Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are two truths that Hazel has managed to admit to herself by the time she reaches her last year of high school.

The first is that she thinks PJ is hot. To be fair, Hazel has also realized that she thinks most women are hot. There’s just something about PJ—maybe it’s her abrasive nature or her terrible personality or how she’s just, objectively, a bad person. Hazel tries not to read too far into it. Fact: PJ is more her type than anyone in the high school. Best to just leave it at that.

The second one is a newer development. She’d noticed it a few times while practicing taekwondo; a strange thrill when she’d accidentally clip someone’s nose and make it bleed, watching the track of blood drip down over their mouth and chin. She’d convinced herself it meant nothing.

That had been shoved out the metaphorical window the first time Josie punched PJ in the face during fight club. The sight of PJ’s face streaked with blood did something to Hazel, and Hazel had no idea what to do with that. Her unreciprocated feelings for PJ were already bad enough.

For better or for worse, this meant that Hazel couldn’t leave the fight club even if she wanted to after that abysmal first meeting.

“Okay, gather round, gather round, ga— don’t make me say it a third time!” PJ snarls. She’s up on a stepping stool she’d brought so that she could look down on all of them. With the added height, her scowl looks a bit imposing, even to Hazel. As imposing as someone can be on a stepping stool, at least.

The chatter dies down. Josie, on the floor by PJ, smiles awkwardly at them, cutting through the tension. Everyone gathers.

They haven’t had a lot of meetings yet. They’ve had enough for them all to sort of get to know each other, for everyone to have gained a bit of confidence in throwing punches. It’d been no small amount of work for Hazel to teach everyone how to actually throw a decent punch that wouldn’t break any fingers.

PJ and Josie had been zero help—no surprises there, considering they’d been lying about juvie. Hazel’s decided to keep quiet about it. With a club this small and tenuous, it would break up the whole thing. The school needed this. And honestly, Hazel needed this.

“Right,” PJ says, once they’re all standing in a circle with her and Josie in the middle. She has a black eye from the previous meeting. Hazel can’t stop staring at it. “So we thought today could be about wrestling, y’know? Enough about throwing punches, we’re all great at that. Skin to skin contact. Does anyone here know anything about wrestling?”

“In professional wrestling you’re supposed to pin your opponent’s shoulders to the mat for three seconds,” Isabel offers. Hazel attempts to school her face to hide her delight. Isabel’s a fucking genius.

“We’ll run with that,” PJ decides. “I’ll demonstrate—who wants to volunteer? Brittany?”

Brittany chews on her lip and says nothing, so Hazel decides to take initiative and steps forward. “I’ll go.”

PJ briefly looks crestfallen, but she smoothes her face over within seconds. “Alright. Hazel. Why not.”

The other girls form a circle around them, like they’d done when practicing punches. Hazel’s not sure how wrestling even starts—should she charge PJ? Is that the first course of action? Are they allowed to punch each other?

PJ’s fist cracks against Hazel’s nose, and Hazel’s on the ground before the sharp bloom of pain even starts to register. She can feel blood trickling sickly down her face, over her mouth and the jut of her chin. She tastes iron.

“What the fuck?” she asks. It comes out thick through all the blood. She tries to struggle up onto her elbows, tries to shake the fog in her head. “I thought we were wrestling.”

“No one tells you what they’re going to do before they do it at juvie,” PJ sneers down at her. “You need to be ready for anything! You need to be able to fight dirty.”

Anger starts seeping in through the edges of the pain in Hazel’s face, dulling it, clearing her head a bit. PJ has never been to fucking juvie. She’d punched Hazel for the fucking fun of it. Maybe she expects Hazel to stay down, chicken out, so she can wrestle Brittany next.

Prick, Hazel thinks. Dirty? I’ll show you fucking dirty.

She’s up in a crouch and sweeping PJ’s legs out from underneath her in the next second. She staggers a bit when she tries to stand, but by the time PJ gets over the shock of suddenly being flat on her back, Hazel is grinning maniacally down at her. PJ blinks. For a moment, all she does is stare, before her eyes narrow.

“You’re dead, Callahan,” she whispers.

Hazel raises an eyebrow. Try me.

She graciously backs up a step as PJ gets to her feet, letting her get her bearings back. Maybe PJ has to fight dirty to win this fight, but Hazel doesn’t. PJ’s glaring at her through narrowed eyes, assessing Hazel’s stance, searching for weak points. She aims an ineffective punch at Hazel’s stomach, only a second too slow.

Hazel strikes her hard against the jaw and immediately regrets it. Her knuckles probably hurt more than PJ’s face, but it gets PJ to back off to the other end of the circle, one hand cupping her face. There’s murder in her eyes. God, she’s hot.

Hazel shakes out her hand, willing the pain to dissipate. She rubs her chin and mouth against her sleeve, can feel that it does virtually nothing to rid her face of blood. PJ smirks.

“You have a little something on your face there, Hazel,” she says sweetly.

Yeah. Hazel’s nose is fucking broken, and she’s considering returning the favor.

PJ charges her, slamming her entire body weight against Hazel’s stomach, and they collapse into a pile of limbs, the air in Hazel’s chest punched out of her. PJ scrambles to get on top, her legs bracketing Hazel’s hips. For one single second, Hazel gets distracted by the feeling of PJ’s jeans pressing into the skin of her stomach, where her shirt’s riding up, and then PJ punches her in the chin and the jaw in quick succession.

She’s avoiding Hazel’s nose, which is surprisingly nice of her. Hazel’s going to make her regret it, though. Her generous mood had vanished with the last punch to her face, and she’s ready to make PJ bleed.

