett pass her the glass, taking it with both hands because one feels optimistic. The cold of it is nice against her palms. Her lip stings when she drinks, water catching briefly at the split, but her throat is dry enough that she keeps going anyway. “He was out of it. Psych presentation. It wasn’t– nobody did anything wrong.”

Tucker returns from the kitchen with an ice pack wrapped in a tea towel and offers it out with both hands like a peace treaty. “For your face. Or your shoulder. Or… wherever. I don’t know. I’m not the medical one.”

She takes it and immediately loves him a little for the towel. “Thanks, Tuck.”

Logan, reading from the discharge sheet now, says, “It says shoulder strain?”

“Logan.”

“What? It does.”

“Stop reading my lore out loud,” she huffs.

Dean gives her a look. “Your lore says shoulder strain and concussion.”

She lets her eyes close for a moment. “My lore is private.”

“Your lore showed up bleeding on our porch.”

She would like to laugh. She really would. Instead, the corner of her mouth twitches, pain bites through her lip, and her eyes water instantly. “Ow. God. That’s so annoying.”

Garrett’s hand comes up, stops short of her face. His fingers curl in midair before he lets them drop. “Your lip’s split and you’ve still got dried blood under your nose, baby.”

The baby does something terrible to her. It always does, but right now it’s worse because his voice is stripped down to the bone. He’s looking at her like he’s trying to keep himself from shaking by cataloguing every visible injury.

She shrugs with one shoulder and immediately regrets that too. Pain tugs from the side of her neck down into the joint, sharp enough that her breath catches.

Garrett sees it. His jaw flexes. “Don’t shrug.”

“I forgot.”

“How do you forget your shoulder hurts?”

“Concussion,” she says, because if everyone else gets to use it as an explanation, so does she. “It looks worse than it is. Promise. I’m just drained. And foggy. I keep losing my train of thought, which is the rudest symptom. Like, I was mid-sentence with Dr. Patel and just fully misplaced the rest of it.”

Tucker’s mouth softens. “That sounds scary.”

She looks down at the glass in her hands. The condensation has started to wet her fingers. “Mostly annoying.”

She lifts the ice pack toward her face, but her shoulder protests halfway up and makes the movement jerky. Garrett catches the pack before she can pretend she meant to do that.

Her eyes flick to him. “I can hold an ice pack.”

“I know.” His voice is quieter now. He shifts closer, one knee turning toward her on the couch, the wrapped ice pack careful in his hand. “But how many times have you looked after me, huh?”

She has no good answer for that. Too many. Not enough. In locker room hallways, in his bed, on this exact couch with bruises over his ribs while he tried to convince her hockey was a sufficient medical explanation for all bodily damage. She’s pressed ice to his cheek and taped his fingers and made him take painkillers and once threatened to call Maria for backup if he said manageable one more time.

Garrett’s mouth moves faintly, not a smile, but close enough to hurt. “Let me.”

She lets him. Garrett lifts the ice pack to her face with a care that makes her throat tighten, angling it over the bridge of her nose and the swelling beginning to spread under one eye without pressing too hard. 

The cold hurts first, a bright, mean sting over bruised skin, then settles into something almost relieving. Her breath comes out shaky despite her best efforts.

“Too much?” he asks.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” She shifts her gaze past him because his face is currently unmanageable. Dean and Tucker and Logan are all watching her with varying degrees of poorly concealed worry. Dean looks like he’s biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. Logan still has the discharge paper. Tucker has both hands shoved into the pocket of his hoodie like he doesn’t trust them not to hover. “What?”

Dean blinks. “What?”

“You guys look like this every week and I don’t stare at you.”

Logan snorts, but it comes out thin. “That’s because we’re hot when we’re bruised.”

She manages an eye roll, which is a win. “You’re concussed half the time and deeply irritating the other half.”

“Range,” Dean says automatically.

She points weakly toward the TV with the hand not holding her water. “Relax. Go back to your video games.”

Tucker’s brows pull together. “No, but– but it’s different.”

Her eyes move to him.

He looks briefly embarrassed, then pushes through it anyway. “It’s you.”

Her chest does that awful thing again, too soft and too sore at the same time. She looks down because taking that directly from Tucker feels unfairly intimate, like he’s handed her something warm without warning.

“I’m okay,” she says, and it’s not entirely true, but she tries to make it sound close enough. “Really. I was observed. I had neuro obs. I had scans. No fracture. Nothing’s broken. Just bruised and concussed and mildly tragic.”

“Mildly?” Dean asks.

“Moderately if you keep fucking yelling.”

His face changes instantly. “Sorry.”

The apology is so immediate that she almost smiles again and has to stop herself like a responsible person. “It’s okay.”

Garrett’s hand holding the ice pack is steady. His eyes have barely left her face, and the longer she sits there under that attention, the more she realises he still hasn’t really said anything. Not like Garrett. Not a joke, not an actual question, not one of the bossy little comments that usually lands him in trouble and somehow still gets her to drink water.

His silence has weight. It sits beside her on the couch, pressed into the careful line of his shoulders.

She turns her head just enough to look at him. “You’re being weird.”

