Kat 🍸

𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐬

[isbellah]

# isabellah . . . ✧.* also known as KAT !

she/her. van + rfc + lh43. lewis hamilton's controversially younger gf. diehard tiger fan. hopeless romantic. vodka redbull enjoyer. 80's lover of music. dustin martin has my heart and soul. june cancer.

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isabellah © 2025 do not copy, translate or claim any of my works as your own. no wattpad.

[isbellah]

Offside

garrett graham x reader

summary . . . At Briar University, hockey isn’t just a sport—it’s a religion. And in the middle of it all is Garrett Graham, the team captain everyone watches but no one really sees. You don’t do fan culture. You do journalism. Observation. Distance. That’s the rule. So when you start writing Offside, an anonymous column exposing the way Briar worships its athletes while quietly destroying them, it feels like truth—not betrayal. Until the article goes viral. Until Garrett starts looking at you like he’s trying to find the person behind the words. And until “just reporting” stops feeling like something you can hide behind. Because at Briar, being seen is dangerous… but being understood might be worse.

warning . . . enemies to lovers, emotional angst, miscommunication, betrayal (perceived), anonymous identity reveal, sports culture critique, athlete pressure, anxiety, guilt, intense confrontation scenes, slow-burn romance, emotional vulnerability, brief heartbreak, heavy themes of reputation and public scrutiny

author’s note . . . this one hurt to write in the best way possible. i wanted something that feels messy and real—like when you think you’re just observing something, and then realise you’ve been part of it the whole time. garrett isn’t meant to be perfect here, and neither is reader. they both mess up, they both misunderstand, and that’s kind of the point. this is very much about being seen vs being understood, and what happens when those two things collide. also… yes, i am emotionally attached to them. no, i will not be taking questions at this time. ive also had to put it into two parts as it is very long ahahah <3 xoxo

word count . . . 10.6k

part one: offside

part two: collide

Offside: Briar's Hockey Problem Isn't Hockey By Offside 

Friday at Briar means hockey. Not “casual Friday,” not “pizza day,” not “that time you might finally catch up on sleep.” No, Friday means the entire campus morphs into a red-and-black tidal wave, a brainwashed flash mob in fleece and face paint, all in honor of our beloved Briar Icehounds. You can almost hear the shift change at 3 p.m.: students flood the quad in a blur, the bookstore lines snake out the door for “limited edition” jerseys, and every dorm window sprouts a makeshift banner scrawled in Sharpie and misplaced hope. It would be inspiring, if it weren’t so culty.

Let me set the record straight: I love hockey. I can recite the 2012 NCAA Frozen Four roster like a Gregorian chant. But Briar’s hockey culture isn’t about the sport. It’s about the athletes — not as people, but as living mascots. We treat the team like a traveling boy band, and the rest of us are stuck as their screaming, sign-waving roadies. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens when a player walks into Psych 101. The room hushes, as if a minor deity has graced us with his presence. Professors adjust their lectures, classmates perform the social equivalent of a slow clap, and the player, to his credit, looks mortified. It’s not his fault. This is just how we do things at Briar.

The worship doesn’t end in the classroom. At parties, Icehounds get first dibs on everything: the keg, the playlist, even the couch with the least suspicious stains. On social media, their every move is tracked, analyzed, and, when possible, immortalized in meme form. If an Icehound sneezes so much as sneezes in the dining hall, somebody posts a slow-motion GIF within an hour. Some call it “school spirit.” I call it a campus-wide case of chronic athlete idolatry.

But here’s the twist: the same machine that hoists these guys onto our collective shoulders is the one that grinds them down. The pressure to deliver — on the ice, in class, at every drunk karaoke night — is relentless. Last semester’s near-miss at the state championship didn’t just sting the team; it triggered a wave of campus-wide existential crisis. People wept in lecture halls. Someone held a candlelight vigil for a broken goalie stick. We set these players up as our emotional weather vanes, then act shocked when they buckle under the forecast.

The real tragedy? We never see these athletes as people. They’re avatars of our own hype, stuck in a feedback loop that doesn’t care about their GPA, their sleep schedule, or their rapidly fraying mental health. We don’t ask if they’re okay; we ask if they’re ready for Friday.

This isn’t just a Briar problem, or a hockey problem. It’s a campus culture problem — a refusal to let people be people, instead of mascots or memes or living, breathing school spirit billboards. If we want to make Briar better, maybe start by swapping the adoration for a little empathy. Let the athletes just be students. Let the rest of us be fans, not fanatics.

And maybe, just maybe, let Friday be a day for everyone again.

— Offside

The hockey house was unusually quiet.

Not silent. Just the kind of hushed, charged quiet that happened when everyone was reading the same thing and trying not to admit they were reading it.

A newspaper sat abandoned in the middle of the kitchen island, its pages fanned open like an accusation.

Dean, all blonde hair and restless energy, had his phone out but wasn't looking at it. His thumb kept scrolling without purpose while his eyes kept drifting back to the paper.

Logan leaned against the counter, his rustic, weathered features pulled into a grin that crinkled the corners of his kind brown eyes. He was already laughing.

And Garrett, tall and broad-shouldered with dark curly hair that never quite stayed tamed, was already irritated.

Which, admittedly, wasn't unusual.

"What the hell is an emotional weather vane?" Dean asked, his voice cutting through the strange stillness.

Across from him, Hannah nearly choked on her coffee, her striking blue eyes watering as she pressed a napkin to her lips.

Logan snatched the newspaper off the counter with theatrical flair, his calloused hands rustling the pages.

"'We set these players up as our emotional weather vanes, then act shocked when they buckle under the forecast,'" he read aloud, his voice dropping into an exaggerated newscaster cadence. "Honestly? That's kind of poetic."

"That's because you're an idiot," Dean informed him, running a hand through his pale hair.

"No, seriously," Logan continued, those warm brown eyes scanning the text with genuine appreciation. "This is good."

"It's insulting."

"It's accurate."

Dean pointed at him with a finger that trembled slightly, betraying more agitation than his voice let on. "You are literally proving the article's point."

The room erupted.

Tucker laughed from somewhere near the fridge, his shoulders shaking. Allie, her wild hair a halo of untamed curls around her face, threw a crumpled napkin at Dean with surprising accuracy. Hannah was smiling into her coffee, those remarkable blue eyes darting between the boys with barely concealed amusement.

Garrett wished everyone would shut up.

Unfortunately, nobody in this house ever shut up.

Logan flipped through the article again, the paper crinkling beneath his rough fingers. "Who even writes these things?"

"Some journalism major with too much free time," Dean muttered, his jaw tight.

"Journalism majors don't have free time."

"Good point."

Allie reached for the paper, her wild hair catching the morning light streaming through the kitchen window. "I actually agree with some of it."

Dean looked personally offended, color rising in his cheeks. "You would."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you're dating me and still somehow think athletes are dramatic."

"You are dramatic."

"I am not."

The collective laughter that followed suggested otherwise, filling the kitchen with echoes that bounced off the tile.

Garrett rubbed a hand over his face, his dark curls falling forward as he leaned his elbows on the table. He'd read the article three times already. That annoyed him more than the article itself.

Because he couldn't decide whether he hated it.

Or respected it.

The writer clearly knew hockey. That much was obvious. This wasn't some random student complaining about athletes. Whoever wrote it understood the culture. Understood the pressure. Understood the weird, uncomfortable reality of being treated like campus property.

Most articles got things wrong.

This one didn't.

That was the problem.

His eyes drifted back toward the paper sitting on the table, his tall frame hunched forward. The final paragraph stared back at him in bold black ink.

The real tragedy? We never see these athletes as people.

Garrett frowned, his dark brows drawing together.

For a stupid second, the sentence lingered, hanging in the air like humidity before a storm.

Because it felt less like criticism and more like observation. Like whoever wrote it had been paying attention.

"You're doing that thing."

Garrett looked up, his curly hair catching the light.

Hannah was watching him over the rim of her mug, those striking blue eyes too perceptive by half.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you're pretending you don't care."

Across the table, Logan immediately pointed, his brown eyes bright with mischief. "Oh, he definitely cares."

Dean grinned, his blonde hair falling into his eyes. "He's offended."

"I'm not offended."

"You've read the article four times."

Garrett froze, his hand still half-raised toward his face.

The grin spreading across Dean's face was immediate, sharp and knowing. "Five."

"Shut up."

The kitchen exploded again, laughter and voices rising in a chaotic symphony that shattered the earlier quiet.

Garrett grabbed the newspaper before someone could read another line aloud, his long fingers curling around the edges. The byline sat at the bottom. Just two words.

Offside.

No name. No photograph. No clue who the hell they were.

Garrett hated anonymous writers. Especially ones that somehow managed to get under his skin.

For the first time, he found himself wondering who was behind the column. And why it felt like they knew him.

Even though they'd never met.

By eleven o'clock, the article had somehow metastasized across half of Briar.

The journalism department was arguing about it in the lounge, voices carrying through the thin walls. The hockey team was arguing about it in the dining hall, apparently loud enough that someone called campus security. Even The Penalty Box-that grimy campus bar with the sticky floors and the bartender who'd seen things-had posted a screenshot on their Instagram story with the caption: "OUR BOYS DESERVE BETTER."

Which was exactly why you were avoiding everyone.

Unfortunately, Garrett Graham made avoiding people difficult. Especially when he was six-foot-something of determined athlete and had apparently decided that today was the day he'd learn to track people like a bloodhound.

You'd almost made it across campus untouched, hugging the library's shadow like a fugitive, when a familiar voice called your name from somewhere behind you.

Damn it.

You turned slowly, already calculating escape routes.

Garrett stood halfway down the pathway outside the student center, one hand shoved into the pocket of his Briar hoodie, the other holding what looked like a very crumpled copy of the student paper. Snow crunched beneath his boots as he approached with the easy, ground-eating stride of someone who'd never once worried about slipping on ice.

He stopped closer than strictly necessary. Close enough that you had to tilt your head back to maintain eye contact. Close enough to smell the cedar-and-laundry-detergent thing he had going on. Close enough to notice the dark circles under his eyes that suggested he hadn't slept either.

"You disappeared this morning."

Not hello. Not good morning. Just an accusation, delivered with the kind of intensity he usually reserved for pre-game speeches.

You forced a smile. "I was asleep."

Garrett raised an eyebrow. The left one, which had a small scar bisecting it from some ancient hockey incident. "You weren't."

"Wow."

"You were not asleep."

You adjusted the strap of your bag higher onto your shoulder, buying time. "Are you calling me a liar?"

"Yes."

The answer came far too quickly, accompanied by a slight lean forward that felt oddly intimate. Like he was studying your face for tells. Your stomach betrayed you by dropping slightly, because unfortunately-he was right.

You hadn't slept. Not really.

You'd spent most of the night hunched over your laptop in the journalism building's basement, fueled entirely by coffee, spite, and the specific delirium that comes from knowing you're about to publish something that might get you murdered by a hockey player. You'd finally stumbled into bed around four, then spent the next three hours checking your phone to see if anyone had figured out who wrote it.

They hadn't.

Yet.

"You look tired," Garrett observed, his gaze doing that uncomfortable thing where it seemed to catalog everything-your messy bun, the same hoodie you'd worn yesterday, the faint coffee stain on your sleeve that you'd forgotten about.

"You really know how to charm women," you said.

"I'm serious."

"I know. That's what makes it annoying."

For a second, Garrett looked like he wanted to smile. The corner of his mouth twitched. Then he caught himself, remembering apparently that you two weren't actually friends-that your entire relationship existed in the Venn diagram overlap where your best friend was dating his teammate, forcing you into the same rooms occasionally.

"You missed breakfast," he said.

Your heart performed an unwelcome gymnastics routine. "Excuse me?"

"You missed breakfast."

"You noticed?"

The second the words left your mouth, you wanted to physically grab them and stuff them back in. Garrett looked equally surprised he'd admitted it. Neither of you spoke for a moment. Snow drifted lazily between you, individual flakes catching in his dark curls. Students hurried across campus around them, bundled in coats and scarves, creating a river of movement that somehow made your stillness feel louder.

The world kept moving. You just stood there staring at each other like two people who'd forgotten how conversations worked.

Eventually Garrett cleared his throat. "Hannah asked where you were."

Liar.

You knew that was a lie immediately. Not because Hannah wouldn't ask-she absolutely would, with the maternal anxiety of a friend who'd seen you mainline espresso at unholy hours. But because Garrett wouldn't have brought it up if Hannah had. He was covering his own concern. And apparently he knew it, because his expression shifted slightly, something vulnerable flickering behind those sharp eyes before the guard came back up.

Interesting.

You crossed your arms. "Tell Hannah I'm alive."

"I can see that."

"Then the problem has been solved."

Garrett sighed dramatically, running a hand through his hair in a way that made it stand up in chaotic directions. "Do you always make conversations harder than they need to be?"

"Do you always interrogate innocent civilians?"

"I wasn't interrogating you."

"You opened with 'you disappeared.'" You affected a dramatic stage whisper. "'You disappeared this morning.' Very ominous. Very noir. Are you secretly a detective? Should I expect a magnifying glass?"

"Because you did disappear."

"Maybe I was kidnapped."

"Nobody would return you," he said, deadpan.

You gasped, pressing a hand to your chest. "Rude."

Garrett actually smiled. A real one this time, sudden and bright and briefly dangerous. The kind that made him look younger. Less Captain Graham, leader of men. More just... Garrett. A college guy who found you funny despite himself.

You hated how much you liked it.

"So," he said after a moment, and you instantly knew where this was going. The paper in his hand rustled. His posture shifted, suddenly all business.

No.

Absolutely not.

"So?" You blinked with manufactured innocence.

His eyes narrowed, suspicious and sharp. "What'd you think of the article?"

There it was.

The article.

The one currently setting Briar on fire, written by someone who definitely wasn't you, using a pseudonym that absolutely wasn't a reference to your favorite hockey penalty, published in a newspaper you definitely didn't edit.

You worked very hard to keep your face neutral. Your pulse hammered in your throat. "What article?"

Garrett stared.

You stared back.

Neither moved. A group of freshmen passed between you, chattering about dining hall hours, and you didn't break eye contact. Finally-

"The article literally everyone is talking about," he said slowly, like you might be simple.

"Oh." You shrugged casually, the picture of someone who definitely hadn't spent six hours writing it. "That one."

"Yeah. That one."

You hummed thoughtfully, tapping your chin. "Thought it was interesting."

"Interesting."

"Very thought-provoking. Made some excellent points about institutional hero worship. I especially liked the part about the emotional weather vanes. Very poetic."

His eyes narrowed further, searching your face for something-cracks in the facade, guilt, anything. "You sound like you're reviewing a documentary."

"I support independent journalism." You pressed your hands together in a prayer gesture. "It's important. For democracy. And... truth. And... other journalistic things."

Something flashed across Garrett's face. Suspicion. Tiny. Gone almost immediately. But there, like a shark fin in distant water.

Your pulse quickened.

Dangerous.

Very dangerous.

"What?" you asked, perhaps too quickly.

"Nothing."

"You look like you're thinking. Your face does this thing when you're thinking. Your eyebrows get all-" You mimicked a furrowed expression. "-like that."

"Stop that."

To your immense relief, Garrett laughed. The sound surprised both of you, loud and genuine in the cold air. For a second neither looked away, and suddenly the air felt different. Too aware. Too warm despite the snow collecting on your shoulders.

You broke eye contact first.

Coward.

Again.

"Well," you said quickly, already backing away. "I have class."

"You have class in twenty minutes," Garrett said, and you froze mid-retreat.

"You know my schedule now?"

"No." The answer was immediate. Which would've been more convincing if he hadn't looked away afterward, studying a nearby tree with sudden intense interest.

A grin threatened. You pointed at him, walking backward now. "That's weird."

"Go to class."

"You're avoiding the accusation."

"Go."

You started backing away across the pathway, your boots finding traction on the salted concrete. "Bye, Garrett."

"Bye."

You turned toward the journalism building, forcing yourself not to run. Halfway across the quad, curiosity got the better of you. You glanced back.

Garrett was still standing there. Watching you leave, the newspaper dangling from his hand. The second he realized you'd looked back, he immediately looked away, shoving his hands in his pockets and kicking at a chunk of ice with elaborate casualness.

Your grin appeared before you could stop it.

Meanwhile, across campus, tucked safely inside your bag, your laptop contained three unfinished drafts. One of them began with:

The strangest thing about campus heroes is that eventually they stop belonging to themselves.

You'd written the sentence at three in the morning, fueled by caffeine and the specific madness that comes from writing about people you know while hoping they never find out.

Now, for reasons you absolutely did not want to examine, it made you think of Garrett Graham standing in the snow, looking at you like you were a puzzle he couldn't solve.

The hockey house smelled like pizza, beer, and poor decisions.

Which, as far as you could tell, was its natural state.

The front door wasn't even locked. You pushed it open with your shoulder and immediately heard shouting from somewhere upstairs, voices bouncing off the narrow walls.

"THAT WASN'T A PENALTY."

"It literally was."

"YOU DON'T KNOW HOCKEY."

"I PLAY HOCKEY."

A crash followed. Then laughter. Then what sounded suspiciously like someone falling down a staircase, accompanied by a chorus of groans.

Business as usual.

You slipped off your boots beside a pile of identical sneakers-Nike, Adidas, more Nike-and followed the noise toward the living room. Your socks immediately found something sticky on the hardwood. You chose not to investigate.

The house was warm. Too warm. The kind of warmth that only came from too many bodies packed into one place and a heating system that didn't understand moderation. It pressed against your skin, heavy and humid, carrying the mingled scents of pepperoni grease and whatever cheap cologne Dean had bathed in today.

The movie playing on the television had been completely abandoned. Nobody was watching it. The screen flickered with some action sequence, explosions illuminating the room in strobing blue light that caught on empty beer bottles and discarded pizza boxes.

Dean sat sprawled across an armchair like a king addressing his court, his blonde hair catching the light, one arm dangling over the side.

Logan occupied most of the couch, his broad shoulders taking up more space than seemed fair, his rustic features relaxed in that permanently amused expression he wore.

Tucker was asleep. Actually asleep, mouth slightly open, snoring softly into a cushion that had definitely seen better decades.

Allie sat cross-legged on the floor, her wild hair a dark cloud around her face as she scrolled through her phone.

Hannah had stolen the blanket. All of it. She was wrapped like a burrito, only her eyes and the top of her head visible, her striking blue eyes darting between people as she followed the conversation.

And Garrett-

Garrett was leaning against the kitchen island, his tall frame folded in that way tall people did when they were trying to take up less space. A newspaper rested in his hands. His dark curly hair fell forward, shadowing his expression as he read.

Your stomach immediately dropped.

No.

Not again.

The article.

You recognized the folded pages instantly, the way the light caught on the newsprint. The newest Offside column. Your newest Offside column.

Wonderful.

Exactly how you wanted to spend your Friday night.

Listening to people critique your secret identity while sitting three feet away from them.

"Look who finally showed up," Hannah said, her voice muffled by blanket.

You forced yourself to smile, your cheeks aching with the effort. "Miss me?"

"No."

"Rude."

"Very."

You dropped beside her on the floor, the carpet rough against your jeans. The heat from the fireplace-or possibly just the collective body temperature of six hockey players-washed over you in a wave.

Across the room Garrett glanced up.

Just briefly.

But it lingered. His eyes found yours in that disconcerting way they did now, ever since the snow and the conversation and the way he'd looked at you like you were a puzzle missing pieces.

Long enough for you to notice.

Long enough for him to notice you noticing.

Then he looked back down at the newspaper, his dark curls falling forward again, hiding whatever expression might have crossed his face.

Coward.

"Tell me," Logan announced dramatically, waving a slice of pizza through the air like a conductor's baton, grease dripping onto the carpet in a way that would definitely cost someone their security deposit. "Why are we talking about this person again?"

Dean pointed toward Garrett with the hand not holding his beer. "Because Captain America over there won't stop reading it."

Garrett didn't even look up. His thumb traced the edge of the paper, a gesture you'd started to recognize. He did it when he was thinking. When something had hooked into his brain and wouldn't let go.

"That's not true," he said quietly.

"You've read it three times."

"Twice."

"Three."

"Two."

"Three."

"Twelve," Tucker mumbled from the couch without opening his eyes, his voice thick with sleep.

The room exploded. Even Garrett laughed, the sound rolling out of him deep and warm and completely unfair. You hated that you knew the difference now. That you could catalog his laughs-the polite ones, the surprised ones, the real ones like this that transformed his whole face.

Logan grabbed the newspaper from Garrett's hands before he could stop him, unfolding it with a flourish that sent a draft of cool air across the room.

"'The problem isn't athletes,'" he read aloud dramatically, his voice dropping into an imitation of newscaster solemnity. "'The problem is turning people into symbols until they forget they're allowed to be human.'"

He lowered the page, his brown eyes scanning the room. "Honestly?"

Dean groaned immediately, throwing his head back against the chair. "Oh God."

"No, seriously," Logan continued, gesturing with the paper. "That's actually kind of good."

"It is not."

"It is."

"It sounds like a philosophy major got dumped."

Allie snorted, her wild hair bouncing with the movement.

You bit the inside of your cheek. Hard. The metallic taste of blood touched your tongue.

Garrett stayed strangely quiet. That caught your attention immediately. Because Garrett usually had opinions. Strong opinions. Frequently annoying opinions. But opinions.

Instead he watched Logan continue reading, his expression unreadable in the flickering television light. Thoughtful. Almost distracted. His jaw worked slightly, like he was chewing on something he couldn't quite swallow.

Like something about the article bothered him.

Or interested him.

Maybe both.

Interesting.

"I don't think they hate athletes."

The room fell silent.

You nearly dropped your drink. The plastic cup slipped in your suddenly sweaty fingers, catching at the last second.

Dean blinked. Logan blinked. Even Hannah looked surprised, her blue eyes wide above her blanket burrito.

The words had come from Garrett.

Garrett Graham.

Captain of the hockey team.

Official victim of at least four Offside articles.

"What?" Dean asked, his voice cracking slightly.

Garrett shrugged, one shoulder lifting beneath his hoodie. "I don't think they hate athletes."

"Then why are they constantly making fun of us?"

"Because we're easy to make fun of."

Dean looked offended, his hand pressing to his chest in mock injury. "That's ridiculous."

"Last week you tried to microwave aluminum foil."

"That happened one time."

"It caught fire."

"Minor detail."

The room dissolved into laughter again, loud and chaotic. You laughed too, the sound coming out slightly strangled. Mostly because if you didn't laugh, you'd stare. And staring at Garrett had become an increasingly dangerous habit. The kind that led to thoughts. The kind that led to articles written at three in the morning.

Across the room his eyes found yours.

Only for a second.

Then two.

The noise around you faded strangely. Not completely. Just enough that you could hear your own heartbeat, could feel the heat in your cheeks that had nothing to do with the overheated room.

His mouth twitched. Like he was trying not to smile. Like he knew something you didn't, or suspected something you hoped he didn't.

You looked away first.

Again.

Pathetic.

The conversation moved on eventually. Movies. Classes. Practice. Someone changed the channel to a hockey game, the announcers' voices filling the room with white noise. The article faded into the background, becoming just another piece of debris in the living room landscape.

But you could still feel Garrett occasionally looking over. Not often. Just enough. The kind of attention that felt accidental until it happened too many times. The kind that made your pulse misbehave and your skin feel too tight.

Hours later, the movie ended. Dean disappeared to take a phone call. Logan followed, probably to find more pizza. Tucker was already unconscious, his snores now accompanied by occasional twitches. The house slowly emptied until only you, Hannah, and Allie remained in the kitchen, the silence settling around you like dust.

The dishwasher hummed quietly, its sound rhythmic and domestic. Snow drifted beyond the windows, fat flakes catching the porch light, turning the night into a soft blur of white and shadow. The night had settled heavily around the house. Comfortable. Safe.

Dangerous.

You were rinsing plates when Hannah suddenly said: "Can I tell you something weird?"

Every instinct immediately screamed. Your spine stiffened. Your hands froze in the lukewarm water.

"No."

"Too bad."

You pointed a dish sponge at her, water dripping onto the tile. "I don't like your tone."

She ignored you, setting down a plate with deliberate casualness. "Offside kind of sounds like you."

The plate nearly slipped from your hands. Cold water splashed across the counter, soaking your sleeves. You froze. Just for a second. Hopefully not long enough.

"What?"

Hannah shrugged, her striking blue eyes fixed on the sink. "It's the sarcasm."

Your heart was beating far too hard. Far. Too. Hard. The sound filled your ears, drowning out the dishwasher.

"What sarcasm?"

Allie laughed from somewhere behind you, the sound sharp and knowing. "Oh my God."

"See?" Hannah said, finally looking at you. "That."

"That what?"

"The thing you do."

You hated them both. Deeply. Passionately. Possibly criminally.

Hannah dried another plate, the towel snapping softly. "You both write the same way."

You forced a laugh. One that sounded mostly normal. Hopefully. "Good thing I'm not Offside then."

"Didn't say you were."

The relief came quickly. Then disappeared just as fast. Because Hannah wasn't looking at the dishes anymore. She was looking directly at you. Studying. Thinking. Her blue eyes too sharp, too perceptive.

Dangerous.

"You'd be good at it though."

Your stomach dropped.

Luckily the front door opened. The interruption saved your life. Or at least your secret.

Boots thudded against hardwood. Male voices drifted inside, low and laughing. You looked up, your heart still hammering.

Garrett. Dean. Logan.

And a whiteboard.

A literal whiteboard, complete with markers and everything.

Your soul briefly left your body.

"What is that?" Allie asked, her voice carrying that particular tone of someone who already knew the answer would be terrible.

Dean grinned, his blonde hair disheveled from the cold. "A suspect board."

No.

No.

Absolutely not.

Logan carried a stack of printed Offside articles, the pages fanned in his hand like a deck of cards. Garrett carried a marker. A red one. The kind that felt unnecessarily ominous.

You considered fleeing through the nearest window. The snow looked deep. You'd probably survive the landing. Probably.

"Please tell me this is a joke."

"It is not," Garrett said.

The seriousness of his answer somehow made everything worse. He wasn't smiling. Wasn't laughing. Just standing there with that marker in his hand and that focused expression on his face, the one he wore during games.

Dean dropped into a chair, the whiteboard propped against his knee. "We're finding Offside."

You stared. Then stared harder. Then looked at Garrett.

He looked completely sincere. Completely serious. The kitchen light caught his dark curls, his tall frame radiating that particular intensity he got when he'd decided on something.

"You're investigating a student columnist."

"We're investigating a mystery."

"That's somehow worse."

Logan slapped an article onto the table, the sound sharp in the quiet kitchen. "We've developed a profile."

You immediately regretted asking. "A profile."

"Yes."

Dean pointed dramatically at the whiteboard, where someone had written in messy marker: SUSPECT PROFILE.

"Upperclassman."

"Definitely."

"Hockey fan."

"Without question."

"Judgmental."

"Obviously."

Garrett picked up another page, his long fingers smoothing the edges. His eyes moved across the article. Following familiar sentences. Your sentences. The ones you'd written at three in the morning, fueled by coffee and the memory of his smile in the snow.

"Good writer," he added quietly.

The room briefly fell silent. Something about the way he said it. Not mocking. Not annoyed. Honest. Almost appreciative.

Your chest tightened unexpectedly.

Then Garrett looked up.

Directly at you.

For one terrifying second you thought he'd figured it out. Really figured it out. Those dark eyes seemed to see straight through you, past the careful masks and the forced casualness, straight to the laptop in your bag and the drafts on your hard drive.

Instead he asked: "What?"

Apparently you'd been staring. Wonderful.

You looked away immediately, focusing intently on a water spot on the counter. "Nothing."

His gaze lingered. Longer than necessary. Long enough to make your pulse stumble. Long enough to feel dangerous. Long enough that Hannah noticed, her eyes darting between you with sudden interest.

Outside, snow continued falling, silent and soft. Inside, Garrett Graham sat three feet away from the person he'd spent weeks trying to find, holding a red marker and a theory that was getting uncomfortably close to the truth.

And somehow-the thing that scared you most wasn't getting caught.

It was the fact that every day he got a little harder to lie to.

The library at Briar had a very specific kind of silence.

Not true silence. The artificial version. The kind manufactured from turning pages, distant footsteps, the rhythmic click of keyboards, and hundreds of students pretending they weren't slowly losing their minds to caffeine and cumulative GPA anxiety.

By Wednesday afternoon, you'd officially become part of the furniture.

Three empty coffee cups sat beside your laptop, their cardboard sleeves stained with brown rings. A fourth waited nearby, still warm, emitting steam that curled lazily into the dry, overheated air. Your notes were scattered across the table like evidence in a criminal investigation, yellow legal paper covered in your cramped handwriting, highlighters uncapped and bleeding into the wood grain, textbooks cracked open to pages you'd stopped actually reading an hour ago.

Maybe they were evidence. Of what, you weren't entirely sure.

A half-finished Offside draft glowed from your laptop screen, the cursor blinking patiently. Judgmentally. Mocking you with its steady, metronomic rhythm.

You stared at the sentence.

Heroes are comforting because they make us believe someone else can carry the pressure.

Delete.

Rewrite.

Delete again.

Nothing sounded right.

The problem was Garrett.

Not him specifically.

Okay.

Maybe him specifically.

The article wasn't supposed to be about him. But somehow every sentence kept circling back to him anyway, like water draining toward a center you couldn't stop. The way he always smiled when people expected it, the performance of it reaching his eyes a half-beat late. The way he laughed off pressure, deflecting with humor before anyone could see how heavy it sat on him. The way everyone seemed to need something from him-autographs, reassurance, leadership, wins-and took pieces in return.

Captain. Leader. Future NHL player. Campus celebrity.

Everyone wanted a piece of Garrett Graham.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in Garrett.

Which annoyed you more than it should.

Your fingers moved across the keyboard again, the keys warm from hours of contact.

People love heroes until heroes remind them they're human.

That one stayed.

For now.

A chair scraped loudly across the floor, the sound violent in the library's hushed atmosphere.

You jumped. Your laptop nearly followed, tilting toward the edge before you caught it with a desperate hand. Someone dropped into the seat across from you without asking, without warning, without any regard for your rapidly declining life expectancy.

"Found you."

You froze.

Garrett.

Of course.

Because apparently peace was no longer available to you. Because the universe had decided that you could not have one afternoon of anonymous work without him materializing like a particularly tall, curly-haired specter of consequence.

You slowly looked up.

He was wearing a grey hoodie, sleeves pushed to his elbows, revealing forearms still speckled with practice bruises. Dark circles beneath his eyes suggested he hadn't slept much either, purple smudges against skin that looked pale under the fluorescent lights. His hair was chaos, curls falling in every direction, still damp from a shower or melted snow.

Unfortunately, exhaustion looked unfairly good on him.

Life was cruel.

"That's concerning," you said.

His mouth twitched. The left side, where that small scar interrupted his eyebrow. "You've been avoiding the hockey house."

You immediately returned your attention to the laptop, your heart hammering against your ribs. "I've been busy."

"Liar."

The response came so quickly you almost laughed. Instead you narrowed your eyes, trying to project an indifference you absolutely didn't feel. "You're weirdly confident for someone with no evidence."

Garrett pointed toward the table. "Three coffees."

You looked. Damn.

Then he pointed at your face, his finger coming close enough that you could see the calluses, the slight tremor of exhaustion in his hand. "Dark circles."

Rude.

Then-his eyes drifted toward your laptop.

"And you closed your screen when I sat down."

Panic. Tiny. Instant. Violent.

Your hand had slammed the laptop shut so quickly you hadn't even realized you'd done it, the crack of plastic against plastic echoing in the quiet. Wonderful. Not suspicious at all.

You forced yourself to shrug, your shoulder blades tight with tension. "Maybe I have secrets."

"Maybe you're terrible at hiding them."

Your pulse kicked. Because if there was one thing Garrett Graham was becoming increasingly good at, it was accidentally wandering too close to the truth, circling it like a shark that didn't know it was hunting.

You reached for your coffee. It was empty. Tragic.

"Why are you here?"

Garrett leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking beneath his weight. The late afternoon sunlight spilled through the library windows behind him, turning everything gold and dusty. Dust motes floated lazily through the air, suspended in the light beams like tiny constellations. Around you, students studied quietly, heads bent over textbooks, the occasional cough or page-turn the only interruption.

The rest of the world felt very far away.

"You never came by Monday," he said.

"What a devastating loss for the household."

"You also skipped Tuesday."

"You keeping attendance?"

His grin appeared immediately, sudden and bright. "There she is."

You hated how much that affected you. The smile. The ease. The way talking to him felt effortless right up until it didn't, right up until you remembered that you were lying to him about literally everything that mattered.

Garrett looked around the table, his gaze cataloging the debris of your afternoon. Notes. Highlighters in four colors. Open textbooks with cracked spines. Notebooks filled with messy handwriting that was definitely yours. The remnants of a student slowly unraveling, surrounded by the evidence of obsession.

"You working on something important?"

"Extremely."

"What?"

You smiled sweetly, your cheeks aching with the effort. "None of your business."

He sighed dramatically, the sound carrying a note of genuine frustration beneath the performance. "I ask because normal people take breaks."

"I'll take one when I become normal."

"So never."

"Exactly."

The corner of his mouth lifted again. God. Someone needed to stop allowing him to do that. To exist in your space with his exhaustion and his curiosity and his complete inability to leave well enough alone.

The conversation settled for a moment. Comfortable. Quiet. Neither of you rushing to fill the silence with noise. It surprised you how easy that had become, how the space between words didn't feel empty with him anymore.

Then Garrett spoke again, and the question caught you completely off guard.

"What do you actually want to do after Briar?"

You blinked. "What?"

"What do you want to do?"

You stared. Nobody asked that. Not really. People asked about classes. Internships. Grades. Professors. The practical scaffolding of a future they could understand. But not that. Not the actual dream. Not the thing underneath everything else, the beating heart of why you were killing yourself in this library at three in the afternoon.

You swallowed. The truth felt too exposed, too close to the surface. But something about his eyes, the genuine curiosity in them, made you want to answer honestly.

"A major publication," you said quietly. "Sports journalism."

Garrett waited, his body still, attention absolute.

You found yourself continuing, the words spilling out before you could catch them. "Writing that matters. That changes how people see things. Not just recaps and box scores, but the why underneath. The pressure. The humanity." You caught yourself, reeled back. "I don't know. Something that matters."

He nodded like this made perfect sense. Like your half-formed ambition wasn't embarrassing. "You'd be good at that."

The answer came so easily. So confidently. Like it wasn't even a question, like he was stating a fact as obvious as gravity.

Your chest tightened unexpectedly. "You don't even know my work."

"I know you."

The words settled heavily between you, three syllables carrying the weight of something larger. Neither of you moved. The library suddenly felt smaller. Warmer. Dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with your secret and everything to do with the way he was looking at you.

You looked away first. Again. "That's unfortunately not the same thing."

Garrett smiled, small and private. "I think it is."

For a second neither spoke. Outside, snow drifted past the windows, fat flakes catching the late light. Inside, your heartbeat had become deeply unhelpful, pounding in your ears, your wrists, everywhere.

Then Garrett broke the moment. "What about you?"

You frowned. "What about me?"

"Pressure."

You stared. He continued, his voice dropping lower, more intimate. "You always talk about athletes dealing with pressure. In the articles. The ones you read." He paused. "What scares you?"

The question landed harder than it should have. Because there it was. The thing nobody asked. Not your plans. Not your goals. Your fear. The core of you, exposed.

You stared at him for a long moment, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, the dust motes dancing in the sunbeam between you. Then quietly: "Being average."

Something flickered across his face. Recognition. Understanding. The kind that felt a little too personal, like he'd reached across the table and touched something private.

"Yeah," he said softly.

The single word carried more weight than an entire conversation. You looked at him. Really looked. The exhaustion. The pressure. The expectations hanging around him like armor he'd been wearing too long, the metal digging into skin he'd stopped feeling.

Suddenly it felt impossible to breathe.

Then Garrett did something unexpected. He laughed lightly, the sound surprising in the quiet. "I kinda get why people like Offside."

You nearly choked. Actually coughed, your hand flying to your mouth. "What?"

He grinned, crooked and tired and real. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I just committed a crime."

You recovered quickly. Hopefully. "What happened to your investigation?"

"Oh, I'm still finding them."

Your pulse stumbled. Wonderful.

"Then why the sudden appreciation?"

Garrett looked out the window for a second, his profile illuminated by the golden light. Thinking. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. More thoughtful. Almost vulnerable.

"They pay attention."

Your heart stopped. Not literally. Close enough.

Garrett shrugged, his shoulders lifting beneath the grey fabric. "Most people don't. They see the jersey. The highlights. The future. They don't see..." He trailed off, searching for words. "They don't see the person carrying it."

You couldn't look away. He didn't know. Didn't know the articles. Didn't know the late nights. Didn't know the reason every sentence somehow found its way back to him, why you were sitting here surrounded by notes about his pressure and his smile and the weight he carried.

Yet somehow he'd landed on the truth anyway.

They pay attention.

No.

She pays attention.

To the things nobody else notices. To the moments between the headlines. To the pressure behind the smile. To him.

Garrett stood a few minutes later, his chair scraping against the floor again, the sound loud in the quiet. Practice. Meetings. Captain responsibilities. Life.

Before leaving, he glanced down at your closed laptop. The same laptop containing half-finished paragraphs about him. The same laptop holding every secret you were trying desperately to keep, the cursor still blinking behind the dark screen.

"You should sleep."

You laughed, the sound slightly unsteady. "You should stop telling me what to do."

His smile returned. Slow. Dangerous. Impossible.

"You first."

Then he walked away, his boots soft against the carpet, his tall frame disappearing between library shelves until you couldn't see him anymore.

Only once he was gone did you reopen the laptop. The blinking cursor still waited. Patient. Judgmental. Mocking.

Slowly, you began typing again.

People love heroes until heroes remind them they're human.

This time, you didn't delete it.

Offside: The Problem With Heroes By Offside 

Everyone wants a hero until the hero has a bad day.

Then suddenly they're washed up.

A fraud.

A disappointment we never really believed in anyway.

Last Tuesday, I sat three rows behind a guy at the hockey game who spent forty minutes building a shrine to a player's greatness. Every save was "legendary." Every pass was "transcendent." The guy spoke in exclamation points, high on the proximity to someone who could do things he couldn't.

Then the player missed a shot.

One shot.

Not a season. Not a career. One moment, one blade catching ice wrong, one puck sailing wide of the net.

The guy behind me changed his tune immediately.

"Overrated," he said, loud enough for strangers to hear. "Told you he was losing it."

Three minutes later, the same player scored the game-winner. The arena erupted. The guy behind me cheered loudest of all, his earlier declaration already forgotten, buried beneath the convenient amnesia of victory.

As if human beings are stock prices. As if a person's value should rise and fall with every public moment, every visible mistake, every swing between transcendence and humanity.

Sports are weird because they force people to fail in front of thousands.

Most of us get the luxury of making mistakes quietly. A bad exam grade stays between us and a professor who won't remember our name in five years. A rough presentation dissolves into the air, forgotten by everyone except the person who gave it. An embarrassing moment gets buried beneath newer embarrassments, sediment layers of awkwardness that nobody catalogs.

Athletes don't get that.

Their mistakes are replayed. Analyzed. Discussed in dining halls and group chats and comment sections. Shared with commentary, with screenshots, with slow-motion breakdowns of exactly where it went wrong.

A missed shot becomes a headline. A bad game becomes a narrative. A loss becomes a personality trait, evidence of some fundamental flaw in character rather than evidence that sometimes people just have bad days.

And somehow we still wonder-still wonder-why so many athletes struggle under pressure.

Here's the truth most people don't want to admit: we don't actually want heroes.

We want certainty.

Heroes are comforting because they make us believe someone else knows what they're doing. Someone else can carry the pressure. Someone else can win the game, save the season, be responsible for the outcome while we watch from the safety of the stands.

Heroes let us believe that excellence is a permanent state rather than a temporary achievement. That some people are simply built different, immune to doubt and exhaustion and the weight of expectation.

But eventually every hero disappoints us.

Not because they're incapable. Because they're human.

Humans get tired. Humans get overwhelmed. Humans have bad days, bad weeks, bad months where nothing works and everything hurts and getting out of bed feels like a victory. Humans fail, publicly and privately, spectacularly and quietly.

The problem is that once we decide someone is a hero, we stop allowing them to be anything else.

We stop seeing the person and start seeing the expectation. The captain. The star player. The future draft pick. The record holder. The face on the poster, the name on the jersey, the symbol of something larger than themselves.

We stop asking how they're doing and start asking what they're delivering.

The burden of that has to be exhausting.

Imagine walking into every room knowing people already decided who you are before you opened your mouth. Imagine knowing every success becomes an expectation, every good game becomes the new standard, every moment of brilliance gets added to the pile of things you must replicate forever.

Imagine knowing every mistake will become a conversation, a narrative, evidence of your decline.

Imagine carrying that every single day.

And before someone accuses me of being overly dramatic-I know.

They're athletes. They signed up for competition. Pressure comes with the territory, comes with the scholarship, comes with the privilege of doing something they love at a level most people never touch.

But pressure and dehumanization aren't the same thing.

One builds character. The other convinces people they're only valuable when they're performing, only worthy when they're winning, only real when they're meeting expectations that keep climbing higher every time they succeed.

That's a dangerous lesson for anyone to learn.

Not just athletes.

Students who believe their GPA is their only worth. Professors who think their publication record is their only legacy. Parents who measure themselves by their children's achievements. Friends who only show up when you're entertaining.

All of us.

Maybe that's why sports fascinate people. Not because of the wins, not because of the championships, not even because of the rivalries that give us convenient enemies.

Maybe it's because sports are one of the few places where we get to watch people try.

Really try.

Fail.

Get back up.

Try again.

Over and over, in public, with consequences, with stakes, with everything on display.

The score matters. The outcome matters. Competition matters.

But maybe the humanity matters more.

At least it should.

The next time someone misses a shot, drops a pass, loses a game, or fails to live up to whatever impossible expectation you've created for them, remember this:

You are watching a person.

Not a hero.

And people were never meant to carry that much weight alone.

— Offside

The article went live at 7:03 a.m.

You knew this because you'd been awake since 5:41, staring at the ceiling while your brain replayed every sentence you'd written, every metaphor you'd chosen, every moment of vulnerability you'd disguised as commentary. Not awake by choice. Your brain simply hated you, had decided sometime around 3 a.m. that sleep was for people who weren't actively courting disaster.

Rain tapped against your dorm window in a steady, monotonous rhythm, the kind of sound that should have been soothing but instead felt like accusation. Each drop seemed to whisper what did you do what did you do what did you do. The glow from your laptop painted your room in pale blue light, the only illumination in the gray morning. Your roommate was still asleep, buried beneath a mountain of blankets, breathing evenly in a way that felt personally offensive.

The Offside submission portal still sat open on your screen.

Published.

The word stared back at you in green text, cheerful and final. Your stomach twisted, a physical knot that seemed to tighten with every passing minute. No matter how many times you did this-and you'd done it fourteen times now, fourteen articles that had slowly built your reputation and your terror-it never got easier. The moment of publication felt like stepping off a cliff and waiting to see if the ground would rush up to meet you.

You wrote the article. Edited it until the words lost all meaning. Submitted it with shaking hands. Then immediately spent the next twelve hours questioning every life choice that had led you here, every decision that had made you believe you could write about people you knew without eventually being consumed by the secret.

Normal. Entirely normal behavior for someone who had voluntarily chosen to become a literary arsonist.

You grabbed your coffee-cold now, bitter, exactly what you deserved-and checked your phone. The screen lit up with notifications, each one a small bomb waiting to detonate.

Three texts from Hannah.

Two from Allie.

One from Dean.

None of them good. You could tell from the preview text, from the all-caps and the exclamation points and the sheer energy radiating through the screen.

Dean: OFFSIDE DROPPED AGAIN

Dean: Hockey house. Now.

Fantastic. 

Nothing like starting the morning with panic and a side of impending social catastrophe. You stared at Dean's messages for a long moment, watching the rain trace patterns down your window, wondering if you could simply become a hermit. Move to the mountains. Live off foraged berries and avoid human contact forever.

Your reflection in the dark glass looked back at you with haunted eyes.

You pulled on jeans and a hoodie-the same one you'd worn yesterday, because who had time for laundry when they were destroying their own life-and stepped out into the rain.

The hockey house looked exactly how you'd expect at eight in the morning.

Destroyed.

Half-empty energy drink cans littered the kitchen island like casualties of war, some still dripping sticky residue onto the granite. Someone had left pizza out overnight, the box open, slices curling at the edges, the smell of cold pepperoni and regret hanging in the air. The television was already running ESPN, commentators discussing last night's games with the gravity of world leaders negotiating peace treaties. A pair of hockey skates sat inexplicably beside the couch, blades glinting in the morning light, laces trailing like abandoned thoughts.

You didn't ask.

You never asked anymore. The house had its own logic, its own ecosystem of chaos, and questioning it only invited explanations you didn't want.

Walking inside felt like stepping into enemy territory. Or maybe friendly territory that had suddenly become hostile. Or maybe just territory where you were a spy wearing your own face, waiting to be discovered. The warmth hit you immediately, too warm, the heat cranked high against the November chill, making the air feel thick and slightly desperate.

Especially because everyone was already staring at the same thing.

The article.

Your article.

Dean sat at the kitchen island scrolling through his phone, his blonde hair sticking up in every direction, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt that had seen better decades. Allie stood beside him reading over his shoulder, her wild hair pulled back in a messy bun, still in pajama pants with coffee mugs printed on them. Hannah sat cross-legged on the counter in an oversized sweater, her striking blue eyes fixed on her own screen, brow furrowed in concentration.

And Garrett-

Garrett leaned against the fridge, one ankle crossed over the other, his phone held at arm's length. Reading. His brow furrowed slightly, that vertical line appearing between his eyebrows that you knew meant he was thinking hard about something. Jaw tight. Focused in that way he got when he was processing, when he was taking in information and turning it over, examining it from every angle.

You hated how much you wanted to know what he was thinking. Hated that you were standing in the doorway cataloging his expressions, memorizing his reactions, when you should have been planning an escape route.

"Well?" Dean asked dramatically, not looking up from his phone. "Thoughts?"

Garrett didn't look up either. His thumb scrolled slowly, carefully, like he was reading every word twice.

"Still dramatic," he said finally.

Dean groaned, the sound theatrical and wounded. "That's your review?"

"Pretty much."

"You don't hate it?"

Garrett finally lowered his phone. His eyes found yours across the room, and for a moment-suspended, breathless-you thought he knew. Really knew. The secret felt written on your skin, visible in the way you were standing, the way you were breathing, the way you were desperately trying to look casual.

"No," Garrett said, and his gaze shifted to Dean. "I don't hate it."

The room went silent. Actually silent, the kind of quiet where you could hear the refrigerator humming and the rain against the windows and your own heartbeat thundering in your ears. Even you nearly choked on your own breath, the air catching in your throat.

Dean looked personally offended, his hand pressed to his chest like he'd been struck. "Excuse me?"

Garrett shrugged, that casual lift of shoulders that somehow conveyed entire philosophies. "They aren't wrong."

"What?"

"They pay attention."

Your pulse stumbled, tripped, crashed against your ribs. No. No. Please stop saying that. Please stop using those words, that phrase, the exact observation that had become your signature, your justification, the thing you told yourself at three in the morning when you couldn't sleep and couldn't stop writing about him.

Hannah looked thoughtful. Dangerously thoughtful, her blue eyes narrowing slightly as she stared at her phone. "The weird thing," she said slowly, "is that whoever writes these actually understands hockey."

Your stomach dropped. Immediately. Violently. The floor seemed to tilt beneath your feet.

You grabbed a water bottle from the counter just to have something to do with your hands, just to keep them from shaking, from giving you away. The plastic was cold against your palm, condensation wetting your fingers.

Dean pointed toward Hannah with his phone, gesturing wildly. "THANK YOU. Finally, someone with sense."

"Most journalists don't write like this," Hannah continued, her voice musing, analytical. "They write like observers. Like they're watching from outside, taking notes, keeping distance."

Garrett nodded once, his dark curls catching the morning light from the window. "This person writes like they're around it. Like they see the stuff nobody else sees."

Your heart stopped. Entirely. Gone. Flatlined. Your fingers tightened around the water bottle until the plastic crackled.

Fantastic.

You were about thirty seconds from climbing directly into traffic. Or possibly confessing everything right there in the kitchen, spilling the secret like water from the bottle you were white-knuckling, just to stop the pressure of waiting to be discovered.

Then Garrett looked up.

His eyes landed on yours with the weight of recognition, of something unspoken passing between you. The conversation died instantly, the energy in the room shifting, becoming charged with something you couldn't name.

The shift was so obvious it was painful. Dean smirked immediately, his gaze darting between you and Garrett with the predatory instinct of someone who loved drama that didn't involve him.

"Oh look," Dean said, drawing out the words. "Our missing person."

You narrowed your eyes, trying to project annoyance instead of terror. "What?"

"Your favorite subject," Dean said, grinning. "Has opinions about your bedtime."

Garrett's gaze never left yours. The intensity of it felt like standing too close to a fire, the heat radiating outward, making your skin prickle.

"You disappeared," Garrett said quietly. Not accusatory this time. Something else. Something that sounded almost like concern wrapped in frustration.

You forced yourself to stay calm, to keep your breathing even, to remember that he didn't know. Couldn't know. Was just saying things that happened to land with devastating accuracy.

"Good morning to you too," you said, your voice coming out steadier than you felt.

His mouth twitched. Barely. A small movement at the corner of his lips that might have been the beginning of a smile or might have been something else entirely. But enough. Enough to make your chest tighten, to make the room feel too small, to make the secret feel like a physical weight pressing down on your shoulders.

And somehow that felt worse than if he'd been angry. Worse than if he'd hated the article, hated Offside, hated the mysterious writer who kept dissecting his life in public.

Because he was looking at you like he was still trying to solve the puzzle. Like you were the answer to something he hadn't figured out how to ask yet.

And you were running out of ways to hide.

The problem with Hannah Wells was that she was terrifyingly smart.

Not book smart. Well. Also book smart-she'd made Dean's honor roll every semester without apparent effort, her notes color-coded and comprehensive in a way that made normal students feel inadequate. But that wasn't the dangerous part.

The dangerous part was that she was observant.

The kind of person who noticed details other people missed. The way someone's voice changed when they were lying. The micro-expressions that flickered across faces in fractions of seconds. The patterns in behavior, the inconsistencies in stories, the small tells that revealed larger truths.

The kind of person who remembered things. Conversations from months ago. Exact wording. Context. The kind of person who could hold fifteen pieces of information in her mind simultaneously and suddenly see how they connected into a picture nobody else had noticed.

The kind of person who could accidentally ruin your entire life without even trying, simply by saying "wait" at the wrong moment and watching you fall apart.

Which was why seeing her waiting outside the journalism building that afternoon-immediately, specifically, leaning against the brick wall with her arms crossed and her eyes fixed on the door-immediately made your stomach sink through the floor, through the foundation, through the earth itself.

She smiled when she spotted you. Too casually. Too innocently. The smile that said I know something or possibly I'm about to know something or maybe just I've decided to destroy you and I'm being polite about it.

Dangerous. Very dangerous.

"You busy?" she asked, pushing off the wall.

"Always." You adjusted your bag higher on your shoulder, buying time, calculating escape routes. The building behind you had a back exit. You could probably make it if you ran.

"Perfect."

You narrowed your eyes. "That's usually a bad sign."

Hannah laughed, the sound bright and genuine and somehow worse because of it. "You have twenty minutes."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, a declaration of how long you had before she would either extract what she wanted or decide you weren't worth the effort. Neither option felt safe.

You sighed, resigning yourself to whatever interrogation she'd planned. "Fine."

The campus coffee shop buzzed with afternoon conversation, the sound layered and complex-steam hissing from the espresso machine, chairs scraping against tile, dozens of conversations overlapping into a kind of white noise that should have felt comforting but instead felt like cover. Like you were being concealed in a crowd that would make it harder to run.

Students crowded every table, laptops open, textbooks spread, the particular desperation of mid-afternoon caffeine dependence written on every face. Steam rose from mugs in lazy spirals, catching the gray light from windows where rain streaked down in continuous sheets, blurring the outside world into watercolor abstraction.

You and Hannah claimed a small corner booth, the vinyl seats cracked and sticky, the table between you barely large enough for two cups. The position put your back to the wall-which should have felt secure but instead felt like being cornered. Trapped. Pinned in place by her attention.

For the first few minutes she talked normally. Classes. The professor who'd assigned three chapters overnight. Assignments. Dean being an idiot about something involving laundry and possibly fire. Everything felt safe, familiar, the comfortable rhythm of friendship that had existed long before you'd started writing articles that could destroy it.

Until it wasn't.

"Can I ask you something?" Hannah said, her tone shifting. Not dramatically-just enough. A subtle change in pitch, in cadence. The dangerous tone.

You took a sip of coffee, stalling, feeling the heat burn your tongue. "Depends."

Hannah tilted her head slightly, her striking blue eyes fixed on you with the intensity of someone who was used to being underestimated and had learned to use it. Watching you. Studying you. Cataloging every micro-reaction, every breath, every flicker of discomfort.

You hated that look. Had always hated it, even before you had secrets worth hiding.

"You okay?" she asked.

Your stomach dropped. Not because of the question-because of how genuine it sounded. Because Hannah didn't do fake concern. When she cared, she cared completely, and that made this worse. Made you feel guilty for the lie you were living inside her friendship.

"Oh." The word came out small, surprised.

She nodded, her wild hair catching the light from the window. "Yeah."

You relaxed slightly, muscles unclenching from the defensive posture you hadn't realized you'd adopted. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Hannah stirred her coffee, the spoon clicking against ceramic in a rhythm that felt almost deliberate. Like she was counting beats. Like she was preparing something.

"You've been weird," she said.

Fantastic. The word every secret-keeper dreaded. Vague enough to be unanswerable, specific enough to be undeniable.

"Weird how?"

