It's a strange feeling when you see your childhood crush after all these years; he's grown up, and I've grown up and fallen even more in love with him.
how it feels when you're reading a fic and a character you love is mischaracterized so horrendously to the point where it's not even them but everyone in the comments love it
no because nobody understands how hard it was to find x reader fics of anyone in the gaang or atla fandom in general before this movie came out. now there’s new fics coming out daily. I USED TO PRAY FOR TIMES LIKE THIS‼️
Summary - They told her he was a monster. A violent, remorseless prisoner buried deep inside a supermax facility. A man no one could control... and no one could understand.
As the new prison psychologist, she was brought in to study men like him. To analyse him. To fix what couldn't be fixed.
She knew the risks but nothing could have prepared her for the moment their eyes met... and something shifted.
Azriel didn't look at her like prey. He looked at her like she was his. And suddenly, every rule she's ever followed began to blur.
The most dangerous place in that prison isn't his cell—it's the pull between them, dark, obsessive and completely forbidden.
Tags - prisoner x psychologist AU, dark romance, morally grey characters, forbidden romance, obsessive love
Contents -
⚠ One
⚠ Two
⚠ Three
⚠ Four
⚠ Five
⚠ Six
⚠ Seven
⚠ Eight
⚠ Nine
⚠ Ten
ACOTAR Masterlist
A/n - As always content warnings will be at the start of each chapter, so please be sure to read them before continuing.
Another requested fic and I ATE this up... I had way too much fun writing it. The plotting, the tension, the characters—everything about this had me completely hooked from start to finish!!
It's 10 whole parts which is the longest fic I've written in months, so you already know I went a little feral with the ideas and let myself fully lean into the chaos xx
Please don't hesitate to vote or comment along the way, it truly means the world to me <3
CW/TW: Typical Heated Rivalry warnings, mentions of mental health issues, slight angst, hollanov in the background/mentioned
~~~
From his spot on the rooftop terrace, Los Angeles looked like a faraway, fuzzy dream. It might've been from all the champagne he'd drunk back to back to ease his discomfort, but he felt feather light, weightless, better.
He liked how hazy the lights looked, golden and twinkling, different colors of various sizes. The city was considered an oasis in the middle of a desert for many who traveled to it, a place to become someone new, someone different.
He found nothing intriguing about the clubs and the casinos or the countless Elvis Presley's who happily officiated weddings.
The cold metal of the railing dug into his temple when he leaned his head against it, and the concrete was uncomfortably rough and flat against his ass, but he'd dealt with worse before.
A gentle breeze blew by, and he sighed, resting his shoulder against the railing. At least they'd fly home the following morning.
(Y/N) never particularly enjoyed attending the NHL Awards ceremony. He found nothing fun or exciting about it, and most of his colleagues were more keen on exploring LA's nightlife and throwing their well-earned money around than anything else.
(Y/N) attended for Ilya, because if he refused, Ilya would spend the entire time bombarding him with messages about how bored he was without him.
But (Y/N) now wondered how truthful his playful tantrums were because Shane Hollander faithfully attended the ceremonies each year, and they'd been having secret sex for who knew how long.
(Y/N) imagined Ilya texted him before and after sleeping with Shane, complaining about how lonely he was despite getting his dick wet.
(Y/N)'s jaw clenched, twirling his cigarette around and digging it into the concrete floor, wisps of smoke flowing out of his mouth. He inhaled sharply, irritated by the needle-like prickle in his eyes.
He had no claim over Ilya Rozanov, no real reason to feel jealous or betrayed. They'd never even shared a drunken kiss before that would imply any of his feelings were reciprocated.
"Stupid." He sighed, the metal vibrating when he tapped his head against it. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
He pressed his forehead against the railing, his eyes sliding shut and squeezing out the tears that'd collected. They slid onto his lashes and dripped down, his nose slowly growing stuffy.
He'd thought about leaving Boston, about being traded someplace else. He was good, but hardly jaw-dropping. The Raiders would easily trade him for someone new.
But Ilya was a stubborn man, and he never made things easy. He'd fight it, and then he'd fight (Y/N), prodding him with questions and following him wherever he was sent to.
It was no use; Ilya viewed himself as his handler, his caretaker. Maybe Ilya liked feeling needed, patted himself on the back for helping the needy.
"(Y/N) (L/N)... the charity case of the Boston Raiders." (Y/N) laughed breathlessly, sniffling quietly, partly regretting having put out his cigarette so soon. "From the boarding school nutcase to the team charity case... what a fucking joke. So dumb. Why'd I even go into hockey? Why do grown men chase a little turd across a rink-"
"You're talking to yourself?"
"Jesus fucking Christ!"
(Y/N)'s head whirled around so fast it was a miracle he avoided getting whiplash. Shane Hollander stood a couple feet away from him with his hands in his pockets and a splash of amusement on his face, the night's breeze tussling some of his neatly styled hair.
The sight was nothing new to (Y/N). When Shane Hollander wasn't in gear, he either wore gym clothes or suits. He looked irritatingly handsome.
"Ever heard of announcing yourself? Fuck."
(Y/N) took in a big, long breath, pressing his hand over his chest until his heart stopped racing. Staggering onto his feet, (Y/N) dragged his fingers over his cheeks and the corners of his eyes roughly, hoping the following inhale he took cleared up his nose.
"What're you even doing up here?"
Shane stared at him, his brows slowly furrowing and mouth forming a frown, the amusement that'd made his eyes crinkle disappearing. "Were you crying?" Shane asked, taking two steps toward him before he stopped himself, uncertainty flashing in his face.
(Y/N)'s shoulders drew into a tense, defensive line. "No."
"Yes, you were."
"Why ask if you know, then?"
That familiar eruption of irritation seeped into his voice. His nostrils flared when he breathed in and out again, his fingers rising to run over his face.
Relax. Relax. Shane Hollander is an innocent bystander in all of this. None of this is his fault.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them, he found Shane even closer than before. "What do you want, Hollander?"
Shane's dark eyes flickered between his, searching. "I want to know why you-" He took a quick look around the terrace, his adams apple bobbing. "Why you had sex with me if you find me annoying? I've been- I've been thinking about it since we last saw each other, and it- it doesn't make sense to me."
(Y/N) rolled his neck until he heard a soft pop, and tried to force his body into relaxing. He could feel the whirlwind building up inside him, the urge to shout and cry at the same time bubbling.
He leaned back against the railing and set his hand over the cool metal, focusing on the cold and not how hot he felt in his clothes.
"I said you were annoying on the ice. I said you weren't horrible. I said we should leave it in the past and go our separate ways, so why are you bringing this up a month later when everyone in the league is right below us?"
He'd left Ilya with Marlow and St. Simon, but the blond would eventually go searching for him. Or for Shane.
"Now's not a great time."
Shane's frown deepened. He looked... embarrassed, his eyes jumping away like he hadn't really thought his plan through. "Why are you being a dick all of a sudden?" He asked, his voice breathless, disappointed. Good. "I came up here to see if you- if you wanted to talk. Why were you crying?"
Some part of him wanted to strangle the poor, oblivious Canadian.
"My personal life is none of your business, Hollander." (Y/N) had a million questions about his, though, starting with: Why does Ilya Rozanov like you so much? "And we have nothing to talk about. We had a one-night stand, that's it. I don't get your obsession with rehashing this shit, man."
"Because- Because I've been thinking more about you than the guy who broke my heart, and I wanted to know if you were thinking about me, too."
No.
No fucking way.
(Y/N)'s throat was dry when he swallowed. He needed a drink, maybe five and a xanny to really take the edge off. He tore his eyes off Shane to stare into the darkness around them, his heart picking up in pace.
His thoughts filled with Ilya, then with the night he spent with Shane, and then they became static, white noise.
"I'm..." He began, his heart in his throat. He pushed himself off the railing and staggered past Shane, faintly light-headed. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, and you're going to get a grip, and we'll never speak of this again."
"Why?"
(Y/N) spun around to face the Metro's captain and stepped close enough that their chests bumped. Shane flinched at the sudden movement, but squared his shoulders stubbornly. (Y/N) wished Shane would stop making things so damn difficult.
"Because Ilya's my best friend, and I know you've been fucking him behind everyone's backs for- for years, probably!" Shane's face fell into a brief panic, then deep guilt. "Sleeping with the best friend of the guy who broke your heart is some high school shit, Hollander."
Shane stared at him, the tips of his ears rapidly darkening with red. His eyes flickered around the terrace, and he swallowed harshly, irritation building on his face.
"He's your friend!" He snapped, and it was (Y/N)'s turn to flinch. "He and I were never together-"
(Y/N) tried to ignore the voice crack, the tremor in his voice when he spoke. Shane liked Ilya, too. He liked him a lot. It showed in his voice, the brief flicker of hurt in his eyes.
(Y/N)'s brain began to churn, questions and assumptions bubbling like boiling water. They liked each other. They likely loved each other.
And (Y/N) never once realized that he never stood a chance.
"-so fuck you for trying to make me feel bad! Is it a fucking crime to want to- to explore? I didn't do anything wrong! He confused me. He made me think-"
Shane sucked in a sharp breath, his lips rolling into his mouth and nostrils flaring with a deeper inhale. He looked distraught.
"He made me think that he liked me, and then- then he talks to me like I'm- I'm nothing to him."
(Y/N) wanted to crawl out of his skin. He wanted to peel it right off.
He reached up to his collar and ripped the tie (the very tie Ilya had helped him with earlier in the day) off, tossing it aside so he could paw at the first few buttons of his shirt.
His feet led him backwards until he turned, Shane's following words muffled and distant to his ears as he threw the rooftop entrance door open.
The cold air felt good on his skin, and his footsteps thundered in the stairwell when he hurried down the steps, going through the first set of doors he found.
A small, empty hallway greeted him. His back pressed to the wall, and he slid down it, cradling his knees close to his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, his heartbeat thumping in his ears.
He thought he'd come to accept that Ilya would never want him, but staring at Shane's face, seeing the whirlwind of emotions on his face...
(Y/N) imagined what type of things they'd done to warrant the heartbreak on Shane's face, the type of things they'd talked about.
Had Ilya shared his secrets with him? His past? Were there inside jokes between them, things they only whispered to each other under the sheets with sweat clinging to their bodies?
He wondered how many things Ilya had shared with Shane that he'd thought had only been between them, things he thought had been reserved only for him: his smile, his laughter, the cooed Russian, the overwhelming affection.
Despite the tears that fell from his face, a little, dry laugh ripped from his throat. God, how embarrassing, crying over a man who'd never look at him in any other way. (Y/N)'s head rolled back, thumping softly on the wall, his watery eyes trained forward on the dull gray wall across from him.
Fuck, what a dumbass...
He had roughly two months of vacation before they'd return to the arena to practice day in and day out. That meant he had two months to finally get over Ilya Rozanov, to reinvent himself the way aspiring fools around the country did whenever they left their miserable hometowns.
Two months to put himself out there. Two months to find someone-
The doors opened beside him, and he stuck his foot out to keep the one closest to him from swinging back into him. He made eye contact with Shane and sighed quietly, his fingers rubbing over his forehead.
The guy was persistent; he had to give him that. A good quality for a hockey player to have, but an annoying one for a hook-up you wanted to shake off.
"Do you like Rozanov?" Shane asked, a tad out of breath, his shoulders rising and falling with the small breaths he took to even out his breathing. "Is that why you're so upset? You like him? You- You think we're, what, love rivals?"
"It doesn't matter," (Y/N) answered quietly, his voice shot to hell.
From his spot on the floor, the light overhead made Shane appear like an angel with a white halo. Was Shane Hollander simply just... perfect?
"It doesn't mean anything, Hollander. He likes you, but he's too chickenshit to say it. You're not my competition because I'm not even in the race."
Shane lowered himself down on his hunches. "You can be a dick, (L/N), but you deserve better than this." He told him, reaching out to gently brush away his tears, his fingertips grazing over his cheek. "Does he know? Has he... mentioned me?"
"I may not be the smartest guy here, Hollander, but I'm not a complete idiot. I have two working eyes. I've seen how he looks at you, and... God, you're saved in his phone as Jane. What is he in your phone, huh? Leah?" (Y/N) sniffled roughly and raised his fist to cough into it lightly. "Lyla?"
Shane's hand dropped. "... Lily."
"Cute. Real cute." (Y/N) scoffed softly, spreading his legs apart to sit more comfortably. "Why'd you break up?"
"We weren't together-"
"Why'd you break up, Jane?"
Shane frowned, and he leaned back onto his hands, readjusting his stance so he could sit on the floor. "It was the Olympics. I don't think you made the US team-"
(Y/N)'s lips pursed.
"Sorry."
Shane hardly looked apologetic. His chest rose with a deep inhale, his eyes lowering onto the small gap on the floor between them. He looked... somber.
"I wanted to check in on him, see how he was doing since, you know, we were in Russia, and they'd lost. He was... mean. Then, he ignored me for, like, months. Fuck him."
(Y/N) despised the satisfaction it gave him. Ilya had kept in regular touch with him during his time in Sochi, lamenting about his father and constantly telling him how much he wished (Y/N) had made the team. They'd send selfies back and forth, pictures showing what they were doing, and they called whenever possible.
And, of course, Ilya never ignored him for months. Quite the opposite, really. He frequently slept over or encouraged (Y/N) to sleep over at his place. Attached at the hip, St. Simons would joke, like conjoined twins. They really needed to be severed apart.
(Y/N) rubbed the heel of his hand over the fabric of his pant leg. "How many other queer athletes do you know?"
"Only you two. Why? Do you know anyone?"
"No." (Y/N) licked his lips, feeling the slightest bit lighter at the expense of Shane's heartbreak. "Just trying to make sure we don't end up going after the same guy again. Ilya hurt your feelings? Find someone new. Who knows, maybe it'll make him jealous, and he'll come crawling back."
"I don't want him to come back."
(Y/N)'s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he slipped it out, rolling his eyes at Shane. "I doubt that, Hollander. It's Ilya. He's the best possible thing that could've happened to either of us. Nobody will treat us as good as he does."
Roz is calling. . .
(Y/N) studied the contact photo of the two of them, their cheeks pressed together after Ilya insisted on them taking a photo together at Niagara Falls and, of course, had to be dramatic about it.
(Y/N) was caught mid-laugh, and Ilya's smile was huge, his eyes bright with pure happiness. He let the call go to voicemail.
"Why don't you tell him?" Shane's voice was quiet, lacking the stoic seriousness it'd carried previously. It was unguarded.
"Because even if he does have feelings for me, he obviously likes you more. Don't you get it? He's been moping around since forever! He misses you, Shane. God, are you that fucking-" (Y/N) clamped his mouth shut, breathing in deeply. Relax. Relax. "You're so fucking perfect, Hollander. I hate-"
(Y/N) groaned at the flood of tears that came again, furiously rubbing at his eyes. He sniffled, grunting quietly, and pushed himself up onto his feet again. Shane followed, looking desperately as if he wanted to argue against his words, but had the common sense not to. (Y/N)'s following inhale was wet.
"Sorry." He muttered, licking his lips. "I... I can get... emotional, sometimes. I- I say things and do things I don't mean. I.."
(Y/N) rubbed his thumb over his middle finger, hard, nearly digging his blunt nail in. His face burned. He'd always been encouraged to stay quiet about it, to hide it away.
"I'm supposed to take, uhm, medication, but I... forget sometimes... Most times. Ilya- Ilya helps. He understands."
"Oh," Shane said breathily. "I didn't- I didn't realize-"
"I don't like talking about it." (Y/N) sighed. "There's a reason I said I'm an acquired taste, Shane. I... I fucked up when I slept with you, and I'm sorry if you expected something to come from it. I was annoyed and- and I acted on impulse. I.. I had a good time, okay? But I can't do it again. It's not right."
(Y/N) took a glance at his phone. Roz is calling. . .
"Look, Shane, you don't like me. Whatever you think you feel for me is- is lust at most, okay?"
"Don't tell me how I feel."
"Stop being so stubborn, fuck."
(Y/N) clutched his phone tight in his hand, his finger hovering over the bright screen key. He rubbed his lips together and watched the second call go to voicemail.
"You don't like me, okay? And it's not fair for you to act or say you do simply because- because you're curious about me or want me as your rebound."
Shane's head shook lightly. "I never said that."
"You didn't have to, Shane. Hooking up with rules after you get your heartbroken? That's rebound stuff. And, shit, don't act all innocent. You knew how close Ilya and I were. You hooked up with me for the same reason I hooked up with you: spite. You wanted to get one over Ilya."
"I didn't come onto you."
"You didn't rebuff me."
Silence filled the hallway, temporarily broken by the vibrations of his phone again. If he ignored Ilya Rozanov again, he'd have the whole of Los Angeles looking for him.
(Y/N) looked down at his phone again, his jaw clenching and unclenching, before he swiped up to answer the call with a text instead, assuring him he was on his way.
"I'm not having this conversation with you again, Hollander. Get back with Ilya, or find someone else, but we've done enough damage. We don't need to add to it."
(Y/N) shoved his phone in his pocket and rolled back his shoulders, hoping and praying his heart settled by the time he returned to Ilya.
"I'm going to- I'm going to do what is best for myself. I'm going to... let these feelings for Ilya go. If you want him, have him."
"I don't want to go through that again, (Y/N), and... and who's to say you and I-"
"There is no you and I, Shane! There can't be, and I refuse to break Ilya's fucking heart, okay? He's a good guy. Please, just- just let this go, okay? I'm not going to start something with you that's going to crash and burn immediately."
"Where have you been?"
(Y/N) smoothed his hands over his shirt to rid it of creases, forcing his mouth up into a casual smile. "Smoking." He answered with a light shrug, studying the people still hanging around the theater.
"Oh? How many? Ten? You took so long." Ilya's eyes felt as if they looked right through him. (Y/N) tried not to fidget. "You did not answer your phone, either."
"Low battery. I wanted to save it just in case. You never know."
Ilya's gaze lowered, his brows twitching. "Your tie is missing."
(Y/N)'s hands raised to pat around his chest, only feeling the polyester buttons brushing against his palm. "Oh, uh-" Shit. "It- It felt too tight, so I took it off. I probably forgot it somewhere."
"I made it loose so it would not bother you."
"I probably tightened it without meaning to."
"I feel like you are lying to me, (Y/N)." Ilya frowned. "Why?"
"I'm not, I swear." (Y/N)'s lungs felt empty. His eyes bounced around, searching for a server with drinks that he could down to ease his bumbling nerves. "I really did lose it somewhere. Probably the rooftop. Why- Why would you think I'm lying to you, Roz?"
Ilya's eyes flickered between his, his head lolling to the side. "You lied about your virginity, (Y/N). You lost it to that guy last season, no? You lied when you said it hadn't been your first time with another man. Are you.. seeing someone and not telling me? We don't keep secrets, (Y/N)."
The panic that'd been rising in (Y/N)'s spine dissipated immediately, his brows furrowing tightly. His lips parted, a small, trembling breath of disbelief slipping past.
"We don't keep secrets?" He repeated slowly, scoffing afterward.
"Yes, we- we tell each other everything- what is wrong?"
(Y/N) rubbed his hand over his face, chuckling breathlessly before he turned on his heel and made his way through the theater, snatching a glass of champagne from a tray along the way and pouring it into his mouth. He set it roughly at one of the tables and pushed his way through the doors, eager for fresh air and space and a fucking break.
The doors opened again and rattled close behind him. "(Y/N)-"
"I don't want to talk right now, Ilya."
"Why are you upset?"
Ilya's hands cupped around his elbow and tugged gently, pulling him back in. (Y/N) shook his hand off and took a deep, long breath. Ilya's frown deepened, the alarm clear as day in his bright eyes.
"What happened? You have been... so strange these past weeks, (Y/N)."
"When were you going to tell me that you like Hollander? That you've been hooking up with him since before the fucking Olympics? Or, were, I guess." Ilya's mouth fell open. "Jane, seriously? You didn't think I'd connect the fucking dots? He said you broke his heart, which I find a little hard to believe, but-"
Ilya's features went slack for a moment, and then tightened with confusion. "Wha- What do you mean? You and Hollander have been... talking? Since when?"
(Y/N)'s nose tickled with the urge to cry, but he was so exhausted. He wet his lips, breathing in quietly and blinking away the wetness in his eyes. He's your friend. He's your best friend. You'll never find another guy like him to tolerate you.
"We... We started talking at a hotel bar once, and... I got a lot off my chest, and tonight he got a lot off his. We're not friends, but we've spoken a handful of times. He's been more honest with me than you've been, Roz. I really... I really like you, Ilya. Maybe I'm- I'm even in love with you-"
"What?"
"-but I know that if you liked me back, you would've done or said something by now, so..." (Y/N) shrugged, feeling the slightest bit helpless. "I really don't want to have this conversation here, Ilya. I'm... I'm getting my own hotel room, and we can... I don't know, I want to go home. I want to be home. I-I want space."
"(Y/N)-"
(Y/N) raised his hand when Ilya tried to step closer, his head shaking. "Please, Ilya, just... just stop. I'm tired. I don't- I don't want to do this here. Shane's still around here somewhere, I'm pretty sure, but I'm leaving. I don't want you to follow me."
umm not sure if i like this but omegaverse kinda-neglected reader! x tf141 (ghost focus at the end), angst, good ending, gn!reader, SFW
PART 2
You’re a beta. That should come as a relief, many tell you every day they wish they were your designation instead. No heats, no ruts, not even stinking up a room when you got a bit too overwhelmed by an emotion.
Just in the middle: a nice calming scent, a decent paying job— never too high, a beta CEO wouldn't be able to control anything— and the lack of any crazy season that would get you all flustered. Your sense of smell was incredibly different to theirs, but you werent given much chances to complain considering all they went through in heats.
So naturally you were taught your life revolved around alphas and omegas, all the way from secondary school when you were sat next to the reactive Alpha’s to “try and make them behave better”. In biology class your designation was skimmed over very quickly in favour of understanding how to react to their emotional changes and the like, and anything else you had to figure out for yourself.
It’s not like getting out of school into the workforce was much better. Omega’s rights had changed greatly in the past century, and no one would bat an eye at them being in most jobs— so applying was even more impossible. Even when you did get into the workplace, it was like alpha’s would immediately stop listening when there was an omega in the room, or vice versa. Truthfully you were jealous of their natural pull to each other, like the relationships you’d read in books or see in swoon worthy movies.
“There’s all sorts of jobs— chefs, mechanics, cyber analysts, engineers, dont just have to be a soldier.” The army recruiter outside your local supermarket rambles, clearly trying to get at least one recruit today at the minimum. Otherwise he’d definitely get in big trouble. “And you’re a beta, so you can do both work with Omega and Alpha jobs! You’ll be fine!”
“What?” You look at him, that mention perking you up and he looks at you with glee. You were only listening in hopes he’d get you off his back, but that was certainly news to you.
“I bet you’re sick of fighting with even more people for jobs now, huh? In the military omega’s and alphas are kept very seperate, even so, they’re required to be on suppressants so everything’s very easy.”
—————
So, that’s how you ended up here, bullied and forced into the shape of a soldier, something you still feel fake about even after countless deployments. It’s quickly forgotten though when you have the thrill of finally finding your place in society.
Your first team was mostly alphas, a beta here and there, but it felt great to have them treat you equally, slapping a hand on your back and grinning at a job well done. The omega team wouldnt even bat an eye when you were assigned to them, just as welcoming. Truly the best of both worlds, you could be anything you wanted in this system— it was like it was built for you to thrive.
Then the taskforce got established, and by a stroke of luck, you got transferred on. “You always run this early?” A hand lands on your shoulder, and you jump just to meet Sergeant Mactavish’ grin. After completing your demolitions course with flying colours, you soon got assigned under him. His hair is wet, mohawk flat for once, and you can only assume he just washed off. Still, his scent washes over you, easing your momentary shock and you nod, smiling. “Yeah, isn't the water too cold this early?”
“It’s alright. C’mon, let’s go meet the others for breakfast.”
You follow him, the faintest happy scent trailing off of you as you do so, and spiking just the miniscule amount when you sit down at the table.
“Please please give me your bread roll, i love the jam they use for it.” Gaz pleads, clasping his hands together and you can't help but roll your eyes, letting him trade it for his fried egg. “I love you so much-“ He mumbles, already taking a bite out of it that Price rolls his eyes as he takes a seat.
“Almost thirty years old...” He mutters and you giggle, eyes moving to where Ghost comes with his tray, sitting next to Price.
“I saw you on the track, you looked tired.” He says, giving you a pointed look, and making your cheeks flush. Oh, right. The night prior you’d been suddenly awaken to help deal with a feral omega, forced to give up hours of sleep to soothe them to submission..
“Just didn’t get the best sleep. I’ll feel alright after a coffee.” You give him a small shrug, eating more of your food. His eyes linger on you for a moment longer before nodding and carrying on.
The sergeants were more than happy to include you in all their plans, barely batting an eye when your scent wasn't as strong as theirs or in combat training you couldn't hold as much of an intimidating presence. Nor did the Captain and the Lieutenant care either, always praising the fact you could slip by unnoticed, with no chance of wavering from the other two designations and such.
It felt almost like a pack.. and it was perfect. So perfect.
“Johnny, just spill it!” Gaz groans as the Scot dances around the subject for the tenth time that morning, making you all roll your eyes at the breakfast table.
“I got an omega!” The whole table falls silent, and then Gaz lets out a low whistle patting him on the back whilst the Captain nods approvingly.
“And you wont show us a photo?” Ghost chimes in, making Soap stumble to get his phone out, excited as he passes the phone around. A sweet, soft omega. Round cheeks, a bright smile, hanging off his arm like it was the key to her heart. A perfect match to him.
“She looks perfect with you, good on you, son.” The Captain says, giving him a gruff smile and Gaz snickers at his father-like praise. Then they turn to you, as you sit in shock, fork gently clattering on the plate.
Your jaw hurts from how you physically have to force a wide enough smile, standing up and coming around to congratulate him properly. It’s even worse when Kyle insists he should show more pictures and so you stand there between them, making fake ooo’s and aaah’s in hopes it would hide the slightest change in your scent.
It changes everything.
“Soap, me and Gaz are going to the pub later—“
“Ah… cant, omega wants me to watch a movie with her. What about friday?”
“Oh— do you mind if we do some sparring today?”
“Uh.. okay, sure. Just gotta finish up this text to my omega. Ye know she’s getting stronger by the day! I’ve been helping her keep fit, yknow, to stay safe and all.”
“Do you want to go grab lunch?”
“Oh— sure. Feels like i havent seen you in forever.”
You smile wide when he finally agrees to hang out with you again— after all, it’s not like he was acting like this with Kyle. So you both enter the mess, going to grab your plate.
“Ahh.. the ‘mega loves chicken like this, makes hers a bit more seasoned though. Bloody good.” You smile weakly, trying to start your own conversation about work, and the mission you’ll be going with him on.
“Oh ye havent heard yet.” He falls quiet and you tilt your head in confusion, about to place the dish on your tray.
“Havent heard what? Was there a new brief?”
“You should talk to the Captain.”
Confused, you do stop by his office later that evening, gently tapping on the door with your knuckles and announcing yourself. With a weaker scent, he couldn’t tell you apart from the alpha’s across base with their scent blockers on, unlike the rest of the taskforce.
“Come in.”
“Soap said i havent heard something about the mission im going with him on soon? Did something change?”
“Ah, right. You dont need to go anymore.”
You blink in surprise, suddenly really confused by all of this and you step forward a bit more, scent souring. Not that he’d pick up on it.
“He’s a claimed alpha now, there’s no need for a beta to mediate.”
You stand there, the contents of your stomach in your throat as you process his words. Mediate. You werent there because of skills.. the CO who encouraged you to take a demolition course didn't even think you were good at it either. They just needed a beta to mediate in a field lacking them.
“Oh. Right.”
A month passes by of you watching Soap slip away from you, barely talking to you if not about his omega, never joining you on a morning run until you’re sure he’s forgotten about you altogether. At first you had chalked it up to him just being busier with mated life. After all, you’ve witnessed the pull of an omega first hand many times, how it makes them change. Though, his relationship with the alphas didn't change in the slightest.
With his protective instincts he was drawn to the alphas more now, always hanging around Gaz and and Ghost when they weren't busy, beelining straight past you unintentionally. You cant really blame him either, no one remembers the beta’s faint scent.
It was Gaz next. One evening you were leaning against him on the couch, unable to hide your despair and luckily he’d been nice enough to let you sit there without explanation. It was nice, you thought that if you had no Soap, at least you had your other best friend. He always made you smile, and he was the reason you even got a slice of attention from Soap these days.
And then it came.
It started small, just hanging around Soap more often than not. Really you hadnt thought much of it, but it did feel rough when you sat also on the rec room couch just to watch them fully invested in something you could never join in on. You figured it was about Soap’s omega again, not something you particularly wanted to hear about.
Then it turned into turning down bar nights altogether. They would both cancel, Gaz excusing it with ‘plans’ whilst Soap was always honest. Sure you had the whole team, but being in the vicinity of four alphas in an alpha only bar was enough of a scent overload to give any beta a headache.
Then you saw his lockscreen on accident, just wanted to check the time really. It was unmistakably obvious though, the smiles, calmer than Johnny’s one, but just as gorgeous and adorable. A real treat for the eyes.
“Congratulations.” You mumbled when he came back to the couch with his can, raising a brow at you.
“What..?” He knew, of course he did. You knew his lying look.
“Got yourself an omega, when are you gonna tell the others?”
He seems embarrassed, quickly grabbing the phone off of you, cheeks burning. “How did you see that?!”
The next morning he announces it to the team and you join in with congratulating again, only too aware of the cycle that was soon to repeat. Only, it wasn't too bad with Gaz. You were grateful, so grateful when he still would spend a lunch or two with you, or even just talk to you.
“Hey, we going on our usual grocery run this week?” You two were put together on the rota for stocking the rec room and so you both head out, riding shotgun in Gaz’s car.
You both had a copy of the list, walking around the store together, until you eventually got them all. “Oh! Just a second, need to grab some scent stuff.” In the small beta section they allowed, there were really good products to clear out scents from others that’d stick to betas and linger around. After all, you had a keener sense of smell, so being around the taskforce meant it racked up pretty fast on your clothes and on your room.
Kyle was the first you confided in after you suddenly fainted once, at a bar, the scents too much for you to handle. Though you managed to quell it pretty quickly with these. Some you could just spray in your nose and go— perfect for getting rid of the oncoming dizziness.
“You know you dont have to get the fanciest things, just get the base ones. It’s at the back of the store and they’re expensive.”
You pause, he never questioned this before, not even the first time you had nervously told him— afraid to be undermined.
“There’s no base ones..” You say with a raised brow, but you cant bring yourself to be too rude to him. Even if his tone was almost sharp, scolding, as if you were being selfish. Right now it feels like you’re reduced to your designations, and that’s it. Not humans, not friends, not even teammates. Alpha and beta. “There’s only one brand that ever does it.”
“Really? And what about the cheap scent clearers? The ones you used to use before.” He gives you a firm look, challenging, and you swallow, unsure where this hostility came from.
“..They got pulled off the shelf, Kyle. Thousands of beta’s got chemical burns— i couldnt smell properly for a week.”
He pauses for a split second, like he’ll acknowledging the truth in your words and his wrongs, then just huffs, turning to scan where the empty checkout is. “Fine. Get what you want then, but I'm going to pay. I’ll meet you at the car.”
When you return with the small plastic bag, he puts his hand out for the receipt so it can be handed to you at a price for expenses on the card. “I paid for it myself.” You mutter back, your scent tinging sour and in the close proximity it might be noticeable this time. He pauses, and then puts his hands on the wheel, choosing not to comment further.
———————————
The sergeants are on a mission, one you were supposed to be on, but now you’ve been shoved into another with unclaimed alpha’s who need a bit of extra settling. Or rather someone lesser than them they can secretly believe they’re higher than. It doesn't feel much different to secondary school now, and you find yourself with less will to argue about it.
Thankfully, Lieutenant Ghost is here with you. He’s always been alright— not exactly friendly but not rude either. You were quite intimidated by his rank at first, convinced he’d be strict and unforgiving but he’s content if you get the work done.
“Handled that bomb in record time.” He comments beside you on the way back to base. There was another demolitions expert on the team but when news came up that there was another bomb they had not suspected, he immediately put his trust in you to disarm it.
“Thanks for the chance, Lt.” You smile up at him and he nods, acknowledging your hard work. After all, you really did always put in more than your best. Even so, he cant help but notice you sink as soon as he shifts his attention to someone elsewhere, the conversation falling quiet. He’d be blind to notice the gap between you and the sergeants, even if you were a beta and them having omega’s shouldnt even bother you. Him and Price had to regularly reminds them to not walk around in clothes stinking of their partner.
“The sergeants are back from their mission, could hit the pub tonight. Whole team can come”
You feel too bad to decline now, so you just nod. “Okay. Yeah.”
—————
The Alpha only pub is bustling and you offer to grab the third round just so you can escape the thick scents building around you. It doesnt help that you’re basically rationing your scent-refresher as of right now.
“Omega’s doing good.” Soap responds to Price’s questions.. At least you’ll miss this mandatory conversation while you go. The bartender already knows you, greeting you with a welcoming smile as you start your order. It’s all going on Price’s card, so you take the opportunity to get a sundae instead of alcohol. He did owe you one after an explosive you caught right by his position. Besides, it was less than a tenner, and you’d savour it for life.
