summary . . . Hockey at Briar University is treated like religion. Everyone worships the players beneath fluorescent arena lights and championship banners - especially Garrett Graham, Briar's captain and future NHL golden boy. As a journalism and photography major with zero interest in idolizing athletes, being assigned to follow the hockey team for a semester should've been simple: take photos, write columns, graduate, leave. Instead, somewhere between late-night practices, darkroom conversations, and learning how loneliness hides beneath fame, the story starts becoming personal. And the closer she gets to Garrett Graham, the harder it becomes to tell where observation ends and feeling begins. A story about ambition, being witnessed, and the terrifying intimacy of truly seeing someone.
warnings . . . slow burn, emotional tension, media/public pressure, injury mentions, blood/bruises, athlete burnout, anxiety themes, loneliness, conflict, swearing, minor angst, vulnerable Garrett Graham, reader insert (no use of y/n), first person POV, journalism ethics discussions, romantic tension, slightly poetic writing style. All characters and storylines belong to The Deal and the Off Campus universe. This fanfiction is purely transformative fan work created for fun.
author’s note . . . okay sooo this started as me wanting to write a hockey/media enemies-to-lovers fic and somehow turned into a 7.6k emotional crisis about ambition, loneliness, and being perceived I really wanted this to feel atmospheric and character-driven instead of just romance focused, especially with the photography/journalism angle. also Garrett Graham being emotionally repressed but secretly wanting someone to actually see him... yeah. thank u for reading <3
Everyone at Briar University loved hockey.
Not casually, either. Briar Hockey existed somewhere between religion and cult initiation, worshipped beneath fluorescent arena lights and carried through campus like mythology. Friday game days transformed students into walking advertisements-jerseys over hoodies, painted faces, bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder outside the arena three hours before puck drop.
The hockey players loved it too.
Half of them walked around campus like they'd personally cured disease.
You adjusted the strap of your camera bag higher onto your shoulder as you crossed the journalism building courtyard, narrowly avoiding a pack of freshmen nearly trampling each other in pursuit of a hockey player exiting a black SUV.
"Garrett looked at me," one girl whispered, clutching her backpack straps like a lifeline.
"He literally smiled at you," her friend breathed.
"I'm never washing this jacket again," said a third, who had nothing to do with the exchange except proximity.
You resisted the urge to turn and ask if they heard themselves. Instead, you shouldered through the heavy glass doors of Adler Hall, the air inside thick with printer toner and ancient carpet dust, and trudged upstairs toward Professor Adler's office. Your coffee balanced precariously in one hand while your camera bag thumped a syncopated rhythm against your hip with every step.
Your life currently existed in three places: the journalism club office, the photography lab, and whichever coffee shop on campus tolerated you squatting in a corner booth for six hours straight, cradling a laptop and editing photos until your eyes watered. It was manageable. Barely. But manageable.
Which is why Professor Adler emailing you at eight in the morning with: Need to discuss your semester exhibition proposal. Urgent. felt vaguely threatening.
His office door sat half-open, the narrow wedge revealing a slice of his disorganized world: shelves buckling under the weight of books and old yearbooks, an actual typewriter gathering dust on the windowsill, and a whiteboard covered in what looked like a mind map for a true crime podcast episode. The rain outside tapped a nervous Morse code against the glass, diffusing the early light into something gray and indecisive.
You knocked once before entering. "If this is about the deadline extension, in my defense, capitalism thrives on artistic suffering."
Adler didn't even look up from the papers on his desk. "You're late."
"You assigned the meeting twelve minutes ago."
"That doesn't make you less late."
You dropped into the chair across from him, the seat still warm from whoever had been chewed out before you. "So what academic disaster are we preventing today?"
He looked up. A red Bic pen dangled from his fingers, and your proposal sat in front of him, already bleeding with edits.
"No," he said, and the word sounded like a verdict. "Actually, it's annoyingly good."
"…that sounded personal."
"The problem," he continued, ignoring you, "is that your work lacks proximity."
You blinked, thrown. "What does that even mean?"
"You photograph people beautifully," Adler said, leaning back so his chair creaked. "But always from emotional distance. You observe. You do not immerse."
"That's called journalism. Emotional attachment gets people fired."
He smiled, the kind of smile you wanted to bleach from your brain. "That's called fear of vulnerability."
You narrowed your eyes. "I liked you better before you started psychoanalyzing me."
He slid a single page across the desk, the motion crisp and final. Your stomach dropped before your eyes even found the Briar Hockey logo at the top.
"You haven't even read it."
"I don't need to. The answer's still no."
"The hockey program granted full media access for one student this semester."
"Wonderful for whichever masochist accepts."
"You're accepting," Adler said, and the pen in his hand pointed at you like a referee's whistle.
You stared at him. He stared back. The radiator clanked to life in the corner, filling the silence with a hot metallic groan.
"No offense, Professor, but I would genuinely rather eat denim."
"The exhibition needs intimacy."
"It needs literally anything else."
"You want to become a sports journalist."
"A distinction no employer will care about."
