𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 : after gathering up all the courage hidden in the depths of your heart, you ask your older friend bellamy to teach you how to kiss!
𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 : bellamy blake x fem!sweetheart!reader, season 1 setting, fluff, kissing/making out, beginning of a fwb dynamic ig?, just sickly sweet.
𝐰𝐜 : 1,8k.
𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭!
Ever since the green planet became home to you, you had been forced to grasp a handful of new skills, which just a few months ago would seem obscurely abstract.
It was a lot to take on, especially for a physically rather weak girl, who had to take a big leap into that new world all by herself.
You had known the bitter taste of independence long before you were even old enough to spell the word. With that being the cause of your stubborn, lonesome nature, you had a hard time accepting how little you could manage without reaching out for someone’s helpful hand.
Luckily enough, the hand you had grasped months ago in hope of learning how to skin freshly hunted meat belonged to Bellamy, who happened to be the one sitting across you when the knife slid across your own palm instead. And once you seized it… you never quite let go.
He made sure you sticked by his side ever since.
Bellamy was strong in every sense of the word and you were utterly fascinated by that. By him. His hands held the strength of a skilled man with ability to handle anything that could’ve gotten in his way and his deep voice laced with clout could sharply cut right through wild crowds.
Yet he was anything but edged when he’d lean down to your level and show you how to take a good aim with a patience of a saint when he took you hunting. When he’d explain to you anything you did not understand in a group conversation, his expression lacked any signs of his usual grumpiness.
Soon enough, you felt quite capable in the majority of the fields required to survive on this violent planet. Handling a gun, hunting, preparing meat, or even moving around the forest in the right, most tranquil way — he taught you all of it.
Yet despite it all, there still remained one elusive mastery that kept you from walking with your chin up. One thing, that every person around you seemed to had mastered with flowing ease.
Kissing.
People kissed every chance they got. Everywhere. With everyone. Sneaking around and making out became a crucial part of a daily routine for the majority of the freedom-starved teenagers.
Bellamy did it a lot. Too much for your taste. Every time a new girl amorously flew in and out of his tent with hearts for eyes and loud giggles taking place of any coherent sentences, your stomach squeezed in an awfully uncomfortable way, making your insides hurt.
Sometimes, you’d hear sounds of bliss seeping through the thin material of his tent when you passed by it under the cover of nightfall. Flooded with a nameless feeling of emptiness in your heart, you’d retreat back to the solitude of your own, cold bed. Sullen and abashed, you fiercely fought back every returning memory of the way his voice dripped with pleasure, the way his distant, laboured breaths sent a wave of heat to your core.
Why would his hands that felt like rays of sunshine to you, wrap around other girls’ bodies?
What was so bad about your own body that he had never desired to touch it with more intent than just a friendly one?
You couldn’t remain isolated from experiencing something so primal, something that seemed so essential to everyone else. You wanted to be let in on the big secret that the feeling of two mouths sharing one breath was.
In order to do that, you decided to do what you always did when you sought guidance — ask Bellamy.
He never denied you anything. That must have been why, when you insisted on paying him a visit later one night in the hope of learning more Earth skills, he was more than happy to be of service to his dear friend.
Just a few hours later, you found yourself sitting across from him. Ribbons of silver moonlight seeped through the holes in his tent, merging with the yellow hue of the lantern behind you when your throat worked with a heavy swallow after you barely uttered the question that actually brought you there, that now hung in the silent air for a good few seconds before pulling a huff out of Bellamy’s chest.
“Let me get this straight—” he narrowed his eyes and readjusted in his seat, convinced his ears must be betraying him. “You want me to teach you how to kiss as part of our ‘Earth skills training’?” those words came out backed up with a silent chuckle.
“Yes,” You looked stern and more ready than ever. You were nervously fidgeting at the rim of your sleeve, yes, but you were ready! “Just teach me how to do it. Like you taught me how to shoot. It can’t be harder than that.”
His eyes had a hard time deciding whether they should rest upon your gaze, or your lips, as his head tilted with a gleam of curiosity.
“Well, there’s quite a spectrum between shooting and kissing, don’t you think?” he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tease and watch maroon splash your cheeks comically fast.
“Yeah. But I’m a fast learner.”
“Know you are, sweetheart,” he assured. “C’mere then. Can’t begin the lesson with you so far away.”
A shaky breath passed from your nose once your body settled so close to his that his distinctive, manly scent riddled your thoughts.
“Good. This we can work with,” he breathed.
Not a single move of his muscles beneath his worn-out, navy blue t-shirt went unnoticed by you. The heat of his much bigger body was endowing your own skin in no time, and it felt like the fieriness was getting to your head as well, leaving you dizzy with it.
It was awfully intimate to see him like this, so near that the small scar over his upper lip was all on display, the placement of it taunting you more than ever. The closeness betrayed the number of freckles splattered all over his face, making you regret to not have enough time to take on the challenge of counting them. You mentally noted it down as an activity for another time.
“Now, there actually is something similar to when you are holding a gun… hey, don’t laugh, I’m serious.”
“What is it?” you raised your eyebrows.
“Timing. You take good aim…” His thumb rubbed over the plush of your cheek and coaxed you into leaning forward, the merest touch unfurling the sweetest ache in your heart which was pounding like a hammer, trying to crush your ribcage. “And then, you have to feel the moment it’s right to pull the trigger.”
Bang.
His lips landed on yours.
Yet it wasn’t anything like the roughly fair comparison he made to the violent act of freeing a bullet.
The warmth of his light coral lips coated your mouth as haltingly as a whisper of the forest wind would. His palms radiated with calm as they turned to vices creeping up your waist, showing you how to move in harmony with the slow rhythm.
You sloppily attempted to return the…affection? Faux-affection? You weren’t sure what name to give to the way he touched you. What you were more than sure of though, was that you dreaded the moment of its evanescence.
A string of saliva followed his lips that drew a few inches away again, as his brown irises searched yours.
“Yeah, like so,” he husked and smiled at the sight of your lips, feverishly plump, and eyes opened wide and gave your arm a few reassuring rubs. “Now, I’ll go faster, and you try to answer to that. Like we’re communicating. Think you can catch up, sweetheart?”
“I can,” you nodded breathlessly, way more eagerly than needed.
You couldn’t have him thinking you couldn’t handle intensity. You would take anything he would be kind enough to offer you. Every word, every touch, no matter how insensitive or rough — you’d appreciate it equally as much.
With those thoughts driving you, you leaned into him.
His mouth swallowed yours with great precision. Your chest flowered with unfamiliar sensations when your ears filled with wet sounds your connection was making.
He had kissed plenty of girls before, yes, yet he had never enjoyed the taste of their lips even half as much as yours. You were the sweetest.
A strained whimper escaped your throat as he angled your jaw with his fingers, burning goosebumps into your stupidly responsive skin as his tongue began to slip into your cavity.
Judging by faint groans he suddenly let out and the way his lips curled upwards, you guessed he liked the odd sound.
Oh, how nice it was to hear him, how winsome to have felt his breath hit your face and know that the sound was meant for your ears only.
His tongue gently slid and circled against yours as his thumb traced over the rim of your lower lip.
You wanted to be bolder, seem fearless. So you arched your back with cupidity, gravitated forward and pushed your mouth against his with more urgency, not really knowing your way around but still taking the risk of it. Well, the soft clashing of your teeth quickly made you aware of the sloppiness of the movement.
Before your mind could shove shame down your throat for that, Bellamy’s chest rumbled with a chuckle, making you forget the embarrassment.
“You’re fine, ‘s alright,” he cackled lowly, barely making it in time before your lips shyly seeked him back.
He then clasped your wrist, guiding your hand upwards, since up until then, it just awkwardly rested on the sheets underneath you. A shiver sprinted up your spine as soon as your digits met his olive skin.
“Go ahead. Be brave, explore a bit,” he offered as his nose nudged against your own.
So, brave you were.
The softness of your touch painted with tingles his arms, his biceps.
You played with his hair, admiringly twirling the curls in your fingers. You had always wanted to know how it’d feel.
Curiosity seemed to be filling your whole body. It pooled in your lower stomach and made you tingle funnily. It drove your every move as you kept squirming closer and closer.
When you eventually broke the kiss to get a breather, you couldn’t help but wonder…
“Am I doing okay?” you whispered so quietly he barely caught it.
“You’re doing great, don’t worry. It takes practice, you’ll get better with time. Just like shooting, yeah?”
“Yeah. Like shooting,” you smiled back and for a moment battled yourself over whether to ask the question balancing on the tip of your tongue. “So we’ll practice more?” you hoped it didn’t sound too much like a plea.
“However often you need, sweetheart,” he said, recognising the undeniable beginning of something new. Something exciting.
Oh, there was so much left to learn. Good thing you had always been hungry for knowledge!
summary: Dean DiLaurentis gives you the "I don't do relationships" speech, and you say okay and come back the next day to fix Tucker's cooking. Turns out the most dangerous thing you can do to a man like that is simply not need him.
word count: 11.5k
warnings: 18+ explicit sexual content, minors do not interact. situationship dynamics, brief angst, dean being cruel in a moment he regrets, dirty talk, slow burn, eventual fluff.
Daily calls with your mother had become more sparse over the course of your college years. They started daily and had slowly tapered to every other Saturday, which, in all honesty, was a bit of a shock given that she wasn't the type to loosen her grip easily. She had always been overprotective, and when you announced you weren't going to Texas University but to a college in Massachusetts, she had genuinely flipped her shit. Two years later she seemed kind of cool about it. Just texting. Sending random updates about your dog, like the Halloween costume from last year that you'd screenshot and saved.
You were sitting in your room in the sorority house, legs extended and resting on the desk, phone propped against your water bottle while you FaceTimed her and tried to paint your nails without smudging anything. The room was quiet except for your mom stirring something on the stove.
"So I ran into Olivia Tucker — you remember her, right? From church? She had a son named John," she said, not looking at the camera.
You had learned years ago that it was easier to say yes, of course than to endure five minutes of your mom describing a person like she was giving a statement to the police.
"Yeah, of course. I remember Mrs. Tucker."
"She mentioned her son John is attending the same college as you." She said it like she was reading off a notecard. Matter of fact. "She said he's playing hockey now."
Oh. That John Tucker.
"Yeah, I know who he is," you said, cleaning up the mess on your middle finger.
"Isn't that a big coincidence?"
"I mean, not really — he's like a year younger than me, right?"
"Yes, but you two used to play together when you were kids. At church, remember?" You did not remember. Your family went to church maybe twice a year. "Anyway, I gave her your number so she could pass it along to him. So you two could talk."
"Mom — what, that's not really —"
"She's probably not even going to use it."
She used it. Mrs. Tucker called three days later, and with the grace of a good Southern woman, she asked you to keep an eye on John — not in so many words, of course. She said he'd moved into a house with some of the other players and she just wanted to know he was taking care of himself. She didn't want you to do much. Just stop by, take a look around, report back. She'd handle the rest by phone.
What she did not tell you was that Tucker already knew about her plan.
He opened the door looking completely unsurprised to see you, leaned against the frame with his arms crossed and a grin that said nice try. He was, it turned out, perfectly capable of taking care of himself and, annoyingly, other people too.
Which is how you ended up here, almost a year later, sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen island in the off campus house, crying into an onion.
"I'm just saying, get a dicer," you said, keeping your eyes on the knife because you had to. "This is inhumane."
"A real chef doesn't use those kinds of things," Tucker said from across the kitchen, doing significantly less chopping than you were.
"Well, good thing you're not a real chef then."
He turned around, visibly offended. "What did you just say?"
You opened your mouth to repeat it — and then Garrett wandered in from the living room, grabbed an apple from the counter, looked at Tucker's side of the kitchen and then at yours, and pointed at you. "She's doing all the work," he said, to no one in particular, and wandered back out.
"He's right," you said.
"He's a traitor," Tucker said.
You opened your mouth to agree and then the sound of footsteps came down the hallway, and Dean came around the corner fresh out of the shower, towel low on his hips and water still tracking down his chest.
You sniffed, eyes watering, nose red.
Dean stopped. Looked at you. And then let out a slow, deeply entertained laugh.
"Well," he said, "I've heard a lot of reactions from girls seeing me like this. But crying might be a first." He tilted his head. "You alright there, sweet pea?"
"It's the onion," you said flatly. "Tucker's making me cut it."
"Sure." He was already turning toward the stairs, completely unbothered. "Whatever floats your boat."
He winked at you over his shoulder as he disappeared around the corner.
You looked back down at the onion.
Tucker was very pointedly not looking at you.
"Not a word," you said.
"I didn't say anything," he said, in the tone of someone who was saying everything.
The party invitation from Tucker arrived as a single text on a Thursday night.
party saturday, be here, i made a playlist
You were in the middle of your readings and you looked at the message for a moment before typing back: do I need to bring anything?
yourself and good energy
You put your phone face down and went back to your reading. Then picked it up again.
what time
nine but come at eight so we can hang before it gets loud
That was Tucker's way of saying he wanted to cook with you beforehand, which you appreciated more than you would ever tell him out loud because he would absolutely use it against you. You sent back a thumbs up and returned to your notes, and you did not think about the fact that Dean would be there, because that was not a relevant consideration.
You thought about it the entire rest of the week.
Not in a dramatic way. Just in the quiet, persistent way of something you kept putting down and finding in your hand again. You were honest with yourself about Dean, had been from the beginning. You knew what he was. Charming in a way that looked effortless because it mostly was, easy with people, the kind of person who filled a room without trying. You'd watched him for almost a year. You knew the way he talked to people, the way he leaned in when something was funny, the way he'd come into the kitchen sometimes when you were there and open the fridge and just stand there for a full thirty seconds like the answer to whatever he was looking for might eventually appear.
You knew that he'd noticed you too. That wasn't ego, just observation. The way his eyes would find you first when he walked into a room where you already were. The way he'd aim a comment at you specifically when he had a whole group to choose from. The way he'd said I've heard a lot of reactions like your reaction was the one that mattered.
You'd been sensible about it for a year. You'd made the choice, every single time, to not do anything about it. And you were fine. You were genuinely fine with that. You knew what Dean was, knew what it would be, and you'd decided the math didn't work out in your favor so you'd left it alone.
It was just that sometimes, quietly, in the back of your head, a voice said but what if you didn't.
You got dressed Saturday night and told that voice to shut up, and went to the party anyway.
Tucker met you at the door at eight on the dot, already in a good mood, which meant either the playlist was really good or he'd already had a drink.
"You look great," he said, holding the door open.
"You say that every time."
"Because it's true every time." He handed you a beer from the counter as you came into the kitchen, already comfortable, already home in the easy way the house had started to feel over the past year. "I was thinking we do something with the leftover rice from yesterday, I got peppers —"
"Tucker."
"What."
"We're not cooking. There are already people here."
He looked genuinely confused. "So?"
You took the beer from him and looked around the kitchen. Logan was leaning against the far counter talking to someone from the team, and Garrett was already in the living room, and the house had that particular pre-party hum to it, not yet loud, still settling into itself.
Dean wasn't in the kitchen.
You noted this the way you noted a lot of things quietly, without making anything of it.
Logan glanced over when Tucker handed you the beer. "You're here early."
"She's basically a resident," Tucker said, like this was a fact.
"I'm a guest," you said.
"Guests don't know where we keep the good knives," Logan said and winked, and went back to his conversation.
You spent the next hour in that easy pre-party mode, moving between the kitchen and the living room, talking to people you knew by name now, accepting a second drink from someone who was mixing them near the back. Tucker orbited you loosely the way he always did at these things, appearing at your elbow every twenty minutes or so to say something that made you laugh and then disappearing again. This was one of your favorite things about him, he was never clingy, never needed to keep you close, just checked in like punctuation.
Dean appeared sometime around ten.
He came down the stairs and into the living room and you saw him before he saw you, which felt important. He was wearing a dark green shirt, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and he had that easy unhurried way of moving through a room like it had already arranged itself around him. He said something to Garrett near the bottom of the stairs and laughed, and you looked away before he could look up.
So. He was here. That was fine. That was completely normal and fine.
You went to find Tucker.
The next hour you spent being very deliberate about not being obvious. You talked to people on the back porch when Dean was in the living room. You came inside when he drifted toward the kitchen. You were not proud of it exactly, but you were not going to stand around waiting for him to decide whether tonight was a night he felt like paying attention to you. You'd done a lot of things in your life. That was not going to be one of them.
Your friend Anna, a sorority sister, texted at eleven: how's the party
You typed back: fine. dean's here.
Three seconds.
oh. OH. okay. call me tomorrow.
maybe
that means yes. don't do anything I wouldn't do
You locked your phone and put it in your pocket and thought about the specific, limited list of things Anna wouldn't do and found it unhelpfully short.
The thing was, and you'd been over this, you'd been reasonable about this, you knew what it would be. A night, maybe a few nights, comfortable and uncomplicated and then done. Dean DiLaurentis didn't do anything that looked like what came after. You'd watched him long enough to know that too. And you'd decided that wasn't what you wanted, so you'd kept your distance, and that had been the right call, and it remained the right call.
You were in college at a party on a Friday night and you had been sensible about this for almost an entire calendar year.
The voice in the back of your head said but you knew that going in and it doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to mean.
You told it to shut up.
It had a point though.
You refilled your drink. Stood near the back door where the air was a little cooler and the noise slightly less consuming. Watched the party happen around you. Thought, very clearly and deliberately: you know what it is. you've always known. that doesn't have to be the reason not to.
You were still working through the logic of that when you felt someone come to stand beside you.
"(Y/N). You've been avoiding me."
Dean. Not accusing, just observing, the same way he did most things, like he was simply noting a fact about the universe. He had a drink in one hand and he wasn't looking at you yet, eyes scanning the room like he'd just happened to end up here beside you, which you both understood wasn't true.
"I've been talking to people," you said.
"You've been talking to people on the opposite side of every room I was in."
"Maybe I just like that side of the room."
He looked at you then. Really looked, in that direct way of his that felt like being assessed and appreciated at the same time. The music was loud enough that the conversation existed in its own small space, just between you.
"You've been doing that for a year," he said.
"Has it been a year?" You kept your voice light.
"Almost." He took a drink. "I've been patient."
The word landed simply, without performance. Patient. Like he'd been waiting. Like the last year had been something he'd noticed too, kept track of, decided to let run its course.
You looked at him for a long moment. The party moved around you, loud and warm, and you stood in it and made the decision clearly, with both eyes open, which felt like the important part.
"Bathroom's upstairs," you said.
Something shifted in his expression, not surprise, just confirmation. Like he'd known, and now he knew for certain.
"Yeah," he said.
He followed you up the stairs without touching you, which felt somehow more loaded than if he had. You could feel him behind you the whole way, that particular awareness of someone close, and by the time you reached the top of the stairs your heart was doing something inconvenient.
The upstairs bathroom was at the end of the hall. You went in, he came in behind you, and you turned to click the lock and found him already there, close enough that turning around put you nearly chest to chest with him, close enough that you could feel the warmth coming off him before he'd laid a hand on you.
He didn't kiss you right away.
That was the first thing. You'd expected him to, he'd been patient for a year, you'd just told him where the bathroom was, you'd expected him to close the distance immediately. Instead he just looked at you, and the looking was its own thing, slow and deliberate, like he was taking his time now that he finally had you here and he wanted you to know it.
"You made me wait a long time," he said.
"You could have said something sooner," you said.
"I said something tonight."
"Barely."
Something shifted in his expression, not quite a smile, more like he'd just decided something. He reached up slowly and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, fingers grazing your jaw, and the touch was so light it was almost nothing, which somehow made it worse.
"You're going to be like that," he said. Quiet. Certain.
"I don't know what you mean," you said, which was a lie and you both knew it.
He tilted your chin up with two fingers, not roughly, just — directing. Making you look at him. "Yeah you do," he said, and then he kissed you.
It wasn't tentative. It was a kiss from someone who had thought about this specifically, who knew what he wanted and had decided tonight was when he was going to have it, and you kissed him back and felt a year's worth of deliberate distance dissolve somewhere at the back of your mind.