“Heat’s coming up though. It’s only three days long usually, but should go smoothly. The store almost ran out of supplies too.” Soap sighs loudly, shaking his head and Kyle nods along, also probably having similar issues.
You’re not exactly listening, carefully holding the plate of drinks so you don't accidentally spill it with the countless bodies in this crowd.
“If they got rid of the beta section, they’d have more to spend stocking on the omega stuff.” A soldier hanging around elbows Soap, but he doesnt disagree. If anything the buzz of alcohol just makes him want to finally speak his truth now.
“Right? I mean really? Beta period products? Beta scent enhancers? Like those would actually even work to attract an alpha let alone an omega. Those scent refreshers cannot be real either, i mean, you’d think they’d want to smell us, ya know? Not like they get anything else— ”
The table goes silent, Gaz obviously kicking Soap in the leg until he looks up and meets eyes with you. The other soldier doesnt bat an eye, raising a brow at you. “Oh, your drinks are here. Can you order me two aswell?”
“I’m not a waiter” You snap back, and the Captain stands quickly, taking the tray from your hands and placing it down on the table.
“Think your team wants you back over there.” He motions for the soldier to go with his eyes, and he quickly leaves. “Thanks for grabbing them, i’ll get yours. Come, sit.” He turns to you but you freeze, shaking your head, and turning back into the crowd. “I’ll get it myself.”
“You idiot!” Gaz puts his head in his hands at the very obvious tension from Soap’s words.
“I didn't know they was there!” He retorts, though also slumps into his seat a little more. “It’s true. What do you want me to say?”
“Enough.” Price sighs, pinching his brow, he should’ve stopped the sergeants earlier but he hadnt known he’d be stupid enough to say that. Even if it was something that they were all thinking.
They take their drinks from the tray you brought, Gaz and Soap downing theirs immediately as if that’ll get rid of the dread hanging on their head. Price begins to sip his light chatter starting up again until Ghost suddenly speaks up.
“They still haven't come back.”
It’s been five whole minutes, and there’s no sight of you to be seen anywhere.
—
You’re sitting at the back entrance of the pub, empty at this time with the game roaring inside the pub. The alleyway it leads into is dirty, a few football decorations here and there, but mostly just black bin bags spilling out the large bins. There were two guys who had been staring you down for a while, like you were something that needed saving. The second one of them approached and caught your lack of omega scent, they immediately groaned and just turned away.
You just stick your spoon back in your sundae, not even lifting your head the entire time, just letting the cold sweetness try and keep you together.
There’s a small noise as someone sits down beside you, a rustle of clothing, and then the soft click of a lighter. You turn your head, slightly surprised to find Ghost there instead of a random drunk bloke hoping to score a sweet thing. He meets your eyes but neither of you say anything as you go back to eating your sundae.
“Should’ve got the other one.”
“What?”
“The bigger one.” He shrugs, the cigarette hanging loosely between his fingers. “Price told us to order whatever.”
“This is the only one that can come in a takeaway cup.” You mumble and he doesn't say anything further, not even when you lick the spoon clean.
“Why are you here?” You ask, unable to keep silent anymore. It’s not like he actually came to see how you were, and you’re suddenly glad he didn't come ten minutes earlier when you were on the verge of bawling your eyes out.
“S’posed to be a team night.”
“Maybe for the Alphas.” You grumble and he cant help but hum alongside you, not arguing with you on that fact.
“Cant stand the smell, can ya? Got the takeaway cup cause you knew you’d need to go regardless.” Of course he figured it out immediately, though you’d think it’s impossible to read you given how some people treat you.
“You mad i’m not fawning over your scent?” You scoff and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, making sure no chocolate sauce lingers— especially with how he’s watching you right now.
“Johnny is a stupid drunk, ‘lright?.” He mutters, a bit of bitterness in his tone that always lingers, but it’s not directly at you. “Price’ll convince you it’s just his instincts and all, looking after the omega.”
You look over at him and give him a deadpan look, the most honest you’ve ever been with the man. Usually you’re pretty agreeable, in fact the only time you’ve had a conflicts was when they got injured. Turns out you’re the only voice of reason whenever that happened, as the smell of the blood sent the rest of them into a spiral of worry.
And well, after that, he can't really blame you for being like this.
“I’m going.” You mutter, standing up and throwing the plastic cup in the bin before wiping your hands on your jeans.
To your surprise, he doesnt hesitate to follow you as you round to the front, heading to the little bus stop. It’s not the first time you’ve left early, but it is the first time someone’s made sure you’re alright by the end of the night.
————————
Soap only makes a quick apology which you’re forced to just accept,, because what else can you really do? Mess up a whole team because of one thing he said which wasnt that far from the truth?
As predicted, Price did try and tell you it was due to protective instincts, wanting the best for his omega. Right, the same instincts that made him leave you like you were dirt on his shoe.
Besides, life was getting busier for you as you now got passed between two teams. Either working with Ghost and Price or a different group of alphas. Passed around like a damn stress toy in your opinion.
“So we’re going to the one in the highstreet?” Gaz and Soap are chatting on the couch, not that you’re listening, just getting your things out the cupboard to make yourself a hot drink.
“My ‘mega loves it, craves the food there all the time. She’s gonna love meeting yours.”
Whatever, it wasnt the first time they’ve discussed plans in front of others. Wouldn't be the last.
“I’ll text the Captain and Ghost.” Soap adds, humming as he starts tapping away at his phone, opening their group chat you assume. One that you’re clearly not on, given that they dont invite you.
“You think he’ll even come?”
“He’s not that antisocial.”
“Yeah but he’s only one without an omega dumbass.”
The container you're holding clatters against the table and they both back to stare at you with the exact same wide eyed look you’re giving them. If he’s the only one then Price..
You walk out like nothing happened, even if you can feel the tears start to burn your eyes. It was all going so well, you were all happy together— werent you? So why?
The cycle repeats for the third time. You’re taken off another team, not deemed useful enough anymore. You congratulate Price when you next see him, and he doesn't say more than a thank you. Somehow it hurts more that he didn't purposefully tell you— he just forgot, like everyone else did.
You stopped coming by the rec room the last time the sergeants had a movie night without you. The texts between them and you ran dry, and after skipping one breakfast, you just never came back again. That’s just how it was now, and they didn't even reach out once. In fact, all of the last messages were from you. An unanswered question, a conversation cut short, or a text that just never even got opened.
Except for Ghost. He still spoke to you— well, as much as he’s known to anyway. A hello in passing, a chat between sets in the gym, maybe when you’re queuing for food. As much as you wanted to take the opening, you just couldnt, too terrified to. After all, it was only a matter of time until Ghost left you aswell. You should know that you should savour every last moment, cling onto it tight, but you just can't. It’s not like you two were ever the closest anyway.
——————-
You’ve been moved to an omega team this time. It’s not the first time you’ve worked with one, but usually they can balance each other out easier since they aren't as explosive as Alphas. It also means this is a mission you can't slip up on from the months of work they’ve put into this.
They welcome you immediately, and you grasp the ropes of it all fairly quickly, until it’s finally the day. The prisoners are right where you expected them, and just as told, the one in the middle has explosives strapped all over.
They evacuate the rest out whilst you kneel down before the explosives, watching the wires and where they turn and twist intently whilst the person tries their best not to squirm too hard. Even with your best efforts, nothing seems to match what you know but you frown as you notice the wire reaching towards the chair they’re bound to. Down to the floor.. a weak floorboard. The weight of the chair.. essentially a mine.
One hostage on that chair— you move her off and everyone dies. What do you even do?
“Do not stand up at any point, okay? I’m going to get you out, but you have to trust me.” Shrugging all the gear off, you cut the straps that locks the person to the chair.
You hand her your gear carefully and step back, just enough to reach the doorway. There’s no telling how large this bomb is, but you can assume it cant be enough to seriously damage the ship you’re on.
“Okay, you need to shuffle forward just slightly and place the gear behind you, okay? Then, when you’re ready, cover your head with your hands and run towards me.” The woman trembles, doing as you told and the weight of the gear seems to be a good enough trade off for the mine to not set off.
After that, she bolts, and you pull her through the doorway and as far away as possible, shielding her as the shockwaves rattles through the ship.
———————
Ghost hadnt expected to see his phone buzz at this time, by the infirmary no less. But when they relayed what happened, he had made his way there immediately. You had just come out of surgery, a high enough dose of anaesthesia in you that you just werent acting right. He intended to wait outside until you stabilised, that is until the nurse rushes out suddenly.
“Would you mind coming in, sir? We need someone to restrain them.”
He steps inside to see you squirming against another nurse, slurring and trying to escape your bed, clearly panicked.
“Stop that, you’re going to hurt yourself more.” He reaches for your flailing wrists, forcing the nurses out the way as they stand at the back and watch you get manhandled by the alpha.
Something in his gut feels uncomfortable with the stains of red across the bandages across your body, burns peeking out of some. So he carefully restrains your wrists against each other, holding them firmly.
“L-lieutenant?” You stammer out, dazed eyes searching for him intently until you manage to focus on his mask. Finally you stop freaking out for a moment. He turns but the nurses are already gone, probably called to another patient— the operation you were on had quite a few injuries for different reasons.
“Yeah, it’s me. Y’just came out of surgery, you’re okay now, alright?” He carefully lets go of your hands, helping you reposition yourself after you had tried to squirm off the bed. “I’ll grab the nurse, then we can see when we can get y’outta here.”
The nurse?
You blink at him, looking around at your surroundings, the sterile smell of the place attacking your nose. Simon was an alpha.. and the nurses, well specifically in this wing.. your eyes glance to the sign outside the door, the familiar writing.
“No- no you cant!” You barely manage to grasp his arm as he pulls away and he looks at you in confusion. The beeping in the room starts getting even louder than before, almost incessant and you feel like your chest is going to explode.
“Your heart rate is rising, sarge. You need help—“
“Lieutenant— no, please-“ You whine pathetically as he pulls away from you, leaving him stunned until he reluctantly steps closer again before you throw yourself entirely out of the bed to reach him.
“I wont let ‘em hurt you, promise.” He can only assume you must be scared of needles or something, a fear of medical care surely. He never knew that about you, and it spikes something in his chest, a cog in his head. The fear radiating off of you is palpable, and he can smell the faintest change of your scent in the air.
“No- no! The nurse— she’s an o-omega, you cant—“ You choke out, head getting dizzy from all the sudden movement as you desperately clutch his sleeve. It forces him to stay right there, not the grip on his sleeve but the desperation in your eyes.
“Sarge— i’m not gonna act like a wimp in rut from talking to an omega.” He huffs but he knows you’re out of it. It must be the anaesthetic getting to your head, making you say all these silly things.
“You’re going to leave me- you’re going to—“ A sob escapes you as grip loosens on him and he freezes, watching you curl into yourself. Your forehead gently hits his arm, tears wetting his sleeve.
“I’m right here.” He says, voice quieter and it makes him breathe relief when the beeping settles down to a steadier rate, even if it is still high and you look even worse like this— so lost and terrified.
“You are..” You sniffle, pressing your nose further against his arm. “t-the omega nurse- she- she’ll come and you’ll leave with her. You’ll leave me- a-and never speak to me again, please- lieutenant please.” Your hands tighten and he swallows sharply, letting your words sink in.
It was never about envy, not even the way you stared at them whenever they spoke about omegas. It was pure fear. And this feeling in his chest, it was tightening with each soft sniffle from you, instincts flaring. He’s never felt like this in his life, infact he was convinced he never would. But he just cant stand the sight of you like this— the bloodstained clothes, the fear in every small movement, your vulnerability.
He steps forward without thinking about it, his free arm gently prying you off of him until you fall back against the pillows. “Not leaving you for some random omega, you silly beta.” He scolds, picking you up off the bed until your head rests on his shoulder, sniffling into his shirt.
“Gonna take you where you belong. Gotta tell me if i hurt you, though.” Warmth spreads through him now that he has you against him like this. It clicks something in his brain he didn't know was waiting for a stimulant.
All that leaves your lips are the sobs that keep coming, staining his shirt, but finally settling now the dizziness has settled. “Dont go.. don’t, please, you cant..”
You’re right, he cant keep you around these omegas and all of this. No, he needs you to be healing properly around things you like— you want. He needs to look after his beta.
He grabs your duffel off the chair where it’s left, checking the corridor twice before marching through the quiet corridors towards the barracks.
it's no secret that where garrett graham is, you're likely close behind. and everyone knows where you are, garrett graham is too. that’s the outcome of growing up best friends.
throw in the messy deal between garrett and hannah, it has you wondering if your so called ‘best friend’ even realizes he's left you behind.
⤷ aka off campus social/text au! - garrett graham x fem!reader
series masterlist
It was obvious to anyone who looked that you were anxious. You’d been this way since the party two weeks ago, when the messages started again. Everything felt like it was adding on to your plate, and you retreated to the safety of yourself because that was easier than admitting it was getting to your head.
You were getting more confident with the photography aspect of things, going as far as to create your own website with a portfolio and start booking sessions. The editing took the longest time, among all the touchups and styling to do.
Jackson keeps you company for most of it. The library is quiet as the two of you sit in the study room, various supplies scattered across the table. You’ve dimmed the lights to something less fluorescent and have a soft playlist going in the background.
Jackson sits across from you with an economics textbook wide open and a burn in his eyes that says he’s beyond done studying.
A notification comes across your laptop screen, and you’re smiling before you can stop yourself.
--
--
“What are you smiling at?”
You show him your screen so he can see Garrett’s messages. He blinks at the last text. “Don’t move?”
“I never know with him, honestly. Probably find out in ten minutes.”
Fifteen minutes later, Garrett Graham arrives in gray sweatpants, a hockey hoodie, and both hands full of goodies.
“Hey,” You greet quietly, surprised at the sight of him out and about the night before a game.
“Figured you could use a pick-me-up after today.”
He sets a drink down beside your laptop without making a big deal out of it before placing a bag from your favorite bakery there, too. Then another bag goes over for Jackson to reach for.
“Wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got some options,” Garrett explains with a nod. He doesn’t sit on it for long, placing both hands on your shoulders to squeeze lightly. “I’m heading to the rink. Let me know when you get back with the girls, okay?”
You nod in agreement. He hesitates for almost a second before he decides it’s good enough. He looks over at Jackson. “See ya, man.”
“Yeah, thanks for the snacks.”
Garrett gives a small wave over his shoulder as he disappears through the doors again.
The room settles again without all the movement, and you don’t hesitate to rip into the bag of food that’s now in front of you.
“Does he do that often?” Jackson asks, his eyes looking toward the items in your vicinity.
You shrug lightly. “He’s just always kind of done that.”
“Can I be honest with you?”
The phrase didn’t sound great, so you immediately knew where it was heading. You bit your lip and shifted in your seat to see him better. “I already don’t like that.”
Jackson laughs quietly. “I know, sorry. I just, I’ve been thinking recently. Those messages, from the unknown number, did… was there something between you and Garrett?”
There’s a small moment of silence before you answer.
“Garrett… Garrett’s been my best friend since we were kids. We grew up together. Same high school, and now the same college. It’s really hard for me to ever remember anything where he wasn’t there,” You say honestly.
“We’ve always been really close. Probably closer than most people would consider normal. We’ve stuck together around other romantic relationships and…” You sigh, pausing to give him a small smile. “Things were different when we got to college. We were able to be a lot more independent but also much closer. I just shadowed him for a long time because he was all I’d really known. And then we got into an argument and tried to get some space for a while.”
“Which evidently didn’t work,” Jackson offers with a smile. He closes his laptop, and you have a sinking suspicion that no more work will be getting done tonight.
You laugh and shake your own head. “No, no, it didn’t.”
Quiet settles over the study room, but it’s not tense. It’s comfortable and safe in a way that a lot of conversations never really see.
“I’m not gonna lie, I really like you. And I know you like me. We’ve had a lot of fun doing this. But I can also tell you look at him in a way you’ll never look at someone else.”
You open your mouth to disagree, but fall short.
“It’s okay,” He reassures, “He’s a really lucky guy to have someone like you. And even though you guys have had some back and forth, I can tell you guys really care about each other. It’s sickeningly sweet.”
The laugh you let out is a mixture of sadness and agreement. You give him a sad smile. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
Jackson shakes his head, but he honestly doesn’t look too upset. “No hurting from me, I promise. If anything, I think we could still be friends, if you’re up for that?”
You nod.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’d really like that.”
--
Jackson drops you off at Allie and Hannah’s with another reassurance that everything’s okay. You thank him, kiss his cheek, and make your way inside. Part of you is reeling with guilt over the whole thing, but the other half doesn’t even care. And there’s zero sadness, which is surprising.
It wasn’t that Jackson wasn’t nice or didn’t do anything right. It was the exact opposite, actually.
The apartment is quiet when you let yourself in. You kick your shoes off by the door and catch sight of Allie and Hannah in the kitchen area. There are two pizza boxes on the counter and Allie’s seated next to one as Hannah reads flashcards from her spot in the bar chair.
“Hey,” Allie greets quietly. It’s like she can immediately tell by the look on your face that something isn’t right. “How’d it go?”
You toss your backpack to the ground and lean against the counter, slowly letting out a breath. “It went okay.”
“Just okay?” Hannah follows up as she sets the flash cards down.
“We broke things off. He knew I wasn’t really into it, and he’s right,” You lean your elbow on the surface to rest your chin in your palm. “I don’t know how long he knew, but it was long enough for me to feel shitty when he brought it up.”
Allie hops down from the counter to stand closer. “Are you okay?”
You nod. “Yeah. I just feel bad. He’s a good guy, and I wanted it to work but…”
“But?”
“He told me I look at Garrett in a way that I never look at anyone else.”
Allie and Hannah go quiet, both of them looking at each other in a way that makes you suspicious. You stare at them, waiting for the ball to drop.
“Alright, I’ll bite. What?”
“Nothing.”
You roll your eyes, stepping around Allie to grab a slice of lukewarm pizza from the box. “No, say it with your chest, Allie Hayes.”
Allie points at Hannah. The music major shakes her head with a laugh before looking back to you. “We’ve been saying the same thing for months, actually. You have one smile for Garrett, and another for everyone else. It’s hard to miss, Bug.”
You groan and cover your face with your hands. “Oh, my God. That’s so embarrassing.”
“It’s kind of adorable, actually.”
“It’s humiliating!” You double down, but can’t stop the smile from forming on your face. They’re both laughing with you and the weight on your shoulders feels a lot lighter with it out in the air.
Allie lets you take a few bites of pizza before she continues, “So, now what?”
You dust your hands off on a napkin and shrug. “What do you mean?”
“Are you gonna tell Garrett?”
You hesitate for a second before shaking your head. “I really liked this… this time away, you know? Like I got to hang with you guys, and our trip, and all of my photography stuff. It’s been so good, and I don’t regret any of it. But I’m also not gonna lie, I miss him. I miss us.”
Hannah nods in understanding before explaining, “So start there. Not with dating, and labels, and trying to fix everything. Just, slowly let him back in. Nobody’s saying you have to figure it all out immediately just because Jackson said something about it.”
She’s right, you tell yourself. Because you don’t have to decide right now. You don’t have to call Garrett and tell him what happened tonight. You don’t have to tell him anything at all, actually.
You can take this at your own pace. Little by little. You don’t have to go looking for him, but you also don’t have to hide from him either.
Allie literally claps at the recognition in your eyes and it brings you back. “Yes! Oh my God, this will be fun. Operation Bugarrett is a go!”
You laugh, “Operation what the fuck did you just say?”
“Bugarrett,” She repeats, like it offers any clarity whatsoever. She settles a hand on your shoulder and refuses to explain further. “Just trust me. You do you and let Hannah and I handle the rest.”
You’re not convinced as you look between the two of them. They look devious, and you don’t really know how to feel about it. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say, Al.”
--
Malone’s is packed on a Thursday night, likely everyone enjoying one last night out before finals season begins. You’re tucked in a booth with Allie, leaning against her shoulder as she excitedly recaps rehearsal to Dexter and Hannah across from you.
The boys are at the booth across from you, rowdy and excited for their upcoming game. You can easily recognise their voices through the noise, piecing together their conversation as you listen. You’re physically here, but mentally, you’re anywhere else.
This is the first weekend in a while that you don’t have a packed schedule, mostly because you want to be there to support the guys in the game, and you just need a solid break. Your social battery is fried and it took Allie a lot of begging to get you out of the apartment among your constant protesting.
You eventually caved, but it was obvious to anyone looking on that you were fading fast.
And by anyone, that means Garrett.
He’s already looking at you when you risk glancing over. Not in an obvious way, but just enough that when your eyes meet, he gives you a small smile. It’s a silent are you okay that you haven’t seen in a long time.
You nod once. He nods back.
The interaction lasts all of three seconds, but it’s enough to warm your skin.
“Babe, you’ve barely touched your food,” Allie’s voice drops in volume as she regards you. She knew you wouldn’t be the most energetic person tonight, but she’d rather not leave you alone with everything going on.
“I’ve been picking at them.”
“You’ve had exactly three,” Dexter says pointedly.
“Did you sit here and count?”
“I got bored.”
You shake your head teasingly. Hannah laughs at the exchange, “You’ve been staring into space for a bit there.”
“I’m just tired.”
Allie studies you for another second before squeezing your knee gently. “You don’t have to stay.”
“I know,” You say as you adjust your positioning against her side to lean back against the wall so you can see Garrett easier without being obvious. “I want to.”
The conversation picks back up around you, but you’re not listening. Your eyes are half-way closed now as bits and pieces of the boys’ topics drift over. Garrett laughs and the familiarity of it all makes you realise how much you simply missed being around them. How much you’ve missed just existing in the same space.
After a few minutes, someone mentions getting another round of drinks and a mix of bodies shuffle their way around you. Allie whispers an apology as she pulls away from you, the warmth disappearing instantly and sending a chill down your spine.
Across the aisle, Dean waves dramatically as if you can’t see his very obvious hand in your vision. You scoff and roll your eyes, shifting a bit in your seat like you’re not one breeze away from goosebumps.
“Yes, Dean?”
He’s smirking at you and Garrett’s peering over his shoulder curiously.
“You look lonely.”
“I’ve been alone for approximately 40 seconds.”
“And?”
“And I’m enjoying my silence.”
“You don’t look like you’re enjoying the silence, babydoll.”
You laugh, tucking your feet closer like it’ll provide any comfort. “You’re so annoying.”
“Heard that before.”
Garrett shakes his head, the hand that isn’t holding his drink slapping against Dean’s shoulder lightly. “Leave her alone.”
Dean points toward you as if it offers any defense. “I am simply including her.”
You laugh and in a moment of weakness, you’re standing. Not because Dean asked, not because Garrett did either. You’ve spent the last hour feeling like you’re sitting beside everyone instead of with them.
You’re standing next to Dean, gaze looking at him pointedly, teasingly. “Move.”
Dean pretends to be offended, as if he didn’t know what he was doing this entire time. “You telling me to move?”
“I like this booth better.”
Dean keeps eye contact with you as he stands, the knowing smirk on his lips getting increasingly worse when he reaches his full height and looks down at you, now. The flirt in him never really disappeared. “Oh? Why didn’t you just say so?”
You slip into the seat easily, like your heart isn’t picking up speed. Garrett fights the pull in his muscles to tuck you under his left arm and into his side. Like he would’ve. Used to.
Dean slides back in on the other side of you, purposefully bumping you further into the booth until your thigh is pressed into Garrett’s. Being pinned between two walls of hockey-based muscle doesn’t give much room, but one thing is for sure…
You’re not cold anymore.
Eventually, Logan, Tucker, and Beau slide back in on the other side of the booth. There’s no big noise about your sudden presence. They’re well aware your social battery is one conversation away from dying completely, so they continue to build around you. Safe. Lovingly.
Allie winks at you when she sits back down in her original seat.
“She’s over there?” Hannah’s asking a bit quieter, but not really since it’s so noisy. She’s trying to play it cool and not peek around Dexter’s shoulder, but she’s itching to. “Did it work?”
Allie keeps her eyes on your form, tucked between two people who would rip the world apart if it meant getting to you. And she loves Dean for it, because Dean loves you in a way that’s so different from how he loves Allie. You’re an extension of Garrett, and Garrett is one of Dean’s best friends, and you’re one of Allie’s. There’s nothing Dean or Allie wouldn’t do to protect the people they love.
“Yeah.” Allie nods and takes a sip of her drink, smiling when Dean sends a knowing, sneaky look in her direction. As if this wasn’t an undercover operation the whole time. As if this hadn’t been her goal when she pushed you into the booth on a side that would give you a view of Garrett. As if Dean hadn’t made up some bullshit lie about needing to sit on the outer seat tonight.
“Yeah, it worked.”
--
Things shift two days later.
You’ve got your set up across Allie and Hannah’s counter, pining through hundreds of photos from the hockey game earlier that night. The social media team was in love with you, simply because they didn’t have to risk trying to coordinate sweaty athletes as they operated in their space. You already had the ability to handle half of them.
And if the captain listens to you, they all fall in line shortly after.
You should’ve gone to bed hours ago, but the win had been too good, and you wanted to get some images edited and shared out before the morning.
The game photos are spread across your screen and you catch yourself smiling as you scroll through them. Tucker screaming into the camera, Dean practically tackling Logan after a good play.
You stop on one photo.
The whole team is celebrating. And then there’s Garrett, looking away from your lens as he laughs at something being said.
It’s not even your favorite shot. The lighting is messy, the angle isn’t perfect.
But it feels so much like him.
You’re still staring when your phone lights up with a notification. Reading the number takes your smile away just as quickly.
--
--
Your stomach drops, breath catching in your chest as you look over your shoulder. Allie closed the curtains hours ago, but it still feels like someone’s seeing straight through them to get to you. Like whoever sent it knows exactly where you are.
The first instinct is to stop looking at it. If you don’t look at it, maybe it’ll go away. Maybe it was never real in the first place.
But then your thumb moves, and you’re pressing the call button before you can talk yourself out of it.
Garrett answers on the second ring.
--
Across campus, the hockey house is still buzzing with energy. The win has easily turned into one of those nights where nobody wants to go to sleep just yet.
Garrett’s in a heated debate with Tucker about their drive patterns of the game when his phone lights up with your name.
“Hey.” There’s a surprise to his tone and a smile on his face until he’s greeted with silence on your end. “Bug?”
You swallow. “Hey.”
One word. It takes one word, and he knows. “What’s wrong?”
“I got another message.”
Garrett’s already standing because something in him is pulled tight and dangerous, like a live wire ready to go.
Dean notices and sits up a bit straighter. Allie’s gone quiet next to him. “Everything okay?”
Garrett doesn’t answer because his focus is on you and the shake in your voice. “Where are you?”
“Allie’s.”
“Are you alone?”
There’s quiet for a second. “Hannah’s closing tonight.”
Garrett’s already got his shoes on, the keys to the Jeep stabbing into his palm solidly. “I’m coming. Stay where you are.”
“Garrett.”
“I’m coming,” He repeats in a more direct tone.
“You don’t have to.”
Garrett takes a second to pause and breathe. He glances over his shoulder where he’s got the attention of his friends, all awaiting his explanation. “I know. I want to.”
He reassures you he’ll be there in a minute before the call ends.
Allie tosses her drink in the garbage and pulls her own heels back on before throwing Dean his jacket from the hook, even though she has no idea what’s going on. “We’re coming.”
“What’s going on?” Logan asks when he finally gets an opportunity.
“She got another message,” Garrett’s answer is blunt, but it’s honest.
He watches the reactions in real time as defeat swallows the group whole, which he knows you would hate. Everyone wants this to be behind you. The mood feels like it’s sucked out of the room, but the focus is on you now, and what comes next.
“Is she okay?”
Garrett nods to Tucker’s question. “Yeah, but I’m going. If anything changes, I’ll call you.
Nobody argues or disagrees when Allie and Dean follow him out the front door and into the night. Because it’s you. And if you called Garrett, they already knew everything was going to be okay.
The drive is almost silent. Garrett’s gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are turning white.
Dean glances over, taking in the tension in his friend’s posture. He knows nothing will help until Garrett’s got eyes on you to assess everything for himself.
“She called me.”
The sentence hangs in the air for a moment like nobody quite knows what to do with it.
Dean bites first. “She called you?”
Garrett nods once, his eyes locked on the distance between you and him. “She called me.”
Dean notices the change in tone. He doesn’t tease, he doesn’t ask more. But he catches Allie’s eyes in the backseat, and the two of them share a small smile because it’s working.
Summary: Dean has never held on to anything — not girls, not feelings, not the memory of a childhood best friend who disappeared across an ocean at fourteen. Then you walk back into his life on a brisk October morning, and every carefully constructed wall he never knew he had built comes down in an instant. You came to Briar to disappear. You didn’t count on being found
Warnings: 18+ content
The late October air sweeping across the Briar University quad is brisk enough to make a normal person shiver, but Dean runs hot. He always has.
Right now, he’s walking backward, a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, completely ignoring the fact that he’s navigating a crowded campus blind. But then again, Dean rarely has to watch where he’s going. People naturally move out of his way.
“I’m just saying,” Dean says, raising his coffee cup to emphasize his point, his voice carrying that familiar, effortless charm that makes half the girls within a fifty-foot radius turn their heads. “It’s not about the quantity, gentlemen. It’s about the experience. The mutually beneficial exchange of joy.”
Logan snorts, adjusting the strap of his duffel bag over his broad shoulder. “Mutually beneficial exchange of joy? Did you read that in a poetry textbook, Di Laurentis? Or is that just the line you used on the kappa sig girl last night?”
“First of all, her name was Britney,” Dean corrects, flashing a bright, wicked grin. “And second, I didn’t use any lines. I am simply a purveyor of good times. I like women. Women like me. It’s the circle of life, Elton John style.”
“You’re a menace,” Garrett mutters, though he’s grinning. Garrett is walking beside Beau, who is casually tossing a small foam football between his hands. Tucker brings up the rear, quiet and imposing, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his denim jacket.
“I am a public servant,” Dean fires back, spinning around so he’s finally walking forward, falling into step with the rest of the hulking athletes. Together, the five of them take up the entire sidewalk. They are Briar’s royalty — hockey stars and the football golden boy — and they know it. But Dean wears the crown with a different kind of ease. He doesn’t have the brooding intensity of Garrett or the quieter, intimidating stoicism of Logan. Dean is sunshine and sin, wrapped in a designer jacket that probably costs more than a semester’s tuition.
And he has nothing to be stressed about. His parents are two of the most high-powered attorneys on the East Coast. His mother’s family basically owns half the luxury hotels in the country. He grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a house that looked like a castle, raised by parents who were shockingly down-to-earth and irritatingly in love with each other. He knows what love looks like. He just has absolutely no interest in it right now. Why tie himself down when the world is full of beautiful, willing women?
“You’re going to catch something one of these days, man,” Beau chuckles, spiraling the foam ball into the air and catching it effortlessly. “And I don’t mean feelings.”
“I am pristine,” Dean says, pressing a hand to his chest in mock offense. “I am a beacon of health and vitality.”
“You’re a slut,” Logan corrects cheerfully.
“I am comfortably sex-positive,” Dean counters, winking at a passing group of cheerleaders who immediately dissolve into giggles. He doesn’t break his stride. He rarely spends a night alone, and he likes it that way.
“Hey, watch it,” Tucker says suddenly, putting a massive hand on Dean’s shoulder to stop him from plowing into a cluster of students gathered near the science building.
Dean halts, taking a sip of his coffee. He glances over the heads of the crowd, his eyes scanning the courtyard purely out of habit. Looking for a pretty face, a nice smile, someone to spend the evening with.
That’s when he sees you.
Dean stops breathing. Actually, physically forgets how to inhale.
Across the courtyard, standing beneath the shade of a massive oak tree, is a woman. And not just any woman. She stands out against the sea of Briar University hoodies and sweatpants like a diamond sitting in a pile of gravel. She’s wearing a tailored camel trench coat, tied neatly at the waist, over a dark, elegant turtleneck. Her posture is immaculate — straight-backed, poised, the kind of posture drilled into someone through years of etiquette classes and formal dinners.
But it’s not the clothes that make Dean’s heart violently hurl itself against his ribs. It’s the face.
He blinks hard. He shakes his head, rubbing his free hand over his eyes. No, he tells himself. You’re hallucinating, Di Laurentis. Too much studying. Too much caffeine. Because it can’t be you. You are an ocean away.
You are the daughter of his mother’s best friend. The girl who grew up in the estate next door in Greenwich. The girl who used to build terribly constructed forts with him in the woods, who used to scrape her knees trying to keep up with him, who he used to share all his secrets with before the world got complicated. You were joined at the hip, practically a permanent fixture in the Di Laurentis household, until right before high school.
That was when your father was appointed as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom. And just like that, you were whisked away to London.
The distance had been a sudden, sharp ache that Dean had never fully known how to process. Over the years, the letters and FaceTime calls had dwindled as you both grew up and built separate lives. Last he heard from his mother, you were studying at Oxford. You were thriving. You were also, allegedly, dating some British aristocrat. A Lord, or an Earl, or a Viscount. Something pretentious. Not that Dean was jealous. He absolutely wasn’t jealous. He was a Briar hockey star; why would he care about some tea-drinking Earl in tweed?
But the woman standing under the tree looks exactly like the girl he used to know, overlaid with a breathtaking, mature beauty that makes his throat go dry.
“Whoa,” Beau murmurs, having followed Dean’s line of sight. “Who is that? She looks like she belongs on the cover of Vogue, not outside the geology building.”
“Transfer student?” Garrett guesses, narrowing his eyes.
“I call dibs,” Logan says immediately.
“Shut up,” Dean snaps. The harshness of his own voice surprises him, and it definitely surprises the guys, who all turn to look at him in bewilderment.
Dean ignores them, his eyes locked on the figure under the tree. The woman is talking to two girls from Dean’s sports psychology class. She looks slightly shy, her hands clasped elegantly in front of her.
Then, one of the girls says something, and the woman laughs.
It’s a soft, musical sound, ringing clear across the crisp autumn air.
Dean drops his coffee.
The paper cup hits the concrete, splashing warm, brown liquid over his pristine white sneakers, but he doesn’t even notice. He would know that laugh anywhere. He has heard it a thousand times in his childhood — when he fell off the monkey bars, when he told a terrible joke, when they stayed up past midnight watching movies they weren’t supposed to see.
“Y/N?” Dean breathes.
He doesn’t realize he’s moving until he’s already shoving past a group of freshmen.
“Whoa, Dean! Where are you going?” Tucker calls out.
Dean ignores them. He closes the distance across the courtyard in long, frantic strides. His heart is pounding a frantic, erratic rhythm against his sternum. As he gets closer, he raises his voice, the desperation bleeding through.
“Y/N!”
You pause. The polite smile falters on your lips as you hear your name. You turn, your eyes scanning the chaotic campus crowd in confusion. You look bewildered, slightly out of your depth, a delicate flower suddenly dropped into the chaotic wilderness of an American college campus.
Then, your eyes land on him.
Dean stops a few feet away, his chest heaving as if he just skated three periods back-to-back.
You stare at him. Your wide, expressive eyes blink once. Twice. Your lips part in shock. You take in the messy blonde hair, the broad shoulders that have filled out significantly since you were fourteen, the familiar, handsome face that has haunted your memories for years.
“Dean?” Your voice is a soft gasp, carrying a subtle, elegant British lilt that completely wrecks him.
“Holy shit,” Dean breathes out. “It’s really you.”
Before you can even formulate another word, Dean crosses the remaining distance. He doesn’t think. He just acts. He throws his arms around you, pulling you flush against his chest. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling the scent of you. You smell like expensive vanilla and Earl Grey tea, sophisticated and warm and so intensely you that it makes his head spin.
For a second, you freeze, completely shocked by the sudden, overwhelming embrace. But then, instinct takes over. You melt against him, your arms wrapping around his waist, holding onto him with a fierce, quiet desperation.
The entire courtyard seems to stop.
“Is that … Dean Di Laurentis?” A girl whispers loudly nearby. “Is he hugging someone?”
“Like … romantically?” Another asks in disbelief. “I thought he didn’t do public affection.”
“I thought he only hugged girls when they were horizontal.”
Dean hears the whispers, but he couldn’t care less. He squeezes you tighter, lifting you off your feet just a fraction of an inch, relishing the feeling of you in his arms. It’s a completely foreign sensation for him — touching a woman not with the intent to seduce, but out of overwhelming adoration and relief.
When he finally, reluctantly pulls back, he keeps his hands on your shoulders, his thumbs gently grazing the soft fabric of your coat. He looks down at you, really looking at you, taking in the elegant curve of your jaw, the soft flush on your cheeks, the way your eyes sparkle with unshed tears.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, his voice thick with an emotion he can’t quite name. “You’re … God, you’re beautiful. You’re all grown up.”
You blush, a deep, pretty pink spreading across your cheeks. You duck your head shyly, a demure gesture that completely contradicts the bold, brash girls Dean usually surrounds himself with. “You haven’t done too badly yourself, Dean. Though I see you’re still as dramatic as ever.”
Dean laughs, a bright, genuine sound. “What the hell are you doing here? Mom told me you were at Oxford. Getting cozy with royalty or whatever.” He tries to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but a tiny sliver slips through.
Your smile falters slightly, a shadow passing over your eyes. You glance around, suddenly aware of the massive crowd of students staring at you, and more specifically, the four giant athletes slowly approaching from behind Dean, their jaws practically on the floor.
“It’s … complicated,” you say softly, your hands nervously twisting the belt of your trench coat. “I transferred. I’m going to Briar now.”
“You’re going to Briar?” Dean repeats, his brain struggling to compute this information. You, the diplomat’s daughter, the Oxford scholar, at a party school in Massachusetts? “Since when?”
“Since about a week ago,” you admit, your voice barely above a whisper. “Dean, I …”
“Hold on, hold on,” Logan’s voice interrupts, loud and booming. Dean groans inwardly, dropping his hands from your shoulders as his friends finally catch up.
Logan, Garrett, Tucker, and Beau form a massive, intimidating wall of muscle behind Dean. They are all staring at you as if you just dropped out of the sky in a flying saucer.
“Dean,” Garrett says slowly, his eyes darting between you and his best friend. “Are you going to introduce us to your … friend?”
Dean feels a sudden, fierce wave of protectiveness wash over him. He steps slightly in front of you, shielding you from their intense gazes.
“Guys, this is Y/N,” Dean says, his voice taking on a serious tone that the guys rarely hear. “Y/N, these are my idiot friends. Garrett, Logan, Tucker, and Beau.”
You offer them a small, polite smile, dipping your head in a graceful nod. “It is very lovely to meet you all. Dean has mentioned … well, he actually hasn’t mentioned you, but his mother has.”
Beau chuckles, immediately charmed. “Well, aren’t you a breath of fresh air. How do you know our boy here?”
“We grew up together,” you explain softly, your eyes darting back to Dean. “In Greenwich. We were best friends.”
“Best friends,” Logan repeats, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline. He looks at Dean, a slow, annoying smirk spreading across his face. “Funny. Dean never mentioned he had a gorgeous, British-sounding best friend.”
“She’s not British, she just lived there,” Dean snaps, glaring at Logan. “And I didn’t mention her because you degenerates don’t deserve to know about her.”
Tucker chuckles, tipping his imaginary hat to you. “Ma’am. It’s a pleasure.”
“Please, just Y/N is fine,” you say, your cheeks still flushed.
Dean turns his attention back to you, completely ignoring his friends. He reaches out, gently catching your hand. Your fingers are freezing.
“You’re shaking,” he notes, his brow furrowing. “And you didn’t answer my question. Why are you here, Y/N? And don’t give me some bullshit about wanting to experience American college life. Oxford was your dream.”
You look down at your intertwined hands, your thumb unconsciously tracing the knuckles of his hand. It’s an intimate, familiar gesture that sends a jolt of electricity straight to Dean’s groin, but he aggressively shoves that reaction down. This is you. He cannot corrupt you.
“My father,” you start, your voice trembling slightly. You swallow hard, looking up into Dean’s eyes, seeing the genuine concern radiating from him. “He … he was getting threats. At the embassy. Serious ones.”
The air around the group instantly shifts. The playful banter evaporates. Garrett’s posture straightens, Tucker crosses his arms, and Dean’s entire body goes rigid.
“Threats?” Dean asks, his voice dropping an octave, losing all of its usual playful cadence. “What kind of threats?”
“Political ones,” you say vaguely, not wanting to spill state secrets in the middle of a busy quad. “Things got very tense very quickly. Security advised that my family be relocated. My parents are back in D.C. under heavy detail, but they didn’t want my education completely derailed. Briar has an excellent political science program, and they accepted my transfer credits immediately. Plus, it’s far away from Washington, but still in the States. They thought I would blend in here.”
You gesture helplessly to your immaculate outfit, contrasting sharply with the neon leggings and hoodies around you. “Though I suppose I’m failing a bit at the blending in part.”
Dean doesn’t laugh. His jaw is ticking, a muscle feathering in his cheek as he processes what you’re saying. You were in danger. You were threatened. The thought makes a sudden, terrifying rage spike in his chest.
“Are you safe here?” Dean demands, his hand tightening around yours.
“Yes,” you assure him quickly. “I have … well, I have discrete security. But officially, I’m just a normal student now. Or trying to be.”
Dean looks at you, really looks at you. He sees the exhaustion lurking beneath your perfectly applied makeup, the faint dark circles under your eyes, the tension in your shoulders. You have been uprooted, terrified, and dropped into a completely alien environment.
“Where are you living?” Dean asks.
“They put me in a single dorm in the upperclassman hall,” you say softly. “I was just trying to find the registrar’s office to get my schedule sorted, but this campus is rather massive.”
Dean makes a split-second decision.
“You’re not staying in a dorm,” Dean says definitively.
You blink in surprise. “Pardon?”
“He said,” Logan chimes in, correctly reading Dean’s mood and seamlessly backing him up, “that the dorms are trash. And you’re not staying in one.”
“I—I have to,” you stammer, looking overwhelmed. “It’s already paid for, and-”
“I don’t care if the President himself paid for it,” Dean says, stepping closer to you. “You’re not sleeping in a building with a broken security door and a bunch of drunk frat boys running down the halls. You’re coming home with me.”
Your eyes go wide. “Dean, I couldn’t possibly-”
“I live in an off-campus house,” Dean continues, his tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. “With Garrett, Logan, and Tucker. We have a spare room. It’s supposed to be a gaming room, but we’ll clear it out. You’re staying with us.”
“Dean,” Garrett says slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, we’re not exactly … quiet.”
“She’s staying with us, Garrett,” Dean repeats, shooting his captain a look that dares him to argue.
Garrett holds his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I’m not arguing. It’s your call. Just warning the lady.”
You look entirely flustered, your elegant composure cracking as you look between the massive hockey players and your childhood best friend. “Dean, really, it’s too much. I don’t want to intrude. You have your own life, your own friends-”
“Y/N,” Dean says softly. He reaches out, gently cupping your cheek. The contact makes you gasp quietly. His thumb strokes your cheekbone, his eyes softening as he looks into yours. “You are never an intrusion. You’re family. And right now, you need someone to look out for you. Let me do this.”
You stare up at him, your heart doing a complicated flutter in your chest. The boy you used to know — the skinny, hyperactive kid who used to catch frogs in the creek — is gone. In his place is a man. A broad, commanding, impossibly handsome man who is looking at you with such fierce, protective devotion that it makes your breath catch.
“Okay,” you whisper softly. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” Dean says, offering you a breathtaking, devastating smile. The kind of smile that breaks hearts on a daily basis.
He turns to the guys. “Beau, go to the registrar and sort out her schedule. Take her ID. Garrett, Logan, Tucker — we’re going to her dorm to pack up her shit and move it to our house.”
“Wait, I didn’t agree to be manual labor,” Logan complains.
Dean shoots him a dark look.
“Manual labor is my favorite,” Logan corrects immediately. “Point me to the boxes.”
Dean turns back to you, slipping your hand securely into his, lacing your fingers together. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get you out of this quad.”
As Dean leads you away, with three massive hockey players trailing behind like your personal bodyguards, you can’t help but feel a profound sense of whiplash. Within twenty minutes, your entire terrifying, lonely American college experience has been hijacked by Dean Di Laurentis.
You look down at your intertwined hands, feeling the heat of his palm against yours.
Maybe coming back to America wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
***
The walk to your dorm is a surreal experience. The Briar campus is bustling with mid-morning activity, and you are acutely aware of the stares. Specifically, the stares directed at your joined hands.
“Dean,” you murmur, leaning closer to him so the guys trailing behind you won’t hear. “People are staring.”
“Let them stare,” Dean says easily, his thumb rhythmically stroking the back of your hand. “They’re just jealous because I’m walking with the prettiest girl on campus.”
You roll your eyes, though a hot blush creeps up your neck. “You haven’t changed. Still a terrible flirt.”
“I’m not flirting,” Dean says, sounding genuinely offended. “I’m stating facts. I have an eye for aesthetics, Y/N. You know this.”
“I know that your mother used to complain that you spent more time looking in the mirror than she did,” you tease gently.
Dean barks out a laugh. “That was one time! And I was styling my hair for the seventh-grade dance.”
“You used an entire can of hairspray,” you remind him, a genuine smile finally breaking through your anxiety. “You smelled like a chemical hazard.”
“And yet, you still danced with me,” he counters, throwing a wink over his shoulder.
“I took pity on you,” you reply primly.
Behind you, Logan lets out a low whistle. “She’s got jokes, Di Laurentis. I like her. Can we keep her?”
“She’s not a stray dog, Logan,” Garrett groans.
“She’s too classy for us,” Tucker adds in his slow, Southern drawl. “Look at her. She looks like she should be having tea with the Queen, not walking next to a guy who ate cereal out of a frisbee this morning.”
You glance back at Tucker, slightly horrified. “You ate cereal out of a frisbee?”
“All the bowls were dirty,” Logan defends him. “It was a logistical necessity.”
You turn back to Dean, your eyes wide. “What exactly have I agreed to?”
“Chaos,” Dean admits cheerfully. “Absolute, unmitigated chaos. But I promise we’ll keep the house clean for you. I’ll personally hire a maid if I have to.”
“You don’t have to do that,” you say quickly. “I can clean. I’m quite domesticated.”
Dean stops walking. He turns to look at you, his expression completely serious. “Y/N. You are not cleaning our house. I will literally physically restrain you before I let you scrub a toilet that Logan has used.”
“Hey!” Logan yells from behind.
“I’m serious,” Dean says, his eyes boring into yours. “You’re a guest. You’re my … you’re with me. You don’t lift a finger.”
His words send a strange shiver down your spine. There is a possessiveness in his tone that you’ve never heard before. It’s thrilling, and terrifying, and completely unexpected.
You finally reach your dorm building. It’s a standard, slightly run-down brick building that smells vaguely of cheap beer and floor wax. Dean wrinkles his nose as you lead them inside and up to the third floor.
When you unlock your door and push it open, the stark, depressing reality of the tiny room hits you again. A single twin bed with a thin mattress, a particle-board desk, and two large suitcases sitting unpacked in the center of the floor.
Dean steps inside, looking around with blatant disgust. “Yeah, no. This is a prison cell. Grab what you need for the day, we’re taking the rest.”
“It’s not that bad,” you say softly, walking over to your suitcase.
“It’s inhumane,” Dean corrects. He turns to his teammates. “Grab the bags. Let’s go.”
Garrett and Tucker easily heft your massive, heavy suitcases as if they weigh absolutely nothing. Logan grabs a smaller duffel bag and a few hanging garment bags.
“Is this everything?” Dean asks.
You look around the barren room, clutching your handbag. “Yes. I haven’t exactly had time to unpack.”
“Good,” Dean says. He steps close to you again, his presence overwhelming in the tiny space. He reaches out, gently tucking a stray lock of hair behind your ear. His fingers brush against your skin, sending a jolt of heat straight to your core.
“You’re safe now,” he murmurs, his voice so low only you can hear it. “I’ve got you, Y/N. I promise.”
You look up into his warm, green eyes, seeing the fierce sincerity there. The fear and isolation that had been gripping your chest for the past week slowly begins to uncoil.
“I know,” you whisper.
For the first time since you landed in America, you actually believe it.
Dean smiles, a soft, intimate thing that makes your breath catch. He takes your hand again, leading you out of the dismal dorm room and toward whatever crazy, chaotic new life awaits you at the off-campus house.
As you walk out of the building, surrounded by a phalanx of massive hockey players, you realize one very undeniable fact.
Dean Di Laurentis might be known as the campus womanizer, but to you, he is something entirely different. He is your past, your protector, and quite possibly, the most dangerous thing to your heart.
The walk to the house is a blur of falling autumn leaves and the continuous, rapid-fire banter of the Briar hockey players. You mostly listen, fascinated by the easy camaraderie between Dean and his friends. It’s vastly different from the stiff, overly polite circles you ran in at Oxford, where every conversation felt like a chess match. Here, the insults are hurled with affection, and there are absolutely no filters.
“So, Y/N,” Garrett says, easily matching your pace despite carrying a suitcase that weighs half as much as you do. “Politics, huh? You want to be a diplomat like your dad?”
“That’s the plan,” you say, your voice steadying as you find your footing in the conversation. “International relations, specifically. Though right now, I think I’d settle for just passing my midterms without causing an international incident.”
“If you need help studying, Logan is basically a genius,” Dean chimes in, though his tone is heavily laced with sarcasm. “He once tried to put metal in the microwave to see if it would sparkle.”
“It was a scientific inquiry!” Logan defends loudly from the back. “And I was a freshman!”
“You were a sophomore,” Tucker corrects mildly.
You let out a soft laugh, the sound bubbling up naturally. Dean’s head snaps toward you, his eyes catching yours. The playful smirk on his face softens into something warmer, something that makes the knot of anxiety in your stomach loosen even more.
“Here we are,” Dean announces, gesturing grandly to a large, slightly weathered two-story house sitting on a quiet residential street just off campus. The lawn could use a trim, and there’s a stray hockey stick leaning against the porch railing, but it looks incredibly inviting. It looks like a home.
Dean leads you up the steps and pushes the front door open, stepping aside to let you enter first.
You step into the foyer, immediately assaulted by the scent of pine cleaner, old leather, and something distinctly masculine. The living room to the left is massive, dominated by a huge sectional sofa and a television that belongs in a movie theater.
“It’s … very big,” you remark politely, stepping further inside.
“It’s a pigsty,” Dean corrects, glaring at a pair of discarded sneakers in the hallway. He kicks them into a closet. “I’m going to murder whoever left their shoes out.”
“Those are your shoes, bro,” Logan points out, dropping your bags at the base of the stairs.
Dean doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m a complex man. I contain multitudes. Come on, sweetheart, let me show you your room.”
He takes your hand again — a gesture that is quickly becoming a habit — and leads you up the wide wooden staircase. You trail behind him, acutely aware of how small your hand feels in his.
At the end of the hallway, Dean pushes open a door.
“This was the designated gaming room,” Dean explains, flipping on the light switch. “But we have another TV downstairs, so it’s basically just storage. Give us an hour to clear out the Xbox and the beanbag chairs, and we’ll bring up a bed from the basement. It’s a real mattress, I swear. Not that dorm room cardboard.”
You step into the room. It’s spacious, with a large window overlooking the backyard. Right now, it’s cluttered with video game cases, a ratty sofa, and empty pizza boxes.
You turn to Dean, feeling overwhelmed all over again. “Dean, I can’t ask you to give up your space for me. I can just stay in the dorm. It really isn’t-”
“Stop,” Dean says softly, stepping into your personal space. He reaches out, placing his hands lightly on your waist. The heat of his palms bleeds through your trench coat, sending a violent shiver down your spine.
“Look at me,” he commands gently.
You look up, meeting those devastating green eyes.
“I am not letting you stay in a dorm where anyone could walk in,” Dean says, his voice dropping to a serious, gravelly register. “I know you have security, but I don’t care. I need to know you’re safe. I need to know that when I go to sleep at night, you’re just down the hall. Let me do this for you, Y/N. Please.”
His plea is so earnest, so completely stripped of the cocky armor he usually wears, that it breaks your heart a little. You realize then that this isn’t just about protecting you; it’s about him needing the reassurance.
“Okay,” you whisper, nodding slowly. “Okay, Dean. Thank you.”
He exhales a long breath, a stunning smile breaking across his face. “Good. Now, sit on that disgustingly stained sofa and supervise while I make these idiots do heavy lifting.”
For the next hour, you sit and watch in amusement as the hockey players dismantle the gaming room. They move furniture with shocking efficiency, bickering the entire time. Dean is a relentless taskmaster, snapping orders and threatening bodily harm if anyone scratches the walls.
When they finally lug a heavy wooden bed frame and a pristine mattress up from the basement, Dean insists on making the bed himself.
You lean against the doorframe, watching as the notorious campus playboy meticulously tucks in a fitted sheet with absolute precision.
“You have excellent domestic skills, Di Laurentis,” you tease, crossing your arms over your chest.
Dean smirks, tossing a pillow onto the bed. “My mother taught me that a man should always know how to make a bed perfectly. Among other things.”
He shoots you a wicked, heavily implied wink that makes your face burn.
“Down, boy,” Garrett warns as he walks past, carrying the last stack of video games. “Don’t scar the poor girl.”
“I am a perfect gentleman,” Dean protests, fluffing the pillow aggressively.
Once the room is cleared and your suitcases are placed at the foot of the bed, Dean ushers the other guys out of the room.
“Give her some space to unpack,” Dean orders, practically shoving Logan out the door. “We’ll order pizza for lunch. Y/N, you like pepperoni?”
“I love pepperoni,” you say softly.
“Perfect. Unpack. Breathe. Come down when you’re ready,” Dean says. He lingers in the doorway for a second, his eyes tracing over your features as if he still can’t believe you’re actually standing in his house.
“Welcome home, Y/N.”
And as he pulls the door shut, leaving you alone in the suddenly quiet room, you press a hand to your chest, feeling the frantic, terrifyingly fast beat of your heart.
You are thousands of miles from the life you knew, hiding from threats you barely understand, living in a house full of giant athletes.
But as you look at the perfectly made bed, and remember the fierce, protective heat in Dean’s eyes, you realize something profound.
For the first time in weeks, you aren’t afraid.
By the time you finish unpacking your essentials and hanging your tailored clothes in the small closet, the scent of melted cheese and greasy pepperoni is wafting up the stairs. Your stomach gives an unladylike rumble, reminding you that you haven’t eaten since a piece of dry toast at 6:00 AM.
You take a deep breath, smoothing down the front of your sweater. You swapped the formal trench coat and turtleneck for a pair of fitted dark jeans and a soft, oversized cashmere sweater — an attempt to match the casual vibe of the house without losing your own sense of style.
When you walk down the stairs, the volume of the house hits you instantly. The television is blaring a sports broadcast, and three overlapping arguments are happening simultaneously in the kitchen.
You peek around the corner. The massive kitchen island is covered in flat cardboard pizza boxes. Garrett, Logan, and Tucker are all standing around, shoving slices into their mouths at an alarming rate.
Dean is leaning against the counter, a slice of pizza in one hand and a beer in the other. He looks perfectly in his element, relaxed and gorgeously disheveled.
Then he spots you.
The conversation around him continues, but Dean completely tunes it out. His eyes lock onto yours, sweeping over your casual outfit. A slow, devastating smile spreads across his face, lighting up his features in a way that makes your breath catch.
“Hey,” he says softly, his voice cutting through the noise in the room like a knife.
The other guys immediately stop talking and turn to look at you.
“The Queen descends,” Logan jokes, offering you a greasy salute with his pizza crust.
“Ignore him,” Dean says, pushing off the counter and walking over to you. He grabs a clean paper plate, loads it with two slices of pepperoni pizza, and hands it to you. “Eat. You look like a stiff breeze could knock you over.”
“Thank you,” you murmur, taking the plate. You walk over to the island, hyper-aware of Dean shadowing your steps. You take a delicate bite of the pizza, the warm, greasy goodness making you close your eyes in appreciation. “Oh, that is heavenly.”
“See?” Dean says, looking incredibly smug. “American pizza. Way better than whatever boiled garbage they serve in England.”
“They don’t boil pizza, Dean,” you point out dryly, taking another bite.
“Whatever,” he dismisses smoothly. He leans against the counter next to you, his shoulder brushing against yours. The physical contact is completely casual for him, but it sends a jolt of electricity straight to your brain. “So, did Beau text back about your schedule?”
Tucker pulls out his phone. “Yeah, Beau texted the group chat while you were upstairs. He got her registered. Emailed the schedule to her student account. She’s got Political Theory at 8 AM tomorrow.”
You groan softly, dropping your head forward. “Eight AM. The cruelty of the American education system.”
Dean laughs, a rich, warm sound that vibrates in his chest. “Don’t worry. I’ll drive you.”
You look up at him, startled. “Dean, you don’t have to do that. I can walk. I’m sure you have your own classes.”
“I don’t have class until eleven,” Dean says simply, taking a sip of his beer. “And you’re not walking across campus alone. Not right now. Until we get a handle on … your situation, you don’t go anywhere alone. Understand?”
His tone leaves no room for argument. It’s the voice of a man who is used to getting his way, but beneath the bossiness, there is a thick layer of genuine anxiety. He is worried about you.
“Alright,” you agree softly. “If you’re sure it’s not a bother.”
“You,” Dean says, leaning in so his face is only inches from yours, his green eyes intense, “are never a bother.”
The kitchen suddenly feels very small, and very hot. You stare into his eyes, completely forgetting how to breathe, let alone speak. The undeniable, pulsing tension between you is thick enough to cut with a knife.
Someone clears their throat loudly.
You jump, breaking eye contact with Dean and looking over to see Garrett leaning against the fridge, arms crossed, observing the two of you with raised eyebrows.
“So,” Garrett drawls, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Childhood best friends, huh? You guys used to play in the sandbox together?”
“I used to push him into the mud,” you correct, finding your voice. “Regularly.”
Logan barks a laugh. “I knew I liked her.”
“She was vicious,” Dean agrees, turning back to the guys but keeping his body angled toward you. “One time, she convinced me that poison ivy was a rare type of mint. I was covered in rashes for a week.”
“You were terribly gullible,” you say innocently, taking another bite of pizza.
“I trusted you!” Dean gasps in mock betrayal. “You were the diplomat’s daughter! You were supposed to be honorable.”
“Diplomacy,” you counter smoothly, “is just the art of letting someone else have your way. I wanted to see what would happen.”
The guys burst into laughter, and even Dean chuckles, shaking his head. He reaches out and nudges your shoulder gently. “You’re lucky you’re cute, Y/L/N.”
The casual compliment makes your heart stutter. You duck your head to hide the sudden blush painting your cheeks.
As lunch winds down, the guys scatter to their respective routines. Garrett and Logan head to the living room to play NHL on the Xbox, and Tucker retreats upstairs to study.
Which leaves you alone in the kitchen with Dean.
You start gathering the empty pizza boxes, intending to throw them away, but Dean intercepts you. His hands cover yours, stopping your movements.
“I told you,” he says softly. “You don’t clean.”
“Dean, it’s just boxes,” you protest weakly, staring down at his large, warm hands covering yours.
“I don’t care,” he says. He takes the boxes from you and tosses them into the large trash can by the door. Then, he turns back to you, his expression turning uncharacteristically serious.
“Y/N. Come here.”
He grabs your hand and leads you out of the kitchen, pulling you toward the back of the house and out onto a small patio. The crisp autumn air bites at your cheeks, but you barely feel it. Dean lets go of your hand and leans against the wooden railing, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Tell me the truth,” he says, his eyes boring into yours. “How bad are the threats?”
You wrap your arms around your middle, suddenly feeling very small. The playful banter of the kitchen is gone, replaced by the stark, terrifying reality of why you are actually here.
“They were … specific,” you whisper, looking down at the wooden planks of the patio. “Letters delivered directly to the embassy. Photos of me at Oxford. Walking to class. Sitting in cafes. Someone was following me.”
Dean curses violently under his breath, his hands gripping the railing so hard his knuckles turn white.
“My father’s security detail intercepted them before I saw most of it,” you continue, your voice trembling slightly at the memory. “But they told him that the people making the threats knew my schedule perfectly. They wanted my father to vote a certain way on an upcoming international trade sanction, and they were using me as leverage.”
Dean pushes off the railing and steps closer to you. He doesn’t touch you, but his physical proximity is a comfort in itself. “So they pulled you out.”
“In the middle of the night,” you nod, tears pricking the corners of your eyes. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my professors or my friends. They packed my bags, put me on a private jet with four armed guards, and flew me to D.C. I stayed in a safe house for three days before they decided Briar was a safe enough distance to hide me.”
You look up at him, a single tear spilling over your lashes and tracking down your cheek. “I’m terrified, Dean. I’m trying to be brave, but every time I look over my shoulder, I expect to see someone watching me.”
“Hey,” Dean breathes, closing the remaining distance between you. He wraps his arms around you, pulling you firmly against his chest. You bury your face in his shoulder, letting out a shaky breath as his arms envelop you completely.
“No one is watching you here,” Dean whispers fiercely into your hair, his hands stroking up and down your back. “I swear to God, Y/N, no one is going to touch you. You have me. You have Garrett, Logan, and Tucker. We are literally a house full of giant, violent hockey players. You are the safest person in the state of Massachusetts.”
You let out a wet, watery laugh against his sweater. “You’re not violent.”
“I can be,” Dean says, and the deadly serious tone of his voice makes you pause. “For you, I could be.”
You pull back slightly, looking up into his face. The cocky, charming playboy is entirely gone. In his eyes, you see a fierce, unyielding devotion that takes your breath away.
“Why are you doing this, Dean?” You whisper. “You have your own life. You don’t need to babysit me.”
Dean reaches up, his thumb gently wiping away the tear track on your cheek. His touch is impossibly tender.
“Because you’re mine,” he says simply, the words slipping out naturally, as if it’s the most obvious fact in the universe. “You always have been, Y/N. Since we were kids. I lost you once when you moved away. I’m not letting anything happen to you now that I have you back.”
Your heart slams against your ribs. The words echo in your head, thrilling and terrifying all at once. You stare at him, seeing the sudden realization of what he just said flicker in his own eyes. Dean swallows hard, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fraction of a second before darting back up to your eyes.
The air between you is highly combustible. All it would take is one lean, one tilt of the head, and years of childhood friendship would go up in flames.
Dean slowly leans in, his face inches from yours. You find yourself leaning closer, your eyes fluttering shut, anticipating the slide of his lips against yours.
BANG.
The sound of the back door flying open shatters the moment like glass.
You and Dean spring apart instantly, your faces flushed, breathing heavily.
Logan stands in the doorway, oblivious to the heavy tension he just interrupted. “Yo, Di Laurentis! Are we doing the grocery run or what? We’re out of beer and Y/N probably needs, like, fancy British tea or something.”
Dean closes his eyes, taking a deep, ragged breath. When he opens them, he shoots Logan a look of pure, unadulterated murder.
“I’m coming,” Dean snaps, his voice completely strained.
Logan blinks, finally sensing the weird vibe. “Uh … did I interrupt something?”
“Yes,” Dean says bluntly. “Go start the car.”
Logan throws his hands up in surrender and retreats back inside.
Dean turns back to you, dragging a hand through his messy blonde hair. He looks incredibly frustrated, but a small, breathless smile tugs at the corner of his lips.
“We’re going to pick up some things for you,” Dean says softly, his eyes dropping to your lips again. “Get settled. Take a nap. I’ll be back soon.”
You nod silently, still trying to get your erratic heartbeat under control. “Okay.”
He hesitates for a second, looking as though he wants to close the distance again, but then he shakes his head and steps back. “Lock the door behind me.”
As Dean walks back inside, leaving you alone on the crisp patio, you press your fingers against your lips. They are tingling, buzzing with the phantom feeling of a kiss that never happened.
You are hiding from a terrifying political threat, living in a house of hockey players, and you are dangerously close to falling completely, irrevocably in love with the biggest playboy on campus.
Welcome to Briar University.
***
It has been exactly three weeks since you moved into the off-campus hockey house, and the entirety of Briar University is operating under the collective, terrifying assumption that Dean Di Laurentis has been abducted by aliens. Or cloned. Or possessed by a very chaste, very domesticated demon.
There is simply no other logical explanation.
“I’m telling you, it’s not him,” Logan says, his voice hushed but frantic as he peeks around the kitchen doorframe. He’s staring into the living room, where Dean is currently sitting on the couch. “Look at him. Just look.”
Garrett sighs, leaning against the counter and crossing his massive arms. “He’s reading a textbook, Logan. It’s called studying. Normal college students do it.”
“Dean doesn’t!” Logan hisses, gesturing wildly. “Dean pays attention in class just enough to coast, and he spends his free time trying to get horizontal with anything that has a pulse and a nice smile! He hasn’t brought a girl home in twenty-one days, Garrett. Twenty-one! Do you know what that means?”
“That we don’t have to bleach the living room rug anymore?” Tucker suggests mildly from his spot at the kitchen island, not looking up from his breakfast.
“It means his brain has been hijacked,” Logan insists.
Beau, who had stopped by to steal their food, chuckles and takes a bite of an apple. “Or, and hear me out, it means his childhood best friend moved in, and he’s realized he has to actually be a functional human being to keep her safe.”
They all fall silent, turning to look back out into the living room.
You are sitting on the opposite end of the oversized sectional. You have a thick political science textbook resting on your knees, your brow furrowed in concentration as you highlight a passage. You’re wearing a pair of soft grey sweatpants — a recent, highly encouraged addition to your wardrobe by the guys — and an oversized Briar hockey hoodie that absolutely swallows your delicate frame. The hoodie belongs to Dean.
And Dean? Dean is sitting about a foot away from you, his own textbook open, but he isn’t reading. He’s just watching you. His arm is draped along the back of the sofa, his fingers lightly, almost unconsciously, playing with the frayed end of your hoodie string. His eyes are soft, tracing the line of your profile with a reverence that borders on religious.
“It’s freaky,” Logan mutters. “He went from being a certified campus manwhore to … a golden retriever. A very protective, aggressively loyal golden retriever.”
“He’s whipped,” Garrett says, though there’s a fond smile pulling at his lips. “And they aren’t even dating.”
“Yet,” Beau corrects softly. “Give it time. The guy looks at her like she hung the moon and the stars.”
In the living room, you let out a soft sigh, rubbing your eyes. You’ve been studying for three hours straight. The sudden shift from the British educational system to American midterms has been jarring, and the added stress of your security situation hasn’t helped your focus.