You hated when he did that.
"You want major publications?" he continued. "Olympics. ESPN. Sports Illustrated. Then you need to learn how to document athletes beyond staged action shots."
Your jaw tightened. Because the worst part? He wasn't wrong.
"You'll photograph the team throughout the semester," Adler said. "Practices, games, travel days, interviews. Alongside that, you'll write a weekly column documenting the culture surrounding Briar Hockey."
"Culture," you repeated. "So alcoholism and concussions."
Adler sighed, but his eyes glinted with something dangerous, maybe hope. "Your inability to take anything seriously is remarkable."
"No, what's remarkable is Briar giving athletes their own kingdom while the arts department still has cameras from the Jurassic period."
"That cynicism is exactly why I chose you."
You leaned back, arms crossed, refusing to be cajoled.
Every professor on campus suddenly developed selective amnesia around deadlines once jerseys entered the equation. Entire buildings bent around the hockey team's existence: tutors, sponsorships, priority scheduling, campus celebrity for boys who occasionally punched each other professionally. And now you were supposed to spend a semester documenting them like some poetic coming-of-age documentary?
"No interviews before ten a.m.," you muttered.
Adler smiled slowly, like a man who'd already won. "I'll let Coach Jensen know."
You pointed at him. "That isn't agreement. That's surrender."
The Briar arena was a half-submerged spaceship, all glass and aluminum, rising out of the mud at the edge of campus. The inside smelled like cold metal, melting ice, and that particular brand of detergent used to clean blood from tile. The air was a shock, a sudden slap of cold that crystallized your breath and made every sound echo like a gunshot. The overhead lights burned with industrial fluorescence, throwing hard shadows across the rink and turning every edge into a geometric threat.
You stepped inside twenty minutes before practice, camera already out, the wide lens making the world seem more remote than it really was. Arena staff moved like ghosts, setting up pylons and cones, their footsteps muffled by rubber mats. High above, banners hung limp in the stale air, each one a decade-old boast about championships and All-Americans, the fabric stained by time and humidity.
Most of the seats were empty except for a couple of bored students in Briar hoodies, already scrolling their phones in the front row. On the ice, a handful of players stretched along the boards, their movements precise and oddly graceful, like dancers in a physics experiment.
One of them looked up as you approached. Tall, wide-shouldered, hair the color of burnt wheat curling beneath a backwards Briar cap. Even from a distance, he radiated the kind of confidence that got people article headlines and interview slots on ESPN. Garrett Graham.
Even if you didn't follow hockey, everyone on campus knew Garrett Graham. Team captain, future NHL draft hopeful, the face of Briar Athletics since sophomore year. He looked exactly like the kind of guy people described with words like electric and legacy.
You hated that you understood why.
His eyes tracked the camera swinging at your chest. Immediate annoyance flickered across his face, a subtle tightening around the mouth. Interesting.
You pretended not to notice, instead lifting your camera to check the settings, the lens cap already stashed in a jacket pocket. The sound of skates carving the ice echoed through the arena as more players filed in: some laughing, some still half-asleep, all of them carrying the casual violence of people who considered pain a minor inconvenience.
You started photographing before anyone could object.
Gloves tightening, tape winding in clean spirals around sticks, a player wincing as he adjusted his helmet, steam curling from coffee cups balanced precariously on the bench. Real things. Not performance.
A camera shutter echoed in the cold, sharp and precise.
Garrett's head snapped toward you. His expression hardened, the lines of his face sharpening with irritation. Oh, he really hated this.
You snapped another photo, deliberately.
Petty? Maybe. Worth it? Absolutely.
He glided over, stopping at the bench directly in front of you, skates planted wide and arms folded. "You always point that thing at people without asking?"
You lowered the camera, fighting the urge to smile. "You always introduce yourself like an asshole, or is today special?"
His eyebrows quirked up, caught off guard. Behind him, another player snorted, the sound barely muffled by a glove.
Garrett ignored it. "Media?"
"Journalism and photography."
You smiled thinly. "And hockey explains the superiority complex."
For a second, he just watched you, like he was trying to decide if you were joking, or if you were dangerous. Then: "I hate media."
"Cute," you replied. "I hate entitled athletes. Looks like we both have hobbies."
Behind him, someone actually laughed. Garrett's jaw worked, and he shot a glare over his shoulder before fixing you with that captain's stare again. "You writing one of those tragic athlete pieces?"
You shrugged. "I prefer investigative journalism. Thinking of exposing Briar Hockey's devastating impact on female GPA averages."
He almost smiled, but caught himself. "Funny."
"You planning on following us everywhere now?"
He exhaled, and you watched frost bloom in the air between you. "Just don't get too close to the glass during drills. We break a lot of shit."
You nodded, camera poised again. "Noted. I'd hate for your slapshot to ruin my thousand-dollar lens."
His mouth twitched. "I'd hate for your thousand-dollar lens to ruin my slapshot."
Coach Jensen blew a whistle from across the rink, the sound slicing through conversation. "Graham!"
