Cassian and Azriel had run you absolutely ragged atop the house of wind, claiming that today was your ‘surprise examination’ on essentially every single manoeuvre they had taught you in the two years they’d been training you.
It wasn’t just you, to be fair. Every single one of you that had shown up was tested to their limits, but of course for you, Deirdre, Ananke and Roslin, it was slightly harder than it was for the Valkyries, despite your athletic heritage as an Illyrian.
You were practically keeling over at the water station when Nesta had walked over to you and said, “Feel free to come downstairs into the house and take a shower and a nap before you head back to Windhaven.” She had squeezed your shoulder and smiled. “Or even spend the night, if you feel it necessary.”
You gave her a red faced smile and a thumbs up, knowing you would definitely take her up on at least one of those generous options. You weren’t clipped, so nobody would be winnowing you home unless you asked, which you certainly wouldn’t dare. And you were far too tired to fly in this state.
Fifteen minutes later, you were taking sluggish steps down towards the bathing chamber, pulling off your perspiration-ridden leathers the moment you’d closed the door behind you. But not before leaning against the wooden frame and hyperventilating like you’d been starved of air. The irony of being so deprived of oxygen inside a dwelling named after the wind.
Once you’d peeled off your clothes, you limped towards the bath and climbed in; before gaping in awe at how it filled to both perfect depth and temperature before you could even reach over to twist the faucet. You hissed as the hot water met your sore, tight muscles, but relaxed soon after as the initial shock faded into something a lot more soothing.
Closing your eyes, you leaned your head against the rim of the bathtub which was thankfully still cool despite the hot water, and it cooled down the back of your neck deliciously. You let out half a groan at the soothing feeling of the porcelain against your shoulders, before startling at the sound of a doorknob being turned.
You hadn’t locked the door. Your stupid, tired, pitiful self had taken a bath in somebody else’s house—without locking the door. You pinched the bridge of your nose, body still frozen as you didn’t dare to turn around.
“Oh…” A deep voice you’d recognise anywhere trailed off, usually the most certain of voices even seemed dumbfounded in this moment. As were you. “It wasn’t locked. I didn’t realise you were in here. I’m sorry.” Azriel muttered.
“I’m sorry for not locking it—” Your cheeks turned red, and you thanked the Cauldron that he could not see as your back faced him. “I’ll get out now, just give me a moment!” You panicked.
Yet surprisingly, a sound you hadn’t heard from him before rumbled from his chest. A chuckle.
“There are plenty of bathing facilities in this house. Do not hassle yourself.” You heard the smile in his voice, which surprised you, because you had rarely even seen him smile.
You nodded, and let yourself lean back against the cool porcelain once more; desperate to savour it before it heated up with the rest of the bathtub. You sank your teeth into your lip in an effort to conceal the groan that escaped you as the cold colliding with your sore shoulders startled you, to no avail.
And right before the door closed, it paused. He paused.
“You sound sore.” Azriel murmured. “Do we really work you that hard?”
You kept your eyes shut, not daring to turn around. “Do you want the honest answer?”
“Of course.” You heard the frown in his voice.
“You work us like a pack of dogs.” You sighed, draping your bare arm over the side of the tub.
He laughed—actually laughed, a deep, hearty sound that slithered over your skin like silk and ricocheted through your body.
“Thank you for your candour.” He said lowly. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Why does that not reassure me?” You sighed, daring a look over your shoulder to see him leaning against the doorway.
His eyes met yours. “Because it shouldn’t.”
You sank your top teeth into your lower lip. Somehow, you weren’t deterred from his intense gaze despite your sub-ordinance to him as an Illyrian. “So you didn’t really appreciate my honesty, then.”
His eyes flicked down to your lip, and then back up to yours. “I always appreciate honesty.” He folded his arms.
“Then why did you make it sound like you’re going to make me pay for it?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Would you like to pay for it?”
You frowned. “Why would anybody wish to be punished?”
He pondered for a moment, before narrowing his gaze. “A lot of people report to have enjoyed being punished by me.”
“Right…” You trailed off, confused. You turned back around, and readjusted your arm that was draped along the side of the tub. Yet you hissed, as you had moved too fast for your sore muscles to keep up.
“Sore?” Azriel purred the question, almost like he revelled in your distress. A sadistic teacher, perhaps.
“How could you tell,” You spoke monotonously, rolling your eyes.
“Don’t do that.”
You froze. You had your back turned to him.
“What?” Your voice was a mere whisper.
“The shadows tell me everything, Valkyrie.” He murmured.
“I’m not a Valkyrie yet.” You sidestepped the slice of information about the shadows.
“But you train like one.”
Your ears perked up. “You really think so?”
“Does your every move currently aching not give it away?” He chuckled again, and you closed your eyes as the velvety sound made you shiver. And his chuckle stopped. “Is the temperature not to your liking?” He asked, genuine concern laced in his voice.
“It’s perfect.” You croaked.
“Then why are you shivering?” He questioned you.
“I suppose it’s a little cold.” You lied, holding your breath.
He finally closed the door, and you heaved a sigh of relief. Yet to your absolute horror, you heard footsteps. On your side of the door.
You felt his presence at your back before you saw him, as he knelt behind the tub. You watched as a tattooed hand, respectfully staying away from you, dipped into the water. Your shoulders were frozen in place, slightly curved inwards to protect your dignity. You weren’t an exhibitionist, and certainly didn’t take to showing your teacher your naked body.
“It doesn’t feel cold, Valkyrie.” He whispered softly, dipping his fingers further in and moving them around.
You opened your mouth to think of some witty or deflecting response, yet no sound came out.
“I was worried.” He murmured gently. “I only came in here to rectify the temperature.” He slowly dragged his hand out of the water, and let it ever so slightly brush against your arm that was still draped around the tub. Much to his amusement, you shivered again. Of course you did. In the two years you’d known the male, he’d never come this close to you while the two of you were alone. Had the two of you ever even been alone together?
“Ah,” he purred. “So that’s why.”
Your breath hitched as he let his finger trail up your arm, until it landed on your shoulder. And then it was fingers, more than one.
And then he began kneading.
You bit back a fitful groan as he began pushing and twisting his thumbs into every crevice of every muscle that connected your back to your shoulders, your neck.
His thumbs pushed into your neck right at the base of your skull and you couldn’t stifle the moan that slipped past your lips at the sensation.
“Azriel,” You rasped, subtly shaking your head.
That seemed to wake him up. He gave a final squeeze, before pushing off his knees and standing up, retreating from the tub.
“Why,” You started, but couldn’t quite move yourself to finish the sentence.
“Why what?” He replied, somewhat hoarsely.
“Why’d you stop?” You whispered.
“Do you know where my chambers are?” He asked breathlessly.
“No?” You retorted. Because obviously, you didn’t.
A sigh fell past his lips. Lips you couldn’t see, but could imagine, blush, parted and plump.
“If you want the rest of the massage, you’ll figure it out. Goodnight, Valkyrie.”
And with that he retreated, shutting the door quickly and locking it for you from the inside with a shadow, which then slipped under the door and vanished, just as he had.
summary: you don't do parties. and you don't do hockey players. Dean Di Laurentis is the last person your anxious brain would ever want to talk to. But when he becomes the only thing that can quiet the noise in your head, it becomes harder to stay away.
wc: 1.3k
warnings: 18+ , panic attack, drugs and alcohol
a/n: this is my first time writing off campus and I'm really hoping I did ok! would love to continue this one if enough people are interested so lmk if you like it! I have some ideas for these two.
banner by: @/issysh3ll
You didn’t do noise. You didn’t do crowds. But your roommate, Britt, had gotten an invite to a party at the hockey house. And at Briar, nobody passed up an invite to the hockey house. So, despite your discomfort, you sucked it up so she wouldn’t have to go alone.
It was easy to go through the motions: hair, makeup, outfit. The hard part was walking through the front door. The party was already packed, students spilling out onto the porch, bass vibrating the ground. You gripped Britt’s hand like a lifeline as she dragged you into the chaos.
Off to one side, a game of beer pong was underway, a crowd cheering them on. On the other, a group was doing shots. In the middle was a makeshift dancefloor with girls in the cutest outfits shaking their hips rhythmically to the music. You make note of the only other exit, a door near the pool table that someone was just heading out of.
Everyone around you was everything you wished you were: confident, excited, having fun. Instead, your brain was torturing you. The noise, the low lights, the crowd: everything was danger. You could feel your pulse spiking already, sweat beading across your forehead.
“Thanks for coming with me. Couldn’t have done this without you.” Britt offers you a smile as she tries to speak over the noise. Even though she was much more social than you, she was also introverted. But unlike you, she hated being alone. For you, being alone was solace. Comfort. Peace.
“Of course!” You force a smile back as best you can. “Do you see John?”
“Not yet.” She answers, her brown eyes searching the crowd. “Oh! He’s in the kitchen.” Dropping your hand, she waves at him until he notices. You follow Britt into the other room, trying to take some deep breaths in a way that you hope doesn’t make you look insane. Britt introduces you, and to your relief, John greets you nicely. In a way that makes you feel like he’s trying to remember your name.
Yet, the moment he starts talking to Britt, it’s like you don’t exist to either of them anymore. In a way, it’s nice. You don’t have to keep up with the conversation or pretend to be having fun. But now you need to find something to do other than disassociate and breathe manually. Grabbing a red solo cup, you it up with beer and take a small sip.
That moment is when Garrett Graham descends down the stairs of the hockey house. He’s the star hockey player, so of course people notice. Heads turn. Multiple people call out to him. And somehow it makes the house feel louder, stuffier, and more overwhelming. You shift on your feet, trying to find somewhere that feels a little less crowded, when someone slams into you.
“Shit, sorry!” The man’s voice echoes in your ear as your beer sloshes out of the cup.
“Nice job, Di Laurentis.” John deadpans.
“My bad.” The man laughs awkwardly, running a hand through his blonde hair. It’s Dean. The other hockey star. Somehow, that makes it worse. Heat rushes to your cheeks, your ears starting to ring. He says something to you that your brain won’t process, his voice sounding far away. Your only clue is him pointing at your drink. Shaking your head quickly, you mutter something about not needing another one before walking away.
Tunnel vision is your next clue things are going downhill. And then it feels like you don’t know how to swallow. Throat too tight to breathe. Hands going numb. Legs going numb. You needed to get some air. Let it pass. Not in front of all these people. The back exit is your target.
Deep breath in. Out. In. Out.
You make it outside, relief slowly blooming as the cold air hit your skin and the noise muffled when the door slams closed. No one else was out here. Just you. Crouching down on the world’s smallest deck, you keep your head low and try to breathe through it.
In. Out. In. Out.
All too quickly, the door creaks open. Your head whips around, eyes wide, heart rate picking up again.
Britt?
John?
Nope. Dean.
Shit.
“Damn, ‘s freezing out here.” He announces to no one in particular, lighting up a joint. Once he takes a drag, his blue eyes lazily scan the deck, landing on you. “Shit, it’s you. Sorry again, for spilling your drink.” The way he chuckles is so easygoing it makes you jealous. You wanted to have fun, to be casual. Your brain always had other plans.
“It’s fine.” You grit out, fists clenching so your nails dug into your palms.
“Whoa,” Dean finally takes in your demeanor. “You sick?” His attention makes your skin prickle.
“I said I’m fine.” Your voice gets harsher, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave.
“You don’t look fine.” There’s an edge of concern in his voice. That sends a new wave of panic. Dean was, based on rumors and the fact that you had eyes, the kind of person always the center of attention. The last thing you needed was someone like that focused on you.
“I’m good, I’ve got it handled.” You try to sound better than you feel.
“Sure.” Dean drawls, unconvinced.
“Don’t you want to go back to your friends?” You ask, nodding back at the door.
“I’ve got a joint to smoke. Don’t you want to go back to your friends?” He counters.
“I just need a minute.” You admit. Truthfully, he was providing the tiniest distraction. Which let feeling come back to your hands and legs. But the song playing inside changes, and the new, louder bass thump makes you flinch. Dean notices it, because of course he does.
“Too much?” He guesses. You can only nod, hoping that’s enough of an explanation to get him to drop it. He’s quiet for a minute, and you think that that’s it. “Be right back.” He promises, the door slamming shut behind him.
You exhale fully now that you’re finally alone. Trying to convince yourself that you’re safe. It’s just a party. There’s no danger. But the door opens again way too quickly, and Dean’s standing next to you, one hand with a joint and the other extending a dark blue, large pair of headphones.
“Put these on.” He offers, shaking them slightly for emphasis. It felt wrong to refuse someone trying to help, and you didn’t have the strength to argue. You grab the headphones, placing them over your ears.
Immediately, the world quieted slightly. You could still feel the bass of the music. But all the noise from the party fully faded. It was a subtle change, but somehow enough to bring much needed relief. And your expression probably showed that, because Dean was smiling down at you.
“I use those before my games. Help me block out distractions and shit.” He tells you, his voice much quieter through the headphones. As he continues to smoke, looking out across campus, you let your panic pass. Your body, as it always does, starts to calm down. In the moment, it always felt catastrophic. Like you were dying. And when it passed, it felt like you were dramatic for no reason.
Once you feel steady enough, you stand slowly. Dean is tall enough that you have to look up at him. When you take off the headphones, you hand them back with a hint of a smile.
“Those are expensive, okay? Be careful with ‘em.” He chides with a grin.
“Oh, no.” You deadpan, pretending to drop them. His reflexes are quick, his warm, large hands covering yours as he takes the headphones back. You flush again, not from anxiety this time, but from how nice it felt. And how good he looked. And that he bothered to do something nice.
“What’s your name, trouble?” He winks, seeming to like that he helped you relax. You tell him, and he repeats it a few times as if to commit it to his crossfaded memory.
“Thank you.” You say honestly, ready to make your way back inside before Britt really noticed you weren’t there.
“Anytime.” He replies in a way that makes you feel like he means it.
Summary: you're on a date with a total douche who keeps bragging about playing on the AHL and (unknowingly) fanboying over your best friend who thankfully makes an apperance just in time to rescue you from a nightmare date.
Word count: 1.2k
⋆˚࿔ tina's note 𝜗𝜚˚⋆ I got this idea at 2AM while half asleep and rambled it to my notes app because I was too tired to type then laughed this morning when I read the note back because it's literally me going "And like the date is an asshole and he's talking about like… and like… but like… and then Garrett like… and blah blah blah and like… and yeah that's it" but here's the (hopefully) better version of my 2AM ramblings
Off campus masterlist
The only redeeming quality of this date is honestly the fact that you won't have to pay for the food and wine you've had. This restaurant is not one you'll usually choose, it's not your style, too fancy and grand for your liking. Your date is… well let's just say you highly doubt there will be a second date.
"So you say you went to where for college?" He asks after finishing a rant about the latest crypto he invested in.
"Oh, I went to Briar!" You perk up a little at him finally showing some kind of interest into you "In Massachusetts, I-"
Of course, he cuts you off "Yeah, I know of Briar, it has one of the best hockey programs in the country, it was one of my options but I felt Michigan calling out for me more"
"Oh yeah, you play hockey right? I have friends who do too" You comment.
He scoffs "You do, don't you? Well sweetheart I'm in the AHL right now, I bet your friends have heard of me, I'm NHL bound any day now"
"Oh really?" You ask with a raised eyebrow, you don't tell him about your two friends breaking records with the Bruins right now "Are you playing here in Boston?"
"No no, I'm with the Islanders" He says, you quickly comb through your hockey knowledge, remembering Garret say something about how the Islanders were bottom three teams in the AHL right now but you choose to keep the information to yourself for now "Just in town visiting some friends and having dates with beautiful women apparently"
"Got lots of those?" You tease jokingly but his reply comes serious.
"A few, not a great dating pool around here honestly" He shrugs "It's just a thing of our generation, women trying too hard to prove something" You give him a slow nod curious to see where this horrible point of him goes "Like just yesterday I was out with this girl who kept arguing with me about how she wouldn't quit her job as a doctor even if she was dating an athlete like me with a packed schedule so she could take care of the kids"
"That's…" You don't even know what to say and thankfully (?) you don't have to say anything because he's not done.
"Like, you have to understand one thing about me honey, I already have a brutal schedule with hockey right now but as soon as I make it to the NHL it's gonna get worse" He shrugs "I need a woman who understands that. There's too few of them around now and I think that's the reason current legends like Graham stay single"
"Garret?" You ask.
"Oh you know of him? Yeah, total beast on the ice"
You nod "I went to college with him"
Your date laughs "Oh I bet you were running around behind him for a bit of attention huh?"
"Uh not exactly" You can't wait to be done with this date.
"Oh come on honey, it's Garret Graham, legend, if not for his hockey skills then for his legacy, his dad was a beast too, really look up Phil Graham" You're not going to lie that hearing him fanboy over one of your best friends is kinda funny, but the guy is annoying to no end so you start thinking of exiting strategies "I'm already on my way up there with him" He's not, you hadn't even heard his name until now and you like to think you are somewhat well versed in the hockey world "Someday you'll be bragging about having gone on a date with me"
You're still thinking about a good excuse to leave the date when the restaurant door opens, you look that way because anything is better than the douche in front of you and you see him, your best friend, Garrett Graham, he notices you too and smiles warmly.
"Holy shit" You hear your date gasp "It's Garret Graham, and he's looking this way, I bet he recognized me from our last game against Boston"
And no matter how much of an asshole this guy is you still can't find it in yourself to break his heart so you plan on letting him believe that's the reason Garret looked your way, but your friend has other plans because he approaches your table, attention solely on you as he leans down to pull you into a warm hug and kissing the side of your head on his way up.
"Hey Tink! What are you doing here?" He asks, the nickname he gave you years ago flowing out, your date, who still hasn't been aknowledged stares in absolute shock.
"Hi Gar, I'm uh… dinner" You motion to the guy sitting in front of you and Garret finally turns his way.
"Oh hey man" He greets with a nod and his attention is back on you "You gonna introduce me to your friend?"
"This is Dave" You don't have to say anything else, Garrett has always been an expert in reading you, he already clocked how this date is going.
"Well, nice to meet you Dave" His words are polite but there's none of the warmth he's had towards you "I'm just here for a quick meeting with my agent, but why don't you wait at the bar for me when you're done here? 15 minutes top?" You nod and he leans down to kiss your forehead again "I'll open up a tab and have your drink waiting for when you're ready" Then he turns to Dave and says "Nice to meet you Gabe" And he leaves.
You fight a chuckle and see his shoulders shaking as he walks away.
A little later, Garrett's turning on the engine of his Jeep, a newer model of the one he had back in college, but before he pulls out of the parking lot he speaks "I just don't know why you insist on going out with those idiots when I'm right here"
"What and miss Dave's NHL debut?" You joke but you know he's right and you're not sure why you're still going out on pointless dates "I heard Bridgeport might have a chance at the playoffs this season, I might get a WAG jacket"
"He's in the AHL?" Garret makes a face, you nod with a laugh "Tink, the chances of Bridgeport making it to the playoffs are lower than Dean being able to recreate Tuck's chicken pot pie recipe successfuly" You burst out laughing remembering the time you had to call the fire department because Tucker was away visiting his mom in Texas and Dean insisted he just had to have chicken pot pie.
"Holy shit I'd forgotten about that" You wipe tears out of your eyes "The firefighters looked so disappointed when Dean asked if he could still eat the food"
Garett looks at you with a wide smile and loving stare "Do you think the WAGs will give me a discount for the fee because we're halfway through the season already?" His question could be taken as a joke, but you know him and you know he's being earnest "Or will they charge me a late fee? What size jacket do you wear? And you can't get mad at me for not knowing, you always end up stealing mine anyways but I don't think you want a Garrett sized WAG jacket"
"Gar slow down" You stop him and he freezes up realizing he's probably gone too far and you're about to tell him you don't see him that way but instead you grin at him "You have to get to the playoffs first, we can't go jinxing it with all this planning ahead"
Or when Dean denies being jealous and Beau tests that theory
Suggestive towards the end <3
It all stemmed from one single throwaway comment.
“God baby, we’re so lucky we’re not jealous people” Dean said scrolling past some couples TikTok.
Beau practically snorted as you chuckled to yourself.
“You’re one of the most jealous people I know” he pointed at him.
“That’s bullshit-“
“Dean, honey“ you placed a hand on his arm.
“What? It is!” He said in denial
“What about when someone did a heart on her coffee so you went to the next shop instead and bought the same drink, sans the heart?”
“Just had a feeling it would taste better”
Your eyes flicked between the pair.
“Okay, sure. So you weren’t jealous when that guy held the door open for her” Beau held a second finger up.
“He was staring at her ass” he retaliated.
“I don’t think he was baby” you spoke up, only to shut your mouth immediately and mime throwing away a key when Dean looked at you utterly betrayed.
“You tripped him up- fine. The TA called her sweetheart and you disrupted a whole lesson”
“That- okay, I have nothing for that one but that’s not the point” he sat forward.
“Face it Beau, I’m not a jealous person. A little protective? Sure. But jealous? You’re losing it” he ran a hand through his hair.
Beau hummed, “we’ll see”
—————————
You were getting ready for the game when a knock thundered on the door.
“Beau?” You asked as he let himself inside.
“I’m literally a genius. Like a literal genius. What’s it like knowing someone so smart?”
“Uhhh..scary?” you watched him hype himself up around your living area.
He dropped his bag onto the sofa and ripped open the zip pulling out a Hawks jersey.
“Thanks I guess? I’ve already got Dean’s ready but it’ll be good to have a spare-“
“No, no, no” Beau chuckled and turned it round.
Logan
22
“Beau” you warned.
“He’s not a jealous person right? So he’ll love to see you supporting one of his best friends” he threw the jersey at you.
“It’s literally just a number on a jersey” you held it up.
“Yes, and Dean is literally just a man. A man whose number you won’t be wearing” he said like it made perfect sense. In his head, it did.
“You’re going to break him” you sighed, jersey in hand.
“I know”
“He’s gonna snap”
“Hopefully”
“You’re an ass”
“Absolutely”
—————————
Considering the jersey was made of the exact same material, it felt wrong against your skin. Like it knew the numbers on your back were 22, not 66 like they should be.
You trailed behind Beau as you got to your seats, not first row but close enough to be seen.
“Oh no” Allie took one look at the jersey and smirked.
“Oh yes,” Beau honestly look thrilled. More excited to see Dean’s reaction than the actual game.
You just sighed.
Suddenly the cheers started and out came the team skating their laps. Dean stopped at the glass by your section tapping his stick ok the glass at you and flashing a wink. You smiled and blew him a kiss, he of course caught it dramatically.
But then Dean’s eyes scanned over you, squinting at the jersey as if something didn’t sit right.