“Tired?” Dean asks instantly, his voice a low, soothing rumble.
You turn to look at him, offering a small, exhausted smile. “A bit. Rousseau is incredibly dense when you’re running on four hours of sleep.”
Dean frowns, his hand dropping from the hoodie string to gently brush a stray lock of hair out of your eyes. “You need a break. We have class in an hour anyway. Come on, I’ll make you tea.”
“I can make it,” you protest gently, starting to close your heavy book.
“Absolutely not,” Dean says, already standing up. He reaches down and effortlessly plucks the massive textbook from your lap, tossing it onto the coffee table. “You sit. I brew. That’s the deal.”
As Dean walks into the kitchen, Logan, Garrett, and Beau immediately scatter, trying to look as though they weren’t just intensely analyzing his every move. Dean ignores them completely, walking straight to the kettle.
You watch him from the couch, your heart doing that familiar, terrifying little flip. The way he treats you is entirely at odds with the reputation that precedes him. You’ve heard the whispers on campus. You know what people say about Dean. You know the girls point and stare, whispering about his conquests. But the man who makes your bed when you forget, who insists on walking you to every single class, who glares at any frat boy who looks at you for too long? That man is careful. He treats you like you are something precious, something made of spun glass that he is terrified of breaking.
Ten minutes later, Dean emerges from the kitchen with a travel mug. He hands it to you.
You take a sip and close your eyes, a genuine hum of pleasure escaping your lips. “Dean … this is Earl Grey. With exactly a splash of oat milk and half a teaspoon of honey.”
“I know,” Dean says, grabbing his backpack and slinging it over one broad shoulder.
“How do you remember that?” You ask, staring up at him in wonder. “I haven’t ordered this in front of you since I moved here. I’ve just been drinking whatever drip coffee the guys make.”
Dean pauses, looking down at you. The easy, arrogant smirk he usually wears is nowhere to be found. “I remember everything about you, Y/N. Everything. I didn’t forget your favorite tea just because you moved across an ocean.”
Your breath catches. You stare at him, feeling a hot flush rise to your cheeks.
“Come on,” Dean murmurs, his voice softening even further. He reaches down, grabbing your heavy tote bag before you can even reach for it. “Let’s go to class. I want a good seat.”
The walk across campus is, as always, an exercise in public scrutiny. Dean walks slightly ahead of you, his large frame parting the sea of students effortlessly. Every time you pass a group of girls, you see the hopeful glances directed his way, followed immediately by total confusion when Dean doesn’t even spare them a second glance. His entire focus is tethered to you.
When you enter the massive lecture hall for your Political Science seminar, it’s already crowded. Dean immediately zeroes in on two seats near the middle row. He drops your bag onto one chair and his own onto the other, effectively claiming the territory.
“Hey, Dean,” a high-pitched, bubbly voice calls out.
You both turn to see a stunning blonde in a cropped sweater leaning over the row behind you. She flashes Dean a brilliant, practiced smile. “I was hoping you’d be here. There’s an empty seat next to me if you want it. We could … share notes.”
You feel a sudden, sharp prickle of insecurity. She is exactly the kind of girl you imagine Dean with — bold, beautiful, and completely uninhibited. You instinctively shrink in on yourself, looking down at your hands. You are so fundamentally different. You are quiet, painfully shy, and the thought of public displays of affection makes you want to spontaneously combust.
But Dean doesn’t smile back at the blonde. In fact, his expression remains completely blank, almost bored.
“I’m sitting with Y/N,” Dean says flatly, leaving absolutely no room for interpretation.
“Oh,” the girl falters, her smile slipping as she glances at you with thinly veiled disdain. “Right. The … new girl.”
Dean’s jaw ticks. He steps slightly in front of you, a clear, territorial block. “Yeah. My girl. Excuse us.”
The words send a dizzying rush of heat straight to your core. You sink into your seat, your face practically burning, as Dean sits down next to you. He casually drapes his arm across the back of your chair, his solid, warm presence a shield against the rest of the room.
“You didn’t have to be rude to her,” you whisper, though secretly, you are terribly glad he was.
“I wasn’t rude,” Dean whispers back, leaning in so close his breath ghosts over your ear. “I was honest. I don’t care about her notes. I only care about you.”
You bite your lower lip, trying desperately to suppress the smile fighting its way onto your face. Dean’s eyes track the movement of your teeth on your lip, his pupils dilating slightly, but he quickly forces his gaze away and pulls his notebook out. He is so restrained with you, so careful not to push your boundaries, and it only makes you fall for him harder.
Friday night arrives with the heavy, pulsing bass of a house party.
The guys decided to throw a rager to kick off the start of the hockey season. Under normal circumstances, you would have locked yourself in your room with a pair of noise-canceling headphones. But Dean had looked at you with those big, green eyes and promised he would stay by your side the entire night, so here you are.
You are standing in the corner of the crowded living room, clutching a red Solo cup filled with ginger ale. You are wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved black dress that hits mid-thigh. It’s elegant, understated, and completely out of place in the sea of neon crop tops and miniskirts surrounding you.
“Are you okay?”
You look up as Dean materializes through the crowd. He’s wearing a fitted black Henley that highlights every single muscle in his chest and arms, and his hair is perfectly, artfully messy. He looks like pure, unfiltered trouble. But the moment his eyes land on you, the dangerous edge softens.
“I’m fine,” you say, though you have to shout slightly over the music. “It’s just … very loud.”
“We can go upstairs,” Dean offers immediately, stepping closer so he doesn’t have to yell. His body acts as a natural barrier, preventing a stumbling frat boy from bumping into you. “We can lock the door and watch a movie. I don’t care about the party.”
You stare at him in disbelief. “Dean, this is your house. Your team. You can’t just hide upstairs with me. Everyone expects the legendary Dean Di Laurentis to be out here, working the room.”
Dean scoffs, taking a sip from his own cup. “Let them expect whatever they want. I’ve retired.”
“Retired?” You echo, a small laugh escaping you.
“Yep,” Dean says, leaning against the wall next to you. “Hung up my jersey. I’m a one-woman man now.”
The casual confession makes your breath hitch. He says it so easily, so confidently, but the weight of the words is staggering.
Before you can formulate a response, a girl with bright red hair pushes her way through the crowd and practically throws herself at Dean.
“Deeeaan,” she purrs, trailing a manicured hand down his bicep. “I haven’t seen you all night! We should go to the kitchen and do shots. Or go somewhere … quieter.”
She presses her chest against his arm, shooting a triumphant look at you. It’s the kind of blatant proposition that the old Dean would have accepted before she even finished her sentence. You’ve heard the stories. You know that more than once, he’s hooked up with girls right here in the living room while a party raged around them.
You instinctively take a step back, the familiar, suffocating shyness gripping your throat. You can’t compete with this. You don’t want to compete with this.
But Dean doesn’t even blink. He physically steps back, dislodging the redhead’s hand from his arm as if she’s made of acid.
“Not interested, Lexi,” Dean says, his voice devoid of any warmth.
“What?” Lexi pouts, looking genuinely shocked. “Come on, Dean. Don’t be boring. It’s Friday!”
“I said no,” Dean repeats, his tone dropping into a freezing, commanding register that makes the girl actually flinch. “I’m busy.”
He reaches out, grabbing your hand and pulling you firmly to his side. He intertwines your fingers, holding your hand up slightly so the girl can see it.
“I’m with her,” Dean states unequivocally. “Have a good night.”
Lexi stares at your joined hands, then looks up at your flushed face. She huffs in annoyance, turning on her heel and stomping away into the crowd.
You look up at Dean, your heart pounding a frantic rhythm against your ribs. “You really didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did,” Dean says, looking down at you. His thumb strokes the back of your hand, a grounding, soothing motion. “I told you, Y/N. I don’t want anyone else. They don’t even register on my radar anymore. It’s just you.”
“Dean …” you breathe, feeling completely overwhelmed by the raw honesty in his eyes.
“Hey, lovebirds!”
The moment breaks as Tucker and Logan push their way over to your corner. Logan is grinning like a madman, holding two fresh beers.
“Di Laurentis,” Logan says, shaking his head. “I just watched you turn down Lexi. The Lexi. Are you feeling okay? Do we need to call a doctor?”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Dean snaps, though he doesn’t drop your hand.
“He’s domesticated,” Tucker drawls, leaning against the wall and tipping his cup toward you. “You’ve tamed the beast, Y/N. The whole hockey team is terrified of you.”
You blush furiously, looking down at your shoes. “I haven’t done anything.”
“That’s the crazy part,” Logan laughs. “You literally just exist, and he acts like a knight in shining armor. It’s disgusting. I love it. Can I get a hug?”
Logan opens his arms, stepping toward you.
Before you can even react, Dean steps directly between you and Logan, pressing a flat hand to his teammate’s chest.
“Do not touch her,” Dean growls, half-joking, half-deadly serious.
Logan puts his hands up in surrender, laughing harder. “Alright, alright! Guard dog mode activated. I respect it.”
As the guys fall into an easy banter, Dean pulls you slightly closer, tucking you into his side. You lean your head against his shoulder, letting the chaos of the party wash over you. Surrounded by the towering hockey players, anchored by Dean’s warm, protective grip, you feel something you haven’t felt since you lived in London.
You feel entirely safe.
The next evening is the first official home game of the season.
The Briar University arena is packed to the rafters, a sea of black and red violently cheering as the Zamboni finishes clearing the ice. The energy is electric, thick with anticipation and the smell of roasted peanuts and cold air.
You are standing outside the home locker room, clutching a plastic cup of overpriced hot chocolate.
The door swings open, and Dean steps out.
He is fully geared up, massive in his shoulder pads, his Briar jersey stark and imposing. He looks like a gladiator about to step into the Colosseum. But the moment his eyes find you, the ferocious intensity of his game-face melts away, replaced by that soft, devoted smile reserved entirely for you.
He walks over, his skates clacking loudly against the rubber floor mats.
“Hey,” he says, stopping right in front of you.
“Hey yourself,” you reply softly, looking up at him. “You look … intimidating.”
Dean chuckles, a low, nervous sound. “Good. That’s the point. But I don’t want to intimidate you.”
“You never intimidate me, Dean,” you say truthfully.
Dean swallows hard, his eyes dropping to your outfit. You are wearing a simple black turtleneck and jeans. He frowns slightly.
“Hold on,” Dean says. He reaches back and grabs the hem of his game jersey, pulling it up and over his head in one fluid motion.
You gasp, your eyes going wide as he stands there in just his black under-armor shirt, the tight material clinging to every ridge of his abs and chest. “Dean! What are you doing?”
“You’re not wearing my colors,” Dean states simply. He shakes out the massive jersey and holds it out to you. “Put it on.”
“Dean, it’s your game jersey,” you protest, your heart doing a wild, frantic dance. “You need it to play!”
“I have a spare in my locker,” he dismisses easily. “Put it on, Y/N. Please. I want … I want everyone in that arena to know whose side you’re on.”
The intense possessiveness in his voice makes your knees weak. With shaking hands, you hand him your hot chocolate and take the jersey. You pull it over your head. It is ridiculously large on you, the heavy fabric falling almost to your knees, the sleeves swallowing your hands entirely.
But across the back, in massive block letters, it reads DI LAURENTIS 66.
You smell like him now — a mix of clean laundry detergent, ice, and that distinct, spicy cologne he wears.
Dean stares at you, his chest heaving slightly as he takes in the sight of you swimming in his jersey. His eyes darken, a visceral, primal reaction flashing across his features before he aggressively reels it in.
“Yeah,” Dean breathes, his voice rough. “That’s exactly how you’re supposed to look.”
He hands you back your drink and steps closer, reaching out to gently tug on the collar of the jersey. “I have to go to the bench. Beau is saving you a seat three rows behind our box. It’s next to the glass. You’ll be safe there.”
“I’ll be cheering for you,” you promise softly.
Dean leans down, and for a terrifying, exhilarating second, you think he’s going to kiss you. But instead, he presses his lips firmly to your forehead, lingering there for a long moment, inhaling your scent.
“Watch me, sweetheart,” he whispers against your skin. “I’m going to play for you.”
When you finally take your seat next to Beau in the stands, the entire arena seems to be buzzing. Beau takes one look at the oversized jersey swallowing you whole and bursts out laughing.
“Oh, he is so gone,” Beau cackles, shaking his head. “If he plays half as aggressively as he’s acting right now, we’re winning a national championship.”
The puck drops, and the game begins.
It is violent, fast-paced, and incredibly stressful. You sit on the edge of your seat, your hands clutched tightly in your lap as you watch the boys crash into the boards.
But Dean is a revelation.
He skates with a fluid, lethal grace, dodging defenders and making plays that leave the opposing team looking foolish. He is a blur of motion, hyper-focused and ruthless.
Midway through the first period, Briar gets a breakaway.
Logan intercepts a pass and sends it rocketing up the ice. Dean is there, catching it flawlessly. He tears down the center, the crowd rising to their feet, screaming his name. He fakes left, drops his shoulder, and sends a devastatingly fast wrist-shot right over the goalie’s glove.
The red light flashes. The horn blares. The arena completely erupts.
You jump to your feet, screaming in delight, your hands flying up in the air.
On the ice, Garrett and Logan immediately tackle Dean, shoving him against the glass in celebration. Dean laughs, shaking them off, and skates directly toward the bench.
But he doesn’t stop at the bench.
He skates right up to the glass where you are sitting. The crowd around you goes wild, but Dean doesn’t look at them. He looks right at you.
He taps his stick against the plexiglass twice, right in front of your face. Then, he presses his gloved hand to his chest, right over his heart, and points directly at you.
The gesture is so public, so undeniably romantic, that the entire section of fans surrounding you completely loses their minds. Girls are screaming, Beau is howling with laughter, and you are standing there, wearing his name on your back, feeling completely cherished.
Two hours later, the game is over. Briar has decimated the visiting team 4-1, and the post-game high is practically vibrating through the concrete walls of the arena corridors.
You are standing in the secluded hallway just past the locker rooms, waiting. The crowds have mostly filtered out, heading to the inevitable victory parties, but you stayed exactly where Dean told you to wait.
The heavy locker room door opens, and the boys start pouring out. They are showered, dressed in their street clothes, and loud.
When Dean finally emerges, he looks exhausted but radiant. His hair is damp from the shower, curling slightly at his forehead, and he’s wearing a simple grey t-shirt and jeans. He has a massive sports duffel slung over his shoulder.
He spots you leaning against the wall, still drowning in his game jersey, and a slow, exhausted smile spreads across his face. He drops his bag immediately and crosses the hallway in three long strides.
“Hey,” he breathes out, stopping right in front of you.
“Hi,” you say, looking up at him with wide, shining eyes. “You were incredible out there, Dean. Truly.”
“Yeah?” He asks, his eyes searching your face, seeking your approval above all else.
“The best on the ice,” you confirm softly.
The boys are filtering past you both, offering catcalls and teasing whistles.
“Get a room, Di Laurentis!” Logan shouts as he walks by with Tucker.
“Shut up, Logan!” Dean yells back without breaking eye contact with you.
The hallway finally clears, leaving the two of you alone in the quiet, fluorescent-lit corridor. The adrenaline from the game is still humming in the air between you, mixing violently with the unspoken tension that has been building for three weeks.
Dean steps closer, invading your personal space. He reaches out, his large hands resting gently on your waist, over the heavy fabric of the jersey.
“I meant it,” Dean whispers, his voice dropping an octave. “When I pointed to you. That goal was for you, Y/N.”
You look up at him, at the handsome, reckless boy you grew up with who has somehow morphed into this incredible, devoted man. You realize, with a sudden, crystal-clear certainty, that you don’t want to be scared anymore. You don’t want to hide behind your shyness or your fears of ruining your friendship.
“Dean,” you whisper.
You reach up, your hands slipping out of the oversized sleeves. You place your palms flat against his chest, feeling the heavy, rapid beat of his heart through his t-shirt.
Dean completely freezes. His breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t move a muscle, terrified that if he does, you will pull away.
You rise up on your tiptoes. Dean instinctively tilts his head down, meeting you halfway.
You press your lips to his.
It is not a hungry, open-mouthed kiss. It is chaste. Soft. Sweet. It is a gentle press of lips, a quiet, tender thank you, a desperate confession of everything you are too afraid to say out loud.
It lasts only three seconds.
When you pull back, dropping down to your flat feet, you keep your eyes closed for a moment, terrified of his reaction.
When you finally open them, you gasp.
Dean Di Laurentis — the guy who has quite literally been with half the campus, the guy who knows every sexual maneuver in the book, the guy who thrives on marathon, sweaty, athletic encounters — looks completely devastated.
He looks like he has died and gone to heaven.
His green eyes are blown wide, his pupils completely dilated. His jaw is slack, his lips slightly parted, pink and damp from your brief touch. His chest is heaving as if he just skated ten periods back-to-back.
“Y/N,” Dean breathes, the word trembling on his lips.
He raises a shaking hand, pressing his fingers to his own mouth, as if he can’t quite believe what just happened.
“Was that … was that okay?” You whisper, your insecurity suddenly flaring up. “I know it wasn’t … I know you’re used to-”
“Don’t,” Dean interrupts, his voice cracking slightly. He drops his duffel bag entirely and reaches for you, wrapping both arms around your waist and hauling you flush against his chest.
“Don’t you dare compare yourself to anyone else,” Dean says fiercely, staring down at you with a reverent, blazing intensity. “That was … Y/N, that was the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
“It was just a small kiss,” you murmur, your face burning.
“It was everything,” Dean corrects, his hands gripping your waist tightly. “You’re everything. God, I’m so in love with you.”
The words slip out of his mouth before he can stop them, tumbling into the quiet hallway like a grenade.
You freeze, your heart slamming against your ribs so hard it hurts. “Dean …”
Dean closes his eyes, resting his forehead against yours. He lets out a shaky laugh, a sound of pure relief and surrender.
“I know,” he whispers, his breath fanning across your lips. “I know it’s fast, and I know you’re scared, and I know I have a terrible reputation. But I’m yours, Y/N. I have always been yours. You just had to come back for me to realize it.”
He opens his eyes, looking deep into yours.
“You don’t have to say it back,” Dean promises, his thumb stroking your cheekbone. “You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for. I just needed you to know. I’m not playing games, sweetheart. I’m playing for keeps.”
You stare up at the man holding you, feeling the absolute truth in his words. The terrifying world outside — the threats, the politics, the uncertainty — melts away entirely.
You rise on your tiptoes again, but this time, Dean doesn’t wait. He captures your lips, kissing you with a tender, devastating passion that seals your fate completely.
***
The collective student body of Briar University is, for lack of a better term, completely losing its mind.
It has been nearly two months since the legendary, untouchable Dean Di Laurentis officially took himself off the market. Two months since he dragged a beautiful, shy transfer student into his orbit and never let her go. And yet, the novelty of his absolute, unrelenting devotion hasn’t worn off. If anything, it’s only become more aggressively apparent.
It’s a chilly Tuesday afternoon, and the campus coffee shop, The Daily Grind, is packed with students seeking refuge from the biting wind.
You and Dean are standing near the pickup counter. You are wearing a cream-colored knit sweater, the sleeves pulled down over your knuckles, your posture as impeccable as ever. Dean is standing practically flush against your back, his large hands resting possessively on your hips. He’s leaning down, his chin resting near your shoulder, listening intently as you softly explain a concept from your international relations seminar.
A few yards away, sitting at a cramped corner table, Logan and Garrett are nursing their coffees and watching the spectacle.
“I give up,” Logan says, shaking his head. “I literally give up. I don’t know who that man is. He’s an imposter. A body double.”
“He’s in love,” Garrett corrects, though he looks equally bewildered. “I mean, we knew it was bad, but this is … this is advanced whipped.”
A group of sorority girls at the next table over are openly staring, whispering behind their hands.
“Do you remember sophomore year?” One of the girls mutters loud enough for Logan to catch. “When he hooked up with those two girls on the literal pool table at a Theta party? He didn’t even care who was watching! It was like a spectator sport for him.”
“I know,” her friend replies, eyes wide. “And now look at him. He looks like he wants to build a white picket fence right here in the cafe line.”
At the counter, the barista calls out your name. “Y/N! London fog latte and a black coffee.”
You step forward to grab the drinks, but a hulking frat boy in a backward cap, rushing to grab his own macchiato, bumps hard into your shoulder.
You stumble slightly, letting out a soft, surprised gasp.
Instantly, the atmosphere in the coffee shop shifts. Dean’s relaxed posture vanishes. He steps in front of you, his chest broad and imposing, his jaw clenching so hard the muscle feathers dangerously. His green eyes turn to ice as he glares at the frat boy.
“Hey,” Dean barks, his voice low but carrying across the suddenly quiet shop. “Watch where the hell you’re going.”
The frat boy pales, taking in the sheer size of the angry hockey player. “My bad, man. I didn’t see her.”
“Well, open your eyes, or I’ll wire your jaw shut so you don’t have to worry about drinking your little coffee,” Dean threatens, taking a menacing step forward.
Before Dean can escalate a simple accident into a full-blown brawl, you move. You reach out, your delicate hands flattening against the solid wall of his chest.
“Dean,” you murmur, your voice soft, sweet, and perfectly calm.
Dean freezes. He looks down at you, his chest heaving under your palms.
You offer him a small, placating smile. You slide your hands up his chest, resting them gently on his broad shoulders. Then, ignoring the dozens of eyes fixed on you, you rise up on your tiptoes. You press a soft, lingering kiss to his tense jawline, right over the ticking muscle.
“I’m alright,” you whisper softly against his skin. You reach up, gently smoothing down the collar of his flannel shirt. “He just bumped me, Dean. Let it go. Please?”
The transformation is instantaneous.
The murderous rage evaporates from Dean’s eyes. His shoulders drop. He lets out a shaky exhale, his hands coming up to wrap around your waist, pulling you flush against him. He leans his forehead against yours, completely ignoring the terrified frat boy who scurries away.
“I know,” Dean breathes, his voice entirely soft, meant only for you. “I just … I hate when people aren’t careful with you, sweetheart.”
“You’re careful enough for the both of us,” you tease gently, your cheeks flushing a pretty, soft pink at the public display, even though it was entirely initiated by you. You give his chest a gentle pat. “Now, carry my tea, please. It’s dreadfully hot.”
Dean practically melts into a puddle on the floor. “Whatever you want, baby.”
He grabs the tray of drinks, completely docile, and follows you out of the shop like a well-trained puppy.
The moment the bell above the door jingles shut behind you, the coffee shop erupts into whispers.
“Did you see that?” Logan says, staring blankly at the door. “She literally just rebooted his operating system with a kiss on the cheek.”
“It’s a superpower,” Garrett murmurs in awe. “She’s a witch. A beautiful, polite, sort of British witch.”
Later that evening, the off-campus house is blissfully quiet. Garrett and Logan are at the library (allegedly), and Tucker is out on a date.
You are in Dean’s bedroom. Or, rather, your shared bedroom. The spare room you initially moved into has slowly become little more than a closet for your clothes, as Dean flat-out refused to sleep in a bed that you weren’t occupying.
The contrast between the Dean that the campus sees — the fiercely protective, completely obsessed boyfriend — and the Dean behind closed doors is staggering.
In public, you are shy, demure, and easily flustered by too much attention. Dean respects that. He shields you, gives you space, and handles the spotlight so you don’t have to.
But here, in the dim, amber glow of the bedside lamp, with the heavy wooden door locked and the world shut out? Here, Dean worships you. And he systematically, patiently dismantles every ounce of your shyness.
You are sitting on the edge of his massive mattress, wearing one of your elegant silk nightgowns. It’s champagne-colored, modest by most standards, but the way Dean is looking at you makes you feel completely exposed.
He is kneeling on the floor between your parted thighs. He hasn’t even taken off his jeans yet, though he shed his shirt hours ago. His broad, muscular chest is on full display, his skin golden in the low light.
“You’re blushing,” Dean murmurs, his voice a low, gravelly hum that vibrates straight through to your core.
You duck your head, your hands nervously smoothing the silk over your thighs. “You’re staring at me.”
“I’m admiring,” Dean corrects softly. He reaches up, his large, warm hands wrapping around your ankles. His thumbs slowly, deliberately stroke the delicate skin there. “I can’t help it. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And I love it when you flush for me, Y/N. I love knowing exactly what it does to you when I look at you.”
Your breath hitches. His words are always so direct, so unapologetically filthy and sweet all at once. He is a master of this — of seduction, of bodies, of pleasure — but he treats you as if you are the very first woman he has ever touched. There is a reverence to him that completely wrecks your defenses.
“Dean,” you whisper, a soft plea leaving your lips.
“Look at me, sweetheart,” he commands gently.
You force your eyes up to meet his. His green eyes are dark, completely blown out with desire, but there is an anchor of absolute patience there. He never rushes you. He has spent the last few weeks slowly, meticulously broadening your horizons, taking you further than you ever thought you’d go, and making sure you feel entirely safe the entire time.
He slides his hands up your calves, his rough palms sending a shockwave of heat over your skin. He stops at your knees, leaning in to press a soft, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of your right knee.
You gasp, your fingers tangling in the thick hair at the nape of his neck.
“So pretty,” he breathes against your skin. He shifts higher, pushing the hem of your silk nightgown up your thighs. “You get so pink, Y/N. It starts on your cheeks …”
He kisses higher up your thigh, his tongue darting out to taste the sensitive skin. You let out a soft whimper, your back arching slightly.
“… and then it spreads down your neck,” he continues, his hands sliding up to grip your hips securely. “Down your chest. All over your stomach. You blush everywhere for me, don’t you, baby?”
“Only for you,” you manage to gasp out, your heart pounding a frantic rhythm against your ribs.
Dean growls, a low, primal sound of satisfaction. He rises up onto his knees, towering over you slightly. He reaches for the thin straps of your nightgown, slipping them slowly off your shoulders.
You instinctively cross your arms over your bare chest, that ingrained, polite shyness flaring up even now.
Dean gently catches your wrists. He doesn’t force them away, but he holds them softly, his thumbs stroking your pulse points.
“Don’t hide from me,” he whispers, leaning in so his lips are barely a breath away from yours. “I want to see you. I want to worship every single inch of you. Let me see, sweetheart. Let me take care of you.”
His words melt your resistance entirely. You slowly uncross your arms, letting your hands fall to his broad shoulders.
The silk nightgown pools around your waist, leaving your top half completely bare to his hungry gaze.
Just as he predicted, a deep, beautiful flush of pink spreads rapidly down your neck, blooming across your chest and stomach.
Dean lets out a ragged breath. He looks at you as if you are a religious artifact, something holy and miraculous. “God, you’re perfect. You’re so fucking perfect.”
He leans in, replacing his intense gaze with his mouth. He kisses the hollow of your throat, his lips hot and demanding. You tip your head back, a soft, breathy moan escaping your lips as his mouth trails lower.
He takes his time, kissing the swell of your breasts, the valley between them, worshipping the flushed skin just as he promised. When his mouth finally closes over one sensitive peak, drawing it in and laving it with his tongue, you completely lose your mind.
“Dean!” You cry out, your hands gripping his shoulders hard, your fingernails digging into his skin.
“I’ve got you,” he hums against your skin, the vibration sending a fresh wave of electricity straight down to your core. “I’m right here. Just feel it, baby. Let go.”
He is relentless in his devotion. His hands are everywhere, mapping your body, learning exactly what makes you gasp, what makes you arch into his touch. For a man who used to thrive on quick, athletic hookups, Dean is agonizingly slow with you.
He pulls away just long enough to shed his jeans and boxers, tossing them carelessly to the floor. When he returns to you, he is fully bare, completely aroused, and radiating heat.
He gently pushes you back until you are lying flat on the mattress, your hair fanned out over his pillows. He follows you down, his massive frame hovering over yours, supporting his weight on his forearms so he doesn’t crush you.
“Tell me this is what you want,” Dean says, his voice strained with the immense effort it’s taking to hold himself back. He needs to hear it. He needs your verbal consent, your absolute certainty.
“It’s what I want,” you whisper, reaching up to cup his handsome, tense face. “I want you, Dean. Please.”
That is all it takes.
Dean shifts his hips, settling himself between your thighs. He reaches down, guiding himself to your entrance. He pauses there, his eyes locked onto yours, searching for any sign of hesitation. When you only nod, your eyes wide and completely trusting, he slowly, steadily pushes inside you.
You let out a sharp cry, your eyes fluttering shut as the feeling of him filling you completely takes over. It is overwhelming, intense, and deeply, achingly intimate.
Dean freezes, his jaw clenched tight. “Y/N? Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“No,” you gasp, opening your eyes. You wrap your arms around his neck, pulling his face down to yours. “No, Dean, it feels … it feels incredible. Don’t stop.”
He lets out a shuddering breath, pressing his forehead against yours. “You’re so tight, baby. So incredibly sweet. I’m going to take it slow. I promise.”
And he does. He begins to move, pulling back slowly and pressing in deep, establishing a steady, torturously good rhythm. Every time he hits the back of your slick heat, he presses a kiss to your lips, your jaw, your neck.
He murmurs dark, dirty praise into your ear, perfectly contrasting your elegant nature. He tells you how good you feel, how beautiful you look laid out in his bed, how much he loves the sounds you make when he hits that one specific spot.
You are completely undone by him. Your shy, reserved exterior is shattered entirely under his careful worship. You are writhing beneath him, your legs wrapped tightly around his waist, matching his rhythm, chasing the blinding pleasure he is feeding you.
“Dean, please,” you beg, your voice breaking as the pressure builds low in your stomach. “I can’t … it’s too much.”
“It’s not too much, sweetheart,” he grunts, his pace quickening, his hips snapping against yours with more force. “You can take it. Let it happen. Come for me, baby. Just for me.”
The possessive command is the final push you need. You shatter entirely, a high, keening cry escaping your lips as your body goes rigid. The climax rips through you in violent, beautiful waves, your internal muscles clenching tightly around him.
Dean groans loudly, his control snapping the second he feels your release. He drives into you a few more times, fast and deep, before burying his face in the crook of your neck and finding his own release with a deep, guttural shout.
He collapses against you, his heavy chest heaving, his heart hammering against yours. You hold him tightly, your hands stroking his damp hair, entirely sated and floating in a euphoric haze.
Dean eventually rolls to the side, taking his weight off you, but he pulls you tightly against his chest, tucking your head under his chin. He pulls the heavy duvet over both of your bodies, enveloping you in warmth.
“God,” Dean breathes into the quiet room, sounding entirely awestruck. He presses a kiss to the top of your head. “I love you. I love you so damn much, Y/N.”
“I love you too,” you whisper sleepily, pressing a kiss to his bare collarbone. “You’re wonderful, Dean.”
“Only with you,” he promises, his arms tightening protectively around you as you drift off to sleep.
The next morning, the campus is bustling with the standard Wednesday chaos.
Dean is walking you to your 10 AM lecture. He’s wearing his Briar hockey letterman jacket, looking impossibly large and handsome.
You are walking beside him, holding his hand. The contrast from last night is almost comical.
You are back in your tailored clothes — a pleated wool skirt, tights, and a high-necked cashmere sweater. Your hair is perfectly styled, and your posture is immaculate. You look every inch the untouchable, elegant diplomat’s daughter.
As you walk past the quad, a group of guys from one of the fraternities walk by. One of them, not noticing Dean immediately, lets out a low, appreciative whistle directed at you.
“Damn, baby. Looking good,” the guy calls out.
Instantly, that furious, shy blush races up your neck and paints your cheeks bright pink. You immediately duck your head, feeling incredibly embarrassed by the crass public attention, and instinctively turn your face in toward Dean’s bicep to hide.
Dean wraps a heavy arm around your shoulders, tucking you safely into his side. He shoots the frat boy a look so terrifying, so full of lethal, possessive promise, that the guy practically trips over his own feet trying to hurry away.
But as Dean looks down at you, hiding your bright red, blushing face against his jacket, a slow, incredibly smug smile spreads across his lips.
Everyone on campus thinks you are a fragile, shy angel who can barely handle a compliment.
But Dean knows the truth.
He knows what you look like completely undone, blushing that exact same shade of pink while tangled in his bedsheets. He knows the sounds you make, the way you scratch his shoulders, the way you let him broaden your horizons in the dark.
The dichotomy is thrilling. It makes his heart race with a fierce, possessive joy. You are this sweet, untouchable, elegant creature to the rest of the world, but behind closed doors, you belong entirely to him.
“You okay, sweetheart?” Dean asks softly, pressing a kiss to the top of your head.
“I’m fine,” you mumble against his jacket, still embarrassed. “People are so loud here.”
Dean chuckles, a rich, warm sound that vibrates through his chest. He pulls you a little closer, kissing your temple.
“Don’t worry about them,” he murmurs, his green eyes sparkling with a secret only the two of you share. “They don’t know anything about you. But I do. And I think you’re perfect.”
You peek up at him, seeing the wicked, knowing gleam in his eye, and your blush somehow deepens even further.
“You’re terrible,” you whisper, though a small smile plays on your lips.
“I’m the best,” Dean corrects easily, pulling open the door to the lecture hall for you. “And you know it.”
You do know it. And as you walk into the classroom, your hand firmly intertwined with the biggest playboy turned most devoted boyfriend in Briar University history, you wouldn’t trade him for the world.
***
The late November air bites sharply at your cheeks as you and Dean walk out of the political science building. The Briar University campus is painted in stark shades of grey and deep, dying auburn, the sky threatening an early winter snow.
