Heavy footsteps echoed within the shared room, each one heavier than the last. Jack Abbot was already a part of your heart, every fiber of it, beating only for and because of him.
You didn't know exactly how or when it happened, you were only certain that it did.
You were a doctor, he was one too. You met at the PTMC a couple of years ago, back when you didn't knew anything—and he knew all of it.
He noticed almost instantly that you were struggling, and he helped in any way that he could—and that you let him.
Dr. Abbot stopped in his tracks, shuffling the door keys between his fingers, listening to the metallic clinking as if it were music.
He noticed the darkness first—a sight he used to know all too well. Then came the quietness.
He took his phone, dialing the numbers he memorized by heart.
"Hello! Sorry, if you're hearing this i'm probably still busy at the hospital, call me later!"
Voicemail.
His mind started to work milestones, where were you? You were supposed to be home.
.✦ ݁˖
You needed to breathe, Jack Abbot was all you knew. Ever since the moment you met, you became addicted to him—you couldn't get enough of him. His eyes stayed in your mind, his soft lips muttering your name like an honest devotion.
You loved him, you loved him more than life itself.
You heard the saying that most rumours are probablu true, so how could you be okay when everyone said that there was another girl? Prettier, smarter, younger.
You knew it was not true, but the heart does not know of truths.
So you sat there, in the park bench where you shared your first kiss, the moments came to you like a melody your heart composed every time you were together.
"You're here" a voice wrecked the silence.
You turned to face him, the person you knew like the palm of your hand, the man you loved.
"Of course I am" you answered, voice low and soft.
"I thought you— I thought you left" his own voice sounded foreign, dettached. Like the mere thought of losing you made him to loose himself.
"I would never leave you, I just needed to think" your voice echoed in his mind.
"You know that I love you, right?" he said, maybe a little too fast, as fast as his heart was racing.
"I do, I just love you too much it overwhelms me sometimes, Jack Abbot" you said, your eyes never leaving his.
And the moment you finished the sentence, was the moment you felt his lips crash into yours, sentencing a never ending love.
.✦ ݁˖ warnings: this is so self indulgent, i wrote it because im OBSESSED with dex AND the pitt so... yeah. stalker!dex, also suicidal!reader is kinda into it (in future chapters).
.✦ ݁˖ summary: you're a doctor who lost too much, and fate decides to bring you and a certain suicide prevention center worker in need of a north star—together.
.✦ ݁˖ THIS IS A CROSSOVER FIC | DAREDEVIL X THE PITT
Your fingertips drifted over the numbers in your phone, every time you pressed a number, the guilt settled in your stomach like a scorpion about to crawl its way to the surface.
You dialed the numbers. You called the line. So why were you so afraid they would answer you?
You could see the whole city from the hospitals rooftop. This particular night was an absolute nightmare, yes, you were at a constant state of loss and never actually grieving, but tonight? Tonight you lost a little boy. And those were always the toughest cases.
A voice echoed in your ears "Suicide prevention this is Dex, who am I speaking with?" the man behind the line said in an almost too well practiced voice.
"Hi" you muttered under your breath, your voice barely a whisper. You told him your name, answering his question.
"Hello, how can I help you today?" Your name felt sweet in his mouth, like a tasting of something he was missing—of something he needed. A North Star to make him good.
"Are you planning on taking your own life right now?"
Seconds passed, you didn't know what to answer, no one had asked you this question before, you didn't even allowed yourself to think of it.
"I just– I don't think so, I just needed someone to talk to, someone who could listen."
"Hey Kid, what're you doing up here?"
He could hear a new voice in the backgroung—a mans voice. Then, just as quickly as the call came, it ended.
He needed to keep thinking of your name over and over again, as a kind of silent devotion. He got a taste of what life can be, of what he can become—someone good.
He had your name, he had the sound of your voice, and that was all he needed to find you.
2ND PART
also, sorry if the timeline is wrong, i haven't watched that dd season in lifetimessss, also i got enhypen tickets so im naming this fic after them!!!
Check Engine Light // John Logan x Fem!Reader - [Chapter One]
Synopsis: What starts as a simple repair turns into late-night diner runs, coffee deliveries to the garage, and a growing attachment neither of you expects. Logan likes that you talk too much when you're nervous. You like that Logan becomes softer when nobody’s watching.
But as pressure mounts with Logan's hockey career and real life starts pulling at you from opposite directions, you begin to wonder if you’re just a temporary stop in Logan’s fast-moving future.
And Logan realizes far too late that somewhere between oil stains and midnight drives, you became the closest thing he’s ever had to home.
Pairings: John Logan x Fem!Reader
Masterlist:Masterlist here.
CHAPTER ONE
The first sign that you were going to have a terrible Thursday happened at 8:10 that morning when you spilled cold brew directly down the front of your white sweater five minutes before class started.
Oh, it wasn’t a splash or a drip. It was a pour. Like the universe had taken deliberate aim at your sweater.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” you muttered, staring down at the spreading brown stain in horror while fellow Briar University students streamed around you outside the Business building.
A guy holding a door open up ahead glanced at you sympathetically. You smiled tightly.
“Livin’ the dream,” you said, holding up your empty coffee cup towards him as you entered the building.
By noon, the stain on your sweater had dried into a horrible stain you weren’t sure you’d be able to get out, you’d forgotten about a discussion post that was worth fifteen percent of your grade, and your mother had texted you three separate times asking if you had heard back from any internship coordinators yet.
You sat in the third row of your marketing class, trying very hard not to put your head through your desk.
Professor Cole clicked through slides at the front of the lecture hall while you stared blankly at your laptop. Your group presentation was in twenty minutes, and Tyler, who had contributed almost nothing for two weeks straight, still hadn’t uploaded the portion of his project.
Melanie leaned over from the seat beside you, “You look like you’re about to commit a felony.”
You didn’t look away from the screen. “I’m considering it.”
“Against Tyler?” Mia asked.
“Yes.”
“Fair.”
You finally turned your head toward her, lowering your voice. “If he doesn’t upload his part before this presentation, I’m actually going to lose my mind.”
“He’s probably just finishing it,” Mel tried.
You gave her a look.
Mel winced. “Okay, yeah. That sounded fake, even to me.”
You scrubbed a hand over your face.
The exhaustion sitting behind your eyes lately felt permanent. Not dramatic enough to ruin your life, not severe enough for anyone to really notice, but constant. Everything required effort.
Everyone around you seemed so sure lately. People are talking about internships and graduate schools, and moving to other cities. You're just trying to get through your junior year.
Your phone buzzed.
Tyler: My bad just saw this lol
You stared at the message in disbelief. Then another message appeared.
Tyler: Think my wifi is messed up
“Your villain origin story,” Mel whispered.
You replied to Tyler: presentation is in fifteen minutes.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, and then reappeared.
Tyler: can u just cover my part?
You slowly lowered the phone. Mel saw your face immediately. “Oh no.”
“He wants me to cover his part,” You whispered.
“Absolutely not.”
“I know that.”
Mel sighed. “You’re going to do it anyway, though, aren’t you?”
You slumped back in your chair, because yes, obviously you were.
Professor Cole clapped once from the front. “Alright, let’s get started.”
Fantastic.
You stood on unsteady legs while your group, minus Tyler, gathered at the front of the room.
The presentation started badly and somehow continued to get worse. The projector lagged, one slide had the wrong chart. Then came your section.
Normally, you were good at presentations. Not amazing, but competent. Today, though? Today, your brain felt like static.
You clicked through to the next slide and immediately realized it was wrong. Not catastrophically wrong, just enough that every word in your head vanished at once.
“And, um…”
The room suddenly felt too warm. You swallowed.
Professor Cole looked up from his notes.
Panic crawled slowly up the back of your neck.
“And the consumer demographic,” you said finally, your voice thinner than normal, “shows a significant preference toward…”
Toward what? Your own slide looked unfamiliar. Heat flooded your face.
“…sorry.” Your voice sounded far away.
You kept talking anyway, grasping at anything to say as a few students focused in on you more.
By the time the presentation ended, you had no memory of half of what you'd said. You sat back down in your seat, your face flushed, while your heartbeat thudded painfully in your ears.
“That honestly wasn’t even that bad,” Mel said, leaning over.
You stared ahead blankly. “You’re lying.”
“A little.”
“Thank you.”
The rest of the class dragged on endlessly. By the time you finally escaped the building, dusk had already started settling over campus. A chilly wind whipped between the brick buildings, as students hurried past in clusters, bundled in hoodies and jackets, laughing too loudly.
You felt disconnected from it all somehow.
Rain clouds rolled low overhead as you crossed the parking lot towards your car.
Your ancient silver Honda Civic sat wedged crookedly between two SUVs, looking vaguely apologetic about existing. This car was your baby, though, and had been with you all through high school and now into college.
You unlocked the car and got inside, sitting there for a minute before starting it up.
The check engine light glowed immediately when you started the ignition. It was bright orange and accusatory.
The light had flickered on three days ago.
You’d ignored it because:
1. You were broke,
2. You were stressed,
3. Denial was free.
The engine made a low, unhappy rattling sound. You gripped the steering wheel.
“Please don’t do this to me today,” you whispered to the car.
The car, apparently unmoved by your suffering, rattled harder.
You pulled out of the parking lot anyway.
The roads around campus crawled with evening traffic. Headlights reflected off of damp pavement while students crossed the streets without looking.
You turned up the radio slightly, trying to drown out the strange noise under the hood. For a few minutes, it almost worked.
Then, the grinding started. Loud, metallic, violently concerning.
“What the hell was that?” You said out loud.
Another awful clunk sounded beneath the car. The steering wheel vibrated faintly in your hands.
“No no no no—” you started.
You turned the radio completely off, which was a bad choice.
Now, all you could hear were the loud sounds of grinding, rattling, and what sounded suspiciously like mechanical death.
Your stomach twisted. Car repairs were expensive, like devastatingly expensive. You did not have the money for devastating right now.
Rain began falling lightly across the windshield. Perfect.
At the next red light, you grabbed your phone with shaky fingers and searched: “mechanic near me open now”.
Most places were closed, except for one. Logan & Sons, open until 9 p.m. It was twenty minutes away.
You looked at the clock. 8:14. The car made another horrifying noise. Decision made.
You took the next right turn abruptly enough that someone honked behind you. “Sorry!”
Rain intensified steadily as you drove farther from campus. The streets grew emptier, lined with warehouses and industrial buildings instead of student apartments and bars. Every strange sound made you more nervous.
What if the car died completely and you got stranded? What if you had to call your parents for money again?
You were twenty years old and still felt like you were constantly one bad week away from falling apart.
The grinding noise worsened as you turned onto Riverside Avenue. That’s when you saw the garage.
There was a neon sign that glowed blue against the dark street: LOGAN & SONS.
One bay door stood open, and warm light spilled out and across the wet pavement. For some reason, relief hit you immediately. The place looked alive. Music drifted faintly outside, voices echoed from inside, and tools clanged somewhere in the background.
