☄︎ Warnings: None! only proofread by myself, idk my tenses
☄︎ Pairing: f!Reader x John Logan (Past), f!Reader x Dean Di Laurentis (Main)
☄︎ Rating: PG
☄︎ Words: 3358
☄︎ AN: i've been to one (1) hockey game in my entire life and it was in switzerland so i cannot speak to how lore accurate my hockey knowledge is. Last chapter for the next two weeks, pretty please share thoughts🧍🏽♀️ xx
Series Masterlist 〣 Main Masterlist
The roar of the hockey arena is deafening; you had all but forgotten what a rush it is to be amongst the screaming crowd, all hyped for the evening’s events. The players aren’t even out yet, but your body is buzzing and the crowd is going wild for the pre-game activities.
The knots in your stomach from earlier slowly disappear as you, Hannah, and Allie take your seats next to the puck bunnies.
It’s your first game back from since you had broken up with Logan. You find it hard to believe that almost two months has passed from since you’ve last set foot in the arena.
Nothing much has changed; the smell of nachos and stale beer still clings to the air, the supporters still shout loudly at basically anything, and the building is the exact same colour as it was when you were last here. It’s all familiar, except you.
You think of all the work you’ve done from since the sleepover with your girls and then the night of the party with Dean and Logan. You have stayed true to your word; you didn’t close the door on what could be a potential future with Dean. While you were still unsure about his feelings, you were very sure on yours.
Over the past month, you cried on the floor, screamed into your pillow, and embraced the waves of grief that occasionally crashed over you until they held even less power. You have done the work to leave Logan in the past. You have proven to whatever demon that was in your head that you want Dean for who he is, and not for what he could do for your grief.
Maybe you are being naïve to think that his actions were mostly platonic. Maybe you aren’t. But, the important point is, you’re finally ready to find that out.
Dean has stayed true to his word too; he hasn’t brought up the actual reason for the breakup to Garrett or to Logan. And, even though your mind is finally settling, even though you’re no longer drowning, in desperate need of a lifeboat, Dean doesn’t walk away. He still calls you most nights. He still turns up to the library to distract you. He still shows up for you.
Throughout it all, Dean stays right by your side, offering a level of unconditional care that you never even thought was possible. You so desperately want to show him that level of devotion too.
So, now, here you are. Ready to face a hockey game, seeing your ex, and ready to challenge every painful memory that this arena could potentially hold. You want to do this to support Dean, to show him that you’ll support him no matter the personal challenge, as he has done for you.
To your relief, the puck bunnies welcome you back easily, catching you up on any of the gossip they think you’d be interested in. They don’t pry about your break-up with Logan nor do they side eye you when they spot the name of the back of the jersey you’re wearing.
On your chest, the massive red, white, and blue Briar U Hawks emblem is proudly displayed. On your back, in unmistakably bold white writing is DI LAURENTIS and his number 66.
Dean’s Briar Hawks practice jersey sits prettily on you, still smelling faintly like him despite Tucker’s reassurances that it had definitely been through a wash. The closer the time gets to when the players come out, the more nervous you get. You rub your sweaty palms against your jean-covered knees.
This was a good idea. ‘Still is a good idea,’ you tell yourself. Garrett goes crazy whenever Hannah wears something with his name on it. Even Logan, who wasn’t that into you, always loved it when you did the same. So, you have to assume that Dean will as well.
However, that doesn’t stop you from starting to think that maybe you should have just asked him. Now that you’re sat here, a wave of doubt hits you, making you wonder if it was completely weird of you to have gone behind his back and asked Tucker to sneak one of his jersey’s out for you.
You practise the upcoming moment in your head for the hundredth time. How you’ll turn to show him his name on your back. You mentally plan out how you’ll apologise if he feels weirded out.
“Stop overthinking it, the number suits you and he is going to absolutely love it,” Hannah says, nudging your shoulder and winking at you. She’s swimming in the matching jersey, proudly sporting 44 and GRAHAM on the back.
The buzzer rings through the arena, and the hawks flood out onto the ice for their warm-ups. You suck in a deep breath as the players loop around the ice in a blur of white and blue, tearing up the fresh ice as they intensely skate their laps.
As soon as he finishes his lap, Dean’s eyes scan the section that he knows you’ll be sitting in today. As you watch him look for you, the memory of your conversation flashes through your mind. The way his face had completely lit up the second you told him you planned to come and watch him had made you feel so wanted.
He spots you and takes off his helmet to get a better look at you, his eyes narrowing once he sees the logo on your chest. Seeing you in a Hawks jersey, clearly hits him. He stops skating mid-stride, the momentum carrying him across the ice to stop at the barrier in front of you.
“Mine?” He mouths through the glass, pointing a gloved hand to his chest.
You bite your lip, a nervous but excited energy racing through you as you nod. You stand up and turn around so that he can see his name and number across your back.
Dean’s smile back at you makes your legs wobble. He looks at you with pride and adoration. The feeling is intense; you haven’t been looked at like that by a man before. He bangs his hockey stick against the glass barrier three times and then points directly at you with a wink before skating away.
You feel a fierce heat rushing up your neck and to your cheeks. On either side of you, Hannah and Allie immediately burst into a fit of screams and giggles, shaking your shoulders.
Allie leans in close, a mischievous smile on her face. “He is so going to be taking that jersey off of you tonight.”
An unfamiliar sensation swirls deep in your stomach, likely a mix of anticipation and an almost lightness. For the first time in a long time, you aren’t walking on egg shells. You want to embrace whatever happens next.
The match kicks off and, for two periods, everything goes the Hawks’ way. Dean has the best defensive period of his life, twice. The team’s energy flows so well that it filters out to the stands. You’re screaming until your throat is raw, even when it’s Logan who scores in the second period.
But that doesn’t last.
The final buzzer cuts through the arena like a harsh whip. Disappointment rings through the home crowd. Harvard had scored two goals in quick succession 10 minutes into the final period, leaving the Hawks with no way to attack back.
They were winning up until the last 10 minutes, you know this is one that Dean will be mulling over for hours, running back over what he could have been done better to not let them slip through the defence. You’ve not had to comfort Dean in this state before, and you’re not sure how you’re going to.
The energy in the stadium is deflated as the players skate towards the tunnel with their heads hanging low.
Half an hour later, you’re standing with Allie and Hannah in the hallway outside of the locker room. Being in this corridor brings back a sudden rush of old memories with Logan. The last time you were in the hallway, waiting for the players to come out after a tough game, was the day that Logan broke up with you.
You brace yourself for the familiar ache but the memory doesn’t hurt as much as you thought it would. Your only real focus is being there for Dean.
The door swings open and the team filter out. Dean walks into the hallway, his hair still damp from the shower.
“Hey,” you say softly as he approaches the three of you.
Dean’s exhausted expression melts the second he looks at you. “Hey. Sorry about that. Not exactly the best welcome-back game for you.”
“Don’t apologise to me,” you say, laughing nervously. “Clearly, I’m a bad luck charm.”
Dean steps a fraction closer to you. “You aren’t my bad luck charm. But you were a distraction. It was incredibly hard to focus out there knowing you were in the stands, wearing my number. Letting everyone know you want to be Dean’s girl.”
He wiggles his eyebrows at you and your stomach does a dangerous flip. Allie immediately clears her throat. “So! What’s the plan for the night? I’m sure we won’t let this depressing energy ruin our Friday night.”
She makes a point of looking directly at the two of you, her eyes practically jumping out of her head.
“Let’s go to Malone’s,” you suggest. When Dean doesn’t look convinced, you wrap you hand around his bicep. “Come on, fries will cheer you up.”
He smiles down at you, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m already pretty cheered up.”
Before you can respond, the door swings open again. This time it’s Garrett who walks out with the same exhausted expression that Dean had.
“Garrett, Malone’s?” You ask.
You truly believe that there is nothing in the world that can’t be fixed by some fries.
“Honestly, food at Malone’s sounds amazing right now,” Garrett mutters, wiping a hand across his face. “Let me grab Tucker and-.”
“No!” Allie’s shout is so unexpected that everyone turns to look at her in surprise. Her eyes frantically shift between you and Dean before her gaze locks onto Hannah. “Hannah, didn’t you say that you and Garrett have that thing tonight?”
“We have a thing?” Garrett blinks, looking completely bewildered.
Hannah picks up on the hint immediately. “Yes, Garrett, we have that thing, so we have to leave. Sorry!”
Before Garrett can even ask, Hannah loops her arm around his and starts pulling him down the hall towards the exit. Garrett looks back over his shoulder at Dean, utterly lost as he’s dragged away.
The hall way has cleared now, so it’s just the three of you left standing there.
Allie clears her throat with a dramatic cough. “And I can’t go because I…”
“Let me guess. You also have a thing?” You say dryly, the set-up is so obvious it hurts. You’d think that someone as amazingly talented as Allie would be better at improve. Unless she planned to make it this obvious…
Allie doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty. Instead, she beams, walking backwards towards the exit. “I do! I have a thing. You two should still go though. Have fun!”
She spins on her heel and jogs down the corridor, her laughter echoing down the empty hall.
Dean watches her go. The corner of his mouth pulling up into an amused smirk. “Looks like we’ve been abandoned. Shall we go?”
Malone’s is, unsurprisingly, extremely busy. The bar is filled to the brim with students desperately trying to drown the memory of the evening’s loss in cheap drinks.
By some miracle, you and Dean are able to find a high table to stand around. It’s already sticky and you internally gag every time part of your skin unintentionally brushes against it.
Dean remains silent, idly dragging his finger through the ring of condensation on his glass of diet coke. He looks exhausted, yet despite the game and the heavy fatigue, he’s right here with you.
“Dean,” you say softly, leaning across the table so he can hear you over the band. “Are you okay? Seriously this time. We can go if you’re not feeling up to it.”
“Yeah,” he sighs, rubbing the back of his neck and offering you a tired, gentle smile. “Just a frustrating game, that’s all. We made some stupid mistakes that’s concerning so close to the Frozen Four.”
“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” Your hand comes to rest gently over his, stopping his finger from trailing through the water on the glass.
“No, thank you though.”
You smile, taking a sip of your drink as you look around the bar. You spot three girls standing around a nearby table. They’re looking directly at Dean and you’re sure one of them is building up the courage to approach him.
‘This isn’t a date, and he isn’t yours,’ you have to remind yourself. It feels ridiculous to be standing in his clothes but not actually his. You pull your hand away from his.
The thought tastes bitter in your mouth and you feel a lump in your throat. You try to wash it down with a big gulp of your water.
It doesn’t go away.
Seeing those girls look at him like a prize up for grabs makes your chest tighten. You have spent weeks trying to convince yourself that you hadn’t imagined something in the air between the two of you, weeks trying to convince yourself that you weren’t just treating him as a rebound. But reality hits and reminds you that just because you have done that, it doesn’t mean this was mutual. This bar is his usual playground, and you wouldn’t be being a good friend to stand in the way of that.
The insecurity pulls at your vice as you look back at him. “You know, usually after a game like this…” you try again to swallow the lump in your throat as you jerk your head in the direction of the girls. “There are plenty of girls in here who would love to help you forget about the loss. Maybe you should go and talk to them.”
Dean doesn’t even glace toward their table. He keeps his gaze on you. “If this is your way of saying that you need space from me, I accept that,” he says, voice dropping an octave. “But if you’re telling me to go and sleep with other women then… no. I can’t do that.”
For a second, you’re sure you can actually hear the sound of your heartbeat over the roar of the bar.
“Why?” You ask, the word leaving your lips in a quiet whisper. You’re actually nervous for the answer.
Dean doesn’t blink. He just leans further forward towards you. “Because I know what I want. And it’s not any of them.”
“What do you want?” Your mind races as it tries to catch up to the gravity of his words.
He drops his gaze to his drink before looking back up at you. “Something that I’m not sure if I can have yet. But I’m very confident in what I want. So, just know, I am happy right where I am. Here. With you.”
The heavy implication hangs thick in the air between you, impossible to ignore.
Especially after what happened with Logan, you find it extremely attractive when a man knows exactly what he wants and is confident about it. You imagine any woman would.
Given how he treats women, you find it hard to believe that he’s never had a girlfriend.
You lean in slightly closer too. “You’re going to make some woman really happy one day, Dean.”
He tilts his head slightly, gaze unwavering as he responds, “I plan to.”
Silence falls around the table for a minute, the sounds of the rowdy bar around you fading into the background as he allows you to fully contemplate his words.
“Can we change the subject now?” Dean asks. “Tell me about your day.”
Grateful for the breather, you babble on about your day.
The drive back to your dorm feels incredibly silent compared to the chaotic of energy of Malone’s. Dean keeps one hand on the steering wheel, his other resting on the console close to where your hand is. You look out the window, staring at the world as you pass it by.
Dean kills the engine in front of your block. He stays seated for a moment, his hands tightly gripping the wheel. You watch his side-profile, your heart leaping into your throat when he turns to look at you.
“Come on,” he murmurs. “I’m walking you up.”
The midnight air bites sharply at your skin as you walk to your block. Dean wraps an arm around you to shield your face from the harsh breeze.
He walks you all the way to your door. Instead of opening it and slipping in, you turn around to face him, your back pressing flat against the wood. The space left between you is thrillingly small.
“Thank you for tonight,” you blush.
“No,” Dean replies. “I should be thanking you for being there with me.”
“Anytime,” you whisper. You look up at him, your breath catching as he looks down at you.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t turn to leave even though he knows that you’re safe at your door. He should, but he can’t seem to stop himself from taking a step forward, crowding your personal space, essentially pinning you to the door. He holds your gaze, looking you dead in the eye before his focus drops to your lips.
Your arms hang straight down by your sides, your fingers instantly curling into the fabric of his jersey. The overwhelming anticipation makes it nearly impossible to breathe, a wave of dizziness washing over you.
Dean watches as your breath hitches, and takes that as his signal.
His hand moves to your chin, his thumb resting gently on your jawline as he tilts your face up slightly. He leans down at an agonisingly slow pace, giving you every opportunity to pull back if you want to.
But you don’t move; you can’t.
There is no guilt or negative thoughts in your mind, you’re fully in the moment. Your eyes flutter shut, your lips parting just a fraction as you completely surrender to the pull of him.
You feel a warm puff of his breath hit against your mouth; it smells faintly of the soda he drank earlier. His lips stop barely a millimetre away from yours, the tip of his nose gently rubbing against yours.
Your entire body tightens in anticipation as you lean forward to close the tiny gap between you, desperate to finally feel his lips on you.
But then, Dean pulls back just a fraction.
Your eyes flutter open in confusion. His chest is rising and falling rapidly, his pupils completely dilated. He closes his eyes and presses his forehead flat against yours, his breathing ragged and uneven.
His head tilts slightly, his lips pressing softly against your cheek, right at the corner of your mouth.
His lips stay pressed against your skin for a long second. It feels like a silent promise; proof that he’s here, completely yours and is just waiting for you to be ready. You appreciate the gesture but the touch leaves your body tinging and screaming for more.
When he finally pulls back fully, his usually light eyes are filled with an intense, dark, heat.
His voice is ragged when he calls your name, and it takes all of your restraint to not wrap your arms around him and drag him into your room.
“Goodnight,” he whispers.
“Goodnight, Dean,” you whisper back, your voice barely audible even to your own ears.
You stand by your door and watch him walk away. When you finally step into your room, your mind is completely consumed by him. An overwhelming wave of clarity hits you, bringing with it the realisation that you have both fallen for each other.
☄︎ Warnings: Angst, Reader getting over heartbreak, slow burn with ex's best friend, Reader being oblivious, sad thoughts / unhealthy thought patterns, alcohol, only proofread by myself, idk my tenses
☄︎ Pairing: f!Reader x John Logan, f!Reader x Dean Di Laurentis
☄︎ Rating: PG
☄︎ Words: 7079 (like wtf how lol)
☄︎ AN: I'm still figuring out / building on my writing style so this chapter may feel a little different (hopefully a better different), really hope you enjoy it still! 🧍🏽♀️pretty please share thoughts xx
Series Masterlist 〣 Main Masterlist
There is a growing part of you that, over the past week, wishes that the most difficult thing you had to get over was your break up with Logan. Sure, the break-up still haunts you, still has you crying into your pillow at times asking yourself why you weren’t good enough. Or even just enough.
But that feeling is being dwarfed by the memory of leaving the cocoon of Dean’s room that Friday morning. It had felt like you were being thrown into freezing water, so cold that your limbs were frozen into place. It had felt like you were being left to drown.
The rational part of you knew that wasn’t the case, Dean had reassured you many times that you didn’t have to leave, he was happy for you to stay wrapped up in his room for as long as you needed. You were the one that insisted you leave.
He didn’t understand why you were so desperate to go and your cheeks burned as you made up a lie about this house triggering too many memories for you. Your pride was already ruined by the break-up; you didn’t want to explain to him that you were embarrassed by how happy you felt when you woke up next to him. You didn’t want to explain that your mind, for just a moment, was creating a world where he was the one you had started dating all those months ago.
The morning after you left his, your mind couldn’t decide how it wanted you to feel. Partly, you felt pathetic, the combination of the still-raw feelings of the aftermath of Logan and the new feelings from the aftermath of Dean.
Obviously, you had a type. And that was men that didn’t want you.
The other part of you felt like a hypocrite, you couldn’t shake the feeling that you were mad at Logan for doing the same thing to you, that you want to do with Dean. You couldn’t let go of the guilt you felt because of it.
Thoughts swirled in your head about what kind of a person you really were. You even came close to blocking Dean’s contact, if not for his benefit, then your peace of mind.
The night after you left his, Dean had unexpectedly called you before bed, asking you to stay on the phone with him to keep him company whilst he played chess. Grateful for the lifeline he was providing, you took it. You listened to him telling you stories about hockey or his childhood or his sister, Summer. For the second night in the row, you fell asleep easily listening to the sound of his voice.
That becomes part of the routine you settle into. Dean’s smooth in the way he embeds himself in your life, you don’t even notice it until it’s another week later and the pain, whilst still there, is more of a dull ache.
You keep waiting for the crushing weight in your chest to return at full force, to suddenly hit you one day when you’re in public, but every time it starts creeping up or the silence gets too loud, your phone buzzes. It’s always Dean with another meme, a call to tell you to come meet him in the library, or a text to say open the door because he’s outside.
If he’s not texting you, then he’s physically present as much as possible. He always frames it in a way that makes it sound like he’s the one desperate for human interaction and you can’t bring yourself to stop it.
Somehow, without you ever even asking, Dean refuses to let you drown.
Now, two and a half weeks after the break-up, you and Dean are sat in the library. You’re staring at your laptop screen, desperately trying to pull together some research for an assignment you have due in a few days. The topic is already complicated enough and you really needed to be able to focus.
Focus is made basically impossible by Dean’s annoyingly chiselled jaw and bright blue eyes. The outfit he’s wearing really brings out the blue in his eyes and you internally groan. For what purpose did he need to look this handsome on a friendly study outing.
Dean’s propping up his chin in his hand and openly watching you work instead of reading one of the five obnoxiously thick textbooks he has sprawled across the table.
“What are you stating at?” You hiss, keeping your voice down as they take the silence policy very seriously in this part of the library.
“Do you miss parties? I think you do.”
The question catches you off guard, there’s been no context leading up to this. It’s a genuine question too, but his voice is entirely too loud and there are probably bigger priorities that you have at the minute.
You stare up at him in disbelief, “I’m trying to study here.”
“Don’t you think it’s time that some place other than the library or your dorm room sees you?” Dean challenges, his voice is gentle but still too loud.
The guy on the table close to you turns to shoot a dirty look in Dean’s direction. He smiles back in that way that gets anybody to let his actions slide.
You brace yourself, immediately feeling tense. He’s dancing around a point he’s trying to make about you not going out anymore.
It shouldn’t come to a shock to anybody that you’ve avoided going to a party as of late. Yes, you used to go to nearly every one of the hockey parties and a few other ones on campus too. But given the circumstances and how fragile you still feel, withdrawing into yourself seemed like the best outcome.
It’s not a topic you particularly want to dissect right now, especially in the library where anyone might see when you inevitably cry. If you allowed yourself to get distracted, to let your mind wander, it wouldn’t end up in a happy place.
“Get to the point quickly and quietly please.”
He leans forward, his blue eyes dancing as he whispers. “There’s this party on Friday-.”
Letting out an unnecessarily dramatic sigh, you look back down at your laptop. You start typing as he continues. “You’re coming.”
The air feels too heavy for you to ignore the subject at hand. As you feared, your mind now runs over every worst-case scenario that you could apply here. You pretend like you are focused on your work, typing random words in the hopes that Dean will think you’re working and move on.
He doesn’t.
Dean reaches over, gently closing the lid on your laptop with your hands still fake typing on the keyboard.
“Can you look at me, please?”
The sight of the concern on his face makes your stomach tighten. He’s not looked at you like this in a while. Not since the very first night where you sat on his lap, nose snotty, as you cried your eyes out.
“Do you want to go somewhere more private?” Dean’s question isn’t suggestive.
You shake your head, maybe here if you speak the words, the tears won’t fall. In private, wrapped up in the hug you know he’ll give you, you’d definitely cry.
You really don’t want to talk about this now, but since it’s in your head, you know you have to get it out.
“I’m scared,” you admit, pulling your hands from under the closed lid. You’ve admitted so many things to Dean over the past couple of weeks, it feels almost natural to be this vulnerable. “They are all his friends, you know. I don’t belong anywhere anymore.”
“Oh.” Dean slides his hand across the table, palm up. It’s an invitation that you choose to ignore but he doesn’t slide his hand back, leaving it there in case you change your mind. “You do belong, with me, with us. We all care about you.”