PJ’s made the mistake of sitting on her stomach, giving Hazel’s legs their entire freedom of motion. She pulls one knee up and slams it hard into PJ’s back, pushing her head forward into position as she does. PJ’s face cracks against her skull with a sick crunch.

A hushed ooooooh of sympathy comes from their spectators, who Hazel had kind of forgotten were there.

PJ topples, blood starting to drip from her nose.

Hazel stays lying on her back, gasping at the ceiling. PJ’s on her hands and knees, breathing hard and occasionally spitting blood.

“This was a great demonstration—” Hazel dimly hears Josie’s voice floating overhead, but she’s interrupted by PJ’s snarl of rage.

PJ kicks out at Hazel’s ribs, sending Hazel wheezing again, and when she curls onto her side to protect herself she catches her first glimpse of PJ’s face. She looks wrecked, blood covering the entire lower half of her face. Her teeth are bared and stained red. Her eyes are narrowed into slits, her jaw starting to swell with bruising.

Hot, Hazel thinks.

When PJ starts to get to her feet, Hazel kicks out at her again, sending her sprawling for the third time. She clambers to her feet before PJ can recover, groaning and clutching her ribs. It hurts like a fucking bitch. Probably not broken though. Adrenaline is coursing through her, taking the edge off most of the pain, and she just stands there, revelling in the endorphins while she waits for PJ to get to her feet as well.

“Guys,” Josie says, sounding concerned. “That’s enough, let someone else have a go—”

“Shut it, Josie,” PJ hisses. “I said I was going to kill her and I’m not a liar.”

Hazel bursts out laughing out of sheer shock—PJ’s face contorts, and they’re on the ground again, but this time Hazel has no recollection of getting there. PJ’s on top of her, and this time she has Hazel entirely pinned, forcing her wrists to the floor with one hand and shoving her shoulders down with the other. Blood drips from PJ’s chin onto Hazel’s face.

Three seconds, Isabel had said.

Hazel bucks her hips, trying to dislodge her, and it almost works. PJ wobbles and almost loses her grip on Hazel’s wrists, but recovers and follows that stunt with knocking her elbow to Hazel’s nose. The world whites out with pain, a thick-hot-radiating pain. Hazel whimpers and goes limp as she waits for it to ease up, at least a bit, but it doesn’t. Possibly she needs a hospital. It takes her a few moments to realize that PJ’s gone rigid on top of her.

“PJ, stop!” someone shrieks. PJ’s weight on top of her disappears.

Someone helps Hazel to her feet—Sylvie. Hazel leans on her gratefully until her feet feel steady enough to support her on their own again. She can see Josie yelling at PJ a few feet away, looking like she’s seconds away from starting to beat the shit out of PJ herself, but at the same time she’s trying to staunch the flow of blood from PJ’s nose.

A gentle hand starts wiping the blood from Hazel’s face, careful at the places she’s been punched, which is basically everywhere. When she’s blinked enough for her vision to clear she realizes it’s Brittany, using what looks like an expensive embroidered silk handkerchief. For a small moment, Hazel can see what PJ sees in her.

“—hospital!” Josie is still going. “Right now!”

Some of the girls leave, the looks on their faces betraying exactly how freaked out they were by PJ and Hazel’s show, but a few pile into the van with them: Isabel, Brittany, Sylvie, Annie. Stella-Rebecca, because it’s her van.

“You’re so lucky Mr. G didn’t show for this one,” Josie fumes as they speed down the road at what must be almost double the speed limit. “He’d have shut us down so fast. And then where would we be? Huntington is coming, the game’s in less than a month, people are being attacked in the streets! Fucked! We’d be fucked! Next thing you know, they instate a Huntington player as the principal and start using medieval torture methods on students sent to detention—” 

“Okay, Josie, we get it,” PJ says tiredly.

She glances back at Hazel from the passenger seat, but her gaze flits away as soon as their eyes meet. Hazel isn’t expecting an apology and thinks she probably doesn’t deserve one the longer she looks at the damage she dealt to PJ’s face. Without the blood from her nose masking most of the injuries, Hazel can see where skin tore with the impact of her punches, the scrapes, the split lip.

She imagines she probably looks worse, though. She lost, after all.

Josie brakes on a dime for a red light, sending them all flying forward against their seatbelts. Hazel can’t help the soft ah! of pain that escapes her when the seatbelt presses sharply into her bruised ribs, and PJ snaps, “Fuck, Josie, chill out! We’re not going to die in the next ten minutes!”

Hazel squints her eyes open and finds PJ looking back at her, an unreadable expression on her face.

The emergency room lights are very white and it makes Hazel’s head hurt even more than it already did. She pulls the hood of her jacket over her eyes and slumps down in her chair as they wait to be called in. PJ curls into the chair next to her. She can hear Josie and Isabel talking in hushed tones somewhere to her right, and Sylvie’s bark of laughter at a joke Annie made. Her face hurts. Her ribs hurt.

“Hazel?” PJ whispers.

“What.” Hazel’s voice comes out as a croak.

“Do I have blood on my teeth?”

Hazel props the hood of her jacket up on her fingers just enough so she can squint at PJ’s teeth when she bares them. “You’re missing a tooth.”

“What?” PJ clamps a hand over her mouth.

“Kidding.” Hazel doesn’t bother to hide her smile as she watches PJ run her tongue over her teeth to double-check. “You still have a bit of blood, though. Show again?”

PJ does, though she’s glowering now. She hadn’t managed to get rid of all the residual red at her gum line. Hazel reaches over and rubs it away with the sleeve of her jacket. Surprisingly, PJ lets her, but she mutters, “Gross,” after Hazel pulls away.

-

Hazel thinks her crush on PJ might have started in tenth grade. There was no catalyst, no grand thing that PJ had done, just Hazel realizing one day that PJ had a pretty smile. It was entirely downhill from there, and the next thing Hazel knew she was fantasizing about PJ’s hands, how prettily the bones of her knuckles jutted out, the shape of the veins in her wrists. What she could do with her hands.

Hazel’s not stupid; she knows PJ’s a virgin. It’s still fun to think about— PJ on top of her, hands everywhere, mouth everywhere, the curve of her hip underneath Hazel’s hand—

Isabel punches Josie hard in the mouth, and the fight is abruptly over. There’s a small smattering of hesitant applause while Isabel helps Josie to her feet and checks the split lip she’d given her.

“Sorry!” she says earnestly, fingers at Josie’s jaw and lower lip.

Josie, blinking furiously and looking like she’s on the verge of passing out, doesn’t answer.

“Okay, who’s next?” PJ asks. “Brittany, you wanna—?”

Brittany shakes her head. She’s nursing a black eye and bruised cheekbone from her earlier fight with Stella-Rebecca, the knuckles of her left hand scraped raw and red. Stella-Rebecca was a star student, shocking the hell out of all of them except Hazel, who’d gone to taekwondo with her since the eighth grade. Except Stella-Rebecca actually stuck with it instead of quitting like Hazel had a year ago.

“I’ll go,” Hazel volunteers.

“Hey,” Josie says, abruptly paying attention again. “I’m setting ground rules. You guys aren’t allowed to punch each other.”

“What?” PJ complains. “That’s the only benefit to fighting Hazel.”

Hazel would probably be insulted if she didn’t agree. What was the point of fighting PJ if she couldn’t make her bleed a little? Josie scowls at them until they back down and turn to face each other. PJ’s mouth tilts downward as she considers Hazel, fingers twitching at her sides. She’s waiting for Hazel to make the first move, Hazel realizes, and she’s only too happy to oblige.

She darts in underneath PJ’s guard, grabbing her waist and dragging them both to the ground before PJ can counter. She feels a small thrill at the feeling of PJ’s bare skin underneath her hands, but she reins it in when PJ nearly breaks her nose again with a flailing elbow. Hazel tries to grab for her wrists, but PJ’s gotten fast with these past few weeks of training. She wraps her arms around Hazel’s neck (shitshitshitshitshit) and flips them over before Hazel’s brain can get back with the program.

“Ha!” PJ laughs, her mouth curling up into a triumphant grin. She has Hazel’s wrists in her hands again, holding them pressed together against her chest instead of trying to pin them to the floor. Hazel stares up at her, immobile. “Give up already, Hazel?”

“Fuck no,” Hazel hisses. She’s not losing to PJ for a second time. Trying to pin her clearly isn’t working, so she goes for a different tactic—flipping them over and clambering onto PJ’s back, using her weight to her advantage. PJ doesn’t give in easily, but ultimately Hazel is announced the winner.

“Woo!” Hazel laughs, falling sideways off PJ’s back onto the floor. PJ is making no move to get up, but when Hazel catches her gaze, concerned that she might have somehow hurt her badly in some way, PJ is just looking at her from the corner of her eye. Her face is expressionless, but there’s something in her eyes.

“That was great, guys,” Josie enthuses from above them. PJ’s eyes flit away and up, and she lets Josie help her to her feet again. Hazel gets to her feet alone, brushing her hands off on her pants.

She tries to meet PJ’s eye again, but PJ avoids her gaze for the rest of the meeting.

Chapter Text

Hazel likes to think she can withstand most things PJ throws at her. She’s been following Josie and PJ around since middle school, and in all that time, PJ’s said some pretty awful things to her. It’s how she rolls. That’s just how PJ is.

She’s never said anything that Hazel couldn’t shrug off. That’s just how Hazel is.

That is, until:

“Well, you have no friends and a skank as a mom, so—”

Worse still is the smile on her face and her shrug as she says it. Like it isn’t just something spilling out in the heat of the moment, no: like she believes it. Like it’s funny to her.

Later, when Hazel’s hiding her tears under the bleachers, she wonders why she hadn’t been able to take that punch. It’d been a low blow, but a weak one. Hazel’s mom sleeps around, everyone knows it, who cares. Hazel has friends; she has the fight club, and even without them, she sort of has Stella-Rebecca.

The realization hits that possibly, it’d been the cold, hard truth that PJ doesn’t consider them friends. Hazel had thought that maybe the way PJ had tightly gripped the back of her jacket after the car bomb fiasco, and how she hadn’t shaken Hazel off when Hazel grabbed her for support, and the way her quips had started to become less biting, that meant—

Something. At least. Turns out that not even Hazel knows exactly what she wants from PJ.

She likes punching PJ in the face, but that’s neither here nor there. She just likes PJ. She likes grappling with PJ, she likes PJ’s biting words and sharp teeth and perpetually unsheathed claws. She likes that PJ never goes easy on her.

Josie treats her a bit like she’s fragile, when Josie even acknowledges her. Hazel’s mom is worried about her, so she’s tiptoeing around every conversation they have. Even Annie and Sylvie sometimes seem treat her delicately sometimes—Sylvie less so. Sylvie’s so cool.

Hazel rubs away the last of her tears with her sleeve and sighs, gathering her stuff and getting ready to face the rest of the school again. She feels marginally better, after her thoughts aren’t as scrambled anymore.

“Hey,” someone says from the bleachers above her. Hazel nearly jumps out of her skin.

“Jesus, Tim. You scared the fuck out of me,” she manages when she finally sees who it is. “Have you been sitting up there the whole time? That’s a bit creepy.”

He shrugs, making his way towards her. The look on his face is sympathetic. “I heard what happened in the gym.”

“That’s also creepy,” Hazel informs him. It’s probably not a good idea to antagonize a football player after what they’d done to the quarterback’s car last night, but he’s alone and Hazel’s fairly certain he’d be easy to take in a fight. “Do you eavesdrop on us often?”

“I was getting something from my locker. The door was open, and you weren’t exactly being quiet. Frankly, it would’ve been difficult not to eavesdrop,” Tim says amiably, not put off at all by Hazel’s barbed words. He shoves his hands in his pockets and leans back against the bleachers. “Anyway. I’m sorry that happened. What PJ said was uncalled for.”

“Right,” Hazel mutters, shouldering her backpack. She’s not in the mood to relive it. “Thanks.”

She starts to walk away, but Tim calls, “Wait!” and jogs to catch up with her. “I was wondering—when you called PJ a liar, what was that about?”

-

When she’s lying on the couch basically immobile after the fight with Tucker, she curses the name of all Tim’s. She’s going to beat the shit out of the fucking coward next time she sees him.

It’s nice, though, the way everyone from the club rallies around her and makes sure she never wants for anything or feels alone. At least one good thing came out of the smashed nose and bruised body.

PJ never shows up. But that's no surprise.

-

Hazel isn’t really surprised when her relationship with PJ gets really fucking weird right after the football game. In hindsight, it’d been weird even before the kiss—PJ apologizing? Unheard of, even with Josie egging her on. But it had been sweet and surprisingly heartfelt, and Hazel can’t really find it within herself to hold grudges.

The kiss itself hadn’t been great at first— PJ had flung herself at her, mashing their lips together and making their teeth knock together uncomfortably, and then basically went for it tongue-first while Hazel was still just standing there open-mouthed with shock. It turned sweet though, once she got her hands on PJ’s face to guide her. She could still hear the din of the crowd around her, but the heat of PJ’s mouth burned away everything else.

PJ was letting Hazel lead the kiss, letting Hazel kiss her, holy shit, a bit inexperienced and awkward and even slightly shy, something Hazel had never seen from her. People were shouting all around them, some were cheering, but Hazel tuned them out. The stadium could burn down for all she cared. For once, she had PJ right where she wanted her.

The announcer managed to cut through the haze with his screech of, “Can everybody stop looking at the dyke parade?” PJ jolted away, but Hazel had to take a moment to wait for the stadium to come back into focus.

The kiss had been good for Hazel, if a bit confusing, but now PJ’s avoiding her.

It wasn’t immediately noticeable, because they’re in the same friend group and whenever the rest of the club’s around, PJ’s her normal self. Still a fucking asshole, but nothing out of the ordinary. She won’t meet Hazel’s eyes, though, and whenever Hazel tries to approach her when she’s alone, she finds some way to mysteriously vanish.

They still have the club meetings in the gym, but it’s a much chiller environment now that everyone knows PJ and Josie aren’t actually the seasoned fighters they’ve been pretending to be, and Huntington isn’t a problem anymore. They’d all been shocked when Principal Meyers let them keep having the meetings, after they’d all committed literal murders, but he’d just said that having an elite team of assassins might come in handy at the next football game, and plus, most of them were graduating that year anyway.

They don’t practice fighting much anymore, which Hazel finds a bit disappointing—not that she’d admit it to anyone. They sit and talk, and whenever someone’s having a rough day, they can take it out on a volunteer or the punching bag that Mr. G donated to the cause.

PJ’s clearly having a rough day. Even Josie’s kind of edging away from her wrath and closer to where Isabel’s sitting. Everyone else in the club just stopped trying to talk to her after they realized that she’d only reply with insults.

“PJ, can you take it out on the punching bag instead of us?” Josie finally snaps after the fourth time PJ replies to some innocuous comment with something vulgar. “Stop being a bitch.”

PJ leans back, looking more hurt than strictly necessary, given that she had been being a bitch.

“Or me,” Hazel is offering before she can fully think about it. “You can take it out on me.”

“Yeah, Hazel, that’s not a good idea,” Josie says wryly. “None of us want another trip to the hospital today.”

“Come on,” Hazel grins. “PJ’s never won a fight against me without cheating.”

She’s pushing it. She can tell by the way PJ’s eyes narrow dangerously and turn flinty, her hands curled around the bench turning white. But to be honest, Hazel’s kind of getting desperate. PJ hasn’t so much as looked at her for days. She just wants PJ to fucking talk to her again. What use was the apology if she’s acting like this now?

“Fine,” PJ snaps, steely. She stomps to the middle of the gym, back stiff, and Hazel follows, a bit more cautious.

She can’t help but flash back to the last time she’d been in the center of the gym, back when she’d fought Tucker. In some weird way, it makes her feel more at ease—he’d been a much more daunting opponent, and she feels like she’d probably win now if they’d give her another shot at it. Her therapist tells her that the amount of confidence killing the Huntington players had given her is a bit alarming.

PJ is practically vibrating with anger at this point. There’s no way she’s going into this with a clear head, Hazel thinks. Which means there’s no way she’s winning.

None of the other girls follow them—they stay on the bleachers, the looks on their faces blatantly expressing how over this they are. Everyone except Sylvie, who Hazel can see wiggling in her seat with excitement.

PJ charges—Hazel dodges. From then on, it’s no longer a clean fight. PJ manages to clip Hazel on the chin, sending a bolt of white pain through her jaw, but that’s the last good hit she gets in. Hazel socks her in the stomach in retaliation, and PJ goes down, doubled over.

“Hazel,” someone calls hesitantly from the bleachers, but Hazel doesn’t even get a chance to look over before PJ grabs her ankle and drags her to the floor.

