satoru's star

Nova | 25 | I don't take requests

[voidsatoru]

— ★ nova | she/her | 25 | satoru gojo and nagumo yoichi enthusiast

" love is the most twisted curse of all "

.°•★ about me

.°•★ my faves

.°•★ masterlist

.°•★ rambles

recent works

jealousy jealousy - hoshina soshiro

i love you - gojo satoru

boards shouldn't have wheels - nanjo kojiro

full fic

olympia - gojo satoru x oc (ongoing)

[yawnzshit]

I NEED HIM SO SO BAD. HE'S A NEED.

[garrettgrahamswhore]

🏒 𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐌𝐄

𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 — john logan x gf!reader

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘 — logan brings you to the rink on his day off, determined to teach you how to skate. you’re terrified of falling, but he doesn’t seem to mind giving you something to hold onto.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 — pure fluff, established relationship, boyfriend-coded logan, rink date, reader is scared of falling, hand holding, kissing.

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 — 5,294.

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 — based on this request 💌 this is exactly why logan is my favourite, he’s so boyfriend-coded it hurts. now i need him to teach me how to skate too. i hope you like it <3 also, i’m still trying to figure out a new aesthetic for my page, tell me what you think

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ⟶ you can find my taglist here!

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ⟶ you can find my masterlist here!

─── ⋆⋅🏒⋅⋆ ───

You should’ve known Logan was up to something the second he told you to wear something warm. Not something nice, not something cute. Warm.

Suspicious. Even more suspicious was the way he smiled when he picked you up, leaning against his car with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets, looking far too pleased with himself for a man who’d refused to tell you where you were going.

You stopped on the sidewalk, narrowing your eyes at him.

“No,” you said immediately.

Logan’s brows lifted, all fake innocence. “I didn’t even say anything.”

“You have a face,” you pointed out.

“I do, yeah,” Logan agreed.

“A guilty face,” you corrected.

His grin widened, clearly pleased with himself. “I think you mean a handsome face.”

“I mean a face that says I’m about to regret trusting you.”

He pushed off the car and stepped closer, still smiling like he was trying not to laugh. “You trust me?”

“I’m currently reconsidering.”

“Too late,” he said, reaching for your hand and pulling you in gently before pressing a quick kiss to your forehead. “You’re already here.”

“I’m standing on a public sidewalk,” you reminded him. “I can still run.”

“You wouldn’t get far.”

You gasped. “Rude.”

“You’re wearing boots with absolutely zero grip.”

You looked down at your shoes, deeply offended to find that he was right.

Logan laughed, opening the passenger door for you. “Come on, dramatic. You’ll like it.”

“That’s exactly what people say right before ruining my afternoon.”

“I’m not going to ruin your afternoon.”

“Logan,” you warned slowly, “where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” he answered.

“I don’t like surprises.”

“You told me last week that you loved surprises.”

“I like surprises when they involve flowers or coffee or you showing up with fries because I had a bad day. I don’t like surprises that start with you telling me how to dress.”

His expression softened at that, just for a second, like the memory caught him off guard in the best way. Then he kissed your hand before letting you climb into the car.

“You’re going to like this one,” he promised.

You didn’t believe him, not fully. But after six months of Logan looking at you like that — soft around the edges, all playful mouth and careful hands — you’d learned that trusting him was usually easier than pretending you didn’t.

So, despite your better judgment, you got in.

The drive didn’t take long. Almost too short, really. Long enough for Logan to keep glancing at you like he was waiting for you to figure it out, but not long enough for you to collect enough evidence to start a real argument. He hummed along to the radio, fingers tapping lightly against the steering wheel, one hand occasionally drifting over to squeeze your knee.

That should’ve been another warning sign. Logan was always affectionate, but this felt different — almost nervous, like he cared a little too much about whether you liked whatever he’d planned.

You turned in your seat to look at him. “Are you taking me somewhere illegal?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “No.”

“Somewhere dangerous?”

“No,” he assured you.

“Somewhere embarrassing?”

“That depends entirely on how good your balance is.”

Your eyes widened as realization hit, and Logan’s mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile.

“No,” you said at once.

“You don’t even know what I mean yet.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“John Logan,” you warned.

“Oh, full name.” He pulled into the parking lot, still trying not to smile. “Serious.”

You looked out the window, already dreading what you were going to see, and then you saw it.

The rink.

The arena sat quiet under the afternoon light, the parking lot nearly empty and familiar in a way that made your stomach dip. Of course, you’d been here before — for games, mostly, practices sometimes, loud nights full of cheering and whistles and bodies slamming into the boards while Logan flew across the ice like he’d been born there.

But now, it looked different. Almost still. Almost private. Waiting.

Slowly, you turned toward him.

“Absolutely not,” you said.

Logan turned off the car. “You haven’t even heard my pitch.”

“I don’t need to hear your pitch. Your pitch involves putting me on ice, and I happen to enjoy having unbroken bones.”

“I’m going to teach you,” he assured you.

“That’s not as comforting as you think it is.”

“It should be,” he informed you. “I’m very good.”

“At hockey,” you corrected. “Not necessarily at keeping your girlfriend alive.”

Logan placed a hand over his chest. “You wound me.”

“You’re about to wound me physically.”

His laughter softened when he looked at you, and for a second, the teasing faded into something warmer.

“I got the rink for an hour,” Logan said, softer now. “Just us.”

You blinked, caught off guard, and your panic quieted a little.

“Just us?” you asked.

“Yeah.” He shrugged, suddenly looking almost shy, which was rare enough to make your heart squeeze. “I thought it could be fun. You come to games and everything, but that’s different. It’s loud, everyone’s there, and I’m usually trying not to get my teeth knocked out.”

“You make almost getting your teeth knocked out sound very romantic.”

His smile softened. “I wanted you to see it like this.”

The words landed softly, right in the place your panic had been a few minutes ago.

You looked back toward the rink.

This place belonged to Logan in a way you’d never fully understood before. Not all of it, maybe, but a big piece.

The ice.

The boards.

The sound of skates cutting across the surface.

The place where he was confident, fast, and completely impossible to look away from.

You’d watched him here from the stands so many times.

But Logan was right. This was different.

From the stands, Logan had always belonged to the noise.

To the team.

To the game.

To everyone cheering his name.

Today, he’d brought you here in the quiet.

Just you. Just him.

You swallowed, trying very hard not to show how much that touched you.

“I’m still going to fall,” you reminded him.

Logan’s smile returned, entirely unhelpful. “Probably.”

You smacked his arm.

He laughed, catching your hand before you could pull away and pressing a kiss to your knuckles.

“But I’ll catch you,” he promised.

“You sound very confident,” you said.

“I’m extremely confident,” Logan replied.

“In yourself?” you asked.

“In us,” he said.

That was deeply unfair.

You stared at him, your argument fading under the weight of the way he was looking at you. You sighed dramatically, because apparently that was the closest thing to winning you were going to get.

“If I die, I’m haunting you,” you declared.

“Fair.”

“And I want it on record that I was manipulated.”

“I’ll tell everyone you were brave,” Logan said, like that was generous and not deeply insulting.

“I’ll be dead, Logan,” you pointed out.

“Beautiful and brave,” Logan announced.

You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling by the time he got out of the car.

Inside, the rink felt completely different without the crowd. Your footsteps echoed down the empty hallway, and the air smelled cold and clean, carrying that sharp, frozen scent that always clung to arenas. Logan walked beside you, your skates in one hand and his in the other, looking more relaxed with every step.

You noticed it immediately — the way his shoulders loosened. The way his gaze moved around the rink was like he was greeting something familiar. The way he seemed quieter here, but not sad.

Peaceful.

You bumped your shoulder against his, smiling a little. “You like it when it’s empty.”

He glanced down at you, his smile small. “Yeah.”

“Why?” you asked.

He was quiet for a moment, thinking about it.

Then he answered, “It’s quiet. I don’t have to think about anyone watching.”

That made you look over at him again.

He gave a small shrug, keeping his eyes ahead. “During games, everything feels loud. The crowd, Coach, the boys, my own head. I love it, most of the time. But sometimes it’s a lot.”

You nodded.

Logan looked toward the rink entrance, voice softening. “When it’s empty, it’s just the ice.”

Something about that made your chest ache softly.

In six months, Logan had let you see plenty of versions of him. Flirty Logan. Sleepy Logan. Cocky post-win Logan. Frustrated Logan, after bad games, dropped onto your bed and complained into your pillow until you ran your fingers through his hair.

But this felt like another version of him, one he didn’t share with everyone, and the fact that he wanted you here to see it made your chest ache.

You reached for his free hand, and Logan looked down just as your fingers slipped between his, closing his hand around yours without hesitation.

“Well,” you said, because being sincere for too long made your heart feel too exposed, “the ice and your girlfriend’s soon-to-be-concussed skull.”

Logan laughed and squeezed your hand. “You’re not getting concussed.”

“That sounds like a promise you’re not legally allowed to make.”

“I’m not going to let you fall that hard.”

“So you admit I’m going to fall.”

“Baby,” he said, gentle enough to make it worse, “you’re definitely going to fall.”

You stopped walking immediately. Logan made it one more step before turning back to you with a grin.

“I hate you,” you told him.

“No, you don’t,” Logan replied.

“No, I don’t,” you admitted, irritated by how little hesitation there was.

His smile softened at that.

You sat together on the bench near the boards before Logan crouched in front of you, your rental skates in his hands.

“Oh, so we’re doing this now?” you asked.

“That’s usually how skating works,” Logan said.

“I thought maybe we’d admire the ice from a safe, non-life-threatening distance.”

“You can admire it from up close,” Logan offered.

“I can admire it from the floor once I inevitably collapse.”

Logan shook his head, laughing under his breath as he slipped one of your boots off, but he went quiet while helping you into the skate.

The simple intimacy of it caught you off guard, how careful he was with something so small.

His hands were careful around your ankle, his fingers steady as he tightened the laces. You watched him focus, brows slightly drawn together and mouth relaxed in a way that made him look softer than usual. He tugged the laces once, checked the fit, and then looked up at you.

“Too tight?” he asked.

You shook your head, still watching him. “No.”

“Tell me if it hurts,” he said.

“I will,” you promised.

“You say that, but you have a habit of pretending you’re fine.”

You blinked, caught off guard.

Logan kept his gaze on yours, and there was no teasing in it this time.

You looked down at his hands instead, suddenly unable to hold his gaze. “You noticed that?”

“I notice a lot of things about you,” he said softly.

Your heart did something embarrassing.

“Unfortunately for you, skating is going to make it very obvious if I’m not fine.”

“Good,” he said, tying the second skate. “Then I won’t have to guess.”

You were quiet for a moment before you said, “You’re being very boyfriend right now.”

He looked up at you, grinning. “I’m your boyfriend.”

“I know,” you told him. “But you’re being extra boyfriend right now.”

“Is that supposed to be a complaint?”

“No,” you admitted.

His smile softened at that. “Good.”

Once your skates were tied and Logan had his own on, you tried to stand carefully, but the second your blades touched the rubber flooring, your legs betrayed you.

You grabbed Logan’s arm with both hands, immediately abandoning any pretense of dignity.

“No,” you protested.

Logan laughed immediately.

“Don’t laugh at me,” you blurted.

“I’m not,” Logan lied.

“You’re literally laughing.”

“You’re just cute when you panic,” he teased.

“I’m absolutely not panicking.”

“You tried to sit back down before you were even fully upright.”

“That was self-preservation.”

“Come on,” he coaxed, holding both your hands as he stepped backward toward the gate. “Small steps.”

“I’m going to die before we even make it to the ice.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“You don’t know that,” you argued, taking one step forward.

“I do,” he said, as that settled it.

“You’re alarmingly calm for a man leading his girlfriend to her doom.”

His grin widened, but his hands stayed steady around yours. “I’ve got you.”

That shouldn’t have worked as well as it did.

But Logan said it as he meant it, his hands steady around yours, and that made it harder to keep pretending you were scared of anything except how much you trusted him.

So you moved slowly, dramatically, and with a lot of complaining.

By the time you reached the open gate and saw the ice up close, your stomach had dropped. It looked impossibly smooth and impossibly hard, like it’d been waiting all afternoon for the chance to betray you.

Logan stepped onto the ice first, easy as breathing, and the second his blades touched the surface, something in him changed. He became fluid, lighter somehow, at home in a way that felt almost unfair.

Your grip tightened on the boards.

“Absolutely not.”

Logan turned back, skating backward a few easy feet. “You haven’t even stepped on yet.”

“And that’s exactly why I’m still alive.”

He held out both hands, steady and waiting. “Come here.”

You stared at him like he’d lost his mind.

He waited with his hands still outstretched, not impatient or mocking, just there, and you hated how much it helped.

With a deep breath and what you considered heroic bravery, you placed one skate on the ice, only for the blade to slide immediately.

You made a noise that wasn’t your proudest moment, grabbing Logan so fast that his eyes widened before he laughed.

“I’m sorry,” he managed, though he was very clearly not sorry at all.

“I hate ice,” you muttered.

“You’re doing great,” Logan said gently.

“I have one foot on the ice, Logan.”

“And that foot is doing great.”

You glared at him, and he only looked more delighted.

Eventually, with Logan holding you steady and offering encouragement that was only occasionally interrupted by laughter, you got both feet onto the ice.

You didn’t move, but you were on the ice. That counted.

“Okay,” Logan said, standing in front of you with both your hands held securely in his. “Bend your knees a little.”

“My knees are locked because they’ve correctly identified danger.”

“Bend them for me, baby.” You did, but barely. “Good,” he praised.

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Don’t use that voice.”

“What voice?” he asked.

“The soft coach voice,” you accused.

“You don’t like it?” Logan murmured, still smiling.

“I like it too much,” you admitted. “Which is irritating when I’m trying to be mad at you.”

His smile softened into something fond. “Noted.”

He started skating backward slowly, pulling you with him.

The second your skates shifted under you, your entire body tensed.

“Logan,” you warned.

“I’ve got you,” he said, hands steady around yours.

“Logan,” you repeated, grip tightening.

“Look at me,” he said gently.

“I’m looking directly at imminent death.”

“Look at me,” he repeated, his voice softer this time.

You dragged your gaze away from your feet and up to his face.