Garrett looked away first, which you mentally logged as a win. "See you around, journalism," he said, and then skated off, leaving a trail of shaved ice in his wake.
You watched practice from behind the benches, shooting through the plexiglass, camera pressed to your face until the tip of your nose went numb. The speed surprised you most-not television hockey, but real hockey. Fast enough to blur, violent in the way storms are violent, unpredictable and beautiful in the same breath.
Your camera loved movement.
Bodies ricocheting off glass, skates churning up snow, gloves colliding with helmets, a bruise blossoming under a player's eye before the period was half over. The noise was relentless: whistles, shouts, the thunk of pucks and the scrape of blades, all of it amplified in the empty arena.
There was something strangely beautiful about controlled destruction.
Hours passed. The rink emptied and refilled with each new drill. By the time practice ended, your memory card was nearly full and your fingers ached from the cold. Players drifted off the ice in packs, towels slung around their necks, joking and chirping each other in a language that belonged exclusively to locker rooms.
You stayed behind, photographing the arena as it emptied, the condensation on the glass, the ghostly tracks left by skates.
That's when you noticed him.
Still alone on the ice, long after the others had left. No audience now, no teammates, just the echo of his skates as he traced slow, perfect circles under the half-lit scoreboard.
He looked different through the lens. Not Briar Hockey's captain, not campus royalty.
You snapped a photo as he coasted to a stop at center ice. Garrett's head turned at the shutter's click, eyes locking onto you even from half a rink away.
For a moment, neither of you moved.
Then something passed over his face-surprise, maybe, or resignation-and he skated toward the exit without a word.
You looked down at the photo on your screen. It should've been like every other sports shot you'd ever taken.
But this one looked lonely.
And for reasons you couldn't explain yet, that unsettled you more than anything else.
For the first week, Briar Hockey still felt fictional. You moved through their schedule like a ghost, hovering at the edge of drills and film sessions, always present but never part of anything. Practice after practice, you learned the choreography: the way the team captain led stretches with dry sarcasm, how the D-men chirped the freshmen, the pattern of tape-then-glove-then-helmet before each player hit the ice.
Sometimes you caught Garrett glancing at you, brow furrowed in mild disbelief-like he was still waiting for you to blink out of existence. You made a game of pretending not to notice, but your camera betrayed you every time, following his movements through the viewfinder.
There were moments when the world narrowed to just the two of you: the echo of a slapshot, the sharp scent of sweat and ice, dust motes dancing through sunlight in the upper rows of the stands. You told yourself it was just good photography.
But the photos told a different story.
After each session, you sorted through them in the dim light of your editing booth, shivering in your hoodie even though the room was warm. The shots that mattered-the ones that made Professor Adler’s lips curl in grudging approval-were never the ones you expected.
Not the glory shots. Not the goal celebrations or arms-raised-in-victory.
Instead: the exhaustion in Garrett’s eyes after a brutal scrimmage. The way a defenseman pressed his forehead to the glass after a mistake, breath fogging the surface. The quiet, private moments when someone sat alone in the penalty box, helmet off, hair matted flat.
You started to see it. The thing Adler kept harping on. Proximity.
You started to want it, too.
The second week, you worked up the nerve to approach Logan, the team’s PR guy, after a particularly bloody practice. He was leaning against the wall, scrolling his phone, a fresh bruise already blooming above his eyebrow.
“Do you ever get used to the bleeding?” you asked, voice pitched low.
Logan glanced up, grinned with half his mouth. “Nope. But you learn to dress for it.” He flicked the collar of his black t-shirt, now spattered with a Rorschach of red. “You’re the photo kid, right?”
You nodded, feeling suddenly self-conscious about the camera hanging from your neck like a borrowed credential.
Logan’s eyes flicked to your hands, then back to your face. “You shoot a lot of hockey?”
“Not unless you count men’s league at the Y,” you said. “They let you drink in the penalty box there.”
He barked a laugh. “Hell of a business model.” Then, more gently: “You’re good. The guys don’t always like cameras in their faces, but they haven’t started icing your tripod yet. That’s a win.”
You smiled, and for the first time since starting this assignment, it felt real.
After that, things got easier. You fell into the rhythm of the team: early mornings, late nights, the constant cycle of sweat and study and recovery. You learned to recognize the moods, the rising tension before a game, the bruised silence after a loss. Even Garrett began to tolerate you, though he never stopped glowering whenever you caught him on film.
The first away game was a three-hour bus ride north, through the kind of November rain that made the highway look endless. You sat near the front, editing photos in the blue glow of your laptop, but you kept one ear tuned to the back of the bus where the team played poker and heckled each other relentlessly.
At a rest stop, Garrett passed by your seat, pausing just long enough to look at your screen.
“You ever put the camera down?” he said.
“Only when I sleep,” you replied.
He made a low, skeptical sound, then nodded at the image on your monitor-a shot of him mid-game, helmet askew, eyes fixed on the puck.
“You make us look tired,” he said.
“Maybe I’m just catching what’s already there.”