A bad move, really. Hazel lands on top of her. She feels an elbow hit PJ’s face while one of her knees connect hard with PJ’s side. She’s not sure if she imagines the crunch she feels beneath the bone of her kneecap, but the pained yelp that PJ lets out tells her all she needs to know.

She rolls off PJ as quickly as she can, kneeling next to her, plucking hesitantly at PJ’s shirt that covers most of what the damage would be. PJ slaps her hands away. Her face is contorted in pain.

“PJ,” Hazel whispers. “Oh god. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“PJ!” Josie falls to her knees on PJ’s other side, her hands hovering first over PJ’s face, where blood is starting to trickle down her chin from a split lip, then over her ribs where PJ’s hands are cupped. “Fuck, PJ, talk to me.”

“I’m fucking fine, Josie,” PJ groans.

The other girls are gathering around them now—Isabel hovers by PJ’s head next to Josie, threading a careful hand through PJ’s hair. Hazel averts her gaze from it, the way PJ leans into it, and focuses on Sylvie’s hand on her shoulder. She looks up into Sylvie’s searching eyes and quickly looks away again.

“You’re not fine, PJ, don’t be an idiot,” Brittany says reproachfully. “Are your ribs broken?”

“No,” PJ hisses out. “I know what broken ribs feel like.” She’s probably lying. “Hazel, help me up.”

Hazel jumps at the chance to help. PJ grips her shoulder and pulls herself carefully to her feet, grimacing the whole time.

Josie steps forward to try and take some of PJ’s weight, but PJ waves her off. “Stay here, Josie, it’s fine.”

Hazel slides an arm around PJ’s ribcage to support her weight. PJ’s breath hisses from her as soon as Hazel applies even a tiny bit of pressure to her ribs, and Hazel has no choice but to slide her hand down around PJ’s hips. It feels uncomfortably provocative, but at least PJ isn’t flinching away from her touch there.

It feels wrong. They’ve made out, and beaten each other up multiple times, but this is an entirely different level of intimacy that Hazel’s never been allowed to have with PJ. She stands stiffly, but PJ leans into her, some of the pain easing from her face, and that makes it a bit more bearable.

Hazel catches Josie’s eye and immediately regrets it; hurt is painted all over Josie’s face. Isabel grabs her hand. Hazel turns away, starting a slow hobble with PJ from the gym to the hallway.

“Forward march,” PJ mumbles when they reach the hall. “Where are we even going?”

“Nurse’s office,” Hazel says. “Why didn’t you let Josie help?”

“I don’t want her I-told-you-so’s. Besides, I’m basically fine.”

Right, Hazel thinks, and adjusts her grip on PJ’s waist.

The nurse’s office is cool and clean, with no nurse in sight. Really, she could be anywhere, given the shit that happens at this school on a regular basis, so Hazel just hauls PJ over to the table and starts looking for the first aid kit. PJ goes willingly, if a bit awkwardly, shoulders hunched uncomfortably as she looks around the office.

Hazel finds the first aid kit in a cabinet drawer and when she turns back around, PJ’s eyes are closed and she’s reclined herself back on the table. Hazel has the fleeting, horrifying thought that she’s passed out, but PJ’s eyes slit open when she hears Hazel’s sharp intake of breath, and she grins.

“Aw, you were worried,” PJ drawls, closing her eyes again.

“‘Course I was,” Hazel mutters as she puts antiseptic on a cotton ball and starts dabbing at the blood under PJ’s lip, because that seems like a reasonable thing to do. Hazel really isn’t a medical professional. “I’m on thin ice with my mom as is after the Huntington game. I can’t kill someone again, even by accident.”

“If you say so,” PJ says. The cotton ball is red now, and Hazel swaps it out for a new one, mopping up the blood underneath PJ’s nose. PJ’s eyes scrunch up with pain when Hazel accidentally touches her nose.

“Take off your shirt,” Hazel says abruptly. Anything to change the subject. PJ cracks one eye open to look at her, and Hazel waves her hands around a bit, flustered. “Not like that. I want to check the bruising. Come on.”

“Ugh. Fine.”

PJ lets out a soft groan of pain as she sits up again, her grip on the edge of the table turning her knuckles white. Hazel’s hands tighten around her own shirt with the effort of not reaching out to help her. PJ painstakingly peels the shirt from her shoulders and over her head, slowly baring her skin to the room. Hazel feels like her entire body itches just looking at her.

The brunt of the bruising curls around PJ’s left side, hugging the line of her bra and the first few ribs. There's a large, mottled patch of skin on her stomach, but other than that, she's intact.

“And you’re sure you don’t want to see a doctor?” Hazel says skeptically, unable to stop looking at the purpling skin around PJ’s ribs. An apology wells up in her throat, but she swallows it down. She doesn’t think PJ would want or accept it.

“No,” PJ says shortly. She doesn’t look at Hazel, just stares at herself in the mirror on the wall next to her. “Just help me get my shirt back on.”

“Wait, we need to ice that,” Hazel protests.

She rummages around until she finds a stash of single-use ice packs, breaking the seal and looking around for something to wrap it in. She doesn’t remember much from the First Aid course she’d taken a couple years back, but she does remember that ice packs shouldn’t be applied to bare skin. She plucks PJ’s shirt from her hands and wraps it once around the pack—works as good as anything.

With PJ on the table, Hazel’s close to eye level with her ribs. It’s natural to step close and press the ice pack to the worst of the bruising herself. PJ stiffens, hissing in a breath that turns into a sigh of relief. Hazel watches the muscles on her stomach contract and realizes, suddenly, that they’re very close. She’d accidentally put her free hand on PJ’s thigh and now it feels like it would be awkward to move it.

“If you’re using my shirt anyway,” PJ says, “why couldn’t I just put it back on first?”

It’s a good question.

“Um,” Hazel says.