"You disappear a lot." Hannah counted on her fingers, each one a small indictment. "You stop answering texts." Strike one. "You look exhausted." Strike two. "And every time someone mentions Offside..." She paused, letting the silence stretch. "You get this look."

Strike three.

Your soul left your body. Completely. Gone. Ascended to whatever afterlife existed for idiots who'd thought they could keep secrets from people who actually paid attention.

You managed a laugh. Somehow. It sounded hollow even to you, a thin thing that didn't reach your eyes. "I think everyone talks about Offside."

"Maybe." Hannah watched you carefully, her gaze unwavering. "Maybe I just notice when you do."

The booth suddenly felt too small. Too warm. The air thick and difficult to breathe. You looked away first, toward the rain-blurred window, toward the students passing outside with their umbrellas and their normal lives and their complete absence of dangerous secrets.

Big mistake.

Because Hannah immediately caught it. The realization flickered across her face-not certainty, not yet, but something almost worse. Suspicion. The beginning of it, the first thread pulled that would eventually unravel everything.

And beginnings were always the dangerous part. Beginnings could be stopped, sometimes, if you were careful. But once suspicion became certainty, once she started actually looking instead of just noticing...

"You know something," she said.

Not a question. A statement. A verdict delivered before the trial had even begun.

You forced yourself to smile, your cheeks aching with the effort. "Journalism major," you said lightly. "I know lots of things. Obscure style guide rules. How to structure a lede. The optimal coffee-to-blood ratio for deadline survival."

Hannah narrowed her eyes, unconvinced. You smiled wider, desperate, feeling the expression crack at the edges.

The conversation moved on. Eventually. Hannah let it go, or seemed to, steering back to safer topics with the ease of someone who knew when to push and when to wait. But as you walked back across campus afterward, rain misting against your jacket and soaking into your hair, one thought repeated itself over and over with every step.

Hannah was getting closer.

And for the first time since this whole thing started-

You weren't worried about Garrett finding out.

You were worried Hannah would.

Because Garrett might be angry. Might feel betrayed, exposed, violated by the intimacy of your observations written for public consumption.

But Hannah would be disappointed.

And somehow, impossibly, that felt worse.

[isbellah]

Collide

garrett graham x reader

summary . . . At Briar University, hockey isn’t just a sport—it’s a religion, and the players are its saints. As the anonymous writer behind Offside, you set out to expose the toxic culture surrounding Briar’s obsession with its hockey team. What starts as observation turns into a viral column that sparks chaos across campus—and puts Captain Garrett Graham directly in the centre of it. But anonymity has a cost. When a second article drops, sharper and more personal than the first, the line between journalism and betrayal begins to blur. Suddenly, the hockey house isn’t just a place you visit for coverage—it’s a place you’re no longer sure you belong in. And Garrett? He’s starting to look at you like he’s trying to solve a mystery he’s terrified to finish.

warning . . . enemies to lovers, anonymous identity mystery, media vs athlete conflict, betrayal (perceived), emotional tension, miscommunication, social media/public backlash, anxiety, confrontation, slow-burn romance, toxic campus culture critique, reputation damage, angst-heavy themes, mild swearing

author’s note . . . part one is basically the chaos era. this is where everything is messy on purpose—intentions get misunderstood, emotions get louder than logic, and nobody has the full picture (including the characters themselves). offside was never meant to be about destruction, but once it gets out into the world, it stops belonging to the writer. and yeah… garrett is hurt. a lot. but so is she, just in a quieter way. part two is where things get real.

word count . . . 11.7k

part one: offside

part two: collide

The email arrived at 8:12 on a Thursday morning.

Which was already offensive. Nothing good happened before nine. The hour existed solely for people with discipline and healthy sleep schedules and functional alarm clocks-qualities you possessed absolutely none of. Your brain at 8:12 was still essentially soup, your eyes crusted with the remnants of another night spent staring at a glowing screen, your room cold in that particular way that dorm rooms got in November, when the heating system hadn't quite committed to winter but the outside had.

You stared at the sender.

Professor Lewis.

That was strike one. Lewis didn't do casual emails. Lewis didn't do "checking in" or "just wanted to say" or any of the soft language other professors used. Lewis communicated exclusively in demands, deadlines, and devastating observations.

You opened it.

Strike two arrived immediately.

Need to see you. Today.

No greeting. No explanation. No context. No softening phrase or reassuring emoji. Just four words that felt like a door slamming shut behind you, trapping you in a room you hadn't realized you'd entered.

Academic terrorism. Pure and simple.

Fantastic.

You found him in the photography department an hour later, your stomach churning with coffee and dread. The studio smelled like chemicals and printer ink, that particular combination of acrid and artificial that clung to your clothes and hair. The walls were covered with student exhibitions and half-finished projects, images pinned haphazardly with pushpins, some color-corrected, some raw, all of them watching you with the judgmental gaze of art you didn't understand.

Professor Lewis stood beside a light table examining contact sheets through a magnifying loupe, his gray hair catching the overhead fluorescents. He didn't look up when you entered. Didn't acknowledge your presence. Just kept studying whatever tiny image held his attention, leaving you standing in the doorway like a supplicant waiting for an audience.

Without looking up, he said, "Sit."

"That sounds threatening."

"It should."

You dropped into the chair opposite him, the metal cold against your legs even through your jeans. The light table cast an eerie blue glow upward, illuminating his face from below like a horror movie.

"What did I do?"

Lewis finally looked up, his eyes pale and sharp behind wire-rimmed glasses. "Nothing."

"Then why am I here?"

He smiled. A terrible sign. Lewis smiling meant either you'd done something brilliant or something catastrophic, and the odds were never in favor of brilliance.

He slid a folder across the desk. Manila. Standard department issue. Completely innocuous.

You immediately recognized the Briar Hockey logo stamped in the corner.

Your stomach sank through the floor, through the building's foundation, through the earth itself.

"No."

Lewis's smile widened. "You haven't even opened it."

"I don't need to."

"You're going."

"I literally haven't agreed to anything."

"Excellent. Then we're having a productive conversation."

You hated professors. All of them. Every single one, with their arbitrary power and their cryptic emails and their ability to ruin your life with a single manila folder.

Lewis ignored your glare, turning back to his contact sheets. "The hockey team leaves tomorrow."

"Wonderful."

"You'll be joining them."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

You crossed your arms. He crossed his. The standoff lasted nearly ten seconds-silent, intense, a battle of wills that you were destined to lose because he had tenure and you had nothing.

You lost. As usual.

Lewis opened the folder with deliberate slowness, each movement designed to maximize your discomfort. "This isn't optional."

You groaned, the sound coming from somewhere deep and hopeless. "Why?"

"Because your hockey series has become the strongest project in the department."

You immediately frowned. That wasn't what you expected. You'd expected punishment, criticism, some devastating observation about your lack of focus or your questionable life choices.

Lewis continued, his voice losing some of its edge, gaining something almost like respect. "The final exhibition is approaching."

"What does that have to do with an away game?"

"Everything."

He leaned forward, the light table casting strange shadows across his face. "You understand the arena. You understand the players." He paused, watching you carefully. "But you don't understand what happens when they leave."

Your mouth opened. Then closed. Damn it. That was annoyingly good. Annoyingly perceptive. The kind of observation that made you feel seen in ways you didn't want to be.

"You need the road trip," he continued. "You need to see them outside their environment. See what the pressure looks like when there's no home crowd, no familiar routines. See who they are when nobody's watching."

You looked down at the folder. The destination sat printed in bold letters three hours away. Overnight stay. Team hotel. Bus ride. Media access. Hours of proximity to Garrett in enclosed spaces with no escape routes.

Absolutely not.

Lewis wasn't finished. "You're also partnering with someone."

You immediately hated that sentence. The word "partnering" felt like a threat. "Why?"

"Because journalism and photography work together."

"I do both."

"You also never sleep." He held up a hand before you could argue. "Fair point. But this project needs both, and you can't be in two places at once."

Lewis pointed toward the studio door.

A tall guy stepped inside carrying two cameras around his neck like jewelry, their straps crossing his chest in an X. Dark hair fell across his forehead in that artfully messy way that suggested either product or complete indifference. Broad shoulders. Easy smile. The kind of casual confidence that came from being good at something and knowing it.

Photography student. Wonderful. Just what you needed. Another person to lie to. Another observer to avoid. Another variable in an equation that was already dangerously unbalanced.

"That's Noah."

Noah waved, his smile reaching his eyes. "Hey."

You waved back cautiously, your hand feeling heavy.

Lewis continued, relentlessly. "He's producing exhibition photography."

You blinked, the pieces slowly assembling into a picture you didn't want to see. "What am I producing?"

"The written piece."

Oh. Oh no.

A collaborative project. Even worse. Someone else's timeline. Someone else's vision. Someone else's questions and observations and potential discoveries.

"You'll travel together," Lewis said, closing the folder with finality.

Noah grinned, adjusting one of his cameras. "Road trip."

You wanted to throw yourself through the nearest window. The glass looked thick, but you were reasonably confident you could generate enough momentum.

The hockey house discovered the news that evening.

Predictably.

It happened during dinner, because of course it did. The universe had a sense of timing that could only be described as malicious. You were halfway through stealing fries from Allie's plate-technically she'd said you could have "some," and you were interpreting that generously-when Dean looked up from his phone with the particular expression of someone who had just seen something interesting.

"Dude."

Never a good start. "Dude" from Dean meant either disaster or entertainment, and the two were often indistinguishable.

You sighed, a fry halfway to your mouth. "What?"

Dean turned his screen around. The away-game media list. Your name sat near the top in plain black text, undeniable and exposed. Alongside Noah Foster. The entire table noticed immediately, of course they did. Nothing escaped this house, this group, this collection of people who seemed to share a single collective consciousness when it came to gossip.

"You're coming?" Allie asked, looking excited. Too excited. The kind of excitement that suggested she saw opportunities you didn't.

Hannah looked curious. Dangerously curious, her blue eyes narrowing slightly as she processed the information.

Dean looked entertained. Predictably.

You looked exhausted. Eternally, irrevocably exhausted.

Before you could answer-before you could construct some plausible explanation or deflection-Garrett spoke.

"Who's Noah?"

The question came casually. Too casually. The kind of casual that sounded practiced, rehearsed, deliberately light. The entire table noticed. Including you. Including Hannah, whose gaze immediately shifted between you and Garrett with the sharpness of someone who missed nothing.

You looked toward him. Garrett sat across from you, elbows resting on the table, his posture deceptively relaxed. Waiting. His dark curls fell forward slightly, shadowing his expression, but you could see his eyes. Fixed on you. Intense in a way that felt suddenly, viscerally dangerous.

You suddenly found the fries fascinating. "Photography major."

Dean immediately grinned. Dangerously. "Oh?"

You kicked him under the table. Hard. Your boot connected with his shin with satisfying force. He nearly choked, his grin transforming into a wince. Worth it.

Garrett didn't laugh. Which was unusual. Garrett laughed at everything, defused every tension with humor, turned every moment into something lighter. But his attention remained fixed on you, unwavering, the intensity of it like standing too close to a fire.

"You're working together?" he asked.

"Apparently."

The answer sounded defensive even to your own ears. Sharp. Edged. Great. Now you sounded guilty. For absolutely no reason. You were doing a project. With a classmate. This was normal. This was fine.

Garrett's jaw tightened slightly. Just enough for you to notice. A small movement, a muscle jumping, the only crack in his composure. Not enough for anyone else to see. Except maybe Hannah. Who immediately looked between both of you with the expression of someone who was assembling a theory.

Shit.

"You hate group projects," Garrett said quietly. Like an observation. Not a question. A statement of fact that he had no right to know, no reason to remember.

You stared. Because that was true. You complained about them constantly, the inefficiency, the scheduling conflicts, the way other people's procrastination became your emergency. And because he'd remembered. For some reason that felt dangerous. Intimate. Like he'd been paying attention to things you hadn't realized you were revealing.

The room suddenly seemed much smaller. Much warmer. The air thick and difficult to breathe. Across the table, Garrett held your gaze for a second too long. Then two. Then three. Long enough for you to notice the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, the small scar through his eyebrow, the way his throat moved when he swallowed.

Before finally looking away.

The conversation moved on. Dean started talking about hockey, his voice loud and performative, deliberately breaking the tension. Allie rolled her eyes. Hannah laughed, but her gaze kept returning to you, curious and calculating. Normal. Everything looked normal.

But later that night, lying awake in bed with your laptop casting blue light across your ceiling, you couldn't stop thinking about the way Garrett had asked:

Who's Noah?

Not because he was curious. Not because he cared about the project or the exhibition or your academic career.

Because he cared.

And somehow-that was worse. That was infinitely worse. Because you were about to spend an entire weekend trapped on a bus with a hockey team, a suspicious best friend, a photography student who would be watching everything, and a secret that was getting harder to keep by the day.

Especially now that you knew Garrett was watching too.

The hockey bus smelled exactly how you'd imagine.

Coffee, dark and bitter, the dregs of cups left too long in cupholders. Rubber, that particular synthetic scent of hockey equipment bags and athletic tape and shoes worn too many times without washing. Protein powder, vanilla and chemical, clinging to the air like humidity. And underneath it all, the unmistakable aroma of poor decisions-the kind that started with "we can sleep on the bus" and ended with someone trying to tape a teammate to the luggage rack.

You paused at the bottom of the steps, duffel bag slung over one shoulder and camera case digging into your hip with the persistence of a bad memory. The parking lot stretched around you, empty except for the bus and the team and the predawn darkness that felt almost oppressive. Immediately regretting every choice that had led you here. Every article written. Every observation made. Every moment when you'd thought this was a good idea.

Around you, players loaded equipment beneath the bus while coaches barked instructions through the freezing morning air. The sky was still dark, that particular shade of pre-dawn black that felt less like night ending and more like night refusing to leave. The parking lot lights reflected off wet pavement, creating pools of orange illumination that seemed to float on the surface like oil. It was six-thirty in the morning. Nobody should be alive at six-thirty in the morning. The hour existed solely for emergencies and regret.

Especially not athletes. Athletes needed sleep. Recovery. Eight hours of REM cycles and proper nutrition and whatever else the sports science people were recommending this week.

Yet somehow they were all here. Loudly. The bus was already vibrating with energy, with voices overlapping and music playing and the general chaos of twenty young men who treated exhaustion like a personality trait.

Dean spotted you first. Of course he did. Dean had a radar for interesting situations, for moments of potential entertainment, for any opportunity to make someone's life more complicated.

"Media!"

You groaned, the sound coming from somewhere deep and hopeless. "Go away."

Dean grinned, the expression bright and dangerous in the parking lot lights. "No."

Unfortunately, that was a complete sentence for him. A philosophy. A way of life.

Behind him, Garrett glanced up from where he was helping unload equipment. The moment his eyes found yours, something shifted. Not dramatic. Not obvious. Just recognition. Like he'd been waiting to see if you'd actually show up. Like he'd wondered, even knowing you were assigned, even knowing there was literally a faculty approval form sitting in some administrative file somewhere.

Which was ridiculous. You'd been assigned to come. This wasn't a choice. This was academic obligation dressed as opportunity.

Still.

His gaze lingered a second too long before he looked away. You hated how much you noticed. How your brain cataloged the moment, filed it away, replayed it before you'd even fully processed it.

"Ready?" Noah appeared beside you carrying enough camera gear to survive a war zone. Three cameras. Two bags. A tripod slung over his shoulder like a weapon. He looked annoyingly alert for someone who'd presumably also been awake since dawn.

You nodded. "Thrilled."

"Liar."

"Correct."

Noah laughed, the sound easy and genuine, and the two of you climbed onto the bus together. And immediately realized every good seat was already taken.

Fantastic.

The front belonged to coaches, territory marked by clipboards and coffee thermoses and the general aura of authority. The back belonged to chaos, to the players who'd claimed their territory early and were already spreading across two seats each like territorial house cats. The middle was a no-man's-land of equipment bags and duffels and the general debris of travel.

Noah pointed. "Here?"

A pair of empty seats sat halfway down the aisle, separated from the nearest occupied row by a single bag. You dropped into the window seat, pressing your forehead against the cold glass in a gesture that felt almost prayerful. Noah sat beside you, arranging his camera gear with the precision of someone who'd done this before.

Problem solved.

Or so you thought.

Forty minutes later, 

Problem not solved. Not even slightly.

You were editing photographs from last week's game, your laptop balanced on the tray table, when someone appeared beside your seat. You didn't look up, focused on adjusting exposure, on cropping, on making the image match the memory.

"Go away, Dean."

Silence. Then-

"That's rude."

Garrett. Of course. The voice was unmistakable, even after only a few weeks of knowing it. That particular cadence, the way he could make two words sound like an entire conversation.

You looked up. He stood in the aisle holding a sports drink, the bottle condensation-beaded in the warm bus air. Looking annoyingly good for someone who'd been awake since dawn. His dark curls were slightly flattened from a beanie, his eyes bright despite the hour, his posture relaxed in a way that suggested he was exactly where he wanted to be.

"What do you want?"

"Nice to see you too."

You sighed dramatically, the sound carrying over the bus noise. "What. Do. You. Want."

Garrett pointed toward your laptop. "Working?"

"Groundbreaking observation."

He ignored that, leaning slightly into your space. Close enough that you could smell his soap, something clean and simple. "You've been staring at that photo for ten minutes."

Your stomach dropped. Had you? Apparently. Because the photo currently displayed on your screen was-

Him.

Wonderful. Just wonderful. The image caught him mid-celebration, arms raised, face turned toward the lights, joy written across every feature. You'd taken it during the game last week, before you'd known him, before you'd understood what you were really capturing.

Luckily it was an action shot. Nothing suspicious. Probably.

"Occupational hazard."

Garrett leaned slightly closer, close enough that you could see the small scar through his eyebrow, the one you'd noticed in your research. "That one's terrible."

You gasped. Actually gasped. The audacity. "The composition is excellent."

"The lighting sucks."

"The lighting is artistic."

"The lighting is bad."

You narrowed your eyes. Garrett smiled, the expression reaching his eyes in a way that felt almost like a victory. The asshole.

Then Noah spoke beside you, his voice mild and unthreatening. "I think the lighting works."

Garrett finally noticed him.

The shift was immediate. Subtle. Tiny. But there. The atmosphere changed, some invisible quality of the air adjusting around you. You felt it. Noah felt it. Probably the entire bus felt it, some collective awareness that something had shifted in the ecosystem.

"Oh." Garrett nodded once, the gesture controlled and deliberate. "You must be Noah."

Noah smiled politely, the expression professional and untroubled. "You must be Garrett."

The conversation somehow became a competition. Without anyone officially declaring one. Without any rules being established. Just two people circling each other with words, testing boundaries, establishing territory.

Men were exhausting.

An hour later, 

The bus stopped at a roadside diner, the kind that existed in the liminal space between cities, all neon and chrome and the promise of coffee that tasted like burnt rubber. Everyone piled out. Half asleep. Hungry. Complaining about the cold, the hour, the fact that breakfast wasn't included. The usual.

You sat in a booth with Noah reviewing photo concepts for the exhibition, your laptop open between you, images cycling on the screen. The assignment itself was actually interesting. Which annoyed you. Because you preferred being dramatic about it. Preferred treating it like an imposition rather than an opportunity.

"You've got the human side already," Noah said.

You looked up. "What?"

"The team." He gestured toward your photos, toward the images you'd taken and edited and somehow made feel intimate despite the distance of the lens. "You don't photograph hockey."

You frowned. "I'm literally photographing hockey."

"No." He shook his head, his dark hair falling across his forehead. "You're photographing people who happen to play hockey."

The comment hit harder than expected. Because that was exactly what Offside was. Exactly what you'd been trying to do. Notice the people beneath the performance. Find the humanity inside the hero narrative.

Across the diner, laughter erupted from another booth. You glanced over automatically, your body responding before your mind could stop it.

The hockey team. Dean was telling some ridiculous story, his hands moving in broad gestures, his voice carrying across the space. Allie looked exhausted, her head resting on her hand, her coffee untouched. Hannah was laughing, but her eyes were sharp, scanning the room with the particular attention of someone who missed nothing.

And Garrett-

Garrett was already looking at you.

Your breath caught. Just slightly. Enough. The moment stretched, time doing that strange elastic thing where seconds felt like minutes, where you were aware of every heartbeat, every breath, every small movement of his expression.

Then Dean noticed. His eyes widened. Immediately dangerous. Oh no. No. Absolutely not.

Dean's grin appeared instantly. The grin of a man about to make everyone's life harder. He leaned toward Garrett, said something you couldn't hear but could absolutely imagine. Garrett shoved his shoulder. Dean laughed harder, the sound bright and delighted and completely unhelpful.

Wonderful.

Back on the bus, things got worse.

Because apparently the universe hated you. Had some personal vendetta. Had decided that your life needed more complications, more near-misses, more moments of cardiac stress.

You returned from the bathroom to find Noah talking with another photography student several rows ahead, their heads bent together over some piece of equipment. Your seat sat empty, your laptop still on the tray table where you'd left it.

You dropped into it gratefully. Pulled out your laptop. Opened a fresh document. Started writing.

The article deadline loomed. The blinking cursor mocked you, that steady rhythm that seemed to say you're running out of time you're running out of time you're running out of time. You typed. Deleted. Typed again. Deleted again. Nothing sounded right.

Maybe that's the problem with heroes.

The sentence sat there. Incomplete. Waiting. You stared at it, thinking. Thinking about pressure. Expectations. Garrett. The team. The impossible standards everyone carried, the weight of being watched, being needed, being expected to perform.

You became so focused you didn't hear someone sit beside you. Didn't notice the shift in the seat, the warmth of another body, the subtle change in the air.

Until-

"That looks painful."

Your soul left your body. Immediately. Ascended to whatever afterlife existed for idiots who wrote thinly veiled confessions about people sitting right next to them.

Garrett sat beside you. Relaxed. Comfortable. Like he belonged there. Like this was his seat now, his space, his territory to claim.

"What happened to your seat?"

He shrugged, the movement easy and unbothered. "Dean talks too much."

Fair. You couldn't even argue. Dean did talk too much. Dean would talk through a nuclear apocalypse, providing commentary and asking questions and generally making silence impossible.

Garrett glanced toward your laptop. You immediately tilted the screen, the movement suspiciously fast. Again. Your second near-miss in as many hours.

His eyebrows lifted. Dangerous. Very dangerous. "You know," he said, his voice dropping slightly, becoming something almost intimate in the bus noise. "People usually only hide things when they have something to hide."

You laughed nervously. A mistake. Because Garrett noticed. His gaze sharpened, that observant quality you'd seen in interviews, the way he read reporters and adjusted his answers accordingly.

"You are unbelievably suspicious lately."

Your heart began sprinting. The article sat open. Three paragraphs from disaster. One accidental glance from exposure. You closed the laptop entirely, the click of the latch loud in the sudden quiet between you.

"No idea what you're talking about."

"Liar."

The word came automatically now. Like breathing. Like habit. Like he knew you. Which somehow made everything worse. Made the lie feel transparent. Made the secret feel obvious.

The bus rolled onward beneath gray winter skies, the landscape blurring into white and brown and the occasional flash of bare trees. Conversation buzzed around you. Music played somewhere near the back, something with bass that vibrated through the floor. Dean was yelling about something. Probably hockey. Probably nonsense.

Yet somehow the space beside you felt strangely quiet. Comfortable. Like the rest of the bus had receded, leaving just you and Garrett and the warmth of shared breath.

Garrett stretched his legs into the aisle, his knee brushing yours briefly before settling. "Can I ask you something?"

You immediately regretted existing. "Depends."

"What are you scared of?"

Your head snapped toward him. "What?"

"You said average." His voice was quiet, almost lost in the bus noise. "In the library. You said you were scared of being average."

Your chest tightened. The library conversation. He remembered. Of course he remembered. Because apparently Garrett Graham stored random conversations in a vault somewhere, preserved and cataloged and ready for deployment at the most dangerous possible moments.

You looked out the window. Snow drifted across distant fields, the world blurred white, indistinct, soft. For a moment neither of you spoke. The silence stretched, not uncomfortable, but heavy with something you couldn't name.

Then quietly, the words escaping before you could stop them: "What if I never become who I thought I'd be?"

Garrett didn't laugh. Didn't tease. Didn't joke. Instead-

"Yeah."

Just that. Yeah. Understanding. Simple. Honest. The sound of someone who'd thought the same thing, who'd stood in the same uncertainty, who'd wondered if the person they were becoming would measure up to the person they'd imagined.

You looked at him. Really looked. The exhaustion beneath his eyes. The pressure in his posture. The expectations that seemed to sit on his shoulders like physical weight. The fear he hid behind humor and charm and the constant performance of being Garrett Graham, campus hero, future NHL player, everyone's favorite person.

Maybe not so different after all.

Garrett smiled softly, the expression small and private and nothing like his public grin. "You're gonna be fine."

The certainty in his voice nearly hurt. Because he believed it. Without hesitation. Without doubt. Without any evidence beyond whatever he'd seen in you that you couldn't see in yourself.

And somehow-you wanted him to be right. Wanted it with a fierceness that surprised you.

Outside, snow continued falling, the flakes catching the bus lights like sparks. Inside, the distance between you felt smaller than it ever had before. Like something had shifted. Like some wall had cracked, letting light through.

And somewhere near the back of the bus-

Dean watched the entire thing unfold. The way you leaned toward each other. The way Garrett's voice dropped. The way neither of you seemed to notice anyone else in the world.

Then immediately texted Hannah.

DEFINITELY SOMETHING GOING ON 

Hannah looked up from her phone. Saw Garrett sitting beside you. Saw you smiling, the expression unguarded in a way you rarely allowed. Saw the way neither of you seemed to notice anyone else.

And suddenly-

She wasn't just suspicious about Offside anymore.

She was suspicious about everything.

The hotel looked nothing like Briar.

No banners hanging from every available surface, no screaming crowds vibrating with school spirit, no students painting their faces in school colours like war paint, transforming themselves into something fierce and collective and slightly unhinged. No history. No weight. No accumulated years of tradition pressing down on every moment.

Just glass doors that reflected the gray afternoon sky, polished floors that squeaked beneath athletic shoes, and the kind of quiet that made everything feel slightly too real. The kind of quiet that didn't care about your reputation or your record or your future. The kind of quiet that asked uncomfortable questions about who you were when nobody was watching.

You stood in the lobby holding your bag, the strap digging into your shoulder with familiar persistence, watching the hockey team spread out like they owned the place anyway. They always did that. Even off campus. Even exhausted. Even half-dead from a bus ride that should've been illegal, that had crossed some invisible line between "team bonding" and "human rights violation."

Dean was already yelling something at reception, his voice carrying across the marble floors with the particular volume of someone who'd never learned that indoor voices were a thing. Allie was laughing at him, her head thrown back, her exhaustion temporarily forgotten. Hannah was checking her phone, calm as ever, her thumb moving across the screen with the efficiency of someone who was actually processing information rather than just scrolling.

Garrett-

Garrett was watching you.

Of course he was. You could feel it before you saw it, that particular weight of attention that made the back of your neck warm. When you finally let yourself look, his eyes were already there, steady and considering, like he'd been waiting for you to notice. Like he'd been tracking your movements since you walked through the doors, cataloging your reactions, filing them away for later examination.

You looked away first. Obviously. Because that's what you did. That's what you'd always done. Look away first. Retreat first. Protect yourself first, before anyone else could decide to hurt you.

A coach called out room assignments, voice echoing through the lobby with the authority of someone who controlled your immediate future. You expected chaos. Expected confusion, complaints, the general negotiation that happened whenever humans were asked to follow rules. You got worse.

Order. Efficiency. Rules.

"Media team," the coach said, scanning his list with a finger moving down printed names. "You're with Wells and Foster."

Your stomach dropped. Slow. Immediate. Unavoidable. Like an elevator with cut cables, that sickening moment of free fall before impact.

Hannah. And you. Together. In a room. Overnight. With your secret sitting in your bag, on your laptop, in every glance you tried to hide.

You turned your head slightly. Hannah met your eyes. Smiled. Too sweet. Too knowing. The smile of someone who'd been waiting for this, who'd suspected something and now had opportunity to investigate.

Perfect. You were going to die here. Not dramatically. Not heroically. Just slowly, over the course of a night, as Hannah Wells dismantled your carefully constructed lies with observation and patience and terrifying intelligence.

Noah bumped your shoulder lightly, grounding you. "Guess we're neighbors."

"Unfortunately," you muttered, the word barely audible.

He laughed. You didn't.

Because across the lobby, Garrett was still watching. And for the first time since this whole thing started, you couldn't tell if that was a good thing or the worst thing that could possibly happen.

The room was small. Too small. The kind of small that made privacy impossible, that turned every movement into performance, that ensured you would be constantly aware of another person's presence whether you wanted to be or not.

Two beds with thin comforters in that particular shade of beige that hotels chose to hide stains. One desk barely wide enough for a laptop, its surface already scratched with the initials of previous guests. One chair that looked like it had already given up on life, its fabric worn thin, its frame slightly crooked, as if it had been sat upon too many times by too many people carrying too many burdens.

Hannah dropped her bag onto the bed closest to the window with a casualness that felt deliberate. You claimed the other one immediately. No negotiation. No discussion. No trust. Just the territorial claiming of space, the unspoken rules of temporary cohabitation.

Noah had gone down to grab equipment info from the coach. Which meant-

Silence.

Just you and Hannah. And the weight of everything unsaid between you.

You unpacked carefully. Deliberately. Each item removed from your bag placed with precision, creating a small fortress of belongings on your bed. Laptop. Camera. Notebook with its pages filled with observations you couldn't let her see. Folded hoodie. Chargers coiled like defensive snakes. Everything arranged like a defence system, like barriers, like the walls you were always building.

Hannah watched quietly. Too quietly. She sat on her own bed, legs crossed, phone face-down beside her, and simply observed. You could feel her attention like physical pressure, like warmth against your skin, like the sensation of being studied under microscope lighting.

Then she spoke.

"So…"

You didn't look up. "No."

She smiled. You could hear it in her voice. "You didn't even know the question."

"I did." You kept your eyes on your laptop, on the familiar motions of setup, on anything that wasn't her.

Hannah leaned back against her pillows, the movement creating a soft rustle of cheap fabric. "You've been weird."

"I've been busy." The words came automatically, rehearsed, practiced.

"You've been disappearing." Her voice didn't change. Still casual. Still conversational. Still dangerous.

You froze slightly. Just for half a second. Then continued unpacking like your life depended on it. Because it did. Because Hannah was getting closer to something, circling it like a predator testing fences, and you needed to be very careful about which direction you ran.

Hannah shifted. The bed creaked. "You write a lot at night."

Your hands paused for half a second. Then kept moving. Casual. Normal. Harmless. "Sometimes."

"That's interesting," she said.

You finally looked at her. Couldn't help it. Needed to see what she was doing, what she was thinking, how much she suspected.

Hannah's expression was soft. Too soft. Which made it worse. Made it feel like she was handling you carefully, like you were fragile, like she was being gentle before she broke something.

"I don't sleep much either," she added.

You exhaled slowly. Dangerous conversation direction. Too intimate. Too revealing. You changed the subject fast, desperate for safer ground. "Where's Allie?"

"With Dean."

"Of course."

Hannah smiled faintly. A pause stretched between you, elastic and tense. Then-

"You like hockey more than you pretend to."

You nearly dropped your charger. The plastic slipped in your fingers, recovered at the last moment. "What?"

"I said what I said." Hannah's voice was mild. Unbothered. Like she hadn't just detonated something in the center of the room.

You narrowed your eyes. "That's not even a sentence."

"It is when you say it right."

Silence. Long. Heavy. Filled with the hum of the hotel's heating system and the distant sound of other guests and the particular quiet of two people who were not saying what they were actually thinking.

Then Hannah rolled onto her side. Facing you now. Direct. Unavoidable. "Do you like Garrett?"

Your heart stopped. Completely. Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. Physically stopped functioning, seized by panic, by the sudden vertigo of being seen. Then restarted aggressively, hammering against your ribs, loud enough you were certain she could hear it.

"No." Too fast. Way too fast. The word came out like a reflex, like a door slamming shut, like every defence mechanism you'd ever learned activating simultaneously.

Hannah watched you carefully. Her eyes were brown and warm and saw absolutely everything. "That was quick."

"I like accuracy."

"Mhm."

You grabbed your laptop. Opened it. Stared at the screen without seeing it. "I'm working."

"You always are."

And somehow-that was worse. Because it was true. Because the work was the excuse, the shield, the reason you gave for disappearing, for being unavailable, for never quite being present in the ways that mattered. Because if you were always working, nobody could ask what you were actually doing. Nobody could wonder why you were exhausted at strange hours. Nobody could connect the dots between your late nights and the articles that appeared the next morning.

You were safe in your busyness. Until you weren't.

Until Hannah Wells decided to start paying attention.

The hallway was quiet. Too quiet. That particular hotel silence that felt manufactured, artificial, like someone had sucked all the life out of the air and left only emptiness behind. You couldn't sleep. Obviously. Because your brain hated you, because it was 2 a.m. and your thoughts were running in circles like hamsters on a wheel, because the room was too small and Hannah was too observant and the walls felt like they were closing in.

You slipped out of the room with your hoodie pulled tight, the fabric soft and worn against your chin, laptop under your arm like a shield. Walked down the corridor until you found the small balcony off the stairwell, the one with the emergency exit sign glowing green above it. Pushed through the heavy door.

Cold air hit immediately. Sharp. Real. The kind of cold that cut through exhaustion and anxiety and left only sensation. Good. Something real. Something that didn't require you to be anyone other than exactly who you were in this moment: tired, scared, hiding.

You leaned against the railing. The metal was freezing even through your hoodie, biting against your forearms. Below, the parking lot stretched empty and dark, a few cars scattered like forgotten toys. Beyond that, the highway hummed with distant traffic, the sound constant and indifferent.

Opened your laptop. The screen glowed blue-white in the darkness, illuminating your hands, your keyboard, the document already waiting.

Offside draft sitting there. Cursor blinking. That steady rhythm that seemed to mock you, to ask what you were doing, why you were doing it, when it would finally be enough.

You started typing. The words came easier here, in the cold, in the quiet, where nobody could see you.

Pressure is funny because it doesn't feel like pressure until it breaks something. We think we're handling it, think we're managing, think we're fine fine fine, until suddenly we're not. Until suddenly the thing we love becomes the thing we fear. Until the ice feels like a stage and the crowd feels like a verdict.

Then-

Footsteps.

You froze. Didn't look up. Didn't move. Your heart hammered against your ribs, every instinct screaming to close the laptop, to hide, to run, to do anything but sit here exposed with evidence spread across your screen like a confession.

Garrett's voice came from behind you. Quiet. Tired. Resigned. "You're everywhere I go now."

You turned slowly. He was standing in the doorway, backlit by the hallway's emergency lighting, hands buried in his hoodie pockets. He looked exhausted. Always exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that went deeper than sleep could fix, that lived in the shoulders, in the jaw, in the way he held himself like he was constantly bracing for impact.

You sighed. The sound came out more relieved than you wanted it to. "I could say the same."

He stepped outside. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing you both in the cold and the dark and the strange intimacy of shared insomnia. Joined you at the railing, close enough that you could smell his soap, something clean and simple, close enough that you could feel the warmth radiating from him despite the chill.

Neither of you spoke for a moment. Just wind. City lights in the distance, blurred and indistinct. The particular silence of a hockey trip, where everyone was supposed to be sleeping but nobody actually was.

Then Garrett leaned forward. His elbows rested on the railing, his posture open in a way that felt rare, vulnerable. "Elaborate question."

You frowned. "What?"

"You always talk about pressure like it's something outside people put on athletes." He didn't look at you. Just kept his eyes on the distant lights, on the darkness, on something you couldn't see. "But sometimes it feels like it's just… inside."

That hit differently. Too differently. You looked at him, really looked, at the exhaustion etched into his face, at the way his fingers tightened on the railing, at the admission he'd just made without fanfare or performance.

"What do you mean?"

Garrett shrugged. Like it was nothing. But his voice wasn't nothing. It was small and honest and nothing like the confident persona he wore in daylight.

"I'm scared I'll stop being good at it." The words came slowly, like he was pulling them from somewhere deep, somewhere he didn't visit often. "I'm scared I'll have one bad game, then another, then suddenly I'm not the prospect anymore, I'm not the future, I'm just… done."

Silence. Heavy again. Different now. The weight of confession.

He didn't look at you. Just the city. "I don't know who I am without it."

You swallowed. That one hurt. More than it should've. Because you understood. Too well. Because you were writing anonymous articles about hockey players at 2 a.m. because you didn't know who you were without the words, without the observation, without the secret identity that made you feel like you mattered.

"I think you'd still be you," you said quietly. The words surprised you. The honesty of them. The way they slipped out before you could stop them.

Garrett laughed once. Soft. Not amused. Just honest. "You say that like you know me."

You didn't answer.

Because you did.

More than you should.

More than was safe.

And somewhere in the silence that followed, you both understood that something had shifted. That the space between you had become smaller, warmer, more dangerous. That the balcony had become a confessional, and you were both leaving pieces of yourselves behind.

The team was loud again. Too loud. Always too loud. The hotel restaurant had become a temporary annex of Briar's athletic culture, complete with the same chaos, the same energy, the same sense that you were witnessing a phenomenon rather than just eating breakfast.

You sat with Noah at a small table near the windows, reviewing photos from the trip. Normal. Professional. Safe. The familiar rhythm of work, of critique, of technical discussion that required nothing from you except competence.

Noah leaned over your laptop, his shoulder brushing yours, his finger tracing the edge of the screen. "This one's good."

You nodded, keeping your eyes on the image. A player mid-shot, the puck frozen in motion, the concentration etched into his face. "Lighting's better than the last game."

"You're improving." Noah's voice was warm. Encouraging. The kind of voice that made you feel seen for your skills rather than your secrets.

You smirked slightly, the expression feeling almost natural. "Don't get used to compliments."

He laughed. You almost relaxed.

Across the room-

Garrett was watching.

Not obvious. Not loud. Not demanding attention the way Dean would, the way the others did. Just watching. His coffee cup held loosely in one hand, his posture deceptively casual, his eyes fixed on your table with an intensity that felt like touch.

You felt it before you saw it. That particular weight of attention, the warmth of being observed, the dangerous thrill of knowing someone was thinking about you.

Dean noticed immediately. Of course he did. Dean had a radar for interpersonal tension, for moments of potential entertainment, for any situation that could be made more complicated or more interesting or more chaotic.

Dean leaned toward Garrett, his mouth moving close to his ear, his grin visible even from across the room. You couldn't hear the words, but you could imagine them. Could see the shape of them in Dean's smile, in Garrett's sudden stillness, in the way his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

"You jealous or something?"

Garrett didn't look away. Didn't break eye contact. Didn't do anything to suggest Dean's comment was wrong or ridiculous or worth denying. Just kept watching you with that steady, considering gaze.

"No."

The word was simple. One syllable. But the way he said it-the certainty, the lack of defensiveness, the quiet admission wrapped in denial-made your stomach flip.

Dean smirked. The expression of a man who had just confirmed something he'd suspected, who had baited a hook and watched someone bite. "Sure."

Garrett finally looked away then. Took a sip of his coffee. But the moment had already happened. The observation had been made. The suspicion had been confirmed.

And somewhere across the restaurant, Hannah was watching all of it. Her phone held loosely in her hand, her breakfast untouched, her eyes moving between you and Noah, you and Garrett, cataloging the triangle of glances and tension and unspoken things.

She didn't smile this time.

She just noted.

Filed away.

Waited.

Briar lost. Not close. Not dramatic. Just… lost. The kind of loss that felt inevitable, that settled over the team like humidity, heavy and inescapable. The kind that made the bus ride back feel longer than the trip there, even though the miles were identical.

You sat in the hotel lobby waiting for checkout, your bag packed, your camera secured, your laptop heavy with photos you hadn't reviewed yet. The team moved around you like ghosts, quieter now, the energy drained out of them, leaving only the hollow shells of athletes processing failure.

Garrett walked past. Didn't stop. Didn't look at you. His shoulders were tight, his jaw set, his whole body radiating the particular tension of someone who was holding himself together through sheer force of will. He'd played badly. You'd watched. Everyone had watched. The future NHL prospect, the captain, the hero, missing passes, losing puck battles, looking half a step slow.

The media would eat him alive. You knew because you'd written those articles, those hot takes, those instant analyses that forgot human beings were involved. You'd contributed to the machine that would now consume him.

Hannah appeared beside you. Silent. Observant. She'd been watching too. Always watching.

"Rough game," she said quietly.

You didn't answer. Just kept your eyes on the middle distance, on the hotel's generic art, on anything that wasn't the weight of what you knew.

"He's usually better," Hannah continued. Her voice was mild. Casual. The voice of someone making conversation rather than gathering evidence. But you knew better. You'd seen her work. Seen her circle topics like a shark, patient and predatory.

"Everyone has bad games," you said. The words came out defensive. Too defensive. You softened your tone, tried again. "Pressure gets to people."

Hannah hummed. A noncommittal sound. "You'd know."

Your stomach tightened. "What?"

"About pressure." She turned to look at you, her expression open and curious and terrifying. "You write about it a lot. In your articles."

You froze. The articles. She'd read them. Of course she'd read them. Everyone read them. That was the point. But hearing her say it, hearing her connect your name to those words, felt like standing on ice that was beginning to crack.

"I read a lot of things," you said carefully. "For research."

"Mm." Hannah's eyes stayed on you. Steady. Unblinking. "You seem to understand Garrett especially well. His psychology. His pressure." A pause. Weighted. "Almost like you know him."

Your heart hammered. "I observe. That's my job."

"Is it?" Hannah tilted her head slightly. The gesture was almost birdlike, predatory. "Or is it something else?"

You stood abruptly. Too fast. The movement jerky and obvious. "I'm going to check us out."

Hannah let you go. Didn't follow. Didn't call after you. Just watched you retreat toward the front desk with the satisfaction of someone who had confirmed a suspicion, who had seen the crack in your armor and filed away its location for future use.

And as you handed over the room keys with shaking hands, one thought repeated like a mantra.

She knew.

Not everything. Not yet. But she knew something. And that was always how it started. That was always the beginning of the end.

The hockey house was louder than it had any right to be for a team that had just lost.

Not celebration loud. Not even coping loud. Just… displaced energy. The kind that had nowhere to go, so it turned into slammed cupboards, half-laughs that didn't land, and music that no one was really listening to. The bass thumped through the floorboards anyway, aggressive and hollow, like the house itself was trying to convince everyone that everything was fine.

The loss sat in the walls with them. Briar hadn't just lost a game. They'd lost momentum. Confidence. That easy sense of inevitability they wore when things were going right, that swagger that made them walk differently, talk differently, exist differently. Now everything felt slightly off-centre. Like a photograph with the horizon tilted just enough to make you nauseous if you stared too long.

Dean was on the couch flicking through his phone, his thumb moving with mechanical repetition, not actually processing anything. Allie was curled up beside him, quieter than usual, her usual commentary absent, leaving gaps in the conversation that no one filled. Garrett stood in the kitchen, hands braced on the counter, staring at nothing. The muscles in his forearms were tight, veins visible, tension radiating off him in waves that you could feel from across the room.

He hadn't said much since the bus. He didn't need to. Everyone could see it on him-the way he carried the loss like personal failure, like he'd disappointed not just the team but some invisible audience he was always performing for.

Then-

Hannah walked in.

No announcement. No hesitation. Just calm. Controlled. Like she'd been carrying something the entire bus ride and had finally decided it was time to set it down in front of everyone. The door clicked shut behind her with a finality that made Dean look up from his phone, made Allie uncurl slightly, made Garrett's shoulders tense even further.

She didn't sit. She didn't smile. She just looked at them, her gaze moving from face to face with the methodical precision of someone checking items off a list.

And said-

"I know who writes Offside."

The room changed instantly. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just… still. The music kept playing, but it felt distant suddenly, like it was coming from another house, another world.

Dean blinked. "What?"

Hannah's eyes didn't move. "I know who it is."

Allie frowned, her confusion genuine, her head tilting in that way she had when she was trying to catch up to a conversation that had already left her behind. "That anonymous column thing?"

Hannah nodded. Just once. Small. Definitive.

Garrett didn't move. But something in his posture shifted. Subtle. Sharp. Dangerous. The kind of shift that happened before a storm broke, before violence erupted, before someone did something they couldn't take back.

Hannah continued, her voice steady, almost gentle. "It's not random. It's not a student journalism experiment." A pause. Weighted. "It's her."

Silence. Thick. Heavy. The kind of silence that pressed against your eardrums.

Then Dean laughed once. Short. Disbelieving. "Her who?"

Hannah finally looked at him. And said your name.

The air left the room. Not metaphorically. Actually. Everyone stopped breathing for just a moment, suspended in the revelation, in the implications, in the sudden recontextualization of every interaction they'd had with you.

Allie sat up slowly. "You're joking."

"I'm not."

Garrett's voice cut through the room immediately. "No."

One word. Final. Absolute. But there was something underneath it-something that sounded less like denial and more like damage control.

Hannah turned toward him. "You didn't see it?"

Garrett's jaw tightened. The muscle jumped. "No."

But he didn't look at her. He looked at the counter. At his hands. At anything that wasn't Hannah's knowing gaze. And in that avoidance, there was something-guilt, maybe. Or recognition. Or the careful mask of someone who'd already suspected and had been hoping no one else would figure it out.

Hannah stepped closer now. Calm. Precise. "She writes about you constantly. Your pressure. Your patterns. Your behaviour under stress." Her gaze flicked across the group. "She's been observing all of you, but especially you."

Garrett's hands clenched on the counter. White-knuckled. "That's not proof."

Hannah reached into her bag. Pulled out printed pages. Lay them on the table with the care of someone laying out evidence in a courtroom. Offside articles. Annotated. Highlighted. Compared. Dates circled. Phrases underlined. A constellation of observation that pointed unmistakably to one source.

Dean leaned forward despite himself, his curiosity overriding his usual performance of not caring. Allie's eyes scanned the page, moving quickly, her lips moving slightly as she read.

And Garrett-

Garrett didn't move at first. Then he read. One page. Then another. Then stopped breathing slightly.

Because Hannah was right. It wasn't just writing. It was familiarity. Too much familiarity. The kind that came from proximity. From attention. From knowing.

But also-

The kind that came from being told.

Garrett looked up slowly. "That doesn't prove it's her."

Hannah didn't flinch. "It's her voice."

Dean frowned. "How the hell do you know her voice?"

Hannah finally hesitated. Just for a second. A crack in her certainty. "I pay attention too."

That landed heavier than anything else she'd said. Because it wasn't just accusation. It was admission. It was Hannah saying, I've been watching too. I've been gathering. I've been building this case while you were all looking elsewhere.

But also-

It was Hannah deflecting. Because she hadn't answered the question. Hadn't explained how she knew your voice specifically. Hadn't explained why she'd been collecting articles, comparing them, building this theory in secret.

Garrett pushed off the counter. "This is insane."

"No," Hannah said quietly. "What's insane is that she's been writing about you while sitting in the same rooms as you and you didn't notice."

That did it. Something in Garrett snapped. "Enough."

The room went silent again. His voice wasn't loud. But it carried. Authority. Finality. The voice of a captain, of someone used to being obeyed.

"You don't get to do this."

Hannah didn't back down. "I'm telling you the truth."

"No," Garrett said sharply. "You're guessing."

"I'm connecting patterns."

"You're accusing her."

"I'm observing her behaviour."

Garrett laughed once. Cold. Sharp. Broken glass in sound form. "You sound like her."

That hit. Even Hannah paused. Just briefly. Her eyes flickered-uncertainty, maybe. Or the realization that she'd overplayed, that she'd revealed too much of her own obsession, that she was standing in glass houses throwing stones.

Then Garrett grabbed his jacket. "Where are you going?" Dean asked.

Garrett didn't look back. "I'm going to talk to her."

Allie stood. "Garrett-"

But he was already gone. The door slammed behind him with a finality that made the windows rattle. And in the silence he left behind, Hannah stood alone with her evidence, her certainty, and the growing suspicion that she'd just made everything worse.

Because Garrett hadn't been surprised. Not really. He'd been angry, defensive, protective-but not surprised. And that meant something. That meant he'd known, or suspected, or been told.

And Hannah wondered, for the first time, who had really been deceiving whom.

Garrett trudged through the November night like the world had forgotten how to be gentle. The cold had stopped being a temperature and started being a taste: metallic, bitter, acrid at the back of his throat. It caught in his sinuses and stung his cheeks, every gust of wind a slap that left no mark but carried a message anyway. The air bit through the fabric of his hoodie, past the layers he’d piled on by instinct and habit, settling against his skin in a way that felt deliberate. Personal, even. Like the weather itself had a vendetta, and he was the only target left in the open.

He hunched deeper into his clothes and walked faster, boots crunching over the gravel with a sharp, irregular rhythm. Each step landed too loud, echoing in the near-abandoned lot, filling up the silence with a violence that felt both necessary and wrong. Sodium lamps buzzed overhead, their light anemic and sickly, painting long shadows that warped with every movement. Even the night seemed to recoil from itself, pressing in on all sides with a pressure that had nothing to do with air and everything to do with the way it made his thoughts feel dense, suffocating.

The parking lot behind the gym looked like a crime scene after everyone had already left and the danger was gone, but the dread lingered anyway. He remembered standing out here after practice with Hannah, both of them pretending the cold didn’t matter, both of them talking around whatever it was neither wanted to name. She’d always had this way of laughing that started small, like she was afraid it would embarrass her, then got louder and clearer until it drew every stray eye in the vicinity. He could picture the way she’d toss her ponytail over her shoulder, the way her eyes crinkled when she was about to say something that would definitely get her in trouble. He remembered the way she used to look at him, like she was waiting for him to be something, someone, he wasn’t sure he could be.

Now every memory of her felt suspect, like it might have been faked or borrowed. He didn’t want to believe that, but it kept happening anyway. His mind kept replaying every moment, every casual brush of her hand, every too-long glance, filtering them through this new, ugly lens. The silence of the night wasn’t peaceful. It was a vacuum that made every internal noise impossible to ignore. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, uneven and panicked, as if his body was trying to warn him about something he already knew but refused to accept.

Inside his head, the thoughts didn’t just race—they collided. Collapsed into each other until he couldn’t separate anger from disbelief, or disappointment from the raw, bruised thing underneath. The anger came first. Hot, immediate, alive in a way nothing else was. It started in his jaw, where he found himself clenching until his teeth ached, and radiated down into his fists, balled deep in his pockets. He wanted to punch something, break something, do anything that would make the world rearrange itself into a shape he could manage. But there was nothing to hit except his own confusion, and that didn’t bruise the way he wanted it to.

Confusion was worse than anger. Anger had purpose; confusion just dissolved him from the inside out. It made the world feel like a lie, made every memory slippery and unreliable. He tried to remember what Hannah had said, the exact words, the tone of her voice, the look on her face, but it all kept shifting, slippery as oil. Had she been sorry? Had she even meant it? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t even decide if he wanted to believe her or if he needed her to be lying. Every piece of evidence existed in a kind of Schrödinger’s box: both true and false, depending on how he looked at it.

He kept walking, not because he had anywhere to go, but because stopping felt like surrender. The wind was stronger out in the open, pushing him sideways, but he leaned into it, letting it numb his face and hands. He remembered the first time he’d ever heard of Offside. Someone had shown him the account on their phone during lunch, and they’d all laughed at the latest post, at how weirdly specific and accurate it was. He’d laughed the hardest, because that was how you survived: you laughed before anyone else could laugh at you. But now every post felt like it had been aimed straight at him, like every inside joke was actually about him, and he’d just been too stupid to notice.

The evidence stacked up in his mind, relentless. Hannah’s weird hours, her offhand comments about “knowing things,” the way she seemed to always be in the right place to overhear something. All the times she’d asked him about his teammates, about his coach, about the stupid drama that kept the team barely functional. It all made sense, too much sense, and that made it worse. Because if it was true, then he’d never really known her at all. He’d just been a source. A data point. Part of the story, but never the audience.

And yet. Underneath all of it, there was something else, something quieter but heavier, like a bruise that hadn’t surfaced yet but would hurt ten times worse when it did. The part of him that stubbornly, humiliatingly, still wanted to believe in her. To believe that she hadn’t lied, or at least hadn’t meant to. That the person he’d built out of all those little moments was real, and not just an alias for something sharper and meaner. He kept thinking of the way she’d looked at him the last time they’d talked. He couldn’t remember the words, but he remembered the silence after, the way she’d looked away, like she already knew this was how it would end.

He kept walking, even after his fingers went numb and his ears started to burn. He circled the empty lot again, and again, and again, searching for something—a reason, a clue, anything that would let him rewrite what he knew. But the night gave him nothing. Just cold, and silence, and the echo of his own boots in a world that had decided, finally and thoroughly, to stop being kind.

The worst part was that it felt like betrayal before he even knew if it was real. Like he’d lost something precious, and the only person who could tell him if it mattered was the one who’d taken it in the first place.

He closed his eyes, let the cold do its work, and told himself he’d figure it out.

The media building was still lit when Garrett found it, a harsh white glow spilling from the glass windows and painting the concrete with cold stripes that seemed to erase the night. He stood outside for a full minute, watching the fluorescent buzz and the flicker of overhead bulbs, and tried to convince himself he had no idea what he would find. That lie lasted until he stepped inside and saw her, small and hunched over a desk littered with so much paper it looked like a snowdrift had settled there. He felt the old, involuntary ache in his chest, the one that came every time he watched her work, but tonight it twisted into something harder, heavier—like disappointment and longing melted together and set to cool.

She was focused in that intense, dissonant way she always was, face lit from underneath by the blue-white of her laptop, headphones pressed over her ears. Her whole body radiated a strain that he would have missed if he hadn’t spent months learning how to find the cracks in her armor. There was no music playing; he could see the cord dangling, unplugged, a useless prop for privacy. Even her posture was off, one shoulder higher than the other, back rounded like she was bracing for impact. For a second, he wanted to walk away, to let her have this last quiet moment before he shattered it. But the truth was already in him, and it wouldn’t leave.