His eyes flick to hers. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

His mouth presses together. For a second, he looks younger than he usually does. Less Briar captain, less untouchable campus landmark, more boy on a couch holding an ice pack to a girl’s swollen face with fear making a mess under his skin.

He swallows. “Do you want me to loosen your hair?”

The question is so small and practical that it nearly undoes her. Her hair is still claw-clipped from placement, half-fallen now, strands tugging at her scalp from where it got pulled in the scuffle and then shoved messily back while she was being assessed. She had forgotten about it until he said it, and now she can feel every tight little pull at the roots, all of it feeding into the headache sitting behind her eyes.

“Yes, please,” she says.

Garrett lowers the ice pack and hands it to Tucker without looking. Tucker takes it like an assistant in surgery. Garrett turns slightly toward her, one hand moving behind her head, not touching at first. “Tell me if it hurts.”

“It all hurts.”

His face does something awful.

She softens her voice. “I’ll tell you if it hurts more.”

“Okay.” His fingers find the clip carefully. He’s taken her hair down before, usually with far less medical purpose and far more smugness, but now every motion is slow, almost reverent. The clip gives, and the weight of her hair loosens down her back. The relief is immediate enough that her eyes flutter shut without permission.

Garrett catches that too. “Better?”

“Mhm.”

He combs the fallen strands away from the side of her face with his fingers, avoiding the swelling, avoiding the blood, avoiding every place that might make her flinch. His thumb brushes once near her temple, feather-light. 

She opens her eyes and finds him looking at her. “I’m okay,” she says again, quieter this time. “Really.”

Garrett doesn’t argue. That might be worse. He only nods once and takes the ice pack back from Tucker, pressing it carefully to her face again.

For a while, the room adjusts around her. Dean sits back down, but he doesn’t pick up the controller. Tucker goes to the kitchen and returns with a straw for her water like a man who’s discovered a side quest and intends to complete it properly. Logan reads the discharge instructions twice, then starts setting alarms on his phone without announcing it, because subtlety, in this house, is sometimes just everyone pretending they cannot see love doing administrative tasks in sweatpants.

She drinks water through the straw because lifting the glass is annoying and because nobody makes a thing of it. Garrett keeps the ice pack steady. Every so often, he asks a question in a voice too even to be casual. Headache worse? Nausea? Vision okay? She answers as best she can. Same. Little bit. Yeah, mostly. 

When Dean shifts too fast and the couch creaks, he freezes like he’s committed assault by upholstery. That makes her huff something dangerously close to a laugh, and Garrett immediately murmurs, “Careful,” like her face is now a team responsibility.

The fogginess comes in waves. Sometimes she’s fully in the room, tracking Dean’s quiet rage and Tucker’s gentle fussing and Logan’s forced calm. Sometimes the edges blur a little, slow, like her thoughts are moving through syrup. Garrett’s thigh is warm against her curled legs. His arm rests along the back of the couch behind her, a soft barrier between her and the world. 

She leans into him by degrees until her shoulder touches his chest and her head tips carefully toward the place beneath his jaw that smells like soap and boy and safety.

She doesn’t mean to get sleepy. She has discharge instructions that say she can sleep, she knows that, but the idea of giving in with everyone watching feels embarrassing in a new, stupid direction. Still, her eyelids grow heavy. The headache spreads and dulls under the cold. The room is dim. The boys are quiet. Garrett is warm.

At some point, Dean says softly, “You want me to call Lucy or someone?”

She tries to answer. The name gets halfway through her head and then wanders off. “Tomorrow,” she murmurs.

“Okay,” Dean says, and for once there’s no joke attached.

Garrett shifts beside her. “Baby?”

She makes a small sound that could mean what or I’m alive or don’t make me move, depending on how generous he feels.

“You getting sleepy?”

“No.”

There’s a pause.

Logan says, very quietly, “That was the least convincing thing I’ve ever heard.”

She opens one eye to glare at him, but the room tilts slightly with the effort, so she closes it again. “Your face is least convincing.”

“Strong comeback.”

“Thank you.”

Garrett’s lips brush her hair. It’s quick, maybe accidental, except nothing Garrett does with her feels accidental anymore, no matter how hard both of them have tried to label it otherwise. “I’m gonna take you upstairs, okay?”

Her eyes open properly at that, or as properly as they can. “I can walk.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that and then doing the thing for me anyway.”

His mouth curves faintly for the first time all night. It’s tiny and tired and painfully Garrett. “Yeah.”

She should argue. She’s built a respectable portion of this entire situationship on arguing with Garrett Graham while letting him do exactly what she wants him to do. But her shoulder aches, her face throbs, and her legs feel like they belong to somebody who’s spent the day being chased by weather. 

More than that, she wants him. She wants his hands steady under her thighs, his chest close, his room dark and warm around them. She wants to stop being the student who got hurt and start being the girl Garrett carries upstairs because the floor feels too far away.

“Okay,” she whispers.

Dean looks at the TV like he’s never been interested in anything more. Tucker suddenly finds the water glass fascinating. Logan folds the discharge papers with great concentration. Nobody says a word.

Garrett slides one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees with the same careful strength he uses for everything he takes seriously. “Shoulder?”

“Fine.”

His eyes flick to hers.

“Not worse,” she corrects.

He nods once and lifts her.

It does hurt, a little. Her shoulder pulls, her head pulses, and the movement makes nausea roll faintly through her stomach. But Garrett holds her so close and so steadily that the discomfort never gets sharp enough to scare her. Her hand curls in the front of his shirt, her face turning carefully toward his neck because pressing into his chest would bump her nose and she’s learned at least one thing tonight.

Dean’s voice follows them, low and rough from the couch. “G.”

Garrett stops at the foot of the stairs but doesn’t turn fully, like turning her too much might hurt.

Dean’s eyes move over her once, then to Garrett. Whatever he’d been about to say gets swallowed down and changed into something smaller. “We’re downstairs if you need anything.”

Garrett’s hold tightens by a fraction. “Yeah.”

Tucker adds, “I’ll bring up more ice in a bit.”

“And meds when she’s due,” Logan says, lifting the papers slightly.

She wants to tell them they’re all being ridiculous. She wants to say she’s fine, to make some joke about the Briar hockey team turning into a poorly licensed urgent care clinic. But her throat feels thick, and her eyes sting in a way that has nothing to do with the swelling, and for once the joke doesn’t come quickly enough to save her from feeling it.

So she only says, “Thanks, guys.”

Dean nods, jaw tight. Tucker gives her a small, worried smile. Logan says, “Anytime,” like he means it and hates that there’s a reason to.

Garrett carries her upstairs slowly. The stairwell is dim, the house clutter softened into shadows: a hoodie over the railing, someone’s shoes kicked near the landing, a dent in the wall nobody has confessed to making. 

His breathing is steady beneath her ear. His arms don’t shift, don’t tremble, don’t let her feel for one second like she’s heavy or inconvenient or anything other than something he’s decided belongs safely against him.

Halfway up, she murmurs, “Garrett?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re still being weird.”

This time, his breath leaves him in something almost like a laugh. It brushes warm over her hair. “Yeah, baby,” he says, voice low enough that it belongs only to the stairs and the dark and the careful space between them. “I know.”

His room is already dim when he gets there, like he’d been in it before everything happened and left the lamp on low beside the bed, the shade turning the walls a warm, soft yellow that doesn’t stab behind her eyes. 

The window is cracked just enough to let in a thin line of cold air, shifting the edge of the curtain and carrying in the far-off sound of campus on a weeknight, car doors and laughter and somebody shouting down the street like the world has not personally offended her face.

Garrett nudges the door open with his shoulder and steps inside carefully, like the room might have developed hazards in the ten minutes since he last saw it. One of his hoodies is thrown over the desk chair. There’s a textbook facedown on the bed that he must have been pretending to read earlier, a roll of hockey tape on the nightstand, his phone charger twisted into a knot on the floor. 

The ordinary mess of him sits around them so gently that it makes something behind her ribs go weak. His room. His bed. His detergent and the clean soap smell of his skin under the faint cold of the hallway.

For the first time since the bay, since the rail, since the white burst of pain and Maria’s hand firm between her shoulder blades, her body seems to understand that it’s stopped moving.

Garrett lowers her onto the edge of the mattress with so much care it almost becomes annoying. One arm stays behind her back until she’s properly sitting, the other at her knees, and even after he lets go he keeps his hands there for a second, hovering near her like he’s not fully convinced gravity has been handled.

She blinks down at him because he’s crouched in front of her now, broad shoulders between her knees, face tipped up, eyes moving over her again with that same awful, quiet attention. 

She can feel what he’s seeing before he says anything. The blood dried tight beneath her nose. The swelling already darkening around the bridge of it. The split in her lip, tacky and sore. Mascara smudged under both eyes from the crying she doesn’t remember allowing herself to do properly, only the wetness and the sting and Maria saying, breathe for me, honey, nice and slow.

Garrett swallows. His hands rest lightly on her calves, thumbs still. “Did you want to wipe your face?” he asks, voice careful. “You’ve got, uh…” His eyes flick down, then back up, and his mouth tightens around something he doesn’t let out. “Some mascara under your eyes. And some blood still.”

She knows he’s trying very hard not to sound like the sight of it is putting his organs in the wrong order. She loves him a little for the effort, which is a thought she cannot touch right now because her brain is concussed and reckless and clearly looking for loaded weapons.

She nods once, then immediately remembers that nodding is no longer a neutral activity. The headache flares behind her eyes, thick and punishing. “Ow,” she says, small and irritated.

Garrett’s hands tighten on her legs. “Hey.”

“I’m good.” Her tongue touches the split in her lip and she tastes metal again. “Can you?”

His face changes. Barely. A little fracture through the tight worry, something softer underneath it. “Course.”

He stands, and the second his hands leave her, her body reacts before her mind catches up. Her fingers snag in the hem of his t-shirt, clumsy and sudden, and the movement pulls through her bad shoulder so sharply that a soft, wounded sound slips out of her before she can bite it down.