There it is, the crushing weight on your chest that’s been trying to find its way out has finally found a gap in the wall to crawl through.
“Dean, I can’t,” you sound breathless, like your lungs cannot take in enough oxygen. “It’ll be so awkward as everyone talks to me out of pity. The broken-hearted girl. I can’t bear the thought of them looking at me with pity, kind of like how you’re looking at me now…”
“I promise you; I don’t pity you. I think you’re incredibly strong.”
The thing about Dean is that he rarely finds a reason good enough to force him into a lie. Trust is a big thing for him, and part of that is being his honest, authentic self. This doesn’t feel like a situation where he’d need to lie to you, but that doesn’t stop you from scoffing. He wouldn’t be thinking that you were incredibly strong if he jumped into your brain right now.
“Look, I know you think-.”
“I don’t think, I know.” Dean rarely interrupts you but he does now. His voice is low and he sounds uncharacteristically angry. “The team love you because you are an amazing person. You’re bold and passionate and… and… people gravitate towards you because you bring life into things. It has nothing to do with who you were with. Please, don’t let him make you forget who you are.”
Dean’s voice is dripping in disgust as he says ‘him’. It reminds you of the fight he got in with Logan just to defend you. You try not to think of all the compliments he just gave you too. You can’t let yourself fall into another foolish fantasy.
When you don’t respond, Dean continues, his voice is rising again and you look around nervously. The guy on the table next to you has already moved to a different part of the library. Clearly Dean’s charms didn’t work on him. “I know you miss going out and dancing and the socialising and sometimes even the drinking too.”
You hate how perceptive Dean is. Someone who looks so stereotypical jock like him should not have the ability to be as intelligent as he is. You can’t argue with him. Insecurity, not reality, is making you think that you have no one. Insecurity, not reality, is making you think that you can only be liked if you were attached with Logan.
“I’m not going to tell you that you’re right,” you mumble. ‘Stupid blonde man and his stupid sexy face,’ you add to yourself.
His face scrunches as he smiles brightly at you. “You just did.”
“Are you done now? Can I get back to work?”
“No.” His face turns serious again and you sigh. What more does he have to lecture you about. “While we’re on the subject, have you spent any time with Allie or Hannah at all?”
You can hear through the fake-casual voice he puts on. Based on that and the fact that he’s searching your face to see your reaction, you know he knows the answer. There’s no point in lying.
Being confronted, even gently, about how much you let Logan make you lose yourself is tough.
“No, not- not really. Just a couple of brief texts, I’ve been pushing them away to be honest.” You look down and away, voice small and full of guilt.
There’s been some sort of message sent in the group chat every day, whether it’s a supportive one letting you know that they’re there or random conversation. You reply when you can, but more often than not, you don’t.
Dean doesn’t need to ask you why for you to know that’s going to be his next question.
“I just, I don’t know. I feel guilty being so miserable around them. They’ve got their own lives and between their boyfriends and working crazy hours at Malone’s… I just wasn’t sure where I fit into that so I guess I made the decision for them to remove myself.”
Now that the flood gates are open, you keep rambling on. “And now, I am ready to see them. I… I know they’re my friends and they won’t hold it against me but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I turned my back on them.”
There’s a small detail that you leave out, the fact that the break-up stemmed from Logan’s love for Hannah.
A completely unreadable expression crosses Dean’s face, but you can practically see the cogwheels turning in his mind. “I understand.”
He’s about to say more but you raise your hand to stop him. This really is way too heavy a topic for a hushed conversation in the library.
Dean allows you to pretend to go back to work without much protest. You do get a few more words written, but you doubt any of it is useful.
Half an hour later, Dean pushes himself up from the desk, grabbing his jacket from behind the chair and starts tugging at your arm. “Pack up your stuff, we’re going to the quad. You’ve done enough starting at a screen for one day.”
“Is that your way of telling me to touch grass?” You’re lightly teasing, not offended at the implication because much to your frustration, he’s, once again, right.
“I’m no expert,” he says, even as he speaks with a confidence that only Dean can possess, “but a change in our routine would be good for you.”
Your hand freezes on its way to stuff your laptop into your bag. Our routine he had said.
“Plus,” he continues, “some more vitamin D can’t hurt.”
It’s like you can see the mischievous glint in his eye when his brain thinks up something that only he’ll find funny. He presses his lips together, like he’s physically restraining himself from saying the stupid thing.
“I half expected you to make some vitamin Dick or vitamin Dean joke there.” You help him get there before he combusts.
A soft laugh bubbles past his lips. “Oh, no, I’m way too mature for that.”
The giggle you were trying to suppress also slips out of your lips before you can stop it. You quickly cover your mouth with your hand.
Talking with Dean really is so easy. On top of all the other things he’s good at, he’s able to guide you through the complex rollercoaster that is your emotions. He never flinches from it when you flip flop from crying to laughing in the space of 5 minutes.
It’s so easy for you to fall for him because of it.
As you lie down on the grass in the quad, Dean lying next to you, you feel a pit opening up in your stomach. It’s only been 2.5 weeks since your life got thrown upside down, he’s just being there for you as any good friend would, why do you have to keep reminding yourself of that fact. Why can’t you just understand he’s only being a good friend.
As always, Dean’s there to pull you out of your thoughts. “Promise me you’ll think about coming with me on Friday? Nobody will mess with you. But, if they do, I’ll handle it.”
You hear it for what it is, a promise from Dean. He’s made a lot of those to you and, so far, he’s not broken any of them.
So, you’ll trust him.
⋆꙳⛸❅*‧⛸‧*❆₊⛸⋆❆⋆꙳⛸❅*‧⛸‧*❆₊⛸⋆❆⋆꙳⛸❅*‧⛸‧*❆₊⛸⋆❆
The next two days passes in a blur, you find yourself scrolling through your camera roll a lot, determined to remember who you were before this thing started to define who you were. Something that’s not really guilt or sadness but feels close to that, washes over you every time you get to the pictures of Dean wearing your tiara.
Being kind to yourself isn’t easy, the easier option is always let the one negative thought define you. But Dean is right, you have forgotten who you are. It is exhausting being sad, you find.
You’re up at 2am that night, your mind running with all the things you’re going to do the next day. You’re going to reevaluate your life, you’re going to reach out to your friends, you’re going to go to that party, and with Dean… you aren’t sure what you’re going to do with him, but you’ll figure it out.
Come morning, you have so many things on your list that you end up doing nothing. You don’t even know how the time passes.
It’s getting darker outside when a loud, impatient knock sounds at your door. You almost don’t get up, Dean would have texted you if it were him and, checking your phone, he hasn’t. Not since his last message over a day and a half ago.
The knock sounds again. The likelihood of it being Logan is slim, but never zero. That sends you spiralling.
You take a deep breath, telling yourself that you can’t go back on your 2am promise to yourself as you walk to the door. You are going to be the new you, that was the old you.
The constant catastrophising has to stop. There is nothing behind that door that you cannot face. You give yourself a pep talk before you swing the door open.
The tension rolls out of your body when you see that it’s Allie and Hannah.
Allie pulls you into a one-armed hug, the other is cradling a tub of ice cream. She greets you in the same way she always does, her face full of genuine happiness at the sight of you. There’s no lingering resentment for all the messages you’d dodged.
She breezes past you and struts into your dorm room, making a beeline for the kitchen.
Hannah drops the bulging duffle bag that she’s carrying and pulls you into a tight hug. Neither of you say anything as you wrap your hands around her, squeezing her back.
Something you can only admit to yourself is that the reason you withdrew from them, apart from the embarrassment that being dumped carried, was how hard it was to see Hannah’s name or see her face those first couple of days. You’ve never blamed her for what happened, nor will you ever. It isn’t her fault, heck even part of you understood why it was Hannah that Logan loved.
But all of that rationalising couldn’t make the pain in your heart or the jealousy in your chest go away. Wrapped in her embrace now, your anger at Logan multiplies. So much was taken from you.
It takes less than 10 minutes for you all to be sat on the floor, laughing until your stomach hurts over the story Allie’s telling you about her week. An embarrassing number of sweet wrappers litter the floor, and Hannah’s dishing out scoops of ice cream.
The awkward, uncomfortable, energy you had told yourself would happen when you finally reconnected with them doesn’t even hint at appearing.
You had moved past the jealousy you felt towards Hannah relatively quickly. Had you not been in your head about how they’d react to your disappearing act, maybe this could have happened sooner. You really were your own worst enemy at times.
“I’m so happy you’re both here,” you say softly, your laughter dying down. “I’ve missed my girls.”
“We’ve missed you too, babe,” Allie says sincerely, she reaches across the floor, taking your hand in hers and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
This feels like the time, the perfect opening to apologise for dodging their attempts to be there for you and to grovel. They don’t seem to need the grovelling, but it’s probably needed.
But, no matter how many times you open your mouth to start talking, you can’t force any words out. You know you have so much to apologise for but it’s like your mind goes blank.
Hannah’s hand slides across the floor to take your other hand. “We don’t know the details, but we don’t need to know. It must have been a lot for you to go through for you and we figured you’d respond to us when you were ready.”
Too many emotions hit you at once as you take in Hannah’s words. You realise you’ve barely been able to look her in the eye since they walked in as you were ashamed of your behaviour. Forcing yourself to do so now, you find her eyes are incredibly soft, filled only with warmth.
“Thank you. I’m lucky to have you both.” And you are, it was pure luck, or fate, that led the three of you together. Not everybody gets to experience what it is like to have their girls in their corner. You do and it’s a magical experience.
“Don’t thank us too much,” Allie snorts. “We were very close to camping out in front of your door and begging you to let us in until a certain 6’2 blonde confirmed that he was taking very good care of you.”
Hannah clears her throat unnecessarily loudly. You don’t miss the daggers that she sends Allie, and the mischievous smile that Allie sends back. “Al,” Hannah warns.
Your eyes shift between them at the silent stand-off. “I’m not sure I’m loving whatever this is,” you say, gesturing to the air between them.
“We promised.” Hannah’s words are directed at Allie.
Allie dramatically rolls her eyes, sighing as she says, “It’s not my fault that I love love! Plus, think about if this was Garrett.”
Hannah’s lips purse for a second. “You got me there,” she concedes. “Tell her.”
Allie turns to you, eyes practically sparkling with excitement. You trust Allie with your life, but her palpable excitement and talk of loving love is making your palms get sweaty.
“Wait.” Allie holds whatever she was about to say as you turn to Hannah. “Should I be worried?”
You turn to Hannah. “No, sweetie. I don’t think you should.”
You turn to Allie. “Okay, hit me.”
“So,” Allie says, casually waving her ice cream spoon in the air, “let’s talk about Dean.”
To anyone who had heard the topics of your conversations before, this would sound like a completely normal statement. It’s not like discussing attractive men, especially ones with a reputation like Dean’s, is a forbidden topic, even when you all had boyfriends.
Truthfully, secretly, you were hoping for a natural way to bring him up. It would look too suspicious for you to want to discuss boys in the middle of your heartbreak. But you don’t want it to happen like this, this feels too loaded.
“What- Dean? What does he have to do with this?” You try to sound casual but you stumble over your words.
The look that Allie shares with Hannah tells you that they already knew how this conversation would pan out. Any hopes of keeping your growing feelings for him a secret are well and truly lost.
Allie turns to look at you, face serious in a way that has you shifting on the floor. “How about we start with the fact that he is totally into you.”
Your throat actually hurts from the force of your scoff. “Oh, no. You have it wrong. He’s just been really supportive. We’re… you know… friends.”
“I don’t know any ‘friend’ of mine that would arrange for two girls to have the night off of work so that they could spend time with their mutual ‘friend’. Do you, Hannah?”
“Nope,” Hannah says, popping the P. “I also don’t know any ‘friend’ of mine that would stop talking to his friend over hurting me.”
Your mind is trying to catch up, you’re not even sure that you understand the English language anymore. “Why are we talking in code,” you whine.
“Hannah and I were supposed to work today.” You look over to Hannah, who is nodding along as she slurps some ice cream. “That is until your prince charming- right, no code. That is until Dean spoke to Della yesterday and got our shifts covered. Apparently, he was very persuasive, if you know what I mean.”
“It’s true,” Hannah adds. She gestures to the bag that she had carried in. It’s open on the floor, overflowing with popcorn, chocolates, face masks, all the things a girlie loved to enjoy. “The duffle bag of goodies are from him too. He shoved it in our hands and said you needed us, so here we are.”
There are a few moments of silence before you can speak. “And you said that Dean and Logan aren’t talking? Because of me?”
“I mean, they are now, but only because Garrett basically knocked their heads together and forced them to talk for the sake of the team.”
Despite the fact that you’re already sat down, you hold your hand out as if to steady yourself. Your head is spinning; the information is coming in faster than you can filter it. It’s important to you that you don’t let your mind run with this. It’ll only be worse for you when you have to face reality.
Allie pops a chocolate in her mouth. “He’s so into you.”
“To be fair, maybe a friend wouldn’t but I think we are technically like best friends now,” you finally manage out. It sounds ridiculous even as you say it.
Both girls look at you like you’ve got a few screws loose, that’s also how you know how ridiculous you sound.
“Do you really think that’s it?” Hannah asks very patiently.
“I do.”
You don’t.
“Right,” Hannah says, “well then maybe we should unpack why you’re actively refusing to even consider this as a possibility.”
And just like in the library with Dean, you realise there’s no point in lying to the people that understand you so well.
“I… I don’t want to mistake basic kindness for attraction; that’s kind of how I ended up falling a man who didn’t even actually want me.” You speak quietly but it feels like you’re shouting for attention at the top of your lungs.
“Oh, honey.” They both lean over and wrap you in a tight hug.
“Also,” your voice drops lower, “I don’t want to use Dean to be some sort of rebound. He’s… he’s worth more than that.” You chew your lip.
‘And that’s basically what Logan did to me. Used me to get over another.’ Is the silent part that you’re scared to say out loud. You don’t want them reading into that comment, possibly connecting the dots back to Hannah.
The same tug of war rages within you. On the one hand, you’re unlovable, Dean could never be interested in someone like you and you were desperately clinging to his kindness. On the other hand, you’re a hypocrite, just using Dean to help you get over Logan. Somehow, neither option feels like reality but they also, simultaneously, are both true.
Your mind has you trapped. But, you remember, one of your 2am promises was to stop this downward spiral you were on. To just live.
Unravelling from the tight hold she and Allie have you on, Hannah takes your face in her hands. “Look at me,” she instructs gently.
“Logan’s inability to appreciate what he had is a reflection of him, not you.” You appreciate how firm Hannah is being with you. “You didn’t do anything wrong by believing in love, you didn’t mistake anything. He made those choices.”
“Exactly,” Allie chimes in, you turn to look at her as she speaks. “And let’s be clear here, Logan is Logan. Dean is Dean. You can’t let the choices and actions of one determine who the other is. That’s not fair to him or to you.”
You swallow past the lump in your throat. You wish you had spoken to them sooner. Your brain listens to them more than it does you.
“For what it’s worth,” Allie continues, “I don’t think this counts as a rebound. You, we all, have thought he was hot for ages, but you still haven’t just jumped into bed with him. You’re actually thinking about how he feels.”
Again, she’s right.
Looking them in the eye while they give you a perspective you hadn’t dared to consider is beginning to feel too intense. You chew on your bottom lip as your eyes drop to focus on the overflowing duffle bag. “He makes the pain of Logan feel so dull when he’s around. Like the grief is still there, it’s just like… I don’t know. Muted? That’s like… textbook rebound.”
“No, it’s not,” Hannah says softly. “A rebound is a distraction so you don’t have to deal with the pain, but you are dealing with it. You’re just finally being treated as you always deserved to be, and that makes you feel good. You’re allowed to feel good at the same time as feeling grief.”
“There’s a big difference between using someone to run away from your problems, and letting someone stand next to you while you face those problems,” Allie adds.
You wonder if they coordinated this, came in with a script prepared that told them exactly what you needed to hear.
“You don’t have to figure out Dean’s feelings, or your own feelings, now. But… just promise us that you won’t close the door on a potential future.”
You nod, tears brimming your eyes.
It’s been an emotional week of truths from Dean, the girls, and even yourself. Maybe it’s time you have a break from that.
“So, what are we wearing to tomorrow’s party?” You ask.
⋆꙳⛸❅*‧⛸‧*❆₊⛸⋆❆⋆꙳⛸❅*‧⛸‧*❆₊⛸⋆❆⋆꙳⛸❅*‧⛸‧*❆₊⛸⋆❆
To your immense relief, there are no pitying looks or subtle whispers when the three of you stride into the party on Friday night. You heard that the Briar U Hawks won big today, so the party is full of energy.
It’s been a while since you properly made an effort to look good. And that gives you a new found appreciation for how well you scrub up. You look hot.
For two hours, you’re able to forget all the emotions of the past few weeks. You forget that it has been so long since you felt music flowing through your body. You drink, you laugh, and you dance with your girls until your feet ache. True to their word, they don’t leave your side for a minute. Not even during the many bathroom trips.
You don’t think about the fact that you’re in Logan’s house nor do you think about Dean. It is freeing in a way.
“I’m going to get another drink!” You shout over the music at them.
You dance your way through the crowd of drunken students grinding on one another. For the first time since setting foot on the dancefloor, you think of Dean.
Dean’s leaning on the makeshift bar when you arrive, nursing an already stale and, now, all too warm beer. His eyes rank over your outfit and settle on your face. He probably thinks he’s being subtle, but you notice it.
You can’t remember the last time being looked at felt this electric. Logan certainly hadn’t looked at you like this.
A slow smirk tugs at the corner of Dean’s mouth as you step up to the sticky counter.
“Hey gorgeous.” His eyes widen as he registers what he’s said. When you just smile back at him, he visibly relaxes. “Sorry, but can you blame me?”
You’re considering how you’re going to respond when you’re suddenly being pulled into a side-hug. “I’m so glad you made it,” Garrett says. “We really missed you. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
Garrett places what you assume to be an attempt at a reassuring hand on your shoulder. His voice sounds awfully close to pity.
“Dude!” Dean’s eye narrow into a glare, shooting Garrett a look that sends a chill down your spine.
Garrett catches the glare quickly and clears his throat. “Um. I think Hannah’s calling me. So, I’m going now.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
You try to hold in your laugh as you watch Dean side eye Garrett as he walks away. You remember the conversation in the quad about ‘handling’ people who pity you but he is being a tad dramatic.
“Come on, let’s go outside,” he murmurs once it’s just you two at the bar. He guides you by the elbow through the crowd and into their back garden.
A breeze hits you; it feels welcome against your skin as the heat of the party mixed with the alcohol has warmed your body up.
To your surprise, it’s relatively quiet out here. A couple of people are in the designated smoking area in the far corner of the garden, but that’s about it. You settle on the wooden chairs side-by-side, facing the fire pit, with your backs to the house.
Strings of warm fairy lights are draped from the low branches of the trees. Combined with the dancing embers of the fire pit, it casts a soft orange glow onto Dean’s face. You watch him as he watches the fire rage on. It’s like your senses are dialled to eleven, you can hear the soft cracking coming from the firepit, but you can’t hear the chaotic party inside. It’s like you and Dean stepped into your own world.
“Thank you for arranging the girls’ night,” you say gently, your voice cutting through the comfortable silence.
He rolls his head to look at you, “Allie?”
“Allie,” you confirm on a laugh.
His jaw clenches slightly as his leg begins to bounce. You know you weren’t supposed to know, but you can’t work out why.
“I’m glad she told me,” You whisper. “Why didn’t you want them to tell me?”
For a minute, you think he’s not going to respond. He closes his eyes, tilting his head back against the chair as the crackle of the fire fills the silence.
It’s another minute later before he responds. “I don’t do things for you for the credit or some sort of acknowledgment. And I know how you think, you might have overthought about the reasons why I did it.”
He opens his eyes, shifting his weight to turn and look directly at you. “Don’t over think it, I did it because I want you to be happy. I want you to have everything and anything that you want. It’s simple.”
“Dean,” you start. “I don’t really know how to thank you for keeping me afloat these past few weeks.”
Dean notices the way your face changes, you suddenly look really serious and it’s making him uneasy. His throat tightens. “But…?”
“It’s not really a but… I just want to make sure that I don’t accidentally use you to heal me. That’s all.”
“But you can. You can use me. I give you permission to use me in any way that you want.”
“Dean,” you say in warning.
“I’m being serious.”
He has no idea why this is this serious to you. But, if you can prove to yourself that you’re not just using him, then you can prove to yourself that maybe there’s a chance there’s something real here. You can’t tell him that, so you plead with your eyes, hoping he understands the plea.
He reaches across the space between the chairs, his fingers resting on your wrist. You can see the internal battle between his eyes, he wants to argue but he respects you more than his own desires.
You sit like that for a while; his hand still wrapped around your wrist.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
The bubble around you instantly pops, dragging you back to a harsh reality. Jumping up, you pull your wrist from Dean’s grip like you’ve been burned. It’s been weeks since you’ve last heard that voice, and the sudden sound of it makes your stomach heave.
Logan’s stood by the back door to the garden. His face is flushed with a mixture of alcohol and something much sadder. Bloodshot eyes sweep between where you’re standing and Dean’s sitting. You find yourself standing straighter, as if under inspection.
“Three weeks and you’re already with him?” Logan slurs, his voice thick.
Something fiercely protective within you fumes at the way Logan spits out the word him, as if any Dean’s the man that should be being judged.
Dean slowly gets to his feet, turning to face Logan. Subtly, he moves to stand slightly in front of you, partly blocking you from the intensity of Logan’s glare.
Dean looks down at you, his eyes silently asking permission to intervene. Your heart hammers against your ribs, you hope he’s not about to lose his temper and hit him again. Not here. Not now.
