Just a brazilian girl who loves formula 1, kpop and reading; 02 liner; she/her; Reading and reblogging blog (Sometimes you may see me posting some commentaries)
Barely remembered the bone-rattling impact of his landing.
The only thing she could think about was the girl.
The impossible girl.
The one standing among the surviving first-years as if she'd belonged there all along.
As if Violet hadn't watched her die.
As if Dain hadn't buried her.
As if none of it had happened.
Tairn crouched low enough for Violet to slide from the saddle.
You are unusually distressed.
"No shit," Violet muttered.
Language.
She shot him an incredulous look.
Before she could answer, a familiar voice cut through the chaos of the flight field.
"Violet!"
She turned.
Dain was striding toward her.
Fast.
Confusion etched across his face.
Behind him came Imogen and Bodhi.
Both clearly curious.
Both clearly wondering why Violet Sorrengail had suddenly summoned Dain Aetos after spending months refusing to look at him.
Sawyer and Ridoc were already joining Rhiannon.
Within seconds, the entire group had gathered.
Dain stopped in front of her.
"What is going on?"
His eyes narrowed.
"After ignoring me all this time, you finally call? And why?"
Violet didn't answer.
Instead, she grabbed both sides of his face.
Hard.
"What—"
She physically turned his head toward the courtyard where the surviving first-years were gathering.
"Look."
Dain frowned. Then followed her line of sight. The moment he saw the girl...every bit of color drained from his face.
Silence.
Absolute silence.
His body went rigid.
His eyes widened.
"No."
Violet felt her own stomach drop.
Because she knew that look.
It was the exact same expression she'd worn.
They stared.
The girl laughed at something another cadet said.
Completely unaware.
Or maybe completely aware.
Gods.
Violet didn't know anymore.
Slowly, Dain turned toward her.
Violet looked at him.
And at exactly the same moment they both said,
"It's not possible." "Are you sure?"
The words overlapped perfectly.
For a heartbeat, nobody spoke.
Then,
"Hello?" Ridoc asked.
"Vi?" Sawyer added.
Bodhi looked between them.
Imogen's eyes narrowed.
Nobody answered.
Because neither Violet nor Dain could tear their eyes away.
The girl was moving toward the registration tables now.
One of the scribes was recording the names of the surviving candidates.
The girl reached the front.
The scribe dipped a pen into ink.
"Name?"
The girl glanced up.
For a second, her gaze landed on Violet.
A small smile touched her lips.
Friendly.
Polite.
The kind of smile one rider might give another.
The kind of smile you'd offer a stranger.
Then she nodded respectfully.
As if Violet were simply an upperclassman she'd noticed watching.
No recognition.
No surprise.
Nothing.
Then she turned back to the scribe.
"Y/n."
The pen scratched.
"Y/n Blackthorne."
The world stopped.
Violet heard Dain inhale sharply.
A horrible sound.
As if all the air had been punched from his lungs.
The name echoed inside her skull.
Blackthorne.
Blackthorne.
Blackthorne.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
Dain's knees seemed to weaken.
Violet grabbed his arm before he could stumble.
Because she knew exactly why.
Why that name mattered.
Why he'd gone white.
Why he suddenly looked like he might collapse.
Blackthorne.
His mother's maiden name.
Bodhi blinked.
"What?"
Ridoc frowned.
"Okay, what are we missing?"
Dain wasn't listening.
His eyes remained locked on the girl.
On Y/n.
On the impossible reality standing twenty yards away.
Violet looked at him.
Then back at the girl.
Then back at Dain.
"That," she said weakly, "is fucking impossible."
For once, Dain didn't even bother correcting her language.
The girl finished speaking with the scribe.
Accepted her quadrant patch.
And continued walking.
Completely oblivious to the destruction she'd left behind.
Or pretending to be.
Violet honestly couldn't tell.
She pressed a hand against her stomach.
Gods.
She really might be sick.
Around them, the first-years celebrated surviving.
Dragons roared overhead.
Cadets shouted.
Life continued.
Meanwhile reality had apparently decided to stop making sense.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
The confession slipped out before she could stop it.
Rhiannon immediately moved closer.
Concern replacing confusion.
"Violet—"
Dain suddenly straightened.
Not fully.
Just enough.
His expression had changed.
Fear.
Raw fear.
The kind Violet had never seen on his face before.
He looked at all of them.
At Rhiannon.
Ridoc.
Sawyer.
Imogen.
Bodhi.
His voice came out rough.
"I know some of you don't owe me anything."
Nobody spoke.
"I know some of you probably never will."
His eyes flickered briefly to Violet.
Then away.
"But I'm begging."
The word hit harder than a shout.
Because Dain Aetos didn't beg.
Not for anything.
"Please."
His voice cracked.
"Make sure my father never knows she's here."
Dead silence.
Even Ridoc stopped joking.
Everyone stared.
Dain looked back toward the girl one final time.
Then turned.
And walked away.
Fast.
Almost a retreat.
As if he needed distance before he completely lost control.
Nobody followed him.
For several long seconds, they simply watched him disappear into the crowd.
Finally, Ridoc broke the silence.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Well."
Another pause.
"He looks like he just saw a ghost."
Violet laughed.
A horrible sound.
Half laugh.
Half sob.
Tears stung her eyes.
Because Ridoc didn't know how right he was.
She looked at him.
Then at the rest of her friends.
Their confused faces.
Their concern.
Their complete lack of understanding.
And quietly said,
"We just did."
The words landed like a stone.
Nobody moved.
Nobody spoke.
The confusion on their faces somehow deepened.
Because they all knew one thing.
Ghosts didn't survive the Parapet.
Yet Y/n Blackthorne had.
And somewhere across the flight field, a girl who should have been dead was walking toward the Riders Quadrant as if she'd been born to be there.
Author's note: Given that I still dont have a masterlist..Imma just conect chapters lmao.
Taglist: @river-of-woe
if you want to be added to the taglist, let me know in the comments.
Summary: Violet's world is already shaken and torn...and now she just saw a face from the past that has no reason being in Basgaith. As a matter of fact, she has no reason even being alive. It is an old tragedy, one that had been buried between her family and Dain's, but history has a way of bringing up the past in such vicious ways.
The wind howled over the cliffs surrounding Basgiath, whipping loose strands of hair across Violet's face as she stood at the edge of the viewing platform overlooking the Parapet.
Below them, hundreds of first-years gathered in nervous clusters, their black uniforms stark against the gray stone.
Another Conscription Day.
Another year of watching hopefuls march toward a bridge designed to kill them.
Beside her, Ridoc was in the middle of making an absolutely ridiculous argument.
"I'm just saying," he insisted, gesturing dramatically, "if someone falls off the Parapet because they're distracted by a particularly attractive rider, that's technically murder."
"That's not murder," Rhiannon said for what was probably the fifth time. "That's natural selection."
Ridoc gasped. "That is cruel."
"I'm realistic."
Imogen snorted from where she leaned against the stone railing, arms crossed over her chest. "The fact that you've survived a year here remains one of Basgiath's greatest mysteries."
"I survive because I'm charming."
"You survive because the gods enjoy a good joke."
Violet smiled despite herself, only half-listening as their banter continued.
Her attention remained fixed on the crowd below.
Searching.
Liam's face flashed through her memory.
The way he'd smiled.
The way he'd stood beside her through everything.
The promise she'd made.
Take care of Sloane.
She'd spent months wondering if Sloane Mairi would ever even come to Basgiath.
Part of her had hoped she wouldn't.
The Riders Quadrant had already taken too much from that family.
But if Sloane did come...
Violet intended to find her.
"...and therefore," Ridoc concluded triumphantly, "I should be allowed to challenge anyone who disagrees with me."
"You can't challenge people every time you're wrong."
"Then why did they give us daggers?"
Violet's eyes drifted across the sea of first-years.
A flash of dark hair caught her attention.
She paused.
Blinking.
Then looked again.
The crowd shifted.
For a second, she lost sight of the girl.
Her stomach tightened.
No.
That wasn't possible.
She scanned the crowd frantically.
Searching.
Searching—
And then she found her.
The girl stepped forward from between two larger candidates.
Long dark brown hair.
Almost black.
Tan skin.
Brown eyes.
Straight posture.
Determined expression.
Violet's breath caught.
The world seemed to tilt beneath her.
"No."
The word escaped as barely a whisper. Then the girl's face turned slightly. And Violet saw it.
Saw her.
Not someone who looked similar.
Not a resemblance.
Her.
Violet gasped.
Beside her, the conversation instantly stopped.
Ridoc turned first.
"What?"
Violet's eyes burned.
Her pulse thundered.
"It can't be..."
Rhiannon immediately stepped closer.
"Violet?"
Imogen's expression sharpened.
"What happened?"
Violet tore her gaze from the crowd.
"Someone get Dain."
All three of them stared.
"...What?" Ridoc asked.
"Dain."
Violet pointed toward Basgiath.
"Get Dain. Now."
Nobody moved.
The request was so unexpected that they simply looked at her. After everything that had happened the previous year.
After Dain's betrayal.
After the memories he'd stolen.
After Athebyne.
Violet asking for Dain was the last thing any of them expected.
Ridoc blinked.
"I thought we were mad at Dain."
"We are."
"Then why—"
"Get him!" Violet snapped.
The urgency in her voice cut through any argument.
Imogen straightened immediately.
Something in Violet's face clearly alarmed her.
"I'll go."
Without another word, she turned and sprinted toward where the dragons waited.
Ridoc exchanged a glance with Rhiannon.
Then his joking demeanor vanished.
"Yeah, okay. That's terrifying."
He took off running after Imogen.
Within moments both riders were racing across the flight field.
Violet watched as orange scales flashed in the distance.
Saw Imogen mounting Glane.
Saw Ridoc scrambling onto Aotrom.
Then both dragons launched into the sky.
Wings thundered.
Gone.
Heading for Basgiath.
Heading for Dain.
Rhiannon remained beside her.
As always.
Solid.
Steady.
Concerned.
"Violet."
She waited until Violet looked at her.
"What is going on?"
Violet couldn't answer.
Not yet.
Because she was looking down again.
The girl had moved closer to the front of the candidates.
And now there was no mistaking her.
The shape of her face.
The eyes.
The smile she'd just flashed at another candidate.
Every detail.
Every impossible detail.
Violet's blood turned to ice.
"No..."
Rhiannon followed her gaze.
"Who is she?"
The question hung between them.
Below, the soon to be first-years continued lining up.
An officer barked instructions.
The crowd shifted forward.
Closer to the stairs leading to the Parapet.
Closer to danger.
Closer to the place where everything could go horribly wrong.
Violet's hands shook.
Because if she was right...
If she was seeing what she thought she was seeing...
Then none of this made sense.
It couldn't make sense.
The dead didn't simply appear at Conscription Day.
Rhiannon grabbed her arm.
"Violet."
More firmly this time.
"Who is she?"
Violet swallowed.
Her mouth had gone completely dry.
Far below, the girl stepped onto the first stair leading toward the Parapet.
Violet's heart nearly stopped.
"Gods..."
Rhiannon's grip tightened.
"Tell me."
Violet finally looked at her.
Her face pale.
Eyes wide.
Terrified.
And for the first time since Rhiannon had met her, Violet Sorrengail looked genuinely shaken.
Not by battles.
Not by dragons.
By a girl.
A girl who should not exist.
"Years ago," Violet whispered, "I watched her die."
Rhiannon froze.
The wind roared around them.
Below, the candidates continued climbing.
Unaware.
Violet looked back toward the dark-haired girl.
Toward the impossible face she'd seen in nightmares.
The face Dain would recognize instantly.
The face that belonged to someone who had been buried.
Someone whose death had shattered a family.
Someone who absolutely, unquestionably, should have been dead.
"That's why I need Dain."
The girl reached the top of the stairs.
Stepped into line.
And slowly lifted her eyes toward the Riders Quadrant.
Toward Violet.
Their gazes met.
The girl's expression didn't falter. Not even for a second. As if she only saw an upperclassman.
As if she didn't know exactly who she was.
And then,
She smiled.
A small.
Unknowing.
Impossible smile.
Violet's stomach dropped.
Because dead girls weren't supposed to smile back.
Author's note: This fic idea quite literally came to me watching tik tok and seeing a Twilight edit with the song Decode by Paramore and I said, "what if i made a fic that had that eerie feeling of Twilingt? Like not with vampires and stuff, just the eerie of that first movie". So here I am, listening to Paramore and writing, lmao.
To be added to the taglist, leave a comment or repost to let me know
Synopsis: When Dean experiences a loss that he will never understand he finds solace in the one person who can understand what he is going through, you.
Warnings: SPOILERS FOR THE SCORE. DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS. grief. so much pain. death of a relative. found family.
Author's note: this will be a few parts long probably. This one hurt a lot to write, if you are struggling with grief my dms are always open.
PROLOGUE
The first thing you learned about moving across the country was that it involved far more stuff than any human being should reasonably own. Your bedroom looked like a tornado had touched down in it.
Clothes covered every available surface. Half-packed cardboard boxes sat against the walls. The navy Briar University hoodie you'd convinced yourself was worth forty dollars hung from the back of your desk chair. Somewhere beneath the chaos, your floor still existed, probably. You sat cross-legged in the middle of the mess, staring at an open suitcase and then promptly threw another shirt into the pile beside it.
"I swear to God," a familiar voice said from your bed, "if you don't actually start packing, you're gonna show up in Massachusetts with three pairs of underwear and a dream." You looked up. Sienna was sprawled across your comforter, completely ignoring the fact that she'd supposedly come over to help. One arm dangled over the side of the mattress while she scrolled through her phone. Her sunglasses were pushed into her sun-bleached hair and there was still sand on her legs from wherever she'd been before this.
“You are literally the reason I'm not packing.
Her grin widened. “False.”
“It is not false.”
“It is.”
“You have been here for an hour.”
“Mhm.”
“And all you've done is distract me.”
“Mhm.”
“And eat my snacks.”
That finally earned a laugh a bright, effortless sound that filled the room. “There were crackers available” she said.
“You ate an entire box.”
“They were really good crackers.” You threw a rolled-up sock at her, Sienna caught it without looking. Show-off.
She tossed it back. “You know” she said casually, “most people would be excited about moving to college.”
“I am excited.”
“You've reorganized the same suitcase four times.”
“I like being organized.”
“You are spiralling.”
You groaned and dropped backward onto the carpet, the ceiling fan spun lazily overhead. Florida sunlight poured through your bedroom window, turning everything warm and gold. In less than two weeks, you'd be leaving, the thought still felt unreal. You'd spent years dreaming about Briar. Filling out applications. Writing essays. Checking acceptance rates. Imagining what it would be like to leave Florida and start somewhere completely new. Now it was actually happening. Which, unfortunately, was terrifying. “What if I hate it?” you asked quietly.
Sienna snorted. You didn't even have to look at her to know she'd rolled her eyes. “You're not gonna hate it.”
“What if everyone hates me?”
“There it is.”
“There what is?”
“The ridiculous thing you've been worried about all summer.”
You sat up enough to glare at her. She grinned. “Nobody is gonna hate you.”
“You don't know that.”
“I do.”
“You literally can't.”
Sienna sat upright, for a second, her expression softened. It always did when she looked at you like that like she could somehow see every thought bouncing around inside your head. “You know what your problem is?” she asked.
“I have several.”
“You think everybody sees you the way you see yourself.”
You frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means you're too busy noticing every little thing that's wrong with you to realize everyone else is too busy worrying about themselves.”
You considered that, then immediately shook your head. “Nope.”
She laughed. “Fine. Ignore my wisdom.”
“I will.”
“Rude.”
“You're twenty-two. Stop acting like some ancient philosopher.”
“First of all, twenty-two is mature.”
“It's old.” Sienna gasped dramatically.
“Oh my God.”
“It's basically retirement age.”
“Oh, you're dead to me.”
You couldn't help laughing, she launched a pillow at your face. You barely managed to catch it before it hit you. The two of you dissolved into another round of bickering, neither making any actual effort to win the argument. It had always been like this, ever since you were little Sienna was only three years older, but somehow she'd spent your entire life looking after you. Teaching you how to ride a bike, helping you study, picking you up after bad days, standing up for you when nobody else would. She was your sister. Your best friend. Your favourite person. The idea of living over a thousand miles away from her felt impossible.
Even if you knew it was time.
Sienna stretched before hopping off the bed. “Okay.”
You eyed her suspiciously. “Okay what?”
“Okay, I'm leaving.”
You blinked. “You're voluntarily leaving?”
“I know. Crazy.” She grabbed her sunglasses from the comforter. “Me and the girls are taking the boat out.”
“The boat.”
“The boat.”
“You said you were helping me.”
“I did help.”
You looked around the disaster zone, nothing appeared noticeably different. “Sienna.”
“You've made emotional progress.”
“I hate you.”
She laughed again, then crossed the room and wrapped her arms around your shoulders before you could protest. You immediately hugged her back because of course you did. “You're gonna do amazing up there, you know” she said. The words were muffled against your hair.
Your throat tightened unexpectedly. “You don't know that.”
“I do.”
“Sienna”
“I mean it.”
You pulled back enough to look at her, she smiled. Not teasing this time, not joking. Just completely certain. The way she'd always been when it came to you. “You're gonna make friends” she said. “You're gonna love it. You're gonna get some fancy degree and become wildly successful and forget all about me.”
You rolled your eyes. “That last part definitely isn't happening.”
“We'll see.”
“We won't.”
Her smile widened. For a moment, everything felt normal, safe, certain. Like there would always be more afternoons like this. More summers. More conversations. More time.
“Text me later?” you asked.
“Obviously.”
“And don't drop your phone in the ocean this time.”
“That happened once.”
“It happened three times.”
“Allegedly.”
You laughed despite yourself. Sienna headed for the door. Halfway through, she turned back. “Love you.” The words were automatic, familiar. The kind of thing she'd said a thousand times before. The kind of thing you'd hear a thousand more, at least, that's what you thought.
“Love you too.”
She flashed you one final grin, then she was gone. The front door slammed downstairs a few seconds later and you turned back toward the half-packed suitcase waiting in the middle of your room.
Completely unaware that your entire life had just changed.
∘•···············•∘ʚ ♡ ɞ∘•················•∘
For a while after Sienna left, you just stood in the middle of your room listening to the quiet, it wasn't actually quiet. The ceiling fan hummed overhead, music drifted from somewhere downstairs, a lawn mower buzzed in the distance. But compared to five minutes ago, it felt strange, empty. You shook the feeling off immediately.
Your sister had a talent for filling every room she entered. Of course things felt quieter when she wasn't in them. You glanced toward the open doorway. Half expecting her to reappear because she'd forgotten something, again. Instead, nothing happened.
The house settled around you, life continued, normal. You dropped back onto the floor beside your suitcase. “Okay” you muttered. “Actual packing.” The suitcase remained unimpressed.
Twenty minutes later, you'd somehow accomplished less than before. You folded three shirts, unfolded two, checked your phone, looked up restaurants near Briar, checked your phone again. Then groaned and flopped dramatically onto your stomach. This was impossible. Maybe you simply weren't meant for adulthood. The thought made you laugh.
You reached for your phone and opened your messages. The conversation with Sienna sat pinned at the top, as always. You sent her a photo of the disaster zone currently masquerading as your bedroom.
You: Help.
Three dots appeared almost immediately. You smiled.
Sienna: absolutely not
Sienna: this is your own fault
You: you were supposed to help me
Sienna: i DID help
You: by eating my food?
Sienna: morale support is important
A second message followed.
Sienna: also look how pretty
A picture appeared, blue water stretched endlessly beneath a cloudless sky. The ocean glittered beneath the afternoon sun several familiar faces crowded into the frame behind her. Sunglasses, swimsuits, bright smiles. Sienna herself was front and center, sticking her tongue out at the camera. You rolled your eyes affectionately.
You: show off
Sienna: jealous?
You: maybe
Sienna: should've skipped packing and come with us
You: mom would've killed me
Sienna: worth it
You laughed softly. Then liked the photo, a few seconds later another message appeared.
Sienna: don't stress so much
You stared at the screen because somehow she'd always known. Even through text. Even from miles away. She always knew when you were spiralling.
You: trying not to
Sienna: you'll be okay
The reply came so easily, so casually. Like a hundred conversations before it.
You: i know
You didn't realize then that it would be the last real conversation you'd ever have with her, the thought didn't even cross your mind.
Why would it?
Sienna was twenty-two years old, healthy, happy. Annoyingly invincible.
The worst thing that could happen on a boat trip was sunburn. You tossed your phone onto the bed and returned to packing.
The afternoon slipped by slowly, your mother called you downstairs for dinner. Your father complained about college tuition. You argued over who got the last dinner roll, normal. Everything was normal. Afterward, you carried another box upstairs. Folded more clothes. Labeled things you'd probably have to relabel later, the sun began to sink lower outside your window. Painting the sky shades of orange and pink.
You checked your phone again.
No new messages. Not surprising. Sienna was probably still out on the water or at dinner or losing her phone somewhere. Again.
You smiled to yourself, then plugged your charger into the wall. Completely certain there would be another text waiting when you woke up tomorrow. Completely certain there would be more conversations. More summers. More time. Outside, the Florida sky darkened and somewhere beyond the coastline, unseen by anyone in this house, a storm was beginning to form.
∘•···············•∘ʚ ♡ ɞ∘•················•∘
By nine o'clock, you'd given up on being productive. The suitcase was still open. Your room was still a disaster and despite spending the entire afternoon supposedly packing, you were fairly certain you'd somehow managed to make things worse. You sat cross-legged on your bed, laptop balanced on your knees. Some random reality show played quietly in the background while you scrolled through housing information for what felt like the hundredth time.Your phone sat beside you.
Silent. You glanced at it, nothing. Not unusual. Sienna had never been particularly attached to her phone. If anything, she was notorious for forgetting it existed.
You picked it up and checked your messages. No new texts, you considered sending another one. Then decided against it. If she was still out with her friends, she'd probably make fun of you for being clingy. The thought made you smile, a moment later your phone rang. You immediately reached for it, expecting Sienna, expecting some blurry video of her screaming over music, expecting a drunk FaceTime request.
Instead, an unfamiliar number filled the screen.
You frowned, for a second you considered ignoring it. Then answered anyway.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end was crying, not quietly, not trying to hide it. Full-blown sobbing. Your stomach dropped instantly.
“Hello?”
For a moment all you could hear was breathing, panic. Noise in the background. People talking. Someone shouting. “Is this” The girl choked on the words. “Is this Y/N?”
You sat up straighter. “Yeah.” Another sob
Your grip tightened on the phone, something cold slid through your chest. “Who is this?”
“It's, it's Olivia.”
The name was vaguely familiar, one of Sienna's friends. You'd met her a few times. Beach parties, birthdays, things like that. “What happened?” The question left your mouth before you could stop it because something had happened.
The silence that followed was enough confirmation, your heartbeat doubled. “Olivia?”
“There was an accident.” Everything inside you went still.
“What?”
“There was an accident.” The words came out rushed, broken. “We were out on the boat and” She started crying again.
You couldn't breathe properly, your entire body felt suddenly wrong like somebody had reached into your chest and squeezed.
“What accident?” you asked. “What happened?”
The questions came too fast, one after another. Olivia tried to answer. “The storm”
“What storm?”
“It came out of nowhere.”
“What happened?”
“The boat flipped.”
Your heart stopped. “What?”
“The boat-“ A sharp inhale, another sob. “The boat capsized.”
You were already standing, you didn't remember getting off the bed. One second you were sitting, the next you were pacing. “No.” The word slipped out automatically.
No.
No.
No.
People survived boat accidents, people survived storms, people survived things all the time. “Sienna”" you asked. “Where's Sienna?” A horrible pause followed, not long. Barely a second but long enough. Way too long. Your stomach twisted violently. “Olivia.”
The girl was crying so hard you could barely understand her. “They took everyone to the hospital.”
Hospital was good.
Hospital meant alive.
Hospital meant doctors.
Hospital meant help.
You grabbed onto those words immediately, clung to them. “Okay.”
Your voice sounded strange. Distant. “Okay. Sienna's there?” Another silence. “Olivia, is Sienna there?”
“I don't know.”
The room tilted. “What do you mean you don't know?”
“They were still looking.”
