emergency contact | dean di laurentis
a/n: so sorry for taking a couple of days to upload this, i wanted to make sure it was perfect!! this is my longest project to date and i'm so proud of it i love them sm. 💗.
pairing: dean di laurentis x childhoodbsf!reader
warnings: swearing, mentions of trauma (not detailed), drinking, alcohol consumption, hospital setting, injuries, hurt/comfort
summary: in which an on-ice accident brings fifteen years of hidden feelings to light in a boston hospital room
Hockey was a dangerous sport. Dean knew that, and he still chose to play. He skated his way through elementary school, high school and now college.
Most people believed his trips outside at night were to the rink, that hockey was what calmed him down when he couldn’t sleep, or when he had too much on his mind and the world felt too loud. But hockey wasn’t what served that purpose, it was you.
You and Dean met at age seven, in New York city. Both of your families had penthouses in the same building, which caused you to run into each other often.
Your friendship bloomed during a Christmas dinner that same year. Mother had instructed you to buy a lengthy list of products at the bodega next to the complex, and Dean’s mother had done the same.
The two of you bumped into each other and got the grocery lists mixed up, causing you to buy the wrong ingredients for your families. When your mother realized what had happened, she went to Dean’s family flat in hopes of sorting things out.
Instead of simply exchanging the products and leaving, Dean’s mother and her decided to host the dinner together, immediately clicking. That night, they both spent their time chatting while you two snuck out of the room, and went someplace else.
“How many drinks in do you think they are?” he asked you, moving the horse on the board and killing one of your bishops.
“I’d say about halfway through the second bottle, knowing my mother,” you answered, a huff coming out of both of your mouths.
“Not so fast, Di Laurentis,” you countered, bringing your queen to trap his king to the edge of the board. “Checkmate.”
He saw it, your king would deliver the final blow, and he’d lost. For the first time, Dean Di Laurentis had been beaten by someone at chess.
Despite being annoyed at himself for not predicting your move, he was glad to see your mouth shape into a grin, even if you bragged about the win for the following week.
After that night, you and Dean declared that you were to be friends. Not just friends– best friends. So, even as the years passed, you two remained constants in each other’s lives. He told you everything, and you did the same.
New York was your city, the space where you could just be the two of you. No outside pressure, no drama, and no complications. Christmases evolved into spring breaks and summer breaks as soon as you two had the power to decide where you wanted to go, which was around the start of high school, due to the lack of attention you received from your parents.
Whenever people wondered if distance put a strain on your relationship, you both laughed. One of the best parts of being reckless teenagers was that you often took trains to see each other, stealing the apartment keys from your parents and spending weekends in the flats, switching penthouses every night.
“Mine or yours tonight?” Dean asked you, putting the tray of blueberry muffin batter in the oven’s middle rack.
“We did yesterday here, so switching it up would be nice, don’t you think? Plus, I think my mom left some of her good liquor over there,” you giggled, raising your brows and smiling.
“Would you look at that? Her first good act of the decade,” he laughed.
“I’ll bring our bags over there then. Should we go buy chips from the bodega or something?” he inquired, after opening the snack cabinet and seeing there weren’t any left.
“Sure, but why don’t we go on a dinner picnic to prospect park or something, that’d be cool,” you suggested, putting the remaining dirty baking dishes in the dishwasher.
“You are a genius, pretty girl, let’s go,” he said, grinning and placing a kiss to the top of your head.
Dean called you after every important thing in his life, because you were the most important person in it. Even if you two fought, which you didn’t do very often, you found your way back to each other, back to New York.
Ever since you started college, you two saw each other often. With you studying at Harvard and him studying at Briar, the distance that separated you was smaller.
That was why you’d showed up to every single game the Hawks played since the start of college. The boys often wondered who that girl in the opposing team’s stand wearing a Di Laurentis jersey that looked like it was years old was. They knew of you, but they’d never actually met you.
God, Dean never shut his mouth up when it came to you.