You pulled into the lot carefully. The second you parked, the car let out one final, horrible, metallic groan before silence dropped heavily around you.
Rain tapped against the roof, and you sat motionless for a second with both hands still gripping the steering wheel. Then, you dropped your forehead against it, muttering, “Love this for me.”
Eventually, you forced yourself out into the rain, and cold water soaked instantly through your clothes and shoes as you hurried toward the open bay door.
The warmth hit you first, then the smell. Motor oil, metal, and coffee.
The garage itself was bigger than you expected, with three service bays stretching deep into the building. Toolboxes lined the wall, and old signs and license plates from across Massachusetts and the New England area hung crookedly overhead.
Classic rock played softly from somewhere near the back, presumably the office. It felt messy, loud, but comfortably imperfect.
One mechanic stood near a truck with its hood open. Another was halfway underneath a lifted SUV, legs sticking out from beneath it.
The standing mechanic noticed you first. “You need help?”
You tucked a piece of your wet hair behind your ear awkwardly. “Hopefully?”
The mechanic grinned. “That usually means definitely.”
Before you could answer, the guy beneath the SUV slid out smoothly, and you forgot what you were about to say.
His broad shoulders stretched beneath a faded gray thermal shirt that was pushed up at the sleeves. Grease was streaked across his strong forearms. A backwards black cap shadowed slightly messy dark brown hair curling at the ends.
It was John Logan. Briar University Hockey Star, John Logan.
He stood up, wiping his hands on a rag while walking toward her.
You blinked. Right. Words.
“The car?”
His mouth twitched slightly, his deep brown eyes locked onto yours.
“Yes. Usually the car.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
God, you sounded insane.
“It’s making a noise.”
The mechanic near the truck barked out a laugh.
Logan just looked at you patiently.
You gestured vaguely toward the parking lot. “Like… a horrible one?”
“Helpful.”
“I try.”
Something amusing flickered across his face.
“What kind of horrible?” he asked.
You frowned. “Metallic?”
“Mmhmm.”
“And clunky?”
“Those are technically words,” he said.
You narrowed your eyes. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
Annoyingly enough, his voice was nice, too. Low. Rough around the edges.
You crossed your arms defensively. “I know absolutely nothing about cars.”
“That much is obvious.”
“Wow.”
He grinned suddenly, and it changed his entire face. Not prettier, exactly. Worse. More dangerous, because his smile was stunning.
He nodded toward the parking lot. “Show me.”
You followed him back outside in the rain. Up close, he was even taller than you realized. At least 6’3, probably. You had heard of Logan around campus, but who hadn’t heard of the star hockey players? He was a senior, and you ran in different crowds, so you’d never really seen him up close.
The rain darkened the shoulders of his shirt while he crouched slightly near the front tire of your car.
“Start it,” he said to you.
You climbed back into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The grinding noise erupted immediately. He physically winced, and your stomach dropped.
“Oh, that’s bad,” you said, seeing his reaction.
“It’s not ideal.”
“’Not ideal’ sounds expensive.”
He leaned closer to the hood, listening carefully while the engine rattled unhappily.
Rainwater dripped from his hat and his hair, making it much curlier. You tried very hard not to notice dumb details like that.
“Kill it,” he said finally. You shut the engine off quickly.
Logan stood fully upright and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
“How long’s it been making noise?”
You hesitated.
“That long, huh?” he asked.
“The light only came on a few days ago.”
“You kept driving it anyway?”
You folded your arms. “I had places to be.”
“The dashboard light is literally warning you something’s wrong.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew that before, too,” he said, smirking.
“Okay, are you always this judgmental, or is this a special service?”
That got another laugh out of him. The sound surprised you again. It wasn’t polished; it was real.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Y/N.”
“I’m John, but everyone calls me Logan.”
He nodded toward the car. “Pop the hood.”
You reached for the lever that was next to your left knee. You found the latch and popped the hood open.
“There you go,” he teased.
You pointed at him warningly while climbing back out of the car, with a smile.
He laughed as he lifted the hood and leaned over the engine. You tried not to stare, but failed almost immediately.
Not because he was objectively gorgeous, he was, but there was something deeply attractive about competence and a man who knew how to use his hands. There was an ease in his movements and a quiet confidence.
He had one hand braced against the frame while the other adjusted something deep inside the engine.
You stood awkwardly beside the car, and the rain slowed to a mere drizzle for the moment. The silence should have felt uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. Instead, it felt strangely… easy.
Logan was sarcastic, a little rough around the edges, but infinitely charming. He was calm in a way that made you hyperaware of how scattered you felt standing next to him.
Logan straightened slowly, wiping grease from his hands against the rag that was hanging from his back pocket.
He stepped around the front of the car and crouched briefly near the front wheel, checking something else while rainwater darkened the knees of his jeans.
You shoved your hands deeper into your coat pockets.
“So…” you said carefully. “How bad is it?”
Logan looked up toward you.
Close up like this, his eyes were a deep chocolate, with flecks of amber.
“You need brake pads,” he said. “Probably rotors too.”
You nodded like that meant anything to you.
“Okay.”
“And your front bearing sounds rough.”
“…Okay.”
“And if you kept driving it, it would have gotten significantly worse. I think we need to do some further digging to make sure everything else is ok.”
You exhaled slowly. This is the part where adulthood cost money.
“How much?” you asked quietly.
Logan studied you for half a second too long before answering.
“Depends on what parts we use.”
That was not a number, and you noticed immediately.
“I don’t like that answer.”
“It’s the answer I have.”
“How bad,” you said, more quietly.
He stood fully upright again. “A few hundred,” he said.
Your stomach dropped hard enough that you physically felt it. Your current bank account contained a little bit of money, but not “a few hundred” to just spend.
You looked away toward the dark street. “Cool.”
Logan’s expression shifted slightly.
“Long day?” he asked.
“You have no idea.”
He waited, not pushing. And for some reason, that made words start slipping out before you fully decided to say them.
“I go to Briar, and my group presentation imploded today,” you admitted. “One of my group members basically disappeared and didn’t show up to class, and then I had to cover half of his section while actively blacking out in front of thirty people.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It was devastating.”
“Mmm.”
He was about to say something, when the other mechanic came to the bay door.
“Logan! You alive out there?”
“Yeah,” he yelled back.
He spotted you again, and grinned.
“Oh, still with the customer,” he said.
Logan looked exhausted already. “Jeff.”
“What?”
“Don’t.”
Jeff looked at you, “He gets cranky when he skips dinner.”
You blinked, and then immediately betrayed yourself by glancing toward Logan.
“Have you skipped dinner?”
Logan shot Jeff a look. “You can go inside now.”
Jeff looked delighted by this entire interaction and disappeared back inside, laughing.
You looked back toward Logan carefully. “You’re mean when you’re hungry?”
“No.”
“You kind of seem like you might be.”
“That’s because I’m currently hungry.”
You smiled before you could stop yourself. Logan noticed. You knew he noticed, because something subtle changed in his expression for half a second.
The rain started to pick up again, this time with a wind that made it so cold that you shivered involuntarily. Logan noticed that too.
“You shouldn’t be standing out here.”
You looked toward your car helplessly. “I also apparently shouldn’t drive that.”
“No.”
“Great.”
Logan glanced back toward the garage thoughtfully. “Do you have someone who can pick you up?”
You immediately thought of your options. Mel was probably studying. Your roommates would complain. Calling your Dad would turn into an entire conversation you emotionally could not survive tonight.
And honestly? The idea of explaining this whole disastrous day out loud to someone sounded exhausting.
“I can figure it out,” you said automatically.
Logan looked unconvinced. The problem was, you sounded unconvinced, too.
He shoved both hands into his pockets.
“You can leave it here overnight,” he said. “We can take a better look at it tomorrow.”
You nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Would you like a ride?”
The question came casually. You hesitated. Logan must’ve seen the uncertainty on your face, because he immediately added, “Or I can wait here while you call someone.”
The fact that he offered you an out so quickly made something clench in your chest. He wasn’t pressuring you, not even slightly.
You glanced back toward the street, then toward the warm garage behind him, then finally back at Logan.
“…You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t even know me,” you said.
He smiled. “You’ve got a very trustworthy face.”
You laughed softly. There it was again, that weird feeling of the day getting lighter around the edges every time he made you laugh. This should still objectively qualify as a terrible day, and yet…
Logan nodded toward the garage, “Come on.”
You followed him back inside as warmth wrapped around you immediately as you entered.
Logan grabbed a dark hoodie hanging off a chair near the office and pulled it over his thermal shirt. He had an extra hoodie that he offered to you, and you put it on.
“Okay,” he said, grabbing keys from the counter. “You hungry?”
You blinked. “What?”
“Are you hungry?” he asked again.
Yes, you thought. Very. You hadn’t eaten since noon, and stress always killed your appetite until suddenly it didn’t, and you realized you was starving.
“…Maybe.”
Logan nodded once like he’d expected that answer already.
“There’s a diner nearby,” he said.
“You’re taking me to dinner?” you said, your eyebrows raising.
His expression turned immediately unimpressed. “I’m taking you to fries.”
“That still counts.”
“Not really.”
“Come on,” he said as he walked out the door. The rain had slowed slightly again.
Logan’s blue truck sat parked near the edge of the lot beneath a flickering streetlamp. It was clean enough to tell he cared about it, and messy enough to tell he actually used it.
He held the passenger door open as you climbed in. He rounded the hood, getting in the driver’s side. The inside was warm and smelled like coffee and pine-scented air freshener.
Soft, classic rock played quietly through the speakers when he started the engine. He started to pull out of the lot as rain streaked softly across the windshield.
𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞 : john logan x fem!reader
𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 : angst, mentions of fainting, breakup implied or atleast taking a break implied, dizziness, medical inaccuracies for the plot.
𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : Being a chronic fainter was a little annoying. but you learnt how to manage and by junior year at Briar, everyone around you had adapted to it too; Hannah and Allie knew how to catch the signs before you hit the floor, Garrett keeps electrolyte packets in his backpack, and the hockey house has practically developed an emergency response system.
Everyone adapts except John Logan.
Because no matter how many times you wake back up smiling and insisting you’re okay, Logan never quite learns how to treat it like something ordinary. And when one particularly bad fainting spell leaves you unconscious long enough to genuinely terrify him, the careful balance the two of you have built between normalcy and fear finally begins to crack.
Or: two times John Logan watched you faint, and the one time he realised loving you meant learning how to be scared without letting it consume him.
𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐜𝐞 : 5.7k words
𝐛𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐲’𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫 : First time fulfilling a request, I hope you like it anon, im sorry that it probably isn't the fluff you are looking for but I hope you like it nonetheless. thank you @mieluno & @kthice for the text dividers
fainting had always been a little bit inconvenient.
not dramatic enough to be cinematic, not predictable enough to properly prepare for - just inconvenient in the kind of way that slowly embeds itself into every aspect of your life until you stop noticing how abnormal it actually is. It all started in high school, the first time it happened was arguably horrifying- 3rd period math class, and your crush had just offered you a pen and flashed you a crooked smile. Your heart raced, like a hummingbird wild and erratic and before you knew it, one minute you were bashfully giggling at his jokes about quadratic equations- the next you were face first in your notebook. The doctors told you Vasovagal Syncope, which in your opinion sounded like a hard metal rock band, but you took their blood pressure medicines from that day onwards.
