#idk how to tag this like i spent days writing this i need people to read this lmao

[fatesundress]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tomes 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, “You seen the shite the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a bloody 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? How about 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 brings you to his bed after and you let him, 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.

[a-spes]

Hi I was rereading devious lies and I was thinking ab if nat and yn were to meet again and everything, yn would have the biggest trust issued ever. First her best friend took advantage of her and ruined her life, then the ones she considered family turned their backs on her without even letting her explain her side, and ofc how her lover shouted in her face that she's not welcome there anymore and how yn shouldn't even talk with her anymore ever. How the last time the team looked at her it was with anger and dissapointment That and also from the first part where she herself admitted to feeling like a stranger amongst her once friends and family.

Idk what you have in store for us for when you're feeling better and out of the writing block that you're currently experiencing, but I can't wait to read it. Take as long as you need, we're here!

˚ 　 ⋆ ⁺ ₊ ✦ ⁺ ₊ 　 ˚ 　. ˚ . 　 ☁ . 　　. 　 ˚ 　⁺ ₊ ⁺ ✦ 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖘𝖈𝖆𝖗𝖘 𝖎𝖓 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖘 ₊ . 　 ˚　. ✧ ⁺ ✦ ₊　 　 ☁ ˚　 . ⁺ ₊ ✧ ˚　 . 　  ˚　 ⁺ ₊ ˚

₊ ⁺ ✦ ₊　 　 ☁ 　˚　 . 　⁺ ₊ ✧ ˚　　 . 　  ˚ ˚ 　. ☁ ˚ 　. ˚ 　 ✩ ₊ ˚ . ☾ ⋆ ⁺ ₊ ✧   　　˚ ⁺

˚　 . ⤳ DEVIOUS LIES — Bonus part, 'the scars in our hearts' (6.280 words).

⋆ ⁺ ₊ ✧ ⤳ SUMMARY — Anon request — “ It has been years since the events, and when you eventually got the chance to go back with them, you thought everything would be the way it used to be. except it wasn't. three years, almost four, is a lot of time, and the people you used to know and the building you called your home do not feel the same anymore. Maybe you've been gone for too long to hope to find a place in their new life. ”

. ☁ ˚ ⤳ TAGS & WARNINGS — Natasha Romanoff x Reader, Avenger!Reader, Female!Reader, Other Avengers x Reader (brief mention of them). Bittersweet, (kind of) angst with comfort. Self-doubt, mental health issues, mention of bad coping mechanisms, toxic relations.

˚ . ⤳ MOODBOARD ⊱⋆⊰ MASTERLIST ⊱⋆⊰ TO SAY SOMETHING ✦ Part one. Part two. Part three. ⊱⋆⊰ the scars in our hearts.

˚ 　 ⋆ ⁺ ₊ ✦ ⁺ ₊ 　 ˚ 　. ˚ . 　 ☁ . 　　. 　 ˚ 　⁺ ⁺ ✦ ₊　 　 ☁ ˚　 . ⁺ ₊ ✧ ˚　 . 　  ˚　 ⁺ ₊

You’ve been told that you just needed a bit of time to adjust, because you come a long way, but they didn’t say how long ‘a bit of time’ was. So the months passed, they soon became years, and if you’ve still made no progress, you kept hoping. Every day, you repeat yourself that you only need ‘a bit more of time’ and that, soon, with just a little extra effort, everything will eventually be fine. 

Except that you’ve never been a patient person.

They made it sound easy. They made you believe that everything would go back to the way it used to be in weeks, and you’ve fallen for their sweet words because you were craving for them to be true. You have dreamed of that moment, and every day you’ve spent far from them was spent thinking about the day they would ask you to come back. It is a little fantasy you’ve been holding on to for the past few years, but the tears, hugs, and excuses you’ve spent hours to imagine never became a reality. No, you only got silent glances.

It has been almost three years since you came back, and it still wasn’t enough. Sometimes, you think about letting go of that dream of yours, the one that makes you believe that things could still get back to normal, even when nothing was —; but how could you do something like that? How could you possibly think about abandoning them again when they’ve been willing to give you a second chance? You weren’t ready yet to accept that the home you’ve been longing to return didn’t feel like it anymore, at least not without first trying your hardest to make things right. Thus you kept pushing yourself a bit more everyday, at the cost of your health — which seemed a very small price to pay in exchange for the feeling of being at home again.

Two years is not a lot of time in a human life but these years still felt like an eternity to you, and you’ve never been so aware of how long they have been as when you came back, realizing the gap that had opened up between you and the others. Your life has fallen apart that day, leaving you with such small pieces of yourself that you weren’t able to rebuild on your own —; but them? It is as if they’ve lost nothing. They’ve spent those two years building a life in which you’ve never existed, one that you are now supposed to find a place in. Every day is just a painful reminder of what you have lost, and will never get back despite your hopes. Your dream slipped away just when you touched it with your fingertips.

You have to accept that you are not a part of the system anymore, you are just the pebble that derails the machine, and that ruins everything —; but you should be used to it, shouldn’t you? To that feeling of shame and sorrow that your heart has been carrying for years, that feeling of failure and permanent disappointment.

Some nights, out of habit, you push the wrong door, and you find yourself in the room you used to share with Natasha. Once full of life, it had now become austere. Yet, there is something comforting about being in that room full of old memories, it is a bittersweet feeling that’s both like a heartbreak and a warm hug. You've never been much of a drinker, or at least you've always been careful enough not to get wasted. But you’ve made an exception tonight, because everything seemed to be too much, and you wouldn’t have survived the party if you hadn’t drowned everything in alcohol.

It is the way they kept laughing that got on your nerves, jealousy rising inside of you every time a new joke was told that you couldn’t understand “because you weren’t here” —; but Wanda wasn’t here either, and yet, she laughed along with them, why? Because she hasn’t lost her place with them, she is still a part of the family. They promised that they would tell their stories and explain their jokes later, because it was too long to do it now, but you were aware that it was just a lie to give you the impression that you weren’t on the sidelines.

It wasn’t very effective.

They spent the whole night telling stories that you couldn’t understand and sharing jokes you couldn’t laugh at, and while they remembered things that you didn’t have a chance to live by their side, giving you an overview of all the things you’ve missed, you were silently sitting on the couch, trying to ignore the knot in your throat. You didn’t even try to take part in the conversation —; what could you possibly have said anyway? You are not sure they would have wanted to hear about how miserable your life was when you were gone, how lonely and desperate you’ve been during these years. It would be an admission that you missed them, needed them.

Instead you kept your attention on the bottles of alcohol, at least they would never let you down —; that’s the advantage when the parties are organized by someone like Tony: you will never run out of booze. You were so uninvolved in what was going on around you, that you missed the worried glances that Natasha and Wanda shared, and they didn’t need to talk to understand each other, to know that they both had the same concerns.

Everyone does, but you’ve made it clear in your first few weeks back that you didn’t want their pity. There was no comfort in the way they looked at you and, quickly, their presence became too much. They were always there, never letting you completely alone despite the appearance and trying to meet your needs before you could even ask, pretending that they knew better than you do —; but they don’t. They have no idea of what you need, because how could they when you’re not even sure yourself?

The loneliness you’ve asked for isn’t more comforting, but at least it comes with familiar feelings, some that you’ve learned how to deal with the past few years. On the contrary, you still hadn’t gotten used to their presence, and you had no idea of how to deal with these contradictory feelings that were starting to grow inside of yourself. While a part of you wanted to lean in their embrace, the other rejected their overwhelming affection. A way of protecting yourself that won out, taking the form of uncontrolled anger and, after days of being yelled at and random objects being thrown at their faces, they’ve eventually got the hint that they should let you alone.

They’ve given up on you —; but that’s exactly what you wanted, isn’t it? 

You can’t be sure, but you are trying to convince yourself that it is better that way. You’re not worth the trouble, and they definitely can’t spend all their energy trying to save you when people are actually dying outside. You would be fine, you would get through it —; right? Because that’s what you’ve always done, and there is no reason that this time would be any different —; you are strong, with or without them by your side. You just need a little bit of time for your scars to heal and then, everything will be back the way it used to be. 

Except that, despite the appearances, those thoughts never really left your mind. Sometimes, you think about your return and what would have happened if they hadn’t found you that day —; maybe everything would have been easier. For you, sure, but also for them. You are not even sure they would have accepted your return if they had a choice —; you wouldn’t have. At least when you weren't there, there wasn't that constant tension that now reigned over the tower, one that followed you into every room you set foot in. 

So you’ve made a decision —; you would rebuild yourself without them. You would make a new name for yourself, a new life, even if it means leaving them behind. There is this growing will deep inside you, the one that feeds off your anger and jealousy, and it’s the one to get your revenge. You want them to suffer as much as you have, to realize what they’ve done, and regret every of their actions. You want them to crawl back at your feet, begging for your forgiveness because you are tired of being the only one to make efforts.

You have waited so long for them to say or do the right thing, but the moment has never come because they can’t possibly understand your situation, let alone knowing what you really need to get better —; how could they when you ignore it too? Nothing feels right anymore. You have tried a lot of things but nothing works. Your life is now like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces refuse to fit together. There is no way to make things go back the way they were, you could only keep on pretending. 

And so you did, locking yourself into a routine. Each day you alternate between training, going on missions or attending meetings, leaving yourself little free time. This hectic schedule has the advantage of allowing you to avoid the presence of others and keeping you from thinking too much while making you more efficient —; it is perfect, isn’t it? It is, most of the time but, some days, the illusion falters, and the facade you’ve built shatters, revealing the truth you are trying to hide.

That’s how you found yourself stumbling into your old bedroom, the one that now smells of dust, desperate for some comfort and familiarity. You didn’t even make it to the bed, falling miserably asleep on the carpet —; you didn’t have the strength to get up when you tripped over your own feet, too drunk to take more than a few clumsy steps.

⊱ ★ ⊰

There is only one person in the team who is willing to give you the space you asked for without agreeing to give up on you yet —; and it is Natasha.

You may not notice it, but the woman has always been here for you since you came back to live with them. It must be said that her gestures are minute, almost imperceptible, but they always manage to draw a slight smile on your lips without you realizing it —; she was perfectly aware that if you knew it was from her, you would start hating on those little things that made your daily life at the tower a little sweeter.

She is the one who always accidentally cooks more food than she needed, making sure there was always a portion waiting for you in the fridge. She is the one who makes sure that your favorite cutlery is always clean. She is the one who buys your favorite flowers to put them in the common room’s vase and never lets them fester. She is the only one who has taken the time to make you feel at home with a bunch of details that are so insignificant that you’ve barely noticed them.

But at least it helped soothe the guilt her heart carried, because these actions are proof that she was fulfilling the promises she had made to you a long time ago, in the secrecy of the night, under a starry sky, whispered words that has been immediately blown away by the wind —; “I’ll always be there for you,” she had said. “Promise?” you’ve asked, your eyes full of hope. “Promise,” she had replied before your lips touched, sealing the contract.

One she broke years ago, when she dragged you out of the tower without letting you a chance to explain yourself. The woman is perfectly aware that flowers and some meals won’t be enough to earn your forgiveness, but she still made it her mission to look after you from afar —; because if she doesn’t, who would? You don’t let anyone get close to you, and the others haven’t looked any further, giving up at the first sign of trouble. She doesn’t blame you for not trusting her, or the other members of the team, she just wishes that you would accept at least one of their helping hands. 

But you’ve rejected everyone. 

Even Wanda, with whom you seemed, at one time, to be getting on well which had given the redhead hope. Those hopes had been shattered the day you violently pushed the witch away without any clear explanation, and the woman blames herself for that, for not knowing what to do in order to help you —; because she should know, right? That’s her role, the promise she had made years ago.

If she can’t, if no one can, what will you become?

You may be able to fool everyone, including yourself, into thinking that you are fine, but you won’t get her to fall for your little tricks. She knows the truth. She can see it in your fake smiles, she can read it in your tired eyes. She knows you by heart, she hasn’t forgotten those years spent by your side, and she has become a master at spotting your bad habits and the sublet signs that accompany them. 

So, tonight, she couldn't have possibly missed how firm your grip has been on the bottles of alcohol, nor how quiet you've been the whole time. But it is only when she saw the door to your old bedroom ajar that she understood the extent of your pain. You were hitting rock bottom, you would have never set foot in this room full of memories otherwise. She knew this because she, too, avoided it like the plague, and hadn’t dared return in it since that day, not even to empty it. For five years, it had remained the same.

The woman is willing to give you the space you asked for as long as you are taking care of yourself, it is the silent promise she made, but it is obvious that you have failed to do so lately as she has seen you slowly falling back into your old habits. The ones she thought you had left behind, the ones she had helped you to overcome years ago. She is ready to accept that you could build a life without her, it is a cost worth paying if it’s the one to your happiness, but you haven’t built anything lately. Nor have you been happy, and she couldn’t bear anymore the sight of you destroying yourself, again.

The redhead is tired of the situation. She is annoyed that everyone is playing your games by pretending that everything is fine because it only encourages you down this dangerous path, one that may cost your life one day. She is angry with anyone who takes the easy way out, because it is obvious that it is easier to act as if all that history belonged to the past rather than acknowledge their mistakes.

At first, she had agreed to play along, but it was only because she thought that it was what you needed and that, when you were ready, you would talk to them. Except that it has been a bit more than two years, almost three, since they brought you back, and you still haven’t told a word about it. The woman didn’t know how long she would be able to put up with your silence on this story and your obvious discomfort.

But it seems that the sight of you asleep on the dusty carpet of the room you once shared was the last straw for the woman who decided to step in. You are probably going to hate her tomorrow, but she doesn’t care —; she is not even sure you could possibly hate her more than you already do. She would rather know that you are safe, even if it means losing you a little more so she decides to call your name multiple times.

It is the sound of her voice who wakes you up. It doesn’t matter how deeply asleep you were because you can’t ignore her when she practically screams out your name, and you are inevitably roused from your slumber. When you opened your eyes, a growl escaping your lips to signal your displeasure, all you could see was a blurred figure with red hair that could only belong to one person. One you could recognize anywhere.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, a mixture of annoyance and concern tinged her voice, but you weren’t aware enough of your surroundings to notice it. Maybe if your hand hadn’t been so heavy on the alcohol, then you would have noticed the tone of her voice.

‘I am sleeping, can’t you see?’ you grumbled, but as soon as the words escaped your mouth, the frustration was replaced by a laugh —; this question was stupid, you realize. Isn’t she supposed to be a trained spy, and one of the best, too? Then why couldn’t she see what was right in front of her? Something that obvious? 

Maybe she doesn’t know either because your question is followed by silence. Her only answer has been to sigh and pinch the bridge of her nose. It was going to be a long night, she already knew it, but wasn’t sure she had the energy to deal with that.

‘Come here,’ you said when the woman didn’t react. Your words were accompanied by the gesture of grabbing her arm in order to pull her toward you, the woman losing her balance because of the surprise. 

Since she had found you, you had never asked for her presence. On the contrary, you had rejected and hated her. At best, you would tolerate her presence, but only when your job didn’t give you a choice, and so this sudden change in your behavior disconcerted her, especially the laugh that escaped your lips when she fell on top of you —; it is a sound that she has never thought she would hear again. So pure, so sincere.

‘Get up,’ she coldly says, not amused at all by your little games. If circumstances had been different, she probably would have found your attitude endearing and stayed a little longer in your arms. Except there was nothing healthy about this sudden closeness after months of hatred, so the woman immediately got up, inviting — ordering — you to do the same —; the sooner she puts you to bed, the sooner she can get back to hers.

Tonight, she had no patience. The woman was exhausted, and frustrated —; you weren’t the only one to suffer from the situation. She knows that your clinging state is just an illusion, the result of the alcohol you’ve ingested, and that the very next day you’re going to hate her again. If she wanted nothing more than to believe everything would be okay now, and to find comfort in your arms, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not when she knew she would lose it all again at sunrise. This scene is only a chimera, a reminder of what she had lost several years earlier as the result of her own actions.

If anything happens tonight, you would both regret it. Nothing can come from the actions of two tipsy and exhausted people. Except that your mind wasn’t clear enough to realize it, and all you could think about in that moment was how you were craving for Natasha’s attention. You wanted her to wrap her arms around you and whisper that everything will be fine now, because she is here. You wanted her to promise to never let you down, again. Even if it is a lie. Even if, one day, she will abandon you again —; because that’s what they all do despite the promises, isn’t it? At that moment, you didn’t care about the lies, you just wanted something to hold onto, just an ounce of comfort.

‘I caaaaaan’t,’ you whined, but you didn’t even try to do so. When you stretch out your arms towards the redhead, she gets the hint that you’re expecting her to help you, which she does. The woman knows how stubborn you can be so she grabs your hands and pulls you on your feet, sighing.

