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matthewtkachuk · 4 months ago

Text

somehow still stuck on you

navigating the realities of your post break up friendship with quinn is exacerbated by how much you’re not over him

pairing: quinn hughes x reader

warnings: a bit of exes to lovers angst

word count: 2.4k

a/n: hi @boqvistsbabe i��m your fic exchange writer, i’m sorry for the wait but i hope you enjoy!! i was feeling mad regret over not signing up for the fic exchange so when @wyattjohnston asked if i wanted to step in as a pinch hitter i said duhhhhh. this is as much a love letter to vancouver in late july as it is a quinn fic

Quinn’s back in Vancouver.

It’s not exactly revolutionary given the millions of dollars and the capital C handed to him by the Vancouver Canucks, but it is noteworthy given the timing.

Training camp doesn’t start for another month, which makes it highly strange for Quinn to be back in the city already. Last you heard he was having a Brat Summer in Michigan.

Not that you were keeping tabs on your ex-boyfriend-turned-just-friend, of course. It’s not a crime to click through the first five Insta stories when you open the app, even when it showcases how much fun he’s having without you.

Although it might have felt like it when you were dating, the sun and moon didn’t rise and fall at the behest of Quinn Hughes. It was just easier to remember that fact when you weren’t faced with him—quite literally faced with a giant banner of his likeness leaving the Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain station. The start of the regular season would be bad enough with his name on every one of your coworkers' lips.

All this to say you thought you had more time before he re-entered a position at the center of your universe.

Summer had been kind to you, giving you the time and space needed to move on and heal. Even with the colder than usual June, you’d managed to sneak away to Osoyoos a couple weekends with the girls. Your skin? Glowing. Your hair? Shining. Your thoughts? Totally devoid of one Quinn Hughes.

Until you’d been swiping through the aforementioned stories and spotted one of your favorite walking spots in his story. Very much downtown Vancouver and very much not Michigan.

It wasn’t a terrible break up and you’d been friends long before ever getting together, so it’s not unreasonable to receive an invitation to get the gang together for drinks and dinner in Gastown to celebrate the return of Quinn and others in your friend group to your city.

The time and place all but guarantees you have no way of getting out of it, and truly you are happy to get together with everyone, so you have no choice but to react to the “thumbs up if you’re coming” message.

All the healing and the positive thinking in the world can’t stop you from dressing a little better than you ordinarily would for a casual hang or spending a little more time on your hair.

You’re glad for the extra effort when you stroll in right on time. Everyone is loitering around the entrance, clearly waiting on an open table. It kind of foils your plan to slip into an empty chair, thereby avoiding the initial how are you hug train. Before you can even think of another way out of it, you find yourself being passed along from one friend to another until you reach Quinn, fumbling into a quick and stilted hug.

“Awkward,” Sienna hisses but all you can do is shrug pathetically.

You’re saved from much more embarrassment by the hostess informing your group the table is ready and you’re so grateful you could almost kiss her. The long table means you’re not sat immediately beside Quinn which is a blessing because you’re not sure you could take any more close contact. Conversation flows easily around you, the usual topics of work, families, and shitty roommates.

Everything is going well until the conversation turns to Quinn’s summer in Michigan. The distance between the two of you isn’t large enough for you to miss the way Quinn’s eyes flicker over to you when someone asks him if he’s seeing anyone.

It’s not fair the way your vision briefly turns to black, your heart constricting in your chest. The feeling of almost betrayal that floods your veins isn’t fair either—it’s been months since you broke up and you’ve been on your own fair share of dates. Failed dates to be fair, but dates all the same.

Sienna is your saving grace in the form of a clenched hand around your forearm, hauling you to the bathroom with some fake excuse you don’t hear.

“Are you okay?” she asks outside of the table’s listening distance

You can only shrug pathetically, all words failing you now.

She waits a solid three minutes before leading you back.

“Crisis averted!” she declares when you both return, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

The conversation has turned away from romantic endeavors, circling back to someone’s work drama.

You get the sense that Quinn is trying to meet your eyes, but you don’t dare look in that direction until it’s time to leave. Your exit is hasty, the excuse of needing to catch the sky train in the next eight minutes excusing you from any further contact. In the sea of goodbyes, Quinn’s is the clearest.

It’s not technically avoiding if your workload has you so busy you barely see your roommate, let alone your friend group, right?

There’s a major deadline coming at work and it feels as though you’re wasting money on rent when all of your time is spent at the office. Wake up, work, eat, sleep, repeat.

It’s easier to just mute the group chat, rather than be bothered by the buzzing of your phone.

Easier until Sienna ends up bursting through your door after work using the key you’d given her for emergencies only.

“This is an emergency,” she says before you can speak—caught red handed knee deep in an episode of Love Island UK and a tub of ice cream.

Neither of you speak as she grabs a spoon from your drawer and burrows into the couch beside your pathetic cocoon. It’s born of burnout rather than heartbreak, but you’re aware of the optics of it all.

“You’ve been avoiding us,” she says while some hot blonde cries in the confessional on TV.

“Have not,” you rebut, unceremoniously pulling the tub of ice cream away from her so that she scoops up air instead. “I’ve just been so busy with work. I haven’t even had the time or energy to go grocery shopping, hence the ice cream for dinner.”

Her eyes flicker down to the tub in your hands but she doesn’t say what you’re both thinking. That there’s more to the unconventional supper than just laziness.

“Come to fireworks this weekend,” she says instead, her motives for the impromptu visit finally becoming clear. “You missed last weekend and yesterday. I’m asking in person so you can’t ignore the group chat message like the last two times.”

