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Hannah's bathroom is too small for the both of them.
Garrett sits on the edge of the tub with his knees apart to make room for her and she stands between them, close enough that he can smell the remnants of her perfume underneath something sharper. Sweat from the showcase, maybe. Adrenaline from the bar. She has changed out of her clothes and into a t-shirt that is too big for her, the collar slipping off one shoulder. He looks at the smattering of freckles there, wants to kiss them, run the tip of his finger over them just to prove she is real, and she is here, and she is with him.
She has not yelled at him, but he finds himself waiting for it anyway.
"Hold still," she murmurs, and presses the antiseptic-soaked cotton pad against the split skin.
Garrett winces. His whole body jerks, a sharp involuntary flinch that has nothing to do with toughness and everything to do with the fact that it is her hand, her careful hand, and he cannot seem to brace against her the way he braces against everything else. On the ice, he has taken elbows to the teeth and finished the shift. He has played through a hairline fracture in his wrist for six games because the team needed him, and he told no one. But Hannah Wells touches him gently, and his body folds like it has been waiting for permission.
She notices the flinch. Of course, she does.
"I've gotten worse cuts than this shaving my legs, Graham."
The corner of his mouth almost twitches. Almost. "You haven't seen the other guy."
"I did see the other guy. You were all very impressive. Very male."
Her voice is dry and light and intentionally unimpressed in a way that should not make his chest ache, but it does, because she is choosing to be normal with him right now. She is choosing not to make this a thing. He showed up at her door less than twenty minutes after they stood in that barwith his knuckles split open and blood already drying above his eye, and she opened the door and looked at him and looked at the blood and said sit down and pulled out a first aid kit from under the sink as if she had been expecting this. As if this is just what comes with him.
That thought catches in his gut, pushing bile up, up, up into his throat.
Hannah tilts his chin up with two fingers to get a better angle on the cut, and her thumb grazes the edge of the wound, and the sting is small, almost nothing, but it travels, and then—
Garrett is fourteen.
He is fourteen and it is winter break and the house in Connecticut is too quiet in the way it has been too quiet since his mother died. Phil is in the kitchen with a glass of scotch on the counter and a game on the television that neither of them is watching. Garrett does not remember what started it. He has tried, over the years, to reconstruct the sequence and it never holds. He remembers fragments. His report card on the counter next to the glass. Phil's voice, not loud. Because Phil's voice was rarely loud. That was the thing people never understood when Garrett tried to explain it later, the few times he tried. (And fuck, did he try, he tried so hard to find someone that would listen, that would believe.) The volume was never the problem. Phil spoke about most things, including his disappointments, with the same even cadence he used in post-game interviews. Measured. Considered. A voice that had been trained for cameras.
You're getting soft up there. That school is making you soft.
Garrett said nothing. He had learned by then that saying nothing was the safest option, that words gave Phil something to push against and silence gave him nothing, and sometimes nothing was enough to make him lose interest and move on to the television or the drink or the phone call to his agent.
But that night Phil did not lose interest.
Your mother coddled you. That was her mistake. A pause. The glass lifted and set back down. You want to hit me. I can see it. So do it. Be a man about it for once in your life.
He said it the way he said everything. Like a coach. Like he was running a drill and Garrett was failing to execute, and maybe that was it he always thought later on, maybe that was the deciding factor, because suddenly he moved without making the decision, like his muscles were already trained for it. He remembers his fist, and he remembers the sound it made against his father's jaw—a wet, dense crack that he felt all the way up to his shoulder. He remembers Phil's head snapping to the side. He remembers the glass sliding off the counter and shattering on the tile and how that sound, the breaking, felt like it belonged to him somehow.
What he remembers most is the half-second after. The flood of it. His pulse hammering so hard it blurred his vision, his hand throbbing and alive, and a satisfaction so complete it made his stomach drop. It felt like the first clean shot in a game. It felt like ice under his skates when everything else falls away, and there is just the puck and the net and the certainty that he will not miss.
It felt good.
Phil straightened up. Touched his jaw.
And grinned.
There he is, Phil had said, pride in his tone that made Garrett want to vomit. There he is.