He lingered in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the unnatural brightness, and told himself he was waiting for her to notice him. Really, he was just stalling, waiting for the anger to return so he could use it as a shield. He wanted to feel righteous, wanted to confront her with the full force of his indignation, but all he felt was tired. The kind of tired that crawled into your bones and waited there.

When he finally stepped inside, the door clicked behind him, a soft but absolute sound that seemed to close off the rest of the world. She looked up instantly, eyes wide and sharp in the sterile light, and in that moment he saw not the girl he’d rehearsed this confrontation with, but the stranger who’d written about him with such surgical precision. Her mouth opened slightly, then snapped shut, and she pulled her headphones off with a slowness that made his skin itch.

“Hey,” she said, voice careful, measured. Like she’d been expecting this, and was already mapping every possible route the conversation might take. He wondered how many times she’d run this scenario in her head. He wondered if she’d ever imagined what it felt like on the other side.

He didn’t answer. He just stared at her, at the ink stains on her hands and the bitten skin along her thumbnail, at the way her hair fell across her face, a curtain she could retreat behind if she needed to. He searched for any sign of the apology he wanted, but all he found was the same wary intelligence that had first drawn him in. He hated her for that, for being exactly herself even now.

He heard his own voice, flat and unfamiliar: “Is it you?”

She blinked. There was a pause, almost imperceptible, but enough that he saw the mask slip. Her lips parted, and he watched her swallow the instinct to deny. “What?” she said, but her tone made it clear that she already knew exactly what he meant.

He took a step forward, careful to keep his movements controlled, deliberate. The last thing he wanted was to give her the satisfaction of seeing him lose it. “Offside,” he said, the word hanging in the air like a challenge. “Is it you?”

He saw the tremor in her hands before she could hide them beneath the desk. The blue glow of the laptop made her skin look translucent, veins dark and obvious under the surface. She let out a laugh—too high, too brittle, a note that didn’t belong in this room. “Where is this coming from?” she asked, but even she could hear the tremor in her voice.

He repeated the question, softer now, almost pleading: “Is it you?”

Her fingers dug into the edge of the desk, and for a moment he thought she might actually tell the truth. But then she said, “No,” too fast and too sharp, the syllable a knife thrown in self-defense.

He knew her tells. He knew them better than anyone. The way her jaw set, the way her gaze flicked away and then back, as if daring him to call her bluff. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not.” But her voice betrayed her, and he saw the crack run through her like a bolt of lightning.

He looked away for a second, tried to gather the pieces of himself that were still intact, then forced his gaze back to her. “You write about me like you know me.”

She bristled at that, sat up straighter, and the old competitive edge sharpened her words. “I observe people. That’s literally my job.” She sounded almost smug, but there was a desperation behind it that made his throat tighten.

“That’s not an answer.”

She stood up, the chair scraping back with a screech that set his teeth on edge. Her hands trembled as she leveled her gaze at him. “Why does it matter?”

He hadn’t expected that. He’d come ready for denial, for anger, for all the defenses she was so good at building. But this—this quiet, raw question—left him off-balance. “I thought I knew you,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. He didn’t mean for it to sound so broken.

She flinched, as if the words had landed somewhere soft. He saw her fighting for composure, saw the struggle play out across her face like a time-lapse of a collapsing building. “I didn’t write it to hurt you,” she said, and her voice wavered on the last word. “I wrote it because I didn’t know how to explain you without people twisting it into something easier to understand. You’re not just the captain or the expectations or the draft pick everyone’s waiting for—you’re also the person who looks like he’s carrying something too heavy even when you’re standing in a room full of people. I saw that. And I didn’t know how to make anyone else see it without putting it into words.”

He felt every sentence like a bruise pressed by a thumb. He wanted to hate her for it, but he couldn’t, not when she was standing there shaking, not when she looked so small and so real.

He moved closer, not even sure why, just that it felt necessary. “That’s not what I asked.”

She stopped, breath uneven. “Then what do you want to know?”

He searched her face for a sign, any sign, that what he was about to say wouldn’t destroy them both. “Was any of it real?”

Her answer came in two parts, a denial and a confession spaced just far enough apart to make him question which was true. “No.” A beat, then, “Yes.”

He let it hang there, the contradiction, the uncertainty. It was the most honest thing she’d ever given him.

She ran a hand through her hair, eyes squeezed shut. “It wasn’t about you the way you think. It started as observation. Distance. Something safe. Something I could control.” She hesitated, voice dropping to a whisper. “Then it stopped being safe.”

He tried to remember the first time he’d read Offside, the first time he’d seen himself reflected back in her stories. They’d felt too sharp, too intimate, like someone had taken his insides and held them up for everyone to see. He hadn’t wanted to admit how much it mattered, how much it hurt. He’d told himself it was just writing, just words. But now, standing here, he knew that was a lie.

He studied her, the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes, the way she folded her arms across her chest as if to keep herself from unraveling. “Then what changed?”

She looked up at him, and he saw the answer before she said it. “You did.”

The words landed between them, heavy and final. He felt the weight of them settle in his lungs, making it hard to breathe. He wanted to ask what that meant, wanted to demand an explanation, but he already knew. He’d felt it, too.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, and the vulnerability in his voice surprised even him.

She laughed, but it was a sound made out of broken glass. “Because I didn’t know how to exist around you without it turning into this.”

He nodded, slow and resigned, like someone accepting a verdict they’d seen coming all along. “I hate that I care about this,” he admitted, and he saw her flinch again.

She stepped closer, arms still folded, but her eyes meeting his now. “I know.”

He wanted to reach out, to touch her, to close the distance, but he didn’t. Instead he looked down at his hands, at the scars on his knuckles, and wondered if there was a version of himself that didn’t end up here, in this endless loop of wanting and resenting and never quite letting go.

He looked up again, and this time he let her see all of it—the hurt, the confusion, the need. “And I hate that I still want to trust you.”

She inhaled sharply, and for a second he thought she might cry. But instead, she stepped closer, closing the gap between them until he could feel the heat of her skin, the faint shiver in her breath. “I never wanted to be something that hurt you,” she said quietly.

He believed her. That was the worst part.

A pause, then: “But you are.”

She nodded, and the movement was so small, so fragile, he thought she might disappear if he looked away. “I’m sorry.”

He took her hand, not because he forgave her, but because he needed to feel something real. Her fingers were cold, but they wrapped around his with a strength that surprised him. They stood like that, suspended in the sterile light, neither of them sure what came next.

Outside, the wind battered the windows, and the world felt very far away.

Inside, it was just them, and the impossible space between what they were and what they could be.

He didn’t know if he could cross it. But for the first time, he wanted to try.

[isbellah]

Offside

garrett graham x reader

summary . . . At Briar University, hockey isn’t just a sport—it’s a religion. And in the middle of it all is Garrett Graham, the team captain everyone watches but no one really sees. You don’t do fan culture. You do journalism. Observation. Distance. That’s the rule. So when you start writing Offside, an anonymous column exposing the way Briar worships its athletes while quietly destroying them, it feels like truth—not betrayal. Until the article goes viral. Until Garrett starts looking at you like he’s trying to find the person behind the words. And until “just reporting” stops feeling like something you can hide behind. Because at Briar, being seen is dangerous… but being understood might be worse.

warning . . . enemies to lovers, emotional angst, miscommunication, betrayal (perceived), anonymous identity reveal, sports culture critique, athlete pressure, anxiety, guilt, intense confrontation scenes, slow-burn romance, emotional vulnerability, brief heartbreak, heavy themes of reputation and public scrutiny

author’s note . . . this one hurt to write in the best way possible. i wanted something that feels messy and real—like when you think you’re just observing something, and then realise you’ve been part of it the whole time. garrett isn’t meant to be perfect here, and neither is reader. they both mess up, they both misunderstand, and that’s kind of the point. this is very much about being seen vs being understood, and what happens when those two things collide. also… yes, i am emotionally attached to them. no, i will not be taking questions at this time. ive also had to put it into two parts as it is very long ahahah <3 xoxo

word count . . . 10.6k

part one: offside

part two: collide

Offside: Briar's Hockey Problem Isn't Hockey By Offside 

Friday at Briar means hockey. Not “casual Friday,” not “pizza day,” not “that time you might finally catch up on sleep.” No, Friday means the entire campus morphs into a red-and-black tidal wave, a brainwashed flash mob in fleece and face paint, all in honor of our beloved Briar Icehounds. You can almost hear the shift change at 3 p.m.: students flood the quad in a blur, the bookstore lines snake out the door for “limited edition” jerseys, and every dorm window sprouts a makeshift banner scrawled in Sharpie and misplaced hope. It would be inspiring, if it weren’t so culty.

Let me set the record straight: I love hockey. I can recite the 2012 NCAA Frozen Four roster like a Gregorian chant. But Briar’s hockey culture isn’t about the sport. It’s about the athletes — not as people, but as living mascots. We treat the team like a traveling boy band, and the rest of us are stuck as their screaming, sign-waving roadies. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens when a player walks into Psych 101. The room hushes, as if a minor deity has graced us with his presence. Professors adjust their lectures, classmates perform the social equivalent of a slow clap, and the player, to his credit, looks mortified. It’s not his fault. This is just how we do things at Briar.

The worship doesn’t end in the classroom. At parties, Icehounds get first dibs on everything: the keg, the playlist, even the couch with the least suspicious stains. On social media, their every move is tracked, analyzed, and, when possible, immortalized in meme form. If an Icehound sneezes so much as sneezes in the dining hall, somebody posts a slow-motion GIF within an hour. Some call it “school spirit.” I call it a campus-wide case of chronic athlete idolatry.

But here’s the twist: the same machine that hoists these guys onto our collective shoulders is the one that grinds them down. The pressure to deliver — on the ice, in class, at every drunk karaoke night — is relentless. Last semester’s near-miss at the state championship didn’t just sting the team; it triggered a wave of campus-wide existential crisis. People wept in lecture halls. Someone held a candlelight vigil for a broken goalie stick. We set these players up as our emotional weather vanes, then act shocked when they buckle under the forecast.

The real tragedy? We never see these athletes as people. They’re avatars of our own hype, stuck in a feedback loop that doesn’t care about their GPA, their sleep schedule, or their rapidly fraying mental health. We don’t ask if they’re okay; we ask if they’re ready for Friday.

This isn’t just a Briar problem, or a hockey problem. It’s a campus culture problem — a refusal to let people be people, instead of mascots or memes or living, breathing school spirit billboards. If we want to make Briar better, maybe start by swapping the adoration for a little empathy. Let the athletes just be students. Let the rest of us be fans, not fanatics.

And maybe, just maybe, let Friday be a day for everyone again.

— Offside

The hockey house was unusually quiet.

Not silent. Just the kind of hushed, charged quiet that happened when everyone was reading the same thing and trying not to admit they were reading it.

A newspaper sat abandoned in the middle of the kitchen island, its pages fanned open like an accusation.

Dean, all blonde hair and restless energy, had his phone out but wasn't looking at it. His thumb kept scrolling without purpose while his eyes kept drifting back to the paper.

Logan leaned against the counter, his rustic, weathered features pulled into a grin that crinkled the corners of his kind brown eyes. He was already laughing.

And Garrett, tall and broad-shouldered with dark curly hair that never quite stayed tamed, was already irritated.

Which, admittedly, wasn't unusual.

"What the hell is an emotional weather vane?" Dean asked, his voice cutting through the strange stillness.

Across from him, Hannah nearly choked on her coffee, her striking blue eyes watering as she pressed a napkin to her lips.

Logan snatched the newspaper off the counter with theatrical flair, his calloused hands rustling the pages.

"'We set these players up as our emotional weather vanes, then act shocked when they buckle under the forecast,'" he read aloud, his voice dropping into an exaggerated newscaster cadence. "Honestly? That's kind of poetic."

"That's because you're an idiot," Dean informed him, running a hand through his pale hair.

"No, seriously," Logan continued, those warm brown eyes scanning the text with genuine appreciation. "This is good."

"It's insulting."

"It's accurate."

Dean pointed at him with a finger that trembled slightly, betraying more agitation than his voice let on. "You are literally proving the article's point."

The room erupted.

Tucker laughed from somewhere near the fridge, his shoulders shaking. Allie, her wild hair a halo of untamed curls around her face, threw a crumpled napkin at Dean with surprising accuracy. Hannah was smiling into her coffee, those remarkable blue eyes darting between the boys with barely concealed amusement.

Garrett wished everyone would shut up.

Unfortunately, nobody in this house ever shut up.

Logan flipped through the article again, the paper crinkling beneath his rough fingers. "Who even writes these things?"

"Some journalism major with too much free time," Dean muttered, his jaw tight.

"Journalism majors don't have free time."

"Good point."

Allie reached for the paper, her wild hair catching the morning light streaming through the kitchen window. "I actually agree with some of it."

Dean looked personally offended, color rising in his cheeks. "You would."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you're dating me and still somehow think athletes are dramatic."

"You are dramatic."

"I am not."

The collective laughter that followed suggested otherwise, filling the kitchen with echoes that bounced off the tile.

Garrett rubbed a hand over his face, his dark curls falling forward as he leaned his elbows on the table. He'd read the article three times already. That annoyed him more than the article itself.

Because he couldn't decide whether he hated it.

Or respected it.

The writer clearly knew hockey. That much was obvious. This wasn't some random student complaining about athletes. Whoever wrote it understood the culture. Understood the pressure. Understood the weird, uncomfortable reality of being treated like campus property.

Most articles got things wrong.

This one didn't.

That was the problem.

His eyes drifted back toward the paper sitting on the table, his tall frame hunched forward. The final paragraph stared back at him in bold black ink.

The real tragedy? We never see these athletes as people.

Garrett frowned, his dark brows drawing together.

For a stupid second, the sentence lingered, hanging in the air like humidity before a storm.

Because it felt less like criticism and more like observation. Like whoever wrote it had been paying attention.

"You're doing that thing."

Garrett looked up, his curly hair catching the light.

Hannah was watching him over the rim of her mug, those striking blue eyes too perceptive by half.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you're pretending you don't care."

Across the table, Logan immediately pointed, his brown eyes bright with mischief. "Oh, he definitely cares."

Dean grinned, his blonde hair falling into his eyes. "He's offended."

"I'm not offended."

"You've read the article four times."

Garrett froze, his hand still half-raised toward his face.

The grin spreading across Dean's face was immediate, sharp and knowing. "Five."

"Shut up."

The kitchen exploded again, laughter and voices rising in a chaotic symphony that shattered the earlier quiet.

Garrett grabbed the newspaper before someone could read another line aloud, his long fingers curling around the edges. The byline sat at the bottom. Just two words.

Offside.

No name. No photograph. No clue who the hell they were.

Garrett hated anonymous writers. Especially ones that somehow managed to get under his skin.

For the first time, he found himself wondering who was behind the column. And why it felt like they knew him.

Even though they'd never met.

By eleven o'clock, the article had somehow metastasized across half of Briar.

The journalism department was arguing about it in the lounge, voices carrying through the thin walls. The hockey team was arguing about it in the dining hall, apparently loud enough that someone called campus security. Even The Penalty Box-that grimy campus bar with the sticky floors and the bartender who'd seen things-had posted a screenshot on their Instagram story with the caption: "OUR BOYS DESERVE BETTER."

Which was exactly why you were avoiding everyone.

Unfortunately, Garrett Graham made avoiding people difficult. Especially when he was six-foot-something of determined athlete and had apparently decided that today was the day he'd learn to track people like a bloodhound.

You'd almost made it across campus untouched, hugging the library's shadow like a fugitive, when a familiar voice called your name from somewhere behind you.

Damn it.

You turned slowly, already calculating escape routes.

Garrett stood halfway down the pathway outside the student center, one hand shoved into the pocket of his Briar hoodie, the other holding what looked like a very crumpled copy of the student paper. Snow crunched beneath his boots as he approached with the easy, ground-eating stride of someone who'd never once worried about slipping on ice.

He stopped closer than strictly necessary. Close enough that you had to tilt your head back to maintain eye contact. Close enough to smell the cedar-and-laundry-detergent thing he had going on. Close enough to notice the dark circles under his eyes that suggested he hadn't slept either.

"You disappeared this morning."

Not hello. Not good morning. Just an accusation, delivered with the kind of intensity he usually reserved for pre-game speeches.

You forced a smile. "I was asleep."

Garrett raised an eyebrow. The left one, which had a small scar bisecting it from some ancient hockey incident. "You weren't."

"Wow."

"You were not asleep."

You adjusted the strap of your bag higher onto your shoulder, buying time. "Are you calling me a liar?"

"Yes."

The answer came far too quickly, accompanied by a slight lean forward that felt oddly intimate. Like he was studying your face for tells. Your stomach betrayed you by dropping slightly, because unfortunately-he was right.

You hadn't slept. Not really.

You'd spent most of the night hunched over your laptop in the journalism building's basement, fueled entirely by coffee, spite, and the specific delirium that comes from knowing you're about to publish something that might get you murdered by a hockey player. You'd finally stumbled into bed around four, then spent the next three hours checking your phone to see if anyone had figured out who wrote it.

They hadn't.

Yet.

"You look tired," Garrett observed, his gaze doing that uncomfortable thing where it seemed to catalog everything-your messy bun, the same hoodie you'd worn yesterday, the faint coffee stain on your sleeve that you'd forgotten about.

"You really know how to charm women," you said.

"I'm serious."

"I know. That's what makes it annoying."

For a second, Garrett looked like he wanted to smile. The corner of his mouth twitched. Then he caught himself, remembering apparently that you two weren't actually friends-that your entire relationship existed in the Venn diagram overlap where your best friend was dating his teammate, forcing you into the same rooms occasionally.

"You missed breakfast," he said.

Your heart performed an unwelcome gymnastics routine. "Excuse me?"

"You missed breakfast."

"You noticed?"

The second the words left your mouth, you wanted to physically grab them and stuff them back in. Garrett looked equally surprised he'd admitted it. Neither of you spoke for a moment. Snow drifted lazily between you, individual flakes catching in his dark curls. Students hurried across campus around them, bundled in coats and scarves, creating a river of movement that somehow made your stillness feel louder.

The world kept moving. You just stood there staring at each other like two people who'd forgotten how conversations worked.

Eventually Garrett cleared his throat. "Hannah asked where you were."

Liar.

You knew that was a lie immediately. Not because Hannah wouldn't ask-she absolutely would, with the maternal anxiety of a friend who'd seen you mainline espresso at unholy hours. But because Garrett wouldn't have brought it up if Hannah had. He was covering his own concern. And apparently he knew it, because his expression shifted slightly, something vulnerable flickering behind those sharp eyes before the guard came back up.

Interesting.

You crossed your arms. "Tell Hannah I'm alive."

"I can see that."

"Then the problem has been solved."

Garrett sighed dramatically, running a hand through his hair in a way that made it stand up in chaotic directions. "Do you always make conversations harder than they need to be?"

"Do you always interrogate innocent civilians?"

"I wasn't interrogating you."

"You opened with 'you disappeared.'" You affected a dramatic stage whisper. "'You disappeared this morning.' Very ominous. Very noir. Are you secretly a detective? Should I expect a magnifying glass?"

"Because you did disappear."

"Maybe I was kidnapped."

"Nobody would return you," he said, deadpan.

You gasped, pressing a hand to your chest. "Rude."

Garrett actually smiled. A real one this time, sudden and bright and briefly dangerous. The kind that made him look younger. Less Captain Graham, leader of men. More just... Garrett. A college guy who found you funny despite himself.

You hated how much you liked it.

"So," he said after a moment, and you instantly knew where this was going. The paper in his hand rustled. His posture shifted, suddenly all business.

No.

Absolutely not.

"So?" You blinked with manufactured innocence.

His eyes narrowed, suspicious and sharp. "What'd you think of the article?"

There it was.

The article.

The one currently setting Briar on fire, written by someone who definitely wasn't you, using a pseudonym that absolutely wasn't a reference to your favorite hockey penalty, published in a newspaper you definitely didn't edit.

You worked very hard to keep your face neutral. Your pulse hammered in your throat. "What article?"

Garrett stared.

You stared back.

Neither moved. A group of freshmen passed between you, chattering about dining hall hours, and you didn't break eye contact. Finally-

"The article literally everyone is talking about," he said slowly, like you might be simple.

"Oh." You shrugged casually, the picture of someone who definitely hadn't spent six hours writing it. "That one."

"Yeah. That one."

You hummed thoughtfully, tapping your chin. "Thought it was interesting."

"Interesting."

"Very thought-provoking. Made some excellent points about institutional hero worship. I especially liked the part about the emotional weather vanes. Very poetic."

His eyes narrowed further, searching your face for something-cracks in the facade, guilt, anything. "You sound like you're reviewing a documentary."

"I support independent journalism." You pressed your hands together in a prayer gesture. "It's important. For democracy. And... truth. And... other journalistic things."

Something flashed across Garrett's face. Suspicion. Tiny. Gone almost immediately. But there, like a shark fin in distant water.

Your pulse quickened.

Dangerous.

Very dangerous.

"What?" you asked, perhaps too quickly.

"Nothing."

"You look like you're thinking. Your face does this thing when you're thinking. Your eyebrows get all-" You mimicked a furrowed expression. "-like that."

"Stop that."

To your immense relief, Garrett laughed. The sound surprised both of you, loud and genuine in the cold air. For a second neither looked away, and suddenly the air felt different. Too aware. Too warm despite the snow collecting on your shoulders.

You broke eye contact first.

Coward.

Again.

"Well," you said quickly, already backing away. "I have class."

"You have class in twenty minutes," Garrett said, and you froze mid-retreat.

"You know my schedule now?"

"No." The answer was immediate. Which would've been more convincing if he hadn't looked away afterward, studying a nearby tree with sudden intense interest.

A grin threatened. You pointed at him, walking backward now. "That's weird."

"Go to class."

"You're avoiding the accusation."

"Go."

You started backing away across the pathway, your boots finding traction on the salted concrete. "Bye, Garrett."

"Bye."

You turned toward the journalism building, forcing yourself not to run. Halfway across the quad, curiosity got the better of you. You glanced back.

Garrett was still standing there. Watching you leave, the newspaper dangling from his hand. The second he realized you'd looked back, he immediately looked away, shoving his hands in his pockets and kicking at a chunk of ice with elaborate casualness.

Your grin appeared before you could stop it.

Meanwhile, across campus, tucked safely inside your bag, your laptop contained three unfinished drafts. One of them began with:

The strangest thing about campus heroes is that eventually they stop belonging to themselves.

You'd written the sentence at three in the morning, fueled by caffeine and the specific madness that comes from writing about people you know while hoping they never find out.

Now, for reasons you absolutely did not want to examine, it made you think of Garrett Graham standing in the snow, looking at you like you were a puzzle he couldn't solve.

The hockey house smelled like pizza, beer, and poor decisions.

Which, as far as you could tell, was its natural state.

The front door wasn't even locked. You pushed it open with your shoulder and immediately heard shouting from somewhere upstairs, voices bouncing off the narrow walls.

"THAT WASN'T A PENALTY."

"It literally was."

"YOU DON'T KNOW HOCKEY."

"I PLAY HOCKEY."

A crash followed. Then laughter. Then what sounded suspiciously like someone falling down a staircase, accompanied by a chorus of groans.

Business as usual.

You slipped off your boots beside a pile of identical sneakers-Nike, Adidas, more Nike-and followed the noise toward the living room. Your socks immediately found something sticky on the hardwood. You chose not to investigate.

The house was warm. Too warm. The kind of warmth that only came from too many bodies packed into one place and a heating system that didn't understand moderation. It pressed against your skin, heavy and humid, carrying the mingled scents of pepperoni grease and whatever cheap cologne Dean had bathed in today.

The movie playing on the television had been completely abandoned. Nobody was watching it. The screen flickered with some action sequence, explosions illuminating the room in strobing blue light that caught on empty beer bottles and discarded pizza boxes.

Dean sat sprawled across an armchair like a king addressing his court, his blonde hair catching the light, one arm dangling over the side.

Logan occupied most of the couch, his broad shoulders taking up more space than seemed fair, his rustic features relaxed in that permanently amused expression he wore.

Tucker was asleep. Actually asleep, mouth slightly open, snoring softly into a cushion that had definitely seen better decades.

Allie sat cross-legged on the floor, her wild hair a dark cloud around her face as she scrolled through her phone.

Hannah had stolen the blanket. All of it. She was wrapped like a burrito, only her eyes and the top of her head visible, her striking blue eyes darting between people as she followed the conversation.

And Garrett-

Garrett was leaning against the kitchen island, his tall frame folded in that way tall people did when they were trying to take up less space. A newspaper rested in his hands. His dark curly hair fell forward, shadowing his expression as he read.

Your stomach immediately dropped.

No.

Not again.

The article.

You recognized the folded pages instantly, the way the light caught on the newsprint. The newest Offside column. Your newest Offside column.

Wonderful.

Exactly how you wanted to spend your Friday night.

Listening to people critique your secret identity while sitting three feet away from them.

"Look who finally showed up," Hannah said, her voice muffled by blanket.

You forced yourself to smile, your cheeks aching with the effort. "Miss me?"

"No."

"Rude."

"Very."

You dropped beside her on the floor, the carpet rough against your jeans. The heat from the fireplace-or possibly just the collective body temperature of six hockey players-washed over you in a wave.

Across the room Garrett glanced up.

Just briefly.

But it lingered. His eyes found yours in that disconcerting way they did now, ever since the snow and the conversation and the way he'd looked at you like you were a puzzle missing pieces.

Long enough for you to notice.

Long enough for him to notice you noticing.

Then he looked back down at the newspaper, his dark curls falling forward again, hiding whatever expression might have crossed his face.

Coward.

"Tell me," Logan announced dramatically, waving a slice of pizza through the air like a conductor's baton, grease dripping onto the carpet in a way that would definitely cost someone their security deposit. "Why are we talking about this person again?"

Dean pointed toward Garrett with the hand not holding his beer. "Because Captain America over there won't stop reading it."

Garrett didn't even look up. His thumb traced the edge of the paper, a gesture you'd started to recognize. He did it when he was thinking. When something had hooked into his brain and wouldn't let go.

"That's not true," he said quietly.

"You've read it three times."

"Twice."

"Three."

"Two."

"Three."

"Twelve," Tucker mumbled from the couch without opening his eyes, his voice thick with sleep.

The room exploded. Even Garrett laughed, the sound rolling out of him deep and warm and completely unfair. You hated that you knew the difference now. That you could catalog his laughs-the polite ones, the surprised ones, the real ones like this that transformed his whole face.

Logan grabbed the newspaper from Garrett's hands before he could stop him, unfolding it with a flourish that sent a draft of cool air across the room.

"'The problem isn't athletes,'" he read aloud dramatically, his voice dropping into an imitation of newscaster solemnity. "'The problem is turning people into symbols until they forget they're allowed to be human.'"

He lowered the page, his brown eyes scanning the room. "Honestly?"

Dean groaned immediately, throwing his head back against the chair. "Oh God."

"No, seriously," Logan continued, gesturing with the paper. "That's actually kind of good."

"It is not."

"It is."

"It sounds like a philosophy major got dumped."

Allie snorted, her wild hair bouncing with the movement.

You bit the inside of your cheek. Hard. The metallic taste of blood touched your tongue.

Garrett stayed strangely quiet. That caught your attention immediately. Because Garrett usually had opinions. Strong opinions. Frequently annoying opinions. But opinions.

Instead he watched Logan continue reading, his expression unreadable in the flickering television light. Thoughtful. Almost distracted. His jaw worked slightly, like he was chewing on something he couldn't quite swallow.

Like something about the article bothered him.

Or interested him.

Maybe both.

Interesting.

"I don't think they hate athletes."

The room fell silent.

You nearly dropped your drink. The plastic cup slipped in your suddenly sweaty fingers, catching at the last second.

Dean blinked. Logan blinked. Even Hannah looked surprised, her blue eyes wide above her blanket burrito.

The words had come from Garrett.

Garrett Graham.

Captain of the hockey team.

Official victim of at least four Offside articles.

"What?" Dean asked, his voice cracking slightly.

Garrett shrugged, one shoulder lifting beneath his hoodie. "I don't think they hate athletes."

"Then why are they constantly making fun of us?"

"Because we're easy to make fun of."

Dean looked offended, his hand pressing to his chest in mock injury. "That's ridiculous."

"Last week you tried to microwave aluminum foil."

"That happened one time."

"It caught fire."

"Minor detail."

The room dissolved into laughter again, loud and chaotic. You laughed too, the sound coming out slightly strangled. Mostly because if you didn't laugh, you'd stare. And staring at Garrett had become an increasingly dangerous habit. The kind that led to thoughts. The kind that led to articles written at three in the morning.

Across the room his eyes found yours.

Only for a second.

Then two.

The noise around you faded strangely. Not completely. Just enough that you could hear your own heartbeat, could feel the heat in your cheeks that had nothing to do with the overheated room.

His mouth twitched. Like he was trying not to smile. Like he knew something you didn't, or suspected something you hoped he didn't.

You looked away first.

Again.

Pathetic.

The conversation moved on eventually. Movies. Classes. Practice. Someone changed the channel to a hockey game, the announcers' voices filling the room with white noise. The article faded into the background, becoming just another piece of debris in the living room landscape.

But you could still feel Garrett occasionally looking over. Not often. Just enough. The kind of attention that felt accidental until it happened too many times. The kind that made your pulse misbehave and your skin feel too tight.

Hours later, the movie ended. Dean disappeared to take a phone call. Logan followed, probably to find more pizza. Tucker was already unconscious, his snores now accompanied by occasional twitches. The house slowly emptied until only you, Hannah, and Allie remained in the kitchen, the silence settling around you like dust.

The dishwasher hummed quietly, its sound rhythmic and domestic. Snow drifted beyond the windows, fat flakes catching the porch light, turning the night into a soft blur of white and shadow. The night had settled heavily around the house. Comfortable. Safe.

Dangerous.

You were rinsing plates when Hannah suddenly said: "Can I tell you something weird?"

Every instinct immediately screamed. Your spine stiffened. Your hands froze in the lukewarm water.

"No."

"Too bad."

You pointed a dish sponge at her, water dripping onto the tile. "I don't like your tone."

She ignored you, setting down a plate with deliberate casualness. "Offside kind of sounds like you."

The plate nearly slipped from your hands. Cold water splashed across the counter, soaking your sleeves. You froze. Just for a second. Hopefully not long enough.

"What?"

Hannah shrugged, her striking blue eyes fixed on the sink. "It's the sarcasm."

Your heart was beating far too hard. Far. Too. Hard. The sound filled your ears, drowning out the dishwasher.

"What sarcasm?"

Allie laughed from somewhere behind you, the sound sharp and knowing. "Oh my God."

"See?" Hannah said, finally looking at you. "That."

"That what?"

"The thing you do."

You hated them both. Deeply. Passionately. Possibly criminally.

Hannah dried another plate, the towel snapping softly. "You both write the same way."

You forced a laugh. One that sounded mostly normal. Hopefully. "Good thing I'm not Offside then."

"Didn't say you were."

The relief came quickly. Then disappeared just as fast. Because Hannah wasn't looking at the dishes anymore. She was looking directly at you. Studying. Thinking. Her blue eyes too sharp, too perceptive.

Dangerous.

"You'd be good at it though."

Your stomach dropped.

Luckily the front door opened. The interruption saved your life. Or at least your secret.

Boots thudded against hardwood. Male voices drifted inside, low and laughing. You looked up, your heart still hammering.

Garrett. Dean. Logan.

And a whiteboard.

A literal whiteboard, complete with markers and everything.

Your soul briefly left your body.

"What is that?" Allie asked, her voice carrying that particular tone of someone who already knew the answer would be terrible.

Dean grinned, his blonde hair disheveled from the cold. "A suspect board."

No.

No.

Absolutely not.

Logan carried a stack of printed Offside articles, the pages fanned in his hand like a deck of cards. Garrett carried a marker. A red one. The kind that felt unnecessarily ominous.

You considered fleeing through the nearest window. The snow looked deep. You'd probably survive the landing. Probably.

"Please tell me this is a joke."

"It is not," Garrett said.

The seriousness of his answer somehow made everything worse. He wasn't smiling. Wasn't laughing. Just standing there with that marker in his hand and that focused expression on his face, the one he wore during games.

Dean dropped into a chair, the whiteboard propped against his knee. "We're finding Offside."

You stared. Then stared harder. Then looked at Garrett.

He looked completely sincere. Completely serious. The kitchen light caught his dark curls, his tall frame radiating that particular intensity he got when he'd decided on something.

"You're investigating a student columnist."

"We're investigating a mystery."

"That's somehow worse."

Logan slapped an article onto the table, the sound sharp in the quiet kitchen. "We've developed a profile."

You immediately regretted asking. "A profile."

"Yes."

Dean pointed dramatically at the whiteboard, where someone had written in messy marker: SUSPECT PROFILE.

"Upperclassman."

"Definitely."

"Hockey fan."

"Without question."

"Judgmental."

"Obviously."

Garrett picked up another page, his long fingers smoothing the edges. His eyes moved across the article. Following familiar sentences. Your sentences. The ones you'd written at three in the morning, fueled by coffee and the memory of his smile in the snow.

"Good writer," he added quietly.

The room briefly fell silent. Something about the way he said it. Not mocking. Not annoyed. Honest. Almost appreciative.

Your chest tightened unexpectedly.

Then Garrett looked up.

Directly at you.

For one terrifying second you thought he'd figured it out. Really figured it out. Those dark eyes seemed to see straight through you, past the careful masks and the forced casualness, straight to the laptop in your bag and the drafts on your hard drive.

Instead he asked: "What?"

Apparently you'd been staring. Wonderful.

You looked away immediately, focusing intently on a water spot on the counter. "Nothing."

His gaze lingered. Longer than necessary. Long enough to make your pulse stumble. Long enough to feel dangerous. Long enough that Hannah noticed, her eyes darting between you with sudden interest.

Outside, snow continued falling, silent and soft. Inside, Garrett Graham sat three feet away from the person he'd spent weeks trying to find, holding a red marker and a theory that was getting uncomfortably close to the truth.

And somehow-the thing that scared you most wasn't getting caught.

It was the fact that every day he got a little harder to lie to.

The library at Briar had a very specific kind of silence.

Not true silence. The artificial version. The kind manufactured from turning pages, distant footsteps, the rhythmic click of keyboards, and hundreds of students pretending they weren't slowly losing their minds to caffeine and cumulative GPA anxiety.

By Wednesday afternoon, you'd officially become part of the furniture.

Three empty coffee cups sat beside your laptop, their cardboard sleeves stained with brown rings. A fourth waited nearby, still warm, emitting steam that curled lazily into the dry, overheated air. Your notes were scattered across the table like evidence in a criminal investigation, yellow legal paper covered in your cramped handwriting, highlighters uncapped and bleeding into the wood grain, textbooks cracked open to pages you'd stopped actually reading an hour ago.

Maybe they were evidence. Of what, you weren't entirely sure.

A half-finished Offside draft glowed from your laptop screen, the cursor blinking patiently. Judgmentally. Mocking you with its steady, metronomic rhythm.

You stared at the sentence.

Heroes are comforting because they make us believe someone else can carry the pressure.

Delete.

Rewrite.

Delete again.

Nothing sounded right.

The problem was Garrett.

Not him specifically.

Okay.

Maybe him specifically.

The article wasn't supposed to be about him. But somehow every sentence kept circling back to him anyway, like water draining toward a center you couldn't stop. The way he always smiled when people expected it, the performance of it reaching his eyes a half-beat late. The way he laughed off pressure, deflecting with humor before anyone could see how heavy it sat on him. The way everyone seemed to need something from him-autographs, reassurance, leadership, wins-and took pieces in return.

Captain. Leader. Future NHL player. Campus celebrity.

Everyone wanted a piece of Garrett Graham.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in Garrett.

Which annoyed you more than it should.

Your fingers moved across the keyboard again, the keys warm from hours of contact.

People love heroes until heroes remind them they're human.

That one stayed.

For now.

A chair scraped loudly across the floor, the sound violent in the library's hushed atmosphere.

You jumped. Your laptop nearly followed, tilting toward the edge before you caught it with a desperate hand. Someone dropped into the seat across from you without asking, without warning, without any regard for your rapidly declining life expectancy.

"Found you."

You froze.

Garrett.

Of course.

Because apparently peace was no longer available to you. Because the universe had decided that you could not have one afternoon of anonymous work without him materializing like a particularly tall, curly-haired specter of consequence.

You slowly looked up.

He was wearing a grey hoodie, sleeves pushed to his elbows, revealing forearms still speckled with practice bruises. Dark circles beneath his eyes suggested he hadn't slept much either, purple smudges against skin that looked pale under the fluorescent lights. His hair was chaos, curls falling in every direction, still damp from a shower or melted snow.

Unfortunately, exhaustion looked unfairly good on him.

Life was cruel.

"That's concerning," you said.

His mouth twitched. The left side, where that small scar interrupted his eyebrow. "You've been avoiding the hockey house."

You immediately returned your attention to the laptop, your heart hammering against your ribs. "I've been busy."

"Liar."

The response came so quickly you almost laughed. Instead you narrowed your eyes, trying to project an indifference you absolutely didn't feel. "You're weirdly confident for someone with no evidence."

Garrett pointed toward the table. "Three coffees."

You looked. Damn.

Then he pointed at your face, his finger coming close enough that you could see the calluses, the slight tremor of exhaustion in his hand. "Dark circles."

Rude.

Then-his eyes drifted toward your laptop.

"And you closed your screen when I sat down."

Panic. Tiny. Instant. Violent.

Your hand had slammed the laptop shut so quickly you hadn't even realized you'd done it, the crack of plastic against plastic echoing in the quiet. Wonderful. Not suspicious at all.

You forced yourself to shrug, your shoulder blades tight with tension. "Maybe I have secrets."

"Maybe you're terrible at hiding them."

Your pulse kicked. Because if there was one thing Garrett Graham was becoming increasingly good at, it was accidentally wandering too close to the truth, circling it like a shark that didn't know it was hunting.

You reached for your coffee. It was empty. Tragic.

"Why are you here?"

Garrett leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking beneath his weight. The late afternoon sunlight spilled through the library windows behind him, turning everything gold and dusty. Dust motes floated lazily through the air, suspended in the light beams like tiny constellations. Around you, students studied quietly, heads bent over textbooks, the occasional cough or page-turn the only interruption.

The rest of the world felt very far away.

"You never came by Monday," he said.

"What a devastating loss for the household."

"You also skipped Tuesday."

"You keeping attendance?"

His grin appeared immediately, sudden and bright. "There she is."

You hated how much that affected you. The smile. The ease. The way talking to him felt effortless right up until it didn't, right up until you remembered that you were lying to him about literally everything that mattered.

Garrett looked around the table, his gaze cataloging the debris of your afternoon. Notes. Highlighters in four colors. Open textbooks with cracked spines. Notebooks filled with messy handwriting that was definitely yours. The remnants of a student slowly unraveling, surrounded by the evidence of obsession.

"You working on something important?"

"Extremely."

"What?"

You smiled sweetly, your cheeks aching with the effort. "None of your business."

He sighed dramatically, the sound carrying a note of genuine frustration beneath the performance. "I ask because normal people take breaks."

"I'll take one when I become normal."

"So never."

"Exactly."

The corner of his mouth lifted again. God. Someone needed to stop allowing him to do that. To exist in your space with his exhaustion and his curiosity and his complete inability to leave well enough alone.

The conversation settled for a moment. Comfortable. Quiet. Neither of you rushing to fill the silence with noise. It surprised you how easy that had become, how the space between words didn't feel empty with him anymore.

Then Garrett spoke again, and the question caught you completely off guard.

"What do you actually want to do after Briar?"

You blinked. "What?"

"What do you want to do?"

You stared. Nobody asked that. Not really. People asked about classes. Internships. Grades. Professors. The practical scaffolding of a future they could understand. But not that. Not the actual dream. Not the thing underneath everything else, the beating heart of why you were killing yourself in this library at three in the afternoon.

You swallowed. The truth felt too exposed, too close to the surface. But something about his eyes, the genuine curiosity in them, made you want to answer honestly.

"A major publication," you said quietly. "Sports journalism."

Garrett waited, his body still, attention absolute.

You found yourself continuing, the words spilling out before you could catch them. "Writing that matters. That changes how people see things. Not just recaps and box scores, but the why underneath. The pressure. The humanity." You caught yourself, reeled back. "I don't know. Something that matters."

He nodded like this made perfect sense. Like your half-formed ambition wasn't embarrassing. "You'd be good at that."

The answer came so easily. So confidently. Like it wasn't even a question, like he was stating a fact as obvious as gravity.

Your chest tightened unexpectedly. "You don't even know my work."

"I know you."

The words settled heavily between you, three syllables carrying the weight of something larger. Neither of you moved. The library suddenly felt smaller. Warmer. Dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with your secret and everything to do with the way he was looking at you.

You looked away first. Again. "That's unfortunately not the same thing."

Garrett smiled, small and private. "I think it is."

For a second neither spoke. Outside, snow drifted past the windows, fat flakes catching the late light. Inside, your heartbeat had become deeply unhelpful, pounding in your ears, your wrists, everywhere.

Then Garrett broke the moment. "What about you?"

You frowned. "What about me?"

"Pressure."

You stared. He continued, his voice dropping lower, more intimate. "You always talk about athletes dealing with pressure. In the articles. The ones you read." He paused. "What scares you?"

The question landed harder than it should have. Because there it was. The thing nobody asked. Not your plans. Not your goals. Your fear. The core of you, exposed.

You stared at him for a long moment, the fluorescent lights humming overhead, the dust motes dancing in the sunbeam between you. Then quietly: "Being average."

Something flickered across his face. Recognition. Understanding. The kind that felt a little too personal, like he'd reached across the table and touched something private.

"Yeah," he said softly.

The single word carried more weight than an entire conversation. You looked at him. Really looked. The exhaustion. The pressure. The expectations hanging around him like armor he'd been wearing too long, the metal digging into skin he'd stopped feeling.

Suddenly it felt impossible to breathe.

Then Garrett did something unexpected. He laughed lightly, the sound surprising in the quiet. "I kinda get why people like Offside."

You nearly choked. Actually coughed, your hand flying to your mouth. "What?"

He grinned, crooked and tired and real. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I just committed a crime."

You recovered quickly. Hopefully. "What happened to your investigation?"

"Oh, I'm still finding them."

Your pulse stumbled. Wonderful.

"Then why the sudden appreciation?"

Garrett looked out the window for a second, his profile illuminated by the golden light. Thinking. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. More thoughtful. Almost vulnerable.

"They pay attention."

Your heart stopped. Not literally. Close enough.

Garrett shrugged, his shoulders lifting beneath the grey fabric. "Most people don't. They see the jersey. The highlights. The future. They don't see..." He trailed off, searching for words. "They don't see the person carrying it."

You couldn't look away. He didn't know. Didn't know the articles. Didn't know the late nights. Didn't know the reason every sentence somehow found its way back to him, why you were sitting here surrounded by notes about his pressure and his smile and the weight he carried.

Yet somehow he'd landed on the truth anyway.

They pay attention.

No.

She pays attention.

To the things nobody else notices. To the moments between the headlines. To the pressure behind the smile. To him.

Garrett stood a few minutes later, his chair scraping against the floor again, the sound loud in the quiet. Practice. Meetings. Captain responsibilities. Life.

Before leaving, he glanced down at your closed laptop. The same laptop containing half-finished paragraphs about him. The same laptop holding every secret you were trying desperately to keep, the cursor still blinking behind the dark screen.

"You should sleep."

You laughed, the sound slightly unsteady. "You should stop telling me what to do."

His smile returned. Slow. Dangerous. Impossible.

"You first."

Then he walked away, his boots soft against the carpet, his tall frame disappearing between library shelves until you couldn't see him anymore.

Only once he was gone did you reopen the laptop. The blinking cursor still waited. Patient. Judgmental. Mocking.

Slowly, you began typing again.

People love heroes until heroes remind them they're human.

This time, you didn't delete it.

Offside: The Problem With Heroes By Offside 

Everyone wants a hero until the hero has a bad day.

Then suddenly they're washed up.

A fraud.

A disappointment we never really believed in anyway.

Last Tuesday, I sat three rows behind a guy at the hockey game who spent forty minutes building a shrine to a player's greatness. Every save was "legendary." Every pass was "transcendent." The guy spoke in exclamation points, high on the proximity to someone who could do things he couldn't.

Then the player missed a shot.

One shot.

Not a season. Not a career. One moment, one blade catching ice wrong, one puck sailing wide of the net.

The guy behind me changed his tune immediately.

"Overrated," he said, loud enough for strangers to hear. "Told you he was losing it."

Three minutes later, the same player scored the game-winner. The arena erupted. The guy behind me cheered loudest of all, his earlier declaration already forgotten, buried beneath the convenient amnesia of victory.

As if human beings are stock prices. As if a person's value should rise and fall with every public moment, every visible mistake, every swing between transcendence and humanity.

Sports are weird because they force people to fail in front of thousands.

Most of us get the luxury of making mistakes quietly. A bad exam grade stays between us and a professor who won't remember our name in five years. A rough presentation dissolves into the air, forgotten by everyone except the person who gave it. An embarrassing moment gets buried beneath newer embarrassments, sediment layers of awkwardness that nobody catalogs.

Athletes don't get that.

Their mistakes are replayed. Analyzed. Discussed in dining halls and group chats and comment sections. Shared with commentary, with screenshots, with slow-motion breakdowns of exactly where it went wrong.

A missed shot becomes a headline. A bad game becomes a narrative. A loss becomes a personality trait, evidence of some fundamental flaw in character rather than evidence that sometimes people just have bad days.

And somehow we still wonder-still wonder-why so many athletes struggle under pressure.

Here's the truth most people don't want to admit: we don't actually want heroes.

We want certainty.

Heroes are comforting because they make us believe someone else knows what they're doing. Someone else can carry the pressure. Someone else can win the game, save the season, be responsible for the outcome while we watch from the safety of the stands.

Heroes let us believe that excellence is a permanent state rather than a temporary achievement. That some people are simply built different, immune to doubt and exhaustion and the weight of expectation.

But eventually every hero disappoints us.

Not because they're incapable. Because they're human.

Humans get tired. Humans get overwhelmed. Humans have bad days, bad weeks, bad months where nothing works and everything hurts and getting out of bed feels like a victory. Humans fail, publicly and privately, spectacularly and quietly.

The problem is that once we decide someone is a hero, we stop allowing them to be anything else.

We stop seeing the person and start seeing the expectation. The captain. The star player. The future draft pick. The record holder. The face on the poster, the name on the jersey, the symbol of something larger than themselves.

We stop asking how they're doing and start asking what they're delivering.

The burden of that has to be exhausting.

Imagine walking into every room knowing people already decided who you are before you opened your mouth. Imagine knowing every success becomes an expectation, every good game becomes the new standard, every moment of brilliance gets added to the pile of things you must replicate forever.

Imagine knowing every mistake will become a conversation, a narrative, evidence of your decline.

Imagine carrying that every single day.

And before someone accuses me of being overly dramatic-I know.

They're athletes. They signed up for competition. Pressure comes with the territory, comes with the scholarship, comes with the privilege of doing something they love at a level most people never touch.

But pressure and dehumanization aren't the same thing.

One builds character. The other convinces people they're only valuable when they're performing, only worthy when they're winning, only real when they're meeting expectations that keep climbing higher every time they succeed.

That's a dangerous lesson for anyone to learn.

Not just athletes.

Students who believe their GPA is their only worth. Professors who think their publication record is their only legacy. Parents who measure themselves by their children's achievements. Friends who only show up when you're entertaining.

All of us.

Maybe that's why sports fascinate people. Not because of the wins, not because of the championships, not even because of the rivalries that give us convenient enemies.

Maybe it's because sports are one of the few places where we get to watch people try.

Really try.

Fail.

Get back up.

Try again.

Over and over, in public, with consequences, with stakes, with everything on display.

The score matters. The outcome matters. Competition matters.

But maybe the humanity matters more.

At least it should.

The next time someone misses a shot, drops a pass, loses a game, or fails to live up to whatever impossible expectation you've created for them, remember this:

You are watching a person.

Not a hero.

And people were never meant to carry that much weight alone.

— Offside

The article went live at 7:03 a.m.

You knew this because you'd been awake since 5:41, staring at the ceiling while your brain replayed every sentence you'd written, every metaphor you'd chosen, every moment of vulnerability you'd disguised as commentary. Not awake by choice. Your brain simply hated you, had decided sometime around 3 a.m. that sleep was for people who weren't actively courting disaster.

Rain tapped against your dorm window in a steady, monotonous rhythm, the kind of sound that should have been soothing but instead felt like accusation. Each drop seemed to whisper what did you do what did you do what did you do. The glow from your laptop painted your room in pale blue light, the only illumination in the gray morning. Your roommate was still asleep, buried beneath a mountain of blankets, breathing evenly in a way that felt personally offensive.

The Offside submission portal still sat open on your screen.

Published.

The word stared back at you in green text, cheerful and final. Your stomach twisted, a physical knot that seemed to tighten with every passing minute. No matter how many times you did this-and you'd done it fourteen times now, fourteen articles that had slowly built your reputation and your terror-it never got easier. The moment of publication felt like stepping off a cliff and waiting to see if the ground would rush up to meet you.

You wrote the article. Edited it until the words lost all meaning. Submitted it with shaking hands. Then immediately spent the next twelve hours questioning every life choice that had led you here, every decision that had made you believe you could write about people you knew without eventually being consumed by the secret.

Normal. Entirely normal behavior for someone who had voluntarily chosen to become a literary arsonist.

You grabbed your coffee-cold now, bitter, exactly what you deserved-and checked your phone. The screen lit up with notifications, each one a small bomb waiting to detonate.

Three texts from Hannah.

Two from Allie.

One from Dean.

None of them good. You could tell from the preview text, from the all-caps and the exclamation points and the sheer energy radiating through the screen.

Dean: OFFSIDE DROPPED AGAIN

Dean: Hockey house. Now.

Fantastic. 

Nothing like starting the morning with panic and a side of impending social catastrophe. You stared at Dean's messages for a long moment, watching the rain trace patterns down your window, wondering if you could simply become a hermit. Move to the mountains. Live off foraged berries and avoid human contact forever.

Your reflection in the dark glass looked back at you with haunted eyes.

You pulled on jeans and a hoodie-the same one you'd worn yesterday, because who had time for laundry when they were destroying their own life-and stepped out into the rain.

The hockey house looked exactly how you'd expect at eight in the morning.

Destroyed.

Half-empty energy drink cans littered the kitchen island like casualties of war, some still dripping sticky residue onto the granite. Someone had left pizza out overnight, the box open, slices curling at the edges, the smell of cold pepperoni and regret hanging in the air. The television was already running ESPN, commentators discussing last night's games with the gravity of world leaders negotiating peace treaties. A pair of hockey skates sat inexplicably beside the couch, blades glinting in the morning light, laces trailing like abandoned thoughts.

You didn't ask.

You never asked anymore. The house had its own logic, its own ecosystem of chaos, and questioning it only invited explanations you didn't want.

Walking inside felt like stepping into enemy territory. Or maybe friendly territory that had suddenly become hostile. Or maybe just territory where you were a spy wearing your own face, waiting to be discovered. The warmth hit you immediately, too warm, the heat cranked high against the November chill, making the air feel thick and slightly desperate.

Especially because everyone was already staring at the same thing.

The article.

Your article.

Dean sat at the kitchen island scrolling through his phone, his blonde hair sticking up in every direction, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt that had seen better decades. Allie stood beside him reading over his shoulder, her wild hair pulled back in a messy bun, still in pajama pants with coffee mugs printed on them. Hannah sat cross-legged on the counter in an oversized sweater, her striking blue eyes fixed on her own screen, brow furrowed in concentration.

And Garrett-

Garrett leaned against the fridge, one ankle crossed over the other, his phone held at arm's length. Reading. His brow furrowed slightly, that vertical line appearing between his eyebrows that you knew meant he was thinking hard about something. Jaw tight. Focused in that way he got when he was processing, when he was taking in information and turning it over, examining it from every angle.

You hated how much you wanted to know what he was thinking. Hated that you were standing in the doorway cataloging his expressions, memorizing his reactions, when you should have been planning an escape route.

"Well?" Dean asked dramatically, not looking up from his phone. "Thoughts?"

Garrett didn't look up either. His thumb scrolled slowly, carefully, like he was reading every word twice.

"Still dramatic," he said finally.

Dean groaned, the sound theatrical and wounded. "That's your review?"

"Pretty much."

"You don't hate it?"

Garrett finally lowered his phone. His eyes found yours across the room, and for a moment-suspended, breathless-you thought he knew. Really knew. The secret felt written on your skin, visible in the way you were standing, the way you were breathing, the way you were desperately trying to look casual.

"No," Garrett said, and his gaze shifted to Dean. "I don't hate it."

The room went silent. Actually silent, the kind of quiet where you could hear the refrigerator humming and the rain against the windows and your own heartbeat thundering in your ears. Even you nearly choked on your own breath, the air catching in your throat.

Dean looked personally offended, his hand pressed to his chest like he'd been struck. "Excuse me?"

Garrett shrugged, that casual lift of shoulders that somehow conveyed entire philosophies. "They aren't wrong."

"What?"

"They pay attention."

Your pulse stumbled, tripped, crashed against your ribs. No. No. Please stop saying that. Please stop using those words, that phrase, the exact observation that had become your signature, your justification, the thing you told yourself at three in the morning when you couldn't sleep and couldn't stop writing about him.

Hannah looked thoughtful. Dangerously thoughtful, her blue eyes narrowing slightly as she stared at her phone. "The weird thing," she said slowly, "is that whoever writes these actually understands hockey."

Your stomach dropped. Immediately. Violently. The floor seemed to tilt beneath your feet.

You grabbed a water bottle from the counter just to have something to do with your hands, just to keep them from shaking, from giving you away. The plastic was cold against your palm, condensation wetting your fingers.

Dean pointed toward Hannah with his phone, gesturing wildly. "THANK YOU. Finally, someone with sense."

"Most journalists don't write like this," Hannah continued, her voice musing, analytical. "They write like observers. Like they're watching from outside, taking notes, keeping distance."