“Y’know, G, she would have never mixed my white laundry with my colors,” Dean said, observing the disaster Garrett had created.
“You will never shut up about her, won’t you?” Garrett asked him, and Dean shook his head.
“How do we know she’s even real? You talk about her like she’s an angel who fell from the sky,” Logan added.
Beau was quick to offer a response. “Oh, she’s very real. If you met her, you would think the same thing. Except Dean’s reaction is exaggerated because he's whipped.”
“See, that’s funny, because she’s my best friend,” Dean said, denying the last thing Beau said.
“These things happen in Hannah’s romance books all the time, dude,” Garrett pointed out and all of the other boys started laughing at him.
“My mom wants us to move to this really big but ugly house in Winchester, which is unfortunately very far away from where we live now, as you may have noticed,” you told Dean, turning around on the king bed to face him, the New York skyline illuminating your face.
“You don’t seem sad at all,” he mentioned, facing you as well.
“That’s because Winchester is way closer to the city, and closer to Connecticut, than where we are now. And that’s what matters,” you said.
“Does this mean we can make New York a monthly thing or?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“This means we can come every two weeks,” you said, a big grin plastered on your face.
Dean pulled you close to him on the king bed and, in an attempt to hug you, ended up rolling both of you off the bed.
Finals week had been eating you alive. It was always bad, but this semester had been especially tough, due to your classes being graduate-level electives.
You told Dean that you wouldn’t be able to attend the week’s game through FaceTime, and he wasn’t even mad. Dean could sometimes act very immature-like, but that never happened with you. He understood you needed to prioritize your studies. Plus, you’d been to every single game since Freshman year.
That particular game was against an especially aggressive team, but the Hawks knew what to do. They had practiced drills to evade certain attacks over and over again, and they were more than prepared. Or so they thought.
The opponents had turned out to be even worse than the team had expected, throwing illegal punches left and right, but Dean managed to stay away from the ones he deemed to be the most violent for the better part of the game.
But when he saw a clear goal opportunity, he took it. Because he was Dean goddamn Di Laurentis, and he wasn’t scared of a couple state university players who had to throw everyone on the floor just to gain control of the puck.
Skating quickly through the ice, Dean was too focused on what was ahead that he missed the player coming up behind him.
Suddenly, he was on the floor, his ears ringing and his eyes unable to open.
“Call her,” he said, unaware of the fact that nobody could hear his whispers.
When everything went to black, the only thing on his mind was you.
“Dean, you’re going to get yourself killed!” you yelled at him as he skated through Wollman rink with astounding speed.
“I got it, pretty girl!” he yelled back from the rink, grinning at you.
After being bribed with hot cocoa, you agreed to go with Dean to the ice rink so he could practice his skating. He’d become obsessed about hockey, and even though he’d always loved the sport, you’d never seen him this dedicated.
“If you’ve got it, push harder, come on! We don’t want you slacking, Di Laurentis,” you joked, moving your hand in circles.
“On it,” he echoed, speeding over to where you were from the other side.
“Y’know, it wouldn’t hurt you to try,” he said, crossing his arms.
“Just so you can check me into the boards and write it off as ‘practice’? No thank you, I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!”
“I’ll convert you one day, you’ll see,” he determined, making you roll your eyes sarcastically.
The call came in at seven pm. You wondered why the local Boston hospital was calling you, but picked up nonetheless.
“Hello ma’am, this is Dr. Abbott, we have you listed as Dean Di Laurentis’ emergency contact. Is this information correct?” the doctor asked, and your heart sank.
Dean. The hospital. A game.
“Yes, that’s right,” you responded, standing up from your chair and going to fetch one of your coats.
“We regret to inform you that we have Dean over in our emergency department”
A pit formed in your stomach. The emergency department.
“He has been seriously injured and we request your assistance to the hospital to discuss things further”
“Is he awake?” you inquired, barely able to hold tears back.
“Not at the moment, I’m afraid,” said the doctor.