Despite your fears, you give him a subtle nod.
But there’s no anger in Dean’s gaze as he looks back to Logan. Just disappointment.
“Walk away, Logan. You don’t get to be jealous of someone else providing the comfort you refused to provide her with. Be a man. Deal with your mess. And approach her respectfully the next time you want to speak to her.”
Logan completely ignores him; his eyes locked entirely on you. He says your name and you feel your entire body cringe.
“Please, let’s just talk,” Logan begs. He takes a clumsy step forward, his cup sloshing alcohol over his fingers. “You never gave me a chance to explain. You blocked me, and I sent you that email, and you still didn’t respond.”
He had sent you an email but you hadn’t given it the time of day. If Logan thinks a couple of piss poorly written paragraphs is enough to claim he was fighting for you, he is surely mistaken.
Dean looks back down at you, analysing the impact of Logan’s words on you. You’re looking at the floor, now scared that you might lose your temper and hit him.
“Can you please just look at me?”
You force your chin up, meeting his bloodshot eyes.
“I know I messed up,” his voice cracks. “I… it was… the adrenaline. From the game. My head was messed up. I never wanted to break up with you. It’s just… I was in my head and I said things I never should have said. I’ll do whatever I can to fix this, please.”
It’s easier to look at him now, any feelings of guilt completely vanish.
“You said things you never should have said,” you repeat. “Not things that you didn’t mean. So, if I hadn’t asked, you would have been content to continue giving me the bare minimum. To continue to use me?”
Dean stays silent but wraps his hand around your wrist again, his grip is grounding.
Logan flinches, his mouth opening and closing. “I can fix it. I’ll do better next time. I miss waking up next to you, I miss the way you laughed at my jokes, I miss how safe you made me feel. Let me fix this.”
You stare at him in disbelief. Even the things he misses about you are entirely self-serving. He misses how you served his ego. Dean has done more for you in the past few weeks than Logan’s done in months, but Dean’s the one you’re doubting the feelings exist for.
You step out from behind Dean’s shoulder. “There’s nothing left to fix.”
Logan looks as if you’ve physically slapped him, you wish you had. “So, that’s it then? Just like that?”
His voice rises, in anger, in desperation, you don’t care enough to figure it out. You look around the garden, none of the other students seem to be paying attention.
“What do you want me to say, Logan? I don’t believe you. I don’t trust you. You only care about me now because you’re lonely.”
Logan takes a step back, alcohol sloshing. “No, that’s not true. I love you. You know I do.”
You suppose, in his way, maybe he does love you. But it’s not good enough.
“Yeah, and I loved you,” you say, and you’ve never sounded so cold in your life. “Let’s go, Dean.”
You rest your hand on Dean’s forearm, pulling him towards the door.
Logan looks down at where you’re holding Dean. A bitter sneer twists his face. “I knew it. You’ve been waiting for this. Waiting for me to make a mistake so you could take my girl. What ever happened to loyalty, Di Laurentis?”
A self-pitying laugh escapes your lips before Dean can even respond. “Loyalty? Coming from the guy who broke up with his girlfriend because he’s secretly in love with his best friend’s girlfriend? Please be serious.”
The words leave your mouth before you can stop them. You blame the alcohol you had consumed earlier.
Dean stiffens beneath your touch. His head snaps to look down at you, his jaw dropping slightly. You still haven’t told him the full story. Well, until now.
Logan’s face drains of colour, and you do feel a little bad. You didn’t want this to get out.
You make a mental note to yourself to beg Dean not to pass this on to Garrett or confront Logan about. This isn’t worth breaking up the team.
You don’t give either of them a chance to say another word. Your heart is beating too fast and you need to get out of here.
Neither of you speak as you drag Dean through the side entrance to the garden and down the path. You walk until you’re a little away from the party, and breathe a sigh of relief. You did it, you faced Logan and came out, relatively, unscathed.
“Are you okay?” Dean asks. “Is your mind running?”
You laugh. Running is an understatement. Your mind is in chaos right now, but you feel euphoric.
“What do you want to do? Do you want me to take you home?”
You take a deep breath, the cold air hitting your lungs. “No,” you say, looking up at him. “I want to take a minute to compose myself, then we’re going back in. I want to dance and drink and laugh.”
Dean’s smile is large and proud. “Then that’s what you shall have.”
Minutes later, as you dance your way back into the party and to your group of friends, you breathe another sign of relief.
The bruises on your heart may still be healing, but as the music washes over you, you know you aren’t drowning anymore, you’re floating and you can see the shore ahead.
And even if you were still drowning, you look up at Dean, who’s dancing next to you, and you know you’re not in this alone.
Based heavily on Stephan Kalyan talking about getting into the head space of playing a playboy was hard because he’s been in a relationship for most of his adult life
dean di laurentis x reader
🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧🫧
The smell of stale beer, expensive cologne, and hockey gear was practically a permanent fixture at the Briar hockey house.
Hannah Wells sat on the edge of the plush leather sofa, clutching a red solo cup and trying to process the absolute whirlwind that was her life.
She was a junior, the exact same age and grade as the guys in this house, but up until a few weeks ago, she had existed in an entirely different universe. Her world was sheet music, quiet library corners, and trying to survive her classes. Their world was stadium lights, roaring crowds, and campus worship.
But now, thanks to a very specific, mutually beneficial arrangement, she was officially in a fake relationship with Garrett Graham. The captain of the hockey team.
As Garrett threw an arm over the back of the couch, laughing at something Logan said, Hannah looked around the room. Because she hadn't grown up in their loop or run in their circles for the last three years, she was just starting to get to know this tight-knit group of elite athletes. She was learning that campus rumors rarely matched reality.
Take Garrett, for instance—arrogant on the surface, but surprisingly sweet and protective when they were alone. Logan was a chaotic charmer, and Tucker was the quiet, southern gentleman who actually knew how to cook.
And then… there was Dean Di Laurentis.
Dean was currently leaned against the kitchen island, a smirk playing on his lips as he talked to a group of girls. He was devastatingly handsome, draped in designer clothes that cost more than Hannah’s tuition, and possessed a natural, effortless flirtatiousness that practically radiated off him.
Every time he winked, chuckled, or leaned in to whisper something, the girls around him practically melted into puddles.
Classic playboy, Hannah thought, making a mental note to keep her guard up around him. For the past three years, she had heard the hushed whispers in the lecture halls about the wealthy, gorgeous Di Laurentis. He just had "heartbreaker" written all over his face.
"Hey, Earth to Wellsy," Garrett murmured, nudging her knee with his. "What's going on in that head of yours? You look like you're analyzing a crime scene."
"Just observing," Hannah said, tilting her head toward the kitchen and taking a sip of her drink. "Does Dean ever stop? I feel like I'm watching a national geographic documentary on mating rituals. How do you guys live with a guy who constantly has a rotating door of girls?"
Garrett blinked, looked over at Dean, and then burst into a loud, booming laugh that caught Logan’s attention from across the coffee table.
"What's so funny, G?" Logan asked, wandering over with a bowl of pretzels.
"Hannah thinks Dean is trying to pull," Garrett chuckled, shaking his head. "She thinks he's a playboy."
Logan let out a dramatic gasp, dropping a pretzel back into the bowl and clutching his chest. "Oh, precious Hannah. No. I mean, I get why you'd think that. The hair, the clothes, the fact that he looks like he escaped a high-fashion magazine. But Dean? A playboy? Absolutely not. He’s been thoroughly, completely off the market since he was sixteen years old."
Hannah’s jaw dropped slightly. She looked back at Dean, then at Logan, then at Garrett. "Wait. Are you guys messing with me? Serious? But look at him! He's literally leaning his entire body weight against that girl's shoulder right now."
"That's just his default setting," Tucker chimed in, walking past the couch and grabbing a fresh beer from the fridge. "He's naturally flirty. It's an illness, really. The boy talks to a wall and the wall thinks it has a chance. But he is fiercely, terrifyingly loyal. He only has eyes for one person."
"If he's taken, why does everyone on campus think he's single?" Hannah asked, genuinely baffled. "I’ve heard girls in my music theory class talk about trying to get his attention at parties."
"Because he doesn't broadcast his personal life to the Briar puck bunnies," Garrett explained, his tone softening a bit. "And because she doesn't go here. They've been long-distance since freshman year. It’s hard, but they make it work. Speak of the devil..."
Right on cue, the heavy front door of the hockey house swung open. The noisy chatter of the party, the bass booming from the speakers, and the general chaos of the room seemed to fade into the background as a girl walked in, shaking out her hair from the crisp Massachusetts air.
You walked into the Briar house, immediately feeling the warmth of the indoor heating hit your face. You loved your school, but coming to the hockey house always felt like a different kind of sanctuary. You didn’t even make it three steps past the threshold before a blur intercepted you.
Dean’s face lit up in a way that completely transformed his usual smirk into a bright, genuine, breathtaking smile. He caught you by the waist, lifting you right off your feet and spinning you around as if you hadn't just seen each other a few days prior.
"Look who finally graced us with her presence," Dean murmured into your hair, before setting you down and pulling you into a deep, lingering kiss.
He didn't care about the crowded room, the girls he had just been talking to, or the guys shouting jeers from the couch. In that second, the entire room ceased to exist for him. "I missed you."
"Dean, I saw you on Tuesday," you laughed, wrapping your arms around his neck and adjusting to the sudden warmth of the house.
"Tuesday was a lifetime ago," he replied smoothly, his eyes crinkling with affection. He kept an arm firmly hooked around your waist, pulling you flush against his side as he turned back to the room, entirely unwilling to let go of you.
Hannah watched the entire interaction, completely stunned. For three years, she had held a completely false perception of this guy.
The girl—you—didn't look like the typical girls who frequented these parties. You looked incredibly sharp, wearing a sleek jacket, your posture perfect, and carrying an aura of quiet confidence that instantly commanded respect without you even trying.
"Hannah, meet the real boss of this house," Garrett introduced as Dean led you over to the living room setup. "Dean’s high school sweetheart."
"Hi, Hannah! It is so nice to finally meet you," you smiled warmly, offering a hand. "Garrett has told us a little bit about you. Don't believe anything he or Logan tells you, by the way. Most of it is exaggerated hockey locker room nonsense."
"Hey! I am a teller of truths and a romantic at heart," Logan protested, throwing a pretzel at Dean, who caught it effortlessly with his free hand.
"Nice to meet you," Hannah said, still trying to reconcile the image of Dean the Campus Flirt with Dean the Devoted Boyfriend. "So, you're a junior too? But you don't go to Briar?"
"No, she's the resident genius," Dean bragged proudly, kissing the side of your head. He squeezed your waist, a look of pure adoration on his face that Hannah had never seen on him before. "She goes to Harvard. Just a quick drive down the road, which means I get to kidnap her every weekend."
"More like I come over here to escape the library and make sure you're eating something other than protein powder and frozen pizza," you countered, teasingly tapping his nose. "Harvard's midterm week is brutal. I needed a break before my brain entirely melted."
As the night went on and the party wound down, the crowd thinned out until it was just the inner circle hanging out. The music was turned down to a low hum, and the atmosphere became quiet and comfortable. Hannah found herself sitting at the kitchen island, pouring a glass of water, trying to process everything she was learning about this group.
You walked over to grab a soda from the fridge, stretching your arms slightly.
"So," Hannah started, a small, intrigued smile on her face. "Harvard? That's seriously impressive. No wonder Dean looks like he won the lottery every time he looks at you."
"Thanks," you smiled, leaning against the counter next to her. "It’s a lot of work, but I love it. Plus, being so close to Briar is a lifesaver. I don't think Dean would survive a true long-distance relationship. For all his tough hockey exterior, he's incredibly clingy."
"I have to admit," Hannah said honestly, lowering her voice a bit so the guys wouldn't hear from the living room. "I’m the same age as you guys, but I've always been so completely out of the hockey loop. I just assumed... well, everyone on campus talks about Dean like he's this legendary playboy. I totally pegged him for a heartbreaker when I walked in tonight."
You let out a soft, genuine laugh, looking over at the living room. Dean was currently engaged in a heated debate with Logan and Garrett about a specific NHL playoff game, gesturing wildly. But the beautiful thing about Dean was that even in the middle of a sentence, his eyes instantly flicked to the kitchen the moment he heard your laugh. He gave you a quick, reassuring wink across the room, ensuring you were okay, before turning back to the boys.
"Oh, I know the rumors," you told Hannah, your voice softening with genuine warmth and zero trace of jealousy. "Dean is a natural flirt. It's just his factory setting. He flirts with the cashier at the grocery store, he flirts with the GPS, he probably flirts with his professors without realizing it. It’s just his personality—he loves attention, he loves people, and he loves making people smile. But when it comes to his heart? He's a one-woman man. He's been my best friend and my biggest protector since we were juniors in high school. I've never had to doubt him for a single second, no matter what campus gossip says."
Hannah looked from you to Dean, seeing the absolute, unwavering adoration in his eyes. For all his flashy clothes, smooth talking, and confidence, Dean Di Laurentis was completely anchored by you.
"That's really amazing," Hannah said, feeling a pang of genuine happiness for you—and maybe a little bit of envy. Here she was, entangled in a complicated, stressful fake-dating scheme with Garrett to get another guy's attention, while Dean and you had something so profoundly real and steady right in the middle of the campus chaos. It made her realize how much she had misjudged the people in this house.
Just then, Dean broke away from the guys, practically jogging over to the kitchen as if he couldn't stand being away from you for more than twenty minutes. He wrapped his arms around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder and looking at Hannah with a playful grin.
"What are we gossiping about? Is it me? Tell me it's me. I love being the center of attention," Dean pleaded, his tone light and teasing.
"We were just talking about how lucky I am to have an amazing boyfriend like you," you lied smoothly, tilting your head up to kiss his jaw line.
Dean’s smirk instantly softened into something incredibly tender, his eyes darkening with affection as he looked down at you. "Damn right you are. I'm the lucky one. Now come back to the couch, Y/N. Logan is losing the hockey argument and I need my brilliant girlfriend there to witness my absolute intellectual victory."
As Dean led you away, his hand securely locked in yours, Hannah couldn't help but smile into her glass of water. Briar University was full of surprises, and as she navigated her own strange journey with Garrett, she was glad to know that true loyalty existed exactly where she least expected to find it.
The living room had transformed from a chaotic frat party into a quiet, post-game wind-down. The air was still thick with the scent of cheap beer and expensive cologne, but the heavy bass had been replaced by the low hum of the television playing NHL highlights in the background.
You let Dean pull you back toward the oversized sectional, sinking into the cushions right beside him. The second you were seated, Dean shifted, throwing his long legs over the coffee table and pulling you flush against his side. His arm wrapped securely around your shoulders, his fingers idly playing with the hem of your shirt. It was an automatic reflex for him; whenever you were in the same room, he needed to be touching you.
"Alright, Harvard," Logan said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "Settle a debate. Garrett claims that the Bruins’ power play strategy last night was flawless. I say it was entirely predictable and they got lucky. What’s the verdict?"
You raised an eyebrow, leaning back against Dean’s chest. "Are you asking me because you genuinely want my sports analysis, Logan, or because you know Dean will agree with whatever I say?"
"A little bit of both," Logan admitted with a grin.
"Don't bring her into your losing arguments, Huntzberger," Garrett chimed in from the other end of the couch, nudging Hannah’s foot with his own. Hannah was watching the exchange with rapt attention, her eyes darting between you and Dean. She still looked entirely fascinated by the dynamic—clearly still trying to reconcile the campus myth of Dean Di Laurentis with the fiercely devoted boy sitting in front of her.
"For the record," you said, tilting your head up to look at Garrett, "the Bruins were predictable. They relied too heavily on the drop pass at the blue line. If the defense had been faster on the backcheck, they would’ve been picked apart."
Dean let out a loud, triumphant bark of laughter, his chest vibrating against your back. "Ha! What did I tell you? Genius. Absolutely brilliant. That’s my girl." He leaned down, planting a fierce, proud kiss on your cheek, making you laugh and try to push him away.
"You're only cheering because she agreed with you," Garrett grumbled, though there was a smirk playing on his lips.
"I cheer because she's always right," Dean corrected smoothly, his voice dropping into that naturally confident, slightly arrogant tone he always used. But as he looked down at you, the arrogance completely melted away, replaced by a quiet warmth. "You want a drink? Water? A soda? I can get you whatever you want."
"I'm good, Dean. Just trying to relax," you murmured, reaching up to run your fingers through the soft hair at the nape of his neck. He practically purred at the contact, leaning into your touch and closing his eyes for a brief second.
Hannah watched this interaction, a small, knowing smile tugging at the corner of her lips. She leaned over to Garrett, lowering her voice so only he could hear. "He’s like a totally different person around her."
Garrett looked over at Dean and you, his expression softening with a rare look of genuine respect. "Yeah, well. she’s his anchor. Dean’s got a lot of energy, a lot of flash. He likes the finer things in life, and he likes being noticed. But with her? He doesn't have to put on a show. She knows exactly who he is, and he'd burn the world down before he ever did anything to jeopardize what they have."
Hannah nodded slowly, absorbing the information. It was an eye-opening realization. Coming into this house, she had assumed the hockey team was a monolith of arrogant, untouchable playboys. But looking at Garrett—who was currently being surprisingly attentive to her—and looking at Dean, who was practically worshiping the ground you walked on, she realized how wrong she had been.
"Hey," Hannah called out across the space, wanting to pull you back into the conversation. "How do you handle the drive back and forth? Harvard to Briar isn't terrible, but with a Harvard workload, it's got to be exhausting."
You shifted slightly, resting your chin on Dean's shoulder. "Honestly, the drive is my decompression time. But usually, Dean's the one making the trip. He’ll drive down to Cambridge just to take me out to dinner for an hour before driving all the way back for morning practice."
"Wait, seriously?" Hannah asked, her eyebrows shooting up. She looked at Dean. "You drive two hours total just for a one-hour dinner?"
"I'd drive ten hours just to see her for five minutes, Wellsy," Dean said, his tone incredibly casual, as if he were stating a basic fact of the universe rather than an act of grand romance.
He winked at Hannah. "Plus, the restaurants near Harvard are way better than the greasy spoons around here. I get to dress up, show off my gorgeous girlfriend, and eat good food. It’s a win-win."
"He's omitting the part where he once showed up at my dorm at 2:00 AM during finals week just because I sounded stressed on the phone," you added, giving Dean a pointed look. "He brought three bags of takeout and a giant teddy bear that took up half my room."
"It was a tactical strike against your anxiety," Dean defended himself, a boyish grin spreading across his face. "And it worked. You aced that exam."
"Because I was terrified you'd show up with a marching band next time," you teased, turning around in his lap to face him fully.
Dean’s hands instantly found your waist, holding you steady. The playful banter of the room seemed to fade into the background as he looked at you, his eyes incredibly dark and focused. "I would have," he whispered, entirely serious. "If it meant making you smile."
You felt a familiar warmth bloom in your chest, reaching up to cup his jaw. For all the years you had been together, the intensity of Dean's devotion never failed to take your breath away. He was a flirt, a tease, and a total show-off to the rest of the world, but his heart belonged exclusively to you.
Across the room, Hannah watched the two of you, a profound sense of clarity washing over her. As she navigated her own chaotic, fake-dating journey with Garrett, seeing you and Dean gave her a glimpse of what real, unshakeable loyalty actually looked like.
And for the first time since she had walked into the Briar hockey house, she realized that beneath all the rumors and the campus hype, these boys were capable of loving fiercely.
The party had entirely cleared out by the time the clock bled past two in the morning. Logan and Tucker had disappeared upstairs to their respective rooms, and Garrett had walked Hannah out to her car, leaving the downstairs of the hockey house steeped in a rare, heavy quiet.
The low hum of the television screen cast flickering shadows across the living room, but the real heat was concentrated on the oversized sectional.
The moment the front door clicked shut behind Garrett, Dean’s entire demeanor shifted. The playful, casual banter he’d been maintaining for the group completely vanished, replaced by an intense, dark focus that was entirely centered on you.
"Finally," he growled low in his throat, his hands sliding up from your waist to grip your hips, pulling you flush against his lap so you were straddling him.
You let out a soft gasp at the sudden movement, your hands automatically flying to his broad shoulders for balance. "Dean, the guys are still—"
"The guys are asleep, and Garrett's outside," Dean interrupted, his voice dropping an octave, thick and raspy. His eyes raked over your face, heavy-lidded and burning with a hunger he’d been suppressing all night. "Do you have any idea what it was like sitting next to you for three hours, watching you laugh, hearing you talk to Hannah, and not being able to do this?"
Before you could answer, his hand cupped the back of your neck, his fingers tangling in your hair as he tilted your head up and brought his mouth down on yours.
The kiss wasn't the sweet, reassuring pecks he’d given you in front of the team.
This was demanding, possessive, and thick with the pent-up frustration of a week spent apart. His tongue parted your lips effortlessly, deepening the kiss until your breath hitched in your chest. You whimpered into his mouth, the sound completely undoing him. Dean let out a low groan, his grip tightening on your hips, pulling you so tightly against him that you could feel the hard, rigid line of his desire pressing against your thigh through his jeans.
He broke the kiss just long enough to trail his lips down your jawline, his breathing ragged against your skin. His mouth found the sensitive spot right beneath your ear, biting down gently enough to make you shiver, then soothing it with the hot stroke of his tongue.
"Dean," you breathed, your fingers clutching the fabric of his Briar hockey jersey, tugging at it desperately. "We need to go upstairs."