Except that you seem to find the idea of testing the limits of her kindness particularly amusing because you make no effort to pull yourself upright, or to stand on your feet —; or maybe you were just that wasted. You’re barely standing when you fall forward, leaving no choice to the woman who has to catch you before you hit the ground.

‘Got you,’ you whispered, a grin on your face, when you felt her arms around your waist.

The thought of dropping you crossed her mind, but all she did was to playfully roll her eyes. The woman should be annoyed by the situation —; right? But how could she when you are so adorable? It has been a long time since she last saw such a peaceful expression on your face. Your eyes were half closed, you looked as if you were about to fall asleep in her arms, and there was a faint smile on your lips. You seemed so content, nestled in her arms with your cheek pressed against her chest, that she hardly dared to move, fearing to break this well-deserved moment of peace. For a moment, it was as if nothing had happened, and the sorrow on your face had dissipated, giving way to a childlike insouciance —; a sight that made her heart melt.

You are the one who broke the silence first.

‘I’ve missed you..,’ you whispered. A confession so unexpected that the woman is not sure if she had understood your words. When her eyes looked down, searching for yours, you hadn’t moved, your eyes still closed. It was almost as if you hadn’t spoken, and that the words had been nothing more than a figment of her imagination. 

‘Me too,’ she softly replied and, maybe, if you had opened your eyes at that moment, you would have noticed the tears that clouded hers — but you couldn’t do that, because you don’t want her to see the tears that you are trying to hold back, right? The one that would just run down your cheeks the moment you open your eyes. 

‘Please, stay with me tonight,’ you asked —; no, you begged. You’ve lifted your head until your eyes finally meet hers, both were shining with the tears that threatened to fall —; you are the first one to give in.

The mere thought of Natasha leaving you was enough to shatter your last ramparts. You have just regained her embrace, you don’t want to be forced to leave her now, not after so many years of hoping to regain the comfort you thought you had lost forever. You have been too stubborn to admit that you needed help, and so you’ve spent years pushing everyone away, thinking that you didn’t deserve their affection. It has been so long that you can’t even remember the last time someone held you this way, with such delicacy and care.

It gave you hope. The one that, maybe, for at least one night, things could be the way they used to be —; just tonight, or even just a few hours. You just want that moment to last a little longer, you don’t want to spend another night alone in your bed, in your cold and austere bedroom with a depressing atmosphere. You want more than that, you want a reason to stay, a reason to try again, and to get up tomorrow —; you want Natasha back. You want your old life back.

Except that the woman won’t give in. It is not that she doesn’t want to, on the contrary, she shares the same wishes that you, but her mind is clear, and she knows that nothing good would come out of it —; you can’t get back to what you used to have. You can’t change the past, nor can you pretend it doesn’t exist.

‘I can’t..,’ she softly replied after a second of silence that marked her hesitation, ‘you know that baby, we both,’ she added, the nickname naturally escaping her lips when she noticed that more tears were threatening to fall from your eyes. 

She wants to say yes, you can read it in her eyes, hear it in her silences —; then why doesn’t she say it? Why does she keep pushing you away when you are eventually ready for her to be back? Isn’t what she has wanted when she spent all those months begging you to accept her help? It is, but she didn’t want it that way, she didn’t want to take advantage of a moment of weakness on your part. She wanted to earn your forgiveness, to show you that you could trust her again, and if she had to work every day until she dies to achieve that goal, then she would do it. 

‘Why not?’ you immediately asked back, ‘you are here, and so am I, and- and our bed is waiting for us,’ you started rambling. You couldn’t speak clearly, the words racing through your head as you tried to convince her, but you knew it was a losing battle. You were so desperate that your hands clung tightly to the fabric of her shirt, as if it could be enough to stop her from leaving. ‘Please,’ you begged once more when she didn’t react. At this point, your voice was nothing more than a broken whisper, ‘just for tonight, we could pre~’ 

‘Pretend that nothing has happened?’ she softly asked, finishing your sentence, and all you could do was nodding. ‘But you know we can’t do that baby,’ she said, hating the way you were looking at her with so much hope, as if you thought that one night in her arms could ease all your problems —; but it can’t. It won’t. 

As she talks, one of her hands tucks a lock of your hair behind your ears. The touch is so gentle that you can resist, and lean into her embrace. The feeling of her hand caressing your head leaves too soon for your liking. 

‘Sometimes, I wish that we could,’ you replied, ‘that I could either forget everything, or go back in time to make everything right,’ you confided in her, sharing your thoughts with someone for the first time.

The words have barely crossed the barrier of your lips that you crumble, because you realize that this wish will never come true. You can no longer hold back your tears, you can only hide your face in the hollow of her neck, hoping she won’t see those. Only, each of your sobs shakes your body so violently that anyone could understand your state in one glance. The woman doesn’t know what to do so she cautiously wraps her arms around you and cradles your body in an attempt to sooth your sobs —; it’s the least she can do.

‘You’ve done nothing wrong, love, nothing was your fault,’ she whispered, and you can hear that her voice is feverish —; she, too, is holding back tears. She can’t bear to see you like this. ‘I am sorry, so sorry,’ she added while she rocks you slowly. Those words weren’t for tonight, and how she had to refuse your proposal, but they were for everything that has happened since that day. Those excuses were for all the things she has done or said since but, most importantly, for all the things she didn’t have the courage to do and the ones she couldn’t. 

⊱ ★ ⊰

The following morning, you’re woken up by Jarvis, his voice echoing through the room, terribly loud and impossible to ignore. A grunt escapes your lips, you were hoping for a few more hours of sleep —; or best, for an eternal slumber. The night before, like the rest of the team, you went to bed late, and the quantities of alcohol ingested are definitely not helping with your condition because you were the victim of a terrible headache. Only, it is impossible for you to ignore Jarvis’ voice. He has been calling your name over and over again for several minutes now, trying to get the attention you are trying to not give him —; but even with your hands covering your ears, his voice would pierces your eardrums.

‘You are not answering me, miss y/n,’ he stated the obvious, ‘do you want me to warn the others that you are sick? My sensors indicate tha~’

‘Please, Jarvis, shut up,’ you mumble, still managing to be polite despite the rising frustration, and you really hope it will be enough for him to leave you alone —; but anyone who knows the AI knows that these hopes are in vain. 

Nonetheless, you have to admit that he is right about one thing: you are not feeling so good —; but who would after attending one of Stark’s parties? He always says that if your head is not sore and your throat is not burning the next day, then you haven’t enjoyed yourself enough. Surely you have enjoyed enough to last a lifetime, although you are not naive enough to swear to never touch a bottle again in your life. Yet, you’ve thought of it for an instant, the lingering nausea making you regret your actions because it gave you the unpleasant feeling that you might throw up at any time.

God, you were weak. So weak that everything was feeling too much right now, even the faint sunlight making its way into your room —; it makes you want to bury yourself alive to avoid all these sensations, and to die. Except you can’t because you have a mission that is scheduled for today and, if you don’t show up soon, they will come looking for you, which is the last thing you want. You have spent weeks preparing for that, you definitely can’t let them down now, especially not because you are just too stupid to know your limits.

You have abandoned them once, you won’t make the same mistake a second time. They won’t be so forgiving this time, no one forgives someone who does the same mistake twice —; no one gives a second chance to traitors. It has been several years since you came back, but you still feel like you are on probation and you need to prove to them that they can count on you. You can sense their hesitation to trust you, even though they insist that everything is fine —; pretending that everything is the way it used to be. It is their new favorite game, but you hate it. Y

et, you don’t have much choice but to play by their rules.

‘Are you sure? Becaus~’ 

‘I said, shut. the. fuck. UP!’ you yelled, not giving him to finish his sentence, already reaching the limits of your patience, ‘what’s so difficult to understand in those two words?’ you growled in frustration, and you can’t help but throw a pillow at the walls. The gesture is useless because it doesn’t even manage to ease the tension you feel, nor does it convince Jarvis that he needs to stop talking because he starts lecturing you about your actions. 

Actually, the only way you have found to shut him up was to get up and join the others for breakfast. Fortunately, only Tony and Steve were there. They are the ones you are going on mission with today, and that’s what they were talking about before you entered the room.  Even though you would rather stay alone, talking about missions is something you can do with little effort because it is easy. You need your brain, but you can turn off your emotions. You do not have to worry about saying the wrong thing or how to avoid an uncomfortable silence. It is familiar, and comforting. It has been a while since you've been sitting at this table talking about something else —; when you are not talking about work, you stay silent. It seems that you have forgotten how to interact with them during those years. 

As they go through the details of the mission one last time, you are playing with your breakfast, not interested in the oat flakes floating in your milk, nor in their voices that forms a dull hum in the background, their words not even reaching your ears —; because you are thinking, your eyebrows furrowed with worry. Except that your state isn’t caused by the reasons they think it is, neither the alcohol nor the mission are in your mind, only a certain spy with whom you shared a moment last night. One you would rather forget because the simple thought of the thing you have said, and done, is enough to fill you with rage and embarrassment.

‘Hi to the moon, here the earth,’ Tony said, snapping his fingers in front of your face to get your attention, ‘were you even listening to us?’ he sighed, but you don’t notice any annoyance in his voice. Only a sickening worry that you can read in his eyes, a feeling that he doesn’t share and doesn’t hide very well. You hate it, when they look at you that way, as if you could break at any moment, as if they needed to be careful —; but you can take it. You can take everything, and you definitely do not need their permanent protection. 

‘No, sorry, I was lost in my thoughts,’ you admitted, giving him a smile that I hoped to be convincing enough to reassure him.

‘Do not worry, everything is going to be fine, okay? We will be here to make sure of that,’ Steve intervened, trying to reassure you about what he thought was the cause of your worries, but his tone didn’t feel comforting to you. If anything, it made you grit your teeth and clench your hand harder around your spoon, increasing your irritation. You don’t really know why, but Steve has been the hardest to get along with since you have come back, maybe it is because of his seemingly false sympathy. 

‘Thank you,’ you managed to mumble, even though you don’t really mean it —; it was still better than the snide comment that made its way in your mind. You even made the effort to smile, one that anyone could see as fake, but not Steve, because he never really pays attention to the others.

The words burn on the tip of your tongue, and you have to bite it to not shout out to him what you are really thinking. You want nothing more than to tell him that you are as capable as anyone around this table. You have proven yourself over the last few months, succeeding in every mission they have given you, what more do you need to do for them to have faith in your abilities again? Reach for the moon? Because you are ready to do it if that’s the price to pay. You are desperate enough to do anything they would ask. 

In reality, you are not worried at all about the upcoming mission because that is not a possibility. You don’t fail, ever, and if you need to give pieces of yourself and mind in order to complete a mission, then you are ready to do it without flinching. 

No, your thoughts were occupied by something else —; or someone else. Something that was more difficult to manage because there is no guide to follow. This person is Natasha, and the cause of your worries is the moment you shared last night because you have no explanation for what happened —; you thought she hated you, and that you hated her. Aren’t you both supposed to despise each other for the pain you’ve caused? Then why do some of you still yearn for her presence? Why didn’t she reject you and, instead, decided to take care of your mess? This even wasn’t meant to be. The redhead is the last person that should have witnessed you in such a vulnerable state, and yet she is the one you have sought attention from, the only one you needed last night —; and you hate that. You hate how your feelings are still the same even after so many years.

That is exactly why, the second the woman that is haunting your thoughts stepped in the room, you left it, pretending that you needed to get ready for the mission. There is no way that the way you walked out of the room, leaving your untouched breakfast behind you, didn’t bring questions to their minds but you were long gone before any of them could say something.

˚ 　 ⋆ ⁺ ₊ ✦ ⁺ ₊ 　 ˚ 　. ˚ . 　 ☁ . 　　. 　 ˚ 　⁺ ⁺ ✦ ₊　 　 ☁ ˚　 . ⁺ ₊ ✧ ˚　 . 　  ˚　 ⁺ ₊

˚ . ⤳ MOODBOARD ⊱⋆⊰ MASTERLIST ⊱⋆⊰ TO SAY SOMETHING ✦ Part one. Part two. Part three. ⊱⋆⊰ the scars in our hearts.

. ☁ ˚ ⤳ TAG LIST — @cd-4848, @chocolatestrawberrykryptonite, @escapereality4music, @fxckmiup, @gemz5, @jusnough, @m0nsterqzzz, @marvelwomenarehot0, @mrsrushman, @riyaexee, @takeyaki, @taliiiaasteria.

[moonpetrichors-blog]

hiii! i love ur avatar writing and i was wondering if u could write something about neteyam x reader, where they're childhood best friends but then some na'vi guy start to show interest in the reader and neteyam gets all jealous and realize than maybe he's in love with them? idk if this make sense, english is not my first language, sorry :((

All Mine

Tags: Neteyam x Omaticaya!Reader, Aonung x Omaticaya!Reader (Only Slight), Fem!Reader, Childhood Friend Romance, Friends To Lovers, Jealousy, Anguished Declarations Of Love, Neteyam Loses His Cool For Once

Warnings: Neteyam Daydreaming About Punching Aonung LMAO

Neteyam was walking along the beach with his siblings when he spotted you, talking to the Olo'eyktan’s son. It had never crossed his mind before that you, his childhood best friend, would eventually find someone to romantically pursue. Was it wrong to realize he wanted you to himself, and not in the arms of another boy?

OMG IM SO OBSESSED W THIS IDEA!!! If theres one trope I love, its a jealous love interest 🤭 also, trust me when I say ur English is perfect!! Fun fact but English is also my second language and growing up I was ass at speaking it LMFAO so ur not alone 😭☠️

Yellow Hyacinth - Jealousy

* ˚ ✦ 1663 Words • Read below the cut

╭┈─────── ೄྀ࿐ ˊˎ-╰┈➤ ❝ [02/01/23] ❞  

It had been roughly a week since you arrived on the Awa'atlu village's shoreline. When you initially arrived, the Olo'eyktan's son harassed you relentlessly.

There were many things he liked to call you. Freak, weirdo, dimwit, you name it.

There was nothing freak-like about you, per se, but the fact that you were from the forest made you a target to Aonung's bullying. What skills could a woodland girl teach sea people? It was dreadful that you had to hide among them in the first place.

Technically, you had no obligation to go into hiding with the Metkayina clan, but you felt as if the Omaticaya had nothing left for you when your childhood best friend, Neteyam, informed you that he and his family needed to flee.

When Neteyam initially told you that he had to abandon your clan, including you, you wailed into his arms as if he had just perished. You couldn't bear the thought of not being with Neteyam, even if it meant compromising your clan's safety.

The truth is, you overreacted so harshly because you’ve had feelings for Neteyam for years now. You’ve always been unsure if he reciprocated, but there were moments between the both of you where he’d send mixed signals; you didn’t know what shifted or when, but there was just something between you both that felt like you were more than just friends.

And now he wouldn’t be able to stay and see how your relationship would unfurl.

Maybe you were foolish to persuade Jake Sully into bringing you along, but he eventually agreed (albeit reluctantly), since you and his son made each other happy. Neteyam was pleased when you told him you were departing with him.

So there you were, well acquainted with the Metkayina, and accompanied by your dearest friend. Aside from Aonung's pestering, you could put up with it since you knew Neteyam would safeguard you.

However, the more time that you spent with the sea people, the more you began to suspect that it was only you who had detected something between you and Neteyam. You stopped sending hints, even if he overlooked them unintentionally, as it stung too much to persevere.

Aonung eventually stopped attempting to harass you, and you even developed a pleasant friendship with him. Tonowari, his father, had him apologize for his poor behavior; after that, he was actually fairly delightful to converse with.

This was your life now.

...

Neteyam sauntered along the coast, followed by Kiri and Lo'ak. He couldn't take his mind off you; were you safe? Was Aonung bothering you yet again? His father had chided him that he didn't need to be at your side all hours of the day, but he didn't quite understand why his father was amused when he talked about how Neteyam behaved with you. You were his best friend, of course he’s worried!

Regardless, Jake instructed him to keep an eye on his siblings, so he didn't have much of a choice in abandoning them and running to your rescue. Not with Lo'ak prowling behind him in search of trouble.

Neteyam maintained his walk, thinking to himself that he was exceedingly fortunate that you had left the clan for him, and although he wouldn't say it, he was overjoyed.

What he wasn't so thrilled with was how he'd discovered you'd grown closer to that jackass Aonung. You could talk to anybody you pleased, and he knew you were far too pure-hearted to entirely dismiss the Olo'eyktan's son, but why did he feel so bitter whenever he saw you together?

Speak of the devil.

Kiri pointed you out, but when she saw who you were with, she shuddered. “Look, it’s Y/N! And... Aonung.” She deadpanned.

Neteyam was paying little heed to what his sister was saying. No, he was paying close attention to how you were giggling at whatever Aonung said.

What the fuck?