Garrett freezes instantly. Entire body going still. “Hey. Hey, you’re good.” He turns back toward her, one hand coming carefully to her wrist, covering her fingers where they’re twisted in his shirt. “I’m just going to the hallway, yeah? Bathroom’s right there. Two seconds.”

She knows that. Obviously she knows that. She’s been in this house enough times to know the bathroom is six steps from his door and usually contains at least one towel on the floor and Dean’s body wash in a place where it doesn’t belong. She knows Garrett’s not leaving. She knows the door is open, the house is full, Logan’s downstairs reading concussion instructions like the exam is tomorrow.

Still, her fingers don’t let go right away.

Her head hurts. Her mouth hurts. Her shoulder is a hot, sharp line down one side of her body. And the small, rational part of her brain that usually handles dignity and sarcasm is sitting in a dark room somewhere with a blanket over its head, because all she can think is that she wants him where she can reach him.

Garrett’s thumb moves once over her knuckles. “I’ll keep the door open.”

She nods more carefully this time. “Okay.”

He waits until her fingers loosen, then steps backward instead of turning right away, eyes on her the whole time. It would be funny, maybe, if it didn’t work. If she didn’t feel her ribs unclench slightly because she can still see him, because he backs into the hallway like she’s a wild animal he’s trying not to spook and not a nursing student with blood under her nose and one of his sleeves somewhere in her fist.

He disappears only when he reaches the bathroom, and even then he keeps talking. “Still here,” he says, and the water starts a second later, soft against porcelain. “Just getting a washcloth.”

“I know,” she calls back, then winces because even her own voice feels too loud inside her skull.

Garrett comes back with the washcloth damp and folded in one hand. His other hand shuts the door halfway, enough to soften the rest of the house into a distant murmur. The mattress dips when he sits beside her, turned toward her with one knee bent on the bed. 

He smells like clean skin and laundry and something faintly sweet from the kitchen downstairs, and she has to swallow around the childish, humiliating urge to press her face into his chest and stay there until her body stops feeling like it has been borrowed from a car crash.

“Here we go,” he says.

The cloth touches just beneath her eye first.

She stiffens on instinct, because everything has hurt tonight and her body is no longer trusting innocent objects, but Garrett pauses immediately. “Too cold?”

“No.” Her voice comes out thinner than she likes. “Just surprised.”

“Okay.” His face stays close, intent in a way that would normally make her flustered for more interesting reasons. “I’ll go slow.”

He does. He wipes the smudged mascara from beneath one eye with feather-light strokes, the washcloth barely dragging over skin, then folds it to a clean corner and does the other side. He works like he has been given something fragile and a little dangerous. Like every movement is being negotiated with the injuries on her face and the dull heaviness behind her eyes. 

His jaw flexes when the cloth comes away grey-black with makeup and faintly pink with old blood, but he doesn’t comment. He only turns it again and brings it to the place under her nose.

“That might hurt,” he murmurs.

“It already hurts.”

His eyes lift to hers. “Yeah.”

She looks down at his wrist, at the veins there, at the old tape mark near his thumb, at the little scrape over one knuckle from practice or a game or some Garrett-related misuse of his own body. Usually she would notice and ask. Usually she would press her thumb near it and say, what’s this? and he would say, nothing, and she would call him annoying and make him let her look anyway.

Tonight she just watches his hand hold the cloth and lets him clean the blood away. The dried parts tug where they have hardened on her skin, and she sucks in a breath through her mouth when the washcloth brushes too close to the swelling at the bridge of her nose. 

Garrett stops every time, waits for the little movement of her fingers in his shirt to settle, then continues. He wipes around the split in her lip last, his mouth flattening when fresh blood beads at the edge.

“You’re gonna bruise like hell,” he says, almost to himself.

She tries not to smile. It becomes a tiny, crooked thing anyway and immediately hurts. “Hot.”

His eyes flick back to hers, and for the first time since she arrived, something almost like Garrett moves across his face. Small. Tired. There and gone. “Yeah, baby. Real intimidating.”

“Good. I’ve always wanted to look tough.”

“You already look tough.”

“That’s because you have questionable standards.”

“No,” he says, and the softness in it makes her look away first. “I don’t.”

The room goes quiet except for the dull throb of the house underneath them, the creak of something downstairs, Logan or Dean moving around, the low murmur of the boys trying and failing not to sound worried through the floor. Garrett folds the washcloth over itself and sets it on the nightstand, then looks down at the rest of her.

The hoodie Maria put on her is zipped to her collarbone, dark fabric stained rusty near the cuff where she must have touched her face. Her scrub pants are still on, wrinkled and creased from the shift, one knee smudged faintly with something she refuses to identify. There is a hospital sticker on her shoe that nobody noticed until now, bright and stupid and stuck to the edge of the sole.

Garrett’s gaze catches on the blood at her sleeve. “You want out of these scrub pants?” he asks quietly. “And your hoodie has blood on it, baby.”

She looks down, as if this is new information. Her brain takes a second to make sense of the stain. “Oh.”

“It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” she says after a moment. Then, because the word seems to have scraped something loose on the way out, she adds, “Sorry.”

Garrett’s head lifts. “Why the fuck are you sorry?”