You are bundled in a thick wool coat and a cashmere scarf, your hands buried deep in your pockets. Dean is walking beside you, seemingly impervious to the cold in just a Briar Hockey quarter-zip, though he has your heavy canvas tote bag slung effortlessly over his broad shoulder.
“I still think the professor has it out for me,” Dean complains, bumping his shoulder gently against yours as you navigate the crowded sidewalk. “I answered the question perfectly.”
“You compared the socioeconomic impacts of the Industrial Revolution to the plot of Transformers,” you point out mildly, though a fond smile pulls at your lips. “It wasn’t exactly a perfect academic parallel.”
“It’s about the rise of machines, Y/N,” Dean argues, a wicked, charming grin spreading across his handsome face. “It’s deeply metaphorical. He just doesn’t appreciate my genius.”
“Of course,” you say, laughing softly. “That must be it. You’re a misunderstood scholar.”
Dean stops walking suddenly, turning to fully face you. He reaches out, pulling your cold hands from your coat pockets and wrapping his large, warm ones around them. He brings your knuckles to his lips, pressing a kiss to the chilled skin right there in the middle of the quad.
“I don’t care if I’m a scholar,” he murmurs, his green eyes locking onto yours with that familiar, breath-stealing intensity. “As long as I get to sit next to you.”
A blush instantly warms your cheeks, combating the winter chill. It’s been weeks of this — weeks of Dean completely upending his life to revolve around yours, weeks of his fierce protection and tender worship — and you still haven’t gotten used to the sheer force of his devotion.
“Come on,” Dean says softly, tugging your hands. “Let’s go get lunch. Garrett said he was craving-”
Dean’s words cut off abruptly.
You look up, following his line of sight, and your heart skips a sudden, violent beat.
Standing near the edge of the courtyard, completely out of place amidst the sea of stressed-out college students in sweatpants, is a man in an immaculate, bespoke navy suit. He is flanked by two very large, very discreet men in dark overcoats who exude a quiet, lethal sort of professionalism.
“Dad?” You gasp, the word slipping out in absolute shock.
Your father turns his head at the sound of your voice. His stern, diplomat’s face instantly softens into a warm, relieved smile.
“Y/N,” he says, his deep, cultured voice carrying across the pavement.
You don’t think. You just run. You drop Dean’s hands and sprint across the quad, throwing yourself into your father’s open arms. He catches you effortlessly, wrapping his arms tightly around you and pressing a kiss to the top of your head.
“Dad, what are you doing here?” You ask, your voice muffled against his lapel. “Is everything okay? Are you safe? Is Mom okay?”
“We are perfectly fine, sweetheart,” your father assures you, pulling back just enough to look at your face, his hands resting on your shoulders. “Everything is fine. In fact, it’s more than fine.”
You blink, confused, as Dean slowly walks up behind you. He is standing a respectful distance away, his posture rigid, his jaw clenched tight. The playful, flirtatious college boy has completely vanished, replaced by a tense, hyper-vigilant protector.
“Ambassador Y/L/N,” Dean says, his voice respectful but cautious.
Your father looks up, his sharp eyes taking in Dean’s massive frame, the Briar hockey quarter-zip, and the canvas tote bag adorned with your handwriting that Dean is still holding.
“Dean Di Laurentis,” your father replies, a small, knowing smile touching his lips. “It has been quite a few years. You’ve grown into a mountain of a young man. How are your parents?”
“They’re doing very well, sir. Thank you,” Dean says stiffly.
You look between the two of them, the tension crackling in the cold air, before turning back to your father. “Dad, please. Tell me what’s going on. You’re supposed to be locked down in D.C. Why are you in Massachusetts?”
Your father sighs, a sound of profound, weary relief. He gestures to a nearby stone bench. “Let’s sit down for a moment.”
Dean remains standing, flanking the bench like a bodyguard as you and your father take a seat.
“The threat has been neutralized, Y/N,” your father says quietly, his voice dropping into the serious, commanding tone he uses for state briefings. “Completely.”
Your breath catches. “Neutralized? How?”
“It was a joint operation,” your father explains, glancing around the quad to ensure no one is within earshot. “MI6 and the FBI have been tracking the extortion ring for months. The group using you as leverage to manipulate the trade sanctions made a mistake. They tried to move funds through an offshore account that had been flagged. The authorities raided their compound in Zurich two days ago. The key players have all been indicted, and the network has been dismantled.”
You stare at him, your brain struggling to process the magnitude of his words. For the past two months, you have lived with a persistent, low-grade terror thrumming in your veins. You had accepted that your life would never look the same, that you would always be looking over your shoulder.
“Are you absolutely sure?” You whisper, your voice trembling. “They’re gone?”
“They are gone,” your father confirms firmly, covering your hand with his. “The Director of Intelligence personally assured me this morning. You are no longer a target, my darling. The danger has passed.”
A wave of dizzying relief washes over you. You slump forward slightly, tears of sheer release pricking the corners of your eyes. Your father wraps an arm around you, holding you close as you let out a shaky sob.
Above you, Dean lets out a long, ragged exhale. The rigid tension bleeding from his broad shoulders is almost palpable.
“Thank God,” Dean breathes, running a hand through his blonde hair. “Thank God.”
“Indeed,” your father says. He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a crisp, white envelope, handing it to you. “Which brings me to the secondary reason for my visit.”
You sniffle, wiping your eyes carefully as you take the envelope. It bears the official crest of Oxford University.
“I spoke with the Dean of your college at Oxford yesterday,” your father continues, his tone gentle. “They understand the extenuating circumstances of your sudden departure. They have held your spot, Y/N. Your transfer credits from Briar will apply. You are entirely free to return to England and resume your studies next semester, just as you planned.”
The words hang in the freezing air, heavy and catastrophic.
Behind you, Dean stops breathing entirely.
The color drains rapidly from Dean’s face. His heart, which had just been soaring with relief for your safety, suddenly plummets straight into his stomach, crashing violently against the cold dread pooling there.
Return to England. Resume her studies. Leave Briar.
Leave him.
Dean feels physically ill. It’s only been a month and a half. He has only had you back in his life for a fraction of a semester, but in that time, you have become the absolute center of his universe. You are the air he breathes, the reason he wakes up in the morning, the only thing that makes this chaotic, loud world make sense. The thought of you packing your bags, getting on a plane, and crossing an ocean again feels like a physical blow to his chest.
He remembers the ache of losing you when you were both fourteen. He remembers how quiet his house felt, how empty his days were without his best friend. But this? Losing you now, after he has tasted your lips, after he has held you in his bed, after he has realized that his soul is irreversibly tied to yours?
It will break him. He knows, with absolute, terrifying certainty, that if you leave, he will not recover.
Dean instinctively takes a half-step backward, the physical manifestation of his emotional retreat. His hand, which had been resting on the back of the stone bench near your shoulder, drops to his side. He stares at the ground, his jaw locked so tight his teeth ache, preparing himself for the inevitable. You belong at Oxford. You belong in grand libraries and ancient halls, not in a messy hockey house with a guy who barely scrapes by in political science.
You look down at the heavy, embossed envelope in your lap.
Oxford. It was your dream. You had worked tirelessly to get in. You had friends there, a life there, a clear, pristine path laid out for your future in diplomacy. Returning is the logical, smart, expected thing to do.
You look up at your father, seeing the quiet expectation in his eyes.
Then, you turn your head to look at Dean.
He won’t meet your gaze. He is staring fiercely at the concrete, his broad shoulders hunched as if bracing for an impact. You see the subtle tremor in his clenched jaw, the absolute devastation radiating from his rigid posture. He has already convinced himself that you are leaving. He is already letting you go, because that is the kind of man he is — he would tear his own heart out before he ever held you back from something you wanted.
A fierce, protective warmth blooms in your chest.
You don’t want Oxford. Not anymore. The ancient halls and polite, intellectual debates suddenly seem terribly cold and lonely compared to the chaotic, vibrant, fiercely loyal life you’ve found here. You don’t want a life without Garrett stealing your snacks, without Logan’s terrible jokes, without Tucker’s quiet drawl.
And, most importantly, you absolutely refuse to exist in a world where you don’t wake up next to Dean Di Laurentis every single morning.
You slide the envelope back across the bench toward your father.
“No, thank you,” you say softly, but your voice is remarkably steady.
Dean’s head snaps up so fast you’re surprised he doesn’t pull a muscle. He stares at you, his green eyes wide, raw shock and desperate hope colliding in his expression.
Your father arches a dark eyebrow. “No? Y/N, you loved Oxford. It is one of the premier institutions in the world for your field.”
“It is,” you agree, reaching out to gently lay your hand over the envelope. “And I am grateful they held my spot. But I don’t want to go back to England, Dad. I want to stay here. At Briar.”
“Briar is an excellent school,” your father acknowledges smoothly, ever the diplomat. “But it is a significant shift in your trajectory. Are you certain this isn’t a reaction to the trauma of the past few months? Now that the threat is gone, you don’t need to hide anymore.”
“I’m not hiding,” you say firmly. You stand up from the bench, stepping closer to Dean. You reach out, your delicate fingers sliding into his large, calloused hand. Dean gasps softly, a quiet, broken sound, and immediately crushes your hand in his, holding on as if you are a lifeline.
You look up at Dean, offering him a smile so full of love and absolute certainty that the last lingering remnants of his panic melt away.
You turn back to your father, your hand firmly anchored in Dean’s. “I’m not hiding, Dad. I’ve built a life here. I have friends here. I’m happy here. Really, truly happy. I want to stay.”
Your father looks at your joined hands. He looks at the way Dean is looking down at you — as if you are the sun and he has spent his entire life in the dark. The Ambassador has spent his career reading people, analyzing motives, and deciphering unsaid truths. It takes him less than five seconds to understand exactly what is happening in front of him.
A slow, genuine smile breaks across your father’s stern face.
“Very well,” your father says, standing up and smoothing the front of his suit jacket. “It is your life, Y/N, and your education. If Briar is where you wish to remain, I will not attempt to convince you otherwise. I trust your judgment.”
You let out a massive sigh of relief, your shoulders dropping. “Thank you, Dad.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” your father says, his eyes shifting to Dean. “My driver is waiting by the main gates. I have reservations at Ostra in Boston for lunch. You are both joining me.”
It isn’t a request.
Dean swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yes, sir.”
The drive to Boston is quiet, insulated by the tinted windows and plush leather of your father’s town car. You sit in the middle of the spacious backseat, your father on your right, and Dean on your left. Dean hasn’t let go of your hand since the courtyard. His thumb traces anxious, rhythmic circles into your palm, betraying the calm, stoic mask he is trying desperately to maintain.
Ostra is exactly the kind of restaurant your father frequents — impeccably designed, quietly opulent, and smelling of expensive wine and Mediterranean seafood. The maitre d’ immediately ushers the three of you to a private, secluded booth in the back.
As the waiter pours sparkling water and takes their drink orders, Dean is practically vibrating with tension.
He knows how this goes. He isn’t stupid. He is the guy with a notorious campus reputation who has suddenly shacked up with the Ambassador’s sheltered, brilliant daughter. He has been waiting for the shovel talk since the day you moved into the hockey house. He is entirely prepared to take it. He is prepared to sit here and let your father threaten him, dissect his character, and warn him of dire consequences if he ever breaks your heart.
Dean will agree to all of it, because he’d sooner die than hurt you.
“So, Dean,” your father starts once the waiter retreats, resting his forearms on the white tablecloth. “Political Science. A slight departure from your parents’ corporate law background.”
“Yes, sir,” Dean says, sitting incredibly straight. “I plan to go to law school after graduation, but I wanted a broader undergraduate foundation. And … hockey takes up a significant amount of my time.”
“Ah, yes. The Briar hockey program,” your father nods slowly. “Your mother mentioned you were a standout player. Any plans to pursue it professionally?”
“I have options,” Dean answers honestly, his voice steady despite his nerves. “I’ve had some interest from scouts, but my priority right now is finishing my degree. And making sure Y/N is situated.”
Your father takes a slow sip of his water, his sharp eyes pinning Dean to the plush leather of the booth.
“Speaking of Y/N,” your father says softly, the diplomatic polish stripping away to reveal the protective father underneath. “She has been staying with you and your teammates at an off-campus residence.”
Dean stiffens. “Yes, sir. When she first arrived, the dorms lacked the necessary security parameters. My housemates and I decided it was safer for her to be with us. We have a spare room.”
It’s a half-truth. You haven’t slept in that spare room in weeks, but Dean isn’t about to volunteer that information over the bread basket.
“I appreciate your hospitality,” your father says smoothly. He sets his glass down. “I also appreciate that you have taken it upon yourself to act as her personal shadow. My security detail informed me that you walk her to every class, you sit beside her in the library, and you haven’t attended a single social event without her on your arm.”
Dean’s jaw clenches. He doesn’t apologize. He looks your father dead in the eye. “She was threatened, sir. I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight. Not when I had the means to protect her.”
You reach under the table, resting your hand gently on Dean’s rigid thigh, a silent gesture of support. Dean’s hand immediately covers yours, gripping your fingers tightly.
“Sir,” Dean continues, his voice dropping into a serious, unwavering register. “I know what this looks like. I know you’re probably aware of … certain aspects of my reputation before Y/N transferred here. And I know you probably brought me here to give me the warning I absolutely deserve. I am completely ready to hear it. But you need to know that I love her. I love your daughter more than anything in this world, and my only priority is her happiness and her safety. You can threaten me all you want, but I am not going anywhere.”
You stare at Dean, your heart swelling with so much love you think it might genuinely burst. You look at your father, ready to defend Dean, ready to tell your dad that Dean is the best thing that has ever happened to you.
But your father doesn’t look angry.
Instead, a soft, incredibly fond smile touches his lips. He leans back in the booth, looking at Dean with an expression of profound respect.
“Dean,” your father says gently. “I did not bring you here to threaten you.”
Dean blinks, completely thrown off guard. “You didn’t?”
“No,” your father chuckles quietly. “My entire career is built on assessing character, gathering intelligence, and understanding the truth of a situation before I enter the room. I know exactly what your reputation on this campus was. And I know exactly how drastically it changed the moment my daughter set foot in Massachusetts.”
Your father folds his hands on the table, his expression turning entirely earnest.
“You think I don’t know the boy sitting across from me?” Your father asks softly. “I have known you since you were in grade school. I have watched you grow up alongside my daughter.”
Your father pauses, his eyes softening as he looks into the past. “Do you remember the summer you were both twelve? Y/N had convinced you to take one of the small sailing dinghies out onto the Long Island Sound, despite the small craft advisory.”
Dean exhales a shaky breath, the memory hitting him instantly. “I remember.”
You look down, blushing slightly. “That was entirely my fault. I wanted to see the lighthouse up close.”
“A sudden squall rolled in,” your father recounts, his voice thick with remembered fear. “The wind picked up, and the boat capsized. The Coast Guard was dispatched, but it took them nearly an hour to locate you in the chop.”
Your father looks directly at Dean. “When they finally pulled you both out of the water, Y/N’s life vest was gone. The clasp had broken when the boom swung around. But she wasn’t under the water. You had given her your life vest, Dean. You spent an hour treading water in freezing temperatures, holding her up above the waves, completely risking your own life to ensure she didn’t drown. You were hospitalized for hypothermia, and you refused to let the doctors treat you until you saw with your own eyes that Y/N was unharmed.”
Dean looks down at the table, his cheeks flushing a dull red. “She couldn’t swim as well as I could. I wasn’t going to let her sink.”
“I know,” your father says quietly. “That is my point, Dean. When the threats against my family escalated in London, my first thought was terrifying panic. My second thought was finding a safe harbor for her. The government suggested several secure locations. But when my wife mentioned that Briar University was an option — that you were at Briar — I signed the transfer papers immediately.”
Dean’s head snaps up, absolute shock written across his features. “You … you sent her to Briar because of me?”
“I sent her to Briar because I knew that if you were there, no one on this earth would be able to touch her,” your father states with absolute, unwavering conviction. “I knew the boy who gave up his life vest in the freezing Sound had grown into a man who would do whatever it took to keep her safe. I don’t need to give you a shovel talk, Dean. You are perhaps the only man on earth I trust implicitly with my daughter’s heart, and her life.”
The silence in the opulent restaurant booth is deafening.
Dean stares at the Ambassador, his green eyes shining with unshed emotion. The heavy, suffocating weight of guilt he has carried about his past, the fear that he wasn’t good enough for you, is completely decimated by your father’s words.
Dean swallows hard, his jaw working as he struggles to find his voice. He looks at you, his eyes blazing with a fierce, watery devotion, before turning back to your father.
“Thank you, sir,” Dean says, his voice thick and rough. “I won’t let you down. I swear to God, I will never let her down.”
“I know you won’t, son,” your father smiles warmly, picking up his menu. “Now, I am told the sea bass here is excellent. And I believe we have a celebration in order. My daughter is safe, she is staying in America, and she is in excellent hands.”
Under the table, you squeeze Dean’s hand, leaning over to rest your head gently against his broad shoulder. Dean presses a kiss to your hair, his entire body radiating a profound, beautiful peace.
He didn’t just get to keep the love of his life today.
He finally realized he was worthy of her.
***
Spring break at Briar University usually means packed beaches in Cabo, cheap tequila, and a week of terrible decisions.
But Dean Di Laurentis doesn’t do anything by the standard playbook anymore.
When you had offhandedly mentioned over a midnight study session that you missed the rainy, historic charm of England and the specific scones from a little bakery near your old flat, you hadn’t expected anything to come of it. You were simply feeling a bout of homesickness.
Two days later, Dean had dropped two first-class tickets to Heathrow onto your textbook.
Now, you are walking hand-in-hand down the ancient, cobblestone streets of Oxford, bundled in a sleek wool coat to ward off the crisp March chill.
The trip has been nothing short of a fairy tale. Dean had rented a massive suite in London for three days, taking you to the West End, indulging in high tea, and buying you more luxury clothes than you could ever fit in your suitcase. Then, he had whisked you away to the Cotswolds, renting a secluded, romantic stone cottage with a thatched roof and a roaring fireplace. You had spent three days snowed in, wrapped in thick blankets, drinking hot cider, and letting Dean absolutely worship every inch of you in front of the hearth.
But Oxford is different. Oxford is your past.
“So, this is it,” Dean says, his head tipped back as he looks up at the towering, magnificent dome of the Radcliffe Camera. “The legendary stomping grounds. I have to admit, sweetheart, it’s pretty spectacular. Makes Briar look like a strip mall.”
You laugh, squeezing his large hand. “Briar has its own charm. But yes, Oxford is … it’s special. I spent hours reading in that library. I used to sit on that wall right over there and debate international policy until the sun went down.”
Dean looks down at you, his green eyes entirely soft, crinkling at the corners. He is wearing a long, tailored black overcoat over a dark turtleneck, looking so impossibly handsome and devastatingly striking that people have been turning their heads to stare at him all morning.
“Show me,” Dean murmurs, pulling you flush against his side and pressing a warm kiss to your temple. “Show me everything. I want to see where you lived, where you drank, where you bought those scones you wouldn’t stop talking about.”
“You bought me five dozen scones yesterday, Dean. I think I’m set for life,” you tease, leaning your head against his broad shoulder.
“I’m a provider,” he counters smoothly, flashing that wicked, brilliant grin. “It’s in my nature.”
You lead him through the winding, historic streets, pointing out your favorite pubs and the quiet little courtyards hidden behind massive iron gates. Dean listens to every word you say with absolute attention. He asks questions, he remembers the names of your old professors, and he looks at you with a devotion so fierce it makes your chest ache in the best possible way.
“And this,” you say, stopping in front of a rustic, wood-paneled pub with hanging flower baskets, “is The Turf Tavern. It’s practically a requirement to get a pint here. Shall we?”
“Lead the way,” Dean says, reaching past you to push the heavy oak door open.
The pub is crowded, smelling of ale, fried fish, and damp wool. You navigate through the low-ceilinged room, Dean keeping a protective hand resting securely on the small of your back. You manage to find a tiny, secluded booth near the back.
Dean goes to the bar to order two pints and a plate of chips. You sit at the booth, pulling your scarf off and feeling a profound sense of contentment wash over you. You are back in the city you love, but you are here with the man who holds your entire heart. It is the perfect collision of your two worlds.
“Y/N? Is that you?”
The crisp, highly polished, and painfully familiar British accent cuts through the low din of the pub.
You freeze. Your blood turns to ice water in your veins.
You turn your head slowly. Standing a few feet away, holding a half-empty pint glass and wearing a perfectly tailored tweed blazer, is Edward.
Edward, the Viscount of Scunthorpe. The aristocratic, impossibly snobby ex-boyfriend you had dated during your time at Oxford. The man who had treated you more like a shiny, diplomatic accessory than a human being.
“Edward,” you say, your voice tight. You force a polite, entirely fake smile onto your face. “Hello.”
Edward steps closer, his gaze sweeping over you with an uncomfortable familiarity. “I had heard a rumor you fled back to the States. Something about your father and a political scandal? What a dreadful business. You look well, though. A bit … domestic, perhaps, but well.”
His backhanded compliment grates on your nerves. You immediately shrink back into the booth, your ingrained, polite shyness warring with your immense annoyance. “I didn’t flee, Edward. I transferred. And I’m doing perfectly fine.”
“Of course you are, darling,” Edward smirks, taking another step forward. He reaches out, aiming to lazily tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “Though I must say, Oxford has been terribly dull without-”
A massive, calloused hand suddenly intercepts Edward’s wrist mid-air.
The grip is visibly bone-crushing.
Edward gasps, his eyes blowing wide as he looks to his right.
Dean is standing there. He holds two pints of beer effortlessly in his left hand, while his right hand is locked around Edward’s wrist like a steel vice. Dean’s expression is completely blank, but his green eyes are practically glowing with lethal, frozen rage.
“Don’t touch her,” Dean says. His voice is dangerously low, a soft, gravelly threat that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
Edward tries to yank his arm back, but Dean doesn’t budge an inch. “I beg your pardon?” Edward sputters, his face turning an undignified shade of red. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Dean slowly, deliberately releases Edward’s wrist, shoving the man’s arm back toward his chest with just enough force to make Edward stumble back a step.
Dean sets the pints down on the table. He doesn’t sit. He turns, placing himself entirely between you and Edward, shielding you from the Viscount’s sightline.
“I’m the guy who is going to break your hand if you reach for my girlfriend again,” Dean answers smoothly, his tone conversational, though the threat is violently real. “I’m Dean.”
Edward scoffs, rubbing his wrist, though he wisely takes another step back from the towering, broad-shouldered American athlete. “Your girlfriend. I see. Y/N, really? You traded me for a … what are you, a footballer? A rugby brute?”
“Ice hockey,” you say clearly, finding your voice. You slide out of the booth, stepping up to stand right beside Dean. You wrap your arms around Dean’s bicep, pressing yourself against his side. “And I didn’t trade you for anyone, Edward. We broke up because you were entirely insufferable.”
Dean looks down at you, the lethal ice in his eyes melting instantly into a look of absolute, smug adoration. He wraps a heavy arm around your waist, pulling you flush against his side.
Edward sneers, looking Dean up and down with blatant aristocratic disdain. “Ice hockey. How terribly colonial. Tell me, Dean, do you actually know how to read, or do you just hit things with a stick for a living? I’m surprised you can even keep up with a conversation here at Oxford.”
Dean doesn’t get angry. He doesn’t raise his voice. Instead, he laughs. It’s a dark, rich, incredibly condescending laugh that completely catches Edward off guard.
“You know, Edward,” Dean says, leaning forward slightly, using his height to completely dwarf the other man. “You talk a lot for a guy whose family wealth is currently tied up in the failing agriculture sector because your father completely botched his investments in the post-Brexit trade agreements. From a socioeconomic standpoint, you’re practically a peasant in a nice jacket.”
Edward’s jaw actually drops. The color drains from his face.
You stare at Dean, absolutely floored.
Dean continues, his voice dripping with terrifying charm. “I study political science and corporate law, Edward. My parents are two of the most ruthless litigators on the East Coast. So, if you want to debate international trade laws or intellectual property, we can. But right now, I’m on vacation with the woman I love, and you are boring me to death.”
Edward opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He looks completely, utterly defeated, stripped of his aristocratic armor by a guy who he assumed was nothing but muscle.
Dean doesn’t give him a chance to recover.
He turns to you, completely ignoring Edward’s existence. “You ready to get out of here, sweetheart? The air in here suddenly feels incredibly cheap.”
“Yes,” you whisper, your heart doing frantic, somersaulting leaps in your chest. “Take me back to the hotel.”
Dean smirks. Right there, in the middle of the crowded pub, with your ex-boyfriend standing three feet away, Dean reaches up and cups your face. He tilts your head back and crushes his lips to yours.
It is a claiming, devastating, incredibly filthy kiss. His tongue sweeps into your mouth, tasting you, devouring you, staking a completely undeniable claim. He kisses you until you are breathless, until your knees go weak and you have to grip his coat lapels to stay standing.
When he finally pulls back, you are thoroughly flushed, your lips swollen and wet.
Dean turns his head slightly, shooting Edward a look of pure, dominant victory.
“Have a nice life, Eddie,” Dean deadpans.
He grabs your hand, lacing your fingers together, and leads you out of the pub, leaving the Viscount standing completely humiliated in the dust.
The walk back to the Randolph Hotel is a blur.
You are practically vibrating with adrenaline. You had never seen Dean like that. You had seen him protective, yes, but the way he had verbally dismantled Edward without even raising his voice, the way he had claimed you so thoroughly in public — it sent a rush of intense, liquid heat straight to your core.
The moment the heavy, oak door of your luxurious hotel suite clicks shut behind you, the calm, collected facade Dean had maintained completely shatters.
Dean spins around, grabbing you by the hips and backing you forcefully against the heavy door.
You let out a soft gasp as your back hits the wood.
“Darling?” Dean snarls, his voice dropping into a dark, guttural growl that sends a violent shiver down your spine. “He called you darling?”
“Dean-” you start, but he cuts you off, his mouth crashing down onto yours.
There is no slow, patient worship this time. This is feral. This is possessive. He kisses you with a desperate, consuming hunger, his tongue pushing past your lips to conquer your mouth. He tastes like ale and dark desire.
You moan softly into his mouth, your arms instantly coming up to wrap around his neck. You kiss him back with matching ferocity, your fingers tangling in the thick hair at the nape of his neck.
Dean’s large hands tear at your wool coat, practically ripping it off your shoulders and tossing it to the floor. His hands roam over the thin silk of your blouse, his palms hot and heavy.
“Tell me whose you are,” Dean demands, pulling back just a fraction of an inch, his chest heaving against yours. His green eyes are black with lust, wild and completely untamed. “Tell me, Y/N.”
“Yours,” you gasp, your eyes fluttering shut as he trails open-mouthed, biting kisses down the column of your neck. “I’m only yours, Dean. Nobody else’s.”
“Fucking right you’re mine,” he groans against your skin. He sucks a hard, bruising mark into the sensitive spot right above your collarbone, making sure to leave a physical reminder of exactly who you belong to.
You cry out, arching your back off the door to press your chest flush against his.
Dean grabs the back of your thighs and lifts you effortlessly. You instinctively wrap your legs around his waist, crossing your ankles behind his back. He carries you across the luxurious suite, your back never leaving his chest, and drops you onto the center of the massive, king-sized bed.
You bounce slightly on the plush mattress, looking up at him through heavy, hooded eyes.
Dean strips off his overcoat and his turtleneck in one fluid, aggressive motion. He stands beside the bed, his golden, impossibly muscular chest heaving. He reaches for the buckle of his belt, his eyes fixed on you like a predator watching its prey.
“Did he ever touch you like this?” Dean asks, his voice tight with lingering jealousy. He reaches down, grabbing your ankles and dragging you down the mattress until your hips are right at the edge of the bed.
“No,” you whisper, shaking your head frantically. “God, no, Dean. Never. It was never like this. It’s only you.”
Dean lets out a harsh, satisfied breath. He kneels between your parted thighs. His hands make quick work of your blouse, popping the buttons and tossing it aside, followed quickly by your bra and skirt.
In seconds, you are completely bare to him, flushed a deep, beautiful pink from your chest down to your thighs, completely exposed to his heated gaze.
“You’re so beautiful,” Dean murmurs, the feral edge softening into pure, intense worship. “You make me absolutely crazy, sweetheart.”
He leans forward, pressing his mouth to the valley between your breasts, before trailing wet, hot kisses down your stomach. You writhe beneath him, your hands gripping the high thread-count sheets on either side of your head.
Dean’s hands slide up the inside of your thighs, pushing them wider apart. He settles himself fully between your legs, his hot breath fanning over your sensitive core.
“Dean, please,” you beg, your voice a high, sweet whimper. You are already aching, already so incredibly slick and ready for him.
“I’ve got you, baby,” Dean hums.
He lowers his head and takes you into his mouth.
You scream his name, your back arching violently off the mattress. His tongue is relentless, swirling and flicking exactly where you need it, while his large fingers slide effortlessly inside your slick, wet heat. He mimics the rhythm of sex, pumping his fingers deep inside you while his mouth devours you, driving you completely out of your mind.
“That’s it,” Dean praises darkly between wet, sloppy kisses against your core. “Let go for me. Show me how much you want it.”
You can’t hold back. The intense, overwhelming pleasure builds too fast, shattering through your body in a blinding wave. You climax hard against his mouth, your internal muscles clenching tight around his fingers, a sobbing moan tearing from your throat.
Dean doesn’t give you a moment to recover.
He rises up, his own need completely overriding his patience. He shoves his jeans and boxers down his hips, freeing his aching, heavy arousal.
He grips your hips, his thumbs pressing into your hip bones, and aligns himself with your entrance. He looks down at you, his eyes blazing, a muscle ticking in his strong jaw.
“Look at me,” Dean commands softly.
You open your eyes, tears of pure pleasure pricking the corners, and meet his intense gaze.
“I love you,” Dean says, the words a fierce, unbreakable vow.
He drives his hips forward, burying himself completely inside you in one long, deep thrust.
You cry out, the feeling of him stretching you, filling you so completely, sending a fresh wave of electricity straight to your brain. You wrap your legs tighter around his waist, locking him flush against you.
Dean begins to move. He sets a punishing, desperate pace, pulling almost completely out before slamming his hips forward, driving deep into your tight, wet heat. The sound of his skin slapping against yours echoes loudly in the quiet hotel room.
“Dean!” You cry, your fingernails digging into his broad shoulders, leaving half-moon indentations in his golden skin.
“You feel so fucking good,” Dean groans, his teeth gritted. “So tight. You’re mine, Y/N. Tell me you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” you sob out, completely lost in the overwhelming sensation of him. “Always yours. Oh god, please, harder.”
Dean complies instantly. He adjusts his grip, hooking his arms under your knees and pulling your legs all the way back against his chest, opening you up completely. He thrusts deeper, hitting a spot that makes you see stars.
You are a chaotic mess of flushed skin, tangled hair, and breathless moans. Every time he hits that spot, you shatter a little more. You are entirely consumed by him, by his heat, his scent, his overwhelming, possessive love.
“I’m close,” Dean grits out, his pace turning frantic, his thrusts losing all coordination as the pleasure takes over. “Baby, I’m right there.”
“Come for me,” you beg, your own body tightening, ready to fall over the edge again. “Dean, please.”
Dean lets out a deep, guttural roar. He drives into you three more times, as deep as he possibly can, before his body goes entirely rigid. He clenches his jaw, his eyes squeezing shut as he pours his release into you, his hips locked flush against yours.
The feeling of him finishing deep inside you pushes you over the edge, your own body convulsing around him as you climax for a second time, calling out his name like a prayer.
For a long time, the only sound in the luxurious hotel suite is the harsh, ragged breathing of two entirely exhausted people.
Dean eventually collapses forward, his heavy chest resting fully against yours, his face buried in the crook of your neck. He is covered in a light sheen of sweat, his heart hammering a violent rhythm against your own.
You wrap your arms around his broad back, holding him tightly, your fingers lazily tracing the deep ridges of his spine. You feel entirely boneless, floating in a euphoric, hazy afterglow.
Slowly, gently, Dean rolls to the side, taking his heavy weight off you but immediately pulling you flush against his side. He reaches down and pulls the thick, white hotel duvet up over your bare bodies, cocooning you in warmth.
He presses a soft, lingering kiss to your bare shoulder, his thumb gently stroking the curve of your waist.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” Dean murmurs into the quiet room, his voice raspy. “I just … seeing him look at you like that. Thinking about him touching you. I saw red, Y/N.”
“You didn’t lose your temper,” you reply softly, turning your head to press a kiss to his chest. “You were completely calm. Terrifyingly calm, actually. I think you might have broken his spirit.”
Dean chuckles softly, the sound vibrating through you. “Good. He was a prick. And he didn’t deserve you.”
“No,” you agree, looking up into his warm, green eyes. “He didn’t. But you do.”
Dean’s breath catches. He reaches up, gently brushing a tangled lock of hair out of your face, his fingers lingering on your cheek.
“I meant what I said,” Dean whispers, all the playful arrogance stripped away, leaving only the raw, honest truth of the man who has loved you since you were children. “I’m your future, sweetheart. I know we’re young, and I know we have our whole lives ahead of us. But I am not doing any of it without you.”
Tears prick your eyes again, but this time they are tears of absolute, profound joy.