The words didn't make sense, you stared at the wall. Still looking. Looking for what? For who? Your brain refused to connect the dots, refused. “They found her, right?” Nothing. “Olivia.” Nothing. “Olivia.”
“I don't know.” The words shattered. Broken, terrified, real. Something crashed downstairs, a chair maybe, a door. You weren't sure. All you could hear was blood rushing through your ears.
“Which hospital?” Your voice came out steadier than you felt. “Which hospital?” She gave you the name but you barely registered it. Already moving, already grabbing your keys from the desk, already heading for the door. “I'm coming.”
“Y/N”
“I'm coming.” You ended the call.
The silence afterward was deafening, for one impossible second you simply stood there. Phone still clutched in your hand, heart hammering, trying to understand what had just happened, trying to make it make sense. It didn't because this was Sienna, your sister. The strongest person you knew, the girl who never got hurt, the girl who never lost, the girl who always came home.
A sharp laugh escaped you, almost hysterical because everyone was acting like this was some huge emergency but it wasn't.
It couldn't be. Sienna was fine, she had to be. Maybe she'd broken her arm, maybe she had a concussion, maybe she was unconscious, maybe she was sitting in a hospital bed right now wondering why everyone was making such a big deal out of this.
Your bedroom door flew open. Your mother appeared. One look at your face and hers immediately changed. “What's wrong?”
You opened your mouth. Nothing came out so you tried again. “There was an accident.” The words felt foreign, wrong.
Your mother's expression drained of colour. “What?”
You swallowed hard. “The boat.”
Your voice cracked. “The boat flipped.”
For a moment neither of you moved, neither of you breathed.
Then your mother whispered, “Sienna?”
And suddenly everything started moving at once, fast, too fast. Your father shouting downstairs, car keys, shoes, questions, panic. The entire house erupting around you but through it all, one thought repeated itself over and over.
Like a prayer, like a promise, like something that would become true if you believed it hard enough.
She's okay.
She's okay.
She's okay.
She's okay. She has to be.
The drive to the hospital should have taken twenty-five minutes. You made it in seventeen, not because the roads were empty, not because traffic was light because your father drove like a man trying to outrun reality. Streetlights blurred past the windows, red lights became suggestions.
Your mother sat in the passenger seat gripping the handle above the door so tightly her knuckles had turned white. Nobody told him to slow down, nobody even mentioned it. You sat in the back seat staring at your phone. Waiting. For a text. A call, anything. Every few seconds, you unlocked the screen, checked for notifications, locked it again. Then repeated the process, nothing.
Your messages to Sienna remained unanswered. The photo she'd sent earlier was still sitting in your conversation, the ocean, the sunlight. Her stupid grin, you stared at it, zoomed in. As if somehow there'd be a clue hidden in the image, something that would explain all of this, something that would tell you she was okay. She looked fine, happy, alive. The idea that anything could have happened between then and now felt impossible.
Your father's phone rang, the sound made everyone jump. He answered immediately. “Hello?” Silence. Then, “No.”, a pause “No, we're on our way.” Another pause. His jaw tightened. “Nobody knows anything?” Your stomach dropped. Nobody knows anything, the words echoed in your head. You hated them because if nobody knew anything, then nobody knew she was okay. Your father hung up.
Your mother twisted in her seat. “Who was that?”
“Coast Guard.” The answer came clipped, sharp like speaking hurt.
“What did they say?”
“They don't know anything yet.”
Your mother let out a shaky breath. You looked back down at your phone, didn't say a word because you were already building explanations. Good explanations, reasonable explanations. Maybe Sienna had been separated from the others, maybe her phone was dead, maybe she'd already been rescued but hadn't been identified yet, maybe she was in another ambulance, maybe she was unconscious.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
You clung to every possibility, even the ridiculous ones, especially the ridiculous ones.
Outside the window, rain had started to fall. Not heavy. Just enough to blur the streetlights. You watched droplets race down the glass. Your chest felt tight, too tight.
You suddenly remembered something, a memory from years ago. You and Sienna at the beach, you couldn't have been older than ten. A wave had knocked you over, you'd swallowed water, panicked immediately, started crying. Sienna had pulled you back to shore and laughed so hard she nearly fell over herself. Then she'd spent the next hour teaching you how to float. “You're impossible to drown” she'd told you. You'd believed her because if Sienna said something, it was true.
The memory disappeared as quickly as it had come. Your throat burned and you swallowed hard, she's okay, the thought came automatically, she's okay.
The hospital appeared ahead, bright lights cutting through the darkness. Your father pulled into the parking lot far too fast. The car barely stopped before your mother was opening the door, you followed immediately. Cold air hit your face, rain dampened your hair, everything suddenly felt too loud. Sirens, voices, footsteps.
You hurried after your parents toward the emergency entrance, people crowded the waiting area. Doctors, nurses, families, police officers.
The fluorescent lights overhead seemed impossibly bright.
A woman behind the reception desk looked up. “Can I help you?”
“My daughter.” Your mother's voice broke instantly. “Sienna Carter.”
The woman typed something into a computer, your heart hammered, you watched her face. Searching for a reaction. Any reaction, a smile, a nod, something reassuring. Instead, her expression shifted into something carefully neutral. Professional.
The kind of expression people wore when they were trying not to say too much. “We have family gathering in the waiting room down the hall.”
Your father frowned. “Can we see her?”
The receptionist glanced toward someone standing behind her, a nurse. The nurse approached immediately, too quickly, your stomach twisted. “We'll have someone speak with you shortly.”
You stared at her. “What room is she in?”
The nurse hesitated, just for a second but you noticed, you noticed everything. “What room?” you repeated.
“We'll update you as soon as we can.”
Your mother was already crying again, your father looked like he might punch a wall and you just felt annoyed, frustrated. Because nobody would answer a simple question. What room was she in? Why wouldn't anyone tell you? If she was alive, then she was somewhere in this building, maybe injured, maybe unconscious. But here, safe, being treated. So why was everyone acting so strange?
The nurse guided your family toward a private waiting room. The door opened. You stepped inside and immediately saw half a dozen familiar faces, Sienna's friends. Some still wrapped in hospital blankets. One girl had a bandage around her forehead, another was crying into someone's shoulder. The moment they saw your family, the room fell silent, nobody spoke, nobody moved. They just looked at you and for the first time all night, genuine fear crawled up your spine because they looked heartbroken.
Not worried. Not scared. Heartbroken. Like they already knew something you didn't, something they weren't saying. Something you refused to believe.
Not Sienna.
Never Sienna. She was coming home. She had to be.
Your mother sat beside you, clutching a crumpled tissue in both hands. Your father stood near the wall, arms crossed, jaw clenched. Pacing every few minutes before forcing himself still again. Nobody spoke. Not at first, the room seemed suspended in time. Everyone waiting. For what, you weren't entirely sure.
You looked around. Recognized most of the people there. Olivia. Mason. Jake. Friends who'd spent summers on boats and beaches and around bonfires with your sister, they all looked terrible, exhausted, shaken.
One girl had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders despite the Florida heat outside, her eyes were red from crying. You hated looking at her because every time you did, your stomach twisted harder.
Finally, after nearly ten minutes of silence, you couldn't take it anymore. You stood. Immediately several heads turned toward you. “Where is she?”
Nobody answered, your heart started pounding. You looked at Olivia. “Where's Sienna?”
Olivia's face crumpled instantly. “No.”
You shook your head. “No.” Because that wasn't an answer and you didn't want whatever answer she was about to give. “She's here, right?” Silence. “She's in surgery?” Still silence, your chest tightened. “What happened?” The question came out sharper than intended, more desperate. “What happened?”
Olivia wiped furiously at her eyes. “The storm came in really fast.” You stared at her. “The forecast said it wasn't supposed to hit until later.” Nobody spoke. “The water got rough.” Her voice shook. “We turned back.” Your pulse thundered in your ears. “We were almost there.”
Almost, the word lodged somewhere deep inside your chest, almost.
“The boat flipped.” You already knew that part, you wanted the rest, the part nobody would tell you. “The Coast Guard got there.” Olivia swallowed hard. “They pulled everyone out.”
Everyone, good, everyone.
Your heart latched onto the word immediately, everyone. See? Everything was fine everyone.
Then why was she crying? Why did everyone keep looking at you like that? “Then where's Sienna?”
The room fell silent again, the same horrible silence, the one you'd started to fear. Olivia looked away and suddenly your stomach dropped. Not because of what she said but because of what she didn't.
“No.” The word escaped before you could stop it. “No.”
Your mother began crying again, quietly this time. Like she'd been crying for hours, maybe she had. You weren't sure anymore. You looked toward your father, waiting for him to say something, anything. To tell everyone they were being ridiculous, that nobody knew anything, that Sienna was fine. Instead he stared at the floor and somehow that terrified you more than anything else.
Because your father always had answers, always.
When you were little and scared of thunderstorms.
When your car broke down.
When life fell apart, your father fixed things. Except now he looked completely helpless.
The door opened and every person in the room turned, a doctor stepped inside. Middle-aged, tired, still wearing scrubs. The room immediately stood, your mother, your father, everyone.
You followed a second later your heart pounded so hard it hurt, this was it. Finally someone who knew something someone who could explain. The doctor looked around the room, his eyes landed on your parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Carter?”
Your mother's hand flew to her mouth. “Yes.”
The doctor nodded once, then glanced at you. “Are you immediate family as well?”
You frowned, the question felt strange, formal, official. Like something from a movie. “I'm her sister.”
His expression changed almost imperceptibly. But enough, enough that your pulse stumbled, enough that dread suddenly curled inside your stomach. The doctor took a breath, a single breath. And the entire room seemed to hold its own. You watched his face, waiting, waiting for the words, stable, recovering, concussion, hypothermia anything. Any of those. Please.
The doctor looked directly at your parents. Then said “We did everything we could.”
The world stopped, not dramatically, not loudly, quietly. Like somebody had reached inside your chest and pulled the plug.
The words didn't make sense, they couldn't because people only said things like that when—
No.
No.
No.
The doctor kept talking, something about rescue efforts, something about resuscitation, something about the amount of time she'd spent underwater but the room had suddenly become underwater too. Every word distorted, distant, muffled.
You couldn't hear properly, couldn't think properly, couldn't breathe properly.
Your mother's knees gave out someone caught her. People moved voices rose around you. The doctor was still talking, still explaining, still apologizing.
“I'm sorry.” The sentence cut through everything, clean, sharp, impossible. “I'm so sorry.”
Your sister was dead, the thought appeared suddenly. Fully formed, your sister was dead, you stared at the doctor. Waiting for him to correct himself, waiting for somebody to laugh and explain the misunderstanding, waiting for reality to reassemble itself into something recognizable.
It didn't, nobody corrected him, nobody laughed, nobody said anything. Because there wasn't a mistake there wasn't another patient there wasn't another family there wasn't another Sienna.
It was yours.
Your sister.
Your best friend.
Gone.
“No.” The word barely came out, your throat burned. “No.”
The doctor looked at you with heartbreaking sympathy and somehow that made everything worse. Because people only looked at you like that when something terrible had happened. “No.” You shook your head, hard, faster. Like if you did it enough, reality would change. “No.” Your voice cracked. “You're wrong.” The room blurred, tears finally gathering, not falling just gathering. Everything inside you desperately rejecting what you'd heard. “You're wrong.”
Because she couldn't be dead. She'd texted you three hours ago. She'd sent you a picture. She'd told you not to stress. She'd said she loved you. People who said they loved you didn't just disappear. Not three hours later, not forever, not Sienna, never Sienna.
But nobody argued nobody corrected you nobody told you she was okay and somewhere deep down, beneath all the denial and shock and panic, you understood why. Because she wasn't.
You didn't remember how long you'd been sitting there, minutes, hours. It all felt the same. The waiting room had become a blur of crying and voices and hands on your shoulders. People kept speaking to you. You weren't listening you couldn't. Because every time you closed your eyes, you heard the doctor's voice.
We did everything we could.
You hated that sentence, hated the sympathy, hated the way everyone looked at you. Most of all, you hated that nobody had corrected him nobody had said there'd been a mistake.
A nurse appeared beside your chair, you barely noticed her at first. “Miss Carter?”
You stared at the floor, she crouched slightly. Gentle, careful like you might shatter if she spoke too loudly. “Your parents are with another doctor right now.”
You nodded without really understanding, the nurse hesitated. Then quietly asked, “Would you like to see your sister?”
The room disappeared, you looked up. “What?” The word came out hoarse.
“Would you like to see her?”
No. The answer should have been no because seeing her meant this was real. Seeing her meant there wasn't a mistake, seeing her meant accepting the impossible. Instead, you found yourself standing. The nurse nodded softly and led you out of the room.
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The walk felt endless. Hallways stretched forever beneath fluorescent lights, your shoes squeaked against polished floors. Everything smelled like antiseptic, everything looked too bright, too clean, too normal.
How could the world still be normal?
How could nurses be laughing at the station?
How could people be drinking coffee?
How could everything continue when Sienna, your throat closed. The nurse stopped outside a door. “You can take as much time as you need.”
You stared at it, the wooden door, the silver handle, the small rectangular window. A completely ordinary door, except your entire life existed on one side of it and whatever came after existed on the other.
The nurse quietly stepped away, leaving you alone. For several seconds you couldn't move.
Your hand hovered over the handle, shaking. You told yourself she wouldn't look like herself, people always said that.
You'd heard it in movies, at funerals, people never looked like themselves. So maybe this wouldn't hurt as much.
Your fingers closed around the handle and you pushed the door open and immediately knew every one of those thoughts had been a lie. Because it was Sienna, it was unmistakably her. The same blonde hair, the same freckles scattered across her nose, the same face you'd seen thousands of times. The face that had smiled at you that afternoon, the face that had laughed at your terrible packing skills, the face that had said love you. Only now it was still. Completely still. You stopped breathing and for a second you genuinely thought your heart had stopped, this wasn't possible.
She was supposed to move, she was supposed to grin and tell you everyone was being dramatic. She was supposed to sit up, say something, anything.
Instead the room remained silent, the reality of it hit harder than anything the doctor had said because doctors could be wrong. Words could be wrong but this wasn't.
You took a step forward, then another. Your vision blurred. Tears finally spilling over. “Sienna.” The whisper barely left your lips, no response. Of course there wasn't but part of you had expected one anyway. You reached the bedside, your hand shook as you reached for hers. The second your fingers touched her skin, something inside you cracked.
Cold, she was cold. Not freezing, not icy just wrong. Wrong in a way you couldn't explain.
Your sister had always been warm. Sun-warmed skin, beach days, summer nights, hugs that felt like home. She wasn't supposed to be cold. A sob tore from your chest.
The first real one, the kind that hurt, the kind that made breathing impossible. You bent forward, gripping her hand tighter.
“No.”
The word dissolved into tears.
“No, no, no.”
Because if you kept saying it enough times maybe reality would change. Maybe she'd wake up, maybe she'd laugh, maybe she'd tell you to stop crying. But she didn't.
She just lay there, silent, gone.
You don't know how long you stood there. Minutes. Maybe longer. At some point your eyes fell to her neck and that's when you saw it. The necklace, a simple white shell hanging from a worn silver chain.
Your stomach dropped, the necklace. The one she'd worn almost every day since she was sixteen, the one she'd bought from a tiny beach shop and declared her lucky charm. You couldn't count how many times you'd seen it. How many photos it appeared in. How many times she'd absentmindedly played with it while talking. The sight of it nearly broke you all over again because it was so normal so ordinary.
Like she'd put it on that morning expecting to wear it tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that.
Your hand lifted slowly, fingers brushing the shell. Fresh tears spilled down your cheeks a nurse quietly entered behind you. You hadn't heard her come in, she stopped near the door. Giving you space you looked back at the necklace. Then at the nurse, your voice barely worked. “Can I...” The words caught and you swallowed. “Can I keep it?”
The nurse's expression softened immediately. “Of course.”
Your chest tightened.
She stepped closer, carefully unclasping the chain. For a second the necklace rested in her palm, then she placed it into yours. The shell felt impossibly small warm from your hand within seconds. You closed your fingers around it immediately like you were afraid someone might take it away like it was all you had left, maybe it was. You stared at the necklace then at your sister. And for the first time that night, a horrible realization settled inside you, this was the last thing she would ever give you.
No more phone calls. No more beach trips. No more teasing. No more advice. No more love you, just this.
A shell necklace. And a lifetime of memories. Your knees nearly gave out. You clutched the necklace against your chest, tears falling freely now and finally allowed yourself to understand the truth.
Sienna wasn't coming home, she wasn't waiting somewhere, she wasn't lost, she wasn't hurt, she was gone.
and nothing in the world would ever be the same again.
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THREE YEARS LATER
The first thing you noticed about Massachusetts was that autumn looked nothing like Florida. Three years later, it still surprised you.
The leaves had started changing weeks ago, painting the Briar campus in shades of gold and amber and deep crimson. Students hurried across pathways lined with trees that looked like they'd been stolen from postcards. The air carried a crisp bite that would have seemed impossible back home, where October still meant eighty-degree weather and beach days.
You pulled your jacket tighter as you crossed the quad, a group of freshmen hurried past. Someone nearly walked into a lamppost while staring at their phone. Two girls sat beneath a tree drinking coffee and laughing loudly enough for half the campus to hear, normal. Everything felt normal, that was the strange thing about grief. The world never stopped not for funerals, not for anniversaries, not for broken hearts.
The sun just kept rising, people kept laughing, life kept moving. Even when yours felt permanently split into before and after.
Your phone buzzed in your pocket, instinct immediately had your hand reaching for it.
The motion happened before you even thought about it.
You glanced at the screen. A message from Grace. Not Sienna, never Sienna. Your stomach tightened for half a second before the familiar disappointment faded. You hated that it still happened, the tiny flicker of hope.
The stupid impossible expectation that somehow there'd be a text waiting for you. A voicemail. A missed call, something.
Your therapist back in freshman year had called it muscle memory, you'd called it bullshit because muscle memory wasn't supposed to last four years.
You opened the message.
Grace: Lunch tomorrow? Please save me from writing this paper before I throw my laptop into the ocean.
A laugh escaped before you could stop it, you typed back immediately.
You: That's a dramatic response to one paper.
The reply appeared almost instantly.
Grace: You clearly haven't read it.
You smiled, then slipped your phone back into your pocket. As you did, your fingers brushed the necklace around your neck the shell rested against your skin beneath your sweater, small. Worn smooth by years of use, the chain had broken twice since you'd gotten it, you'd repaired it both times. The clasp wasn't even original anymore nothing about it should have survived this long. But it had. Just not the girl who'd worn it first.
The thought arrived quietly, the same way it always did. Not enough to ruin your day. Just enough to linger. You adjusted the necklace beneath your sweater and kept walking, students flowed around you. A professor rushed past carrying far too many books, someone called out a greeting. You waved automatically.
The education building appeared ahead, your first class didn't start for another ten minutes. Plenty of time. The realization should have relaxed you. Instead, your eyes drifted toward the clock tower. October, already. The month settled heavily in your chest.
Not because of classes, not because graduation was getting closer because October meant November was next and November meant- You cut the thought off immediately. No, not today. You'd spent years learning how to do that. Push it away. Put it somewhere else. Deal with it later, maybe.
Your therapist had probably hated that strategy. But it worked. Most of the time.
You climbed the steps toward the building entrance, the shell necklace shifted against your skin as you moved. A familiar weight. One you'd carried every single day since you were eighteen. Some mornings you forgot it was there, some mornings it felt impossibly heavy. Today sat somewhere in the middle. Inside, students crowded the hallway you slipped through them easily. You had settled into a routine by now, classes, placement hours, assignments, coffee, repeat. Normal. Comfortable. Safe.
The life you'd built for yourself. A life you'd built almost entirely on your own. Your parents hadn't visited Briar in nearly two years, the thought surfaced unexpectedly. You shoved it away just as quickly. There was no point dwelling on it not before eight-thirty in the morning.
Not ever, if you could help it.
A classroom door opened nearby, students poured out. You stepped aside to let them pass and one girl accidentally knocked into your shoulder. “Oh my God, sorry.”
“No worries.”
She smiled gratefully before hurrying away, the interaction lasted less than three seconds. By tomorrow neither of you would remember it. But as you watched her disappear into the crowd, a strange thought crossed your mind. Sienna would have remembered, not the girl. The moment. She remembered everything, every embarrassing story, every random conversation, every tiny detail people forgot about themselves.
You could still hear her voice sometimes. Not literally. Just memory. Sharp enough to feel real. Your chest tightened, then loosened again because that happened too. The ache came, the ache left. Like a tide, the years hadn't made it disappear, they'd just taught you how to live beside it.
“Y/N?”, You turned. One of your professors stood a few feet away, smiling. “Ready for placement this afternoon?”
The question immediately pulled you back into the present. Back into your life. The one that existed here, now. You smiled, a real one this time. “Absolutely.” And for the next few hours, you let yourself believe it, that everything was fine, that grief was something manageable, that the worst day of your life belonged firmly in the past.
You had no way of knowing that by the end of the week, another tragedy would shake Briar or that it would bring a certain hockey player crashing into your life or that for the first time in four years, you'd meet someone who understood exactly what it meant to lose a person you couldn't imagine living without.
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The best part of your week wasn't any of your classes. It wasn't hanging out with friends It wasn't even the fact that your mountain of assignments was finally starting to look manageable, it was Thursdays because Thursdays meant placement.
The elementary school sat twenty minutes from campus, tucked into a quiet neighbourhood lined with trees and small family homes. By the time you arrived that afternoon, the parking lot was already packed with parents and teachers. You climbed out of your car and immediately heard your name.
“Miss Y/N!” A blur of pink sneakers launched itself across the playground and you barely had time to brace yourself before eight year old Sophie wrapped herself around your waist.
You laughed. “Hi, Sophie.”
“You were gone forever.”
“I was here last week.”
“Forever.”
You nodded seriously. “My mistake.”
“Exactly.” Sophie's expression suggested she'd won the argument.
Behind her, several other children had already spotted you, within seconds you were surrounded. Questions immediately started flying. “Can you help me with my reading today?”
“I got an A on my spelling test.”
“Look at my new backpack.”
“I lost my pencil.”
“I found a frog.”
The last one made you blink.
“What?”
A boy proudly held up a plastic container, inside sat a very confused frog. You stared at him and he stared back. “You brought a frog to school?”
“His name is Kevin.”
“Of course it is.”
The boy grinned a familiar laugh sounded behind you. You turned to find Mrs. Reynolds approaching, third-grade teacher. Your mentor and one of your favourite people in the building.
“Sorry about them.”
You glanced at the crowd surrounding you. “I think they're planning a hostile takeover.”
Mrs. Reynolds nodded, “That's usually how Thursdays go.”
The children immediately began protesting. You laughed and for the first time all day, every lingering thought in your head disappeared no assignments, no family, no grief, just this, just kids. It was why you'd chosen education in the first place, not because it was easy, bot because it paid particularly well. Because you loved it. Because somewhere along the way you'd discovered that helping children feel safe felt important, meaningful, necessary.
The classroom buzzed with energy once everyone settled inside. You moved from desk to desk throughout the afternoon. Helping with reading, answering questions, breaking up one surprisingly dramatic argument over coloured pencils, by three o'clock your feet hurt.
Your coffee had gone cold and you couldn't stop smiling.
A little girl named Emma sat beside you during independent reading, her dark hair was pulled into messy pigtails, her front tooth was missing and she looked deeply concerned about something, you lowered your voice. “What's wrong?”
Emma frowned at the book in front of her. “I don't know this word.”
You glanced down, the word was adventure. You pointed at it, together, you sounded it out. Slowly, patiently, Emma repeated each syllable then looked up. Her face immediately brightened. “Oh.”
“See?”
“I know that word.”
“You do.”
She smiled proudly, the kind of smile that could probably power an entire city. For reasons you couldn't explain, your chest tightened. Just slightly because moments like this mattered. People always underestimated them. One child learning a word, one conversation, one moment of encouragement. Tiny things, until they weren't. Until they became the things a person remembered years later, the things that stayed.
A memory surfaced unexpectedly. You were seven crying over multiplication homework, convinced you were stupid. Sienna sitting beside you at the kitchen table, patiently walking you through every question. Refusing to let you quit the memory hit so suddenly you almost lost your train of thought. You swallowed hard, then smiled at Emma. “You want to read the next page?”
Emma nodded enthusiastically and just like that, the memory faded again. Still there, always there. Just quieter.
The final bell rang not long after, chaos immediately erupted. Backpacks. Jackets. Parents. Children racing toward the door. The classroom transformed into complete madness. You helped Mrs. Reynolds clean up once the last student had gone. The room finally settling into silence. For a moment neither of you spoke then Mrs. Reynolds smiled.
“You know.”
You glanced up. “What?”
“You've got a gift for this.”
The compliment caught you off guard. “Oh.”
“I'm serious.” She leaned against a desk. “The kids adore you.”
You laughed. “They mostly use me as free labour.”
“That's how you know they trust you.” The words settled somewhere deep inside your chest, warm, comforting.
You weren't usually great at accepting praise but this felt different. Because teaching mattered to you, maybe more than anything.
Mrs. Reynolds continued gathering papers. “You ever think about staying in elementary education after graduation?”
“Every day.” The answer came easily, without hesitation because despite everything life had thrown at you. Despite losing Sienna, despite leaving Florida, despite the years that followed— This part had always felt certain.
Mrs. Reynolds smiled. “Good.”
You looked around the empty classroom at the colourful artwork hanging on the walls at the tiny desks at the bookshelves at the evidence of a hundred small lives learning and growing every day and for a moment, something settled inside you, a rare kind of peace. The feeling that maybe you were exactly where you were supposed to be. For now, though, all you knew was that a little girl had learned the word adventure and somehow, that felt like enough.
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The student centre was packed, which wasn't unusual.
Between classes, sports practices, study groups and what seemed like half the student population surviving exclusively on caffeine, the building was always busy. You spotted Grace immediately. Mostly because she was waving at you from across the room like she'd been stranded for days instead of twenty minutes.
You laughed. “You're ridiculous.”
Grace pointed dramatically at the laptop in front of her. “You don't understand.”
“I feel like I do.”
“No.” She looked genuinely offended. “You don't.”
You slid into the seat opposite her and Grace immediately pushed her laptop toward you, you glanced down then immediately pushed it back. “Nope.”
“See?”
“Nope.”
“Exactly.” The grin she gave you was pure satisfaction, the paper looked terrible. Not because Grace was a bad student. Because she'd apparently spent the last three hours staring at the same paragraph.
You reached for your coffee. “How many words have you written?”
Grace looked away.
“Oh my God.”
“Technically some of them count.”
“Grace.”
“Forty-three.”
You nearly choked. “Forty-three?”
“It was a difficult forty-three.”
You laughed despite yourself. The sound earned a victorious smile, that was the thing about Grace being around her always felt easy. You'd met during freshman year after being assigned to the same orientation group, somehow the friendship had stuck and years later, she remained one of your favourite people. Even if she was occasionally dramatic enough to qualify as a public health concern.
“How was placement?” she asked.
Your expression softened instantly. “Good.”
“Just good?”
You smiled. “There was a frog.”
Grace blinked. “A frog.”
“A student brought it to school.”
“Why?”
“Apparently his name was Kevin.”
Grace immediately started laughing, you joined her. The conversation drifted naturally after that. Classes, placement hours, a professor neither of you liked, plans for the weekend. The comfortable rhythm of a friendship that had existed long enough to settle into something familiar. Around you, students came and went. The noise level constantly shifted, someone dropped a tray nearby a group of athletes crowded around one of the televisions, the usual chaos.
Grace was halfway through complaining about one of her assignments when her phone buzzed. She glanced down, rolled her eyes, then smiled despite herself.
“Logan?” You guessed.
She pointed at you. “See? This is why we're friends.”
“What did he do?”
Grace held up the screen.
Logan: forgot my lunch
Logan: tragic
Logan: tell my family i loved them
You laughed. “He's such an idiot.”
“He's a dramatic idiot.”
“Same thing.”
Grace hummed thoughtfully. “Fair.”
A few moments later another familiar figure appeared beside your table. Tucker, grinning, carrying enough food for what looked like an entire hockey team. “Well, if it isn't my two favourite people.”
You narrowed your eyes. “How many times have you said that today?”
Tucker considered. “At least six.”
“Honesty. I respect it.”
He dropped into the empty chair beside Grace, immediately stealing one of her fries. Grace smacked his arm and he looked delighted by this. The next ten minutes passed in easy conversation, Tucker updated you on hockey drama, Grace complained about Logan. You mostly listened, laughing whenever necessary. The hockey team came up frequently around Briar, that was unavoidable. They were practically campus celebrities especially after everything they'd accomplished over the past few years.
You knew all of them at least loosely. Garrett. Hannah. Logan. Grace. Tucker. Sabrina.
Even Dean. Though not well. Mostly through mutual friends and occasional group gatherings, you'd spoken to him maybe a handful of times over the years. Enough to know he was charming, confident. The kind of person who could make conversation with absolutely anyone.
Not enough to know much else.
“You coming Friday?” Tucker asked suddenly.
You frowned. “Friday?”
“Movie night.”
Grace immediately groaned. “Oh God.”
“What?”
“Tucker picks the movies.”
You immediately understood. “Oh no.”
“Exactly.”
Tucker looked offended. “My taste is excellent.”
“You made us watch Sharknado.”
“It is a cinematic masterpiece.”
You laughed into your coffee, the conversation continued around you, comfortable. Easy. Normal. You found yourself looking around the crowded student centre, watching people move through their day.
Friends laughing, students studying, couples holding hands. The ordinary rhythm of campus life. For a moment, you felt strangely lucky because despite everything that had happened, despite all the things you'd lost, you'd built something here.
Friends, a future, a place for yourself. Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not without scars but you'd built it anyway.
Grace was saying something about Friday, Tucker was still defending Sharknado. You smiled and shook your head and for a little while, everything felt uncomplicated. Like just another ordinary Thursday afternoon at Briar.
The kind of day nobody remembers, the kind of day that feels endless while you're living it, the kind of day that ends far sooner than you expect.
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By the time you got home, the sun had started to set. Golden light spilled through the windows of your apartment, painting everything in soft shades of orange. You kicked off your shoes by the door, dropped your bag onto the kitchen counter and immediately made your way toward the coffee machine.
It was nearly five o'clock. Too late for coffee according to most people. Unfortunately for most people, you had three assignments due next week and coffee was non-negotiable. The machine hummed to life. You leaned against the counter while it worked, the apartment was quiet, comfortably quiet. You'd never minded being alone. Not really.
After years at Briar, you'd become used to it. Your roommates had graduated the previous spring, leaving you with a small one-bedroom apartment just off campus. It wasn't fancy but it was yours.
You liked that, the coffee machine beeped and you reached for your mug, that's when your phone rang. The sound startled you enough that coffee sloshed over the rim, you hissed then glanced at the screen. Mom. Your stomach immediately tightened, not dramatically, not painfully, just enough. The familiar reaction of someone who never quite knew what version of a conversation they were about to get.
You answered anyway. “Hey.”
A pause, then your mother's voice. “Hi, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart, the word should have felt comforting, instead it just felt distant like something she said because she'd always said it. Not because she meant it. You hated yourself for thinking that. “How are you?” she asked.
You carried your coffee into the living room, settling onto the couch. “I'm good.”
“Classes going okay?”
“Yeah.” The conversation immediately fell into an awkward silence, neither of you seemed to know where to go from there. It had been like this for years. You remembered when phone calls used to last hours, now they felt like obligations. Something both of you were trying very hard not to fail. Finally you spoke.
“I had placement yesterday”
“Oh.” A pause. “How was it?”
A small smile appeared despite yourself. “Good.” You tucked your feet beneath you. “One of my students brought a frog to school.”
Your mother laughed softly and the sound caught you off guard, for a moment, she sounded like herself. The version of her that existed before. “The school allowed that?”
“Apparently not.”
Another laugh and for one brief second, everything felt easy, normal.
Then your mother sighed. “I found one of Sienna's old notebooks today.”
The moment shattered, just like that. Your smile disappeared and your grip tightened around your mug. “Oh.”
The silence stretched, you knew this routine, you knew it by heart. “One of her field journals.” Your mother's voice softened. “It still had all her notes in it.”
You closed your eyes briefly, of course it did. Sienna had filled dozens of notebooks over the years. Observations, ideas, dreams, plans, entire futures written neatly across hundreds of pages. “I forgot how beautiful her handwriting was.”
There it was, the shift. The conversation changing direction, again. Always, you stared at the wall opposite you. Listening. Your mother continued speaking. About the notebook. About finding one of Sienna's old photographs tucked between the pages. About a marine conservation project she'd wanted to work on. About how excited she'd been, you listened quietly. Making the appropriate sounds responding when necessary. The same way you'd done for years because what else were you supposed to do?
Tell your mother she was talking about your dead sister again? Tell her every conversation somehow ended here? Tell her you missed Sienna too?
The words stayed trapped inside your chest. Unspoken like they always did.
Eventually your mother paused and before you could stop yourself, you said: “I got really good feedback from my placement teacher.” The line slipped into the conversation carefully, like testing ice.
For a second, silence, then “That's nice, honey.”
That's nice, the words landed heavily. Not cruel. Not dismissive. Just automatic. Like she'd barely heard them.
Before you could respond, your mother continued. “I wish Sienna could've seen what you've done with your life.”
Your throat tightened because she meant it kindly. That was the worst part, she genuinely meant it kindly. Yet somehow it still hurt.
You stared down at your coffee, watching the steam rise from the surface. You suddenly felt eighteen again, standing in a hospital room, holding a shell necklace. Invisible beside a loss that consumed everyone around it. “I do too.” The words came out quietly.
Your mother sighed. “She would've been so proud of you.”
Tears threatened unexpectedly. You swallowed them down immediately because you weren't angry, you weren't, you understood, you really did. Your mother had lost a daughter. A piece of herself. The grief had hollowed her out, you knew that, you knew it every single day. The problem was, she wasn't the only one. You had lost her too and sometimes it felt like everyone forgot that. The conversation limped on for another few minutes. Neither of you saying what you actually meant.
Eventually your mother glanced at the time. “I should go.”
“Okay.”
“We love you.” The words came automatically. Practiced. Familiar.
You closed your eyes. “Love you too.”
The call ended. The apartment immediately fell silent again. You stared at your dark phone screen. The ache in your chest settling somewhere familiar. Not new, not sharp, just old, an old wound you'd learned how to carry. Slowly, your fingers lifted to the necklace around your neck. The shell rested beneath your sweater. Warm from your skin. You held it gently between your fingers. Thinking about your mother, thinking about Sienna, thinking about all the things that had been lost alongside her. After a moment, your phone buzzed. A text from Grace.
Grace: Movie night tomorrow remember. You're coming.
You laughed softly despite yourself, the sound echoed through the empty apartment. Then you typed back.
You: Is Tucker still choosing the movie?
The reply appeared almost instantly.
Grace: unfortunately
You: then absolutely not
Grace: too late. you're already invited
A smile tugged at your lips. Small. But real.
Life moved forward. It always did.
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Friday nights at Briar had always been chaotic. Not the wild party kind of chaotic, at least not for you. The hockey crowd had somehow evolved into something closer to a family over the years. Loud. Unhinged. Constantly in each other's business. But a family.
Which was how you found yourself standing outside Garrett Graham and Hannah Wells' apartment balancing a six-pack of soda in one hand and a bag of microwave popcorn in the other. The door flew open before you could knock.
“Thank God.” You blinked and Grace grabbed your arm immediately. “You're here.”
“Hello to you too.”
“Tucker brought three movies.”
“Oh no.”
“Exactly.”
She dragged you inside and the room was already full. Garrett sat sprawled across one end of the couch. Hannah occupied the other. Sabrina and Tucker were arguing near the kitchen, or maybe flirting. With those two it was honestly difficult to tell. Logan sat in an armchair looking entirely too comfortable, the room immediately felt familiar. Comfortable. Like stepping into something warm.
“Look who finally showed up.”
You rolled your eyes at Garrett. “I was three minutes late.”
“You were seven.”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
“You literally have no proof.”
Garrett pointed toward Logan. “Witness.”
Logan didn't even look up from his phone. “She was late.”
Traitor.
You narrowed your eyes. “I hope your team loses.”
Garrett gasped dramatically and the room immediately erupted into offended noises. You laughed. Some things never changed.
Grace finally released your arm. You dropped into the empty space beside Hannah. She immediately offered you popcorn, you accepted because she was your favourite, don't tell the others. Conversation flowed easily around the room, classes, internships, the latest hockey drama, plans for winter break. The kind of conversation that only happened between people who'd known each other long enough to stop trying.
For a little while you just listened, watching everyone interact, Garrett making terrible jokes. Logan pretending not to laugh at them, Sabrina threatening violence, Tucker encouraging it. The usual a smile tugged at your lips. You liked this, the simplicity of it, the comfort.
It felt earned somehow. Like after years at Briar, these people had become part of your life in ways you hadn't expected.
Maybe not your closest friends but close enough, safe enough. The door opened suddenly, a burst of cold air swept inside. You looked up automatically Dean Di Laurentis stepped into the apartment carrying two pizza boxes. “You're welcome.”
Several people immediately stood, not to help, just to steal food.
Dean sighed dramatically. “Animals.”
“Took you long enough” Garrett called.
“I had to save dinner.”
“You got lost.”
“I did not get lost.”
“You absolutely got lost.”
Dean rolled his eyes, the motion was so familiar it almost made you laugh. He looked exactly the same as every other time you'd seen him over the years, confident, easygoing. Always in the centre of everything without really trying, people gravitated toward him naturally. You'd noticed that before. Not because he demanded attention because he made everyone feel comfortable. The room always seemed brighter when he walked into it.
He set the pizzas down, immediately caught sight of you. “Hey.” The smile he offered was easy, friendly. The kind you gave someone you recognized but didn't know particularly well.
“Hey.”
“How've you been?”
“Good.”
“Student teaching still going okay?” The question surprised you, you hadn't expected him to remember. Apparently your expression showed it. Dean shrugged. “You talked about it at Tucker's birthday.”
Six months ago, you blinked. “Oh.”
His grin widened slightly. “That's a yes then?”
A laugh escaped. “Yeah. It's going well.”
“Nice.”
The interaction lasted maybe thirty seconds, nothing important, nothing memorable. Just conversation. Dean grabbed a plate. Someone yelled at Garrett. Tucker began defending another terrible movie choice. Life moved on and yet. A strange thought crossed your mind as you watched the room settle back into its usual rhythm. Dean was easy to be around. Not in a flirtatious way, not in a romantic way. Just easy. Like someone who genuinely cared when he asked how you were. The thought disappeared almost immediately. Lost beneath louder conversations, laughter, arguments over pizza toppings, the movie finally starting. The night continued, normal, comfortable, forgettable.
Hours later, as the credits rolled and everyone began gathering their things, you found yourself smiling, the evening had been fun. Nothing more, nothing less. You said your goodbyes. Promised Grace you'd text when you got home and ignored Tucker's insistence that Sharknado deserved awards. Then stepped out into the cold Massachusetts night, the air bit at your cheeks immediately.
You tucked your hands into your pockets, started the walk toward your car. Behind you, laughter spilled from the apartment. Warm and familiar.
You smiled to yourself.
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The apartment was quiet when you got home, almost midnight. Most of Briar was still awake. Weekend nights usually meant parties, crowded bars, loud music drifting through open windows, your apartment building, thankfully, was a little calmer, you locked the door behind you. Kicked off your shoes. Dropped your keys into the bowl beside the entrance, the familiar routine settled over you automatically. Comfortable. Predictable. Safe.
Movie night had been fun, your cheeks still hurt slightly from laughing. Particularly at Tucker's increasingly desperate attempts to convince everyone that Sharknado deserved critical acclaim, you shook your head.
Idiot.
The smile lingered as you moved through the apartment. Until your eyes landed on the calendar hanging beside the fridge and immediately disappeared.
November 14th, three weeks, your stomach dropped. Three weeks. That was all. The date stared back at you. Unmoving. Unforgiving. You looked away first because of course you did. You always did.
Her birthday wasn't today, there was no point thinking about it today. No point counting down. No point letting it ruin a perfectly good evening, three weeks. You swallowed hard. Then headed toward your bedroom, the necklace felt heavier than usual against your skin.
The room was dark except for the small lamp beside your bed, you sat on the edge of the mattress. Slowly reached for the chain, the motion was muscle memory by now. The clasp clicked open and you carefully lifted the necklace over your head. For a moment you simply held it, the shell rested in your palm, small, white, worn smooth after years of being touched. You traced your thumb across the surface, the same way you always did.
Then opened the drawer of your bedside table, inside sat a wooden box, nothing fancy. Just a small rectangular thing you'd bought during freshman year. The hinges squeaked slightly as you opened it. The contents were sparse, a bracelet, a faded concert ticket, a photograph and beneath them, your phone charger. Because apparently you trusted absolutely nobody. You laughed softly, then reached for the photograph, the edges were worn from years of handling, the image itself was simple.
You and Sienna at the beach, she couldn't have been older than twenty.
You sixteen both sunburnt.
Both grinning. Sienna had an arm around your shoulders. You were making a face because she'd shoved you into the ocean moments before the picture had been taken. You remembered being furious, she'd laughed for nearly an hour.
Your throat tightened, the memory came so easily, too easily. Sometimes you worried that one day it wouldn't.
That one day you'd forget the sound of her laugh, the exact shade of her eyes, the way she'd throw her head back when something genuinely amused her. That was your biggest fear, not grief, not sadness, forgetting.
You stared at the photo for a long moment, then carefully set it aside. Beneath it sat an old voicemail notification. A screenshot. One you'd taken years ago because the voicemail itself lived on three different devices. Two cloud backups and a USB stick, you were many things, careless wasn't one of them. Slowly, you picked up your phone, opened the file, pressed play.
Static crackled briefly. Then, “Hey loser.”
Your eyes immediately closed, there she was years later. Still there. Still waiting. “Mom said you're stressing about college again.” A laugh escaped you despite yourself. Same opening every time. Same stupid teasing. “You're gonna be amazing, okay? Stop acting like you're about to fail out before you've even gotten there.”
Your chest ached, not sharply, not the way it used to. Just enough. Enough to remind you.
“Call me later. Love you."
The voicemail ended, silence returned. You sat there for several seconds, phone still in your hand. The apartment felt impossibly quiet eventually you placed the necklace back around your neck. The shell settled against your skin. Home. Comfort. Pain, all at once.
Your phone buzzed suddenly, the sound startled you, you glanced down. Grace.
Grace: made it home?
A smile tugged at your lips.
You: yes mom
Three dots appeared instantly.
Grace: rude
Grace: just checking
You typed back.
You: i know
A second later another message arrived.
Grace: goodnight ❤️
You stared at it, something warm settled in your chest. Not because of the text itself because somebody had checked. Somebody had thought about you, it was such a small thing. Yet somehow it mattered.
You: goodnight grace ❤️
You set the phone down, turned off the lamp and slid beneath the covers. Outside, wind rattled gently against the windows. The campus continued moving around you. Students laughing. Cars passing. Life continuing, normal. Tomorrow would be another ordinary day, classes, assignments, coffee, friends. The same routine you'd built over four years. You closed your eyes and somewhere across campus, completely unknown to you, another Briar student was enjoying what would become one of the last ordinary weekends of his life.
Not because he was going to die.
Because someone he loved was.
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The next few days passed exactly the way most days did, quietly, classes, placement, assignments, coffee, repeat. By Tuesday afternoon, you found yourself wedged into a corner booth in the student centre with a textbook open in front of you and absolutely no motivation to read it. The words blurred together, you reread the same paragraph three times. Retained none of it. Across from you, Grace wasn't doing much better. She stared blankly at her laptop. “You know” she said eventually, “I think if I close my eyes long enough, maybe my paper will finish itself.”
You looked up. “That's not how writing works.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I've tried.”
Grace sighed dramatically. “Tragic.”
You smiled, outside the windows, students crossed the quad beneath a grey November sky. The weather had turned colder over the past week, winter creeping closer. You glanced at your phone, three thirty. Another hour before you had to be anywhere, plenty of time. A comfortable silence settled between you and Grace, the kind that only existed between people who no longer felt the need to fill every moment with conversation. You returned to your reading. Made it through exactly one sentence.
Then Grace's phone buzzed, neither of you paid much attention. Until it buzzed again and again and again. Grace frowned. “What the hell?”
You looked up, her screen continued lighting up, messages flooding in one after another, the expression on her face changed immediately, confusion, then concern. Then something else, something colder.
Your stomach tightened. “Grace?”
She didn't answer, her eyes moved rapidly across the screen, reading, rereading. Whatever she was looking at seemed impossible, like her brain couldn't quite process it. “Grace.”
This time she looked up and the colour had completely drained from her face. A pulse of anxiety shot through you, “What happened?”
For a second she just stared at you, then looked back down at her phone. “No.” The word came out barely above a whisper. “No.”
Your chest tightened and the student centre suddenly felt quieter. Not actually quieter, just different, wrong. “What is it?”
Grace swallowed hard, you watched her fingers shake, actually shake around her phone and suddenly every instinct in your body went on alert. Something had happened, something bad, something terrible, people nearby had started checking their own phones. Conversations faltering, expressions changing. One by one, like a ripple moving through the room. The atmosphere shifted and you could feel it happening. See it. A collective confusion spreading across campus.
Grace looked down again, then covered her mouth. “Oh my God.”
Fear curled sharply in your stomach. “What happened?”, your voice sounded distant, the words barely yours.
Grace finally met your eyes and whatever she saw on your face seemed to break something inside her because tears appeared instantly. You'd almost never seen Grace cry, not like this, not without warning. Your heart started pounding. “Grace.”
Her voice cracked. “Beau.”
The name meant nothing to you for half a second, then everything clicked into place. Beau. The football player, Dean's friend. The one everyone loved. The one who always seemed to be around, your stomach dropped.
“What about him?”
Grace stared at the screen, then at you. And whispered “He's dead.” The world tilted. Not because you knew Beau particularly well, you didn't. You'd met him a handful of times, shared conversations at parties, movie nights, group gatherings, nothing more. But death had a way of making everything else irrelevant. For a moment neither of you moved. Neither of you spoke. The student centre around you seemed frozen, phones lighting up, messages spreading. Shock travelling through the campus faster than wildfire. Someone nearby started crying another student stood abruptly. Your pulse thundered in your ears. Dead. The word echoed through your mind. Dead.
You looked at Grace at the tears gathering in her eyes, at the horror written across her face and suddenly you weren't thinking about Beau, not really. You were thinking about a hospital waiting room. Bright fluorescent lights. A doctor saying I'm sorry. You were thinking about a shell necklace clenched tightly in your fist, about a sister who'd left for a boat trip and never come home, about all the people left behind when someone died. Because grief wasn't just about the person you lost. It was about everyone who survived them, everyone forced to keep living afterward.
A face appeared unexpectedly in your mind.Blue eyes. Easy smile. Pizza boxes balanced in his hands.
Student teaching still going okay?
Dean.
Your throat tightened.
Because if Beau was gone then somewhere on campus Dean Di Laurentis had just lost one of the people he loved most in the world.
And whether he knew it yet or not
His life had just been split into a before and an after. Exactly like yours had.
The realization settled heavily in your chest. Painfully familiar. Terrifyingly familiar and for the first time since Grace had spoken, you found yourself thinking one thing. Not about Beau, not about the tragedy, not even about yourself. Just Dean. Wondering if anyone was with him. Wondering if he was alone. Wondering if somebody was making sure he remembered to breathe.
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The first thing you noticed was the silence, not actual silence. The student centre was still full, people still moved through the building. Chairs scraped against floors, coffee machines hissed, phones rang but something had changed. The atmosphere felt wrong like the entire campus had collectively forgotten how to breathe.
You sat frozen in your seat. Grace's words still echoing through your head. He's dead. Across the table, Grace stared at her phone, neither of you had touched your work in nearly fifteen minutes. Messages continued flooding in, the screen lit up every few seconds. Names. Questions. Rumours. People desperately trying to understand something that didn't make sense.
Your own phone vibrated, then again, then again. You looked down. The group chat. Over fifty unread messages. You didn't open them, not yet, you couldn't. Because you already knew what they would say, shock, disbelief. Questions nobody could answer.
