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sydnikov · 3 months

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the ink on your skin || N. Hischier

Author: Sydney / @sydnikov

Pairing: Nico Hischier / gn!Reader

Word Count: 10.5k

Summary: You’re a successful tattoo artist right in the middle of Newark, New Jersey. One of your many clients just so happens to be a teammate of Nico Hischier, and he and his girlfriend, Natalie, play a game of matchmaker to get you talking. While you’ve never been a huge fan of hockey, getting to know Nico gets you instantly addicted to the sport as well as him. Friendship quickly turns into holding hands, kissing, acting like a couple but holding off on a label… And then, finally, right as you’re drifting apart, Nico swoops in and turns it into something more.

Warnings: Cursing, some angst, lots of anxiety talk, Tw*tter mentions, mostly fluff, poorly proofread

A/N: This is for @selfindulgentpoorlywritten for @wyattjohnston ‘s Winter Fic Exchange 2024 😁 I’ve been wanting to write for Nico for a while anyways so this gave me the perfect opportunity, and I really enjoyed having a bit of a personalized reader insert to play around with. I hope y’all enjoy! Loosely based on the lyrics of “Tribulation” by Matt Maeson

“Fuck, man, that hurts,”

You chuckle, lifting the needle of your tattoo gun for a few seconds before continuing your work. “I’m almost done, I swear,” you reassure, hiding your smirk as you take a napkin to dab away at the excess ink surrounding your linework.

The very man you’re tattooing, Jonas Siegenthaler, or ‘Siegs’ as you affectionately call him, is someone you’ve known for years. He is also a regular of your tattoo parlor, and right now is getting a lion on his right wrist shaded in.

Playing professional hockey, he doesn’t have much time to spend keeping up with a healing tattoo, but Jonas scheduled an appointment with you a week ago after his team, the New Jersey Devils, were eliminated in the playoffs. With three months to himself, he told you that now is the perfect time to get started on shading his wrist again.

Jonas curses again as the needle goes over the underside of his wrist, and once again you can’t hide back your laughter. You’ve been a tattoo artist for quite a few years now and are fairly used to the varying reactions your customers have, but expletives always manage to get you to break character. With any other client you’d at least attempt to be stoic, but you’ve been friends for long enough to know he doesn’t mind.

Finally, you finish your work, wiping away the remaining ink and powering off your tattoo gun. “Alright, Siegs, that’s it for today.” you say, wrapping his wrist with the proper coverings. Once you’re done sanitizing your own hands, you admire the art on his skin for a moment.

Jonas does the same, sitting up with a giant grin on his face. “It looks amazing, as always,” he looks like he wants to touch his newly-inked skin, but refrains when seeing the warning on your face.

“Okay,” you say as you lead him to the front of the store to ring up his aftercare supplies. Jonas is no amateur when it comes to tattoos by any means, but you feel the need to remind him anyway because athletes in particular always tend to lax out on tattoo aftercare. “You know the drill, but I’m still telling you anyways,”

Jonas just raises an eyebrow, listening to you list off all aftercare instructions as if he hasn’t been coming to you for years. Strangely enough, he couldn’t actually think of a time you’d hung out with each other outside of your working hours. He’ll have to change that, he hums to himself, especially after seeing the small New Jersey Devils flag you have hung on the wall.

“Have you ever been to a Devils game?” he asks as you’re handing him his aftercare supplies.

“I don’t think so, no. You know I don’t pay attention to hockey that much.”

“You should,” Jonas pushes, following you as you shuffle around the entrance of your parlor, likely looking for some supply he wouldn’t know the name of. “We’re a blast. And playoff hopeful again next season,”

You shoot him a wry smile, the both of you knowing it would take a lot more convincing to get you to leave the comforts of your shop to watch a sport you’ve never kept up with before. “Yeah? I’ll consider it,” you deadpan.

The defenseman takes no offense to your words, instead finding them to be a challenge. Mischievously, he grins. “Your consideration will turn into a yes, just you wait,”

“Sure,” you laugh, changing the subject. “You get an uber yet?” It’s relatively early in the day, so competition for booking one shouldn’t be too difficult.

Jonas shakes his head, unlocking his phone at the reminder of needing to leave. “Nah, my teammate is picking me up. He’s our captain, maybe you’ve heard of him—Nico Hischier?”

You think back to news articles you’ve seen online from late April when the Devils made the playoffs for the first time in years and you think you may have heard something about the team’s captain, but otherwise you don’t know much.

“I thought everyone would have gone home by now,” you say instead. It had been a week since their season ended, after all. Maybe this Nico guy had captain duties to attend to? You figure it’s nice of him to pick his teammate up from getting a tattoo either way, though.

The hockey player hears the curiosity in your voice, wondering how you would react to meeting his captain. “We’re both from Switzerland, so we both agreed to fly home together once we were all finished up here in Jersey. Getting my wrist shaded was the last thing on the list, thankfully,”

You make a noncommittal noise of understanding, your curiosity officially peeked by this ‘Nico’ guy. If you’ve learned anything about how the Swiss act from Jonas, you’re definitely looking forward to seeing if this captain was anything like his teammate.

Soon enough, the bell above your door is ringing as a man enters the parlor. You assume it’s Nico Hischier because of the Devils beanie he’s wearing, and because he looks out of place standing in your little parlor on the opposite side of town where his team plays. You wouldn’t know he has several tattoos himself.

You meet his eyes for a moment, and it almost looks like he’s caught off guard by the sight of you before he spots Jonas. He’s tall, you note to yourself, his shy smile endearing as he greets his teammate with a pat on the back.

“Nico!” Jonas greets happily, engaging in a short conversation before he turns his arm up to show his newly-shaded ink. “This one hurt like a bitch, but it’s looking beautiful now, isn’t it?”

“It is,” the man who you now know to be Nico confirms, admiring your work on his friend’s skin. “You did this?” he suddenly asks, the deep timber of his voice catching you off guard.

“Yeah,” you say, a little breathless. He’s beautiful. You think to yourself, confused about why you suddenly feel so hot when you purposefully keep the temperature in your shop cool. “Jonas is one of my regulars.”

Nico hums in response, eyes flitting back and forth from the lion on Jonas’s wrist and back to you, undoubtedly curious about how long his teammate has known you, and why he feels disappointed that he can’t see the rest of the ink decorating your own arms.

He himself is no stranger to tattoos, but he doesn’t have many nor do his look so intricate on his body like they do on yours. I need a new tattoo artist, he thinks, then mentally slaps himself because what?

With your cheeks feeling like they’re on fire, you turn away from the two hockey players in front of you to try and hide the embarrassment you feel. Unbeknownst to you, your movements make the light catch the dainty jewelry decorating your ears and nose, and Nico now undoubtedly finds himself in awe at your retreating form.

Who are you? He thinks. Siegs is a shit for not introducing you sooner. And then he rolls his eyes at himself again. What the fuck is the matter with him, anyways? He must have gotten a concussion during the playoffs, or something.

“You’re a regular?” He looks to his friend, subtly asking how long you’ve known each other. “You must like them, then,”

Jonas never prided himself on being intuitive; Nico’s prying went right over his head. He says your name with a fond smile, briefly looking to you as you mess around your desk again. “Oh, yeah, they’re the best. They’re fucking amazing with a tattoo gun, not to mention a huge Devils fan, too,”

You just so happen to overhear their conversation. “No, I’m not,” you scowl, but quickly retract your statement because Nico is looking at you like you just kicked his puppy. “Well, I mean, I’m a fan but not, like, a huge fan. I’ve never even been to a game,”

“Siegs, you should’ve brought ‘em around sooner, what the fuck!”

“I tried,”

Nico continues on like he didn’t hear him. “You’re coming to opening night. On me—on us, yeah?”

You’re much too in shock to comment on his slip of tongue, instead staring wide-eyed as he looks at you with determination. Nico just met you, but feels this compelling need to know you beyond the fact that you’re his friend’s reserved tattoo artist.

“You might as well just say yes,” Jonas speaks up, having caught on to your hesitation. “He won’t stop until you do,”

“Damn right.” The captain agrees, crossing his arms to further cement his point.

You’re drawn to the muscles that flex under the material of his shirt, and okay. Wow. With the way your body is heating up you would think that you’ve never been attracted to another human being in your life.

Quickly, your eyes dart back up to Nico’s, and you flush when you see he’s already caught onto your admiration of his body. He raises an eyebrow, teasing, and then you finally blurt out your response lest he call you out. “Well,” you start, clearing your throat when your voice comes out hoarse. “I guess that could be fun, yeah?”

Nico’s infectious grin at your agreement has you returning one of your own, flushed at the way you already knew your life would be a much happier one if you got to see him smile like that at you forever.

The two Devils’ players left soon after that, but not before you exchanged numbers with Nico Hischier himself while a smug Jonas watched from the background. “So I can send you the tickets when the time comes,” he’d said.

It was a perfectly believable excuse to you, but Jonas clapping his teammate on the back as if it were some kind of accomplishment had you questioning if Nico planned on texting you before their opening night.

You forced yourself to forget about it, though, in the meanwhile. You still had two more clients after they left, and you couldn’t exactly do your best work if Nico’s chiseled face and soft eyes wouldn’t leave your head.

And then a sharp pang struck your heart as you figure you’re just being delusional again. Reading too much into a situation that had no call for it, and imagining the way he looked at you like there was something behind your guarded eyes he wanted to explore.

No, you quickly put an end to your thoughts, steeling your resolve as you march back into the shelter of your shop. You aren’t putting yourself through this. Not again.

In a world of meaningless hookups and disappointing endings, you were a damaged romantic who would have once given the world if asked. But that hope for the future you envision with rose colored glasses is long gone, destroyed along with the pieces of your heart that shattered the last time you let yourself get too close to someone.

You decide then and there, with the image of Nico Hischier and his look of awe the moment he first saw you, that you weren’t going to ever grant him the ability to break you like the last person who did so years ago.

Despite the politeness he exudes, you half expect him to start making a move the moment he lands in Switzerland. You think he’ll start with a text that says, ‘Hey, how are you?’ and once you respond (because you will) he’ll send you pictures of him in his homeland, ones that require a compliment or an inquiry about what he’s doing.

You think you have him figured out. Men are predictable, you would know—their brains all work the same, and that includes how they hit on people they’re interested in.

However, you’re surprised to find that a text from him never comes. There’s no message awaiting you in between tattoo sessions, no ‘how are you’ or a picture of a ski lift or whatever it is people do in Switzerland. It irritates you because you don’t have Nico all figured out like you thought.

If you couldn’t place him into the typical group of uncommitted assholes you’d come to learn, then just who is he?

The answer escapes you for many months after. You certainly don’t text him, but you do find his Instagram after drinking one too many glasses of wine and scroll through his pictures. Nico isn’t very active online is what you gather, for his last post was back in May after they got eliminated from the playoffs.

It makes him endearing, much to your displeasure. People glued to their phones and still use Snapchat as their main form of communication irritate you to no end.

Not Nico, though…

He stays on your mind for the entirety of summer, because you just couldn’t get the memory of his eyes out of your head. It panics you a little because it feels like you’re forming a crush, and your last one didn’t exactly bode well for you.

Whatever. It’s just a small, meaningless feeling that just so happens to have stuck. Nico probably wasn’t even going to send you a ticket for opening night.

This is what you tell yourself as September rolls around, the NHL preseason starts, and your stomach sinks deeper and deeper the closer the Devils’ opening night comes.

You’re thinking about him again right now, much to your displeasure, as you finish wiping down one of your stations after your last client of the day left. It was a busy one, and you’re grumpy because your neck hurts from leaning over for so long.

You accidentally knock over your cleaning spray in the midst of your aggressive cleaning, and just as you pick up the bottle there’s a quiet knock on your shop’s door.

“I thought I flipped the closed sign,” you mutter, exiting the room you were just in and walking to the lobby. You’re unable to make out who it is outside, the only striking feature being that they’re tall.

You open the door warily, speaking before they get the chance to. “Sorry, we’re closed for the night. You can come back tomorrow morning or call to book an appointment—”

“I’m not here for a tattoo.” He interrupts you with what sounds like amusement, and you freeze because you would recognize that voice anywhere.

You look up to meet his eyes, and are struck with the same dark brown that’s been haunting your mind for months.

“Nico,” you say, shock written all over your face. You lick your lips, trying to find something to say. “You’re… What are you doing here?”

“I still have the address saved from when Siegs sent it to me,” he admits, aware that’s not what you’re really asking. Facing you now, he finds himself nervous. You hadn’t changed much, except for maybe the addition of another piercing in your right ear, he thinks.

But you were so unlike other strangers he’s met in the past; they know who he is, all about his life, whereas you look at him like you’re not sure what to think.

Nico finds it refreshing. You’re intriguing, someone to figure out—not to mention he really likes your tattoos. And piercings. He fights the urge to trail his fingers up your sleeves to reveal the art decorating your skin.

You’re raising an eyebrow at him, and then he realizes he’s been silent for a good minute while he’s been staring at you. He releases a quick breath, “You still want to come to opening night, right?”

“I do,” you say, foregoing acting coy. Fuck it, you actually did really want to go. “Why? Is there an issue?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he reassures, giving you a quick smile. “I’d just rather explain the ticket situation in person than on text,”

His reasoning sounds understandable to you, but you fail to pick up on why he still seems so nervous. It’s just a ticket to a game, right?

“So since it’s just you,” he starts, hesitantly. “You’ll be sitting with, um. You’ll be in the wives and girlfriends section.”

Truthfully, Nico wouldn’t be shocked if you decline after hearing where you’ll be sitting. He himself probably would have, because who, as a stranger, wants to sit with the players’ significant others?

He watches your reaction, holding his breath. But all you do is laugh a little, shrug nonchalantly even though internally you’re shitting your pants.

“Okay, but you do know I’m neither a wife nor a girlfriend,” of you, you want to add, but keep that last part to yourself. Even though over the course of these last few months your mind definitely imagined it.

Your expression is teasing, the corner of your lips quirked up into a small smirk that has the tension falling from Nico’s shoulders. You aren’t mad. This is a start.

He rubs the back of his neck, looking rather sheepish. “I didn’t know if you’d be okay with that,” he mumbles lowly, meeting your eyes. If you look closely you think you can see a rosy hue covering his cheeks.

“It’s just one game, yeah?” You muse, secretly pleased at the fact that he’s the nervous one this time, not you. “Nothing wrong with that,”

Nico lets out a breathless laugh, relieved knowing you won’t be caught off guard when you come to the opening game in October.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Nothing wrong with that all.”

He stays for a few more minutes after that, your conversation surprisingly pleasant with little awkwardness as you shyly ask about his stay back home, and he gladly expresses his joy at being back in Switzerland for a few months.

His unabashed enthusiasm to share his life with you catches you off guard, but you find that you like learning these little things about him. It defeats your whole purpose of not letting yourself get close to him, but you push that worry to the back of your mind for later.

Nico does eventually leave, but not before giving you a hug that leaves your heart racing. One of his hands came to rest respectfully at the small of your back, and you could have sworn you felt his lips brush your cheek before he pulled away.

“See you soon,” he had grinned, his eyes dark and enthused.

Feeling corny and rather irritated with yourself, your fingers brush the spot on your cheek, swearing you could still feel the heat of his lips.

You still don’t hear from Nico even after his visit, and you’re once again struck by the fact that you still can't tell what his intentions are. You find yourself checking your phone anyway, going so far as to stalk his Instagram. Again.

This is most definitely becoming a bad habit. A very bad one. You think to yourself as, one day, you find yourself staring at your screen once more, weeks having gone by with the brown eyed boy still on your mind.

With another client in just over two hours, you find yourself using the break to get some work done on your laptop at the desk in the lobby of your shop. You aren’t very productive, but it makes you feel better about your wandering imagination being so distracting.

Just having happened to save a finished spreadsheet of your recent clients and their pricing, a man is pushing open the door to your shop. You quickly determine that it’s some type of delivery based on the package he carries before he drops it onto your counter.

He reads out your name from a paper, glancing up at you for confirmation of your identity. “Yes, that’s me,” you say, eyeing the unknown sender label. “Do you know who sent this?” You haven’t placed any orders recently, so it isn’t something from you.

The mailman shakes his head, giving you a polite smile before wishing you a good rest of your day. You wave to him offhandedly as he exits the shop, and then find a pair of scissors to carefully cut through the tape holding the box shut.

As if you’re opening Pandora’s box, you’re wary as you unfold the cardboard, your fingers brushing against thick fabric before carefully taking it out.

Unfolded and spread out across your desk, you freeze. You’re lucky no one else is here in the front to see you because your face is a deep shade of tomato red, and you’re smiling so hard your cheeks hurt.

Before you lay a jersey for the New Jersey Devils, and you know even before turning it over that it has Nico Hischier’s surname and number printed on the back.

As you’re staring at the jersey in awe, your fingers trailing over the brand new and surely expensive fabric, your phone pings with a new message.

It’s from a number you’d memorized months ago even though you’d never once used it to communicate. A text from Nico Hischier greets you as you unlock your phone.

UPS sent me a notification that the package I sent you arrived. I hope you like it. Looking forward to seeing you next month :)

“Oh, he’s good,” you say out loud, your smile growing even wider if that were possible. Your heart’s tempo picks up, and your fingers fly across the keyboard to respond.

You’re still not sure what he’s about—what are his plans here? Does he like you? Is he flirting for fun or does he have intentions to go forward?

You try not to overthink it as you finalize your response, pressing send soon after.

I just got it. I have to say, you’re bold. I guess I have no choice but to wear it now considering how much it probably cost you.

As if he were waiting for a response, a new message appears almost instantly.

It’s no big deal. Really. Just want to make your first game a memorable one. I’ll sign the jersey for you, too.

Careful, hot shot, I might start thinking you have other intentions here.

You wouldn’t be wrong.

September passes quickly, and before you know it October 12 is here and you’re nervously walking through Prudential Center to the section your seat is in.

You don’t stick out as much as you think you do, which is relieving because everyone around you is too focused on getting to their own seats and discussing the game.

You know you don’t fit the typical bill of someone coming to support a professional hockey player, considering what you think you are to Nico is… Complicated.

Your arms are covered in small but meaningful tattoos, and your ears are decorated with piercings along with the lone stud on your nose. You wouldn’t think someone like Nico would find it all attractive about you, but he’s said so numerous times over call and text.

You think about said communication as you finally sit down, a good thirty minutes before the game starts because nobody else is around you yet.

After Nico sent you his jersey, it’s like the floodgates opened from whatever was holding the two of you back from talking. Despite your reservations, he enraptured you from the get-go and you just couldn’t stop yourself from falling.

Nico is a really good texter, surprisingly. None of the lower case bullshit or long response times you’d expect from a sports player, but instead the exact opposite.

He doesn’t give you the feeling of talking to a child, an immature man who doesn’t know what he wants; in the time spent between him first using your number and going to the game, you’ve noticed how his responses are thought out and intentional. He responds quickly, but not too quickly to make you think he doesn’t have a career to focus on, and he makes you smile when he adds those cute smiley faces after the end of his texts.

You think you’re enjoying Nico Hischier a little too much to be normal, but you choose not to focus on that as you’re greeted by an unknown woman tapping your shoulder.

“Hi!” She says, giving you a welcoming smile that instantly puts you at ease. “Nico said he invited someone to come tonight. And Jonas,” she adds the last part like it was an afterthought, then gives you a slightly apologetic look. “He didn’t have time to tell us your name, so he just said to look for piercings and tattoos. I’m assuming that’s you?”

You’re not offended by others using your slightly unconventional looks to point you out; you’re proud of all of your piercings and the ink decorating your skin. You wouldn’t be you without them.

Slightly overwhelmed at the amount of words that just spewed from her mouth, though, you hide it well as you damper your nerves to respond. “Hi. Yeah, um, that’s me. They both - Nico and Jonas - really wanted me to come tonight.” You don’t include the fact that it was all Nico who sent you the ticket, showed up at your shop, and had been texting you nonstop for the past month.

The woman grins, seemingly relieved she had the right person. “Nico never brings anyone around so we were all pretty excited to meet you. I’m Natalie, Jonas’ girlfriend, by the way.”

Natalie is the exact type of girl you’d be expecting to date a professional hockey player. She’s blonde with a lithe figure, bright blue eyes and a face that could be on the front page of a magazine. She fits in with this crowd, not you, but you try not to let that bother you as you focus on her being the woman who makes one of your good clients happy.

Jonas has mentioned his girlfriend numerous times before, singing nothing but praises, and he’s even shown you a picture. Now that she’s in front of you, you instantly recognize her.

“I thought I recognized you,” you say. “I’m Jonas’ tattoo artist, he talks about you all the time,” maybe you were exaggerating a bit, but. Siegs wouldn’t mind. You were buttering him up to the ‘love of his life’, after all.

“He’s mentioned you too, oh my gosh, now it’s all clicking!” Natalie instantly gasps, sliding into the seat next to you. “You’re crazy talented. All of his tattoos are beautiful.”

“Thank you,” you grin, a little bashful. “He’s a great guy. I enjoy working with him.”

Natalie smiles back, and soon the two of you are joined by the rest of the WAG’s as the puck drop grows closer. Just as you’re about to pull out your phone, Natalie has seemingly managed to break free from whoever she was talking to.

“So, how do you know Nico? Jonas didn’t mention much about you coming, it was mostly Neeks who asked us to greet you,”

Neeks? You file that nickname away for later, and then your face grows red because you’re not sure how to answer her question.

“We actually met because of Jonas, funny enough. He was getting his wrist shaded, right after they got eliminated from the playoffs, and he asked Nico to come pick him up from my shop when it was done.”

“I remember,” Natalie says. “We were flying to Switzerland right after he was done. Sorry, you can continue,”

“You’re good,” you chuckle. “But yeah, then Jonas mentioned how I’d never been to a game, and Nico is who managed to convince me to come tonight.” You keep it simple, vague. No need to provide a complicated answer, mostly because you didn’t know how to reply without making it seem like you and Nico hadn’t been flirting for weeks now.

She looks like she’s about to say something, but suddenly the lights are dimming and an announcer is speaking, his loud voice booming throughout the arena. The next thing you know the lights are coming back on full blast, the puck is dropped, and ten hockey players are whipping across the ice at lightning speed.

Holy shit, you want to say, the sounds of screaming fans and players slamming against the boards rather overwhelming to you but in a good way. It has your blood pumping, and while you don’t understand much of anything - like why the refs blow the whistle randomly or what certain penalties mean - you find that you’re having a good time with Natalie keeping you company, explaining things as they occur.

“That Red Wings player is going into the box which means they’re down a player, and—oh, look, there’s Nico!” She’s pointing to the ice, and you have to squint to follow her line of sight, but you quickly recognize the Swiss captain’s profile and fight the muscles in your face from breaking into a smile.

Alas, you end up losing that battle as a grin manages to fight its way onto your face anyway. You know he can’t see you from so far up, but you like to think he tries as the Jumbotron focuses on him and catches his eyes peering up into the general direction of where you’re seated.

To downplay your excitement at spotting him, you ask, “What’s Jonas’ number?”

“Seventy-one,” Natalie answers, about to say something else, but interrupts herself as she along with almost every other fan in the arena jumps up out of their seats to shout obscenities at the referees.

Yeah, you think to yourself, comically scared of the aggression these hockey fans show for their team. This will take some getting used to.

Almost three hours later, the Devils manage to secure the win for their first game of the season. They almost blew it, or that’s what you hear from others around you, but you’re just glad to have something to congratulate Nico for when you go to meet him outside the locker room.

Speaking of, you along with the other WAG’s are walking down there right now, and your nerves from before the game are coming back full-force, stomach-twisting, vomit-inducing and all.

You’re standing next to Natalie as she talks with two other girls, and you’re content to just listen because your nerves aren’t allowing you to do anything else.

Then, as if the universe were tuned into your thoughts, the locker room doors open and multiple Devils players come streaming out. They’re freshly showered, back in the suits they arrived at the arena in, and you don’t even bother to hide your eagerness as you look for Nico in the crowd.

You spot Jonas first, though, as he catches sight of Natalie and bounds over to her with open arms. “Good game,” you think she says, then says something even quieter and that’s when Jonas sees you standing next to them.

He says your name in shock before a broad smile stretches over his face. “You came!” And then he’s also bringing you into a hug, looking all too happy to have some of his favorite people surrounding him.

“I did,” you laugh, pulling back after a moment. “It was really fun to watch. I’m glad you guys won,” you kind of wince at the end, knowing their win was shaky at best, but he looks like he appreciates the humor all the same.

“Yeah, we are too,” he says, then looks as if he just remembered something. “Nico was coming out right behind me, and—oh, there he is! Neeks!” He calls his captain’s name abruptly, and you swivel around to see Nico Hischier in the flesh heading towards you.

“There you are with the nickname again,” Nico chuckles as he approaches, then embraces his friend as if they didn’t just see each other a minute ago.

When he pulls back, his eyes quickly find yours, and unlike the first time you met there’s no awkwardness as Nico gives you a wide grin before wrapping his arms around you.

“You came,” he says into the top of your hair, and you can hear the smile in his voice. He doesn’t give you time to speak before he’s pulling back only slightly, enough to see your face from below peering up at him.

You take in the sight of him above you, rendered speechless as this image of him smiling so happily will likely replay in your memory forever. Nico is pure ecstasy, delight incarnate as those dark brown eyes likely have you painted in a way you could never see yourself in.

Finally finding your words, you duck your head for a moment, embarrassed at the blush you know is on your cheeks. “I wouldn’t miss it,” you say, referring to the game. “You played great, Neeks,”

Nico playfully leans back, lightly groaning at hearing you tease his nickname. “I should’ve known they’d say that in front of you,” he sighs, but you can tell it’s in nothing but jest as his smile remains. “Thank you, though,”

And now it was his turn to be bashful, as the blood rushes to his cheeks. What a picture you’re sure the two of you were; both pairs of hands still holding the other and equally flustered expressions on your faces. You find that you don’t mind the contact, though, despite having a slight aversion to touch. Nico’s warmth is comforting, and you rather like being close to him.

