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startanewdream · 4 years ago

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Summer Heat

Summary: James is late and summer heat always brings out Lily’s emotions.

Part of my Jily Lives AU, set during Order of the Phoenix and based on @secretsongdeer‘s amazing prompt of “James or Lily is late from an Order mission, and the other is worried sick".

It turned out into this crazy emotional roller-coaster of Angst and Smut.

Rated M, so all below the cut or on AO3. Read at your own risk (but if anyone wants a PG version, just tell me that I can post it too :D)

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James is late.

It is not like it never happened before, it is not like every Order mission has a defined duration of time and it is not like he is on a particularly dangerous mission tonight, but still fear bubbles like acid in her stomach. He is supposed to be on watch-duty with Sirius, and while she trusts Sirius to guard him with his life, she also knows Sirius can be a little hothead too and Sirius hates to stay still for too long.

Also, when they are together, Prongs and Padfoot, things tend to escape control, even for a mission that is supposed to be only guarding a door.

Or maybe she is overreacting. Many simple things could have happened. Tonks got caught in her work and could not relieve them; someone decided to stop by the Department of Mysteries and they had to wait to get out. Still, Lily knows she will never get used to that feeling of waiting for him to come home safe.

Maybe it was the years of relative peace they enjoyed that have made her feel more unacquainted with that waiting. For the last fifteen years, James had not once taken a mission for the Order. Ever since Harry was born, they both had promised to concentrate their energy in protecting their son - and all they had done that first year was hiding, moving from a place to another, until Voldemort had finally found them and -

She blinks, deciding to not let her thoughts wander in that direction - in that horrible night -, and her eyes fall on Harry. He is sitting on the kitchen table, reading a muggle newspaper, his face closed and troubled.

That is not new. All summer Harry has been distraught, demanding they talk to him and yet refusing to say anything himself. Lily can read her son easier than she can read the book she is supposed to be currently studying, and she can see a storm brewing inside Harry, but he insists on staying silent. He hasn’t said a word about that night in the graveyard with Voldemort, nor about Cedric Diggory and not even a mention of whatever dreams have been tormenting him at night.

Her husband is late and her son is suffering and she cannot help any of them right now.

Her head hurts.

Somehow this feels worse than the first time, which doesn’t make any sense. In the First War, she was too young and inexperienced and no matter what they said to each other, they were losing - Dorcas was killed by Voldemort himself, Marlene and her family had perished in a fire, they didn’t trust Remus and they trusted Peter too much, and Harry was the target of a prophecy.

Now they are better prepared. Voldemort is still hiding and they know what he is after and that gives them an advantage. As long as they can keep Voldemort away from the prophecy, they will have more time to… She doesn’t know what they will do with more time. Convince those stupid politicians that Voldemort is really back? Gather more help for the Order? Prepare better her son for -

No. This is not Harry’s obligation, no matter what a stupid prophecy says. Voldemort is still human and then he can die like any other man. Anyone can kill him; she will kill him if she gets the chance. Not her fifteen-year-old son, who is currently crumpling the newspaper as if it offends him, tearing each page with particular vengefulness and throwing it in the fireplace to watch them burn.

‘Harry…’, she begins, her voice as tired as she feels, trying to ignore the buzz in her head.

‘There is nothing here’, he complains, still tearing the pages. ‘Of course, we could actually know what’s going on if we hadn’t cancelled our subscription of the Daily Prophet’.

Lily presses the bridge of her nose to see if her headache gets better. It doesn’t help.

‘We told you the Prophet is not reporting anything because nothing is going on’.

Except for the current attack on them - the silly remarks of Harry's instability, the cruel distortion of her story with James -, but she doesn’t say that. They will have to tell Harry eventually; she just never found an opening for it, because he is always brooding and upset and Lily knows that Harry will feel guilty for causing trouble when he hears it.

As if it’s his fault for witnessing Voldemort’s return.

‘How can there be nothing to report? With you guys all mysterious?’

‘We are not - ’, when Harry rolls his eyes disdainfully, she stops to control her own rising anger. It is not Harry’s fault that she is more stressed than normal today. Where the hell is James?

'Don't pretend everything is fine, Mum. I see you looking at your watch every five seconds. I know you are worried about Dad'.

She forces herself to breathe normally, even though she knows she won't deceive him. Harry and Lily always understood each other too well.

‘It’s just normal Order business’.

‘If there is Order business happening -’

‘There is always Order stuff going on, Harry. We didn’t stay doing nothing for all these years’.

‘You could have fooled me’, he whispers loudly enough for her to hear but to also pretend she hasn't understood him.

She shouldn’t take his bait, but James is not there and how can he be so damn late? She is fearing for him and also a little mad - why couldn't he choose another mission? One that he could do safely at home? And why did she have to stay behind? Someone has to look after Harry, sure, but she is as much capable as him of doing things. Next time he can be the one staying and worrying about where is she and why the hell she is late -

‘And what do you mean by that?’, she asks before she can stop herself.

Harry turns to really face her now. He may look like a copy of James sometimes, but the raging expression in his face is just like the one on Lily’s.

Like her, Harry’s temper rises too fast and too quickly.

‘I didn’t see your amazing Order when I was facing Quirrell. Or when there was a basilisk in the castle. Or -’.

‘Harry -’

‘And a great job you all did last year’, he adds, ignoring her, his voice raising. ‘That bloody Death Eater was just under your nose -’

‘HARRY!’

Lily stands furiously and Harry blinks at her, seeming both surprised and satisfied that she screamed at him.

‘You know, this, right now, is why you are too young to be involved with the Order’.

‘Am I young?’, he asks, baffled, crossing his arms. ‘How can I be too young with all the things that happened to me?’

‘You are fifteen and you don’t get it. Do you think facing Voldemort is enough? I’ve done it four times too -’

‘And I am the one with a scar! I am the one that gets stuck with sphinxes and dragons and that has to escape him over and over again, so no, you don’t get it!’.

She closes her eyes briefly and then she can see, as if she is locked on that moment, the memory of that night, that horrible night, of Voldemort raising his wand to her little baby, of her and James alone and helpless -

No.

‘What I get’, she says, forcing herself to calm her voice, ‘is that you are fifteen and you should be worried about other stuff. School, dates, your pimples. And I am sorry that things keep happening to you and I know it’s not fair -’

‘And still, you treat me like a baby! You don’t tell me anything!’

‘You want to talk about who is withholding information? How about we talk about your nightmares?’

Harry stands suddenly, making his chair fall with a heavy sound, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are blazing with fury and for a moment Lily thinks he will scream at her.

‘I am out’, he says instead, his voice trembling with cold fury. When she opens her mouth to argue, he adds: ‘In the backyard. I know I can’t leave this bloody house’.

He makes the house sound like a prison.

‘You know perfectly well why you have to stay near’, she reminds him, ignoring his bad language. Harry shrugs, indifferent.

‘Yeah, that amazing blood protection’, he scoffs. ‘Helped a lot last month’.

‘You are alive, aren’t you?’

‘But Cedric isn’t’, he says and more than the anger she can hear his sorrow.

Her annoyance suddenly vanishes, and she takes a step in his direction, but Harry turns his back to her and leaves her alone in the kitchen.

Great. Just all she needed. A grieving teenager son and a missing husband.

She points her wand around the kitchen, thinking of making tea for herself - and Harry when he returns from his walk around the garden. She knows her son. He will still be angry, but much less inclined to fighting again. He will accept her tea.

She glances outside the window, fanning herself with her hand. It’s early night already, but the heat did not wave. It's the hottest summer she can remember, which isn't probably helping any of them. Summer heat always brings out your emotions, her mother used to say.

And once more she feels that bitterness of worry for where James is and why he didn't warn her that he would be two hours late - he could have been drinking with Sirius right now as much as he could have fallen into a trap for all she knows and -

The thought makes her feel strangely cold and Lily shivers before she notices it's not only her mind playing tricks with her. Something is off. She can see her own breath condensing in the air. It’s eerily quiet around her and she can’t hear any sound coming from the street, nor the sound of the teakettle whistling - in fact, even though she is three feet away from the stove, she can’t feel the warmth of the fire at all. It is like there is an ice storm coming, inside the house, and she thinks she will never feel happiness again -

The realization comes to her suddenly and it helps shake her senses. Lily raises, gripping her wand in her trembling hand and she concentrates on one thought. Find Harry.

She leaves the kitchen, following Harry’s steps, going almost blindly to the edges of their propriety, close to the small woods that James uses to transform with Remus on full moon nights. It is dark outside as if the lights from the lamp streets cannot reach their house and the sky has lost all the stars. The despair threatens to overwhelm her and she takes deep heavy breaths, looking around - she can’t see them, she can’t see Harry, but she knows they are close… They shouldn’t be here, not here, not with their blood protection…

Except she knows Voldemort was able to touch Harry, so maybe it isn’t as strong as before… maybe Harry is helpless, and she will have to watch her son die before her eyes once more - no, she can’t think about it…

‘Mum!’

Harry’s voice breaks through her reverie and she turns towards the sound. Harry is running, coming from behind the old broom shed, his face pale and sweating. Two dementors are gliding behind him, and for a moment Lily thinks of silly horror movies, of how no matter how much the victim runs, the killer always catches it -

Harry screams for her again and Lily raises her wand, the spell ready in her lips, her mind focusing on protecting him. But Harry is still looking fearfully at her, his eyes opened in panic and it takes her a full second to understand he is not really staring at her.

But at something behind her.

The cold gets stronger than before and it is like a block of ice has dropped directly over her, almost making her heart stop beating altogether. It is not fear - it is the certainty she will never feel happiness again, that this is all useless. All she ever did was delay this moment because nothing could ever stop it - did she really think she could save herself? Or Harry?

The dementor is almost gentle as it grabs her, opening her arms and approaching her face. It does not seem to be in a hurry, and she doesn’t see the dementor’s face, because she thinks of Voldemort during that night. He wasn’t in a hurry either.

She can hear her own voice, how she pleaded and pleaded that not Harry, not ever Harry, they would do anything, her and James, because they loved Harry too much. And Voldemort had laughed, cruelly and happily, and told them to stand aside. But James and Lily had stood, their hands together, protecting their son as if their body shield would be enough - Voldemort had then blasted them out of the way like they were nothing and then he had marched to her son, his wand raised just like the dementor’s hand in her direction - and she had watched helpless, unable to stop, as he cast the Killing Curse on her son - and the world had exploded in a bright green fire and she had thought - she had believed - they all were dead… and Harry who was barely one-year-old, who had died alone because she couldn’t protect him…

But he didn’t die, a small part of her thinks, Harry is alive, your love saved him. And she tries to concentrate on this small hope, even though this time James is not there with her -

‘ Expecto - expecto patronum!’

There is a small wisp of vapour, a light that seems to flicker for less than a second, but her doe does not come out of her wand. This last effort used all her strength, however, so Lily drops her wand and the dementor is upon her now, his horrible mouth close enough to kiss her, taking away her hope and her soul -

‘EXPECTO PATRONUM!’

There is a flash of light and Lily is suddenly falling in the ground, the dementor dropping her. She raises her eyes to see, through her blurred vision, antlers hitting the dementor that was holding her - it’s a stag, she realizes, so James has finally come home…

But it’s not James. It’s Harry and for all they look alike, she never once mistook one from another.

Harry is at her side, his arms around her while he points his own wand to direct his patronus to the other dementors. His face is contorted with fury and fear and his arms are trembling, but Harry makes his patronus draw away all dementors, until his stag patronus comes back to them, circling them as if on guard.

‘They - they are gone’, Harry whispers and Lily knows he is right. The stars are shining in the sky again, there is a sound of life around them and the heat is back. She is sweating, but she doesn’t think it’s because of the summer heat anymore.

‘Thank you’, she says weakly, and when her eyes can focus on something, she finds herself staring at the bright eyes of the stag patronus he had never seen him cast before. Her hand raises, but the patronus dissipates in thin air before she can touch it. ‘He was beautiful’.

‘It is Prongs’, Harry says, his voice still very low. ‘Can - can you walk?’

She nods and accepts his help to stand up; he is almost at her height now. She had not noticed it before.

‘Let’s go back’.

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Lily hates Grimmauld Place.

It is the darkest house she ever entered and she feels that the house hates her too as if every long-dead Black is watching over her when she is there, judging her, calling her a mudblood and how dare she enter their sacred house. All the pureblood air threatens to overwhelm her, crush her like a bug and she curses the place.

But for all she is unwelcomed there, she hates it more because of Sirius.

She knows Sirius hates that house that was never a home for him and she admires him for offering Grimmauld Place as a safe hour to host the Order of the Phoenix; she knows the place holds no good memories for him and she hears his bitterness whenever he mentions his parents. And Sirius is miserable all the time he is there; he loathes everything, from the house-elf he never wanted to inherit to his mother’s portrait that they didn’t manage to take down.

And an unhappy Sirius is never a good thing. She notices how he always drinks more when they are there in one of their meetings - something Snape always mentions - and how reckless he gets after staying there for more than five minutes as if he is still that teenager who once needed to prove himself so different from his family.

When she mentions it to James, he looks worriedly at Sirius, but tells her that everything is fine - but Lily knows it is not fine, because Voldemort is back and Harry is suffering in silence and everything they fought for in the last fourteen years is crumbling. And she fears that James wants to be a little reckless too. They went hiding for a year before the First War ended and she knows him - he hated standing still, feeling like he wasn’t doing enough, and he is afraid to have to lie low again.

And James always enjoyed taking risks too much - he would never do anything that could harm Lily and Harry, of course, but then things are different now. Harry is older and not a helpless baby and Lily agreed to watch over him, concentrating on more internal missions, all because he assured her he would not be in danger -

All these thoughts come back to her but Lily doesn’t say anything. She feels strangely detached, doing things automatically, without really thinking about it. Some part of her registers when she and Harry arrive in the house, when he offers her a piece of chocolate that she can’t make herself eat despite knowing it will help, and when she hears their laughter.

Sirius’s bark laughter and James’ the-world-is-a-good-place-come-laugh-with-me laughter.

The sound causes a wave of anger through her body and that almost wakes her, but the numbness is still too high.

She watches them entering the kitchen and their smiles dying when they see her and Harry, in the exact moment they register something is wrong. Harry is explaining what happened and James is at her side, his face pale - and she wants to cry, where were you?, but she still keeps silent.

She almost jumps when an owl flies through the open window - owls aren’t allowed, they’ve cut communication -, but it is only an official owl from the Ministry. It shouldn’t be bad - except the Ministry of Magic has declared war against the Potters lately, so it is not surprising when the letter talks about Harry being expelled from Hogwarts.

Harry looks heartbroken and somehow more afraid than when he was running from dementors, so that sparks some life in Lily. She raises, ignoring James’ hand extended towards her - she can’t deal with him, not now - and she puts her hand on Harry’s shoulder.

‘We need to go to a safer place’, she says, her voice rough. It’s the first thing she has said in the last fifteen minutes, even though she knew they had to move ever since she saw the dementors.

‘Grimmauld Place’, Sirius suggests and for once Lily doesn’t grimace at the mention of that house. She will go anywhere if it means Harry will be safe and that was the only place she thought of.

‘But - Hogwarts - I can’t be -’

‘Dumbledore will solve this, Harry’, James promises, and Lily sees his patronus already galloping and vanishing in the darkness outside. It’s a stag, as always, but this vision fills her with more violence than comfort and she ignores him once more when he tries to take her hand.

‘Go pack your things, quickly’, Lily tells Harry, placing a soft kiss on his forehead before letting him go.

‘Lily -’, she hears James calling her but Lily doesn’t turn around. Sirius looks from James to her and then back again.

‘I will go help Harry’, he says, hurrying after his godson and leaving them alone.

There is a moment of silence. Lily flinches when James touches her arm, and he doesn’t insist.

‘Lily?’, he asks again, his voice very soft.

‘Where were you?’, Lily whispers, still avoiding looking in his direction. ‘You were supposed to be back more than two hours ago’.

‘I -’, he hesitates and Lily knows he is considering lying to her in that one second it takes for him to keep talking. ‘It was a very good lead, Lily, I swear -’

‘Lead’, she repeats, without any emotion in her voice.

‘It was the best one we had in months - the sewers -’

‘The sewers? You left me alone to go on a chase for Wormtail?’

She doesn’t need to see his face to know she got it right. She can hear the heaviness in his sighing, the one that only thinking of his former friend causes him.

And she doesn’t need to ask him how the search was. James has been looking for Peter for more than one year now and he never got close to finding him.

He is a rat, she wants to say. You will never find him .

‘I will go take our things’, she says instead.

‘Lily - I am really -’

‘Not now, James’, she cuts him and she leaves the kitchen because she can’t stand to look at him.

It may not be fair, but so it wasn’t leaving her alone.

-------------------------------

Dumbledore promises he will fix things, but the fact is that Harry has a disciplinary hearing and she can see real fear in her son’s eyes.

And not just that. The anger too. She hears him screaming at Ron and Hermione, obviously unhappy with the fact that he was alone all summer while they were together, no matter in a dismayed place like Grimmauld Place. Harry is feeling betrayed.

Right now, he isn’t the only one feeling like that.

Lily survives through the Order meeting barely registering what everyone is saying. She doesn’t participate in James and Sirius’ heated discussion of how the hell three dementors managed to pass their barriers to attack her and Harry, she doesn’t even acknowledge that Snape is for once glancing in her direction. They end the meeting rescheduling their patrol rounds and for the first time she submits her name, her voice daring anyone - James - to disagree with her participation; but even though she can feel James’ eyes looking intensely at her, he doesn’t say anything.

That’s for the best. She doesn’t want to hex him in front of everyone.

When the meeting is over, Sirius, obviously thinking he is being very nice, takes them upstairs to offer her and James the master bedroom. It’s a nice old room, even if a little dusty and dark, and she realizes that Sirius was late for the Order meeting because he had been fixing the room for them in whatever way he could.

A part of her thinks it was kind of him, especially because he must hate that room that belonged to his parents. Lily glances around, her eyes falling on the elegant canopy bed, but all she feels is loathe, if only by the fact that Walburga and Orion Black once slept there; she never met them and she barely heard the stories, but she saw how much they messed with Sirius to know she would hate them. The feeling would be mutual - they would despise her for her blood.

When she turns around, James is alone with her in the room, in front of the closed door. His expression is concerned.

‘Here. Eat this’, he says, offering her a chocolate bar. She ignores it. ‘You need chocolate for dementors, Lily, you know Remus -’

‘This is your fault’.

She hears her words but somehow it takes a second for her to realize she said them.

It’s irrational, she knows, because James wasn’t the one that sent those dementors she should be able to handle, nor he is the one that threatened to expel Harry from Hogwarts, and for one mad moment, she thinks he will argue with her. But James just blinks, his shoulders slumped and he nods.

‘I know’.

‘No’, Lily whispers, taking a step closer to him, her eyes ablaze. ‘You don’t get to self-hatred’.

James blinks.

'You don't want me to agree with you?' he asks, and Lily can hear the faint amusement in his voice, the one that always looks like an invitation for grinning with him.

Any other day she would accept it, but now there is only one emotion strong enough to break into her numbness: fury, senseless and overwhelming fury.

'You don't get to find this funny, James. You don't get anything, because you left us'.

He frowns and she sees a flash of hurt in his eyes. Good, Lily thinks darkly.

'I would never leave you -'

'You weren't there. There were three dementors and an underage kid but no James Potter'.

'So I was supposed to foresee it?'

'We all knew something was bound to happen. That's why we keep our eyes on Harry, isn't it?'

'It is not like he was alone - you were there with him!'

'Yeah, I was', she admits, defeated. 'And I was useless because there were dementors and you know what I hear when they are around? That fucking Halloween night, every time'.

'That is what I hear too'.

'And all I could think was that at least that night you were with me. We were losing and dying but at least you were there'.

'Lily… I was on a mission -'

'Oh, spare me, James. The Order comes first, we always agreed on this. But your mission had ended and instead of doing the right thing that was coming back to your family you decided to play the hero'.

He gasps.

'What? I wasn't -'

'No, you're right. It was not playing the hero - that’s Harry. You were on your crazy suicide revenge mission’.

'It is not - it was a good lead, Lily, I wouldn't go if -'

'Did you find him? Did you see Peter? Even a hint of him?'

He doesn't say anything, but she knows the answer in his resentful face.

'Your problem is that you forget everything when it involves him'.

'He betrayed us', James spats, venom in his voice. 'Then he bleed Harry one month ago and he held him and he would watch him die without saying anything. He. Betrayed. Us'.

'Yeah, but that's not what bothers you. It’s your bloody ego. It’s the fact that he betrayed you'.

James' eyes are burning now.

'Yes, it was me firstly', he concedes, agony and hatred in his voice. 'But he would give us all up because he never cared'.

'Taking him down won't change that'.

'And what do you want me to do?', James finally screams and she feels a dark satisfaction in making him lose control. 'Let him go?'

'I want you to care more about us than for your selfish need for revenge!'

'I already care!'

'Then prove it!'

She is screaming too and maybe even crying because her vision is blurred once more, but still, she registers that at some point they got closer than ever, their noses almost touching. She can smell his musky scent and she can feel his heavy breath over her face. James is angry, but so is she and Lily won't stand down, won't forget that while he couldn't stop what happened, he should be there, he should be with her.

He promised they would always be together - and his absence hurts and she is afraid and she hates him for leaving her. She only wants them to be safe. How can they be at war again? Why can’t they have some peace?

She hates him right now, but she hates more all the danger they are in and even then all that hate pales in comparison to how much she loves him.

'Fuck, James', she sighs.

'Fuck, Lily', he agrees, and then their lips are crashing and it's desperate and painful how she clings to him.

Her numbness is all gone, replaced by a familiar urge of James - of his lips, of his touch, of knowing he is with her. It’s been a long time since she felt this fear, this adrenaline rush after a battle or a near-death experience, but she knows how it goes.

His hands cup her face, his thumbs drying the tears that are falling there without Lily even realizing, and she feels locked in his arms - it’s a good feeling. James is home, James is safety and love. She wants more of him, all of James. She needs him.

And he seems to be thinking the same about her. His hands fall to her arse, to hold her up and press her against the door of the room, her legs going automatically around his waist for better support, their lips never leaving each other. She grips the hair at the back of his head, as if holding a lifesaver she can’t let go or else she drowns.

They are not teenagers and they are not in that mad sex phase of a new relationship, so Lily knows they should stop and recover their senses. But this was Orion and Walburga Black's room, she thinks incoherently, and they would never accept someone like her there - that was the prejudice that started a war that messed with their lives. And suddenly Lily knows what she needs to do.

Her hands are shaking as much as before, though for completely different reasons, as she fumbles with his clothes, opening his shirt so she can feel his heartbeat and the muscles in his torso. James is always so warm , much hotter than any summer heat.

His lips move away from hers and before she can complain, James is kissing her neck - or sucking it, she doesn’t know. Where his lips touch her skin she can feel goosebumps erupting and it is so fresh that she moans, even as he, always aware of her, keeps bending down his head until he is kissing the top of her breasts, any piece of skin her cleavage exposes.

She attends his silent request. Her hands leave his chest to take off her own shirt and bra, and as soon as she holds his neck, his mouth is covering her nipple and Lily arches her back as much as she can against the door. It’s cool , she thinks irrationally, feeling his tongue teasing her and feeling the wood of the door behind her naked torso. Good. It was too hot .

But she still needs more.

‘James’, she moans, and he stops to look at her. His hazel eyes are dark and for as much as she loves their natural colour, she loves so much when they are almost brown, filled with lust for her. She knows it’s a match for her own desire. ‘Kiss me’, she asks, and his lips find hers once more.

They are closer now, so it’s easy to slide her hands through his chest, following the path of his hair there, until she is opening his belt and his jeans and she is feeling him, sliding her hand through his length. He moans into their kiss and his hands let her down for just the seconds it takes for him to touch under her skirt and take away her panties.

‘I need you, Lily’, he whispers and it is so much a pleading as a demand; she is willing to accept both.

She nods and he raises her again, both hands now under her skirt, one holding her tight and another grabbing her arse, his fingers pressing her skin and she hopes it leaves a mark for tomorrow. She has been hurt and bruised in battles before, and because of that she loves seeing the soft purple of the places James grabbed her rough, lost in their moment together; these are the marks she is proud of.

His lips are once again on her neck, sucking the skin there (good, another mark), his body pressing her against the door and she can feel his hardness against her pelvis and her pulse beating down there.

‘James - please’.

He was never able to refuse her anything, not really, so James complies at once, his hand leaving her thigh just so he can help himself slide inside her - and it’s a familiar feeling that she can never get really used to, that of him filling her. She moans loudly and uncaringly, her hips trying to move for more friction and God bless James, he attends her wishes once more, moving in sync with her.

They are not young anymore and she knows they will probably regret this tomorrow, but right now she just tightens the grip of her legs around him, inviting him to go deeper and he groans, his head buried in her neck. It is a sound that reverberates into her, and Lily opens her eyes suddenly, her eyes falling on the master bed. It’s still a beautiful canopy bed, one that speaks of luxury and expensive fabrics, and she thinks briefly of how she hates that house, hates the people who lived there.

Toujours pur.

‘James’, she calls him, and he stops moving at once to look at her, breathing heavily. ‘The bed’.