“’ll be there in thirty minutes”
After hanging up, you grabbed your keys and raced outside the house. The clothes you were wearing didn’t even cross your mind, for it was far too busy shifting through the possible injuries that could land Dean in the ER.
Running down the stairs of your apartment building, another name appeared on your screen, calling you.
You slid your finger through the cold screen, answering the call as fast as you could. Beau’s face popped up on the screen, and you felt a tiny sense of relief once you saw he was already in the hospital.
“I assume they’ve called you already,” he said when he noticed that the oversized hockey jersey you were wearing, which was obviously Dean’s, sat under a big coat.
“Yeah, they have. Who’s there already?” you wondered, finally reaching the lobby.
Beau answered, but all sound felt muffled as you ran towards your car, rushing to get inside and be on your way to the hospital.
Memories flooded your brain as you pressed your body to the car seat, which only made you want to get to Dean more.
It was the last game of sophomore year, and you had taken a three and a half hour train to surprise Dean inside of the rink. Suited up in your Di Laurentis jersey, you waited for twenty more minutes until the players came into the ice.
As soon as he spotted you leaning next to the box, he dropped his stick and ran to hug you, ignoring the comments he got from his coach and teammates.
“What are you doing here, pretty girl?” he asked, a wide smile crowding his face.
“I wanted to surprise you today. You kept mentioning how excited you were for this game, and I decided to buy a train ticket over,” you replied, mirroring his own smile.
“Does your mom know you’re here?” his tone shifted, not concerned, just curious.
“We’ve been approved for a three day sleepover,” you reassured.
“Di Laurentis, get into the rink!” his coach yelled, beckoning him inside.
“Go get ‘em, Dean,” you told him, tapping the spot in his jersey that was over his heart.
The game was going very well, Dean’s team leading by five goals. The crowd was cheering like crazy, screams echoing throughout the rink. Then came gasps, followed by a thick wave of silence.
Dean had been knocked onto the floor with an insane amount of force, leaving him unresponsive.
You ran from your spot in the stands to where they were carrying him out of the rink faster than the speed of light, pushing people off your way if you needed to.
“Excuse me, young lady, you can’t be here. We’re escorting him to the hospital,” said the team medic.
“I’m family,” you stated, standing your ground.
After a moment of hesitation, the medic nodded and allowed you to go with the rest of the personnel. They placed Dean on a gurney inside an ambulance, and you interlocked your fingers with his during the journey to the hospital.
The feeling of terror inside you wasn’t any different this time. A cloud of dread rested above you on your way to the hospital, during which you’d remained on call with Beau.
“What happened?” you asked him once your mind was as clear as it would get.
“He lost consciousness after getting checked into the boards. The doc said he had a pretty severe concussion and the usual hockey injuries, but they put him into observation because his breathing was odd” Beau replied, trying to keep his tone as steady as possible to alarm you as little as he could.
You didn’t know what to say. You just kept driving, your eyes on the road, your mind on Dean.
“You know he’ll go on and on about how you’re his lucky charm and that’s the reason why he got hurt, right?” Beau joked, getting a small laugh out of you.
“I can already hear him say it,” you said, the corners of your mouth turning up.
Parking in the hospital lot took less time than expected, so you headed out of the car with shaky hands and stood in front of the automated doors of the ER, which allowed you to enter.
Bright LED lights blazed into your eyes, and the sharp smell of sterile cleaning products, iodine and latex gloves penetrated your nostrils. Nurses rushed up and down the hallways, their hands busy at all times. The place was filled with despair and hope overlapping with one another, infinite possibilities streaming out of every patient.
The woman at reception shot you a pitiful look before setting the mug on her hand down and focusing her full attention onto you.
“Who are you here for, sweetheart?” she kindly asked, turning to type your response into the database.
“Di Laurentis, Dean,” you responded, fiddling with the charmed bracelet on your right hand.
“He’s in the observation unit at the end of the hall. There’s a crowd of people outside, so you’ll see it,” she remarked, making you huff.
Despite never having met them, you had a pretty good idea of who the people may be. Dean had told you all about his friends from Briar. Garrett, Logan, Tucker, Hannah and Allie.