Lo’ak nudged his shoulder. “Bro?”

Lo'ak waved his hand in front of Neteyam's face, which he instantly swept aside. What exactly did Aonung say to make you laugh that hard? You only laugh when you're with him!

Neteyam was practically seething, his fists clenched into balls, as Kiri and Lo'ak snickered to each other out of his earshot. If Kiri didn't know any better, she'd suppose Neteyam was thinking about the finest ways to strangle a (what might as well be) merman.

And truly, he was.

Lo’ak held his fist to his mouth to stifle his laughs. “Dude, are you jealous?”

Kiri placed a hand on Lo’ak’s shoulder, and looked away with a smile plastered to her face. “He totally is.”

Neteyam’s rage was now being directed towards his siblings. “What? No I’m not! Why would I be jealous?”

Lo’ak was still chortling when he pointed behind Neteyam, motioning that he should probably look. He turned around indignantly, and saw that Aonung had a hand on your arm. He was close. Too close for his liking.

And that look. Anyone could see that Aonung was flirting with you. He was maintaining direct eye contact with you, narrowing his gaze. He appeared to be listening carefully to what you were saying, but his smirk paired with his eyes passing over your lips indicated otherwise.

Neteyam just wanted to pummel his stupid, blue face in.

Kiri and Lo'ak burst out laughing as they witnessed Neteyam storm over to where the two of you were. He aggressively inserted his own hand where Aonung's own had originally been, shoving your body into his own by the shoulder. The unexpected intrusion caught you off guard.

“Oh! Neteyam!”

You beamed at his arrival right away, but Aonung frowned. Before you could enquire what Neteyam was doing, he stared daggers into Aonung's head, and hauled you away from him by your bicep. Aonung remained there stunned, staring at your back as you walked away.

“What the hell?”

Kiri and Lo'ak tripped over themselves on their way over to Aonung, howling with laughter, and Lo'ak smacked his shoulder in amusement.

“Sorry cuz, you never stood a chance!”

Aonung’s cheeks darkened deeply. He was thoroughly mortified; he had no idea you were and Neteyam were like that! (You’re not.)

...

Neteyam began to lose confidence throughout the walk once he had pulled you much further away. While you shouted at him to let you go, he inwardly cursed at himself, wondering why he had just done that.

Does he like you?

Your vehement protests about how Neteyam was causing you pain eventually ceased falling on deaf ears. His rage vanished when he realized he'd been treating you like a ragdoll for the entire walk, and he immediately felt horrible. He let go of your arm and buried his face in his hands, ashamed that he had done such a thing to you in the first place.

You rubbed your sore arm, and nudged his shoulder gently. “What’s wrong?”

He looked way too upset, and you rarely saw him like this, if ever.

“Why was Aonung looking at you like that?”

That struck you with irritation. “Are you serious? That’s what this is about?”

His eyes darkened at your words. How could it not be?

You started to raise your voice. “You cannot be for real. You’re just my friend, why are you being so overprotective? If Aonung likes me, that’s my business! Not yours!”

Neteyam snatched your wrist again, evidently upset by what you just uttered. He didn’t know what he was saying anymore. “The only person that can look at you like that is me!”

You went quiet for a time, then realization dawned on your features. “Hold up... do you like me?”

Suddenly, Neteyam’s gaze softened, and he could no longer be furious with you. “How could I not?”

He released your wrist, unsure of what to say next. When he noticed your prolonged silence, Neteyam whirled around, prepared to walk back to his home and cry his frustrations out. He was fighting back tears already; what was the point of telling you this anyway?

You gripped his shoulder and forced him to swivel around and face you. Neteyam could not cover his face, and he felt humiliated because he didn't know why he was acting in this manner. Why was he weeping over a silly look?

He was caught by surprise when you cupped his face in your hands, and wiped the stray tears away. Your irritation had completely dissipated. “You have nothing to be worried about.”

He sniffled. “Why?”

“Because I’ve liked you since forever, but I didn’t think you liked me back. There were so many mixed signals, and you never picked up on my hints, either!”

Neteyam was taken aback. He was at a loss for words.

You rolled your eyes. “Just kiss me, you big idiot.”

Your hand that was on his shoulder was now suddenly imprisoned in his grip, and he jerked you towards his body, lips crashing into yours. He pressed against you with ardor, as if you'd vanish if he didn't embrace you like you were the last Na'vi on Pandora.

Your nimble fingers found purchase in his braids. His hands slithered around your waist, drawing you flush against him, effectively deepening the kiss. He needed you so near that he could only sense your lips against his. When you would try and pull away, his desperate kisses would follow.

You feared Neteyam had forgotten you needed to breathe, because you had to roughly pull his head back by his braids to eventually get him to halt his feverish actions. The minimal bit of pigment on your lips had now smeared, a mark left by Neteyam that claimed you as his. Who the hell taught him to kiss like that?

As you both merely stared at each other, stunned, Neteyam spoke through labored breaths. “All mine?”

“I’m all yours.”

Bonus!

Lo'ak sipped his fruity iced drink, having witnessed the entire exchange from a distance. He patted Aonung's back.

“You wish that was you, huh?”

Aonung punched him.

[fictionismyreality3]

Hi first off just wanted to say I absolutely love your work! But please remember to take care of yourself and have plenty of water and Food and please remember to take breaks 🫶

Anyways I was wondering if I could req a fic where Jason finds out his s/o is an Ex-Criminal who's trying really hard not to fall back into old habits but is struggling because these guys keep harrasing them to become a criminal again

Mm just gonna take this :D -🎧

Better off Before You

Jason Todd x Reader

Tags: boyfriend!jason todd, ex-criminal!reader, established relationship, kinda controlling!jason todd idk, angst but it gets resolved at the end

Warnings: romance and everything that comes with it, violence, crime, drugs, weapons like knives and guns, arson, sexual assault 🤨

Notes: I gagged writing this 😩 sorry to all the Jefferey’s out there I just think Jeff is a creepy name. Kinda put a spin on the req hope that’s okay ☺️

34 stitches, 18 hours, and 1 bullet.

That’s what you’d scarified to get the life you had now. You’d done your time, and spent the hours necessary to detach yourself from your previous life and associates.

You had a lot to be grateful for and you knew that. It wasn’t like you were waking up everyday selfishly forgetting where you came from. That seemed impossible with the way the bullet was still lodged under the skin of your hip. But you were happy. You had a good life now and you were happy.

When you met Jay, you used to go by a different name, and when you thought about it, you were really a different person. But he pushed you. He wasn’t like those other self righteous hero’s you so often found yourself running from. He told it like it was, and he didn’t care if he hurt your feelings when he spoke. And back then, that’s something you needed desperately.

“You look like shit.”

Rolling your eyes, you wiped your lips, spitting the blood that had pooled in your mouth onto the gum covered pavement.

“You’re not exactly looking your best either, Red.” You drawled, eying the tall form of Jason Todd as he stalked down the alley towards you. “Yeah, well, it’s been one of those days.” He shrugged.

“Cortez?” Jason threw out there as he tucked his pistols away and got ready for a fist fight.

“No, Romero this time. You know what the buyers are like.”

Rain fell around you as you struck Jason in the stomach, his body expertly maneuvering to the side so he could grab your leg when you tried to throw a kick at him. Soon you were on your back, hitting at the inside of his elbow to push him off you. A well timed bite to shoulder and kick in the nuts let you escape.

That was 2 years ago.

Some days you almost wished you’d lost that fight, it would have made getting out from under your bosses thumb a lot easier had you been thrown in jail. You ended up having to do it the hard way. First breaking things off with Cortez, he was a squealer, especially when you pulled a few fingernails to reinforce he wouldn’t come after you.

Romero was harder. The man had a good few hundred men and women working for him. He practically ran the entire drug scene on the east end of Gotham. You used to be one of his best. It was a slightly demeaning work, being the person whose sole job was to ensure rich, high society people got their pill fix for the week, but it payed well. The only way you managed to get out was by knocking off his men one by one till you got to the top.

To him.

But Jay helped you, and you did it, even if it did leaving you with a permanent reminder in the flesh of your hip. There was no immediate way for Romero build back his little empire, and you allowed yourself to relax over the years, even getting to the point where Jason and you would run missions for Bruce.

Which is why this had to be a one time thing.

“Eh, c’mon pretty. Let’s not keep the boss waiting.”

How you found yourself back on the radar of the man you were trying so hard to distance yourself from seemed to be a sick joke from the universe. All it took was one wrong decision and you’d slipped right back into your old life like you’d never left. It wasn’t that you wanted to, but at this point, you didn’t have a choice.

You were sloppy. Normally you made sure to never take any jobs related to the underground drug rings so as to avoid spotted. But you didn’t do your research, and one bust got you noticed by one of Romero’s men who got away. That was all it took for him to go ratting back to his boss, who now held a massive grudge against you for how long it took him to regain power.

You fought hard when they found you again. The skin of your attackers still sat underneath your fingernails.

But you weren’t a super, you didn’t have powers or years of extreme training like Jay. You were just a girl who grew up on the wrong side of town, and chloroform wasn’t exactly easily avoided.

Scanning your surroundings, you tried to memorize the route of winding hallways you were being dragged through. The smell of gasoline and booze hung in the air, making your nose scrunch in disgust. Being pushed through a set of heavy metal doors, you found yourself face to face with the beady eyes of Jefferey Romero.

“You know, I’ve thought a lot about what I would say,” he began, standing up from the crusty folding chair he was sitting in. “When I saw you again.” Two men came and held your arms behind your back, their grip tight despite your struggling. “But all I can think about is how pathetic you look.”

One grubby hand reached up to clutch your chin, his fingers digging into your skin while he surveyed your face. The other reached down and squeezed at your ass.

“Fuck you.” You spat.

Driving your knee up, you kicked him as hard as you could in the dick, relishing the whiny noise of pain he made as he fell to his knees. Deciding to use the opportunity, you spat on him, but by then more of his men came to hold you still.

“You’re just as feisty as I remember too.” He coughed and brushed himself off. Getting back up, with a slight limp he came to stand in front of you. “You cost me a lot of money, you know.” Romero licked his lips. “It took me years to get it back.” He thread his fingers through your hair, yanking your head harshly to the side. “That’s why you’re gonna do me a little favour, bitch.”

You scoffed, wanting nothing more than to wrap your hands around his neck and choke him to death. “I’m not doing jack shit for you.” Romero let out a sneering laugh.

“Oh, but you will. Because I have this.”

As he held out his hand, your eyes darted down to the little enamel pin resting in his palm.

Your tongue was heavy in your mouth.

“What do you need?”

Jason wasn’t a great boyfriend when it came to his protectiveness. Knowing the life you’d came from, and how you two literally met when you were running from the cops, he was constantly worried about keeping you safe. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust you, he just wanted you to have the life you deserved.

Because he knew you deserved so much.

Fiddling with the string of his hoodie, he tried to stay focused on whatever random ass tv show was on. Pressing the material to his nose, he took a deep breath. Your perfume filled his lungs and he felt dizzy and relieved at the same time. It had only been a few hours since you left to go get some groceries, but the time away was killing him.

Clingy was a word he liked to pretend didn’t exist, but with the way you’d been acting for the last few weeks, he was getting more and more reluctant to let you out of his sight. Bruises that you’d brush off as you being clumsy, scrapes lining your knees, even the way your eyes were seemingly darting around to look for a threat that wasn’t there. All of it was beginning to leave a sour taste in Jason’s mouth.

Normally, he would never do anything to invade your privacy, but the nagging feeling in the back of his head wouldn’t let him drop it. Rustling through drawer after drawer, Jason searched from the objects that would confirm his suspicions. Cursing under his breath, he mumbled a few prayers that this wasn’t what he thought it was as he moved to your half of the closet.

Pushing the clothes to the side, his eyes got stuck on the red dress he’d bought you, and he had to clench his fists from punching the wall when he saw what was lying in the shoebox behind it.

Your knives.

The same knives he’d taken from you when you first started to change the way you were living. The same knives he’d hidden from you to help you transition. The same knives that were sitting there, clearly having been recently polish, laughing at him as they glinted in the light. The sound of the front door ripped him from his stupor.

“Hey, Jay. I got those chips you like-” Your words died on your tongue as you came face to face with a very angry Jason Todd, standing in the living room, holding a reminder of your past.

“What the fuck is this, huh?” He ground out, holding knives out with a shaking hand. “I promise, it’s not what it looks like.” You began quickly. Letting out a huff of tightly contained anger, Jason stormed up to you, grabbing you by the wrists and sending your shopping bags to the floor.

“Not what it looks like?” He scoffed. “No, I-”

“Because to me, it sure fucking looks like you’re working again.”

Your breath caught in your throat, and you stared up into the now swirling blue-green eyes of the one man who never left. “You don’t understand.” You tried to plead. Throwing the knives to the floor, Jason backed you up against the front door, his hands caging you against the wood. “I don’t understand?” He hissed. “I risked my ass when I asked Bruce to cover your bail.”

The pressure of your rapidly beating heart was barely being held in by your ribcage. “Jay, you can’t understand.”

Jason swore he felt a tooth crack with how hard he was clenching his jaw. There hadn’t been a lot of instances where he’d felt truly hurt in his life, not before you. He always kept himself too closed off for that. But now? Now the small sliver of worth you had given him felt like it was being doused in salt and vodka.

“Then make me understand, baby.” Jay pleaded. “I can’t let you do this to yourself.” He hated the way his voice cracked.

All at once you were overcome with the urge to tell him everything, to fall into his arms and cry to him about how Romero had found where your sister went to university, and how you might not have talked to her in years but you still couldn’t let her die.

But your mouth didn’t open.

And Jason could only drop his hands to his sides and take a step back from you.

“Where the fuck having you been goin’ for the last 3 weeks?” He said disbelieving. “I don’t even know who you are anymore!” Wiping the tear you didn’t realize was forming, took a deep breath and steeled yourself.

“I’ll tell you when it’s over.”

All his years of experience, the instincts and reaction times he’d had trained into him, seemed to vanish as he watched you turn on your heel and leave. Standing frozen for a moment, Jason stared at the handle of the door, as if his gaze would somehow cause it to turn and you to come back.

“Fuck.” He snarled, whipping around to leave a fist sized hole in the wall.

One more job.

One more job and then this would all be over.

That’s what you kept telling yourself. The words got repeated over and over again in your mind as you stepped out into the streets of Gotham and began walking towards where you were stashing your things. The words echoed into the foggy air as you mumbled to yourself, changing into your district clothes and heading to the target Romero sent you.

They acted as a sort of prayer to who ever was listening. A plea, for all of this mess to somehow how straighten itself out, and for you to be forgiven as you hurled the bottle of alcohol and flames at the cargo truck you’d been ordered to destroy.

The fire danced across the surface of the truck until the whole thing burst into a ball of heat. You don’t know what was in it or why Romero wanted it gone, and you didn’t ask. You didn’t want to know. All you felt like doing was crumbling into the pavement and disappearing into one of the cities many potholes so you never had to show your face again.

It was nearly impossible for Jason to keep from destroying the apartment. Every item of furniture you’d picked out together sat like a reminder. He’d been the one to get you off the streets. He’d been the one to show you that there were people who cared about more than their next hit or how to get money. He’d been the one to help you get free.

And now he had failed you.

Jason sat on the couch, slumped forward with his head in his hands. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Really, everything was wrong, but something about the way you left felt odd. There was this look in your eye, the same one he saw the first time you’d met when he cornered you after the police slacked off at their jobs. A look of fear.

Not towards him. He could still remember it plain as day. It was more a look of dread, like you were worried about the consequences of getting caught and not the scary guy in the red mask who caught you. Like you were dreading someone finding out. Just thinking about it made his stomach churn. Although he was absolutely livid, he couldn’t stand seeing you in fear because he loved you.

He loved you.

“What the fuck am I doin’ just sitting here?”

When you got back to the seedy building near the docks, you were let in instantly by two of Romero’s men. The winding hallways of his new building had reluctantly become a familiar sight after spending the last 3 weeks running errands for him. But now your debt was paid, and you could get to tell Jay everything.

The same set of heavy metal doors that seemed to unlock a world you tried so desperately to forget opened once more, and you were once again standing in front of the man who used you. Putting out his cigarette, Jeffery Romero sauntered his way over to you.

“It’s done. The truck’s gone.” You spoke first. “I did my half of the bargain, so don’t you dare touch my sister.” With a thoughtful look that was clearly exaggerated, he looked you over, walking a circle around you. “I’ll admit, you weren’t as useless as I remembered.” The beady-eyed man snickered. Your hands were clenching, fingernails digging into your palms. “I might even take you back to work for me.”

“I’d never fucking work for you.”

His eyes narrowed, a dark smile curling across his lips. “That’s a shame,” He said nonchalantly. “Because you know too much now to be kept alive.”