If James finds her request weird, he doesn’t say. He takes her to the bed, laying her down gently, before standing to take off his pants. She moves to take off her skirt too, but he stops her, laying over her, his hand caressing her face to keep her hair out.

‘Keep it’, he asks, and then his lips are finding hers and she loses herself happily in the taste of his mouth. His hand bounds hers above her head, and all Lily can do is arch her back as he enters her again, his movement much more desperate than before and all she can do is meet each one of his thrusts.

She wants to giggle of pure joy, but James is still kissing her and as much amused as she is, she needs that kiss more. But still, a part of her sends a big silent fuck-off for Sirius’ parents in whatever hell they are, because there is a blood traitor and a mudblood fucking in their bed and somehow this makes everything better.

‘Lily’, he groans and Lily hears the warning and request in his voice. She frees her hands, but before she can do anything, James lowers his hand to touch her, on the soft wet spot right above where their bodies meet, and she lets out a moan that is lost in their kiss.

She knows he is losing control now, his thrusts erratic and needy, and that’s fine because she feels the same. More, she thinks, feeling the pressure building inside her, and like if he is reading her mind, James obliges instantly, his finger circling her faster, in sync with the movement of his body. More, James, she thinks one more time, and then she is over the edge, her world exploding in a blinding light that sometimes looks a lot like what happened in that Halloween night, but so different - it is colourful (not just green) and powerful and its ache is welcomed and her heart is beating so fast and so alive.

God, she loves James so much.

Almost like in a dream, she feels James pushing inside her one final time and then his body is shaking, his mouth leaving hers so he can cry her name like a prayer. After what seems years and seconds at the same time, his grip over her looses and she raises her shaking hands to cup his face until he opens his eyes.

His hazel eyes are still burning, but his voice is tender when he whispers: ‘I love you’.

She kisses him softly in response.

James rolls to lay by her side and, in a movement she has made thousands of times before, Lily lays her head over his chest, hearing his heart still beating too fast, while her hand plays with his chest hair.

‘I am sorry for not coming home sooner’, he whispers after a while, his hand caressing her hair absently. ‘You are right, it was selfish - everything. I just… I feel so guilty, Lily, it is my fault only -’

She knows he is not talking about the dementor attack.

‘I trusted him too, James. We all did’.

‘But I - I was the one that was his friend first, I was the one that thought I knew him for all those years - I would have died for him -’

‘You are not wrong for trusting people’, she assures him, finding his hand to grip it tightly. ‘Your faith - that is one of the most amazing things about you. He is the one at fault for not living up to your trust’.

‘I just think, somehow, that if I catch him… I can make everything all right, like if that night never happened, like -’

‘James’, she calls him softly, turning so she can look him in the face. ‘We can’t change the past. Let us live today’.

This makes a sparkling shine in his eyes.

‘I say we are definitely living’, he notes, looking around for all the mess of clothes on the floor, and she lets out an amused laughter that only James can cause. He touches her face, looking at her with undeniable tenderness and love. ‘I will be there next time’.

It is a promise and she believes him.

‘Already waiting for the next dementor attack?’, she asks playfully, and he kisses her on the forehead before they get up.

‘Harry is a magnet for trouble’, he sighs, just half-teasingly, as he picks up his wand to clean them up.

Still, she laughs softly, because sometimes laughing at their own misfortune is all they can do.

‘A little bit dusty here, no?’, James says, looking around.

‘Guess we will have chores to keep Harry busy for a while’.

‘I think he will prefer the dementors’, he jokes, smirking.

Their hands are clasped together when they descend the stairs, following the sound of people talking in the kitchen. Sirius is waiting for them, his arms crossed and his eyebrows raised, and he closes the kitchen door to muffle the sound.

‘How old are you?’, he asks grumpily.

‘Same age as you, Padfoot’, James answers easily.

‘And do you have a wand?’

That makes James blink, clearly missing the point.

‘Yeah, you know -’

‘Then why did you forget a basic Silencing Charm?’, asks Sirius, in a hissed whisper. ‘Do you know what I had to endure to go upstairs and cast it just so you wouldn’t further traumatize your son?’

Fifteen years ago Lily would blush at this, but now she just stares at Sirius with pure amusement.

‘That’s what godfathers are for, Padfoot’, she says nicely, raising on her tiptoes to press a kiss in his cheek, while James laughs at her side.

‘Do I even want to know what you were doing with that mouth, Evans?’, Sirius asks, looking at her with an expression torn between disapproval and respect.

‘Probably not’, she chuckles. ‘And it’s been “Potter” for a while now’.

‘Come on’, James says, coming between them because he knows they can lose themselves in their silly banters. ‘I am starving’.

‘Wonder why’, scoffs Sirius, but Lily can see a grin on his lips. Sirius always feels bad when she and James are fighting. ‘Hope you broke the bed at least’.

‘It is a work in progress’, Lily promises, winking at him, and they enter the kitchen.

#Jily Lives #Eyes glistening #Jily Fanfiction #Smut and Angst #Order of the phoenix #James Potter #Lily Evans #t: fanfiction

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aint-love-heavy · 3 years ago

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What threatens local newspapers now is not just digital disruption or abstract market forces. They’re being targeted by investors who have figured out how to get rich by strip-mining local-news outfits. The model is simple: Gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring as much cash as possible out of the enterprise until eventually enough readers cancel their subscriptions that the paper folds, or is reduced to a desiccated husk of its former self.

The men who devised this model are Randall Smith and Heath Freeman, the co-founders of Alden Global Capital. Since they bought their first newspapers a decade ago, no one has been more mercenary or less interested in pretending to care about their publications’ long-term health. Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that Alden-owned newspapers have cut their staff at twice the rate of their competitors; not coincidentally, circulation has fallen faster too, according to Ken Doctor, a news-industry analyst who reviewed data from some of the papers. That might sound like a losing formula, but these papers don’t have to become sustainable businesses for Smith and Freeman to make money.

With aggressive cost-cutting, Alden can operate its newspapers at a profit for years while turning out a steadily worse product, indifferent to the subscribers it’s alienating. “It’s the meanness and the elegance of the capitalist marketplace brought to newspapers,” Doctor told me. So far, Alden has limited its closures primarily to weekly newspapers, but Doctor argues it’s only a matter of time before the firm starts shutting down its dailies as well.

This investment strategy does not come without social consequences. When a local newspaper vanishes, research shows, it tends to correspond with lower voter turnout, increased polarization, and a general erosion of civic engagement. Misinformation proliferates. City budgets balloon, along with corruption and dysfunction. The consequences can influence national politics as well; an analysis by Politico found that Donald Trump performed best during the 2016 election in places with limited access to local news.

[...]

The story of Alden Capital begins on the set of a 1960s TV game show called Dream House. A young man named Randall Duncan Smith—Randy for short—stands next to his wife, Kathryn, answering quick-fire trivia questions in front of a live studio audience. The show’s premise pits two couples against each other for the chance to win a home. When the Smiths win, they pass on the house and take the cash prize instead—a $20,000 haul that Randy will eventually use to seed a small trading firm he calls R.D. Smith & Company.

A Cornell grad with an M.B.A., Randy is on a partner track at Bear Stearns, where he’s poised to make a comfortable fortune simply by climbing the ladder. But he has a big idea: He believes there’s serious money to be made in buying troubled companies, steering them into bankruptcy, and then selling them off in parts. The term vulture capitalism hasn’t been invented yet, but Randy will come to be known as a pioneer in the field. He scores big with a bankrupt aerospace manufacturer, and again with a Dallas-based drilling company.

By the 1980s, this strategy has made Randy luxuriously wealthy��vacations in the French Riviera, a family compound outside New York City—and he has begun to school his children on the wonders of capitalism. He teaches his 8-year-old son, Caleb, to make trades on a Quotron computer, and imparts the value of delayed gratification by reportedly postponing his family’s Christmas so that he can use all their available cash to buy stocks at lower prices in December. Caleb will later recall, in an interview with D Magazine, asking his dad why he works so hard.

“It’s a game,” Randy explains to his son.

“How do you know who wins?” the boy asks.

“Whoever dies with the most money.”

Even in the “greed is good” climate of the era, Randy is a polarizing character on Wall Street. When The New York Times profiles him in 1991, it notes that he excels at “profiting from other people’s misery” and quotes a parade of disgruntled clients and partners. “The one central theme,” the Times reports, “seems to be that Smith and its web of affiliates are out, first and foremost, for themselves.” If this reputation bothers Randy and his colleagues, they don’t let on: For a while, according to The Village Voice, his firm proudly hangs a painting of a vulture in its lobby.

[...]

Most of his investments are defined by a cold pragmatism, but he takes a more personal interest in the media sector. With his own money, he helps his brother launch the New York Press, a free alt-weekly in Manhattan. Russ Smith is a puckish libertarian whose self-described “contempt” for the journalistic class animates the pages of the publication. “I’m repulsed by the incestuous world of New York journalism,” he tells New York magazine. He writes a weekly column called “Mugger” that savages the city’s journalists by name and frequently runs to 10,000 words.

Randy claims no editorial role in the Press, and his investment in the project—which has little chance of producing the kind of return he’s accustomed to—could be chalked up to brotherly loyalty. But years later, when Randy relocates to Palm Beach and becomes a major donor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, it will make a certain amount of sense that his earliest known media investment was conceived as a giant middle finger to the journalistic establishment.

#rage rage rage panic panic panic #journalism #the atlantic #nonfiction #⭐#🔗

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randomoranges · 4 years ago

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welcome to my splurgy hc where err year since 5evr, emma would drive down over and she and ét would then go out to see the nutcracker ballet the following day. they dress up and Make a Big Deal of it and have a grand old time of it.

Nutcracker

end December 2020

Étienne clicks on the link and waits for the screen to load. The wheel spins for a moment, but soon, he sees the edges of a stage appear on the screen. He makes it bigger and dares to believe that he’s actually in a theatre, somewhere, and not sitting up in bed in his boyfriend’s guestroom. He reaches for his headphones and plugs those in, before he opens another application to video call Emma.

Even though he's been living in what he likes to call Zoom Hell, this, if anything is different. He doesn't need to worry about presenting a certain way, he doesn't have to be Perky and Upbeat, and he doesn't need to be engaging and alert. He can simply sit back, enjoy his friend's company and be himself, sharp edges and foul mood included.

She's already there and he recognises her living room sofa. If he at least could have been sitting with her, it would have made this a little better, but he supposes he has to content himself with what he has. At least he’s not exactly alone. At least they can do this ‘together.’

Étienne hadn’t been surprised when he’d found out that the Nutcracker presentations were cancelled this year, but at the same time, it had been another nail in his coffin. He understood why, he had figured it was bound to happen, but he had also been desperately hanging onto the hope that maybe for the end of the year, they could be allowed to do something fun again. That he could see his friends, his family, and get lost in his city without having to watch his every move. That, had not happened.

For as long as he could remember, ever since there had been a production of the Nutcracker that came and played in Montréal, Étienne and Emma had gone together. It was their little holiday tradition and Étienne loved it. For one afternoon, they dressed in their finest and pretended to be part of the elite society who went to the ballet often. They always got the same seats, they splurged on a cab and then a fancy dinner and had a grand old time of it all.

They never tired of seeing the same ballet and enjoyed picking the differences in the performances they had seen over the many years they had been coming. The dancers were never the same, each director brought on their own little special touch and they had their personal favourites and least favourites. (Étienne had loved the production of 82, Emma had hated the one of 03.)

The Nutcracker was familiar and comforting, but always amazed them by the performance of the ballerinas and the audacity in the costumes and productions.

However, this year, none of that was happening. If anything, Étienne wasn’t even in the same time zone as Emma. However, when Emma had found out that an online production from the previous year would be available to view online, she’d sent him the link and asked if he wanted to see it with her. Étienne knew that it wouldn’t be the same – that nothing could compare to being seated in the theatre next to her – that he couldn’t hold her hand and she couldn’t whisper in his ear about how wonderful one piece was, or how much she hated this one costume – but, he’d ended up agreeing.

If anything, this wasn’t the production they had seen last year and it would give him an excuse to chat with her for a bit. Even though they tried to video chat once a week, they were both occupied with their own realities and sometimes, their schedules didn’t align for as long as they would have liked. Étienne had his classes, Emma had her own work and throughout it all there was everything else; time zones, Mercury, Edward, Lucas, errands, his incapacity to function on some days...

They've agreed that their formal, nice clothes aren’t needed today, but Étienne still goes so far as to find the nicest shirt he had thrown in his suitcase (in case they were still allowed to go out in public) and it feels a little bare without a bow tie, but it’ll have to do. (Calvin had offered him one of his neck ties, he had politely declined.) He even fixed his hair and he can’t help but smile when he sees his friend’s face on the screen.

“So, how’s exile treating you?” She asks as the “guests” on screen are settling in.

Étienne ponders this for a moment, before he replies, “It’s – well, it’s not home, but it has its perks.” He does miss home – even if he couldn’t do what he wants to, he does miss the streets and the familiar faces. He misses his neighbourhood and his home. He misses the local eateries he would visit, the sight of the buildings and the sound of a familiar language. Still, this way he gets to spend time with Edward; make up for the lost years and such. Reconnect, rebuild and move on. He gets to further discover Edmonton and get a better sense of the place. He supposes there’s that much. Hell, he’s even developing favourite places and regular spots. Edward teases him and says he needs to watch himself, or else he’ll be needing the GPS for when he goes back home.

“And how’s that boyfriend of yours?”

Étienne rolls his eyes at her and laughs, “Edward is fine; he’s being very nice and patient with me. How’s – yours?” He knows it’s hard to believe, but he does try – for Emma’s sake – to be more – tolerant of Lucas. He doesn’t need to understand why it is she cares for him, but the fact remains that she does and she seems happy. He can try his best and make an effort even if there are still certain things that leave a bitter after taste in his mouth decades later.

“Lucas is also fine,” She tells him, “Any idea when you’ll be heading back east?” She seems almost hopeful that he’ll say soon and part of him wishes he would.

“I – don’t know.” He replies truthfully. “I was originally going to come back after the holidays, but then figured I could actually stay until Edward’s birthday. Do you realise, this’ll be the first time in a think forever that I can spend it with him?” He smiles softly at that. Edward’s visited him many times for his birthday, but Étienne never really had a chance to come out west for Edward’s. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, but Edward had never really invited him over and he had felt a little unsure if he should just – show up unannounced. (He knows he can do that now and honestly, he likes the idea that he can.) And from the top of his head, he can’t recall if Edward was ever in town soon after his birthday, especially not if he’d flown over to spend the holidays with him. If anything, they most likely celebrated before he headed back. There had always been an excuse about work, obligations, and such.

“But I guess I don’t really know. It’s not as if things are any better back home and it’s still winter. At least here, I have company. I don’t – trust myself alone at the moment.” He says quietly, luckily Emma knows what he means by that, and he doesn’t have to go into the gory details. She offers him a kind smile for his troubles and maybe Étienne imagines it, but he’s convinced she almost reaches out for him. Lifts her hand just so as if she wants to touch the screen, make him know she’s there, even if she’s so very far away. He appreciates the gesture. “Maybe when spring rolls around – if Edward hasn’t kicked me out yet,” He doesn’t want to overstay his visit even though Edward has told him countless times that he can stay here as long as he wants. Still, he’d hate for his boyfriend to grow tired of his constant shifting mood. He’s already tired of himself, he can only imagine how Edward will feel in the long term. Once he really realises what it’s like living with him twenty-four-seven during the winter. “I guess we’ll see.”

“Would you – consider making a stop before going back to yours?” Emma asks quietly and Étienne is curious by what she means. “I mean – I was thinking – but maybe, you could come here, before going back home. For a bit. We could quarantine together. Or something. Two weeks. Make sure you’re note diseased and such,” She adds as a joke, but Étienne reads between her words, knows her enough to hear what it is she means – what she wants to say but doesn’t.

“Think you can handle me for that long with nothing else to do?” He jokes, but he’s honest. It’s one thing spending a weekend catching up and taking it easy. It’s another to spend ten to fourteen days with each other and little else to do. He’s known Emma for eons and yet he feels she’d grow tired of him as well.

“I haven’t seen you since July; I have enough subscriptions to streaming sites that I think we’d manage. Plus, I can always drag you out on walks by the Canal and watch you slowly freeze.”

He laughs at that and Emma seems immensely pleased with herself. “It’ll be like a little vacation – just, not down south.”

He’s been on vacation with Emma countless times. She’s been his go-to travel buddy for decades now and the idea starts to grow at the back of Étienne’s mind, regardless of his anxious thoughts. It would be nice to see her again. Catch up. Hold her close in his arms. Grow fondly exasperated at her. Stay up late and share secrets. Fall asleep knowing she’d be there in the morning.

“What if they close the provincial borders?” He does genuinely worry about that, the longer he stays here. Case numbers are going up fast everywhere and the predictions don’t seem favourable. It would be the next logical step. Edward has assured him that even if for some reason he’s at wits end with him, he won’t kick him out. It had been – reassuring. However, for as much as he likes the time he’s spending with Edward he does want and need to go back home at a certain point. He doesn’t like being away for so long. He knows he ends up being and feeling even more disconnected.

“I’ll – I’ll figure something out. Fly you out as an Important Federal Matter, or something. I’ll drive over if I have to. Pick you up. We can road trip it back.”

He laughs, amused by her enthusiasm; him, a Federal Matter – that would be the day, “The borders will be closed though – for driving,”

“Then – I don’t know! You used to travel there by canoe, foot, and horse before. I’m sure we could rig something up.”

If anything, Étienne knows where to get horses, but he’s not about to tell Emma any of that just yet. He doesn’t need her concocting schemes at the moment.

“Yeah,” He finally says.

“You’ll consider it?”

“Yeah, I’ll come. When I head back.” He clarifies and she seems surprised, but really pleased.

“Yeah?” Her smile brightens and Étienne yearns to be there next to her. To kiss her cheek and hear her laugh. For her to tickle his sides until he’s wheezing. To see her. Properly.

“Of course; I miss you, believe it or not.” He does. Even if they didn’t necessarily see each other every weekend, knowing that she was close by was enough. Before, he could pick up and drop by for the day. Get on a train or a bus and spend the day with her. Even if it was only for a few hours. He’s lost track of how many times he’s done it. Now – now he doesn’t even know when he’ll ever be able to do that again.

“I miss you too.”

He hates how vulnerable she sounds – how vulnerable they both sound and how there’s nothing he can do to make it better. Emma is strong and sure-footed, it's not like her to be this way and he supposes this pandemic – this whole year has taken its toll on her as well. Still, it’s a little disconcerting. Of course, he’s seen Emma be vulnerable – in private, never in front of others, but – this time, there’s little he can do to make her feel better. He can’t even give her a proper fucking hug.

Luckily, the show starts and it gives them an excuse to quiet down. The production, if anything, is one they haven't seen – one from a different company than Les Grands Ballets, so at least, for that, they have something to focus on. Despite that, however, Emma is oddly quiet – more so than usual and Étienne wonders what it is that's running through her head. He gives her a little time to just be and ends up getting caught up in the production, his perpetual vagabond thoughts and the soft weight of Mercury on his lap. His mind slowly processes the conversation they've just had and he thinks of theatres, vacations and the possibilities of doing something semi-normal again, one day.

“Étienne,” Emma cuts through a particularly good rendition of a pas-chassé. He looks away from the stage and focuses on the upper left square where Emma's face is visible.

“Yeah?'” His throat is a little thick and heavy with emotions he’s not quite sure he knows where they came from and he swallows down the bubbling anxiety that seems to want to make a breakthrough to freedom.

“Promise me you'll be okay?”

He blinks, wondering where this is coming from and maybe realises that he’s equally been a little quieter than usual. Emma, of course, knows what that could mean and he hates that she worries about him, on top of everything else on her plate.

“Of course – but you gotta be okay too. I need to see you when I head home.”

She nods, making the silent promise, and they fall quiet again, submerged in the world of the Nutcracker and childlike dreams.

FIN

emma belongs to at @ultimate-quartz

#pc: montreal #pc: ottawa #emma whatshername #emma dubois #étienne maisonneuve #fic #projocanondoko

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migleefulmoments · 4 years ago

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Abb/y has something to s/ay

Let me premise this by reminding everyone that Abby -like Trump-doesn’t “get” comedy. They literally do not understand jokes, punchlines, or humor. So a satirical show about the Hollywood song writers falls flat. Her time away did nothing to sway her conspiratorial aspirations or her misogynistic hatred of Mia. She watched Royalties not once, but twice... not to enjoy Darren’s creativity and performance, not to support the celebrity she stans, and not even to crack up at the humor, no she watched twice because she was looking for confirmation bias. She wanted to document all of the ways Darren wrote his CrissColfer truth into Pierce’s life and she obsessively listened to all of the diss-tracks he wrote to attack his wife.

Let me also premise this by saying I loved the show. I thought it was funny and the songs are so damn catchy. The lyrics are quintessential Darren- funny, very clever, and raunchy.

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

R/oyalties, the Tale of Two Shows with a Heaping Side of Meta

ajw720. So I just finished watching R/oyalties for the second time, this time solely focused on the meta. Look, we all know, the show is not good, it was not well written and the short format didn’t help as there was no option to develop character or plot. But D knew it would not be good, he apologized for it back in January 2019. And I think the effort he put into acting was the effort it deserved. Ok.

But his songs were genius. As were the videos, hence why i call it the tale of two shows. It truly was like watching content made by completely different people. I concur with MH, D is “intensely talented.” And the part of this show he poured his blood, sweat, and tears into, the songs, are evident of this.

But this is a post about that Heaping Side of Meta. I think D, knowing that that show would not be made in the manner he envisioned, instead used it as a vehicle to make some bold statements and parallels with his career and public life. Shall we begin? And please, unlike the perfect song, this is not a perfect post and after the second round of watching i canceled my Quibi subscription and never plan to look back, so please feel free to add. I know some of these have been pointed out but I thought it was valuable to have one post.

One idea to inpsire the song? A tiny FROG on a dime.

D’s shirt 1st seen in Episode 2: “It is hard to soar like an Eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys”

And of course “Call me Goldilocks bitch” Remind you of something?

How about the entirety of Episode 3 when we are told that an artist is completely the product of the team. That no matter what the artists expresses they want, it doesn’t matter because the Label/manager/publicist/on camera agent/legal will always have a say. And how it will play in America or the Foreign market are key metrics of how the product is produced and presented. I love the line of the songwriter that tells P/ierce and S/ara to “get out while they are young.” Or the line by one of her team “we don’t want something different, we want something the same that is different.” And in the end P&S simply took one of KK old songs and reworked it, making something different that is not different and her team loved it.

And of course, the line that was an utter slap in the face to the most over praised “director” of an indie band video ever when D reminds her of the real director in his life, the man set to direct major motion pictures, “you know who would be perfect to direct? C/hris. C/hris would shatter this.”

Not much in Episode 4, but the gorilla suit in my opinion was mocking of a certain MMR video where we watched Swiller and a banana in a song about a gorilla. Images I never need to see in my head again.

Episode 5, a gem, I am still so fucking proud of D and how he mocked her throughout the entirety of the episode. New lines I love of that amazing song he wrote about her (in addition to those i posted previously here) “Some people say I’m a genius, which comes from the greek word for Latin, and other people will say, alright in fact i’m a fuckin’s genius” “I’m not saying I’m a god, but I’m not saying I’m not a god.” Mocking at its finest made all that much better by the band’s name “Switchback Jacket” that D describes as “butt rock emo” that is performed by a band that doesn’t actually sing, they are just the public image. He literally told us that what we see is an image created for the public and that it is completely fake. And he used his beard to make this statement. Just brilliant. I cannot praise him enough for this, stealing her moment in the sun and making her look like an utter fool, telling us just how narcissistic she is.

Also some wonderful lines from that episode that are beyond telling:

“Power, it felt good to remind Kevin that I hold power over him. You always want to be the one with power”

“p/ierce wouldn’t know where to take a shit if I didn’t tell him.”

“she is like my wife except we don’t have sex and we are friends.”

“alright boss, I am ready to record that song, but where should i take a shit?”

“You will do anything to succeed.”

Episode 8 starring “Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild” an episode used to shine a light on how absurd it is that people believe D&PBB lived with platonic roomie B/enny for something like 4 years. 3 grown ass adults, all of whom have money to spare lived together in a relatively small house for four years. It is pure comedy that anyone would believe that this is normal. But hey these are the same people that explained away the infamous arm around her while at an awards show with D looking on:

And the cherry on top of this episode, the inclusion of C/huck (for some background, see my post here).

I really like the one bit of dialogue between P&S, where D pretty much tells us once again that M will use anyone to get what she wants:

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe just maybe, I don’t like where we are now? There were a lot of really great things about the way things were. Things that are worth preserving. Not that you just take and use and through out.”

Episode 9 had some really impactful lines:

“you think i wouldn’t steal for my career? You think I wouldn’t lie? I would do anything.”

The Neils being the nameless individuals, nothing more than a number, who are the ones who actually create the product. And then the song, some of the translations are D telling you how he feels, because sometimes i think in terms of his public image he is just a Neil trying to escape the cage that has been built around him:

“I dream about getting away, I have been locked up in this cage wishing i could make my escape. I hate that I need you.”

And finally Episode 10, where we learn the Neils get no credit and no royalties. This reminds me of a script C wrote that never saw the light of day but suddenly the next season of AHS had the same theme as his script.