"Not yet," he muttered against your throat, his hands sliding up beneath the hem of your shirt, his warm, calloused palms making direct contact with your bare skin. You arched into his touch, your heart hammering against your ribs. He traced the curve of your waist, his thumbs brushing the lower edge of your ribs, sending jolts of electricity straight down your spine. "I’ve been thinking about this all day in practice. Every single drill, all I could think about was getting you back to this house."
He pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes dark, intense, and completely consumed by you. There was no trace of the arrogant, smirking campus flirt that Briar University thought they knew.
This was the raw, unyielding version of Dean Di Laurentis that belonged entirely to you.
"You drive me completely crazy, Y/N," he whispered, his thumb rubbing soothing circles over your hip, though his voice was entirely tight with restraint. "Every guy at Harvard looking at you, and all I can do is sit over here and wait for the weekend."
"You know I don't care about any of them," you whispered back, leaning down to press your lips to the center of his chest, right over his racing heartbeat. "I only want you."
A dark, possessive smirk finally cut through his expression, his chest swelling with pride. "Good. Because I'm not sharing."
In one swift, athletic movement, Dean slid his arms under your thighs and back, lifting you effortlessly off his lap as he stood up from the couch. You wrapped your legs tightly around his waist, burying your face in his neck as he carried you down the dimly lit hallway toward his bedroom, his grip unbreakable and his intentions completely clear.
Dean didn’t even bother turning on the lights when he nudged his bedroom door open with his shoulder, shutting it behind you with a firm, decisive click of his heel. The room was bathed in the cool, silver glow of the moonlight cutting through his window, casting long shadows across the organized chaos of his space.
He didn't make it two steps toward the bed before he pinned you against the heavy wood of the door, the impact solid but careful. Your back flushed against the surface, and you let out a breathless laugh that was instantly cut short when Dean crowded his entire body weight against yours.
His hands slid down from your thighs, his palms flattening against the wood on either side of your head. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving against your breasts, the scent of him—expensive cedar wood, mint, and pure heat—completely enveloping you.
"Dean," you gasped, your fingers curling into the fabric of his jersey again.
"I'm losing my mind, Y/N. Seriously," he murmured, his voice a rough, gravelly whisper. He leaned in, his lips brushing yours with agonizing slowness, teasing the seam of your mouth until you parted your lips for him. When you did, he didn't hold back. The kiss was deep, wet, and utterly consuming, his tongue tangling with yours in a rhythm that made your knees go weak. Thank God his hands migrated down to your waist, gripping you tightly enough to bruise, holding you up against the door.
You reached down, your fingers finding the hem of his heavy hockey jersey, and tugged it upward. "Take it off," you demanded against his lips.
Dean broke the kiss with a low growl, stripping the jersey over his head in one fluid, impatient motion and tossing it blindly into the darkness of the room. The sight of his bare chest—the sharp lines of his collarbone, the hard, defined muscle of his abs, and the faint scars from years on the ice—made your throat go completely dry. He was beautiful, and he was entirely yours.
Before you could fully appreciate the view, Dean's hands were back on you, working at the buttons of your shirt with a frantic energy that was entirely uncharacteristic of his usual smooth, calculated demeanor. When the fabric parted, his breath hitched. He mapping out every inch of your exposed skin with his hands, his thumbs dragging over the lace of your bra, making your hips unconsciously arch upward into his.
"You are so beautiful," he rasped, his eyes burning as he looked down at you in the moonlight. "It kills me. Every single day I'm stuck at Briar, it kills me."
He bent his head, his mouth dropping down to track a path of burning kisses from your jawline, down the column of your throat, to the sensitive valley between your collarbones. You threw your head back against the door, a loud, uninhibited moan escaping your lips as his teeth gently grazed the soft skin of your shoulder.
"Dean, please," you whimpered, your fingers burying themselves into his thick, soft hair, pulling him closer. Your thighs clamped tightly around his hips again, begging for a friction that was driving you both to the edge.
He let out a ragged breath, his hands sliding down to cup the undersides of your thighs, lifting you effortlessly once more. He carried you the short distance to his bed, tumbling both of you down onto the mattress. The cool sheets offered a brief shock of relief against your overheated skin, but it was immediately incinerated when Dean crawled over you, pinning your wrists gently beside your head.
He looked down at you, his chest rising and falling, his gaze so fiercely loyal and completely possessive it made your heart skip a beat.
"You're mine," he whispered, a stark, undeniable promise as his hips settled heavily into the cradle of yours. "Tell me you're mine, Y/N."
"Always," you breathed, pulling your hands free to wrap them tightly around his neck, pulling him down to finish what he started. "Only yours, Dean."
The mattress dipped under his weight as Dean shifted, freeing one of his hands from your wrist to trace the line of your jaw, his thumb wiping away a bead of sweat from your temple. His touch was suddenly a striking contrast—gentle, almost reverent, even while the rest of his body burned against yours with an undeniable, heavy urgency.
"Always," he repeated against your lips, the word sounding like a vow. "Good."
He didn't give you another second to breathe. His mouth claimed yours again, harder this time, demanding and deep. The heat between you was absolute, a fuse completely lit after days of forced distance. You hooked your legs around his waist, pulling him as close as physically possible, feeling the rigid tension in his thighs and the muscle of his back flexing beneath your fingertips. Your hands mapped the familiar expanse of his shoulders, your nails digging into his skin as he rocked his hips forward, a low, guttural groan tearing from his throat.
Every point of contact was electric. Dean’s hands migrated down to your hips, his fingers digging in to guide your movements, establishing a slow, agonizingly perfect rhythm that had your head spinning. You arched into him, a soft, broken sound escaping your lips that went straight to his head.
He broke the kiss, his breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps as he buried his face in the crook of your neck. His teeth nipped at the sensitive skin right where your neck met your shoulder, sending a violent wave of shivers straight down your spine.
"Y/N... God, you're perfect," he muttered, his voice entirely wrecked. The suave, unflappable Dean Di Laurentis was completely gone, reduced to a man entirely unraveled by the girl in his arms. He lifted himself up slightly on his forearms, his eyes locking onto yours in the dim moonlight. The intensity in his gaze was staggering—fierce, unyielding, and completely consumed by you.
The friction was building, a tight, coil of heat pulling tighter and tighter in the center of your chest. You gripped his arms, your eyes closing as the sensation threatened to overwhelm you.
"Look at me," Dean commanded softly, his voice a raspy plea.
You opened your eyes, meeting his dark, focused gaze just as he drove into you again, harder, matching his pace to the frantic beating of your heart. Seeing the absolute adoration and raw desire written all over his face pushed you entirely over the edge. A loud, breathless cry escaped you as the tension shattered, a violent rush of pleasure rippling through your entire body.
Hearing your release was the final thread for Dean. His grip on your hips tightened, his jaw clenching as he let out a low, rough shout, burying his face in your hair as his own climax hit him, hard and heavy. He held you tightly, pressing his weight into you as the aftershocks ran their course, his heart hammering wildly against your ribs like a trapped bird.
For a long time, the only sound in the room was the heavy, synchronized breathing of the two of you.
Slowly, carefully, Dean rolled to the side, taking you with him so you were tucked securely against his chest. He pulled the thick comforter up over your bare shoulders, shielding you both from the cool draft of the room. His arm stayed wrapped around your waist, his hand resting flat against your stomach, pulling you so close there was no space left between you.
He kissed the crown of your head, his breathing finally beginning to slow down.
"I'm never letting you go back to Cambridge," he murmured into your hair, his voice thick with sleep and exhaustion, but entirely serious.
You let out a weak, content laugh, resting your hand over his. "You have to. I have an exam on Monday."
"I'll buy the university," he mumbled, a classic, ridiculous Di Laurentis statement that made your heart swell. He squeezed your waist, pulling you just a fraction closer. "Whatever it takes to keep you right here."
You smiled into the dark, closing your eyes as the warmth of his body completely enveloped you. Outside his door, Briar University could think whatever they wanted about the flashy, flirty hockey player. But in the quiet of his room, you knew the absolute truth—Dean Di Laurentis was yours, entirely and completely, and he wasn't going anywhere.
— cw: established relationship; smut and fluff; domesticity; wc: 5.5 k
— S. RILEY:
Simon loves handling knives. It’s one of his specialities after all. And he’s caught you watching him multiple times; whether it was him cutting vegetables for supper, cleaning his combat knives, or shaving with a razor blade.
So, when you pad into the kitchen in nothing but his shirt and ask him to help you shave, he doesn't even blink.
“Where?”
You tug at the hem. He follows the gesture, and his expression doesn’t change, but something behind his eyes does.
“Right.” The chair scrapes over the tiles as he rises to his full height, rolling his broad shoulders. “Bathroom. Now.”
He has you up on the counter with your legs spread before you can overthink it. Clinical and efficient, like he’s done this a thousand times.
“Hold still,” he commands, lathering soap between his mammoth hands. “Squirm and I'll nick ya.”
You snort, “Reassuring."
“Wasn’t meant t’be.”
His hands are rough but warm and deliberate as he works the lather over you, one palm flat against your lower belly to keep you pinned. He tilts his head, surveying you like a problem he’s solving.
He clucks his tongue, “Not takin’ it all off.”
And you blink owlishly, “Why not?”
“Because I like it.” He drags his thumb through the dark curls at the apex of your cunt, appraising. “Leavin’ a clean strip. You'll thank me later.”
The razor comes up before you can argue. First stroke—slow, precise, the blade gliding through lather and coarse hair with a control that makes your stomach flip. His jaw is set, focused, and there is something unbearable about how steady his hands are when yours are gripping the counter edge so hard your knuckles ache.
He rinses the blade. Goes again. His knuckles brush bare skin this time and your thigh jerks involuntarily.
“What’d I say?” His voice is low, flat; his eyes almost bored as they flick up to meet yours.
“Sorry—”
“Don’t apologise. Stop squirmin’.” He resettles his grip on your thigh, firm enough to bruise. “Almost done.”
But you’re not making it easy on him and he knows it. He can see it—the flush creeping down your chest, the way your breathing has gone shallow, the slick gathering where his hands keep almost-but-not-quite touching.
“You’re wet,” he remarks, the same way he’d say It’s raining.
“Can you blame me?” you squeak.
“No.” Simon finishes the last stroke, rinses the blade, sets it aside. Then he runs his thumb along the neat strip of hair he’s left, then lower, over smooth sensitive skin, checking his work. “Did a bloody good job, if I say so myself.”
His thumb drags lower. Slides through the slick with zero hesitation, and you gasp loud enough to echo off the tiles.
“Responsive,” he murmurs, smug. He does it again—slower, more deliberate, watching your face like he’s taking briefing notes. “All this from a shave, love?”
You nod, voice thick, “From you.”
Something shifts in his expression; shifts to something darker, hungrier. His free hand grips the inside of your thigh and pushes it wider, and he drops to his knees on the bathroom floor like a man settling into a foxhole.
“Si—”
“Shut up,” he growls against your skin. “Let me admire my work.”
His mouth finds you—hot and wet, and completely unhurried. He licks a long, flat stripe over the freshly shaved skin and groans low in his throat like he’s tasting honey on a warm, buttered toast. Your hand flies to his head, fingers digging into the short hair, and he lets you.
Then he pulls back, and you almost whine, but he’s not going anywhere. He brings both hands up instead, spreads you open with his thumbs, rough callused pads pressing into soft skin, holding you apart so he can see everything.
“Look at that,” he murmurs, low and self-satisfied. “All swollen already.”
Your hips buck, but his sheer strength keep you pinned to the counter. “Simon, please—”
“I heard ya.”
But then Simin leans back in and his tongue finds your clit—not a broad stroke this time but a quick, focused flicker, right over the swollen nerve. Your hips buck harder and his grip tightens, thumbs digging into the soft flesh of your pussy lips, keeping you spread wide and pinned open.
“Stay. Still.” Spoken directly against you, the vibration making your thighs shake.
He does it again—that precise, maddening flicker—and you make a sound that’s closer to a sob than anything dignified. He rewards it with a low hum, adjusting the angle, working the tip of his tongue in tight little circles that make your vision blur.
“Knew you’d be like this,” he groans, pulling back just enough to watch your clit twitch under his breath. His thumbs spread you wider, obscenely so. “All wound up from a fuckin’ razor and a steady hand.”
Your cheeks are burning while your hole clenches around nothing. “You’re so full of—oh—”
“Myself? Yeah.” His tongue flattens against you, then flickers again, fast and relentless. “And you love it.”
You can’t argue. You can’t do anything except grip his hair and hold on.
He doesn’t let up. That maddening flicker becomes a rhythm—tight, relentless circles over your clit with the tip of his tongue while his thumbs keep you spread open and pinned like a butterfly under glass. You’e shaking, thighs trembling against his hands, and every sound you make earns you another low hum of approval that vibrates straight through your whole body.
“Simon—Si—I’m going to—”
“Then fuckin’ do it.” His tone is flat as ever, impatient, like you’re wasting his time by holding back.
His tongue presses harder, faster, and you come with a choked cry that bounces off the bathroom tiles. He works you through it—slower now, lapping at you in long, lazy strokes while your legs twitch and your fingers go slack in his hair.
And then you hear it before you see it—the sound of his joggers being shoved down, the slick rhythm of his fist. You lift your head, still dazed, and look down to find him on his knees with his fat cock in his hand, jerking himself in hard, fast strokes while his mouth stays pressed against your inner thigh.
“Simon—?”
“Shut up.” His voice is wrecked now. Rough. Nothing clinical about it anymore. “Needed this since I fuckin’ started.”
He’s close already. You can tell from the way his breathing fractures, the way his free hand grips your thigh hard enough to leave fingerptints. Simon pulls back, angles himself forward, fist working fast and tight, and his eyes are fixed on the mess he’s made of you—all swollen and slick, the neat landing strip dark and matted with your slick against flushed skin.
“Fuck,” he grits out, low and broken. “Look at you.”
He comes across your cunt in hot, thick stripes—groaning through his teeth, forehead dropping against your thigh as his hips jerk into his own fist, massive shoulders shaking against the onslaught of pleasure. You feel it land on smooth skin, on the strip of hair he insisted on keeping, dripping down between your folds, and the sound he makes is almost pained.
He stays there for a moment. Breathing hard. Forehead pressed to your leg.
Then he straightens up, tucks himself away methodically, and surveys the damage with the composure of a man reviewing a mission report.
“There,” he says, dragging his thumb through the mess on your skin. His and yours, mixed so prettily. “Payment for services rendered.”
Your eyes roll with fond exasperation as your head tips back to rest on the counter.
“You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re welcome, love.” He leans in, presses a single kiss to the landing strip, and stands. “Clean yerself up. Dinner’s in twenty.”
— K. GARRICK
Kyle notices things. It’s what makes him terrific at his job—reading a room in mere seconds, clocking the miniscule details everyone else always misses. So, when you come home looking like the week has chewed you up and spat you out, he’s already running the bath before you’ve kicked off your shoes and put down your bag.
“Self-care day!” he announces. “You. Me. Bathroom. Now.”
“Kyle, I’m fine—”
“Didn’t ask.” He’s already steering you by the shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “I’ve got you, yeah? Let me do this for you, baby.”
And that’s the thing about Kyle. He doesn’t ask permission to take care of you—he just does it, like breathing, like it’s the most natural and obvious thing in the world.
He starts with your arms.
You’re sitting on the edge of the ceramic tub, warm water lapping at your calves, while Kyle kneels beside you with a fresh razor and a bottle of fancy shaving oil he warmed between his palms. He lifts your arm above your head, long and gentle fingers circling your wrist, and works the oil into the hollow of your underarm with slow, thorough strokes.
“When’s the last time someone took care of you properly?” he asks casually, like small talk.
“You did. Last week,” you deadpan, brows furrowed.
He grins brilliantly. “Doesn’t count. That was just sex.”
You snort softly, “Just sex, he says—”
“Hush now.” He draws the razor up in a smooth, careful line. Rinses. Again. His touch is absurdly gentle for hands that can strip a rifle in seconds. “This is different. This is maintenance.”
“You make me sound like a bloody car.”
“Nah.” Kyle kisses his teeth, then switches to the other arm, lifting it with the same easy confidence. “More like a classic bike. High-performance. Needs the right hands.”
You snort again, but your skin is already tingling where he’s touched—warm oil sinking in, the faint sting of freshly shaved skin, his thumb rubbing slow circles into your wrist while he works.
Your legs take longer. He’s thorough about it—kneeling on the tile floor, one of your calves propped on his shoulder, dragging the razor from ankle to knee in long, unhurried strokes. He takes his time with the oil after, working it into your skin with both hands, thumbs pressing into the muscle of your calf until you groan.
“Good?” he asks, gauging your reaction, and there’s something darker in his voice now. Something paying attention.
“So good,” you breathe, eyes closed in bliss.
He slides higher—past your knee, along your inner thigh. Still massaging, still working the oil in, but his fingers are brushing territory that has nothing to do with shaving. He watches your face the whole time, reading every micro-expression, cataloguing what makes your breath hitch, what makes your muscles relax.
“One more spot,” he murmurs, hands settling on your inner thighs. “Yeah?”
You nod. Your mouth has gone dry.
“Need words, love.”
And you nod more enthusiastically, “Yes. Please.”
His smile is warm, but his gaze is filthy.
Kyle repositions you gently, guiding you back against the fluffy towels he’s already laid out on the bathroom floor like he planned this from the start. Probably did. Kyle Garrick is always three steps ahead.
He settles between your thighs and takes his time with the oil, working it into the soft skin of your mound with his fingertips. Not rushing. Letting you feel every slow circle, every press of his thumb, until you’re breathing hard and your hips are shifting restlessly.
“Easy, my love," he says softly, one hand flat on your belly. “I’ve got you. Not going anywhere.”
The razor is careful. Feather-light strokes, angled perfectly, his free hand stretching the skin taut with a confidence that makes heat pool low in your stomach. He shaves you bare, all of it, pausing to rinse the blade and check his work with the pad of his thumb.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs thickly, and means it.
Then the oil comes back. Warm from his hands, drizzled over freshly shaved skin, and he starts working it in with both thumbs in long, slow strokes down either side of your slit.
Your thighs twitch. He notices. Of course he does.
“Sensitive?” he asks teasingly, voice low. Eyes crinkling with mirth.
“Kyle—”
“That’s not an answer.” But he’s smiling, thumbs pressing a little firmer, gliding through the oil and spreading you open slowly. “Tell me how it feels.”
You swallow hard, but your voice still comes out raspy, “Like you’re trying to kill me, baby.”
He laughs; warm, genuine, the sound rumbling through his chest. “Not yet.” His thumbs drag inward, slicking through the oil and your own syrupy wetness now, framing your clit without touching it. “We’re getting there, though.”
Kyle starts massaging in earnest then, and it’s devastatingly precise. Both thumbs working slow circles over your outer lips, pressing and releasing, coaxing blood to the surface until everything is swollen and throbbing and so slick you can hear it. He watches your face the whole time, dark eyes tracking every flutter of your lashes, every bitten-back sound.
“There she is,” he praises when your hips start rolling into his hands. “There you go. Just let it happen, baby.”
And he slides one thumb between your folds—just one, dragging through the mess—and your whole body arches.
“Fuck, Kyle—” you mewl, and Kyle mutters a curse under his breath, pupils blown.
“Yeah, I know.” He does it again, slow and firm, circling your clit with the pad of his thumb while his other hand keeps you spread open. “You’re soaking my hand, love. That all from the shave, or you just like being taken care of by me?”
“Both—God—both!”
“Greedy.” He says it fondly, pressing a kiss to your inner thigh. Then he sinks a finger into you—one, then two—curling them forward, and your back comes off the floor.
“Oh—oh—fuck!”
“Right there?” He crooks his fingers experimentally, finds the spot that makes your vision white out, and presses more firmly. “Yeah. Right there.”
He starts working you open with slow, deliberate thrusts—two fingers buried deep, curling against that front wall, while his thumb keeps circling your clit in a rhythm that’s going to end you. His other hand is on your hip, holding you steady when you start to writhe.
“Don't fight it,” he reminds you, and then his mouth replaces his thumb—hot and wet, tongue lapping at your clit in broad, flat strokes that make your thighs clamp around his head.
He groans against you and his fingers pick up the pace, curling and pressing in a rhythm that builds something white-hot at the base of your spine. You can feel it coiling, tighter and tighter, different from a normal orgasm, deeper, more urgent.
“Kyle—Kyle, I’m gonna—”
“I know.” He pulls back just enough to speak, lips brushing your clit while your inner muscles clench and flutter around his pumping fingers, urging him deeper. “I can feel it. Let go.”
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.” His fingers press harder, faster, rubbing firmly against that swollen spot inside you. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. Let go for me.”
His mouth seals over your clit and he sucks, gentle and persistent, while his fingers thrust up hard until something inside you breaks. And you come with a sound you don’t recognise; your whole body locking up and then releasing in a hot, pulsing rush that soaks his hand, his chin, the towels underneath you.
“That’s it. Fuck, baby, that’s it—” Kyle’s voice is wrecked, awed, his fingers still working you through it as you gush and squirt over his knuckles, soaking the towels. “Christ, look at you. So fucking beautiful.”
You’re shaking. Trembling all over, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes from the intensity of it, and Kyle is already there to catch you; easing his fingers out gently, pressing soft kisses to your inner thighs, your hip, the curve of your quivering belly.
“I’ve got you,” he says again, gathering you up against his lean chest. “I’ve got you, love. You did so well.”
You bury your face in his neck and he holds you. Always solid, warm, and steady. His hand strokes your back in slow, soothing circles while your breathing comes down.
“Self-care day,” you mumble against his throat, chuckling softly.
He laughs, quiet and fond. “Told you I’d take care of you.”
— J. PRICE
John finds you standing in front of the bedroom mirror, fresh from the shower, towel discarded on the floor like an afterthought. You’re turning sideways, then forward again, fingers tugging at the dark curls between your thighs with a frown he recognises immediately.
He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. Watches you for a moment.
“Don’t even think about it, woman,” he says gruffly.
You jump, because of course you didn’t hear him coming. The man moves like smoke when he wants to. “Jesus, John—”
“I know that look.” He nods toward your hand. “You’re thinking about shaving.”
You tut. Caught again. “It’s gotten—”
“No.”
He pushes off the doorframe and crosses the room, calm and unhurried, the way he does everything. Like the world operates on his schedule and it knows better than to argue.
“You nicked yourself last time,” he reminds you, stopping behind your back. You can feel the warmth of him through his shirt, his breath against the top of your head. “Bled all over the damn bathroom. Looked like a crime scene.”
You frown. “It wasn’t that bad—”
“It was exactly that bad.” His steely eyes meet yours in the mirror. Steady and final. “You want to be smooth, I’ll do it. End of discussion.”
That tone from your husband. The one that ends briefings and closes arguments. It means Captain Price isn’t asking.
He takes his time setting up, because John Price has never rushed anything important in his life and he’s not about to start with a blade near your precious skin. Warm water in a bowl. A fresh razor—not the one you butchered yourself with last time, but his, the good one he keeps in the leather case. A flannel. Shaving soap that smells like sandalwood and menthol.
“On the bed,” he orders. “Edge. Legs apart.”
“John,” you try to reason again.
“Did I stutter?” And he gives you that look. The head tilt forward to look down at you.
And you sit obediently. He pulls the ottoman over, settles onto it between your knees like he’s sitting down to a job that requires patience and precision. Which, in his mind, it does. He drapes the warm flannel over you first—pressing it gently against the curls, softening the hair—and the heat makes you exhale slowly through your nose.
“Good girl,” he murmurs, absent and fond. “Just relax.”
He works the soap into a lather between his palms, and his hands are broad and rough and unhurried as he spreads it over you. Fingers moving through the hair with a kind of proprietary ease, like this is his to manage. His to maintain. You watch him from above—the focused set of his jaw, the silver threading through his beard, the absolute steadiness of his hands.
You exhale slowly, willing yourself to relax while heat starts pooling low in your belly. “You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to,” he interrupts calmly, picking up the razor. “I want to. Difference.”
The first stroke silences you. Slow, precise, the blade drawing a clean line through lather and hair. His free hand pulls the skin taut, and his eyes never leave his work with the same concentration you’ve seen him give to maps and mission briefs in his office.
He rinses the blade in warm water. Goes again.
“You’re quiet,” he remarks eventually, a hint of amusement buried under the gravel.
“Hard to be mouthy when your husband’s got a razor on your—”
“Careful.” But he’s smiling, just barely, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “Good time to practice some of that restraint I’m always on about.”
Stroke by stroke, he clears the hair away. Thorough. Methodical. He tilts your hips when he needs a better angle, adjusts your thigh with a tap of two fingers like he’s positioning you on instinct. There’s nothing rushed about it, nothing performative—just a man doing a job properly because it needs doing and he doesn’t trust anyone else to do it right.
When he’s finished, he sets the razor aside and wipes you clean with the warm flannel—slow and careful passes that make your freshly shaved skin prickle and sing. Then he sits back, hands on your knees, and surveys his work.
“There,” he murmurs, thoroughly satisfied. “That’s how it’s done, woman.”
“Thank you.” And when you try to close your legs to get up, his hands stop you.
“I’m not finished.”
Your breath catches. He hasn’t moved—still sitting on the ottoman, still between your thighs, still looking at you with that calm, unhurried authority. But something’s shifted in his expression. His gaze has darkened, and you very well know what that means.
Your stomach swoops. “John?”
“Lie back.”
And you do obediently. Again. Not because he’s ordered you to—though he has—but because when John Price uses that voice, your body just listens. Your back hits the duvet and you stare at the ceiling, heart hammering, while he pushes your thighs wider with both hands.
“Smooth,” he murmurs absentmindedly, running his palm over you, feeling his own handiwork. His thumb traces the edge of your slit; barely there, maddeningly light. “Soft.” His eyes flit up to look at you, almost smugly. “See what happens when you let me handle things?”
But you’re still staring at the ceiling, refusing to give him the satisfaction. “You’re insufferable.”
“And you’re wet.” John mentions it plainly, like a field observation. “Have been since I started. Thought I wouldn’t notice?” He snorts.
Your eyes close slowly, praying for patience. “Was hoping you wouldn’t.”
“I notice everything. Especially about my wife. You know that.” He leans forward, presses a kiss just above your mound. Utterly deliberate and proprietary. His beard scratches against the smooth skin and your hips jerk. His eyebrow raises. “Sensitive?”
You exhale a breath. “Your beard—”
“Mm.” He does it again—drags his jaw across the freshly shaved skin, rough against smooth, and the noise you make is mortifying. “That’s bloody new. Like that, do you?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, just settles in, hands hooking under your thighs, pulling you to the edge of the bed and into his mouth like he’s sitting down to a meal he intends to take his time with.
The first broad stroke of his tongue makes you arch clean off the mattress. He grunts, low and satisfied, and pins your hips down with one forearm.
“Stay put,” he mutters against you. “I mean it.”
And then he takes you apart.
It’s not frantic. It’s not teasing. It’s thorough. The way John does everything. Long, slow drags of his tongue from entrance to clit, tasting every inch of smooth skin, learning the new terrain with the same patient focus he gave the razor. His beard scrapes against your inner thighs, your lips, the crease of your legs, and the contrast—soft tongue, rough stubble—has you writhing within minutes.
“John—John—”
He hums against your clit and the vibration shoots straight up your spine. His hands tighten on your thighs, pulling you closer, burying himself deeper. He sucks your clit between his lips firmly and flicks his tongue over it in a tight rhythm that makes your hands fist in the duvet.
“Oh God—oh fuck—”
He pulls back. Just enough. Lips still brushing you when he speaks.
“Language, darling.”
“You’re eating me out!” you whine helplessly.
“And you’ll still mind your mouth in my house.” But there is a rumble underneath the words—amusement and bone-deep arousal, barely restrained—and his tongue is back on you before you can fire back, licking into you with a hunger that contradicts every ounce of composure in his voice.
John brings a hand up and slides two thick fingers inside you without preamble, curling them forward, and the sound you make is broken and loud and not remotely dignified. He groans at the feel of you clenching around him, and you feel it everywhere.
“That’s it,” he groans, low and rough. “That’s my gorgeous girl.”
He fucks you with his fingers—steady and deep, curling against the spot that makes your thighs shake—while his mouth works your clit in slow, sucking pulls. He’s not rushing but savouring. Taking you apart piece by piece with the same relentless patience he applies to everything, and you couldn’t stop the orgasm building in you if you tried.
“John—I’m close—”
“I know you are.” He doesn’t change pace. Just keeps that maddening, steady rhythm. “Come when you’re ready. I’ll be here.”
It hits you like a wave. Slow and devastating, rolling through you from the inside out. Your back arches, your legs lock around his wide shoulders, and you come on his tongue with his name in your mouth. John works you through every second of it, fingers still moving, tongue still pressing, until you’re shaking and pushing weakly at his head.
When he finally pulls back, he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Looks up at you with dark, satisfied eyes and a beard that’s matted and glistening with your come.
“See? That’s why you let me handle things.”
You can’t even argue with that. Not right now at least. You’re boneless, spent, staring at the ceiling while he presses a kiss to your inner thigh and stands—unhurried as ever, straightening his shirt like he didn’t just ruin you for the rest of the day.
“I’ll make us a tea,” he calls from the doorway, completely composed. “You’ll want a biscuit after that, because I’m going to fuck my wife later.”
— J. MACTAVISH
“Nae, hen.”
Like every time before, Johnny straight up refuses when you ask him to help you shave your bush.
He takes one glance at it and his pupils blow up like an IED, swallowing the baby blue of his irises within milliseconds.
“Why?” you whine, stomping your foot like a petulant bunny. “Johnny, pleeease! I can’t do it on my own! I cut myself last time!”
And you cross your arms, frowning at him, and hoping it’s enough to make him cave. But, alas, it is not.
“Good,” he retorts, turning back to the telly where some Premier League match is playing that he’s barely watching anymore. “Maybe tha’ll teach ye to leave her alone.”
Her.
“Johnny, it’s hair.”
“Aye, it’s hair. Her hair. And I fuckin’ like it.” He slings his arm over the back of the couch, manspreading like he owns the entire living room, eyes fixed on the screen with a stubbornness that makes you want to scream. “End of.”
“You don’t get to decide what I do with my own—”
“Never said I did,” he interrupts flatly, then glances at you sideways, grinning. “I said am no’ helpin’. Big fuckin’ difference, lass. Ye want to hack away at yerself in the bathroom again, be my guest. I’ll be here Mournin’.”
You cross your arms, scoffing, “You’re mourning my pubic hair.”
“Aye. She’s a right bonnie. Deserves better than some dull razor and yer shaky hands.”
You gape at him. He takes a slow sip of his beer, utterly unbothered, eyes back on the match. The audacity of this man. The sheer, Scottish audacity.
“Fine,” you snap, and yank your leggings down right there in the living room. “Look at it then. Look. It’s a mess, Johnny!”
That gets his attention.
He turns his head slowly, beer bottle halfway to his mouth, and his eyes drop between your thighs. The grin slides off his face and something else replaces it—something hotter, sharper. His jaw works. He shifts in his seat.
“Come here,” he demands suddenly.
“No. You said no.”
“I said come here.” He pats his thick thigh. “Need a closer look, don’t I? Cannae make a proper assessment from across the room.”
You know it’s a trap. You know it is. But he’s looking at you with those baby blue eyes and that crooked, shit-eating smile, and your feet are already moving.
He pulls you onto his lap the second you’re within reach—hands on your hips, spinning you so your back is against his chest, your bare arse settled right over the growing bulge in his joggers. He spreads your thighs with his knees, hooking your legs over the outside of his, opening you up.
Your eyes widen. “Johnny!”
“Shh, hen. ‘M assessin’.”
Johnny looks down over your shoulder, chin resting against your temple, and his hands slide down from your hips to your inner thighs. He spreads you open with both thumbs and makes a low, appreciative sound that vibrates through his chest and into your spine.
“Aye, see?” he says, voice dropping into something rougher. “Look at her. She’s fuckin’ gorgeous. All soft an’ warm." He drags his fingers through the curls, tugging gently, and your hips twitch. “Why would ye want to get rid of this?”
“Johnny, I just—”
“Nah, hold on, ‘m talkin’ to her, no' you.” He dips his head lower, mouth against your ear, but he’s addressing your exposed cunt like it’s a separate entity. “Don’t listen to her, sweetheart. She doesnae know what she’s got. Ye’re perfect.”
You sigh deeply, lips pursing. “You’re literally insane.”
“Aye, she says thank ye,” he continues, ignoring you completely. His fingers stroke through the hair again, lower this time, brushing your outer lips. “She’s happy. See? Nice and warm in her wee fur coat. Ye want to take that away from her? In this economy? In this weather?”
“It’s literally June, Johnny.”
“Could get cold! Ye don’t know!” His thumb grazes your clit—barely, just enough—and you gasp. He grins against your ear. “Oh, an’ she’s awake now. See that? She heard ye talkin’ aboot razors an’ she got scared. I’m just comfortin’ her.”
“You’re the worst person I’ve ever—hah—”
His thumb presses down, firm, and circles slowly. “What was tha’?”
“—ever met in my entire—fuck—”
Johnny chuckles with dark satisfaction. “That’s more like it.” He circles again, lazy, like he’s got all the time in the world, like the match is still the most important thing in the room. His other hand holds your thigh open, fingers digging into the soft flesh. “Look at ye. All wet already and I’ve barely touched her. She likes the bush, babe. She’s tellin’ ye.”
Your eyes squeeze shut, trying not to make another sound. “That’s not—that’s not how that works—”
“No?” He sinks a finger into you—just one for now, thick and rough—and you clench around him so hard your vision blurs. “Feels like it’s workin’ to me.”
He starts a rhythm—slow, dragging thrusts with his finger while his thumb circles your clit—and you’re melting into his chest, head falling back against his shoulder. The telly is still on, some commentator yelling about a foul, and Johnny’s watching the match over your shoulder like he’s not knuckle-deep inside your hairy cunt.
“Johnny—fuck—pay attention to me—”
“I am payin’ attention. Multitaskin’, lass. Top o’ ma fuckin’ class.” He crooks his thick finger, and you nearly come off his lap. “Ooh, there she is. Found the spot, aye?”
“Please—”
“Please what? Please shave ye?” He tsks, adding a second finger, stretching you. “Still nae. But I’ll make ye forget why ye wanted to in the first place. Deal?”
You whimper. He takes that as a yes.
Then he pulls his fingers out, and you do whine, loud and needy, and before you can protest, he’s lifting you off his lap and onto your feet. You sway, legs shaking, and he grins up at you as he slides down the couch, lying back with his head on the armrest.
“Come here,” he demands again, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it. He folds his arms behind his head, looking up at you like he’s just ordered room service. “Sit on my face.”
“You—what?”
Johnny snickers at the dumbstruck expression on your face. “Ye heard me.” He licks his lips. Obscenely slow and deliberate. Like a wolf licking its chaps. The bastard. “Bring her up here. I want to have a proper conversation.”
“A conversation,” you repeat, not amused.
“Aye. With my tongue. Now get up here before I drag ye.”
Your thighs are still trembling as you relent with a groan and climb over him, knees sinking into the couch cushions on either side of his head. You hover, suddenly self-conscious, and he rolls his eyes.
“Oh, fer fuck’s sake—” His brawny hands grip your hips and yank you down onto his mouth.
The first thing you feel is his groan—deep, guttural, vibrating against your cunt like he’s just taken a bite of the best thing he’s ever tasted. His tongue drags through your furry folds, broad and flat and filthy, and his fingers dig into the meat of your arse hard enough to leave bruises.
“Johnny—oh my God!”
He can’t answer with his mouth full of you, but he slaps your thigh once—hard—and you jolt. And the message is clear.
You roll your hips against his face, tentative at first, then harder when his tongue licks your clit and flicks over it in rapid, relentless strokes He’s making sounds beneath you, groaning into your cunt like he’s getting off on it as much as you are. Perhaps more. His nose presses into the curls he refused to shave and he inhales deeply, moaning like he’s dying.
“Taste so fuckin’ good,” he mumbles against you, pulling back just long enough to breathe. His chin is soaked, his eyes are five shades darker, and he’s grinning like a maniac. “Ride my face, sweetheart. Fuckin’ use me.”
His mouth seals over your clit again and he sucks hard, and your hand flies to the armrest for balance because your legs have stopped working entirely. He’s licking into you with his whole mouth now, tongue fucking you, slurping, then dragging back up to your clit, alternating between sucking and flicking in a rhythm designed to make you lose your mind.
“I’m—Johnny, I’m going to—fuck—!”
He pulls you tighter against his mouth, both hands gripping your arse and leaving finger-shaped marks, and his tongue works your clit in fast, tight circles while his nose presses against your mound and you come so hard your thighs clamp around his head and your whole body convulses.
He doesn’t stop. He licks you through it—slower now, gentler, long lazy strokes through your folds while you twitch and shake above him. When you finally collapse sideways onto the couch, boneless and gasping, he wipes his face with the back of his hand and sits up looking thoroughly pleased with himself; face shiny and mohawk wild.
“So,” he says, reaching for his beer on the side table like nothing happened. Like his grey joggers don’t have a large, damp patch on the front where his hard cock presses against it. “Still want to shave?”
You throw a cushion at his head.
He catches it, laughing—that big, stupid, full-body laugh that crinkles his whole face—and pulls you into his buff, hairy chest.
“That’s what I thought.” He presses a kiss to your hair. “Now let me watch the fuckin’ match.”
Warnings: really just tooth-rotting, sweet fluff. A small warning alluding to sex at the end and having another baby but other than that, it's soft.
Author's Note: This idea came to me very late and even though I am busy with a shit work schedule this week and college, I had to get this out of my head. I was also insired by the latest pics of Shawn 🤪 Anyway, I hope you all enjoy! For my besie @josephs-quinns
Between raising a daughter and working nights as an ER attending, Jack Abbot rarely had a moment to himself. Yet no matter how long the hours or how heavy the exhaustion settled into his bones, he always made time for his daughter and you. Somehow, he never stopped showing up. Today was no different.
After twelve relentless hours at PTMC, Jack was running on little more than caffeine and stubborn determination. Yet as he stepped out of his truck and looked toward the warm glow of the house, a small smile tugged at his lips. He knew exactly what was waiting for him on the other side of that door.
With a tired sigh, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and grabbed the stainless-steel tumbler that had carried him through the night. Empty now, it swung lightly from his hand as he climbed the front steps. With his free hand, he fished around in his pocket until his fingers found the familiar shape of his key.
He eased the key into the lock and slipped through the front door as quietly as he could. Chances were you and his baby girl were still asleep, and he intended to keep it that way. The house was peaceful, and after the chaos of the emergency room, he found himself reluctant to disturb it.
He dragged a hand down his face, feeling the coarse stubble that had taken over his jaw over the last few days. Shaving had fallen somewhere near the bottom of his priority list.
Easing out of his tennis shoes, he left them by the door and carefully set his backpack beside them. The house was quiet, the kind of peaceful silence that only existed in the hours before the rest of the world woke up.
He crossed the hardwood floor on silent feet and slipped into the kitchen. Setting his tumbler in the sink, he winced at the faint metallic clink that broke the stillness, then paused to listen. When no movement followed, he continued on, relieved he hadn’t disturbed anyone.
He decided a quick shower downstairs was in order before making his way upstairs. Then he’d crawl into bed beside you, burying himself in the familiar comfort of your arms and the scent of your shampoo before exhaustion finally claimed him. It had become a rountine neither of you ever spoke about, but one he looked forward to after every shift.
In a few hours, you’d wake before he did. You always did. While he caught up on the sleep he’d sacrificed all night for strangers, you’d keep your daughter occupied downstairs, filling the house with breakfast, cartoons, and quiet laughter so Daddy could rest a little longer.
As the hot water poured of him, Jack felt some of the day’s weight begin to slide from his shoulders. Twelve hours of chaos, fluroscent lights, and life-or-death decisions swirled down the drain along with the soap and sweat.
By the time he shut off the water, the knot between his shoulder blades had loosened, if only a little.
He grabbed a towel and dried himself off, the familiar scent of fresh detergent clinging to the fabric. The corners of his mouth twitched upward.
You always made sure the towels smelled good.
Dressed in a pair of sleep pants, he paused in front of the mirror and studied his reflection. Dark circles shadowed his eyes and several days worth of stubble covered his jaw,.
“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath.
He looked exhausted.
Worse than exhausted, really. Worn down. Like the last few weeks had caught up to him all at once.
It felt worse than when his daughter had first been born. At least back then, there’d been a reason for the sleepless nights. Tiny cries at three in the morning. Bottles. Diapers. The indescribable joy of holding his little girl against his chest.
This?
This was just work. Endless, exhausting work.
He decided—one again—that shaving could wait. Another day. Maybe two. At this rate, he might accidentally end up with a beard.
The thought made him huff out a quiet laugh.
Leaving the bathroom behind, he made his way upstairs, careful to avoid the creaky spots he knew by heart. The house remained silent around him as he climbed the staircase and headed down the hall toward the master bedroom.
The door was closed.
Of course it was.
You always slept with the door shut. Whether it was for privacy, comfort, or simply habit, he wasn’t entirely sure anymore. He’d stopped questioning it years ago. Now the sight of the closed door waiting for him at the end of a long shift felt oddly comforting—a small sign he was finally home.
He took a deep breath as his hand settled on the doorknob. Turning it carefully, he eased the door open, mindful not to disturb the peaceful scene he was certain awaited him on the other side.
As the door cracked open, you came into view.
You were curled up on your side of the bed, buried beneath the blankets, your hair spread across the pillow.
A smile immediately tugged at Jack’s lips.
Then his gaze shifted, and the smile grew.
Nestled beside of you was your four-year-old daughter, fast asleep and sprawled halfway across the mattress as if she owned it. One tiny hand rested against your shoulder, her favorite stuffed animal trapped beneath her arm.
Of course she’d ended up in your bed.
She must have wandered in sometime during the night after another bad dream or a sudden need for Mommy cuddles.
The sight alone was enough to melt away what remained of the exhaustion clinging to him. After twelve hours spent dealing witht he worst moments of other people’s lives, this felt like stepping into a different world entirely.
His world.
Jack quietly crossed to your side of the bed and leaned down, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of your head. His fingers slopped through your hair, brushing a few stray strands away from your face.
“Hey, baby,” he murmured.
You let out a sleepy hum, your eyes still closed.
“Mornin’,” you mumbled.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You awake?”
“Barely.”
Your hand drifted up, finding his jaw. The moment your fingertips brushed the rough stubbe there, you paused.
A sleepy frown crossed your face.
“Ow.”
Jack snorted. “Ow?”
You rubbed your thumb against his jaw again. “Your face is scratchy.”
“I just got home.”
“Mhm.” Your voice was thick with sleep. “And still haven’t shaved in days.”
He laughed quietly. “Is that a complaint?”
“It’s an observation.”
Your eyes fluttered open just enough to look at him. “A very, sexy concerning observation.”
Jack shook his head. “It isn’t that bad.”
“It absolutely is.” You yawned. “You kissed me and I thought a cactus had attacked my forehead.”
That earned a geniune laugh from him.
His gaze drifted down to your daughter, curled uop between the two of you, her stuffed rabbit tucked tightly against her chest.