It’s not until Jonas coughs loudly from behind you that you and Nico finally release your hold on one another, and you turn to see he and Natalie looking at the two of you with barely contained excitement.

You meet Nico’s eyes, both of you struggling to hide your laughs at Jonas and Natalie’s failed poker faces. “Nice assist, Siegs,” you say to break the lingering tension, and the four of you come together like you’d all been close friends for years.

As you’re all leaving the arena through the exit the players use, Jonas and Nico walk ahead of you, exchanging teasing words and lighthearted insults, while you and Natalie watch from behind.

“So,” Natalie chirps, looking at you expectantly. “What do you think?”

You’re not dumb. You know she’s asking about Nico, thinking this is the first time you’ve talked to him since you first met him at your tattoo shop.

“Hockey? Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” you say, snickering when she sighs at your avoidance. “I’ll have to go to more games.”

“Not about hockey, about Nico,” Natalie says, whispering his name as if it’s taboo. “We aren’t blind. That was a long hug, and Nico literally never brings anyone here. Ever.”

“Technically, Jonas offered to bring me to a game first,”

The spunky blonde ignores you, offhandedly waving her arm. “Semantics. He also keeps turning around to look at you. Like right now.”

What? You instantly look ahead and see she’s right, your eyes meeting Nico’s. His face turns red as he sends you a shy smile, and then he turns back to Jonas who is still talking beside him.

Natalie observes the interaction, a small grin on her face. “You’ve both been talking long before now, haven’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?” you chuckle bashfully, slightly embarrassed your interactions allow her to pick up on your chemistry so quick. She shrugs, increasing her stride to stand in front of you as you reach their cars. “A little. But I’ve known Nico for a bit now, he’s a good guy. He likes you, too, I think.”

You don’t get the chance to respond before Jonas is wrapping an arm around Natalie’s waist, pressing a quick kiss to her lips. “We gotta get going, yeah? Early morning tomorrow,”

Nico’s hand is brushing against your arm as he moves to your side, unable to tell if the resulting shiver from his touch is from the slight chill in the air or just him. “We have a game in Arizona, a back-to-back,” he clarifies, answering your unspoken question.

“Ah,” you say. “That sucks.”

“Not this time. I’ll have plenty of good things to think about on the flight.” He winks at you, perfectly implying what those ‘good things’ are.

Your face turns red just as Jonas pretends to gag. “That would be our sign to leave. Right, babe?” He attempts to lead his girlfriend away, but Natalie suddenly gasps and runs back to you.

“I forgot to get your number,” she says, thrusting her phone into your hands. “We’re definitely hanging out again.” And, well, okay then. Who are you to deny her?

Jonas and Natalie drive away in his fancy sports car, which leaves you to walk Nico to his own. It’s quiet between the two of you, comforting because you’re both content to revel in each other’s company. Your hands occasionally brush - purely Nico’s fault - until he gathers the bravery to lace your fingers together just as you approach his car.

He doesn’t drop your hand, not even as he turns to face you once you come to a stop. “You have a ride home?”

You shrug sheepishly. No, you hadn’t really thought that far. “I was just planning on ubering…”

Nico scoffs, as if the very thought offends him. “Yeah, no. I’ll drive you home.” At the apprehensive look on your face, his confidence wavers slightly, and he mindlessly rubs his thumb over your hand to calm his own nerves. “If you’re okay with it, of course,”

Why does he have to be so cute? You give in instantly, the tension melting from your bones as, boldly, you use his grip on your hand to tug him closer. “That would be great, Nico, thank you.”

While his car, like Jonas’, is also expensive, you feel comfortable surrounded by the dark material and the scent of Nico’s cologne. The radio is playing softly, and he’s humming along quietly while strumming the fingers of his hand on the steering wheel. His other is resting on the gear shift, but you can tell by the way his hand keeps twitching that he wants to move it closer to you.

If you’ve learned anything about Nico within the weeks that you’ve been talking to him, it’s that he is huge on physical touch. He said it over text, but in person it’s even more obvious because his hands are rarely to himself when he’s next to you.

As the minutes go by, you finally give in to his body’s desire with a laugh as you reach over to tangle your hands together, now resting in your lap. “You really weren’t kidding when you said you liked touching, were you?”

Even with the darkness surrounding him, you can easily spot the maroon flush blooming across his cheeks. He briefly looks to you, unable to hide his grin before turning his attention back to the road. “No,” he laughs, gripping your hand reflexively like he’s testing out the contact. “I wasn’t.”

You’re both significantly more loose after you give in to your want for the other, and the rest of the ride is silent save for the occasional song lyrics mumbled by Nico. Almost too quickly he’s pulling into the parking lot of your apartment complex, and you’re disappointed when your hands release as you climb out of the car.

“Can I walk you to your door?”

“Sure.”

Like the car ride, the walk to your apartment is comfortably silent, and this time Nico doesn’t hesitate when taking your hand. He smiles when you shiver, but doesn’t say anything which you appreciate.

The elevator is stopping at your floor almost too soon, and you find yourself not wanting the night to end. You’re enjoying his company far too much, and you really like holding his hand. Imagining yourself doing this on a regular basis is overwhelming and definitely freaks you out a little once you come to a stop at your door.

“Here I am,” you chuckle, a little awkwardly. So… What do you do now? Thank him? Hug him? Kiss him?

You go to say something, anything… But Nico beats you to it. “Thank you for coming tonight,” he says, squeezing your hand. “I couldn’t see you from the ice, but I liked trying to pretend I could see you watching me.” He winks, then, and you don’t bother denying that yes, you were watching him the entire time.

You still try to be humble, though. “Thank you for getting me a ticket,” you say, trying to decide how forward you should be. His eyes sparkle, though, as you talk, like he can’t get enough of your voice… “All the girls were nice. Welcoming. It was fun pretending I was one of them.”

“I want you to be,” Nico blurts, almost breathless. “‘One of them’, that is. I think I like you,” he laughs like he can’t believe the words coming out of his mouth.

You’re unable to take your eyes off him, those dark brown of his bearing into you. The color is warm, just like Nico because he reminds you of a summer day and if he's the sun, then you’re a mere leaf desperately searching for his light.

“I think I like you too,” you admit, a little quieter, a little shy. You still don’t like being touched, but as his hands come to cup your cheeks you decide that you do like the feel of his calloused skin against yours, and then he’s dipping his head to capture your lips in a kiss you don’t know you’ve been waiting for.

You melt instantly, sighing into his mouth with relief. Nico’s kisses are long and smooth, and you’re happy to let him lead before he’s pulling back all too soon, his beard scruff leaving the skin around your lips burning pleasantly.

Fluttering eyes open, leaving you with the distinct feeling of coming up from underwater. Nico looks just as elated as you feel, gazing at you from dark brown eyes filled with adoration. His thumb runs across your bottom lip, and then he’s stepping back respectfully.

“I’ll call you when I get back to my place, yeah?” He says, and you’re glad he seems just as eager to continue talking as you are.

“Yeah, that… That works,” English has left your head, and you stumble over what to say next. Nico has left you speechless, literally. “Drive safe.”

He flashes you a blinding smile, and then disappears back into the elevator.

“Oh fuck,” you say to the emptiness of the corridor. “Fuck. I’m so fucked.”

Nico calls you when he gets home, just like he said he would. He also calls you the day after that and the day after that, and when he can’t call because of a game or practice or whatever, he’s texting you.

You’re swept up in the world of Nico Hischier; his friends have become your (albeit, surface) friends, Natalie has taken you under her wing, and as the weeks go by you’re regularly attending games in the WAG section.

There’s no label on your relationship, and while you like that you’re taking this slow, there's still this desire to kiss him in front of everyone after a game won, to show the hockey world that this man, this man right here is yours.

You don’t act on it, though, as much as you may want to. You have this fear that because your appearance isn’t so conventional, that Nico would get hate for being seen with you. Everyone around you subtly hints that this fear of yours is irrational, but you know better.

As the new year comes and goes - it’s the best way you’ve spent new years in forever because Nico kisses you right as the clock strikes twelve, under the flashing lights and his cheering teammates around you - the Devils’ season continues to dominate. They’re projected to make the playoffs again, and you’re going to just about every game now to show your support.

What you don’t realize is that the fans’ scrutiny of the players only grows the closer the end of the regular season comes, and their attention also shifts to the significant others. WAG playoff jackets are apparently a thing, and you hear from Natalie how the designs for this year are already in the works.

Nico hinted one night that he wanted you to wear one by mentioning he can’t wait to see you when they’re in the playoffs. You gave him a slight look of suspicion because he said it in a way like he’s anticipating something, but he only shrugged cheekily when you tried prying.

Everything comes to an ugly head, though, when you discover hockey Twitter. You’ve obviously known of the app, but you only download it when you hear how the hockey coverage is extensive and you decide you want to keep up with all NHL news more easily.

That’s when you stumble across a term called ‘puck bunnies’, and how there are accounts dedicated to the players’ dating lives with information as trivial as who they’re being spotted with.

Anxiety takes control one night when you’re scrolling through a gossip page, and you succumb to the urge to search Nico’s name. To your horror, there are posts mentioning how a new person (you) has joined the WAG’s at games, and fans have spotted him leaving with this new person consistently.

You can’t find anything mentioning your identity, but you do find criticisms of your appearance. A lot of them. And, really, you knew this was going to happen, it was just a matter of when. The thought doesn’t comfort you, though, as your stomach drops when past girlfriends of Nico are brought up.

They’re all blondes, the occasional brunette, too. Of course they are. You figure anyways that part of the reason you were so intriguing to him to begin with is because you’re so unlike anyone he’s ever dated before. It still doesn’t make you feel better.

You have unconventional piercings, tattoos and quite a lot of them, and you don’t have the money to splurge on expensive clothing like these models do. A word a lot of these hateful posts use is ‘downgrade’, and your insecurities start to agree.

Why does Nico even like you? What do you have that these other girls don’t? From the looks of it, you’re the first of, well, you that he’s ever dated.

You hate it. You hate all of it. Twitter, stupid puck bunnies (how demeaning, too?), your incredibly strong feelings for Nico, and the thought that you aren’t good enough for him.

Now, what you should be doing is calling him. Hell, even Natalie. You know you need to talk to someone about what you’ve found, get some reassurance that the online gossip is purely just that: gossip.

But, well, you’ve never been reasonable. Anxiety and overthinking has ruled your life since you could talk. Instead, you stay silent, stew in your self-loathing and scroll through more of the disgusting Twitter thread.

You let these strangers’ words get to you, their biting insults swimming around in the back of your mind over the next few days all while everyone else is none the wiser.

Especially Nico, who thinks everything is fine until it isn’t. He’s busy with the team, leading with a grace only a captain could possess, and playing his heart out every game to ensure their spot in the postseason. He thinks your distance is because you know how busy he is and simply just don’t want to bother him.

Which, he appreciates you respecting his career, but your shortened responses, curt replies, and frequent denials to come to his games start to signal warning sirens in his head. You aren’t an open book by any means, but this… Nico finds it startling. He knows something is wrong.

So he pries. He texts you more than normal, during video reviews where he’s supposed to be paying attention to replays and right after practices, too. One could say he’s being overbearing, and in the midst of all your self-loathing and depressive overthinking, you snap.

Nico had kept texting you, over and over again, asking for your schedule over the next few days along with continuously asking about when you could see him next. Your fingers moved faster than you could think, and then you pressed send on a message you keep telling yourself you don’t regret.

I just don’t have time, Nico, jesus. Let it go.

The read receipt had appeared under the message less than a minute later, and not another text came through. You’d most definitely had a slight mental breakdown, wanted to call him and apologize and kiss away the frown you’re sure is marring his beautiful lips, but you try convincing yourself it’s for the best.

You don’t deserve all the good that Nico Hischier brings into your life. He’s far too good for you—everyone else seems to think so, too.

And so, that’s that. Nico doesn’t text you anymore and you certainly don’t text him. You’d burned that bridge with no hesitation, and any sparks that were growing between you are certainly extinguished now. This is what you tell yourself, anyways, even as you still can’t stop yourself from tuning into the Devils games over the next few days.

You throw yourself into your work, even more than before. You switch around scheduling for different clients, place multiple sessions right after the other so the buzz of your tattoo gun is too loud for you to think of anything else.

It works, for a time. But you can only do it for so long, and it doesn’t stop you from watching recaps of Nico nor does it keep you from noticing how off-kilter he seems. You’ve come to realize that whenever the captain is off, so is the rest of the team, and the Devils go on a losing streak over the next two weeks that kills you almost as much as you’re sure it’s killing them.

You still don’t contact him, though. You keep your distance, avoid the bars you know they frequent and dodge Natalie’s attempts at meeting up, too. You’re sure she knows you and Nico aren’t talking, either because of how badly he’s playing or because Jonas told her, and you don’t want to give her an opportunity to pry.

And Nico, well. He’s very obviously a mess. He’s snappy, overwhelmed, angry at the littlest things; he broke his stick against the wall during one practice because Jack had passed him a puck, but Nico botched the play just like everything else in his life, apparently.

A perk about being the captain is that none of his teammates have the guts to come up to him to bluntly ask him what’s wrong. On the other hand, his teammates follow his lead to a T, which means that as a result of his foul mood and horrible playing, their spot in the standings has noticeably suffered.

You don’t leave his head, not when he’s in the middle of a game or lying wide awake in his bed until the early hours of the morning. Many times he contemplates breaking the barrier you’d put between the two of you, to ask what he did and if there’s anything he can do to fix it. Nico thinks it’s his fault, that maybe he came off as too clingy…

He knows of your past, knows you’re so wary to jump into relationships for a reason, and figures he just did something to scare you back into seclusion.

The abrupt silence between the two of you builds, and Nico is so frustrated with himself and with you that when they play a division rival, the Philadelphia Flyers, his pent-up aggravation is released and he plays the best hockey he’s probably ever played before in his life.

Nico has never done drugs, but he’s positive the adrenaline pumping through his veins is similar to the rush of dopamine one would feel right after. He’s high off the elation of winning, and it gives him the courage to finally do something about the mounting irritation from his lack of contact with you.

He leaves the rock as soon as he’s able, breaks a few traffic laws in his haste to get to your shop as quickly as possible. It’s a long shot, showing up this late at night on a Friday, but he knows your habits and he knows you.

As he swerves into a parking spot, his gut tells him he’s right. You’re here. You have to be.

Unfortunately for you, Nico is right. You are, in fact, holed up alone in your shop, postponing the lonely ride to your lonely apartment in place of searching for something to do.

You watched the Devils game in the midst of distracting yourself, because of course you did. You saw how the players’ growing frustration led to pure determination that ultimately secured them the win.

You’re proud of them. Proud of Nico. You want to text him, do something, but… then there’s rapid knocking on the doors, and you’re peeking around the corner to catch a glimpse of the likely drunkard trying to break in.

You’re about to just wave them off, gesture towards the sign hanging on the window you know is switched to close, but the man outside speaks and you’re frozen.

“Please, baby, let me in,” the voice is laced with pure desperation, and oh, now you can see him as clear as day. He mouths your name through the glass, and you don’t have the strength to send him away.

You reluctantly unlock the door, shying away from his touch when he tentatively puts a hand on your arm. Nico is having none of it, though, and quickly grabs your hand to tug you back towards him. He’s had enough of your silence, isn’t going to let you walk away so easily this time.

When you don’t meet his eyes, he lets out a heavy breath, squeezes your hand once, then, “What the fuck is going on?” and you’re still silent, still avoidant, refusing to look up at his face. He says your name, voice anguished as he begs again, “Talk to me, please?”

You dodge his questions. “Why are you here, Nico?”

Nico reads your body language, watches as you refuse to meet his eyes and finally break away from his touch. He realizes he still affects you, and that you pushing him away is purely because you’re in your own head and don’t know how to get out of it

“Did you see my game?” Nico eventually asks, realizing he has to approach this gently, like you’re a wounded animal and in a sense, you are.

You did, but you don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. (He knows, anyway). So you just shrug, pretending to fiddle with the random shit on your desk.

“So that’s a yes,” Nico mutters to himself. Then, he speaks up, louder, so he knows you hear him. “I scored a goal tonight.” he pauses, waits for your reaction.

You look up then, only for a moment, squinting your eyes in what looks to be a glare. “Congratulations.”

The way you look at him screams paranoid, insecure, and suddenly Nico is hit with the memory of a conversation he had with a fan a few days ago. She was young, in her early teens and certainly not out of highschool so he didn’t take her gossip too seriously, but…

“You guys are so cute!” he remembers her squealing, shoving her phone in his face. It was a blurry picture of the two of you holding hands walking out of the arena, that much he remembers. “Everyone’s hating on them online but they’re all just jealous you’re taken now.”

Nico had been signing her jersey when she said that. He raised an eyebrow, was tuning her out slightly. “Hating? On Twitter? Shocking,” he had laughed. “Does anyone take them seriously?”

The girl - whose name he now doesn’t remember - had shrugged. “A few obsessed people, yeah. Don’t go on Twitter if you want to keep your sanity. I’d tell your… friend that, too.”

Except he didn’t. Her words went through one ear and right out the other, and it’s like a halo of light just lit up his head because oh, Nico understands now, and he feels his stomach dropping over the thought that you’ve been living with this for weeks now.

Nico scoffs at your sass but it sounds more like a laugh. He knows what to do, now. “Signed a few fans’ jerseys after the game, and then I remembered an interesting conversation with this one girl a few games back. It was really enlightening. Wanna know what she said?”

You know what’s coming. You’ve already seen what people say about your rumored relationship with Nico, and you think he’s just telling you this to definitively end whatever you started with each other.

Words escape you, but what does manage to come out is a choked up, “Not really”, under your breath.

“She said people talked about us online. Were saying a bunch of bullshit about how you ‘aren’t my type’ and that I’m too good for you. Can you believe that?”

Nico takes a few cautious steps towards you, leans over your desk to gauge your reaction. He sees the light sheen in your eyes, the way your hands tremble as you attempt to look like you aren’t hanging on to his every word.

But Nico sees right through you. He understands immediately, in that moment, why you’re pushing him away, and it breaks his heart into a million pieces.

“Oh, baby,” he coos, softly. “You didn’t think I agreed with them, did you?”

You try to respond, but you cut yourself off by letting out a sob as the overwhelming emotions catch up to you.

Nico immediately rounds the desk, his own eyes tearing up as he wraps his muscular arms around your body in a protective hug. You’re shaking as you bury your head into his neck, spurting apology after apology.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,”

“I know,” he shushes, one hand running through your hair while the other rubs soothing circles on your back. “I know. It’s okay,”

“Why don’t you hate me? You should hate me,”

“I could never hate you.”

You don’t let go of Nico, not even as he slides down the wall with you in his arms. It’s behind your desk, so you’re hidden from view. The thought that he did this on purpose so you can break down in peace only makes you cry harder, and yet he doesn’t falter in his comfort.

“Is this why you went silent on me?” He eventually asks, gently, so as to not startle you. “Because of… Twitter?”

You nod imperceptibly, feeling rather embarrassed now that it’s said out loud how much online gossip has bothered you. It wasn’t just because of that, though. “It’s stupid, I know—”

“No, no it’s not. Your feelings aren’t stupid.” He says immediately. “I’m sorry you found those things online. I wish you would’ve told me, or something, that way I could’ve reassured you,”

“I should have,” you say. You almost lost him, this person you care about so deeply. “You scare me so much, though, you know?”

Nico jerks, aghast. “No, no, not like that,” You reassure, unable to stop yourself from smiling. “I mean… What I feel for you scares me. Like it’s too good to be true,”

You’re nervous to continue, but then his fingers begin tracing the tattoos on your arms and you shiver because of an entirely new reason, other nerves forgotten.

“And, I don’t know. I guess I was looking for reasons to doubt… Us. Which is wrong, I know. And then I found the Twitter thread, and I let their words confirm what I was already thinking.”

One of his hands trails up the back of your neck, gently massages the skin there for a moment, and is then carefully smoothing over some of your older piercings, admiring how the jewelry looks against your skin. He’s working to calm you down, and it’s working because you then realize you've forgotten how to speak.

“Um,” you swallow, throat dry. “You’re here, though,” you finish lamely, finally meeting his eyes in awe.

“I am.” He affirms. The hand on your arm joins the other to cup your face, and then your eyes flutter shut as he presses a gentle kiss to your lips. “And I’m not going anywhere, yeah? Not unless you tell me to fuck off. ”

“Okay,” you whisper, assured and now content as his arms go back to curling you into his chest. “Okay. Sounds good.” And then a thought strikes you, like the deprivation of his life you’ve been forcing yourself to deal with has had enough. “When’s your next game?”

Nico’s face breaks out into a beautiful smile, one that takes your breath away. “There’s one at home next Thursday,” he says. “I think Natalie might hurt me if I tell her that you’re still too busy, so does this mean you’ll come?”

“Can’t have that now, can we?” you murmur, matching his grin. “But yeah, yeah, I’ll go,” and back to cool nonchalance you go, unable to take the love rushing through you.

Finally, you find the strength to lift yourself off the floor. He immediately grabs your hand, lacing your fingers together. As you stand in the middle of your shop, smiling goofily at each other, he looks nervous again, and his thumb smooths over the back of your hand reflexively.

“I’ve missed you,” Nico admits, looking down at you shyly. “Didn’t realize how much I liked having you in my life.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, genuinely upset with yourself for shutting him out. “I missed you too. A lot.”

“So we’re good now, then?” he looks anxious, like he thinks he still did something wrong. “You’ll talk to me next time?”

“We’re good. I’ll talk to you,” you swear. And you’re serious this time. It hurt you just as much as it hurt him to fall out of contact for weeks. Terrifyingly enough, you’re sure it’s because you’re falling in love with him.

You’ll hold back from saying those three words for a little while longer, though.

“So,” you say after a moment. “Catch me up? On everything I missed?”

He grins again, and you think it’s the prettiest thing you’ve ever laid your eyes on. “Can we recap back at my place?” At the suggestive look on your face his face quickly turns red. “I just miss having you in my bed,” he mumbles, and at your laugh just starts dragging you to the door.

“Wait, wait, I need to lock up!” Nico playfully groans, squeezes your hips with a mocking “hurry up” and then you’re running out onto the busy streets of New Jersey like two reckless teenagers looking to elope.

It’s healing, freeing, and dangerous all at once because you can’t stop giggling and Nico can’t stop kissing you, and as you look at his face outlined by the red of a stoplight you think, I could fall in love with him.

You’re sure he’ll catch you when you hit the bottom, too.

A/N: I was planning on including smut but since I wrote this with a gender neutral reader not even I could make that work LMAO regardless, I hope you still enjoyed! I haven’t written a 10k+ fic in a while so I had a lot of fun with this one. As always, comments and reblogs are much appreciated <3

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gravestrain · 3 months

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And he feels like home (j. hughes)

Happy winter fic exchange! @one-night-story I am so thrilled to be able to have written this for you! I hope I created something that you love that you feel fully represented in and safe to read. 🩷

Demi @wyattjohnston, thank you as always for creating such a wonderful event for our community. Your hard work for these exchanges will never go unnoticed by me, I appreciate you so much.

And thank you to @thomasschabot for proofreading this for me and making sure it was accessible for all to read, I appreciate you so much my friend!

Title was taken from long story short by Taylor Swift. This is 4.7k words, gender neutral reader. It has been double checked by lovely c to ensure that it is safe for all to read <3

new neighbor

You considered yourself to be a very patient person. You were also extremely understanding. You didn't get upset or frustrated by much. You were a good person, sometimes you allowed people to get away with things for their own sake, even if it inconvenienced you in anyway. But at this point, you had had enough.

Since you moved into your apartment in August, you could probably count on one hand the amount of times you had talked to your neighbors. You were in the corner apartment, the last at the end of the hall, your only neighbors being two young men who you presumed to be brothers.

You ran into them a few times in the hallway, the two of them hardly ever separated. You knew they left in the mid afternoon, usually in suits. You assumed it was for work, but you never felt inclined to ask. They usually look rushed, the older one pestering the younger one to "hurry up" as he got out the door.

It was only this week that you had learned their names. A piece of their mail had accidentally been dropped in your box. The name addressed as "Jack Hughes." You contemplated what to do with it, standing at their door with the letter in your hands for a few minutes when the door suddenly burst open, the younger brother opening the door.

"Oh! Hello," he muttered out awkwardly. Neither of you had known the other's name, but you both knew each other as neighbors. "Hi! Are you Jack?" You asked awkwardly, not holding out the card, making your question seem like a random inquiry. "No, I'm Luke, Jack is my brother. Why do you ask? Do you need something?" He asked in an almost bothered tone, as if people frequently came to him asking for unwanted favors.

"Oh! Duh. A piece of Jack's mail got put in my box by accident. I assume it's okay if I drop it with you?" You asked, making you almost instantly face palm. "Yep, that works. Anyway, I'm late to something. Thanks for dropping it off..." He mumbled off at the end, not knowing what to insert for your name. You told him your name, and that was that.

That was earlier this week. This was now Friday. Occasionally, you could tell that they had some small parties. Nothing too outlandish for an apartment building that shared thin walls, but a decent amount of people resulting in a louder volume. You were young yourself, you were never going to complain for a small amount of volume on the occasional Saturday night. This however, had been far too much.

You swear this was the 3rd night in a row of their little parties, and you had dealt with far too much. It was mid April, you were studying for a big exam you had. Part of your move in August was to signal the start of your journey to get your masters degree. You were almost done with the semester, just a few big exams in between, this being one of them. You knew that it seemed a little lame, studying for exams on a Friday night, but part of the move was moving to New Jersey where there was a school that was one of the best in the country for your intended major, not super close to home. With all of your studying and academic work, including working to pay for the apartment and schooling, you didn't have much time to socialize. You had gone to coffee with some people from your classes, but not much beyond that, not enough to warrant Friday night plans towards the end of the semester.

