my dumbass was scrolling through the timeline on tumblr and was like “whose sevnszn? never followed them .” then i realized its literally me reading my own posts
Luka and Trainer have been sneaking around for a while…. Maybe she’s stretching Luka out on the facility and Luka is trying to feel her up while no one is watching.
unholy (blurb)
background: sneaking around post breakup with one of the players of your job has secrets that nobody knows about, including him getting too comfortable..
(all pics from pinterest, all rights reserved)
word count: 1.2k
notes: this is a blurb again, been in my drafts for one, and for two im writing because i have writers block when it comes to writing for joe. so send ideas.. who said that...
warning: lil steamy, alternative universe, got rid of the smut because i literally outfreaked myself.. trust me i want yall to be holding the phone with two hands.
The Lakers locker room was unusually quiet after the final buzzer. A home loss to the Portland Trail Blazers was never going to sit well, especially not when Luka had one of the roughest nights of his season.
Nothing seem to connect, he'd miss the bucket on 3's that he usually makes without looking, turnovers from everyone in moments that could've changed the games outcome.
To make matters worse, midway through the fourth quarter, the tightness in his hamstring had returned. He'd hidden it well enough to finish the game, but Y/N had noticed the slight hitch in his stride immediately. She always did.
By the time the media had finished asking him the same questions in five different ways for a narrative, Luka looked mentally exhausted.
He gave the same polite answers he'd been giving all season, that he'd be ready for the next game.
Y/N had everything prepped before he came to the trainers room, obviously preparing her laptop to chart notes the door opened behind her.
Without turning around, she smiled. "You're late.'
"I had to shower."
His voice sounded tired.
She finally looked over her shoulder.
Fresh out of the shower, Luka's hair was still damp, small curls forming around his forehead. He wore gray Lakers sweatpants and a black shirt that clung slightly from where it hadn't fully dried yet, but he looked far more relaxed than he had ten minutes earlier.
She softened immediately.
"Come here."
He limped over with an exaggerated sigh, "I know that look Y/N."
"What look?"
"The one where you're about to tell me I shouldn't have finished the game."
"You shouldn't have finished the game."
He rolled his eyes before pinching at the bridge of his nose, clearly annoyed. "I knew it."
"Luka."
Her concern made him laugh quietly before sitting on the treatment table.
Y/N crouched in front of him, carefully checking the hamstring again. Her hands were practiced and precise, her attention fixed entirely on the muscle.
"My ego hurts though."
She stood clearly ignoring him, gently stretching his leg while watching his expression, he winced before opening his mouth.
"So you aren't mad?"
"Oh, I'm absolutely mad."
He blinked up at her confused, "You ignored your minutes restriction."
"I felt okay."
"You lied."
"I stretched the truth."
"You lied."
He grinned still trying to flirt, "I missed you though."
"We were together all afternoon."
"Not alone."
She rolled her eyes, though the smile tugging at her lips betrayed her, "You flirt after shooting 60% from the field?"
"I flirt after every game."
"That's true."
She turned back toward the computer, typing today's evaluation into his file.
The room settled into a comfortable silence while in the meanwhile outside, equipment carts rolled down the hallway. The arena was slowly emptying and Luka still focused, watched her from across the room.
She looked beautiful even doing paperwork.
Her curls were pulled into a loose bun, a few curls escaping around her face after a long evening and a noisy one. She'd changed into a black Lakers hoodie with her sleeves pushed to her elbows as she typed.
She sensed him staring at her once again, "You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one where you're pretending to listen but you're actually staring."
"I'm appreciating."
She sighed at that horrible answer before saving the treatment notes and closing her laptop.
"There."
"Done?"
"For tonight."
She turned toward him only to realize he'd already stood up, "Luka."
"What?"
"I literally just told you your hamstring needs rest."
"I'm resting."
"You are standing."
"I walked."
"Which is standing up, stupid."
He laughed and she crossed her arms in retaliation to his antics.
"You look cute when you're pretending to be annoyed."
"I'm not pretending."
He took another slow step closer then another and she didn't move, "Luka."
"Hm?"
"Someone could walk in."
"They could."
She shook her head with a smile before he stopped just in front of her. Close enough that she could smell the clean scent of his soap from the shower Neither of them spoke for several seconds. The silence felt louder than the arena earlier that night.