He walked you backward until your hips met the bathroom counter and left you there, stepped back just enough to look at you again with that same unhurried attention, and you understood then that he wasn't in a hurry. That he'd waited this long and now he was going to enjoy it, and you were going to have to let him.
"Take your jacket off," he said.
You did.
He watched you do it. That was all — just watched, arms loosely crossed, completely at ease, like this was exactly where he'd planned to be tonight. You set the jacket on the counter and looked at him and he looked back.
"Good," he said, like that meant something.
Your heart was doing the inconvenient thing again.
He came back to you slowly, hands finding your waist, and kissed you again, deeper this time, one hand sliding into your hair and gripping, not painfully, just holding you exactly where he wanted you. You made a small sound against his mouth and felt him smile.
"There it is," he murmured.
"Shut up," you said.
"Make me," he said against your jaw, and then his mouth was on your throat and the option to respond coherently became briefly unavailable.
He took his time with your throat, your collarbone, the soft place below your ear that made your fingers curl into his shirt without your permission, and every time you moved to pull him closer he'd ease back just enough to remind you that he was running this. Not mean about it. Just clear.
"Dean —"
"I've got you," he said, against your skin. "I'm not going anywhere."
His hands moved to the hem of your top, pulling it up slowly, and he stepped back to pull it over your head and dropped it somewhere on the floor and looked at you again with that particular focus, and you had to actively resist the urge to cover yourself, because that was not what you did, but the way he was looking at you made you feel like you were already coming apart.
"You have no idea," he said quietly, more to himself than you, and then his mouth was on your collarbone and his hands were at your waist and you gave up on dignity entirely.
His hands moved to the button of your jeans, unhurried, and he looked up at you first — not asking exactly, just checking — and you nodded and he undid it and crouched down to pull the fabric down your legs with a thoroughness that felt like a point being made. He looked up at you from there, and whatever was on your face made him look deeply, quietly satisfied.
"You've been thinking about this," he said. Not a question.
"Don't," you said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't be smug about it."
"I'm not being smug." He pressed a kiss to the inside of your knee, which short-circuited something. "I'm just paying attention."
He stood back up slowly, hands trailing up the outside of your thighs, and lifted you onto the counter like it was nothing, stepping between your knees. You pulled him back in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him harder than you'd meant to and he made a low sound and kissed you back the same way, one hand flat against the small of your back pulling you closer.
"Tell me what you want," he said, against your mouth.
"You know what I want."
"I want to hear you say it."
You pulled back and looked at him. He looked back, completely unbothered, and you understood that he meant it, that he was going to stand here all night if he had to, patient as anything, until you said it out loud.
"Dean."
"I'm right here," he said pleasantly.
"You're so —"
"Tell me."
You told him.
"Please"
The expression that crossed his face was worth it. He kissed you once, hard, like a reward, and said good against your mouth, and then his hand moved and all the words you'd been planning to say next went somewhere inaccessible.
He knew what he was doing in a way that felt almost unfair, thorough, attentive, like he'd already decided exactly how this was going to go and was now simply executing. When you tried to rush it he slowed down. When you made a sound he filed it away and came back to it. The tile was cold at your back and his hands were warm on your thighs and his mouth was at your cunt and the things he said there were quiet and precise and designed specifically to ruin you.
"You've been driving me crazy," he said. Low, unhurried. "All year. You know that."
"Dean —"
"Every time you walked into a room." His hand didn't stop. "Every time you looked at Tucker instead of me. Every single time."
"That's your fault," you managed.
"I know," he said. "I know it is." Something almost rueful in it. "Doesn't change the fact."
When you finally came it was with your head hitting the mirror behind you and holding his shoulder and his name somewhere in the middle of it, and he stayed with you through the whole thing, unhurried, like he had nothing else in the world to do.
He gave you a moment. Then he pulled back and looked at you with an expression that you could only describe as thoroughly pleased with himself, which should have been annoying and wasn't.
"Don't," you said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to ask if you were okay," he said, which was such an obvious lie that you laughed, and the laugh broke something open in the room, and he grinned, a real one, unguarded in a way you hadn't seen before, and kissed you again before it could turn into a whole thing.
You worked his belt with hands that weren't entirely steady and he helped without comment, and then his hands were at your hips and he pressed his forehead to yours for just a second.
You watched him look for a condom on his backpocket.
"Yeah?" he said quietly. All the performance gone.
"Yeah," you said.
He pushed into you slow and you exhaled against his jaw, fingers gripping his shoulders, adjusting to the feeling of him. He gave you a moment, forehead still to yours, patient, present, and then he moved and everything else became temporarily beside the point.
It was charged the way it only gets when two people have been waiting too long. Not frantic but urgent, with a focused intensity that felt like something being resolved. His grip was firm and deliberate and you pulled him closer when he slowed down and he got the message and didn't slow down again. The mirror was fogging and somewhere below you the party was still happening and it was completely irrelevant.
"Look at me," he said.
You did. He held your gaze and something passed between you that neither of you named, and you felt it in your chest more than anywhere else.
"Months," he said again. Quieter now.
"I know," you said. "I know."
When he came he buried his face in your neck and went quiet and still, one hand flat against the small of your back holding you against him, and you held onto him too because it seemed like the thing to do, and because you wanted to, and those were the same thing tonight.
You stayed like that for a moment longer than necessary.
Then you both exhaled at roughly the same time, which broke the tension, and Dean huffed a quiet laugh into your shoulder.
You untangled carefully, straightened yourselves out. You hopped off the counter and turned to the mirror, fixing your hair, smoothing your top back into place. He leaned against the wall watching you do it, arms crossed loosely, shirt back on. His hair was a mess and he didn't appear concerned about it.
You met his eyes in the mirror.
"This doesn't have to be a thing," you said. Even, matter of fact. Not cold, just clear. You were giving him an out because you'd rather give it than have him feel like he needed to take it badly.
Something moved across his face. He pushed off the wall slightly. "What if I want it to be a thing?"
You turned around. "What kind of thing?"
He held your gaze. Didn't answer right away, which was an answer, and you'd known it would be, you'd known before you came upstairs, and still it took a small quiet moment to settle.
"Right," you said simply.
Not angry. Not hurt, or at least not visibly. You'd gone in with both eyes open and you'd meant it, and the math was what you'd always known it was. That was fine. You were fine.
You unlocked the door.
"Hey," Dean said.
You looked back.
He opened his mouth, closed it. Something in his expression that you couldn't entirely read. "Nothing," he said finally. "Never mind."
You nodded once and stepped out into the hallway.
Downstairs, the party had peaked without you. The music was louder and the living room was full and Tucker was in the kitchen, which is where Tucker always ended up at some point. He took one look at your face when you appeared in the doorway and turned to open the fridge and produced a beer, which he held out without a word.
You took it.
"Having fun?" he asked, very casually, eyes on the fridge.
"Yeah," you said. "Party's good."
"Cool." He closed the fridge. "I made queso."
"Tucker."
"It's in the pot on the back burner."
You looked at him for a second. He looked back, perfectly neutral, perfectly unbothered, and completely full of information he was choosing not to say.
"Thank you," you said.
"Don't mention it," he said. "Seriously, don't. I have a reputation."
You laughed despite yourself, and some of the tightness in your chest loosened, just a little.
Tucker handed you a chip.
You both stood at the stove and ate queso and said nothing about any of it, and that was, genuinely, one of the nicest things anyone had done for you in a while.
Dean came downstairs eleven minutes later, you weren't counting, you just noticed, and grabbed a beer from the fridge and leaned against the counter across from you, and the three of you stood in that kitchen like nothing had happened at all.
Dean looked at the pot on the stove. "Is that queso?"
"Made it myself," Tucker said.
"You absolutely did not."
Tucker looked at you. You said nothing, scooping queso onto another chip. Dean's eyes moved between you both and landed on you with something unreadable in them.
"Can I have some?" he asked.
"It's your house," you said.
He got a chip. Ate it. Looked at the pot. "That's really good."
"I know," you said.
Tucker stared directly at the wall and smiled at absolutely nothing.
It didn't have a name. That was the thing , it never got one, and neither of you tried to give it one, and somehow that made it easier to just let it exist.
It started simply enough. A week after the party, Dean texted you at eleven on a Tuesday night. Just: you up?
The second text was a trailer link. No context, no explanation, just: this.
You watched it once. Typed back: that looks pretentious.
i know. yes or no.
fine.
The house was quiet when you got there , Garrett's door closed, Tucker apparently out, and Dean was on the couch with a beer and the energy of someone who had been waiting without admitting to waiting.
You sat in the middle of the couch.
He pulled up the movie without comment.
It was pretentious and it was also actually good, and you told him so twenty minutes in when he glanced over to see what you thought. He said told you without looking back at the screen. You said you said it looked pretentious, which is not the same as saying it wasn't good. He said that's a very specific distinction. You said I'm a specific person. He didn't say anything for a moment, and then said: yeah.
Somewhere around the third act the distance between you closed. You weren't sure who moved, maybe both of you, gradually. His arm along the back of the couch and your shoulder under it and neither of you addressed it.
The movie ended and neither of you moved.
He found something else. A documentary, shorter, that turned out to be genuinely interesting. You watched most of it. Somewhere in the second half you were closer still his arm properly around you now, your feet tucked up beside you — and the lamp in the corner was the only light, and in here it was warm, and you were paying attention to about thirty percent of the documentary.
You woke up at two in the morning with a blanket over you that hadn't been there before. Dean was asleep at the other end of the couch, head back, completely unconscious. The TV was still on. You looked at him in the blue light of the screensaver, the line of his jaw, the stillness of someone actually asleep and felt the quiet weight of something you were not going to examine.
Then you got up, folded the blanket, left it on the cushion, and walked home.
You didn't text him about it. He didn't text you about it. Two days later he sent: you around tonight? and you said depends and he said on what and you said what's the plan and he said no plan and you said okay.
That was how it started.
By November it had a shape, even if it didn't have a name.
You came over two or three times a week. Sometimes it was a movie, sometimes it was just you in the kitchen making something with whatever was in the fridge while Dean sat at the counter with his phone and ate everything you put in front of him without comment except occasionally this is really good in a tone that suggested he was a little annoyed about it. Sometimes the whole house was there, Tucker loud and cheerful, Garrett and Logan drifting in and out, the TV on in the background and sometimes it was just the two of you and the house was quiet and those evenings had a quality to them that you tried not to examine too closely.
He texted you things that weren't questions. A link to an article about something you'd both argued about in passing. A photo of a sunset he'd apparently seen from the library roof, no caption. A voice memo once, at midnight, that was just him reading something in the flat unimpressed tone he used when something was genuinely getting on his nerves — listen to this, the message said, and you did, and you laughed, and he sent back a single: right?
You sent him things back. A recipe you thought he'd actually like. A clip of something that reminded you of a conversation you'd had. He always answered. Not immediately, not performatively, just he answered.
Garrett had noticed, in his way. He'd stopped doing double-takes when you were in the kitchen on a Tuesday night, had started just saying hey and opening the fridge like your presence was a given. Logan was less subtle, he'd caught your eye once across the living room when Dean laughed at something you'd said, and raised an eyebrow, and you'd looked away and he'd had the decency not to push it.
You talked to Anna about it on a Sunday afternoon in November, feet up on her bed, staring at the ceiling while she did her readings across from you.
"So it's a situationship," she said, not looking up.
"I didn't say that."
"You described a situationship."
"I described two people who spend time together."
"With benefits."
"Occasionally."
She finally looked up. "How often is occasionally?"
You said nothing.
"That's what I thought." She went back to her reading. "Are you okay with it?"
You thought about it honestly, the way you tried to think about most things. "Yeah," you said. "I went in knowing what it was."
"That's not what I asked."
You looked at the ceiling. "I'm fine," you said. "It's fine. I know what it is."
Anna made a small noncommittal sound that you chose not to interpret.
The physical part of it was easy in a way you hadn't entirely expected. Comfortable in a way that felt like it should have taken longer to get to. He knew what you liked with an attentiveness that might have been alarming if you'd let yourself think about it, and you knew what worked for him, and there was none of the awkwardness of newness anymore.
The only thing you were consistent about was the condom. Every time, without exception. Until one night in late November when Dean caught your wrist gently before you could reach for the nightstand.
"Why do you always —" He stopped. Nodded toward it. "Every time."
"Because I'm not stupid," you said. "You were getting around a lot before this and I don't know what this is and I'm not asking but I'm also not —"
"I haven't," he said. "Since the party. I haven't slept with anyone else."
The room went quiet.
"Oh," you said. A beat. "Me neither."
Something moved across his face that he didn't entirely manage to control. His thumb traced a slow absent line against the inside of your wrist.
"Okay," he said quietly.
"Okay," you said.
The air in the room changed into something neither of you was going to name. Then he kissed you, and it was different, slower, more careful, like something had been confirmed that he hadn't known he was waiting to confirm, and you let yourself feel it without examining it too closely, because that felt fair.
The first sign was the texts.
Not that they stopped completely, that would have been obvious, and Dean was too smart for obvious. They just slowed. A reply that came four hours later instead of forty minutes. A shorter answer where there used to be a real one. The voice memos stopped. The links stopped. You'd send something and get back a single word where there used to be a sentence, and you'd look at it and feel the shape of what was happening without being able to name it yet.
You told yourself it was school. Exams were coming, everyone was disappearing into the library, that was normal. You told yourself he was busy, stressed, in his head about the end of semester and the hockey team. You were busy too. You had your own readings, your own papers, your own life that existed completely separately from the off campus house and always had.
You kept coming over. Tucker needed someone to watch the game with and you'd promised him a recipe you'd been meaning to show him and you were not going to rearrange your life over a shift in text frequency.
But you noticed.
You noticed the way Dean would come into the kitchen when you were there and open the fridge and not look at you the way he used to. Not hostile, just absent. Like you were furniture. Like the awareness he'd always had of you in a room had been switched off at a source you couldn't locate. He ate the food you made without commenting on it. He answered direct questions. He didn't start anything.
You didn't push. That wasn't who you were.
But by the second week of December you were lying in your room at night doing the math and the math was not coming out well, and you were tired of pretending it wasn't.
You went over on a Thursday.
Tucker was at a class. You'd known that, you'd checked, because you wanted the house quiet, because you wanted five minutes of honesty without an audience. Garrett's truck wasn't in the driveway either. You knocked on Dean's door and he opened it in sweats and a Briar hoodie, textbook open on his desk, and the look on his face when he saw you was almost nothing, which was its own answer.
"Hey," you said.
"Hey." He stepped back to let you in, which you took as an invitation, and you came in and stood in the middle of his room and he closed the door and leaned against his desk with his arms crossed. Not aggressive. Just closed.
You looked at him for a moment.
"What's going on with you?" you asked. Quiet, direct. No accusation in it, just the question.
He shrugged one shoulder. "Nothing. Finals."
"Okay," you said. "That's not what I mean and you know it."
A beat. Something moved behind his eyes and then went still.
"I don't know what you want me to say," he said.
"I want you to say what's actually happening."
He looked at you. Then he looked away, jaw tightening slightly, and you recognized the particular quality of someone deciding something, not discovering it, deciding it, and some quiet part of you braced.
"I think this has run its course," he said. Flat. Careful.
You kept your face even. "Okay. What does that mean."
"It means —" He stopped. Started again. "I don't want this anymore. Whatever this is. I don't want it."
"Okay," you said.
He looked at you, and something in your steadiness seemed to irritate him, which you hadn't expected, and that was maybe the thing that cracked something open in him that should have stayed closed.
"I don't know what you thought this was," he said, and his voice had an edge now, "but it wasn't — I wasn't —" He made a short, almost contemptuous gesture. "You've been coming over here for months like you live here. Cooking, watching movies, acting like this is some kind of —"
"I never called it anything," you said.
"No, but you acted like it was something. You act like everything is fine and nothing bothers you and you're so —" He stopped, and the word he landed on was quiet and precise and clearly chosen to land: "You're so comfortable here. Like you belong here. And you don't."
The room was very quiet.
You looked at him. He looked back, and you could see the moment he heard what he'd just said, saw something flicker across his face that might have been regret but came too late to matter.
"You're right," you said. Your voice was completely level. "I don't."
He opened his mouth.
"I'm not going to make this into something," you said. "You don't want it, that's fine. I went in knowing what it was." You picked up your jacket from where you'd set it on the edge of his bed. "I hope finals go okay."
"Hey —"
"Good night, Dean."
You left. You closed the door behind you, not hard, just closed, and you walked down the stairs and through the front door and out into the December cold and you kept your shoulders straight the whole way home.
You didn't cry until you were in your own room with the door locked, and even then it wasn't for very long, because you'd known, you'd always known, and knowing didn't make it nothing but it made it survivable.
You texted Anna: you were right.
She called immediately. You let it ring twice, then picked up.
"I'm okay," you said, before she could ask.
"I know you are," she said. "Tell me anyway."
The hard part came later, at midnight.
You were lying in bed and you saw a link, a restaurant that had just opened, a tasting menu you'd been meaning to mention and you had his name pulled up in your contacts before you caught yourself. Thumb over send. The restaurant unremarkable and the gesture everything.
You put your phone face down on the mattress and looked at the ceiling for a while.
You'd known. You'd always known. That didn't make it nothing. It made it survivable, which was what you'd agreed to, and you were keeping that agreement.
The next afternoon you went to the off campus house.
Not because of Dean. Tucker had texted you at noon — i made something and i think i made it wrong, come look at it — and you'd said what did you make and he'd sent a photo that made you genuinely concerned for his wellbeing, and you'd said I'm coming over because that was what you did.
You showed up at three in the afternoon in your good boots and your coat, hair done, bag over your shoulder, because you had a study session after and you were not rearranging your life. You walked into the kitchen and Tucker was standing over something on the stove that smelled questionable and turned around with the expression of a man who needed saving.
"What is that," you said.
"I was trying to do the thing you showed me with the —"
"Tucker."
"I know."
You put your bag down and took your coat off and hung it over the stool and rolled up your sleeves and looked at whatever was happening in the pot, and Tucker stood next to you like a man watching a surgeon assess a patient.
"It's salvageable," you said.
He exhaled. "I knew it."
"Get me the garlic."
You cooked. Tucker hovered and passed things when you asked and made commentary that you ignored selectively and the kitchen filled up with something that smelled the way the kitchen was supposed to smell, and it was normal. It was completely normal. You were fine.
Logan came through at some point, stopped in the doorway, looked at the pot. "That smells good." Then he looked at Tucker. "Did you make that?"
"We're collaborating," Tucker said.
Logan looked at you. You said nothing. He grabbed a water from the fridge and left, which was exactly the right thing to do.
Dean came downstairs at some point, and you heard him stop at the bottom of the stairs, and you stirred the pot and didn't turn around.
"Hey," Tucker said, in the careful voice of someone being very casual.
"Hey." Dean's voice from the doorway. A pause. "What are you making?"
"She's fixing what I made," Tucker said.
You felt Dean's eyes on your back. You reached past the stove for the spice rack.
"Smells good," Dean said.
You said nothing. Not pointedly — just nothing. Tucker handed you the paprika.
Dean didn't leave. You could feel him still standing there, which told you something you set aside for later. You plated what you'd made, put Tucker's portion in front of him, put the extra in a container that you labeled with a piece of tape and a marker the way you always did, and started washing the pan.
"There's extra," Tucker said, to the room.
"I can see that," Dean said.
Tucker ate a bite. Made a sound of profound relief. "You're genuinely talented, you know that?"
"I know," you said, drying the pan.
You stayed another forty minutes, finishing your tea, going over the recipe with Tucker so he could try again, answering a text from Anna. Normal. Easy. The house the same as it had always been, Tucker the same as he'd always been, you the same as you'd always been.
When you left you said, "Bye Tuck, don't touch the leftovers until tomorrow, they're better the next day."
"Noted," Tucker said.
You pulled on your coat. Picked up your bag. "Later," you said, generally, to the room, and you walked out.
Dean stood in the kitchen after the front door closed.
