stillness in motion

mid-20s, she/her/hers. i write sometimes, but mostly i procrastinate. navigation | masterlist

[coeurdalene]

𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

❏ about me

→ hi, i’m amelia! she/her/hers, mid-20s.

→ things i like: a:tla, derry girls, pacific rim, pokemon, stardew valley.

→ every few years, i pop onto this site to drop a fic that took me way too long to write. you can also find me on ao3 @ boulevards.

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[sharkgirldick]

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Gulpin

[sharkgirldick]

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( -3-) (-Ɛ- )

Two Gulpin

[sharkgirldick]

If you can count on anything, you can count on Two Gulpin Tuesday.

[the-haiku-bot]

If you can count on

anything, you can count on

Two Gulpin Tuesday.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[onebreakdownawayfromspiraling]

these pacific rims scientists are the gayest people i've ever seen. what were they on in the 2010's

[pokemon]

Please handle Mudkip with care 🥹

[alierecss]

I can see you | John Logan

summary: Three months ago, you and Logan quietly became something. You forgot to tell anyone. That was fine, it was yours, and you liked it that way. Then you found out your friends had started a betting pool on when you'd finally get together, and suddenly keeping the secret became a lot more fun.

or: four times someone almost caught you, and one time someone did.

notes: hii i'm back!! okay so this one is a little different from my usual so no angst, no parking lot confessions, no rain. also this pic of antonio is just so boyfriend that i had to write something. thank you so much for reading and please let me know what you think!!

warnings: swearing, implied intimacy, a missing bra, hannah being a terrible secret keeper and fluff.

word count: 6k

You and Hannah were not often scheduled to work the same shift at Malone's, for the simple reason that you two were dangerously prone to a severe case of the giggles that management had clocked early and worked around. But today was different, another server had called in sick and your manager had called you in a tone that left very little room for negotiation. You said yes, of course. You always said yes.

Arriving, you spotted Hannah immediately, weaving between tables with three plates balanced on her arm. You passed her on your way to the staff locker room and gave her arm a quick squeeze. She grinned at you over her shoulder.

The lunch rush was the particular kind of brutal that didn't leave room for anything except moving, table to table, order to order, the focused blur of a busy service. By the time it slowed down your feet ached and your ponytail had developed a life of its own.

Hannah found you at the counter, mechanically polishing glasses.

"So busy we couldn't even talk today," she said, sliding in beside you and stealing a glass to polish.

"It was genuinely awful," you agreed. "My feet are going to file a formal complaint."

Hannah laughed. And then the door opened.

Logan, Garrett, Tucker, and Dean came in with the energy of people who had just finished practice and were extremely confident about their right to exist in any space they chose. Garrett made a beeline for Hannah with the focused intention of a man who had one priority. Behind him, Logan drifted toward the counter, casually, like he just happened to end up there, and leaned against it, watching you serve a customer with an expression that was doing nothing for your professional composure.

You almost dropped the bag the customer was reaching for.

"Hi, Logan." You kept your voice completely neutral. "Do you mind not staring at me? I'm working, you know."

He laughed, low and unhurried. "No, I don't think I can manage that."

"You could try."

"Not when you look this pretty."

"This pretty?" You gestured at yourself. "My hair is dirty and I didn't even have time to put on makeup."

"Still the prettiest," he said, and winked, and wandered back to the table where his friends had settled in like they owned the place.

You looked back at the counter. The glass you had been polishing was now somehow less clean than when you started.

Hannah had materialized at your elbow with the expression of someone watching something inevitable unfold.

"When," she said reverently, "are you two just going to date like normal people?" She sighed. "I hope it's soon. I kind of want to win that betting pool Tucker made."

You put the glass down. "What betting pool?"

Hannah's expression cycled through several things in rapid succession.

"No betting pool," she said. "I meant a real pool. Tucker said something about you guys and a real pool. Can't think of what it actually was. Because it was so long ago."

You looked at her.

"Hannah Marie Wells."

"That's not my middle name."

"Tell me the truth right now."

She looked left. She looked right. She found no exits. She exhaled.

"All right. Tucker organized a bet where everyone has to guess when you two will finally become a couple. I said three weeks from the day the bet was made, which is actually — tomorrow — so if you two could maybe just —"

"I cannot believe you guys would bet on something like that." You shook your head. "Actually, I can believe them. But you, Hannah. I expected better."

"Allie too," Hannah offered, as though this was helpful.

"What does the winner get?"

"Pride and glory. Also we each put in twenty dollars."

You set down the glass and made a direct line for the boys' table. Logan spotted you coming and started to smile, that smile, the one that was specifically for you.

"Logan," you said pleasantly, "can you help me with something? The door on one of the staff lockers is jammed. Do you mind taking a look? Your bill will be on the house if you fix it."

He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, sure." He pushed back from the table, nodded to the others, and followed you toward the back.

Dean watched you go with an expression of mild suspicion. Tucker didn't look up from his menu.

The staff locker room smelled like industrial cleaner and someone's forgotten lunch, which was not exactly the atmosphere you would have chosen, but it would do.

"So where's the door?" Logan said, looking around.

"There's no door."

He turned. "What?"

"There's no door. I needed to get you alone." You crossed your arms. "Your friends are running a betting pool on us."

"What do you mean there's no door?" He looked genuinely betrayed by the architecture. Then: "And they're your friends too."

"Not when they're betting on us. There's no door, Logan, I made it up. Focus."

He laughed and crossed the small room toward you, his hands finding your waist and pulling you in with the unhurried ease of someone who had been doing it for a while, not long enough that it felt ordinary, long enough that it felt inevitable.

"It's not a big deal, you know," he said. "The bet. They're just nosy."

"I know." He was very close, which made it difficult to maintain the appropriate level of outrage. You found yourself pressing small kisses to his lips almost without deciding to, punctuating your words between them. "I just — don't want — to make it — a whole thing yet."

Logan pulled back far enough to look at you properly.

"Yeah?" he said. Not pushing. Just asking.

"It's ours," you said, which came out simpler and more honest than you had intended. "For a little while longer. I just want it to be ours."

Something in his expression settled, warm and unhurried, the specific look of someone who understood completely and wasn't going anywhere.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah." He tucked a piece of hair behind your ear. "Okay."

You pulled him in by the front of his shirt and kissed him properly this time, the locker room and the betting pool and Hannah's guilty face all receding into irrelevance.

Logan pulled back.

"Wait," he said. "So no bill on the house, then?"

one — tucker

The thing about Logan's shirts was that they were extremely comfortable.

This was not a controversial observation. They were soft and worn-in and smelled like him which was a feature rather than a bug on cold Sunday mornings when getting dressed felt like an unnecessary commitment.