He stared at you for a beat, then gave a grudging smile. “Fair.”
The bus rolled on, rain hammering the windows, and you watched the night blur past in streaks of yellow and black.
By December, you stopped noticing the cold. The rink was just another classroom, the locker room a strange second home. You started to understand the language of hockey-the coded handshakes, the superstition rituals, the way even the worst insults meant you were part of the group.
You understood, too, that Garrett was more complicated than the press releases let on. He played through pain with a kind of stubborn grace, never complained, never asked for anything. After every game, he was the last to leave the ice.
One night, you caught him sitting alone in the stands, helmet off, just watching the Zamboni circle the rink.
You sat beside him, camera left zipped in your bag.
“Everything okay?” you asked.
He shrugged, eyes distant. “Just thinking.”
He hesitated, then: “This is my last season. Feels weird.”
You nodded. “You’ll miss it.”
“Yeah.” His voice was so soft you almost missed it. “But I’ll miss this, too.” He gestured at the empty arena, the echoing silence.
You looked at him, really looked, and for the first time you saw not Briar’s captain, but just a guy trying to hold on to something slipping through his fingers.
You didn’t take a photo. Not then.
Instead, you sat together in the quiet, letting the moment stretch out between you.
When you turned in your next set of photos, Professor Adler didn’t say anything for a long time. He just paged through them, one by one, eyes sharp and unreadable.
Finally, he set them down.
“You’re getting closer,” he said quietly. “Good work.”
You left his office with a strange ache in your chest, like you’d just finished a race you didn’t remember starting.
You wondered if this was what it meant to want something badly enough to risk being seen.
You wondered if it was worth it.
The next morning, you arrived at the arena before sunrise. The parking lot was empty, the world muffled by new snow. You stood at the edge of the rink, breath fogging in the cold, and waited for the team to arrive.
When Garrett walked in, he didn’t look surprised to see you. He just nodded, then laced up his skates in silence.
You lifted your camera, but he shook his head.
“Not today,” he said. “Just watch.”
You watched him move across the ice, alone and unhurried, carving slow, perfect lines through the untouched surface. There was no performance, no crowd, no reason to impress anyone.
It was just him, and the ice, and the beginnings of a story you suddenly couldn’t wait to tell.
You didn’t take a single photo.
You just watched, and listened, and learned what it meant to be close.
By January, Garrett Graham had become impossible to avoid.
Not physically. You could still navigate campus without collision, still maintain professional distance at practices, still pretend your stomach didn't lurch when he entered a room.
Which was significantly worse.
The arena in winter existed in perpetual twilight. Even at noon, the sun barely cleared the horizon, casting everything in that particular New England gray that made the world feel underwater. You arrived earlier each morning, until your presence became part of the building's routine-the security guard nodding without checking your ID, the Zamboni driver lifting a hand in greeting as he guided his machine across the ice in pre-dawn darkness.
The cold had changed texture. November's sharp bite had softened into something wet and insidious, the kind of chill that crept through jacket seams and settled in your bones for hours. Your coffee went lukewarm faster. Your camera batteries died quicker. Everything required more effort.
And somewhere between Thanksgiving and now, things had shifted.
Garrett started looking for you first after games.
It happened subtly, like ice thinning beneath snow. You noticed it first in the locker room-that split second when the door opened post-game, steam billowing out carrying the scent of sweat and soap and adrenaline, and Garrett's eyes found yours immediately. Not scanning the crowd. Finding you.
A glance across crowded spaces. Small pauses in conversation when you entered rooms. The way he angled his body toward you during interviews, even when answering questions directed at someone else.
Like he noticed your absence now.
"You know," Logan said one afternoon while you photographed practice drills, your breath fogging in the frigid air, "this is the longest Garrett's willingly tolerated a media person."
You lowered your camera slightly, lens cap dangling against your chest. "What an honor."
"I'm serious," he laughed, skating a lazy circle around you. "Usually he acts like reporters personally killed his family."
From across the ice, Garrett snorted audibly.
You looked up immediately.
He was watching you. Not casually either. Actually watching you, stick resting loose in his gloved hands, helmet pushed back to expose damp hair curling against his forehead. The arena lights caught the sweat on his skin, turned his eyes into something bright and unreadable.
The realization hit hard enough to make your stomach tighten unexpectedly.
The thing nobody warned you about regarding sports photography was how intimate it felt sometimes.
You spent hours observing people through glass. Learning the architecture of their faces-how frustration settled into jawlines, how exhaustion hollowed cheeks, how joy transformed everything about them. You memorized the way bodies moved when unguarded: the slump of shoulders after losses, the unconscious preening after victories, the small gestures of comfort players offered each other in silence.
You noticed when someone was injured before trainers admitted it publicly. You learned which smiles reached eyes and which were manufactured for cameras, the subtle difference between a grin that showed teeth and one that showed feeling.
Garrett had become terrifyingly readable to you.
You knew when frustration sat heavy on his shoulders before he even spoke, could read it in the set of his mouth during warmups, the extra violence in his stickhandling.
