Julian Lupin is a Legend

Eve, she/ they II Sweater Weather fanfic blog II AO3: Athenowl II Fluff Pt 1 II Fluff Pt 2 || Hurt/ Comfort || Smut II Social Media Fics II Series Masterlist II Short Fics

[fruitcoops]

FAQ

Welcome to the fruitcoops blog, and thanks for stopping in! Please check out my ‘will write’ and ‘will not write’ before submitting fic requests to my inbox--my masterlists and ko-fi are also linked below <3

Fic Requests: Open!

Will Write:

- Smut

- Fluff

- Angst

- Ridiculous tiktok pranks

Will Not Write:

- Car accidents

- Drug use

- Non-con

- Cheating

- Major character death/ unhappy endings

- Diversions from canon (see this ask for clarification)

- Asks with Vaincre spoilers in them (see this ask)

Anything not listed in the “Will Not Write” column is fair game and I LOVE receiving prompts/ original ideas from all of you. Feel free to send asks if you’d like to know more about my process/ boundaries!

Masterlists:

Fluff Page One & Two

Hurt/ Comfort + Angst

Smut

Social Media Fic

Series’

Short Fics (+ prompt list)

**Most fics are also on ao3 here!

Ko-Fi **not commissions; more like a tip jar :)

[fruitcoops]

Another year, another outstanding set of prompts. Thank you to @oknutzy-week-2026 for keeping this going! Happy fifth anniversary, everyone! I look forward to this every summer <3

[fruitcoops]

Afternoon Delight

O'Knutzy Week Day 7: A happier (and smuttier) future. Characters belong to @lumosinlove, and thank you x3 to @oknutzy-week-2026 for organizing all of this year's wonderful works. It's such a treat every time!

TW for smut

Shower (C3)

Leo comes with a sharp cry and a moan that lingers somewhere low in his chest. It breaks over him like waves on the beach, the undertow that pulls him deeper and the gasping when he spills out the other side. Finn follows with his nose buried in the crease of Leo’s hip, wet mouth open and panting against his skin. Aftershocks spark hot and fast; he sucks a mark there, and a second. Licks at Leo’s inner thighs and the shivering mess of his lower belly, still jumping with each lave of his tongue. The hair on his thighs is soft under Finn’s hands, nearly invisible in its blondness. It’s coarser on his calves where they wrap around him while Leo tries (and fails) to catch his breath. The bedroom fan hums. Finn digs his fingertips into the thick, sun-flecked flesh joining the angles of Leo’s waist to the pert roundness of his ass. The tan line there that wraps around Leo, so fucking low, teases him—he licks that, too.

Finn loses himself in kissing his way up the rest of Leo’s body until it’s just them, in the memory of the pounding heat outside, tangled up in the kind of decadence he’s still getting used to. The drumming song in his head is only pleasure; it leaves his mouth slack when he nudges into the salt of Leo’s chest and lays all his weight down. His lips are numb. His jaw screams. Leo brings him closer when Finn gets at his throat with a touch of teeth and a puppylike snarl, and laughs, and all thought of soreness flees.

His phone pings with an all-too-familiar text tone. Leo’s fingertips press into his bare back. His knee hitches around Finn to keep him there, even as Finn raises his head to brush their noses together. Leo’s mouth is soft under his fingertips, and his eyes, blown black-blue. Finn makes himself look away to leave a kiss at his collarbone. “Your Lo’s calling.”

He feels Leo inhale, all sweet pleasure with the arch of his body against him. Finn would swear in front of any judge that that blush tastes like raspberries when he kisses each of Leo's cheeks. His brain sparks and fizzes at the thought of getting hard again this soon. It would hurt. He doesn’t care. Leo guides him up by the back of his hair until they’re eye-level again and—Finn never stood a chance—draws his thumb over the corner of Finn’s lips. “You gonna tell me what he wants?”

For one wild moment, Finn considers ignoring the text. They could go another round. Logan’s patient.

Hm. No, he’s not.

“As you wish,” Finn promises. That smile. Fucking Christ Almighty and the rest of them, too. He nestles himself between Leo’s thighs again (his hips this time, instead of his shoulders) and reaches blindly for their nightstand while grazing a few more pecks across the slight arc of his clavicle. He makes sure to mouth at Leo’s sensitive ears and the place one meets his neck, if only to keep him laughing like that. Once he’s sure Leo will survive a few seconds without being kissed, he props himself on his elbows with a groan and squints down at the screen. Leo’s clever hands slip down to hold his waist. The base part of his brain tells him those big paws could reach the whole way around. Sometimes, he thinks they should give it a shot.

"One new message from Logan Tob-oh-gan Trebamalay," he reads aloud, carding through the side of Leo’s sweaty hair where it halos him against blue cotton in the safe bracket of Finn’s forearms. “Forgot my keys. Outside.”

Leo snorts, covering his eyes with one hand. “God, Lo.”

A knock sounds at the front door. They lose themselves in giggling.

--

Logan is getting impatient.

They’re home. He checked their location twenty minutes ago, when he realized his house key was still in the bowl, and fifty-five seconds ago, when peering through the peephole gave him absolutely no clues.

The door swings open. Logan loses every thought skipping through his head like a seventy-car pileup.

“Well, hello,” Finn says, leaning his forearm on the doorway beside them. “No solicitors, please. Didn’t you see the sign?”

His hip is cocked, his bicep flexed, his abs right there for Logan to touch (he wouldn’t even have to reach far), but it’s none of that that draws Logan’s entire focus to a single pinpoint. It’s his mouth. Grinning and sharp-toothed and red. Red, red, and wet as a cherry when the thin skin first pops and leaves Finn to slurp the juice off his hand. It looks like it hurts. He could slip two fingers into the heat of Finn’s mouth and never feel a moment of friction.

Belatedly, Logan realizes Finn’s wearing Leo’s underwear. The hand not drumming along their doorframe with faux exasperation bunches the cotton and elastic over the jut of his hip.

Finn’s still sweaty. Fucking fuck.

Logan only catches a glimpse of the red hair trailing down below Finn’s navel when that hand twists in the front of his shirt and yanks him inside. His back slams the door shut behind them, and then it’s mouth and tongue and lips and mouth, hungry, nibbling at Logan between breaths hotter than the sidewalk outside. Finn licks past his teeth before Logan can beat him to it: salt, himself, and Leo. Logan’s head spins and spins. His dick throbs. He shoves both hands down the front of Finn’s—Leo’s—boxers and groans at the sticky dampness still clinging to him, swallowing down Finn’s hiss when he closes a hand around the mostly-soft length of him.

“Harzy…”

Finn’s shiver ricochets off Logan’s clinging hands. Logan can’t blame him. Leo’s demands are clear and precise even in just one word, and he nudges his nose to Finn’s cheek to kiss the corner of his smile before taking him by the hand to pull him down the hall.

The sight that greets him is—

“Fuck.”

It’s—yeah. Fuck. Logan’s brain supplies nothing else. Leo smiles up at him sweetly. The utter wreck of their bed hugs him close where he lounges, debauched, flushed from head to toe in pretty patterns with one hand propping his chin up from the pillows.

“Hi, Lo,” he says softly.

Logan hears himself make a suffering sort of noise. He looks at Finn, and with a wave of his hand only manages, “without me?”

The boxers slump dangerously low. Finn scratches the side of his nose. He still hasn’t looked away from Leo, and Logan can’t blame him. “Yeah, this was…” Finn blows out a breath. “Entirely my fault.”

“Without me?”

“We can go again,” Leo volunteers, always such a team player even when he’s looking at Finn like a goddamn lynx. Logan kind of wants those teeth to sink into his jugular, next. He has to press the heel of his palm against himself when Leo rolls languidly onto his back and flexes his ankles all the way to the end of the bed. All. The way. “Right, Harz?”

“Yeah,” Finn says immediately. “Yeah, please. Yes.”

Logan can’t think. Leo had come—on himself, he realizes, though most of the mess is gone. Finn had still been sticky, and Leo was still catching his breath, if the fading color on his face and chest said anything at all. Leo had come, and it was recent.

He doesn’t bother asking when. His pants hit the floor in a heap; he kicks his ankle free, already reaching for Leo across the short expanse of ruined sheets. Logan hears Finn curse behind him at the same time Leo cups his face in his palms and pulls him down for a deep, pleased kiss. Logan feels his chest hum and goes lax. His weight makes Leo smile, and an arm comes around his shoulders to flip them over.

“Off,” Leo requests, pushing his hands up under Logan’s shirt.

Logan’s eyes flutter shut when cool bedroom air bathes his chest. Leo’s hands are quick to follow, and his thigh slots between Logan’s so smoothly he’s already kissing the hiss from Logan’s mouth by the time it slips out. Logan grinds up against him, feeling the mattress dip when Finn joins them. He knots one hand in Leo’s mussed curls and flails the other out in Finn’s general direction. The backs of his fingers slap against skin and he hears Finn laugh, even through Leo’s low noise when he gives his hair a tug. There, there, there—

“Pull harder,” Leo mumbles into his mouth.

It quakes through Logan whip-fast. Leo’s not giving him much, but it’s everything and more. Logan can feel his quad flex and release in the smallest motions to help him along, to ease the way, to meet him where he’s at because Leo knows better than anyone how hard it is to rock against someone when you’re pinned down tight by a strong body and a loving mouth.

That thought alone gets Logan over the cusp of the first one. His hips buck; the glide smooths, and so does Leo’s grin.

“Fuck,” he grates out. “Merde, Le.”

“Keep going.” Breath, hot between them. What Finn must have done to him to keep Leo’s lips unswollen…Logan feels himself twitch, thighs clenching around Leo’s own.

He pulls back to catch his breath, though it does little when every bit of motion steals it anew. Finn’s already looking back when Logan finds him, idly splayed over the other half of the mattress like a lord or a prince of their tiny castle. Humor quirks his mouth. “Hot out there, huh?”

Logan whines.

“Pretty hot in here, too.” Finn thumbs over his cheekbone when the fireworks of Leo’s teeth on his neck make Logan groan. “Poor thing. You didn’t even get a warning.”

He’s going to come again. He can feel it, low in his belly, tingling up his legs. “What’d you—” Logan breaks to land a few desperate kisses over Leo’s mouth. “What’d you do? Tell me.”

Finn wets his lips, though he hardly needs to. Logan’s seen him like that before. It used to scour his insides with fervent envy, made worse by the rumors that dogged Finn’s reputation through their last years because he knew they were true. He’d seen half the girls, and knew about the rest. Logan had always been proud that his own name was never mentioned far behind.

Leo’s the lucky one, tonight and forever. As his second orgasm hits like a landslide, Logan’s never been less jealous in his life.

Finn pets his hair off his forehead and helps him through it with his mouth on Logan’s shoulder, his chest, the brush of a nipple, heightening the rush of Leo’s thigh pressed flush against him and his body covering Logan from top to bottom. A sigh whispers across the sweat just beading over Logan’s neck. Leo nuzzles up to the hinge of his jaw in unabashed contentment.

“He put my knees all the way up here.”

Logan shuts his eyes. The butter-thick accent is a cruelty and a blessing.

Leo sighs again, as if the memory is too good to trim down. “Didn’t get ‘em back for ages. Kept me spread open like a damn book.”

“So good…” Finn says into the crown of his head.

And isn’t that a picture.

Leo’s index finger trails across Logan’s collarbones; left, then right. Down his sternum, over his tattoo, tracing his v-line, all while avoiding his cock with tantalizing intention. Logan feels a little like he’s going to pass out if they don’t fucking do something soon—

Leo noses at his cheek and kisses his obvious delight into Logan’s upper lip. “Shower with me. Then it’s your turn.”

[fruitcoops]

Confessional

O'Knutzy Week Day 6: Finn's torment nexus; or, pretty little green eyes and the sea. Y’all ever been so tired you have a breakdown over something that happened a decade ago? Characters belong to @lumosinlove, fest prompts from @oknutzy-week-2026!

Hometown (B3)

It was 3 o’clock in the morning, and Finn was awake.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen that hour tick over. College, maybe. He almost hadn’t believed it when he checked his phone.

His heart still pounded, low in his stomach, low enough that he could feel it when he ran a hand from his sternum to his navel and back again. God. Fuck. He could feel it in his throat, too, clenching and releasing. He didn’t want to move; Logan was cuddly tonight, curled so tight to the side of Finn’s body that there was no way to get up and walk this clinging thing off without waking him. No way at all.

Finn laid his head back on the pillow and tried to breathe it out. Leo, at least, was asleep. He could hear it in the slow inhales from the other side of the bed. Logan’s arm was a concrete bar over Finn’s stomach, his thigh weighing both of Finn’s legs down. His lips were slightly parted. Soft hair tickled Finn’s nose where Logan had burrowed into him.

“Lo.”

The smallest, slightest hitch of breath.

Finn lowered his voice and trailed his knuckles up the ridges of Logan’s bare back. “Lo.”

Logan mumbled something, lashes fluttering. His nose nudged under Finn’s jaw. A long exhale cooled Finn’s skin, still damp with sweat.

“Logan,” he whispered, and bent to kiss Logan’s forehead. Warm as always. Their little radiator. “Lo, hey. Hey.”

Logan was awake between one breath and the next. Sleepy green eyes blinked up at him; his brow furrowed, cheeks pink at the top. He’d been deep under. Finn would feel bad about it later, but he waited patiently for Logan to look down at their tangled bodies and back over his shoulder at Leo. Could Logan feel his heart skittering away? He hoped not.

He hoped so.

“Too hot?” Logan asked, already starting to unwind his arm from Finn’s torso. He was still disoriented enough to drop the ‘h’. Something inside Finn heaved at the familiarity. A kiss bumped against his cheek, though it was more of a fond nuzzle than anything more. “Sorry, baby.”

“Hey, wait.”

Logan sat up on one elbow.

Finn didn’t know. He just didn’t know. He tugged at the drawstring of Logan’s shorts. “Can we…?”

The sleepy blur was gone. Logan glanced down. “Now?”

“No, no, I…” Finn shook his head. He didn’t know. “Not that. Can we go outside?”

Logan looked toward the window, then back at him. “Outside?”

Finn fought down a small shiver and tucked his feet deeper under the blankets. “Yeah. Just—just for a minute?”

That look. He’d died for that look, once. The closeness, the focus. He’d felt it burn right through him from every angle of every room they entered.

“Okay,” Logan said slowly, quietly. He cast one more glance at Leo’s slumbering shape. “It’s early.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re awake.”

Finn didn’t have to answer. Logan wasn’t looking for one—his face said plenty. He knew. Finn twisted the drawstring around his first two fingers and pulled. Logan’s mouth fell into a gentle frown, but he helped Finn ease the covers back and slipped out of bed behind him.

It was cooler in the living room. Finn poured himself a glass of water, though he didn’t really want it. The coldness on his palms helped. He could feel Logan behind him, lingering in the space between the kitchen and the sofa. He downed the water in two gulps, then refilled the glass, bracing both hands on the sink in the meantime. He just had to get a fucking grip.

A hand found the small of his back and Finn’s throat tightened. He looked away, to the side, to the safety of the key bowl by the front door and their haphazard shoe pile. He’d organize that in the morning. Maybe tonight, if he couldn’t make his mouth work.

“Fish?”

“Yeah,” he managed, rough. Logan’s thumb, rubbing tiny circles over his skin, stopped. Finn nodded. “Yeah, c’mon.”

Logan followed. His shadow, even in the dark.

The city was still up. Cars and people, lights in the distance. Finn abandoned his water on the tiny mosaic table by the balcony doors and let Logan close it behind them. The railing bit into his forearms. It was still mild, for June. Someone had pinned a pride flag to the complex across the street already. A siren wailed down Main, ten blocks down. If they were in New York, he would’ve taken them out onto the fire escape outside his bedroom window. His bedroom. Not Logan’s.

Tentative hands on his hips lost their hesitation when Finn didn’t flinch away, wrapping around him from behind. Comfortable weight against his back; a head resting between his shoulders. “You’re hot.”

“Thanks.”

Logan’s little puff of disapproval made him smile despite himself. He ran a hand over Logan’s forearm, though his palms were probably cold. Maybe Logan would like it. He didn’t know. He hoped so. Logan liked the cold, even when it bit and howled and threatened to pull them both under.

“Is it bad news?”

Finn shook his head. “Just needed some air.”

He didn’t want to be standing anymore. If they went back to bed, he’d just lie there, blisteringly awake, and if he didn’t sleep then Logan wouldn’t sleep, and he really shouldn’t have brought Logan out here at all. He should’ve closed his eyes and let it go.

He was selfish. For lots of things, he figured, but especially for Logan. Years of hunger and then more more more.

“Sorry for waking you up.”

He felt Logan shake his head. “Don’t be.”

“Well, I am.”

“I want to be there.” Logan shifted. His chin rested where his cheek had been. “Here, I mean. For you.”

“Can we sit?”

