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23 | 🇷🇸🇦🇺 | nba, music, & everything in between

[starrrlite]

Hey, instead of posting "there's too much of x" or "there's not enough y" in the x reader genre, why don't you take this opportunity to boost writer engagement instead? Compliment their work then ask if they're taking requests. (Please be respectful if they don't). You can't really expect your tastes to be met if you don't politely engage with others. If you're not gonna write what you want to see, you might find someone here who will. I'm sure there are some writers who would appreciate more interaction on their pages. I'm not saying that they are obligated to cater to others, but the thought that someone liked their work enough to make a request can be encouraging. (This is also just my perspective as a reader AND writer).

[kooksandpearls]

garrett graham ❄︎ wanted you.

pairing – garrett graham x nursing student!reader summary – after a head injury at clinical, garrett graham gets to be the one doing the looking after for once. warnings – head injury, concussion, facial bruising, blood, medical care, patient aggression, emotional distress, caretaking, strong language notes from me – we're getting somewhere my loves!!!! based on this ask, hope u enjoy! <3 word count – 11.9k

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The car smells like hospital hand sanitiser and Maria’s vanilla air freshener and the coppery, unpleasant trace of blood she’s pretty sure is still stuck somewhere under her nose.

She sits very carefully in the passenger seat with her bag clutched in her lap and the discharge papers folded into the front pocket because Maria had put them there for safekeeping after watching her try to read the same paragraph three times and then ask, quietly and with genuine confusion, whether nausea was spelled with an o. The answer is no. Apparently. She knows that. Usually.

Her head throbs with every tiny vibration of the road, a dull, spreading pressure behind her eyes and across the bridge of her nose, pulsing in time with her heartbeat like her skull has decided to develop a second career as a bass drum. The split in her lip keeps reopening every time she moves her mouth too much, which is rude, considering she would very much like to continue pretending this is all fine and fine people generally require functional lips for lying.

There’s dried blood under her nose. She can feel it there, tight and flaky against her skin, the way she can feel the swelling beginning to gather beneath both eyes, heavy and hot and humiliating. 

Her scrub top is folded in a plastic bag somewhere near her feet because the front of it’s torn and streaked with blood from the first few awful seconds before anyone could get to her, before security and Maria and Steph from triage had managed to pull her backwards by the waist while the patient screamed so loudly the whole department seemed to go airless around it.

It wasn’t his fault, not really. He was frightened and out of it and nobody expected him to come up that fast, one second curled tight on the bed with his voice climbing, the next swinging blind and hard enough that his elbow caught her straight across the face. 

She remembers the crack of pain before she remembers making a sound. Then her own cry seemed to set him off worse, his hand catching a fistful of her scrub top before she could step back, the brutal pull forward, the bed rail coming up too fast.

Her nose had hit first. Or her mouth. Or her forehead. It’s all a little rearranged now, bright flashes and metal and Maria shouting her name and someone saying, “Security, now,” with enough force to make the whole bay move.

She knows it wasn’t anyone’s fault. She knows psych presentations can turn quickly, knows agitation isn’t always a straight line with warning signs and a polite little interval where everyone gets to reposition themselves safely. 

She knows all the rational things. She also knows her face hurts badly enough that thinking in full sentences feels like pushing through wet cement, and she is, medically speaking, having a really fucking shit time.

Beside her, Maria drives like a woman who’s spent twenty years transporting compromised student nurses and actual glassware with equal care. One hand on the wheel, eyes on the road, her voice soft enough not to scrape against the inside of her skull when she says, “How’s the head, honey?”

She exhales through her nose and immediately regrets it because her nose doesn’t wish to be involved in breathing at this time. “Super normal. Love having one.”

Maria makes a small sound that could be a laugh if it wasn’t wrapped so tightly in concern. “Nausea?”

“Not worse.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She lets her head rest back against the seat and keeps her eyes on the blurred glow of streetlights sliding across the windscreen. The movement makes her stomach roll faintly, but not enough to tell Maria about, because Maria has already done enough. 

Maria had stood in the consult room while Dr. Patel checked her pupils and her nose and the swelling around her cheekbones, one warm hand resting between her shoulder blades every time she tried to make a joke and ended up going quiet instead. 

Maria had found her spare hoodie from the locker room and helped her into it when lifting her left arm made pain streak down through her shoulder. Maria had said, very gently, you’re not catching the bus after getting your bell rung in my department, like that settled the matter.

“A little,” she admits. “But I’m not going to vomit in your car.”

“Kind of you.”

“I’m very thoughtful.”

“You’re concussed.”

She sighs softly. “Also that.”

Maria’s eyes flick over her in the dim light, quick and practised. “You remember what Dr. Patel said?”

She does. Mostly. The words have been looping vaguely around the edges of her head since he handed her the paperwork. Mild concussion. No fracture. Neuro obs stable. X-ray clear. Rest. No driving. No placement until reviewed. Come back if vomiting, worsening headache, confusion, unusual drowsiness, changes in vision, weakness, seizure, or if anything feels wrong enough that you’re trying to talk yourself out of seeking help.

No being alone tonight.

That last one had landed harder than the rest, somehow. Maybe because the ED had been too bright and too busy and she had been sitting there with a wad of gauze under her nose, feeling like a leaking appliance. Maybe because the doctor had said it in that professional, non-negotiable way that made arguing feel childish. Maybe because the idea of someone watching her because her brain had been knocked around made her feel suddenly, horribly small.

“Wake me every few hours,” she says. “Check I’m not getting weirder.”

Maria’s mouth tips. “You said weirder.”

“That’s the clinical term.”

“It’s not.”

“It should be. Easier to spell than altered level of consciousness.”

Maria actually laughs that time, but it fades quickly. “You can’t be home alone.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not going to pretend you’re fine and sit in your dorm by yourself because you feel embarrassed?”

Her eyes drift shut for half a second, then open again when the darkness makes her head swim. “I’m not embarrassed.”

Maria’s silent.

She sinks a little lower in the seat. “Okay. Maybe a normal amount.”

“There is no normal amount of embarrassed after being assaulted by a patient at work.”

“It wasn’t assault.”

Maria sighs. “Honey.”

“He didn’t know what he was doing,” she argues.

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t get hurt.”

Her mouth twitches before she remembers her lip is split. Pain snaps bright and sharp through the swollen skin. “Ow. Fuck.”

Maria’s hand lifts slightly off the wheel like she wants to reach over, then thinks better of it. “Don’t smile.”

“That’s bleak advice.”

“Currently medical advice.”

She presses her tongue carefully to the inside of her lip and tastes blood again. The whole evening keeps arriving in pieces. The patient’s arm. The bed rail. Maria’s face above hers, too close and too worried. Someone cutting away the torn edge of her scrub top. 

Her own hands shaking in her lap while she tried to tell everyone, very reasonably, that she could finish the shift if they just gave her a second. As if she hadn’t been bleeding on her own shoes.

The thought makes heat rise under the bruising in her face, which is unfair because her face has already suffered enough. “God,” she mutters. “Everyone saw.”

Maria sighs, not impatient, but close to something sad. “Yes, everyone saw that you got hurt.”

“I’m the student.”

“Yes,” Maria nods.

“I’m supposed to be useful.”

“You were useful all day.”

“I ended the shift with a concussion and a bloody nose.”

“You ended the shift injured because an unpredictable situation escalated. That’s not a performance review.”

She knows that. She does. She would say that to anyone else. She would put her hand on another student’s shoulder and mean it completely. She would tell them they were in the wrong place at the wrong second and that sometimes you can do everything right and still get hurt because hospitals are not made of lesson plans and perfect outcomes.

Unfortunately, she’s not another student. She’s herself. And herself currently has blood in her hoodie sleeve because she keeps forgetting not to touch her face.

They hit a bump in the road, not even a large one, but it sends pain blooming through her skull with such immediate nastiness that she sucks in a breath through her teeth and grips the strap of her bag.

Maria notices. “Almost there.”

She opens her mouth to ask where there is, and then remembers campus, her dorm, her room, the bed with the old sweatshirt shoved under the pillow, the roommate who is not there. Her stomach drops so abruptly it makes the nausea worse. “Shit.”

Maria glances over. “What?”

“My roommate’s not home.”

“Tonight?”

“She’s at her sister’s. Like, hours away.” She closes her eyes, then opens them again because the inside of her head does not enjoy visual privacy right now. “Fuck. I forgot.”

“Okay.” Maria’s voice stays calm. That is possibly the worst part. “Do you have someone else? A friend you could stay with?”

She thinks of Lucy first, because that’s the correct answer. Lucy would absolutely let her stay. Lucy would probably panic and then overcorrect into a level of cheerfulness that could qualify as a secondary head injury. Monique would be better, quieter, but Monique has an exam tomorrow and lives across campus in a building where the lift is always broken, which feels like a personal attack under current conditions.

Then her brain, unhelpfully and immediately, supplies Garrett.

Garrett’s room with the lamp on. Garrett’s hand at the back of her neck. Garrett’s voice low in her ear telling her to stop studying and sleep. Garrett sitting on the edge of her bed taking off her shoes after a bad shift. 

Garrett looking at her like competence is something he can be proud of even when she feels like she’s wearing it badly. Garrett, who has been hit in the head enough times that concussion protocol is probably written somewhere in his bones.

Garrett, who’s not technically her boyfriend, except the technicalities feel very stupid when her head is throbbing and her lip is bleeding and she wants him so badly it makes her chest ache worse than her shoulder.

“Yeah,” she says, and her voice comes out softer than she means it to. “Uh. Yeah. I have someone.”

Maria doesn’t look smug. That’s probably part of why she is a good preceptor. “Address?”

She gives her the hockey house. The words feel bigger in the car than they should. Maybe because saying his address out loud to Maria feels like she’s accidentally handed over evidence. Maybe because the last time Maria saw Garrett, he’d been standing in the ED hallway with panic sitting badly under his skin while Logan asked what day it was for the third time. 

Maybe because Maria now knows exactly where to take the concussed student nurse with the split lip and the ruined scrubs, and that place is apparently Garrett Graham’s house.

Maria only nods and changes lanes.

The hockey house is lit up when they pull onto the street, every downstairs window glowing warm and yellow into the cold, the porch light flickering faintly over the steps. There are cars out front, some vaguely familiar. The sight of it loosens something in her chest. At least someone’s home. At least there’s a couch, and people who know what pupils are supposed to do, and Garrett somewhere inside if the universe has decided to be kind after all the other things it did tonight.

Maria puts the car in park and turns toward her. “Wait. I’ll help you.”

“I can walk.”

“I didn’t ask,” Maria responds.

She huffs, which hurts less than smiling. Maria gets out first and comes around, opening the passenger door before she can argue again. The cold hits her face and instantly makes her nose ache in a new and innovative way. 

She climbs out slowly, one hand braced on the car door, shoulder protesting when she reaches for the strap of her bag. Maria takes it from her without comment.

“Rude,” she murmurs.

“Concussed.”

“Everyone keeps saying that like it explains everything.”

“It explains a lot.”

The walk up the path feels longer than it should. The porch steps require more concentration than she likes, which annoys her because she’s watched drunk freshmen navigate these steps while carrying open cups and zero dignity. Her sneakers scrape lightly over the boards. 

Somewhere inside, someone yells something that might be, “You’re cheating,” followed by Dean’s voice saying, “It’s not cheating if the game lets me do it,” which feels like an argument that has existed in this house for generations.

She knocks once because lifting her hand twice seems excessive. There’s a crash inside. A hockey house crash. Male voices overlap, loud and irritated and completely unaware of the fact that sound is currently a weapon. She winces before she can stop herself, one hand coming up toward her temple and hovering there uselessly.

Maria’s mouth tightens. “You okay?”

“Yep.”

The door opens on Logan in sweats and a faded Briar shirt, hair a mess, controller in one hand, expression halfway to annoyed until he sees her. Everything drops out of his face.

He says her name once, startled and low, and then, “What the fuck happened?”

The room behind him seems to quiet in stages. Maybe because of his voice. Maybe because she’s standing on the porch looking like an ED discharge summary with legs. 

She becomes suddenly, viciously aware of herself: the bruising already shadowing beneath her eyes, the swollen bridge of her nose, the blood dried under it despite Maria helping her clean up, the split lip, the hoodie zipped crooked because raising her shoulder hurts. She hadn’t thought much about how she looked in the car because looking required mirrors and mirrors required courage she didn’t currently possess.

Then Garrett appears behind Logan, and the whole night rearranges itself around the look on his face. He must have been in the living room. His hair’s damp at the edges like he showered not long ago, curls loose over his forehead, sweatpants low on his hips, a dark t-shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. 

He steps into the doorway with his mouth already forming some question, probably a chirp, probably something warm and annoying about why she’s showing up with supervision. He sees her, and all the colour leaves his face, as if something has reached into him and taken it by the roots.

His eyes move over her once, too fast and not fast enough. Nose. Mouth. Bruises. Hoodie. The stiff way she’s holding her shoulder. Maria beside her with the bag and the paperwork. Back to her face, where his attention catches and stays.

She tries to smile. It’s a mistake immediately. Pain sparks through her lip, and she winces instead, which feels like the saddest possible version of flirting. “Hi,” she says.

Garrett doesn’t answer.

Logan steps back at once. “Jesus. Come in. Fuck. Come in.”

Warmth and sound and the smell of boys and pizza and laundry detergent roll over her as she steps into the house. The living room lights make her eyes sting. Dean and Tucker are on the couch, controllers in hand, the TV paused mid-game like they’ve both forgotten the concept of winning. Dean’s mouth opens. Tucker’s face changes quietly, which somehow feels worse.

“Holy fuck,” Dean half-yells.

The words hit too loud. She flinches before she can make herself not do it.

Tucker moves instantly. “Dean, get the lights, man.”

“What? Oh. Shit, yeah.” Dean scrambles for the lamp with the guilty urgency of a man who’s suddenly remembered inside voices exist. The room drops into a dimmer yellow, the overhead going off, the TV brightness turned down under Tucker’s quick hand. It changes the whole house at once, softens the edges, takes the blade out of the light.

Maria watches all of it with a look that would be approving if she weren’t still too professional to be obvious about it. 

“She’s had a head injury,” she says, voice calm, eyes moving to Garrett because everyone’s eyes move to Garrett, because this is his house and not-his-girlfriend has arrived at his door concussed and bleeding. “Mild concussion. X-ray was clear, no nasal fracture, but she needs monitoring overnight. No alcohol, no driving, no being alone. Keep the lights low, noise down. She can sleep, but someone needs to check on her as per the discharge instructions. If she starts vomiting, gets more confused, can’t be woken, worsening headache, vision changes, weakness, anything that feels off, take her back in.”

Garrett nods slowly. He’s still staring at her.

Logan, maybe because Garrett looks like he’s briefly lost access to language, reaches out and takes the paperwork from Maria. “Yeah. We’ve got it.”

Maria turns back to her, and her face softens in that way that makes the back of her throat go tight. “I’ll see you in a couple days, honey. Not tomorrow. Rest tomorrow.”

She nods carefully. Even that tiny motion makes pressure throb through her skull. “Thanks for driving me.”

“Text me when you wake up.” Maria’s eyes flick toward Garrett again. “And listen to them for once.”

That almost makes her smile. She resists, heroically. “No promises.”

Maria gives her shoulder the gentlest squeeze, nowhere near the painful side, then lets herself out. Logan closes the door softly behind her, like the whole house has been put on medical quiet time. 

For half a second, nobody moves. Then Dean says, much quieter this time, “Who the fuck did that?”

She lets out a breath that doesn’t quite make it to a laugh. “Hi to you too.”

Dean’s on his feet now, controller abandoned on the couch, all his usual lazy beauty sharpened into something pissed and bright. “I’m serious.”

“I know.” Her head’s beginning to pound harder now that she’s standing still. The adrenaline from getting out of the car, climbing the steps, seeing Garrett’s face, all of it drains down through her body and leaves her feeling oddly hollow. 

Garrett notices, his hand comes to her elbow, barely touching at first like he’s afraid pressure might break something. The warmth of him lands through the hoodie and her body, traitorous and exhausted, turns toward it before her pride has any say.

She steps into him. She leans forward and presses her forehead against his chest because the angle is the only one that doesn’t put pressure on her nose, one hand curling weakly in the soft fabric of his shirt. 

Garrett tenses under her for a fraction of a second, like seeing her had knocked him out of himself and her touching him is what pulls him back in wrong. Then his arms come around her.

Careful. So careful it almost makes her cry. One hand settles at the back of her head without pressing, fingers spread wide over her hair, the other around her waist, holding her there with a gentleness that feels nothing like the boy who body checks men into boards for sport and everything like the one who once took her UGGs off because outside shoes didn’t belong in bed.

She closes her eyes, just for a second. Garrett’s voice, when it finally comes, is rough enough that she feels it against her cheek. “Baby.”

“I’m okay,” she says into his shirt, because she’s decided to start lying as a hobby.

His hand flexes once at her waist. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m not actively dying.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

She manages a weak shrug. “Clinically significant distinction.”

Logan exhales behind them, shaky in a way he probably wishes nobody noticed. Tucker moves around them quietly, collecting controllers, turning the game off properly, lowering the TV volume until the room becomes mostly the hum of the refrigerator and distant campus noise through the windows. Dean’s still standing there looking like he needs something to hit and has, unfortunately for everyone, found only furniture.

Garrett pulls back enough to look at her, but not far enough that she loses him. His eyes scan her face again, slower now. It’s almost worse than the pain. The way his gaze catches on the swollen bridge of her nose, the blood at one nostril, the split in her lower lip. He looks wrecked by it. Offended, almost, like her body has done something behind his back.

“Come sit down,” he says.

She wants to make a joke about his captain voice. She really does. It’s right there, familiar and easy. Unfortunately, her brain loses the sentence halfway through assembling it, and by the time she finds a piece of it, Garrett’s already guiding her to the couch.

Dean moves a cushion out of the way. Tucker places another behind her back. Logan stands nearby with the paperwork in one hand, reading it with a frown so intense it looks like he’s preparing for finals in head trauma. 

They all shift around her with this strange, quiet purpose that makes her chest feel too full and her face feel too sore to hold whatever expression she wants. Garrett crouches in front of her and reaches for her sneakers.

She blinks down at him. “What are you doing?”

His mouth barely moves. “Taking your shoes off.”

“I can take my shoes off.”

He looks up at her, and there is something in his face so taut and helpless that the argument falls apart in her lap. “Can you let me?”

Oh. That’s not fair. That’s wildly not fair.

She swallows and looks away first. “Yeah.”

Garrett unties her sneakers one at a time, slow with the laces, careful of the way moving her leg pulls faintly at her shoulder. He sets them neatly beside the coffee table. When her feet are free, she curls her legs up onto the couch without thinking, tucking herself sideways into the cushions because upright feels like an idea designed by people whose skulls are not currently full of angry bees.

Garrett’s hand hovers near her knee, then settles there. “Did you want water?”

She nods, then instantly regrets the movement. Pain washes across her forehead, hot and thick. Her eyes squeeze shut. “Ow. Fuck. Yes, please.”

Garrett rises. Her hand moves before she decides to move it, fingers catching the loose fabric of his sweatpants at the thigh, barely enough to stop him if he wanted to go. But he does stop. Immediately. She opens her eyes. Garrett’s looking down at her hand on him. Then he looks at Logan.

Logan’s already moving. “I’ve got it.”

Garrett sits beside her instead. He does it carefully, couch dipping with his weight, his thigh warm along the outside of her curled legs. He doesn’t crowd her face. Doesn’t pull her in too fast. Simply sits close enough that she can feel him there, his hand returning to her knee, thumb still because even his restless touching has gone cautious.

Dean hasn’t let the original point go. He sits on the edge of the coffee table across from her, elbows on his knees, all dramatic cheekbones and very real anger. “No, seriously. Who the fuck did this?”

She opens her mouth. The first answer is too long and falls apart before she can get to it. Her head gives one hard pulse. She shuts her eyes briefly, tries again. “A patient.”

Dean stares at her. “A patient did this to your face?”

“He was really agitated,” she explains as Logan comes back with water. He hands it to Garrett, not her, which would be annoying if her hands didn’t feel vaguely unreliable. “It escalated. He didn’t mean it.”

Dean’s expression says that this isn’t helping his blood pressure. “He didn’t mean it.”

“No.” She lets Garrett pass her the glass, taking it with both hands because one feels optimistic. The cold of it is nice against her palms. Her lip stings when she drinks, water catching briefly at the split, but her throat is dry enough that she keeps going anyway. “He was out of it. Psych presentation. It wasn’t– nobody did anything wrong.”

Tucker returns from the kitchen with an ice pack wrapped in a tea towel and offers it out with both hands like a peace treaty. “For your face. Or your shoulder. Or… wherever. I don’t know. I’m not the medical one.”

She takes it and immediately loves him a little for the towel. “Thanks, Tuck.”

Logan, reading from the discharge sheet now, says, “It says shoulder strain?”

“Logan.”

“What? It does.”

“Stop reading my lore out loud,” she huffs.

Dean gives her a look. “Your lore says shoulder strain and concussion.”

She lets her eyes close for a moment. “My lore is private.”

“Your lore showed up bleeding on our porch.”

She would like to laugh. She really would. Instead, the corner of her mouth twitches, pain bites through her lip, and her eyes water instantly. “Ow. God. That’s so annoying.”

Garrett’s hand comes up, stops short of her face. His fingers curl in midair before he lets them drop. “Your lip’s split and you’ve still got dried blood under your nose, baby.”

The baby does something terrible to her. It always does, but right now it’s worse because his voice is stripped down to the bone. He’s looking at her like he’s trying to keep himself from shaking by cataloguing every visible injury.

She shrugs with one shoulder and immediately regrets that too. Pain tugs from the side of her neck down into the joint, sharp enough that her breath catches.

Garrett sees it. His jaw flexes. “Don’t shrug.”

“I forgot.”

“How do you forget your shoulder hurts?”

“Concussion,” she says, because if everyone else gets to use it as an explanation, so does she. “It looks worse than it is. Promise. I’m just drained. And foggy. I keep losing my train of thought, which is the rudest symptom. Like, I was mid-sentence with Dr. Patel and just fully misplaced the rest of it.”

Tucker’s mouth softens. “That sounds scary.”

She looks down at the glass in her hands. The condensation has started to wet her fingers. “Mostly annoying.”

She lifts the ice pack toward her face, but her shoulder protests halfway up and makes the movement jerky. Garrett catches the pack before she can pretend she meant to do that.

Her eyes flick to him. “I can hold an ice pack.”

“I know.” His voice is quieter now. He shifts closer, one knee turning toward her on the couch, the wrapped ice pack careful in his hand. “But how many times have you looked after me, huh?”

She has no good answer for that. Too many. Not enough. In locker room hallways, in his bed, on this exact couch with bruises over his ribs while he tried to convince her hockey was a sufficient medical explanation for all bodily damage. She’s pressed ice to his cheek and taped his fingers and made him take painkillers and once threatened to call Maria for backup if he said manageable one more time.

Garrett’s mouth moves faintly, not a smile, but close enough to hurt. “Let me.”

She lets him. Garrett lifts the ice pack to her face with a care that makes her throat tighten, angling it over the bridge of her nose and the swelling beginning to spread under one eye without pressing too hard. 

The cold hurts first, a bright, mean sting over bruised skin, then settles into something almost relieving. Her breath comes out shaky despite her best efforts.

“Too much?” he asks.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” She shifts her gaze past him because his face is currently unmanageable. Dean and Tucker and Logan are all watching her with varying degrees of poorly concealed worry. Dean looks like he’s biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. Logan still has the discharge paper. Tucker has both hands shoved into the pocket of his hoodie like he doesn’t trust them not to hover. “What?”

Dean blinks. “What?”

“You guys look like this every week and I don’t stare at you.”

Logan snorts, but it comes out thin. “That’s because we’re hot when we’re bruised.”

She manages an eye roll, which is a win. “You’re concussed half the time and deeply irritating the other half.”

“Range,” Dean says automatically.

She points weakly toward the TV with the hand not holding her water. “Relax. Go back to your video games.”

Tucker’s brows pull together. “No, but– but it’s different.”

Her eyes move to him.

He looks briefly embarrassed, then pushes through it anyway. “It’s you.”

Her chest does that awful thing again, too soft and too sore at the same time. She looks down because taking that directly from Tucker feels unfairly intimate, like he’s handed her something warm without warning.

“I’m okay,” she says, and it’s not entirely true, but she tries to make it sound close enough. “Really. I was observed. I had neuro obs. I had scans. No fracture. Nothing’s broken. Just bruised and concussed and mildly tragic.”

“Mildly?” Dean asks.

“Moderately if you keep fucking yelling.”

His face changes instantly. “Sorry.”

The apology is so immediate that she almost smiles again and has to stop herself like a responsible person. “It’s okay.”

Garrett’s hand holding the ice pack is steady. His eyes have barely left her face, and the longer she sits there under that attention, the more she realises he still hasn’t really said anything. Not like Garrett. Not a joke, not an actual question, not one of the bossy little comments that usually lands him in trouble and somehow still gets her to drink water.

His silence has weight. It sits beside her on the couch, pressed into the careful line of his shoulders.

She turns her head just enough to look at him. “You’re being weird.”

His eyes flick to hers. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

His mouth presses together. For a second, he looks younger than he usually does. Less Briar captain, less untouchable campus landmark, more boy on a couch holding an ice pack to a girl’s swollen face with fear making a mess under his skin.

He swallows. “Do you want me to loosen your hair?”

The question is so small and practical that it nearly undoes her. Her hair is still claw-clipped from placement, half-fallen now, strands tugging at her scalp from where it got pulled in the scuffle and then shoved messily back while she was being assessed. She had forgotten about it until he said it, and now she can feel every tight little pull at the roots, all of it feeding into the headache sitting behind her eyes.

“Yes, please,” she says.

Garrett lowers the ice pack and hands it to Tucker without looking. Tucker takes it like an assistant in surgery. Garrett turns slightly toward her, one hand moving behind her head, not touching at first. “Tell me if it hurts.”

“It all hurts.”

His face does something awful.

She softens her voice. “I’ll tell you if it hurts more.”

“Okay.” His fingers find the clip carefully. He’s taken her hair down before, usually with far less medical purpose and far more smugness, but now every motion is slow, almost reverent. The clip gives, and the weight of her hair loosens down her back. The relief is immediate enough that her eyes flutter shut without permission.

Garrett catches that too. “Better?”

“Mhm.”

He combs the fallen strands away from the side of her face with his fingers, avoiding the swelling, avoiding the blood, avoiding every place that might make her flinch. His thumb brushes once near her temple, feather-light. 

She opens her eyes and finds him looking at her. “I’m okay,” she says again, quieter this time. “Really.”

Garrett doesn’t argue. That might be worse. He only nods once and takes the ice pack back from Tucker, pressing it carefully to her face again.

For a while, the room adjusts around her. Dean sits back down, but he doesn’t pick up the controller. Tucker goes to the kitchen and returns with a straw for her water like a man who’s discovered a side quest and intends to complete it properly. Logan reads the discharge instructions twice, then starts setting alarms on his phone without announcing it, because subtlety, in this house, is sometimes just everyone pretending they cannot see love doing administrative tasks in sweatpants.

She drinks water through the straw because lifting the glass is annoying and because nobody makes a thing of it. Garrett keeps the ice pack steady. Every so often, he asks a question in a voice too even to be casual. Headache worse? Nausea? Vision okay? She answers as best she can. Same. Little bit. Yeah, mostly. 

When Dean shifts too fast and the couch creaks, he freezes like he’s committed assault by upholstery. That makes her huff something dangerously close to a laugh, and Garrett immediately murmurs, “Careful,” like her face is now a team responsibility.

The fogginess comes in waves. Sometimes she’s fully in the room, tracking Dean’s quiet rage and Tucker’s gentle fussing and Logan’s forced calm. Sometimes the edges blur a little, slow, like her thoughts are moving through syrup. Garrett’s thigh is warm against her curled legs. His arm rests along the back of the couch behind her, a soft barrier between her and the world. 

She leans into him by degrees until her shoulder touches his chest and her head tips carefully toward the place beneath his jaw that smells like soap and boy and safety.

She doesn’t mean to get sleepy. She has discharge instructions that say she can sleep, she knows that, but the idea of giving in with everyone watching feels embarrassing in a new, stupid direction. Still, her eyelids grow heavy. The headache spreads and dulls under the cold. The room is dim. The boys are quiet. Garrett is warm.

At some point, Dean says softly, “You want me to call Lucy or someone?”

She tries to answer. The name gets halfway through her head and then wanders off. “Tomorrow,” she murmurs.

“Okay,” Dean says, and for once there’s no joke attached.

Garrett shifts beside her. “Baby?”

She makes a small sound that could mean what or I’m alive or don’t make me move, depending on how generous he feels.

“You getting sleepy?”

“No.”

There’s a pause.

Logan says, very quietly, “That was the least convincing thing I’ve ever heard.”

She opens one eye to glare at him, but the room tilts slightly with the effort, so she closes it again. “Your face is least convincing.”

“Strong comeback.”

“Thank you.”

Garrett’s lips brush her hair. It’s quick, maybe accidental, except nothing Garrett does with her feels accidental anymore, no matter how hard both of them have tried to label it otherwise. “I’m gonna take you upstairs, okay?”

Her eyes open properly at that, or as properly as they can. “I can walk.”

“I know.”

“You keep saying that and then doing the thing for me anyway.”

His mouth curves faintly for the first time all night. It’s tiny and tired and painfully Garrett. “Yeah.”

She should argue. She’s built a respectable portion of this entire situationship on arguing with Garrett Graham while letting him do exactly what she wants him to do. But her shoulder aches, her face throbs, and her legs feel like they belong to somebody who’s spent the day being chased by weather. 

More than that, she wants him. She wants his hands steady under her thighs, his chest close, his room dark and warm around them. She wants to stop being the student who got hurt and start being the girl Garrett carries upstairs because the floor feels too far away.

“Okay,” she whispers.

Dean looks at the TV like he’s never been interested in anything more. Tucker suddenly finds the water glass fascinating. Logan folds the discharge papers with great concentration. Nobody says a word.

Garrett slides one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees with the same careful strength he uses for everything he takes seriously. “Shoulder?”

“Fine.”

His eyes flick to hers.

“Not worse,” she corrects.

He nods once and lifts her.

It does hurt, a little. Her shoulder pulls, her head pulses, and the movement makes nausea roll faintly through her stomach. But Garrett holds her so close and so steadily that the discomfort never gets sharp enough to scare her. Her hand curls in the front of his shirt, her face turning carefully toward his neck because pressing into his chest would bump her nose and she’s learned at least one thing tonight.

Dean’s voice follows them, low and rough from the couch. “G.”

Garrett stops at the foot of the stairs but doesn’t turn fully, like turning her too much might hurt.

Dean’s eyes move over her once, then to Garrett. Whatever he’d been about to say gets swallowed down and changed into something smaller. “We’re downstairs if you need anything.”

Garrett’s hold tightens by a fraction. “Yeah.”

Tucker adds, “I’ll bring up more ice in a bit.”

“And meds when she’s due,” Logan says, lifting the papers slightly.

She wants to tell them they’re all being ridiculous. She wants to say she’s fine, to make some joke about the Briar hockey team turning into a poorly licensed urgent care clinic. But her throat feels thick, and her eyes sting in a way that has nothing to do with the swelling, and for once the joke doesn’t come quickly enough to save her from feeling it.

So she only says, “Thanks, guys.”

Dean nods, jaw tight. Tucker gives her a small, worried smile. Logan says, “Anytime,” like he means it and hates that there’s a reason to.

Garrett carries her upstairs slowly. The stairwell is dim, the house clutter softened into shadows: a hoodie over the railing, someone’s shoes kicked near the landing, a dent in the wall nobody has confessed to making. 

His breathing is steady beneath her ear. His arms don’t shift, don’t tremble, don’t let her feel for one second like she’s heavy or inconvenient or anything other than something he’s decided belongs safely against him.

Halfway up, she murmurs, “Garrett?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re still being weird.”

This time, his breath leaves him in something almost like a laugh. It brushes warm over her hair. “Yeah, baby,” he says, voice low enough that it belongs only to the stairs and the dark and the careful space between them. “I know.”

His room is already dim when he gets there, like he’d been in it before everything happened and left the lamp on low beside the bed, the shade turning the walls a warm, soft yellow that doesn’t stab behind her eyes. 

The window is cracked just enough to let in a thin line of cold air, shifting the edge of the curtain and carrying in the far-off sound of campus on a weeknight, car doors and laughter and somebody shouting down the street like the world has not personally offended her face.

Garrett nudges the door open with his shoulder and steps inside carefully, like the room might have developed hazards in the ten minutes since he last saw it. One of his hoodies is thrown over the desk chair. There’s a textbook facedown on the bed that he must have been pretending to read earlier, a roll of hockey tape on the nightstand, his phone charger twisted into a knot on the floor. 

The ordinary mess of him sits around them so gently that it makes something behind her ribs go weak. His room. His bed. His detergent and the clean soap smell of his skin under the faint cold of the hallway.

For the first time since the bay, since the rail, since the white burst of pain and Maria’s hand firm between her shoulder blades, her body seems to understand that it’s stopped moving.

Garrett lowers her onto the edge of the mattress with so much care it almost becomes annoying. One arm stays behind her back until she’s properly sitting, the other at her knees, and even after he lets go he keeps his hands there for a second, hovering near her like he’s not fully convinced gravity has been handled.

She blinks down at him because he’s crouched in front of her now, broad shoulders between her knees, face tipped up, eyes moving over her again with that same awful, quiet attention. 

She can feel what he’s seeing before he says anything. The blood dried tight beneath her nose. The swelling already darkening around the bridge of it. The split in her lip, tacky and sore. Mascara smudged under both eyes from the crying she doesn’t remember allowing herself to do properly, only the wetness and the sting and Maria saying, breathe for me, honey, nice and slow.

Garrett swallows. His hands rest lightly on her calves, thumbs still. “Did you want to wipe your face?” he asks, voice careful. “You’ve got, uh…” His eyes flick down, then back up, and his mouth tightens around something he doesn’t let out. “Some mascara under your eyes. And some blood still.”

She knows he’s trying very hard not to sound like the sight of it is putting his organs in the wrong order. She loves him a little for the effort, which is a thought she cannot touch right now because her brain is concussed and reckless and clearly looking for loaded weapons.

She nods once, then immediately remembers that nodding is no longer a neutral activity. The headache flares behind her eyes, thick and punishing. “Ow,” she says, small and irritated.

Garrett’s hands tighten on her legs. “Hey.”

“I’m good.” Her tongue touches the split in her lip and she tastes metal again. “Can you?”

His face changes. Barely. A little fracture through the tight worry, something softer underneath it. “Course.”

He stands, and the second his hands leave her, her body reacts before her mind catches up. Her fingers snag in the hem of his t-shirt, clumsy and sudden, and the movement pulls through her bad shoulder so sharply that a soft, wounded sound slips out of her before she can bite it down.

Garrett freezes instantly. Entire body going still. “Hey. Hey, you’re good.” He turns back toward her, one hand coming carefully to her wrist, covering her fingers where they’re twisted in his shirt. “I’m just going to the hallway, yeah? Bathroom’s right there. Two seconds.”

She knows that. Obviously she knows that. She’s been in this house enough times to know the bathroom is six steps from his door and usually contains at least one towel on the floor and Dean’s body wash in a place where it doesn’t belong. She knows Garrett’s not leaving. She knows the door is open, the house is full, Logan’s downstairs reading concussion instructions like the exam is tomorrow.

Still, her fingers don’t let go right away.

Her head hurts. Her mouth hurts. Her shoulder is a hot, sharp line down one side of her body. And the small, rational part of her brain that usually handles dignity and sarcasm is sitting in a dark room somewhere with a blanket over its head, because all she can think is that she wants him where she can reach him.

Garrett’s thumb moves once over her knuckles. “I’ll keep the door open.”

She nods more carefully this time. “Okay.”

He waits until her fingers loosen, then steps backward instead of turning right away, eyes on her the whole time. It would be funny, maybe, if it didn’t work. If she didn’t feel her ribs unclench slightly because she can still see him, because he backs into the hallway like she’s a wild animal he’s trying not to spook and not a nursing student with blood under her nose and one of his sleeves somewhere in her fist.

He disappears only when he reaches the bathroom, and even then he keeps talking. “Still here,” he says, and the water starts a second later, soft against porcelain. “Just getting a washcloth.”

“I know,” she calls back, then winces because even her own voice feels too loud inside her skull.

Garrett comes back with the washcloth damp and folded in one hand. His other hand shuts the door halfway, enough to soften the rest of the house into a distant murmur. The mattress dips when he sits beside her, turned toward her with one knee bent on the bed. 

He smells like clean skin and laundry and something faintly sweet from the kitchen downstairs, and she has to swallow around the childish, humiliating urge to press her face into his chest and stay there until her body stops feeling like it has been borrowed from a car crash.

“Here we go,” he says.

The cloth touches just beneath her eye first.

She stiffens on instinct, because everything has hurt tonight and her body is no longer trusting innocent objects, but Garrett pauses immediately. “Too cold?”

“No.” Her voice comes out thinner than she likes. “Just surprised.”

“Okay.” His face stays close, intent in a way that would normally make her flustered for more interesting reasons. “I’ll go slow.”

He does. He wipes the smudged mascara from beneath one eye with feather-light strokes, the washcloth barely dragging over skin, then folds it to a clean corner and does the other side. He works like he has been given something fragile and a little dangerous. Like every movement is being negotiated with the injuries on her face and the dull heaviness behind her eyes. 

His jaw flexes when the cloth comes away grey-black with makeup and faintly pink with old blood, but he doesn’t comment. He only turns it again and brings it to the place under her nose.

“That might hurt,” he murmurs.

“It already hurts.”

His eyes lift to hers. “Yeah.”

She looks down at his wrist, at the veins there, at the old tape mark near his thumb, at the little scrape over one knuckle from practice or a game or some Garrett-related misuse of his own body. Usually she would notice and ask. Usually she would press her thumb near it and say, what’s this? and he would say, nothing, and she would call him annoying and make him let her look anyway.

Tonight she just watches his hand hold the cloth and lets him clean the blood away. The dried parts tug where they have hardened on her skin, and she sucks in a breath through her mouth when the washcloth brushes too close to the swelling at the bridge of her nose. 

Garrett stops every time, waits for the little movement of her fingers in his shirt to settle, then continues. He wipes around the split in her lip last, his mouth flattening when fresh blood beads at the edge.

“You’re gonna bruise like hell,” he says, almost to himself.

She tries not to smile. It becomes a tiny, crooked thing anyway and immediately hurts. “Hot.”

His eyes flick back to hers, and for the first time since she arrived, something almost like Garrett moves across his face. Small. Tired. There and gone. “Yeah, baby. Real intimidating.”

“Good. I’ve always wanted to look tough.”

“You already look tough.”

“That’s because you have questionable standards.”

“No,” he says, and the softness in it makes her look away first. “I don’t.”

The room goes quiet except for the dull throb of the house underneath them, the creak of something downstairs, Logan or Dean moving around, the low murmur of the boys trying and failing not to sound worried through the floor. Garrett folds the washcloth over itself and sets it on the nightstand, then looks down at the rest of her.

The hoodie Maria put on her is zipped to her collarbone, dark fabric stained rusty near the cuff where she must have touched her face. Her scrub pants are still on, wrinkled and creased from the shift, one knee smudged faintly with something she refuses to identify. There is a hospital sticker on her shoe that nobody noticed until now, bright and stupid and stuck to the edge of the sole.

Garrett’s gaze catches on the blood at her sleeve. “You want out of these scrub pants?” he asks quietly. “And your hoodie has blood on it, baby.”

She looks down, as if this is new information. Her brain takes a second to make sense of the stain. “Oh.”

“It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” she says after a moment. Then, because the word seems to have scraped something loose on the way out, she adds, “Sorry.”

Garrett’s head lifts. “Why the fuck are you sorry?”

The sharpness of it makes her blink. He says it too quietly, all the force held under his tongue. But it lands somewhere tender anyway. She presses her lips together and immediately regrets that too. “Ow.”

Garrett’s expression softens, but his eyes stay fixed on her. Waiting.

She sighs, and it comes out shaky enough that she would like to file a formal complaint with her nervous system. “Because you…” The thought keeps slipping. She can see it, vaguely, but reaching for it makes her head pulse harder. “You didn’t sign up for this. I should’ve gotten Lucy or Monique. Or stayed with Maria, or– I don’t know.”

“No.” Garrett shakes his head once, and then stops himself, like maybe he’s remembered that head movement isn’t anyone’s friend right now. His hand comes to the side of her face, careful of the bruising, thumb brushing just below her temple where the skin is untouched. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re apologising for coming here.”

Her throat tightens. She looks at his shoulder because his face is too close and too much and still not close enough. “I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to.”

“Had to what?”

“Look after me.”

For a second, he only stares at her. Then he exhales through his nose, rough and almost disbelieving, and his fingers slide into her hair at the side of her head, holding it back from her face like the gesture can stand in for all the things he’s trying not to say too fast or wrong. “You think I’m sitting here because I feel obligated?”

She has the very strong, very pathetic urge to cry, which is inconvenient because crying would involve her face. “I don’t know.”

“Baby.”

She closes her eyes.

“Hey.” His thumb moves once. “Look at me.”

She does, reluctantly, because Garrett’s voice has gone into that low place that usually gets him what he wants and because her resistance is currently running on fumes.

His face is steadier now. Still pale underneath the warm lamplight, still tight around the edges, but steady in the places he’s offering to her. “I want you here.”

Her breath catches around something that hurts in a completely separate way from her nose. “Are we…” She stops, partly because the sentence is embarrassing and partly because she loses the middle of it for a second. The fog rolls in, cottony and irritating. She blinks, and Garrett waits. He doesn’t hurry her. Doesn’t fill the gap with a joke. Just keeps his hand at her face until she finds the rest. “Are we okay?”

His expression breaks so gently it makes her chest ache. “Course we are.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He brushes her hair back again, knuckles barely grazing the side of her neck. “We’re okay.”

She nods carefully. A tiny movement. “Good.”

Garrett’s mouth lifts at one corner, soft and sad and warm all at once. “Good?”

“Yeah.” Her fingers curl in his shirt again. This time, she doesn’t pull. “Because I really…” She swallows. Her throat is dry. Her head is thick. The truth comes out before she can dress it up in something safer. “I just wanted you.”

Something in him goes still. A held breath somewhere in the centre of him, then he nods, and the smile that comes with it is small enough that it feels private, even with the door half open and the boys downstairs and the whole house softly rearranged around her injury. “I know the feeling.”

She sniffs, because her body is committed to making the worst possible choices, and pain snaps up through her nose so sharply her eyes water. “Ow. Fuck.” She presses two fingers near the side of her face. “You do?”

Garrett’s smile shifts. “You want me to say it again while you look like you’re about to sneeze blood?”

“Maybe.”

“I know the feeling,” he says, and this time he doesn’t look away. “Because who better to nurse me back to health than you, huh?”

The laugh that escapes her is tiny and breathless and immediately followed by a wince, but it’s real. “I’m not even good at it today.”

“That’s okay.” He leans in and kisses the top of her head, nowhere near the bruising, lips warm against her hair. “I’ll cover this one.”

He gets up slowly this time, one hand staying in hers until the last possible second, then moves to his dresser. She watches him pull open drawers. 

He finds a pair of grey sweatpants first, soft and old and definitely his, then a zip-up hoodie because it will not need to go over her head. She can see the moment he chooses it for that reason. The little pause, the glance back at her shoulder, the jaw tight enough to tell on him.

When he comes back, the clothes folded over his arm, he crouches in front of her again. “Alright. We’ll do this slow, okay?”

She nods, then corrects it into a verbal answer before her head can punish her. “Okay.”

“Pants first.”

“Romantic.”

His mouth twitches. “I’m known for it.”

He helps her stand only as much as she needs, one hand at her good elbow, the other at her waist. The room sways faintly when she gets upright, unpleasantly loose at the edges, and Garrett’s hand firms at once. “Dizzy?”

“Little bit.”

“Sit?”

“No, I’m good. Just…” She looks down at the drawstring of her scrub pants, then at him. “This is a very low dignity moment for me.”

Garrett’s gaze flicks up, and there it is again, the smallest spark of him through the worry. “Baby, you’ve fallen asleep drooling on my chest after telling me I had slutty veins.”

She frowns. “I said that?”

“You did.”

“That does sound like me,” she accepts. 

“Exactly. Dignity’s been dead.”

She huffs, almost laughing, and he helps ease the scrub pants down her legs without making a production of it. Nothing in his face changes in the way that would make her feel watched, despite the fact that he’s, technically, undressing her in his bedroom. 

His touch stays practical, warm, almost painfully respectful. He holds the sweatpants open for her one leg at a time, keeps a hand at her hip while she steps in, then draws them up slowly over her thighs.

They’re too big, of course. They sit low on her hips and pool at her ankles in a way that would be funny if everything didn’t hurt. Garrett ties the drawstring in a loose knot and pats it once.

“There,” he says. “Very fashionable.”

“Shut up. I’m concussed.”

“I know. That’s why I’m letting you get away with that tone.”

Her mouth threatens a smile, so she bites it back and looks down at herself instead. The hoodie is next. Garrett reaches for the zipper, then stops. “Where’s the top?”

She blinks at him. “What?”

“Your scrub top.” His voice stays even, but not naturally. 

Her mind searches the department and comes back with torn fabric, scissors, someone’s gloved hands. “Um.” She rubs her fingers against the seam of his sweatpants, trying to make the thought stay still long enough to look at it. “Um. Bag. Maybe. They had to cut it off, I think.”

Garrett’s jaw tenses. It’s quick. A muscle jumping once, his mouth going flat, his eyes dropping away from her face for half a second like he needs to put the reaction somewhere she can’t see it. But she sees it anyway. She’s concussed, not blind.

When he looks back up, he’s forced something lighter onto his face. It’s not quite convincing, but the attempt is so Garrett it makes her ache.

“Damn,” he says. “Liked that pair.”

She stares at him. “Pair?”

“Set. Outfit. Whatever.” He lifts one shoulder, careful to keep his voice mild. “Made your ass look great.”

The giggle escapes before she can stop it. Immediately, pain blooms across her lip and nose, and she presses her fingers to her mouth with a muffled, “Ow. Don’t flirt with the concussed.”

Garrett’s smile is barely there, but warmer this time. “Can’t help it.”

“You should try.”

“I’ve been trying for months. Terrible at it.”

That one sits in the room longer than it should. Her eyes lift to his, and for a second, neither of them moves. Then Garrett clears his throat softly and reaches for the zipper of her hoodie.

“This one’s gonna suck,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

That’s somehow worse than if he had lied. “Okay.”

He unzips the bloodstained hoodie slowly, easing one side down her good arm first. That part is fine, or close enough. The bad shoulder is different. Even with the zip-up, even with him going painfully slowly, the fabric drags over the sore joint and catches near her elbow, and the strain of lifting even a fraction sends pain snapping hot and deep through her shoulder and up the side of her neck.

She makes a sound she hates. Small and broken enough that Garrett’s whole face changes.

“Stop, stop, stop,” he murmurs immediately. His hands freeze, one holding the fabric, the other at her waist. “I’ve got it. You’re okay. Don’t move.”

Her eyes burn fast. Too fast. The pain isn’t even the worst she has felt tonight, which somehow makes crying more insulting, like her body has chosen this as the point to become unreasonable. A few tears slip out anyway, hot and humiliating over her swollen cheeks.

“Sorry,” she whispers.

Garrett’s eyes flash. “Do not.”

“I know. I know, I’m just–” Her breath catches in that horrible little pre-sob way, and her face hurts too much to do anything with it. “It hurts.”

“I know.” His voice drops, low and steady. He shifts closer, bracing her gently with his own body while he works the sleeve down by tiny increments. “I know. I’m sorry. Almost done. There you go. Good girl. That’s it.”

The praise lands somewhere stupid and warm under all the pain, and she would make fun of him for weaponising it if she were not currently trying not to cry into his shirt. The hoodie finally comes free, and Garrett gets his zip-up around her without making her lift her arm higher than necessary, guiding the sore side in first, then the other, then drawing the soft fabric closed around her body. It smells like him immediately. Clean laundry, cold rink air, skin.

The relief of being out of the hospital clothes hits harder than she expects. She folds forward into him.

Garrett catches her like he has been waiting for it, one arm firm around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head before she can tip into the wrong angle. “There we go,” he murmurs into her hair. “Got you.”

She nods against him, but it’s barely a movement. “Hurts.”

“I know, baby.”

“I’m being a baby.”

“No.” His hand spreads over her back, broad and warm through the hoodie. “You’re being concussed with a fucked-up shoulder.”

She breathes against him for another minute, letting the warmth of him settle over the sharper edges. His heart is steady under her cheek. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe that’s just what she needs it to be. Either way, his arms stay around her until her breathing evens out, until the tears stop sliding hot under her eyes, until she can pull back without feeling like she might tip sideways into the nightstand.

Garrett helps her lie down against his pillows. He has her on her back at first, then adjusts when she makes a face, turning her slightly onto her good side with slow hands and a pillow tucked near her shoulder so it isn’t pulling strangely. He moves like he’s learning her injury as he goes, like the map of her pain matters enough to memorise. It makes something soft and sore press up behind her ribs.

When he climbs in beside her, he doesn’t pull her in immediately. He waits, lying on his side facing her, one arm bent under his head, the other resting near the blanket between them. Giving her space to decide how much contact feels possible. Which is very considerate of him and also deeply annoying because she has no interest in space.

She curls into him as best she can, awkwardly, her bad shoulder protected between them, her forehead carefully finding the safe hollow below his collarbone. Garrett lets out a breath that sounds like he has been holding it since the front door.

“There,” he says softly. “That okay?”

“Mhm.”

His hand comes to her hair again. Fingers sliding slowly from her temple back over her scalp, loosening what the clip and the shift and the panic left behind. The motion sends a dull, pleasant ache through her, somewhere under the headache, a different kind of heaviness.

She sighs before she can stop herself. “Feels nice.”

Garrett’s thumb moves near her hairline. “I’ll keep doing it then.”

She lets her eyes close.

For a while, the room stays still around them. The lamp glows behind her eyelids. The house below makes small, careful sounds, a cabinet closing softly, footsteps pausing in the hallway and then retreating, the quiet evidence of three hockey players trying very hard to be normal about the girl in Garrett’s bed with a concussion. 

Her head throbs anyway, steady and deep. Her lip pulses. Her shoulder aches in its own miserable rhythm. But Garrett’s hand keeps moving through her hair, slow enough that her breathing starts to follow it.

She’s almost asleep, or something near it, when Garrett speaks. “What happened?”

His voice is quiet. He asks like he’s been holding the question in both hands for too long and needs to set it somewhere.

She opens her eyes to the dark cotton of his shirt. Her brain takes a few seconds to come back online. She breathes out slowly through her mouth because her nose is still a disaster. 

The memory is there at once, too close and too bright around the edges, and her body reacts to it before the words arrive. Fingers curling lightly in the front of his shirt. Shoulder tightening, then complaining. The ghost of the rail coming up fast.

Garrett’s hand pauses in her hair. “You don’t have to.”

“No.” Her voice is quiet. “It’s okay.”

He starts moving his hand again, slower now.

“It was a psych patient,” she says. “He was really agitated. Not like… violent, at first. Just scared, I think. Curled in on himself, wouldn’t really let anyone near him. Maria was with me. We were trying to keep the room calm, but the ED was so busy and loud and everyone was stretched thin, and he just…” She stops, trying to find the order of it. Everything feels slippery when she looks too directly. “He lashed out. His elbow got me in the face. Accidentally, I think.”

Garrett’s chest goes very still under her cheek.

“And I cried out,” she continues. “I don’t know. It just hurt and it surprised me, and I think that freaked him out more. Or the noise did. Or maybe he just didn’t know what was happening.” She swallows. Her throat feels raw. “He grabbed my scrub top before I could move back. Pulled me forward. My nose hit the bed rail. Or my mouth did. I’m not sure. It happened really fast.”

Garrett’s arm tightens around her, then loosens immediately like he’s afraid of hurting her. His hand remains in her hair, but the fingers have gone still.

“Security came in,” she says. “Another nurse pulled me back. Steph, I think. Or maybe Maria. Both, maybe. I don’t know. I remember Maria saying my name a lot.” She looks down between them, though there is nothing to see but the dark fold of his shirt and the edge of his hoodie on her body. “He didn’t mean it.”

Garrett is quiet for long enough that she starts to wonder if he has stopped breathing.

Then he says, “You keep saying that.”

“He didn’t.”

“I know.” His voice is rough, scraped thin at the edges. “I know he didn’t, baby. I just…” He takes a breath. It moves carefully through his chest. “You got hurt anyway.”

The words land with the same awful simplicity as Maria’s had in the car. That doesn’t mean you didn’t get hurt. She closes her eyes, because everyone has decided to be kind in the exact way she cannot defend against.

“I know,” she whispers.

Garrett’s hand finally moves again, fingers sliding over her scalp, then down to the nape of her neck where he can touch without brushing bruised skin. “Is this how you feel?”

She opens her eyes. “What?”

“When I come home after a game all bruised and shit.” He shifts just enough that she can feel him looking down at her, though she doesn’t lift her head to meet it yet. “Is this what it feels like?”

A tiny breath leaves her. Not quite a laugh. More tired than that. “You mean do I also go weird and silent and look like I might throw up?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yeah.” Her fingers smooth over the fabric of his shirt because she needs something small to do. “Kind of, I guess.”

Garrett doesn’t answer.

She turns her face slightly, enough to look at the line of his jaw in the low light. He’s staring at the wall beyond her head, mouth set, brows drawn, hair falling messily over his forehead. He looks angry and young and helpless, which is such a strange combination on him that it makes her chest ache.

“It’s different,” she says softly. “You’re playing a game you love. You know the risks. I know that. And you guys are all… insane about pain, which I’ve accepted against my will.”

His mouth twitches without humour.

“But I don’t enjoy seeing you hurt.” Her voice goes quieter around the admission. “Even when it’s normal hockey hurt. Even when you’re smug about it and standing in the kitchen telling me it’s fine while your ribs look like someone used you as a doorstop. It still makes my stomach feel weird.”

Garrett’s eyes come down to her then. She tries to hold the look for a second and manages maybe half. His attention is too raw tonight. Too stripped of the things he usually wears over it.

“I know you’re tough,” she says, looking at his collar instead. “I know you can take it. I know half the time you think me worrying is funny or hot or both, because you have a very damaged sense of romance.”

“That’s fair.”

“But I still…” She frowns slightly, the thought losing shape, then finding it again. “I still hate it. Not because I think you’re weak. Because you’re not. Obviously. It’s just your body, you know? And I like your body.”

Garrett’s eyebrows lift faintly.

She narrows her eyes at him. “Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to become insufferable.”

“Maybe a little.”

“I have a concussion. Be kind.”

His face softens again, the almost-tease folding back into something warmer. “I’m being so kind.”

“You’re doing okay.”

“Glowing review.”

She breathes out through her mouth, and for a moment the room feels almost normal. Almost. Garrett’s hand in her hair. His chest under her cheek. The two of them managing to find the familiar shape of each other even through the bruising and the blood and the fear still sitting somewhere near the foot of the bed.

Then Garrett’s thumb brushes the side of her head again, light and careful, and his voice drops. “I hated seeing you like that.”

She looks at him this time.

He doesn’t look away. His eyes are dark in the low light, all the usual teasing stripped out of them. “At the door,” he says. “I hated it.”

“I know.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” His mouth tightens, then releases. “You were standing there with blood on your face and Maria next to you and you looked at me like you were sorry. Like I was gonna be upset that you came here.”

Her throat works. “I didn’t want to be too much.”

Garrett makes a sound under his breath, small and rough. “You got hurt.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re allowed to be too much.”

The sentence is so simple it feels dangerous. Her eyes sting again, and she presses her face carefully into his chest before the tears can do anything stupid to her already stupid face.

Garrett’s arm comes around her, careful of her shoulder, his hand settling between her shoulder blades where he can hold without hurting. “Especially here,” he murmurs into her hair. “Especially with me.”

She doesn’t answer. She can’t, really. Not without crying, and crying hurts, and she’s tired of things hurting. So she only curls her fingers more tightly in his shirt and lets him keep his hand in her hair.

After a while, she says, very quietly, “I’m really tired.”

“I know.” Garrett kisses the top of her head. “You can sleep.”

“Logan set alarms.”

“Of course Logan set alarms.”

She manages the faintest smile. “He looked very serious.”

“He loves a protocol.”

“He does have the head injury experience.”

Garrett huffs a soft laugh against her hair, the sound loosening something in the dark. “Unfortunately.”

She lets her eyes close again. The headache is still there. The bruising is still swelling around her nose, hot and heavy. Her shoulder still aches beneath his hoodie. None of it has gone away.

But Garrett’s fingers keep moving through her hair, and his body is warm where hers has gone cold and wrung out, and downstairs the boys are quiet in a way that makes the whole house feel like it is holding its breath around her.

“Garrett?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“If I say something weird, it’s the concussion.”

His hand pauses for half a second. “Okay.”

“And if I say something nice.”

His mouth brushes her hair. “Also concussion?”

“Probably.”

“Got it.”

She’s quiet long enough that he likely thinks she’s drifted off. Maybe she has, a little. The edge of sleep is soft and close, pulling at the corners of the room, blurring the pain into something thick and manageable. Then she murmurs, “You’re good at this.”

Garrett’s chest rises slowly beneath her cheek. “At what?”

“Looking after me.”

His fingers resume their movement through her hair, slower than before. “Yeah?”

“Mm.”

His voice, when it comes, is barely more than warmth in the dark. “Only because you taught me how.”

to be notified when i post new fics, follow @kooksandpearls-library and turn on notifications! i no longer use a taglist for garrett fics.

[milehighbasket]

KARL ANTHONY TOWNS IS NBA CHAMPION

[sunnydilaurentis]

part 3 | mom and dad in new york ⋆˚࿔

✩.* 'dean's children' hockey group chat leaked!

✩.* found family masterlist

note: thank you to all those who voted in the poll! this was so fun to make 💌 i hope the formatting with the photos isn't too annoying, enjoy!! <3

summary: in which y/n and garrett escape to new york for a few days, flooding the groupchat with photos.

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✩.* taglist; @05gwyn | @alwaysclassyeagle | @casiiopea2 | @nexisphere | @imstressed17 | @legendarychrattgirl | @ethanthequeefqueen | @wiishies | @legendarychrattgirl | @tabisswag | @corvusmorte | @mariiibash | @stevesxwhore | @choppedpartymuffinwinner | @flannelshirts-and-fingerguns | @leilareads58

[milehighbasket]

I miss my big guy 😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔😔

[konstrakted]

[sinestezijaa]

My robbed kings, you made us all proud

[iguessweallcrazyithinktho]

I like hate to sound greedy but can everyone start writing for Garrett graham

[hoeops]

I need to marry this man one way or another

[amidalorian]

now some oc writers are using the “x reader” tag and giving the excuse that “it’s just a different perspective.” it doesn’t matter if you use that tag IF YOU’RE NOT INCLUDING THE READER! YOU have your own tag, leave us alone.

the “x reader” tag exists so that readers of any background, appearance, or identity can immerse themselves in a story and feel included as the main character.

when you write a story centered around your own original character, with a defined name, personality, and often a specific appearance, you’re no longer inviting the reader to step into that role, you’re writing about your character, not the reader. that’s completely fine! writing oc content is valid and has its own space.

but misusing the “x reader” tag to gain visibility or clicks is misleading. it sets the wrong expectations and excludes readers who were looking for stories where they could truly see themselves in the narrative. if your story focuses on your oc, label it honestly.

use the “oc x canon” tag or “original character” there’s no shame in that. but please stop co-opting a space that’s meant to be inclusive and flexible for all readers, especially those who are often underrepresented in fiction. the “x reader” tag is not a blank slate for oc projection.

it’s meant to include everyone, not just your creative vision.

respect your audience. tag responsibly.

NOTE: writing in another point of view like “SHE/HE went to the market” instead of “YOU went to the market” does not count as “x reader.”

(not 100% but most of the time) don’t try to be clever or sneaky about it.

NOTE 2: by the way, regarding the second image, it’s great to see more asian, black, and mixed oc’s! but even so, that still doesn’t make it a reader insert, let alone fit the tag. the reader needs to be the main character.

[stevescigarettes]

not gone, just late ⋆ steve murphy

steve murphy x f!reader

summary ⋆ after weeks of emotional distance, a strained reunion between you and steve erupts into a confrontation. accusations, vulnerability, and raw honesty force both of you to confront the damage his absence has caused. in the quiet aftermath, anger softens into tentative trust, and though the wounds are fresh, steve promises, this time, to stay. warnings ⋆ hurt/comfort (happy ending), swearing , cheating accusations (no actual cheating) word count ⋆ 1.3k words a/n ⋆ hurt/comfort is my favourite thing to write bc angst kills my soul HAHAHAH anyway i was out sick from uni today so instead of doing my work, i quickly wrote this oops <33

You’d tried everything to distract yourself from the ache.

In the past week alone, you'd worked late every night; drafting briefing notes, helping liaise between diplomats, finessing tense communications between agencies and the Colombian government. Anything to stay busy, anything to keep your thoughts from spiralling back to Steve.

It worked… to a point.

But when you were home, in this apartment with the chipped tile and humming fridge, everything always came crashing back in. The silence here wasn’t peaceful, it was suffocating. Like the walls themselves were waiting for him to walk back in.

You’d fall asleep on the couch sometimes, too tired to climb into bed. You stopped checking your phone after midnight. Stopped waiting for that late-night call that sometimes came when he’d finished with whatever raid or meeting or dead end they’d chased. You stopped calling after the day Javier answered, telling you he had no idea where Steve was. You cried once or twice, then carried on. You existed, with a growing knot in your chest and a dull ache behind your eyes. Loving someone like Steve meant being patient. However, you were a human with a loving heart, and still had a breaking point.

The soft glow of the lamp in your living room is the only light cutting through the darkness. The city buzzes quietly outside your window, but inside, all you can hear is the steady rustle of paper in your hands. You try to focus on the report in front of you, but your mind keeps drifting. The words blur together no matter how hard you try to concentrate. Your thoughts are consumed by him.

You think about the fact that you can count on one hand how many times in the last few weeks he’s called to check in or just to talk to you, let alone see you. You can’t shake the feeling that with every new lead that pulls him away, the distance between you two becomes more than physical. Now it hurts more than ever before.

A sharp knock at the door snaps you out of your thoughts. Your heart jumps in your chest, not expecting any visitors. You’ve barely had time to breathe from work, let alone entertain any unexpected guests.

You open the door to find Steve standing there, unshaven and tired, his usual sharp edge softened by the exhaustion and intensity in his eyes. His gaze locks onto yours, and for a split second, you’re unsure what to say.

“You remembered I exist?” The snarky comment rolls off your tongue before you could hold it in. The words are bitter, a little sharp, but they’re nothing compared to the frustration swirling beneath your skin. You can feel the sting of his absence like a weight you’ve been carrying, and he’s just going to stand there, looking like he’s been through hell, and expect you to smile?

His lips twitch at the corners, a faint attempt at a smile, but it quickly fades when he sees the look in your eyes. Steve sighs, running a hand through his hair, the lines of stress in his face deeper than usual.

"I didn’t come here to be made to feel like a bastard, alright?" He steps inside without waiting for an invitation, as if it was still his space as much as yours, but you don’t stop him.

“Yeah, well, you sure as hell have been treating me like one,” you reply, crossing your arms over your chest. You can’t help it; the resentment bubbles up faster than you can stop it. “Do you have any idea how many nights I sat here alone? Waiting for the door to open, for the phone to ring, anything? Almost a goddamn month, Steve.” You feel yourself become angrier with each word that leaves your mouth.

He drops his bag by the door with a heavy thud, not meeting your gaze. "I know. I know I’ve been distant. But I haven’t been… I’ve been distracted, okay? Trying to—"

"Fix the world? Catch Escobar? Yeah, I get it, Steve. I know the lines. ‘It’s not personal, it’s the job.’ Always the job," you cut in, your voice dripping with sarcasm. “Or maybe you realised I’m not worth it anymore. That you got what you needed and bailed. Just another warm body in a bed between missions, right? I—"

It’s not even what you truly believe, not deep down. But the silence, the neglect, it’s made your mind turn on itself, made your insecurities claw their way to the surface like rot beneath your skin.