Tucker was eating. Not looking at him. The kitchen smelled incredible and there was a labeled container in the fridge and the pan you'd used was clean and back on the rack like you'd never been there.
"She labeled it," Dean said.
"She always labels it," Tucker said.
Dean looked at the fridge. "For who."
"I don't know, Dean." Tucker turned a page in whatever he was reading. "Whoever wants it, I guess."
He couldn't focus in class the next morning.
The professor was talking and Dean had his laptop open and his notes half-started and none of it was going in because he kept coming back to the same thing, the same image, which was you standing at his stove with your back to him like nothing had happened.
Not performing like nothing had happened. Actually fine. The difference between those two things was something he understood logically and couldn't reconcile emotionally and it was making him insane.
He'd expected — he didn't know what he'd expected. Something. Some sign that what he'd said had mattered, that he had mattered, that the months of you being in his space and in his kitchen and in his bed and knowing how he took his coffee and showing up when Tucker texted you and falling asleep on his couch and leaving your chapstick on his nightstand —
You'd taken the chapstick. He'd noticed.
You'd taken it and labeled the leftovers and said later to the room and walked out and that was it, apparently. That was the whole thing. He'd said you don't belong here and you'd said you're right and you'd meant it, and that was the part he couldn't get past. You'd meant it not because you believed it but because you weren't going to fight him on it. Because you didn't need to.
You act like you belong here. And you don't.
He'd said that. He'd actually said that.
He stared at his laptop screen.
You'd been coming to that house since before he'd ever spoken a full sentence to you. Tucker's mom had called you, you'd shown up, you'd been folded into the house slowly and completely the way only people who actually fit somewhere ever are, Tucker texting you unprompted, Garrett knowing your coffee order, Logan moving over on the couch without being asked, and Dean had stood in his own room and told you that you didn't belong there and you'd looked at him like you were giving him the chance to hear what he was saying and he hadn't taken it and you'd left.
And then you'd come back the next day and cooked Tucker's disaster and labeled the leftovers and said later.
Later. Like you'd see them around. Like the house was still just a place you came to, unconnected to Dean, existing independently of whatever he'd decided.
Because it was. Because Tucker was your friend. Because you'd built something there that had nothing to do with Dean DiLaurentis and apparently had no intention of dismantling it on his account.
He wrote something down without reading it.
The thing was and this was the part that was sitting in his chest like something he couldn't shift, he'd ended it because it was getting too real. That was the honest answer, the one he hadn't said out loud to anyone including himself until approximately right now, which was not ideal timing. He'd felt it getting heavier and closer and more like something that had a name and he'd panicked, and when Dean DiLaurentis panicked he went cold, and when he went cold long enough he said things he couldn't take back.
You don't belong here.
He closed his laptop. Opened it again.
You hadn't fought for it. He'd said something genuinely cruel and you'd said you're right and you'd left, and the version of events he'd been running in his head where you'd be upset, where you'd pull back from the house, where he'd see the evidence of having mattered somewhere in your behavior, none of that had happened. You'd come back with your boots and your coat and your labeled container and your later and you were fine.
He was not fine.
That felt deeply, profoundly unfair, and he was self-aware enough to recognize that he had no one to blame for it but himself, which made it worse.
Wait, said something in the back of his head, quiet and inconvenient.
He picked up his pen. Put it down.
Wait.
He didn't finish the thought. He stared at his notes until they stopped meaning anything, and outside the window the Briar campus went on being cold and grey and completely indifferent to the fact that Dean DiLaurentis was sitting in class slowly understanding something he wasn't ready to understand yet.
The problem with ending things, Dean was discovering, was that it only worked if the other person let it end.
You hadn't made a scene. Hadn't texted him anything he had to respond to, hadn't shown up at his door, hadn't done a single thing that gave him something to push against. You'd just continued. Existing in the house, in the kitchen, in Tucker's orbit, completely unchanged, like Dean's opinion of the situation was one data point you'd received and filed appropriately and moved on from.
He ate everything you made. That was the humiliating part. Every single time you left something in the fridge he ate it, sometimes within the hour, standing at the counter in the kitchen alone like some kind of punishment he was administering to himself. Tucker never commented on this. Tucker never commented on anything, which was its own form of commentary.
You'd left soup once. Labeled, like always — back burner, twenty minutes, don't let Tucker have more than one bowl he'll eat the whole thing. Dean had read the label four times. Eaten two bowls. Stood at the sink washing the pot afterward feeling like a man losing an argument he wasn't allowed to be having.
Garrett had found him standing there once, staring at nothing, and said "you good?" and Dean had said "yeah" and Garrett had looked at the labeled container still on the counter and said nothing further, which somehow made it worse.
He started noticing everything.
The way you'd laugh at something on your phone and not share it with the room, just smile to yourself and put it face down. The way you always took your shoes off at the door and lined them up neatly to the left, always the left, and he'd started checking for them when he came downstairs, the presence or absence of your boots telling him things about the afternoon before he'd even gotten to the kitchen. The way you said Tucker's name — comfortable, fond, like a shorthand — and the way you had, at some point, stopped saying Dean's name at all. Not pointedly. Just it didn't come up. He wasn't who you were talking to.
He'd done that. He understood that he'd done that.
He just hadn't understood what it would feel like to have done it.
He tried, for a while, to be reasonable about it.
He made a list, mentally, of all the reasons this was fine. He didn't do relationships. He'd never done relationships. He had a plan for his life that had been in place since he was sixteen, and that plan had no room in it for whatever you were. Whatever you'd been. The comfortable weight of your presence, the evenings when you were in the house versus evenings when you weren't, the way he'd started coming across things during the week and thinking you'd have something to say about this —
That was the problem right there. That was the thing he kept running into.
He'd been having conversations with you in his head for weeks. Full conversations, with your actual responses, because he knew how you thought well enough to fill both sides, and that was, that was not the behavior of someone who was fine.
He talked to Garrett on a Tuesday night, which he never did, and talked around the subject for twenty minutes before Garrett said, flatly: "Just tell me what she did."
"She didn't do anything," Dean said.
A pause. "Then tell me what you did."
Dean stared at his ceiling. "I ended it."
"And?"
"And she's fine."
"That's it? She's fine and you are like this?"
"She's too fine," Dean said, and hated how that sounded.
Garrett was quiet for a moment. Then: "Dean."
"What."
"You absolute idiot."
January settled over Briar cold and grey and Dean settled into a particular kind of misery that he was too proud to name properly. He went to class. He did his readings. He played well enough at practice that Coach didn't get on him, which required more effort than it should have because his head was not where it was supposed to be.
You came over on Saturdays, usually. Sometimes Thursdays. Tucker had apparently taken to texting you about things that had nothing to do with cooking, Dean had seen the thread once, accidentally, and it was just the two of you sending each other increasingly unhinged videos with no context, a friendship that existed completely on its own terms, owed nothing to Dean, and was apparently thriving.
Logan had said, once, carefully, over breakfast: "She was here yesterday."
"I know," Dean said.
Logan looked at him. "Just saying."
"I know," Dean said again.
Logan went back to his cereal and didn't push it, which was the right call, and Dean appreciated it and resented it in equal measure.
He watched you from across rooms and told himself he wasn't doing that.
You never looked uncomfortable. That was the thing that was going to actually kill him. You'd come in, take your boots off, left side of the door, say hey to whoever was around, drift toward the kitchen with the ease of someone in a place they belonged, and it would be normal. Warm. Real. And Dean would be somewhere in the same house eating himself alive and you would be completely, genuinely fine.
He thought about the things he'd said. You act like you belong here. And you don't.
He thought about those words with a frequency that was becoming a problem.
It was a random Wednesday in late January.
Dean came home from a late class tired and cold and in the specific bad mood that came from hours with a professor who seemed to find his suffering amusing. The house was lit up when he got there, which meant people were home, and he could hear voices from the kitchen before he'd gotten his coat off.
Tucker's laugh. And then yours.
He stood in the hallway for a second with his coat half off.
"—absolutely not, that's not how that works—" Tucker, indignant.
"I'm telling you, Tucker, I watched you do it, that's exactly how you did it—"
"I was recovering, there's a difference—"
"There is no difference, the result was the same—"
Tucker said something Dean didn't catch and you laughed, full and real, the kind of laugh that meant you'd actually been caught off guard by it, and the sound of it hit Dean somewhere undefended and just stayed there.
He finished taking his coat off. Hung it up. Walked to the kitchen doorway.
You were at the island, Tucker leaning on his elbows across from you, some kind of card game between you that Dean didn't recognize. You had a mug of something and your hair was down and you were still smiling from whatever Tucker had just said, and Tucker was looking at you with the expression of someone who had won a point. Garrett was on the couch in the next room, feet up, barely paying attention, the way Garrett existed in the house like ambient weather.
"Dean," Tucker said. "Tell her that recovering from a bad move is a valid strategy."
"Depends on the move," Dean said, automatically.
"See," Tucker said to you.
"That's not what he said," you said, and glanced at Dean briefly,not long, not loaded, just a glance, the kind you'd give anyone and looked back at Tucker. "Your move."
Dean got a glass of water. Stood at the counter. The card game continued. Tucker accused you of cheating, you denied it with the specific serenity of someone who was absolutely cheating, Dean watched and said nothing and felt the sensation of standing outside something warm.
An hour later you started putting your coat on.
"Okay," you said, gathering your things. "Tucker. Rematch Thursday."
"Thursday," Tucker confirmed. "I'll win."
"You won't." You pulled your bag onto your shoulder. Looked at Tucker with something genuine and warm. "Bye, Tuck."
"Bye." Tucker was already looking back at his phone.
"Later, Garrett," you called toward the living room.
"Later," Garrett called back, not looking up.
You walked toward the door. Past Dean, close enough that he could have said something, close enough that the window was right there, and he stood at the counter with his glass of water and said nothing, and you pulled the door open and walked out, and the door closed, and that was it.
Tucker looked up from his phone.
The two of them sat in the quiet kitchen, the card game still spread out on the island, your mug still on the counter.
"She forgot her mug," Dean said.
"She'll get it Thursday," Tucker said.
Dean put his glass down. Picked it back up.
"She said bye to you first," he said.
Tucker looked at him for a long moment. Set his phone down. "Yeah," he said. "She did."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Tucker —"
"I'm not doing this, Dean."
"I'm not asking you to do anything."
"Good." Tucker picked his phone back up. "Because I really, genuinely, am not getting involved."
From the living room, Garrett said nothing, which meant he was listening to every word.
Dean looked at the door.
"She left her mug," he said again, quieter, to no one in particular.
Tucker said nothing. Which was, as always, its own kind of answer.
He lasted four days.
Four days of your mug on the counter — Tucker had washed it and left it there — four days of picking up his phone and putting it down, four days of being a reasonable adult who had made a decision and was living with it, and then on Sunday night at eleven p.m. he put on his shoes and his coat and walked across campus to the Kappa house like a man who had exhausted every other option.
He stood outside in the cold and looked up at the second floor windows and felt genuinely insane.
He found a handful of small rocks from the landscaping border. Looked at them. Looked up at the windows.
He threw one.
It hit the wrong window. A light came on and someone looked out — not you, someone he didn't recognize — and he stepped back into the shadow of the tree until the light went off again.
He tried the next window. Nothing. The one after that.
The window opened.
You leaned out, hair messy, clearly pulled from sleep or close to it, and looked down at him in the dark with an expression that moved through several phases: confusion, recognition, disbelief. Before settling on something that was almost exasperated and almost amused and fully of course.
"Dean," you said, not loud. "What are you doing."
"I need to talk to you."
"It's eleven o'clock."
"I know. You weren't answering my texts."
You stared at him. "You texted me twenty minutes ago."
"You didn't answer."
"I was asleep."
"Can I come up?"
The expression on your face did something complicated. "You want to climb the sorority house."
"There's a trellis."
You looked to the left, apparently confirming the existence of the trellis, then looked back down at him. "Dean."
"Five minutes," he said. "I just — five minutes. Then I'll go."
You looked at him for a long moment, and he stood in the cold and let you look, because he'd run out of ways to manage how this went. You could close the window. That was a real option and he'd accept it.
You didn't close the window.
"The trellis is on the left," you said. "Don't break anything."
He made it up without incident, which he felt was frankly more than he deserved. You'd stepped back from the window to let him climb through, and he came in trying not to knock anything over and stood in the middle of your room feeling the full absurdity of the situation settle over him.
Your room was small and warm. Books on every surface, a desk lamp on low, a quilt on the bed that looked like it had been in your family for a while. It smelled like you, something warm, something that had been living in the back of his brain for months without his permission.
You sat on the edge of your bed and looked at him with your arms loosely crossed, not hostile, just waiting. Giving him the floor.
"I need to say something," he said.
"Okay."
"And I need you to let me say it without — I need to actually get through it."
"I'm not stopping you," you said.
He looked at you. You looked back, and there was something in your expression: patient, steady, not giving him anything, and he understood suddenly that you were going to make him do this himself. All the way. No half measures.
He took a breath.
"I said things to you that I can't take back," he started. "That night in my room. And I knew when I said them that they weren't — I knew they weren't true. I said them because I was scared and I was trying to make you leave and I wanted it to work so I made it as —" He stopped. Tried again. "I wanted you gone and I made sure you'd go and then you went and I've been —" He stopped again.
You waited.
"I've been losing my mind," he said. "For weeks. You keep coming over and cooking Tucker's food and laughing at his jokes and you left your mug on the counter and you said bye, Tuck and walked out like I wasn't standing right there and I —" He stopped. The words that needed to come next were the ones he'd been circling for weeks and he was done circling. "I'm in love with you."
The room was quiet.
"I'm in love with you," he said again, because it had come out steadier the second time and it was true and he was done with it living only in his head. "I have been for a while. I didn't know what to do with it so I — I did what I did. And I know that's not an excuse. I know what I said. But I needed you to know that it wasn't because you didn't matter. It was because you mattered too much and I didn't know how to —"
"Dean," you said.
He stopped.
You looked at him for a long moment. Something in your expression that was careful and real and not entirely closed.
"I know," you said quietly.
He blinked. "You —"
"I knew." You said it simply, without cruelty. "I've known for a while. I needed you to know it too." A pause. "And I needed you to say it. Out loud. To me. Without me making it easy for you."
He held your gaze. "Because you're not going to make it easy for me."
"No," you said. Not meanly. Just honestly. "I'm not."
He nodded slowly. That was fair. That was completely fair.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For what I said. You don't belong here — I knew that wasn't true when I said it. That's the worst part. I knew and I said it anyway."
You looked at him. And he watched something in your expression shift, not all the way, but enough, a small careful opening.
"I know," you said again. Softer this time.
"Can we —" He stopped. Tried to find the right shape for the question. "Is there a way back from this. Is that something that exists."
You were quiet for a moment that felt very long.
"Come here," you said.
He crossed the room and you stood from the bed to meet him and he kissed you carefully, like he was asking, and you kissed him back like you were answering, and it was nothing like the first time and nothing like any of the times in between, because those had all been about desire and this was about something that didn't have the same kind of ceiling.
His hands came to your face, gentle, and you let him, and he kissed you like he was trying to say the things that words hadn't been sufficient for the weeks of watching you from across rooms, the soup, the mug, the way your boots on the left side of the door had started to feel like something he needed, all of it, moving through the kiss like it had somewhere to go now.
You pulled back after a moment and looked at him.
"Say it again," you said quietly. Not a test. Just you wanted to hear it again.
"I'm in love with you," he said, without hesitating.
You looked at him for one more second. Then you kissed him again and this time you meant it differently, your hands in his collar pulling him in, and the tenor of the whole thing shifted from careful to something warmer and more certain.
He walked you back to the bed gently, and you sat and pulled him down with you, and he went willingly, propping himself above you, and looked at you for a moment. Your hair on the pillow, your expression open in a way he hadn't been allowed to see in weeks.
"Hi," he said, quietly.
The corner of your mouth moved. "Hi."
He kissed you again, slower this time, and his hands moved over you with a deliberateness that was different from anything before not performing, not proving anything, just present. Your shirt came off and his followed, and he pressed his mouth to your collarbone, your shoulder, the soft curve of your throat, taking his time in the way of someone who wasn't going anywhere.
"Dean," you said softly, fingers in his hair.
"I know," he said, against your skin. "I've got you."
You exhaled like something releasing.
It was slow and close and almost unbearably tender, the kind of thing that didn't have anything to hide anymore. He was attentive in a way that felt different now not just knowing what worked but wanting you to feel it, wanting you to know he was there, all the way there, not halfway out the door. You made soft sounds against his jaw and pulled him closer and he went, and you moved together in the small warm room with the desk lamp still on low and neither of you suggested turning it off.
When you came it was quiet and deep and you said his name and he held you through it with his face pressed to your temple, and afterward he stayed close, closer than strictly necessary, and you didn't move away.
When he followed he was holding your hand, fingers laced, which hadn't been planned and was completely true, and you held on.
Afterward you lay in the small bed in the quiet and the lamp was still on.
Your head was on his chest. He had his arm around you. Neither of you had suggested otherwise.
"You really threw rocks at my window," you said, to the ceiling.
"Small rocks."
"You hit Anna's window first."
"She didn't see me."
"She definitely saw you." A pause. "She texted me twenty minutes ago asking if I had a 'nighttime visitor.'"
Dean closed his eyes briefly. "Great."
You laughed, quiet, against his chest, and he felt it more than heard it and thought: there it is. there's the thing I've been missing.
He pressed his mouth to your hair.
"For the record," he said, "you do belong there. In the house. That was — I need you to know that was the opposite of true."
You were quiet for a moment. "I know," you said. "I always knew."
"You're annoyingly self-possessed, you know that?"
"You've mentioned it."
"Not a complaint."
You tilted your head to look up at him. Something in your expression that was warm and a little careful still, not closed, just real. This was going to take time, he knew that. He'd put something between you that didn't disappear overnight and you weren't going to pretend it had, because you didn't do that.
"Tucker's going to be insufferable about this," you said.
Dean thought about Tucker, who had said absolutely nothing for weeks and washed your mug and left it on the counter. "He already knows," Dean said.
"He's known for months."
"I know."
"He texted me two weeks ago," you said, "and said 'just for the record I think he's an idiot.' I asked who and he said 'you know who.'"
Dean stared at the ceiling. "I'm going to kill him."
"You're not."
"No," he agreed. "I'm not."
A beat.
"Garrett's going to say I told you so," you said.
Dean closed his eyes. "Did he tell you so?"
"He texted me a single thumbs up the morning after the speech. No context."
"I'm going to kill Garrett too."
"You're really not."
"No," he said. "I'm really not."
You settled back against him and the room was quiet and warm and your hand was resting on his chest and outside the world was doing whatever the world was doing and in here it was just this, finally, with a name on it.
Summary: Falling for your brother’s best friend is already a terrible idea. Falling for John Logan, while Garrett Graham watches the two of you like a security threat, is even worse.
Pairing: John Logan x Graham!Reader
A/N: hii! this is actually the first thing i’ve ever published, which is both exciting and terrifying honestly 😭 i’ve always been more of a reader than a writer, so this is very new to me, but i had so much fun writing it.
if you end up reading, please let me know what you think! i’d really love to hear your thoughts.
also, im taking requests, so if you have any requests you can send it to me
okay bye, hope you enjoy <3
Garrett and you were born three minutes apart. Only three. You've done the math a thousand times, turned it over like a coin, trying to understand how three minutes could possibly account for the way he acts. The only explanation you've ever landed on is that Garrett must have gone through some Interstellar type of thing on his way out, where those three minutes stretched into three decades, aging him into the world's most exhausting older brother before he even took his first breath.
You two were never the kind of twins people expected. No matching outfits, no finishing each other's sentences, no eerie identical habits. From the very beginning you were sorted into different boxes. Garrett's box had ice skates and early morning practices. Your box had dolls and tea sets and the vague, uncomfortable feeling of being dressed up for something you hadn't agreed to.