As if waiting for their cue, the men who’d been leaning against the walls or playing poker and pretending not to listen pounced on you. Hands were tugging you in every which way, some tearing at your clothes as they shoved you to your knees. With a surge of adrenaline, you went down kicking and screaming, biting and pushing back against anyone who touched you. All the while Romero sat and watched, lighting another cigarette.

Glass shattered as the windows got kicked in. People were screaming. A gun went off. Again. And then again. And slowly, working through the shock, your mind caught up to process the image of Jason blowing the heads off of everyone around you, their brains splattering onto the walls and floor.

Letting out a practically feral noise, you lunged at Romero, shoving him to the ground and pounding your fists down into his face over and over again. Your vision was blurry, partly from your tears and partly from the blood that was spraying onto your face every time you brought your hand down. But you couldn’t stop. You busted his lip for your sister. You shattered his nose for the peace you’d fought for.

And you broke his jaw just for you.

Two strong arms were tugging you off the now lifeless body, and your face was pressed into a broad chest. Taking the first breath you’d been able to in 3 weeks, you got a lungful of Jason and you sobbed like a little baby. The hiss of his mask coming off barely registered in your mind.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, hey you’re- fuck, princess it’s okay.” He cooed and ran his gloved fingers through your hair. “It’s over. It’s over.”

“I should have-” You tried to speak but all that came out was a strangled gasping noise. Jason was wiping the blood off your face, pressing kisses to your forehead, your cheeks, your nose. “I should have told you.” You blubbered, clutching at the leather of his jacket. He didn’t even know what you were talking about, or how you got dragged into all this mess, but right now, he didn’t care. “M’not going anywhere, sweetheart. You’re stuck with me.”

“I’m always gonna stay.”

[crippleprophet]

i don’t understand how people can be so fucking cruel about people who can’t read much (including people who aren’t literate, though this post is from my experience with chronic illness). like, one of my main motivations behind posting excerpts of butch+femme writing on my main (@campgender ; it’s fine to go through my bookshelf tag but please only followers age 18+ on that blog!) is that it is fucking hard to read a full book!!

my reading comprehension & stamina decreased drastically when i developed worse chronic fatigue, & while i’m overjoyed that i’ve recently regained a lot of that particular ability since getting blackout curtains, there are absolutely still texts i can’t even begin to parse that i once would’ve loved digging into — texts that it would be actively dangerous for me to attempt to struggle through because it would break pacing.

idk i’m not trying to be self-congratulatory here or whatever but like. the second i could access information through this means again, the focus of my (very fucking limited!!) energy has been giving it back to my people. my life has been unquestionably, deeply shaped by tumblr users who share excerpts of theory & memoir & poetry because they were providing labor of which i was in need & incapable.

finding, selecting, transcribing, formatting, & at times contextualizing passages takes a lot of fucking time & energy, but in order for me to encounter certain concepts, experiences, & histories, it’s work somebody else had to do, because i couldn’t read 200 pages of research or anthology in order to encounter the 10 that would change my life — but posted 2 or 3 pages at a time, i could save that in my drafts to get through on a good day, & quotes that were only a couple lines i could usually read right when i encountered them.

so, in memory of the years i spent unable to access theory through anything other than excerpts & secondhand summaries,

and in anticipation of the years to come where i will live the same,

and in acceptance that the brain is a muscle, in love of we the exercise-intolerant,

to you, dear reader — whatever form & frequency & duration that reading may take, even if it’s no further than this post — i make my motherfucking covenant: the issues i discuss around pulling quotes will be about the political act of the ellipse and the ethics of transcription, not shaming people for the methods of accessing information that are available to them. as often & as long as i am able, people can ask me to explain something or summarize in plain language and i will meet them with respect, interest, & effort. if someone’s looking for information on a particular topic, identity, experience & doesn’t have the energy to find it, i’m gonna give what i have towards filtering through the bullshit for the gems.

according to our abilities. according to our needs.

and the next time somebody tells you it’s not ableist to say everyone has to read [whatever work], tell them to go put their precious ability to better use in making it more accessible.

[paigeswrld]

Heart of Ice pt. 2

Azriel x Archeron!reader

Warnings: mentions of depression, angst, longing, I think that’s it??

WC: 2.8k

A/N: you guys are all so sweet, thank you for all the love on the first part<3 that was my first time ever writing anything, and when I started writing it I had no plan, just started typing. The fact that I got so much love blew my mind! There will be a third part to this, I think that will be the final part. I decided to just tag everyone that commented..(I’m new to tumblr so idk if it’ll work) Thank you guys for the support! I know I didn’t reply, but I saw every comment and I can’t begin to express how happy it made me to see that people actually liked it??

I’m always welcome to constructive criticism<33

****************************************************

After the night that Azriel promised to help you with your powers, you two spent a lot of time together. He tried taking you to the House of Wind to train, but you refused. You couldn’t stand to be around the others, not yet anyway. So, you began training in the woods.

Today was the start of the second week of training. Like yesterday, you spent an entire hour on silly breathing exercises for the mind, claiming that if you learn to control your mind then you can control your powers. Afterwards was spent doing physical training. With your lack of muscle, even the smallest things left your legs shaking and lungs gasping for air. Luckily, your new fae body had you gaining muscle much quicker than when you were human. Once you were entirely exhausted, he had you work on controlling your powers.

You still hadn’t managed to do more than conjure up a few snowflakes, and when you did manage more than that, you had trouble controlling where it went. Right now, Azriel wanted you to focus on making small, controlled patches of ice using water already in a puddle. It’s easier to use what’s already there then create something out of thin air, he had told you.

“Why do we do this last? Shouldn’t I practice when I have my full strength?” You turn to him after unsuccessfully trying to turn the small puddle to ice.

“If you learn to harness your powers while worn out, it’ll be easier at full strength. Besides, if you're tired, then your powers will be weaker, and there will be less risk of something going terribly wrong. Now try again.” He’s leaning against the tree, a casual day of pushing you to exhaustion.

You huff and turn back to the puddle. Deep breaths Y/N. Focus. It’s just a small puddle, you can turn it to ice. You willed your mind to stay calm, to focus simply on the puddle. You dig deep inside of you, invisible hands grasping the ice inside you and pushing it out, towards the puddle. It didn’t work. You hear a crackling, and a grunt from Azriel. You turn to him, only to find his legs frozen in a chunk of ice.

Never had you seen such shock on his face, which quickly turned to annoyance as he said, "Y/N, get me out of this damn ice."

You tried so, so hard to choke back the laugh that rose in your throat, but to no avail. Soon enough, you were doubled over in laughter. The sight of Azriel, the all mighty shadowsinger, stuck in a block of ice was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing you had ever seen.

Azriel, however, looked far from amused. "Y/N, you need to focus. Melt the ice and then you can laugh all you want, but my feet are getting cold." Even though the shadowsinger tried to look angry, you could still hear the hint of amusement in his voice.

“Okay, okay fine.” You took deep breaths, calming your mind, before putting all your focus on turning the ice to water. You weren’t entirely convinced it would work, considering you couldn’t manage the puddle.

“I’d rather not lose my toes to frostbite, so if you could speed this up, that would be great.”

You sent a glare towards the male. “You know, I could just leave you here. Leave you to find your own way out of the ice.”

He smirked at you, his arms crossed, “You and I both know you’re not going to leave me. We’re miles from home and out of range of Rhys’ daemati powers. You have nowhere to go.”

Story of your life.

With a sigh, you focus again on that stupid chunk of ice. Despite being trapped in the ice, Azriel still thought it okay to taunt you, even though he relied on you to get out of his situation. What a fool. You were beginning to regret letting that stupid, arrogant, handsome male train you…

Suddenly, there was a crack of ice and the splash of water, your shoes becoming soaked.

You looked at Azriel, who was now free of the ice, everything below his knees soaked. Despite the cold of his legs, Azriel was grinning at you. Grinning at you like a madman.

“You did it! You did it Y/N!” He rushed toward you and before you could react, he threw his arms around your waist spinning you around while laughing, “I knew you could do it, I just had to get you mad enough!”

Finally, he put you down, that adorable grin still on his face. You looked at him confused, “What do you mean ‘get me mad enough’?”

“Like most people, your powers tend to react more to negative emotions, including anger. I figured if I was able to annoy you enough, you would be able to use those emotions towards changing the ice to water. I was right.” That smug smirk was back on his face.

Rolling your eyes you said to him, “Does this mean I have to make myself angry every time I want to use my powers?”

“No, but in the beginning, it might help.”

You nodded. What Azriel said made sense. Your magic did tend to act up when you were feeling a negative emotion, like anger or fear. But with that numbness still deep in your heart, it was hard to muster up any emotions, even negative ones. Your time with Azriel was the only reprieve you had from that feeling. With him, the ice caging your heart melted just the slightest bit, slowly melting more and more as the days with him went on.

Finally pulling yourself out of you thoughts, you realized Azriel must be freezing. “We should probably go, wouldn’t want you to get that frostbite you were talking about.” And with that you two were off, back to the city of Velaris.

As you lay in your bed that night, it dawned on you, that was the first time you had laughed in months.

***

As the weeks flew by, you began to master your powers. You could conjure up snow storms in small areas, trap people in ice, throw ice daggers, and that was just the surface, according to Azriel. Yet, you still couldn’t shake the freezing cold that followed you wherever you went, no matter how hot the fire or the amount of blankets you piled upon yourself.

While spending time with Azriel helped tremendously for that numbness that had been plaguing you, it wasn’t the cure. There were days, like today, where it was worse and you couldn’t bring yourself to get out of your bed. Azriel had knocked on your door twice now, but you had simply pulled the covers over your head and attempted to block out any and all light.

Darkness. Darkness was what you wanted. Darkness would welcome you with open arms, it would hold you as you fell back into that deep, dark, bottomless pit of numbing depression. You would stay there forever. If you stayed there, you wouldn’t have to face your sisters again. Or the inner circle. Or the feelings for Azriel that were becoming harder and harder to ignore. None of it would bother you, and you would rather lay here and rot than face those things head on.

To your dismay, the Shadowsinger walked in, creating a crack of light in your dark pit. “What are you still doing in bed? We were supposed to start training 20 minutes ago.”

You decided to just ignore him, pulling the cover farther over your head.

You feel a dip on the edge of the bed. “Did you stay up too late last night?”

Finally, you give him a response, “No.” In fact, you had fallen asleep right after you got home, neglecting dinner and a bath.

He sighs, “Then what’s going on? You need to talk to me.”

You try to come up with an excuse, to think of anything that will get him to leave you alone. You almost told him you had your cycle, but if that were true, he’d smell it on you.

“I’m just… not feeling well today. I think we should cancel training for the day.” Your voice came out muffled by the covers.

“Do you need to see a healer? Are you sick?”

An easy out. “Yes, I’m sick. Nothing serious, just need to rest for a day or two. Then I’ll be fine.” You stayed under the covers, not trusting that you’ll be able to keep up the lie if you look into those hazel eyes.

“When Fae get sick, it’s often very serious. We should probably get you to a healer. I’ll have Rhys get Madja.”

“No!” You sit up all of a sudden, pushing back the covers and your eyes wide, “I don’t need a healer. Please don’t call Rhys in here, or anyone for that matter. I just want to be left alone.” You pick at your nails, not having the courage to look him in the eyes.

Ever so gently, he takes your chin into his scarred hand and brings your eyes to his, “Tell me what’s really going on sweetheart. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.” Concern laced his features as he looked at you.

You look to the side, struggling to keep eye contact. “I just… I get this feeling sometimes. Where I no longer care about anything. About myself. And I just want to lay in bed forever, in the darkness. It’s like I can’t get myself to feel anything but numb, more so than usual. I don’t want to leave bed, I don’t want to talk to anyone. I used to be afraid of the dark, before the Cauldron, but ever since I was Made it’s the only thing that makes me feel safe, it’s comforting.” You could feel your cheeks turning red at your confession, you’ve never been so vulnerable with someone.

Azriel’s voice is thick with emotion as he says, “And does anything help you to get out of these moods?”

You shake your head.

“Very well.” He stands up and walks out the door, and the feeling of rejection seeps into your bones. You had scared him away. Only a couple minutes later he returns, having changed out of his leathers into a t-shirt and sweatpants. Your eyes follow him as he walks over to your bed and pulls back the covers, placing himself right next to you.

“What are you doing?”

“We will spend two hours here, in this bed, and then we are going to spend the day outside, maybe have a picnic. Is that okay with you?” He settles down into the bed and turns on his side to face you. Unable to find the words, you merely nod your head.

“Good. I know that this is hard, and that being told that it will pass isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s true and it will. Until then, I will be by your side, helping you every step of the way. But Y/N,” you meet his eyes then, and he puts a hand on your cheek, “I can’t fix you, I can only be there to support you. This is something you have to do on your own, nobody else can do it for you. Okay?”

You could almost feel the ice inside your chest melting away. Tears were starting to form in your eyes, and your voice wobbled when you spoke, “Okay.”

A small smile formed on Azriels lips. He pulled you into his arms, and to your surprise, gave you a delicate kiss on the forehead. “Go back to sleep sweetheart, we have a picnic to rest up for.”

As your eyes drift close, Azriels shadows create a veil of complete darkness around you both. It seemed at that moment, something akin to love began to push its way through the ice in your heart, and not once did he mention the chill on your skin, or how his arms seemed to be the only thing that kept it at bay.

***

It had been three months since the day Azriel comforted you in bed. He has continued to do so anytime he found you nestled under the covers, refusing to leave. Some days he would hold you while you told him all of your thoughts, exposing every corner of your wretched mind. Other days you two would stay completely silent, allowing the darkness to be your only source of comfort.

But there was that one day… that one day that Azriel told you everything. He had laid his heart bare for you to see, showing you the darkness that lurked inside. He told you of his childhood, the story behind his hands, the fears and nightmares that still haunt him. The worst one, he had told you, was that voice in his head, his fathers voice, telling him he would never be enough. Telling him nobody would ever love him, for how could somebody love a monster such as Azriel? He wiped away your tears, and you his, as you told him that anyone would be lucky to have him as their own, that they should feel honored. You couldn’t help but see the resemblance… how you both never felt like you were enough. You hugged him tighter after that, and he drifted off to sleep shortly after.

It was that day that the bond snapped for you, as you looked at Az peacefully asleep in your arms. You let out a gasp, not loud enough to wake him. You could feel it then, that golden tether linking you two together for eternity. You couldn’t help but smile at the thought of the male you’d grown to love being yours for the rest of your existence.

There was one problem, you realized. You still hadn’t forgiven your sisters, and they you, and you weren’t sure you ever could. How could you ever get over such a thing? That feeling of love quickly turned to a feeling of dread as you realized, Azriel would have to choose. These people were his family, and even if you were his mate, that didn’t mean he would pick you. You had decided then that you wouldn’t tell him. You knew that if you did, you would lose your mate forever, and you would rather love him as his friend than not get to love him at all.

***

It had been a week since the bond snapped, and you now stood skipping stones in front of a small pond as Azriel tried to convince you to attend family dinner at the House of Wind. He’s been trying to do so for the past couple weeks, claiming everyone wants to see you.

“I’ve already told you Az, it’s too much. What if something goes wrong with my powers again?” Not turning to face Azriel as you threw a stone at the water, sending it skipping across the pond.

You could almost hear the frown in his voice, “You have full control over your powers now, you can’t keep using that same excuse. They all want to see you, they miss you.”

You turned back to face him as your face scrunched up in anger, “Don’t lie to me Az. They don’t know me well enough to miss me. Those that do don’t care about me, they just want me to show up and act like everything is fine so they don’t have a guilty conscience. I won’t put myself through the pain of having to act like I’m okay just to soothe their selfish worries about their character.” You were almost chest to chest with the Shadowsinger, temper rising as you stared him down.

“If you just gave them a chance, Feyre and Elain both ask about you every time I come home, and even Nesta has asked how you are doing. What they did was wrong, but they’re trying to make things better. Shouldn’t you at least hear them out? If not for them, then for you. Give yourself that closure.” You could see the pleading in his eyes, begging you to do this. For you. For him.

You couldn’t bring yourself to say no, not as he looked at you with those big, beautiful eyes. You took a deep breath, closing your eyes before looking back up to him, “Okay. One dinner, and you have to promise that if I want to leave at any point— even if we just stepped foot through the door— you will get me out of there. Deal?”

He put his hands on your waist, pulling you even closer, “It’s a deal.” As you looked at him, triumph written all over his face, you began to wonder if maybe, for a chance at being with him, you could look past all that your sisters had done.

And so it was settled, two days from now you would be attending the Inner Circle’s family dinner.