Knew when exhaustion sharpened his voice, that particular roughness that emerged after road trips and double-headers.
Knew when pressure hollowed him out quietly after losses, the way he sat in his stall longer than necessary, methodically untaping his wrists while the room emptied around him.
He knew things about you now too.
"You didn't sleep again."
You glanced up from your laptop in the empty media room, the blue glow of the screen painting your hands in cold light. Outside the windows, snow fell in heavy, silent flakes, already burying the campus in white.
Garrett leaned against the doorway still half-dressed from practice, damp hair curling slightly against his forehead, the collar of his Briar hoodie dark with sweat. The hallway light behind him turned him into a silhouette until he stepped inside, and then you could see the purple shadows beneath his eyes, the matching exhaustion in his face.
"You get meaner when you're tired."
He caught it effortlessly, that stupid athlete reflex, and you hated the small smile that tugged at your mouth.
"You have a game tomorrow," you said, turning back to your screen. "Shouldn't you be doing captain things?"
"That sounds concerning."
Garrett walked further into the room, his sneakers squeaking faintly on the industrial carpet. His eyes landed on the photographs scattered across your desk-prints you'd been sorting for the exhibition, edges curling slightly in the dry heated air.
Most were unfinished edits from the semester so far: bruised hands wrapped in tape, fogged arena glass with fingerprints pressed against the inside, players collapsing exhausted against the boards after overtime wins.
Then there were the Garrett photos.
Far too many Garrett photos.
You tried not to think about that.
"You make hockey look sad," he said quietly, picking up one image-himself alone on the ice after practice, head bowed, steam rising from his shoulders in the cold air.
He looked at you then. Really looked, with an intensity that made you want to adjust the thermostat or open a window or flee to Antarctica.
"Thought you hated hockey."
"I hate what people turn athletes into."
Something flickered across his expression briefly. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition.
"You know what the weirdest part is?" you continued, leaning back in your chair until it creaked. "Everyone thinks sports are about winning."
Garrett folded his arms, leaning against the desk beside you. The heat of him radiated through the small space between your shoulders, and you focused very hard on your computer screen. "They are."
"No," you said softly. "They're about being witnessed."
Silence settled heavily between you, thick enough to taste.
Outside the media room windows, snow drifted slowly across campus beneath pale evening lights, turning the world into a snow globe someone had shaken and forgotten.
Garrett's voice came quieter this time, rougher.
"That sounds like something you figured out about yourself."
Your chest tightened instantly.
You hated when he did that. Took your words apart carefully until they exposed things you weren't trying to say aloud, held them up to the light like evidence.
"I think," you said slowly, "you're developing a very unhealthy habit of psychoanalyzing me."
His mouth curved slightly, and God, that smile was becoming a genuine problem. It reached his eyes now, changed the whole architecture of his face from guarded to something almost soft.
The rumors started before either of you acknowledged what was happening.
Not real rumors. Nothing concrete or actionable. Just observations, the kind that accumulated like snow until you couldn't ignore the weight anymore.
"You and Graham are weird lately."
You glanced up from editing photos inside the journalism office, the overhead fluorescents buzzing their electric song. "Define weird."
Your friend Jenna leaned against the desk dramatically, her scarf still beaded with melting snow. "Sexual tension weird."
You nearly choked on coffee, the liquid going down wrong enough to make your eyes water.
"There is no sexual tension."
"Babe," she deadpanned, "he looks at you like you invented oxygen."
"That is biologically inaccurate."
"He literally waits for you after games."
Jenna stared at you with genuine pity, her eyebrows raised in silent judgment. "You are unbelievably stupid."
Mostly because if you thought too hard about Garrett waiting outside media rooms lately, leaning against walls with his hands shoved in his pockets, watching the door like he had nowhere else to be, you might actually combust.
Friday night games at Briar felt less like sporting events and more like controlled hysteria.
The arena pulsed with noise, a physical pressure against your eardrums that you could feel in your teeth. Students screamed themselves hoarse from the stands, faces painted, bodies packed so tight you could see heat rising from the crowd in the cold air. Cameras flashed relentlessly across the ice, strobing against the white surface. Music shook through the building loud enough to rattle your ribs, bass notes you felt in your sternum, as players skated onto the rink beneath blinding lights that turned everything sharp and surreal.
You photographed from beside the glass during warmups, the cold radiating through the barrier, your breath fogging in quick bursts.
Garrett moved differently during games. Sharper. Faster. Like adrenaline transformed him into something dangerous and beautiful, all controlled violence and impossible grace.
You caught him slamming another player into the boards hard enough to shake the glass near you, the impact vibrating through your palms where they braced against the barrier. The crowd erupted instantly, a roar that swallowed thought.
Through your lens, Garrett looked almost unreal beneath arena lighting-sweat shining on his temples, bruises blooming purple against his jaw, fury written in every line of him.
People loved athletes most when they appeared invincible.
His eyes found yours through the glass.