The sharpness of it makes her blink. He says it too quietly, all the force held under his tongue. But it lands somewhere tender anyway. She presses her lips together and immediately regrets that too. “Ow.”

Garrett’s expression softens, but his eyes stay fixed on her. Waiting.

She sighs, and it comes out shaky enough that she would like to file a formal complaint with her nervous system. “Because you…” The thought keeps slipping. She can see it, vaguely, but reaching for it makes her head pulse harder. “You didn’t sign up for this. I should’ve gotten Lucy or Monique. Or stayed with Maria, or– I don’t know.”

“No.” Garrett shakes his head once, and then stops himself, like maybe he’s remembered that head movement isn’t anyone’s friend right now. His hand comes to the side of her face, careful of the bruising, thumb brushing just below her temple where the skin is untouched. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re apologising for coming here.”

Her throat tightens. She looks at his shoulder because his face is too close and too much and still not close enough. “I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to.”

“Had to what?”

“Look after me.”

For a second, he only stares at her. Then he exhales through his nose, rough and almost disbelieving, and his fingers slide into her hair at the side of her head, holding it back from her face like the gesture can stand in for all the things he’s trying not to say too fast or wrong. “You think I’m sitting here because I feel obligated?”

She has the very strong, very pathetic urge to cry, which is inconvenient because crying would involve her face. “I don’t know.”

“Baby.”

She closes her eyes.

“Hey.” His thumb moves once. “Look at me.”

She does, reluctantly, because Garrett’s voice has gone into that low place that usually gets him what he wants and because her resistance is currently running on fumes.

His face is steadier now. Still pale underneath the warm lamplight, still tight around the edges, but steady in the places he’s offering to her. “I want you here.”

Her breath catches around something that hurts in a completely separate way from her nose. “Are we…” She stops, partly because the sentence is embarrassing and partly because she loses the middle of it for a second. The fog rolls in, cottony and irritating. She blinks, and Garrett waits. He doesn’t hurry her. Doesn’t fill the gap with a joke. Just keeps his hand at her face until she finds the rest. “Are we okay?”

His expression breaks so gently it makes her chest ache. “Course we are.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He brushes her hair back again, knuckles barely grazing the side of her neck. “We’re okay.”

She nods carefully. A tiny movement. “Good.”

Garrett’s mouth lifts at one corner, soft and sad and warm all at once. “Good?”

“Yeah.” Her fingers curl in his shirt again. This time, she doesn’t pull. “Because I really…” She swallows. Her throat is dry. Her head is thick. The truth comes out before she can dress it up in something safer. “I just wanted you.”

Something in him goes still. A held breath somewhere in the centre of him, then he nods, and the smile that comes with it is small enough that it feels private, even with the door half open and the boys downstairs and the whole house softly rearranged around her injury. “I know the feeling.”

She sniffs, because her body is committed to making the worst possible choices, and pain snaps up through her nose so sharply her eyes water. “Ow. Fuck.” She presses two fingers near the side of her face. “You do?”

Garrett’s smile shifts. “You want me to say it again while you look like you’re about to sneeze blood?”

“Maybe.”

“I know the feeling,” he says, and this time he doesn’t look away. “Because who better to nurse me back to health than you, huh?”

The laugh that escapes her is tiny and breathless and immediately followed by a wince, but it’s real. “I’m not even good at it today.”

“That’s okay.” He leans in and kisses the top of her head, nowhere near the bruising, lips warm against her hair. “I’ll cover this one.”

He gets up slowly this time, one hand staying in hers until the last possible second, then moves to his dresser. She watches him pull open drawers. 

He finds a pair of grey sweatpants first, soft and old and definitely his, then a zip-up hoodie because it will not need to go over her head. She can see the moment he chooses it for that reason. The little pause, the glance back at her shoulder, the jaw tight enough to tell on him.

When he comes back, the clothes folded over his arm, he crouches in front of her again. “Alright. We’ll do this slow, okay?”

She nods, then corrects it into a verbal answer before her head can punish her. “Okay.”

“Pants first.”

“Romantic.”

His mouth twitches. “I’m known for it.”

He helps her stand only as much as she needs, one hand at her good elbow, the other at her waist. The room sways faintly when she gets upright, unpleasantly loose at the edges, and Garrett’s hand firms at once. “Dizzy?”

“Little bit.”

“Sit?”

“No, I’m good. Just…” She looks down at the drawstring of her scrub pants, then at him. “This is a very low dignity moment for me.”

Garrett’s gaze flicks up, and there it is again, the smallest spark of him through the worry. “Baby, you’ve fallen asleep drooling on my chest after telling me I had slutty veins.”

She frowns. “I said that?”

“You did.”

“That does sound like me,” she accepts. 

“Exactly. Dignity’s been dead.”

She huffs, almost laughing, and he helps ease the scrub pants down her legs without making a production of it. Nothing in his face changes in the way that would make her feel watched, despite the fact that he’s, technically, undressing her in his bedroom. 

His touch stays practical, warm, almost painfully respectful. He holds the sweatpants open for her one leg at a time, keeps a hand at her hip while she steps in, then draws them up slowly over her thighs.