Slamming your textbook, you decided you had officially reached your limit. You paced back and forth a bit, trying to calm down a bit in an attempt to hopefully not absolutely lose it on your neighbor. It wasn't that late, but you had been studying all day with minimal breaks. You couldn't see the end of the studying in sight if your neighbors kept the music at the volume they had. You wondered how the people on the other side of them weren't bothered by the noise, but then again you had probably seen them even less than you had seen Jack and Luke.

You slipped your feet into the pair of shoes closest to the door, banging on the door in an attempt for them to hear it over the blaring music. You took a small step back when a man you didn't recognize answered the door. "Can I help you?" A dark haired man with an accent asked. Before you could open your mouth, a very energetic Jack came bustling towards the door. "Y/N! To what do I owe this pleasure?" He asked with a charming smile, almost causing your reserve to break down. But when your brain came back after the sound of the music blared through your ears, you remembered why you were over here.

"Do you know what time it is?" You asked, crossing your arms over your chest. "It's only 11. It's a Friday night. But based on your casual attire, I doubt that matters much to you," Jack quipped at your casual pajamas. "For your information, Jack, I'm studying for a big exam. Clearly you don't know much about that." You snapped back.

"For your information, my team just made the playoffs. We have a lot to celebrate." Jack flexed, causing his chest to puff out a bit. "I don't care which of your beer league teams made the playoffs, but I would really like to pass my first year of my masters program and not have to repeat. That is, after all, how I ended up here, as your neighbor." You were starting to lose your patience, and instead of Jack surrendering, he started laughing.

"Beer league, huh. Do you not know?" You rolled your eyes. "If this is your attempt at a 'Do you know who I am?' moment, you're failing severely. Or even better, if it's going to be a 'do you know who my father is?' Just save me the time, I have an exam to study for," you had one foot out the door when Jack grabbed your arm, stopping you in your tracks.

"Relax, I just figured you knew because that seems to be all anyone wants from us who lives in this building. Favors relating to our job. Luke and I play for the New Jersey Devils, the NHL team around here. It's okay that you don't know, however I hope now that you do, you'll choose us to be your favorite team." Jack smirked at you, causing you to giggle, which resulted in you immediately covering your mouth. What was happening to you? You didn't giggle over charming guys.

"Oh, did you guys win or something? Seems like an awfully long time to be celebrating one win," you quipped. "We made it into the playoffs. We are the number one seed. We've been celebrating for a few days because we have a bit of time off. I am sorry, it is probably excessive. We'll turn it down and remind the guys that we aren't the only ones who live here." Jack put his tail between his legs. You did feel a bit bad, but you were glad the noise was going to at least quiet down.

"I hope I didn't come off like a jerk, I just got flustered. I know you didn't know. I shouldn't have come over attacking." You muttered, causing Jack to smile.

"I'll accept your apology on one condition. Do you think you can find some time in your busy finals schedule to come to one of our games? I can get you more details when the playoffs schedule comes out, but I would it if you could come. I think Luke might be a little jealous that I softened you up first, but it just adds for some more bragging rights on the kid."

You couldn't believe your ears. Your cute, albeit a little clueless neighbor, was not only a professional athlete, but he was also asking you on a date if you weren't mistaken.

"Well Jack, I'd love to, but you just better hope I pass this exam." You smiled, feeling your cheeks heat up.

"Good thing we're gonna turn the volume down."

2. first game

What do you wear to a hockey game that you were invited to by your neighbor who you have only talked to a few times but you think he may have been awkwardly potentially flirting with you when he invited you?

You were digging through your closet, looking for something appropriate to wear for probably one of the most awkward, unique events you have ever been to. You can't say that you had ever been to a professional hockey game. You weren't clueless to the rules and such, you just never had the opportunity to attend one in person.

Not to mention, you were going alone. You only had a few casual friends at school through this point in the year, and it didn't feel appropriate to bring any of them to this... interesting event you were going to. Plus, you were certain that you would be wrapped up in the game. You were nervous enough as is, and you can't imagine if you had to sit there and make awkward small talk with one of your classmates who might be able to say what your last name is.

Sitting in the uber on the way there made you start to question your choice of agreeing to go to the game. You had no idea how this would go other than you knew that Jack had slipped the ticket under your door earlier this morning and written on it was instructions on how to get to the gate. One thing that caused your cheeks to heat was that on the bottom of the post it note, was his phone number.

This made it feel almost official in a way, having his phone number. Before you could dwell on it too much, your uber pulled up to the door that Jack directed you to. You thanked the driver and walked in to the stadium, immediately overwhelmed by everything. For a second you considered turning around and making something up to Jack that you were sick, but when you took a second to look around, you saw so many happy people with Jack's last name plastered across their backs, number 86 standing proudly. You felt a sense of pride for Jack, though you weren't sure how to feel about that.

That sense of pride never went away once the game started. Your eyes were on Jack from the second his feet touched the ice, and the moment he sat on the bench. Your eyes followed him all the way to the bench, wishing the time he wasn't on the ice would go faster. You wondered why you had never been interested on hockey. Jack was so talented, and the game ended with him scoring a goal and getting two assists. You thought for a second that he was looking up at you when he scored, but you shook your head quickly to rid your brain of those thoughts.

As the game ended, it suddenly occurred to you that you weren't sure how this would end. You sat in your seat for a while letting the seats clear out, preparing to walk towards the gate that you entered in, opening the uber app. As soon as your phone unlocked, a message from Jack popped up on your phone.

"Meet me outside," it read. "I'd like to take you to dinner and drive you home. I'll meet you by the gate you entered in."

Your cheeks flushed at his admission, suddenly looking down at your outfit. Was this appropriate for a dinner date? You were not planning on this at all. You checked what you looked like in the front camera of your phone. Before you could decide whether or not you looked appropriate, you heard a familiar laugh. Your chest warmed at the idea that his laugh could be so familiar, so homey despite the fact that the two of you had not spent much time together.

Jack's feet sped up as he caught up to you, just excited to see you after a great win. His smile was contagious when he saw you standing there, staring at your sneakers in an attempt to not be noticed by the rest of the guys who might ask questions.

In the end, it wasn't Jack who spoke up first. It was Luke. "Y/N! I'm so glad you came! I wanted to score for you, but unfortunately this guy beat me to it," he smiled, throwing an arm around your shoulders. You tried to relax into his arms, telling yourself this was a new normal in your life. Casual banter with your neighbors who just so happen to be professional athletes making millions of dollars.

"Hey back off, I invited them. You dropped the ball. Your turn is up, by the way," Jack muttered, causing Luke to give a quizzical look. Taking advantage of Luke's moment of confusion, Jack sneaks around him and puts his arms around you, squeezing you tightly. A noise of surprise comes out of your mouth. Not discomfort, just surprise at his sudden display of physical affection. "That was awesome!" Jack yelled. "Did you have so much fun?" He asked, pulling away to see your face looking up at him.

"Well it would have been more fun if Luke scored for me but I guess I'll settle for your points," you teased. He smiled, his cheeks turning red at your teasing. "Y/N, is Jack blushing? Did you turn him into a shy mess?" Luke teased and Jack groaned, hiding his face in your shoulder. "I just want to impress you," he smiled which caused your entire body to heat up. It never occurred to you that he wanted to impress you. That you were there because he wanted you to be impressed with his game and how he played.

"Well don't worry, I was thoroughly impressed. Would you like to go to dinner now?" You asked. "Am I invited? Is this like a neighborly get together?" Luke was now teasing you both, causing both of you to get bashful. "Dude, clearly this is a date," Jack mumbled, causing your eyebrows to raise. "Clearly? Is that what we're calling it now. I mean I certainly thought it was, but you never asked me." You and Luke were truly just having fun with the teasing now.

"Jack, it's not very gentlemanly to assume it's a date. You really should ask, especially with someone like Y/N. They're a catch!" Jack was glaring daggers into Luke. "Yes, I should. Y/N, I would like tonight to be a date. Will you go out on a date with me?" Jack asked, grabbing your hand in his. You were grinning, nodding your head. "Well then, Luke I think it's past your bedtime. Why don't you go home with Holtzy and I will take Y/N out for dinner?" Luke shook his head, giggling. "Wouldn't you like that," he laughed. "Luke-" "Fine! Fine! I'm done. I'll go. Y/N, it was a pleasure to laugh with you. You kids enjoy yourself."

"I have a feeling we will."

3. first (real) date

Your dinner with Jack was perfect. You finally got the news back that you had passed the exam you were stressing about, and to celebrate, you got your favorite take out and watched Jack's game on the couch with a glass of wine. It was strange, to whole heartedly notice his absence when him and Luke were away for games. Right now, they were on a short West coast road trip, Denver, Arizona, and Seattle, and then heading back home for a few days off before a home game.

This was their last game being gone, and you found yourself waiting hopefully for Jack to come back. You had been texting a lot on the road trip, Jack even calling you once after he crawled into the empty bed next to Jesper's bed. According to Jack, his friend, teammate, and road roommate Jesper slept like the dead, even going as far as to wearing headphones when he slept, so there was no concern of the call waking him up. That didn't stop you from keeping your voice to a low volume, which Jack of course countered by yelling an obnoxious "What was that?" whenever he couldn't hear you.

After a Devils win, you crawled into bed for the night, finding yourself thinking of Jack, and how you couldn't wait to see him. You were in so deep.

------

As you cleaned up the remnants of your late afternoon lunch, a knock sounded on your door. You had a feeling you knew who it was, but you still checked the peephole to see Jack's face on the other side, nervously rocking back and forth on his feet, holding something in his hand.

Flowers.

"Hi, it's so good to see you!" You smiled, welcoming him inside. "These are for you. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate, but I wanted to ask you something, so I thought these might help. I was wondering if you maybe wanted to go to dinner with me on Friday? We have a game on Thursday night, and I thought a more formal, not after a game greasy pizza joint dinner would be fun. That is, if you are interested? If not, it's okay, I was just," you finally cut him off with a hand on his arm. "Jack! I'd love to. The flowers are beautiful. Thank you for thinking of me. I would love nothing more." You smiled, causing an audible sigh to come from Jack's lips.

"Oh thank God! Sorry, I didn't want to ramble, I just really got nervous. I wanted you to say yes but I didn't want to sound weird or make you uncomfortable." He smiled. Neither of you knew what was going on. Jack was stunned that his neighbor who he had barely talked to but admired from afar had turned him into a nervous, blushing mess. You also couldn't say you were expecting to fall for your neighbor. But when he was gone, you came to that conclusion: you were absolutely falling for Jack. You were falling for him, you couldn't understand how it had happened or why, but you absolutely were.

When it came time for your date to come, you felt more nervous than you did for the game. Jack had let you know that you were going to be going to a nicer restaurant. You picked his brain a bit at what to wear. What you didn't know is that he had preplanned his outfit, mannerisms, conversations, basically his every move for the date with his mom and brothers. Well, mostly Quinn. When Luke saw how nervous he was, he was constantly teasing him. Luke loved to tease him about how you should have fallen for him instead of Jack. Of course it was all jokes, as soon as the two of you started hanging out Luke could immediately see the chemistry between the two of you. He knew that your connection was much deeper than any sort of joke he could make. He was really happy for his older brother, finally seeing him fall for a person who made him truly happy.

When you decided on an outfit that was both appropriate for the occasion and made you feel good about yourself, you started pacing by the front door of your apartment, anxiously waiting for Jack to come. It was about 10 minutes before he said he would arrive. On the other side of the wall, Jack thought about coming a few minutes early, but his mom immediately shut that down. Jack argued that he wanted to seem timely and didn't want to keep you waiting. Ellen shut him down, though.

"How long does it take you to walk 10 steps next door? You never want to rush someone getting ready, especially for a first date." Luke was cackling in the background, of course.

At 6:00 on the dot, Jack was knocking on your door. He was almost more nervous than when he came by a few days before asking if you wanted to go to dinner with him, if that was even possible. When you opened the door, Jack planted his feet in the ground, willing himself to not fall over on his ass and make a complete fool of himself.

You were absolutely stunning. You looked so amazing in Jack's eyes. He felt himself blushing as soon as you opened the door. He was thanking his lucky stars, wondering how he had gotten so lucky as to find someone as special as you.

"Y/N..." he finally breathed out, his heart racing. "What? Do I look okay?" You began to feel nervous under his intense gaze, your hands instinctively picking at your fingernails. "Okay would be an insult. You look incredible. These are for you, by the way," Jack handed you the flowers he forgot he even had. "That's so sweet! You didn't have to bring me flowers. The ones you brought me a few days ago are still going strong. They will look beautiful together, though."

You took a minute to put the flowers in a vase. Jack was watching you from afar, you felt his eyes on you, following you around your small kitchen. Truthfully, he was admiring you. He couldn't help but blush at the sight of you, putting flowers in the vase that he bought for you, getting ready for the date that he was taking you out on. He felt like he won the lottery.

When you turned around, you saw him blushingly admiring you, causing your own cheeks to heat up. "What has you so smiley?" you asked, taking a step closer to him, bravely grabbing his hand in yours. You rubbed your thumb over his hand in an attempt to help him feel calm. Jack was certain no one had ever made him feel this nervous. Certainly not someone he was dating. "I just can't believe how beautiful you are. I feel so lucky that you are going out with me."

Both of you were nervous wrecks at this point. Before you could convince yourself otherwise, you were leaning forward, kissing him on the cheek. As soon as Jack felt your lips on his skin, he knew he had to kiss you. "Can I kiss you? Like, on the lips," he muttered, causing you to giggle. "Yes Jack, you can kiss me, like on the lips." He groaned at your teasing, but before he could throw his head back exasperatedly, you leaned forward, capturing his lips with your own.

Jack felt himself melt, holding onto your waist in an attempt to hold himself up straight. It was official. You had softened Jack into a gushy, pillowy mess. And Jack had never been so happy.

+1. as a couple

6 months later

"Jack, honey, if you keep stomping any louder, the people below us are gonna come complain," you muttered teasingly at him. "You really think they can hear you? Besides, if they came and complained, I would simply explain to them that my amazing partner, whom I care for very much, is meeting my family for the first time, and I think they would understand." He quipped back, causing you to laugh.

Jack's parents were coming in to town for the first time in the new season. Before you met Jack, you had long planned to spend the summer abroad with your closest friend. Jack was thrilled for you, but disappointed you wouldn't be able to spend time together over the summer at his summer house. He did however, jet off to meet you in Italy for a week, which was perfect. Ordinarily, you probably would have met Jack's parents already, but with the chaos of your summer, it was now the Devils home opener, and you had yet to meet your boyfriend's parents.

"If I'm so amazing, why are you so nervous for me to meet them?" Jack groaned, causing you to laugh. Teasing each other was something so common, but it was always done lovingly. It was almost a love language of sorts between the two of you.

"Babe, how many times have I talked to Quinn on FaceTime with you? And Luke is the best friend I have here in Jersey, besides you obviously, so it's just your parents. Who, by the way, we have also Facetimed with a handful of times together."

"I know, but in person it's different. They might get knocked on their ass by your good looks and charm, just like I was. And besides, if you think Luke's teasing and sarcasm is bad, just wait until you meet my dad. Where do you think he gets it from?" Jack continues to ramble. To an outsider, it might look like Jack didn't want you to meet his parents, but you both knew it was the complete opposite. The two of you hadn't been together for that long, but in a way that didn't matter. Jack was close to saying the "l word," and you probably weren't that far behind him. He wanted you to meet his parents because he wanted them to love you as much as he did. You felt the same way.

In an attempt to stop his never ending nerves, you took the few steps across the room towards him, putting your hand on his cheek and pulling him in for a soft kiss. "Jack, I am thrilled to meet your parents. If it makes you feel any better, I am a bit nervous too. I want them to like me. Although, I'm sure you've bored them to tears with stories making me seem like I'm the most amazing person on the Earth." "Because you are," Jack intervened, serious as a heart attack.

You laughed at his genuine tone, he was always buttering you up. "They'll love you, because you're amazing. Besides, Lukey and Quinn already love you. This will be easy work for you. The shock of me being in a serious relationship has already worn off. They're thrilled to meet you," you laughed at his half hearted attempt at a joke.

"Besides, I'm sure they will be so excited to meet the person who has turned you into a sap," you laughed, causing Jack's mouth to open in shock. "I am not a sap!" He tried to quip back, but you both knew he was absolutely lying. He was so soft on you, something none of his loved ones had ever seen. "Jack, yesterday you laid your nice jacket over a puddle in the nasty streets of Jersey for me to walk over because there was no way around it," you stared back at him. "That puddle was huge! Your pant legs would've been soaked, I know you would've hated that." You laughed at his kind hearted attempt at an explanation.

"You are one of a kind Jack Hughes," you started. "I truly love you." As soon as the words came out of your mouth, your hand covered it in shock. Of course you loved Jack, but you were so nervous to tell him. You had never said those words to someone romantically before, and you were both certain he would say it first, even though you hadn't talked about it before.

"You love me?" He asked, his voice quivering. "Of course I love you, did you miss the puddle story? I would be crazy not to have fallen in love with you." At this point, both of your eyes were watery, Jack's grip on your shoulders never wavering. "Oh my God, you love me. Oh my God, wait, I love you! I love you so much! I can't believe I haven't said it back yet! I love you!" Jack was over the moon, causing you to laugh wetly.

You had absolutely softened Jack to his core. But you were nothing but soft for him, the two of you a perfect match for each other. When you pulled each other in for a kiss, the love between the two of you was imminent, the nerves of the upcoming event melting away. Jack couldn't wait to introduce you to his parents as his partner whom he loved so much, and you couldn't wait to love them as much as you loved him.

#jack hughes #Jack Hughes fic #Jack Hughes imagine #Jack Hughes x reader #nhl imagine #nhl x reader #New Jersey devils #New Jersey devils x reader #New Jersey devils imagine #hughes brothers #jh86

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jackhues · 4 months

Text

this is our place - jack hughes

notes: i hope you guys like this, sixth fic for 'it's the most wonderful time of the year' celly :)) slightly based off of lover by taylor swift! a little bit shorter, but i hope you like it <3

likes are good, reblogs are better <3

part of naqia's end of the year celly!

gif not mine

"the lights look so pretty," you muttered, admiring the christmas decorations inside your house.

after hannukah had ended, you and jack had decorated the house for christmas. you had your tree, decorated with ornaments both of you chose and some cute christmas lights. the star on top was one your mom had gifted you when you and jack moved in together.

even after decorating the tree, you had a lot of lights left over. so you and jack ended up decorating the entire living room. it looked amazing, but the days had passed - christmas was over, and the new year had begun.

"we did a good job decorating," jack agreed, coming to wrap his arms around you from the back.

you hummed, "i kind of don't want to take it down anymore, you know? they look so cute."

jack shrugged, "then don't take them down."

you laughed, before realizing he wasn't joking.

"jack, come on," you turned around to face him. "christmas is over, the new year is over, holiday season's done, babe. i've got to go back to work tomorrow. it's time to take the lights down, or else we won't have time later."

"if you like them, we can keep them," he repeated. "this is our place, we make the rules here. no one's going to come in and start screaming because our christmas lights are still up. it's you and me, whatever we want."

you tilted your head, taking in what he'd just said.

he had a point.

this house belonged to you and jack, you got to choose whether the christmas lights stayed up or not. it might seem like such a simple thing, but it held a lot of value. the meaning behind his words was clear.

whether it was christmas lights, or hungover friends, or pets, or children, or something completely different - you and jack got to choose what happened.

this was your place.

"you know what," you smiled. "let's keep them up."

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lvrhughes · 6 months

Text

My Princess | L. Hughes

pairing: Luke Hughes x fem!reader

word count: 4.2k

warnings: none? maybe drunk Luke?

summary: After a night out you collect Luke from the club, then in his drunken state admits he loves you.

not my gif!

“Come on, let him in this once! We’ll leave him every other time but it was a big win!” Jack begged, almost dropping to his knees in front of the clubs’ owner.

“Does your mother know about this?” The owner had a smug look on his face at the brunette.

“Yes, and so does his because he’s my brother, please?” The look was quickly wiped from the owners’ face, being left to just nod. “Yes!” Jack cheered, grabbing onto his brother’s shoulders and shaking.

“Calm down.” Luke groaned, pushing Jack off. Jack, running over to the rest of the team, left Luke standing alone at the entrance. Quickly pulling his phone out to message you, sending a quick ‘hey’ before Jack came bounding back.

“Let’s go, Moose!” Jack cheered, pushing Luke into the club, the rest of the team following behind. Leading them into the back corner of the bar, choosing the biggest table in the back, yet it was still small.

“Everyone’s phones on the table!” It was a stupid rule made up one night out, making Luke’s phone to be taken out of his hand when he tried to refuse.

“Jack, no. What if mom calls?” Luke tried to argue.

“Then, whoevers at the table will tell us!” Jack returned, reminding him of the other rule that at least one person must always be at the table with the phones.

“Fine.” Luke practically growled, letting Jack grab his phone to place on the table.

After the scene, everyone settled for a minute. Talking around the table while some of the team brought chairs over.

“What do you all want for drinks?” A waiter asks, trying to hide how his eyes widened at the large group. The entire team, squished into a corner of the bar, leaned against each other in the bench seat, or leaning back in a chair.

“Nah, it’s good, we’ll get our own drinks.” Dougie told the man, making him nod with enthusiasm.

“So Moose, what do you want your first drink to be?” Jack’s excitement dripping from his voice.

“You know, this definitely isn’t his first drink?” Dawson brought up, nudging Luke’s shoulder as he passed.

Jack murmured a ‘shut up’, refusing to admit he was right. It was his first time in a club with his little brother, no one was going to ruin it.

“So?” Jack pushed.

“Uh, just a beer I guess?” Luke’s shoulders shrugged with his words, proving how little he cared.

“Okay well, you’re not getting that, I’m getting you something fun!” Jack cheered, running over to the bar, leaving Luke, yet again, with the rest of the team.

“So, how many times you been drunk?” John asked, nudging Luke’s side when he reached for his phone.

“Like 4, didn’t go to many parties, only went when Princess did.”

“Princess, huh?” John smiled, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Not like that,” Luke groaned, “She’s my best friend.”

“She’s your best friend and you call her princess?”

“Started as a joke, she dressed up as a princess for halloween a few years back.” Luke explained, trying to get at his phone again, successfully grasping it this time.

John nodded, letting Luke go on his phone before his brother returned and took it. Replying to your message by telling that he was ‘kidnapped and forced into a club’, making you laugh on the other side of your phone.

Quickly, you called him, he answered quickly. You could hear the noise of the club behind him as he answered with a quick ‘Hi princess”.

“Hi Lukey, so you actually made it into a club?”

“I did, thanks to Jack begging the owner.” You could hear Luke’s eye roll, clearly not too impressed to be there. “And when I asked for a beer he said no and he’ll get me something more exciting!” Luke groaned, hearing your laughter at the explanation.

“I’m sure it’ll be good!” You giggled, hearing him groan again.

“It’s gonna be like one of your drinks!”

“Hey! Don’t insult my drinks, they’re good!” Laughter bubbled from the both of you, giggling like teenage girls spilling drama.

“Luke!” You heard Jack yell over the call, “Phone on the table!”

“But it’s-” Luke's voice was cut off as you heard the movement of his phone being taken.

“Oh, hi princess!” Jack teased, making you roll your eyes.

“Don’t call me that, that’s for Luke only, goodbye Jack, give Luke his phone.”

“No can do, phone on the table rule, if you want to talk to him you gotta come to the club.” You could hear his grin, you wanted to smack it off his face.

“You dick, I can’t get into clubs!”

“I’ll get you in, meet outside in 20?” You groaned, ending the call.

“What did you do?” Luke groaned, grabbing his phone from his brother's hands.

“Nothing, just told her the no phone rule. Now, drink up, pookie.” Jack grinned, passing him the pink drink he’d gotten Luke.

“What the fuck is this?” Luke grimaced, staring at the pink drink in his hand.

“I don’t know, bartender said it was good.” Jack shrugged, chugging his drink quickly. Luke sighed, taking a drink.

Oddly sweet. But if he could finish it he could get a beer next, so he chugged it with his brother, handing Jack the empty glass.

“Can I get a beer now?”

“Ugh fine, boring.” Jack moaned, walking back to the bar, leaving time for Luke to call you back quickly.

“What did he do?” Luke asked quickly when you answered, making you giggle.

“Told me your no phones rule.”

“Oh. That's it?”

“Pretty much.” You shrugged, hearing his panic over nothing. “So I see you stole your phone?”

“Yes, shush, shit gotta go Jack’s coming back.” Luke rushed out, quickly hanging up and throwing his phone on the table, where it slid off onto Dougie.

The table had mostly emptied at the time, leaving only dougie, John, Dawson, and the brothers. The rest of the team having wandered off to dance or get drinks, occasionally returning.

“Get better aim.” Dougie groaned, letting Luke look to see where his phone had slid.

“Oops?” He grinned, laughing at the tall man in pain.

“What did you do, Luke?” Jack’s voice was loud, a clear sign he had some shots at the bar waiting for their drinks.

“He hit me with his phone!” Dougie complained, earning a smack from John.

“What was that for?” Dougie moaned, hitting John back.

“You idiot, you’re gonna get Luke in trouble with his brother!” Dougie quickly quieted, seeing the way Jack was looking at Luke.

“Hands off your phone before I make Nico hold it for the night.”

“Don’t.” Luke mumbled, taking the beer from Jack and quickly taking a sip.

“I can’t believe you choose to drink beer.” Dawson shook his head at the sight of the young defenseman chugging his beer.

“What? Because Jack drinks those frilly pink drinks, ya thought I would too?” Luke laughed, seeing Jack's mock hurt expression beside him.

“Maybe.” Dawson laughed, earning Jack to lean over and try to hit him. Failing miserably and instead falling into the table.

“Ouch.” Jack groaned, the rest of the table laughing at him.

“‘Think you should be cut off, Jacky boy.” Luke grinned, making his brother stand up to run after him, while Luke had already headed over to the bar to get another beer.

“Dick.” Jack mumbled, running up beside his brother.