Over time, you learnt how to live with it. Sometimes it was manageable. Sometimes it was just dizziness and blurry vision making you sit down on the nearest surface before your body decided to humble you publicly. Sometimes it was waking up to panicked faces hovering over you while you tried to convince everyone around you that no, seriously, this happened all the time.
which, unfortunately, was true.
Allie and Hannah learned the quickest, being roommates would do that to you. The boys learned soon after. By junior year, there was practically a system in place for it - water bottles shoved into your hands, someone grabbing your bag before you hit the floor, Garrett texting Logan before you were even fully conscious again.
Logan, however, never quite adjusted to it the way everyone else did.
he tried to.
God, he tried.
but there was something uniquely horrifying about loving someone whose body could go slack in your arms without warning. Something deeply unsettling about the way you always laughed it off afterwards, brushing it aside with flushed cheeks and a quiet, "I'm okay,” while his heart was still somewhere near his throat.
because to you, fainting was normal.
to John Logan, it never would be.
But here are the two times he dealt with it..somewhat normally. And the one time he didn’t
𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝟏
The library at Briar had a very specific kind of silence.
Not actual silence - that would’ve been impossible considering half the student population seemed physically incapable of existing without aggressively whispering every thought that crossed their mind - but the sort of hushed atmosphere that made every dropped pen sound like a gunshot.
You were currently trying very hard not to contribute to that atmosphere by murdering John Logan with a highlighter.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Logan muttered from across the table, long legs nudging yours beneath it.
You didn’t look up from your notes, underlining a sentence in your physiology textbook hard enough to nearly tear the page. “Because,” You whispered sharply, “you’ve tapped your foot against mine for the last fifteen minutes.”
“That’s because my feet are freezing.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“It became my problem when you shoved your icy ass converse under my legs.”
A snort came from beside you. Hannah quickly disguised it as a cough when you glared at her over your laptop screen.
Across from her, Garrett looked deeply unbothered by the entire interaction, lazily flipping a page in his philosophy textbook while Hannah slowly collapsed into silent laughter against his shoulder.
“You two are disgusting,” Allie informed you quietly from the end of the table.
You blinked. “We’re literally studying.”
Logan hummed beside you, not even pretending to pay attention to the stats worksheet in front of him anymore, “Yeah baby, real filthy behaviour.”
Heat crawled up your neck instantly.
The word baby wasn’t exactly new. Logan had been throwing it around for months now, slipping it into conversations with such casual ease that you’d stopped reacting outwardly somewhere around week three, despite the fact every single time still felt like someone plugging your nervous system directly into a live wire.
“You’re staring again,” You muttered.
“I’m allowed to stare at my girlfriend.”
Allie gagged dramatically.
“Oh my god,” She whispered loudly, “he’s gotten even more annoying.”
“Impossible,” Hannah replied solemnly.
Garrett barely glanced up from his book. “Give it a week. They’ll become one organism.”
“We already basically are,” Logan said casually.
You finally looked up at him then.
That was the problem with Logan. The reason you’d fallen for him so spectacularly despite your better judgement.
He said things like that so easily. Like it was obvious.
obviously he’d started keeping protein bars in his backpack because you forgot to eat when you were stressed. obviously he waited outside your exam halls even when he had practice. obviously your legs ended up over his lap every time you sat together for longer than ten minutes.
Your chest tightened softly.
And because apparently the universe enjoyed humiliating you whenever you got too emotionally comfortable, your vision blurred slightly at the exact same moment.
You frowned. That was… inconvenient timing.
The words on your laptop screen swam for half a second before sharpening again. Your heartbeat fluttered unpleasantly.
Not enough to panic over yet. You subtly shifted in your seat, rolling your neck and readjusting your posture- hoping to god that it would be enough, trying to ignore the familiar lightheadedness curling at the edges of your body.
“Hey.”
Logan’s voice dropped quieter instantly.
You looked over.
His brows had pulled together slightly, eyes scanning your face with terrifying precision.
“How long?” He asked softly.
Damn him.
Most people didn’t notice until you were actively halfway unconscious.
“I’m okay,” You whispered automatically.
A look crossed his face. Because he knew that tone. Knew what it meant when you said I’m okay in that specific careful voice. Your boyfriend leaned back slightly in his chair, completely ignoring the fact that Garrett was now openly watching the interaction over the top of his textbook.
“When was the last time you ate?”
You blinked once.
Logan sighed immediately. “Baby.”
“I had coffee?”
Allie dropped her pen onto the table. “Oh my god.”
“You can’t survive on caffeine and academic validation,” Hannah hissed.
“I literally can though.”
“No,” Logan said flatly, “you literally cannot. That’s the whole issue.”
Despite yourself, you laughed quietly.
Wrong decision.
The movement sent dizziness crashing through you harder this time, your stomach dipping sharply as black spots burst across your vision.
Logan was moving before you could even process it properly.
One second you were upright, the next his hand was wrapped around your wrist while the other steadied your shoulder.
“Hey,” He said immediately, voice calm enough that someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t notice the tension underneath it, “look at me.”
Your body felt frustratingly floaty all of a sudden.
“I’m fine,” You murmured weakly.
“Yeah, sweetheart, that sentence is losing credibility.”
Garrett was already standing.
“I’ll get water.”
Hannah reached for your bag without needing to ask while Allie shoved your laptop aside to make room.
The horrifying thing was how practised everyone looked doing it.
Like this had become routine.
Which, unfortunately, it kind of had.
“I hate all of you,” You mumbled as Logan carefully crouched in front of your chair.
“You love us deeply,” Allie corrected.
“Stockholm syndrome maybe.”
“You literally chose to date one of them,” Hannah pointed out.
“That weakens your argument significantly,” Garrett called over his shoulder.
Logan ignored all of them.
His thumb pressed lightly against your pulse point while he watched your face with that same concentrated expression he got before hockey games. Like he could somehow prevent your body from betraying you if he paid enough attention.
Your chest ached.
“Hey,” You whispered softly once your vision finally started stabilising again.
Logan looked up immediately.
You reached out without thinking, fingers brushing against the crease between his eyebrows. The tension sitting there.
“I’m okay.”
He closed his eyes for half a second. Then he turned his head slightly and pressed a quick kiss into the centre of your palm before standing back up.
The library collectively chose that exact moment to become aware of the fact that the hockey team’s second line centre was looking at you like you personally held his heart hostage.
“Oh my god,” Allie whispered dramatically.
Hannah looked emotional.
Garrett looked disgusted.
“Suddenly we’re all trapped in a Nicholas Sparks novel,” he muttered.
Logan didn’t even glance away from you.
“Shut up,” He said absentmindedly, still watching your face carefully, “she almost passed out.”
“I did not almost pass out.”
“That’s not medically valid.” Logan shot.
You flicked his forehead, “You’re not medically valid,”
You stared at him for two seconds before bursting into startled laughter.
And just like that, some of the fear eased out of his shoulders.
𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝟐
The thing about the hockey house was that it never really felt like anyone was visiting it.
It felt like everyone was always a part of this little ecosystem, even if half of them technically still had their own places and the other half only owned two plates and a concerning number of energy drinks that nobody could fully account for.
Tonight was one of those nights where everything blurred into something almost domestic in a way you loved. Garrett and Hannah were folded into each other on the armchair in the corner, Hannah scrolling absently while Garrett spoke over her shoulder in low, easy comments about something on his screen that she kept pretending not to care about but clearly did.
Dean and Allie were on the floor near the coffee table, Allie leaning against him in that casual way that somehow always ended with her stealing his hoodies and Dean acting like he was personally offended by affection while still adjusting her position when she shifted too much.
And then there was Tucker, occupying the remaining space like a problem nobody had successfully solved yet, talking at a volume that suggested he had forgotten walls existed.
You were on the couch.
Logan was on the couch too, your legs resting across his lap, your head resting on the back of the couch. His hand had found your ankle at some point during the evening and had simply stayed there, like it had decided that was where it belonged and saw no reason to reconsider.
“Have you eaten today?,” Logan murmured into your ear, not looking up from his phone.
You didn’t look away from the conversation Dean was having with Allie about whether cereal could be classified as a personality trait. “Hmm?”
“Did you eat today baby?” He dropped his phone into his lap and caressed your hair.
“I think so.”
A pause.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It does if you really think about it.”
Hannah glanced over from the armchair. “She’s lying.”
“I am not lying.”
Garrett didn’t look up. “You had toast and emotional distress.”
“I had toast and a very normal amount of stress.”
Logan’s thumb pressed lightly against your ankle once, absent and automatic, but his attention had shifted to you properly now. Not fully concerned yet, but already recalibrating the room around your answer the way he always did when he thought something might be off.
“Baby,” he said quietly, like it was a habit more than a warning.
You finally turned your head slightly toward him. “Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything.”
“You’re absolutely starting something.”
Across the room, Allie made a sound of exaggerated disgust without even looking up. “I can feel the health lecture forming.”
Dean nodded. “It’s in the air.”
Logan ignored them completely. “You said you had toast this morning.”
“I did.”
“And then what.”
You hesitated.
Which was apparently answered enough.
Hannah sighed. “Oh my god.”
“I had coffee,” you admitted finally, because there was no point pretending anymore.
Garrett closed his eyes briefly like he was praying for patience. “That’s not food.”
“It has beans in it.”
“That’s not how nutrition works,” Logan said, though his voice was still calm, still even, like he was trying very hard not to make it into a bigger thing than it already was.
You shifted your legs slightly on his lap, rolling your eyes. “You’re all obsessed with me.”
“Yes,” Allie said immediately.
“That’s not-”
“Yes,” Dean repeated, “we are.”
You opened your mouth to concede and hop to the kitchen, go grab whatever tucker had made and stored in the fridge, but the words didn’t come out as smoothly as they should have.
It wasn’t immediate. It never was, much to your annoyance. It was subtle in the way your body always was about these things, like it preferred to give you enough time to be pissed before it betrayed you properly.
A slight softening at the edges of your vision first, like the room had decided to lose definition without informing you. The low hum of conversation didn’t change, but it felt slightly further away, like you were listening to it through water.
You frowned. This was inconvenient.
You shifted your weight on the couch instinctively, trying to ground yourself without drawing attention to it, but Logan noticed anyway. Of course he did.
His hand tightened slightly around your ankle.
“You good?” he asked, quieter now.
You nodded automatically. “Yea,” pushing off the sofa, hoping the movement would reboot your brain,”... yeah im fine.”
It came out too fast. Logan’s expression changed imperceptibly, the way it always did when he didn’t believe you but hadn’t yet decided whether to challenge it in front of everyone.
