#// jinx | they/them | 21

[bluscr33ns]

𝗜 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗞, 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗘 𝗜 𝗔𝗠 .

indie private selective and 18+ multimuse featuring muses from bnha, arcane, soul eater, and more . all muses will be heavily headcanon based . please read the carrd !! glitched by jinx . ( they/them, 21+ . )

graphics by @noxcave .

[sparkles0n]

✨ 𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐅 ✨

Indie Yuga Aoyama written by Jinx . Private and Selective . 18+ . Heavily headcanon based . graphics by @noxcave .

promo || headcanons tag || meme tag

mains . // @bulletshot @deathonate @patronsxints @yoakkemae @auditioheros @adhesive-king @eclipsemuses @quirkthieves @mutherless @rewithea @keshimasu @sanitatemsolis @knife-like

rules and basic info under cut .

BASIC INFO . Name / Alias : Yuga Aoyama ( goes by his first name more often after the final war, also goes by Yu ) Age : 17 ( verse dependent ) Gender : amab he/him & she/her pronouns Sexuality : gay I usually default to my post canon verse, in which Yuga does not leave UA and instead continues his studies in the hero course after the final war .

RULES .

1 . ) No NSFW . I have Aoyama’s age at 17, he is a minor, thus i obviously won’t write or allow any NSFW content .

2. ) This blog is friendly to OCs, crossovers, etc .

3. ) If you are a personal / non rp blog, please do NOT interact . i will hardblock anyone who does . this may seem harsh, but personals in my notes can be very distracting and disheartening . if you are a personal blog with an rp sideblog, please let me know so i don’t accidentally block you .

4. ) This blog is 18+, so please be at least 18 if you plan on interacting .

5. ) TRIGGERING CONTENT WILL APPEAR . I will tag things as “ cw (trigger) ” . if you want something tagged, just let me know . common triggers on this blog will include : blood/gore, abuse, mental illness/suicide, self harm, and more .

6. ) please keep in mind that I am still working on watching the MHA show and have not read the manga . so please be patient with me and forgive me if i get anything wrong ! my portrayal will also be VERY HEADCANON BASED,so many things likely won’t be exact to the lore anyway .

7. ) THIS BLOG WILL BE VERY SPOILER HEAVY, and I won’t be tagging spoilers, so keep that in mind .

8 . ) DNI : any kind of bigotry including racism/misogyny/homophobia/transphobia, etc . proship . your name is Ire / hatecharred/hostica .

[ordermad]

𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐙𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐎𝐒 .

Indie Soul Eater multimuse written by Jinx . Private and Selective . 18+ . Heavily headcanon based . Sideblog to @sparkles0n , follows from there .

Rules & Muses under the cut .

Rules :

1 . ) No NSFW . Multiple muses are minors, so i won't write NSFW content on this blog .

2. ) This blog is friendly to OCs, crossovers, doubles, etc .

3. ) If you are a personal / non rp blog, please do NOT interact . i will hardblock anyone who does . this may seem harsh, but personals in my notes can be very distracting and disheartening . if you are a personal blog with an rp sideblog, please let me know so i don’t accidentally block you .

4. ) This blog is 18+, so please be at least 18 if you plan on interacting .

5. ) TRIGGERING CONTENT WILL APPEAR . I will tag things as " cw (trigger) " . if you want something tagged, just let me know . common triggers on this blog will include : blood/gore, abuse / child abuse, death, experimentation, mental illness/suicide, self harm, and more .

6 . ) mun =/= muse . many of these muses are villains or have skewed morals . i may write them, but i obviously do not agree with or condone them .

7 . ) DNI if you support any kind of bigotry or are proship .

Muses :

Death The Kid -- primary .

Crona Gorgon -- secondary .

Medusa Gorgon -- secondary .

Asura -- secondary .

[sparkles0n-a]

𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐅 ✨

Indie Yuga Aoyama written by Jinx . Private and Selective . 18+ . Heavily headcanon based . sideblog to @1mpulsee , follows from there . graphics by @noxcave .

mains . || @rewithea @4heroes @quirkthieves @deathonate @uravityxo

promo || headcanon tag || meme tag

rules under cut .

1 . ) No NSFW . I have Aoyama's age at 17, he is a minor, thus i obviously won't write or allow any NSFW content .

2. ) This blog is friendly to OCs, crossovers, etc .

3. ) If you are a personal / non rp blog, please do NOT interact . i will hardblock anyone who does . this may seem harsh, but personals in my notes can be very distracting and disheartening . if you are a personal blog with an rp sideblog, please let me know so i don’t accidentally block you .

4. ) This blog is 18+, so please be at least 18 if you plan on interacting .

5. ) TRIGGERING CONTENT WILL APPEAR . I will tag things as " cw (trigger) " . if you want something tagged, just let me know . common triggers on this blog will include : blood/gore, abuse, mental illness/suicide, self harm, and more .

6. ) please keep in mind that I am still working on watching the MHA show and have not read the manga . so please be patient with me and forgive me if i get anything wrong ! my portrayal will also be VERY HEADCANON BASED, so many things likely won't be exact to the lore anyway .

7. ) THIS BLOG WILL BE VERY SPOILER HEAVY, and I won’t be tagging spoilers, so keep that in mind .

8 . ) DNI : any kind of bigotry including racism/misogyny/homophobia/transphobia, etc . proship . your name is Ire / hatecharred/hostica .

[briimstne]

Pinned post .

indie selective & private superhero/villain oc . inspired by dc comics with original lore . affiliated with @unrestraiint .

sideblog to @1mpulsee . rules under cut .

MUSE BIO . | LORE .

01.) both mun and muse are 21+, so NSFW content is likely to appear . it will be tagged as "cw suggestive" or "cw nsft" if it appears .

02.) this blog is friendly to ocs, canons, and crossovers ! I am also open to any muse from superhero media, even if I’m unfamiliar with them.

03.) If you are a personal / non rp blog, please do NOT interact . i will hardblock anyone who does . this may seem harsh, but personals in my notes can be very distracting and disheartening . if you are a personal blog with an rp sideblog, please let me know so i don’t accidentally block you .

04.) typical dni rules apply here . no bigotry of any kind, transphobia, homophobia, racism, anything like that . i also ask that proship people do not follow, it makes me extremely uncomfortable . and if anything makes me uncomfortable, i have the right to choose not to interact with you .

05.) this blog is 18+. I am 21+, so if you interact, i ask you to be at least 18+ . this is both because mature content will likely appear, and for my general comfort .

06.) TRIGGERING CONTENT WILL APPEAR. I will tag where I can, and you can always ask me to tag something if needed. I tag triggers as ”cw trigger”. Common triggers on this blog will include: blood/gore/violence, death, mental illness, fire/descriptions of burns, abuse/child abuse, human experimentation, and more .

[1mpulsee]

… AND YOU’LL MISS IT .

indie BART ALLEN / IMPULSE of dc comics . young justice '98 / impulse comics & hc based . 18+, selective & private . mun jinx is 21+, they/them . ( pinned image by @noxcave )

an exploration in ; hope, flawless memory of an infinite existence, the burden of meta knowledge & power, heaven being other people, hell being inside of yourself, living solely in the present, death and more death, a heart with room for everyone except yourself .

promo | meme tag | headcanons tag

other blogs .

@eendtiimes — superhero/villain multimuse .

@briimstne — supervillain oc with original lore .

@sparkles0n — yuga aoyama of mha .

@ordermad — soul eater multi with death the kid as the main muse .

[fatesundress]

⭑ for the love that used to be here. tom riddle x reader

summary. you and tom are the only muggle-borns in slytherin, until one day he isn’t.

tags. angst, afab reader who is referred to as a witch a few times and rooms with girls but i don't think i ever use she/her pronouns or say the word girl/woman, biggest warning is that this is SO long (idk what compelled me to write a year 1 – post-hogwarts fic but here we are twenty thousand damn words later), blood purity and bigotry, dumbledore is greatly offended by the bonding of two orphans until he can capitalise on it, frequent wwii mentions (specifically the blitz), book clerk tom, MURDERER TOM… ministry reader, kissing, smut once they’re 21/22 May all the minors in the room exit at once, more angst, sad ending kinda, me spreading a very personal and very nefarious tom riddle agenda that is canon to ME but probably only like two other people

note. i need a shower and an exorcism after writing this shit. i'm exhausted. i don't even remember half of it. but i'm also SO stoked, this is my little (very large, frankly) 100 followers celebration! i've only been on here for about a month and the love has been so crazy so thank you mwah mwah mwah ♡

word count. 21.8k (i know... i KNOW)

You learn quickly that your shade of green is not the same as theirs. The rest of them are emeralds, even at that age — they glitter with their parent’s polish. You are flotsam, sea-sick, envy green; the putrid boiling stuff that brews in your cauldron when you look away for a second too long, and, really, it’s more of a stain than a colour at all. There is a fraction of a second where you find something powerful in that. You are not an easy thing to remove. And then it’s gone, because they want to so badly.

You learn, with a bit less tact, that you doesn’t actually mean just you; that it’s you and him whether you like it or not.

He evidently does not.

“It has to be completely fine,” Tom says to you in Potions, his voice small then but just as practised.

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

“I said the powder has to be completely fine.”

“I heard you completely fine. I know how to read.”

He stares blankly at you before returning to his own station, and that’s that.

It isn’t unheard of for muggle-borns to be sorted into Slytherin, so you’ve been told, but one glance around your common room and you can see it’s pretty damn rare.

There’s Tom Riddle, there’s you, and there’s a seventh-year girl whose knuckles are always white like she’s spent so long with her hands balled into fists that they don’t know how to do anything else. Tom Riddle is a prat, the girl is too old and unapproachable even if she wasn’t, and you are very good at being alone.

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

Everything is — fine. It’s fine for months; you have no one and need no one and sometimes you catch a jinx in the back of Charms that zips your mouth shut or bends a foot the wrong way (a cruel reminder of how much more these people know than you) and your broom occasionally pivots so sharply the Flying professor has to stop you from careening into a wall and breaking enough bones for a week’s worth of Skele-Gro, but it’s fine. 

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

The boy is eleven years old and he speaks like he’s stealing glances at an invisible lexicon between every word, more refined than any of the orphans you grew up with which makes you wonder which sort he’s surrounded by, and you take it upon yourself to theorise in passing if you could ever scare him badly enough his real voice would slip and he might just appear human for once.

Only it becomes clear when you’re stirring awake in the Hospital Wing after a mysterious bout of dragon pox (conveniently, all the pureblood children developed an immunity after catching it young) has rendered you bed-ridden and pockmarked, that you don’t think anything can scare Tom Riddle. He’s suffering just as well in the bed beside yours to keep the contagion to the two of you, and he’s all cold, eddied rage under sallow skin and beetling bones. 

“They’re going to kill you,” he says after three days of silence, when the room is dusted in moonlight so thin it’s like squinting through cinema noise or mohair fluff to try to see him.

You blink at the vague shape of him. “What?”

“If you don’t hurt them back, eventually, they’ll just kill you.”

In hindsight, it’s an assumption so hastily bleak only a scared child could make it.

I want to hurt them, you try to say, but for what follows you cannot: I want to hurt them but I’m not good enough to do it.

You roll over and pretend to sleep, and in the morning, you hurt them anyway.

It’s Avery who’s unlucky enough to be the first to test you when you’re three assignments behind in Transfiguration, still a bit groggy from your last dose of Gorsemoor Elixir, and actually, physically green. He tugs your hair and stings your cheek with the promise of “bringing a bit of colour back to your face” and it’s sort of funny how banal it is compared to the other transgressions you’ve been dealt — that this is the thing that makes you bare your teeth, grip your wand in a hand that still can’t hold half of it, and send Avery flying across the room with a Knockback Jinx.

Tom sits with you in the Great Hall for dinner that night, and he never really stops.

You practise spells by the Black Lake between classes and he’s anything but kind about the ordeal, but you teach each other. You end your days with singe prints and sore wrists and you often take more damage than he does, but sometimes, as spring settles in with warm tones (apple and jade and moss — all the greens you’d never imagined), you leave with less bruises than he does. It hardly feels like friendship. It feels much more like purpose.

When summer comes you don’t write to him, and you don’t expect he will either. You don’t suppose you’ve actually written a letter in your life. Instead you try new wand movements under your quilt every night and wait for August’s departure on a big red train.

You sit together when the day does come. He asks you if you’ve been practising. You frown and tell him you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school.

Second year is nothing but monotonous, antiquated theoretics. Most everyone complains. You don’t see why they should — they’re already aeons ahead of you — but that means you finally have a chance to catch up in your less-than-school-sanctioned meetings with Tom while the rest remain practically stationary. 

Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration professor Albus Dumbledore is imperceptibly less soft with you than he was last year when you make the apparently poor decision to sit beside Tom on the first day, and you file the subtle shift in demeanour into some mental cabinet to review later.

You find workarounds with the librarian, Madam Palles, inclined to sympathy for the poor, orphaned muggle-borns to grant relatively unfettered daytime access to the Restricted Section so long as you keep it tidy and none of the books leave the library. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tombs and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly. 

You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.

It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.

Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.

You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.

Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.

Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.

“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”

“I wonder why.”

He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.

“What, Tom?”

He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”

You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile? 

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.

“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up. 

Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.

Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about? 

You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers. 

For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.

He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)

Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.

You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession. 

They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.

You’re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.

“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.

He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”

He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.

You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.

But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”

“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”

This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary. 

“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”

He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure? 

It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.

The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning. 

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.

So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.

And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.

The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.

It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with. 

You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.

Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.

But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge. 

He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.

You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books. 

You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.

“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.

Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.

He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”

“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”

You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls. 

“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin. 

“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.

You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.

You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated. 

But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again. 

She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.

For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.

Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)

Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.

“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.

But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”

Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —

“A professor?”

“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.

He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.

It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.

He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.

Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”

His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.

“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”

“So?”

It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.

“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”

He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.

“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”

Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.

You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.

You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.

“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”

Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”

You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.

“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”

“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”

“I —”

“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”

You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.

“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”

“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.

You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”

That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.

“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.

“Tom.”

“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”

“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”

Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.

It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.

The day everything changes starts the same as any. 

You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now. 

Tom has cracked the book.

It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.

He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.

“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”

You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”

“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”

“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”

“I have no need.”

You frown. “You… you already know it.”

“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”

“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”

You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.

“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”

He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”

Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.

He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice. 

It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.

“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all.  You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.

There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.

“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”

You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else. 

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them. 

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten. 

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.) 

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true. 

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer. 

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t. 

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid. 

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless. 

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that. 

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately. 

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end. 

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight. 

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes. 

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand. 

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain,  a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him. 

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love. 

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock. 

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly. 

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it. 

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.) 

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish. 

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same. 

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much. 

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition. 

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal. 

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it. 

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

“I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is. 

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —” 

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant. 

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor. 

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? Why don’t you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together. 

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident. 

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be. 

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop. 

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece. 

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that." 

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval. 

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will." 

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis. 

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain. 

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.” 

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back. 

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake." 

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster. 

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating. 

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself. 

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh. 

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes. 

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.

You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you. 

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

[kaiyunsim]

HEARTS IN THE MARGINS — SMAU !

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synopsis : Jake Sim, the only guy who can compete with you when it comes to academics. Both of you have been trying to come out on top which results in an inconsistent victor. One day, you flunk your test which results in a tutoring session with a intelligent guy…

pairing : academic rival!jake x gn!reader (they/them prns but first few chapters are he/him but i changed it to gn)

genre : smau, fluff, enemies(-ish) to friends to lovers, (angst??), high school / college au

featuring : all of enhypen, shotaro (riize), minji (new jeans), yujin (ive), sunwoo (tbz)

warnings : death jokes, swearing, maybe more (will be stated)

a/n : first smau / fic! excited and have been wanting to write one for a while. i hope the fic will be an enjoyable read and pls lmk of any feedback :> (i want to make better fics)

started : 30/07/24 - …

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profiles : dumbasses | kool kidz

chapter 1 : the test

chapter 2 : golden r

chapter 3 : tutor ! (written)

chapter 4 : ditched plans

chapter 5 : roomate? (written)

chapter 6 : so what?

chapter 7 : cuties

chapter 8 : get ready !

chapter 9 : jay’s jacket (written)

chapter 10 : afterparty (written)

chapter 11 : kidnapped?

chapter 12 : og bf (written)

chapter 13 : jinxed

chapter 14 : delusional

chapter 15 : hangout

chapter 16 : spill

chapter 17 : study again

chapter 18 : celebrate

chapter 19 : party party yeah !

chapter 20 : in the backseat

chapter 21 : boyfie

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taglist : (OPEN!!)

@onlyhyunjin @starchasing-cryptid @bubblztaro @kanattac @nootnootpinguuu @gnusihcom @kkurbys @wh0evenareu

[rascalcurious]

today i have a set of defaults for some of the base game hairs for you guys :) there's also defaults for fhairlong and fhaircornrowslong included that aren't pictured, you can take a look at them here . all clones and unnatural colours are also replaced.

download all: SFS / MF

pick and choose: SFS / MF

i hope you enjoy these defaults :) information about each one and links to custom versions of the hairs are under the cut

credits for original hairs: @simcelebrity00 @dogsill @oakiyo @imvikai @arethabee @aharris00britney @catnipsims @buzzardly28 @laeska @miikocc @clumsyalienn @c-cerberus-sims-s @goamazons @candycottonchu @jellymoo @oydis @feralpoodles

credits for conversions: @kestrelteens @platinumaspiration @miniculesim @shiftingparadymes @pforestsims

1: fhairacorntuck replaced with my conversion of simcelebrity00's lauren hair. CF-EF. 3.8k poly. animated.

2: fhairbarrette replaced with my conversion of dogsill's lucille hair. CF-EF. 7.5k poly. updated with animation

3: fhairbowltwist replaced with my conversion of oakiyo's brandy hair. TF-EF. 4k poly

4: fhairbraids replaced with kestrelteens conversion of imvikai tabitha. CF-EF. 5.5k poly. animated

5: fhairbraidsup replaced with platasp's conversion of dogsill jinx braids. CF-EF. 6.2k poly. animated

6: fhairbun replaced with pforestsims' mesh edit of kestrelteens' conversion of arethabee vega v2, using EA colours. TF-EF. 5k poly. animated

7: cfhairbun replaced with miniculesims' conversion of aharris00britney eve. CF-EF. 4.1k poly

8: fhairfeather replaced with my conversion of catnipsims groovy. TF-EF. 7.8k poly. animated

9: fhairflypigtails replaced with shiftingparadymes' conversion of axa britney. PF-EF.4.9k poly. animated

10: fhairformal replaced with platasp's conversion of ep15 butterfly. CF-EF. 4k poly (note: child sims who wear this hair will age up into fhairfrenchbraid when they age into teen)

11: fhairfrenchbraid replaced with my conversion of buzzardly28's gytha updo. TF-EF. 5.1k poly

12: fhairfuzzylongcp replaced with my conversion of laeska oliva v1. CF-EF. 7.8k poly. updated with animation.

13: fhairhalo replaced with kestrelteens conversion of miikocc marigold hair. CF-EF. 5k poly. animated

14: fhairlongsimple replaced with my conversion of dogsill natalia v2. TF-EF. 11.1k poly. animated

15: fhairlowbun replaced with pforestsims' mesh edit of platasp's conversion of clumsyalienn aelia. 7k poly. animated

16: fhairmediumcenterpart replaced with my conversion of dogsill karlee. CF-EF. 10.1k poly. animated

17: fhairmessy replaced with my conversion of axa brittany. TF-EF. 5.5k poly. animated

18: fhairpagepunk replaced with my conversion of cerberus mia v1. TF-EF. 4.2k poly. animated

19: fhairpgchoppy replaced with my conversion of goamazons lucrecia hair. TF-EF. 5.9k poly. animated

20: fhairpigtails replaced with miniculesim's conversion of oakiyo aria. CF-EF. 6.9k poly. animated

21: fhairponytail replaced with my conversion of candycottonchu's athena hair. CF-EF. 4.3k poly. updated with animation

22: fhairponytailhigh replaced with my conversion of jellymoo maddy. CF-EF. 6.9k poly. animated

23: fhairpoofs replaced with platasp's conversion of clumsyalienn linnea. CF-EF. 13.2k poly

24: fhairshorttuckin replaced with my conversion of aharris00britney amy. CF-EF. 4.2k poly. animated

not pictured

25: fhairlong replaced with my conversion of @oydis dahlia v1. TF-EF. 4.9k poly. animated

26: fhaircornrowslong replaced with @miniculesim ’s conversion of @feralpoodles zara (get custom version here). TF-EF. 14.3K poly. animated

[penkura]

last forever [9/13]

Summary: Zoro only offered to marry you to keep you out of an arranged marriage with a man much older than you. You agreed with the caveat of ending it via annulment once you received word from your parents regarding the original engagement, despite your growing feelings for your close friend.

Pairing: Zoro x Fem!reader, mentioned Sanami later (like epilogue later so chill)

Warnings: Marriage of Convenience, Fake Marriage, referenced sex (waaaaaay later on), mutual pining, Zoro is bad at feelings but what's new there, eventual romance I promise, mention of past attempted assault (I'll warn in that chapter), creepy older dude later on

Note: Post-timeskip, go let's go. Of course, they're a little older now, we know Zoro is 21, so Reader is now 20. :) This chapter IS shorter than the others that are left, but that just means we're getting into the better parts of the story. I really can't wait for you all to see what's next. :)

Taglist:

@misfits1a

[Ch. 1] ● [Ch. 2] ● [Ch. 3] ● [Ch. 4] ● [Ch. 5] ● [Ch. 6] ● [Ch. 7] ● [Ch. 8]

It’s been a long time since you’ve felt such strong anxiety about seeing people, not since the last time you’d met with your parents’ chosen fiancé for you, but it’s come back in spades at the thought of seeing your crew again after two years.

At the thought of seeing Zoro again, more than anything.

The thought of him deciding to dissolve your marriage when he sees you again is the main source of your anxiety, what you try to push away as you leave the lovely group of swordswomen who took care of you for the last two years, those who you’d told about your situationship with Zoro wishing you the best as they dropped you off. You hope no one is jinxing anything, but still feel nervous every time you see someone or something that could be Zoro as you go about, looking for things to purchase and for your friends.

When Nami and Usopp find you, the happiness between the three of you makes all your worries and anxieties dissipate for the time being. Both hug you so tightly, a three-person group hug, you almost cry out of happiness at seeing them again, before Nami starts fawning over how you look so much stronger yourself. She can’t believe how different you seem! She adores your outfit of course, a fitted tank top with knee-length shorts to match and ankle boots, your beloved sword from Elias still attached to your hip. You tell her how wonderful she looks, giving Usopp the same compliment as the three of you start making your way towards Sunny, running into a distraught Chopper who you’re able to calm down after an explanation of the fake Starw Hats on Sabaody.

Chopper gives you a big hug and lets you carry him the rest of the way, its like you have a child but you don’t mind it. You’ll baby Chopper all he wants, it’s the least you can do after he’d taken such great care of you all as your crew’s doctor before you were separated.

Once you make it to Sunny, you’re glad to see your ship and home is safe, and receive compliments from Franky and Robin regarding how more grown up you look. You are twenty now, after all, but it makes you smile shyly and your face feel warm as you thank them both.

After Chopper leaves to retrieve the missing members of your crew once Brook arrives, you start to feel your anxiety creep in again, Robin noticing right away and giving you a soft smile.

“Zoro will be glad to see you again.”

“You,” you gulp a bit, smiling nervously now, “you think so?”

“I do. You two have been close since I’ve been with everyone, I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you’re well.”

You really do hope Robin is right, especially when you hear Chopper calling for you all, the large bird he’d left on returning now with Luffy, Sanji, and Zoro aboard as well. You surprise yourself by not crying when you see Zoro, instead grinning brightly and joining Usopp at waving widely to the three of them, shouting their names.

It slightly catches Zoro off guard to see you so happy, but still makes him keep his own smile on his face when he sees you. Robin is correct, though Zoro doesn’t know that, but he is truly glad to see you’re fine, you look so much stronger than two years ago, and seeing how you keep yourself up on your feet when Luffy flings himself down to give you a hug, he’s even more impressed. He wants, needs, to talk to you alone, but after making it on deck, Luffy still hasn’t let you go, Zoro realizes its going to be a bit before he can take you elsewhere to talk, especially so once Sanji recovers from his nosebleed and also gives you a hug. He turns to fawning over you like Nami did, telling you how lovely you look.

Zoro can’t disagree with that statement.

He gives you time with Sanji, who continues to talk to you and tries to tell you about his own two years, until he notices you’re constantly glancing past him, and he knows exactly why.

Sanji smiles at you, before taking you by the shoulder and pushing you towards Zoro, essentially telling you to go see your husband already, he’s been waiting for you to be free so you could talk maybe. It makes you smile at him before you finally walk over to Zoro, who had turned to leaning against the rail with his arms crossed and eyes closed, until you tap his shoulder and he opens his one good eye to see you.

“Hey there.”

“Hey.”

You feel nervous, for some reason, before you notice the scar over his left eye finally and tilt your head.

“What happened with your eye?”

“Training accident,” Shrugging, Zoro stands up straight and you realize he’s gotten slightly taller in the last two years, he notices the same for you but you’re still shorter than him, “Come with me for a bit, yeah?”

Nodding, you follow Zoro up to the crow’s nest, the two of you briefly talking about your two years. You’re amazed to hear he trained under Mihawk, while Zoro is beyond impressed you ended up in a village for swordswoman. He knew you looked stronger, he can’t wait to see how much better you’ve become with your sword.

Once you’re both in the crow’s nest, before you can say anything else, Zoro surprises you this time but hugging you as tightly as he can, which you return once you’ve shaken off the shock that he’s initiated this. You thought the two years would make the two of you drift apart, not being around each other or anything, but perhaps you’d just been paranoid the whole time.

Don’t cry, I don’t want to cry right now…

“I missed you.”

He’s making it difficult for you not to cry, so you just nod a bit, biting your tongue to keep from crying.

“I missed you too, Zoro…”

Neither of you say anything for a while, you’re impressed the rest of your crew hasn’t tried to bother and bring you both back down with everyone, but you’re also grateful for it. You both need this, just some time together, time alone, it’s probably not enough time to discuss your marriage and what’s next, but you don’t really care that much.

“I…I love you…”

Zoro nods, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead briefly.

“I know.”

That’s enough for you right now, it still makes you smile up at him, before you frown a bit, causing Zoro to raise an eyebrow at you.

“My parents…they still want me to go back and marry him…”

“Oh yeah?”

You nod, staying quiet for a moment before you sigh and lay your head back against his chest and gripping his top while he strokes your hair a bit. He may not agree with what you’re about to say, but after two and a half years, your marriage could only be ended by divorce, a thought you’ve hated since this came into being. You even hated the thought of the annulment plans, and now, you two only had the choices of divorcing or staying married.

“I don’t want a divorce…”

“We’re not gonna. Not now,” Zoro hugs you a little tighter, one arm around your shoulders and the other around your waist as he gives you a kiss on the top of your head, “I won’t let anyone take you away from the crew, even if we stay married forever.”

“Thank you…thank you so, so much, Zoro…”

“Of course. I’d never let anyone force you into anything, wife.”

+!+

You think Fishman Island was one of the fastest “get to city enter battle” events you’ve experienced do far, maybe second only to Sabaody. Your crew was separated almost immediately, you ended up with Nami and she took you to the shops right away, demanding discounts and trying to put cute clothes on you, things she swears Zoro would probably like to see you in with a grin while you shy away and push her off a bit. Admitting to her and Robin that you’re in love with Zoro might have been a mistake, but at least you have people to talk to about the situation.

Of course, though, nothing is easy as a member of the Straw Hats and you all quickly are defending the Ryugyu Kingdom from Hordy Jones, fighting off masses of Fishmen to protect yourselves and the innocent citizens of the kingdom.

While you don’t take out anywhere near as many enemies as Zoro or Sanji, you still fight enough to help keep them at bay, getting some compliments post-battle from your crewmates and some of the citizens. It makes you feel both shy and proud at the same time, your two years of training weren’t a waste after all, even Zoro can see the changes in your fighting style and how well your attacks land now. You don’t look as nervous as you used to either, despite the confidant air you’d put on back then. The little bout you two had when you asked to stay with him, he saw you shaking so badly because you were scared but also still recovering from being sick, you tried your best and Zoro could see that, it’s part of why he had no problem with you following him, especially once you let him start teaching you more about swordsmanship.

You’ve definitely improved from the shaky, scared girl he met four years ago.

You feel like Zoro hasn’t changed at all, despite the scar over his left eye and definitely becoming bulkier, he was still the same to you. Still makes your heart flutter when you watch him fight, he still checks on you after fights, it makes you happy to see he’s still the same. He’s still Zoro, of course he wouldn’t change.

“Hey, come with me for a minute.”

During the celebration that’s being thrown for you all as thanks for saving Fishman Island, Zoro takes your hand leads you off again, just the two of you. It makes you comment that if he keeps taking you away from everyone, someone is going to get the wrong idea, but Zoro just shrugs it off. He doesn’t really care what others think still, you’ve always known that.

Once you’re far enough away from everyone, he guides you to sit beside him before surprising you with what he says next.

“We should talk about our situation.”

The fact Zoro actually wants to discuss what’s going to happen next is the surprise, but you still nod, agreeing with him.

“Change your mind on us divorcing?”

“No, I haven’t,” Zoro brushes a bit of hair behind your ear, placing his hand on your cheek which makes you smile at him, “We’re not divorcing unless you want to, but…I think we should try, you know, dating, or whatever you want to call it…”

You blink a few times, completely confused and shocked before tilting your head.

“…huh? You…what?”

“What, you suddenly going deaf or something?” Zoro pinches your cheek a little which makes you wince and pout, before giving him a glare that makes him smirk at you, “We should try a relationship, forget your parents and our original deal. I…I want to try being your boyfriend.”

You really didn’t expect this, you first thought,  like you asked, that Zoro had changed his mind and decided he was done with your fake marriage, but instead, he actually wants to give the two of you a try. Wants to see if this might be something that really could last, not a temporary solution to your personal problems.

While you think it through for a moment, you barely register that Zoro is starting to look nervous, something you’ve never really seen before. Once you make up your mind, before he can say anything more, you lean up and kiss him, pulling away with a smile that Zoro returns.

“I’d love to give us a real try, Zoro.”

Everything is going to be okay, you’re sure of it.

+!+

Sanji and Nami can see a difference in your and Zoro’s relationship quickly after you leave Fishman Island. As you approach Punk Hazard, Zoro doesn’t really let you go, keeping you near to him even as you all draw straws and you end up being one of the group to stay on Sunny and keep watch. Neither of them say anything when he pulls you aside once again, but the smile you have while you talk to Zoro tells them both everything is fine, especially when you nod once more and hug him, which he returns to their surprise.

The two look at each with questioning glances, trying to see if you’ve said anything to the other, but both shrug. Truthfully there’s not been time to talk to either of them, and when the group Zoro’s a part of leaves, the two drag you to the kitchen and start asking questions, which causes you to laugh, but Nami doesn’t really think it’s funny.

“Come oooonnnn,” Nami leans against your arm, giving you a pout, “You guys are acting weird, you can’t tell us something isn’t going on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nami.”

The blush on your face starts to give you away, and Sanji figures it out, giving you a slight grin.

“Did he finally tell you he likes you back?”

“Mm…something like that.”

“Are you guys dating then?”

“Maybe~” You’re not very good at being coy, to the point Nami gasps and shouts that she knew it before hugging you tightly while you laugh and Sanji sighs, still smiling.

“About damn time. That stupid mosshead, taming two years to tell you anything.”

“Well, all he said was that he wants to try a relationship, so that’s what we’re doing.”

“So he’s your boyfriend!” The little squeal and giggle from Nami makes you join in. “Finally, I told you he liked you back!!”

“Yeah, yeah, you were right!”

Sanji is quiet while he watches the two of you for a few moments. He really does hope that you and Zoro are going to be okay one day, that he’ll stay your husband and neither of you has to deal with the divorce papers or anything like that. He doesn’t want to watch another couple in his life break down, even as you two are just starting out.

Well, minus your two and a half years of actually being married, even though it hasn’t been a real marriage yet. It still isn’t, as you explain after a bit, but your friends seem to get it. You still want things kept under wraps, until Nami brings something up.

“Yeah…umm…about that…”

You give her a confused look as Sanji sighs again.

“Luffy kind of told everyone that didn’t know. It was the day Franky was making comments about you and mosshead being in his bed.”

Groaning, you lean back in your seat before nodding.

“All right then…let’s keep me and Zoro dating between the four of us then?”

“A good idea.”

“At least we can keep a secret.”

[korraofthereef]

Holy shit. TIMEBOMB FANS STRAP IN FOR THIS.

(lots of you have probably already seen this video before, but here’s a quick reminder)

First let’s start with the pinned comment that breaks down time stamps in the video:

Introduction (Ekko did not just have a SLIGHT crush on Jinx lol) : [0:00]

RIOT geniously hiding stuff about Timebomb till the reveal : [1:32]

The timelapse (lots of uncorrect lines in the audio cause we didn't know they met at that time, so it was just me theorizing, but I guess I wasn't wrong now lol) : [2.35]

Ekko-Jinx background, Timelapse + what we know from LORE, and how RIOT been playing with our sanity : [3:20]

✨ WALL ANALYSIS [starting with the easiest ones to see, most interesting parts are near the end]

Intro : Ekko's Wall painted in a RORSCHACH Art style [patchwork graffiti] - being full of Powder & Jinx, Ekko being in love representations, and references to Arcane : [7:28]

Jinx's heroe number and Ekko having her X and her signature all over him : [10:09]

(!) Please see the threads in description to see it all pointed out (!) The video didn't really say it right but these pictures and explanations will definitely make you see what I mean, and also, what I mean about the hair-clip and the Firelight symbol might be theory but I have explained in my thread all the things I discovered that make me thing the Firelight symbol, seeing how it changed, might have a link with Jinx in the first place when it was invented by Ekko.

RIOT playing with us and hiding the fact Jinx was on the wall : [12:14]

This is NOT hypothesis : [12:58]

The developers pointing out the forms we need to see with the thunder hextech energy : [14:54]

Yes, Ekko was in love, and he represented himself 6 times looking at her with bewildered eyes, heart in his eyes, blushing or spying on her during their teenage days : [15:18]

✨ SUMMARY FOR THE THE PAINTINGS --------

NOTE : sometimes you will see the paintings I’m pointing out even better in the next paintings I will point out. By exemple, the Firebomb and the Ekko blushing drawing described in N°2, are clearer and more easy to see in the screencaps pointing out painting N°3! Just try sticking till the end of the video to see them all! ;)

First observations & How I started my Analyze : [16:11]

N°1 - Arcane Jinx main painting on the left - representing Ekko’s Hope to get her back : [16:41]

N°2 - Powder main painting on the right (double faced Powder-Jinx + Ekko blushing + Jinx Chumper bomb) : [17:44]

N°3 & N°4 (I apologize for the lame quality of this one but it was quite hard to make it stand out!) - Screaming/crying Powder, teenage Powder-Jinx drawn K/DA style boxing + teenage Ekko with his Firelight jacket standing on the other side : 5 scenes painted in one and moving along with the seconds! (SIDE NOTE : the cube design on the painting represents the Arcade place in which Jinx boxes the machine, I forgot to mention it in the video!) : [19:19]

N°5 - Vi abandoning Powder - exact Arcane scene : [21:28]

N°6 - Get Jinxed scene from Arcane and Ekko spying on her : [22:14]

N°6, 7 & 8 - Ekko representations watching with bewildered eyes, blushing, with his Firelight mask AND A HEART around the 2 middle Powder & Jinx paintings : [25:20]

Back on N°7, beautiful painting of teenage-adult Jinx with shimmer eyes on top of the wall : [26:26]

N°9 - Little Powder from Arcane & Ekko blushing next to it : [27:47]

N°10 - Doll Jinx with Arcane's clothes : [28:28]

N°11 - Black & white picture of the same screaming/crying Powder represented on painting N°3 : [28:50]

N°12 (that you can see more clearly later in the screencaps of N°27!!) - Ekko in GILDED skin & Jinx with untie long hair drawn in negative mode : [29:04] (!) in the video I said Firelight jacket but now that I discovered all the Ekko-Jinx matching stuff in the Gilded universe (and them hiding in the crowd side-by-side on the Caitlyn’s Gilded artwork lol), I realized it looked like Gilded Ekko in that painting!

N°13 - Young Ekko with unknown person on his side but seeing how the rest of the wall is Jinx, it is probably Powder : [29:19]

N°14 - Young Powder & Ekko talking, probably the talk they had after Powder was taking in by Silco, seeing how Ekko is represented like a skeleton (dying inside) : [29:37]

N°15 - Jinx blue smoke/cloud tattoos representation (!) this cloud I'm pointing out is actually part of the ''cracking the hextech scene'' I've discovered later on, and is located on her shoulder! I will show the painting of that scene later in the video don't worry ! ;) [30:25]

N°16 - Symbols next to the Get Jinxed painting, that have different meanings in the next scenes I will show when the wall will be upside down (singing, crying + hextech symbols) : [30:32]

N°17 - THREE PAINTINGS IN ONE : Powder's red eye when she looks at Silco at the end of Act 3 + Jinx's face/mouth when she looks at Ekko before she made her bomb explode : [30:45]

N°18 - Representation of baby Powder's trauma on the bridge : [31:54]

N°19 - Lighting the flare scene drawn negative mode again, being represented in every way/side you turn the wall : [32:12]

N°20 - Random elements, like Ekko's young blushing face, giving the shape of a heart when you turn them upside-down : [32:29]

N°21 - Young Powder with Arcane's clothes, but looking more fierce as the Powder we know. Perhaps one Powder from Ekko's memory, or the Powder from the Timelapse : [32:40] (!) You can see this painting more clearly in the screencaps of N°27 (!)

N°22 - Jinx drawning/reborn scene with Silco : [32:56]

N°23 - (sorry I have deleted this one since I couldn't point it out in the video, but here's what it was : the black canvas on each side of the scene, also have Jinx & Powder's representations on them, but you'll have to zoom in and improve lighting + the quality yourself to see them cause it can't be shown in a video ToT/)

N°24 - Powder’s leather bag + teenage Ekko staring + blue & pink hand palm : [33:17]

N°25 - Big Jinx monkey-bomb from Arcane, near the other paintings of that exact same scene : [33:37]

N°26 - Drawn negative mode : ''Devil'' Jinx from the bridge scene : [34:08]

N°27 - Two paintings in 1 - Teenage or adult Ekko & Jinx + Ekko’s Gilded skin again ? : [34:31]

N°28 - Jinx ''cracking the Hextech'' scene : [34:57]

N°29 - Firelights representations, same as the ones Jinx drew in her Diary : [35:40]

N°30 - end [36:05]

MORE INTERPRETATIONS & BETTER QUALITY OF SOME PAINTINGS :

N°12 - Ekko & Jinx with untie long hair drawn in negative mode but also, if you look at it at [34:55], you'll see it way more clearly AND also see that it gives Jinx lighting up the flare scene with Ekko on his overboard flying around her.

N°27 - at [34:37] you'll see the young Powder from N°21 way more clearly!

The Jinx Monckey-bomb. At [30:58] ; [31:55] and [34:13] you might see the Jinx Monckey-bomb more clearly as the pictures are in better quality or more focused on this area !

N°22 [32:06] : I forgot to mention it in the video but in that drawing-reborn scene with Silco, you can actually see fingers/a hand (drawn by the Jinx mouth from N°28) pushing on Jinx’s skull/in her hair which seems to be pulling her under water.

More stuff about the Get Jinxed painting and the Devil Jinx one : on top of the Get Jinxed painting, there is a scary white mask/face that I believe to be representing Silco. When you turn the picture upside down, and try not focusing on that mask, it then gives off the Devil Jinx I showed earlier.

Also, the big yellow/bewildered eye in the middle of Jinx chest in the Get Jinxed painting could be representing the Eye of Zaun, as this a tech-nerd Jinx being represented here, and as Ekko is represented staring/spying on her, it could imply that Ekko has recognized Powder in her in that moment, the Zaunite child with whom he grew up with and whom he loved.

End note : I forgot to mention it in the video but there are also 2–3 Vi representations on the Jinx paintings, one from the scene where she left her on the street and went to calm herself away from her, and another with her head and shoulders down, on the main Jinx painting on the left, that looks like the Vi introducing scene from Episode 4 in the prison.

OKAY INSANE. Next I’m gonna give you some screenshots I took so y’all can get some visuals to the stuff you just read. Also, WATCH THE VIDEO!!! The creator does a lot better at exposing than I do—never mind the fact that this is literally their findings! (I didn’t find any of these, just watched the video and now spreading it to tumblr). I have absolutely no recollection of which N• photo these images belong to so you’ll have to play connect the dots lmao

A lot of the images also already have text on the screen explaining, I’m just gonna paraphrase what the voice in the video (not the text) is saying.

These two photos are telling us how Ekko’s down bad ass based the entire firefly logo off of Jinx and her logo… and for the context in the first image about the emboldened Z, here it is:

PRACTICALLY IDENTICAL.

This is the video creator explaining their level 1 billion brain power on thinking outside the box and how the idea of the painting was to go back to an Ekko origin short that came out YEARS before Arcane did. They’ve been planning this entire time, and when the description pasted far above talking about the different photos it was talking about the images painted on a wall in an Ekko origin (will show screenshots next)

The creator of the yt video found almost FORTY Jinx paintings and references to Arcane (which hadn’t been anywhere near its release date when the origin came out.

These ones on the large wood slab are CRAZY. The artists and develops had loads of fun because in the last photo you can see jinx screaming/crying if you focus on all the colours in the photo.

However, the YouTuber blurred Jinx’s face to hell you focus on the blues and pinks where the developers/artists made kind of like a moving mini scene that moved while the video itself moved. To my understanding you can see Jinx boxing and at some point Ekko shows up, too.

(I’ll repost this so I can add more images 👍)

[mysecretlittlelibrary]

One Last Lesson

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: okay so there's some switching on both sides but mostly dom!Spence, oral (f receiving), age gap (reader is over 21), teasing, pet names, marking a lot, p in v sex, praise/minor body worship, yk I love some dirty talk so- that's there, multiple orgasms, riding, marking- I hope I got everything??

Genre: Just fluff, Just smut

Summary: It's been a year, Spencer is yours, but it seems someone just won't back off at the alumni gala

A/N: I wasn't planning on a Pt. 3 for this yall it was a duology lmao- I saw the demand but I had nowhere to take it; so you can thank @shan-yee because their comment inspired the continuation of this saga :)

***

Spencer walks over to you and places his hands on either side of the counter you're sitting on. You're spending the night at his place and right now he's cooking dinner.

"You know, it's been almost a year now." He says kissing your neck.

"Since what exactly?" You ask him.

"Since you graduated is what I meant, but also since we made it official technically." Spencer squeezes your hand and then grabs a spatula from a drawer and walks back over to the stove.

"Oh yeah, we're a few months off from it I suppose." You hum.

"The alumni gala is this weekend. Do you- plan on going?"

"It's this weekend? Really? I didn't even realize."

"Oh." He says, his back is facing you but you're positive he's leading up to something and that answer didn't give him the lead up he was hoping for.

"Why are you asking?" You smile.

"Well I was thinking that if you were planning to go we could go together. I mean I'll be there regardless but like- it'd be nice to go as a couple. If you wanted to do that." He shrugs.

"Do you want me there Spence?" You ask.

"Of course I do. I always want you by my side."

"Then I'll go. We'll go. As a couple."

"You're sure?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" You frown. Spencer turns around to look at you.

"Well you know, I don't want you to be uncomfortable if people say-"

"I don't give a fuck what anyone might have to say. I like you Spencer, I like being with you. Nobody's random opinion is gonna make me stop feeling that way." You shrug. Spencer's eyes soften, adoration shining in them.

"Okay." He smiles.

"Oh, but when we go we should change the timeline a little." You say.

"What do you mean?"

"Instead of telling them we've been together almost a year, tell them it's only been a couple of months." You shrug.

"So if we've only been together a couple of months what's like- the rest of our story?"

"Well we can say we ran into each other at a bar a few months ago, got talking, and realized we had a lot in common- decided to see where things go and it's been great so far."

"Okay." He nods.

"I know you don't particularly like lying but it's for you. I don't want anyone doubting the ethics of our relationship and calling into question your job. So stick to that story and try not to oversell it with details. The more complex the harder it is to keep things straight."

"Well, what if they ask for details?"

"I can't imagine we'll spend a lot of time apart at the gala so chances are I'll be there to handle that for you but if you find yourself alone and they ask you something you don't want to risk complicating- just tell them 'things are still new and you don't wanna risk jinxing anything' and then find a way to change the subject to literally anything else."

"Things are still new and I don't wanna risk jinxing it- okay sure. You're a- good liar."

"I've thought about it before, in case anyone started asking questions- at least for the next few years. After a while, no one will care but you know, for now. I don't want you to lose your job or anything because of me." You shrug. Spencer walks over to you and tilts your head up to look at him. He kisses you sweetly and quickly.

"That's sweet of you to be that concerned about it but you shouldn't stress too much about my job." Spencer says.

"I know, I know, but I care about you, Spence. Of course, I'll worry about that sort of thing."

"You're so cute." He chuckles, returning to the stove to finish cooking dinner.

"Yeah, I know." You say jokingly, making him laugh harder. A few minutes later, dinner is finished and you move from your spot on the counter to the living room to eat and watch TV with him.

~*~*~

When the day of the gala comes around that weekend, you spend more time getting ready than you usually would. Your dress is a gold floor-length number with no sleeves and a dangerously high slit. You pair it with black lace gloves just because you can and your makeup is killer if you do say so yourself. Not that you have to, Spencer's reaction when he comes to pick you up is more than enough confirmation that you look drop dead.

"Woah." He breathes out, his eyes wide.

"Hello to you too Spence." You chuckle stepping into the hall and locking your apartment door.

"I- hey. You look stunning baby."

"Thanks, you don't look too bad yourself love." You wink at him as you loop your arm through his. He's wearing a black dress shirt with gold detailing which you didn't know he was planning on wearing when you picked your dress but how convenient that you match. You notice he's forgone a tie and left the top couple of buttons undone and part of you wants to skip the gala altogether, but you got all pretty so to the gala you will go.

By the time you arrive, it seems the event is already in full swing, the hall is full of familiar and unfamiliar faces between faculty, alumni, and current students- who apparently are welcome and encouraged to attend these things. In fact, you're barely there for 10 minutes before some of your former classmates get a hold of you and drag you away from Spencer. So much for being together most of the night. It's fine, you remind yourself, he's a big boy, plus he's got his script. You focus on the conversation you're part of, a few guys and girls from your department are playing catch up, everyone sharing the most important news from their lives post graduation. 

You find yourself in several more of those kinds of conversations with various groups of people over the next hour or so. Side effect of being half part of so many social groups during college you suppose. Every once in a while you steal glances at Spencer, who mostly seems to be enjoying himself with his colleagues. You know Spencer was expecting this night to be a sort of debut for your relationship at his job so you wanted to be with him most of the night but maybe this is fine, him with his people and you catching up with friendly acquaintances you haven't seen in a while.

Just as you're settling with that idea you catch Professor Greene beelining towards Spencer and you can't help the internal eye roll when she walks up to him with a megawatt smile. You split your attention between the conversation you're currently part of and Spencer's interaction with Professor Greene. With things official between you and Spencer, you're much less worried about her honestly but you watch Spencer for signs of discomfort so you can rescue him if needed. You haven't heard much of her from Spencer since your little stunt last year with the hickeys so you're surprised to see her so friendly with Spencer. When you catch her place a hand on Spencer's arm and he awkwardly breaks the contact you decide to step in.

"I am- so sorry to cut this conversation short, I just- it looks like I need to rescue my date from a conversation he absolutely does not want to be part of but I will find you again to finish this before the night ends okay?" You tell Jordan, a friend of yours who you had classes with literally every semester of university.

"Girl don't even worry about it go save your man." He chuckles waving you off.

"Thank you babes, if I don't catch you again tonight, I'll just text you." You rush out before making your way over to Spencer and Professor Greene. You keep your pace light so as to not look vexed but you reach them rather quickly.

"Spencer! There you are! I've been looking for you." You smile, placing your hands on his arm gently. He relaxes with you at his side, matching your smile with one of his own. You turn to Professor Greene, still tucked against Spencer's side. "You're Professor Greene, right? I'm y/n." You stick an arm out to shake her hand and she takes it albeit a little hesitantly.

"Have we met before?" She asks with a curious frown.

"Not formally." You smile.

"I'm- gonna grab a drink. Y/n, do you want anything?" Spencer asks.

"I'll have a mojito if they can make one. If not then I'll just grab champagne from one of the trays floating around the room." You tell him.

"Professor Greene? Would you- like anything?"

"No thanks, Spencer." She says with a tight smile.

"Okay well you two wait here, I'll be back in a sec." He says jogging off. You can't help but smile as you watch him go.

"He's so sweet." You say before you can stop yourself.

"Oh that's cute." Professor Greene says.

"Sorry?" You turn to her.

"Are you one of Spencer's students?"

"No, I've graduated. Almost a year ago now. Why do you ask?"

"Well, it's just- perhaps I'm assuming but it seems like you have a bit of a crush on him." She says and you can't help the surprised chuckle you let out.

"Excuse me?" You ask with a smile.

"I'm not judging or anything. It's cute and totally not unusual! That's why I asked if you were one of his students, I mean- not that anything would come of it but having a crush on your professor and all is pretty common despite the- taboo around it. I one hundred percent get it." She explains.

"Oh, do you? You get it? See- the thing I get is that you have a bit of a crush on that professor but I'm fucking that professor so I'm not sure you one hundred percent get it seeing as we are not in the same boat." You say, your tone deceptively cheery.

"Excuse me?" She blinks at you incredulously.

"I'm not daft Professor Greene and neither is Spencer- it's quite obvious you fancy him which is totally not unusual and not that anything would come of it but I one hundred percent get it. See you don't need to placate to me because I'm the person he came here with. I'm the person he'll be leaving with." You say. Professor Greene's eyes narrow for a moment before widening.

"Wait no you have definitely been a student of his, I remember you. A plucky thing- sat in the front row."

"Surprised I left an impression." You cross your arms.

"Spencer always seemed particularly concerned with you."

"I was his best student." You shrug.

"Oh I'm sure you were. Extra credit will do that." She scoffs.

"I didn't need to suck his dick to be the best in his class I'm just that good. We only started seeing each other a couple of months ago not that it'd really make a difference he still wasn't interested in you at any point. You'd think by now you'd get the hint." You say and she levels you with another glare.

"Did you know they make flavored mojitos? The guy at the bar asked me what flavor you wanted. You didn't mention a flavor but I know you like passionfruit so I hope that's okay." Spencer's arrival doesn't break the tension between you and Professor Greene but you shoot him a sweet smile as you take the drink from him.

"Passionfruit's perfect baby, thank you." You tell him. "I was just telling Professor Greene here about how we got together."

"Yeah, Spencer, I didn't know you had a girlfriend!" Professor Greene says with a smile that's too wide to be genuine.

"Oh! Well, yeah things are still pretty new, I haven't made it a point to go around announcing it. Plus it's not like we're close or anything." Spencer shrugs and puts an arm around you casually, pulling you closer to him.

"Well yeah I know I know it's just- well that's kind of a big deal, isn't it? A girlfriend. You've got a bit of a bachelor reputation you know." She says and you let out a sharp disbelieving laugh.

"Do I? That's news to me." Spencer looks at you with a chuckle.

"Oh you know what I mean Spence."

"Not really but I guess it doesn't matter. I'm pretty private about these things, even though I'm obsessed with her."

"Aw you're so cute." You gush with a hand on his chest.

"Well you do make quite an interesting pair. If you'll excuse me, I see Darla and I've been trying to track her down all night so I'll leave you to each other." Professor Greene dismisses herself and rushes off to start another conversation elsewhere.

"'I didn't need to suck his dick to the best in his class'? Are you insane?" Spencer turns to face you with an incredulous smile on his face.

"To be fair it didn't start there!" You say.

"Oh yeah? Give me the breakdown."

"You left and she made a snide comment about me having a crush on my professor that 'wouldn't go anywhere', I got a little snippy with her and then she implied the only reason I was one of your favorite students is because you were screwing me but like I'm smart I don't need to fuck you for an A I already had one before you even touched me so- I was basically just telling her that."

"When you say a little snippy-"

"I honestly don't think you want to know." You shake your head.

"What did you say to her?"

"TLDR, I told her she has a crush on you and I am fucking you so we're not really in the same boat which was- probably escalating but she started it by trying to patronize me." You shrug and Spencer sighs though you can see his shoulders shake in silent laughter.

"You are-" he stops to laugh again. "Incredible."

"Thank you baby." You smile.

"Honestly that was very uncomfortable but I will admit there was something... captivating about that battle of wits you had going on." His head dips to press a kiss to your neck.

"Captivating huh." You hum.

"Yeah, you're hot when you get all territorial." He smiles down at you.

"You're saying that now because this time I didn't take it out on you." You chuckle.

"I mean, I certainly wouldn't have been against walking in tonight covered in hickeys like last time." He mutters.

"Naughty boy. Keep that up and we'll have to leave early you know." You muse.

"I mean I've spoken to everyone here I need to talk to." Spencer's hand slides down over your ass for a moment.

"So worked up so quickly."

"Come on princess, let's get out of here. I owe you one hell of a thank you for dealing with Professor Greene." Spencer mutters in your ear trying to sway you.

"If we're going to leave early, you'd better make it worthwhile professor." You tell him pulling him through the party towards the exit. He stops you just outside the hall to pull you into a kiss.

"Don't I always?" He winks at you and takes the lead then, walking you to his car and helping you into the passenger side. Once he pulls out of the parking lot, you put a hand dangerously high on his leg, rubbing up and down his thigh 'absentmindedly', watching the way his fingers grip the steering wheel tighter with each passing moment. At red lights, you lean over to kiss and nip at different spots on his neck, you didn't mark him up before going out but there's no reason you can't do it now. By the time you're back at Spencer's apartment, you can tell your teasing did exactly what you wanted when he rushes you through the lobby and into the elevator. He hardly lets the elevator doors close before he corners you against one of the walls. Spencer kisses you, rough and hot, his hands gripping your upper arms.

"You'll be the death of me one of these days." He breathes out. The elevator doors open then and you drag your fingertips up his thigh with a dangerous smirk before getting off. You can hear him let out a harsh breath before he follows you to the door. Spencer unlocks the door and lets you in, barely shutting the door before he pulls you against him in another searing kiss. One of your hands tangles in Spencer's hair tugging lightly which he rewards with a grunt and a nip at your lip. Eventually, you pull away from him, grabbing his chin a bit to tilt his head out of the way of his neck.

"Hm- they're not great but- by the end of the night I'll mark you up so well it'll be like a signed my name on you." You hum kissing him again.

"Whatever you want princess. Tonight's about thanking you, any particular way you want me to show my gratitude? Because personally, I'd like to peel this dress off of you and bury my tongue between your folds." Spencer mutters, trailing soft kisses across your neck and shoulders.

"That- that sounds like a great way to start." You say.

"Perfect." Spencer pulls you down the hall into his bedroom. His hands drag down your arms, pushing the sleeves off and subsequently dropping your dress to the ground. He lets one hand grab onto yours to help you step out of the dress and immediately drops to his knees in front of you. Spencer pulls one of your legs onto his shoulders, grips the back of your thighs tightly, and buries his head between them. You jolt forward as his tongue swipes through your folds, catching your clit and you tangle your fingers in his hair to steady yourself.

"Oh god." You gasp as Spencer pushes his tongue inside you, thrusting in and out, caressing your walls all while moaning at the taste of you and the feeling of you pulling his hair. Spencer can feel your legs start to shake and tightens his hold on your thighs when he drags his tongue up to focus on your clit. "Fuck!" You squeak, actually squeak, when Spencer flicks at the bundle of nerves with practiced precision that has you trembling in his hands. 

"Spence." You moan his name in warning, your orgasm building quickly. He increases the pressure slightly, just enough to push you over the edge with a cry, your fingers tightening in his hair, holding him against you as you ride out your orgasm against his mouth. As the aftershocks of your release ease, Spencer eagerly laps up the juices flowing from you, his nose brushing your clit with each draw of his tongue. You gasp when Spencer hooks his arm under your leg still draped over his shoulder and presses his hand at the small of your back as he wraps his lips around your clit and sucks harshly on the little button. You jerk against his ministrations but his hold is steady- even as he releases your other leg to bury two fingers between your walls. He pumps the digits quickly and you can feel another orgasm building.

"Holy- shit that feels good." You whimper and you feel Spencer smile around your clit for a moment before he continues to suck on it feverishly. Spencer pulls your second orgasm from you so quickly that you don't even realize how close it is until you're screaming from the force of it. Spencer works you through it, his fingers slowing but not stopping until your walls ease up against them. He gazes up at you as he licks his fingers clean before kissing just below your belly button. He kisses his way up your body, hands trailing over your skin until he's at his full height.

"One hell of a thank you baby." You say breathlessly. Spencer laughs and leans down to kiss you, cupping your face with his clean hand. You use the time to pull his shirt free and undo the buttons, then focus on his pants, tugging off the belt and shoving the slacks down his legs. You let Spencer walk you back towards the bed and lay back when your legs hit the edge of it. You watch as Spencer finishes undressing himself and crawls over you.

"I'm not done thanking you yet princess." Spencer says kissing your neck. He lines himself up with your entrance and sinks in with one thrust. He groans against your skin at the feeling of your wet heat engulfing him. "If I believed in heaven this would be it." He breathes out and you giggle a bit. That is until Spencer cocks his hips back and rocks them into you pulling a moan from your lips effectively ending your giggle fit. Spencer sets a dangerous rhythm of sharp, deep thrusts that have your back arching off the bed.

"So good- Spence, feel so good inside me baby." You moan, your nails marking angry red lines down his back as he takes you.

"I know princess- fuck I know." He grunts reveling in the sting of your fingers clawing at him. Spencer can feel his balls tightening as you drip down his shaft and he leans back to toy with your swollen clit. The sudden extra stimulation has whines and mewls falling freely from you as your third orgasm rushes you. The feel of your walls spasming around him sends Spencer into a frenzy, his thrusts becoming erratic as he chases his own release. Your mind clears just in time to catch the signs of his impending orgasm and you muster enough strength to flip Spencer onto his back. He blinks at you in shock but only for a moment as you start riding him and his face scrunches up in pleasure. Spencer throws his head back and you lean forward to darken the hickeys you left earlier and add more as promised. He lets out a string of curses and grips the sheets so tightly you think he might tear them as you bounce up and down his length. When you feel his muscles clench beneath your hands you sit up, examining the marks now covering his neck. You're more than satisfied with them. You thread your fingers into Spencer's hair and tug, forcing him to look at you.

"I wanna watch your face when I make you cum Spence. Don't look away." You tell him sharply. Spencer tries to nod but your hand in his hair stops him.

"O-Okay. F-fuck, whatever you want- please just let me cum." He begs.

"Go ahead baby." You tell him and that's all it takes for him to let go, hot ropes painting your inner walls.

"I was supposed to be expressing gratitude here." Spencer says after a few moments of silence, when his breathing is settled.

"I feel plenty thanked don't worry love. It's way more fun having you beg me to cum anyway." You say turning your head where you lay just enough to kiss his chest. Spencer lets out a small disbelieving chuckle and you can feel him shake his head as his hand strokes down your back.

"I love you." He says.

"I love you too." You say with a smile. How lucky you are, to have your crush work out so perfectly. Although if you ask Spencer who the lucky one is he'll surely say it's him. Luck is the only explanation for him to now have the object of his desires for months in his arms like this every night. Thank goodness you called him out that day in his office, or he'd have never gotten this far.

***

Part 2

Tagged Users: @regulus-black-223048, @perkypink19-blog, @p0ssywhippedcream

[imwritingforfun]

Is it just acting?

Ethan landry x gn reader enemies to lovers

synopsis- both you and Jack champion are actors the problem is the directors called both of you to addition for the new scream movie but that's not all both you and Jack want to be ghostface in the movie and sadly there is only one part left

⋆┈┈｡ﾟ❃ུ۪ ❀ུ۪ ❁ུ۪ ❃ུ۪ ❀ུ۪ ﾟ｡┈┈⋆

Genre: enemies to lovers/angst to fluff

Status: will post chapters when I have time to

Taglist: open

1. Not delulu

2. Wish me luck!

3. Don't jinx it

4. Getting the call

5. Practicing

6. Some competition

7. Why are you like this?

8. The part will be mine

9. Why won't he back off?

10. Let's all hang out

11. Secrets

12. Hold on what the fuck

13. I knew it no I didn't

14. What does this mean?

15. Just date already

16. I'm sort of processing

17. They're dating?!

18. We caught them

19. You ruined my dreams

20. Stop being horny

21. It must come to an end

22. The show must go on

23. Bonus- prank gone wrong 🔞

[defectivevillain]

struck by your lightning, ch3

reader’s pronouns: he/him

summary: You decide to take advantage of the moment’s respite you’re given. “Okay. Hey, how are you?” You look up, only to find yourself staring at Kaminari Denki. The Kaminari Denki—the idol with over thirty million listeners and sold-out concerts across the world. You’re certain that you’re going to fumble your words several times in front of him. (You're a reporter working at the red carpet of a national award gala. You've convinced yourself that you're doing just fine. At least, you're doing fine until you interview Kaminari.)

here’s chapter one and chapter two [you’ll want to read these first, otherwise this won’t make much sense]

this is a chat-hybrid fic and the formatting was mostly made for ao3. it’s a lil wonky here, so here’s the ao3 version if you’d prefer to read that :)

since it's been a while, here's a refresh of what happened in ch1-2: The reader works at DoubleVision agency and is invited to interview artists at an award show. His interview and interaction with Kaminari quickly goes viral—both because of his flustered reaction at the end and the “Love ya”s exchanged at the end. The reader tries not to think too much of it, until he opens his phone to find a message from an unknown number who proves to be Kaminari himself. The two quickly grow to be friends through frequent text conversations. Kaminari reveals that he has your placard for the event and plans for the two of you to meet up together at the nearby coffee shop…

now, onto the story....

Tokyo Entertainment Fix | @tokentfix

Popstar Kaminari Denki Spotted with Reporter from Awards Gala at Coffee Shop! 

[ coffee1.jpg ] [ coffee2.jpg ] [ coffee3.jpg ]

89k comments | 486k retweets | 1.8m likes

____________

jj | @dendendenki

ARE Y’ALL SEEING THIS

409 comments | 3k retweets | 18.2k likes

i said what i said. | @ urfavescouldnever

In response to @dendendenki 

seeing what

5 comments | 21 retweets | 451 likes

jj | @dendendenki

In response to @ urfavescouldnever 

THIS [tokentfix.twt] [newsarticle.link]

61 comments | 1.3k retweets | 8k likes

i said what i said. | @ urfavescouldnever

In response to @dendendenki 

I’M SEEING IT NOW HOLY SHIT

4 comments | 808 retweets | 1.6k likes

_______

Direct Message 

You: have you seen…?

Kaminari Denki: the news article about us?

You: yeah

Kaminari Denki: ah yeah, i saw it

You: i’m sorry

Kaminari Denki: i’m sorry

Kaminari Denki: WHAT

You: i’m sorry

Kaminari Denki: no no no

Kaminari Denki: stop that immediately

You: y??

Kaminari Denki: bc it's not ur fault!!!

Kaminari Denki: if anything, i should be the one apologizing 

You: why??? you didn’t do anything

Kaminari Denki: NEITHER DID YOU

You: ah damn it i see what you did there

Kaminari Denki: damn right

Kaminari Denki: but srsly, i hope the article isn’t messing anything up for u

You: i was gonna say the same to you

Kaminari Denki: oh pls, this kind of shit happens to me all the time

Kaminari Denki: but seriously, are you doing ok?

You: yep all good

You: it’s just more funny than anything else

Kaminari Denki: is the thought of dating me really so bad :(

You: oh pls, that’s not what i meant

You: i just meant celebrity culture in general…  like they’re so obsessed with your relationship status and it’s kinda weird>??

Kaminari Denki: yeah… 

You: sigh

You: so glad i’m just a lowly reporter 🙏

Kaminari Denki: hey, don’t jinx it

Kaminari Denki: plus, haven’t you looked on twt recently

Kaminari Denki: fans are shipping us together

Kaminari Denki: pretty sure there are stan accounts dedicated to you now

Kaminari Denki: not that i would know

Kaminari Denki: or follow them

You: fr??

Kaminari Denki: fr fr

You: deadass?

Kaminari Denki: on god

You: i hate us

Kaminari Denki: same

__________

Thankfully, that article about Kaminari and you doesn’t actually change much. You go about business as usual, albeit with a strange sense of guilt prickling along your skin when your mind is unoccupied. You throw yourself into your work and try to bury the emotions, but they are never truly extinguished. 

Your conversations with Kaminari are far rarer now, especially as the both of you get even busier. Kaminari is working on releasing his next album and you’re pitching new stories and writing to old acquaintances for features. Even though you throw yourself into work, you still find your thoughts returning to Kaminari. Your relationship with him is currently undefined—your meeting the other day felt like a date, but neither of you acknowledged it. You would love to be more than friends with Kaminari, but you also know that someone as well-known as him doesn’t exactly have the freedom to pursue a relationship and a music career at the same time. Resigned, you slowly push away thoughts of Kaminari until you think you get a good handle on your emotions. 

Until everything you try to suppress comes roaring back.

___________

 Kaminari Denki | @kaminaridenki

24 hours. [STATIC.jpg]

203k comments | 1.2m retweets | 4m likes

____________

Kaminari Denki to Release New Album Tomorrow

Arts—Music

2 min ago ᐧ By Janet Drews

Kaminari Denki, award-winning musical artist and popular culture icon, recently announced the release of his new album on Twitter. The Tweet earned over four million likes and 200,000 comments. Listeners are clearly looking forward to the occasion, as #KaminariDenki, #STATIC, and #DenkiAlbum top the Twitter Trending page (#1, #2, and #4, respectively). 

Some fans speculate the new album will be an ode to the rumored relationship between Kaminari and the DoubleVision reporter who interviewed him at the award gala [interview.mp4]. The interaction between the singer and the reporter quickly went viral following live coverage of the event. Digital citizens across the platform searched for explanations for the exchange, and Kaminari fans such as user @heyheyh3y discussed their red-carpet conversation.  

stream lightning by kaminari! | @heyheyh3y okay but is it just me or was there some tension there…  [interview.jpg]: A screenshot of Kaminari standing next to you during the interview.   907 comments | 66k retweets | 256k likes

This album will be a bit different from his previously released music, Kaminari said to Vogue Japan mere days ago. The artist made no mention of a significant other who could bear influence on his new music, despite the fact that he was seen with the DoubleVision reporter at EspressoBeanz but a few days ago—a cafè conveniently located near both DoubleVision agency and UA Entertainment. However, other Kaminari fans, like users @electrstatic and @staticshockwave, weren’t convinced:

⚡⚡| @electrstatic y’all are making such a huge deal about this whole reporter business, as if the same thing hasn’t happened time and time again with literally anyone kaminari interacts with 31 comments | 23 retweets | 700 likes electric boogaloo  | @staticshockwave In response to @electrstatic  THANK YOU. like, when he first got Arata as a manager, everyone was going batshit crazy about how they were dating… and they weren’t. and the way anyone breathing in Kaminari’s direction is assumed to be dating him… it’s crazy 0 comments | 8 retweets | 32 likes

Either way, fans across the world are looking forward to the release of new music from Kaminari.  His new album, STATIC, will be released on Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, and assorted digital platforms at 3 p.m. JST (approximately 10 a.m. UTC). 

__________

Direct Message

You: heyyy, how are you feeling

You: the album releases tmrw, right?

Kaminari Denki: very nervous 

Kaminari Denki: and yes, t minus 20 hrs

You: awesome!

You: and rly? why?

Kaminari Denki: well… i worked hard on it, and i want ppl to like it

You: okay 

You: will you be disappointed if your fans don’t like it?

Kaminari Denki: a little, yeah

You: but why do you write music? do you write it for them or for yourself? 

Kaminari Denki: 

You: sorry, that sounds patronizing…

Kaminari Denki: no, you’re right

Kaminari Denki: i think i needed to hear that

You: i mean, you clearly worked very hard on it. i’m sure everyone listening will recognize that.

Kaminari Denki: i hope so

You: they will 😠 and if they don’t, fuck em

Kaminari Denki: damn right

Kaminari Denki: thanks <3

You: ofc! <3

You: i have to go eat dinner, talk soon?

Kaminari Denki: yep,, enjoy your meal

You: tyyy haha

___________

Direct Message

Kaminari Denki: hypothetically speaking

Sero Brain Cells: ok hello to you too

Sero Brain Cells: also bitch do i look like a scientist

Kaminari Denki: hYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING

Kaminari Denki: does a “<3” mean someone is hopelessly in love with me

Sero Brain Cells: jfc

Kaminari Denki: is that a yes

Sero Brain Cells: ur so fuckin whipped

Kaminari Denki: SHUT UP

Kaminari Denki: I TRUSTED YOU

Kaminari Denki: i came to you in my time of weakness

Kaminari Denki: and this is how you repay me

Sero Brain Cells: dude, you gotta tell him at some point

Kaminari Denki: ik…

Sero Brain Cells: and even if you don’t, he’ll probably figure it out soon

Kaminari Denki: wdym

Sero Brain Cells: ur new album. 

Kaminari Denki: what about it?

Sero Brain Cells: half of those songs are so clearly about him

Kaminari Denki: nahhhh no way i kept it hella ambiguous

Sero Brain Cells: ambiguous, huh

Kaminari Denki: shut up

Kaminari Denki: … do you really think he’ll notice

Sero Brain Cells: well, i’m not sure

Sero Brain Cells: you both seem a lil oblivious, so it may be fine

Kaminari Denki: hey 😭

Sero Brain Cells: all love

Sero Brain Cells: but also get ur shit together u raging homo (affectionate, non-derogatory)

Kaminari Denki: oh pls, as if you haven’t been pining for shoto for six business years

Sero Brain Cells: HEY

Sero Brain Cells: …HEY

Sero Brain Cells: HEY 💀

Sero Brain Cells: ik ur stressed rn so i’ll let that slide 🤨

Kaminari Denki: ur right, i’m so anxious

Kaminari Denki: sry for taking it out on u, bro 

Sero Brain Cells: it’s ok bro

Sero Brain Cells: wanna get ur ass kicked in mariokart?

Kaminari Denki: do i want to kick ur ass in mariokart? absolutely

Sero Brain Cells: we’ll see about that

Kaminari Denki: damn right we will

___________

Kaminari Denki | @kaminaridenki

fucking godly at mariokart [mariokart.jpg]

19k comments | 97k retweets | 347k likes

Sero | @serofucks

In response to @kaminaridenki 

oh fuck all the way off, you had steering assist on

3k comments | 45k retweets | 228k likes

@kamisimpsimp

In response to @serofucks 

OOOOP

47 comments | 430 retweets | 1.4k likes

surprised pikachu face | @kamipikakami

In response to @kamisimpsimp 

gagged and gooped

31 comments | 338 retweets | 2.3k likes

alex | @kaminarunaronari

In response to @kaminaridenki 

what really concerns me is that you main lakitu

2k comments | 134k retweets | 765k likes

stream lightning by kaminari! | @heyheyh3y

In response to @kaminaridenki 

here we are, anxiously awaiting the new album, and this mf is playing mariokart

21 comments | 208 retweets | 809 likes

@kamisimpsimp

In response to @heyheyh3y 

as one does!

0 comments | 46 retweets | 665 likes

___________

Direct Message 

You: heyyyy

You: it’s release dayyyyyy

Kaminari Denki: when you when you when you whennnnnnnnnnnnnnfdshfkdjs

You: :0

You: looking forward to it!

Kaminari Denki: :3

(Nine Hours Later) 

Direct Message 

You: congratulationsssss!!!!

You: i’ll try to find the time to listen to STATIC soon!!!

Kaminari Denki: thanks :)

___________

Kaminari stares down at his phone, watching as fans discuss the new album. He has the album on shuffle in the background as he tries to brainstorm some choreography. Kaminari has absolute faith in the talented choreographers that he works with—but he just feels like he needs to do something to combat the restless energy surging through him.  

The feedback on the album so far has been overwhelmingly positive, yet he’s still nervous—as if he’s still waiting for a reaction from someone. Shaking his head, he tries to focus on the choreography he’s creating. But that plan quickly backfires. Within moments, his phone buzzes—breaking him out of his thoughts. Kaminari freezes and immediately grabs it from his pocket, heart thudding rhythmically in his chest as he unlocks his phone and goes to his messages. There’s a series of texts from you:

You: ok, i have time to listen, now! You: gonna listen as i make dinner!!!

Kaminari sighs, trying to calm his racing heart. He doesn’t know what to say or how to say it. Taking a deep breath, he puts his phone back in his pocket and decides to practice some of the choreography for his other songs. Even amidst the music running through the space and the dance moves that seemed etched onto his very skin, Kaminari still can’t help but think of you. 

___________

Meanwhile, you’re just getting home from work. You hate to admit it, but you’ve been looking forward to listening to Kaminari’s new album for a bit now. It’s especially thrilling to think that you can discuss it with him afterward—hell, he even seems to be awaiting your feedback. The thought is exciting and nerve-wracking in equal measures. 

You decide to change out of your work clothes before starting dinner, so that you don’t have to worry about staining anything. Then, you grab your Bluetooth speaker and place it on the kitchen counter, before pulling up Kaminari’s newest album and tapping on the first song. Immediately, a beautiful, twisting melody reaches your ears and you swear you feel your shoulders begin to relax. You busy yourself with preparing dinner while his voice fills the space. 

Safe to say, the album is incredible. You really like each song you’ve listened to so far—and have found yourself saving each of them to various playlists. Even if you hadn’t spoken with Kaminari throughout the period he was working on the album, you would be able to tell that he put a lot of effort into it. As you expected, that effort shows through in each and every song.  

His songs are rather hard-hitting, emotionally speaking. The fifth song, traces of you , makes you freeze in place. You have to rewind to listen to one particular portion of the song again: 

…and I stand aside 

as you’re washed away  

with the ebbing tide 

I’m so afraid 

of falling out of love 

Sometimes I look up  

at the blinding black night 

and the stars seem to whisper  

your name in the air 

I feel a shiver roll down my spine 

I remember your hand in mine, 

and I’m just so afraid.  

You don’t know how long you stand at the kitchen counter, letting the lyrics slip into your ears and down your skin. This song is so raw and vulnerable. You feel the sudden urge to close your eyes. For a moment, you can almost trick yourself into thinking Kaminari is singing to you, that these lyrics are meant for you and you alone. It’s a foolish thought, but you can’t quite push it away. You feel your eyes burning with unshed tears as you try to picture Kaminari writing down these lyrics. What was he feeling, in those moments? Were his eyebrows furrowed in concentration? Were his hands stained from the still-drying ink of his pen? Was he tapping his foot along to an unheard, not-yet-created melody?  

Something blares loudly, tearing you from your reverie. You blink and look around the room, gasping when you realize you completely neglected the pan on the stove. The pan is smoking and you recognize that insufferable sound to be the fire alarm. You’re quick to turn off the burner. The fire isn’t extinguished. Panicking, you race to one of the kitchen cabinets to grab baking soda. Baking soda, quickly , your mind is practically yelling. You grab the baking soda and haphazardly spread it over the grease fire, relief coursing through you when you see the flames begin to die down. When the fire finally subsides, you look down at your attempt at dinner, only to find a charred pile. You shake your head in disbelief and clean up your mess, before grabbing your phone and skipping to the next song. 

You don’t make the mistake of attempting to make dinner as you listen to the rest of the album, which is a rather smart move, because the remaining songs are lyrical masterpieces. There isn’t a single song on the album that you don’t like. A small smile growing on your face, you open your messaging app. 

___________

Direct Message

You: i love the new album holy shit

Kaminari Denki: really?

You: yesssss omfg absolutely 

Kaminari Denki: akjdfkjfskdjfsdlkf

Kaminari Denki: which track is your favorite? for research purposes 

You: research purposes? lol

You: my favorite is definitely traces of you 

Kaminari Denki: ah, that’s one of my favorites, too!

Kaminari Denki: and lemme just say: i’m so happy you listened! it means the world to me, so thank you <3

You: no need to thank me—just doing my due diligence as a friend! besides, the new album is incredible!

You: and i promise i’m not just saying that to be nice,,, it’s clear you put a lot of effort into it. 

Kaminari Denki: ahhh stawp ur gonna make me all flustered xD

You: hahaha

You: i do have one critique, though

Kaminari Denki: ooooh ok i’m listening 👀

You: traces of you needs to come with a warning

Kaminari Denki: for what? shit how did i miss that

You: “warning: will distract you from cooking dinner and nearly burn your home down”

Kaminari Denki: wait

Kaminari Denki: you did notttttt 💀

You: I DID

You: i was so distracted i forgot i was making dinner

Kaminari Denki: omfgggg that’s insane

Kaminari Denki: i’ve heard a lot of things about my music, but never that it almost burned a house down and ruined dinner 😭

You: lmfaooo 

Kaminari Denki: i’m so sorry 😭😭

You: it’s not your fault, holy shit

You: don’t feel guilty!!!! if it makes you feel better, it was completely worth it

Kaminari Denki: hmph 

You: i wasn’t rly that hungry anyways

Kaminari Denki: hm hm hm hm hmmmmmm

You: whatttt

Kaminari Denki: nothing i gtg

Kaminari Denki is offline. 

You: o….kay? …bye?

___________

You exit out of your messaging app and start rummaging through your pantry for something to eat. Nothing sounds very good right now. You don’t have much food left, either—you’re in desperate need of a trip to the grocery store. You’re sure you can make time to go tomorrow, but as for right now… you’re stuck making do with what you have. Truthfully, you’re tempted to order something—but it’s already getting late and you don’t want to wait even longer for a meal when you’re already hungry. 

You walk out into your living room and flop onto the couch, trying to distract yourself from the hunger gnawing at your stomach. Admittedly, your abrupt conversation with Kaminari is weighing heavily on your mind too. You eventually scroll through YouTube mindlessly, if only to keep yourself distracted. You’re not sure how long you sit there before there’s a sudden ringing sound. You frown, wondering if you’re hearing things. 

The sound occurs again, and you realize that someone must be ringing your doorbell. Squinting in confusion, you head to your front door and peek through the peephole—surprised to find a familiar blond singer standing on your porch. You quickly unlock your front door and swing it open. “Kaminari?” You ask, convinced you’re seeing things. You hadn’t made plans to hang out today, and you assumed that your conversation died off because he was busy. 

“Hey,” Kaminari smiles. He’s wearing a sweatshirt and jeans with a pair of colorful sneakers. His bangs are clipped back and his hair is almost glowing in the dim light of your porch. There’s a sheepish smile on his face that is endlessly endearing. “I heard you missed dinner.” He smiles, holding up a few bags of takeout from a restaurant the two of you had spoken about before. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” you say quickly, hoping that you didn’t make him feel as if he had to provide you with dinner. It wasn’t his fault you were distracted. 

“I wanted to,” he says with a smile, dispelling your doubts. “I think I remember your order, but…” He trails off, averting his eyes with an embarrassed expression. “I got a few different things, just in case.”

“I could kiss you,” you breathe relievedly, unaware of the flush that adorns Kaminari’s cheeks as he processes that remark. You motion for him to come in, before locking the front door and showing him to the dining room. You leave him to unbag the food, while you grab plates and utensils. “Do you want anything to drink?” You ask from the kitchen.

“What do you have?” Kaminari asks casually. 

“Water, soda, sparkling water…” You trail off, looking through your fridge for anything else you may have laying around. 

“Water’s fine,” he smiles. You roll your eyes and grab another glass, filling up waters for you both before returning to the table. Kaminari wasn’t kidding when he said he bought a few different things—as it’s all laid out on your table, it looks as if he bought half the menu. You return to the kitchen and grab the plates and utensils you gathered earlier, before heading back. Unsurprisingly, the pile of food on the table doesn’t get any smaller. 

“This is a lot of food,” you remark cautiously. Realistically speaking, there’s no way you’ll be able to finish all of this, and you feel slightly guilty. 

“Oh, yeah,” Kaminari nods, “I figured we would have enough for leftovers, and stuff.” You nod in agreement, before busying yourself with making a plate. 

“So,” you say, once the two of you are settled in and have begun eating. You didn’t realize just how hungry you were until you took a bite of the food. There’s an inexplicable tension hovering over the air, and you’re unsure if you’re imagining it or not. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” Kaminari responds with a nod. “Really good,” 

“Good!” You smile, taking another bite. “Are you topping the charts already?”

He smiles bashfully, poking at his food with a fork. “I think so… yeah.” He’s so humble, and you can’t help but think it’s rather admirable. 

“That’s so cool,” you remark, “I’m so happy for you.” 

“Thanks, I’m happy, too.” He smiles briefly, before looking back down at his food. The happiness in his expression almost seems to flicker for a moment, and the grin on his lips suddenly looks strained. You frown. At first, you want to put that sight down to your imagination; but when the silence stretches on for a while and he doesn’t make a move to continue speaking, you decide to acknowledge it. 

“Are you sure?” You blurt out, before you can contemplate the consequences of speaking so freely. Kaminari looks at you in confusion and you grimace. “Sorry. It’s just- You seem a little… off, I guess.”

“I’m good,” he reassures you with a small nod. The gesture is not very convincing. 

“Okay,” you say, not wanting to push him further. If there’s something he doesn’t want to talk about, you’re not going to force it out of him. After a few moments, your conversation returns to normal. You still have a lingering suspicion that there’s something weighing on his mind, but you decide to forget about it. 

Overall, your dinner is pleasant. You get the chance to ask Kaminari a few questions about the album, and you really enjoy seeing his eyes sparkle as he goes into in-depth explanations of the meanings behind his songs. It feels like you’re seeing a side of him that very few people get to see—but you don’t want to flatter yourself. 

Kaminari offers to help you with the dishes when you’re both finished eating, but you quickly refuse and promise him you’ll finish them quickly. You run water over the dishes before placing them in the dishwasher, promising yourself to run it later that night. When you return to the table, you’re surprised to find Kaminari staring ahead with a troubled expression on his face. His hands are clasped on the table and his lips are pulled in a thin line. 

Before you can even begin to ask, he’s filling the silence. “You were right,” Kaminari admits. He sounds a little strange—almost as if he’s nervous. You stare at him expectantly. “There is something bothering me.”

The tortured expression on his face is a bit worrying. “Well, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” You feel the need to remind him. While you’re concerned about what could be distressing him, you know that sometimes, it’s too painful to talk about those types of things. 

But Kaminari surprises you with his response. “I want to,” he reassures you. You watch as he pushes himself to his feet and stares down at the table, running a finger along the wood. “I’ve just… been trying to figure out how to say it.” 

“Take your time,” you say. “I’m not in a rush.” Kaminari nods appreciatively. 

You’re not sure what you’re expecting to hear, in all honesty. But what he says next feels entirely unreal. “When I first met you, I was attracted to you,” Kaminari chokes out, looking at the ceiling as if nervous to meet your eyes. “I sort of expected it to fizzle, because… well, I didn’t know you all that well. But once we started talking more, I realized that my feelings weren’t going away. While I just knew you as the alluring reporter before, I now knew you as this… this incredible person.” You stare at him in shocked silence. 

“You’re so… You’re kind, smart, and passionate. You have a wicked sense of humor and I always look forward to hearing from you. I…

“I’m not sure how familiar you are with me and my career, but… Truthfully, I hit a bit of a rough spot. My last album was a few years ago and I was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to write anything new. But then I met you, and got to know you, and all of a sudden, I was writing all the time. 

“Suddenly, I had an entire album—filled with songs that I wrote while thinking about you. And I didn’t know what to do. I had already tried to bury my feelings for you, and it clearly hadn’t worked at all. I assumed you didn’t feel the same as I did. And I’m still not sure, of course.

“But when you sent those messages earlier… I felt something snap in me. It was like, one moment I was staring down at my phone, and the next, I was walking into that restaurant you were talking about.

“And tonight, I’ve been trying to keep it together… But it’s been nearly fucking impossible. I see you across the table and I can’t help but think that this is how I want to spend the rest of my life—sneaking glances at you, and hearing about your day at work…

“Not to mention, the whole Sero thing… It was stupid. But when you said you liked his music, my heart just dropped. I felt like… I don’t know. I felt like I lost you. Even though you weren’t mine to lose.” 

“Anyway,” Kaminari says, shaking his head before meeting your eyes. He looks simultaneously more relieved and more nervous than before. “I just had to get that out. And now we can pretend I never said anything.” He shakes his head and fiddles with the strings of his hoodie. 

You’re still reeling from everything he just said, but you’re quick to dismiss his assumptions. “What?” You exclaim. “No, Kaminari, I have feelings for you too,” you say. He stares at you with wide eyes. “It’s been so fun getting to know you. You’re just… you’re so bright and energetic, passionate, and good-hearted… I was so nervous when I first met you, because it was my first time ever being on a red carpet… but you made me feel more confident, just by being yourself.”

“And when I got distracted listening to your music earlier… It was because I was thinking of you, and thinking that, somehow, you could be singing just to me. That you could have written that song… just for me. And I know it’s stupid…”

“It’s not stupid,” Kaminari interjects, before you can spiral into further self-deprecation. “I just told you, I was thinking of you when I wrote them. All of them.” The lyrics flicker before your eyes at rapid speed, as you remember all the words that felt too vulnerable to ever be yours. You think about how you felt as you were cooking dinner—that tight feeling in your chest as you pretended that everything was fine, as you pretended that you were okay with the idea of Kaminari writing those songs while thinking of someone else. Before you can contemplate your next move, you’re surging forward—and Kaminari is too. Your hands cradle his cheeks as you kiss him, and he tugs you impossibly closer with his hands on your waist. His touch sends pleasant shivers down your spine. 

“I guess the fans were right, huh,” you remark with amusement once you break apart. 

“There’s a first time for everything,” Kaminari says, his eyes gleaming. He takes a deep breath, his hands still latched on your waist (as if he doesn’t want to let you go). Indecision draws his lips together into a flat line. “Are you sure you want to do this? Being in a relationship with me… It’s going to be different. I- I can’t pretend that I have any privacy whatsoever, or a super accommodating schedule, or-”

“Of course I want to do this,” you immediately say, before he can continue. “More than anything.” 

Kaminari’s hands migrate up your shoulders and towards the nape of your neck. He leans closer until your foreheads are touching. “I’m just so afraid.” He whispers, so quietly that you nearly convince yourself you didn’t hear it. (The stars seem to whisper your name in the air… I feel a shiver roll down my spine, I remember your hand in mine, and I’m just so afraid). You pull him into a hug.  

“Me too,” you admit in a breath against his shoulder. Kaminari mutters something into your shoulder, but it’s incomprehensible. “Hey, if we can get five and a half million people to watch us stumble through an interview, I think we can do this.” The singer huffs a laugh and pulls back, his hand rising to your cheek and his thumb running across your skin. There’s a smile on his face—one of unmistakable fondness and affection. You lean forward to break the distance between you once more, a euphoric feeling settling in your chest and a smile growing on your face.

endnotes:

i really snuck Seroroki in there, mhwhahaha.

this took so fuckin long to format on here (I had to format it AGAIN despite already devoting time to doing that on ao3), pls show some love if you enjoy it... i'm begging

thanks for reading! <3

check out my other works, sorted by fandom.

general taglist: @its-ares @excusemeasibangmyheadonawall @kingkoku @the-ultimate-librarian @gayaristocrat anddd @alex12ander @7heehee7 @the-lurking-await-you since y'all commented on part two

[queenimmadolla]

Hey, me again! Sorry to bother you but I wondering if I can send a request about my favourite family (but of course remember to take the time you need to write this or completely ignore this request if you don't like it)? I was thinking about the reader coming back home from an afternoon with the other girls and once she comes back, she sees the most adorable scenario she has ever seen. Eddie and the other boys sitting on the tiniest chairs ever, wearing tiaras, make up, fake earrings, playing having tea with Penny and her stuffed animals. Idk, I thought it was cute😅

But Again, feel free to ignore this request if you don't want to write it. Thank you and I hope you have a nice day❤️

this was such a cute request for them and i enjoyed every single second of writing it. i hope i did it justice and i hope you enjoy!

𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐞𝐚 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬

(girl dad!eddie munson x mom!reader/pregnant!reader)

warnings: imagery of men in terrible makeup and mentions of pregnancy (reader is pregnant) more penny, eddie and reader (and baby wayne) adventures here :)

If someone were to have told younger you, you’d be a mom before you were the age of 21, you probably would have punched them in the face, strictly because of the implication and the jinxing. While having a baby was something you entertained after seeing a particularly cute one out in the world or something, you weren’t overly fond of the idea of raising a tiny human with someone or even on your own. You considered yourself much too selfish for that. 

  …However, if someone were to have told you you’d have Eddie Munson’s–one of three local freaks and town urban legend in the making—babies, you probably would have given them the keys to your car and maybe the deed to your parents’ home.

  Your crush on the metal head had a lasting effect on you. When you’d actually begun dating him, falling head over ass in love, being with him was all that mattered to you and it didn’t feel pathetic because it was all he wanted, too. 

  Immediately after graduation came marriage and then Penny, your cute little Oopsie as Eddie referred to her when she was in your tummy. You preferred it over his original nickname for her, which was Creampie, seeing as how he was sure that was how she’d been conceived. You forced him to change it.

  Of course, since you had said baby with another on the way, you had to provide for them. Eddie had already been employed at an autoshop—his skill with the mechanics of a car was probably what led to Penny’s conception, you just couldn’t help yourself when faced with Grease Monkey Eddie—and Eden got you a job with her at her father’s firm as his partner’s receptionist.

  It worked out pretty well, Eden didn’t have a car so you’d pick her up before work since she’d rather jump off her roof than drive with her dad, who was also her boss, then afterwards you’d drive back to the trailer where Eddie and Argyle would be waiting for the two of you (if Argyle wasn’t off, she’d chill with your little family until he came to get her because she didn’t want to go home and you couldn’t blame her).

  Normally, your job wasn’t super stressful, you’d just been exhausted lately, though you didn’t exert yourself (Eddie would never allow it). 

  Today you had felt every agonizing second of the work day, it had been so slow. You’d done all the filing, made all the copies, called all the people, there just hadn’t been as much going on as usual and after you’d managed to make it to lunch time, the last half of your shift was spent staring across the room at Eden, both of you blinking owlishly at each other, staring contests, trying to get paper airplanes to reach the other, anything to stave off the boredom. Suddenly, you couldn’t wait til you could take maternity leave. 

  After work, you’d both practically sprinted to your car, the ride was spent bitching about the work day. The closer you got to your home, the more life you felt began to fill you; energy the work day had sucked away returning to you at the notion of seeing Eddie and Penny.

  If you had known exactly what you’d be walking into, you may have transcended into a higher level of joy.

  You and Eden were still chatting as you shut your car doors, still shedding the weight of the work day. She’d been talking about moving in with Argyle, something she was desperate to do but her parents were still hesitant about when you unlocked the front door, pushing it open for her.

  Eden had walked through the doorway and stopped, causing you to run into her back. 

  “What’s the hold up?” You asked, peering around her shorter frame. The sight made you gasp.

  “Hi, honey!” Eddie greeted you, grin so wide it almost looked like it hurt.

  Eddie, Argyle and Jonathan—always dragged around with Argyle—were crouched in tiny pink plastic chairs (much too small for them to actually allow their weight to rest in, lest they break them) around the small table in the living room, which was cluttered with various kitchen utensils and Penny’s pink tea set. 

  Not an unusual sight, since they always indulge your three year old. What was new was the bright colors adorning their faces.

  Eddie had on bright purple eyeshadow (complete with poorly replicated wings of eyeliner), cheeks powdered with an even brighter pink and lips coated in a deep shade of red lipstick, meticulously applied judging by the precision. Pink clip-on earrings dangled from his lobes and around his waist was one of Penny's pink tutus—stretched to its limit.

  Argyle’s long dark locks were in two high, messy ponytails. His eyes were decorated with a blue eyeshadow (ruined with various marks and stains of mascara), cheeks powdered bright red and lips a coral orange. His tutu was purple and his earrings were red.

  But Jonathan…oh, Jonathan. His eyeshadow was pink, cheeks pink, and lipstick a bright red. Penny was always more gentle with Jonathan, for some reason. His makeup didn’t look as messily applied as the majority of Argyle’s and Eddie’s. Unlike with them, Penny had attempted to draw on eyelashes for him, and he had smatterings of glitter sporadically around his face. Not only did he have one of her pink tutus and green earrings, he also got the privilege of wearing her favorite pair of fairy wings.

  He refused to make eye contact with you, staring into the tiny, plastic tea cup clenched in his hand.

  “Hi, babe. What happened here?” You asked, hand moving to hide your smile, though you were pretty sure it was obvious. Penny—dressed in her pink princess dress and a purple feather boa, pretty little face also covered in makeup with a plastic crown carefully placed on her head to make sure her curls didn’t get tangled in the combs of it (Eddie had to have put it on her)—returned from the hallway closet where her toy box was located, arms full of her stuffed animals, all of which she dropped the moment she saw you.

  “Mommy!” She squealed and you squatted down to allow her to run into your arms as Eden stepped out of the way and disappeared into your room. “LOOK, MOMMY! I made daddy and unca Ahgle and unca Johnny puddy!”

  “Uh huh,” was all you could say without laughing. 

  “We awe having a tea pa’ty.” Penny informed you after she’d unwound her arms from around you, giving your baby bump a gentle pat before she ran back over to scoop up her stuffies. They were placed in the other empty plastic chairs surrounding the table and actually looked like they fit in the tiny seats, unlike the grown men.

  “Do you think I’m pretty, mama?” Eddie asked, batting his eyelashes at you with his red lips pulled into a mischievous smirk. Eddie was no stranger to makeup, you’d done his eyeliner for gigs plenty of times and he could now do it on his own, but that only involved lining his waterline and tightlining, not wings. 

  He and Jonathan had silently stared at themselves in the bedroom mirror, self reflecting on how they got themselves in this position, for longer than either of them would care to admit. But Eddie would do anything for Penny and he knew you would get a crack out of seeing him like this.

  Argyle was too high (it was a perpetual thing at this point, he’d been stuck in a high since back in high school) to care, although he’d wanted his ponytails braided and Penny wouldn’t allow it.

  “I think you’re something,” You offered through your giggles and Eddie chuckled along with you, stopping only when a flash of bright light momentarily lit up the room and blinded him. 

  Eden lowered the Polaroid camera she’d retrieved from your room, plucking the picture that whirled out. 

  She shook it briefly and examined the developing photo with a careful eye before she smirked. 

  “Oh, this is a good one. I gotta make a copy of this for Nance.” 

  Jonathan stood up then, kind of. His butt was still stuck in the tiny chair so it went with him. “Eden, give me the photo.”

  Eden took that as her cue to take another one, cackling as she grabbed the film. 

  Jonathan began to advance. 

  “Eden—I mean it, give me the pictures—EDEN!” He shouted as she bolted out of the front door. He ran (as best as he could with a tiny chair attached to his ass) after her with Argyle following him to play instigator. 

  “Run, baby, run!” Then when he realized he’d be in both pictures as well, “GET HER, JONATHAN!”

  Eddie was howling with laughter, causing Penny to join in even though she hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on. Once he calmed down, he stood up from his chair, pulling the thing off of his hips, he moved it to the side and sat on the carpet, patting the spot between his legs to beckon you over. 

  You set your bag on the counter and went over to join them, settling between his legs as you leaned back into his chest with his encouragement for cuddles. Eddie pressed a kiss to your forehead, no doubt leaving a kiss stain as Penny set a little tea cup on a plastic plate down in front of you.

  “He’we you go, mama.” 

  “Oh, thank you, Penny!” You lifted the teacup by its tiny handle and pretended to take a sip. “That’s very good!”

  “Yes,” she stated, pleased and already distracted with arranging her stuffed animals in their seats.

  “Long day?” Eddie asked, mumbling against the side of your head as he continued to press kisses wherever his lips could reach. He’d clocked the lingering bits of tension and stress on you the moment you’d walked into the trailer, he also swore he had a sixth sense tied to you somehow, because he could always tell when something was wrong. He’d get bouts of anxiety at work and come home to find out you’d had a terrible day, so he’d taken to just calling you when the feeling popped up. 

  He hadn’t been wrong yet.

  “Yeah,” You sighed, turning onto your side as you burrowed further into Eddie and the soft shirt he wore. “It’s better now, though.”

  He hummed as you lifted your head, lips puckered.  With a grin, he closed the small distance, giving you your ‘welcome home’ kiss.

  “Awww!”

  You broke away, the two of you smiling as your attention was drawn to your daughter, who looked shy and had a small smile of her own as she wrung her little hands together.

  “You kissed.” 

  Eddie chuckled, chest shaking against you. 

  “We’ve kissed before, baby.” He pointed out. She’d witnessed you exchange thousands of (appropriate) kisses in front of her but lately she’d been cooing every time Eddie showed you affection. You thought she may like seeing you two love each other like the couples in the cartoons she watched.

  “Yes.” She giggled into her little palms, shoulders rising as she became even more bashful.

  You shook your head in amusement, raising a hand to rest your chin in, thumb absentmindedly stroking over your lower lip. You were surprised to see a shade of red over the skin of your thumb, considering you’d worn a nude shade of lipstick.

  Oh. Eddie’s lipstick. Right.

  Then you got to thinking about it, the gears in your head turning as your eyebrows furrowed. 

  “Eddie?”

  “Yes?” 

  “Where’d you get this makeup?”

  Eddie and Penny exchanged nervous glances and there was a long pause in between your question and his answer, deciding to try to get out of this like his daughter often tried to.

  “Yes.”

  “Eddie, is this my makeup?!”

  “Baby, I have to go pee, can you move real quick?”

  “You’re not getting away, answer the question!”

  Yes. It was your makeup.

[billthedrake]

This one I started a few months ago but didn’t get too far yet. It started off as a spinoff of Dads I’d Like to Fuck and took on a life of its own.

THE SPORTS ILLUSTRATED JINX

Doing that cover was how I met my partner, my first one at least.

The Sports Illustrated issue had just dropped. A big cover photo of me, looking serious and posting with my bat, and the words "Miracle Worker" in big letters over my image. I was winding down my rookie season in the majors at the age of 21 and had exceeded high expectations. Life was good.

"Don't pay any attention to that jinx business," a man said as I was out a high-end steakhouse after a game, enjoying a drink in the bar area. "It's all bullshit."

The man was my type to a T. Late 40s, sturdy build, some gray in his medium-length hair, masculine dad-next-door looks. I am often guarded in public, but I gave him a big smile.

"Yeah?" I asked. "I sure hope so."

This man had an easy way about him. Confident, but not overly so. "It's definitely BS," he added. "Look at Trout. Didn't hurt his career one bit." His blue eyes seemed to sparkle as he talked, and I had to wonder if I was reading too much interest in them. Sexual interest. "But you don't need me to tell ya that, man."

I shrugged. "Well given how many people have brought up that fucking jinx," I said, "it's nice to hear a different point of view." I extended my hand. "Luke... nice to meet you." I mean, the guy clearly knew who I was, but I wanted to know who he was.

"Dan Ogle," he said, as he clasped my hand with an equally strong grip. In baseball you judge a man by his handshake. Dan was used to being judged. "It's an honor to meet you."

"You in the business?" I ventured.

"It shows?" he chuckled. "Yeah, I'm a scout. Was with the Orioles organization and now work independent."

"Smart move," I quipped. "The Orioles seem a mess lately."

"Ouch," he laughed harder. "That's tough, man." He gave my shoulder a friendly, gladhanding pat for a second. "Listen... I'm here to meet an agent buddy of mine..."

Something about his eye contact made me wonder if I could make a move. "Let me give you my number, Dan," I said.

The way his eyes lit up said I'd made the right call. Maybe he was just star struck. But I'd work that in my favor if it meant seeing more of that sun-weathered face and those sea-blue eyes. He pulled out his phone, and I told him my number.

****

The first drinks I grabbed with the guy was basically a date. We didn't call it that. But we made the usual small talk. Dan knew a lot more about me than I did about him. So I had him tell me his bio. He'd played in the majors a few years and got into the coaching side in some single-A team. Was frustrated by the lack of opportunities there so went into scouting. Was married once, no kids, divorced at 38.

I talked more about what it was like to be a star. Even if Dan Ogle was never a magazine-cover caliber player, he understood me. The benefits of being idolized and famous, and the drawbacks. I didn't talk about the latter with a lot of guys, but I felt I could with this pro-ball veteran.

Our eye contact got heavier as we talked. Like we knew what we were dancing around without coming out and saying it. Finally, I asked, "So, Dan... you able to be discreet?"

Without missing a beat he nodded. "Oh yeah. Absolutely." Those sea blue eyes staring back at me, with clear expectation.

"It's been a couple of months since I've gotten laid," I said, laying my cards on the table.

He let out a playful whistle. "Way too long, Luke."

"What about you?" I asked, finally nudging his knee under the bar. This was gonna happen, and I knew, and I was throwing hard in anticipation.

"About the same," he smirked.

"We should go fix that," I hissed.

"Now?" It wasn't a question of surprise. More, Dan was trying to read what was on my mind.

"If you're up for it... yeah, now." I knew my voice was getting that horny edge to it.

We settled up our check and I went over to Dan's hotel room. I wondered if we were going to have more conversation, maybe figure out what each other was into sexually. I was strictly top or into getting serviced. I normally got my way, but sometimes older guys think it should be the other way around.

But we didn't talk. Instead we met for a kiss as we rapidly stripped off our clothes. I'd barely unbuttoned my jeans when Dan crouched down in front of me, pawing my crotch and reaching in to pull out my cock.

"Damn, that's a big dick," he gasped. And then revealing he did not find that a problem in the least, the middle-aged ex-jock leaned forward and started sucking me.

"Holy shit!" I laughed. I wasn't 100% surprised Dan Ogle sucked cock. After all, I'd met up with older guys who liked to fool around. But I was surprised he was so into it, so good at it. He sucked me fast and hard, like it was his last cock ever. I didn't think that the almost rough sucking would feel good, but it was incredible. Those long fast mouth strokes and that heavy suction were gonna get me to nut, too soon.

"Ease up, man!" I gasped. "I'm almost cumming."

The veteran ex-jock spit out my prick and sucked in some air, as he swallowed that excess spit. "Yeah?" he teased, now hand stroking my bat. "What would be wrong with that?" The man was horny, and I loved how thrilled he seemed to be about sex. No hang ups whatsoever. That was a first for me, actually.

"Come on, man," I almost complained. "Let me at least feel up your body for a bit, you know... enjoy this some."

That took Ogle by surprise. I think he thought I'd just want to shut my eyes and use his mouth or something. Maybe that's what dudes like me had done before with him. Leaning back, he showed off his bare chest. "Didn't think you'd be into all this, man," he smiled.

"You have no fucking idea," I growled. I could unload my daddy issues on Dan later and tell him how I was wired for men over 40, but for now, I just wanted that physical contact with that more mature muscle. "Let's get on the bed," I urged.

I stripped off the rest of the way and ate up the way Dan's eyes feasted on my nakedness and my erect state. Maybe it was the ego boost he needed to strip down all the way and almost pose for me as he got on the bed. His body wasn't perfect but it was pretty damn nice. Strong muscle, just the right amount of hair, amazing legs. Dan had been a catcher back when he played.

His body felt hot to the touch when we embraced. He was a good kisser and seemed to get into the sensual, slow approach. I matched his speed, even as I was horny as fuck and leaking against his furry belly. We made out and rolled around some, and I ended up on top of him. Heart pounding against his chest and his strong grip feeling up my lat muscle.

When I pulled back from our lip lock the 40-something scout had need in his eye. "You wanna be in me, Luke?" he asked softly.

"Hell yes," I growled.

He smiled. "I got some lube in my bag in the bathroom, if you wanna get it. Rubbers if you want, too."

I hoisted my athletic body out of bed and went to get the stuff, my dick sticking straight out like a divining rod. The stuff was easy to find. Indeed next to the small lube bottle there were two foil packets. I loved that a man like Dan came prepared.

I didn't take a condom, though, and I could read Ogle's silent excitement as he saw me empty handed other than the lube. I flipped the cap and squirted the slickness onto my fingers as I got up on the bed. Any other time, I'd enjoy more foreplay and rim him out some. I loved eating ass, and an ex-catcher daddy would be one hell of a feast. But I needed to fuck.

He hissed at the first finger but the second went in like butter. Dan Ogle wasn't a slut bottom, but this wasn't his first rodeo. As I lined up my cock, I was excited to be topping such a hot guy. It was still sinking in that I was a lucky bastard.

"That's good," Dan said softly as I pushed in. His sea blues were looking up, and he was nodding slightly as I pushed on. I knew why. He was tight as fuck and he knew I wouldn't be able to read if he was good to go. Thankfully, he was.

"You have an amazing ass," I grunted as I bottomed out. He was hot and snug and his insides felt alive around my cock.

Dan was horned up, and his dick twitched on his furry belly. He had some love handles but otherwise was total DILF. "I can't believe you're here fucking me," he almost laughed.

I held my body steady for him, his legs on my shoulders. "You ever fantasize about me?"

"Didn't dream to," he admitted.

"But a player like me, right?" I nudged him mentally. "You always wanted to get nailed by a guy like me." That second part was now statement, not a question.

"Jesus," Dan growled, a deep belly growl. "Fuck yes."

"You got it, man," I said and just started fucking. Not hard, but it was a deep steady fuck and I was hung enough for him to feel it.

He stroked as I railed him then let go when he was getting too close.

"Go ahead," I urged. "I'm pretty close, too."

I watched him stroke and I watched his hand work up his pleasure in tandem with the internal stimulation I was giving him. Then I watched the 40-something ex-catcher spew his pearly white seed all over that gorgeous daddy fur.

"FUCK!" I grunted and felt my own cum rising up, all of a sudden. Two months was a long time between lays. I held his legs tightly and humped his ass with a couple of final fast strokes.

I was flush red and breathing fast as I came down. Dan laughed at me some, and I laughed with him. "I needed that, buddy," I said, giving his meaty chest a playful dual fist bump before I leaned back and slowly pulled out.

I had to watch the slight creampie in his hole before it shut back up. A conquest trophy.

"I could tell," Dan grinned as he lowered his legs and shook out the stiffness. "I don't normally like it missionary, but that was hot as fuck."

I grinned, plopping down on the bed. "It was."

Dan gave me one last look, like he still couldn't believe his luck and still couldn't believe this happened. I got that look a lot, and I always ate it up. "Gonna shower off," he announced.

He was back to normal when he got back. A little quiet, maybe moody. I didn't know his deal, but I wasn't gonna find out. I took a piss and got dressed.

"Take care, man," I said as I got ready to leave. He was on his phone, checking on texts or something.

He looked up. "Yeah. Have a good one."

I got the message. One time thing. OK by me. I was a player, a hunter, always onto the next lay. One time things were my MO.

Only the next morning I awoke to a text. Dan Ogle's text, sent fifteen minutes earlier. "I got an 11AM plane to catch. But maybe I can interest you in a morning BJ before I go?"

I texted him a thumbs up and my hotel and room number.

****

It's not as easy having groupie sex when you're into guys as when you're straight. But it happens for me far more than you'd imagine. I just have to be cautious with my approach, feel a guy out. The thing is, if a guy has a remote bi-curious streak, it's almost a sure thing that a star athlete will be able to exploit it. The star struck thing goes a long fucking way, and guys felt excited to be close to me. Even if only for an hour or a night, they were getting one-on-one Luke Fulton time.

My first groupie was when I was still in the minors. But I was clearly a top prospect in the farm system and come Spring Training I had a chance to practice and play with the big league guys.

I was gathering up my stuff after an afternoon game versus the Tigers when I saw him. A few of the guys would meet with fans after, but this man seemed to be waiting for me. He was very much a typical corporate looking dude. Medium height, golf shirt, golf tan, khaki shorts, ball cap, expensive watch, dad sneakers. Meaty dadbod build filling it all out and looking pretty good for a man in his 50s.

"Hi Luke," he said, polite but also forward. "Can I get your autograph?"

That was my first request for one, actually. I smiled. "Yeah?" I said, registering my surprise. "Um, sure."

I walked up and set down my bag. He handed me a pad and a pen. "You're gonna be the biggest star," he said, referencing the pro team name whose roster I was vying for. His gaze was on me, like he was trying to memorize the whole encounter for later. That was my first taste of groupies, the way they might not even be showing sexual interest but they clearly are into me and being around me.

"I'm not 21 yet," I reminded him.

"Well, I've been watching your progress. Ever since the draft." OK, Corporate Dude was one of THOSE fans.

"Who should I make this out to?" I asked, maintaining equally heavy eye contact. Corporate Daddy was good looking in a normal way, and that turned me on, too. He reminded me of the men in my hometown. I even flashed a wink, nothing too over the top, but doing as much flirting as I dared.

"Jim," he said. "God..." he continued as he watched me write my dedication and sign my name. "This is really cool."

I looked up and flashed my grin. "Isn't this what you come to Spring Training for?" I asked. "To meet the players?" Maybe I was starting to lay it on thick.

Jim was gung ho, though. "It's my second year here, but yeah... the chance to talk to you guys is incredible."

His eye contact was heavy and his wedding band made me think he wasn't the blabbing type. I still consider a band the best insurance when hitting on a guy. I took another paper out of that pad and wrote my number on it.

The man seemed embarrassed. "What's that for?" He asked.

Goddamnit. I guess I misjudged. "Never mind," I said, maybe a little curtly. After all, it wasn't any guy I gave my number. I started to grab the paper back.

He blushed, getting it, really getting. "Oh. That's cool, that's man. I'll keep it. If that's OK."

I nodded. "Just keep it private, OK?" I meant my number but also the fact that I'd given it to him.

"Oh yeah," he said.

I gave him one more wink and picked up my bag to walk back to the locker room.

It was an hour later when I got a text. "Hey. It's Jim. Thanks for giving me your number."

"Thanks for using it," I typed back. I was hanging out with some of the guys from the team, about to get some dinner.

I didn't hear back for a few minutes, then I got another text. "I don't normally do this kind of thing."

"It's cool man. I don't bite. No strings no expectations." I didn't have my mojo down, but I knew with a guy like this corporate dad you had to reassure him.

"What are you looking for?" I could almost sense his nervousness on his end.

"That's something better talked about in person," I wrote.

"Yeah," he acknowledged. Then "I'm around all week."

"Tonight?" I wrote. "9?"

"Yes."

He gave me his hotel info, which worked better. I was in a good mood when I showed up and gave a soft knock.

Jim had a nervous, naughty look as he ushered me in. "Hey..." he said as he shut the door behind me. "I shouldn't be doing this."

I got it. I'd met married men with misgivings before, but none as strong as this man's.

I paused and looked at him, giving him my best friendly expression. Giving him an out. "It's up to you, man. I'm not gonna pressure you."

He thought for a second. It was like I knew what he was thinking. Wondering if he'd ever get another chance at this. "I wanna," he replied.

"Cool," I said and stepped up to him. I'm used to seeing athletes and coaches all day, so sometimes a normal build like Jim's pales in comparison. But now that I was there, up close, he looked pretty damn fine. My hand touched his chest through his golf shirt and moved down to feel up his sides. I drew him closer to me, being forward now to claim a kiss off him.

He grunted as our lips met. I slipped my tongue forward and felt his excitement grow as his lips part and accepted it. We made out for a minute, which is the surest way to get my motor running. I was rock hard now, for sure.

I pulled back and examined his handsome face. "I guess I should have asked if you kissed," I said.

He exhaled a breath he'd been holding. "Yeah... that was my first kiss with a man, actually."

I cocked a grin. "Whaddya think?"

"'s pretty wild," he answered honestly. "But good."

My fingers now caressed his side, and I could sense he was getting majorly hard, too. "You done anything with a guy?" I needed to know where I stood.

He shook his head. "Back in college. You know some fooling around with fraternity brothers. A couple of blow jobs, that kind of thing."

I cocked my eyebrow. "You ever give one?"

Jim blushed some, making his reddish tan redder. "Yeah... it was years ago."

I pulled him closer to me, so he could feel my hardon against his own. "I'd very much enjoy getting one, man... if you're up for it." He was warming up to the idea, I could tell, but I wanted to head off any hesitation. "It's just us here. No one's gonna know."

"I don't know if I'm any good," he objected.

I moved my hand up and patted his shoulder. "Trust me, I'll love it." I didn't throw in a "pretty, please," but I was being as gradual and coaxing as I knew how to be. "Come on, why don't you sit on the bed?"

He nodded and stepped back from me. He was rock hard in his khaki shorts, which was a good sign. And as he settled on his hotel bed, his look was one of excitement more than nervousness.

I didn't want to spook him, but I was getting crazy horny. Jim was pushing my buttons big time. I stepped up till I stood about a foot in front of him. Then slowly, I undid my shorts and pulled out my boner.

Some guys comment on my size when they first see my endowment, but Jim just silently watched, eyes going wide.

"It's OK, bud," I assured him. "Just take what you feel comfortable with." I scooted closer so my hardon was an inch or so away from him. His licks were tentative, then less so. I could sense the novelty for him, and the thrill that came with that. I knew this was the last thing he expected to be doing on this trip.

"You've done this before, man," I urged. "You got this."

He nodded and then opened his lips to take me in. He bobbed up and down on a few inches. Jim wasn't lying. He wasn't any good at this. But I loved the feeling of his warm mouth and the wet tongue against my steel-hard dick. And I loved the rush of seeing this regular married daddy servicing me. I let him do his thing for a minute then spoke again.

"Feels nice," I encouraged him. Then, "Just suck me like you enjoy being sucked, man."

That seemed to make something click for him, and he adjusted his blowjob. Jim wasn't gonna be a pro cocksucker any time soon, but THIS was a lot better. He flenched when my hand touched his hair, but when he realized I was just gonna stroke his head in encouragement he relaxed back into it.

"Take your time, bud," I hissed, spreading my stance a little. "Takes me a good couple of minutes to work up a head of steam. But this feels awesome."

It did, and the physical sensations were starting to build up. But I also imagined this guy sucking dudes back home, showing off what he'd learned on me. That was the trigger that got me off.

"You better swallow, man," I growled. Mr. Easygoing was gone. I didn't want him pulling off. Maybe my fingers curled around the back of his head to keep him from retreating.

He grunted. Agreement, I guess. But he kept sucking as I spurted into his craw. I heard a choked sound, but it wasn't an actual choking. Mostly a grunt of excitement as he tasted, then swallowed, as fast I was pumping more sperm into his mouth and throat.

"Damn, that was nice," I hissed as I let go of his head and finally stepped back out of his sucking mouth.

"Did I do OK?" he asked, voice thick with my cum still. Something about that question was adorable and exciting both.

I smiled. "Fuck yea you did." I nodded down to his hard crotch. "You need to get off?"

He unzipped. Clearly, sucking me had worked him up. He spit into his palm and I watched him start pulling his pud. It wasn't gonna take him long, not from the excited look in his eyes and the fast fist motion. I stepped closer and let my dong sway in front of his face.

That got him going. "You got a great cock," he admitted.

"And you sucked it," I reminded him.

"Yes," he grunted, and like that he was cumming.

"That's it, man," I urged.

Our release complete, I stepped back and tucked back in as he wiped himself with a Kleenex. His mood shifted some.

"We good man?" I asked. He could have all the guilt pangs he wanted, but I didn't want a full-on freak out.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Thanks for that.... I'm gonna remember that for a long while."

"If you wanna make some more memories this week, you know where to reach me."