“Idiot says what?” Luke mumbled, enough to confuse the slightly tipsy brunette.

“What?” Jack asked, earning a luke from anyone around who heard Luke’s joke.

The bar arena was crowded, making Jack push his way to the front to talk to the bartender, quickly saying what he wanted.

“And for you, baby?” She asked Luke, watching a pink flush cover his cheeks.

“Just a beer. On his tab.” He added, pointing to his brother. She nodded, reaching under the counter to pull out a beer for him before going to mix Jack’s.

Luke took the beer quickly, nodding a thank you before returning to the table. The group had changed, now Nico, Curtis, Akria and Nate sat around the pile of phones.

“Luke!” Nico cheered as he watched the tall boy walk closer.

“Nico.” Luke saluted his captain, seeing his dilated pupils and slightly slurred words, he knew Nico had a few drinks already.

“We’re doing karaoke tonight, you have to join.” Nico’s command scared him. “Not yet though, don’t worry, get s’more drinks in.” Their captain grinned, patting Luke on the shoulder from the corner of the booth he said in.

“Luke! You left me!” Jack’s dramatic groan came from behind Luke, turning to see Jack sauntering over.

“You were fine, besides, means I got to finish my drink before you even got yours.” Luke grinned, quickly chugging the beer in his hands for an excuse to leave yet again.

“Fine, go get another drink, leave me again!” Jack played, falling into the booth practically on top of Nico.

“Get off.” Nico groaned, pushing Jack to the floor, earning a pained grumble as Jack quickly got up.

Luke pushed his way to the bar again, waiting for the bartender to walk over to his side again.

“Another Beer?” She asked as she walked over, making Luke nod again. “On your brother’s tab?” Luke nodded once more. Grabbing the beer from her hands with a thank you, slowly walking back to the table. The drinks slowly hitting him, making him wobble a little on his walk back, a perfect thing for Jack to point out.

“Getting a little drunk, eh?” Jack’s voice was loud and his words were slightly slurred, making his point irrelevant compared to his state.

“Shh.” Nico urged, holding his head in his hands, clearly tired of Jack already. “How ‘bout we go do some shots?” He suggested, pushing Jack out of the booth.

“Yes!” Jack cheered, grabbing Luke’s hand and pulling him to the bar.

“Slow down or I’ll puke on you.” Luke moaned, making Jack freeze about three feet from the bar.

“Don’t do that.” he warned, continuing the path to the bar, Nico, Akira, and some others who had found them followed.

“Round of shots please!” Jack cheered at the bartender, making her smile and continue making drinks.

She slid a tray of shots to the group shortly, everyone quickly grabbing a shot and tipping it back. Luke shook his head as he finished, seeing his brother do the same.

“No more shots.” Jack encouraged, getting many nods from the others.

The group returned to the booth, shoving John and Dawson, who had been brought over to watch the phones when they left, over to sit. Luke, sliding in beside John, placed his head in his hands, begging the world to stop spinning.

Jack returned, last of the group, carrying more drinks for himself and Luke, sliding Luke another beer. Luke took it quickly, taking a sip before standing up.

“I am..” His words trailed off, “‘gonna go dance!” He finished, slightly swaying already. Jack nodded, getting up with his brother.

“I’m coming with, no way I’m leaving your drunk ass alone out there.”

“You’re drunk too!” Luke argued, seeing Jack shake his head.

“I’ve had two drinks and a shot, you’re on drink what five?” Jack accused, making Luke think back to how many he’d had.

“But you got drinks at the same time as me?” Luke wouldn’t deny he was on drink five, that was right, but he could question Jack.

“Luke, I came back with water, each time.” Jack deadpanned, seeing the wide-eyed expression Luke gave.

“Oh, well, let’s go dance!” Luke cheered, letting loose, and dragging Jack to the dance floor.

He was swaying and jumping around Jack for half an hour before he deemed, to Jack, very slurred, ‘I miss my princess and my feet hurt’. Making Jack laugh and bring his brother off the dance floor, leading him back to the table.

“Do you want me to call princess for you?” Jack grinned, clearly entertained by his drunken younger brother.

“Not yet. Nico’s calling!” Jack turned, confused, looking for Nico. Nico was waving his arms to call the team over, bringing everyone into a huddle in the club.

“We got karaoke, who’s going?”

“Oh me!” Luke cheered, a few others cheering him on.

“Oh god.” Jack mumbled, walking back to the table to grab Luke’s phone. Typing in the password quickly and pressing your contact.

“Luke? Why are you calling at-” you paused, “1 am?”

“Not Luke. But he is about to sing karaoke so I think you should come get him.” Jack rushed out, seeing his brother wander back over, after his name was put on the list for third.

“Oh my gosh! Is that my princess? I miss her, awh my baby girl.” Luke mumbled, seeing Jack on the phone, stumbling over to grab the phone.

“Princess?” He got out as he leaned against the table, Jack holding onto him for support.

“Hi, lu.”

“Oh my gosh I miss you, can I come home later? I wanna sleep with you.” His words a little slurred together but understandable, making you giggle.

“Yes you can, Lu, you can come here after you sing that karaoke I heard you signed up for.” Luke’s eyes shot open to Jack.

“You tol-” His word interrupted with a hiccup, “ Told her?”

“I did.” Jack confirmed, taking the phone back to whisper goodbye and hang up.

“Hey! You took away my princess.” Luke looked on the verge of tears, Jack patting his back.

“You’ll see her soon, go wait to sing your karaoke.” That snapped Luke out of it, waddling over to the line of Devils players waiting for their turn.

“Where is he?” You asked, finding Jack at the corner table, sitting with the pile of phones, along with John, Dawson, Akira and a few others.

“Oh you’re in! How’d you get in?”

“Told them I had to pick up the kid, so where is he?”

“Look on stage, they’re getting his song up.” Jack grinned, seeing the words to ‘Black’ come up.

“His go to song.” You grinned, sliding in beside Jack to watch the performance.

The opening notes flooded the club, mostly empty now, only a few others besides the team. Luke’s focus being solely on the lyrics in front of him, reading them on cue. Of course it wasn’t the first time he’d sung for you, usually in a joking manner, but every time you thought he sounded like an angel.

The guitar solo hit and he looked around, catching your eyes. You could see the way his smile lit up at the sight of you making your heart soor. His attention brought back to the words appearing on the screen again, finishing out his song before running over to the table. Microphone dropped on the stage as he jumped off, running to the table, leaving you just enough time to stand up before he got there.

Quickly picking you up, spinning you around while you laughed. His stomach filled with butterflies at the sound, begging to listen to it forever.

“Hi Lu.” You grinned at the tall boy, seeing his dilated pupils and sappy smile.

“Hi princess.” He grinned, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Missed you.” He confessed, wrapping his arms tighter around your body.

“Missed you too, pretty boy.” He smiled at the nickname, closing his eyes and leaning his head on your shoulder. “Should we go home?” He nodded at the question, grabbing your hand to pull you out.

“Wait, gotta get your phone.” He stopped while you waited for Jack to pass you Luke’s phone, thanking him and telling him you’d return Luke tomorrow sometime. He laughed at your words, modding and letting you bring Luke to yours.

“I get a night with my favorite princess!” Luke cheered as you led him to the car, opening the passenger door for him.

“I’d hope I’m your only princess.” You played, buckling his seatbelt for him.

“Oh you are, you’re my favorite girl, you know that.” His words were slowly slipping together, his head falling against your shoulder while you helped him.

You ran over to the driver's seat quickly, simply wanting to get the drunk boy in bed. His hand drug across the console to rest on your thigh, making you flinch at the contact.

“What’re you doing, Lukey?”

“Wanna hold your hand, but you’re driving.” He mumbled, his head pressed against the cool window. You nodded, letting his hand have its place on your thigh while you drove. It was a short drive, less than ten minutes, yet Luke was complaining every two.

“Are we home yet?”

“We home?”

“Home?”

Every other minute you had to tell him no, not yet. And then it’d repeat.

“Lu, we’re home.” You whispered, seeing the boy dozing off to sleep in the seat.

“Home?”

“Yep.” He lifted his head at the confirmation, stretching as much as he could. You walked over to his side quickly, helping him out of the car so he wouldn’t fall. Gently leading him the path of your house and inside, his figure leaned slouched against the wall while you unlocked your door.

He was quick to stumble his way in, making you reach for him quickly, holding up.

“Lu slow down please?” You whispered, holding him as close as you could while you locked the door again. You could feel his nod, just standing over you now.

“Let’s go to bed now, huh?” He nodded, leading the way to your room.

“You’re so pretty.” He mumbled, falling onto your bed.

“What?” It caught you off guard, reaching for something he could sleep in.

“You’re so gorgeous, god I just want to kiss you all the time but I don’t want to ruin this ‘cause I’ll lose you and I can’t do that, I can’t live without you.”

You stood with your back to him for a minute, holding a shirt you stole from him a while ago in one hand. Letting his words pour over you, before turning to pass him the shirt.

“Get changed, I’ll go get changed in the bathroom then we’ll go to bed, yeah?” He nodded at the words, lifting his shirt before you could even leave the room.

You walked to the bathroom quickly, leaning your head against the door as soon as you closed it.

Deep breaths. Calm. Luke loves you.

You got changed as fast as you could with shaky hands, this wasn’t the first time you and Luke shared a bed, you needed to calm down.

Yet you couldn’t. You returned to see Luke, face down, laying on top of your blankets.

“Oh, babes.” You smiled at the scene, seeing the boy lift his head to look at you. “What’re you doing?”

“Goin’ to bed.” He grinned, laying his head back down. Slowly you walked over, coaxing him off the bed to move the blankets.

Getting him under the blankets with effort, pushing his body onto the bed when he fell on the side.

“Ugh would you just cooperate?” You groaned at the defenceman as he laid, partially sliding off your bed.

“I’ll cooperate for a kiss.” He grinned, seeing the wide eyed look you gave him.

“Lu, you’re drunk, don’t do this now.”

“I’m sobering up.” He mumbled, standing up quickly before running to your bathroom. Leaving you stood there for a moment before following after him, seeing the tall boy hunched over your toilet.

Gently you sat behind him, rubbing his back, occasionally running your hands through the curls at the nape of his neck. Mumbling sweet words to him, ensuring that he’d be fine.

“Do you have my toothbrush?” He groaned, leaning back against the tub.

“I do, I’ll grab it for you.” you agreed, standing up to reach for it. Gathering toothpaste on it before passing it back to Luke, who gladly accepted.

“That was so gross.” He moaned when he was done, now standing in front of your sink.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But I’m sober now.” He nodded, making you roll your eyes.

“You are not fully sober.” You argued back, letting him take a step closer to you in the small space.

“No, but I’m sober enough to know what I’m doing and know that I’ll remember this in the morning.” He shrugged, watching you back into the wall when he took another step closer.

“Lu, please, we’ll do this when you’re completely sober.”

“One kiss?” He pleaded.

“Lu-”

“Please, you know how I feel now, I just need to kiss you once then I’ll never bring it up again, we can still be friends?”

“Luke,” It came out with a sad smile, reaching your hands up to his hair. Gently pressing a kiss to his cheek, making him turn his head to kiss you. His lips fit perfectly against yours, like puzzle pieces connecting, you melted against him. His arms trailed around your waist, holding your body against his.

“Lu” You mumbled against his lips, making him pause.

“No, please I’m sorry.”

“Lu, calm down, let’s go to bed huh?” You nodded, waiting for him to nod along.

“I’m sorry.” He mumbled while following you back to bed.

“Calm down, Luke, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I didn’t even ask-” It became clear he wasn’t going to stop no matter how many times you called his name, interrupting his sentence at least five times. So the only logical move was to kiss him, it shut him up.

“You’re good.” You whispered against his lips before he pressed against you again.

“Mhm” He murmured, still pressed against your lips, his hands holding your waist keeping your body against his.

“Bed?” You asked when you pulled away, dodging his attempts to chase your lips.

“But if we go to bed will I get to kiss you in the morning?”

“If you want to Lu, we’ll talk, okay?”

“Okay.” He agree, dropping his hands from your waist to hold your hand as you walked towards the bed again. Quickly getting into your side while Luke got into his, his arms wrapping around you and pulling your body into his shortly after.

Keeping your body pressed to his, his arms snaking around your waist, leaning down to press a kiss to your hair. Leaning up instead to kiss him once more for the night, feeling him melt into the kiss.

“Goodnight, luke.” You whisper against his lips, hearing him whisper a ‘goodnight my girl’ back, pressing your body against his as you both drifted to sleep.

It was 7am when you woke, the sound of Luke running to your bathroom waking you, leading you to follow behind him quickly.

It was the same scene as before, your hand rubbing gentle circles on his back, occasionally running through his curls as he leaned over the toilet.

“I’m so sorry.” He mumbled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“S’okay, Lu.” You assured, keeping your hands on his back.

Slowly he got up, standing in front of your sink as he grabbed his toothbrush. Quickly beginning to brush his teeth, opening his arms a little for you to slip in. Wrapping your arms around his torso, his free arm wrapping around you.

You stayed like that while he brushed his teeth, getting rid of the fowl taste that was left behind. His other arm wrapping around you when he finished, leading you back to the bedroom. Laying the two of you down, keeping you pressed against his chest as he laid.

“‘M sorry for last night.” Luke whispered, mumbling the words into your hair.

“It’s okay, Lu.” You paused for a minute, looking up to him, “Do you still feel the same?”

“I’ve always felt that way.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I couldn’t risk losing you.”

“Lu-” You could feel the tears filling your eyes at his confession.

“No, it’s okay I get it, I’ll never bring it up again, promise, and we can still be friends-” You cut him off by pressing your lips against him, feeling his body relax into the kiss.

“I feel the same.” You mumbled against his lips before he pressed against you again, holding your body tight to his.

“God, I’ve wanted to do this for years.” He smiles, covering your face in short kisses as you laughed at the feeling.

“Lu!” You laughed, his smile growing at the sound.

“Hmm?” He hummed, moving his kisses down your neck, making you instinctively move to give better access.

“You…” The words came out far more breathier than intended, the moment switching as Luke’s kisses lingered on your neck, “Better stop.” You finally finished.

He lifted his head, kissing you once more before moving.

He sat up, keeping you in his lap as he moved. Shimmying his was to sit with his back against the headboard, holding his arms around your body the entire time.

“This mean you’ll be my girl?” He asked, looking down at you, where you were staring at him. Smiling at him before leaning in, savoring another kiss with him. “Yes, if you want me to be.” “Oh, I want you to be.” He grinned, kissing you again, lifting you up to sit with your legs on either side of his.

#luke hughes #luke hughes imagine #luke hughes fic #new jersey devils imagine #nhl imagine #luke hughes x reader #mads writings!

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blueskrugs · 3 months

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Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under | Nico Hischier

no thoughts, just vibes and fuck boy nico I'm considering this my honorary entry into demi @wyattjohnston's winter fic exchange because I didn't trust myself to finish an actual entry in time but managed anyway (technically, this took me 10 months to finish) enjoy! length: 5.6k words

It’s dark in the club where Nico Hischier presses himself along Hailey’s back for the first time. She lets it happen, barely one drink in and looking for a good time. It’s dark, lit up by the glow of neon, when the man leans close and asks if he can buy Hailey a drink, hands on her hips as they continue to dance. She doesn’t realize who he is then, but he’s a decent dancer. It doesn’t seem important at the moment.

It’s dark as they stumble outside a few drinks and a few kisses later, a car already called and waiting for them at the curb. Hailey doesn’t remember when she caught his name, in between kisses pressed to her bare shoulders, her neck, but she knows he’s Nico now, soft-spoken with an accent Hailey can’t place.

“I don’t usually do this,” Hailey admits as she slides into the backseat. Nico doesn’t say anything as he slides in next to her, but he keeps his hand on Hailey’s thigh the whole drive back to his place.

It’s dark in Nico’s apartment, too, only a few lights left on before he went out for the night. It doesn’t matter much, anyway. They don’t stop in the kitchen, or the living room. It’s only the middle of October, and there are no outer layers to shed as they stumble down the hallway, though Hailey shivers every time Nico’s hands brush her bare skin.

“I didn’t catch your name earlier,” he says, breaking the kiss.

“Hailey,” she gasps. She shivers again as his stubble scratches against her skin.

“Hailey, I like that,” he says. Hailey refrains from rolling her eyes. Barely. Her name does sound nice in his accent, she admits to herself.

Neither of them are drunk, not really, but the room seems blurry around the edges as Nico presses her into his sheets.

An alarm is blaring, too loud, too early. Hailey groans and shoves her face into her pillow before reaching to slap at her phone to snooze that awful alarm. Her phone isn’t on the nightstand beside her where it should be, and Hailey starts to sit up, confused. It’s not until she hears someone swear softly, in a language she doesn’t recognize, that she remembers she’s not in her own bed. She bolts upright.

Nico’s sitting up beside her, shirtless and his hair a disaster. Hailey doesn’t fully remember how she ended up sleeping in one of Nico’s T-shirts, but she’s thankful for it now, though she still pulls the sheet up across her chest as she sits up next to Nico. For his part, he looks apologetic for the rude awakening.

Nico swears again. “I’m sorry, I forgot I have—work this morning.”

“What kind of job do you have that makes you work at—” Hailey squints at the digital clock on Nico’s side of the bed. “9 on a Saturday morning?”

Nico doesn’t answer, but he shoots Hailey a rueful smile as he rolls out of bed.

Hailey vaguely remembers being offered a washcloth to wipe off her makeup and generally clean up with, but she still feels crusty. Her eyes itch from sleeping with her contacts in. She heaves a sigh and throws back the sheets to get out of bed. She finds her clothes strewn about the room and reluctantly pulls them back on. Her phone landed somewhere on the floor, too, and she picks it up. Almost dead.

Hailey manages to call an Uber and scrape her hair into a ponytail before Nico re-emerges from his bathroom. She’s already lingered too long. This isn’t the type of hookup where they sit and have coffee over breakfast. Hailey shouldn’t have even stayed the night.

“I should—” Hailey starts, as Nico says, “I can walk you out.” “Oh, uh, sure,” she says.

Now that she thinks about it, she doesn’t quite remember all the steps and turns they took last night to get to Nico’s apartment. So she follows Nico back through his apartment, out the front door, down the hallway to the elevators. They stand in awkward silence.

“My Uber should be here soon,” Hailey offers. She shifts nervously.

“Good, that’s great,” Nico says.

The elevator dings, and the doors slide open. There’s already someone on, a boy probably around their age. Hailey starts to step forward, but Nico grabs her by the elbow.

“We can wait for the next one,” he says firmly. Hailey looks back at the boy on the elevator as the doors begin to shut. He raises his eyebrows at them, and Hailey thinks she hears him laugh as the elevator starts to descend again. Nico jams the down button again.

“Did you know him?” Hailey asks.

“He’s, uh, a friend.” Nico says. Hailey raises an eyebrow at him. “You don’t need to meet him, I promise.”

Hailey isn’t about to argue. This walk of shame is already bad enough.

Nico walks Hailey all the way out the front door of his apartment building. Hailey’s Uber is idling at the curb, and they go their separate ways. Hailey doesn’t look back as she slides into the backseat of her car; she’s not expecting to ever see Nico again.

There’s a phone charger plugged in the backseat of the car, and Hailey plugs her phone in gratefully. She swipes through her missed notifications quickly until one catches her eye from ESPN: Nico Hischier scores goal, assist in Devils win.

Oh, fuck.

Hailey puts it out of her mind. Or tries to, at least. She doesn’t actually follow the Devils that closely—she only has the ESPN app on her phone at all to keep up in conversation with the boys in her family about the Giants. Besides, she doesn’t exactly frequent any of the bars in Jersey. She should forget about Nico—his accent when he whispered her name, the way his bracelets brushed her skin when he touched her. He’d probably forgotten about her, by now, anyway.

It’s a few months before Hailey runs into Nico again, at another bar. He spots her first, at a table with her friends. Hailey doesn’t notice him at first, not until one of her friends nudges her with her beer bottle.

“Who’s the guy over there that can’t stop staring at you?” Beth asks.

Hailey follows her gaze across the bar, to a rowdy group of guys she’d been trying to ignore all night. She doesn’t spot who Beth is asking about at first, but then she catches the eye of one of them. She wishes she could hide, but she knows Nico’s already seen her. Has been watching her.

“Shit,” Hailey says. “I hooked up with him once, like in October.”

It’s December now. There was another time, a few weeks after that first hookup—and only hookup, if Hailey has anything to say about it—that she’d run into Nico again in another dark bar, where he’d bought her another few drinks. They didn’t even make it out of the bar that time, though; Nico had dragged Hailey into a corner and pinned her against the wall, behind an empty booth to make out.

Nico had torn away from the kiss to press a line of kisses down Hailey’s neck. His stubble burned Hailey’s skin as he went.

“Hannah,” Nico had murmured, so quiet Hailey wasn’t even sure she’d heard him at first, but then he said it again. “Hannah, you wanna get out of here?” Hailey had shoved at Nico’s shoulders so hard he’d stumbled backwards, looking confused. There had been a moment before Nico’s face had cleared in realization. “Shit, Hailey, I—”

“Get your own fucking ride home,” she had spit, storming through the crowded bar and out the front door without looking back.

She’s been trying to forget that night since then. She wonders if Nico’s forgotten it, too.

Hailey knows Nico spent a lot of the time in between October and now out with an injury. She refuses to examine exactly why she knows that as someone who “really doesn’t watch hockey” too closely right now.

Several of her friends raise their eyebrows at her.

“What, he was hot, sue me,” Hailey says. It doesn’t quell the looks she’s getting. She drains the last of her drink. She glances back at Nico. He’s gotten roped back into whatever conversation is happening with his friends—his teammates, probably, Hailey realizes belatedly—so it might be safe to venture over to the bar and get another.

Hailey is leaning on the bar, waiting for the bartender, when she feels someone come up behind her. The bartender looks their way.

“Her next one is on me,” a familiar voice says. Hailey glances over her shoulder for the first time. Nico is there, close enough that Hailey can feel his body heat. "Hailey," he says. He leans even closer. “Haven’t seen you around.”

Hailey ignores him for a moment to turn back to the bartender with her order. Tries to collect herself.

“Didn’t realize you were looking,” she says.

Nico grins at her, a little crookedly. “I’ve been—”

“Busy,” Hailey finishes. With hockey, with other girls, she doesn’t add. She thinks Nico gets it anyway.

The bartender slides Hailey her drink. She turns around, but Nico doesn’t step back.

“Listen,” Nico starts. Hailey looks over his shoulder, towards the group of guys he was with before. A few of them are already looking in their direction. Hailey meets Nico’s eyes again. “How about—” Hailey cuts him off. “No, you listen,” she says. “I’m here with my friends, you’re out with yours. I’m not looking for anything tonight, Nico, and I don’t think you should be abandoning your friends to leave with me.”

“Eh, they’d be fine without me,” Nico defends mildly, but he takes a step back, unpinning Hailey from the bar. “Next time?” he asks.

Hailey hopes there isn’t another next time. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she says. She doesn’t wait to hear if he answers, just brushes past him on her way back to her friends.

Hailey’s friends don’t try to hide the fact that they’d been watching the whole exchange. Hailey slides back into her seat next to Beth.

“We can never come back to this bar,” she says.

The next time Hailey runs into Nico Hischier isn’t at a bar at all.

Hailey’s walking out to her car after a rec league softball game when she hears someone call her name—an accent she wishes wasn’t so familiar echoing across the half-empty parking lot. Hailey turns towards the voice—Nico’s voice—as she tugs the elastic out of the end of her braid, shaking out her sweaty hair. Nico’s jogging across the parking lot towards Hailey.

“Hailey, hey,” he says as he gets closer.

“Are you stalking me now, Hischier?” Hailey asks.

“You played well out there tonight,” Nico says earnestly, completely ignoring Hailey’s question.

Hailey shrugs. It’s a competitive league, but at the end of the day it’s still a recreational league for a bunch of washed up college athletes. Hits and stolen bases don’t really matter anymore.

“How’d you know I would be here?” Hailey asks.

“Uh, I didn’t,” Nico says quickly. “Your organization, they partner with Eric LeGrand for charity stuff, and the Devils worked with LeGrand a few seasons back, and I stopped in for coffee today after practice, and he mentioned something about the rec sports—” Nico’s rambling, and Hailey realizes he’s nervous. Nico continues. “I was bored and had the night off when I looked it up I saw a game tonight and—”

Hailey takes pity on him and cuts him off. “And then you got here and saw me playing.”

“Yeah,” Nico says lamely. He seems to recover from his awkwardness and grins at Hailey, flashing his dimples. “Are you doing anything else tonight?” he asks.

Hailey regards her own dirty pants, her janky Crocs. She probably smeared her eye black with sweat, too. Not exactly the picture of beauty. “Do those dimples usually work for you?” she asks instead of voicing any of those thoughts.

Nico takes a step closer to Hailey. The strap of her gear bag is digging into her shoulder, and she steps back under the guise of shifting it to her other shoulder.

“I seem to remember them working on you before,” Nico says.

They’re working on Hailey this time, too, but she’s not willing to admit that right now. “I’ve got work in the morning, and I’m sure you do, too.”

Nico shrugs. Doesn’t say anything else, just looks at Hailey with his eyebrows raised.

Hailey gives in. “Fine.” She tries to ignore Nico’s triumphant smile. “But we’re going to mine.”

It’s Nico’s turn for the walk of shame this time. If he’s even capable of being shamed, that is.

Nico looks like he might argue, but he says, “Okay. But you’re going to have to give me your address first. Y’know, so I don’t get lost.” He holds out his hand expectantly, waiting for Hailey to give him her phone. There was a reason they never exchanged phone numbers the first time they hooked up. There was also a reason why there was never supposed to be a second hook-up. Hailey disregards both of those reasons as she unlocks her phone and passes it to Nico.

Somehow, Nico beats Hailey back to her apartment complex. He’s leaning against the driver’s door of his car, face lit up by the glow of his phone screen, but he locks it and shoves it in his pocket when she pulls into the spot next to him and climbs out of her car.