“Hey,” he said again, softer, his hand wrapped around your wrist- following you away from your seat.
You tried to laugh it off, but it didn’t quite land properly even in your own ears. “I’m finally listening to you guys, just going to grab something to eat.”
You pushed yourself to step away.
That was when it hit properly. Your body simply decided that it was no longer participating in the conversation. The room loosened, like the edges stopped agreeing with each other and in between the gaps your brain filled with black spots.
You reached out without thinking, fingers brushing the back of the couch as your knees went weak in a way that didn’t feel like anything at first, until it did.
“Hey-”
Logan’s voice cut through immediately, sharper now, closer than it had been a second ago, but it was already too late for clarity.
There was so much movement all at once.
Someone swearing.
A water bottle being cracked open.
The shuffling of sneakers and socks against the floor.
Coming back was always the worst part.
Because there was always a moment where you could hear everything before you could properly exist inside it again. Voices layered over each other, closer this time, less casual.
“I’ve got her,” Logan’s voice said, low and controlled in a way that didn’t quite match the tension underneath it.
“She’s out cold?” Dean asked, like he was trying not to panic but also deeply failing.
“She’s not- don’t say it like that,” Allie snapped immediately.
“Water,” Garrett said somewhere to the side, already moving.
And then your vision finally returned in pieces.
Ceiling first.
Then faces.
Then Logan.
He was closest.
Crouched in front of you, one hand steadying your shoulder, the other still holding your wrist like he hadn’t fully decided whether letting go was allowed yet. His expression wasn’t dramatic in the way people expected panic to be.
He was focussed on you, in a way that made your chest tighten before you even fully remembered why. You blinked slowly.
“Oh,” you muttered. “That was annoying.”
Relief flickered across Allie’s face instantly. “She’s alive.”
“Barely,” Dean said.
“I heard that,” you murmured.
Logan didn’t smile, “you scared me,” he said finally. You swallowed, trying to sit up, but his hand immediately steadied you again, firmer now.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
“I’m fine,” you replied automatically, accepting the water from garrett with a smile, you reach over to your bag and search for an energy bar. You hated the nutty torture snacks, but Logan insisted on you carrying them around for emergencies.
Everyone around you had relaxed, Hannah, Garrett and Tucker went to the kitchen, animatedly chatting about dinner whereas Allie and Dean went back to their places on the floor, already scrolling through her phone.
Logan hadn’t moved, his fingers drumming against your knee. Your fingers moved without thinking, brushing lightly against his sleeve.
“I’m okay,” you said again, softer this time, like it might mean something more if you said it gently enough.
Logan exhaled through his nose, eyes flicking briefly shut like he was trying to steady something in himself. He shook his head, as if the movie had been unpaused and he had momentarily lost the plot.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”
𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝟑
Logan got the message in the middle of something he would not later be able to reconstruct properly, not because it wasn’t important, but because everything that happened immediately after replaced it so completely that the original context never stood a chance of surviving in his memory.
His phone buzzed incessantly on his desk breaking his concentration from whatever his professor was droning about ,to the group chat notifications exploding on his phone screen. It was Hannah’s name first, then Garrett’s, then Allie’s, all stacked on top of each other in a way that made him unlock his phone and scroll through hurriedly.
you fainted. properly. you're awake now. come back.
He read it once without reacting in any visible way, which was what made it worse in hindsight, everything else that he had been doing was irrelevant, as though the idea of continuing it belonged to someone else entirely, and he was no longer that person.
By the time he got back to the house, his hoodie was half-zipped because he had started putting it on properly and then stopped halfway through, his cap still backwards and slightly uneven like he had forgotten it was there at all and his hair underneath it flattened in places that suggested his hand had been through it more times than he had noticed.
Logan shut off his ignition and ran up the stairs, two at a time until he was bursting through the front door- his bag hanging from one shoulder as he scanned the scene in front of him. Garrett stood near the kitchen counter with a glass of water he had clearly forgotten to drink from, Hannah sat on the couch angled slightly forward in a posture that suggested she had not yet decided whether she was allowed to relax, Allie hovered somewhere between the hallway and the living room in a way that made it clear she had been going back and forth between checking on you and giving you space, and Dean existed in that familiar state of pretending not to be paying attention while absolutely paying attention.
And you were on the couch. Your eyes were open but not fully anchored yet, blinking slowly in that delayed way that made it clear your body was still catching up to where you were. Your shoulders were slightly hunched forward as if you were trying to find the correct posture for being awake again and your hands were loosely folded in your lap before you noticed him properly.
The moment you did, everything in you shifted in a way that was immediate and familiar, like muscle memory rather than thought. You sat up, twisting over the couch to meet his eyes and smile with your hand outstretched- that was when the collective inhale happened, like even the house was waiting to see what he would do.
His eyes stayed on you without breaking, taking in the fact that you were sitting there, awake, conscious, present, and yet his brain still hadn’t stopped running like a hamster on a wheel, rotating again and again through all the scenarios he had plagued himself with on the drive over- a broken movie reel that fluttered between bad, worse and catastrophic.
You saw him, the way his eyes darted all over your face, how his hand was tightening and loosely against his bag strap.
“Hey,” you said, your voice slightly rough, but it jumpstarted him to begin slowly approaching you, like a wounded animal. Your first instinct whenever he looked like that, as if you could smooth the edges of his expression back into something manageable by making yourself smaller within it, which was something you did without hesitation, like it was part of a pattern you had both already agreed to without ever discussing it.
He let you.
Let you intertwine your fingers with him and pull him closer next to you. Let you kiss his hands, then knuckles and then the side of his wrist. He let you ground him before he could process anything.
“I’m fine,” you said quickly, already aware of how the room was still holding itself slightly tense, and your voice tilted into something apologetic without fully meaning to, “I’m sorry guys, I must not have realised how stressed I was. I didn’t mean to scare anyone, I just didn’t eat properly and I got a bit dizzy and I didn’t realise it would turn into anything, it won’t happen again, I promise.”
Around you, the room began to release itself in pieces.
Garrett exhaled and shifted his weight like he had been waiting for permission to stop bracing, Hannah leaned back into the couch again as her shoulders loosened, Allie moved a step closer to you and immediately started talking in that half-joking, half-relieved tone about electrolytes and how she was “putting you on a schedule if this ever happens again,” and Dean, finally, contributed something about how he shouldn’t have asked about how your paper went, and he’ll let you run him over with his car to relieve stress next time, which was unhelpful but normal in a way that helped everyone else reset.
You leaned into Logan without thinking, still holding his hand, your body molding into his as you rubbed circles on his knuckles and pressed your hand into his thigh
You looked up at him, already softer, already slipping back into the version of the evening where everything was normal again. But what you couldn’t see was the way his emotions swirled thunderously in his mind, how he couldn’t begin to relax like everyone else did- in fact he was baffled they were so normal so quickly. He barely heard you ask about his class, or notice when you peppered soft kisses to his jaw and say that you missed him- how boring it was when he wasn’t there. As though the structure of his day mattered more than anything.
He tried to answer at first, his words bubbling to the tip of his tongue, but it didn’t take long for him to realise they wouldn’t come out in a smooth, caramelised way that would flow into the calm atmosphere of the room. He gently let go of your hand, in a decisive way that made you furrow your brows and scan his face.
“Logan?” you said, quieter now, not fully alarmed but already sensing the direction this was going.
He rubbed his hands together, throat working thickly as his adams apple bobbed. Everyone else had noticed the shift, conversations slowed. Dean stopped mid-sentence. Allie’s expression changed slightly as she looked between the two of you. Hannah went still in a way that suggested she was no longer sure whether to intervene or wait.
Logan turned to you, his hair falling in specks along his forehead, “I need a minute.” He got up and went upstairs, footsteps heavy along the ceiling of where you all stayed frozen until his bedroom door clicked closed; you blinked a few times, looking at your friends who met you with confused, concerned shrugs and shakes of their heads.
Your expression tightened and you pushed yourself up to follow him, ignoring whatever advice your friends were half-heartedly giving you.
When the door creaked open under your hand, you found him sitting on the edge of his bed, hands braced on his knees and holding his head, as though he needed something solid to hold the weight of his thoughts. His cap lay discarded on the floor, shoulders slightly lifted in tension that he was not releasing, and when you entered the doorway he did not look immediately, as if he already knew what would happen if he looked at you too quickly.
When he did meet your eyes, it was not anger that you saw first, but something more difficult to place because it did not sit cleanly in any single emotion. It looked like a strain held in place for too long.
“You shouldn’t apologise like that,” he said, and you frowned slightly, stepping inside and shutting the door behind you. Trapping whatever conversation you were about to have within these four walls.
“I wasn’t- I just didn’t want everyone worrying,” you said, still trying to smooth it over in the same way you had in the other room, still trying to keep it within something manageable. The bedframe creaked under you, as if warning you from crossing your legs and sinking into this situation.
But he shook his head once, not dismissive but overwhelmed, and when he spoke again his voice had shifted into something quieter but sharper at the edges, “You were apologising for being unconscious.”
That made you stop, properly stop, because it didn’t match the version of the moment you had been holding onto, and he saw that in your face immediately.
“I wasn’t here,” he said, and there was something in the way he said it that made it clear that time had not been abstract for him in the same way it was for you. “You were just gone, and I found out from my phone blowing up, messages that had sat there for god knows how long because…” He grit his teeth, “I just had to turn it on silent for class. And I get back to everyone telling me it was fine, that you’re fine, like that changes anything.”
You try to re-anchor him in proximity the same way you always did, your hand finding his again, your voice softening as you said, “You can’t always be there Logan, I don’t want you to always be on edge. I’m okay.”
But when he looked at you this time, there was something in his expression that did not settle with that reassurance.
“I know,” he said quietly, and it came out with more restraint than anything he had said earlier, like it was something he had been holding back for a long time and could no longer keep contained in the same shape. “I just don’t know how to stop thinking about what it looked like when you weren’t.”
You cup his cheek, turning him towards you, “I’m right here baby,” You kiss him, imprinting the taste of you onto his mouth, the feel of your lips together as a way to tell him that you’re still there with him, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Logan held your wrists, his fingers shaking against your skin, “I..” his eyes were wide, pupils flicking between yours, “I never know when you aren’t going to be here.”
He tugged at your hands and you let him, nails digging into the bedsheet uselessly next to you. Your breath caught in your throat, face quaking and crumbling at the edges, eyelashes fluttering- beating away the bubbling tears forming on your lashline.
“I think I’ll sleep at the dorm tonight,” you said eventually, and your voice was softer than it had been before, tired in a way that didn’t fully belong to the moment.
Logan looked up at that, but he didn’t stop you, just watched with a shattered look in his eyes, his lips pursed and pressed against his hands that were clasped together. You collected your things as seamlessly as possible, and given that you’d stayed over for the entire weekend, it was proving to be harder than you thought. But you huffed and puffed with each new article that got shoved into the shoulder bag until the room looked as if you’d never stepped foot in there.