His eyes caught yours, steady and warm, and despite yourself, some of the panic loosened in your chest.

When you looked down, all you could focus on was the ice, the blades, the strange pressure in your ankles, and the terrifying lack of friction. But when you looked at Logan, there were his hands around yours, his eyes on your face, his body moving backward smoothly like guiding you was the easiest thing in the world.

You moved barely an inch, but it still counted.

“Oh my god,” you whispered, staring at him as he’d just performed a miracle.

Logan’s smile widened, proud and entirely too pleased. “See?”

“I’m skating,” you whispered, like saying it too loudly might ruin it.

“You are,” Logan said, smiling like he was proud of you.

“I’m incredible,” you declared.

“You’re extremely humble,” Logan teased, still guiding you backward.

“I’m basically ready for the Olympics.”

“Let’s maybe get you to the blue line first,” Logan suggested.

You looked down at the ice.

Mistake.

Your skate wobbled, your balance tipped, and a tiny scream slipped out as your arms flailed.

Logan caught you before you could fall, one hand at your waist and the other around your back, pulling you against him before you could hit the ice. Suddenly, your face was pressed to his chest, his laugh soft above you — not loud, not mean, just warm and happy as his arms stayed secure around you.

“I told you,” he murmured, his arms still secure around you. “I’ve got you.”

Your heart was pounding, and not entirely because of the almost-fall.

“You’re enjoying this too much,” you grumbled into his jacket.

“I’m enjoying holding you,” he murmured.

You lifted your head just enough to glare at him, but Logan only smiled down at you, warm and pleased in a way that made the glare hard to maintain.

That was the problem with Logan.

Sometimes it was impossible to stay annoyed with Logan when he looked at you like that, all soft eyes and quiet amusement, like your fear of ice was something precious he’d been trusted to hold.

You swallowed, trying very hard not to melt. “This is very manipulative.”

“What is?” Logan asked, looking far too innocent.

“You being cute while I’m vulnerable.”

His brows lifted, his smile already starting. “You think I’m cute?”

“I regret saying that,” you muttered, because Logan had clearly found a weak spot.

“No, no,” he said, holding you a little closer. “Let’s go back to that.”

“Absolutely not,” you muttered.

“You called me cute,” he reminded you.

“I was briefly concussed,” you replied.

“You didn’t fall,” Logan pointed out.

“I was emotionally concussed,” you replied, like that was a valid medical defense.

He laughed, kissing your forehead before letting you find your balance again.

For the next twenty minutes, Logan tried to teach you how to move.

You learned how to push off gently, keep your knees bent, and stop staring at your feet, even though they felt deeply untrustworthy. You learned that Logan was more patient than you’d expected, repeating himself without getting frustrated, catching you every time you stumbled, and praising even the smallest bit of progress as it mattered.

“That was good,” Logan praised after you managed three tiny glides without clinging to him.

“That was barely movement.”

“That was good,” Logan insisted.

“I moved approximately four inches,” you argued, like the measurement alone proved your point.

“Six, at least,” he corrected.

“Wow,” you deadpanned. “Alert the press.”

He skated a small, effortless circle around you, looking annoyingly beautiful while he did it. “You’re improving.”

“You’re showing off,” you accused.

“Maybe a little,” Logan admitted.

You watched him move, all easy bend in his knees and smooth shifts of weight, as the ice knew him as well as he knew it. He looked different here, not like he belonged to hockey exactly, but like this was one of the places where he could finally breathe.

It was beautiful, and a little intimidating.

Your smile faded before you could stop it, and Logan noticed immediately.

He slowed beside you, his voice gentler now. “Hey.”

You looked down at your skates, avoiding his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“Nope,” Logan said softly.

You sighed, still avoiding his eyes. “What?”

“That’s your fake fine,” Logan pointed out.

You looked up at him, and his face was open, concern softening it in that quiet way he got when he wasn’t trying to turn everything into a joke.

“It’s nothing,” you tried, but Logan’s expression made it clear he didn’t believe you for a second.

“It’s nothing if it made your face change like that.”

Your throat tightened unexpectedly, and you hated that.

The day had been sweet and funny and light, and suddenly your eyes were threatening to do something dramatic.

“I just…” You looked past him, toward the empty stands. “You’re so good here.”

Logan blinked, like that wasn’t where he’d expected your mind to go.

“And I know that’s obvious,” you continued quickly, suddenly feeling silly, “because it’s literally your thing. But seeing it up close is different. You look so comfortable here, like this whole place makes sense to you.”

His expression softened at that.

“And I’m standing here like a baby deer with knives strapped to its feet.”

His lips twitched, but he managed not to laugh.

“Don’t laugh,” you warned.

“I’m not,” Logan lied.

“You want to,” you accused, because the corner of his mouth was giving him away.

“A little,” he admitted, the smile fading into something softer. “But keep going.”

You exhaled, suddenly embarrassed. “I don’t know. I guess I hate being bad at something you love.”

Logan went still, as that’d hit somewhere he wasn’t expecting.

And there it was — the small truth you hadn’t meant to say out loud.

It felt ridiculous as soon as you said it. This was skating, not some life-changing test, and Logan was your boyfriend, not someone waiting to judge you. Still, you felt exposed, unsteady in more ways than one.

“I know it’s stupid,” you rushed out. “I just don’t want you to regret bringing me here because I’m terrible at this and scared and—”

“Baby,” Logan said softly.

You stopped, and Logan skated closer until the tips of his skates nearly touched yours. Then he reached for your hands.

“I didn’t bring you here because I needed you to be good at it,” Logan said, his hands steady around yours. “I brought you here because I wanted you here.”

Your chest tightened at that.

His thumbs brushed gently over your knuckles.

“I don’t care if you fall every five seconds,” he said, thumbs brushing over your knuckles. “I don’t care if we spend the whole hour by the boards. I just…” He glanced around the rink, then back at you. “This place is a big part of me. And you’re a big part of me now, too. I wanted those things to overlap a little.”

You stared at him, too full of feeling all at once to know what to say.

Logan’s mouth curved into a faint, self-conscious smile. “Too cheesy?”

“A little.”

“Good cheesy or bad cheesy?” he asked, still looking a little unsure.

You squeezed his hands, smiling despite the ache in your chest. “Devastating cheesy.”

The teasing faded from Logan’s face. “I’m serious,” he said. “I like having you here.”

You swallowed, hating how small your voice sounded. “Even if I’m bad?”

“Especially if you’re bad,” Logan said gently.

Your eyes narrowed at him.

He laughed, his thumbs brushing over your knuckles. “Because then I get to hold your hands.”

“You’re impossible,” you murmured, but your hands tightened around his anyway.

“You love me,” Logan said, entirely too pleased with himself.

You froze for half a second, and Logan’s smile faltered like the words had caught up to him too late.

It wasn’t the first time either of you had used the word casually. You loved plenty of things — fries, sleep, the way Dean got offended when nobody laughed at his jokes. But this time, it landed differently.

It slipped out softly, easily, too close to something real for a relationship that was still new enough to make you both careful.

Six months was long enough to know his favorite breakfast order, the way he liked his hair touched when he was tired, and all the little things that made him feel familiar. But it was still new enough that some words felt too big to throw around carelessly.

Logan’s expression shifted, a little panic flickering at the edges, and you squeezed his hands before he could take it back.

“I do,” you said quietly, and his breath caught like he hadn’t expected you to let the words stay.

The whole rink seemed to go impossibly still around you.

Your cheeks warmed immediately. “I mean, I do love you,” you rushed out. “Not just because you’re holding me upright, though that’s definitely helping your case.”

Logan stared at you, and for once, John Logan had absolutely nothing to say.

You gave him a nervous smile. “You’re supposed to say something now.”

His mouth opened. Closed. Then he laughed under his breath, soft and a little wrecked.

“I was trying not to say it first,” he admitted.

Your heart stumbled.

“What?” you breathed.

He looked down at your joined hands before looking back up, his eyes softer than you’d ever seen them.

“I didn’t want to scare you.”

“You thought loving me would scare me?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, suddenly bashful in a way that made you want to kiss him until he stopped looking unsure. “Six months is still new, and you’re careful with stuff like that.”

“I’m careful because you’re terrifying,” you told him.

“I am?” he asked, looking genuinely confused.

“You’re John Logan,” you said.

“That explains absolutely nothing,” Logan said.

“You’re charming, and flirty, and everybody likes you, and sometimes you say things so easily, like they don’t mean anything, but they feel like something to me. I never know if I’m allowed to keep them.”

Something in his face changed, the softness there deepening until it almost hurt to look at.

“You’re allowed,” he whispered, and your throat tightened before you could stop it. “With me, you’re allowed.”

For a second, you stood together in the middle of the ice, hands linked, the quiet rink around you seeming to hold the moment carefully.

Then Logan looked at you and whispered, very softly, “I love you.”

There was no dramatic lead-up, no big speech, no smirk to soften it. Just Logan, standing in the place that felt most like him, giving you something he’d apparently been holding back out of fear.

You smiled, wobbly and helpless. “I love you too.”

His face broke into the sweetest smile, and then your skate slipped, because apparently romance and balance were too much for your body to manage at once.

Logan caught you before you could fall, laughter warm against your hair as you clutched at his jacket.

“Seriously?” Logan laughed.

“I was emotionally compromised,” you defended.

“You used that excuse already.”

“It keeps happening,” you argued.

He kept his hands at your waist, still smiling like he had no intention of ever letting this go.

“You okay?” he asked.

You nodded, still a little breathless. “Yeah.”

“Good,” he murmured, and then he kissed you right there on the ice.

It was soft at first, his hands steady at your waist while yours fisted in the front of his jacket. Cold air brushed your cheeks, but Logan was warm against you, his mouth gentle and smiling, and you felt the curve of it when he kissed you again, slower this time, like he had all the time in the world and nowhere else he wanted to be.

When he pulled back, your eyes stayed closed for a second.

“Still hate skating?” he whispered.

You cracked one eye open, like even that took too much effort. “I’m considering tolerating it.”

“Look at you. Big progress.”

“Mainly because there’s kissing involved.”

“Yeah, I can definitely work with that.”

You laughed, and he leaned in to kiss you once more, quick and sweet.

After that, you managed to make it a little farther across the ice, and while no one would’ve called it graceful or impressive, it still felt like progress. You even made it halfway around the rink with Logan skating backward in front of you, his hands holding yours as he smiled every time your eyes found him instead of the ice.

“Look at you,” he said, like he was proud enough to make your cheeks warm.

“Don’t hype me up,” you warned. “I’ll get cocky and die.”

“You’re doing great.”

“I’m doing okay.”

“You’re doing great,” he reassured you, his hands steady around yours.

You tried to glare at him, but the smile tugging at your lips ruined it.

Eventually, your legs got tired, and your ankles started to complain, so Logan guided you toward the bench. You nearly fell as soon as you stepped off the ice, but he caught you with a smile and claimed it didn’t count since you technically weren’t skating anymore.

He helped you sit before crouching in front of you again, his hands already moving to untie your skates.

You watched him work in silence, your fingers still cold, your cheeks still warm, and your chest still full from the kiss and the way he’d looked at you when he said he loved you.

“Thank you,” you murmured, watching his hands work at your laces.

Logan looked up from your skates. “For what?”

“For bringing me here,” you said, watching his smile soften. “Even though I complained the whole time.”

“Especially because you complained.”

“You’re too fond of me,” you said, like that was the problem.

“Yeah,” he murmured, his voice quieter now. “I am.”

You leaned forward and pressed your hand to his cheek. Logan turned into your palm without thinking, and the smallness of it almost undid you.

“You really wanted me here?” you asked.

Logan looked up at you, his expression soft. “I always want you where I am.”

Your heart gave a painful little squeeze.

“Stop being romantic,” you whispered, like your voice wasn’t already giving you away. “It’s embarrassing for both of us.”

He grinned, like he already knew the answer. “You love it.”

“I love you,” you corrected.

His expression softened all over again, like he still wasn’t used to hearing it and needed to hear it a hundred more times before he believed it.

He stood before sitting beside you on the bench, close enough that your shoulders brushed. You leaned into him without thinking, and Logan wrapped an arm around you, pulling you into his side.

The rink stayed quiet around you—no crowd, no whistles, no teammates yelling from the boards. No pressure. Just Logan, the ice, and you.

After a while, Logan pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

“So,” he started, his voice light, “second rink date?”

You let out a groan. “Logan.”

“What?” he asked, grinning. “Too soon?”

“I barely made it through the first one.”

“You did more than survive,” he said, smiling down at you.

“I nearly died three times.”

“I caught you three times, so really, you’re welcome.”

“Exactly,” you said. “Dangerous.”

He laughed and gave your shoulder a gentle squeeze.

You tipped your head back to look at him. “Maybe.”

His brows lifted. “Maybe?”

“Maybe we could do this again.”

His smile went soft, though there was no hiding how victorious he looked. “Yeah?”

“If you promise you’ll keep holding my hands.”

Logan looked at you like there was nothing easier in the world to promise.

“Always,” he promised.

He leaned down and kissed you again, soft and slow, while you sat there beside the rink with your skates untied and your fingers curled into his jacket.

You still weren’t sure skating was for you, but you loved the way Logan looked at you every time you tried.

─── ⋆⋅🏒⋅⋆ ───

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[alierecss]

I can see you | John Logan

summary: Three months ago, you and Logan quietly became something. You forgot to tell anyone. That was fine, it was yours, and you liked it that way. Then you found out your friends had started a betting pool on when you'd finally get together, and suddenly keeping the secret became a lot more fun.

or: four times someone almost caught you, and one time someone did.

notes: hii i'm back!! okay so this one is a little different from my usual so no angst, no parking lot confessions, no rain. also this pic of antonio is just so boyfriend that i had to write something. thank you so much for reading and please let me know what you think!!

warnings: swearing, implied intimacy, a missing bra, hannah being a terrible secret keeper and fluff.

word count: 6k

You and Hannah were not often scheduled to work the same shift at Malone's, for the simple reason that you two were dangerously prone to a severe case of the giggles that management had clocked early and worked around. But today was different, another server had called in sick and your manager had called you in a tone that left very little room for negotiation. You said yes, of course. You always said yes.

Arriving, you spotted Hannah immediately, weaving between tables with three plates balanced on her arm. You passed her on your way to the staff locker room and gave her arm a quick squeeze. She grinned at you over her shoulder.