And that is all i got, if you have more please add. I think the fact that D took what he knew would be a mediocre project and projected his voice and story throughout it was pretty genius and a smart way to utilize this vehicle, that was clearly payout for so many that have used him for years and to shine a bright light on the truth.

elicc The “perfect song”’s performer is called Bailey Rouge, a clear link to TLOS.

He is a genius.

ajw720 @elicc damn, that was on my list and I forgot. And we all know who Red is inspired by, so seems fitting Bailey Rouge would get the perfect song.

ajw720. Just adding one more I thought about putting in my original post but admittedly think it’s a stretch. But maybe not? Just adding here for fun.

When Theo tells P to bottle up all his romantic feelings I couldn’t help but think of a certain chapter in a book

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

Oy Vei! Abby didn’t use her time away getting any therapy or perspective. She hasn’t learned any lessons. I have no doubt she’s been reading just as much as she did before and she’s speaking to Cassie, Flowers et al all day. It’s really sad. It’s sad that she can’t see how silly she sounds, what an asshole her version of Darren is. If she could restrain herself even a little bit it might come off less unhinged because turning every single moment of Royalties into some crisscolfer wet dream reeks of desperation.

Abby hates Royalties. In last week’s “Dear D” she had the audacity to say

....Fans that are beyond devoted and mainly because of the way you have treated fans with respect and a level of caring that far surpasses the majority of public figures. And while I am not enjoying the show itself, the music shows how diverse you are as a writer and how you can virtually write for anyone or any genre. The songs are fantastic. Memorable. And really fun.

She knows the the Langs wrote the show and Darren wrote the songs but what she can’t seem to comprehend is that Darren IS Royalties. Everything in the show is Darren’s.

Staying in the closet would be less painful than trying to express oneself through a short-form satirical comedy. Can you imagine trying to express your devastation and pain through Kick Your Shoes off or Break It In?

“I’m the king of the hard fuck....pile drive the bed like a young buck...if you like feathery shit thats pretty cool but I don’t need that...people say I fuck too soft, saying that I can’t please a woman”

BTW Abby- “call me goldilocks bitch” isn’t a reference to TLOS it’s a reference to Goldilocks and Three Bears because because he fucks perfect, not too soft, not too hard. It’s much more believable that he is referring to a random nursery rhyme than it is to believe he is referring to a children’s book his lover/husband/boyfriend wrote 8 years ago. You might love the book but Chris has moved on and written new things.

Darren wrote funny lyrics. I loved Kick Your Shoes Off because it’s written by a man whose watched his wife and female friends wear painful shoes for the same of fashion even though its painful as fuck.

“Yeah, I’m a bad bitch so don’t be mad bitch. I turned the room into a catwalk like a sad bitch. I can’t feel my toes in these stilettos. when I walk out my roomate says you’ll regret those....Beauty is pain but oh I look amazing. You won’t hear me complaining but oh my instep (inside?) is screaming...kick your shoes off (kick em off) ooooooo I do what I want..(Kick em off) ooooo Hey I can’t walk in these, blisters start to bleed now both my feet are swollen. Kick your shoes off (Kick em off).....It’s like i feel so good when my shoes are on, but like i also feel sooooo good when they are off”

Abby’s convinced I am So Much Better Than You is straight up about Mia because Mia is in the video. She listened to it on repeat the day after it came out. In her “Letter to D” last week she said

Especially after you made an effort to mock her for the entirety of Tuesday when her episode aired (and for the record I am still really, really proud of what you did with that episode and how you handled the roll out, that is the fighter I admire and that inspires me. I listened to I am so much better than you on repeat on my drive home from work yesterday).

Good Lord The lyrics are as silly as all the other songs: “My mirror wants to bone me (but it can’t because it’s a mirror)” How did Abby miss the obvious TLOS mirror/ Halloween costume reference here?

“You keep doing push ups while I get buff eating mac and cheese (with overpriced lobster and truffles because I’m worth it)”

“Some people say I’m a genius (which comes from the greek work for latin) Some other people will say yeah I’m right I’m a fucking genius (I’m not saying I’m a god but I’m not saying I’m not a god).

“And even when you sneeze, God blesses me, he blesses me. And even when you sneeze, god blesses me, he blesses me, he blesses me”

“I’m am so much better than you at everything”.

She believes Darren would be- and stay- married to a women that he publicly ridicules and attacks. I don’t get why she thinks that is something admirable .

She thinks Also You is referring to Ben living with them. Where to start with this one? She says

“Episode 8 starring “Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild” an episode used to shine a light on how absurd it is that people believe D&PBB lived with platonic roomie B/enny for something like 4 years. 3 grown ass adults, all of whom have money to spare lived together in a relatively small house for four years. It is pure comedy that anyone would believe that this is normal. But hey these are the same people that explained away the infamous arm around her while at an awards show with D looking on”

I’m gobsmacked. Also You is about Polyamory. She doesn’t even understand her own theories if she thinks that is the message Darren wants to share about Mia and Ben. In no world would someone try to proclaim their wife was cheating on them with a live-in houseguest by writing an episode called Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild. Also, someone needs to explain cuckholding to her because her theories about Ben and Mia make Darren a cuck.

OMG I just realized that Darren is a cuck and Royalties proves it. He hired Kether to be his costar in Royalties,...Kether is in You’re the Worst as Lindsay. Lindsay cuckholds her husband. Bam! mic drop.

Why isn’t Perfect Song about Mia, you know, if we are playing confirmation bias “No one is as good as you because you're my perfect song”

#CrissColfer #Darren Criss #Abby Speaks

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greenninjagal-blog · 5 years ago

Text

It’s Always Been This Way (Hasn’t It?)pt2

Hello! Did someone order 52 pages of Virgil angst, gayness, and magical shenanigans? If you missed the prologue you can find it right [here]!

Summary: After deciding not to go back to Hogwarts for their final year of school, Virgil, Roman, Patton, and Logan all enjoy living together in their quiet muggle neighborhood and doing small tasks for the Order. It would be nice, Virgil thinks, if he wasn’t actively lying to their faces every day.

Also if the Neo Death Eaters weren’t trying to kill his friends.

Words: 21,080 (and no thats not some joke)

Read on AO3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Chapter One: Liar, Liar (House On Fire)

“This is absolute bullshit and they know it!” Virgil yells to no one, as he slams the morning paper on the table.

From somewhere not far away, Patton’s voice calls out “language”, but Virgil doesn’t really register it at all. He’s too busy reading over the front page article again as if he missed something the previous four times he had read it. He flicks his wand (Cypress, 9 inches, semi flexible) across the kitchen with barely a thought which makes the coffee pot start up and his favored mug place itself under it.

It’s somewhere past eight in the morning, and Virgil still feels drowsy which probably isn’t helping his mood at all. He hasn’t gotten a full night's rest in at least three years, and he doesn’t expect to get it for another ten years. And that’s only if his half muggle born ass survives that long.

He snarls at the paper again, slamming a fist on the table hard enough that the stinging goes all the way up his arm to the back of his eyes, and that in turn ruffles the owl on the perch in the corner out of its trance.

“Sorry Logan.” Virgil breathes in deep and snarls it back out.

The horned owl titters on the perch turning towards him, blinks twice in a sophisticated way that’s made doubly effective by the strange rectangular pattern around its eyes, and then reaches out its wings. With powerful gust and a blur of brown, white, and black feathers, the animal leaps into the air. It morphs with precision, a complex series of motions that elongates its body, shrinks the eyes, and changes the number of bones under its feathers all together. Its fascinating to watch: in less than a second the air is filled by a stern looking seventeen year old with square glasses, a sharp nose, and matted dark hair that rarely appears to have a strand out of place.

But then again, Virgil thinks its fascinating every time Logan breaks the law at all. There’s something about seeing a man so rule orientated like Logan breaking those very same rules that makes Virgil’s heart flutter in that entirely unhelpful way.

“Salutations, Virgil,” Logan says, sounding exactly like he had just swallowed a muggle computer. “May I inquire what has your frustrations today?”

Virgil huffs, sliding the paper across the table for his friend. “See for yourself.”

Logan picks it up at the same time as Virgil flicks his wand at his mug and exchanges it for the one Logan favored. Logan’s still frowning at the article when both the cups come levitating through the air and set themselves on the table between them.

The Daily Prophet had never been Virgil’s favorite source of information. It didn’t take a genius to know when a reporter was being paid to report--or not report-- something. Not to mention it was practically controlled by the Ministry and that it was more concerned with sales than with accuracy.

Still, Virgil is too much of a sucker for routine to cancel his subscription to the utter nonsense. Which leads him to mornings such as this: grumbling into his coffee mug, with his illegal animagus of a friend across from him equally displeased and showing it in the way his eyebrows furrow and his thin lips squeeze together, with Patton in the other room somewhere, probably stress cleaning again (which is marginally better than when he’s stress eating), and Roman out on his morning jog through the quiet muggle neighborhood they called their own.

It’s strange, Virgil thinks, knowing that none of their neighbors are aware of the nuclear bombs that rest in each of their pockets disguised as sticks that they might have picked up in the park last Saturday.

It’s strange, Virgil thinks, that its September fourth and none of them are at Hogwarts, or even intending on going to the esteemed magic school that had been their homes for six years prior.

It’s strange, Virgil thinks, knowing that Dee’s family had helped finance the Dark Lady's rise to political power and then had started murdering muggles in distant countries and the Daily Prophet was refusing to acknowledge any of it at all.

They’d all be seventh years this year, completing the second half of their courses and preparing for the NEWTS and practicing their nonverbal spells. And maybe Virgil’s spent too much time in his own head this summer because he misses going the kitchens and tapping out the rhythmic pattern of “Helga Hufflepuff” on the barrel that would open up to the soft, cozy, and quiet common room. From the very first moment he had done it himself, Virgil had always felt a bit like he was walking home when he entered the Hufflepuff dorms, as ridiculous a notion as it was. (And he’d die before he’d admit that to anyone else.)

But even here, in Roman’s semi-modest muggle neighborhood, it feels a bit like that. He can’t pretend that he doesn’t like waking up and seeing those three again and again and again. He doesn’t want to either.

He feels guilty about it. A whole lot of guilty. For the first month of them living together, Virgil hadn’t been able to sleep at all, because he’d been so afraid of waking up, and finding the spell over them had broken.

Virgil can survive losing a lot-- he’s done it before with his mother, his home, his holidays, his sanity (on Thursdays, specifically),-- he doesn’t think he can survive losing them too. And that’s partially his fault, he supposes: his defining character trait has always been that fierce loyalty, with a more than a dash of selfishness that his mother hadn’t managed to iron out of him.

He loves the spell that was over them. He also hates that he loves the spell that was over them.

The second they found out it would be over and they’d never forgive him for using them like stepping stones.

His fingers tighten around the mug at the spiral of his own thoughts. Logan’s eyes flick up from his reading to look at him, and Virgil wished he knew what that sort of look meant. If they had actually been friends for five years, he probably would have known.

Its a little late to ask.

It doesn’t matter much because the next moment the front door opens with a loud boom and a louder voice sings the ending line of some Disney song that Virgil recognizes only because it had been in the back of his head for three days straight. (That song from that night when the four of them had curled up in the living room and Roman had tugged him into a cuddle and then forgotten to let go of him before he fell asleep with his head on Virgil’s shoulder and-- and he was blushing just thinking about it.)

Virgil makes a mistake of swallowing his coffee at the same time as Roman Prince comes tromping into the kitchen after his morning run. And hell, if it didn’t take every single muscle in his body to keep from spitting his drink back up.

Virgil has seen Roman come back from runs before: it was part of his routine that he rarely switched up and he had admitted to Virgil once that it was when he did his best thinking. Alone with his music in his ear, his wand in his pocket, and the rhythmic pounding of his sneakers on the pavement-- Virgil could see how it was appealing. If it didn’t require getting up so early, or going outside, or like...exercising, Virgil would have totally been down to run with him.

But the way that Roman comes into the room-- his shirt in his hands, instead of on his body like a normal person, glistening with sweat that seemed to drip off every single muscle which was only emphasized by the smug look on his face, his eyes sparking with his endorphins running rampid and his face still flushed from his workout--like he knew, the little shit, knew that he was making Virgil short circuit by looking like that.

Virgil swallows his coffee, with his hands around his mug so tightly he thinks it might take a crowbar or diffindo to get them apart.

Logan turns into an owl again.

(Animals don’t feel emotions quite like humans, Logan had said once and Virgil has never been able to get over that particular jealousy.)

“What's the matter, Morgan le Fretful?” Roman asks with that shit eating grin of his that, by itself, can turn Virgil’s thought process into a first graders string art project. That smile coupled with his gleaming abs and Virgil’s complete and utter gayness? Oh he’s down for the count and out of the game all together.

“Boo,” Virgil manages, “Weak.”

“I think it was a good one!” Roman responds so blithe and warm that Virgil wonders if the sun came to earth for the day. Logan flutters his feathers, which only makes Roman laugh more.

“Put on a shirt, Princey,” Virgil says, deliberately not looking at him as he says it. He steals the paper back from Logan’s place, and pretends to find the articles in it interesting and not at all offensive.

"And if I don't?" Roman's wiggling his eyebrows and Virgil can tell because the picture of Celestina Warbeck (the famed Singing Sorceress, whom Roman had once said should be the next Disney Princess) was blushing furiously and waving her face in her article.

Virgil glares at the singer and she gives him a wink like she knows exactly what his heart is doing in his chest. He changes pages as fast as he can, grabs his mug and his wand in one hand, and does not look up at Roman.

"If you don't, Patton's gonna have a hard time putting out the Bluebell flames I'm gonna--"

Virgil stops mid sentence as his eyes catch on a familiar face on the page. A face he hadn't seen in a year, but saw each and every time he had a nightmare. The paper crinkled in his hand.

"Virgil?" Roman says playfulness gone. "If it's really that much of a bother I'll put it on--"

Virgil blinks once, twice, and he swallows hard. "What? No its-- Its fine. I don't care." He folds the paper and sticks it under his arm as he convinces himself to keep breathing.

Roman stares at him (shirt around his neck like hawaiian lei). Logan gives a ruffle of feathers and touches down at the edge of the table next to Virgil's elbow. Despite being a bird, and despite the fact the markings around his eyes only look like glasses, the gaze he holds is sophisticated and knowing. Virgil refuses to look at him, at either of them. He finds a spot just over Roman’s shoulder to stare at in conviction.

"I'm fine," Virgil says again, as if that will convince them.

"You're clearly not." Logan's voice says and Virgil just barely restrains himself from batting the glasses off his face. (When the first animagus was done, why didn't they included a sound with their morphing? A bell ringing? A tumblr notification noise? Something???)

"Yeah, last time you acted like this after reading the paper, you disappeared for a day, without explanation." Roman says (and Virgil doesn't flinch, does not, does not), "So to prevent Patton from worrying all day, I'm gonna wait for an answer that's the truth."

"It is the truth!" Virgil responds. And its not a lie. Not a whole lie. Barely a partial lie. Its nothing compared to the other lies he's been telling.

And when neither of them fall for it, he lets out a defeated breath. "You guys remember Professor Remus Dukeson?"

Roman snorts, "Crazy Divination teacher? The one who ate a physical teacup in third year?”

Logan picks up a feather from the table, one of his own feathers, and twists it in his fingers, “What about him, Virgil?”

“Do you know what Alstroemeria flowers represent?”

Virgil unfolds the paper from under his arm, “He’s dead.”

Virgil doesn’t expect them to understand. He can’t expect them to. Logan thought Divination was a waste of school funds. It was the only class he didn’t even attempt to master. And Roman and Professor Remus never once got along. After the disaster of third year Roman had dropped Divination like it had been going out of style, and maybe it had. By fourth year only half the class had stuck around.

And Virgil had been one of them.

He hadn’t been particularly good at it: he didn’t like his tea without sugar, the crystal balls never once filled with smoke for him, and he mixed up the head and life lines on his during the Palmistry portion of his OWLs despite having had the class for three whole years by then. Professor Remus had mentioned he had a latent talent once upon a time, but the man had also said that Roman was going to cast a forbidden curse at Virgil and Logan was going to win a duel with Professor Sanders, so Virgil hadn’t put much merit in his words.

But seeing the teachers face, his smirking mouth, his mustache that always had something in it, and even seeing his picture shuffling side to side as he was trying to stripe which unfortunately was not a new phenomenon to anyone who took his class...seeing Professor Remus in the Obituaries with the cause of death being labeled as an unsolvable murder? Oh, there was something cold about that, something that makes Virgil’s empty stomach churn and his head feel warm, and his fingers itch for the coin in the secret pocket over his heart.

Theres a flash of red in the corner of his eye and Virgil freezes, but in the end its just Roman tugging his shirt over his head, and pushing back his sweat drenched bangs. He’s frowning, as people do when they hear someone died.

“Oh man,” Roman says, “That’s pretty awful. I mean he was a terrible teacher, but I never wanted to see him dead.”

“Agreed,” Logan says. He flips the paper to read the small written eulogy himself. “I wonder who the new teacher in his place is?”

“Maybe they brought back Trelawney?” Roman suggests.

And just like that the topic is gone and Remus Dukeson is forgotten. Virgil wishes that his right hand would stop feeling like someone had stabbed him with a thousand needles in the meantime, please and thanks.

Listening to them feels a lot like they’re standing on opposite sides of a one-way glass wall. They keep talking, the topic gone, and in a few minutes Virgil’s little freak out will have been forgotten to them. Virgil thinks he should be thankful for that: with his life on the line he really doesn’t need them to be prodding into why exactly crazy Remus Dukeson’s death matters all that much.

Crazy Remus Dukeson who would have been the only one who could have helped him out of the hole he’d been digging for himself for the past two years. But if he was dead, then there was no one left who could vouch for him when all of this was over, no one who would be able to stand in a court room and say without a doubt that Virgil had done the only thing he could have done, no one who would want to believe Virgil was a good guy.

And, of course, Logan was not stupid in any manner. If past memories hadn’t secured such a reaction as his as one of normality, then surely he would have put two and two together. Surely if he hadn’t had five years of false memories under his belt he would have realized that Virgil was hiding something behind that glass mirror of his, and that it was bad and evil and going to get them killed.

Virgil slips out of the room about the same time as Roman and Logan start arguing over whether Divination should even be a course offered at school (a debate of which has been ongoing for three years now). Part of him wants to be sad that it's so easy to just fade away from and exit the room without making them even turn from each other.

But Virgil knows how Roman and Logan stare at each other when they get into a debate, how everyone stares at Logan when he gets filled with that prim-and-proper, fuck-you fire. Outside of seeing him break the laws with ease, watching Logan get passionate is one of Virgil’s favorite sights. (Even if the first memory of it that Virgil has also includes Logan giving him a bloody nose and Patton crying--)

Roman isn’t any different. That’s why he purposely eggs the ravenclaw on, and then stares stupidly at Logan’s flushed cheeks with a cocky smirk that is absolutely impossible for Virgil to witness when the other still hasn’t showered from his run.

So really its for his own sanity that he manages to escape the room when he does.

***

Virgil is coming down from his room at a quarter after four when Patton assaults him with the brightest wand-lighting charm Virgil has ever seen performed.

“Pat! Fuck!” Virgil stumbles back on the stairs covering his eyes against the white light. “Warn a dude!”

“Virgil!” Patton yelps, “Language!” But he giggling far too much for it to come out stern. Virgil feels the other boy batting his hands away from his face, “Stop, stop that, Virgil!”

Virgil squints past the glare, “What are you--”

“Smile!”

Then there's a flash of light even brighter than Patton’s wand followed by a puff of purple smoke that practically spelled out what was going on.

Virgil coughs, waving off the smoke while Patton removes the wizard polaroid photo from his camera. His brain is working overtime trying to remember what holiday it is because Patton never breaks the camera out unless its an important date. But Virgil had his calendar in the room marked with all their birthdays, and the major and minor national holidays--magic and muggle alike because Patton had started crying the last time they forgot to tell him about Arbor Day and Virgil wasn’t ready for that to happen again in this lifetime or the next or the one after that. He’s even marked the full moon, because he was pretty sure the girl from the public library was a werewolf and didn’t want to accidentally wander outside if she missed a potion on one of those nights.

“Pat,” Virgil says in a sort of defeated, anxiety ridden tone. “What’s going on? Who’s birthday--”

Patton just laughs at him, and Virgil has to shut up at that. Patton’s laugh was like a waterfall, like bells chiming, like angels signing. Virgil would rather pitch himself from the Astronomy Tower than miss any second of his glorious happiness.

Its unhealthy. Its gonna be the end of him.

Virgil can’t help but smile at the other’s toothy grin. And if he gets a hug out of it? Well, someone once mentioned that that Virgil was touch starved, so that’s the reason he melts at Patton’s touch.

Patton shows him the picture without relinquishing any hold on him. Somehow that leads to them stumbling around on the stairs until Virgil’s sitting and Patton’s basically in his lap, fuck. But Patton doesn’t even seem to notice at all.

“It’s no one’s birthday!” Patton says, “I just was cleaning up earlier and I came across a bunch of photos from school!”

And just like that Virgil’s short lived happiness evaporates. Dread settles on his shoulders like a cloak, and anxiety wriggles straight down his throat to grip his pulsating heart. “Oh?”

It comes out too innocent. Patton doesn’t notice.

“Yeah! I got so many pictures of Logan and Roman and Me! I used to carry this camera around everywhere! Don’t you remember?”

Virgil remembers. He remembers it very well. Especially when he can see the crack on the side where the flash bulb hooked on before he had accio-ed it right out of Patton’s hands in second year and tossed it back and forth with Dee until even Logan had come to Patton’s defense. Especially when Logan had called all three of them childish and then Dee had laughed some sort of nasty laugh and tossed the camera right over the edge of the moving staircase, before linking hands with Virgil and dragging him out to the quidditch pitch for the rest of the time before dinner.

Virgil mentions none of this. “Yeah? What about it?”

Patton waves the photo in his face and, really, it's a pretty terrible photo of him. He didn't even know skin could be that pale and his hair is sticking up from where he had been running a hand through it all evening, and his irises were red from staring directly into the flash.

“I saw that we don’t have any pictures with you in them!” Patton sighed, “It’s terrible! You’ve been our friend for so many years! I can’t believe that you aren’t in any of our pictures!”

Virgil forces himself to keep smiling. It hurts his cheeks. “Well you know me…”

“So we have to take a bunch of pictures right now!”

Patton sets those blue eyes of his on him, and Virgil cannot believe that he’s 100% wizard. Somewhere someone in his family line had to be part selkie because those are definitely baby seal eyes, and who the fuck is gonna say no to them? Not Virgil!

“Okay,” Virgil says. “Alright sure, whatever you want.”

And he means it. He’d give Patton all the stars in the universe if he didn’t think removing them would make Logan lose his shit about order and necessity.

Besides Virgil has just as few photos of them as Patton has of him. So when the photo session is over and Patton’s hair was dusted purple and Virgil’s eyes hurt from the brightness and they were both crying from laughter, Virgil makes sure to snag one of the better photos for his own room.

(It was always so easy to laugh with Patton, so easy, nearly too easy. But that was okay for now.)

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Patton says, looking up from his glistening stack of pictures suddenly, “The Order is having a meeting next week.”

“Oh?” Virgil swallows nervously, “you mean like, having a meeting, here?” He folds the picture of him and Patton in his pocket, running the edge of the photo between his nail and the skin under it. (He’s pretty sure the photo version of Patton is talking the photo version of himself out of a panic attack, but he disregards it.) His other hand comes to his mouth, and he nips away at the black chipped nail polish.

Patton shakes his head, and Virgil can’t but help a sigh of relief. “Nope! No worries, kiddo! Thomas-- wow, it sure is silly to call him by his first name!-- Professor Sanders and I talked about how uncomfortable you are with anyone new in the house, so instead we agreed that it was easier for us to go to him to give our reports!”

Patton hums looking at another picture, where he had magicked up some cat ears for the two of them. “Plus it would be a pain to have to undo all those charms you set up for one measely meeting!”

“Cool,” Virgil says.

It's not really, because Virgil hates leaving the house, hates stepping into an area that could so easily be compromised, hates when he can’t be sure if he’s leading his friends into a trap or if he’s just being paranoid again. But that’s definitely better than inviting people, even the Order, into the house that Virgil had made sure was their safe haven.

But Patton takes his quietness with grace. He gives up one of his blinding smiles and Virgil is vividly reminded of how pretty he looks like this. Virgil knows that the secrets he’s keeping from them are unforgivable, knows what they did to the trio of boys is terrible and deplorable and shameful. Despite that, Virgil can’t help but feel...relief that Patton is smiling like this.

Patton doesn’t remember why he should never smile at Virgil, doesn’t remember the year after year of Virgil tearing him down, doesn’t remember what Virgil and Dee did to him. And Virgil is selfish enough to be grateful for that.

“Oh would you look at the time!” Patton says brightly, “I better go start dinner before Roman gets into the pantry again! Are you going to be joining us, Vee?”

Virgil nods, even though he doesn’t really catch whats being said to him.

“Yay!” Patton holds his new pictures to his chest, “I’ll call you when its ready then! Love you, VeeVee!”

He says it so effortlessly.

