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chapter seventeen: sneaking around

a/n:

six chapters left after this, man

nobody: me in like three stories: and the varsity boys will give off douchebag older brother energy

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Unfortunately, after a few blissful days, it was time for the Banks family (and Jamie) to return to Edina.

With literally none of her stuff unpacked, Jamie sits curled up on the couch, catching up on the episodes of Boy Meets World she missed while she was away. She's got Adam's hoodie on and she plays with the strings, pulling them all the way out and then loosening the hood over and over.

It doesn't smell like him anymore, but it keeps her warm enough so maybe it still has a function.

(For a while, she considers asking him to give her a different hoodie, but that would make her sound like a dork.)

Just as it's revealed that Shawn only asked Topanga out in an attempt to set her up with Cory, Lisa pokes her head into the room with a tight smile. She lowers the volume on the TV, turning to face her mother.

"Hi, mom."

"Hi, Jamie. Can you go to the store for me? I need something for dinner."

Resisting the urge to throw her head back and groan, Jamie nods and gets up from the couch with a sigh. Her mother's smile becomes a real smile and she clasps her hands in front of her.

"Oh, good. Thank you so much, hon."

Even if she didn't really have a choice, Jamie shrugs. "It's whatever."

She takes the list and crumpled-up bills from her mother, shoving them in the pocket of Adam's hoodie. Lisa kisses her daughter on the cheek and sends her off, watching until she closes the door behind her.

The sun is starting to set, and the street lights are coming on.

Across the street, Adam is playing hockey in his driveway. He's dressed in a t-shirt as if there isn't a cool breeze blowing and she frowns, watching him casually readjust the grip he has on his stick before hitting the puck, because he has to be cold.

Hockey player or not, his body is like any other.

"Hey, Banks!"

Adam jumps, turning to her as she looks both ways before jogging across the street. He looks over her form appreciatively, leaning on his stick and grinning crookedly as she approaches.

"Hey." He hums. "I ever tell you that I like it when you wear my hoodie?"

She rolls her eyes, albeit fondly. "Yeah, you dog, but what the hell are you doing?"

Adam cocks his head a bit, eyebrows crinkling together in both amusement and confusion.

"Playing hockey?"

"No, I know that genius- why aren't you wearing a jacket or something?"

He shrugs. "It's not that cold."

Jamie stares at him skeptically, wrapping her arms tighter around herself as a particularly bold gust of wind blows by. He breathes a laugh.

"What? It isn't."

"Look at my face." She points to the cheeks she knows are turning pink. "It's cold."

Adam continues to stare at her in amusement as she walks up to him, pulling the sleeves of his sweater down over her hands before rubbing his arms in an attempt to warm them.

"I'm fine. I'm fine. Playing hockey warms me up, remember?"

"It can't warm you up that much."

"It does." He counters. "Let me show you."

Jamie's eyebrows shoot up to her hairline as he puts the hockey stick in her hands. It's heavy and awkward in her hands, even as he manually corrects her grip on it.

"Go on, give it a try." Adam smiles, placing a puck on the floor in front of her.

Feeling a strange twisting in the gut, she pulls the stick back and hits the puck. It barely travels down the driveway, not making it near the goal by any means, and she wrinkles her nose in frustration.

"That was... good."

"Don't lie. That was pathetic."

"Okay, it was kinda pathetic." Adam hums, corners of his lips twitching slightly. "But it wasn't bad for a first try. Come here."

He comes to stand behind her, hands sliding down her arms to grab her wrists and repositions her grip. Jamie stops breathing as he leans his chin over her shoulder, his breath fanning across her neck.

"Okay, so you have to hold it this way."

His voice (and his breath) kind of tickles.

"And you're gonna stand with your legs like this."

Adam nudges her foot with his until it's in the right spot. She knows her face is impossibly red, and she looks down to help him adjust her footing.

"And then...you're gonna wind it back..."

He guides her to pull it back again and they hit the puck together. This time, it actually goes into the goal, and she breathes a deep, excited breath.

She turns around to face him, their noses brushing. "Oh, wow, I did it."

"You did." Adam grins softly.

He looks down on her with hooded eyelids, and her eyes flicker down to his lips.

They probably would've kissed had her mother not poked her head out of her house to shout across the street at her.

"Jamie! You can talk to Adam later, I need that stuff!"

Jamie jumps back from Adam, blushing impossibly brighter, and he stares at her mother with wide eyes. She completely forgot why she was out here in the first place.

"Sorry, mom! I'm on it!"

"Hi, Mrs. Johnson!" He says, waving awkwardly as his girl shoves his stick into his chest.

Lisa seems incredibly amused. "Hi, Adam."

Jamie whispers a quick 'see you later' and starts rushing down the street, trying to ignore her mother.

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School started again within the next few days.

Jamie, donning his varsity jacket, walks hand in hand with Adam as they walk down one of the main building's main hallways. It connects most of their earlier in the day classes and he figured he'd walk her, giving her some bullshit excuse about chivalry and being a gentleman and all that.

She thinks he just wanted to hold her hand, but she's not complaining.

"I can't believe I already have homework. You'd think they want to spend some time helping us figure out what the hell is going on, but no."

He smiles down at her. "Well, you probably have half of it done already. You're brilliant."

She flushes because she does have half of it done already.

"Such a charmer." Jamie snarks.

Adam's still looking at her all cutely like he might just want to kiss her, and she wets her lips with her tongue. Nothing really happens, though, because Rick Riley stands behind them, wrapping an arm around the both of them.

"Excited for tonight's game, love birds?"

Jamie rolls her eyes, dropping Adam's hand and shrugging the varsity captain's arm off her shoulders. The blond doesn't really move much and just kind of shrivels up in fear of the bigger, dark-haired boy.