“If I say yes will you be quiet and let me watch my show?” you ask. She nods emphatically, apparently proving that she can in fact be silent. Truthfully the festival of lights is a highlight of your summer, and watching the last two shows through other people’s stories isn’t your favorite way to view them.

“Fine.”

She squeals and throws her arms around you. You want to ask if Quinn will be there, and the look on her face says she’s waiting for you to, but you don’t.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if he’s going to be there or not. Exes or not, he was one of your best friends and will always be a major part of your friend group. There’s no separating the two and the sooner you get over it and everything returns to the way it was before you started dating the better.

She doesn’t push any further, content to sit alongside you and soak in someone else’s love drama on screen rather than your own.

“Remember a sweater!” are her parting words to you, notorious for always neglecting one.

You forgot a sweater.

It’s not until you’re sitting down on the 99 beside an old lady that you realize. You’re already running a little behind schedule and it would double your transit time to head back, so you settle into your seat and hope it doesn’t get too cold later.

By the time you reach the beach the group is already together, sitting on a couple beach blankets lined up end to end. You spot Quinn’s unruly dark hair before you even realize you’re looking for him.

“Look who finally showed!” someone says, and you roll your eyes as you drop down on the only spot available, right next to Quinn.

“I’m at the mercy of Vancouver transit, we all know this.” You’d rather rake your naked body over hot coals and then confess your lingering feelings for the boy beside you in front of everyone you know than waste time in traffic and pay the outrageous inflated parking price on a night of fireworks.

Quinn doesn’t tease you like the rest of your friends, and you wonder if he’s thinking about how the last time you saw fireworks together he’d driven. Or how he kissed you for the first time after driving you home from a different fireworks show.

The late afternoon passes by with an impromptu game of frisbee that you don’t partake in—there’s way too many people at the beach for it to be enjoyable and you’re more content to people watch and gossip while picking at the charcuterie spread someone else brought. The active rest of the group seems to reach the same conclusion you had and someone breaks out Uno.

By the time the sun sets, you’ve considered murdering both your friend to your left and your ex-boyfriend to your right. It’s bad enough you’re walking around with a still broken heart, now they’re ganging up on you with draw four cards and Uno reverses. The group is spared by the darkness making it too hard to play.

If circumstances were different, Quinn likely would be teasing you about being a sore loser, offering to kiss it better until someone inevitably fake gagged and told you to get a room.

Instead he’s silent as you turn your back to him in order to face the direction of the show about to start. The sea breeze hits and you can’t hold back your shudder.

“Did you seriously forget a sweater?” Sienna asks. “I told you.”

You spin around. “Yeah yeah yeah.”

Quinn is quick to pull off his hoodie, offering it to you with an outstretched hand. “Here.”

It feels too personal, too heavy, too full of implications and so you start to shake your head. “Oh, that’s okay.”

“You’re literally shivering,” he says. “Take it.”

It’s warm and soft and smells just like him. As you pull it over your head you’re taken back by just how right it feels. Like if you closed your eyes, you could almost pretend things were different.

The train of thought is broken by the first firework, and you spin back to watch.

The fireworks are beautiful and you sit in awe, ‘ooh’ing and ‘ahh’ing along with the crowd around you.

Someone up ahead stands up to take a photo and Sienna has no problem heckling him. “Sit down!”

They do and you just shake your head at her antics.

It turns out that sitting on the sand on a blanket isn’t the most comfortable position to be in. Mid way through the show, you find yourself shifting and leaning back to find a better way to situate yourself. In the process you brush your hand against Quinn’s, quickly pulling it back like you’d been burned.

“Sorry,” you murmur over your shoulder, unsure if the blush coating his cheeks is just your imagination.

When it’s over, you help everyone pack up and follow the group through the beach, quietly bitching about the sand getting into your sandals.

Everyone starts splitting up when the sand gives way to pavement. Sienna lives close, within walking distance and she gives you a tight hug and heads off in the direction of her house.

You’re turning away to start towards the bus stop when Quinn grabs your arm.

Thinking he wants his sweater back, you begin to pull at the hem but his words have you freezing in place.

“Do you want a ride home?”

Your place isn’t the exact opposite of his, but it’s also certainly not on his way home. Call it masochism, call it a desire to return to the way things were before you loved and lost, you agree with a quiet ‘yes.’

The walk to his car is quiet, and you resist the urge to ask him how much he paid for parking tonight, not sure you want to break the silence first.

That silence continues in his car, at least between the two of you. Something soft and acoustic plays through the car speaker as the lights of Kits turn into downtown.

When you get home, he offers to walk you to your door. Once, it was his way of making sure you got in safe. Then, it was his way of trying to prevent the night from ending.

Now, you’re not sure of his reasoning.

You get to the door, and he doesn’t say much more as you unlock it and step in.

“Do you want to come in?” you find yourself asking despite yourself.

He hesitates, hands in the pocket of his shorts. It kind of looks like he’s contemplating between stepping inside and running away.

It makes you angry, that bitter edge of hurt you haven’t quite gotten over yet surfacing.

“What do you want? You need to use your words, Quinn. Because your actions are confusing me!”

You have a very formulated argument prepared, full of evidence and conflicting actions—the result of hundreds of mini one sided arguments playing in your head since he’s been gone and since he’s been back. Arguments that don’t come to fruition because the look on his face is dangerous.

He cups your face in his hands and presses his lips solidly to yours. You don’t even have enough time to fall into the kiss before he’s pulling apart. “How’s that for confusing?”

There’s no answer from you, not verbally at least. Just the momentum of you throwing yourself at him, crushing your lips to his.

Words can wait.

#nhl fic #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #nhl fanfiction #nhl x reader #quinn hughes fic #quinn hughes fanfiction #quinn hughes x reader #shelb writes

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