“Admit it, Callahan,” PJ grins down at her. “You just like seeing me shirtless.”

Hazel looks up at her, unsure of what to say. PJ’s grin falls away as their eyes lock. For a moment, Hazel thinks she might say something, anything—maybe even bring up the kiss. She wants an explanation so badly. She wants to know why PJ is being so weird about it.

When it becomes clear that PJ’s not going to say anything, Hazel opens her mouth, but panic lights up in PJ’s eyes and she gives Hazel a light shove, sending her stumbling back a step.

“That’s fine. It feels fine now.”

“Mm,” Hazel hums, trying to hide her disappointment. “You should ice it again when you get home.”

She tosses PJ’s shirt back at her. PJ catches it and glowers at the damp splotch that the ice pack left, but she struggles to put it back on anyway, only letting Hazel come closer to help once it’s become obvious that she can’t do it by herself. Hazel bites her lip as she helps PJ ease an arm into one of the sleeves. She’ll never understand why PJ pushes people away even when it’s obvious that she needs help.

PJ’s forehead is bunched in such a deep frown that Hazel almost can’t muster up the courage to ask, but she still says: “So why were you being an asshole earlier? What’s going on?”

PJ stares at her for a long moment before she answers, like she’s debating even acknowledging that she heard Hazel. Finally, she mutters as she slides off the table, “Does it matter? We’ve fought it out. It’s over.”

Hazel frowns. “Of course it matters.”

“I’m always an asshole.”

“Real answer this time.”

PJ rolls her eyes and sighs, chewing on her lip as she searches for words. They’ve left the nurse’s office and walked halfway back to the gym before PJ speaks.

“Just stuff going on at home, I guess. Jeremy didn’t come home last night and still hasn’t texted anyone where he is, and Mom’s kind of taking it out on everyone. It’s fine. It happens all the time. He’ll be back by the end of the day.”

Hazel averts her eyes to hide her shock; PJ outright refuses to talk about her family with anyone except Josie. She only knows that Jeremy’s her younger brother because Josie had mentioned his name offhand once.

“Hm,” Hazel says. “Want to spend the night at my place?”

“Hazel, you flirt,” PJ teases, but it’s clear her heart isn’t in it. “Nah. Don’t want to stress Mom out more than necessary.”

They’ve reached the gym doors, but PJ stops Hazel before she can open them.

“Look,” she mutters. “I really did mean my apology. You have friends. Everyone likes you because you’re kind and funny. And like, smart, and stuff.” Hazel frowns and opens her mouth, but PJ forges on, “And no one really likes me because I’m an asshole and I take out my problems on them.” When Hazel just looks at her silently, her shoulders rise defensively. “It's fine. I don’t care.”

Hazel sees right through her. She cares.

Hazel doesn’t say: I like you. It doesn’t feel right.

Chapter Text

Graduation is there and gone so fast that Hazel can’t really remember much of it. She remembers the panic of university applications—the relief when she’d gotten into her first choice. She remembers her mom crying on the end-of-summer dry day she’d left, PJ’s sullen and withdrawn goodbye, and the rest of the fight club enveloping her in a group hug that lasted for minutes. The rest is all a complete blur.

She loses herself in schoolwork almost instinctively. Sylvie and Annie visit almost every weekend, and she sees Brittany whenever she finds spare time to visit her mom. It’s been months since she’s seen PJ, Josie, and Isabel; they’re just as bogged down with schoolwork as Hazel is. The groupchat is occasionally lively, but PJ and Hazel have never really texted, just the two of them.

That is, up until a seemingly random day in December. Hazel has been staring at the message since it popped up on her phone ten minutes ago.

PJ
what dorm are u in

When she finally musters up the courage to send a reply, PJ shows up within the hour. Hazel can tell she’s in an awful mood from the first second she opens the door. Beneath all the layers that she’s wearing to stave off the cold, her eyebrows are furrowed angrily, her hands clenched into fists. She doesn’t quite meet Hazel’s eyes.

“Hey,” Hazel says, unsure. “Are you okay?”

She steps backward to let PJ in, but PJ doesn’t move. She keeps her gaze fixed on the space that Hazel had made between herself and the doorframe.

“Can we—I mean—do you want to—” she stops, clearly frustrated with herself, but Hazel thinks she knows what she’s going to ask. She’s felt the same throughout the entire semester, the urge to exorcise something that seemed to have settled into her bones sometime during high school and refused to leave. There had been a certain euphoria in being able to trade punches with someone whenever the feeling got too intense. Losing the fight club had been a blow that Hazel had not expected to hurt as badly as it did.

“Yeah, of course,” she says immediately, shocking PJ into finally looking at her. For a long moment, they just stare at each other. PJ’s eyes are very wide and very grey. “Just let me change into something more comfortable.”

There’s a long pause.

“Okay,” PJ finally agrees, her eyebrows furrowing, but when Hazel turns back to her dorm room, PJ follows her in. She sniffs a bit in disdain for the state of the place—Hazel’s always been neat where PJ is scattered. “I can’t believe you fold your laundry.”

-

Hazel is very familiar with the nearest boxing gym to her dorm. She doesn’t have the time to go often, but going helps to take the edge off when she’s so frustrated with schoolwork that she’s on the verge of tears. It’s small, usually sparsely populated, and smells terrible. The combining smells of sweat, leather, and rubber are distinct and tend to linger in the nose. PJ’s face scrunches when they enter, but for once in her life she doesn’t comment.

Beneath all the layers that she finally peels off, she’s wearing sweatpants and a tank-top that clings to her chest and stomach. Hazel’s throat goes abruptly dry.

Hazel knows herself a bit better by now. She knows she likes women—just women. Her experimentation with guys hadn’t brought any promising results. She also knows that getting into it with PJ is a colossally bad idea.

PJ has had Hazel’s heart in her hands since the beginning of high school, whether she knows it or not, and she has never once treated it kindly. Whether Hazel minds is another thing altogether, but she’s become generally aware of the consequences of letting someone in with that much influence over her moods and feelings.

So.

It’s a bad idea. Hazel doesn’t let herself look.

PJ clearly has no similar reservations. She’s been unsubtly checking Hazel out since Hazel had changed into her own gym clothes. Her eyes flit away when Hazel catches her in the act, but it hasn’t stopped her for long. She’s doing it now—her eyes lingering on Hazel’s arms and chest.

Hazel snaps her fingers in front of her eyes. PJ jerks back. “My eyes are up here, perv. How do you want to do this?”

How PJ wants to do this, apparently, is to try and punch Hazel in the mouth as soon as they get into one of the rings. Hazel isn’t quite fast enough to dodge, and PJ manages to clip her mouth, sending her staggering. It’s strangely reminiscent of their first fight when they’d both had to be hospitalized— PJ had done the same thing then, too.

Hazel stares up at her in surprise, hand cupping her mouth. Her lip had split against her teeth, and she can taste blood. PJ raises an eyebrow. Over PJ’s shoulder, Hazel can see an employee watching them, probably wondering if he should intervene.

“Well, Callahan?” PJ asks. Her eyes are narrowed, but Hazel can see the amusement in them. “I thought we were going to fight.”

All the practice fights Hazel’s been in since leaving high school have been restrained, careful, focused more on improving form than drawing blood. She thought she was the only one with a strange fascination for blood, but PJ’s eyes are on the blood smearing Hazel’s chin.

With that distraction, it’s laughably easy to sweep PJ’s legs out from under her. PJ hits the mat hard, but she’s back on her feet in an instant with a frustrated growl. Hazel can see her looking for an opening to go for her again, but without the upper hand of a surprise attack, PJ is not the better fighter. Hazel tries to keep her admiration from showing on her face. PJ’s still so damn attractive.  

Hazel anticipates her every move, and once PJ’s jabbed at her five times and none of them have hit, PJ gives up and just straight up tackles her. Hazel’s not expecting it, and they both go down hard. PJ tries to pin her wrists, but Hazel’s quick to escape her grip and flip them, trying to get on top. PJ knees her in the groin, and while Hazel gasps and tries to recover from the shock of pain, PJ grabs her wrists in an iron grip.

“Hah,” she croons. “Who’s never won without cheating now?”

“Still you,” Hazel wheezes. “You call this sportsmanlike?”

PJ’s face is very close to hers. Hazel’s breath stutters away. PJ’s eyes are dark, pupils blown, and when she releases one of Hazel’s wrists to bring a hand to her chin, Hazel’s breath leaves her entirely.

Oh, she thinks. What a spectacularly bad idea.

Then PJ pulls her chin up and captures her lips in a hard, furious kiss, and Hazel doesn’t think anymore.  

She fists her hands in the front of PJ’s top—forgetting every single reason for her restraint earlier—and kisses her back messily, desperately, weathering a full body shudder when PJ sinks her hands into her hair and tugs. This is one of the few things Hazel is confident in, something she knows how to do and how to navigate. She winds her arms around PJ’s waist, up her stomach, swallowing the whine PJ breathes into her mouth. The kiss hurts. It tastes like blood.

Someone clears their throat from off to the side. They break apart, and PJ’s weight on Hazel disappears almost immediately. Hazel sits up, feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. Eyes from all over the gym are on them. She can almost hear the announcer from last time: can everyone stop looking at the dyke parade?

The gym employee is standing off to the side, looking at them with an exhausted slump to his shoulders. “Not here, please,” is all he says.

“Okay,” PJ says agreeably, and drags Hazel to the locker room. She pushes Hazel up against a locker as soon as the door swings shut behind them.

“You got taller,” PJ accuses when they inevitably have to stop to breathe. “I wasn’t leaning up this much last time.”

“Yeah, you’re short,” Hazel says, just to rile her up. “My neck hurts from leaning down.”

“You can suffer,” PJ says. She kisses Hazel’s neck, sending a shiver through her. “Are we going somewhere with this? Because I'm not doing it where any voyeur can just observe.”

“Huh, I thought you were into that,” Hazel remarks, but she drops her arms from where they’d been wrapped around PJ’s neck, letting her step back.

The walk back to Hazel’s dorm is freezing and awkward. PJ hides half her face in her scarf and stays stubbornly silent, and Hazel can’t think of anything to say that isn’t: Why? Does this mean anything?

Not even the ten minutes in the freezing cold can make Hazel come back to her senses, apparently. They sloppily make out against Hazel’s bedroom door as soon as it closes behind them, and it becomes increasingly obvious that PJ knows what she’s doing this time around—knows exactly how to make Hazel melt against her. She’s nipping at Hazel’s lips, curling their tongues together, kissing her deep and hot and wet. It’s all Hazel can do to reciprocate instead of just slumping back against the door with her mouth open and letting PJ do whatever the hell she wants with her.

She lets out a sigh when PJ’s mouth drifts away from hers, across her cheek and down her neck. Hazel can feel PJ’s mouth curl into a smirk against her neck, and she’d punch her in the arm but it just feels like too much effort right now, with PJ’s mouth sucking a bruise into her collarbone, grinning at every soft noise she manages to pull from Hazel’s throat.

“So, I guess—” Hazel gasps out between breaths, “—you’re not—a virgin anymore?”

“Emerson has a lot of girls who are into all this,” PJ laughs against her throat, nimble fingers trailing slowly up her thigh and to her stomach, dragging Hazel’s shirt up with them. Her fingertips dip down and slip beneath the waistband of Hazel’s sweatpants. “This okay?”

“Yeah, more than okay, touch me,” Hazel sighs.

In the next second, Hazel is suddenly hoisted into the air, PJ’s hands digging into the backs of her thighs. Hazel squeaks, wrapping her legs around PJ’s waist with a stream of curses hissed out through her teeth. To retaliate, she sinks her teeth into PJ’s ear, making her jerk in surprise.

“Brat,” PJ breathes into her collarbone. They tumble onto the bed, barely managing to extricate themselves from the awkward sprawl of their limbs before Hazel is grabbing PJ’s face again and pulling her down for a rough, messy kiss. There’s a brief interlude where they both help each other struggle out of their sweatpants, and PJ is back and kissing Hazel breathless again almost before she can free herself from them.

“You’re such a mess,” PJ whispers into the kiss, her thumb dragging through the spit on Hazel’s chin.

“Speak for yourself,” Hazel manages, and feels PJ’s teeth against her lip bare in a grin before she catches Hazel’s lower lip between her teeth.

“I wear it better.”

Hazel laughs out, “Fuck you,” and grips PJ’s forearms to get enough leverage to flip them over, press PJ into the mattress, straddling her hips with ease. She’s smaller than Hazel by quite a bit now actually, but still just as sturdy. Hazel can feel muscle underneath her hands where she’s gripping PJ’s biceps. PJ stares up at her with her lips parted in surprise, her eyes dark.

Hazel can say that without a doubt she’s rarely ever seen such a fucking beautiful sight. PJ’s brown hair frames her face, dishevelled by Hazel’s hands, her lips red and kiss-swollen, the line of her jaw bruised by Hazel’s mouth.

PJ yanks her down for another thorough kiss. Her thigh slips between Hazel’s legs at some point, grinding up against the thin fabric of her underwear, and Hazel tries to stifle the surprised noise in the back of her throat when PJ suddenly takes charge again, mouthing down Hazel’s neck, sucking what will definitely be a bruise in the morning into the skin just above the thrum of her pulse. The spike of arousal that accompanies the bloom of pain is almost too much for Hazel to bear. She wants PJ’s clothes off.

“PJ,” she manages to gasp out.

“Hazel,” PJ murmurs back, her tongue soothing the ache of one of the bites.

“I—fuck,” Hazel groans. She wants to do something with her hands, wants to touch PJ, but clothes— “Clothes, off.”

PJ pulls her hands out from underneath Hazel’s shirt and to the waist of her own, yanking it over her head. Hazel reaches out to touch, palms on PJ’s stomach and sliding further up, over soft abdominal muscles until her fingertips bump the edge of PJ’s bra.

“Hey,” PJ says, sitting up and reaching behind herself to unclasp her bra. “You should go down on me.”

Hazel watches the bra fall away, mouth dry. “I mean, yeah, of course.” PJ quirks an eyebrow at her, her mouth curled up in a smug little smile. Hazel falters, not really sure what the boundaries are here, until PJ reaches up to grab her wrists and drags Hazel’s hands onto her tits.

It’s still awkward, but PJ shivers when Hazel brushes her thumbs over her nipples, which is all it takes for Hazel to remember that she’s done this before. Being with PJ scrambles her mind, makes her feel like she’s seventeen and stupid again. She leans down and puts her mouth on PJ’s tits like she’s wanted to since the first time PJ had flashed her in the high school locker room. PJ gasps, a full-body shudder running through her. Hazel wonders hazily if she’s always this receptive. Sensitive.

She traces a line with her tongue down PJ’s stomach, to the dip of her navel. She pauses when her tongue touches the fabric of PJ’s underwear, glancing up through her eyelashes to gauge PJ’s reaction. PJ’s breathing hard, a red flush creeping down her face and neck, her eyes so dark that Hazel can barely see the gray anymore.

Without breaking eye contact, Hazel moves further down, pressing her tongue fully over PJ. PJ’s entire body goes rigid. The dry cotton sits heavy on Hazel’s tongue, and through it she can taste PJ as well, the heady, thick scent of her.

“Can you hurry up?” PJ grits out. The breathiness of her voice takes most of the bite out of it.

“But I’m having fun,” Hazel whines. She moves her mouth away, playfully biting down on the inside of PJ’s thigh.

“Hazel,” PJ warns, one of her hands threading through Hazel’s hair and tugging. A bolt of heat goes through Hazel at the sensation, and she suddenly doesn’t feel much like drawing it out anymore either.

She pulls PJ’s underwear down and just goes for it, drawing one of PJ’s legs over her shoulder and pushing the other to the side to give herself better access. PJ shudders around her, and it’s so good. Hazel could do this forever.

She loses herself to sensation, finding out what makes PJ tense up, what makes her gasp, what makes her cry out. It’s only a few minutes before PJ is coming against Hazel’s tongue, her legs clenching around Hazel’s head. Hazel keeps her tongue on her, easing her gently through it. It’s only when PJ whimpers from overstimulation that Hazel pulls away, wiping a hand over her mouth.

“Fuck,” PJ says, voice strained. She has one arm flung over her eyes, but Hazel can still see the red splashed over her face.

“Yeah, we should,” Hazel grins.

PJ pulls her arm away and cracks one eye open to squint at Hazel. “Take your bra off.”

-

Hazel wakes up alone in her bed, her dorm quiet and dark. She lies there for a moment, staring at the ceiling and letting it sink in that PJ had left. Without leaving a note or texting her.

Her first deep breath catches in her throat, which in turn infuriates her. What had she expected? There should not have been any expectations.

Hazel pulls the blanket over her head and goes back to sleep.