They’re too big, of course. They sit low on her hips and pool at her ankles in a way that would be funny if everything didn’t hurt. Garrett ties the drawstring in a loose knot and pats it once.

“There,” he says. “Very fashionable.”

“Shut up. I’m concussed.”

“I know. That’s why I’m letting you get away with that tone.”

Her mouth threatens a smile, so she bites it back and looks down at herself instead. The hoodie is next. Garrett reaches for the zipper, then stops. “Where’s the top?”

She blinks at him. “What?”

“Your scrub top.” His voice stays even, but not naturally. 

Her mind searches the department and comes back with torn fabric, scissors, someone’s gloved hands. “Um.” She rubs her fingers against the seam of his sweatpants, trying to make the thought stay still long enough to look at it. “Um. Bag. Maybe. They had to cut it off, I think.”

Garrett’s jaw tenses. It’s quick. A muscle jumping once, his mouth going flat, his eyes dropping away from her face for half a second like he needs to put the reaction somewhere she can’t see it. But she sees it anyway. She’s concussed, not blind.

When he looks back up, he’s forced something lighter onto his face. It’s not quite convincing, but the attempt is so Garrett it makes her ache.

“Damn,” he says. “Liked that pair.”

She stares at him. “Pair?”

“Set. Outfit. Whatever.” He lifts one shoulder, careful to keep his voice mild. “Made your ass look great.”

The giggle escapes before she can stop it. Immediately, pain blooms across her lip and nose, and she presses her fingers to her mouth with a muffled, “Ow. Don’t flirt with the concussed.”

Garrett’s smile is barely there, but warmer this time. “Can’t help it.”

“You should try.”

“I’ve been trying for months. Terrible at it.”

That one sits in the room longer than it should. Her eyes lift to his, and for a second, neither of them moves. Then Garrett clears his throat softly and reaches for the zipper of her hoodie.

“This one’s gonna suck,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

That’s somehow worse than if he had lied. “Okay.”

He unzips the bloodstained hoodie slowly, easing one side down her good arm first. That part is fine, or close enough. The bad shoulder is different. Even with the zip-up, even with him going painfully slowly, the fabric drags over the sore joint and catches near her elbow, and the strain of lifting even a fraction sends pain snapping hot and deep through her shoulder and up the side of her neck.

She makes a sound she hates. Small and broken enough that Garrett’s whole face changes.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he murmurs immediately. His hands freeze, one holding the fabric, the other at her waist. “I’ve got it. You’re okay. Don’t move.”

Her eyes burn fast. Too fast. The pain isn’t even the worst she has felt tonight, which somehow makes crying more insulting, like her body has chosen this as the point to become unreasonable. A few tears slip out anyway, hot and humiliating over her swollen cheeks.

“Sorry,” she whispers.

Garrett’s eyes flash. “Do not.”

“I know. I know, I’m just–” Her breath catches in that horrible little pre-sob way, and her face hurts too much to do anything with it. “It hurts.”

“I know.” His voice drops, low and steady. He shifts closer, bracing her gently with his own body while he works the sleeve down by tiny increments. “I know. I’m sorry. Almost done. There you go. Good girl. That’s it.”

The praise lands somewhere stupid and warm under all the pain, and she would make fun of him for weaponising it if she were not currently trying not to cry into his shirt. The hoodie finally comes free, and Garrett gets his zip-up around her without making her lift her arm higher than necessary, guiding the sore side in first, then the other, then drawing the soft fabric closed around her body. It smells like him immediately. Clean laundry, cold rink air, skin.

The relief of being out of the hospital clothes hits harder than she expects. She folds forward into him.

Garrett catches her like he has been waiting for it, one arm firm around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head before she can tip into the wrong angle. “There we go,” he murmurs into her hair. “Got you.”

She nods against him, but it’s barely a movement. “Hurts.”

“I know, baby.”

“I’m being a baby.”

“No.” His hand spreads over her back, broad and warm through the hoodie. “You’re being concussed with a fucked-up shoulder.”

She breathes against him for another minute, letting the warmth of him settle over the sharper edges. His heart is steady under her cheek. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe that’s just what she needs it to be. Either way, his arms stay around her until her breathing evens out, until the tears stop sliding hot under her eyes, until she can pull back without feeling like she might tip sideways into the nightstand.

Garrett helps her lie down against his pillows. He has her on her back at first, then adjusts when she makes a face, turning her slightly onto her good side with slow hands and a pillow tucked near her shoulder so it isn’t pulling strangely. He moves like he’s learning her injury as he goes, like the map of her pain matters enough to memorise. It makes something soft and sore press up behind her ribs.

When he climbs in beside her, he doesn’t pull her in immediately. He waits, lying on his side facing her, one arm bent under his head, the other resting near the blanket between them. Giving her space to decide how much contact feels possible. Which is very considerate of him and also deeply annoying because she has no interest in space.

She curls into him as best she can, awkwardly, her bad shoulder protected between them, her forehead carefully finding the safe hollow below his collarbone. Garrett lets out a breath that sounds like he has been holding it since the front door.

“There,” he says softly. “That okay?”

“Mhm.”