The lunch rush was the particular kind of brutal that didn't leave room for anything except moving, table to table, order to order, the focused blur of a busy service. By the time it slowed down your feet ached and your ponytail had developed a life of its own.

Hannah found you at the counter, mechanically polishing glasses.

"So busy we couldn't even talk today," she said, sliding in beside you and stealing a glass to polish.

"It was genuinely awful," you agreed. "My feet are going to file a formal complaint."

Hannah laughed. And then the door opened.

Logan, Garrett, Tucker, and Dean came in with the energy of people who had just finished practice and were extremely confident about their right to exist in any space they chose. Garrett made a beeline for Hannah with the focused intention of a man who had one priority. Behind him, Logan drifted toward the counter, casually, like he just happened to end up there, and leaned against it, watching you serve a customer with an expression that was doing nothing for your professional composure.

You almost dropped the bag the customer was reaching for.

"Hi, Logan." You kept your voice completely neutral. "Do you mind not staring at me? I'm working, you know."

He laughed, low and unhurried. "No, I don't think I can manage that."

"You could try."

"Not when you look this pretty."

"This pretty?" You gestured at yourself. "My hair is dirty and I didn't even have time to put on makeup."

"Still the prettiest," he said, and winked, and wandered back to the table where his friends had settled in like they owned the place.

You looked back at the counter. The glass you had been polishing was now somehow less clean than when you started.

Hannah had materialized at your elbow with the expression of someone watching something inevitable unfold.

"When," she said reverently, "are you two just going to date like normal people?" She sighed. "I hope it's soon. I kind of want to win that betting pool Tucker made."

You put the glass down. "What betting pool?"

Hannah's expression cycled through several things in rapid succession.

"No betting pool," she said. "I meant a real pool. Tucker said something about you guys and a real pool. Can't think of what it actually was. Because it was so long ago."

You looked at her.

"Hannah Marie Wells."

"That's not my middle name."

"Tell me the truth right now."

She looked left. She looked right. She found no exits. She exhaled.

"All right. Tucker organized a bet where everyone has to guess when you two will finally become a couple. I said three weeks from the day the bet was made, which is actually — tomorrow — so if you two could maybe just —"

"I cannot believe you guys would bet on something like that." You shook your head. "Actually, I can believe them. But you, Hannah. I expected better."

"Allie too," Hannah offered, as though this was helpful.

"What does the winner get?"

"Pride and glory. Also we each put in twenty dollars."

You set down the glass and made a direct line for the boys' table. Logan spotted you coming and started to smile, that smile, the one that was specifically for you.

"Logan," you said pleasantly, "can you help me with something? The door on one of the staff lockers is jammed. Do you mind taking a look? Your bill will be on the house if you fix it."

He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, sure." He pushed back from the table, nodded to the others, and followed you toward the back.

Dean watched you go with an expression of mild suspicion. Tucker didn't look up from his menu.

The staff locker room smelled like industrial cleaner and someone's forgotten lunch, which was not exactly the atmosphere you would have chosen, but it would do.

"So where's the door?" Logan said, looking around.

"There's no door."

He turned. "What?"

"There's no door. I needed to get you alone." You crossed your arms. "Your friends are running a betting pool on us."

"What do you mean there's no door?" He looked genuinely betrayed by the architecture. Then: "And they're your friends too."

"Not when they're betting on us. There's no door, Logan, I made it up. Focus."

He laughed and crossed the small room toward you, his hands finding your waist and pulling you in with the unhurried ease of someone who had been doing it for a while, not long enough that it felt ordinary, long enough that it felt inevitable.

"It's not a big deal, you know," he said. "The bet. They're just nosy."

"I know." He was very close, which made it difficult to maintain the appropriate level of outrage. You found yourself pressing small kisses to his lips almost without deciding to, punctuating your words between them. "I just — don't want — to make it — a whole thing yet."

Logan pulled back far enough to look at you properly.

"Yeah?" he said. Not pushing. Just asking.

"It's ours," you said, which came out simpler and more honest than you had intended. "For a little while longer. I just want it to be ours."

Something in his expression settled, warm and unhurried, the specific look of someone who understood completely and wasn't going anywhere.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah." He tucked a piece of hair behind your ear. "Okay."

You pulled him in by the front of his shirt and kissed him properly this time, the locker room and the betting pool and Hannah's guilty face all receding into irrelevance.

Logan pulled back.

"Wait," he said. "So no bill on the house, then?"

one — tucker

The thing about Logan's shirts was that they were extremely comfortable.

This was not a controversial observation. They were soft and worn-in and smelled like him which was a feature rather than a bug on cold Sunday mornings when getting dressed felt like an unnecessary commitment.

You had not planned to be at the house on a Sunday morning. You had planned to be at your own place, in your own bed, wearing your own clothes, like a person who had their life together. What had actually happened was that Saturday night had turned into Sunday morning in the way that it sometimes did around Logan, and now it was nine-fifteen and you were in his kitchen in his grey shirt making coffee while he was still asleep upstairs.

Which was fine. Which was completely normal and fine.

The house was quiet. Tucker's door had been closed when you passed it. Dean and Garrett weren't home, Logan had said. You were alone with the coffee machine and a comfortable Sunday silence and absolutely no reason to think anyone was going to come downstairs for at least another hour.

You had just found the good mugs when you heard footsteps on the stairs.

Tucker appeared in the kitchen doorway in a hoodie and the expression of someone who had not yet fully committed to being awake. He was looking at his phone. He walked to the refrigerator. He opened it. He stared into it with the vacant focus of someone hoping food would appear through willpower alone.

Then he turned around and saw you.

The silence that followed had a very specific quality.

Tucker looked at you. He looked at the shirt. He looked at the coffee you were making, looked at the two mugs, and something moved across his face that went through approximately six stages before landing on stunned comprehension.

"Hey," you said, with the casual energy of someone who was not wearing their boyfriend's shirt in his kitchen on a Sunday morning. "Coffee?"

Tucker opened his mouth.

"I stayed over," you said pleasantly. "The couch is really comfortable actually."

Tucker looked at the shirt. He looked at the mugs. He looked at the shirt again.

"...Right," he said slowly.

"He let me borrow this because my top had a thing. A stain. From last night." You gestured vaguely. "Very embarrassing, actually. Pasta related."

Tucker was still looking at the mugs.

You picked up both mugs, tucked them against your chest in what you hoped was a casual gesture rather than an incriminating one, and smiled at him.

"I'm just going to bring this up," you said. "You should have some. There's plenty."

You walked past him and up the stairs before he could say anything else.

Logan was sitting up in bed when you came back, hair doing something architecturally ambitious, squinting at the light.

"Tucker's awake," you said, handing him his coffee and sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed.

Logan processed this. "And?"

"And I told him I slept on the couch because my shirt had a pasta stain."

Logan looked at you for a long moment.

"Did he believe you?"

"Absolutely not," you said cheerfully, and drank your coffee.

Downstairs, Tucker stood in the kitchen for another full minute. Then he took out his phone.

tucker: i just saw (Y/N) in the kitchen wearing logan's shirt

tucker: making TWO coffees

tucker: and she said she slept on the couch because of a pasta stain

dean: WHAT

garrett: what

tucker: I THINK I JUST WON THE BET

hannah: you didn't win the bet tucker. it was clearly just a pasta stain situation

tucker: HANNAH

allie: omg omg omg

tucker: do i win?? does the pasta stain story count as them getting together???

dean: i don't think pasta counts as confirmation tucker

tucker: I WILL NEVER FINANCIALLY RECOVER FROM THIS

two — hannah

The thing about Malone's on a Friday night was that it had exactly one staff bathroom and one customer bathroom, and the customer bathroom had been out of order since Wednesday, which meant that the staff bathroom had become public property by necessity, which meant the line for it snaked along the back wall and required a wait time that was genuinely unreasonable.

You had been waiting for four minutes when you remembered that you knew where the staff entrance was.

The staff hallway was quiet and dim, the sounds of the bar muffled behind the door. You had worked here long enough to know the code, and the bathroom was unlocked, and you were inside and washing your hands within ninety seconds, feeling extremely smug about the whole thing.

You were just reaching for a paper towel when the door opened.

Logan slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind him, and looked at you with the expression of someone who had just made the same efficient calculation.

"Oh," he said. "You had the same idea."

"Staff entrance," you confirmed.

"Smart."

"I know."

He crossed to the sink beside yours and turned on the tap, and for a moment you were just two people washing their hands in a small staff bathroom, which was either extremely romantic or extremely unromantic depending on how you looked at it. His shoulder was warm against yours in the small space. You handed him a paper towel.

"Tucker's texts have been unhinged this week," you said.

"The pasta shirt thing really broke him," Logan agreed, the corner of his mouth lifting.

"He texted me three times yesterday asking if I wanted to talk about my feelings."

Logan laughed. You loved the sound of it in small spaces, the way it filled them. You turned toward him and he turned toward you and you were very close, and he tucked a piece of hair behind your ear with the absent, habitual tenderness of someone who had been doing it long enough that he didn't think about it anymore, and you went up on your toes and kissed him quickly.

"Separate," you said against his mouth. "We should go back separately."

"Separate," he agreed, not moving.

You kissed him again, less quickly this time, his hands finding your waist, the paper towel entirely abandoned.

The door opened.

Hannah stood in the doorway.

The three of you looked at each other.

"The customer bathroom is out of order," Hannah said, very carefully, "so I used the staff code."

"Same," you said. You and Logan had separated with the practiced efficiency of people who had been interrupted before. "Just washing our hands."

"Both of you."

"It's a two sink bathroom," Logan said.

Hannah looked at the two of you. She looked at the very small bathroom. She looked at the single paper towel that was inexplicably on the floor.

"Right," she said. "Of course. I'll just —" she pointed at the toilet. "I'll just use this."

"We were just leaving," you said.

You and Logan filed past her. You did not look at each other in the hallway.

Behind you, you heard Hannah take out her phone.

hannah: ok so i just walked into the staff bathroom at malone's and (Y/N) and logan were BOTH in there

allie: WHAT

tucker: I TOLD YOU ABOUT THE PASTA SHIRT

hannah: they said they were just washing their hands

dean: both of them. in the staff bathroom. together.

hannah: there were two sinks

garrett: hannah

hannah: i mean it's a completely reasonable explanation!!

tucker: HANNAH YOU ARE LITERALLY DATING GARRETT YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS

hannah: i mean. yes. but also. two sinks.

allie: hannah i love you but two sinks is not an explanation

hannah: i just think we should give them the benefit of the doubt!!

tucker: hannah you literally have twenty dollars on this

hannah: ...i said three weeks

hannah: from a month ago

hannah: i may have already lost

three — allie

Allie considered herself an observant person.

This was not arrogance, it was simply a fact, documented over years of being the person in any given group who noticed things. Who left early. Who had argued with whom. Who liked whom. The small social architecture of any room was, to Allie, essentially readable at a glance.

Which was why she could not understand why no one else was seeing what she was seeing.

It was a random week night, the kind that had somehow evolved from a study session into a full group hangout without anyone formally announcing it, and now there were seven of them spread across the living room , Logan and Dean on the floor with Tucker's terrible taste in television providing background noise, Garrett and Hannah on the armchair that was technically too small for two people but they had been making work for months, and you and Allie on the big couch with your respective laptops.

Normal. Fine. A completely normal Tuesday.

Except.

Allie had been reaching for her water bottle when she saw it.

Logan had said something to Tucker, something quiet, barely audible over the television, and Tucker had responded, and then Logan had looked across the room at you. Just looked. For maybe two seconds.

And you had looked back.

It wasn't a loaded look, exactly. It wasn't the dramatic eye contact of a romantic comedy. It was quieter than that, it was the almost imperceptible look of two people who were sharing a private thought from across a room. Easy. Habitual. Like a conversation conducted entirely without words by people who had been having it for a long time.

Allie's water bottle missed the table entirely.

"You okay?" you asked, looking at her.

"Fine," Allie said. "Totally fine."

She looked at Logan. He had gone back to whatever Tucker was saying. Completely normal. Nothing to see.

Allie looked back at you. You were typing something on your laptop. Also completely normal.

I saw that, Allie thought. I absolutely saw that.

She leaned over to you. "Hey," she said, very casually. "What was that?"

You looked up from your laptop. "What was what?"

"That —" she gestured vaguely between you and Logan. "That look."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You and Logan just —" she did the gesture again, which in retrospect was not a very descriptive gesture.

"Allie," you said pleasantly, "I genuinely don't know what you're referring to."

You went back to your laptop. Allie stared at the side of your head.

I saw it, she thought. I definitely saw it.

She turned to the room. She needed a witness.

"Dean," she said.

Dean looked up from the floor. "What."

"Did you just see —" she started. But Dean had already looked back at the television. Tucker was saying something about the episode. Logan was responding. You were typing. Nothing was happening. The moment was completely gone, absorbed back into the ordinary texture of a Tuesday night, leaving absolutely no evidence.

Allie sat back on the couch.

I know what I saw, she thought.

Twenty minutes passed.

And then Logan got up to refill his water bottle in the kitchen, and on his way back he passed the couch, and his hand dropped briefly to your shoulder, barely a touch, a graze really, the kind that lasted less than a second and you didn't even look up from your laptop, just tilted your head toward it slightly, like a plant toward light, like the most natural thing in the world.

Allie's laptop slid off her knees.

"I SAW THAT," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

"Saw what?" Tucker said.

"Logan's hand — and her shoulder — they just —" she pointed. Logan was back on the floor. You were looking at Allie with an expression of polite confusion. "He touched her shoulder and she —"

"Are you okay?" Dean said.

"I'm fine, I just —" Allie looked around the room. Six faces looked back at her with varying degrees of concern. "Did anyone else see that?"

"See what?" Logan said.

"You touched her shoulder," Allie said, pointing at him.

"I was just walking past," Logan said.

"She leaned into it!"

"I have a stiff neck," you said.

"YOU HAVE A STIFF —" Allie stopped. Took a breath. "I know what I saw," she said, with dignity.

"Allie," Dean said carefully. "Have you had enough water today?"