She looked down at their hands before meeting his eyes again, "You really need to stop distracting your athletic trainer."
"I don't think she's very distracted."
"Oh?"
"I think she's smiling, and its cute."
She immediately looked away, "I am not."
"You are."
"It's professional."
He laughed softly, "You sure about that?"
She nodded and he leaned in just enough that their foreheads almost touched, "I don't believe you." Y/N exhaled slowly, trying extremely hard to maintain the composure she was known for around the facility.
"Luka."
"Hm?"
"This is still the training room."
"I noticed."
"We're at work."
"We're technically finished."
She laughed under her breath, "You always have an answer."
"I try."
He brushed a loose curl away from her face, it was such a small gesture that somehow carried more weight than either of them expected as she looked up at him. For a moment, neither of them seemed interested in breaking the silence. Then he closed the remaining distance and kissed her.
It was gentle considering the door was unlocked to the training room. When they finally pulled apart, she was still smiling despite herself.
Her voice came out quieter than she'd intended, "Is there any cameras in here?"
He looked around the room theatrically before grinning, "I was going to ask you that."
"There aren't."
"You've checked?"
"I work here."
He laughed.
"So.."
She glanced toward the hallway windows built into the training room entrance. Anyone walking by couldn't see much, but they could certainly notice if two people were standing suspiciously close together.
Y/N let out a small, amused sigh, "You are going to be the death of me."
"I hope not."
She shook her head, unable to stop smiling as she walked toward the door.
With one quick glance into the hallway to make sure it was empty, she quietly turned the lock. Then she crossed to the narrow windows and lowered the blinds felt warm and private.
When she turned back around, Luka was already looking at her with that unmistakable smile. She laughed softly, folded her arms, and raised an eyebrow.
"This doesn't leave this room tomorrow morning."
He nodded immediately, "It never does."
Y/N watched him for a moment longer, the corner of her mouth twitching before she stepped forward and reached for his shirt, and the second he pulled it off and hit the floor, his hands were on her, and this would be the dirtiest confession she'd die with.
The confession? She just had sex with one of the players in the arena, which would get her career done for if anyone finds out.
pairings: aj barner x reader 💚
wc: 1.4k
an: surprise! nobody asked for this. i've been sitting on aj barner for months — reading, taking notes, quietly losing my mind — and i think i finally know him well enough to write him.
this is the first of several intros. no plot yet, i just want you to meet him. this one's about how fast he decides.
he is, respectfully, insane about this. more soon.
masterlist
AJ Barner is the type of boyfriend who...
He's already all in before you know it.
You didn't get a warning. That's the thing you keep coming back to when you try to explain it to your friends — there was no gradual escalation, no slow build from casual to serious, no moment where he sat you down and said I think this is becoming something real. One week you were someone he'd met twice, and the next week you were in his prayers.
He didn't tell you that part. Not then.
Six weeks in, you're at dinner. Some place in Ballard he picked, bad lighting, forty minutes on the wait, and he's three minutes into a story about Kenneth Walker and a rental car in Arizona. Doing both voices. One hand flat on the table.
"—and Ken's telling me the GPS is wrong. The GPS. And I'm looking at him like, bro, the satellite does not have a personal issue with you—"
He stops. Pushes back from the table. "Hold on."
You assume it's a phone call. He's gone two minutes. Comes back with a hoodie, drops it in your lap, sits down and picks up the sentence where he left it. "—so we're forty minutes out from the hotel and he's still arguing with a machine—"
You hadn't said anything. You hadn't rubbed your arms or crossed them or done any of the things you do without noticing when a restaurant blasts the AC. You'd mentioned it once, weeks earlier, buried inside a story that was actually about something else — that you always get cold in restaurants and never remember to bring a jacket.
You figured he happened to have one in the car. It was a Michigan hoodie, enormous on you, sleeves past your hands, and it smelled like whatever detergent he buys in bulk.
A month later it's Canlis — some milestone of his he'd decided to make a thing of — and you're in a sleeveless dress because you never learn. Halfway through the entrées it happens again. He stops mid-story. "Hold on." Gone two minutes.
He comes back with a blazer. Navy, absurd on you, sleeves you have to shove up twice to find your hands. And he doesn't drop it in your lap this time. He settles it over your shoulders on his way past, because a hoodie at Canlis would have looked like exactly what it was.
Nobody keeps a blazer in a car. He'd taken it out of his closet before he picked you up — looked at where you were going, thought about what you'd probably be wearing, picked accordingly. He'd been doing some version of that for a month and you'd thought he was lucky.
"You gotta stop being cold," he said, cutting back into his steak. "It's, like, your whole thing."
___
He doesn't collect information about someone casually. When he decides to pay attention to you, he pays attention — the focus his coaches describe in press conferences, turned on you across a dinner table. You didn't feel it at first because he made it look like nothing. Like he was a guy who happened to notice things. Everything you said went somewhere he could find it again, and he never let on that he was keeping any of it.
___
His mom knew your name before your third date.
You found that out much later, when Reva mentioned something on FaceTime she could only have known if AJ told her, and the timeline didn't add up. He'd been talking to his mother about you while you were still calling this hanging out. While you were still being careful about how often you texted him. While you were still in the stage where most people are hedging, playing it cool, leaving room to walk it back if it doesn't work out.
AJ was calling his mom after your second date to tell her about the girl who made him laugh so hard he choked on his drink. Who argued with him about Drake being overrated and held her ground when he got loud about it. Who said something about her family that made him go quiet in a way he couldn't explain to Reva and didn't try to. He was going to text you back. He was always going to.
The certainty is the part that's hard to explain to people afterward. There was no declaration, no stated intent, nothing you could point to and say there, that's when. Something clicked into place in him before you were ready for it and then held. The same instinct that made him quit every other sport at fourteen and put it all on football, that made him walk into Michigan's program for one year and decide he belonged there before he'd unpacked the car. He reads a situation and then he's in. Chips on the table.
___
It showed up in how he talked about you to other people.
"My girl likes that place." Said to a teammate at lunch, three weeks in, about a restaurant you'd mentioned once. My girl.Like it was settled. Like the label had existed in his head long before either of you said it out loud.
Kenneth gave him grief about it for ten solid minutes. "Four dates, bro. Four. That's four dates. You met her in April."
AJ shrugged. "When you know, you know."
___
You caught up eventually. He's not subtle.
It was the morning you woke up in his apartment after he'd already left for the facility. Glass of water on the nightstand. Your phone charger — yours, the one you'd left there last time, not a spare — plugged in on your side of the bed. Your side. And next to it, a drawer standing open and empty. He'd cleared it out. Never mentioned it, never made it a moment, just emptied a drawer and left it open where you'd see it.
You stood there a while. His room was a disaster. Cleats by the door, two open tubs of protein powder on the dresser, a Bible on the floor by the bed with a hotel notepad shoved in it as a bookmark. And one clean empty drawer in the middle of all of it.
He'd decided. Built the place, cleared the space, told his mother, picked the word, all of it while you were still doing the math on a timeline you thought you were both on. Being loved by someone that certain is generous and it is enormous. It also means he stopped checking. He'd handed you something heavy and walked off before you could say whether you could carry it.
You closed the drawer. Then you opened it again. Then you went home and got a few things.
You weren't catching up to where he was. You were arriving at a place he'd already built for you.
___
He said it on a Tuesday.
You were on his couch with your legs across his lap and he was relitigating Captain Hook, which had come back up in the group chat for the fourth time that season.
"—and nobody's asking the real question, which is why is there a hook in there. In a bathroom stall. At that height. For who. For what purpose. I'm six-six, I'm walking in there minding my own business, and this thing is sitting at exactly—"
He stopped mid-sentence, the way you stop when you've lost your place. He hadn't lost anything. He'd run into something bigger and the story couldn't hold it.
"I love you."
Full voice, no hedge, hand still warm on your ankle. He looked at you and waited and didn't take it back and didn't ask if it was too soon, because it had never occurred to him that it might be.
You said it back.
He smiled — the big one, the one that changes his whole face — and picked the story right back up. "Anyway. A hook. At forehead height."
Like it was a fact he'd been carrying around and finally put down.
___
He decides, and then he's there, completely, with everything he has. The only real question is whether you're going to meet him where he already is, and he isn't worried about it. He decided weeks ago.