You’d already begun to calculate how many trips it would take to empty out the clothes from his dresser and toiletries from his bathroom.
Logan still hadn’t said anything, his eyes widening by a fraction when he realised just how much you had erased from his space, but he stayed silent when your fingers hesitated against the door handle and didn’t dare to say anything when you turned back to him- eyes begging him to stop you, to cradle you in his arms and work it out. He ignored it all, looking through you and barely flinching when you shut the dare harder than necessary.
You adjusted your bag strap over your shoulder with careful hands, stilling when you realised everyone was staring at you when you emerged from the stairwell, “I’m heading home guys..”
Your throat tightened but you shook your head and forced a smile onto your face, it felt plasticy and fake when your eyebrows tightened together, nose burning with each deep breath you took.
You added lightly, “I’ve got that test tomorrow anyway, and it’s probably better if I just- yeah. I’ll head back.”
Allie and Hannah both turned slightly, breaking out of the pitying trance when you grabbed your keys and headed for the door.
Neither of them said anything at first, because there was a specific kind of silence that settles when two people are trying very hard to behave like nothing irreversible has happened only a floor above them.
“Okay,” Allie said finally, careful but not pushing, “Text us when you get in?”
You nodded quickly.
“Yeah, of course.”
Hannah’s eyes lingered on you a little longer, not interrogating, just observing, like she was storing away the way you were holding yourself more tightly than usual, the way Logan wasn’t following you to the door, barely letting you out of his hold with attacks of kisses and whispers in your ear.
But neither of them asked.
Because to everyone else in the house, it still looked like something that could be explained away by stress and timing and too much noise and not enough food.
You said goodbye in a way that was deliberately light, stepping out with your usual version of composure stitched back together over something slightly less stable underneath it.
Back in the living room, the energy eventually returned in fragments, Logan had rejoined the group nearly an hour after the girls had left.
Allie and Hannah left together not long after you, mumbled goodbyes were exchanged and worried whispers about Logan along with promises to update them over text had gotten them out the door back to you .
And once the door closed behind them, the house settled into a quieter version of itself.
Dean was the first to fully break the tension, dropping onto the couch with the kind of exaggerated movement that only made sense when someone was actively trying to remind a room how normal they were allowed to be. Tucker followed soon after, already halfway into a joke about how “Briar parties are medically unsafe environments” that no one really responded to but still helped reset the tone anyway.
Logan stayed silent for a moment too long in the kitchen doorway before eventually sitting down on the arm of the couch, not fully joining the group, just occupying space near it without integrating into it. The others kept talking for a while, but their volume softened slightly in the way it does when people unconsciously recognise that something heavier is still present in the room.
Eventually, Dean stretched and yawned in an overly theatrical way.
“Right,” he said, pushing himself up. “I’m calling it before I start thinking about my own mortality again.”
Tucker followed immediately, clapping Logan on the shoulder on his way past like nothing meaningful had just been discussed at all. “Don’t overthink it, man,” he added lightly, already heading upstairs. “She’s been doing that since high school apparently. She’s fine.”
Garrett didn’t follow them right away.
Logan just exhaled once, slow, like something had tightened in his chest at the phrasing.
Once the footsteps disappeared upstairs and the house settled properly, Garrett stayed behind in the spot next to Logan, leaning against the couch and pretended not to be boring holes into the side of his best friend's face. Logan was still on the couch arm, staring somewhere that wasn’t really the room.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
“I can’t imagine it,” Garrett broke the silence, voice quieter now, stripped of the earlier group energy, “loving someone and knowing that at any point they might just not respond.”
Logan’s jaw tightened slightly at that, but he didn’t interrupt.
Garrett looked down at his hands briefly before continuing, “I know everyone’s saying she’s used to it and it’s normal for her or whatever, but… that’s not really the part that sticks, is it?”
That landed differently.
Logan looked down finally, his hands loosely clasped together, and when he spoke his voice came out lower than before, less controlled in the way it had been earlier.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, and there was no performance left in it now, no attempt to hold anything in place. “I love her so much it actually hurts, and I can’t… I can’t keep doing that thing where I pretend I’m okay when she’s-”
He stopped. Swallowed slightly and pressed his fingers to his eyes. Logan exhaled again, slower this time, like the words were physically difficult to keep forming.
“But I also can’t go on like this,” he finished, quieter.
That silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable in the way earlier ones had been. It was just heavy with the absence of an answer. Garrett nodded once, slowly, like he understood that there wasn’t a clean solution sitting anywhere in reach.
“I think,” Garrett said carefully after a moment, choosing each word like he was placing it somewhere fragile, “it might actually be harder to let her go than it is to keep reminding yourself she wakes up every time.”
Logan turned to Garrett, and nodded slowly- a row of tears fell from his chin and onto the soft cashmere beneath him, “I just don’t know how many times I can do it.”
Hi, could I please make a request with baran X wife!reader, where r comes in as a trauma (maybe like a pretty bad car accident or something like that) and baran is really worried and protective while everyone is treating r? Thank you !!
first, do no harm (baran al-hashimi x wife!reader) .ೃ࿔*everyone at PTMC knows chief emergency attending baran al-hashimi does not play about strict adherence to medical procedure. but when her wife is injured in a car accident, she has to decide whether she's willing to compromise on the rules.
tags: hurt/comfort, established relationship, married, canon-compliant setting, medical inaccuracies, irl baran would be on a power trip if she did this but we ignore that for the sake of the hurt/comfort, you are totally high
Baran’s hip hurts. She’s standing against the nurse’s station with all of her weight shifted to the other side, and it still won’t stop throbbing. She’s supposed to go out to dinner with you tonight, but she thinks if she has to take more than 20 steps between now and the time she goes to bed her body might just give out. Maybe she’ll suggest making stir fry instead.
In a few minutes, she’ll join Abbot for her final rounds of the night, which won’t be hard, just names and presentation. Then she’s off. She is thinking, with a small and guilty pleasure, about the leftover rice she knows is in the refrigerator at home. By extension of that, she is thinking about you.
Baran’s personal phone has been sitting in her locker in the staff room for the better part of two hours, the dark screen facing the metal locker’s door, receiving nothing, buzzing for no one. She'd meant to take it out at seven-thirty when her shift was supposed to end, but she'd gotten pulled into the consult that ran long, and in a few minutes she’d have to lead the shift-change. Besides, Baran was hardly a phone-addicted woman; she felt no pull toward it, no itching craze to check it. It wasn’t on her mind at all.
She only thinks of this because Dana is across from her, pressing the clunky red phone to her ear that was ringing incessantly up until a few moments ago. Baran hates that fucking phone. It was helpful exactly one time, during the blackout, but now just serves as a medium through which they can get forty spam calls again, and the sound of it ringing is shrill and piercing and makes her ears ring. She would chuck that phone from the rooftop if given the chance.
Ten seconds pass. Then twenty. Baran quirks an eyebrow at Dana and all her shoulders-back brows-furrowed gruffness, something about the call very clearly not going right. Dana doesn't have a good poker face, and Baran immediately wants to know why. She may pride herself on her composure, but she’d never claim she isn’t nosy.
"What?” Baran mouths with a quirk of her lip, which quickly morphs into a frown as Dana holds up a single finger, silently commanding her to wait.
Dana’s voice drops low, gruff with an edge Baran rarely hears from her. “And how soon will you be here? Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you.”
Dana exhales through her nose sharply before covering the receiver. Baran waits for Dana to scan the bay, look for a resident or a charge nurse or to assist with what Baran assumes is an incoming trauma. But Dana looks at Baran specifically, her eyes don’t drift. Baran lifts her chin, trying to wrest away the nausea that just swept over her.
“What is it?”
Dana crosses the desk, grabbing Baran’s arm and trying to lead her away. "Can I pull you aside for a moment?”
Baran plants her feet. "Tell me here. What’s wrong?”
Dana purses her lips. “Dr. Al-Hashimi, please, follow me.”
“No,” Baran snaps, and a few heads turn their way. “Tell me, Dana. Who was that? What’s wrong?”
Dana levels her with a mom-glare, but Baran is a mom too and is impervious to it. She won't be moved. Dana breaks quick enough.
"There was an MVA,” Dana says carefully. “EMS called ahead because they couldn’t get a hold of you but they know you work here. They’re about eight minutes out.”
“Couldn’t get a hold of me?” Baran breathes, head spinning. “Why would they— was it Y/N?"
"The incident was reported at seven-forty-nine," Dana is saying. She's watching Baran with that careful, steady look. "ETA is four minutes. A teenage driver, illegal street racing, ran a red at the intersection of—"
"Her injuries," Baran says. "What did dispatch tell you?"
"Head trauma, possible rib fracture, lower extremity injury. She was responsive at the scene,” Dana replies. “GCS of thirteen."
Thirteen out of fifteen. Disoriented but not unconscious. Thirteen is not fourteen, which is where she’d want it, but thirteen is also not eight, which is where she’d start to make very different preparations.
"Baran,” Dana takes one step closer. She must’ve been calling Baran’s name, who didn’t hear it. "What do you need, hon? What can I do?"
Baran takes one breath in through her nose and releases it slowly through her mouth, hand coming up to squeeze tightly around her wrist.
"Please get Abbot and Langdon, if he’s still here," she says. "Tell them incoming trauma, MVA, head injury and possible rib fracture. I want imaging on standby and I want ortho paged."
Dana is already reaching for her radio. "Done. Anything else?"
"Yes." Baran straightens. "Would someone grab my phone from my locker? The code is 4-7-1-9."
Dana nods once, her movement slowing to a stop, and her eyes drift back up to Baran. "Are you going to—" She finishes the sentence without words, instead raising a single brow.
Baran only offers one singular nod before she's beelining to the ambulance bay. She hears the siren before she sees the lights, the Doppler shift of it growing closer, and she forces herself to stand still and breathe even as other doctors rush out to help her receive you. Her wife. Baran has been in room after room after room delivering this kind of news about someone that someone loves, and she has watched what they do. There’s usually the one who crumples, or goes rigid, or flees. She always had empathy, but now she has a direct understanding. She wants to do all three. Her chest feels like it’s going to implode. She feels both weightless and leaden, like she’ll either crack through the earth and plummet to its core or float off, somewhere far away.
The ambulance pulls in. The back doors open before the vehicle has fully stopped and the paramedics are already yelling: "-y year old female, restrained driver, T-bone impact on the driver's side, airbag deployment with delayed activation, she's been in and out—"
Your body jolts around like a rag doll as the stretcher bumps its way out of the back of the ambulance. Your head lolls this-way-and-that as if weightless. There’s a C-collar on you, a line in your left arm, a pressure bandage along the hairline where your head must’ve slammed into something. Baran can hardly breathe at the sight of it all as Langdon and Mel descend upon your stretcher, jogging with it as you’re rolled in.
A treating physician cannot have a primary care relationship with an immediate family member. It compromises the objectivity of clinical judgment in ways that can lead to either over-treatment or dangerous minimization, because love is not a diagnostic tool and it never has been.