Garrett nodded once, his dark curls catching the morning light from the window. "This person writes like they're around it. Like they see the stuff nobody else sees."

Your heart stopped. Entirely. Gone. Flatlined. Your fingers tightened around the water bottle until the plastic crackled.

Fantastic.

You were about thirty seconds from climbing directly into traffic. Or possibly confessing everything right there in the kitchen, spilling the secret like water from the bottle you were white-knuckling, just to stop the pressure of waiting to be discovered.

Then Garrett looked up.

His eyes landed on yours with the weight of recognition, of something unspoken passing between you. The conversation died instantly, the energy in the room shifting, becoming charged with something you couldn't name.

The shift was so obvious it was painful. Dean smirked immediately, his gaze darting between you and Garrett with the predatory instinct of someone who loved drama that didn't involve him.

"Oh look," Dean said, drawing out the words. "Our missing person."

You narrowed your eyes, trying to project annoyance instead of terror. "What?"

"Your favorite subject," Dean said, grinning. "Has opinions about your bedtime."

Garrett's gaze never left yours. The intensity of it felt like standing too close to a fire, the heat radiating outward, making your skin prickle.

"You disappeared," Garrett said quietly. Not accusatory this time. Something else. Something that sounded almost like concern wrapped in frustration.

You forced yourself to stay calm, to keep your breathing even, to remember that he didn't know. Couldn't know. Was just saying things that happened to land with devastating accuracy.

"Good morning to you too," you said, your voice coming out steadier than you felt.

His mouth twitched. Barely. A small movement at the corner of his lips that might have been the beginning of a smile or might have been something else entirely. But enough. Enough to make your chest tighten, to make the room feel too small, to make the secret feel like a physical weight pressing down on your shoulders.

And somehow that felt worse than if he'd been angry. Worse than if he'd hated the article, hated Offside, hated the mysterious writer who kept dissecting his life in public.

Because he was looking at you like he was still trying to solve the puzzle. Like you were the answer to something he hadn't figured out how to ask yet.

And you were running out of ways to hide.

The problem with Hannah Wells was that she was terrifyingly smart.

Not book smart. Well. Also book smart-she'd made Dean's honor roll every semester without apparent effort, her notes color-coded and comprehensive in a way that made normal students feel inadequate. But that wasn't the dangerous part.

The dangerous part was that she was observant.

The kind of person who noticed details other people missed. The way someone's voice changed when they were lying. The micro-expressions that flickered across faces in fractions of seconds. The patterns in behavior, the inconsistencies in stories, the small tells that revealed larger truths.

The kind of person who remembered things. Conversations from months ago. Exact wording. Context. The kind of person who could hold fifteen pieces of information in her mind simultaneously and suddenly see how they connected into a picture nobody else had noticed.

The kind of person who could accidentally ruin your entire life without even trying, simply by saying "wait" at the wrong moment and watching you fall apart.

Which was why seeing her waiting outside the journalism building that afternoon-immediately, specifically, leaning against the brick wall with her arms crossed and her eyes fixed on the door-immediately made your stomach sink through the floor, through the foundation, through the earth itself.

She smiled when she spotted you. Too casually. Too innocently. The smile that said I know something or possibly I'm about to know something or maybe just I've decided to destroy you and I'm being polite about it.

Dangerous. Very dangerous.

"You busy?" she asked, pushing off the wall.

"Always." You adjusted your bag higher on your shoulder, buying time, calculating escape routes. The building behind you had a back exit. You could probably make it if you ran.

"Perfect."

You narrowed your eyes. "That's usually a bad sign."

Hannah laughed, the sound bright and genuine and somehow worse because of it. "You have twenty minutes."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, a declaration of how long you had before she would either extract what she wanted or decide you weren't worth the effort. Neither option felt safe.

You sighed, resigning yourself to whatever interrogation she'd planned. "Fine."

The campus coffee shop buzzed with afternoon conversation, the sound layered and complex-steam hissing from the espresso machine, chairs scraping against tile, dozens of conversations overlapping into a kind of white noise that should have felt comforting but instead felt like cover. Like you were being concealed in a crowd that would make it harder to run.

Students crowded every table, laptops open, textbooks spread, the particular desperation of mid-afternoon caffeine dependence written on every face. Steam rose from mugs in lazy spirals, catching the gray light from windows where rain streaked down in continuous sheets, blurring the outside world into watercolor abstraction.

You and Hannah claimed a small corner booth, the vinyl seats cracked and sticky, the table between you barely large enough for two cups. The position put your back to the wall-which should have felt secure but instead felt like being cornered. Trapped. Pinned in place by her attention.

For the first few minutes she talked normally. Classes. The professor who'd assigned three chapters overnight. Assignments. Dean being an idiot about something involving laundry and possibly fire. Everything felt safe, familiar, the comfortable rhythm of friendship that had existed long before you'd started writing articles that could destroy it.

Until it wasn't.

"Can I ask you something?" Hannah said, her tone shifting. Not dramatically-just enough. A subtle change in pitch, in cadence. The dangerous tone.

You took a sip of coffee, stalling, feeling the heat burn your tongue. "Depends."

Hannah tilted her head slightly, her striking blue eyes fixed on you with the intensity of someone who was used to being underestimated and had learned to use it. Watching you. Studying you. Cataloging every micro-reaction, every breath, every flicker of discomfort.

You hated that look. Had always hated it, even before you had secrets worth hiding.

"You okay?" she asked.

Your stomach dropped. Not because of the question-because of how genuine it sounded. Because Hannah didn't do fake concern. When she cared, she cared completely, and that made this worse. Made you feel guilty for the lie you were living inside her friendship.

"Oh." The word came out small, surprised.

She nodded, her wild hair catching the light from the window. "Yeah."

You relaxed slightly, muscles unclenching from the defensive posture you hadn't realized you'd adopted. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Hannah stirred her coffee, the spoon clicking against ceramic in a rhythm that felt almost deliberate. Like she was counting beats. Like she was preparing something.

"You've been weird," she said.

Fantastic. The word every secret-keeper dreaded. Vague enough to be unanswerable, specific enough to be undeniable.

"Weird how?"

"You disappear a lot." Hannah counted on her fingers, each one a small indictment. "You stop answering texts." Strike one. "You look exhausted." Strike two. "And every time someone mentions Offside..." She paused, letting the silence stretch. "You get this look."

Strike three.

Your soul left your body. Completely. Gone. Ascended to whatever afterlife existed for idiots who'd thought they could keep secrets from people who actually paid attention.

You managed a laugh. Somehow. It sounded hollow even to you, a thin thing that didn't reach your eyes. "I think everyone talks about Offside."

"Maybe." Hannah watched you carefully, her gaze unwavering. "Maybe I just notice when you do."

The booth suddenly felt too small. Too warm. The air thick and difficult to breathe. You looked away first, toward the rain-blurred window, toward the students passing outside with their umbrellas and their normal lives and their complete absence of dangerous secrets.

Big mistake.

Because Hannah immediately caught it. The realization flickered across her face-not certainty, not yet, but something almost worse. Suspicion. The beginning of it, the first thread pulled that would eventually unravel everything.

And beginnings were always the dangerous part. Beginnings could be stopped, sometimes, if you were careful. But once suspicion became certainty, once she started actually looking instead of just noticing...

"You know something," she said.

Not a question. A statement. A verdict delivered before the trial had even begun.

You forced yourself to smile, your cheeks aching with the effort. "Journalism major," you said lightly. "I know lots of things. Obscure style guide rules. How to structure a lede. The optimal coffee-to-blood ratio for deadline survival."

Hannah narrowed her eyes, unconvinced. You smiled wider, desperate, feeling the expression crack at the edges.

The conversation moved on. Eventually. Hannah let it go, or seemed to, steering back to safer topics with the ease of someone who knew when to push and when to wait. But as you walked back across campus afterward, rain misting against your jacket and soaking into your hair, one thought repeated itself over and over with every step.

Hannah was getting closer.

And for the first time since this whole thing started-

You weren't worried about Garrett finding out.

You were worried Hannah would.

Because Garrett might be angry. Might feel betrayed, exposed, violated by the intimacy of your observations written for public consumption.

But Hannah would be disappointed.

And somehow, impossibly, that felt worse.

[isbellah]

The Anatomy of Ice

garret graham x reader

summary . . . Hockey at Briar University is treated like religion. Everyone worships the players beneath fluorescent arena lights and championship banners - especially Garrett Graham, Briar's captain and future NHL golden boy. As a journalism and photography major with zero interest in idolizing athletes, being assigned to follow the hockey team for a semester should've been simple: take photos, write columns, graduate, leave. Instead, somewhere between late-night practices, darkroom conversations, and learning how loneliness hides beneath fame, the story starts becoming personal. And the closer she gets to Garrett Graham, the harder it becomes to tell where observation ends and feeling begins. A story about ambition, being witnessed, and the terrifying intimacy of truly seeing someone.

warnings . . . slow burn, emotional tension, media/public pressure, injury mentions, blood/bruises, athlete burnout, anxiety themes, loneliness, conflict, swearing, minor angst, vulnerable Garrett Graham, reader insert (no use of y/n), first person POV, journalism ethics discussions, romantic tension, slightly poetic writing style. All characters and storylines belong to The Deal and the Off Campus universe. This fanfiction is purely transformative fan work created for fun.

author’s note . . . okay sooo this started as me wanting to write a hockey/media enemies-to-lovers fic and somehow turned into a 7.6k emotional crisis about ambition, loneliness, and being perceived I really wanted this to feel atmospheric and character-driven instead of just romance focused, especially with the photography/journalism angle. also Garrett Graham being emotionally repressed but secretly wanting someone to actually see him... yeah. thank u for reading <3

word count . . . 7.6k

Everyone at Briar University loved hockey.

Not casually, either. Briar Hockey existed somewhere between religion and cult initiation, worshipped beneath fluorescent arena lights and carried through campus like mythology. Friday game days transformed students into walking advertisements-jerseys over hoodies, painted faces, bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder outside the arena three hours before puck drop.

The hockey players loved it too.

Obviously.

Half of them walked around campus like they'd personally cured disease.

You adjusted the strap of your camera bag higher onto your shoulder as you crossed the journalism building courtyard, narrowly avoiding a pack of freshmen nearly trampling each other in pursuit of a hockey player exiting a black SUV.

Jesus Christ.

"Garrett looked at me," one girl whispered, clutching her backpack straps like a lifeline.

"He literally smiled at you," her friend breathed.

"I'm never washing this jacket again," said a third, who had nothing to do with the exchange except proximity.

You resisted the urge to turn and ask if they heard themselves. Instead, you shouldered through the heavy glass doors of Adler Hall, the air inside thick with printer toner and ancient carpet dust, and trudged upstairs toward Professor Adler's office. Your coffee balanced precariously in one hand while your camera bag thumped a syncopated rhythm against your hip with every step.

Your life currently existed in three places: the journalism club office, the photography lab, and whichever coffee shop on campus tolerated you squatting in a corner booth for six hours straight, cradling a laptop and editing photos until your eyes watered. It was manageable. Barely. But manageable.

Which is why Professor Adler emailing you at eight in the morning with: Need to discuss your semester exhibition proposal. Urgent. felt vaguely threatening.

His office door sat half-open, the narrow wedge revealing a slice of his disorganized world: shelves buckling under the weight of books and old yearbooks, an actual typewriter gathering dust on the windowsill, and a whiteboard covered in what looked like a mind map for a true crime podcast episode. The rain outside tapped a nervous Morse code against the glass, diffusing the early light into something gray and indecisive.

You knocked once before entering. "If this is about the deadline extension, in my defense, capitalism thrives on artistic suffering."

Adler didn't even look up from the papers on his desk. "You're late."

"You assigned the meeting twelve minutes ago."

"That doesn't make you less late."

You dropped into the chair across from him, the seat still warm from whoever had been chewed out before you. "So what academic disaster are we preventing today?"

He looked up. A red Bic pen dangled from his fingers, and your proposal sat in front of him, already bleeding with edits.

You winced. "That bad?"

"No," he said, and the word sounded like a verdict. "Actually, it's annoyingly good."

"…that sounded personal."

"The problem," he continued, ignoring you, "is that your work lacks proximity."

You blinked, thrown. "What does that even mean?"

"You photograph people beautifully," Adler said, leaning back so his chair creaked. "But always from emotional distance. You observe. You do not immerse."

"That's called journalism. Emotional attachment gets people fired."

He smiled, the kind of smile you wanted to bleach from your brain. "That's called fear of vulnerability."

You narrowed your eyes. "I liked you better before you started psychoanalyzing me."

He slid a single page across the desk, the motion crisp and final. Your stomach dropped before your eyes even found the Briar Hockey logo at the top.

"No."

"You haven't even read it."

"I don't need to. The answer's still no."

"The hockey program granted full media access for one student this semester."

"Wonderful for whichever masochist accepts."

"You're accepting," Adler said, and the pen in his hand pointed at you like a referee's whistle.

You stared at him. He stared back. The radiator clanked to life in the corner, filling the silence with a hot metallic groan.

"You cannot be serious."

"I am entirely serious."

"No offense, Professor, but I would genuinely rather eat denim."

"The exhibition needs intimacy."

"It needs literally anything else."

"You want to become a sports journalist."

"A sports photographer."

"A distinction no employer will care about."

You hated when he did that.

"You want major publications?" he continued. "Olympics. ESPN. Sports Illustrated. Then you need to learn how to document athletes beyond staged action shots."

Your jaw tightened. Because the worst part? He wasn't wrong.

"You'll photograph the team throughout the semester," Adler said. "Practices, games, travel days, interviews. Alongside that, you'll write a weekly column documenting the culture surrounding Briar Hockey."

"Culture," you repeated. "So alcoholism and concussions."

Adler sighed, but his eyes glinted with something dangerous, maybe hope. "Your inability to take anything seriously is remarkable."

"No, what's remarkable is Briar giving athletes their own kingdom while the arts department still has cameras from the Jurassic period."

"That cynicism is exactly why I chose you."

You leaned back, arms crossed, refusing to be cajoled.

Athletes.

God.

Every professor on campus suddenly developed selective amnesia around deadlines once jerseys entered the equation. Entire buildings bent around the hockey team's existence: tutors, sponsorships, priority scheduling, campus celebrity for boys who occasionally punched each other professionally. And now you were supposed to spend a semester documenting them like some poetic coming-of-age documentary?

Hell.

"No interviews before ten a.m.," you muttered.

Adler smiled slowly, like a man who'd already won. "I'll let Coach Jensen know."

You pointed at him. "That isn't agreement. That's surrender."

"Same thing."

The Briar arena was a half-submerged spaceship, all glass and aluminum, rising out of the mud at the edge of campus. The inside smelled like cold metal, melting ice, and that particular brand of detergent used to clean blood from tile. The air was a shock, a sudden slap of cold that crystallized your breath and made every sound echo like a gunshot. The overhead lights burned with industrial fluorescence, throwing hard shadows across the rink and turning every edge into a geometric threat.

You stepped inside twenty minutes before practice, camera already out, the wide lens making the world seem more remote than it really was. Arena staff moved like ghosts, setting up pylons and cones, their footsteps muffled by rubber mats. High above, banners hung limp in the stale air, each one a decade-old boast about championships and All-Americans, the fabric stained by time and humidity.

Most of the seats were empty except for a couple of bored students in Briar hoodies, already scrolling their phones in the front row. On the ice, a handful of players stretched along the boards, their movements precise and oddly graceful, like dancers in a physics experiment.

One of them looked up as you approached. Tall, wide-shouldered, hair the color of burnt wheat curling beneath a backwards Briar cap. Even from a distance, he radiated the kind of confidence that got people article headlines and interview slots on ESPN. Garrett Graham.

Of course.

Even if you didn't follow hockey, everyone on campus knew Garrett Graham. Team captain, future NHL draft hopeful, the face of Briar Athletics since sophomore year. He looked exactly like the kind of guy people described with words like electric and legacy.

You hated that you understood why.

His eyes tracked the camera swinging at your chest. Immediate annoyance flickered across his face, a subtle tightening around the mouth. Interesting.

You pretended not to notice, instead lifting your camera to check the settings, the lens cap already stashed in a jacket pocket. The sound of skates carving the ice echoed through the arena as more players filed in: some laughing, some still half-asleep, all of them carrying the casual violence of people who considered pain a minor inconvenience.

You started photographing before anyone could object.

Gloves tightening, tape winding in clean spirals around sticks, a player wincing as he adjusted his helmet, steam curling from coffee cups balanced precariously on the bench. Real things. Not performance.

A camera shutter echoed in the cold, sharp and precise.

Garrett's head snapped toward you. His expression hardened, the lines of his face sharpening with irritation. Oh, he really hated this.

You snapped another photo, deliberately.

Petty? Maybe. Worth it? Absolutely.

He glided over, stopping at the bench directly in front of you, skates planted wide and arms folded. "You always point that thing at people without asking?"

You lowered the camera, fighting the urge to smile. "You always introduce yourself like an asshole, or is today special?"

His eyebrows quirked up, caught off guard. Behind him, another player snorted, the sound barely muffled by a glove.

Garrett ignored it. "Media?"

"Journalism and photography."

"That explains it."

You smiled thinly. "And hockey explains the superiority complex."

For a second, he just watched you, like he was trying to decide if you were joking, or if you were dangerous. Then: "I hate media."

"Cute," you replied. "I hate entitled athletes. Looks like we both have hobbies."

Behind him, someone actually laughed. Garrett's jaw worked, and he shot a glare over his shoulder before fixing you with that captain's stare again. "You writing one of those tragic athlete pieces?"

You shrugged. "I prefer investigative journalism. Thinking of exposing Briar Hockey's devastating impact on female GPA averages."

He almost smiled, but caught himself. "Funny."

"I try."

"You planning on following us everywhere now?"

"Unfortunately."

He exhaled, and you watched frost bloom in the air between you. "Just don't get too close to the glass during drills. We break a lot of shit."

You nodded, camera poised again. "Noted. I'd hate for your slapshot to ruin my thousand-dollar lens."

His mouth twitched. "I'd hate for your thousand-dollar lens to ruin my slapshot."

Coach Jensen blew a whistle from across the rink, the sound slicing through conversation. "Graham!"

Garrett looked away first, which you mentally logged as a win. "See you around, journalism," he said, and then skated off, leaving a trail of shaved ice in his wake.

You watched practice from behind the benches, shooting through the plexiglass, camera pressed to your face until the tip of your nose went numb. The speed surprised you most-not television hockey, but real hockey. Fast enough to blur, violent in the way storms are violent, unpredictable and beautiful in the same breath.

Your camera loved movement.

Bodies ricocheting off glass, skates churning up snow, gloves colliding with helmets, a bruise blossoming under a player's eye before the period was half over. The noise was relentless: whistles, shouts, the thunk of pucks and the scrape of blades, all of it amplified in the empty arena.

There was something strangely beautiful about controlled destruction.

Hours passed. The rink emptied and refilled with each new drill. By the time practice ended, your memory card was nearly full and your fingers ached from the cold. Players drifted off the ice in packs, towels slung around their necks, joking and chirping each other in a language that belonged exclusively to locker rooms.

You stayed behind, photographing the arena as it emptied, the condensation on the glass, the ghostly tracks left by skates.

That's when you noticed him.

Garrett.

Still alone on the ice, long after the others had left. No audience now, no teammates, just the echo of his skates as he traced slow, perfect circles under the half-lit scoreboard.

He looked different through the lens. Not Briar Hockey's captain, not campus royalty.

Just tired.

You snapped a photo as he coasted to a stop at center ice. Garrett's head turned at the shutter's click, eyes locking onto you even from half a rink away.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

Then something passed over his face-surprise, maybe, or resignation-and he skated toward the exit without a word.

You looked down at the photo on your screen. It should've been like every other sports shot you'd ever taken.

But this one looked lonely.

And for reasons you couldn't explain yet, that unsettled you more than anything else.

For the first week, Briar Hockey still felt fictional. You moved through their schedule like a ghost, hovering at the edge of drills and film sessions, always present but never part of anything. Practice after practice, you learned the choreography: the way the team captain led stretches with dry sarcasm, how the D-men chirped the freshmen, the pattern of tape-then-glove-then-helmet before each player hit the ice.

Sometimes you caught Garrett glancing at you, brow furrowed in mild disbelief-like he was still waiting for you to blink out of existence. You made a game of pretending not to notice, but your camera betrayed you every time, following his movements through the viewfinder.

There were moments when the world narrowed to just the two of you: the echo of a slapshot, the sharp scent of sweat and ice, dust motes dancing through sunlight in the upper rows of the stands. You told yourself it was just good photography.

But the photos told a different story.

After each session, you sorted through them in the dim light of your editing booth, shivering in your hoodie even though the room was warm. The shots that mattered-the ones that made Professor Adler’s lips curl in grudging approval-were never the ones you expected.

Not the glory shots. Not the goal celebrations or arms-raised-in-victory.

Instead: the exhaustion in Garrett’s eyes after a brutal scrimmage. The way a defenseman pressed his forehead to the glass after a mistake, breath fogging the surface. The quiet, private moments when someone sat alone in the penalty box, helmet off, hair matted flat.

You started to see it. The thing Adler kept harping on. Proximity.

You started to want it, too.

The second week, you worked up the nerve to approach Logan, the team’s PR guy, after a particularly bloody practice. He was leaning against the wall, scrolling his phone, a fresh bruise already blooming above his eyebrow.

“Do you ever get used to the bleeding?” you asked, voice pitched low.

Logan glanced up, grinned with half his mouth. “Nope. But you learn to dress for it.” He flicked the collar of his black t-shirt, now spattered with a Rorschach of red. “You’re the photo kid, right?”

You nodded, feeling suddenly self-conscious about the camera hanging from your neck like a borrowed credential.

Logan’s eyes flicked to your hands, then back to your face. “You shoot a lot of hockey?”

“Not unless you count men’s league at the Y,” you said. “They let you drink in the penalty box there.”

He barked a laugh. “Hell of a business model.” Then, more gently: “You’re good. The guys don’t always like cameras in their faces, but they haven’t started icing your tripod yet. That’s a win.”

You smiled, and for the first time since starting this assignment, it felt real.

After that, things got easier. You fell into the rhythm of the team: early mornings, late nights, the constant cycle of sweat and study and recovery. You learned to recognize the moods, the rising tension before a game, the bruised silence after a loss. Even Garrett began to tolerate you, though he never stopped glowering whenever you caught him on film.

The first away game was a three-hour bus ride north, through the kind of November rain that made the highway look endless. You sat near the front, editing photos in the blue glow of your laptop, but you kept one ear tuned to the back of the bus where the team played poker and heckled each other relentlessly.

At a rest stop, Garrett passed by your seat, pausing just long enough to look at your screen.

“You ever put the camera down?” he said.

“Only when I sleep,” you replied.

He made a low, skeptical sound, then nodded at the image on your monitor-a shot of him mid-game, helmet askew, eyes fixed on the puck.

“You make us look tired,” he said.

“Maybe I’m just catching what’s already there.”

He stared at you for a beat, then gave a grudging smile. “Fair.”

The bus rolled on, rain hammering the windows, and you watched the night blur past in streaks of yellow and black.

By December, you stopped noticing the cold. The rink was just another classroom, the locker room a strange second home. You started to understand the language of hockey-the coded handshakes, the superstition rituals, the way even the worst insults meant you were part of the group.

You understood, too, that Garrett was more complicated than the press releases let on. He played through pain with a kind of stubborn grace, never complained, never asked for anything. After every game, he was the last to leave the ice.

One night, you caught him sitting alone in the stands, helmet off, just watching the Zamboni circle the rink.

You sat beside him, camera left zipped in your bag.

“Everything okay?” you asked.

He shrugged, eyes distant. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

He hesitated, then: “This is my last season. Feels weird.”

You nodded. “You’ll miss it.”

“Yeah.” His voice was so soft you almost missed it. “But I’ll miss this, too.” He gestured at the empty arena, the echoing silence.

You looked at him, really looked, and for the first time you saw not Briar’s captain, but just a guy trying to hold on to something slipping through his fingers.

You didn’t take a photo. Not then.

Instead, you sat together in the quiet, letting the moment stretch out between you.

When you turned in your next set of photos, Professor Adler didn’t say anything for a long time. He just paged through them, one by one, eyes sharp and unreadable.

Finally, he set them down.

“You’re getting closer,” he said quietly. “Good work.”

You left his office with a strange ache in your chest, like you’d just finished a race you didn’t remember starting.

You wondered if this was what it meant to want something badly enough to risk being seen.

You wondered if it was worth it.

The next morning, you arrived at the arena before sunrise. The parking lot was empty, the world muffled by new snow. You stood at the edge of the rink, breath fogging in the cold, and waited for the team to arrive.

When Garrett walked in, he didn’t look surprised to see you. He just nodded, then laced up his skates in silence.

You lifted your camera, but he shook his head.

“Not today,” he said. “Just watch.”

So you did.

You watched him move across the ice, alone and unhurried, carving slow, perfect lines through the untouched surface. There was no performance, no crowd, no reason to impress anyone.

It was just him, and the ice, and the beginnings of a story you suddenly couldn’t wait to tell.

You didn’t take a single photo.

You just watched, and listened, and learned what it meant to be close.

By January, Garrett Graham had become impossible to avoid.

Not physically. You could still navigate campus without collision, still maintain professional distance at practices, still pretend your stomach didn't lurch when he entered a room.

Emotionally.

Which was significantly worse.

The arena in winter existed in perpetual twilight. Even at noon, the sun barely cleared the horizon, casting everything in that particular New England gray that made the world feel underwater. You arrived earlier each morning, until your presence became part of the building's routine-the security guard nodding without checking your ID, the Zamboni driver lifting a hand in greeting as he guided his machine across the ice in pre-dawn darkness.

The cold had changed texture. November's sharp bite had softened into something wet and insidious, the kind of chill that crept through jacket seams and settled in your bones for hours. Your coffee went lukewarm faster. Your camera batteries died quicker. Everything required more effort.

And somewhere between Thanksgiving and now, things had shifted.

Garrett started looking for you first after games.

It happened subtly, like ice thinning beneath snow. You noticed it first in the locker room-that split second when the door opened post-game, steam billowing out carrying the scent of sweat and soap and adrenaline, and Garrett's eyes found yours immediately. Not scanning the crowd. Finding you.

A glance across crowded spaces. Small pauses in conversation when you entered rooms. The way he angled his body toward you during interviews, even when answering questions directed at someone else.

Like he noticed your absence now.

Dangerous.

"You know," Logan said one afternoon while you photographed practice drills, your breath fogging in the frigid air, "this is the longest Garrett's willingly tolerated a media person."

You lowered your camera slightly, lens cap dangling against your chest. "What an honor."

"I'm serious," he laughed, skating a lazy circle around you. "Usually he acts like reporters personally killed his family."

"Maybe I'm charming."

From across the ice, Garrett snorted audibly.

You looked up immediately.

He was watching you. Not casually either. Actually watching you, stick resting loose in his gloved hands, helmet pushed back to expose damp hair curling against his forehead. The arena lights caught the sweat on his skin, turned his eyes into something bright and unreadable.

The realization hit hard enough to make your stomach tighten unexpectedly.

You looked away first.

Coward.

The thing nobody warned you about regarding sports photography was how intimate it felt sometimes.

You spent hours observing people through glass. Learning the architecture of their faces-how frustration settled into jawlines, how exhaustion hollowed cheeks, how joy transformed everything about them. You memorized the way bodies moved when unguarded: the slump of shoulders after losses, the unconscious preening after victories, the small gestures of comfort players offered each other in silence.

You noticed when someone was injured before trainers admitted it publicly. You learned which smiles reached eyes and which were manufactured for cameras, the subtle difference between a grin that showed teeth and one that showed feeling.

And Garrett-

Garrett had become terrifyingly readable to you.

You knew when frustration sat heavy on his shoulders before he even spoke, could read it in the set of his mouth during warmups, the extra violence in his stickhandling.

Knew when exhaustion sharpened his voice, that particular roughness that emerged after road trips and double-headers.

Knew when pressure hollowed him out quietly after losses, the way he sat in his stall longer than necessary, methodically untaping his wrists while the room emptied around him.

Worst of all?

He knew things about you now too.

"You didn't sleep again."

You glanced up from your laptop in the empty media room, the blue glow of the screen painting your hands in cold light. Outside the windows, snow fell in heavy, silent flakes, already burying the campus in white.

Garrett leaned against the doorway still half-dressed from practice, damp hair curling slightly against his forehead, the collar of his Briar hoodie dark with sweat. The hallway light behind him turned him into a silhouette until he stepped inside, and then you could see the purple shadows beneath his eyes, the matching exhaustion in his face.

"How can you tell?"

"You get meaner when you're tired."

"I'm always mean."

"Exactly."

You threw a pen at him.

He caught it effortlessly, that stupid athlete reflex, and you hated the small smile that tugged at your mouth.

Show-off.

"You have a game tomorrow," you said, turning back to your screen. "Shouldn't you be doing captain things?"

"I am."

"That sounds concerning."

Garrett walked further into the room, his sneakers squeaking faintly on the industrial carpet. His eyes landed on the photographs scattered across your desk-prints you'd been sorting for the exhibition, edges curling slightly in the dry heated air.

Most were unfinished edits from the semester so far: bruised hands wrapped in tape, fogged arena glass with fingerprints pressed against the inside, players collapsing exhausted against the boards after overtime wins.

Then there were the Garrett photos.

Far too many Garrett photos.

You tried not to think about that.

"You make hockey look sad," he said quietly, picking up one image-himself alone on the ice after practice, head bowed, steam rising from his shoulders in the cold air.

"That's because it is."

He looked at you then. Really looked, with an intensity that made you want to adjust the thermostat or open a window or flee to Antarctica.

"Thought you hated hockey."

"I hate what people turn athletes into."

Something flickered across his expression briefly. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition.

"You know what the weirdest part is?" you continued, leaning back in your chair until it creaked. "Everyone thinks sports are about winning."

Garrett folded his arms, leaning against the desk beside you. The heat of him radiated through the small space between your shoulders, and you focused very hard on your computer screen. "They are."

"No," you said softly. "They're about being witnessed."

Silence settled heavily between you, thick enough to taste.

Outside the media room windows, snow drifted slowly across campus beneath pale evening lights, turning the world into a snow globe someone had shaken and forgotten.

Garrett's voice came quieter this time, rougher.

"That sounds like something you figured out about yourself."

Your chest tightened instantly.

You hated when he did that. Took your words apart carefully until they exposed things you weren't trying to say aloud, held them up to the light like evidence.

"I think," you said slowly, "you're developing a very unhealthy habit of psychoanalyzing me."

"You started it."

"True."

His mouth curved slightly, and God, that smile was becoming a genuine problem. It reached his eyes now, changed the whole architecture of his face from guarded to something almost soft.

Almost reachable.

The rumors started before either of you acknowledged what was happening.

Not real rumors. Nothing concrete or actionable. Just observations, the kind that accumulated like snow until you couldn't ignore the weight anymore.

"You and Graham are weird lately."

You glanced up from editing photos inside the journalism office, the overhead fluorescents buzzing their electric song. "Define weird."

Your friend Jenna leaned against the desk dramatically, her scarf still beaded with melting snow. "Sexual tension weird."

You nearly choked on coffee, the liquid going down wrong enough to make your eyes water.

"There is no sexual tension."

"Babe," she deadpanned, "he looks at you like you invented oxygen."

"That is biologically inaccurate."

"He literally waits for you after games."

"He's being polite."

Jenna stared at you with genuine pity, her eyebrows raised in silent judgment. "You are unbelievably stupid."

You ignored her.

Mostly because if you thought too hard about Garrett waiting outside media rooms lately, leaning against walls with his hands shoved in his pockets, watching the door like he had nowhere else to be, you might actually combust.

Friday night games at Briar felt less like sporting events and more like controlled hysteria.

The arena pulsed with noise, a physical pressure against your eardrums that you could feel in your teeth. Students screamed themselves hoarse from the stands, faces painted, bodies packed so tight you could see heat rising from the crowd in the cold air. Cameras flashed relentlessly across the ice, strobing against the white surface. Music shook through the building loud enough to rattle your ribs, bass notes you felt in your sternum, as players skated onto the rink beneath blinding lights that turned everything sharp and surreal.

You photographed from beside the glass during warmups, the cold radiating through the barrier, your breath fogging in quick bursts.

Click. Click. Click.

Garrett moved differently during games. Sharper. Faster. Like adrenaline transformed him into something dangerous and beautiful, all controlled violence and impossible grace.

You caught him slamming another player into the boards hard enough to shake the glass near you, the impact vibrating through your palms where they braced against the barrier. The crowd erupted instantly, a roar that swallowed thought.

Through your lens, Garrett looked almost unreal beneath arena lighting-sweat shining on his temples, bruises blooming purple against his jaw, fury written in every line of him.

People loved athletes most when they appeared invincible.

Then-

His eyes found yours through the glass.

Everything paused strangely for half a second. Not the game, not the world, not the screaming crowd. Just you. Your finger hesitated against the shutter, suspended above the button.

And Garrett-

Garrett smiled.

Small. Brief. Barely there, really, just a slight curve of his mouth that softened everything about him.

Only for you.

Your stomach dropped violently, a sudden free-fall that had nothing to do with gravity.

Oh, this was bad.

Briar won 5-2.

The locker room afterward exploded with noise and celebration, steam and sweat and the sharp chemical smell of industrial cleaner, while reporters crowded near players gathering post-game quotes. Music pounded from someone's speaker, something triumphant and loud.

You stayed near the back photographing candid moments instead, your camera drinking in the chaos: a defenseman laughing with his head thrown back, two forwards embracing hard enough to bruise, equipment scattered like abandoned armor across benches.

Victory looked different up close. Messier. More exhausted. Less like glory and more like relief.

Garrett sat near his stall tugging tape from his wrists in methodical strips, while reporters circled nearby waiting for interviews. The captain mask had already settled back onto his face-controlled answers, practiced composure, every word measured and safe.

You watched him carefully through your lens, the autofocus hunting slightly in the steam-thick air.

Then one reporter asked: "Do you feel pressure carrying this team into finals?"

Something changed instantly. Barely noticeable to anyone else. But you saw it.

Garrett's jaw tightened slightly, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. His shoulders stiffened, drawing inward like he was bracing for impact.

Pressure. Always pressure.

"Comes with the job," he answered evenly.

Another reporter: "NHL scouts attended tonight. Thoughts?"

"There are scouts at every game."

"But expectations are higher this season."

Garrett smiled politely. The kind that never reached his eyes, that stretched his mouth without touching anything else.

You lowered your camera slowly.

Everyone in the room saw Briar's captain. You saw someone drowning quietly beneath expectations he'd carried too long, the weight of it visible in the set of his shoulders, the tension in his hands.

And suddenly-you couldn't stand it.

"You guys done?" you interrupted sharply.

Several reporters turned toward you, faces annoyed.

One frowned. "We're in the middle of-"

"He's answered like fifteen questions already."

Garrett blinked at you slightly, surprise breaking through the mask for just a moment.

You shrugged one shoulder, focusing very hard on your camera settings. "Some of us enjoy post-game silence."

The reporters grumbled but gradually backed off toward other players, sensing the shift in atmosphere.

When the room finally cleared enough, Garrett looked over at you, tape still half-removed from his wrist.

"You just bullied reporters for me."

"I bullied reporters for everyone."

"That isn't denial."

You busied yourself adjusting camera settings, fingers moving automatically. "Don't make it weird."

Too late.

It was already weird.

The darkroom became your favorite place on campus after that.

Quiet. Red lighting that turned everything into shades of crimson and shadow. No expectations, no crowds, no noise except the gentle slosh of chemicals in trays and the soft hum of the ventilation system.

You spent hours there developing film photographs for the exhibition while music played softly from your phone speaker, something moody and instrumental that matched the womb-like atmosphere. The chemical tang of the developer filled your nose, familiar and comforting.

Most nights nobody bothered you.

Except Garrett apparently.

The door creaked open around midnight one Tuesday, the sound impossibly loud in the silence.

"You know normal people sleep at this hour, right?"

You looked up from the developing trays, your hands submerged in liquid that turned your skin pale and strange. The safelight painted everything in shades of blood and black, softening edges, hiding flaws.

Garrett stepped inside slowly, hands shoved into the pockets of a grey Briar hoodie, the door clicking shut behind him. The red lighting softened everything about him-sharp jawline, tired eyes, the uncertainty in his posture.

Dangerous information.

"What are you doing here?" you asked.

He leaned against the counter beside you, close enough that you could smell the faint traces of his soap beneath the chemical sharpness. "Could ask you the same thing."

"I was here first."

"Fair."

You returned attention to the photograph slowly appearing in the tray beneath your hands, watching shapes emerge from white paper like memories surfacing.

Garrett watched quietly, his reflection ghostly in the liquid surface.

Then: "That one's good."

You glanced down.

It was him again. Sitting alone in the locker room after a game, head lowered, bruised knuckles resting against his knees, steam rising from his shoulders. Vulnerable. Human. Caught in a moment he'd never have allowed if he'd known you were watching.

"You hate when I photograph you like this," you said softly.

"No," Garrett replied after a moment. His voice was different here. Quieter. "I hate that you're the only one who notices."

Your breath caught slightly.

The darkroom suddenly felt much smaller. Too warm. Too close. The red light made everything feel dreamlike and dangerous and intimate in ways you absolutely did not know how to handle.

Garrett stepped nearer beside you, looking down at the photographs spread across the counter, their edges curling slightly in the humidity.

"You never photograph yourself."

You laughed lightly, the sound strange in the enclosed space. "That's because I'm better behind the camera."

"I don't think you realize people look at you too."

That-

Your pulse stumbled hard enough to physically hurt, a sudden arrhythmia that made you grip the edge of the counter.

The red lighting made everything feel dreamlike and dangerous and intimate in ways you absolutely did not know how to handle. It turned Garrett's eyes into something dark and endless, softened his mouth into something that looked like invitation.

Garrett looked at you differently now. Not like campus media. Not casually. Like he was trying to memorize something, like he was afraid you might disappear.

And maybe you were doing the exact same thing.

"You should go," you said quietly.

His eyes flicked toward yours, searching.

"Why?"

Because if you stayed in this room another minute, you were going to kiss him. The realization nearly knocked the air from your lungs, a certainty that resonated through your whole body.

You forced yourself to look away first, focusing on the photograph developing slowly beneath red light, Garrett's lonely image emerging clearer by the second.

"I have work to finish."

Garrett stayed still for another second. Then two. You felt his gaze on your profile, heavy and warm and wanting.

Then finally he nodded once, pushed off the counter.

"See you tomorrow, photographer."

The door closed softly behind him, the click of the latch impossibly loud in the silence.

You stared down at the photograph developing slowly beneath red light afterward, your hands shaking slightly where they gripped the tray.

Garrett Graham looked lonely even in still images, isolated in the frame, steam rising from his shoulders like smoke.

And somehow-you were beginning to understand exactly what that loneliness felt like.

Everything fell apart the week Briar started winning again.

Which felt fitting, somehow.

Success made people cruel.

The campus transformed overnight after the team secured their place heading into finals. Students flooded the arena in record numbers, roaring for blood. Sports pages exploded with headlines, and suddenly everyone wanted something from Briar Hockey again: interviews, predictions, access. The air on campus was different-brittle and electric, as if everyone was bracing for a storm.

You noticed it first in the journalism office. Under the wash of fluorescent light and the metallic hum of old computers, paper stacked in precarious towers, there was a tension you could feel in your teeth. Reporters who normally ignored you now hovered near your desk, trying to peek at unfinished edits. Professors started forwarding your articles to faculty boards, like they wanted to claim a piece of your work before the rest of the world could. Even the journalism club treated your hockey coverage differently now.

Like proximity to success made your work more legitimate.

You hated that.

"You should submit the Graham piece nationally," Jenna said, looming over your shoulder with a mug of coffee, her ponytail swinging like a metronome.

You looked up from your battered laptop. "Absolutely not."

Jenna frowned, her eyebrows scrunching together in a way that always made her look twelve. "Why?"

"Because I'm not exploiting someone's emotional collapse for career advancement."

She slumped into the cracked plastic chair across from you, smiling with too many teeth. "That's… aggressively noble of you."

"It's called ethics."

"It's called self-sabotage."

Maybe. But some things didn’t belong to the audience. Especially not Garrett.

That realization alone should’ve terrified you more than it did.

The article was published Thursday morning.

You didn’t write it.

But the damage still landed on your doorstep anyway.

BRIAR CAPTAIN CRACKING UNDER PRESSURE?

The headline glared from the student sports page beside a photograph of Garrett leaving the rink after a loss earlier that week. Your photograph. Except cropped tighter now. Darker. Meaner somehow. The exhaustion in Garrett’s face had been transformed into spectacle, the grain of digital shadow accentuating every crack in his composure.

Your stomach dropped violently.

No.

No, no, no.

You grabbed the newspaper immediately, scanning the article faster with every line.

Anonymous sources. Speculation about NHL pressure. Questions about leadership. Claims Garrett was "emotionally unraveling" before finals.

Jesus Christ.

Your name wasn’t attached to the article.

But the photograph was.

And everyone would know it came from you.

"Hey," Jenna said carefully from nearby. "I don’t think the editor cleared that with anyone."

You were already standing.

"Where is he?" 

"I used available media resources."

You stared at the sports editor across his desk in disbelief, a stack of discarded proofs between you.

"You stole my work," you said, voice shaking so badly you had to clutch the camera bag at your hip.

"It was submitted to the paper database," he replied, not even bothering to meet your eyes.

"For exhibition review," you snapped. "Not publication."

He leaned back, spinning an old Bic pen between his fingers. "The article needed visuals."

"That photograph wasn't meant for public release."

"It's journalism."

"No," you said sharply, rage starting to eclipse your panic. "It's exploitation."

A few staff members nearby went silent, their fingers freezing mid-keystroke.

The editor shrugged, lips curling. "You're getting emotional over an athlete."

Something inside you hardened instantly.

"You know what your problem is?" you said quietly. "You think people stop being human the second audiences find them entertaining."

His expression shifted slightly.

Good.

"You wanted drama," you continued. "Not truth. There’s a difference."

Then you walked out before you said something career-ending.

Your phone buzzed nonstop afterward.

Messages. Notifications. Social media discourse exploding around the article.

Some people defended Garrett. Others called him weak. Others treated the entire thing like celebrity gossip.

You muted everything.

The worst part wasn’t even the article.

It was knowing Garrett was going to think you allowed it.

And honestly?

You didn’t know if you could blame him.

Practice that evening felt wrong immediately.

Quieter.

The locker room lacked its usual energy, players speaking in low voices while coaches stalked around visibly irritated. The arena echoed with the hollow clang of pucks off metal, and every so often you caught a cold stare from someone on staff.

The article had spread fast.

Garrett stood near the bench retaping his stick when you entered the arena. Under the harsh LED glare, he looked carved out of marble. You could see the black tape bite into itself, the methodical sharpness of his hands.

His eyes landed on you instantly.

No smile this time.

No softness either.

Just distance.

Your chest tightened painfully.

You approached slowly. "Garrett-"

"Did you get what you needed?"

The question hit harder than yelling would’ve.

"What?"

He laughed once quietly, but there wasn’t humor in it. "The article. The photo. Whole tragic captain narrative."

"I didn’t write that piece."

"But you took the photo."

"Yes," you admitted immediately. "But I never approved publication."

Garrett looked away briefly, jaw tightening. You noticed the raw friction in his hands, the way he flexed his fingers like he wanted to crush the stick in half.

Around you, the arena noise blurred strangely distant.

"I trusted you," he said finally.

God.

That almost physically hurt.

"I know."

"No, I don’t think you do." His voice stayed calm, which somehow made it worse. "You said not everything deserves an audience."

"It didn’t."

"Then why does half the campus suddenly think I’m having a breakdown?"

You stepped closer instinctively. "Garrett, listen to me-"

"You know what’s funny?" he interrupted quietly. "I actually forgot you were media sometimes."

The words landed like a slap.

Because somewhere along the line-

you forgot too.

You forgot this started as observation. Documentation. Career ambition.

Not feelings.

Never feelings.

"You think I wanted this?" you asked, anger finally breaking through the guilt. "Do you seriously think I’d use you like that?"

Garrett looked exhausted suddenly.

Not angry. Just tired.

"I don’t know," he admitted.

And somehow that hurt worst of all.

Coach Jensen shouted something from across the rink before practice officially started.

Players began moving toward the ice.

Garrett grabbed his helmet without another word.

"Wait," you said.

He stopped.

Your throat tightened painfully around everything you wanted to explain.

That you never meant to become someone capable of hurting him. That every photograph started feeling personal somewhere along the way. That being seen by Garrett terrified you more than any future failure ever had.

Instead what came out was: "I’m sorry."

Garrett nodded once.

Then skated away.

You stopped attending practices after that.

Technically not entirely.

You still photographed games. Still submitted recaps. But you did it all from the periphery, hiding behind the lens, refusing to step into the light of the rink.

It felt like a punishment.

It felt deserved.

You slept less, edited more, and tried to ignore the way your camera felt heavier every day. Jenna noticed your absence but didn’t press. She had always been good at letting things rot quietly.

You wondered if that was a skill you'd ever develop.

Finals week arrived with a vengeful blizzard.

Campus shut down for two full days before the championship, and you spent them in the darkroom, letting the chemical stink bleach your thoughts. You printed old negatives, watching the world swim into focus in shallow trays of developer. It was easier-safer-to hide in the hush of running water and the thump of your own heartbeat.

On the morning of the game, you laid out your prints, one by one, across the table. Most were of the team, faces half-obscured by helmets or visors, but Garrett always stood out. Even in profile, even blurred by motion, he looked like the only one awake in a room of sleepwalkers.

It was stupid, but you found yourself tracing the sharp line of his jaw through the plastic sleeve, remembering the way he frowned when he thought no one was watching.

You almost didn’t go to the arena that night.

But the thought of someone else telling Garrett’s story finally propelled you from the darkness, out into the teeth of the storm.

The championship was a riot.

Spectators packed into the stands in a fever, banners and confetti everywhere. The entire campus vibrated with anticipation. The game itself was brutal-three periods of bone-shattering hits and near-fistfights, referees constantly separating players like agitated dogs.

You watched Garrett from the penalty box, camera trained on him as he barked orders and smashed his stick against the boards, veins standing out in his neck. He was a force of nature, uncontainable and viciously alive.

The final buzzer sounded with Briar up by one.

The arena detonated.

You caught a single image of Garrett at the moment of victory: helmet gone, mouth open in a scream, sweat and blood mixing on his face. His teammates mobbed him, the ice littered with gloves and sticks.

You lowered your camera, hands shaking.

It was over.

Except it wasn’t.

Not for you.

You found Garrett in the hallway outside the locker rooms, still in partial uniform, hair damp and wild. He looked at you like he expected you to vanish.

Instead, you held out the print.

He took it carefully, staring at the image in silence.

You waited.

Finally, Garrett looked up. His voice was rough. "You could’ve sold this."

You shrugged. "Didn’t want to."

He turned the print over in his hands, the edges bending slightly. "I’m not mad at you," he said. "Not really."

You believed him.

But it still felt like a wound.

"Can I ask you something?" you said.

He nodded.

"Why hockey?" It wasn’t what you meant to say. But it was honest.

Garrett smiled, slow and tired. "It hurts when I stop."

You understood that.

Maybe too well.

You reached out and touched his wrist, half-expecting him to pull away. He didn’t.

"I wanted to tell the truth. Not just the story people wanted," you said.

His thumb brushed the edge of the photograph, thoughtful. "You did," he said. "Even when it sucked."

You laughed, the sound ugly and wet.

Garrett leaned in, his forehead bumping gently against yours. "You know," he said, "I never minded being seen. As long as it was you."

The words hung between you, sharp and soft at the same time.

You closed your eyes, the relief dizzying.

Maybe the world didn’t deserve every part of you.

But this moment?

You’d keep it for yourself. 

The article that ran the next week was yours.

It was about victory, and exhaustion, and the cost of letting people in. It was about a team and a captain and the stupid, reckless hope of believing in something-someone-enough to risk disappointment.

The campus read it. The faculty shared it. But you didn’t care about that anymore.

You cared about the photograph taped to Garrett’s locker.

And the quiet knowledge that, for once, you hadn’t betrayed the story.

Or the person at its heart.

[isbellah]

The Anatomy of Ice

garret graham x reader

summary . . . Hockey at Briar University is treated like religion. Everyone worships the players beneath fluorescent arena lights and championship banners - especially Garrett Graham, Briar's captain and future NHL golden boy. As a journalism and photography major with zero interest in idolizing athletes, being assigned to follow the hockey team for a semester should've been simple: take photos, write columns, graduate, leave. Instead, somewhere between late-night practices, darkroom conversations, and learning how loneliness hides beneath fame, the story starts becoming personal. And the closer she gets to Garrett Graham, the harder it becomes to tell where observation ends and feeling begins. A story about ambition, being witnessed, and the terrifying intimacy of truly seeing someone.

warnings . . . slow burn, emotional tension, media/public pressure, injury mentions, blood/bruises, athlete burnout, anxiety themes, loneliness, conflict, swearing, minor angst, vulnerable Garrett Graham, reader insert (no use of y/n), first person POV, journalism ethics discussions, romantic tension, slightly poetic writing style. All characters and storylines belong to The Deal and the Off Campus universe. This fanfiction is purely transformative fan work created for fun.

author’s note . . . okay sooo this started as me wanting to write a hockey/media enemies-to-lovers fic and somehow turned into a 7.6k emotional crisis about ambition, loneliness, and being perceived I really wanted this to feel atmospheric and character-driven instead of just romance focused, especially with the photography/journalism angle. also Garrett Graham being emotionally repressed but secretly wanting someone to actually see him... yeah. thank u for reading <3

word count . . . 7.6k

Everyone at Briar University loved hockey.

Not casually, either. Briar Hockey existed somewhere between religion and cult initiation, worshipped beneath fluorescent arena lights and carried through campus like mythology. Friday game days transformed students into walking advertisements-jerseys over hoodies, painted faces, bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder outside the arena three hours before puck drop.

The hockey players loved it too.

Obviously.

Half of them walked around campus like they'd personally cured disease.

You adjusted the strap of your camera bag higher onto your shoulder as you crossed the journalism building courtyard, narrowly avoiding a pack of freshmen nearly trampling each other in pursuit of a hockey player exiting a black SUV.

Jesus Christ.

"Garrett looked at me," one girl whispered, clutching her backpack straps like a lifeline.

"He literally smiled at you," her friend breathed.

"I'm never washing this jacket again," said a third, who had nothing to do with the exchange except proximity.

You resisted the urge to turn and ask if they heard themselves. Instead, you shouldered through the heavy glass doors of Adler Hall, the air inside thick with printer toner and ancient carpet dust, and trudged upstairs toward Professor Adler's office. Your coffee balanced precariously in one hand while your camera bag thumped a syncopated rhythm against your hip with every step.

Your life currently existed in three places: the journalism club office, the photography lab, and whichever coffee shop on campus tolerated you squatting in a corner booth for six hours straight, cradling a laptop and editing photos until your eyes watered. It was manageable. Barely. But manageable.

Which is why Professor Adler emailing you at eight in the morning with: Need to discuss your semester exhibition proposal. Urgent. felt vaguely threatening.

His office door sat half-open, the narrow wedge revealing a slice of his disorganized world: shelves buckling under the weight of books and old yearbooks, an actual typewriter gathering dust on the windowsill, and a whiteboard covered in what looked like a mind map for a true crime podcast episode. The rain outside tapped a nervous Morse code against the glass, diffusing the early light into something gray and indecisive.

You knocked once before entering. "If this is about the deadline extension, in my defense, capitalism thrives on artistic suffering."

Adler didn't even look up from the papers on his desk. "You're late."

"You assigned the meeting twelve minutes ago."

"That doesn't make you less late."

You dropped into the chair across from him, the seat still warm from whoever had been chewed out before you. "So what academic disaster are we preventing today?"

He looked up. A red Bic pen dangled from his fingers, and your proposal sat in front of him, already bleeding with edits.

You winced. "That bad?"

"No," he said, and the word sounded like a verdict. "Actually, it's annoyingly good."

"…that sounded personal."

"The problem," he continued, ignoring you, "is that your work lacks proximity."

You blinked, thrown. "What does that even mean?"

"You photograph people beautifully," Adler said, leaning back so his chair creaked. "But always from emotional distance. You observe. You do not immerse."

"That's called journalism. Emotional attachment gets people fired."

He smiled, the kind of smile you wanted to bleach from your brain. "That's called fear of vulnerability."

You narrowed your eyes. "I liked you better before you started psychoanalyzing me."

He slid a single page across the desk, the motion crisp and final. Your stomach dropped before your eyes even found the Briar Hockey logo at the top.

"No."

"You haven't even read it."

"I don't need to. The answer's still no."

"The hockey program granted full media access for one student this semester."

"Wonderful for whichever masochist accepts."

"You're accepting," Adler said, and the pen in his hand pointed at you like a referee's whistle.

You stared at him. He stared back. The radiator clanked to life in the corner, filling the silence with a hot metallic groan.

"You cannot be serious."

"I am entirely serious."

"No offense, Professor, but I would genuinely rather eat denim."

"The exhibition needs intimacy."

"It needs literally anything else."

"You want to become a sports journalist."

"A sports photographer."

"A distinction no employer will care about."

You hated when he did that.

"You want major publications?" he continued. "Olympics. ESPN. Sports Illustrated. Then you need to learn how to document athletes beyond staged action shots."

Your jaw tightened. Because the worst part? He wasn't wrong.

"You'll photograph the team throughout the semester," Adler said. "Practices, games, travel days, interviews. Alongside that, you'll write a weekly column documenting the culture surrounding Briar Hockey."

"Culture," you repeated. "So alcoholism and concussions."

Adler sighed, but his eyes glinted with something dangerous, maybe hope. "Your inability to take anything seriously is remarkable."

"No, what's remarkable is Briar giving athletes their own kingdom while the arts department still has cameras from the Jurassic period."

"That cynicism is exactly why I chose you."