Virgil wishes it didn’t feel like a snake wrapping around his chest and squeezing the breath right out of him. Patton pops back down the stairs, leaving a cold empty space in Virgil’s lap where he used to be. He jumps the last step and gives one last wave to Virgil as he turns the corner--

“Hey, uh, Pat?” Virgil says at the last second.

Patton hums to show he’s listening, even though he’s still flipping through their pictures. “Yeah, kiddo?”

“Will Remy be there?”

Patton blinks and looks up the stairs at him. Virgil’s nails dig into the banister. Something flickers in the Ravenclaws eyes, confusion or pity. Virgil’s not sure there’s a difference at this point.

“Remy? Oh! You mean the Ravenclaw that joined the Order the year before us!” Patton shuffles the photos with a smile, “And you mean at the Order meeting, right?” He tilts his head to the side as he thinks, before shrugging and offering, “I’m not sure!”

Virgil breathes like he’s a drowned man finally come up from the water. “Uh, cool! That’s cool.”

The itch to recheck his charms hits him then. Like being trampled by a Mountain Troll.

Remy’s not a threat, Virgil tells himself.

Except that he is. Virgil had met the Ravenclaw twice before, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t acutely aware that Remy was a very skilled Legilimens.

And the last thing Virgil needs right now is someone poking around in his head. Virgil’s seen first hand what a Legilimens can do to someone: Patton looks at him with a smile instead of with tears, Roman challenges him to duels over the spot on the couch rather than to the death, Logan has no clue how attractive he looks angry out of his mind and giving people nosebleeds with his barefists.

“I do.”

No, Virgil doesn’t need someone looking in his memories, even at a glance. Not now, not when they’ve come so far and the Order is so, so very close to being able to combat the Dark Lady before she takes over the Ministry of Magic.

At best, he’ll be labeled a Neo-Death Eater. At worst, no one will ask any questions and they’ll just kill him without hesitation.

He needs to check the charms on the house, because that’s something other that just sitting on a staircase in the center of the house and having a break down where one of the others will see him.

Virgil launches himself to his feet and takes the six stairs upwards two at a time. He runs his fingers over the wall as he goes, picking at the peeling wallpaper that none of them have taken the time to fix yet. There are pictures of baby Roman and his muggle family at the beach on the walls and classical music coming from beyond the closed door of Logan’s room. Virgil moves beyond it all to his room at the end of the hall.

Well he calls it his room, and so do the others. Virgil thinks they might be a little upset if they ventured into the room that Roman had given him and found it was nearly the same as it had been at the beginning of summer break two years ago.

The window facing the street had the blinds drawn and a thick layer of dust over the windowsill because Virgil was not in the process of airing his dirty laundry or his room. The bed was neatly tucked in from his routine habit, the floor was clean and clear, his extra shoes lined up at the foot of the bed so he couldn't trip over them in the night--those were things he did to remember his mother; she always did like it when he kept his room neat. He had a total of eight outfits in the closet, which he was sure if Roman knew about he'd have a heart attack. So far Virgil had avoiding the issue by magically changing the shade of black in his shirts every other day.

The only things that Virgil had brought into the room that weren't absolutely necessary for him to have was that calendar on his wall, a collection of seventh year textbooks he had bought himself even though he wasn't going to school, his school trunk that he hadn't touched since getting off the train last year, and now, a picture of him and Patton making silly faces and laughing (very happy to be unfolded).

He slips out his wand and wanders towards the window.

The spells are all over the house, on every window, over every wall, under every carpet. Roman had put the first layer on himself when he was sixteen, and later when he, Patton, Logan, and Virgil had been inducted into the Order of the Phoenix, Thomas Sanders had come over and reapplied more of them. Once the Transfiguration Teacher had finished, Virgil had then moved in and quietly applied his own.

They were subtle differences in magic, in skill, in finesse. Virgil had smoothed over the rough edges and connected the corners that no one else might have noticed if they hadn’t gone looking for them. Every full moon Virgil had snuck around quietly checking the magic cloaking spell and then muggle deterrent spell and the silencing spells---

Needless to say the one time the girl scouts had rang the doorbell, Virgil had nearly had a heart attack. Patton had bought ten boxes of cookies with Roman’s money before Logan had managed to get Virgil to put his wand away.

Virgil had obsessively checked the spells after the girls had left until he found the loophole that had allowed the girls to get all the way to their front door. By the time he found it dinner had gone cold and only Logan was left awake to witness Virgil trip down the stairs in his haste to fix it.

Roman hadn’t even known he had been adding spells at all until Logan had tried to floo Remy Dormire into the house.

So Virgil’s first time meeting the legilimens is really not a good one. There had been something about the way that Remy had looked at him while Roman gave him the “dude what in Merlin’s name??” speech that made Virgil uneasy. Something about the way that a smile had flickered across Remy’s face and he sipped on his homemade tea that only Patton had touched, something about the way that Virgil felt like Remy had gotten inside his head without him drawing his wand, something about the way that Remy had said “It’s all cool hun! Paranoia is all part of the game!”, which made it sound like Virgil was overreacting yet again.

Something about the guy feels wrong to Virgil.

So he adds more charms to the house, ones he’s sure no one but himself and the trio of boys he lives with can get through.

It doesn’t feel like enough.

And in the end, he's right about that.

***

Their role in the Order is small really. They’re all too young to be doing anything important like infiltrating the Ministry-- except Logan, who despite choosing not to graduate from the esteemed magic school had been offered several internships over the summer which he had denied. Patton’s Uncle Kiddel had been very adamant that Patton be as far removed from danger as he could get, and while Roman had been a bit bummed at the lack of action he had jumped at a chance to offer his family’s house for their activities while his parents took an extended vacation to some place that Virgil doesn’t remember.

The combination of parents between the four of them is depressing: Roman’s muggle parents are unreachable, Patton’s are dead, Logan’s Dad took his mom to a safe place in another country, and Virgil’s mom… well, there’s an understanding between the four of them not to bring up parents unless they were trying to bring the mood down to rock bottom.

So really they are just four seventeen year olds living in the house together. Roman monitors the muggles near them, Logan handles correspondence between certain branches of the Order (although Virgil suspects that Thomas Sanders fields some of the letters before they get to them). Patton monitors the wizarding world. Virgil exists to be anxious on the edge of their consciousnesses.

He doesn’t have a job title really, but Virgil is the one who does his best to keep the rest of them alive and safe and not killing each other (which, surprisingly, happens at least once a week, when Roman gets tired of having no logical reason to practice magic and then starts charming things in the house that shouldn’t be charmed, when Logan runs out of work to do and restlessly snaps at them until a fight starts, when Patton gets too far in his head about what would happen if the Dark Lady manages to win against them and refuses to let any of them leave the room lest they disappear on him--)

So their part of the Order’s functions are minuscule.

Virgil doesn’t see why they have to go at all, but he goes with Patton, Logan, and Roman to the Order meeting all the same. The location they pick is a townhouse that magically doesn’t exist until they need it to. When it does exist, its across the country so they take the brooms there, which makes Roman so happy he cries five minutes into flying, and almost makes Virgil not hate the heights so much.

(Roman, of course, used to be a Quidditch player, a Chaser, up until he decided not to go back to school that year. Virgil used to split his attention between watching Roman’s windswept hair and Dee’s cheeky smile when the latter managed to beat a bludger just right to knock the Quaffle right out of Roman’s hands.)

Virgil sidelines those memories and grips the handle of his broom until his knuckles are white and the cold air of the upper atmosphere begs him to stop holding so tight. Patton flies beside him, naturally swerving like a lackadaisical snake with the ease that only comes with having ridden brooms since he was in diapers. Ahead of them Roman does a loopdeloop and tries to goad Logan into racing him, who in turns calls him every childish name in the book.

It takes them forty minutes to get there. Roman wins the race, and because Logan is petty, he changes the color of Roman’s firetruck red robes to a dull beige.

“Hello Professor!” Patton waves to Thomas Sanders as the older man appears on the street across from them, and because Virgil’s luck is terrible, Remy Dormire appears next to him.

“Patton,” Thomas greets them all warmly. “I’ve told you guys to call me Thomas before.”

Said Ravenclaw ducks his head sheepishly, “Its just feels so strange! You’re always going to be my Transfiguration teacher to me!”

Remy cooes at him and pats Patton on the head, “You are so adorable, hun.” He says, “Come on Bitches! Its cold as balls out here and I’m ready to hear all the juicy gossip you babes have been collecting!”

Virgil is more worried about a muggle peeking out their windows and seeing four teenagers with brooms and long cloaks so for once he agrees with the magic mind reader. The glasses on the older boy's head are mirrored, which makes it hard to tell who he’s looking at, who’s mind he’s reading. Virgil reaffirms his mental walls as he follows the others inside.

The inside of the townhouse looks pretty much like it hasn’t been used in years. There’s layers of dust on everything. Which Virgil guesses is why Remy’s face screws up when Thomas’s hand lands on his shoulder and guides the older boy towards one of the rooms. Remy shrugs his hand off as soon as he physically can, and then brushes the area on his leather jacket that Thomas had touched, like he could wipe the phantom traces of the man off it.

“Vintage Leather, Babe!” Remy doesn’t quite hiss, but it’s a close thing. “No touching!”

Thomas laughs good naturedly and Remy’s snarl fades a bit back to that condescending look that Virgil always associated with him. Roman sneezes three times in succession, and his eyes start watering and he croaks something about dust being the bane of his existence.

“Pardon me,” Logan says to Thomas, “He will be completely unhelpful until this is cleared up. Scourgify!”

It was frankly impressive. At least, to Virgil it was. Patton always got that excited look on his face when someone did magic, and Roman was too busy sniffling and rubbing his red eyes to really watch. Remy rolled his eyes and Thomas smiled at Logan when he performed the charm that left the previously untouchable room into a cozy living room with plenty of space for the six of them.

“Excellent job, Logan!” Thomas said.

(For a moment Virgil feels like he’s back in class and Logan just won another ten points to his house for being naturally gifted at forcing things to shapeshift.)

Logan blushes at the compliment, so Virgil thinks he’s not alone in the flashback.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s great,” Remy bulldozes the compliment and tosses himself on a length of sofa meant for two people. “Its time for the good gossip, girls!”

“None of us are female presenting--” Logan starts, but Remy rolls his eyes and waves him off.

“What-everrr! Pat come sit with me, babes!”

Virgil wants to drag Patton far away from Remy, but the older Ravenclaw raises an eyebrow at him like a dare. Virgil counts to four and reminds himself that Remy is part of the Order and Thomas is there and even if he is a legilimens that doesn’t mean that he’s going to read any of their minds. In fact, he’s likely there just because he got bored doing whatever the fuck Thomas has him doing.

Patton jumps on the cushion next to Remy and bounces on the seat like an excited child. Logan opts for a spot on the adjacent couch with Thomas, Roman on the floor like a drama queen who needs to be the center of attention, and Virgil ends up perched on the armrest next to Logan’s elbow where he can easily see both the fireplace and the door to the dusty parlor.

Thomas is a comforting presence, Virgil thinks as the discussion starts. He had been their professor and he had taught all of them and had been right beside them when they were sworn into the Order. He had never been cagey about this past, being a half blood from Hufflepuff who had been there that day that Harry Potter had defeated Voldemort and witnessed all the fighting first hand. He had joined the Order not long after that final battle by tracking down Headmistress McGonagall and subtly asking if there were any alternative plans for if another dark wizard started raising.

According to Thomas he had gotten the job as a Transfiguration teacher less than a year after that and Virgil really never had the guts to exist in the same room as Headmistress McGonagall long enough to ask her if that was true.

“Remy?” Logan says, after a lull in the conversation, which Virgil, himself, only realizes because Logan’s elbow slides onto the armrest and its dangerously close to touching Virgil’s thigh.

The other member of the Order takes another moment to respond which makes the hairs on Virgil’s neck raise. Remy’s hand is twisting through Patton’s hair so casually and somehow they ended up with Patton leaning heavily on Remy’s shoulder. Virgil thinks it would be weird for anyone else, but Patton likes to touch and its most likely that Logan and Virgil haven’t been providing enough of those touches recently. Remy’s still wearing those stupid sunglasses even though they are inside and its dark in here, but Virgil knows instinctively that he was reading thoughts.

Probably.

“Hmm, doll?” Remy says, “Sorry I zoned out when y’all started getting boring. You know me; I just can’t keep my focus on things when theres a cute boy around!”

Virgil wants to point out that they don’t know him, but Patton meets his gaze and Virgil loses the courage to say anything.

Right, they should be avoiding instigating a fight here.

Regardless Roman spread himself out on the ground and sighs dramatically, “I know what you mean, Rem! All these glor--”

“Remy,” Remy says, peering down his nose at Roman, “Its Remy. Or just don’t address me at all, hun.”

Virgil thinks the whole room is thrown for a moment. Remy’s tone isn’t necessarily icy or cold, and he’s still grinning when he talks, as if they’re sharing a private joke. He twists one of Patton’s curls so gently, it almost looks intimate. Virgil can see Logan’s jaw shift at the motion, and how Patton seems to be unsure if he should be moving away or staying still.

“S-sorry?” Roman says, unsuredly.

Remy smiles at him, with something that’s borderline unfriendly, “Sure, hun. Now are we done here, or are y’all still doing that small talk thing?”

Thomas shifts in his seat, “Actually there is one more thing I want to let you four know about.”

At once he has all of their attentions. Logan who had been talking the most moves to straighten his tie again, and Roman sits back up so he can see the Professor clearly. The room gets a sort of eerie feeling to it, and Virgil swears for a moment that he can see his breath in the air.

“We’ve gotten some suspicious reports about the Dark Lady and her followers.” Thomas says, “I’ve had some suspicions for a while, but we recently got proof-- thanks to Remy-- that the Dark Lady has a time turner on her.”

“A Time Turner?” Logan says, “I thought all of them had been rendered useless after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries when they were all caught in a time loop?”

“Wait wait wait, we’re saying the lady who wants to legalize casual genocide now has the ability to go back in time?” Roman yelped. “Doesn’t this mean all of our possible plans are useless then?”

"I told you, babe!" Remy sings, boredly, "All it would do is worry the poor things!" He rests his chin on Patton's shoulder, which startles a ticklish giggle from the younger Ravenclaw.

Thomas ignores him, "We're not sure what the implications are if it yet." He admits, "Headmistress Mcgonagall, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Ron Weasley are all discussing the possibilities of it now. I was told to advise you guys of the situation." Thomas gives them each a look, and then he smiles, "Don't worry too much about it, boys. We'll take it slow and smart and we'll figure this out."

Its a pep talk, Virgil realizes. And in a weird way, Virgil guesses he does feel a little reassured.

In another way Virgil's mind tunnels downward towards the forbidden memories of a Slytherin boy who told him two years ago that the Dark Lady possessed a means to turn back time and what both of them had done about that.

Thomas is looking at him, he notes, suddenly.

"What?" Virgil asks right as his palms begin to sweat, and his mouth tastes like his black nail polish as he forces his hand away from his mouth.

Thomas frowns, "I...well, I assumed that you would find this information a bit more surprising."

Virgil squeezes the sleeves of his jacket. His jaw creaks open, reminding him pathetically of how tense he was. "Well its like you said," he defends lamely. "We shouldn't worry too much. If the Lady already has a Time Turner, we can't do anything about it now."

Remy is grinning at him. Like the cat that caught the canary and Virgil is the very dead canary in this scenario.

“I’m sure I’ll have a break down later and, you know, over analyze absolutely everything.” Virgil hurriedly says. Which maybe isn’t the best thing to say because now Patton’s staring at him with those wide doe eyes that he makes when he wants to wrap Virgil in a hug. Roman and Logan share a look that shows that maybe they aren’t as convinced, but Thomas nods understandingly and doesn’t push it.

He stands up from the couch and addresses Roman, Logan, and Patton, “I trust you three to keep an eye on him, please? Despite the new news, the Order’s decision so far is to continue work as usual. I’ll be in touch if that changes.”

Logan stands to mirror Thomas and offers his hand. “We’ll do our best.”

Which sounds a little strange to Virgil, because really they weren’t doing much of anything. Thomas had tried talking the four of them into going back to school this year but Roman had gotten antsy about the muggle murders and had dropped out to take care of his parents. Logan and Patton would die before being separated from the Gryffindor, and of course Virgil had followed along with them.

Thomas had set them up with easy jobs and then sent them magical homework via Owl so they were still learning things although Logan seemed to be the only one who was truly excited about more homework. Its enough for now.

Virgil gathers their brooms while Roman breaks into one of his glorious tales of living life in a Muggle neighborhood, followed by Patton make a pun that makes Thomas laugh and Logan groan. When they finally stumbled outside, it’s nearing ten at night and the stars are out.

“Interesting,” Logan states with his eyes to the stars that were just barely seeable behind the halo of the streetlamps. But before Virgil can ask what exactly Logan is seeing in the stars (he had always been the best as Astronomy), Remy vaults down the steps of the house.

“Hey, Badger-boy!” The older Ravenclaw says. He’s grinning again, in a way that makes Virgil’s skin feel too loose, and his palms too slick from sweat, and his mind sing out every protection spell he knows. In the darkness his sunglasses seem even more impractical, and Virgil is left staring at his own reflection rather the other’s eyes.

“What?” Virgil answers, despite the fact he’s not wearing any of his house’s bright yellow and no one had dared call him a badger since he and Dee had put Alfred Hitchcockopolous in the Hospital wing for a day in First Year for it.

Remy laughs. Its the type of laugh that someone gives when their particularly stupid animal does something stupid and has to face the stupid conseqeunces for it.

“Nothing, babe.” He says. “Just wanted to see your face one last time.” He turns to Patton, and flicks his glasses down just enough that he shows off those golden eyes. “Stay adorable, Freckles.”

Then he flashes a peace sign at them and apperates away.

Thomas sends them on their way, with waving hands and farewells and a promise to see them soon. Roman does helix roll once he’s in the air to show off, and Logan berates him for risking the Muggles seeing them, while Patton laughs like an angel beside them.

Virgil glances back at the ground, ignoring the swoop of his stomach at the height difference, to see Thomas staring at the spot Remy had been last with a frown. As if sensing him, Thomas looks up, gives Virgil an unreadable smile, a wave, and then he too apperates away and the street is empty of all the signs they were ever there.

***

“Well that was fun,” Roman hums landing his broom with utmost ease. With a hand through his windswept hair, he turns that charming smile on the rest of them, which somehow still sparkles despite the lack of actual light. He’s a silhouette, a shadow, a half visible fraction, and yet Virgil has absolutely no trouble seeing the full on Roman-ness of the action.

“We have very different definitions of fun,” Logan notes, and turns Roman’s red robes back to a less offensive beige. Virgil bites back a smile when Roman complains about him being petty and uncreative for someone in Ravenclaw.

And if it starts a lighthearted magic battle in the enclosed backyard, well, there are no muggles out at near eleven in their quiet suburban dream neighborhood. In the flashes of red and purple and blue he can see Logan and Roman grinning like fools and he can feel Patton’s laughter reverberating through him when the other boy leans on his shoulder and watches the two quibble.

Its….happy. Virgil is happy.

Watching them like this, watching them laugh and have fun and enjoy themselves, even after they were just told that the evil force they were combating had the ability to change timestreams. They’re so resilient, so optimistic, and Virgil wishes that he could place some complicated spell on the house right here so that they’d never be disturbed and they could just exist like this happy forever.

But Virgil knows that Roman would detest being stuck to one place for forever and Logan would run out of things to do and turn bitter and Patton would wonder why they weren’t happy anymore and then come to the conclusion it was somehow his fault.

There’s no way to preserve the happiness forever. Virgil spent all of fourth year combing through the books in the restricted section for a spell that he could cast and he had come up blank.

“The best type of prison,” Dee had said, once upon a time, “is one that the prisoners do not know they’re in.”

“You really think Prince needs to be aware of a prison to want break out of it?” Virgil had shot back.

And Dee had just laughed and flipped the page of his book.

That had been before he had become a Neo-Death Eater, Virgil thinks. Because he hadn’t been wearing the skull clasp on his robes yet, hadn’t started avoiding Virgil like he had contracted Dragon Pox, hadn’t started actually using the mind magic excessively ….

Virgil’s smile slips, and Patton notices almost immediately. “Kiddo?”

Virgil nudges him with his shoulder, “‘M just tired, you know? Talking to people and all that.”

He feels the Ravenclaw laugh softly. Theres a flash of red where the grass by Logan’s feet catches fire, and the other wastes his turn of their duel using aguamenti to put it out before one of the neighbors look out their windows or it spreads to the deck where Patton and Virgil are and then consumes the entire house.

Roman laughs at him. “My house? Are you sure? Virgil’s put so many charms on that thing nothing short of an atomic bomb is going to bring it down!”

Not true, but Virgil feels himself preen at the compliment anyway. He rubs the back of his neck and knows his face is a flushed pink, but its too dark for anyone to make it out.

“Yeah, sure,” He calls to them, “Now, if you excuse me, I’m going to go overthink everything Professor Sanders just told us.”

“Professore Sanders told us--” Logan starts, but Virgil knows that tone all too well and he manages to wave it away.

“I know, I know. Nothing to worry about.” Virgil waves his wand blindly towards the door handle and unlocks it with Alohomora (a spell which only works for one of their four wands). “I’ll see you guys in the morning!”

“Goodnight, Virge!” Patton calls after him, and because he’s a good person he adds, “I’m making french toast tomorrow for breakfast if you want to help!”

“Happy Nightmares, Jack Smellington!” Roman throws in because he’s much less of a good person.

Virgil closes the door behind him. His body leans against it for a second, hearing the sounds of his friends getting back to their shenanigans. He gives it maybe ten minutes before Roman and Patton start up the cheery Hogwarts chants and an impromptu dance routine in which Logan is dragged around the backyard, trying to pretend like he still has dignity.

Its nice. Virgil fumbles through the kitchen, using the light from the magic hall sconces to guide himself down the hall and then up the stairs. The pictures on the walls of the other three laugh and rough house around. Virgil runs his fingers over the picture frames as he walks.

“Get some sleep, kiddo!” One of Patton at a Dragon Petting Zoo from second year tells him.

And Virgil has every intention of it.

He does.

But he gets to the front of his room and there’s a warmth against his chest that makes his blood freeze. His hand frantically pats his chest, pressing into the warmth, trying to determine if its real or just something in his head, please let it be something in his head, please, please--

Its not in his head. He throws himself into his room and locks it behind him. The lights stay off and he drags the curtains closer together just to make sure that absolutely no one can see inside. Then he crawls into the closet, with his breath coming out in shaky breathes too rapidly to count.

His hands shake too hard to unzip his sweatshirt all the way. It gets jammed by his belly button. The burning against his chest feels like an open flame right to his right pectoral, hissing with heat, demanding to be appeased. Virgil couldn’t have ignored it if he had wanted to.

He doesn’t want to look.

He looks anyway.

His hand opens the invisible seams of the hidden pocket right over his chest. There are only two items in it, but Virgil drops them both into his lap anyway. He kneads his palms into his eyes and forces himself to take a breath and hold it-- one second, two, three-- which is about as long as it takes for him to remember every lie he’s ever told to the trio outside.

As long as it takes for him to remember whose lives are on the line if he messes up.

As long as it takes for his hands to steady enough to pick up the coin from his lap and for the sudden heat to fade. The closet is doors are firmly pulled closed and Virgil twists his Cypress wand in his hand.

“Lumos,” Virgil whispers scarcely more than a thought. He’s sure that the sound of the dishwasher in the kitchen is louder than his own voice. He’s afraid any louder will make Roman or Logan burst into the room and demand to know what he’s doing and he doesn’t have an explanation, doesn’t have an excuse, doesn’t have an escape.

They’d hate him if they knew.

Virgil hates himself for them.

The coin is a Galleon, but despite the shiny color and the heavy weight, Virgil knows its fake. He made it after all, pouring over the details for most of two days. But it would never stand up to a Goblin; Virgil doubts it would stand up to a normal wizard if they looked for more than a couple seconds at it.

The Protean Charm on it is too strong for it to go unnoticed to a trained eye.

He told the others he collects Galleons with specific dates on them. “A half muggle thing,” He had told Patton who had taken him very seriously and started checking the dates on every coin he came across. Even now, Galleons show up on the kitchen counter with dates of their birthdays and the first day of Hogwarts and the day they would have graduated.

The serial number on the rim of the coin in his hand had changed.

It was a series of four numbers and then various letters that Virgil decoded with a slight glance at-- he had memorized the code and then burned the last key in existence after all, too paranoid to risk someone ever finding it.

It takes Virgil a second, a moment, a year to understand what date it was. For him to get his brain to work past the dread that bubbling up his throat like a bottle rocket.

And his breath gets caught in his chest when he does.

It’s tomorrows date.

Its tomorrows date and there’s no time to warn anyone without revealing his source.

Its tomorrows date and someone in the Order is going to die.

Virgil does not have a good night, or happy nightmares, and he most definitely does not sleep at all.

***

“You look like death,” Roman says the next morning when Virgil slumps on the stool at the kitchen counter. Virgil can smell his cinnamon body wash from clear across the kitchen which is entirely unhelpful in the light of things because now he’s thinking about Roman in the shower after his morning run and when there are other things to be thinking about.

“Gee, thanks Princey,” Virgil says very tiredly.

Patton is cooking bacon to go with the French toast. It’s sizzling. Does all bacon sizzle so loud? It smells so good Virgil might throw up. His stomach feels empty, but the thought of actually chewing and swallowing food makes head dizzy.

“-rgil, Virgil!”

Virgil blinks for a second, glancing up from the bacon to see that Logan had somehow appeared next to him.

“You do not appear to have slept at all, Virgil,” Logan says thoughtfully. “If it is about the Dark Lady, I can assure you--”

“It’s not,” Virgil says, which sounds like a lie even to him.

Patton, Logan, and Roman all share a look. A silent conversation that Virgil feels unnecessarily annoyed to be excluded from.

“What?” He snaps.

“No offense, Helga Hufflegruff,” Roman says, “But its not like you to be this out of it.”

Virgil flicks his wand at the coffee mugs across the kitchen, “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Kiddo,” Patton says.

“The eggs are burning,” Virgil waves him off. And for a moment it works on taking the attention of him. He takes all of one breath, while Patton squeaks over the breakfast and Roman and Logan watch on ready to jump in and help before the fire alarms go off. But the moment passes and he feels the suffocating gaze of his housemates on him again.

Granted he did look awful. The picture of both him and Patton which had taken residency on his desk had winced when Virgil had stumbled from the closet. There’s a crick in his neck that he can’t get rid off no matter how much he rotates his head and his eyes feel heavier than they have any right to be. Screw his eyeshadow, he hadn’t even put any on today.

He was still in his clothes from yesterday, and he was careful to keep his left hand in his pocket or his sleeve, because he had bitten his nails until they bled last night, though if anyone asks he’ll tell them the morning paper Owl had bitten him when he had forgotten to pay it.

“We should do something today,” Virgil says suddenly.

Which is not the right thing to say. At all.

Roman chokes on his orange juice, and ends up spilling more on the floor than he gets in his throat. Patton nearly drops his hot pan in the sink with how quickly he whips around to stare at Virgil.

Logan adjusts his glasses, “Pardon?”

“Are you sick?” Roman blurts out, rasping as he tries to dislodge the last of the juice, “Is it Dragon Pox? Scrofungus? Heartbreak?”

“Heartbreak isn’t a sickness,” Virgil squints at him.

“Additionally how would one’s heart break?” Logan asks, “Unless it was frozen with Glacius by some means--”

“People can die from Heartbreak!” Roman interjects, despite the fact no one suggested anything about dying. Virgil’s stomach churns around and the coffee on his tongue tastes stale at the thought.

“I’m not dying!” He says quickly, hotly. His fingers squeeze his mug tightly, drawing the warmth from the liquid inside it and hoping it covers the coldness that came over him.

“Yes, it seems much more likely that he was affected by the imperious curse,” Logan suggests.

“I’m not under any curse either!” Virgil hisses, “I just… I thought--” He grits his teeth, “I thought it might be nice to get out of the house.”

Entirely. And never come back.

“You never want to get out of the house,” Roman points out.

“Well I do now!”

Logan does that thing he does when he doesn’t believe something-- a mix of tilting his head and tapping his fingers on the nearest surface while his eyes rotate around the surroundings. Virgil likes to think it was a subconscious reaction: he’s actually observing the room for threats so that he could produce a working solution.

Roman summons more orange juice from the fridge and makes it pour him another glass.

Virgil twists his mug in his fingers and chances a look towards Patton. He spent most of the night trying to figure out what to do, trying to figure out what to say, what he could say. He thinks that he turned over every scenario ten times and fought off the nauseous urge to vomit all through the fourth hour that morning.

He thinks that if he can just get Patton to say yes.

He thinks if he can just get Patton to leave the house that he'll be able to keep all of them safe if the attack is at their location.

(Because that's in question too. Its possible that by some blessed fate that the dread and certainty in his stomach does not mean its going to be here thats attacked. Its possible that he's just paranoid. Its possible that when Professor Remus Duke told him he had a natural latent ability for Divination that the teacher was just spouting nonsense like usual. Its possible.)

((Virgil doesn't take chances like that. He won't. Cant.))

"Virge…" Patton says.

Logan adjusts his glasses, "Thomas told us that work should continue as normal. As such, I have several letters I must attend to-- a group in Romania is requesting the Orders help in tracking several suspicious individuals, a wizard in America got apprehended by MACUSA without proper papers, and Thomas asked me to make a list of where a certain wizarding plant can be found and I've received a pile of responses just this morning I have to comb through-- I can't just drop these tasks. Patton has already agreed to help me."

"What?" Roman says, "Why didn't you ask me?"

"I'm afraid that the thought didn't cross my mind," the Ravenclaw admitted somewhat guiltily. "But Patton has a superior knowledge of the wizarding world that I believe would be most beneficial, and-- I mean this with the least amount of offense-- I feel that if you or Virgil were to join us, we'd be more hindered than helped."

"Ouch," Roman says with wounded pride, and jabs Logan in the shoulder. "I cannot believe you think I'd be bad at answering letters! My handwriting is amazing."

"The chicken scratch you call handwriting is atrocious." Logan bats his hand away easily, "but that's not why I think you helping would be counterproductive."

“Its not?” Roman asks.

“Its not?” Virgil echoes with just enough of a teasing tone that Roman turns his coffee mug into a chicken like the disrupting asshole he is. The bird squawks the second its lungs are formed and Virgil drops it the moment the warmth turns from “warm liquid in a mug” to “living thing with a heartbeat he can feel”.

“Roman!” Logan yells, stumbling back to avoid it and crashing into Patton. They both land on the floor in a heap of limbs and cooking utensils. The chicken flaps over them, screeching something awful. Patton’s glasses somehow end up hooked with Logan’s and their faces mere inches apart and brown chicken under feathers in both their hair.

Roman’s laughter almost makes it worth it: breathless and gasping for air, doubled over and wheezing like an idiot.

It only takes a moment before Patton’s laughter joins in with Roman’s, very much sounding like the usual angels on high. Virgil watches the glorious sight of Logan’s entire face turning redder than an Hippocampus skin and immediately transforming himself into in an owl.

Virgil can’t really blame him. If he were hit at point blank by both Roman and Patton’s carefree laughs like that, he’d turn into an Owl too, regardless of if an Owl was his animagus form or not.

It takes Patton three times to turn the chicken back to a mug-- missing twice because he’s laughing too hard to keep his wand from shaking, and once because the chicken is fast-- and by that time Roman’s on the floor with a hand gripping his chest, grin wider than the fucking sun itself, feathers on clinging to his clothes and his shirt riding up his stomach just enough to be a tease. Logan transforms back long enough to move the cup from the floor to the sink, but when he turns around to see the Gryffindor, his cheeks flare back up and Virgil can feel the heat from where he is.

The bacon definitely burns.

Virgil doesn’t really think any of them notice.

He doesn’t even notice until the fire alarm goes off.

Roman groans from the floor and Virgil coughs into his sweatshirt sleeve to hide his face. A sound like that? Even with the background of a shrill alarm and the smell of smoke, it makes the room itself feel hundreds of degrees warmer, makes the whole world seem to fade away, makes Virgil want to plunge his face into a bucket of ice water.

Logan hits the smoke detector with his beak. Patton throws open the kitchen windows, giggling foolishly.

“You’re cute when you blush, Vee,” Roman says from his spot on the floor.

“Fuck off and die,” Virgil tells him.

“Aw, but your little ears!” Roman cooes, dragging himself from the floor like it was some tremendous task. He pinches the air with both his hands like he was supposed to be pinching Virgil’s ears.

Virgil’s hands immediately switch position, covering the tattletale tips of his ears. “Shut up!” He grumbles.

“Not exactly my forte, Virge!” Roman sings, “Just ask anyone!”

Logan does that thing where he lands on a surface and turns back to human, and Virgil gets a front row seat of seeing Owl talons elongate into slender legs that cross ever so confidently as he settles on the barstool next to Virgil. And the way that Logan ever so casually reaches up to loosen his tie just a millimeter?

If Virgil wasn’t blushing before, is now.

(He thinks he likes this version of Logan Ackroyd more: the effortlessly oblivious tease, compared to the bloody knuckled version that so angrily put Virgil in his place in the middle fourth year)

“I can attest to that,” Logan says, with the crease in the corners of his lips that implies a smile being hidden just below the surface, “He really does never shut up.”

“Wh--hey!” Roman gasps,”Patton! Logan’s bullying me!” He drapes himself over the smaller Ravenclaw with a dramatic flare that causes Patton’s whole face to light up. Sunlight bounces off his glasses but his eyes sparkle like the ocean on a sunny day.

“Sorry kiddo!” He says, “That’s just how he is!”

“Falsehood!” Logan calls.

“Losing battle,” Virgil nudges him. Oh god, what just came over him? His elbow feels tingly, like some sort of numbing jinx, but warm and welcome. Logan actually laughs as he straightens himself back on the chair.

(Logan laughs like he’s in a library about to be scolded for being too loud. Virgil isn’t sure what it would take for him to laugh louder. He wishes he had time to figure it out.)

Breakfast comes after that. With Patton severing french toast and Roman spilling orange juice on Logan's plate because the Ravenclaw told him he was putting far too much syrup on his and Virgil convincing Roman to shove an entire piece in his mouth just to prove that he could.

"Really attractive, Princey," Virgil says when the Gryffindor chokes and has to spit out soggy mush.

"You love me," Roman coughs.

"Yeah," Virgil says. It's a mostly meaningless statement. Because Roman thinks everything loves him, because Roman is very loveable, because it's light and witty banter and that's what they do.

Because Virgil’s thinking about the coin in the pocket on his chest, because Virgil is thinking how likely it was for him to be able to pry both Logan and Patton out of the house without a real reason, because Virgil is weighing his friends lives in his head like its just another sucky Arithmancy problem on the homework he put off until an hour before it was due.

And because Virgil is not really thinking about what comes out of his mouth, it comes out honest and true and it takes him three more blinks to realize that Roman is staring at him, with something like akin to...to...surprise?

“What?” Virgil asks, his breath hitching all of a sudden. He was tired but he wasn’t so tired that he could have started just talking out loud-- and even if he had surprise was not the thing that Roman would have on his face. Disgust, maybe. Anger, definitely. What kind of person can look at the people sitting next to him and think about how likely it was for someone on the street to kill them? How could he think about blood purity at a time like this?

But then again how could he not?

“You agreed,” Roman says, a tinge of awe.

“What?” Virgil tries again, because he really doesn’t know what is going on. Logan and Patton are staring at him too, but Patton’s smiling and Logan’s rolling his eyes and they’re tugging Logan’s plate between them in a silent argument of who gets to do the dishes.

“You agreed! About liking me!” Roman says down right giddy.

Virgil’s brow furrows, “Princey, we literally live together. Of course I like you.”

“But you said Love!”

Virgil glances at Patton for help. Patton is enchanting a sponge to wash the cups and is therefore, no help. His stomach does a flop. A flip flop. A flip flop right off a fucking cliff top.

Roman’s face appears right next to his, earnest and full and bright. Virgil thinks its like standing at ground zero of an atomic bomb.

“You never say Love. And I think if I remember correctly the last time you implied you even liked me, it was when Logan tried to cook and you got food poisoning and I gave you a bucket to throw up in.” Roman says. “So this is a big thing!”

Virgil should tell him its nothing, because even with his heart threatening to jump straight out of his chest, and his hands aching to curl in the fluff of his russet hair, and his eyes darting to Roman’s lips which for some reason are still right there next to Virgil’s own-- because even with Virgil thinking of that night years ago when Logan had given him a righteous nosebleed and he had run off and hid behind the One-Eyed Witch Statue on the third floor and had the biggest gay breakdown of his entire life--

Virgil should tell him its nothing because he’s been lying to Roman and Patton and Logan for two years, nearly three.

Virgil should give Roman’s face a shove away and make some insulting comment that will draw out those offended dramatic noises he likes so much.

Virgil should.

“I guess,” Virgil tongue warps around the words without an ounce of his permission. “Don’t go--”

“YES!” Roman hollers over him, throwing his hands in the air so suddenly that Virgil legitimately forgets what he was saying. “This is perfect! Amazing! Splendid!”

Virgil should tell him to calm down, that it means less than nothing. But Virgil threw away his entire life for them: for Roman’s celebratory fist pumping and sparkling eyes, for the quirk of Logan’s lips and the late night sleepy talks about the stars, for the taste of Patton’s baking and the feel of those tight, warm, safe hugs. He wants to dance around the word “Love” and its billions of meanings in billions of languages, because he knows that if he thinks about it for too long, he’ll realize that he loves the three of them in every sense of it.

Which, decidedly, means much more than nothing.

But there’s also that thing.

That thing where Virgil is lying, has been lying, will continue to lie, right to their faces. Which stands to be the absolute worst thing he’s ever done and if he stops it he’ll die a horrible painful wizard death and then they’ll be doubly angry with him for it.

But isn’t angry with him-- isn’t never wanting to see his face ever again-- better than them being dead? Which is likely what they’re all going to be if Virgil doesn’t do something to convince them to leave the house for the day.

Them, he thinks and then hesitates because its not really “Them”. Patton’s got magical blood: blood so pure it practically glows under his skin and his wandwork is practically flawless. Logan’s got half magic blood, too, which is half more magic blood than sad little muggleborn Roman has.

The anxious feeling of dread creeps up Virgil’s back, like a dementors fingers ghosting along his spine before it spins him around and gives a soul sucking kiss. Once the thought comes he can’t get it out of his head: the idea that if the Neo-Death Eaters show up here, and they breech the defenses that Virgil’s put up, and they catch them by surprise, the idea that they’d hesitate to hurt Patton or Logan or Virgil, but they’d execute Roman without a thought.

Virgil is staring at Roman.

Virgil is listening to Roman talk about something.

Virgil is thinking about Roman’s corpse lying on the ground in the kitchen, as a green light steals away his life in an echo of two forbidden words.

“Hey Princey,” Virgil says, trying to hide the way his entire body is shaking. “Let’s go on a date.”

Because Roman being angry at him, being unable to ever forgive him, being so enraged he can’t think about Virgil without wanting to put him in St. Mungos, will always be better than Roman being dead and Virgil having not done anything about it.

Roman looks at him and he smiles so prettily Virgil almost thinks he’d be able to forgive himself one day.

***

Virgil has never been on a date before.

It’s tragic. Embarrassingly so.

If Virgil were watching this broomwreck from the outside, he’d been on the floor in tears from laughter.

Roman bumps his shoulder casually, “Relax, Felbert the Fearful! There are no roofs around to cave in on us.”

The joke doesn’t quite land for Virgil, but he laughs anyway. Roman deserves it, at least.

For putting up with Virgil not knowing the first thing about that how one proceeds on a “date”. He thinks he watched a Hallmark movie on this shit once or twice back before...everything. He thinks that it should have given him some clue how to act, what to say, where to go. But all they do it remind him how completely and utterly bootless he is in the grand scheme of things.

Disney, of course, never really taught the whole “take it slow” sort of thing. And with magic? Forget it. He wonders how Patton’s parents did it, how the famous Weasley’s did it, how any wizard ever did it.

(He supposes that it helped that in most cases that neither partner was hiding a double life behind a cloak of fake memories implanted in the other, but really what did he know.)

They had gone shopping. Kinda.

Roman had gone shopping. Virgil had watched him try on muggle clothes again and again, listened to him complain about prices, and testily remark about color coordinating. He tried paying the girl at the cash register in sickles and Virgil got a good laugh at his face when he realized his mistake. He tried on two T shirts just it looked like he was participating his fair share even bought one, but once it was in the bag he forgot what the design had been.

(He did not forget the way that Roman’s eyes had roamed over him and the way that he had mentioned how nice it would be to see that shirt on his floor.)

Virgil wished his heart was in it, wished that he could get his shoulders to unwind, wished that he could stare at Roman for a few minutes without thinking about what an awful person he was.

They have Ice cream for lunch specifically because Logan is not there to tell them not to.

It devolves to Virgil splattering Roman’s nose with Chocolate ice cream and only getting half an apology out before Roman shovels a spoonful of strawberry into his mouth. Like a kiss. Indirectly.

Virgil wonders for all of three seconds if Roman’s tongue also tastes like strawberry.

“There’s a music store,” Roman says. “It just opened around the block. I’m sure it has some PG music for you to listen to, Edgelord.”

They hold hands. Virgil can’t tell if Roman can feel him shaking, or if he notices how distracted Virgil in worrying about something he won’t share. The music store is so muggle-like its distressing.

Virgil loves it. The musty smell of the building despite it being brand new, the feel of actual records in his hands, the beats in the background that his head bops unconsciously. Roman makes comments about the artwork on every cover that Virgil flits through, which is impressive because Virgil isn’t even looking as much as pretending to.

Its hard for him to be excited about an album of music when his friends could be in danger.

Its hard to remind himself why he needs to draw out this date as long as he possibly can to make sure that Roman doesn’t go back to the house.

They catch a movie at the local theater. Virgil doesn’t remember the plot at all because Roman throws an arm over his shoulder halfway through it. Its dark, mostly silent, and Roman smells like cinnamon and ash that somehow is very attractive on him. Virgil leans in, selfishly enjoying the warmth that comes with it.

Virgil’s eyes...close just for a second.

Only a second.

“Hey, Vee,” Roman says, “Maybe we should head home?”

“No!” Virgil snaps awake so suddenly their heads collide. “Ow! Fuck!”

Roman’s pained laughter joins him. The lights are on, now so Virgil must have slept straight through the credits. He wants to curse himself for that one. What if something had happened? What if a Neo Death Eater had tracked them all the way to the theater and crept in during the show?

The ache in his head subsides to a mild annoyance that makes his eyes water.

“Okay, wow, ow,” Roman says, “If I knew you were gonna wake like that, Stormcloud, I would have done something else!”

Virgil freezes. “What did you just call me?”

Roman blinks a couple times, “Stormcloud? Is that alright? I figured it might be nice to, uh, have a nickname that’s not an insult.” He sounds strangely hesitant, strangely unconfident, strangely not-Roman like.

“Its...fine,” Virgil says and pretends like the name doesn’t strike half a million chords in him. “Totally fine.”

Roman hums like he isn’t convinced. “Yeah well, we should get back to the house. I’m sure, Pat is making dinner.”

“Uhh!” Virgil says, “Or we could not!”

The Gryffindor raises an eyebrow at him.

“I just, I mean--” Virgil’s not good at excuses.

“Vee, you literally just fell asleep on my arm in the middle of an action movie. You’ve been unable to focus all day. I have half a mind to think that you only wanted to do this because you’re so sleep deprived that you can’t think straight.”

Virgil doesn’t have anything to say to that. There’s a stain on Roman’s shoulder from where he had been drooling. Roman presses their foreheads together and they both wince where the lumps collide.

“Listen,” Roman says, “I love spending time with you. How about we go back to the house, and throw on a movie and just...cuddle or something?”

Its not fair.

Virgil wants it so badly as whimper builds in his throat. But he doesn’t want to chance it, doesn’t want to risk it, doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t.

Roman leads him out the door.

Its dark outside. Its still not dark enough. The town isn’t far enough from their house, and the longer Virgil is silent the closer they get back to the house. His hands twist in his pockets, his nail rubs over the engravings in his wand.

He needs something, anything, to catch Roman’s attention. Keep him away from the house until the days over and he’s sure there’s no chance that the Neo-Wizard Nazis are going to show up and kill Roman.

“We should stop at the bookstore and pick up Logan’s order for him,” Virgil suggests.

“Logan just picked up his newest shipment two days ago, remember?” Roman says. “I dropped them and he yelled at me for a full hour.”

“Do we have milk at the house? Maybe we should get some groceries while we’re out.”

“Patton wants to go tomorrow instead. And only he knows the list. But he’ll love if we come with him.”

“A play!” Virgil says weakly.

“Hm?” Roman blinks lazily from beside him. The street lamps give him halo.

“I heard there’s a play going on!”

“There are no plays this week, Virgil.”

“I swear there was one.” Virgil says, “You know we should check just in case--”

Virgil has seen the news on the TV before: he’s seen coverage of car crashes that had lit on fire, of the forests burning in California and the Amazon, of muggle apartment buildings being swallowed entirely from faulty wiring. He’s kept a lighter in his back pocket for the longest time, for emergencies, for those moments when his wand is out his hand and needs to resort to a more unexpected muggle way of defending himself. He’s started tiny fires made of leaves in his backyard, of candles in his moms house when the summer rain storms knocked out the electricity again, of a pile of photos at his feet wiping away any evidence that would allude to what they had done.

Still watching Roman’s house explode is so much more terrifying. The blast of heat burns his body even from down the street. The noise is deafening, but the sight is ghastly: the roof of the building shoots straight into the air and then dissolves apart until its swallowed by the resulting black cloud, the windows break outward sending millions of shards into the surrounding houses, half of that ugly sofa that Virgil had fallen asleep so many times on shattered on the asphalt road barely four feet from the two of them.

Oh, its something straight from a nightmare and it makes Virgil’s stomach violently turnover and his eyes water and his heart jump straight up his throat to the back of his mouth. His limbs freeze at the sight, as if keeping from moving would keep the destruction from following. Flames lick the the inside windows, a thousand twisted toxic tongues that burned brighter than the sun in the night sky.

In seconds the building is unsalvageable and Virgil’s throat closes up like someone magicked away the very oxygen in the air.

“Virgil!” Roman yells some a million miles away from him, from right behind him, from beside him with a hand on his upper arm, tight and squeezing and real. “Protego!”

A white shield forms in front of him seconds before a chunk of the TV in the downstairs living room crushes him completely. An arm, Roman’s arm, wraps around him and drags him back from the flaming wreckage.

“Logan!” Roman screams, “Pat!”

And suddenly Virgil snaps back to the present, to the way the noise is louder than life, to the way that they stick out like sore thumbs in the middle of the road.

“Aguamenti!” Virgil shouts pointing his wand at the the neighbors hedges. He doesn’t remember drawing it or thinking about the spell, but he knows that the family of four that live there just hit a rough patch financially and don’t need to pay for a house on top of that.

By the time he looks back up, Roman is down the street and Virgil doesn’t think there’s a single thing on this planet, magic or muggle that could stop him. So Virgil, the reigning king of making poor decisions in the moment, charges after him.

(Because he knows what this is, know that houses don’t just explode, knows that Roman is about to charge head into battle. He knows that Virgil would never forgive himself from turning tail and running when any of those three are in danger.)

So Virgil-- also reigning king of mistakes and regrets--charges after him with is wand drawn and prays to deities he does not believe in that he won’t see Dee tonight.

There are three Neo-Death Eaters on what used to be Roman’s front lawn. Virgil stumbles at the sight of them, at the sight of their long black cloaks and white theater masks and the skull pendants they wore so proudly. He doesn’t think they can be more than a few years older than him or Roman, but they find another section of the house to use Bombarda on and shriek joyfully when it sends part of dresser into the next door neighbors roof.

Roman makes use of Flipendo Tria on the first one, and clocks the next with his bare fist. Virgil uses Oppugno on several flaming objects (shirts maybe? Logan’s sweater vests?) and sends them wrapping around the face of the last one before she can make any move against Roman.

“How dare you touch me, Filthy Mudblood!”

Roman punched him again. And then a third time for good measure.

“I may be muggle born, but I’ve never needed magic to fix my problems.”

It would be a good dramatic line if he wasn’t trembling as he delivered it, if Virgil didn’t need to throw protego between him and the guy he had punched because the Neo-Death Eater had managed to get his wand again, if they were acting in a movie this wasn’t real.

Roman snaps the guy’s wand in half and throws it into the fire before sprinting towards the front door.

“Patton!” He yells, “Logan!”

“Roman!” Virgil yells and lunges for him. They go tumbling to the ground, knees scraping on concrete pathway up to the house but Virgil doesn’t notice. He can’t notice, not really.

He’s too busy imagining Roman as a flambeed corpse, as a crispy unrecognizable mass, as ashes fluttering in the wind.

Roman shoves against him, frantically calling for their friends.

And the smoke robs his throat of any moisture, clogs his lungs with lead laden gases and deteriorates his vision. There’s another explosion (Virgil thinks its the fire reaching the chemical closet in the downstairs powder room) and the force of it knocks Virgil across the lawn. His shoulder slams into the grass with a popping noise Virgil is pretty sure it isn’t supposed to make and his vision goes white for all of a second as his chest flops over and his other shoulder follows in a tumble of limbs.

When he can see again Roman is right over him. He’s glowing-- kinda. The fire behind him creates a halo effect all over his body. Whatever words he’s saying, they’re lost in the buzz of Virgil’s brain as it reconnects and reboots and the panic comes back.

In the grass by his hand is a burned photo: the one of him and Patton that they took on the staircase, the one he put in his room, the one he kept.

And the fire burned him right out of the picture.

“--irgil!” Roman says, “We have to get up!”

Virgil nods dumbly at him. He tears his eyes away from the picture and grabs Roman’s forearm so he can help him get up. He smells like smoke and ashes and that Cinnamon body wash he liked so much. Virgil breathes it in and chokes on the air.

“We need to get out of here!” He says, “To the Rendezvous point! They’ll find us!”

Virgil isn’t sure Roman hears him at all, isn’t sure that Roman even remembers that they had a rendezvous point for if the base was attacked. But he doesn’t try to go running into the unsalvageable house again, so Virgil thinks that its enough.

(He doesn’t think about Patton on the kitchen floor desperately gasping for raspy breaths pinned under a flaming beam of the house and unable to move. He doesn’t think about Logan screaming as the flames swallow up his pant legs, and his sweater vest and his hair. He doesn’t think about them yelling for them and Virgil dragging Roman away from the fire and leaving them to die. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t--)

Away. They need to get away. Before a Neo-Death Eater shows up that they can’t beat.

Down the street. Virgil’s eyes are watering, his heart is thumping, his thoughts are screaming.

Somehow he still manages to see the enemy before they see him.

Its just that Virgil has absolutely terrible luck. It’s just that the shock makes him forget Its just that Virgil freezes with half of a hex on his tongue, when his eyes catch on the other figure. Or more specifically, his wand.

Virgil doesnt know a lot about wands, but he thinks he knows more than average. Patton always did have a habit of rambling about his hobbies and wand making happened to be on that list. But even before that, Virgil would know that wand blindfolded: Elm, nine inches, with a rougarou hair core.

And he'd know it by the way it never quite looked like it fit in the hands of its owner.

Said owner, who was staring at him like he was the biggest idiot to ever grace the earth, someone who had been hit with confundgus until he couldnt remember his own name, someone who for some absolutely idiotic reason, decided not to curse a Death Eater the moment he saw one holding a wand at him.

"Virgil!"

Virgil feels the spell blast by him, missing his ear by mere inches. The Death Eater is almost as lucky: the spell hits the black Honda Civic behind him and explodes outward. The Death Eater is launched back towards them rolling across the asphalt, but his cloak took most of the damage.

“Confringo!” Roman shouts again, and another blast of a spell goes out.

"Protego!" The Neo-Death Eater counters and for a moment Virgil doesn't see the shield go up, doesn't see a way for him to escape the spell.

Virgil grabs at Roman's arm, because it's the only thing he can think to do, and the last half of the flame veer to the side just enough that the enemy can scramble to his feet behind his shield.

"What are you--" Roman snaps, fiery and hot, and demanding of Virgil.

"Adorable!" The Neo-Death Eater cooes at them, "You actually thought those flames could hurt me?"

Virgil feels feverish just hearing that voice. Its a slippery eel of a tone, something sinister and mocking and Virgil knows it too well. So does Roman. So does everyone.

Its the voice he uses when he's scheming, when he's hiding something and wants you to know it, when he's got the upper hand in a conversation.

Its the voice that is undeniably Dee’s, and no one else's.

“Ekans,” Roman growled.

“Guilty as Charged, Prince,” Dee Ekans smiles like snake oil and mistrust, “I take it you saw the Fireworks? They were a bit disappointing for my taste, but then again all things muggle usually are.”

“Sectumsempra!”

Virgil mouth tastes like ash. Roman’s wand slices the air like a sword, like a knife, like death, and the green spell flies towards Dee faster than Virgil can react. (He knows what that spell does: they’ve all heard the rumors around Hogwarts of the Potions teacher that created a curse that killed from bloodloss, they’ve all heard how it can’t be cured and how Severus Snape took the countercurse with him to the grave--)

Dee throws himself to the side. He’s not smiling anymore, not when the spell shreds the flaming car behind them. His hand moves to the side of his face, the left side of his face, where some part of the magic had skimmed him and left a precise line that welded with cherry red.

Roman raises his wand again, and this time Virgil leaps in front of him.

“Virgil!”

“Patton, Logan,” Virgil gasps out but he cant remember when he stopped being able to breathe. The world threatens to start swimming so he grabs Roman by the forearms to steady himself. “Patton and Logan.”

Dee hisses violently, “Don’t worry about your blood traitor, Little Raccoon. My father invited him for a stay and when he leaves I’m sure he’ll want nothing to do with you.”

Virgil squeezes Roman’s wrists, but Dee’s face is too proud to be lying about this one.

“Be more worried about the owl.” Dee’s grin came back, a blinding white in the fire of around them. “Last I checked only one wing had been broken, but Mother does move very fast.”

Roman roars and lunges forward, but Dee presses his bloodied fingers to his lips and blows them both a kiss. By the time Roman gets around Virgil, gets close enough to grab the Neo-Death Eater that is Dee Ekans, the Slytherin had twisted up in his cloak and disapparated into a black cloud of smoke.

Virgil wants to throw up. Distantly he’s aware that there are sirens ringing, and he knows that means that Muggles are on the way.

He should be terrified, but all he can feel is relief. Patton is alive, Dee had said so. He was full wizard, a pureblood, from a pureblood family. He was alive for now.

Virgil grabs Roman by the back of his shirt, “We have to go.”

Roman slaps his hand away, “Why did you do that?!” The flames dance behind him, giving him wings of fire. Somehow his breath his hotter than them. “Why did you stop me from killing him?!”

“We have to go, Roman.” Virgil ignores him, “Logan needs us.”

“Ekans deserves to die!”

“Roman!” Virgil yells, “It’s time to go,” He tugs him towards the end of the road, “I’ll explain later.”

“No!” Roman slaps him away again, “You’ll explain right now! I’m so sick and tired of not knowing what the hell is going on in your brain! Why did you stop me from hitting him? He’s the bad guy, Virgil!”

“We don’t have time for this!” Virgil says he grabs on to Roman again, yanks him towards the end of the street. Roman fights him every step of the way, smelling like ashes and cinders and charcoal.

“Answer me!”

“You are no good to anyone in wizard jail, Prince!” Virgil snarls back.

“Bullshit!”

Virgil wants to take a swing at him, wants to yank his wand out and litter him so full of spells that he can’t move a muscle until Virgil finds Logan and gets all three of them somewhere safe, wants to cup Roman’s jaw and tell him everything between rough lip-biting kisses.

“You’re always doing shit like this!”

Virgil doesn’t do any of those things. He drags both of them into the community park and the wooden area beyond that. The heat between them blisters his fingers, stinging and burning and telling Virgil that its not worth it. But Virgil is a Hufflepuff, and Hufflepuffs are a loyal sort of people. And really that is Virgil’s biggest flaw.

“Running off, being secretive, pretending to be happy when you obviously aren’t--”

Roman gets a hand under Virgil jaw and shoves him up, up, and away. Virgil hits the ground with this tongue between his teeth and tears threatening in his eyes.

“Roman!” He snaps, spitting blood from his mouth.

“Whose side are you on?”

Virgil’s body freezes.

Roman stands over him, moonlight shadows painting his face. His wand twists in his hand. He’s always been dangerous, Virgil remembers suddenly, with the effortless magic in his veins and the endless spell knowledge in his head and the whimsical creativity in his words.

“Virgil,” Roman says breathless, and he looks angry. Rightfully so. “The only one of us who would have both the information and the opportunity to give our location to the Death Eaters, is you.”

“What? Why would I--”

“You wanted me out of the house.” Roman says in an accusatory tone that makes Virgil’s blood slow in his veins. “You wanted me--the most powerful of us-- out of the head quarters, for a day of activities you weren’t even enjoying, and on that same day my house is blown up.”

Virgil scrambles to his feet, but he still feels off balanced, “It’s not like that--”

“Isn’t it?” he hisses, “You pestered us all last week about what charms were set up around the house! You said you were adding more! How do we know you didn’t take some off?”

“Because I didn’t!”

“You’re a master at Charms.” Roman snarls, “It would have been a sinch!”

And Virgil doesn’t know what to say to that. His hand slips into his jacket pockets, just barely resisting the urge to go for the hidden pouch over his chest that’s numbly cold--

Roman shoves his wand at him. “No! Hands out of your pockets, Storm.”

“What?”

“You heard me!” Roman said, stepping around him, like he’s some dangerous wild animal and Roman is the hunter come to put him down before he hurts another innocent person. “Did you or did you not give information to the Death Eaters? Did you tell them our location so they could kill us?”

“Roman!” Virgil takes a step back, his hands come out of his pocket and he starts wondering if maybe he should have been reaching for his own wand, after all.

Roman looks angry; he looks like the fire that had eaten up his house. His hold on his wand is so tight, Virgil can see the red oak wood threatening to split. Small sparks dance at the edge reacting to Roman’s anger. No muggles would be out here in the woods, and the neo Death Eaters should still be dancing around the bonfire of the house. The only person who would come was possibly Logan, and they didn’t-- Logan wasn’t--

There was no one to stand between them, or direct attention away. For all intents and purposes they were alone in the world.

“That date was just a ploy,” Roman growls, “A ploy that I fell for!”

“No!” Virgil wants to list all the reasons why it wasn’t just a ploy.

But that of course isn’t the problem here. The problem is that it was a ploy in the first place. It was a ploy that Virgil made and took advantage of Roman to get him to follow in it.

Virgil tongue feels swollen, and he isn’t thinking. He knows he isn’t thinking. Because the next thing out of his mouth is the biggest mistake he’s ever made: “When have I ever done something to purposely harm you guys?”

“I don’t know, maybe every single school year up until fourth year--”

Roman stops.

Blinks.

“Every single school year up until…” He repeats, and Virgil feels the cannonball of dread in his stomach swell until shoves its way up through his lungs and up his throat.

He’s imagined the way it happens a million times. Each one worse than the last, each one dangerous and bad and terrifying. Still the sight of Roman’s copper eyes turning purple and the light that drifts off him like an angelic aura is worse than all of them. Its his nightmares, come to life, and it’s staring at him with a murderous expression.

“Roman?” Virgil whispers, and maybe there’s a faint hope there that he’s wrong and the spell over him hasn’t broken and Virgil hasn’t lost the only thing he’s had for the past two years.

“These are false memories,” Roman says. It feels like a slap in the face. “Why are there false memories in my head?”

Virgil’s mind tells him to run, and to run fast, but his body doesn’t move an inch. Not even to breathe. Roman had effortlessly used Sectumsempra against Dee, and Virgil is weaponless against him. He needs to get out of there, before either of them do something they’re going to regret.

But at that moment there a sound of something tumbling through the branches above them, and Virgil looks up out of instinct.

Its an owl, and it looks like it hell. Virgil lunges to catch it before it hits the ground, because even in the moonlight he’d know that white and brown and black pattern anywhere.

“Logan!” Virgil calls, slightly more than horrified because he’s no owl expert but he’s pretty sure owls wings aren’t supposed to do that. There’s blood too. Virgil doesn’t know what to do with blood like this. “Roman! Roman I need--”

He stops when he sees the the other hasn’t lowered his wand. “Roman?”

“Avada--”

Virgil doesn’t hear the end of it. All he sees is the green light and then…

And then there’s just darkness.

***

Dee had told him on the first Train Ride to Hogwarts about the Sorting Hat.

“It uses Leg-ili-men-cy,” Dee had said holding up identical Chocolate Frog Cards with Salazar Slytherin on it “Thats a type of magic. It reads your thoughts and figures out where you’d best fit.”

Virgil had been so happy to be a Hufflepuff. He had never thought it was going to end up being a death sentence.

***

“-nnervate.”

Virgil blinks his eyes open groggily. His whole head feels a bit like it was stuffed with tissues, like that Christmas that he spent sick out of his mind and Dee had shown up in the fireplace with more pumpkin pasties than he could carry and sugared butterfly wings for his mom, like that time they had hung out over the summer when Dee had wanted to practice for his position as Beater on the Slytherin Quidditch team and Virgil had dragged out his old baseball supplies only have Dee accidently beam him in the head on the first throw, like that time when Roman had cast a killing curse at him and Virgil hadn’t even tried to move out of the way.

And suddenly the fogginess of his head gives away to absolutely panic and its the cold type that surges through his veins freezing over his muscles and making his lungs work over time for air that only comes in every third heave. Its the panic he remembers and hates because its only happened once before and that was the worst day of his life.

He needs his wand.

His hand doesn’t even reach to his chest, not to mention across his body to the inside of his left boot where he normal keeps it. It takes him a moment to realize its not his lack of coordination, not his lack of focus nor disconnected thought process struggling to comprehend what was going on: his arm was being prohibited from coming forward by a rope.

Whats more is that when Virgil looks up too slowly putting together the pieces, Roman is standing over him with Virgil’s wand in his hand and an angry look on his face.

It feels like a nightmare; one of his worst ones yet. Its the version where he can’t wake up. The one where Roman has his wand and he’s been dragged somewhere he doesn’t recognize (the woods? Some woods somewhere?) and he’s been tied up because they can’t trust him and--

And Virgil can’t figure out why he’s alive at all.

He knows what curse Roman sent at him. The bad taste in his mouth and the tingling pain in all of his limbs shows he knows it. The object anger in Roman’s expression is just further confirmation.

And yet, Virgil’s still alive, his pulse fluttering like a pixie’s wings as he desperately tried to come up with an excuse, an explanation, something that he can say that wouldn’t get him killed.

“Hey, Storm,” Roman says with a mockery of a smile that makes Virgil flinch. When was the last time he called Virgil by his last name? Fourth year? “I’m glad to see you alive.”

“Ro- roman,” Virgil gasps. He presses his back against the tree as if he can melt into it. The rope scratches at his wrists. Roman leans closer, and he’s always been taller but its never been threatening until now.

“Wanna tell me why there’s a bunch of fake memories in our heads?” Roman suggests with the end of the wand.

Virgil can’t tear his eyes from the tip, the glowing red that lies there ready to spark whenever Roman wants it to. Virgil’s watched Roman do spells for years; he knows how easily magic comes and flows through him and a wand. Even if it wasn’t through his own wand, he rarely ever messed up.

Is that what happened? Roman made a fluke with the killing curse and now Virgil was still alive when he should be dead?

Virgil’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. Pulling it off will probably make his mouth bleed.

“That was not a rhetorical question, Virgil,” Logan’s voice says icily from beyond the wand.

Virgil pries his eyes away from the wand, to where Logan is standing half turned away, with his arm in a makeshift sweatshirt sling and his clothes rumpled and blood crested. There’s a table in front of him where he’s looking at several things with his good hand and his wand is sticking out of his deep pocket like it was just another day out of class. A breeze blows through the trees.

It looks like it should be a happy place.

Virgil doesn’t think he’s ever been so terrified in his life.

“I-”

Roman looks at him impatiently. “You-?”

He wants to say he doesn’t know, but thats a lie. He knows why there are fake memories in their heads, has known for nearly three years. He’s known and lied and he’s so sick of lying.

But if he doesn’t lie, he has to tell the truth.

And the truth will kill him. Literally. Virgil can feel the stinging pain of his forearm, the burning warmth that he isn’t sure his brain is just making up.

He squeezes his eyes shut pressing his back against the bark of the tree he’s tied to. His voice is quieter than the breeze through the leaves. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Roman scoffs, “Did you hear that, Logan? He says he can’t tell us.”

Logan doesn’t answer so Roman lunges forward to grab Virgil by the front of his jacket and hauls him to his feet. Virgil’s knees threaten to give out but he forces himself back against the tree again, getting as far away from the Gryffindor as he can.

(He still smells like ashes, like smoke, like death and danger, and an enemy--)

“I can’t believe you, Storm,” Roman snarls at him, “All this time you were pretending to be our friend, pretending to be more than a friend, and then you turned right back around and fed information to the neo wizard nazis? Who does that?! Other than you, apparently?”

“It’s not like that!” Virgil wishes he kept silent. His eyes are burning with the desperate need to stop the tears from falling, but he doesn’t think he’s been doing a good enough job.

“Tell me what its like then,” Roman challenges.

And Virgil’s mouth snaps shut. His tongue tastes like blood again. His whole mouth tastes like blood.

“His jacket,” Logan says distantly. “He never goes anywhere without that jacket.”

Virgil’s chest constricts, “No.”

Logan glances back at him, then at Roman and without even saying a word they both nod.

“No!” Virgil squirms back into his hoodie, as if he can make himself smaller or make the jacket stick to his back. “Please! Roman!”

Virgil had been smart when he made his jacket. He had been smart when he shielded it with charms to ward off rain and mud and soda. He had protection against cuts and scrapes and fire. Honestly Virgil could charge into battle with nothing but his jacket and most likely come back unscathed from the amount of spells he put on it.

But he's not stupid enough to think that between Logan’s endless knowledge of spells, Roman’s creativity in making new ones, and their combined level of determined spite, that his charms would do anything more than delay the inevitable.

It takes them twenty minutes.

Virgil’s wand flicks in Roman’s hand and then Virgil is left shivering, tied to a fucking tree, begging uselessly for them to stop. His jacket phases right off him, like it was made of some ghost material that existed in a secondary dimension where they can see it but not touch it. Virgil doesn’t understand beyond the fact that its wrong.

“Accio,” Logan says.

His jacket-- the one his mother had bought him, the one that he had painstakingly stitched back together after every adventure with Dee, the one that he had enlarged every time he had outgrown it because that jacket was his safety blanket-- his jacket sails right towards Logan and lands over Logan’s broken arm’s shoulder.

Virgil’s voice is raw. “Guys, please. Stop--”

They don't stop.

Virgil almost wonders what his life would be like if they did.

“Logan,” Virgil repeats, “Logan, please, don’t--”

“Specialis Revelio,” Logan says ignoring Virgil entirely. His wand waves over Virgil’s jacket. And Virgil can’t tear his eyes off the interior pocket he had charmed away from normal eyes, that glows red in response to Logan’s spell.

Logan doesn’t even look at him as he flips the jacket over and tears the patch open. Maybe if he had he would have hesitated, even just a little. Roman crosses his arms, squeezing Virgil’s wand in his hand. Virgil shakes his head, blinking back those unhelpful tears, and the whimper thats climbing up his throat.

“What is he going to find?” Roman demands.

Virgil wishes the rope was just a bit longer, just enough that he could bring his hands up to his ears and block out the accusatory tone.

Logan pulls out the Galleon, and rubs it between his fingers for a moment. Virgil’s breath catches at the sight of it, his dark bangs tumbling into his eye sight and his gaze losing hope when Logan says quietly, “Coin Collecting.”

He doesn’t sound surprised. He doesn’t sound like anything.

“There’s a Protean Charm on this.” Logan says in that same cold tone. “And the date on the border...this is yesterday’s date.”

Roman snarls, oh god, he snarls. Virgil’s chest seizes at the sound. He’s been crying for the past several minutes but that's nothing compared to the absolute dread that floods over him.

“It’s not like that!” Virgil says, “Guys, please!”

“Isn’t it?” Roman growls, “Who were you talking to?”

“I wasn’t--”

“Roman.” Logan interrupts, and Virgil’s stomach drops out.

Because he knows what's in Logan’s hand now, what can make him take on that face, so pale, so horrified.

He knows deep in his heart that the past two years were never going to end quietly but this is something worse. This is his nightmare, this is the scene that keeps him up at night, keeps him terrified of falling asleep and risking seeing that sort of expression on their faces, except this time there is no gasping awake, no pinching himself until his vision blurs and he’s staring up at the ceiling of the guest bedroom in Roman’s house.

Roman’s hands shake as he takes it from the Ravenclaw, that single little paper, worn with age and love and desperation folded into eighths and hidden in his pocket a million times over.

“You--” Roman says, and, oh god, those brown eyes rage with a fury so much like the fire, full of so much hatred, that Virgil feels it from where he is tied up. Roman can’t finish the sentence, and that’s as scary as what else he could have said.

Its a picture. The picture.

Its thirteen year old Virgil and thirteen year old Dee and its Virgil biggest mistake.

“You’re still friends?” Roman’s voice shakes just like his hands.

“Its not what you think!” Virgil repeats like a broken record, his eyes burning, his voice begging, “Please it’s not--”

Roman rearranges the two wands in his hand and flips the picture around and pinches the top on either side of the fold and gives just a quick jerk of his wrists--

“ROMAN!” Virgil screams. “NO! Please! No, please don’t!”

And the picture--

He thrashes against the bindings, and the sound he makes is not human. Its a scream, its desperation, its absolute terror and panic. His eyes blur with tears, and his lungs beg to be allowed to inhale again, and his arms are sticky with blood and burning around the wrists where his movements caused the rope to slice his skin and, and, and.

And all Virgil can see is that picture in halves on the ground between them. One half him, one half Dee, and their winter scarves twisted together so that the yellow and green are on both sides and their arms linked just enough to show off those handmade sweaters.

His knees go weak and Virgil ends up on the ground, without being able to drag his eyes from the way Dee had smiled four years ago and never again.

“Repario,” Virgil whispers desperately, despite the fact he doesn’t have a wand and he’s never had enough skill to perform wandless magic. “Repario, please, Repario.”

His chest heaves, shuddering his entire frame with the pleading gasps and wish, wish, wishing the halves back together because despite the fact that he knows the picture like his own face in the mirror, he needs it to not be torn apart, not be ruined, not to be unrecognizable.

“Please, please, pleasepleaseplease,” Virgil sobs, “Please don’t... take it from me...please Repario, Logan, please!”

He tugs on the bindings again, and his head drops to his chest, vaguely aware that he’s soaked and shivering and this is the longest he’s gone without his jacket since he was ten, and that he hasn’t cried this much since he had last hugged his mom and she had said that she was proud of the man he had grown into and the friend he would die for.

“Why should we do anything for you?” Roman demands, “You got Patton-- he’s-- and Logan’s arm--” Roman blows his breathe out of his nose like a Chinese Fireball, “You’re a Death Eater!”

“I’m not,” Virgil hiccups, “Please, I swear!”

Roman’s foot slams down on the pieces of the photo and grounds them into the forest floor.

Virgil blubbers his way through another series of pleading that falls on deaf ears. His fingernails dig into his palms, sticky with blood from his wrists. He tugs uselessly at the rope again, as if it had somehow become loose in the past three seconds. Snot runs down his chin, and salty tears burn his eyes and irritate his neck where he can’t wipe them off. His shoulder blades ache, but its really nothing compared to how the cavity in his chest seems to gnaw at him from inside.

Then Roman is right in front of him, dragging him off the ground by his shirt collar and forcing Virgil to meet his gaze and the tip of a wand, Virgil’s own wand, digging into the soft flesh under his jaw.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, stop, I’m sorry--”

“Shut Up!” Roman snaps.

And Virgil’s mouth closes, but the whimper escapes just enough that Roman gives him a violent shake. The back of his head hits the bark of the tree, and Virgil remembers those hands that had held him as they fell asleep on the couch with movies playing, those hands that had caught him when he fell off his broom in sixth year, those hands that had pulled him out of the way of the Whomping Willow-- those same hands were very capable of of crushing his trachea without magic at all.

Roman backs him up until he’s pressed against the tree and Roman is the only thing holding him up.

“How long have you been feeding information about the Order to Dante Ekans?”

Virgil whimpers.

“Tell me!”

“It’s not like that,” Virgil hiccups, “I swear Roman--”

“Don’t swear to me!” Roman’s fist tightens, “You and that snake put false memories into our heads! You made us believe that we were friends for who knows how long! I can’t believe we trusted you! I can’t believe I really thought--”

He lets out a breathy laugh, that’s void of the warmth he’s known for, “So tell me how long you’ve been a traitor, Storm, or I’ll leave you here for the wolves to enjoy, bite by bite.”

“I--” Virgil squeezes his eyes closed but it does nothing to relieve the feeling of being burned alive by the other’s eyes. “I’m sorry I can’t...Roman...p-please you...have to believe me.”

“Give me something to believe!” Roman hisses between his gritted teeth, the wand jabs him in the jaw, but the whatever magic Roman’s trying to produce won’t come out because its still Virgil’s wand and unicorn hair cores are as faithful as they come.

Roman throws the wand to the side and instead hooks his other hand on Virgil’s collar. “I haven’t heard a single reason why I shouldn’t believe you aren’t a Death Eater or why we shouldn’t leave you tied up right here.”

God, if Virgil wasn’t terrified before, he is now. Because he’s lost a lot, and he was prepared to lose some of it, but he’s never been alone. He’s never not had someone to have his back, never not had someone to remind him what he was fighting for. The idea of Roman and Logan simply apperating away and abandoning him in the middle of this forest by himself causes his lungs to stutter in complete horror.

He doesn’t care if they hate him. He doesn’t care if they keep him tied up, or frozen over with petrificus totalus, just as long as they take him with them.

“Virgil!” Roman yells, and Virgil flinches, at the loudness of his tone, at the closeness of their bodies, at the sharpness of his canines. He’s got to be delirious from terror, because he’s pretty sure Roman’s eyes are rimmed red and there’s lift in his voice that sounds like he’s pleading for the truth.

Virgil doesn’t know how else to apologize to him, so he says the same words again and again and again.

Then all at once he feels it.

The feeling of someone shoving their hand directly into his brain, ripping apart the muscle at each wrinkle. There’s no precision to the attack; its bloody, and violent, and unpracticed. Claws that thrash and slash and its not like Dee’s soft touch. And that alone triggers Virgil’s urge to vomit.

The walls come on instinct: practiced instinct, muscle memory. They’re strong and thunderous and built out of critical necessity to protect and defend. The claws scratch at the barricade dragging along the stone like it can out run Virgil’s ability to set it them up.

“Virgil,” Logan’s voice comes from somewhere far away, strained, tired. He doesn’t say to let him inside, but Virgil can hear the unspoken words.

Of the two of them Dee had always been better at Legilimency and Occlumency. He had to be. Virgil wasn’t great at either, but they had practiced every night for a year, and then Virgil had done it by himself in the following years, and that had to count for something, didn’t it?

“S-stop!” Virgil sobbed, “Logan!” His hands yank the rope again pulling as far as they can but he can’t get anywhere near his own body, much less where Roman is holding him up.

“Let him in.” Roman commands, “Virgil, let him in!”

Logan isn’t a practiced Legilimens. In fact Virgil bets he’s barely done this more than twice, and even then he needs to use a wand for it. He’d get tired long before Virgil’s walls would come down.

Virgil blames his own unstability. He blames it on the rising feelings he’s harbored for Patton and Logan and Roman and he blames it on Dee leaving him with them. He blames it on the feeling of Roman’s skin so warm on his own freezing, on the touch of Logan in his mind which disregarding the raw, rough edges of the claws, still feels like the raven haired ravenclaw and Virgil still wants to hoard those touches and keep them for himself. He blames it on the fact that he’s wanted to tell them for years now, and that he doesn’t want them to hate him, and, and, and.

And Logan’s claws leap upward and Virgil’s walls are a second slower then they should have been.

Virgil feels his throat burn with his own stomach acids and memories flash by his mind’s eye, tearing them apart as it goes, searching ever so violently for the memory that explains why Virgil is the way he is, as if his whole life hasn’t been building to this outcome.

Virgil snatches them away from Logan, snatches and stashes and saves those tiny bits behind secondary and tertiary walls before Logan can get to them. Again and again and again until Logan is bruised and battered and Virgil can’t breathe and they’re standing in--

The living room he grew up in. His pictures on the mantle with both him and his mom and three of them emptied where the pictures stolen away. The coffee table has three mugs of tea on it and magazines about the city and the remote that was missing a battery because Virgil had stolen it to put in his secondary Xbox control earlier.

His mom is there, hugging him tightly, “I’m so proud of you, my little storm cloud. I’m always going to be proud of you.”

Virgil tackles Logan out of that memory.

Grocery store. Virgil’s been staring at the cereal for five minutes. His wand is in his boot, and his hands are in his jacket. Clenched into fists.

“Pardon me, young man? Would you mind helping me reach the great value box up there?”

Mom. She smiles at him. She doesn’t know him.

“Yeah, sure. This one, right, Ma’am?”

Another person, a shadow from the end of the aisle, No, no, no, not here--

Virgil locks the rest in a black box. Logan doesn’t fight it.

“Don’t you dare try to take this from me, Ekans!”

Anger. Angry. A challenge. Mistake. Mistake. Mista---

“Lo--Logan!” Virgil gasps.

“Nasty little fates,” The professor mutters, “Nasty indeed. Do you know what Alstroemeria flowers represent?”

“Logan!”

“Face each other! Grip your right hands!”

“Please!”

Fourteen year old Dee is staring at him. Their hands are clasped tightly, and thin stream of red wrapping around their fingers weaving them together. Professor Remus’s wand doesn’t shake. Virgil doesn’t hesitate.

“I do.”

Virgil goes limp in Roman’s arms. Seven feet away, Logan stumbles back further, tripping over a tree root and hitting the ground almost as hard as Virgil does. Maybe harder with that broken arm of his. Virgil’s not sure from how intensely his own body shakes trying to get rid of the vile feeling of someone else being in his head.

He lets out another sob, yanking on the rope and falling as far forward as he can. Roman’s embrace isn’t comforting, but its something. His throat feels dry and eyes burn and he wants to get his hands on that pesky time turner that caused them to do all this just so he can stop himself from ever being born in the first place.

“You--” Logan says. He’s pale, paler than before, paler than paper, paler than the ghosts at that stupid castle. “You made an Unbreakable Vow.”

And whatever slim reserve, whatever dignity, Virgil had left, breaks and he’s gone.

(Next Chapter)

Quick Taglist: @whizzie72 @chelsvans @faithfulcat111 @felicianoromano @holliberries @jemthebookworm @killerfangirl3 @silverflame-wc @stricken-with-clairvoyancy @treasureofpriam

#lamp #dlamp #anxceit #prinxiety #hogwarts bois #Hogwarts au #IABTW(HI?)#Working title: It's Always Been This Way (Hasn't It?)#attempted murder #spellcasting #mind reading #time turners #ravenclaw!logan #ravenclaw!patton #Hufflepuff!Virgil #gryffindor!roman #Ravenclaw!Remy #sanders sides

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bubmyg · 6 years ago

Text

wonder - jjk

pairing: jeongguk x reader

genre/warnings: pool boy/waiter/kind-of-baker/first-aid-extraordinaire/aspiring singer!jeongguk(ft. cherry!guk), writer/journalist!reader, the CHEESIEST fluff, tiny amounts of angst, a bad attempt at original poetry, there is a tiny blood mention

word count: 14,906

summary: romance novels lie about finding some deep epiphany in the ocean because you find your inspiration in some chlorine tainted red locks or where jeongguk isn’t smooth with a pool net.

a/n: this is. the longest fic i’ve ever written. also the longest i’ve ever worked on a fic (...a month ajfdks) and im really proud of it :-( i hope u like it :-(

There’s a certain breaking point for an advice columnist, one that isn’t supposed to come three years into the job and over a handwritten letter from a nine year old who has just had her dream of becoming a vet shattered by this sudden discovery that she, in fact, passes out when she sees any type of blood. Or if that breaking point comes, the draft of the response isn’t supposed to make it past an unsaved document, (Dreams are a scam, anyway. Learn that.) scrapped and used as emotional support to formulate the real answer.

There’s a nine year old little girl who rushes to the paper for a week after sending her letter, hoping to find some sort of solace in the advice column she finds fascinating, generally filled with advice on things she doesn’t have the capacity to understand: cheating husbands, the capitalist nature of the makeup industry, why “business casual” isn’t a reward for women, and taxes. She’s memorized her opening line enough to have her heart racing into her throat when she catches sight of it on its usual page, her letter transcribed and italicized just above the tiny portrait of the columnist and the bold font that would be her response.

Her mother finds her sobbing on her bed fifteen minutes after she called for her to come to dinner and consoles her enough to acknowledge that being a Disney princess is just as good of an aspiration as a vet, not before writing a strongly worded letter addressed to the editor of the paper and canceling the family’s subscription.

There’s a different document you should have scrapped completely, the sixty-seventh page of your never ending novel, never ending in the sense that it would never end because you were going to give up on everything with the exception of the column for the next day: an obscure sex toy shop escapade that isn’t fit for the nine year old and her canceled subscription in the first place.

You’d been glaring at the grainy lines across your monitor, ones that cut through the middle of the words on the sixty-sixth page, when Hoseok’s figure glided past the glass wall of your office to enter without knocking.

He cleared his throat and you turned slowly from the monitor, as if your gradual spiral cascading to a head had brought an end to your cordiality as well. There was a paper in his hand, the day prior’s edition, ink thick on the outside where a picture of a local elementary school’s service project was displayed. He opened it silently, turning to a page, your page, outlined heavily in red ink pen.

The gold links of Hoseok’s watch reflected off your monitor as the paper smacked and slid its way across your desk, forcing you to wince for two separate reasons.

“I’m sorry—”

Hoseok withdrew his latter hand from the pocket of his black slack and your fingers itched to close out of your novel but his gaze was steady on the blinking cursor next to a piece of grammar you’d fiddled with six separate times.

“Any progress?” You blinked at him and he jerked his head in the direction of your desktop, black fringe parting against his eyelashes so his dark eyes dropped a deeper shade of black.

There was a raw spot ready for you on the inside of your cheek and the taste of stale metallic flooded your tongue. Your legs unfurled from where they’d been folded up underneath you in your desk chair, gaze sweeping to the wilting ficus underneath your desk, “Not exactly…”

Papers fluttered together and you caught sight of the dogeared letter from the little girl as Hoseok brushed a bare spot on the corner of your desk to take a seat. There was a smiling cartoon character patterned to the surface of his short-sleeved button up and it’s smiling muzzle appeared to mirror that flit of an upturn on the edge of Hoseok’s dimpled lips. The subtle cock of his chin was anything but of praise, sympathy more so bleeding out the strict in his dark irises as he sighed.

“I understand this job and this column are not your first love,” He mirrored the snarky response that swallowed on the back of your tongue, “Hell, this probably isn’t even your third or fourth love.”

“But I do expect you to uphold a certain level of professionalism in your column. I’ve never had an issue with you in the past. In fact, I nearly stopped looking over your submissions before sending things to print,” Hoseok leaned forward, elbow on his thigh, chin on curled, ring clad knuckles, “However, as of recent…”

“It won’t happen again, Hoseok. I swear, I was just—”

You quieted when his fingers curled outward from underneath his chin. “...this was not the first column as of recent that hasn’t exactly been up to par.”

Quieter, barely a breath, you nodded, “I’m sorry.”

Hoseok’s index finger straightened, leaning from his lips to press into the side of your monitor, tapping his nail against the screen, “I know how much this means to you. I know how little progress comes when inspiration comes. I know that inspiration doesn’t just strike when we ask it to. I get it, I really do.”

“...and I think some time away from here, from this place, from your column, would do you wonders.”

There was something defensive in your next inquiry, “What are you saying?”

“I’m giving you the summer off—” His finger wagged in your direction when you choked, “—no I’m making you take the summer off.”

“The whole—”

“Two months. Away from here, as in, I’m sending you to the coast for two months. Beach house, all to yourself, all-expense paid. Except for your food, I know you like—”

You squinted at him, “What?”

“Namjoon,” Hoseok provided and you tensed at the name of his friend, a high-powered executive at a publishing company you’d failed three times over to score an internship at, “He really understands the plight you’re going through. It’s his house.”

“There has to be a catch.”

“Yes, I’m giving Jimin your column while you’re gone.”

You grit your teeth at the mention of Hoseok’s blonde headed assistant and Hoseok chuckled at the reaction he desired, “I’m kidding. I mean, I am giving him your paper space. But, Namjoon said, providing that you make some sort of sizable progress on your manuscript, he’ll review it.”

“What?”

“You’re my friend. He’s my friend,” He plucked your turtle shaped paper weight into his palm, tracing it with the same index finger, “I want the best for you and I want my employee’s to be working at their utmost capacity. Namjoon can never have too many clients—” He made eye contact with you when he set the turtle down, “—and he probably owes me some sort of favor.”

Your gaze wandered out the window, eyeing a taxi as it sped away from the curb and forced its way into the flow of traffic. “All because I told a nine year old that Disney princesses’ aren’t real, huh?”

“No,” Hoseok’s hand covered one of yours, patting gently, “Because you’re better than this version of you. And I miss her, frankly. Old you used to bring me coffee in the mornings, so—”

“That’s when I was in Park Jimin’s position.”

“Jealous?”

“No,” Your jaw clenched but the smile on your lips was tiny and genuine regardless, “Thank you, Hobi.”

He hummed, pushing himself up off your desk to trail around toward the door, “Put your novel away, you have two months at the beach to work on that. Submit tomorrow’s column and then get your ass out of here. You have a flight to pack for.”

You weren’t sure if it were the wet tropical air that clung to your hair follicles or the grains of sand already wedged underneath the platform of your sandal but stepping off the plane gave you at least the vague sense that your inspiration was back. You itched for the keys on your laptop, letters worn and granules of salt from potato chips lodged in between, the space bar with two glossed circles from the unconscious tap of the side of your thumbs.

But the device was lodged in your backpack which was lodged between your shoulder blades as you tried to balance the lopsided baggage while maneuvering the cheap wheels of your suitcase over cobblestone sidewalks.

The keypad granted you entry when you’d barely pressed down on the last number of the combination you were given and your suitcase thanked you when sand rippled stepping stones became smooth, white tile. You nudged the luggage aside, dropping your backpack from your shoulders in the process of the long exhale you released from tense muscles, sand splaying messily over sleek flooring as you peeled your sandals from your ankles.

The house was open concept, white tile outlined in golden, sand like consistency, flooring that disappeared from the entryway to the wide room in the middle and down a short hallway that pointed into a wide, sliding glass door. Stainless steel appliances encased by black cabinets and white marble countertops, blue accent pieces and a fruit bowl filled with plastic treats completed the kitchen while compact leather furniture in the same hues boxed in a towering entertainment center on the opposite end of the room.

Your bare feet welcomed the shag grey rug that resided under the living room furniture, carrying you toward the various DVDs peeking out of the glass case underneath the TV. Nature documents sandwiched a singular copy of The Notebook, the cover worn and tattered underneath plastic from being parted so many times.

He’ll like her then and your fingertips twitched at your thighs in search of your laptop keys.

You turned a collection of faux grapes in your palms, pressing into the waxy material, eyes squinted for the typed letter lodged underneath the wire basket.

Welcome! I trust that you’ll find your accommodations satisfactory for a few months, yes? I’m eagerly awaiting your progress, Hoseok speaks very highly of you and your skills. Happy writing!

Underneath was a bulleted list of contact numbers and a FAQOTH (Frequently Asked Questions of the House), trash days, the number of the nearest pizza delivery, the code to the shed outside that contained noodles and an inflatable flamingo for the pool. It was skimming that provided you with that information and your brain short circuited on the mention of a pool, abandoning memorization in favor of your bare feet scuffing across the warmed concrete of the pool deck.

If the pesky sand rubbing raw at the arches of your feet or the palm trees you’d spotted out the windows of the plane weren’t enough to immerse you in the mindset, the clear blue of chlorine tainted water twitched at your knuckles just a fraction more, especially as engulfed by a privacy fence and vining vegetation cut neatly through the rungs of thick white.

Your stomach argued for lunch from one of the pizza places Namjoon had suggested and your heaping luggage argued for organizing the white wicker drawers in your bedroom but your gut said your laptop and your swimsuit. You were pressed onto a candy-striped towel in a lounge chair with the sun trickling at the sweat on your hairline before any other option could out weight, your clothes half strewn in the entryway of the house where you’d dug for the spandex material but forgotten as you furiously hacked away at editing your outline.

You bolded the newest addition to your outline inside your outline, the one that held all the tropes you wished to tackle in the sensical nonsensical manner that was a novel centered around the beauty of clichés. If other authors avoided clichés at all cost, the adverse relationship of shoving any and all that you could correlate between the confines of two plastic ends and a spine could produce a similar effect, pique the interest if marketed as the cliché of all clichés, work against and for itself between worlds of bubblegum high school romance and stale mint flavored coworkers, strangers, and enemies to lovers.

Besides, eliminating stereotypes within clichés counted for something in itself. A commentary on something much larger, at least, you liked to think it was.

SEND THEM TO A BEACH HOUSE appeared directly beneath THE SPAGHETTI SCENE FROM LADY AND THE TRAMP BUT WITH EXCESS CHEESE FROM A PIECE OF PIZZA and the giddiness from typing it out had you overloading the software with how quickly you switched documents to your outline outline, swiping your index finger until the setting appeared and you deleted it in one long, blue highlight.

You thought back to the young adult romance you’d read in high school that had taken place in a beachside town, then to the very same romantic thriller you adored as an adult, to the whimsical short story you’d written in an undergraduate, elective creative writing class, to the first time you’d dug your toes into slightly damp sand and let the soothe of the waves lap at your ankles and the fall of your eyelids to be as dark as the never ending water disappearing over the horizon.

Nothing is more cliché than a beachside town, you thought and spoke the words all the same, shoulders hunching over your keyboard as you clacked the same sentence across the screen and quickly deleted it to amend more specifically. It was the most you’d typed, switched tabs for research, and had the curled feeling of anticipation for what would flow from your fingers in the last year and you briefly wondered if Namjoon had pumped something into the seashell shaped air fresheners stuck in every outlet in the house.

Your trusty search engine provided little response for “beachside towns with little to no tourism” and you instead found yourself typing in the name of the city you’d directed your cab to from the airport, a homage to the sudden rush of inspiration. More details flowed than necessary but you allowed them in the haze of humidity and sun, the name and country and zip code following out next to the bolded location bullet point until your cursor dropped down to the third line and you cut yourself on the words Sunny Drive, where the speed limit signs end in threes?

You cracked your knuckles first, then your toes, then rolled your ankle to pop it, too, crooked fingers still sat on the middle row of the keyboard, asdf-jkl;, tapping in tune with the hum that slipped through your sealed lips.

The high top of a golf cart cruised over the links of the white fence encasing you in your writing utopia, the whir dying as the vehicle rounded the corner. Your fingers were back in action, deleting the modest, white four door sedan assigned to your main character in favor of a high-powered golf cart that you’d research later if realistically existed.

Somewhere in the distance was the call of a bird, traveling over the thrash of the waves onto the shore just in reach beyond the tops of houses suspended on frames around the boardwalk. It was the call of a sea gull or something of the same variety, but you considered giving your main character a parrot and added an entire new section of your outline for the very plot piece.

Something bubbled in the depth of the pool stretched at the end of your pointed ankles, something that had curled into the filter and elicited a burst of air. In your head, you extended the pool by significance on either side and gave your protagonist the trait of an accomplished swimmer in high school.

Nothing more cliché that dropping some characters into a seaside town, one with a parrot, a tricked-out golf cart, and an affinity for swimming rather than surfing like her love interest, antagonistic counterpart and his four door sedan with a dent in the side and caked sand on the rims.

Three documents over was your actual manuscript, one you marked with various highlights to change major plot points later. A major rehaul of location but worth it for the electricity snagging and pushing your joints to click across the keys. Your brain left a footnote to revamp the scene you’d left your characters at, previously at a crossroads of figuring out the vibe in their acquaintance, stuck in a grocery store with the love interest clutching a bouquet of flowers and squinting at your protagonist.

It was quickly changed to a late night scene at a beach, the bouquet of flowers instead a ghost crab and the line of dialog a do you want to hold him? rather than the, awkward albeit, I could buy these for you? To give to your mom, of course—

And then the artificial blue of the water behind you seemed to engulf your laptop screen, draining it into a lower quality of pixels and blurred lines that categorized your work computer, the giant stone turtle hidden behind a bush of thick vegetation shrinking into your paper weight, the line of documents open across your screen erasing into your next column that, for some reason, included every curse word you could imagine in angry red font.

A tiny emoticon reminiscent of the talking paperclip from early Microsoft word processing appeared in the corner, but in the shape of Park Jimin.

In short, you were stuck, the fire of inspiration eager to boil in the pit of your stomach evaporating like the footprint on the pool peck after you’d dipped a singular foot in. You’d transported back to your office in the uncomfortable desk chair stolen from the insurance office a story down with Park Jimin breathing down your neck for your position by bringing Hoseok coffee every morning but in a slightly better quality than you had, because it was handmade with love in the longue, with a novel that was no closer to being finished than it had been when you’d fell in love with the concept and got paid to outline the entire thing not a week into your position at the newspaper (and in between running Hoseok coffee and trying to hide your work in the limited privacy of your cubicle).

A massive control + Z was in order and the fingers on one hand stretched to do just that on the first of three documents, latter cuticles shoved in between your teeth to nibble miserably on. You’d erased any mention of a beachside town and ripped away the sticky note on the inside of your conscious that suggested touching a ghost crab for romance when something rough and cold dripped against the outside of your thigh.

Confusion caused you to place your laptop to the concrete below your chair and terror caused the startled gasp to bubble out of your throat at the sheepish looking figure stood knee deep on the pool stairs.

“Uh, hello,” The figure had obnoxious red hair to match the obnoxious yellow shirt hanging off his shoulders, a similar hue that colored the apples of his cheeks, shading embarrassment over sunburn and traveling to the peek of his teeth and the twinkle in gentle brown eyes that much resembled that of a deer pinned by some oncoming headlights. “I’m...here to clean the pool.”

It was a pool net that had hit you, misjudged from the sopping pile in the mulch of leaves and bugs and neon colored specks of unidentified objects. Your eyes trailed upward from the damp pleats of rope at your side to the holder of the pole, one who hadn’t tried to jerk the net away from you but instead kept in place, as if he didn’t move a muscle maybe you’d disappear.

“I clean the pool twice a week?” He tried again but you were too focused on the rosy shade of his lips matching the moussed fringe that curled into his eyelashes. “It should have been on the note Namjoon left—”

“It probably is,” You dismissed and he finally pulled the net away from your side, the wide sweeping circle he took to plop it back into the pool not succeeding without dripping some onto the top of your head. Unconsciously eager to amend the endearing pout that graced the stranger’s lips as he stirred the net into the center of the water, you added, “I just got in this morning. I haven’t had time to read everything yet.”

“Oh. Oh,” The man straightened from where he’d been crouched trying to snag a red thread at the far end of the pool, the ends of blue pool shorts darker than the rest and trickling against toned thighs, “Well, I’m Jeongguk. The neighborhood pool guy. And groundskeeper. And...whatever else you need me to be, I guess.”

You quirked an eyebrow and Jeongguk faltered, “I mean, like, I can fix shit. If you need me to. Like, if the cable goes out. But don’t ask me about the Wifi. No clue how to improve that.”

“Do any of us?”

He laughed and there was a peek of a dimple at the corner of his lips, turning away from you, “Fair point.”

You watched as he navigated the net with a finesse that suggested he didn’t just smack your thigh with it, depositing the red string in a sad heap near the filter. The calculated wander of your gaze drew your mouth to dry, following the jump of his calf muscles as he stepped from the pool, dragging the net with him over his shoulder.

“Seriously though,” Jeongguk’s voice snapped you out of your trance and you wet your lips and longed for your chapstick lodged somewhere in the depths of your backpack. He stood by a plastic looking brown shed, the net out of his hands, arms instead folded to his chest. “If you need anything, just call the front desk. The number is pasted on the fridge.”

“Noted, thanks.”

“My pleasure—” He paused halfway through the sliding glass door, fingers poised in an awkward pointing motion, “—what was your name again?”

You uttered it and Jeongguk winked, fingers shaking as his latter foot joined him inside. “Well, then I’ll see you later.”

“Perfect,” You breathed to yourself and you realized after the roar of his blue maintenance truck pulling from your drive that your collection of tattered bras and panties were scattered in the only entrance to the house.

Romance novels lied and movies an even bigger scam about wearing sandals for long periods of time without developing stupidly coarse blisters on the surface of the faux leather straps. You were heaving and limping and confused by the time you found the main office at the far end of the neighborhood.

In retrospect, it was hard to miss, an obnoxious aqua shade of paneling, outlined in a thick white trim led to by an equally bright staircase. Bikes accented in the same white but a clearer shade of blue lined the racks outside, complete with wicker baskets on the front and shiny metal bells that glinted just right to make you shield your eyes and trip up a single stair in your ascend. Inside the barn like doors came a refreshing burst of air conditioning, eliminating the humidity from outside and immediately calming some of the sweat curling into the hair at the nape of your neck.

A man sat behind a glass top counter in the middle of the room, legs delicately crossed on the stool he perched to, sunglasses nudged in the darkest part of dyed blonde roots, thumbing through a tourist style magazine that advertised May, the current month, as it’s date of publication. When the doors rattled shut behind you, he looked up, sunglasses bouncing to the bridge of his nose as he let out a tiny, startled noise.

“Hello!” He greeted after a moment, broad shoulders setting as you approached the counter. The magazine was flipped shut and slid closer to you, eyebrows wiggling at you beyond the frames of his fallen glasses, “Can I interested you in an entire article on the shrimp business in town?”

You giggled then, gently nudging the magazine back to him. The gold on his nametag fastened to the pocket of a blue surf shop t-shirt read Seokjin.

“No, not today.”

Seokjin balled the gloss into a roll and with a shrug, pitched it over his shoulder. “You know what, me either,” He winked, folding his hands on the counter and leaning toward you, plump lips curled back to let out an endearing wheeze of a laugh, “What can I do for you today?”

“Do you rent the bikes outside?”

“I’ll rent you two of them,” He laughed again at the expression on your face, turning to fish a clipboard off the tiny table behind him. “Kidding. I’ll rent you three.”

“I love it, but I think I only need one for right now.”

“If I weren’t on shift, I’d accompany you,” Seokjin scribbled something on the clipboard, “What house number are you in?”

You recited the number to him and he nodded with his tongue between his back molars. The clipboard was returned to the table in exchange for a set of tiny keys, ones he held out to you by the dangle of their miniature, metal hook. “These work on the first bike on the rack,” He smiled again, all full lips and an endearing red tinge to the tips of his ears, “Bring them back to me to check the bike back in or I may have to hunt you down.”

Your eyes widened and he cackled again, slapping a palm down on the glass countertop, “Kidding. But there is a fine if it’s not returned in twenty-four hours so—”

“Noted. I’ll have it back,” You pressed the keys into your palm and offered a halfhearted wave, “Thank you!”

“Always! Happy riding!”

The keys were deposited safely into the pocket of your shorts after you’d managed to wiggle the bicycle away from the rack, clacking against your phone screen as you clambered aboard the leather seat and pushed off in the direction you’d came.

You pedaled first in search of the house, finding it easier on the retrace and mapping it to memory as you dared a new trail, the one that looped and met a dead end when asphalt curled into white sand. The house whirred by again and then the main office, the air cooler in a breeze and with an easier travel than walking with a dozen blisters. You cycled slowly, taking in the unruly wind of cobblestone sidewalks and curiously planted palm trees near the planned planted flowers and each house in their own entirety in comparison to your own and the license plates of each car in each driveway as they advertised various regions and places and worlds aside from the one you were living in.

The blue maintenance truck elicited bile in the back of your throat from the incident earlier in the week as it sat parked on the street corner where sprinklers poked out of the turf and sprayed onto the green and yellow logo pasted to the side. The cab was empty but the yard it was parked in front of wasn’t, the knee height gate surrounding the shrubbery open with Jeongguk’s feet planted just on the other side of it.