The next morning, Garrett started running. Five miles before sunrise, then six, then eight, his lungs burning in the January cold until his legs shook and his mind went blank. He ran until the wanting stopped. He lifted until his muscles screamed louder than the noise in his head. He poured everything into the game because the game had rules and penalties and a clock that eventually ran out, and on the ice the anger had a shape, a direction, a purpose that was not his father's face.
He has been running ever since.
"Hey." Hannah's voice. Her fingers still on his chin, but lighter now. "Where'd you go just then?"
Garrett blinks. The bathroom reassembles around him. White tile, bad lighting, the faucet dripping in a rhythm that Hannah has told him three times she is going to fix and has not. He will do it tomorrow, he decides. He should have done it a month ago. Her eyes are searching his face with a patience that undoes him because it is not careful. It is not the way people look at someone fragile. She is looking at him the way she looks at a song that is not working yet, a problem she intends to solve by sitting with it until it makes sense.
"Nowhere," he says.
She does not believe him. He can see that. But she lets it go, turns back to the first-aid kit, and tears open a butterfly bandage with her teeth.
"You're going to have a scar," she says.
"I have tons of scars."
"You do have a collection, don’t you? This is getting excessive." She smooths the bandage over the cut, her fingertips warm and precise. "You're like a before picture for a safety PSA."
Her hand drops from his face and she steps back to survey her work and Garrett catches her wrist before she can move out of reach. Her pulse jumps under his thumb. His hand is too big around her wrist and his knuckles are swollen and dark with bruising and he can see her looking at them, at the damage on his hands, and he waits for it. The flinch. The flash of something that looks like what Cindy's face looked like when he raised his voice at that dinner.
It does not come.
Hannah looks at his hand around her wrist and then she looks at him and her expression is steady and open and unafraid and he hates how much he needs that, hates that he is searching her face for proof that she is not scared of him because he should not need proof, because a good person would not need proof.
But he is Phil Graham's son, and there are some things, he knows, you can never outrun.
But he’s trying.
He lets go of her wrist. The absence of her pulse under his thumb is immediate. Hannah does not step away. She stays exactly where she is, close enough to touch but no longer touching, and he watches her fold her arms loosely across her chest. Her patience with him and for him makes him feel unhinged.
"I'm sorry," he says. He stares at the tile between his feet. There is a crack running through one of them, a thin dark line that spiders out from the grout. "I don't want to be this person."
Hannah is quiet.
The silence stretches long enough that he has to look at her. That is the thing about Hannah. She will not fill the space for him. She will not rush to smooth it over the way Dean does with a joke or Logan does with a clap on the shoulder. She just stands there, her arms crossed, her expression unreadable, and waits until he is brave enough to meet her eyes.
And when he does, she holds his gaze.
"Then don't be," she says.
He opens his mouth to say something else, another apology probably, another version of the speech he has been building since the bar, but she shakes her head once, small and definitive.
"I don't want you to be sorry, Garrett. Sorry doesn't actually do anything."
She uncrosses her arms, presses her palms flat against the counter behind her. Her voice is not angry. It is factual in a way that is worse than anger because anger, he knows how to handle, has been handling it his entire life. This is different. This is Hannhahg, choosing to stay in the room with him and tell the truth, and he doesn’t know what that’s like. He doesn’t know if he deserves that.
"I want you to stay with me when you're angry, not disappear into your head. Not go somewhere I can't follow. If you want to be with me, be with me. Let me in.”
“It’s hard for me.”
“I know.”
His voice is too quiet to be his own, and he's almost positive he's not making any sense at all, but Hannah just nods, her smile small and sad at the corner of her mouth, and he thinks that if anyone could understand it, it would be her.
Garrett loves that fact just as much as he loathes it.
On the street below, there is yelling, the sound of broken glass, and suddenly he is in Connecticut again, the sound of his fist connecting with Phil's jaw echoing throughout his skull. It is always sitting right there, pressing against his teeth, the thing he hates most about himself, the thing he craves so often and so much because it would quiet everything. All he would have to do is open his mouth and let it out, and then she would know. She would know the thing underneath the apology, the real thing, the ugly thing, and she could make her decision with all the information.