You leaned back, arms crossed, refusing to be cajoled.

Athletes.

God.

Every professor on campus suddenly developed selective amnesia around deadlines once jerseys entered the equation. Entire buildings bent around the hockey team's existence: tutors, sponsorships, priority scheduling, campus celebrity for boys who occasionally punched each other professionally. And now you were supposed to spend a semester documenting them like some poetic coming-of-age documentary?

Hell.

"No interviews before ten a.m.," you muttered.

Adler smiled slowly, like a man who'd already won. "I'll let Coach Jensen know."

You pointed at him. "That isn't agreement. That's surrender."

"Same thing."

The Briar arena was a half-submerged spaceship, all glass and aluminum, rising out of the mud at the edge of campus. The inside smelled like cold metal, melting ice, and that particular brand of detergent used to clean blood from tile. The air was a shock, a sudden slap of cold that crystallized your breath and made every sound echo like a gunshot. The overhead lights burned with industrial fluorescence, throwing hard shadows across the rink and turning every edge into a geometric threat.

You stepped inside twenty minutes before practice, camera already out, the wide lens making the world seem more remote than it really was. Arena staff moved like ghosts, setting up pylons and cones, their footsteps muffled by rubber mats. High above, banners hung limp in the stale air, each one a decade-old boast about championships and All-Americans, the fabric stained by time and humidity.

Most of the seats were empty except for a couple of bored students in Briar hoodies, already scrolling their phones in the front row. On the ice, a handful of players stretched along the boards, their movements precise and oddly graceful, like dancers in a physics experiment.

One of them looked up as you approached. Tall, wide-shouldered, hair the color of burnt wheat curling beneath a backwards Briar cap. Even from a distance, he radiated the kind of confidence that got people article headlines and interview slots on ESPN. Garrett Graham.

Of course.

Even if you didn't follow hockey, everyone on campus knew Garrett Graham. Team captain, future NHL draft hopeful, the face of Briar Athletics since sophomore year. He looked exactly like the kind of guy people described with words like electric and legacy.

You hated that you understood why.

His eyes tracked the camera swinging at your chest. Immediate annoyance flickered across his face, a subtle tightening around the mouth. Interesting.

You pretended not to notice, instead lifting your camera to check the settings, the lens cap already stashed in a jacket pocket. The sound of skates carving the ice echoed through the arena as more players filed in: some laughing, some still half-asleep, all of them carrying the casual violence of people who considered pain a minor inconvenience.

You started photographing before anyone could object.

Gloves tightening, tape winding in clean spirals around sticks, a player wincing as he adjusted his helmet, steam curling from coffee cups balanced precariously on the bench. Real things. Not performance.

A camera shutter echoed in the cold, sharp and precise.

Garrett's head snapped toward you. His expression hardened, the lines of his face sharpening with irritation. Oh, he really hated this.

You snapped another photo, deliberately.

Petty? Maybe. Worth it? Absolutely.

He glided over, stopping at the bench directly in front of you, skates planted wide and arms folded. "You always point that thing at people without asking?"

You lowered the camera, fighting the urge to smile. "You always introduce yourself like an asshole, or is today special?"

His eyebrows quirked up, caught off guard. Behind him, another player snorted, the sound barely muffled by a glove.

Garrett ignored it. "Media?"

"Journalism and photography."

"That explains it."

You smiled thinly. "And hockey explains the superiority complex."

For a second, he just watched you, like he was trying to decide if you were joking, or if you were dangerous. Then: "I hate media."

"Cute," you replied. "I hate entitled athletes. Looks like we both have hobbies."

Behind him, someone actually laughed. Garrett's jaw worked, and he shot a glare over his shoulder before fixing you with that captain's stare again. "You writing one of those tragic athlete pieces?"

You shrugged. "I prefer investigative journalism. Thinking of exposing Briar Hockey's devastating impact on female GPA averages."

He almost smiled, but caught himself. "Funny."

"I try."

"You planning on following us everywhere now?"

"Unfortunately."

He exhaled, and you watched frost bloom in the air between you. "Just don't get too close to the glass during drills. We break a lot of shit."

You nodded, camera poised again. "Noted. I'd hate for your slapshot to ruin my thousand-dollar lens."

His mouth twitched. "I'd hate for your thousand-dollar lens to ruin my slapshot."

Coach Jensen blew a whistle from across the rink, the sound slicing through conversation. "Graham!"

Garrett looked away first, which you mentally logged as a win. "See you around, journalism," he said, and then skated off, leaving a trail of shaved ice in his wake.

You watched practice from behind the benches, shooting through the plexiglass, camera pressed to your face until the tip of your nose went numb. The speed surprised you most-not television hockey, but real hockey. Fast enough to blur, violent in the way storms are violent, unpredictable and beautiful in the same breath.

Your camera loved movement.

Bodies ricocheting off glass, skates churning up snow, gloves colliding with helmets, a bruise blossoming under a player's eye before the period was half over. The noise was relentless: whistles, shouts, the thunk of pucks and the scrape of blades, all of it amplified in the empty arena.

There was something strangely beautiful about controlled destruction.

Hours passed. The rink emptied and refilled with each new drill. By the time practice ended, your memory card was nearly full and your fingers ached from the cold. Players drifted off the ice in packs, towels slung around their necks, joking and chirping each other in a language that belonged exclusively to locker rooms.

You stayed behind, photographing the arena as it emptied, the condensation on the glass, the ghostly tracks left by skates.

That's when you noticed him.

Garrett.

Still alone on the ice, long after the others had left. No audience now, no teammates, just the echo of his skates as he traced slow, perfect circles under the half-lit scoreboard.

He looked different through the lens. Not Briar Hockey's captain, not campus royalty.

Just tired.

You snapped a photo as he coasted to a stop at center ice. Garrett's head turned at the shutter's click, eyes locking onto you even from half a rink away.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

Then something passed over his face-surprise, maybe, or resignation-and he skated toward the exit without a word.

You looked down at the photo on your screen. It should've been like every other sports shot you'd ever taken.

But this one looked lonely.

And for reasons you couldn't explain yet, that unsettled you more than anything else.

For the first week, Briar Hockey still felt fictional. You moved through their schedule like a ghost, hovering at the edge of drills and film sessions, always present but never part of anything. Practice after practice, you learned the choreography: the way the team captain led stretches with dry sarcasm, how the D-men chirped the freshmen, the pattern of tape-then-glove-then-helmet before each player hit the ice.

Sometimes you caught Garrett glancing at you, brow furrowed in mild disbelief-like he was still waiting for you to blink out of existence. You made a game of pretending not to notice, but your camera betrayed you every time, following his movements through the viewfinder.

There were moments when the world narrowed to just the two of you: the echo of a slapshot, the sharp scent of sweat and ice, dust motes dancing through sunlight in the upper rows of the stands. You told yourself it was just good photography.

But the photos told a different story.

After each session, you sorted through them in the dim light of your editing booth, shivering in your hoodie even though the room was warm. The shots that mattered-the ones that made Professor Adler’s lips curl in grudging approval-were never the ones you expected.

Not the glory shots. Not the goal celebrations or arms-raised-in-victory.

Instead: the exhaustion in Garrett’s eyes after a brutal scrimmage. The way a defenseman pressed his forehead to the glass after a mistake, breath fogging the surface. The quiet, private moments when someone sat alone in the penalty box, helmet off, hair matted flat.

You started to see it. The thing Adler kept harping on. Proximity.

You started to want it, too.

The second week, you worked up the nerve to approach Logan, the team’s PR guy, after a particularly bloody practice. He was leaning against the wall, scrolling his phone, a fresh bruise already blooming above his eyebrow.

“Do you ever get used to the bleeding?” you asked, voice pitched low.

Logan glanced up, grinned with half his mouth. “Nope. But you learn to dress for it.” He flicked the collar of his black t-shirt, now spattered with a Rorschach of red. “You’re the photo kid, right?”

You nodded, feeling suddenly self-conscious about the camera hanging from your neck like a borrowed credential.

Logan’s eyes flicked to your hands, then back to your face. “You shoot a lot of hockey?”

“Not unless you count men’s league at the Y,” you said. “They let you drink in the penalty box there.”

He barked a laugh. “Hell of a business model.” Then, more gently: “You’re good. The guys don’t always like cameras in their faces, but they haven’t started icing your tripod yet. That’s a win.”

You smiled, and for the first time since starting this assignment, it felt real.

After that, things got easier. You fell into the rhythm of the team: early mornings, late nights, the constant cycle of sweat and study and recovery. You learned to recognize the moods, the rising tension before a game, the bruised silence after a loss. Even Garrett began to tolerate you, though he never stopped glowering whenever you caught him on film.

The first away game was a three-hour bus ride north, through the kind of November rain that made the highway look endless. You sat near the front, editing photos in the blue glow of your laptop, but you kept one ear tuned to the back of the bus where the team played poker and heckled each other relentlessly.

At a rest stop, Garrett passed by your seat, pausing just long enough to look at your screen.

“You ever put the camera down?” he said.

“Only when I sleep,” you replied.

He made a low, skeptical sound, then nodded at the image on your monitor-a shot of him mid-game, helmet askew, eyes fixed on the puck.

“You make us look tired,” he said.

“Maybe I’m just catching what’s already there.”

He stared at you for a beat, then gave a grudging smile. “Fair.”

The bus rolled on, rain hammering the windows, and you watched the night blur past in streaks of yellow and black.

By December, you stopped noticing the cold. The rink was just another classroom, the locker room a strange second home. You started to understand the language of hockey-the coded handshakes, the superstition rituals, the way even the worst insults meant you were part of the group.

You understood, too, that Garrett was more complicated than the press releases let on. He played through pain with a kind of stubborn grace, never complained, never asked for anything. After every game, he was the last to leave the ice.

One night, you caught him sitting alone in the stands, helmet off, just watching the Zamboni circle the rink.

You sat beside him, camera left zipped in your bag.

“Everything okay?” you asked.

He shrugged, eyes distant. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

He hesitated, then: “This is my last season. Feels weird.”

You nodded. “You’ll miss it.”

“Yeah.” His voice was so soft you almost missed it. “But I’ll miss this, too.” He gestured at the empty arena, the echoing silence.

You looked at him, really looked, and for the first time you saw not Briar’s captain, but just a guy trying to hold on to something slipping through his fingers.

You didn’t take a photo. Not then.

Instead, you sat together in the quiet, letting the moment stretch out between you.

When you turned in your next set of photos, Professor Adler didn’t say anything for a long time. He just paged through them, one by one, eyes sharp and unreadable.

Finally, he set them down.

“You’re getting closer,” he said quietly. “Good work.”

You left his office with a strange ache in your chest, like you’d just finished a race you didn’t remember starting.

You wondered if this was what it meant to want something badly enough to risk being seen.

You wondered if it was worth it.

The next morning, you arrived at the arena before sunrise. The parking lot was empty, the world muffled by new snow. You stood at the edge of the rink, breath fogging in the cold, and waited for the team to arrive.

When Garrett walked in, he didn’t look surprised to see you. He just nodded, then laced up his skates in silence.

You lifted your camera, but he shook his head.

“Not today,” he said. “Just watch.”

So you did.

You watched him move across the ice, alone and unhurried, carving slow, perfect lines through the untouched surface. There was no performance, no crowd, no reason to impress anyone.

It was just him, and the ice, and the beginnings of a story you suddenly couldn’t wait to tell.

You didn’t take a single photo.

You just watched, and listened, and learned what it meant to be close.

By January, Garrett Graham had become impossible to avoid.

Not physically. You could still navigate campus without collision, still maintain professional distance at practices, still pretend your stomach didn't lurch when he entered a room.

Emotionally.

Which was significantly worse.

The arena in winter existed in perpetual twilight. Even at noon, the sun barely cleared the horizon, casting everything in that particular New England gray that made the world feel underwater. You arrived earlier each morning, until your presence became part of the building's routine-the security guard nodding without checking your ID, the Zamboni driver lifting a hand in greeting as he guided his machine across the ice in pre-dawn darkness.

The cold had changed texture. November's sharp bite had softened into something wet and insidious, the kind of chill that crept through jacket seams and settled in your bones for hours. Your coffee went lukewarm faster. Your camera batteries died quicker. Everything required more effort.

And somewhere between Thanksgiving and now, things had shifted.

Garrett started looking for you first after games.

It happened subtly, like ice thinning beneath snow. You noticed it first in the locker room-that split second when the door opened post-game, steam billowing out carrying the scent of sweat and soap and adrenaline, and Garrett's eyes found yours immediately. Not scanning the crowd. Finding you.

A glance across crowded spaces. Small pauses in conversation when you entered rooms. The way he angled his body toward you during interviews, even when answering questions directed at someone else.

Like he noticed your absence now.

Dangerous.

"You know," Logan said one afternoon while you photographed practice drills, your breath fogging in the frigid air, "this is the longest Garrett's willingly tolerated a media person."

You lowered your camera slightly, lens cap dangling against your chest. "What an honor."

"I'm serious," he laughed, skating a lazy circle around you. "Usually he acts like reporters personally killed his family."

"Maybe I'm charming."

From across the ice, Garrett snorted audibly.

You looked up immediately.

He was watching you. Not casually either. Actually watching you, stick resting loose in his gloved hands, helmet pushed back to expose damp hair curling against his forehead. The arena lights caught the sweat on his skin, turned his eyes into something bright and unreadable.

The realization hit hard enough to make your stomach tighten unexpectedly.

You looked away first.

Coward.

The thing nobody warned you about regarding sports photography was how intimate it felt sometimes.

You spent hours observing people through glass. Learning the architecture of their faces-how frustration settled into jawlines, how exhaustion hollowed cheeks, how joy transformed everything about them. You memorized the way bodies moved when unguarded: the slump of shoulders after losses, the unconscious preening after victories, the small gestures of comfort players offered each other in silence.

You noticed when someone was injured before trainers admitted it publicly. You learned which smiles reached eyes and which were manufactured for cameras, the subtle difference between a grin that showed teeth and one that showed feeling.

And Garrett-

Garrett had become terrifyingly readable to you.

You knew when frustration sat heavy on his shoulders before he even spoke, could read it in the set of his mouth during warmups, the extra violence in his stickhandling.

Knew when exhaustion sharpened his voice, that particular roughness that emerged after road trips and double-headers.

Knew when pressure hollowed him out quietly after losses, the way he sat in his stall longer than necessary, methodically untaping his wrists while the room emptied around him.

Worst of all?

He knew things about you now too.

"You didn't sleep again."

You glanced up from your laptop in the empty media room, the blue glow of the screen painting your hands in cold light. Outside the windows, snow fell in heavy, silent flakes, already burying the campus in white.

Garrett leaned against the doorway still half-dressed from practice, damp hair curling slightly against his forehead, the collar of his Briar hoodie dark with sweat. The hallway light behind him turned him into a silhouette until he stepped inside, and then you could see the purple shadows beneath his eyes, the matching exhaustion in his face.

"How can you tell?"

"You get meaner when you're tired."

"I'm always mean."

"Exactly."

You threw a pen at him.

He caught it effortlessly, that stupid athlete reflex, and you hated the small smile that tugged at your mouth.

Show-off.

"You have a game tomorrow," you said, turning back to your screen. "Shouldn't you be doing captain things?"

"I am."

"That sounds concerning."

Garrett walked further into the room, his sneakers squeaking faintly on the industrial carpet. His eyes landed on the photographs scattered across your desk-prints you'd been sorting for the exhibition, edges curling slightly in the dry heated air.

Most were unfinished edits from the semester so far: bruised hands wrapped in tape, fogged arena glass with fingerprints pressed against the inside, players collapsing exhausted against the boards after overtime wins.

Then there were the Garrett photos.

Far too many Garrett photos.

You tried not to think about that.

"You make hockey look sad," he said quietly, picking up one image-himself alone on the ice after practice, head bowed, steam rising from his shoulders in the cold air.

"That's because it is."

He looked at you then. Really looked, with an intensity that made you want to adjust the thermostat or open a window or flee to Antarctica.

"Thought you hated hockey."

"I hate what people turn athletes into."

Something flickered across his expression briefly. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition.

"You know what the weirdest part is?" you continued, leaning back in your chair until it creaked. "Everyone thinks sports are about winning."

Garrett folded his arms, leaning against the desk beside you. The heat of him radiated through the small space between your shoulders, and you focused very hard on your computer screen. "They are."

"No," you said softly. "They're about being witnessed."

Silence settled heavily between you, thick enough to taste.

Outside the media room windows, snow drifted slowly across campus beneath pale evening lights, turning the world into a snow globe someone had shaken and forgotten.

Garrett's voice came quieter this time, rougher.

"That sounds like something you figured out about yourself."

Your chest tightened instantly.

You hated when he did that. Took your words apart carefully until they exposed things you weren't trying to say aloud, held them up to the light like evidence.

"I think," you said slowly, "you're developing a very unhealthy habit of psychoanalyzing me."

"You started it."

"True."

His mouth curved slightly, and God, that smile was becoming a genuine problem. It reached his eyes now, changed the whole architecture of his face from guarded to something almost soft.

Almost reachable.

The rumors started before either of you acknowledged what was happening.

Not real rumors. Nothing concrete or actionable. Just observations, the kind that accumulated like snow until you couldn't ignore the weight anymore.

"You and Graham are weird lately."

You glanced up from editing photos inside the journalism office, the overhead fluorescents buzzing their electric song. "Define weird."

Your friend Jenna leaned against the desk dramatically, her scarf still beaded with melting snow. "Sexual tension weird."

You nearly choked on coffee, the liquid going down wrong enough to make your eyes water.

"There is no sexual tension."

"Babe," she deadpanned, "he looks at you like you invented oxygen."

"That is biologically inaccurate."

"He literally waits for you after games."

"He's being polite."

Jenna stared at you with genuine pity, her eyebrows raised in silent judgment. "You are unbelievably stupid."

You ignored her.

Mostly because if you thought too hard about Garrett waiting outside media rooms lately, leaning against walls with his hands shoved in his pockets, watching the door like he had nowhere else to be, you might actually combust.

Friday night games at Briar felt less like sporting events and more like controlled hysteria.

The arena pulsed with noise, a physical pressure against your eardrums that you could feel in your teeth. Students screamed themselves hoarse from the stands, faces painted, bodies packed so tight you could see heat rising from the crowd in the cold air. Cameras flashed relentlessly across the ice, strobing against the white surface. Music shook through the building loud enough to rattle your ribs, bass notes you felt in your sternum, as players skated onto the rink beneath blinding lights that turned everything sharp and surreal.

You photographed from beside the glass during warmups, the cold radiating through the barrier, your breath fogging in quick bursts.

Click. Click. Click.

Garrett moved differently during games. Sharper. Faster. Like adrenaline transformed him into something dangerous and beautiful, all controlled violence and impossible grace.

You caught him slamming another player into the boards hard enough to shake the glass near you, the impact vibrating through your palms where they braced against the barrier. The crowd erupted instantly, a roar that swallowed thought.

Through your lens, Garrett looked almost unreal beneath arena lighting-sweat shining on his temples, bruises blooming purple against his jaw, fury written in every line of him.

People loved athletes most when they appeared invincible.

Then-

His eyes found yours through the glass.

Everything paused strangely for half a second. Not the game, not the world, not the screaming crowd. Just you. Your finger hesitated against the shutter, suspended above the button.

And Garrett-

Garrett smiled.

Small. Brief. Barely there, really, just a slight curve of his mouth that softened everything about him.

Only for you.

Your stomach dropped violently, a sudden free-fall that had nothing to do with gravity.

Oh, this was bad.

Briar won 5-2.

The locker room afterward exploded with noise and celebration, steam and sweat and the sharp chemical smell of industrial cleaner, while reporters crowded near players gathering post-game quotes. Music pounded from someone's speaker, something triumphant and loud.

You stayed near the back photographing candid moments instead, your camera drinking in the chaos: a defenseman laughing with his head thrown back, two forwards embracing hard enough to bruise, equipment scattered like abandoned armor across benches.

Victory looked different up close. Messier. More exhausted. Less like glory and more like relief.

Garrett sat near his stall tugging tape from his wrists in methodical strips, while reporters circled nearby waiting for interviews. The captain mask had already settled back onto his face-controlled answers, practiced composure, every word measured and safe.

You watched him carefully through your lens, the autofocus hunting slightly in the steam-thick air.

Then one reporter asked: "Do you feel pressure carrying this team into finals?"

Something changed instantly. Barely noticeable to anyone else. But you saw it.

Garrett's jaw tightened slightly, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. His shoulders stiffened, drawing inward like he was bracing for impact.

Pressure. Always pressure.

"Comes with the job," he answered evenly.

Another reporter: "NHL scouts attended tonight. Thoughts?"

"There are scouts at every game."

"But expectations are higher this season."

Garrett smiled politely. The kind that never reached his eyes, that stretched his mouth without touching anything else.

You lowered your camera slowly.

Everyone in the room saw Briar's captain. You saw someone drowning quietly beneath expectations he'd carried too long, the weight of it visible in the set of his shoulders, the tension in his hands.

And suddenly-you couldn't stand it.

"You guys done?" you interrupted sharply.

Several reporters turned toward you, faces annoyed.

One frowned. "We're in the middle of-"

"He's answered like fifteen questions already."

Garrett blinked at you slightly, surprise breaking through the mask for just a moment.

You shrugged one shoulder, focusing very hard on your camera settings. "Some of us enjoy post-game silence."

The reporters grumbled but gradually backed off toward other players, sensing the shift in atmosphere.

When the room finally cleared enough, Garrett looked over at you, tape still half-removed from his wrist.

"You just bullied reporters for me."

"I bullied reporters for everyone."

"That isn't denial."

You busied yourself adjusting camera settings, fingers moving automatically. "Don't make it weird."

Too late.

It was already weird.

The darkroom became your favorite place on campus after that.

Quiet. Red lighting that turned everything into shades of crimson and shadow. No expectations, no crowds, no noise except the gentle slosh of chemicals in trays and the soft hum of the ventilation system.

You spent hours there developing film photographs for the exhibition while music played softly from your phone speaker, something moody and instrumental that matched the womb-like atmosphere. The chemical tang of the developer filled your nose, familiar and comforting.

Most nights nobody bothered you.

Except Garrett apparently.

The door creaked open around midnight one Tuesday, the sound impossibly loud in the silence.

"You know normal people sleep at this hour, right?"

You looked up from the developing trays, your hands submerged in liquid that turned your skin pale and strange. The safelight painted everything in shades of blood and black, softening edges, hiding flaws.

Garrett stepped inside slowly, hands shoved into the pockets of a grey Briar hoodie, the door clicking shut behind him. The red lighting softened everything about him-sharp jawline, tired eyes, the uncertainty in his posture.

Dangerous information.

"What are you doing here?" you asked.

He leaned against the counter beside you, close enough that you could smell the faint traces of his soap beneath the chemical sharpness. "Could ask you the same thing."

"I was here first."

"Fair."

You returned attention to the photograph slowly appearing in the tray beneath your hands, watching shapes emerge from white paper like memories surfacing.

Garrett watched quietly, his reflection ghostly in the liquid surface.

Then: "That one's good."

You glanced down.

It was him again. Sitting alone in the locker room after a game, head lowered, bruised knuckles resting against his knees, steam rising from his shoulders. Vulnerable. Human. Caught in a moment he'd never have allowed if he'd known you were watching.

"You hate when I photograph you like this," you said softly.

"No," Garrett replied after a moment. His voice was different here. Quieter. "I hate that you're the only one who notices."

Your breath caught slightly.

The darkroom suddenly felt much smaller. Too warm. Too close. The red light made everything feel dreamlike and dangerous and intimate in ways you absolutely did not know how to handle.

Garrett stepped nearer beside you, looking down at the photographs spread across the counter, their edges curling slightly in the humidity.

"You never photograph yourself."

You laughed lightly, the sound strange in the enclosed space. "That's because I'm better behind the camera."

"I don't think you realize people look at you too."

That-

Your pulse stumbled hard enough to physically hurt, a sudden arrhythmia that made you grip the edge of the counter.

The red lighting made everything feel dreamlike and dangerous and intimate in ways you absolutely did not know how to handle. It turned Garrett's eyes into something dark and endless, softened his mouth into something that looked like invitation.

Garrett looked at you differently now. Not like campus media. Not casually. Like he was trying to memorize something, like he was afraid you might disappear.

And maybe you were doing the exact same thing.

"You should go," you said quietly.

His eyes flicked toward yours, searching.

"Why?"

Because if you stayed in this room another minute, you were going to kiss him. The realization nearly knocked the air from your lungs, a certainty that resonated through your whole body.

You forced yourself to look away first, focusing on the photograph developing slowly beneath red light, Garrett's lonely image emerging clearer by the second.

"I have work to finish."

Garrett stayed still for another second. Then two. You felt his gaze on your profile, heavy and warm and wanting.

Then finally he nodded once, pushed off the counter.

"See you tomorrow, photographer."

The door closed softly behind him, the click of the latch impossibly loud in the silence.

You stared down at the photograph developing slowly beneath red light afterward, your hands shaking slightly where they gripped the tray.

Garrett Graham looked lonely even in still images, isolated in the frame, steam rising from his shoulders like smoke.

And somehow-you were beginning to understand exactly what that loneliness felt like.

Everything fell apart the week Briar started winning again.

Which felt fitting, somehow.

Success made people cruel.

The campus transformed overnight after the team secured their place heading into finals. Students flooded the arena in record numbers, roaring for blood. Sports pages exploded with headlines, and suddenly everyone wanted something from Briar Hockey again: interviews, predictions, access. The air on campus was different-brittle and electric, as if everyone was bracing for a storm.

You noticed it first in the journalism office. Under the wash of fluorescent light and the metallic hum of old computers, paper stacked in precarious towers, there was a tension you could feel in your teeth. Reporters who normally ignored you now hovered near your desk, trying to peek at unfinished edits. Professors started forwarding your articles to faculty boards, like they wanted to claim a piece of your work before the rest of the world could. Even the journalism club treated your hockey coverage differently now.

Like proximity to success made your work more legitimate.

You hated that.

"You should submit the Graham piece nationally," Jenna said, looming over your shoulder with a mug of coffee, her ponytail swinging like a metronome.

You looked up from your battered laptop. "Absolutely not."

Jenna frowned, her eyebrows scrunching together in a way that always made her look twelve. "Why?"

"Because I'm not exploiting someone's emotional collapse for career advancement."

She slumped into the cracked plastic chair across from you, smiling with too many teeth. "That's… aggressively noble of you."

"It's called ethics."

"It's called self-sabotage."

Maybe. But some things didn’t belong to the audience. Especially not Garrett.

That realization alone should’ve terrified you more than it did.

The article was published Thursday morning.

You didn’t write it.

But the damage still landed on your doorstep anyway.

BRIAR CAPTAIN CRACKING UNDER PRESSURE?

The headline glared from the student sports page beside a photograph of Garrett leaving the rink after a loss earlier that week. Your photograph. Except cropped tighter now. Darker. Meaner somehow. The exhaustion in Garrett’s face had been transformed into spectacle, the grain of digital shadow accentuating every crack in his composure.

Your stomach dropped violently.

No.

No, no, no.

You grabbed the newspaper immediately, scanning the article faster with every line.

Anonymous sources. Speculation about NHL pressure. Questions about leadership. Claims Garrett was "emotionally unraveling" before finals.

Jesus Christ.

Your name wasn’t attached to the article.

But the photograph was.

And everyone would know it came from you.

"Hey," Jenna said carefully from nearby. "I don’t think the editor cleared that with anyone."

You were already standing.

"Where is he?" 

"I used available media resources."

You stared at the sports editor across his desk in disbelief, a stack of discarded proofs between you.

"You stole my work," you said, voice shaking so badly you had to clutch the camera bag at your hip.

"It was submitted to the paper database," he replied, not even bothering to meet your eyes.

"For exhibition review," you snapped. "Not publication."

He leaned back, spinning an old Bic pen between his fingers. "The article needed visuals."

"That photograph wasn't meant for public release."

"It's journalism."

"No," you said sharply, rage starting to eclipse your panic. "It's exploitation."

A few staff members nearby went silent, their fingers freezing mid-keystroke.

The editor shrugged, lips curling. "You're getting emotional over an athlete."

Something inside you hardened instantly.

"You know what your problem is?" you said quietly. "You think people stop being human the second audiences find them entertaining."

His expression shifted slightly.

Good.

"You wanted drama," you continued. "Not truth. There’s a difference."

Then you walked out before you said something career-ending.

Your phone buzzed nonstop afterward.

Messages. Notifications. Social media discourse exploding around the article.

Some people defended Garrett. Others called him weak. Others treated the entire thing like celebrity gossip.

You muted everything.

The worst part wasn’t even the article.

It was knowing Garrett was going to think you allowed it.

And honestly?

You didn’t know if you could blame him.

Practice that evening felt wrong immediately.

Quieter.

The locker room lacked its usual energy, players speaking in low voices while coaches stalked around visibly irritated. The arena echoed with the hollow clang of pucks off metal, and every so often you caught a cold stare from someone on staff.

The article had spread fast.

Garrett stood near the bench retaping his stick when you entered the arena. Under the harsh LED glare, he looked carved out of marble. You could see the black tape bite into itself, the methodical sharpness of his hands.

His eyes landed on you instantly.

No smile this time.

No softness either.

Just distance.

Your chest tightened painfully.

You approached slowly. "Garrett-"

"Did you get what you needed?"

The question hit harder than yelling would’ve.

"What?"

He laughed once quietly, but there wasn’t humor in it. "The article. The photo. Whole tragic captain narrative."

"I didn’t write that piece."

"But you took the photo."

"Yes," you admitted immediately. "But I never approved publication."

Garrett looked away briefly, jaw tightening. You noticed the raw friction in his hands, the way he flexed his fingers like he wanted to crush the stick in half.

Around you, the arena noise blurred strangely distant.

"I trusted you," he said finally.

God.

That almost physically hurt.

"I know."

"No, I don’t think you do." His voice stayed calm, which somehow made it worse. "You said not everything deserves an audience."

"It didn’t."

"Then why does half the campus suddenly think I’m having a breakdown?"

You stepped closer instinctively. "Garrett, listen to me-"

"You know what’s funny?" he interrupted quietly. "I actually forgot you were media sometimes."

The words landed like a slap.

Because somewhere along the line-

you forgot too.

You forgot this started as observation. Documentation. Career ambition.

Not feelings.

Never feelings.

"You think I wanted this?" you asked, anger finally breaking through the guilt. "Do you seriously think I’d use you like that?"

Garrett looked exhausted suddenly.

Not angry. Just tired.

"I don’t know," he admitted.

And somehow that hurt worst of all.

Coach Jensen shouted something from across the rink before practice officially started.

Players began moving toward the ice.

Garrett grabbed his helmet without another word.

"Wait," you said.

He stopped.

Your throat tightened painfully around everything you wanted to explain.

That you never meant to become someone capable of hurting him. That every photograph started feeling personal somewhere along the way. That being seen by Garrett terrified you more than any future failure ever had.

Instead what came out was: "I’m sorry."

Garrett nodded once.

Then skated away.

You stopped attending practices after that.

Technically not entirely.

You still photographed games. Still submitted recaps. But you did it all from the periphery, hiding behind the lens, refusing to step into the light of the rink.

It felt like a punishment.

It felt deserved.

You slept less, edited more, and tried to ignore the way your camera felt heavier every day. Jenna noticed your absence but didn’t press. She had always been good at letting things rot quietly.

You wondered if that was a skill you'd ever develop.

Finals week arrived with a vengeful blizzard.

Campus shut down for two full days before the championship, and you spent them in the darkroom, letting the chemical stink bleach your thoughts. You printed old negatives, watching the world swim into focus in shallow trays of developer. It was easier-safer-to hide in the hush of running water and the thump of your own heartbeat.

On the morning of the game, you laid out your prints, one by one, across the table. Most were of the team, faces half-obscured by helmets or visors, but Garrett always stood out. Even in profile, even blurred by motion, he looked like the only one awake in a room of sleepwalkers.

It was stupid, but you found yourself tracing the sharp line of his jaw through the plastic sleeve, remembering the way he frowned when he thought no one was watching.

You almost didn’t go to the arena that night.

But the thought of someone else telling Garrett’s story finally propelled you from the darkness, out into the teeth of the storm.

The championship was a riot.

Spectators packed into the stands in a fever, banners and confetti everywhere. The entire campus vibrated with anticipation. The game itself was brutal-three periods of bone-shattering hits and near-fistfights, referees constantly separating players like agitated dogs.

You watched Garrett from the penalty box, camera trained on him as he barked orders and smashed his stick against the boards, veins standing out in his neck. He was a force of nature, uncontainable and viciously alive.

The final buzzer sounded with Briar up by one.

The arena detonated.

You caught a single image of Garrett at the moment of victory: helmet gone, mouth open in a scream, sweat and blood mixing on his face. His teammates mobbed him, the ice littered with gloves and sticks.

You lowered your camera, hands shaking.

It was over.

Except it wasn’t.

Not for you.

You found Garrett in the hallway outside the locker rooms, still in partial uniform, hair damp and wild. He looked at you like he expected you to vanish.

Instead, you held out the print.

He took it carefully, staring at the image in silence.

You waited.

Finally, Garrett looked up. His voice was rough. "You could’ve sold this."

You shrugged. "Didn’t want to."

He turned the print over in his hands, the edges bending slightly. "I’m not mad at you," he said. "Not really."

You believed him.

But it still felt like a wound.

"Can I ask you something?" you said.

He nodded.

"Why hockey?" It wasn’t what you meant to say. But it was honest.

Garrett smiled, slow and tired. "It hurts when I stop."

You understood that.

Maybe too well.

You reached out and touched his wrist, half-expecting him to pull away. He didn’t.

"I wanted to tell the truth. Not just the story people wanted," you said.

His thumb brushed the edge of the photograph, thoughtful. "You did," he said. "Even when it sucked."

You laughed, the sound ugly and wet.

Garrett leaned in, his forehead bumping gently against yours. "You know," he said, "I never minded being seen. As long as it was you."

The words hung between you, sharp and soft at the same time.

You closed your eyes, the relief dizzying.

Maybe the world didn’t deserve every part of you.

But this moment?

You’d keep it for yourself. 

The article that ran the next week was yours.

It was about victory, and exhaustion, and the cost of letting people in. It was about a team and a captain and the stupid, reckless hope of believing in something-someone-enough to risk disappointment.

The campus read it. The faculty shared it. But you didn’t care about that anymore.

You cared about the photograph taped to Garrett’s locker.

And the quiet knowledge that, for once, you hadn’t betrayed the story.

Or the person at its heart.

[isbellah]

code blue

jack abbot x reader

summary . . . Jack Abbot thought he stopped noticing people a long time ago. The hospital had a way of sanding grief down into routine - overnight shifts, cold coffee, fluorescent lights that made everyone look half-dead before they even were. But every night for a week, he notices the same woman sitting outside Room 214. The last person he expects to find in that hallway is you - the woman he once loved in the aftermath of losing everything. Now you're keeping vigil beside the hospital room of the ex-husband who broke your heart, and Jack is forced to confront the ghosts the two of you never really buried. A hospital grief fic about widowhood, loss, oncology wards, and the terrifying intimacy of being understood by someone who survived the same kind of devastation you did.

warning . . . grief, death/mourning, mentions of child loss, cancer/hospice themes, hospitals/medical settings, emotional dependency, unresolved trauma, discussions of terminal illness, complicated relationships, depression themes, exhaustion/burnout, subtle references to abandonment and divorce.

author's note . . . this fic deals heavily with grief and loss. all characters and storylines are fictional, and this work is fanfiction created as transformative fan art.

word count . . . 2.8k

Jack Abbot had worked enough overnight ER shifts to stop noticing most people. But tonight, two-thirty on a Tuesday that might as well be any other day of the week, the fluorescent corridor stank of antiseptic and grief the way a morgue stank of formaldehyde-inescapable, metallic, settling into the soft tissues of the lungs. Beneath the lights every color looked leeched, as though the hospital itself had bled out months ago and now ran on habit alone. The eye noticed things it had sworn off noticing: the crying families curled like question marks on vinyl couches, the nurses’ shoes squealing on linoleum in the same rhythm as the cardiac monitor alarms, the vending machine dinners that tasted of plastic, regret, and the faint residue of someone else’s fingerprints. Jack’s body knew the schedule better than his brain did - four to five was the only hour the building pretended to rest, a temporary hush before the new shift herded fresh tragedies through the automatic doors.

But he noticed you.

The hoodie swallowed you whole, sleeves so long only the tips of your fingers showed, the hood still damp from the drive over. Every night for almost a week you had claimed the same chair outside Room 214, the vinyl cracked, the foam flattened by years of other people’s worry. You pressed yourself into the corner where the arm met the wall, as if you could disappear into the ninety-degree angle. A paper cup of coffee, long cold, sweated beside you; its rim bore the ridged imprint of your teeth. Your eyes were twin absences, pupils too wide, fixed on the door yet seeing nothing. Each time a doctor passed-lanyards swinging like pendulums-you flinched, then sagged when the footsteps continued on. The overhead light reflected off the laminate floor and slid straight into the hollows beneath your eyes, carving them deeper, older.

Jack tried not to stare. He told himself a hundred times to keep walking, the same lecture he gave interns: don’t take the corridor that leads through the waiting area, don’t absorb the collateral damage. Tonight he failed. He halted mid-step, the surgical cap still clinging to the back of his skull, stethoscope cold against the sweat-damp collar of his scrubs. The cap smelled faintly of Allison’s perfume-no, of the memory of it, a ghost note of vanilla that clung to his hair whenever he pulled sixteen-hour shifts and forgot to shower.

That was when the recognition slammed into him. Not memory so much as a physical blow between the ribs: You. The woman from the group therapy circle in the basement of St. Agnes two years ago, plastic chairs in a ring, a box of off-brand tissues making the rounds. The woman who had once whispered, “My son was six,” and then never said his name again. The woman he had dated for exactly thirteen months after that first meeting, as though grief were an aphrodisiac, as though two people drowning might somehow keep each other afloat.

Jack’s breath caught a hiccup between heartbeats. You looked up at the small sound. For a second nothing moved-not the air, not the clock on the wall, not the IV pumps three doors down. Then you spoke, voice a serrated edge worn soft by fatigue.

“...Jack.”

His name in your mouth was a wound reopening, salt pressed into something that had never quite scabbed over. He felt it in his jaw, in the metacarpals of his left hand, in the phantom ache where Allison’s head used to rest on his shoulder. He swallowed once, twice; the taste of burnt coffee and latex lingered.

“What are you doing here?” The question came out rougher than he intended.

Your fingers whitened around the cup. A single tremor traveled up your forearm and disappeared beneath the sleeve. Jack glanced toward Room 214-plain beige door, silver handle smudged with fingerprints. The number plate had lost one screw and hung crooked, 214 tilting like a drunk man unsure of where gravity lived.

He gestured with his chin. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

You hesitated. A hesitation, Jack knew, was never empty; it was packed tight with every unsent text message, every voicemail deleted unheard, every time one of them had almost reached out and then decided against it. The pause pressed against the walls, dense enough to muffle the distant paging system.

The door opened. A nurse emerged-crocs squeaking, ponytail frizzed at the edges from humidity and exhaustion. She clutched a chart like a shield. “Mr. Mitchell’s vitals are stabilizing-”

Jack’s gaze snagged on the top sheet. Emergency Contact: your name printed in block letters, stark as a ransom note. The letters blurred; he blinked, and they were still there, irrevocable.

He turned back slowly. The corridor felt narrower suddenly, walls leaning in. “He’s your emergency contact?”

“I’m his emergency contact.” Your voice cracked on the word his, a hairline fracture.

Jack laughed once-a bark of sound with zero warmth, the laugh he used when residents screwed up central lines. The universe, apparently, had a cruel streak wider than the Grand Canyon. Your ex-husband before him lay behind that door, swollen with fluids and fate, while you sat vigil like some penitent saint carved from exhaustion.

Jack rubbed the heel of his hand over his jaw. The stubble rasped like sandpaper against grief. “You stayed?”

“He doesn’t really have anyone else.” The answer arrived too quickly, rehearsed in the dark hours when the monitors beeped and the ice machine down the hall kept coughing up pellets like gunfire.

Jack studied you. Not the way a doctor studies a patient-clinical, detached-but the way a man studies an almost. Dark half-moons under your eyes the color of storm water. Chapped lips bitten raw. One knee bouncing, the rubber of your sneaker squeaking faintly each time it lifted. There was a small scar just above your left eyebrow he didn’t remember, or maybe he had forgotten it the way he had forgotten to remember the exact shade of brown your irises turned in autumn light. Everything about you looked brittle, as though a loud noise might shatter you into pieces too small to pick up.

“You look terrible,” he said. The words left him before he could soften them.

You exhaled what might have been laughter. “Nice to see you too.”

That sound-ragged, almost amused-punched clean through the Kevlar he had wrapped around his heart after Allison died, after you left, after he learned the body could metabolize sorrow into eighty-hour weeks, bad takeout, and still wake up the next morning. For one impossible instant it sounded like before: the two of you in the sad little kitchen of his apartment, arguing over whose turn it was to buy groceries, over whether “fine” was an acceptable answer to “how was your day.” Back when grief was a thing you dissected together, passing it back and forth like a shared cigarette, convinced that if you both breathed it in you might somehow exhale something survivable.

He pushed off the wall, vertebrae popping. “You should go home.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ve been here every night.”

“I know.”

“You can barely keep your eyes open.”

Silence. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a high whine that lived inside the bones of the skull. You blinked, slow as a wounded animal, lashes trembling against the bruised skin.

“I know.”

Jack looked at the door again. Then at you. Understanding arrived like a scalpel sliding under skin: you were staying because you knew exactly what it felt like when nobody stayed for your son, when the pediatric oncology ward emptied at shift change and the night stretched endless and white. You were keeping vigil because the idea of walking away was an echo of every time someone had walked away from you-first your ex-husband, then Jack, then the world itself when it let a six-year-old boy die of breast cancer no adult had ever heard of.

The ache in Jack’s chest expanded, hot and viscous, crowding out the last of his professional detachment. He exhaled through his teeth, the sound barely audible over the HVAC system, and sat down in the chair beside yours. The vinyl exhaled a sigh that sounded too much like surrender.

Your eyes flicked to him, wary. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure you eat something.” His own voice startled him, low and quiet, the register he used when telling a child why Mommy wasn’t waking up.

“You don’t have to-”

“I know.” He cut in softly, final as a door closing.

Silence poured back in-not awkward, not comfortable, just thick as wet wool. It carried the scent of stale coffee, floor wax, the faint iron smell that always lingered near oncology. Somewhere down the corridor an IV alarm pinged, steady as a heartbeat. Rain tapped against the windows in a minor key, the glass trembling with each gust.

Neither of you spoke of Allie, or of Jamie, or of the night last October when Jack had come home to an empty apartment and a note on the counter that said only I can’t do this anymore.You didn’t ask if he still sometimes woke reaching for her; he didn’t ask if you still packed a lunchbox every morning for a boy who would never be six again. The fluorescent lights buzzed on, indifferent. A pulse oximeter sang its electronic lullaby behind the door to 214.

And for the first time in years, Jack Abbott sat beside you again, close enough to see his own exhaustion mirrored in the tremor of your hands, close enough to remember that some silences were not empty but full-of every word they no longer dared to speak.

Three years ago, this same corridor had been Jack's second home. Allison's last home. He remembered the way the light here turned her skin gray in the final weeks, how the oncology wing smelled different from the ER—sweeter, like flowers left too long in stagnant water. He remembered learning the names of nurses who would outlast his marriage, the way hope could be measured in milligrams of morphine and the angle of a hospital bed. He remembered the nurse who had tried to comfort him with a hand on his shoulder, and how he wanted to break every bone in her fingers for touching him like that, like they were already prepping him for loss.

He had met you in the aftermath, circling the same orbit of loss. Group therapy was a joke—twelve plastic chairs and a box of discount tissues purchased in bulk, the facilitator reading from a script that sounded like it was meant for the recently divorced, not the recently widowed. But you—quiet, hair pulled back so tight it looked like a headache, hands folded and clenched as if in permanent prayer—had sat across from him and spoke nothing for four consecutive Wednesdays. When you finally spoke, it was to answer the question, "Who are you missing?"

"My son was six," you said, and then you did not say his name. Nobody asked you to. The room froze. The facilitator wrote something on her clipboard and called for a break early.

He learned the boy's name later, in the parking lot, when you stood next to your car, keys in hand, staring at the windshield like it had delivered your death sentence. "Jamie," you said, voice flat, and Jack understood instantly that you had not said the name in months. Maybe years.

They became a pair, not because they fit, but because they were the only two left who were too broken to hide it. You made it thirteen months, a record for both of you. Jack threw himself into work—eighty hours a week, the hospital as his confessional. You withdrew. He remembered the way your eyes darkened when he came home late, the way you ate meals standing in the kitchen, never sitting, as though the act of stillness might allow the sorrow to catch up. He remembered the night you left. You packed no bags. You left a note on the counter, written in the same blue gel pen you used for grocery lists, and it said only I can't do this anymore.

Now, in the corridor, you looked at him like he was a ghost. Maybe he was. Maybe you both were.

He tried to imagine what it must feel like, holding vigil for your ex-husband, the man who had fathered the boy you lost. The two of you had never spoken of that man in the year you were together. Jack had never asked, and you never offered. Now he wondered if the silence had been its own kind of violence.

He got up and retrieved a sandwich from the vending machine. It was turkey and cheese, the kind that sweated inside the cellophane and tasted of pure, distilled sadness. He set it on the armrest beside you, not meeting your eyes.

"You'll get sick if you don't eat," he said.

You looked at the sandwich like it was a loaded gun. "I'm not hungry."

"You never are," he said, and then regretted it instantly.

But you did not flinch. "Do you ever stop counting the empty spaces?" you asked.

He thought of Allison's side of the bed, of the toothbrush that sat in the holder for months because he could not bear to throw it away, of the way his apartment echoed with every step. He thought of the bed you both tried to fill, the nights when you clung together and it felt more like mutual drowning than anything else.

"No," he said. "You just learn to walk around them."

A silence. Then you asked, "Do you remember that group session when the lady brought up the stages of grief?"

He almost smiled. "She said them in the wrong order."

"She did," you agreed. "I wanted to correct her. But I didn't."

"Why not?"

You shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. "It doesn't matter what order they come in. They're all the same in the end."

He had nothing to say to that.

You rubbed your eyes, the skin raw and red. "Do you know why I'm here?"

He waited.

You said, "He's dying. Not tonight. Maybe not for weeks. But it's coming. He never even visited Jamie at the hospice. He sent a letter, once. I almost threw it away. I should have. And now I sit here, because there's nobody else." You looked at Jack, your mouth trembling. "Isn't that pathetic?"

He shook his head. "It's not."

You laughed, bitter. "You always did give me too much credit."

He wanted to take your hand, but he didn't. Instead he said, "Do you want a walk?"

You looked at him, surprised, as if the concept were foreign. "Where?"

"I don't know. Around the block. To the cafeteria, maybe." He shrugged, and the motion made his shoulder ache. "Anywhere but here."

You considered, then nodded. "Okay."

They walked in silence, down the empty corridor, past the nurses' station where two RNs giggled over a phone screen, through the automatic doors and into the wet, metallic night. The rain had stopped, but the world still smelled like it. Jack remembered a night much like this, the two of you huddled under an umbrella, not talking, just walking for the sake of motion. The umbrella had collapsed, and you both stood under the awning of a closed bakery, laughing like idiots as the rain pounded the sidewalk. It was the only time he remembered you smiling for real.

He said, "Do you remember—"

"I do," you interrupted. "But it's not the same now."

He nodded. He didn't need to ask why.

They circled the block, returning to the lobby where the lights seemed even harsher. You looked at the sandwich, picked it up, and took a bite. You chewed slowly, methodically, as if it were penance.

"I think you should sleep," he said.

You shrugged. "Maybe."

Jack stood. "I'll be here in the morning."

You looked at him, something close to gratitude flickering in your eyes. "Thanks."

He nodded and walked away, the taste of grief still sharp in the back of his throat. At the end of the corridor he paused, looked back. You were still there, eating the sandwich, eyes closed, as if you could will yourself into another world.

He understood. He did.

For a moment, Jack Abbott wondered if there was a universe in which neither of them had lost anything, in which they met in a bar or a library or on a blind date, in which they flirted and fought and married and grew old together. In that world, maybe, they would have been happy. In this one, all they had was the pain—and the knowledge that, for a few more hours at least, neither of them would have to endure it alone.

He went back to his rounds, the pulse of the hospital steady and indifferent. But tonight, when he passed through the waiting area, he noticed you, and you noticed him, and it was enough.

[finco99]

Damn, think the loss I feel in this one is gonna stick with me for a while.

Thank you for writing the piece that you have 🩷

[isbellah]

this genuinely means so much to me 🥺 i wanted the emotions in this story to feel real and lingering, so hearing that it stayed with you means everything. thank you so much for reading 🩵🫧

[isbellah]

code blue

jack abbot x reader

summary . . . Jack Abbot thought he stopped noticing people a long time ago. The hospital had a way of sanding grief down into routine - overnight shifts, cold coffee, fluorescent lights that made everyone look half-dead before they even were. But every night for a week, he notices the same woman sitting outside Room 214. The last person he expects to find in that hallway is you - the woman he once loved in the aftermath of losing everything. Now you're keeping vigil beside the hospital room of the ex-husband who broke your heart, and Jack is forced to confront the ghosts the two of you never really buried. A hospital grief fic about widowhood, loss, oncology wards, and the terrifying intimacy of being understood by someone who survived the same kind of devastation you did.

warning . . . grief, death/mourning, mentions of child loss, cancer/hospice themes, hospitals/medical settings, emotional dependency, unresolved trauma, discussions of terminal illness, complicated relationships, depression themes, exhaustion/burnout, subtle references to abandonment and divorce.

author's note . . . this fic deals heavily with grief and loss. all characters and storylines are fictional, and this work is fanfiction created as transformative fan art.

word count . . . 2.8k

Jack Abbot had worked enough overnight ER shifts to stop noticing most people. But tonight, two-thirty on a Tuesday that might as well be any other day of the week, the fluorescent corridor stank of antiseptic and grief the way a morgue stank of formaldehyde-inescapable, metallic, settling into the soft tissues of the lungs. Beneath the lights every color looked leeched, as though the hospital itself had bled out months ago and now ran on habit alone. The eye noticed things it had sworn off noticing: the crying families curled like question marks on vinyl couches, the nurses’ shoes squealing on linoleum in the same rhythm as the cardiac monitor alarms, the vending machine dinners that tasted of plastic, regret, and the faint residue of someone else’s fingerprints. Jack’s body knew the schedule better than his brain did - four to five was the only hour the building pretended to rest, a temporary hush before the new shift herded fresh tragedies through the automatic doors.

But he noticed you.

The hoodie swallowed you whole, sleeves so long only the tips of your fingers showed, the hood still damp from the drive over. Every night for almost a week you had claimed the same chair outside Room 214, the vinyl cracked, the foam flattened by years of other people’s worry. You pressed yourself into the corner where the arm met the wall, as if you could disappear into the ninety-degree angle. A paper cup of coffee, long cold, sweated beside you; its rim bore the ridged imprint of your teeth. Your eyes were twin absences, pupils too wide, fixed on the door yet seeing nothing. Each time a doctor passed-lanyards swinging like pendulums-you flinched, then sagged when the footsteps continued on. The overhead light reflected off the laminate floor and slid straight into the hollows beneath your eyes, carving them deeper, older.

Jack tried not to stare. He told himself a hundred times to keep walking, the same lecture he gave interns: don’t take the corridor that leads through the waiting area, don’t absorb the collateral damage. Tonight he failed. He halted mid-step, the surgical cap still clinging to the back of his skull, stethoscope cold against the sweat-damp collar of his scrubs. The cap smelled faintly of Allison’s perfume-no, of the memory of it, a ghost note of vanilla that clung to his hair whenever he pulled sixteen-hour shifts and forgot to shower.

That was when the recognition slammed into him. Not memory so much as a physical blow between the ribs: You. The woman from the group therapy circle in the basement of St. Agnes two years ago, plastic chairs in a ring, a box of off-brand tissues making the rounds. The woman who had once whispered, “My son was six,” and then never said his name again. The woman he had dated for exactly thirteen months after that first meeting, as though grief were an aphrodisiac, as though two people drowning might somehow keep each other afloat.

Jack’s breath caught a hiccup between heartbeats. You looked up at the small sound. For a second nothing moved-not the air, not the clock on the wall, not the IV pumps three doors down. Then you spoke, voice a serrated edge worn soft by fatigue.

“...Jack.”

His name in your mouth was a wound reopening, salt pressed into something that had never quite scabbed over. He felt it in his jaw, in the metacarpals of his left hand, in the phantom ache where Allison’s head used to rest on his shoulder. He swallowed once, twice; the taste of burnt coffee and latex lingered.

“What are you doing here?” The question came out rougher than he intended.

Your fingers whitened around the cup. A single tremor traveled up your forearm and disappeared beneath the sleeve. Jack glanced toward Room 214-plain beige door, silver handle smudged with fingerprints. The number plate had lost one screw and hung crooked, 214 tilting like a drunk man unsure of where gravity lived.

He gestured with his chin. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

You hesitated. A hesitation, Jack knew, was never empty; it was packed tight with every unsent text message, every voicemail deleted unheard, every time one of them had almost reached out and then decided against it. The pause pressed against the walls, dense enough to muffle the distant paging system.

The door opened. A nurse emerged-crocs squeaking, ponytail frizzed at the edges from humidity and exhaustion. She clutched a chart like a shield. “Mr. Mitchell’s vitals are stabilizing-”

Jack’s gaze snagged on the top sheet. Emergency Contact: your name printed in block letters, stark as a ransom note. The letters blurred; he blinked, and they were still there, irrevocable.

He turned back slowly. The corridor felt narrower suddenly, walls leaning in. “He’s your emergency contact?”

“I’m his emergency contact.” Your voice cracked on the word his, a hairline fracture.