But Baran is also the chief attending on duty, which means it is ultimately her call to make, which means she can assign Abbot as the primary and oversee, or she can assign Abbot as the primary and step back entirely, or she can (and the protocol is grayer here than people admit) take primary herself on the grounds that she is the most qualified physician in the building and that the injuries in question, while serious, are not so acutely life-threatening as to require surgical intervention, and that her training is specifically relevant to every item on this presentation. Baran is someone whose hands do not shake. They are perfectly steady now, even as her pulse thrummed in her teeth, in her spine, behind her eyes.
She is through the door, back into the ER and coming up alongside your moving stretcher before Langdon can finish his first thought. "Hold on," she says. "What's the reasoning on that?"
Langdon looks up, eyes a little owlish.
"Dr. Al-Hashimi—"
"The reasoning, Langdon."
"I'm cautious about the rib given the mechanism. I want to rule out pneumothorax before we—"
"Breath sounds are equal bilaterally," Baran says, because she can hear them from here, has been hearing them since she walked in. "Trachea is midline. Sat is ninety-seven. This isn't a pneumo." She pulls a pair of gloves from the box on the wall. "Order the CT chest anyway, I want to see the full picture. But we're not holding on that basis."
Langdon holds her gaze for a moment. He is a good doctor and a careful one, and she respects him. But it is more important in this moment that he respects her.
"Sure," he says slowly, letting the words go reluctantly.
"I'll take primary," she says curtly. "Someone get Abbot in here, and Langdon, stay. I want you on the imaging review because I want your eyes on it independent of mine, and you are to say something if you think I'm wrong about anything."
Langdon nods once as Mel rushes off to get Abbot, and Baran steps up in her place.
Close up, it's different. She can see the blood at your hairline more clearly, a gash of maybe two centimeters that has been partially dressed by the paramedics, still oozing slightly. Your hands are resting open at your sides, which is either calm or the absence of enough presence of mind to close them. Baran puts her gloved hand over yours, heart pumping hot blood through her veins. “Y/N, eshgham, can you look at me?"
Your eyes drift around aimlessly for a moment before arriving on hers. She shines her penlight in your eyes as your stretcher keeps moving, apologizing with a raspy voice as you whine.
“Do you know where you are, hon?” Dana asks as they finally reach a room, getting ready to transfer you onto the bed.
"Hospital," you croak.
"That's right. Do you know what happened?"
You groan as they start to jostle you. "There was a car."
"You were in a car accident. Someone hit you,” Baran confirms, "I need you to tell me where it hurts. Can you do that?"
"Head," you wheeze with visible effort: "Side. My side."
"Your ribs?" Baran is already reaching to palpate, carefully, feeling for crepitus. You hiss at the contact, trying to pull away. "I know, I know. I'm sorry,” she responds, blinking the tears out of her eyes, trying to push it all back, down, far away. There’s a fracture, possibly two. "What about your ankle? How does it feel?"
You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to locate that specific pain among the throbbing ache everywhere. You can’t really pinpoint it, so you just supply: “Ouch.”
Langdon huffs out an amused breath as Abbot bursts in, still pulling his gloves on. "What the hell is going on here? Y/N? Baran, you're primary?"
"Yes."
"And you want me—"
"To help. Eyes on everything I do. You countermand me the second you think I'm compromised, you have my full authorization and I mean that." She glances at him then, just briefly. "Jack."
His crossed arms drop as she rounds the bed. "Jesus," he exhales. "Okay. Right. Hi, Y/N. You’re not lookin’ nearly as bad as I thought you would be going off of Baran’s face.”
You hold up a loose-armed thumbs up. “I always look good. Tha’s why she calls me hot stuff,” you slur.
Jack’s eyes shoot up to Baran in amusement. “You drug her?"
"She got two of fentanyl in the field," Baran says. She's already peeling back the paramedic's dressing at your hairline, gazing down at the still-oozing wound. She holds the pressure and looks up. "Langdon, I need this closed."
"On it." He's already moving to the supply cart to get the staples.
She turns back to the room. "C-collar stays until we have the head CT. Cardiac monitor, second IV right arm, supplemental O2 at two liters. Any update from ortho?"
"They said ten minutes,” Dana says.
"Please ask them to be down here in eight."
Dana gives her a look and picks up the phone anyway as the beeping of your heart rate monitor ticks up. All eyes fall on you.
"Baran." Your voice has gone thinner, frightful. Your fingers scrabble at the bed rail. "Baran, I can't— something's wrong, I can't— "
"It's the medication," she softens her voice. Langdon has come back with the stapler and is setting up at your head; she shifts fractionally to give him room without releasing your hand. "Keep your eyes on me."
"Wait,” you gasp, “‘t doesn’t feel right."
"I know it doesn't." She keeps her voice even as an anchor. She has done this ten thousand times with people less important. She can help you through this. "Find my face, honey. Right here." Your eyes find hers and then skate off, glassy and searching. You're trying to reach for something with your left hand, the one with the line in it, fingers splaying open uselessly.
"Hey." Dana catches your wrist before you can pull the IV, "Leave that alone, Y/N. That's keeping you comfortable."
"Well, I don't feel comfortable," you moan.
"I know," Dana says sympathetically, guiding your hand back down on the bed. "But you gotta try to stay still."
"Tracking's better than field report. I'd call her a fourteen,” Abbot updates the room.
Baran knows this, she's been watching. She just nods without taking her eyes off of you. You make a low, distressed sound, head moving restlessly against the pillow, C-collar shifting with it.
"I’m serious, something really feels wrong."
"Nothing is wrong, Verstappen," Abbot says. He has moved down to your ankle now, palpating carefully, watching your face for the pain response. "Your brain is lying and telling you that because of the medication. Your vitals are good."
"It doesn't feel like it's lying," you repeat miserably.
"I know," Baran smooths her thumb along the uninjured side of your hairline, gloved and careful. "That's what makes it convincing. But you’ve got several doctors in here to make sure you’re okay. Including me."
Your eyes squint at Baran, something finally clicking behind your eyes. Then, small and muzzy: "You're not supposed to be my doctor."
Abbot coughs noisly behind you, then oofs as Dana juts her elbow into his ribs.
"No," Baran agrees, ignroing them both. "I'm not supposed to be your doctor."
"Are you in trouble?"
Still hunched, Abbot mouths ‘yes’ behind Baran with an exaggerated nod of his head while Baran’s own expression remains impassive. "Not yet."
You grin, letting your head thunk back against the bed. Your eyes drift shut, then drag back open with visible effort to glare at Langdon who’s approaching you with the stapler. At least he has the courtesy to offer you a sympathetic smile.
"I’ll make it really fast,” he promises. “Just a few small pinches.”
You flinch at the first one and make a sound through your teeth.
"Three more," he says.
"I hate this stupid ED," you inform him, though your syllables are all jumbled. His grin spreads wider across his face.
"Two more."
Your grip on Baran's hand tightens with each one, which she happily allows (it makes her feel at least semi-useful.) Her gaze flicks between the cardiac monitor — rate 104, sinus tach, no big deal — and watching your chest rise and fall and watching your eyes.
"Done," Langdon says. He steps back, strips his gloves, reaches for a fresh dressing. There are four staples across your forehead now, injected in a clean line. "Lac's closed."
"Good." Baran looks across at Abbot. He's finished with the ankle, already straightening.
"Displaced, probably," he says quietly, just to her. "Ortho's going to want to look at that tonight." She nods. That's a problem for twenty minutes from now.
"We're going to take some pictures," she tells you. "Head first, then chest. The collar has to stay on until we rule out a neck injury. I know it's uncomfortable."
"S'fine," you murmur.
"Is it?"
You purse your lips. Caught. "No."
Abbot steps up on your left. "Radiology's ready. You want to take her down?"
"Yes," Baran replies quickly. “Please.”
Dana has already moved to the head of the bed, hands on the rail. "Ready?"
"Where are we going?" you ask the ceiling.
"To get your picture taken," Dana reminds you.
A loopy frown pulls at your lips, memory already lapsed. "For what? I look terrible."
"You look fine, hon."
"Liar," you groan, slurred enough to make Dana laugh. Baran takes your hand as they start to move, fingers lacing through yours. Your grip tightens immediately around hers, a tiny little breath puffing from your mouth in what she takes to be near-contentment.
"Close your eyes,” she whispers, leaning down to place one soft kiss to your forehead. “I'll tell you when we get there."
pairing: bsf!dean di laurentis x reader, john logan x reader (will have 2nd part).
Dean's lips were just as you'd imagined them; soft and passionate. Moving in all the right ways, as if he'd performed this dance a million times, almost like muscle memory.
Dean Di Laurentis was your best friend, yes. But you also knew what it was like to be under his sheets—you knew the heat that emanated from his body at the end of the night. All of this? This was just for fun, neither of you felt anything for the other, and you? You only had eyes for John Logan, always the one following his toned, tense form after every practice. Everyone noticed—everyone but him.
"You gotta stop doing this to yourself babe" Dean said, his eyes never leaving yours, his hands never leaving your hips, always an unmovable force—a soft possession.
"Do what?" You answered, voice higher than usual, you knew what he meant, but you weren't going to give the win so easily.
"C'mon, I know you, and I know this little crush you have on my boy Logan right there" his eyes were playful, the kind of playful you see on people that knows they are winning.
"He isn't looking for anything serious, let it go before you hurt yourself" you couldn't help but to feel hurt, he was right, you needed to stop.
The blond man let out a mocking giggle and took a couple of steps back.
"Well I have to go, beautiful women and really good alcohol are waiting for me" his face showing you the perfect grin you knew all too well.
"Don't keep them waiting, manwhore" You said to him before he shut the door.
A couple of seconds passed when you heard the door opening, and there he was.
His brown hair, and his drenched clothes reflected his hard work—his eyes found yours.
"I didn't know you were here" his voice sounded distant in your ears, you could see that Logan opened his mouth to speak again but never muttered a sound.
His eyes danced across your face, stopping in your lips for just a fraction of a second, before looking at your eyes again, he said in a grave whisper—"do you want to stay? Maybe watch a movie?"
"Sure, I'll leave my things in your room" you said with a sly smile.
Right now, you couldn't care less about what Dean Di Laurentis had to say about your love life choices.
summary: it’s casual, dean is a little less than casual when he sees someone elses hands on you.
—
Dean had never been jealous a day in his life.
Possessive? Sure.
Competitive? Absolutely.
But jealous? No.
At least that was what he told himself while staring so hard at the guy sitting beside you on the couch that Logan physically leaned over and took Dean’s beer from his hand before he crushed the can.
“You’re being weird,” Logan muttered.
Dean didn’t look away from you. “I’m not being weird.”
“You’ve looked two seconds away from murder since we walked in.”
Across the hockey house living room, you laughed at something the guy beside you said, head tipping back slightly. His hand rested on your knee like he belonged there.
Dean’s stomach twisted violently.
Garrett followed his line of sight and immediately groaned. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You’re jealous.”