***************************************************

Taglist:

@illyrian-dreamer @bigcreatorwombatdreamer @venussdovess @fall-myriad @mischiefmaryon @lana08 @aetherl0l @anniestar2 @nobody00sthings @goldenmagnolias @booksboysandbaklava @letspretendimnottrash @xiangping-28 @nemesis6666 @im-bili @brekkershadowsinger @feyretopia @katcandy @valeridarkness

[the-kingshound]

Warning inane ramble incoming, it’ll probably be annoying I apologize. (*_ _)人 I spent the last several days reading every post here. I managed to convince myself to start liking some (sorry about that I’m sure it was annoying to get all those notifications) I have this weird thing where I get nervous about liking older posts cuz I mean it’s been a long time and it’s unprompted so that’s weird right? It feels weird like I’m doing something wrong or I’m being annoying, I considered reblogging too but somehow that felt worse? Sorry I am not good with social rules they confuse me both on and offline Idk my brain is wrong and I’m just a nervous socially anxious snail. (＞﹏＜)

Anyways just wanted to gush about how much I love it here and I’m never leaving (´꒳`) ♡ First and foremost Yniol has a special place in my heart they will forever be my favorite bestie (*＾ω＾)人(＾ω＾*), yes I am biased as my partner is grey and though they don’t play IFs they were thrilled to learn about your character! Also your writing is just phenomenal, your fans are fun and creative, your characters give such warm and positive energy I love them so much they’re perfect, the inclusivity is such chefs kiss ( ´ з `) 🤌����✨, the angst is delicious, the fluff is so sweet and comforting, the spice is ... very blush-worthy (⁄ ⁄>⁄ ▽ ⁄<⁄ ⁄). This has been a journey I laughed, I cried, I giggled, and I blushed and I have enjoyed every bit of it from pasta discourse to Moldien cult wars to Arthur bunnies, I’ve had the most wonderful time. Now my mind is gonna be filled with Arthurian stuff for months my maladaptive daydreaming is having the time of its life I have a road trip next week and I’m so looking forward to just staring out a window for 6+hours while my Hound's just alternating daydream adventures with the cast o(≧▽≦)o. Also speaking of your amazingly wonderful, sweet, and supportive cast I have decided my (though I love them all) favorite poly pairings are Arthur/Morien and whole crew polycule I’d sell my soul for those but I 100% understand why you can’t really do that. I don’t think I have the endurance in me to code a single poly no matter how much I wish it so the fact you’re doing any let alone several is just god tier you are awe inspiring.

Alas I have rambled far far to much I wish I could be more eloquent in expressing just how much I enjoyed experiencing all of this but for now this is the best I can do (╥ω╥). Thank you for sharing your wonderful work it’s truly a gift to experience. ଘ(੭ˊ꒳​ˋ)੭✧ I wish you wealth, health, and all the best in all your creative endeavors. -🐌

No, please please do not apologize. You made my entire week <3 This ask is straight up going into the folder where i keep my motivation to write and to be just a little proud of my work, thank you so so much for sending it.

For anyone having the same thoughts about liking or reblogging old posts: please do it. When I see the notifications, get very giddy and pleased, and I hope you are enjoying the food. Liking, and especially reblogging things, even more so if you add tags and reactons, not only fills me with glee but it also reminds me of old asks that I want to reblog again for new followers. So yeah, I love it, please feel free to go on a liking/reblogging spree!

You are so relatable for the maladaptive daydreaming (this game was absolutely born out of my own mental movies), I wish I could speed up the writing and editing for the next update so you can read it while you travel but I'm afraid it's a lost cause (I have been working on things, even now, but I am currently rewriting like half of it and while it is way better it takes sooo much time and energy). Knowing my characters and story are in someone's thoughts it the best kind of reward I need. I will never likely monetise this game, so this is the thing I wish to leave people with, and I hope the characters can be comforting and keep you company <3

You have no idea how much I would love to write the full polycule... maybe one day :,) But don't lose hope for the Arthur/Morien poly yet, as I decided to cancel the Gwyar/Morien poly and now I have a potentially free slot. In any case, awww, please know that this ask made me so happy today and will be in my thoughts as tkh is in yours.

Please have a lovely day and a lovely week and also a very lovely trip! Thank you again so so much!!

[interpolanticssuperfan]

nothing natural | ken x fem!reader | part 3 | 18+ only

hii everyone! thank you SO much for the incredible kindness youve shown me and sweet words so far! and thank you all for reading. i accidentally made this chapter longer than i intended to.. oops. i hope i am doing a good job at slow burning because ive struggled with that in the past. warnings: reader goes outside to smoke a cigarette. lol. enjoy and as always feedback fuels me!!

also, i wanted to let you all know that you can listen to the playlist i have been listening to as i work on this fic which is sort of a mix of stuff that reminds me of ken and stuff i think he'd like. idk i love when authors share what they listen to, so you can check that out here.

you can also reply to my posts or message me if you want to be tagged for updates. i am posting a masterlist today for ease of access.

tags: @heyareyoulistening @itsametaphorbriansblog @alyeria

In the span of one hour, you absorbed more information and somehow became more confused the longer Ken spent investigating every inch of your apartment. You explained to him that you did not own this entire building, and that only one unit was allotted to you, but this still impressed Ken.

“Are you friends with all your neighbors?” He asked, squinting closely at the magnets on your fridge, touching them and flipping frantically through the notepad you used for grocery lists, like he needed to see more of your handwriting, more of the things you used every day. Ken murmured to himself as he took in the words: flour, one dozen eggs, croissants.

You’d reinstated yourself at your dining table with your work laptop, creating an elaborate lie for your supervisor as to why you missed the weekly team check in. My cousin’s dog was assaulted by a rabid possum and we had to take him to the emergency vet, please excuse my brief absence… I’m happy to work overtime to accommodate this inconvenience… He was only a puppy…

So on and so forth. You were confident you could schmooze your way out of a write up. Ken couldn’t stand still, couldn’t contain himself – had whizzed through the front door when you unlocked it, bouncing off the walls with questions and comments that flowed freely.

“No, I’m not friends with all my neighbors. There’s gotta be at least forty other people that live here. Are you?”

“I know all the Kens. We are not all friends. But I know all of them.”

“You’re all named Ken.”

“No. There’s Allans.”

“Right.”

Ken gleefully picked up each cookbook stacked on top of a low hanging shelf, tearing through each one and making tiny astonished faces at each new dish he was introduced to. Recipes on the sweeter side piqued his interest – cinnamon rolls, pastries, cookies. You had suspended disbelief long enough to just let Ken do this, let him touch everything even if he moved your belongings out of place. It wasn’t typical for you to have a man over, let alone one who was learning how the natural human world worked. (And had to ask you with stars in his eyes what ovens were for.)  

“These pancakes look divine. They’re putting all kinds of stuff in these. I didn’t know you could put blueberries in them. They taste good, right?” You craned your neck to get a look at the recipe he was referring to.

“If you’re a decent cook! You just have to pay attention to what you’re doing, measuring, how long things stay on the stove. It’s like that for anything you cook. I’m not great with pancakes, for some reason I always tend to burn them.”

“So what’s your favorite food?” Ken asks, setting the book down and taking to the fridge, flinging the doors wide open and surveying each salad dressing, bottle of water, every can of cold brew coffee. He ran his fingers along the labels, as if reading braille, receiving telepathic information about these products from just handling them. It was an odd sight. Everything he held looked so small in his hands.

“Er… I guess I really like sushi. But I haven’t had it in awhile. Trying to save money, make a habit of eating at home. And I just like to make simple things.”

“What’s in sushi?” Ken’s rotating a banana in his hands, picking at the stem to see what it does.

“A lot of things. Usually raw fish. Rice that sticks together to make a shape, seaweed, different kinds of sauces.” It’s making you laugh, seeing Ken size up this banana with a puzzled look on his face. “Do you want to try eating that?”

He shifts uncomfortably, placing the fruit back down on the counter like it had offended him. “We have these in Barbieland but they are not nearly as squishy. Ours are rock hard. And not brown!”

Ken was right – that banana was probably past its prime, but you hadn’t cleaned out the fridge in a few days. You’d gotten sick of refreshing your inbox waiting for a reply from your supervisor, so you got up and pulled a knife from the drawer, setting the squishy banana on a paper towel to cut it.

“Here. Try this,” you cut through the peel and divide up a small end slice into two pieces, holding one out to Ken who seems frightened by it, squares his shoulders.

“There’s something inside that peel?”

“Go ahead, just take a bite! You might like it, how else will you find out what you like?”

“But (Y/N), I’m not… hungry.”

“That’s okay. It’s a very small slice, I promise it’ll be alright, Ken.”

His eyes flash with trust at the promise you’ve just made him, so he abandons his apprehension and plops the bit into his mouth. It’s like watching a baby bird clamor for its mother’s offering of regurgitated seed and berry mix. Ken doesn’t instinctively chew, he just lets it sit in his mouth like he’s waiting for the fruit to do something. You raise up the other banana slice, catch his eye and show him how to chew, slowly, and then swallow. 

Ken nods, although his movements are strange and exaggerated, but eventually allows a smile. “That was pretty good. Mushy.” He searches your face to see if he’s given the correct answer, which is even funnier to you than him trying food for the first time.

“Did you like it? Bananas are on the sweet side.”

“Definitely. I think I really like them. Can I have the rest of it?”

“So you can taste!”

Ken grins to himself, gives you a proud stance and swaggers to the side, popping his hip out as he starts cutting up the rest of the fruit. 

“Oh, yeah. I can taste everything. Nothing I can’t taste.”

“When I go to the store next I can get you some more sweet foods. But you can’t just eat sweets. Fruit is naturally sweet, but for example, you can’t just have ice cream and brownies all the time. Your body will hate you for that.”

“And I can make you pancakes with bananas.” Ken adds, cocky as ever, already physically spreading himself out in your kitchen like he owns the place, thighs open and easy and confident as he leans back. He adjusts quickly to new situations, you’re discovering, with none of the social anxiety most people might feel.

“Let’s save the cooking and… turning on the stovetop… for when I can teach you. It can be dangerous if you’re not familiar with what to do.”

“But what if I want to surprise you, (Y/N)? You wouldn’t want to ruin it, would you?”

“I’d rather ruin the breakfast than have you accidentally catch my apartment building on fire.”

Ken considers this, starts chewing at the rest of the banana slices while still committed to looking cool as he does so. “You’re so right. So, where do you think I should sleep?”

You put some distance between the two of you, since proximity to the blonde had begun to make you feel inexplicably self conscious, and sit back down at your laptop. You hadn’t gotten this far, hadn’t decided where Ken could stay and if he was even going to stay. Stay for what? A crash course in becoming a member of society? Turn him into the perfect roommate who’s convinced you’re dating now? And how in the hell were you qualified to teach him anything about life, fulfillment, health or success when you were far from the epitome of any of those?

“I thought you said you didn’t get tired.”

“There’s something I need to tell you about,” the sudden change in Ken’s tone caught you off guard, so after taking a brief glance at your emails again and confirming nothing of substance had arrived, you folded your hands in your lap and turned your body towards him, anticipatory and patient.

“When Barbie went to the real world, almost everything about her changed. She still looked like herself, but… it was different. She told us that she got a cold.” Ken gestured to his nose, crinkling it up in dismay. “Sniffling. She had to use tissues.” 

“You’re worried about getting sick?”

“No, not… right now.” Ken tried again, attacking it from a different angle. “Barbie said the longer she was here, the more she kept changing. Barbies never got sick before. But she had to see a human doctor, and she started making her own food and eating it. Sandwiches. And her flat feet never went away.” Ken’s distress was evident, but you weren’t sure what he was getting at, couldn’t see what panicked him so much about this topic.

“I don’t understand. What are you saying, Ken?” You tried to keep yourself casual, so as not to freak him out even further; he’d already begun pacing, boots clacking against your kitchen tile with each step.

“I’m saying that the longer I stay here, the less I’m going to be like… how I was.” He sounded so unsure, on the precipice of a conclusion, fearful of what he might learn. “Don’t you get it? I’ll have to brush my hair. Call the dentist. Pay taxes. Wear deodorant. I might get a breakout on my chin, just like Barbie did.” The last part sounded like the nail in the coffin for Ken, who looked weak just recalling the memory.

“Taxes? But you don’t have a job, do you? For all the city knows, you don’t even exist.”

“That’s not the point, (Y/N)! I’ll have to get a job.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry. So… it sounds like you’ll become less like a doll?”

“Exactly. And I’ll have to do it alone.” Ken was silent, pensive as you let his confession settle. Perhaps it wasn’t the changes that he dreaded.

It was doing it without any support.

“I see. So you’ll have to sleep. You’ll have to eat. Is that scaring you?” Your intention was to minimize these facts of daily human life, shrink them down to manageable tasks, not to trivialize his valid concerns.

Ken hollowed his cheek, bit the skin in between his teeth and looked around for something to focus on while he reflected on what you asked. Noticing the cage you had set up for your guinea pig, Ken crouched in front of it without so much as a knee crack, raising his eyebrows up inquisitively.

“Who’s this?”

“I should’ve introduced you to her earlier. She’s my guinea pig, her name’s Willa. See her long hair? It’s really beautiful, but she’s pretty high maintenance.” 

Sounds like someone else in this room.

Being so close to Willa appeared to calm Ken down, and you watched his shoulders drop slightly, saw the veins in his neck depress, growing less agitated. “Does she have to brush her hair?”

The cookbooks, grocery lists, the banana had inspired Ken to ask countless questions, but meeting Willa, Ken merely watched in quiet awe.

You couldn’t help but laugh at his purported  jab. “I help her with it every day. She’s got a special little brush.”

“Hers is longer than mine. At least she gets some assistance.”

Ken sighs deeply, not taking his eyes off tiny caramel colored Willa, who has no idea what’s happening, just lounges in the paper substrate fleece and wiggles her nose up at the blonde staring her down. He rubs meager circles on his knees as if to soothe himself, then sighs again, long and dramatic. From minute to minute, Ken’s moods shift so drastically – he could be lovingly describing his newfound obsession with bananas and then just as easily pivot to jealousy over a guinea pig receiving grooming services from its owner. Decoding him was like whiplash.

“Ken?”

“I’ve been putting off thinking about this part.”

“You mean losing your doll-ness?”

“Yeah.” Ken’s voice is small, terrified, unbefitting of how he presented himself. Put together, well dressed, toned, tanned, oozing with charm. It all dissipated with his answer. 

With your foot, you push out the dining table chair adjacent to you, the scrape spooking Ken as he jumps. “Why don’t you come sit here and talk with me? You can bring Willa, she likes making friends. Just be mindful of her.” Nervous, Ken obliges, sticks a hand into her enclosure and waits for Willa to crawl over to him. 

To your shock, she comes without a moment’s hesitation, nosing at his palm and blinking at him. Willa ardently disapproved of your last boyfriend, and she never seemed to like the odd hookup you’d bring over after your explosive breakup. She’d ignore any man in the apartment for the most part, but you couldn’t believe how easy it had been for her to warm up to Ken, snuggling up to him already. 

“Wow. She normally doesn’t like strangers.” 

“Looks like she prefers your friends. She’s so soft,” Ken notes, temporarily forgetting about the needling anxiety he’d been expressing to you, and sits down. At your table Ken seemed larger than life, so full of color and irresistible personality. The most interesting irregularity you had ever entertained. He flattened the backs of his hands on the placemat and smiled down shyly at Willa, gentle like he was convinced the tiniest movement could hurt her.

(A smile that had the power to devastate – could ruin your life, could make you want to throw it all away just to know him; a smile that Ken saved specifically for a defenseless creature that nibbed at his thumbnail.) 

“Go ahead and pet her! They like that,” you encouraged Ken, denying the lump in your throat, who obeys and brings a steady forefinger to Willa’s back, warily petting her in one stunted action. Willa rustles, but doesn’t flee or make any noises contesting his presence. “She might try to run away, so just make sure you keep an eye on her.”

“I promise I will, (Y/N). How old is she?”

“She’s two and a half.” You raise your eyes to Ken, who’s entranced by the small animal and her lustrous coat, indifferent to his surroundings now that he’s connected with this hairy comrade. “How old are you?”

“I have no idea. How old are you?” 

This shouldn’t have surprised you at this point. Nothing could catch you off guard now as you went down the list, dedicating yourself wholly to figuring out what to do with this guy. Given how unadjusted he is to the world, is Ken your responsibility now? What would happen to him if he went out, unprepared, unassimilated, and tried to do things like get a job, buy something from the store? Had he ever seen currency before? 

Would you have to teach Ken math? You failed calculus. More than once. This wasn’t boding well.

“I’m twenty five. You don’t have a birthday?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s how you keep track of your age. Could you look at me for a second? Maybe I can try and guess.” Ken’s reluctant to stop looking at Willa, but does as you say, and it strikes you to admire him overtly like this, free from the guise of contrived modesty, not hiding how strongly you want to see him. He’s open, almost tranquil, those wide eyes continuously following yours, every single aspect of his demeanor softening the more you drink him in.

You couldn’t help but freeze. Pinning him. You could hear the robins chirping outside on the patio. Buses shuttling along on the road outside. Your blood pumping in your fingers, the hot curl of desire in your stomach. At once, everything felt vibrant, felt… exceptional.

Because of him.

Blonde angel, almost porcelain. Kind with your pet. Enthralled with the simplest items you owned. Eager to assist you with any task, however minor. Naively trusting. 

Blind to the ways this world could twist and chew you up. Brand new.

You wouldn’t ever be the source of pain for Ken. In that moment, searching his stark blue eyes for an answer to a question you couldn’t articulate, you wrote it on your heart, that no matter what happened – whether Ken stayed in your life, as a friend or something more – you would never hurt him.

You don’t even remember what you were trying to do with him. Mesmerized, you simply just enjoyed the sight, at a loss for words. What was there to say that wouldn’t fizzle out and die on your lips?

How are you real? (He wasn’t.)

How did you get here? (He’d waited for you.)

Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?

“(Y/N)? Did you calculate it yet? Maybe it’ll be easier if I unbutton my jacket. Willa, stay put, I need to do something,” It flew over your head, you couldn’t hear what he said, just gawked and felt your pulse thrum as Ken started to undo the top of his denim jacket. Deft fingers working, you had to be aware of how affected you looked. You couldn’t hide it.

To see more of Ken’s chest physically pained you – it hurt to look, hurt to squirm and act like it wasn’t overwhelming, burning you up. He showed off his defined, carved muscle, smooth and enticing like a joke or something. 

Willa sniffed the salt and pepper shaker, not moving even a millimeter away from Ken as he undid the last button with a muffled pop. 

Where wisps of blonde hair would’ve led down to the tip of Ken’s waistband, there was nothing, just more of that milky white skin, blameless and pure and teasing. Where ribs should have anatomically been, his chest expanded then deflated, ripples of flesh rolling, then relaxing.

All of him on display. All of him so… bare.

Well – not all of him. Not yet.

You hadn’t felt anything like this before, not ever. You were experienced – you weren’t uneducated when it came to sex, or… pleasure. Yet it was impossible that you’d felt true desire in the past, even for the man you’d fallen in love with and been betrayed by, because those memories shriveled in comparison to what you felt in this moment, seeing Ken like this, expectant and unrestrained and so fiercely magnetizing. You saw your future, you saw his body, you saw Ken’s long eyelashes fluttering and pretty like a girl’s, and it was too fucking much, louder than your heart slamming inside your chest.

You began to question if you were even real. If this was happening. Maybe you were the lifeless doll. Harsh stings peppered out along the slope of your neckline – for the second time since meeting Ken, did that really just happen today? – and you made the horrible mistake of telling him the truth just as he was starting to visibly fidget, awaiting your reply.

“(Y/N)? Is this helping? If not, I can –”

“You’re so goddamned gorgeous. Fuck.” 

“What?” Ken blinked, taken aback. He looked like he wanted to say more, to press you, but he couldn’t form a response. 

“I’m. Jesus. I am so sorry, Ken. That wasn’t appropriate at all. I’m… supposed to be helping you. I’m sorry.” Dizzyingly, you shot to your feet, dug your heels against the floor just to feel grounded, and reached over the table for your purse. 

Weren’t you the one supposed to be in charge of boundaries? Teaching Ken how to act, how not to rush things when you met someone you wanted to get to know? 

Ken had flushed a deep shade of peach, an obvious blush that mottled his neck and spread out to his clavicles, nearly reaching his shoulder tips. 

“Did I do something wrong? Can you please tell me what it was?” Ken urged, pupils the size of saucers and still dancing to follow your every move. His face was frantic, lips parted revealing more of his perfect teeth, just another element of his perfect face, everything so perfect about him, and your headache threatened to return in full force.

“No – no, you didn’t, Ken. I promise. I just need to go outside and smoke, it’s not your fault, okay? Can you please stay here with Willa? I’ll only be a minute.”

Ken clearly didn’t know what you meant, or what smoking entailed, but he stayed fused to the chair, biting at his lip again in fragile confusion and not daring to abandon Willa. Fumbling for your lighter through the fabric, you caught the unmistakable downturn of rejection swimming across his features, and the notion that you might have inadvertently let him down made you sicker than the intense wave of lust that had just crashed over you, almost crumbling you, reducing you to nothing but a star cursed to orbit a bigger, more important planet. 

[mossstep]

ghost sagau!

Part one… you’re here Part two part 3

characters: Hu Tao

tw/cws: genshin sagau, swearing, minor ooc (idk how to write hu tao)

note: I am a minor, don’t be weird in my tags please!

Waking up in teyvat was certainly not on your bingo card for this year. You had only been playing genshin seriously for about a year or so. You had played before that, but had gotten bored after the Monstadt archon quest, because of the steep ar requirements for the Liyue archon quest.

So waking up in Liyue, specifically wuwang hill was,  jarring to say the least. You had recognized the area immediately. You had basically lived in the crimson witch domain farming for your Hu Tao. Not that you had Hu Tao yet, having lost your 50/50 on each of her reruns. (Seriously! Talk about bad luck!)

As you get up you notice a vague feeling weightlessness, looking down, you noticed that you were partially see-through? What?

You had barely been able regain your composure when you here a familiar song. You recognized it anywhere, seeing as it from was one of the most iconic idles in the game. 

As the director of the Wanshengn funeral parlor sang her song, she suddenly paused, staring directly at you.

“Hello!” She says with a grin walking towards you, “you’re different from the other ghosts that hang around here,” she said with a smile.

“I-“ you opened your mouth to speak, but what were you supposed to say in this situation? ‘Yeah you’re right, I’m from a world where this is all a game and you’re a fictional character lol’ like, you can’t just say that! That’d give Hu Tao an existential crisis! 

…actually maybe it wouldn’t considering her personality, but thats besides the point. 

“…yeah,” you say, “you’re Hu Tao, correct?” You don’t need the clarification considering how much time you’ve spent on this game, but it doesn’t really matter.

Hu Tao laughed, “I’m sure you don’t need need me to confirm, your grace, considering-“

“IM SORRY?” You blurt out before thinking, “what- what the fuck did you just call me?”

“Oh” Hu Tao stared at you for a moment. “You’re the creator right? Everyone here knows we wouldn’t exist without you creating an account!”

“What?” Is the only thing you can’t think about to say, “you- oh my god?” The people here know they’re in a video game? Wait hold on- creator? The fuck?

Hu Tao stared at you for a moment, before a mischievous look washed across her face, “you should come to liyue harbor! I’m sure everyone would be happy to see you!”

“Okay?” You say, and Hu Tao ran off. “Hey- wait!” You didnt know your way to liyue harbor from here, always taking advantage of the waypoints, you go to run after her, but suddenly the world shifted. 

You would’ve felt a wave of nausea if it weren’t for your ghostly form, but one moment you’re at wuwang hill, and the next you’re standing by the waypoint overlooking Liyue harbor.

This was going to be a long day, wasn’t it?

[ghostxrose]

𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝑴𝒆 𝑳𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝑰 𝑾𝒐𝒓𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝒀𝒐𝒖 | 𝑩𝒂𝒌𝒖𝒈𝒐 𝑲𝒂𝒕𝒔𝒖𝒌𝒊 & 𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

Summary ~ You love Katsuki. You worship him like the God he is. You would do anything for him. So what is this switch that flipped in your mind when you finally have him?

Tags/Warnings ~ Fem!Psycho!Reader, yandere themes, characters are in their 20's, stalking, roofying, dubcon/noncon but sex doesnt happen, Idk what else to tag.. psycho-shit, I guess lol

Note ~ Hey y'all.. I really have no explanation for this one.. I wanted to try my hand at writing twisted/psycho stuff and this is what I churned out. Now, it is based off of a couple of songs (All Around Me by Flyleaf and God Complex by Violent Vira) so just like Nicotine, I'm sorry if it's cringe. Welp, buckle in Lovelies because Reader really said "Marbles? What marbles??"

The day you got hired on as a secretary for Dynamight’s hero agency was the single greatest day of your life. You had been following the progress of Dynamight’s career since he started to get famous back in high school. Ever since you were thirteen years old and had first seen him on your TV during the UA Sports Festival his first year, you had known that he was the one.

Every video, news article, and picture uploaded online of Dynamight, aka Katsuki Bakugo, was automatically saved to your phone or computer so that you could look at him anytime you wanted. His loud and brash personality, explosive Quirk, and frequent encounters with villains made sure to keep him within the media’s sights and it really felt like he was all around you.

“Every time I see his face.. it’s like he’s thickening the air I’m breathing but in the best way possible. Like I’m burning and not used to seeing him, not used to seeing a God. Something about him makes me feel like I’m alive.” You dazedly tried explaining to a friend one day when they had noticed your obsession taking off not long after Katsuki’s hero debut.

Of course, your friend had no idea what you were going on about and had looked at you with such concern and.. fear. You couldn’t understand how your friend didn’t see the white light that shone behind Katsuki, illuminating the sacred being so brightly that you cry sometimes. How, in your dreams, Katuski takes your outstretched hand and promises to never leave you as you shout your beliefs in him, tell him that you worship him, and make sure he knows that he owns your heart and soul.

Now, years later, you no longer speak to that friend or any of your old friends. You don’t speak to anybody, really, but you don’t care. All you need is Katsuki and now, working at his agency, you’re going to have him.

Your Quirk, when it manifested, was registered as a weak and non-threatening anesthetic gaseous-type Quirk. When activated, your Quirk came out of your mouth upon an exhale as a colorless and odorless gas that you could control the potency of if you were to train it. The only tell that your Quirk had when it was activated was your body feeling physically colder to the touch. And, luckily enough for you, you are immune to the effects of your anesthetics with the exception of hypothermia from overuse.

Weak and non-threatening; that’s what your Quirk had been.. when you were a little kid. But you’ve trained with it in secret over the years, your test subjects being any animals you could get close enough to and unsuspecting people. You have worked hard to master the levels of potency depending on the subject, the proximity you would need to be to a subject, and keeping yourself warm so as to keep from developing hypothermia when pushing the limits of your Quirk.

You spent years putting together your plan and perfecting every single detail. The final piece of your puzzled plan falling into place when you discreetly snagged the Quirk canceling cuffs from an overly flirtatious officer that was chatting you up one day at the agency. You had blown a puff of weakly potented gas their way and the fucker had spent the next 20 minutes in a dazed high too busy poorly flirting with you to realize that you had made any move to touch them at all.

Currently, it’s a little after ten at night and Katsuki has just walked into the agency to finish up his shift then change out of his hero costume. You’re sitting in your car that’s parked not far from his in the lot and getting into character. You have about twenty five to thirty minutes until Katsuki walks out of the building and to his car, the perfect amount of time.

Your forehead is resting against the top of your steering wheel, your hands clutching the sides tightly with white knuckles, and loud sobs leave your mouth. A knocking on your window startles you and your head jerks up to see who it could possibly be at this late hour. There is a watery and truly pitiful look on your face when your eyes connect with sharp crimson ones.

You reach a shaky hand out to the door handle and open it slowly so Katsuki has time to move back to allow you to open the door fully. Your car’s interior lights don’t kick on, in fact none of your car’s lights come on, when you open the door and you let out a pathetic whimper.

“What are you still doing here?” Katsuki asks, his gruff tone holding slight irritation and discomfort.

Mentally you melt over the sound of that rough voice speaking words to you. You let the sound play on loop in your mind as you answer him in the most ‘helpless-damsel-in-distress’ voice you can manage.

“I-I’m s-so s-sorry, Dynamight, S-Sir.. M-my car w-won’t s-start.. I-I’m not s-sure wh-what’s wrong with i-it..” You stutter out between sobs.

“You didn’t think to call a friend to come get ya? Or maybe a tow truck?” Katsuki questions exasperatedly and you let out a couple more sobs.

“I-I h-haven’t m-made any fr-friends, y-yet.. I-I’m s-still new a-around h-here.. Pl-plus m-my ph-phone i-is d-dead..” You cry and stutter out then put your face into your hands.

Katsuki lets out a heavy and annoyed sigh, “Okay, okay, just calm down. Fuck, alright, let me take a look. I know some shit about cars.”

Your head snaps up and you look at him with max amounts of pathetic relief, “R-really?! Th-thank y-you so much, Dynamight!”

Katsuki rolls his eyes, “Yeah, yeah, and just call me Bakugo. I’m not in my damn hero gear right now. And pop the hood.”

“S-sorry, Bakugo..” You quietly apologize, then attempt to look for the lever to pop the hood. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the emotions of Katsuki’s short fuse flicker across his face before he schools his features and takes a deep breath.

“Move. I’ll do it.” He says curtly and you move out of the way for him.

“Thank you so much, Katsuki.” You say, your voice sultry and free of the shaky patheticness it’s held the whole time.

“The fuck did you just s-” He tries to angrily question but you’ve already blown a cloud of gas his direction and the effects are almost immediate. His face changes to surprise as his body gives out and falls back into your driver’s seat, then within seconds his eyes close and his breaths deepen.

You act quickly, pulling the Quirk canceling cuffs from behind your back and securing them around his wrists. You hum a happy tune to yourself as you move his unconscious body to the back seat with minimal struggle. Luckily, you have been hardcore working out in preparation for this part of the plan. You just knew that like any other God out there, Katsuki was built and densely packed full of muscle.

Once you have him situated in the backseat, you pop open the hood, reconnect your battery, then slide into the driver’s seat and start the car. ‘I know some shit about cars too, my lovely Katsuki!’ You think with a giggle as you leave the parking lot.

You drive for a few hours, occasionally blowing mentally measured doses of anesthetic gas into the backseat to keep Katsuki asleep. Finally, you drive carefully down a dirt road that leads to an old family farmhouse that you have fond memories of. The better of those memories being the most recent ones where you came out here to prepare the house so that it may be fitting of a God such as Katsuki. Though as you half drag, half carry his unconscious body into said house, something in you begins to feel.. ungratified.

You bring Katsuki to the guest room on the first story of the house and get him onto the bed. As an extra precaution, you blow a bit more gas into his face before going back out to the car to get your bags. Quickly getting back into the house and locking the front door behind you, you bring all of your stuff to the guest room and get to work.

In hindsight, it may have been a bit excessive buying chains to keep Katsuki in place.. but what if the cuffs failed at some point, huh? If you used rope then he would be able to blast right through them. At least chains would give him more of a challenge, and if there is anything that you know for sure about Katsuki, it’s that he loves a challenge.

So you get to work chaining each of his ankles to the bed posts at the foot of the bed. Then you disconnect the chain between the wrist cuffs and attach chains to each of his wrists that connect to the headboard. You stand back to look over your work, to take in his peaceful sleeping features, and realize that maybe you should have changed him before chaining him up.. Oh well, too late now, hopefully his jeans are comfy. All that’s left to do is wait for Katsuki to wake up.

It takes a total of three and a half hours for Katuski to finally stir and begin to wake from his forced slumber. Grumbles of slurred curses fall from his mouth and his eyes flutter open as he brings a hand up to his head. You watch this whole waking process from a chair in the corner of the room, some thoughts that have accumulated over the last few hours weighing heavy in your mind.

“Where the fuck am I? The fuck’s going on?” Katsuki angrily asks, the slur of his words starting to wear off.

“You are in the presence of your biggest worshiper, Katsuki.” You answer calmly, your legs crossed and hands clasped in your lap.

“Jesus fucking christ! I’m gonna kill you, you psychotic bitch!!” Katsuki shouts and aims a hand at you in an attempt to send a blast your way while he also tries to launch himself off the bed.

When neither action is successful he stares down at himself in horror while you just let out a semi-tired sigh. He looks back up to you as horror, shock, rage, and whatever else may be bubbling under his skin fights over who gets to contort his face.

“Maybe I was your biggest worshiper.. I’ve been having some interesting thoughts and feelings since we got here.” You ponder out loud as you pick at the threads of your pants.

“You’re fucking crazy!! What the fuck have you done to my Quirk?! Do you know how fucking screwed you’re about to be when people find out you’ve.. Find out about what you’ve done?! Ever heard of fucking Tar-”

“Enough, Katsuki.” You say sharply while holding a hand up. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Why you became a hero? So you could be praised? Loved? Worshiped like the God you are? I mean, your full hero name is Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight.” You say, a now dark and twisting devotion gleaming in your eyes and a small smile on your lips.

“You have always been a God to me, Katsuki. Someone I have always found worthy of my love and devotion and worship. But finally having you here with me, something has changed..” You look down from Katsuki to stare intensely at a spot on the floor.

“You mean you finally lost your last fucking marble?!” Katsuki snarls out as he looks at the chains on his limbs.

“You can’t lose something you never truly had, my lovely Katsuki.. No no, it’s these feelings inside of me. They’re not so much conflicting as they are two sides of the same coin..” You try to explain but Katsuki is having none of it.

“You’re not making a lick of fucking sense to me, psycho bitch! Now, let me the fuck out!!” He shouts but you wave him off which aids in pissing him off more.

“My old feelings.. I’ve spent all of these years screaming to you that I wanna be your true love, the only one for you.. That I could be just who you need.. But now.. These new feelings.. I want to be the God now.” You say, your voice distant as pieces inside of you click.

You stand from your chair and Katsuki’s body tenses as he glares harshly at you and snarls. You step towards him with the body language and face of a mother who is trying to sweetly calm their child. Right as Katsuki brings his hands up, making to punch at you, you blow an invisible cloud of low dose anesthetic gas towards him.

You watch as his body relaxes and his glare softens to something more neutral-dopey. You send him just a little bit more, just to ensure your own safety, and wait for it to take effect before you climb onto the bed. You straddle his lap, your arms looping over his shoulders, and look into his clouded and dazed crimson eyes.

“Won’t you just plead for me now, Katsuki?”

“Y-yess..”

“You make me your God, Katsuki, and I’ll tear down the sky for you.”

“Y-Youu w-willl?”

“Mhmm, I’ll do it all for you for life, my love. We are meant to be, Katsuki Bakugo.”

“W-wee a-re m-eant t-to be..”

“Darling, please worship me..” You breathe against his neck, then start to kiss along it slowly.

The bottom of his jaw is as far as your lips get before something is suddenly coiling around your body and yanking you away from Katsuki. You shove down the urge to scream in favor of pulling in air so that you can exhale a large cloud of anesthetic gas but something wraps around your nose and mouth before you get the chance.

Your eyes dart to the doorway and connect with the glowing green eyes of Pro Hero Deku. Tears involuntarily begin to pour from your eyes and you’re not sure if it’s the fear, heartbreak, or lack of oxygen that’s getting to you. Your cries are muffled as Deku brings you closer to himself via the tendrils of his Blackwhip. He turns your body away from him while he slaps Quirk canceling cuffs on your wrists but you can feel his livid and burning gaze melting through your skull the whole time.

“Z-Zuku? Y-you’re here?” Katsuki questions dazedly from the bed.

It’s then that you see the ring on Katsuki’s left ring finger. It’s glowing a slowly pulsing red color and you scream at yourself for not checking him for tracking devices.

“Yes, Kacchan, I’m here. It’s okay now, Kacchan, you’re safe.” Deku says as he moves over to the bed to free Katsuki, all while Blackwhip squeezes tightly around you.

“Th-thanks, Zuku. Love you.” Katsuki murmurs to Deku but you could still hear him.

“I love you too, Kacchan, let’s go home.” Deku says as he breaks the final chain and picks up Katsuki.

“If there is any God that Kacchan worships it’s me, you psychotic bitch.” Deku darkly informs you as Blackwhip squeezes you even tighter and he drags you out of the house.

Note ~ Sooo.. did you like the little sprinkle of BKDK at the end there? Cute, right? *insert nervous laughter* Anywho, I hope that this fic does better here than it did on my AO3, Nicotine certainly has, so I have some hope. Stay tuned, My Lovelies, I think I'll start posting my newest fic soon! Oh and.. Happy Valentines Day, Lovelies, much loves to you all! <3

Divider Credit ~ @cyberangel-graphics

[butmakeitgayblog]

Does teach me clexa do anything special for Pride month?

I was JUST talking about this with Sam tonight 🤯

Because she asked if I was writing anything for Pride and I was like eh idk I'm lazy, bUt also that I'm working diligently on Professor au in the hopes it'll be done by this month (with a bit of MBFW work being done as well 👀 yes you read that correctly). And that got the convo rolling on how:

Clarke has never been to a Pride.

Ever.

Like, ever. She got married so young, and then had a baby, and spent all her younger adult life doing the whole housewife and mom thing that it just... it seemed to pass her by. Plus... she kinda felt weird? Like if she went, then Finn would've wanted to go and it would've felt weird to her to bring her cishet husband (unnecessarily, but ya know, sometimes people internalize some bad hot takes), and so she just always kinda felt like she didn't belong either (again, very wrong. So wrong.)

But of course Lexa's been to so many that she's probably accidentally inhaled enough rainbow colored glitter that her internal organs look like a disco ball 🥴

So after everything in the fic is said and done, I think Lexa eventually taking Clarke to her first Pride would be An Experience. Granted they're in their 40s so the days of doing body shots off lingerie clad drag queens are squarely in the rearview mirror, but everything else? Getting to do the silly face paint and soldier through the heat of a sea of bodies and a 1000 goddamn suns, Clarke getting to meet other bi women and make friends with other queer moms while Lexa quietly watches on the sidelines with her big "I'm very in love with that excited little dork" hearteyes. A BARELY-legal-to-drink Madi tagging along and doing shots with an ease that both impresses and disappoints Clarke down to her bones. All three of them buying entirely too many tchotchkes and so on from venders because, "Yes Lexa 😑 we absolutely do need matching lesbian and bi wife mugs. We're helping the community."

[lily-alphonse]

trying out the ask game if u pls 🕯️🥤🪐🥑

This is my best friend yall idk why she's asking these things like she doesnt know

🕯️ ⇢ on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy editing? why is that?

It's awful. 1. Every once in a while I have a stroke of genius while editing but usually it's torture and feels unproductive but is so unfortunately necessary for me (unlike some other soupy creatures)

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

I have 2 fics I need to shout out, both are Explicit NSFW.

Generally the fic I say is my go-to favorite is The Wind That Cuts The Night by thespectaclesofthor, but it's not for everyone. It's BDSM, hatefucking, a lot to turn people away but it really changed how I approached canon characterizations and the kind of stories we can tell with them. I am a slow reader but I spent 3 days doing nothing but reading this I was so engrossed. It's Stardew Valley Alex x Elliott

Another all-time favorite is JINGI by my friend Goldtinted. Im not even in this fandom (My Hero) but I love Goldtinted's writing style it's so interesting to me how they weave in and out of scenes using poetic prose. Such an inspiring and hot fic I reread it all the time. It's a yakuza AU, Chisaki Kai / Dabi | Todoroki Touya

🪐 ⇢ name three good things going on in your life right now

My writinggg Im writing so much and it is better than it has ever been I am so close to writing to publish I can taste it

While its not really a thing going on in my life necessarily I feel like I have to mention my friends. Idk how I got here because I can be a pain but finding people who like me has been wildly gamechanging lol

Fall is coming :D about to not DIE in the summer heat

🥑 ⇢ you accidentally killed somebody, which mutual(s) do you text for help?

Obviously you @writing-for-soup and @softwarecorruption-exe the ride-or-dies, but honestly I am surrounded by amazing people I don't doubt would be there for me if I needed them. I could list several more but Im not trying to tag the whole friends list lol

If you want to join the fun, here is the original ask game post!

If you are reading this and you like Cyberpunk, RDR2 or Stardew Valley go check out Soup's work on AO3 she's a better writer than I am

[wikiangela]

tease tidbit tuesday💀

tagged by @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @daffi-990 @fortheloveofbuddie @disasterbuckdiaz @hoodie-buck 💖

hi! so, yesterday I randomly opened the doc with the buddie death cast au - which is a fic I started writing last summer on vacation and never got back to it but then made progress lol it's gonna be MCD, which i know is not everyone's thing so feel free to ignore this 🤣 it's basically buddie in the universe of the "they both die at the end"/"the first to die at the end" books so it's gonna be sad, sorry lol (I never even read mcd, idk why i'm writing this but this idea just wants to be written i guess haha) gotta put this weird mood I've been in lately to good use and finally write this 🤣 not sure if I'm happy with this snippet, but it all needs editing, the first two snippets were written on my phone and haven't been edited yet lol

I posted two snippets so far, gonna link them both snippet 1 | snippet 2

___

“Is all of this clear, Eddie?” she asks in the end.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” he says shortly. He should've just hung up immediately. Or cancel this stupid subscription after Shannon died. Sometimes he wonders if maybe people who get the calls and coincidentally get into accidents, for example, just give up and refuse to fight because they think it’s their time. Not like Shannon could do much, her injuries were too severe when they got there, but the point stands. Maybe they get more reckless, thinking it doesn’t matter anyway. 

There’s a short pause on the line, but then Jane speaks up again, her tone softer, more sympathy seeping through.

“I know it’s not easy to accept, if you’d like some help with that, on out website you can find therapists and grief counselors specializing in-”

“Listen.” Eddie interrupts. He’s spent enough time in therapy. He’s not doing it on his supposedly last day. “I know it’s all bullshit. I don’t care. You said what you had to say, I listened, for whatever reason.” he rolls his eyes. He really should’ve hung up, or not answered at all. “Is this conversation over yet?” he asks and is met with another moment of silence. She’s probably wondering what everyone else always is: why is he even spending money on this if he doesn’t believe. He has an answer ready to go, but that’s not what she asks.

“Can I ask you a question?” she says quieter, whispering, probably not allowed to go too much off-script. 

“Sure, why not.” he shrugs. He’s wide awake now, anyway, he’s not in a hurry. Not like he’s dying anytime soon.

“If it was your last day, how would you spend it? You don’t have to answer, just think about it.” she adds quickly, her tone much softer and gentler now. Eddie’s mind immediately supplies a picture of Christopher and Buck, just a casual hang-out, like usual, maybe going to the movies, or the aquarium, or the planetarium, something fun for his kid. And later a gathering with the rest of their family, maybe a barbecue at Bobby and Athena’s, with Maddie and Chim, and Hen and Karen, all their kids, just everyone having fun together. Yeah, that’d be a perfect day. “There’s no harm in spending today just like this, if possible. Just in case.” Jane adds, still whispering. He doesn’t tell her that’s more or less his plan, anyway, for the evening after his 12-hour shift. During which nothing will happen to him, because Death-Cast doesn’t know shit. “Well, lastly, Eddie,” Jane’s voice is back at normal-volume, tone strictly professional but sympathetic, as she recites the end of her script, “on behalf of everyone here at Death-Cast, we’re so sorry to lose you. Live this day to the fullest.”

Eddie hangs up without a word.

___

no pressure tags: @elvensorceress @gaydiaz @diazass @thebravebitch @silentxxsoul @shortsighted-owl @eddiebabygirldiaz @arthursdent @911onabc @housewifebuck @rogerzsteven @watchyourbuck @underwater-ninja-13 @eowon @loserdiaz @evanbegins @ladydorian05 @wildlife4life @nmcggg @diazpatcher @lover-of-mine @king-buckley @monsterrae1 @thewolvesof1998 @puppyboybuckley @weewootruck @buckaroosheart @spagheddiediaz @steadfastsaturnsrings @exhuastedpigeon @jesuisici33 @theotherbuckley @rainbow-nerdss @malewifediaz @giddyupbuck @diazsdimples @jeeyuns @epicbuddieficrecs @pirrusstuff @honestlydarkprincess @hippolotamus @spotsandsocks

[rhondafromhr]

So I started writing that Max and Steph roleswap AU and I wanted to post this little snippet I have so far and hear everyone’s thoughts because I’m not 100% happy with it yet…idk i feel like it might be too exposition heavy if that makes sense?? Like the backstory is important but idk I feel like I just kind of dumped it and maybe could weave it throughout the story better?? Lmk if you have any thoughts :)

Also Max and Richie’s relationship is going to be platonic in this (bc once again I’m weak for aroace Richie and the power of friendship being treated with the same narrative weight as romantic relationships).

Finally shoutout to tumblr user @idk-imrambling-idk who said in the tags of the original post that Max and Steph give sibling vibes in this au because I was like you know what, I love that, yes they do!! And it really inspired their dynamic and relationship in this

Here it is :)

Stephanie learned what it meant to be powerless at the ripe old age of nine. She sat next to her father in the crowd, watching the blindingly bright spotlight shine down upon her mother and beaming with pride as she was crowned Honey Queen. The applause was uproarious, every last townsperson’s gaze fixed solely on her. She’d always known her mom was the sweetest woman in Hatchetfield, but now it was official. Now she had the beautiful, ornate crown upon her head to prove it. As her mother was whisked away to what she assumed was some sort of super special, secret ceremony, her father insisted over her protests that no, they couldn’t go with her, she needed to go home and get to bed. It was a school night, after all, and she’d see her mother soon enough. She didn’t. Her mother never came home that night and with each passing day, Stephanie’s hope that she ever would dwindled even further.

Every woman who’s ever won that pageant has left Hatchetfield and never looked back, but back then, she didn’t know that. She just knew that one day, her mom was there to fawn over her drawings and point out all the little details she liked and put her spelling test up on the fridge and say how proud she was that Steph worked so hard and got more words right than last time and the next day, she wasn’t and there was nothing Stephanie could do about it. She wondered what she did wrong that her mom was so eager to get away from her. To this day, Stephanie doesn’t know where she ended up. She went through a brief phase where she spent hours a day fervently researching online and following every crumb of information she could find, desperate for any answers, but the very few flimsy leads she was able to find turned out to be dead ends. Not long after her twelfth birthday, Solomon told her she really ought to stop digging, because she wasn’t going to find the answers she was looking for and if she did, she wouldn’t be able to handle them. She rolled her eyes at his usual weird, cryptic nonsense, but for once, she didn’t argue with him. She never did figure out how he knew what she was doing. She only did her sleuthing when she was home alone and always made sure to use incognito mode.

As she got older, the list of things she had to do and wasn’t allowed to do and people she couldn’t hang out with grew exponentially. Everything always came back to the next election and how her behavior might reflect on her father. There was to be no hanging out with the smoke club kids, because he didn’t want the public thinking she was some kind of drug fiend (as if they were doing actual drugs. They were seventh graders. They may have upgraded to the real stuff now, but back then, Stephanie’s confident their vices of choice were, in fact, cloves and oregano, whether or not they were aware of it). If there was an option for honors or AP in a given subject, she had to take it, regardless of her interest or aptitude. He didn’t want her looking like some kind of slacker. Ironically, she credits that with how she became one. It was embarrassing trying so hard, only to still struggle to understand the material and receive abysmal grades in return, but it was equally embarrassing to admit to this and ask for help, so she figured the easiest route would be to stop trying. She made sure to keep her grades just barely high enough to keep her dad off of her case, but refused to do anything more. These days, she doesn’t have to sweat it. If she’s really in a pinch, she can just threaten some nerd into doing her homework for her.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the summer before Freshman year, one Greg Jägerman followed in his wife’s footsteps and vanished without a trace. That in itself was nothing out of the ordinary, but it did raise the question of what to do with the son he left behind. Solomon wasn’t doing so hot in the polls and Miss Tessburger decided that taking in the guy’s now-orphaned kid would make Solomon look kind and charitable, two of the last descriptors most voters would apply to him. Of course, nobody asked Steph her opinion. She was just stuck with this annoying pseudo-adopted brother one day and expected to be cool with it. Well, more accurately, nobody cared whether she was cool with it or not. The worst part was that he totally bought into this stupid fake family thing. He still won’t stop calling her sis.

What really infuriates her is that he gets the freedom she’s long been denied. Solomon truly couldn't care less what he does as long as he stays out of major trouble, doesn’t completely flunk his classes and shows up for all the public appearances and family photo ops. To this day, he still calls Solomon Dad as if he has any right to, as if Solomon sees him as anything more than an unfortunate consequence of a bold PR stunt, as if he’s had to put up with a fraction of what Stephanie’s endured from him. Solomon is not his dad and he is not a Lauter, no matter how many people mistakenly call him that. Solomon even praised him once. He came home from his latest lacrosse match and proudly said that they’d creamed Sycamore or whoever. Solomon, nose-deep in the latest poll and survey results Miss Tessburger had sent him, absently said, “that’s nice, son,” and waved him off. Sure, it was insincere. Sure, it was dismissive. But it was still far more than Stephanie had gotten since she was literally nine years old and more than she’s gotten since. It made her blood boil. She’d been jumping through hoops like some kind of goddamn show dog for her father for years and never got so much as one half-hearted compliment. It was just expected of her.

Still, she continued to jump through those hoops. It wasn’t like she had much of a choice and at this point, it was all she really knew, anyway. Unsurprisingly, Solomon still demanded more and just before she went into high school, he decided she was going to do sports. If there’s one defining trait that all of his constituents in town share, it’s their bizarre obsession with high school football, so this was a surefire way to impress them.

“Why do I have to?” she’d protested “Max already plays volleyball and lacrosse, doesn’t that satisfy the sports kid requirement?”

“Stephanie, I’d like to have an intelligent conversation with you. In other words, shut up. You know as well as I do that nobody cares about either of those sports. Clivesdale doesn’t even have a lacrosse or volleyball team and beating them is all these simple-minded hicks seem to care about. If you refuse to bring up your mediocre grades or put your time into any useful extracurriculars or bettering yourself in any way, the least you can do is join the cheer squad. How hard can it be to jump around and do some silly little chants?”

Max was there, too. Of course he was. On the increasingly rare occasions where Solomon was actually home, he was sure to be right there at his side, telling him about his day as if he fucking cared. Calling him Dad as if he had any fucking right to. She didn’t miss the way his face fell ever so slightly when Solomon said that nobody cared about his stupid sports and she couldn’t help but feel smug about it.

“Ha, yeah,” she said with a smirk “volleyball and lacrosse are dumb.”

The brief satisfaction was quickly overshadowed by a more pressing matter. Hell no, she was not going to join cheer. Pep, enthusiasm and silly dance routines aren’t really her style. She wasn’t sure she could do it if she wanted to and she really, really didn’t.

“Well, figure it out,” Solomon told her, looking at her with the usual disdain “it’s either that or football.” He may have said it mockingly, but she decided to take it as a challenge. She breached her own “no putting in more effort than necessary” policy and spent hours a day on the empty football field practicing plays. She’d usually drag Max along with her if he didn’t have practice for whichever one of his unimportant non-sports was in season.

“Hey,” he said during one of these practice sessions as he threw an admittedly decent spiral, his signature dumb, goofy grin on his face “I’ve been thinking about trying out, too. It might be kinda fun to be on the team together.”

She scowled. “No,” was her only response “just shut up and throw the ball, okay?” This was going to be her thing, damnit. He wasn’t going to invade it like he did everything else in her life. He did as she asked and never brought it up again.

She spent hours more at the gym, doing hard cardio until she was as sweat-soaked as that annoying weeb kid she saw around school sometimes and pushing herself to her limits strength training. It all paid off when the day of tryouts arrived and she blew everyone away with her athletic prowess, earning the position of star quarterback. That alone would have been great publicity and the fact that she was a freshman and the first girl ever to make the team in any position were the cherry on top. It spoke volumes that Solomon didn’t have anything negative to say, although he didn’t offer any praise, either.

If nobody could stand up to her before, they really couldn’t now. She wasn’t just the mayor’s daughter anymore. She was the star football player and with every victory she helped them score, especially against Clivesdale, the teachers and the principal became less and less likely to discipline her if anyone complained of her so-called bullying. It wasn’t as if they could do much before, but now they didn’t even care to try. With that, her iron grip over the school was secured and she’s thoroughly enjoyed it ever since. She still can’t do anything about her mom walking away or her dad treating her like some kind of accessory whose only use is to make him look good to potential voters or her stupid not-brother encroaching on her life and taking everything that’s rightfully hers, but she can maintain the delicate balance that is the high school hierarchy she’s created and bring order to Hatchetfield High. Really, she’s doing them all a favor. They don’t know what’s good for them and without her, it would descend into chaos.

Max slides into his seat in AP Calc with seconds to spare before the bell rings. He’s slammed two of those vile tasting sugar free energy drinks and he’s praying they’ll kick in soon.

“Alright, we’re going to have a pop quiz today. Hope you’ve been hitting the books, Mr. Lauter,” Miss Mulberry says. He doesn’t bother correcting her. Maybe if he could wear his letterman that has “Jägerman” embroidered on it, people wouldn’t make that mistake so often, but he’s not allowed to. The letterman jacket is Steph’s signature look. Not even Kyle and Jason get to wear theirs unless it’s a game day and they’re her closest friends. Max doesn’t even get that privilege, so he settled for a navy blue flannel with a tiny nighthawk patch poorly sewn into the pocket and his letterman hangs untouched in his closet. Sometimes, he doesn’t mind being called Max Lauter, even if it sounds a little off. Sometimes, he wants to believe that’s what he is. Other times, he wishes people would get it right. That’s the least of his worries right now, though. His chest feels so, so tight and a wave of nausea overtakes him and makes him wonder if ingesting so much caffeine and chemicals was a wise idea. He’s screwed. He can barely pass a test in this class when he has time to prepare and sacrifices several nights’ worth of sleep to study. He shouldn’t even be here. He knows he’s kind of dumb. Stephanie gleefully reminds him on a regular basis. Solomon doesn’t vocalize it, but sometimes Max will say something to him and he’ll just give him this look as if he’s just uttered the stupidest, most incomprehensible words ever spoken, then shake his head and go back to ignoring him. He’s always had a lot of trouble in most subjects, but math is by far the worst. Realistically, remedial algebra would be more his speed, but it wouldn’t be very becoming of a sort-of Lauter. Solomon took him in when he had nowhere else to go. He’s been a lot nicer to him than his own father ever was. He figured the least he could do is make him proud, but so far, that plan has backfired tremendously. Nobody’s going to be impressed with the D plus that he’s clinging to for dear life and can still feel slipping through his grasp.

He glances to his left and sees his neighbor calmly reach into his backpack and pull out his pen and calculator. The sheen of sweat on his forehead would suggest that he’s almost as nervous as Max is, but his demeanor radiates confidence and excitement. Max wonders why that guy wears so many layers if he’s always so sweaty. They’ve been in classes together since the first grade, but they’ve hardly spoken two words to each other. Max has, however, watched his hand eagerly shoot up whenever Miss Mulberry asks a question. He has watched him answer every equation with ease, solving them without fail, even when it all looks like gibberish to Max. If anyone can help Max out of this jam, it’s this guy. He has no real reason to, but Max supposes it can’t hurt to ask. What’s the worst that could happen?

“Hey,” he whispers “Shitlips, right?” He immediately winces. Fuck, he did not mean to say that. That’s how Steph and her friends always refer to him and he let it slip without thinking. Richie turns to glare at Max, clearly not amused.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly “I meant Lipschitz. Richie Lipschitz, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, still a little irritated “what is it? We’re about to take a test.”

“It’s just that, uh, we’ve been in school together for, like, ages and I just realized I’ve never introduced myself. I’m Max.”

“Yeah, I know, Max Jägerman. The mayor’s kid. Stephanie Lauter’s brother.”

“She doesn’t like me reminding people, but yeah,” Max replies with a self-deprecating chuckle “I feel kinda bad now. I called you Shitlips and you got my name right on the first try. A lot of people think it’s Lauter.”

This gets Richie to crack a faint smile. “Yeah, I always remembered it because it sounds like Eren Yeager.”

“So, you ready for this test?” says Max with a sheepish grin “‘Cause I’m really, really not. Like, nothing in this class makes even a little bit of sense to me. I’m one hundred percent going to fail. Unless you help a bro out.”

“Oh, we’re bros now?” Richie says with a raised eyebrow.

“Sure,” Max says “we’re Nighthawks, right? We gotta stick together.”

“But won’t we get in trouble?”

“Not if we don’t get caught,” Max says “rules were made to be broken.”

“Fine,” says Richie “I’m willing to tilt my paper slightly so you can see it better. Try to keep up, though, I’m not waiting to turn in my test so you can finish copying. That’ll look suspicious.” That much is true. Richie’s always the first person to turn in his test in this class, usually by a substantial amount of time. “And don’t be super obvious about it,” he adds.

“Really?” Max says, his face lighting up in a way that he rarely allows it to “thanks, dude, I owe you one!”

[tequila-solar-storm]

Hello author!! Thx for replying!! I hope life has been treating you alright! Work kicked my butt and my brain is fried lol

but reading your writing had been the highlight of my day!! Will give you a proper response when my braincell allows it

Here's a lil question for ya if you'd like to answer: do you think Ajaw will be satisfied if, after working so long with Kinich, he finally obtains his body??

—🌻

Thank you so much ❤️ I hope things get more manageable on your side too!! Take as much time as you need. Your health always comes first!

As for your question… oof, that’s tricky! It can go SO many different ways!

Here’s two main ways that I can picture it playing out! Warning for angst, character death and spoilers for Kinich’s Character Story 1!

Let’s assume that Kinich, like all his ‘Malipo’ forebears, meets his end relatively young and in probably a grisly fashion. Whatever happens, when Ajaw takes over, he’ll first complete whatever task Kinich failed to see to the end. Once that’s done, Ajaw’s free to do whatever he wishes!

The realistic answer is that Ajaw won’t feel as satisfied as he initially expects to be, but he won’t be too bothered either. He’s a dragon that lived for aeons. He knows humans don’t live for long and Kinich is no different. Sure, it’s a little lonely without him around, but Ajaw’s used to solitude. He’d been stuck in a ruin, alone, for who knew how long before Kinich fished him out after all.

Contrary to his threat to Kinich, Ajaw won’t go out of his way to ruin Kinich’s reputation after taking over. He’ll make it pretty clear that Kinich is dead, and it’s Ajaw piloting the vessel now. So people can mourn all they wish. He doesn’t care for the vitriol they direct at him, or the grief that looms over Kinich’s loved ones. Their contract was fulfilled. That’s all that matters. It was always going to end one way or nothing.

If there’s ever a memorial put up for Kinich, he’ll still pay his respects on occasion. Otherwise, he’ll do whatever he pleases.

That’s what I can foresee happening in the most realistic scenario. But we’re not here for realism!!! Here’s the more drama-filled answer I like!!

Would he be satisfied? Absolutely! He finally got his promised vessel after so long! Somehow, against all odds, the persistent roach finally kicked the bucket! Ajaw would spend a lot of time enjoying his new body.

But… he doesn’t feel as satisfied as he wants to. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t shake the persistent loneliness that starts to plague him. He didn’t realise it, but he’d gotten used to the banter he had with Kinich. Tagging along on camping trips with Kinich’s friends. Fighting alongside the infuriating man. As much as he pretends otherwise, those days were golden.

Suddenly so much more beautiful with Kinich out of the picture.

Seeing Kinich’s loved ones, especially Mualani and Kachina’s, reactions to his demise hit surprisingly hard. Watching them mourn was shockingly suffocating (If Ajaw had a hand in Kinich’s death, they’ll be, through tears, demanding to know if all the time he spent with Kinich meant nothing. He’ll refuse to admit it but the question hurt. A lot).

In a way, just like how Kinich’s received the gift of freedom—and solitude—on his seventh birthday, Ajaw is the same. By losing Kinich, he gained the freedom to do whatever he pleased. But it came at the price of losing perhaps the only person in the world who genuinely, truly did love him, despite all their mishaps.

It’ll take Ajaw a long, long time to figure that out, and an even longer time to accept it. But it’s all far too late.

(Now I’m sad 😭 A bonus happy ending is Kinich actually fell during the Night Warden Wars, so after some personal soul searching, Ajaw decides to do some literal soul searching and hunt down Kinich in the Night Kingdom. He gets there through dragon magic or something idk. Lo, the persistent roach is still wandering about and hasn’t lost his mind! He gets rescued somehow, don’t ask me for details, and gets his body back! His relationship with Ajaw gets better somewhat, and though the bickering never lessens, they’re now genuine partners whose partnership will last till Kinich perishes at the ripe old age of 100! Peacefully! In bed! Surrounded by his friends and family which includes his ten grandkids or something! Yaaaaay!!)

[the-guilty-writer]

hi! i love what you’ve written so far !! would it be possible to do reid x daughter reader where she is in the process of getting an autism diagnosis & reid just is supportive and helpful (maybe because he understands what it’s like?) this is self indulgent haha, just need some support as a person who rlly wants to get tested but is told that it’s just severe anxiety & eating stuff

Thank you for the compliment and the request! They are both highly appreciated!!!

Okay so I had wayyyyyy too many ideas about how to go about this and then when I finally decided on an idea the outline turned into this list. I'm still planning on writing this as a one-shot (or maybe a series but idk yet) but enjoy this headcanon-ish list for now.

(and yes I did a happy stim when I got this request because it hits real close to home)

You had always been told it was anxiety.

Spencer had always been told it was anxiety.

So why would either of you have a reason to believe otherwise? 

Of course there were always little things that didn’t quite add up to anxiety.

Like how when you were little it took a long time for you to be comfortable with someone other than Spencer holding you.

It took you about 4 months to get comfortable with Derek and six months for JJ.

Emily, Hotch, and Rossi were perfectly okay with the fact that you didn’t seem to like any of them.

Hotch was only secretly a little offended because he is a dad he should be good with kids.

The only way Penelope eventually got to hold you was because she wore a headband with a stuffed kitten on it one day and after you had stared at it for an hour straight Spencer finally handed you over to her.

And Penelope thought you wanted to wear the headband so she put it on your head and you immediately got upset, but once she put it back on her head everything was fine and you spent another hour petting it which Penelope was all too happy about because she had been trying to hold you for years.

But all that was just anxiety and being weary of people… right?

When you started elementary school you had trouble adjusting for the first week but after that everything seemed fine (because masking).

And everyone assumed that you had friends because you got invited to your classmates' birthday parties (even though it's required in elementary school to invite everyone nowadays).

The first one was a “girls only” party so Spencer let JJ take you.

And you participated in the crafts and the tea party portion but you DID NOT want to wear the princess dress or wear a tiara (which JJ just assumed was because you were surrounded by men- Spencer was your only parent, your other favorite adult was Derek, even though Henry was a year older than you he was your best friend- but it was actually because of the weird tag in the dress and the combs on the tiara hurt your head).

Your teachers just all thought that you were mature for your age- choosing to read during recess and going overboard on projects (because chances are school was your first special interest).

Once you were a pre-teen/teen certain things got better but certain things got worse.

You had always been fickle about your food (dino nuggets for the win) but suddenly you were even more weird about it.

Spencer was really worried it was a body image issue when in reality you were just having to put triple the effort into masking now that you were older and some days you simply didn’t have the energy to eat.

But the doctors said the lack of appetite was hormone changes.

However, not everything was bad because this was also around the same time you started to really like things. 

Like… really, really like things.

And of course Spencer was the kind of dad that would happily let you talk about your obsessions for hours and buy you books to read on your favorite topics.

If you had a liking for something like a boyband he wouldn’t understand it, but that was where Penelope would step in.

Your grades were good because neurodivergence can cause someone to have people pleasing tendencies in order to be socially accepted or avoid conflict you were smart and worked hard.

But the pressure to be socially accepted at school as you got older started to become way too much.

At first you were able to hide how bad it was by breaking down in your room quietly or in the corner of the school library that nobody used.

Then the breakdowns went from once every few weeks to every week to every day.

And at that point you couldn’t hold it in anymore.

You stepped into the apartment one day after school and had a full-blown meltdown.

And Spencer just knew what to do.

He turned off every light in the apartment and covered every window. Anything he could possibly do to reduce the amount of noise in the room he did. He put his weighted blanket beside you just in case you wanted it. If you started any self-destructive behaviors he knew grabbing you would only make it worse so he gently talked you through it instead.

When it was finally over and you apologized he told you over and over again that you had nothing to be sorry about.

And then the exhaustion hit you so hard that you fell asleep and didn’t even hear your alarm for school the next morning.

Spencer called both of you in sick.

The recovery took days.

But your dad was there for you the entire time.

All you would could eat was dino chicken nuggets and that was 100% okay with him.

At this point Spencer was certain this wasn’t anxiety so he dove into research.

His sheer shock when he came across an article on autism presentation in girls and everything just made sense.

Like how could he have not known this before?

Then he saw how little information there actually was on the topic and how little researchers care because society would much rather continue believing that women are hysterical than to actually accommodate people.

So he had you get tested by someone who actually knew what they were doing instead of an old white-man still living in the dark ages.

And when you were officially diagnosed with autism it was a relief because now you could actually get the accommodations you needed to help make life more accessible to you.

Spencer had also read about how unmasking and allowing yourself to use accommodations was a process.

So instead of asking you what you needed (because he knew you would say that you didn’t need anything) he just came home one day with two sets of noise canceling headphones.

“Dad, what is this?” “Next week they’re starting night construction on the building across the street. It’s going to be loud.”

There was never going to be any construction.

You went from wearing your headphones at night to holding them sometimes on the metro to having them in your school backpack.

Then one day he came home with his old rubix cube after “tidying up his desk” and he taught you the easy method of how to solve it.

You carried it around everywhere with you, even if it was hidden.

And slowly, but surely you began to unmask just a little bit at a time.

One day he brought home a documentary on your special interest and you got so excited you let yourself stim for about three seconds before unconsciously stopping because of social conditioning, but those three seconds of freedom to be yourself felt so good.

You started with the rubix cube in public because that was the least attention grabbing of everything.

Then you began wearing your headphones on the metro.

And slowly but surely you started to wear them in the halls at school.

Soon enough there was a pocket in your backpack with a variety of different stim toys and sensory tools so everything you needed was always within reach.

You and Spencer both knew that your life would never be easy.

But this life was so much better than pretending to be someone you weren't.