You'd seen it before. Different names. Different circumstances. Same reactions. The memory hit so suddenly it stole the air from your lungs, a waiting room, hospital blankets, people crying, someone saying: "No, there has to be a mistake."
You blinked hard, forcing yourself back into the present. Not then. Now. This was now. “Grace.” Your voice sounded strange, small, she looked up, tears still clinging to her lashes. “What happened?” The question had been circling your head ever since she'd spoken.
Grace swallowed. “I don't know everything.”
Neither of you moved, the student centre seemed filled with people doing exactly the same thing. Checking phones, making calls, searching for information, searching for something that would make it make sense. Grace looked back at her screen. “Logan said it was an accident.”
Your stomach tightened. Accident. You hated that word. Accidents were cruel because they happened on ordinary days, normal days. Days that weren't supposed to become tragedies. Your fingers curled around your coffee cup. It had gone cold. You hadn't noticed.
“Is Logan okay?” The question escaped before you could stop it.
Grace's face crumpled. “No.” The answer came instantly, without hesitation and somehow that hurt. Because of course he wasn't, none of them would be. Not Garrett. Not Tucker. Not any of them. They'd lost someone, one of their people. You looked around the room, students continued receiving the news.
A girl near the entrance covered her mouth, a guy stood up so abruptly his chair nearly tipped over, two people started crying. The shock spread through campus like a living thing, fast, relentless, unstoppable. Your phone buzzed again. This time it was Tucker. You frowned but opened the message.
Tucker: where are you?
Another arrived immediately.
Tucker: grace too
Then: Tucker: everyone is coming to the house
You looked at Grace, she'd received the same message. You could tell by her expression. For a moment neither of you spoke. Then she whispered, “We should go.”
You nodded immediately because staying here suddenly felt impossible.
The walk across campus felt surreal, the sky overhead was grey, students moved around you, classes still changing, professors still teaching, life continuing. The unfairness of it settled heavily in your chest. You remembered hating that after Sienna died. The normality, the way people still laughed, still made plans, still worried about assignments. As if the world hadn't ended, as if everything hadn't changed.
Grace walked beside you silently. Phone clutched tightly in her hand. Neither of you knew what to say. What was there to say? Eventually Grace spoke. “So many people loved him.”, the words came out broken. You glanced at her, she looked devastated. Not just sad. Devastated. The kind of sadness that arrived when someone good disappeared. You'd met Beau a handful of times. Enough to know he was loud, funny. The kind of person who made everyone feel included, the kind of person people assumed would always be there.
You swallowed hard.
Because that part felt familiar too.
You used to think that about Sienna.
By the time the house came into view, your chest felt tight. Cars already lined the street. People stood outside, talking quietly, crying. Making phone calls. The entire hockey community seemed to be gathering. Drawn together by grief, you stopped for a second. Just looking. A strange sense of dread crawled beneath your skin. Not because you were afraid of going inside because you knew exactly what waited there.
Shock, denial, anger.
People trying desperately to make sense of the impossible, you'd seen it all before, you knew every stage, every expression, every silence.
And suddenly you were eighteen again, standing outside a hospital room. Trying to gather the courage to open the door.
“Y/N?” Grace's voice pulled you back, you looked up. She offered a small, shaky smile. “You okay?” The question caught you off guard, for a second you didn't know how to answer. No. Yes. Maybe. You weren't grieving Beau, not really. You were grieving every memory his death had dragged back to the surface.
You forced a smile. “Yeah.”
It wasn't entirely true but it wasn't entirely a lie either. Grace nodded.
Then together, the two of you climbed the steps toward the house. Toward the people whose lives had just changed forever and toward a grief-stricken hockey player who still didn't know you were about to become one of the most important people in his life.
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The Briar hockey house had never been quiet, not once in the years you'd known people who lived there. There was always music, someone yelling, a game on television, an argument over food, something, tonight felt wrong, the closer you got to the front door, the more obvious it became.
You followed Grace up the front steps, the front door was already open. Students drifted in and out. Former teammates, friends, people who loved Beau, people who couldn't quite believe he was gone. The second you stepped inside, grief hit you like a physical force. The house was packed, every couch occupied, people sitting on floors, peaning against walls. Gathered in the kitchen, nobody seemed to know what to do. Everyone just wanted to be near each other, like separating would somehow make it more real. Your chest tightened because you'd seen this before, not the hockey house, not these people but this feeling. The helplessness. The shock. The desperate need to gather.
After Sienna died your family home had been filled with people for days. Neighbours. Friends. Relatives. People bringing food nobody ate, offering condolences nobody remembered. Everyone trying to help, nobody actually knowing how. A hand brushed your arm. You blinked. Returning to the present.
Grace. “You okay?”
You nodded automatically, she didn't look convinced. Thankfully she let it go, the living room came into view.
Garrett sat on the couch or rather, he occupied it physically. Mentally he seemed somewhere else entirely, his eyes were red. Hannah sat beside him, one hand gripping his. Neither looked up when people entered across the room Tucker stood near the fireplace. Talking quietly to someone, his voice sounded strained. Like he'd been speaking all day.
Logan paced. Back and forth. Back and forth. His phone pressed tightly against his ear, you'd never seen him look so unsettled. The entire house felt suspended nobody knew what happened next nobody knew how to move forward because grief was like that. One moment life existed. Then suddenly it didn't and everyone was expected to keep going anyway. Your stomach twisted, the familiar ache of memory pressing against your ribs.
Grace disappeared toward Hannah almost immediately. The two women falling into each other's arms. You remained near the doorway. Unsure where to go, unsure what to do. Then Tucker spotted you for a second something softened in his expression. Recognition, relief, any familiar face helping. “Hey.”
You offered a small smile.
“Hey.”
He looked exhausted. The kind of exhausted sleep couldn't fix. You knew that look too. “How's everyone doing?” The question felt stupid the second it left your mouth.
Tucker's laugh was hollow. “Not great.”
You immediately wished you could take it back. “Sorry.”
“It's okay.”
His eyes drifted around the room, toward Garrett, toward Logan, toward people crying quietly in corners. “Nobody knows what to do.”
The honesty hit harder than anything else had because that was exactly it, nobody knew what to do. You couldn't fix death. You couldn't solve grief. You just endured it. One second at a time. One breath at a time. One day at a time.
Tucker rubbed a hand across his face. “He was here last week.” the words cracked, just slightly, enough. “He was literally here.”
Your chest tightened because that was grief too, the disbelief, the inability to comprehend that someone could exist one day and disappear the next. You remembered thinking exactly the same thing about Sienna. She'd texted you. Three hours later she was gone. Your eyes burned. You blinked quickly. Across the room somebody started crying again, the sound settled heavily over the house. Tucker looked away. You could tell he was trying not to cry himself. Trying and failing. Because grief didn't care how strong you were it came anyway.
A sudden movement near the staircase caught your attention, several heads turned, conversations faltered. The atmosphere shifted instantly, you frowned. Not understanding why, then you followed everyone's gaze and saw someone descending the stairs.
Dean.
For a moment, nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The entire room seemed to hold its breath. You stood near the doorway, watching. Dean descended the stairs slowly one hand trailing against the banister his head lowered. Like every step required conscious effort, the sight immediately made your stomach drop. Because Tucker had been right, nobody looked okay.
But Dean looked different, wrong.
A memory surfaced before you could stop it. Your reflection in a hospital bathroom mirror. Eighteen years old. Pale. Shaking, eyes swollen from crying. Looking like someone you didn't recognize.
The memory vanished as quickly as it came, leaving you staring at Dean trying to understand why your chest suddenly hurt. He reached the bottom step people immediately gravitated toward him. Not physically, nobody rushed him, nobody touched him. But every eye in the room followed him. Concern. Worry. Helplessness. Everyone watching the same person. The same way people had watched your mother after Sienna died, like they were afraid to look away.
Dean didn't seem to notice. Or maybe he did, maybe he just didn't care. His hair was messy, his clothes looked slept in, the dark circles beneath his eyes stood out immediately. But it was his expression that got you or rather the lack of one. Because Dean Di Laurentis had always seemed animated. Smiling, laughing, talking. The kind of person who filled a room, this version looked hollow like somebody had removed something essential from him.
He moved through the crowd without really seeing anyone, people spoke. He nodded. People touched his shoulder. He barely reacted. Your chest tightened further because you knew that look. God. You knew it.
You remembered standing at Sienna's funeral while people hugged you, talked to you, offered condolences and none of it felt real. Their words had sounded distant, muffled. Like they were reaching you through water, you'd smiled when required. Nodded when expected, not because you were listening. Because it was easier than explaining that your brain had stopped working. Dean looked exactly like that, lLike someone operating entirely on instinct. A machine pretending to be a person. The realization settled heavily inside you. A terrible kind of familiarity.
Across the room, Logan approached him first, the two exchanged a few words. You couldn't hear them Dean nodded, Logan said something else, Dean nodded again. That was it. No conversation. No reaction, nothing. Your stomach twisted because people expected grief to look dramatic.
They expected screaming, crying, breaking things. Sometimes it did. But often it looked like this. Like a person disappearing while still standing right in front of you. You remembered doing the same thing, for weeks afterward. Going through motions, attending classes. Eating when people reminded you, sleeping occasionally. Breathing. Existing. Not living. Just existing.
A horrible thought appeared suddenly. Has he eaten? The question caught you off guard, you frowned because it seemed ridiculous. Yet you couldn't stop thinking it. Had he slept? Had anyone made him drink water? Had anyone checked? Your therapist had once told you grief turned people into children, not emotionally. Practically. You forgot things, basic things.
Food.
Sleep.
Self-care.
Your body became secondary to the loss and looking at Dean now. You doubted he remembered any of it. The realization lodged itself stubbornly in your chest.
Across the room, Garrett finally stood, he crossed the space between them and pulled Dean into a hug.
A long one, neither spoke, neither moved. Dean's eyes squeezed shut, just briefly. One second. Maybe two. Then he stepped back and for the first time all evening, you saw genuine emotion crack through, pain, raw, devastating. Gone almost immediately, hidden again. But you'd seen it. The room had too, several people looked away. Others started crying. You couldn't, you couldn't stop looking. Not because you were fascinated. Not because you had feelings for him. Because every instinct inside you was screaming. You know this, you know exactly what this feels like. A lump formed in your throat. Suddenly the house felt too warm. Too crowded. Too familiar. You couldn't stop seeing yourself, the similarities, the shock, the emptiness, the way grief hollowed people out from the inside.
Your fingers found the shell necklace beneath your sweater automatically, holding it. Grounding yourself, the familiar shape pressed into your palm. You stared at Dean, at the grief written across every line of his body and for one impossible second, the years disappeared. You weren't twenty-two and standing in a crowded hockey house.
You were eighteen. Standing beside a hospital bed, holding your sister's necklace, trying to understand how the world kept turning. The realization hit with startling clarity. Nobody could fix this for him.
Nobody.
Not Garrett.
Not Logan.
Not Tucker.
Not you.
Because grief wasn't something that could be fixed. Only survived. And suddenly you felt something dangerously close to fear. Not for yourself, for him. Because you remembered what came next. The nights, the loneliness, the silence after everyone went home, the way people slowly stopped checking in, the way the world expected you to recover long before you were ready.
The worst part wasn't the funeral, the worst part came after. When everyone else returned to normal life and you were still drowning.
Dean turned slightly, for a brief second, his gaze swept across the room. Across the gathered friends, across the strangers, across you. His eyes met yours, only for a moment. A heartbeat, then moved on. He didn't recognize you or if he did, it didn't register. You were just another face, another person filling the room, another reminder that Beau was gone. Yet somehow that brief glance settled heavily inside your chest because there had been something in his eyes. Not sadness. Not exactly. Something deeper.
The kind of pain that changed people, the kind that divided lives into before and after. You knew it because you carried it too and standing there in a crowded house filled with grief, you realized something that terrified you. You understood him.
More than anyone in this room probably realized.
More than you wanted to.
More than a stranger should.
And for the first time since hearing Beau's name that afternoon, you couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't the last time you'd find yourself thinking about Dean Di Laurentis.
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You left the hockey house just after midnight. The air outside was cold, sharp enough to sting your lungs. For a few seconds you simply stood on the porch, listening. The muffled sound of voices drifted through the walls people still arriving, still grieving, still trying to understand. You wrapped your arms around yourself, suddenly exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that settled somewhere deeper than your bones. Grace had stayed behind because Hannah needed her. Honestly, everyone needed everyone right now.
So you'd quietly slipped out, promising to text when you got home. The walk to your car felt longer than usual. Your mind refused to stay in the present. Every few minutes it dragged you backward.
Back years. Back to hospital hallways, funeral homes, condolence cards, the smell of flowers. God. You hated funeral flowers, you hadn't thought about them in years. Yet suddenly you could smell them, see them, feel them. Your fingers tightened around your keys.
By the time you reached your apartment, your chest ached.
The silence hit immediately, the kind only an empty apartment could create. You locked the door dropped your bag, kicked off your shoes and stood motionless in the middle of the living room.
The evening replayed itself automatically. Garrett. Logan. Tucker. Grace crying. Dean, especially Dean. You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to stop thinking about him.
Not because you didn't care because you cared too much and you didn't understand why, you barely knew him. Had never had a real conversation with him. Yet every time you pictured his face, your stomach twisted because he looked exactly how you remembered feeling.
Not looking, feeling. There was a difference. People always talked about grief like it was sadness, it wasn't, not at first. At first it was shock, disbelief, confusion. Your brain refusing to accept reality, your body continuing long after your mind stopped functioning. Dean looked trapped in that stage and the sight had followed you home.
You sighed heavily. Then crossed the room toward your bedroom. The necklace felt unusually heavy against your skin.
The wooden box sat exactly where it always did. Inside the bedside drawer, waiting. You opened it without thinking. Muscle memory. The hinges creaked softly and your eyes immediately landed on the picture.
The beach photo, you and Sienna. You picked it up, the edges were beginning to wear, you should probably laminate it. The thought arrived automatically, the same practical thought you'd had a dozen times before and ignored every single one.
You sat on the edge of the bed, photo in hand. The apartment dark except for the lamp beside you. Outside, a car passed, then another, life continuing, always continuing.
Your eyes drifted across Sienna's face. Twenty-two forever. She would have been twenty-five now, the thought hit harder than usual.
Twenty-five. She should have had a career, an apartment, a future, maybe kids someday.
Instead your throat tightened and you looked away. A familiar ache settling in your chest, not sharp, not overwhelming. Just present like an old scar.
Then your gaze caught on something else, a second photograph, one you'd almost forgotten was there. You pulled it free, the image was grainy. Taken during your first semester at Briar, orientation week. You stood between Grace and some guy you'd briefly dated, everyone looked painfully young.
The sight made you laugh softly, then freeze. Because suddenly you remembered.
Freshman year, two weeks after arriving at Briar someone had asked if you had siblings. You'd burst into tears in the middle of the dining hall, completely without warning. The poor guy had looked horrified, you'd spent ten minutes apologizing. The memory surfaced vividly, embarrassingly, painfully.
And then another memory followed. A different one. A worse one. You sitting alone in your dorm room. Three in the morning, unable to sleep, unable to stop crying, scrolling through old photos because you couldn't bear the silence. Nobody checking on you. Nobody calling. Nobody knowing. Your parents trapped inside their own grief, the world moving forward without permission. You swallowed hard because that was the part people didn't understand, the loneliness, everyone showed up at first. For the funeral. For the tragedy. For the story. Then they slowly disappeared.
Not because they stopped caring.
Because life kept going.
You couldn't blame them.
But God. It hurt.
Your fingers tightened around the photograph and suddenly Dean's face appeared in your mind again, the empty look in his eyes, the way he'd barely reacted to anyone speaking, the way he'd seemed disconnected from the room around him.
You stared at Sienna's photograph, then whispered softly: “I hope somebody stays.” The words surprised you, you hadn't meant to say them out loud, yet there they were. Hanging in the silence. A confession, a prayer, a wish, not for yourself, for him. Because once upon a time, you'd needed somebody to stay too and nobody had, the realization lingered long after you switched off the lamp. Long after you climbed into bed. Long after sleep should have come. Instead, you lay awake staring into the darkness. Thinking about grief, thinking about loneliness, thinking about a hockey player sitting in a house full of people and somehow looking completely alone. And for the first time, a dangerous thought began taking root.
Maybe everyone was wrong.
Maybe what Dean needed wasn't space.
Maybe what he needed was exactly what you'd needed all those years ago.
Someone willing to sit beside him in the dark.
And stay.
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The funeral was on a Saturday. You didn't go, it felt wrong to not because you didn't care, you did, you cared deeply. But Beau hadn't been your friend, not really. He'd been someone you knew, someone you liked, someone whose death had shaken the campus. But the people attending that funeral deserved space to grieve him properly, you weren't one of them.
So instead, you spent Saturday alone, trying and failing to focus on coursework, trying and failing to stop thinking. The day felt heavy from the moment you woke up like the air itself knew.
Around noon, you found yourself sitting cross-legged on the floor of your living room, laptop open, textbook untouched, a half-finished coffee growing cold beside you. Your attention drifted toward the window, then your phone, then the clock, then nowhere at all.
You knew exactly what was happening right now. The service, the eulogies, the tears, the impossible finality of it all. Your stomach twisted because funerals were strange. Everyone treated them like closure. You'd never understood that, there had been no closure at Sienna's funeral, only confirmation. A room full of people acknowledging that she was really gone.
You hated funerals, you hated sympathy cards, you hated flower arrangements, you hated casseroles.
And most of all you hated what came after, the silence, the world moving on, the grief staying behind.
Your phone buzzed. Grace. You hesitated before opening the message.
Grace: it's over
Just three words. Yet your chest tightened immediately. You stared at the screen, at the tiny blinking cursor.
Then typed:
You: how is everyone?
The reply took longer this time, several minutes. You imagined her sitting somewhere with the others, probably emotionally exhausted, trying to answer a question that didn't really have an answer. Eventually your phone buzzed again.
Grace: not good
You swallowed. A second message appeared.
Grace: dean especially
The words landed heavily, your eyes closed briefly, of course. Another message.
Grace: he barely spoke
Grace: i don't think he's cried yet
Your stomach dropped because that wasn't necessarily unusual. People grieved differently, some cried immediately, some didn't, some couldn't. But something about it bothered you, something about it felt familiar, dangerously familiar.
You set the phone down, stood abruptly and started pacing. One lap around the apartment, then another, then another. The restless energy building inside your chest. You didn't understand why this was affecting you so much, you really didn't.
Dean wasn't your friend. You barely knew him.
If someone asked, you could probably count your conversations on one hand. Yet every update felt personal somehow, every detail lodged beneath your skin. You stopped pacing. Stared at the bookshelf across the room. Then immediately looked away because sitting on the second shelf was a framed photograph.
You and Sienna.
Suddenly you were twenty minutes after her funeral, standing in your childhood bedroom, still wearing black. Everyone downstairs eating food and talking quietly. You alone because nobody had noticed you'd disappeared. The memory arrived with startling clarity. You remembered sitting on the floor, holding a photograph. Thinking: Now what?
Not dramatically.
Not poetically.
Just honestly.
Now what? How was life supposed to continue? How was anybody supposed to keep going?
Nobody had answers, nobody had even stayed long enough to hear the question.
The realization hit you so hard you sank onto the couch, breath leaving your lungs slowly. Because that was it, that was the thing that had been bothering you. Not Dean. Not specifically. The loneliness. You remembered the loneliness.
Eventually life resumed, eventually the grieving person was left alone with the wreckage and somehow everybody expected them to know what to do next.
You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes, trying to stop the memories, trying to stop thinking. It didn't work. Nothing worked because now you were remembering everything.
The sleepless nights.
The panic attacks.
The forgotten meals.
The feeling of walking around campus convinced nobody could possibly understand.
You'd survived it, eventually. But God, you wouldn't wish it on anyone. Especially not someone who looked as lost as Dean had. Your eyes drifted toward the bedroom, toward the drawer, toward the wooden box. The necklace resting against your chest suddenly felt heavier, meaningful, present.
You decided to open the box again. Just to see pieces of a person who no longer existed, pieces of the one girl that might know what to do right now. Your fingers brushed over the beach photograph, then the old voicemail screenshot, then a folded note. The note stopped you.
You hadn't looked at it in months, carefully, you unfolded it. Sienna's handwriting immediately greeted you, messy, familiar, alive.
A note she'd left on your bedroom door years ago before leaving for a college field trip, one sentence stood out immediately.
Take care of yourself while I'm gone, okay?
Your throat tightened because the irony was cruel, painfully cruel. You stared at the words, reading them again and again and again.
Then something shifted, not dramatically, not all at once, just enough. Enough for a realization to settle quietly into place, for days now, everyone kept saying the same thing.
Give him time.
Give him space.
Leave him alone.
The words echoed through every conversation, every update, every concern. And maybe they were right, maybe Dean wanted space, maybe he wanted to be left alone, maybe showing up would be intrusive. Inappropriate, insane.
You barely knew him, the thought should have ended there. It didn't. Because another thought immediately followed.
What if they're wrong?
You sat on the edge of your bed heart beating a little faster.
What if everyone was wrong?
What if space wasn't what he needed?
What if space was the worst possible thing?
You remembered sitting alone in your dorm room, wishing somebody would knock, wishing somebody would sit down beside you. Not fix it, not make you feel better. Just stay. Nobody had. Not really.
And suddenly for the first time you knew exactly why you couldn't stop thinking about Dean Di Laurentis. It had never been about him, not entirely. It was about eighteen year old you. The version of yourself nobody noticed. The girl quietly drowning while everyone focused on the tragedy. You looked down at Sienna's note, at the familiar handwriting, at the words she'd left behind and before you could talk yourself out of it, a decision settled deep inside your chest.
Quiet.
Certain.
Terrifying.
You were going to check on him.
Not today.
Maybe not tomorrow.
But soon.
Because if there was even a chance he felt the way you'd felt, you couldn't ignore it, you just couldn't and once the decision existed, there was no taking it back. The moment you acknowledged it, you knew. Sooner or later, you were going to end up at the hockey house and everything was going to change.
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The decision haunted you for three days, three days of talking yourself out of it, three days of convincing yourself it was a terrible idea, three days of immediately thinking about it again. By Tuesday evening, you were exhausted, not physically, mentally. Because every time Grace mentioned Dean, your stomach twisted, every time someone brought up Beau, you found yourself wondering how he was doing, every time you remembered the look on his face in the hockey house, you felt that same horrible sense of recognition.
And eventually you ran out of excuses, the November air was freezing. You shoved your hands into your coat pockets as you crossed campus. Your heart pounded harder with every step. This was insane, absolutely insane. You barely knew him, what exactly were you expecting to accomplish? You weren't a therapist, you weren't his friend. Hell, you weren't even part of the hockey group the way Grace and Hannah were.
You were just... You. A girl carrying around too much grief of her own.
The hockey house came into view, warm light glowed from the windows. Cars lined the street, the familiar sight should have been comforting. Instead it made your stomach lurch, you stopped walking, twenty feet from the porch and your pulse hammered. You could still leave, nobody knew you were here, nobody would ever know, you could go home, make a cup of tea, watch television. Convince yourself you'd done the sensible thing.
The thought lasted approximately three seconds, then you started walking again because deep down you already knew. If you left now, you'd spend the next week wondering whether you should've stayed. The porch steps creaked beneath your feet, you climbed them slowly, one at a time, the cold wind bit at your cheeks.
Your fingers found the shell necklace beneath your sweater automatically, touching it, grounding yourself.
You stared at the front door, suddenly eighteen again, standing outside a hospital room, trying to find the courage to walk inside. Your chest tightened, you raised your hand, knocked. The sound echoed far louder than it should have, then you waited. One second. Two. Three. Your heart climbed into your throat.
The door opened, Logan stood on the other side. For a moment he simply stared at you, clearly not expecting this. You weren't exactly a regular visitor, his eyebrows pulled together, confusion flashing across his face. “Y/N?”
Immediately, you wanted the ground to swallow you whole. “Hi.”
Smooth. Very smooth.
Logan looked tired, not ordinary tired. Grief tired, the kind that sat behind someone's eyes. He glanced over his shoulder briefly before looking back at you. “Everything okay?”