Steve’s expression darkens, and he cuts you off sharply, his tone icy, more so than you’ve ever heard it. “Don’t ever fuckin' insinuate that. Ever.”

You blink, startled. It’s not his volume that shocks you, because he hasn’t raised his voice. It’s the steel in it. The warning. The emotion buried beneath the surface that he refuses to let show but can’t quite hide.

“I never would, and you know that,” he says, slower now; each word deliberate, firm. “So be mad. Scream at me if you want. But don’t stand there and tell me I saw you as disposable when you are the most important thing in my life.”

His gaze doesn’t waver from yours, a silent intensity hanging between you two.

"I’ve been distant, I know I’ve fucked up, but don’t ever think I don’t care. You matter, even when I’m not here. Especially when I’m not here."

The rawness in his voice hits you like a punch to the gut. You’re still angry, so angry, but there’s no denying the sincerity in his words. For a moment, the biting anger that’s been building between you two falters. It’s replaced by something else, something softer, but just as vulnerable.

You swallow hard, meeting his gaze. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. I just...” you pause and rub your eyes as if it would stop you from tearing up. “You hurt me, Steve. I’m so tired of being invisible to you.”

He steps forward, carefully, like he’s afraid you might bolt. He’s only a breath away now, and you can feel the weight of his presence again. That constant heat he carries, even when he’s not touching you.

His voice is quieter now, laced with regret.

“You’re not invisible,” he says, and it sounds like the most honest thing he’s said all night. “You’ve never been. I just—I’ve been so buried in this shit, I lost track of the one person I should’ve been holding onto.”

Your anger falters again, and for a moment, the tension that’s been building between you two starts to dissipate.

“And how do I know you won’t disappear again? How can I believe you?”

He steps closer, his hand reaching for yours, his touch warm and steady.

“I’ll show you. I won’t disappear. I’ll prove it to you. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

His words, no longer full of the tension and harshness they carried before, settle between you two. He’s not saying anything spectacular, nothing revolutionary, but the sincerity in his voice, the vulnerability in his eyes, makes you believe him… for now, at least.

“I’m still mad at you,” you murmur, letting him pull you close. “Really mad, but I want to believe you. I miss you, Steve.” You say as you wrap your arms around him, looking up at him with longing.

He feels the shift, the warmth returning in small, fragile waves, but it only makes the guilt settle deeper; he is the reason you ever felt invisible in the first place.

“And I miss you, but...” he whispers, stopping to press a soft kiss to your forehead and tighten his hold on you. "I’m here. I’ll be here. And I’m going to fix this. Even if it takes everything I’ve got.”

You close your eyes and breathe him in. The scent of worn leather, cologne and smoke. He pulls away from the hug to take you all in.

Steve knew he was finally back where he belonged.

[delowry]

imagine getting eliminated by a r*dy g*bert legacy game while the rest of his team launches 50 bricks from 3. has to be one of the most embarassing ways to go

[stevescigarettes]

everything i didn't say ⋆ steve murphy

(i'm crying what happened to the photo quality) steve murphy x dea agent f!reader summary ⋆ after an op takes a turn for the worst, steve is forced to confront emotions he’s buried under duty and denial. as the line between professional and personal blurs, steve must face the terrifying possibility of losing the one person he never let himself love warnings ⋆ hurt/comfort (happy ending), guns, injury description, hospitals, reader gets shot & seriously hurt, swearing, he's kinda ooc but i live for dramatic boys word count ⋆ 3.6k a/n ⋆ ignore the way i go from present to past tense every sentence, it pisses me off too but i'm too sleepy to fix it. ALSO tagging javi x reader just for some reach but i promise i'll tag my other fics properly <33

If it wasn’t for the severity of the situation, the humidity would have clouded your brain. You leaned into the centre console from the back seat, wondering whether you should voice your concerns to the two men in front.

“You sure about this source?” Steve asked, eyes on the road.

“Yeah, CI’s credible,” Javier replied while shifting in his seat. He pulled out his pack of cigarettes, lighting one up as he turns to look outside.

You ease back into your seat, glad that Steve managed to read your thoughts. He catches your eyes in the rearview mirror, nerves clearly etched on your features.

“What’s up with you y/n? Not like you to stay this quiet.” He asked and you smirk at him.

“Just be honest and say you miss the sound of my voice, Murphy.” You quip back, pulling a laugh from both men.

The nerves from the car ride returned tenfold as you fidget with the stitching on your holster. Steve stood beside you, scanning the alley ahead with that tight-set jaw he wore like a second badge. Javier leans against the dilapidated wall behind you, cigarette still hanging from his lips as he follows Steve’s gaze.

“It’s almost too quiet.” You wander out loud, not sure if this was nerves or logic talking.

Javier flicked his cigarette to the ground and stomps on it. “We sit on our asses, they say we’re fucking letting the trail go cold. We move too fast, we walk into a damn hornet’s nest.” He replies and you nod in agreeance; now was not the time to second guess a cleared tip.

Steve finally looked over at you. Something in his expression wavered, like he wanted to say more, but didn’t. “Alright. Let’s move.”

You notice Trujillo and his guys take their positions at the back entrance of the building; go time is approaching. You’d done this dance a hundred times before: doors kicked in, rooms cleared, names crossed off lists… but the idea that something was off gnawed at the back of your mind.

Intel said the place was light on personnel; a handful of lookouts, a low-level product runner or two. Easy in, easy out.

You push the door open, gun raised, heart thudding in your ears. The room inside is dark, abandoned-looking. Dust hangs thick in the air, lit by slats of sunlight through broken blinds. You signal clear as you turn to the doorway you entered from, no need to go further as you see Trujillo entering the room in front of you to survey.

Then it happens; Trujillo screaming your name through the doorway behind you, a loud gunshot sliced through his scream, then a second, and a third. Your body jerked forward with each gunshot, one to the side of your neck and two in the thighs. Air was being stolen from your lungs as you fell face-first to the floor.

You hear shouting; Steve’s voice, sharp and panicked. Javier barking orders and boots thunder around you. You blink, disoriented, but manage to turn on your back. The pain envelops you, like an unwelcome hug. That, and the feeling of blood pooling underneath you makes you look down.

“Y/N!” Steve dropped to his knees beside you, hands already pressing into the wounds. “Hey, hey, look at me. Stay with me.”

You try to say something, joke, curse, anything, but your brain and voice don’t connect. Everything feels distant, underwater.

You can hear Javier’s strained voice calling for backup, medevac, anything. Steve doesn’t leave your side, his hands soaked in your blood and, unbeknownst to you, his worst fear invading his mind and body.

“Don’t you dare, alright?” he says through clenched teeth. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to check out on me.”

You wanted to tell him you’re trying, you really were.

With every bit of strength you could muster, you reached a hand up to cup his cheek. The tears in his eyes threaten to break through as you drop your arm.

You open your mouth to try and thank him for everything, but fighting it became impossible. The darkness consumed you.

Steve barely registers the scramble around him: Trujillo shouting into his radio. Javier grabbing the back of his vest, trying to pull him away so the medics could do their job, the medics yelling at him in Spanish to move. He didn’t budge.

You were limp in his arms, your face starting to lose some colour but still so warm. His hands trembled as they pressed against the wound. It wasn’t enough.

“Stay with me,” he mutters, blood slicking between his fingers. “You don’t get to leave me like this. You hear me?”

He wasn’t even sure who he was trying to convince anymore.

Javier finally manages to pull Steve away, but Steve couldn’t even register being cursed out. The only thoughts behind those eyes were about you and something he hadn’t realised earlier.

The sterile white light of the hospital felt almost offensive. Too clean. Too calm. Why isn’t everyone in this hospital rushing to save you?

Steve sat slouched in the waiting room chair, elbows on his knees. The dried blood, your blood, a reminder of transpired events. The nurse had asked if he wanted to clean up; he barely acknowledged her.

Javier paced across from him, arms crossed tightly, silent for once. Every so often, both of their eyes would flick to the doors, like sheer willpower could pull a doctor through them with an update. Finally, one does, and Javier takes it upon himself to receive the update in case it was bad; he’s unsure whether Steve would break the doctor’s nose or set fire to the hospital.

“Surgeon came down from Bogotá. Special trauma unit or something.” Javier finally exhaled. “The best of the best.” He added for comfort, but unsure if it was for Steve’s or his own.

Steve didn’t answer... more like he couldn’t. Plaguing his mind was your face as you faded on that warehouse floor. The way your hand reached for him; shaky, blood-slick, trying to offer him comfort when you were the one suffering.

That moment had cracked something open in him.

He’d known you were important. Trusted you with his life. But what hit him then, what was still hitting him now, was that losing you would wreck him in a way he didn’t think he could come back from.

He loved you.

God help him, he really did.

But the thought that he might be too late? He didn’t even want to entertain it.

Of course, Javier knew before Steve knew himself. He slumps down next to Steve with a sigh, head falling into his hands.

Neither of them speaks at first. The silence presses in tight, thick with everything they refuse to say out loud.

“She’ll pull through,” Javier says, voice low, but not quite convincing. “She’s tough.”

Steve doesn’t look at him. His eyes are locked straight ahead, severely bloodshot. A muscle ticks in his jaw. He opens his mouth and takes a breath, as if he’s going to say something, but he stops himself.

Javier watches him for a second longer, then says it; quiet, certain.

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you”

It was rhetorical. But something in Steve snaps.

He shot up from the chair suddenly, pacing a tight line in front of the waiting room seats. His breath quickened. One hand ran through his hair, the other clenches and unclenches at his side as he tried to find his words.

“I shouldn’t’ve let her go in first,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone. “I knew she thought something was off. Hell, even I knew! And I still—”

“Steve—”

“I fuckin' knew, Javi!” His voice cracks, raw and sharp, loud enough that a nurse down the hall flinches and glances over. “I let her walk into that building. I let her walk in like it was any other fuckin' day!”

He turned, ready to slam his fist into the wall, but he freezes. Dragging himself back to where they were sitting, he looks at Javier.

“She bled out in my arms, man,” Steve choked, sinking back down into the chair disgusted in himself. “She looked at me and I couldn’t do a damn thing.”

Javier drops into a crouch in front of Steve and grabs both his shoulders, grounding him.

“Hey. Hey! Shut up and listen to me.” His grip tightens when Steve wouldn’t meet his eyes. “She’s still in there, alright? YOU kept her alive, you hear me? You did everything you could.”

Steve shakes his head, tears sliding down his face now, silent and messy. “I didn’t even tell her. I didn’t tell her how I felt. What if she—” His voice breaks again, and he groans at the repetitive thought infiltrating his brain like a parasite.

Javier squeezes his shoulders to cut him off, not wanting either of their thoughts to go there. “Then you tell her when she wakes up.”

Steve nods, barely. His hands drag down his face as he collapsed back into the seat again, chest heaving. He was completely wrecked, broken open in a way that feels irreversible.

And Javier just sits there with him, quiet, steady, keeping him from falling apart completely.

Eventually, a nurse approached. A gentle-sounding middle-aged lady with a sympathetic smile on her face. She didn’t come with an update, but with a clipboard and questions he couldn’t process. Javier handled it for him. Names. Date. What happened. Steve didn’t move, didn’t look up.

Until the nurse hesitated.

“She’s stable… for now,” she said carefully. “She’s out of surgery. On a ventilator.”

That was enough to jolt him upright.

He was on his feet before he could think, ignoring Javier’s sharp “Steve—fuck, wait!” as he ran down the corridor like a man possessed, looking for you. The run was short, but every step felt heavy.

And then he saw you.

Through a large gap in the curtains, he sees you laying pale and still in the hospital bed. Machines surrounded you, monitors, IV drips, the rise and fall of your chest unnaturally controlled by the mechanical rhythm of the ventilator. A tangle of wires framed your face, the one he knew better than his own now.

You looked... gone. Hollow. Like the light that made you you had been stolen and left behind nothing but a fragile, possibly failing body.

Steve froze, trying to process his thoughts. He dragged himself backwards to lean against a wall opposite your room.

What if the last proper words he ever said to you were those dumb words in the car? What if he never got to say all the things clawing up his throat now? He didn’t even feel Javier stand beside him again until he heard his voice.

“She’s fighting, man. You know she is.”

Silence fell again. He stood there, completely unravelled, watching the rise and fall of your chest through the curtain. It was the only thing anchoring him.

The nurse from the waiting room finally catches up to Javier and Steve, cautiously standing in front of both men.

“Would you like to sit with her? We’re weaning her off the anaesthesia, but it’s up to her body to decide when it wakes up. I don’t have to tell you how bad her injuries are...” The nurse asks with quiet resolve, mainly directing her words to Steve.

“I’ll wait outside.” Javier suggests with a pat on Steve’s back, making his way back to the waiting room.

The nurse guides him into the room, pulling the chair closer to the bed.

“She’s very lucky to have a boyfriend who cares so much, you know?” She says as she slips out of the room, fully closing the curtain. Steve refused to correct her, because for the first time since the shooting, he smiled. A real, genuine smile.

But it didn’t last long.

The hum of the ventilator echoed in his ears, the harsh beeping of the monitors, the gun shots that brought you here; it's all he can hear. He took a seat beside the bed, his hand hovering above yours for a second before he finally reached out and held it gently. Careful not to press too hard.

“Hey,” he murmured, thumb brushing the back of your hand. “I’m here.”

There was no response. Just the soft hiss of the ventilator, the steady rhythm of machines doing what your body couldn’t.

“You scared the shit outta me,” he added, voice hoarse. “Still are, honestly.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, still clutching your hand like it was the only thing keeping him steady. He stared at the floor as he began to speak his mind.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do if you don’t wake up.” He took a sharp breath, carefully thinking about his choice of words.

“I was gonna tell you... About how I felt. But I figured we had time. And now…” His voice trailed off.

“Fuck, just come back to me.”

Three days. That’s how long it took for your body to decide it was ready.

You tried to move, but a weight on your hand stopped you. Someone's hand. A familiar one. Steve's.

Your brows furrowed, and the hand not being held by Steve’s lifts, trying to swat away the ventilator.

He lets go of you and swats the curtain open so hard he manages to yank a few notches out. “She’s waking up!” he yells, unsure if any of the nurses understood him with how fast he was yelling.

The medical team came in fast, moving past Steve as they began the process of removing the vent. Steve backed into the corner of the room, barely breathing. Finally, the tube was out.

Your breath hitched during a deep, painful inhale which made you wince, but you were breathing on your own.

“Can you hear me?” one of the nurses asked. You nod in a daze, blinking once. Then again.

Your eyes moved slowly, unfocused at first, as you try to find him past the medical team swarming you. You knew he was there, and standing in the corner like a ghost of himself, there he was.

“Murphy…” you croaked, voice cracked and weak.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Relief hit him so hard he slumped onto the wall behind him.

“You’re okay,” he whispered, half to you, half to himself.

You gave him the faintest of smiles. “See, I knew you’d miss the sound of my voice.”

Steve let out a choked laugh, wiping a hand down his face as the medical team disperse. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” He replies as he drags the chair over to your bed.

You scan your face as he scans yours, and you give him an even better smile than before.

“You… look like shit,” you croaked.

A laugh burst out of him, and his forehead dropped to your hand.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

And this time, when he looked at you, he didn’t hide it.

Not the pain.

Not the fear.

Not the love.

Not anymore.

Two weeks later, you were released from the hospital. Still sore, still exhausted, but alive. Breathing. Healing.

Steve insisted (ordered) on you staying in his apartment while you recovered. Something about not trusting your neighbours or you to be alone. You rolled your eyes and argued once, weakly. He raised an eyebrow, crossed his arms, and that was the end of that.

His place was cleaner than you expected, though a little chaotic. Coffee mugs, case files, a mountain of laundry waiting to be folded; normal signs of life.

But for the next two days, all his focus was on you.

He cooked.

He made sure you took your pain meds.

He hovered when you coughed.

He let you watch tv in his clothes and didn’t bat an eye when you didn’t change them.

But every now and then, you’d catch him looking at you like he wanted to say something before swallowing it down.

Two days with Steve flew by, but the need to catch Pablo Escobar doesn't stop for anyone. He didn’t want to go, told you about dozen and one times while making sure your meds were lined up on the counter and your water bottle was full.

You reassured him, gently teased him even, but when the door clicked shut behind him that morning, the apartment felt colder.

Steve's first shift back was hell.

Carrillo. He threw the sicarios out of the helicopter mid-air. Steve had barely kept it together. He worked through the night and part of the next day to keep the thoughts at bay. When he returned a whole 31 hours later, his jaw was clenched, shoulders straight and heavy like bricks.

You looked up from the couch. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he muttered, kicking off his shoes and tossing his jacket aside. He made a beeline for the kitchen, opened a beer, and leaned against the counter like gravity was failing him. He stayed there for a while, but the idea of being left alone with his thoughts had him feeling sick.

As he came back into the living room, slumping onto the couch with his beer already on the table and head in his hands, you knew something had happened.

You shuffled closer to him, resting a supportive hand on his back. “Steve? Talk to me.”

 “I just—Jesus, I don’t even know where to start.”

You waited. Gave him time.

He ran a hand down his face as he sat back upright. “Carrillo pushed two guys out of a chopper today. Just—no hesitation. No warning.”

He swallowed hard, still coming to terms with the day that passed. “And I stood there and watched it happen. I didn’t stop him. I didn’t even flinch. And the worst part is, I don’t know if I’m angry because it was wrong… or because it felt like part of the job.”

You reached for his hand, lacing your fingers with his.

“That doesn’t make you heartless,” you said quietly. “It makes you human. You’ve been through literal hell out there Steve.”

He shook his head, eyes glassy but refusing to spill. “No but you don't get it. I almost lost you. And then I come back and I’m right in the thick of it, like nothing happened— shit, like you weren’t lying in a fuckin' hospital bed a few days ago.”

His voice cracked. “I can’t do it like this anymore. Not without saying it.”

You cocked your head to the side but stayed silent, letting him find the words.

“I love you,” he said, voice rough. “I’ve loved you for a long time.”

He pauses, trying to gauge your reaction. With no avail, he kept going, like if he didn’t say it now, it would eat him alive.

“I tried not to. I really did. It was the wrong time, the wrong place—hell, everything about this was wrong. We were partners. You were my backup. My best friend. And I told myself that was enough, that I could handle it. That I could keep it in. But then I almost lost you and I—" He pulls out his pack of cigarette from his pocket, ready to light one. Instead, he throws them on the table.

“You just got out of the hospital. You’re still recovering. You shouldn’t have to deal with me and my shit on top of everything else. And I know working together makes things complicated, dangerous, fuckin’ reckless even. And yeah, maybe this is the worst possible time to say any of it. Maybe I should’ve waited until you were better. Until we were both in a better place. But I’ve been holding this in for months. And I’m tired.” Steve turns his whole body to face you, but your eyes are locked in on his; raw and pleading.

“I’m tired of pretending I don’t look for you the second I walk into a room. I’m tired of watching you get hurt and not being able to say how much it kills me. I’m tired of holding it all in while it tears me to fuckin' pieces!” He almost yelled. With a deep breath, his voice dropped, barely above a whisper. “If you don’t feel the same, if you need space, or time, I’ll back off. Hell, I’ll leave Colombia if I have to. I just needed you to know... Before I drown in it.”

Silence settles between you, thick and heavy. Steve uses the opportunity to take a swig of his beer, thinking about the whiskey he’s going to drown himself in when you reject him.

“Steve.” You finally call out, and he can’t decipher your tone of voice.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head down, as if he was bracing for impact. You cautiously reached out for his face with both hands, gently turning his head towards you. Your eyes met his wide, scared and hopeful ones.

“I’ve been in love with you for a while,” you said softly. “I just didn’t know how to show it. Not when we were both carrying all this weight. I didn’t want to lose what we had. And after everything that’s happened, with everyone we've lost… I didn’t know if it was fair to throw my feelings on top of it all.”

Steve gently rested his hands on the sides of your pyjama-clad thighs, still scared he was going to hurt you.

“But for me,” you continued, voice thick with emotion, “it’s you. It’s always been you, Steve. Always has been. Always will be.”

His breath hitched. He stared at you like you you hung the stars, like hope was a fragile thing and you’d just handed it to him wrapped in gold.

And then he kissed you.

It wasn’t desperate. It wasn’t rushed. It was slow. Warm. Real. The kind of kiss that said I’m here. I see you. I’m not going anywhere.

When he pulled back, he pressed his forehead gently against yours.

“I’m all in,” you whispered. “You can’t get rid of me that easily now.”

His lips quirked up, breathless, eyes slowly opening to meet yours.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Me too.”

Outside, the world kept turning. But inside that apartment, for once, it could wait.

[lepabebaa]

read every steve murphy x reader fic on this app and respectfully i need more wtf

[emmcfrxst]

wanna ride steve murphy and grab his jaw to force his mouth open so i can spit in his mouth. thank you for your time.

[emmcfrxst]

wanna suck his dick under the desk while he’s getting scolded by messina over something him and javier did <3

[emmcfrxst]

wanna shut him up by making him eat me out after he went to follow a lead on his own like a dumb ass rookie <3

[blueberry-sleight]

Dawn is like 'oh owen thinks hes operations 🙄' girl nobody tells him what he's supposed do until after he's done it. He repeatedly asks his coworkers for help and gets it without going over their heads to force them maybe 1/5 of the time. wtf do you want from him

[et6rnalsun]

matt’s job is NOT dancing in a 10s tiktok 😂😂 atp u guys js want to talk shit about EVERYTHING. leave him tf alone & don’t even try to bring out his mental health

[pepsiskiess]

CHRIS STURNIOLO AS JAMES BEAUFORT. Thats it. Thats the tweet