No A, he noticed. Probably a shop error.
He shook it off, winked again and started to skate away till Beau’s voice cut through the crowd.
“LOGAN!! BIGGEST FAN OVER HERE” he shouted through cupped hands, then tugging you around to show the back of the jersey.
“Shit, Deanie doesn’t she look cute” Logan said, smirk in his voice.
Dean stopped, turned around and saw the bold unmissable 22 on your back.
What.
The.
Fuck.
Shit he was about two seconds away from climbing out the rink skates and all to take that off you.
Honestly, the only thing stopping him was the look on your face. You looked mortified.
Between your and Beau’s reactions he could tell whose bright idea it was - it clearly wasn’t you. He swallowed down the rage and skated to the team ready to start the game.
To you that was worse.
Quiet Dean was lethal Dean.
He thought he was doing quite well in the first and second period, sure he’d ended up in the penalty box and he’d checked Logan accidentally a few times but, it’s hockey, these things happen.
For once, Dean Di Laurentis was itching to get off the ice. As soon as the second period finished he practically flew off.
You looked on as he spoke to the starry eyed worker. Two seconds later he looked smug as shit. 2 minutes later said worker appeared next to you.
“Dean said this is for you” he thrust a bag into your hands.
“He didn’t-“ Allie snorted.
Oh he absolutely did.
You pulled the jersey out the bag, 66 staring back at you and couldn’t help but blush. And then came the note.
Babydoll,
You’re a cutie all the time but if I see you in another man’s jersey I’ll do more then check him next time :) 66 is your number and you’ll be keeping it on for the rest of the night, including later.
I love you xx
Your skin heated.
You took Logan’s jersey off chucking it at Beau’s face, ignoring the muffle underneath it.
Dean skated back over to you watching as you slipped his over his head.
“Better” he mouthed, his eyes flared glancing down then back up and he pointed to his heart.
SUMMARY: Dean has been dying to know why you keep sneaking out at 6 a.m. every single morning. Convinced there's a story behind it, he decides to tag along, expecting just about anything, except a Pilates class. Suddenly, the hockey star finds himself way out of his comfort zone and questioning every life choice that led him there.
WARNINGS: Pure fluff! Dean is down bad for reader, cursing, dramatic hockey boys, suggestiveness but no actual smut, probably some inaccurate Pilates descriptions (sorry)!
A/N: Once again this is PURELY self indulgent! Inspiration struck by watching a Quinn interview between Mika and Stephen talking about how he “accidentally” bailed on their Pilates class! Hope y’all enjoy!! Divider by @sc3ptre <3
➩ main masterlist
➩ dean di laurentis masterlist
Dean was naturally curious. Actually, that wasn't entirely true. Dean was nosy. There was a difference. Curiosity was casually wondering about something. Nosiness was noticing a pattern and becoming mildly obsessed with figuring it out. And for the last three weeks, he'd been trying to figure out where the hell you kept disappearing to every morning at six o'clock.
Every. Single. Morning.
Without fail, his bedroom door would creak open just enough for him to hear the soft shuffle of your footsteps. Half-asleep, he'd crack open one eye and catch a glimpse of you moving through his bedroom like some sort of fitness-obsessed ghost. Always dressed in workout clothes. Always carrying that absurdly large water bottle that was practically the size of a small child.
Where the hell were you going?
Because nobody willingly woke up at six in the morning unless they were being paid, chased, or clinically insane. Yet there you were. Every day. Gone before sunrise. By the time Dean finally dragged himself out of bed at a reasonable hour, you’d already returned. Usually flushed from exertion, a light sheen of sweat still clinging to your skin as you tossed your keys onto the counter.
Your leggings and fitted tank top would be slightly damp, strands of hair escaping your ponytail and sticking to your temples. And you always, always, had that weird green drink in your hand. The thing looked radioactive, Dean swore it practically glowed. "What the hell is that?" He'd asked one morning, staring suspiciously at the cup in your hand. "Matcha." You muttered taking a sip through the straw, eyebrows raised.
"It looks like liquid grass."
"It's tea, Dean."
"It's toxic waste, babydoll."
A laugh escaped you as you shook your head, completely unbothered by his judgmental stare while taking another sip. Sometimes you'd head out alone. Other mornings, Dean would hear even more movement in the hallway before dawn. Additional doors opening. Muffled voices. The unmistakable sound of people who should absolutely still be asleep. Then later that day, Garrett would stumble into the hockey house looking personally victimized.
"Wellsy left at six this morning." Dean barely glanced up from his phone. "Tragic." He teased, lips quirking up in his well-known cocky smirk. "I woke up and she was gone, all I know is that she took Grace and Y/N with her." Now that got Dean's attention. "Where?" Garrett groaned dramatically and collapsed down onto the couch. "I don't know." Across the room, Logan snorted into his coffee cup. "Join the club, G."
"Grace ditched you too?" Garrett pointed accusingly as Logan nodded. "Six fifteen," Logan confirmed darkly dropping down onto the couch beside Dean with all the suffering of a man personally betrayed, scrubbing a hand down his face. "I woke up because she kissed my forehead like she was shipping off to war." Dean looked between them, then slowly lowered his phone.
"Wait," Both men turned toward him, brows raised in silent question. "You both don't know where they're going either?" Both hockey players exchanged a look. Then Logan shrugged as Garrett shook his head. Dean stared at them, then started laughing. Because suddenly this wasn't just his mystery anymore, it was a goddamn conspiracy. Three women. Three clueless boyfriends. Zero explanations.
And suddenly the fact that all of them were somehow managing to sneak out before dawn without providing answers made Dean's curiosity became an obsession and made him even more determined to figure out what the hell was going on. Whatever was dragging you out of bed at six in the morning had to be really fucking important. Or incredibly weird. Either way, he was going to find out.
Which is why on Friday afternoon after multiple rounds of hot, mind blowing sex, is when he finally found the courage to ask. The two of you were sprawled across his bed, tangled in rumpled sheets that had long since been kicked down to your waists. The room smelled faintly of sweat and his cologne, what was left of the evening sunlight streaming through the partially closed blinds and painting lazy golden stripes across the mattress.
“Babydoll?” He asked, his hand halting from tracing absent-minded shapes on your bare back. You hummed softly in response, lifting your head from where it rested on his naked chest. Your chin settled on top of your folded hands as you peered up at him, still looking pleasantly dazed and entirely too comfortable. Dean shifted so he was facing you more directly, propping himself up on one elbow.
"Where do you go every morning?" You blinked, expecting anything but that question. "At a ix a.m.," He stated matter-of-factly. "Every day." The fact that you looked entirely too pleased with yourself made him even more suspicious. The corners of your mouth twitched as if you'd been expecting this conversation for weeks. "See? That right there, that's the face of someone hiding something." Dean pointed a finger at you.
"I'm not hiding anything." You caught his hand before he could continue accusing you, lowering it to the mattress between you. "You absolutely are." You laughed, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear while trying to pull off an expression of complete innocence. Unfortunately, Dean knew you far too well. His gaze narrowed further, there it was again: that smug little smile.
The one that usually meant you knew something he didn't. And Dean hated not knowing things. Especially when those things involved you. "You leave before sunrise," He continued dramatically. "You come back sweaty carrying that suspicious green drink and you've even somehow convinced Wellsy and Grace to join your secret society." At that, you actually snorted. "A secret society?" Your eyebrows shot upward in amusement.
"That's currently my leading theory." You folded your arms across your chest, trying, and failing, not to laugh. The smile threatening to break free gave you away instantly. Dean took that as encouragement. "Either that or you're all secretly training for the Olympics or preparing for some kind of a heist." He delivered the line with complete seriousness, making it impossible for you to hold back any longer.
You finally lost the battle and laughed outright, the sound filling the room. Dean tried not to smile but ultimately failed miserably. Because he loved making you laugh, even when you were laughing at him. "Dean, it's not a secret." Your voice carried the familiar warning that always appeared whenever he was being ridiculous. "The tell me.”He practically whined, green eyes narrowing. You bit your lip in response, a sure sign you were debating whether or not to answer.
However, instead of speaking, you reached over and patted his cheek, thumbs sweeping over his cheekbones. "Babydoll." His eye twitched. God, how you loved riling him up. "Yes, Dean?" You smirked, batting your eyelashes flirtatiously. "You're testing my patience." Your grin turned positively wicked. Then you leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to his lips, making sure to linger and slip in some tongue just long enough to be distracting. And the worst part? It almost worked.
Almost.
Dean caught your wrist before you could pull away completely, his fingers wrapping loosely around it as he shook his head. "Nice try." Your laughter softened, fondness replacing some of the mischief in your expression. "You're really that curious?" He groaned dramatically, dropping his head back against the pillow. "At this point? It's consuming my life." You stared at him for a second, studying his expression as if trying to determine whether he was serious.
The answer was obvious, he absolutely was. With a small shake of your head, you finally relented. "Fine." Dean immediately perked up, his head snapped back up so fast it nearly gave you whiplash. “If you’re so curious, just come with me tomorrow. Find out for yourself." For a moment, Dean just stared. Then a slow grin spread across his face. After weeks of wondering, and developing increasingly ridiculous conspiracy theories, he was finally going to get answers.
The following morning, Dean was drooling on his pillow when he felt you shift. The room was still dark, the early morning sunlight barely beginning to creep through the gap in the curtains. His brain hadn't fully booted up yet, leaving him somewhere between sleep and consciousness as he instinctively reached for the warm body beside him. Letting out a groan, he tried to pull you back into his chest, burying his face deeper into the pillow. But it was no use, you were already awake.
"Up and at 'em, Di Laurentis." He could practically hear the smirk in your voice. Dean responded with another groan, dragging the pillow over his head in protest. For a brief moment, he considered pretending to be dead. Unfortunately, you knew him too well. A second later, the pillow was yanked away. "Don't make me get the spray bottle Tucker keeps in the kitchen." His eyes cracked open. "You wouldn't." The grin on your face told him otherwise.
With a sigh worthy of an Oscar, he finally pushed himself upright, rubbing a hand down his face. That was when his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. You were bent over tying your shoes, already dressed and ready to go. The fitted workout set left very little to the imagination, the leggings hugging every curve while your matching top disappeared beneath one of his old hockey hoodies.
Your hair was already pulled back into a ponytail, looking far too awake and put together for an hour that should've been illegal. Dean stared, brain completely short-circuited. He was half tempted to drag you right back into bed and forget this entire mystery existed. Curiosity, however, was the only thing stronger than his desire to go back to sleep or have hot morning sex.
Barely.
Sluggishly rolling out of bed, Dean shuffled toward the bathroom. The floor was cold, his eyes burned, and his soul hurt. Five minutes later, after splashing water on his face enough times to resemble a functioning human being, brushing his teeth, and throwing on a pair of gym shorts and a fitted black t-shirt, he emerged from the bathroom looking considerably more awake. Not happy, but awake.
You looked up from screwing the lid onto your giant water bottle, your gaze traveling slowly. Dean immediately noticed. The tight black shirt stretched across his shoulders and defined the muscles in his chest and back, while his shorts sat low on his hips, exposing powerful thighs built from years of hockey practices, conditioning drills, and games. You blinked. Once. Twice.
"You're droolin', babydoll." The smug grin that followed was absolutely insufferable. Snapping out of your thoughts, you rolled your eyes and grabbed your freshly refilled water bottle from the counter. "Please. Your ego doesn't need any more encouragement." Dean gasped dramatically. "That was rude." You simply headed toward the door. "Come on, Dean." You coaxed, hand firmly on your hip leaving absolutely no room for discussion.
He followed behind with another exaggerated sigh, shoving his feet into a pair of sneakers as quickly as possible. "They'll charge us if we're late." That made him pause. One hand still on his shoe, Dean slowly looked up. "Hold on." You were already opening the apartment door. "What do you mean they'll charge us?" A suspicious feeling settled in his stomach. For the first time all morning, Dean wondered if maybe, just maybe, following you had been a terrible idea.
Sure enough, when you led him through the doors of The Pilates Lab, Dean knew he was fucked. The realization hit the second he stepped inside. The studio was bright, spotless, and somehow intimidating despite the soft instrumental music drifting from hidden speakers. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors lined one wall, reflecting rows of sleek reformer machines arranged with military level precision.
Natural light poured through massive front windows, illuminating polished hardwood floors and cream-colored walls that somehow made the place feel both welcoming and terrifying. Terrifying mostly because every person inside looked like they belonged there. Dean, however, did not. The scent of eucalyptus and expensive cleaning products hung in the air. A small reception desk sat near the entrance beside shelves stocked with water bottles, protein bars, grip socks, and enough workout accessories to bankrupt a small nation.
You, meanwhile, looked completely at home. "Morning!" The receptionist greeted cheerfully as you approached. "Morning, Claire." Dean glanced around while you checked in. Women. Everywhere. A few men too, but mostly women. All of them looked suspiciously fit and flexible. Very, very flexible. One woman was casually stretching with her leg resting on a barre at a height Dean was pretty sure violated several laws of physics.
His hockey injuries hurt just looking at her. Then to make matters worse, he noticed the reformers. Rows and rows of reformers. Metal frames, straps, springs, moving platforms. They looked less like exercise equipment and more like devices designed specifically for torture. Dean pointed toward one. "The hell is that?" You followed his gaze, biting back a smile. "A reformer." You replied nonchalantly. "It looks dangerous." The smile at your lips widened at his tone which oozed discomfort.
"It's really not."
"You hesitated."
"I didn't."
"You absolutely did."
You laughed, reaching for his hand and tugging him farther inside to where you usually worked out. Only the deeper you ventured into the studio, the worse his feeling became. As you set your water bottle down beside your reformer and tugged off his sweatshirt, revealing your fitted workout top underneath, Dean stood there questioning every decision that had led him to this moment.
Then his gaze landed on the instructor, the woman looked approximately five feet tall, and somehow absolutely terrifying. The kind of terrifying that came from smiling too much while planning your demise. "Good morning, everyone!" Her voice carried easily across the room as the class immediately began moving toward their reformers. Around him, people adjusted springs, grabbed resistance bands, and clipped straps into place with the confidence of seasoned veterans.
Meanwhile, he was still trying to figure out what half the equipment even did. You noticed the shift in his demeanor next to you as you offered his forearm a reassuring squeeze. His eye twitched, which nearly made you laugh again. "You're going to be fine, Dean." The confidence in your voice wasn't nearly as comforting as you intended. Dean looked around the studio one more time. At the springs. The straps. The weights. The machines. The terrifyingly cheerful instructor. Then finally back at you.
"Babydoll, I think we have very different definitions of fine." It's not like he could leave. Not now. Not when half the class had realized a six-foot-two hockey player was standing in the middle of their Pilates studio looking like he'd accidentally wandered into enemy territory. Huffing, he turned towards the rack of weights lining the mirrored wall, barely hesitating before reaching for the heaviest pair available. The movement immediately caught your attention.
"You're gonna regret that." Dean scoffed, looking personally offended by the suggestion. "Babydoll, please, I bench two-thirty. I can easily handle twenty-pound hand weights." As if to prove his point, Dean was too busy rolling his shoulders and casually curling one of the dumbbells, looking far too pleased with himself. You looked at the weights, then at him, trying, and failing, to hide a smug smile since you already knew exactly how this was going to end for him.
The first five minutes weren't terrible. At least, that's what Dean told himself. The instructor began with slow, controlled movements that looked deceptively simple. Around the room, springs clicked softly against metal frames while reformers glided back and forth with smooth precision. Dean found himself settling into the rhythm quickly enough, or so he thought. Then, the shaking started. It began in his thighs. A subtle tremble at first, barely noticeable.
Then came the burn. The kind of deep, relentless burn that didn't make any sense. He was a Division I hockey player. He spent hours in the gym. He could squat absurd amounts of weight. Yet somehow a tiny movement performed on a sliding carriage had his legs vibrating like he'd just skated three periods back-to-back. Across the room, you looked annoyingly graceful. Dean, meanwhile, was fighting for his life.
Thirty minutes in, the black t-shirt clinging to his back was soaked through. His hair stuck to his forehead. Every muscle seemed to have discovered entirely new ways to suffer. The instructor floated around the room like an executioner disguised as a yoga mom, offering gentle corrections that somehow made every exercise twice as difficult. Whenever Dean thought a set was ending, another variation appeared.
Another hold. Another pulse. Another ten seconds.
Those ten seconds felt like years. At one point he became convinced time itself had stopped moving. The mirrors surrounding the studio only made things worse. Everywhere he looked he could see himself struggling. See the tremor in his arms. The shake in his legs. The tightening of his jaw. And every time he considered lowering a weight or taking a break, his gaze inevitably landed on you. You looked focused. Determined. Completely in your element.
There was a concentration on your face he rarely got to see outside of moments that truly mattered to you. That alone kept him going. That and his pride. Mostly his pride. Because there was absolutely no chance he was quitting before any of the women around him. By the forty-five minute mark, however, Dean was beginning to reconsider several core beliefs. Including his understanding of physical fitness. And maybe even reality itself.
The studio had grown warmer as class progressed, bodies moving continuously beneath the bright overhead lights. Sweat rolled down the back of his neck, his shirt felt suffocating. Eventually he gave up. During a brief transition between exercises, he grabbed the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it over his head before tossing it toward the cubbies lining the wall. A few heads turned. Not many. Most people were too busy suffering.
However, your attention certainly did, so much so that for the briefest moment, your focus slipped. Your eyes tracked across his broad tanned shoulders, defined abs, and muscles earned through years of hockey training. The sight was familiar, yet somehow still distracting. Heat immediately crawled up your neck, luckily Dean didn't notice seeing as he was far too busy trying not to collapse. The distraction lasted only seconds before the instructor was directing everyone into another movement.
The class continued and somehow got harder. The final thirty minutes became a blur of shaking muscles, controlled breathing, and pure stubbornness. At that point, Dean's arms trembled. His core burned. His legs felt like overcooked noodles. Several times he caught you sneaking amused glances his way. Several times he returned them with a look that promised revenge. By the final series, every movement required concentration. The studio had fallen quieter now seeing as no one had energy left for anything else.
When the instructor finally announced the last stretch, a collective sigh swept throughout the entire room. Dean nearly collapsed onto the machine. His entire body felt spent. Not the satisfying exhaustion of hockey. Not the familiar ache of lifting. Something entirely different. Every muscle felt worked. Even muscles he hadn't known existed. As everyone began cleaning equipment and gathering their belongings, Dean remained exactly where he was for a few extra seconds, staring at the ceiling.
Humbled. He was completely, utterly, humbled.
Humiliated by a workout he'd walked into thinking would be easy. Yet despite himself, despite the suffering, despite the shaking, despite the fact that he probably wouldn't be able to sit down tomorrow, a reluctant smile tugged at his mouth. Because somewhere between the torture, the challenge, and stealing glances at you throughout the last ninety minutes, he'd actually had fun. Only he would never admit that part to you out loud.
As a chorus of applause rang out throughout the studio, Dean stayed flat on his back atop the reformer, bare chest glistening with sweat as he fought to catch his breath. The bright overhead lights blurred slightly above him while every muscle in his body protested the simple act of existing. Around the room, people began climbing off their machines, gathering water bottles and towels while chatting casually as if they hadn't just endured ninety minutes of pure torture.
Dean genuinely didn't understand how they were all standing. "You did it!" Your smile was warm and impossibly proud as you leaned down, pressing an encouraging kiss to his sweaty forehead. The simple gesture somehow felt more rewarding than surviving the class itself. You handed him your water bottle and for once, Dean didn't make a single joke about it. He simply took it immediately, drinking like a man who'd just crossed a desert. Cold water hit his throat as he gulped down several desperate mouthfuls.
"I'm so proud of you, baby, you completed your first Pilates class like a pro." He was almost certain you were fucking with him. There was absolutely no way he'd looked professional while shaking like a newborn deer for an hour and a half. Yet despite knowing that, he still preened under the praise. Because it was coming from you. And Dean was embarrassingly weak when it came to anything involving you. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he finally accepted your outstretched hand, fingers wrapping around yours while you helped haul him upright.
"So," You grinned, raking your nails through his sweaty blonde curls, pushing them away from his forehead. "Have I officially turned you into a Pilates princess?" Dean scoffed, yet his hands on your waist tightened as he pulled you closer, refusing to surrender what little dignity he had left. "Not a fucking chance, babydoll." He shook his head firmly, yet the look on his face made it clear he wasn't finished. "But, I wouldn't be opposed to seeing you in tight workout clothes more often." You instantly swatted his shoulder, which made his sore muscles jump.
The motion lacked any real force, mostly because you were trying not to laugh. Dean's grin immediately grew knowingly. The post-workout flush coloring your cheeks wasn't helping his concentration either. Not that he'd been concentrating much to begin with seeing as he made absolutely no effort to hide the way his gaze lingered. Not when you looked this good. Not when you were smiling at him like that. Not when you were still standing close enough for him to loop an arm around your waist and pull you closer.
You made no effort to move away as he dipped his head, pressing a playful kiss against your neck before blowing a raspberry against your damp skin. The sound echoed loudly enough that your laughter filled the studio as you swatted him again, the bright sound instantly pulling his attention back to you. And just like that, he realized something. He'd willingly gotten out of bed before sunrise. He'd survived ninety minutes of what could only be described as organized suffering. His entire body hurt. Tomorrow would probably be far worse.
The boys were absolutely going to roast him alive when they found out he willingly attended a Pilates class. Yet somehow? He didn't care, not even a little. Because throughout the entire class, every time he'd wanted to quit, he'd looked over and seen you. Smiling. Laughing. Thriving. Happy. And apparently that was enough to make him push through burning muscles, wounded pride, and an instructor who was definitely some kind of sadist in brightly colored workout clothes.
As you gathered your things and reached for his hand, Dean intertwined your fingers without hesitation, thumb brushing across your knuckles as you walked toward the exit together. Maybe he'd never admit that he'd actually enjoyed Pilates. But if it meant spending mornings with you? Dean would survive the teasing, the early alarms, hell, he'd even drink your radioactive green juice. Because when it came to you, Dean was hopelessly, irrevocably gone. And honestly, he wouldn't have it any other way.
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• ☆ . ° .• ° . ☆ Garrett Graham and his sleeping gf
He does not want to get up.
Despite practice starting in thirty minutes, he really, really does not want to get up. Because Garrett’s sweet, clingy girlfriend is still wrapped up next to him.
Your arms are around his waist, head tucked close to his neck, and you’re adorably dead to the world- unless he moves right now.
Which he has to.
But Garrett Graham does not want to.
He lets out a pained sigh, and slowly starts to move his hands to yours so he could gently pry you away. Unfortunately, you stir, and his chest immediately tightens at the small grumble you make, followed by a mumbled, “Nooo…”
“Baby.” He mutters, lips twitching up in exasperation. “I have practice.”
You pout, and Garrett has to fight the urge to accept his fate and lie back down, but he continues, “I need to go, babe.”
“Noooooo….” You whine, but you loosen your grip on him, enough for Garrett to slip away and get up. “How long again?” You slur in your half-asleep daze, and Garrett glances over at you, a soft smile growing on his face as he takes your disheveled, sleepy state.
“An hour or two.”
“Mki,” You mumble, and he watches you instead grab his pillow and hug it to your chest as you basically curl back to sleep. How you could get even more adorable, he doesn’t know, but he also knows if he stays any longer, he really would be missing practice.
Garrett laughs under his breath, and before you slip into dreamworld, he presses a kiss to your temple. “See you later, baby.”
You make a sound between a hum and a jumble of words, and Garrett smiles, before you hear the door of his bedroom click shut.
Being the youngest of two older sisters was hard. But being the youngest sister of three older sisters was worse.
Feyre's Twin Sister! Reader x Azriel
Warnings !!! ; Depression, sexua1 abus3, anxiety and anxiety attacks, disfuncional family except for reader and Feyre, the first two episodes are a little bit heavy so read at your own risk,negative thoughts, and other things i can't remember now.
This series is based on the Acotar timeline and events with a few changes.
Or Dean’s girlfriend makes a drunk decision without thinking how he’ll react…
Some suggestive content but nothing crazy <3
The best ideas always happen at 1am. Said no one. Like, ever.
You blamed the combination of cheap tequila, loud music, and your three best friends encouraging you with the enthusiasm of people who wouldn’t have to explain the consequences to their boyfriend afterward.
“Do it!” Allie shouted over the music.
Hannah was flushed and giggling “c’mon babydoll”
Jules raised their glass. “To questionable decisions!”
You should’ve known better, hell, even the tattoo artist asked three times if you were sure
You were absolutely not sure. So why instead of a resounding no, did the words, “yep, right here” leave your mouth.
You tapped your ribs. The artist let out a laugh. Or a sigh. Who can remember.
It wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t artistic but 5 minutes later there it was.
66.
Dean Di Laurentis’s hockey number.
The number that now, thanks to several shots of tequila and a complete lack of judgment, was permanently inked onto your skin.
At the time, it felt romantic. The next morning, it felt catastrophic.
⸻
“Oh my god.”
You stared at your reflection.
The tattoo stared back.
“Oh my god.”
The throbbing head wasn’t helping and neither was the fact that Dean was due back from an away game that afternoon.
You pressed a hand over the fresh ink hoping somehow when it lifted the numbers would be gone. Didn’t work.
The gentle knock on your bedroom door came moments later.
“Still alive?” Hannah called.
“No.”
The door opened anyway. She took one look at your face and bit her lip trying to hide her smile.
“This isn’t funny.”
“Oh no of course not”
“Hannah.”
“You tattooed your boyfriend’s jersey number on your body.”
“Okay, well, it sounds bad when you say it like that”
“There’s literally no way to say it that sounds normal.” She replied, causing you to let out a groan, head in hands.
Because she wasn’t wrong. But the thing was Dean had changed. Before you, commitment had been a foreign concept to him. He’d spent years charming his way through campus, never staying with one girl for very long. He was six flags for crying out loud.
Then he met you, and he fell fast. He fell hard.
Regardless of your year long relationship, a tiny part of you still worried. Shit. What if seeing his number permanently etched onto your skin scared him? What if he thought you were insane?
What if-
“So when are you gonna tell him?”
“Never if I can help it”
Hannah sighed, “this is going to blow up in your face.”
You stared down at the tattoo. You hated when Hannah was right.
⸻
So naturally, you did the mature thing and avoided Dean. Not completely, but enough for him to notice
The first day, you claimed you had a migraine.
The second day, you said you had to study.
The third day, you suddenly remembered three months worth of errands that apparently couldn’t wait.
Dean noticed immediately. Because it was you.
By Friday, he’d had enough. You were sitting in the library when your phone buzzed.
Dean: Are you mad at me?
You blinked. Shit.
You: What? No.
Dean: Then why have I barely seen you all week?
You: Busy. Like, super busy.
Dean: Liar.
You: Rude.
Dean: Come over tonight.
You stared at the message, practically feeling the burn of the tattoo.
Dean: Please?
Dean: I’ll behave
Dean: scouts honour
Your heart squeezed as a chuckle escaped.
You: you were never a scout…
The response came instantly.
Dean: Me and Beau tried - never let us in for some reason
Dean: Tried though and that’s gotta count for something
You: I’ll be there soon
Dean: Knew you’d cave.
You rolled your eyes but couldn’t help the smile on your face.
⸻
Before you could even knock the door swung open and there he was. Grinning, eyes soft and looking at you like you were his favourite person in the world.
“Hey, babydoll.”
Before you could answer, he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you against him pressing his lips to your head, breathing you in.
“You’ve been avoiding me.” He mumbled against the strands
“Have not” you muffled into his chest. His shirtless chest.
You could practically see his eyebrows lift in your head.
“Okay, maybe a little.”
“A little?” He let out a breathy chuckle, “baby, you practically vanished.”
Guilt twisted in your stomach, feeling you tense he pulled you inside and shut the door.
“Seriously. What’s going on?”
Nothing. Everything. A very stupid tattoo. You forced a smile.
“Just stressed.”
He studied you for a moment. Early on, Dean had developed an annoying ability to see through your lies.
He sighed, “okay”
Your shoulders dropped in relief. Until he added, “you’re staying tonight.”
“Dean-”
“Nope.”He grabbed your hand, “you owe me. We’re making up for lost time.”
⸻
The way you missed Dean became painfully obvious in the next few hours. You missed the way he constantly touched you, the way he stole bites of your food, the way he made you laugh until your stomach hurt and the way he looked at you when he thought you weren’t paying attention.
Like you were something precious.
Like loving you was the easiest thing he’d ever done.
By the time midnight rolled around, you almost forgot about the tattoo entirely. Almost.
It wasn’t till you were lying together on his bed with his fingers tracing lazy circles along your side. Your heart nearly stopped.
Thankfully the number lay hidden under your bra strap.
He broke the silence, “I missed you,” he admitted quietly.
Your chest tightened and guilt lined your stomach.
“Yeah?”
He pulled you impossibly closer.
“Yeah.”
The softness his voice made your heart melt, because this wasn’t the Dean everyone else knew. This wasn’t the cocky flirt who’d once been terrified of commitment. This was your Dean.
You tilted your face up, he met you half way. The kiss started slow, soft, comfortable. Your fingers slid into his hair and gave it a tug. The groan rumbled in his chest and the kiss deepened, him moving over you. When you finally broke apart, his lips moved to your neck. Down and down till his hands reached the end of your shirt pulling it off.
You could faintly hear it. The alarm bell ringing in your head. That was until his teeth grazed your hip and hands reached for your bra clasp. And suddenly all you could think was Dean Dean Dean.
You tensed and he pulled back.
“Babydoll?”
You gazed up at him and he tried again.
“Sweetheart?”
Your resolve crumbled.
Maybe if you told him now-
But before you could speak, he kissed you again and every coherent thought vanished.
You felt his smirk against your mouth and before you knew it your bra was flung across the room.
He carried on pressing kisses towards the line of your underwear teasingly slow.
And then he stopped. Because there it was in black ink, impossible to miss to the one person who knows your body.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
“Is that…”
You squeezed your eyes shut.
“Yes.”
Silence.
“Oh my god.”
There it was.
The horror.
The disgust.
The inevitable breakup.
You prepared for impact.
Instead, his hands gripped your thighs tighter.
“Dean?”
Then he looked at you, the expression on his face wasn’t horrified, angry or even shocked anymore.
It was something far more dangerous.
Because Dean looked ridiculously pleased.
“Babydoll…”
You covered your face.
“I was drunk.”
His grin widened and his eyes darkened.
“You got my number tattooed on you.”
“Please stop saying it.”
“You literally have sixty-six on your body.”
“Dean.”
“You’re obsessed with me”
“Di Laurentis I swear-“
He pressed his body against you, you squeezed your eyes shut feeling the warmth. He placed a kiss on your neck before his eyes dropped back to the tattoo.
“I’m getting it removed.”
“No.”
“Dean.”
“Baby…” he groaned.
Your stomach flipped.
“I can’t believe you did this.”
“You hate it.”
The words came out before you could stop them.
Dean immediately looked up, “hate it?”
You shrugged, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.
“It was stupid.”
“Yeah.”
You frowned opening your mouth to reply.
“It was definitely stupid.” He continued
“Dean.”
“But I don’t hate it” his grin returned.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m absolutely not lying.”
“You should hate it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s weird.”
“Oh absolutely.”
“Dean.”
His eyes sparkled.
“But it’s also kind of hot.”
You nearly choke, “what?!”
“Babydoll I’m fucking obsessed with you. Knowing you’re obsessed with me too? Fuck” he dropped his head, “does it feel like I hate it?” He flexed his hips against yours as blush coated your cheeks and mumbled into your neck about never avoiding him ever again.
Need A Ride?
When a night out with the girls gets chaotic, you have to decide… Walk home, or ask your (hot) stubborn coworker for a ride.
Unexpected
When Zemo manages to turn Bucky back into the Winter Soldier, you fight to protect him. What started off as a friendly relationship turns into something more. That's a good thing, right?
Azriel
Stumbling Home With You
In which the reader gets drunk and has a certain shadowy boy there to take her home.
Sick
Azriel finds out you've been hiding an Illyrian cold from him, and takes matters into his own hands.
A Night Snowed Inn
You didn't mean to fall into the water, but Azriel doesn't care. His protective nature leads to a night cramped in a one bed Inn, tensions rising between you and the Spymaster.
The Tunnels
BAU!Azriel x BAU!Reader (Criminal Minds inspired)
When the team goes searching for a reoccurring serial killer, things get hectic.
Collection
A collection of moments between you and Azriel building up to your feelings forming for each other.
Collection Pt. 2
I Love You, I'm Sorry
Things between you and Azriel had been going great, until he comes home from a mission wrapped around another. Realizing it wasn't as serious to him, you run. Just intending to take a walk, things go south when you realize you're in trouble... and the shadowsinger might just not care.
Dean Di Laurentis
Special Girl
Life at college was supposed to be about making memories... late night parties, games, cheap beer, and maybe even a few bad decisions. Determined to break out of your shell after a promise to your friend, you throw yourself into the Briar social scene. The last thing you expect is to cross paths with Briar U's most notorious playboy. Charming, cocky, and impossible to ignore, Dean Di Laurentis might just turn your college experience upside down... and make you question everything you thought you wanted.
Submarines and Apologies (part two)
Seeing Dean slip so easily into the behavior he's known for leaves you questioning everything between you. Maybe everyone was right about him. Maybe you were just another girl who got caught up in his charm. But Dean isn't willing to let you walk away without a fight, even if earning back your trust means changing his entire college persona.
summary: Dean DiLaurentis gives you the "I don't do relationships" speech, and you say okay and come back the next day to fix Tucker's cooking. Turns out the most dangerous thing you can do to a man like that is simply not need him.
word count: 11.5k
warnings: 18+ explicit sexual content, minors do not interact. situationship dynamics, brief angst, dean being cruel in a moment he regrets, dirty talk, slow burn, eventual fluff.
Daily calls with your mother had become more sparse over the course of your college years. They started daily and had slowly tapered to every other Saturday, which, in all honesty, was a bit of a shock given that she wasn't the type to loosen her grip easily. She had always been overprotective, and when you announced you weren't going to Texas University but to a college in Massachusetts, she had genuinely flipped her shit. Two years later she seemed kind of cool about it. Just texting. Sending random updates about your dog, like the Halloween costume from last year that you'd screenshot and saved.
You were sitting in your room in the sorority house, legs extended and resting on the desk, phone propped against your water bottle while you FaceTimed her and tried to paint your nails without smudging anything. The room was quiet except for your mom stirring something on the stove.
"So I ran into Olivia Tucker — you remember her, right? From church? She had a son named John," she said, not looking at the camera.
You had learned years ago that it was easier to say yes, of course than to endure five minutes of your mom describing a person like she was giving a statement to the police.
"Yeah, of course. I remember Mrs. Tucker."
"She mentioned her son John is attending the same college as you." She said it like she was reading off a notecard. Matter of fact. "She said he's playing hockey now."
Oh. That John Tucker.
"Yeah, I know who he is," you said, cleaning up the mess on your middle finger.
"Isn't that a big coincidence?"
"I mean, not really — he's like a year younger than me, right?"
"Yes, but you two used to play together when you were kids. At church, remember?" You did not remember. Your family went to church maybe twice a year. "Anyway, I gave her your number so she could pass it along to him. So you two could talk."
"Mom — what, that's not really —"
"She's probably not even going to use it."
She used it. Mrs. Tucker called three days later, and with the grace of a good Southern woman, she asked you to keep an eye on John — not in so many words, of course. She said he'd moved into a house with some of the other players and she just wanted to know he was taking care of himself. She didn't want you to do much. Just stop by, take a look around, report back. She'd handle the rest by phone.
What she did not tell you was that Tucker already knew about her plan.
He opened the door looking completely unsurprised to see you, leaned against the frame with his arms crossed and a grin that said nice try. He was, it turned out, perfectly capable of taking care of himself and, annoyingly, other people too.
Which is how you ended up here, almost a year later, sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen island in the off campus house, crying into an onion.
"I'm just saying, get a dicer," you said, keeping your eyes on the knife because you had to. "This is inhumane."
"A real chef doesn't use those kinds of things," Tucker said from across the kitchen, doing significantly less chopping than you were.
"Well, good thing you're not a real chef then."
He turned around, visibly offended. "What did you just say?"
You opened your mouth to repeat it — and then Garrett wandered in from the living room, grabbed an apple from the counter, looked at Tucker's side of the kitchen and then at yours, and pointed at you. "She's doing all the work," he said, to no one in particular, and wandered back out.
"He's right," you said.
"He's a traitor," Tucker said.
You opened your mouth to agree and then the sound of footsteps came down the hallway, and Dean came around the corner fresh out of the shower, towel low on his hips and water still tracking down his chest.
You sniffed, eyes watering, nose red.
Dean stopped. Looked at you. And then let out a slow, deeply entertained laugh.
"Well," he said, "I've heard a lot of reactions from girls seeing me like this. But crying might be a first." He tilted his head. "You alright there, sweet pea?"
"It's the onion," you said flatly. "Tucker's making me cut it."
"Sure." He was already turning toward the stairs, completely unbothered. "Whatever floats your boat."
He winked at you over his shoulder as he disappeared around the corner.
You looked back down at the onion.
Tucker was very pointedly not looking at you.
"Not a word," you said.
"I didn't say anything," he said, in the tone of someone who was saying everything.
The party invitation from Tucker arrived as a single text on a Thursday night.
party saturday, be here, i made a playlist
You were in the middle of your readings and you looked at the message for a moment before typing back: do I need to bring anything?
yourself and good energy
You put your phone face down and went back to your reading. Then picked it up again.
what time
nine but come at eight so we can hang before it gets loud
That was Tucker's way of saying he wanted to cook with you beforehand, which you appreciated more than you would ever tell him out loud because he would absolutely use it against you. You sent back a thumbs up and returned to your notes, and you did not think about the fact that Dean would be there, because that was not a relevant consideration.
You thought about it the entire rest of the week.
Not in a dramatic way. Just in the quiet, persistent way of something you kept putting down and finding in your hand again. You were honest with yourself about Dean, had been from the beginning. You knew what he was. Charming in a way that looked effortless because it mostly was, easy with people, the kind of person who filled a room without trying. You'd watched him for almost a year. You knew the way he talked to people, the way he leaned in when something was funny, the way he'd come into the kitchen sometimes when you were there and open the fridge and just stand there for a full thirty seconds like the answer to whatever he was looking for might eventually appear.
You knew that he'd noticed you too. That wasn't ego, just observation. The way his eyes would find you first when he walked into a room where you already were. The way he'd aim a comment at you specifically when he had a whole group to choose from. The way he'd said I've heard a lot of reactions like your reaction was the one that mattered.
You'd been sensible about it for a year. You'd made the choice, every single time, to not do anything about it. And you were fine. You were genuinely fine with that. You knew what Dean was, knew what it would be, and you'd decided the math didn't work out in your favor so you'd left it alone.
It was just that sometimes, quietly, in the back of your head, a voice said but what if you didn't.
You got dressed Saturday night and told that voice to shut up, and went to the party anyway.
Tucker met you at the door at eight on the dot, already in a good mood, which meant either the playlist was really good or he'd already had a drink.
"You look great," he said, holding the door open.
"You say that every time."
"Because it's true every time." He handed you a beer from the counter as you came into the kitchen, already comfortable, already home in the easy way the house had started to feel over the past year. "I was thinking we do something with the leftover rice from yesterday, I got peppers —"
"Tucker."
"What."
"We're not cooking. There are already people here."
He looked genuinely confused. "So?"
You took the beer from him and looked around the kitchen. Logan was leaning against the far counter talking to someone from the team, and Garrett was already in the living room, and the house had that particular pre-party hum to it, not yet loud, still settling into itself.
Dean wasn't in the kitchen.
You noted this the way you noted a lot of things quietly, without making anything of it.
Logan glanced over when Tucker handed you the beer. "You're here early."
"She's basically a resident," Tucker said, like this was a fact.
"I'm a guest," you said.
"Guests don't know where we keep the good knives," Logan said and winked, and went back to his conversation.
You spent the next hour in that easy pre-party mode, moving between the kitchen and the living room, talking to people you knew by name now, accepting a second drink from someone who was mixing them near the back. Tucker orbited you loosely the way he always did at these things, appearing at your elbow every twenty minutes or so to say something that made you laugh and then disappearing again. This was one of your favorite things about him, he was never clingy, never needed to keep you close, just checked in like punctuation.
Dean appeared sometime around ten.
He came down the stairs and into the living room and you saw him before he saw you, which felt important. He was wearing a dark green shirt, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and he had that easy unhurried way of moving through a room like it had already arranged itself around him. He said something to Garrett near the bottom of the stairs and laughed, and you looked away before he could look up.
So. He was here. That was fine. That was completely normal and fine.
You went to find Tucker.
The next hour you spent being very deliberate about not being obvious. You talked to people on the back porch when Dean was in the living room. You came inside when he drifted toward the kitchen. You were not proud of it exactly, but you were not going to stand around waiting for him to decide whether tonight was a night he felt like paying attention to you. You'd done a lot of things in your life. That was not going to be one of them.
Your friend Anna, a sorority sister, texted at eleven: how's the party
You typed back: fine. dean's here.
Three seconds.
oh. OH. okay. call me tomorrow.
maybe
that means yes. don't do anything I wouldn't do
You locked your phone and put it in your pocket and thought about the specific, limited list of things Anna wouldn't do and found it unhelpfully short.
The thing was, and you'd been over this, you'd been reasonable about this, you knew what it would be. A night, maybe a few nights, comfortable and uncomplicated and then done. Dean DiLaurentis didn't do anything that looked like what came after. You'd watched him long enough to know that too. And you'd decided that wasn't what you wanted, so you'd kept your distance, and that had been the right call, and it remained the right call.
You were in college at a party on a Friday night and you had been sensible about this for almost an entire calendar year.
The voice in the back of your head said but you knew that going in and it doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to mean.
You told it to shut up.
It had a point though.
You refilled your drink. Stood near the back door where the air was a little cooler and the noise slightly less consuming. Watched the party happen around you. Thought, very clearly and deliberately: you know what it is. you've always known. that doesn't have to be the reason not to.
You were still working through the logic of that when you felt someone come to stand beside you.
"(Y/N). You've been avoiding me."
Dean. Not accusing, just observing, the same way he did most things, like he was simply noting a fact about the universe. He had a drink in one hand and he wasn't looking at you yet, eyes scanning the room like he'd just happened to end up here beside you, which you both understood wasn't true.
"I've been talking to people," you said.
"You've been talking to people on the opposite side of every room I was in."
"Maybe I just like that side of the room."
He looked at you then. Really looked, in that direct way of his that felt like being assessed and appreciated at the same time. The music was loud enough that the conversation existed in its own small space, just between you.
"You've been doing that for a year," he said.
"Has it been a year?" You kept your voice light.
"Almost." He took a drink. "I've been patient."
The word landed simply, without performance. Patient. Like he'd been waiting. Like the last year had been something he'd noticed too, kept track of, decided to let run its course.
You looked at him for a long moment. The party moved around you, loud and warm, and you stood in it and made the decision clearly, with both eyes open, which felt like the important part.
"Bathroom's upstairs," you said.
Something shifted in his expression, not surprise, just confirmation. Like he'd known, and now he knew for certain.
"Yeah," he said.
He followed you up the stairs without touching you, which felt somehow more loaded than if he had. You could feel him behind you the whole way, that particular awareness of someone close, and by the time you reached the top of the stairs your heart was doing something inconvenient.
The upstairs bathroom was at the end of the hall. You went in, he came in behind you, and you turned to click the lock and found him already there, close enough that turning around put you nearly chest to chest with him, close enough that you could feel the warmth coming off him before he'd laid a hand on you.
He didn't kiss you right away.
That was the first thing. You'd expected him to, he'd been patient for a year, you'd just told him where the bathroom was, you'd expected him to close the distance immediately. Instead he just looked at you, and the looking was its own thing, slow and deliberate, like he was taking his time now that he finally had you here and he wanted you to know it.
"You made me wait a long time," he said.
"You could have said something sooner," you said.
"I said something tonight."
"Barely."
Something shifted in his expression, not quite a smile, more like he'd just decided something. He reached up slowly and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, fingers grazing your jaw, and the touch was so light it was almost nothing, which somehow made it worse.
"You're going to be like that," he said. Quiet. Certain.
"I don't know what you mean," you said, which was a lie and you both knew it.
He tilted your chin up with two fingers, not roughly, just — directing. Making you look at him. "Yeah you do," he said, and then he kissed you.
It wasn't tentative. It was a kiss from someone who had thought about this specifically, who knew what he wanted and had decided tonight was when he was going to have it, and you kissed him back and felt a year's worth of deliberate distance dissolve somewhere at the back of your mind.
He walked you backward until your hips met the bathroom counter and left you there, stepped back just enough to look at you again with that same unhurried attention, and you understood then that he wasn't in a hurry. That he'd waited this long and now he was going to enjoy it, and you were going to have to let him.
"Take your jacket off," he said.
You did.
He watched you do it. That was all — just watched, arms loosely crossed, completely at ease, like this was exactly where he'd planned to be tonight. You set the jacket on the counter and looked at him and he looked back.
"Good," he said, like that meant something.
Your heart was doing the inconvenient thing again.
He came back to you slowly, hands finding your waist, and kissed you again, deeper this time, one hand sliding into your hair and gripping, not painfully, just holding you exactly where he wanted you. You made a small sound against his mouth and felt him smile.
"There it is," he murmured.
"Shut up," you said.
"Make me," he said against your jaw, and then his mouth was on your throat and the option to respond coherently became briefly unavailable.
He took his time with your throat, your collarbone, the soft place below your ear that made your fingers curl into his shirt without your permission, and every time you moved to pull him closer he'd ease back just enough to remind you that he was running this. Not mean about it. Just clear.
"Dean —"
"I've got you," he said, against your skin. "I'm not going anywhere."
His hands moved to the hem of your top, pulling it up slowly, and he stepped back to pull it over your head and dropped it somewhere on the floor and looked at you again with that particular focus, and you had to actively resist the urge to cover yourself, because that was not what you did, but the way he was looking at you made you feel like you were already coming apart.
"You have no idea," he said quietly, more to himself than you, and then his mouth was on your collarbone and his hands were at your waist and you gave up on dignity entirely.
His hands moved to the button of your jeans, unhurried, and he looked up at you first — not asking exactly, just checking — and you nodded and he undid it and crouched down to pull the fabric down your legs with a thoroughness that felt like a point being made. He looked up at you from there, and whatever was on your face made him look deeply, quietly satisfied.
"You've been thinking about this," he said. Not a question.
"Don't," you said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't be smug about it."
"I'm not being smug." He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee, which short-circuited something. "I'm just paying attention."
He stood back up slowly, hands trailing up the outside of your thighs, and lifted you onto the counter like it was nothing, stepping between your knees. You pulled him back in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him harder than you'd meant to and he made a low sound and kissed you back the same way, one hand flat against the small of your back pulling you closer.
"Tell me what you want," he said, against your mouth.
"You know what I want."
"I want to hear you say it."
You pulled back and looked at him. He looked back, completely unbothered, and you understood that he meant it, that he was going to stand here all night if he had to, patient as anything, until you said it out loud.
"Dean."
"I'm right here," he said pleasantly.
"You're so —"
"Tell me."
You told him.
"Please"
The expression that crossed his face was worth it. He kissed you once, hard, like a reward, and said good against your mouth, and then his hand moved and all the words you'd been planning to say next went somewhere inaccessible.
He knew what he was doing in a way that felt almost unfair, thorough, attentive, like he'd already decided exactly how this was going to go and was now simply executing. When you tried to rush it he slowed down. When you made a sound he filed it away and came back to it. The tile was cold at your back and his hands were warm on your thighs and his mouth was at your cunt and the things he said there were quiet and precise and designed specifically to ruin you.
"You've been driving me crazy," he said. Low, unhurried. "All year. You know that."
"Dean —"
"Every time you walked into a room." His hand didn't stop. "Every time you looked at Tucker instead of me. Every single time."
"That's your fault," you managed.
"I know," he said. "I know it is." Something almost rueful in it. "Doesn't change the fact."
When you finally came it was with your head hitting the mirror behind you and holding his shoulder and his name somewhere in the middle of it, and he stayed with you through the whole thing, unhurried, like he had nothing else in the world to do.
He gave you a moment. Then he pulled back and looked at you with an expression that you could only describe as thoroughly pleased with himself, which should have been annoying and wasn't.
"Don't," you said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to ask if you were okay," he said, which was such an obvious lie that you laughed, and the laugh broke something open in the room, and he grinned, a real one, unguarded in a way you hadn't seen before, and kissed you again before it could turn into a whole thing.
You worked his belt with hands that weren't entirely steady and he helped without comment, and then his hands were at your hips and he pressed his forehead to yours for just a second.
You watched him look for a condom on his backpocket.
"Yeah?" he said quietly. All the performance gone.
"Yeah," you said.
He pushed into you slow and you exhaled against his jaw, fingers gripping his shoulders, adjusting to the feeling of him. He gave you a moment, forehead still to yours, patient, present, and then he moved and everything else became temporarily beside the point.
It was charged the way it only gets when two people have been waiting too long. Not frantic but urgent, with a focused intensity that felt like something being resolved. His grip was firm and deliberate and you pulled him closer when he slowed down and he got the message and didn't slow down again. The mirror was fogging and somewhere below you the party was still happening and it was completely irrelevant.
"Look at me," he said.
You did. He held your gaze and something passed between you that neither of you named, and you felt it in your chest more than anywhere else.
"Months," he said again. Quieter now.
"I know," you said. "I know."
When he came he buried his face in your neck and went quiet and still, one hand flat against the small of your back holding you against him, and you held onto him too because it seemed like the thing to do, and because you wanted to, and those were the same thing tonight.
You stayed like that for a moment longer than necessary.
Then you both exhaled at roughly the same time, which broke the tension, and Dean huffed a quiet laugh into your shoulder.
You untangled carefully, straightened yourselves out. You hopped off the counter and turned to the mirror, fixing your hair, smoothing your top back into place. He leaned against the wall watching you do it, arms crossed loosely, shirt back on. His hair was a mess and he didn't appear concerned about it.
You met his eyes in the mirror.
"This doesn't have to be a thing," you said. Even, matter of fact. Not cold, just clear. You were giving him an out because you'd rather give it than have him feel like he needed to take it badly.
Something moved across his face. He pushed off the wall slightly. "What if I want it to be a thing?"
You turned around. "What kind of thing?"
He held your gaze. Didn't answer right away, which was an answer, and you'd known it would be, you'd known before you came upstairs, and still it took a small quiet moment to settle.
"Right," you said simply.
Not angry. Not hurt, or at least not visibly. You'd gone in with both eyes open and you'd meant it, and the math was what you'd always known it was. That was fine. You were fine.
You unlocked the door.
"Hey," Dean said.
You looked back.
He opened his mouth, closed it. Something in his expression that you couldn't entirely read. "Nothing," he said finally. "Never mind."
You nodded once and stepped out into the hallway.
Downstairs, the party had peaked without you. The music was louder and the living room was full and Tucker was in the kitchen, which is where Tucker always ended up at some point. He took one look at your face when you appeared in the doorway and turned to open the fridge and produced a beer, which he held out without a word.
You took it.
"Having fun?" he asked, very casually, eyes on the fridge.
"Yeah," you said. "Party's good."
"Cool." He closed the fridge. "I made queso."
"Tucker."
"It's in the pot on the back burner."
You looked at him for a second. He looked back, perfectly neutral, perfectly unbothered, and completely full of information he was choosing not to say.
"Thank you," you said.
"Don't mention it," he said. "Seriously, don't. I have a reputation."
You laughed despite yourself, and some of the tightness in your chest loosened, just a little.
Tucker handed you a chip.
You both stood at the stove and ate queso and said nothing about any of it, and that was, genuinely, one of the nicest things anyone had done for you in a while.
Dean came downstairs eleven minutes later, you weren't counting, you just noticed, and grabbed a beer from the fridge and leaned against the counter across from you, and the three of you stood in that kitchen like nothing had happened at all.
Dean looked at the pot on the stove. "Is that queso?"
"Made it myself," Tucker said.
"You absolutely did not."
Tucker looked at you. You said nothing, scooping queso onto another chip. Dean's eyes moved between you both and landed on you with something unreadable in them.
"Can I have some?" he asked.
"It's your house," you said.
He got a chip. Ate it. Looked at the pot. "That's really good."
"I know," you said.
Tucker stared directly at the wall and smiled at absolutely nothing.
It didn't have a name. That was the thing , it never got one, and neither of you tried to give it one, and somehow that made it easier to just let it exist.
It started simply enough. A week after the party, Dean texted you at eleven on a Tuesday night. Just: you up?
The second text was a trailer link. No context, no explanation, just: this.
You watched it once. Typed back: that looks pretentious.
i know. yes or no.
fine.
The house was quiet when you got there , Garrett's door closed, Tucker apparently out, and Dean was on the couch with a beer and the energy of someone who had been waiting without admitting to waiting.
You sat in the middle of the couch.
He pulled up the movie without comment.
It was pretentious and it was also actually good, and you told him so twenty minutes in when he glanced over to see what you thought. He said told you without looking back at the screen. You said you said it looked pretentious, which is not the same as saying it wasn't good. He said that's a very specific distinction. You said I'm a specific person. He didn't say anything for a moment, and then said: yeah.
Somewhere around the third act the distance between you closed. You weren't sure who moved, maybe both of you, gradually. His arm along the back of the couch and your shoulder under it and neither of you addressed it.
The movie ended and neither of you moved.
He found something else. A documentary, shorter, that turned out to be genuinely interesting. You watched most of it. Somewhere in the second half you were closer still his arm properly around you now, your feet tucked up beside you — and the lamp in the corner was the only light, and in here it was warm, and you were paying attention to about thirty percent of the documentary.
You woke up at two in the morning with a blanket over you that hadn't been there before. Dean was asleep at the other end of the couch, head back, completely unconscious. The TV was still on. You looked at him in the blue light of the screensaver, the line of his jaw, the stillness of someone actually asleep and felt the quiet weight of something you were not going to examine.
Then you got up, folded the blanket, left it on the cushion, and walked home.
You didn't text him about it. He didn't text you about it. Two days later he sent: you around tonight? and you said depends and he said on what and you said what's the plan and he said no plan and you said okay.
That was how it started.
By November it had a shape, even if it didn't have a name.
You came over two or three times a week. Sometimes it was a movie, sometimes it was just you in the kitchen making something with whatever was in the fridge while Dean sat at the counter with his phone and ate everything you put in front of him without comment except occasionally this is really good in a tone that suggested he was a little annoyed about it. Sometimes the whole house was there, Tucker loud and cheerful, Garrett and Logan drifting in and out, the TV on in the background and sometimes it was just the two of you and the house was quiet and those evenings had a quality to them that you tried not to examine too closely.
He texted you things that weren't questions. A link to an article about something you'd both argued about in passing. A photo of a sunset he'd apparently seen from the library roof, no caption. A voice memo once, at midnight, that was just him reading something in the flat unimpressed tone he used when something was genuinely getting on his nerves — listen to this, the message said, and you did, and you laughed, and he sent back a single: right?
You sent him things back. A recipe you thought he'd actually like. A clip of something that reminded you of a conversation you'd had. He always answered. Not immediately, not performatively, just he answered.
Garrett had noticed, in his way. He'd stopped doing double-takes when you were in the kitchen on a Tuesday night, had started just saying hey and opening the fridge like your presence was a given. Logan was less subtle, he'd caught your eye once across the living room when Dean laughed at something you'd said, and raised an eyebrow, and you'd looked away and he'd had the decency not to push it.
You talked to Anna about it on a Sunday afternoon in November, feet up on her bed, staring at the ceiling while she did her readings across from you.
"So it's a situationship," she said, not looking up.
"I didn't say that."
"You described a situationship."
"I described two people who spend time together."
"With benefits."
"Occasionally."
She finally looked up. "How often is occasionally?"
You said nothing.
"That's what I thought." She went back to her reading. "Are you okay with it?"
You thought about it honestly, the way you tried to think about most things. "Yeah," you said. "I went in knowing what it was."
"That's not what I asked."
You looked at the ceiling. "I'm fine," you said. "It's fine. I know what it is."
Anna made a small noncommittal sound that you chose not to interpret.
The physical part of it was easy in a way you hadn't entirely expected. Comfortable in a way that felt like it should have taken longer to get to. He knew what you liked with an attentiveness that might have been alarming if you'd let yourself think about it, and you knew what worked for him, and there was none of the awkwardness of newness anymore.
The only thing you were consistent about was the condom. Every time, without exception. Until one night in late November when Dean caught your wrist gently before you could reach for the nightstand.
"Why do you always —" He stopped. Nodded toward it. "Every time."
"Because I'm not stupid," you said. "You were getting around a lot before this and I don't know what this is and I'm not asking but I'm also not —"
"I haven't," he said. "Since the party. I haven't slept with anyone else."
The room went quiet.
"Oh," you said. A beat. "Me neither."
Something moved across his face that he didn't entirely manage to control. His thumb traced a slow absent line against the inside of your wrist.
"Okay," he said quietly.
"Okay," you said.
The air in the room changed into something neither of you was going to name. Then he kissed you, and it was different, slower, more careful, like something had been confirmed that he hadn't known he was waiting to confirm, and you let yourself feel it without examining it too closely, because that felt fair.
The first sign was the texts.
Not that they stopped completely, that would have been obvious, and Dean was too smart for obvious. They just slowed. A reply that came four hours later instead of forty minutes. A shorter answer where there used to be a real one. The voice memos stopped. The links stopped. You'd send something and get back a single word where there used to be a sentence, and you'd look at it and feel the shape of what was happening without being able to name it yet.
You told yourself it was school. Exams were coming, everyone was disappearing into the library, that was normal. You told yourself he was busy, stressed, in his head about the end of semester and the hockey team. You were busy too. You had your own readings, your own papers, your own life that existed completely separately from the off campus house and always had.
You kept coming over. Tucker needed someone to watch the game with and you'd promised him a recipe you'd been meaning to show him and you were not going to rearrange your life over a shift in text frequency.
But you noticed.
You noticed the way Dean would come into the kitchen when you were there and open the fridge and not look at you the way he used to. Not hostile, just absent. Like you were furniture. Like the awareness he'd always had of you in a room had been switched off at a source you couldn't locate. He ate the food you made without commenting on it. He answered direct questions. He didn't start anything.
You didn't push. That wasn't who you were.
But by the second week of December you were lying in your room at night doing the math and the math was not coming out well, and you were tired of pretending it wasn't.
You went over on a Thursday.
Tucker was at a class. You'd known that, you'd checked, because you wanted the house quiet, because you wanted five minutes of honesty without an audience. Garrett's truck wasn't in the driveway either. You knocked on Dean's door and he opened it in sweats and a Briar hoodie, textbook open on his desk, and the look on his face when he saw you was almost nothing, which was its own answer.
"Hey," you said.
"Hey." He stepped back to let you in, which you took as an invitation, and you came in and stood in the middle of his room and he closed the door and leaned against his desk with his arms crossed. Not aggressive. Just closed.
You looked at him for a moment.
"What's going on with you?" you asked. Quiet, direct. No accusation in it, just the question.
He shrugged one shoulder. "Nothing. Finals."
"Okay," you said. "That's not what I mean and you know it."
A beat. Something moved behind his eyes and then went still.
"I don't know what you want me to say," he said.
"I want you to say what's actually happening."
He looked at you. Then he looked away, jaw tightening slightly, and you recognized the particular quality of someone deciding something, not discovering it, deciding it, and some quiet part of you braced.
"I think this has run its course," he said. Flat. Careful.
You kept your face even. "Okay. What does that mean."
"It means —" He stopped. Started again. "I don't want this anymore. Whatever this is. I don't want it."
"Okay," you said.
He looked at you, and something in your steadiness seemed to irritate him, which you hadn't expected, and that was maybe the thing that cracked something open in him that should have stayed closed.
"I don't know what you thought this was," he said, and his voice had an edge now, "but it wasn't — I wasn't —" He made a short, almost contemptuous gesture. "You've been coming over here for months like you live here. Cooking, watching movies, acting like this is some kind of —"
"I never called it anything," you said.
"No, but you acted like it was something. You act like everything is fine and nothing bothers you and you're so —" He stopped, and the word he landed on was quiet and precise and clearly chosen to land: "You're so comfortable here. Like you belong here. And you don't."
The room was very quiet.
You looked at him. He looked back, and you could see the moment he heard what he'd just said, saw something flicker across his face that might have been regret but came too late to matter.
"You're right," you said. Your voice was completely level. "I don't."
He opened his mouth.
"I'm not going to make this into something," you said. "You don't want it, that's fine. I went in knowing what it was." You picked up your jacket from where you'd set it on the edge of his bed. "I hope finals go okay."
"Hey —"
"Good night, Dean."
You left. You closed the door behind you, not hard, just closed, and you walked down the stairs and through the front door and out into the December cold and you kept your shoulders straight the whole way home.
You didn't cry until you were in your own room with the door locked, and even then it wasn't for very long, because you'd known, you'd always known, and knowing didn't make it nothing but it made it survivable.
You texted Anna: you were right.
She called immediately. You let it ring twice, then picked up.
"I'm okay," you said, before she could ask.
"I know you are," she said. "Tell me anyway."
The hard part came later, at midnight.
You were lying in bed and you saw a link, a restaurant that had just opened, a tasting menu you'd been meaning to mention and you had his name pulled up in your contacts before you caught yourself. Thumb over send. The restaurant unremarkable and the gesture everything.
You put your phone face down on the mattress and looked at the ceiling for a while.
You'd known. You'd always known. That didn't make it nothing. It made it survivable, which was what you'd agreed to, and you were keeping that agreement.
The next afternoon you went to the off campus house.
Not because of Dean. Tucker had texted you at noon — i made something and i think i made it wrong, come look at it — and you'd said what did you make and he'd sent a photo that made you genuinely concerned for his wellbeing, and you'd said I'm coming over because that was what you did.
You showed up at three in the afternoon in your good boots and your coat, hair done, bag over your shoulder, because you had a study session after and you were not rearranging your life. You walked into the kitchen and Tucker was standing over something on the stove that smelled questionable and turned around with the expression of a man who needed saving.
"What is that," you said.
"I was trying to do the thing you showed me with the —"
"Tucker."
"I know."
You put your bag down and took your coat off and hung it over the stool and rolled up your sleeves and looked at whatever was happening in the pot, and Tucker stood next to you like a man watching a surgeon assess a patient.
"It's salvageable," you said.
He exhaled. "I knew it."
"Get me the garlic."
You cooked. Tucker hovered and passed things when you asked and made commentary that you ignored selectively and the kitchen filled up with something that smelled the way the kitchen was supposed to smell, and it was normal. It was completely normal. You were fine.
Logan came through at some point, stopped in the doorway, looked at the pot. "That smells good." Then he looked at Tucker. "Did you make that?"
"We're collaborating," Tucker said.
Logan looked at you. You said nothing. He grabbed a water from the fridge and left, which was exactly the right thing to do.
Dean came downstairs at some point, and you heard him stop at the bottom of the stairs, and you stirred the pot and didn't turn around.
"Hey," Tucker said, in the careful voice of someone being very casual.
"Hey." Dean's voice from the doorway. A pause. "What are you making?"
"She's fixing what I made," Tucker said.
You felt Dean's eyes on your back. You reached past the stove for the spice rack.
"Smells good," Dean said.
You said nothing. Not pointedly — just nothing. Tucker handed you the paprika.
Dean didn't leave. You could feel him still standing there, which told you something you set aside for later. You plated what you'd made, put Tucker's portion in front of him, put the extra in a container that you labeled with a piece of tape and a marker the way you always did, and started washing the pan.
"There's extra," Tucker said, to the room.
"I can see that," Dean said.
Tucker ate a bite. Made a sound of profound relief. "You're genuinely talented, you know that?"
"I know," you said, drying the pan.
You stayed another forty minutes, finishing your tea, going over the recipe with Tucker so he could try again, answering a text from Anna. Normal. Easy. The house the same as it had always been, Tucker the same as he'd always been, you the same as you'd always been.
When you left you said, "Bye Tuck, don't touch the leftovers until tomorrow, they're better the next day."
"Noted," Tucker said.
You pulled on your coat. Picked up your bag. "Later," you said, generally, to the room, and you walked out.
Dean stood in the kitchen after the front door closed.
Tucker was eating. Not looking at him. The kitchen smelled incredible and there was a labeled container in the fridge and the pan you'd used was clean and back on the rack like you'd never been there.
"She labeled it," Dean said.
"She always labels it," Tucker said.
Dean looked at the fridge. "For who."
"I don't know, Dean." Tucker turned a page in whatever he was reading. "Whoever wants it, I guess."
He couldn't focus in class the next morning.
The professor was talking and Dean had his laptop open and his notes half-started and none of it was going in because he kept coming back to the same thing, the same image, which was you standing at his stove with your back to him like nothing had happened.
Not performing like nothing had happened. Actually fine. The difference between those two things was something he understood logically and couldn't reconcile emotionally and it was making him insane.
He'd expected — he didn't know what he'd expected. Something. Some sign that what he'd said had mattered, that he had mattered, that the months of you being in his space and in his kitchen and in his bed and knowing how he took his coffee and showing up when Tucker texted you and falling asleep on his couch and leaving your chapstick on his nightstand —
You'd taken the chapstick. He'd noticed.
You'd taken it and labeled the leftovers and said later to the room and walked out and that was it, apparently. That was the whole thing. He'd said you don't belong here and you'd said you're right and you'd meant it, and that was the part he couldn't get past. You'd meant it not because you believed it but because you weren't going to fight him on it. Because you didn't need to.
You act like you belong here. And you don't.
He'd said that. He'd actually said that.
He stared at his laptop screen.
You'd been coming to that house since before he'd ever spoken a full sentence to you. Tucker's mom had called you, you'd shown up, you'd been folded into the house slowly and completely the way only people who actually fit somewhere ever are, Tucker texting you unprompted, Garrett knowing your coffee order, Logan moving over on the couch without being asked, and Dean had stood in his own room and told you that you didn't belong there and you'd looked at him like you were giving him the chance to hear what he was saying and he hadn't taken it and you'd left.
And then you'd come back the next day and cooked Tucker's disaster and labeled the leftovers and said later.
Later. Like you'd see them around. Like the house was still just a place you came to, unconnected to Dean, existing independently of whatever he'd decided.
Because it was. Because Tucker was your friend. Because you'd built something there that had nothing to do with Dean DiLaurentis and apparently had no intention of dismantling it on his account.
He wrote something down without reading it.
The thing was and this was the part that was sitting in his chest like something he couldn't shift, he'd ended it because it was getting too real. That was the honest answer, the one he hadn't said out loud to anyone including himself until approximately right now, which was not ideal timing. He'd felt it getting heavier and closer and more like something that had a name and he'd panicked, and when Dean DiLaurentis panicked he went cold, and when he went cold long enough he said things he couldn't take back.
You don't belong here.
He closed his laptop. Opened it again.
You hadn't fought for it. He'd said something genuinely cruel and you'd said you're right and you'd left, and the version of events he'd been running in his head where you'd be upset, where you'd pull back from the house, where he'd see the evidence of having mattered somewhere in your behavior, none of that had happened. You'd come back with your boots and your coat and your labeled container and your later and you were fine.
He was not fine.
That felt deeply, profoundly unfair, and he was self-aware enough to recognize that he had no one to blame for it but himself, which made it worse.
Wait, said something in the back of his head, quiet and inconvenient.
He picked up his pen. Put it down.
Wait.
He didn't finish the thought. He stared at his notes until they stopped meaning anything, and outside the window the Briar campus went on being cold and grey and completely indifferent to the fact that Dean DiLaurentis was sitting in class slowly understanding something he wasn't ready to understand yet.
The problem with ending things, Dean was discovering, was that it only worked if the other person let it end.
You hadn't made a scene. Hadn't texted him anything he had to respond to, hadn't shown up at his door, hadn't done a single thing that gave him something to push against. You'd just continued. Existing in the house, in the kitchen, in Tucker's orbit, completely unchanged, like Dean's opinion of the situation was one data point you'd received and filed appropriately and moved on from.
He ate everything you made. That was the humiliating part. Every single time you left something in the fridge he ate it, sometimes within the hour, standing at the counter in the kitchen alone like some kind of punishment he was administering to himself. Tucker never commented on this. Tucker never commented on anything, which was its own form of commentary.
You'd left soup once. Labeled, like always — back burner, twenty minutes, don't let Tucker have more than one bowl he'll eat the whole thing. Dean had read the label four times. Eaten two bowls. Stood at the sink washing the pot afterward feeling like a man losing an argument he wasn't allowed to be having.
Garrett had found him standing there once, staring at nothing, and said "you good?" and Dean had said "yeah" and Garrett had looked at the labeled container still on the counter and said nothing further, which somehow made it worse.
He started noticing everything.
The way you'd laugh at something on your phone and not share it with the room, just smile to yourself and put it face down. The way you always took your shoes off at the door and lined them up neatly to the left, always the left, and he'd started checking for them when he came downstairs, the presence or absence of your boots telling him things about the afternoon before he'd even gotten to the kitchen. The way you said Tucker's name — comfortable, fond, like a shorthand — and the way you had, at some point, stopped saying Dean's name at all. Not pointedly. Just it didn't come up. He wasn't who you were talking to.
He'd done that. He understood that he'd done that.
He just hadn't understood what it would feel like to have done it.
He tried, for a while, to be reasonable about it.
He made a list, mentally, of all the reasons this was fine. He didn't do relationships. He'd never done relationships. He had a plan for his life that had been in place since he was sixteen, and that plan had no room in it for whatever you were. Whatever you'd been. The comfortable weight of your presence, the evenings when you were in the house versus evenings when you weren't, the way he'd started coming across things during the week and thinking you'd have something to say about this —
That was the problem right there. That was the thing he kept running into.
He'd been having conversations with you in his head for weeks. Full conversations, with your actual responses, because he knew how you thought well enough to fill both sides, and that was, that was not the behavior of someone who was fine.
He talked to Garrett on a Tuesday night, which he never did, and talked around the subject for twenty minutes before Garrett said, flatly: "Just tell me what she did."
"She didn't do anything," Dean said.
A pause. "Then tell me what you did."
Dean stared at his ceiling. "I ended it."
"And?"
"And she's fine."
"That's it? She's fine and you are like this?"
"She's too fine," Dean said, and hated how that sounded.
Garrett was quiet for a moment. Then: "Dean."
"What."
"You absolute idiot."
January settled over Briar cold and grey and Dean settled into a particular kind of misery that he was too proud to name properly. He went to class. He did his readings. He played well enough at practice that Coach didn't get on him, which required more effort than it should have because his head was not where it was supposed to be.
You came over on Saturdays, usually. Sometimes Thursdays. Tucker had apparently taken to texting you about things that had nothing to do with cooking, Dean had seen the thread once, accidentally, and it was just the two of you sending each other increasingly unhinged videos with no context, a friendship that existed completely on its own terms, owed nothing to Dean, and was apparently thriving.
Logan had said, once, carefully, over breakfast: "She was here yesterday."
"I know," Dean said.
Logan looked at him. "Just saying."
"I know," Dean said again.
Logan went back to his cereal and didn't push it, which was the right call, and Dean appreciated it and resented it in equal measure.
He watched you from across rooms and told himself he wasn't doing that.
You never looked uncomfortable. That was the thing that was going to actually kill him. You'd come in, take your boots off, left side of the door, say hey to whoever was around, drift toward the kitchen with the ease of someone in a place they belonged, and it would be normal. Warm. Real. And Dean would be somewhere in the same house eating himself alive and you would be completely, genuinely fine.
He thought about the things he'd said. You act like you belong here. And you don't.
He thought about those words with a frequency that was becoming a problem.
It was a random Wednesday in late January.
Dean came home from a late class tired and cold and in the specific bad mood that came from hours with a professor who seemed to find his suffering amusing. The house was lit up when he got there, which meant people were home, and he could hear voices from the kitchen before he'd gotten his coat off.
Tucker's laugh. And then yours.
He stood in the hallway for a second with his coat half off.
"—absolutely not, that's not how that works—" Tucker, indignant.
"I'm telling you, Tucker, I watched you do it, that's exactly how you did it—"
"I was recovering, there's a difference—"
"There is no difference, the result was the same—"
Tucker said something Dean didn't catch and you laughed, full and real, the kind of laugh that meant you'd actually been caught off guard by it, and the sound of it hit Dean somewhere undefended and just stayed there.
He finished taking his coat off. Hung it up. Walked to the kitchen doorway.
You were at the island, Tucker leaning on his elbows across from you, some kind of card game between you that Dean didn't recognize. You had a mug of something and your hair was down and you were still smiling from whatever Tucker had just said, and Tucker was looking at you with the expression of someone who had won a point. Garrett was on the couch in the next room, feet up, barely paying attention, the way Garrett existed in the house like ambient weather.
"Dean," Tucker said. "Tell her that recovering from a bad move is a valid strategy."
"Depends on the move," Dean said, automatically.
"See," Tucker said to you.
"That's not what he said," you said, and glanced at Dean briefly,not long, not loaded, just a glance, the kind you'd give anyone and looked back at Tucker. "Your move."
Dean got a glass of water. Stood at the counter. The card game continued. Tucker accused you of cheating, you denied it with the specific serenity of someone who was absolutely cheating, Dean watched and said nothing and felt the sensation of standing outside something warm.
An hour later you started putting your coat on.
"Okay," you said, gathering your things. "Tucker. Rematch Thursday."
"Thursday," Tucker confirmed. "I'll win."
"You won't." You pulled your bag onto your shoulder. Looked at Tucker with something genuine and warm. "Bye, Tuck."
"Bye." Tucker was already looking back at his phone.
"Later, Garrett," you called toward the living room.
"Later," Garrett called back, not looking up.
You walked toward the door. Past Dean, close enough that he could have said something, close enough that the window was right there, and he stood at the counter with his glass of water and said nothing, and you pulled the door open and walked out, and the door closed, and that was it.
Tucker looked up from his phone.
The two of them sat in the quiet kitchen, the card game still spread out on the island, your mug still on the counter.
"She forgot her mug," Dean said.
"She'll get it Thursday," Tucker said.
Dean put his glass down. Picked it back up.
"She said bye to you first," he said.
Tucker looked at him for a long moment. Set his phone down. "Yeah," he said. "She did."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Tucker —"
"I'm not doing this, Dean."
"I'm not asking you to do anything."
"Good." Tucker picked his phone back up. "Because I really, genuinely, am not getting involved."
From the living room, Garrett said nothing, which meant he was listening to every word.
Dean looked at the door.
"She left her mug," he said again, quieter, to no one in particular.
Tucker said nothing. Which was, as always, its own kind of answer.
He lasted four days.
Four days of your mug on the counter — Tucker had washed it and left it there — four days of picking up his phone and putting it down, four days of being a reasonable adult who had made a decision and was living with it, and then on Sunday night at eleven p.m. he put on his shoes and his coat and walked across campus to the Kappa house like a man who had exhausted every other option.
He stood outside in the cold and looked up at the second floor windows and felt genuinely insane.
He found a handful of small rocks from the landscaping border. Looked at them. Looked up at the windows.
He threw one.
It hit the wrong window. A light came on and someone looked out — not you, someone he didn't recognize — and he stepped back into the shadow of the tree until the light went off again.
He tried the next window. Nothing. The one after that.
The window opened.
You leaned out, hair messy, clearly pulled from sleep or close to it, and looked down at him in the dark with an expression that moved through several phases: confusion, recognition, disbelief. Before settling on something that was almost exasperated and almost amused and fully of course.
"Dean," you said, not loud. "What are you doing."
"I need to talk to you."
"It's eleven o'clock."
"I know. You weren't answering my texts."
You stared at him. "You texted me twenty minutes ago."
"You didn't answer."
"I was asleep."
"Can I come up?"
The expression on your face did something complicated. "You want to climb the sorority house."
"There's a trellis."
You looked to the left, apparently confirming the existence of the trellis, then looked back down at him. "Dean."
"Five minutes," he said. "I just — five minutes. Then I'll go."
You looked at him for a long moment, and he stood in the cold and let you look, because he'd run out of ways to manage how this went. You could close the window. That was a real option and he'd accept it.
You didn't close the window.
"The trellis is on the left," you said. "Don't break anything."
He made it up without incident, which he felt was frankly more than he deserved. You'd stepped back from the window to let him climb through, and he came in trying not to knock anything over and stood in the middle of your room feeling the full absurdity of the situation settle over him.
Your room was small and warm. Books on every surface, a desk lamp on low, a quilt on the bed that looked like it had been in your family for a while. It smelled like you, something warm, something that had been living in the back of his brain for months without his permission.
You sat on the edge of your bed and looked at him with your arms loosely crossed, not hostile, just waiting. Giving him the floor.
"I need to say something," he said.
"Okay."
"And I need you to let me say it without — I need to actually get through it."
"I'm not stopping you," you said.
He looked at you. You looked back, and there was something in your expression: patient, steady, not giving him anything, and he understood suddenly that you were going to make him do this himself. All the way. No half measures.
He took a breath.
"I said things to you that I can't take back," he started. "That night in my room. And I knew when I said them that they weren't — I knew they weren't true. I said them because I was scared and I was trying to make you leave and I wanted it to work so I made it as —" He stopped. Tried again. "I wanted you gone and I made sure you'd go and then you went and I've been —" He stopped again.
You waited.
"I've been losing my mind," he said. "For weeks. You keep coming over and cooking Tucker's food and laughing at his jokes and you left your mug on the counter and you said bye, Tuck and walked out like I wasn't standing right there and I —" He stopped. The words that needed to come next were the ones he'd been circling for weeks and he was done circling. "I'm in love with you."
The room was quiet.
"I'm in love with you," he said again, because it had come out steadier the second time and it was true and he was done with it living only in his head. "I have been for a while. I didn't know what to do with it so I — I did what I did. And I know that's not an excuse. I know what I said. But I needed you to know that it wasn't because you didn't matter. It was because you mattered too much and I didn't know how to —"
"Dean," you said.
He stopped.
You looked at him for a long moment. Something in your expression that was careful and real and not entirely closed.
"I know," you said quietly.
He blinked. "You —"
"I knew." You said it simply, without cruelty. "I've known for a while. I needed you to know it too." A pause. "And I needed you to say it. Out loud. To me. Without me making it easy for you."
He held your gaze. "Because you're not going to make it easy for me."
"No," you said. Not meanly. Just honestly. "I'm not."
He nodded slowly. That was fair. That was completely fair.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For what I said. You don't belong here — I knew that wasn't true when I said it. That's the worst part. I knew and I said it anyway."
You looked at him. And he watched something in your expression shift, not all the way, but enough, a small careful opening.
"I know," you said again. Softer this time.
"Can we —" He stopped. Tried to find the right shape for the question. "Is there a way back from this. Is that something that exists."
You were quiet for a moment that felt very long.
"Come here," you said.
He crossed the room and you stood from the bed to meet him and he kissed you carefully, like he was asking, and you kissed him back like you were answering, and it was nothing like the first time and nothing like any of the times in between, because those had all been about desire and this was about something that didn't have the same kind of ceiling.
His hands came to your face, gentle, and you let him, and he kissed you like he was trying to say the things that words hadn't been sufficient for the weeks of watching you from across rooms, the soup, the mug, the way your boots on the left side of the door had started to feel like something he needed, all of it, moving through the kiss like it had somewhere to go now.
You pulled back after a moment and looked at him.
"Say it again," you said quietly. Not a test. Just you wanted to hear it again.
"I'm in love with you," he said, without hesitating.
You looked at him for one more second. Then you kissed him again and this time you meant it differently, your hands in his collar pulling him in, and the tenor of the whole thing shifted from careful to something warmer and more certain.
He walked you back to the bed gently, and you sat and pulled him down with you, and he went willingly, propping himself above you, and looked at you for a moment. Your hair on the pillow, your expression open in a way he hadn't been allowed to see in weeks.
"Hi," he said, quietly.
The corner of your mouth moved. "Hi."
He kissed you again, slower this time, and his hands moved over you with a deliberateness that was different from anything before not performing, not proving anything, just present. Your shirt came off and his followed, and he pressed his mouth to your collarbone, your shoulder, the soft curve of your throat, taking his time in the way of someone who wasn't going anywhere.
"Dean," you said softly, fingers in his hair.
"I know," he said, against your skin. "I've got you."
You exhaled like something releasing.
It was slow and close and almost unbearably tender, the kind of thing that didn't have anything to hide anymore. He was attentive in a way that felt different now not just knowing what worked but wanting you to feel it, wanting you to know he was there, all the way there, not halfway out the door. You made soft sounds against his jaw and pulled him closer and he went, and you moved together in the small warm room with the desk lamp still on low and neither of you suggested turning it off.
When you came it was quiet and deep and you said his name and he held you through it with his face pressed to your temple, and afterward he stayed close, closer than strictly necessary, and you didn't move away.
When he followed he was holding your hand, fingers laced, which hadn't been planned and was completely true, and you held on.
Afterward you lay in the small bed in the quiet and the lamp was still on.
Your head was on his chest. He had his arm around you. Neither of you had suggested otherwise.
"You really threw rocks at my window," you said, to the ceiling.
"Small rocks."
"You hit Anna's window first."
"She didn't see me."
"She definitely saw you." A pause. "She texted me twenty minutes ago asking if I had a 'nighttime visitor.'"
Dean closed his eyes briefly. "Great."
You laughed, quiet, against his chest, and he felt it more than heard it and thought: there it is. there's the thing I've been missing.
He pressed his mouth to your hair.
"For the record," he said, "you do belong there. In the house. That was — I need you to know that was the opposite of true."
You were quiet for a moment. "I know," you said. "I always knew."
"You're annoyingly self-possessed, you know that?"
"You've mentioned it."
"Not a complaint."
You tilted your head to look up at him. Something in your expression that was warm and a little careful still, not closed, just real. This was going to take time, he knew that. He'd put something between you that didn't disappear overnight and you weren't going to pretend it had, because you didn't do that.
"Tucker's going to be insufferable about this," you said.
Dean thought about Tucker, who had said absolutely nothing for weeks and washed your mug and left it on the counter. "He already knows," Dean said.
"He's known for months."
"I know."
"He texted me two weeks ago," you said, "and said 'just for the record I think he's an idiot.' I asked who and he said 'you know who.'"
Dean stared at the ceiling. "I'm going to kill him."
"You're not."
"No," he agreed. "I'm not."
A beat.
"Garrett's going to say I told you so," you said.
Dean closed his eyes. "Did he tell you so?"
"He texted me a single thumbs up the morning after the speech. No context."
"I'm going to kill Garrett too."
"You're really not."
"No," he said. "I'm really not."
You settled back against him and the room was quiet and warm and your hand was resting on his chest and outside the world was doing whatever the world was doing and in here it was just this, finally, with a name on it.
Summary: where the girls take you to a costume party and things change a little bit for you.
Warning: off campus au (kind of), puck bunnies, shy reader, dumb, toxic and lame ex, dean being a gentleman (in his own way), drunk reader, one bed trope, a little angst, teasing and fluff.
Beau Maxwell's house is packed to the rafters: strobes of red and blue light cut through a thick haze of sweat, cheap beer, and expensive cologne. The bass from the speakers is vibrating so hard it rattles the red Solo cups stacked on the kitchen counters. You're dressed like Christina Aguilera in her 2002 Dirrty era, you're really trying something new and that reason alone is probably why the girls dragged you to Beau's costume party.
Allie was walking next to you, dressed in a flawless, glittery 2000s J-Lo tracksuit, yelling over the music. “I told you! Beau promised this would be the party of the semester, and he actually delivered!”
Beau came to her side in full Top Gun flight suit as Goose, wrapping an arm around Allie's waist. “Babe you need to have some faith in me, the Maxwell brand never misses.”
Hannah was wearing fluffy bunny ears and a white bodysuit, nudging you with her elbow. “Look at you, sweetie! Miss Malone’s waitress of the month is absolutely rocking the 'Dirrty' era. I knew we just needed to get you out of your oversized sweaters.”
You're tugging anxiously at the edge of your cropped halter top, your face is flushing with embarrassment.
“Hannah, I feel like half my body is exposed. If a customer from Malone's sees me like this, I’m going to have to fake my own death and move to Canada.”
Brianna was laughing, her halo tilted slightly as she laughs. “Oh, please honey. You look stunning! Besides, look around. Logan is literally just wearing bird wings and no shirt.”
Logan's flapping a giant pair of feathered wings behind Brianna, he's grinning. “Hey, it takes a lot of confidence to pull off the avian look, okay? G, back me up.”
Meanwhile Garrett was wearing a magician's cape, clearly matching with Hannah. He's holding a Solo cup like a prop. “Can't hear you, Birdman. I'm currently preparing to make this keg disappear.”
You try to laugh and blend into the background, taking a hefty sip of your drink to calm your nerves just a little. As your eyes wander through the crowded living room, your heart drops, because, standing by the punch bowl is a shockingly familiar face...
You choked slightly on your drink. “Oh my god. No! No, no, no.”
Hannah frowned, she followed your gaze. “What? What is it- oh.” she paused. “You have got to be kidding me, is that...?”
You just nodded, panicking. “Yes! It’s him. My ex, Stuart. Why is he here? He hates hockey and its players, he hates american football players, he hates big crowds, and his idea of a wild and crazy night is watching documentaries on tax law! We broke up, like... two months ago and I am not dealing with his boring lectures and energy tonight.”
Allie grabbed another drink from a passing tray and handed it to you. “Babe, drink this okay? You are a popstar tonight! You work hard, you look hot, and you are going to vibe. Just... Forget about him and his boring ass.” you accepted the drink and downed it in one gulp. “Damn, that was easy.”
The drinks have fully kicked in, the initial shyness has melted away into a warm, buzzing confidence. You’re standing near the edge of the makeshift dance floor, fully lost in the rhythm, your hips swaying to the heavy beat, feeling so good and free. You feel alive, your head is fuzzy because of the drinks, the stress of school and Malone’s are completely forgotten.
Through the crowd, a guy in a full, fuzzy yellow and black bumblebee suit bumps into you. “Oh, whoa! Sorry about that, Xtina. Didn't mean to buzz into your personal space.” Tucker said smiling warmly.
You giggled, waving your cup. “Tucker! Oh my god, hi! You're a bee! That's amazing!”
He grinned. “Garrett picked it out, don't ask him about it. You're having fun?”
You nodded vigorously, your vision is a little swimmy. “The best! I am just... living life!”
Tucker chuckles and moves toward the kitchen, and as you turn back to the dance floor, your eyes lock onto the center of the room in where Dean Di Laurentis is standing there. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses inside, dog tags resting over a suit against a completely bare, perfectly toned chest. He looks like Maverick if Maverick spent twenty hours a week on the ice. Naturally, there is a literal flock of puck bunnies surrounding him, hanging onto his every word.
Dean's eyes scan the room, cutting through his circle of admirers, and stop dead on you. His jaw slackens slightly as he takes in the outfit.
You started shouting way too loudly, waving both arms in the air with zero chill, because when you're drunk you feel invincible. “DEAN!! HI!!! DEAN, OVER HERE!!!”
Dean blinks at you, a slow, utterly wicked smirk spreading across his face, he doesn't hesitate. He murmurs something to the girls around him, leaving them mid-sentence, and struts directly through the crowd toward you.
He stopped a few inches away, taking off his aviators to reveal burning blue eyes. “Well, hello there, sweetheart. I didn't know Briar’s sweetest girl had a wild side... What's all this?”
You giggled, doing a little uncoordinated but enthusiastic dance step, your hips bumping into his thigh. “I'm a popstar, Dean! Do you like it? Allie and Hannah made me do it, but I think I love it!”
His voice dropped an octave, a low chuckle escaping his throat. “Like it? Honey, I'm trying very hard to remember my manners right now. You look incredible.”
Before you can think, you step closer into his space, completely unbothered by your usual shyness. Dean’s smirk softens into something warmer, he steps in, his large, warm hands finding their way to your hips. The contact sends a jolt straight down your spine, but it’s not uncomfortable or awkward like when your ex tried to do that, it feels grounding.
Dean's guiding your rhythm smoothly, pulling you a fraction closer. “Well... Let's see those moves then, popstar. Don't let me stop you.”
You dance with him, your head spinning from the alcohol and his sheer proximity. And every time your body brushes against his bare chest, your heart does a flip, he keeps his hands firmly on your waist, navigating you away from any rowdy partygoers, his eyes never leaving yours.
Hours after that the music has died down to a low murmur, the house is a wasteland of crushed cans and deflated balloons. You are leaning heavily against Dean, your chin resting on his shoulder and your legs feel like absolute jelly.
You're slurring slightly, looking around the empty couch area. “Wait... where did Hannah go? Brianna? And Allie? Did they leave me? Am I abandoned?”
Dean rubs his thumb in soothing circles against your hip. “Relax, babe. Hannah went upstairs with Garrett about an hour ago. Allie and Brianna did the same with Beau and Logan. They're all crashed out in the boys' rooms.”
You're pouting, your eyes are heavy. “Oh... So I'm lone... lonely. The lonely popstar.”
Dean smiled softly to you. “You're not lonely, you're with me. And you are officially cut off, sweetheart. Let's get you off your feet, okay?”
You try to take a step forward, but your heel catches on a stray solo cup, you stumble, but you don't hit the floor. Dean catches you effortlessly, scooping you up into his arms before you can even gasp by his action. One arm is securely behind your back, the other one is under your knees.
“Whoa... You're strong, like a hockey player.” you say while wrapping your arms around his neck.
He laughed softly as he carries you up the stairs. “Funny how that works. Just hold on, I've got you.”
Dean's room is surprisingly neat for a college guy, smelling of cedar, books and clean laundry. Dean gently deposits you onto his large mattress, you immediately flop backward, sighing contentedly against the pillows.