"I've had plenty of water, Dean, I'm not —"

"Sometimes dehydration causes —"

"I am not dehydrated!" Allie said. "I know what I saw and what I saw was —" she looked at you. You were looking back at her with an expression of patient concern. She looked at Logan. He was also looking at her with patient concern. Both of you at the same time, with the same expression. "— you know what, never mind," she said. "Never mind. I'm fine."

She picked up her laptop.

Across the room, completely undetected, Logan looked at you.

You looked back.

The corner of your mouth moved. His did too.

Allie, who had her eyes fixed resolutely on her screen, did not see this.

She was choosing not to look anymore. For her own mental health.

allie: OKAY SO

allie: I JUST SAW SOMETHING

tucker: WHAT

allie: logan touched (Y/N)'s shoulder while walking past and she LEANED INTO IT

allie: and before that there was A LOOK

dean: allie we were all in the same room

allie: YOU WEREN'T PAYING ATTENTION DEAN

hannah: what kind of look

allie: the kind that MEANS SOMETHING

garrett: i mean they're friends

allie: garrett

garrett: what

allie: i love you but you have the observational skills of a golden retriever

garrett: ...fair

tucker: ALLIE YOU MIGHT HAVE JUST WON THE BET

allie: i can't win on a shoulder touch and a look tucker i need more evidence

tucker: THE PASTA SHIRT WAS EVIDENCE

allie: the pasta shirt was circumstantial

dean: none of us are going to win this bet are we

three and a half — garrett

It was a Wednesday afternoon, the house quiet in the way it got between practice and evening, and you had let yourself in with the key Logan had given you two weeks ago, casually, like it was nothing, tucked it into your palm and gone back to whatever he had been saying, and you had put it on your keychain without making a thing of it either.

You were in the kitchen making tea when Garrett came downstairs.

He was in sweats, hair still damp from the shower, moving with the unhurried ease of someone with nowhere to be. He went to the refrigerator, opened it, considered it, closed it. Then he leaned against the counter across from you and looked at the mug situation with the mild, unreadable expression that was, you had come to understand, just his face.

"Logan's still at the rink," he said. "Film session ran over."

"I know," you said. "He texted."

Garrett nodded. He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl. He looked at it. He looked at you.

"You should tell him about the Boston thing," he said.

You looked up. "What?"

"The conference. The one your professor forwarded you." He bit into the apple with the casual certainty of someone stating something obvious. "You've been sitting on it for two weeks. You should just tell him."

You stared at him.

The Boston conference was something you had mentioned exactly once, in passing, weeks ago, in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely. You had said three sentences about it and then moved on. You had not mentioned it since. You had not mentioned it to Logan because you hadn't figured out how yet because Boston was four days in February and it was a good opportunity and you didn't know what it meant for the thing that was still, technically, just yours.

"How did you —" you started.

Garrett shrugged. "You got quiet when someone mentioned February plans at dinner last week." He took another bite of the apple. "Logan noticed too. He just didn't want to push."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"He'll be fine with it," Garrett said, simply, like that was the part you needed to hear. "He's not going anywhere." He pushed off the counter and headed toward the living room. "Tell him about Boston."

He disappeared around the corner.

You stood in the kitchen holding your mug, looking at the space he had just occupied.

You had not told anyone about Boston. You had not told Hannah, who told you everything. You had not told Allie, who noticed everything. You had mentioned it once, in passing, and Garrett who had the observational skills of a golden retriever, according to Allie, according to everyone had filed it away and waited until you were alone to say the thing you needed to hear.

You looked down at your mug.

Then you took out your phone and texted Logan.

can we talk tonight? nothing bad. just something i've been sitting on.

His response came back in under a minute.

yeah. i'll bring food. what do you want?

You smiled at your phone in the empty kitchen.

surprise me.

four — dean

You weren't really supposed to be there.

You had come over earlier in the afternoon with the genuine intention of spending a couple of hours with Logan and then going home like a responsible person. What had actually happened was that Logan had been very convincing about the staying part convincing in the specific way that involved kissing you before you could finish your sentence and pulling you back against the mattress until leaving felt like a genuinely unreasonable idea.

So now it was late, and you were sprawled across his bed while he kissed your neck, his hands finding the hem of your shirt and pulling it over your head.

"I missed them," he said, with complete sincerity, cupping your chest in both hands, unclasping your bra with an easiness that frankly made you jealous.

You giggled and pushed his shoulders. "You idiot."

He kissed you again slow and soft, his tongue lazy against yours, the unhurried quality of someone with absolutely nowhere to be. You were certainly not going home now. You reached up and pulled his shirt over his head, and your fingers found a purple mark spreading across his stomach.

"What's this?" you said, tracing it gently.

"Practice got tough."

"Oh, my poor baby." You shifted, pressing a line of soft kisses across his stomach. You felt him shiver underneath you. "My poor, poor baby —"

The knock on the door made you both freeze.

"Logan?" Dean's voice, from the other side. Another knock. The sound of the handle being tried. "You in there, man?"

You and Logan looked at each other with the wide-eyed, frantic energy of two people who had absolutely no good explanation for the current state of the room.

Logan started moving toward the door.

"No," you whisper-screamed.

"Hide," he said, at the same volume.

"Where?"

You looked around the room in rapid, increasingly desperate assessment. The bathroom — no, what if Dean needed it. The wardrobe what if Logan opened it. The only viable option was under the bed, the duvet long enough to reach the floor and conceal the gap completely.

You rolled off the mattress and slid underneath it in one graceless motion. You heard Logan muffle a laugh by converting it unconvincingly into a cough. In your frantic scramble you had grabbed your shirt, clutched against your chest, but your bra was somewhere out there discarded, incriminating, absolutely in the middle of the room.

Fuck, you thought.

Logan opened the door.

Dean walked in. There was a brief silence of the kind that meant someone had immediately spotted something they were not expecting to see. From your position on the floor you had a very clear view of Dean's socks stopping in the middle of the room.

Then not moving.

You watched Dean's socks stand very still for approximately eight seconds.

"I need to borrow your charger," Dean said.

His voice was extremely, carefully normal. The voice of a man making a decision in real time.

Logan turned and retrieved the charger from the bedside table. "Here."

A pause. Dean's socks did not move.

"Leave, Dean," Logan said.

Another pause.

Dean's socks backed slowly toward the door.

He stood in the hallway for a moment, you could hear him through the door, just standing there, processing, and then his footsteps retreated down the hall. You waited until you heard his door close before sliding out from under the bed, pulling your shirt back on and looking at Logan, who was leaning against the wall with his hand over his mouth doing an extremely poor job of not laughing.

"Your bra," he managed.

"I know."

"It was just — right there —"

"I know, Logan."

He was fully laughing now, silent and shaking, and you threw a pillow at him, which did nothing to help.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand.

dean: dude…

logan: say nothing

You watched him type it, one eyebrow raised. His phone buzzed back almost immediately.

dean: i have twenty dollars on the line

logan: dean

dean: i'm just saying

logan: goodnight dean

dean: does tucker know

logan: GOODNIGHT DEAN

Logan put his phone down. You looked at him. He looked at you.

"He's not going to say anything," Logan said, with the confidence of a man who was not entirely sure of this.

His phone buzzed again.

dean: for what it's worth i called it from the beginning

Logan turned his phone face down.

You looked at him for a moment longer.

Then you retrieved your bra from the corner of the room where it had been sitting like evidence at a crime scene, and you got back into bed, and Logan pulled you against him with the easy, unhurried certainty of someone who had won the argument about staying a long time ago.

Down the hall, Dean lay on his bed staring at the ceiling, charger plugged in, feeling extremely vindicated about everything.

He did not tell Tucker.

He did not tell Garrett.

He did not tell Allie, who sent him three texts the following morning about the shoulder touch that he left on read.

He did not tell Hannah, which was the hardest one, because Hannah asked him directly at breakfast if he had noticed anything and Dean had looked her in the eye and said no.

He was, he decided, a good friend.

He was also, he decided, definitely going to win that bet.

five — garrett

The hit happened in the second period.

It wasn't malicious, just the particular physics of two large bodies in a confined space moving fast, the kind of collision that happened in every game, that everyone who had ever watched hockey understood to be part of it. Logan went into the boards hard and stayed down for a moment longer than usual, and the arena went quiet in a collective way that meant everyone was holding the same breath.

You were on your feet before you had decided to stand up.

"He's fine," Allie said, grabbing your arm. "He's moving, look, he's moving."

He was moving. He was getting up, slowly, with assistance from a teammate, skating to the bench under his own power. The arena exhaled. You sat back down.

Your heart was doing something extremely inconvenient.

"You okay?" Hannah said, from your other side.

"Fine," you said. "Totally fine."

She looked at you for a moment. You looked at the ice.

Logan was on the bench. The trainer was with him. He was talking, responding, doing all the things that meant he was okay, and you sat in the stands and watched with the stillness of someone who was doing a very good impression of a person who was just watching a hockey game and not mentally composing hospital directions.

He came back in the third period.

You exhaled properly for the first time in forty minutes.

After the game the group filtered down to the corridor outside the locker room the way they always did. You went because you always went, because it was a group thing, because it meant nothing in particular.

The players came out in ones and twos. Garrett first, immediately absorbed by Hannah. Tucker departing with a couple of the other guys. Dean getting into a conversation with someone near the exit.

Logan came out last.

He had a bruise forming along his jaw and he was walking with the slightly careful gait of someone who had taken a hit, and when he saw you he smiled, that specific smile, the one that was yours, and something in your chest did the thing it always did, except louder tonight, turned up by forty minutes of sitting in the stands holding your breath.

You crossed the corridor and hugged him, which was normal, everyone hugged after games, that was a completely normal thing to do.

Except then you pulled back and looked at him, at the bruise, at the careful way he was holding himself, and you said his name, quietly, in the way that was only for him, and he looked back at you in the way that was only for you, and the thing you had been keeping quietly for months was right there at the surface, obvious and warm and entirely done being kept.

You kissed him.

Not a quick kiss. Not an ambiguous one. A real one, his hand coming up to your jaw, yours finding the front of his jacket, the kind that had three months of ordinary Tuesday nights and Sunday mornings and staff bathroom detours in it.

The corridor went quiet.

You pulled back.

The group was looking at you.

Tucker's mouth was open.

Garrett had an expression cycling through several things very quickly , and then it landed on something that looked, more than anything, like quiet relief. Like someone who had been waiting for a particular thing to resolve and was glad it finally had.

Hannah was smiling in the particular way of someone who had known something for a while and was very glad to finally be allowed to show it.

Dean looked, more than anything, deeply smug.

"Wait," Tucker said. "Are you two — have you been —"

"Three months," Logan said, still looking at you, the corner of his mouth doing the thing.

"THREE MONTHS?"

"We forgot to mention it," you said.

"YOU FORGOT TO —"

"Tucker," Logan said.

"I HAD TWENTY DOLLARS ON THIS." Tucker pointed at you both. "I HAD — the pasta shirt! I KNEW about the pasta shirt! Does the pasta shirt count? When was the pasta shirt? If the pasta shirt counts then I —"

"Who won?" Allie said. "Technically who —"

Everyone looked at each other. A rapid, chaotic calculation passed through the group.

"Garrett," Hannah said slowly. "Garrett said —"

"After a game," Garrett said, with the equanimity of someone who had never been particularly worried about it. "I said after a game."

"You said after a game," Dean confirmed.

Tucker made a sound that had no letters in it.

"So Garrett wins?" Allie said.

"Garrett wins," Hannah confirmed, and immediately turned to Garrett with an expression of pure delight. "You won, baby."

Garrett looked at Logan. Logan looked back at him.

"You've been together for three months," Garrett said.

"About that," Logan confirmed.

"And you didn't tell anyone."

"We wanted to keep it for a while," you said, which was the simplest and most accurate version of it. "It was ours. We just wanted it to be ours for a bit."

Garrett looked at you for a moment. Something in his expression was entirely unsurprised. He nodded once, like a thing confirmed, and then looked at Logan with the small, easy smile of someone who had never doubted the outcome.

"Okay," he said. "Good."

Tucker pointed at both of you. "I want my twenty dollars back."

"You didn't win," Dean said.

"I KNEW ABOUT THE PASTA SHIRT."

"Tucker —"

"THE PASTA SHIRT WAS EVIDENCE AND NO ONE LISTENED TO ME —"

Logan looked at you. You looked back at him.

"Worth it?" he said quietly.

You looked at Tucker, who was now gesturing with both hands. You looked at Allie, who was consoling him with the resigned energy of someone who had expected this outcome. You looked at Hannah, who was collecting twenty dollars from Dean with the serene satisfaction of a person who had always known. You looked at Garrett, who was watching all of it with the calm, unhurried expression of a man who had called it months ago in a quiet kitchen on a Wednesday afternoon and had simply waited.

"Completely worth it," you said.

Logan kissed your temple.

Tucker made the sound with no letters in it again.

tucker: I WANT IT ON THE RECORD THAT I KNEW

tucker: THE PASTA SHIRT WAS REAL EVIDENCE

tucker: I CALLED IT FROM DAY ONE

dean: garrett won tucker

tucker: GARRETT WASNT EVEN PAYING ATTENTION

garrett: i was paying attention

tucker: YOU HAVE THE OBSERVATIONAL SKILLS OF A GOLDEN RETRIEVER

garrett: allie said that first

allie: it's true both times

allie: okay fine. garrett wins. i respect it.

tucker: I DO NOT RESPECT IT

tucker: TWENTY DOLLARS. GONE.

garrett: worth every penny honestly

allie: okay fine it was very cute

allie: i still saw the look though

allie: i want that acknowledged

dean: acknowledged allie

allie: thank you

tucker: I WILL NEVER FINANCIALLY RECOVER FROM THIS

[alierecss]

right where you left me | Dean Di Laurentis

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.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," you said.

He pulled you a little closer. You let him.

[seafoammm]

plowed down!

*⁀➷john logan x fem!reader

➷ summary: you’re the captain of the briar girl’s volleyball team, leading your team through the ncaa volleyball semifinals in the hopes of reaching the championship. and you do achieve that, but not after experiencing the most insane introduction with john logan, a man you hadn’t known to exist until now

➷ word count: 5464

pt. 2 here!!