So, you had a pretty good idea of which group they were when you spotted them. Beau was also there with them, and his expression fully shifted when he saw you. Relief spread through his features, and he came over to give you a hug.
“They wouldn’t let us see him because we’re too many and not his–”
“Emergency contacts,” you finished the sentence for him, hugging him back.
Handing your coat over to him, you looked for the nearest nurse to notify her of your appearance and ask her to let you into the room.
“Is that..?” Logan asked Beau, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, she is,” Beau responded, sitting down on a chair.
“That isn’t Dean’s Briar Hockey jersey,” Hannah pointed out, observing the details of the embroidered 66 on your back.
“It was his senior night jersey, Dean gave it to her so he could spot her at games in college,” Beau explained, mentally preparing himself to answer the flood of questions that he was sure would come.
Before any of them could ask anything else, you came back with a nurse, room keys in hand.
“Nice to meet you all, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’ll be right back,” you stated in a poor attempt to hide the shaky tone in your voice.
All of the fear slowly melted away when you saw Dean laid down on the hospital bed, and you let out a breath you didn’t even realise you were holding.
You stepped into the room and immediately sat on the chair next to his bed, lacing his uninjured fingers with yours.
Suddenly, a rough, gravelly voice laced with painkillers spoke for the first time. “I know I’m handsome, but your gaze will burn through my face if you keep staring at me like that”
A bruise was starting to form on his jaw, and his hair was messy. His eyes, red from the painkillers the medical staff had given him, were entirely focused on you.
“You idiot. You absolute, utter, stubborn idiot!” you exclaimed, your voice catching in your throat as you heard his own. You knew you couldn’t stay mad at him for long, you’d never been able to.
Despite your tone, he simply smiled, his thumb tracing patterns on the back of your hand. The asshole was soothing you while he was getting lectured.
“Missed you in the stands today. I didn’t have anyone to look at after scoring, it was kind of pointless,” he said, the corners of his lip tugging at his stitches, and he winced slightly at the feeling.
“Do not joke right now, Di Laurentis. A doctor and Beau called me from the hospital–” your voice broke, tears threatening to spill from your eyes, “they said you got checked, hard, and you weren’t responding. They said your breathing was off.”
“Hey,” he squeezed your hand and pulled on your sleeve, waiting for you to get closer to him. “C’mere”
Once you moved the chair as close to the hospital bed as you could, Dean’s good hand came up to wipe one of the slow tears that had come out of your eyes.
“I’m okay, pretty girl,” he reassured, interlocking his fingers with yours again. His fingers grazed your knuckles, softer than usual. “I’m here, I’m okay”
Despite being in pain, Dean’s only preoccupation was to make the tears in your face disappear, because if he was asked to name the thing that he disliked most in the world, his answer would be seeing you hurt.
The doorbell in Dean’s New York apartment rang, and Dean raced downstairs, expecting to encounter one of the packages he’d ordered. However, when he opened the door, he saw you.
Clothes soaked, sobs shutting the sound of heavy rain out from the apartment. Without asking, he pulled you flush to him.
“You’re okay. You’re with me,” his voice and warmth grounded you, reminding you that you were safe because you were with him.
Dean ran his hands through your wet hair until your breathing evened out and you were ready to talk. “I trusted my mom when she said she’d changed, when she asked me to go down to their place for thanksgiving. But when I got there, she was only nice for twenty minutes. Then, she started screaming at me and telling me just how much of a failure I was and how she regretted me all together”
“She was drunk, wasn’t she?” he asked, looking down at you with eyes full of understanding.
You gave him a small nod, and he sighed in defeat. He’d known your mom as long as he’d known you, and there had always been a bottle of some sort alongside her, as a mandatory accessory. After your gesture, he pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead, and you two stood enveloped in each other in silence for quite some time.
There was nothing he hated more than seeing you suffer, whether that may be physical or mental. A close second, though, was seeing you cry. The moment tears were involved, Dean just wanted to hold you and run his hands through your hair to soothe you and prove you were safe when he was alongside you. No matter what.