He swallows it because Hannah is kind, and patient, and far, far braver than he is.
"Okay," he says instead. It is not enough. He knows it is not enough, can feel the insufficiency of it sitting between them. "Okay. I can work on that."
Hannah watches him for a moment longer. Then she nods, just once, her shoulders loosening and her smile twisting at the corners just so.
He stands. His legs feel strange beneath him, the adrenaline from the bar finally draining, leaving behind a heaviness that settles into his joints. He is taller than her by almost a foot, and in this bathroom, that fact feels absurd, too much of him crammed into too small a space. He reaches for his jacket on the towel rack where he hung it when he came in.
"I should let you sleep," he says. "Big night. You were incredible up there, by the way. I don’t know if I’ve said that enough."
It is a good exit. Casual, warm, the kind of thing you say when you are leaving on normal terms after a normal evening. He has gotten very good at normal exits. He learned young that if you keep your voice easy and your posture loose, people will let you go without a fight. They will assume you are fine and they will not chase you and you can be in your car and three miles down the road before the shaking starts.
He makes it to the hallway. His hand is on the doorframe when she speaks.
"Garrett."
He stops. He does not turn around immediately. He stands there with his fingers pressed against the wood of the frame and waits because some part of him, the part that has not stopped running since he was fourteen, already knows what she is going to say and is terrified of it.
"I want you to stay."
Her voice does not waver. There is no question mark at the end of it. She says it the way she said sit down when he arrived, the way she said then don't be when he tried to apologize. A simple statement about what she wants, offered without performance or pretence, and the choice is entirely his.
Garrett stands in the doorway of Hannah's bathroom and feels tension begin to give way inside him.
He turns around.
Hannah is still leaning against the counter. Arms at her sides now. The t-shirt is slipping off her shoulder, the freckles he wanted to touch earlier still there, still waiting. She’s still waiting, and it astounds him, and because Garrett is Garrett and Hannah is Hannah, he complies to easily, crossing the distance between them without a mere thought.
When he reaches her, he does not kiss her, but when he reaches for her hand, hers is already there waiting.
He gets lost too quickly. All it takes, really, is Hannah's mouth on his, her tongue flicking against his own with intention, with want, and he's throwing all caution to the wind, all reasonable thinking goes right out the window as he tangles his fingers in her hair and crushes his mouth against hers so hard he feels it in his teeth.
It’s been days but it feels like years, and he was foolish to think he could be without her. Foolish to think there is a future for him that does not include her by his side. He’ll be better, he vows. He will do better. He has to, because he cannot lose her, he will not lose her.
Hannah moans something guttural, something that tears right through him and he rearranges them so her back is digging into the counter behind them, her hips flush with his, and her intentions have never been clearer, have been more unmistakable.
“I missed you so much,” she breathes against his mouth warm and wet, and he nearly bowls over at the intensity of the love and affection and sheer love he feels for her.
Kisses her as if his life depends on it, holds on to her tightly, but not tight enough to bruise, never tight enough to mark. Her hands are everywhere at once, slipping under cotton, tracing muscle and bone, setting everything she touches on fire. He runs his hands down the length of her, dropping from where his fingers are tangled in her hair to her shoulders, down her arms, traveling the length of her back and over the ass he dreams about at night.
Garrett memorizes the feel of every square inch of her, allows his fingers to slip under her shirt, to feel the smooth skin at the small of her back, and moans at the feel over the shiver that runs up her spine as a result, at the way her hips jerk towards his on reflex, at the unimaginable amount of friction that single movement creates.
The urgency of it all consumes him, causes his mind to go almost completely blank, focusing on nothing but the feel of her pressed up against him, the sounds she murmurs against the skin of his throat, the way she says his name. He gets so lost so easily that he nearly jerks away from her at the feel of her hands dipping into his jeans, slipping under cotton and around him with an amount of pressure that is almost too much.
"Fuck," he mutters, teeth finding her ear and biting softly because he knows she likes it. She has the audacity to laugh, and he pulls back to stare at her, to get some distance, but her fingers keep moving, keep applying pressure, and all he can do is say fuck, fuck, fuck over and over, his forehead falling to rest against her shoulder, his lips parted around the sound of her name.