“What happened here?”, he whispered.
You glanced down at her, your expression immediately softening. “Bad dream.”
His smile faded into concern. “Yeah?”
You nodded. “Came into our room around two in the morning crying about a monster in her closet.” You brushed a hand through your daughter’s messy hair. “I checked three times, but apparently sleeping with Mommy fixed everything.”
A sleepy chuckled escaped Jack. “Sounds serious.”
“Oh, extremely serious. The monster was apparently ‘this big’.” You held your fingers a few inches apart. “Terrifying stuff.”
He smiled, watching his daughter sleep peacefully now. “My poor baby girl.”
Careful not to wake her, Jack leaned over and pressed a gentle kiss on the top of her head.
The moment his stubbel brushed her skin, your daughter scrunched up her face in her sleep and let out a displeased little whine.
“She was okay after a few cuddles.” You glanced back up at him. “Though she did steal your side of the bed.”
Jack looked at the little girl sprawled diagonally across the mattress and huffed a laugh. Her tiny hand came up and rubbed the spot on her forehead before she burrowed deeper into the pillow, still fast asleep.
You immediately bit down on your lip, fighting a laugh.
“Even she thinks it’s scratchy.”
Jack groaned. “She’s four.”
“And yet she still agress with me.”
“I will shave soon,” Jack sighed, though a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Mhm.”
“I will.”
“That’s what you said three days ago.”
Then your hand found his jaw again. “I do mean it, though.”
Jack looked back at you. “What?”
“The stubble.”
A sleepy smile curved your lips.
“It’s sexy.”
His chest warmed instantly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, almost makes me want another one of these with you.”
You nodded towards your daughter.
“Maybe we can arrange that. Later.”, he laughed before kissing you on the lips.
“But seriously,” you began, breaking the kiss. “If it gets much longer, our daughter is gonna start introducing you as a mountain man.”
Jack laughed hard enough that he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from waking her.
“Now come to bed, mountain man”, you whispered, lifting the comforter for him. “Before you fall asleep standing up.”
Jack carefully climbed beneath the blankets, trying not to disturb his daughter. The moment he settled in, she instinctively scooted toward him in her sleep, throwing a leg across his waist.
You snorted. “Looks like she missed you.”
Jack wrapped an arm around her tiny frame and smiled, careful to kiss her hair this time. “Missed her too.”
There was nowhere else in the world he’d rather be.
"It’s gonna be ugly," he'd said, tugging you close in bed the night before. "Brutal. You don’t need to see it."
But the moment his voice cracked — the smallest tremor — you knew he needed you far more than he realized. So you went.
The set was colder than you expected — not just physically, but emotionally, too.
Everyone was professional, respectful, quiet. There was a certain heaviness in the air, a collective understanding: this was the scene.
Joel's end.
You found a corner near the monitors, out of the way but within Pedro's line of sight.
He spotted you instantly, his shoulders relaxing just a little.
You offered him a small smile, your fingers curling into a heart across your chest. Pedro smirked — a soft, private thing — before disappearing into character.
Watching him die was harder than you thought it would be.
Even though you knew the script.
Even though you knew it was fake.
Even though you knew Pedro was right there, breathing, alive.
It didn’t matter.
The first take, you had to clamp your hand over your mouth to keep from making a sound.
The second, you had tears streaming down your face.
By the third, you were practically vibrating with the need to just hold him.
Pedro was too good — too real — and seeing him broken, bloodied, gasping for air... it shattered something inside you. And it broke him, too.
Between takes, he'd shuffle off the set, still half in character, his face caked in horrifying makeup — bruises, cuts, blood.
You could see it: the way his shoulders curled inward, the way he struggled to shake off the sadness clinging to him.
Without thinking, you rushed to him.
Someone must've snapped a picture right then — you wrapping your arms around Pedro, burying your face in his chest like you could protect him from the script itself.
Pedro clinging back just as tightly, his hands trembling slightly against your spine.
In full dead-Joel makeup, he looked terrifying.
But to you, he was just Pedro.
Your Pedro.
You kissed his jaw, whispered, "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here," like a mantra only he was meant to hear.
He breathed out a shaky laugh, squeezing you harder.
"You shouldn’t have come," he rasped, voice thick with emotion.
"You needed me," you murmured back, pulling away just enough to cup his battered-looking face in your hands.
Another picture captured the moment his forehead pressed to yours, his fake blood smearing across your skin, neither of you caring.
You stayed like that for a long time — just holding each other, grounding each other — until the director gently called him back.
Pedro kissed your forehead once, lingering.
"Stay where I can see you," he whispered.
You nodded, your heart in pieces.
The rest of the day blurred into a series of heartbreaking takes, whispered reassurances, and moments where Pedro would glance over, find your eyes, and remember he wasn't really alone in all this.
At one point, between scenes, you climbed into his lap in a quiet corner, wrapping yourself around him like armor.
He buried his face in your neck, breathing you in.
Someone took a picture of that too.
And another, later, when it was all over — when Pedro, still painted like a corpse, cradled you as you cried silently into his shoulder, overwhelmed by everything you'd seen. He rocked you gently, whispering soothing nonsense into your hair.
"I'm okay, cariño. It's just pretend. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
The BTS pictures dropped a week later.
The fandom imploded.
There you were, in shot after shot — holding Pedro like your life depended on it, him holding you back, both of you wearing your hearts on your sleeves.
#protectpedropascal trended within minutes.
#protecthisgirl wasn't far behind.
Tweets poured in:
"They’re literally saving each other."
"How am I supposed to survive knowing Pedro Pascal cuddled his wife through fake death?"
"Someone write fanfic about THEM, they’re the real love story."
"This is the most devastating and healing thing I’ve ever seen."
Pedro reposted one of the pictures on his Instagram story — the one where you were cradling his battered face, forehead to forehead.
No caption.
Just a heart.
You, watching from the couch, sniffled pathetically.
Pedro grinned, pulling you into his arms.
"You saved me that day," he said softly.
"You saved me too," you whispered back.
And you would — over and over again, for the rest of your lives.
requested! thank you. ♡
content: fluff, comfort, period care (yay), spanish pet names
You always felt it creeping in a few days before—your body begging for more rest, your mood going softer, and your need for Pedro’s arms increasing by the hour. By the time your period actually arrived, you were wrapped up in blankets, hair mussed, eyes heavy-lidded, and already leaning on him like he was your personal pillow.
Pedro loved it. He loved you, always, but there was something about your sleepy, clingy self that made his heart squeeze.
This morning he stirred before you. The sunlight was barely peeking through the blinds, his alarm already silenced with a lazy swipe. He had work soon, but right now? You were curled into his chest, your breath warm against his shirt, and there was no way he’d let you go.
He tightened his arms around you, kissing your hair.
“Mi vida,” he whispered, his voice husky with sleep. “Duerme, mi niña. I’ve got you.”
You hummed, half-asleep, and nuzzled closer. The warmth of him, the scratch of his beard against your temple, the slow beat of his heart—everything felt like a lullaby.
By the time you stirred again, Pedro had already gotten up, showered, and—apparently—done the chores. You blinked awake to find the laundry folded at the end of the bed and the kitchen sounding faintly like fresh coffee.
Dragging yourself out of bed, you padded over to find him at the counter, sleeves pushed up, towel draped on his shoulder. He was humming softly, the smell of coffee and toasted bread filling the air.
“Pedro…” Your voice was still raspy from sleep. “You did my part.”
He glanced up, smiling like you’d just caught him red-handed in the sweetest crime.
“Good morning, princesa. Sleep well?”
You crossed your arms, pouting. “You weren’t supposed to do my chores. That was my part.”
Pedro walked over, coffee cup in hand, and pressed it gently into yours. Then he leaned down, lips brushing your forehead.
“Shhh. No protest, cariño. I wanted you to rest.”
“But—”
“No buts.” He tilted your chin up, smiling that soft, stubborn smile. “I know how tired you get, mi amor. It’s no big deal. Let me take care of you.”
The lump in your throat gave you away. You melted instantly, eyes prickling with tears as you clung to his shirt. He laughed quietly, wrapping his arms around you again, guiding you toward the couch.
“You’re ridiculous,” you mumbled into his chest, already half-dozing again.
“And you’re perfect,” he countered, settling with you across his lap. He tugged the blanket over both of you, letting you bury yourself into the warmth of his body. His hand stroked slow, lazy circles on your back.
Your eyelids fluttered. Sleep tugged again, heavier this time, but before you drifted off, you caught the sound of his voice—soft, low, threading through your dreams.
“Te amo, mi niña bonita. Duerme, descansa. I’ll be right here.”
You smiled against him, sinking deeper into the cocoon of his arms. His scent, his warmth, his voice in Spanish lulling you under—everything was perfect. Even when he finally had to leave for work, Pedro would still carry the imprint of you in his arms, your sleepy smile etched into his memory.
It was movie night, you both loved movie nights!! Early on in your relationship, it was a way to spend time together after work, unwinding and talking about each other's day while you cuddled on the couch. You would put on some god-awful sci-fi movie that Ryland would be making fun of and pointing out all the incredibly inaccurate special effects they had. But you wouldn’t spend your nights any other way.
You were laying on top of him on the couch, his arm lazily encircled your back and draw figures of eight into the soft fabric of his borrowed shirt. He was mumbling something about there being no sound in space, which makes you smile at how ridiculous he could be sometimes. Your head moves to get a better view of his scrunched up nose and exasperated expression.
Ryland peaks down when he felt the movement on his chest, and his face instantly switched into a small smile when he looks at you, making your heart flutter. He always managed to make you giddy in the stupidest ways possible.
His hand came up to smooth the baby hairs at the top of your head, which didn't do much since they will never go down. Then it traveled back down, tracing the vertebrae of your spine. It was a soothing touch, one he does almost every single time he manages to have you this close to him.
“Are you liking it?” He asked
“Mmm nooo, it’s boring,” you admit, looking back at the tv. You felt his laugh, his chest rising and falling with each little noise he made.
“Yeah it is”, he responds. His hand stopped on the small of your back, lingering. You were about to turn back to him but he tapped you gently, “Gotta pee.”
You giggle, getting off of him and watching his figure retreat into the dark hallway. You take that as your moment to walk to the kitchen to grab something to drink. You don’t bother flicking the light on; you knew the place like the back of your hand at this point. Grabbing one of his mismatched cups from the drying rack, you fill it with water and bring it up to your lips to feel the cool liquid go down your throat. You turn around, hearing the TV still on in the other room, the light of it casting a cold shine into the hallway. As if on cue, Ryland's figure comes back into view, startling slightly when he sees you standing in the dark kitchen. You try not to laugh at the way he looks like he saw a ghost, skin turning pale, and all.
“What’re you doing there!?” He asked with a far too high pitch, making him cough into his hand to play it off.
You raise the cup, which he could barely see, “Water.”
He steps into the kitchen, and just like you, ignored the light switch on the wall as he walks past it, deciding to lean against the fridge, a few feet away.
“Kinda creepy.” He jokes, watching as you drink some more, crossing his arms over his chest.
You shrug, placing the cup on the counter so you could lift yourself up, trying to be eye to eye with him. He took it as an invitation to get closer, stepping between your legs and resting his hands on either side of you.
It took him a moment to realize what he did, but he didn’t falter. There was a shift in the atmosphere when he just stayed there, looking at you with that oh so in love gaze. There was a beat of silence, Ryland's eyes flickered between your eyes and your lips, cocking his head to the side so gently.
“This ok sweets?” He muttered when he leaned in closer, hot breathes against your skin.
“Yeah” your response was barely there, but he heard it.
Ryland leaned in, closing the gap with a slow kiss. His hand came to cup your jaw, guiding you to follow his leisurely pace. He hummed against your lips, leaning away slightly just to look at you, pulling your bottom lip down with his thumb, watching it bounce back into place with a lazy smile, before tenderly going back in for more.
His fingers felt soft against your skin, the frame of his glasses nudging against your own, something you’ve grown used to when you both kiss. Your arms came up to wrap around his shoulders, fingers running slowly through his hair before settling at the base of it, scratching lightly at the short hairs, earning a whiny noise from him. You felt his other hand grab your hip, rubbing up and down your waist for a few seconds, before it found its way to the hem of your shirt and nudged it upwards, letting his cold fingers settle against the warm skin of your waist. The contrast of it made you arch your body away from his hand, but he just pulls you closer to the edge, until you were just leaning on him.
You gasped at the sudden movement, and his freezing fingers (genuinely, you’d think he's a dead body or something), giving him access as his tongue slowly licked your bottom lip, prying your mouth open with ease. The movements were measured, he’s exploring every corner of your mouth, furrowing his brows because he can’t lean in more, can't have more of your sweet taste that he simply can’t get enough of.
At no point does he try to change the tempo; he kept it easy, slow, and steady because it was too late to even think about doing anything else. Besides, why rush something that he wishes could last forever?
“Can we go back to the couch?” You mumble your words against his lips when he pulls away for a sliver of a second. He licks his lips, his wide, dark pupils look up to meet yours, which are in the same state, and he nods sluggishly.
You were about to hop off the counter to walk over, but he pulled you closer by his hand on your hip, his other tapping your thigh, beckoning you to wrap your legs around his waist.
“Mmm heavy,” you slurred, pecking his lips so that he’ll let go, but he didn’t, just pulled you off the counter with a quiet grunt. You yelped, wrapping your arms around his neck tighter. “Ry-!”
“You weren’t gonna fall.” His voice was heavy, and you could sense the smile in it.
When he gets to the couch, he places you softly on your back, not missing a beat to settle his legs between yours. His chest pressed against yours for a second before he held himself up with his arms, resting near your head at the top of the couch. He’s smiling down at you with those sweet eyes, the light of the TV casting a blue hue on his face, which just makes him look even more angelic.
“Hi” you whisper, feeling your heart hammering in your chest. It’s not the first time hes this close to you, but you can’t help but get nervous at just how pretty he is.
And you’re not the only one. His own hands felt shaky, not because he can’t support his own weight, but because. God, how is it that you can be so pretty no matter how he looks at you?
“Hey” he responds, quickly pecking your lips once, twice, thrice, and pulling away to run his fingers through the front pieces of your hair, pushing them aside so he could get a full view of your face. “I’m so lucky to have you”
You laugh quietly when he comes back for one more, feeling that warm sensation forming again in the bottom of your stomach. Your nails take a slow path up his forearm, coming to a slow stop at his bicep, squeezing the muscle gently, earning a smile from him against your lips.
After a few more minutes of kissing and giggles between the two of you, Ryland pulls away, kissing the top your nose, and then nuzzled against it with his own.
Thermal Equilibrium Ryland Grace/Reader | Explicit, MDNI | ~4.7k words
Tags: cockwarming, established relationship, humor, explicit, fully au, domestic au, one-shot, female reader insert, he will not stop talking, the experiment gets away from him
You wanted stillness. He wanted to understand stillness, which is a different thing entirely, and requires a methodology, and apparently several variables he needs to isolate. The problem is Ryland Grace has never been quiet for more than eleven seconds in his life, and right now he is very warm, very inside you, and extremely busy explaining thermodynamics.
[ Cross posted on Ao3 ] [ fic masterlist ]
There is a particular kind of quiet that only happens when Ryland Grace has run out of things to say, and you have learned, over the better part of a year, that it never lasts longer than it takes him to think of one more thing.
Right now it has lasted eleven seconds. You are counting, because counting is contagious and you have caught it from him like a cold.
You are in his lap. Properly in his lap, settled all the way down, the both of you bare and warm under the good blanket on the couch that smells like him and faintly like the lemon thing he uses on his hands. His back is against the armrest. Your knees are bracketing his hips. He is inside you and neither of you is doing anything about it.
It is a Saturday, which is relevant context. Saturdays in this apartment have a shape: he sleeps in until some ungodly hour like eight, makes coffee badly, grades a stack of seventh-grade lab reports at the kitchen table while reading the funniest answers aloud whether you ask him to or not, and then somewhere around early afternoon, having run out of obligations, he gets restless in his skin and goes looking for something to investigate. Usually that means a kitchen experiment or taking apart the toaster that works fine. Today it meant you, and a thing he read about, and a careful negotiation conducted mostly while undressing.
So now it is mid-afternoon, the light coming sideways and gold through the blinds, a half-graded lab report still face down on the coffee table where he abandoned it, his glasses the only thing he is still technically wearing, and you are sitting full and still in his lap conducting research. There is a mug of his terrible coffee going cold on the side table. There is a documentary he put on hours ago and forgot about, paused on a frame of a jellyfish. The apartment has the specific stillness of a weekend with nowhere to be, and into that stillness he has introduced the one experiment guaranteed to test it.
That is the entire arrangement. That is the whole plan. He is inside you, and you are simply sitting there, and the rule, the single rule he himself laid down with the gravity of a man chalking an equation onto a board, is that nobody moves.
It was his idea.
You want that on the record, because in about ninety seconds it is going to stop being relevant to him that it was his idea, and you intend to remind him.
His hands are resting on your hips. Not gripping. Resting, the way you rest your hands on something you are trying very hard not to touch. His glasses have already gone askew. You did not do that. He did that, somewhere in the last eleven seconds, by frowning thoughtfully at the middle distance over your shoulder.
"Okay," he says.
You wait.
"Okay, so," he says, and stops again, and his hands tighten by maybe two millimeters, and you feel the whole length of him go a little harder inside you in a way that is involuntary and that he absolutely registers, because his breath catches and then he says, with enormous dignity, "that's just data."
"That's data," you agree.
"That's the experiment working."
"Mm."
"The experiment is going great."
The experiment is going great the way a soufflé is going great in the thirty seconds before it isn't.
—
It started, as a frankly indecent number of things start with him, with an article.
You don't even know where he finds them. He surfaces from his phone roughly twice a week with some new fact lodged in him like a splinter, and you have learned to recognize the symptoms: the eyebrows go up, the phone comes down, and he turns to you with the expression of a golden retriever that has found a second tennis ball.
Three nights ago the symptoms had presented over dinner.
"Did you know," he had said, around a mouthful of the pasta, which is a sentence that has preceded some of the strangest conversations of your adult life, "that people do a thing where the guy just. Stays in. On purpose. And nothing happens."
You had put down your fork. "I'm familiar with the concept, yeah."
"You're familiar with it." He had pointed his own fork at you, delighted, betrayed, thrilled. "Okay, see, this is the thing about you. I bring you a fact and you already have the fact. How do you already have the fact."
"It's a fairly well known fact."
"It is not a well known fact, it is a fact I just learned, which by definition makes it cutting edge." He had leaned in. "But okay, here's what I don't get. Walk me through the appeal. Because as far as I can tell the appeal is, and I want to make sure I'm reading this right, the appeal is nothing. The appeal is that nothing happens. You go to all this trouble to get into a position where historically a great deal happens, and then, on purpose, like monks, you make nothing happen."
"It's about closeness," you had said. "Being close. Staying connected. It's not about the friction, it's about the. You know. The being."
He had stared at you for a moment with the specific stricken wonder of a man encountering a foreign cuisine he has decided he must understand from the inside out.
"The being," he had repeated.
"The being."
He had set his fork down entirely at that point, which is how you know a thing has truly taken hold of him, because Ryland Grace abandoning food mid-meal is a seismic event.
"Okay, but here's my problem," he had said. "And it's a methodology problem. Because everything I'm good at, everything, the whole skill set, it's all about doing. You give me a problem, I poke it, I take it apart, I build a worse version and then a better version, I run it twenty times. Right? That's the move. That's the only move I have." He had gestured with both hands, knocking the salt over, ignoring it. "And you're telling me there's a whole, a whole discipline, where the entire point is to not do the thing. To just hold still and let it happen to you. That's. I don't even have the wiring for that. That's like asking a shark to stop swimming and appreciate the ocean."
"Sharks do have to keep swimming, though."
"Exactly! Thank you! That's my entire point! I'm a shark!" He had been thrilled to be a shark. "I would die. Conceptually. If I stopped."
"It's not really a swim-or-die situation."
"Everything's a swim-or-die situation if you think about it hard enough," he had said, which is the single most Ryland thing he has ever said at a dinner table, and you had married the idea of him a little further in your head right then, the way you do about twice a week.
"I need to try this," he had said, the way other men announce they need to see a specialist.
So here you are. Being.
—
"It's basically thermal equilibrium," he says now, twelve, thirteen seconds into the quiet, because he cannot leave a silence the way some people cannot leave a hangnail.
"Is it."
"It's totally thermal equilibrium. Okay, imagine, no, okay. You've got two objects, right, two bodies, different temperatures, and you put them in contact, and heat flows from the hot one to the cold one until they hit the same temperature and then. Nothing. Net zero. No more heat moving. That's equilibrium. That's us. We're two bodies that have reached the same temperature and now there's no net flow and it's peaceful, it's the most peaceful thing in the universe, it's the heat death of the universe except cozy."
"You've made cockwarming about the heat death of the universe."
"I've made it cozy," he says, wounded. "Were you listening. Cozy heat death. That's the whole pitch."
You shift your weight. Just barely. Just enough to settle a little deeper, not even on purpose, the kind of small adjustment a body makes on its own when it's getting comfortable.
His hands clamp down on your hips like he's bracing for reentry.
"Don't," he says, strangled. "Don't, that's, you can't do that, that's against the rules, those are my rules."
"I didn't do anything."
"You did a thing."
"I breathed."
"You breathed with intent."
You hold very still, and you let your face do nothing at all, which you have discovered is the single most devastating weapon in your arsenal where he is concerned. Ryland Grace can survive almost anything except an audience that refuses to react.
He looks at you for a long moment. His glasses are now at a genuinely impressive angle. There is a flush coming up his throat that you can feel more than see, the warmth of him radiating where your chest is against his.
"You're really good at this," he says, and it comes out almost accusatory.
"At sitting still?"
"At sitting still. Yeah. You're a natural. It's annoying. I'm the one who proposed the study and you're out here being zen about it and I'm." He swallows. "I'm having a lot of thoughts."
"What kind of thoughts."
"Scientific ones."
"Uh huh."
"Rigorous ones," he insists, and then his hips do a thing, the smallest unconscious flex upward, barely a centimeter, the kind of motion a body makes entirely without consulting its owner, and you both feel it, and he says "okay that wasn't me, that was an autonomic response, that doesn't count, the brain didn't authorize that."
"The brain's not really running the show right now, is it."
"The brain," he says with dignity, "is collecting valuable data."
The thing about him, the thing you fell for somewhere around the second month, is that he cannot do anything without trying to understand it, and he cannot try to understand a thing without poking it.
So of course he starts adjusting variables.
It begins almost innocently. His hands, which have been gripping your hips like handles, gentle, and start to move. Not anywhere scandalous. Up your sides, slow, mapping. You recognize the touch. It's the same touch he uses on a problem, the same patient curious pressure he puts on anything he's trying to figure out, and the fact that the thing he's trying to figure out is you makes something low in your stomach pull tight.
"So like," he murmurs, and his thumbs have found the dip of your waist and settled there, "the interesting thing is the anticipation, right, because nothing's happening, so your nervous system is just. Idling. It's revving. It's like sitting at a red light with the engine going." His thumbs stroke once. "Everything's primed and there's nowhere for it to go."
"You're narrating," you tell him.
"I narrate, it's a whole thing, you knew this going in." His mouth has wandered to your jaw. Not kissing. Just resting there, breathing you in, talking against your skin so you feel every word as much as hear it. "The question I have, the real research question, is whether the stillness amplifies sensation or dulls it, because there's an argument both ways. Like on one hand, no new stimulus, so you'd think it'd fade. Habituation. You stop feeling your own socks after a minute, right. But on the other hand."
He goes quiet.
You wait.
"On the other hand," he says, and his voice has dropped about half an octave, "I can feel your pulse."
You go still in a different way.
"Right here," he says, soft, wondering, the wonder doing the thing it always does where it stops being funny and starts being unbearable. "I can feel your heartbeat. From the inside. I didn't, I didn't know I'd be able to feel that. It's going kind of fast, by the way. For someone so zen."
"Shut up."
"I'm just collecting data."
"Collect it quietly."
"That's not really my strong suit," he says against your throat, and you can feel him grin, and then he goes thoughtful in the specific dangerous way that means he's had an idea. His hand slides up your spine to the back of your neck, cradling. "Okay, new variable, hold on, I want to isolate one thing." And he tips his head and kisses you. Slow. Deep. The kind of kiss that has a thesis. The whole time his other hand stays flat and still on your hip, anchoring you down onto him, so the only thing moving anywhere between the two of you is his mouth on yours, and somehow that makes it worse, makes the stillness everywhere else roar.
When he pulls back his pupils are blown and he looks genuinely rattled by his own findings.
"Yeah, that's, okay, that did something," he reports, a little hoarse. "That changed the readings. The readings are way up. I felt you do that thing, the clench thing, you did the clench thing when I kissed you, don't tell me you didn't, I have direct evidence."
"That's not fair."
"Science isn't fair," he says, delighted and wrecked. "Science is just true."
"That's not what that means."
"It's what it means tonight," he says, and then, because he is who he is, because the curiosity is always going to win, his hands slide around to your back and pull you in that final fraction so there is no space left anywhere between you, and he exhales like a man who has just understood something. "Oh, that's the appeal. Okay. Okay, yeah. I get it now. I get the being."
And the worst part, the part that undoes you, is that he means it. He's not performing. He has genuinely, in this moment, with his glasses crooked and his heart hammering against your chest and himself buried as deep in you as he can get without moving, arrived at a real understanding of why people do this, and the understanding has cracked something open in him, and the something is tenderness, and it is pouring out of him at a rate his mouth cannot keep up with.
"You're a menace," you tell him, but your voice has gone unsteady.
"I'm a scientist," he says, and kisses you.
That's where it starts to come apart, and it comes apart on his end first, which is exactly how you both secretly knew it would go.
Because once he's kissing you he can't stop talking into the kisses, and once he's talking he's getting worked up, and once he's worked up his hands won't stay still, and his hands not staying still means his whole body wants to follow, and the entire structure of the experiment is now resting on the willpower of a man who has never successfully resisted finding out what happens next.
"The hypothesis," he says against your mouth, breathing hard, "the hypothesis was that I could just. Be. Be in the moment. Very enlightened. Very still."
"Mm hm."
"I want to flag that the hypothesis is in trouble."
"Is it."
"It's in serious trouble. We may need to revise the hypothesis. The hypothesis may need to be that I have the self control of a, of a, I don't even have an analogy, that's how bad it is, the analogy generator is offline."
You almost laugh, and then you make a decision, and you do not move at all.
You stay completely, perfectly, infuriatingly still. You let him do all the wanting. You sit there, warm and soft and unhurried in his lap, and you watch the experiment he designed turn around and start running him.
His hips flex again. He catches it. Stops.
His breath shudders out.
"Okay, I'm controlling for breathing," he announces, to nobody, to the ceiling, in the voice of a man clutching the last shred of his methodology. "If I just regulate the breathing, right, box breathing, in for four, hold for four, the Navy SEALs do it, I read a thing, I can bring the whole system back down to baseline and then I can. I can just." He takes a slow, deliberate, theatrical breath in, and you feel his chest expand against yours, and you feel exactly what that does to the rest of him where he's seated inside you, and so does he, because the breath comes out as a wreck instead of a four-count. "Okay, the breathing makes it worse. Filing that. Breathing is contraindicated. Who knew. Everybody, probably. Everybody knew."
"You're doing great."
"I'm doing terribly, and we both know it, and the cruel thing, the genuinely cruel thing, is that you're enjoying watching me do terribly."
You are. You make absolutely no effort to hide it.
"You could just," he tries.
"Mm?"
"You could just move. A little. Hypothetically. For science."
"But it was so peaceful," you say. "The cozy heat death. I was really getting into the being."
He makes a sound that is not a word.
"You said nobody moves," you remind him sweetly. "Those were the rules. Your rules."
"I have done extensive research since I made those rules," he says, very fast. "There's new data. The rules are out of date. I'm issuing a correction. A formal correction. I was wrong, the original parameters were flawed, I'd like to move now please, I'd really like to move, I think about thirty seconds ago I would have said I could do this all day and I want to retract that, I want it stricken from the record, please."
"You're begging."
"I am peer reviewing," he gasps, and his hands are gripping you again, white knuckled, and the flush has gone all the way up to his hairline, and his glasses are so far gone they're practically vertical, and he is the single most undone you have ever seen a fully verbal human being get, and he has not moved an inch, because the one thing more powerful in him than the wanting is the part of him that will not, ever, be the one to break a rule he set for the experiment, even as the experiment dismantles him in real time.
It is, you decide, the most him thing you have ever witnessed.
So you take pity on him.
You lean in, your lips against the shell of his ear, and you feel him go rigid with hope, and you say, very quietly, "Okay."
And you move.
The sound he makes when you finally roll your hips is not dignified, and you treasure it, because Ryland Grace has been talking for what feels like a geological age and you have rendered him, for one perfect second, completely silent.
It lasts exactly that one second.
"Oh thank god," he breathes, and then he's moving, finally, hips driving up to meet you as you sink back down, and the first real slide of him is so much after all that holding that you both make a noise into it. His hands clamp on your hips and drag you down onto him, all the way, deep enough that you feel it in your stomach, and the relief in him is so total it's almost a religious experience. He's laughing, breathless and a little wild, the way he laughs when something works. "Oh, okay, yeah, no, this, this is the appeal, I had it backwards, the appeal is when you stop, the stopping is the appeal because then there's the. The." He loses the word as you grind down hard and feel him twitch inside you. "The starting. God. The starting is the whole thing. Don't stop, do not stop, that's an official finding."
"I thought it was about the being."
"It's about the becoming," he says, which is either profound or completely meaningless, and you don't care which, because his hands are everywhere now and his mouth has found your throat and the careful, agonizing stillness of the last however-long has wound you both so tight that every drag of him in and out of you lands like something much bigger than it is. You're slick enough that there's no friction left to fight, just the slow obscene ease of taking all of him and lifting off and taking him again, and the wet sound of it fills the quiet where his voice used to be.
You set the pace. He lets you. That's the deal you've worked out over months, that he can run his mouth about variables and equilibria all he likes but in the end he goes pliant and grateful under your hands, follows wherever you take him. So you take him slow. You ride him in long unhurried strokes, drawing all the way up until he's barely inside you, until he's panting and his fingers are flexing helplessly against your skin, and then down again, slow, slow, watching his eyes roll back. The contrast, the manic brilliant chatterbox going soft and obedient and wrecked underneath you, is something you will never, ever get tired of.
"You held out," you tell him, rolling your hips in a slow grind that has him gasping. "You actually held out. I'm impressed."
"I'm a professional." His voice is shredded. "I'm extremely. Professional. I had a hypothesis and I tested it and the hypothesis was that I'd die, and I was right, I'm dying, this is what dying is, write it down," and the last word breaks in half as you clench around him on a downstroke, deliberate, just to watch it happen.
His head goes back against the armrest. "Okay, that's, you can't just, that's not in the protocol, you can't do that," but his hips are snapping up into you now, losing the rhythm, chasing it, all his careful method dissolving into want. One of his hands leaves your hip and slides between you, thumb finding you exactly where you need it because of course he knows, he has studied you the way he studies everything, and the first slow circle he draws makes your whole body jolt down onto him.
"There she is," he says, ragged and delighted and reverent all at once. "Okay. Okay, I've got data on this, I know what this does," and he does it again, steady pressure in time with the way you're riding him, and the two sensations stack and stack and you stop being able to keep your pace even. "Yeah. Yeah, there you go. You're allowed to fall apart, that's, I'd actually really like to observe that, for science, please, I want to feel it."
"You're going to make me," you manage.
"That's the entire research objective," he gasps. "That was always the objective. Come on. Come on, I've got you, I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere, I'm cozy heat death, remember, no net flow," and he's babbling now, half nonsense, his thumb relentless and his hips driving up to bury himself in you again and again, and the wound-tight pressure that's been building since the very first still minute finally crests and breaks. You come hard around him, clenching tight, and you hear him swear, genuinely swear, the fear-gauge profanity he saves for when the floor drops, because the feeling of you tightening on him is the thing that finally takes him too. He pulls you down flush and holds you there and lets go with a broken sound against your throat, hips stuttering up into you, spilling deep while you're still pulsing around him, both of you locked together at the exact point where neither of you can tell whose shaking is whose.
For a long moment there is no net flow at all. Just the two of you, joined, gasping, finding the same temperature.
When you finally lift your head he's looking at you with his crooked glasses and his blown pupils and that specific expression he gets, the one underneath all the noise, the one that you don't think he knows he makes. The one that says you are the most interesting thing that has ever happened to him and he cannot believe his luck and he is a little bit scared of how much he means it.
He gets there late. He gets there sideways. But he gets there.
"Hey," he says, soft, and for once there's no preamble, no analogy, no okay-so. Just: "I'm really glad it was you who already knew the fact."
Your heart does something complicated.
"Why's that," you manage.
"Because I would've been embarrassed to be this bad at sitting still in front of anyone else," he says, and grins, and ruins the moment perfectly, on purpose, the way he always does the second a feeling gets too big to hold, and you love him so much in that instant that you have to close your eyes.
---
You stay like that for a while, the two of you, not moving for an entirely different reason now. He's still inside you, softening, and neither of you is in any hurry to change that, which strikes you as funny given that not moving was the whole problem twenty minutes ago. His hand has found the back of your head again and he's just holding it there, thumb tracing slow shapes you don't think he's aware of, his heartbeat slowing under your cheek from a sprint to a walk to something steady.
"You okay," he murmurs into your hair. The voice has gone soft and low, the post-disaster voice, the one that comes out after the engine cools.
"Mm."
"You went somewhere at the end there."
"I did."
"Good somewhere?"
"Very good somewhere."
He's quiet for a second, and you can feel him deciding whether to make a joke, and you can feel him choose not to, which is its own small miracle.
"I think I had the appeal backwards the whole time," he says instead, slow, working it out the way he works everything out, sideways and out loud. "I kept thinking the still part was the experiment and the moving part was the reward. But it's not two things. It's the same thing. The staying still is just. It's trust, right. It's me sitting here doing nothing useful and you letting me, and neither of us going anywhere." A pause. "That's the whole experiment. That's all it ever was. Everything else was just me being a shark about it."
You lift your head to look at him, because that is dangerously close to him being cleanly self-aware, and you want to see it before it evaporates.
It evaporates. He sees you looking and the grin comes back, sheepish, reflexive, the shutter coming down over something he showed you for exactly one second.
"Don't write that down," he says. "That one's not for the record."
"Too late."
"You can't publish that, it's not peer reviewed."
"I'm publishing it everywhere."
"Devastating," he says happily, and pulls you back down against his chest, and you let him.
After, much after, when the experiment has reached its actual conclusion and you are both a boneless tangle on the couch with the good blanket half on the floor and his glasses somewhere that is going to be a problem to find later, he is quiet again.
Genuinely quiet. The rare kind. The kind that means he's run out, fully, that the engine has finally idled all the way down.
You give it eleven seconds.
You count.
At twelve, predictably, gloriously, he stirs against you, and you feel him take a breath to say something, and you brace for it.
"So in conclusion," Ryland Grace says, to the ceiling, with the deep satisfaction of a man filing a final report, "the appeal is real, the methodology was sound, and I think for the next round we should isolate some additional variables."
You don't even open your eyes.
"Go to sleep, Ryland."
"I'm just saying. For science."
"Sleep."
He goes quiet. He lasts almost thirty seconds this time.
It's a personal best, and you tell him so, and he's so pleased about it that he forgets to keep talking, which is how you finally, both of you, reach equilibrium.
I love the idea of Aerion being a loser for his wife. I will read it whenever its published. But Valarr will always be the OG pathetic loser husband! 🙂↕️✋️
A little idea for ITIMMWAU (OG edition), Aelias definately takes after his father, he misses his mother just as much. Reader probably went to meet her brother for two days, and now Baelor has to deal with two sulking princes. Valarr, who has gone back to staring at his locket during the council meetings, and Aelias, who disturbs the said council meeting every 10 minutes or so to ask his sire and grandsire if his mother is back yet.
Two Sleeps
Valarr Targaryen X Reader "ITIMMW AU"
Summary: In which your son misses you
WC: 3k
AN: Sorry for the late answer it was in my notes and i forgot i had it😭
The raven arrived on a Tuesday, and Valarr's world collapsed. Not really. It was just two days. Forty eight hours. Less time than he had spent apart from you a hundred times before. But somehow, with Aelias now three years old and capable of expressing his feelings with words instead of just screams, the parting felt infinitely worse.
Your brother's wife had given birth again. Another girl. Healthy, screaming, perfect. And your brother, the fool, had written to say that he needed you there because his wife was "unwell" and he was "overwhelmed" and you were "the only person who could help."
You had read the letter aloud to Valarr at breakfast. Aelias had been sitting between you, smearing porridge across his face and the table and his father's sleeve.
"I have to go," you had said.
Valarr had opened his mouth to argue. Aelias had beaten him to it.
"No." It was a clear, firm, three year old no. The kind of no that came with crossed arms and a jutted chin and eyes that looked exactly like Valarr's own.
"Mama has to go help Uncle," you had said, wiping porridge off Aelias's nose. "Auntie is sick. The new baby needs her."
"I need you," Aelias had said, which was a devastating argument that Valarr wished he had thought of first.
"I will be back in two days."
"Two days is forever."
"It is two sleeps. You can count them. One sleep, then another sleep, then Mama is home."
Aelias had considered this. His little face had scrunched up in concentration. Then he had looked at Valarr, looked back at you, and sighed the sigh of a child who knew he was beaten.
"Fine," he had said. "But Papa has to do the voices for the dragon story."
"The dragon story is a Mama story," Valarr had said.
"Then you have to learn it." And that had been that. You had left that afternoon, and Valarr had spent the evening trying to memorize a story about a dragon and a knight and a princess who rescued herself, because Aelias had made it very clear that he would accept no substitutes.
Now it was the next morning. You had been gone for eighteen hours. Aelias had woken up three times during the night asking for you. Valarr had not slept at all. He had lain in your empty side of the bed, holding your pillow, staring at the ceiling, and missing you with a physical ache that made him feel like he was drowning.
The small council meeting started at nine. Valarr arrived on time, which was unusual. He arrived holding a locket, which was not unusual when his wife was missing. He sat down in his usual seat, opened the locket, and stared at your painted face with the expression of a man who had just received terrible news about his favorite horse.
Baelor watched him for a full minute before speaking. "Valarr."
"Yes, Father?"
"The locket."
"What about it?"
"You are looking at it."
"I am looking at my wife. There is a difference."
"You have been looking at it for the entire meeting. We have not started yet, but you have been looking at it for the entire time we have been sitting here."
Valarr tore his gaze away from your painted smile. He looked at his father. He looked at the Master of Coin, who was pretending to read a report. He looked at the Lord Commander, who was not pretending to be amused.
"My wife is gone," Valarr said. "She has been gone for eighteen hours. That is eighteen hours without her smile, without her voice, without the way she hums when she brushes her hair. I am allowed to miss her."
"No one said you are not allowed to miss her. But you are sighing."
"I am not sighing."
"You sighed three times since I started speaking. You sighed when I mentioned the grain shipments. You sighed when the Master of Laws asked about the roads. You sighed when the Lord Commander cleared his throat."
Valarr had not realized he was sighing. He tried to stop. He lasted approximately thirty seconds before his chest heaved and another sigh escaped him.
"There," Baelor said. "That is the fourth one."
"I cannot help it. My wife is gone."
"Your wife has been gone for less than a day. She has visited her family before. You have survived. You will survive again."
"This is different."
"How is this different?"
Valarr looked down at the locket. Your eyes looked back at him. Your soft smile. He wanted to kiss you. He wanted to hold you. He wanted to bury his face in your neck and breathe in your scent and feel your arms wrap around him.
"Aelias is three now," he said quietly. "He understands that she is gone. He keeps asking for her. He cried three times last night. He cried when I tucked him in. He cried when I gave him water. He cried when I tried to do the dragon story voices because I am not as good at them as she is."
Baelor's expression softened. Just a little. Just enough. "That is hard," he said. "But you are his father. You can comfort him."
"I do not know how to comfort him when I cannot comfort myself."
There was a pause. The Master of Coin shifted in his seat. The Lord Commander looked at the ceiling. Baelor rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed in a way that had nothing to do with missing his wife.
"Let us begin," Baelor said. "We have matters to discuss. Grain shipments. Roads. The situation in the Riverlands. Valarr, if you can manage to contribute without sighing, I would appreciate it."
Valarr nodded. He closed the locket. He set it on the table in front of him. He took a breath.
The door burst open. A small maid, no older than four and ten, stood in the doorway with her cheeks flushed and her hands twisted in her apron. "Your Grace," she said to Baelor, then turned to Valarr. "My prince. The little prince is asking for his mother."
Valarr was on his feet before she finished speaking. "Is he alright? Is he crying? Did he eat breakfast?"
"He ate his porridge. But he keeps asking. Every few minutes. He wants to know if she is back yet."
"Tell him two days. Tell him she will be back after two sleeps."
"I told him. He said two days is forever and he wants his mama."
Valarr looked at his father. Baelor looked back. The Master of Coin cleared his throat.
"Go," Baelor said. "Take him. Bring him here if you have to. We will manage."
Valarr did not need to be told twice. He found Aelias in the nursery, sitting on the floor with his dragon toy in his lap and his lower lip pushed out in a pout so dramatic that Valarr almost laughed. Valarr saw you. He saw you in the way Aelias wrinkled his nose when he was thinking. He saw you in the way he tilted his head when he was listening. He saw you in the shape of his hands and the sound of his laugh and the fierce protective love that burned in his chest whenever he looked at his mother.
"My baby," Valarr said, crossing the room and scooping Aelias into his arms. "My sweet boy. My little prince."
"I want Mama."
"I know. I know. I want her too."
"When is she coming back?"
"After two sleeps. You remember. We talked about this."
Aelias buried his face in Valarr's neck. His small body was warm and solid, his arms wrapping around Valarr's shoulders with a grip that would have been impressive in a child twice his age.
"I miss her," Aelias said, his voice muffled.
"I miss her too."
"I miss her more."
Valarr smiled against his son's hair. "You definitely miss her more. No one has ever missed anyone as much as you miss Mama."
"Not even you?"
"Not even me. You win. You are the champion of missing." Aelias pulled back to look at him. His eyes were red rimmed, his cheeks wet, but he was not crying anymore. He was studying Valarr's face with that serious expression that always made Valarr feel like he was being evaluated.
"You look sad too," Aelias said.
"I am sad. I miss her."
"Are you crying?"
"No."
"You look like you want to cry."
"I am being brave. For you."
Aelias considered this. Then he patted Valarr's cheek with his small hand, the way you did when you were comforting him, and said, "You do not have to be brave. You can cry. I will not tell anyone."
Valarr's throat tightened. He pulled his son close again and held him there, breathing in the smell of him, porridge and soap and something that was just Aelias.
"I love you," Valarr said. "You know that, right? I love you more than all the dragons in all the stories."
"I know. I love you too. But I love Mama more."
"That is fair. I love Mama more too. We have that in common."
Aelias nodded against his shoulder. "Can we go find her now?"
"She is far away. We cannot find her. But we can wait for her together. Would you like to come to the council meeting with me?"
"The boring meeting?"
"The very boring meeting. But you can sit on my lap and I will let you hold the locket."
Aelias perked up. "The locket with Mama's face?"
"The same one."
"Okay. But only if I can open it myself."
"You can open it yourself."
"And close it."
"You can close it too."
"Okay. Let us go."
Valarr carried him through the corridors of the Red Keep. Aelias was getting heavy, too heavy to carry for long, but Valarr did not put him down. He held his son against his chest and walked past the guards and the servants and the painted tapestries, and he thought about you, about the way you looked when you held Aelias, about the way your whole body softened around him like he was the most precious thing in the world.
He walked into the council chamber with his son in his arms. Everyone looked up. The Master of Coin stopped mid sentence. The Lord Commander raised an eyebrow. Baelor looked at Valarr, looked at Aelias, and sighed.
"Valarr," Baelor said.
"Father."
"You brought your son."
"I brought my son. He is missing his mother. I am missing his mother. We are going to sit here together and miss her while you discuss grain shipments. Is that a problem?"
Baelor looked at the ceiling. He looked at the other men around the table. He looked back at Valarr and Aelias, who was now staring at his grandfather with the same stubborn expression that Valarr had worn at every council meeting since he was old enough to attend.
"No," Baelor said. "No problem. Sit down. Try not to sigh."
Valarr sat down. He settled Aelias on his lap and pulled out the locket. He opened it. Your face looked back at him, painted and golden and perfect.
"That is Mama," Aelias said, touching the portrait with his finger.
"That is Mama."
"She is so pretty."
"She is the prettiest. The prettiest in all the Seven Kingdoms."
"Prettier than the queen?"
"Much prettier. Do not tell the queen I said that."
Aelias nodded seriously. He took the locket from Valarr's hands and held it himself, studying your face with the same intensity that Valarr had seen in his own reflection a hundred times.
"Mama," he said softly. "Come home soon."
Valarr's chest ached. He wrapped his arms around his son and rested his chin on top of Aelias's head and stared at the locket over his shoulder.
The Master of Coin began speaking about grain shipments. Valarr did not hear a word. He was too busy watching his son trace the outline of your painted smile with his tiny finger, too busy feeling the weight of Aelias against his chest, too busy missing you with every breath he took.
Ten minutes passed.
Aelias looked up at Valarr. "Is Mama back yet?"
"No, sweet boy. Not yet."
"Oh."
He went back to studying the locket. The Master of Coin droned on. The Lord Commander asked a question about roads. Baelor answered. Valarr sighed.
"There," Baelor said. "That is the fifth one."
"I cannot help it."
"You are not even trying."
Valarr sighed again. Aelias looked up at him with concern.
"Papa is sad," Aelias announced to the council.
"We know," the Master of Coin muttered.
"His wife is gone," Aelias continued. "He misses her. I miss her too. We are both sad. That is why he is sighing."
"Thank you for the explanation," Baelor said.
"You are welcome, Grandfather."
Aelias turned back to the locket. He held it up to the light, watching the gold catch the sun, watching your painted face glow. He kissed it, right on your painted lips, and Valarr felt something crack open in his chest.
"I love you, Mama," Aelias whispered. "I will see you after two sleeps."
The meeting continued. The Master of Coin finished his report. The Master of Laws started talking about the roads. The Lord Commander added his thoughts about the Riverlands. Valarr sat in his chair with his son in his arms and his locket in his son's hands and his heart somewhere far away, wherever you were.
Fifteen more minutes passed.
Aelias tugged on Valarr's sleeve. "Papa."
"Yes?"
"Is Mama back yet?"
"No. Still two sleeps."
"I do not like two sleeps. I want zero sleeps."
"I know. I want zero sleeps too."
"Can we make her come back faster?"
"No. But we can wait together. That makes the waiting easier."
Aelias considered this. Then he nodded, leaned back against Valarr's chest, and resumed his study of the locket.
He asked again after twenty minutes. And again after thirty. And again when the Master of Laws started talking about the roads for the second time, which Valarr suspected was because he was bored rather than because he had forgotten.
Each time, Valarr answered the same way. Not yet. Two sleeps. She will be home soon.
Each time, Aelias nodded and went back to the locket.
And each time, Valarr held him a little tighter, kissed the top of his head a little softer, and sighed a little deeper.
By the end of the meeting, Baelor looked like he had aged ten years.
"Valarr," he said, as the other council members filed out.
"Yes, Father?"
"Take your son. Go do something. Play with him. Read to him. Anything. Just stop coming to council meetings with that locket and those sighs. I cannot take another day of it."
"Tomorrow is another day. She will still be gone tomorrow."
Baelor closed his eyes. "I know. That is what I am afraid of."
Valarr stood up. Aelias was asleep in his arms, finally worn out by the morning of missing, his cheek pressed against Valarr's chest, the locket still clutched in his small hand.
"Look at him," Valarr said softly, looking down at his son. "He looks so much like her."
Baelor opened his eyes. He looked at Aelias. The dark hair. The silver gold streak. The eyes, closed now in sleep. The narrow face and the long limbs and the stubborn jaw.
"He looks exactly like you," Baelor said.
"He does not. He has her nose."
"He has your nose. He has your whole face. He is a copy of you. Everyone says so. Your mother would have wept to see it."
Valarr shook his head. "You are wrong. He has her spirit. Her kindness. Her stubbornness."
"His stubbornness comes from you. You are the most stubborn person I have ever met."
"I am not stubborn. I am determined."
"Valarr."
"Fine. I am stubborn. But so is she. So is he. We are a family of stubborn people."
Baelor stood up and crossed the room. He looked down at his grandson, at the sleeping child in his son's arms, and his weathered face softened into something almost tender.
"He is a good boy," Baelor said. "You are doing well. Both of you. She will be proud when she comes home."
Valarr's throat tightened. "Thank you, Father."
"Now go. Take him to the gardens or something. Let him run around. Stop sighing in my council chambers."
Valarr carried Aelias out of the room. The baby woke up as they walked through the corridor, blinking and confused, still clutching the locket.
"Papa?"
"Yes?"
"Is Mama back yet?"
"Not yet. But soon. Come. Let us go to the gardens. We can look for flowers to show her when she comes home."
Aelias perked up. "Pink ones?"
"All the pink ones we can find."
"And yellow ones?"
"And yellow ones too."
Aelias wrapped his arms around Valarr's neck and held on. Valarr held him back. They walked through the Red Keep together, father and son, missing the same woman, waiting for the same homecoming.
And somewhere on the road between your brother's keep and King's Landing, you were already on your way back. You did not know that your husband was sighing in council meetings. You did not know that your son was asking every ten minutes if you were home yet.
But you would. Soon and when you walked through the door, Aelias would run to you with pink and yellow flowers clutched in his small hands. Valarr would stand behind him, watching, smiling, crying a little. And you would hold them both, and the waiting would be over.
“honey, can you pass me that?” with an open hand, not even looking at you, too focused on the stack of paperwork in front of him.
“it’s okay, honey, i’ll be home soon,” spoken into the microphone of his phone, reassuring, aching at the distance between you two.
“hi, honey,” whispered into your hair, one hand pressed against your head to keep you close, the other pressed against the wall to keep his balance as he slides off his shoes.
“oh, honey,” spoken gently, big hands covering your cheeks as he holds you close, kissing your forehead soothingly.
“honey,” said between a laugh, a shake of his head, as he walks close to you and grabs your hips, so enthralled by you that he can’t help but bend into a kiss.
Summary: Aaron Hotchner is not a man of many words — he prefers silence, gesture, subtle care. You have learned to listen.
Warning: I don't think this can even be considered a story in itself. It's more about my kink for tough men who obey their wives in silence. Delusions
WC: 1 093
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You knew that Aaron Hotchner was not an easy man.
He was – for lack of a more delicate term – emotionally constipated. And the chronic stress of his job made it worse. He is a person who values justice a lot, and yes, he manages to apply it at work. But sometimes willpower alone is not enough, luck is not always on your side – even if he doesn't say it out loud, you know it affects him.
Aaron carried all of this in silence – never showing how tired he was, never asking for help.
He is extremely protective, to an almost suffocating degree. Not only of you and Jack, but of the team as well – which means he takes on more responsibilities than any healthy human being should try to handle.
Even so – and perhaps precisely because of this – he is a great husband.
Aaron Hotchner is the most romantic person you know.
Of course, if you tried to verbalize this to him, Aaron would give a half-smile, mumbling in mockery.
“Tzz, you’re starting to get sleep deprived. Let’s go to sleep, honey.”
But you could see it. You knew.
He didn’t say “I love you” often, or make big public declarations—it wasn’t necessary. You learned to watch the way he loved.
He would show up with a bouquet of tulips every month on the twentieth (the date you got married)— a silent ritual he followed to the letter, whether you were traveling to a case or at home. If a case was particularly difficult for you, he would sit next to you on the jet in silence, intertwine your fingers with his, and with his free hand, place a cup of tea and your favorite candy in front of you.
You mentioned once — just once — that your lower back hurt during your period. It was a casual comment, something so small that you didn’t even remember why it was important to the conversation. But he kept it in mind. In the months that followed, he would pay attention to every phase of your cycle. Every tiny expression on your face—from a slight frown when you bent down to pick up something that had fallen on the floor — didn’t go unnoticed.
Aaron would come to you at the end of the day, placing a quick kiss on your lips and a folded note in your hand.
a voucher for a massage.
And when you were feeling especially needy — which happened more often than you’d like to admit out loud — he’d notice before you could even open your mouth. Aaron would drag you to sit on his lap while he finished his reports.
Even if it was hard to write. Even if his leg went numb. He let you, because it was important to you. And because he loved you.
But there was one thing, one specific gesture, so simple, that melted you like jelly.
He didn’t make any decisions without asking your opinion first.
–
After the wedding, you agreed to stay in his apartment instead of buying a house. The apartment was well located, practical, and safe. Besides, with the routine at BAU, it would be difficult to look for a house, deal with the renovation, and move. It was a lot of unnecessary stress.
The only problem is that Aaron is a very practical person, and takes the meaning of the word functional very seriously – things just needed to fulfill their purpose. A couch was a couch. And a curtain was just a piece of cloth that needed to block the sun's rays from coming in.
Worrying about the colors of the walls, matching the furniture in the house? No, that wasn't important to him.
But it was important to you, and that was the first thing you noticed. The wooden furniture in different tones, the three wallpapers in different colors and patterns. Not to mention the biggest affront to good taste, that damn striped curtain.
The decoration of the apartment was, honestly, terrible. But in his defense, Aaron was willing to make the place comfortable for you. In other words, he was so committed to transforming the apartment that he even mentioned changing the tiles in the bathroom if you wanted.
“You can decorate it however you want,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. His arms crossed over his chest, an amused smile on his lips when he noticed your expression of disgust.
“You promise?” , you asked, still staring at the couch as if it were a personal enemy.
“Of course, honey” , he assured, “where do you want to start?”
“I need a metal can.”
Aaron frowned. “What? Why?”
“I’ll start by burning these curtains.”
–
Aaron woke up thirty minutes earlier than you every day. It was a deal you made, you take care of breakfast and he gets Jack ready for school. It was the kind of simple but essential deal that made the routine lighter without weighing on either side.
You were still half asleep, sunk into the soft sheets, hugging Aaron's pillow to fill the void in the bed and smell him – a mix of soap and cologne.
“Love?”
“Hm..?” You murmured, your voice hoarse. Opening your eyes slightly, trying to make out the figure near the wardrobe.
Aaron had his back to you, only with the white towel wrapped around his waist, still with small drops of water sliding down his back. His hair was damp and disheveled. He was holding two hangers.
“Gray or navy blue?”
You blinked slowly, trying to understand why the koala from your dream was calling you and your love and asking you to choose between two colors. You snuggled deeper into the bed, burying your head in the pillow. “I think… Navy blue.”
Aaron smiled, seeing your drowsy state. He hung the hangers back in the wardrobe and walked over to the bed. The mattress dipped slightly under your weight, before his lips brushed against your shoulders, leaving small kisses.
“Coffee in ten minutes?”
“Depends, if you want pancakes it’s ten minutes. Now if you want coffee in bed…” Before you can finish your sentence, he lightly bites your shoulder, making you let out a muffled laugh against the pillow.
“I can’t believe you’re flirting with me in your sleep,” he says, his tone full of disbelief – although he was clearly enjoying himself.
“Baby, I would learn necromancy to flirt with you after death,” you retort, turning your face slightly to face him.
Aaron lets out a snort of laughter. “You’re impossible,” he mutters, slapping your ass before standing up. “Come on, Mrs. Hotchner.”
“Call me that later,” you whine dramatically as you sink deeper into the sheets and mattress, “Now give me five more minutes, Mr. Koala.”
summary ᰋ you always try so hard to not rely on your boyfriend because you know how busy he is. so naturally when there’s a power outage in your apartment you hesitate to let him know about it which leads to a very disappointed aaron behind you door.
warnings ᰋ angst with fluff end. lots of pauses (sue me i want the dialogue to go slower) swearing & language.
one thing about being with a man that was a man— which, by that, you mean a man who was so unlike the little boys you had dated before—was that he was extremely assertive, mature, and overall just knew how to take care of you just right.
and one thing about being with so many little boys unlike him was that over time you had learned to shut down, because they always made you feel like you were too much.
asking for too much, when the whole time it was beyond the bare minimum.
so naturally, whenever you had issues, you dealt with it yourself.
like right now when you had a power outage on your whole street, meaning everything was shut. your fridge, electricity, elevator (which meant you had to climb up and down eight floors), and most importantly, your stove.
you didn’t call your boyfriend because you felt like it was too much.
shit, you couldn’t even use your phone to order food because it was dead let alone try to call him.
it was running on 5%, and you had just enough to let your best friend know that you were alive and that if you didn’t answer, it was probably because you ran out of battery. while she insisted you leave your house and maybe go over to aaron’s, since she herself was all the way in the other side of the country for a work trip, you had refused, because seriously, it’d be embarrassing.
sure, you’d crashed at his place since you’ve been together for almost three years, that’s normal—but this just didn’t feel right. you weren’t about to go bother him and ask if you could stay at his place for god knows how many days until the electricity was fixed. that was too much. at least, that’s what you thought it was.
it was fine. you were going to be able to survive on a dead phone, dead stove, absolutely no lights, all alone in your apartment.
but it wasn’t fine when aarons’s eighth call to your phone went straight to voicemail and he hadn’t heard from you all day, which was so unusual, because you usually responded no matter what.
naturally, his only solution was calling your parents, your family, anyone he knew, but they also hadn’t heard from you. that left him with one last person: your best friend, who he essentially forced an answer out of until she finally cracked and told him what was going on.
“she’s fine, she just. . didn’t want to bug you,” she had sighed through the phone. “power’s out. the lights and everything. she refuses to leave.”
“and she didn’t even try to call me?” he’d asked, voice going flat.
“you know how she is.”
hearing that he’d cursed under his breath, grabbed his keys and jacket, and headed out the door, worry swirling in his gut the entire thirty-minute drive to your apartment.
he parked near your building’s garage, said a quick hi to your doorman, then went to the elevator. when he realized it didn’t work, he took the stairs two at a time, jaw tight.
another string of curses left him. he was beyond irritated—not at you, never at his sweet girl—but at the fact that you felt like you couldn’t rely on him, like you always had to solve your problems alone.
if he couldn’t help you on your worst days, then why was he even there?
he finally got to your door, only to realize the doorbell didn’t work either. of course. he knocked, harder than he meant to.
a few seconds later, you opened the door in your pajamas, hair up in your crazy big rollers he still didn’t fully understand the point of—something about volume and blowouts or whatever you’d explained to him a hundred times.
you were probably getting ready to sleep off the night alone in the dark.
“hey,” you breathed out, staring at him. from the look on his face, you knew you might be a little screwed.
“hi,” he said simply, eyes scanning you quickly, alive, breathing, upright, before the tension in his shoulders eased the tiniest bit.
“come in.” you give him a light peck on thr lips before you cleared your throat and stepped aside, trying not to do anything to intensify the situation further.
“what’s up with the lights?” he asked as he came in, toeing off his shoes like he always did, acting like he didn’t already know.
“power outage,” you muttered, leading him toward your bedroom. there was still a bit of light from outside, but not much.
“have you eaten?” he asked, following close behind, hands in his pockets.
“not yet,” you admitted with a wince. “my stove doesn’t work, and my phone’s dead, so i can’t order takeout.”
you flopped down at your vanity chair, turning away a little as you started taking your rollers out, trying not to look directly at him.
aaron watched you for a beat, then came up behind you, catching one of the rollers you fumbled. “and you didn’t bother telling me about all this?” he murmured, standing behind you as he gently started helping with your hair, fingers careful not to tug.
“my phone died?” you offered, glancing at his reflection. he looked calm, but you knew him—you could see the tick in his jaw.
“yeah?” he said quietly, setting another roller down. “before or after you decided to play pioneer in the dark instead of calling me from literally anywhere else?”
you chewed your lip. “. . before,” you whispered, then sighed. “i’m sorry.”
you finally blurted it out; you knew it was due.
“not a word,” he said, stepping back and shaking his head. “get dressed, pack a bag. you’re coming with me.”
“baby, you know you don’t have to—” you started, then froze when he gave you a look. firm, not angry, but very, very clear.
“i’m not asking,” he said, tone soft but absolute. “i’m telling you. pack a bag.”
you swallowed and nodded quickly, turning away to change into proper clothes. you grabbed a small overnight bag and started shoving in necessities makeup, skincare, some clothes, your laptop, and your dead phone, while he waited in the doorway, arms folded, eyes following your every move.
he was quiet, and with the way he was quiet, you knew he was more hurt than mad.
“done,” you breathed out, holding up the bag.
“good.” he walked over, took it from you without a word, and with a hand on the small of your back, gently steered you out of your apartment after you’d double-checked everything and locked the door.
you both walked in silence down the eight flights of stairs and out to his car. he opened the passenger door for you, waited until you were settled, then put your bag in the back and got into the driver’s seat.
the car was quiet as he pulled away from the curb.
his hand wrapped around the steering wheel, knuckles pale from the pressure. you stared at it for a few seconds, realizing you couldn’t take it anymore you gave in and reached over, gently prying his fingers away so you could lace your hand with his left hand on the center console.
“you’re mad at me,” you said softly, thumb rubbing over the back of his hand—the hand you were honestly obsessed with.
“i’m not,” he sighed, squeezing your fingers. “i’m just—” he cut himself off with a deep breath, jaw clenching.
“i should’ve told you. i’m sorry,” you said, filling the silence. “you’re right. i should’ve called.”
“you should’ve told me,” he agreed quietly. “i should’ve been the first person you thought to ask.”
you looked over at him, seeing the faint frown lines between his brows, the way he was staring straight ahead like if he looked at you too long he’d say something he’d regret.
“i know,” you said. “i just. . didn’t want to bother you.”
he huffed out a humorless laugh. “bother me? you think you bother me?”
you swallowed. “i know you’ve got stuff to do. and besides. . it’s just a power outage. i felt dumb calling you just for that ”
“you live on the eighth floor with no lights, no elevator, no food, and a dead phone,” he said slowly. “that’s not nothing, sweetheart.”
“still. it felt like a lot to ask.”
“from me?” he asked, finally turning his head to really look at you. “after three years? after everything? you’re allowed to ask me for things. that’s kind of the point.”
you bit your lip, shoulders hunching. “i just got used to hearing i was too much, you know? wanting too much.”
his expression softened immediately. his hand tightened around yours.
“look at me,” he murmured.
you did.
“you’re never ‘too much’ for me,” he said, voice low, steady. “you’re my girlfriend. you’re supposed to call me. you’re supposed to need me. if you don’t, then what the hell am i here for?”
your eyes stung a little. “you do enough already.”
“clearly not if you’re sitting in the dark, hungry, pretending you’re fine,” he countered gently.
you didn’t have an argument for that, so you just squeezed his hand instead, letting the silence settle between you, softer this time.
by the time he pulled into his driveway, the knot in your chest had loosened a little. he parked, killed the engine, but didn’t move right away.
“for the record,” he said, still looking straight ahead, “you never ‘bother’ me. if it’s you, it’s not too much. ever.”
your throat went tight. “okay,” you whispered. “i’ll try to remember that next time.”
“don’t try,” he corrected quietly, finally turning to meet your eyes. “just call. right away with absolutely no hesitations.”
you nodded, and that seemed to be enough for him. he leaned over, pressed a quick kiss to your forehead, then climbed out to grab your bag before opening your door.
later after he made sure you ate he moved around to plug your phone in, for you to answer calls from your mom and letting everyone know you were fine, all while you curled against him on the couch while some random 90s movie played in the background. his arm was around you, fingers tracing idle patterns on your shoulder as he breathed you in, quietly enjoying the feeling of holding you.
“aaron?” you murmured.
“mm?”
“thank you for coming to get me,” you said quietly.
he pressed his lips to the side of your head. “always.”
“and. . i’m sorry i didn’t call. i’m trying to be better at that,” you admitted. “it’s just. . leftover crap from before you.”
“i know,” he said. “i’m not mad at you for having history. i just need you to let me be different from it.”
you swallowed. “you are different.”
“then treat me like it,” he said gently. “let me show up for you.”
you shifted, turning so you could look up at him. “okay,” you whispered. “i will. i promise.”
“good,” he murmured. “my girl’s safe. that’s all i need.”
dededos
prguitarman
romaincrisis
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
stormborns
dailybridgerton