Everything paused strangely for half a second. Not the game, not the world, not the screaming crowd. Just you. Your finger hesitated against the shutter, suspended above the button.
Small. Brief. Barely there, really, just a slight curve of his mouth that softened everything about him.
Your stomach dropped violently, a sudden free-fall that had nothing to do with gravity.
The locker room afterward exploded with noise and celebration, steam and sweat and the sharp chemical smell of industrial cleaner, while reporters crowded near players gathering post-game quotes. Music pounded from someone's speaker, something triumphant and loud.
You stayed near the back photographing candid moments instead, your camera drinking in the chaos: a defenseman laughing with his head thrown back, two forwards embracing hard enough to bruise, equipment scattered like abandoned armor across benches.
Victory looked different up close. Messier. More exhausted. Less like glory and more like relief.
Garrett sat near his stall tugging tape from his wrists in methodical strips, while reporters circled nearby waiting for interviews. The captain mask had already settled back onto his face-controlled answers, practiced composure, every word measured and safe.
You watched him carefully through your lens, the autofocus hunting slightly in the steam-thick air.
Then one reporter asked: "Do you feel pressure carrying this team into finals?"
Something changed instantly. Barely noticeable to anyone else. But you saw it.
Garrett's jaw tightened slightly, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. His shoulders stiffened, drawing inward like he was bracing for impact.
Pressure. Always pressure.
"Comes with the job," he answered evenly.
Another reporter: "NHL scouts attended tonight. Thoughts?"
"There are scouts at every game."
"But expectations are higher this season."
Garrett smiled politely. The kind that never reached his eyes, that stretched his mouth without touching anything else.
You lowered your camera slowly.
Everyone in the room saw Briar's captain. You saw someone drowning quietly beneath expectations he'd carried too long, the weight of it visible in the set of his shoulders, the tension in his hands.
And suddenly-you couldn't stand it.
"You guys done?" you interrupted sharply.
Several reporters turned toward you, faces annoyed.
One frowned. "We're in the middle of-"
"He's answered like fifteen questions already."
Garrett blinked at you slightly, surprise breaking through the mask for just a moment.
You shrugged one shoulder, focusing very hard on your camera settings. "Some of us enjoy post-game silence."
The reporters grumbled but gradually backed off toward other players, sensing the shift in atmosphere.
When the room finally cleared enough, Garrett looked over at you, tape still half-removed from his wrist.
"You just bullied reporters for me."
"I bullied reporters for everyone."
You busied yourself adjusting camera settings, fingers moving automatically. "Don't make it weird."
The darkroom became your favorite place on campus after that.
Quiet. Red lighting that turned everything into shades of crimson and shadow. No expectations, no crowds, no noise except the gentle slosh of chemicals in trays and the soft hum of the ventilation system.
You spent hours there developing film photographs for the exhibition while music played softly from your phone speaker, something moody and instrumental that matched the womb-like atmosphere. The chemical tang of the developer filled your nose, familiar and comforting.
Most nights nobody bothered you.
Except Garrett apparently.
The door creaked open around midnight one Tuesday, the sound impossibly loud in the silence.
"You know normal people sleep at this hour, right?"
You looked up from the developing trays, your hands submerged in liquid that turned your skin pale and strange. The safelight painted everything in shades of blood and black, softening edges, hiding flaws.
Garrett stepped inside slowly, hands shoved into the pockets of a grey Briar hoodie, the door clicking shut behind him. The red lighting softened everything about him-sharp jawline, tired eyes, the uncertainty in his posture.
"What are you doing here?" you asked.
He leaned against the counter beside you, close enough that you could smell the faint traces of his soap beneath the chemical sharpness. "Could ask you the same thing."
You returned attention to the photograph slowly appearing in the tray beneath your hands, watching shapes emerge from white paper like memories surfacing.
Garrett watched quietly, his reflection ghostly in the liquid surface.
It was him again. Sitting alone in the locker room after a game, head lowered, bruised knuckles resting against his knees, steam rising from his shoulders. Vulnerable. Human. Caught in a moment he'd never have allowed if he'd known you were watching.
"You hate when I photograph you like this," you said softly.
"No," Garrett replied after a moment. His voice was different here. Quieter. "I hate that you're the only one who notices."
Your breath caught slightly.
The darkroom suddenly felt much smaller. Too warm. Too close. The red light made everything feel dreamlike and dangerous and intimate in ways you absolutely did not know how to handle.
Garrett stepped nearer beside you, looking down at the photographs spread across the counter, their edges curling slightly in the humidity.
"You never photograph yourself."
You laughed lightly, the sound strange in the enclosed space. "That's because I'm better behind the camera."
"I don't think you realize people look at you too."
Your pulse stumbled hard enough to physically hurt, a sudden arrhythmia that made you grip the edge of the counter.
The red lighting made everything feel dreamlike and dangerous and intimate in ways you absolutely did not know how to handle. It turned Garrett's eyes into something dark and endless, softened his mouth into something that looked like invitation.
Garrett looked at you differently now. Not like campus media. Not casually. Like he was trying to memorize something, like he was afraid you might disappear.