➷ warnings: cursing, sexual references kind of (no smut), probably inaccurate volleyball because i literally have never played and don’t know anything about it (i was researching as i wrote this, so i'm genuinely so sorry if it’s completely wrong. also, for the sake of plot making sense, we’re gonna say the ncaa volleyball tournaments take place in march because i want hannah and garrett, and allie and dean to be together)

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

It was nearing the end of the 5th set, and yet, still, both Briar U and Harvard’s girl’s volleyball teams were tied. Fucking 24 points each, both having two winning sets beneath their belts. Meaning, whoever got the last two points– the points that both teams desperately needed– would get a ticket straight to the NCAA Championship.

And you, the libero on the team, the captain, were fucking livid.

Your team, as well as yourself, had been playing sloppy– or at least, it felt like you had– and you really had no clue why. You guys had been perfect during practice, together as one team. Hell, the first two sets had been great, too. Wipeouts. 

But then, of course, because it was fucking Harvard, they won the third set. And then the fourth.

And now you were on the fifth and final set of the NCAA Semifinals, tied 24 points each.

It had to be the most intense game you had ever played in your 15 years of volleyball. 

It didn’t help that Harvard was absolutely, 100%, targeting your ass. You guess it made sense– since your freshman year, you’d been talked about. A prospect that sports sites couldn’t stop talking about. Your name had been in their mouths since your first game at Briar U, and it hadn’t left since.

And that’s because you– to be totally, completely humble– were a really fucking amazing libero. 

Your defensive moves and tactics were the highlights of many games, the Briar U volleyball account literally reposting edits that fans have made of your best saves. You didn’t let it get to your head, of course. You couldn’t, even if you had tried. You weren’t like that– you could never be like that, because in all honesty, you knew the only reason you had gotten as good as you had was because of past coaches and teammates. As well as current ones.

So yeah, you were good, maybe even great as some of the sports sites put it, but it was all through the effort of others.

And, to be honest, right now, you didn’t feel great.

Or good.

You felt completely, utterly, horrible, because during this set– despite it being in the beginning– you had failed to save two hits, the spikes from the opposing team smacking the center of your side of the net. This meant that Harvard had earned two points because you couldn’t get your shit together, and it was driving you fucking nuts.

You felt like you had the pressure of this win on your shoulders, and it really didn’t help that the stands were filled to the brim with students. Harvard students, yes, but mostly Briar students, since it was ‘Briar Blackout’ tonight, a term coined for any sports event when they were wanting to fill the stands, especially now, since it was semifinals, which were held in an arena very close to campus. And boy, were they filled. Which made this all that much worse. God, did it feel like you were letting them down right now. It was embarrassing. Every time Harvard got a point, the disappointed groans of your supporters met your ears, and the usual smile that you wore on your face as you played had been completely wiped from your features during the third set. Because genuinely what the fuck?

This game had been disappointing on so many levels to the point that you were now actively listening to the chants from fellow students and supporters, something you never did. You always tried to block them out, to focus on yourself, but right now, you needed the support.

And it helped a bit, hearing the chants of your name, as well as the other names of girls on your team, shouting how you guys totally ‘got this’.

The people sitting in the courtside seats were the loudest.

In the chairs to your right sat people who had actually bought tickets, while the courtside seats to your left was the Briar boys volleyball team. And, in the courtside seats directly behind you sat the Briar U boys hockey team. Which was new.

You’re pretty sure it was because they had won nationals, so they were here to support the girls volleyball team as they fought for their place. Which you were dreading may be coming to a dead-end tonight.

But you couldn’t be thinking about the hockey boys right now– you couldn’t be thinking about any of this, not when you watched as Luisa Elliot, your best friend, your outside hitter, stumbled as her hands tapped the ball, sending it in the completely wrong direction. Instead of it going back over the net like it was meant to, it had been hit completely off course.

It flew over your head, and was heading straight for the stands directly behind. 

That was no good.

You sprint with not an ounce of hesitation towards the ball, following its movement with your eyes and legs, and you knew there was no way in hell you were going to make it– not when you were coming horribly close to the hockey boys. And, if you ran into them before you sent that ball back where it was meant to go, then you might not get the point, or, worse, Harvard could get the point.

And, fuck, you really couldn’t have that.

So you did what you always did– you leaped, quite literally throwing yourself forward in a dive, right arm pointed straight out, desperate to hit that ball back to your teammates. And you felt it, the ball smacking against the fleshy part of your hand below the knuckle of your thumb. 

You figured it went as planned, your eyes watching as the ball went back over your head– and, when a loud, collective, deafening cheer sounded from your side of the stands, you were positive that your play had gone perfectly, the ball going exactly where it was supposed to be.

However, you were not where you were supposed to be.

No, you were currently dangling over one of the Briar hockey boys.

In the save that may have kept Briar in the game, you had sacrificed your dignity, because here you were, body pressed against and over a man you had never once spoken to– hell, you didn’t even know which hockey player was beneath you. All you knew was that you could feel his face pressed into the fabric that covered your stomach, the rest of your upper body draped over the top of his head. The only reason why you hadn’t flipped completely over the man was because his right arm had instinctively secured itself around the back of your thighs, keeping you in place.

To your left, you heard the loud cackle from one of the boys, and to your right, you heard another one of the guys react with a shocked, “Oh, shit!”

You tried to move quickly, hearing the game continuing behind you as the ball was passed between the Harvard girls. Your hands, which had previously been held out in front of you, trying to balance yourself, now were being grabbed by the two other hockey players beside you, who helped tug you to an upright position as quickly as they could.

As they do this, you feel the arm of the guy that you are currently straddling slide away from your thighs, and he holds his hands back, palms facing you as if he was surrendering to something.

You only get a quick glance of the guy’s baffled– but heavily amused– eyes before your left hand quite literally presses against his face, using it as leverage to push yourself off him, where you start at a sprint back towards the game that had your entire focus. And, it’s lucky you did that, because just as you were about to make it back to the court, the middle hitter of the Harvard team had spiked the ball straight to the floor on your side of the court. 

Again, you dove to the ball, slamming your hand down on the polished wood floor just in time. Instead of the volleyball making contact with the planks of wood, it ricochets off the back of your right hand, moving upward where another one of your teammates– Liliana Amato– bumps it up and over to Louisa.

Louisa, the fucking amazing hitter that she is, spikes the ball with the palm of her hand, sending it straight to the back corner of Harvard’s side of the net. 

Their libero isn’t fast enough. 

No one on their team is fast enough, because the ball hits the wood with a loud smack, resulting in the entire room to vibrate with the loud cheers and screams of Briar students and fans.

You jump up quickly when you hear the whistle from the referee, and you swear you could cry from pure glee when the ref announces that, yes, the point did count, despite the Harvard team trying to claim that your pancake move hadn’t actually saved the ball. 

This causes another wave of loud cheers to erupt in the room, and you move to Louisa and Liliana, a giant grin on your face as you three high five, but not before each of you took a running headstart, jumping as you met in the middle, your shoulders colliding in a celebration of glee. It was something you always did, the three of you, because, as fate had it, you three were the ‘big three’. You guys moved with an efficiency like no other, and as it turned out, sports websites loved it.

All you needed now was one point.

One point, and you would be two points ahead, and then you’d win.

If you guys got this point, you’d make it to the NCAA Championship, something that Briar girls volleyball hasn’t been to in over ten years.

The arena gets quiet again as the two teams get ready, and from the corner of your eye you watch as Macey Cameron, your team's setter, tosses the ball up into the air, using her palm to serve it to Harvard.

And, like that, another intense battle ensues. You swear to God you’ve lost at least twenty pounds through this game because the Harvard girls really were putting you to work– the ball had gone over the net and back three times in the last thirty seconds, and each time, you’ve had to dive to save the ball from one of the girls' vicious spikes.

Like now.

You had just gotten to your feet again when Harvard’s middle hitter sent a completely fucking lethal spike your way. It was going down and over your head with a speed you didn’t even know was possible, and you tossed yourself backwards, right hand out to save the ball from hitting the floor. As it flies up, your body rolls on top of itself, and you’re pretty sure you’ve done some sort of fucking backward sumersault, because one second you’re on your back, and the next you’re on your knees, panting as you rise back to your feet, watching as Liliana sends the ball back over the net.

You watch as the ball flies near the back of the court, hitting the polished wood planks before any of the girls can get it.

But the room stays deathly silent because was that out?

It couldn’t be out.

There was no way you guys just did all that shit for the fucking ball to go out.

Everyone’s eyes are on the ref, who’s talking to the other referees. They’re huddled in a group, and after thirty seconds, they step apart. You watch, and you feel like it’s in slow motion as the man points to your team, nodding.

It had gone in.

The ball had gone in, meaning that Briar had just won the second point needed.

Meaning you were going to the fucking NCAA Championship.

In an instant, the room erupted in cheers so loud that it vibrated through the ground, reaching your feet as you and your team jumped up and down, your coaches– who have yelled at you more times than you could count this game– joining in. You’re so ecstatic that you don’t even think to apologize to the hockey boy that you had run down just minutes prior.

The hockey boy that is now watching you as he cheers, a soft, intrigued smile on his face.

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

Typically after volleyball games, you went straight home, where you would take a shower and then slump into bed, passing out before you could even question if you were comfortable. It was a ritual at this point; you play a game, you go home and sleep immediately after.

But tonight was different.

Tonight, you and your team had made it to the fucking NCAA Volleyball Championship, which Briar hadn’t done since you were still in elementary school. So, yes, you would fight through your exhaustion for one night, and head to Malone’s for a late night meal with three of your teammates– your best friends– and you would have a great time despite desperately wanting to get comfy in your bedsheets.

Which is how you found yourself now, at 10:30 p.m., entering Malone’s with Louisa, Lililiana, and another girl on the team, Jade, at your side, the four of you walking through the doors of the popular diner. 

You were chatting with Louisa who walked directly next to you, and you laughed at something she said, the soft sound carrying through the diner over the group you had yet to notice. The group you had yet to ever meet.

“Holy shit, it’s her!” Dean hissed, leaning across the table to nudge Logan in the shoulder from where he sat beside Garrett. “She’s literally right there–”

“Yeah, I have fucking eyes and ears, man,” Logan responded back quickly, voice terse as his eyes sideglanced you and your group, watching as the four of you walked past the table that currently held six people, including himself, without any knowledge that you were being watched. He looked back to Dean, eyes narrowed, “Can you be quiet?”

“Why?” Dean asked with a smirk, leaning back against the booth chair, his arm still hung comfortably around Allie, who was grinning with Hannah. “You’ve been aware of this girl for four hours now, and it’s obvious you already have a massive crush on her.”

“I don’t–”

“You’ve been stalking her Instagram since the game ended,” Garrett interrupted with a snort. “I’m pretty sure you’ve scrolled down to her sophomore year of high school.”

Hannah laughs into her drink at that, sharing a look with Tucker who had been snacking on the basket of fries that sat in the middle of the friend group. 

Logan feels his face heat up at that, and he promptly shuts off his phone, pressing it face down onto the table. Then, he picks up his drink, taking a large sip as he shrugs, speaking into the glass, “She’s interesting.”

“Yeah, interesting because she practically gave you a lap dance mid-game,” Tucker snickered, which, as a result, caused Hannah and Allie to erupt into fits of laughter. 

Logan glared harshly at Tucker, “That’s not why I find her interesting.”

“Sure,” Dean drawls out.

“Dude, I’m serious,” Logan huffs, taking a fry and chucking it at the blonde’s head. Then, he leans back against his seat, crossing his arms over himself, “She’s good at her sport. It's fun to watch."

“I think he’s so intrigued because she has no idea who he is,” Hannah butts in with a grin, laughing as Garrett nods along, his arm resting firmly around her, his fingers rubbing against the fabric of her cardigan. “And that’s new for any Briar hockey boy.”

“Oh, definitely,” Garrett agrees.

Logan only stays quiet with a sharp roll of his eyes. But he doesn’t deny it. He can’t deny it, because it’s true. 

Just hours ago, after your amazing win, you had been asked for a post-game interview by Briar’s sports media team. And you had said yes, because why would you not? It was better than having to deal with the glares and snarky comments from exiting Harvard fans.

Now, one thing about you was, you didn’t do hockey. Like, at all. You’ve never been to a game before. You didn’t understand how the stupid little ice game worked. Which, very fucking embarrassing for you, was discovered by the entire internet just hours prior.

It was discovered by John Logan hours prior.

The questions had been basic; they always were. Just repeats of the same things, such as certain plays, how you felt winning, yada, yada, yada. However, tonight, the last question had been different, directly tied to the man you had plowed down hours ago. The man who you didn’t know a fucking thing about, because you seriously didn’t do hockey.

“Alright,” the reporter, Sammy, had said, moving onto the next question. “Now, kinda venturing off… we actually wanted to talk about a specific save tonight.”

You smiled your practiced smile, the type that was sweet and polite and all the right ways, “Oh yeah?”

“John Logan. How are you feeling about that?” The reporter stated the question like you were supposed to know who the fuck that was. And maybe it was because your brain was practically mush from the brutal game, paired with the fact that you were running on pure adrenaline post game, but you couldn’t for the life of you connect that the guy you had run down was John Logan. Again, whoever the hell he was.

“Sorry, who?”

Yeah, you couldn’t have picked a worse fucking response.

But, in John Logan’s eyes, that was the perfect fucking response. When he watched the interview on the way to Malone’s after the game– because he was intrigued with volleyball, that was the only reason– he couldn’t help the amused but giddy smile that laced his face.

The reporter’s smile faltered, and she looked back to the camera that was videotaping the entire thing for the school’s media, before her gaze returned back to you like you guys were in an episode of The Office, “Uh… John Logan?”

“Yeah, um... I’m really sorry, I have no clue who that is.”

“The guy you ran into. When saving one of the passes.”

“Oh,” you respond. And because for some fucking reason you can’t help but embarrass yourself tonight, the situation finally clicks in your head, and you say the worst thing humanly possible: you smile, and say, “Hockey boy.”

Like a fucking idiot.

Or, in John Logan’s eyes, like a fucking angel.

“...Right. He plays right wing for Briar men’s hockey,” she explains. And then, she looks back at the camera as she asks, “You didn’t know the hockey team was behind you, watching tonight?”

And, of course, because for some reason your brain’s goal is to get you to make a complete fool out of yourself, you answer an even worse answer.