You had not planned to be at the house on a Sunday morning. You had planned to be at your own place, in your own bed, wearing your own clothes, like a person who had their life together. What had actually happened was that Saturday night had turned into Sunday morning in the way that it sometimes did around Logan, and now it was nine-fifteen and you were in his kitchen in his grey shirt making coffee while he was still asleep upstairs.

Which was fine. Which was completely normal and fine.

The house was quiet. Tucker's door had been closed when you passed it. Dean and Garrett weren't home, Logan had said. You were alone with the coffee machine and a comfortable Sunday silence and absolutely no reason to think anyone was going to come downstairs for at least another hour.

You had just found the good mugs when you heard footsteps on the stairs.

Tucker appeared in the kitchen doorway in a hoodie and the expression of someone who had not yet fully committed to being awake. He was looking at his phone. He walked to the refrigerator. He opened it. He stared into it with the vacant focus of someone hoping food would appear through willpower alone.

Then he turned around and saw you.

The silence that followed had a very specific quality.

Tucker looked at you. He looked at the shirt. He looked at the coffee you were making, looked at the two mugs, and something moved across his face that went through approximately six stages before landing on stunned comprehension.

"Hey," you said, with the casual energy of someone who was not wearing their boyfriend's shirt in his kitchen on a Sunday morning. "Coffee?"

Tucker opened his mouth.

"I stayed over," you said pleasantly. "The couch is really comfortable actually."

Tucker looked at the shirt. He looked at the mugs. He looked at the shirt again.

"...Right," he said slowly.

"He let me borrow this because my top had a thing. A stain. From last night." You gestured vaguely. "Very embarrassing, actually. Pasta related."

Tucker was still looking at the mugs.

You picked up both mugs, tucked them against your chest in what you hoped was a casual gesture rather than an incriminating one, and smiled at him.

"I'm just going to bring this up," you said. "You should have some. There's plenty."

You walked past him and up the stairs before he could say anything else.

Logan was sitting up in bed when you came back, hair doing something architecturally ambitious, squinting at the light.

"Tucker's awake," you said, handing him his coffee and sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed.

Logan processed this. "And?"

"And I told him I slept on the couch because my shirt had a pasta stain."

Logan looked at you for a long moment.

"Did he believe you?"

"Absolutely not," you said cheerfully, and drank your coffee.

Downstairs, Tucker stood in the kitchen for another full minute. Then he took out his phone.

tucker: i just saw (Y/N) in the kitchen wearing logan's shirt

tucker: making TWO coffees

tucker: and she said she slept on the couch because of a pasta stain

dean: WHAT

garrett: what

tucker: I THINK I JUST WON THE BET

hannah: you didn't win the bet tucker. it was clearly just a pasta stain situation

tucker: HANNAH

allie: omg omg omg

tucker: do i win?? does the pasta stain story count as them getting together???

dean: i don't think pasta counts as confirmation tucker

tucker: I WILL NEVER FINANCIALLY RECOVER FROM THIS

two — hannah

The thing about Malone's on a Friday night was that it had exactly one staff bathroom and one customer bathroom, and the customer bathroom had been out of order since Wednesday, which meant that the staff bathroom had become public property by necessity, which meant the line for it snaked along the back wall and required a wait time that was genuinely unreasonable.

You had been waiting for four minutes when you remembered that you knew where the staff entrance was.

The staff hallway was quiet and dim, the sounds of the bar muffled behind the door. You had worked here long enough to know the code, and the bathroom was unlocked, and you were inside and washing your hands within ninety seconds, feeling extremely smug about the whole thing.

You were just reaching for a paper towel when the door opened.

Logan slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind him, and looked at you with the expression of someone who had just made the same efficient calculation.

"Oh," he said. "You had the same idea."

"Staff entrance," you confirmed.

"Smart."

"I know."

He crossed to the sink beside yours and turned on the tap, and for a moment you were just two people washing their hands in a small staff bathroom, which was either extremely romantic or extremely unromantic depending on how you looked at it. His shoulder was warm against yours in the small space. You handed him a paper towel.

"Tucker's texts have been unhinged this week," you said.

"The pasta shirt thing really broke him," Logan agreed, the corner of his mouth lifting.

"He texted me three times yesterday asking if I wanted to talk about my feelings."

Logan laughed. You loved the sound of it in small spaces, the way it filled them. You turned toward him and he turned toward you and you were very close, and he tucked a piece of hair behind your ear with the absent, habitual tenderness of someone who had been doing it long enough that he didn't think about it anymore, and you went up on your toes and kissed him quickly.

"Separate," you said against his mouth. "We should go back separately."

"Separate," he agreed, not moving.

You kissed him again, less quickly this time, his hands finding your waist, the paper towel entirely abandoned.

The door opened.

Hannah stood in the doorway.

The three of you looked at each other.

"The customer bathroom is out of order," Hannah said, very carefully, "so I used the staff code."

"Same," you said. You and Logan had separated with the practiced efficiency of people who had been interrupted before. "Just washing our hands."

"Both of you."

"It's a two sink bathroom," Logan said.

Hannah looked at the two of you. She looked at the very small bathroom. She looked at the single paper towel that was inexplicably on the floor.

"Right," she said. "Of course. I'll just —" she pointed at the toilet. "I'll just use this."

"We were just leaving," you said.

You and Logan filed past her. You did not look at each other in the hallway.

Behind you, you heard Hannah take out her phone.

hannah: ok so i just walked into the staff bathroom at malone's and (Y/N) and logan were BOTH in there

allie: WHAT

tucker: I TOLD YOU ABOUT THE PASTA SHIRT

hannah: they said they were just washing their hands

dean: both of them. in the staff bathroom. together.

hannah: there were two sinks

garrett: hannah

hannah: i mean it's a completely reasonable explanation!!

tucker: HANNAH YOU ARE LITERALLY DATING GARRETT YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS

hannah: i mean. yes. but also. two sinks.

allie: hannah i love you but two sinks is not an explanation

hannah: i just think we should give them the benefit of the doubt!!

tucker: hannah you literally have twenty dollars on this

hannah: ...i said three weeks

hannah: from a month ago

hannah: i may have already lost

three — allie

Allie considered herself an observant person.

This was not arrogance, it was simply a fact, documented over years of being the person in any given group who noticed things. Who left early. Who had argued with whom. Who liked whom. The small social architecture of any room was, to Allie, essentially readable at a glance.

Which was why she could not understand why no one else was seeing what she was seeing.

It was a random week night, the kind that had somehow evolved from a study session into a full group hangout without anyone formally announcing it, and now there were seven of them spread across the living room , Logan and Dean on the floor with Tucker's terrible taste in television providing background noise, Garrett and Hannah on the armchair that was technically too small for two people but they had been making work for months, and you and Allie on the big couch with your respective laptops.