But that wasn’t enough, either, and Finn realized it the second he folded his legs under himself and cool stone seeped through his pajama pants. It wasn’t enough, until his feet were stretched out toward the far railing and his head was on Logan’s chest, and Logan’s, on his shoulder, laying the opposite direction. Finn was so tired he could cry. The stars above turned hazy through his eyelashes. Logan’s heart thudded along.

“I need to know,” he whispered. His chest hurt like he’d been kicked. He rubbed the heel of his hand over it, back and forth, pushing the tightness away from the soft center. “I gotta know, Logan, I can’t—it was so bad. I know you love me—”

Logan’s breath caught.

“—I really do, I promise and I believe you and it’s so, sogood.” Finn cursed under his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. Jesus, it’s so good now, I know you hate talking about it, I’m just having these fucking—dreams, and it’s us, in that fucking water, and it’s killing me, Lo, it’s killing me. I gotta know.”

To anyone else, he wouldn’t be making any sense. He was sweating again. He could feel it prickling his face and underarms. Leo could parse through his rambling, but he always asked questions, even just one to confirm that he understood. Finn loved that, he loved him, he loved how Leo always made sure people felt seen and heard and that he had got it all right. He was so kind. Finn felt—with Leo, he felt so real.

“I loved you.” His eyes burned. He should let Logan speak, but he couldn’t stop his trembling mouth. “God, Logan, I loved you so much it tore me to fucking pieces. And you knew.”

A firefly bloomed out of their potted violet. “I did,” Logan said quietly.

“I wanted—” Finn stopped himself. It would be easier to list the things he didn’t want, in those heartsick, aching days. “I wanted us. Every bit of it. Was it like that for you?”

It was, it was, he’d read it all over Logan and tasted it from his manic mouth in their stolen kisses. It had certainly felt like theft. Every kiss Finn got was one taken from someone else, someone Logan didn’t like half as much as he liked Finn. He didn’t have to ask. He’d seen those pleading green eyes and felt the way Logan’s whole body tilted toward him when he walked into a room.

“It was the end of the world.”

Finn closed his eyes.

Logan breathed out into the night air. “I was…out of control. This—pressure, in my head. I wanted you so bad.”

“I’m sorry,” Finn rasped.

“Non, it was everything to me.” Logan’s chest rose and fell, bringing his head with it. “I didn’t want it to be different.”

Wet warmth slid down to the shell of Finn’s ear.

“That was hard,” Logan added.

Hard. Understatement of the century. Flayed, more like, every nerve exposed. Finn pressed his lips together.

After a moment, he felt Logan’s fingertips come up to toy with the hair above his ear. “I didn’t know if I could tell anyone,” he said haltingly. “My sisters…Noelle guessed. Because of Nice, and the draft. I think they knew before. I think I wanted them to. I didn’t want to carry it by myself and—I don’t know. I think I wanted everyone to know. It was very confusing.”

I’m sorry, Finn’s mouth tried to say. He dug his teeth into the inside of his cheek.

“Not you, though. You never confused me.” Almost an afterthought, but Logan didn’t do those. He thought, fully and completely, even if he rarely said it all. Goosebumps flew down Finn’s arms despite the heat. “I wanted you to,” Logan continued. “To confuse me. You were so loud. Friendly, and so fun, and you made people laugh, you liked to read, you did all these things that I don’t. It made no sense. If you were confusing, I could let it go.”

Silence again. Finn couldn’t help it. “And?”

“And I loved you.” Simple. They’d never had simple in the way he wanted. “I loved you the whole time. I didn’t even ask questions about it.”

“You should have.”

“Yes.”

“You—” He should be angry, he really should. “Fuck, Lo, I asked.”

In his hair, Logan’s hand slowed. “You did.”

“You lied.”

“Non.”

Finn couldn’t do another cycle of this, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t. He pushed the heels of his hands to his forehead as hard as he could, then folded them back on his stomach.

“I…” Another firefly. They’d come up in the park, soon. Logan sighed. “I thought I was going to ruin your life.”

“You couldn’t.” Ignoring the fact that he very nearly did, of course.

“You would never have seen the draft if we were out.” Finn caught a glimpse of his face when he turned, the unhappy set of his mouth. “You deserved the first round. Anything less would be an insult. My fault. You’re so brilliant.” It came out a whisper. Logan dragged a hand down his face with a small sound. “Finn, you’re…extraordinary. They would have been blind and stupid to draft you any lower than they did. But they would have. Because of me.”

“We could’ve been quiet.”

“I would never hide you,” Logan said immediately. “You deserved more.”

Finn sighed through his nose. Back to square one. “You’re saying a lot about what you think I deserve.”

“I know you.”

Finn’s lower lip shook in spite of him. He bit back a curse and pressed his thumb to the heat of his inner eye, where the wetness still hadn’t dried. “Yeah.”

“I know you,” Logan insisted, pulling him open all over again. “I’ve loved you for so long I don’t remember what it felt like to not. And back then—at school—in the water. Telling you didn’t mean anything when I couldn’t show you.”

“It meant something to me,” Finn said thickly.

“I know.” Despair. Finn knew the feeling. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“It meant something. Everything you fucking did meant something to me, Logan.” Finn pressed his hands to his thighs until it hurt. “I felt like—it’s been so long. I’ve had nightmares about drowning for eight fucking years.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He could hear the tears in Logan’s whispers. Finally, they could be in the same boat. Finn looked up to the starless sky and laid his palm flat on the balcony floor; the other, he wrapped around Logan’s wrist behind him. He took an unsteady breath. “I’m not angry.”

“You can be.”

“I was. I was so angry with you. God, Logan, it ate me up.” The softest skin, right above his pulse. That had always made sense to Finn. His hard-shelled, soft-hearted boy. The admission felt too big for this place. “I get it, of course I do, I’m…I can’t love you quiet. Everyone can see it all over me.”

“I did,” Logan said miserably.

“Good.” Finn squeezed his wrist. “I wanted you to.”

Logan let it lie for a moment, then swore softly and pushed a hand through his hair, nearly black in the night. “I need to—I need to say something. I need you to let me say it.”

“Okay.”

But he didn’t speak, just breathed like each one took more effort than the last. “I love you.” A fast kiss found the side of Finn’s head. “Je t’aime, I love you, I always did.”

“I love you, too.” Finn waited, but when nothing else came, he tipped his head back on Logan’s shoulder. “Is that it?”

“Non.” Logan’s palm cupped his face, upside down and backwards, the warmest shelter from a mild night. Something stammered in his chest. His expression crumpled; he made a quiet sound, wordless and agonized, and kissed Finn’s forehead only to let his lips linger. “I’d do it again,” he murmured against Finn’s too-hot skin. “If I had to, for this. Never to hurt you, never that. But I’d do it.”

He would have loved Logan better than anyone. Logan would have loved him back. And none of it mattered, not even a little, because that choice was about as real as the leaves of their table’s mosaic tree. Finn covered his eyes and let Logan’s collarbone take the weight of his pounding head.

“It’s not fair.” He sounded like a child. He tried to choke it down, be an adult, be better than the worst of himself at age eighteen, but it just made the clogging, soggy thing in his throat even thicker. “I just wanted to love you, and it was just a fuckin’ massacre.”

Logan took him as he broke, like the waves had taken him until he gasped awake to a world only slightly kinder. Concrete sat hard and brutal under Finn’s shoulder when he turned on his side; it was quickly replaced by the give of Logan’s chest as he pulled him over in an awkward gathering of Finn’s puddle-body. He wasn’t much help, but he held tight to Logan, and something told him that was plenty.

“I loved you.” Finn’s voice cracked. It wasn’t even funny. “I love him.”

Something sob-like and snotty rattled Logan’s body.

“I love you.”

The sea, the wind—his dreams even gave him the gulls, the only audience to the worst day of Finn’s life. They never spoke in that in-between place. Logan’s eyes. Logan, pulling away, until the water took him under and tore salt through his body. The sun burned him, sometimes. Other nights, it blinded him, too far still for Finn to reach. Sometimes, it was a nightmare. Sometimes it felt like mercy.

Logan was saying it back, in the cool-warm-busy air of this dry night. Finn could hear himself trying to gulp down a breath, and beneath it, a resonance he’d never forget. Iron-clad Logan clutching him to his chest and the raw things beneath, his mouth to Finn’s temple and his body shielding him from the balcony’s unforgiving floor.

I’d do it again. For this.

No draft. No Gryffindor. No team, no Cup, no Cap, no flock of Dumaises. No Kasey Winter, Chekov’s fucking goalie for Finn to stumble upon. They would have watched Sirius and Remus kiss on the ice from a TV screen—or not at all. A lower league, if they were lucky. Different teams, certainly. He would have kept Logan for a few more years, and then, inevitably, they would lose each other. Or one of them would give up the game to stay together, and they’d lose each other in a whole new way too terrible to imagine.

Finn was avoiding the last and greatest loss. Ten, thirty, sixty years without Leo was not a life at all. His unwavering devotion, and a temper that could match Logan’s like wildfire hitting stone. Are you going to kiss me?, sly eyes still sweet and eager, already reaching for Finn. His kisses took Finn out of the hurricane of his own head and set both his feet on the ground. Here, they said. You’re staying here with me. Yes, you, in all you are.

Hurt and hurt and pain and Logan. As much as it was misery, it was Logan, and that had been worth it. Still was.

“You have to tell me,” Finn sobbed. “You have to tell me.”

“I loved you every day.” It tore from him, trembling. Logan took a sticky-sounding breath. “Every minute. Crisse, Finn, it drove me out of my mind. I would think about you when I was doing my fucking laundry, just—wishing you were there with me. Can you believe that?”

He could. He did. He’d lived it and it haunted him and Finn had begged on his knees for some karmic force to take it away from him without ever meaning a single word.

“I would wake up afraid,” Logan continued, shivering under him, quick and shallow. “Sometimes…sometimes I still don’t know how to love you without being afraid. But I do. I’m so sorry. I loved you at Harvard, and here. At home, and New York, in New Orleans, and—the way he loves you, Fish, I wish you could see it like I do.”

Finn couldn’t have left Logan’s hold if he tried. Finally. At last.

“It’s like looking into the sun.” Logan’s hand vanished from his shoulder for only a second. Finn heard him wipe his nose. “Merde. Fuck. Do you remember the solstice?”

Finn huddled into the caving space of his chest. Sweat and sleep and home. “Which one?”

“New Orleans.”

New Orleans, Louisiana, on the longest day of the year. Finn remembered.

It had been him and Leo in the hammock, giggling into each others’ faces and half a hundred kisses from the uncoordinated struggle into their sticky-hot shelter. Leo’s hands were still callused. His smiling mouth, sweet and bitter from tea. Finn had wanted to lick up every drop of it.

“I could hear you laughing from ten feet away.”

I love having you here. Leo’s hand on his jaw, gentle-firm, shaking back and forth with a flash of his teeth. God, Finn, I love it so much.

“I don’t know if I ever made you laugh like that at school,” Logan said in a small voice. His fingers slipped through Finn’s hair to cradle the back of his head. “I would dream about it, though. I’m…I still don’t know which ones were real. I wanted to make you laugh like that. A lover. Not like a friend.”

“You did,” Finn whispered. So many times. His whole body had hurt from it.

“Are we—oh.”

Finn blinked the salt-crust from his eyes and peered out into the dark. It fizzed and blurred into the vague shapes of buildings; a smear of color here, wind buffeting their flowers there. Inside, the kitchen light was on. Finn put his sleeve to his dripping nose, but didn’t try to speak. Logan held out an arm.

Knees, folding into the bent backs of his own. A forearm on the concrete above his head, on the other side of Logan’s body. At his back, warmth, broad and safe. Finn shuddered his way through a breath. Exhaustion. Collapse. An arm slid beneath his own to wrap around him; a palm rubbed over his heart.

“Hi, Fish,” Leo murmured, pressed to Finn from his ankles to the top of his head. A wall against the dark. A ledge above the void, holding firm.

The words tangled, tying his tongue to paralysis. He shook his head. Leo traced a bumpy path between his collarbones.

“Nightmare.” His throat clicked when he swallowed. “Sorry.”

Leo made a sympathetic sound and shuffled closer. “Want to talk about it?”

“We are,” Logan said softly. Finn saw his hand pass by. “Hi, Peanut.”

Finn heard a sound like a kiss. Logan’s hum vibrated. “Want me to go back to bed?” Leo offered.

“No,” they said at the same time. Something in Finn’s chest released. A knot, pulled in just the right place.

Leo’s knees gave a tiny pulse behind his own. “Okay. Are you doing your quiet time thing?”

It took Finn’s tired ears a moment to clock back in. Quiet time. Was he ever quiet? “Huh?”

“Your quiet time,” Leo repeated, like it was obvious. He was holding Logan’s hand, thumb running across his knuckles. “You know. When you get all sad about college and sit really quietly together for a while to think about it. It’s, like, a meditation thing, right?”

Finn stared at him. “Non,” Logan answered.

“Oh.” Leo sat up a little on his elbow with a frown. “Did you know you do that?”

“No,” Finn croaked.

One of Leo’s pale brows twitched upwards before he got ahold of it again. He shrugged, releasing Logan’s hand to dry Finn’s cheek with the side of his hand. “It’s not a bad thing. Giving yourself space to think about it, I mean. Seems like there was a lot to…you know. Get through.”

“You’re awake,” Finn realized belatedly. “Were we loud?”

Leo kissed his burning cheek. “No. I was cold. And thirsty. Is that your water up there?”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to get it?”

“No,” Finn mumbled. Leo snuggled closer, clearly satisfied.

Quiet time. Fucking hell.

Finn lifted his hand and whacked the back of it against Logan’s chest. “I was really fucking mad at you.” He wanted to leave it at that, but Logan was blinking at him like an owl and he had always been so beautiful at night, the moon to Finn’s stars and—

Finn whacked him again. Gentler, but still gratifying in the dull slap of skin on skin. It didn’t even leave a mark. “So fucking mad. You jackass. How could you do that to me? We should’ve just made out on the front porch. It would have ruined everything.” He groaned, burying his face in the softness of Logan’s belly. “You’re right. You’re so smart and right about everything. God fucking dammit, Logan, you and your goddamn eyes. I would have dropped out of college for you, but you wouldn’t even let me. I had to make it to the NH-motherfucking-L playoffs before you’d tell me you loved me. Is that it? You have a kink for pro hockey players? I was standing there like an idiot in the middle of the ocean, crying my eyes out, and you were still so goddamn perfect. I’m going to love you forever. You can’t stop me. Me and you and Knutty are gonna die within ten seconds of each other.”

That was a fact. The universe was crueler than he thought if it planned for anything else. Coarse hair scratched Finn’s cheek, and he raised his head to glare as best he could. Logan’s lower lip had disappeared between his teeth; bracing for impact, if he was smart, or stifling a laugh, if Finn knew him at all. “Fuck off,” Finn grumbled, and delighted in Logan’s visible alarm. “Hold me.”

Logan’s gaze darted to Leo for the briefest second. “And I.”

“What?”

“You and Knutty and I.”

Finn bit the nearest roll of his abs. “I said fucking hold me, Logan.”

Logan made a small noise, smiled a small smile, wrapped them both up in his arms until Leo was laughing into the crook of Finn’s shoulder. “You’re fucking crazy,” Finn felt Logan whisper into the top of his head. “I love it so much.”

“You’re welcome,” Finn groused.

Logan’s sigh pushed Leo’s weight harder into him. Finn counted three beauty marks on the underside of his chin, and one hickey in the perfect shape of Leo’s mouth. “I love when you say my name.”

Finn would say it here, in the comfort of the dark. In bed. In the light of the kitchen and the light of the moon. At home, in New York, in New Orleans; for crowds, for cameras, for just the three of them. He’d press it to the softness of Logan’s body, help Leo scream it, and someday, hopefully not too long now, he’d teach it to someone small and gentle. Logan Logan Logan and Leo Leo Leo. Three times, because he meant it. He always had.

[fruitcoops]

Taxi!

O'Knutzy Week Day 5: Rangers stew(ing in their feelings). Characters belong to @lumosinlove, fest and prompts are from @oknutzy-week-2026!

TW for drunkenness/ alcohol, **Vaincre spoilers

Wedding (D5)

Luke wasn’t jealous. Sure, Logan and his boys got to canoodle in bars together, pulling each other around on tall stools or bookending in booths. And sure, they could go wandering around Gryffindor, New York, a dozen cities around the world and not worry how many people might snap photos of them. Luke didn’t even like PDA. Neither did Saint, by any metric known to man. They’d pretty solidly used up their quota for the next year or two after the final buzzer of that beautiful game. No, the two of them far preferred an evening in with movies or a nice dinner in a candlelit restaurant.

But maybe, sometimes, a little bit, Luke wanted.

Percy and Will were working on getting Logan up. Well—Will was working on it. Percy had to turn away to catch his breath through laughter every few seconds. Luke could only see a bit of Logan, curled up as he was in the corner of the velvet booth seat; a sneaker, a bit of his arm, that damn phone. His foot flexed, then went lax again.

“Nooooon…”

It was a cute fucking picture, Luke had to give him that. Knut and O’Hara on some floor somewhere—Gryffindor, if he had to guess, probably their apartment—with their cheeks pressed together and the biggest of grins splashed over their faces. Two books with identical covers sat in the bottom of the frame, spread open on their chests like they’d stopped reading just long enough to snap the photo. O’Hara’s red hair was darker in person than it looked against the wood flooring; the polite, yet genuine smile Knut generally gave Luke was nowhere to be found, buried deep behind a toothy grin that made every soleil, soleil, soleil understandable.

Saint had a dimple. Just one. It rarely left its fortress.

“Non,” Logan complained again. The bar was nearly empty around them; in the other room, toward the front, by the door, the noise from the dance floor kept them hidden. Luke saw Logan’s leg stretch out and go limp. Will said something too quiet for Luke to hear. The toe of Logan’s sneaker rolled on the floor. “Really?”

When they’d won the Cup, and Logan brought it back to Harvard for the second elysian year in a row (that lucky fucker), he and Finn had been gods on earth. Someone put a laurel wreath in Finn’s hair. It had been off-set in that video: the one that slid a final puzzle piece into the biggest picture of the year. A kiss on the ice was one thing—almost cliché, at this point, though the memories still made Luke’s heart stammer and pound. Leave it to O’Hara to make a dramatic moment ten times as tragically theatrical in one fell swoop.

Newsflash, asshole! Laurels askew, sweat-red cheeks, Logan tucked under his arm and laughing like he’d never be sad again. We’ve been in love the entire goddamn time!

Percy’s drunken giggles filled the background of the shaky video in the same tune and timbre as Finn’s. Lovers, not fighters, those two. Luke was…Luke was trying.

“Promise?” Logan mumbled, leaning heavily into Will’s side. He put his head on Will’s shoulder with those huge begging eyes. “You promise?”

“Yeah, bud.” Will heaved him upright with a grunt. “I promise.”

“Give back.” When Will kept hustling them toward the exit, Logan let out a childlike whine. “Give it back.”

“We’ll call them in the car—”

“You promised.”

Luke was still pretty sure Percy meant to put the video on his private story, but he was even more sure neither Finn nor Logan minded the mixup too much. The wedding (and following festivities) kept them out of sight long enough for the flurry to die down. It wasn’t like Percy caught them in any sort of incriminating throes. God bless Black and Lupin. Luke’s mother would have been apoplectic if he’d been snapped tonguing Saint down in the backseat.

“Hey—heyyyyy.” Touch snapped Luke out of that compelling mental image. Logan listed toward him. “Come home?”

Luke nodded. The last inch of his beer was warm, anyway. “Yeah, Tremz, I’m coming back with you guys.”

“With me,” Logan insisted. “Jouer vidjagames. Vi-de-oh.”

Over his shoulder, Will rolled his eyes. “I gotta get home, too,” Luke laughed.

“Noo, sleepover.”

“You need to sleep,” Will said firmly.

Logan shot him an affronted glare. “Call first.”

Will mumbled something like oh my god and guided Logan in a half-circle toward the door. “Sure, Tremz, you can call first.”

Luke followed, dropping his bottle and two empties at the end of the bartop. “Who’re we calling?”

“Take a guess.”

“Mes amours,” Logan answered loudly. A small, proud smile flushed his face. “Calling them to-night. Before sleep.”

“Oh,” Luke responded. ‘Eloquent’ was never a word used to describe him, but Logan didn’t tend to expect it and was too far gone to rib him for it anyway. He was already distracted trying to retrieve his phone from Will’s pocket.

“Cut it out, Lo.”

“I want.”

Saint had already gone home. I’m out, Tweedle. Flashing eyes and a kiss on Luke’s cheek, so much softer than his expression would imply. Saint would be in bed by now. In Luke’s bed. In Luke’s apartment.

Luke wasn’t sure they’d ever be as loud as Logan and his boys (man, he really needed a shorter phrase for them). Falling asleep at the bar, zoomed in on Saint’s photo in front of their teammates and friends, was not exactly his M.O.

But maybe he would. His few pictures of Saint were more precious than the ring three men in suits had fit on his finger mere days ago. When the world was blurry and he was tired and craving home, he’d also want to look at a face that brought him there with a single glance.

Logan’s willpower had won out. He clumsily navigated to an obnoxiously-named groupchat and within a few seconds, a different photo filled the screen. The three of them, this time; O’Hara’s birthday, if the lit candle in front of his chin said anything. His freckled face scrunched with a smile until his eyes closed to happy half-moons. Knut and Logan were kissing each of his cheeks. Logan, as per, was far more aggressive—that side of O’Hara’s cheek sat just a little higher. But Knut’s hand was just barely visible in the corner, holding his chin still for the photo.

It was sweet.

“Hey-hey, baby-baby.”

“Salut,” Logan answered, dragging out the u sound.

Luke heard O’Hara’s tired laugh. “You’re having fun.”

“Mmmouais.” Logan brought the phone close to his face, then turned it in a few rapid flicks to the sides. “Morgs ’n Marsh ‘n Luke. Don’t say anything crazy.”

“Oh, good, I was planning on it.”

Logan let out another little whine; O’Hara laughed at him again. Will ducked into frame, holding Logan’s hand steady. “We’re—stop pulling—we’re taking him home, don’t worry.”

“Oh captain, my captain, you are heaven-sent. Good night?”

“Yes,” Logan said loudly, pushing back into frame. “Miss you.”

“We miss you, too.” Knut’s voice. Luke peered over. Their Uber wouldn’t come any faster from him staring down the street. He must have found his way into the camera view, because O’Hara gave him a small wave and a smile.

They looked cozy. Really, really cozy, and really, really happy. Logan made a tender sort of noise and touched the screen. “Miss you.”

“Thursday night, cher.”

“Sooner.”

“Take it up with Bettman.”

“I will,” Logan sulked.

There was a show Luke would like to see. In part because Logan might even be able to pull it off. Will tipped the phone toward himself again. “Sorry for calling so late. He wouldn’t leave it alone.”

“Nah, it’s all good,” O’Hara said, his arm around Knut’s shoulders on top of their pillows. Luke liked to sit that way on the couch. Saint liked it, too, even if he’d never say it out loud.

“Fell asleep in the bar looking at that photo you sent him,” Will added. He shoved Logan’s face away gently when Logan began to protest. “The one on the floor, with your books and—”

“Stop.”

“Aw, baby,” Knut laughed. “That’s cute. Did you get photos?”

“I did,” Percy chimed in, popping into frame with his tongue stuck out. “Hi.”

“Sharm.”

“Ranch dressing.”

“Shabamalam.”

“Ranunculus supreme.”

“What the fuck?” O’Hara laughed. “Fucking ranunculus?”

Percy tapped his index finger against the screen until Logan swatted him away. “It’s a flower, Socrates, Cassie’s putting them in her community garden.”

Knut shook his head. “It is way too late for you two to get going.”

“Butter, we have not even started.”

“The car is here,” Logan announced, pulling the phone back to his chest, then his ear, before apparently remembering they were on FaceTime and bringing it back to his face. Luke lost sight of Knut and O’Hara, but not the way Logan bit his lip, or the spread of his smile. “Hi.”

“Hi,” they chorused.

“I have to hang up, or I will be carsick. But I am okay. I love you. I call you later. I love you.” He kissed his first two fingers, then pressed them to the screen. “Je t’aime. Ugh, trop beau.”

One hand still at his back, Will waved to the Uber and gestured for the driver to wait. “Don’t worry about it, Lo,” Knut’s voice said. “Sleep tight.”

“We love you, too.”

“Okay.” Luke could hear the exhaustion catching up with him again, but Logan brushed his fingers over the screen once more. “Okay. Love you.”

“Love you.”

“Thursday.”

“We’ll save a seat.”

Luke’s phone chimed when he slid into the back with Percy and Logan. It was a big car, but a tight squeeze considering Logan’s fuck-off huge shoulders jammed in the middle. He’d only just slipped his phone from his pocket when weight thudded down into the bend of his shoulder.

“I like it here.”

“Well.” He took a second to get his mouth away from Logan’s hat. “Good.”

“You’re a good friend.” Logan mumbled.

“Glad you think so.” He tried. Really hard. He was pretty sure Logan knew it.

Logan sighed. “I miss them.”

“I know, bud,” Luke said, as gently as he could. The Rangers were good for Logan. Alex, and Percy and Will—even himself, he thought. Good people. Good fans, who adored Logan without question.

But they weren’t the Lions. They weren’t his boys.

You Have Two (2) New Messages from: Saint

[10:45 p.m.]

In bed.

[11:50 p.m.]

xo

“I miss coming home to them.”

X-O, Luke’s heart beat. xo, xo, xo.

“I miss…” Logan trailed off. They rode in silence until he sighed. “Miss them, at the bar. I keep looking.”

Luke met Percy’s eyes over the curve of Logan’s back. Percy made a sad face, mouth turning down. “It’s okay, Tremz,” he said, rubbing between Logan’s shoulder blades. “You’re heading up Thursday, right?”

“Ouais.” A small puff of breath. “Not the same.”

He didn’t want to think about Saint getting traded. He’d had enough of beds in different places, let alone going to sleep in different cities, hours apart. Luke would be left staring at the ceiling or—worse, leaving Saint alone in the dark while he slumbered.

“I miss them.” It was plaintive, almost. Luke found himself wishing Logan would go back to staring blearily at their photo. Instead, he pressed his temple to Luke’s shoulder and sighed. “We’re fun.”

Percy bit the inside of his cheek and looked out the window, hand going still on Logan’s hot back. But Logan wasn’t done.

“I thought we had more time,” he mumbled. “I wanted to be fun with them.”

“Christ,” he heard Percy whisper.

Luke wracked his brain. He wasn’t good at the sap. He never saw the point, and it wasn’t like Saint ever—

“Bring them out with us.”

The hat shifted. Logan’s eyes, squinting up at him. “Quoi?”

“Next time they visit.” Luke hoped he remembered this in the morning. He shook Logan’s shoulder lightly and tried to find some levity. “We’ll all go out. Have a little fun, nothing too crazy. You should bring them.”

Logan scanned his face, as if searching for a lie. Or perhaps just some clarity in his fuzzy world. “D’accord,” he said at last. He stifled a yawn in his hand. “Bon. Hmm. J’suis fatigué.”

Percy patted his thigh in two good thumps. “Almost home, Lo.”

“Not home.” Logan’s weight grew heavier. “Thursday.”

“Yeah, buddy, Thursday.”

“Hey,” Logan started, like the thought had just occurred to him. He nudged his knee against Percy’s. “Sorry for making out above your bedroom.”

Percy closed his eyes and covered his mouth with one hand. Luke lost the battle against his own grin. “It’s fine.”

“With Finn,” Logan clarified.

“I know, bud.”

“It was only sometimes.”

“I figured.”

“This year doesn’t count,” Logan informed him. “ ‘Cause you don’t live there anymore, so I’m not apologizing.”

Percy covered his eyes; up front, Luke saw Will’s shoulders hitch with stifled laughter. “Okay,” Percy managed. “Sounds great.”

Logan nodded. “It was.”

Even the driver was snickering, now, and Luke knocked Logan’s hat around to the front to buy himself a second. “If you’re gonna be a chatty drunk, Tremz, I need to brush up on my French.”

Logan grumbled and mumbled and fought with the canvas-lined brim before wrenching it off his head and scowling up at Luke. “Ouais. Si tu compt’être mon ami—”

“Woah, woah—”

“—tu dois parler le québécoise—”

“—woah—”

Logan’s next words were lost in laughter; his forehead pushed against Luke’s arm. He was warm, but not too warm. Heavy, but never too heavy. He knocked his knuckles to Luke’s. “Immersion lessons,” he finally said. “You’ll learn.”

“I meant for the accent,” Luke laughed.

A click of his tongue, but no further scolding. The driver turned down Logan’s street and Luke felt him sigh. “Bonne nuit, mes amis.”

“Night, Tremz.”

“Later, Lo.”

The car rolled to a stop. Luke stepped out to give Logan an exit and let the night air wash over him, a little freedom after the loud, cramped bar and the louder, more cramped backseat. It was good for him, he figured. Going out. Being with the team, with or without Saint. It was better, now that he knew something waited for him at home.

Logan took his offered elbow to get up the curb. “Want me to walk you up?”

“Non.” Logan wrinkled his nose at the door and the bright lobby lights, then turned back and gave Luke a clap on the shoulder, followed by a tight hug. He didn’t let go for a moment. When he did, there was a little more sharpness in his eyes. “Merci.”

“Sure thing.”

“You’ll text me?”

“Ouais.”

Logan smiled. Big, bright, a bit crooked; Luke returned it. He couldn’t leave Logan hanging. “Hey, not bad,” Logan laughed, nodding. “He can be taught.”

“Next time,” Luke reminded him. “Bring them. I mean it. I still gotta win over O’Hara.”

Logan just shook his head and patted his shoulder again. “Oh, Dev. You already got him.”

--

Luke thought about it the whole way home.

“Logan thinks O’Hara likes me.”

Silence, then a shift in the darkness. Breath ghosted over his jaw. “Should I be worried?” Saint murmured.

Luke felt his cheeks warm. “Not like that.”

“Of course O’Hara likes you.”

“He does not.”

Another puff of air, in what would have been a snort if there was the faintest hint of morning around. “You take care of Logan. Trust me. O’Hara likes you fine.”

“Logan thinks they’re fun.” Luke didn’t know why he was saying this, only that it was dark and safe and he had the warmth of his boyfriend pressed up against him under sheets they’d picked out together. “He thinks—I don’t know. He says the three of them are fun.”

“They are.”

“Most people don’t call Logan fun.” Or me.

Saint put his hand on Luke’s chest, right above his beating heart. “It’s not about other people. They have fun together. That’s enough.”

Luke picked his hand up and pressed it to his mouth. Big palm, long fingers. Saint wasn’t like Knut. Luke wasn’t much like Logan, down in the roots. He thought they could be fun, though, the two of them. “Night, Seb.”

“Night.”

“Love you.”

A squeeze to his fingers. A smile, tiny and hidden, buried in his bicep. “Love you.”

[fruitcoops]

Fall Forward

O'Knutzy Week Day Four: Bleeding Out (Part 2/2). Characters from @lumosinlove, fest from @oknutzy-week-2026 <3

Dads (D1) | Aging (C5)

“What happens when it’s done?”

Logan’s throat closed immediately. His back teeth worked against each other in tiny pulses of pressure that ground away the shivers fighting to reach the rest of him. His stomach, unsettled since breakfast, sat like a rock. He wanted to itch the edges of his incision—they were driving him insane—but he put his hands under himself, instead. Rolled the sheets between his fingers. He wished they were clammy. Temporary panic would be so much better than this bottomless, hours-old void.

That hit hurt. And he’d gone down.

He’d left his breath on Vegas’ bench, along with most of his vision. So much weight behind him. He faintly remembered the impact forcing spit from his mouth; a glimmering spray before roughness caught him by the collar, and then it was ice, and then it was pain.

Logan had fought bigger people and won. Lost, too, but less in the last few seasons. Big guys, tall guys, enforcers, dirty players. Guys who treated hooking penalties like arcade points, and guys who always toed the line between a check and sending someone to the IR. Some people called Logan a dirty player, but he knew he kept his hits clean. Cap would have torn him a new one if he didn’t.

Fenrir Greyback liked pain far more than he liked hockey. The usual lines didn’t exist for him. Logan knew that. It pissed him off, but he knew it and he was prepared. He thought.

Stupid, maybe—the idea that anyone who did what he had done to Remus would play with any dignity at all, any honor. Logan played a rough game, and he met rough players with two skates down and both fists up, but he would never in a thousand years seek to hurt beyond repair.

Greyback wanted him hurt. Done. Finished.

He’d been cold on that table. Cold and sick. It had been a slow, painful decline into blackness.

Logan thought of locker rooms. He thought of Remus.

There had been no blood for him, soaking Julian or his mother when the dark took him. Maybe inside, draining into the spaces torn into his nineteen-year-old body by clawing, vicious, jubilant hands. Logan didn’t know. He’d never asked.

Greyback’s foot was a gunshot. He’d felt it all the way in his spine, and the whole long way down the tunnel. Getting his pads off came with a wave of relief from the pressure on his pulsing skin. It didn’t last long.

Logan turned his head on the pillow, toward where Leo was still looking at their joined hands.

“We’ll go to New York.”

Logan blinked. Beside them, Finn breathed softly, one arm low over his hips.

Leo nodded, almost to himself. His fingers danced across Logan’s knuckles. “You’ll be back in Gryffindor by then, with us.”

So sure. So solid.