Jack laughed once-a bark of sound with zero warmth, the laugh he used when residents screwed up central lines. The universe, apparently, had a cruel streak wider than the Grand Canyon. Your ex-husband before him lay behind that door, swollen with fluids and fate, while you sat vigil like some penitent saint carved from exhaustion.

Jack rubbed the heel of his hand over his jaw. The stubble rasped like sandpaper against grief. “You stayed?”

“He doesn’t really have anyone else.” The answer arrived too quickly, rehearsed in the dark hours when the monitors beeped and the ice machine down the hall kept coughing up pellets like gunfire.

Jack studied you. Not the way a doctor studies a patient-clinical, detached-but the way a man studies an almost. Dark half-moons under your eyes the color of storm water. Chapped lips bitten raw. One knee bouncing, the rubber of your sneaker squeaking faintly each time it lifted. There was a small scar just above your left eyebrow he didn’t remember, or maybe he had forgotten it the way he had forgotten to remember the exact shade of brown your irises turned in autumn light. Everything about you looked brittle, as though a loud noise might shatter you into pieces too small to pick up.

“You look terrible,” he said. The words left him before he could soften them.

You exhaled what might have been laughter. “Nice to see you too.”

That sound-ragged, almost amused-punched clean through the Kevlar he had wrapped around his heart after Allison died, after you left, after he learned the body could metabolize sorrow into eighty-hour weeks, bad takeout, and still wake up the next morning. For one impossible instant it sounded like before: the two of you in the sad little kitchen of his apartment, arguing over whose turn it was to buy groceries, over whether “fine” was an acceptable answer to “how was your day.” Back when grief was a thing you dissected together, passing it back and forth like a shared cigarette, convinced that if you both breathed it in you might somehow exhale something survivable.

He pushed off the wall, vertebrae popping. “You should go home.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ve been here every night.”

“I know.”

“You can barely keep your eyes open.”

Silence. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a high whine that lived inside the bones of the skull. You blinked, slow as a wounded animal, lashes trembling against the bruised skin.

“I know.”

Jack looked at the door again. Then at you. Understanding arrived like a scalpel sliding under skin: you were staying because you knew exactly what it felt like when nobody stayed for your son, when the pediatric oncology ward emptied at shift change and the night stretched endless and white. You were keeping vigil because the idea of walking away was an echo of every time someone had walked away from you-first your ex-husband, then Jack, then the world itself when it let a six-year-old boy die of breast cancer no adult had ever heard of.

The ache in Jack’s chest expanded, hot and viscous, crowding out the last of his professional detachment. He exhaled through his teeth, the sound barely audible over the HVAC system, and sat down in the chair beside yours. The vinyl exhaled a sigh that sounded too much like surrender.

Your eyes flicked to him, wary. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure you eat something.” His own voice startled him, low and quiet, the register he used when telling a child why Mommy wasn’t waking up.

“You don’t have to-”

“I know.” He cut in softly, final as a door closing.

Silence poured back in-not awkward, not comfortable, just thick as wet wool. It carried the scent of stale coffee, floor wax, the faint iron smell that always lingered near oncology. Somewhere down the corridor an IV alarm pinged, steady as a heartbeat. Rain tapped against the windows in a minor key, the glass trembling with each gust.

Neither of you spoke of Allie, or of Jamie, or of the night last October when Jack had come home to an empty apartment and a note on the counter that said only I can’t do this anymore.You didn’t ask if he still sometimes woke reaching for her; he didn’t ask if you still packed a lunchbox every morning for a boy who would never be six again. The fluorescent lights buzzed on, indifferent. A pulse oximeter sang its electronic lullaby behind the door to 214.

And for the first time in years, Jack Abbott sat beside you again, close enough to see his own exhaustion mirrored in the tremor of your hands, close enough to remember that some silences were not empty but full-of every word they no longer dared to speak.

Three years ago, this same corridor had been Jack's second home. Allison's last home. He remembered the way the light here turned her skin gray in the final weeks, how the oncology wing smelled different from the ER—sweeter, like flowers left too long in stagnant water. He remembered learning the names of nurses who would outlast his marriage, the way hope could be measured in milligrams of morphine and the angle of a hospital bed. He remembered the nurse who had tried to comfort him with a hand on his shoulder, and how he wanted to break every bone in her fingers for touching him like that, like they were already prepping him for loss.

He had met you in the aftermath, circling the same orbit of loss. Group therapy was a joke—twelve plastic chairs and a box of discount tissues purchased in bulk, the facilitator reading from a script that sounded like it was meant for the recently divorced, not the recently widowed. But you—quiet, hair pulled back so tight it looked like a headache, hands folded and clenched as if in permanent prayer—had sat across from him and spoke nothing for four consecutive Wednesdays. When you finally spoke, it was to answer the question, "Who are you missing?"

"My son was six," you said, and then you did not say his name. Nobody asked you to. The room froze. The facilitator wrote something on her clipboard and called for a break early.

He learned the boy's name later, in the parking lot, when you stood next to your car, keys in hand, staring at the windshield like it had delivered your death sentence. "Jamie," you said, voice flat, and Jack understood instantly that you had not said the name in months. Maybe years.

They became a pair, not because they fit, but because they were the only two left who were too broken to hide it. You made it thirteen months, a record for both of you. Jack threw himself into work—eighty hours a week, the hospital as his confessional. You withdrew. He remembered the way your eyes darkened when he came home late, the way you ate meals standing in the kitchen, never sitting, as though the act of stillness might allow the sorrow to catch up. He remembered the night you left. You packed no bags. You left a note on the counter, written in the same blue gel pen you used for grocery lists, and it said only I can't do this anymore.

Now, in the corridor, you looked at him like he was a ghost. Maybe he was. Maybe you both were.

He tried to imagine what it must feel like, holding vigil for your ex-husband, the man who had fathered the boy you lost. The two of you had never spoken of that man in the year you were together. Jack had never asked, and you never offered. Now he wondered if the silence had been its own kind of violence.

He got up and retrieved a sandwich from the vending machine. It was turkey and cheese, the kind that sweated inside the cellophane and tasted of pure, distilled sadness. He set it on the armrest beside you, not meeting your eyes.

"You'll get sick if you don't eat," he said.

You looked at the sandwich like it was a loaded gun. "I'm not hungry."

"You never are," he said, and then regretted it instantly.

But you did not flinch. "Do you ever stop counting the empty spaces?" you asked.

He thought of Allison's side of the bed, of the toothbrush that sat in the holder for months because he could not bear to throw it away, of the way his apartment echoed with every step. He thought of the bed you both tried to fill, the nights when you clung together and it felt more like mutual drowning than anything else.

"No," he said. "You just learn to walk around them."

A silence. Then you asked, "Do you remember that group session when the lady brought up the stages of grief?"

He almost smiled. "She said them in the wrong order."

"She did," you agreed. "I wanted to correct her. But I didn't."

"Why not?"

You shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. "It doesn't matter what order they come in. They're all the same in the end."

He had nothing to say to that.

You rubbed your eyes, the skin raw and red. "Do you know why I'm here?"

He waited.

You said, "He's dying. Not tonight. Maybe not for weeks. But it's coming. He never even visited Jamie at the hospice. He sent a letter, once. I almost threw it away. I should have. And now I sit here, because there's nobody else." You looked at Jack, your mouth trembling. "Isn't that pathetic?"

He shook his head. "It's not."

You laughed, bitter. "You always did give me too much credit."

He wanted to take your hand, but he didn't. Instead he said, "Do you want a walk?"

You looked at him, surprised, as if the concept were foreign. "Where?"

"I don't know. Around the block. To the cafeteria, maybe." He shrugged, and the motion made his shoulder ache. "Anywhere but here."

You considered, then nodded. "Okay."

They walked in silence, down the empty corridor, past the nurses' station where two RNs giggled over a phone screen, through the automatic doors and into the wet, metallic night. The rain had stopped, but the world still smelled like it. Jack remembered a night much like this, the two of you huddled under an umbrella, not talking, just walking for the sake of motion. The umbrella had collapsed, and you both stood under the awning of a closed bakery, laughing like idiots as the rain pounded the sidewalk. It was the only time he remembered you smiling for real.

He said, "Do you remember—"

"I do," you interrupted. "But it's not the same now."

He nodded. He didn't need to ask why.

They circled the block, returning to the lobby where the lights seemed even harsher. You looked at the sandwich, picked it up, and took a bite. You chewed slowly, methodically, as if it were penance.

"I think you should sleep," he said.

You shrugged. "Maybe."

Jack stood. "I'll be here in the morning."

You looked at him, something close to gratitude flickering in your eyes. "Thanks."

He nodded and walked away, the taste of grief still sharp in the back of his throat. At the end of the corridor he paused, looked back. You were still there, eating the sandwich, eyes closed, as if you could will yourself into another world.

He understood. He did.

For a moment, Jack Abbott wondered if there was a universe in which neither of them had lost anything, in which they met in a bar or a library or on a blind date, in which they flirted and fought and married and grew old together. In that world, maybe, they would have been happy. In this one, all they had was the pain—and the knowledge that, for a few more hours at least, neither of them would have to endure it alone.

He went back to his rounds, the pulse of the hospital steady and indifferent. But tonight, when he passed through the waiting area, he noticed you, and you noticed him, and it was enough.

[isbellah]

hidden desires

jack abbot x reader

summary . . . you're a respiratory therapist working in a busy ER, where your life is already defined by long shifts, grief, and impossible decisions. The one constant in it all is Jack Abbott—your father's best friend and the only person who's ever made the chaos feel a little quieter. What starts as familiarity and unspoken tension slowly becomes something neither of you can ignore. But when feelings finally surface, everything that connects you also threatens to tear your life apart. Some things are never meant to be simple.

warnings . . . this story includes angst, grief, medical trauma, and emotional breakdowns. It also explores an age gap relationship (20 years) and the "best friend's daughter" trope. Characters make messy, emotional decisions and struggle to say what they really feel. Heavy hurt/comfort themes throughout. All characters and events are fictional. This is a work of fanfiction, created as a form of fan art and creative expression.

word count . . . 10.9k

The ER in the afternoon had its own geography: the fluorescent hum that never stopped, the linoleum scuffed pale by ten thousand hurried footsteps, the particular silence of a hospital holding its breath between traumas.

Bambi knew every inch of it. Had known it for three years, since she'd graduated respiratory therapy school and landed here, since she'd stopped being her father's daughter and started being-what? A colleague. A peer. Someone Jack could look at without seeing a child he'd watched graduate high school.

Someone he could still call Bambi after all this time.

She'd earned the nickname her first day, fresh out of school, hydroplaning three feet across wet tile and catching herself on a crash cart. Jack had been the one to haul her upright, laughing, his hand warm and steady on her elbow. Her father's best friend. Twenty years her senior. The man who'd taught her to tie her shoes while her dad worked doubles, who'd attended her respiratory therapy graduation with a bouquet and a proud smile that made her chest ache.

The man she was desperately, stupidly in love with.

"You're staring at the coffee machine like it owes you money."

She didn't jump. She'd learned not to jump around Jack, learned to modulate her reactions, her breathing, the way her eyes tracked him across a room. Learned to be casual.

"Contemplating my choices," she said, not turning. "There's a difference."

"Is there?" His voice came closer. Scrub sleeves rustling, that particular gait she could identify blindfolded-slight favoring of his left knee, old soccer injury, the one he never mentioned and she only knew because she'd memorized everything. "Your dad asked me to cover. Plumber's coming at 5 to fix the pipe in the basement. Said he couldn't trust the guy alone in the house."

There it was. The explanation for why Jack was here, two hours early, filling space her father should have occupied. The domestic detail-her father's house, aging pipes, strangers in the basement-grounding them both in the reality of who Jack was to her family. Who he'd always been.

"That pipe's been leaking since I was in high school," she said, reaching for a cup.

Jack's hand got there first. Poured. Added the splash of oat milk she pretended not to need, the two sugars she absolutely did.

"Some things take time to fix," he said, and held the cup out to her.

Their fingers brushed. She didn't flinch. She'd gotten very good at not flinching, at accepting these small kindnesses as the currency of their friendship-colleagues, her father's friend, nothing more.

But she saw the way Dr. Cassie McKay looked up from her charting, eyebrows raised. Saw the way the resident paused in the doorway, watching Jack save the chair beside him during rounds, watching him check Bambi's tray to confirm she'd eaten something before the night got busy.

Watching him find her first, always first, when the trauma bay doors opened and the paramedics called out vitals.

Tiny things. Meaningless separately.

Everything together.

"You're in early," Cassie said to Jack, not quite a question.

"Covering for Bambi's dad."

Cassie's eyes moved between them. Assessing. Knowing.

Bambi took her coffee and sat in the chair Jack had saved, close enough to smell his soap-something clean, medical, familiar-and felt the weight of months pressing down on her chest. The love she'd been hiding so carefully, the wanting she'd learned to bury under professionalism and distance and the sheer impossibility of what she felt.

Jack pretended not to notice how she looked at him. Had been pretending for months.

The problem was that everyone else was beginning to.

Jack came through the ambulance bay doors at 6:02 PM, still in civilian clothes-dark jeans, gray sweater, leather jacket that had aged into something soft and expensive-looking. His scrubs were in his bag, his shift didn't start for fifty-eight minutes, and every head in the ER turned to watch him cross the floor.

Bambi was managing a ventilator in bay three, adjusting settings for a COPD exacerbation. She didn't look up. She didn't need to; she felt him enter the room like a pressure change, like the moment before a storm when the air goes heavy and electric.

"Dr. Abbot," Santos said, too tired to be suspicious over his timing, "you're here early."

"Paperwork," Jack said. The lie was smooth, practiced. He'd used it three times this week.

But there was no paperwork waiting at the physicians' station. Everyone knew it. Langdon knew it, looking up from his charting with that knowing expression. The residents knew it, nudging their colleague. Even the patient Bambi was working with-a seventy-year-old who'd smoked for fifty years-seemed to sense something, his eyes tracking from Bambi to Jack and back again.

Jack didn't go to the nurses' station. He went to the coffee machine, poured two cups, added oat milk to one, two sugars, and carried them both to bay three.

"You're going to burn yourself out," Bambi said, not looking up from the ventilator settings. "Coming in early every day."

"Not every day."

"Three times this week."

She felt him smile. Felt it like warmth against her cheek.

"Twice," he corrected, soft. "Tuesday doesn't count. I had a meeting."

"Jack." She finally looked at him, the nickname slipping out unguarded, too intimate for the department, for her father's presence somewhere behind them, for the eyes she could feel pressing against her back like hands. "You don't have to-"

"I know." He set the coffee down where she could reach it, close enough that his sleeve brushed her shoulder. "I know I don't have to."

But he stayed. Leaned against the counter in his civilian clothes, drinking his own coffee, watching her work with an attention that felt like touch. Around them, the ER hummed its usual chaos, but in bay three, time had gone strange-soft-edged, intimate, the two of them suspended in something everyone else could see but neither would name.

At 6:47, he finally changed into scrubs. At 6:52, her father walked past, paused, looked from Jack to Bambi to the two coffee cups sitting side by side on the counter.

Robby didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

The silence was loud enough.

Michael Robinvitch had spent thirty years learning how to read a room. It was part of the job: the subtle shifts in a trauma bay when a case went bad, the tension in a family's shoulders before they asked the question they didn't want answered, the way nurses communicated silently across a crowded ER when something was about to break.

He knew how to see what people were trying to hide.

What he didn't know was how to stop seeing it once he'd started.

It began with annoyance. The jokes from residents, the raised eyebrows from nursing staff, the way Santos had asked Bambi if she and Jack were together like it was a reasonable question. Robby had shut that down with a look, then buried himself in administrative work, convinced it was just gossip, just boredom, just the department's endless appetite for drama.

Then he started noticing.

It was 7 PM, a multi-car pileup, the trauma bay flooded with bodies and blood and the controlled panic of a bad night. Robby was across the room, intubating a chest trauma, when he looked up and saw it: Jack's eyes sweeping the chaos, searching, finding Bambi in seconds where she was bagging a patient near the door.

Jack didn't look away. Not for three full minutes, not until Bambi glanced up, met his gaze, and something in her shoulders settled. The tension in her jaw released. She nodded once, barely perceptible, and went back to her patient with steadier hands.

Robby's hands paused on the laryngoscope.

He started watching after that. Really watching, the way he watched residents for competence or patients for deterioration. He saw how Bambi's whole body changed when Jack entered a room-not performative, not conscious, just... relief. Like she'd been holding her breath and hadn't noticed until she could finally exhale.

He saw Jack's hand hover at the small of her back when they squeezed past each other in the corridor, not touching, just... there. Ready. He saw the way Jack checked her tray during long shifts, the way he knew her coffee order, the way he stepped between her and angry family members before Robby could even move.

Protective. Automatic. Unconscious.

Robby told himself it was friendship. Told himself Jack had known Bambi since she was in pigtails, that of course he cared about her, that the age gap alone made the thought absurd-Jack was forty-six, Bambi was twenty-six, and Robby had been there for every year between.

But then came the night shift handoff, 7 PM, Robby staying late to finish a case while Jack came in early. Again. Third time this week.

He watched Jack cross the ER floor in civilian clothes, watched him pause at the coffee machine, add oat milk and two sugars to a cup, and carry it directly to Bambi without asking. Watched her take it without looking up from her chart, her hand finding his sleeve for balance as she stepped back from the counter.

Watched Jack's face in that moment. The softness. The wanting he wasn't hiding because he thought no one was looking.

Robby was looking.

And for the first time, he wondered if there might actually be something there. Something real. Something that had nothing to do with the age gap or the history or the fact that Jack was his best friend and Bambi was his daughter.

The thought opened up beneath him like a sinkhole.

He went back to his charts. Didn't say anything. But he kept watching, and the terror stayed coiled in his chest, heavy and cold, because he knew Jack-had known him twenty years-and he'd never seen him look at anyone the way he looked at Bambi.

Not once.

Not ever.

The shift from hell.

Not a mass casualty. Nothing so dramatic, so organized. Just one of those brutal ER nights when the universe decided that everyone, everywhere, needed medical attention immediately.

It started at 7 AM with a chest pain that turned out to be anxiety, followed by a chest pain that turned out to be a massive MI. Then the pediatric fall. Then the three MVCs in forty minutes. Then the homeless man with frostbite even though it was May, then the executive with chest pain who screamed at her for the wait time, then the grandmother who'd "just felt a little dizzy" and was actually stroking out in the waiting room.

By 2 PM, Bambi had eaten nothing but a granola bar she'd found at the bottom of her bag. Her feet ached in her shoes. Her scrubs had blood on them from a trauma she'd forgotten to change out of, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd sat down.

She was bagging a patient in bay four-a respiratory failure, elderly, family wailing in the corner-when she felt the familiar shift in the room's gravity. Didn't look up. Didn't need to. Jack was standing in the doorway, still in his leather jacket, still fifty minutes early for his shift, and she could feel his eyes find her in the chaos like he'd thrown her a rope.

"Bambi." Her father's voice, sharp, from the attending station. "I need you in two."

She didn't look at Jack. Handed off the bagging to the nurse, wiped her hands, moved toward bay two where her father was examining a belly pain with the focused intensity that meant he was worried.

Jack was still in the doorway when she came out twenty minutes later. Still watching. He held out a coffee, oat milk, two sugars, and she took it without meeting his eyes because her father was watching too, she could feel it, could feel them both like opposing magnetic fields pulling at her exhausted body.

"You need to eat," Jack said. Not a question.

"I'm fine."

"You're swaying on your feet."

"Jack." The warning in her voice was barely audible, but he heard it. His jaw tightened. He stepped back, just an inch, just enough.

But her father had seen. She knew he'd seen, because when she turned around he was staring at them with an expression she'd never seen before-not anger, not exactly. Something colder. Something afraid.

The shift didn't end. It just kept going, patient after patient, hour after hour, and by the time the evening crew started filtering in, Bambi was running on caffeine and stubbornness and the desperate, bone-deep awareness that Jack was somewhere behind her, still watching, still waiting, still fifty minutes early for a shift that didn't start for another hour.

The patient was seventeen.

That was the part Bambi couldn't shake. Seventeen, with a driver's license still warm from the printer, a cracked phone case with a photo of her dog, parents who'd rushed in behind the ambulance screaming her name like they could pull her back from wherever she'd gone if they just said it loud enough.

Traumatic brain injury. GCS 3 on arrival. They'd worked her for forty minutes before Robby called it, and Bambi had been the one to close her eyes, to smooth her hair, to say the words she'd said a hundred times before: I'm sorry. We did everything we could.

She'd kept moving. That was the trick, the thing they taught you in school that nothing prepared you for. Keep moving. Next patient. The abdominal pain in bay two. The drunk guy in the hallway who needed sutures. The grandmother with the UTI who reminded her of her own grandmother, dead five years now, and somehow that made it worse.

She kept smiling. Kept her voice steady. Kept her hands from shaking when she started an IV on a dehydrated toddler, kept her eyes dry when the mother thanked her, kept her shoulders straight when she walked past the trauma bay where they'd already stripped the gurney and wiped down the rails like the seventeen-year-old had never been there at all.

By 8 PM, she'd been on her feet for thirteen hours. The shift from hell had become the shift that wouldn't end, the kind of day that hollowed you out and left you running on fumes and professional pride.

She made it to the east stairwell before she broke.

It was supposed to be unused. Maintenance access, tucked behind radiology, the stairs that went nowhere useful. She'd found it months ago, her secret place to breathe when the ER became too much. She sat on the concrete step, back against the wall, and let herself finally feel it.

The grief hit like a wave, cold and sudden, pulling her under. She pressed her palms against her eyes, willing the tears back, but they came anyway-hot, ugly, the kind of crying that made your chest hitch and your throat close. Seventeen. She'd been seventeen once. She could have been that girl on the gurney, that girl with the dog on her phone, that girl whose parents would never stop screaming her name.

She didn't hear the door open. Didn't know anyone had found her until she felt the warmth beside her, the presence settling onto the step below hers, close enough to touch but not touching.

"Bambi."

Jack's voice. Soft. Broken with something she couldn't name.

She didn't look up. Couldn't. Her face was a mess, snot and tears and the ugly red flush that came with real crying, not movie crying, and she didn't want him to see this, didn't want anyone to see this, but especially not him.

"Go away," she whispered.

"No."

"I said-"

"I heard you." He didn't move. Didn't reach for her, though she could feel the tension in him, the wanting to. "I'm not going anywhere."

She laughed then, bitter and wet, the sound tearing out of her like it hurt. "You always do this. You always-" She broke off, swallowed, tried again. "You find me. Every time. Every time I fall apart, there you are, with your coffee and your questions and your-" She gestured helplessly, unable to name the thing he did, the way he made her feel seen without making her feel exposed.

"That's what friends do," he said quietly.

"We're not friends." The words came out sharp, desperate. "We haven't been friends for years, Jack. Don't you get that? Don't you see what this is?"

She finally looked at him. He was still in scrubs, hair mussed from pulling off his cap, eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. He looked as broken as she felt, as hollowed out by the day, by the patient, by everything they couldn't say.

"Do you know what's funny?" she asked, and her voice was strange, distant, like someone else was speaking. "I spend all day trying not to fall in love with you. I wake up and I tell myself, don't look at him that way, don't take the coffee, don't let him save you a seat. And somehow-" She laughed again, broken, hopeless. "Somehow that's the easiest part of my life. The rest of it-" She gestured at the stairwell, at the hospital, at the world. "The rest of it is this. Death and screaming and kids who die for no reason. But you?" She met his eyes, finally, let him see all of it, every humiliating, desperate, impossible thing she felt. "You're the easy part. And that terrifies me."

Silence.

Complete silence.

She watched him process it, watched the words land like blows. 

His face went through a dozen emotions in seconds-shock, denial, something that looked almost like pain, and then, finally, something she couldn't read.

"Jack-"

"Don't." His voice was rough, scraped raw. "Don't take it back. Don't say you didn't mean it, or you're tired, or-"

"I meant it." The admission cost her nothing now. She was too empty to lie. "I've meant it for months. Maybe longer."

He closed his eyes. She watched his throat work, watched him struggle with something she couldn't see, and for a terrible moment she thought she'd ruined everything. The friendship. The careful distance. The only good thing in her life that she hadn't managed to destroy yet.

Then he opened his eyes, and she saw it. Really saw it.

He'd been hiding it too.

All this time. All those coffees, those saved seats, those eyes finding hers across the chaos-he'd been fighting the same war, carrying the same weight, wanting the same impossible thing.

"Bambi," he said, and her name had never sounded like that before. Like a prayer. Like a confession of his own.

He moved before she could reach for him. Moved up one step, close enough that their knees touched, close enough that she could smell the soap he used, the coffee on his breath, the particular scent of him that she'd memorized without meaning to. His hand came up, tentative, shaking, and cupped her cheek.

"Tell me to stop," he whispered. "Tell me to walk away. Tell me I'm imagining this, that you don't feel this, that I'm twenty years older than you and your father's best friend and this is wrong-"

"I can't." She leaned into his palm, felt the warmth of his skin against her tear-streaked face. "I've tried. I've been trying for years."

His thumb traced her cheekbone, reverent, terrified. "God, Bambi. Do you know what you do to me? Do you have any idea?" 

Jack leaned forward.

Not quickly. Not impulsively.

Like a man walking toward a cliff and knowing exactly how far the drop was, knowing the precise velocity of falling, the precise shape of the wreckage at the bottom. He moved through the thickened air of the stairwell as if each inch cost him something irretrievable-his resolve, his distance, the careful walls he'd constructed brick by brick over three years of wanting and refusing to want.

His forehead brushed hers.

The contact was barely there-a whisper of skin against skin, the warmth of him bleeding into her, the faint roughness of his temple where he'd leaned against his hand during a long case. But it stopped her breath. Stopped time. Stopped everything.

For one impossible second the world narrowed to the space between them.

No hospital. No trauma bays with their screaming and their blood. No Robby. No twenty years of history that made this wrong, that made this impossible, that made this the one thing Jack had sworn he would never allow himself to have.

Just her.

Just the warmth of her breath against his mouth, coffee-sweet and trembling. Just the scent of her shampoo-something cheap and floral, drugstore brand, utterly unlike the sophisticated women he dated and forgot. Just the trembling realization that if he kissed her now, if he closed this final inch, he would never be able to pretend again. Never be able to look at her across a crowded room and call it friendship. Never be able to face Robby over a beer and keep the secret buried in his chest.

His eyes closed.

He felt the moment he surrendered. Felt it in the loosening of his shoulders, the exhale that shuddered out of him like a man finally releasing a weight he'd carried for years. He was going to do it. He was going to kiss her. He was going to choose her over everything else-his job, his reputation, his best friend, the life he'd built carefully, sensibly, safely.

Bambi's fingers curled into the front of his scrub top.

She was shaking. He could feel it in the tremor of her hands against his chest, in the uneven rhythm of her breathing, in the way she held herself still as if movement might break this spell and send him running again. She wasn't pulling him closer. Wasn't pushing him away. Just holding on, anchoring herself, waiting for him to decide.

And for the first time in months-maybe years-Jack stopped fighting.

He let himself want her. Let himself acknowledge the depth of it, the breadth of it, the way she'd become the first thing he thought of in the morning and the last thing at night. Let himself imagine what it might be like to stop running, to stop pretending, to simply have this. Have her.

His hand came up. Found her cheek. Cupped it with a gentleness that belied the violence of his heartbeat, the roaring in his ears, the certainty that this was both the best and worst decision he would ever make.

"Bambi," he whispered, and her name was a vow, a promise, a beginning. 

Then his phone rang.

The sound was jarring, violent, tearing through the moment like a siren. Jack flinched, his hand dropping from her face, and she saw the reality crash back into him-the hospital, his job, her father, the twenty years between them that suddenly mattered again.

He didn't look at the phone. Didn't move to answer it. But the spell was broken.

"Jack-"

"Don't." He stepped back, two steps down, putting distance between them. When he looked at her again, his expression had gone remote, shuttered, the way he looked at difficult families or combative patients. "You think this is easy for me? You think I haven't noticed?"

Bambi's heart stopped. "Jack-"

"I've known you for twenty years." Every word sounded painful, dragged out against his will. "I held you at your mother's funeral. I taught you to drive. You're Robby's daughter."

"I'm not a kid anymore."

"I know." Somehow that hurt worse. The acknowledgment, the finality of it. "That's the problem."

She was standing now too, her legs unsteady, her face still wet with tears she couldn't control. "Then why? If you know I'm not a child, if you know I choose this-"

"Because I'm twenty years older than you." His jaw tightened. "Because I've known you since you were six years old. Because if I let myself have this..." His voice broke, finally, the crack she'd been waiting for, but it wasn't surrender. It was grief. "I'd lose everything. My job. My reputation. My best friend. The only family I've got."

The stairwell went silent. Somewhere above them, a door opened and closed, footsteps fading, but down here the air had gone solid, unbreathable.

"You're asking me to choose," she said, barely audible. "Between you and-"

"I'm not asking you to choose anything." He was already moving toward the door, his shoulders rigid, his back to her. "I'm telling you I can't. I won't. Not with you. Not with Robby's daughter."

"Jack."

He stopped with his hand on the push bar. Didn't turn around.

"I've been fighting this for months," he said to the door, to the darkness, to anything but her. "Every day. Every time you walked into a room. Every time you smiled at someone else and I wanted to break something." His knuckles were white on the metal bar. "But I'm done fighting, Bambi. I'm just... done."

The door opened. Hospital noise flooded in-beeps and alarms and the distant chaos of the ER, the world continuing indifferent to the wreckage happening in this stairwell.

"Don't," she whispered. "Don't leave me like this."

He paused. For a moment she thought-hoped-prayed that he'd turn around, that he'd see her, that he'd choose her over the fear, over the rules, over the two decades between them.

But he didn't.

"I'm sorry," he said. And then he walked away.

The door swung shut behind him with a pneumatic hiss that sounded final. Bambi stood alone in the stairwell, her confession still hanging in the air, her heart still beating, her whole body still aching with the memory of his hand on her cheek.

He'd said he was sorry.

He hadn't said he loved her back.

She slid down the wall until she hit the concrete step, pulled her knees to her chest, and let herself finally, completely break. 

Jack made it exactly thirty feet.

Thirty feet down the hallway before his legs stopped working, before his body overrode the autopilot that had carried him up the stairs and through the door and past her without looking back. Thirty feet before he ducked into an empty supply closet and braced both hands against a metal shelf, fingers wrapping around the edge until the steel cut into his palms.

His breathing was wrecked.

Each inhale felt like swallowing broken glass, jagged and insufficient, unable to fill the hollow space expanding in his chest. He leaned forward, forehead pressing against the cool metal of the shelf, and tried to remember how lungs worked. Tried to remember that he was a forty-six-year-old man, a physician, someone who had faced death in all its forms and remained functional.

His chest hurt.

Not the sharp, diagnostic pain of a cardiac event. Something worse. Something that felt like his ribs were cracking open, like his heart was physically tearing itself apart against the cage of bone that couldn't contain it anymore. He pressed one hand flat against his sternum and felt his own heartbeat rabbiting against his palm, erratic and wild, a trapped animal trying to escape.

Every instinct screamed at him to go back.

The voice wasn't subtle. It wasn't the gentle whisper of conscience or the measured assessment of risk versus reward. It was primal, ancient, the same voice that had told his ancestors to run toward danger instead of away from it, to protect what was theirs, to claim what they loved before it slipped forever into the dark.

To open the stairwell door.

He could still do it. The door was thirty feet away. Three seconds of running. One second of decision. He could still turn around, still undo what he'd just done, still salvage the one thing that mattered.

To tell her he was an idiot.

Because he was. God, he was. The biggest fool who had ever lived, the coward who had been handed everything he'd ever wanted on trembling, outstretched hands and had walked away from it because he was scared of what it might cost him.

To tell her he'd loved her for years.

The truth sat in his throat like a stone, heavy and immovable. Three years. Maybe longer. Maybe since the first time she'd smiled at him across a trauma bay and he'd felt something shift in his chest, something fundamental and terrifying that he'd immediately locked away and labeled forbidden.

Instead he stood there shaking while a code blue echoed somewhere down the corridor.

The sound was distant, muffled by concrete and linoleum, but he knew what it meant. Someone was dying. Someone's heart had stopped, someone's lungs had failed, someone's life was hanging in the balance while a team of professionals fought to pull them back from the edge. It was the sound that had defined his entire adult life. The sound that had always centered him, reminded him of his purpose, given him something to do when emotions became too complicated to navigate.

He didn't move toward it.

For the first time in twenty years of medicine, Jack heard a code blue and felt nothing. No adrenaline. No instinct to run. Just the hollow recognition that somewhere, someone else was experiencing their own worst moment, and it had nothing to do with him.

Because patients were dying.

That was the reality. That was the job. People died every day, in every hospital, in every city, in every country. Death was the constant, the baseline, the thing that made the living precious.

The hospital kept moving.

Around him, beyond the thin walls of the supply closet, the ER continued its relentless rhythm. Stretchers rattled past. Voices called out orders and responses. Machines beeped and alarmed and were silenced. The world didn't pause because Jack Hartley had just destroyed the best thing that had ever almost happened to him.

And somehow the worst thing that had happened that day wasn't the seventeen-year-old.

He thought of the boy-the lifeless body on the gurney, the parents' faces, the crushing weight of failure that had sent him to the stairwell seeking air in the first place. That should have been the worst thing. That should have been the trauma that kept him awake tonight, the memory that haunted him, the loss that mattered.

It wasn't.

It was walking away from her.

The realization was devastating in its simplicity. He'd chosen fear over love. He'd chosen safety over happiness. He'd chosen the devil he knew-loneliness, longing, the slow erosion of hope-over the terrifying possibility of having everything he'd ever wanted and losing it later.

Jack sank to the floor of the supply closet, back against the shelves, knees drawn up to his chest like a child. He pressed his palms against his eyes until colors burst behind his lids, until the pressure built to something approaching physical pain, until he couldn't see the boxes of gauze and saline bags that surrounded him in this tiny, temporary hiding place.

He didn't know how long he sat there.

Long enough for the code blue to resolve-one way or another. Long enough for his pager to buzz twice with messages he didn't read. Long enough for the shift change to happen, for the day crew to become the night crew, for the hospital to cycle through its endless renewal while Jack remained frozen in place.

When he finally stood, his legs were stiff, his eyes were dry, and his hands had stopped shaking.

He walked out of the supply closet like a man emerging from a bomb shelter into a changed world. The hallway was the same. The fluorescent lights hummed the same song. The linoleum stretched in the same scuffed patterns toward the same destinations.

But everything was different now.

He'd made his choice. He'd walked away. And he would spend the rest of his life knowing exactly what that choice had cost him.

Three hours later, she was still there when her phone buzzed.

She ignored it. Let it go to voicemail. Then it buzzed again, and again, and finally she pulled it out with shaking hands, expecting Jack, hoping for Jack, terrified of Jack.

It was her father.

Call me when you get this. Worried about you.

She stared at the message, numb. She couldn't call him. Couldn't face him. Couldn't pretend everything was fine when her heart was in pieces on a concrete stairwell floor.

She typed a text instead.

Need a couple days. I'm safe.

She turned off her phone before he could respond. Then she stood, wiped her face, and walked out of the stairwell into the fluorescent glare of the hospital corridor.

She made it to her car. Made it home. Made it through the door of her apartment before the next wave hit, before she collapsed onto her bed fully dressed, shoes still on, and cried until she had nothing left.

She didn't call out sick. She didn't do anything. She just lay there in the dark, her phone dead on the nightstand, her heart empty, her future suddenly a blank she couldn't face.

She didn't know that two floors down, in the physicians' station, Jack was staring at her untouched coffee cup, wondering where she was.

She didn't know that her father was already watching him, already suspicious, already putting together pieces that would lead him to her door.

She only knew that she'd been brave. She'd told the truth. And it hadn't been enough.

It hadn't been nearly enough. 

Jack knew something was wrong when she didn't take the coffee.

He'd set it on the counter automatically, muscle memory from three years of mornings, the oat milk already added, two sugars stirred in. But the shift changed, nurses came and went, and the cup sat there cooling, untouched.

He checked the schedule. She was off. Had been off for six hours.

He told himself she was sleeping. Told himself the stairwell meant nothing, that she'd needed space, that disappearing was normal after what he'd said, what he'd done.

He told himself these things for twelve hours. Then twenty-four.

Then Robby found him.

"Have you seen her?"

Jack looked up from a chart he hadn't been reading. Robby stood in the doorway of the physicians' station, hair mussed, the same worry Jack had been swallowing for a day now written all over his face.

"She's not answering my calls," Robby said. "Not my texts. Just one message yesterday. Need a couple days. I'm safe.That's all."

Jack's stomach dropped. "When did you last hear from her?"

"Two days ago. Before-" Robby stopped, narrowed his eyes. "Before your shift. You were there. Did she say anything?"

She said she loved me. She said I was the easy part. I almost kissed her and then I walked away while she begged me to stay.

"No," Jack said. "Nothing."

Robby studied him for a long moment. Jack felt it like a physical weight, the scrutiny of a man who'd known him twenty years, who'd trusted him with his daughter, who was looking at him now like he was a stranger.

"She's never done this," Robby said quietly. "Not once. Not even when her mother died."

The words hung between them. Jack thought of the stairwell, of her face when he'd walked away, of the way she'd looked at him like he was breaking her heart with every step.

"I'm sure she's fine," Jack offered, the lie tasting like ash. "Probably just needed rest after that shift."

"Maybe." Robby didn't sound convinced. "Or maybe something happened. Maybe that shift broke something. Maybe-" He stopped, ran a hand through his hair, suddenly looking every one of his fifty-two years. "Maybe I should have seen it. Whatever it was."

Jack said nothing.

Robby's phone buzzed. He glanced at it, frowned. "Her apartment manager. Says her car's in the lot but she's not picking up." He looked back at Jack, something shifting in his expression. "I'm going over there. You coming?"

Jack shouldn't. He knew he shouldn't. Every instinct screamed at him to stay away, to maintain distance, to not walk into her apartment with her father like he had any right to be there.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm coming."

They found her car first. Parked in her assigned spot, dust already gathering on the windshield. The manager let them in after Robby flashed his hospital ID and used his chief-of-staff voice, the one that brooked no argument.

Her apartment was neat. Too neat. Bed made, dishes washed, a half-empty coffee mug in the sink. Her phone sat on the nightstand, dead or turned off, the screen black and silent.

Jack stood in her bedroom doorway while Robby checked the bathroom, the closet, anywhere a person could hide, and felt the full weight of what he'd done pressing down on his chest.

She'd left everything. Her wallet on the counter. Her keys in the bowl by the door. Her shoes lined up in the closet, the running shoes she never went anywhere without.

"Her bag's gone," Robby called from the living room. "Her scrubs. Some clothes."

She'd packed, then. Planned. Not a breakdown, not an impulse-a decision.

Jack thought of the seventeen-year-old on the gurney, the way Bambi had kept working afterward, kept smiling, kept pretending. He thought of the stairwell, her forehead almost against his, her hand reaching for him.

Don't leave me like this.

He'd left her exactly like that.

"Jack." Robby's voice had changed. Jack turned to find him holding something-a photograph, framed, from Bambi's bookshelf. He crossed the room, took it, and felt the world tilt.

The photo was from three years ago. Her first day. The crash cart, the wet floor, his own face laughing as he hauled her upright. Someone had caught the moment, the two of them frozen in time, her cheeks flushed, his hand on her elbow, both of them grinning like idiots.

She'd kept it. Framed it. Put it where she'd see it every day.

"Jack," Robby said again, and this time there was something dangerous in his voice, something that sounded like the beginning of understanding. "Why does my daughter have a framed photograph of you?"

Jack looked at the picture. At her face, young and hopeful and already half in love, though neither of them had known it then.

He looked at his best friend of twenty years, the man who'd trusted him, who'd asked him to look out for her, who was staring at him now with dawning horror and the first sparks of rage.

"I don't know," Jack lied, and the words tasted like poison.

But even as he said it, he was pulling out his own phone, scrolling to her number, typing a message he knew she wouldn't see, wouldn't answer, because she'd turned it all off, disappeared into the silence he'd created.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please come back.

He didn't send it. He couldn't. Not with Robby watching, not with everything still at stake, his job and his reputation and the friendship he was already destroying just by standing here with the truth unspoken between them.

"She'll turn up," he said, putting the phone away. "She's smart. She's capable. She just needs-"

"Needs what?" Robby's voice was ice. "Space? Time? What did you say to her, Jack?"

I told her I'd lose everything. I told her she was the problem. I walked away while she begged me to stay.

"Nothing," he said. "I didn't say anything."

Robby held his gaze for a long moment. Then something in his face shifted-cracked-and the controlled calm he'd been maintaining shattered.

"You're lying." Robby's voice was low, dangerous. "You've been lying to me for months. Maybe years."

"Robby-"

"Don't." Robby stepped closer, close enough that Jack could see the veins in his temples, the white-knuckled grip he had on the photograph. "I found this. I saw the way you looked at her. And now she's disappeared, she's turned off her phone, she's-gone-and you're standing here telling me you didn't say anything?"

Jack backed up until he hit the wall. "I didn't-"

"What did you do to her?" Robby's voice rose, cracking with something between grief and fury. "Did you touch her? Did you-"

"No!" Jack's own voice broke, desperate. "God, no. I would never-"

"But you wanted to." It wasn't a question. Robby saw it-the guilt, the wanting, the twenty years of friendship being destroyed in real time. "You wanted to, and you did something, and now she's-"

"I walked away!" The confession tore out of Jack like it was ripping skin. "She told me-she said she loved me, and I walked away. I told her I couldn't. That I'd lose everything. That she was your daughter." He was shaking now, the photograph trembling in his hand. "I left her in that stairwell crying, Robby. I left her because I was scared. Because I'm forty-six years old and I've known her since she was six and I have no right to want her but I do. God help me, I do."

The silence that followed was absolute.

Robby stared at him, the photograph forgotten, the anger draining out of him like blood from a wound. He saw it now-the exhaustion, the grief, the same brokenness he'd seen in his daughter's face.

"You love her," Robby said quietly. Not accusing. Just stating.

Jack closed his eyes. "Yes."

"For how long?"

"I don't know." Jack's voice was barely audible. "Maybe always. Maybe since she graduated and I realized she wasn't a kid anymore. Maybe since the first time she smiled at me and I felt it like a physical thing."

Robby nodded slowly. He thought of twenty years of friendship. Of Jack showing up to every birthday, every graduation, every milestone. Of how Jack had stopped coming to dinner six months ago, how he'd started making excuses.

"She kept this photograph," Robby said, holding up the frame. "Three years. She's loved you for three years, and you loved her back the whole time."

Jack opened his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"For what? For loving her? Or for being too scared to do anything about it?"

Jack had no answer.

Robby set the photograph down on Bambi's nightstand. He suddenly looked every one of his fifty-two years-tired, defeated, afraid.

"If you had chosen her," Robby said quietly, "if you had actually chosen her instead of running... I would have been angry. I would have yelled. I might have even hit you." He met Jack's eyes. "But I would have respected you. Eventually. Because she would have been happy."

Jack flinched like he'd been struck.

"But you didn't choose her," Robby continued. "You chose your fear. You chose your job, your reputation, your-" His voice cracked. "Your friendship with me. You chose everything except the person who actually matters."

Robby drove for nearly an hour before he realized he wasn't heading anywhere.

The city blurred past in streaks of red brake lights and streetlamps, each intersection melting into the next. He stopped at three different lights without remembering them changing from red to green. His hands stayed locked around the steering wheel, knuckles white, fingers cramping, as if gripping hard enough could keep the world from spinning off its axis.

Jack loved her.

The thought kept circling back, relentless, each pass cutting deeper.

Not wanted her.

Not flirted with her.

Loved her.

For years.

The weight of it pressed against his sternum, making it hard to draw a full breath. Twenty years of friendship unspooled through his head like damaged film, frames skipping and catching: college football games in freezing rain, Jack's shoulder pressed against his for warmth; standing side by side at Sarah's funeral, Jack's hand steady on his back while Robby couldn't stop shaking; the night Bambi was born, Jack pacing the waiting room for six hours because Robby looked more terrified than the woman actually in labor, bringing him terrible coffee and not mentioning that his hands were shaking too.

Jack had been there for everything.

Every birthday cake with candles blown out.

Every graduation gown with the mortarboard tilted wrong.

Every Christmas morning after her mother died, showing up with presents and a forced smile, staying until the house wasn't empty anymore.

Every single time Bambi had needed someone, Jack had materialized like he'd been summoned.

And somehow Robby had missed this.

Or maybe he hadn't.

Maybe there had been signs he hadn't wanted to read.

The way Jack always poured her coffee before she asked, two sugars, oat milk, the specific combination she'd mentioned once in passing three years ago.

The way his body oriented toward her in a crowded trauma bay, like a compass needle finding north.

The dinners Jack had stopped attending six months ago, the excuses growing thinner, the distance deliberate and painful.

The guilt Robby had mistaken for work stress.

A humorless laugh escaped him, cracking the silence of the car.

"Jesus Christ."

His daughter.

His best friend.

Of all the people in all the world.

He pulled into an empty grocery store parking lot and killed the engine. The sudden silence flooded the car, heavy and absolute, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal and his own uneven breathing.

His anger should have been a clean thing, directed at Jack.

Part of it was.

But another part-one he hated acknowledging, one that sat heavy and sour in his gut-was directed at himself.

Because Jack hadn't manipulated her.

Hadn't pressured her.

Hadn't taken advantage of her trust or her youth or her grief.

If anything, the idiot had done the opposite.

He'd spent months, maybe years, running away from something Robby now realized had probably been obvious to everyone except the two men most determined not to see it. The nurses probably knew. The other doctors probably knew. The whole damn hospital probably watched Jack find excuses to be near her, watched him leave rooms when she entered, watched him destroy himself with propriety while everyone else saw straight through it.

Robby leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

The image that wouldn't leave him wasn't Jack's confession in Bambi's bedroom, the words torn out like something bleeding.

It was Bambi.

Six years old, missing her front teeth, dragging Jack by the hand across their patchy lawn because she wanted him to watch her ride her bike without training wheels for the first time. Jack had run beside her for twenty minutes, hand hovering near her back, ready to catch her, letting go only when she screamed at him to stop.

Twelve years old, hair in a messy bun, demanding Jack help with a science project because apparently her father explained things "too boring" and Jack made physics sound like a story.

Twenty-three, graduating respiratory therapy school, throwing her arms around both of them for a photograph that now sat in a frame on his desk, her cheek pressed against Jack's shoulder, both of them grinning like they'd won something.

Maybe that was why this hurt so much.

Because somewhere along the way, without him noticing, he'd stopped seeing her as an adult.

Everyone else had adjusted.

Jack had adjusted-had been adjusting for years, apparently, carrying this alone.

Bambi had adjusted-had grown up, fallen in love, made her choice.

Robby was the one still looking at his daughter and seeing every version of her at once, layered on top of each other like transparencies. The little girl with skinned knees. The teenager with too much eyeliner. The woman who'd held a dying boy's hand yesterday came home and told a man twenty years her senior that she loved him.

All three were colliding inside his chest, and he didn't know which one he was supposed to protect.

His phone sat silent on the passenger seat.

No messages.

No calls.

Nothing from Bambi, nothing from Jack.

The anger drained away slowly, leaving only fear in its place. Not fear of Jack. Not fear of gossip or hospital politics or what the board would say if they knew.

Fear that his daughter was hurting somewhere in the dark and believed she had to do it alone.

Robby started the engine. The sound was too loud in the empty lot, aggressive, final.

He didn't know if he'd ever sit across from Jack again, sharing a beer like nothing had changed. Didn't know if twenty years of friendship had survived the last hour, or if it was already dead and he just hadn't felt the body go cold yet. Didn't know if forgiveness was possible, or if he'd even want it when the shock wore off and the betrayal settled into something permanent.

The road ahead was dark, unwritten.

Robby pulled out of the parking lot and drove toward the cemetery, toward whatever he would find there, toward the only thing he knew for certain: that tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days that followed, he would choose her.

Robby didn't go home. He didn't go to the hospital. He drove to the one place he hadn't checked-the cemetery where they'd buried her mother five years ago.

He found her there at dusk, sitting on the grass in front of the headstone, her knees pulled to her chest, her face streaked with tears that had dried hours ago.

"Bambi."

She didn't turn. Didn't flinch. Just sat there, staring at the stone with her mother's name carved into it, like she was waiting for answers that would never come.

"I've been looking everywhere," Robby said, sitting down beside her, not touching her, just being there.

"I know," she whispered. "I saw your calls. I just... couldn't."

They sat in silence for a while, father and daughter in the growing dark, the cemetery quiet around them.

"I talked to Jack."

The words fell into the space between them, heavy as stones dropped into still water. Bambi went completely still-shoulders rigid, breath caught, her body language screaming retreat even as she remained seated on the cold grass.

"You did?" Her voice was barely audible, thinned by the evening wind that rustled through the oak trees overhead.

Robby nodded, though she wasn't looking at him to see it. "I confronted him."

She looked down at her hands, fingers twisting the hem of her sweater until the fabric warped and stretched. Robby watched her knuckles turn white, watched her retreat into herself the way she'd done as a child when the world became too loud, too sharp, too much.

He rubbed a hand across his face, feeling the scratch of stubble he hadn't bothered to shave, the grit of exhaustion in his eyes. For a moment he didn't say anything. The truth sat in his throat like a physical obstruction, harder to speak than he'd expected, because saying it out loud would make it real-would transform this from a nightmare he could wake from into a reality that would reshape all three of their lives permanently.

Because once he said it, there was no pretending this was some misunderstanding. No pretending Jack had simply been careless with her feelings, or confused, or momentarily stupid.

"He loves you."

The words came out rough, scraped against his vocal cords like gravel. Bambi's head snapped toward him so fast he heard the vertebrae in her neck crack. Her eyes were wide, disbelieving, desperate for hope and terrified of finding it.

Robby stared out across the cemetery, unable to hold her gaze. The rows of headstones stretched into the gloaming, gray shapes dissolving into the gathering dark. Somewhere in the distance, a crow called out, harsh and lonely.

"I don't like it," he admitted. The confession felt necessary-a father's duty to acknowledge the wrongness of it even while accepting it.

"Dad-"

"I don't." He shook his head, the motion sharp, definitive. "I don't like the age difference. Twenty years, Bambi. Twenty. I don't like that he's my best friend-that he's been my best friend since before you were born. I don't like that I've known him longer than you've been alive, and that he held you when you were six months old, and that he watched you take your first steps."

A watery laugh escaped her-brittle, broken, surprised despite everything.

"But?"

Robby looked at her then. Really looked. Saw the woman she'd become, sitting on her mother's grave with her heart in pieces, still brave enough to ask for the truth.

"But I know what love looks like."

His voice softened, dropping into the register he used when she was small and frightened of thunderstorms. "And when that man talked about you..." He swallowed hard, the memory of Jack's face rising unbidden-those twenty years of friendship stripped raw, exposed, the naked grief of a man who'd spent years hiding his own heart even from himself. "I've never seen Jack look that broken."

Bambi's eyes filled, tears spilling over before she could blink them back. "He walked away."

"I know."

"He chose everything else." Her voice cracked, splintering on the words. "His job. His reputation. You."

"I know."

Robby reached over and squeezed her hand. Her fingers were ice-cold, stiff with cold and grief, but they curled around his palm like she was drowning and he was the only solid thing left in the world.

"And I'm still angry at him for it."

The admission seemed to surprise her. Her tear-blurred eyes found his face, searching.

"I'm angry because he hurt you," Robby continued, the words gaining momentum now that he'd started, each one a small betrayal of the friendship he'd valued for two decades. "I'm angry because he should've been braver than that. Because he spent years being careful and respectful and then when it mattered most-when you were standing there offering him everything-he ran like a coward." He sighed heavily, the anger draining as quickly as it had risen, leaving only the complicated truth. "But being angry doesn't mean I can pretend he doesn't love you. That he hasn't loved you for years. That he wouldn't cut out his own heart before he'd actually harm you."

The silence stretched between them, filled with the whisper of wind through grass and the distant hum of traffic beyond the cemetery walls. The last light of dusk was fading, the sky bleeding from violet into indigo, stars beginning to pierce through.

Finally Bambi whispered, the sound barely carrying across the inches between them:

"What if he never comes back?"

Robby stared at the headstone in front of them-her mother's name carved in granite, the dates marking a life too short, the space beside it where he would eventually lie. He thought of Jack, alone in his house, probably staring at his own walls, probably wondering if he'd destroyed everything that mattered.

Then he answered honestly, because his daughter deserved honesty even when it hurt.

"Then he's the biggest fool I've ever known," Robby said quietly. "And I will spend the rest of my life being grateful that he was too stupid to see what he had, because it means I don't have to share you with anyone." He paused, squeezing her hand tighter. "But I don't think he's that stupid, baby. I think he's just scared. And scared men either run forever, or they run until they realize what they're running from is the only thing worth having."

Bambi leaned her head against his shoulder, and they sat together in the dark, waiting for morning, waiting for whatever came next. 

Jack stayed in Bambi's apartment long after Robby left.

The door had barely clicked shut before the silence settled over the room-heavy, suffocating, the kind of silence that made every thought sound louder than it should. Jack stood in the middle of her living room, his shoes sinking into carpet that needed vacuuming, his breath shallow in a space that suddenly felt too small, too intimate, too filled with her.

He stared at the photograph Robby had left on the nightstand.

Three years ago. Her first day. His hand wrapped around her elbow after she'd nearly taken out a crash cart, steadying her while she laughed and apologized and tried to pretend she wasn't mortified. He remembered the warmth of her skin through the thin cotton of her scrub top. Remembered the way she'd rolled her eyes and accused him of being dramatic when he'd insisted on checking her ankle. Remembered the sound of her laugh, bright and unguarded, before she'd learned to be careful around him.

He remembered every second of it.

What he didn't remember was realizing someone had taken a picture. Or that she'd kept it. Framed it. Displayed it on her nightstand like it mattered. Like he mattered. Like a moment of casual kindness from her father's best friend was worth preserving in wood and glass.