It was a common complaint "why does Garrett get to do something while I just sit here?" Your mother would smooth your hair and change the subject. Your father never even registered the question. It took years before you understood that Phil Graham simply operated in a world where the answer was obvious. Garrett got to play hockey because Garrett was his son. You got the dolls because you were his daughter. Feminist icon was not a title Phil Graham was ever in the running for.
Growing up, you and Garrett were close in the way that kids who share a wall and a last name and a particular kind of household tend to get close,out of necessity as much as love. It was a good closeness, mostly. Until high school, when it curdled into something more complicated.
The prom thing was the first real incident. Aaron Michaels showed up at your door junior year with his hair combed and his hands in his pockets, and before he even finished the sentence you said yes. Not because you were swept away by him, you barely knew him, honestly. But you had caught Garrett watching from the top of the stairs with that particular expression on his face, the one that meant he was calculating something, and the thought of letting him anywhere near your prom night was enough to make you say yes to virtually anyone.
You think about that sometimes. How early it started.
In college, things loosened. Distance helped. You found your place in a sorority a house full of girls who were loud and warm and didn't ask you to be anything specific. Garrett found his place off campus, in a house with three teammates that quickly became something closer to family.
You were glad for him. You meant that sincerely. He had always been the kind of person who needed people around him, and for a long time the only person around had been you.
What you were less glad for was the way his protectiveness followed you across town like a second shadow. He knew your schedule. He knew your friends. He had a habit of appearing places whenever a boy seemed too interested. You had once watched him dismantle an entire almost-relationship simply by being in the same room, asking questions that were technically friendly and somehow completely lethal.
The thing was, and this was the part that made it complicated, you understood where it came from.
Growing up, Garrett's protectiveness hadn't been suffocating. It had been necessary. Your father's anger was the kind that lived in the walls of the house, that changed the air pressure in a room when he walked in. For a long time you were almost oblivious to it, the way children learn to not see things that are too large and too frightening to look at directly. But then you got old enough that it became impossible to pretend.
What you remember most is not the sounds. It's Garrett, how he would find you, and sit with you, and press your head gently against his chest without saying anything, his hands patient and steady, turning himself into a wall between you and whatever was happening on the other side of it.
He never talked about it. Neither did you. You're not sure you ever will.
Your mother died when you were young. After that, there was just you and Garrett and your father and a house that felt too big and too quiet. Garrett stayed close to you that whole year in a way that asked for nothing and gave everything, and you never once had to ask him to.
So no you didn't resent the protectiveness, not really, not at its root. You understood it.
You just wished it wasn't currently ruining your love life.
It's college, you thought, more than once, lying on your sorority house bed staring at the ceiling. Why can't I get some?
When Garrett moved into the house off campus at the end of freshman year, the relief was quiet and immediate and guilty enough that you didn't mention it to anyone. You visited often it was an easy excuse to get out of the sorority house, and Dean and Tucker were genuinely funny, the kind of company that required nothing from you.
But there was something about Logan that was different from the start. Something you noticed before you had the language for it.
The first time you really registered him was after the team's first game of the season. You had gone to the arena with Rowan, more out of obligation than enthusiasm, expecting to do your dutiful twin sister routine and leave. You found Garrett near the locker room, already mid-conversation with Logan, still in half his gear, laughing at something.
Logan turned when Garrett said your name. That's what you remember: the turn, the way his attention moved to you. He reached out to shake your hand and said something, something normal, something you have completely forgotten because you stopped processing words the moment his hand closed around yours.
His hands were warm. That's what you thought. Just warm. And large. And you were aware of them in a way that made the rest of the sentence disappear entirely.
You let go. You said something back. You moved through the rest of the conversation on autopilot, smiling at the right moments, and the whole time you were thinking about his hands.
On the drive back, Rowan looked at you sideways and said, you have about five seconds to tell me what that was.
You told her.
She was quiet for a moment. Then: make a move before they get any closer. Because once Logan becomes one of Garrett's people, you're done.
You had laughed at the time. But Rowan was right.
That was two years ago. Logan and Garrett were now the kind of friends that finished each other's sentences and covered for each other without being asked. Which meant that every time you let yourself think about Logan, really think about him, about his hands and his voice and the way he looked at you sometimes when he thought you weren't paying attention ,Garrett materialized in your mind immediately, like a warning, like a wall.
Two years. And you were no closer to doing anything about it.
This morning Logan had texted, and the moment his name appeared on your screen that feeling arrived with it the one that lived somewhere between your ribs and your stomach and had no polite name. You had stopped calling it a crush a long time ago. Crushes were light things, easy things. This was two years old and had roots.
He needed help with an assignment. A professor, a deadline, the usual disaster.
You had started tutoring at the beginning of sophomore year, a natural extension of the waitressing you'd picked up at Malone's when you first realized college was expensive and pride was not a payment method. Tutoring paid better and smelled less like fried food. Logan was the one client you had never once considered charging. You weren't sure what that said about you. Probably something embarrassing.
You got a ride to the house and let yourself in without knocking, everyone did, that was just how it worked here, and followed the stairs up to Logan's room, where you found him on his bed with his laptop open and his reading glasses on.
You took a moment.
"Hey, you," you said, walking in and knocking on the door after the fact, in the way you had trained yourself to do ever since a series of unfortunate incidents involving Dean that you were never going to think about again.
Logan looked up and smiled.
"Hey." He moved to make room. "I was waiting for you."
The assignment was for his sports management elective and it was, structurally speaking, a crime scene.
"Walk me through what you're trying to argue," you said, pulling the laptop toward you.
"That collegiate athletic programs need better mental health infrastructure."
"Say that in the paper."
"I did."
You turned the screen to face him. He read it. He had the grace to look slightly ashamed.
"...that's not what that says."
"No. It really isn't."
You started from the top. Logan sat beside you and explained himself in sentences that were clear and direct and completely unlike anything on the page, which was its own kind of frustrating because it meant the ideas were good. They were just trapped under writing that was trying too hard to sound like writing.
"Stop trying to sound smart," you told him. "You already are. Just say the thing."
He looked at you. "You're kind of mean when you tutor."
"You're paying forty dollars an hour for this."
"You're not charging me."
"Then you're getting exactly what you paid for. Keep going."
He kept going. You kept pushing. Somewhere in the middle of restructuring his third paragraph he had migrated from the desk chair to the bed beside you, and at some point after that the laptop had ended up in your lap, and the space between you had gradually, unremarkably, ceased to exist. His arm was against yours. His knee was against yours. He smelled like cedar and something warmer underneath it, which you were actively choosing not to think about.
Once, leaning over to point at something on the screen, he turned his head and found you already looking at him. Neither of you said anything. You looked back at the screen.
By the time you finished it was late afternoon, the light in the room had gone gold and low, and Logan was leaning against the headboard with his legs stretched out and you were beside him, close enough that moving away would have required a decision neither of you had made.
"Thank you," Logan said, and the way he said it was quieter than his regular voice. "Genuinely. You didn't have to do this."
"I know," you said.
"You're kind of incredible, you know that?"
You laughed, which was the only safe response available to you.
"You are very welcome, Johnny," you said, shaking your head, which brought you even closer than you already were.
The room was very quiet.
You had thought about this moment approximately four hundred times over the past two years. You had imagined it in detail. Talked yourself out of it and back into it and out of it again, and every single time Garrett had materialized in your head like a stop sign and that had been enough.
But Garrett was not here. And Logan was looking at you like that, his eyes dropping, just briefly, to your mouth, and coming back up. And two years was a very long time to wait for a moment that kept almost arriving.
You closed the distance.
The seconds that followed were the slowest of your life. You were aware of everything the warmth of him, the sound of your own pulse, the fact that his eyes had closed, which meant something, that had to mean something..
His eyes opened.
He pulled back, just slightly, and looked at you with an expression you had never seen on him before and couldn't name.
"Oh," he said. "Are we finished?"
The words landed like a door closing.
You heard yourself say yes. You heard yourself say something about studying, about being busy, about having to go. You were already reaching for your bag. You were already standing.
Every embarrassing moment you had ever lived through, every misdirected wave, every bon appétit thrown at a waiter who had not asked for it, every autocorrected text sent to the wrong person, shrank to nothing. Microscopic. Irrelevant. Amateur hour.
This was the real thing.
There should be a world record for how fast you left that house. You would have broken it.
Arriving home, there was only one thing on your mind.
The almost-kiss.
You prayed on the entire walk back. Prayed that something would take you lightning, a sinkhole, the apocalypse, anything. Because there could not be a world in which you had just tried to kiss John Logan and he had literally swerved. This could not be happening. You felt like you couldn't breathe, and yes, it was dramatic, but how, how could something like this happen to you?
I have to hide forever, you thought.
So hide was what you did. Three days of pretending to be too busy to check your phone, sending texts that said busy, call later to everyone who tried to reach you and yes, that included Logan. He had texted to thank you for the tutoring session and ask how your day was going, which was its own specific kind of torture. It was genuinely difficult to decide which was worse: him not mentioning the almost-kiss, or him not mentioning the almost-kiss.
Your sorority friends decided not to let you sulk indefinitely. You hadn't told them the truth, it was too embarrassing,but they had collectively decided that you needed to go out. Luckily, Dean and Beau's birthday bash was happening that weekend. Rowan had appointed herself costume director. You and her were going as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in New York Minute — which was a generous description of what amounted to tiny red shorts and an I ♥ NYC shirt.
Walking into the party, you spotted your brother almost immediately. He was standing with a girl: Hannah, you realized after a second. You had heard the rumors that Garrett was seeing someone but hadn't paid much attention. Garrett with a girl was like rain in the Amazon. Unremarkable. Constant. A feature of the landscape.
You already knew Hannah from Malone's. She was sweet, genuinely, almost confusingly sweet, and you had always had a hard time understanding why a girl like her would give the time of day to someone like your brother. You grabbed a drink and kept glancing at them, and spotted the exact moment Garrett stepped away and Jules moved in with that particular look on their face that meant they were about to conduct a full background check.
Time to intervene.
"Hi, Hannah," you said, inserting yourself smoothly. You turned to Jules with a look of mock severity. "Jules. This is a party. Stop the questionnaire."
They both laughed, because that was exactly what Jules had been doing. Jules threw her hands up and wandered off.
"Hey, (y/n)!" Hannah said cheerfully. "I haven't seen you at Malone's in a while — how have you been?"
"Busy. Tutoring." You shrugged. "How about you? I heard you were dating my brother."
Hannah looked startled. "Oh, not dating. Just a fling."
"Nice. A fling is nice." You tilted your head. "But since when do you do flings?"
"It's new. Experimenting." She seemed to run out of words.
"You can tell me the truth, you know," you said, softening your voice. "I'm not going to say anything. I thought you had a thing for that guy Justin,the one with the band?"
"I did," Hannah said, and then lowered her voice. "If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone."
You made the motion of zipping your mouth shut, locking it, and throwing away the key.
"Garrett is helping me," she said. "He said guys aren't interested in girls who are too available. So he's helping me seem less available so Justin will come around."
You stared at her. "He's fake-dating you to make another guy jealous."
Hannah nodded.
"That's—" you started, then stopped. Actually not the worst plan. "Okay. Solid strategy."
As if summoned, Garrett appeared carrying a can of beer for Hannah, which was objectively cute even if you would never tell him that.
"Hey, (y/n)." He pulled you into a side hug. "Why have you gone MIA? I was getting worried."
Because I tried to kiss your best friend and he dodged me like I was a pothole in the middle of the road.
"Just busy," you said pleasantly. "I'll leave you two lovebirds alone." You winked at Hannah, who turned pink, and made a beeline for the kitchen.
The thing was, you couldn't stop turning it over. What Garrett had said to Hannah guys aren't interested in girls who are too available. Was that it? Was that why Logan had pulled back? Had you made it too obvious, been too present, too easy to read?
It was the kind of question that only one person at this party could answer.
Dean was in the kitchen taking shots with Tucker, Beau, and,of course, Logan. He was dressed as Maverick from Top Gun, which was doing entirely too much for everyone in the vicinity. The navy jumpsuit was one deep breath away from falling off his shoulders entirely, to the visible appreciation of roughly half the party.
Your heels announced you before you got there. All four of them looked up.
"Dean." You used your most businesslike voice. "I need to talk to you."
Logan, who until that moment had been carefully avoiding looking at you, looked at you.
"In private," you added.
Beau and Tucker made a coordinated oooooh sound. You took Dean by the hand and led him to a quieter corner, and from the edge of your vision you could feel Logan watching the whole way there.
"Do you think guys go for girls who aren't available?" you asked, skipping any kind of introduction.
Dean blinked. "What?"
"Just answer it. Do guys prefer women who are harder to reach?"
He studied you for a moment with the particular expression of someone who was not fooled even slightly.
"(y/n)."
"Dean."
"It's Logan."
"It's not…"
"It is literally Logan." He glanced over his shoulder and back at you. "He's been staring at this corner since you dragged me away from the shots he was pouring, by the way. So I hope this is worth it."
You opened your mouth. Closed it.
"He swerved me," you said finally, quietly, in the tone of someone confessing a crime.
Dean's eyes went wide. "He what—"
"Don't make it a thing."
"I'm not making it a thing, I'm just" He stopped, visibly recalibrating. Then something shifted in his face. The confused expression dissolved into something far more dangerous. A Dean I have an idea smile. "Okay. I know exactly what to do."
"That face terrifies me."
"Let me make him jealous."
You stared at him. "What."
"Think about it." He leaned against the wall, warming to the plan in real time. "You and me, rest of the night, very cozy, very close. Logan spends the whole party watching. By midnight he either says something or he implodes. Either way you get your answer."
"That is insane."
"That is genius and you know it." He held out his hand. "What do you say, Graham?"
You looked at his hand. You looked across the room at Logan, who was very deliberately not looking in your direction, which meant he was absolutely looking in your direction.
You took Dean's hand.
"If this blows up," you said, "I'm telling everyone it was your idea."
"It is my idea." Dean grinned and pulled you back toward the party. "Come on. Let's go be very convincing."
Dean was, it turned out, an excellent co-conspirator.
He had led you back into the main room with his hand on the small of your back, a small gesture, casual enough to be deniable, obvious enough to be noticed, and steered you toward the couch where Tucker and Beau had set up camp. You settled in close to him, closer than you normally would, and let the conversation wash over you while you tracked Logan from the corner of your eye.
It took approximately four minutes.
Logan had migrated from the kitchen to the edge of the living room, arms crossed, drink in hand, wearing an expression you had never seen on him before. Not angry exactly. Something tighter than that. Something controlled, but only barely.
Dean said something in your ear something about Tucker's costume, and you laughed and leaned into him, and across the room Logan's jaw tightened.
Good, you thought, and then immediately felt terrible about it, and then thought good again.
The night continued like that. Dean was committed to the bit in the way that only someone who was genuinely enjoying himself could be his arm around your shoulders, finding excuses to tuck your hair back, laughing at everything you said like you were the most interesting person in the room. It wasn't entirely unpleasant. Dean was funny and warm and completely unthreatening, which made it easy.
What was not easy was Logan.
He didn't leave. That was the first thing you noticed he had every opportunity to drift to another room, another conversation, and he didn't take a single one. He stayed in the periphery of wherever you were, a fixed point, his drink barely touched. He had stopped pretending to talk to people. At some point Tucker said something to him and he responded without looking away from you, which Tucker clearly clocked because he glanced between the two of you with an expression of dawning comprehension and wisely said nothing.
Once, you made direct eye contact with Logan across the room. Neither of you looked away for a long moment. Then Dean said your name and you turned, and when you looked back Logan had moved closer.
He was close enough now that you could hear him when he spoke, which he had started doing small insertions into the group conversation, technically friendly, with an edge underneath them that you recognized because you had never heard it from him before.
When Dean refilled your drink, Logan was suddenly beside him. "I'll get it."
"I've got it," Dean said pleasantly.
"I said I'll get it."
Dean looked at him. Logan looked back. The silence lasted exactly long enough to be uncomfortable.
"She likes more ice than you think," Logan said finally, which was such a specific and unguarded thing to say that Dean had to look away to keep from smiling.
He brought you the drink himself. Set it down in front of you without a word and went back to his position across the room, jaw tight, arms crossed, watching.
You picked up the drink. You took a sip. You did not look at him, which cost you more than you were prepared to admit.
Okay, you thought. So it's working.
The makeout was a decision.
You made it around midnight, when the party had gotten louder and the lights had gotten lower and Dean had pulled you onto the makeshift dancefloor with the easy confidence of someone who had committed fully to a plan and intended to see it through. You were dancing close, and it was working you could feel Logan's attention like a hand on the back of your neck and then you looked up at Dean and he raised an eyebrow, a question, and you thought about Logan swerving you on a quiet October afternoon and something in you made a decision.
You kissed Dean.
He kissed you back, because he was Dean and he was committed to the bit, and for a moment it was just that a kiss, warm and uncomplicated, Dean's hands steady on your waist.
You didn't hear Garrett coming. Nobody ever did.
"What the fuck?" His voice came from directly behind you, loud enough to cut through the music. You pulled back from Dean and turned around.
Garrett was standing there looking like he had just witnessed something that had personally offended him on a cellular level. Behind him, a few feet back, standing very still, was Logan.
"(y/n)." Garrett's voice had dropped into that register the one that meant he was trying very hard to be calm. "What is happening right now."
"I'm at a party, Garrett."
"You're…" He gestured at Dean, who had the presence of mind to take a small step back. "That's Dean."
"I'm aware of who it is."
"He lives in my house."
"Also aware."
"(y/n)"
"Garrett." You crossed your arms. "I am an adult at a college party. I don't need your commentary right now."
"I'm not — I'm just—" He stopped. Dragged a hand through his hair. Then, with the particular tone of someone who had not thought through what they were about to say before saying it: "Thank God. Logan went to get me — I thought something was actually wrong—"
The sentence landed in the middle of the room like something dropped from a height.
You went very still.
Logan went to get him.
Logan, who had been standing across the room all night with his arms crossed and his drink untouched and his jaw tight, had watched you kiss Dean and gone to get your brother instead of coming over himself.
You turned, slowly, and looked at Logan. He was looking back at you with an expression that was carefully, completely neutral, which was somehow the most infuriating thing you had ever seen on a human face.
"Garrett." Your voice came out quieter than you intended. "You want to talk about boundaries? Let's talk about boundaries. Let's talk about the fact that you have spent the last three years treating me like I'm something that needs to be managed. Like I'm a problem to be solved. I am your sister, not your assignment."
"I know that—"
"Do you?" You were properly angry now, the kind of angry that had been looking for a door for a long time and had finally found one. "Because from where I'm standing it looks a lot like you don't trust me to make a single decision about my own life without you swooping in to fix it. I kissed someone, Garrett. At a party. Like a normal person."
"I just—"
"You sent Logan to get you." Your voice cracked slightly on his name, which you hated, and pushed past. "Like I was a child who had wandered too close to the street. I'm twenty years old."
Garrett opened his mouth. Closed it. He looked, for the first time in the conversation, genuinely uncertain.
"I need some air," you said, and turned and walked toward the door.
You made it to the front porch before you heard footsteps behind you.
"(y/n)."
Logan's voice. Of course.
You kept walking down the porch steps, arms wrapped around yourself against the cold, and didn't turn around.
"Hey." He was closer now. "Can we—"
"Logan." You stopped walking but didn't turn. "Please don't."
"I just want to—"
"I said please." Your voice was steady, which surprised you. "I can't do this right now. I need you to leave me alone."
A long pause. The sounds of the party filtered out through the walls of the house, muffled and distant.
"Okay," Logan said quietly.
You heard him stop. Heard him not follow you. Stood there in the cold for a moment with your eyes closed, and then kept walking.
The week after the party, you became a ghost.
Not dramatically, you didn't make an announcement, didn't post anything, didn't give anyone the satisfaction of knowing they had gotten to you. You just quietly became unavailable. Texts went unanswered for hours, then days. You skipped the house visits. You stopped showing up to things you normally showed up to.