Dean scoffed loudly enough to earn a glance from you across the room. “I’m literally not.”
“You absolutely are,” Garrett laughed. “This is incredible. I’ve never witnessed such a sight.”
Dean ignored them both, taking his beer back before shoving himself off the kitchen counter. He needed another drink. Or maybe twelve.
This was ridiculous.
You were single.
He was single.
That was the whole point.
From the beginning, the two of you had agreed this wasn’t serious. No labels. No exclusivity. No clinginess.
Just sex.
Really good sex.
The kind that had somehow turned into movie nights and late-night drives and you stealing his hoodies and Dean memorising your coffee order without meaning to.
Except now there was some finance major touching your thigh like he’d earned it, and Dean suddenly felt borderline homicidal and violently ill.
“You good, D?” Tucker asked as Dean grabbed vodka this time instead of beer.
“Fantastic.”
Tucker looked toward the couch.
“Oh,” he said carefully. “That bad?”
Dean glared at him. “Shut up.”
The worst part was that you looked good tonight.
Dean knew exactly what your skin felt like under his hands. Knew what you sounded like when he got you alone.
And now some other guy was making you laugh.
You spotted him hovering near the kitchen and smiled automatically.
That smile almost made it worse.
You excused yourself from the couch a few minutes later, weaving through the crowd toward him.
“There you are,” you said easily. “You disappeared.”
Dean leaned back against the counter. “You seemed busy.”
One eyebrow lifted immediately.
Uh oh.
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like an asshole.”
You folded your arms over your chest. “Dean.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been glaring at Evan all night.”
“Evan,” Dean repeated flatly. “Jesus Christ, even his name sucks.”
You stared at him for a second before realisation slowly crossed your face.
“No way…”
Dean took another drink.
“Oh my God,” you laughed quietly. “You’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“You absolutely are.”
“I’m annoyed.”
“Because I’m hooking up with someone else?”
The directness it was harder than he expected.
Dean’s jaw tightened. “I just think you could do better.”
You blinked at him slowly. “Dean. You literally sleep with half the female population of Briar.”
“Not anymore.”
The words slipped out too fast.
Your expression shifted slightly.
Dean immediately regretted opening his mouth.
You stepped closer, voice softer now, your fingers grazing softly over his shirt covered abdomen, “What’s going on with you?”
Dean didn’t know when this had happened.
Didn’t know when you’d become the first person he looked for at parties. Or when his bed started feeling empty without you in it. Or when hearing another guy make you laugh started feeling like someone scraping a knife against his ribs.
He was fucking Dean Di Laurentis.
He didn’t do this. Relationships were messy. Feelings complicated things. Casual was supposed to be easy.
But watching another guy touch you all night had made him feel insane. And maybe worse than insane was hurt.
“You said casual,” he said finally.
Your face softened slightly. “Hey, we both did.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you acting like this?”
Dean laughed once, bitter under his breath. “Because apparently I’m an idiot.”
You went quiet.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw before looking at you directly for the first time all night.
“I didn’t think I’d care.”
There it was.
Ugly and embarrassing and completely unavoidable now.
Your lips parted slightly.
Behind you, the music blasted and people were yelling.
Dean barely noticed any of it.
Because you were just staring at him.
“You care if I hook up with someone else?” you asked carefully.
Dean gave you a look. “That obvious?”
“A little.”
“Fantastic.”
A small smile tugged at your mouth before you shook your head. “You know what the crazy part is?”
“What?”
“I only started talking to Evan because I thought you were losing interest.”
Dean actually frowned. “What?”
“You stopped sleeping with random girls,” you said quietly. “You started acting weirdly domestic with me and then pulling away after. I figured maybe you were getting bored.”
“Bored?” Dean repeated like the word offended him personally.
You shrugged slightly. “You never said anything.”
“Because I was trying not to turn into a psychopath!”
You laughed softly.
Dean stepped closer before he could stop himself.
“You think I liked watching him touch you?”
Your breath caught slightly.
Dean noticed immediately because of course he did. “I almost put him through a wall, baby.”
“You’re dramatic.”
“I’m serious.”
Silence settled between you both, your fingers gripping his shirt a little tighter. The space between you was closing.
He knew he had no right to feel this way when he’d been the one insisting on casual from the start.
But standing here now, looking down at you with your mouth slightly pink from the drink in your hand and your eyes fixed on his, Dean realized something horrifying.
“You wanna know something pathetic?” he asked quietly.
You looked wary already. “Probably not.”
“I have your coffee order saved in my notes app.”
You blinked.
Dean pushed forward before he could lose his nerve.
“You leave hair ties all over my apartment and I don’t throw them out anymore. Tucker asked why there’s strawberry yogurt in our fridge because I don’t eat strawberry yogurt but you do when you’re studying. Garrett says I smile differently when you text me.” He paused. “And apparently seeing another guy touch you makes me physically ill.”
Your lips twitched despite yourself. “Oh my God.”
“Yeah,” Dean muttered. “That’s pretty much how I felt too.”
For a second neither of you moved.
Then quietly, “So what now?”
Dean looked at you for a long moment.
Then his eyes flicked toward the living room where Evan was still sitting on the couch waiting for your return.
“Now,” Dean said calmly, “I’m gonna walk over there and tell him to stop looking at my girl.”
⊹ synopsis | being the little sister to karen page has its downsides. when dex’s bullet finds the wrong girl, so does his obsession. STEAMY. slow burn. dark romance. obsession. dom!dex & page!reader.
⊹ warnings | this is DARK. stockholm syndrome, obsession, stalking, mentions of mental illness, harm, religion, age-gap romance, etc. read at your own discretion.
⊹ next chap | lmk if you’d like to be tagged | ♫
it’s silly how random life is. when you were younger you used to think it was all one big game. like, god or whoever the fuck was looking down at you and changing the colors in the sky was manning some big joystick 24/7.
it made sense then. but now?
the blood spilling from your stomach onto the scuffed, dilapidated floors of your unfurnished hell’s kitchen apartment was as red as the tomato sauce still boiling in the pot you’d been stirring four seconds prior.
glug. glug. glug.
your free time was sacred. and that tomato sauce was supposed to go over frozen gnocchi, devoured on the couch with NCIS on and a seltzer sweating in your hand. you never found it realistic; the way actors bled on screen. too much, too dramatic.
but now, here, with your own trembling hands pressed against your midsection, you realized something.
you had been so terribly wrong.
droplets became spills. and as it always did, the sight of blood made your head swim. the copper smell hit the back of your throat and your knees buckled before you could stabilize yourself on the newly red countertop. your head met the floor with a crack that you felt more than heard.
three versions of your ceiling swam above you. all of them blurry.
and a ways away, in a place you couldn’t see, the man responsible was still squinting through his scope. still trained on the peephole of what was supposed to be karen’s door.
but you were not karen.
oh no no no.
at surface level, similar enough. a pretty blonde thing, wide-eyed. and now, gorgeously complemented by the crimson blooming across that frilly white top of yours. he stayed a beat longer than necessary, watching the spiderweb of red spread against the fabric.
his work. tidy, even when it was wrong.
then his stomach growled.
fries, he thought. and a banana milkshake. definitely a banana milkshake.
he was already turning on his heel when he heard it. faint. muffled by the door between you.
“father forgive them…” a wet, rattling inhale. ”…for they know not what they do.”
ben stopped.
were you… praying? for him?
a long pause settled behind his mask. his head tilted a fraction, the way it did when something didn’t compute. he’d just put a bullet in you. and you were down there, trembling on the other side of that door, bleeding out, spending what might be your last breaths on forgiveness.
he didn’t deserve that. he knew it plainly, the same way he knew he was hungry, the same way he knew the door in front of him was unlocked when it shouldn’t have been. facts. simple ones.
his hand closed around the knob anyway.
the click of the latch was barely a sound. the draft from the hallway kissed your face before you registered the shape crouching over you. masked, still, radiating something you couldn’t name but recognized in your gut as wrong.
“door’s unlocked.” his voice was even, almost conversational. almost amused. “that’s not very smart.”
you blinked up at him. or tried to. the tears were making it difficult.
he reached down with ease and tucked a dirty blonde ringlet away from your clammy face. clinical. unhurried. like he had all the time in the world and you weren’t actively dying beneath him.
Series Summary: Unable to control your abilities, you’re stuck in the present with Billy Butcher, his team, and America’s first asshole. At this point, you’ve become Soldier Boy’s personal punching bag. But when an accident leaves you stranded in 1942, you run into a familiar face and suddenly rely on your future tormentor’s help as your only hope.
Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x supe!Reader
Warnings: 18+ due to language and mature themes, reader is a supe with chronokinesis (time manipulation), a lot of time travel talk, set partially in 1942 and the present (alternate S3 ending), PTSD, Soldier Boy before Soldier Boy (aka no powers yet, plus meet his childhood home and parents), slight Beauty/Beast vibes, enemies to lovers, slow burn, smut, fluff, humor, angst
A/N: Been wanting to write about time travel again since this fun one-shot. Got the idea while writing Bad Reputation years ago but never got to it. Felt challenged again after rewatching the Community episode where Dean Pelton whines, "Time travel is really hard to write about." Welp, challenge accepted 😂🤍
Main Masterlist || Soldier Boy Masterlist || Tag List
Chapter 1: Of All the Gin Joints…
Chapter 2: Is This the 40s?
Chapter 3: I’m Going To Be a Lady If It Kills Me
Chapter 4: After All, Tomorrow Is Another Day
Chapter 5: We'll Always Have Paris
Chapter 6: I Don't Mind a Reasonable Amount of Trouble
Chapter 7: Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
Chapter 8: Frankly, My Dear, I Don't Give a Damn
Chapter 9: As Time Goes By
Chapter 10: Here's Looking at You, Kid
Chapter 11: When You’re Slapped, You’ll Take It and Like It
Chapter 12: You’re Not Just a Man, You’re a Monument!
Chapter 13: It's Alive! It's Alive!
Chapter 14: I'm Going to Have a Lot of Drinks
Chapter 15: I May Be a Thief, but I Am Not a Cheat
Chapter 16: I Don’t Care What the Papers Say!
Chapter 17: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of
Chapter 18: Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
Chapter 19: You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat
Chapter 20: What We’ve Got Here Is Failure to Communicate
Chapter 21: Round Up the Usual Suspects
Chapter 22: There’s No Place Like Home
Chapter 23: The World Is Not a Pleasant Place to Be…
Chapter 24 – …Without Someone to Love
Epilogue: Until It Ends, There Is No End
|| SERIES COMPLETE ||
One-Shots & Drabbles:
A Study in Emerald (1942)
Headcanons, Imagines & Other:
💌 15 Questions about creating TAT
💌 Headcanon: Would Ben sacrifice himself for you in a worst case scenario?
For all of you hungry for Soldier Boy fics, Time After Time is, hands down, one of my favorites from my lovely and ridiculously talented friend, Wayne! 💛🕰️
An expertly woven Back to the Future romance where you won't know which version of Ben to root for more, and the reader character is a true force to be reckoned with. 💫
The '40s setting part of the story is so swoony and full of charm, but not without its angst and complexities for reader and Ben - you'll especially get to explore his daddy issues firsthand. 😬
The journey back to the "present" (and beyond) might rip your heart out - but you'll say "thank you" by the time you get to the end of this masterpiece. Check it out if you haven't yet already! 💛
This made me tear up so much (and then squeal and kick my feet)!! Thank you so much for your wonderful words, Alex! 🥹💜💜💜 I honestly want to frame this whole thing and proudly hang it on my wall. If TAT were a paperback, it'd be one of those reviews on the back 🫶😭
pairing; soldier boy x supe!reader word count; 1.1k 🌿
summary; the suits want to pair you and bombsight together in front of the media as some sort of power couple, but soldier boy's not having it.
tags/warnings; language, slight angst, jealousy/possessive ben, hurt/comfort, mutual pining, love confession(s), supe!reader, the boys season five spoilers ✮.ᐟ
notes; I neeeeed to know the rest of his lore asap i'm so intrigued. daydreaming in the meantime I guess <3
♪ now playing; title from cheri cheri lady by modern talking
ben masterlist ᝰ. main masterlist
You hear him before you see him.
Footsteps thundering down the hall, getting closer and closer until they're right outside your door. Three single knocks thud against the wood, and you make your way over with a sigh.
You open it to see an irritated Soldier Boy standing in front of you, his eyes quickly scanning your form before he walks inside.
"Sure come on in." You mutter sarcastically as you close and re lock your apartment. When you turn around you find him staring at you, jaw clenched like he's holding something back.
You walk closer and cross your arms. "Well, what's up?"
"What's up?"
"Why are you here, Ben?"
"You're gonna prance around with Bombsight. Really?"
You should've known this was coming.
It's been a few months since Vought grouped the only couple of people to survive the V1 trials together into a supe team, boosting the company's image tenfold.
But the numbers have been dwindling the past few weeks, so they decided to pair you and Bombsight together as a couple for the publicity. Figured you two would be the easiest to work with. They were announcing it soon, scheduling you both for a magazine cover shoot tomorrow.
"It's not my idea."
"You're still going along with it." He scoffs.
You groan in frustration. "It doesn't matter, doesn't mean anything to either of us. It's just to get them off our backs. Besides what choice do we really have?"
His jaw clenches and he turns his head to look at the wall for a moment. He's debating something in his mind, a visible frustration forming as the seconds ticked by. He couldn't stand the thought of someone else's hands on you, posing together for pictures, kissing for the cameras.
The minute that passes feels like an eternity, but he finally turns to look at you again. "Fuck that."
"What?"
"No."
"No?"
"After everything we went through together in that shithole it should be me and you out there.” He spits, "Bomb boy was in a different sector with Angel, he doesn't get you too."
You roll your eyes. “You don’t own me Benjamin.”
“It’s not that.”
Your head tilts slightly, growing tired of his definitive tone.“Oh? Cause if I recall correctly you said I was just blinded by our shared trauma, that my feelings weren’t real and it’s all just a response. So it couldn't possibly be anything other than some possessiveness crap, right?”
He looks down for a beat, something akin to shame washing over his expression at the thought of your last argument. He knew he'd hurt your feelings, could see it all over your face then, same as now. It wasn't what he wanted but he didn't see another way to protect you. He came with too much, nothing you deserve to deal with.
After a moment he comes closer, stopping in front of you and setting his warm hands on your waist. Your arms stay crossed against your chest as you look up at him, still defiant.
A sad smile slowly appears on his face at the sight. "Always so stubborn." He murmurs, softly running his thumbs back and forth against you. "I'm no fucking prince charming, sweetheart."
There it was.
As much as he likes to carry himself with a sense of pride and entitlement, deep down his father left scars that would never fade. Always an inkling of doubt, of shame within himself. He couldn't help but wonder if the old man was right, and he cared too much about you to drag you down with him whether he'd admit it or not.
At that you finally soften, bringing your hands up and around to rest softly at the nape of his neck. This beautiful stubborn asshole.
"I don't want prince charming, I want you." You bring a hand up further to caress his hair softly giving him a moment to think, process. It's all you've been doing, really.
Since a few weeks ago when you got drunk and told him that you love him. Then again when you were sober the following day. And he proceeded to try and gaslight you, telling you it's just a trauma bond.
He didn't reject you though.
Didn't say much actually, after that he went through the effort of avoiding you as much as he could. While it did hurt your feelings a little, you mostly thought he was just being immature.
So maybe you figured you could be a little petty back when you accepted Vought's "couple" proposal. Make him see what he's missing.
Because you can feel it in your heart of hearts, that he feels the same for you.
You continue quietly after a minute. "Of course I feel connected by all the shit we went though at Harmony, how could I not? But it's..different. I love you for who you are as a person, not for the experience we shared in that place."
"I really don't see how."
"You put yourself on the line for me, time and time again. Protected me when you could. Comforted me when you couldn't. You didn't have to do any of that. You chose to, cared enough about me to."
He doesn't seem to have a response to that, closing his eyes in defeat. It's not really a battle lost for him though.
Not when he opens them back up to see your sweet smile, the hand in his hair moving to cup his jaw softly. "It's okay if you don't feel the same way. Can't force your feelings, or lack of. I'd just prefer to know for sure."
Something tightens in his chest, and his movements are sudden but careful as he brings you into a passionate kiss. Your arms wrap around his neck once more as you melt into it instantly.
He's pouring everything into it—all the emotions he's been keeping in regarding you, his apology, the desire he tries so hard to keep in check. You feel it all, reciprocating with just as much enthusiasm.
When you pull away for air, he continues his descent of kisses to your cheek and down your neck, all while you pant into his ear. "Ben." You whine softly, and he finally pulls back enough to look at you, still close enough to feel his breath on your face.
He looks down at your swollen lips, then back at your eyes. "Course I feel the same, doll. How could I not." He murmurs, a soft echo of your own words.
"Then give this a try. All the horrors we went through in that concrete hell and feelings are what's gonna scare you?" You tease just as soft, his lips curling into a real smile.
"You're a smartass, y'know that?"
"And...?"
He holds you closer, pecking your cheek with a gentle kiss before finally saying it. "And, I love you too."
You beam in response, and he can't help but roll his eyes playfully before you bring him in for another sweet kiss.
ben masterlist ᝰ. main masterlist
end notes; I came to the realization that I often write Ben soft to where he's a bit ooc, and it will in fact happen again. I like it here in lalaland where he's down bad for his sweetheart lol what can I say 😭
.✦ ݁˖ warnings: stalker!dex, suicidal!reader is kinda into it, delusional reader (me too girl) not proofread.
.✦ ݁˖ THIS IS A CROSSOVER FIC | DAREDEVIL X THE PITT
.✦ ݁˖ GO TO PART ONE, PART TWO, PART THREE
The shift was finally over, you couldn't wait to reach your apartment, have the warm water touch your tense shoulders and your greasy, disheveled hair.
You longed for your bed, and to finally close your eyes, awaiting the darkness that was ready to kiss you goodnight.
You could finally see your apartments door, while reaching for your keys, your feet took you to the end of the hallway. Once you're inside you get out of your scrubs mid living room, the journey to your bathroom feeling like an unending travel. Letting your pants fall to your feet, you crossed your arms, grabbing the bottom edge of the black top and pulled it up, passing the fabric over your head in one fluid motion. You become self aware all of a sudden, you swear you could feel someone was watching you. But that was nearly impossible right?—They would have to use binoculars for that, and no one is that crazy.
Wrong.
Dex saw everything. And he could swear you did it just for him, just because he's watching. This is your spectacle, and he's the crowd.
After that relaxing shower, your paranoia finally stopped, and you went quietly to bed. Your apartment ever the lonely place, it didn't looked lived in—because you were barely there. And you hated that, you wanted to be here, you wanted someone to talk to, someone who could know things about you you didn't even figured out yet.
The tiredness came to you all of a sudden, and just like that, you were now fully asleep, not acknowledging a certain man watching from afar—waiting for that exact moment.
The sun set high in the sky. Now greeting you completely. You started to open your eyes, and now that you were awake you needed to do something, if you couldn't rest atleast you were going to make something out of it, so you decided to go running.
You planted your feet on the cold wooden floor, creakin' each time you took a step on it, announcing your rising to the whole floor. You put some blue leggings on and a matching top, you raised your arms to tie your hair in a high ponytail. Finally, you bend down to tie your shoelaces and went directly to your apartments elevator.
There, the feeling that came to you reached you all over again, a pair of eyes, never leaving your frame, you looked over your shoulder in a desperate manner, but you did not find anything—anyone.
The metal doors opened, so you stepped in.
"Wait–" a man said, voice desperate. Hand stretched so the doors wouldn't close, leaving him behind.
"Sorry, I can't get late to work" he said, his lips forming a smile. The man was handsome, he had blond hair, a couple of healed scars and some faint bruises. You could read the yellow letters in his windbreaker 'FBI'.
"It's okay" you answered. Have you ever seen him before? You weren't sure, but he looked eerily familiar.
"I'm Dex" he said, stretching his hand, hoping you would reach for it. Hoping to finally feel your skin caressing his blood-tainted hands.
"Dex?" You felt the world tilt to the side, taking his hand—you remembered a Dex, and it reminded you of a time in your life you've been wanting to forget—or ignore.
"Are you going for a run, Doc?" The man broke the silence, pulling you out of the spiral you were sinking in, you noticed his hand was still in yours, like he didn't want to let you go. You looked directly in his eyes.
"How do you know i'm a doctor?" You asked, suspicious laced your voice.
"I've seen you. I've seen you coming home late, and... well I've seen you in the papers." His voice sounded tender in your ears, you could see his lips forming a smile you know knew he gave for even the smallest thing.
"Oh, right" you said, of course he saw you there. That case was a mediatic chaos, you and Jack worked on it, and the fact that you both succeded was indeed a miracle.
It came to you suddenly that this man, standing in front of you, was interested in what you had to say, in what you were going to do, you existed in someones life, even if he barely saw you, you were a part of it, a constant in someone elses life—in his life.
And that excited you, because he noticed. He noticed things from you that nobody else bothered seeing—like the time you came home from a long shift at the hospital. You started wondering what life can be with him in your life, what does this FBI agent have to offer?
The elevator came to a halt, announcing it's stop. The metal doors opened, you moved your head slightly, just enough to see him, and you gave him a smile. He returned it, he took a step and he turned to look at you–"I didn't got your name." He stated.
You told him your name, allowing yourself to imagine the picture of his frame in your apartment, or the faint scent of his perfume in your sheets after a long night.
He repeated your name, savouring the taste of it on his lips, he found that he knew the feeling all too well—"A pretty name for a pretty woman".
And just like that he left.
He didn't noticed he left an equally obsessed doctor behind–and that was probably the only thing he didn't knew about you.