And maybe you were doing the exact same thing.
"You should go," you said quietly.
His eyes flicked toward yours, searching.
Because if you stayed in this room another minute, you were going to kiss him. The realization nearly knocked the air from your lungs, a certainty that resonated through your whole body.
You forced yourself to look away first, focusing on the photograph developing slowly beneath red light, Garrett's lonely image emerging clearer by the second.
Garrett stayed still for another second. Then two. You felt his gaze on your profile, heavy and warm and wanting.
Then finally he nodded once, pushed off the counter.
"See you tomorrow, photographer."
The door closed softly behind him, the click of the latch impossibly loud in the silence.
You stared down at the photograph developing slowly beneath red light afterward, your hands shaking slightly where they gripped the tray.
Garrett Graham looked lonely even in still images, isolated in the frame, steam rising from his shoulders like smoke.
And somehow-you were beginning to understand exactly what that loneliness felt like.
Everything fell apart the week Briar started winning again.
Which felt fitting, somehow.
Success made people cruel.
The campus transformed overnight after the team secured their place heading into finals. Students flooded the arena in record numbers, roaring for blood. Sports pages exploded with headlines, and suddenly everyone wanted something from Briar Hockey again: interviews, predictions, access. The air on campus was different-brittle and electric, as if everyone was bracing for a storm.
You noticed it first in the journalism office. Under the wash of fluorescent light and the metallic hum of old computers, paper stacked in precarious towers, there was a tension you could feel in your teeth. Reporters who normally ignored you now hovered near your desk, trying to peek at unfinished edits. Professors started forwarding your articles to faculty boards, like they wanted to claim a piece of your work before the rest of the world could. Even the journalism club treated your hockey coverage differently now.
Like proximity to success made your work more legitimate.
"You should submit the Graham piece nationally," Jenna said, looming over your shoulder with a mug of coffee, her ponytail swinging like a metronome.
You looked up from your battered laptop. "Absolutely not."
Jenna frowned, her eyebrows scrunching together in a way that always made her look twelve. "Why?"
"Because I'm not exploiting someone's emotional collapse for career advancement."
She slumped into the cracked plastic chair across from you, smiling with too many teeth. "That's… aggressively noble of you."
"It's called self-sabotage."
Maybe. But some things didn’t belong to the audience. Especially not Garrett.
That realization alone should’ve terrified you more than it did.
The article was published Thursday morning.
But the damage still landed on your doorstep anyway.
BRIAR CAPTAIN CRACKING UNDER PRESSURE?
The headline glared from the student sports page beside a photograph of Garrett leaving the rink after a loss earlier that week. Your photograph. Except cropped tighter now. Darker. Meaner somehow. The exhaustion in Garrett’s face had been transformed into spectacle, the grain of digital shadow accentuating every crack in his composure.
Your stomach dropped violently.
You grabbed the newspaper immediately, scanning the article faster with every line.
Anonymous sources. Speculation about NHL pressure. Questions about leadership. Claims Garrett was "emotionally unraveling" before finals.
Your name wasn’t attached to the article.
And everyone would know it came from you.
"Hey," Jenna said carefully from nearby. "I don’t think the editor cleared that with anyone."
You were already standing.
"I used available media resources."
You stared at the sports editor across his desk in disbelief, a stack of discarded proofs between you.
"You stole my work," you said, voice shaking so badly you had to clutch the camera bag at your hip.
"It was submitted to the paper database," he replied, not even bothering to meet your eyes.
"For exhibition review," you snapped. "Not publication."
He leaned back, spinning an old Bic pen between his fingers. "The article needed visuals."
"That photograph wasn't meant for public release."
"No," you said sharply, rage starting to eclipse your panic. "It's exploitation."
A few staff members nearby went silent, their fingers freezing mid-keystroke.
The editor shrugged, lips curling. "You're getting emotional over an athlete."
Something inside you hardened instantly.
"You know what your problem is?" you said quietly. "You think people stop being human the second audiences find them entertaining."
His expression shifted slightly.
"You wanted drama," you continued. "Not truth. There’s a difference."
Then you walked out before you said something career-ending.
Your phone buzzed nonstop afterward.
Messages. Notifications. Social media discourse exploding around the article.
Some people defended Garrett. Others called him weak. Others treated the entire thing like celebrity gossip.
The worst part wasn’t even the article.
It was knowing Garrett was going to think you allowed it.
You didn’t know if you could blame him.
Practice that evening felt wrong immediately.
The locker room lacked its usual energy, players speaking in low voices while coaches stalked around visibly irritated. The arena echoed with the hollow clang of pucks off metal, and every so often you caught a cold stare from someone on staff.
The article had spread fast.
Garrett stood near the bench retaping his stick when you entered the arena. Under the harsh LED glare, he looked carved out of marble. You could see the black tape bite into itself, the methodical sharpness of his hands.
His eyes landed on you instantly.
Your chest tightened painfully.
You approached slowly. "Garrett-"
"Did you get what you needed?"