“Here, let me,” Nico says, trying to reach for Hailey’s softball bag.

Hailey shoots him a look and shifts her bag to her other shoulder, away from Nico. “I think I can handle it, thanks.”

Nico huffs but follows Hailey the rest of the way up to her unit in silence.

Hailey’s apartment isn’t as swanky as Nico’s—or as clean, Hailey thinks absently, as she dumps her bag—but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Do you need a Gatorade or something?” Nico asks.

He looks out of place in Hailey’s little apartment, with her hand-me-down couch and Facebook Marketplace kitchen table. Hailey can’t help but laugh.

“Are you this nice to all of your hook-ups?” she asks.

Nico shrugs, looking a little put out. “I mean, I guess?”

Hailey laughs a little again. “It’s cute, you’re cute.”

Nico scoffs. “Cute?” He takes a step closer to Hailey, close enough to slide his hands around her hips. “Just cute?”

Hailey pretends to think about it, but Nico is kissing her before she can respond.

Hailey knows that something has shifted before Nico rolls off of her, before she slips out of bed to take a shower. Nico’s still wrapped up in her sheets when she emerges thirty minutes later, shirtless and scrolling through his phone again. Hailey pauses at the end of her bed.

“Don’t you have to be up early in the morning?” she asks. Hailey has work, too, but she expected Nico to ditch her while she was in the shower. Instead, he stretches lazily, dropping his phone to his chest. “Mmm, probably,” he says. He shows no signs of getting up any time soon. Hailey gives up and slides back into bed beside him.

“Probably?” Hailey echoes.

She resists the urge to poke at his ribs, exposed with one of his arms carelessly stretched over his head, or to trace his collarbone until she reaches the crucifix on his chain, tug on it until he comes over and kisses her again. There’s a tattoo on his arm, bold, black looping lines that cover most of the inside of his left bicep. Hailey gives in and reaches out to trace them with her fingertip. Nico twitches but doesn’t pull his arm away.

Nico goes on. “We have film review in the morning, but skate’s optional.” He trails off.

“Which means…?” Hailey prods.

Nico does roll over, then, bracing himself on his hands above Hailey. She tilts her chin to meet Nico's eyes. He smirks at her.

“It means I don’t have to be ready to go work out, and I’ll still have time for a nap before our game tomorrow night. I don’t have to rush out of here.”

Hailey fumbles for her phone in the sheets and glances at the time. It’s creeping towards midnight. She stalls, scrolling around until she finds her morning alarm for work. The one where she can be a little lazy with her morning routine and still make it out the door on time. She tosses her phone aside.

Nico’s watching her carefully, brown eyes somewhere between serious and teasing.

“Well, some of us have to work normal jobs in the morning.”

“What, it’s not like you need any beauty sleep,” Nico says. He leans in for a kiss, and Hailey tilts her chin up again to let him. The kiss nearly gets away from her before she remembers she’s supposed to be awake again in six hours. She pulls away, albeit reluctantly.

“I don’t think I have any NHL approved breakfast foods in my fridge for you,” Hailey says carefully. An offer to stay and an excuse for Nico to leave all in one. “Just a bunch of frozen waffles and frozen breakfast sandwiches.”

Nico shrugs. “There’s always breakfast at the rink.”

Hailey scoffs. “Must be such a difficult life, being a professional athlete.”

Nico doesn’t retort, though he does roll his eyes and kiss Hailey quiet. She grabs at his bicep, presses her thumb into the tattoo there. Hailey turns her head.

“What is this?” she asks. Her finger follows one of the lines again.

“A tattoo,” Nico says. He brushes his hand over Hailey’s ribs, her hip, where she has tattoos of her own. She shivers. “I know you’ve seen them before.” At Hailey’s flat look, he smiles. “They’re the zodiac signs of me and my family,” he says.

“That’s really sweet,” Hailey tells him. It's surprising, somehow, but Hailey guesses she hardly knows Nico at all.

Nico grins at her again, flashing those damn dimples. Hailey has to kiss him about it, feeling desperate with it, like she might never get to do it again. Nico gentles her, a hand on Hailey's jaw. They kiss, slow and lazy, until Hailey yawns into Nico’s mouth. He pulls away with a chuckle.

“I should let you get some sleep,” he says. He rolls off Hailey again. He picks up his phone and checks the time, grimaces. “Do you know how far you live from Prudential Center, by any chance?”

Hailey doesn’t think she’s ever seen the Devils play in person. “Grew up a Rangers fan,” she murmurs, already halfway to sleep.

Nico slides out of bed, starts searching for his clothes. Hailey thinks she dreams him brushing a kiss across her forehead as he slips out of her room.

It’s a few weeks later, and Hailey and Nico are walking out of his apartment on a rainy Saturday morning. The elevator dings just as Nico swears and pats down his pockets.

“I forgot my phone,” he says. He glances at the elevator. “I’ll, uh, meet you downstairs,” he tells Hailey. He looks back at the elevator, and says, to the guy holding the door for Hailey and looking amused, “Play nice.” Nico retreats back down the hall, and Hailey steps onto the elevator, bemused.

The guy in the elevator speaks up first. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hisch repeat before.”

Hailey feels her cheeks burn. Nico had texted last night, early enough that Hailey wasn’t in bed, late enough that she was under no illusions about his intentions. And yet, she dragged herself off of her couch and into slightly-more-respectable pants, all the way to Nico’s apartment in Jersey City.

Hailey realizes something. “You were the one we saw on the elevator that one time.”

The boy grins at her and sticks out a hand. “Jack,” he says. “I mean it, though,” he continues, “must be pretty special to get Hisch to come back for seconds.”

They’ve reached the ground floor, and the elevator doors slide open. “Thirds,” she says without thinking. Four times, actually, if you count that time Hailey rejected Nico in the bar. Five times, if you count the one where Nico called Hailey the wrong name.

Jack whistles. “Our boy must be down bad.” Hailey laughs. “It’s definitely not like that—” She’s interrupted by—saved by? —Nico appearing out of the emergency stairwell nearby. She shuts her mouth and hopes her face isn’t still too red.

Nico looks between Jack and Hailey suspiciously. “What’d you say to her?” he asks Jack.

Jack laughs awkwardly. “Nothing, nothing, Nico, c’mon.”

Nico continues to regard them warily. “Jack—” Nico starts, but he, too, is interrupted by a fourth person joining their little conversational triangle.

“You two are going to make us late, and Lindy’ll—oh.” The new boy stops when he notices Hailey standing between Jack and Nico. The look on his face turns sly. “Sorry, Hisch, didn’t realize you were doing something.” Jack makes a noise of protest. “Hey, how do you know she didn’t sleep with me?” he asks. “Dude, I live with you, of course I know you didn’t bring a girl home—” They walk away, still arguing.

Hailey blinks after them, confused.

“That was Luke, Jack’s little brother,” Nico supplies, watching them head towards the front door of their building. “I’m sorry on their behalf.” Nico checks the time on his phone and grimaces. “Luke was right, though, we really are going to be late.” They start walking towards the front door, where Luke and Jack are impatiently waiting. Nico presses a quick kiss to Hailey’s cheek as they part ways.

Jack’s words from the elevator rattle around Hailey’s head as she walks to her car, as she drives home. Our boy must be down bad. Is that what this had become? Hailey didn’t know the last time she’d had a hookup stick around and make her breakfast in the morning—even if he had somehow managed to burn the toast—let alone keep coming back for more. When Hailey parks in front of her building, she has a Venmo notification—from Nico: for coffee x. There’s a coffee emoji, too, because Nico’s a dork like that. Hailey smiles down at her phone; they’d been lazy about getting out of bed, until Nico was rushing out the door, and they had to leave their coffees to go cold, mostly untouched.

Hailey’s cheek burns again with the phantom sensation of Nico’s lips, the ghost of his kiss goodbye.

It’s a few days before Hailey sees Nico again. On another night off for the Devils, Nico appears at Hailey’s door with a heads-up “On my way. :)” text and takeout. He kisses Hailey hello, a chaste peck as he steps through her doorway.

“What’s all this for?” Hailey asks, watching as Nico dumps several bags of food on her little kitchen table. She trails after him, curious. “Smells good,” she adds.

Nico grins at her as he starts unpacking the bags. “Wanted to see you,” he says, like it’s simple, like hanging out is just a thing that they do. He goes on, “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I got a little of everything.”

Everything indeed, Hailey thinks, surveying her table—it looks like Italian, sandwiches and salads and pastas and what could be arancini. She picks up one of the discarded bags and reads the restaurant’s name.

“Hey, I’ve been wanting to try this place.” It’s just a few blocks away from her apartment. “Always felt too pathetic to order takeout for one,” she says.

Nico chuckles. “Well, I guess I helped you out then.” He grins up at Hailey, who’s still standing beside the table. “C’mon, sit, we’ve got a lot to eat.”

Hailey sits obediently, across from Nico. Nico had managed to find Hailey’s plates, as well, and Hailey begins to fill hers with a little of everything.

“How much of all of this,” Hailey gestures broadly at her overflowing table, “is on an NHL player’s diet plan?” she asks.

Nico looks sheepishly down at his own full plate. “Not much,” he admits.

Hailey suddenly remembers something she’d seen on Twitter a few days before. She nudges Nico with her foot under the table; he immediately traps her ankle between both of his.

“Happy belated birthday, by the way,” she tells him. A look that Hailey can’t read crosses Nico’s face, but it’s gone just as soon as it appeared. “Had a pretty good game the night before, too, I hear.”

“You watched our game?”

Hailey finds herself blushing. “Saw some of it,” she says. She had thought about texting Nico, both about his three point night and his birthday, but she had chickened out. Thought it might be too earnest for a semi-regular hookup.

“I thought you were a Rangers fan,” Nico teases.

Hailey kicks him with her other foot.

Nico keeps their dinner conversation steered carefully clear of hockey talk after that. They slowly work their way through some of the piles of food Nico brought over. Hailey thinks she’s going to be eating leftovers all week, regardless.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Nico asks suddenly during a lull in their conversation.

Hailey swallows her bite of pasta uncertainly. “Uh, sure?”

“Why softball?” “What do you mean, ‘why softball?’” Hailey echoes. She goes on before letting Nico clarify. “I’ve been playing softball forever. I used to toddle around at my older brothers’ tee ball games, trying to take a swing at every baseball I could find.” Nico laughs a little at that. “I ended up playing all the way through college. A lot of my friends were pretty beaten up or burnt out by the time we graduated, but I never really lost the love I had for the game, y’know?”

Nico nods but doesn’t interrupt.

“I mean, we never, like, won the College World Series or anything, but I liked going out there and playing all the time. When I left college ball behind and started my big girl job, I guess I was feeling kinda lost. Someone told me that New Jersey Play Sports had a competitive division for washed up athletes, it gave me a team again, a reason to get out of my apartment and get active.” She pauses, assesses Nico. He’s watching her intently. “Plus, some of the former college baseball players are kinda hot.” Nico flushes bright red, and Hailey smirks at him. She had actually slept with one of them once, but that had been long before Nico. Nico clears his throat.

“I get that—the, the team part, I mean. I think I’d be pretty lost without hockey.” Nico takes a pensive drink of his wine. “And I don’t think you’re washed up, you looked pretty good when I saw you play.”

“Are you sure you weren’t just looking at my ass in my softball pants?” she teases.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Nico says, holding his hands up in defense. “Maybe a little,” he admits.

Hailey heaves a sigh. They’ve barely made a dent in all of their food, but she doesn’t think she can eat another bite. “I think it’s time to clean up all this fuckin’ food,” she says, pushing her chair back and standing.

Nico stands, too. “Here, let me help.” He reaches for Hailey’s plate, but she holds it out of his reach.

“No way, buddy. You brought the food, I clean, that’s how this works.” Nico makes a face at Hailey, but he hands his plate over. Hailey makes a shooing motion with her hand. “Go find us something to watch on Netflix, or something.”

Nico trails after Hailey as she steps over to her sink. “Oh, are you trying to Netflix and chill me now?” Nico asks, voice low.

Nico places his hands on Hailey’s hips and crowds close behind her, pinning her to the counter. Hailey tries not to shiver. He presses a kiss to her cheek, then her neck, then to her shoulder. He keeps his face there, buried in her neck.

“I think we’re way past that, Hisch,” she tells him. Her voice comes out mostly normal. Nico releases Hailey, but not without one last kiss on the cheek.

With the food all stashed in the fridge and dishes done, Hailey wanders back into her little living room to see what Nico’s found to watch. He looks ridiculous lounging on her shitty hand-me-down couch, one of his socked feet hanging over the arm of the couch. He looks away from the TV to smile at Hailey as she walks over.

She can’t resist bending down to give him a quick kiss.

“Bathroom break,” she tells him, tossing her phone down on the cushion next to him. “Be right back.”

While Hailey is in the bathroom, her phone vibrates. Nico digs it out from where it had slid underneath his thigh, intending to set it on the coffee table instead. It vibrates again, then once more, before Nico has the chance to set it back down. Nico glances at the screen. Three new text messages, all from someone named Connor. Hailey has her message previews off, so Nico stares at the three little iMessage notifications until her screen goes dark.

Hailey reemerges from her bathroom.

“Nico?” she says softly. “Is that my phone?” Nico doesn’t release his white-knuckled grip on her phone. Hailey steps into his line of sight, crouches down in front of him when he doesn’t move. “Nics? Did something happen?” she asks.

Nico manages to say, “You got a few texts.”

Hailey eyes her phone. Nico still hasn’t set it down. “Okay?”

“Why don’t you have your message previews on?”

She’d had to turn them off when Nico had tried—quite badly—to sext her one night while he was bored on the road in December. She doesn’t say that, though.

“Because apparently the guy I’m fucking is nosy as hell.” Nico inhales quickly through his nose. Hailey pries her phone out of Nico’s grip, barely glancing at it before setting it aside. She’s feeling defensive now, though she still doesn’t understand why Nico suddenly got so upset.

“I didn’t realize you were sleeping with someone else,” Nico says stiffly.

Hailey blinks up at him. “What?” she asks. Then says, “I’m not, what the hell?”

Nico crosses his arms, frowning. “Who’s Connor, then?” His eyebrows, always so expressive, are drawn together. Hailey resists the urge to poke them.

Hailey crosses her arms, too, mirroring Nico instead. “What makes you think that’s any of your business?” Nico opens his mouth to argue, but Hailey barrels on. “And what makes you think you can judge me if I were sleeping around, anyway? Jack told me how you’re always bringing home different girls, never sleeping with the same one twice. Or how I literally saw you leave the bar with another girl the night I turned you down in October?”

Nico, somehow, frowns harder. He’d been trying to fend off Jack and Luke’s teasing for weeks; he’d lost count of the number of times he’d told them this thing with Hailey was just casual, just another hook-up, even though the rest of his regular picking up and hooking up had fallen by the wayside. Hailey watches him in silence as he struggles to organize his thoughts and respond.

“I— I haven’t slept with anyone else in—” He breathes out a harsh breath. “A month? Two?” The days all blur together during hockey season. They’d started to turn into: day off, game day, or a day he could see Hailey again.

Hailey’s face softens. “And Connor’s my brother, you dumbass.” Nico gapes at Hailey. She shrugs and pushes to her feet. Nico grabs at her wrist and tugs until she topples onto the couch, half on top of him. “Think you’ve got a little jealousy problem there, Cap,” she teases.

She likes the way Nico blushes and tries to hide his face in her neck, even though he scoffs.

“I’m not— I wasn’t jealous, I was just—” He trails off.

Hailey rests her head on Nico’s shoulder. “It’s okay, you can say it.”

Nico pinches at the skin above her hip, but he goes quiet for a moment. “I think—” He tries to collect his thoughts. “I think I was worried I’m more invested in this than you.”

Hailey cranes her neck to look into Nico’s face. He’s resolutely looking at a spot over her shoulder, towards the neglected Netflix screen. She pokes him in the cheek, right where one of his dimples is. He blinks and looks down at her.

“And what is ‘this,’ exactly, Nico?” she asks.

“I really like you,” Nico says. He doesn’t look away from Hailey this time.

She thinks about Jack Hughes telling her Nico was “down bad” in the elevator, Hailey grins at him. “I know,” she says.

“What?” Nico asks. He looks a little alarmed. “What do you mean, you know?”

“Jack told me,” Hailey says. “Something about never coming back for seconds?”

Nico swears. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Hey, Hisch?” She waits until Nico meets her eyes again. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, because I really like you, too.”

Nico, somehow, looks surprised. “Really?” he asks.

Hailey pulls him in for a kiss, slow and sweet. “Yes, really, Nico. You are definitely the only guy I’ve hooked up with in—longer than I’d care to admit, actually.”

Nico chuckles and pulls Hailey in for another kiss. They never do end up watching what Nico had picked out on Netflix.

#cait writes things #nico hischier imagine #nico hischier fic #new jersey devils fic #new jersey devils imagine #nhl fic #nhl imagine #nhl fanfiction #hockey fic #hockey imagine #hockey fanfiction

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itsnotgray · 1 month

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until forever falls apart | nico hischier

same drill as the cole one, i asked @fantillisdaylight for a player, and this is what became of it. decided this one hurt too good not to share with the masses.

nico and his little childhood girlfriend that start dating at 15, thinking it’s them against the world.

the girlfriend who moves away to canada at 16, promises of forever exchanged amidst the careful kisses they press to each other’s lips.

nico joining her in canada, and for a year, it’s perfect. they’re reunited, and filled with we laugh belief that they may actually make it. they made it when she was in canada, snd he in switzerland, so what can truly part them, if not an ocean?

the nico gets drafted, and still, reality hasn’t hit. “we made it with over 3000 miles between us, 800 is nothing.”

he goes to the show the very next season, headed to new jersey bright eyed and full of hope- hope for a long-lasting relationship, as well as a long-lasting career.

very quickly, nico is swept up in the nhl chaos. the media is more chaotic than ever, swarming through latest number one draft pick, eager to see how he’d perform against the very best.

and somewhere along the way, those 800 miles begin to feel like 3000 again. and suddenly there’s an ocean between them again. and suddenly, it’s like nico isn’t even living in the same stratosphere.

“you haven’t called in weeks nico! i’m lucky to even get a goodnight text. what’s happened to us?”

and nico absorbs the question, searching for answer within himself. “what did happen to us?” he asks himself.

and truthfully, he knew. it was a mixture of things, truly, but there was a primary cause: himself. he brought these problems upon them, and he knew it.

“i’m- “ “nico don’t apologize. i know you. i know how you’re mind works. it’s- it’s not your fault. i just think- i swore we were going to make it. but i think- i think we might’ve been wrong.”

and his heart breaks, but he knows it’s the truth. “‘m sorry,” he croaks out, the breaking of his heart audible, even with some 800 odd miles between them.

“me too,” she sobs back, covering her mouth to try and keep her wails in the confines of her mind, at least until they ended the call.

they didn’t end the call. they stayed on the phone all night, exchanging sobs and apologies, two shattered hearts trying to soothe one another.

at the all star break, nico flys back to halifax, needing one last moment together, not accepting anything less than ending their relationship in an embrace.

he knocked on her door, (the door of the apartment she had moved into at the start of school- nico missed that. he missed a lot. it made his heart hurt thinking about just how much he missed), fully expecting to have to sleep outside her door (but he’d do that, he thought. he’d do it for her. it’s the least she deserved), but to his surprise, she opened the door.

upon her door opening, he was greeted with a sight that made his heart ache in so many unexplainable ways.

she was there, perfect as ever. hair was a little ruffled, but she was perfect. it was like nothing had changed, but it reality, everything had.

“nico,” she sighed out, tears rushing to her eyes at the sight of the boy who had occupied her heart for so long now (but not forever, a voice taunted her inside- that was over now.)

in a blink of an eye, he crossed the threshold of her apartment (that smelt like her favorite candle, he noted inside his head. oh how’d he miss that smell), wrapping her in his arms. at the feeling of his familiar arms encasing her, she broke, sobs wracking her body once again.

“i guess forever wasn’t ours,” he croaked out, a sob cutting him off from continuing his sentence.

“i guess-“ she started, a sob interrupting her sentence. “i guess not,” she finished, tears soaking the fabric of nico’s hoodie (not one of his old ones, she noted. she knew those fabrics. this- this was new. she didn’t like that. it was just a symbol of the distance between them, literally and figuratively).

a while later, after the couple had calmed down, they sat huddled together on the couch, arms still embracing one another.

“it was good, right?” she hesitantly questioned, afraid of the answer he’d respond with.

“the best,” the boy replied.

and with that, it was like the string that tied them together snapped. the feeling was gut wrenching, that much was true. but over time, their hearts would heal. they’d move on, and one day, could hopefully look back on their time together and smile.

but for now, they’d simply remember each other by the ache deep in their chests, the longing that weighed down their bones, and the broken promises of forever in their hearts.

#nico hischier #nico hischier x reader #nico hischier imagine #hockey imagine #hockey imagines #nhl fics #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #new jersey devils imagine #hockey oneshot #gray writes #nhl fic

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offside-the-lines · 7 days

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Right Where We Left Off | Nico Hischier

Summary: It’s September in NYC and Ana finds herself unexpectedly face-to-face with her ex-boyfriend, Nico. They finally have the conversation they should’ve had seven years ago. But, where does that lead them and what does this mean for her future— their future? After all, who are they to question fate?

This fic is dedicated to @fallinallincurls for her birthday bingo. Happy birthday, Bre! I am always so grateful for the incredible comments you leave on fics. Pairing: Nico Hischier x F!OC Word count: 2.5 k No warnings (as far as I know). Bingo card tropes: Second chance romance, invisible string theory, they’re both idiots; it's always been you. Masterlist

Ana’s exhausted. After ten days of straight work and travel, she just wants to sleep and hide in her expensive hotel room. It’s a gorgeous day in New York City, not sweltering and muggy as it often feels in the summer, and she doesn’t want to waste the opportunity to actually explore the city she has visited many times but never enjoyed.

She turns her face up to the sun and closes her eyes. The sounds of the city carry on around her, and it’s strangely calming— it probably should be unnerving. Besides, she has to make a decision soon about whether she is going to move here, the offer letter taunting her from her email inbox.

Her mind wanders across the Hudson for a brief second before she catches herself, eyes flying open. She takes a sip of her mocha, savoring the drink that she hopes will bring her some energy.

It isn’t often that she has a chance to take a day off. Well, no, that’s a lie. She could take any day off if she wanted to. After all, she works for herself. But she usually never lets herself, always working through weekends in an effort to get ahead— of what, she’s not quite sure.

She has always been a workaholic: working two jobs in college, graduating a year early, and starting and selling her own company before the age of 25. She tells herself that her hard work has given her the happiness she has now. She now has the freedom she always wanted— independence.

Ana’s mother always points out that she’s rushing through life because she doesn’t have an anchor. She always goes on about how the stress and inability to relax is going to take her to an early grave. Ana always sees it for what it is: an unwelcome probe into her dating life.

She’s doing quite fine on her own, thank you very much— that’s what she always retorted anyway. She can't tell her that the only stress relief she needs is the occasional hookups from the fancy bars she goes to— a series of tall men with brown hair, warm eyes, and a good smile.

Before her mind even has a chance to ruminate on that again, a little boy bumps into her leg— causing her to spill her coffee a little— and runs to hide behind the chair opposite from her.

“You won’t tell him where I am, right?” he whispers. He startles her, and it takes her a few seconds to realize he’s probably playing hide-and-seek. It takes her even longer to realize this child is speaking in her native tongue. He peers up at her with pleading eyes.

“Of course, sweetie,” she replies, pushing past her confusion. He has big brown eyes and the cutest dimples— it makes her heart ache. She presumes the little boy is hiding from his father and scans the cafe for him. Having not seen anyone looking for a child, she turns back to her coffee and continues to drink it, observing the little boy. “I’m Ana. What’s your name?”

“I’m Jan. I can’t talk right now because I’m hiding, see?” he whispers.

Ana can’t help but let out a chuckle at the earnestness in the kid’s eyes. “Okay then.”

She’s just about to take another sip of her coffee when she hears a gentle voice behind her. “Jan, where did you go?” There’s a pause, “Oh! There you are!” The boy giggles and moves to hide under the table.

Her smile freezes— her whole body freezes. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle, and she feels her cheeks grow warm. It might’ve been seven years, but she’d recognize that voice anywhere— Nico. She doesn’t turn around, praying Jan will just run to his daddy and leave.

She is not that lucky. Footsteps approach her chair, his voice getting closer and closer to her as he says, “Oh my god. Come on, Jan. Get out of there!”

She closes her eyes and holds her breath.

“I’m so sorry if Jan’s been bothering you, ma’am. I—” His gentle, accented English stops abruptly, and a silence hangs in the air as she slowly opens her eyes. When their eyes meet, Nico lets out a barely audible “Oh.”

“Um,” her gaze darts around, trying to avoid the warm brown eyes that still haunt her dreams, “Hi?”

“My god, is that you?” he mumbles, barely audible. He stares at her, the color draining from his face.

Jan finally emerges from beneath the table, his curiosity piqued by this stilted exchange. Beaming at her, he reaches up for Nico’s hand— his father’s hand? It had to be, right? The resemblance— she cuts her thoughts off.

“Um... yes?” she manages to say.

“I feel like I’m hallucinating. You’re really here? It’s been so long.”

“Well, yes, Nico, it’s been about seven years.”

“That’s a really long time.” There’s silence as they just stare at each other, neither knowing what to do, neither moving.

“Yes. It is,” she says cautiously.

He rests a hand on Jan’s shoulder, holding him close. “Why did you never call me?” he asks, looking down at his feet.

“Why would I have called you Nico?”

“You left for London without telling me. You told everyone else. I had to find out from Nina.”

“I had no reason to tell you, Nico. We weren’t together anymore,” she scoffs, “You moved too. And besides, you found someone to ‘replace’ me, clearly.”

She looks at Jan, bile rising in the back of her throat. Nico responds with a puzzled expression before deciding to return to his original line of questioning.