Garrett called twice. You let it ring both times and sent a voice memo that said I'm fine, just busy in a tone that made it very clear you were not interested in discussing it further. He texted after that, a long one, full of run-on sentences and no punctuation, and you read it three times and didn't respond.
Logan texted once. Just your name. A single word, no punctuation, no follow-up. You stared at it for a long time, lying on your bed in the dark, and said none of it. You set your phone face-down on the desk and went to sleep.
Or tried to.
The only people you talked to with any regularity were Hannah and Dean. Hannah because she never pushed, never pried, just showed up with iced coffee and terrible reality television and the quiet uncomplicated warmth of someone who liked you without needing anything from you. Dean because he was the only person who knew the full story and had the decency not to turn it into a conversation every time he saw you.
He did try, once.
"You can't hide forever," he said, sitting on the edge of your bed one afternoon while you stared at the ceiling.
"Watch me," you said.
He watched you for approximately eleven more days before he stopped saying anything about it at all.
The car situation came to a head on a Tuesday, which felt appropriate. Tuesdays had always had a particular talent for making things worse.
You had always known, in a vague and carefully unexamined way, that the car thing was unfair. Garrett had gotten one junior year of high school a practical, slightly dented Honda Civic that Phil Graham had handed over with a clap on the shoulder and a speech about responsibility that lasted four minutes. You had gotten a lecture about how young women didn't need to be driving alone at night, delivered in the measured, reasonable tone your father used when what he actually meant was something he knew better than to say out loud.
In college it hadn't mattered much. Campus was walkable, rideshares existed, and you had quietly become very skilled at organizing your life around other people's cars without ever quite admitting that was what you were doing.
And then the interview came up and the system collapsed.
The position was tutoring coordinator at a learning center in Boston — real money, flexible hours, the kind of thing that could genuinely change the shape of your year. Friday at nine. Boston. Forty minutes away on a good day.
You needed a car.
Which meant you needed to call your father.
Phil Graham suggested lunch, because Phil Graham always suggested lunch. It was his preferred format for any interaction he wanted to feel like generosity rather than transaction, a restaurant, a table, the performance of a normal family.
You took Dean with you without asking permission, which your father noticed immediately and acknowledged with a slight tightening around the eyes that lasted less than a second before his public face reassembled itself. He shook Dean's hand with the particular warmth he reserved for audiences and said it was nice to see one of Garrett's friends, and Dean smiled and you watched them take the measure of each other across the table.
Dean was good at this. You had not known, before today, exactly how good. He had a way of being present without inserting himself filling silences before they became uncomfortable, asking your father questions that were just interested enough to be flattering without being so specific that they required anything real. He ordered the second cheapest thing on the menu, sat up straight, and spent the meal being quietly, almost imperceptibly perfect, and you watched your father recalibrate in real time.
"I need a car," you said, when the food arrived. Straight to it.
Your father looked up from his plate. "A car."
"I have an interview in Boston on Friday morning. I need reliable transportation."
"You could take the train."
"The timing doesn't work for the train."
A pause. Your father cut into his steak with the precise unhurried movements of a man deciding how much something was going to cost him versus how it would look to say no in front of company.
"I'll look into it," he said.
"I'd prefer to sort it out today."
Dean took a sip of his water and looked pleasantly at the middle distance, which was exactly right.
Your father bought you a car three days later. A white Subaru, two years old, clean interior. He texted you the details with no preamble and no sentiment, and you picked it up from the dealership with Dean in the passenger seat reading the car manual out loud in a documentary narrator voice until you were laughing so hard you had to pull over.
It was, all things considered, one of the better days you'd had recently.
The tire went two weeks after the party, on a Friday morning, on a stretch of road so unremarkable it felt like an insult.
You heard it first a dull, percussive thud that traveled up through the wheel and into your hands, followed immediately by the lurch of the car pulling hard to the right. You steered onto the shoulder and sat there for a moment with both hands still on the wheel and the hazards blinking orange into the grey morning air.
Boston was forty minutes away. The interview was in just under two hours. You were wearing your good blazer.
You got out and looked at the tire. Flat. Completely, aggressively, unapologetically flat.
You got back in the car and called Dean.
"Tell me you know how to change a tire," you said, when he picked up.
"Good morning to you too."
"Dean. I have a flat tire and an interview in Boston in less than two hours."
A pause. The sound of someone sitting up. "Where are you?"
You told him. There was a longer pause the kind that meant he was deciding something you weren't privy to yet.
"I can't come," he said finally. "I'm on the other side of town and I don't have the truck. But I'm going to fix this. Give me ten minutes."
"If you send Garrett—"
"I'm not sending Garrett." His voice had gone careful. Deliberate. "Ten minutes. Stay put."
He hung up before you could argue.
You sat on the hood of your car in your good blazer and watched the morning traffic pass and tried very hard not to think about who else Dean might send. You had a short list. The list had one name on it.
Fourteen minutes later, a familiar dark truck pulled onto the shoulder behind you.
You closed your eyes briefly.
Dean, you thought. I am going to kill you.
Logan got out without hurrying, because he never hurried. He was in a worn grey shirt with the sleeves pushed up and dark jeans, carrying a jack and a spare tire with the easy competence of someone who had done this many times before, and the morning light was doing something completely unreasonable to the line of his jaw.
You crossed your arms.
"I didn't ask for you," you said, before he reached you.
"Dean called me." He crouched beside your tire and assessed the damage.
"I know Dean called you. I'm saying I didn't ask for you."
"I know." He ran his hand along the tire. "You've got a nail in the sidewall. It's not patchable."
"Logan—"
"You can be angry at me the whole time." He looked up at you briefly, and there was something in his expression that wasn't quite an apology and wasn't quite a plea but sat somewhere in between. "But you have an interview in an hour and forty minutes, so let me do this."
You looked at the road instead.
He worked quickly and without commentary loosening the bolts, positioning the jack, the methodical progression of someone who understood machines in a way that was almost meditative to watch. You tried not to watch. You watched anyway.
Once he glanced up and found you looking. You looked away first.
"This is a temporary spare," he said, after a while. "It'll get you around town but not highway speeds. Not safely." He stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. Then he reached into his pocket. "Take my truck."
"Absolutely not."
"Your interview—"
"I'm not taking your truck, Logan."
"Why not?"
Because taking his truck meant owing him something, and owing him something meant having a reason to come back, and coming back meant another conversation where you said something you couldn't take back and he looked at you with that expression and didn't say anything.
"Because it's your truck," you said.
"And your interview is in less than two hours." He held out the keys. "Take it. I'll stay here. Come by the house when you're done and we'll swap back."
"I can call a rideshare—"
"(y/n)." Just your name. Just that, quiet on the side of the road, and something about the way he said it made all the arguments feel very small. "Please."
You looked at him. He looked back, steady and patient, keys extended, and you were so tired of fighting things that weren't worth fighting anymore.
You took the keys.
"I'm paying for the tire," you said.
"You're not."
"Logan—"
"Go." The corner of his mouth moved, almost. "You're going to be late."
The interview went well. You thought about Logan the entire time.
You drove back in his truck, which smelled like cedar and old coffee and something else you couldn't name, and you sat in the driveway of the house for a moment before going in.
Logan was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a glass of water, and he looked up when you came in.
"How'd it go?" he asked.
"Good. Really good, actually." You set his keys on the counter. "Thank you. For the truck."
"Of course."
A silence settled. The television murmured from somewhere in the house. Tucker's laugh, distant and easy.
You should leave. You had told yourself on the drive over that you were going to return the keys and go clean and simple, no openings.
But you were so tired.
Tired of the almost-conversations and the loaded silences and the two years of carrying something that got heavier every time he looked at you like that and said nothing.
"I like you," you said.
The words came out quieter than you intended. Steadier than you expected. You watched them land.
Logan went very still.
"I know that's complicated," you continued. "I know about Garrett. I know that's why. I'm not asking you to do anything about it." You paused. "I just needed to say it out loud. I've been carrying it for two years and I needed to put it down somewhere."
Logan looked at you with an expression you had never seen on him before — open and unguarded and almost pained. His mouth opened.
"(y/n)—" he started, and his voice was different, lower
The back door opened.
Garrett came through it pulling off his jacket, mid-sentence about something to Tucker, and nearly walked into you before he registered you were there.
He stopped. For a moment he just looked at you. Then something cracked open in his expression relief and guilt and two weeks of missed calls all arriving at once.
"(y/n)." His voice was careful. "Hey. I didn't know you were here."
"Just returning the truck," you said. Perfectly normal. You were getting very good at it.
"Okay." He nodded slowly. Then, quieter: "Can we talk? It's been weeks and I—"
"I'm kind of in the middle of something," you said.
Behind you, almost inaudible, Logan said: "It's okay. Go."
You turned.
He was leaning against the counter with his arms crossed and his expression carefully arranged into something neutral, and he met your eyes for exactly one second before he looked at the floor.
"Logan—"
"Go talk to your brother." His voice was even. Controlled. "It's fine."
You stared at him. The word sat in the kitchen between you like something neither of you wanted to pick up.
Fine.
"Okay," you said. And turned away.
The conversation with Garrett lasted longer than ten minutes. They always did.
He sat across from you on the couch with his elbows on his knees and said: "I'm sorry about the party."
"Okay," you said.
"I didn't mean to embarrass you. I was worried."
"I know."
"I know you're an adult. I know you don't need me to—"
"Garrett." You looked at him. "I know you know. That's never been the question."
He was quiet. In the kitchen, the low sound of Tucker and Logan talking, the refrigerator opening and closing.
"Then what's the question?" he asked.
You thought about it. About his hands pressing your head against his chest in the dark. About the house that felt too big after your mother left. About the whole year he had stayed close without ever being asked.
"I think you learned to protect me at a time when I really needed it," you said carefully. "And I think you don't know how to stop. And I think—" your voice went slightly unsteady "—I'm always going to love you for the first part. I just need you to work on the second part."
Garrett looked at the floor. His jaw worked.
"Yeah," he said finally. "Yeah, okay."
It wasn't a resolution. It wasn't a fix. But it was the most honest thing you'd said to each other in years, and when you stood up to leave he pulled you into a hug that lasted long enough to mean something.
Logan was in the hallway when you came out.
Not waiting, exactly leaning against the wall with his phone in his hand, doing the convincing impression of someone who just happened to be there. He looked up when he heard you.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." You picked up your bag. "I should go."
"(y/n)—"
"I meant what I said." Your voice came out gentler than you intended. "I'm not asking you for anything. You don't have to—"
"I know." He said it quickly. "I know you're not. I just—" He stopped. Something moved across his face. He pressed his mouth closed and looked at the ceiling briefly. "I heard you. What you said in the kitchen. I need you to know that I heard you."
You stood there with your hand on the door and the cold night air coming in.
"Okay," you said quietly.
And you left.
The guy's name was Eric.
He was in your economics lecture tall, easy smile, the kind of person who made friends without trying. He had asked to borrow a pen three weeks ago and somehow that had turned into sitting together, and sitting together had turned into coffee after class, and coffee after class had turned into texts that had nothing to do with economics.
You liked him well enough. He was uncomplicated in a way that felt, after everything, like something you might need.
You mentioned him to Hannah on a Thursday. Hannah mentioned him to Garrett on a Friday. Garrett mentioned him to the house on a Saturday, in the way Garrett mentioned things casually, as information, with the studied neutrality of someone who had learned to deliver news without editorializing.
Dean watched Logan's face when Garrett said the name.
Later, he would describe it as watching someone step on a piece of glass they hadn't seen coming.
Logan lasted four days.
Four days of being completely normal. Of practice and class and the house and dinner and conversations that had nothing to do with you. Four days of his phone on the table, not checking it, of going to bed at a reasonable hour and lying there for a long time.
On the fifth day, Dean knocked on his door.
"You have about forty eight hours," Dean said.
Logan looked up from the bed. "What?"
"Before she decides Eric is actually a good idea." Dean leaned against the doorframe. "She's not in love with him. She's barely interested. But she's trying, and she's good at trying, and if you wait much longer she's going to try herself right into actually meaning it."
"She deserves to be happy—"
"She deserves to be with someone who's been in love with her for two years, actually." He said it simply, without drama, the way you said things that were just true. "But that's just my opinion."
The word landed in the room and sat there.
In love.
Logan didn't correct him.
"Garrett—" he started.
"Talk to Garrett first if you need to," Dean said. "But do it tonight. Because forty eight hours is generous and I'm not known for being generous."
He left the door open when he walked out.
Logan found Garrett in the kitchen an hour later.
It was the conversation he had been avoiding for two years the one that lived in the back of his head every time you walked into a room, every time he had talked himself back from the edge of doing something about it.
"I need to talk to you about (y/n)," he said.
Garrett turned from the refrigerator. His expression moved through several things quickly before settling into something careful and still.
"Okay," he said.
"I like her." Logan held his gaze. "I've liked her for a long time. I should have said something to you before now and I'm sorry I didn't. But I'm saying it now because I can't not anymore."
The kitchen was very quiet.
Garrett looked at him for a long moment. Long enough that Logan had time to fully contemplate what losing his best friend would feel like, to turn it over, to decide that he was going to say it anyway.
"I know," Garrett said finally.
Logan blinked. "What?"
"I've known for a while." Garrett set his drink down. "I was waiting to see if you'd do something about it or if it would just go away."
"It didn't go away."
"No," Garrett said. "I can see that." He was quiet for a moment. "She's not easy to know. You know that."
"I know."
"And if you do this and it goes badly—"
"It won't."
"Logan—"
"It won't." He held Garrett's gaze. "I promise you it won't."
Garrett looked at him for one more long moment. Then he picked his drink back up and said, in the tone of someone changing the subject entirely: "She's probably at the sorority house."
You were on the porch when he pulled up.
You had come outside for air, just that, and you were sitting on the steps with a mug of tea going cold in your hands when you heard the truck. You knew the sound of that engine. Your stomach did the thing it always did.
He got out. Crossed the front path. Stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at you with an expression that had nothing careful about it — no composure, no distance. Just Logan, standing there looking like he had driven over without thinking it all the way through and wasn't sorry about it.
"There's a guy," he said. "Eric."
"I know who Eric is," you said slowly. "He's in my economics class."
"I know." His jaw worked. "I know, and I have no right to say anything about it. But I've been sitting in that house for four days and I can't—" He stopped. Tried again. "I can't watch you choose someone else because I was too much of a coward to say something."
You were very still.
"I talked to Garrett," he said.
"You—" You stared at him. "When?"
"Tonight." He took a step up, closing some of the distance. "I should have done it a long time ago. I should have done a lot of things a long time ago." He looked at you with an openness that was almost difficult to look at directly no walls, no distance, just the thing underneath all of it, which was apparently enormous. "I like you. I have liked you since the first time Garrett introduced us and you shook my hand and looked at me like you were trying to figure out what I was. And I have been handling it badly ever since and I'm sorry."
The street was quiet. The mug in your hands had gone completely cold.
"Eric is fine," you said. Your voice was slightly unsteady. "He's a perfectly nice person."
"I know."
"I'm not in love with him."
"I know that too." Logan's voice dropped slightly. "Is it too late? Because Dean said—"
"What did Dean say?"
"That I had forty eight hours."
You looked at him.
"Dean gave you forty eight hours," you said.
"He said it was generous."
"He's right, it was." You stood, which put you on the same level as him, close enough that you didn't have to look up anymore. "I was going to give you until the end of the month."
Something broke open in his expression. "Yeah?"
"Don't make it a thing," you said, and kissed him.
He kissed you back immediately, no hesitation, one hand coming up to the back of your neck and the other finding your waist, and it was nothing like October — none of the uncertainty, none of the held breath. This was certain. This was two years of accumulated patience finally running out, from both directions at once.
When you pulled back he was smiling — a real one, unguarded, the one you had always liked best on him.
"For the record," he said, "the first time you shook my hand I thought about it for three days."
"I know," you said. "I could tell."
He laughed. You smiled. Down the street a light came on in someone's window, and the night was cold, and two years of almost finally became something else entirely.
You swallow hard, blinking against the tears clouding your vision before forcing your feet to move. Your shoes feel strangely heavy as you make your way toward the staircase, your breathing uneven no matter how hard you try to steady it.
The first stair creaks beneath your weight as you sniffle, scrubbing impatiently beneath your eyes with the sleeve of your sweatshirt, but the tears keep coming anyway.
The staircase is dim, lit only by the warm glow from the kitchen downstairs. Your vision swims again, forcing you to focus on the next step before carefully lowering your foot.
You catch yourself against the railing before you can stumble, your fingers wrapping so tightly around the wood your knuckles ache.
You draw in a slow breath through your nose, willing your heartbeat to settle, but it only makes the ache spread further, every beat reminding you of his voice and the words he’d whisper to her.
I like us.
I haven’t stopped thinking about New York.
This feels different.
You’d spent years imagining what it might feel like to hear Dean Di Laurentis confess his feelings to you. You just never imagined you’d be the one he practiced them on before saying them to somebody else.
You weren’t jealous of Allie. You were jealous of the version of Dean she’d gotten to meet.
You didn’t want her life. You wanted the words he’d chosen for it.
The worst part was that the words sounded just as beautiful as you’d always imagined, but they weren’t yours. They were Allie’s.
“I get it now. You love love.” Dean smiles as he admits it, watching her closely. Allie stands almost perfectly still in front of him, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag before loosening again.
She glances up at him, biting her cheek, her eyes going wide before they dart away. He mistakes the color rising into her cheeks for something sweet—like maybe he finally understands what she’d been trying to tell him all along.
“That’s what you said you wanted, right? That night at the fire pit.”
He moves closer to her, the confidence he’d carried out of the house still holding despite his nerves. His hand rests on her hip and her shoulders turn away slightly.
“So, I came here to tell you that, uh… I didn’t complete the assignment.”
“What?” she asks, her expression changing so quickly he nearly misses it. Her lips part, but nothing comes. There aren’t any words that make this better, not when Dean matters to her and she already knows this is going to break his heart.
He sees the confusion but not the panic underneath it. Even now, with her staring at him like he’s said something impossible, he only thinks he’s caught her off guard.
“Why?” Her voice breaks around the word, her head tilting as she tries her best not to cry.
“Because I like you. I like us,” he answers surely, his thumb rubbing absently against her skin. “I know that’s not what we said, but I was hoping—”
“Hey, no, Dean. You can’t,” she blurts as he steps so close she can feel the warmth of his body, the smell of his cologne amplified with the heat of his anxiety.
Her hand comes up slightly between them, but Dean’s too caught up in the rush of finally saying it to notice how rigid her shoulders have become.
He thinks she’s scared. He is too, and somehow that only makes him more certain they’re standing in the same place. Both of them nervous. Both of them trying to figure out what comes after the agreement they’d made. His eyebrows lift as he looks down at her, the confidence returning to his voice before he says, “And yet, I am.”
Allie blinks up at him, her tears balancing on her waterline as the bar rages around them.
But she’s silent.
Dean feels a wave of unease, his eyes drifting around the bar as he realizes just how many people are there, everything closing in a little tighter.
“No, I mean, like, you have to complete the assignment,” Allie whispers, her voice barely carrying over the music. She draws in a shaky breath before finally forcing herself to meet his eyes. “Because—”
“Because why?” he asks quietly, his eyebrows pulling together.
His heart pounds so hard he can feel it in his throat. He’d been terrified she would laugh it off. Terrified he’d stumble over the speech he’d practiced with you. You had cried. You’d called it beautiful. You’d told him to tell her. Somehow, being here now, he realizes there had been one outcome he never once prepared himself for.
She nods once, looking sick to her stomach. “Because I did. I swear, it didn’t mean anything. I—Joanna set me up with this guy, like a total stranger at a bar.”
He stares at her, waiting for her to say there was more to it—that she hadn’t wanted to, that it didn’t matter, that she’d stopped before anything happened.
“You…” His voice comes out quieter than he means it to. “You actually did it?”
“I’m sorry.” The words barely leave her mouth before fresh tears gather in her eyes.
Nothing else comes. She doesn’t take it back. She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t tell him she misspoke.