Dean's standing over the bed, unlooping his dog tags. “Alright, popstar. Since there's only one bed, you can have the left side of the bed, I'll take the right. Just get comfortable."
You're trying to sit up, tugging frantically at the back of your halter top. “Dean... Maverick... we have a problem. A big, sticky, terrible problem.”
He arch an eyebrow. “Yeah? What's that?” he says amused.
Your fingers are fumbling uselessly against the fabric, your vision blurring with frustration. “I'm trapped! The fabric... it's like cheap faux-leather or something, and I sweat, and now it's stuck to my skin. And my hands aren't working! They're like little clubs, I can't unclip the back. I'm going to have to live in this costume forever.”
He walks over to the edge of the bed, kneeling down so he's at the same eye level as you. “Hey, take a breath. Breathe... You're not living in the costume.”
You look at him with big, innocent, tipsy eyes, your lower lip is slightly trembling. “Can you help me? Please? I can't get it off.”
Dean freezes for a fraction of a second, his gaze drops to your lips, then to the intricate, tangled straps at the back of your neck. The playful playboy facade completely drops, replaced by a tense, hyper-focused intensity.
His voice is thick, deadly serious but incredibly gentle. “Okay, turn around. Sit up for me, please.”
You clumsily turn your back to him, sitting cross-legged on the bed. You feel his large, cool hands brush your hair over one shoulder, his knuckles graze your bare skin, sending a wave of goosebumps across your arms.
His fingers are working meticulously at the stubborn clasp. “Jesus, you weren't kidding. Whoever designed this outfit did not think about the exit strategy.”
“Don't rip it, please. It's Hannah's.” you whispered while staring at the wall.
He chuckled softly, his breath warm against the back of your neck. “I won't rip it, sweetheart. Trust me, just hold still for a second...”
He carefully detangles the sticky fabric from the clasp, his touch light and deliberate. With a soft click, the tension in the top gives way. He holds the fabric against your front gently, making sure it doesn't just drop, completely respecting your boundaries and privacy.
Dean steps back, and he grabbed one of his giant, soft Briar Hockey t-shirts with his number "66" and surname on the back from his dresser.
“There, the clasp is undone. I’m turning around now. Put this on, slip the costume out from underneath it, and slide under the covers, yeah?” he turns his back to you, facing the door.
You clutched the soft, oversized shirt to your chest, your heart's pounding for a completely different reason now. “Dean?”
He looks at you from over his shoulder, a soft smirk returning to his lips. “Yeah, popstar?”
You smile softly, your eyelids are drooping. “Thank you.”
He smiled. “Anytime, sweetheart. Now get changed before I lose my mind.”
The rustle of fabric fills the quiet room as you quickly slip into Dean’s massive Briar Hockey t-shirt. It swallows you whole, the hem falling all the way down to your mid-thigh, smelling intensely of his signature cologne: sandalwood and success. You slide under the crisp, cool sheets, pulling the duvet right up to your chin.
You spoke again softly, your voice muffled by the blanket. “Okay... I’m decent. You can turn around.”
Dean turns around, a slow, appreciative smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he sees you practically drowning in his clothes under the duvet. Without a word, he reaches down and effortlessly unbuttons the suit, kicking them off along with his aviators and dog tags. He's left in just a pair of dark gray Calvin Klein boxers. He climbs into the other side of the mattress, the bed dips significantly under his weight.
He's prop-ping his head up with one hand, looking over at you in the dark. “Are you comfortable, popstar?”
You nodded shyly, burying half your face in the pillow. “Yeah, the shirt is really soft.”
He lowers himself onto his pillow, his voice dropping into a sleepy, raspy rumble. “Keep it if you want. Go to sleep, sweetheart. I'll see you in the morning.”
***
The bright morning sunlight streams through the window blinds, cutting across the room as stripes. As consciousness slowly returns to you, the fog of the alcohol has cleared, leaving behind a mild headache and a very sudden, overwhelming awareness of your surroundings.
You can barely move, there is a heavy, solid weight draped securely over your waist, pinning you to the mattress.
You blink your eyes open and realize you are tucked firmly against a wall of absolute muscle, Dean is acting as the perfect big spoon, his chest is pressed flush against your back, his breathing deep and even against your shoulder. Because he’s only in boxers, you can feel the direct, radiating heat of his bare skin right through the thin fabric of your t-shirt. His strong arm is wrapped completely around your middle, pulling you back so there is zero space between you.
Your heart starts hammering against your ribs, you try to gently shift forward to create some breathing room, but the moment you move, the grip around your waist tightens.
Dean groan softly, his voice incredibly deep and raspy from sleep, burying his face deeper into the crook of your neck. “Stop moving... 'S too early.”
You're completely freezing by his voice, your face flushing a bright, fiery crimson. “Dean... Dean, wake up.”
His thumb lazily brushing against your hip through the shirt, entirely unfazed. “Mmm, no. Bed is warm, you're warm. Stay still.”
You squeak slightly, overwhelmed by the sheer intimacy of the position. “Dean, please. You're... you're holding me really tight. And you don't have a shirt on.”
That seems to wake him up a little, you feel him chuckle against your skin, the vibration sending a shiver down your spine. Slowly, he lifts his head from your neck, though he doesn't untangle his legs from yours.
You blinked sleepily, a lazy, incredibly charming morning smirk spreading across his face. “Good morning to you too, sunshine. And for the record, I didn't have a shirt on last night either. You didn't seem to mind it when you were dancing with me.”
You hide your face in your hands. “I was tipsy! I didn't know what I was doing. And I... I usually don't do this. Wake up like this, with anyone.”
Dean’s smirk softens slightly at your clear embarrassment. He carefully rolls onto his back, finally releasing his grip on your waist, though he stays close enough that your shoulders are still touching. He props himself up on an elbow, looking down at your flustered, messy-haired state with an expression that is surprisingly tender.
"Hey, look at me." you slowly lower your hands, your big, innocent eyes meeting his burning blue ones. He reached out to gently tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “You don't have to panic, okay? Nothing happened. Well, besides you screaming my name in front of the entire hockey team and demanding I help you out of a sexy, sticky popstar outfit.”
You groan, pulling the duvet over the lower half of your face. “Please tell me you're making that up.”
He laughed out loud, the sound rich and clear in the quiet room. “I wish I was, but honestly? It was the highlight of my night, by a mile. Your ex-boyfriend looked like he was going to cry when I carried you up those stairs... It was funny.”
You peek out from over the blanket, your eyebrows knitting together.
“You saw him?” you asked.
His jaw tightened just a fraction, his playboy swagger returning full force. “Yeah, I saw him. Total buzzkill. You're way too vibrant for a guy who looks like he calculates taxes for fun, sweetheart. You deserve someone who actually knows how to have a good time.”
He leans in just a little closer, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fleeting second before locking back onto your eyes.
“Now, how about we go downstairs, get some coffee into that system of yours, and after that you can tell me all about why Briar’s sweetest waitress has been hiding from me all semester?”
***
You are practically hiding behind Dean as you walk down the stairs. You’re clutching the hem of his oversized Briar Hockey t-shirt, which still smells heavily of him, and your bare feet pad softly against the wooden steps. Your hair is a messy, sleep-tousled cloud, and your cheeks are still burning from the bedroom conversation.
Dean, on the other hand, is the picture of effortless confidence. He’s thrown on a pair of grey sweatpants, but he’s still shirtless, his broad shoulders and tattooed chest completely on display. He glances back at you over his shoulder, a devastating smirk on his face.
He's whispering, leaning back toward you. “Relax, sweetheart. You look adorable and if anyone opens their mouth to tease you, I’ll just tell them I’m cutting off their supply of my premium hair products.”
You tugged his arm, frantically whispering back. “Dean, they're going to think we... you know! And I work with Allie and Hannah! I'll never hear the end of it at Malone's!”
Dean winked. “Let them think whatever they want, it keeps life interesting.”
As you round the corner into the massive, sunlit kitchen, the sheer volume of the room hits you. The smell of sizzling bacon, fresh coffee, and maple syrup is overwhelming. The kitchen is a war zone of morning-after chaos: Tucker is standing at the stove, looking like the only responsible adult in the house, he’s wearing a ridiculous pink apron over a plain t-shirt, methodically flipping a mountain of golden-brown pancakes on a massive griddle.
The rest of the crew is gathered around the long kitchen island. Garrett is slumped in a barstool, still wearing his magician's top hat sideways, looking completely hungover, Hannah is next to him, sipping coffee, her bunny ears now resting around Garrett’s neck. Logan is face-down on the counter, his giant bird wings draped over the back of his stool like a deflated prop, while Brianna gently rubs his back like a soft caress. Beau and Allie are literally sharing a stool, Beau still in his flight suit trousers, looking entirely too energetic at 9am.
The moment Dean’s heavy footsteps echo on the tile, all heads turn.
A dead silence falls over the kitchen and then, the realization hits them.
Garrett lifted his head and a massive evil grin is spreading across his face. “Well, well, well... Look what the cat dragged in. Or rather, look who Di Laurentis managed to avoid scaring away.”
Allie's eyes widening as she spots you, specifically targeting the giant hockey jersey swallowing your frame. “Oh my god. Is that... number 66? The sacred jersey?”
Hannah choked on her coffee, standing up immediately. “Wait, you're wearing his shirt! Xtina, you survived the night!”
You instantly shrink behind Dean’s broad back, your face turning a shade of red that rivals a tomato. You try to look down at your bare toes, wishing the kitchen floor would just open up and swallow you whole.
You were mumbling behind Dean. “It’s just a shirt... my costume was sticky...”
Logan muffled his voice into the counter. “Sure, sure. A sticky situation, classic Di Laurentis play.”
Brianna smacked Logan’s arm. “Shut up, Logan, your wings are dipping into the butter. Let her breathe, she’s sweet.”
Beau pointed a spatula at Dean. “I gotta hand it to you, Maverick. You left the party early, missed the epic beer pong finals, and we all thought you just went to sleep like an old man.”
Dean stepped forward smoothly, wrapping a casual, protective arm around your shoulders and pulling you into his side. “Alright, alright, clear your ears out, you hyenas. First of all, I was being a perfect gentleman. Our favorite Malone's waitress here had a little too much to drink, and I wasn't about to let her drive or deal with her buzzkill of an ex-boyfriend.”
The mention of your ex makes Hannah and Allie instantly switch gears.
Hannah snapped her fingers. “Oh, that’s right! That boring guy was hovering around the punch bowl like a dark cloud, did he bother you sweetie?”
You peeked out from behind Dean, feeling a little braver. “No... Dean carried me upstairs before he could even come over.”
Suddenly, Tucker banged his spatula against the rim of a pan, his voice cut through the noise.
“Alright, y'all need to shut your traps and leave the poor girl alone. Can't you see that y/n's about to faint from embarrassment? Go sit down at the table before I starve the lot of you.”
Tucker turns around, holding a massive platter loaded with a tower of pancakes, a mountain of crispy bacon, and a bowl of perfectly scrambled eggs. He walks over to you, his expression warm and completely understanding.
Tucker handed you a massive ceramic mug filled with steaming black coffee. “Here you go, sweetheart. Drink this. Don't mind these idiots; they've got the collective brain cells of a single hockey puck this morning.”
You take the mug gratefully, the warmth instantly soothing your hands. “Thank you, Tucker. You're a lifesaver!”
Dean guide you over to the two empty stools at the far end of the island, safely away from Garrett’s reaching hands. “Sit here, babe. Tucker, slide those pancakes over before Garrett tries to perform a magic trick and make them disappear into his mouth.”
You slide onto the stool, pulling the oversized shirt tightly around your knees. Dean sits right next to you, his thigh brushing against yours. The proximity is dizzying, but as everyone digs into the food, the tension in the room shifts from teasing to comfortable, chaotic breakfast banter.
Garrett shoved a whole piece of bacon into his mouth. “Seriously though, Tucker, these are amazing. Marry me.”
“You can't afford my dowry, Graham.”
Dean reaches over, loading a plate with two massive pancakes, several strips of bacon, and a neat pile of eggs. He places it directly in front of you, along with a fork.
“Eat up, popstar. You need the fuel... Then, if you're feeling up for it, I can drive you back to your dorm to get a change of clothes or you can just stay here and keep wearing my stuff... Personally, I think it’s a massive upgrade.” his voice dropped into that low, sweet murmur he meant only for you.
You look up from your coffee, meeting his intense blue eyes. The playboy charm is there, but beneath it, you can tell he’s genuinely watching to see if you’re okay. You take a bite of a pancake, a small, shy smile finally breaking across your face.
“I think I’d like that coffee first.” you smile softly.
He grinned, leaning his elbow on the counter, entirely captivated. “Deal.”
***
Dean’s sleek, expensive car pulls up right to the curb outside your freshman dorm. The campus is relatively quiet, with only a few hungover students blinking at the daylight, wrapped in sweatpants.
You open the passenger door, immediately wincing as your feet slide around inside Dean's massive Briar Hockey slides. You have to walk with a ridiculous, wide-stanced shuffle just to keep them from flying off your feet. You’re clutching your crumpled "Dirrty" costume and silver heels to your chest like a shield, still swallowed alive by his number 66 jersey.
Dean round the front of the car, effortlessly grabbing the bundle of clothes and shoes from your arms. “Give me those before you trip and face-plant into the concrete, popstar. You’re like a hazard to yourself right now.”
You flushed, shuffling alongside him as he guides you toward the heavy glass doors of the dorm. “I told you I look ridiculous, people are staring! The girl at the front desk is looking at me like I just robbed a sporting goods store.”
He flashed a dazzling, blinding smile at the sleepy desk attendant as he holds the door open for you. “Let them look, they’re just jealous you’ve got the best chauffeur on campus. What floor, sweetheart?”
“Third floor. And please, keep your voice down. My RA is incredibly strict about morning-after guests.”
Dean just winked, stepping into the elevator with you and pressing the button. “Relax, I’m an expert at stealth operations. Your secret is safe with me.”
You fumble with your room key, your clumsy, tired fingers dropping it once before Dean gently takes it from you and unlocks the door.
The room is dark, the blinds pulled tightly shut. Your roommate is clearly gone for the weekend, leaving the space completely quiet. The room is a perfect reflection of you: a little messy, with stacks of heavy English literature textbooks on the desk, a string of unlit fairy lights draped over the headboard, and a pile of soft, oversized blankets neatly folded at the foot of your unmade bed.
Dean steps inside, tossing your silver heels and costume onto your desk chair. He looks around the cozy space, his eyes lingering on a stack of highlighters and sticky notes.
He have a soft, amused smile tugging at his lips. “So this is where the magic happens. Lots of heavy reading, huh? You really are a little nerd under that popstar exterior.”
You dropped instantly onto the edge of your mattress, kicking off his giant slides with a sigh of absolute relief. “I have a mid-term on Tuesday, Dean. Some of us actually have to study, we can't all just coast on raw athletic talent and... and perfect hair.”
He let out a low, rich chuckle, walking over to the side of your bed. “Hey, maintaining this mane takes serious dedication. Don't minimize my hard work.”
He stops right in front of you, in the dim light of the dorm room, the playful banter suddenly softens. The reality of the situation settles in: you're sitting on your bed in his clothes, and he's standing over you, looking at you like you're the only person in the world.
You look up at him, your voice small, fighting off a massive yawn. “I’m so tired, my brain feels like mush.”
His expression softening completely, stepping closer and pulling back the heavy comforter for you. “Then get under the covers. Stop talking and just crawl in.”
You don't argue, you slide beneath the sheets, curling onto your side and pulling the blanket up to your chin. Your head sinks into your fluffy pillow, and you let out a long, contented breath.
Dean stands there for a moment, watching you settle. Then, he reaches down, picking up his thick black hoodie that he had slung over his shoulder, and gently drapes it over the top of your comforter, adding an extra layer of warmth.
After a moment you peeked out from under the blanket, watching him. “Are you going back to the house?”
Dean sit down on the very edge of your mattress, his weight is slightly shifting the bed. “In a minute, I want to make sure you actually pass out first. Can't have you wandering back to Malone’s in your sleep.”
He reaches out, his large, warm hand gently smoothing over the top of your messy hair. The gesture is so unexpectedly tender, so completely un-playboy like, that your breath hitches in your throat. You lean into his touch just a fraction, your innocent, sleepy eyes locked onto his.
He whispered, his thumb lightly grazing your forehead. “You're safe here, sweetheart. Go to sleep.”
You closed your eyes, and a soft smile forming on your lips. “Don't take your shirt back while I'm sleeping.”
Dean let out a quiet, raspy laugh, his hand lingering on your hair for just a few seconds longer before he slowly stands up. “It looks better on you anyway. Sleep tight, popstar. I'll text you later to make sure you're alive.”
After a while, maybe an hour, you hear his quiet, heavy footsteps move across the linoleum floor. The door clicks shut with a soft, secure sound, leaving you wrapped in his warmth, his scent, and the absolute certainty that your life is about to get a whole lot more interesting.
***
The Tuesday morning air is sharp and brisk, rustling the leaves along the cobblestone pathways of the main quad. Students are bustling past in every direction, clutching travel mugs of coffee and rushing toward their morning lectures. It's been a couple of weeks after the party and you and Dean are taking things slow, he's funny, loyal and so sweet when he wants to, he's been such a support helping you study for midterms while you're taking work breaks at Malone's.
You are walking alone, hugged tightly by your favorite, heavily oversized knit sweater that swallows your hands. In your arms, you are hauling a precarious tower of heavy English literature anthologies, a messy binder bursting with loose-leaf notes, and three different colors of highlighters tucked into your pocket. Your mind is completely occupied with thoughts of your upcoming midterm, mixed with a lingering, warm flutter in your chest from a text Dean had sent you just an hour earlier.
You take a deep breath, focusing on the pavement, completely minding your own business and then, you lift your eyes. About twenty yards ahead, walking straight down the center of the path toward you, is Stuart. He is dressed exactly the way he always is: a stiff, perfectly pressed pastel polo shirt, ironed khaki trousers, and a leather briefcase. He looks entirely out of place among the casual college crowd: rigid, clinical, and completely unbothered by anyone else.
Your stomach instantly drops into a cold, heavy pit. Your heart begins to hammer against your ribs.
“No, no, no. Please, god, no. Not today, not here.” you talk to yourself, almost panicking.
You look frantically to your left, then to your right. To your left is a wide-open lawn with absolutely nowhere to hide, to your right is the Science building, but the doors are too far away. You try to abruptly pivot on your heel, pretending you forgot something in the opposite direction, but your clumsy foot catches on the edge of the cobblestone. You stumble slightly, your heavy textbooks shifting dangerously in your arms.
Stuart voice cut through the morning air, cold and sharp. “Oh. I thought that was you. Don't bother turning around, I already saw you.”
You freeze, your shoulders tensing up until they practically touch your ears. Slowly, you turn back around, clutching your books to your chest like a literal shield. Stuart closes the distance, stopping right in front of you, completely blocking the path. He looks down his nose at you, his eyes scanning your oversized clothes and messy hair with an immediate expression of deep disapproval.
He crossed his arms, leaning back slightly. “You know, it’s funny. I’ve lived on this campus for three years and I barely ever ran into you. Now, suddenly, I can't seem to escape you. First at that rowdy, classless hockey party, and now out here.”
You spoke, your voice's barely a whisper, your natural shyness locking your throat up. “Stuart... hi. I’m actually really late for my literature lecture, I just need to get through—”
He cut you off instantly, raising a hand. “You're always rushing, always disorganized. Look at you, you’re practically dropping your notes on the ground. Some things never change, do they? You’re still the same messy girl I spent two years trying to fix.”
The word fix stings like a slap to the face, you take a half-step back, your knuckles turning white as you grip your binder tighter.
Stuart let out a heavy, self-righteous sigh, shaking his head. “You know, I’ve been waiting for an apology from you for two months... Two whole months since you ruthlessly blindsided me and walked away from everything we built. And instead of showing any remorse, what do I see? I see you at a hockey house, dressed in a vulgar, completely inappropriate outfit, acting like a child.”
You're feeling tears of frustration burning behind your eyes, trying to find your voice. “It wasn't a vulgar outfit, it was a costume party... and I didn't blindside you, Stuart. We were unhappy. I was unhappy for months, and I told you that—” he cuts you again.
He's scoffing loudly, waving his hand dismissively. “Oh, please. Don't rewrite history to make yourself feel better. You were unhappy? Try to think about someone other than yourself for once in your life. I gave you absolute stability, I had our entire five-year plan mapped out, I tolerated your messy schedule, your constant shifts at Malone's, your total inability to keep your life together... and how did you repay me? You threw it all in my face because you claimed I was 'boring'.”
Stuart steps a fraction closer, his shadow completely falling over you, making you feel incredibly small and trapped on the busy walkway.
His voice dropping into a venomous, hushed tone. “You humiliated me. Do you have any idea what it felt like for me to stand at that party and watch you get carried up the stairs by some brainless, arrogant jock? Dean di Laurentis? Seriously? You left a man with a future, a man who actually cared about your intellect, to become a temporary plaything for a guy who changes girls faster than he changes his hockey stick.”
Your voice is trembling, a tear finally slipping down your cheek. “Dean was just helping me... he didn't do anything wrong! He was nice to me. He treated me better than—”
He let out a harsh, mocking laugh. “Nice to you? Wake up! You are so incredibly innocent and naive it’s pathetic. A guy like that sees a shy, sweet girl like you and thinks you’re an easy target. He doesn't respect you, he’s using you to look good, or maybe just to pass the time until a prettier puck bunny comes along. And you’re just blindly falling for it because you don't know any better.”
He looks at you with a mixture of pity and disgust that makes your stomach turn. “I was the victim in this breakup. I spent weeks staring at my spreadsheets, wondering how I failed to guide you properly. But now I see the truth. You’re just immature, you couldn't handle a real, adult relationship with expectations and maturity, so you ran away to a boy who plays games for a living. You ruined the best thing that ever happened to you, and when he’s done with you, don't you dare come crying back to me expecting me to clean up your mess again.”
You stand there, completely frozen, the heavy books in your arms feeling like lead weights. The insults press down on your chest so hard you can barely breathe. You want to scream at him, you want to tell him how miserable he made you feel, how he always made you feel small and stupid, but the old, sweet, non-confrontational version of you is completely paralyzed by the cruelty of his words.
Stuart looks at your tear-stained face, entirely satisfied with the damage he’s caused, and straightens his ironed polo shirt.
“Go on to your little class then. Try not to drop your notes on the way.” he spoke and he steps around you, his leather briefcase brushing against your arm as he struts away down the path, leaving you standing entirely alone in the middle of the crowded quad, trembling and completely shattered.
The world around you feels dizzying and loud. Your hands are shaking so violently that as you try to readjust the heavy burden in your arms, the top-heavy English literature anthologies slide sideways. Your binder flips open, and a cascade of loose-leaf notes, highlighted outlines, and three different colored highlighters spill across the cold, hard cobblestones.
You drop to your knees, your oversized knit sweater pooling around you on the ground. Blurry-eyed, you frantically start grabbing at the papers, but your vision is so swimming with tears that you can barely tell the outline sheets apart. You reach for a pink highlighter that has rolled into a crack in the pavement, your fingers fumbling clumsily. You feel completely exposed, small, and utterly broken by every single word Stuart just hurled at you.
"I spent two years trying to fix you."
"You’re so incredibly innocent and naive it’s pathetic."
"A temporary plaything."
You let out a small, ragged sob, pressing the palm of your hand against your forehead, trying desperately to stop crying in the middle of the busiest walkway on campus.
A heavy, dark leather backpack drops onto the cobblestones with a loud, solid thud right next to your scattered notes.
Before you can even look up, a pair of large, familiar hands: strong, broad, and calloused from a hockey stick, begin gathering your loose sheets with lightning-fast, effortless efficiency.
“Hey. I’ve got 'em. Don't move, sweetheart, I’ve got the papers.” Dean says, his voice's a low, smooth recognizable rumble.
You freeze, your breath catching in your throat, you lift your tear-stained face. Dean is kneeling on the pavement right in front of you, he’s fresh out of the Social Sciences building from his Political Science seminar, wearing a dark fitted jacket that accentuates his broad shoulders, his hair perfectly pushed back. He’s holding a stack of your literature notes in one hand, but the moment his burning blue eyes lock onto your face, his entire posture changes.
The easy, playboy smile he usually wears completely vanishes. His jaw tightens so hard a muscle twitches in his cheek, he takes in your red-rimmed eyes, the tear tracking down your cheek, and the way your shoulders are trembling.
His voice's dropping into a deadly serious, raspy register, tossing the papers onto his lap and reaching out for you. “Hey, what's wrong? Why are you crying?”
You're instantly looking down, trying to wipe your face with the sleeve of your oversized sweater, your shyness taking over. “Dean... hi. It's nothing, I'm just—I'm just clumsy. I dropped my midterm notes and I got stressed out, I'm fine—”
He's grasping your wrists gently but firmly, stopping you from hiding your face. “Don't lie to me, you don't cry like this over a couple of dropped papers. Who did this?”
He looks up, his sharp eyes scanning the crowded quad. In the distance, about fifty yards away, Stuart’s rigid, pastel-polo wearing frame is still visible, walking toward the upper campus. Dean’s eyes narrow into slits as he connects the dots.
His grip on your wrists softening into a gentle, reassuring hold, his voice laced with an icy fury. “Was that him? The spreadsheet guy? The ex?”
You don't say anything, but a small, fresh sob escapes your lips, and you look away. And that’s all the confirmation he needs.
Dean doesn't hesitate and, instead of going towards Stuart, he just gathers the rest of your papers in one swift motion, shoves them safely inside his leather backpack, and zips it up. Then, he stands up and reaches down, wrapping his hands under your arms and lifting you effortlessly to your feet.
Instead of letting you go, he guides you away from the center of the path, pushing you gently against the brick wall of the nearby library, completely shielding you from the view of the rest of the campus with his massive frame.
Dean placed his hands on the wall on either side of your head, leaning down so he’s inches from your face, his eyes blazing. “What did he say to you?”
You shaked your head, tears spilling over again. “It doesn't matter, Dean. He's right. I'm just... I'm messy, and I'm disorganized, and I'm too naive. He said I threw away stability for... for a temporary plaything. He said you're just using me because I'm an easy target.”
Dean lets out a harsh, dark breath, his forehead almost touching yours. The sheer gravity of his anger is palpable, but none of it is directed at you.
“Look at me... Just look right at me.”
You slowly lift your eyes to his, the blue of his eyes is incredibly intense, completely stripped of any playboy facade.
His voice's fierce, thick with genuine emotion. “Listen to me very carefully, because I am only going to say this once. That guy is a miserable, insecure little coward who couldn't handle the fact that he had a girl who is a thousand times brighter, sweeter, and more beautiful than he will ever deserve. He didn't try to 'fix' you, sweetheart, he tried to break you so you wouldn't realize you were completely out of his league.”
Your heart thumps violently against your ribs, his words cutting right through the cold venom Stuart had left behind.
Dean reached up, his warm thumb gently wiping the tears from your cheek, his touch incredibly tender. “And as for me? A temporary plaything? An easy target? I have spent the last couple of weeks doing nothing but thinking about you. I haven't looked at another girl, I haven't wanted to. I walked you to the library because I wanted to be near you. I left you my jersey because I wanted you wrapped in my stuff. You are not an easy target, you are the best thing that has happened to me all semester, and I am not letting some boring, dynamic-less idiot make you feel small for even a second.”
You stare up at him, your lips parting slightly, your breath is trembling. The sincerity in his voice is undeniable. The arrogant, untouchable Dean di Laurentis is standing in the middle of the campus quad, entirely unbothered by who sees him, comforting a messy, crying girl with everything he has.
You whispered, a small, fragile smile finally fighting its way through your tears. “You really mean that?”
The corner of his mouth finally tugging up into a soft, devastatingly handsome smirk, his thumb lingering on your cheekbone. “I don't lie about things that matter, popstar. Now, screw your literature lecture. We're cutting class.”
He drops his hands, reaching down to grab his leather backpack full of your notes, and firmly links his fingers through yours, pulling you into his side.
“We're going to my car, I'm taking you back to the house, and I'm going to make Tucker cook you whatever you want while I sit next to you and read you those stupid literature definitions until you know them by heart. Sound like a plan?”
You squeeze his hand back, the warmth of his fingers completely melting the last of Stuart’s chill. “Yeah, that sounds like a perfect plan.”
Warnings: angst, fluff, talk of removal of ovaries because of cancer gene
Summary: Dean has been feeling like his marriage is slowly fizzling out. Not because he doesn’t love you, he does, but because he can’t be the man he knows you deserve. He had divorce papers drafted months ago, but he hasn’t yet given them to you. The longer that time goes on, the more he rediscovers why he fell in love with you, and the more the thought of divorce gets pushed from his head. That is, until you find those divorce papers.
Request by anon: Idk if you write slowburns or if this would work best as a one shot but could you possibly do a story about wife!reader and dean who plans to divorce her soon but she doesn’t know. and as time goes by and he keeps pushing the divorce back, he realizes his mistake and doesn’t want to go through with it anymore but she stumbles upon it anyways…
Square Filled: sam’s laptop for @spntfwbingo
Author’s Note: There will be a part two to this, don't worry :)
Any and all comments are greatly appreciated! <3
x
You hum as you start to mash the potatoes, pouring in extra milk to make them creamier. The chicken is almost done cooking in the oven, and the corn is already done. The front door opens and closes, and you hear the heavy footsteps of your husband walking into the kitchen.
“Hi, baby,” you grin.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
While mashing, you lean up and give him a kiss, but he doesn’t kiss you back as eagerly as you do. You chalk it up to a very tiring day and move on.
“Are you okay?”
“Just tired. It’s been a long day.”
“Well, it’s a good thing dinner is almost ready. I made your favorite.”
Dean can’t help but smile, but the smile isn’t as big as it should be. He walks over to the sink and washes his hands free of the grime from the grueling hunt. You finish with the potatoes and take the chicken out of the oven. You plate the food and set the table while Dean gathers spices and drinks.
“How was work?” Dean asks after he takes the first bite.
“Oh, amazing. We just got a new horse. Poor thing was being abused, but I think she’ll pull through.” You work at a horse sanctuary. Not only do you take in abused horses, but you also take in the ones that have been abandoned. Even people who can’t care for them anymore sell them to your sanctuary. “She’s a black beauty. Dean, I swear, you should come over and meet her. Total sweetheart.”
“That sounds great, Y/N. I’m glad you had a good day.”
“How was your day? How was the hunt?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” That’s half the truth, anyway. He tries to keep you out of the supernatural as much as he can, and you don’t complain.
“I get it. Maybe one day you can come to work with me. Being around the horses is very relaxing.”
“Yeah, maybe…”
You two fill the silence with small talk as you eat. Before you know it, the food is gone, and you’re already cleaning up.
“Here, let me do the dishes. You cooked.”
“I got it. Go to bed, Dean. You’re exhausted. You need the rest. I’ll be up soon.”
Dean’s shoulders sag in relief. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
He kisses the top of your head as he passes by you. You watch him climb the stairs before turning back to the dishes. As Dean walks into the bedroom, he strips off pieces of clothing on the way into the connecting bathroom. He takes a quick shower that lasts only a few minutes. After he’s done, he walks into the bedroom with a towel wrapped low around his hips.
He walks over to the bedside table and grabs the lock that’s on the handle. Once the combination is put in, he removes the lock and opens the drawer. The reason he keeps it locked is that he has several guns inside it for protection. You hate guns, so he keeps them locked away. However, he needs them accessible just in case something were to come for him here.
It hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever.
Dean pushes the guns aside and grabs the papers he had drafted a few months ago. Divorce papers. The reason he hasn’t given these to you is complicated. This is one of those rare instances where it’s him, not you. He is the problem. He’s too busy with Sam and hunting to give you the attention and love you deserve. He would be able to give it to you if he cut back on hunting, but he loves hunting and killing monsters.
It’s who he is. It’s what he’s been doing his entire life.
Yet he married you anyway. He can see how much you love him not only through your words but through your actions, too. It’s why the thought of divorce hurts him so much.
When you two first met, he fell head over heels in love with you. He saw a future with you. You two got married at a young age, still in the hazy love phase. It’s not that he doesn’t love you now—he does—he just doesn’t think he’s in love with you anymore. It kills him to even think about the decision he needs to make.
Your footsteps coming up the stairs snap him out of his daze, and he shoves the papers back into the drawer. He closes and locks the drawer before getting dressed in a t-shirt and briefs. You two get ready for bed before you slide into bed with him. You immediately snuggle up to his side and wrap your arm around his waist.
He closes his eyes as if your touch brings him pain. Your arms feel safe and gentle, but he’s afraid of ruining that if he keeps stringing you along.
“I love you, Dean,” you whisper into the silence.
“I love you, too.” The words taste sour on his tongue.
The next morning, you wake up before Dean does. Normally, you’d be sleeping in on a Saturday, but work called for you to come in. You’re one of the only doctors who can work on the horses. You’re paid enough to always be on call, but it’s not like you mind hanging out with the horses.
“Dean.” His eyes flutter open when he feels your soft lips on his cheek. “Hey, I gotta go to work.”
“Oh, okay,” he mumbles sleepily.
“One of the horses is sick. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
“Okay. I’m going to the bunker. I might not be home when you come back.”
“Will you be home for dinner?” He nods while keeping his eyes closed. “Okay. I’ll see you later.” You peck his lips and climb off the bed. “I love you.”
Before he can say anything back, you’re gone. Twenty minutes pass before Dean gets out of bed and gets ready for the day. He drives over to the bunker, which is only ten minutes from your house. It’s why he’s able to come home most nights.
Sam and Cas are in the library doing research when Dean walks in. Sam is on his laptop, and Cas is reading through books. They are trying to figure out what monster they’re hunting here in Kansas.
“Hey, we’re still doing some research, but we have a list of monsters we know it isn’t.”
“I guess that’s something.”
To distract himself from his feelings, Dean jumps in to help. Sam and Cas sense something is wrong, but they don’t ask him about it. They know from experience that Dean will talk about it if and when he’s ready to.
A few hours pass with their noses in books before Sam thinks he has found something. “I think we’re hunting a Tulpa.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It matches a legend that someone created on Reddit. All we have to do is keep everyone alive long enough to find the symbol and destroy it. That’ll kill it.”
“Great.”
The first thing they have to do is find out who the person is who created the legend. Time slowly crawls as they do research. Before Dean knows it, it’s lunchtime. His stomach grumbles, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten today.
As if the universe heard his stomach, the bunker’s metal door opens and closes. Not many people have a key to this place, but they’re still curious as to who is here. Cas gets up to greet whoever it is, and he’s shocked to see you with a bag of food.
“Hey, Castiel,” you smile.
“Y/N, hello.”
You walk into the library, surprising Sam but shocking Dean. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on my lunch break and thought you might be hungry.”m You hold up the bag of food. “I picked up some cheeseburgers from that place I know you love. I also brought some from Sam and Cas if they’re hungry. There’s a salad in here for Sam since I know he loves those.”
“Thank you,” Sam smiles as he grabs the bag.
Dean can’t stop staring at you as he tries to process what is happening with his feelings.
“It’s no big deal,” you shrug. “I had time and wanted to do this. I hope you like it.”
Castiel doesn’t eat, but he doesn’t say this to you, so he smiles politely and thanks you.
“How are the horses?” Dean asks once he finds his voice.
“Oh, Dean, it’s amazing. Another horse came in, and she’s pregnant. I can’t wait until she gives birth!” When you speak about your horses, you have such a bright smile and good energy about you. It makes Dean smile. This is why he fell in love with you in the first place. You’re the bright light to his darkness. “You should definitely come over and meet her. She’d love you.”
“Yeah, maybe. We’re in the middle of a hunt right now.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I won’t keep you.” You lean down and kiss him lovingly. “I’ll see you at home for dinner.”
Dean watches you leave the bunker, and when he knows you’re gone, he runs a hand down his tired face. Sam and Cas watch him, and they look at each other knowingly. Sam knows about the divorce papers. He was there when Dean had them drafted.
“Still haven’t done it, have you?” Sam asks.
“No.” Those divorce papers are like a heavy weight on his chest. “I know I should get it over with, but I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Dean.” Sam waits until Dean looks at him. “That woman loves you. Either do it now or make it work because she doesn’t deserve it.”
“I know,” Dean whispers.
Dean can’t find the right words to say to you about it, so he stews in his own stress for the next few weeks. He’s been home most nights, and it hurts to see you bright and happy while he’s suffering over here. The reason why he hasn’t done it yet is that he really does love you. He doesn’t want to hurt you.
Just when he thinks he can do this, you come in with some grand gesture to show he’s always on your mind.
When Dean has a free day, he decides to visit you while you’re at work. Maybe you two can talk about how he’s feeling. One of your coworkers directs him to the stables where you are, so he walks through the fresh fields. Horses are grazing in the area, and he smiles at the serenity.
He walks into the barn and immediately hears your voice come from one of the back stables. The pregnant horse isn’t doing too well, so she’s been in her stable for a few days. You’re brushing her thick mane, making sure she’s clean and freshly trimmed. Dean stops and stands in the shadows where you can’t see him. He shouldn’t eavesdrop, but he's curious when he hears his name.
“I envy you, you know. You being pregnant, I mean. I can’t get pregnant. Ten years ago, I found out that I carried the ovarian cancer gene. That’s how my mom died. I was so scared that I’d get cancer, so I had both of my ovaries removed.”
Serena, the horse, nudges her nose against your back, and you smile sadly at her.
“It’s okay, Serena. This was before I met my husband, Dean. He doesn’t know I can’t have kids. I told him when we first started dating that I didn’t want kids, but that’s not the truth. I just can’t have them.”
You trail the brush over her body slowly, trying hard not to cry. “My heart breaks for Dean, though. I think he’d make a wonderful dad. He has a good heart and a strong mind. It’s what I love most about him.”
Serena must sense your sadness because she does her best to bring you comfort. You shake those thoughts out of your head and try to move on to something better.
“Do you wanna know a secret? Don’t tell him I said this, but I think Chase has a crush on you.” Chase is a male horse that’s been hanging around her since she got here. “He might make a good dad.”
Dean rests against the wooden post with a smile. Seeing you with Serena brings him back to the first time you took him riding. He had never ridden a horse before, so he was scared he was going to do the wrong thing or that he would be too heavy for the horse.
His horse wasn’t too fond of Dean, but that didn’t stop you from coaxing him to be gentle. With some time and love, the horse was able to calm down enough to let Dean ride him.
He shouldn’t have eavesdropped on you. That story is personal to you, and he hates this is how he knows about it. You’re such an angel, and he’s an idiot for even thinking about letting you go. Maybe he should give this marriage another chance. Really put in the effort because he really does love you.
He steps out from behind the pillar and walks over to you. You look over your shoulder when you hear footsteps, and you grin widely.
“Hey, baby.” Dean grabs the sides of your face and kisses you. He really means it this time, and you melt in his touch. “What are you doing here?”
“I just missed you.”
“I’m just killing time, so I can leave now. Did you want to do something?”
“Like a date?” he teases.
“Maybe,” you smirk. “I’ll even wear that red dress you love so much.”
Dean groans at the image of you wearing that damn dress. You’re so fucking beautiful. He kisses you once more before pulling away.
“Deal.”
That night, he stands in front of the now unlocked drawer where the divorce papers sit. He thought he’d have a clearer answer about what he wanted to do, but now he’s fucking confused. The date had been so much fun. It made him feel like the old Y/N and Dean, the ones from the beginning. Not to mention the sex. Sex with you is always good, but tonight made him feel like a teenager again.
He hasn’t mentioned the whole kid thing because he wants you to feel comfortable telling him on your own terms.
While he still thinks you deserve a man who will be home every night and not risk his life every time he goes to work, he wants to be the man you already think he is.
For the next couple of weeks, you and Dean have been going on strong. More date nights and fewer late nights. He looks forward to going home to you and hearing about your day. You even worked up the courage to tell him about you not being able to have kids when the topic came up.
Serena had her baby, and Dean was there to watch it happen. He’s even thinking about getting a dog with you since you love animals so much. Plus, a dog would help you be less lonely if Dean is gone on a hunt.
Things are looking so good that he hasn’t thought about those damn divorce papers once. He can see that you two can really make it work now that the spark is back. He hasn’t had time to do this, but if he can just get rid of the papers, then you will never know about it. Everything can stay the same.
Dean is with Sam and Cas as they get ready for a hunt a few states away. They don’t notice Dean isn’t packing for this one until they’re both ready to go. Sam slings his bag over his shoulder and walks toward the garage, but stops when he sees his brother still by the war table.
“Are you coming?”
“No, I’m going to sit this one out.”
Sam nods with a ghost of a smile. “Decided to make it work?”
“I love her, Sam. She’s it for me, and I need to think of her more.”
Sam and Cas smile at each other before Sam nods. “We’ll call you if we need you.”
You took a week off work, so Dean made sure to keep this week open so that you two can spend time together. Sam and Cas take Cas’ truck while Dean drives the Impala back to your house.
The house is quiet when Dean enters. He slides off his boots by the front door before walking deeper into the house.
“Y/N? Sweetheart? I’m home!”
No response. Your car is in the driveway, so he knows you’re here. He walks up the stairs and heads straight to the bedroom. Maybe you’re sleeping or cleaning with headphones in. He takes two steps into the bedroom and freezes in horror.
You’re upstairs, alright, only his worst fear has come to life.
His bedside drawer is open—did he forget to lock it?—and the divorce papers are in your trembling hands.
“Y/N…?”
You look up at him with a look that just breaks his heart. He never wanted to be the one to hurt you like this. Tears well in your eyes, but they haven’t fallen yet, only adding to the heartbreak.
“You want a divorce?”
x
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synopsis: daisy gets injured at practice, forcing you and dean together again
warnings: mentions of divorce, hospitals, injuries
author's note: based off this anon!! i thought of a cute plot so i decided to write abt it hehe, again thank you for all the support on this au!! lmk if you catch the pitt reference hahaha
divorced dad!dean au masterlist
"What the hell did you do?!" You burst through the curtains of the small area in the ER they had placed Daisy in, immediately glaring at Dean.
He raised his hands up defensively. "I didn't do anything!"
"She was under your care!"
"Mom! I'm fine." Daisy chuckled while you shifted your attention to her. "I think I just twisted my ankle pretty badly at practice."
"Oh baby.." Dean stood up from his seat next to Daisy, allowing you to sit next to her. "Practice was hours ago! Why didn't you say anything to your father?"
"I didn't think much of it, I'm sorry mom." She grinned sheepishly. "Don't blame dad."
You sigh softly. "Sorry sweetheart, I didn't mean to blame him. I just got worried." You turn towards Dean, who stood by the end of the bed with his arms crossed. "What'd the doctors say?"
"They're going to take her in for an X-ray in a bit, but they said it's probably just be a sprain. The worst it could be is a minor fracture. They do want to keep her overnight though to make sure everything's okay."
You let out a breath of relief. "But she's going to be okay?"
"Yes, sweetheart. She'll be okay." He places a hand on your shoulder, rubbing it with his thumb softly out of habit.
You huff and slightly lean into his touch, making him smirk. "Both of you and your sports. I'm going to have a stroke one day."
Daisy furrowed her brows. "Did dad get injured a lot too?"
"A lot is an understatement."
"Don't listen to her, sweetheart." Dean shakes his head, chuckling softly. "Your mother tends to worry over the smallest things."
"Smallest things?!" You scoff. "Don't even get me started on hockey."
His grin widened as he looked at Daisy, who's eyes were shining out of curiosity. "Your mother would clean my cuts or help ice my bruises after every game, even if I didn't need help."
"Yeah, well, you suck at cleaning and bandaging your own injuries. You were basically asking for an infection." You grumble, crossing your arms over your chest.
"Sure, sweetheart." Dean fought the urge to place a soft kiss to your forehead, something he'd always do to calm you down, while Daisy looked between the two of you with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
"Daisy Di Laurentis?" A doctor walked in with a nurse following behind him. "I'm Doctor Abbott, I'm here to take you to your X-ray." They helped her into a wheelchair.
"How long will it take?" You stand up from the chair, biting your bottom lip nervously.
"It shouldn't take too long. There's a few people in line so I'd say about thirty minutes to an hour."
Dean nods and goes to shake his hand. "Thank you for all your help tonight."
Dr. Abbott nods. "Of course, it's my job."
They eventually leave, leaving you and Dean alone in the room.
As you sit back down in your seat, he grabs another chair and places it next to you.
"Hey," He sits down, noticing your thigh bouncing nervously. "She's going to be okay."
"I know, I'm just worried."
"You're always worried." He gives you a soft smile. "Why don't you get some rest? It's late."
"I'm fine, these chairs aren't the most comfortable anyways." You shift around, trying to find a good position.
"You can lay your head on my shoulder." When you give him a glare, his smile widens. "Baby, it's harmless."
"That nickname wasn't so harmless."
"Oh come on, you're used to it."
"Unfortunately." You mumble under your breath, rolling your eyes before laying your head on his shoulder. "Happy now?"
"Yes." He wraps an arm around your shoulder. "Now get some rest."
☄︎ Warnings: not proofread & idk my tenses
☄︎ Pairing: Dean Di Laurentis x F!Reader x Beau Maxwell
☄︎ Rating: PG
☄︎ Words: 2760
☄︎ AN: Written for this lovely anon, i hope you enjoyed, i actually cannot remember the last time i was sick so please ignore the creative liberties i have taken lmao
Beau (established relationship) & Dean (no labels) look after you when sick
It started as a blocked nose. Every time you breathed in, you only managed to pull in a uselessly frustrating amount of air. No matter how much your nose ran or your head began to pound, you absolutely refused to believe you were sick.
It was a reality you firmly elected to ignore.
The denial became harder to maintain when the next day, it developed into a sharp pain at the back of your throat. Every swallow felt like you had deepthroated some sandpaper. You kept deliberately swallowing, desperately testing to see if the pain would just disappear. It didn’t.
Still, you refused to give in. Delusion had to carry you through as surely the universe wouldn’t align like this.
You had plans, very hot and sweaty plans, with your boyfriend and Dean, who didn’t have a label because what do you call the man who you and your boyfriend would spend many a night with and were most definitely falling for.
So, no, you weren’t sick because you just couldn’t be.
By day three, reality was quickly catching up to you. You were half-way through your morning lectures when suddenly you were seeing double of your lecturer. In your mind, Beau & Dean would still be able to come over tonight, you just needed a heavy nap. You refused to be the sole reason that everybody had to stay clothed.
Packing up early, you abandoned the rest of your lectures and slipped back to your apartment, determined to sleep it off.
Your body, however, had other plans. By the time you unlocked your door, you were so dizzy that you had to steady yourself on the wall as you stumbled into the bedroom. You had just enough energy to pull off the clothes you’d been in that had hit the lecture room air.
With a heavy thud, you collapsed onto the mattress. The tissue box on your bedside table became your lifeline, they were on rotation. One snotty tissue out and the next one immediately in.
Shakily, you reached for your phone, fully intending on admitting defeat and messaging Beau. You don’t remember how you drifted off, but the sound of a distant door slam jumped you out of your sleep hours later.
As you rolled over to face the bedroom door, the entire room span around you. The sleep had done nothing for you, in fact, you woke up feeling worse. Your head was pounding and, clearly, you’d been breathing through your mouth as it was dry, your tongue feeling thick in your mouth.
“Babe?” Beau called from the hallway, his footsteps getting louder as he approached the bedroom. “Are you okay? You’ve been silent all day, that’s not like–.”
His voice died as he rounded the corner into your bedroom. You watched as his bright smile instantly faded into pure concern.
“Don’t come any closer,” you croaked, your voice raw from how dry your throat was. “I’m really sick.”
Completely ignoring your ask, Beau pulled off his jacket and threw it onto your desk chair. “You say that like it’s going to stop me.”
He crossed the room in two long strides, sinking to his knees on the side of the bed. A cold palm was pressed against your forehead as Beau took you on. “Oh, baby, you’re burning up.”
Despite you wanting him to leave, you pressed your head into him, sighing with relief when his other hand came to your cheek.
“Beau, go, I’m probably contagious and it’s a bio-hazard in here,” you grumbled. Your arm felt like it weighed a tonne as you weakly lifted it to gesture toward the pile of tissues you’d discarded onto the floor.
Beau looked down at the mess on the floor, as if he hadn’t even noticed in when he walked in. Your heart squeezed with a mixture of shame and appreciation when you realised there wasn’t a single hint of judgement on his face. The past few days had taken a toll on you and your room bared the brunt of that.
Beau stood up and began cleaning up your room. He gathered the snotty tissues from the ground but didn’t stop there; he organised the books on your desk and wiped down the messy surface.
Picking up the clothes you had discarded, he tossed them into the laundry basket. Seeing that it was full; he disappeared with it down the hall, and soon you heard the washing machine click to life.
You drifted in and out of sleep as he worked, cleaning and putting things away as he saw them. He knew you would have been restless knowing that things were untidy, even if you didn’t have the energy to do it yourself. You felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for having someone like him.
When Beau returned to your room, he was carrying a fresh washcloth and a tall glass of water. Kneeling on the floor by the bed, he gently slipped an arm behind your head to help you sit up a little. The water felt so satisfying as it ran down your throat, soothing the fire there.
Once finished, he gently guided you back to lying. He unfolded the damp cloth and gently pressed it to your sweaty forehead. You hadn’t realised how badly you needed that until he was pressing it against you.
“Can you text Dean?” You looked up into his eyes, they’re gentle as always. “Tell him I’m sorry for ruining tonight?”
“He won’t care about that,” Beau murmured softly. He stayed in front of you on the floor, patiently wiping your neck with the cloth. And when your nose ran, he used the tissue to wipe that too.
“Tell me about your day, missed you,” you slurred.
His laugh was soft but he told you about his day. The soothing sound of his voice and how he wiped you down until the cloth was no longer damp acted as a sedative, it pulled you into another sleep without you even realising your eyes were closing.
When your eyes finally opened again hours later, the room had gone completely dark save for the warm light coming from the hallway. Beau was no longer knelt in front of you. You gave a discontented mumble, slowly rolling to get your bearings, careful to avoid moving your pounding head too much.
“Hey there, sleepy.”
Arms came to wrap around you from the bed, but the voice hadn’t come from there. You blinked against the shadows, tired eyes straining to see the figure in front of you. “Dean?” you whispered, your brows furrowing in confusion.
He was sitting in the desk chair, leaning back very comfortably.
The way Dean said your name back to you had your heart skipping a beat. You hadn’t expected him to be here when you woke up. Of course you cared for Dean, you loved the wicked things that he did with you and Beau in the dark, but this was territory you hadn’t crossed before.
He had never seen you look this snooty, miserable, or unglamorous. You didn’t like how vulnerable you felt at that moment, how your mind wondered if he’d still find you attractive if he saw you at your, arguably, worst.
Standing up, Dean came to sit on the edge of the mattress next to you. He didn’t look at you like he was uncomfortable or seeing a side to you he didn’t like. He simply gave you a soft smile and began pressing the cool washcloth over your face, wiping away the fresh layer of sweat that was a mixture of fever and the furnace that Beau was next to you.
He then reached over, popped open the lid of the Vaseline that was on your bedside table, and used the pad of his thumb to spread it over your chapped lips.
“What are you doing here?”
“Beau texted me,” he explained softly. “Said our girl was out of action.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” you protested weakly. You wiggled in Beau’s hold as he stirred beside you. “You both shouldn’t be. I’m gross and you’re going to get sick.”
“You’re not gross, you’re beautiful,” Beau mumbled, voice gravelly with sleep.
“I can be both,” you said defiantly.
“Here,” Dean said, ignoring your protest as he picked up the glass of water to offer it to you again. It was warmer than when Beau had given it to you, but still deeply needed. He held it to your lips, forcing you to take a few small sips.
“I think I’m fine now, you both should go.” You weren’t fine. Every move you made hurt. Your throat was burning and your teeth was beginning to hurt. Your muscles felt like they needed a good stretch.
Dean let out a soft huff, fingers brushing your face. “I’m not going to be present only for the good times, you know. I’m here for it all. You’re sick, so we take care of you.”
It all sounded so amazingly simple when it came from his mouth, but your fever ridden bran kept thinking about getting them sick. They were in varsity; they couldn’t afford to be knocked out by the thing that you knew would claim you for days. They had training sessions to attend, strict schedules to keep, fans they couldn’t disappoint, probably scouts that would watch them play their respective sports. It was a lot of pressure and you couldn’t be the reason they missed a game.
The hours of sleep you’d had did nothing to restore your strength, but that didn’t stop you from trying to argue. “But I–.”
“Do you really want to use the little bit of energy you have left arguing with us?” Dean interrupted.
“Yes.” You immediately responded, a weak grin on your face.
“All in favour of us staying and taking care of our girl?”
Both Dean and Beau raised their hands, shouting and very rehearsed sounding, “Aye!”
“Looks like you were outvoted. Sorry.” Dean does not sound the least bit sorry.
“That’s not fair,” you whined. “Have you no shame, ganging up on a girl when she’s vulnerable?”
Beside you, Beau laughed, a chuckle that vibrated through your body. He leaned forward to press a kiss to your neck, “Brat.”
As if on cue, a harsh cough ripped out of your chest. Then your nose began to run. You body really was being your own worst enemy. You pressed your eyes closed, willing the ground to open up beneath you and swallow you whole.
“Just leave me here, the death will come swifty.” With how you were feeling, it wasn’t the least bit dramatic a thing to say.
Dean laughed, the sound rumbling into the quiet room as Beau chuckled beside you.
“It’s a hard no on that one, but thank you for the suggestion. We’re going to take care of you, starting with me making you some soup.”
You opened one eye, looking at him sceptically. “Oh, so you do want me to die.”
Dean had the audacity to look offended, scoffing and placing a hand over his chest as if the last time he attempted to cook didn’t nearly give you all food poisoning.
Beau’s arms tightened around you. “I will do the cooking,” Beau intervened smoothly, pressing another kiss to your neck. “Dean will do the supervising.”
“Hey, I resent the implication that all I’m good for is standing there and looking pretty,” Dean defended himself, tossing the washcloth onto the bedside table.
You rolled your eyes and scoffed; entirely certain that Beau was doing the exact same thing.
With a reluctant groan, Beau unravelled his arms from around you and slid out from under the duvet.
The bright light of the hallway flooded in as Beau left the room. You instantly closed your eyes to avoid the harsh glare. The moment the door clicked shut, you blinked them again, fumbling weakly toward the bedside table for the new tissue box that Dean had brought.
Dean beat you to it, smoothly pulling a tissue free and leaning across the mattress to help you clen up with an unbothered hand.
“Gross,” you whispered, cheeks burning from more than just the fever.
“Firstly, grow up,” he teased gently, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Secondly, trust me, you have no idea what gross is until you’ve spent a season in a men’s locker room.” He set the used tissue aside.
Reaching over, Dean clicked on the small lamp you had on the bedside table, bathing the room in a soft glow. It made his face look so warm. “Let’s get you to sit up, Beau will be back soon.”
He slid his hands under your arms, his touch careful as he helped you to sit. He plumped up the pillows behind your back to keep you comfortable. You leaned back wit a soft sigh, the physical effort making your head swim just a little.
Dean stayed next to you as you heard Beau working in the kitchen. He sat on the edge of the bed, tracing gentle patterns over your knuckles. For a while, you just talked. You fever ridden brain had your thoughts going crazy. You told him how you felt guilty about ruining the night and that you didn’t want to ruin the season for either of them. Dean, of course, told you you were being ridiculous. They wouldn’t choose anything over being here with you.
It wasn’t long before the rich aroma of chicken broth began to drift into the bedroom, making your mouth water despite your lack of appetite.
The soft click of the door came not too soon after. Beau walked in carrying a tray, carefully balancing the streaming bowl of warm chicken broth, another glass of ice-cold water, and a small bottle of medicine.
He set it down on the bedside table before moving the pillows you were popped up against to replace them with himself. He sat with his back propped against the headboard. Dean helped as Beau pulled you into his lap, rearranging you so your legs were hanging off of the bed and your head was tucked into his neck.
You grumbled. Beau began rubbing slow soothing circles into your back, putting pressure on the right points to have the muscles relaxing slightly. “I know, my love. Take some medicine first.”
Dean handed you with some medicine and you swallowed it with the glass of water.
Once you finished with your glass, Dean reached for the bowl of broth. He sat beside you both and gently blew on the spoonful to cool it down before bringing it to your mouth.
“Dean, you really don’t need to feed me,” you said.
“Let us have this,” Beau whispered against your ear, he continued rubbing perfect circles into your back. “Just relax and let us take care of you.”
There was no real point in arguing, you didn’t hate that you didn’t have to make much effort when there were two athletes more than willing to do this for you. Dean fed you a few more spoonfuls before you pulled back, shaking your head. You had managed about half the bowl, and you couldn’t do anymore.
Dean set it back onto the bedside table.
“You did well,” Beau said.
“Better?” Dean asked, his voice a low murmur.
“Much better,” you breathed, your eyelids already growing heavy again.
“Good, let’s put something to distract you while the meds kick in.”
10 minutes later, the three of you were sitting against the headboard watching one of your comfort movies on your laptop. You were sat in between them, both having a hand on you in different ways.
Slowly, the weigt of the medicine kicking in took over. Your head began to droop, eyes shutting for longer and longer periods until you could barely open them at all.
Sensing your exhaustion, Beau slid down the bed until he was on his back, brining you with him. Sleepily, you crawled completely on top of him, your body sprawling over his. Your cheek rested over his heart, the sound soothing you to sleep easily.
Dean reached over to close the laptop, setting it on the floor before sliding back under the duvet. He scooted closer to where you and Beau were, draping a large, heavy, arm over your back.
“We’re definitely catching this flu, you know,” Beau chuckled quietly, his chest vibrating beneath you.
“Likely,” Dean murmured back, his eyes blinking shut as he rested his chin near Beau’s shoulder. “Worth it, though.”
he’s fucked you so good it feels like you’ve just gone through a three hour workout session. you’re sprawled on his bed, his whole weight pressed on top of you, when your stomach clearly didn’t get the memo and lets out a loud grumble.
“you hungry?”
“a little.” you nod, a little breathless. his expression softens instantly, thumb brushing gently over your cheek. “say less. your favorite, yeah?”
which is what brings you both into the kitchen at one in the morning.
he’s quietly whipping up the ingredients for your favorite cinnamon pancakes, trying not to wake the others, while you sit on the counter beside him, a bowl of strawberries balanced between your legs. you bite into one, watching—no, openly admiring—your very attractive boyfriend.
soon-to-be husband, if he keeps this gentleman act up.
the whole “being quiet” thing fails miserably because garrett can’t help cracking dumb jokes and throwing in terrible pickup lines. you laugh way too loud, and he uses it as an excuse to kiss you just to shut you up.
“can you get me the chocolate chips, please?” he mumbles, focused adorably on mixing the dry with the wet ingredients.
you reach into the drawer next to you and hand them over. he leans in to peck your lips in return. “thank you, baby.”
“mhm.”
while waiting for the pancakes to cook, he stands between your legs as you feed him strawberries, rewarding you each time with a soft kiss.
who knew garret “i-don’t-do-girlfriends” graham would be standing in a dimly lit kitchen, hand-feeding his girl pancakes he made from scratch at one in the morning without a single complaint—kissing the syrup off her lips after every bite, making her giggle hysterically. the kind of giggle that makes him grin so wide, looking at her like she’s the only girl in the world.
I think you would eat up a who did this to you trope with Azriel 😛😛
(Photos courtesy of Pinterest)
Summary: "Who did this to you!?"
Authors Note: Lowkey this may be one of my favourite tropes...
Training in the Illyrian camps had always been brutal.
You knew that long before you decided to train.
Bruises were common. Bloody lips happened. Even Cassian had once shrugged at a dislocated shoulder like it was a mild inconvenience.
But this?
This was different.
The male across from you circled slowly, wooden training sword spinning lazily in his hand while several others watched from the sidelines. The afternoon sun beat harshly against the training ring, sweat sticking your leathers to your skin.
“You’re distracted,” the Illyrian sneered.
You tightened your grip on your blade. “I’m fine.”
He smirked.
Then he struck.
Hard.
The force of the blow rattled down your arm painfully enough to numb your fingers. Before you could fully readjust your stance, he swept your legs out from under you which you tried to clumsily recover from.
Pain exploded across your cheekbone as the hilt of his weapon clipped your face hard enough to send you finally sprawling.
The world tilted sickeningly.
You hit the dirt hard.
A few males laughed nearby.
Humiliation burned hotter than the sting of your cheek.
“Get up,” he barked.
You did.
Again and again, he came at you too aggressively for a sparring match. Every strike was meant to hurt. To embarrass. To prove something.
And when you managed to land a decent hit to his ribs—
His temper snapped.
The next shove sent you crashing directly into one of the wooden posts surrounding the ring. The male hit you hard enough that your vision blurred.
You stumbled backward as his hand grasped the front of your leathers, boots skidding across the dirt as he dragged you away forcefully into the middle of the ring, before slamming shoulder-first into the ground once again.
Something cracked painfully along your ribs.
Pain exploded across your side and a sharp gasp escaped you before you could stop it.
The training ring went quiet for half a second.
The male looked almost satisfied.
“You’re weak,” he spat.
You swallowed hard against the pain radiating through your ribs. “I said I’m fine.”
But your voice sounded strained even to your own ears.
He eventually grew bored and wandered away.
You ignored the looks from the others as you left the ring, forcing your breathing steady while your side screamed with every step. You didn’t want pity. Didn’t want a scene.
You especially didn’t want Azriel finding out.
Unfortunately for you, the universe seemed personally committed to ruining that plan.
You had barely made it beyond the training courtyard when shadows curled around your ankles.
Your heart dropped.
Azriel stepped from the shadows directly in front of you.
He took one look at your face and froze.
His eyes took everything in.
Your split lip. The darkening bruise across your cheekbone. The rip in your leathers exposing bloodied skin beneath. The way you were holding your side like breathing itself hurt.
The world seemed to go silent around him.
Even his shadows stilled.
“Who did this to you?”
The words were terrifyingly calm.
You immediately straightened despite the pain. “Az, it looks worse than it is—”
“Who.”
You had heard him interrogate enemies with more warmth than that single word.
You swallowed hard. “It was training.”
Azriel’s gaze dropped to the blood soaking through your side.
Then to the trembling hand you were unsuccessfully trying to hide behind your back.
His jaw flexed once.
“Training,” he repeated softly.
The shadows around him began writhing violently.
You stepped forward quickly before he could vanish. “I’m alright.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That does not comfort me.”
His voice cracked slightly on the last word and suddenly the anger on his face looked dangerously close to panic.
Azriel moved toward you slowly then, like he was holding himself together by sheer force. His scarred hands hovered near your waist, hesitant—as though he was afraid touching you would hurt.
“Let me see.”
You winced as he carefully moved your arm from your ribs.
Blood stained his fingers instantly.
He went utterly still.
The kind of stillness that meant something terrible was about to happen.
You knew it immediately.
“Azriel,” you said carefully.
His hazel eyes lifted to yours.
Cold. Lethal.
“Who,” he repeated quietly, “hurt you?”
You hesitated for half a second too long, your eyes instinctively flickering over to the male in question.
That was all he needed.
His shadows surged violently around him as understanding settled across his face.
You grabbed his wrist immediately. “Please don’t kill him.”
His gaze snapped back to yours, and somehow that terrified you more because his expression remained perfectly calm.
“I need you to go inside.”
You blinked. “What?”
Rhysand’s mother’s old house sat just beyond the camp, warm light glowing faintly through the windows.
"Go inside."
"Not unless you come with me."
He didn't say anything for a moment, but eventually he nodded his head sharply.
You heaved a sigh of relief, as much as your ribs allowed you anyway.
Azriel guided you towards the house carefully, one hand firm against your back while shadows circled restlessly around both of you.
“Azriel, I'm fine—”
“You’re hurt. You can barely stand.”
That shut you up because unfortunately he was correct.
Pain stabbed sharply through your ribs with every breath now, your head spinning unpleasantly from whatever damage had been done to your face.
Azriel opened the door and guided you inside with startling gentleness compared to the fury radiating from him.
The moment the door shut behind you in your room, he turned toward the small wash basin, grabbing a cloth to press carefully against the blood at your side.
His hands shook, so slightly that anyone else may have missed it.
But not you.
That scared you more than the injuries.
“Azriel…”
His eyes flicked upward.
You softened immediately at the sheer rage and fear warring there.
“I’m okay,” you whispered.
Something painful crossed his face.
“No,” he said quietly. “You aren’t.”
He cleaned the blood from your cheek with impossible care, but every new bruise he uncovered only darkened his expression further.
When he touched your ribs, you inhaled sharply.
Azriel closed his eyes.
A muscle ticked in his jaw.
Then he stood.
You immediately grabbed his hand. “Don’t.”
His fingers curled tightly around yours for one brief second.
“You know I can’t let this go.”
“He was just a bit rough, that’s all—”
“He enjoyed it.”
Silence.
Because again—he was right.
Azriel crouched in front of you then, both hands cupping your face carefully despite the blood still staining your skin.
“You are not supposed to look like this after training,” he said softly.
The fury in his voice made tears sting unexpectedly behind your eyes.
You leaned into his touch instantly. “Please don’t kill him.”
A shadow of dark amusement crossed his face.
“I’m going to try not to kill him.”
“Azriel.”
His thumb brushed gently beneath your swollen cheekbone.
“I’m simply going to remind him,” he said softly, “that if he ever touches you like that again, training or not, they’ll never find enough of him left to bury.”
You stared at him.
He stared calmly back.
Oh, he meant business.
“Azriel—”
He leaned forward, kissing your forehead tenderly before you could continue arguing.
“Stay here.”
And before you could stop him, darkness swallowed him whole.
You groaned softly, dropping your head back against the chair. “Mother save that male.”
It was nearly an hour before shadows finally stirred near the fireplace again.
Azriel stepped from them silently.
Your head snapped up from where you’d been anxiously waiting wrapped in blankets.
He looked entirely uninjured.
Calm.
Too calm.
You narrowed your eyes immediately. “Did you kill him?”
Azriel paused mid-step like he genuinely needed to consider the question.
“No.”
Suspicion flooded you instantly. “Azriel.”
His mouth twitched faintly.
“I didn't kill him.”
“I don't believe you.”
A soft huff of laughter escaped him then as he crossed the room toward you.
The tension in your chest eased immediately despite yourself.
He was alive. He was safe. Most importantly, he was here.
Azriel crouched beside your chair, hands settling carefully around your waist as though checking you were still real.
“I merely reminded that filth,” he said mildly, “that training with you does not grant him permission to brutalise you.”
You squinted. “Define reminded.”
A pause.
“He will struggle to sit comfortably for a few days.”
“Azriel.”
“And perhaps his hand is broken.”
You stared at him in shock.
Azriel looked entirely unrepentant.
“He shouldn’t have touched you.”
The possessive fury beneath the quiet words made your stomach flip.
You sighed tiredly. “You’re terrifying.”
His expression softened instantly. “Not to you though, right?"
You smiled gently at him, brushing some stray hairs tenderly from his forehead. "Of course not."
The rest of the tension in his shoulders eased slightly.
His hands slid carefully up your arms, pulling you gently into his lap despite your quiet protest about your ribs.
Azriel ignored you completely.
He tucked your head beneath his chin, wings curling protectively around both of you while his shadows settled at last.
Safe.
You felt his lips brush softly against your hair.
“No one hurts you,” he murmured quietly, “and walks away unchanged.”