“Why did you leave?”

“I had to go to university, start my career… I have dreams too, remember? Ones that are just as important as yours?” She shudders at the memory of their fight, the fight that broke everything. Her heart races; she can hear the blood rushing in her ears.

“I was young, stupid and immature. But, I swear to God, I loved you so fucking much. You should’ve told me you were moving to London… I would’ve—”

“You would’ve what, Nico? You broke up with me. What was I supposed to do? Stay at home? Or should I have followed you to New Jersey like a sick puppy? Continued wasting my time like I clearly did when you were in Halifax? Watching any and every opportunity— watching my future— fly by me as I waited for and supported someone who was no longer mine?”

“I said that we should take a break to figure things out. Figure out what to do long-term. I never meant to suggest that we break up forever. You just assumed— You left. You didn’t even give me a chance to—”

“Look at you, Nico.” She was struggling to keep her voice under control as it wavered and threatened to break. “It’s always someone else’s fault. Nothing’s changed, huh?”

He looks at her, his face shutters with an unreadable expression, before pulling out the chair opposite her. He sits and lifts Jan onto his lap. The little boy looks between them in confusion, ultimately deciding that playing with the wooden block table number is more interesting.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t mean for it to sound so— I was heartbroken that you weren’t there anymore when I came back after the draft.”

“What about me? What about how I felt when you asked me to just drop my plans for my future like it was no big deal? Or when you suggested we take a break? When you never called me after that summer?” She studies his face, seeing his genuine sadness, and sighs. “We were so young, Neeks. What were the chances it would have even worked out anyway? Even if you had cared to fight for us.”

“I thought that you took the space and realized— I thought that maybe you didn’t want me anymore. I thought that maybe you hated me. I thought that maybe you realized that you were just too good for me. So, I thought that maybe I should let you go, live your life, and find your career like you said you wanted to,” he says, voice thin and reedy before he clears his throat and laughs humorlessly. “I guess I was right, huh? I mean, just look at you now. You’re pretty incredible. Forbes 30 under 30.”

He smiles at her, a small fragile thing. It’s only because she has known him her entire life that she is able to spot the pride that shines through the pain and regret. Her thoughts are crashing inside her mind.

He knows and has clearly been following her career.

In the delicate silence that stretches between them, the storm inside her head is able to bring something else to the surface: the loneliness of her success— the gnawing feeling that something is always missing.

“What about how I felt when I kept hearing our friends talk about every new girlfriend you had?” she whispers, staring into her coffee cup. She has no control over the way her throat tightens over something she’d finished crying over a long time ago.

“I never loved any of them,” he answers without missing a beat; his voice is firm and sure.

“It’s been seven years, Nico. How could you say you never loved any of them?”

“I mean, I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t date some great people because I did. But they were always just— I cared for them, sure, but I was never in love with any of them.” He looks down at the boy sitting in his lap.

“Not even the mother of your child?” she blurts out, outraged.

“The who?” His eyebrows are scrunched low on his face as he studies her.

Ana rolls her eyes and gestures at Jan. “His mother?”

“His— Oh! No, he’s not—” he exclaims before laughing.

“He looks just like you,” she says, confused.

“Aww,” he coos, tightly clutching the little boy to his chest, “Jan’s my nephew— He’s Luca’s.”

“Oh.”

Something about her expression sets him off again, throwing his head back as he laughs. Against her will, the sound nestles deep in her chest, filling her with warmth.

“I’m babysitting him today so Luca and his wife can explore the city a bit. I won’t be able to do much once training camp starts next week. And I want to get as much time with this munchkin as possible,” he explains, tickling Jan’s belly to his delight.

Ana feels her chest constrict as she watches them interact. It’s a glimpse into the future she could’ve had, and it hurts in a place so deep in her chest she’s not sure she’s ever going to be able to unearth it. After their first moment of comfortable silence, Nico looks up at her with a soft smile.

“You know, I got you a ring.”

“Y-you w-what?” she says unsteadily as she feels the world stop around her.

“Yeah.” He looks back down at Jan and fidgets with his shirt. “I bought it with my signing bonus. I was going to ask you to marry me when I came back if we had worked things out, which— I know, it was so stupid. We were, what, 18? Like, what was I thinking, right? It wouldn’t have solved anything. But I just wanted— needed you to know how much I loved you and… ”

His voice gets tighter as he speaks, and he lets the sentence trail off. His eyes flash to hers, holding them so briefly before looking away again. He clears his throat, “I guess we never made it there.”

Ana’s silent for a moment that feels like it stretches a lifetime— or at least, it feels like time has warped and dumped her back into her 18-year-old self, seven years ago. Her heart was pounding so hard that it made her feel faint.

“I would have said yes,” she realizes with a start, the words tumbling out before she has even fully formed the thought in her mind.

“What?” His eyes snap up, finally looking at her again.

“If you had asked me, I would have said yes.”

It was his turn to stare. “Really?” he whispers.

“Yes. Despite our fight, I still loved you. I was waiting for months for you to call me, to tell me that we would work it out, that we were going to be okay long distance for however long it took. I would have— If you begged — Hell if you had just asked...”

Nico just stares, flabbergasted. Neither of them even hear the tapping of Jan’s block on the table. “I still love you,” he says.

“What?”

“What I mean is, can we try again? It may have been seven years, but I still love you.”

“Are you insane?”

“I don’t think so. It has always been you; it will always be you. I have known that for a long time now. There has to be some fate or God or something to bring us back together, right? I feel like it’s a good sign, anyway. I’m sorry for being the idiot I was back then, but I promise I’m ready now. I’m ready to be whatever you need me to be. It won’t be the exact same, but it will finally be us again.”

Ana is stunned, speechless, as she blinks at Nico.

“Nicki?” Jan interrupts their silence, snapping them out of their bubble.

“Yeah, Jan, what’s wrong?”

“Can I have a cookie, please?”

“Sure, bud.” Nico sets him on the floor and stands up. He smiles at her cheekily, “Don’t you dare leave before I get back. I will chase you this time. I’m fast, you know.”

“I’ll be here, I promise.” She feels a bubble of tension burst as she laughs, shaking her head as she watches him walk to the counter holding Jan’s hand.

The seven years apart has worn down her willpower. She gave up on love years ago when she realized that she was probably going to dream about Nico every night for the rest of her life. She’s always known that she would cave if asked; she just never thought this day would come.

She looks at him now. She sees the boy she grew up with and the teenager she fell in love with. But there’s also a sadness behind his eyes that she doesn’t remember being there. The corners of his eyes are worn and weathered in a way that’s unusual for a man in his mid-twenties.

There’s a voice in her head— it sounds eerily like her mother— that points out that she’s always known the truth: Nico was why she was always working, pushing away everyone and everything. It was some twisted self-punishment; if she lost Nico, she had to make the sacrifice worth it.

But maybe— Maybe, she can have both. Ana thinks about the job offer from the company that acquired her start-up— a job based in NYC. She thinks about all the hundreds of coffee shops they could’ve gone to. Maybe there was some fate at play. And who was she to question fate.

Nico sits back down, a tentative smile on his face that makes Ana’s heart flutter for the first time in seven years, and says, “So, Ana, will you pick up where we left off?”

Requests (open) | Masterlist

#bre's birthday fic bingo #birthday bingo #rox writes #hockey imagine #nhl imagine #new jersey devils imagine #nico hischier imagine #nico hischier x oc #nico hischier fic #njd #nico hischier x reader

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sunkissed-zegras · 16 days

Text

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐓 (𝐁𝐄𝐒𝐓) 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 "𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐄" ─ LH⁴³

౨ৎ ─ summary | requested ! -> i kind of have a specific request 🫣 im an ohio state fan so it also kinda pains me that i love luke hughes since i hate umich 😭 my request is reader being an osu student and long term devils fan, so when she goes to a devils game in columbus her friends dare her to make a sign for luke during warm ups that says something along the lines of “can i trade you a hat for a puck?” so when luke gives her a puck, she throws him an ohio state hat w her phone number on it. and he finds it really funny and actually ends up messaging her (and then you can end it how you want. fluff, smut, wtv) thank you <33

─ word count | 2.8k

─ warnings | so so so fluffy it might kill you, luke being a cutie pie, meet-cute situation, ohio state (bleh), slight angst, luke being self-conscious and overly self-critical, hurt to comfort, the devils vs rangers game (😭😭😭), nothin' else!

─ taglist | @dancerbailey @maryleclerc @valluvsu @bowen-power @bunting58 @daisysnhl @daisysthings @hearts-4-luke @iminlovewithtz11 @jackhughesily @literatureluster @lvrzegras @lxvelyzoe @ru-kru

─ ev's notes | luke hughes fic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! guess who's outta their writing slump??? this guyyyyy!!!! so yeah, here is a cute little sweet luke fic because my best friend has been into him and this request has been sitting in my inbox, so!! yeah, enjoy, i love you guys mwah mwah mwah

"HE'S PROBABLY NOT EVEN GONNA SEE THE SIGN," you laughed as your best friend took in the sign you'd made. She nodded in a approval, a knowing smirk on her lips.

"Who cares? It's just for fun. You know, YOLO," she replied, giving you a playful nudge. "Plus, imagine the look on his face if he does see it."

You couldn't help but chuckle nervously, adjusting the sign in your hands. It read, "Can I trade you a hat for a puck, #43?" in bold, black letters against a vibrant red background. You were loved DIY projects so this was just as fun for you as it was for your friends.

"Maybe he'll finally follow you back on Instagram," your best friend added with an amused tone as you rolled your eyes, feeling your cheeks get red. She'd known of your long time crush on the youngest Hughes brother, and she was having the time of her life teasing you about it. "Who knows, maybe it'll be a start of a love story."

You laughed nervously at your friend's teasing, feeling a flush of embarrassment creep up your cheeks. "Oh please, it's just a bit of fun," you replied, trying to play off your crush on Luke as nothing more than innocent admiration.

But deep down, the idea of catching Luke's attention in any way made your heart flutter.

Entering the Nationwide Arena, the energy of the crowd enveloped you, and you couldn't help but feel a rush of adrenaline. As the players hit the ice for warm-ups, you scanned the rink eagerly, trying to catch a glimpse of Luke. With your homemade sign clutched tightly in your hand, you made your way to the glass, positioning yourself so that Luke could see you.

Then, there he was, Luke Hughes, effortlessly weaving between his teammates with grace. You couldn't tear your eyes away as he neared your section of the glass, your breath catching in your throat. You'd only seen him one other time and that was at a Michigan game - however, because it didn't end very well, you decided it was best not to go get a picture with him.

He looked more put together this time, his curls pouring out of his helmet in a way that made your heart jump. You could feel your best friend's amused gaze on the side of your face, you rolled your eyes as she let out a teasing laugh.

"Oh, shut up."

"Hold up your sign higher, Y/N." She urged, nudging you playfully. You did as she said, holding the sign as high as you could.

To your surprise, Luke's gaze flickered towards you, a smirk playing on his lips as he skated closer. He pointed at your sign, giving you a nod of approval before flipping a puck over the glass in your direction.

"Oh my fucking god," your friend mumbled as she caught the puck. You couldn't believe it. Your heart was pounding with excitement as your friend caught the puck that Luke had sent flying your way.

With trembling hands, you fumbled in your bag for the Ohio State hat you had brought along, your heart pounding in your chest.

"You're actually gonna give him the hat?" Your friend laughed as she glanced back at Luke, an amused expression on his face as he waited for you to throw him the hat.

As you lifted up the hat from your bag, Luke let out an amused chuckle as he caught sight of it, his eyes widening with surprise. With a nervous laugh, you nodded, feeling a flush of embarrassment creeping up your cheeks.

"Yeah, why not?" you replied, trying to sound casual despite the flutter of butterflies in your stomach. You glanced in between Luke and your friend, feeling a surge of confidence as you smiled.

Quickly scribbling your phone number on a scrap of paper, you tucked it inside the hat before tossing it over the glass towards Luke. Gripping on the red hat, you tossed it over the glass towards him. He caught it with ease, giving you an impressed smirk.

You mimicked holding a phone to your ear, gesturing towards Luke with a playful smile before mouthing the words 'call me' as your best friend erupted in laughter, her face turning red. Luke couldn't help but join in on the laughter as he shook his head, skating off with the hat in his hands.

──

"I still can't believe you did that," your best friend giggled as she drove home. To no one surprise, the devils had won and you were over the moon.

You couldn't help but giggle along with her, the adrenaline from the encounter still coursing through your veins. "I can't believe it either," you admitted, your smile widening as you replayed the moment in your mind.

As you finally arrived back at your dorm, you couldn't wipe the grin from your face, the memory of Luke's amused reaction playing on a loop in your mind. You got ready for bed and snuggled into the bed but no matter how hard you tried to sleep, you just couldn't.

So, you pulled out your phone and went on TikTok, scrolling endlessly. You knew you'd regret it in the morning but sleeping didn't seem too appealing, especially after the night you'd had.

Suddenly, your phone buzzed and you glanced up to read the message. Your heart skipped a beat once you'd glanced at it. It was an unknown number, with an unfamiliar area code.

You clicked on the number and searched the area code and it was Michigan. You didn't know anyone from Michigan, so who the hell could it─

Oh.

It suddenly clicked, your eyes widening in disbelief. As you stared at the screen, a rush of excitement flooded through you. Could it be? Your mind raced with possibilities as you hesitated for a moment before tapping on the message.

unknown so you're still an ohio fan after we beat ur ass ?

you who's this?

unknown how many hats did you give away tonight? 🥲

you luke???? hughes????

unknown good so im the only one, i hope 🥰

You let out scoff, in utter disbelief. Before responding furthur, you screenshotted the conversation and sent it to your best friend. There was no fucking way that Luke Hughes had messaged you.

──

A few weeks passed and you'd been talking to Luke almost everyday. And that wasn't an exaggeration, after every conversation that died, Luke began another one. You'd even gone as far as FaceTiming him, it seemed surreal for the first couple weeks but it had since become normal.

"How was your test?" Luke spoke, his voice muffled as he chewed on his protein bar. You put your phone down on the desk as you shrugged, sighing. "Wow, that bad?"

You chuckled softly, the sound carrying through the phone as you leaned back in your chair. "Yeah, pretty much," you admitted, running a hand through your hair. "But hey, at least it's over now. I can finally breathe a sigh of relief."

Luke's laughter echoed through the speaker, and you couldn't help but smile at the sound. Despite the miles between you, his presence felt comforting and familiar, a constant in your otherwise chaotic life.

"Who needs Calc? I mean, it's useless." Luke added as he took another bite of his protein bar. Before you could respond, someone in Luke's background began talking. "Yeah, yeah. I'll clean it after I get off the phone."

Your lips curved into an amused smile as you heard the voice retort, watching Luke's expression became annoyed. "I'm on the phone, Jack. Give me two seconds-"

The next thing you see is Luke's screen being shaking and a few voices arguing before Jack took his phone, coming on to the screen."Y/N, tell Luke to wash his dirty ass dishes."

"Luke, listen to your big brother." You respond teasingly, causing Jack to smirk at his younger brother.

Luke rolled his eyes but you could see a hint of amusement dancing in them. "Come on, Y/N, you're supposed to be on my side," he joked, though there was a playful glint in his eyes.

You chuckled at the playful banter between the brothers, feeling a sense of amusement. "Sorry, Luke, but I have to agree with Jack on this one. Clean those dishes, it's disgusting."

Jack grinned, giving you a thumbs-up before disappearing off-screen. Luke let out an exaggerated sigh, but you could see the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"Fine, fine," he relented, rolling his eyes theatrically. "But only because you said so, Y/N."

"Good."

"See! You only listen to Y/N!" Jack shouted as Luke's face flushed, glaring at his brother off-screen before he disappeared into the home.

"Looks like I have some influence around here," you teased, flashing Luke a playful grin.

Luke shook his head, a sheepish smile playing on his lips. "I swear, he's impossible sometimes," he muttered, though there was a fondness in his voice that betrayed his annoyance.

"It's okay. That's just how all siblings are," you cleaned on to the desk as you watched Luke through the screen.

There was a short silence as Luke gazed back at you through the screen, his lips curving into a smile. "Hey, so uh... we have a game later this week."

"Yeah, I know. Against the Rangers."

Luke ran his hands through his curls, his expression a little anxious before he continued. "And don't you have spring break?"

You put two and two together, a small smile playing on your lips as you nodded.

"Well, uh... I was thinking, maybe you could come to the game?" Luke's words came out in a rush, his cheeks flushing slightly as he awaited your response. "So we can finally hang out in person."

Your heart skipped a beat at his invitation, the idea of finally hanging out with Luke in person sending a thrill through you. "I'd love to," you replied eagerly, unable to hide the excitement in your voice.

Luke's smile widened at your enthusiastic response, relief evident in his eyes. "Great! I'll make sure you have the best seats in the house."

"Good, I wanna be watching when you beat the Ranger's asses." You joked as he smiled.

"Oh and, you have one of my jerseys. Right?"

You let out a laugh as you rolled your eyes. "Yeah, of course I do,"

Luke chuckled, a hint of pride evident in his expression. "Good, because I was thinking you could wear it to the game. Show some support for your favorite player," he teased.

"Who said you were my favorite player-"

"Hey, I was the one you gave your number to." Luke teased as you rolled your eyes.

"Okay fine," you admitted with a smirk.

Luke flashed you a satisfied smile, his eyes sparkling with amusement. "So, you'll wear the jersey then?"

You nodded, unable to resist his infectious enthusiasm. "Yeah, I'll wear it. But only because you asked so nicely."

Luke's grin widened, a sense of satisfaction evident in his gaze. "Okay, great. Maybe I'll even sign it for you?"

"Oh, shut up." You rolled your eyes as Luke let out a very amused laugh. "Show-off."

──

Luke didn't have a lot of time before the game so he only waved at you during warmups, but you weren't mad about it. With a smile on your face, you waved back at Luke, sending him a silent message of support and encouragement.

You understood the importance of the game and knew that Luke needed to be on his A-game tonight. However, Luke did keep his promise of giving you the best seats in the house ─ you felt as though you were really on the ice, with the players.

You stood in the stands, watching as Luke and the rest of the team warmed up on the ice. As the puck dropped and the game began, you cheered loudly, your heart filled with pride for your favorite player.

The Rangers came out strong, controlling the puck and applying pressure on the Devils' defense early on. Despite their best efforts, the Devils struggled to gain momentum, facing relentless attacks from their opponents.

In the end, it was a hard-fought battle, but the Rangers had won. You weren't disappointed, no. But you knew how hard everyone could be on Luke, despite him being a rookie. You were a little conflicted, maybe this wasn't the best game you could've came to.

Luke made his way towards the tunnel, his expression disappointed. You knew this one of the biggest games of the season and knowing Luke, he probably thought it was all his fault.

You knew how much he poured into every game, and it pained you to see him shouldering the weight of the loss. Despite your conflicted feelings about the outcome of the game, your support for Luke never wavered.

You made your way out of the arena, waiting outside the player's exit area. You glanced around, scanning the area for any sign of Luke or the rest of the team. As the minutes passed, you shifted from foot to foot, nerves knotting in your stomach as you waited.

Finally, the door to the player's exit swung open, and you held your breath, your heart pounding in your chest. And then, there he was—Luke emerged from the doorway, his expression still clouded with disappointment from the game.

You stepped forward, a sympathetic smile tugging at your lips as you approached him. "Hey, Luke," you called out, your voice soft.

Luke's gaze met yours as he bit the inside of his cheek. "Hey."

You could feel the anxiety radiating off of him and you couldn't help but frown. You looked up at the taller brunette as he sighed.

"I'm sorry that I, uh wasted your time. I should have invited you to a better game." Luke apologized, his voice tinged with self-doubt.

You shook your head, a sympathetic smile touching your lips as you gazed up at him. "Luke, you didn't waste my time," you reassured him, your tone gentle yet firm. "Being here with you, win or lose, means more to me than you'll ever know."

"Yeah but we got our asses handed to us out there. And you had to see that." He shrugged as he sniffled, his gaze averting yours.

You could sense the weight of Luke's disappointment as he spoke, his words heavy with frustration and self-doubt. Gently, you reached out to hold his hand. His touch was tense before he relaxed into your touch.

"Luke, it doesn't matter what the scoreboard says," you said earnestly, your voice soft yet unwavering. "What matters is that you gave it your all out there, and that's something to be proud of."

Luke's eyes stilled, a flicker of vulnerability shining in his expression. "But we lost,"

You squeezed his hand reassuringly, offering him a small, understanding smile. "Win or lose, you're still out there doing what you," you reminded him. "And that's worth more than any score."

He sighed before he finally met your gaze. His expression softened for a moment, as he admired you. He let out a sigh before he pulled you in, embracing you tightly.

You both pulled away, Luke's lips slowly curving into a smile as he gazed at you. He let out a small chuckle before he shook his head. "God, this is depressing. What kind of date is this?"

"A date?" You repeated, chuckling. "Is this your idea of a date?"

Luke's cheeks flushed slightly as he realized what he had said, his embarrassment evident in the way he averted his gaze momentarily. "Uh, I mean..." he stammered, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. "I guess I just meant... hanging out with you, you know?"

You couldn't help but smile at his awkwardness, finding his genuine charm endearing. "Well, in that case, it's the best date I've ever been on," you exaggerated with a playful wink.

Luke's smile widened at your response, the warmth in his eyes mirroring the affection you felt for him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," you confirmed, reaching out to squeeze his hand reassuringly.

"Shut up. This is probably the worst one," he chuckled as he shook his head. "Watching as your date's ass get beat isn't exactly... the best."

You couldn't help but laugh at Luke's self-deprecating humor, easing the tension of the moment. "No, I've definitely had worse dates."

"How about I make it up to you?" Luke smiled as he pulled you in closer. You felt your face flush as you laughed.

"Are you asking me on a second date, Luke?" You teased, a playful glint in your eyes as you looked up at him.

Luke's smile widened, his expression earnest as he met your gaze. "I guess I am," he replied, his voice soft. "I owe you one, after all."

"Well, in that case, I'll gladly accept," you said with a grin, leaning into his embrace.

↳ make sure to check out my navigation or masterlist if you enjoyed! any interaction is greatly appreciated !

↳ thank you for reading all the way through, as always ♡

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misshoneyimhome · 4 days

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can you write first time with jack hughes pls?? (fluff + smut) i love ur writing!!

Thank you, babe! And of course, I'm happy to give it a try 😉

I do sense that I'm gradually improving with these soft, smut stories, although I still have room to grow in this area 😅🤍

Moreover, I'm aware that I've done this kind of theme before, even featuring JH, but I hope it's still enjoyable to read 🌺

Tropes & warnings; friends to lovers, reader's first-time, virginity; 18+ smut, fingering, protected penetrative sex;

Word count; 4.5K

・✶ ｡ﾟ

The First Time | Jack Hughes 🖋️⚡️🌺

"How's it goooing? 😏" "JACK! Stop texting! I'm in the middle of a date here..."

"I know, just wondering how it's going 😈" "Seriously, don't you have anything else to do! 🙄" "Nah, just chilling at home 😉 Why are you even replying? Shouldn't you be talking to him?" "Ugh, you’re so annoying right now... but no, he's on the phone with someone 🙄" "Isn't that like the third call tonight 🤔" "Just the fact that you've noticed says something about how this date's going... 😒" "Sorry that sucks y/n... thought things were going well between you two 😕 you seemed pretty into him" "Yeah, well, turns out it's a one-way street 🙃"

Tonight, marked your fourth date with Ben; a young professional from New York who'd taken a keen interest in you since bumping into you at the library, where he’d confidently asked you out, and you’d happily agreed.

It had been a simple encounter. Just two young adults navigating life in the big city. Yet, your connections across the water also often had you traveling back and forth between your home and Newark, especially because of one person.

Jack Hughes had probably become your closest friend, since he unexpectedly came into your life when you were dating one of his friends. However, when that relationship fizzled out, you surprisingly ended up forming a bond with Jack instead of being left out in the cold.

You never quite understood what went down between your ex and Jack, as it seemed like they had a falling out or something. But frankly, you didn't care – you felt like you came out of the break-up on top with your friendship with Jack.

Despite his own hectic lifestyle, he was always there for you, even on the most personal levels. Already right from the start, when you first met in your friend group, and later as you spent more time together before your relationship with your ex started to crumble, you felt a certain connection.

Jack tried to support both of you through the breakup, but when push came to shove, he ended up siding with you, which turned out to be the best possible outcome for you. As the social and caring person he was, Jack became your pillar of support, your rock whenever you felt low or unsure of yourself.

And in return, you stood by him through thick and thin in his hockey career. As his dear friend, you were always there at his games, ready to cheer him up after a tough loss.

"Maybe Ben's just nervous 😉 and he's getting advice from his friend on how to talk to you" "Do guys actually do that? 😅" "Some of them do 😂"

At this point, you'd lost track of how long Ben had been out on the balcony, deep in conversation on the phone. You felt your heart starting to race as nerves as suspicions crept in about the date. Despite the initial connection you shared, something felt off. And when things felt off, they usually were.

Deep down, you had a gut feeling about why he was acting this way. It was the same reason your ex had given for breaking up with you, and why other guys you'd dated had lost interest, though it was never explicitly stated. Just mentioning it seemed to make them pull away.

"Alright I think he's heading back now 🤞🏼" "Fingers crossed, babe!" "Jack... you can’t pull off ‘babe’ 😂" "What do you mean by that 😅"

And unfortunately, the date ended just as you'd feared, as Ben returned from his balcony call and gently explained that he wasn't interested in continuing to date.

For a moment, you felt a pang of hurt, thinking he actually liked you. But as you'd mentally prepared for this outcome, the disappointment faded quickly, and you simply gave him a sweet smile before he left your studio apartment.

"I'm giving up, Jack... I don't think there's anyone out there for me!! 😫🥺" "What? He ended things?? Whyyy?" "You know why..." "HE SAID THAT?? I'm gonna beat his fucking ass..." "Well, he didn't say it outright... but let's face it, Jackie... no one wants to date a 22-year-old virgin..."