“I’m not going anywhere, Dean,” you promise him, sliding your hand up to cup his handsome face. “I love you. I love you more than anything.”
Dean leans down, capturing your lips in a slow, impossibly tender kiss. It is a promise, a vow, a sealing of a fate that had been written in the stars the moment you built your first terribly constructed fort in his backyard in Greenwich.
He pulls back slightly, resting his forehead against yours, a stunning, radiant smile breaking across his face.
“So,” Dean murmurs, a hint of his signature, charming arrogance slipping back into his tone. “Since I successfully defended your honor against a British Lord, do I get to be a knight now? Is that how it works here?”
You laugh, the sound bright and clear, echoing perfectly in the quiet room.
“You’re already my knight in shining armor, Dean Di Laurentis,” you tease, pressing a final kiss to his jaw. “Now, shut up and hold me.”
“As you wish, sweetheart,” Dean replies smoothly, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you impossibly closer.
As you lie there in his arms, thousands of miles from the Briar hockey house, looking out the window at the ancient spires of Oxford, you realize you have never felt more at home.
You had crossed an ocean to escape your past, but in the end, it was your past that had caught you, held you safe, and given you the most beautiful, chaotic, perfect future you could ever ask for.
summary. You learned to bottle your feelings for John Logan, ever since junior year of high school. Because you knew you would always be just friends, and out of fear of not ruining your friendship, you kept these feelings on ink and paper, locked in a box, first in your room, and now in your dorm, hidden away until you would put another letter in.
It was supposed to be a secret that you would take to the grave. Until a mistake has your box of unsent letters, spanning from your high school days to present college years, tumbling right in front of him, and now his curiosity is piqued.
pairing. John Logan x Reader
tags. Hurt/comfort, angst (it’s not really angst) with a happy ending, yearning, yearning, yearning but its reader yearning SO bad
ice time. 10k (woops)
notes. @ladynaviamin hi babes.
The first letter was on the day you realized you liked him.
It was a messy jumble of words, ink stains obvious on the fading paper, the emotions spilling out before you could even register what you were writing. All you knew was that you needed the whole thing out of your system and onto the only thing you knew what to do and that was to write.
Before you could stop, or be smart about it, everything was poured on the paper. Lengthy, descriptive, and full of the things you wanted to say, and things you know you can’t say, because even at that age, you knew that liking John Logan was a beautiful terrible idea.
Because he was your best friend. And you aren’t supposed to like your best friend. At least, in your head. Who are you to ruin the friendship, you know?
You remember folding it in half. Then again, then for a third time, like you were trying to make it as small as possible. Like diminishing it physically would diminish what the words on the paper meant.
You'd been looking for somewhere to put it. The trash felt too final, too much like admitting it had existed, and you were halfway on just stuffing it under your pillow when you'd found the box. Your grandmother's, handed down at the end of summer with a kiss on your forehead and the words for letters you mean to send someday. Wooden, old-smelling, with a brass latch that stuck a little if you didn't press it just right.
You'd tucked the letter in and shut the latch.
That was the beginning of it.
-
It had been a random tuesday, back in junior year of high school.
John – he had always been John to you before he became Logan – had after school hockey practice. You'd been draped over the boards for the past ten minutes, watching from the bleachers the way you always did when you had nowhere better to be, which was most days— something you'd never quite admitted to yourself until recently. Because the walk home was shorter from this direction. You had a whole catalogue of reasons, and not one of them was true.
John had been the last one off the ice.
That in itself was not unusual. John Logan was always the last one off the ice. The coach was nice enough to lend him that extra time, considering that he had always been the kid that loved hockey more than anything else.
And you would always wait in the bleachers. Sometimes on your phone, most times watching him as he skated. You count the amount of times he circled it, especially when you felt bored but didn’t have the strength to look away. Because something about him was magnetic to you. You wondered what it was, every time you stay that extra ten minutes in the rink.
Then after his usual rounds (at most, seven rounds), he looked up, and caught your gaze.
John grinned. The stupid, lopsided grin that suddenly made your heart skip. Then he skated all the way over to the boards, where you were, and leaned on them as he grinned. His helmet was tucked under his arm, hair damp at the temples, “You just got here?”
“Yep. Passed by after practice.” You tried to keep your tone as casual as possible, like the sight of him didn't make your heart skip.
“You really didn’t have to come by, you know. It’s late.”
“I wanted to.” You smiled. You didn’t say anything else as follow up. Because adding something else after that would mean that you were admitting something that you weren’t ready to admit. And you would have to explain everything else that you didn’t name yet.
He looked at you for a second, searching for something in your face, and then he looked down and smiled again. It was softer this time, private, the one that felt like it wasn't for anyone else, the one he wore when something surprised him in a way he found pleasant, and tilted his head.
"Sure. Thanks for that.”
You just shrugged.
John nods over at the locker rooms. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll get you hot chocolate at the cafe nearby.”
You huffed, lips curling in amusement. “There? Really? Last time we went there, you said you didn't like the hot chocolate they made.”
John just grinned at you. “Yeah. But you like it.”
He skated away after that. Like those words didn’t make you freeze, your eyes trailing after him, heart stuttering and your brain finally naming that warmth that spread on your cheeks.
And that was it. That was the whole thing. That was the moment that broke you open.
You'd gone home that day and picked up the closest paper and pen, and the words just started coming, because they didn't have anywhere else to go. You wrote about how his smile was the most disarming thing he could have. You wrote about the way he'd leaned on the boards and looked at you like looking at you was just a natural extension of breathing. You wrote about how his curls fell perfectly on his face.
You wrote about how the hot chocolate from the machine in the convenience store nearby had been terrible, watery and too sweet for him, and even when you told him he didn't have to drink it, he'd laughed and drank it anyway and said that it was fine with all the cheerfulness of someone who genuinely didn't mind, and how that had somehow made everything worse.
You wrote, hesitantly, but filled with everything in your chest— I like him.
You folded the paper into thirds, tucked it into your grandmother's box, and pressed the brass latch shut.
You didn't open the box for three weeks after that. Not because you were over it, but because you were hoping, very determinedly, that if you didn't look at it, the feeling would dissolve on its own.
It didn't.
-
The letters accumulated the way all things do when you are trying not to notice them: gradually, and then all at once.
By the end of junior year, there were ten. By senior year of high school, fifteen.
They were not all long. Some were barely a paragraph, dashed out on notebook paper in the middle of class when something happened that you had no one to tell except him, which was the problem, because he was the person that you would usually go to about these things… so you tell the paper instead.
Junior year, you wrote about how naturally John seemed to do things for you. Carrying your bag, buying things in the cafeteria when you didn't want to get up from the bench. But at the same time, it was always the question if he liked you, or if he was being nice
You remembered I hate raisins in things. You picked them out of the muffin before you gave it to me. You've been doing that since seventh grade and I only just noticed today that it's something you do on purpose.
Jealousy would often seep into your letters, as well. Because you knew he was well liked. That John had a future of having girls that would throw themselves at him, and he would always entertain it with his smile and pretty curls and—
— but you act like I’m special, and that they don't matter. But I don't have the right to even stop them from liking you, so all I could do is watch and wish that you would instead look at me.
You kept those folded five times.
--
Senior year, anger would sometimes seep into them.
I should tell you. I should tell you that I lie in bed until 3 am wondering if anything would happen between us. I should— but you are so unfair. You act like you care, and then I'm left hanging again.
I still have your jacket. That stupid, gray jacket that you gave me. The damn gray jacket that was your favorite and you don't let anyone wear but you handed it to me when I was cold. And at the same time, you turned and smiled at Kaia like she mattered and.
I hate that I like you and I hate that it feels like you do too— but then you turn around and act like you don't.
Some were the soft, bewildered variety, written in the margins of homework you’d never turn in, about something small he'd done that shouldn't have meant as much as it did.
You know how everyone else talks over me when I'm telling a story and moves on before I'm done? You always wait. You just… wait. You wait until I'm finished, and then you respond to what I actually said, not what you were going to say next. I don't know if you know you do that. I don't know how to tell you that it matters.
When you both got into Briar University, John on a hockey scholarship, you on a Merit Scholarship— you celebrated together in the parking lot of the ice rink, his arms around you, lifting you a full two inches off the ground, and you laughed and said “John, put me down!” even if you knew that deep down, you didn’t mean any of it, wanting him to keep his arms around you longer.
You'd gone home that night and written four pages.
I keep telling myself I'm not following you. And I'm not. I worked for this, I studied late into the night and doubled my efforts whenever I would fail because I wanted Briar before you got in.
But some part of me is terrified that the reason I want it so badly is mixed up with the reason you're going, and I can't separate them cleanly, and that scares me.
What if I didn't want Briar so much as I wanted to be wherever you were going to be? What does that mean? What am I supposed to do with that?
I don't have an answer. I'm going to go to sleep. I'm going to not think about it.
I'm going to go to Briar, even if I can't solidify why I am.
You went to Briar.
You don’t address it after the long four page letter, and somewhere between orientation week and prelims, the box had gone from a strange habit to a necessity, a pressure valve that kept everything from building to critical mass.
You'd gotten good at it. At the translation of feeling into ink, at the sealing away of things that had no business existing in the open air. The box lived under your bed, behind your extra blankets and a stack of Intro to Lit anthologies you kept meaning to donate. The latch, temperamental from the start, had gotten worse with age.
You'd meant to fix it.
You kept meaning to do a lot of things.
The letters still ranged from two lines to four pages, even when you entered Freshman Year in Briar. They still kept the same amount of yearning and thoughts you would never find the courage to say, or even send to Logan– and soon after, you started signing them too.
John – or maybe Logan?
You started being called Logan after you teamed up with Tucker and the rest. So maybe I should change it up to. Adapt and change, you know.
Though it would be weird to start calling you by your last name.
– With love, and judgement.
You tried to call him Logan. He looked at you then with such offense that you back tracked and went back to calling him John. He said it made him feel better. Special, because John was a name only you could use.
You wrote another letter that night, trying to reason out the butterflies and the implications of what he meant. Because rationalizing it away makes it easier than admitting it out loud.
They kept piling up. Letter after letter.
This sucks. You remembered my coffee order even after I changed it three times in two months. I can’t blame you for how well you treat me. It’s just how you are.
I should just stop putting meaning into things, but the other part of me just wants to believe that maybe it did mean something.
UGH. John Logan you fucking suck. I hope you trip on the ice during practice.
Actually, no. That was a joke.
Maybe.
– With love.
You called the longest ones your pathetic, yearning lovergirl letters. Late-night things, written when the distance between what you felt and what you were allowed to say felt too wide to sleep across. Those ones you sometimes read back in the morning with a kind of horrified tenderness, like finding a diary from a younger self.
They were overwrought.
They were honest in ways you couldn't quite access in daylight.
John,
I've been thinking about the thing you said last week, that you don't know what you'd do without me. You said it so easily. Like it was just true, just a fact of your life, the way you'd say it's cold out or practice got cancelled.
I don't know what to do with that. I've been turning it over and over in my head trying to figure out what it means and I think the honest answer is that it means exactly what it sounds like and nothing more and I need to learn to be okay with that.
I'm working on it.
– With love.
P.S. You should stop handing me your hoodies when I get cold and letting me keep them. It messes with me and my late night 3 am delusional thoughts.
John,
You have this thing you do when you're listening to someone — you get very still. Most people, when they listen, they nod, they mm-hm, they start formulating their response and you can see the moment they stop actually hearing you. You don't do that. You just go still and you look at the person and you listen, like it costs you nothing, like you have all the time in the world. I don't think you realize you do it. I don't think you realize what it does to people.
What it does to me.
I'm going to stop writing now. Before I start turning into the 3 am yearner I was last night. Again.
— With love.
By freshman year of college, there were thirty letters.
Sophomore year is when it all cracked.
Classes started to weigh on you in a way freshman year hadn't warned you about. Rehearsals that ran until midnight, choreography notes bleeding red ink across marked-up scores, tech week for the department showcase bleeding into finals week, the constant ache in your calves and the tape on your feet that never seemed to come off in time — a dance major was not a degree that let up, and you were running harder than you ever had, barely sleeping, more often than not with Logan being the one thing keeping you sane, showing up with food you hadn't asked for and quiet company at your desk — or in the studio doorway — at midnight, watching you run the same eight counts until your body finally understood what your brain already knew.
And then there was the puck bunny thing.
You didn't have the right to say anything about it, not really. You understood why. John Logan was hot. He was charming, easy to talk to, easy to fall for — and there was always a rotating cast of girls finding excuses to linger near him after games. You watched it happen the way you'd always watched it happen, except now you were closer to it, in his dorm, at his games, in the middle of the aftermath. And you had no claim to any of it. He wasn't yours. He'd never been yours. You just got to watch, the way you always had.
So you stopped writing. You shoved the box into the dark crevice under your bed and didn't take it out again. You prayed it would stay there. You told yourself you were moving on.
Meeting Davis was almost spontaneous — a late night out at Malone's, small talk with a guy from your gen-ed class that turned into something steadier. He was easy. Uncomplicated. He didn't make your chest hurt the way John did, and for a while, that felt like a relief instead of a warning sign. The letters stayed buried. Things between you and Logan went back to what looked, on the surface, like normal. Friends. Best friends.
Because that was all it was going to be.
-
"So how are things with Davis?" Logan asked, leaning against the kitchen counter while you hunched over a marked-up piece of choreography notation, notes scattered across the counter in purple and yellow highlighter, counts and spacing diagrams bleeding into the margins. Gen ed notes scatter on top of them, but you seemed more preoccupied with the scrawls of markings for your major.
"Things are fine." You tried to keep the annoyance out of your voice, but Logan had always been perceptive, and it showed in the way his brows drew together.
"Yeah? Then why do you sound like that?"
Your pen dug a little deeper into the page. "Sound like what?"
"Like things aren't fine."
Your head snapped up, an evident frown pulling at your mouth. "It's none of your business, John."
Your voice came out sharper than you meant it to, and you winced, immediately regretting it. "Sorry. That was — sorry."
He didn't push on the apology. Just crossed his arms and softened his voice instead. "What's wrong?"
You hesitated, pen hovering over your notes, and then you let out a long groan and dropped your forehead against your textbook. "I don't want to start venting."
"Vent anyway."
"He keeps asking when I'm free. Wants to hang out constantly, and I get it, I do, but callbacks are in two weeks and I have a showcase piece I'm not off-book for yet, and I told him that, and he just —" You sat up, dragging a hand down your face. "He said it's kind of pathetic that I care this much about a theater degree. That I don’t have a future in this and that I’m only wasting my time."
Logan's jaw went tight. He would also do that when something pissed him off, and you knew him enough to know that he was also pissed off at what you said. "He said that?"
"Basically."
"That's not — " He stopped himself, exhaled through his nose, clearly working to keep his voice level. "You've wanted this since we were sixteen. You used to run your combinations for me in your driveway at eleven at night in the middle of winter because you couldn't get the phrase to feel right, and I stood there freezing my hands off holding your phone so you could film it."
That got a small, watery laugh out of you. "You always came outside, though. Even when it was that cold."
"Because it mattered to you." He said it so plainly, like it wasn't even a decision he'd had to make. "Anyone who makes you feel stupid for caring about the thing you've wanted since we were in high school doesn't get to also get your time. That's not — that's not how it should work."
You didn't have an answer for that. You just nodded at your notes, throat tight, and went back to studying, and Logan stayed leaning against the counter a while longer before he finally pushed off it and went to make you tea you hadn't asked for, the same way he always did.
-
Things ended with Davis not long after that — quietly, without a scene (an irony you did clock, even mid-breakup), the kind of ending that comes less from a single fight and more from a slow accumulation of moments where you'd chosen your scripts, your late rehearsals, your friendship with Logan, over him, and he'd finally said out loud what he'd clearly been thinking for weeks. You didn't wallow in it. It hadn't felt like losing something so much as setting something down.
Allie, your dorm neighbor across the hall, caught you in the laundry room a few days later, sorting a basket of mismatched socks.
"Wait, so you and Davis are actually done?" Allie asked, propping her hip against the dryer.
"Yeah." You shrugged, feeding a quarter into the slot. "It didn't work out." She knew about what he said, and she made the same face as you the moment you told her. She was the friend you made in one of the early collaborations your major did with hers, and she was the one who knew well how taxing it would be on your body and to have someone just brush it off? She had also pushed for you re-evaluating your whole relationship before you even talked to John about it.
"Huh." Allie studied you for a second too long. "You don't seem that broken up about it."
"I'm fine," you said, and mostly meant it, which felt strange enough that you didn't examine it too closely.
Allie didn't push, but she gave you a look on her way out that said she'd clocked something you hadn't said out loud.
Your roommate and best friend in all things best friend, Jai, was less subtle about it. She came in that night to find you cross-legged on your bed, not doing anything in particular, just sort of staring at the wall.
"Okay, what's actually going on with you?" Jai said, dropping her bag and sitting across from you. "You broke up with Davis, which you knew most of us had been telling you to, but usually break ups have the whole grieving process. And right now, you look like you're thinking about a math problem, not a breakup."
"I don't know. I think I just — I didn't care as much as I should have. The whole time. I feel bad about that." You fiddle with your fingers. “That maybe I feel this apathetic because I didn’t care as much in the beginning.”
Jai considered you for a moment, tilting her head the way she did when she was about to say something you weren't going to like. "You know what I think?”
You looked up at Jai, who nodded over at the space under your bed. “You never wrote about him.”
You blinked. "What?"
"The letters." Jai said it like it was obvious, like she'd noticed the box's absence the same way she'd notice if you'd rearranged the furniture. "You've had that thing since I've known you — you disappear into it when something's actually gotten to you. You didn't write a single letter about Davis. Not one, in like four months."
You opened your mouth to argue and found you didn't have anything to argue with.
You hadn't written about Davis. Not once. Every single letter in that box, every one you'd ever written, had one name on it, and it wasn't his.
The realization hit you like cold water.
You hadn't moved on. Not even a little.
That night you pulled the box out from under the bed — dusty, a stray cobweb clinging to one corner — wiped it down, and wrote the first letter in months. You didn't let yourself think too hard about what it meant that your hand knew exactly how to start again, like it had never really stopped.
I dated someone in hopes of getting over you– only to realize that every time I sit across from him, I imagine its you. It’s not fair on him. Or myself.
But though he did deserve the break-up… he didn’t deserve someone who is still hung over a guy she liked since high school, It’s stupid. Terribly so, but I had four months of thinking that dealing with him was much easier than dealing with the constant ache in my chest every time I see you.
Maybe it’s more stupid of me to get back to writing to you and acknowledging the constant hurt i feel.
— With love, reluctantly, again, and always.
By Junior year, the letters slowed but never stopped completely. The program was, if anything, worse than sophomore year — a full-length ensemble piece now, not just technique classes, and you were buried in rehearsal schedules and rep notes, and the only thing that made any of it bearable was Logan, constant as ever, still showing up with food, still sitting on the studio floor with you at 1 a.m. while you both pretended you weren't exhausted, still somehow always exactly where you needed him to be.
Jai, who had appointed herself the unofficial keeper of your feelings since the Davis revelation, was relentless about it.
"You have to tell him," she said one night, apropos of nothing, while you were both supposed to be doing readings for your gen ed classes. "Junior year of high school, senior year, all of freshman and now half of junior year of college. That's — I did the math, that's four years, and you're going to keep writing it down instead of just saying it?"
"It's not that simple."
"It kind of is, though."
You'd relented eventually, worn down by her insistence and your own exhaustion at holding the same shape for four years straight. You told her you'd do it. You'd tell him. Maybe at the house party that weekend, when everything felt looser and easier and less like something you had to plan for.
You didn't get the chance.
You found him in the kitchen of the party, laughing with a girl whose name you didn't know, and before you could process anything, she'd leaned in and he hadn't leaned away.
You didn't wait to see more than that. You turned around and left before he ever noticed you'd been there, walked back to your dorm in the cold without your jacket, and didn't cry, exactly — just sat on your floor and wrote until your hand cramped.
I stopped hoping tonight. I think I needed to see it to actually believe it, because apparently telling myself wasn't enough. I'm not writing this one for you to ever read. I'm writing it so I stop lying to myself about what almost happened this weekend, and didn't, and isn't going to.
I keep thinking about how badly I wanted to walk over there and how I didn't, and how that's the whole story of us, isn't it. Me, standing a few feet away, wanting, and staying exactly where I am.
You told Jai it hadn't worked out. She didn't push for details, just sat with you until you didn't feel like crying anymore.
Things between you and Logan, in the weeks after, went quiet in a way that wasn't quite a fight and wasn't quite normal either — some instinctive retreat on your end that you dressed up as being busy. Eventually it faded, the way most things did when you were both incapable of staying upset at each other for long, and by the second half of the semester you'd settled back into something that looked, from the outside, exactly like it always had. You told yourself that was enough. You tried, in your quiet, determined way, to move on.
There was one more letter before the long silence, written the week after, when he'd shown up at your studio with soup because Jai had mentioned you were sick, and stayed on the floor doing his own reading while you slept on and off on the yoga mats, and woken you gently every hour to make sure you drank water.
You have no idea what you do to me by being like this. You have no idea, or you do, and you just don't care, because it's easier to be kind to me than to explain why you keep being kind to me. Either way, I am so tired of this constant wishing and wanting. I’ll move on. I have to. Or I’ll never get out of this stupid hole.
I love you. But it hurts to keep loving you.
By the second semester of junior year, there were forty-three letters. You left it at forty-three letters.
Ever since that night, where your anger and everything about you spilled into paper and ink– you didn't slip in another letter. It stayed at forty-three.
Forty-three letters, across four years, across the span of a friendship that had become the most important thing in your life and the most carefully guarded secret you kept. Forty-three letters that were supposed to go with you to the grave while you plan out your whole moving on shtick.
That was the plan. That had always been the plan.
The plan, it turned out, was not consulted before Thursday afternoon.
—
It was a fire drill that turned out not to be a drill.
You'd been on the floor beside your bed, hunting for your phone charger, having pulled the mattress out from the wall and tangled yourself in the extra blankets you kept stuffed behind it, when the alarm split the air — sudden, violent, the particular shriek of the Briar dorms that had never once not startled you no matter how many times you'd heard it.
Your elbow caught the edge of the blanket stack. The box, which you'd shoved back into place after re-reading that last letter just the other day, teetered on the edge of the mattress frame. You grabbed for it, fingers catching the corner.
The latch — that brass, temperamental, long-suffering latch you'd always meant to fix and never had — gave.
The box opened.
Forty-three letters, across the floor of your dorm room.
You were still on the ground, staring at them, trying to process the scope of the disaster, when you heard Logan's familiar voice, your name, followed by a quick, "It's me, don't freak out —"
You looked up. Panic set in immediately, your heart dropping to your feet.
John Logan stood in the doorway, your dorm key in his hand — the one you'd given him freshman year for emergencies and never asked back — the opening words dying in his throat as he watched the letters settle.
The alarm was still going. Someone in the hall was shouting about everyone needing to get out. The late-afternoon light came through the window, gold and slanted, landing on the scattered envelopes and the stunned expression on his face and every single letter that bore, in your own handwriting, his name.
For a moment, neither of you moved.
Then you hit the floor on both knees, grabbing at the letters with both hands, stacking them against your chest with no particular order, your mind repeating the same panicked loop — collect them, get them back in the box, get them away from his line of sight.
"These are nothing — they're old, they're just — don't look at those—" You scrambled, but the panic made the ones in your hand slip loose again, and you nearly wanted to just sprawl over the envelopes and pretend they'd never fallen at all.
But John was crouching too. He wasn't reading them. He was just looking at the envelopes scattered across your floor, and you could see the exact moment he registered what they all had in common.
All of them. Every single one.
John Logan.
Your handwriting. His name. Over and over, in blue ink and black ink, and once in green, junior year of high school, when you'd been out of everything else.
His name on the front of forty-three letters you never sent.
He picked one up. He did it with the careful hands he used for things he wasn't sure about — the same way he picked up injured birds on his way to practice, the same way he handled other people's textbooks, and, twice, your feelings, on the two occasions you'd broken down in front of him and he'd gently cradled your face and helped you through the tears. Those were among the ten thousand other things written in your letters. Things you loved him for.
"These are addressed to me," he said. His voice was quiet. Unsure, tentative, like if he spoke louder he'd scare you off entirely.
"They're not —" you stammered. "I didn't send them. That's the whole —" You pressed the stack still in your hand to your sternum. "Please. Just — pretend you didn't see them."
"How many are there?"
His voice was doing something you couldn't quite pinpoint. Low. Careful. Something heavy underneath it, if you read between the lines.
You looked at him over the letters clutched to your chest, not sure what expression was on your face that made him soften even further. Maybe it was the pure panic. Maybe it was something else.
"Twenty — wait, uhm." You paused, blinked. "Thirty-four."
He lifted a brow. "You hesitated."
"...Forty-three."
The silence after that had weight. The alarm had stopped — someone had pulled it, or the drill was over, or building staff had caught up to whatever triggered it — and the sudden absence of noise made everything feel louder. Your heartbeat. His breathing. The soft scratch of the envelope he was turning over in his hands, not opening, just turning.
"How long?" he asked.
You didn't want to answer that. The answer was the part that would make it real. The part that would say out loud what had only ever existed on paper.
"Since junior year of high school," you said quietly.
You watched him absorb it.
He sat back on his heels, and you could see him doing the math. Junior year of high school. The end of the letter stack. The date on whatever letter he was holding. The span of years between then and now.
"You've been writing me letters," he said slowly, like he was learning the sentence as he spoke it, "for four years. That you never sent."
"It's not — it's a journaling thing. It's not —"
"Your journals have my name on them."
You winced and closed your eyes. "Yes."
"Why didn't you send them?"
You opened your eyes. He was watching you with an expression that made it very hard to think clearly, and you needed to think clearly to get through this conversation without losing something you couldn't afford to lose. Carefully, you thought. Be careful. He is your best friend and he is looking at you and you are not allowed to ruin this.
"Because I didn't want things to change," you said, which was the truest and most incomplete answer you had.
"What things?"
"Us." The word landed between you, bare, nothing around it to soften it. "The way things are. The way things have always been. I didn't — I wasn't willing to risk it. So I wrote it down instead, and I kept it, and I was going to keep it forever, and this was a mistake, Logan —"
"John." He interrupted quietly. You ignored the correction.
"— you were not supposed to see these."
"What are they?" he asked. "Just — tell me what they are. In plain English."
You looked at him. Then at the forty-three letters — the ones against your chest, the ones still sprawled on the floor, the one in his hands, the stupid brass-latched box open between you. You thought about every 2 a.m., every bleacher, every game, every borrowed hoodie you'd never given back. You thought about how long you'd been careful not to say a single thing. How much energy you'd spent on the not-saying, and how completely, catastrophically exhausted you were from it.
"They're everything," you said, "that I didn't know how to say to your face."
—
He was quiet for a long time after that.
You spent most of it looking at the floor, cataloguing the letters you could see from where you sat — the corner of the very first one, faded and ink-stained, from that Tuesday in junior year. The familiar blue pen of the one from a few months ago, the night of the game where he'd scored the tying goal in the final minute and looked up into the bleachers and found you immediately, like he'd known exactly where to look, like he always knew where to look, and you'd gone home and written four pages you didn't remember most of the next morning.
Then right by your knees was the latest letter. The one that was lengthy and full of hurt and anger and everything else that you poured out after seeing him make out with another girl– You push down the memory.
The afternoon light had shifted. It was later than you'd realized.
"I want to ask you something," Logan said, "and I need you to answer honestly."
"Okay."
"Is it —" He exhaled through his nose, tried again. You watched the struggle on his face — that particular Logan expression of someone who had something to say and was working out how to say it without saying too much or too little. You'd seen it a thousand times. You'd written about it. Letter fourteen, sophomore year of high school. The way he gets quiet before he says something he means.
"Is it the same thing I think it is?"
"Probably," you said, to the floor. "Unless you think it's a grocery list, in which case, no."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh — hoarse, surprised out of him.
"You've liked me," he said, still careful, "since junior year."
"Yes."
"And you didn't say anything because you didn't want to lose the friendship."
"Yes."
"And you wrote — forty-three letters. Instead."
"I was going to say forty-three seemed excessive, but honestly, given the timeline, I think it's fairly restrained."
"Hey." His voice changed. That made you look at him. He was watching you with something so open on his face it hit you square in the sternum. "Don't do that. Don't make it a joke right now."
You swallowed. "Sorry."
"Don't be sorry either." He set the letter down between you, gently, the way he set down things he didn't want to damage, and ran a hand through his hair — the thing he did when he was thinking hard, when something had knocked him somewhere he hadn't planned to go. "I just need a second."
You gave him the second.
Outside, someone on the quad was playing music, drifting up through your open window without any particular hurry. Late afternoon light cut across the room at the angle it only ever hit in March — long and gold and slanted, the kind that made everything look like it was happening in the last good hour of something. The last hour before whatever came next.
He abruptly brings up Davis. "What about Davis?"
Your brows furrow. "What about him?"
"You dated him last year."
You hesitate. "It was a half-hearted attempt to try and get over you."
"Did it work?"
You deadpan. "Well, I broke up with him, didn't I?"
John laughs through his nose. "Yeah. Yeah that makes sense."
Another beat passes, quieter this time, before he asks if you know why he's shown up to every single one of your performances since freshman year. Not just the winter and spring showcases. The studio showings nobody came to, the ten-minute improvisation pieces you took for the sake of getting better, performed to an audience of six, the Tuesday afternoon rehearsal run-throughs that overlapped with his lift block, when he'd shown up, hair damp, sitting cross-legged in the back corner of the studio so he could leave before anyone noticed a hockey player watching a modern dance rehearsal like it was the only thing happening in the building.
"That's practice, though," you say. "You're always busy."
"Not always." He says it like it's nothing, like it was never a real sacrifice, just a matter of arranging things around each other the way you'd both always done. "I never missed a lift block or a mandatory practice for it, if that's what you're asking. Coach would've had my head, and there goes the scholarship. I'm not that much of an idiot."
"So how—"
"I just used the time I actually had. Free blocks. The hour after morning skate before class. You'd be in Studio B until midnight running the same eight counts over and over, and I'd come sit in the corner with a granola bar and my laundry, because doing laundry at the machines by the dance building was somehow always more urgent than doing it in my own dorm."
You protest anyway, because your brain is still catching up, still trying to file this under good friend the way you have filed every other thing he's ever done for four years running. "You're just — that's just you being supportive. You did that for Summer-"
"I went to Summer's event once, and that was because Dean wanted us to. I have sat through you running the same eight counts eleven times in a row at eleven p.m. on a Tuesday because you couldn't get the turn right, and I have watched you mark a whole solo with a busted ankle because you didn't want to fall behind, and I still came."
"That was one time."
"I know. I counted the limps."
That gets you. Something in your chest cracks open a little wider.
He tells you about the incidents, then — the small things you never clocked because you were always mid-combination or too deep in your own head to notice him in the doorway, or slumped against the wall outside the studio with his bag still packed from practice. The night your partner dropped you a beat early in a lift and you both recovered it so smoothly the audience never noticed, and how he'd told Tucker after, unprompted, that he'd never seen anyone save a mistake like that mid-air, like it mattered to him the way his own game footage mattered.
The way he'd show up straight from morning skate, hair still wet, to walk you back to your dorm after a late rehearsal because he didn't like the idea of you crossing the quad alone at midnight, ice pack pressed to your shin, making conversation about nothing in particular just so you wouldn't have to walk in silence. The stretch of a week during tech for the fall showcase, when you barely left the studio, and he started just bringing his own homework to do on the floor during your five-minute breaks, so you'd have someone there without either of you having to say why that mattered.
"You did that the whole week," you say slowly.
"I did that the whole week."
"You never told me you had a physics midterm that same week."
"Didn't want you to feel bad about it." He shrugs, like this is a reasonable thing to have kept from you for two years. "It wasn't your fault. I wanted to be there."
You're quiet for a second, turning that over, and something about the quiet must give you away, because he tilts his head at you. "What?"
"Nothing."
"You've got a face on. That's not nothing."
"It's just—" You stop. Start again. "If you wanted to be there that badly. If you were doing all of that. Then what was with the girls?"
He blinks. "What girls?"
"You know what girls, Logan." Your voice comes out sharper than you mean it to, two years of swallowed irritation finally finding a door. "The ones after games. Hanging off the boards. The ones who got to walk up to you, because they didn't have some — some rule in their head about not ruining anything."
"That's what this is about?"
"I'm asking."
He drags a hand down his face, and for the first time all night, he looks ashamed instead of careful. "Those weren't anything," he says. "You know that, right? They were never anything."
"They looked like something."
Logan lets out a hoarse laugh — short, not really about anything funny. It's the sound of a person getting cornered by their own bad decisions. "Yeah," he says. "I bet they did."
There's something almost shameful in the way his jaw works before he goes on.
"They were a distraction." He says it plainly, no dressing it up. "You didn't — I thought you didn't feel the same way. I thought I was the only one carrying this, and I didn't know what to do with that, so I did the dumbest possible thing, which was try to feel something for anyone else so I'd stop feeling this much for you. It never worked. Not once. I always ended up back at your door with food you didn't ask for, like an idiot."
"I did care," you say, and it comes out smaller than you mean it to, four years of carefulness still clinging to your voice even now. "I thought you didn't."