“We’ll get Fish to find somewhere special for dinner. Somewhere nice, with something sweet for you at the end. One of his Christmas spots. We’ll get lunch with Saint and Luke the next day if we want, but we’ll have dinner just the three of us. Get you all dressed up in your greens. Then we’ll go home.” Leo’s eyes were moonstone blue in the dark. “I want to wake up with you the first morning after.”

I’m scared. I’m scaredI’mscared. “Then what?”

“Croissants. Coffee. You’re going to steal a sip of Finn’s and hate it.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you always do,” Leo laughed quietly.

He did, he did, oh god, he did. “That’s it? Dinner and breakfast forever?”

“Yeah,” Leo said, eyes shining. “Isn’t it great?”

Yes. A thousand times over.

Leo twined their fingers together and brought them to his mouth. “We’re gonna be such hot dads, too.”

The first tear slid down Logan’s cheek.

“Can you imagine? That one over there is gonna cause an accident every time he does preschool pickup. Oh, and I call dibs on bake sales, but we can share swim lessons. You can do…what, little league? You’d be cute playing baseball. Are we going to be those hockey dads that throw their kid in skates at eighteen months?”

Logan sniffled. “Ouais.”

Leo sighed, tipping his head to the side. “Well, you’ll have to fight it out with Loops for cub coaching, then.”

“Okay,” he said thickly.

“I was thinking we’d stay in Gryffindor,” Leo said, as if he hadn’t noticed what every word from his mouth did to Logan. He would. God, of course he did. “We can move, if you really want. New York’s a little loud for me, sometimes. New Orleans is far, and too hot for you. And, you know, hockey’s tough. We could stay by your family.”

“Quebec is too cold,” Logan managed, smudging at his cheek with the sheets.

“I could make it work.”

Logan shook his head. He’d never ask that. “It’s too cold.”

“Okay.” That made him happy. Logan could tell.

“We’ll stay,” Logan decided. “Gryffindor. Close to Dumo, and Cap. Probably Noelle.”

Leo’s mouth tilted playfully. “He might be carried off to the wilds of Wisconsin if we’re not careful.”

“Loops wouldn’t leave us.”

“Neither of them would.” Something sad buffeted his face, then, but Leo was still smiling. His thumb pressed to the dip of Logan’s chin. “You should’ve heard him, baby. He was right there for you.”

“Remus?”

“Yeah. We miss you.” Carefully, Leo leaned over and kissed his forehead. The mattress hardly moved beneath Logan. “Miss you so much. I’d wake Fish up to tell you, too, but he’d cry.”

“Non,” Logan said softly.

“I won’t,” Leo promised. His knuckles ran down Logan’s cheek. The sadness was still there; the pain, too, of a different kind than the ache and sting of Logan’s midsection. Then, like he could read Logan’s mind, “How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Itchy.”

“Hurts?”

“Like a bad bruise.”

A bad, bad bruise. Deep enough to touch a couple organs. It stretched across his whole torso, blackest in the wonky specter of a skate toe. He was unbelievably lucky that the blade had been cushioned by his jersey, they said. Logan counted his luck in his sister, and the two bodies in his bed.

“Is she okay?” he asked, turning the collar of Leo’s pajama shirt between his fingertips.

“They made coffee a little while ago. Or tea, I couldn’t tell. Thomas likes the foldout.”

Two key pieces of information for one question. Logan liked those odds. “You’re not sleeping?”

Caught. Leo narrowed his eyes. “Neither are you. But I’m trying.”

“Let me—”

“Rest,” Leo insisted, cutting him off. He patted Logan’s chest with all the force of a dragonfly. “I’m fine. Just a little freaked, still.”

If only arguing would help. Logan pressed his lips together obediently, and Leo smiled, Leo kissed him soft, so maybe it was okay just for tonight.

They laid together in the silence of his apartment and Finn’s muffled exhales.

It wouldn’t leave him alone, gnawing at his stitches and the edges of his heart. Remus, frightened and alone. Sirius, driven to the point of collapse. Finn, panicked, broken on the ice, his careful eyes and the uncanny squareness of his shoulders during every followup appointment after his third concussion. Their battered bunch of Lions made quite the picture.

And Leo. He’d seen how the riptide of retirement swallowed people up more closely than most (except, perhaps, Sirius, though Logan had never asked him about that either and probably should one of these days). Leo, still dreaming of them and a life beyond this all-consuming game.

Dinner in the city, breakfast like their favorite mornings. Not a loop, but a throughline. A foundation for more.

“I don’t know how I’d be.” When it was over. When he was done. People grew angry.

People grew sad.

You’re out for the playoffs, Lo. And when it was more, and Logan was staring down the barrel of—nothing? He didn’t want it all to end with him fucking dying on the ice, but god, the sudden drop of aging out almost scared him more. He didn’t know himself without this game.

Leo sighed, and Logan could hear the sleepiness blur its edges. They were sharing a pillow. He hoped that stayed, through it all.

“You’ll be you.” Leo’s arm laid over his, hand wrapping around his bicep. He nuzzled his face against Logan’s skin. “That’s all I need.”

[fruitcoops]

Fleur de Sel

O'Knutzy Week 2026: Day Three! Some French summer sun for the Cubs :) Characters belong to @lumosinlove, fest is from @oknutzy-week-2026!

Italy (C1) | Solstice (B1)

“Remember Italy?”

Finn finished chasing a drip of vibrant orange down the side of his popsicle and nodded. “Which part?”

“The park.” Leo hadn’t even looked up from his book.

Of course Finn remembered the park. Rambling green within the confines of towering castle walls that dated back to the 15th century; enough shade to escape the lunchtime heat, but enough warmth that Leo could bask in the soft grass between bites of cheese and salami. Logan’s radiant delight when they turned the corner and uncovered his eyes, his pleased smile when they crossed the drawbridge over a dry moat, the lounge of his body while he surveyed the land around them like his own personal kingdom. Finn had barely been able to keep the old fortress secret for those morning hours.

“Loved that place, yeah.”

Leo turned a page, uncrossed his legs, and crossed them again in the opposite direction. “We should go back.”

“Missing the sun?”

There—a teasing dart of blue eyes over the edge of his sunglasses. Finn stretched out with a laugh and let the French heat beat down on his knees, etching more freckles over his pasty skin. A beachside sprawl of towels and half-broken umbrellas marked their territory. A dozen yards out, a volleyball went scampering off toward the water to a chorus of groans.

“I’m missing the—”

“Maman!”

“—cheese.” Leo held the edge of his page down at the next gust of wind. “And the—”

“MAMAN!”

“—architecture. Reg wants to go with us next time.”

“As long as he gets his own place.”

Leo chucked a shell at him, which Finn caught, laughing. “You like him.”

“I do, I do.” Another bit of popsicle attempted escape. Finn savored it, the sharp tang of fresh orange juice straight out of the freezer against this summer boil, and felt his toes pop as he worked them into the sand. “But,” he added. “I refuse to keep my hands to myself for the sake of his delicate sensibilities.”

“Control yourself, O’Hara.”

“Around you in your teeny-tiny, itty-bitty vacation shorts?” It was Finn’s turn to peer at him over his glasses. “Not a chance, Butter. Not a chance.”

More shouting from below; a squabble, loud gestures, something about the imaginary offsides line that left Sydney stomping back to her position with a vicious scowl. Twenty feet to his right, Finn watched Iva raise her wineglass at her children in acknowledgement and return to her shell-sorting.

“He’s thinking of bringing Harper.”

“He should.” Finn slurped a bit of juice off his hand and caught the glance of Leo’s eyes. “Better than staying in a hotel alone.”

“Finn…”

“I joke, I kid.”

“First Luke, now Reg…” Leo clicked his tongue. “Somebody doesn’t like to share.”

He did not. But Finn wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of defining his very specific sharing parameters. He gave Leo a firm pat on his thigh, tilted into the light to collect sun-gold as a souvenir. Gold beside him, bronze ahead. Lots of bronze, actually—his own personal statue slapped the volleyball back over their net to immediate protests.

“What’s she saying?”

“Hmm? Oh.” Leo’s face scrunched slightly, listening. “Aubrey’s calling him a filthy cheater and sore loser. And—”

“MAMAN!”

“—uh, they wanted Iva to play ref, earlier. Which is obviously going super well.”

“Lo?”

“He just told Aubrey he was gonna kill her with a rock.”

“So he’s happy,” Finn finished, pushing his glasses up into his hair. He laid back with a sigh. “Perfect.”

Leo’s laugh made him smile. His hand was hot and sandy on Finn’s jaw in a quick scuff, thumb pushing at his dimple. “Hmm,” Leo sighed happily. “You’re scruffy.”

“Was thinking of shaving tonight, before dinner.”

“MENTEUSE! MENTEUSE! MENTEUSE!”

Leo’s fingertips trailed over his cheek. “Aw, but I like it.”

“I can keep it,” Finn offered, squinting up at him in the sun.

Leo examined him for a moment. “Tomorrow,” he decided. “Keep it for tonight.”

“You got plans, Knut?”

“Hush.”

Finn grinned at the blush on his cheeks. “Be-have.”

“I’m—” Leo smacked his glasses back down over his eyes. “Watch your show.”

“Who, Lo?”

“Yes.”

“My show,” Finn muttered, smiling. He wasn’t wrong. Well—Leo was rarely wrong. And he was also watching Logan, as evidenced by the extensive lifespan of page 117 and his fixed gaze that Finn could see through the side of his sunglasses.

He snuck a hand up under the leg of Leo’s swim shorts and gently pinched the underside of his thigh. Leo jumped with a yelping sort of sound, and whacked at him with his paperback. “Finn.”

“Back muscles.”

“I’m finishing this before you and spoiling it all.”

“Nah. You won’t.” Finn bit his lip at the softness of the back of Leo’s knee. Muscle and joints twitched under his touch. “Gonna give me subtitles?”

“I’m reading.”

As if. Even with his book fully spread open in front of his face, Finn saw him peeking. That was fine. Beach volleyball looked good on the Tremblays. The half-inflated ball and a torn net from their grandmother’s shed brought the whole thing together, a picture-perfect window into the last twenty-odd years of these visits. He was more than happy to watch Logan, season-strong, solstice-bronzed, lope around with three of his most favorite people in his most favorite place.

“D’you think Alex would let me use his espresso machine?”

Leo looked down at him, straw in his mouth. “Huh? Probably.”

“Like, could I borrow it?”

“Unlikely.”

“Really?” Finn frowned, and folded his hands behind his head. “Maybe we could grab it next time we visit.”

“Or we could just buy one,” Leo laughed.

“It doesn’t taste the same.”

Leo shook his head, setting his lemonade down in the sand. “You and Lo. Impossible. Ohhh, it’s not the same, ohhh, theirs is so much better, ohhhh, we can just borrow it real quick when we visit.”

“Older sibling seasoning is real,” Finn insisted.

“If my cousins ever stole half the shit you two have taken from your siblings, I would have fed them to a gator.”

Finn tsked. “They love us. And I miss good espresso. Italy spoiled me.”

Leo took another sip. His book was fully abandoned, resting beside him while he watched Aubrey and Noelle race the tide for the ball, shrieking as the water pulled back. Logan stood with his arms crossed by the side of the net and one hip tilted. Statue, indeed. “I think,” Leo said slowly. “That if you just told Alex he makes good coffee, he’d make you some when we visit.”

Finn waved his hand in the air. “He’d do that anyway.”

“Still.”

Logan looked back at them, one hand shading his eyes. He waved, then raised one thumb up in question. The two of them returned the gesture. The wet volleyball slammed into Logan’s back from behind with a plasticky shlorp he could hear across thirty feet of distance. Finn could see the red mark stretching across his shoulder blade when he turned and raced back into the Nice surf. He’d make sure to kiss it better later, scruff and all.

[fruitcoops]

Bleeding Out

O'Knutzy Week Day 2: Love the Tremzy. Whump the Tremzy. Characters belong to @lumosinlove, prompts are from @oknutzy-week-2026!

TW for hockey injuries, blood

Early Morning (B2) | Longing (B5)

(Part 1/2)

Gryffindor took Tampa in a sweep. From the look of it, the Rangers were hungry for the same from Vegas. They even had good-luck charms in the Garden for game four: six Lions, tucked away in a family booth where their ballcap disguises didn’t matter so much. They wouldn’t be counted among opponents for another week, anyway. It was really nobody’s business how many people it took to convince Sirius Black a day trip wouldn’t jinx them. Leo maintained that the benefits of watching Logan take out Vegas in the first round far outweighed any advantage they might get from staying home. And on the subject of advantages, he had Remus on his side. Sirius never stood a chance.

“I love watching him lose,” Remus muttered into the rim of his solo cup. Leo was pretty sure that was only meant for Sirius’ ears; Sirius, who ducked his smile into the crook of Remus’ neck before kissing his temple.

“I still think you should let me fight him,” Sirius murmured back.

Remus, halfway through another sip of beer, shook his head. “You know how he gets that stupid look on his face? Right before he starts taking terrible shots? If I’m lucky, Tremzy’ll even punch him in the throat.”

Teeth scraped Leo’s ear as Sirius began to laugh. He pressed a blind kiss to Finn’s forehead and settled into the weight of his arms when they circled his waist. A sigh warmed his nape. “I love those top-shelf goals. I really, really do. And I know he’s doing it to drive me crazy. Knutty, can you believe he’s doing it just to drive me crazy?”

Leo smiled. “Sure, Harz. Just for you.”

“I mean, he could do anything,” Finn continued, running a hand along Leo’s lower belly with an absent sort of slowness. “This goalie—who is this, Hill?—I mean, seriously, Peanut, look how much fuckin’ room he’s leaving.”

“Shit’s wild,” Leo agreed.

“And yet.” Finn sighed again. His fingertips slipped under Leo’s shirt. “Top-shelf, baby. Every time.”

Leo hummed. “For your eyes only.”

Finn nuzzled into the side of his hair. “He’ll get a five-hole, next,” he whispered. “Just for you.”

Leo knew that. He’d seen Logan watching from the bench, all keen green eyes on the Jumbotron whenever it swept near the family box, squinting up at them when it was away. Logan’s excellence never made him a puck-hog. It was one of the many things Leo loved about him. He’d get two goals against Vegas tonight, and he’d probably try to fight Greyback if he could bait him into it before the final buzzer. That part, Leo didn’t love so much. Not the fighting—that would always get him riled. But Greyback wasn’t like the other big lugs Logan could grapple.

Leo glanced over to Remus. The two of them had slipped in halfway through the first to avoid the crowds and cameras, dressed down in hoodies and hats and standing just out of the camera’s scope. They weren’t quite as cozy as Finn and himself, but that was no surprise. They could barely sit still long enough to share a seat on their own couch for a full period. Sirius’ hand rested gently at the small of Remus’ back, though, and when the buzzer went a few seconds later, he watched Remus breathe out and lean his head on Sirius’ shoulder.

Finn patted his stomach twice. “Want a refill?”

“Nah, I’m good.” He made to leave, but Leo caught his wrist. Finn wrapped him up even closer with a small, pleased noise and gave his hips two quick squeezes. His eyes were bright when Leo turned to look at him. “Hi.”

“Hi, handsome.” Finn kissed his shoulder. Sweet boy. “You okay?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Worried about something?”

Remus and Sirius were talking about something else, now, heads bowed together while Sirius pointed at the ice. Leo looked back to Finn and smiled. “Not too worried.”

Finn stole a sip of his drink. Leo watched him think for a moment, from the way his gaze trailed over to Remus to the dart of tongue over his gin-shiny lower lip. A light pat found his hip. “He’ll be okay,” Finn murmured.

“Not Loops I’m thinking about.”

“I know.” He always did. “We got a good one, Le. He can hold his own.”

Logan was very good. That’s what worried him. Maybe too much—not enough faith in Logan, too much trust in his squirming gut. But looking at Remus and Sirius, chatting with Noelle, he couldn’t bring himself to feel better. Twelve minutes left. He took his drink back from Finn with a kiss and a smile.

“Think we’ll be able to go say hi?”

“No way,” Finn laughed, looping an arm around his waist. “Not even a little. That big bunch of Rangers won’t want to see our faces until July.”

“I dunno,” Leo mused. “I do love some of those faces.”

Finn narrowed his eyes playfully as they meandered toward the snack table. “You’re allowed one.”

“Oh, yeah? We’re rationing Rangers, now?”

“And he barely even counts.”

Finn bent to grab a few cookies. Leo couldn’t help himself—he laid his head on Finn’s shoulder blade, slipping his hand into his back pocket on the way. Only for a moment, and with a silent thank you in the form of a kiss to his warm neck as he straightened.

Around them, families and lovers and the few kids too young to handle the stands milled about. Leo spotted a game of hide and seek with Will Morgan’s wife, Ray, as ‘home base’. Finn just watched him, a soft crease at his brow. “You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked quietly.

“I’ll be better when the game’s over.” And he’s back in Vegas.

“Me, too.” Finn pressed a shortbread cookie into his hand. “I think everyone will. You…”

“Hmm?”

Finn took a moment to answer, then smoothed his thumb over the side of Leo’s mouth. “Let me know if I can do anything, okay? Anything at all.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“Don’t fret all by yourself,” Finn added a few seconds later. They made their way toward the viewing window again, arm in arm like something out of an old Victorian painting. Leo felt like he was being perhaps a little too clingy, but Finn didn’t seem to mind. Just tilted his head when they made it back and shot a smile at his parents across the room. “Lo’s got Al and the rest of them out there with him. Then we’ll bring him home, and he’ll be all safe with us.”

Leo cupped that thought in two careful hands for the remainder of the break. Logan looked so good in the quick glances they got of him around the locker room. Five minutes before the start, while Finn laughed with Thomas and Noelle, Leo reached for his phone. He kept his eyes fixed on the shape of Logan’s shoulders meeting his neck on the small TV.

Message to: LT <3

Love you! Cheering for you :)

Damn it.

Message to: LT <3

Be careful <3

That would worry Logan. Or maybe not—Leo watched him glance at his phone, propped up on the shelf of his stall. Logan smiled. Good. That was better. A shadow stretched beside him.

“I want that fucker in Vegas by midnight.”

A soft snort answered. “You and me both.”

Leo closed his eyes. “Sorry.”

“Why?” Remus laughed, peering down at the ice. “I’d put the fucker in a catapult if I could. Jeez, hell of a view up here.”

“No kidding. Think they can hook us up with one of these in Gryff?”

“Nah, I like ours.”

Years into their friendship, Leo still couldn’t believe the way Remus watched the ice. Remus and Sirius, which really explained a lot more than most people knew. He’d only known Remus as a staff member for a year, but he’d known even then that the way he scanned the game was not normal for…well, anyone, but certainly not a trainer. They watched Logan skate out together.

“I’m sorry,” Leo said suddenly.

Remus glanced behind him. “What, me?”

“I just—” He gestured vaguely at the glass, and the game beginning again below. “All of that. It’s not fair. And I know you’re all good and everything, but I am. Sorry, I mean. It shouldn’t be hard like this.”

Remus opened his mouth, then closed it. He patted Leo on the shoulder, eyes back on the game. “It’s not hard with you guys.”

“Good.” Leo swished a mouthful of ice water around. “Let me know if you want anyone to go in on that catapult with you, rookie.”

Back on the ice, for the third period of game four, your NEW! YORK! RANGERS!

Logan got his second goal of the night three minutes in. A five-hole. Finn bit his bicep, just below the edge of his shirtsleeve, and whispered told you in the sweetest sort of promise while the crowd chanted Logan’s name. It would be hell on earth to face them in the second round, but god, the things Leo would do to snatch that puck right out of the air and watch Logan’s eyes go flame-hot.

“We’re still good for later, right?” Remus asked, accepting a perfect cheese and cracker from Sirius.

Finn nodded. “Should be. They’ll want Lo for postgame—oh, nice steal, go baby go!”

Logan swept the puck out of the Rangers’ zone and took to the half, already winding up for a pass to Alex. It connected—Alex shot—the goalpost knocked it away, just barely, a near-miss that rebounded off the boards. Vegas’ new winger was closer, but Logan was hungry. He shouldered 64 out of the way and sniped it to Percy for a beautiful wraparound on the other side.

“Yes!” Finn hollered, slapping his palm to Leo’s. “That’s what I’m talking about, baby, absolute beauty!”

Logan and Percy jostled each other around as they headed out of the dog pile and toward the face-off. Leo liked Percy. He was wild and crazy and all-in-all a lot, but there was a little mirror-part of him that was so very much like Finn. He knew Percy had been there for the highest highs and lowest lows. It had never stopped him from being kind to Leo.

Finn groaned softly. “I want a hattie for him.”

Leo jerked his chin toward the ice. “I think he does, too.”

“The things he’ll get if he sinks it…”

“You got plans?”

Finn’s smile glimmered in the booth light. “Always.”

There was really no way for Vegas to come back from their deficit. Not with that kind of time, not with Saint in net. Leo was pretty sure New York’s defense would find a way to box the Knights out even in Saint’s absence. He respected them for their hunger, even if he didn’t like it from the other side. It was hard to hope they’d be tired before going head-to-head, when a sweep of Vegas sounded so good.

“There’s the face,” he heard Remus mutter.

Greyback was sweating hard. His hair stuck to his forehead under his visor as he shouted down the bench before standing and heading for the gate. It was hard to imagine him in the same room as Remus, let alone the same team. His expression defaulted to an ugly sort of rage, starved and rabid. It unsettled even his teammates. It certainly unsettled Leo.

Eight minutes remaining, and Logan got the puck again. He hadn’t had it a second when it happened.

“Fuck—”

Leo flinched as Logan folded gut-first over the Knight’s bench, Greyback’s weight behind him. His whole body visibly jerked, skates dangling. Finn shouted—whistles blew. The puck skipped away.

Greyback grabbed Logan by the back of the jersey and threw him to the ice.

“Oh my god,” Leo whispered. “Oh—”

Greyback’s skate met Logan’s stomach, vicious and mean and hard, both gloves braced on the boards for leverage. Logan jolted again and curled on his side, pinned between the boards and Greyback’s foot rising a second time—

The Rangers fell on him like wolves. Leo covered his mouth with both hands. He didn’t want to watch this. Oh, god, he didn’t want to see this. Greyback shook the refs off and skated backward to boos that rattled the windows. His lips twitched into a snarl. A grin.

Leo swore he looked right at them.

“Oh my god.” It tore out of him, muffled by his palm.

“—motherfucking maniac.”

Finn was yelling. He must have been, before. Leo hadn’t heard. A hand found his mid-back. Sirius. Unflinching and unblinking. Leo’s throat pulled hard enough to hurt. “He…”

“Go downstairs,” Sirius said quietly. His other arm was wrapped around Remus’ shoulders. God. Remus.

Leo’s ice water soaked into the carpet by his sneaker. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. “It’s because Logan’s good.”

Because you were good. Around and around. It never fucking ended. Remus stared at the ice as the medical team helped Logan off the ice, all shades of dark blue and red. He shook his head. “He knows I’m here.”

He’d been ready to kick Logan again. And again, and again, until—Leo didn’t want to know what Fenrir Greyback’s stopping point was. The whole team watched him limp down the tunnel, a trainer under one arm and Luke under the other.

Percy grabbed Greyback by the back of the jersey and slammed a fist across his face.

“Go downstairs,” Sirius repeated.

Captain’s orders. Leo figured he should probably let go of Finn’s wrist. He didn’t seem to mind, though, and they kept up a quick, steady pace through halls so empty Leo could hear each footfall. A security guard stepped forward when they reached the medical room. “Sir—”

“Move,” Finn said flatly. He didn’t wait for an answer; Leo clapped the guard on the shoulder as they passed through the door.

They weren’t alone.

The Rangers’ PT closed his eyes. “I said no visitors.”

“They’re fine.” Leo winced at the strain in Logan’s voice. “They’re fine, they can stay.”

“Goddamn right we can stay,” Finn muttered. He pulled a stool over to the side of Logan’s bed and pressed a kiss to the top of Noelle’s head. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Her eyes remained locked on the PT as he palpated Logan’s thigh, then his calf. She must have left the second Logan folded. That explained the security guard.

“What are we doing?” Leo asked.

“Checking legs and arms,” Noelle answered before the PT could open his mouth. “Nothing so far. They’re looking at his chest and stomach next.”

“I feel great,” Logan said from the bed. He offered Leo a shaky grin, a little pale against the white pillow. “Hey, like my goals?”

Leo mustered something like a smile and squeezed his hand. “Real pretty, baby.”

“Nothing broken,” the PT said. He had moved on to Logan’s ankles. “Anything hurt, Tremblay?”

Logan laughed ruefully. “Everything. But not so bad.”

The PT nodded, though he didn’t look convinced. “Let’s get those pads off you and take a look. How’s your breathing?”

“Better, now.”

“Ribs?”

“Sore.”

The PT—Koch, Leo read—finally looked back to them. “If you’re going to be here, you can help him sit up.”

Good. Leo hadn’t planned on leaving either way. He took the head of the bed, where Logan was pressing himself up onto his elbows with a grimace. It felt odd to handle him in all his gear—Leo could feel straps and buckles bunch under his bare hands, all locked tight against Logan’s body. He got ahold of Logan’s underarms and took his weight, then brushed a kiss to his sweaty hair. “Hi.”

“Salut.”

“Okay here?”

“Ouais, it’s good.”

“We’re going to get that jersey off first,” Koch instructed. “Tremz, can you lift your arms?”

Leo eased his weight forward until Logan could brace against him. He managed to get his arms up, but not without a low noise. “Yeah.”

“We can always cut it off if it hurts.”

“Non, I’ll be quick.”

Leo watched Finn watch Logan as he pulled his jersey over his head. The crease between his auburn brows was back. Deeper, now. More intent. Leo watched it go slack in an instant. “Fuck, Lo.”

“Tabarnak,” Noelle mumbled.

“Is it bad?” Logan craned his neck down at an odd angle. “Get these things off, I can’t see.”

Koch clicked his tongue. “Pretty banged up, bud.”

The four of them worked Logan’s pads off in pieces. The release made Logan sigh and lean back, eyes closed, his abdomen free and bare. Leo’s stomach curdled. "Fucking Christ, Logan."

Banged up. Beaten, more like it. Brutalized. Leo couldn’t help it—he reached out to touch, and felt heat radiating off the mass of purple-blue-black spreading across Logan’s torso an inch before contact. “How’s the breathing?” Koch checked. Logan gave a thumbs-up. “Cramping?”

“A little. Sore, mostly. I’m coming off the adrenaline.”

Noelle glanced to Leo. “He got the wind knocked out of him.”

“No shit.”

“Did they throw Greyback out?”

“Percy fought him,” Finn chimed in. Logan’s eyebrows rose. “We didn’t see the rest.”

“We’ll win,” Logan said decisively, then winced. “Ugh. I should be excited.”

“Be excited at home tonight.” Koch felt around the abused area and made a face. “This will feel worse in an hour, and real bad in the morning. I can send you home with some pain meds and anti-inflammatories. Honestly, though, heading to urgent care or the hospital is not a bad idea.”

Logan made a face. “I’m too tired for a hospital.”

“You’re sure?”

“I don’t want to…” Logan trailed off. Noelle squeezed his hand. “Just, like, go sit there forever so they can give me meds and send me home. I really just want to sleep this off.”

“You should have someone stay with you overnight,” Koch said. “Just in case, I mean.”

Logan gestured to them. “I have three right here.”

“Are they going to be able to get you to a hospital if anything changes?”

“Absolutely.” Finn patted Logan’s calf. Leo could see the false edge in his smile from a mile away, but Logan seemed tired enough not to care. “Hear that, baby? We’ll even carry you to the car.”

“Please, no,” Logan laughed, then made a soft noise.

Koch’s eyes narrowed. “What feels bad?”

“Feels like I got kicked in the fucking stomach.”

“Lo,” Leo said quietly. Logan exhaled through his nose.

Waspish or not, Koch appeared unbothered by Logan’s attitude. He laid his hands over the darkest part of the bruise again and gave Logan a once-over. “I’m going to get those anti-inflammatories,” he said. “Lift your arms again?”

Logan waved his arms up and down, like he was doing jumping jacks. “See? Fine.”

“His back’s really tense,” Leo said.

Logan let his head thud back against Leo’s shoulder. “Come on.”

“I’ll get the medical staff to give a second opinion,” Koch said. He held both hands up as Logan began to protest. “Look, Tremz, I think you’ll be good in a couple days, but I’m not tossing you out the door without another set of eyes.”

“Just—” Logan turned to Finn, all hopeful and sweet. Leo nearly rolled his eyes. “Loops is upstairs, right? He knows me. He’s got his fancy doctor school stuff and everything, he counts.”

“Tremblay,” Koch said at the same time Finn sighed out a “Logan.”

“He does!”

“Oh, tais-toi,” Noelle grumbled, covering his mouth with her palm. “Hush. No more. Yes, Mr. Koch, please get your medical team to tell my idiot brother if he should go to the doctor. Thank you.”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Koch said.

Leo had never tried that method. He wasn’t sure it would work as well for him, though he had a few tricks of his own. The sides of Logan’s mouth tilted down in a hard frown when Noelle took her hand away and patted his arm. “Mean to me,” he muttered.

“You look like an eggplant.”

“I’m hurt.”

“Then go to the doctor,” she said slowly.

“I’ll be fine!” Logan spread his hands. “Look, I move, I breathe, I’m talking, I can argue.”

“You could argue from your grave, Lolo.”

Logan huffed and folded both hands on his stomach, winced, and laid them in his lap instead. He looked up at Leo, upside-down and far less flushed than he’d been on the TV screen. “Sorry I scared you.”

“Not your fault.”

“No,” Logan agreed. He looked down at Finn and held a hand out for him to take. “Sorry, Fish.”

Finn ran his thumb over Logan’s knuckles. Unbruised, for once. “Just glad you’re okay.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Noelle added, standing only to sit on the side of the PT table and usher Logan a few inches over. She combed her fingers through his hair; his eyelids drooped. “We’ll check the game in a minute, d’accord? They probably suspended Greyback.”

“Dirty hit,” Logan said.

“Dirty kick,” Leo muttered.

“A mess,” Noelle agreed. “But not our mess. How’s your stomach?”

Logan wobbled his hand from side to side. “Been better. Bruised, probably.”

She laid her head on top of his, but kept one hand in his hair. She was petting Logan the same way their mother did—Leo had been pleasantly surprised by the tenderness of Iva’s hand on his head at dinner, slipping a few curls behind his ear with a thoughtless, yet no less intense, kind of care. Logan liked it, too. He let out a long sigh and Leo watched the tension in his legs fade away.

“Here,” he said, ratcheting the top section of the PT table up a few notches into more of a chair shape. Noelle helped Logan get comfortable, though Leo noticed she took most of his weight on herself. Their legs stretched in parallel down the length of the cushioned tabletop. He’d never noticed how their feet turned inward at the same angle.

Finn straightened Noelle’s stool out for him when he came back around, bringing it close to his own. “And now we wait,” he said quietly. His palm smoothed up Logan’s thigh, then up to the ink-spill of a bruise. His splayed fingers stood vivid in their paleness. Finn ran his thumb across the lower boundary, then laid his hand back over the heart of it. He frowned.

“Lo?”

As quickly as it had eased, Leo’s heart rate kickstarted again.

“Hmm?” came Logan’s tired answer.

Noelle sat up the rest of the way, frowning. “Why are you purple?”

“My stomach hurts.”

“You’re—Finn, do you see this?”

“Hang on, he’s all…tense, here, I don’t know.” Finn prodded the purpled skin, then seemed to see something in Logan’s face, too. “Yeah, right around his—"

“Mouth,” Noelle finished. She shook Logan’s shoulder. Gentle at first, then harder. “Logan. Look at me.”

“Arrêtes,” he muttered, peering out at her through one slitted eye. “Let me nap, it’s been a long night.”

“Noelle.” The urgent undertone of Finn’s voice raised every hair on Leo’s neck. “He doesn’t feel right.”

“He’s breathing faster.” Noelle rubbed her palm along the center of Logan’s chest, even when he tried to push her away. “Come on, Lolo, look at me.”

Logan started to speak, then stopped. He blinked both eyes open with a hard breath out through his nose. He held himself awkwardly—too still, too wary. Leo watched him glance down at himself, at the table, and take another labored breath, brows knitted like he’d missed an easy pass. A shudder rattled from the tops of his shoulders to his socked feet. “Nolly.”

“I’m here,” she said immediately, wrapping her arm fully around his shoulders.

“It’s okay, Lo,” Leo said. Even as the words left his mouth, it felt like a lie.

Another shiver. Fast breaths, shallow breaths. Leo’s lungs hurt just looking at him. They caught in Logan’s chest and flared his nostrils like each one took a thousand tons of effort. He wet his lips. His gaze slid to the side, and only focused after a few blinks. “J’ne sais…”

“C’est bon.”

Logan shook his head, then laid it on her shoulder again. His face twisted the moment he moved.

She murmured something into his hair, then turned to Finn and Leo. “He’s cold—”

Logan lurched. In a single rush of motion, red poured down the front of Noelle’s shirt, across her lap, and began to pool on the floor of the PT room.

Leo ran.

Noelle’s blistering scream followed him out the door.

Koch and his collection of medics were already running when Leo found them, coffee cups sloshing in their hands. Leo twisted his fist in the front of a Ranger-blue quarter-zip and hauled him back down the hallway at a sprint. “What—”

“Fix it!”

One of the medics shouted when they crossed the threshold. There was a lot of shouting, actually. Leo let it blur like a crowd and beelined for the table. Logan: slumped and still. Finn: holding both of Logan’s hands. Noelle: holding the rest of Logan’s upper body in her arms and lap, where he had evidently passed right the fuck out. She looked like she’d fallen out of a bad remake of Carrie. The whole fucking room was the set.

Leo heard sirens echo from the back of the building. More rapid footsteps, more people, and Logan. Still laying limp. Leo knelt by his head and swallowed hard at the warmth seeping through the knees of his jeans. “Logan? Lo, can you hear me?”

“He’s out, he just went fucking out,” Noelle sobbed, clutching him to her as the medics closed in. “Allez, Bear, reste avec moi—"

“Ms. Tremblay—"

“No!” she howled.

Leo let the medics body him out of the way. He hit something solid; arms came around him, and he was on his feet in one tug, but Finn had been bullied all the way on the other side of the room. He was watching them load Logan onto a stretcher, ghost-white. A medic barred his path. Leo sucked in a breath. “I…”

“Stay here,” Sirius ordered. Leo could have cried. Oh, fuck, he was definitely going to cry. Sirius was holding him like he’d bolt. Leo didn’t know how to tell him it was more likely he’d collapse. “Sit.”

He sat. He didn’t know whose chair he was in, but he sat. Sirius moved around him like a shadow and steered Finn to the adjacent seat by his shoulders.

“Stay,” he repeated, pointing to the pair of them. “Do not move. I’ll be back in two minutes. Count.”

“One,” Finn said shakily. He held onto the chair with both hands. “Two. Three.”

Noelle was still crying, somewhere in the vastness beyond the room. The underside of her sneaker was stamped in crimson on the floor. Leo blinked fast.

“Four,” Finn continued, voice wobbling harder. “Five.”

Someone was yelling in the hallway. Unfamiliar—no, very familiar, and very loud.

“Eight. Is that—”

“What the fuck were you doing?” Very, very familiar, yet so foreign in its thunderous anger. “It’s internal bleeding, you stupid motherfucker! It’s goddamn hypovolemic shock! He came in with—HE CAME IN WITH A TRAUMATIC BRUISE AND LABORED BREATHING, AND YOU WENT FOR ANTI FUCKING INFLAMMATORIES AND A COFFEE?”

“Oh, shit,” Finn choked out.

“This is your job! THEY ARE YOUR JOB!”

The shouting died out for half a second.

“A MISTAKE? You left a patient to puke blood on his fucking sister! HE COULD HAVE DIED ON YOUR TABLE, YOU IRRESPONSIBLE SON OF A BITCH!”

Leo reached for Finn. He’d made it to number sixty-five. The chair arms wedged against his side at an awkward angle, but Finn clutched at the back of his shirt and pressed his face to Leo’s shoulder like it was his only anchor on earth.

The door hit the wall. A picture fell flat to Koch’s desk with the impact. “Jesus,” he heard Remus mutter, then quick footsteps crossing linoleum. “Hey,” he said, gentler. The back of a cool hand came to rest on Leo’s forehead, then a palm just below his nape. “Hey, come on. We’re gonna get out of here, okay?”

“We’re good,” Leo managed. His vision blurred. “We’re good.”

“I know, bud.” Remus put his hand on Finn’s shoulder and gave a squeeze. “They’re taking Logan to the hospital right now. I bet he’ll want to see you when he wakes up, right?”

Finn was one solid tremor in Leo’s arms. “Is he alive?”

Leo watched Remus’ face do something complicated. “Yeah, Harz. He’s alive. They’re taking real good care of him.”

“Cap told us to stay.”

“He’s helping Noelle right now.” Remus’ knuckles rubbed short, quick lines along the side of Finn’s spine. “He asked me to come get you two. Finn, can you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you gonna pass out?”

Finn pulled in a shuddering, tear-filled breath. “Maybe.”

“Yeah, man, you’re shaking pretty bad.”

Touch. Leo flinched at the sensation.

“You with me, Knut?”

Leo nodded, and nodded, and broke.

Remus didn’t balk at the first garbled sob, nor the second. When Leo came back to himself, dry-mouthed and riddled with a headache he hadn’t had five minutes ago, he’d sweated through his shirt. It didn’t even make him feel worse.

“Keep breathing,” Remus murmured. “Good job, that’s really great. We’re going to try standing up now, okay?”

He swayed badly, clutching Finn for support, but they made it. Lukewarm water dribbled down the inside of Leo’s wrist. Paper towels. Damp, like the glistening floor. Leo licked his lips. Chemicals and salt the whole way down.

“I promise,” Remus was saying, low and soothing like a lullaby Leo couldn’t remember. “Keep those there, Harz. I’ll get you some water.”

Finn was crying. Oh, he hated it when Finn cried. It broke his heart right open. Leo swiped the handful of paper towels down his face and shuddered at the cool air that followed. He made his wooden feet take a few steps toward the door.

“Nope, nope, nope.” A grip on his arms shocked Leo away from the buzz in his ears. Remus lifted his hand for him and pressed it to his neck. Water began trickling down the soaked back of his shirt.

Leo shook his head. “He’s not dead.”

“He’s not,” Remus agreed, guiding Finn over with a hand on his back. “He’s at the hospital.”

“It’s because Logan’s good.” They made their way across the room. Someone should put up a ‘wet floor’ sign, Leo thought. Between Finn’s clenched fistful of damp paper towels and his own dripping rivers down his spine, this place would be a slipping hazard sooner rather than later. Someone had tossed a few towels down—the red was gone. Leo could still see it when he blinked. A tang lingered in the air. He nodded to himself. “He hurt him ‘cause he’s good. He always does that. Logan’s so good.”

“Merci,” Sirius murmured, kissing Remus’ forehead quickly. The hallway around them was—was a mess. Sirius had blood on his shirt. Not as much as Noelle, but Leo frowned.

“Your shirt.”

“She’s fine,” Sirius assured him. “I’m driving you two to the hospital, d’accord?”

“Who’s fine?”

“What?”

“She’s fine,” Leo repeated. “Who?”

Sirius glanced down the hallway, toward the bathrooms. “Uh, Noelle. She was—upset. But she’s okay. Thomas is with her.”

“Is she coming?”

“Where?”

Too many follow-up questions. Leo was getting impatient. “Is she coming to the hospital with us?”

“Not right now.” Sirius gave him a strained smile and pried the wad of paper towels from his hand, then Finn’s. “Thomas will drive her. Let’s be quick, ouais? Is one of you his emergency contact?”

They’d joked about it, at the start of the season. Lots of back and forth about if you’re in an emergency, he’s going to be right next to you and we should all put Loops and see what he says and wait, no, do Kuny, it’ll be funny and am I too old to put my mom on mine? “Both.”

The throbbing in Leo’s head had started leaving a pretty little star in the left side of his vision. He let Sirius shepherd them toward the exit, blinking slowly to clear it. It worked for seawater. At home, and in Nice. They made it all the way to the car, parked in the players’ lot, before he could find words again. “Dumo.”

The engine rumbled to life. “What about him?”

“Dumo’s his other emergency contact.” Beside him, Finn nodded. His eyelid was twitching fast. Leo put a hand on his thigh, and in a second Finn’s palm had folded over it. “It’s us and then him. And then his mom, I think.”

Sirius kept his headlights off until they made it to the main road. “He doesn’t have anyone in New York?”

“Um.” He couldn’t think. Sensation returned to his fingers and toes in a tingling wave, but his brain… “Luke, probably. We didn’t want to put people on our teams.”

“Why?”

“We figured if something happened, it’d be on the bus,” Finn said. His thumbnail ran along the outer seam of his jeans in one long highway, then back up, juddering over the bump of each stitch. He pressed his other hand over his eyes. “Or, like, a plane or something. Or practice. Everyone would be there.”

“We’re—” Sirius broke off with a sigh, like the red light personally offended him. “Okay, we’re changing that when we’re at the hospital.”

--

A few other things came first. Logan’s surgery, for instance. And one hell of a hullabaloo about blood transfusions. Leo forgot about blood banks entirely and nearly called Noelle before the nurse stopped him. He and Finn were awarded the illustrious honor of sitting outside the OR for over an hour.

Someone had found Noelle a change of clothes. Thomas, Leo realized when she fell into his arms. She smelled like Thomas. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her hair. She held on to him tight, then went right for Finn.

There wasn’t much to say after that. Leo didn’t want to know the answers to any of his questions except one.

Alex showed up a few minutes before ten with food and hot tea for each of them. That hug nearly did Leo in. He’d wanted to hide in the safe arch of Alex’s body and let him handle the onslaught of questions for a while. But he couldn’t. Not forever.

More waiting, and more updates that sent Leo’s heart into his throat only to be told that Logan was doing great. That he just needed some time to rest up before receiving visitors. Leo wasn’t sure how Logan could possibly do better alone in a recovery room than he would with them beside him, but he’d left his energy somewhere between Remus’ shoulder and the doors of the hospital.

In an unusual turn, it was Finn that caught a second wind just past eleven o’clock, with a mutter of fucking bullshit and a hard kiss to the crown of Leo’s head. They were at Logan’s side with a pair of stupid little bracelets in a matter of minutes.

“Do you think he’ll have a scar?”

Finn looked over at him, one hand still tucking the edge of the blanket under Logan’s ribs. Confused, then soft as new snow. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, real sexy.”

“Hear that, Lo?” Leo squeezed his hand and tried to ignore the lack of response. “You’ll be rugged.”

“They suspended Greyback.”

Leo would have preferred a death notice, but that worked. “Good.”

“And we won,” Finn added. He stroked the side of Logan’s sleeping face, mouth turning down at the sides. “I asked. He’ll want to know.”

“He will.”

Finn stared for a long moment, then groaned out a fuck and carded both hands through his hair, folding them at the back of his neck. He put his forehead on the crisp white sheets. “I don’t get it, Le. I just don’t. I can’t even—the fact that he’s still there, that they might still let him play.”

“It’s what he does.” Around and around and over and over.

“Remus said—”

“He didn’t know.” Leo wouldn’t stand for it. “They came late and they were never on the cameras. He did it because of Logan.”

Finn rested his chin on his forearms. His eyes were red-rimmed, face flushed. “It wasn’t Lo’s fault.”

“Logan’s good,” Leo said quietly. “This is what he does.”

“He knew Remus would be watching.” Red hair, falling prettily over his ears even mussed as it was. “Even if he thought he was at home, he knew.”

“Sure. Does it matter?”

“No.” Finn sat back, legs akimbo, restless hands tangling in his lap. He let out a low groan and let his head drop onto Leo’s shoulder. “I hate this. I hate that he’s ever been on the fucking ice, I hate that they might let him back, I hate that there’s a fucking—pattern, Le, and nobody even knows.”

Leo had missed his voice in those silent minutes.

“It’s not right.” He was fever-hot, close like this. Logan had been cold. “It’s not okay. Someone needs to know. I don’t fucking care if Loops just wants to, like, do his Zen get-over-it bullshit or whatever, someone needs to fucking stop him. I can’t keep doing this. Every time he’s out on the ice with you two I’ m just…”

Finn broke off with another groan. Privately, Leo was pretty sure there wasn’t an ounce of get-over-it in Remus’ body. And his dedication to dismantling Greyback’s legacy year by year, point by point, humiliation by humiliation, was pretty far from Zen.

“We could’ve been home.” Finn’s voice broke. Leo closed his eyes. “Jesus, we could’ve been four fucking hours away. What if nobody had been with him? That fucking PT was just going to let him bleed out on a table. I can’t take this. I can’t watch him get away with it again.”

When Alex stole a reluctant Finn away, and Noelle went to check in with Thomas at the end of the hall, Leo had taken a moment to call his mother. She’d heard Logan was taken to the hospital, but not much else. Twitter knew more. Someone got a shaky, out-of-focus video of Noelle before Sirius had taken their phone and thrown it in the nearest trash can. Can you tell us what happened? Can you tell us how you’re feeling?

I’m fucking covered in my little brother’s fucking blood!

“I don’t think Remus has to tell anyone.”

Finn sighed, slumping in his seat. “Leo…”

“We can’t make him. Not like this.” Fucking covered. She’d been holding Logan. Cradling him. Remus had been alone. And tonight, his sharp teeth, hidden by cautious walls. Leo didn’t think he’d been like that, before. “It needs to be its own thing. He deserves that much.”

He saw it in Logan’s chest, first. The same shift-stutter-sigh that greeted him in the earliest early mornings, when the moon and sun had both left Leo behind. Finn heard it, too, and took Logan’s hand in his between one breath and the next.

“Morning, baby,” Leo whispered.

In the low orange light, Logan’s eyes were nearly hazel. The tiny oxygen tubes pulled when he turned his head; his nose crinkled, mouth turning down. “Quoi…?”

“How are you feeling?” Finn asked. “Hi, Lo baby, hi.”

“Le match…” Logan trailed off, frowning harder. “Noelle.”

Leo exchanged a look with Finn. He didn’t want to leave, but he certainly didn’t want to squabble pointlessly over who should go. Finn stood, and smoothed a hand over Leo’s head with a soft kiss for his temple. “I’ll get her.”

“Thanks,” Leo murmured.

Finn just kissed him again. Three taps to his shoulder, three taps for Logan’s hand. Leo’s heart ached.

Logan took in a long breath, then let it out slow. He was still looking at Leo. “Did I throw up on her?” he asked in hazy French. “I think…I don’t remember. She was with me.”

“Does your stomach still hurt?”

“Non.”

“That’s good.” Leo straightened the oxygen tubes, mostly to give his hands something to do. Logan’s cheeks were soft under his thumb when he stroked over them. “You did throw up earlier, but it was just blood.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

Leo blew out a breath. “Fenrir Greyback?”

“What a fuck.”

“What a fuck,” he agreed. “He hit you. Too hard.”

“Kicked me.”

“Yeah,” Leo said quietly. “That, too. Your bruise was—you were bleeding inside. Your gear kept it under pressure until we took it off to check you out.”

“It was bad.”

Tears pressed at the back of Leo’s throat. He glanced at the ceiling to will them back, then nodded. “Yeah, pretty bad.”

Logan nodded. “Did we win?”

“Mhm.” One streaked down his cheek; Leo made sure to swipe it off on his shoulder before taking Logan’s hand between his own. A few careful rubs brought some warmth back to the tips. He needed to touch. To feel him move. “Percy fought for you.”

“He thinks you’re great.”

Leo managed a wet laugh. “Oh, yeah?”

“I made him a believer. Wasn’t hard.”

“Well, you can tell him I’m a big fan, too. He’s probably banging the door down right now.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Logan mumbled. The medication kept his eyelids heavy and his voice low, but when he adjusted his head on the pillow to look at Leo head-on, his focus was good. He sighed when Leo laced their fingers together.

The two of them were good at comfortable silence. Leo let it wash over him, a cool wave, a calm wind. He laid his head on the pillow next to Logan. He used to long for him so badly it hurt. This was worse, this was so, so much worse, but he’d take a hundred doses of that longing if it meant he could stay here for another second. Leo watched him blink and breathe in peaceful oblivion across a few inches of clean cotton. Rip the bandaid off—one quick stroke. He hated being the unfair one. Perhaps this Logan, pink-cheeked and foggy, would forgive him fast.

“You’re out for the playoffs, Lo.”

Logan’s exhale quavered. “I know.”

I’m so sorry. It wasn’t the time for apologies. Logan didn’t need them. Not from him, at least. Leo had a long list of people who owed Logan far more than an apology tonight.

But that list did not include Noelle, who brought no noise with her when she arrived. Leo had seen that zip-up hoodie on Ray Morgan this afternoon. She folded herself into the infinitesimal space between Logan’s arm and the rail of the bed and said nothing for several minutes.

“Thomas called the girls. And maman.”

Logan nodded. “Sorry I threw up on you.”

Leo didn’t have a name for the look on her face. The four of them were so…he didn’t even know. He wasn't sure he ever would. The way they spoke to each other with no words at all—the way they saw each other, intense eyes piercing through masks and lies down to the marrow of their bones. Logan and his sisters were cut from the same tight-woven cloth. They could say one thing, mean something entirely different, and be understood all the same.

Finn’s hands came to rest on his shoulders. They gave a tiny pulse; Leo leaned into it and kissed his forefinger. It wasn’t enough. He reached back and pulled on Finn’s sleeve until he came around the side of Leo’s chair, and Leo was gifted a small, tired smile when he brought Finn down to sit in his lap.

There. Better. Both arms around Finn’s body, whole and unbruised. His heartbeat, calm under Leo’s touch. Body heat and the familiar scent of him. He’d stolen Logan’s cologne before they left for the game. Extra luck, baby-baby. You’ve got someone in the box who loves you. Noelle’s strong arm laid across the pillow, above Logan’s head in a protective arc. She tucked a lock of his hair over his ear. Leo held tight to Finn. They watched him fall asleep.

[fruitcoops]

Midnight in Paris

O'Knutzy Week 2026: Day One! Travel shenanigans, because they deserve to go to Paris. Characters belong to @lumosinlove, fest prompts are from @oknutzy-week-2026!

Multiple O’s (D3) | Freckles (D4)

Finn wasn’t sure he’d ever been so sweaty.

“Thank you, yeah, that looks great.”

Or tired. Jesus, he was so fucking tired.

“The keys are—? Okay, perfect, sounds good.”

Thank god for Logan, because his brain could hardly string together a sentence in English, let alone attempt anything else.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t…oui, yeah, he’s—”

So when they pulled up to the front desk (tired, hot, admittedly grimy), Finn gave himself a little grace.

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you supposed to be here?”

“Yes,” Finn said slowly. The front desk person flipped her hair over her shoulder and clicked her mouse a few more times. Her nametag read CAMILLE above the name of the hotel he was absolutely, 1000% sure they had a room in.

Though at this point, he’d believe just about anything.

“I don’t see,” Camille said with a bored shrug. “Sorry. Tremblay? With a T?”

“Oui,” Logan answered.

Finn could hear the edge in his voice. That I’m tired, and you are standing between me and my bed annoyance that felt like a spitting kitten when directed at himself but was never taken well by strangers. He pressed the pad of his thumb to the pulsing dent on his nose left by his glasses. “Um. Can we try a different name?”

Camille shrugged again. “Sure.”

“O’Hara. First name Finn.”

They’d booked this so long ago. Any of them could have called it in. God, Finn had never even thought about this part of polyamory. Maybe he should write a book. Two Lovers? No Problem: Solutions for Everyday Mix-Ups in the Modern World, by F.C. O’Hara. Edited by L. Knut and L. Tremblay. Hmm. Logan would be irked if he was listed last. Maybe it was time to get a joint last name. Two hyphens wouldn’t simplify things at all, though, and they’d never agree on one. Or would they?

Another chapter for the book.

“O’Hara…” Camille pursed her vivid red lips. “Multiple O’s?”

Finn stared. “No, just—just the one.”

“Okay.” Oh-kaye. Almost like Logan’s, but not quite. He’d always been put off at how different Logan sounded compared to the average Frenchman. Faint surprise darted over Camille’s face. “Ah! We have a room, yes. Finn?”

“Yes. F-i-n-n.”

“Large room, one king bed. Do you need us to bring a cot?”

It would be unbelievably funny to accept if it was literally any other day. “No.”

She remained impassive. He probably would have started crying if she was mean about it, at this point. “Parfait. Three keys, breakfast is in the room down the hall and to the left from seven o’clock until ten, you have a parking spot in the garage, please call the front desk if you have any needs, linens are changed every other day, you get a discount—ten percent—at the restaurant in the lobby, thank you joining us for your stay in Paris and bon nuit.”

“Merci.”

She winced. Finn took the keys from the desk and headed for the elevator, and prayed to a god he didn’t believe in that his boys hadn’t fallen asleep in the nine thousand years that had passed since they dragged their carcasses through the revolving door.

The elevator door shut with a cheerful ping.

“O’Horo.”

“Ooooooo’Hara.”

Finn closed his eyes to the sound of manic giggling. “I can’t,” he groaned, and kicked petulantly at the wheels of his suitcase. “I can’t do it.”

Leo hummed. “Would it be Oooh’Hara or Ooooo’Hara?”

“Ooooo,” Logan decided. “Like a ghost. Ooo.”

“I confirmed with them yesterday!”

“I feel like there’s some merit to O’Horo, though,” Leo continued.

Logan tsked. “Non, I like the ghost.”

“They have my phone number!” The door slid open, with a much lower chime. Apparently, getting to their rooms was serious business. Finn didn’t care. He was in the hall before the stupid little noise was even done. He turned a plaintive look on Leo as they headed down the hall. “They have both our names on the reservation, Le. Both! I checked! Yesterday!”

Leo reached out and passed a hand through his hair. “You poor thing, you’re red all through your freckles.”

“I am,” Finn said hotly. The click of the room door was the trumpets of heaven. He made straight for the end of the bed and flopped down face first.

“Thank fuck,” Logan sighed. Finn turned his head to the side once breathing got too hard—just in time to watch Logan strip off his shirt and begin unbuttoning his pants in the same breath, leaving both haphazard on the floor in his wake. “I’m taking my shower, come bother me.”

“I…” Leo’s bemusement was not enough to stop him from visibly raking his eyes down Logan’s (delicious) back before it vanished behind the bathroom door. Nor did it stop him from catching Logan’s boxers when they were thrown out by a disembodied hand two seconds later.

He looked at Finn. Finn did his best Camille impression, and shrugged. “Hot.”

“Hotter than he can handle.”

“’S why he has us.” Finn put his face back in the sheets and let all the air out of his body through one long, warbling groan.

Leo laughed at him; plastic wheels creaked. The shower kicked on. Now that he had a millisecond to think about it, that didn’t sound so bad. A nice rinse, even though he probably needed to really suds up. Logan could wash his hair. He sort of did it like he was washing a large retriever, all big scrubs and heavy affection. It wasn’t how he washed his own. Finn sort of loved it. A lot.

Weight fell down beside him, all the way down to the end of the mattress. If a thousand bodies did the same, Finn thought, he’d be able to pick Leo out every time. There was that tiny noise—a stretch. He’d be flexing his feet up and down. In a few seconds, he’d probably—

Indeed. But when Leo finished cracking his knuckles, he didn’t move on to splaying all his limbs out. He didn’t even shuffle into Finn’s side. Instead, he slung his weight upright again, and a leg fell over Finn’s butt before the rest of him followed.

“Did you take your pants off?” Finn mumbled. He was too tired to turn and see.

“Yeah.”

Cool air hit his back in waves with each new inch of skin revealed. Leo pushed his shirt up the last couple inches, then spread his palms across Finn’s shoulder blades and pressed down with most of his weight.

“Good?”

“You’re amazing.” He hoped Leo could hear him through fabric and foam.

“Hmm.” He could. He was smiling. Good. “Thanks again for driving today.”

Finn managed something like no problem. His eyelids were heavy. Oh, no, they were closed. The sound of Logan splashing around was basically white noise. And Leo was heavy, all warm across his back and thighs, kneading the ache out of his back even though Finn was probably disgusting. Leo would like the balcony, here. He could be up by seven, pop down to the continental breakfast for coffee and pastries, and bring some back before the two of them woke so they could eat outside.

Or, even better—he could find a corner bakery. Enough charades and apologetic smiles could get him something good, times three. Not that people in Paris didn’t speak English, but Finn hated the thought of being rudely American.

A kiss brushed his ear. “You’re quiet.”

“Sleepy.”

“Long day.” A gentle pass of palms, up either side of his spine. Leo blew lightly across his back. “Still too hot?”

“Nah.”

“We’ll get you some sunscreen tomorrow. Oh, and sunglasses, mine broke in my bag.”

“Aw, really?’

“Yeah, forgot the case at home.” There was a sound like Leo had patted for his pockets, only to meet skin instead. Finn laughed into the bedspread and felt Leo squeeze his hips between his thighs. “Hey, you only get to laugh if you’ve got a pen hiding in there somewhere.”

“Sorry, not me.” One pale knee greeted him, and a thigh stretching up and out of sight beyond. Finn rubbed his cheek on the duvet cover and let his eyes close again. “You gonna go bother the wet beast?”

“Maybe, just to tell him you called him that.”

“It’s true. Say vray.”

Leo’s elbow worked at the knot beneath his shoulder blade. “Don’t go anywhere in this country without us, honey, your mouth was made for other things.”

“Hmm.” Finn smiled. What an exceptionally good thought. “Okay.”

[oknutzy-week-2026]

✨DRUMROLLLLLLLLLL✨

Here is the bingo board for O’Knutzy Week 2026!

Rules: Yes it would be super cool if you did a traditional bingo, however please create something with words that you are drawn to.

You can write, draw, collage to your hearts content.

Next, for the love of everything good and glitter filled in this world ✨NO AI CONTENT✨ be creative and use your own noggin.

During the week of July 6th-12th please make sure you make a post here on tumblr and tag this blog so that I can reblog it as well as tagging @lumosinlove for their lovely characters they have created.

Lastly, please have fun with this event. I enjoy this fest every year and I know so many others do too.

[fruitcoops]

[fruitcoops]

Honeymoon Phase

Yes, yes, Coops are going to have the most beautiful honeymoon and be in love forever but have we considered how insufferable they'd be after the Olympics if they played? Character credit to @lumosinlove!

TW for heavily implied past/ imminent smut

Nine o’clock. James finished his second bowl of cereal and gave the room another scan when he got up to bus his dishes. Sirius liked a lie-in on the rare occasion it was possible, but this was pushing it, even for him. Especially on the road. James was going to be pissed if he skipped continental breakfast to get Dunkin’ with the guy he saw every day. Not that he didn’t see James every day. Or that James would ever really be upset, but he was morally obligated by the laws of best-friendship to give him hell about it.

Maybe his favorite antisocial socialite had just gotten tired of sharing meals with everyone at the Games. Ha. Not likely. If there was one thing Sirius loved more than being on the ice with a full team (plus subs), it was collecting them around his dining room table.

“T.” He rapped his knuckles on the back of a booth seat. “You seen Cap this morning?”

Thomas shook his head. “Not a peep. Jesus, man, look at that.”

Another gust of wind turned the world outside to a white blur: the heaviest, thickest, coldest snow James had seen since he was nine. Thomas shivered theatrically and took another sip of coffee. James jerked his head at the window. “Just like home for you and Loops, eh?”

“Why do you think I left?” Thomas snorted.

“No kidding. Think we’ll get stuck?”

“I think we already are.”

James sucked his teeth. He could go for another coffee, but he’d be a wreck by 2 o’clock. The decaf here tasted like sand and motor oil regardless. “How much does Loops like the snow?”

Thomas’ arched brow confirmed the answer he already knew. Not Dunkin’, then. If it was even open. And if Dunks was closed, so was everything else, so they wouldn’t have left.

The pool? It was early, sure, but a hot tub sounded nice with the mess coming down. The booth squeaked when Thomas leaned back, rolling his ankles out under the table with a singsong whistle. “I’m dreaming of a white….February….”

No, no more coffee, but definitely his swimsuit. It was hot tub time—whether he’d have company or not.

-

“Come back.”

“One second,” came the muffled answer, followed by the sound of water. A swish and spit, then a second. It was a familiar enough routine to frustrate Sirius. He rolled onto his back and kicked the sheets back down to the foot of the bed; put one arm under his head, then the pillow, and finally laid it back on the mattress with a heavy exhale toward the blizzard-blind window. Not a building in sight, even when he squinted. The hotel radiator hummed in a constant spill of heat that made gauzy curtains flutter like bedsheets falling to the floor. (Shh, baby, shh, don’t want them to hear.)

The bed dipped beside him, and Remus was curled up against his ribs in the hollow of his arm before Sirius could even turn his head back around. “Brr, yikes.”

Devastation. Cruelty. Sirius hooked his fingers in the elastic waistband of Remus’—his own?—boxers and tugged with a small noise of distress that Remus seemed to take as a joke. “Why’d you put these back on?”

Remus stopped trying to pull the blankets back up to their shoulders and blinked at him. “To brush my teeth.”

“Mean to me.”

“I had morning breath.”

As if Sirius had ever cared or ever would. Ever. In his life. He made sure to slip some tongue into the next kiss, nipping Remus’ smile right off his mouth as he rolled them onto their sides again, then kept going until Remus was laid across his chest. The blankets tangled around his ankles; body-warm and still fresh(ish), they made the perfect cocoon without denying him an inch of smooth freckled skin. (I can’t help it, you taste so good.)

“James—”

“Don’t talk about James right now,” Sirius mumbled into the next kiss, tucking both hands down the back of Remus’ underwear to gather two handfuls of his ass. He was cooler to the touch than when he’d left for those few merciless minutes. That wouldn’t do at all.

Remus laughed into his mouth. He was minty fresh, but Sirius could fix that, too. He’d had enough of Remus in other people’s colors, smelling of other teams’ rooms, no matter how much of a rush it had been. Weeks of suffering through digital billboards and posters of his face, blown up a thousand times larger than life just to torment Sirius with detail in 4K when he was supposed to be professional.

He squeezed; thick muscle, warm skin. Remus grinned, but never stopped kissing him. Good. “He’s missing you.”

Sirius took his lower lip between his teeth. “Who?”

“James.”

“Why are we—”

“I’m just saying,” Remus said with a placating brush of his thumb over Sirius’ forehead. “I remember you telling him we’d be at breakfast. You big baby.”

“There’s time.”

“It ended—” Remus tried to lean toward the nightstand. Sirius made sure he didn’t get far. “—five minutes ago.”

That particular stretch of neck was too bare. “Such a shame. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Hmm.” Remus looked down at him, the critical, analytical focus that made Sirius feel delightfully like a bug in a jar. Hope, in her endless affection, called it ‘studious’. Sirius leaned more toward ‘deeply sexy’.

Sirius had it on good authority that Remus far preferred his worst behavior to any attempt at his best. Mostly because it meant Remus could be on his worst behavior and get away with it. He kept both hands down Remus’ shorts and stared back, unblinking.

“There’s no way we’re getting home tonight.”

“Nope.”

Remus sighed, shoulders caving right in Sirius’ line of sight. Bare. Biteable. (Don’t stop, Re, did I tell you you could stop?) “We’re gonna be up all night again,” he muttered.

“Yep.”

An unimpressed look: one of Sirius’ favorites, ranked just below domestic confusion and feral, jump-the-boards intensity. The look deepened with a raise of Remus’ eyebrows that said really? and meant keep pushing. As if it wasn’t equally his fault they’d spent the night napping between rounds and probably would keep doing so until the next Olympics.

Sirius smiled up at him and squeezed again. This time, he didn’t let go. “We’re going nowhere.”

“We need to eat.”

“Room service.”

“You know, I hear there’s a whole hockey team full of our friends downstairs.”

“Wow, amazing.” Sirius gently bit at Remus’ forearm, folded over his chest. “It’s almost like we see them every. Day.”

“You are grabbing my ass so hard right now.”

“I can let go.” He would not.

Remus seemed to ponder it for a moment, narrowing the eyes that distracted Sirius on every block of the Village. “How does anyone get you to do anything?”

Like he didn’t know. Sirius bit him again, right on the trio of freckles by his wrist, then dragged his mouth to the next cluster at the round of his muscle. Absolutely fucking insane what the season did to him. He didn’t blame the committee for putting Remus on everything they could. “I am very,” another nibble, near the bone of his opposite wrist. “very easy to motivate.”

Remus made another little humming sound, but the battle was over, if that even counted as a battle. Tug-of-war, maybe. A feigned fencing match, like when they bickered over who should do the grilling even when the answer was obvious every single time. Remus finally let himself relax and laid flat, chest-to-chest, his nose beneath Sirius’ jaw and the freshly-cut ends of his hair still soft from their shower the previous night. (On your knees. Slow.) He took a deep breath. Sirius felt the whole thing, from the dip of his diaphragm to the pulse of his heart.

“You’re thinking about that review.”

Sirius groaned, wrapping both arms around his lower back in a tight hold. “Of course I am, tabarnak—”

“It was good.”

“It was the best.” He wanted to crush them together forever. “We’re the best.”

“Fuckin’ crazy.”

“Bury me with it,” Sirius said solemnly.

Remus raised his head just enough to look down at him. “And what else?”

“My skates. Our medals.” A kiss to one cheek, hard and rough, then the other. “And you. Come back.”

“I’m—” Remus broke off with a laugh, looking behind himself. “I literally could not be closer.”

Sirius snapped the band of his underwear.

“I wasn’t about to go wander around naked—”

“We’re the only ones here!”

“Still.”

“You’re—” In locker rooms every day, Sirius finished in his head, but settled for drowning his protests in a swollen-soft mouth instead.

And how about Lupin’s breakaway?

My god, Steve. My god.

We’ve spoken at length about both Sirius Black and Remus Lupin as individuals in these Olympics—and there is still so much more to say—but I have never seen the kind of consensus among international commentary that game has inspired. Historic, Rick. The kind of thing fans will be talking about in fifty years.

Absolutely, Steve, and not only because Black and Lupin are the first professional men’s hockey players to be married and opponents—

Married at all.

At all, true, true. That fact defined much of the conversation around their presence at the Games this year, and their roles as rival captains.

Ha, well, I think we all heard Black’s opinions on that.

He’s not one for rivalry rumors, no. But both of them went into every game like it was their last, and that gold-medal final exemplified their strengths as players and leaders on the ice.

Most definitely. There is so, so much to be said about those teams as well. Canada may have taken silver this year, but I haven’t seen one real critic of Black’s performance throughout the Games.

Who could be?

I mean, the kind of skill we saw from him across the board was simply exceptional. Those years of captaincy with the Gryffindor Lions, the grit and work that’s gone into building his team and career with such sincere passion for the sport. That final was heartbreaking for him, I’m sure, but those last few plays…

Outstanding. Outstanding. We heard it from Lupin himself in that postgame interview, that even with gold around his neck, he still believes Black is the best player in the world. And, you know, biased or not, he’s absolutely correct.

Now, we could go on about that podium game for a whole segment, but I really do believe Mikaela Freeman said it best in this week’s New York Times Sunday sports review: if you want to see how the game of hockey was meant to be played, look no further than Sirius Black and Remus Lupin.

Gold medals, Gatorade, champagne-soaked microphones—he belonged to Sirius, now, exclusively, at long last. Their Games. Their game. And their game was great.

A heave and a roll and a laugh, and Remus was under him again. Pleased by it, too; it was written all over his face and the stretch of his arms before he laid them over Sirius’ shoulders and goal-scoring fingers tangled in his hair. Sirius reached back and yanked the blankets over their heads. The white, cold light vanished in the hollow of their hideaway.

“You are…” Remus didn’t finish, trailing his fingertips over the planes and bumps of Sirius’ face before lacing them at his nape again. “Look at you,” he said softly. The sides of his mouth turned down for a beat. “Missed you. Ugh.”

“We could’ve been roommates.”

“They would have run you out of our hotel.”

“You could have stayed with me.” Though in truth, Sirius wasn’t sure he ever would have let him out of that bed to go frolic around in that star-spangled sweater.

“Logan would run me out.” Remus’ eyes shone happily, mouth sweet on Sirius’ jaw. That mouth had been anything but sweet last night, but Sirius had always appreciated his versatility, however it manifested. “Big bad Captain Black. They wouldn’t let you within a hundred feet.”

“Meters.”

A flash of hot triumph, days old but far from cooled. “I’m sorry, whose gold is that?”

“Fuck you.”

“Better get used to the measurements of freedom, baby.”

Sirius groaned and buried his face in the safety of Remus’ collarbone, which shook and jostled him as he laughed. There was nothing funny here. Nothing at all. Sirius’ mournful noise only made him do it harder.

“Poor thing,” Remus cooed, pushing his hands over Sirius’ aching shoulders. “You were so good. You know that.”

Sirius’ stomach fluttered. (Good boy, almost there.) “Je crois.”

“Yeah-huh, you were.” Remus rubbed his back, the heel of his hand oh-so-familiar on Sirius’ sore muscles. They’d played so, so hard. He knew Remus was still feeling it. That kind of momentum, the reach of his body, the hits he took and those he doled out. He skated like he expected everyone else to be seven feet tall and bulletproof, and hit them twice as hard. Sirius’ ribs still hurt from one of those.

He propped his head on the center of Remus’ chest and sighed. “You bruised me.”

Amber flickered over his neck and shoulders. “…yes?”

Sirius rolled his eyes and took Remus’ hand, planting it flat to his side. “Here.”

“I think I apologized very well for that last night.”

“Ow.”

“And this morning.”

“Ow.”

“And last week, you—” Remus ran his fingers up Sirius’ ribs, far past the fading bruise and right into the sensitive spots that made him yelp and kick, too trapped in the blankets and Remus’ embrace to escape. Not that he wanted to. Not then, not now, not ever again. He was quick to collect fine wrists in his hands and pin them beside Remus’ ears, and sealed it with a kiss.

He let it simmer, low and slow. He missed it. He missed them. Not Olympics them, no captaincy or cameras, no rivalry bullshit. Not even the scant hours they stole for themselves, when the very air vibrated with the knowledge they’d be the last ones standing—though those had their moments. Curled up in a window seat, having left their flag-adorned gear behind in favor of splitting a piece of coffee cake. They’d known it was coming in the earliest days. There was no other option either of them would allow. If they had to take their teams on their shoulders to get through Russia, Germany, Finland, Sweden, they’d do it. If they had to play the final one-on-one, they’d do it.

The media had been all over it. But it wasn’t for them, and it never had been. Sirius couldn’t stand it. He played for Canada, but he played for Logan more. He played for Remus more than anything. To be matched and challenged, driving each other into the ice until there was literally nothing left. He still felt like he’d walked through a waterfall and come out cleaner on the other side.

“They were right,” he said into Remus’ mouth, kissing a path down his red cheek to the hollow of his throat and the bruise below. “They were so right to make you captain, loup. When you skate…”

There weren’t words for it, but Remus would understand. For weeks, his name came decorated with enough adjectives to cover the SAT. Sirius didn’t believe in all that, but he believed in hockey. Remus played like he was made for the game, and it was made for him. That was the beginning and end of it. Sirius knew the feeling.

“I know you were nervous,” he added, or else Remus would start protesting. He traced the pulse points of his wrists, then shook his head. “I never was.”

Remus looked at him, golden against the white sheets. “Really?”

“Not for a minute.”

“Even though you knew you’d lose?”

It was a tease, but Sirius just nodded. “Ouais.”

Remus’ smile slipped at the corner. His gaze went soft, pink heating his neck and shoulders. “Crazy boy,” he murmured.

“You were going to drag that team across the finish line by their laces, if you had to.”

“So were you.”

“The way you looked at me—” Sirius broke off. He didn’t need to find words. Remus knew what that had felt like. He shook his head again. “I fought you for it. That game was—it was everything, Re. But I knew.”

“You’d never let me win.”

“I couldn’t have stopped you,” Sirius said honestly. “And I tried.”

He was pale with winter, still. Sirius wanted to take him somewhere nice this summer. Somewhere warm, where the sun would kiss his hair blond until the start of the season, grown long around his ears for the wind to ruffle. They’d go to the lake, but he needed more of this first. He’d need it for the rest of his life. They shared the ice and snow; the sun belonged to Remus.

Even snowed into a hotel room, waiting for Sirius’ phone to buzz with an official cancellation of the game (and likely their flight home), they could have this. He figured it was a good omen for the future, when things would be easier. They could run away to the beach for a whole year if they wanted. Would Remus let him carry him off in the middle of the night to somewhere quiet? He thought so. He would miss James, though, and the rest of the team. They could have neighboring cottages, maybe. Or islands. He didn’t want to be bothered about noise.

The ladder of his ribs rolled under Sirius’ fingers, soft now that they’d stopped sweating all over each other for a few minutes. There was very little softness to Remus at this point in the season—especially considering the last few months—but he’d never be made of jagged edges. He could be in the best shape of his life (and Jesus fuck, was he ever) and still be smoothed by that heart. Sirius laid a kiss over it, cradling Remus’ hips in his hands.

Then he shoved both down the sides of his boxers again and deepened the kiss until his lungs burned, swallowing Remus’ surprised noise. Remus tried to meet him, and failed—tried to sit up into it, and failed harder. Sirius used his shoulders to weigh him back down onto the sheets and licked into his mouth, past the toothpaste, past the laughter, until Remus turned his head and he could grab his chin instead, licking a line up his cheek.

“Four years and it’s mine.”

“No way.” Remus scrubbed at his cheek with the edge of the pillowcase, all feigned disgust even as he pressed closer to Sirius’ body. “Big fuckin’ dog. Ugh.”

Mine. “I’m fucking coming for you.”

“Yes, please.”

“Logan is going to be doing conditioning for…until he prays for mercy. And then he’s doing more.”

Remus snorted. “Yeah, maybe, if Knutty and Harz release him.”

“And I,” Sirius threatened, gripping the thick heft of Remus’ upper thigh. “am going to end your dreams. I will grind your face into the ice and score a hundred thousand points.”

Remus looked up at him, humor playing at his mouth. “You’re gonna grind on me?”

“Until you quit hockey and only play with me. Forever,” Sirius added, decisive. He pushed his face into Remus’ cheek with a snarl. “And then I’m going to take my medal, and dig yours out of the drawer I hide it in after this, and tie you to the bed for three fuckin’ days.”

A happy shiver ran through Remus. Fingernails scratched through Sirius’ hair and sent his head spinning in a giddy, twirling loop. A few gentle kisses found his mouth, small tastes, simply sweet and intimate to anyone that didn’t know him like Sirius did. Remus was going to tear him apart in a matter of moments. But before that, he’d be kissed like this, and after, they’d have breakfast and watch Iron Chef in their underwear until noon. Sirius half-wondered how long it would take to work this hair-trigger need out of his system, but he wasn’t confident it would ever end, in this life, with this boy.

“A hundred thousand points.” A tongue, wetting his lower lip. If Sirius was standing, his knees would be weak. “Big dreams, Captain Quebecois. Jesus, your hands are so far in my shorts, they’re twisting all weird—”

“That’s why I was saying—"

(One more, loup, I know you can, I know it’s hard, one more for your captain.)

[oknutzy-week-2026]

✨DRUMROLLLLLLLLLL✨

Here is the bingo board for O’Knutzy Week 2026!

Rules: Yes it would be super cool if you did a traditional bingo, however please create something with words that you are drawn to.

You can write, draw, collage to your hearts content.

Next, for the love of everything good and glitter filled in this world ✨NO AI CONTENT✨ be creative and use your own noggin.

During the week of July 6th-12th please make sure you make a post here on tumblr and tag this blog so that I can reblog it as well as tagging @lumosinlove for their lovely characters they have created.

Lastly, please have fun with this event. I enjoy this fest every year and I know so many others do too.

[fruitcoops]

WOOHOO!!! Thank you so much for organizing! I'm so excited to see what everyone makes this year <3

[fruitcoops]

Questions about O'Knutzy week because I feel like you might know...

Do all three boys have to be in all the stories? Like can you do moments with one or two of them?

Are stories about them with OCs allowed (like their future kids)?

Can you write anything or do you have to pick off the list of words?

How many people on average participate?

If you don't know, that's totally ok, I was just curious.

Great timing! The list of prompts for this year was just released (I'll reblog in a sec) but as far as I know:

Any/ all combos, including as singles, are okay! Can take place in Harvard era, in Leo's lonely-boy era, pre-Cubs mid-Sweater Weather, whenever.

Definitely! Go crazy, make OCs, have fun!

You can write whatever you want! The bingo board is generally what people use as a personal challenge to pick a theme/ include a word int heir story. Not at all a hard requirement.

Oof, good question. It varies year-to-year and I'd recommend checking out @oknutzy-week-2025, @oknutzy-week-2024, @oknutzyweek2023, @oknutzyweek2022 if you want to read fics from previous years and see who's written before.

General FAQ:

Art and other media are welcome! O'Knutzy Week is not just for writing, so feel free to draw/ paint/ make a moodboard/ playlist!

It's technically July 6-12 this year, but as you can see from prev years, that timeframe is pretty loose and you can post whatever you want, whenever you want lol

All themes are okay! Literally any topic, characters, etc. Go crazy, do major character death, do fluff, do crack AUs or smut--whatever your heart desires is the right answer.

If/ when you post something for the fest, make sure to tag @oknutzy-week-2026 so it can be reblogged on the main page! This keeps all the submissions in one location so it's easier for people to find them. Also, you can add "#oknutzy week 2026" in the tags of your piece! Shoutout to the page mods for keeping track of everyone <3

This fest is super chill, I promise. Everyone's just excited to create and share their cub-related thoughts. It is the ultimate "woah, two cakes!" situation and newcomers are always welcome to jump in :)

[fruitcoops]

Summer shuffle time! Drafts galore, textposts out my ears, a couple of WIPs lurking in the closet (happy pride, get the hell out of there)......

Batter Up!

Give me textposts or give me death

If I ever see an image on this blog again I'm unfollowing

Lock in and publish the footage of Loops getting salad-spun already

Sampler platter of one-shots, charcuterie board-style

Nuance/ bald/ girl it's your inbox idgaf

Voting ended onJun 12

Life exploded in my face for the last ten consecutive months but I'm really carving time for Me now (hashtag hothobbysummer), so thanks for sticking around <33 I love you guys so much and it's been a wild ride of five and a half years (!!!) of fruitcoops. Due to the aforementioned pyrotechnics I'm not doing anything fancy, but I love hearing from y'all about what you want to read. Mwah mwah kisses kisses happy voting knicks in five!

[fruitcoops]

Four hours left to vote!

[fruitcoops]

Pls literally anything O'Darwin I love them sm ive reerad practiclly every O'darwin microfic i can find (no pressure obvi) Im also biased toward hurt/comfort and angst bcs i am addicted to angst but if its O'Darwin i dont mind tbh

I started writing hurt/ comfort, then that beautiful @lumosinlove art came out, so it transformed into sweeter moving-day fluff instead. Oops? Blame it on Hazel for making Alex so gorgeously tragic. I had to throw him a bone!

“You know you don’t have to do that.”

It wasn’t a question, and Alex didn’t take it as one—just smiled at him, a little out of breath, and stepped sideways around the kitchen island to drop the box on the floor by the couch. He radiated heat when he passed behind Kasey with a squeeze to his shoulders and a kiss to the top of his head. Short and sharp, sweetened by the tang of sweat. Kasey watched him half-jog back into the hallway. Hockey looked good on Alex. It always had. The media called them twins but he was so much bigger than Finn, thick in the shoulders and waist and thighs. Finn didn’t fight because he had a knight two steps behind him. Alex didn’t fight because everyone else knew he’d win.

“Al,” Kasey called at the next small huff of effort. “Come on.”

“Right here, baby.” That smile. Goddamn. Kasey crossed his arms over his chest to trap the flutter inside.

“Give me—” He checked his phone. “Five minutes. For the sake of your back if nothing else.”

“No can do, sugar-sweets.” Alex left the box on the countertop, though, and was at his side in moments. The freckles on his knuckles stood out when he braced his hands on the back of the couch and leaned over Kasey. Sweaty, indeed. It darkened his shirt and the roots of his hair, still a little longer than he usually liked it. His kiss was brief and hard. “Mwah. Two more boxes.”

“Let me help you.”

“Kase.” Alex knelt on one knee. His fingers found Kasey’s hair; his eyes flickered dragonfly-fast over Kasey’s face. “Kasey Winter, Winter Kasey, the most beautiful brick wall in the league and love of my fuckin’ life. No.”

“Why?”

“Hmm, let’s think about that one.” Alex widened his eyes for a moment, teasing, and he swept his index finger down Kasey’s nose until he wrinkled it. “My lover’s moving in, he’s got a bum leg, and I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in. Three strikes, you’re out.”

“If you give me five minutes—four, now—”

“You will still be my lover, who is still moving into my apartment.” Alex tucked his hair behind his ear and scuffed his thumb against Kasey’s cheek on the way. Impossibly gentle. Everything about Alex had always felt impossible. “Let me do this,” he murmured. “Boyfriends are supposed to do the heavy lifting, right? Move all your shit in for you, ‘cause it’s my place and I want you here?”

“Eighty percent of that is Nat’s.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one that gets to look at my muscles while I do it.” Alex tapped his nose again. “Let me boyfriend, winterlong. I’m good at it.”

Kasey arched a brow. “Your job is boyfriend?”

“My job is boyfriend,” Alex said, solemn as the grave. “Stanley-Cup-winning, MVP boyfriend. I’m the best boyfriend you’ve ever had.”

Kasey bit his smile into the inside of his cheek and knew Alex saw it by the glimmer of his eyes. “You’re the only boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

Kasey hooked his finger in a hole at the neckline of Alex’s shirt. He’d chew on them while he scrolled his phone, sometimes. Absolutely insane. Kasey had never seen Finn do that even once. “You really, really don’t need to move all my boxes for me.”

Alex squinted at him. “Mmmm, yeah, pretty sure I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I wanna.” He dashed a kiss to the inside of Kasey’s wrist. “I love ya. I want to go lift heavy things for my boy and my girl so they can live in my house forever and ever and ever.”

“And ever?”

“And ever. I haven’t told you the best part yet.”

“Oh?”

“My boyfriend objectifies me when I lift heavy things for him.” Slowly, tenderly, Alex took Kasey’s hoodie sleeve between his teeth. His pointed canines flashed.

Kasey narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think he does that.”

“He does. I can tell. He’s really, really bad at hiding things.”

“Hmm.”

“He also joins me in the shower when I’m done.”

Kasey gave his shoulder two sturdy thumps, then dragged his hand through thick red waves with the kind of pressure that made Alex grin. His copper eyelashes flashed in the afternoon light. Outside, a car horn blared. He’d missed it. He’d missed all of this so, so much. “Two boxes. Get moving.”

(Many hours later, in a bed that smelled so perfectly and entirely of Alex, when Natalie was home and broken-down boxes laid haphazard by the door to be taken out tomorrow, Kasey laid his head on Alex’s chest and felt his heart hammering despite the evenness of his breathing. He wove their fingers together and gave two quick squeezes. What-what? The point of Alex’s nose nuzzled the top of his head. He squeezed back, long and hard, drawing his opposite hand along the curve of Natalie’s back where she slumbered against him. Kasey felt the shape of two words against his forehead. All mine.)

[oknutzy-week-2026]

Taking bingo card word suggestions now for O’Knutzy Week 2026! O’Knutzy Week 2026 will be July 6-12! @lumosinlove thank you for these characters!

O’Knutzy Week 2026 Word Suggestions

You can either list words or drop words individually for suggestions!

[billiamdoor]

I can be trusted with the fictional character. I Promise.

[billiamdoor]

I lied. Fuck it’s dire y’all. It’s Bad.