This is not what he wanted. This is no way, shape, or form what he thought their reunion would be like, what he wanted their reunion to be like, but her fingers are skilled and her mouth is warm as it sucks at the spot just below his ear and it takes everything in him, every single shred of willpower to reach down and pull at her wrist as his hands literally shake.
"No," he manages, his tone more forceful than he means, and she snaps backwards in recoil, and he regrets it almost immediately. "I can't... I mean I can, but maybe we shouldn't..." he reaches for her, his hands at her face, and she softens just a little bit as he tries to explain, as he tries to push words past his lips that make sense, but fails miserably. He has only ever felt this way with her, somehow unmoored and settled at once, tethered.
He tries to laugh it off, to make a joke, but it falls short.
There is a moment where they just stand there and stare at each other, his breathing harsh while hers levels, and after a moment, she reaches for him again, just like she had when she started this, but instead of resting her palm against her cheek, she drags her thumb over his bottom lip, back and forth, back and forth, before pulling him towards her.
"I want you," Hannah says, and she sounds so sure, so certain that he almost comes to the sound of those three words alone.
In her bed, on sheets of linen with dainty little flowers that always make him smile, Garrett feels her nails bite into his skin and the tension loosens in him at the symmetry of it—she marks him the way he refuses to mark her, and he lets her, wants her to, wants to carry the proof of this on his body tomorrow like evidence that he was here and he stayed and she wanted him enough to leave a record.
He presses his forehead against her thigh and breathes, steadying himself, because he wants to rush, wants to be consumed by her, but he will not let himself, and he will not let himself. He waits for her the way she waits for him, and when she opens her legs wide, adjusting to the width of his shoulders, he goes willingly.
His grip is firm as he holds her still, as he presses her into the mattress and draws her closer to the edge with smooth, solid movements of his fingers curling inside her, of his tongue pressing against her clit at exactly the right moments. He wants her and tells her so. Tells her how beautiful she is to him, how badly he's missed her, how he promises to be better for her. Garrett draws out the moment for as long as he can handle, for as long as he thinks she can take, and just as she nears her breaking point, he pulls away, moves back up her body, kisses her soundly and laughs at the string of expletives that leave her lovely mouth.
When he presses between her legs, there is a moment of absolute stillness, and he watches her, watches her eyes widen then close, listens to the sharp intake of breath as she stretches to accommodate him, as he fills her wholly. When he moves, finally, it's slow for his sake and not hers, but Hannah won't have any of it. She sets a pace that is needy and desperate, frantic almost in the way she wraps her legs around his waist, the way she angles her hips to allow him to sink deeper within her. Hannah moans then, at the fit of them, and her lips meet his in desperation, and Garrett loses his tongue inside her mouth.
He chases his orgasm roughly, pushing them both to the edge harshly and quickly, and for once in his life, he does not pull back from the edge, does not retreat into the safe controlled distance he has built around himself like armor. He stays. Because she asked him to. Because there is no place for him except with her.
Hannah comes first, shaking and quivering around him, blindingly hot and fast. She'd oddly quiet, her moans soft as they pass her lips and settle deep in his belly, his name softer as she mumbles it over and over, her voice hoarse with emotion, with want.
Her eyes stay locked with his the entire time.
After, the quiet of the apartment seems stifling, the sound rings in his ears and puts him on edge. He stares at the place on her hip where his hand had been. The skin is pink. Not bruised, not yet, but the ghost of his grip is there, and he can see it, and he cannot unsee it, and reaches out to touch it, fingers trembling as he does, and suddenly he feels like he’s being strangled, like he's drowning on dry land, his fingers grasping for something to hold on to but to no avail—
Hannah reaches for him, pulls him closer, pulls him into her entirely as if she knew the exact moment she was needed to stop him from retreating back into himself.
Her legs tangle with his, her cheek warm against his shoulder. She reaches for his hand, fingers tightening around his wrist for a moment before relaxing, before she drags the pads of her fingers back and forth, drawing circles and shapes over and over into the soft skin there where the bones collide.
"I'm happy you're here," she says.
Garrett breathes.