The question hit harder than yelling would’ve.
He laughed once quietly, but there wasn’t humor in it. "The article. The photo. Whole tragic captain narrative."
"I didn’t write that piece."
"But you took the photo."
"Yes," you admitted immediately. "But I never approved publication."
Garrett looked away briefly, jaw tightening. You noticed the raw friction in his hands, the way he flexed his fingers like he wanted to crush the stick in half.
Around you, the arena noise blurred strangely distant.
"I trusted you," he said finally.
That almost physically hurt.
"No, I don’t think you do." His voice stayed calm, which somehow made it worse. "You said not everything deserves an audience."
"Then why does half the campus suddenly think I’m having a breakdown?"
You stepped closer instinctively. "Garrett, listen to me-"
"You know what’s funny?" he interrupted quietly. "I actually forgot you were media sometimes."
The words landed like a slap.
Because somewhere along the line-
You forgot this started as observation. Documentation. Career ambition.
"You think I wanted this?" you asked, anger finally breaking through the guilt. "Do you seriously think I’d use you like that?"
Garrett looked exhausted suddenly.
"I don’t know," he admitted.
And somehow that hurt worst of all.
Coach Jensen shouted something from across the rink before practice officially started.
Players began moving toward the ice.
Garrett grabbed his helmet without another word.
Your throat tightened painfully around everything you wanted to explain.
That you never meant to become someone capable of hurting him. That every photograph started feeling personal somewhere along the way. That being seen by Garrett terrified you more than any future failure ever had.
Instead what came out was: "I’m sorry."
You stopped attending practices after that.
Technically not entirely.
You still photographed games. Still submitted recaps. But you did it all from the periphery, hiding behind the lens, refusing to step into the light of the rink.
It felt like a punishment.
You slept less, edited more, and tried to ignore the way your camera felt heavier every day. Jenna noticed your absence but didn’t press. She had always been good at letting things rot quietly.
You wondered if that was a skill you'd ever develop.
Finals week arrived with a vengeful blizzard.
Campus shut down for two full days before the championship, and you spent them in the darkroom, letting the chemical stink bleach your thoughts. You printed old negatives, watching the world swim into focus in shallow trays of developer. It was easier-safer-to hide in the hush of running water and the thump of your own heartbeat.
On the morning of the game, you laid out your prints, one by one, across the table. Most were of the team, faces half-obscured by helmets or visors, but Garrett always stood out. Even in profile, even blurred by motion, he looked like the only one awake in a room of sleepwalkers.
It was stupid, but you found yourself tracing the sharp line of his jaw through the plastic sleeve, remembering the way he frowned when he thought no one was watching.
You almost didn’t go to the arena that night.
But the thought of someone else telling Garrett’s story finally propelled you from the darkness, out into the teeth of the storm.
The championship was a riot.
Spectators packed into the stands in a fever, banners and confetti everywhere. The entire campus vibrated with anticipation. The game itself was brutal-three periods of bone-shattering hits and near-fistfights, referees constantly separating players like agitated dogs.
You watched Garrett from the penalty box, camera trained on him as he barked orders and smashed his stick against the boards, veins standing out in his neck. He was a force of nature, uncontainable and viciously alive.
The final buzzer sounded with Briar up by one.
You caught a single image of Garrett at the moment of victory: helmet gone, mouth open in a scream, sweat and blood mixing on his face. His teammates mobbed him, the ice littered with gloves and sticks.
You lowered your camera, hands shaking.
You found Garrett in the hallway outside the locker rooms, still in partial uniform, hair damp and wild. He looked at you like he expected you to vanish.
Instead, you held out the print.
He took it carefully, staring at the image in silence.
Finally, Garrett looked up. His voice was rough. "You could’ve sold this."
You shrugged. "Didn’t want to."
He turned the print over in his hands, the edges bending slightly. "I’m not mad at you," he said. "Not really."
But it still felt like a wound.
"Can I ask you something?" you said.
"Why hockey?" It wasn’t what you meant to say. But it was honest.
Garrett smiled, slow and tired. "It hurts when I stop."
You reached out and touched his wrist, half-expecting him to pull away. He didn’t.
"I wanted to tell the truth. Not just the story people wanted," you said.
His thumb brushed the edge of the photograph, thoughtful. "You did," he said. "Even when it sucked."
You laughed, the sound ugly and wet.
Garrett leaned in, his forehead bumping gently against yours. "You know," he said, "I never minded being seen. As long as it was you."
The words hung between you, sharp and soft at the same time.
You closed your eyes, the relief dizzying.
Maybe the world didn’t deserve every part of you.
You’d keep it for yourself.
The article that ran the next week was yours.
It was about victory, and exhaustion, and the cost of letting people in. It was about a team and a captain and the stupid, reckless hope of believing in something-someone-enough to risk disappointment.
The campus read it. The faculty shared it. But you didn’t care about that anymore.
You cared about the photograph taped to Garrett’s locker.
And the quiet knowledge that, for once, you hadn’t betrayed the story.
Or the person at its heart.