There it was. The truth you didn't want to admit, but somehow it kept getting confirmed: You were still a virgin.

Despite being in a few relationships, you'd never quite reached that point. And now you were convinced it was the main reason for your breakups. With your ex - Jack's friend - you just didn't feel ready, and though he never explicitly said it, you sensed his impatience. Then every time you dated someone new, when they hinted at wanting sex, you had to explain your situation. And then they all seemed to lose interest.

It was the same story every time.

"Want me to come over?" "You don't have to... it's late and you have training tomorrow 💓" "That doesn't matter! You do, and I want to make sure you're okay, so I'm on my way over" "Then why even ask? 🙃"

It didn't take long before Jack arrived at your place, and soon enough, the two of you were comfortably lounging on the sofa, each at opposite ends, facing each other under a blanket.

"What a jerk," Jack chuckled softly as he tried to console you after yet another dating disappointment.

You looked down at your hands in your lap, fidgeting with your fingers. "I know... it's just..." You let out a deep sigh and glanced up at him. "I hate that it has to be such a big deal... I don't want it to be."

Jack seemed to grasp your frustrations. It wasn't that you lacked interest in men sexually; you just hadn't found the right person or the right moment to explore that aspect, and Jack understood that.

"They're all idiots, y/n/n... you deserve so much better! Don't let it get to you - you're amazing, and they're the ones missing out!"

His words were comforting, and you knew he wouldn't say them if he didn't mean it. But changing your mindset was easier said than done.

"I know, Jackie... I just - sometimes, I just want to get it over with, you know... so I wouldn't have to worry about it every time..."

"What? No, your first time shouldn't be something you just 'get over with,' y/n!" He responded quickly, prompting you to look directly at him.

"But why not?" you exclaimed, feeling defeated. "It's just sex - everyone's doing it all the time! With random people, whenever, wherever..." You tried to articulate your thoughts, but Jack was already quick with a response.

"Yes, but this is your first time... It's supposed to be a good experience and doing it with someone random just to get it over with probably won't be the best thing," Jack reasoned.

It was an odd discussion to be having with him. Were you really debating how, why, and with whom you should lose your virginity?

Letting out another sigh, you gave him a firm look. "Well, it's my body and my choice..." you spoke softly, earning an eye roll from the hockey player.

"Come on, y/n, don't be naive... It should be with someone who at least cares about you... Just, don't do anything stupid, alright."

"Oh, so now I'm stupid!" You retorted with a huff, crossing your arms defensively. "I think I can decide what I want for myself. Besides, it's not like you want to do it with me..."

As soon as the words slipped out, a rush of embarrassment washed over you. Though you knew it was just a joke, a small part of you felt a flutter at the thought. Yet you quickly brushed it off as ridiculous. That until Jack caught you off guard.

"Says who?"

"What?"

You were taken aback. Did he really just say that?

"I said, who says I don't want to sleep with you?" He chuckled, sounding a bit mysterious, as if it were the most absurd question in the world.

"You - you want to - with me?" You almost stuttered, trying to process his words.

And Jack couldn't help but grin. "Of course, I mean, you're really hot and... I'm a bit more experienced... so."

The suggestion hung in the air as you contemplated it. Was this some kind of joke or bet?

"Jack... wouldn't that be weird? I mean, we're friends..."

"So?" Once again, he chuckled. "It's just an idea. Maybe it would be good for you to be with someone you know and who knows you. Someone you trust, who can make you feel comfortable."

And truth be told, it didn't sound half bad.

"Actually, I think it could be an interesting idea..." you admitted softly.

Jack didn't want to rush anything, as it was crucial to him that you felt comfortable with the pace.

However, as soon as you agreed to the idea, a surge of desire coursed through him. And when your lips met in a tender kiss, he felt a stirring sensation he hadn't anticipated.

Sure, he knew he liked you. But he hadn’t expected to be genuinely drawn to you like this. Yet perhaps, considering what was about to happen, it was a good thing that he felt the magnetism between you.

You weren't just a casual hook-up. You were his close friend. And he was about to share an intimate moment with you for the first time, which he wanted it to be as close to perfect as possible.

Initially, he hesitated to proceed that evening, given the recent breakup and your likely vulnerability. However, as you talked it through, you expressed feeling in the mood, especially since you had hoped Ben might have been understanding and potentially your first time.

So, Jack agreed to it. Let's face it, he wasn't one to turn down sex, even if it was with you, his friend, and your first time. To him, it felt almost like a privilege, as he would be the one to make you feel amazing and ensure you had a good experience.

And as the two of you then slowly settled onto your bed, he made sure you always felt at ease.

He took his time kissing you deeply, allowing your mouths to explore each other as your hands tangled in his brown curly locks, feeling his naked chest against yours. He was almost painfully slow as he undressed you to your underwear, wanting to ensure it didn't feel rushed in any way. But as you grew closer and more engrossed in the moment, you found yourself becoming more intrigued and eager to discover how it truly felt.

And so far, it felt rather good.

Furthermore, you could tell that Jack was equally invested in the heat of the moment, his hand exploring your body as his lips remained locked with yours. Half lying next to you and half over you, clad only in his boxers, he was fully devoted and engaged. And while you, too, were half on your side, letting your leg wrap around his, both of you eager to pull each other closer.

It was in that very moment, you suddenly felt something you'd never experienced before; his hardness pressing against you.

You couldn't help but gasp as you felt how hard he was, realising that you were the cause of it. "Jack... you're... wow..."

And he couldn't suppress the grin at your slightly stunned remark. "Yeah, well, that's just what you do to me."

The moment was both tender and intense as Jack quickly resumed kissing you, but before long, he took the initiative to undress both of you completely. This was the first time you truly felt nervous in the moment. Despite feeling completely safe with Jack, you also felt exposed as your most intimate parts were suddenly bare to him.

"Try to relax..." he softly encouraged you, hovering over your body and engaging in yet another kiss. "Breathe slowly, and let me know if anything hurts..."

His voice was gentle and soothing, and you nodded gently to indicate your consent to proceed. But before fully engaging with you, Jack wanted to ensure your comfort and readiness for pleasure.

So, upon taking two of his long fingers into his mouth to moisten them slightly, he then slowly trailed them down between your bodies to find your core. He took his time, studying your face for any reaction, as you gasped lightly while his fingers met your sensitive flesh, tracing them up your moist folds. His eyes remained locked onto your face, and when he sensed you were comfortable with his touch, he carefully pressed a finger inside you.

"Oh..." you breathed softly, your eyes meeting his as you surrendered to his gentle touch.

"Does it feel good?" Jack asked with a soft smile, feeling your warmth and wetness as he slowly moved his finger in and out, delicately stimulating your walls.

"Mmm," you nodded, smiling as you felt the pleasure slowly building in your lower abdomen. And as Jack then gently pressed his second finger to join, you couldn't help but let out another gasp, feeling a slight stretch. "Oh, it's good," you moaned softly.

Jack felt a sense of pride as he watched the signs of pleasure play across your face. He had only taken a girl's virginity once before, and that was when he himself was inexperienced. But this time, he knew what he was doing, and he was determined to make it a memorable experience for you.

And as you moved your hands to his shoulders, your fingers lightly digging into his skin, he could tell he was eliciting a strong response from you. And he was right.

The way he moved his fingers in and out caused your walls to gently clench, the wetness making a sound with every gentle pump, as your mind spun with pleasure, your toes curling involuntarily and your breath growing erratic.

This must be what a pending orgasm felt like, you thought. You'd heard about it from your girlfriends, some more than others, but you'd never truly known what to expect. Yet here you were, squirming and panting as Jack pumped his fingers in and out of you, curling and scissoring, pushing you closer and closer to climax.

"Oh, Jack..." you murmured softly, urging him to increase his speed.

"Mmm... Do I make you feel good, baby?" he hummed seductively, growing more eager to push you to your peak, wanting to make you feel the incredible sensation of a high.

"Yes... yes..." you moaned louder and louder.

The feeling was intensifying, your vision blurring and your mind spinning. And as you dug your heels into the mattress, you finally let yourself surrender to the incredible sensation that was about to consume you.

"Jack... I think... I think I'm..." you cried out, not really sure how to express yourself.

It was like a wave of pleasure coursing through your body, your eyes rolling back as you let go of all tension. Your nails marked his shoulders as you let out a loud moan, tightening your walls around his fingers as you were introduced to the new level of ecstasy.

"Oh, fuck..." you breathed out loudly as you slowly came down from the euphoric state, opening your eyes to meet Jack's satisfied grin.

"That felt good?" Jack asked, though he knew the answer already. Your moans spoke volumes, and the way your walls pulsed around his fingers confirmed it. So, as you then offered him a shy smile, he carefully withdrew his fingers from your core.

It had already been a wonderful experience, but you knew there was more to come. And Jack's hardness showed just as much anticipation.

"Y/n," he suddenly spoke, his voice low and tender. "Are you still sure about this?"

His concern was endearing, and it only made you smile and nod in confirmation. So, with that, Jack undressed himself completely, revealing his fully erect and proud manhood.

You gasped lightly at the sight, marvelling at how proud and eager he was, while a part of you wondered if it would fit. Yet you trusted Jack completely. He knew what he was doing, and you were more than comfortable letting him guide you.

And much to your comfort, he returned to the bed, hovering over you to share another deep kiss, melting away all the nervousness. Again, he took his time, letting your tongues dance as your fingers explored his hair, before breaking apart to let you catch your breath.

"The drawer," you softly spoke between deep breaths. "Condoms... are in the drawer."

You could almost feel the slight embarrassment as you admitted you'd been prepared for the potential outcome of the night - only the guy involved turned out to be different. But Jack only flashed a cheeky smile as he retrieved the small foil package and wrapped himself up, before returning to you in missionary position. Your hands settled on the back of his shoulders again, your legs spread wide and your heels digging into the mattress as you found a comfortable position.

"Just relax," he encouraged softly once more, before placing another kiss on your lips.

You then felt the tip of his member gently aligning with your entrance, and when Jack sensed you had your breath under control, he slowly and carefully pressed himself into you.

"Oooh..." you moaned as his cock stretched you further than his fingers had been able to. "Ffff, Jack."

Your voice cracked as he eased himself inside your warmth, stimulating your sensitive walls, while moans were cut off as you lost yourself in the sensation. It felt so fucking good.

"You're okay?" Jack inquired with a sly smile, though he didn’t need a verbal answer. Instead, you offered him another nod and a smile gracing your lips, and then he slowly pulled out his length before gently pushing back in, carefully finding a gentle rhythm for both of you to enjoy.

It was incredible. The feeling of Jack's cock massaging your insides felt nothing short of amazing. And as he rocked his hips in patient yet devoted motions, you couldn't find the words to describe the feeling.

Your breaths were incoherent, your fingers digging into his shoulders as he thrust slowly and passionately into you. While Jack, too, felt a surge of pleasure as your tight walls hugged his length.

"Oh shit, babe, you're so tight... Mmm, it feels so good around my dick," he muttered under his breath as your unintentional clenching brought you both closer to climax.

Jack wasn't usually one to finish quickly, but with his busy hockey schedule and lack of frequent releases, your tightness effortlessly made him see stars, causing the pleasurable rush to arrive sooner than anticipated.

His panting mirrored yours as he slowly picked up the pace, assuming your comfort and pleasure by your moans. Your heat was beyond wet, and it was growing increasingly difficult for him to hold back, while his fingers clenched into the sheets beneath you, his mind spinning as your moans harmonised.

"Oh Jack... Mmm..." you cried under your breath as his movements intensified, another orgasm slowly forming within your body. You had long given up on controlling your breathing, and as you curled your toes again, your cunt dripping with juices, you knew you were about to experience another rush of pleasure.

The room was incredibly hot, filled with the sounds of your moans mixing with Jack's steady thrusts and the faint squeaking of the mattress. But at this point, you didn't care if anyone else could hear you. All that mattered was how close you both were to reaching your peaks.

Jack tried his best to maintain a slow and romantic pace, occasionally returning to kiss you passionately, keeping his motions steady and deliberate. However, as the intensity increased with every moan and every thrust, and you both felt the incredible connection between your bodies, it was difficult to hold back. And soon, he found himself lost in the moment, thrusting with more fervour than intended while you became a heated mess beneath him.

"Oh my... I- I- I'm coming... Ja- Mmm..." It was almost too much for you to handle as Jack pushed you closer and closer to the edge again. And this time, it felt more intense than before. This time, you were sure you were about to experience the feeling so many women raved about.

With every thrust, your legs trembled, your mind spun, and your toes curled. Your nails left creative marks as Jack increased his speed once again, pounding harder and more intensely than before.

And not only did those actions push you closer to your peak, but Jack too felt his own climax approaching, causing him to squint his eyes and bite his lip.

"Oh yes... baby, mmmm come for me..." he urged in a deep grunt, his hips slamming harder against yours, his cock hitting you deep with every motion. "Fuck, come with me..."

And it didn't take anything else for him to push you over the edge, into the ecstatic high as the orgasm coursed through you, sending you into overdrive. Meanwhile, your tightness around his length had him following suit, letting out a deep groan as he released himself into the condom and panted deeply into the crook of your neck.

There was a long moment of silence, only the sounds of your heavy gasps as you both calmed from the intense pleasure. Jack remained in position for a little while longer, relishing the wonderful feeling you'd created in the heated moment. Meanwhile, you slowly opened your eyes only to be greeted with Jack's signature smile.

Everything felt like a dream. How amazing your body felt right now, how high your mind was after this, was so far from anything you'd been able to imagine. And as the two of you met in a tender gaze, you couldn't contain your light, satisfied chuckles.

"So..." Jack spoke huskily. "Did it feel alright?"

You could barely even reply, yet your body spoke loud enough on its own, while you flashed him an almost worn-out smile, and nodded again. "Definitely... Jack, it was amazing."

And that was only putting it mildly.

As you both rode out the orgasms, Jack slowly and carefully withdrew his member from your core, leaving you with a slight void sensation as he made his way to the bathroom to discard the condom. However, it didn’t take long before he returned, snuggling under the covers with you.

It was an amazing feeling to have Jack close to you, despite the heat you’d both generated from the sexual activity. Yet, it made you feel at ease and comfortable in his arms as he pulled you closer. And as the soft noise of the street sounded in the background, the two of you simply enjoyed the aftermath of your very first time having sex.

"Thank you," you softly spoke, your voice barely above a whisper as you couldn’t suppress a smile.

"You don’t have to thank me, y/n..." Jack chuckled, propping his head onto his elbow as he admired your face.

"Of course, I do, Jack. Seriously, you’ve made me feel so good! And now, I feel so much more comfortable about having sex... I mean, I can date without having to worry that guys won’t want to be with me because I’m a virgin," you spoke with confidence as you turned to your side and offered him a smile.

However, unbeknownst to you, your words pricked a little at Jack's emotions. "Wait, what?" he questioned, caught off guard by the unexpected revelation.

“Well, now that I’m not a virgin anymore, hopefully it won’t scare the next guy away…” you remarked casually, unaware of the impact your statement had on Jack.

His stomach twisted slightly at your words. “Oh, yeah, right…” he replied, attempting to downplay his reaction as he shifted to lie on his back.

You then lifted yourself up, and a puzzled expression crossed your face. “Jack, what’s wrong?” you inquired, sensing his unease.

Releasing a deep sigh, Jack stared into space, before turning to look at you. “Come on, y/n, you know I’ve always had feelings for you…”

You were taken aback. “Again, what?”

“What do you mean what? That’s why y/ex/n and I don’t talk anymore - didn’t you know that?” Jack explained, hints of light frustration evident.

“Honestly, Jack... I had no idea what you’re talking about - did you really... argue over me?” you asked, incredulous at the revelation.

"Of course! When he told me he was going to break up with you because you said you weren’t ready to have sex and he didn’t want to wait, I told him I thought he was being by a complete dick head, I mean, you’re so amazing and if you want to wait, he shouldn’t pressure you into anything…”

Your silence spoke volumes as Jack recounted the details, assuming you were aware of the situation. Yet your perplexed expression mirrored your inner turmoil.

“Wait, you really didn’t know that?” Jack's own bewilderment surfaced, prompting a gentle shake of your head in response.

“N-no… I mean… I can’t believe you did that…” Your voice wavered as the weight of his confession settled between you.

In that moment, Jack realised he’d admitted something unexpected, something he never anticipated revealing to you.

But it was all true. Your ex's betrayal, Jack's futile attempts to reason with him, and the ultimatum that ensued. And in the end, Jack chose to stand by you, drawn to your kindness and genuine nature.

“Yeah well…” Jack attempted to mask his vulnerability with a casual laugh, though his true feelings were already exposed. “I guess I just… like you, y/n/n,” he admitted, offering you a shy smile.

It took a few moments for the revelation to sink in. So, this wasn’t solely about sex? There was more depth to this connection, you realised. And as the true nature of the encounter dawned on you, your own emotions stirred within.

With a radiant smile gracing your lips, you closed the distance between you and Jack, sharing a tender, romantic kiss with the remarkable boy lying beside you.

“I like you too, Jack,” you confessed softly, your eyes brimming with joy as they locked with his in another sweet moment.

“Really?” he asked, a hint of surprise colouring his tone at the unexpected mutual admission.

“Mmm,” you nodded gently. “I guess I just didn’t realise it... maybe I didn’t want to admit it, thinking you wouldn’t be interested in me,” you confessed, baring your own deeper thoughts.

And as the two of you then shared your innermost desires, a new energy filled the room; one of genuine emotion and romantic connection.

Drawing himself up, Jack pressed his forehead against yours, a smile spreading across his face as he too savoured the sweetness of the moment.

“Well, then I hope that maybe I can also be your second time…”

Your stomach fluttered at his words.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” you grinned. “On one condition though…”

“Anything?” Jack replied eagerly.

“Admit that the ‘babe’ thing still doesn’t work for you,” you teased, a playful chuckle escaping your lips.

"We'll see about that," Jack replied with a playful smirk, the hint of a challenge in his tone.

#my asks #18+#jack hughes smut #jack hughes x reader #jack hughes imagine #nhl fanfiction #nhl imagine #nhl smut #new jersey devils imagine

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heartsandhischier · 19 days

Text

"You slept with who?"

nico hischier x reader

summary - 1.5k words. trying to escape an awkward encounter after a one night stand, emphasise on trying

author's note - in my head nico is such a sweetheart no matter the situation, and NO ONE can tell me otherwise. i will protect this man with my life!

warnings - slight reference to the devils tango (ig), swearing

As the morning sun tiptoed through the parted curtains, it painted the room in a soft glow, awaking you from a restless slumber. A throbbing headache served as your unwelcome alarm, joining forces with the sunlight to assault your senses. You pulled the covers over your head, seeking refuge from the discomfort, suddenly hit by an unfamiliar scent – cologne. With a jolt, you sat up, struggling to pry your heavy eyelids apart as you looked around the room. This wasn’t your bedroom.

Where the fuck am I?

Alone in the unfamiliar bed, you took a moment, attempting to piece together the puzzle of your surroundings. The room was clean, neat, the owner clearly a tidy person. Despite the overall cleanliness, scattered trinkets and personal belongings were scattered along the space, giving it a sense of lived-in comfort – a curated chaos.

Your breath caught in your throat as your gaze fell upon the floor, a scattered array of clothing formed a path from the bedroom door to the bed. With a hesitant rise from the mattress, a sudden realization washed over you – you were completely naked.

Remnants of the previous streamed through your mind. Recollections of hitting the club with your girlfriends flooded back, the taste of margaritas still lingering on your lips. The thumping bass and flashing lights of the club replayed in your mind, each memory accompanied by the relentless pounding in your head.

As your feet met the floor, your head pulsed with every beat, you had to get out of here. This wasn’t your typical scene – you weren’t accustomed to waking up in unfamiliar beds after nights of festivities. And when these rare occurrences did happen, you never stayed long, avoiding any potential awkward encounters with one-night stands. Hastily you collected your belongings, attempting to look just a bit more presentable as you assessed your disheveled reflection in the full-length mirror. Panic set in as you realized your heels were missing – likely abandoned somewhere in the entrance hallway.

You peeked your head past the bedroom door, checking if the coast was clear. No one in sight. You kept your head low as you tiptoed along the corridor. Your heart raced with each step, the uncertainty of encountering the apartment’s owner weighing down on your consciousness. Lost in your haste, a collision abruptly halted your escape.

Fuck

As water splattered and your belongings scattered across the floor, the jarring sound of shattering glass pierced your ears. Before your bare feet could melt into the broken shards, a pair of strong arms caught you, preventing a painful misstep. A heavy silence settled over the room as you couldn’t bear to meet the eyes of the stranger. “Are you okay?” His voice was thick with an accent you couldn’t quite pinpoint, breaking through the tension. Unable to muster a response, you offered a timid apology, keeping your eyes trained on the floor as you began to gather your scattered belongings. Finally standing upright, you mustered the strength to meet the stranger’s gaze. Warm brown eyes met yours, framed by a freshly-trimmed beard and tousled brown locks – a picture of effortless charm, even in the disarray of early morning wakefulness.

You were lost in his eyes for a moment. He must have noticed as he let out a small chuckle, “I’m sorry for ruining your escape. I was just trying to get you a glass of water.” he explained with a soft smile, gesturing toward the now-spilled contents polled on the floor amidst the shattered glass.

Your cheeks flushed with embarrassment as you watched him bend down to collect the scattered glass. It seemed like a series of unfortunate events had led you to this moment – waking up in a stranger’s apartment, breaking a glass meant for you during your escape, and now, standing awkwardly as he cleaned up your mess. What made it even worse was that you didn’t even know his name.

An uneasy silence hung in the air as he continued to tidy up. "So... last night was fun?" his smile genuine despite the situation. You could only manage a sheepish smile and a polite nod in response, feeling utterly mortified. He chuckled at your response, tossing the broken glass into the trash.

Once he finished cleaning up, he approached you again with a fresh glass of water in hand. Dressed in a black t-shirt neatly tucked into a pair of gym shorts, you couldn’t help but notice the definition of his muscles peeking through the fabric. You politely accepted the glass of water with trembling hands. Taking a hesitant sip, the cool water provided some relief to your throbbing headache.

His laughter broke through the tension as he observed your state. “You don’t remember my name, do you?” he teased, causing your cheeks to flush even deeper. You stammered out an awkward apology, feeling like you couldn’t sink any lower in embarrassment.

“It’s alright, happens to the best of us,” he reassured you, his voice gentle and understanding. “Since it seems we’re both in need of a little memory jog, how about we start fresh? Hi I’m Nico,” he introduced himself with a mock bow.

You felt a smile tug at your lips, appreciating Nico’s effort to lighten the mood – definitely not the reaction you’d expected after the awkwardness of being caught trying to escape his apartment. “Nice to meet you Nico, I am Y/N,” you gave him a small courtesy, mirroring his playfulness. His laughter was infectious, melting away the tension that had gripped you moments before. It was amazing how quickly his easygoing demeanor put you at ease.

“I would’ve offered you breakfast, but I have to head out to practice,” Nico explained with a smile, his warm brown eyes meeting yours. “Early morning practice after a night out, wow, you’re a fighter,” you teased, genuinely impressed by his dedication given your own current state.

"Well, gotta do what you gotta do when you're captain," he replied with a grin, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "But I can offer you a ride home on the way.”

“YOU SLEPT WITH NICO HISCHIER?!” Sarah’s voice was a mixture of shock and excitement, drawing the attention of nearby patrons in the cafe. You hastily gestured for her to lower her voice, feeling a flush of embarrassment creeping up your cheeks.

Sarah’s hand shot to her mouth covering it, quickly scanning her surroundings she leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “You slept with Nico Hischier!?” her eyes were wide with excitement, barely able to contain herself.

“I didn’t know!” you chuckled, shrugging in amusement. “Yeah, that’s because you’re boring and don’t watch sports!” Sarah teased. “He’s literally the captain of the New Jersey Devils!” Sarah exclaimed, her arms waving around excitedly.

“How was it? Was it good?” Sarah fired off questions, her curiosity barely giving you enough time to answer. You laughed, trying to keep up with her rapid-fire interrogation. “You tell me,” you replied, taking a sip of your coffee. “I don’t remember, I mean, I didn’t even remember his name!”

Sarah’s eyes widened in realization. “You have to meet him again,” she urged, the sudden weight of missed opportunity sinking in. You groaned – you didn’t get his number. With a defeated sigh, you explained the predicament to Sarah.

“We’ll just have to go back to the club. tonight. “

The club pulsed with energy, red lights casting an enticing glow over the throngs of dancing bodies. Sarah and the girls were lost in the music, their laughter mingling with the bass thumping through the air. Despite their best efforts to drag you to the dancefloor, your attention remained divided, your gaze drifting to the entrance in hopes of spotting those familiar brown eyes.

It was a long shot, you knew, but it was worth trying. Why hadn’t you thought of exchanging numbers? You sighed, taking a sip of your amaretto sour. Amidst the chaos of the club, your purse buzzed incessantly, drawing you out of your thoughts. Fishing out your phone, you were met with an unknown number flashing on the screen. Normally, you wouldn't answer such calls, but tonight, emboldened by the alcohol coursing through your veins, you pressed the phone to your ear.

“Hello?” you shouted into the phone, hoping to be heard above the chaos of the club.

“I can see you're looking for me,” the voice on the other end replied, laced with the same thick accent. Your head snapped up, scanning the club for the source of the voice. And there he was, standing by a table surrounded by a group of guys you could only make out to be his teammates. His warm brown eyes locked onto yours, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he gave you a small wave. A surge of relief and excitement washed over you as you realized you hadn’t lost your chance after all. You couldn’t help but smile, you probably exchanged numbers during your drunken encounter, lucky for you.

With a grin plastered on your face, you made your way through the pulsating crowd. The warmth of his presence drawing you closer, as the pulsating rhythm of the club faded into the background.

“Hey stranger,” you playfully smiled. “Ready for round two?”