But, no, you weren’t a fool in Logan’s eyes. Not even close. You were the complete opposite and it had his heart going like a freight train was headed straight for him.

“I knew they were here. I just don’t have a clue who they are.”

“You don’t know Garrett Graham?”

“Uh… nope? I don’t think so.”

“Dean Di Laurentis?”

“Not ringing a bell, sorry.”

“John Tucker?”

“The guy I ran into?”

Logan had laughed at that, making up a quick excuse to Tucker, who had been sitting next to him in the car back when Logan had first seen the video.

“What? No– no, that was John Logan.”

“Right.” You shake your head and you laugh, “Too many John’s, am I right?”

The reporter was watching you like you had grown another head; she did not laugh. You felt a swell of embarrassment creep up in your chest, but you pushed it away, trying to finish the interview as quickly as possible. And you had.

Jesus Christ, Logan practically ate the thing up. He’d played it back, telling himself it was for educational volleyball purposes, when really it was to watch as your eyebrows furrowed in confusion when asked who he was.

And not caring when finding out who he was.

Which is how he ended up searching your name on Instagram, scrolling through your feed, post by post like some weird stalker, according to his friends. Who, presently, were watching him, because he had turned on his phone yet again, eyes flickering down to the screen, watching an old volleyball practice video you had posted.

“Just go talk to her, dude,” Garrett finally said after another thirty seconds of watching Logan silently yearn at your Instagram profile. “She’s two tables down.”

Logan followed Garrett’s gesture, his head turning a fraction, his eyes catching your form as you hovered over a laminated menu, talking pleasantly with the girl who sat beside you. You pointed at something on the menu, wiggled your eyebrows at the girl across from you, and then snorted at what you had said while your three friends gave you bored expressions.

God, he hadn’t even spoken to you and he was positive he was in love.

“No,” he finally says, twisting his head back to his friends.

“Okay, this is painful,” Dean finally said, throwing his hands up. “Give me that–”

Dean had reached forward, plucking Logan’s phone from his loose grip.

“What– dude, stop– give it back–” 

But Dean had stood in the booth, holding Logan’s phone out of reach, and he scrolled all the way back up to the top of your Instagram. He wasted no time, clicking the follow button with a sigh of content before shutting off the device and tossing it back to Logan.

And, oh, if looks could kill.

“Are you fucking–”

“Shhhh, thank me later.”

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

“No way.”

“What?” Louisa had said, smiling at the waitress as she brought out the four Cokes that you guys had ordered. She took a long sip, staring at you from over the rim, “What’s up?”

You silently turn your phone, showing your three best friends your most recent notification.

John Logan has requested to follow you.

“Holy fuck,” Jade gapes. Then, she snatches your phone from your grip, and you reach forward, trying to snatch it back. However, she’s already leaning far away from you, “Oh, we are accepting this right now–”

“No! No, we are not,” you respond, voice stern as you stand to try and reach for your phone again. “He literally just followed me. If I accept now, he’ll think me plowing into him was intentional or something, so give–”

“And, accepted! Alrightly, follow back… and look at that, he already approved it!”

“I hate you,” you groan.

“Bro,” Liliana said, gesturing to your phone, “he was the one who followed you first. Which means that after you ran him down, he looked you up on Instagram. Which means he has been debating following you for four hours now. Which means he has the hots for you.”

“You guys are all delusional,” you respond, but not before quickly thanking your waitress, who brings over the four burgers and fries you guys had ordered just a bit ago. The food had come quickly, and you know it’s because Malone’s is relatively empty tonight. Only three tables are taken, including the one that you and your friends occupy.

“I don’t think you’re grasping the severity of this situation.”

“‘The severity of the situation’?” You repeat Jade’s words. “The hell does that mean?’

“That you have one of the hottest guys at Briar, a hockey player, following you almost immediately after you straddled him–”

You feel your face burn, “I did not straddle him.”

“Babe,” Louisa interjects, “you absolutely straddled him. Wanna see a video?”

You groan, “They already posted it?”

“Girl, they posted it three minutes after it happened,” Liliana said. She grabbed her phone, typing quickly, and then slid her phone across the table. You steadied it in front of you, leaning over to watch. And, yeah, you definitely straddled the guy. But not after you fucking launched yourself at him like a rabid squirrel, nearly flinging over his shoulder– you only hadn’t because he had held you against him. 

“Oh,” Louisa says from beside you, pointing to the phone. “So that’s Garrett Graham,” she points to the guy who was on your right, the one who had vocalized his surprise when it had happened, “and that’s Dean Di Laurentis,” and then she points to the guy who had cackled. You watch as her finger points to the man next to Dean, “That’s John Tucker. The other John. They all live together. They throw the best parties, too, out of all the hockey boys.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Literally everyone does except you, apparently.”

“Okay, whatever.”

Jade groans loudly, “Can we return to the issue at hand here? John Logan thinks you’re hot.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Girl, look at his smile after you push your hand against his face.”

Jade leans over, using two fingers to zoom the video on the guy’s face, and sure enough, after you push off against his face, sprinting to save the volleyball once more, he watches you with what looks to be a dazed grin, his bottom lip tucked beneath his teeth.

Fuck, it was kinda hot.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” you choose to say instead.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jade groans. “Look, whatever. Do you at least find him attractive?”

You shrug, lying, “I dunno. Didn’t get a good look at him.”

“Alright, Liliana, pull up the edit.”

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘the edit’?” You question, absolutely baffled. “This guy has edits made for him?”

“He’s a college hockey player, and he’s fucking amazing. And really fucking hot. So, yeah, he’s got edits– but this one is like, top tier. Really gets you going, if you know what I mean–”

“You guys are disgusting.”

“Here,” Liliana says, clicking a video in her liked posts. She shifts her phone towards you, turning up the volume with the pad of her thumb, and you watch as the song “Do I Wanna Know?” by Arctic Monkeys sounds through her phone, an extremely well crafted edit of John Logan both on the ice and in interviews playing before you.

“Okay,” you say once the edit finishes, “he’s hot. I get it.”

“See!” Jade grins, “He’s hot, and he’s definitely interested in you after tonight, which means that–”

But you all pause. All four of you freeze, because two tables down, you hear the sound of your voice on full blast, coming from someone’s phone. It’s you answering a question after a relatively successful game, followed by a song. Meaning that somewhere in this fucking diner, someone was watching edits of you.

“Shit! Dean, turn it down–”

It was too late, though.

You and your friends’ heads snapped in the direction of the noise, only to be met with the eyes of six others– five who seemed absolutely thrilled that you had noticed, while the sixth definitely looked like a deer in headlights.

The sixth being John Logan.

You can’t even react accordingly, because Louisa is grinning like a madman, shaking your shoulder and pointing very obviously at the group that’s only two tables away, “Holy shit, he’s right there, oh my God–”

“I can see that, Louisa,” you hiss, pushing her hands off you. Then, you turn back to John Logan, watching as he whispers heated words to his friends before standing. And holy fuck, he’s making his way over to you. Before he even reaches the table, Liliana, Louisa, and Jade are standing, gathering their things and food, and your eyes widen with an alarmed expression, and you hurriedly whisper, “Where the fuck are you guys going?”

“To a different table so we don’t block his cock.”

“Oh my–”

You can’t even finish your words, because your friends are gone. And John Logan is standing right in front of you, a small, gentle smile on his face as he watches your friends scurry over to the table he had just come from. They shove themselves into the booth next to Logan’s friends, acting as if they knew the people they now sat with, which they did not.

Logan’s friends didn’t seem to care, though. They looked just as eager, making room so your three obnoxious teammates could sit comfortably.

You fight the urge to audibly sigh, looking back at the man in front of you. You match his smile, and you really don’t know what’s with your fucking head today, but the first words that leave your mouth aren’t something sweet. They aren't cute. They make you look like a dipshit.

“My victim.”

You immediately want to get up and leave, because genuinely what the fuck were you on today?

But you don’t leave, not when John’s smile widens, and you can see his pretty teeth. He looks thoroughly amused, excited even, and he nods along with your words as he responds, “My attacker.”

“I wouldn’t call it an attack–”

“What would you call it?” He asks with his gentle grin, and he pulls out the chair where Jade had just been, sitting directly across from you.

“A collision on the playing field,” you offer with a hint of playfulness, which he catches onto instantly. “I’m sure you’re used to those. With hockey and everything.”

“So you know who I am now?” He asks, his eyes sparkling with something exciting.

“Hard not to when our video is already making its way through social media. Have you seen it?”

“Absolutely,” he says with a nod, and his tone is serious in a joking way. He’s got his arms now on the table, leaning forward as he speaks to you. He’s still grinning, and you conclude now that this guy is insanely good at keeping eye contact. It's really hot. “You tackling me, me catching you–”

“Straight out of a sports romcom,” you conclude. Then, you shake your solemnly, “What a waste, am I right? If we had some good dialogue, we would’ve gotten a ticket straight to the Oscars!”

“Oh, I know,” he says, and he throws his hands up dramatically. “We’ve been snubbed.”

Fuck, he was fun to banter with.

All the nerves you felt when you first realized he was walking over had vanished into thin air, because you guys got along good. You clicked instantaneously, falling into an easy back and forth that had you leaning forward as you spoke to him, words playful as he nodded along, eyes wide in a way that showed he was having just as much fun as you were.

You guys had been so invested in your many conversations about literally whatever the fuck came up that you didn’t even realize when your friends left. Or when his friends left. Or when you two were the only people left in Malone’s, except for the staff.

And, through the long, witty, playful conversations you were having with John, you two somehow ended up staying at Malone’s until close. It was late out, just past 2 a.m., and John offered to walk you home, which you refused at first, worried about keeping him out too late. But the man pouts dramatically, a playful expression as he told you there's nothing else he'd rather do, and you can’t help but agree.

Which is where you found yourself now.

Pushed up against the front door of your apartment, lips pressed against his, hands threaded through his hair while his fingers held your waist, thumbs rubbing over your hipbones with the type of gentleness that made your heart ache. 

He presses more kisses to your lips. They’re firmer, eager, and it’s now that you know you have to break the news to him.

“Wanna know another thing about me, John?” You grin, tilting your head back as he presses kisses down your neck.

He hums against your skin, sucking gently at your pulse point before smoothing it over with his tongue, pressing once final kiss to the skin. He moves his way back up your neck and jaw with soft kisses, pressing one final kiss to the softness of your lips, “What?”

“I don’t do hook-ups. Or casual.”

You expect him to falter, to pull back with a face of disappointment. You figured that’s what would happen, but you didn’t necessarily care. Sure, it was going to suck, having to end this short-lived thing with the hottest guy you ever met, but you weren’t going to change your rules for a guy you had just met. 

But, no, Logan doesn’t react how you were expecting at all.

No frown, no hint of irritation. He does something else, something that catches you off guard in the best way possible.

He grins. 

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

[railingsofsorrow]

the alchemy

[john logan x reader]

summary: john logan scores a goal and goes running straight to you. pairing: john logan x reader w.c: 1.1K warnings/content: none.

A/N: purely inspired by the lyrics “where's the trophy he just comes running over to me” and the edits of that scene of logan scoring a goal.

navi

off-campus masterlist (TBA)

masterlists

“Hey, baby?” You called out for Logan as he walked into the kitchen. He was going to grab the popcorn from the microwave for you guys to finally watch the movie. 

“Yeah!” Logan answered back, his voice echoing through the living room. 

When he walked back, you offered a smile, pulling your legs under you so you could be more comfortable. The popcorn was put on the coffee table in front of you and Logan pressed play on the movie. “What's up?”

“Remember that midterm exam I missed because I was sick?” You asked and watched out for his expression to see if he did recall it. It happened last month, so you wouldn't blame your boyfriend for not remembering. 

Logan nodded in response, scooting closer to you on the couch and grabbing a handful of popcorn. “Yeah, you had a really high fever—”

“Don't speak with your mouth full.” You chuckled, covering his mouth with a hand. He only rolled his eyes but finished eating it before speaking again. 

“What about the exam? You said you'd try to talk to your professor to see if you could retake it, right?” 

You hummed softly, brushing a few of his curls that had fallen on his eyes. The strands smoothing out with your touch. 

“She said it was alright and that I could take it on the fifth.” 

“Oh, that's great, baby.” His hand froze when he was about to take more popcorn to his mouth. “On the fifth, you say?”

You bit your cheek, waiting for it to land fully in his brain that you were going to miss a really important game for him.

“Yeah.”

“Of this month?”

“Unfortunately. It's the only day available.”

He nodded slowly but you could see the way disappointment flashed in his eyes before he said it was okay.

“I'll make it up to you after the game, I promise, okay?” You mumbled with your lips glued to his cheek. “You'll play great, I'm sure.”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

It was an unspoken agreement that you'd go to every hockey game you were able to to support your boyfriend. It wasn't at all something difficult because you happen to be very interested in it. 

Logan visibly brightened whenever he would see you from the ice. You'd wave back and that was the interaction you'd share until the match was over. 

You weren't a couple big on PDA. You guys liked to keep things private and enjoyed being in your own little world whenever you had the chance. 

So you had never worn his jersey that displayed his number during a game before. 

But your plan had worked and he bought the exam thing really quick. You felt guilty seeing his face turn sad but it would be for a good cause. You wanted to see his reaction when he saw you were wearing his number; you wanted it to be a boost for him to win.

“Did he see you?” Hannah asked you, a giddy smile on her face. 

“Not yet.” You chuckled at her excitement. 

A twinge of that guilt flared up again in your chest. Remembering how his eyes had dropped, trying to hide his disappointment when you told him you couldn't make the biggest game of the season, made you want to run down to the sidelines and hug him right then. He had tried so hard to be supportive, telling you to ”go crush it” and that he'd play his heart out for you anyway.

You pulled the oversized fabric tighter around yourself, the familiar scent of his laundry detergent offering a little comfort. 

“Go, Logan!” You yelled at the top of your lungs and quickly felt your face warm up in embarrassment. 

The shout left your throat before you could overthink it, sounding incredibly loud even against the ambient roar of the stadium crowd.

For a split second, you wanted the stadium steps to open up and swallow you whole. Hannah let out a delighted giggle next to you, watching the field with wide eyes.

