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fatesundress · 1 year ago

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⭑ 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.

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle fluff #tom riddle smut #tom riddle angst #(the trifecta)#tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world #ftltutbh

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cherienymphe · 11 months ago

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Teenage Dirtbag II (JJ Maybank x Reader x Rafe Cameron)

Warnings: NON-CON, DUB-CON, abusive relationship, domestic violence, violence (+ gun violence), gun kink, dacryphilia, attempted murder, mentions of blood, public sex, jealousy, manipulation, infidelity, underage drinking, drug use, canon ages, kook!reader

➥ banner by @vase-of-lilies | ➥ divider by @firefly-graphics

➥ series masterlist

summary: You’re charmingly spoiled. You’re too kind for your own good. You’re the princess of Figure 8 …and you’re way out of JJ Maybank’s league, but when he realizes that Rafe Cameron’s pride and joy is actually a bruised and battered damsel, he’s determined to save you.

Your rescue just comes with a price.

“Why was JJ even trying to give you some drink, anyway?”

You resisted the urge to sigh, anticipating such a question the moment the topic had swung back around to the party from last week. You kept your gaze on your lip gloss, dipping it once then twice before looking up into the mirror. You could hear Rafe pause in his movements, no doubt waiting for an answer, and this time you finally did heave a breath.

“I don’t know, Rafe. I told you this,” you said to him, turning to look at him as he sat on the edge of his bed.

You watched him study you, that blue gaze of his oh so unnerving, and you weren’t the least bit relieved when he simply hummed.

“I know,” he finally replied, tongue pressing to the inside of his cheek. “…but I have a right to wonder. Especially since you’ve never spoken to him a day in your life before that night.”

Rolling your eyes, you turned to swipe the sticky product over your lips, recalling that it was one of Rafe’s favorite shades. The conversation had the potential to slip into dangerous territory, derailing your entire night, and you mulled over your next words carefully.

“He was probably just trying to get a rise out of you,” you honestly murmured, looking at your boyfriend. “…and it worked.”

You merely shrugged at him as he scoffed.

“I mean, he’s way more familiar with you than me. Probably just wanted to piss you off.”

You turned the light off in his bathroom, making your way towards your shoes as you desperately hoped this conversation would come to an end soon. The topic of other men was one that rarely ended nonviolently, and you didn’t know how Rafe got it into his head that the antics of JJ Maybank had anything to do with you when everyone on this entire island knew how much they hated each other. A year ago, you barely even knew the other blonde’s name.

“Well, it worked,” Rafe confessed, coming over to help you put on your other shoe. “You’re too good to even be talking to trash like that, so yeah. It pissed me off.”

At the look on your face, Rafe continued, shaking his head.

“I know what you’re thinking, and you really don’t need to go around feeling sorry for guys like that. He’s not the down on his luck kid you think he is,” he advised, pulling you to your feet. “Him and all of Sarah’s little buddies are nothing but trouble.”

Rafe took his time telling you this, making sure you heard every word, and you only felt compelled to nod as he placed a brief kiss on your lips. Rafe swiped up your purse for you as he pulled you out of the room. You felt safer with Rafe in his house than you did in your own, but Ward’s careful eye on his son had never been foolproof. There’d been plenty of times Rafe gave you a sprained wrist or bruised jaw in his very own bedroom.

It's just that in his desire to be more careful within the Cameron household, he sometimes decided that it wasn’t even worth it.

“Where are you two off to?” Sarah wondered as you came face to face with her in the living room.

You hadn’t even known she was home, and when it became clear that Rafe wasn’t going to answer her, you did.

“To a movie.”

The smile you sent her was small, and she reluctantly returned it before settling her gaze on her brother. You didn’t miss the way her eyes narrowed, lips pursing a tad. They never got along, but considering recent events, you knew what this particular disagreement was about to be about.

“JJ’s nose is still pretty messed up, you know.”

At that, Rafe did finally acknowledge her, stopping to face her with a challenging look you knew all too well. He tilted his head to the side, one brow raised.

“That sounds like something that isn’t my problem,” he shrugged, and you softly told him that you needed to go in an attempt to avoid whatever this was, but he ignored you.

“God, you’re such an asshole, you know that? JJ just offered your girlfriend a drink and so you broke his nose? Yeah, ‘cause that makes sense,” Sarah murmured, shaking her head as she looked back down at her phone.

You squeezed Rafe’s arm, but he merely sneered at his sister.

“JJ’s a little shit who likes to look for trouble wherever he goes. Not my fault he found it,” Rafe spat, pulling you along before Sarah could reply.

His quiet disposition and tight grip on your hand told you how annoyed he was at Sarah’s reminder of JJ and that night, and you mentally wondered if this was going to be a little thing or something that affected your whole night. Maybe even the next one too. He said nothing when he helped you into his truck, and so you were unsurprised that he was quiet his whole way to the movie too.

You were thankful this was the date of choice because it was easier to ignore Rafe’s mood when your eyes were glued to the screen. In fact, there were moments you forgot he was even there, giggling to whatever was going on in front of you. Once the movie was over, however, Rafe’s uncharacteristic silence was hard to ignore.

Knowing that you’d regret it, you finally spoke up when you made it back to his truck.

“I feel like you’re mad at me for some reason.”

It sounded silly to your ears, but then again, you knew your boyfriend like the back of your hand, and as little sense as it made, you had the sneaking suspicion that he put some blame with you somehow.

“Not mad,” he murmured, and you simply looked at him.

His gaze and the tightness in his jaw said otherwise, and despite his evident annoyance, he still claimed otherwise. He was silent as he opened your door—his irritation growing the longer you stared at him—and when he blinked, straightening, you finally slid inside. You weren’t surprised to have the door slammed in your face, and you could only sigh when he joined you.

The first few minutes of the drive were as quiet as before, but when Rafe finally cracked, you could only close your eyes.

“Why did you even want to go that night, anyway?” he bitterly chuckled.

You turned to look out of the window with a defeated heave of your shoulders, swallowing.

“You’ve never wanted to go before, and even then, some bonfire on the beach isn’t your thing. You go to house parties with pools and prissy bitches who don’t want to get their hair wet,” he sneered, making you look at him. “Yeah, JJ might’ve wanted to piss me off, but it was you he chose to do it through.”

“So…what…? It’s my fault? I should’ve never gone with you, is that what you’re saying?”

You frowned at him when he glanced at you, dirty blond hair kissing his forehead, and Rafe’s silence spoke volumes. Against your will, you felt your throat tightening, and you were unsurprised when tears kissed your eyes. You hated crying in front of Rafe.

“I just wanted to go, Rafe. I’d never been, and…it’s not like I have any friends to go with anymore. Would you have rather I’d gone alone?”

“Don’t be cute,” he threw at you, tossing you a scathing look. “You wouldn’t even get the chance to try.”

You huffed, looking away from him as he continued, watching the trees fly by.

“Besides, I thought we both agreed that your friends were catty airheads who you didn’t need to be around,” Rafe firmly said. “You have better friends, now.”

“Those are your friends,” you sighed. “…and I know because they barely talk to me. I’m just your girlfriend who’s supposed to stand there and look pretty.”

Those last words came out in a murmur, but Rafe heard them loud and clear.

“You’d have nothing to complain about if you didn’t ask to go in the first place.”

His words made your frown deepen, and despite what you wanted, a few tears escaped. You looked at him in disbelief, although, you didn’t know why. You should’ve been perfectly used to the words that came out of his mouth, sometimes, now.

“What am I supposed to do, Rafe?” you cried. “Just sit in my room, twiddling my thumbs until you come back?”

When he looked at you, he rolled those blue eyes of his, a scoff leaving his perfect lips.

“I don’t have time for the antics, tonight,” he breathed.

Now, it was your turn to scoff.

“You started it,” you pointed out.

You knew that you were already on thin ice, you could tell, but when Rafe cut his eyes back to you, your heart skipped a beat. You watched your boyfriend swipe his tongue between his lips, slowly nodding as he looked back at the road.

“Okay…” the truck started to slow as he inhaled. “Yeah, okay.”

You felt the hairs on your arms stand on end as he stopped in the middle of the road. It was late, so it wasn’t like the roads of Kildare County were littered with traffic, but it still made you nervous, nonetheless. You watched Rafe turn the truck off, and before you could say anything he was looking at you.

“Get out.”

His words made you blink, lips parting before snapping them shut.

“…what?”

One of Rafe’s arms leaned on the steering wheel while his other hand rested behind your headrest. Even in the darkness, there was a glint in his eyes that told you he was completely serious despite the insanity of the request. The atmosphere in the truck felt so tense—thick with it—and you pulled your lip between your teeth when Rafe leaned in, gaze cold and mocking.

“You said I started it? Well, now I’m finishing it. Get the fuck out of my truck,” Rafe quietly spat at you, making you flinch.

An incredulous bark of a laugh escaped you.

“Rafe, it’s the middle of the night, are you crazy?”

At your refusal to do what he asked, he merely turned away, opening his door. Your heart fell to your stomach as you watched him hurry to your side, yanking the door open and proceeding to yank you too.

“Rafe! What the hell-?”

Your words were cut off as you were forced to stumble out of the vehicle and into the road—without your purse. When he roughly shoved you away, you tripped over your own feet, hissing in pain as you barely caught yourself on your hands. Rafe was already back in his truck by the time you pushed yourself to your feet, and in shock, you watched him start it up. You’d only just reached the handle of the door when he sped off, and you screamed his name after him in a mix of fear and anger.

You couldn’t even really focus on the knowledge that you were in the middle of an empty stretch of road in the middle of the night. You were too angry and annoyed to, and with a sob, you pressed your face into your hands. You sniffed, wiping your face before wrapping your arms around yourself and looking around.

You knew that trying to go toe to toe with Rafe even just a little could prove to be disastrous. You just desperately wanted him to understand that all you had was him. With no friends and no social life outside of him, Rafe was all you had, and you weren’t the bad guy for simply wanting to go to a party with him. You knew he knew this though, so you didn’t even know why you bothered, but you just hated to be blamed for something JJ Maybank did solely because he and Rafe hated each other.

You were merely a tool in the incident.

Rafe was so childish sometimes, so this little display of anger shouldn’t have surprised you. Even still, your nerves were on end as you started to walk down the road. Like you’d thought earlier, there was no traffic in sight, and truthfully, nothing in Outer Banks was that far from anything else, but that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

You wiped your face again, but fresh tears just fell.

It was cold, and while your jacket kept you from shaking, this still wasn’t the kind of weather to be walking down the street in. You couldn’t stop crying no matter how much you tried, debating with yourself if you wanted to just keep walking towards your house or try your chances with getting sympathy from some stranger. You knew what Rafe would prefer—and you knew what was statistically safer—but something in you wanted to piss him off further.

After all, he was the one who threw a tantrum and put you out on the side of the road in the middle of the night. Something in you was desperate to teach him a lesson, and you genuinely wondered what Rafe would do if you just…never came home. You wanted to see the look on his face when your parents called him asking if he’d seen you. However, something in you told you that he wouldn’t be as stricken as you’d think.

This was the same man who threatened to kill you on several occasions.

…but that was different.

That had always been when you tried to leave or even made him think you would leave. That was always said as a promise to make you stay, and even worse, that was when your demise would be at his hands. Rafe wouldn’t get the same satisfaction from leaving you to the mercy of the elements and strangers in the middle of the night.

You were just wiping more tears away when you could see headlights coming from the other end of the road. You weren’t on that side, so you weren’t all that concerned, and despite your earlier bleak thoughts, you actually didn’t relish getting in some stranger’s car and hoping he was honest enough to just take you where you needed to go.