His hand comes to her hair again. Fingers sliding slowly from her temple back over her scalp, loosening what the clip and the shift and the panic left behind. The motion sends a dull, pleasant ache through her, somewhere under the headache, a different kind of heaviness.

She sighs before she can stop herself. “Feels nice.”

Garrett’s thumb moves near her hairline. “I’ll keep doing it then.”

She lets her eyes close.

For a while, the room stays still around them. The lamp glows behind her eyelids. The house below makes small, careful sounds, a cabinet closing softly, footsteps pausing in the hallway and then retreating, the quiet evidence of three hockey players trying very hard to be normal about the girl in Garrett’s bed with a concussion. 

Her head throbs anyway, steady and deep. Her lip pulses. Her shoulder aches in its own miserable rhythm. But Garrett’s hand keeps moving through her hair, slow enough that her breathing starts to follow it.

She’s almost asleep, or something near it, when Garrett speaks. “What happened?”

His voice is quiet. He asks like he’s been holding the question in both hands for too long and needs to set it somewhere.

She opens her eyes to the dark cotton of his shirt. Her brain takes a few seconds to come back online. She breathes out slowly through her mouth because her nose is still a disaster. 

The memory is there at once, too close and too bright around the edges, and her body reacts to it before the words arrive. Fingers curling lightly in the front of his shirt. Shoulder tightening, then complaining. The ghost of the rail coming up fast.

Garrett’s hand pauses in her hair. “You don’t have to.”

“No.” Her voice is quiet. “It’s okay.”

He starts moving his hand again, slower now.

“It was a psych patient,” she says. “He was really agitated. Not like… violent, at first. Just scared, I think. Curled in on himself, wouldn’t really let anyone near him. Maria was with me. We were trying to keep the room calm, but the ED was so busy and loud and everyone was stretched thin, and he just…” She stops, trying to find the order of it. Everything feels slippery when she looks too directly. “He lashed out. His elbow got me in the face. Accidentally, I think.”

Garrett’s chest goes very still under her cheek.

“And I cried out,” she continues. “I don’t know. It just hurt and it surprised me, and I think that freaked him out more. Or the noise did. Or maybe he just didn’t know what was happening.” She swallows. Her throat feels raw. “He grabbed my scrub top before I could move back. Pulled me forward. My nose hit the bed rail. Or my mouth did. I’m not sure. It happened really fast.”

Garrett’s arm tightens around her, then loosens immediately like he’s afraid of hurting her. His hand remains in her hair, but the fingers have gone still.

“Security came in,” she says. “Another nurse pulled me back. Steph, I think. Or maybe Maria. Both, maybe. I don’t know. I remember Maria saying my name a lot.” She looks down between them, though there is nothing to see but the dark fold of his shirt and the edge of his hoodie on her body. “He didn’t mean it.”

Garrett is quiet for long enough that she starts to wonder if he has stopped breathing.

Then he says, “You keep saying that.”

“He didn’t.”

“I know.” His voice is rough, scraped thin at the edges. “I know he didn’t, baby. I just…” He takes a breath. It moves carefully through his chest. “You got hurt anyway.”

The words land with the same awful simplicity as Maria’s had in the car. That doesn’t mean you didn’t get hurt. She closes her eyes, because everyone has decided to be kind in the exact way she cannot defend against.

“I know,” she whispers.

Garrett’s hand finally moves again, fingers sliding over her scalp, then down to the nape of her neck where he can touch without brushing bruised skin. “Is this how you feel?”

She opens her eyes. “What?”

“When I come home after a game all bruised and shit.” He shifts just enough that she can feel him looking down at her, though she doesn’t lift her head to meet it yet. “Is this what it feels like?”

A tiny breath leaves her. Not quite a laugh. More tired than that. “You mean do I also go weird and silent and look like I might throw up?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yeah.” Her fingers smooth over the fabric of his shirt because she needs something small to do. “Kind of, I guess.”

Garrett doesn’t answer.

She turns her face slightly, enough to look at the line of his jaw in the low light. He’s staring at the wall beyond her head, mouth set, brows drawn, hair falling messily over his forehead. He looks angry and young and helpless, which is such a strange combination on him that it makes her chest ache.

“It’s different,” she says softly. “You’re playing a game you love. You know the risks. I know that. And you guys are all… insane about pain, which I’ve accepted against my will.”

His mouth twitches without humour.

“But I don’t enjoy seeing you hurt.” Her voice goes quieter around the admission. “Even when it’s normal hockey hurt. Even when you’re smug about it and standing in the kitchen telling me it’s fine while your ribs look like someone used you as a doorstop. It still makes my stomach feel weird.”

Garrett’s eyes come down to her then. She tries to hold the look for a second and manages maybe half. His attention is too raw tonight. Too stripped of the things he usually wears over it.

“I know you’re tough,” she says, looking at his collar instead. “I know you can take it. I know half the time you think me worrying is funny or hot or both, because you have a very damaged sense of romance.”

“That’s fair.”

“But I still…” She frowns slightly, the thought losing shape, then finding it again. “I still hate it. Not because I think you’re weak. Because you’re not. Obviously. It’s just your body, you know? And I like your body.”

Garrett’s eyebrows lift faintly.