At the sound of his name, Logan’s head snapped up. His eyes scanned the front rows of the bleachers, looking a little dazed, until they locked squarely on you.

He thought he was imagining things. That couldn't be your voice, right? You were doing an important test. You wouldn't come tonight—No. No, that was definitely you. 

What?

His brain trying to process why you were standing in the stands instead of trapped in a lecture hall taking an exam. Then, his eyes dropped to the oversized jersey engulfing your torso, recognizing the bright, bold numbers stretched across your chest.

His entire posture changed. The serious stance was replaced by a large, breathtaking smile that crinkled the corners of his big brown eyes. 

“Oh, man.” Dean whistled when he saw Logan almost willingly to leave the rink. 

Garrett and Tucker nudged Logan with playful grins in their faces. 

“An exam, huh?” Logan called up over the noise of the arena, stopping right at the boards. He looked up at you, his large brown eyes bright with a mixture of sheer disbelief and pure affection. "You completely played me!” 

“Love you!” You yelled back and sat back down beside Hannah, practically hiding your whole body behind her as she laughed. 

When you finally looked down at the rink again, your eyes meeting his, Logan raised his hand and tapped his fingers right over the Briar crest on his own jersey—right where his heart was beating a mile a minute.

I love you too. 

By the third period, the game was grueling. Everyone was sharing the same feeling, at the edge of their seats expecting a win for Briar Hawks. 

With less than two minutes left on the clock, the match was tied. But Logan was Logan and he was the element of surprise. With a brilliant move, he dragged the puck between his own legs, leaving the defenseman stumbling through thin air. The goalie’s instincts weren't sharp enough. With a brutal, flick-of-the-wrist snap shot, he made the puck go straight into the net.

The crowd went absolutely wild. Thousands of people jumped into the air, screaming and spilling drinks. The student section went completely feral, banging frantically against the glass.

Tucker, Garrett, and Dean swarmed him in a group hug, lifting him nearly off his skates. But he didn't stay long with them to celebrate. Logan broke away from the celebration just long enough to look directly at you, chest heaving as he breathed heavily, his strands dripping with sweat on his forehead. 

Once he finally caught your eye, he smiled and you thought his lips would split at some point. He ran toward the glass and jumped on the boards, calling out for you. You threw yourself down the steps to the very front row, leaning over the cold metal railing.

Your boyfriend dropped his stick onto the ice, his chest heaving as he stood on the ledge of the boards, hauling himself up just high enough to bridge the gap between the rink and the stands. 

“You came,” he breathed out against your ear, his voice rough and full of emotion. “You're really here.”

When you pulled back just enough to look at him, that massive, brilliant smile was still splitting his face, his big brown eyes shining with pure happiness. 

Before he could say another word, you leaned down and kissed him.

“I wouldn't miss it for anything, less alone for a stupid test.” 

One of his heavy hockey gloves came up to gently cup the back of your neck, deepening the kiss, entirely uncaring that his teammates were down on the ice wolf-whistling and catcalling them at the top of their lungs.

Suddenly the no-PDA unspoken rule was completely thrown off the table and none of you could care less. 

[selenitasofi]

boy fuck you and your genius brain and those big ass biceps and your pretty smile i’m irritated

[sharingangirl]

Smiling Kakashi for everyone

Keep smiling. Keep shining.

[cuddlymaus]

Kakashi again! b&w. Currently working on a coloured version 💕

[cuddlymaus]

Kakashi Hatake

[kamuifade]

hii, could i request a kakashi drabble where he’s helping out and tending to his pregnant wife, sfw or nsfw really wtv you want!!

of course! I hope you like it!

-------------------------------------

The front door clicked shut softer than usual.

You heard the familiar sound of his sandals being toed off in the genkan, then the quiet rustle of his vest sliding from his shoulders and being hung on the hook. Normally he’d call out a lazy “I’m home,” just to hear your answering voice. Today there was only silence—and then the slow, measured tread of his footsteps coming straight toward the living room.

You were curled on your side along the couch, one of the long body pillows hugged against your chest and belly, trying (and failing) to find a position that didn’t make your lower back scream. At seven-and-a-half months pregnant, the word “uncomfortable” had become your full-time residence.

Kakashi appeared in the doorway still wearing the rest of his jōnin uniform—mask, hitai-ate tilted up, silver hair mussed from the wind. His visible eye softened the instant it landed on you.

“You’re home early,” you said, voice thick with the nap you’d almost been able to steal.

“Yamato volunteered to finish the last of the paperwork.” He crossed the room in four strides and crouched beside the couch so you were almost eye-level. “He said I looked like I was about to summon lightning just to make the clock move faster.”

You huffed a small laugh. “Romantic.”

“Very.” Cool fingers brushed your hair back from your temple. “How bad is it today?”

You didn’t bother lying. “Back’s killing me. Feet are balloons. Baby’s decided my bladder is a punching bag. The usual.”

He made a quiet sound—half sympathy, half guilt—and pressed the back of his knuckles gently against your cheek like he was checking for fever even though he knew there wasn’t one.

“Shower first or food first?” he asked.

“Neither. Just… stay here a minute?”

Without another word he kicked off the last of his gear, unbuckled the weapons pouches, and eased himself onto the couch behind you. Long legs bracketed yours; one arm slid carefully under your head so you could use his bicep for a pillow while the other wrapped loosely around your middle, palm settling warm and wide over the taut curve of your belly.

The moment his hand made contact the baby rolled—slow, deliberate, like she was stretching toward the familiar chakra signature.

Kakashi’s soft exhale stirred the hair at your nape. “Still showing off for me, huh?”

“She knows when you’re home before I do,” you murmured. “Traitor.”

He chuckled under his breath, the sound vibrating against your back. Then his thumb began tracing slow, absent circles over the side of your stomach—the same soothing motion he’d started using around month five when the kicks first became strong enough to startle you awake.

Minutes passed like that. Just breathing together. His heartbeat steady against your spine. The house quiet except for the faint creak of the old wooden beams cooling in the evening air.

Eventually he spoke again, voice low. “I brought dango. And that ginger tea you like. But if you’d rather I just carry you to bed and rub your back until you fall asleep, say the word.”

You tilted your head enough to catch the corner of his eye crinkling.

“Tempting,” you admitted. “But I’m starving. And if I don’t eat something soon this little monster is going to start a riot.”

“Understood.”

He shifted—careful, always so careful now—and helped you sit up slowly. When you winced at the pull in your lumbar, he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and simply scooped one arm under your knees, the other behind your shoulders.

“Kakashi—”

“Shh. Indulge me.”

You rolled your eyes but looped an arm around his neck anyway. He lifted you like you weighed nothing, even with the extra weight of late pregnancy, and carried you into the kitchen. Instead of setting you in a chair he deposited you gently on the countertop, then stepped between your knees so you wouldn’t have to balance alone.

“Stay,” he ordered softly, tapping the tip of your nose.

You watched him move around the small kitchen with the same calm efficiency he used in the field. Water on for tea. Dango arranged on a plate. A quick rummage through the fridge produced the leftover miso soup you’d barely touched at lunch; he reheated it with a flick of chakra, steam curling up almost instantly.

When he turned back to you he was holding a damp washcloth. Without asking he pressed it to the back of your neck—cool relief against skin that had felt too warm all day.

You sighed, eyes fluttering closed. “You’re spoiling me.”

“Mm. Years of missed opportunities to make up for.” He leaned in and pressed a masked kiss to your forehead, lingering. “Let me.”

The tea was placed in your hands first—ginger and honey, exactly the way you liked it. Then the soup, spoon already in it so you wouldn’t have to reach. He stood close the whole time, one hand resting on your thigh, thumb sweeping back and forth in that same absent, grounding rhythm.

Halfway through the bowl you caught him watching you with an expression you rarely saw outside these quiet moments: unguarded, almost reverent.

“What?” you asked around a mouthful of tofu.

He tilted his head. “Just thinking… I never pictured this. Not really.”

You lowered the spoon. “This?”

“You. Us. A house that smells like ginger tea and baby clothes. You sitting on my counter growing our daughter while I try to remember how to be domestic.” The visible corner of his mouth curved. “I like it more than I expected.”

Your throat tightened. You set the bowl aside and reached for him, fingers curling into the soft fabric over his heart.

He stepped closer immediately, letting you pull him in until his forehead rested against yours.

“I’m glad you’re home,” you whispered.

“Me too.” His hand found your belly again; the baby gave an answering nudge, right under his palm. He laughed quietly—the real one, soft and surprised and yours. “She agrees.”

You smiled against his mask. “Then stay here. No missions for a while, okay? Just… this.”

Kakashi exhaled through his nose, long and slow.

“Already put in the request,” he murmured. “Desk duty until she’s here. And after that… we’ll see.”

You tugged the mask down just far enough to steal a proper kiss—slow, grateful, tasting faintly of dango he’d swiped from your plate.

When you pulled back he was smiling with his whole face, eye crescented, silver lashes catching the kitchen light.

“Bed now?” he asked.

“Bed now,” you agreed.

He lifted you again—bridal style this time—and carried you down the hall, pausing only long enough to nudge the bedroom door open with his foot.

The rest of the night was simple:

Him helping you change into one of his oversized shirts because nothing else fit comfortably anymore.

Him propping every pillow in the house behind your back and under your belly until you finally sighed in relief.

Him sliding in behind you again, chest to your back, one arm draped protectively over the swell of your stomach, fingers splayed like he could shield both of you from the world.

And just before you drifted off—his lips against the shell of your ear, voice barely a whisper:

“Thank you… for choosing me for this.”

You squeezed the hand resting over your heart.

“Always,” you breathed.

[voidsatoru]

OLYMPIA | a jujutsu kaisen fic

gojo satoru x fem!oc

prev | main menu | next

.°•★ Chapter Two

"Welcome back, Sweets."

Aiko peered over the boxes she was holding, her eyes settling on the ginormous, white-haired sorcerer standing towards the other end of the hallway.

"Hi, Toru," she greeted with a smile, leaning to the left slightly to allow Satoru to place a quick kiss on her lips. "Didn't you have a mission today?"

"Nah," he waved off, but he paused when he noticed the look that Aiko was giving him. "Well yes, but the students are taking care of it so it's fine."

"You need to stop doing that, you idiot," the red-haired woman reprimanded, lightly kicking him in the shin.

"OUCH!" he cried out, dramatically clutching onto his leg for dear life. "You almost killed me!"

"I would've hit you 'round the head but my hands are busy."

Satoru immediately perked up in interest, his so called death blow to the shin merely forgotten in an instant.

"What do you have there anyway?" he questioned as he attempted to stick his head into the box.

Aiko only sighed in response as she walked into the makeshift office in their home. "It's a long story. She placed down the boxes and turned back towards Satoru, only just noticing that he was properly dressed up in casual wear as opposed to his regular jujutsu high uniform.

"Are you going out?"

"Ohhh that's what I was forgetting to do," he responded in thought. "I totally forgot. Come on," he suddenly announced, grabbing onto Aiko's hand and dragging her out of the room and towards the exit of their home.

"Wha-" Aiko spluttered and she haphazardly followed behind Satoru, not making much effort to make him stop. He would only end up warping them to the destination anyway. "Where are you going?"

"You mean, where are we going," he corrected, his signature mischievous grin lighting up his face. "We were summoned by the higher ups."

Aiko narrowed her eyes as she finally fell into step with the white-haired sorcerer, her fingers properly intertwining with his. "I know for a fact they only summoned you, Toru."

"Hey, we're a package deal, okay? They might as well have included you by name."

"I hate them, I can't believe you'd make me do this."

"I promise to buy you dango after."

The woman perked up in excitement. "Really? From that really specific bakery that I like?"

"That's the one," he nodded, beginning to swing their arms back and forth between them.

"I guess I can let it slide this time then."

"So what's this meeting about then?" The woman questioned as they made their way towards the Jujutsu high school building, where the higher ups were waiting.

"It's regarding Okkotsu Yuta."

Aiko furrowed her brows. She was certain that she had come across that name just recently.

"Wait, is that.."

"The kid that unknowingly used a curse to attack his fellow classmates," Satoru finished off. "It seems he doesn't know anything about the Jujutsu world, so the higher ups have been deliberating how to deal with him."

"I see," Aiko mused. "Have any sorcerers tried to talk to him?"

Satoru only sighed in response. "Yeah, it didn't work out too well for them."

"It's probably safe to assume that those bastard higher ups want him killed," the young woman spoke, as they finally walked through the gates leading to the building in which the elders were gathered. "Why else would they call you in?"

"Don't worry," he assured as they moved to a stop outside the building, his head slightly tilting down towards her. "I won't let them take a young life that easily. It's also why I brought you along."

Aiko raised her brow in question.

"They're not gonna go against two of the only special grades that they have on their side," he revealed.

"Oh please," Aiko scoffed. "You'd have the same effect if you went by yourself."

"I was trying to make us sound like a badass, unstoppable couple," he said with a slight pout.

The woman rolled her eyes before shoving him lightly up the small steps. "Come on, let's get this over with."

The hallway leading to the meeting room was as uncomfortable as it always seems to be, Aiko noted. Cold, dark, and devoid of life, perfectly fitting for the group of bastard old men who were waiting for them just beyond the doors at the end of the hallway.

Aiko pulled her hand away from Satoru as they entered the room, not wanting to invite more unwanted attention towards her. They walked in complete silence until they reached the centre of the room, completely surrounded by each of the men on the Jujutsu Council.

"Well, we're here."

"Gojo Satoru," one gruff voice spoke from behind one of the screens. "Only you were to be summoned to this meeting. Why is Tetsuya Aiko here? This matter does not concern her."

"Well, you never specifed not to bring her, old man. You gotta be more specific."

"You-"

"Enough," another voice spoke. "I'll get straight to the point."

Aiko crossed her arms in front of her chest as she waited for the verdict, knowing damn well she wasn't gonna like what she was gonna hear.

"We have deemed Okkotsu Yuta as being too dangerous to be left to his own devices. Therefore, we have decided to completely cover up the incidents in which he was involved, and to promptly execute him on Jujutsu High grounds out of the public eye."

"See, I told you," Aiko murmured under he breath, only loud enough for Gojo to hear her.

"A cover up and a secret execution?" Satoru spoke. "That's ridiculous."

"The boy consented, though," the older man tried to convince.