"I know that now."
You stare at each other for a second, and it lands on both of you at once — the sheer, staggering waste of it. Four years of two people orbiting the same unspoken thing, each one certain the other didn't want it, each one building elaborate, private monuments to a feeling neither of you would say out loud. You almost want to laugh. You almost want to be furious. Mostly you just want to sit in the wreckage of it with him and not move for a while.
That's when he tells you about the texts.
"There's something you should probably know, since, well– I just accidentally saw your very personal letters." he says, and something in his voice makes you go still before he even finishes the thought. "I've been deleting texts to you since October of junior year."
"What texts?" you said.
"The ones I wasn't going to send." A muscle in his jaw moved. "Different medium. Same problem."
You stared at him.
"You," you said carefully, "have also been —"
"Yeah."
"Since —"
"Junior year." He kept his eyes on you. "You did that solo — the contemporary piece, the one set to that stripped-down piano track, for the fall showcase. I only went because you asked me to come, and also promised to buy me free snacks right after. So I came. I sat in the back row not expecting to care, and then the lights came up on you and you just — you weren't you anymore, you were something else entirely, and I remember thinking, very clearly, that I had never seen anything move like that. Not the piece. You. I didn't say anything to anyone. I definitely didn't say anything to you. I just knew, sitting in that folding chair, that something in me had rearranged itself and it wasn't going back." He stopped. Shook his head. "I thought you knew, later, that something had shifted for me. I thought it was obvious. I thought you didn't feel the same way, and I figured I could live with that — be your friend, be fine. And I was mostly fine. I was fine until you and Davis started whatever that was, and I wasn't fine anymore, and that's when I knew I was a lost cause."
"There was nothing with Davis," you said. "It was just — a gen-ed class, and I thought it was something—" The words died on your tongue.
"I know that now."
"John." Something enormous was rising in your chest — too big for any letter, too loud for that box. "We've been — we've both been —"
"Catastrophically stupid," he said, with a short, helpless laugh. "Yeah. I'm aware."
"Four years."
"I know."
"I have forty-three letters —"
"I know, I can see them —"
You laughed, and it came out slightly broken, and he laughed too, and for a moment it was just that — the two of you on your dorm room floor, surrounded by four years of everything you hadn't said, laughing at the sheer, impossible absurdity of it. At how close you'd been the whole time. At how completely you'd managed to miss each other while never once being apart.
Then the laughter faded.
He was looking at you. The gold light had shifted, fallen across him, and he looked the way he always looked when he was done thinking and had arrived somewhere decided. You knew that look. You'd written about it. Letter twenty-one. The way he looks when he's made up his mind about something and nothing in the world is going to unmake it.
"What do we do now?" you asked.
John reached out slowly, giving you every chance to move away if you wanted to. He tucked a loose strand of hair back from your face, hand staying at your jaw, careful. His thumb traced, barely, along your cheekbone.
"I have a practice slot tomorrow morning," he said. "Early. Six a.m., the rink's usually empty." He paused. "You could come. Sit in the bleachers, like you always do. And after — I could buy you hot chocolate. And maybe this time I could actually say what I haven't been saying for four years."
You looked at him. His hand was warm at your jaw, and the room smelled like old paper and cedar and whatever that specific thing was that his jacket always smelled like, because of course he was wearing the jacket you knew best.
"And we're doing it at the rink," you said slowly, "because —"
"Because that's where it started," he said, shrugging. "It should start there too. Not the ratty ice rink back home, but it still counts."
The feeling in your chest crested, enormous and warm, nothing like the quiet ache you'd carried for four years. That ache had been private and careful, kept deliberately small so it wouldn't take up too much room, wouldn't crowd out anything else. This was not small. This was taking up every room you had. This was refusing, loudly and completely, to fit inside a box.
"Okay," you said.
He smiled — the full one, the private one, the one that had always felt like it was only for you. Maybe it had been. Maybe you'd just been too busy cataloguing reasons not to believe it.
"Okay," he echoed.
He let go of your jaw slowly, like he was in no hurry about it, then stood and started helping you gather the letters off the floor, stacking them with surprising care, not reading them, just collecting. You watched him do it and didn't say anything. There was something strange and sweet about watching his hands handle these things that had existed in secret for so long.
He asked a few questions. Simple ones. The things you could admit to. Small rants you'd written. How you didn't read back on some of them, out of fear of what you'd find. You mentioned the one where you'd hoped he tripped, and how the very next day, he actually had.
Logan laughed at that — bright, curls settling around his face. You had to stop yourself from staring too long.
"Which one's your favorite?" he asked, holding the stack against his chest the way you'd been holding it minutes ago.
"I'm not telling you that."
"Come on."
"Absolutely not."
"I'll find it eventually."
"That sounds like a threat."
"It's a promise." He looked entirely too pleased with himself. "I have forty-three letters and the rest of my life. I'll get there."
When all the letters were back in the box, he set it on your desk and looked at it for a moment.
"You're going to have to let me read them eventually," he said.
"I really am not."
"The 'I hope you trip' one. I want to find that one."
"Absolutely not."
"I'm going to find it."
"Get out of my room, Logan."
"I thought I said you could call me John?"
You rolled your eyes. "I'm adapting to Briar. You're either Logan or John. Now get out of my room."
He grinned, the lopsided, lethal one, and you felt it the same way you always had — right in the sternum, like a bell being struck — and went, unhurried, toward the door.
"Six a.m.," he said from the doorway.
"Six a.m.," you agreed.
He left.
You stood in your room surrounded by the afterimage of all of it, then sat on the edge of your bed and put your face in your hands, staying that way for a while — not crying exactly, just feeling the full, enormous weight of something shifting into a new configuration, four years of tectonic plates rearranging themselves into something that finally made sense.
After a while, you got up, took the box from the desk, and put it back under your bed.
You set your alarm for five-thirty.
Hockey rinks always smelled and looked the same, no matter where you would go. It would always smell like ice and rubber and something underneath, though it didn't have the same ratty smell from the old hockey rink at home.
You climbed to your usual spot in the bleachers. Third row, center. You'd been sitting here since the first time you ever came to watch him practice. Even when you moved closer to Briar, you always gravitated to the same spot, before you'd known it was your spot, before you'd known you'd keep coming back. You'd just sat where the sight line was clear and the draft from the ventilation didn't hit as hard. You'd sat there every time after that, out of habit, out of something you'd told yourself was just habit.
John stepped onto the ice.
He didn't look up at the bleachers right away. That wasn't unusual. He rarely did, at first. He had a routine — you knew the routine, had watched it enough times to know it by heart — where he'd take a lap or two before he settled into the actual work of it, like he was reacquainting himself with the ice, reminding himself of the particular quality of this rink on this morning. Then he'd pick up speed. Then he'd look like himself.
You watched him. You were done pretending you weren't.
He skated the way he always skated — like it required nothing, like it was breathing, like the rink was just another place he lived and the ice was simply the ground beneath him. He did a lap, and then another, and then he started working through something, crossovers into a long sweep across the length of the rink, and you watched the way he held his weight, the clean economy of every movement, and felt the thing you always felt watching him, which you'd spent four years filing under aesthetic appreciation, nothing more, and which you were now allowed to call by its actual name.
After a while he came to the boards and looked up at you.
"You're in your spot," he said.
"I'm always in my spot."
"I know." He leaned on the boards, the same way he had the first time, junior year, helmet under his arm, and he looked up at you with that look you were done misreading. "I skate better when you're here. I don't know if you knew that."
"I didn't."
"I didn't either, for a while. I thought it was just that the bleachers were less empty, which helps. But then I figured out it was specifically you." He said it matter-of-factly, like it was just a thing that was true. Like it was weather. Like it was temperature. "Third row, center. Every time."
"You knew the seat."
"I always knew the seat."
You looked at him, and the rink was cold, and the light was just beginning to come in through the high windows, pale and early and new, and forty-three unsent letters sat in a box under your bed, and standing at the boards in front of you — in his skates, in his gear, on his ice — was the person they were all addressed to.
With a smile, you got up and headed down from your seat. The second you stopped in front of Logan, the only thing separating you being the rink’s wall, you smiled wider. "Hi," you said.
"Hi," he said back.
He reached for you, and you reached back, and when his hand found yours over the boards it was easy, the easiest thing, like something that had been waiting a long time to finally happen and was not going to make a fuss about it now that it had. His hand was cold from the ice, and you held it anyway, and neither of you said anything for a moment, because there wasn't anything that needed saying.
You got the hot chocolate from the machine in the convenience store. Different store, same franchise. It was, as promised, terrible. Watery and too sweet, dispensed in a thin paper cup that was already going soggy at the base.
He handed it to you and watched you take a sip and pull a face.
"Still bad," you reported. “It’s surprising how consistent the store is.”
"Still bad," he agreed, leaning against the wall, holding his own cup, looking entirely unbothered. He'd never minded the terrible hot chocolate. You'd written about that once. Letter seven. The way you seem genuinely content with things that aren't good. Like the contentment is the point, not the quality of the thing.
"You said you were going to say what you hadn't said."
"I was getting to it."
"It's been twenty minutes."
"I was working up to it," he said, and there was something almost shy in the way he said it, which was not a quality you'd had many opportunities to observe in him, and which was doing things to you that you weren't prepared for. "I've been working up to it for four years, give me another thirty seconds."
You giggled, but you still waited.
He looked at his terrible hot chocolate. Then he looked at you.
"I love you," he said. "I've loved you since I saw you performing on stage and I thought — I thought, that's her. That's the person. And I didn't say anything because you didn't, and I figured I was misreading it, and I kept not saying anything for four years and I had a phone full of deleted texts and a very long mental list of things I was not going to tell you, and then yesterday I walked into your room and saw my name on forty-three envelopes on your floor and I thought—" He stopped. Something moved across his face, somewhere between wrecked and grateful. "I thought: we are both absolute idiots."
"We really are," you said.
"We really are." He pushed off the wall and set his cup down on the machine and took yours out of your hands and set it next to his, and then he looked at you the way he had yesterday, with that decided, arrived quality, and said, "I'm done not saying it. I love you. Okay? I just — I love you."
You looked at him. This person you'd known since before you knew what it meant to know someone. This person who remembered your coffee order and picked raisins out of muffins and drove forty minutes in the rain and kept nine of your hoodies and showed up to every meet in every kind of weather and had, apparently, been composing and deleting texts to you since junior year of high school.
"I love you," you said. "I have loved you for a very long time."
He exhaled, slow, like something he'd been holding finally let go, and then he smiled — the private one, the full one, the one that had always felt like it was only for you because, you understood now, it had always only been for you — and said, "Yeah. We're definitely idiots."
"Monumental idiots."
"Historically unprecedented idiots."
"There should be a word for it."
"There probably is, in some language we don't speak." He reached out, and you let him pull you in, and he held you the way he'd held you before, the same arms, the same warmth, but with something different in it now, something that had been allowed to be what it was instead of being carefully kept at a certain size. You pressed your face against his shoulder. His chin dropped to the top of your head.
"We wasted four years," you said into his shoulder.
"Nah." His voice rumbled against your ear. "We just took the long way."
You thought about that. About the letters, and the bleachers, and the hot chocolate, and the forty-minute drives in rain, the deleted texts, and the space between what you feel and what you're brave enough to say. About all the things that had happened in the gap.
"The long way," you agreed.
Outside the rink, the morning was getting started. Inside, it smelled like ice and rubber and cedar and something new.
—
The forty-fourth letter was the last one. Written that night, because some habits deserve a proper ending.
John. Logan. Or whatever name you want to be called–
The hot chocolate was terrible. The one near our old school was better (I’m lying, but you know that), but it’s not like you would drive an hour just to get there. Still, you know hot chocolate is always terrible from that machine. You bought it anyway because I said I wanted it and you cannot help yourself.
I've been writing these since high school. I don't think I'm going to write another one. Not because I have nothing left to say — I think I'm going to have a lot to say, for a very long time — but because I'm going to say it to you from now on.
Out loud. In real time. Without a box to put it in afterward.
You told me today that you skate better when I'm in the stands. I wanted you to know that I run better when you're at the end of the finish line. I have never told you that. I'm telling you now.
I love you. I have loved you since a Tuesday in junior year in High school when you offered me bad hot chocolate on an empty rink and smiled at me like I was someone worth skating across the ice for.I loved you through every year after that, through every letter I wrote and sealed and tucked away, through every moment I talked myself out of saying something because I was afraid of what it would cost.
It turns out it didn't cost anything. It turns out you were over there deleting texts.
We were both such idiots. Though I guess it does make sense with our track record.
I'm done keeping it in a box, and I'll say it to your face from now on, and I'm sorry it took me four years and a broken latch and forty-three embarrassing letters, some of which you are never going to read, to get here. But I'm here. And so are you.
That's enough. That's more than enough.
— With love.
A/N: I love reading the lil fics like these so now I must write one hahaha. (sorry to anyone who's waiting for my Logan series update, it's coming I swear) (I've been waiting to use this gif its sooo 🤤)
summary: the five times Logan almost said he loved you and the one time you beat him to it.
pairing: John Logan x fem!reader
wc: ~5.5k
warnings: fluff, a lil angst in one bit but not much, implied friends-to-lovers, a lil suggestive in some parts, swearing, alcohol
disclaimer: I don't own any of the off campus characters or story lines, all credit to the author and show writers.
-----
1.
The first time was only two weeks into your recently-defined relationship. You were at the library together, your chemistry books and lectures piled high on the table as you meticulously scrawled incomprehensible formulas and equilibrium expressions across a notebook page. You were gently humming some song playing through your headphones, your head bobbing to the beat as you finished another chapter.
Logan kept peeking glances at you from across the table, a small smile on his face as he shook his head and looked back down at his Econ homework. You caught movement out of the periphery of your eye, looking up to catch Logan in the act. You took an earbud out, your eyebrows furrowing as you turned to question your boyfriend.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Logan lazily shrugged.
“John Logan,” your eyes squinted as you assessed him.
“Ooh, the full name,” Logan leaned back in his chair, a teasing smirk forming.
“John Logan, why are you laughing at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you, I would never.”
“It sure looked like it.”
“I would never laugh at you, baby. Maybe I just enjoy sitting here and basking in your presence,” Logan tilted his head, a mischievous look on his face.
“Aww that was sweet,” you leaned forward, your chin resting in the palm of your hand.
“And watching you dance while doing homework,” he added with a chuckle.
“Logan you ass,” you tossed a highlighter across the desk at him, grinning in satisfaction as it smacked him in the chest.
“That’s not very nice,” he raised his hand to his chest where the marker had hit him, feigning pain.
“Neither is laughing at your girlfriend,” you teased back, not nearly as offended as you pretended to be.
Logan grinned widely, his girlfriend. God, he loved the sound of that. Loved it even more when you were the one to say it out loud.
You turned your attention back to your notes, unable to wipe the dopey smile off your face.
Logan’s eyes never left you. He watched as you slowly started bopping along to the beat again, occasionally looking his way and giggling as you continued to study. He loved studying with you, mostly because that meant he got to study you. Your little quirks and habits, he loved memorizing them all. Every little small detail of yours, he loved them all.
As time went on Logan was learning he loved every little minor thing you did that you never would’ve thought he’d noticed. The urge to tell you how much he loved all these little things he’d picked up on over the last few months you’ve been dating was building rapidly.
However, Logan feared it was too soon and he didn’t want to risk running you off, so he held back for now. He watched as you continued bouncing your head to the beat in your headphones, smiling to himself as he refocused on his notes.
Too early in the relationship, but that didn’t stop Logan from cataloguing every characteristic and mannerism of yours.
2.
The second time Logan almost admitted that he loved you was the first time you came to one of his games while wearing his name across your back. You had been several times before, always sitting with Allie and Hannah as they cheered on their boyfriends.
But this was the first time you were there, as Logan’s girlfriend.
He had made a couple laps around the ice to warm up, hyping himself up in his head as he nodded to his teammates as they began warm up drills. As he pumped his skates back and forth his gaze naturally found yours in the crowd. You were sitting front and center with the girls, his away jersey covering your frame.
You had been staring at him, excitedly bouncing up and down as he finally found you amongst the buzzing student section. You waved at him from across the rink before cupping your hands around your mouth and screaming your head off for him.
“Let’s go baby, kick their asses!”
And you had remained loud during the entire game, consistently cheering him and his friends on as the Hawks gained the advantage and Logan scored a goal. He could hear you over the crowd going crazy as the puck swished into the opposing team’s net.
“Hell yeah, baby!”
Logan could hardly stop the dopey little smile that was largely hidden underneath his hockey helmet’s cage. He circled back around the rink, hitting his archer pose as he pointed towards where you were cheering him on from the stands, Allie and Hannah sharing similar looks behind you.
“Dibs on number 22!”
Logan was impressed with how loud you were able to yell, he could hear you clear across the rink. Dean and Tucker came up skating behind him. Dean thumped a padded arm against Logan’s back.
“Y/N’s loud as hell, Logan,” Dean laughed.
“She could probably announce the game with how loud she is,” Tucker added.
Logan had the cheesiest grin plastered all over his face.
“Oh, he’s whipped,” Dean practically cackled as he gloated.
“Yeah, I totally am,” Logan was proud of this, you had him wrapped around your finger and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He loved that you claimed him as loud and proud as he claimed you. His heart swelled, adoration pouring out of him as he pointed to you with his hockey stick. His smile widened as you started screaming even louder.
After the game, when the Hawks won you had slithered out of the stands and ran towards the men’s locker room, positively buzzing with excitement.
Allie and Hannah could hardly keep up, their rapid footsteps falling short as you had practically sprinted to find Logan. By the time the other girls had caught up to you, you were bouncing up and down in the hallway as you waited impatiently by the door to see your winning boyfriend.
One by one, the team started to file out of the locker room and either exited to the left or found their respective friends and family to the right.
Dean and Tucker came out first, the loud-mouthed blonde immediately noticing you vibrating with excitement and letting out a chuckle before grabbing Allie by the waist and pulling her in for a sweet kiss. Tucker also laughed lightly, shaking his head as he greeted Hannah and Allie.
Garrett came out next, simply sparing you a sideways glance and smile as he quickly pulled Hannah into his arms, his face relaxing in the crook of her neck.
At long last, Logan finally appeared in the door. His curls fresh from the post-game shower, his impish grin widening as he locked eyes with you. You didn’t give him a second to think twice, immediately throwing yourself into his arms and pecking small gentle kisses all over his face as his chest reverberated with deep laughter.
Out of breath, you pulled away and stared deeply into his brown eyes. Logan was grateful for the dimmed lights of the underground hallway, or he was sure you would’ve noticed the pure adoration and deep emotion swirling through them as he stared at you like you were the most precious thing he’d ever hold in his arms.
“Thanks baby, I had the best cheerleader out there,” Logan smirked.
“Are you guys coming to Malone’s or you gonna stand there in the doorway all day?” the group collectively giggled as Dean interrupted the moment you were having.
You sighed in fake protest as you slid out of Logan’s arms, settling on holding his hand as you dragged him along the hall with the others.
He was falling more and more in love with you every day. He wanted to tell you, he just didn’t want to do it with everyone else around. He wanted it to be just yours between the two of you.
3.
The third time was the result of you testing Logan’s patience time and time again. It was harmless really, and he’ll admit that on that particular day you got him good. You had been walking out to his truck after getting breakfast together when you pointed to something in the distance over Logan’s shoulder.
“What’s that over there?” You had sounded innocent enough.
He had turned to look, rapidly spinning back around when he heard you take off sprinting towards his truck.
You and Logan had been battling it out lately, you were adamant that you could get your own door and not shrivel up and fade away. Logan saw things differently and came up with every excuse under the sun as to why you shouldn’t have to open your own door.
“I like your nails, I don’t want you to ruin them.”
“What if your bag gets caught in the door? We can’t have that.”
“What if I just want to do this one thing for you, Y/N?”
Which had then resulted in the current situation, of you always trying to throw him off so you’d get your way. Logan wasn’t about to let that happen, and he was determined to get his point across.
Logan had jogged his way bag to his truck, giving you a stern look through the passenger window as he opened your door.
“Absolutely not,” was all he said.
Logan’s hands undid the seat belt buckle in one swift movement, his arms sliding behind your back and under your thighs as he pulled you out of his truck.
“Logan! What are you doing?” You had shrieked, giggling the entire time as you threw your arms around Logan’s neck to catch your balance.
“How many times do I gotta tell you, baby?” Logan set you down gently, closing the passenger door as soon as your feet touched the ground.
“John Logan, I know you did not just yank me out of your truck to prove a point.”
Logan bit his lip, nodding as he looked you up in down, savoring every bit of your form as he was going to show you how much he intended to prove that point. He pressed his body into yours, your back pushed against the truck door as you felt like you forgot how to breathe.
Logan brought a finger up, brushing loose strands of hair behind your ear.
“I like doing these things for you, baby. So yeah, I’m going to prove my point to you right now and I’m going to open your door for you, and you’re going to sit your pretty little ass down in that seat and then I’m going to take you home. Sound good baby?”
Logan didn’t leave much room for argument, his body so close to yours that if you leaned just the slightest bit forward you could’ve kissed him. Logan knew the effect he had on you, a knowing smirk on his face as he hovered over you.
You weren’t going to let him have it that easily. If he wanted to play dirty, two could play that game. You leaned in as if to kiss him, Logan instinctively flickering his eyes down to your lips as he simultaneous bent his head lower. Instead, you dodged his kiss, tracing your lips gently up his jawline and landing on the pulse point on his neck. You lingered there, noting the way Logan groaned as you tenderly kissed up towards his ear.
“Don’t think that just because you’re taking my ‘pretty little ass’ home that I am going to make things easy for you, baby.”
Your lips now hovered above his, the urge to close the distance mounting within Logan as a teasing, coy look crossed your face. Just as Logan began to lean in, you abruptly pulled away. Instead, you opened the door once again and climbed up into your seat. You put on your seat belt, sparing a glance back out the open truck window where Logan stood staring at you with his lips parted and his brows furrowed in disbelief that you had just curved your own boyfriend.
You giggled as you rested your arms against the windowsill, tilting your head to the side as you stared right back at him.
“There, my ‘pretty little ass’ is sat. You taking me home or what?” You flirted unabashedly.
Logan could feel the warm heat crawling up his neck. You kept him on his toes and he loved how despite the routines you’d had after so long of being friends, you found new ways to surprise him every day.
Every day Logan found new reasons why he loved you, and every day he was closer and closer to admitting to you something he had just kept to himself all these moments.
4.
The fourth time was after your first fight. Logan hardly wanted to call it a fight, he’d folded the instant you gave even the slightest inclination that you were maybe about to cry. Tears welled up in the corners of your eyes, and Logan had already forgotten what you’d been arguing about. He just knew that he couldn’t stand the sight of you upset and he knew that stress was the main factor that had kicked off the argument in the first place. The whole thing had started because you were overwhelmed from work and school and you hadn’t been taking care of yourself and Logan called you out on it. He hadn’t meant to strike a nerve, but when he pointed out that you looked tired, you took it personally and started bickering with him until you realized you needed a break.
“Logan, I’m still mad at you,”you pushed his arms away from you as he had tried to pull you into his embrace.
“That’s fine, be mad at me,” Logan was doing his best to ignore the sting, wanting nothing more than to reach out and hold you.
“I am,” you affirmed.
“I know, baby,” Logan winced.
“Don’t baby me,” your eyes practically shot daggers at him.
“I’m sorry, Y/N,” Logan apologized for probably the hundredth time that night.
“I’m going to walk away for ten minutes,” you said as you threw pushed your hair out of your face, Logan itching to be the one to do it.
“Ten minutes?” He asked.
“Just ten minutes. I’m going to shower, do a face mask, and calm down,” you confirmed, your eyes softening as you took in the way Logan gave you his sad, pouty eyes.
“Okay,” he acquiesced.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll stay right here.”
“Good.”
Those were the longest ten minutes of Logan’s life to date. Albeit, it was probably going to take way longer than ten minutes in the bathroom as you had wanted to shower, run through your skincare and haircare routines, and just take some time to breathe as you processed what had just transpired.
He had been waiting for all of about two minutes, his leg bouncing as he sat on your couch waiting for you to come out of the shower. He wanted to give you your space, but god he also wanted to hold you close and promise to never argue with you again. He couldn’t stand to think that he had hurt your feelings in any capacity, the idea alone making his chest ache as he thought about how upset you’d looked.
He couldn’t just sit there, his mind kicking into high gear as he jumped up and into the kitchen. Logan racked his brain for ideas, his mind in overdrive as he tried to come up with a plan to fix things. That was his whole thing after all, he was the one who fixed problems and he was absolutely desperate this because he didn’t want a silly fight to be the starting crack in the foundation of what you two are building together.
You were peacefully showering, completely oblivious to the madness happening beyond your bathroom door. Logan moved mechanically, his body taking him to where he needed to be. He had resorted to taking some of the tedious tasks off your to do list, trying to find anything he could do to help soften your burden as he started your laundry, took out trash, and ordered your favorite take out.
He knew you were just stressed, that the weight of midterms and everything you had on your plate was simply weighing you down. He just wanted you to take care of yourself because of how much he cared about you.
He had just taken your favorite hoodie and sweatpants—conveniently missing from his closet Logan had noted—out the dryer with some fresh towels, only having thrown them in there for a few seconds to warm them. He had folded them as nicely as he could manage, before cracking the door to the bathroom to set them on the counter. He kept his gaze downwards, not wanting to disrespect your privacy and just quickly slip in and out.
“Ugh, what is wrong with you.”
Hearing you speak, he froze mid-step in fear that you were about to be angry with him all over again.
“Like c’mon Y/N this is so dumb, he wasn’t trying to be mean.”
Were you talking to yourself? Logan pondered.
“He’s just trying to look out for you, and here you are being difficult for no reason.”
Logan frowned, he didn’t like the way you spoke to yourself about yourself. He didn’t think you were being difficult, he just thought you needed more support as you dealt with the stress of everything and that it had simply boiled over tonight.
The water dripped to a stop, Logan quickly refocusing and setting the warmed towels and clothes down before slipping out silently to let you change and continue with your routine.
He had made his way back out towards the living room, setting your fuzzy blanket on the sofa and queuing up your favorite movie before reaching for your empty water bottle to refill it. By the time he had filled it to the top, you had appeared in the doorway and stared at him.
Logan’s heart melted into a puddle at the site. His hoodie swallowed you whole, your socks barely peaking out beneath the sweatpants, and your eyes red-rimmed, and swelling with a new set of tears. A sniffle caught his attention as he set your water bottle down and was immediately striding over to pull you into his arms.
“Baby, don’t cry please,” Logan cooed as his heart ached.
“I’m sorry for getting mad for no reason,” you mumbled into his chest.
“It wasn’t no reason, you were overwhelmed and stressed,” Logan countered.
“You didn’t deserve that though.”
“Trust me, baby. I can take a lot more than that.”
You laughed lightly, the sound bright in Logan’s ears as his thumbs came up to brush away the few tears that had managed to escape. Looking beyond Logan’s shoulders, you paused as you realized.
“This hoodie was nice and warm. Did you do my laundry?”
“Maybe,” Logan sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck.
“And my dishes?” Your heart was swelling with adoration for this man.
“Among a few other things,” Logan nodded.
“I don’t deserve you, John,” you said as you gazed helplessly into his gentle brown eyes.
“I would do it a million times over for you, baby. C’mon, go get comfy. Food should be here any minute now.”
Logan led you to the sofa, happy he could just take a few small things off your shoulders and get you to take a break. He admired the smile when you realized he’d ordered your favorite without you having to ask, and he cherished every small giggle as your favorite movie played. As you watched the scenes you’d long since memorized play out, Logan watched you. He was content as well as relieved that the silly little argument remained just that.
Logan loved taking care of you, almost as much as he loved you. Every chance he got, he intended to show that to you.
5.
The fifth time Logan almost said he loved you, he couldn’t bring himself to do it because he was convinced you were too drunk to remember.
You had gone out for a girls’ night with Allie and Hannah, the three of you hitting your favorite bars and dancing the night away as you talked about everything under the sun from your respective relationships to the way midterms and group projects had been kicking your asses this semester. It was a fun change of pace, just hanging out and having fun.
By the time you had gotten to the end of the night, you and Allie were well-beyond just tipsy and gallivanting towards wildly drunk. Hannah had the good conscious to remain somewhat sober, and had called in the reinforcements to rein you and Allie’s antics in. What Hannah hadn’t accounted for, was you being just far enough gone to not recognize your own boyfriend. When Logan arrived to take you home, he was desperately trying to hold back his laughter as he assessed the state you were in. You were slumped against the bar, absentmindedly swirling a straw in your drink. You were sullenly watching as Garrett and Dean had arrived to join their girls as you waited listlessly for Logan to make his appearance.
“Hi, baby,” he greeted you.
Looking over your shoulder, you gave him the nastiest look Logan had ever seen you muster as you side-eyed him.
“I have a boyfriend, dude,” Vitriol coated every syllable of your words, the sheer magnitude of sass catching Logan off guard.
“Ah, I don’t see him,” Logan pretended to look around.
“My boyfriend is picking me up, don’t get any ideas weirdo,” you continued to twist your straw around.
“Oh really, he left you out here all alone?”
“It was girls’ night, dude. He’s not a girl therefore he’s not included,” you didn’t even spare a backwards glance as you rolled your eyes.
“Well, hopefully he’s coming soon then,” Logan took the seat next to you, flagging down the bartender so he could pay your tab.
“I know, I just miss him soooo much,” you sighed.
“He must be a really great guy,” Logan was having fun with this conversation.
“Oh, he’s just the best,” you agreed.
“Tell me about him,” Logan grabbed the check from the bartender, nodding in appreciation as he grabbed his wallet to pay.
“He’s so pretty, he’s got curly hair and dimples. Oh! And he pisses me off,” you stated, quickly disrupting into giggles afterwards.
Logan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“What? Why does he piss you off?”
“Because, he’s got really nice, long eyelashes. Like why? How dare he?” You gave up playing with your straw.
“He sounds like just the worst,” Logan nodded.
“No, he’s the best. I said that already.”
“You just told me what pisses you off about him, what makes him the best then?”
“He’s a mechanic, and a plumber! Not officially but like he’s really good at those things. He is I think the best guy I’ve ever met, he’s so sweet and kind. He cares more than he lets on. Oh and he’s also really smart and athletic,” you listed on and on.
“Does this guy have a name?” Logan turned back towards you, having signed the check for your tab and gathering up your bag and jacket.
“He goes by his last name, Logan. But I like to call him John because he gets super flustered and the tips of his ears turn pink,” you admitted with a giggle.
Logan could feel the blush washing over his face and down his neck as you said this, despite being not at all baffled that you had been doing it on purpose.
“So John Logan, eh? Isn’t he a hockey player?” Logan coughed as he tried to recover and continue the conversation.
“Oh my gosh yes! Do you know him?” You had excitedly sat up in the barstool, ready to talk about your boyfriend more.
“I think you’re looking at him, baby,” Logan grinned.
Confused, you leaned closer and squinted as you raked over his features. It took a moment through your drunken stupor, but as you took in the curls and the brown eyes and dimples, realization washed over you.
“John! There you are! When did you get here? I missed you,” you exclaimed as you had finally recognized your boyfriend.
“Hi baby, I missed you too. You ready to go?” Logan had grabbed your jacket, holding it out so you could slide your arms in.
You stood from the bar stool, shimmying your body into your jacket before turning around and wrapping your arms around Logan’s middle. You inhaled deeply as the scent of his soap and cologne infiltrated your senses.
Sighing contently, you whispered, “Can I stay at yours tonight, please?”
Logan smiled as he pressed a soft kiss to your hairline.
“I’d love that, baby. Let’s go,” Logan pulled your hand towards the exit, stopping so you could say bye to the girls you were going to see in about 15 minutes at the hockey house.
You were quiet as you let Logan lead you to his truck and buckle you into his passenger seat. Logan had gently closed your door, walking around the front to the driver’s side and hopping in. As he adjusted the temperature settings for you, you broke the silence.
“This guy was asking me all sorts of questions about you, John.”
“Oh yeah?” Logan couldn’t help his grin.
“Yeah, I told him I had a boyfriend and then all he could ask about was you! Can’t blame him though, you’re pretty great.”
Logan turned to find you already staring at him. Your head pressed into the seat, your eyes had glazed over and your pupils dilated, a soft flush had settled across your features and was barely seen under the pale glow of the streetlights. You were practically incandescent, Logan relaxing in his seat as he almost said it, his mouth opening and closing as you began to shake from laughter and breaking him out of his trance.
Logan wanted it to be special when he told you that he loved you, he wanted you to remember. He was ready, he wanted to tell you just how deeply his adoration for you ran.
+the 1 time you beat him to it
You and Logan had been dancing around the subject for awhile, neither one saying the dreaded “L Word” as weeks turned into months and you had started getting antsy. You knew how you felt about Logan, you knew that you loved him and you felt like your relationship was only getting stronger every day. But, that didn’t stop the anxiety that had been plaguing you about who would say it first. Which led you to tonight, in which you were going to just rip the bandaid off and tell Logan exactly how you felt and be done with it.
Once you had worked up the courage, that is.
You two had decided to go for a romantic walk now that the weather was starting to warm up, the spring air and recent rain turning everything a bright green. Flowers had begun sprouting along the path, the sun setting behind the trees as you had been absentmindedly walking along. Talking about anything and everything, your hands entwined as Logan rubbed circles into your hand with his thumb.