The concern in his voice almost made you abandon the entire plan because now that you were here, you realized how ridiculous it sounded. Hi, I know we barely know each other, but I'd like to see your grieving best friend because I think I understand what he's feeling.
Insane.
Completely insane.
Your pulse raced and Logan waited. You swallowed, then forced the words out. “I need to see Dean.”
The confusion deepened instantly, you couldn't blame him. If anything, you were surprised he hadn't shut the door already. “Dean?”
“Yeah.”
Logan blinked, for a moment he seemed genuinely unsure he'd heard correctly. Behind him, you could hear voices, the television. Someone moving around the kitchen, life continuing inside the house. Your stomach churned. “I know this is weird.” Massive understatement. “I just...”
The words caught. How were you supposed to explain this? How could you possibly explain that a stranger's grief had been keeping you awake at night? That every instinct inside you was screaming not to leave him alone? That you recognized something in him nobody else seemed to?
“I lost my sister.” The words escaped before you could stop them, silence, immediate, heavy. Logan froze and you stared at the porch floor. Unable to look at him now, unable to take it back. “My sister died when I was eighteen.” Your voice sounded smaller than usual, more fragile. “I know what this feels like.”
The wind swept across the porch, cold against your face. Neither of you moved. For several seconds, Logan didn't speak. Then quietly, “Oh.”
You nodded, still looking down. The necklace rested heavily against your chest. The familiar weight of it. The familiar ache. “When everyone leaves...” Your throat tightened. “...that's when it gets bad.”
The words hung between you, raw, honest. Painfully true. You finally looked up and Logan was staring at you differently now. Not confused anymore, not suspicious, just understanding. For the first time since opening the door he looked past the awkwardness, past the weirdness. And saw what was actually happening. You weren't here because you wanted something. You were here because once upon a time nobody had shown up for you and you couldn't bear the idea of that happening to someone else.
Logan glanced over his shoulder, toward the staircase, toward wherever Dean was. Then back at you, your heart hammered so hard it hurt. For a second you thought he might say no, thought he might tell you Dean wasn't seeing visitors, that he was sleeping, that this had been a mistake. Instead, Logan stepped back, opening the door wider. His voice was quiet, gentle.
Almost grateful. “Come in.”
Your breath caught. The warmth of the house spilled out onto the porch and standing in the doorway, you realized something.
You had absolutely no idea what you were going to say once you saw him, only that you couldn't walk away. Not this time, not from this, not from him.
And with your heart threatening to beat straight out of your chest, you stepped inside.
Hi! I really like the way you write about off-campus. Dean can you pls do a dad dean omg only if u want thanksss
The Tooth Fairy
Pairing: Dean Di Laurentis x Reader
Word Count: 990
Request open!
Off campus masterlist
The first tooth happened on a Tuesday.
Which, according to Dean, was deeply unfair.
Your daughter had been brushing her teeth in the bathroom with you when she suddenly let out a confused little sound and ran into the hallway holding her mouth.
You and Dean both looked up at the same time.
“She’s bleeding,” she announced in a voice that sounded halfway between panic and offense.
Dean shot up from the couch so quickly he nearly kicked over a throw pillow. “What?”
You hurried over, already smiling a little because you suspected you knew exactly what had happened. “Let me see, sweetheart.”
She opened her mouth and pointed dramatically.
There, in the front, was the tiny gap you had both been waiting for.
Her first tooth had finally come loose.
You blinked, then turned to Dean, who was already crouching in front of her like he had personally been tasked with solving the crisis of the century.
“Oh,” you said softly. “Baby, that’s a loose tooth.”
She frowned. “It came off?”
“Almost,” you said. “It’s supposed to.”
Dean looked at you like you had just told him the moon was made of cheese. “That’s normal?”
You laughed quietly. “Yes, Dean.”
He turned back to your daughter with a face full of concern and wonder and something a little too emotional for such a tiny event. “Does it hurt?”
She shook her head. “A little.”
Dean’s expression changed completely.
He looked at the gap in her smile, then at her face, and then back at you, as if the reality of what was happening had suddenly hit him all at once.
“She’s growing up,” he said, in the tone of a man who had just discovered a betrayal.
You smiled. “It’s one tooth.”
He looked personally wounded. “It’s her first tooth.”
Your daughter tucked herself into his side then, blissfully unaware that she had just triggered a full emotional response from her father. Dean automatically put an arm around her and kissed the top of her head.
“What do we do with it?” she asked.
You and Dean looked at each other.
That was when it became obvious that Dean had already started spiraling.
He pointed vaguely toward the ceiling. “The tooth fairy.”
She blinked. “The who?”
“The tooth fairy,” Dean repeated, as if all children everywhere should have known this. Then he looked at you. “We are doing that, right?”
You laughed. “Yes, Dean, we are doing that.”
He looked immensely relieved, like this had been a vital parenting issue and he had nearly failed it.
That night, after she had gone to bed with her tooth tucked carefully in a little cup beside the pillow, Dean lingered in the hallway outside her room for far too long.
You found him there just staring through the crack in the door like he was trying to memorize the scene.
“You okay?” you asked softly.
He looked at you with an expression that was equal parts soft and sad. “Her first tooth.”
You smiled and slipped your hand into his. “You are so sentimental.”
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
He sighed and leaned his shoulder against the wall. “She was tiny yesterday.”
You laughed quietly. “That’s not how time works.”
“It is when you’re a parent.”
You looked at him and felt your chest tighten a little at the softness there. Dean had always been emotional in his own way, but fatherhood had only made that part of him more obvious. More open. More vulnerable. Especially when it came to your daughter.
That night, he checked on her three separate times before bed.
He also insisted on writing a note to the tooth fairy “just in case she had questions.”
You were sitting on the edge of the bed when he came back in holding a small piece of paper.
“What’s that?”
He cleared his throat. “I wrote instructions.”
You stared. “Instructions?”
“Yes.”
“For the tooth fairy?”
Dean looked offended. “She needs to know the context.”
You tried and failed to keep a straight face. “Dean.”
He handed you the note.
You unfolded it and read:
Dear Tooth Fairy, Please be gentle. It’s her first tooth. She’s very brave, very cute, and extremely excited. Also, do not wake her up. Sincerely, Dad.
You looked up at him.
He had the decency to look a little sheepish. “What?”
“You wrote that.”
“Yes.”
“It’s very sweet.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I know.”
You smiled and held the note to your chest for a second. “You’re going to make her believe in the tooth fairy until she’s fifteen.”
Dean gave a very serious nod. “That is the plan.”
You laughed softly and leaned in to kiss him.
When you pulled back, he was smiling in that warm, helpless way you loved most.
“She’s going to wake up so happy,” you whispered.
Dean looked toward her room and then back at you. “Yeah.”
Then, a little quieter, “I just hope she knows how loved she is.”
You reached for his hand. “She does.”
He squeezed your fingers once and nodded.
And when your daughter woke the next morning shrieking with joy over the coin left under her pillow and the carefully folded note from the tooth fairy, Dean looked at her like she had just performed a miracle.
She ran into his arms so fast he barely caught her.
“Daddy, it worked!”
Dean laughed and lifted her off the ground. “Of course it worked.”
She grinned, gap-toothed and triumphant. “Can I lose another tooth now?”
He stared at her for one horrified second before looking at you like he needed backup immediately.
You laughed so hard you had to lean against the hallway wall.
And Dean, still holding your daughter, looked between the two of you and shook his head with a smile that said he was already doomed in the best possible way.
summary: you've been married to Garth and enjoying the married bliss
warnings: none, just cuteness
a/n: i hope you like this one as much as i do!
Nobody tells you that marriage is embarrassing as people only talk about responsibility, commitment and duty.
Nobody warns you that one day you will wake up married and suddenly become painfully aware that another person exists all the time.
That they can see you, that they notice things, they know whether you prefer the window open and know how long you spend deciding what to wear. That they hear you singing quietly to yourself when you think nobody is nearby.
Nobody warns you how intimate ordinary things become; nobody talked about affection, about kissing.
Nobody talked about the fact that maybe the most intimate thing in the world was not ceremony but somebody reaching for your hand automaticly as if your existence had become habit if closeness had become instinct.
You and Garth had been married for a little over a month. long enough that people stopped asking how married life was.
Short enough that sometimes you still woke up and remembered oh, right this is real.
This is my room now, my books he gave me and tried to teach me how to read against rules.
My husband.
That word still startled you and not because it felt wrong but because it felt unexpectedly soft.
You had expected marriage to feel formal, instead it felt strangely domestic like warm socks, forgetting to knock and like finding out somebody remembers how much honey you take in your tea.
You had discovered very quickly that Garth liked touch. Constantly.
His hand finding yours, his shoulder against yours, his fingers brushing your back when walking past. If you sat beside him eventually you ended up touching like gravity pulling you both to eachother. It happened naturally.
At first you thought he didn’t realize, then one day you asked and he looked surprised.
Then shrugged. "I like knowing you’re there"
That had nearly killed you.
Today you found him in the sitting room reading... or pretending to.
You stood in the doorway, he looked up immediately and his face changed instantly.
That soft thing, that expression people never talked about. The one that says there you are.
Your chest still did strange things when you saw it, you crossed the room.
He looked at you, closed his book and held out one hand.
No words.
You smiled and walked over. Immediately he pulled gently.
You laughed. "What?"
His mouth curved. "Come here"
You looked at him. "You’re reading"
He shrugged. "You’re better"
Your face got warm, you rolled your eyes then sat half on top of him because apparently this had become your life.
He smiled immediately, one arm around your waist. Book long abandoned.
You looked at him. "That was fast"
He looked confused. "What?"
"You gave up on reading"
He thought about it for a moment then looked at you. "Oh"
Like the answer was obvious.
"I missed you"
You looked away, his nose brushed your temple. "You were gone for an hour"
You looked offended.
His shoulders moved with quiet laughter then he kissed your cheek.
Once. Twice. Three times.
You stared as he tried to look innocent.
You narrowed your eyes when he kissed your forehead.
You laughed. "What are you doing?"
He looked thoughtful. "Nothing..."
Another kiss. Your jaw this time.
He smiled when you grabbed his face. Then kissed him properly and his eyes widened slightly, he smiled against your mouth.
One hand moved higher against your back. Slow. Warm.
When you pulled away he looked entirely too pleased with himself.
You narrowed your eyes. "I see"
He smiled. "What?"
You leaned closer. "You’re affectionate because you know I’ll kiss you"
His eyebrows lifted. "...yes"
You laughed and he kissed you again like that answered everything.
You stayed there, curled against him, his chin resting on your shoulder. His hand under yours.
The room being warm, windows open, nothing happening. It felt impossible sometimes.
Not the marriage but the gentleness because outside everything felt structured, measurd and observed.
People performed marriage, discussed households and nobody said 'my husband kisses my forehead absentmindedly while reading'
Nobody said 'sometimes my wife steals my book because she wants attention'
Nobody said 'we talk in bed until too late because we like hearing each other think'
You looked at him then quietly you said "Do you think we’re strange?"
His eyes moved to yours. "What?"
You smiled then looked away. "I don’t know... compared to everyone"
His expression softened and his thumb moved over your hand. "Maybe"
You looked at him, his mouth curved. "But I like us"
Your chest hurt unexpectedly, he reached out and touched your face. His eyes softened.
He asked quietly "What?"
You shook your head "Nothing" You leaned forward and kissed him once.
Then again, then once more.
He smiled. "You seem affectionate today"
You looked offended. "Today?"
He laughed then suddenly moved.
One second you were sitting, the next he pulled you sideways onto the sofa.
You yelped.
His arm wrapped around you, your head landed on his chest as he looked smug.
You stared. "Garth!"
He looked innocent. "Yeah"
You tried not to smile but still failed.
His hand moved slowly through your hair and you melted instantly.
His eyes softened."There she is..."
You blinked. "What?"
His smile became smaller. "Saw you relaxing"
You stared at him then buried your face in his chest. He laughed softly, wrapped both arms around you. You felt him press a kiss into your hair, then another to your cheek. You smiled.
His voice quiet above you "I wish people talked about this" His expression softened and he looked embarrassed for exactly one second. "The nice parts..."
Your chest tightened as you looked at him. He looked away.
"Nobody says marriage can just be liking somebody"
You smiled and moved closer, your nose brushed his. You whispered "I like you"
He smiled immediately, too quickly like he couldn’t help it."No, you love me"
You gasped and his grin widened.
You kissed him and his hand moved to your jaw. He kissed you back.
When you finally pulled away he rested his forehead against yours, eyes closed.
"I love you too you know"
Simple and easy like breathing.
You smiled and kissed him again.
And whispered "I know"
He opened one eye. Offended.
You laughed as he kissed you until you apologized.
And later when evening came you ended up in bed tangled together under blankets. No urgency and no expectations; just his arm around your waist, your leg over his, your face tucked into his neck.
His sleepy kisses against your forehead and hand finding yours under the covers and you thought maybe love was not dramatic after all.
Maybe sometimes the bravest thing in the world was making a home out of another person and filling it with softness until nobody remembered it was ever supposed to be anything else
hey, i don't know if you do request, but what about brendon Park x wife!medical malpractice attorney? and they have a kid together who needs urgent medical attention for a sprained ankle, aaaand she is just as intimidating as park. u can feel the pressure and tension in that room for both having the shark and a well recognized medical malpractice attorney
okay I did peds reader bc they’re almost the same??? lol
brendon park x peds wife!reader
SHALLOW WATERS
"what've we got?" robby asked as the paramedics wheeled in.
"11 year old male, bp 119/73, HR 111, RR 20. apparently he took a fall; reporting pain to the left ankle." the EMT leaned in closer. talking in his ear. "neighbors called it in."
the attendings eyebrows drew in. “parents?" the medic tipped his head toward the kid discreetly. "he said his parents were at work— didn't say where. but he was adamant about coming here.”
robby glanced at the boy then back to the EMT. almost as if needing clarification. “we were closer to Presby.”
it wasn’t new to have patients rerouted. but it wasn’t something they’d ask for. especially by someone this kid's age. if his condition was worse, they would’ve taken him to Presby. no hesitation.
“his name?”
“Henry— didn’t get the last. we were trying to get his heart rate down, his adrenaline was high.“ the medic explained. “besides his request to come here, he didn’t talk much after that. I assumed he was still in shock from the pain.”
“and the neighbors didn’t say anything else? where his parents are or where they work?” robby needed something. the medic shook his head. “not to me.” his head turning over to his partner. “Pzsonyi— did the couple tell you anything about the parents?”
“said they were doctors.”
and he was adamant about coming here.
“that should narrow it down. not like we have a hospital full of those—” robby said sarcastically. “we got it from here.”
robby turned and walked towards where the nurses were. the blonde already fixed on him as he approached.
“you good?” dana asked as she watched over the rim of her glasses.
Robby’s hands went behind his neck as he blew out a breath. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
he then looked over his shoulder where the boy was across the floor of the department. “the 11 year old patient that just came in” his head gestured back. Dana’s eyes following. “would you be able to work your magic and get his emergency contacts? came in without anyone. according to the EMT, his parents work here.”
the charge nurse's eyes pinched a bit.
"they work here?"
Robby shrugged. “I’m not for sure,” Dana gave him a look, rolling her eyes.
“one of the medics said his parents were doctors and the other told me the boy was insistent on coming here. It’s a long shot but I could only assume.” robby scratched his beard. Dana gave him a nod. “I’ll see what I can do.”
His hands clapped together, grasping one another as he gave her a tight lipped smile. A silent thank you before he turned to leave. heading over to where Henry was.
Jesse was with him. A smile on the boy's face despite his damp cheeks.
“Henry, right?” robby started as he grabbed some gloves. blue eyes stared back at him, then a nod. a quiet ‘yes sir’ given.
it was a small movement. the corner of Robby’s mouth lifted up.
Respectful.
his attention turned to Jesse. “500 mg of acetaminophen, 350mg of ibuprofen. and let’s get him in for xrays.” Jesse nodded as he gets the meds ready.
“We’re gonna get a hold of your mom and dad, Henry– let them know you’re here.” robby circled back to the patient. The attending watching. The boy’s lips parting before licking the bottom. almost as if it was on the tip of his tongue and he decided against it. “Okay.”
“I hear they’re doctors here, any chance I might–”
“Robinavitch.” Dana peeked in. Robby glanced up. The charge nurse's head tipped the other way. “a word.”
Robby gave Henry’s shoulder squeeze. “I’ll be right back, in the mean time, Jesse here,” hand motioning to the tall male nurse, “aaaand” Robby’s head swiveled. eyes catching two of his students.
Student and first year resident.
“Whitaker. Ogilvie.”
the two turned when they heard their names. Robby signaling them over.
“Dr. Whitaker and Dr. Ogilvie,”
“Student Doctor.” James interrupted with a finger up. Robby paused and nodded. “Right– are going to assist.”
“Dr. Robby, we don’t–” whitaker’s words fell short as the older man delivered a shoulder pat. “You got this.” gloves snapped off as he sailed out. The blonde was standing in the hall with pressed lips, tablet held to her chest, and an amused glint in her eyes.
“Did you work your magic?”
A smile stretched across Dana’s face. “I feel like you’re gonna regret asking me.” she laughed. “I did— and you’re never gonna guess who mom and dad are.”
Robby eyed her. “Who?”
Dana flickered her sight a few feet away to where the boys were. her finger pointing to the younger one who sat on the hospital bed.
“you’ve got a baby shark in there.”
Robby blinked. then let out a laugh.
not a nervous one and not an amused one. It was one someone gave when they were just given information they couldn't fathom. Or really, didn’t like. Almost like not wanting to hear what they were just told even if they asked for it and now they were suffering the consequences.
that kind of laugh.
“of course they are.” hands rubbing his eyes as he fell back onto the heels of his feet. “Are we sure?” he squinted as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Dana grinned. “Oh, I’m sure.”
“Did you already let them know?” robby asked.
“And what? risk the chance of there being blood in the water because I waited to tell them that their son was down here. What are you fucking kidding me? Of course I told them.” the charge nurse gave him a wide look as if not believing he really just asked a stupid question.
He was a man afterall.
Robby blew out a breath. “Fuck– okay. When are they–” his question answered when you guys approach.
“Park.”
It was rare to see you both down here at the same time. Not that it never happened, it was just unexpected. The interns said it felt wrong. like seeing a shark itself in the shallow waters.
You hadn’t even acknowledged robby; passing right by. Brendon barely sparing a nod.
“Better not have anyone incompetent with my son.”
Henry looked up when he heard his dad. A wide smile stretching when he saw his mom.
Your persona was washed off. Not at all caring that you were completely exposed. Out in the open. Your hand caressing his cheek, his smaller one on top.
“Are you okay?” a quiet ask. eyes watching him as he nods. “I’m okay.”
A satisfied smile before you press a kiss to his forehead. Squeezing his cheeks in your grasp.
Whitaker and Ogilvie just stared. One not wanting to interrupt and probably too scared to do so, while the other stood with wide eyes. His mouth parted like a fish out of water.
Brendon pressed another kiss to the other side of his head. before his eyes lift to his boy's foot. an ice pack resting on his ankle.
“is he on meds?” Brendon asked as he leaned up. his hand brushing against his son’s hair before pulling gloves out of his scrub pocket. snapping them on.
“500 mg of acetaminophen– 350mg of ibuprofen.” Robby clarified. arms crossed as he nodded.
“iced the area to—” “I’m not blind.”
Whitaker closed his mouth.
“dad.” brendons eyes caught his sons. the boy giving him an unimpressed look that you knew he inherited from the man in front of him. “don’t interrupt.”
your suppress a smile. his words sounded familiar.
brendon cleared his throat. “finish.” gaze on the r1 for a split second before he diverts it.
Whitaker looks to robby, then looks to you then the young boy. he knows now how Ogilvie felt. only this time it was a little more reassuring knowing the kid had his back. he didn’t know if that made him feel better or worse.
“We uh— just iced to reduce the swelling, elevation above heart level. bp now, 105/61, HR 89, 99 on room….” his eyes finding Henry’s. the youngest park giving him a thumbs up.
“xray?” you asked from the side. "dr. robby already had them in order.” whitaker verbalised.
“we’re still waiting to get him in.” the attending intervened quietly. you slowly peeled yourself away from your son. "I'll be back— make sure dad doesn't kill anyone." you joke drily as you leave.
it earns a giggle from the kid.
Ogilvie, who had been surprisingly quiet, turns to where you just left. eyes wide as his head spins. “was she being serious—”
"It was just one time." Henry shrugs.
"One?” Whitaker and Ogilvie echo. Robby’s lips pursing as he watches in amusement. head shaking at how easy it was to reel them in.
By the time the sun had climbed high over the Fire Palace, Fire Lord Zuko had already accepted that he was being followed.
Again.
He noticed it first in the corridor outside the eastern archives, when he turned after dismissing a messenger and saw the small figure at the far end of the hall, just barely peeking around a carved pillar. When he kept walking, the figure moved too, quick and quiet and determined to remain unnoticed despite being about three feet tall and wearing a bright red dress that made “stealth” entirely impossible.
Zuko stopped.
The little shadow stopped too.
He folded his arms. “Suri.”
A beat of silence.
Then, from behind the pillar, his daughter stepped out with a solemn expression that she clearly believed was very convincing. Her hair had been tied back by your hand that morning, though now half of it had escaped and curled around her face in loose dark waves. She looked at him with all the seriousness of a royal guard.
“Yes, Papa?”
“You have been following me all morning.”
Suri blinked once, then looked mildly offended. “I have not.”
Zuko raised one brow.
She considered this, then changed course without hesitation. “I have been… walking nearby.”
“That is still following.”
“It is different.”
“How?”
She put one small hand on her hip, just like you did when you were being theatrical on purpose. “Because I am not following you. I am making sure you are safe.”
The answer was so matter-of-fact, so entirely confident, that Zuko had to bite back a laugh.
He crouched slightly so he was eye level with her. “You are four.”
“I know.”
“That is not usually the age when children patrol the palace.”
Suri frowned. “I am not patrolling.”
“No?”
“No.” She lifted her chin. “I am helping.”
Zuko stared at her for a moment, then glanced down the hall as if appealing to the spirits for guidance. “Helping.”
“Yes.”
“And what exactly are you helping with?”
She thought seriously about that. “You.”
That stopped him.
The stern line of his mouth softened before he could stop it. “Me?”
Suri nodded as though this should have been obvious. “You have important work. Important work needs watching.”
Zuko exhaled through his nose, looking away for a second so she would not see how close he was to smiling. “Who taught you that?”
“Mama.”
He should have known.
He straightened and offered her a hand. “Come on. If you are going to insist on being my shadow, you might as well do it properly.”
Suri’s face lit immediately. She took his hand with both of hers, and the two of them continued down the corridor together, her tiny steps keeping pace beside his much longer ones.
For the next hour, she was there for everything.
She accompanied him to the receiving chamber when a pair of merchants came to present a proposal about imported tea. She sat very still on a cushion beside his throne while he listened to them explain shipping costs, trade routes, and the politics of ceramic jars. When one of the merchants glanced at her and smiled, Suri smiled back with unnerving solemnity.
Zuko could feel the man trying not to be distracted.
“Go on,” Zuko said dryly. “My daughter is not judging your numbers.”
Suri whispered loudly, “I am not.”
That, unfortunately, made it worse.
After the merchants left, Zuko found her swinging her feet on the cushion and staring at him in complete absorption.
“What?” he asked.
“You were very serious.”
“I am usually serious in meetings.”
She nodded as though this confirmed something important. “You look serious all the time.”
He leaned against the arm of the throne and gave her a look. “That is rude.”
“It is true.”
“And your mother says you should not say every true thing you think.”
Suri brightened. “Mama also says I am very honest.”
“Did she say that as a compliment or a warning?”
Suri grinned, entirely unrepentant.
By noon, the palace had begun to notice the tiny royal escort.
A servant carrying a stack of folded linens nearly tripped when Suri appeared beside Zuko in the hallway, silent as a cat and twice as determined. Two guards at the doorway to the council chamber exchanged glances when she tried to mimic her father’s stride, planting her feet with great seriousness and swinging one arm just slightly too much. Zuko caught one of those looks and immediately sighed.
“No,” he said.
The older guard straightened at once. “Your Majesty?”
“I know what you are thinking.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
“You are thinking she is adorable.”
The guard’s expression remained perfectly neutral. “I would never presume,”
“She is,” Zuko said flatly. “You are not allowed to laugh.”
The second guard cleared his throat, suspiciously close to a cough.
Suri looked up at him. “Papa, why can’t they laugh?”
Zuko opened the council chamber door for her and muttered, “Because then they will never stop.”
Inside, the room fell into the usual uneasy silence of a meeting beginning too early in the day. Advisors sat around the long table with scrolls and ledgers stacked neatly before them. A few looked mildly alarmed to see Suri following Zuko in and taking her place right beside his chair as though she had every right to be there.
One councilman leaned toward the others. “Has the princess been invited to this meeting?”
Suri heard him.
She turned her head and said, with complete composure, “I invited myself.”
The room went still.
Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose. “That is also not how invitations work.”
Suri blinked. “But it worked.”
It did not, strictly speaking, help the atmosphere.
The meeting dragged on through border disputes, grain supplies, and a long, tiresome discussion about reconstruction budgets in the western provinces. Zuko spoke when necessary, listened when he had to, and tried not to smile every time he looked down and found Suri sitting on the floor beside his chair, drawing tiny fire lilies on scraps of paper with a charcoal nub one of the servants had given her.
She was very quiet there. Very focused.
Every few minutes, though, she would look up at him.
Just to check.
Just to make sure he was still there.
Still safe.
Still hers to follow.
At one point, as one advisor droned on about tax levies, Zuko noticed Suri leaning against the side of his chair, her little eyelids beginning to droop. She had made a heroic effort all morning, but the palace was warm, the room was stuffy, and being a tiny shadow required more endurance than she could keep up forever.
She rubbed one eye with a tiny fist.
Zuko lowered his voice without interrupting the speaker. “Suri.”
Her head lifted at once. “Mm?”
“You can go find your mother.”
She shook her head immediately. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am helping.”
He nearly smiled again. “You are falling asleep.”
“I am not.”
She said it with such offense that one of the advisors coughed into his hand to hide a laugh. Zuko heard it.
He pointed at the man without looking away from his daughter. “Do not encourage her.”
Suri straightened her back valiantly, determined to prove him wrong. “I can stay.”
“Of course you can.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You do not believe me.”
“I believe you are very stubborn.”
“I learned it from you.”
That drew a real smile from him at last.
The council chamber, which had been miserable ten seconds earlier, visibly struggled not to react. Zuko looked down at his daughter, who was now swaying only slightly in place, and his expression softened in a way no one in the room was meant to see.
“You did learn that from me,” he admitted.
Suri looked victorious.
Then, suddenly, she yawned so wide that she nearly lost her balance.
Zuko stood at once, startling the entire council into silence. “Meeting is adjourned.”
One advisor opened his mouth. “Your Majesty, we have not,”
“We have.” He reached down, scooped Suri up before she could protest, and settled her against his shoulder. She immediately melted into him with the trust only a child could have. “Continue tomorrow.”
The advisor looked scandalized. “Because the princess is tired?”
Zuko’s gaze lifted, calm and unyielding. “Because my daughter has been following me around the palace all day and I have decided she has earned the right to nap.”
No one argued after that.
By the time he reached your chambers, Suri was already half asleep in his arms, her cheek pressed into his robes and one small hand curled in the fabric at his chest. You were sitting near the window when he came in, reading with your feet tucked beneath you, and the moment you looked up, your face changed.
“There she is,” you said softly. “My tiny spy.”
Zuko gave you a tired look. “She claims she was helping me.”
You closed your book with a smile. “Was she?”
“I think she believes she was.”
You stood and crossed the room to meet him, brushing your fingers lightly over Suri’s hair. Your daughter stirred at your touch, then sighed and burrowed deeper against him.
Zuko looked down at her, then at you, and something warm passed across his face.
“She followed me everywhere,” he said quietly. “The throne room. The archives. The council chamber.”
You laughed under your breath. “And did the Fire Lord survive?”
He adjusted Suri in his arms with careful hands. “Barely.”
Your smile softened. “Did she tell everyone she was helping?”
“She did.”
“And did anyone believe her?”
He paused, then answered with complete seriousness, “I did.”
That made you grin.
Zuko glanced between you and the sleeping child in his arms, then sighed in the long-suffering way of a man who had been defeated by affection and did not mind at all.
“She is very small,” he said.
You reached up and touched his cheek. “Yes.”
“She is also very determined.”
“Yes.”
“And she thinks she is my guard.”
You kissed the corner of his mouth. “She is.”
He looked down at the sleeping bundle in his arms, then back at you. “I think I may have created a problem.”
You smiled. “A very cute problem.”
Zuko huffed quietly, but there was no complaint in it. Only love.
He bent his head and kissed your forehead, then carried his tiny shadow toward the bed, where he could let her rest after a long day of important work.
pairing: Garth Chapin x f!reader | genre: drama, cute |
summary:
warnings: Gilead being Gilead,
a/n: i decided to merge two of my requests as they were very much similar. I hope it's fine by you
People always assumed daughters of commanders had easy lives, people imagined silk, teal dresses, private gardens, big houses filled with children. That was what good marriages were like.
They imagined certainty but nobody imagined fear. Fear belonged to other women. Not to daughters. Not to wives and not to women who smiled correctly and sat at the right tables
You learned very early that people only saw what confirmed the story they wanted.
Your father had once said proudly "Power protects"
You had smiled and nodded, you were fourteen and already knew that power only protected people who already had it.
So you learned, you listened, you stood near doors and remembered conversations.
You memorized names, routes and transfers. You learned to look uninterested, you learned that men spoke freely around women they respected least. You learned how to become invisible while standing in the center of a room and eventually someone found you or maybe you found them. You never knew.
Only that information started moving; quietly.
One conversation passed to another person, one schedule remembered, one warning delivered.
Never enough to matter and never enough to save everyone.
But enough. Enough that every morning you woke up wondering if today was the day someone would open the door and know.
Then you got married.
Commander Garth Chapin.
Newly promoted, good family, educated and respectable. And young.
Your father approved imediately. Too imediately.
Which made you suspicious as you expected another man who wanted obedience, politeness and distance, careful affection performed for appearances.
Instead the first night in your new house Garth carried your bag into your room and said "You can arrange things however you want"
You looked at him.
He looked back. Then frowned. "Was that strange"
You blinked. "...a little"
His ears turned pink. "Oh"
You almost smiled.
You were married for three weeks before he kissed you; not because he didn’t want to. That part was obvious.
You noticed the way he looked at you and immediatly looked away. The way he stood too close before remembering himself. The way his voice changed when he said your name. No,he waited because he thought he should.
You noticed that too and for reasons you couldn’t explain that made something ache in your chest.
One evening you were sitting together after supper.
You were embroidiering and he kept pretending to read some papers.
You put aside your unfinished work. "You’ve turned the same page three times"
His eyes widened. "I wasn’t_"
"You were"
He sighed.
You looked at him.
He looked back.
And then "Can I ask something?"
You nodded.
His fingers tapped once against his knee. "Are you uncomfortable with me?"
Your breath caught. "What?"
He looked embarrassed. You almost laughed at the sight.
He countiniued "You’re kind to me" His eyes stayed on the floor. "But sometimes it feels like you’re somewhere else"
Your stomach twisted because he wasn’t wrong.
You smiled carefully. "I’m just adjusting"
His expression softened immediately like he regreted asking.
And suddenly you wanted to touch him which felt dangerous.
You said "You can kiss me if you want"
His eyes snapped up and you immediately regretted saying it.
His throat moved. "You mean that?"
You held his gaze "Yes"
He looked at you for a long moment. Then quietly "I’ve wanted to"
Heat climbed your neck as he moved slowly like he expected you to change your mind.
His hand touched your jaw. Warm and careful.
His mouth brushed yours. Soft, nothing dramatic. Nothing demanding.
But when he pulled back his expression looked almost startled.
You looked away first. After that everything became worse because now you knew, now you knew what his hands felt like, now you knew he looked at you like you were something fragile and impossible and now you noticed how broad his shoulders were when he loosened his coat after long days.
How his voice got lower late at night, how his hand settled briefly against your back when he walked past and you hated yourself for noticing because you were keeping secrets, because people died for les and because if he ever discovered who you really were you didn’t know what he would choose.
You didn’t know if love would matter then.
Months passed and both of you got better at being married.
You on the other hand got worse at hiding.
One night there was a dinner; several Commanders, your father included.
You sat quietly, listened.
One mentioned increased investigations, another laughed. Someone said "Traitors always think they’re smarter than they are"
Your chest tightened.
Then your father said "People reveal themselves eventually"
Your glass almost slipped, across the table Garth looked at you, only for a second. Then looked away.
That night you couldn’t breathe, you stood alone on the balcony.
Cold air and too much silence.
You didn’t hear him approach.
Only "Hey"
You jumped. Garth stopped immediately, his face softened. "Sorry"
You turned away. "I’m fine"
He came beside you. Waited. Then "Are you?"
You laughed quietly. "That’s dangerus"
His brow furrowed. "What is?"
"Asking questions you might not want answers to..."
He stared at you. "I think not asking is worse"
Your chest hurt as you looked at him.
His shirt moved in the wind, his expression looked tired.
Human.
You wondered terribly what would happen if you told him. Then imediately shut the thought down.
Three nights later you made a mistake. Not dramatic one just tired kind of mistake.
A folded page hidden in the wrong place. Names, dates.
You realized it the second you entered your room, the drawer was open and your entire body went cold.
Garth stood near the desk, looking at you. He wasnt angry or confused, just... still.
Your heartbeat became painful. His eyes held yours.
You whispered "What did you find?"
He didn’t answer.
You swallowed.
Again you asked, harder this time "What did you find?"
His jaw moved once. Then "I burned it"
You stared, your knees nearly gave out.
He continued quietly "I didn’t read all of it... I just read enough"
You couldn’t move, you expected shouting, questions fear and Eyes coming for you.
Instead he looked devastated which was far worse as you thought of it.
You whispered "...why?"
His eyes stayed on you and very softly "Because you looked terrified"
Your throat closed. You laughed once, a horrible sound. "You should report me"
His expression changed instantly like something inside him broke. He stared for a moment then crossed the room. Stopped close. Too close.
His voice low "Is that what you think I would do?"
You looked away. "You’re a Commander..."
He looked at you. "You’re my wife"
Your eyes burned. "You don’t know what that means...."
His voice became rough. "Then tell me"
You shook your head, he stepped closer. "You’ve been carrying something since the day we got married"
His eyes searched your face. "You wake up afraid"
His hand lifted then stoped and rested lightly against your wrist.
"You look at every closed door" His voice softened. "And every time I get called into meetings you look sick"
You closed your eyes.
He whispered "What are you afraid of?"
Your breath shook.
Then you said it. Not details. Not names.
Just "I help people"
Silence.
You kept staring at the floor.
"I use access" You whispered, your voice got quieter. "I pass information"
"Why?"
You looked at him and his face wasn’t angry just confused.
You laughed softly, disbelieving.
"How are you asking why?" Your voice cracked.
He didn’t answer and suddenly everything came out.
Because you were tired, because he knew and because maybe you wanted someone to know.
You whispered "Because people disapper" Your eyes burned. "Because everyone pretends not to see"
Your breathing shook. "Because if I have power and I do nothing then what’s the point"
Silence. Then very quietly "I’m scared all the time" You looked away.
"I thought marriage would make it easier" A laugh. "It made it harder"
His face softened.
You whispered "Because now there’s something to lose"
His eyes changed, you saw it. he stepped closer his hand finally touched your face, his forehead rested against yours.
And he whispered "You thought I’d hand you over?"
You closed your eyes and he let out a breath.
"No"
Your eyes opened.
He looked terrified and honest. "No"
His thumb moved once. Then quietly "I don’t know what this means..." His mouth curved sadly. "I don’t know what I’m supposed to do"
His eyes held yours. "But I know I can’t look at you and believe you’re wrong"
Your throat tightened, he looked at you for a long moment. Then smiled faintly. "You know what’s funny"
His voice softened. "My promotion" He looked away. "I thought it meant I finally understood the world"
His eyes returned to yours. "And then I married you"
You laughed through tears. He smiled. "I think maybe I’m only starting now"
Neither of you moved away, his hand stayed at your jaw while his eyes dropped briefly to your mouth then back to your eyes.
You whispered "What happens now?"
His expression softened, his answer came immediately. "Now" His thumb brushed your skin. "You stop being afraid in this house"
Your breath caught. His eyes stayed on yours and for the first time since your wedding you kissed him first.
Not desperate.
His hand moved to your waist. Pulled you nearer, his forehead pressed to yours afterward, his eyes closed and for one impossible moment you thought that maybe the most dangerous thing you had ever done was let yourself believe someone could know the truth and stay
The photographer had been smiling for exactly seventeen minutes, which was about sixteen minutes longer than she wanted to.
You could tell she was trying. Really trying. Her smile was still polite, her camera still hanging around her neck, and her voice had remained sweet through at least three failed attempts at a simple couple’s shoot. But even the nicest people had limits, and you were beginning to think Beau Maxwell was testing every single one of hers.
“Okay,” the photographer said carefully, stepping back from the lens and lowering the camera. “Let’s try that again. Just look at each other. No laughing. No faces.”
Beau, standing beside you in a white button-down he had already somehow made wrinkled, put a hand over his chest like he had just been personally attacked. “No faces?”
You bit your lip so you would not laugh. “That is a very reasonable request.”
He turned to you with mock betrayal. “You’re taking her side?”
“I am a fan of professionalism.”
The photographer looked between the two of you and gave the kind of small smile people reserved for situations that had gone beyond recovery but might still be salvageable with prayer. “Maybe a little softer this time.”
You nodded immediately. “We can do soft.”
Beau leaned closer to you, his shoulder brushing yours. “I can do soft.”
The photographer lifted the camera again. “Great. Look at each other.”
You did.
Beau held your gaze for exactly two seconds before his mouth twitched.
Your brows rose in warning. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You are definitely doing something.”
“I’m looking at my girlfriend.”
“You are plotting.”
That made him grin. A real grin, bright and helpless and way too good-looking, and you already knew where this was headed.
The camera clicked once.
Then again.
Then the photographer lowered it slowly and shut her eyes for one long, quiet second.
Beau, who had been trying very hard to look innocent and failing beautifully, had crossed his eyes.
You snorted before you could stop yourself.
The photographer exhaled through her nose. “Beau.”
He straightened at once. “What?”
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
You covered your mouth with your hand, shoulders shaking. “You crossed your eyes.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You absolutely did,” you said, laughing now. “I saw it.”
He looked wounded. “I was trying to create a playful atmosphere.”
The photographer stared at him.
Beau stared back.
You could practically hear her soul leaving her body.
“I appreciate playfulness,” she said finally, “but I would also like one photo where both of you look like you are not being held hostage.”
That made you laugh harder. Beau glanced at you, clearly pleased with himself, and then said, “See? Hostage is strong. That means the energy is memorable.”
The photographer turned to you, not even bothering to hide the pleading in her expression. “Does he always do this?”
You opened your mouth, then closed it.
Beau answered for you. “Yes.”
You shot him a look. “That was not your place.”
“It absolutely was.”
She let out a tiny, tired laugh, and you could tell she was trying to stay in control of the session by sheer force of will. “Okay. New approach. You two stand closer.”
Beau stepped in immediately, one hand settling at your waist. His touch was warm and familiar, the kind that still made your stomach feel light even after all this time. You angled toward him, chin tipping up with a smile you were trying to keep under control.
The photographer nodded. “Better. Now just relax.”
Beau made a face. “I am relaxed.”
“You look like you’re about to fake your own death.”
He gasped. “That is offensive.”
“It is also accurate,” you said, and that was enough to make him look down at you with that crooked smile he used when he was in trouble and knew it.
“See?” he said. “She’s on your side too.”
“Because I like photos where we both still have eyes,” you muttered.
The photographer raised the camera again. “Okay. This time, Beau, do not make any weird expressions.”
He pressed a hand to his chest. “Why does everyone assume I’m the problem?”
You and the photographer said at the same time, “Because you are.”
He blinked, then looked offended again. “Wow. So this is bullying.”
You leaned into him, trying not to smile too much. “You brought this on yourself.”
Beau rested his chin lightly on top of your head, and for a second the whole thing actually felt like it might work. The photographer’s voice softened. “Good. Stay there.”
The shutter clicked.
Once.
Twice.
Then Beau whispered, just loud enough for you to hear, “I can feel you trying not to laugh.”
You muttered back, “I can feel you being impossible.”
“That is not a crime.”
“You’re right,” you said. “It should be.”
He made some tiny noise of offended amusement against your hair, then, because he was Beau and self-control was clearly a myth, he whispered, “If I kiss your cheek, will she let us go sooner?”
You turned your head a fraction. “No.”
His grin widened. “Didn’t say it had to be a good idea.”
The photographer, from behind the camera, sighed. “Beau, if you make her laugh again, I am officially quitting.”
He looked over at her, dead serious. “That sounds dramatic.”
“It is dramatic.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding like he was taking this all very seriously. “No more laughing.”
You watched him for exactly three seconds before narrowing your eyes. “That face means you are absolutely about to do something.”
“I’m just standing here.”
“With intent.”
He smiled innocently, which was never a good sign.
The photographer pointed at the two of you. “Hands on each other. Natural. Not weird.”
Beau placed both hands on your waist like he was obeying a command from the gods. You mirrored it with one arm around his middle, your fingers curling lightly against the back of his shirt. If not for the photographer’s increasingly strained patience, you might have actually been able to enjoy this.
“Okay,” she said. “Now look at each other like you love each other.”
You did.
That part was easy.
Beau’s expression changed first, the teasing fading into something softer, steadier. It happened so quickly you almost missed it, but then you caught it fully, the way his eyes settled on you like he had no interest in looking anywhere else. The whole room seemed to quiet a little.
The photographer’s voice softened too. “Good. That’s good.”
You felt your own smile turn smaller, more real. “Like that?”
“Yes,” she said. “Exactly like that.”
For one perfect second, Beau stayed still.
Then his face slowly shifted into a ridiculous over-the-top smolder that was so exaggerated it looked like he was parodying a romance cover.
You lost it immediately.
The photographer made a sound that was halfway between a groan and a cry for help. “Beau.”
He broke character at once and started laughing too, which only made you laugh harder. You leaned forward, forehead hitting his shoulder, while he bent slightly at the waist, one hand gripping his stomach like he had been wounded.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped.
“No, you’re not,” you said, trying and failing to catch your breath.
The photographer lowered the camera and just stared at him. “What was that even supposed to be?”
He straightened, still laughing. “I thought it was sexy.”
You wheezed. “It was terrifying.”
“Okay,” he said, pointing at you. “That’s hurtful.”
She rubbed a hand over her forehead. “I need you to know I have photographed weddings, babies, and one extremely emotional engagement in the rain, and I have never felt this close to quitting.”
Beau’s grin softened into something more sheepish. “That bad?”
“Worse.”
You covered your face with one hand while still laughing, and Beau glanced down at you with a little smile that said he had no intention of helping the situation. He brushed his thumb over your hip, then leaned in and kissed your temple.
The photographer clicked the camera anyway.
At that, you peeked through your fingers. “Did you get something usable?”
She looked at the screen, then looked back at the two of you with a suspicious expression. “Maybe.”
Beau perked up. “Maybe?”
She turned the camera around so you could see the shot. It was not perfect, which was somehow the point. You were half laughing, Beau was kissing your temple, and both of you looked messy and real and so clearly in love it was almost embarrassing.
You stared at it for a second longer than you meant to.
Beau did too.
His voice came out quieter when he finally spoke. “That one’s good.”
You glanced up at him. He was no longer joking. His eyes stayed on the photo for a second, then moved back to you, and there was something so warm in his expression that your chest gave a small, stupid ache.
The photographer noticed the shift too, because she immediately lifted the camera again. “Yes. That. Don’t move.”
Beau looked back at her, then at you, then slowly let his expression settle into a real smile. “Oh, so now you trust me?”
“No,” she said. “I trust her. You’re just there.”
You snorted. Beau put a hand over his heart like he had been mortally offended, but he was smiling too, and this time when he pulled you closer, he did not try to ruin it.
“Eyes on me,” he murmured.
You lifted yours to his.
His voice dropped even lower. “There she is.”
Something in your face must have changed, because the photographer gave a sharp little yes under her breath and started snapping pictures again.
This time, Beau stayed still.
Mostly.
He did, however, decide to whisper, “You’re really pretty when you’re annoyed.”
You shot him a look. “I’m going to destroy you later.”
His smile turned dangerous in the softest possible way. “That sounded promising.”
The photographer made a strangled noise from behind the camera. “Please do not say things like that during a session.”
You and Beau both went red.
Then, because he had clearly decided embarrassment was just another form of entertainment, he leaned forward and kissed you.
Not a dramatic kiss. Not one meant to show off. Just a quick, warm press of his mouth to yours that made your entire body go pleasantly weightless for a second.
When he pulled back, your lips were tingling and the photographer looked like she had just witnessed either a masterpiece or a crime.
Beau’s grin was lazy and satisfied. “There. Natural.”
The photographer stared at the camera screen for a long, silent moment.
Then she looked up.
“Finally,” she said, with the exhausted reverence of someone who had barely survived a storm. “That one is perfect.”
You laughed again, though this time it was softer. Beau slid his hand into yours and squeezed once, pleased with himself in the way only he could be. The photographer continued taking a few more shots, but now there was less pressure in the air, less frustration, more of the easy rhythm that had been there all along beneath the chaos.
Still, Beau could not help himself.
The moment she lowered the camera for a break, he leaned toward you and murmured, “We should frame that one.”
“The one where you acted like a menace?”
“The one where I was emotionally compelling.”
You gave him a flat look. “You crossed your eyes.”
He smiled, completely unashamed. “And yet, you loved it.”
“I tolerated it.”
“Same thing.”
The photographer looked up from the camera bag, visibly alert. “If either of you start making faces again, I’m done.”
Beau held up both hands in surrender. “No more faces.”
You looked at him skeptically. “That’s not a promise you can keep.”
He glanced at you, all faux innocence. “Watch me.”
The next time the photographer lifted the camera, Beau managed exactly four seconds of serious composure before he started laughing at absolutely nothing.
She shut her eyes.
You laughed so hard you had to grab his arm to stay upright.
And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, the photo she took ended up being the one you loved most.
Because it was not perfect.
It was better.
It was you, laughing into Beau’s shoulder while he looked at you like you were the whole reason he was smiling at all. It was messy and real and impossible to stage, which was exactly why it felt like the kind of picture you would keep forever.
When the session finally ended, the photographer lowered her camera with the expression of a soldier returning from war.
“I survived,” she announced.
Beau gave her a solemn nod. “You did great.”
She pointed at him. “Do not flatter me after what I endured.”
You laughed, stepping closer to Beau as he draped an arm around your shoulders. The photographer began packing up with one final glance in your direction.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “the ridiculous pictures were better than the serious ones.”
Beau grinned. “I knew it.”
You looked up at him. “You would.”
He kissed the top of your head and said, with complete satisfaction, “You looked cute when you were trying not to smile.”
You narrowed your eyes. “You are impossible.”
He smiled down at you, warm and easy and entirely certain. “Yeah,” he said. “But you still kept me.”
And that, more than the photos, was the part you knew you would remember.
That was the only reason he wasn’t immediately defensive about it, because if it had been intentional, he would have absolutely gotten smug and impossible about it just to annoy you.
Instead, he was standing in your room with his hoodie half on, looking for his phone charger while you were in the bathroom, when he spotted the folded piece of paper on your desk with his name written in the corner of the notebook page underneath it.
He should have ignored it.
He did not.
Dean picked it up, unfolding it with the casual curiosity of a man who had not yet realized he was about to ruin his own emotional stability.
The first line made him pause.
Then the second.
Then he sat down slowly on the edge of your bed like his legs had briefly stopped working.
Because the page was full of names.
Not random names. Not class notes. Not a grocery list. Baby names.
There were neat little pairs written in your handwriting, some crossed out, some starred, some with little notes beside them.
Elliot — sounds strong June — pretty, soft Theo — maybe too serious Sophie — cute Milo — no Lila — maybe if it’s a girl Noah — good with Dean’s last name? Adrian — maybe Violet — pretty James — too common Wren — love this one
Dean stared at the page for a long time.
Then he flipped it over.
There was more.
His chest felt strange. Not bad. Not panic, exactly. More like surprise had decided to settle somewhere deep and warm and inconvenient.
You came back into the room drying your hands on a towel and froze the second you saw him holding the paper.
Dean looked up very slowly.
You looked at the list.
Then at him.
Then back at the list.
And in the space of one terrifying second, all the blood seemed to rush out of your face.
“Oh my God,” you said.
Dean blinked once. “So, uh.”
You crossed the room so fast it almost counted as a run. “You were not supposed to see that.”
He looked down at the page again, then back up at you. “You made a baby name list.”
You made a horrified sound. “Give that back.”
Dean lifted it a little higher, just out of your reach. “Absolutely not.”
“Dean.”
He stared at you with wide, stunned eyes and the beginnings of a grin that he was clearly trying and failing to suppress. “Did you really write ‘good with Dean’s last name?’”
Your whole face went hot. “I was brainstorming.”
“That is my favorite thing you’ve ever said.”
You groaned and dropped your forehead into your hand. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do, because this is humiliating.”
Dean stood up, still holding the page, and took one slow step toward you. “You made a list.”
“It was private.”
“It has my last name on it.”
You peeked at him through your fingers. “That does not make it less private.”
Dean looked down at the list again and then smiled, softer now. Not smug. Not teasing. Something gentler and far more dangerous because he clearly knew exactly what he was doing to your nerves.
“You were really thinking about this?” he asked.
You lowered your hand. “Not, like, right now. It’s just, I don’t know. I was thinking.”
He held your gaze. “About babies?”
You made a face. “Dean.”
“What? I’m asking.”
You crossed your arms. “Maybe a little.”
He looked like he had just been handed the universe and had no idea what to do with it.
That was the problem with Dean. He could go from cocky to completely undone in the span of two seconds if you gave him something real enough.
He glanced back down at the page and read a few names under his breath. “Violet, June, Elliot…”
You nearly died on the spot. “Stop reading it.”
“I’m learning.”
“You’re being a menace.”
Dean looked up, and now he was smiling so openly that it made your stomach feel warm and helpless. “You have opinions about future baby names.”
You sighed dramatically. “I was bored.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I was.”
He folded the page once, carefully, like it had somehow become something fragile instead of embarrassing. Then he tucked it into his back pocket, which made you stare at him in horror.
“Dean.”
He looked down at you, eyes bright with amusement. “What?”
“You are not keeping that.”
He lifted a brow. “I absolutely am.”
You took a step toward him. “Give it back.”
“No.”
“That is blackmail.”
“No, this is evidence.”
You made a scandalized sound. “Evidence of what?”
Dean smiled, stepping closer until he was right in front of you. “That you think about me in your baby name lists.”
That made your face feel like it was on fire.
“You are impossible,” you muttered.
“You already said that.”
“Because you are.”
Dean’s eyes softened a little when he saw how flustered you were. Then, because he was Dean and could not possibly resist making the whole thing worse, he lifted one hand and brushed his thumb lightly against your cheek.
“You really thought I wouldn’t like this?” he asked softly.
You looked up at him. “I thought you’d tease me.”
“Obviously.”
“I didn’t think you’d be this happy about it.”
His smile changed into something quieter. More honest.
“I am happy about it.”
Your heart kicked once.
He held your gaze and said, in the simplest voice possible, “You’re thinking about a future that has me in it.”
You swallowed.
His hand stayed warm against your face. “That’s kind of insane.”
You laughed weakly. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m trying to be serious.”
“That is always suspicious coming from you.”
He grinned a little, but his voice stayed soft. “No, really. That’s…” He paused, then looked almost shy for half a second. “That’s really sweet.”
You blinked.
Dean Di Laurentis calling something sweet like it wasn’t the most embarrassing thing in the world made your chest feel too full.
“You’re blushing,” he said.
“Because you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not.”
You stared at him. “Dean.”
He shrugged, still smiling. “A little, maybe.”
You reached for the paper in his pocket, and he caught your wrist with a laugh.
“Too late,” he said.
You narrowed your eyes. “I’m not letting you keep that.”
He leaned in, voice low and playful again. “Then make a better list.”
You froze.
His grin widened.
Then he kissed your forehead, still laughing under his breath, and you had to look away before he could see how much that one tiny gesture had gotten to you.
He tugged you gently closer after that, resting his forehead against yours for a second.
“You know,” he murmured, “I’m very interested in the rest of this list.”
You groaned. “Dean.”
“What? I am.”
“You are not allowed to be this smug over a notebook page.”
He smiled against your mouth when you looked back at him. “I absolutely am.”
And then, because he could not leave it alone, he kissed you once more and said, “For the record, I think June sounds nice.”
You stared.
He gave you a very serious look. “What?”
You buried your face in his chest to hide your laugh, and Dean held you there with that stupidly soft expression of his, still very much acting like he had not just discovered the possibility of a future that included both your name and his.
More specifically, he had a you problem, which was much worse because the second your name lit up his phone, he was done for.
It happened during a team meeting in the hockey house common room, where Garrett was complaining about something stupid, Dean was barely listening, Tucker was pretending to be the only responsible one in the room, and Hunter was trying very hard to act like he was paying attention.
Then his phone buzzed.
He looked down without thinking.
you: are you still alive you: or did hockey finally kill you?
Hunter stared at the screen for one second.
Then the corner of his mouth lifted before he could stop it.
Garrett, sitting across from him, narrowed his eyes instantly. “What?”
Hunter looked up too fast. “What?”
“You just smiled.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
Hunter shoved his phone face-down on the table and leaned back in his chair. “You’re imagining things.”
Garrett looked deeply unconvinced. “No, I’m not.”
Dean glanced up from his own drink. “He did smile.”
Hunter pointed at him. “Traitor.”
Dean smirked. “It was small. But it was there.”
Hunter scowled, which only made Tucker look more interested. “Who texted you?”
“No one.”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a lie.”
“It is not.”
His phone buzzed again.
He made the mistake of looking down.
you: wow. rude.
Another smile tugged at his mouth immediately, smaller this time but very much there.
Garrett slapped a hand on the table. “Aha.”
Hunter straightened. “Oh, come on.”
“You are absolutely smiling again.”
Hunter scoffed. “I’m not.”
Dean leaned back in his chair, smirking. “You are.”
Hunter glared at all of them. “Why are you all watching my face?”
“Because it changes when you get texts,” Garrett said.
“That is not a real sentence.”
Tucker looked amused. “It is if the texts are from her.”
That made Hunter pause.
Because of course it was from you.
You had become, somehow, the one person who could make his mood turn around with a single notification. He hated how obvious it was. Hated more that the guys had figured it out before he had managed to do anything about it.
He picked up his phone again and typed back, trying to look uninterested even though his thumb was moving faster than usual.
alive. unfortunately. barely survived practice. thinking about quitting hockey and becoming your full-time reply guy.
The message sent.
Then the little typing bubble appeared.
Hunter’s face changed before he could stop it.
Garrett saw it and groaned dramatically. “Oh my God.”
Hunter looked up. “What?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“You have the stupid smile.”
Hunter took a slow sip from his drink to hide it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dean leaned forward a little. “You look like you just got told Christmas was canceled and then immediately got it back.”
Hunter almost choked.
Tucker laughed into his hand. “That’s oddly specific.”
Hunter gave them all a flat look. “You guys are obsessed with me.”
Garrett pointed at his phone. “Because every time she texts you, you look like you won the lottery.”
Hunter looked down immediately, trying to regain some kind of control. But then your reply came through.
you: wow. dramatic. you: i miss you though
That was the end of him.
He smiled before he even realized it.
Not a small smile this time.
A real one.
Garrett made a noise like he was suffering. “There it is.”
Hunter looked up, completely lost to the fact that he was now very obviously smiling at a phone screen in front of all of his friends.
“What?” he asked, too casually.
Tucker squinted at him. “You’re smiling.”
Hunter’s eyes widened a little. “No, I’m not.”
Dean laughed. “Yes, you are.”
“You all need hobbies.”
Garrett leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “You know what’s funny?”
Hunter gave him a warning look. “No, I don’t think I do.”
“You smile more when she texts you than when we win.”
Hunter went still.
That actually stopped the room for a second.
Tucker’s brows rose. Dean looked mildly impressed. Garrett looked like he had just found the final puzzle piece.
Hunter’s mouth opened, then shut again because that was absurd and maybe also true and absolutely not something he wanted to deal with in front of the whole room.
“That’s not,” he started.
“True?” Garrett offered.
Hunter stared at him.
Garrett grinned. “It’s true.”
Hunter muttered, “You’re all terrible.”
But then his phone buzzed again, and before he could stop himself, his face softened all over again.
Garrett threw both hands up in victory. “Oh, come on.”
Hunter looked down and saw your next text.
you: if you’re smiling at your phone again i’m taking credit for it
He laughed before he could hide it.
All three guys erupted immediately.
“There it is!” Garrett said.
Dean sat up, pointing at him like he had just caught him in the act of a crime. “You did smile.”
Hunter looked around the room, half annoyed and half helpless because there was no way out of this anymore.
Then he typed back.
you: guilty. you: i am smiling because of you. you: happy now?
The reply came almost instantly.
you: very
Hunter stared at the screen for a second.
And, naturally, smiled again.
Garrett groaned like he had just suffered a personal loss. “That’s disgusting.”
Hunter finally looked up, not even bothering to pretend anymore. “You’re just mad because nobody texts you like this.”
Dean pointed at him. “Don’t make me agree with Garrett.”
Tucker smiled to himself. “He’s not wrong.”
Hunter shook his head, but he was still smiling, and at this point he had given up on trying to hide it. “You guys are unbearable.”
Garrett leaned over the table and jabbed a finger toward his phone. “Text her back.”
Hunter looked down.
Then he did.
Because of course he did.
And while he typed, all four of them watched him with varying degrees of amusement and disgust until Garrett finally muttered, “Yeah, he’s gone.”
Hunter didn’t even care.
Because you had sent him one text, and now he was smiling like an idiot in the middle of the hockey house and would probably do it again the second your name lit up his screen.
Which, if he was being honest, was maybe the worst and best thing that had ever happened to him.
Just a Bruise - Nathan MacKinnon x Daughter Reader
Summary: You take a hard shot off your ankle during a game and assume you're perfectly fine. Unfortunately for you, your dad knows exactly what "I'm fine" sounds like when it's actually "something is very wrong."
Warnings: Sports injury, ankle fracture, stubborn athlete behavior, pain, swelling, worried dad, medical evaluation
Word Count: 960
Requests Open !! :)
"You did it again."
Nathan MacKinnon stood at the boards with his arms crossed.
You sighed.
"Dad."
"You did it again." He repeated.
"It hit my shin pad."
"You dove in front of it."
"I'm a defenseman."
Nate looked completely unimpressed.
"You are at practice."
"I'm a defenseman." You repeated.
"It was a drill."
"I'm a defenseman." You said as if it explained everything.
"It was a shooting drill."
You pointed dramatically.
"Exactly. Defense."
Nate rubbed his face.
"Honey, you don't have to block every shot in practice."
"Yes I do."
"No, you don't."
"That's literally my whole thing."
"No, your whole thing is being a good hockey player."
"No. My whole thing is blocking shots."
Nate stared.
You stared back.
He sighed.
"You are going to get hurt if you keep doing this."
"Dad."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
"You don't need to sacrifice your body every time somebody winds up."
"I play defense."
"And?"
"You're a forward."
The second the words left your mouth, several of your nearby teammates immediately looked away.
Nate narrowed his eyes.
"You wanna say that again?"
"You wouldn't get it."
"Oh, I wouldn't?"
"No."
"I think I can say I've played a little hockey in my life."
"Not defense."
"You are impossible."
"And yet I'm correct."
"You're fifteen."
"And correct."
He pointed a finger at you.
"One day you're going to block a shot you shouldn't."
"I'll be fine."
"That attitude is exactly what worries me."
Three weeks later.
Tie game.
Third period.
Your team was killing a penalty.
The puck moved across the blue line.
The opposing defenseman wound up.
Huge shot.
You didn't even think.
Just instinct.
Drop.
Turn.
Block.
CRACK.
Pain exploded through your left ankle.
White-hot and instant.
You nearly dropped to your knees as the puck deflected harmlessly into the corner to your left.
The crowd cheered.
You sucked in a sharp breath.
Everything hurt.
Everything.
Your teammate skated over.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, yeah."
You absolutely were not.
"That looked like a hard shot."
"It's okay."
"You sure?"
You took a tentative step.
Pain shot up your leg.
Your stomach flipped.
"It's okay," you repeated quickly. "Just stung a bit."
The coach was already looking your way.
You forced yourself upright.
"Let me walk it off."
You finished the game, because of course you did.
By the end of it you were barely putting weight on the foot.
But you'd finished.
Your team won.
You convinced everyone it was fine, but that only lasted until you got home.
summary: in which dean is always the one quietly stepping in whenever garrett can’t, filling the gaps with a kind of friendship that feels safe without ever asking for recognition.
notes: hi! thank you so much for your request! just a few little sweet moments between dean and y/n to establish their 'sibling-styled' relationship. i love seeing how precious dean can be with those around him. i hope you enjoy! 💌💌
✩.* found family fics!
✩.* found family masterlist
ˋ°•*⁀➷ in other words... three times dean steps in when garrett couldn't.
ꪆৎ
1. the morning coffee tradition
the thing about dean and y/n’s coffee tradition is that nobody actually remembers how it started.
one day it just sort of… existed.
wednesday mornings became tradition sometime during your freshman year after dean discovered that you physically could not function before ten in the morning without caffeine, food, and at least twenty minutes of silence.
he’d found you sitting outside one of your lecture halls looking genuinely miserable, curled into yourself on the concrete ledge beneath the windows with an untouched granola bar in your lap.
dean had stopped walking immediately.
“you look dead,” had been his first greeting.
you’d blinked up at him slowly from beneath the hood of your sweatshirt, eyes tired and unfocused in the way they always got when you were overwhelmed.
“i feel dead.”
dean stared at you for another second before glancing down at the granola bar still sitting untouched in your hands.
then he sighed dramatically. “absolutely not.”
you frowned faintly. “…what?”
“c’mon.”
“where?”
“coffee.”
“dean i have class in twenty minutes.”
“and i have concern for you.”
despite all the overwhelming thoughts, you’d laughed quietly at that and dean had felt something oddly victorious settle in his chest. even back then, before the tradition became routine, dean had already started noticing things about you.
you carried stress quietly, too quietly.
you’d smile through exhaustion.
push through headaches.
skip meals when assignments got overwhelming.
tell people you were “fine” in that soft voice that usually meant the exact opposite.
somewhere along the way dean had started catching those things automatically.
not because garrett didn’t, he noticed too.
always.
but garrett loved you loudly, openly. he was constantly touching you, checking on you, looking at you like you'd hung the sun.
dean’s care was quieter than that, woven into little things.
extra coffees, walking on the outside of sidewalks. small things that slowly became permanent.
after that first coffee, wednesday mornings became routine without either of you ever formally discussing it.
same coffee shop just off campus
same booth beside the window.
same sleepy version of you arriving somewhere between five and ten minutes late every single week while dean pretended to be annoyed about it.
same teasing arguments over your coffee order because dean remained personally offended by your commitment to iced coffee in the middle of winter.
“one day,” he tells you, “you’re gonna freeze to death out of stubbornness.”
“you're so dramatic.”
“no, i'm just correct.”
the rest of the guys catch onto the routine pretty quickly, mostly because dean disappears every wednesday morning without fail.
“where are you going?” logan asks one morning from the kitchen while dean searches for his keys.
“coffee.”
“with who?”
dean looks at him blankly like it’s the stupidest question he’s ever heard.
“y/n.”
logan pauses mid-bite.
“again?”
dean frowns immediately. “what do you mean again.”
“you guys literally do this every week.”
“and?”
logan exchanges a look with tucker across the kitchen island. “nothing,” tucker says carefully. “it’s just really sweet.”
dean looks horrified. “don’t say that.”
logan grins immediately, “you’re basically her emotional support hockey player.”
“incorrect,” dean says instantly. “i’m her favourite hockey player.”
“that’s actually me,” garrett says as he walks into the kitchen moments later, hair still damp from practice.
dean points at him immediately. “you’re biased.”
garrett snorts softly while reaching for the coffee dean had apparently made him earlier. “she’s literally my girlfriend.”
“exactly. biased.”
garrett just shakes his head with poorly hidden amusement because honestly?
he loves the tradition.
he loves that you have dean.
hockey consumes so much of their lives sometimes. practices, travel, games, media, pressure and expectations all piling endlessly onto them, until exhaustion settles deep into their bones. somehow, dean became the person who quietly made sure you didn't get lost inside all of that.
garrett notices it constantly.
the way dean always pushes your coffee toward you before you even sit down. the way he checks your expression the second you walk into a room. the way he instinctively steps closer anytime you look overwhelmed in crowded places.
it’s never overbearing, just protective in that deeply steady way dean loves people, and garrett trusts him completely.
“you’re late.”
you slide into the booth exactly seven minutes behind schedule one snowy wednesday morning, scarf wrapped around the lower half of your face while cold air clings to your coat.
dean’s already sitting across from you nursing his coffee.
“good morning to you too.”
“i thought you died.”
“that’s sweet.”
“it would’ve ruined my morning.”
you laugh softly under your breath while shrugging your coat off, your cheeks a crimson red from the cold outside.
the café glows warm around you, windows fogged slightly from the winter air. soft music hums somewhere overhead while students crowd small tables scattered throughout the room.
dean pushes your usual order across the table before you even ask.
your coffee. your breakfast sandwich, and an extra hash brown because dean’s somehow convinced you, “don’t eat enough.”
“thank you,” you mumble quietly.
“mhm.”
you take your first sip and physically relax against the booth. you feel your shoulders loosen and your eyes close briefly, almost as if your soul had just re-entered your body. dean watches the entire thing happen with visible satisfaction.
“there we go” he says.
you crack one eye open. “what?”
“the human version of yourself, she's here."
you point accusingly at him over the rim of your coffee cup, “you’re mean to me every single week.”
a glint of amusement settles into his eyes, “and yet you still show up.”
“free breakfast goes a long way di laurentis.”
dean snorts softly into his coffee before his expression shifts slightly, softening around the edges the way it always does when he really looks at you.
“you okay?”
the question comes every week. always casual, always genuine, never forced. sometimes the answer’s easy but other times it turns into an hour-long conversation about stress, homesickness or overthinking.
sometimes dean talks instead, letting anxiety off about the pressure he feels from jensen, about how tired he is of feeling like everyone has it all mapped out but him.
these wednesday mornings had quickly become the one place neither of you felt pressured to pretend.
today you just sigh quietly while pulling your sleeves over your hands.
“busy week.”
dean hums knowingly.
“you’ve been studying too much.”
“i’m in college, dean.”
“yeah, but normal people sleep occasionally.”
you laugh softly. “garrett says the same thing.”
dean immediately points at you. “see? that’s because your boyfriend and i are the only people around here with common sense.”
“that's debatable.”
“no it's not.”
your smile grows slightly while snow continues drifting softly past the windows outside, for a moment neither of you say anything.
a comfortable silence settles easily between the two of you, and maybe that’s part of why these mornings matter so much. dean never demands anything from you. you don’t have to be funny or energetic, you can just exist quietly with him while the world wakes up outside.
then eventually your expression softens around the edges.
“thank you,” you say quietly.
dean glances up from his coffee.
“for?”
“this.”
you gesture vaguely between the two of you. “the coffees, the checking in. you're always making sure i’m okay. i know i have garrett and the girls, but it really means a lot to have someone else too."
for a second dean just looks at you like he doesn’t understand why that would need thanking, before he leans back slightly against the booth with the faintest shrug.
“you’re one of my favourite people, y/n" he says simply.
the words hit harder than they should, because dean says things honestly, and there’s something incredibly safe about being cared for by someone like that.
you smile softly down into your coffee. “don’t tell garrett you said that.”
dean scoffs immediately. “please. that man already knows.”
you chuckle briefly and dean’s grin appears instantly at the sound, that’s another thing about this coffee tradition. dean quietly measures the success of every wednesday morning by whether he can make you laugh before ten am.
somehow, without anybody really noticing when it happened, these mornings became one of the steadiest parts of both your lives.
ꪆৎ
2. insecurity; everyone wants garrett graham
it’s nearly twelve am when dean hears the front door open quietly.
the hockey house is mostly asleep now after an away game. the bus got back almost forty minutes ago, everyone exhausted and cold and half-dead after six straight hours of travel.
empty gatorade bottles litter the kitchen counter, an abandoned duffle bag sits by the stairs. the whole house smells faintly like sweat, detergent, and post-game exhaustion.
dean’s downstairs on the couch pretending to study while eating cereal straight from the box when you walk in.
his eyes lift immediately.
you’re wearing garrett’s jacket over your outfit from earlier, sleeves hanging over your hands, your makeup slightly smudged beneath your eyes.
you look tired, not upset exactly, just emotionally wrung out.
dean frowns immediately. “where’s garrett?”
“still at briar,” you murmur softly while shutting the door behind you. “coach jensen wanted to talk to him after everyone had left."
dean nods once because that makes sense.
captain stuff. probably game strategy or travel schedules.
you walk further into the living room before dropping onto the couch beside him with a small exhausted sigh.
“weren’t you supposed to drive back together?” dean asks after a second.
you nod, curling slightly beneath the blanket abandoned beside him. “yeah, we were.”
your mouth softens faintly afterward. “but he knew i was tired and didn’t wanna make me wait around at the rink. i think he's getting a ride home with jensen".
dean can practically hear the rest of the conversation without needing details. garrett standing beside the bus still carrying half his equipment, one hand rested on your waist telling you softly to go home and sleep while he finished talking to jensen. probably kissing your forehead before forcing his car keys into your hands.
dean huffs quietly to himself.
hopelessly in love, the both of you.
“he made me promise to text when i got home,” you mumble.
“obviously.”
you smile faintly at that before leaning your head back against the couch cushions. dean studies your face for another second.
“you okay?”
you hesitate for a second before shrugging lightly. “just got in my own head a little tonight.”
dean turns to face you immediately. “about what?”
you debate brushing it off. normally you would, but dean’s always been easy to talk to. calm and patient. never making you feel silly for the thoughts your brain turns into bigger problems.
“there were these girls at the game tonight.”
dean’s expression shifts slightly, not tense yet, just attentive.
“okay…”
“they were sitting a few rows behind us,” you explain softly. “all wearing graham jerseys and talking about garrett.”
dean already knows where this is going before you even finish the sentence and you watch as his jaw tightens slightly.
“what were they saying?”
you shrug again, but this one feels smaller.
“just that he was hot. that they wished he’d notice them. one of them literally said she’d do anything to be with him.”
dean’s face immediately darkens with annoyance.
not at you.
never at you.
at them.
because people always seem to forget there’s an actual person attached to situations like that.
“they were saying it right there?” he asks carefully.
you nod once, slightly pulling on the ends of garrett's sweater in search of something grounding.
“like i wasn’t even there.”
something in dean’s chest twists at that, because you and garrett aren’t subtle. maybe not publicly public, but enough.
enough that anyone paying attention should notice the way garrett’s attention constantly gravitates toward you without even thinking about it.
yet, apparently these girls didn’t notice, or didn’t care.
you had convinced yourself it was the latter.
“and i know it’s dumb,” you continue quickly before dean can speak, voice quieter now, “because i trust him. i do. garrett handled it immediately when one of them tried talking to him after the game and he was perfect about it, it’s not even him.”
dean remains quiet, letting you get it out.
“it's just…” you laugh softly, but there’s no humour in it. “sometimes i think about the fact that he could genuinely have anyone he wanted.”
dean’s expression softens instantly.
“y/n-”
“no, seriously,” you interrupt gently. “he’s attractive, he’s good at hockey, everyone loves him already and he's not even playing in the nhl yet. once that happens it’s only going to be worse.”
your eyes stay fixed somewhere on the floor now.
“and those girls were all wearing his jersey and cheering for him and i realised i don’t even own one.”
dean blinks slightly. “what?”
you shrug helplessly, “i don’t know. it just made me feel stupid for some reason.”
dean places his hand on your shoulder reassuringly. “you know why those girls were talking about him like that?”
you frown slightly.
“because they don’t know him.”
your expression falters a little and dean continues talking before you can argue.
“they know hockey garrett. public garrett. they know the version they see for three hours on the ice.” his voice stays calm and certain.
“you know the guy who drives across town at two in the morning because you mentioned wanting fries once.”
your lips twitch faintly, a small smile threatening to grace your features.
“you know the guy who physically cannot relax if he thinks you’re upset" dean adds quietly, the corner of his mouth lifting as he gives your shoulder a brief squeeze. warm, steady, familiar.
“the guy who looks for you first in every room without even realising he’s doing it.”
your chest tightens quietly at his words.
“those girls wanting him doesn’t mean they actually have him, y/n.”
dean’s voice softens slightly then.
“you do.”
he lets his hand fall away gently from your shoulder before adding, quieter now, "and for the record, garrett would rather lose playoffs for the rest of his life than have you feel even slightly replaceable."
you snort softly. “that feels dramatic.”
“he’s dramatic,” dean replies immediately, earning a real laugh from you this time. he smiles faintly at the sound.
“also,” he adds, “the jersey thing is fixable. honestly kind of offended he hasn’t already forced one onto you himself.”
you smile at his words, your hand finding his shoulder as you squeeze gently.
"thank you", you say softly.
he nods his head in quiet understanding, then after a second, nudges the cereal box towards you.
“you hungry?”
you laugh softly. “yes.”
“good,” dean says. “because your boyfriend left strict instructions to feed you if you came home tired.”
your smile appears instantly. “did he actually?”
dean grabs his phone before tossing it into your lap. a text from garrett glows across the screen.
garrett
make sure y/n eats something please. she looked exhausted when i was with her
another one sits directly underneath it.
garrett
and don’t let her say she’s fine if she goes quiet
your chest aches immediately, because garrett knows you so completely it still catches you off guard sometimes.
dean notices your expression soften while reading the messages and immediately points at you accusingly. “don’t get emotional over texts right now.”
you laugh quietly, “shut up.”
he gets up a second later to make you actual food instead of letting you survive off cereal and when garrett finally gets home twenty minutes later, still wearing his briar hockey hoodie with damp hair from the cold outside, his eyes find you instantly.
you’re curled beneath the blanket half-asleep with dean beside you. garrett’s entire expression softens the second he sees you safe and warm on the couch.
“hey, baby.”
you look up sleepily.
“hi.”
he leans down immediately, kissing your forehead while one hand slides gently along your cheek.
“you okay?”
you nod softly.
“mhm.”
garrett glances toward dean who lifts both hands up defensively.
“she ate.”
garrett snorts quietly. “thanks, dean.”
he shrugs like it’s nothing, like he wouldn’t do it every single time.
ꪆৎ
3. quietly looked after
briar’s hockey house is always chaos after a friday night win, loud with music and crowded with teammates spilling throughout, their drinks carefully balanced in their hands.
someone’s yelling over beer pong in the dining room, logan and tucker are arguing about a goal replay near the tv and allie, sabrina and grace are all laughing so hard in the corner they can barely breathe.
everything feels hazy with warmth and noise and post-game adrenaline.
garrett’s across the kitchen talking to a couple alumni players who’d shown up after the game, still half in hockey mode despite the hoodie he’d changed into. every few seconds his eyes flick back toward you, like some invisible string keeps tugging his attention in your direction despite who he’s talking to.
and every time you drift close enough, his hand finds you instinctively.
your waist, your lower back.
your fingers for half a second before somebody pulls him into another conversation.
touching you has become second nature for him at this point.
you’ve been awake since six that morning. an early lecture, library study session, two assignments you forgot were due, then the game.
now you found yourself at the afterparty that allie had begged you to stay at for “at least one hour, because you’re literally dating the captain, and leaving early is bad for morale.”
that was nearly three hours ago.
you’re sitting on one of the kitchen bar stools slowly losing a fight against exhaustion, cheek pressed heavily into your palm while your eyes blink slower every couple minutes.
you’re still trying to be social, nodding along when people talk, smiling faintly at conversations happening around you, however, it’s the kind of tired where your whole body starts going soft around the edges.
dean walks into the kitchen beside logan mid-conversation, laughing at something over his shoulder, before his gaze lands on you and he stops immediately.
his eyes narrow, because dean knows your tired face.
there’s regular tired and then there’s this.
the heavy blinking, slumped shoulders. the way your fingers loosen around your drink because you’re too exhausted to hold it properly anymore.
“why do you look sedated?”
you lift one finger weakly without moving your head. “that’s offensive.”
“you’re falling asleep sitting upright, y/n".
“i'm multitasking.”
logan snorts loudly. dean just shakes his head before moving automatically toward the fridge, grabbing a water bottle and twisting the cap open before pressing it into your hands.
“drink that.”
you squint up at him sleepily. “you’re so bossy.”
“and yet somehow i'm always right.”
he leans against the counter beside you afterward, arms folding loosely over his chest while you obediently sip the water despite glaring at him about it.
dean glances across the room, right as garrett looks over.
the second your boyfriends eyes properly land on you, his expression shifts instantly.
it softens first before sharpening slightly with concern, because now that he’s looking closely, he notices everything at once.
the way your head keeps dipping, the tiredness in your eyes.
he excuses himself from the conversation almost immediately before crossing the kitchen toward you. dean steps aside without a word, not because garrett needs help noticing, just because he was filling the space until he got there.
garrett slides easily between your knees, hands settling automatically against your waist while he tilts his head slightly trying to catch your eyes.
“baby,” he murmurs softly. “you tired?”
your forehead drops dramatically against his shoulder. “so tired.”
garrett laughs quietly beneath his breath, one hand sliding slowly up your back.
“yeah, i can tell.”
“m’awake.”
“you almost fell asleep drinking water.”
“lies.”
dean points immediately. “not lies.”
you weakly lift a hand toward him without moving from garrett’s shoulder. “i dislike you.”
“no you don’t.”
garrett’s smile presses briefly against your hair before he presses a delicate kiss to the top of your head.
“c’mon,” he murmurs softly. “let’s get you upstairs.”
“but allie said we have to socialise.”
garrett's hand shifts from your waist to capture your face gently in his hand. “you’ve been socialising for three straight hours, y/n.”
you make a sleepy noise of agreement.
garrett laughs again quietly before helping you down from the stool carefully, one arm wrapping around your waist the second you sway slightly from standing too fast.
his hand immediately tightens, protective instinct.
you lean into him without thinking and dean watches the interaction from beside the fridge with the faintest smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
because that’s the thing, garrett always notices.
always.
he notices when your smile feels forced, when your hands get cold, when you go too quiet in crowded rooms, when you stop stealing bites of his food because you’re stressed.
dean just catches some things first sometimes because garrett’s constantly being pulled in six different directions at once.
captain.
friend.
teammate.
leader.
boyfriend.
dean’s usually standing slightly outside the chaos watching all of it unfold, so he's able to step in automatically.
not because garrett doesn’t care enough, but because dean cares too. just differently. like the brother you never had. like family.
He had opinions about practice schedules, bad refs, terrible coffee, and the correct number of snacks one should keep in a dorm room at all times. He also had a strong opinion about you sleeping on his chest.
Mostly, the opinion was that he liked it.
A lot.
It started innocently enough. You had both been curled up on the couch in the hockey house after a long day, a movie playing low in the background while Garrett’s hand absently traced slow circles over your shoulder. At some point, sometime between the third tired laugh and the moment your head settled against his chest, you had drifted off.
Garrett noticed immediately.
He glanced down, saw your face softened in sleep, and went perfectly still like he had been handed something sacred.
“Aw, come on,” he muttered under his breath, though he was smiling.
Your breathing was slow and even, your hand resting lightly against his stomach, and Garrett looked at you with the same expression he usually reserved for game-winning goals and especially good insults. Fond. A little stunned. Deeply, annoyingly soft.
Then his phone buzzed on the coffee table.
He did not reach for it.
It buzzed again.
Still no movement.
A few minutes later, Tucker poked his head into the living room and stopped when he saw the two of you.
“Dude,” he whispered, “you asleep too?”
Garrett looked up slowly, because somehow he had managed to become protective over your nap in the span of ten minutes. “No.”
Tucker took in the scene, then smirked. “You planning on moving?”
Garrett shot him a warning look. “No.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
Tucker laughed quietly. “You’re trapped.”
Garrett glanced back down at you and brushed a thumb over your arm. “I’m not trapped. I’m committed.”
That made Tucker grin wider. “You’re ridiculous.”
Garrett leaned his head back against the couch. “And yet I’m winning.”
Tucker snorted and left them there.
The movie kept going, but Garrett barely heard it. Your weight against him was warm and comfortable, your breathing a steady rhythm against his chest. He did not intend to move. Not for anything.
Which was probably why, twenty minutes later, when Dean shouted from the kitchen that they were out of ice, Garrett did not respond.
A moment later, someone yelled, “Garrett! You want me to go get,”
“No,” Garrett called back automatically, without looking away from you.
He barely heard the laughter that followed.
Another minute passed. Then his phone buzzed again. Then again. Then a text from Logan. Then a text from Tucker. Then Garrett finally looked at the screen and saw:
we need you for the pizza order also you’re being weird is she dead or just asleep
Garrett frowned and typed with one hand.
sleeping. go away.
His phone immediately rang.
He stared at it like it had personally offended him, then rejected the call.
A minute later, Dean appeared in the doorway with the air of a man who had decided to make this his problem.
“We need food,” Dean said.
Garrett didn’t even look up. “Get food.”
“We need your card.”
Garrett finally raised his head. “I’m busy.”
Dean stared at him. “Busy doing what?”
Garrett looked down at you with obvious affection and no shame whatsoever. “This.”
Dean’s gaze followed his, then he made a face. “Oh, that’s disgusting.”
Garrett grinned. “You’re jealous.”
“I am not jealous.”
“You are absolutely jealous.”
Dean leaned against the doorway and crossed his arms. “You’re never letting her up again, are you?”
Garrett looked down at you as your fingers twitched slightly in your sleep, then smiled. “Nope.”
Dean shook his head. “You’re hopeless.”
“Correct.”
Just then, your eyes fluttered open, unfocused and sleepy, your face still pressed to Garrett’s chest. You made a soft sound and blinked up at him.
Garrett’s entire expression changed immediately.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “You awake?”
You looked around a little, confused and sleepy. “Mm.”
He smiled. “Hi.”
You yawned and shifted just enough to look up at his face. “How long was I asleep?”
“Long enough.”
You frowned a little, then realized where you were and let out a tired hum. “You didn’t move?”
Garrett shook his head. “Nope.”
You blinked. “You’re still sitting here?”
He gave you a very serious look. “I made a decision.”
That made you smile, soft and sleepy. “What decision?”
He leaned closer and kissed your forehead. “That I wasn’t getting up for anything.”
You laughed weakly and settled back against him again. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah.”
“Were you at least comfortable?”
Garrett smiled down at you with the kind of tenderness that made the whole room go quieter. “I am now.”
You stared at him for a second, then reached up and touched his cheek with the back of your hand. “You’re sweet.”
He looked offended on principle. “I am always sweet.”
Dean made a gagging noise and walked away muttering something about never wanting to see that again.
You laughed and Garrett tightened his arm around you a little, clearly delighted to have you awake again but still unwilling to let you go.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“A little.”
“Good.”
“How is that good?”
“Because I was about to order pizza and refuse to move anyway.”
You smiled into his chest and shook your head. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re warm.”
That made you laugh again, softer this time, and Garrett looked absurdly pleased with himself for getting it out of you.
He kissed the top of your head and murmured, “Still not moving.”
You sighed dramatically, but you were smiling, and that was enough for him.
For the rest of the night, he refused to get up for anything at all.
summary: in which allie, y/n, sabrina and grace chase a sunset from the hockey house roof, only to end up stranded while the boys swing wildly between panic, frustration, and overwhelming relief trying to get them down safely.
notes: hi!! thank you so much for your request, this was such a fun idea to write! i love incorporating moments where the girls are completely unfazed and oblivious while the boys are losing their minds trying to keep them safe. i hope you all enjoy!! 💌
✩.* found family fics!
✩.* found family masterlist
ꪆৎ
the sunset idea had sounded significantly smarter forty minutes ago.
back when the four of you were tipsy on cheap wine, sprawled across the living room floor while grace insisted the sky looked too pretty to waste from ground level.
“we should go on the roof,” allie had declared immediately from where she was sat on the couch. which, looking back now, should’ve concerned everyone a little more.
instead, grace had gasped dramatically.
“oh my god, yes!”
you had already started grabbing blankets from around the hockey house before anyone could question the plan, and suddenly all four of you were climbing out through the upstairs bedroom window.
the roof was perfect for sunset.
warm summer air brushed softly against your skin as the sunset stretched pink and orange across campus, the sky painted in streaks of gold that reflected against the windows of the dorm buildings nearby.
grace's speaker played quietly beside you, music low enough that your laughter still carried loud across the roof.
grace lay flat on her back with one arm thrown across her eyes, her half-empty wine glass balancing dangerously against her stomach.
sabrina sat cross-legged beside her trying to tell a story that kept getting interrupted because she physically could not stop laughing at her own retelling.
allie lay beside you, curled beneath a blanket while animatedly talking about how some girl in her tutorial thought dean was 'intimidating'. you smiled softly to yourself, knees tucked beneath your chin while the skyline glowed around you.
there was something so peaceful about being with your people. the kind of closeness that only existed when friendships had crossed so far beyond casual that they’d become something permanent.
your cheeks hurt from laughing, your body pleasantly heavy from alcohol and summer heat, the sunset so pretty it almost didn’t look real.
it felt warm.
safe.
which was probably why none of you noticed the window sliding shut behind you. not until nearly twenty minutes later.
sabrina was the first one to realise.
she’d leaned backwards toward the window to refill her drink from the wine bottle that had been sitting just inside the bedroom, before stopping abruptly.
“…guys?”
allie looked up immediately, “yeah?”
sabrina frowned slightly, pushing at the window once, then harder. to her dismay, it didn't budge and a strange silence settled over you all.
grace slowly sat upright, “why are you making that face?”
“the window’s locked.”
another pause.
“what do you mean locked?” grace asked slowly.
sabrina laughed uncomfortably, her eyes widening in realisation.
“i mean it's shut...it doesn't want to open”
allie crawled over immediately, “let me have a go.” she grabbed the handle, pulling on it, but nothing happened.
the window didn't budge.
her expression shifted almost instantly.
“…oh shit.”
you stared at her, your eyes widening in realisation. “allie, what exactly do you mean by ‘oh shit’?"
she looked back at the four of you and despite the situation, started laughing.
“i think we’re stuck up here.”
you weren’t sure if it was the alcohol coursing through your body or the way the moment felt too warm to properly hold onto, but before you could say anything, laughter spilled from your lips.
because of course this had happened, of course you had somehow found yourselves locked out from the house and stuck on the roof.
the boys were going to kill you.
“okay,” you managed eventually. “it's okay we'll just call one of them”
silence.
grace checked her pockets first.
“…i left my phone downstairs.”
“mine too,” sabrina admitted weakly.
allie slowly grimaced, she had too.
you reached into the pocket of your hoodie before stopping.
“…no.”
grace immediately collapsed backward onto the blankets again.
“oh guys.”
-
the boys knew something was wrong almost immediately, mostly because the house was quiet.
far too quiet.
logan walked through the front door first carrying takeout bags in one hand before immediately narrowing his eyes. “why does it feel haunted in here?”
“y/n?” garrett called out behind him.
nothing.
dean dropped his bag beside the stairs with a frown, noticing allie’s purse abandoned on the kitchen table.
tucker glanced slowly around.
“…why can i hear faint screaming?”
everyone stilled.
logan paused.
“wait.”
there it was again.
distant yelling somewhere above them.
then-
“we're stuck!"
all four boys whipped their heads upward simultaneously.
“…what the fuck?” dean muttered.
they moved immediately.
garrett took the stairs two at a time while logan nearly dropped the takeout trying to keep up. it wasn’t until they rushed into the upstairs bedroom that garrett spotted movement outside the window.
his entire face drained instantly because there you were, sitting on the roof wrapped in a blanket, a small smile gracing your features.
“what the-" logan starts, before garrett quickly cuts him off.
"why are you all on the fucking roof?”
“before you get mad-” you started carefully.
“we got locked out!” allie yells from behind you.
dean physically freezes at the window, his eyes wide in shock. “how does that even happen?”
grace points vaguely towards all of you. “group decision.”
“that does not make it better!"
tucker’s stomach drops the second he notices how close sabrina is to the edge.
“okay no, seriously” he said immediately. “move back, sweetheart.”
“tucker, relax-"
“absolutely not.”
sabrina blinked at him.
“you guys are being dramatic" allie states, a glint of humour evident in her eyes, clearly amused by the situation.
four male voices answer instantly.
“no we are not!”
tucker already has both hands gripping the sides of his head. “you’re all drunk on a roof.”
dean narrows his eyes, focusing on the piece of blue fabric near the gutter.
“…why is there a blanket hanging off the gutter?”
everyone slowly looks down before grace visibly hesitates. “that might’ve been my attempt at making a rope.”
there was a moment of complete silence before dean covers his face with both hands.
“jesus christ-"
“i’m actually getting grey hairs.”
logan looks horrified as realisation crosses his features, “you guys were going to climb down?!”
“well we weren’t planning on living up here permanently,” sabrina points out.
“sabrina.”
“i’m kidding!”
“you’re not funny right now.”
which only makes her burst into laughter.
garrett’s attention snaps back towards you the second you shift closer to the window.
“baby,” he says carefully, in the kind of controlled voice that meant he was significantly more stressed than he wanted to sound.
"i need you to stop moving around up there.”
you blinked at him innocently in response. “i’m literally sitting.”
“exactly. stay sitting.”
“you sound stressed.”
“because my girlfriend is trapped on our roof”
a slight grin tugs at your lips. “trapped feels a bit dramatic, don't you think graham?"
“you guys made a blanket rope, y/n”
you pressed your lips together hard to stop yourself from laughing.
eventually, after twenty minutes of yelling over each other while dean attempted to figure out how the window had managed to lock in the first place and tucker actively debated whether breaking it would somehow make the situation worse, they finally managed to force it open from the inside.
dean was first to help allie climb back through the window while actively lecturing her at the same time.
“you climbed onto the roof drunk.”
“tipsy,” allie corrected immediately, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
“that is not the part of the sentence i’m concerned about.”
once safe, logan had both hands on grace’s face like he genuinely couldn’t decide whether to kiss or yell at her.
“you could’ve fallen.”
“i didn’t though.”
“grace.”
“logan.”
tucker looked genuinely stressed beside sabrina, hands rubbing over his face. “you guys seriously didn’t bring your phones?”
that somehow made all four boys visibly more upset.
“oh my god,” dean muttered. “you are all impossible.”
you were climbing carefully back through the window when garrett’s hand settled instinctively against your waist to steady you. the contact felt firmer than usual, protective in a way that immediately made your chest ache slightly.
because he still looked rattled.
his jaw was tight, eyes scanning over you again like he still wasn’t fully convinced you were okay.
“hey,” you said softly once the two of you were standing properly inside again.
garrett looked down at you immediately and something in his expression shifted the second your voice softened.
less frustration.
more relief.
you reached carefully for his wrist, “we’re okay, we were being safe.”
his hand moved instinctively higher against your waist then, pulling you closer without even seeming to realise he was doing it. he exhaled sharply against the top of your head like he’d been holding his breath ever since he saw you up there.
“how long were you guys stuck out there for?”
the question comes out sharper than he intends it to, his hands settling against your arms like he needed physical confirmation that you were fine.
“not that long,” you said carefully.
“define not that long.”
“…maybe forty minutes.”
he exhales, pressing a delicate kiss to your forehead.
“you scared the shit out of me, you know that?” his voice is quieter than before, the honesty in it hitting significantly harder than you expected.
he sounded genuinely shaken.
you tilted your head back slightly to look up at him.
“but did we die?”
all of the boys groaned simultaneously in response before dean points accusingly at all four of you.
A/N: this is from last summer hence why he’s a Canuck 🤗
Summary: Quinn Hughes is calm, quiet, and steady. His girlfriend? Not so much…
Warnings: none :)
Quinn Hughes is a man of few words.
You are a woman of seventeen side quests before breakfast.
It works. Mostly because he lets you be unhinged and you let him have quiet moments to recharge.
---
You first met at a charity event. He was standing by the snack table, quietly debating whether eating a third granola bar would be frowned upon.
You, meanwhile, were in the middle of passionately explaining to a Canucks media intern why every NHL team should have a mascot fight night.
You talked for ten straight minutes. Quinn said maybe six words.
You didn’t notice. You were too busy acting out a hypothetical scenario where Gritty suplexes Carlton the Bear.
He asked for your number anyway.
You told your friends: *“He’s mysterious. I like it.”*
He told his friends: *“She’s kind of terrifying. I also like it.”*
---
Now, six months in, you’re somehow still functioning as a couple — despite the fact that you treat life like an improv show and he treats it like a silent meditation retreat.
---
Example A: The Morning Routine.
You:
Wake up at 6:37AM. Play music. Do a 3-minute dance workout. Text Quinn TikToks while he's still in the bathroom. Sing the *Succession* theme song into a hairbrush. Tell the cat your plans for the day. Forget what you were saying mid-sentence. Start again with something new.
Quinn:
Wakes up. Blinks. Sits on the edge of the bed while you narrate the weather, your dream from last night, and the fact that “we should get a trampoline, babe. For cardio.”
“Trampoline?” he repeats.
“Mini one,” you say, doing jumping jacks. “Very urban. Very compact. Very me.”
He just nods. “Okay.”
You kiss him on the forehead and sprint into the kitchen like you’re being chased. He hears a crash and a “don’t worry!!” from the other room.
He worries. But only a little.
---
Example B: Game Nights.
You’re not a chill WAG.
You scream when Quinn scores. You do the “W” arms. You bring homemade signs that say “HUGHESY OR BUST.” You once got gently scolded by Rogers Arena staff for throwing confetti. It was biodegradable.
After the game, Quinn finds you bouncing on your toes outside the locker room.
“I MADE A FRIEND,” you announce. “Her name is Bethany and she said I have ‘excited golden retriever energy,’ so obviously we’re going to start a book club.”
Quinn, towel around his neck, just smiles and tucks your hair behind your ear.
“You’re sweating,” he says.
“I WAS YELLING.”
“I could tell.”
---
Example C: Living Together.
You narrate everything. Every thought. Every passing idea. Every weird Twitter thread you read that day. Sometimes in accents. Sometimes mid-pilates.
You also:
* Jump-scare him with songs from musicals
* Collect mugs you’ll never use
* Give the cat a new middle name every week
Quinn just… lets you.
He grounds you.
---
“You’re so calm,” you say one night, flopping dramatically across his lap as he scrolls on his phone.
“You’re so loud,” he replies, grinning as you poke his ribs.
“Admit it,” you say. “You like that I keep things interesting.”
“You climbed the fridge yesterday.”
“I was getting the peanut butter. That’s just resourceful.”
“You also told a delivery guy he had ‘good aura’ and then gave him a banana.”
“THE VIBE WAS RIGHT,” you say defensively.
He laughs. “I know. I love it.”
You pause. “Wait, really?”
He kisses your forehead. “You’re fun. Like, once-in-a-lifetime fun. You make life loud — in a good way.”
You blink.
Then: “You’re getting laid tonight.”
---
Quinn’s POV, Later That Week:
You’ve dragged him to a candle-making class. He’s not entirely sure how. You’re wearing a headband that says “FIRE STARTER 🔥” and explaining wick placement like it’s rocket science.
He looks at you across the table flour on your cheek, eyes lit up with caffeine and ambition and thinks, *I’d follow her anywhere. Even into a Michaels craft store.*
You glance at him mid-rant. “Wait, are you paying attention?”
He nods slowly. “Yeah. You said… pour the wax with love?”
You gasp. “YOU WERE LISTENING.”
Of course he was. He always is.
You bring the noise. He brings the peace.
Together, you’re somehow… balanced.
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