Every sound in the bar swells until it becomes one unbearable roar. Somebody bumps his shoulder walking past, muttering an apology he doesn’t hear. A loud bark of laughter cuts clean through the noise.
Dean glances over his shoulder, watching as Hunter steps through the front door, eyes drifting across the room.
Hunter finds Allie almost immediately, a smile tipping at the corner of his mouth as he nods in her direction. The look of someone who’s on the receiving end of an assignment she completed.
Hunter’s smile falters for only a second as his eyes finally land on Dean standing beside her.
They’d spent years trying to get under each other’s skin. Dean sees it the moment it clicks. Hunter understands why Dean’s standing beside her. He doesn’t know the whole story, but the smile curling on his lips tells Dean Hunter’s enjoying every second of it.
Dean turns back to Allie, meeting her gaze. He doesn’t even need to ask—but he needs to hear it.
“Him?”
“No,” she croaks, eyes pinching shut as she shakes her head. “Yes—do you know him?”
And for the first time all night, Dean takes a step back, then another. His hand reaches up, raking through his hair as every sound around him crashes together like a freight train. The rose-colored glasses he’d walked in wearing had been ripped clean off, and all he could see now was red.
His skin crawls with the thought of it, heartbreak clawing at the back of his throat as his stomach sinks. How could he be so stupid? How could he possibly think either one of them would come out unscathed?
Maybe it’s because he never thought it would end like this when he agreed…
Maybe he thought the only person she could see herself with was him. He’d never even been the only option. And it broke his heart because he’d been the only one falling in love.
I like us. Not enough…
I haven’t stopped thinking about New York. I have.
This feels different. And it still isn’t enough.
None of this mattered.
“Dean, I’m sorry,” Allie whispers, taking one careful step toward him before stopping herself. “Dean…”
Dean doesn’t even look at her. His jaw flexes hard enough to ache as he turns away, forcing the people lingering nearby to shuffle out of his way.
“The fuck are you doing here?” Dean asks, grabbing onto the anger before the sadness can split him open in front of everyone as he turns to Davenport.
“I heard your team needs saving,” Hunter says, taking a beer from the bartender’s hand.
He takes a slow drink without taking his eyes off Dean, leaning his body against the edge of the bar like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Yeah?” Dean laughs bitterly. “Get the fuck out.”
Hunter huffs out a laugh, the corner of his mouth pulling higher as he sets his beer back down. Dean can see Garrett and Tucker already closing in.
“Hey,” Hunter scoffs, putting his hands up in surrender, his demeanor anything but. “Logan said this was your idea—”
Dean doesn’t answer him. His eyes drift past Hunter instead, landing on Garrett standing a few feet away, confusion written all over his face.
“You weren’t there. Logan had to make a call,” Garrett mumbles.
“I’m not skating with this prick.” Dean squares up to him, stepping closer as Hunter studies him. A crooked grin spreads across his face. Neither one of them looks away.
“Aww. What, are you scared I’m gonna dust your ass again?” Hunter closes the distance until they’re nearly chest to chest.
“You wanna try?” Dean asks, shoving Hunter backward with both hands.
Hunter plants his feet, catches himself, then steps right back into Dean’s space. “Yeah? Yeah, I do.”
Dean grabs the front of Hunter’s shirt, hauling him close enough that their foreheads nearly touch. “I’d like to see you fucking try.”
“Get the fuck out of my face,” Hunter shoots back.
Dean buries both hands in Hunter’s shirt, shoving him hard enough that he crashes into a high-top table. Glasses shatter and beer spills, the crowd parting as he surges forward, driving both palms into Dean’s chest.
Dean stumbles backward into the bar rail, his lower back slamming into polished wood. His fist connects with Hunter’s jaw almost on instinct, snapping his head sideways before Hunter answers with one of his own that catches Dean beneath the eye.
The two of them crash sideways into another cluster of people, chairs scraping violently across the floor as somebody dives out of the way.
Hunter lands a punch deep into his ribs that drives the air straight out of his lungs. Dean grabs onto him as he folds, dragging Hunter down until both of them hit the sticky hardwood in a tangled heap.
Hunter’s elbow catches the corner of Dean’s mouth—his lip splitting, blood flooding his mouth.
“Dean!” Garrett shouts. “Break it up!”
People reach for both of them from every direction, but neither man lets go. Dean tears free long enough to throw another punch that lands against Hunter’s ribs before Hunter answers with one across Dean’s cheekbone, his vision blurring again as people shout over one another.
Beau finally hooks both arms around Dean from behind, hauling him backward across the beer-slick floor while Garrett and Tucker wrestle Hunter the opposite direction. Dean strains against Beau’s grip anyway, shoes scraping against the bar floor as blood drips steadily from the corner of his mouth onto the front of his shirt.
“Enough!” Garrett barks into the space between, breathing hard himself.
Dean glances back, and Allie’s standing exactly where he left her, crying hard enough she has to cover her mouth. He tears himself out of Beau’s grip and storms toward the front door without another word.
“…Hey.”
Your stomach twists. You hadn’t even considered somebody else might still be here.
Logan’s leaning against the kitchen counter, dressed for the bar, absentmindedly eating a bowl of cereal. His eyes squint, taking a better look at you through the dark house, before his expression immediately changes.
Logan lowers the spoon back into the bowl, his eyebrows pulling together as he straightens away from the counter. “Hey, sweetheart…” he says carefully, his gaze moving over your face for less than a second before all the color drains from his own. “What’s wrong?”
You pull your bag a little closer against your side as you force yourself to look anywhere but at him, swallowing hard around the lump already sitting in your throat.
You open your mouth, fully intending to tell him you’re fine, but the words refuse to come, leaving you standing there in complete silence while another tear slips free despite your best efforts.
Logan sets the bowl down without taking another bite. “Hey,” he says again, this time much softer as he walks around the counter toward you. “C’mere.”
You suck in one sharp breath, another tear sliding down your cheek before you can stop it. You shake your head, blinking hard as you try to pull yourself back together.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
He reaches for you, wrapping his arms around your shoulders as carefully as if he thinks you might fall apart in his hands, and for the first time since Dean walked out that front door, you let yourself cry.
The front of his t-shirt grows damp beneath your face while one of his hands rubs slow circles across your back, his other resting gently against the back of your head.
You don’t remember the last time someone held you while you cried. Dean never had to. He’d always made sure you laughed before it got this bad.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs quietly. “I’ve got you.”
The cool night air hits Dean like a slap the second he shoves through the front doors.
His shoes pound against the sidewalk as he puts as much distance between himself and Allie as he can, dragging the back of his hand across his split lip.
Every breath stings his ribs—his left eye’s already swelling shut—but none of it hurts as much as the pressure sitting in the middle of his chest.
“Dean!” He doesn’t look back as he hears her voice. “Dean, wait!”
Allie hurries after him, weaving around the crowd standing outside Malone’s. She reaches for his arm, fingers barely brushing the sleeve of his jacket before he jerks away so fast it startles both of them.
He shakes his head, breathing hard through his nose. “Don’t.”
Her hand falls back to her side as she searches his face, tears continuing to roll down her cheeks. If she’d reached for him five minutes earlier, he would’ve melted into it.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m fine. Go back inside,” he huffs, turning back around to walk away.
He only makes it a few steps before she reaches for him again, her hand wrapping around his arm. “How is this fine, Dean? You’re not okay. We’re not okay—”
“We? We’re not okay?”
“Yes we—us, Dean.”
“Why are you acting like there’s a fuckin’ we here when you clearly… you—you just. Fuck! You weren’t supposed to say that,” Dean cuts her short, the words sounding almost childlike, leaving him mortified.
“…What?” she asks breathlessly, staring up at him.
“You weren’t supposed to say that.” His voice cracks this time. “I was supposed to come here.” He gestures back toward the bar with one bloody hand before letting it fall uselessly to his side. “I was supposed to tell you how I felt.”
“Dean…”
“You were supposed to tell me you felt the same way.” His breathing grows more uneven with every word, his chest rising sharply as he struggles to keep himself together. “You were supposed to tell me I’d been an idiot for waiting this long. We were supposed to laugh about that stupid fucking assignment. We were…”
His voice disappears completely. He swallows hard, looking away for a second before forcing himself to meet her eyes again.
“How do you not feel the same way? How, Allie? I don’t get it. And that's my issue to work through, not yours—”
“I never wanted this to happen.”
“Neither did I,” Dean whispers, his eyes glassy despite how hard he’s trying to keep himself together.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are.” He presses his lips together for a second, his jaw flexing as he tries to steady his breathing. “I just… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this now.”
He’d spent so long wondering how good it would feel when he finally told her how he felt that he’d never once thought about what came after she said no.
Allie’s eyes drift back to the cut beneath his eye, another thin line of blood working its way down his cheek. “You’re bleeding.”
Dean reaches up, touching the corner of his mouth before looking at the blood on his fingertips, completely numb.
“It’s nothing.”
“Dean, it’s not nothing.” She fumbles through her purse until she finds a bar napkin, unfolding it with shaky hands as she steps closer again. “Just… hold still for one second.”
She barely gets close enough to lift her hand before Dean takes another step backward. “Please don’t.”
Dean holds her gaze for a moment before letting out a shaky breath, his gaze dropping to the cracked sidewalk.
“Forget it.”
She says something else. He sees her lips move. Another apology, maybe. Another explanation. He doesn’t hear a word of it because the thoughts in his head are so, so much louder.
She never asked him to come tonight.
…Hunter was there.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly where Allie wanted him to be. His throat burns as he swallows hard, his vision blurring again.
The front doors of the bar burst open behind them, music spilling out onto the sidewalk along with a chorus of raised voices. Allie looks back toward the entrance as tears of frustration stream down her cheeks.
“Where is he?” Beau asks, already looking past her.
Allie whips around toward where Dean had been standing, but he’s gone. “He…” Her voice catches before she manages to finish. “I don’t know.”
“You really don’t wanna tell me?” Logan asks against the rim of his beer bottle before he takes a sip.
You shake your head almost immediately, your head resting heavy on his shoulder as you look out onto the empty street.
Logan nods like he’d expected that. He glances down at the porch beneath his feet for a second, tapping the toe of his boot lightly against the wood before looking toward you. “…Alright,” he says quietly. “Then don’t.”
You let out a long breath through your nose before quietly agreeing.
“Mind if I take a guess?” he asks gently.
Your fingers tighten around your sleeve until the fabric bunches in your fist.
You keep your eyes fixed in front of you, blinking quickly as another sting builds behind them, but you can’t quite bring yourself to answer, so you nod.
“It has something to do with Dean?”
Your chin trembles as you try your hardest to stay still, telling him everything he needs to know anyway.
“Mhmm,” he hums. “…Dean and Allie?” The names hang in the cool night air swirling around you.
You draw in another shaky breath, staring out at the emptiness for another second before the words finally leave you. “I just…” You swallow hard. “I don’t want to lose my best friend.”
Logan shifts toward you, pressing a kiss against your hair before he rests his chin on the top of your head. He draws in a deep breath, letting it out nice and slow.
“That’s not gonna happen,” he whispers.
You shrug helplessly, your voice barely rising above a whisper. “Everything changes when people fall in love.”
He chuckles breathily. “Nah… It’ll change some things,” he admits honestly. “Life always does.”
He turns toward you, brushing a tear away with his thumb.
“You’re not gonna lose Dean.”
His arm tightens around your shoulder, headlights sweeping briefly over the porch, and your heart plummets—the thought of Dean and Allie stumbling out of an Uber, laughing and kissing, tearing away at your last thread of sanity. The car disappears and you blow out a breath, nodding because Logan is waiting for some kind of response.
“You can talk to me, you know? It’s me.”
“How are you so sure?” you whisper.
Logan’s lip pouts a little, so slight you barely catch it out of the corner of your eye, when he hears just how broken you are. He takes another drink from his beer. “You two have been attached at the hip since freshman year. One girl isn’t gonna change that.”
“One girl,” you breathe, the words leaving your lips like you can’t believe he could possibly think that’s all she is—but he doesn’t know Dean like you know Dean.
Like Allie’s no different from the dozens of girls that have walked in and out of that door behind you. Like she isn’t the first one who made him nervous enough to ask for your help—caring enough to ask you for the first time if what he was offering someone else was enough. If he was enough.
Another car turns into the neighborhood and chills fall down your spine. “She’s not just some girl.”
The ring on his finger clinks against the bottle before he speaks. “I just mean Dean’s had people come and go before,” he continues. “You haven’t. He trusts you more than anybody. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” you manage.
“And he’s always gonna need you.” Logan dips his head, trying to catch your eyes. “That idiot barely knows what he’s feeling until he talks it through with you first. You really think he’s gonna stop calling because he has a girlfriend?”
The word settles between your ribs, sharp and heavy.
“He talks about you constantly,” he adds. “Half the time somebody asks him a question, he starts with, ‘Well, she said—’ like we don’t already know who he means.”
You shake your head quickly, trying to get Logan to stop being so kind because each comforting word he offers to “Dean’s best friend” just pulls the woman who would do anything to mean what he means to her deeper underwater.
“Besides…” Logan huffs quietly, shaking his head. “They’ve been… whatever this is… for what? Five minutes?”
“It doesn’t matter,” you press the words past your lips.
“Exactly. I mean… they literally made a deal to hook up with other people.”
“No,” you whisper. “I mean—I just,” you stumble over your words, trying to put your misery into something coherent but it’s too fucking much. “I’m being stupid.”
“No, c’mon.” His hand slips from your shoulder, lifting to cup your cheek, turning you gently so you finally have to look at him.
His expression softens, his eyebrows pulling together with worry.
“If you think Allie’s gonna have some issue with you being close to him, she won’t,” Logan says, like it should be obvious. As though the possibility is so unreasonable it doesn’t require more than a sentence to dismiss.
“Okay,” you whisper, wanting the honesty to stop, hating how small your voice sounds.
“She knows you.” He gives you a confused little smile, like he can’t figure out how you’ve managed to scare yourself this badly over something so simple. “She knows what you and Dean are like.”
And how is that?
Your breath catches in your chest and your lashes flutter anxiously. A tiny part of you waits for him to say you’ve got it all wrong.
That Dean’s just taking the long way around. That one day he’ll realize he’s been looking at you all this time and finally understand why he could never let you go.
He doesn’t.
“You’re not competition, sweetheart.”
His expression softens when he says it, like he’s finally found the sentence that should make all of this better. The tears fill your eyes, blurring him so much that you can barely see.
“Thank you,” you whimper. You turn away from his touch, face crumpling before you can stop it, wiping away your tears with the heel of your hand.
“Hey.” Logan’s voice drops. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to make it worse.”
“No.” You shake your head, drawing in a trembling breath as you stand up, crossing your arms tight over your chest. “I appreciate it.”
“She’s not gonna want to take away somebody who’s like family to him.”
“You’re right,” you whisper.
“Hell, you’re probably gonna end up with one of us anyway,” Logan laughs quietly before shaking his head. “I mean…” His cheeks redden ever so slightly as he scratches the back of his neck. “We all love you.”
You barely hear the first part. The last three words only make the ache inside your chest that much harder to bear because you know exactly what kind of love he means.
You nod, forcing the corner of your mouth upward, tight and unsteady, but Logan’s shoulders lower slightly in relief when he sees it.
“I don’t need to go to the bar,” Logan mumbles. “You wanna come back inside? Watch a movie or somethin’?”
And be here when he comes home? You try to keep your expression from changing, terrified that the question is painted all over your face anyway.
“No, you should go.” Your voice cracks at the end, so you clear your throat. His eyes search yours, moving over your tear-streaked cheeks before he finally lets out a quiet breath. “Everybody’s probably wondering where you are—”
“They’ll survive,” Logan stops you, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees as he looks up at you.
Silence stretches between the two of you.
Finally, Logan pushes himself to his feet, studying your face as he slips his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
He watches you for another long moment, and for one awful second you think he can see straight through it. You think he’s going to pull you back into his arms and keep asking questions until the truth spills out of you, but his shoulders slowly loosen.
“Text me when you get home.”
“I will.”
“And if you’re still upset, call me.” He reaches up, rubbing away a tear. “Don’t care what time it is, alright?”
Logan draws you into one last hug, and you let yourself sink into it as the pressure in your chest starts building again. “You’re not gonna lose him,” he whispers once more, pressing another kiss against the top of your head before giving you a final squeeze and letting you go.
He stays near the doorway, watching while you cross the yard, so you keep your shoulders straight and your steps steady. You even lift a hand when he reminds you to text him, pretending you can hold yourself together for another ten steps.
You make it out of sight before your hand flies over your mouth, a sob breaking through as the strap of your bag slips down your shoulder and you struggle to drag air into your lungs.
You were his best friend. His safe space. His family. Close enough to stay beside him through every part of the life he was about to build with someone else.
You weren’t going to lose him.
Dean was still going to choose you.
Just never the way you’d dreamed he would.
Dean runs until his lungs start burning.
His shoes hit the pavement as his heart pounds in his chest. He stumbles off the curb at the end of the block, catching himself before he goes down completely, his hands still trembling with adrenaline.
His phone vibrates against his thigh, but he doesn’t reach for it. He doesn’t want to know if it’s Allie. He doesn’t want to hear Garrett asking where he went or Beau telling him to come back. He can’t go back.
He gasps for a breath, his split lip tearing open more as the cold air bites at his skin. He’s a little drunk, and he hates to admit it. Those beers he threw back to calm his nerves are catching up with him at the worst possible time.
His shoe catches against a raised crack in the sidewalk and he stumbles forward, one palm scraping hard against the concrete. His knee drops to the wet ground, and he stays there for a moment, head hanging between his shoulders.
“Fuck,” he chokes out, shoving himself upright before his body can decide to stay down.
He makes it another block before the street opens in front of him, the familiar intersection finally slowing his feet.
His hands rake through his sweaty hair. He looks to the right, then the left toward the hockey house, before he glances back to where he wants to go.
Dean’s phone vibrates angrily in his pocket. He tugs it out, seeing a string of notifications, and a list of text messages stacked on top of each other. The latest one hits him like a gut punch.
Just talk to me please. Allie Hayes.
What if she comes looking for him? He doesn’t want to fold if she tells him she regrets what she did. He knows he will.
He doesn’t want to cry in front of her. He doesn’t want her to pity him while she patches him up after this stupid fuckin’ fight with Hunter. He doesn’t want to pretend it’s not shattering him while she tries to explain how it meant nothing.
He doesn’t want to fall asleep in sheets that smell like the two of them.
“I can’t fucking do it,” he whispers, because he knows the boys aren’t far behind. He doesn’t want Garrett or Beau. He doesn’t want Allie. He just wants you.
There’s nowhere else he goes.
He hopes you’re home.
You always know how to make things better.
But it’s gonna hurt. He can already picture the look on your face when he tells you he wasn’t enough. He can already hear your voice soften when he tells you Allie chose somebody else. He can already feel the way you’ll fit in his arms when you hug him and tell him he’s gonna be okay. He just wants to be okay…
He just wants to go home.
And so do you.
You keep your head down, not trusting yourself to look up if anyone passes by. Another tear falls, disappearing against the dark concrete before the next one follows.
Your sneakers scuff quietly against the sidewalk while you try not to think about what Dean’s doing or whether he’s already made it back to the house.
And, even though you don’t wanna know, you’re hyper aware of the phone weighing heavy in your pocket. A text from Dean—a social media update from Allie. Some public display of affection that will surely ruin you. But this limbo of knowing and not knowing what happened makes your stomach twist in knots.
What if you turned around right now? What if you went to Malone’s? Would that help? Maybe seeing them together would be the push you’d need to let that want go.
What’s a little more heartbreak?
You stop walking and in that moment you hear footsteps echo behind you. At first, you don’t think much of it. Briar’s campus is never completely empty, even this late, and somebody’s probably headed home just like you are.
You glance over your shoulder, the hair on the back of your neck standing straight as you catch a man walking toward you fast, too fast, so you move.
Your feet pound against the sidewalk as you look over your shoulder just as a pair of headlights rounds the corner.