Continuing along, the two of you knew this path like the back of your hands. You basked in each other’s presence, just content and happy to be together. As the sun continued to set on the horizon, you stumbled upon your special spot.
In the park you two frequented, there was a massive boulder that overlooked the pond that you two loved to come and sit and be in each other’s company. It was just slightly off the beaten path, but it offered a bit of privacy. You had shown it to Logan back when you were just friends, and it ended up being the place that Logan would ask you out. You smiled at the memory.
“What are you smiling at?” Logan asked, peeping down at you as he swung your intertwined hands back and forth.
“Just thinking,” you replied.
“Anything in particular?”
“Actually I was just remembering how this was where you finally asked me out, took you long enough,” you teased, bumping your shoulder into his.
“You have no idea how long I had been dreaming about asking you out,” Logan groaned.
You looked out across the pond, an idea springing to your mind.
“I want to go swimming,” you stated firmly.
“What? Y/N it’s going to be so cold. It’s only just started getting warm out,” Logan looked at you like you’d maybe lost your mind a bit.
“Aren’t you a hockey player, John? Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little cold,” you had already started slipping off your shoes, hopping down off the rock as you made your way towards the pond.
Logan could only stare momentarily as you slipped off your shirt, your light reflecting off the bond and dancing across your skin as the sun had almost completely set now.
“You coming?” You called back to Logan over your shoulder, having stepped out of your shorts and just standing in your bra and underwear.
You had always been a sight for sore eyes, your beauty taking Logan’s breath away every time.
He found you mesmerizing. And that often worked in your favor, as it did now when Logan found himself following you towards the pond and pulling his hoodie over his shoulders.
You grinned as you waited for him, reaching your hand out towards him and beckoning for him to join you. He had also stripped down to his underwear, your eyes raking over him as you appreciated way the sparse light reflected across his toned muscles.
“Like what you see?” Logan smirked, intertwining his hand with yours again.
“I think you know I do, come on,” you scoffed as you pulled Logan with you, wading into the water.
“Shit, I told you it was going to be cold,” Logan’s shoulders tensed as he waded deeper, instinctively bringing you close to his chest to keep you warm.
You shivered lightly in Logan’s arms, wrapping your arms around his neck as you both floated along in the pond. The sun had fully set, the moonlight being the only thing reflecting in the shadows that danced across your faces as you stared deeply into each other’s eyes.
You stayed silent for a moment, reveling in each other as you quietly whispered the one thing that had been constantly at the forefront of your mind.
“I love you, John.”
Your voice had barely been above a whisper. Logan looked like he could hardly believe what he’d heard, like maybe he’d been imagining it. He’d been trying to find the perfect moment to say it over the last four months, and you’d beaten him to it.
As the quiet continued to stretch, you began to second guess yourself as doubt set in. You pushed out of Logan’s arms a bit, worried you had just ruined everything.
“John, if you don’t feel the same, I—”
Logan’s brain caught up to his ears as he realized, not giving you the opportunity to put any distance between the two of you. He reached out, his hands resting against the side of your face and the back of your neck as he pulled you in.
His lips hungrily met yours, Logan’s heart beating out of his chest as every nerve ignited in his body. He felt impossibly warm with you in the cold pond, pulling away as your eyes stayed close for a brief moment. You were breathing hard and deep, your lips swollen as you finally opened your eyes and stared back into Logan’s.
“I love you, Y/N. Sorry it took me a second, I just couldn’t believe you beat me to it,” Logan chuckled, his hand never once leaving your face. You smiled once more, letting Logan tug you closer as the hand that had been on your neck found your waist and moved to support you as you wrapped your legs around him.
Your lips met his once again, a moan escaping from somewhere deep inside as Logan weaved his fingers into your hair. You two were so wrapped up in each other, enveloped in the moonlight that you hardly noticed the cold anymore.
You had beaten him to it, but Logan intended to tell you all the ways he’d learned he loved you. Even if it took all night long.
A/N: as always, you know this isn't proofread. pretend you don't see the typos bby plz I beg. also please leave me some comments or send some requests! it makes me so so so happy to see your messages and y'all make me laugh I love reading them <3 forehead kisses for you all x.
general taglist: @sue-me-i-wanna-be-wanted @run-for-the-hills
This is a yap session so scroll if you feel so inclined to.
As a person who reads fanfiction you are not going to catch me complaining about what it is that people are writing. I am an AVID consumer of ‘x reader’ fanfiction and l hate to see people complain about “too much smut” or “messy writing” you guys have NO RIGHT to complain about the things that people write as a HOBBY for FUN. It infuriates me to see so many people shit on authors who write smut. I’ve seen so many authors say that it’s the only way to get people to interact with what they write. Or they could just LIKE writing smut. There are so many phenomenal writers on this app who could give you exactly what you’re looking for. You guys have become too prideful. A lot of you will say “ Well I’m the consumer so l have a right to criticize what I’m consuming.” or “Well l can say something because where would they be without me?” You guys have to check yourselves. Unless an author specifies that they are open to criticism do NOT give it. It is rude and uncalled for when people work so hard. It’s the same as someone showing you their art and the first thing you say is “the lines are too crooked”. Enjoy or scroll. Don’t be an asshole.
Summary: Azriel refuses to leave your side after the Valkyrie training, which is all well and good until a certain High Lord shows up unannounced.
A/N: Almost there! Next part is Az finding out, I promise! I honestly didn't expect this part to take so long to come out. Thank you all so much for your patience. I don't know why, but writing every scene with Rhys so far has been like pulling teeth. Thank you all for your patience. Some stuff came up with my job that took over the past month of my life, but it should be over now, or at least calmed down (but I'm not promising anything).
This will probably be the shortest part, besides possibly the epilogue. There is a possibility that what is now part 5 will be split, but I'm not sure yet (the reveal will happen in the next chapter no matter what, don't you worry).
Word Count: 4.5K ish
Warnings: Reader has chronic pain (I'm trying to keep it accurate, but just in case: any medical inaccuracies are due to the fact that Reader is fae and not human and should be attributed to the biological differences between the two species), semi-unreliable narrators, feeling insecure, more angst, talk of pregnancies and complications during pregnancies (see previous note about medical inaccuracies, but with more fae and magic nonsense), past child abandonment, Rhysand means well
Part 3 | Part 5
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Azriel's wing coils gently behind you, its warmth seeping through the back of the couch, soothing some of your aching muscles. The shadows curl lazily about the room, humming contentedly. A soft smile pulls at your lips, eyes lethargically following their swirling movements. Azriel's arm drapes around you, his touch light, leaning into you as much as you are him. He insisted on taking you to his apartment after you reunited in the garden, keeping you close as you and the parents-to-be arranged a time for their appointment in a few days.
The two of you barely said a word when you arrived; Azriel discarding his leathers before sitting next to you on the couch, the shadows depositing warm mugs of tea in your hands. Your fingers flex gently around the mug, the contents seemingly charmed to remain the perfect temperature. Azriel takes a long, slow sip, eyes never leaving you.
The soft cushions relieve some of the stress on your spine, muscles still throbbing after spasming earlier. During the kiss. Just the thought has your smile growing and warmth rushing up your neck. You have only been kissed a handful of times, but they weren't… like that. A spark of warmth filling every part of you, the need to feel him more important than breathing, all your pain momentarily forgotten. It was the first time the bond flared so brightly since it snapped, the only time it brought a gentle warmth and love and acceptance and no pain.
Azriel nuzzles your hair softly, you can feel his smile against your scalp. "What are you thinking about that has you blushing so prettily?" he hums.
You turn to him slightly, flush deepening. "Just you," you admit in a whisper.
Azriel's smile broadens. "Oh, yeah?" he murmurs, amusement dripping from his voice. "What about me?"
Ducking, you hide your face in his shoulder. "The garden," you whisper.
He hums, pecking the crown of your head. "I meant every word."
You still, his words breathed into your skin hours ago echoing in your mind.
You are everything. So perfect.
I love you so much. My beloved.
I'm yours.
Your pulse climbs into your throat and you draw your hands in until you can feel the warmth of your tea on your stomach, almost enough to disguise the void opening there. You could feel the sincerity in his words, his earnestness flowed through the bond. You want so desperately to believe them, and you had for a brief, perfect moment.
Then your lower spine spasmed and reality flooded back. You aren't perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. He only calls you such things because you keep a part of yourself from him, a part that dictates your entire life. Such sweet nothings will die on his lips the moment he learns, as they have for everyone else in your life.
"Hey," Azriel murmurs, tenderly guiding your face out of his shirt. He studies you with a quiet intensity. "Where did you go?"
You try to force a smile, but it's shaky. "Nowhere," you try. Azriel hums, unconvinced, eyes not leaving yours. You take a deep breath, gaze sliding to a shadow curling serenely on his shoulder. "I- I didn't mean to ruin everything with your family," you breathe.
His brows cinch, eyes flickering between yours. "Oh, my love," he whispers, voice soft and thick. Shaking his head, he leans in slowly until his forehead rests on yours. "You didn't ruin anything," he vows, the words gentle but heavy.
"But… the Hight Lord–" you start.
"Was wrong," he finishes gently, running his thumb across your cheek. "He never should've spoken to you that way. He knew those questions were inappropriate and asked anyway. If anyone ruined anything, it was him, not you."
You purse your lips, taking a shaky breath. The High Lord may have asked the questions, but only in response to you, your job, your trip to the Dawn Court. It was still your fault in that way, but you knew Azriel would never see it that way.
Your eyes drop to his chest. "I'm sorry about this morning," you breathe, shifting to try to relieve the ache from your twisting spine.
"Y/N," he whispers reverently, his voice catching. His other hand cups your jaw, his tea disappearing into the shadows. "That was not your fault. None of this is your fault." Gently, he tilts your head up, ducking to catch your eyes.
"But, if… if I wasn't there it wouldn't have happened. She never would have been kicked out," you insist quakily.
Taking a deep breath, Azriel closes his eyes. Your pulse thunders, hot tears burning behind her eyes. It really shouldn't surprise you; despite his flowery language, he can't deny that. Still, the jagged bond writhes in your chest, the hollowness in your stomach growing.
"Y/N," he says softly, his eyes opening, lined with silver tears. "My kind, sweet, beautiful, selfless Y/N." He smiles shakily as your face heats. He forces himself to take another deep breath, his eyes locked on yours. "Your presence may have been a catalyst, but her actions, her words, are hers and hers alone. It is her responsibility to bear, my beloved. Not yours. Never yours."
Your breath picks up, faster and shallower than before. Azriel's fingers tense against your cheeks, his jaw ticking as he studies your face. Stiffly, you force yourself to nod once, just to put him at ease. It works, his hands and shoulders relax a fraction, a sigh escaping him.
"It looked like you wanted to kill her," you breathe, voice steadier than you felt.
Azriel tenses again, eyes widening as they flicker across your face. You know of his job, of course, heard the stories that circulate about the… less savory aspects. Today was the first time seeing him fight, watching as the kind, gentle shadowsinger morphed into the deadly Spymaster. You thought it would scare you, distantly you were aware it should scare you, but it hadn't. Fear had been coursing through your veins, but Azriel was never the cause. Rather, it had fascinated you in a way you don't think it should; it made somewhere deep inside of you feel… safe.
You keep your face neutral, waiting patiently. It was a part of himself he hasn't shared with you and you aren't going to force him. You know all too well what it must feel like, to keep something secret for fear of rejection. But it was different, you reason; he has a family who has stuck by his side, while you… The only constant you have is Madja and you suspect she only tolerates you because you pay for her tonics.
"I… I considered it," Azriel admits in a tight breath.
Your lips pull upward in a small, shaky smile, his eyes track the movement, brows furrowing. Slowly, you lean in, watching him closely, your lips pressing softly onto his cheek when he doesn't pull away. His body shudders, wings twitching from the slots carved in the couch.
You pull back a fraction, smile steadying, his head turning slightly, your eyes meeting his hazel ones again. Mentally, you map every line, ridge, diamond, and fleck, noting the hundreds of colors that appear to glow in the sunlight.
Hesitantly, you lean in again, gaze flickering to his lips. His fingers tense against your cheeks, a soft breath escapes him as his lips twitch upwards. For a moment, your lips just brush each other, both your breaths already quickening in the shared air. The touch sent a painful shiver up your spine that you ignore. The shadows dance excitedly, urging you both closer. Time seems to slow, your very being gravitating to him, the bond clawing in your chest, begging for your mate's touch.
Drifting forward, your lips slot perfectly in his. You both sigh in relief, lips languidly beginning to move as one. The shadows take your tea and your hands immediately come to lightly grip his shirt, pulling his body flush to yours. The bond roars in triumph, heat pouring into your stomach and somewhere lower, demanding more. Carefully, you pull back before the need fully overtakes you, the bond screaming in protest.
Leaning your forehead against his, you both smile, cheeks flush. "I'll be honest," Azriel pants, a hand tucking a small lock of your hair back, "that's not how I thought you would react."
Your brows furrow, smile dimming slightly. "It wasn't too much, was it?" you ask quickly, trying to pull away.
Azriel's grip keeps you in place, shaking his head as your mouth opens again. "It was perfect," he breathes, pressing forward until his lips meet yours again for a brief moment. "You are perfect."
You relax into him, eyes fluttering closed, limbs heavy, even as your mind spirals, fighting against his words. Once he finds out about your condition, about the bond, this… fantasy he made of you will crash and he will leave. You're sure of it. Everyone has before him. Why should he stoop so low as to accept you? You who are weak, uneducated, poor, who has spent the past 24 hours ruining different parts of his life. How he was not embarrassed by you already, you don't know. It was only a matter of time, you concluded the night you met him in Madja's clinic, before he left you for someone better, as is his right.
"I wish I got to meet your family," Azriel murmurs, breaking your thoughts.
Your eyes snap open, pulling back sharply, wincing at the shooting pain up your spine. "W-what?" you breathe.
Azriel's brows furrow, his hands dropping. You had told him that you grew up at the Silver Oaks Orphanage when he asked about your family in the past. The words had stuttered out, face flushed with shame. Az had simply taken your hands, gently explaining how the Lady Nyssa had all but adopted both him and the General. He had never pushed or asked for an explanation.
His soft smile remains, a hand gently reaching up to grasp your wrist, thumb running tender circles along your pulse point. "Your parents, my love," he tries again. "I wish I could meet the fae who blessed me with you."
Heat flares up your neck and cheeks, you shift away, the shadows stilling around the room. You don't remember much about your parents, but you remember their voices, the disappointment, the disbelief, the yelling. They still echo through your dreams, along with your begging; begging them to believe you, that you weren't trying to get out of work. Mostly, you remember their silence, their disbelief in Madja's diagnoses. Then they were gone, leaving you with the old healer, refusing to take you back.
You still see them every once in a while, your parents and siblings, selling their crops in the market. You're always careful to stay away from their stall.
A tear burns a path down your cheek, you pull your hands away from him, furiously wiping your face. Azriel's smile fades. "If- if you truly want to, then we can- I mean, you are- if they–" you stammer, breaths coming too fast, too shallow, before you stop yourself.
They don't want you, never have, why would that change now? And if they told Azriel why they left you behind, he would just follow suit. Your breath shudders, the bond roiling at the thought.
"Hey, hey," Azriel chides gently, taking your hands in his, guiding them away from your face. "Breathe, my love," he commands softly. Shadows press in around you, whispering against your skin, a light grounding weight on the back of your neck. They pulse against you, slow and steady, miming a deep breath.
You do your best to copy, focusing on their steady weight against you, on the light brush of Azriel's thumb on the back of your hand. It takes several moments, but your breathing does start to even, although your heart continues to pound against your ribs. "That's it, beloved. That's it," he encourages. "What were you trying to say?"
Lips trembling, you force a steady breath, eyes focusing on where his hands hold yours. "It's just…" you push past the lump in your throat. "They own a farm, maybe two hours from the city. It- if you t-truly want to meet…" you trail off as his hands tense around yours.
His brows cinch, a muscle in his jaw flexing. "They're still alive?" He asks, voice almost a growl. Flinching slightly, you nod. "And… you were raised at Silver Oaks?" he asks, trying to keep his voice steady, but it remains low.
Slowly, you nod, breath shuddering again. "They- I–" you stammer. "I was six when… when they…" you couldn't get the words out, eyes closing as more tears fall, missing how Azriel's eyes darken.
"Oh, sweetheart," he breathes, voice cracking.
Slowly, he gathers you into his arms, drawing you to his chest. Placing a tender kiss on your hair, he holds you as you attempt to keep your breathing even. "I was too much," you admit thickly through your tears. Azriel goes still beneath you, but you keep your eyes closed, basking in his warmth, his wing curling around you. "I couldn't help on the farm, so I wasn’t worth keeping," you repeat, the threat constantly thrown your way until they made good on that promise.
Azriel's breathing picks up slightly, but he stays eerily still beneath you. You take another breath, the shadows nudging you encouragingly. Exhaustion pulls on the edges of your mind, dampening the walls you normally keep around the memories. "I- I was no use to them," you heard yourself saying, "not after Madja–"
A loud knock echoes through the apartment. Your words die as you stiffen in Azriel's hold, eyes snapping open. The shadows still around you, their indistinct voice shifting from soft whispers to a harsh hiss. Azriel tenses beneath you, blinking the silver from his eyes, gaze hardening at the door.
You are both silent for a long moment, barely breathing before the knock sounds again. "Az," the High Lord's voice is dampened through the wood, low and hoarse, almost tired, "it's me."
You scramble in Azriel's hold, sitting up as much as you can, ignoring the rippling pain along your spine. Azriel's arms remain firm, not caging you, but keeping you close. Your heart thunders, eyes flickering wildly across the room. Instinctively, you grip tightly onto Azriel, pressing back into him. Your breath comes fast and shallow, a few hot tears burning your cheeks. The shadows flock to you even as their swirling ceases.
Azriel pulls you back into his chest. You don't resist, nearly collapsing back into him. Your body trembles in his hold, the High Lord's accusations from the night before echoing in your head. Rubbing a hand along your arm, Azriel gently shushes you, his shadows running along your body. "It's okay, my love," he hushes, voice barely a breath. "If he doesn't hear us, he might just leave." Azriel tries to add some levity to his voice, but it remains tense.
Your gaze slides to him, blinking rapidly. "Does that normally work?" you whisper, breathing shakily.
"Az, I know you're in there," the High Lord sighs, his voice echoing through the quiet apartment. "Please, can we talk?"
Azriel lets out a long, controlled breath. "Worth a shot," he mumbles. You try to laugh, it coming out a huff through your tight chest.
Slowly, carefully, Azriel shifts to settle you on the couch next to him. Grabbing your hands in one of his, he gently tilts your head until you're looking him in the eyes. "Listen to me, my love," he whispers, his gaze searching yours. "You don't owe him anything. You don't have to talk to him or even see him if you don't want to." You swallow thickly, forcing yourself to nod. A muscle feathers in his jaw. He leans in, pressing a long, gentle kiss to your cheek. "I'll deal with him," he says, voice low as he pulls away.
Slowly, Azriel stands, stalking towards the door. The shadows surround you tightly, whispering against your skin. Your hands shake, butterflies fluttering in your stomach as you force your breath to remain calm. You stand, mostly unaware of the action, turning towards the door, drawing the shawl around you tightly.
The door swings open silently, and you have to take a step to the side to see around Azriel. The High Lord stood in the doorway, dark circles under his eyes, a hand running through his hair. Azriel studies him, keeping his wings drawn tight. Rhysand lets out a relieved breath, smiling weakly at his brother. "I wasn't sure you were going to answer," he admits softly.
"I almost didn't," Azriel retorts, crossing his arms over his chest.
Rhysand nods slowly, licking his lips. "I…" he starts, sighing softly. "I want to apologize."
You watch in silence, hugging yourself in the shadows' embrace as Azriel scoffs. "I'm not the one you should be apologizing to."
"I know," Rhysand says, pursing his lips. "But, showing up at her place unannounced didn't seem like the best course of action," he chuckles breathlessly.
Azriel growls, taking a step towards his High Lord. Rhysand's voice fades and he tenses, squaring his shoulders, almost like he's preparing for an attack. "And you thought showing up here unannounced was better?"
The High Lord flinches slightly. "I was wrong. I shouldn't have… fuck," he breathes, running his hand through his hair again. "Can I please just speak with her? To apologize and explain."
Your breathing is still heavy and your pulse echoes in your ears, even as the shadows attempt to guide you towards the couch again. "What is there to explain, Rhys?" Azriel snarls, hands clenching at his sides. "You made your opinion very clear last night."
Rhysand lets out a heavy breath, nodding slowly. "I–"
"She doesn't want to see you," Azriel continues, cutting him off. Your grip on your shawl tightens.
"But–"
"No," Azriel barks, wings extending slightly, blocking your view of the male he considers a brother. "She does not want to see you. You don't get to argue your way out of that, Rhysand. If you have something you want to say to her, then tell me and I can pass it along."
You take a step back, your calves hitting the low coffee table behind you. The shadows rush to stabilize you, the soft thud echoing through the apartment. Azriel stills, head whipping towards you, his hard expression softening slightly, his wings extending further, almost hitting the walls. A hand flies to your mouth as if that will soften the sound, neck and cheeks heating, your back protesting the shock. Gently, the shadows guide you away from the table, but you can't bring yourself to sit despite their prompting, so you stand next to the couch, eyes fixed on the rug beneath you that doesn't look like it's from the Night Court; Summer Court maybe, or Day.
"She's here," Rhys breathes, somewhere between a statement and a question. Azriel's gaze returns to him, a low growl rumbling through his chest.
You can hear the High Lord shifting on the other side of Azriel as your mate squares his shoulders. "Just say what you came here to say, Rhysand," he demands, forcing his wings to fold just enough to provide you a sliver to see the High Lord.
Rhysand tracks the movement, eyes finding you almost immediately, a long, careful breath escaping him. "Look, I… I am sorry. Truly. I jumped to a conclusion and refused to be swayed when it turned out to be wrong. I never should have spoken to you like that, never should have… interrogated in such a way, never… well, there are quite a few things I should have done differently," he admits, just loud enough for you to hear. Your grip tightens around your shawl, the other hand coming down to wrap around your middle, eyes stinging.
"It's just…" he continues, voice bordering on desperate, "you have to understand. I've known Az since we were children. He's my brother in all but blood. In many ways, I know him better than I know myself. And I know that when he loves, he does so with his whole self, willing to put everything on the line for those he cares for," Rhysand pauses, taking another breath, eyes flickering to Azriel. "And there… there have been times when that has been used against him, against the Court." Your eyes jump to Azriel, his back still turned to you, wings almost fully tucked in, but his shoulders tense.
Pursing his lips, Rhysand looks back to you, your wide eyes meeting his for a brief moment before they drop again. "I will always do what I need to, to protect my family and my Court. So, when I recognized you as the one who had the private meeting with Theason, I wrongfully assumed the past was repeating. I pushed because I thought I could catch you in what I assumed to be a lie. And when one of the first things you answered was something we were explicitly told by our healer not to do, I thought I had."
Rhysand's eyes close for a moment, his lips pursed. Your breath picks up slightly, a few tears falling. "But then, you went into your reasonings and… either you were a really good liar, or you were telling the truth and Feyre, my mate, suffered from something with such a simple solution because we…. because I refused to look in the right places. I needed you to be lying just to prove that we didn't miss anything, that we did all we could, that what happened to Feyre was inevitable, and the only thing I could point to was your meeting with Thesan."
The High Lord chuckles drily, running a hand over his face. "Of course you can't tell us specifics of what you spoke about with him. I know how confidentiality works, and I used that against you. I am deeply sorry."
Quiet breaths shake your frame. Azriel turns slowly, watching you with a carefully neutral expression, hands still clenched at his sides. You don't even hear him move, just feel the shadows split apart before his arms wrap around you. You lean into his chest, letting his scent engulf you as you try to control your breathing, keeping your gaze fixed on the rug.
"I am not saying any of this to excuse my words," Rhysand continues. "What I did was inexcusable, but I did just want to give you a bit more context so, hopefully, you can understand where I was coming from. What happened last night, what I did and said, had nothing to do with you and should never have happened. I don't think there are words to express how sorry I am."
Your breath shudders in your chest, Azriel's arm tightening slightly around your waist, and you force yourself to nod, unable to find words. Your head hurts, dry tear tracks mar your face, your thoughts moving like molasses. The muscles in your back rage, begging you to lie down, even Azriel's support only offering slight relief, and all you can focus on is how much you want this to be over.
Rhysand takes another deep breath, nodding stiffly. "You should go," Azriel says, the gentle rumble soothing your frayed nerves.
"Yeah, of course," Rhysand agrees. His eyes find you once more. "We are having a birthday dinner for Az next week. You are welcome to come, Y/N. Only if you want, we understand if not." He gives you a sheepish smile before turning to leave. The shadows make quick work of closing the door behind him.
Your body falls into Azriel, knees buckling beneath you. Azriel doesn't flinch, gingerly guiding you back to the couch and gathering you into his lap. Your muscles ease slightly, but are still tense in his hold. Azriel sits too still beneath you; his only movements are his careful breaths and a hand rubbing soft circles along your upper back.
Everything around you feels distant and out of focus. The feel of your mate's body and his scent are the only things that feel real. Distantly, you are aware of what emotions you should be feeling: disbelief, anger, guilt, and shame, but it all feels so far away. Azriel's voice cuts through the fog gently. "I'm sorry," he breathes into your hair. "I've got you, my love."
The shadows trace gentle patterns up your arms and around your neck, and you melt further into the haze, taking comfort in the nothingness. Somewhere out there you feel the shadows guide Azriel's hands to better support your strained back, although even the pain in your back feels distant; it wasn't often that you are able to remove yourself so fully, so you embrace the opportunity.
Exhaustion pulls on your mind as you nestle further into your mate's chest. The High Lord's voice echoes through your mind, most of it disjointed and muffled, but one part breaks through. "Someone hurt you?" you ask, tongue heavy in your mouth, your words barely a breath.
For a moment, you don't think Azriel hears you. He doesn't react, tracing soft circles along your back and arms. Azriel stiffens slightly after a few seconds, the meaning of your words dawning on him, his hands hesitating for a brief moment before continuing on their paths. "Out of everything Rhys said, that is your first question?" he asks teasingly, but his voice is strained. Your grip on him tightens and Azriel lets out a long, slow breath. "It was a long time ago, my love," he admits softly, his arms tightening around you.
Carefully, you turn your head to look up at him, the odd angle angering your already inflamed muscles. "Where are they now?" you demand in a whisper.
Azriel looks down at you, wetting his lips, eyes softening. "Gone."
"Gone?" you repeat.
Studying you carefully, Azriel nods slowly. "Dead," he amends, voice clipped, adjusting his hold on you but not letting go. "She's dead."
Something odd settles in your chest at his words: relief and satisfaction and something almost protective. Nodding stiffly, you settle your head back on his chest, eyes fluttering closed. "Good."
————
Fun fact: the original plan was to have Rhys appear unannounced at her door. But then I thought about it and realized Az wouldn't leave her alone after the dinner and the training, so… here we are. The conversation had to be reworked with Az, but it gets us where we need to go in the end.
Azriel murmured under his breath once you had stepped inside his townhouse. You felt your eyes narrow at the man, crossing your arms across your chest while he seemed to pay no mind. “Excuse me?”
“Sit.” Az didn’t even look up from where he had plopped down on the couch next to you. The audacity of this man. You should’ve left. Instead, you dropped down to sit next to him.
“I’m sitting. Now what?” The brattiness tinged over your tone yet the dealer's lips twitched into a sly smirk. “Whatchyu need?”
“I literally…” you sighed, trying not to let the heat between your legs pool too much. How did this man turn you on yet annoy you all in one?
“I told you when I texted you. Just some bud.”
His arm lazily draped around the back of the couch. Your pulse jumped through the roof as you fiddled with the rings on your fingers. “How much you need, doll?”
“I have…”
Pausing for a moment you dug through your purse, drawing out the crumpled up twenty and holding it up with your own small smirk.
“A twenty- I see. I could do a gram or…” Azriel started to speak as he reached over to the coffee table, getting a baggy and a scale ready. You swore you noticed his hazel eyes darken just a touch. “… I could do more…”
More. More weed? Right? Your face flushed up. It seemed you both were thinking the same damn thing. “How?” The question jumped from your lips eagerly.
“I wouldn’t mind throwing some more in for a pretty face like yours… Especially if—“
He was being confident of course. It should’ve annoyed you. But for some reason, it only made that second heartbeat thump between your legs faster. “If what?”
So. Damn. Bratty. But you wanted him to spit it out already. Az let out a low and dangerous chuckle. Hanging his head off the back of the couch while his tongue grazed over the inside of his cheek.
“If ya wanna use those gorgeous full lips of yours to compensate.”
It came out nonchalant but there was a growl aching to escape from his throat. So straightforward. You couldn’t help but blink at the dealer for a few moments. Processing it.
But that damn shit-eating grin of his stayed plastered across his features. Even while he grabbed one of his pre-rolled joints and sparked it up.
“Like a blowjob?!”
You almost sounded offended. Almost. Yet again he let out that cocky laugh of his. Raising his brow while he puffed on his weed. “You said it, darlin’. Not me.” The. Fucking. Nerve.
Although you couldn’t lie, couldn’t hide the fact that you really fucking craved him. “You wouldn’t last a minute with my throat game.”
“Ha- wanna bet?”
The tension was heating up between the two of you through the back-and-forth bantering. “You know what?”
“Hm? What’s that, doll?”
Before he could spew anything else, you leaned in and kissed him. Your lips locking with Azriel's. His hand instantly wrapped around your throat while your tongues swirled roughly together.
A damned good kisser. Fuck.
A husked groan seeped between his lips, holding the burning joint with his free hand. “You taste fucking sensational-“ Az growled as you started to kiss and lick down his jaw, to his neck.
“I know—“
That siren-like stare of yours burned to his for a split second before you dropped down to your knees. Teasing your fingers along the waistband of his grey sweatpants.
“Confident, aren’t ya?”
With a simple nod, you let one of your hands trace over the outline on his pants. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. This man is fucking hung. You felt your heart jump in your chest. “Hard, aren’t ya?”
Biting your lower lip to hide the growing smile across your face, Azriel's brows rose in amusement. Finding someone to match his style of banter and jokes was something new.
“Hard not to be when I got you down on your knees like that.”
He muttered, shifting his hips forward as you finally tugged his sweatpants down. His blood-filled length popping right out. Hard as a fucking rock. Veined to perfection and ready to burst.
“Well… let me work my magic—“
That was the last thing you had seductively whispered before starting to go down on him. You started simple. Kissing the precum right off his tip. Licking from his balls all the way to the top.
“Fuuuuck— such a damn tease.”
You let your tongue lick across your top teeth as you slowly stroked his cock. His darkened gaze burning down into yours as he took a hit from his joint. Blowing the smoke smoothly up above him.
“You know… I could go slower—“ You bratted right back, his head snapping down to yours with a domineering look glistening in his eyes. “You’re a fucking brat.”
With that his big hand found its way into your hair, wrapping it around into a ponytail as you pulled yourself closer to his dick. “Open.”
Another demand. But you obeyed. God- did you obey. Instantly. Those once siren-like eyes turning to a submissive doe-eyed gaze. Wrapping your swollen lips around his massive length.
“There you go- good fucking girl.”
A satisfied growl emitted, taking another long drag from his drug while you sucked him off. Azriel was definitely having the time of his fucking life right now.
He pushed down on your head, forcing his cock deeper down your throat. Your muscles stretched around it while you gagged, tears pricking your eyes. “Relax your throat, doll— there ya go- fuck. Just like that.”
Fuck. Did this man talk you through it. Mascara smeared under your eyes from the tears. But Azriel fucking loved this sight of you. Loved it.
“Such a pretty mess for me, aren’t we? A greedy little slut suckin’ me off so she can get some more weed.”
Your panties? Fucking soaked. Absolutely drenched. All you were doing was blowing him. Why the fuck did it turn you on so much? His hand kept a tight grip on your locks as his hips started to thrust harder. Faster.
“Keep lookin’ at me like that— Fuck. You’re gonna make me bust-“
Azriel's head hung back for a moment while he drilled down your throat like a damn jackhammer. Before you knew it you felt his warm seed explode down your throat. “Swallow.” He demanded through his groans and heavy breathing.
Once again, you obeyed. Swallowing every last drop of his cum before slowly pulling off his cock. Saliva dripped between your lips as you giggled. “Such a good girl when ya want to be, huh?”
His free hand grabbed you by the throat, gently bringing you into a softer kiss and helping you up. “When I want, yes.” You teased him right back while you sat beside him.
The half-smoked joint was handed to you, taking a long dragged-out puff as he nodded his head. “You good? Need anything?” He asked through his glazed-over gaze. Definitely as high as a kite.
“Just my weed and I’ll be on my way-“
He playfully rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “What? Don’t wanna stay a bit?” Az asked you as you both fell into a soft laughter together. He got your baggie ready. Giving you plenty more than what you asked for.
You just knew you’d be returning to him for weed. For drugs. The banter. The sex. The vibes between you both. It was just… Too damn good.
dealer!az has been taking over my fuckin brainnnn yall 🫠🤤
As always dividers are linked in my main ml— asks and requests open to all of you beauts🤍
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