#nico hischier #nico hischier x y/n #nico hischier x you #nico hischier x reader #nico hischier fanfic #nico hischier fanfiction #nico hischier imagine #nico hischier smut #nh13 #new jersey devils #njd #nhl fanfiction #hockey fic #hockey fanfic #nhl fanfic #new jersey devils x reader #new jersey devils fic #new jersey devils imagine

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sydnikov · 1 year

Text

Jersey || J. Hughes

Author: Sydney / @sydnikov

Pairing: Jack Hughes/fem!Reader

Word Count: 5.5k

Summary: You and Jack got into a fight before he left for a game. To get back at him, you showed up at the bar you knew the Devils frequented after they won a game wearing the other team’s jersey. Only, a fan of said-team’s jersey gets a little too handsy, and even when fighting, Jack won’t stand for another man touching his girl.

Warnings: Cursing, alcohol consumption, touching w/out consent, mild and/or potential assault, kissing, mild angst, lots of fluff at the end

A/N: This is purely self-indulgent… Though I am a little nervous because I��ve never been a Jack Hughes girlie until recently, plus before my beloved hurricanes eliminated the devils I was battling my growing hatred for him LMAO but, anyways, I still have never written for him before, so lemme know what y’all think about this one... Happy reading <3

“Are you done yet?” Jack Hughes said as he raced around the apartment looking for his bag, briefly casting you a look of irritation as he rushed by.

Scowling, you merely spun around to follow his movements. “Did you even hear a word I just said?”

Jack released a sound of triumph as he found his bag by the couch and threw it over his shoulder. “About what?” he asked, purposefully dodging the topic you were trying to hint at. “You bitching about my ‘nighttime activities’ again?” he muttered, intending to just push back your problem with him for another day.

“I heard that,” you hissed, taking brief satisfaction in the way his neck flushed red at being caught. “So, what, I’m just some nagging girlfriend to you, then? Is that it?”

Jack sighed, rubbing a hand down his face as he tied the last lace on his shoe. “I don’t know, babe,” he said. “Can we just do this later?” Finally, he met your eyes for the first time that evening and found stubbornness and frustration staring back at him.

“So you can stay out until four in the morning again doing God knows what?” You scoffed, crossing your arms.

Jack, fed up, stood up and merely shook his head. He said your name through gritted teeth, a spark of genuine anger showing for the first time since starting this conversation. “I have a game to get to. I don’t know what your problem is but you’re really getting on my nerves right now and I really don’t want to hear it.”

Jack, feeling slightly guilty at the way he just spoke to you but not wanting to be the first to apologize, deliberately avoided looking at your face before grabbing his phone and marching out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

“Fuck,” he muttered, tugging at his hair once before releasing a strained breath. Not able to stop himself, Jack looked back at your shared apartment and debated being late to his game just to talk to you, but his stubbornness ultimately won out and with one shake of his head, he tried to cast you and your fight out of his mind until after he came home.

You’d still be there, waiting for him like always, after all, right?

You, meanwhile, stared at the door your boyfriend had just walked through in shock. Anger, frustration, confusion, and the strongest of them all: hurt, rolled through you in waves as you processed the conversation that just happened.

And the ‘problem’ you had with Jack, exactly?

It started out small—nothing huge, or anything. Jack didn’t have many red flags, if any at all – unless you counted him being a professional hockey player – so the fact that you’d been having so many problems recently was a mystery to you, as well.

Well, your relationship had just reached the 1-year milestone, and you only moved in together about a month ago… That’s when you started having problems, you supposed.

Jack’s season playing for the New Jersey Devils had started out strong immediately, and it was clear this was going to be one of his best seasons yet if not the best. The NHL was booking interviews with him, the Devils’ social media had practically turned into a Jack fan page, and the city had just fallen in love with him.

He absorbed the attention like a sponge, of course, like he couldn’t get enough of it. While he was clearly riding the high of being such a hot player right now, he hadn’t ever let it get to his head. His teammates, family, you, would never let him hear the end of it if his ego got too big.

So, here begs the question: why was Jack coming home later and later, texting you when away less, coming up with excuses on why he had to bail on weekly date nights?

Your insecurities had been eating you up lately, and the fact that Jack didn’t even see the problem made it worse. Was he cheating on you? You couldn’t help but ask yourself during many late nights, curled up in the bed you shared, alone, staring at the digital clock on the bedside table as the hours crept by.

Inhaling a shaky breath, you wiped at your eyes before finally tearing them away from the front door after accepting he wasn’t coming back. Making your way to the kitchen, you poured yourself a glass of water to cool your heated body when the vibration of your phone from your pocket interrupted you.

Feeling your heart swell with the hope that maybe it was Jack, you quickly pulled it out only to be disappointed when it was just one of your friends—then you felt bad for feeling disappointed because you loved your friends, as pushy as they could be, sometimes.

Want to hit up a bar? Is what one of them texted in a group chat with you and a few others. Normally, on a night like this where you were wallowing in the emptiness felt by Jack’s continued absence, you’d deny such an offer and merely drown yourself in the cheap wine you kept stashed, but…

A notification from a Devils news site interrupted your thoughts, and that’s where a devious idea struck your mind. Your boyfriend’s team was playing the Philadelphia Flyers tonight, a division rival, and you just so happened to have a close friend who was from the area.

I’m in, you responded to the group chat and couldn’t help but laugh at the string of fire emojis that followed. Wiping the remaining tears from your eyes, you texted said-Philly friend separately and asked if she had any jerseys she’d be willing to spare.

The text bubble that showed she was typing appeared, and then her response came. I have a Konecny jersey. Why?

Perfect.

Two hours later, you were in an Uber on your way to the designated club for the night which just so happened to be a bar that your boyfriend and his teammates frequented after a win. You sported black flared jeans and stilettos, and the star piece of your whole look: a Philadelphia Flyers jersey stamped with Travis Konecny’s name.

You wholeheartedly intended for Jack to see it to rile him up; he had a vicious jealousy streak, and a time like this was the perfect time to ignite it, especially after the 7-0 shutout win they took tonight.

Once you arrived, you tipped the Uber driver and walked in, a happy sway to your step because you felt like you were finally gaining the upper hand in your little feud with your boyfriend. As you walked into the club you were immediately bombarded with the sounds of booming music and flashing lights—the red-to-orange jersey ratio was almost comical, for the amount of ecstatic Devils fans far beat the few Flyers fans scattered throughout the room.

Drunken cheers of your name made you giggle as you found the table your friends had claimed. Like almost every patron in the bar, they were all sporting New Jersey Devils' colors or merch in some way—except for you and the friend who lent you the jersey you were currently wearing, of course.

“Never took you for a Philly fan,” said one of the girls, followed by several agreements. “What’s Jack gonna say when he sees you?”

So he was here, then, you hummed to yourself, briefly scanning the room for any sign of the team. “He’s here already?” you casually asked, leaning back against the booth and sipping on the drink one of your friends handed you.

“Yeah, they’re over in the booth across from us,” they pointed, helping you locate a large group of men and women who you, sure enough, identified as New Jersey Devils players and fan girls hanging off their arms. Feeling your heart seize up because what if Jack had someone hanging off of him, you only released the breath you’d been holding when you saw him near the back of the group talking to Nico.

Your friends saw the brief look of trepidation on your face and didn’t take long to fit the puzzle pieces together. “Are you and Jack still having problems?”

Smiling bitterly, you only shrugged. “Nothing too bad, really. I just want to get back at him for taking me for granted, y’know?”

Immediately, more shots were ordered and you couldn’t help but grin as you tossed the alcohol down your throat, feeling immensely better with the slight buzz that came after.

More confident, too.

Tossing your hair over your shoulder, you announced you were going to the bathroom but merely used it as an excuse to walk by the Devils group, intent on catching your boyfriend’s eye.

Feeling an arm brush against you, you were momentarily distracted when you turned around to find a man about your age looking down at you with a grin that told you he was already several shots ahead of you. He was sporting a Flyers jersey, too.

“You from Philly?” you think the man asked, but it was hard to understand the slur of his words over the loud boom of the music.

You gave him a tightlipped smile before giving your response. Despite the fact you were on a mission to make your boyfriend jealous, you weren’t actually wanting nor intending to cross a line. “No,” you shrugged, taking a small step back. “But I can still be a fan, right?”

As the man laughed, you turned your head back towards where you last saw Jack and sucked in a breath when you saw the look on his face.

Jack had seen you the moment you walked into the bar. He was just drawn to you like that, noticed every little detail about you—including the bright orange Flyers jersey you were currently wearing that made him clench his hand around his drink so hard the glass almost shattered.

What the fuck? He practically growled as he watched you walk up to your friends without sparing him a glance. You hadn’t noticed him yet, and he wasn’t sure if that made him feel relieved or guilty, because what were you even doing here? You normally always stayed in.

Then Jack had the realization that oh, yeah, you did always stay in—because of him, his schedule, his late nights, and he couldn’t even be bothered to come home to you until the early hours of the morning.

Well then, he thought. That solved the mystery of why you’d been so pissed off at him lately.

The forward anxiously ran a hand through his hair. He couldn’t blame you, either.

“Why do you look like you just fucked up?” Nico’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and Jack only cast him a quick glance before relocating you just as you stood up from your booth.

“Because I did,” he said, not taking his eyes off of you as some idiot wearing a Flyers jersey grabbed your attention. “Badly. Very badly.”

Nico followed his teammate’s gaze, furrowing his brow in confusion until he saw you, wearing a—

“Oh,”

Jack had the face of one who couldn’t decide if he wanted to kill you or the guy next to you who still hadn’t taken the hint that you weren’t nearly as interested in him as he was in you. The centerman’s eyes were abnormally dark in the club’s dim lighting, simmering with jealousy and protectiveness.

But that was the entire point of coming here tonight, wasn’t it?

Plastering on a wide, fake smile, you met your boyfriend’s searing gaze and merely shot him a pointed look before attempting to make conversation with the inadvertently talkative man still blabbering on beside you.

He was handsome in a rugged kind of way if you were into that sort of thing, and towered over you in both height and weight much like Jack, but whereas with your boyfriend the size difference made you feel safe and protected, this guy just made you feel smothered and uncomfortable.

He was well past drunk, though, so you figured he couldn’t do that much harm. You hadn’t let him come very close to you either and were trying to maintain a respectful distance knowing Jack was probably having a very hard time restraining himself from marching over and making a scene.

You were just trying to get back at him, as petty as it may be…

The man whose name you later found out to be Todd managed to keep a fifteen-minute conversation going on about himself – which you found mildly impressive – so when he finally started to trail off, you began to make your escape.

“Nice talking with you, but my friends are probably looking for me,” you said, dodging Todd’s attempts at trying to touch you.

“Awe, c’mon, babe, I’m sure they don’t care,” Todd tried to wink, but it looked like he was having some type of muscle spasm instead. You nervously laughed, trying to back away, but then he suddenly stepped in front of you and got so close you could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Don’t be a tease, now,” he slurred, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark. You tried backing away, but quickly hit the counter of the bar where you were now caged in. Fuck, you gulped, feeling very uncomfortable as he crept his hands up your waist. “Get off me, please,” you said, trying to sound stern, but even you could hear the shakiness in your words.

Panicked, your eyes darted around the room looking for any of your friends you came with or even any of the guys you passed earlier, but in the darkness of the club, you came up empty. You squeezed your eyes shut, feeling helpless and regretting all of your life choices leading up to this moment, and tried to get away from the face that was steadily creeping closer until you heard a voice all too familiar.

A thunderous voice suddenly boomed over the music, and your eyes shot open in shock at the sight in front of you.

“Get the fuck off of her,” Jack's voice was livid, the edges of a growl erupting from his chest as you watched his hand clamp down on Todd’s shoulder to forcefully yank him away. “Ever heard of consent, asshole?”

You watched, stunned, as your boyfriend’s dark eyes glared daggers into Todd’s whose collar was currently in his grasp. Jack might have been a few inches shorter, but he was stronger and clearly more sober as Todd stumbled in his grasp.

“Dude, chill,” you sucked in a breath as he tried pleading with your murderous-looking boyfriend. “I didn't know she was your girl,” trying to get away from a potential brawl, you stumbled back and in your confusion ran right into someone.

Having just been practically assaulted, you jumped as a hand came to rest on your shoulder. You were sure you resembled something of a startled animal and felt almost embarrassed at the situation you found yourself in.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s just me!” Nico’s reassuring voice immediately had you relaxing, and you released a breath as you spun around to face him. Gladly taking the arm the captain offered, you smiled shakily.

“You okay?” He asked once you were safely next to him. You nodded slowly, blinking past the slight pounding of your head. “Yeah,” you replied, your eyes finding Jack and Todd still exchanging heated words a few feet away.

They had won your attention back just in time for you to watch the centerman shove your drunken pursuer to the floor and then step away immediately before doing something worse.

Jack’s eyes quickly found yours as he brushed his hair away from his face, scanning up and down your body for any sign of injury. You knew he was furious with you, but even pissed beyond belief, he was still the most attractive man in the world to you because of how he put your safety and well-being first.

He walked up to you then, nodding his thanks to his teammate for keeping you safe before pulling you into his chest. “Are you okay?” He murmured into the top of your hair, one of his hands squeezing your hip reassuringly.

You inhaled your boyfriend’s scent, burying your face in his shirt and reveling in the comfort his mere presence brought you. “I’m okay,” you whispered, feeling tired now that the night’s events had started to catch up to you. “I love you,”

You felt him murmur the exact words back, the tension slowly leaving his body the longer he held you in his arms and away from the idiot who had his hands on you.

Jack stepped back after a moment, keeping you tucked into his side with a protective arm wrapped around your waist. You kept your face pressed into his side, not yet willing to face reality.

All you wanted right now was him. And your bed, too.

“We’re going to head home for the night,” the centerman said to the rest of the group, hearing no disagreements as they spoke their goodbyes. You lifted your head only slightly to say your own goodbye, giving an extra thankful smile to Nico who merely waved you off.

As you finished talking to the rest of his teammates, you tapped Jack's shoulder and spoke into his ear over the loud music. “I’m going to say bye to my friends real quick,”

Jack had a look of apprehension and even worry on his face, so you stood up on your toes to press a quick kiss to his lips. “I’ll be fast, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “But nothing more than that. I’ll be by the door.”

You cast him a grateful smile before slipping away, locating two of your friends still sitting at the booth looking far more inebriated than before. “Jack and I are heading home,” you told them.

“Oh! You guys worked it out?”

You bit your lip, fiddling with one of your sleeves. Huh, orange wasn’t really your color. “Not exactly,” quickly glancing back towards your boyfriend waiting by the club doors, you winced when you saw his darkened expression. “He’s a little angry with me…”

“Because of the jersey?” they asked, curious. “That’s what you wanted, right?”

You decided you were going to blame the hideous Flyers jersey you were wearing for the series of unfortunate events that happened tonight.

Speaking of, you needed to give it back to the friend who lent it to you, at some point.

“I’ll see you guys,” you muttered, purposefully dodging their questions as you waved goodbye. Luckily, they were too drunk to argue.

You made your way back through the crowd, Jack meeting you halfway to lace your fingers together before leading you to the exit. His pace was quick, and determined, making you wonder just what exactly he had planned.

The cold Jersey air sobered you immensely once you were outside, ridding you of the effects the alcohol had left on you earlier. You finally got a clear look at your boyfriend then, admiring the sharp cut of his jawline and the way he was still fuming even as you walked to his car.

“Jack?” you tried, watching as he pulled open the passenger door for you. “Get in,” he said, avoiding your imploring eyes. “And take that off. You know it looks awful,” he added the last part as an afterthought, scowling at the sight of you wearing a jersey sans his name.

You thought about making a joke but decided against it when you saw the look on his face. He didn't look like he was in the mood for games right now, and something told you you didn't want to test him.

“I’m not wearing anything underneath,” you responded meekly. You heard Jack sigh, and you briefly looked up to find him pulling out a hoodie he had in his backseat.

It was red, of course, a Devils hoodie with his surname printed on the back. The hockey player stared at you, arms crossed and eyebrows raised and that's when you realized he was waiting.

“What, you mean change now?” you squeaked, feeling your eyes widen at the seriousness in his eyes. “Jack, we’re in a public parking lot,”

“And?” he asked, almost sassy considering the situation. “You really think I’ll let anyone look at you?” his muscled arms tensed out of reflex, further cementing his point.

You clenched your jaw, opening your mouth to argue, but then Jack took two quick strides towards you until you were standing chest-to-chest.

He said your name once, placing his hands on your waist to pull you closer. “I almost beat that guy back in the bar to death for placing his hands on you. I would have, actually, if it weren’t for seeing you look so scared next to Nico,” he murmured, staring into your eyes so deeply you couldn’t look away.

“It’s bad enough having to see you wear our rival’s jersey, which I deserve, by the way, because I’ve been an ass to you—but if I have to see you wearing someone’s name that isn’t my own for the rest of the night any longer, I might commit a crime.

“Please,” he breathed, tilting his head downwards to brush your lips together. “Take off the damn jersey.”

All you could do was nod. Yes sir. You maintained eye contact all while you slipped the jersey from your shoulders, feeling immensely better without the scratchy fabric on your skin. Jack wordlessly handed you his hoodie, and you slid it on without complaint.

It was several sizes too big for you; it was loose around your waist and hips and the sleeves were too long for your arms, but you didn’t care one bit because it smelled just like him and made you feel safe and warm and most importantly:

Home.

Jack raked his eyes up and down your body in approval, but he was still tense even as he opened the passenger door for you and shut it once you were in without a word.

You had a feeling you were going to be in for it when you got home, and even with his anger – whether it was directed at you or himself – you didn’t quite blame him.

The only thing you weren’t quite sure of is if he was angry because you semi-flirted with another man or wore a jersey that wasn’t his… Both are completely plausible possibilities.

Jack, meanwhile, had to stop himself from looking your way because he knew he was going to snap, and that wasn’t fair on you. Yes, he had to sit back and watch another guy blatantly hit on you while wearing the opposing team’s jersey, but… You didn’t reciprocate any advances, and he would never fault you for the actions of another.

Just the mere thought of the jackass who had his hands on you made his knuckles turn white on the grip he had on the steering wheel. If not for the terrified look on your face to snap him out of it, he had no doubt he would have pummeled the guy to the ground.

And at the same time, he knew he wasn’t angry with you but angry with himself instead because you had done nothing to warrant his behavior towards you and could even go as far as to say he deserved it, too.

He just wished he hadn’t walked out on you before—you wouldn’t have been almost assaulted if he hadn’t.

Alas, his anger – no matter who it was directed at – radiating off of him in waves was palpable and kept you tense and unsure of what to say or do the entire ride home.

When you finally arrived back at the apartment, the two of you remained silent as you worked around each other in getting ready for bed. For the first time in months he was going to fall asleep in the same bed as you, at the same time, you noted.

The brooding centerman muttered something aloud from the other side of the room, and you looked at him questionably. Jack met your eyes, an emotion unknown brewing in his own that made you curious.

“Orange is such an ugly color,” he said. “What convinced you to even wear that?”

A teasing mood he was in, then. “To make you jealous. Did it work?”

Jack scoffed, taking a few steps forward to playfully grab at your hips causing you to grip his biceps for stability. “It worked, alright,” he murmured, and then his eyes turned dark as he remembered the night’s end result before the two of you left. “I would’ve pummeled him if it weren’t for the guys.”

You bit your lip at the sight of his protectiveness for you written all over his face, hating that you were having a serious conversation now and all you could think about was how attractive he is.

“Then you would have gotten arrested, and probably suspended from the team,” you replied, bringing his attention back to you. Jack cracked a small smile, hair falling over his eyes as his gaze dropped.

“Worth it.” your boyfriend then brought you in close to wrap his arms around you, burying his head in his favorite spot where your neck met your shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispered after a moment, his grip on you tightening.

You had no complaints at his sudden burst of physical affection and happily burrowed your head in his chest, breathing in his comforting scent. “For what?”

You might have accepted the fact he was trying to make up for all the fighting over the last few months, but you weren’t just going to let it go, either.

After all, it was only due to you going out of your way to invoke such a strong reaction that got him to pull his head out of his ass.

“For everything,” his mind raced over all the ways he had been treating you wrongly, and had a hard time forming his words in such a way that covered it all. “For never coming home to you, and acting like you were ridiculous for feeling insecure,” he quickly clarified.

You made a noncommittal noise, muffled by the fabric of his shirt your face was pressed against. “I felt crazy—still do feel kind of crazy,” the tears came back then, the emotions – anger, frustration, sadness, fear – of the night catching up to you. “Did I… Was I doing something wrong?”

Jack felt his heart break at the sheer amount of emotion in your voice, and while knowing that the alcohol in your system was partly to blame for your unfiltered honesty, he knew the words you were speaking were still true.

He had to approach this conversation delicately.

He whispered your name, bringing a hand up to cup your cheek and sliding it under your chin so you’d meet his eyes. “Hey, hey, don’t cry, okay? I hear you. You’re valid, how you’re feeling is valid.

“I’m the stupid one, okay? You did nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing. Well—except for wearing that jersey. But, hey, I don’t even blame you for that, either. I deserved it, yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” you said, not willing to accept his apology because you still felt like he was being too forgiving.

Jack, not being able to stand you hiding from him, gently brought both his hands to your face so he could bring you closer and press a kiss to your lips. “Stop demeaning yourself. You’re better than that—certainly better than me.”

Your laugh was shaky, remnants of tears in your voice undeniable. “I don’t know. I wore that stupid jersey, after all. To make you mad. Deliberately.”

“And it worked,” he replied, refusing to let you shy away from him when you tried ducking your head again. “Very well, in fact. It was really smart, actually; I’m almost proud of you for thinking of it.”

Jack was already making you feel miles better compared to how you were feeling before, and you knew he was using his humor on purpose. His corny jokes were what drew you to him in the first place, after all.

“Almost proud?” you couldn’t help but tease back. “Maybe I should wear a Hurricanes jersey next time. Ooh, or the Rangers,”

The centerman had enough then, and with a wicked grin threw you over his shoulder to bring you into the bathroom. You weren’t drunk, but you were a bit tipsy, and he just wanted to use it as an excuse to really take care of you.

He also just felt really bad, like a shitty boyfriend, too. He had a lot of making up to do and knew this was only the first step.

“There will be no jerseys owned by you unless they are Devils’ red and have my name on the back, yeah?” you pouted as he set you down on the counter next to the sink.

“Fine. Orange is an ugly color, anyways.”

Jack hummed in agreement as he wet a washcloth with warm water and then began to gently wipe down your face. He worked in silence, concentrated on the task at hand while you just admired his face.

Okay, yeah, you were still a little tipsy. Your boyfriend always looked good, but maybe it was just about what happened tonight that had you really appreciating his looks.

“What’re you staring at?” Jack said, biting his lip to hide the grin threatening to break through. He loved that you couldn’t keep your eyes off him.

“You,” you replied with no hesitation, giggling when he proceeded to wipe directly over your eye at your witty comment. “I can’t help it. You’re just so pretty. Why do you like me, again?”

Your boyfriend scoffed, tossing the washcloth somewhere on the sink before pulling you closer to him. “Pretty? What if I lose a tooth, would you still like me then?” he briefly washed his hands, and then turned back to you. “And why do I love you, you mean? That’s easy. Let me show you.”

“Show me?” you muttered, your brain still running slow. “What do you mean, ‘show me’—”

That’s when he interrupted you by picking you up, moving your legs to wrap around his waist before carrying you to the bed.

Jack kicked off his shoes before falling on his back first while taking you with him. You ended up sprawled on his chest, his arms holding you close as you tilted your head up to meet his eyes.

“Being able to manhandle me is why you love me?” you said teasingly. “Noted,”

The centerman groaned dramatically. Knowing you were about to speak, he interrupted your next sentence by kissing you and grinned into your lips when you sighed with pleasure and brought your hands up to tangle in his hair.

“Done being sassy now?” your boyfriend hummed as he slowly pulled back, looking every bit the mischievous devil as the team he played for.

“Hmm,” you blinked lazily, stretching as if you were a satisfied cat, and wrapped your arms around his neck to keep him close. “As long as you stay here with me,”

“I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

A few minutes later of the two of you making up for lost time, you had eventually moved to be cuddling under the bed sheets as the little spoon, just how you liked it.

“Don’t wear that jersey again,” Jack grumbled into your neck, pressing a few butterfly kisses to the skin exposed to the air.

“Seriously?” you giggled, attempting to turn around in his arms but being stopped due to the strength of his hold.

“Dead serious. It almost killed me.”

You were used to his dramatics by now but knew he was speaking from his heart because jerseys really did mean a lot to sports players, hockey players especially. Wearing Jack’s name might have just been superficial, but it was still a sure thing and a testament to the seriousness of your relationship.

Wearing someone else’s name, especially someone from an opposing team, was an insult to that even though it was just a piece of clothing at the end of the day.

“Better stay on my good side, then,” you teased, but knew you wouldn’t ever wear any other jersey but Jack’s again. He learned his lesson, as did you.

Teasingly nipping at your neck, your boyfriend merely laughed before burying his head in your shoulder and closing his eyes.

You snuggled closer to the warm wall of muscle behind you, reveling in the comfort of knowing your relationship was stronger than ever.

“I love you,” you said, quietly, staring out the window as the stars looked down upon you.

“Love you, too,” Jack whined at the sharp pain he felt from your arm as it swatted at him, and then quickly clarified. “I mean, I love you—I love you, too!”

You grinned, and you knew he could practically feel it which made the small victory even more satisfactory.

Jack muttered something else under his breath, one word suspiciously sounding like ‘jersey’, and then he was out like a light.

Exasperatedly, you sighed. Hockey players.

You wouldn’t wear a jersey that didn’t have the name ‘Hughes’ and his number printed on it ever again.

A/N: Did you guys like the missing tooth reference? One of my favorite lines in this tbh, I just love poking fun at situations like those lol. Anyways, please please please reblog and comment because it means the world to me and makes writing so much more worth it. I hope y’all enjoyed :))

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