"He's underage," the white-haired sorcerer cut off promptly. "A sixteen year old. Besides, we don't know how many he'll curse to death. He's already turned the tables on three grade two sorcerers and one grade one, so that's why you turned to me."

Aiko widened her eyes in surprise. An inexperienced boy with no knowledge of the jujutsu society managed to overpower a grade one sorcerer?

"So what are you going to do? Are you actually going to-"

"Yes," Gojo confirmed. "Okkotsu Yuta will be taken to Jujutsu High."

The two special grades made their way down the stairs to the basement, a room completely covered in hundreds of seals designed to suppress any kind of dangerous cursed energy. In this case, the person who currently inhabited this room was Okkotsu Yuta.

The two approached the door at the bottom of the stairs, the only noticeable thing on there being the large seal in red.

"You better not say anything stupid to the poor boy," Aiko muttered, watching as Gojo placed his hand on the doorknob. "Don't scare him."

"Pshh, when do I-" He cut himself off as he noticed the young woman's expression. "Okay."

Aiko held her breath as he twisted the handle and pushed open the door. She didn't really know what to expect.

Her eyes fell on the figure in the centre of the room, his form exhibiting anything but a dangerous aura. Yuta was sitting on the uncomfortable wooden chair, his legs pulled close to his chest and his head resting on his knees. He barely even reacted to the sound of the door opening.

She would have laughed if someone had told her that this young, innocent-looking boy had severely hurt his classmates as well as overpowering trained sorcerers.

She stayed by the door as Satoru approached him, choosing to simply watch the scene before her.

Yuta lifted his head from his knees as Satoru moved closer towards him, his knuckles turning white as the grip on his legs tightened.

"Please.. stay away," he whispered, barely loud enough for Aiko to hear him.

Gojo ignored the request. After all, he was the strongest. The older sorcerer shoved his hand into his uniform pocket, and fished out a mangled piece of metal. "I heard you tried to kill yourself with this."

The young boy nodded meekly. "Rika wouldn't let me.."

Aiko's heart dropped further and further as she listened to the two of them talk. The boy was certainly dangerous, but he didn't mean to be. How badly must the guilt be eating him up for him to contemplate killing himself?

"You're pretty depressing, huh?"

"Satoru!" Aiko hissed, unamused by his choice of wording. She should've seen this coming. He had no tact after all.

"Aren't you starting a new school tomorrow?" he continued, as if he couldn't feel the piercing death stare directed at him.

"I'm not going," Yuta firmly stated. "I don't want to hurt anyone ever again. I'm done going outside."

"Won't it get lonely by yourself?" Gojo questioned.

The boy didn't respond.

"That curse you're afflicted with," the white-haired sorcerer continued. "Depending on how it's used, you can use it to save people too. Learn to harness that power, otherwise you're just throwing it all away. Even so, it's not too late you know?"

"Yuta," Aiko began as she walked closer, and the boy looked up with the same worried eyes. "I promise that you're not alone," she reassured as she crouched down, hoping that getting down to his level would make him more comfortable. "If anything were to happen, we're here to put an end to it before anyone gets hurt. You don't have anything to worry about, I swear it."

Yuta nodded slowly, his gaze flitting between Aiko and Satoru.

"I can really learn to control it?"

"Yep," Aiko answered, even though she didn't know for sure. He didn't need to know that.

"Okay," he mumbled. "I'll go."

"Splendid!" Gojo exclaimed, aggressively patting Yuta on the back. "Welcome to Jujutsu High."

"So," Aiko began as both she and Satoru made their way outside. "What's your plan for him then? Is he gonna transfer in with the current first years?"

"I'm sure he'll get on amazingly with Maki, Panda, and Inumaki," Gojo said with a hum.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Although Maki might scare the poor boy."

"Psht they'll be fine."

"Remember to give Yuta the full rundown about the Jujutsu world before you throw him into the chaos," the red-haired woman warned.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know."

"Toru, I'm being serious."

"Come on, Sweets. Don't you trust me-"

"Not one bit."

prev | main menu | next

a/n: ahhh my shaylas my shaylas

[frenchcoucou]

THE BATHTUB SCENE FINALLY ANIMATED

[voidsatoru]

OLYMPIA | a jujutsu kaisen fic

gojo satoru x fem!oc

main menu | next

.°•★ Chapter One

Aiko would much rather be fighting curses right now. In fact, she would even prefer to be fighting a special grade curse with her eyes closed and her arms tied behind her back.

Anything would be better than having to sort through the mountains of boxes that filled her office, all filled to the brim with documents that probably no longer held relevance to the clan.

After all, most of the sheets that Aiko had painstakingly sorted through had been dated back to several generations before her time. I mean, really, who cared about some missions that happened before even her grandparents were alive.

See, this wouldn't have been an issue if her brother had just been organised when he was clan head. Now that the position had been passed onto her, he had gleefully passed on the role of managing an entire clan as well as the monstrous amount of paperwork that came with it.

The girl sighed as she smacked a lid onto yet another box, labelling it neatly before stacking it to the side of the room.

Three boxes down, only like fifty more to go.

"Hey little robin how is it go- OW" The older Tetsuya sibling screeched as a pen pinged off his forehead, with Aiko muttering to herself as she retracted her arm back to her side.

"My dear baby sister, abusing me," he exclaimed with a pout, arms folding in front of his chest. "What could I have possibly done to deserve this."

Aiko raised a brow at him, her arms gesturing towards the stacks of paperwork left all over the table and even the floor.

Yabe went silent for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face "Yeah. Yeah, I suppose this IS my fault. Fair enough."

"I'm glad we can see eye to eye, big brother," the red-haired girl responded with a snort, her back turning toward him as she moved towards her office chair.

"Do you want me to help y-"

Aiko whirled around at the sound of a large crash, only to find a guilty looking Yabe and a series of boxes laying across the floor, files and sheets of paper spilling out and jumbling up into one huge mess.

"I can explain-"

"Yabe, I'm gonna kill you."

"It's fine, it's fine," he argued as he crouched down, frantically shoving the contents into boxes despite them sliding back out moments later.

Aiko grumbled as she carefully made her way over, various threats tumbling past her lips.

Her brows furrowed slightly as her eyes speedily scanned the documents, its contents unfamiliar to her.

"Stop for a second," she called out as she caught his wrist, crouching down carefully beside the older male.

"Something wrong?" Yabe questioned, further halting his movements.

The young woman carefully plucked out various sheets from the pile and raised them up momentarily, before carefully arranging them into a neat order on an unobstructed place on the carpet.

"Is this familiar to you at all?"

She pointed towards the detailed sketch of a katana, with various symbols and markings often affiliated with the Tetsuya clan.

She looked up to find Yabe shaking his head in confusion.

"I haven't, no. Is it important?"

Aiko hummed slightly in response as she moved to sit more comfortably on the floor, her eyes once again focused on the documents in front of her.

"This katana is supposedly called the Blade of Zeus. And it's a special grade cursed tool."

"What's the likelihood of there being an unregistered special grade tool out there though?" The male questioned thoughtfully. "I don't think the Zenin clan would let that slide. You know how particular they are about that kinda stuff."

"Hmm. Maybe it was destroyed? It takes a lot to destroy a tool with that much cursed energy though. If it was destroyed it must've been written down somewhere in these records. Some kinda historic fight or something."

"What else does it say about it? Anything about past wielders?"

"Yeah, right here. Apparently.."

Aiko's brows furrowed as she read on.

"Apparently what?"

"Uh, sorry," she mumbled as she shook her head. "The blade is a.. Tetsuya clan heirloom."

"Huh?? Why have I never heard of it then?"

"I'm not sure. Hmm.. I mean it makes sense given the name but still. Oh wait, the most notable past wielders were the previous Cursed Olympian users. Including the first user herself."

"Actually, that makes sense." Yabe cut off. "Wielding a special grade tool is difficult as it is, it only makes sense that special grade sorcerers like Cursed Olympian users had a more successful time with it."

"Yeah.."

"Hey," Yabe called out, concern lacing his voice. "What's on your mind?"

"It's just, according to our records, the last Cursed Olympian user was alive hundreds of years ago. They were also the last person recorded to have used the Blade of Zeus…"

"...so where is it now," Yabe trailed off, finally understanding where she was coming from.

"If the clan still had it, they would've given it to me by now, right?"

"Yeah, I mean, I don't see why they wouldn't. Besides, we didn't even know this existed. Maybe they don't either."

"Maybe we should try asking Kato or Grandma Ayame . Surely one of them would have some answers."

Aiko sighed, her head resting against her hand. "What if it was lost even before their time though?"

"Don't be a negative Nancy, little robin," he spoke, one hand ruffling her hair despite her protests. "We will find out what happened to that katana back then and we will bring it back to where it belongs. To you."

Aiko smiled brightly. "Thanks, big brother. Don't think you're getting out of cleaning up this mess though."

"God dammit"

Aiko sighed as she glanced at the images once again, eyes scanning the recorded dates associated with them.

"Do you think Grandma or Kato would know anything?" The redhead questioned. "It supposedly went missing before they were even teenagers, but surely they'd know something right?"

Yabe shrugged. "Wouldn't hurt to ask." He paused for a moment. "Maybe it would hurt to ask. They're crazy." He fake shudders. "I can't forget Grandma's vicious grip when hugging me."

Aiko laughed as she gathered the necessary documents and scrambled to her feet, no longer concerned about the state of the room. “Come on then,” she called as she walked towards the open doorway, head turning to look over her shoulder. “Let’s find some answers.”

"Maybe we should put up some missing posters-"

"Don't be an idiot."

The Tetsuya siblings made their way towards their grandmother’s cottage home, which was only a stone's throw away from the main Tetsuya estate.

Aiko raised her brow at the sound of bickering coming from the small abode, and quickened her pace down the gravel path with her brother following right behind her.

"Grandma?" she called out as she made her way through the building, but quickly realised the sound wasn't actually coming from inside the house.

The sounds only increased as the redhead made her way towards the backdoor. She stopped in her tracks as her eyes fell on the sight in front of her.

Aiko's grandmother Ayame was aggressively shaking Tetsuya Kato, another one of the Tetsuya Clan elders, by the collar, curse words spewing out of her mouth.

"Is.. everything okay?" Aiko questioned as she stepped out of the door and onto the patio, clutching her folder to her chest.

"Aiko!" The older woman exclaimed as she let go of Kato and stood up, arms reaching out to embrace the younger woman. "My favourite grandchi- daughter" she quickly corrected, noticing Yabe's flabbergasted expression on his face.

"Granny!” he gasped, his hand clutching his chest. "How could you?"

Aiko only chuckled as she embraced her grandmother momentarily, before pulling back to allow her to hug Yabe.

"It's good to see you, Grandmother. You too Kato-san," she greeted as she turned towards the older man. "You being here certainly makes this easier."

"What brings you here?" Ayame questioned as the siblings made themselves comfortable around the wooden table.

"We’re hoping to clear up some of the questions that we have." Aiko opened up the folder and pulled out the sheet with the image of the cursed tool.

"Have you guys ever heard about the Blade of Zeus?" Yabe questioned as the red-haired sorcerer slid the sheet towards the elders. "It seems to be a katana that was passed through our clan, but I've never heard about it."

"Ohhh," Kato began as he sat up, a look of interest on his features. "It was that white one right? With a gold bolt running through it."

"Oh, that old thing," Ayame remembered. "Yeah, I know it.'

"Wha-" Aiko spoke in surprise, momentarily turning her head to share a confused look with Yabe. "You're familiar with it? Where is it?"

Ayame sighed. "Unfortunately, it was stolen from the clan when we were pretty young. It used to be displayed in a room connected to your current office, and had all sorts of wardings on it."

"What happened then?" Yabe questioned, leaning forward with his elbows on the pine table.

"I wish I could tell you that there was some kind of big commotion which we can analyse, but we never did find out how it happened and who it could've been. Someone took advantage of the fact that there were no active Zeus Technique wielders, and managed to steal it without leaving a single clue.”

Aiko let out a sigh of disappointment, her body slouching down in her chair. "I see." She stared down at the images for a few moments, before shuffling the paper back into the folder. "What's this about Zeus Techniques wielders, by the way? I mean, I guess the clue is in the name, but still, did they use the sword too?"

Ayame simply nodded. "Yeah, Olympian users were the most known for using the katana, but people with the Zeus technique can control it just as well due to compatibility. I would have inherited it once I became Clan Head if we still had it."

"Ah okay. That's all I wanted to know, Granny," Aiko said as she stood up,

"What are you gonna do?" Kato questioned.

"I'm gonna open up an investigation into this," the clan head spoke. "As the current Cursed Olympian User, that katana is rightfully mine. I won't stop 'til I find it."

main menu | next

a/n: this is my first attempt at posting a full fic on here. pls show me some mercy.

[voidsatoru]

OLYMPIA | a jujutsu kaisen fic

gojo satoru x fem!oc

main menu | next volume

volume one: cursed child arc

mysterious new special grade, and memories from the past

★ chapter one

★ chapter two

★ chapter three

★ chapter four

★ chapter five

★ chapter six

★ chapter seven

★ chapter eight

★ chapter nine

★ chapter ten

★ chapter eleven

[voidsatoru]

OLYMPIA | a jujutsu kaisen fic

gojo satoru x fem!oc

main menu

JUJUTSU CLANS INDEX: TETSUYA

Current notable members of the Tetsuya Clan

TETSUYA AIKO

Jujutsu Class: Special Grade

Technique: Cursed Olympian Technique

Status: Current Clan Head + Teacher at Jujutsu High

Family: Tetsuya Yabe (brother), Tetsuya Hana (mother), Tetsuya Ayame (grandmother)

Relationship: Gojo Satoru

Education: Jujutsu Tech Tokyo Branch

TETSUYA YABE

Jujutsu Class: First Grade

Technique: Poseidon Technique

Status: Previous Clan Head + Weapons master

Family: Brother to Tetsuya Aiko

TETSUYA HANA

Jujutsu Class: First Grade

Technique: Book of Fairytales Technique

Status: Former Clan Head

Family: Mother to Tetsuya Aiko

TETSUYA AYAME

Jujutsu Class: First Grade

Technique: Zeus Technique

Status: Former Clan Head

Family: Grandmother to Tetsuya Aiko