For half a second, the headlights catch the face of the man behind you, and your heart nearly stops—his split lip, cheeks stained from tears and blood, his eye already swollen beneath blonde locks plastered to his forehead. He’s breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling with every jagged breath.
Your stomach drops and your voice breaks as you call out for him.
“Dean?”
Even from where you’re standing, you watch his head lift before tipping back toward the dark sky for a second, his shoulders sagging as another broken breath escapes him and his eyes squeeze shut.
“Dean…” You try again, your voice catching as you hurry the last few steps toward him. The streetlight finally catches his face, and your chest tightens. “Dean, what the hell happened?”
He doesn’t answer. The second you’re close enough, he reaches for you. His arms wrap around you so suddenly they almost knock you off balance, pulling you against his chest with enough force that you stumble into him.
Before you can even think to hug him back, he’s buried his face against the side of your neck, another broken sob tearing through him as his whole body shakes in your arms.
“Hey… hey,” you whisper, choking back tears of your own.
Your fingers tangle through the hair at the back of his head while your other arm wraps around his waist, holding him as tightly as you can.
“I’ve got you.”
His hands bunch the back of your sweatshirt in his fists. You can feel every tremor that moves through him, his forehead pressed against your shoulder while you continue stroking his hair over and over, your own heart breaking right alongside his.
“What happened?” you whisper. He draws in a deep breath, blowing it out slow.
You pull back just enough to look at him again, your thumb brushing carefully beneath the eye that hasn’t swollen shut.
His lashes lift slowly and the tears on his bruised cheeks shimmer. And, at this moment, you can’t remember a time when you’ve ever seen him this sad… but you know the feeling. You’ve been living it all night.
For a second, all you hear is the rustle of leaves and the uneven sound of the two of you trying to hold yourselves together.
“Just give me a minute,” he whispers.
“Okay,” you nod. “Where were you going?”
His lips draw to the side, his eyebrows softening as he looks at you like you shouldn’t even have to ask. Dean’s hand slips into yours, his fingers closing tightly around your own before he begins pulling you toward your place.
The two of you walk side by side without another word, your hands still linked between you. Dean keeps his head down, staring at the sidewalk as it passes beneath his feet.
You sneak another look at him beneath the streetlights, taking in the blood drying beneath his nose and along the corner of his mouth. He lifts his free hand, wiping at his mouth, hissing in pain before he pulls away.
Dean must feel you looking because his head turns slowly toward you, his bruised eyes finally meeting yours.
And still, he can’t bring himself to speak. Not yet. Normally, he wouldn’t have let the silence last this long. He would’ve made some joke about you staring at him or squeezed your hand until you finally looked over and smiled. He would’ve told you the other guy looked worse, even if you hadn’t asked.
You wish there was something you could say that would make any of this better.
Dean lifts his eyes, staring toward your place before letting out a long, unsteady breath. You fish your keys from your sweatshirt pocket as the two of you make your way up the short walkway.
You unlock the door and pull it open, holding it for him as he steps inside ahead of you.
The apartment is almost completely dark when the two of you step inside. You quietly push the door shut behind you, the soft click of the lock sounding impossibly loud in the silence.
He starts toward the staircase without saying a word, and you follow him just as silently. The steps creak softly beneath your weight as the two of you climb toward the second floor.
You can’t stop checking on him. Every few steps your eyes drift back to his face, the physical pain and heartbreak painted so clearly across it.
And even so, you hate yourself for the relief that’s settled somewhere deep inside you, quiet enough that you tried to keep it buried.
Dean’s heart is in pieces, and somehow a part of you is grateful that he isn’t spending tonight somewhere else. Grateful that he came looking for you instead of her. Grateful that he’s here.
The realization makes you feel sick.
That’s not what best friends are supposed to think. They aren’t supposed to find comfort in someone else’s heartbreak, no matter how desperately they’ve wished for them.
You swallow hard, forcing your eyes back to the steps beneath your feet as another sting settles behind them. This isn’t about you. Whatever’s left of your own heart can wait. Right now, Dean needs someone to put him back together.
The two of you step into your place and Dean kicks off his shoes, still refusing to let go of your hand, leading you toward the bathroom at the end of the hall, nudging the door open before stepping inside.
The room stays dim, lit only by the soft amber glow from the hallway and the faint wash of moonlight filtering through the small window above the shower.
He reaches up for the collar of his jacket, and slowly eases it from his shoulders, wincing in pain as he drags it off one arm then the next.
He nods toward the shower, waiting for your answer before he reaches for the handle. “Of course,” you whisper. He twists the metal handle until hot water begins pounding against the tile, steam slowly filling the small bathroom.
“…I got blood everywhere,” he whispers, and your eyes flick up to the mirror, the corners already fogging over from the heat.
His t-shirt is stained across the collar, dried streaks trailing down the front where he’d wiped at his face over and over throughout the walk home. There are rusty fingerprints smeared across the sleeves of your sweatshirt too, little reminders of how tightly he’d held onto you in the middle of the street.
“You’re okay,” you whisper.
He reaches for the hem of his shirt first, pulling the bloodstained fabric over himself before dropping it onto the bathroom floor. You quietly do the same with your sweatshirt, leaving it beside his before slipping out of your jeans.
Neither of you says anything about it. By the time the two of you step beneath the spray, he’s wearing nothing but his boxers, and you’re standing in your panties and bra.
The hot water runs over Dean’s hair, wetting dried blood, sending it ribboning down the side of his face. The chain on his chest flickers with every shaky breath, the tanned skin on his ribs a watercolor of purple and blue bruises.
Pink water circles lazily around the drain, carrying away blood and fresh tears.
He simply stands there with his eyes closed while you carefully press the damp cloth beneath the cut at his eyebrow, your other hand resting lightly against his shoulder to steady him. Every now and then he whimpers, but he never pulls away.
You rinse the washcloth beneath the spray before pressing it against the corner of his mouth. Dean’s head tips down slightly to give you better access, his eyes staying closed while you wipe away the blood still caught along his jaw.
“Who did this to you?”
He swallows hard enough that you see the movement in his throat. For a second, you think he might avoid the question but he doesn’t.
“Hunter.”
Your brows pull together in confusion. There are probably a dozen Hunters somewhere on campus, but there’s only one who could make Dean say it like that.
“Davenport?”
He nods, and the answer only leaves you with more questions. You look over his bruised face again, the cut at his eyebrow, the swelling already darkening beneath his eye, and the fresh scrape across his cheekbone that hadn’t been there when he left the house.
Hunter and Dean had never needed much of an excuse to get under each other’s skin, but this wasn’t the aftermath of another stupid chirp taken too far. Dean hadn’t run across campus crying because Davenport made some comment about hockey.
“Why?”
His lips part, but nothing comes out. Dean blinks a few times, unable to put his disappointment into words.
“Do you want me to guess?” you whisper. The question sounds painfully familiar the moment it leaves your mouth. A few minutes earlier, Logan had offered you the same mercy while the two of you sat on the porch, quietly filling in the spaces around everything you couldn’t bring yourself to admit.
Now Dean is standing in front of you with the same helpless look you must’ve worn then, and somehow you already know where to begin.
“She did the assignment?”
Dean bites down on his split lip, turning his face away from you before he nods.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper.
His jaw locks so tightly you can see the muscle jump beneath his skin.
And suddenly, everything starts to fall into place. Allie had completed the assignment. Dean had found out after telling her everything. Hunter had ended up with blood across his fists. But your heart still resists placing the last one where it belongs.
“With who?” you ask.
His nostrils flare and his arm circles your waist, pulling you closer beneath the water.
“No,” you breathe, but you can see Hunter stepping through the bar doors without having been there. You can see the look Dean must’ve caught between him and Allie, the one answer neither of them would’ve needed to say aloud. Your free hand rises to cover your mouth, but it does nothing to hide your emotions. “She couldn’t have known.”
“She didn’t,” he says, his voice breaking beneath the steady rush of the shower. “She had no clue.”
Dean lets out a slow breath, his forehead lowering until it rests against yours. “It…” His voice catches, forcing him to stop before he can get the rest out. “It could’ve been anybody. Would’ve hurt either way,” he whispers. He draws in another shaky breath, his lips flattening into a thin line before he finally forces himself to finish. “It just…” Another pause. “It being him fucking hurts.”
Your palm slides slowly over his shoulder before settling against the back of his neck, pulling him closer when a tremor moves through his body. “I’m sorry,” you whisper again, because there isn’t anything else you can give him.
“I really thought it was gonna go well.” Dean says it so quietly that the words almost disappear beneath the water, but you hear every one.
He had walked into that bar convinced the words he’d practiced with you would be enough to make Allie choose him. And fuck, if those same words had ever left his mouth for you, you think you could’ve lived on them for the rest of your life.
You can’t tell him that. You can’t admit that while he’s standing here broken over somebody else, not when he trusts you to be the one person who will hold him without asking for anything in return.
So you don’t.
“I love you,” he whispers, his voice cracking when he speaks as your fingers continue moving gently through his hair.
“I love you too.”
Your eyes burn all over again. The last traces of blood disappear down the drain beneath your feet, but neither of you makes any move to step away.
“You’re the only person I can count on.”
“Always,” you whisper.
He steps close enough that the tip of his nose nearly brushes yours. His hands slide from your waist, lifting between you to hold your face, his bruised knuckles resting beneath your ears while his thumbs sweep over your cheeks. Your mouth trembles when you try to give him a reassuring smile.
He’d been too consumed by everything that had happened to realize you’d already been crying long before he found you.
And after he’d left you crying on his bed, you’d probably never stopped.
Dean’s thumb slides along your bottom lip, feeling it tremble under his touch. The fact that you’re holding your breath to keep from sobbing makes his heart start to race all over again.
“Babygirl,” he whispers. “Hey.” He stops you when you look away, searching your face for another long moment, looking at you like he’s only just beginning to realize that he wasn’t the only person whose heart was broken. “What’s wrong?”
c/w ᝰ.ᐟ unrequited love, love confession rehearsal, crying, yearning, self-inflicted emotional damage, one-sided love, hurt no comfort, painfully oblivious!dean, pet names (you’re my girl + babygirl; platonic, no y/n), all the right words to the wrong person, reader heartbreak + language
You’re sitting on the couch fully dressed with your shoes already on after changing outfits three times because apparently going to a bar with your best friend now requires a full identity crisis. You drop your phone beside you and let your head fall back against the couch cushion.
You and Dean have been friends for years. Long enough that he has a spare set of apartment keys for himself, free rein to your leftovers without repercussions, and his own little corner in the closet.
Dean never stayed serious about anybody long enough to worry about. There was always another girl, another date, another reason to remind yourself that whatever stupid crush you’d been carrying around wasn’t worth ruining the best friendship you’d ever had.
Until Allie.
For the first time since you’ve known him, Dean actually thinks before he talks about someone. Like she matters enough to make him choose his words carefully.
You spent years convincing yourself you’d get over him eventually. Turns out watching Dean fall in love with somebody else is a pretty effective way to figure out exactly how bad you’ve got it.
Your phone lights up on the coffee table, and you hate how fast you reach for it, rolling your eyes at yourself.
You stare at the messages for a second before typing back.
˗ˏˋ ☏ ˎˊ˗ 𝚈𝚘𝚞: 𝙽𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 💕
A smile tugs at your mouth despite yourself.
That was the other problem. No matter how much this hurt, Dean was still Dean.
Your phone starts ringing before you can answer. Your heart immediately jumps, which is embarrassing considering it’s been doing that for years.
You answer before the second ring.
“Babydoll.”
“Mhmm…” You hum out a breath. “What do you want, Dean?”
For a second all you hear is his breathing before he chuckles weakly, and even though you can’t see him you can feel it. Something’s wrong.
“Can you come over?” His voice wavers a little.
“Yeah,” you answer, gently. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah. M’fine,” he assures quickly, like the concern is completely unnecessary. You hear him shift around on the other end of the line. “I just need somebody to talk to.”
“Yeah,” you say. “Of course.”
“You’re the best,” he hums.
“Be there in ten.” Click.
You grab your purse and step into the warm summer night. Dean’s place is only a few blocks away, unfortunately giving you more than enough time to think.
You don’t dislike Allie. She’s beautiful, funny, smart, and completely capable of keeping Dean on his toes. The problem is that every time he talks about her, he sounds like somebody who’s already fallen.
You don’t want it to be somebody else.
You want it to be you.
By the time you step into the driveway, most of the lights in the guys’ house are on, the front door wide open and music and conversation pouring out onto the street.
You let yourself inside, greeting the boys on autopilot, too worried about how Dean sounded on the phone to think of much more.
You make your way upstairs, following the sound of Dean moving around in his room. His door is half open. You push it the rest of the way and find him standing in front of his dresser, pulling a shirt over his head.
The second he sees you, his face brightens. “Finally,” he huffs out a breath like you had kept him waiting and you roll your eyes.
Dean crosses the room and wraps his arms around you before you can say something smart—a smothering hug. But this time he keeps you there, turning his face into your shoulder and letting out a long breath.
He stays like that for a moment, holding you like he needs it—like he needs you.
“Dean?” You whisper.
“Babydoll,” he mumbles.
“Seriously, are you okay?” You laugh nervously.
He thinks about that for a minute, mumbling something frustrated and small under his breath. You pull back and cup his cheeks between your hands, forcing him to look at you.
“C’mon,” you breathe, and his bottom lip pokes out in a pout. “It’s me… Tell me. What the hell’s going on with you. You told me to come over. I’m here…”
“I know… Thank you,” he mutters.
“So?”
“So…” He sighs as you drop your hands, hanging heavy by your sides. “Mental gymnastics.”
“Over what?” You ask, cocking an eyebrow at him.
Allie.
“Allie,” he whispers the name you saw coming a mile away. “I can’t do it.”
“Like?” You ask, feeling your stomach sink like a rollercoaster drop. “Like the two of you?”
“No—No. Hell no,” he answers fast and breathless. “That assignment. I couldn’t do it. Every girl I talked to, I just kept thinking about how fuckin’ stupid it was. I even thought about asking somebody to lie.”
“Desperate times,” you murmur.
“You got no clue,” he mumbles, tiredly. “I even thought about asking you. Y’know, to lie.” The words hit harder than they should. “Probably the only person I know who’d give a shit enough to help me with that.”
You force a smile, your lips trembling at the corner. “Of course.”
“She’d never believe it.”
Your eyelashes flutter as your heart starts to crack. “Oh?”
Dean laughs, scratching at the stubble on his jaw as he thinks it over. “You’re my girl. She’d know I was lyin’.”
You nod, giving him the only reply you can muster to that. He lifts his hands, running his fingers through his hair, still turning it over in his head.
“I’m just gonna tell her.”
You stare up at him for a moment, and those nerves you heard on the phone start to become crystal clear. “Tell her what?” You ask nonetheless.
He blows out a breath just like before, laughing nervously. “I don’t know how to say it.”
“You’ve never had trouble talking before,” you say, already turning away, glancing at him out of the corner of your eye as he scowls, rolling your eyes away.
“No too much on your boy, alright. I’m going through emotional duress.”
He walks around his bed and crashes down, turning to his side like he’s already waiting for you to settle on the other.
“This feels different.”
Your stomach sinks as you sink into the mattress next to him.
“I keep trying to convince myself we’re casual, but we’re not,” he tells you honestly. “I haven’t stopped thinking about New York.”
“Yeah,” you whisper.
“We didn’t even do anything special. We stayed in, ordered food, watched movies, and it was probably one of the best nights I’ve had in years.”
The best night he’s had in years. All those memories you’d secretly hoped might fill that place already did—for you.
“I keep waiting for this feeling to go away,” he sighs. “I keep thinkin’ eventually I’ll wake up and it’ll be normal again, but it doesn’t.”
You look up at him for a moment, wishing he would stop talking and feeling awful for it at the same time. You hate how much it sounds like everything you’ve spent years wanting to hear.
You hate it even more because none of it is meant for you.
“Well, what are you gonna say?” You whisper, and he scoots a little closer, snuggling into his pillow.
“To Allie?”
You widen your eyes to keep the tears inside—because why the fuck would you want to know? But some part of you knows you need to hear it.
“Tonight?” He asks and you nod. “Like practice on you.”
No.
You look back at him, wishing you could take back those six little words because now he’s not just going to talk through his feelings.
He wants you to feel them. He wants to sit here and practice telling another girl he loves her while looking you directly in the eye, and the worst part is that he trusts you enough to do it—trusts you enough to hand you something this important and never once wonder what it might cost you.
And that might be too much for you to take.
“Mhmm,” the utterance pushes past your lips, and your head falls a little heavier into the pillow, wafting an unfamiliar perfume, just a whisper. Allie’s.
You push off the pillow and sit, and he does the same, meeting you eye to eye.
“Allie,” he breathes. “I, uh….” Dean laughs nervously, so you do the same. The two of you look away for a moment, anxious for different reasons entirely before looking back at each other.
“Dean,” you whisper, extending your hand casually for him to continue.
“I get it now,” he mumbles, taking your hand in his. Your gaze falls as his fingers tighten around yours.
“Get what?” You whisper, eyes lifting back to him.
“You love love.” Your eyebrows soften on his, recalling something he had told you she had mentioned when they first met. “That’s what you said you wanted, yeah?”
“Yeah,” you whisper, and he smiles.
“So, I came here to tell you that I…” He mumbles as his thumb brushes along your knuckles. “I didn’t complete the assignment.”
Silence settles over the room as you already hear something you know to be true.
“Why?” You ask, watching him for a moment, holding your breath, waiting for his four little words he’s so desperate to say to leave his lips and shatter your heart completely.
“Because I like you,” he answers and you force yourself to smile.
Suddenly, Dean is harder to see through the blur gathering in your eyes. You nod, feeling your body starting to tremble with adrenaline.
“I like us.” He laughs softly. “We just kept having all these little moments.”
Dean doesn’t notice the way your stomach twists, looking away as your first tear breaks free. You lift up your shirt, brushing it away before he can see. He drags a hand across his mouth, smiling at the memory, too busy to see you.
And suddenly every fear you’ve spent months trying not to think about becomes impossible to ignore. Because if he talks about her like this now, what happens when she says yes?
The answer comes immediately. You lose him.
Not all at once. Slowly, the way people drift when they start building a life full of beautiful memories with someone else.
“I couldn’t do it either,” you whisper.
“You think she’s gonna say that?” He asks, breaking character. Talking to a friend.
“I hope so.”
He looks relieved, like finally saying it out loud has taken a weight off his shoulders. “Was it too much, honestly?”
You shake your head quickly—too eager. Not at all your normal reply and you both know it. “No, Dean. I think you should tell her,” your words barely slip past your quivering lips.
“Hey,” he breathes, his eyes widening as he leans in, that relief he was feeling falling away almost as fast as it came. “Are you okay?”
You look up to the ceiling, your hands coming up under your eyes to catch your tears, letting out a breathless laugh. “Oh my God,” you huff.
“You’re crying,” he interjects, pawing your hands away, grabbing your face just like you held him just minutes before.
He searches your face like he missed something. And he did. He has no clue. No fucking clue.
Dean immediately leans forward, pressing his forehead against yours, and you sniffle, hiccuping on your tears. Embarrassment coursing through your veins.
“Did I say something wrong?”
The panic in his voice makes you feel guilty, your tears rolling warm over his hands as you think of an escape plan. Some way to salvage this moment for him—for you.
“Why are you crying?” He whispers, laughing because it’s awkward and he’s nervous. Because this went from a hopeful moment to him being totally perplexed.
“That was just…” You swallow hard. “Really beautiful.”
Dean blinks a few times. “What?”
“Your,” you swallow hard, rolling your eyes as tears flick off your lashes. “That—that speech, Dean.” Your voice cracks, and you laugh as well. For him. Again.
“You think?”
You nod as a smile pulls at your mouth. “I loved it.”
His thumbs come up, brushing beneath your eyes. Dean's smile gets a little brighter, the dimples in his cheeks popping like that was the vote of confidence he needed. “It was that good?”
“Perfect,” you whisper.