"You guys still have a game tonight? Even after the bug thing?"

"You bet, Johnson. They can only put off hockey so long."

She rolls her eyes, muttering something along the lines of 'if you like hockey so much why don't you just marry it?' and Adam, laughing awkwardly, grabs her arm.

"We'll see you later, Rick. At the game. We're very excited."

Without another word, he drags Jamie into their next class.

"I really wish people would stop stopping us from kissing."

"And I really wish you wouldn't pick fights with Rick." He huffs, taking the seat next to her. "But that too."

She snorts softly.

The next forty minutes breeze by, and then the forty minutes after that, and so on and so forth. Right before lunch, Adam and Jamie go their separate ways, her heading to art class and him going to a free period; she goes to her locker after, dropping off her heavy Spanish textbook so she doesn't have to drag it around all day. He'll probably come meet her here and walk her over to the cafeteria, but on the off chance, she'll just say hi to him in the cafeteria.

(Hopefully, he won't expect her to sit with his varsity friends.)

Just like she suspected, as the hallway clears out, he turns the corner with a wide grin on his face.

"Hey, Banks. What's got you in such a-"

Jamie doesn't have an opportunity to finish her sentence, though.

Adam kisses her sweetly, hands holding either side of her face. She makes a little surprised noise as she finds herself pressed up against the lockers, her eyes widening and her hands grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. Just as she's realized what's going on, he's pulling away, still smiling.

"Hi." He breathes, wiping the corner of his lip with his thumb.

"Hi? What brought that on?"

She swallows, letting go of his shirt and smoothing it out a bit, still staring up at him with wide eyes.

"I dunno." Adam shrugs. "I've wanted to do that for like three days."

Jamie snorts a disbelieving laugh.

"Now, c'mon. I'll walk you to lunch."

She shuts her locker and picks up her bag again while fighting to cool her face down. He takes her hand again, which makes it impossibly hard to do so.

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"What's up with you?"

Jamie lingers in the doorway of Cole's dorm with a wrinkled nose.

The last time she was in here was before the whole ant incident, and watching Rick scratch at himself like a dog because of those bites was enough incentive to make her feel uneasy just being on this side of this dorm building. Every time something brushes against her, she fights the urge to freak out and smack at her skin.

Will she ever recover? Hopefully.

"You guys just had ants unleashed on you, forgive me for being a little uncomfy."

She steps into the room as she snarks at him, putting her book bag down and sitting in the swivel seat by his desk. Cole doesn't really budge from the bed, rolling his eyes at her and lying back down.

"They killed all the ants."

Jamie could, in theory, break down paranoia for him, but she's too tired for that- or he's too stupid. Either way, it's not happening.

"Yeah. Whatever."

"Knock knock," Rick says cheerfully, knocking on the doorway. "Oh, Johnson, crazy seeing you here."

"Oh, my god. Why are you always here? It's not even your dorm."

The dark-haired captain rooms with Scott, the goalie who stands behind him. Rick walks past her, ruffling her hair, and sits down on Cole's roommate's bed.

"Because he's my friend, kid, and I like spending time with my friend."

"Even if it intrudes on his tutoring?" She huffs, dragging her bag over to her.

"Yep."

He kicks off his shoes, lying back on the bed in the same way Cole is. Jamie rolls her eyes again, grumbling silently as she opens her book bag to get a book, which turns out to be a mistake.

"Hey, what's that?" Scott asks, pushing off the doorway to look down at her.

"Nothing." She says, going to close her bag again.

He's quicker than her, though, and stops her. A wide grin quickly comes across his features.

"Is that Banks' jacket?"

Jamie groans, sitting back in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest like a petulant child as he pulls it from her bag. Rick sits up in bed and Cole does too, but much more slowly.

"I hope you know I hate you." She hisses at the goalie.

"What's going on?"

"What's going on, my slow enforcer friend, is that our little dork has blossomed into a pretty flower."

She smacks at Rick's hand as he, after getting up, pinches her cheek.

"Huh?"

The two boys deadpan at a confused Cole.

"Jamie and Banks finally got it on, Cole."

"Oh!"

"We did not get it on." Jamie cuts in indignantly, snatching the coat back from the older boys. "Not that it's any of your business!"

He lets her take it.

"Now, now. Don't blow a gasket, Johnson." Scott teases.

"Yeah....also, way to sound like someone who got it on, Johnson."

She hits Rick with her jacket, glaring at him as the three varsity boys dissolve into peels of raucous laughter.

"God, I hate you."

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The varsity kids, surprisingly, beat their rivals ten to one.

Adam and Jamie walk to their bus together afterward, her holding some of his gear for him no matter how much he insisted he didn't need any help. He looks worse for wear, sick, almost, with misery about still being on the varsity team. She knows he probably misses his friends, those Ducks, but she's a little worried at how worn down he looks.

Taking his hand, she squeezes it comfortingly, and they arrive at their stop.

For a few minutes, they're silent as Jamie figures out what she has to say, or rather if there's anything she can say. He wobbles a bit on his feet, falling asleep while standing, but shakes himself awake and sits down.

Frowning, she stands in front of him. "Adam..."

"I'm alright. I promise. The season ends in a few months." Adam waves dismissively.

"Addy, you have to quit the team."

"But my dad-"

"I'll help you talk to him." Jamie brushes his face with her knuckles. "You can't keep doing this to yourself."

He sighs, leaning into her touch. "Alright."

She's not sure Adam actually means it, but she'll accept it anyway. Jamie sits next to him, holding his hand again and letting him lean on her until the bus comes.

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a/n:

so, like, a pretty famous mighty ducks author that i have been following for months (who sorta inspired me to write for this fandom) followed me today and i genuinely don't know how to feel-

me trying to explain the significance of this to my mom: