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slowdivinqs · 27 days ago

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Presentiment

Stalker! Joel Miller x f!reader ( 18+ MDNI )

summary : no one is truly alone in the world, especially not you.

w/c : 12K

warnings : no use of y/n, horror themes and elements DDDNE, stalker behavior, feelings of isolation and depression, existential crisis? Kidnapping, cynical thoughts about life described, abuse, violence against the reader by Joel, old!Joel. slowburn-ish. dub-con?. unprotected PinV. Oral f!receiving. Manhandling. Hunter / prey kink. Twisted daddy kink but no use of the word 'daddy'. Joel popping a viagra. VERY Large age gap ( 35+ years ) . Manipulation. Obsession. Reader’s mother is described as a drug addict. Shitty men, harassment and pervertedness from a co-worker. Murder / death of side characters. Stockholm syndrome. Reader is toxic too. Religious imagery. Can be pixel or pedro Joel. The reader is implied as being thinner due to life long poverty, but her body type is not described or stated.

a/n : This was made for @pedgito's writing challenge and kind of ran away from me. It was such a blast, I've never tried horror or a specifically dark fic and it was sm fun! I’m sure the characters I wrote will stick with me forever. I sat with this fic for a long time before posting, and it's the longest thing I've ever written!! Not sure how I feel about it still. Thank you for letting me participate! Happy birthday ♡

if you don’t like dark themes, listen to the warnings and don’t read the fic.

masterlist

—— ☓ ——

Something feels wrong before your eyes have had the chance to open – a kind of warning, an omen, baked into the morning light stabbing your iris through moth-eaten curtains.

It was the way your body ached as you tried to sit up, stomach screaming for food you just don’t have. Your mother hasn’t been home for a week and you know she’s either run off with some incest-bred asshole who’s promised her a beer or she’s passed out in a crack-house miles away.

Your shift at the diner starts in thirty minutes.

The men that pass through this town are all the same.

Truck drivers – men who think all women in the world are there to satisfy their needs. Iagos of the world, the dark underbelly.

The men that stay in this town are not dissimilar, your days a monotonous blur of wondering when something better will drop into your desperate palms.

There is one man who feels like your only friend in the world.

Standing at a whopping five foot seven, and still kicking up the diner’s jukebox at eighty three, he makes sun shine out from your soul. You can confidently say that Jerry is the best.

He usually sits with you the entire day at work, and makes sure to fill your empty time by teaching you to dance to El Toro Rabón, and La Bamba. His rich hands, littered with wrinkles yet full of life, hold yours while he makes you laugh. Clapping as you finish off with an animated twirl and curtsy.

Jason usually eyes you from the kitchen, rolling his sleazy eyes at the sight of you having so much fun with your elderly best friend. Going back to making greasy burgers and puffing on a cigarette that’s gotten him in trouble with the owner before.

You never agreed with the sentiment that old people were cute until you met Jerry and his late wife during your first shift at the diner : fourteen years old and composed of an exhaustion that was ill fitting for someone so young. He’d been your first ever customer, seventy seven and still wearing that cowboy hat of his.

The first thing you noticed about him was his mustache, the way he uses wax to curve up the tight white curls into points, how it covered his top lip when he spoke, making him look like a cartoon character – his oak brown eyes that has gotten increasingly red and yellow around the corners as he’s gotten older. The way his warm skin has developed patches of darkness, yet he still looks the exact same as the photo of him he showed you from thirty years ago : fresh off his racing horse in Mexico, holding the same cowboy hat over his chest that he adorns now, smiling brightly. He kept his hair looser back then, his ringlets looked shiny even in those black and white photographs.

He calls you bumblebee, and you think he’s the first person that’s ever loved you – and he’s the first person you’ve ever loved. He’s your sunshine, a tether to the world past your 18 hour work day.

Every morning he’s seated in the diner at 8:30 AM with a joke to tell you, stories of his racing days, growing up in Cuajinicuilapa, his time travelling around South America before settling down in this small town near Wyoming. He tells you of his late brother, his views of the world and the people he’s met. He talks of humanity and how love is what is most important in life.

You feed off of the stories he tells you : meeting people from all walks of life under the pretense of coffee, sitting around the same food stand, chatting to strangers who would play guitar on the side of the street for no other purpose than passion.

You feel the desire for this ideal world thrum in your veins vicariously.

He used to come in with his wife Dolores until she passed two springs ago – he talks of her jewelry often, thinks that you should inherit it : they were never able to have children. You serve his coffee fresh and hot – asking Jason in the back to make his eggs perfect and his toast golden brown. You sit across from him at the counter to play bullshit with him while he eats – he always knows when you’re lying, his cheeky smiles catching you out, and his joy wraps it’s warm arms around you.

Your days are filled with giggles and smiles whenever he comes to see you, and he never leaves without a hug.

Jerry does not like Jason one bit – eyeing the skinny, pale cook through the serving counter, telling you that a man like that is ‘no good, honey’. You don’t blame him – Jason had tried to coerce you into giving him a blowjob a few weeks before your 18th birthday – but never forced you when you had threatened to go to the sheriff and have them run a much needed background check. Jason has steered clear of you since then, knowing you weren’t shooting empty threats. You never told Jerry about that, but you think he knows regardless.

He jokes that the forest behind your house has eyes – the kind only the old and the dying could feel. You never found it funny.

Your clothes were not too crinkled this morning when you pulled them on : giving you a small mercy as did your almost-dry mascara surviving one more day. That hadn’t quelled the uneasiness you’d felt all morning, the whole drive to the diner. All you could think about was seeing your friend, and hoping that he would give you a hug and tell you all those happy stories again.

The second you clock in, and Jason comes back in from his third smoke of the hour, Jerry opens the door to the diner.

You float over to the counter with a genuine smile, but it flickers when you see the look on his face.

He talks a lot that day – about his wife, about his old job, even the time a fight broke out in his hometown and his father died, how the horses he looked after got caught in the crossfire : admitting he had hurt the perpetrator afterwards and it haunts him. He tells you everything, even the things he’s told you time and time before – forgetting he ever mentioned it. He’s never forgotten a thing about you, but he talks as though he’s in a hurry, as though he needs to get everything out.

He does not come in the next day or the day after that, and when he doesn’t arrive on the third day you take time off to confirm your fears at the hospital. You do not hear it from a nurse, or a doctor, but from the silence you are met with when you ask for him. That silence, the loneliness that instantly sunk into your bones, shattered your heart into millions of pieces. It is destroying.

You did not come to see him when you could, there was still time to be had, stories to be told. He never saw you make something of yourself, he will never walk you down the aisle like you dreamt he would one day.

You are all alone in the world. No one to speak to, no one to comfort you. No one to make you think life might not be as meaningless as the whispers of your mind seem to believe. The warmth of him is gone, and you feel as cold and grey as the forest that surrounds this town, as if the sun has gone into eternal hibernation.

You want to bury yourself in your room for hours, to not surface for months and months until your body reflects the rot you feel on the inside. Hollow. Your sunshine is gone.

You tell yourself Jerry is now with Dolores, and laugh at the fact that your mind even supplied such a deluded thought. You never believed there was something better up there, not for long anyway.

You still go to his new tombstone, next to his wife’s, and speak to them. They were both religious, crosses carved into the place their names will stay forever, and so you ask any god out there to let them rest peacefully as though they are back in their hometown with their horses and not worry about you.

That evening you sit on your porch, chain-smoking the packs of cigarettes you had been saving, staring at the stars caged by thick trees. You realize you do not have a purpose. You don’t have a want – can’t have one, there’s not enough money for the luxury of wanting something. You’ll live and die in an 18 hour work day.

Your thoughts are scary and boring at the same time, so you begin to look out at the illuminated forest. The sounds of the night – it scares you as well sometimes, an entire empty forest just outside your door, nothing but rotten wood and locks keeping you safe.

Today you found out you will be alone for the rest of your life, but when you sit out on the porch, flicking your third cigarette – you don’t feel entirely alone at all. You feel as though there is something out here with you, your skin rippling with bumps.

You blame it on the Grim Reaper licking at your heart today.

The cabin on the other side of the forest you’re staring at now has been vacant since you were born. Never a light, a sound – it haunts you.

The closest you’ve gotten to it was at the ripe age of 8, venturing through the forest to explore. You had come to the front door until the house moaned at you, and the forest went quiet. You can still vividly picture the glance you got of the cabin while you ran all the way home.

You leave the shadow of the cabin in the dark forest behind, you need to get dressed for your shift. Money waits for no one, not even for the death of your best friend.

Down the empty highway, not a car in sight – the image of your headlines whirring past the thousands of trees burnt into your retinas from seeing it every single night. Your eyes are puffy and raw from crying, a headache pounding behind them.You pass the single off–ramp road you’ve never been stupid enough to take, the one that winds through the forest, all the way to an open clearing, a small path that can barely fit your sputtering car – leading all the way to the back of your rotting house. You used to play in that clearing as a child, pulling out grass and flowers and making huts out of branches until the day the forest went quiet for a second time – and you knew something was out there with you.

You had told your mother after running inside, but she pushed you away from the comfort of her arms and told you it was just jackals – you knew it wasn’t, even then.

It had seemed you knew something was coming your whole life, constantly looking over your shoulder – watching, listening. Sensing all and any kind of movement anytime, wary. You didn’t like the silence, you didn’t like being alone – yet you were singled out, not a soul or sound to comfort you through your isolated existence.

The gas station is empty as it is every night, you use the time to read. To think, to wonder what it’s all for in the end. If you should run away, leave and never come back. Go and find the ocean, let it swallow you whole.

The sliding doors of the entrance ding as they open. Your eyes flick up so quickly it hurts. A man walks in, and your stomach swoops. Everything falls quiet, and you think of the thing that your mother called the jackals, you think of the forest falling silent : baby birds quieting in the face of danger. He disappears behind a shelf, a glimpse of a Carhartt jacket that sparks a warmth : a remembrance of your dear friend who is now gone, the once comforting material on someone foreign, scary.

Your breath shallows. You don’t know why. It’s not just the quiet – it’s the kind of quiet that makes your blood congeal. Like the silence before a scream.

You glance to your side, below the counter, a bat sits for emergencies. You’re not sure why you are panicking the way you are, if it’s the hour, Jerry’s passing, the presentiment you’ve felt all week.

There is something silent, and something wrong.

When you look up, you still don’t see him. The light behind you flickers, and you almost want to cry at the fear that’s bubbling up in your throat, your hair is standing on end. Your ears prick at any sound, a fridge door opening and shutting.

Your body is shutting down on you, your heart crawling up your throat by claws : fighting and fighting for a chance to survive while your body quivers with the force of your instinct to run. Grab the bat, over the counter, out the door to your car.

You blink, realizing you haven’t been seeing a damn thing, and he’s on the other side of the counter. Looking at you with a blank expression.

Your heart fizzles and falls back to its place, your hands are shaking.

“Forgot milk.” His voice is entirely too flat, disarming and discerning.

You glance down at his hands, calloused and holding a single jug of full cream milk. He’s waiting for you to scan it.

“Right, sorry.” You mutter, sliding the milk over the scanner and taking the cash from him before returning the change. He hasn’t looked away from you once, he seems tired and bored : a normal milk run, but you’ve never seen him before. It’s shocking for a town with under five hundred residents.

He nods his thanks and leaves. The sound of his car sputtering away allows you to finally exhale.

You cash out and go home soon after that, shaken, like every ounce of fear you’ve felt in your life crashed through you the second he entered the store. An omen, a warning.

You wake up to a box at your door the next morning. In your sleep-shaken state, you have half the mind to stomp on it, fearful it came from The Man last night. Fortunately, curiosity seemed to be on your side this morning, as upon opening the box you find Denise’s necklaces, bracelets, rings and books. Paintings, antiques, and most importantly - a cowboy hat. Your favorite hat in the entire world. He had left everything of his to you, when he wrote his will you do not know. Maybe Jerry knew what was coming, he always was wise, connected to everything there is in a way you wish you could be.

You cry all morning, through your miserable shift at the diner. You must look like some sort of slug, because Jason asks you if you’re okay, as does the girl from your old english class who came in that morning all the way from New York : in town and visiting her parents. She dyed her hair and found her style. You see the sparkle of the world in her eyes, and your dirty fingers itch to steal it, to run outside with her car keys, assume her role as a real person. You do not feel real at all.

When you return to your rotting home you watch an old western - Jerry’s favorite - while you wear his cowboy hat, toying with the new jewelry that was sent to you when the police must’ve got around to acting out Jerry’s will. You feel loved and, oh, so lonely at the same time. You are a ghost in your own home, and the appearance reflects it. No real girl would live in a house of mold and quiet, where it is abandoned despite having a resident.

—-

The Man returns this evening as well, in the moment you were humming the iconic tune from your new favorite movie. Jerry had good taste. The world goes silent, and he grabs a pack of beers before heading to the till. “Marlboro Reds, please.” He has a Texan accent, and you stare at your hands as you give him what he wants. He leaves after that again, your only customer of the night.

The next night, he takes his time browsing the store. You watch him, watch how he languidly moves, scanning the items like his eyes would not eventually land on you. Approaching the counter with his chosen trifle.

“You don’t get scared workin’ nights?” He asks, and now you know your concerns were not unfounded.

“No.” you lie, meeting his eye for the second time since the first night. He does not have facial expressions, you realize. Blank, revealing nothing. He is a handsome man. An eerie man. He nods, holding eye contact as he grabs the useless item and goes back to his sputtering truck outside. He looked like he wanted to call you a liar.

You do not show up for your shift the night after that. Your gut tells you to stay home, to lock your doors and keep your father’s old pistol near you. To close the blinds – sit and listen to every sound of the night. Check under your bed just in case.

You’re late to the diner the next morning, greeted by Jason’s complaining that he had to serve the first customer’s coffee, asking for you to make it up to him. When you peep through the corridor, your heart drops at the only customer in the restaurant.

The Man has come to the diner. He knows you, he knows where you work – probably where you live.

Maybe he lives here, maybe it’s all some coincidence. Maybe it’s not what you think.

You bring him his eggs and bacon, and when you look up to his face he’s already looking at you. He does not move, does not touch his knife or fork. He’s staring at you.

“Leave me alone.” You say, quiet yet firm, standing over him as he blinks and looks down at his food. Your fear is making you angry, fire spitting in your eyes. He doesn’t answer you, and after two moments of being unable to bear the energy that exudes from him – you walk away, into the back of the kitchen to watch Jason work, peeping through the slits of the serving station to watch The Man eat his food. Your body hair prickles into points.

Jason eyes you, glances at The Man, and raises a faint eyebrow at you.

“That your daddy?” he asks, staring at the popping bacon. You watch the grease heat and solidify, the sweat sticking on Jason’s skinny yet defined triceps, coated with wiry hair that’s never been tended to.

“No.” you whisper, tucking your hands under your legs : they are cold, and your skin is overridden with goosebumps, hair standing. You feel as though you’re about to be swallowed, like large claws will pick you up and drop you into a maw of sharp, hungry teeth.

“Why’s he givin’ me the stink eye, then?” Jason grunts, picking at his gold tooth with a grimy finger as he lazily looks over to your thighs, then your face. Raising an eyebrow at how fearful you look, he glances back at The Man. Something like concern flashes across his face, and he lifts his cap to rub over his short, receding hair. It’s the first time his eyes have ever looked soft.

“Dunno.” is all you manage to mutter as you brace a peek to find The Man has looked away.

He’s slow, takes time to eat every piece of food while staring blankly out the window, like he’s watching the world as though he’s never seen it before, unnatural. You want to tell Jason about your all consuming fear that this man is going to hurt you, but his eyes have changed and he makes another comment about how good you look in the plaid dress that happens to be your uniform. You choose to wait outside of the building instead of enduring the male specimen of your species. It feels like you are alone in a world of monsters.

When you return inside, there’s a fifty dollar tip next to the spotless plate, everything stacked for you to carry.

You don’t return home that night : you ditch your job at the gas station for a second time, leaving your car at the diner to book a room at the shitty motel. It feels as though you died the same day Jerry did, maybe you are dreaming : alone in an empty world, your only companion being the monster. Nothing feels real.

You fall asleep to the sound of ugly moans, watching the handle of your door : your heart beating faster than your body can manage. Rocking yourself back and forth, humming a soft tune your father used to play on the guitar when he was sober enough to think.

You feel as though you are living on borrowed time, as though this opportunity to wait is a mercy.

He is not at the diner the next morning. Neither is Jason, it’s closed up and the lights are shut off – it is Jason’s job to open up and get the stoves burning. You try to call the owner with the small amount of change you have on the payphone, but no one answers. The sound of the dead line ringing in your ears as you look around in a panic.

You suddenly feel as though you’re back in that patch of forest, surrounded by tall trees and a monster waiting to swallow you whole. Watching. A fear so curdling you fear you’ll throw up over the plastic phone.

You’re wide awake standing behind the counter of the gas station. Watching the fluorescent lights flicker. You parked your car out back. You’re holding the bat in your right hand under the counter. You are waiting for him to come in. You should have driven far far away, but you have a sinking feeling he would have followed.

The night is completely quiet. No people, no sounds except for the humming of the fridges.

You glance at the back door, and the moment your eyes turn away from the sliding doors they ding. Your hair rises and stands violently. Skin alight and blazing as the first footstep echos in the store.

You don’t think about it, your body tells you to run and you do.

Out the back, to the edge of the concrete until your feet are pounding along the road, bat gripped tightly in your fist. The sound of your own feet are drowned out by the ones behind you, big and stomping. The trees framing your attempt at an escape as they yawn and stretch above - caging you in, suffocating. They grow tall as you sprint, closing like they will eagerly crash down and trap you like a wave from the ocean you’ve never seen.

You push with all your might, and you thank the lord you took track during school, adrenaline coursing through your veins as you run so fast the sound of feet behind you fade. It feels like victory, like being free – your chest blooms from the burn and the success. You think of the gun in your bedside drawer, and turn down the off-road into the woods you’ve never been brave enough to take before. The only sound is the one of your own feet : you’re not stupid enough to look behind you.

The moon lights up the forest floor, you don’t trip over a single root or branch. You’re moving faster than you ever have in your life : your lungs screaming, fear rising in your lungs like bile. You break into the clearing, the one that has always been haunted by Jackals.

You’re almost home.

A force heavier than you think you’ve ever felt crashes into you from the side, you’re slammed down into the one patch of grass you often picked, the bat flying out of your hands and rolling to the dirt in front of you.

“Knew you’d run here.” A deep, breathless voice says right into your ear, your hair is pulled as a hand clamps down on your struggling wrists, excited. “Always liked playin’ here, didn’t ya?” he grunts, pulling something out of his pocket. You swing your elbow up, knocking him straight in the jaw. He sways for only a moment, but it’s all you need. You dash forward, crawling away from him before you find your feet, grabbing the bat and smashing it down over The Man’s skull. He groans and stumbles, gripping the back of his head as you trip over your own feet to stumble away. You run towards your rotting home, you can’t think about the fact he knew where you played as a child, all you are thinking about is the gun.

You don’t even get to the steps of your back porch before he’s tackling you to the ground again and hitting the side of your face hard enough to make you cry, your head fuzzing. Your face stings and your eye throbs. You want to bring your hands to cup over the hurt, hold yourself in an attempt to make it better, but he is holding your hands. He curses at you, spitting vile words for managing to get solid blows at him.

“Come on, darlin’. You think that little gun ‘s gon’ do anythin’? It don’t even got any bullets.” He grunts, you feel zip ties around your wrists, your mind racing as you continue to struggle and kick until his hand is around your throat faster than you can think. “Don’t make me hit that pretty face again, bitch.”

You go still, and slumped. Trapped in a wolf’s jaws.

His hand squeezes tighter and tighter as you squeak a protest, until you can’t think anymore and the last of your squirming falls away.

The first thing you smell when you wake up is smoke, the kind that comes from a fireplace. The first thing you see is rich, dark wood. You’re on a bed and you glance up to see you’re handcuffed there. Your skin isn’t just throbbing – it's raw, the skin bitten where the metal has scraped against you. Your head pounds like it’s been split open, the ache thick and blinding.

You can feel he is somewhere within the room, the twist of your stomach and the lingering presence on the back of your head tells you he is there. A creak of a chair behind you finalizes his presence but you can’t be bothered to do anything besides slump back against the mattress, curling up into a tiny ball.

He says your name to get your attention, and you don’t attempt to look at him, your skin is already crawling with what you think he wants to do to you. Future years of using and hitting flash through your mind, wishing for the mercy of death.

He walked next to the bed too fast, too silent. A wall of muscle and heat as large as him should not be so quiet. He is touching your hair, stroking down your cheek. His hand is rough and warm, he smells like a cologne that reminds you of your father. You think you might be sick.

“I was bein’ nice. I waited.” he says softly, pressing down with his pointer finger on the bruise that has molted under your skin, making you wince and shuffle away from him, glancing up at him to find his striking, dark eyes on you. His jaw is bruised where you hit him with your aching elbow, a trickle of dry blood still stuck on a piece of his salt-and-pepper hair. You made a crack in his head – a small trickle of pride filling your veins at the fight.

It is small lived, and dies out at the next throb of your wrists.

He sighs at this reaction, before walking out of this bedroom and shutting the door behind him.

You lie there for what feels like hours, only moving when you notice the water and ibuprofen on the bedside table : still in its packaging. Your whole body aches, the last throttles of your adrenaline were beaten out of you with his hands.

It’s only when you sit up that you notice where you are. The view outside the window is the forest behind the cabin that groaned at you, that haunted you as a child.

He’s lived here the whole time : he’s been here the whole time. The feeling of impending doom that curdles your skin when he’s been near. The jackals you felt as a child, the forest going quiet.

It’s been him. It’s always been him.

Your skin feels as though it will turn inside out, every hair on your body standing to a rigid point. The fear feels as though you’re dying.

You don’t have to look to know he’s silently opened the room again, and you speak.

“You some kind of pedo?” You spit as your head throbs, sitting up on the bed, tugging on the cuffs, rage curdling and bubbling up on your skin – you think of your mother.

He stops moving at your words, “what?”

“You’ve been watching me since I was a child.”

“It wasn’t like that, Jesus.” He grunts, sounding uncomfortable at the idea. You almost want to laugh. In your periphery you see he’s ditched his canvas jacket, wearing a navy flannel that shows you just how large he is - as if you didn’t feel it the night before when he tackled into you so violently, stealing every inch of breath in your lungs.

“Oh, well sorry for assuming some old, sick pig stalking a young girl since she was a child isn’t a fucking pedophile.”

He smacks you over the throbbing patch of your skin, and you finally glare up at him with every bit of ire in your body. It was not any kind of hit, it was the kind that made you feel like dead weight, that knocks all the air out of your body as if you are a puppet with it’s strings cut.

He’s staring down at you.

“I’m not – christ, it ain’t like that.”

“So you’re just going to kidnap and keep me? You’re not going to – to do anything, is that right?” You scoff the words out, holding your hand to your cheek. The ache under your skin feels like it could stay there forever.

“I don’t want to do anything to you.” He seems to notice the irony of his words when you let your palm drop, face swollen. “I didn’t want to have to hurt you.”

You look out the window and go silent.

“You didn’t have to hurt me, this was your choice.” You spit, and he looks almost surprised by your words. There’s goosebumps that break out over his skin, and the energy in the room constricts as he backs away from you.

He glances out the same window before handing you a warm bowl of stew, pieces of meat and potato bobbing up from the thick, stock smelling liquid. You stare down at it, and then glare back up at him.

“Is it poisoned?” You’re not serious, you’re angry.

“If I wanted to kill you I would have done it earlier.” He says it as though it’s as casual as the weather, as though killing something – a person – is as boring as can be. Idle reassurance.

“You seem to like the waiting game.” You huff, staring at his large, twitching hands. His watch is broken.

He looks like he wants to smile at your quip, eyes crinkling in the corners.

“Eat.” He tells you, closing the bedroom door softly as he leaves you be.

—

You have been here for two weeks, only knowing this due to the little alarm clock next to the bed that he brought you from your house.

True to his word, he hasn’t touched you – in fact, he’s been taking care of you in ways you have never been before. It’s intimate, and a sick hunger has begun to heat low in your belly alongside the fear.

You feel as though you’ve been living in a small bubble where time never passes. He watches you at all hours of the day, asking you questions about the men you’ve worked with, if there’s anything from your house you want him to fetch. He tries not to hit you when his anger bubbles up at your persistent silence. He asks you questions about yourself, not ones like favorite colors, but if you think all people in the world are unsavable.

He looks like he’s hoping you will tell him he can be saved. You do not.

He makes you eat dinner with him every night, bathes you as well. The first time he tried it, after letting you rot in bed for three days, he had to wrestle you into the bathtub after trying to be nice, held you down while you kicked and splashed and scratched at him until he pressed his fingers over your injured face in an unforgiving manner until your cries went quiet, and you almost fainted from the pain. He made you apologize for making him have to hurt you.

You swallowed the clawing, raging voice at the back of your throat and did it. When he kissed your forehead and told you it’s okay, a warm sickness swirled in your stomach, nauseating and tentatively delicious all at once.

You have not tried to fight him after that night, scared of what would happen if he were to comfort you.

He tucks you into bed most evenings, pressing the blanket to cushion you and arranges the pillows. In the first nights, it had scared you : you hadn’t slept a wink, terrified he would slip into bed and his patience would wear thin. Now, it feels like something nice. He tries to tell you happy stories, he usually fails – but it makes you think of Jerry and you feel better regardless, it makes The Man seem more real, like a human rather than a monster.

He asks you to curl up next to him on the couch so he can read aloud to you, books you’ve heard about in passing but never read : he has a liking for Cormac McCarthy and the Wild West. He bakes cookies for you when you ask him your first question, letting you sit at the table with a glass of milk to enjoy them. You feel warmth radiating from inside of you, spiked with fear – no one has baked cookies for you before. You finish them, and he says he’s proud.

—-

The sinking feeling comes slowly. Seeping into your bones whenever he holds you. It gets worse when you begin to dream of him, a possible reality, one of him holding you and kissing you – telling you you’re lovable, perfect, worthy. Six months have warped your brain, slipping out of your grasp like sand. You wake up to slickness between your legs, a desire to go find him in the kitchen making breakfast and nuzzle under his broad arms, let him squeeze you tight and surround you with his scent. You don’t have to beg him to make you feel loved, he’s always loved you : he’s made that clear.

You had realized long ago that he is too big for you to fight, he is all consuming and overpowering. The sinking feels like acceptance, and you think it’s close to dying.

It’s a sunny day when it all hits you. He’s been out for half an hour – at the grocery store a few towns over – the moment he said goodbye you had felt a twist in your stomach. You didn’t want him to go. He hugged you and told you he would be back soon, kissing your cheek when you got teary, his whiskery beard tickling your soft skin.

You don’t know when the terror began to feel like safety. You only know that when he’s gone, it feels like you’re alone with the jackals instead of how it was when he found you. When he was the monster.

The worst part was you knew why you reacted that way. Sitting in the sunny room, you forced your mind to constantly think of escape routes, of the disgusting actions he had committed, the way he has trapped you in this little house. Your mind adamantly hates The Man, but that large pit, the self that was unloved and uncared for – alone, has already started to need him, to ignore the stupidity in believing he loves you. To latch on like a leech and suck up all of the love and care he has, not caring if it’s real or pure, to see if it’ll make you round and fat with it – satisfied.

The hunger for what he has to offer you makes you feel like you might be the true monster in the house : your desperation for what you have never tasted knows no bounds. You think you’d kill for it. You might have been the jackal the whole time, the hole that lived inside you might have turned you ugly from a young age.

You are scared of your own desperation.

He bathes you every night – ritualistic and precise. Guides you under the water until you reappear, clean and new to a kiss on your cheek, hands scrubbing you clean. Every time the surface breaks and you come back to him, the forest grows denser : tighter and vast while the home, your home, becomes all the more simple and clear, exactly how it is supposed to be.

You need him, and you think you love him. What that makes you, you’re not sure and you no longer care.

He goes out months later, telling you he needs to get food and soap, baby - he leaves the window open and the door unlocked : he knows you will not leave. He says he’s going to grab soap, but he is carrying a prescription slip with a little baggie, what he’s actually going to get remains a mystery to you.

The nightmare you had in the middle of winter had shifted something deep in your foundations – the fear that licked up your spine at the thought of being alone – the much lesser, flickering fear that your body had instinctually looked for him in his room, the dull scream your mind let out at the way you climbed into his bed, burrowing under his large, comforting arms until your brain went quiet and he pulled you closer. Those dull screams of fear and resistance from a lifetime ago have been washed away from his hands, and now a need so gravitational has birthed in its place. You want him.

Dusk comes softly in the weeks after taking residence in his bed. He still has not touched you, and you are beginning to feel ire towards his morality. A wrongness in the way he tries to be right. The cabin is warm with firelight, the smell of smoke wrapping around you like a blanket, similarly to his flannel that stretches over your skin. He jostles open the door slowly, grocery bags lining his fingers in a way that is dangerously domestic – his hair is tousled. His eyes catch onto the fabric, and he pauses.

“You’re in my shirt.” He states, but you know it’s a question. Your eyes search for the little baggie he had, wondering what he put in there.

You close the book he gave you to read, the cover sliding across your fingertips, “It smells like you.”

Something in his expression shifts. You think it might be guilt. Or pride. Or both, layered on top of each other until they’re indecipherable. He sets the bags down and moves to you, slow and steady – crouching to your level in front of the couch.

“You missed me?” He asked, eyes wild and dilated, hands skirting over your exposed thighs. Up and down.

You look away, unable to meet the gaze that is burning into you, to admit how far you’ve gone to his face. Yet your head nods, eyes flicking to his as your chin wobbles, bottom lip jutting out before tightening in a grimace. He wipes a tear from your eye.

“’s okay to miss me, I’m the only one who’s here f’you, darlin’.” He cups your cheek, rubbing the skin there. You meet his eyes this time, close them before you’re leaning in, resting your head on his shoulder as he sits next to you, guiding you onto his lap and telling you it's okay, and it’s natural, baby and finally I love you, don’t cry sweet girl.

You’re tired of the tears, of the fight. Tired of the empty woods and the silence – the loneliness that lives in your bones. You’re tired of running from the thing that makes you feel whole and real.

You wonder if Jerry ever saw this coming, and if he did – why didn’t he ever warn you something so soul destroying would be waiting to swallow you? Why didn’t he tell you the most human monster in the world would be the only one to see you without the shiny idealism behind cataracts? You feel guilty for admitting that The Man knows you better than Jerry ever did. The Man knows you are not made of sunshine and flowers, he sees the hole carved in your stomach that makes you so achingly hungry, and shows his own back.

—

You noticed the loose floorboard on the second day, and now you pry it open. While you care for The Man, you are acting on instinct.

He had shouted at you this morning while you were still curled in his arms, gotten rotten and angry, called you a stupid bitch when you had asked him to come with him to the store, wanting to see the world again.

You were hopeful he would trust you, that he would prove you are, in fact, not living in a cage.

He had stormed off, and for the first time in eight months he had locked the door on his way out, shoving a small plastic bag in his pocket.

Spiders crawl out from the floorboard, and you jump back, standing on the couch while you throw The Man’s shoes at them, you wish he was here so he could take care of it, could laugh softly at your fear and hold you in his arms – away from the floor – to protect you.

You remind yourself you do not know his name and that you’re trapped here, a jarring reminder of the way you have settled.

You need something to prove he was a real, living man before his life revolved around you. You need to rebel against him, like a petulant, scared child because of his rudeness this morning.

Once you feel safe enough, you roll up the sleeve of the lacy undershirt he gave you and stick your hand inside. Searching for some sort of ocular truth amongst the bones of his own rotted cabin.

A pair of old boots with a ‘J’ engraved in the sole is the first thing you pull out. An army knife next, then a bunch of guns and weapons.

No matter how strange it is to find guns and knives buried in someone’s house, for The Man it’s quite boring.

You pull out a shoe box next, placing it next to you on the floor before blowing the dust off of the top. It doesn’t help much. From the amount of grime, it looks as though you are the first person to touch this box in years.

The lid sticks to the rest of the compartment from cobwebs, but you discard the thing anyway, desperate and careless.

A photo is the first thing you find, old and yellowed.

A little girl.

At first you are fearful she is a victim, until you see the photo of The Man - much younger - holding her in the hospital. Your stomach curdles, and it feels like rotting, eating itself from the inside.

A daughter.

Your heart swoops low, pensive. You think of the room he keeps locked, the warm light that streams under the gap of the door - reflecting something pink inside. The way you would watch the beams dance on the floor like a whole soul was trapped inside there, wilting as the sun set.

Her birth certificate is the second thing you find.

Sarah Miller : 1983 / 03 / 18

City of origin : Arlington, Texas.

Father : Joel Miller

A name, a life, a whole world buried in the foundations.

You gawk at the fact that The Man – Joel – is 60 years old.

Her missing poster is what you find next. Bile rises like acid on your tongue, a smiling, happy girl plastered with information about her last whereabouts, the pink shirt she was wearing and how tall she had gotten. She went missing on your third birthday. Your head swims. You drop the documents back into their casket with trembling hands and weak knees.

Stupid, stupid girl – why did you have to look?

The last thing you find is a golden tooth, familiar in its grime and dullness. You can imagine a sleazy tongue gliding over it in irritation. Jason’s golden tooth. You drop it immediately and slam the loose floorboard shut, burying what was meant to stay that way once more.

The room looks as though nothing has changed, yet everything inside of yourself is different. A storm of fog and clarity, adrenaline pumping for running and the desire to stay still.

You throw up outside the living room window.

Everything feels like a blur after that, grabbing your boots he stuffed away - a coat and a knife from his kitchen.

Run, just run. Don’t look back. Get away, fast fast fast.

You climb out of the bedroom window and run all the way to where you left your car the night he caught you, cold wind whipping past your face and sending a burn through your nose. Your feet pound along the ground like the whole world is weighing you down, like every stone is hoping to trip you and let you fall, to cut your knees open and stop you.

You eventually arrive at the gas station.

You're stunned that the place is closed and rotted, not a single soul in sight.

Your lungs are burning, you feel woozy, and you let out a pathetic cry when you see he has slashed your tires.

Stopping at the rough concrete of the shop, you attempt to open the back door, only to spot a poster plastered on the side of the wall.

A missing poster. Your missing poster, with not a single person in the world to care for its presence besides a man who you ran away from, who would tear it down and remove you from an existence that is not with him, that would try to come find you to bring you back.

You decide to keep running in the opposite direction of his home. A large part of you is screaming at you to run to the Sheriff’s office and tell them what happened, that Joel will find you if you try anything else, but a shamefully large part - a sick part of you does not want to run away from him. He has cared for you - he has watched you all your life, and you know – regardless of purity or morality – he loves you. All that is left for you without him is a town that would freeze in time if you were to vanish, fake in its existence, a facade for the life you were always meant to live.

To your horror, the twist in your chest tells you that you love him too, it’s a surety now.

You think of the soft kisses he pressed to your hair, the way you got used to him telling you of things he liked about you, that he only would have known from watching. The way he told you he too liked Jerry, and liked the movie you watched after his passing. He let you watch it every night for a month, and began to quote the lines with you in an exaggerated version of his accent to make you giggle.

He saw you, he has always seen you. He loves you and wants you and needs you enough to take you for himself.

You have stopped running, standing still for a moment before slowly turning around, feet shaking in your soul’s indecision. Torn and trembling. The forest is completely silent, yet this time you feel all too real – too alive.

Your mind is not what it used to be. The shake of your hands comes from the part of you that is pleading for you to run, to see the clear manipulation : the rose coloured glasses that have been forced over your eyes. The other part – the part that you are starting to believe is the truth of who you are – wants to run back to the cabin before he sees you ever left, to cup his devastatingly handsome face and let him take what has always been his, to be made a real person.

It is consuming, this primal want.

A twig snaps.

You don’t need to turn around to know he his standing close behind you.

You clench your fists and turn around, fear curdling and boiling in your belly, making your knees weak and shaky.

The look on his face clears your rational thought once again, and you quickly attempt to scramble away from the monster. He looks absolutely, impossibly, livid.

You do not know why you ever thought you could run, why you thought he would not find you, that he would let you go.

You burst into tears the second he has you against the forest floor once more. The ground ripping the skin from your cheek as you fall, crushed under him once again – worse this time : you knew better.

“Why’d you do it, angel?” He says softly, entirely contrasting from the way his arm is curled around your head, large biceps restricting your breath.

“I-I was scared.” You cry, trying to stop the hiccuping of your lungs to keep the breath you have.

“I know baby, I know.” He soothes, deep voice right next to your ear, his mostly salt and slightly pepper beard tickling the skin. “You made me so scared, sweet girl. Thought you cared ‘bout me.” he whispers. You do not know if the tightening of his arms was intentional, or if he is so upset at the idea you could hate him that he is consumed with it.

“I’m s-sorry,” You gasp, clawing at his arm, “I do care, ‘s why I–”

He raises his hand quickly, yet it hangs in the air for a moment. Hesitation, guilt – trembling like he’s stuck. You see something raw flicker in his eyes before it’s gone and he’s striking the ground next to your face, barely missing you – a last second decision.

“Don’t fuckin’ lie to me.” Desperate, angry, scared.

You need to placate him before he does something stupid.

“I turned back– I was going to go back home I promise, please.” you cry, looking into his eyes. You loathe the fact that your words aren’t lies, that the care he sees reflected in them is real. You want him, you need him.

He watches you silently, frowning. Waiting to see what you have to say to him.

“I snooped, I’m sorry. I was angry about this morning and I saw– I saw Jason’s tooth and–”

The sound that leaves him is punched from deep within his chest.

He is silent for a long time. Pulling away from you.

You do not breathe, scared – the back of your neck is bared to him. Your life depends on his reaction.

“You saw my girl.”

You tremble in his slackening grasp. He seems to be staggering for a moment, unprepared and assaulted by the memories you have brought back. His hands grip tighter and tighter.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – I didn’t know.” you whisper, tears streaming out of your eyes as you look up at the setting sun, these must be your last moments. Your body trembles and your hiccuping noises are ugly. You wish you could take this all back to before.

“You ain’t supposed t’see what’s down there.” he’s lifting his hands off of you, and you think the scariest thing about this moment is how human he finally seems. Like you are the one seeing him after all this time. You stay down, turning to look into his eyes – all you can see is grief. “You know what it’s like to be lonely, that’s why you were brought to me, baby.” His hands wrap around your neck again, and you shriek a small protest, scrambling. Your nails crack and bleed as they attempt to rip yourself away from him by holding onto the ground and pulling.

You feel drops against the back of your neck, and fear lurches in your stomach at the fact that he’s crying. “She would have hated me, she was so good.” His hands are constricting, crushing. You choke and gasp for breath. “But I ain’t got her anymore. I got you. And God help me, I need you, sweet girl.”

“I’m sorry.” you whisper again, looking into his sad eyes with your teary ones.

“I know.” He says softly, and you whimper as his hand comes to your face. He rubs the skin for a few moments, letting himself breathe and feel you. It feels like an eternity, lying under him, trapped.

“I’m goin’ to give you a choice, sweet girl. I ain’t given you one before.” His voice builds up as he says it, like the memory of his daughter drives him to formulate a plan – a way to somehow fix everything he’d done. Your heart stops as he slides off of you, picking you up with him and holding you, the tips of your boots brushing the ground. He stares at you seriously, and he looks so different from the monster, like he’s trying his best to do the right thing after all this time, pretending it’ll take everything back.

“I’m goin’ to let you run, sweet girl. You can choose to go to the sheriff– or, or steal my truck, do what you want.” He swallows thickly, eyes wild. “I’ll let you go, I should let you go.” He whispers almost to himself. “But if you choose t’go back home…I won’t let you leave me again, baby.” He smooths his hand over your hair after setting you down. “You’ll be mine, honey. And I’ll be yours, we can be fair and make this right. I’ll take you, and I’ll tell you everythin’.”

You thought your heart was going to rip out of your chest. Everything is primal, it’s all desperate and ugly and raw. He lets go of you, taking a few difficult, staggered, paces back. His fists are clenched tightly at his sides.

“Go,” he nods slowly, like he’s trying to assure himself this is the right thing to do. “If you run now, I won’t stop you, I swear.” his voice breaks like he’s not sure of it himself — scared of what he’s capable of yet consumed with need. His eyes are soft and round, vulnerable in a way you’ve never seen. You are scared, but more importantly you are tired.

For the first time someone has loved every rotten bit of you – so desperately they leave morality behind. How could you run away from this?

You hesitate, stagnant and unsure. Your heart and your brain have gotten so tired from fighting it feels they have turned off all together, what happens now is primal – instinctual, you feel out of your own body, vaguely aware of the blood pulsing through you.

You turn around and run swiftly down the road, scrambling over a few loose stones. You glance back at him once, surrounded by the trees, watching you like a dead man watches water. Your heart lurches. He looks heart broken, shattered and as alone as you’ve always felt, like this is the last time he’ll ever see you.

Silly old man, you think.

You were always going to run back to his cabin.

You’ve got no need to disappear into nothing for the sake of rightness when everything you’ve ever wanted lives in the warm, wooden walls of his — your — home.

He underestimated just how hungry, how broken and corrupt you are.

You know now that you love him, and you know that you have always been just as much of a monster as he is. Rotten and broken and impure, tainted and shattered.

You have always been his match.

Your boots carry you home like you weigh nothing, light as air as ribbons of your past fears and wishes string and rip behind you. A flurry of ideas and thoughts until there is nothing except for yourself standing in that same flowery spot with plucked grass and no-more- monsters.

You bask in the silence of the forest. You have since lost track of the hurt, the burn of fear rising in your throat. You think of gold teeth and little girls and bright, wrinkled eyes surrounded by rich, dark skin – before your thoughts fall silent too.

You are under water. By the time you see his cabin : dim with no lights on as it always was until he found you – your mind is somewhere else, hollow and empty and replaced with something molten in your stomach. An ache, gnawing away at your belly.

You don’t knock, you let the stairs creak as you silently open the door.

He had not followed you, true to his word. The house is just as you’d left it.

You feel settled, clam and composed as you slowly begin to strip. Boots at the door, jacket in the living room. A trail made from your scarf leading to shorts and small socks. At the side of Joel’s bed, a lacy undershirt and bra.

You have already started to drift off by the time the cabin door opens. Two shuffles of feet before they stop short.

He takes time to make a fire, the sound of crackling wood creating a comforting blanket to your sleepy state, in and out of the haze, yet aware.

You are silent and waiting, your breath fanning softly as your eyes struggle to stay open. Somewhere deep, your heart throbs – the last fizzling jump of fear before it dies and fades away for good. You hear the opening of a small, plastic bag somewhere in the kitchen, little taps of what sounds like a pill falling against the counter top– a gulp of water a few seconds later.

The mattress dips as he climbs into bed behind you.

His callouses catch on your skin roughly as he traces the side of your face, bare chest pressing against your lower back while he buries his face between your shoulder blades.

You let your eyes flutter shut as he places open-mouthed kisses up your spine, wet and shaky. His hands grip your hips like you’ll turn to smoke if he doesn’t hold on. His beard tickles your shoulder as he continues, cradling you against him as if he is trying to stitch himself back together again, to become real and whole.

You let him.

He is shaking when you turn to face him. Neither of you speak, words unnecessary in the softness and stillness of the night : no need for words when there are only two people in the world who are so entwined already.

His palm cups your face, turning you to look at him, thumb stroking over the corner of your mouth like a prayer. You whisper his name to him for the first time, a shaky breath escapes him as he whispers yours back. A small ruffle of the familiar duvet as you turn to face him, his warm palm cups over your tit – your pounding heart – as you turn to face him. Eyes shining as they meet yours. He looks so human.

He presses his nose against your own before his chapped lips finally meet yours in hesitation, like he’s trying to confirm that you’re really here next to him, that he hasn’t lost the only thing he has.

It’s soft for only a moment before you both let the hunger take over – hot and wet, lips moving faster and faster as his tongue swipes across the seam of your lips. They part without hesitation, taking the warm wetness of it inside your mouth and sucking gently, rolling over the other’s until your tastes are the same.

You gasp as his hands – rough and trembling – slide down your body, tracing every feature he studied from afar that is now finally his to touch. His mouth nudges along your jaw, nipping at the skin before he’s burying his face in your neck and inhaling.

When you whisper his name softly, he shudders like you’re the first person to ever truly call for him.

Your hand glides down to his stomach, running through the silvery hair that coats it desperately, trying to ground yourself to him. To pull him impossibly closer like you want to merge your bodies into one, consuming.

His hands are everywhere as he groans into your mouth, surrounding you completely. One grips your hair, pulling back gently to bare your throat to him as the other runs down your breasts, pulling and squeezing your nipples into tight points, breath panting from the intensity. He paints your neck with bites, blooms where he’s sucked and tugged on your skin until his mark has been made – groaning as he licks over the skin, like he’s trying to infuse you into his bones. Your skin tastes like his surrender, like the salt of his prayers. It’s not forgiveness he asks for – but belonging, trying to carve a place for himself in the crook of your neck.

Your fingers slip under the band of his boxers, searching for that rigid warmth that’ll complete you, retreating slightly on a shaky gasp as his hot, wet mouth envelopes your nipple, pulling and licking.

He’s on top of you within seconds, hands splaying across your shoulder blades as he shows equal treatment to each breast, arching you against him. His heavy sighs travel across your skin as he exhales. Groin slotted against the warmth of yours, he lets your hands tangle in his hair as he moves Southwards, kissing as he goes.

You whine a protest, whimpering for him to join the two of you together, and he answers your previous curiosities in a deep rumble, “Gotta give it time to work, sweet girl. I ain’t young no more.”

You let your head fall back against the pillows, a spark of electricity running through you at the reminder of his age, wetness seeping out into the gusset of your panties as you try to close your legs – an attempt at alleviating some of the heat that’s been building there.

He grunts at this, large hands gripping your soft thighs as he plants them wide and flat against the mattress, “Easy, darlin’ – gon’ take care of you now.” He rumbles against your lower stomach, right over your womb as he reaches up to pinch your tit, prompting you to look down at him between your thighs. Those eyes you once used to fear with such intensity now only make more slickness spill into the cotton that conceals you.

“Want you t’look at me while I taste this pretty little cunt for the first time.” He whispers on a kiss against your mound, dragging your panties down by latching his teeth onto the little bow adorning the front and pulling. You moan softly at the sight, hands fisting the sheets next to your head as his broad, muscular shoulders keep your legs spread wide, baring your warm pussy for his taking.

His eyes meet yours as his breath falters at the first glide of his tongue through your cunt, breaking off into a deep groan as he tastes you. A small cry of his name leaves your lips at the new sensation, hands immediately going to tangle in his soft hair. His tongue is ravenous, licking up every ounce of arousal as his eyes stay on yours, only dropping down when your head falls back once more.

He sucks your clit into his mouth, beard tickling and stimulating you – sending head through your bones. His lips tug on your bundle of nerves, pulling so deliciously your hips cant up onto his face, letting your wetness coat his beard until it’s soaked.

He lets go of your throbbing bud with a pop, licking his lips as he lets his mouth glide lower.

“Taste so fuckin’ perfect, my angel.” He groans as his tongue digs over your hole, an obscene sound of him slurping up all you’ve given him echoes through the humid room, and your moan of approval follows soon after. His nose digs into your clit as he pushes his tongue inside you, letting it glide into your gummy walls as you clench around him. His moans of approval course through you, heat rising blindly through your bones as you cry out for him, hips bucking as he presses against your lower stomach with a large palm. The rough material of his watch-strap scratching your tummy as his brows furrow, focused on eating you alive. The smacking sounds of his lips against your wetness make your eyes roll as he digs his tongue inside. His hand moves lower, skirting against your entrance before he’s pulling his tongue out with a slick pop, replacing it with his fingers as he sucks on your clit once more.

“Joel I-I’m gonna…” You trail off into a high pitched gasp, body trying to twist away from him as his thick fingers curl, pads of them bruising a spot inside of you that makes wetness gush out onto his wrist.

“Cum f’me, sweet girl, look at me.” He grunts, waiting until your eyes meet his to suck on your clit harshly, tongue running against the underside as he spreads and lifts his fingers to press against your gummy walls.

Your first orgasm crashes into you when you realize he’s humping the bed, his hot tongue desperately lapping up the slick that gushes from your spasming hole. He moans at the taste, making sure to drink it all down before he’s pushing up the bed – capturing your mouth in a wanting kiss as his thick hardness leaks against your leg.

His pill must’ve worked.

“Joel.” You whisper against his lips, nails dragging down the muscles in his back as you try to paw his underwear off with your foot, cunt clenching around nothing, desperate to grip and coat his cock in your slickness.

He offers his body to you in a way that feels holy, the glide of him through your messy folds makes a sound so perfect leave his mouth you feel as though you’ve gone to heaven.

“I’ve got you.” He whispers against your lips, the hand that is not cupping your face is notching his fat, drooling tip at your entrance. “I’ve got you, baby.”

The first time he pushes into you, it’s gentle. A broken sound rips from him like he can’t bear it, face strained as he takes his bottom lip between his teeth, watching his cock sink into you at a sinfully slow speed. Only when your nails sink into the skin of his back does he look into your eyes, seeing his own want, need, obsession painted in your irises.

He rocks into you like he’s trying to carve a home for himself inside your body, bringing your hand up to cup at his face while you lose yourself to the delicious stretch of him – cunt gripping him so tightly he can barely leave. You were always meant to be wrecked by hand like his – hands that tremble, hands that destroy, hands that worship.

His moans fan across your lips, shaky as they exit. He’s slow, letting you feel every inch of him, every vein, as he glides into your soaking cunt. His eyes have rolled, but you lean up to bite your own mark into his neck, pussy clenching as he moans raw and deep at the bright red mark you suck into his skin.

He watches you now, staring into your eyes. You want him to see the hungry, ugly, ruined thing he’s made. You want him to love it.

And when he leans down to kiss you like this night has changed him forever, you know he loves you. He is searching for his salvation in your body.

You anchor yourself to him like the earth is shaking, moaning a soft gasp as his forehead pressed against yours. Reveling in the feeling of his sac slapping against your backside, the sounds of lewd smacks and wetness – his own moans and whispered words of praise floating around you as the sheer size of him swallows you whole. He fucks you like he’s praying at an alter and you devour him whole. In the darkness, there is no difference between love and need, no line between hunger and worship.

Every thrust feels like a prayer, a confession, like he’s spilling the truth of himself into you on every plunge, letting you see every crack of his soul, the ugliness through the pounding of his hips against yours. Rocking together, bound by the loneliness and hunger and something older than love.

You cry under him, silent and open as he digs into you, so big and taking that your body can hardly bear it. He kisses every tear like an apology, licking up the salt as he coos above you, kissing the tip of your nose as he lets the heavy weight of his cock sit and twitch inside you for a moment, pubic hair sticky from your arousal as it grinds against your clit. He buries his face against your neck as he begins thrusting shakily again, and you know he’s crying too.

“I love you.” He whispers against your skin, broken and raw as he shakily moves his hips, eyes flitting to you, hopeful and soul-crushingly vulnerable.

Your breath is shaking, heat coursing through you at the glide of his cock against that place, tailor made for him. Your eyes falter, fluttering as the last of your tears stream down your cheeks, clenching around him so tightly. Every shared breath tastes like forgiveness neither of you have earned.

“I love you too.” You whisper, shattered. Body light as a feather as you let yourself fall.

His breath hitches as he comes inside of you, unprepared for it – hot pulses of his seed spurting quickly, flooding you as he sobs out moans against your skin, gripping your hips so tightly you think you’ll break. You follow immediately, arching into him as his arms wrap around you, pulling you impossibly closer to him as you ride out the waves of your pleasure together, knowing it is so much more than this. You are no longer a scared bunny, alone in the world, and he is no longer a jackal hunting you down — you are only two humans, connected in a way that ascends your lives : cosmic.

It’s not just sex, it’s not just lust – it’s your whole life that has led up to this, to him. Two people who are too broken to live, yet too stubborn to die.

He’s made you his.

You’ve made him yours.

And lying in his arms, letting his hand rub up and down your back, you know neither of you stood a chance.

-------

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extra presentiment lore if you’re interested after reading ;)

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marauroon · 1 month ago

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𝟏 𝐭𝐨 𝟏𝟎𝟎 — 𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐇 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑. (𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧)

lily forces her help on james after discovering an unsent letter he wrote to you at the end of last year. it doesn’t exactly go as planned.

CW | characters are 17-18, lily is the best wingman, banter on banter, MDNI AFTER A CERTAIN POINT (there is a separate warning before it begins)

james potter x fem!reader | 18.7k | series masterlist.

main masterlist.

AN | and so, 1-100 comes to an end, thank you so much to everyone who’s kept up with reading and supporting this series, i love you guys sm !! 🫶

There’s something about stepping back into the Great Hall after a summer away that always makes your stomach twist.

Maybe it’s the grandeur of it—four long house tables glittering under a sky enchanted to mirror the fading twilight—or maybe it’s the realisation that this is it. Seventh year. Your last first feast at Hogwarts. You glance around at the familiar faces, older now, and think how quickly everything’s changed, and how much it hasn't at all.

The Gryffindor table is buzzing, voices overlapping as friends greet each other, chatter about summer holidays, and sneak wary glances at the staff table where the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor is already under intense scrutiny. You sit between Lily and Dorcas, with Marlene just opposite, her chin in her hand as she eyes the new teacher with suspicious intensity.

“I’m giving him a two weeks before he loses his temper,” Marlene says, not even blinking. “One, if he’s already had a mental breakdown before arriving,”

“You’re just bitter because Professor Lome never liked your essays,” Dorcas points out, stealing a bread roll from the centre plate before anyone else can. “He gave me full marks on that piece about curse detection,”

You’re half-listening, mostly looking around the room. It’s the same as ever, and yet not. Everyone’s taller. Slightly leaner. Tired in that way only seventeen-year-olds on the cusp of adulthood can be. The weight of NEWTs, of future plans, of knowing this is your last go at all of it.

The buzz of the hall dies down as Professor McGonagall stands at the staff table. The sorting ceremony has already taken place—little first-years blinking up at the ceiling, clutching their house badges like lifelines—and now it’s time for the usual announcements.

“Welcome back, students, to another year at Hogwarts. A particular welcome to our first-years, who I hope will find these halls as challenging and rewarding as the generations before them,”

You tune out a bit as she goes through the basics: forbidden forest is still forbidden, Zonko’s products are still banned, and any students caught brewing illegal potions will be given detention and a strongly worded letter home.

Then, she straightens, and there's a tiny spark in her eye that sets everyone leaning forward.

“And now, I’m pleased to announce this year’s Head Boy and Head Girl of Gryffindor. A pair who will, I trust, represent the house and the student body with diligence and pride. Please join me in congratulating Lily Evans and James Potter.”

Silence.

Then—

“What?” Dorcas shrieks before she can stop herself, hand flying to cover her mouth.

Lily’s face is a perfect blend of composed and internally screaming. You can see it in the way she holds her posture just a touch too rigidly, in the slight widening of her eyes.

A few seats down, James has frozen. Mid-sip of pumpkin juice. You think he might choke on it.

The hall erupts in applause, mostly polite, some genuine. The Gryffindor table is particularly vocal—Sirius is cheering obnoxiously loud, Remus is clapping with amused restraint, and Peter looks like someone just told him Christmas has come early.

“Head Boy?” Marlene mouths, turning to stare at you and Lily like you’ve both gone mad. “Him?”

You glance at Lily, who is clearly experiencing an existential crisis in real-time.

James slowly sets his goblet down. “I—what?” he says weakly. “Me?”

“I… wasn’t told,” Lily says, her voice barely above a whisper. “I knew I got Head Girl, McGonagall owled me over the summer, but—him?”

You smother a laugh. “You okay, Lils?”

She glares at you. “No.”

James, for his part, finally seems to have processed the information. He sits a little straighter, shoulders back, trying for composed but mostly looking like he might be sick.

“I’m already Quidditch Captain,” he mutters to Sirius, who slaps him on the back with far too much enthusiasm.

“You’ll be brilliant,” Sirius grins. “Just think—power, responsibility, and even more excuses to boss people around.”

Remus raises an eyebrow. “You do realise it’s actual work, right? Prefect meetings, patrols, schedules…”

James pales slightly. “Bloody hell,”

You and the girls settle back into your seats as the feast begins properly. Food appears across the tables in a shimmer of golden light, and the scent of roast chicken and buttered potatoes fills the air. For a while, everyone’s distracted—eating, catching up, stealing sips of pumpkin juice between bites. The announcement lingers in the air though, rippling down the table in whispered disbelief and mild chaos.

You poke at your roasties, thoughts elsewhere. You’re happy for Lily—Head Girl is so her. She’s meticulous, clever, endlessly fair. But James? It’s not that he’s a bad student—he’s clever when he applies himself—but his reputation precedes him. Pranks. Detentions. A casual disregard for rules that somehow charmed most of the school and irritated the rest. You look down the table to where he’s now loudly panicking about his term planner.

“He’s actually worried about having too much to do,” Marlene says, eyebrows raised. “Is this a new personality shift or did he hit his head over the summer?”

“He’ll be fine,” Dorcas says through a mouthful of carrots. “Maybe this’ll actually knock the arrogance out of him. Or at least make him too busy to be annoying,”

Lily just stabs a pea with unnecessary force. “I’m going to murder Dumbledore.”

You snort, covering it with a cough. “Think of it this way—you get to boss him around,”

“Please,” she says dryly, “he’ll talk about the Marauders and Quidditch and I’ll be asleep by the third sentence,”

You laugh properly at that, and the sound feels good. Light. Familiar.

Marlene leans closer, dropping her voice. “Anyway, more important question—have you had any more letters?”

You blink. It takes you a second to realise what she’s referring to.

“Oh,” you say, slowly. “No. Not since the last one. You know, the one I got right before term ended,”

There’s a beat of silence, the kind that means they’re all about to jump in.

“You’ve still got them, don’t you?” Dorcas says, eyes narrowing.

“Of course she does,” Lily says before you can speak. “She practically laminated the bloody things,”

You shove her shoulder with yours. “I did not. I just… kept them. They were nice,”

“Nice?” Marlene repeats. “They were poetry. Like, actual effort. Not ‘fancy you, meet me in the broom cupboard’—actual, personal, stupidly romantic letters,”

Dorcas sighs dreamily. “Still can’t believe we never figured out who it was. No hints? Nothing?”

You shake your head, and try not to let your disappointment show too much. “They just… stopped. That last one before summer hols—it was like a goodbye. Like they didn’t know what else to add,”

“Bit tragic,” Lily says softly, and despite her sarcasm earlier, you hear the real sympathy in it.

You shrug, reaching for a second helping of Yorkshire pudding to hide the sudden ache in your chest. “I don’t know. It’s stupid. I didn’t even know who they were,”

“But they knew you,” Dorcas says. “Really well, apparently,”

The words make something twist inside you. Because she’s right.

Whoever they were, they did know you. The letters had come at your lowest points last year—when the pressure of coursework, the drama with Severus, and everything else felt like too much. Each letter had felt like a lifeline, like someone reaching across the void just to remind you that you weren’t invisible.

You miss that. You miss them.

“I just thought maybe,” you say quietly, “there’d be another one waiting. When we got back,”

The silence around your little corner of the table grows thick with understanding. No one says anything for a moment. Then Lily bumps your knee under the table.

“Well,” she says, with the kind of finality only she can manage, “maybe they’re just waiting for the right time,”

You nod, but you don’t believe it. Not really.

The conversation moves on. Marlene brings up the new Hogsmeade permission rules (apparently no more ‘mysterious illnesses’ to get out of going—thanks to a Slytherin who faked being poisoned last year). Dorcas starts planning the best window seat in the common room for her study spot, and Lily starts stress-talking about her NEWT timetable.

But your thoughts don’t quite leave the letters.

You wonder where they are now—your mystery writer. If they’re even still thinking about you. If they’re watching you across the Great Hall, debating whether or not to start again.

You hope so.

Even if you don’t say it out loud, not even to Lily.

Even if you’re pretending not to look toward the other end of the table for who it might be.

—

It becomes a weekly ritual. Every Wednesday night, Lily Evans storms back into the Gryffindor common room around ten-thirty, throws herself onto the armchair closest to the fire, and launches into a detailed monologue about the trials and tribulations of patrolling the corridors with James Potter.

And every Wednesday night, you, Marlene, and Dorcas do your best not to laugh too obviously.

“He just won’t shut up,” Lily declares one evening, halfway through untangling her scarf from her hair. “Every corridor, every stairwell, it’s Quidditch this, Marauders that—and not even mildly interesting Marauder tales. No, no. Apparently Sirius once managed to transfigure a Slytherin’s tie into a snake and got away with it by pretending it was a defence demonstration. That’s what I have to listen to for two hours,”

Dorcas, stretched out on the rug with a textbook balanced on her stomach, snorts. “Honestly, sounds like quality entertainment,”

“You do realise he’s trying to impress you, right?” Marlene adds, not looking up from her Ancient Runes homework.

Lily looks personally offended. “By telling me about how many nosebleeds they’ve collectively caused in the name of house pride?”

“Maybe he thinks violence is your love language,” Dorcas offers with a shrug.

You laugh softly but say nothing. Lily rolls her eyes and turns to you, as she often does.

“You would die. Honestly. You should swap with me sometime just to understand the suffering.”

“I’m not a prefect,” you remind her, amused.

She huffs. “Tragic. You’d actually hold a decent conversation. Meanwhile, I’ve learnt the entire 1974 Quidditch Cup roster twice, and I don’t even like Quidditch,”

Still, she doesn’t ask for a trade from any of the actual prefects. And despite the complaints, she never actually seems to loathe their time together—frustrated, yes. Exhausted, absolutely. But somewhere beneath it all is a sort of resigned affection she doesn’t quite admit to.

You often sit by the fire after she’s done ranting, book in your lap, mind somewhere else entirely.

Because while Lily battles James's endless rambling about goal strategies and prank logistics, your thoughts drift to the letters again and again.

You miss them.

More than you like to admit.

Even now, months after the last one, you still half-expect to find something tucked inside your Transfiguration book. Or a note slid under your pillow. That hopeful little ache has never quite gone away. You know it’s silly—it’s been so long, it’s probably over—but that connection, however brief and anonymous, was something you’d never really had before.

Whoever wrote those letters saw parts of you you didn’t think anyone noticed. They wrote like they knew what you needed to hear before you even knew it yourself.

And now… it’s just silence.

—

It’s late December when Lily finds it. Just a few days shy of the Christmas Holidays, when the castle starts to shift into that enchanted, warm glow of the holidays. Wreaths bloom along the walls, garlands wrap the banisters, and the air smells faintly of cinnamon and woodsmoke.

It’s snowing outside, but the halls are still humming with end-of-term energy—homework, holiday plans, and whispered excitement about the upcoming Hogsmeade weekend.

Lily’s rifling through James Potter’s satchel.

To be fair, she asked him where the patrol rota was, and he told her—somewhere in his bag. He’s halfway through an apple and elbow-deep in a discussion with Remus about whether or not the Gryffindor team needs a strategy change after Christmas.

She pulls out quills, broken Sugar Quill sticks, crumpled bits of paper, at least two spare ties, and—at the very bottom—a small, folded piece of parchment.

Gold foil.

Your name on the front.

She freezes.

It’s unmistakable. The handwriting is the same elegant, slanted script you used to show them, the same ink, the same careful fold. But this letter has never reached you.

Her eyes widen. Her breath catches.

She looks up at James.

Still talking.

Still completely unaware that in one careless second, he’s just given everything away.

Lily takes the letter. Quietly. Carefully. She tucks it into her robe pocket and says nothing. Not yet.

But she watches him all night. She watches the way his gaze flickers towards you sometimes across the common room. The way he gets unusually quiet when your name comes up.

Later that night, in the corridor outside the common room, she pounces.

“James.”

He jumps. “Bloody—Evans, you trying to give me a heart attack?”

She crosses her arms. “I need to ask you something,”

“Okay…?”

She pulls the letter from her pocket.

He stops breathing.

“Is this yours?”

He tries—tries—to play dumb.

“I—uh—never seen that before in my life.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“No? Oh well, guess i’ll deliver it myself then,”

The way James snatches the letter from her hands you’d think it was his lifeline. It kind of was. “Don’t you dare—”

She doesn’t say anything for a beat. Then:

“It was you.”

He nods, sheepish. “Yeah.”

“You were writing the letters all last year. All that time. While she was agonising over who it was.”

Another nod.

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“I—” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “I panicked, alright? I was going to. I really was. The last letter—I wrote it to finally tell her. Then I just… I bottled it. It felt too big. Too serious. I didn’t think she’d… you know. Want me.”

Lily stares at him.

“You absolute moron.”

He blinks. “Sorry?”

“She’s been miserable for months. She kept waiting for another letter, hoping you’d write again. Do you have any idea how much she—” She cuts herself off, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”

“I didn’t think she liked me,” James mutters. “I mean, properly. Not just the letters. And not after everything—after how I was in fifth year—”

“You’ve changed.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know if that matters.”

Lily looks at him, and something softens.

“It does. And for what it’s worth, I think she would want to know. But—” She holds up a finger before he can respond. “—If you want to be a coward, I won’t say a word. But if you want my silence, you’re going to have to make it worth it.”

James straightens. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’ll keep your secret—for now. But only if you actually do something about it. No more hiding. No more waiting. I’m going to help you, and you’re going to let me.”

James looks like someone’s just told him he has a shot at the World Cup.

“You’ll help me?”

She nods. “But only because I’m tired of watching her mope around like a ghost every time she checks her pillow for a letter that never comes.”

His expression shifts—hope blooming like a star behind his eyes.

“Alright,” he says, determined now. “Deal.”

Lily smiles.

—

The Christmas holidays was an odd time for both Lily and James. While a welcome respite from the usual whirlwind of school activities, they brought their own pressures. For Lily, it was the mounting anticipation of how to pull off her bold plan, and for James, it was the dawning realisation that he might just have a chance with you—but only if he didn’t screw it up.

It started innocently enough: a stack of parchment and a quill. The first few letters between them were brief and clumsy, full of the usual banter that you’d expect from James Potter. But with Lily’s encouragement and careful advice, his words began to take shape. She steered him, nudging him in the right direction.

There were moments of frustration—James was a disaster with anything that wasn’t a Quidditch strategy or prank, and this was, in his mind, far too serious to be a joke. But Lily stuck by him, offering a steady hand when his confidence faltered, teaching him how to make the words meaningful.

The tone of the letters shifted as they continued. At first, James wrote about what he thought you would want to hear—grand gestures, over-the-top declarations that, in hindsight, seemed ridiculous. But Lily patiently worked through them with him, showing him that it wasn’t about showiness—it was about connection. The real connection. The sort of connection that wasn’t about impressing you with his charm, but letting you see who he really was. She made him laugh, made him reflect on his own growth, and made him understand that this wasn’t just some passing fancy.

Their letters became a sort of symbiotic process. James would write something a bit too much, and Lily would dial it back with a comment about being too self-deprecating or too dramatic. He’d write again, taking into account her feedback. Then, Lily would send him back something that was genuinely thoughtful about what he could say to you—subtle things like, “She likes someone who listens, not just talks,” and “Remember, be genuine. It’s okay to be nervous.”

They’d find themselves exchanging letters, not just for the sake of figuring out what to say to you, but out of a shared sense of friendship, a bond that neither of them had expected to form.

They started to know each other better—not just as the Head Girl and the Head Boy, but as two people who were learning to be better versions of themselves. James began to appreciate Lily in a way that went beyond admiration—he respected her, her intelligence, her patience. She had a depth to her that he hadn’t quite realised before.

And Lily, for her part, couldn’t deny that James was more than just the loud, arrogant Quidditch star he used to be. He was thoughtful. He was kind. And beneath that cocky exterior, he was actually a lot more humble than anyone gave him credit for.

—

When the holidays ended and the students returned to Hogwarts, the air was thick with a sort of nervous energy. It was a fresh start after weeks away, and the school had a distinct feeling of a new term—new opportunities, new resolutions. It was also, for Lily, the moment when the plan she had been quietly constructing would need to unfold in full force.

As they returned to their regular routines, Lily began her work behind the scenes. It started innocently enough—casual conversations in the corridors, the library, and the common room. She would slip in little details about James—never overtly, but just enough to plant the seed in your mind.

“Did you hear about James helping that first-year with their transfiguration homework? I swear, he’s actually really good at it when he puts his mind to it,”

You had glanced up from your own work at the mention of James's name, frowning a little, because honestly, you hadn’t thought about him much. Not lately. He’d been busy with Quidditch, as usual. You couldn’t deny, though, that the idea of him being helpful—genuinely helpful—sounded out of character, even for him.

Over the next few days, Lily casually dropped more snippets into conversations. “James, honestly, I’m impressed with how he’s handled being Head Boy. He really seems to be taking it seriously. Even with Quidditch on his plate, he always makes time to help out,” She’d speak with genuine admiration, her voice unconsciously laced with warmth whenever she spoke of him.

At first, you dismissed it. It was all so subtle—so carefully orchestrated—that you barely noticed it happening. But the more Lily spoke, the more you began to pay attention.

One afternoon, you were walking down the corridor to the library when you spotted James on the far side of the hall, surrounded by first-years. You were about to look away when you saw him gently helping one of them with a stack of books, his hands steady, his voice low and encouraging. A completely different side to the usual cocky, mischief-driven James Potter. You’d never seen him like this before. You’d never seen anyone so engaged in something so simple.

That night, when you sat with the girls, Lily mentioned it casually. “James was really great today, helping the first years carry their books. He’s definitely grown up. It’s funny, isn’t it? We always think of him as the prankster, but there’s so much more to him than that. Honestly, I’m starting to see him in a new light,”

You were about to say something dismissive—something that would push the conversation away. But then, you stopped. There was something in the way she said it, so earnestly, that made you pause.

“Why do you keep talking about him like that?” Dorcas asked, raising an eyebrow at Lily.

Lily didn’t even bat an eyelash. She was smooth. “Why? What do you mean? He’s really changed, that’s all,”

“She has a bit of a point,” You immediately regret backing Lily. Why did you say that?

You weren’t sure what was happening to you. Why, when you closed your eyes that night, did your thoughts drift to James? Why, when you caught his smile in the corridor, did your heart feel like it skipped a beat? Why did you feel the need to brush your hair just right every time you passed him?

What was Lily doing to your head?

—

Lily Evans was a lot of things. Bright. Commanding. Intimidating when she wanted to be. But above all else, she was strategic. And once she caught on to the fact that you had—finally—developed something resembling a real, actual crush on James Potter, it was game over. For you.

You just didn’t know it yet.

“You need a break,” she said, as if that weren’t a suspicious statement from someone who had spent the last week stress-annotating every page of her Arithmancy textbook.

You glanced at her warily. “A break from what?”

“Studying. The common room. Yourself.” She sipped her tea primly. “We’re going to the library,”

“You think the library is a break?”

“Yes, because you’re not going alone this time,” she said. “We’ll revise together,”

You narrowed your eyes. “You hate revising with other people,”

“I don’t hate it,”

“You said—and I quote—‘group studying is a punishment for introverts who can’t read in silence.’”

Lily gave you her best innocent expression. “Wow. That doesn’t sound like me at all,”

Still, she wore you down. As she often did. And twenty minutes later you were being marched into the library under the pretense of productivity.

You weren’t entirely sure when you’d clocked it. Maybe it was the faint hum of nerves in Lily’s step, or the way she seemed to be leading you rather than walking beside you. But then you turned the corner near the back tables, and there he was.

James Potter. Sat alone at a table by the window, sunlight catching on his hair like it was doing it on purpose. His head was bowed, pencil tapping rhythmically against his lip as he read, and for once he looked almost serene. Normal. Thoughtful.

“Oh,” Lily said, not even bothering to feign surprise. “James. Didn’t see you there,”

He looked up, blinking at the both of you, then smiled—wide and easy. “Hey. Fancy running into you two,”

You turned to Lily with a look. She smiled sweetly and gestured to the empty chairs. “Plenty of room. Come on,”

You gave her a long-suffering sigh, but joined them. You didn’t miss the way James straightened up a little when you sat down. Or how he nudged his textbook closer to make space.

“We’re reviewing Potions,” Lily said, as if that was the plan all along. “James, you’re good at Potions, right?”

He gave a modest shrug. “Decent. Do you need help?”

She said nothing. Just looked at you. Pointedly.

“…Sure,” you mumbled, flipping open your book. “Why not.”

—

Later that week, it happened again.

You and Lily were walking down toward Herbology, cutting across the greenhouses when a burst of motion caught your eye near the Quidditch pitch.

James was there. Not flying, not showing off—but hovering gently just above the grass, alongside a very nervous-looking first year. The kid was wobbling on their broom, fists clenched white around the handle.

“Easy now,” James called, encouraging but calm. “Keep your knees loose. You’re thinking too hard. Let the broom do the work,”

“Is that Potter?” you asked, squinting.

Lily followed your gaze and made a noise like she’d just noticed. “Oh, yeah. I think he’s mentoring first years this term. Sweet, right?”

You turned back toward him. The wind ruffled his hair, and he reached out to steady the kid’s broom with a gentle hand, his voice low and kind and patient. It was… not a side of him you saw often. Or ever.

Your stomach did a thing.

Lily nudged you. “You’re staring,” she sang under her breath.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m observing,” you said flatly. “For science.”

“Sure. For science,”

—

By the third encounter, you were onto her.

This time, Lily “forgot” her notes in the Divination tower and asked you to come with her to get them. But when you reached the corridor, who was leaning against the wall chatting with Professor Sinistra?

That’s right.

James bloody Potter.

“…Hi?” he said, eyes flicking between the two of you.

Lily acted delighted. “Oh! James! What’re you doing up here?”

“Dropping off the star charts for Astronomy club,” he replied.

Lily gasped. “Look at you. Responsible and helpful,”

You turned your head slowly, muttering under your breath. “You planned this,”

“I absolutely did not,” Lily said, far too brightly.

You stared.

She smiled wider.

James, to his credit, just looked confused.

And maybe—maybe—a little hopeful.

—

Later, in the common room, you finally snapped.

“You’re setting me up,” you accused.

Lily beamed, completely unbothered. “Yes. And you’re welcome,”

“I didn’t ask for your interference,”

She crossed her arms and leaned against the sofa. “No, but I got tired of watching you pretend not to like him every time he breathed in your direction. So I decided to help you skip to the part where you realise he’s more than just a pretty face with Quidditch shoulders,”

You covered your face with a groan.

“Oh come on,” she said. “You like him,”

“No.”

“You do,”

You peeked between your fingers. “He was really sweet with that first year,”

Lily smirked. “I know,”

You slumped further into the cushions. “I hate how well this is working,”

“I’m a genius,” she said modestly.

And honestly? She kind of was.

—

It wasn’t long before Lily noticed that she didn’t have to nudge you in James's direction anymore. You started coming to her with your own observations. It started innocently enough.

“Did you see James helping that second-year with her Transfiguration homework today?” you asked, as you sat in the Gryffindor common room one chilly evening. “It was kind of… sweet,”

Lily's lips twitched in a knowing smile, but she hid it behind the book she was pretending to read. “Oh, really?” she asked casually, though her voice was laced with an almost imperceptible hint of amusement. “That sounds like him,”

And then, the more you noticed these things, the more you found yourself noticing him. The way his hair always fell in that messy way, no matter how much he tried to push it back. The way his eyes seemed to light up when he was talking about something he loved—Quidditch, of course, but also the way he spoke about his friends, his teammates. His honesty, unpolished but real. How, after all these years, you hadn’t truly seen him for what he was—someone who, despite his flaws, actually tried to do the right thing, even when he didn’t have to.

The realisation hit you slowly, like a wave creeping up the shore. You liked James Potter. You were attracted to him.

And that made you feel insane.

—

It was a Tuesday, and the usual hustle and bustle of Potions class filled the air as students shuffled into the dimly lit dungeon. You were seated next to Lily as usual, one row behind the Marauders, but that day, for some reason, your focus was nowhere near the task at hand. You were supposed to be preparing a Draught of Living Death, but your eyes kept straying to James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, who were across the room, clearly engaged in some kind of prank plan.

It wasn’t even subtle. They were making faces at each other, stifling laughs, and it was so obvious that Professor Slughorn wasn’t even pretending to ignore them. You couldn't help the smile tugging at your lips as you watched James pass something to Sirius behind his cauldron, a quick handoff of some joke ingredient that was almost certainly going to explode in someone’s face.

“You’re staring again,” Lily pointed out with a grin, her voice low enough so that no one else could hear.

You blinked, realising that she had caught you, yet again. “What? No I’m not, I’m paying attention!” You quickly turned your focus back to your potion, though it was already too late—the glint in Lily’s eyes told you that she knew the truth.

She raised an eyebrow, still looking amused, and shook her head. “It’s okay. I mean, I did call it though,”

You groaned, slumping in your seat, feeling your cheeks flush. “I’m insane,” you muttered to yourself, so quietly that only Lily could hear. “What am I supposed to do? He’s been a complete arse to me for years, and now I’m falling for him? I’m a lunatic. Someone, take me away to Mungo’s. Commit me now. I’m beyond saving,”

Lily’s laughter bubbled up, and she didn’t even try to hide it. “Oh, come on, you’re not insane. You just like him. It’s not the end of the world,”

You shot her a glare. “Lils, I hate him. I have hated him for six years. Six years! He’s loud, he’s cocky, he’s arrogant. And now I want to—what? Be all gooey-eyed at him?”

She shrugged, the smile still dancing on her lips. “You’re allowed to change your mind, you know,”

“About him?” you said, pointing dramatically toward James, who was still engaging in some prank or another, his laugh unmistakable even from across the room. “What is wrong with me? Maybe I need a head examination. Maybe I just need to stop thinking about it altogether. Because this? This is crazy,”

Lily laughed again, a sound that was half sympathetic, half mocking. “I think you're being a little dramatic, don't you?”

“Drama's my middle name, Lils,” you muttered, sinking further into your seat, your face growing hot as you tried to ignore the fact that, even now, you could feel the pull of James Potter’s presence across the room. “Ugh. What do I even do? I can’t just talk to him. He’s so annoying. I can’t believe this is happening,”

Lily's tone turned more serious as she leaned a little closer, her voice softening. “Maybe… maybe you should start by just talking to him. Like, really talking. Not about Quidditch or anything that’s just… surface stuff. Maybe actually get to know him, without the whole cocky idiot routine he’s always doing,”

You frowned, looking over at James again, who had just leaned back in his chair, grinning at something Sirius had said. You shook your head, resisting the pull. “I don’t know, Lils. This whole thing is just… confusing,”

Lily sighed dramatically, resting her chin on her hand. “Yeah, I get that. But you know, I think he’s just a little misunderstood. He’s not perfect—he never has been. But… I think he’s worth getting to know. And I don’t think you’d regret it, if you gave him a chance,”

You stared at her, wide-eyed. “Are you… are you implying something here?”

Lily raised her hands in mock surrender, her eyes twinkling. “I’m not implying anything. I’m just saying… you should give him a chance to surprise you,”

You let out a long, dramatic groan. “What is wrong with me? I need help,”

—

Later that evening, you found yourself sitting in the Gryffindor common room, trying to ignore the noise around you. You were perched on the edge of the couch, pretending to study, but your mind was elsewhere entirely. Not on the anonymous love letters, but on James.

How had it happened? How had the most annoying person you’d ever met—someone who had spent years making fun of you, pranking you, and generally being an all-around nuisance—suddenly become someone you were seriously thinking about? It didn’t make sense. And yet, here you were, sighing over him like some lovesick fool.

“Everything okay?” Lily asked, sliding into the seat next to you. She had that familiar, knowing smile on her face—the one that made you feel like she could see straight through you. “You seem distracted,”

You let out a frustrated breath. “I’m an idiot,” you muttered, burying your face in your hands. “I’m an absolute, utter idiot,”

Lily laughed, clearly enjoying your inner turmoil. “You’re not an idiot. You’re just human,”

“Human, my arse,” you grumbled. “I’m supposed to be in control of my emotions. I’m supposed to be the level-headed one. And instead, I’m obsessing over James Potter. I mean, James Potter. What is wrong with me?”

Lily’s laugh was warm and understanding. She didn’t press you for more, though she did, at the back of your mind, know something you didn’t. She knew that you were slowly starting to see James for who he really was. And she knew that, when the time was right, it wouldn’t take much for him to see you for who you truly were, either.

But for now, all she had to do was sit back and watch the inevitable unfold.

—

By March, the weight of the upcoming mock NEWTs had hit Hogwarts like a bludger to the ribs. The once-lively Gryffindor common room was now filled with students hunched over parchment, quills scratching like beetles in the quiet, anxious air.

Even the usual chaos of the Marauders had simmered into a tense sort of focus—less pranks, more sighing, and an abundance of sugar quills chewed to bits while everyone tried to pretend they weren’t on the verge of collective academic collapse.

You’d taken to escaping the chaos by spending more time in the library, where the silence was less oppressive and the chances of being interrupted were, blessedly, low. There was something grounding about the musty scent of old books, the feel of parchment under your fingers, and the soft rustling of pages turning around you. Here, at least, you could pretend to have control over the mounting panic.

You didn’t expect to see him there.

It was a Thursday afternoon. The sky outside was grey and moody, a typical March sulk, and you’d made your way to the far side of the library looking for a quiet corner. Your bag was heavy on your shoulder, the strap digging into your collarbone, and your fingers were already ink-stained from a particularly ambitious essay you'd abandoned halfway through breakfast.

You turned down one of the aisles and paused.

James Potter sat alone at a study table, bent over a thick Potions textbook, hair sticking up in that ridiculous, familiar way, glasses slightly askew, brows furrowed in concentration. His quill tapped thoughtfully against his lips as he scanned a particularly long paragraph, completely unaware of your presence.

There were no Marauders in sight. No Sirius lolling about with a smirk, no Peter sneaking sweets, no Remus patiently annotating with colour-coded inks. Just James. Quiet. Focused. Normal.

It was weird.

You hovered there, unsure for a moment. James Potter was not someone you’d ever associated with solitude. He belonged in groups. In crowds. Loud, chaotic ones. He was a whirlwind of motion and noise and cheeky grins. But now—

Now, he just looked… Tired. Still. Almost soft.

You blinked. Once. Twice. And then, before your brain could talk your body out of it, you approached.

“Mind if I join you?”

James startled, looking up as though you’d just Apparated beside him. His expression shifted rapidly—surprise, confusion, and then something else entirely. Something warmer.

“Oh. Er—yeah! Yes, absolutely, yeah, course you can,” he stammered, quickly moving his things to make space for you, nearly knocking over his inkpot in the process. “Didn’t expect company,”

“I didn’t expect you to be in here,” you replied, sliding into the seat beside him and placing your books on the table. “Alone, I mean. No gaggle of mischief-makers in tow,”

He gave a sheepish laugh. “Yeah, I figured I’d actually try to… I don’t know, pass transfiguration this year. Trying this whole ‘focus’ thing,”

You arched an eyebrow. “Look at you. All grown up and responsible,”

He mock-scowled at you. “Don’t make it weird,”

You smiled despite yourself. “I’m stressed about the Potions exam,” you admitted after a moment. “I feel like Slughorn could hand me a list of ingredients and I’d still forget what a bezoar does,”

James gave you a surprised, almost earnest look. “Do you want to revise together? I mean—I’m decent at Potions. Got a weird knack for it. I could help,”

You tilted your head, eyeing him. “You? Helping me revise?”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” he said, grinning now. “I can be serious when I want to be,”

“Can you?”

James snorted. “Okay, I try to be,”

You laughed, and somehow that broke the tension. The two of you slipped into an easy rhythm. You started with Potions, him explaining the nuances of antidotes and the precise slicing technique needed for Sopophorous beans.

His explanations were animated—hands gesturing as he talked, voice fluctuating with a kind of earnestness you’d never quite noticed before. It made sense why he was such a good Quidditch captain; there was something undeniably compelling about the way he communicated, even when it was just about brewing Draught of Peace.

He didn't mock you when you forgot something obvious. He didn't interrupt. He listened.

And when your hands brushed across the table, reaching for the same note at the same time, he didn't flinch away. He just smiled.

Then the subject drifted. From Potions to Charms. From Charms to Transfiguration. From school to House gossip to whether centaurs secretly judged the students during Care of Magical Creatures.

Somewhere along the way, the edges between awkward and easy blurred.

There were pauses, of course—comfortable silences where you simply worked, and longer ones filled with light teasing or surprising bursts of genuine conversation. Like when he told you about his mum’s obsession with over-feeding the stray street cat, or how Sirius once bewitched his bed curtains to play harp music every time someone said his name.

It was weird, how easy it was.

It was weirder, still, when you realised you’d lost track of time.

“Blimey,” James muttered, glancing at the high windows. “It’s practically dark out,”

You blinked, checking your watch. “We’re late for dinner,”

“I was supposed to meet the team for a strategy review,” he said, rubbing a hand through his hair, making it stand up even more.

As if summoned, Peter popped his head around the shelf with a harried expression. “There you are!” he said to James, and then looked at you, visibly surprised. “We thought you’d fallen in a cauldron or something,”

James gave an apologetic shrug. “Lost track of time,”

Peter eyed the two of you, then turned his gaze back on James and raised his eyebrows very pointedly. “Riiight,”

You and James exchanged a glance, and then you both gathered your things and followed Peter out.

—

When you entered the Great Hall late, your friends were all over you.

“Where were you?” Dorcas asked, half-standing.

“Don’t say the library,” Marlene warned. “We know you left for the library, but you didn’t come back for hours,”

“And with James Potter?” Dorcas added, now openly gaping.

You groaned, sliding into the seat beside Lily. “It’s not what it sounds like.”

“It sounds like you two met up for a shag,” Marlene suggested, delighted.

“Absolutely not,” you said, head thunking dramatically onto the table. “He was helping me with potions. That’s all.”

Lily grinned, rubbing your back. “So you finally cracked, then?”

You peeked up at her with a groan. “I can’t stand how smug you look right now,”

Dorcas leaned in eagerly. “Wait—you like him?”

You sighed and sat up. “I begrudgingly have a crush on James Potter. There. I said it. I hate myself. I hate him. I hate everything. Kill me now.”

The table burst into laughter. Marlene actually clutched her chest. “I knew it. You’ve been making heart eyes for weeks,”

Lily looked positively radiant. “It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “It’s only taken you, what? Seven years?”

You scowled. “This is the worst timeline.”

Still, you couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at your lips.

—

Meanwhile, James was in the middle of a complete overshare.

“I panicked,” he said, flopping dramatically onto Sirius’ bed. “She just walked over and sat down. And then we actually talked. Like properly talked. And she laughed, Sirius. She laughed. At my jokes,”

Sirius grinned from where he was perched at the edge of Remus’s bed. “So you didn’t ruin it. Colour me shocked,”

James threw a pillow at him. “I’m being serious.”

“I’m being Sirius,” Sirius deadpanned.

Remus groaned. “Not this again,”

Peter snorted, settling at the foot of his own bed. “So what now? You two just revise together like it’s no big deal?”

“She asked to join me,” James said, like it was still unbelievable. “And I didn’t mess it up. I even helped her with Potions,”

Sirius gave him a sly look. “You like her,”

“Yes,” James said, no hesitation. “Obviously. I’ve liked her for ages. And now she’s actually… noticing me. And it’s terrifying,”

“What happened to cool, confident James Potter?” Remus asked with a faint smile.

“He’s dead.” James exclaimed. “He doesn’t exist,”

Sirius cracked up laughing.

James groaned, grabbing another pillow. “Promise me you lot won’t screw this up for me,”

“Course not,” Remus said. “We want you to be happy,”

“Speak for yourself,” Sirius muttered. “I liked it better when he was hopeless,”

But he smiled anyway.

—

From that point on, library sessions became a thing.

At first, it was casual. A few times a week, whenever you happened to run into each other. Then Lily started suggesting you go together—“oh, James said he’d be in the library after dinner, you should head down,”—and it became routine.

You tried to tell yourself it was just studying. That was all.

But it wasn’t.

You and James talked about everything—from exam stress and professors to more personal things. Like how he hated how he used to treat people, especially you and Lily. How he couldn’t believe he’d wasted so much time being a prat. How he’d let his ego make choices he still regretted.

“I was a total wanker,” he said one evening, sitting across from you, fiddling with the end of his quill. “Back when you and Lily were still friends with Snape. I was just… angry all the time. Jealous, maybe. I don’t know. But I was awful. And I’m sorry,”

You blinked. The sincerity in his voice caught you off guard.

“Thanks,” you said softly. “That actually means a lot,”

He gave you a small smile. “I just—I want you to know I’m trying. Not just for you. For me, too,”

And you believed him.

Which was maybe the scariest part.

Because this—whatever this was—wasn’t just a passing crush anymore.

You were really starting to fall for James Potter.

—

It was a Friday afternoon, the eve of the Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw Quidditch final, and James Potter was, predictably, in full strategising mode. You’d barely sat down at your usual table in the library before he launched into a spirited rant about formations, wind direction, and something called “chaser rotation efficiency” like he hadn’t just spent the past two hours at practice already barking the same things at his team.

You, meanwhile, were fighting a losing battle against a headache and the slow, creeping guilt of having left your Potions essay untouched for two full days.

“—and I swear if McLaggen swerves left again when I signal right, I’m going to charm his broomstick to fly backwards—”

“I forgot my quill,” you interrupted, sighing dramatically and digging fruitlessly through your satchel. “Great. That’s perfect. That’s exactly what I needed today,”

“Oh—here,” James said, gesturing vaguely to his bag without pausing his train of thought. “There’s loads in there, probably. Knock yourself out,”

You slid his satchel toward you, still only half-listening as he rambled on, now something about wind tunnels and Ravenclaw’s new Keeper. You unzipped the bag and fished around, fingers grazing parchment, a broken sugar quill, and several unidentifiable sticky objects before landing on a whole bundle of rogue writing utensils.

And then—your fingers brushed something else.

Smooth. Firm. Familiar.

You pulled it out.

Gold-foiled parchment.

Your breath hitched.

It was folded and refolded a dozen times over, edges fraying, the once-glossy surface dulled and creased. There were small ink stains on the back. A faint smudge of what might have been chocolate. You didn’t even need to open it to know what it was.

But you did anyway.

You shouldn’t have. You knew that. But your hands acted faster than your brain, and before you could stop yourself, your eyes were scanning the page.

Your name was there, in that now-unmistakable handwriting. The curves and flicks that had haunted your thoughts for nearly a year. And the words—oh, the words. Soft and intimate and so completely James that you were stunned you hadn’t pieced it together before.

I know I said I wouldn’t write you anymore, but I’m afraid I can’t help myself. The truth is, I’ve been terrified of saying it out loud, of giving you something you don’t need or want. But I can’t pretend anymore. I’ve loved you for so long, in ways that I can’t even put into words. I’ve watched you, really watched you, every day, and I’ve noticed things about you that—

You were halfway through reading it when James looked up from his notes, mid-smirk.

“I know my bag’s a bit of a disaster zone, but come on—it can’t be that hard to find a—”

He stopped mid-sentence.

His smile dropped.

You slowly looked up, the letter still in your hands, your fingers clenched tight around the gold paper. Your voice, when it came, was a whisper. Distant.

“…It was you?”

Silence.

James stared at you.

He opened his mouth, then shut it again.

You saw it—the flicker of panic, the rapid calculations behind his eyes, the moment he considered denying it.

But he didn’t.

He just nodded. Once. Barely perceptible.

You rose from your seat with a quiet scrape of your chair.

“I— I need to go.”

“Wait—” James started, standing as if to follow you, but you were already gone.

You didn’t look back.

—

James slumped back into his seat like the air had been knocked out of him.

He felt like he might be sick.

He'd known it was a risk. He’d always known. That’s why he never sent that final letter. That’s why he buried it in the bottom of his bag with the other forgotten things. Because if you ever found out…

And now you had.

He ran both hands through his hair and groaned into the table.

Lily found him twenty minutes later, still in the library, head buried in his arms.

“James we need to— What happened?” she asked immediately, sliding into the seat beside him. “You look like someone hexed your soul out,”

James didn’t lift his head.

“She found the letter,”

“…What?”

James groaned again. “I had it in my bag and she went in for a quill and she found it. Read it. Said ��It was you?’ and then just—left.”

Lily’s eyes widened.

“What? James, that wasn’t the plan—!”

“I know,” he said miserably. “Trust me.”

Lily didn’t wait for more. She stood, grabbed her bag, and strode from the library like a woman on a mission.

—

She found you in the girls’ dormitory, door slightly ajar, the room quiet except for the faint rustle of parchment and the erratic, uneven sounds of your breathing.

The gold-letter lay open on your duvet, surrounded by all the other ones you’d carefully saved. The edges were frayed and thumbed from how often you’d reread them, but now they were scattered like fallen leaves, forming a halo around your crossed legs.

You didn’t look up when Lily entered.

She sat beside you quietly.

For a while, there was only the sound of your sniffles and the occasional tear hitting paper.

“I feel insane,” you said eventually, voice shaking. “I— I didn’t think— I never imagined it would be him,”

Lily reached out gently, plucking a letter from the bedspread. “You mean to tell me you never noticed the handwriting?”

“I never thought to look,” you mumbled. “Why would I? It was James Potter. He was—he was awful for so long,”

“But he isn’t now,”

You looked at her then, eyes red, lips trembling. “No. He’s not,”

There was a long pause.

Lily tilted her head. “You really like him, don’t you?”

You groaned, flopping backwards onto your pillow with a dramatic sigh. “I guess! I don’t—I didn’t think I did, not like that, not really, not until recently, and now—now I don’t know what to do, Lily,”

Lily smiled gently. “It’s okay. It’s… a lot. I know that,”

“It’s so much,” you moaned. “It’s like my brain is having a meltdown. All the letters—I loved the letters, and now they’re his letters and it’s like this huge secret just blew up in my face and I think I want to cry but also yell but also maybe kiss him and I don’t know what order those things go in!”

Lily laughed softly. “That’s the grief talking,”

You sniffled. “Grief?”

“Yeah,” she said solemnly. “The five stages of realising you’ve been in love with James Potter,”

You gave her a look.

“I’m serious. Denial—you definitely had that one early. Anger? You stormed out of the library. Bargaining—we’re doing that now. Depression is when you go quiet and start rereading all his letters while questioning your entire existence. And acceptance—well,”

“I’m not at acceptance yet,” you insisted, even as your voice wobbled. “I’m still in a very dramatic spiral,”

“You’ll get there,” Lily said kindly. “Just… breathe, okay? You’re allowed to freak out. But this—this doesn’t have to be bad,”

“He lied to me,”

“He didn’t lie,” Lily said gently. “He just… couldn’t find the courage to tell you the truth,”

You fell quiet, chewing your lip. “Was this your plan all along?”

Lily hesitated. “Not this exact ending, but… I knew. For a while. And I may have nudged things along,”

You groaned again, grabbing a pillow and burying your face in it. “You kept it from me?”

“It wasn’t mine to tell,”

You peeked out. “He’s really upset, isn’t he?”

“Like a kicked puppy,”

—

James was falling apart.

The Marauders tried their best to be supportive.

Which, unfortunately, amounted to Sirius offering him chocolate, Remus recommending deep breathing exercises, and Peter saying things like, “Well, at least it’s out now?”

“Out?” James choked. “It’s out like a Blast-Ended Skrewt in a greenhouse! She’s going to hate me,”

“You’re being dramatic,” Sirius said. “She likes you. Even I can see that,”

“She liked the version of me who wrote the letters,” James said. “Not the idiot who shoved them in a bag and hoped they never saw the light of day,”

“She liked you, mate,” Remus corrected. “You were being yourself in those letters. You just… didn’t know how to show it in person,”

James rubbed his hands over his face. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

“No,” Sirius said, surprisingly firm. “Not unless you give up now,”

James looked at him.

“You’ve come this far. She knows now. You can’t back down. Not unless you’re okay with always wondering what would’ve happened if you tried,”

James took a deep breath.

“I want to try,”

“Then try,” Remus said, clapping him on the shoulder.

—

You stayed up most of the night rereading the letters.

Every word hit differently now.

The soft musings. The little jokes. The genuine awe in the way he’d described you.

James Potter had written them all.

And somehow, that made your heart hurt in the most complicated, overwhelming, real way.

By morning, your mind was no clearer—but you knew one thing.

You needed to talk to him.

—

James didn’t wake up until nearly noon.

He jolted upright in bed with a strangled noise, heart racing, hair a chaotic mess of pillow creases and stress, the realisation slamming into his chest like a Bludger—he’d missed practice.

He’d missed practice.

On the day of the finals.

There was a beat of stunned silence in the common room, broken only by Peter’s stifled gasp as James scrambled down the stairs, knocking over a chair, his wand, and nearly himself in his blind panic.

“Shit—shit—shit—”

“James, mate, calm down,” came Sirius’s voice, too calm, too amused for the situation.

“I missed practice, Sirius! Finals practice! I'm the captain! I was supposed to run drills, go over the formations—McLaggen was probably leading it, and now the team’s going to think I don’t give a damn—”

“Breathe,” Remus added, flicking his wand to fix James’ mess of a hairdo mid-spiral.

“I can’t—breathe! I should be—kicked off the team, I should sub myself out—”

At that, Sirius sat up properly, ruffling a hand through his dark hair. “Okay, whoa, no. What are you on about?”

James didn’t answer. He was halfway dressed, chest still heaving, hands shaking so badly he couldn’t even fasten the buttons.

“I mean it,” he muttered, voice lower now, harsher. “Maybe I shouldn’t play,”

“You’re literally the best Chaser in the school,” Peter said, face scrunched in confusion.

“I’m also a disaster. You didn’t see her face yesterday. She looked—like I’d broken her, or something. I can’t concentrate, I can’t think—I can’t lead the team if my brain’s stuck on whether or not I’ve ruined the only real shot I had with her,”

“James,” Sirius said carefully, sitting on the edge of one of the sofas. “You don’t have to ruin everything just because your crush found out you have feelings,”

James shot him a look. “It’s more than that and you know it,”

Sirius shrugged. “I do. I also know you’re being an idiot,”

“I panicked. I didn’t mean for her to find the letter—”

“No one thinks you did,” Remus said gently.

“Then why did she run?”

Sirius gave him a flat look. “I dunno, maybe because she’s been falling for you and just found out the sweet, romantic mystery boy she’s been dreaming about for a year is the same idiot who hexed her potions cauldron in fourth year? Maybe it was a lot?”

James dropped heavily into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

He muttered something into his palms that sounded suspiciously like, “I hate everything,”

Sirius stood. “You can’t sit this match out, Prongs,”

“I might make things worse,”

“You won’t,” Remus said.

“You’re just scared,” Sirius added. “And you should be. Feelings are terrifying. But you either play today and show her you’re still you, or you hide away and let her think she was right to walk away,”

James didn’t answer.

—

You were pacing the corridor outside the Gryffindor common room like a lunatic.

You’d spent half the night re-reading the letters again, still overwhelmed, still processing, but ultimately—and maybe most importantly—feeling guilty.

You hadn’t meant to run out on him like that. You did still care. A lot. Too much.

So you needed to say something. Maybe not everything. Maybe not a confession, not yet. But something.

You asked a third year if they’d seen James. They hadn’t.

You tried the Quidditch pitch. Empty.

Eventually, you made your way to the prefects dorms, hesitating at the door before quietly pushing it open.

“…sub myself out…”

You froze.

James was sitting on his bed, dressed in his Quidditch uniform, looking like the ghost of himself. Sirius was pacing. Remus and Peter were quiet. And then—

“Oh,” you blurted.

All four heads turned.

You immediately wanted to melt into the floor. “I—uh—I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I was just—um—I came to wish you luck. For the match. Lily and I are gonna watch for Marlene, obviously, and I know you were really going on about it yesterday so… yeah.”

Your cheeks were burning. You tugged at the sleeve of your jumper and avoided eye contact like it would save you from death by embarrassment. “Anyway. Yeah. Good luck,”

You turned and practically sprinted out the door, pressing both palms to your face the moment it closed behind you.

Inside, there was a beat of silence.

Then Sirius’s slow, satisfied, “She so likes you,”

James didn’t believe it. But still—he sat up straighter. There was a faint flush in his cheeks, a tiny, hopeful ember reigniting.

He wasn’t going to sub himself out.

Not now he knew you were watching.

—

The match that afternoon was nothing short of brutal.

Ravenclaw had a reputation for smart plays and clever feints, and they came in swinging with strategy and speed. But James was a force. It was like someone had lit a fire under him—every pass was clean, every dodge intentional. He was focused. Sharp. Alive in a way he hadn’t been in days.

The crowd in the stands was on fire.

You’d never really been the biggest Quidditch enthusiast—not like Marlene or even Dorcas, who pretended to be bored most games but secretly had a very complex internal fantasy league ranking system. But today? You were completely, helplessly, entirely invested.

Your throat was raw from shouting. You didn’t even care that Lily kept elbowing you in the ribs every time you shrieked James’s name louder than was probably acceptable for someone not dating him. (Yet.)

“I’m sorry,” you rasped after the sixth time, cupping your hands over your mouth as James executed an absolutely outrageous dive to steal the Quaffle from a Ravenclaw Chaser. “But that was hot. That was so—Lily, did you see that—?”

Lily didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t grinning. “I saw it. The whole pitch saw it. You are so painfully gone for this boy it’s almost tragic,”

You shoved her shoulder, cheeks on fire, unable to wipe the dopey grin off your face. James was glowing—wind-swept, flushed, every movement clean and confident and completely alive. It was unfair how good he looked flying. Like it was something stitched into his DNA.

Gryffindor was ahead. Barely. And the entire stadium was one collective heartbeat waiting for the final move.

It came with a streak of red and gold as the Seeker bolted upward—Marlene’s signature move—and then a roar from the crowd when she clutched the Snitch in her hand, grinning like a maniac.

“Yes!” you and Lily screamed in unison, nearly falling over the bench in front of you.

Below, the team rushed to meet her midair, swarming in a tangle of hugs and back pats, and James—James looked up toward the stands, searching, scanning, finding you.

Your breath caught. He grinned, absolutely beaming, and you—without thinking—grinned back.

—

The Gryffindor common room was buzzing. It looked like every single student in the house had packed themselves in to celebrate the win. There were butterbeers flying, someone had enchanted the couches to bounce like trampolines, and music blasted from one corner where Sirius had commandeered the record player.

You tried to stay off to the side with Lily and the other girls, laughing and pretending to be just another teammate’s supporter, not the girl who had maybe-sort-of-definitely admitted feelings for the captain.

But they were not having it.

“Go talk to him,” Dorcas demanded, poking you hard in the ribs.

“He just won the Cup, obviously you have to congratulate him,” Mary added, dragging you a few steps forward.

“I will! Just—” You resisted, flustered. “I need a second. Or ten.”

You didn’t get ten.

Because moments later, James appeared near the fireplace, sweaty and still in uniform, laughing at something Sirius said, absolutely radiant. And the girls all but shoved you in his direction.

You stumbled a bit, clutching your butterbeer like a life raft. He noticed you instantly.

His smile faltered. Just slightly.

You walked the rest of the way on your own, heart hammering like a snitch in your chest.

“Hey,” you said.

“Hey,” James replied, voice quieter than usual.

You stared at each other for a long moment.

Then Sirius, bless his idiotic timing, called from across the room. “Oi! If you’re gonna stare at each other all night, at least do it while snogging! Save us all the agony!”

You blinked. James blinked. Your face caught fire.

You coughed, trying to rally. “Congratulatio—”

“I like you.”

You blinked again. He was staring at you now, so intently, like you were the only person in the room. The words spilled out of him like they’d been waiting on his tongue for weeks.

“A lot. It might not even be liking anymore—I think I might actually be in love with you. Which is terrifying, obviously. I mean, do you know how scary that is? I didn’t mean to say that just now but it’s true and now it’s out there and I can’t take it back and I am so definitely panicking right now what am I doing—”

“James.”

He stopped.

You took a step closer.

“I like you too.”

Silence.

Then James let out a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a laugh and maybe a choke. “You do?”

“I do,”

“Like, like-like me?”

You rolled your eyes, grinning now. “Do you want me to write it in a letter that I’ll never send to you?”

“Okay, wow,” James let out a short laugh, one your grateful breaks the tension a little. “Too soon, too soon,”

He looks at you with unbridled affection as you return the laugh with an unapologic “Sorry,”, and he can’t seem to help himself.

“We should kiss now, right? Wait—should I have asked that? That sounded stupid—so stupid—oh my God, what is wrong with me, I’m gonna go cry in a corner—”

You interrupted him the only way that made sense.

You kissed him.

He froze for half a second—just long enough to register that it was actually happening—and then he melted into it like he’d been waiting forever. His hands hovered for a moment before settling, warm and firm, at your waist. His mouth was soft, gentle, hesitant in the best way, like he was afraid he’d wake up and realise this was all a dream.

But it wasn’t. It was very, very real.

And, unfortunately, also very public.

“Oi! You’re in public, you know!” came Marlene’s unmistakable cackle from across the room.

You broke the kiss, face flaming as you realised—oh no—everyone had seen.

Like… everyone.

James looked equally shellshocked. You both stared at the cheering, whooping, laughing room of Gryffindors, then at each other.

You groaned and buried your face in your hands. “Kill me now.”

James laughed, looping his arms around your shoulders and holding you tight, radiating smug glee.

“No can do,” he said into your hair. “I’ve been waiting years for this,”

“You’re insufferable,” you muttered.

“And yet,” he grinned, “you like me anyway.”

You looked up at him. “Unfortunately.”

And yeah, okay—maybe it was chaotic, and soft, and totally unplanned—but your first kiss with James Potter was exactly as ridiculous and wonderful as it should’ve been.

Lily caught your eye across the common room after the commotion of the kiss settled into a hundred knowing glances and too-loud whispers. She made a very obvious, very exaggerated “go!” motion with both hands, then shoved her way across the crowd to reach you.

“We are not doing this in front of thirty nosy Gryffindors,” she said under her breath, looping her arm through yours and all but dragging you toward the dorms.

“Wait, what’s happening—”

“Privacy, darling. Trust me,”

She glanced back at James, who was still slightly dazed, and jerked her head at him. “Potter. Move,”

He blinked. “Yeah—yep—coming.”

“Also,” she added over her shoulder to the room at large, “if anyone so much as breathes near the Head Boy’s dorm in the next hour, I will personally hex your toes off,”

There was a smattering of laughter, but everyone—whether out of respect or fear—gave a collective nod of understanding.

You didn’t even fight her on it. You let her guide you through the winding corridors until James was unlocking the door to his private dorm, a quiet space tucked away on the top floor of Gryffindor Tower.

He stepped aside to let you in first. You walked in slowly, half-expecting something chaotic, like prank supplies or an entire wall of Quidditch posters—but the room was surprisingly clean. A little messy around the edges, sure—a few rogue socks, a quill left in an ink bottle too long—but warm. Lived in. His.

“Your curtains don’t match,” you said, for lack of anything better.

He chuckled nervously. “Yeah. Peter charmed them once to be the colours of the Weird Sisters and I’ve never managed to get them back properly,”

You nodded slowly. “Cool,”

A pause.

Then—

“You’ve liked me since fourth year?”

It slipped out without warning. You hadn’t meant to say it, not so quickly, but the words burned in your chest. That letter, the gold-foiled parchment, the confession—it was still vibrating through you.

James looked startled, but only for a second. He nodded once, soft and certain.

“Yeah,”

You swallowed. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

He smiled faintly, stepping closer. “Because I was a little idiot. Arrogant. Immature. A menace, honestly. You hated me,”

“I didn’t—hate you,”

“You did,”

“…Okay, a little, maybe,”

That made him laugh.

“But honestly— I didn’t think I deserved to like you back then,” he said. “You were smart. And kind. And so real. You were always thinking about things, you saw people. I was just the loud idiot on a broom,”

You were quiet, because hearing it like that—laid out so plainly—made your heart ache.

He was in front of you now, barely a foot away. You thought he was going to kiss you again, but he didn’t.

Instead, James reached up and gently cradled your face in his hands, his thumbs grazing the apple of your cheeks like you were made of glass and starlight. And then he just looked at you. Like he had all the time in the world. Like he was committing every inch of you to memory.

“You have no idea,” he said, voice barely more than a whisper, “how much you make me feel.”

You couldn’t speak.

So instead, you leaned up and kissed him.

This time, there was no chaos. No crowd. No interruptions. Just you, and James, and the warmth of something blooming between your ribs.

It was slow—achingly so—your lips brushing his like a question. He exhaled into you, a soft, broken sound, and kissed you back like you were the answer.

It was… everything.

The kind of kiss that didn’t need to prove itself. One that said: I see you. I’m here. I want this.

Somewhere between one kiss and the next, you murmured, “Thank you,”

He pulled back just slightly, brow furrowing. “For what?”

You looked up at him, heart thundering.

“You didn’t make this some huge thing. You didn’t… turn it into a game, or a bet, or something loud and performative. You liked me. And you didn’t hide it, but you didn’t push me either. You just… were. You were you.” You blinked. “Thank you for being you,”

James’s face crumpled just a little, like he couldn’t decide whether to smile or cry. One of his hands dropped to your waist, the other curling behind your neck like he needed the anchor.

He pressed his forehead to yours, breathing you in.

“I don’t think you know,” he said hoarsely, “how long I’ve wanted to hear you say that,”

You smiled, dizzy with it all. “Well. Get used to it,”

His lips brushed yours again, so soft it was almost nothing. “I’m really, really in love with you,”

Your breath caught.

“I know,” you whispered.

And then you kissed him again.

And again.

-MDNI FROM THIS POINT ONWARD.-

It started soft—careful, like you were both still testing the weight of the moment. His hands cradled your face like you were something fragile, something precious, something he’d been terrified of holding wrong for years. But each time your mouths met again, the kiss deepened. Grew bolder. A little less hesitant. A little more sure.

Your fingers tangled in his hair—so soft, so stupidly soft—and James let out a noise against your mouth that had your heart stuttering in your chest. The hand cupping your cheek slid down, fingers grazing your jaw, your neck, until it found the curve of your waist and settled there, grounding you.

He was warm. Too warm. Like every inch of him was heat and adrenaline and the barely-contained relief of finally, finally having this.

You tugged him closer.

He didn’t hesitate.

Your back met the edge of the desk behind you, his chest flush with yours, and suddenly there was no air left between your bodies. Just the solid, real weight of him—every inch as solid and strong as you’d imagined when he walked through the halls like the sun had chosen him to orbit around. But here, like this, he was just James. And he was looking at you like he could drown in the sight of you.

His thumb brushed along your hipbone, under the hem of your shirt, and your whole body lit up like you’d been cursed—like every nerve ending had just remembered it was alive.

“Are we—?” he started to ask, breathless.

You kissed him again before he could finish. “I don’t know,” you murmured. “But don’t stop,”

James definitely didn’t stop.

His hands wandered with a careful hunger—like he wanted to memorise the shape of you, not just with touch but with reverence. His mouth followed the same path, trailing kisses from the corner of your lips down the line of your jaw to the soft skin beneath your ear. When he whispered your name there, barely audible, your knees buckled.

You gripped his shirt, fisting the fabric at his chest to stay steady. “God, you’re—” You stopped yourself before the rest could fall out, but the look in his eyes said he’d heard the whole thing anyway.

His lips parted like he wanted to say something—maybe something funny, maybe something devastating—but you kissed him before he had the chance. This time slower, more deliberate, your mouths fitting together like puzzle pieces that had always been waiting for the right alignment.

And it worked. Somehow, it just worked.

The kind of kiss that felt like you’d been chasing it your whole life.

James groaned softly into your mouth, and that noise did something catastrophic to your brain. One of his hands slid up your back, fingers spread wide like he was trying to anchor himself to you, and when you opened your eyes for half a second to look at him, you found him already watching you—eyes blown wide with want, with feeling, with everything.

“I’ve wanted this,” he breathed against your skin. “For so long,”

James kissed you like a man starved after that—still gentle, always careful, but no longer pulling back.

It was clumsy in places, breathless in others. Too many teeth in one kiss, your shoulder knocking into a stack of textbooks in another. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

You were on fire.

And James was the match, the spark, the sun itself.

At some point, his forehead pressed to yours. You both just breathed. Hard. Laughing softly between gasps, because of course it was James who made kissing this addictive and this stupid.

You were lost in him.

In the feel of every inch of him pressed against you—his hips pinning you to the edge of the desk, his body surrounding you like a forcefield of lean muscle and freckled skin.

Heat was unfurling like liquid fire in your veins, but his mouth still traced over your jawline and across your cheek like he couldn’t stop. Like you were precious.

You gripped the fabric of his shirt, tugging hard enough to bring his gaze back to yours and then holding it, your breath hitching when you caught that look in his eyes, and his hips moved—just once, and just a little—and god, what that did to you. How it sent desire flashing like a lightning bolt down your spine to pool low in your stomach, and you had to bite down on your lip to keep from gasping out loud.

His fingers curled around your hips, digging into the soft flesh through your jeans, and then he pulled you closer like he couldn’t get enough. Closer still, until you were practically draped over the desk, your thighs parted and hips flush with his, and he was devouring you—his touch, his kiss, with no sign of being full.

God, he wanted everything.

His hands mapped out the line of your waist, your ribs, your spine, and everywhere you could feel the warm, rough slide of his touch you burned for more. Your heart was beating so fast you were sure he could feel it pulsing through your skin, and when you rolled your hips up towards his you were just as surprised by the noise you made as James was.

He inhaled sharply, swearing softly, and there would have been time to be embarrassed if you weren’t too busy being turned to mush.

“God that was hot,” James practically breathes out the words, hungry eyes half hidden behind fog-covered lenses as they drag down your body.

He looked utterly ruined already. Hair a mess from you running your fingers through it, shirt rumpled from when you couldn’t keep yourself from touching him. Wanting him.

You reached up to cup his face on impulse, your fingers tracing the lines of his cheeks, his jaw, before sliding your fingers across the arms of his glasses, delicately pulling them from his face. “D’you need these?”

The smirk that spreads across his face is just a little bit smug, but it still does things to you. “Depends,” he said, still breathless. “Are we planning on doing anything that would necessitate me being able to see?”

You laugh, dropping both your voices, and it comes out sounding rough. “Maybe not,” you say, slipping the specs into the front pocket of his shirt. “Do you need to be able to see to kiss me?”

His eyes are half-lidded, and you could count each of his eyelashes from the way he’s looking at you, lips still swollen from a few minutes ago. “No,” he murmurs, leaning down to brush his mouth over yours again, “but it does help with the view.”

He took your chin with his finger, tilting your face up so he could take in the sight of you properly. A slow-burning warmth unfurled in your stomach—no, lower than that, and for a few seconds you were both just looking, and it felt almost more intimate than the last few minutes.

“God, you’re… blurry,” he whispered, and you can’t help the sharp laugh that echoes out of your throat.

“Bugger off,” you said, without any real intent behind it. You weren’t even sure why you were acting so shy—maybe you were just overwhelmed by the situation, the feelings, or the way being with James just felt. Whatever the reason, he seemed to find your nervousness amusing.

He chuckled, dipping his head to press a kiss to the sensitive skin just beneath your ear, right there at the edge of your jaw where you were softest. “I’m kidding,” he murmured. “I’m nearsighted. And you’re definitely close enough for me to see,”

He pulled back just enough for the smirk to return, the tips of his fingers grazing over the strip of exposed skin between the hem of your shirt and the waist of your jeans and sending a shiver down your spine. His mouth was still curved in that maddeningly smug smile, but his voice was so low when he continued to talk. “I’m gonna take your shirt off now, okay?”

The question comes out quiet and gentle, but there’s a heat to it too. Asking what you want, asking what you’ll let him have.

You manage a breathless, “okay,” and his gaze is still fixed on you when he lets his hands slide up under your shirt, calloused fingers dancing over the bare skin of your waist.

Every point of contact seemed to sizzle, nerve endings you didn’t even know you had sparking alive beneath his touch. You felt like you were trembling, like every breath hit was a jolt of pure, liquid feeling.

His eyes were still trained on your face as he drew your shirt over your head, gaze drifting across your exposed chest with an unabashed—and kind of feral—kind of reverence. “God, you’re perfect—”

He pressed a kiss to the spot just below your collarbone, and you could feel the rasp of a day’s worth of stubble against your skin, burning down to your very bones. Both his hands splayed across your ribcage, like he was trying to memorise the shape of your body by touch.

You can hear the sharp intake of breath he takes when his fingers catch the edge of your bra, and he’s already murmuring again, his voice a low, wrecked sound against your bare skin. “Can I take this off too?”

You answer by helping him fumble with the hooks, the heat from his skin and his gaze almost too much to bear. By the time it hits the floor somewhere behind you, his mouth has found the delicate, thrumming hollow of your neck, and his hands are wandering lower. Across your stomach, tracing over your curves to slide across your hipbone and dip under the waist of your jeans.

Any coherent thoughts you’d been clinging on to up until this point were gone, lost in a haze of heat and want. Every touch was electric, his mouth searing a path down your neck, across your shoulder, across the bare skin of your collarbone, until he’d left a trail of warm, open-mouthed kisses along the apex of your breasts.

“You sound so good,” he whispered, the words catching against your skin. “Taste so good.”

He was everywhere, surrounding you, all his attention on the body under his touch. His nose grazed the sensitive skin just above your nipple, just a gentle brush at first, and then he flicked the tip of his tongue across the peak of your breast and every nerve in your body went white hot.

“God—” the single syllable comes out as a broken gasp. A plea, maybe, a wordless begging for more.

He chuckled softly, a dangerous, wicked sound, and then he closed his mouth over your nipple and sucked. It felt like he’d lit a fire in the pit of your stomach, like it was all you could do to breathe, and he wasn’t even finished. One of his hands was still holding your hip—steadying you as he switched his attention to the other, teeth scraping just enough to make the heat in your belly flare brighter, deeper, all of your muscles tensing at once.

Every part of you felt like it was on fire, and you were so empty. The ache between your thighs was insistent, demanding attention you couldn’t give it. You let out a breathless whine, shifting to try and get some friction, and when he raised his head to look at you, eyes all half-lidded and mouth still slightly slick, you thought you might actually go insane.

You were so caught up in the moment that it took a second longer than it should’ve to notice the cocky smile plastered across his face. He was watching you writhe under his touch like it was the best show he’d ever seen.

“You good up there?” he said teasingly. “Look like you’re about to combust.”

“Bastard,” you managed, and it sounded as breathless as you felt. You reached up to bury a hand in his hair, tugging on handfuls of messy waves and relishing in the way he cursed softly under his breath. “You’re a goddamn tease.”

He gave the underside of your breast one last wet kiss, then started pressing a line of kisses up your body towards your mouth. “A tease, am I?” He said between kisses, his voice still low and rough. “I don’t know, sounds more like I’m trying my best to be a gentleman instead of rushing into the action,”

“Some gentleman,” you laughed, and that time it came out more of a gasp than anything else. He’d drawn himself up to full height, looking down at you with a smirk that was half amused and half smug, and god, he was handsome. “You’ve got me half naked on your desk, I’m pretty sure that’s the opposite of gentlemanly,”

“That’s not my fault,” he said, mock-offended, and you let out a bark of laughter. “You’re the one who started it. With the shirt, and the kissing. All my good intentions went right out the window,”

You were still giggling—his hand was now tracing idle circles on your hip, gentle and tender—but his touch was driving you insane. He was everywhere, burning through your skin, and all it did was make the heat beneath your ribs worse. You took a deep, shaking breath, trying to slow down your heart.

Your voice came out much more timid than you expected. “You’d probably better finish what you started, then.”

His eyes caught yours, and the smile that spread across his face sent a shiver straight down your spine. “Are you asking me to take your pants off, sweetheart?”

You rolled your eyes at the endearment, but it was impossible to stay irritated with the way your heart was jumping into your throat. “I’m asking you to take your pants off, actually,”

He raised an eyebrow, expression still cocky but edged with a touch of surprise. He looked so good like that—glasses missing, mouth pink and kiss-swollen, eyes fixed on your every move. “Consider it done,”

He took your chin in one hand, his touch almost teasing, tilting your head back to give himself full access to the line of your neck. His other hand drifted to rest on your side, pulling you away from the desk to push you over to his four-poster instead.

It was a bit undignified, stumbling backwards while he was still glued to your neck, but somehow you both managed to land in a heap on the mattress, with him on top. The sheets rustled in protest, and god, you could just feel his weight on top of you, pinning you to the mattress and setting fire to every point of contact.

You barely even noticed him pulling off his own shirt and pants, your mind too clouded with desire to pay attention. You just watched, taking in the sight of his bare chest and the sharp planes of his muscles, his lean and strong and all you could do was reach up to run your hands down across his shoulders—over the freckles and moles and scars that covered his skin.

He let out a strangled sound when your hands slid over the waistband of his boxers, his eyes fixed on your face, his whole body rigid under your touch as the fabric drags down his thighs. He was breathless, his breathing coming fast and shallow, but he still managed to speak.

“You seem to be missing a few things, if you haven’t noticed.” His voice was still that same, annoyingly smooth, but there was a rasp to it too. Like talking was suddenly more difficult than it should have been.

And yeah, okay, he had a point. You hadn’t even realised you were still wearing jeans until now, but it was quickly becoming an issue. He was still pinning you to the mattress, but you managed to lift your hips up under him enough to reach the zipper on your pants.

He sat back on his heels, watching you struggle out of your jeans—he reached down to help when your legs got tangled, and you swore the smirk on his face when he got the second leg off was almost wolfish. “Careful, there, you almost kneed me in the bollocks.”

“Too bad, I was aiming for them.”

He laughed, running a hand up your bare thigh, fingers tracing across the edge of your underwear and making your whole body burn. “Nice knickers.”

“Shut up,” you said, but your voice was already hoarse, half from the effort of talking and half from the way every little touch seemed to send lightning straight to the pit of your stomach. “You literally have snitches on your boxers, you’re not allowed to make fun of me,”

“For your information, they’re my lucky boxers,” he said, as if it was the most logical thing in the entire world. “And they seem to be working,”

You were about to comment on the ridiculousness of that statement, but then he let his hand brush over the damp patch in your panties and every thought in your head evaporated in about ten seconds flat. “Oh, fuck—”

His touch was agonising. Just a single, gentle stroke traced across the edge of your underwear, but it felt like being set on fire. “You’re so wet,” he murmured, still watching your face like the world’s most beautiful train wreck, and the way he’s smirking is just a little bit cruel. “Is this all because of me?”

You should’ve found the teasing infuriating—maybe even patronising, but your head was spinning and you were so turned on you couldn’t think straight. “You know it is,” you managed to gasp out, arching your hips up into his touch and desperately trying to find more friction.

His thumb pressed across your clit through your underwear and the gasp that came out of your mouth was practically obscene. “Good,” he said. “I like that.”

He was shifting back on top of you, and his mouth was on your neck, hot and wet and distracting, and you’d almost forgotten about his thumb until it moved again—a slow, torturous circle that had you whining. “God, you sound so good,” he murmured against your skin. “Can I take these off? Please?”

If you’d had even a second of self-control left, you probably would’ve found the way he was almost begging for it adorable, but as it was all you could manage to do was nod.

You felt more than heard him swear, and the next thing you know he’s hooking his fingers around the elastic of your underwear, pulling them down your legs with a speed that says he’s having trouble keeping his own eagerness in check.

He sat back once you were completely naked—just you, sprawled out on his four-poster, bare and trembling and wanting. Every part of you felt like it was on edge, like you’d fall apart as soon as he touched you again.

He was looking at you like he was starving, eyes wandering across every inch of your body. “You’re perfect,” he murmured, “Merlin, look at you,”

You couldn’t help but shiver under his gaze, the feeling of helplessness sending another jolt of heat down your spine. You’d almost gotten used to seeing that cocky smirk of his, but now it was gone—replaced by a look you couldn’t place, like he was in awe of you.

You watched helplessly as he shifted, his body covering yours again, bare skin against bare skin. His cock was already hard against your thigh and you were so empty that you knew nothing except the urge to have him as close to you as possible. “Please,” you managed to say, words a gasp as he traced a finger over your hip.

He groaned softly at the desperation in your voice, and then he was reaching down, his fingers finding your opening and sliding in. All you could do was moan out loud, clenching around him and aching for more. “God—” His voice was ragged, rough, like he was using all his willpower just to keep himself from going too fast. “That’s it. That’s it,” he murmured, his forehead dropping against your shoulder. “You’re so tight.”

“You’re gonna destroy me,” you gasped out, as he slowly started to pump his fingers in and out. “I—” Whatever you’d been about to say dissolved into another moan. “Please, just—”

“I’ve got you,” he said, and another kiss, against your collarbone. “I’ve got you, I’ll take care of you,” And then he added a third finger, and you were certain you wouldn’t even be able to string words together anymore.

“Oh god—oh, god—” Your back arched again, hips lifting off the bed, and he curled his fingers again and the pleasure of it was so sharp it almost hurt.

“Just like that? You like that?” He murmured softly against your skin.

You weren’t even sure how to answer that, your brain so overwhelmed by heat and pleasure that all you could do was let out a helpless whine.

He kept pumping his fingers, working you open, and you were trembling with the effort of trying not to let go just yet. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, and you could hear the smile in his voice, and god, he was so cocky like this. “Just be patient—”

You gasped out something between a laugh and a moan. “Patient? You have some nerve—”

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of nerve,” he said, and then he pulled his fingers out with another sound from your throat. You were about to complain, but he kissed you before you could—a brief brush of his mouth on yours that was so distracting you almost didn’t notice him moving until he was between your thighs.

He had one hand on your hip and the other wrapped around himself, and the way he’s looking at you makes your whole body ache.

“You ready?” He asked, and his voice is still rough and a little breathy. You nodded, words failing you, and the sound he made was almost desperate.

“You’re so perfect,” he murmured, and then the tip of his cock was right at your entrance and you were trembling so badly you were almost whimpering.

“I’m gonna make you feel so good,” he promised, and then he started to press in. It was a torturously slow stretch, every inch of him filling you like you were made for him. You’re still too full of him—you clench around him without meaning to, and all of him shudders.

“Oh my god,” he says, and it comes out like a gasp, and when he’s finally in all the way you feel like you might cry, like he’s touching all of those parts of you you’ve been waiting for him to find.

“Oh, god,” you moan, and it’s all you can manage. It’s just too much—the feeling of him, the stretch of your body, the heat in your ribs that you can’t seem to breathe around. It’s like he’s everywhere, and you’re not sure you want it to ever stop.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and he’s starting to move, “that’s it, breathe. Just feel me.” He leans down to kiss you, messy and sloppy, just a brush of open mouths before you’re arching off the bed and his lips are on your neck.

“You look so god damn good like this,” his thrusts are slow, deep, and they’re already driving you mad. “All spread out for me.” You can’t even answer him in words anymore, every sound slipping out of your mouth a high, breathy whine.

He keeps up his torturously slow pace for what feels like a small eternity, and every time he pushes in you can feel him against the inside of you, like your body was made to take him in. “You feel so good,” he’s murmuring, “God, why haven’t we done this before?”

“Maybe if you hadn’t been a coward for the last three years—” Your response is humorous, lighthearted, and falls almost completely flat as it comes out more desperate than goading.

But everything feels so good—he feels so good, the slow drag of his cock filling you over and over, his hands on your thighs holding you open just for him, his teeth and mouth everywhere they can reach.

He laughs, the sound coming out as half-moan, and it’s incredible how he’s somehow still acting cheeky when he’s like this—like the whole world has shrunk down to the two of you and there’s still room for playfulness. “Maybe if you hadn’t been so blind you would’ve noticed me sooner,” he says, and he’s still teasing, like he isn’t literally inside you, and you’d hit him if you had the brainpower. “You could’ve had this the whole time.”

Your face is so flushed it feels like you’re on fire, every muscle in your body tense and trembling. You dig your nails into his shoulders, trying to find some kind of anchor. “You’re still a cocky bastard, you know that?” But it’s hard to keep up the banter, and all it comes out sounding like is a soft whine.

“I know,” he grins, and he’s so smug you’d almost hate him if you weren’t so desperate for him. “God why didn’t I know sex felt this good-?” He leans down again, his mouth hovering over yours, the heat of him so close that you can feel it and it burns.

“Maybe I’m just that good,” you manage to say—and yes, okay, your voice is half a gasp and the words are broken, breathless by the way he’s still moving inside you, but you still manage.

He laughs again, sharp and ragged at the edge, and you feel like you’re being unwound like some old toy, your whole body vibrating like a live wire. The stretch of him is almost too much to bear.

He’s still smirking when he says, “And you call me cocky,”

He’s picking up the pace, but only just enough to make you whine again, his head dipped to mouth at your throat again.

You’re so tight around him it’s like he’s trying to make you come apart one piece at a time, his breath warm against your skin as he keeps whispering. “But you’re right, you feel so damn good—”

He’s losing control, losing his smugness, because despite what he said about patience he looks like he’s ready to go over the edge already. But he’s still got that smirk on his face, like even now, when he’s all ragged breaths and desperate thrusts, he’s still teasing. “I should’ve done this sooner. Should’ve taken you back here back in fourth year. Should’ve had you like this when I first started thinking about you,”

His hands are on your hips, his thumbs digging into your hipbones like he’s trying to hold himself back from just snapping and going wild on you.

“Should’ve had every day in fifth year," he’s panting now, and he’s still going just as slow, making it feel like you’re being taken apart, piece by piece. “Would’ve been better than those stupid pranks.”

You can’t even laugh—you just can’t, every nerve in your body is set off like a firework. You manage, “You’re- you’re terrible,” but then you’re arching your hips up into him, your body taking over despite yourself.

“I’m terrible,” he agrees, but he’s grinning, he’s breathless and there’s a sweat on his forehead and he still looks infuriatingly gorgeous. “Doesn’t change the fact that I want you so bad I can’t think straight. Couldn’t, back then. Just followed you around like an idiot.”

“You were an idiot,” you manage, and he’s moving faster now, his arms shaking on either side of you. “You-ah—” You’re falling apart—you can feel it happening—“you were an arrogant bastard—”

He’s kissing your neck and it just makes you louder, your words coming out in ragged gasps. “I know,” he says, like he’s laughing, and you would want to smack him if he didn’t feel so good. “I was an arrogant bastard who was in love with you,”

The words hit you like a bolt of lightning. You open your mouth to respond, but right at that moment he thrusts in a way that hits that spot inside you that makes your vision go white, and the sound that comes out of you is so indecent.

“You—oh, god—” You’re trembling, you’re coming undone underneath him, and he’s doing his best to keep up the pace but you can tell there’s something desperate taking over. “I’m- god, I can’t, I’m so-“

He’s losing more and more control, his breathing ragged and his own body shaking as like he’s just barely holding himself together.

“Please,” it comes out like a gasp, “just come for me, please, come on-” And he’s begging, now, like he couldn’t stand it another minute more, “I just want you to come, please, you’re so perfect—”

He’s pressing right against that spot, over and over, and you’re so on edge you think you might be dreaming. “I’m gonna— oh, god-”

His hand has snuck down between you, fingers moving in tight, fast circles on you clit, and everything is so close and so hot you could die— “God, you look perfect, come on, that’s it, you’re so good—“

The tension in you is snapping, and you’re on the edge, you’re so close you can’t see straight. “Please, I— I-“ you’re there, you’re there, you’re going to fall but he’s falling too.

“Come on, you’re so close, just come-“ He’s begging again, and you’re shaking so hard you feel like you might fall apart—and then you do, and the pleasure hits like a lightning bolt, and you’re crying out loud, the sound breaking like a whimper, and you feel like you’re going to fall apart.

“Oh, god-” His body’s shaking, the breath leaving his chest in ragged gasps, and you’re just clinging to him, riding out the aftershocks of your orgasm and shaking so hard you think you might go insane. “Oh, god, oh, god-”

It didn’t really help that James was still going.

“God you’re so beautiful,” he’s saying, “God, you’re so beautiful, you’re so good, you’re so-“

Another wave comes over you like a shockwave, and it’s almost too much, you’re so sensitive and over-whelmed you feel like it’ll break you, but he’s still going, still moving inside you, still driving you straight through the edge of pleasure and over it into something bright-hot and almost frantic. “God, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come—“ He’s falling apart, and he’s never looked better. “I’ll pull out I promise—”

You can’t find the words to answer him, but you manage a nod, your whole body trembling as you cling to him.

He swore, and he’d almost be swearing with that same cocky smirk if it weren’t for the fact that he’s falling apart completely, gasping out “You’re gonna kill me, you’re gonna-”

His whole body trembles, and then he’s pulling out, just in time, his body going rigid, his mouth finding yours in a messy, desperate sort of kiss. And he’s still shaking, still panting against your skin, his forehead pressed against yours like he’s never going to let go, watery ropes of his come left decorating your pussy and your torso.

“Fuck,” he’s panting, and he’s still shaking but there’s a smile on his face, like he’s drunk and blissed out and just happy. “Just- give me a minute, just a minute-”

You just lie there, feeling like you’ve just been set on fire and left to burn, and he’s pressing kisses wherever he can reach, on your neck, your temple, the corner of your mouth, until both of you are finally still, just lying wrapped up in each other.

He’s wrapped himself around you like he’ll never move again, his face buried in your neck, and your whole body feels like it’s come unglued.

After a few minutes, he lifts his head to look at you, and that smirk is back, the bastard. “So,” he says, and there’s a sly look in his eyes. “Did I live up to the hype?”

“There was no hype, James, you were a virgin,” You laugh shortly with a roll of your eyes, shifting your legs a little wider open to accommodate for the stickiness between them.

“Ouch.” He winces dramatically. “You’re gonna ruin my ego.”

He’s looking at you with so much heat you’re half-convinced he’s about to go for round two, but then he shifts, pulling away to lie down next to you, your legs tangled together. He’s still grinning, a smug sort of half-smile on his face.

“Don’t look so damn pleased with yourself,” you grumble, but you’re still so buzzed up and he’s looking at you like you’re the best thing he’s ever seen.

He’s looking at you with a kind of reverence you’ve never seen before, but he covers it up with the same stupid smirk he always wears. “So,” he says, like he’s casually mentioning the weather. “You, uh… had fun?”

You laugh—that’s a severe understatement of the year—and you can’t help but smile at the boyish enthusiasm in his expression. “Yeah,” you say, a little softer. “I did.”

He grins at that, and then he’s rolling on top of you again, covering you with his body like a blanket. “I’m assuming that means we can do this again sometime.”

The words come out as the same obnoxious cockiness, still cocky and self-assured, but there’s something almost… nervous underneath it, like he’s not really being blasé at all. You hum, tilting your chin back enough that he can bury his face in your neck. “Yeah,” you say, and you wrap your arms around his back, tracing the knobs of his spine with your fingers. “Yeah, we can probably do this again. But maybe take me on a date first next time,” You laugh.

He grins against your neck, his mouth still leaving lazy kisses on every part of your skin it can reach. “That’s fair,” he murmurs, and his breath on your neck sends a shiver through you. “I have to romance you first. I can do that.” His teeth nip at your earlobe, and you can feel the sharp edge of of a grin. “I could even be a gentleman about it, if you wanted.”

“You? Be a gentleman?” You fake gasp, like it’s the most ridiculous suggestion you’ve ever heard. “Absolutely unheard of.”

He snorts, and you can feel the smile on his mouth, hot and wet against your skin. “You’re laughing, but I could be incredibly charming if I wanted to,” He’s still just mouthing at you, running his teeth over the soft underside of your jaw. “You read my letters,”

“Yeah,” you admit, almost against your will. “I did.”

He pulls back to look at you with a lazy, smug half-smile. “And they were charming?”

You roll your eyes at him, but you’re still smiling. “They were… acceptable.”

“Acceptable,” he sighs sadly, mock-disappointed. “I don’t know how I feel about being reduced to ‘acceptable’. I put a lot of work into those letters, you know.”

But he’s grinning, his chin propped up on your chest with his chin, like he’s waiting to get a response. “Come on. I’m at least worth ‘good,’ right?”

“Yeah, alright,” you give in, even though ‘good’ isn’t nearly enough to describe his letters. “They were good. They were… nice.”

He pouts, like a kid who did a drawing and didn’t get a gold star. “Nice? Jesus, you do not understand the concept of positive reinforcement.”

“Sorry,” you say, with your best attempt at earnestness, “how about this? They were fantastic. World class even. You should be writing love letters professionally.”

It takes him a moment of studying you to realise you’re joking, but then he sighs in mock-agony, burying his face in your neck. “I can’t believe I’ve fallen for a girl who’s mean to me,”

“Yeah,” you say, and you’re laughing, now, your whole body shaking with gales of laughter. “You’re really just… the world’s biggest loser.”

He huffs good-naturedly, his face still hidden in your neck. “Says the girl whose been attracted to me for years,”

“Says the boy who wrote me sappy-ass love letters like a Victorian maiden,” you retort.

He laughs at that, but it’s not mean or mocking. “It’s a wonder you didn’t catch on, honestly,” he mutters jokingly, “I laid it on so thick I thought even you would see me pining tragically through all the ink I used to write about how obsessed with you I was.”

You bite back a smile at that, rolling your eyes at his mock-exasperation. “God, you’re dramatic.”

His mouth presses a soft, wet kiss under your jaw, and he murmurs against your skin—“You like it, though.”

It’s a statement, not a question.

And he’s right, because you do—you do like him, when he’s all bluster and bravado and bullshit, and you like him like this too, when he’s gentle and reverent and a tad bit vulnerable. “Yeah,” you say, and it’s soft. “I do.”

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