“Damn, might be too much for a bar, huh?” He sighs, smiling back at you before he leans in, pressing a kiss against your forehead. “Thank you.” You can hear the relief in his words, like that conversation was exactly what he needed.
And, the last thing you wanted to hear.
“The Uber is here,” Garrett calls from downstairs.
“Oh, shit,” Dean practically jumps off the bed, running his fingers through his hair before he pats his pockets, double-checking for his wallet. “You comin’?” He asks when you stay right where you are.
You shake your head.
You point to your tear-soaked cheeks, attempting a self-deprecating smile. “I don’t think I’m feeling very good—I…” You look around for a moment. “I think I’m just gonna go home.”
Dean frowns immediately. “You’re joking? No, you’re fine. You just—It was the speech, right?” He asks, his attention immediately pulled away when he hears the boys outside yelling for the two of you. “I don’t wanna do this without you. What if this blows up in my face—”
“YOU TWO COMING?” Both of you are called through the open window. Dean groans and drops his head back for a second.
“I need you. You’re killin’ me.”
“Go,” you say, offering him a smile that lets him know he’s gonna be okay.
For a moment he just stands there before finally nodding. “Okay—Alright,” he answers, checking his reflection in the mirror, spraying some cologne across his chest before he grabs his jacket off the chair. He heads toward the door, stopping with one hand on the frame.
“You sure, sure?”
You nod. “I’m sure.”
Dean studies your face for another second before nodding back. “Okay.” A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. Then he hesitates. “Wish me luck?”
“Good luck.”
The sound of his footsteps disappears down the stairs. A few seconds later you hear laughter, voices, a door opening and closing. You push yourself to your feet and wander toward the window, watching the black SUV drive off into the night.
And silence.
And in that moment, it’s like the energy had been sucked out of the room completely, the reality of the night catching up to you.
Your throat tightens immediately and your vision starts to blur—you don’t even realize you’re crying until you wipe at your cheek and your hand comes away wet.
You turn away from the window and look around his room. Your sweatshirt is draped over the back of the chair. His backpack with notes from your study session on Tuesday is half-open beside his desk. The cologne you bought him for his birthday—the scent drilled so deep in your brain it still lingers faintly in the air.
Everywhere you look there are pieces of you here.
Maybe that’s what has been hurting so much. Not the idea of Dean loving somebody else. The idea that he might be happy enough to stop needing you the way he always has. That one day you’ll wake up and realize you aren’t the first person he calls anymore, and that neither of you will have even noticed when it happened.
You press a hand over your mouth and try to breathe through it, but all you can hear is Dean’s voice.
I haven’t stopped thinking about New York.
I keep waiting for this feeling to go away.
Eventually you kick off your shoes and pull yourself onto his bed. The pillow is still warm from where he’d been lying. You bury your face in it trying to stop thinking—stop feeling.
Tomorrow he’ll probably walk through the front door smiling. He’ll tell you everything. What she said. How nervous he was. What had happened after that. And you’ll sit there and listen because that’s what you’ve always done.
Then a horrible thought hits you. You can’t stay here.
Because there’s a really good chance Dean is about to get exactly what he wants tonight. There’s a really good chance she says ‘yes’. And if she does, why wouldn’t they come back here?
For years you’ve walked into this room without thinking about it. You’ve fallen asleep here during movie nights. You’ve spent hours sitting on this bed listening to Dean complain about classes, hockey, teammates, girls you didn’t give a shit about. You treated this like it was your home and you belonged here.
But maybe that’s the problem.
Maybe none of it was ever yours in the first place.
Maybe this is just the first time you’ve had to realize it.
Your grip loosens on the pillow before you finally stand, picking up whatever pieces of yourself you can.
That isn’t even the part that hurts the most. Maybe you should’ve known how this would end.
He needed help telling another girl he loved her, and he came to you.
again, sorry for the delay on your request lol. I love a coffee shop meet-cute! hope you enjoy!
i present to you: there was only one table
master chief x f!reader
fluff, no warnings
---
John hates to admit it, but he has an addiction.
A caffeine addiction to be exact. So, he regularly finds himself at his favorite coffee shop in New Alexandria, Reach Roast.
He really should have looked at the time before he left, because the coffee shop is packed and he notices that all of the tables and booths are filled.
He mentally sighs, he was planning on working remotely here for a couple hours. Sometimes a change of scenery helps him focus on his work.
Surprisingly enough, a lot of the work he does as a Spartan contains developing work papers. Since he is Blue Team's leader, he has the ultimate responsibility of writing their reports for their missions. He could delegate the work, but he finds some strange comfort in writing them. Almost, as if it was a journal page of everything that happened while on a mission.
So, that brings him here today. Although he doesn't see how he will find a seat in this sea of people. He orders his drink and stands, waiting with all of the other caffeine frenzied people.
He gets his drink, then starts to look around for a possible opening. He is about to give up when he feels something tug on his jacket sleeve. He turns slight and looks down, only to see a woman with bright eyes smiling up at him.
She gestures to the seat across from her, "Need a seat?"
John doesn't respond right away; he's too taken aback by this woman's beauty. He snaps out of it though, and responds, "Are you sure you don't mind? I don't want to disrupt your working." He noticed you had a laptop and a notebook with lots of scribbles and notes.
She responds, a smile still on her lips, "Oh no, of course not. I can always make room for a handsome man like yourself."
She's bold, he thinks. And he finds himself smiling to himself about this woman's forwardness.
"Well, since you insist." He sits down, almost awkwardly for someone of his caliber, but he tries not to let his nervousness show. He can't remember the last time he sat across a beautiful woman in such a casual setting.
He opens his laptop and gets to work, although he finds that his thoughts stray to the stranger across from him. He wonders why you let him sit with you and if you knew who he was.
Probably not. No one really knows what I look like out of the armor.
She confirms his suspicion when she asks, "So, what is your line of work? I'm guessing military?"
He's not surprised she guessed that. he does have the build for it.
"I'm in the intelligence community." He mentally smacks his head. Why the fuck would I word it like that?
She raises her eyebrows, "Ah, so you can't say. I understand." Then she goes back to her notebook and jots something down.
John thinks she's a bit strange, but endearing. Even though he doesn't even know her.
"And what about you?" He glances towards her and notices that her glasses sit perfectly on the bridge of her nose.
"I'm a scientist." So she's smart.
"What do you specifically study?"
She tilts her head and places her pointer on her lip, "Hmm that's going to cost you another cup." She picks up her empty mug and wiggles it around playfully.
John then grants her a smile, "I have the time."
He sticks out his hand to her, and finds his endearment growing when her small hand encloses around his. "John, by the way."
"Y/N, a pleasure."
John never thought his caffeine fixation would lead to something so pleasant, but he finds himself at Reach Roast even more so than before.
warnings: fluff, mentions of blood and descriptions of injuries, Jason and Tim lwk hate each other lol, but overall just them trying to be a family<33
based off this request!
a/n: this is my first time writing for a request I hope I did it right!
It was a cloudy dark night today in Gotham.
The heavy rain splattered against the manor’s windows, sounds of water dropping echoing against the tall empty halls.
You were alone, your husband and the kids out for patrol.
Alfred was out of town, so you made yourself busy by sitting down on the couch and turning on the TV.
A few hours passed by when you heard footsteps coming from downstairs, your head perking up immediately.
Bruce emerged from the batcave, Jason, Tim and Damian following along.
You immediately jumped up from your position, running over to Bruce.
His suit was still on, though he took his cowl off so he could place a small yet intimate kiss on your lips.
“How was patrol?” You asked.
He smiled and wrapped his hands around you, “Rough. It’s better now that I’m with you.”
Damian scoffed and Tim turned his head away.
You looked over to them, Bruce slowly unraveling his grip on you so you could approach them.
“How was patrol boys?” You asked gently.
“Fine.” Damian muttered.
The rest nodded along.
Damian cleared his throat, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go to sleep.”
He tried walking off before you noticed a slight limp in his posture.
“Damian?”
He turned his head back, sparing a glance at you and Bruce.
“Did you get hurt?” You asked.
“No.” He began to walk back up the stairs but quickly regretted it as he winced and clutched his shoulder.
You scoffed, crossing your arms and heading into the beathroom, “Alright everyone. Follow me.”
The rest looked at each other confused turning to Bruce for answers.
“You heard her.” He shrugged.
Then, coming out of the bathroom, you set the first aid kit down onto the coffee table. Crossing your arms and waiting for them to come sit on the couch.
Damian rolled his eyes and painfully approached you, the same time as Tim went over to sit by your side.
Jason rolled his shoulders back and stretched his arms out.
“Alright B, guess that’s it for tonight.” He was about to leave when-
“Nope. You too Jason.”
He looked at you in disbelief, groaned and forced himself to walk over to the couch.
“Seriously? I’m a grown ass man!” Jason complained as he sat himself down clumsily.
“Language.” You looked at him sternly, holding a disinfectant bottle in one hand.
Bruce watched the whole scene unravel from the side, chucking low under his breath.
You slowly approached Damian, crouching down to eye-level with him.
“Where are you hurt?” You asked.
He crossed his arms, “I am Damian Al Ghul-Wayne, I do not get-”
“Damian.”
He winced, giving up in defeat.
“My shoulder.” He mumbled.
You slowly lifted his arm, now seeing the red gush of blood seeping though his shoulder pads.
“Jesus.” You muttered.
Your hands took care of the scar effortlessly, focused on disinfecting it.
You placed the gauze on his shoulder with great precision, making sure no blood leaks out.
Damian spared a glance at the wrapped injury, breathing in deep.
“Acceptable.”
You smiled as you got up, wiping your hands clean of the blood.
Then, looking over to Tim and Jason, you approached them with the same determination.
“Just so you know” Jason cut in, “I’m not hurt. I don’t get hurt. I’m the red hood.” He said puffing his chest out.
“Okay tough guy.” You said, “Then you can help me patch Tim up.
His eyes widened. “What? Why do I have to do that!” You simply stared at him and handed him the gauze.
He looked at Tim, narrowing his eyes.
Jason let out an exasperated sigh, holding the gauze up.
Tim showed you where his injury was, your breath hitching when you saw the ripped skin on the sode of his ribs.
“This is gonna need stitches.” You mumbled, fumbling through the first aid bag.
You meticulously guided the string through his blood soaked skin, doing your best to make the stitches as tight as possible. Then you gestured for Jason to hand you the gauze, which he did (with a small roll of his eyes.)
Tim nodded, sharing a small smile with you when you finally got done treating his injury. “Thanks [name].”
Bruce swears his heart was melting at the moment, watching you take care of his kids like that. He wanted to marry you all over again.
Before Jason could try to walk out again, you tutted at him and spoke up, “Jason.”
He groaned and turned around.
“What now?”
“See you tommorow at dinner?” You smiled.
His gaze immediately softened.
Jason’s voice felt vulnerable as he spoke up.
“I’ll… see what I can do.” He said, before saying goodbye and walking out of the manor.
Bruce slowly walked over to you, hugging you tightly.
Tim and Damian took that as a sign to retreat to out of the room, exchanging their “good nights” on the way.
The room was now empty, the only thing keeping you warm now was Bruce’s skin against yours.
“I love you so much.” He whispered against your neck.
You laughed, “Why are you getting all sappy on me now?”
He smiled against your neck as he pulled his head back to look at you.
“It’s the truth, darling. I love you.”
You cooed at him teasingly. “Aww baby I love you too.”
He smiled at your antics.
“Are you hurt? Do I need to take care of you too?” You teased him further.
Bruce rolled his eyes and picked you up swiftly, knocking the wind out of you.
You yelped as he lowered his head to yours.
“Do I look hurt?” He grovelled.
You shook your head as he carried you up the stairs.
“You look so pretty when you’re pissed off at me.” You pushed further, still not giving up your act.
He tightened his grip on you as a small grin crept up on his face despite himself.
big beefy boyfriend Bruce Wayne who knows you don't like the paparazzi taking pictures of you when you're out bc you just don't like how they twist the look on your face into disdain and so when a big crowd of paparazzi start flooding around him he wraps his arm over you shoulder and presses you into his chest he then presses his hand over your face, splaying his fingers to cover as much of it as possible so now your face is covered by his big hand and your body is pressed into his side and he knows you can't see so he leads you to the car and the gently pushes you into the car first so his wide shoulders can cover you before he gets in and slams the door on the paparazzi only then Gotham starts to think Bruce is a manhandler and likes to throw his partner around in the bedroom
If you had told Bruce Wayne five years ago that he’d officially be married to the woman of his dreams, he would say there’s no way.
If you were to tell him that not only was he married but he also finally got to experience the baby stage of having children, he’d tell you to get out and stop trying to mess with him. Yet here he is, finally experiencing the stage of a child’s life he never got to with his other children.
Who knew that the best way for Bruce Wayne to settle down was to be nap trapped by a twelve pound three month old. It hasn’t been easy for anyone in the family, it was the biggest adjustment the both of you had to face. Having six children and bypassing the baby stage made it even harder. By the time each child came into your lives, they could already talk, walk, and basically survive without the both of you constantly hovering over them.
However the minute little Martha was conceived, the life you knew was over.
“Bruce I’m telling you, that’s a second a line.”
“It could be a faulty test, an evaporation line.”
“For the world’s greatest detective, your deduction skills need to be brushed up on. You watched me pee on four other tests. All of which confirmed that there’s a fetus,” you sighed and set the last of the pregnancy test on the sink counter before turning to him.
“What’re we going to do? We have no idea how to take care of a baby”
“We will figure it out. We always do.” He replied and pulled you in for a hug.
“A baby.” You say again still in disbelief.
“Our baby,” he confirms and rubs your back.
“What’re you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that this baby is going to be loved and that they’ll have to learn to survive in a house with six older siblings,” he replied softly with a teasing tone. You laughed and hugged him a bit tighter.
Since then the two of you did figure it out. Well… as much as you could. Bruce panicked a bit when you heard the heartbeat for the first time. Instead of talking it out like he knows he should’ve, he used Batman.
“Are you and Bruce fighting?” Dick asked one day as he came to Wayne Enterprises to have lunch with you.
“What? No, why would you say that?” You replied as you shuffled papers around at your desk so he could set the food he brought down.
“He’s been more stressed than usual. Swearing that our patrols haven’t been enough. That we’re not getting enough done.” Dick replies as he flopped in the chair across from you.
You bite the inside of your cheek and sigh. “We’re not fighting but he is stressed. I’ll talk to him about it”
You and Bruce did talk about it later that day. It was honestly more like you chewing him out.
“You’re pushing yourself too hard, you’re pushing the kids too hard.”
“I’m trying to make everything go smoothly so when you’ll need me further in the pregnancy I can be there”
“Gotham’s always going to need you Bruce but it can survive without Batman. It’s not like there’s not at-least six other vigilantes that can keep watch in your place.” You say a bit teasingly.
He grumbles, a sign he’s not impressed.
“We should tell the kids. I’d rather they hear it from us than figure it out on their own”
“You’re barely nine weeks along, we should wait.”
“I’m two months along, and luckily the first trimester has been good to me. I want to tell the kids.”
“Okay”
Cue trying to gather all your children before patrol and trying to make sure everyone is in Gotham for the announcement. This was a much harder task than you thought it’d be but you succeeded.
In front of you and Bruce, all dressed in their uniforms stood Dick, Jason, Cass, Tim, Duke, and Damian.
“Right, so before everyone gets going for patrol. I want to tell you all something important.”
“Are you dying?” The question came from Jason followed by a “Are you sick?” From Tim.
“No and No. I’m pregnant.” You say, figuring the best way to get it over with was just to say it outright.
It was quiet for a bit then the yelling came,
“Pregnant?! You guys are having a baby?” Jason reacted first
“I knew Bruce was acting weird when I went to see you last week!” Dick yelled over Jason.
“Congratulations mom! How far along are you?” Cass, comes up to hug you and then Bruce.
“Congrats you two,” Duke came up next and gave you both a half hug.
“Does this mean we all have to help orrr?” Tim asked next.
After the initial shock went down, the boys gave their congratulations, all except Damian who just stood there silent.
“Dami? You alright?” You asked softly approaching him.
“I’m fine mother, congratulations to you and father,” he says a little harsh before turning away.
It took a lot of encouragement and reassurance for Damian to finally come around to the idea of being a big brother.
The rest of your pregnancy was relatively easy going if you consider always having a bodyguard in the forms of your husband, sons, and daughter, easy going. Everyone hovered but it was out of love.
When you finally went into labor, everyone lost their minds. Bruce, for once lost his cool.
“We need to get you to the hospital. Your water broke.”
“Bruce my contractions aren’t even consistent right now. We have time.” You argued.
That argument didn’t last long as baby Wayne was just as impatient as their father.
Less than three hours later in a private suite at Gotham General, your sweet baby girl Martha Alice Wayne was born. Bruce cried when he heard her cry. He cried again when he cut the umbilical cord and held her for the first time.
“She’s perfect” he whispered as he held her to his chest.
“She is. Bruce Wayne officially a father to two girls now. How’s it feel?”
“Unreal, I don’t have any idea what I’m doing but having her in my arms just feels right”
Since that day in the hospital when Martha was born, Bruce felt like a whole new person. Which is how now, even after the more lack of sleep than usual, the millions of dirty diapers, the tantrums, and spit up, Bruce does his best to enjoy every second of it.
Even if that means being nap trapped and screamed at by a three month old.
A.N: I literally couldn’t get this out of my head since I went on a Batman rereading spree. DC give him a tiny baby now. I can definitely see myself making more fics on this in particular, especially with Bruce and processing his feelings and Damian’s reaction. Hope you guys liked it! Love ya
in which bruce isn't used to waking up without you.
( bruce wayne x fem!reader | fluff! )
it was an unusually quiet night. bruce hadn’t done patrol tonight, instead he opted to stay in, rest. usually he would be against the idea—gotham didn’t sleep so neither should he, but ever since you came into the picture bruce found himself waiting for his days off. sleep only came easy to him when you were near, which was why he was jolted awake when he turned to pull you closer only to be met with an empty side of the bed.
panic filled his chest as more than one scenario filled his mind each one becoming more disturbing than the last causing him to jump out of the bed and leap into a search for you. he silently cursed the massive manor as he felt like he was running a marathon as he checked every room he thought you would be in.
it wasn’t until bruce peaked into the kitchen that the panic settled and relief took over as there you stood in the middle of the kitchen—your mouth filled with cookies and the area dimly lit by the refrigerator that had been left open.
you weren’t aware of the man who leaned against the frame of the door and bruce took advantage of that as he just watched, taking in your appearance. your eyes looked heavy with sleep that was needed, your hair had been a mess and your socks were inside out no doubt being lazily thrown on.
yet bruce couldn’t tear his eyes away from your stomach. he smiled softly as his shirt stretched over the curve of your pregnant belly—your hand rubbing up and down the bump as you mindlessly ate your snacks.
“hungry?” you jumped, hand leaving your stomach to rest on your heart as you stared wide eyed at the sudden intruder. “jesus fucking christ bruce!” you whispered shouted, being mindful of your family who were no doubt fast asleep.
he laughed, walking over until he stood at your back—his hands now resting on your stomach as his face buried itself in the nape of your neck, kissing the exposed skin.
“you scared me” you muttered.
“you scared me” he repeated “not used to waking up without you in bed” he explained. you sighed, you had learned how to cope with the uncomfortable feeling of waking up in the middle of the night without bruce. you hated the fear of waking up and never seeing his face again.
but bruce always made sure every morning he was tucked by your side in one piece. bruised and battered yes, but in one piece nonetheless.
“well you have your son to blame for that” he smiled. bruce was scared when you weren’t next to him yet with the additional knowledge that you were currently carrying a piece of you both—bruce couldn’t bare losing either one of you.
“yeah? is he full now? can we go back to bed?” you let out a soft laugh, nodding your head. you both cleaned the kitchen quietly and by you both i mean bruce took everything out of your hand and handled it himself.
when he was done he placed both hands on your hips, leading you back to your shared room so you can both fall back asleep peacefully—especially since you both knew the other would be there when you woke up.