However, your heart did sink a little when it became clear the vehicle was slowing down.

…but your worry morphed into irritation when you recognized the truck.

Rolling your eyes, you merely kept walking as Rafe slowed down enough to have a conversation with you. Or at least attempt to, anyway. You didn’t look at him, swallowing and keeping your tearful eyes straight ahead as you walked.

“Baby, get in the truck.”

“Why?” you wondered with a shrug. “You’re the one who kicked me out.”

“I don’t have time for this,” you heard him mumble. “Y/N, get in the truck.”

Against your better judgement, you ignored him, and Rafe stopped reversing to put the vehicle in park. You picked up your pace when you heard his door open, but Rafe was faster, and you could only attempt to pull away when he roughly grabbed your arm. Yanking you towards him, Rafe didn’t hesitate to push you against the side of the truck, making you wince.

His hold was so tight on your arm, and you shrank away from him when he pressed his nose to yours. His chest and shoulders were heaving, so you knew that he was beyond annoyed, now, but the stubborn part of you that reared its ugly head sometimes only stared back at him with trembling lips.

“I really don’t have time for this, tonight,” he whispered. “Get in the fucking truck, so we can go home.”

“You kicked me out! You go home…and I’ll just walk,” you tearfully spat, attempting to get out of his hold. “It’s what you wanted, anyway.”

Rafe’s impatience was bleeding through as you tried to get past him. One of his arms secured itself around your waist, the other gripping your arm as you attempted to grab that one. You were a mess of limbs and tears as you begged him to let go of you, Rafe’s low voice telling you to get it together.

You weren’t surprised when you found yourself harshly thrown to the ground.

You cried out when your chin bounced off of the pavement, unable to stop your fast descent in time. You heard Rafe curse from above you as a loud sob escaped, and you reached up to touch your chin, attempting to push yourself up. Rafe—in his haste—beat you to it though, grabbing you and forcing you to your feet. You could feel wetness on your chin as he forced you to the passenger side, quite literally shoving you into the truck.

You flinched when he slammed the door shut, tearful gaze focused on the glove compartment as he angrily joined you. When he told you to put on your seatbelt, you reluctantly did with trembling fingers, a choked cough escaping as you tried to stop crying. You couldn’t.

Rafe didn’t say a word to you the whole way back to his house, but you could feel his gaze on you every now and then. He didn’t turn on the radio, the only sound in the vehicle was that of your harsh wails. When he finally did stop in his yard, you both sat there for some time before a long sigh reached your ears.

“You know how I get,” you eventually heard him say. “You know I wouldn’t just…leave you out there.”

You didn’t say anything because you had nothing to say. You heard him shift, and you flinched again when the tips of his fingers grazed your face, his other hand coming up to gently take your chin. Turning you to face him, you watched his blue eyes roam over your face, taking in your tearful cheeks and bloody chin.

“I’m sorry.”

Not only was it something you’d heard a million times before, but you also knew that it was solely in reference to your face. Rafe wasn’t apologizing for kicking you out on the side of the road in the middle of the night. Why would he apologize for that when he felt that was justified? When you said nothing in response, he opted for getting out, and when he opened your door, you hesitated before taking his offered hand.

Once you were standing before him, he wrapped an arm around you, pulling you against him. You felt him press his lips into your hair, deeply inhaling. He quietly apologized again, and his words hung in the air as you knew what he wanted. Sniffling, you nodded.

“It’s okay,” you whispered. “It was an accident.”

It wasn’t…because even if Rafe hadn’t explicitly tried to make you bleed, he had intended to hurt you. In these moments, in the aftermath of whatever else Rafe did, it was so easy to think to yourself that you’d leave him. It was almost too easy to hype yourself up, but then you’d think about how it felt to be on the receiving end of that emotionless stare, dead eyes gazing back at you. You’d think about the fear you’d feel whenever his hand was round your neck.

…or the feel of the barrel of a gun in your mouth.

It was so easy until you remembered that Rafe would actually kill you, and you’d learned a long time ago that Rafe wasn’t one to bluff.

You were making something to eat when you heard someone coming down the stairs, and when you glanced up, you weren’t surprised to make eye contact with Sarah. You knew she was home, and you’d heard her friends downstairs not too long ago. You surmised that they were outside waiting for her judging by her state of undress.

“Oh,” she said, sounding a little startled to see you. “I didn’t know you were still here. Where’s Rafe?”

She glanced towards the stairs, and you confirmed her suspicions that he was indeed gone.

“He went to the club with Kelce and Topper.”

You gave her a shrug, answering her silent question.

“I didn’t really feel like going.”

It wasn’t a lie, but you also knew that even if you did feel like going, it probably wouldn’t have gone over well. The last time you went to the country club with Rafe, it didn’t exactly end the best. Running into some of his more casual friends had apparently sparked a conversation that you unfortunately bore the brunt of. It amazed you, really, how Rafe wanted both an attractive girlfriend his friends could envy him for while also losing his mind if said friends dared to say it.

“Oh,” she said again, a little more dejected this time.

Your attention was focused on your food, so you didn’t even realize Sarah was still lingering about until she spoke again.

“We’re going to the beach,” she suddenly blurted out, and you’d guessed as much at the sight of her bikini top. “You should come with us.”

At that you paused, giving her a questionable look that conveyed exactly what you were thinking. Sarah sighed, dropping her bag to the floor before nearing you with a roll of her eyes.

“I know that we’re not friends,” she slowly started, scrunching her face. “…but you’ve been dating my brother for like, what, two years?”

You glanced down at that.

“…and…I know it’s not my place, but you just seem lonely sometimes,” she hurried to continue when your gaze met hers. “I mean, I never really see you do anything that doesn’t involve Rafe. At least, not anymore.”

You swallowed at that.

“Come on, he’s at the stupid country club with his friends, and you’re just waiting for him to get back. Surely, you can’t like that.”

Sarah was more right than she knew, but you swallowed that down.

“I told you, Sarah, I didn’t want to go. I’m fine just hanging out here. I like being at your house,” you chuckled.

Sarah looked like she wanted to say something else but thought better of it. However, she did eye you though with a look you couldn’t place, and you sent her a reassuring smile as you grabbed your plate.

“You guys have fun,” you encouraged, touching her arm on your way past her.

You wondered how pathetic you’d become if your boyfriend’s younger sister was extending a hesitant offer of friendship. Granted, it wasn’t like she was outside your age group or anything, because she wasn’t, but the other circumstances surrounding your relationship just made it seem sad on your end. Your boyfriend’s little sister wanted to make up for how her brother treated you, and it was laughable in the worst way.

You were pulled from your thoughts by the sound of the hallway bathroom door opening, and you sharply inhaled as you almost quite literally ran into the last person you ever expected to see in the Cameron household. Now, you understood why Sarah had been worriedly eyeing the stairs as she asked if Rafe was home.

JJ Maybank looked just as startled to see you, but he recovered quicker than you did.

“Sorry,” you rushed out, breaking eye contact and moving to get past him.

You slowed when you recalled your brief glance at his face, guilt eating at you at the bruising that was still faint around the area of his nose. Briefly pressing your fingers to your forehead, you turned around, a little shocked to find the blond already staring at you. That discovery gave you pause, but you quickly pushed it aside.

“I’m sorry, by the way.”

You watched him raise his brows at you, but JJ otherwise said nothing, and so you elaborated.

“About your nose,” you told him, and JJ nodded in understanding. “Sure, you were being…a bit of a jerk, but Rafe shouldn’t have done that.”

At your words, you watched something flicker over his features, and the corner of his lips curved upwards just enough to be noticeable.

“You thought I was being an asshole,” he pointed out, and you snorted.

“I didn’t say that-.”

“…but it’s what you meant,” he slowly interrupted, stepping towards you.

You took note of the action, frowning a bit before glancing away.

You knew that Rafe would throw you down the stairs for even looking at JJ Maybank, let alone having a full-blown conversation with him, but the polite manner in which you’d been raised wouldn’t let you walk by the guy without saying anything in reference to Rafe’s behavior that night. Choosing to let the conversation die, you sighed.

“I just wanted to apologize for how he acted. That’s all.”

You gave him a strained smile before turning away, pausing when he spoke.

“You know, your boyfriend’s a bit of an asshole too.”

You tensed for half a second before turning to face him, stomach twisting at that mocking curve to his lips. Blinking, you wondered how to respond to that.

“That’s your opinion.”

“One you agree with,” he argued with a slow smile, studying your face as he pulled his lip between his teeth. “I can tell. You think he’s an asshole too. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be apologizing on his behalf.”

Maybe it was because Rafe took JJ’s actions that night out on you, but you actually felt yourself getting irritated.

“I wouldn’t have to apologize for anything if you hadn’t been trying to provoke him. We all know what he’s like, and you two don’t exactly have the best history,” you shrugged.

The other man didn’t respond right away, simply leaning against the wall with one hand shoved into his pocket. You felt a little self-conscious the longer he stared at you, doubly so when his blue gaze lowered. Having expected no one outside of immediate family to be in the house, you were only sporting one of Rafe’s shirts. It came down to your knees, but in front of JJ, you might as well had been wearing a thong.

It's how Rafe would see it, anyway.

“Is that what you do?”

At your blink of confusion, he continued.

“When he’s being…well…Rafe, do you tell yourself that’s just how he is and you know what he’s like and so you should know better?”

JJ’s words struck a nerve, more than he’d ever know, and you glanced away. You guessed that your silence was answer enough, and when you looked back to him, he was nodding to himself.

“Sounds to me like you need a better boyfriend,” he told you with an amused smile, shrugging at you.

Realizing that this conversation went far beyond what you intended, you chose not to dignify that with a response. You could still feel the heat of his gaze as you walked to Rafe’s room, and when you paused with your hand on the knob, you glanced up to catch his eye. JJ hadn’t moved, at all, simply opting to stare at you, blond hair messy in a way that Rafe’s would never be.

You recalled what Rafe said about JJ being trouble, and it was only then did you consider he might be trouble in a way you hadn’t thought about before. When the sound of Sarah’s voice traveled upstairs, JJ’s name in the air, only then did he glance over his shoulder, and you took that opportunity to lock yourself inside of your boyfriend’s room.

#jj maybank x reader #dark!jj maybank x reader #dark!jj maybank #jj maybank #obx imagine #rafe cameron x reader #dark!rafe cameron #obx fanfiction #jj maybank fanfiction #rafe cameron fanfiction #rafe cameron #dark!rafe cameron x reader #outer banks #outer banks fanfiction #outer banks imagine

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ew-selfish-art · 1 year ago

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DP x DC AU: Letters and Paper goods are easy to store, and therefore, easy to hide. Danny has drama to monger though.

Tim Drake becomes a ward of Bruce Wayne at the same time the Drake Corporation is crumbling, and his father's health is declining. Dana, his father's physical therapist turned new wife, isn't optimistic these days, and Tim can read the writing on the wall.

Times have changed and Bruce and Dick are treating him with kid gloves. Jason Todd is alive again, been there suffered that. Young Just-Us has proven yet again to be his true family... But Bruce 'welcomes' him home the second the fake uncle is sniffed out.

So, Tim rationalizes, If Drake Corp is going down, then so shall the reason he spent his childhood abandoned. The many, many archeology digs his parents left him for over the years and their many, many stolen historical pieces. Tim is ready and able to get rid of them all.

He first returns the artifacts that have obvious origins to the people with whom they belong. Then it starts to get a little hazy as to where each item stolen is from. The paper goods are the hardest to place.

Years later, Tim has almost completely emptied his parent's old home of their stolen goods. By now, he runs a fortune 500 company and is working as Red Robin. Going through the last of the archives means going through the very last objects his parents ever preferred over his company, and he can't wait to be rid of them.

A glowing green envelope however... this one he feels compelled to keep. He hadn't known it back when he started this project- but somehow his Parents had found objects drenched in the essence of the Lazarus Pits. And it wasn't just one letter, it was dozens and dozens.

Tim Drake knew it would be risky to move them, but he needed to get these letters to an ex-league member to understand what the language of the dead was trying to proclaim.

_____

Danny hates a fetch quest but apparently Ghost Writer is having a bad day. It starts with Danny running by the guys library to have a chat when all of a sudden, the question of certain... ghost relations... came up. Danny is always more than thrilled to hear about how the various ancient-as-in-old ghosts interacted with the Ancients-as-in-yikes ghosts.

Ghost Writer finally admitted to the monarch in training that if he wanted to know so badly, that he could track down Clockworks old letters. They'd been scattered well before Ghost Writer could properly work on the ghost archives (read: was still alive), and it wasn't until he'd long worked on the library that such affairs were noted as missing.

The potential for gossip was just too good! A call home to Sam, Tuck and Jazz to let them know he was on an adventure, and then Danny flew off with little more than some hints by GW and an annoyed nod of cryptic agreement by CW.

Danny goes about wondering Gotham as himself, not yet seeing the need to be Phantom, when he runs into the very guy he was looking for.

"Hey- you don't happen to have a shit ton of letters written in the language of the dead do you?" Danny smiles as innocently as possible as he watches all seven stages of grief play out on the guy's face. Then something changes and Danny can tell that this guy is like, scary competent.

"I do, however, I was double crossed and a shit ton of assassins are on their way to try and take them."

"Uh... Bummer for them I guess? I'll just take them and go- I don't even really need to keep them if you want em back-"

"Assassins. They won't exactly leave empty handed."

"Huh. Well... Wanna come with? These are supposed to have some pretty juicy drama in them." Danny awkwardly places a hand on the back of his neck.

A knife being thrown in their direction was enough to get this guy to make a decision.

"Let's go spill some tea then."

Danny grins as he pulls the guy through a rapidly drawn portal, ignoring the wide eyes he makes. Turns out his name is Tim, and walking him through afterlife drama is the best- how does he know so many dead assassins??? One of these letters is about a guy who took Tim's spleen??

#dcxdp #dpxdc #dc x dp #dp x dc #dc crossover #dp crossover #danny phantom #long post #tim drake

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warping-realities · 15 days ago

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Where Would You Rather Be? (Redux)

A collaboration with the amazing @johnbrand

“You know I love you, right?” Malcolm reaffirmed to his boyfriend. “And I’m here for you, babe.”

It had been a hell of a week for Shane. He had been living in the city for almost ten years now, moving there for college and then sticking around after graduation. It was a scary transition, but thanks to the quick friends he made, the ride was a bit easier. One of them, Shane’s freshman roommate—who he had lived with and then kept close since they met—got an eviction notice the week before. Shane had been as supportive as he could through the whole mess, but watching his buddy pack up and leave was a real kick in the gut. His friend would now be living hours away, no longer right next door.

Shane nodded his head, followed by a quick “Thanks, babe.”

“I’m happy to be the shoulder you can cry on, I know this sucks” Malcolm sympathized. “Still wanna grab dinner tonight? We can bail on the plans if you need some time.”

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” Shane said with a slight smile. “Plus, it’s our third anniversary—you’ve done more than your fair share, and I’m super grateful for that.”

Malcolm chuckled, quickly snatching Shane from behind. “Then maybe you’ll have to show some gratitude later tonight.”

Rolling his eyes, Shane still returned the passionate kiss from his boyfriend.

That night, he found himself back in his own home. After climbing a few flights of stairs, he was surprised to find his buddy’s old apartment door wide open. Curious, Shane peeked in, and without thinking twice, he stepped into the familiar space, now filled with unknown furniture, boxes, and other random junk scattered around.

Before he could snoop around, a voice from behind barked at him to move aside. “Get outta the way, bro!”

The rich baritone caught Shane so off guard that he jumped a bit, scurrying as a big dude stomped through the doorway before dropping a few boxes. At least six feet tall, the buff, masculine intruder immediately intimidated Shane. Shirtless, barefoot, and rocking some tiny shorts that could easily be mistaken for underwear. Probably due to the effort of hauling all those boxes, the muscular man gave off a strong, manly odor that quickly overwhelmed Shane’s senses. In fact, all of his senses, although he didn’t really realize it. The stranger smiled cockily, sizing Shane up with eyes glinting with mischief before speaking.

“Mind being useful and helping me organize the rest of my stuff?” the man asked. Shane, a bit freaked out by the pure masculinity in front of him, didn’t say a word. The guy didn’t need his response, though, knowing Shane would help him out no matter what. Shane couldn’t explain what came over him; his mouth was just hanging open while cardboard boxes were dumped into his waiting arms.

In minutes, he was soaked in sweat, having to peel off layer after layer of clothing as he helped the stranger organize the apartment. His mind screamed at the absurdity of the situation, yet he kept doing what the man asked him to do like a robot. After an hour of relentless work, the guy, noticing Shane’s drenched clothes, pulled out a change of clothes from one of the boxes still piled in a corner.

“Put these on, thank goodness I wear extra-large, bro, so they should fit your chubby ass!” he said, flexing his muscles and releasing another wave of that masculine musk from his armpits.

Drowsy Shane picked up the clearly unwashed tank top and gym shorts, reeking of that same animal musk but concentrated from days of use. That scent almost made him hurl.

“What are you waiting for, man? Put these on already. We still got work to do.”

Once again, not understanding why, Shane felt compelled to obey, stripping down in front of his new neighbor until he was left only in his underwear. He was already putting on his shorts when the man interrupted him.

“No, man, you gotta let the jewels breathe. Not that they take up much space, from what I can see, but there’s no reason to squeeze the poor things,” he quipped, bursting into laughter, and Shane, even without getting the joke, found himself laughing along. When he was finally dressed in the provided clothes, completely engulfed by the animalistic smell, the man approached him with a grin.

“Back to work, man, a little more exercise and maybe you’ll fill out those clothes just right,” he said with a smirk. Shane just nodded and kept working.

Before he knew it, another two hours had flown by, and the apartment now had a minimally organized look, unlike the previous chaos. The night fully enveloped the dimly lit room.

“Martin,” the mysterious man finally offered his name, alongside a giant meaty hand that crushed Shane’s. “Are you my new neighbor?”

“Uh... yeah,” Shane finally spoke, pointing to the wall their apartments would share.

“Cool, bro,” Martin replied. “Wanna chill on the balcony with me for a bit?”

Shane checked his watch, noting that there was still some time before he had to get ready for his dinner date. “Sure.” Following the muscular alpha outside, Shane took a seat on the wicker couch while waiting for Martin. He did his best to plan out the remaining time he had. Not realizing that the tight outfit now seemed to hang off his body, which in the last few hours had shed a good amount of fat while gaining a little muscle, revealing a face that was somewhere between cute and handsome.

“Sit over there,” Martin directed as he stepped onto the balcony. Shane didn’t think twice about getting up and moving aside so Martin could sit on the couch. It wasn’t until he moved to the other side of the coffee table that Shane realized Martin wanted him to sit on the deck.

“That’s right, faggot. Sit in front of my feet,” Martin said, the friendly smile fading from his face as he propped his giant, smelly feet up on the table.

Shane was shocked, offended by his neighbor’s sudden bigotry. The lame joke about the size of his dick was one thing, but this vocabulary was degrading and... the smell of a full day’s work was coming off those giant boards Martin called feet. And Shane train of thought completely derailed. So he did as he was told, taking his seat in front of the two massive soles placed before him. Somewhat exasperated by the incomprehensible actions he had taken up until that point and anxious not to miss his meeting with his boyfriend, Shane shifted uncomfortably in the awkward spot, to the point that Martin himself noticed.

“You got any plans tonight, fag?” Martin questioned.

In a flustered, embarrassed, and strangely lustful state, Shane answered, “Yeah, I have an anniversary dinner with my boyfriend.”

Martin snickered. “And when is that?”

“I should start getting ready in 10 minutes,” Shane’s response was robotic. “I’ve gotta shower, get dressed, wrap my present, and then travel.”

Martin mulled this over for a bit, relishing the fact that Shane would wait for his next prompt. He was completely overtaken by the scent that wafted from the other man. Martin’s natural musk and body odor held an authority over him like nothing else ever had.

“Let me make you a deal, faggot,” Martin finally said. “You can bounce now, get ready, and have a great night with your loving boyfriend. Or you can stay seated right where you are, at the feet of a straight man, waiting for my next command and finally discover what it’s like to be a real man!”

Shane didn’t reply, shocked by what Martin was insinuating. With casual indifference, Martin wiggled his toes in front of Shane, knowing the silence was already his answer. But in true alpha fashion, Martin made sure to hammer his superiority home.

“Where would you rather be, faggot?” he asked, with his feet releasing another wave of potent funk towards an already completely subdued prey.

They stayed there without saying a word: Martin laid-back, comfortable, and minding his own business, and Shane at his feet. Neither got up as time ticked by. In his head, Shane’s plans slowly morphed. He didn’t need to wrap Malcolm’s present, he didn’t need to shower, he didn’t even need to change. Eventually, the anniversary dinner came and went, and Shane was still at the feet of the straight man.

“Well, now that you’ve made your choice I gotta keep my promise, right, sissy boy? But to be my bro, you gotta become a real man, don’t you, Shotgun?”

“My name is…”

“Shut up, sissy boy. You’ll be able to talk when you’re a man and have a place to sit by my side, not at my feet!”

Imbued by Martin’s potent scent and words of dominance, Shane fell silent.

“I don’t give a damn what you were known for, Shotgun,” Martin retorted, making the smaller man shiver at the sound of that nickname. “I don’t care about your art degree or the lame job you do or the degenerate things you do with your fag boyfriend. And that doesn’t matter to you either, Shotgun, because it’s not real, but what I’m gonna tell you now is that it is real, and your jelly brain is gonna do its best to make it happen.” The man concluded, lifting both arms and releasing the most powerful wave of musk yet, taking Shane... or Shotgun?... what kind of name is that? That didn’t matter, only the wave of nauseating smell that invaded him.

“Take it like a man, Shotgun,” Martin ordered, and he obeyed. “What you’re gonna do is very simple, I want you to think about all the jocks who humiliated you in school, the fraternity brothers who often give each other nicknames just like yours, Shotgun, which you certainly mocked but deep down envied. I want you to think about all the real men you and your faggot friends called toxic behind their backs without having the guts to face them. I want you to picture yourself as one of them, with all the stereotypes of white cis straight men, yada yada yada bullshit that your liberal faggot mind has stored. I want you to take all their traits and slap them on yourself. Habits, behavior, conduct, appearance, desires, thoughts, everything! Yeah, everything you think about guys like me applied to you. When you’re done, Shotgun, then we’ll talk man to man, and only then I’ll wanna know more about my new bro. A bro who scored this awesome apartment for a fellow frat brother moving across the country as soon as he heard someone just like him was moving here, just for the spirit of brotherhood that exists between real men that your old self would never have been able to grasp! Do it now!

The wave of nausea hit its peak; Shane felt the vomit rising in his throat but held it back, swallowing it down again, while another sensation took over his head, a feeling of being invaded and violated, his mind dominated by a relentless buzz, his vision flooded with a myriad of colors, while his whole body itched as if a million ants were crawling over him. The whole situation was overwhelming. And it got worse when his memories and recollections started to twist and reform, everything he was being tangled up in a whirlwind of misinformation. He found himself facing several traumatic situations from his life, but in reverse roles; the bullying he suffered turning into the bullying he practiced, the sports activities observed from afar being felt and lived, the toxic behavior going from being judged to being experienced and appreciated. And with that, new memories surfacing, time in the gym sculpting his body to perfection, nights of sex with various women whose names he didn’t even remember, his work at the art gallery replaced by a finance job earned not through talent but through connections made via his fraternity brothers. At last the image of Malcolm, the great love of his life, being erased. In an internal scream of despair, he tried to cling to that safe harbor, but that ship had already sailed to new waters, taking with it his humility, knowledge, empathy, and kindness. Leaving only inflated self-confidence, privilege, and respect only for those he considers equal or superior.

As the night wore on and Shane’s inner turmoil reached its peak, his exterior was undergoing its own transformation. His muscles were going into overdrive. They just kept contracting and expanding. Over and over. Lost in jumbled thoughts, he couldn’t feel his bones stretching longer. But each one was stretching out to its new length, growing denser to support his new weight. His average build quickly disappeared as muscle packed onto his recent lean frame. Little by little, he felt constricted by Martin’s clothing. The shirt pulled at his chest and shoulders while the shorts barely contained his thick, muscular ass, with his thighs growing like tree trunks, stretching the fabric to its limit. His shoulders broadened, turning into large round orbs jutting from his sides. Two mighty pecs pushed a bit in front of him while a firm set of abs grew more defined right underneath. His biceps bulged out of his arms while his forearms widened to support the new strength building within him. Amid the chaos of conflicting memories, his average-sized dick, the butt of Martin’s jokes, quickly grew to new heights. What had been his maximum hard was now his flaccid member. His calves grew to the size of most men thighs. Meanwhile, his feet grew well beyond the previous size 8, increasing to the point of competing with Martin’s stinky paws, which had to be at least size 13. The changes also hit his face, which took on a more squared-off, rugged look, with his button nose growing and turning into an aquiline nose that could’ve easily been broken in a fight, which only reinforced the raw masculinity taking over from his previous cuteness.

Finally, a smile formed on his chiseled face, oozing confidence and displaying his internal arrogance for all to see.

Seeing that smile appear, Martin knew his work was nearly done. And when that new Shane let out a fart and a burp, he knew it was all over. Feeling that new putrid smell mix with his own musk, he turned to the other man.

“Damn, Shotgun, you’re rank!”

“I didn’t get the name Shotgun Shane for nothing, man; it was for the shots I could take back in college, but I almost got called Stinkbomb for what I let out. Now, if you’re gonna complain about the smell, you better get those damn feet outta my face!” Shane shot back, his arrogant smile widening. This made Martin lift his feet off Shane’s face while cracking up.

“I knew we’d be best bros the moment we met, Shotgun,” he said, admiring the result of his handiwork.

“Me too, bro; way better having you as a neighbor than that faggot who lived here before.”

“If you compare me to some queer again, I’m gonna mess you up.”

“You can try!” Shane replied, flexing one of his powerful arms before continuing. “But you’re right, there’s no comparison, dude. To make it up to you, how about I take you to check out the hottest club in town? Celebrate the move by picking up some chicks?”

“Now you’re speaking my language, bro!”

….

Martin hated waiting on others, even though he himself had no problem showing up late. Apparently, Shane inherited that same trait during his transformation. The other man had gone home, took forever in the shower, and then posted some pretty provocative videos on his social media. The first one showed off his well-developed muscles while he seductively invited all the girls interested in him to meet him and his best bro at a city club.

In the second video, he just slid the camera down, revealing the huge package he had stuck in his underwear. All of this under the suggestive caption, “You really gonna miss this?”

Martin was super stoked with the results of his actions. Moving to a new city was tricky, but having a bro made it a whole lot easier, no matter that bro had been crafted by him. Still, he wondered if he hadn’t put too much of himself into the other man while he waited for him with a frown and his arms crossed. After a reasonable amount of waiting, he saw the gigantic figure strutting toward him down the first-floor corridor and was sure he had indeed put too much of himself into the other man, which could lead to some friction in the future when they had to sort out their power dynamics, but at that moment, that didn’t matter; he just wanted to have a good time, and there wouldn’t be better company than someone who was practically him in another body.

That became even clearer when Shane stopped in front of his irritated face and flexed his muscles playfully.

“What’s with the ugly mug, dude? You wanna throw down?”

“The ugly mug is because you took your sweet time, Shotgun! And you can joke all you want, but you can’t compete with this,” he replied, flexing one of his powerful arms. “Now let’s go after some hot chicks, or what?”

….

Malcolm didn’t quite know why he was in that dump of bigotry and toxicity. He just felt like something was missing and couldn’t quite put his finger on what. His trip to the place was the result of an Instagram video where one of the typical patrons invited all the interested bitches to come on down. Malcolm didn’t consider himself a bitch and usually would’ve laughed if someone said he might be into a dude like that, yet here he was. Knowing he had no chance of getting close to that man radiating toxicity. But only when he saw that self-proclaimed Shotgun Shane chatting up a hot young woman did something stir within him, a memory of a passionate kiss shared just that morning.

“S-Shane…?” he murmured, though he didn’t know exactly who this man was, he felt something deeply wrong was going on. While he stood there, dumbfounded, the man made his move and kissed the woman, which made him decide to leave the place as he was hit by another wave of strangeness and sadness mixed together.

However, he wasn’t the only one watching the scene; on the other side of the club, Martin saw his supposed wingman score before he did.

“Damn, I really put too much of myself in that dude,” he muttered as he weaved through the crowd. That’s when he saw Malcolm hurrying along with a look of confusion.

Well, if his wingman bailed on him, he could just make another one, right? It’s not like there was a shortage of material to work with, as that other faggot’s presence left abundantly clear. He just needed to be a bit more careful not to overdo it again, although he didn’t really have that refined of a control over the final result, and the most likely outcome would be ending up with another bro exactly like him. But he didn’t care that much; to him, there wouldn’t be better company than his own, and if someone asked him where and with whom he rather be, the answer would always be the same, he thought, smiling as he approached his future bro.

#male tf #mind change #reality change #jockification #mental transformation #corruption #musclegrowth #gay to straight #douchebag tf

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lurkingshan · 2 months ago

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10 Things I Love About Mr. Mitsuya's Planned Feeding

This wonderful little show has come to an end, and I feel compelled to tell folks why I loved it, and why you should watch if you haven't yet. First, a big word of thanks to @isaksbestpillow for providing her excellent subtitles and making this show available to international fans. You can find all seven episodes here, get them while you can!

This drama understands that sometimes we really do want to fuck that old man

I don't know what to tell you, the man is hot. He is kind, patient, and generous, he's a master chef, he has a beautiful home with a garden that he tends himself, he is a loving dog owner, and on top of all that he has a hilarious dry wit. Who wouldn't want to fuck him??

Ishida is an endearing protagonist having a relatable quarter life crisis

Ishida certainly does! Which is a nice little revelation for him in a time when he's already struggling to figure himself out, as it's his first time wanting to fuck a man and his work colleague to boot. Ishida has hit a stumble in his original career choice and is feeling pretty apathetic about his job when he meets Mitsuya and gets his world rocked.

Mitsuya is a weary older man who has been burned

Mitsuya is quite a contrast to Ishida as an older adult who very much has his shit together, but has also survived some deep hurts living as an out gay man and grown reluctant to let people in. He and Ishida both see something in each other that the other needs.

It's a food drama that will make your mouth water

The food Mitsuya makes and serves to Ishida in this show looks so delicious that I had to make sure I was fed before watching each episode. Mitsuya can feel free to bait me with food any time.

Shige is my idol

We get to spend ample time at the neighborhood bar, where Mitsuya's old friend Shige serves drinks and hot goss. Shige is a great mix of the wise elder gay dispensing advice and the mischievous trouble maker who likes to stir the pot. I love him, and this show's understanding of the realities of men their age living out and proud.

Frito is a very good dog

FRITO! I'm not always too hype about pets with prominent roles in my shows, but in this story Frito is an important character and an emotional support to Mitsuya, and often provides impetus for Mitsuya and Ishida to grow closer.

Have I mentioned this show is hilarious

Truly, so funny. I laughed out loud during most episodes. Ishida is a walking comedy show as he flails through life, and the few moments when Mitsuya's dignified exterior cracks will have you howling.

It gave us one of the best dates I have ever seen on my screen

I still think about this date all the time. It was so beautifully written to underscore why this couple fits and how they each meet the needs of the other. Just having seen this one day spent together, it's easy to understand how a life between the two of them would unfold.

This show has a mature and nuanced understanding of relationships

We get deep into the show's perspective on love and romantic relationships via the return of Mitsuya's ex, Kaoru, a plot which the story handles with remarkable grace. I loved the space they gave to Mitsuya's former love and need for closure, and that Kaoru was not treated like a villain. He even got to provide an assist to Ishida!

The main romance feels deep and compelling

All of this adds up so that by the time we got to the finale, I really believed in this romance and why Ishida and Mitsuya needed each other, and the way the show dug into their hesitations and fears around that was so moving. My only regret is this show is short and we can't follow them to keep watching their lives together, but we got what we needed to feel confident in their future. I will miss them.

#mr mitsuyas planned feeding #mitsuya sensei no keikakuteki na ezuke #japanese bl #jdrama #shan recommends #10 things #shan shouts into the void

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tomriddleslove · 9 months ago

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The Black Lake, a shared blunt, and realisations.

✩Mattheo Riddle x Reader

Summary: The one where Mattheo has had enough. Everyone and everything seems to be agitating him, and he feels as though he can’t catch a break. Then you come along. Alternatively: You may just be his saving grace, hidden in plain sight.

Slight? Angst but mainly fluff

A/N: I get all my fic ideas when listening to music so bear with me when I say there’s a very certain vibe to this and you have to know the song to understand it.

Songs: Tek it - Cafuné

The clock strikes noon, and Mattheo couldn’t be more than relieved to finally leave the stuffy clasroom. Tossing his bag over his shoulder, he swiftly makes his way out of the classroom, ignoring the agitated glares of the other students he had so rudely shoved past.

Now Mattheo wishes he could say he wasn’t this rude that often. He didn’t really go out of his way to fight people per se, but it just so happened to be that he was quite confrontational and rather good at resolving things with his fists. However these past few days he had been more on edge than usual, snapping at almost everyone for reasons that were far beyond him.

Everything seemed to agitate him immensely, from the way lessons seemed to drag on, to his deskmates who all seemed to have a penchant for being the most agitating, infuriating people possible.

I mean, seriously? What could compel a person to chomp down on a beef sandwich in the middle of class at 10 in the morning? The professor may not have noticed but Mattheo most certainly did, having to spend the last hour with a raging headache trying to ignore the obnoxious chewing sounds and the revolting smell of beef.

He all but almost cries as he collapses down onto the sofa in the common room, grateful for the fact that everyone else seemed to have lessons currently. He closes his eyes for a millisecond, letting out a small sigh of frustration.

He feels the sofa dip beside him and that same frustration returns. He opens his eyes, ready to snap at whatever poor person had decided to sit next to him, but his gaze immediately softens when he realises it was you.

“Oh,” He murmurs, and a lazy grin tugs at your lips as you look over at him, raising a brow.

It’s remarkable just how quickly his mood seems to lighten when he sees you.

“Oh?” You repeat, amused.

“Mhmm. Just not in the mood for it recently and thought you were Belby or some other git. I was ready to hex you.” He murmurs, and you roll your eyes in mock admonishment as you reach for your book, leaning back into the sofa as you thumb through the pages.

“Charming, Riddle. Really, I feel flattered.” You say sarcastically, and the corners of Mattheo's mouth quirk upwards.

You and Mattheo were part of the same extended friend group. You weren’t the closest with him, yet you weren’t absolute strangers. You didn’t talk that much to one another, but got along surprisingly well. Mattheo was one of the only people (bar Blaise) who could match your wit and dry humour, and you were one of the few (if not only) people who didn't seem to annoy him.

You pay him no mind as you read your book, and with any other person, Mattheo would have been largely grateful for that. But for some bizarre reason, he wants you to speak to him.

He glances over at you for a second, admiring the way the gentle glow from the fireplace illuminates your face as you read.

How oblivious could one get?

You break the silence, peering down at your book as you speak.

“Do you have a double free period?”

Mattheo hums, looking over at you. He wants you to look up at him so badly, and he can’t tell why. It seemed as though he’d need a slap in the face to make him realise why he craved so much attention from you.

He shifts on the sofa, trying to appear nonchalant as he replies, "Yeah, luckily. No classes for the rest of the day. What about you?"

You glance up from your book, meeting his gaze with a faint smile. "Same here. Wanna come walk around with me?” You ask, and Mattheo nods, albeit a bit confused as to why you’d want to wander around in such cold weather aimlessly.

You reach into your robe pocket, producing a neatly rolled joint with a cheeky wag of your eyebrows. A grin spreads across Mattheo's face as he looks at you, and he raises a brow in mock disappointment.

“Am I seeing correctly, or has the academic prodigy of Hogwarts just suggested we use our valuable study time to get high?”Mattheo taunts, and you scoff, getting up.

“Piss off, Riddle. Are you coming or not?” You retort, glancing back at him.

He looks up at you, and his gaze lingers far too long on the way your eyes light up, your mouth forming a gentle curve as you smile at him and-

Oh god, Mattheo never really stood a chance, did he?

He nods, getting up as he grabs his robe and follows you. You both meander aimlessly through the empty corridors of Hogwarts, poking fun at the unfortunate students who still had lessons. As you walk past a classroom you catch a glimpse of Theodore, chin resting atop his palm as he sleepily gazes at the board. You snicker, nudging Mattheo as you both hide at the side of the doorway, peering into the class. Mattheo wraps an arm around your waist, moving you behind him and you ignore the way you reel at his touch, dazed for a second.

It doesn’t last long, however, for you're drawn out of your short-lived crisis when you spot Mattheo pulling his wand out from his pocket, discreetly pointing it in Theodore’s direction. It was rather astounding seeing how no other students in the class noticed you, but Professor Binn had a rather uncanny knack for getting people to fall into a zombie-like state of fatigue whenever they were in his class. You were convinced it had to be some sort of superpower.

With a short flick of his wand, Theodore's eyes widened as he yelped, hand shooting up to clasp over his upper arm.

As Theodore's yelp echoes through the classroom, everyone snaps out of their daze, their attention immediately drawn to the source of the disturbance. Theodore grimaces, sheepishly looking down as he tries to play it off. Unable to contain your laughter anymore, you snort, and the sound has everyone turning to look outside the classroom.

Mattheo grabs your hand, pulling you along as the two of you run down the corridor, laughter bubbling up from deep within you.

As you round a corner, out of sight from the classroom, you finally come to a stop, breathless from both the running and the laughter. Mattheo leans against the wall, trying to catch his breath as he looks at you with sparkling eyes.

It was amazing how he had gone from being so irate to so…. Carefree. He felt alive with you, like he could forget about the countless burdens that weighed down on him day in and day out.

“That was bloody brilliant,” You wheeze, clutching your ribs as you laugh. Mattheo grins, panting as he nods.

“Theodore’s hilarious. Can’t wait to hear him complain about that later on,” He muses and you snort, straightening up. You jerk your head to the side, motioning for him to join you as you slip out of the castle onto the school grounds. You leisurely walk down the fields, heading towards the Black Lake.

You stop at a large cluster of rocks near the surface of the water, plopping down on the slightly damp grass. Mattheo joins you, long legs stretched out in front of him as you fish around your pocket. His arm presses against yours and you’re immediately warmed by the heat coming off his body, trying to ignore the intoxicating aroma of his cologne filling your senses.

You hit Mattheo's thigh with your hand, nudging him to get the lighter as you place the blunt between your lips. He obliges, cupping his hand around the flame as you lean down to light the tip, taking a few drags. You pass it over to Mattheo, tilting your head back as you exhale with a sigh. Mattheo mimics your actions, letting out a low groan as he passes the blunt back to you.

“Shit, this is fucking good.” He murmurs, eyes flickering over to you as you take another drag.

You speak, blunt dangling between those perfect lips of yours that Mattheo can’t seem to tear his eyes off of.

“Should be,” You muse, handing it over to Matteho as he takes another long drag. “I sucked dick for it.” You comment offhandedly and Mattheo splutters, coughing as he smacks his fist against his chest, looking over at you in disbelief. You look at him with a lazy grin, a hint of amusement in your eyes.

“Relax, of course I didn’t. But with the price it came at I may as well have.” You murmur, shaking your head.

“So ladylike” He teases and you roll your eyes for what must be the umpteenth time, slapping his thigh as you snatch the blunt back.

You remain silent for a while, and it's oddly comforting. Just you and Mattheo, passing the blunt back and forth between one another as you overlook the black lake. The setting sun is reflected in the ripple of the water, golden rays dancing along the small waves that give the illusion of the lake being made of pure gold.

Mattheo leans back on his elbows, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the crisp air. You're reclined beside him, the gentle lapping of the water providing a soothing backdrop to your conversation.

"So, Riddle, what's been bothering you lately?" you ask casually, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between you.

Mattheo hesitates for a moment, his gaze fixed on the horizon as he considers his response. He's never been one to open up easily, but there's something about the softness in your voice that makes him want to confide in you.

"Just...everything, I guess," he admits finally, his tone uncharacteristically vulnerable. "I feel like I'm constantly on edge, and I'm not sure why.”

Your gaze remains on the lake, a pensive expression on your face as you hum.

“I get it. I suppose for all their goodwill it's a bit hard for the boys to understand that.” You murmur and Mattheo chuckles, looking down at the long strands of grass he was fiddling with.

“Tell me about it”

You remain silent for a second longer, before turning to face Mattheo. He looks up at you and feels as though he's pinned down under your gaze. It’s as though you were dissecting his very being, staring at him with a calculating look before you speak once again, your voice low and soft.

“You don’t always have to be a hardhead. You don’t need to dismiss how you’re feeling. We aren’t meant to have this figured out yet. We’re still young, with so much to learn. What’s the point of life if we know it all now?”

Mattheo listens to your words, feeling as though you've peered straight into his soul and laid bare all his insecurities. There's a wisdom in your words that resonates deeply with him. It's as though you possess a wisdom beyond your years, a rare insight that he finds both intimidating and captivating.

"Thank you," he murmurs, his voice barely above a whisper.

That god-forsaken smile appears on your face again, and you look over at Mattheo.

“Don’t. Someone has to tell you this, right? I love Nott to bits but I doubt he has anything but quidditch on his mind.” You joke, and Mattheo laughs.

You seamlessly lighten the mood, and Mattheo is eternally grateful for that. Really, he’s grateful for you. He can't think of the last time he's laughed so much. Or felt so free. Perhaps it was the weed, that had lowered his inhibitions and relieved him of his stresses.

But no, it was a drug far worse than that. He had just gotten a taste of it and he knew he would be hooked on it. It came in the form of you, and gods was it dangerous.

There's a heavy silence between the two of you, broken by the sound of rustling as Mattheo sits up abruptly, a grin spreading across his face.

"Hey, wanna go closer to the edge of the lake? I think I saw something cool over there," he suggests, his tone playful as he nudges you with his elbow.

"What, are you trying to pull some sort of prank on me, Riddle?" You ask, your tone sceptical as you raise an eyebrow.

Mattheo feigns innocence, holding up his hands in mock surrender. "Who, me? Never," he replies with a smirk, his eyes dancing with mischief.

Despite your reservations, you can't help but be intrigued by Mattheo's suggestion, and with a shrug, you agree to accompany him to the water's edge.

You walk a few steps to the surface of the black lake, peering down at your own reflection for a second. You turn to Mattheo, caught off guard when he gives you a playful shove.

You yelp, reaching out instinctively to grab onto Mattheo as you lose your balance. Instead of regaining your footing, you find yourself slipping on the dampened grass near the edge of the lake and falling backwards into the water with Mattheo.

The icy cold water seems to seep into your body, eradicating any hint of warmth. You resurface with a gasp, brushing your wet hair away from your face as you tread water, your robe floating around you in the water.

Mattheo resurfaces moments after you, his curly brown hair now plastered against his forehead, droplets of water glistening in the fading light. He blinks the water from his eyes and looks at you with a playful grin.

“Why did you do that!” He gasps, though his tone is lighthearted and playful.

You roll your eyes, splashing him in retaliation. “You practically threw me in there! I just needed to find my footing!” You retort, indignified.

Mattheo chuckles, the sound echoing across the stillness of the lake. “Fair point.” He concedes.

Not a second later, however, he splashes you with water, somehow drenching you even further.

“Mattheo!” You gasp, sending a wave of water back at him. The two of you playfully fight in the water, and you laugh, head tilted back. It's a scene straight out of a childhood fantasy, the cares and worries of the world melting away beneath the warm glow of the setting sun.

Mattheo pauses, and his heart pounds against his sternum as he hears your laugh. It’s loud and it's unabashed, and it's the most perfect thing ever. You smile, and he feels as though he can't breathe, you had to have stolen his breath.

The golden rays of the sun illuminate your skin, catching in the droplets of water that cling to the wet tendrils of your hair. You looked like an image out of a Renaissance painting, and Mattheo is sure the sun must hide itself in shame, for on its brightest day it couldn’t compete with your radiance.

He takes in the way the fading sunlight casts a warm glow on your features, highlighting the curve of your cheekbones and the sparkle in your eyes. He’s sure the image must be etched into his mind, permanently engraved. He knows when he closes his eyes, all he will see is the image of you, and he doesn’t mind it one bit.

In fact, he welcomes it.

In your presence, he feels alive in a way he never has before. He will wake up tomorrow and face all the trials and tribulations the universe has to throw at him. For now, however, the sun is shining. The water is cold, but you make him feel warmer. The gentle sound of water sloshing about fills the silence, the horizon is beautiful.

Everything was alright.

@mildlyuninformative @chgrch @gillyweeds @anti-hero03 @schaebickel @lillywildly @multifandom-worlds

#slytherin #slytherin boys #tom riddle #harry potter #draco malfoy #lorenzo berkshire #slytherin boys fic #theodore nott #blaise zabini #pansy parkinson #mattheo x you #mattheo riddle x reader comfort #mattheoxreader #mattheo x y/n #mattheo riddle x reader #mattheo riddle x you #mattheo riddle #mattheo riddle fluff

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strangelysamantha · 24 days ago

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JJ MAYBANK X FEMALE READER‼️ a short fluff about jj + how he would be too nervous around you to confess his feelings + so his usual tough guy act is lowered + he has to really find a way to tell you how he feels.

nerves ❀

jj maybank x fem!reader.

warnings: none.

summary: jj is too nervous around you, he struggles to tell you how he really feels.

word count: 984.

request? yes!

a/n: i’m so excited to finish up my drafts, and create more stories for you guys.

my masterlist

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you sit on on john bs couch. jj is sitting a little far away, but he’s sitting with you. the sunset leaks through the living room blinds, it’s quiet but comfortable. you look over at him, his face is hard to read. “hey j, is everything okay?” you question. he takes a second, “yeah, i’m alright. it’s just been a long day that’s all.” you nod, but fall short on a response. after a few seconds, jj breaks the silence. “why do you hang out with me?” you’re caught off guard by his question, “what do you mean?” he quickly corrects himself, “i mean like, us, the pogues?” you nod. “you guys make me feel like i have a family. i don’t have to change who i am, yknow? my last friend group made me feel like i had to act a certain way. i lost who i was…” you glance over to look at him, “you guys helped me find that girl i had lost.” jj finally makes eye contact with you. “im really glad we’ve done that for you.”