Normal. Fine. A completely normal Tuesday.

Except.

Allie had been reaching for her water bottle when she saw it.

Logan had said something to Tucker, something quiet, barely audible over the television, and Tucker had responded, and then Logan had looked across the room at you. Just looked. For maybe two seconds.

And you had looked back.

It wasn't a loaded look, exactly. It wasn't the dramatic eye contact of a romantic comedy. It was quieter than that, it was the almost imperceptible look of two people who were sharing a private thought from across a room. Easy. Habitual. Like a conversation conducted entirely without words by people who had been having it for a long time.

Allie's water bottle missed the table entirely.

"You okay?" you asked, looking at her.

"Fine," Allie said. "Totally fine."

She looked at Logan. He had gone back to whatever Tucker was saying. Completely normal. Nothing to see.

Allie looked back at you. You were typing something on your laptop. Also completely normal.

I saw that, Allie thought. I absolutely saw that.

She leaned over to you. "Hey," she said, very casually. "What was that?"

You looked up from your laptop. "What was what?"

"That —" she gestured vaguely between you and Logan. "That look."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You and Logan just —" she did the gesture again, which in retrospect was not a very descriptive gesture.

"Allie," you said pleasantly, "I genuinely don't know what you're referring to."

You went back to your laptop. Allie stared at the side of your head.

I saw it, she thought. I definitely saw it.

She turned to the room. She needed a witness.

"Dean," she said.

Dean looked up from the floor. "What."

"Did you just see —" she started. But Dean had already looked back at the television. Tucker was saying something about the episode. Logan was responding. You were typing. Nothing was happening. The moment was completely gone, absorbed back into the ordinary texture of a Tuesday night, leaving absolutely no evidence.

Allie sat back on the couch.

I know what I saw, she thought.

Twenty minutes passed.

And then Logan got up to refill his water bottle in the kitchen, and on his way back he passed the couch, and his hand dropped briefly to your shoulder, barely a touch, a graze really, the kind that lasted less than a second and you didn't even look up from your laptop, just tilted your head toward it slightly, like a plant toward light, like the most natural thing in the world.

Allie's laptop slid off her knees.

"I SAW THAT," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

"Saw what?" Tucker said.

"Logan's hand — and her shoulder — they just —" she pointed. Logan was back on the floor. You were looking at Allie with an expression of polite confusion. "He touched her shoulder and she —"

"Are you okay?" Dean said.

"I'm fine, I just —" Allie looked around the room. Six faces looked back at her with varying degrees of concern. "Did anyone else see that?"

"See what?" Logan said.

"You touched her shoulder," Allie said, pointing at him.

"I was just walking past," Logan said.

"She leaned into it!"

"I have a stiff neck," you said.

"YOU HAVE A STIFF —" Allie stopped. Took a breath. "I know what I saw," she said, with dignity.

"Allie," Dean said carefully. "Have you had enough water today?"

"I've had plenty of water, Dean, I'm not —"

"Sometimes dehydration causes —"

"I am not dehydrated!" Allie said. "I know what I saw and what I saw was —" she looked at you. You were looking back at her with an expression of patient concern. She looked at Logan. He was also looking at her with patient concern. Both of you at the same time, with the same expression. "— you know what, never mind," she said. "Never mind. I'm fine."

She picked up her laptop.

Across the room, completely undetected, Logan looked at you.

You looked back.

The corner of your mouth moved. His did too.

Allie, who had her eyes fixed resolutely on her screen, did not see this.

She was choosing not to look anymore. For her own mental health.

allie: OKAY SO

allie: I JUST SAW SOMETHING

tucker: WHAT

allie: logan touched (Y/N)'s shoulder while walking past and she LEANED INTO IT

allie: and before that there was A LOOK

dean: allie we were all in the same room

allie: YOU WEREN'T PAYING ATTENTION DEAN

hannah: what kind of look

allie: the kind that MEANS SOMETHING

garrett: i mean they're friends

allie: garrett

garrett: what

allie: i love you but you have the observational skills of a golden retriever

garrett: ...fair

tucker: ALLIE YOU MIGHT HAVE JUST WON THE BET

allie: i can't win on a shoulder touch and a look tucker i need more evidence

tucker: THE PASTA SHIRT WAS EVIDENCE

allie: the pasta shirt was circumstantial

dean: none of us are going to win this bet are we

three and a half — garrett

It was a Wednesday afternoon, the house quiet in the way it got between practice and evening, and you had let yourself in with the key Logan had given you two weeks ago, casually, like it was nothing, tucked it into your palm and gone back to whatever he had been saying, and you had put it on your keychain without making a thing of it either.

You were in the kitchen making tea when Garrett came downstairs.

He was in sweats, hair still damp from the shower, moving with the unhurried ease of someone with nowhere to be. He went to the refrigerator, opened it, considered it, closed it. Then he leaned against the counter across from you and looked at the mug situation with the mild, unreadable expression that was, you had come to understand, just his face.

"Logan's still at the rink," he said. "Film session ran over."

"I know," you said. "He texted."

Garrett nodded. He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl. He looked at it. He looked at you.

"You should tell him about the Boston thing," he said.

You looked up. "What?"

"The conference. The one your professor forwarded you." He bit into the apple with the casual certainty of someone stating something obvious. "You've been sitting on it for two weeks. You should just tell him."

You stared at him.

The Boston conference was something you had mentioned exactly once, in passing, weeks ago, in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely. You had said three sentences about it and then moved on. You had not mentioned it since. You had not mentioned it to Logan because you hadn't figured out how yet because Boston was four days in February and it was a good opportunity and you didn't know what it meant for the thing that was still, technically, just yours.

"How did you —" you started.

Garrett shrugged. "You got quiet when someone mentioned February plans at dinner last week." He took another bite of the apple. "Logan noticed too. He just didn't want to push."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"He'll be fine with it," Garrett said, simply, like that was the part you needed to hear. "He's not going anywhere." He pushed off the counter and headed toward the living room. "Tell him about Boston."

He disappeared around the corner.

You stood in the kitchen holding your mug, looking at the space he had just occupied.

You had not told anyone about Boston. You had not told Hannah, who told you everything. You had not told Allie, who noticed everything. You had mentioned it once, in passing, and Garrett who had the observational skills of a golden retriever, according to Allie, according to everyone had filed it away and waited until you were alone to say the thing you needed to hear.

You looked down at your mug.

Then you took out your phone and texted Logan.

can we talk tonight? nothing bad. just something i've been sitting on.

His response came back in under a minute.

yeah. i'll bring food. what do you want?

You smiled at your phone in the empty kitchen.

surprise me.

four — dean

You weren't really supposed to be there.

You had come over earlier in the afternoon with the genuine intention of spending a couple of hours with Logan and then going home like a responsible person. What had actually happened was that Logan had been very convincing about the staying part convincing in the specific way that involved kissing you before you could finish your sentence and pulling you back against the mattress until leaving felt like a genuinely unreasonable idea.

So now it was late, and you were sprawled across his bed while he kissed your neck, his hands finding the hem of your shirt and pulling it over your head.

"I missed them," he said, with complete sincerity, cupping your chest in both hands, unclasping your bra with an easiness that frankly made you jealous.

You giggled and pushed his shoulders. "You idiot."

He kissed you again slow and soft, his tongue lazy against yours, the unhurried quality of someone with absolutely nowhere to be. You were certainly not going home now. You reached up and pulled his shirt over his head, and your fingers found a purple mark spreading across his stomach.

"What's this?" you said, tracing it gently.

"Practice got tough."

"Oh, my poor baby." You shifted, pressing a line of soft kisses across his stomach. You felt him shiver underneath you. "My poor, poor baby —"

The knock on the door made you both freeze.

"Logan?" Dean's voice, from the other side. Another knock. The sound of the handle being tried. "You in there, man?"

You and Logan looked at each other with the wide-eyed, frantic energy of two people who had absolutely no good explanation for the current state of the room.

Logan started moving toward the door.

"No," you whisper-screamed.

"Hide," he said, at the same volume.

"Where?"

You looked around the room in rapid, increasingly desperate assessment. The bathroom — no, what if Dean needed it. The wardrobe what if Logan opened it. The only viable option was under the bed, the duvet long enough to reach the floor and conceal the gap completely.

You rolled off the mattress and slid underneath it in one graceless motion. You heard Logan muffle a laugh by converting it unconvincingly into a cough. In your frantic scramble you had grabbed your shirt, clutched against your chest, but your bra was somewhere out there discarded, incriminating, absolutely in the middle of the room.

Fuck, you thought.

Logan opened the door.

Dean walked in. There was a brief silence of the kind that meant someone had immediately spotted something they were not expecting to see. From your position on the floor you had a very clear view of Dean's socks stopping in the middle of the room.

Then not moving.

You watched Dean's socks stand very still for approximately eight seconds.

"I need to borrow your charger," Dean said.

His voice was extremely, carefully normal. The voice of a man making a decision in real time.

Logan turned and retrieved the charger from the bedside table. "Here."

A pause. Dean's socks did not move.

"Leave, Dean," Logan said.

Another pause.

Dean's socks backed slowly toward the door.

He stood in the hallway for a moment, you could hear him through the door, just standing there, processing, and then his footsteps retreated down the hall. You waited until you heard his door close before sliding out from under the bed, pulling your shirt back on and looking at Logan, who was leaning against the wall with his hand over his mouth doing an extremely poor job of not laughing.

"Your bra," he managed.

"I know."

"It was just — right there —"

"I know, Logan."

He was fully laughing now, silent and shaking, and you threw a pillow at him, which did nothing to help.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand.

dean: dude…

logan: say nothing

You watched him type it, one eyebrow raised. His phone buzzed back almost immediately.

dean: i have twenty dollars on the line

logan: dean

dean: i'm just saying

logan: goodnight dean

dean: does tucker know

logan: GOODNIGHT DEAN

Logan put his phone down. You looked at him. He looked at you.

"He's not going to say anything," Logan said, with the confidence of a man who was not entirely sure of this.

His phone buzzed again.

dean: for what it's worth i called it from the beginning

Logan turned his phone face down.

You looked at him for a moment longer.

Then you retrieved your bra from the corner of the room where it had been sitting like evidence at a crime scene, and you got back into bed, and Logan pulled you against him with the easy, unhurried certainty of someone who had won the argument about staying a long time ago.

Down the hall, Dean lay on his bed staring at the ceiling, charger plugged in, feeling extremely vindicated about everything.

He did not tell Tucker.

He did not tell Garrett.

He did not tell Allie, who sent him three texts the following morning about the shoulder touch that he left on read.

He did not tell Hannah, which was the hardest one, because Hannah asked him directly at breakfast if he had noticed anything and Dean had looked her in the eye and said no.

He was, he decided, a good friend.

He was also, he decided, definitely going to win that bet.

five — garrett

The hit happened in the second period.

It wasn't malicious, just the particular physics of two large bodies in a confined space moving fast, the kind of collision that happened in every game, that everyone who had ever watched hockey understood to be part of it. Logan went into the boards hard and stayed down for a moment longer than usual, and the arena went quiet in a collective way that meant everyone was holding the same breath.

You were on your feet before you had decided to stand up.

"He's fine," Allie said, grabbing your arm. "He's moving, look, he's moving."

He was moving. He was getting up, slowly, with assistance from a teammate, skating to the bench under his own power. The arena exhaled. You sat back down.

Your heart was doing something extremely inconvenient.

"You okay?" Hannah said, from your other side.

"Fine," you said. "Totally fine."

She looked at you for a moment. You looked at the ice.

Logan was on the bench. The trainer was with him. He was talking, responding, doing all the things that meant he was okay, and you sat in the stands and watched with the stillness of someone who was doing a very good impression of a person who was just watching a hockey game and not mentally composing hospital directions.

He came back in the third period.

You exhaled properly for the first time in forty minutes.

After the game the group filtered down to the corridor outside the locker room the way they always did. You went because you always went, because it was a group thing, because it meant nothing in particular.

The players came out in ones and twos. Garrett first, immediately absorbed by Hannah. Tucker departing with a couple of the other guys. Dean getting into a conversation with someone near the exit.

Logan came out last.

He had a bruise forming along his jaw and he was walking with the slightly careful gait of someone who had taken a hit, and when he saw you he smiled, that specific smile, the one that was yours, and something in your chest did the thing it always did, except louder tonight, turned up by forty minutes of sitting in the stands holding your breath.

You crossed the corridor and hugged him, which was normal, everyone hugged after games, that was a completely normal thing to do.

Except then you pulled back and looked at him, at the bruise, at the careful way he was holding himself, and you said his name, quietly, in the way that was only for him, and he looked back at you in the way that was only for you, and the thing you had been keeping quietly for months was right there at the surface, obvious and warm and entirely done being kept.

You kissed him.

Not a quick kiss. Not an ambiguous one. A real one, his hand coming up to your jaw, yours finding the front of his jacket, the kind that had three months of ordinary Tuesday nights and Sunday mornings and staff bathroom detours in it.

The corridor went quiet.

You pulled back.

The group was looking at you.

Tucker's mouth was open.

Garrett had an expression cycling through several things very quickly , and then it landed on something that looked, more than anything, like quiet relief. Like someone who had been waiting for a particular thing to resolve and was glad it finally had.

Hannah was smiling in the particular way of someone who had known something for a while and was very glad to finally be allowed to show it.

Dean looked, more than anything, deeply smug.

"Wait," Tucker said. "Are you two — have you been —"

"Three months," Logan said, still looking at you, the corner of his mouth doing the thing.

"THREE MONTHS?"

"We forgot to mention it," you said.

"YOU FORGOT TO —"

"Tucker," Logan said.

"I HAD TWENTY DOLLARS ON THIS." Tucker pointed at you both. "I HAD — the pasta shirt! I KNEW about the pasta shirt! Does the pasta shirt count? When was the pasta shirt? If the pasta shirt counts then I —"

"Who won?" Allie said. "Technically who —"

Everyone looked at each other. A rapid, chaotic calculation passed through the group.

"Garrett," Hannah said slowly. "Garrett said —"

"After a game," Garrett said, with the equanimity of someone who had never been particularly worried about it. "I said after a game."

"You said after a game," Dean confirmed.

Tucker made a sound that had no letters in it.

"So Garrett wins?" Allie said.

"Garrett wins," Hannah confirmed, and immediately turned to Garrett with an expression of pure delight. "You won, baby."

Garrett looked at Logan. Logan looked back at him.

"You've been together for three months," Garrett said.

"About that," Logan confirmed.

"And you didn't tell anyone."

"We wanted to keep it for a while," you said, which was the simplest and most accurate version of it. "It was ours. We just wanted it to be ours for a bit."

Garrett looked at you for a moment. Something in his expression was entirely unsurprised. He nodded once, like a thing confirmed, and then looked at Logan with the small, easy smile of someone who had never doubted the outcome.

"Okay," he said. "Good."

Tucker pointed at both of you. "I want my twenty dollars back."

"You didn't win," Dean said.

"I KNEW ABOUT THE PASTA SHIRT."

"Tucker —"

"THE PASTA SHIRT WAS EVIDENCE AND NO ONE LISTENED TO ME —"

Logan looked at you. You looked back at him.

"Worth it?" he said quietly.

You looked at Tucker, who was now gesturing with both hands. You looked at Allie, who was consoling him with the resigned energy of someone who had expected this outcome. You looked at Hannah, who was collecting twenty dollars from Dean with the serene satisfaction of a person who had always known. You looked at Garrett, who was watching all of it with the calm, unhurried expression of a man who had called it months ago in a quiet kitchen on a Wednesday afternoon and had simply waited.

"Completely worth it," you said.

Logan kissed your temple.

Tucker made the sound with no letters in it again.

tucker: I WANT IT ON THE RECORD THAT I KNEW

tucker: THE PASTA SHIRT WAS REAL EVIDENCE

tucker: I CALLED IT FROM DAY ONE

dean: garrett won tucker

tucker: GARRETT WASNT EVEN PAYING ATTENTION

garrett: i was paying attention

tucker: YOU HAVE THE OBSERVATIONAL SKILLS OF A GOLDEN RETRIEVER

garrett: allie said that first

allie: it's true both times

allie: okay fine. garrett wins. i respect it.

tucker: I DO NOT RESPECT IT

tucker: TWENTY DOLLARS. GONE.

garrett: worth every penny honestly

allie: okay fine it was very cute

allie: i still saw the look though

allie: i want that acknowledged

dean: acknowledged allie

allie: thank you

tucker: I WILL NEVER FINANCIALLY RECOVER FROM THIS

[adobe-outdesign]

If you're bored, Reddit user Top-Weakness-1311 built a free Pokemon guessing game where you get a silhouette and have to enter the 'mons name:

WhosThatMon — Daily Pokemon Guessing Game

Can you guess the Pokemon from its silhouette? Play the free daily challenge, track your streak, and share your results.

There's also a timed version where you can guess as many as you can in 60 seconds, and one where you can guess a Pokemon based entirely off its cries.

[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ one shot.

pairing – garrett graham x reader notes from me – i know i usually only write rafe/drew but i'm on my second rewatch of off campus and i couldn't help myself!! warnings – alcohol, drunken silliness, soft/protective garrett, party chaos, mild innuendo word count – 4.1k

navigation – masterlist

The thing about Garrett Graham being on a one-drink limit was that it made him unbearably observant.

Usually, at parties like this, Garrett was loud in the easy way he always was when the room already liked him. Leaning against the kitchen island with a red cup in one hand, shoulder knocked against Logan’s while Tucker said something dry enough to make both of them laugh through their noses, still getting pulled into conversations every two minutes by guys who remembered Briar had a game tomorrow and thought “bury those assholes” counted as both analysis and encouragement.

He was still doing that, still smiling when somebody slapped his shoulder on the way past. Still nodding along when a freshman he vaguely knew started talking at him about the power play with the intense glassy-eyed sincerity of a man who had consumed too much cheap vodka and exactly one hockey podcast. Still charming people mostly by accident, because Garrett had never once walked into a room and thought maybe he should make himself smaller for everybody else’s sake.

But sober Garrett had range. Unfortunately for her, sober Garrett noticed things.

He noticed when Logan’s cup went from beer to something stronger. Not his problem. He noticed Dean talking with both hands while Allie stood tucked under his arm, laughing like she knew whatever came out of his mouth next was going to be either stupid or actionable. Also not his problem.

He noticed Tucker quietly moving somebody’s drink away from the edge of the counter before it got knocked onto the floor, because Tucker had always possessed the exhausting dignity of a man born already tired of everyone’s shit.

And he noticed the exact second his girlfriend put one hand on the kitchen bench again. That was his problem.

He’d already stopped this exact mission twice in the last ten minutes, which felt excessive for a girl who kept insisting she was literally fine while blinking a little too slowly and smiling at him like the lights had all gone soft around the edges.

The first time, he’d caught her by the waist and set her back on the floor with a calm, captainly, “Nope,” said close to her ear. The second time, he’d stepped between her and the counter like a very attractive barricade while she pouted at him like he'd personally cancelled fun.

Now she was trying again, because, apparently, the second a vodka cranberry and an Ariana Grande song got into the same room, her ability to retain recent history collapsed entirely.

Her skirt was too short for climbing. It was probably too short for several forms of normal standing, if Garrett was being honest, but that was between him, God, and the part of his brain currently doing threat assessment on behalf of her underwear.

Her heels were tall enough that Allie had called them hot but fucking dangerous when they arrived, and now one of them scraped against the cabinet front as she lifted her knee with absolutely no concern for balance, modesty, or Garrett’s long-term cardiovascular health.

Dean, from the other side of the kitchen, had been waiting for this. Garrett could feel it in the air. The man had made three separate comments about keeping her away from elevated surfaces and then looked personally enriched every time Garrett told him to shut the fuck up.

Garrett moved before the room really had time to understand what was happening. One second he was beside Logan, cup loose in his hand. The next he was behind her, cup abandoned somewhere near the sink, palm landing firm and warm against the back of her thigh as he tugged the hem of her skirt down with the grim focus of a man handling something highly flammable.

“Yeah, nope,” he said, low against her shoulder, his voice amused even as his hand stayed where it was. “Not doin’ that.”

She turned around like she'd been caught doing something cute instead of deeply stupid, her face bright with that pleased, unfocused warmth she got when the room had started moving a little faster than she could keep up with and Garrett was suddenly close enough to touch.

Her hands went straight to his chest, fingers sliding up the front of his shirt with drunken affection and absolutely no subtlety, and she beamed at him like she hadn't seen him in months. “Baby!”

Garrett looked down at her hands, then back at her face, his mouth twitching. “Hi.”

“Where were you?”

“Right there.” He nodded vaguely over his shoulder, where Logan had turned to watch them with the exact expression of a man who would rather die than become useful. “Saw you, like, ten seconds ago.”

“Oh.” She seemed to consider this very seriously, brows knitting for one whole beat before her face opened again, delighted by the rediscovery. “Hi.”

“Yeah, we did that part.”

She smiled anyway, her hands still sitting flat against his chest like she had every right to keep them there. Which she did. That was becoming a problem, actually. The newness of it. The fact that they were together enough now for people to know, for her to touch him without pretending it was accidental, for him to stand in a crowded kitchen the night before a game with one beer in his system and her skirt in his hand like this was a normal responsibility a man could acquire through dating.

She swayed into him. A small tilt of her weight, the kind someone else might have missed if they were drunker or less embarrassingly tuned to her. Garrett’s hand tightened at her waist before she seemed to notice she’d moved at all.

“Okay,” he said, dragging the word out in warning. “Bar stool. Right now.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re beautiful.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, suspicious and visibly pleased. “That’s not what I said.”

“No, but it worked better.” He turned her neatly by the hips before she could decide the counter still had unfinished business with her. “Sit.”

She made a noise of offence, but she let him guide her onto the stool, mostly because it was already there and because Garrett’s hands were warm and annoyingly sure and doing that thing where they seemed to make decisions for her body a full second before her brain managed to file an objection.

The room tilted pleasantly when she sat. The bass pushed through the kitchen floor and up into the bones of her legs. Someone had spilled beer near the fridge and the tile caught lightly under the heel she kept tapping against the stool rung. Across the room, Allie was tucked into Dean’s side, laughing at something Tucker said while Dean looked over her head with the bright, vicious joy of someone watching Garrett suffer a romantic inconvenience in real time.

Garrett went to the sink and filled a plastic cup with water. He came back holding it out like evidence.

She reached for it.

He lifted it just out of range.

She blinked at him.

His face went blank in that innocent way that always meant he was about to become deeply irritating. “What?”

“Gimme.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m trying.”

She pouted. “You’re being mean.”

“I’m providing medical care.”

“You’re making me work for water, Garrett.”

His laugh came out before he could stop it, quick and real, his head ducking for half a second as if he was genuinely annoyed with himself for enjoying her this much. He lowered the cup again. She reached. He moved it left. Her fingers closed around absolutely nothing.

“Garrett.”

“Reflexes are a little rough tonight, huh?”

“I will break up with you.”

“No, you won’t.” He brought the cup close again, then jerked it back when she lunged, and she burst into giggles so hard her knee knocked against his thigh.

“Baby, this is bleak. This is like watching a kitten lose a fight with a shoelace.”

“I hate you.”

He finally let her take it, but only after wrapping his hand around hers to steady the cup because she came in too fast and almost sent half of it down her front. “Slow. Drink it like you’ve used a mouth before.”

She glared at him over the rim while she drank, which would have worked better if he hadn’t still been holding the cup with her. The water was cold enough to make her teeth ache, cutting through the sugary film of whatever Allie had mixed earlier and landing hard in the warm, spinning centre of her stomach.

Garrett watched her with his head tipped slightly, all amused mouth and attentive eyes, and she hated, immediately and deeply, how much she liked it. Not the fussing, she would deny enjoying the fussing until the end of time. But the way he did it. Like he could tease her without making her feel stupid. Like the joke was never that she was embarrassing him. Like he had simply accepted that she was drunk, pretty, badly behaved, and his to keep upright for the next hour.

His hand settled on her thigh while she drank, thumb resting just under the edge of her skirt, not doing anything much except being there. The contact was casual enough to look like nothing from the outside. From inside her body, it had weight. A small, steady point in a room full of noise.

Someone yelled his name from the living room. “Graham!”

Garrett turned his head. “What?”

A couple of hockey guys were waving him over, one of them yelling something about the line changes tomorrow and another immediately shouting over him that they were not talking strategy at a party because some of us actually know how to live.

Garrett’s attention shifted for barely two seconds. Barely. His hand left her knee. His shoulders angled away. And then the opening presented itself. It wasn't her fault. It really wasn’t. Because Ariana came on.

The song that reached into the middle of her chest and hit whatever drunk, glittery emergency button existed in girls at parties. The one that made Allie gasp from across the room and point at her because Allie understood. Allie knew. This was not about Garrett and his very boring anti-countertop agenda anymore. This was bigger than him. This was practically civic duty.

She set the water down very carefully, which felt mature enough to balance the scales of whatever happened next, and slid off the stool.

Dean noticed first. Dean noticed anything with potential for either nudity or injury, especially if both were being offered at once.

His whole face lit up. “Wooo!” he shouted, lifting his cup. “Get up there!”

Allie smacked him in the stomach, laughing even as she did it. “Don't encourage her.”

“What? I’m supporting women.”

“You’re supporting Garrett committing murder.”

Dean’s grin widened.

Garrett turned.

The timing was, unfortunately, beautiful. Her knee was already on the counter. One hand braced against the surface. Her skirt was doing its absolute best in conditions no garment that short should ever have been expected to survive.

She looked back over her shoulder at the exact moment Garrett’s expression shifted from distracted amusement to flat, immediate disbelief.

His cup was gone again. Nobody knew where he kept putting them. One second his hands were empty; the next they were on her waist.

“Alright,” he said, hauling her backward before the second knee could get involved. “We’re done here.”

She made a sound that was half laugh, half protest, her feet finding the floor with such minimal commitment to the task that he had to catch more of her weight.

“We’re done.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You were halfway to a public incident.”

She furrowed her brow, glaring up at him. “I was dancing.”

“You were climbing furniture.”

“For art.”

“For urgent care.” He bent a little to look into her face, and fuck, he was so annoying like this. So sure of himself. So warm around the edges of his authority that it made arguing with him feel less like resistance and more like foreplay’s better-behaved cousin. “Up we go.”

Her eyes widened. “Where?”

“Anywhere that isn’t this kitchen.”

“Garrett, no–”

But she was already laughing, because he had that look. The one that said he had made a decision and her role in the next thirty seconds was mostly decorative. His arm slid around the backs of her thighs, the other braced firm at her waist, and before she could do anything more strategic than clutch at his shirt, the whole kitchen flipped.

Light, ceiling, cabinets, Logan’s deeply entertained face, Dean’s open-mouthed delight. All of it went upside down in one warm, dizzy rush as Garrett threw her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing and he had reached the end of negotiations.

She shrieked.

Everyone cheered.

“Garrett!”

“Yup.” He adjusted his hold like this was a normal thing to be doing in somebody’s kitchen, one hand firm across the backs of her thighs, the other keeping her skirt decent. “That’s my name.”

She smacked his back, badly, mostly because she was laughing too hard to aim. “Put me down!”

“No.”

“I’m serious!”

“You’re drunk and upside down. You’re not serious.”

Dean was losing his mind across the room, bent halfway over Allie’s shoulder while she tried and failed to look disapproving. Logan lifted his cup with solemn respect. Tucker, because he had chosen betrayal, called, “Honestly, I think this is the safest option available.”

“I hate all of you,” she announced to the kitchen, though it came out wobbly with laughter because Garrett had started walking and every step made her bounce lightly against his shoulder.

Garrett paused in the doorway and turned just enough for the room to see her dangling there, hair falling toward the floor, cheeks hot, both hands planted uselessly against his back while her skirt remained under the firm jurisdiction of his palm.

“Say goodnight, everyone,” he said.

She lifted her head with great effort, spotted Allie first, then Dean, then Logan, then the blurry, bright collection of cups and boys and bad decisions behind them, and waved with both hands like she was leaving a pageant. “Goodnight, everyone!”

The kitchen erupted again. Dean actually clapped. Allie blew her a kiss. Logan yelled, “Hydrate!” with the confidence of a man who had not had water since Thursday.

Garrett carried her through the house, past the crush of bodies in the hallway, past two people making out badly against the wall by the stairs, past somebody’s abandoned jacket and an open front door letting in a thin slice of cold night air.

The music followed them out in pieces, bass first, then voices, then the muffled whole of the party dropping behind them as Garrett stepped onto the porch and the night came up around her bare legs.

The air sharpened everything at the edges. Damp grass. Car exhaust. The metallic bite of early spring. Garrett’s cologne caught in the cotton of his shirt where her cheek had ended up pressed against his back.

For a few seconds she kept wriggling on principle, because it seemed important for the record that she hadn't gone quietly. Then the path dipped slightly and the world swung with it, and she decided stillness had a lot going for it.

Halfway down the walk, she stopped struggling altogether and just hung there, arms loose, one heel slipping lower on her foot.

“Babe,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“You have a nice butt.”

Garrett did not miss a step. “Thanks, baby.”

“Like, really nice.”

“I know.”

She gasped, offended despite having introduced the subject herself. “You’re so cocky.”

“You’re upside down staring at my ass and giving live commentary. I feel like the confidence is evidence-based.”

She giggled again, softer this time, the sound spilling out into the cold. Garrett’s hand shifted against the backs of her thighs, careful with her balance, careful with the hem of her skirt, careful in a way that shouldn't have been noticeable when she was upside down and full of vodka and openly objectifying him, but was.

He could have made a thing of it. Could have rolled his eyes harder. Could have acted like taking care of his drunk girlfriend was some massive inconvenience being inflicted on him by the universe and Ariana Grande.

But Garrett just carried her like it was easy. Like she was funny. Like she was his problem, and he was, privately and embarrassingly, kind of pleased about it.

At his car, he set her down slowly, both hands at her waist until her heels found pavement and stayed there. The world rushed upright too fast, porch light blurring behind his shoulder, and she grabbed his forearms while her stomach took a second to remember where it lived.

Garrett watched her face, his smile fading into something more focused. “Good?”

She nodded, then immediately leaned forward until her forehead touched his chest because nodding had been a little ambitious. “Mhm.”

“That was wildly convincing.”

“I’m graceful.”

“You tried to climb a kitchen counter because Ariana Grande told you to.”

“She did.”

“She didn't personally tell you shit.”

She pointed one finger up at him. “You don’t know our relationship.”

His mouth curved again, and he brushed her hair back from her face, knuckles grazing her cheek in a touch so light it made her eyes want to close. “Your relationship with gravity is a little unstable right now.”

She looked up at him. The kitchen light was still on him somehow, caught in the angles of his face, in the dark sweep of his lashes, in the small amused pull at the corner of his mouth. He was close enough that she could see the faint scrape near his jaw from shaving, the tiredness tucked under his eyes from practice, the way his attention kept moving over her in pieces. Eyes. Mouth. Balance. Mood.

He was still teasing her, still Garrett, still unfairly pleased with himself, but under it sat the thing he did without announcing it. The checking. The steadiness. The hand already there before the fall happened.

She slid her hands up his chest again because it was the easiest place to put them, fingers curling loosely in his shirt. “Are you mad?”

Garrett looked genuinely insulted by the question. “At you?”

“Mm.”

“For trying to flash half the hockey team and die on a countertop?” He pretended to consider it. “Nah.”

Her mouth turned down. “That sounded judgy.”

“That was the edited version.”

“You’re mean.”

“I’m driving you home, giving you water, and preventing you from becoming a cautionary tale. I’m a hero.” His hands settled at her hips again, thumbs warm through the thin fabric at her waist. “A hot one, apparently. Nice butt. Heard that somewhere.”

She groaned and dropped her forehead back against his chest, and his laugh moved under her ear, low and pleased.

For a few seconds they just stood there beside his car while the party carried on without them, muffled and distant now, her body still buzzing with music and alcohol and the delayed embarrassment of nearly becoming a story Dean would tell until graduation. Garrett’s hand moved once down her back, then up again.

When she tipped her face up, he was already looking.

“What?” she asked, suspicious.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing a face.”

“That's because I have a face.”

“A smug one.”

“Yeah, that’s genetic.” He opened the passenger door and guided her toward it, one hand hovering near her head so she didn’t knock it against the frame. “In.”

She sat with less dignity than she would have preferred, knees bumping together, one heel catching awkwardly on the floor mat. Garrett crouched before she could fully process the problem, fingers closing gently around her ankle as he straightened the shoe and set her foot flat. The intimacy of it caught weirdly in her stomach.

“There,” he said. “Both shoes accounted for. Huge night for us.”

She stared down at him. “You’re really pretty from this angle.”

He looked up, one brow lifting. “From the floor?”

“Mhm.”

“Good to know.” He reached across her for the seatbelt, and she took the opportunity to press a messy kiss to his cheek, catching more jaw than anything else. Garrett paused with the belt pulled across her lap, mouth twitching like he was trying very hard not to smile too obviously. “You missed.”

“I didn’t.”

“That was my jaw.”

“I know what I did.”

“Terrifying sentence.” He clicked the belt into place and tugged once to check it, then braced one hand on the roof of the car and looked down at her. “You gonna puke in my car?”

She considered lying, then made a face. “No.”

“Very long pause.”

“I was thinking.”

“That’s what scared me.”

She laughed, head falling back against the seat, and Garrett’s smile went helpless for half a second. There and then mostly gone, swallowed back under the usual cocky tilt of his mouth before she could do anything devastating with it, like point it out.

But she saw it. The fondness. The stupid, pleased little crease near his eye, like this – her drunk and difficult and half-asleep in his passenger seat, mascara probably doing something unfortunate, skirt riding high enough on her thighs that he reached in and tugged it down again with a muttered, “Jesus, baby,” – was somehow not a nuisance to him.

Somehow, it was worth smiling about.

He shut the door and walked around the front of the car, and through the windshield she watched him shake his head to himself, still grinning.

When he got in, the party disappeared almost completely. Door closed. Engine on. The car filled with the low blue glow of the dashboard and the clean, familiar smell of Garrett’s hoodie thrown in the backseat.

He handed her a half-full water bottle from the backseat. “Drink.”

She took it with both hands. “You’re bossy.”

“You like it.”

She hummed into the rim, then looked over at him with her cheek pressed against the seat. “Maybe.”

Garrett pulled away from the curb with one hand on the wheel, the other reaching over without looking to settle warm over her bare knee.

“Next party,” he said, “we’re putting you in pants.”

She made a horrified noise. “Absolutely not.”

“Fine. Longer skirt.”

“No.”

“Flats?”

She turned her head very slowly, giving him the full weight of her disappointment. “Garrett.”

He glanced over, and the grin came back. “Yeah, okay. That was too far.”

“Thank you.”

“But no counters.”

She sighed like he had asked her to give up art. “You’re ruining my brand.”

“Your brand almost gave Tucker a full view of your underwear.”

“Was he impressed?”

Garrett’s hand tightened on her knee. Enough that she felt the shift before she saw the look he kept aimed at the road. “Careful.”

Garrett Graham, competitive down to the bone. Still warm, still amused, but with that little edge in his voice that made her grin against the side of the water bottle because he was so easy sometimes. Pretty and cocky and gone for her in ways he kept trying to disguise as confidence.

She reached over and covered his hand with hers, fingers slipping between his. “I’m kidding.”

“I know.”

“You’re my favourite.”

His mouth softened before he could stop it. “Yeah?”

“Mhm.” Her eyes were getting heavy now, the night stretching into something blurred and honey-warm around the edges. “Even when you’re mean and anti-Ariana.”

“I’m pro-Ariana. I’m anti-head injury.”

She hummed again, sinking lower in the seat, her thumb moving lazily over his knuckles. The car rolled through the quiet streets around Briar, past porch lights and parked cars and the occasional burst of noise from other parties spilling out over lawns.

Garrett drove slower than usual, glancing over every so often like she might attempt to climb something inside the car if left unsupervised.

Maybe she loved that. Just a little.

Maybe that was the problem with him. The dangerous part wasn’t the grin, or the body, or the fact that half the girls at every party seemed to know where he was without looking directly at him.

It was this. His hand steady under hers. His hoodie in the backseat. His voice still teasing because he knew she would hate being fussed over too seriously, even while he kept watch like it mattered.

She turned her face toward him, smiling sleepily. “Garrett?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Next time she plays that song, I’m getting on the bench.”

He laughed under his breath, eyes on the road, thumb brushing once over the side of her hand.

“Mm,” he said. “We’ll see about that.”

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

[eveningstarisaliar]

ok but. what makes the twins such a great team and devastating tragedy is that they're fundamental opposites and basically cancel each other's shortcomings out. they *need* each other. lemon has a (quote from lemon's actor) "slow, chill kind of vibe" that's reflected in his speech as opposed to tangerine's spitfire, constantly aggressive way of talking.

BUT ALSO (more so obviously in the book, since we can see through his point of view) tangerine clearly thinks he's smarter than everyone and isn't afraid to say or prove it. he gets pissed at lemon for trying to correct him on how many people they killed and launches the narrative into this montage that proves him right. when tangerine finds ladybug, he takes the precious time to show him the tracker app from the phone ladybug stole from lemon to emphasise ladybug's oversight and tangerine's solution.

lemon is the one who doesn't notice little details. it's tangerine who remembers that guy they accidentally killed. it's tangerine that notices the bloodstain on lemon's shirt. and who's the one who falls for prince's white girl tears bullshit? it's fucking tangerine.

while tangerine is more organised and observant, his emotions are all over the fucking place and it gets the best of him. he falls for the prince's act multiple times. ladybug takes advantage of his anxieties during the "are you gonna get that? might be important" scene. the white death shocks him into silence by saying he'll look him in the eyes as he kills him and his brother.

but lemon, he reads people. he can see people objectively. it's lemon who notices that prince assumes briefcase instead of everyone else who assumes suitcase becuase it's an overnight train. it's lemon who considers ladybug's (albeit scruffed) attempts at betterment and insists he didn't kill percy.

and tangerine, who's petty and aggressive and exudes this aura of self-proclaimed superiority in everything he does and presents himself to be, knows lemon well enough to genuinely trust him at each turn and judgment. he trusts lemon's judgement of ladybug and prince in their most crucial moments. tangerine knows lemon wouldn't fall for the prince's bullshit like he would (and does) and the moment he sees the diesel sicker as an indicator of lemon's judgement, any sympathy he had for prince vanishes. lemon even manages to talk him down from his speech about how they fucked up and the white death is Going to kill them and convince him that things can still be fixed.

and, like, the instance they have to operate alone, distant and individually, they literally can't and die in both instances.

[dietranch]

healing wish

[lujinarchive]

Katara and Sokka

[advosart]

Riolu likes his trains

[i115ve]

iloveher

[demaparbat-hp]

That infamous prison escape.

[thisisdarkesq]

I’ve come to really love and appreciate the Xatu line, so I drew a bunch of Natus! They are so cute and round, I want to squeeze one so badly and keep it in my pocket.

[solanumstarss]

sokka is so sokka in this i love him

[pokemonarchive]

Waterbending (2025) Illustrator: DWalkn

[ashcremated]

shhhh theyre sleeby 🤏🤏