She narrows her eyes at him. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to become insufferable.”

“Maybe a little.”

“I have a concussion. Be kind.”

His face softens again, the almost-tease folding back into something warmer. “I’m being so kind.”

“You’re doing okay.”

“Glowing review.”

She breathes out through her mouth, and for a moment the room feels almost normal. Almost. Garrett’s hand in her hair. His chest under her cheek. The two of them managing to find the familiar shape of each other even through the bruising and the blood and the fear still sitting somewhere near the foot of the bed.

Then Garrett’s thumb brushes the side of her head again, light and careful, and his voice drops. “I hated seeing you like that.”

She looks at him this time.

He doesn’t look away. His eyes are dark in the low light, all the usual teasing stripped out of them. “At the door,” he says. “I hated it.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” His mouth tightens, then releases. “You were standing there with blood on your face and Maria next to you and you looked at me like you were sorry. Like I was gonna be upset that you came here.”

Her throat works. “I didn’t want to be too much.”

Garrett makes a sound under his breath, small and rough. “You got hurt.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re allowed to be too much.”

The sentence is so simple it feels dangerous. Her eyes sting again, and she presses her face carefully into his chest before the tears can do anything stupid to her already stupid face.

Garrett’s arm comes around her, careful of her shoulder, his hand settling between her shoulder blades where he can hold without hurting. “Especially here,” he murmurs into her hair. “Especially with me.”

She doesn’t answer. She can’t, really. Not without crying, and crying hurts, and she’s tired of things hurting. So she only curls her fingers more tightly in his shirt and lets him keep his hand in her hair.

After a while, she says, very quietly, “I’m really tired.”

“I know.” Garrett kisses the top of her head. “You can sleep.”

“Logan set alarms.”

“Of course Logan set alarms.”

She manages the faintest smile. “He looked very serious.”

“He loves a protocol.”

“He does have the head injury experience.”

Garrett huffs a soft laugh against her hair, the sound loosening something in the dark. “Unfortunately.”

She lets her eyes close again. The headache is still there. The bruising is still swelling around her nose, hot and heavy. Her shoulder still aches beneath his hoodie. None of it has gone away.

But Garrett’s fingers keep moving through her hair, and his body is warm where hers has gone cold and wrung out, and downstairs the boys are quiet in a way that makes the whole house feel like it is holding its breath around her.

“Garrett?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“If I say something weird, it’s the concussion.”

His hand pauses for half a second. “Okay.”

“And if I say something nice.”

His mouth brushes her hair. “Also concussion?”

“Probably.”

“Got it.”

She’s quiet long enough that he likely thinks she’s drifted off. Maybe she has, a little. The edge of sleep is soft and close, pulling at the corners of the room, blurring the pain into something thick and manageable. Then she murmurs, “You’re good at this.”

Garrett’s chest rises slowly beneath her cheek. “At what?”

“Looking after me.”

His fingers resume their movement through her hair, slower than before. “Yeah?”

“Mm.”

His voice, when it comes, is barely more than warmth in the dark. “Only because you taught me how.”

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[seventiesaces]

I read ur hockey sandwich fic of dean I lived it and I wanted to ask I u could write more parts where dean is being annoying and the other guys would always help her and defend her and make dean stop annoying her

absolutely!! I'm glad you liked it!! I enjoy writing these types of cute/funny stories.

Dean is one of the clingiest people your have ever met. He constantly hangs off of you, not being particularly picky in regards to manner in which he clings. He clings to your shoulders, your hands, even your feet. In a perfect world, he'd be able to lay with his head in your lap or cushioned against your breasts with your fingernails scratching his scalp all of the time. Alas, that was not an option.

"Dean," You grumbled, your textbook hovering over his blond head that lays in your lap. "I need to study."

Dean peeked up at you, one eye narrowly opening dramatically. He was pretending to be asleep, but not very well. Truly, the dead weight of his giant frame was the only thing preventing you from rolling him off your lap.

"Dean." Your tone was warning, making him open his eyes further.

He pretended to yawn and stretch, a smug look on his face. "Sorry, babe. I'm just so tired."

You roll your eyes. "Uh huh," You attempt to move your legs but Dean doesn't move. "Dean!" You shout, close to using the open textbook as a weapon.

Garrett walked through the living area, heading for the kitchen. "Damn, Dean. I've never heard a girl whine your name with so much anger before."

"First time for everything!" Dean quips, lifting his head to grin at his friend.

In that moment, you catch Garrett's eye. He winks at you, gesturing to Dean. You grin mischievously, realizing he was distracting Dean on purpose.

With a firm push, Dean tumbles to ground. He groans like an old man as you and Garrett laugh. You hop up, hurrying to escape the couch and plop onto one of the stools at the counter before Dean could peel himself off the floor.

As gets up, his arms outstretched to cling to a different part of your body, Garrett catches one of his arms by the bicep.

"You know what, Dean," Garret starts, a twinkle in his dark eyes. "I think we need your help outside."

"With what?" Dean asks, easily distracted like a puppy with a toy.

"You'll see." Garrett remarks, steering his friend out the backdoor. He glances back mouthing, "You owe me."