“jj, you were one of the main reasons i felt comfortable enough to be myself. i could never thank you enough.” you move closer to him on the couch, placing your hand on his. he holds it, “i don’t want that to change.” you nod, “it won’t change, i know it won’t.” his breathing is slow, and his eyes are shut. “what’s on your mind j, you can tell me.” he shakes his head, “i just need a second, okay? i’ll be right back.” he stands up, and walks out onto the porch. his hands are shaky and his heart is racing.

you wait on the couch, compelled to get to the bottom of what was going on with him. he was always there for you, regardless of what happened, or what needed to be done. you couldn’t sit around, you needed to return the favor. you slowly stand up from the couch, you tread slowly to the front door, you knock, hoping he wants you to follow him.

“hey.” he mumbles. “i wanted to check on you. i’m here for you, you know that right?” he turns around to face you, he grabs your hands and takes a deep breath. “listen, i don’t know how to act around you. it’s been difficult for me.” you understand how he feels, “that’s okay, talk to me. we’ll get through it together.” he looks away, and drops your hands. he can’t get the words out. his brain is overwhelming and he can’t navigate it. “join me.” you lay with him on the hammock. you guys look up at the sky in comfortable silence. “jj. i’m open to anything. just get it off your chest, i promise there is nothing you can say that will ruin our friendship.” his heart stings at the dynamic.

“you see the stars?” you glance at him, and notice his eyes are set on the sky. your eyes look up as well, “i do.” he hesitates, “we only get one life. and i don’t want to mess this up. but i can’t continue being your friend, it’s too difficult.” your heart speeds up, “what are you saying jj?” he sighs, “i have this urge to protect you, and do everything for you. whether it be as small as grabbing you water, or running errands with you so you aren’t alone. anything you ask, and it’s done. but…” his cheeks are bright red and his breath is heavy. he continues softly, “i don’t want to just be your friend, i need you as more. my whole body aches to be yours.” you sigh with relief. “are you saying you like me maybank?” you giggle. you roll over so your body is cuddling his. he laughs and nods his head. “yes, that’s what i’m saying.” you kiss his cheek, “well, i don’t want to just be friends either. i’ve liked you for so long, but i was too scared to say anything. i couldn’t fathom loosing you.”

“i felt the same way, i was so nervous all night. but i knew i had to say it now, or else id miss my chance.” you both sit up, “i don’t want to miss this chance either j.” you’re looking into his eyes, you glance down to his lips, and without a second thought you lean in and kiss him. he eagerly kisses back, his hands desperate for your touch, land around your waist. he pulls away softly, his forehead leaning against yours, “will you be my girlfriend?” he chuckles slightly, his face bright red. “of course, i’ve been waiting for this moment forever.” he goes in for another kiss, your arms wrapping around his back, you run your fingers through his hair.

john b and kiara interrupt, “finally, took you two long enough.” john b exclaims. kiara laughs, “i’m so happy for you guys.” the two of you both embarrassed, look at your friends. jj is the first to comment, “hey! it’s a delicate subject okay!” kiara rolls her eyes, “i’m just glad you guys have finally made it official. everyone has seen the way you two look at eachother.” you bite your lip ashamed, “i thought i was being subtle!” jj shrugs, “you were subtle, i was certain you would have laughed at my confession and went home.” you playfully punch his arm, “i would have never done that! i’ve had a crush on you since the first day we met!” john b chimes in, “why do you think she’s turned down every guy whose ever looked her way jj?” you gasp, and jj laughs, “i should have saw the signs.” all four of you head inside, making plans for the rest of the night, however, unlike usual, jjs hands are wrapped around your waist, and he cuddles and kisses you all night.

#jj maybank x reader #jj maybank #jj maybank imagine #jj maybank outer banks #outerbanks fanfic #outer banks fluff #jj outer banks #jj maybank fanfic #jj maybank x fem!reader

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beomiracles · 5 months ago

Text

「 GREED 」

DREAM RECALL your kind heart often led you down dangerous paths. So when there's a knock on your door and you find a beautiful man in dire need of your help, who are you to turn him down? Even if it may cost you your life.

pairings vampire!taehyun x afab!human reader warnings minor character death, descriptions of violence, descriptions of injury, DUB-CON (taehyun compels reader), blood drinking, oral (f. rec), vaginal fingering, unprotected sex, orgasm denial, breast play, marking, choking, manhandling, slight dumbification?, taehyun refers to reader only as 'human', prey/predator dynamics. please let me know if I missed any !!

wc -> 6.5k

#serene adds ✎... ahem the literal bible of warnings...anyway! guys I lowkey really like this one, it's my first ever vampire fic, which is crazy because I'm a diehard vampire fan (name any show/movie/book and I will know of it) so I'm surprised that I've managed to go this long without writing one. I really didn't intend for it to get this long and um like 1/3 is just smut... happy reading ! :3

The radio of your old car made a bruising noise before giving up completely, your last bit of civilization diminishing to nothing. Sighing you glance toward your GPS, but even that seemed futile. “I guess it’s just you and me now, Lola”, you state as you peer at your dog in the rear view mirror.

Ahead, the narrow road made for a bumpy ride as you dwelled deeper into the forest. Surrounding you were pine trees, standing tall and proud, looming over you in an almost menacing way, as if to say; you are not welcome here. With both your phone and radio cut off, you were beginning to think that maybe there lay something in the unspoken words of the trees. This was no place for humans, yet you recognized the way the road turned, if ever so slightly, not to mention the familiar large stone that you had climbed so many times before.

Soon the small cottage comes into view, and it was just as you had remembered it, save for the overgrown lawn that reaches its way through the old wooden planks of the porch. Your vehicle comes to a stop and as you step outside, the earthy smell of the forest greets you. Lola, on the other hand, sems skeptical; she fuzzes for a moment before finally getting out as you opened the trunk for her. “Oh don’t be so quick to judge it, you haven’t even seen the inside yet”, you give your dog a few pats before retrieving your large bag from the car.

The old wooden steps creak under your weight as you make your way toward the front door. Rust had formed around the lock and it took more than a few tries to get the darned thing opened. With the push of your shoulder, the old door finally budges and you step inside. Nostalgia immediately fills your senses, it smells stuffy and old yet exactly like your childhood. The many summers you had spent cooped up in the small house, plenty of your drawings remaining on the wallpapered walls.

It had been years since the passing of your parents, years since the house became yours, and years since anyone had even bothered to acknowledge its existence. In a way, you supposed you felt bad for the place, yet you hadn’t been able to come here without the painful memories of your parents flooding your mind. Not up until recently had you felt ready, ready to return here and remember the good things, the good memories. You wanted this house to remain a happy place for you.

“Well it could definitely use a sweep, what’d you say, Lola?” The dog lets out a gruff of agreement as she noses at the dust covered sofa with a displeased look. Most of the place had been drowned in layers upon layers of dust and spiderwebs, you were certain that all kinds of animals lingered around the old building, seeking shelter from the harsh conditions the outside world provided.

You spend the rest of the day cleaning, going through old photographs and personal belongings of both you and your parents. The downs of being an only child you supposed, not having anyone to share your grief with. It would’ve been nice to not be completely alone in the mess that your parents left, from arranging their funeral to selling their house back in the city. The project that was this cabin had all become too much, and thus you had put it off, admittedly for longer than you had originally intended. Though now that you were finally getting around to it, it was with a light heart rather than a heavy.

By nightfall you had finished off practically all of the first floor. Flopping down on the now very much clean couch, you let out a tired sigh. Lola was sleeping peacefully on the carpet nearby and you leaned to give her a few pats before reaching for your phone. The device had been in and out of signal throughout the day, you figured you could try your luck with a call.

Bringing it up to your ear, your phone rings, once, twice, three times before there’s a shift in the audio. “Hello?” The voice of your friend calls out on the other line and a small sigh of relief escapes your lips. “Jjunie? Hii, it’s me! Can you hear me?” You ask as there’s a small disturbance in the quality of the call.

“Dimples?” he asks and you giggle, “who else?” Yeonjun lets out a huff of air and you hear the rustling of his mattress as he sits up, “I’ve been texting you like crazy, where have you been all day?” he questions, a tone of fake hurt lingering in his words. “I know”, you mumble as you pick at your cuticle, “I’ve barely had any service all day, it’s a miracle that this call even went through.”

“I guess you’re really living that outdoor mindfulness life now huh?” he teases and you could’ve sworn that you heard the shit eating grin on his face. “Ha-ha”, you muse, “careful or I’ll make you spend the next week here with me. You could use a detox from that phone of yours.” Your friend snorts, “as if. My followers need me.” You roll your eyes, “you sure it’s not the other way around?” you ask to which Yeonjun responds with a row of profanities.

Aside from a few break ups here and there the call runs smoothly and you’re relieved to be having a conversation with another human being for the first time today. After about twenty minutes of catching up, the subject suddenly shifts as Yeonjun’s voice grows wary. “You’ve heard about the stuff that’s been happening right?”

You frown, "No? What stuff?” On the other side of the line, Yeonjun hesitates. “Well c’mon and tell me”, you press as you sit up a little straighter. Drawing in a long sigh, he then exhales, “well there’s been, bodies…” “Bodies?” you repeat, “you mean like…?” — “Dead bodies, yeah.”

A small silence lingers in the air as you process the words of your friend. “Hikers”, he then adds and you gnaw on your bottom lip. “Well there’s plenty of good hiking trails around”, you mumble. It wasn’t unusual for people to try their luck up in this forest, during your summers spent here you had seen plenty of tents indicating someone’s stay. “Some are quite dangerous though and-” —- “That’s not why they died.” Yeonjun interrupts with a solemn voice and you feel your throat go dry.

“Right…” you murmur as your gaze flickers toward Lola, “then how did they die?” Once more, your friend on the other line hesitates. “Please, Jjunie, I need to know, and I don’t exactly have any other way of finding out, other than going out there myself.” Outside of your window, the forest seemed darker than it had all those years ago; something bad had happened here.

“They think it was an animal of some kind…” Yeonjun whispers and suddenly you feel a slight glimmer of hope. “Jjunie, trust me I’ve encountered plenty of-” — “This one’s different, Dimples.” Your friend interrupts you again, though his voice is now uncertain, “this thing, it’s smarter, it…it lures its way inside.”

You swallow, “what do you mean?” Though you weren’t certain that you wanted to know. “It…the bodies, they never left their tents. It came to them.” The silence that follows is palpable and a shiver runs down your spine, despite the fact that you were covered head to toe in blankets.

That night, you barely got any sleep. Your mind kept shifting back toward your conversation with Yeonjun as your gaze flickered to the window. You got up to close the curtains, but it did little to help the uncanny feeling seeping through your veins. Lola seemed to notice it too, she barely made a move to go outside, if only to use the bathroom. As three days passed, your phone refused to work and you became increasingly paranoid.

By your fourth night at the cabin a heavy storm rolled around. This would also mark your fourth night without any signal whatsoever, the events of the outside world remaining unknown to you. The thunder roared outside, and if it wasn’t for Lola’s sensitive hearing, you probably would have missed the light knock to your front door.

The persistent barking of your dog turns your attention toward said door, “what is it, Lola?” you ask to which your dog lets out a small whine. There’s a brief pause and for a moment everything is quiet, even the merciless storm outside seemed to hold its breath. Another knock against the old wood sends your heartbeat into a small spiral. You knew better than to open the door for just any stranger, besides, what business did another human being have in the middle of this forest? Unless… They were a hiker.

Soon a raspy voice echoes out from the other side of the door. “P-please…please help me...” Your eyes widened, were they hurt, had something happened, and why were they alone? “Are you hurt?” you question as you get up and slowly inch toward the door, Lola trails behind you worriedly.

It takes a moment before the voice replies, ragged breaths and soft grunts are all that can be heard. “...yes.” Their answer makes you hesitate, there was something uncanny about the voice, it felt almost strained. Upon noticing your evident doubt the voice pleads to you once more. “Please, please let me in. It hurts…” The voice morphs from a quiet plea into one of sheer desperation.

“Who hurt you?” you ask, still wary as you keep one hand on the doorknob. Behind you, Lola whines in protest as she pulls her tail between her legs. The person on the other side of the door draws in a sharp breath, “I…I don’t know, it…I couldn’t see it clearly but it’ll come back I’m certain.. Please, please let me in!” it begs.

Suddenly, you recall your last conversation with Yeonjun, about the animal preying on hikers. Could this be another of its victims? Whoever was on the other side of the door were in dire need of your help. With one final deep breath you unlock it and turn the handle.

On your doorstep, you find a young man, slightly hunched over as he maintains a tight grip on his left arm. His breathing is labored and his clothes torn. It is not until he glances up at you, a hesitant yet hopeful look on his face that you finally see him. He was beautiful. Big dark eyes stare up at your own, his skin was smooth and perfect, yet sickly pale, you supposed it had to do with being out in this weather.

“Oh my goodness…” you quietly mumble as you take in the state of the man. “Come in.”

Upon urging him inside and shutting the door tightly behind you, you guide him to sit on one of the chairs by the dining table. The man thanks you over and over for your kindness as you rush to get him a warm blanket. “What’s your name?” you wonder as you place the quilt over his shoulders. He silently thanks you before replying, “Taehyun.”

Just when you’re about to tell him your own, Lola emits a loud bark as she growls toward the man. Taehyun gives her a questioning glance but doesn’t seem to pay her any further attention. “Lola! Quit that!” you scold, embarrassed over your dog's odd behavior. “She isn’t usually like this, I don’t know what’s gotten into her…” you apologize as you swat the dog away with your hand.

Taehyun gives you a small smile, “it’s alright, I’m certainly not the most pleasant thing to gaze upon at this given moment.” You thought his statement to be debatable as your eyes trail across his well built frame; stopping as they reach the large gash on his left arm. “Oh my, your…your arm”, you exclaim as you watch the way blood trickles from the fresh wound. Following your horrified gaze, Taehyun winces as he flexes his arm slightly.

“Stay here, I’ll get you something for the pain!” You say as you scurry out of the kitchen and to your bedroom where you kept most of your essential supplies. Thankfully you had thought to bring along a medical kit, in case of an emergency like this. Though you were rather unsure if your meek bandage and lacking surgical skills would do much good to the large gash on his arm. Before exiting, you make sure to shut Lola in, not wanting her to cause yet another scene, she whines in protest as you do but you pay it little mind.

Hastily, you return to the kitchen, and as you set the medkit down you begin rummaging through it. “I should have some kind of disinfectant here..” you mumble without lifting your gaze. It wasn’t until you went to check on the severity of his injuries once more that you froze in your tracks. The once large wound on his arm was…gone. You frown, “what…but I could’ve sworn…”

The quiet chuckle emitting from the man before you makes your blood run cold as you lift your gaze to meet his. Taehyun’s once pleading eyes were now peering at you in an almost predatorial way as he studied your perplexed expression. “But I…” your words fall short as Taehyun suddenly rises from the chair, without taking his gaze off of you, he reaches a hand up to his neck, it makes a cracking sound as he tilts his head to the side, a small sigh escaping his lips.

“You humans are far too kind.” His voice is low and as he takes a step forward, you immediately falter backward. The back of your legs hit the table behind you and you wince as you fumble to move around it. “Inviting just anyone into your home like that.” Taehyun’s eyes never leave you as a smirk etches its way to his lips. “My, your gullibleness is quite endearing.”

You cast a quick glance around the old kitchen, your gaze falling on one of the larger knives. All you had to do was move one step to the right, reach out and… Taehyun’s eyes follow your own and he cocks an eyebrow. “I admire your plan of strategy, but a mere human’s tool will bring little harm to my kind.”

His kind? Just what exactly was this man. You swallow a gulp as your gaze flickers between him and the knife, your heartbeat working overtime as you grasp for a decision. Despite his words you end up reaching for the knife, grabbing it tightly with both hands, you aim it toward the intruding man. “What do you want from me?” you grit out as you steady your feet against the wooden floor.

Taehyun inhales slowly, letting his eyes flutter closed for a brief moment; as if savoring a pleasant scent. When he opens them again they’re a swirling pool of crimson. “Now you’re asking the right questions”, his voice lingers with desire as he slowly makes his way around the dining table.

Like a deer in headlights you immediately dart in the opposite direction. Tumbling out of your kitchen and into the open spaced living room. Behind you, Taehyun laughs, an almost sinister laugh. Frantically you search for anything to shield yourself with. Settling on one of the armchairs in the corner, you quickly dip behind it. With your knees to your chest and back pressed against the soft cushion; you cover your mouth with your free hand, the other maintaining a tight grip on the knife.

The wooden floor creaks beneath him as Taehyun slowly emerges from the kitchen. “Your determination to live is surely fascinating” he muses, the sound of his voice only becoming louder as he slowly approaches your corner. “Foolish human, you forget that I can hear the delectable sound of your heart beating from miles away.”

Biting down on your hand, you will the tears away as you screw your eyes shut. “The human’s weak body gives them away before they even become aware of the dangers surrounding them.” The sounds of his footsteps come to a stop and you hold your breath, you don’t dare open your eyes, prolonging the moment for as long as possible.

It is not until you feel his cold breath on your face that they snap open. The smirk plastered on his beautiful face as he watches you with much intrigue is enough for you to finally act. Your arm works faster than your brain as you swing the knife toward him. Taehyun lets out a faint hiss as he pulls back, thick red liquid seeps from the small cut on his cheek and his expression soon turns from smug into a scowl.

Seizing your opportunity, you scramble to your feet as you dart for your bedroom. Though you barely make it 10ft before something hard crashes into you from behind. With inhumane speed Taehyun slams you up against the nearest wall. A cold hand wraps around your neck as he lifts you without much trouble.

Your feet kick at the wall behind you as your body trashes against his grip. With his free hand, Taehyun wipes the blood from his cheek, the wound closing up before your eyes. In your haste you realize that you’ve lost your knife, your only hope. Letting out a huff of air, Taehyun’s gaze locks onto yours, “the others did not struggle this much”, he mutters.

The others? As realization slowly seeps in, your eyes widen — it wasn’t an animal that had killed all those hikers. It was him. His tight grip on your neck restricts your intake of air and you barely manage to gasp out the word, “y-you..” Taehyun tilts his head to the side, a glimmer of curiosity flashing before his eyes. The grip on your neck falters, if only for a moment, as he lets you regain your breath in order to continue.

“It was you. You killed all those people”, you splutter as your chest rises and falls in a heavy manner. He smirks, and from this close you’re able to make out the sharp fangs that prod against his bottom lip. “I see I have earned myself quite a reputation amongst your kind”, he comments before leaning in closer, eyes glinting with intrigue, “pray tell, what else have you heard of me?”

You part your lips to reply before you stop yourself. As Yeonjun’s words ring in your ears you suddenly realize your mistake. “It lures its way inside. They never left their tents. It came to them.” He had come to you, he had knocked on your door and you had let him in. You hadn’t even left your house and the next time you would it would be in a body bag.

Everything aligned, the pale skin, his inhumane strength and speed, his ability to heal, the crimson eyes, his fangs. He was a vampire and you had willingly invited him inside your house, ultimately signing your own death.

“I let you in…” you whisper, disbelief evident across your face. “Ah, you are finally connecting the dots”, he mumbles, “I must admit you differ from the rest.” Cold fingers trace the outline of your face before trailing down your collarbone. His touch causes shivers to ripple through your body and Taehyun’s smirk grows. “Had I not been so insatiably hungry right now, I might have kept you around for a bit.”

His gaze shifts from your mortified expression down to your neck. Contradicting to his previous tight hold on you, he now gently brushes along the exposed veins. “This forest has been vacant for weeks, I thought my last meal here had long since passed.” He brings a strand of your hair to his nose, inhaling the scent.

“But then came you. And you smell absolutely divine.” His voice is low as his eyes flicker back to yours once more. Horrified, you shake your head as you push against his chest, your meek attempts at breaking free drew a breathy laugh from him.

“Let us not struggle now.” The once feathery touch along your neck is replaced by a harsh and cold hand against your chin as he holds your face in place. And as your eyes come level with his own, you suddenly find it hard to look away. Dark pools of crimson pull you in, entrancing you as Taehyun mutters something under his breath. You know that it is wrong, but the longer you stare into his eyes the more you feel like giving yourself to him. Despite every instinct in you screaming for you to shut your eyes and pull back, you instead find yourself going limp in his grasp.

“Much better”, he whispers as he loosens his hold on your chin. Your feet softly hit the ground again and you glance up at him. Somewhere in the back of your head, the urge to run still exists. But you don’t move, you stay unblinking as you gaze at him with a clouded expression. “You humans are almost beautiful when you don’t fret”, he mumbles as his cold fingers brush your hair back to expose your neck fully.

His tongue drags across one of his fangs as he eyes the skin of your neck with anticipation. “Don’t worry, your sacrifice will not go to waste”, he assures as he leans in to press his cold lips against your warm skin. The feeling of his sharp fangs piercing the flesh of your neck causes your body to feel as if it were on fire. Yet all but a soft gasp is what leaves your lips at the intrusion.

Everything hurt and you wanted nothing more than to push him off, pry his teeth from your weakening body. But your limbs felt strangely heavy, unable to move, your vision threatens to give out as your knees wobble. What was going on, why weren’t you doing anything? Taehyun groans against your skin, his hands harshly tugging at your hips to keep you in place.

Soon the burning sensation faded before it morphed into something dangerously similar to pleasure. Your body felt tingly, sensitive, every gulp of blood he took sent minor shock waves surging through you and you let out a small sigh at the feeling. To think that this was how you were to die, as nothing more but the next meal of a hungry creature, and in your last moments you found pleasure in it? The thought alone was enough to have your eyes drooping shut.

Realization slowly creeps its way into your foggy mind — you were actually going to die. No one was coming to save you, you were all alone and this was how your last moments would play out? It was hard to feel any emotion, your mind far too clouded to even keep your eyes open, but if you could feel something, you supposed it would be despair.

Teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, you accept your lowly fate. Just as the darkness is about to consume you, everything suddenly stops. Was death really nothing? Was there no heaven, no hell? Just darkness? It takes you a moment to realize that you are in fact not dead, and that Taehyun has pulled himself away from your neck.

Slowly, your eyes regain focus as you look at him, confused. You were certain that he was going to kill you, did he really intend to prolong your inevitable death, to make you suffer further? You thought him to be cruel but this was far worse than you had imagined.

His eyes remain a dark crimson as they fixate on you, but they had lost their sharp edge, he no longer looked as if he was eyeing his next meal, but rather his gaze held something akin to desire. Taehyun’s tongue swipes across his lips, coated in your rich blood as he savors the remnants of it. His breath is shallow, though you wondered if vampires ever really became out of breath.

“You taste…” he trails off, eyes fixating on the puncturers he’d previously caused on your neck, “...unlike any human I’ve ever had before.” He almost looked to be at a loss for words as he stared at you, you weren’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing, and you couldn’t find yourself to care. Your body felt weak, numb and not like your own anymore. Perhaps death had been the easy way out from your current situation.

As his cold fingers brush along your exposed collarbone, your gaze flickers back up to his once more. The movements of your own limbs still felt restricted by the unknown force caused by Taehyun, and even if they weren’t, you were sure that your body wouldn’t be able to maintain an upright position, much less run away from the creature before you.

“I wonder if the rest of you taste just as divine”, he murmurs. His peering gaze suddenly shifts toward your lips and before you have time to question his intentions further, he crashes his lips against your own.

At first you remain unmoving, unblinking, Taehyun pays your unenthusiastic response little mind as he kisses you hungrily. The faint metallic taste of your own blood lingers on his tongue as he pushes it inside your mouth and your nose turns up in slight disgust. Suddenly your body jolts to life once more, as if the spell in which he had put you under was lifted the moment his lips pressed against your own.

With newfound strength you push against his cold and hard chest in a desperate attempt to break free. Your fighting hands are met by his own as Taehyun pins them to your sides before taking the liberty to explore all of your body. Cold hands wandering beneath your loose t-shirt, earning him a small whimper from you.

You can’t help the moan that escapes from your lips as his fingers rub over your perked nipples, squeezing the soft flesh of your breasts. His touch felt oddly enticing and your body suddenly craved more, a lot more. But as his lips found your neck, the memories of what had previously taken place, flashes before your eyes and suddenly it feels as if those sharp fangs pierced your skin all over again. You become dangerously aware of what is about to happen as one of Taehyun’s hands tug at the hem of your shorts and you immediately try to twist your body away from his invasive touch.

“No! Wait- stop!” you shriek as your hands work to pry him off of you. There’s a brief pause as Taehyun once again pulls his lips from your neck. He doesn’t say anything as he looks at you, an impassive expression pending across his face. You swallow, “this- I, what’s happening? This isn’t…” The words fall from your lips in a hasty manner as you struggle to form coherent thoughts, afraid that he would grow impatient at your antics and just kill you off. Finally you settle on, “I don’t understand.”

Taehyun looks at you as he cocks an eyebrow, an insatiable hunger swirling behind his eyes. “You do not understand the act of indulging in one's sexual desires?” He wonders as he studies you with a mix of apprehension and disbelief. Your mouth falls open as you blink, “...I, of course I do but…”

“Then you must understand that a vampire’s hunger exceeds beyond just his thirst for blood”, he murmurs as his gaze returns to your lips. “You are a very pretty human.” He breathes, cold fingers trail along your chest, pushing your shirt up to reveal your soft stomach. His eyes twinkle in anticipation, “there are other ways for you to satiate me.”

With that statement, he reconnects your lips in a kiss filled with yearning. You don’t have any time to react before you feel your feet lift from the ground. The surge that forms in your stomach at his rapid movements remind you of that when a roller coaster drops. Your back hits the soft cushion of the sofa as Taehyun swiftly takes place above you, his arms caging you in.

With one harsh tug, he pulls your shirt up to reveal your breasts. The cool air causes goosebumps to bloom on your skin, Taehyun trails his fingers over the small bumps as his lips attach around one of your nipples. Sharp fangs graze over your sensitive skin and you shiver in a fear mixed arousal. “I can hear your blood rushing”, he groans against your breast before moving on to the next one, leaving red marks that would soon blossom into purple. Tongue swirling over the sensitive bud, he elicits a small moan from you.

In a tantalizing slow manner he moves down your stomach, inhaling your scent before stopping above the hem of your shorts. He looks up at you, with that same expression that had terrified you not long ago, he looked ready to eat you whole. “Are you scared, human?” he asks, fingers dipping inside the waistband of your pajama shorts. Your gaze flickers between his hand and his eyes, you swallow, “no.”

Taehyun smirks, “liar.” Without warning he pulls both your panties and shorts down, a small shriek leaving your lips at the action as your thighs instinctively squeeze together. “There is little point in denying me”, he grunts as his hand easily finds its way between your sealed legs. Upon reaching your already wet cunt, Taehyun’s smirk grows, “and in denying yourself.” You bite your lip, unable to hide the fact that his lips on your own had spurred you on further than you’d liked to.

“My, are you pretty”, he mumbles as his crimson eyes fixate on the way his fingers glide against your folds. His subtle comment has blood rushing to your face and had it not been for the way your core ached to be touched, you would’ve probably even been embarrassed at the remark. Squirming beneath him, your hips buck in an attempt to seek any kind of relief. Taehyun’s gaze snaps to your face, “you humans are far too greedy”, he snarls, “never satisfied with what they have, you always want more.”

Your back arches off the cushion as he pushes two fingers inside of you. “Is that what you want?” He curls his fingers, brushing them against that small bundle of nerves that never failed to make you go cross eyed whenever you pleasured yourself. “To be ruined to bits by a vampire, reduced to nothing at my mercy?”

You meekly nod, struggling to keep your eyes open at the intense waves of pleasure that overflow your senses. Taehyun huffs, “I knew that your kind was pathetic, but this sure takes the price.” His words barely register, you’re too lost in the way his fingers move inside of you, thumb pressing up against your clit in a menacing way.

When he suddenly pulls his hand away, you cry out in displeasure as your eyes shoot open in search of his. You find him already looking at you intently, his gaze unwavering as he watches the steady rise and fall of your chest, the way blood rushes beneath your skin, listening to the supple beating of your heart.

His hand glides across the soft flesh of your thighs, “I need to taste you again”, he says, his voice strained and hoarse as his stare drops to your glistening folds. Before you have the time to register his words, his head is between your legs and you let out a small yelp at the feel of his cold breath hovering over your sensitive cunt.

The idea of him, his mouth, his fangs, so close to such a sensitive part of you was terrifying in itself, yet you couldn’t find it in you to push him away. A low groan rumbles from deep within his chest as Taehyun drags his tongue along your slit, leaving you gasping as your nails dig into the cushion of the sofa.

He pulls back for a moment, his eyes never leaving your core as he licks his lips, as if he focused entirely on the taste of you. Then, without warning he dives back in and your thigh twitches as his lips latch onto your clit. Hungrily, he sucks and laps at your cunt and you wondered how this man had been close to killing you just moments prior.

Pathetic whines leave your lips as his tongue pushes inside of you, the tip of his nose rubbing against your clit. The harsh grip of his hands holds your thighs down as they threaten to close around his head. Moans and pleas fall from your lips but he pays them little mind, too focused on the way you taste, the way your body reacts to his touch.

Your stomach draws into knots as you feel your orgasm approaching. Taehyun lets out a sound of contentment as he feels you clench around his tongue. “F-fuck…I’m..” your words are swallowed by the whine that leaves you as he pulls his head from between your legs, robbing you of the high that was just within your reach.

“Again, you humans are consumed by your greed”, he tsk’s as he watches the way you squirm, pathetically chasing after your desired orgasm. He leans back on his knees as one of his hands frees his cock from his pants. “Patience”, he grunts as his pale hand glides along his shaft, “comes naturally when living for centuries. You humans only live to see a fragment of what I experience, yet you greedily take and take.”

You swallow as your eyes shift from his intense gaze toward the hand wrapped around his cock. Like the rest of him, it was beautiful, flushed at the tip and slick with precum that spilled from the slit. Your cunt throbbed at the sight and you bit your lip in anticipation. Above you, Taehyun’s expression turns into a sneer, “do not think that I am here to fulfill your bottomless greed, human.” A small gasp leaves your lips as you feel the head of his cock pushing against your folds.

With one harsh thrust, he buries himself deep inside of you, drawing a small shriek from you at the burning intrusion. Taehyun lets out a groan of satisfaction as his lips return to suck at the mark on your neck, the still fresh wound causing a throbbing pain to flare through your body, mixing with the feel of his cock deep inside of you.

He moves slowly, taking his time to feel the way your body wrapped around him. The warmth of something so full of life entangled with the very epitome of death. The rapid beating of your heart against his unmoving one filling his senses. Your mind feels hazy and that familiar feeling of pleasure you had felt when he drained you of blood returned. With each slow thrust you felt him graze along every inch of you, the tip of his cock caressing the bundle of nerves that had you clenching around him. You had never felt so full before.

His lips reconnect with yours, the taste of blood completely gone and now replaced by the remnants of your own fluids. And while it was certainly not something you had let previous partners do, it somehow felt right with him. Your hands loosen their grip on the cushion as they move across his body; the body you had longed to touch since he first appeared on your doorstep.

Taehyun inhales against your lips as your warm fingers wander beneath his shirt and over his cold chest. Perhaps he was right, perhaps you were greedy, even on the brink of death you had let your desires consume you. But did it really matter? Your life was bound to end anyway. Once more, just once, you would let yourself be greedy.

His hands glide across your body, squeezing and groping at every part of flesh he could access, relishing in how alive you felt, how your blood pulsated under his hands. Your legs move on their own, wrapping around his waist as you drew him in closer, making him groan into your mouth.

He breaks the kiss to look at you, watching your eyes roll back in pleasure as your lips part in a silent moan. Cold fingers dig into your cheeks as he keeps your head in place. “Foolish human”, he grunts, “I could kill you right now.” His thumb pulls your bottom lip down, “either you are too dumb to even comprehend the danger of your situation, or you’re just too fucking desperate to care.”

Without warning he pushes his thumb inside your mouth, you respond eagerly by swirling your tongue around it. “Considering the way your pussy so desperately sucks me in, I would assume the latter”, he sneers before pulling his thumb from your mouth, smearing your saliva across your lips and cheek.

His thrusts grow ragged as he presses his lips against yours. You know that he’s close, and you were too, if only you could… Your hand slides between your bodies and down your stomach, but before reaching where you need it the most, cold fingers wrap around your wrist. “Stupid human”, Taehyun groans as yanks your hand away.

The whine that escapes your lips is soon replaced by a soft gasp as his fingers circle your clit. Your legs around his waist tremble as you finish around his cock, a cry of pleasure emitting from deep within your throat as your nails dig into his arms whilst you continuously clench around him.

Taehyun’s lips travel down your neck, licking over the previous bruises he’d left before hovering above the sensitive bite marks. You’ve barely come down from your high when you feel his hips stutter, the warm liquid that shoots up inside of you makes you completely unguarded for when his fangs re-pierce your neck.

The shock only lasts a moment as Taehyun rocks his hips into you, all the while he takes gulp after gulp of your blood. As you lay there panting, you think that you might just actually die, but then you feel him pull back, the sensation of his fangs withdrawing makes you shiver.

His tongue drags across the punctures, licking up the very last droplet of blood before he leans back to look at you. Despite everything, you still thought he was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen. Even as thick blood coated his lips and chin, his uncanny and red eyes peering at you; contrasting his sickly pale skin, you found yourself in awe.

Taehyun’s gaze shifts from your neck to your eyes, no matter how hard you tried; you couldn’t possibly decipher a single thought going through his head. “Perhaps there is more to you than just your pretty face, human”, he murmurs as his tongue swipes across his lips.

“I intend to keep you.”

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