Jack sank onto the edge of her couch and dropped his head into his hands.

The apartment smelled like her. Coffee from the French press still sitting in the sink. Vanilla lotion from the bottle on the bathroom counter he could see through the open door. The faint scent of laundry detergent-lavender, something soft and clean-lingering in the blankets folded neatly over the armrest. Evidence of a life. A life he'd somehow become part of without ever allowing himself to acknowledge it, without ever admitting that he knew which cabinet held her mugs, which drawer held her takeout menus, that she preferred the left side of the couch because it faced the window.

His gaze drifted around the room, cataloging details he'd pretended not to notice during dozens of visits.

A half-finished book sat face-down on the coffee table-spine cracked, pages warped from being carried in a bag. A blanket was tangled in the corner of the couch, the one she wrapped herself in when she was cold, the one he'd seen her burrow into a hundred times while they watched bad medical dramas and she criticized the inaccuracies. One of her hoodies hung over a dining chair, gray and soft, something she'd probably thrown on to run to the store, and he knew without checking that it would smell like her shampoo if he pressed his face into it.

Normal things.

Ordinary things.

And somehow they hurt worse than the photograph.

Because she wasn't here.

For years he'd convinced himself distance was protecting her. Protecting Robby. Protecting all of them from a scandal that would destroy careers and friendships and the careful order of their lives. He'd told himself he was being noble. Responsible. That wanting her was a failing he could manage through sheer force of will, through avoidance, through the careful construction of boundaries that kept everyone safe.

Now he was sitting alone in her apartment while she was gone. Actually gone-having fled somewhere he couldn't follow, couldn't find, couldn't apologize to. And none of the things he'd protected seemed particularly important anymore. The job felt hollow. The reputation felt like chains. The friendship already felt like ash, destroyed not by what he'd done but by what he hadn't done, by the cowardice that had masqueraded as honor.

Jack looked toward the dark window. His reflection stared back at him-older than he felt, tired in ways that sleep wouldn't fix, ashamed in ways he hadn't known were possible. The image of her in the stairwell slammed into him again unbidden, as it had been slamming into him every three minutes since he'd walked away.

Her tear-streaked face.

The way she'd looked at him like she was finally done hiding, like she was offering him everything she had and trusting him not to destroy it.

The way she'd handed him her heart without hesitation, without conditions, without any of the fear that had paralyzed him for three years.

And he'd walked away.

Not because he didn't love her. Not because he couldn't imagine a future with her-waking up beside her, learning her routines, building a life that included her in every moment. But because he'd been afraid. Afraid of the conversations they'd have to have. Afraid of Robby's anger. Afraid of the hospital board and the gossip and the years of careful reputation-building that would crumble overnight.

The irony was almost enough to make him laugh, except his throat felt too tight, his chest too compressed.

Because he'd ruined everything anyway.

His eyes landed on the bookshelf. On another framed photo, this one from her graduation-Robby on one side, him on the other, Bambi in the middle grinning so hard her eyes were nearly closed, her arms thrown around both of them, pulling them together. Jack stood and crossed the room before he could stop himself, drawn to the image like a man approaching a wound he needed to probe.

His fingers brushed the frame. Dust motes danced in the lamplight.

"You idiot," he muttered.

He wasn't sure whether he meant himself or the smiling man in the photograph. Maybe both. Maybe Robby for not seeing what was obvious, for trusting him with the one thing that mattered most. Maybe himself for betraying that trust not through action but through inaction, through years of wanting and never admitting it, through the final, devastating choice to walk away when she'd finally offered him everything.

The apartment remained silent. No phone calls. No texts. No sign of where she'd gone, whether she was safe, whether she was crying, whether she hated him now or simply felt nothing at all.

Just the lingering proof that she'd loved him long enough to make space for him everywhere. In photographs. In memories. In her life. In the careful way she'd arranged her apartment to be comfortable for him, the way she'd learned how he took his coffee, the way she'd become the person he called first when something went wrong.

And he'd still acted surprised when she said the words out loud.

Jack closed his eyes.

For the first time since the stairwell-maybe for the first time in years-he stopped fighting the truth. Stopped trying to rationalize it, to minimize it, to hide it behind professional distance and paternal concern and the thousand other excuses he'd constructed to keep himself from acknowledging what was happening to him.

The truth was painfully simple.

He loved her.

Not as his best friend's daughter. Not as the kid he'd taught to ride a bike, the teenager he'd helped with science projects, the young woman he'd watched graduate and start her career. Not as someone he needed to protect from the world or from himself.

He loved the woman who argued with him over vent settings until they were both red in the face, then bought him coffee afterward to apologize. Who stole his fries during overnight shifts and complained when he ordered onions. Who sat beside grieving families and somehow made impossible moments easier through sheer presence, through the warmth of her hand on a stranger's shoulder, through the way she never looked away from pain.

Who had become the first person he looked for in every room. The first person he wanted to tell things to-good news, bad news, the stupid jokes that occurred to him at 3 AM. The first person he thought about in the morning, wondering if she'd slept, if she'd remembered to eat, if she was happy. The last person he thought about at night, replaying conversations, storing up moments to revisit later.

He loved her.

And she'd been standing right in front of him.

Choosing him.

While he'd been too scared to choose her back.

Jack swallowed hard. His throat burned. His chest felt hollow, scraped out, like someone had reached inside and removed something essential. He pulled out his phone with hands that wouldn't stop trembling and opened their messages. The cursor blinked against the white screen, patient, waiting.

For once, he didn't overthink it. Didn't draft and delete and draft again. Didn't calculate the impact or the risk or the potential for regret.

He typed:

I should've stayed.

A pause. His thumb hovered. Then:

I should've chosen you.

The words looked small on the screen. Inadequate. A pathetic offering after everything he'd done, everything he hadn't done. But they were true. And after everything-the years of silence, the stairwell, the walking away-the truth was all he had left.

He hit send.

The message disappeared into the void, marked delivered, then read. Or maybe her phone was still off. Maybe she'd never read it. Maybe she was staring at the screen right now, crying, or laughing bitterly, or feeling nothing at all. Maybe she never wanted to speak to him again.

He'd earned that possibility. He'd earned worse.

Jack slipped the phone back into his pocket and looked around the apartment one last time. At the photographs that documented a history he'd tried not to notice. At the blanket on the couch that still held the shape of her body. At the life she'd built so carefully, so completely, while he'd been pretending not to watch.

At the space she'd made for him inside it.

Then he headed for the door.

Halfway there, he stopped. Looked back. And for the first time since the stairwell, allowed himself to say it out loud. To the empty apartment. To himself. To her, wherever she was, in whatever state he'd left her.

"I love you, Bambi."

The words echoed softly through the silence, filling the space she'd left behind, hanging in the air like a promise or a confession or a beginning.

Then he left.

And this time, as the door closed behind him with a sound that felt like the end of something old and the start of something new, he already knew he wasn't going to spend the rest of his life running.

[isbellah]

─── ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ A CROWN OF SHADOWS, B. TARGARYEN

‧₊˚ ┊ Part II — The First Whisper

pairing . . . baelor targaryen x original female character

warning . . . Grief / Loss of a Spouse, Emotional Angst, Political Manipulation / Court Intrigue, Power Imbalance (Royalty/Common Nobility), Arranged Marriage Themes, Slow Burn Romance, Unresolved Tension

summary . . . In the glittering halls of the Red Keep, where every smile is calculated and every glance carries meaning, Prince Baelor Targaryen plays his role to perfection—dutiful, composed, and entirely hollow beneath the weight of expectation. Surrounded by nobles vying for his attention, he moves through the night bound by duty, unable to answer the simplest question of what he truly wants. Everything shifts when he notices Lady Elinor Arryn. Unlike the others, she does not perform. Their exchange is brief, quiet—and dangerously real. For the first time in years, Baelor is seen not as a prince, but as a man. In a court built on appearances, such moments do not go unnoticed. By morning, whispers have taken root, turning a single conversation into intrigue. Elinor is warned of the risks tied to royal attention, while Baelor struggles to return to duty as thoughts of her linger. Elsewhere, Lady Rhea Hightower and other watchful players begin to assess, strategise, and wait. In King’s Landing, nothing is ever just a conversation—and even the smallest connection can shift power, ignite ambition, and unravel far more than either of them intended.

THE GREAT HALL of the Red Keep glittered like a promise no one quite trusted. Gold and candlelight softened the harshness of stone, turning banners into silk and ambition into something almost beautiful. Music threaded through the air—lutes and pipes weaving a tune light enough to dance to, heavy enough to conceal conversation. The scent of rose oil, citrus, and something sharper—fear, perhaps—lingered beneath it all.

It was a room built for performance. And every soul within it knew their part.

Baelor Targaryen moved through it as though he had been born to it. He inclined his head at precisely the right angle. He smiled when expected, spoke when required, listened when it was politically useful to do so. Lords praised the peace of the realm. Ladies praised his patience, his strength, his… resilience. He thanked them all. He remembered none of it.

Yet beneath the practiced facade, a quiet storm brewed. What would it take to feel more than this endless performance? He felt like a marionette, strings pulled taut by duty, every gesture choreographed to fit the expectations of the court. How could anyone mistake this for happiness?

Behind him, Ser Jory Wylde stood like a shadow carved from iron, his presence as constant as the prince himself. “You’ve been admired six times, pitied twice, and nearly cornered by a mother from the Reach,” Ser Jory muttered under his breath as Baelor moved past another cluster of nobles.

Baelor did not break stride. “Only nearly?” 

“She was intercepted.” 

“I am grateful for your continued vigilance.” 

“I live to serve,” Ser Jory replied dryly.

The pattern did not change. A lady laughed too brightly. A lord spoke too earnestly. A mother guided her daughter just slightly too close. Every conversation circled the same unspoken question: Will you choose?

Baelor endured it. He always had. But how long can I do this?

“Your Grace.”

The voice was warm, polished, deliberate. Baelor turned. Lady Rhea Hightower stood before him like something painted into the room itself—white silk cascading in perfect folds, gold woven subtly through her sleeves, her smile measured but inviting. Around her, attention gathered naturally, drawn as if by design.

“The honour is mine,” Baelor said, feeling the weight of expectation settle upon his shoulders like a mantle.

Her eyes held his—not boldly, not shyly, but with practiced ease. “The honour, I think, is shared.”

A dance, then. He recognised it immediately. A game, always a game. “I trust the journey from Oldtown was not too taxing,” he said.

“Not at all,” she replied, her tone smooth and inviting. “Though I find King’s Landing rather more… lively.”

“That is a generous description.” “It is the one most suited to a celebration such as this.”

Their words moved as they were meant to—light, balanced, without fault. She laughed when expected. He responded when required. Every moment was shaped, refined, polished until it gleamed. Perfect.

And yet—Baelor found himself aware, with quiet irritation, that he was not listening. Not truly. He was answering. Not engaging. There was a difference.

Am I always destined to be just a prince? The thought nagged at him. What do I want?

“And what do you enjoy, Your Grace?” Lady Rhea asked, tilting her head slightly. “When the court does not demand your attention?”

The question was well-placed. Carefully chosen. And entirely without weight. Baelor opened his mouth—and realised he did not know how to answer it. Not in a way that was true. Not in a way that mattered.

He gave her the answer expected of him. “I find value in service to the realm.”

Lady Rhea’s smile did not falter. But something in him did. She is not just a pretty face. There is depth beneath her charm.

Across the hall—stillness. It drew his eye before he understood why. Amid movement, she did not move. Amid sound, she did not speak.

Lady Elinor Arryn stood near one of the great columns, her pale blue gown catching the candlelight in soft, shifting lines. She was not hidden—but neither was she seeking to be seen. She was simply… there. And for the first time that evening, Baelor wanted something without understanding it.

What is it about her? There was a quiet strength in her presence, an air of contemplation that drew him in. She seemed impervious to the court’s demands, her gaze cutting through the cacophony around her.

“You are distracted, Your Grace.” Lady Rhea’s voice was gentle. Observant.

Baelor’s gaze returned to her, composed as ever. “Am I?” “For a moment.” He inclined his head. “Then I shall endeavour not to be.”

Her smile deepened, though her eyes flickered—just briefly—toward the edge of the hall. She had seen it. Of course she had. Everyone saw everything here.

At the dais, laughter rang out. Maekar Targaryen leaned back in his chair, one arm slung carelessly over the carved wood, his expression somewhere between amusement and mild disapproval. Beside him sat his wife, Dyanna Dayne, newly wed and already far more composed than her husband.

“You stare like a man who has misplaced something,” Maekar remarked, not bothering to lower his voice. “I have misplaced nothing,” Baelor replied evenly. “Then perhaps you’ve found something.” Dyanna hid a smile behind her goblet. “You should be kinder,” she murmured. “To him?” Maekar scoffed. “He’s the Crown Prince. He can endure it.” Baelor gave him a look that might have silenced another man. Maekar only grinned. “Careful, brother,” he added. “The last time a Targaryen followed interest over sense, we gained a rebellion for our trouble.”

The words were light. But not without meaning. The shadow of the First Blackfyre Rebellion had not entirely faded. Loyalties still lingered beneath the surface, waiting for reason—or excuse—to resurface. Marriage, in such a realm, was never simple. Baelor knew that better than most.

“Go,” Dyanna said softly, glancing toward the edge of the hall. “Before he says something worse.” “I have said nothing yet,” Maekar protested. “That is precisely the concern.”

Baelor hesitated, acutely aware of how many eyes tracked the movements of the Crown Prince. A departure now would be noticed—not just by Lady Rhea, whose smile had grown a shade tighter, but by every mother and courtier in the hall. It would be a statement. Yet, standing still, he felt the weight of his own curiosity—and of a more private longing—tip the scales. With a measured breath, Baelor offered Rhea a word of polite farewell, then, accepting the consequences, moved—slow and deliberate—toward the column’s quiet edge.

Lady Elinor Arryn did not turn as he approached. But she knew he was there. Of course she did.

“You are not dancing.” His voice was calm. Neutral. A statement, not a question.

She turned then. And for the first time that evening—someone looked at him without expectation.

“Nor are you, my prince,” she replied, her tone soft yet unwavering.

The words, though gentle, held a hidden strength that caught him off guard. Her gaze was steady, presenting no sign of the anxiety that permeated the hall. Baelor felt something inside him shift—a flicker of intrigue mingled with confusion.

“I have been,” he said, attempting to reclaim control of the conversation.

She tilted her head slightly, a challenging yet playful gesture. “Then perhaps Your Grace should allow himself rest.”

There was no mockery in it. No flirtation. Only quiet observation.

“I did not expect to be advised this evening,” he noted, a hint of amusement creeping into his tone.

“Then you have been poorly prepared,” she replied, a brief smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

The exchange lingered between them, a moment bathed in a strange intimacy that drew him closer to her presence. Baelor realised, with a jolt of awareness, that this conversation was different from those with the other ladies of the court. Their words were polished, rehearsed, devoid of genuine connection.

But Elinor… she was speaking truthfully. It was disarming.

Across the hall, whispers had begun to swell again. The prince. The Arryn girl. Too long. Too close. Lady Rhea watched from where she stood, her smile unchanged, her eyes anything but.

Baelor became aware of it then—the shift in the room, the subtle turn of attention, the beginning of something that would not remain contained. He should step away. He knew it. He had always known when to leave.

And yet—for a moment longer, he did not.

“Elinor Arryn,” he said quietly, as though committing it to memory. “Baelor Targaryen,” she returned, just as softly. Not Your Grace. Not Prince. Just— Him.

Something in his chest tightened. Not pain. Not quite. Recognition. He stepped back first. Because this time—he knew enough to do so.

But as he turned, as the court closed around him once more, as duty settled back over his shoulders like armour—Baelor understood something with quiet certainty. For the first time in years—someone had seen him. And worse—he had allowed it.

Morning came softly to the Red Keep, though there was little softness in the castle itself. The gardens below the queen’s holdfast gleamed under a pale wash of sunlight, every rose petal and clipped hedge still jeweled with dew. Fountains murmured into still pools, their water catching gold where the sun broke through the morning haze. It was beautiful in the way King’s Landing often tried to be—carefully arranged, richly dressed, concealing whatever rot lay beneath.

Lady Elinor Arryn walked beside her mother along a gravel path edged with white stone, her hands clasped lightly before her, her steps measured. Her gown was simpler than the one she had worn to the feast, a soft blue wool with silver stitching at the sleeves, though even now she felt dressed for scrutiny. Because she was.

The eyes were not always visible in King’s Landing. Often, they were only felt.

Beside her, Lady Alys had been quiet when they first entered the gardens, but Elinor knew that silence in her mother. It was not peace. It was preparation.

At last, Alys spoke. “You were seen.”

There was no accusation in the words. That made them worse. Elinor kept her gaze ahead, watching a pair of servants cross the far end of the path, carrying cut flowers in shallow baskets. “I gathered as much.”

“More than seen.”

Alys stopped walking. Elinor turned.

Her mother’s face, so often kind and composed, held a strain she could not quite smooth away. 

The breeze lifted a strand of pale hair from her brow, and she tucked it back absently, studying her daughter with tenderness edged by fear.

“The court has made a story of it already,” Alys said. “A prince leaves Lady Rhea Hightower to speak to the quiet daughter of the Vale, and half the Red Keep decides it has witnessed the beginning of something.”

Elinor let out a breath that might have been a laugh if there were any humour in it. “The beginning of what? A conversation?”

“In this place,” her mother replied, “a conversation is often enough.”

That, at least, was true. Elinor looked toward the roses, their red blooms heavy on the vine. 

For one foolish instant, the colour summoned last night again—black and crimson at the prince’s shoulders, the measured stillness of him, the unsettling weight of being looked at as though she were the only quiet thing in the room. Why had she felt so seen?

She had not meant to remember it. That was the trouble.

“I did nothing wrong,” she asserted, and heard in her own voice the carefulness of someone defending herself before she comprehended why.

Alys’s expression softened further. She stepped closer, smoothing a crease in Elinor’s sleeve just as she had in the carriage the day before. “I know that, my love.”

The gentleness almost undid her. “It was only a polite exchange,” Elinor continued. “He spoke. 

I answered. That is all.”

Alys searched her face, as though trying to find what had been left unsaid between the spaces of those words. “Perhaps,” she said quietly. “But princes do not love without consequence.”

The words settled heavily between them.

Love.

It felt too large a word for what had passed beneath candlelight. Too dangerous a thing to even name. Yet Elinor understood what her mother truly meant. Not love as songmakers told it. Love as court remembered it. As history punished it. As the realm bent beneath it.

Royal marriages were not marriages alone. They were bargains, shields, treaties dressed in silk and gold. A prince’s attention was never merely his own to give. It drew with it expectation, ambition, resentment, and the hunger of every house that stood to gain or lose by where it fell.

Alys touched her cheek lightly. “I do not say this to frighten you.”

“No,” Elinor said. “Only to warn me.”

“Yes.”

She looked down, the gravel path blurring for a moment beneath lowered lashes. “There is nothing to warn against.”

Was there not?

Her mother did not answer at once, and that silence felt more merciful than any contradiction.

At the far side of the garden, a dragon carved in red stone watched over the fountain basin, wings arched, mouth open in a frozen snarl. In the morning light, its shadow cut long and dark across the grass, as if reminding every soul below exactly whose castle this was.

Alys followed her gaze. “They are not cruel because they are Targaryens,” she said softly. “But the blood of old Valyria does not bend easily. Fire rarely asks permission before it burns.”

Elinor swallowed. She wanted, absurdly, to say that Prince Baelor had not looked like fire. He had looked like ash. Like something scorched and still standing. But she said nothing.

Instead, she resumed walking, and after a brief pause, her mother walked with her.

Behind them, unseen but not unfelt, the whispers continued.

Prince Baelor spent the morning in a solar lined with maps and old sunlight. The chamber looked eastward over the city, where the distant glimmer of Blackwater Bay lay hazed in pale gold. Letters and sealed dispatches rested in ordered stacks across the great oak table, some bearing the direwolf of the North, others the sigils of lesser lords requesting judgment, favour, reassurance. Kingdoms were held together by such papers more often than by swords.

Today, they might as well have been written in some dead tongue.

Baelor stood with one hand braced against the table, reading the same line for the third time and understanding none of it. What did they want from him? The demands of court pressed against him like the weight of an unsheathed sword, always ready to strike.

“White Harbor requests permission to expand harbor duties on imported timber…” Maester Corbyn said, scanning the letter in his hand before looking up. “Your Grace?”

Baelor blinked, forcing his thoughts back to the room. “Yes. The increase is reasonable if matched by improved patrols. There were reports of smuggling last winter.”

Corbyn’s brows lifted faintly. “Indeed.”

Baelor straightened, drawing his shoulders back with mild irritation—not at the maester, but at himself. He should not have needed the pause. This was simple work. Necessary work. The sort of governance he had always found steadier than feasts and smiling women.

And yet his mind had wandered again. Not to policy. To a voice. What do you do when no one is watching? He had been asked many questions in his life. Clever ones. Political ones. Dangerous ones. None had lodged beneath his skin quite like that.

Corbyn set one letter aside and reached for another. “There is also correspondence from Winterfell. Lord Stark’s steward writes regarding boundary disputes with the mountain clans near the Neck.”

Baelor took the parchment this time, letting the dry scrape of it anchor him. He read. Understood. Replied. But even then, some part of him lingered elsewhere—in a candlelit hall, at the edge of a great stone column, with clear grey eyes fixed on him not with calculation, but recognition.

It was intolerable.

Corbyn watched him for a moment longer than was comfortable. “You are distracted this morning.”

Baelor did not look up. “Am I?”

The maester’s mouth curved by a fraction. “Less so than many men would be after such an evening.”

Baelor folded the Northern letter carefully, too carefully. “You speak in riddles for a man of chains.”

“I have found them useful at court.”

At last, Baelor raised his gaze. Corbyn was an old man, but not a dull one. His eyes were lined by age, sharpened by decades spent observing those who mistook learning for harmlessness. He would not ask directly. Men at court rarely did when the answer mattered.

Baelor set the letter aside. “If you have something to say, Maester, say it.”

Corbyn inclined his head. “Only that it is uncommon to see Your Grace abandon a conversation already considered advantageous.”

Lady Rhea Hightower’s smile flashed unpleasantly through his mind. “Advantage does not always hold attention,” Baelor said.

“No,” Corbyn agreed. “It does not.”

The maester’s tone remained mild, but the words landed with more precision than Baelor cared for. He moved toward the window, clasping his hands behind his back. Below, the city stretched outward in a confusion of red roofs and smoke, the world beyond the walls still turning, indifferent to the quiet disorder of a prince’s thoughts.

“I spoke to a lady of the Vale,” he said at last, because denying it would insult them both.

“So I have heard.”

Of course he had. The Red Keep bred gossip as readily as it did mould. Baelor exhaled softly through his nose. “It was a conversation. Nothing more.”

“Very well,” Corbyn said, his voice steady. “But you know where such conversations may lead.”

Baelor's chest tightened at the implication. He had spent years mastering himself. Grief had taught him discipline more effectively than any knight ever had. He would not be unsettled by one lady with observant eyes and an inconvenient talent for honesty.

He turned from the window, brushing aside the unease that lingered. “What remains?” he asked, shifting back to the business at hand.

Corbyn glanced down at the stack of letters. “Dorne. Then the Reach. Then three petitions regarding grain levies.”

Baelor nodded once. “Very well.”

Work, at least, asked nothing of his heart.

In a small withdrawing room off the western gallery, Lady Rhea Hightower received her guests with grace sharpened into purpose. The chamber was full of soft light and cool wine. Two ladies of the Reach sat beside her—one a cousin by marriage, the other the daughter of a bannerman whose loyalty was most often measured in what it could purchase. A third woman, old enough to be called wise and vain enough to resent it, leaned near the window with a fan in hand.

Rhea stood before the hearth, white silk exchanged for pale green this morning, as though to suggest she had not dressed with the prince in mind at all.

“He crossed half the hall,” the older woman said, unable to keep irritation from her voice. “In front of everyone.”

“Then half the hall has eyes,” Rhea replied smoothly.

The bannerman’s daughter shifted in her seat. “Do you think it serious?”

Rhea accepted the goblet offered by a servant but did not drink. “Not at all,” was her quick reply. The answer came too swiftly to be entirely honest.

She looked toward the open lattice, where the summer breeze stirred the gauze curtains. “Men such as Prince Baelor are susceptible to novelty,” she said. “Particularly after grief. A quiet face. A different manner. Something unpracticed enough to seem sincere.”

“And the Arryn girl?”

Rhea’s smile sharpened by a degree. “Will either prove foolish… or prove useful.” She did not yet know which she preferred.

“Then what will you do?”

At that, Rhea finally sipped her wine. “What women have always done at court,” she said. 

“Wait. Watch. And never surrender a field because one soldier wandered from it.”

Later that afternoon, Elinor found no true peace indoors and so returned to the outer walk overlooking the gardens. The day had grown warmer, the sun laying bright heat across the stone, while the sea breeze just managed to slip over the walls and soften it. Below, servants crossed the pathways with baskets of herbs and cut blooms for the evening tables. Somewhere nearby, a harp sounded faintly from an open chamber.

She rested one hand against the balustrade and let herself breathe. Only for a moment.

“Lady Elinor.”

The voice behind her was smooth and pleasantly pitched, the sort of voice that spent much of its life being welcomed into rooms.

She turned. Ser Wendel Royce bowed with practiced ease, one hand pressed to his chest. He was handsome enough, if one liked that sort of thing—broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, all bronze courtesy and easy smiles. His house was a noble one. His timing, however, was suspicious.

“Ser Wendel.”

“I hope I do not intrude.”

“You do,” she said, then softened it with the slightest incline of her head. “But not unforgivably.”

His smile widened. “I shall take that as mercy.”

He moved to stand at a respectable distance beside her, following her gaze over the gardens as though he had come for the view alone. Men at court often believed women mistook proximity for innocence.

“I had meant to pay my respects sooner,” he said. “The Vale has been much discussed since your arrival.”

“How flattering.”

“Not flattering,” he corrected lightly. “Important.”

Elinor glanced at him, aware of the game beneath the surface. “And is that why you have come? To discuss the political importance of my father’s house?”

“Among other things.”

There it was. The smile remained, and so did the purpose beneath it. She looked away again, allowing him enough silence to grow just slightly uncomfortable.

“At feasts,” Wendel said at last, “the smallest moments often become the most interesting by morning.”

“I have noticed.”

“The prince seemed particularly interested in one such moment.”

Elinor almost smiled. So this was the shape of it. Not flirtation, then. Fishing.

“And did he?”

Wendel studied her profile. “You tell me, my lady.”

“No,” she said gently. “I do not think I will.”

He laughed at that, though she sensed the edge beneath it. “I meant no offense.”

“Nor do I.”

“Only caution?”

She turned fully now, meeting his eyes with calm that bordered on cool. “Only the understanding that in King’s Landing, a question is rarely just a question.”

For the first time, his expression shifted—amusement touched by reluctant respect. “I see the Vale sends no fools.”

“My father would consider that a point of pride.”

Wendel nodded. “Then I shall not insult him by pretending I came merely to admire the roses.”

“How honest of you.”

“Briefly,” he said with a grin. “I cannot make a habit of it. It would ruin me.”

That, despite herself, nearly drew a laugh from her. Nearly.

He stepped back. “Take care, Lady Elinor. Attention is a dangerous thing to carry in this castle.”

When he left, she watched him go and wondered not whether he would report the exchange, but to whom. The answer, she suspected, was everyone.

By evening, the air in their chambers had changed. It felt tighter. Smaller. As though something had followed them inside from the corridors and shut the door behind it.

Lord Lucys stood by the hearth when Elinor entered, though no fire burned there. He had removed his outer cloak but not the severity from his face. The light from the candles cut his features into sharper lines, turning his hawk-like gaze sharp.

Elinor closed the door behind her. Her father did not waste time. “You were approached by Royce.”

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He asked polite questions and hoped for impolite answers.”

Lucys’s jaw tightened. “Did you give him any?”

“No.”

He watched her for a long moment, pacing once. “This is how the game begins. Not with grand gestures, but with small tests—men sent to weigh what may be won, or lost. Remember that, Elinor. In King’s Landing, your name is not just your own. It is currency.”

She nodded, steady.

Lucys’s tone was low, clipped, all politics and strategy. “Do not give them more than you must. The Targaryens notice everything, and so does the rest of the court.”

His worry was unspoken but palpable—a warning about power, not about love. 

The word lingered, though it had not been spoken.

Love.

It did not belong to what had passed beneath candlelight—too large, too perilous a name for something so quiet. What existed between them was smaller. Quieter. And yet, no less dangerous.

Elinor lifted her gaze to her father, composure settling over her like armour. “I understand,” she said.

( MAIN MASTERLIST ) ( SERIES MASTERLIST ) (BAELOR TARGARYEN MASTERLIST )

[isbellah]

A CROWN OF SHADOWS, B. TARGARYEN

“Not Your Grace. Not Prince. Just—him.”

pairing baelor targayren x original female character 

summary In a court where every smile is calculated and every marriage is a political move, Prince Baelor Targaryen has long mastered the art of duty over desire. But when he meets Lady Elinor Arryn—quiet, observant, and unwilling to perform—something shifts. What begins as a single moment becomes something far more dangerous. Whispers spread. Alliances tighten. And in a world where love is never without consequence, being seen may be the most dangerous thing of all.

001. The Prince's Falcon

002. The First Whisper

( MAIN MASTERLIST ) ( BAELOR TARGARYEN MASTERLIST ) ( NAVIGATION )

[isbellah]

─── ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ A CROWN OF SHADOWS, B. TARGARYEN

‧₊˚ ┊ Part II — The First Whisper

pairing . . . baelor targaryen x original female character

warning . . . Grief / Loss of a Spouse, Emotional Angst, Political Manipulation / Court Intrigue, Power Imbalance (Royalty/Common Nobility), Arranged Marriage Themes, Slow Burn Romance, Unresolved Tension

summary . . . In the glittering halls of the Red Keep, where every smile is calculated and every glance carries meaning, Prince Baelor Targaryen plays his role to perfection—dutiful, composed, and entirely hollow beneath the weight of expectation. Surrounded by nobles vying for his attention, he moves through the night bound by duty, unable to answer the simplest question of what he truly wants. Everything shifts when he notices Lady Elinor Arryn. Unlike the others, she does not perform. Their exchange is brief, quiet—and dangerously real. For the first time in years, Baelor is seen not as a prince, but as a man. In a court built on appearances, such moments do not go unnoticed. By morning, whispers have taken root, turning a single conversation into intrigue. Elinor is warned of the risks tied to royal attention, while Baelor struggles to return to duty as thoughts of her linger. Elsewhere, Lady Rhea Hightower and other watchful players begin to assess, strategise, and wait. In King’s Landing, nothing is ever just a conversation—and even the smallest connection can shift power, ignite ambition, and unravel far more than either of them intended.

THE GREAT HALL of the Red Keep glittered like a promise no one quite trusted. Gold and candlelight softened the harshness of stone, turning banners into silk and ambition into something almost beautiful. Music threaded through the air—lutes and pipes weaving a tune light enough to dance to, heavy enough to conceal conversation. The scent of rose oil, citrus, and something sharper—fear, perhaps—lingered beneath it all.

It was a room built for performance. And every soul within it knew their part.

Baelor Targaryen moved through it as though he had been born to it. He inclined his head at precisely the right angle. He smiled when expected, spoke when required, listened when it was politically useful to do so. Lords praised the peace of the realm. Ladies praised his patience, his strength, his… resilience. He thanked them all. He remembered none of it.

Yet beneath the practiced facade, a quiet storm brewed. What would it take to feel more than this endless performance? He felt like a marionette, strings pulled taut by duty, every gesture choreographed to fit the expectations of the court. How could anyone mistake this for happiness?

Behind him, Ser Jory Wylde stood like a shadow carved from iron, his presence as constant as the prince himself. “You’ve been admired six times, pitied twice, and nearly cornered by a mother from the Reach,” Ser Jory muttered under his breath as Baelor moved past another cluster of nobles.

Baelor did not break stride. “Only nearly?” 

“She was intercepted.” 

“I am grateful for your continued vigilance.” 

“I live to serve,” Ser Jory replied dryly.

The pattern did not change. A lady laughed too brightly. A lord spoke too earnestly. A mother guided her daughter just slightly too close. Every conversation circled the same unspoken question: Will you choose?

Baelor endured it. He always had. But how long can I do this?

“Your Grace.”

The voice was warm, polished, deliberate. Baelor turned. Lady Rhea Hightower stood before him like something painted into the room itself—white silk cascading in perfect folds, gold woven subtly through her sleeves, her smile measured but inviting. Around her, attention gathered naturally, drawn as if by design.

“The honour is mine,” Baelor said, feeling the weight of expectation settle upon his shoulders like a mantle.

Her eyes held his—not boldly, not shyly, but with practiced ease. “The honour, I think, is shared.”

A dance, then. He recognised it immediately. A game, always a game. “I trust the journey from Oldtown was not too taxing,” he said.

“Not at all,” she replied, her tone smooth and inviting. “Though I find King’s Landing rather more… lively.”

“That is a generous description.” “It is the one most suited to a celebration such as this.”

Their words moved as they were meant to—light, balanced, without fault. She laughed when expected. He responded when required. Every moment was shaped, refined, polished until it gleamed. Perfect.

And yet—Baelor found himself aware, with quiet irritation, that he was not listening. Not truly. He was answering. Not engaging. There was a difference.

Am I always destined to be just a prince? The thought nagged at him. What do I want?

“And what do you enjoy, Your Grace?” Lady Rhea asked, tilting her head slightly. “When the court does not demand your attention?”

The question was well-placed. Carefully chosen. And entirely without weight. Baelor opened his mouth—and realised he did not know how to answer it. Not in a way that was true. Not in a way that mattered.

He gave her the answer expected of him. “I find value in service to the realm.”

Lady Rhea’s smile did not falter. But something in him did. She is not just a pretty face. There is depth beneath her charm.

Across the hall—stillness. It drew his eye before he understood why. Amid movement, she did not move. Amid sound, she did not speak.

Lady Elinor Arryn stood near one of the great columns, her pale blue gown catching the candlelight in soft, shifting lines. She was not hidden—but neither was she seeking to be seen. She was simply… there. And for the first time that evening, Baelor wanted something without understanding it.

What is it about her? There was a quiet strength in her presence, an air of contemplation that drew him in. She seemed impervious to the court’s demands, her gaze cutting through the cacophony around her.

“You are distracted, Your Grace.” Lady Rhea’s voice was gentle. Observant.

Baelor’s gaze returned to her, composed as ever. “Am I?” “For a moment.” He inclined his head. “Then I shall endeavour not to be.”

Her smile deepened, though her eyes flickered—just briefly—toward the edge of the hall. She had seen it. Of course she had. Everyone saw everything here.

At the dais, laughter rang out. Maekar Targaryen leaned back in his chair, one arm slung carelessly over the carved wood, his expression somewhere between amusement and mild disapproval. Beside him sat his wife, Dyanna Dayne, newly wed and already far more composed than her husband.

“You stare like a man who has misplaced something,” Maekar remarked, not bothering to lower his voice. “I have misplaced nothing,” Baelor replied evenly. “Then perhaps you’ve found something.” Dyanna hid a smile behind her goblet. “You should be kinder,” she murmured. “To him?” Maekar scoffed. “He’s the Crown Prince. He can endure it.” Baelor gave him a look that might have silenced another man. Maekar only grinned. “Careful, brother,” he added. “The last time a Targaryen followed interest over sense, we gained a rebellion for our trouble.”

The words were light. But not without meaning. The shadow of the First Blackfyre Rebellion had not entirely faded. Loyalties still lingered beneath the surface, waiting for reason—or excuse—to resurface. Marriage, in such a realm, was never simple. Baelor knew that better than most.

“Go,” Dyanna said softly, glancing toward the edge of the hall. “Before he says something worse.” “I have said nothing yet,” Maekar protested. “That is precisely the concern.”

Baelor hesitated, acutely aware of how many eyes tracked the movements of the Crown Prince. A departure now would be noticed—not just by Lady Rhea, whose smile had grown a shade tighter, but by every mother and courtier in the hall. It would be a statement. Yet, standing still, he felt the weight of his own curiosity—and of a more private longing—tip the scales. With a measured breath, Baelor offered Rhea a word of polite farewell, then, accepting the consequences, moved—slow and deliberate—toward the column’s quiet edge.

Lady Elinor Arryn did not turn as he approached. But she knew he was there. Of course she did.

“You are not dancing.” His voice was calm. Neutral. A statement, not a question.

She turned then. And for the first time that evening—someone looked at him without expectation.

“Nor are you, my prince,” she replied, her tone soft yet unwavering.

The words, though gentle, held a hidden strength that caught him off guard. Her gaze was steady, presenting no sign of the anxiety that permeated the hall. Baelor felt something inside him shift—a flicker of intrigue mingled with confusion.

“I have been,” he said, attempting to reclaim control of the conversation.

She tilted her head slightly, a challenging yet playful gesture. “Then perhaps Your Grace should allow himself rest.”

There was no mockery in it. No flirtation. Only quiet observation.

“I did not expect to be advised this evening,” he noted, a hint of amusement creeping into his tone.

“Then you have been poorly prepared,” she replied, a brief smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

The exchange lingered between them, a moment bathed in a strange intimacy that drew him closer to her presence. Baelor realised, with a jolt of awareness, that this conversation was different from those with the other ladies of the court. Their words were polished, rehearsed, devoid of genuine connection.

But Elinor… she was speaking truthfully. It was disarming.

Across the hall, whispers had begun to swell again. The prince. The Arryn girl. Too long. Too close. Lady Rhea watched from where she stood, her smile unchanged, her eyes anything but.

Baelor became aware of it then—the shift in the room, the subtle turn of attention, the beginning of something that would not remain contained. He should step away. He knew it. He had always known when to leave.

And yet—for a moment longer, he did not.

“Elinor Arryn,” he said quietly, as though committing it to memory. “Baelor Targaryen,” she returned, just as softly. Not Your Grace. Not Prince. Just— Him.

Something in his chest tightened. Not pain. Not quite. Recognition. He stepped back first. Because this time—he knew enough to do so.

But as he turned, as the court closed around him once more, as duty settled back over his shoulders like armour—Baelor understood something with quiet certainty. For the first time in years—someone had seen him. And worse—he had allowed it.

Morning came softly to the Red Keep, though there was little softness in the castle itself. The gardens below the queen’s holdfast gleamed under a pale wash of sunlight, every rose petal and clipped hedge still jeweled with dew. Fountains murmured into still pools, their water catching gold where the sun broke through the morning haze. It was beautiful in the way King’s Landing often tried to be—carefully arranged, richly dressed, concealing whatever rot lay beneath.

Lady Elinor Arryn walked beside her mother along a gravel path edged with white stone, her hands clasped lightly before her, her steps measured. Her gown was simpler than the one she had worn to the feast, a soft blue wool with silver stitching at the sleeves, though even now she felt dressed for scrutiny. Because she was.

The eyes were not always visible in King’s Landing. Often, they were only felt.

Beside her, Lady Alys had been quiet when they first entered the gardens, but Elinor knew that silence in her mother. It was not peace. It was preparation.

At last, Alys spoke. “You were seen.”

There was no accusation in the words. That made them worse. Elinor kept her gaze ahead, watching a pair of servants cross the far end of the path, carrying cut flowers in shallow baskets. “I gathered as much.”

“More than seen.”

Alys stopped walking. Elinor turned.

Her mother’s face, so often kind and composed, held a strain she could not quite smooth away. 

The breeze lifted a strand of pale hair from her brow, and she tucked it back absently, studying her daughter with tenderness edged by fear.

“The court has made a story of it already,” Alys said. “A prince leaves Lady Rhea Hightower to speak to the quiet daughter of the Vale, and half the Red Keep decides it has witnessed the beginning of something.”

Elinor let out a breath that might have been a laugh if there were any humour in it. “The beginning of what? A conversation?”

“In this place,” her mother replied, “a conversation is often enough.”

That, at least, was true. Elinor looked toward the roses, their red blooms heavy on the vine. 

For one foolish instant, the colour summoned last night again—black and crimson at the prince’s shoulders, the measured stillness of him, the unsettling weight of being looked at as though she were the only quiet thing in the room. Why had she felt so seen?

She had not meant to remember it. That was the trouble.

“I did nothing wrong,” she asserted, and heard in her own voice the carefulness of someone defending herself before she comprehended why.

Alys’s expression softened further. She stepped closer, smoothing a crease in Elinor’s sleeve just as she had in the carriage the day before. “I know that, my love.”

The gentleness almost undid her. “It was only a polite exchange,” Elinor continued. “He spoke. 

I answered. That is all.”

Alys searched her face, as though trying to find what had been left unsaid between the spaces of those words. “Perhaps,” she said quietly. “But princes do not love without consequence.”

The words settled heavily between them.

Love.

It felt too large a word for what had passed beneath candlelight. Too dangerous a thing to even name. Yet Elinor understood what her mother truly meant. Not love as songmakers told it. Love as court remembered it. As history punished it. As the realm bent beneath it.

Royal marriages were not marriages alone. They were bargains, shields, treaties dressed in silk and gold. A prince’s attention was never merely his own to give. It drew with it expectation, ambition, resentment, and the hunger of every house that stood to gain or lose by where it fell.

Alys touched her cheek lightly. “I do not say this to frighten you.”

“No,” Elinor said. “Only to warn me.”

“Yes.”

She looked down, the gravel path blurring for a moment beneath lowered lashes. “There is nothing to warn against.”

Was there not?

Her mother did not answer at once, and that silence felt more merciful than any contradiction.

At the far side of the garden, a dragon carved in red stone watched over the fountain basin, wings arched, mouth open in a frozen snarl. In the morning light, its shadow cut long and dark across the grass, as if reminding every soul below exactly whose castle this was.

Alys followed her gaze. “They are not cruel because they are Targaryens,” she said softly. “But the blood of old Valyria does not bend easily. Fire rarely asks permission before it burns.”

Elinor swallowed. She wanted, absurdly, to say that Prince Baelor had not looked like fire. He had looked like ash. Like something scorched and still standing. But she said nothing.

Instead, she resumed walking, and after a brief pause, her mother walked with her.

Behind them, unseen but not unfelt, the whispers continued.

Prince Baelor spent the morning in a solar lined with maps and old sunlight. The chamber looked eastward over the city, where the distant glimmer of Blackwater Bay lay hazed in pale gold. Letters and sealed dispatches rested in ordered stacks across the great oak table, some bearing the direwolf of the North, others the sigils of lesser lords requesting judgment, favour, reassurance. Kingdoms were held together by such papers more often than by swords.

Today, they might as well have been written in some dead tongue.

Baelor stood with one hand braced against the table, reading the same line for the third time and understanding none of it. What did they want from him? The demands of court pressed against him like the weight of an unsheathed sword, always ready to strike.

“White Harbor requests permission to expand harbor duties on imported timber…” Maester Corbyn said, scanning the letter in his hand before looking up. “Your Grace?”

Baelor blinked, forcing his thoughts back to the room. “Yes. The increase is reasonable if matched by improved patrols. There were reports of smuggling last winter.”

Corbyn’s brows lifted faintly. “Indeed.”

Baelor straightened, drawing his shoulders back with mild irritation—not at the maester, but at himself. He should not have needed the pause. This was simple work. Necessary work. The sort of governance he had always found steadier than feasts and smiling women.

And yet his mind had wandered again. Not to policy. To a voice. What do you do when no one is watching? He had been asked many questions in his life. Clever ones. Political ones. Dangerous ones. None had lodged beneath his skin quite like that.

Corbyn set one letter aside and reached for another. “There is also correspondence from Winterfell. Lord Stark’s steward writes regarding boundary disputes with the mountain clans near the Neck.”

Baelor took the parchment this time, letting the dry scrape of it anchor him. He read. Understood. Replied. But even then, some part of him lingered elsewhere—in a candlelit hall, at the edge of a great stone column, with clear grey eyes fixed on him not with calculation, but recognition.

It was intolerable.

Corbyn watched him for a moment longer than was comfortable. “You are distracted this morning.”

Baelor did not look up. “Am I?”

The maester’s mouth curved by a fraction. “Less so than many men would be after such an evening.”

Baelor folded the Northern letter carefully, too carefully. “You speak in riddles for a man of chains.”

“I have found them useful at court.”

At last, Baelor raised his gaze. Corbyn was an old man, but not a dull one. His eyes were lined by age, sharpened by decades spent observing those who mistook learning for harmlessness. He would not ask directly. Men at court rarely did when the answer mattered.

Baelor set the letter aside. “If you have something to say, Maester, say it.”

Corbyn inclined his head. “Only that it is uncommon to see Your Grace abandon a conversation already considered advantageous.”

Lady Rhea Hightower’s smile flashed unpleasantly through his mind. “Advantage does not always hold attention,” Baelor said.

“No,” Corbyn agreed. “It does not.”

The maester’s tone remained mild, but the words landed with more precision than Baelor cared for. He moved toward the window, clasping his hands behind his back. Below, the city stretched outward in a confusion of red roofs and smoke, the world beyond the walls still turning, indifferent to the quiet disorder of a prince’s thoughts.

“I spoke to a lady of the Vale,” he said at last, because denying it would insult them both.

“So I have heard.”

Of course he had. The Red Keep bred gossip as readily as it did mould. Baelor exhaled softly through his nose. “It was a conversation. Nothing more.”

“Very well,” Corbyn said, his voice steady. “But you know where such conversations may lead.”

Baelor's chest tightened at the implication. He had spent years mastering himself. Grief had taught him discipline more effectively than any knight ever had. He would not be unsettled by one lady with observant eyes and an inconvenient talent for honesty.

He turned from the window, brushing aside the unease that lingered. “What remains?” he asked, shifting back to the business at hand.

Corbyn glanced down at the stack of letters. “Dorne. Then the Reach. Then three petitions regarding grain levies.”

Baelor nodded once. “Very well.”

Work, at least, asked nothing of his heart.

In a small withdrawing room off the western gallery, Lady Rhea Hightower received her guests with grace sharpened into purpose. The chamber was full of soft light and cool wine. Two ladies of the Reach sat beside her—one a cousin by marriage, the other the daughter of a bannerman whose loyalty was most often measured in what it could purchase. A third woman, old enough to be called wise and vain enough to resent it, leaned near the window with a fan in hand.

Rhea stood before the hearth, white silk exchanged for pale green this morning, as though to suggest she had not dressed with the prince in mind at all.

“He crossed half the hall,” the older woman said, unable to keep irritation from her voice. “In front of everyone.”

“Then half the hall has eyes,” Rhea replied smoothly.

The bannerman’s daughter shifted in her seat. “Do you think it serious?”

Rhea accepted the goblet offered by a servant but did not drink. “Not at all,” was her quick reply. The answer came too swiftly to be entirely honest.

She looked toward the open lattice, where the summer breeze stirred the gauze curtains. “Men such as Prince Baelor are susceptible to novelty,” she said. “Particularly after grief. A quiet face. A different manner. Something unpracticed enough to seem sincere.”

“And the Arryn girl?”

Rhea’s smile sharpened by a degree. “Will either prove foolish… or prove useful.” She did not yet know which she preferred.

“Then what will you do?”

At that, Rhea finally sipped her wine. “What women have always done at court,” she said. 

“Wait. Watch. And never surrender a field because one soldier wandered from it.”

Later that afternoon, Elinor found no true peace indoors and so returned to the outer walk overlooking the gardens. The day had grown warmer, the sun laying bright heat across the stone, while the sea breeze just managed to slip over the walls and soften it. Below, servants crossed the pathways with baskets of herbs and cut blooms for the evening tables. Somewhere nearby, a harp sounded faintly from an open chamber.

She rested one hand against the balustrade and let herself breathe. Only for a moment.

“Lady Elinor.”

The voice behind her was smooth and pleasantly pitched, the sort of voice that spent much of its life being welcomed into rooms.

She turned. Ser Wendel Royce bowed with practiced ease, one hand pressed to his chest. He was handsome enough, if one liked that sort of thing—broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, all bronze courtesy and easy smiles. His house was a noble one. His timing, however, was suspicious.

“Ser Wendel.”

“I hope I do not intrude.”

“You do,” she said, then softened it with the slightest incline of her head. “But not unforgivably.”

His smile widened. “I shall take that as mercy.”

He moved to stand at a respectable distance beside her, following her gaze over the gardens as though he had come for the view alone. Men at court often believed women mistook proximity for innocence.

“I had meant to pay my respects sooner,” he said. “The Vale has been much discussed since your arrival.”

“How flattering.”

“Not flattering,” he corrected lightly. “Important.”

Elinor glanced at him, aware of the game beneath the surface. “And is that why you have come? To discuss the political importance of my father’s house?”

“Among other things.”

There it was. The smile remained, and so did the purpose beneath it. She looked away again, allowing him enough silence to grow just slightly uncomfortable.

“At feasts,” Wendel said at last, “the smallest moments often become the most interesting by morning.”

“I have noticed.”

“The prince seemed particularly interested in one such moment.”

Elinor almost smiled. So this was the shape of it. Not flirtation, then. Fishing.

“And did he?”

Wendel studied her profile. “You tell me, my lady.”

“No,” she said gently. “I do not think I will.”

He laughed at that, though she sensed the edge beneath it. “I meant no offense.”

“Nor do I.”

“Only caution?”

She turned fully now, meeting his eyes with calm that bordered on cool. “Only the understanding that in King’s Landing, a question is rarely just a question.”

For the first time, his expression shifted—amusement touched by reluctant respect. “I see the Vale sends no fools.”

“My father would consider that a point of pride.”

Wendel nodded. “Then I shall not insult him by pretending I came merely to admire the roses.”

“How honest of you.”

“Briefly,” he said with a grin. “I cannot make a habit of it. It would ruin me.”

That, despite herself, nearly drew a laugh from her. Nearly.

He stepped back. “Take care, Lady Elinor. Attention is a dangerous thing to carry in this castle.”

When he left, she watched him go and wondered not whether he would report the exchange, but to whom. The answer, she suspected, was everyone.

By evening, the air in their chambers had changed. It felt tighter. Smaller. As though something had followed them inside from the corridors and shut the door behind it.

Lord Lucys stood by the hearth when Elinor entered, though no fire burned there. He had removed his outer cloak but not the severity from his face. The light from the candles cut his features into sharper lines, turning his hawk-like gaze sharp.

Elinor closed the door behind her. Her father did not waste time. “You were approached by Royce.”

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He asked polite questions and hoped for impolite answers.”

Lucys’s jaw tightened. “Did you give him any?”

“No.”

He watched her for a long moment, pacing once. “This is how the game begins. Not with grand gestures, but with small tests—men sent to weigh what may be won, or lost. Remember that, Elinor. In King’s Landing, your name is not just your own. It is currency.”

She nodded, steady.

Lucys’s tone was low, clipped, all politics and strategy. “Do not give them more than you must. The Targaryens notice everything, and so does the rest of the court.”

His worry was unspoken but palpable—a warning about power, not about love. 

The word lingered, though it had not been spoken.

Love.

It did not belong to what had passed beneath candlelight—too large, too perilous a name for something so quiet. What existed between them was smaller. Quieter. And yet, no less dangerous.

Elinor lifted her gaze to her father, composure settling over her like armour. “I understand,” she said.

( MAIN MASTERLIST ) ( SERIES MASTERLIST ) (BAELOR TARGARYEN MASTERLIST )

[isbellah]

─── ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ A CROWN OF SHADOWS, B. TARGARYEN

‧₊˚ ┊ Part I — The Prince's Falcon

pairing . . . baelor targaryen x original female character

warning . . . Grief / Loss of a Spouse, Emotional Angst, Political Manipulation / Court Intrigue, Power Imbalance (Royalty/Common Nobility), Arranged Marriage Themes, Slow Burn Romance, Unresolved Tension

summary . . . In King’s Landing, a grand ball hosted by Daeron II Targaryen brings together the great houses of the realm—but beneath the celebration lies a clear purpose: Prince Baelor Targaryen must choose a new bride and secure the future of House Targaryen. Still burdened by grief, Baelor moves through the court bound by duty rather than desire. Lady Elinor Arryn arrives from the Vale with no intention of playing courtly games. Quiet and observant, she remains on the edges of the spectacle—until Baelor notices her. Drawn to her honesty and calm presence, he finds himself unsettled in a way he has not been in years. As whispers spread through the court, their brief connection begins to carry weight. Elinor’s father grows wary of royal attention, while Lady Rhea Hightower watches closely, determined to secure her own place beside the prince. Caught between duty and something far more personal, Baelor must decide whether to follow the path expected of him—or risk everything for something real. In a court where every glance matters, even the smallest choice can change the future of the realm.

THE EVENING BLED gold across the stone of the Red Keep, casting long bars of light over the gardens below. From the balcony outside his chambers, Prince Baelor Targaryen stood motionless, one hand resting against the cold carved rail, the other loose at his side. Beneath him, the royal gardens had been dressed for spectacle—lanterns strung between cypress trees, fountains polished until they gleamed like silver, roses trimmed and arranged with such care they looked almost false in the fading light.

From above, it all appeared beautiful. From above, it felt like a stage being prepared for his undoing.

Baelor drew in a slow breath, though it did little to settle the tightness coiled within his chest. He had faced councils, border tensions, lords hungry for favour, and whispered dissent from men who still muttered of Dorne as though it were an infection in the realm rather than a part of it. He had endured war, grief, and duty without complaint. Yet tonight—the simple thought of descending into a hall full of silk-clad ambition and smiling daughters—filled him with a kind of exhaustion no battlefield ever had.

His reflection stared back at him in the glass of the open door behind him when he turned slightly. He scarcely looked like the sons and daughters sung of in old Valyrian songs. No silver graced his hair, no lilac illuminated his eyes, no pale, ethereal beauty marked him as so many of his blood. His mother’s inheritance had claimed him more strongly: olive skin warmed by the Dornish sun, dark hair, dark eyes, and the proud, steady face of a man shaped more by the earth than by flame. Tonight those features were arranged in careful neutrality, every trace of fatigue and reluctance buried beneath the discipline he had worn since boyhood.

His doublet was black velvet, severe and finely cut, its high collar embroidered with crimson thread in the shape of curling dragons. Red silk lined the sleeves. A chain of dark rubies rested against his chest, heavy as expectation. He reached up to adjust one of the cuffs, more for something to do than from any true need.

Behind him, boots scraped softly against stone.

“You look as though you’re marching to your execution, Your Grace.”

Baelor glanced over his shoulder. Ser Jory Wylde stood near the doorway, broad as an oak and twice as immovable, his weathered face carved into its usual expression of stern disapproval. His sworn shield had never been a man for softness, but he had a way of offering comfort that suited him—gruff, plain, and unadorned.

Baelor allowed the barest hint of a smile. “And here I thought my misery was better concealed.”

Ser Jory snorted. “Not from me.”

The older knight stepped forward, resting one gauntleted hand near the pommel of the sword at his hip, though he had not yet donned full ceremonial armour. His gaze swept over the gardens, then back to Baelor.

“It is only a ball,” he said.

Baelor turned back to the fading view. “No. It is a council chamber set to music.”

That earned a short grunt of agreement.

Beyond the balcony doors, the castle stirred with restless purpose. Servants hurried through corridors carrying trays of goblets and wine, bolts of folded cloth, candelabra, bundles of flowers. Somewhere deeper in the hall, musicians tested strings and pipes in brief, broken bursts. The Red Keep had become a living thing in anticipation of the night ahead, each corridor pulsing with preparation.

All of it for a celebration that was not truly a celebration at all.

The court would call it a grand summer ball, a gathering of the realm’s finest houses in honour of peace and prosperity under King Daeron’s reign. But Baelor knew what it was. Everyone did.

A parade. A weighing of daughters. A polite, glittering hunt for the future princess who might stand beside him.

Years had passed since he had buried his wife, and still the thought of another woman occupying that place at his side felt less like possibility than betrayal. Time had softened the first sharp edge of grief, but it had not hollowed out the shape left behind. He had simply learned to live around it. Learned to speak over it. Learned to let the realm mistake silence for healing.

The music drifted up from the hall below, all lutes and laughter, bright as summer—but Baelor did not hear it as the others did. He stood with one hand resting against the cold stone of the balcony, gaze fixed somewhere beyond the gardens, beyond the Red Keep itself. The air was sharp tonight. It reminded him of storms.

Of her.

It came upon him without warning, as it always did—not a single memory, but a quiet procession of them. The way she had spoken his name, never Prince, never my lord, once the doors were closed. The weight of her hand in his, warm and certain, as though she had never doubted where she belonged. The softness in her eyes when she looked at him—not for what he was meant to be, but for what he was.

Baelor exhaled slowly. He had not known, then, how rare that was.

At court, every glance carried purpose. Every word was measured, weighed, sharpened into something useful. But with her… there had been no need for such things. She had understood him in the quiet moments, in the silences between duty and expectation.

And he—he had let himself be known.

A mistake, perhaps. Or the only truth he had ever been granted.

His jaw tightened. He remembered the last time he saw her clearly—not as a blur of pale sheets and whispered prayers, but as she had been before the pain took her. Calm. Gods, she had been calm. As though it were he who needed comforting.

“It is only another duty,” she had told him, her voice softer than he had ever heard it. “You have carried heavier things.”

He had wanted to tell her she was wrong. That there was nothing heavier than this. But Baelor Breakspear had never been a man given to useless words. And so he had said nothing—only held her hand tighter, as though strength alone might keep her anchored to the world. It had not.

His fingers curled slightly against the stone now, remembering the absence of her hand more than its touch. The child had lived. She had not. A fair exchange, the realm might say. An heir for a life. The sort of balance men like his father spoke of in council chambers, with maps and marriages laid out like pieces on a cyvasse board.

Baelor had learned long ago not to argue with necessity. Still… there were nights when he wondered. What she would make of all this. Of the banners being raised. Of the women below, dressed in silks and ambition, each one a possible future he had not asked for.

Would she smile, as she had always done, and remind him of his duty? Or would she see what he could not say aloud—that some vows, once broken by death, were never truly set aside?

His gaze lowered to the courtyard, where torchlight flickered like distant stars. He could almost hear her then, not as she had been in her final moments, but as she had been in life—quiet, certain, unafraid of him.

You will do what is required of you.

Yes. That, above all, had been what she believed in him. Not love, not grief, not even happiness. Duty.

Baelor straightened slightly, the motion subtle but deliberate, as though settling armour upon his shoulders. “Always,” he murmured under his breath, though whether the word was meant for her… or for himself, he could not say.

And yet, as he turned back toward the hall, there lingered a single, treacherous thought—one he would never give voice to, not even in the silence of his own mind.

If she had lived… he would not be standing here at all.

“You need not like it,” Ser Jory said after a moment. “Only endure it.”

Baelor exhaled through his nose. “You make duty sound almost merciful.”

“I make it sound what it is.”

Baelor gave a quiet hum of acknowledgment. There was little point in pretending otherwise. Duty was the one constant of his life. Duty had shaped his youth, his marriage, his place at court, his father’s expectations, his children’s future. Duty had carried him through mourning when personal sorrow had threatened to split him open from within. It had left no room for indulgence. No room for weakness. And certainly no room for refusal.

The doors behind them opened wider.

Neither man turned at once. The sound of approaching footsteps was enough.

“Leave us, Ser Jory,” came the calm, measured voice of the king.

Ser Jory straightened at once and bowed. “Your Grace.”

Baelor turned fully now as King Daeron II Targaryen stepped onto the balcony.

His father moved with the quiet assurance of a man who needed no display of strength to command it. Age had touched him in silver at the temples and in the slight heaviness at the corners of his eyes, but it had not diminished him. If anything, it had sharpened him. Daeron’s face was thoughtful, his mouth set in its customary line of reserved composure, though Baelor knew well how much calculation lived behind it.

Ser Jory inclined his head once more before withdrawing into the chambers, leaving father and son alone with the evening.

For a few moments, neither spoke.

Daeron came to stand beside him at the railing, his gaze drifting over the illuminated gardens below, where servants moved like ants through ordered paths. In the distance, banners stirred in the warm breeze—Targaryen red and black, Martell sun and spear, the sigils of houses newly arrived at court.

“The castle is full,” Daeron said at last.

“So I have gathered.”

“The Tyrells sent two daughters and a niece.”

Baelor’s expression did not shift. “How generous of them.”

The ghost of amusement passed across Daeron’s face, brief and dry. “The Hightowers have also arrived. As have envoys from the Vale and the Riverlands. The Lannisters sent word they would not be overlooked.”

“Of course not.”

Daeron folded his hands behind his back. “And there are others. Houses less grand, but no less important. Men who wish to be seen. Men who wish to be remembered. Men who still require reassurance.”

That pulled Baelor’s gaze from the gardens to his father’s face.

“Reassurance,” he repeated.

Daeron met his eyes. “You know as well as I do that peace is not the same as loyalty.”

The words settled heavily between them.

This was the true marrow of the night. Not music. Not feasting. Not courtly smiles.

The realm had endured the joining of Dorne, but not all had embraced it. Some lords still nursed old hatreds beneath velvet courtesies, speaking of the Martells as outsiders and of royal favour as though it had been stolen from them. Daeron had spent years threading fragile peace between houses that smiled in court and seethed in private. A strong alliance, a wise marriage, could soothe old resentments before they hardened into something more dangerous.

Baelor knew this. He had always known it.

Still, knowing did not make obedience easier.

“You believe a second marriage will still their complaints,” Baelor said.

“I believe it will remind the realm that the crown remains forward-looking,” Daeron answered. 

“That the line is secure. That no grief, however deep, can be allowed to stall what must endure beyond us.”

Baelor looked away again.

Below, a servant stumbled while carrying a tower of folded linens, nearly losing half of them to the gravel path before another rushed to help. Somewhere, a laugh rose, distant and quickly swallowed by the thickening sounds of preparation. The world continued, indifferent to private loss. It always had.

His father’s voice softened, but only slightly. “This is not cruelty, Baelor.”

“No,” Baelor said. “Only necessity.”

Daeron said nothing to deny it.

For years, Baelor had been many things to the realm: prince, heir, diplomat, warrior, bridge between old hatred and new peace. He had worn every role with the steadiness expected of him. He had sat in judgment, settled disputes, spoken with men twice his age as though born for command. He knew how to be the king his father needed him to become.

But some quieter part of him, one he rarely allowed himself to examine, had withered in the long shadow left by his wife’s death. He had not meant for solitude to become a habit. It simply had. At first it had been survival. Then routine. Then something close to comfort—a stillness untouched by expectation, where no one asked more of him than what he had already given.

Tonight would end that.

“Have you chosen already?” Baelor asked, not because he believed it, but because the question rose unbidden.

Daeron’s brow lifted. “If I had, you would know.”

“Would I?”

His father gave him a longer look at that.

“I would advise,” Daeron said at last. “I would weigh. I would consider what serves the realm best. But I am not blind to the fact that you must live with the choice.”

Live with it.

The phrase was almost cruel in its gentleness.

Baelor had lived with worse.

He straightened, shoulders drawing back as if the movement itself could lock all weakness behind a wall of flesh and bone. When he spoke, his voice was even, steady, precisely what a prince’s should be. “I understand what is required of me.”

Daeron studied him for a moment, as though measuring whether the words were true or merely well-practiced. Perhaps they were both.

“You have always understood,” the king said quietly. “That has never been your failing.”

Baelor did not answer.

A bell sounded somewhere below, low and resonant, its peal rolling through stone corridors and open air alike. A signal. The first of the guests would soon be assembled in the great hall. 

There would be no more time for solitude.

Daeron placed one hand briefly against his son’s shoulder—not affectionate enough to be called tenderness, but not wholly political either. For a moment, Baelor was reminded that before the crown, before the realm, before expectation, there had simply been father and son.

Then the hand was gone.

“Come,” Daeron said. “Let them see the prince the realm trusts.”

Baelor’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

The prince the realm trusts.

Not the man who had once loved. Not the widower. Not the hollow place beneath the ribs that no title could fill. Only the shape of duty. Only the heir.

He gave a single nod. “As you command, Your Grace.”

Together they turned from the balcony and stepped back into the warmth of the chambers, where torchlight gilded the walls and servants waited with gloves, cloaks, and the final details of ceremony. Ser Jory straightened as they entered, eyes flicking once to Baelor’s face as if searching for some sign of fracture.

He would find none.

Baelor lifted his chin and allowed the last pieces of his composure to settle into place like armour.

Beyond the doors, music was beginning to rise.

And somewhere in the heart of the Red Keep, beneath candlelight and silk and the hungry gaze of half the realm, a future waited for him that he had not asked for and could not refuse.

The road to King’s Landing had been long, though not unpleasant. Lady Elinor Arryn sat within the carriage as it passed through the final gates, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her gaze steady as the city unveiled itself beyond the window. The air had shifted hours before their arrival—thicker, warmer, touched by salt and smoke in equal measure. It lingered now in the narrow streets and crowded markets, clinging to stone and silk alike.

It was not like the Vale.

The Vale was wind and height and distance—clean air and silence that stretched without interruption. This place breathed differently. Closer. Heavier. As though everything pressed inward rather than out.

As though nothing here was ever truly free.

Beside her, Lady Alys Arryn adjusted the fall of her daughter’s sleeve for the third time since they crossed the city walls. “Sit straighter, my love,” her mother murmured, smoothing an invisible crease from the pale blue fabric. “The court sees everything, whether it means to or not.”

Elinor inclined her head slightly, though her posture remained unchanged. “Then I shall give it nothing to remark upon.”

She had learned that young. Stillness was safety. Composure was protection. Silence was power—if one knew how to use it.

Alys smiled faintly at that, though concern lingered behind it. “That is not always enough.”

No. It never truly was.

Across from them, Lord Lucys Arryn remained silent. Elinor did not need to look at him to feel the weight of his attention. It was always there—watchful, protective, unyielding. He had spent much of the journey observing, his focus fixed not on comfort but on threat.

Even now, as the procession slowed and the sound of hooves against stone echoed through the Red Keep’s courtyard, his sharp, hawk-like gaze tracked every movement—guards. Servants. Banners. Entrances. Exits.

He was not seeing a court.

He was seeing a field.

And wondering where danger would come from.

The Arryn standard rose above their party, pale and proud—a white falcon set against a field of sky-blue, stirring in the warm southern breeze. It did not belong here. Not entirely.

And neither did she.

“Elinor,” Lucys said at last, his voice low but carrying the quiet authority she had known all her life.

She turned her head slightly. “Father.”

“We are not here to be dazzled.”

“No.”

“We are not here to be drawn into court favour or ambition.”

“No,” she repeated, just as calmly.

His gaze lingered on her, searching—not for disobedience, but for weakness.

“And you are certainly not here,” he added, more pointed now, “to catch a prince’s eye.”

Elinor held his gaze without flinching. “I have no intention of doing so.” It was the truth. Or close enough to it. Because intention had never been the only thing that mattered.

The carriage came to a halt.

Outside, the world shifted into motion—voices rising, servants stepping forward, the creak of doors opening.

Elinor stepped down with practiced grace, her hand resting briefly in her father’s before she released it. The stone beneath her slippers was warm. The courtyard wide. The walls too high.

Her gaze moved—not hurried, but thorough.

Guards placed where blind spots should have been. Banners arranged not for beauty, but for message. Nobles directed not by name—but by value. Everything here spoke. And everything here expected to be understood.

She understood enough.

Their chambers confirmed what she had already begun to suspect.

They were welcome. But they were not central. There was a difference—and in King’s Landing, differences mattered.

“This one,” Alys said, lifting the blue silk. Elinor allowed herself to be dressed, to be turned, to be arranged. The fabric settled over her shoulders like water—cool, smooth, deceptive in its softness.

“The colour brings out your eyes,” Alys continued, stepping back slightly to study her. “And the silver will catch the candlelight. You must not disappear entirely, my love.”

Elinor met her mother’s eyes in the mirror. “I had hoped to.”

Because to be seen was to be measured. And to be measured was to be chosen. And to be chosen… was to lose the quiet she had spent her life protecting.

“This place watches,” Lucys said.

Elinor glanced toward him. “All courts do.”

“Not like this.”

He was right. The Vale watched with honour. King’s Landing watched with intent.

“Then I will give it nothing to remember,” she said. But even as she spoke, she knew—that was never entirely within her control.

The corridors were alive when they left. Voices layered over one another. Perfume thick in the air. Silk brushing stone. Elinor moved through it untouched. Or rather—appearing untouched. 

Because every step, every glance, every passing word was noted, sorted, understood.

She did not need to speak to know who mattered. She only needed to watch.

“The White Rose of Oldtown,” Maester Corbyn murmured.

Elinor’s gaze shifted. Lady Rhea Hightower stood at the centre of attention as though she had 

been placed there deliberately. Beautiful. Effortless. Admired. Desired.

Everything the court expected. Everything Elinor had no intention of becoming.

“Who else should I be aware of?” She did not ask out of curiosity. She asked out of necessity. 

Because knowledge was the only protection the court could not take from her.

Then—the doors opened. Light spilled outward. And the world narrowed.

The announcement came. The room shifted. And Elinor felt it—that moment where power entered a space and everything else bent toward it.

Her gaze lifted. She saw the king. The princes. The dynasty made flesh. And then—she saw him.

Baelor Targaryen.

Not the legend. Not the heir. Not the man the songs would describe. A man standing exactly where he was meant to be…and nowhere at all.

She watched him move. Watched the perfection of it. The control. The precision. Every word measured. Every gesture exact. Every expression correct.

It was flawless. And she knew, instantly—it was not real.

Others saw a prince. She saw a man who had learned how to disappear inside himself. The distance in his eyes was not absence. It was protection.

And something in her—quiet, careful, controlled—recognised it. Not admiration. Not curiosity. 

Recognition. The most dangerous thing of all.

She looked away first. Because she understood something he did not yet know—that once you recognised a person like that… you could not unsee them.

As the music swelled and the court breathed around her, Elinor Arryn realised—she had not come to be seen. But she might have just seen something that would change everything.

( MAIN MASTERLIST ) ( SERIES MASTERLIST ) (BAELOR TARGARYEN MASTERLIST )

[isbellah]

─── ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ A SONG OF ASH AND BLOOD, V. TARGARYEN

‧₊˚ ┊ Part IV — The Blood that Remains

pairing . . . varlarr targaryen x original female character warning . . . canon-typical violence, animal death, forced marriage themes, possessive behaviour, political pressure, psychological distress, eventual major character death summary . . . After the tragic loss of her brother Baelon, Alyssa returns to King’s Landing, where she grapples with grief alongside her family. The chapter unfolds during Baelon’s emotional funeral, where tensions rise as Aerion claims a right to marry Alyssa, igniting a heated argument that reveals deep family fractures. Amidst the turmoil, Alyssa finds comfort in Valarr, leading to their wedding and a passionate union that rekindles hope

THE AIR WAS thick with the scent of burning wood and the lingering fragrance of withered flowers as Alyssa stepped through the gates of King’s Landing. The familiar stone walls felt heavy on her heart, each step echoing with memories of joy now twisted by grief. She clutched the hem of her dark dress, the fabric a stark reminder of the loss she carried like a shroud.

As she crossed the threshold, the heavy doors swung open, revealing a hall bathed in muted light. Crowned banners hung limply from the stone walls, their colors dimmed in mourning. Her grandparents waited at the foot of the grand staircase, the King and Queen of the realm, their expressions somber yet welcoming.

“Welcome home, my dear,” her grandmother, Queen Myriah, said, her voice soft yet heavy with shared sorrow.

Alyssa’s heart quickened at the sight of her, the woman who had always been her anchor. But before Alyssa could find her voice, her gaze caught sight of her mother, Aelinor Penrose, standing just behind the Queen, tears glistening in her eyes. The moment their eyes met, the world around Alyssa faded away.

Without a second thought, she rushed into her mother’s embrace, sobs erupting from her chest like an unquenchable flood. She clung to Aelinor, the warmth of her arms a fragile comfort in a world that had turned cold. Together, they wept, the sound of their grief echoing through the halls, a haunting melody of loss.

“It’s okay, my darling girl. He fought bravely,” Aelinor whispered, her voice shaking as she stroked Alyssa’s hair, soothing her as if she were still a little girl. Alyssa felt a piece of her childhood return in that moment, buried beneath the weight of anguish.

Alyssa’s heart ached for the brother she had lost, the brave man who had fought for honor, only to fall in a trial born of cruelty. The rest of her family watched in silence, their faces etched with grief. Valarr, her steadfast companion, stood among them, offering a supportive presence as he greeted each family member with a quiet nod, his gaze drawn closer to Alyssa as if he could shield her from the storm of emotions swirling around them.

Yet, amidst the sorrow, there was an emptiness that threatened to engulf her. Aerys, her father’s shadow, was nowhere to be seen. His absence felt like a gaping wound, a reminder that grief could take many forms. Perhaps this was his way of mourning—isolating himself from the weight of loss.

As she pulled back from her mother’s embrace, wiping her tears, Alyssa’s gaze drifted to Valarr, his unwavering support a balm to her raw heart. She felt the warmth of his hand brush against hers, grounding her in a moment when everything else felt fleeting.

“We will honor him,” Valarr whispered, his voice steady amid the chaos of her thoughts. “Together.”

Alyssa nodded, grateful for his presence. In that moment, they were united—their hearts entwined in a bond stronger than the shadows that loomed over them.

Days passed in a blur of mourning and chaos. The castle felt emptier, the laughter that once reverberated off the stone walls now replaced by a heavy silence. Alyssa found solace in her memories of Baelon—the way his laughter rang like music, how he would tease her until she giggled uncontrollably, and his fierce sense of justice that burned brightly within him.

As the funeral approached, preparations were made in haste. Flowers were gathered, their vibrant colors a stark contrast to the darkness of their grief. Alyssa stood in her chamber, staring out at the garden that had once been a place of joy. Now, it felt like a reminder of everything that had been lost.

The day of Baelon’s funeral dawned bright, but the sun felt like it mocked their sorrow. Alyssa wore a simple white dress, contrasting sharply with the black mourning attire of her family. As they gathered in the great hall, the air was thick with the scent of incense, its smoke curling around them like a ghost.

The ceremony was attended by nobles from across the realm, their faces twisted in sorrow. Alyssa stood at the front, her heart heavy as she listened to the words of the sept, each word a reminder of the brother she would never see again. The Sept spoke of honor and bravery, of sacrifices made for the realm, but all Alyssa could think of was the emptiness that now resided in her heart.

When the time came to lay Baelon to rest, Alyssa felt a surge of panic. “No,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Not yet.” As the knights slowly approached with flame sticks to burn his body to ashes, she felt a part of herself being burn along with him. “Please, don’t leave me,” she sobbed, feeling the weight of grief suffocating her.

Aerys stood beside her, his expression a mask of stoicism. He placed a hand on her shoulder, but it felt cold and distant. Alyssa turned away, seeking comfort in her mother’s embrace, but even that felt inadequate. Aelinor’s tears mingled with her own, a shared sorrow that seemed to stretch across the chasm of her loss.

After the ceremony, the royal family gathered for a feast, the grand hall adorned in a shroud of silence. The long table was filled with the remnants of food, but the atmosphere felt stifling, a stark contrast to the vibrant celebrations they once shared. Alyssa picked at her meal, her thoughts consumed by the absence of her brother, wishing for the comfort of his laughter.

Maekar, seated at the opposite end, broke the silence. “Your Grace,” he addressed the King, his voice steady yet commanding. “I have granted Aegon permission to squire for the Hedge Knight.”

The King nodded, a fleeting spark of approval in his eyes amidst the haze of grief. But Alyssa felt a knot tighten in her stomach at the mention of the Hedge Knight, a reminder of the impending dangers that loomed over their family.

In the far corner of the table, Aerion sat, cloaked in shadows, his demeanor quiet but simmering with unspoken resentment. His grandmother sat beside him, her expression filled with disappointment as she glanced at her grandson, as if she too felt the weight of his actions.

Baelor turned to the King, his voice calm yet urgent. “Your Grace, Valarr wishes to marry Alyssa.”

Alyssa’s breath caught in her throat. She glanced at Valarr, their hands brushing beneath the table, a silent affirmation of their shared desire. The King’s face softened with understanding. “It is a match I find favorable.”

Alyssa nodded, her heart swelling with hope even in the midst of despair. Yet, the moment of relief was short-lived.

“What?” Aerion erupted, his voice tinged with anger. “She was to wed me! That was the deal between me and Baelon.” His eyes flared with entitlement as he leaned forward, the tension in the air thickening. “I brought a agreement to him since he wished to battle against me, if i win, i will claim Alyssa as my wife. He agreed like a fool. I won, it is my right1’ 

Alyssa felt her heart race at his words, a surge of anger igniting within her. “What right do you have to claim anything? Your right was dismissed when Ser Duncan made you yeild” she shot back, fury bubbling beneath the surface.

Maekar’s gaze hardened. “You were to best the boy, Aerion, not claim his life! You have brought shame upon our family.” His words were sharp, cutting through the silence like a knife. 

“I was not the one to kill him, father. That was you” Aerion snarled back, staring harshly towards the older man he shares blood with. 

“You will not marry the princess!” Maekar spat, his voice rising in defiance. “You are to be sent to Lys for your actions, if that is what it takes.” He slammed his fist against the table, the force echoing through the hall. Dismissing his words of the guilt he carries for killing his brother’s son. 

Alyssa’s chest tightened at his words, tears brimming in her eyes as she looked between the faces of her family. The chaos around her felt suffocating, and she couldn’t bear to hear any more. Storming from the table, she fled to her chambers, the sound of her heart racing matching the pounding in her ears.

Valarr followed closely, concern etched on his face. “Alyssa, wait!” he called, but she continued on, fueled by a mix of anger and sadness.

In the confines of her chamber, Alyssa paced, her emotions swirling like a tempest. “How could he say such things?” she cried, her fists clenched. “How could Aerion even think he had a right to me?”

Valarr stepped closer, reaching for her hand. “He is a fool,” he said softly. “Your brother’s death means nothing to him, only his pride.”

“But it was Baelon’s agreement! he made the agreement believing he would win the trial with Ser Duncan.” Alyssa shouted, the rage boiling within her. “Aerion thinks he can just take everything!”

Valarr’s grip on her tightened. “He will be sent far away, Alyssa. You can find solace in that.”

“Solace?” she echoed, frustration spilling from her voice. “I’m furious at my brother for leaving us, and at Aerion for his arrogance. I want to scream!”

“Then scream,” Valarr urged, his tone unyielding. “Let it out. You have every right to be angry.”

And so, she did, the cry of anguish ringing through the chamber, echoing off the stone walls like a battle cry. Valarr remained beside her, a steadfast presence as she unleashed the tempest of her emotions.

The day of the wedding dawned bright and clear, the sun casting a golden hue over King’s Landing as Alyssa prepared to walk down the aisle. Her heart raced with a mix of excitement and apprehension, the memory of her brother’s death still lingering like a shadow in the back of her mind.

As she entered the hall, adorned in a gown that shimmered with every step, she caught sight of Valarr waiting at the altar. His eyes sparkled with affection, a reassuring smile breaking through the tension that had built between them since Baelon’s death. In that moment, she felt a flicker of hope ignite within her heart.

The ceremony unfolded beautifully, the vows exchanged amidst the soft whispers of the guests. Alyssa felt the warmth of Valarr’s hand wrapped around hers, grounding her as they stepped into this new chapter together. She could almost hear Baelon’s laughter echoing in the corners of her mind, filling her with a bittersweet sense of love.

As they were pronounced husband and wife, Alyssa felt a surge of joy wash over her, a promise of new beginnings despite the scars of the past. Together, they would honor Baelon’s memory, weaving it into the tapestry of their shared future.

The feast had been a whirlwind of laughter and celebration, the hall alive with conversation and the clinking of goblets. Alyssa and Valarr had exchanged glances across the table, each one a silent promise of the night to come. As the last of the guests departed, the remnants of joy lingered in the air like a sweet perfume.

Alyssa led Valarr through the dimly lit corridors of the castle, their hands intertwined, fingers weaving together as if they were two parts of a whole. The soft flicker of candlelight danced across the stone walls, casting playful shadows that flitted like memories throughout the hallways.

As they entered their chambers, a warm glow enveloped them, the fire crackling in the hearth casting golden hues across the room. Alyssa turned to face Valarr, her heart racing with anticipation. The lingering warmth of the feast still wrapped around her like a gentle embrace, heightening her senses.

“Tonight feels special,” Valarr murmured, his voice low and rich, sending a thrill down her spine.

Alyssa smiled, her cheeks flushed with a mix of excitement and shyness. “It does,” she breathed, taking a step closer until the warmth of his body radiated against hers.

Valarr cupped her face in his hands, his thumb brushing softly against her cheek. The world outside faded away as their eyes locked, a deep understanding passing between them. “I love you,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion.

“I love you too,” Alyssa replied, her heart swelling as she leaned into his touch. The connection between them pulsed like a living thing, electric and vibrant.

As if drawn together by an unseen force, Valarr dipped his head, their lips meeting in a gentle kiss that sent shivers through Alyssa. The kiss deepened, igniting a fire within her, overwhelming her senses as their mouths moved in perfect harmony. She felt the world around them dissolve, leaving only the two of them, lost in each other’s embrace.

Valarr's hands slipped from her face to her waist, pulling her closer until her body pressed against his. The warmth of his skin ignited a spark within her, and she sighed into the kiss, her fingers threading through his hair as she reveled in the sensation of him.

He pulled back, his eyes dark and smoldering. “You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice low. “More beautiful than I could ever have imagined.”

Alyssa felt her cheeks heat under his gaze, but the compliment only fueled the desire swirling within her. “You make me feel alive,” she admitted, her voice barely a whisper.

In one smooth motion, Valarr swept her up in his arms, carrying her toward the massive bed draped in soft linens and pillows. The flickering firelight danced across the fabric, casting a warm glow that felt intimate and inviting. He laid her down gently, as if she were the most precious thing in the world, his eyes never leaving hers.

Alyssa watched him, breathless as he hovered above her, his body a powerful contrast to her own softness. He leaned down to kiss her again, slower this time, their mouths moving together like a delicate dance. The taste of wine and warmth enveloped her, igniting every nerve in her body.

She dug her fingers into his shoulders, pulling him closer, as if she could fuse their bodies together. Valarr’s hands explored her waist, trailing down to the hem of her dress, fingers brushing against her skin, sending sparks of sensation flaring to life.

“May I?” he murmured, his voice a mixture of desire and reverence.

Alyssa nodded, breathless, her heart racing with anticipation. In one fluid motion, he lifted her skirts, exposing her legs to the cool air and the heat of his gaze. A sense of vulnerability washed over her, but it mingled with excitement as she watched him take in the sight of her.

Valarr’s fingers danced along her thigh, tracing delicate patterns that made her gasp softly. The sensation of his touch ignited a fire within her, a longing that pulsed in time with her heart. She arched her back, craving more, yearning for the connection that only he could bring.

“Alyssa,” he breathed, his voice thick with emotion. “You are everything to me.”

With each caress, each whispered word, he ignited a passion within her that felt boundless. She reached for him, pulling him down to her, her lips finding his again in a fervent kiss that spoke of their shared love and desire. The world beyond faded as they lost themselves in each other, their bodies entwined, hearts racing in sync.

Valarr broke the kiss, his breath warm against her skin as he trailed kisses down her neck, along her collarbone, leaving a path of heat that made her shiver. The sensation of his lips against her skin was intoxicating, a heady mixture of love and longing that made her dizzy with desire.

“Please,” she whispered, her voice trembling with want. “I need you.”

He looked up at her, his gaze intense and filled with unyielding love. “Always,” he vowed, his voice a promise.

With a swift movement, Valarr shed his own clothing, revealing the strong contours of his body, each muscle defined and inviting. Alyssa couldn’t help but admire the sight, her heart racing as he joined her once more, their bodies pressing together, skin against skin.

The warmth of his body enveloped her, and she gasped as he captured her lips again, their kisses growing more fervent, urgent. Every touch ignited a flame within her, a wildfire that spread through her body, consuming her completely.

Valarr's hands roamed over her curves, exploring every inch of her as if she were a treasure he had long sought. He took his time, savoring the sweet connection between them, his fingertips dancing over her skin, igniting sparks of pleasure that made her moan softly.

As their bodies moved together, Alyssa lost herself in the rhythm of their passion. The world outside ceased to exist; there was only Valarr and the love they shared. Each kiss, each touch deepened their connection, wrapping them in an intimacy that felt both electric and tender.

With a surge of confidence, Alyssa responded to his every movement, guiding him closer, urging him to explore more. Their bodies fit together perfectly, like pieces of a puzzle, each thrust and caress bringing them closer to the edge of ecstasy.

“Valarr,” she gasped, her nails digging into his back as he pressed her further into the bed, their bodies moving in perfect harmony. “I need you—now.”

He met her gaze, his eyes dark with a mix of desire and affection. “You have me,” he promised, and in that moment, as their bodies united, nothing else mattered.

The sensation was overwhelming, a wave of pleasure washing over them as they moved together, hearts racing in unison. Alyssa felt the world blur around her, consumed by the heat and intimacy that enveloped them. The connection between them was palpable, an unbreakable bond forged through love and desire.

With every thrust, every whisper of his name, she climbed higher, surrendering herself completely to the waves of pleasure that coursed through her. Valarr’s breaths matched her own, their passion intertwining in a beautiful dance that felt both sacred and exhilarating.

As they neared the crescendo, the room filled with the sounds of their shared ecstasy—soft gasps, heavy breaths, and the rustle of sheets beneath them. Alyssa held onto Valarr tightly, her body arching toward him as she surrendered to the tidal wave of pleasure that threatened to consume her.

“Together,” he murmured, his voice a low growl as he joined her in that blissful moment, their bodies entwined in a climax that sent electric shivers coursing through them.

In the aftermath, they lay entangled in each other’s arms, hearts racing and breathless. The warmth of the fire flickered softly, casting a glow around the room that felt almost magical. Alyssa nestled against Valarr’s chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, feeling safe and cherished.

“I’ve never felt like this before,” Alyssa confessed, her voice a whisper.

Valarr kissed the top of her head, his fingers gently playing with her hair. “Neither have I. You are my everything, Alyssa. You make me feel alive.”

Tears of happiness glimmered in her eyes as she looked up at him, a smile breaking across her lips. “I love you, Valarr. More than words can say.”

He smiled back, his eyes softening with emotion. “And I love you, now and always.”

In that moment, surrounded by love and warmth, they knew they had created something unbreakable—a bond that would withstand the trials of life and the passage of time. Together, they would face the world, side by side, hearts entwined in a love that was both passionate and profound.

Months passed, and the news of a new life blossoming within Alyssa brought a sense of peace to the castle. As her belly rounded, the anticipation grew, filling the halls with laughter as the family rallied around her. She could feel a connection to Baelon, as if he were with her in spirit, guiding her through the journey of motherhood.

The warmth of the summer sun bathed the castle in golden light as the season turned, and Alyssa found herself spending more time in the gardens. There, she would often sit beneath the old oak tree, reminiscing about the days she’d spent with her brother, recalling his dreams of honor and courage.

“Do you think he’d be proud of us?” she whispered to Valarr one afternoon, as they lingered in the shade.

Valarr nodded, his expression tender. “He would be proud of you, Alyssa. You’re stronger than you realize, and you carry his spirit with you.”

As the days grew longer, Alyssa felt the weight of her growing belly, a constant reminder of the life blossoming inside her. The anticipation of becoming a mother filled her with joy and trepidation, but Valarr’s unwavering support grounded her through it all. He remained by her side, attending to her every need and ensuring her comfort, reminding her that they were in this together.

When the day finally arrived, the cries of new life echoed through the chambers. Alyssa cradled her newborn son, Baelon II, close to her heart, tears streaming down her cheeks as she whispered his name. “You will carry your uncle’s spirit with you,” she vowed, her voice trembling with emotion.

Valarr stood beside her, his eyes filled with love and pride as he gazed at their son. “Together, we will raise him to be brave and honorable, just like Baelon,” he promised, wrapping his arms around them both.

In that moment, amidst the joy and the sorrow, Alyssa felt a renewed sense of purpose. They would face the challenges ahead as a family, carrying the memory of Baelon with them, honoring his legacy through the love they shared.

As Baelon II grew, so did the bond between Alyssa and Valarr. They filled their days with laughter and stories, weaving memories to cherish forever. The castle came alive again, the echoes of joy resonating off the stone walls, echoing the warmth of their family. Yet, the ache of loss was a constant presence, reminding them both of the fragility of life.

One evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky with hues of orange and pink, Alyssa held Baelon II in her arms, rocking him gently as Valarr sat beside her. “Tell me a story,” she urged softly, resting her head against his shoulder.

Valarr smiled, his eyes sparkling with affection. “Once upon a time, a brave knight named Baelon fought valiantly for his family and his realm. He was known for his courage and honor, and his sister, Alyssa, always stood by his side.”

Alyssa chuckled softly, her heart swelling with pride. “And I would always remind him to be careful,” she added playfully.

“Yes, and he would never listen,” Valarr replied with a grin. “But his heart was always in the right place.”

As Valarr continued, Alyssa closed her eyes, allowing herself to be transported back to those moments with her brother. She could almost hear him laughing, feel his presence wrapping around her like a warm embrace. The flicker of hope ignited within her, reminding her that he would always be a part of their lives.

“Baelon was brave, but he also knew the importance of love,” Valarr said, his voice turning serious. “He would want you to find happiness, Alyssa, to live fully, even in his absence.”

Tears stung her eyes, but she wiped them away, determined to remain strong. “I will, Valarr. I promise to honor him by living boldly, by loving fiercely. For Baelon and for us.”

As Baelon II cooed in her arms, Alyssa felt her heart swell with gratitude. Together, they would build a life that paid homage to his memory, one filled with love, strength, and resilience.

The seasons continued to change, and with them, life within the castle flourished. Alyssa found herself immersed in the responsibilities of motherhood, nurturing her son while also embracing her role as Valarr’s wife. Their bond grew deeper, and with each passing day, she discovered new facets of love she had never known before.

But with the joy came the weight of responsibility. The kingdom faced challenges, from political unrest to threats from rival houses. Alyssa found herself drawn into the intricate web of court politics, navigating the delicate balance between loyalty to her family and her growing affection for Valarr.

One evening, as they sat together in their chamber, Valarr shared the news of a gathering among the noble houses. “They want to discuss the unrest in the North,” he said, his expression serious. “It could mean trouble for us.”

Alyssa’s heart sank at the thought. “What can we do? We’re just one family among many.”

Valarr took her hand, his grip firm and reassuring. “We can lend our support to those who seek peace. Together, we can influence the outcome in our favor.”

“But what if it backfires?” Alyssa asked, uncertainty creeping into her voice. “What if we lose everything?”

Valarr leaned closer, his gaze steady. “We won’t. We have each other, and we have our son. That is our strength. We will face whatever comes together.”

His confidence bolstered her spirits, and Alyssa nodded, determination igniting within her. “You’re right. For Baelon, for our family, and for the realm, we must stand together.”

As they entered the gathering, the tension in the air was palpable. Nobles from various houses exchanged glances, their whispers trailing off as Alyssa and Valarr walked in. Alyssa felt the weight of scrutiny upon them, but she held her head high, determined to face the challenges ahead.

Throughout the meeting, they listened intently to the concerns raised by the lords and ladies. The North was restless, and rival factions threatened to disrupt the fragile peace they had worked so hard to maintain. But as the discussions grew heated, Alyssa felt her resolve harden.

With a steady voice, she stood to speak. “We must remember that our strength lies not in division but in unity,” she urged, her heart pounding in her chest. “If we allow ourselves to be torn apart, we risk losing everything we hold dear. We owe it to our families and our people to work together.”

The hall fell silent as her words hung in the air, resonating with the gathered nobility. Valarr’s hand brushed against hers beneath the table, a grounding presence as she continued. “Let us find common ground, forge alliances where we can, and stand together against those who would see us fall.”

Slowly, nods of agreement began to ripple through the assembled lords and ladies. Alyssa felt a flicker of hope, a sense of camaraderie blossoming amidst the turmoil. Together, they could weather any storm.

As the meeting continued, they discussed strategies and alliances, with Alyssa and Valarr advocating for compromise and cooperation. The atmosphere shifted, and a sense of purpose filled the hall. They were no longer just individual houses but a united front, ready to face the challenges ahead.

When the meeting concluded, Alyssa felt a wave of relief wash over her. They had managed to create a foundation for peace, a step toward a brighter future for their kingdom. Valarr beamed at her, pride evident in his eyes. “You were incredible,” he said, his voice filled with admiration.

Alyssa smiled, her heart swelling with gratitude. “We did this together. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

As they left the gathering, hand in hand, Alyssa felt a renewed sense of purpose. They would face the challenges ahead as a family, carrying the memory of Baelon with them, and honor his legacy through the love they shared.

As months passed, life in King’s Landing flourished once more. The gardens bloomed with vibrant colors, and laughter returned to the halls. Yet, whispers of unrest continued to linger at the edges of their lives, a reminder that peace was fragile.

One evening, as Alyssa sat in the garden with Baelon cradled in her arms, she noticed a figure approaching through the blooming roses. It was Aerys, his expression drawn and weary. “Alyssa,” he called, his voice strained.

Alyssa's heart tightened as she watched her father approach, the weight of grief still evident in his movements toward his only daughter.

“Yes, Father?” she asked, her tone gentle.

“How is the little one?” he inquired, his gaze shifting to the babe in her arms.

“He's perfect, Father,” she replied with a smile, pride swelling in her chest.

Aerys moved closer to lift the child into his own hands, cradling him against his chest. “He is worthy of carrying Baelon’s name. I am proud,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

[isbellah]

─── ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ A SONG OF ASH AND BLOOD, V. TARGARYEN

‧₊˚ ┊ Part III — The Seventh Trial

pairing . . . varlarr targaryen x original female character warning . . . canon-typical violence, animal death, forced marriage themes, possessive behaviour, political pressure, psychological distress, eventual major character death summary . . . Tension builds as Alyssa shares a quiet breakfast with her brother Baelon, who reveals his determination to participate in a dangerous Trial of Seven against Aerion. Despite Alyssa's pleas for him to reconsider, Baelon remains resolute, causing conflict as her fear for his safety clashes with his sense of duty. As the trial begins, chaos erupts in the arena, with steel clashing and the fate of the fighters hanging in the balance. Alyssa's anxiety grows as she watches her brother fight, her heart filled with dread as the events unfold, leading to a moment of overwhelming turmoil.

BAELON SAT ACROSS from Alyssa in the quiet of the morning, their shared breakfast unfolding in a comfortable silence that wrapped around them like a familiar cloak. It was a silence they had always shared, warm and easy, never needing the intrusion of words.

Alyssa lifted her gaze from her plate, swallowing the last morsel of her meal as her thoughts drifted back—back to the chaos of the previous day, to raised voices echoing through the hall, to the sharp glint of steel, and most of all, to Aerion. Her fingers tightened slightly around her steaming cup, a small anchor in the storm of her mind.

“Has the knight found his seven?” she asked at last, her voice steady but barely so, as if it trembled beneath the weight of her concern.

The moment she had heard of Aerion Targaryen’s reckless demand for a Trial of Seven, a fiery impulse to confront him had surged within her, compelling her to storm his chambers. It had taken the calm presence of Valarr Targaryen to hold her back, to remind her of the stakes involved.

Baelon blinked, his gaze drawn back to her as though he had been plucked from a distant place. “Yes,” he replied, the word nearly swallowed by the air between them.

Too soft, she thought.

Alyssa’s brows knitted together as unease pricked at her. Something was amiss; she could feel it. Baelon had been different all morning—no playful smirk gracing his lips, no teasing remarks to lighten the mood, and his eyes, usually so warm, seemed clouded. He hadn’t even smiled when they had greeted one another.

“Baelon,” she prompted, her voice cautious now. “Is everything alright?”

He nodded once, too quickly, as if the motion alone could dispel her growing anxiety. “Yes. Of course.”

A pause stretched between them, heavy with unspoken thoughts. “I am only… finding the words.”

Alyssa’s stomach dropped like a stone. She set her utensils down slowly, the faint clink louder than she intended, reverberating in the tense air. “What words?” she asked, her heart racing. “You are frightening me.”

Baelon exhaled, the sound heavy with unvoiced burdens. Then, he spoke: “Myself and Uncle Baelor will ride—with the hedge knight. Ser Duncan.”

The world tilted beneath her. Alyssa stared at him, disbelief coursing through her veins. “What?” The word slipped from her lips before she could catch it. “No.” Her response was instinctive, as if she were warding off a dark omen. She stood so abruptly that her chair scraped harshly against the stone floor, a sound that punctuated her resolve. “Absolutely not.”

She pointed at him, her finger jabbing through the air as anger ignited within her. “You will not do such a thing.”

Baelon, already on his feet, closed the distance between them with a steady calm that only fueled her rising panic. “Alyssa—”

“No!” she snapped, stepping back as if physical distance might sway his decision. “You are a prince. You do not throw yourself into a hedge knight’s fight like—like—”

“Like a man who knows what is right?” Baelon finished quietly, his voice a calm counterpoint to her turmoil.

Her chest tightened, the weight of his words settling heavily upon her. “It is not right,” she replied, her voice wavering now, emotions intertwining into a tangled mess of anger and fear. “It is foolish. It is dangerous.”

With an urgency that startled her, she stepped closer, her voice rising. “Aerion will not fight fairly. You know that. He will see you dead if it gets him what he wants.”

Baelon reached for her then, his hands settling firmly on her shoulders—a grounding force in this chaotic moment. “It is what must be done,” he said, his tone unyielding.

“No,” she whispered, her voice trembling as uncertainty seeped into her resolve. “It is not.”

Her eyes searched his face desperately, yearning for even the slightest hint of hesitation, some sign that he could still be swayed. “There are others,” she urged, her voice rising again. “Let them fight. Let someone else take this burden.”

He shook his head, resolute. “I will not stand by while he dishonors the realm.”

“And I will not stand by while you walk into death,” she shot back, each word laced with urgency.

Silence fell between them, heavy and unyielding, an unspoken acknowledgment of the chasm between their desires.

For a moment, he looked at her not as a prince, not as a knight, but as her brother—their bond laid bare beneath the tense surface. “Alyssa,” he said softly, “I must.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “No,” she whispered again, though the strength had ebbed from her voice, replaced by a creeping dread. “I cannot lose you.”

The confession spilled from her lips, raw and unguarded.

Baelon’s expression softened, just a fraction. “You won’t,” he reassured her, but even he sounded unsure, as if the weight of their reality loomed larger than either of them could bear.

Later, as the arena filled, the late sun casting long shadows across the lists, Alyssa stood in the royal box beside her uncle, hands gripping the rail, her gaze locked onto the sandy ground below. Seven against seven. Steel against steel. And her brother among them.

She found him easily. Prince Baelon stood among the champions, clad in armor that gleamed in the dying light—too heavy for the boy who had laughed with her that very morning. He lifted his head, and their eyes met. For a moment, everything else disappeared. No crowd. No kings. No trial. Just them. The way it had always been.

Alyssa swallowed hard. Please.

Beside her, Valarr shifted, his silence louder than any words. She glanced at him, catching the tension in his jaw, the storm gathering behind his eyes. “He’ll be fine,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. Valarr did not answer; instead, he took her hand and squeezed her fingers tightly, offering reassurance against the chaos surrounding them.

The horns sounded. The trial began.

It was chaos. Steel rang against steel, shields splintered, men shouted and fell. The neat lines of chivalry dissolved into something far more brutal—seven duels collapsing into one.

Alyssa could barely follow it. Only him. Only Baelon. He fought well—of course he did. Each strike was clean, each movement sure. For a moment, foolish hope stirred in her chest—he might live through this.

Then—everything shifted. A knight went down. Another turned. The lines broke. And suddenly—Baelon was no longer facing one man.

Maekar Targaryen moved through the chaos like a storm. Alyssa saw it—too clearly. Too late. Baelon turned—just as Maekar’s mace came down.

The sound was wrong. Not steel. Not a clash. A dull, sickening crack echoed through her bones.

“No—” The word died in her throat. Baelon staggered. For a heartbeat, he remained standing. Then—he fell.

The world stopped. The crowd vanished. The noise—gone. All that remained was the sight of him on the ground, unmoving.

“No!” This time it came out, raw and broken, a scream that tore from the depths of her soul. “BAELON!”

Alyssa surged forward, hands slipping from the rail as if she might reach him, as if distance could be undone by will alone. “No, no—Baelon!”

Valarr caught her before she could fall, his arms firm around her as her body trembled. But she barely felt his grip; her world was crumbling. The crowd erupted in chaos around her, but all she could see was the stillness of her brother’s form.

“Get up!” she screamed, her voice cracking, desperation clawing at her throat. “Please, Baelon, get up!”

Her lungs burned, but the anguish surged through her, a tidal wave of grief and terror. With each moment that passed, the weight of her fear crushed her, pulling her deeper into the abyss. “BAELON!”

The scream tore through her again, visceral and primal, echoing across the arena. She felt the world spinning as darkness danced at the edges of her vision.

Alyssa’s knees buckled, and in that moment of despair, she felt herself slipping away.

Surrounded by the cacophony of chaos—shouts, the clatter of armor, the stunned silence of nobles who had not expected this—none of it registered besides her eyes trained on her brother. Valarr was beside her, his face a mask of concern, but her heart raced with only one thought.

She pushed herself upright, gasping for breath as she struggled to find her feet. Across the field, Maekar stood rigid, his mace hanging at his side, his expression hollow as he met Baelon’s still form. “What have I done?” he whispered, the weight of guilt crushing him.

Baelor, in a fury, grabbed Maekar by his armor and pushed him away from Baelon’s lifeless body. “You have done something beyond cruel!” he shouted, pointing an accusing finger at his younger brother. Maekar’s body sagged to the ground, his knees meeting the rough dirt; he did not feel it, too consumed by guilt.

Alyssa’s heart leapt as she heard Ser Duncan scream for Aerion to yield, to stop the madness. “AERION, YIELD!” As he aimed his sword towards the prince's neck, knuckles raw from fighting his way through, Baelon was a great knight, a better prince. He was determined to stay by Duncan’s side, declaring that he would fight for the realm’s honor.

The wounded prince, still in the thick of the chaos, looked at Baelon’s body with a twisted smile—a predator relishing his victory. Valarr’s rage ignited anew as he pushed through the fray, intent on reaching Aerion, but Baelor stepped in front of him, pleading with desperate fervor. “Stop, Valarr!”

“Not like this!” Baelor’s voice trembled, disbelief etched across his features.

Alyssa fought through the haze of her mind, her heart pounding as she pushed past Valarr and Baelor, driven by a singular purpose. She had to get to Baelon.

“Yield, you cruel bastard!” she screamed, feeling the desperation clawing at her throat once more. “Yield, Aerion!”

But Aerion merely laughed, a cold, cruel sound that sent chills down her spine. “He was never a match for me,” he taunted, arrogance dripping from his words.

Valarr surged forward, fury blazing in his eyes, but Alyssa reached for him, her hand gripping his arm with a strength born of desperation. “Don’t! Please!”

Her gaze swept across the arena, and she saw her brother lying motionless, the life stolen from him. She felt the world collapsing around her, everything she had ever known shattering into irreparable pieces.

“Baelon!” she cried one last time, a heart-wrenching wail that echoed through the arena, a sound that would haunt her forever.

With that, the darkness swept over her again, and this time, she couldn’t fight it. Her heart, like the world around her, had broken beyond repair.

Later, in the dim light of their chambers, Alyssa sat on the edge of her bed, her hands trembling as she clutched the fabric of her dress. The silence around her felt suffocating, heavy like a shroud.

Valarr entered quietly, his presence both a comfort and a weight upon her chest. He moved to her side, kneeling as he took her hands in his, grounding her in a reality that felt too cruel. “Alyssa,” he whispered, concern etched in his features.

“I can't… I can’t do this,” she breathed, her voice breaking as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Baelon is gone, and I couldn’t save him.”

“Shh,” he murmured softly, pulling her closer as she broke down. “It’s not your fault. You did everything you could.”

“But it wasn’t enough!” she cried, the rawness of her grief spilling out in ragged breaths. “He was supposed to come back. He was supposed to be here with me!”

Valarr wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in warmth as she sobbed into his shoulder. “You’re not alone in this,” he said, his voice steady despite the storm raging around them. “I am here.”

“I hate him for leaving me,” she admitted, her words punctuated by choked sobs. “I hate him so much for being so brave, for making the choice to fight. He shouldn’t have done it! He should have listened!”

Valarr held her tighter, the weight of her anguish pressing against him. “He loved you too much to let dishonor taint your family name. Baelon was honorable, even in his choice to fight. He did it for the realm, for you.”

“But I wanted him to stay safe!” she lamented, her heart aching with the burden of loss. “He was my twin… and now, I’m alone!”

“No, you’re not,” Valarr insisted, pulling back just enough to meet her gaze. “You have me, Alyssa, always. You’re not alone in your grief. We will carry this together.”

She nodded, though the weight of her sorrow still loomed large. Valarr brushed her hair back gently, his eyes soft with understanding. “We’ll honor Baelon’s memory. He wouldn’t want you to carry this alone.”

Alyssa leaned into him, allowing herself the comfort of his presence, even as the darkness threatened to pull her under. “I don’t know how to go on without him,” she whispered, the fear of the future settling in her chest.

“You will find your way,” Valarr assured her, his voice a steady anchor. “One step at a time. For Baelon. For yourself.”

As she clung to him, a small flicker of hope ignited within her, the faintest promise of healing amid the devastation. They would face the days ahead together, even if the road was long and filled with shadows. Together, they would remember Baelon, carrying his spirit forward into the light.

[isbellah]

A SONG OF ASH AND BLOOD, V. TAGRAYEN

“Not claimed. Not taken. Chosen.” 

pairing valarr targayren x original female character 

summary At Ashford Meadow, a celebration spirals into chaos. Princess Alyssa Targaryen is thrust into the spotlight, a pawn in a game she never agreed to play. When the second heir to the Iron Throne, Valarr Targaryen, boldly chooses her, the balance of power shifts—but not everyone is willing to let her go. As rival princes circle, tensions ignite, transforming Ashford from a tourney into a battlefield of pride and power. When a Trial of Seven is called, honor gives way to blood, and Alyssa loses not only the life she envisioned but also the one person who made it bearable. Now, with grief replacing certainty and the truth of her position in the realm fracturing, Alyssa must navigate a world that sees her as a prize to claim or a threat to fear. In a realm built on legacy and blood, being chosen may prove to be the most dangerous fate of all.

001. The Meadow of Ash 

002. The Prince and the Shadow 

003. The Seventh Trial 

004. The Blood that Remains 

( MAIN MASTERLIST ) ( VALARR TARAGARYEN ) ( NAVIGATION )

[isbellah]

VALARR TARGARYEN

description valarr targaryen, the eldest son of baelor breakspear and lady jena dondarrion, was raised with the quiet certainty of a prince destined to inherit more than just a name. As the firstborn grandson of daeron II targaryen, he stood close to the Iron Throne—second only to his father in the line of succession. Unlike others who sought the spotlight, Valarr’s presence alone carried its own weight.

IMAGINES & BLURBS

FICS

SERIES

A SONG OF ASH AND BLOOD | drama & angst  

summary At Ashford Meadow, a celebration spirals into chaos. Princess Alyssa Targaryen is thrust into the spotlight, a pawn in a game she never agreed to play. When the second heir to the Iron Throne, Valarr Targaryen, boldly chooses her, the balance of power shifts—but not everyone is willing to let her go. As rival princes circle, tensions ignite, transforming Ashford from a tourney into a battlefield of pride and power. When a Trial of Seven is called, honor gives way to blood, and Alyssa loses not only the life she envisioned but also the one person who made it bearable. Now, with grief replacing certainty and the truth of her position in the realm fracturing, Alyssa must navigate a world that sees her as a prize to claim or a threat to fear. In a realm built on legacy and blood, being chosen may prove to be the most dangerous fate of all.