That night, Dean and you curled up on the couch to watch one of your comfort movies, a nightly ritual you both did before playing a couple of games of chess and then going to bed.
“What are we watching tonight, pretty girl?” he asked, arm around your shoulder, pulling you into him.
“Will you cry again if I put The Notebook on?” you questioned, scrunching your nose up at him.
“You know I will,” he affirmed, a raspy laugh coming out of his throat.
“That is not very d1 hockey player and fraternity brother of you, Di Laurentis,” you teased, poking his side to get control of the remote.
“There you are, thought you’d vanished on me”
“I could never vanish if you’re with me, you know that,” your voice grew quieter, more serious.
“And you know that I’m not the way you described while I’m with you,” his tone matched yours as his hand traced lazy patterns on your shoulder.
“Yeah, you’re yourself here,” you deadpanned, and Dean didn’t even dare deny it.
Nobody had warned you and Dean about how nostalgic you would feel right before going off to college on your own.
You and Dean had picked Harvard and Briar to be closer together than you’d ever been while not being in New York, but you couldn’t deny that you wished college wouldn’t stop you from driving out to the city every other week.
It was your last night in the city before officially becoming college students, and you were both more scared than you’d let on. So, logically, you’d decided to go out and get pizza at the 24-hour pizza joint you had next door.
“Should we dress up or just go like this?” you thought out loud, looking down at the oversized hoodie you were wearing, which you’d stolen from Dean.
“It’s 2 AM, no one will see us on the street,” he said, snorting at your comment.
The walk to the pizza place was filled with laughs and memories, recalling the times where you’d showed up to his school and he’d showed up to yours, sometimes unannounced but never less welcome.
Once you reached the joint, Dean went ahead and ordered both of your pizzas without asking. He knew your order off the top of his head.
Emilio, the man at the register, smiled at the sight of you and Dean, unable to contain his happiness. He’d seen you two grow up and change together, and the way you two enchanted him was visible in his face every time you stepped into his shop late at night.
“Don’t stop coming by during holidays, kids! I’ll be expecting you this Christmas,” Emilio said as he handed you two your pizzas.
“We’ll never stop coming here, Emilio,” You told the man and glanced at Dean, who was nodding.
“Not when you make the best pizzas in New York,” Dean said, his mouth beginning to water.
You and Dean ate your pizzas, sharing half of yours with the other person. The only thing left to do was walk back home.
Even if the joint was just a couple of blocks from your apartments, it was easy to get distracted while walking around the city, especially if you were with Dean. Walking backwards while eating a slice of pizza, you didn’t notice you were about to fall into a puddle.
Dean grabbed you by the collar of your hood and pulled you flush to him, preventing your fall. Suddenly, the air felt like it had thickened up, partially because of how Dean was looking at you. He was studying your face like it was his favorite subject and he never wanted to stop learning.
Dean’s hand moved to the nape of your neck and he opened his mouth to say something, your heart racing. Just when he was about to say it, a speeding taxi passed by next to you, shutting Dean up.
“I’m gonna miss messing with you, pretty girl,” he said, moving you to his side by your waist and then letting you go.
The tone in his voice was filled with things unsaid, things you were too scared to put out into the air. Because once they were out there, they couldn’t be reeled back in.
“You scared the shit out of me, Dean,” you whispered, staring at the boy you had known forever, the one who had been with you through everything, who you knew would never let you go.
The knot in your throat did not seem to want to loosen unless you spoke and mentioned what was truly on your mind, what you’d longed to say to him ever since you saw the hospital was calling you.
“For a second, I wondered what would happen if you didn’t make it, what my life would look like without you in it. And I didn’t like it one bit. Because I don’t know who I am without you, Dean. Without you, I’m half of myself, you took the rest the moment we met, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you, Dean. I think I always have”
Dean’s eyes were locked into yours, his breathing heavy and uneven. With your words, you’d completely shattered his facade, leaving him unfiltered.
“When everything went black, death didn’t scare me. The only thing on my mind was you. Because if I left it all behind then, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how I’ve felt all of these years,” he said, and your eyebrows furrowed out of instinct.
“You think I’ve been looking at you like this for fifteen years just because you’re my best friend? No, pretty girl, it’s because you’re my entire world. It’s always been you, ever since we played that damn chess game during Christmas break. I love you too”
The two of you let out a small laugh at the same time, one of the tiny habits you’d picked up from each other over the years.
“Now come closer, if the nurses see me leaning in to kiss you, I might not make it out of this hospital after all,” he joked, making your face shift into a grin.
Careful of the beeping monitor beside you, and the wires attached to him, you closed the remaining distance between the two of you. His good hand escaped your grasp to settle on your jaw, and your own hands moved to the nape of his neck, fiddling with the blond hair that was there.
The atmosphere didn’t completely change, it simply revealed what it had truly been all along. It was a reminder that all of the stolen glances, the gentle touches and the quiet nights filled with charged silence hadn’t been for nothing.
Dean’s breath caught in his throat the moment your lips grazed his, and he couldn’t bear to wait any longer. Tentatively, he pressed your lips to his, tangling you in a kiss. It was hesitant at first, as if he couldn’t believe this wasn’t just one of his dreams, as if he wasn’t sure if you were even real.
After letting out a sigh of relief, he kissed you like the world owed him something for keeping you away from him for so long, like it came as natural to him as breathing, like he never wanted to let your lips split from his ever again.
When you finally pulled back, your forehead resting against his, you two kept your eyes closed for a few seconds. He opened his before you did, so you caught him looking at you like you’d just fulfilled his biggest dreams with a kiss.
“So, does this mean you’re officially my girl now?” he whispered, his signature grin finally appearing on his face.
“I’ve been your girl for a while, Di Laurentis”
By the time you’d finished that sentence, Dean was already tugging you closer to him with his good hand to kiss you again, which made you giggle. Both of you had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and you wanted to make the most of it.
Suddenly, there was a creak at the door.
“D, we come bearing gi– What the fuck!” yelled Logan, almost dropping the things he’d brought over from the vending machine.
Garret came into the room and just stared at you two, flushed faces and intertwined hands. His face was a completely blank look, jaw hung ajar.
You cleared your throat, running a hand through your messy hair and moving to stand next to Dean.
“What’s going on in there, G?” asked Beau from the door, making his way in. Once he saw your joined hands, messy hair, and the grin on Dean’s face, he quickly put the pieces together.
“Fuck yeah, D! Finally! Took you long enough, idiots,” Beau said, beginning to clap.
“The rest of you do not understand what a pain all of these years have been. I’ve had to wait since high school. This is such a big moment for me,” he continued, his face shifting onto a smirk.
Tucker, hearing the commotion that was coming from inside, also decided to step in. “So this is pretty girl, huh? Nice to meet you too”
The boys laughed, but the flush on your face only deepened.
“Guys, you’re ruining a moment!” yelled Hannah and Allie in unison from behind the boys.
“Okay, okay, we’ll leave the two lovebirds be,” Logan replied, shooting Dean a knowing smile before leaving the room.
The Hawks and Beau walked out, leaving you and Dean alone again. Beau’s cheers were audible, and he was telling every member of the group the story of your lives.
Dean pressed a gentle kiss to your knuckles, and then looked at you again. It was the same look he’d been giving you since you were kids, but you saw it under a different lens now.
His fingers, still interlocked with yours, traced patterns on the back of your hand. “Y’know, the second I get let out of here, we’re going straight to the city again”
“Are you feeling homesick, Di Laurentis?” you teased. The smile that cracked through your lips broke your act, though.
“If you’re with me, I’ll never feel homesick,” he retorted, leaving you puzzled.
“New York’s not my home, pretty girl. You are”
i'm making a dean taglist (finally) so lmk in my inbox (or in the comments) if u wanna be added!!