You whipped your gaze from the slice of hedge trimmers through an exotic looking tree, instead looping your bike onto the opposite sidewalk and in the opposite direction. To no avail, the cul de sac throwing you back around like an out of control speed skater and suddenly the distance in front of you was filled only with the image of Jeongguk’s bare shoulders.

The bike coasted underneath you, leather relaxing its strain on your blisters as you concentration instead fell to the defined ridges between his shoulder blades, ones that rippled under a thin sheen of sweat each time he drew the trimmers open and shut, fluttering confetti like green to the grass below. The gardening tool fell as you watched, one arm staying above his head as he wiped a glove covered hand across his forehead, pasting more of the faded red fringe to the sweat already glistening there than clearing it. In the same moment did he pivot, trimmers dangling at his thigh, but this time you weren’t focused on the short black clinging desperately to his lean hips or the bunched white shirt sticking out from the waistband, rather the defined lines of his trimmed stomach starting underneath his ribs and disappearing underneath the elastic.

Jeongguk calling your name wasn’t part of the mirage and your rounded mouth jerked up just in time to notice the rapidly approaching edge of the curb.

Your dry mouth didn’t need water when it instead got the sprinkled of gravel, your bike tire colliding with the blocked concrete below and throwing you off to the side. A pain registered as a skid down your elbow but nothing quite matched the shamed embarrassment that flushed at your cheeks as a distant shit, hey! echoed in your ears and gravel crunched under approaching footsteps.

“Hey, woah, are you okay?—” You felt like you were underwater, like the ocean had suddenly decided it could eat the human race and was choosing you as its first victim, “—shit, you’re bleeding.”

A sting to your arm drew you above water and fingers that weren’t your own wiggled in front of your blurry vision, coating in a glob of dark red. The dots in your vision worsened when there was a pressure around your arm, Jeongguk’s t-shirt yanked from his shorts to act as a makeshift bandage and you couldn’t even appreciate the feeling of his hands touching you when you felt like you could vomit all over them any second.

“Hey, hey, babe can you hear me? Don’t pass out on me, it’s just a little scrape. C’mon, hey, I have some water in my truck, give me a second—”

The grass was a welcome pillow to the throb in your head, clearing the specks of black and white in your vision just enough for you to welcome the overhead blue curling around the landscape. You focused your attention on a cloud, one shaped like a disfigured dolphin, until it slipped in front of the sun, the rays spilling out in thick shards from between the transparent water vapor chilling the new layer of sweat that had slipped over your skin in your near faint.

You shuddered as more of the dots in your vision transferred to a seeming chill in your veins, goosebumps crawling across your arms and leaving a dry, cotton taste in your cheeks. Scrambling footsteps in the gravel returned as quickly as they had retreated and a gentle hand slipped behind your shoulders, aiding you in sitting up enough to bring your lips to a cool splash of water.

“I’ve been telling Seokjin to replace the brakes on these for months,” Jeongguk passed the water bottle into your still twitching fingertips, instead taking a seat next to you in the grass.

You were shaky in taking another gulp of the lukewarm water, letting it slide thickly down your throat. Various retorts snagged in the back of your throat and you suppressed them like the urge to glance over at him. Instead, a soft hum came out, one emitted through another cheek full of water.

“Well, when you’re ready, I’ll drive you back to the house and take the bike back—”

“I’m fine,” You croaked but you punctuated the sentiment by gathering your feet underneath you. A dull pain throbbed in your forearm and you swayed slightly in your crouched position, but you managed to stand with no more than a few stars decorating the back of your eyelids.

Jeongguk stuttered behind you, scrambling to his feet as you hunched over the fallen bike, dragging it to an upright position by one of the protruding handles. He slipped a warm hand to the small of your back, stalling you. “You’re not going to try to ride back, are you?”

“Yes?”

“You nearly fainted just now. Do you really think that’s...the best idea?”

Your knee caught on the seat in your first attempt to straddle the bike but you were successful the second time, standing with shaky palms clenched on the handles. “Not really. But it’s not very far…”

You thought you’d shaken him, the bike wobbling as you pushed off, getting two tire rolls away before his figure was jogging up beside you, placing an insistent hand on the bars. “At least let me walk back with you,” Jeongguk insisted, red fringe not obscuring his wide-eyed concern.

You begrudgingly ignored the veins in his forearm, slowing the speed of your pedaling to let him guide you through the desolate roads of the quiet neighborhood. It was a quick but silent trip, Jeongguk turning to balance the bike with two hands as you clambered off on shaky legs. He’d barely pivoted from depositing it back into its empty space on the rack when you’d pushed the tiny set of keys against the center of chest, too engrossed in a range of mortification.

“Here,” You bit out, “Thanks again.”

You took off in a rumpled mess of gravel, sunburn, and a bloody t-shirt as Jeongguk called after you some variation of be careful! that almost sounded like he was laughing.

The blood caked off his t-shirt on the third wash (when you managed to understand the complex mess of dials lining the top of the machine) and you hung it on a wire hanger on the tiny awning that extended outward from the house onto the concrete. He’d have to duck underneath it to do his job as you hid faithfully in your bedroom and pretended to nap for the duration of his visit.

There was a distinct clattering outside as the morning hours drew into the afternoon and you buried your head underneath the puffy duvet, taking comfort in the flash of colors across your phone screen even if you were mute to the video you’d played. But then the clutter outside transferred to the slide of the patio door and the video disappeared as your phone fell face down against your waist and you froze.

Jeongguk was calling your name, fluctuating in volume as he moved about the main part of the house. You winced each time the scuff of his bare feet moved closer, relaxed when it was farther away, and sighed when he tried, “I know you’re in here. Seokjin didn’t see you leave today. Or yesterday. Or the day before.”

You swallowed your pride and the unattractive scab growing on the flat of your forearm as you stalked out of your room. You found him mostly clothed this time, hands braced on the lip of the bar in the center of the kitchen with his phone pressed toward his nose in one hand.

“What, have you been watching me?”

There was a fond smile that crept to Jeongguk’s lips as he turned to look at you, “Making sure you didn’t bleed out, actually, but if you want to look at it that way.”

You paused in the hallway, feet as wide as your shoulders and arms folded tight to your chest. Only then did you realize you still had flannel pajama shorts and a flimsy white shirt on. “Well. Here I am. With only minor injuries. So uh…”

There was a glass plate in the flat of his palm before you could blink, a pyramid of chocolate chip cookies wrapped with plastic presented before you. “I, uh, made you some cookies,” He blinked, tossing his head toward the refrigerator. The red in his hair had faded to a harsh pink, “and there’s fresh lemonade in the fridge.”

“Your t-shirt is hanging outside,” You blurted in response, “free of blood.”

Jeongguk’s nose wrinkled, turning to deposit the cookies to the countertop again, “Didn’t want it back. I have fifty of the same thing. But thank you…”

You stared at the back of his head, where dark brown roots had begun to weave through the sharp red. After a moment, you blinked, “...so you can bake?”

He shrugged without looking at you, peeling the plastic away from the plate to pluck a cookie into his palm. He glanced over his shoulder, endearing smile dimpled into his cheeks and you melted like the bits of chocolate that brushed against his digits when he stretched the treat out to you, “Eh. Try one?”

Jeongguk’s gaze followed you as you shuffled around the kitchen, sliding out one of the bar stools with the crook of your foot to slip onto the round leather. You reached over the countertop, snatching a napkin from a pile near the sink to spread out in front of you, lips pressing into a geometric shape in your cheeks.

“C’mon, hand it over.”

He bypassed your wriggling fingers to place the cookie down on your napkin, watching you with a bated breath and round eyes. Soft irises followed the path of the piece you broke off the cookie to where you nudged it into your mouth by the curve of your thumb. The cookie crumbled across your tongue, melting in a mess of sugar and chocolate that gurgled a pleasured moan from your throat as you dived in for two, four more nibbles on the soft corners.

An amused expression wrinkled at his cocked eyebrows and the small sliver of his teeth when your eyelids fluttered open from devouring half the treat, “Good?”

“You can bake,” You affirmed, breaking off another bite sized corner. “Maybe I should wreck bikes more often.”

“No,” Jeongguk assured, replacing the cookie with a fresh one before turning to your fridge to yank out the pitcher of lemonade, “You definitely should not.”

His stature went fishing about the kitchen area, yanking open cabinet after cabinet until he found something suitable, glass pieces smudged from years of use. He pulled down two, placing them in front of the pitcher.

“You know, your food selection here is pretty sad,” He handed over a full glass, watching as you took a languid gulp.

“I don’t exactly know where the grocery store is,” You argued of the boxes of leftover pizza stacked inside your fridge and the singular bag of pretzels you’d smuggled onto the airplane. “Nor do I have a car, and biking is certainly out of the question—”

Jeongguk ignored you, opening and closing drawers until he found the packet of paper Namjoon had left for you, the FAQOTH. His thumb lodged between the pages, squinting at the ink as his voice muffled around the rim of his own glass.

His tongue swiped at the lemonade clinging to his upper lip, sighing, “You really didn’t read this, did you? There’s, like, seven cab services to choose from. And at least six of them know where the Walmart is.”

You dismissed him with a wave of your hand, snatching the packet of paper from his grasp to flatten it over the napkin you’d been snacking from. “All Namjoon has listed are pizza places…” You trailed off, “I need restaurant recommendations. Throw some at me.”

“That’s a pretty broad question. I have a lot.”

“You’ll have to show me a few before I leave.”

You stared at each other in a passing silence that heightened your mortification like bile on the crux of your throat, especially when Jeongguk cocked an eyebrow, the slightest of smirks slanting his lips as his chin unhinged, falling to his chest as he fished aside for another napkin.

“Maybe…” He trailed off, snatching a pen from the same drawer the FAQOTH had came from. “But for now—” He scribbled some more on the surface pebbled in design, scratching out a name and an address before presenting the drooping napkin to you, “—try this place. I think the cab drivers can find it...”

The Dusty Dolphin bordered the line between the natural white sands of the beach and the main strip of highway that cascaded down the coastline. It was as if sitting on the border in territories, the inside seating of the restaurant on soft grasses sticking through sand like soil with an asphalt parking lot lined in chipped neon parking spaces just a walking distance away, while the outside seating was perched on the beach, a patio raised on wooden platforms with brightly colored umbrellas stuck through the center of wooden tables.

Your fingers paled your knuckles with how tightly you clenched your fists, flip flops slapping against the wooden surface as you climbed up a rickety staircase to tell an uninterested looking hostess that it would be just you.

“Outside?” It wasn’t really a question of yes or no, more of a confirmation of what she was expecting you to say as she hopped down from her stool and began to collect silverware and a glossy menu.

Your sure was lost under your breath as she took your curt nod as the answer, weaving through the close knit tables in the indoor seating to lead you through a single set of double doors and to an empty table on the far corner. Again, her, “Is this okay?” was a confirmation, not an affirmation, and your nod had her saying your server will be right with you when she’d already slipped back inside.

The sun peaked out from behind the lapping waves on the horizon, the blackness engulfing the farthest waves a taste of the sun’s sleep for a few hours, leaving the world with a brilliant mesh of pastel hues, colored together like oil crayons as brushes of wispy clouds rushed by to the melody of the water rushing to the shore. A breeze rolled with the motion of the water and you tugged your thin cardigan closer to your torso, not helped with the fans bolted to the overhead framing that continued to rotate softly, a cooldown from their midafternoon duties where they whirred fatefully.

“Hey, told you the cab driver could find this place.”

Jeongguk stood in front of you with the dopiest of grins on his lips, a tiny and audible giggle stumbling out from the shocked expression that met your features. He was adorned in all black, tight black jeans, a black belt cinching a black t-shirt into his waist, a black apron snug just a beat above the belt buckle. His bright locks were styled, parted away from his forehead in a calculated fashion that made one swoop a tad bigger than the latter side. Pens and straws and a tiny notepad were tucked into the pouches of the apron and he held a notepad of a similar fashion up, pen clicking rapidly as he continued to giggle at you.

“You work here?” You blinked, and then added with flat palms slapping against the front of your menu, “Is there anything you don’t do?”

“Can’t quite train the dolphins at the wildlife reserve yet, but we’re getting there,” His nose wrinkled in another laugh, pen clicking out finally as he rested it against the paper, “What can I get you to drink?”

“Uh. Water, I guess.”

“Boring,” Jeongguk scribbled shorthand to the pad, “Are you going to get something a bit more exciting than chicken strips for your meal?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be heckling the paying customer.”

“Seriously,” He eyed you again, “Do you know what you want?”

You opened the menu for the first time, the array of seafood and pastas and salads and various other dishes overwhelming you with him hunching over you, shuffling to read over your shoulders.

“What do you recommend?”

“Well, we’re pretty known for seafood—” You shot him a look, “—obviously. But like, all the shrimp is pretty good—”

“Because of the shrimp business in town?”

Jeongguk laughed, “Seokjin?”

“A little bit.”

He hummed, chin hovering dangerously close to your shoulder before he straightened, shuffling between the railing around the porch area. “I’ll bring you a couple things,” He decided, mostly to himself and absently over his shoulder,

A couple things meant a platter of shrimp, cooked, seasoned, piled, and ripped in different variations, piled high like the pyramid of cookies you’d nearly devoured after he’d left your house. His manager complained twice upon finding him sitting with you, judging your expression as you sucked some butter contraption off the ridges of a steamed shrimp and teasing you of the flakes of garlic clinging to the corner of your mouth. He returned to refill your water when you’d only taken a few sips from the candy striped straw and ignored you three times when you asked for the bill as the sun completely disappeared beyond the water, leaving the sea to one giant stretch you could not see but could hear the threat of.

“Here, I guess,” Jeongguk settled the black fold down on your table, leaving with a wink that illuminated in the artificial porch lights hanging from the center of the still turning fans. It was enough lighting to read that he’d paid for your bill, scrawling a giant smiley face underneath the amount.

You sighed, prepared to reprimand him as you carefully folded the receipt to slide into your pocket but two colored notes underneath caught your attention. The pink one read wait on me, I’ll drive you home. You placed it aside with a check to your phone, finding it five minutes from closing time of the restaurant as a majority of the other patrons who had long fled the premises.

The second note was yellow, the handwriting a bit more loopy, calculated in a sense.

A mirage is the peace the night time sea suggests; a reality is the beauty your soul creates.

Jeongguk was free of the apron when he returned, shirt untucked, and a large blue jacket shrugged across his shoulders. The same giddy smile from before remained plastered to his features as he dug in his pocket, pulling out a set of keys that he tossed and caught in the same palm.

“Ready to go?”

You folded the sticky note carefully, slipping it with the collection of bills in your back pocket.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

He left notes while you were asleep and he had another schedule to get to, choosing your pool as the first to clean and assess and correct the chemical balance of, leaving the bright blue paper with tacky glue stripped on the top to the patio door.

You caught it when you shrugged outside with a piece of toast in hand and your laptop folded under your arm, crumbs decorating your knuckles as you slipped the paper off the sizable smudge on the glass to bring it to your nose.

Think of dream, sleep of you.

He left notes on the hedge just outside your door on his way to the neighbors to fix a faulty outlet in the upstairs bedroom for a family who’d just arrived and had decided to cram three children with twelve electronic devices between them into that very room.

It was bright pink and sealed to the petal of a flower you debated picking, a petal that dislodged anyway when you plucked the note instead, decorating the stone walkway with a single question of soft red hues.

Bloom in my heart like the question of my soul.

He left notes on the inside of your refrigerator, right on top of a family sized bottle of orange juice he’d watched you haul through the front gates of the neighborhood while Seokjin assumed he was paying attention to his instructions for the disposal of some lawn chairs at the community pool near the beach.

You found it after he left in a flurry of more cookies, the smell of chlorine, and an off handed comment about you needing more variety in your life than water and orange juice, a yellow note that rivaled the unnatural coloring of the juice when you’d purchased a brand name rather than the more expensive, family brand.

Orange juice sucks, that much I do know.

You scattered them across the screen of your open laptop like an investigator piecing together the details of a crime while your neglected novel watched on, the cursor mocking you from beyond a note that said procrastinating my destiny with a useless metal fence. Color coding failed when Jeongguk switched from pinks, blues, and yellows to purples, oranges, and greens. His handwriting didn’t falter, suggest a trend with a certain harder press of his pen. The medium in which he wrote varied, lead or red pen or what appeared to be a blue colored pencil. Some told a story, only to be ruined with orange juice or elbow scabs or half eaten shrimp.

Your laptop screen was coated in a thin layer of film from placing and plucking the notes into various orders, one that hazed over your novel as you began to stack the notes into a neat pile in your cupped palm. It mirrored the midday haze that had curled across the neighborhood, the sun eliciting the mirage of steam curling off the pool water that seemed to hinder your conscious unable to understand the growing tree of poetry in your grasp.

The contents of the last paragraph, even without a layer of tacky glue and humidity stained air, made little sense, only one of five you’d written in three weeks. It was thick and expositional, a writing exercise within the draft, a rambling discussion of your surroundings when you’d decided to have your characters visit a beach rather than force their stories into some sand and sun.

Your outline answered your rhetorical question.

Why are they going to the beach? TBD.

You deleted the fifth paragraph and shut your laptop. Four paragraphs in three weeks.

Soft fluttering of the notes between your fingertips kept the distracted state of your conscious occupied long enough to seek out an unnatural sound of nature. It was a scurrying from around the side of the house, scattering through dry pine needles and gravel poured between the concrete stepping stones. The cloud of your thoughts cleared enough to panic in confusion, leaving the notes underneath a corner of your laptop as you crept into your flip flops.

The wire gate was left open, swinging gently against the side of the house. Clear footsteps rut deep into the coarse brown needles, smudging into the mud below still damp from the morning rain shower.

Your first rational thought of it being a squirrel erased as you reached for the gate, pulling and latching it. Someone was walking a dog across the street, a tiny white poodle with a ridiculous haircut and a cat bell on its collar. A childlike scream traveled upward from the beach. The breeze clattered against the leaves of a towering tree planted entirely too close to the house.

The same gentle breeze fluttered a strip of pink against the side of the house.

“Dammit, Jeongguk,” You cursed, needles lodging between the rubber of your flip flops and your bare feet as you moved off the stepping stone path. It was pasted high, too, barely in reaching of your pinching fingertips as you leaned into the house and stretched as high on the balls of your feet as you could go.

Your back slumped against the house as you glared at your prize for thin scratches and a strain in your shoulders. A number. A phone number.

With a shitty smiley face, a curve and two dots, beneath it.

You cursed through another layer of pine needles, deserting your flip flops on the far end of the pool deck as you hopped across seething hot concrete to retrieve your phone from underneath your towel. Pointed thumbs jabbed in the number to a new text thread, equally as prominent in clicking out a message.

What the hell are you trying to tell me with these notes, Jeongguk?

For thirty-seven agonizing seconds, you thought your only answer was the smiling emoticon with tiny red hearts dotted around the surface. And then three little dots appeared in the bottom left corner.

Everything. Meet me at the beach tonight?

You followed the sound of music, passing only a family with two tiny girls, headlamps strapped to their foreheads and plastic sand castle buckets clutched in their fingers as they chatted eagerly about what they’d seen underneath their feet, and a colony of the very crabs they’d been trying to capture. Your flip flops followed the beat of the guitar melody, pattering against the flex of your thigh where you clutched them in loose fingers at your hip, bare feet sliding through the cool sand, occasionally catching on snags of sea shells and scurrying sea creatures.

The sounds grew louder, dimming the thrash of night time waves, and you found him, seated not far down the coast line on a ratty looking, red lawn chair.

Jeongguk glanced up from furrowed eyebrows when you cleared his throat, hunched over a guitar balanced neatly on short clad thighs. Confusion erased into elation as he grinned, tossing his head toward the empty lawn chair next to him, blue and with less frayed edges.

“Hey! Have a seat. I brought beer in the cooler behind you. And water. I can go get you anything—”

You ducked for the red plastic container, drawing out a dripping water bottle and cracking the lid, “It’s okay. Thank you.”

He visibly relaxed, the lingering stare on your lips wrapping around the bottle diverting back to his work on the instrument in his lap, fiddling with some of the tuners at the top. You watched as he worked, thumb coming out to strum at the bottom few strings before he sat back with a satisfied hum.

And then Jeongguk began to sing. Softly at first, a testing glance in your direction as soft pink lips seemed hesitant in parting. When intrigue lit your features, body visibly tensing, his mouth curled into a smile, voice a higher volume but a soft octave nonetheless, gentle and soothing like a retreating wave that lipped gently across the shells it was leaving behind. His gaze faltered from yours to hit a note, a scrunch to his nose, a vein down the length of his neck, a passion that you longed for as his voice fishtailed into an easy run. It was an unfamiliar tune to you, one that ended in a handful of endearing head bops and cheesy hums from Jeongguk as he strummed once, hard, down the strings of his guitar.

The smile on his lips wobbled, trying to contain his teeth but still dimpling in his cheeks as he blinked at you. He lost the battle with his smile when he spoke, testing “Good?”, with a slight giggle.

“The notes,” You said dumbly, “They’re your lyrics?”

“Some of them…” He sat the guitar in the sand with a shy hand wrapped around the back of his neck, “Some are just, I don’t know, poetry.”

“So you sing.”

“I sing,” Jeongguk nodded, “I like to think I’m a better singer than pool cleaner. Or cookie baker.”

You followed his gaze from your eyes to his clasped hands on his knees. “Have you tried to pursue anything in it?”

“No point,” His gaze moved onward from his hands to the ocean, squinting and closing, “Just a hobby.”

“For now—”

“For always,” He was staring at you again, curt in his sharp correction. After a moment, a tiny smile slanted his lips, “It’s okay, really. I enjoy doing it in my free time.”

You tilted your head, “Why are you sharing this with me?”

Jeongguk was standing above you, hand outstretched, shy smile flushing his cheeks even in the darkness. “Walk with me.”

He took the initiative the thread your fingers together, leading you down to the edge of where the water reached. The water still warm from the heat of the season lapped around your ankles as you trudged down the coast, hand in hand, silence welcome to the soundtrack of the ocean. After a sizable distance, Jeongguk sighed, footsteps stalling to yank your unsuspecting figure to a stop.

“I’m showing you because lately, they’re all about you.”

You blinked at him, hands still clasped but pulled at an unnatural distance between your statures. “Jeongguk, what—”

“Look, I’m extremely lame and not as good with actual words as I am with the notes I left you but…” He stepped closer, dropping your intertwined hands to swing between your bodies, “I like you. Basically.”

“Basically?”

A disgruntled whine left his lips and his gaze trailed over your shoulder, upward toward the sky, “I know you’re only here for another month and I know I barely know you but. I don’t know. I like you. And I felt weird envisioning a future where I didn’t at least try.”

Your skin warmed through the thin flannel draped across your sun irritated skin. Another step closer, this one initiated by you, followed by a soft squeeze and tug on his palm. “Like you said, I’m only here for another month,” Soft eyes darkened into the stars dancing around you wandered back down to your gaze, hopeful even as you sighed, “I’m supposed to be writing, anyway. That’s the entire point of my trip and I’ve barely got anything done…”

“I won’t be a distraction.”

“You already are.”

Another shy smile graced Jeongguk’s features, mumbling, “Sorry.”

“But a good distraction…” One more step and there was but a fingertips length distance between your torsos, your thumb running along his knuckles, “You’re a good distraction.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

You held up your free hand, pinky presented. “I’m willing to try, Jeongguk but—” You punctuated the word before he could hook the digit in yours, “—no obligations. Not really, anyway.”

“Do the obligations include or exclude kissing?” He braved leaning closer to you, even as the rosy hue on his cheeks spread, “Pleasesayinclude, pleasesayinclude, pleasesay—”

You tugged down on his hand, loose fist with your pinky presented falling against his shoulder as you connected your lips. He hummed happily into the seam of your lips, arm snaking around your waist to eliminate the distance between your torsos. “One month,” You punctuated between a breath of air, one he ignored with another languid kiss into your mouth.

“So I can’t tell Taehyung you’re my girlfriend?”

“Who’s Taehyung?”

“My roommate,” Jeongguk linked your pinkies while you were distracted, kissing your jaw, “I’ll introduce you to him.”

“Jeongguk,” You squeezed his hand and pinky in tandem, “One month.”

“Stop, you’re making your not-really-your-boyfriend sad.”

Kim Taehyung was all surfer, the stereotypical bleached blonde hair with dark peeking out of the roots, baggy black shorts with the white strings untied, a thin white undershirt hugging his lean figure underneath a blue shirt with some intricate design of flames and waves and a surfboard ironed on the front. His bare feet slapped through the corridor, grumbling something to Jeongguk’s greeting call, hair tossed back with a thick white headband around the middle of his forehead that pronounced his harsh eyebrows, ones that furrowed to inspect you.

“Hi!” He was loud, like an over excited golden retriever, especially when he beamed to tease his roommate, “So you’re the beautiful lady Gukkie here courted by flashing his stellar abs and less than comparable thighs.”

You gawked, cheeks heating because well, kind of, but the hand on the small of your back fist into the material of your shirt, pushing you forward and past his broad figure.

“Don’t you have a wave to almost drown in?”

“C’mon, I was just kidding, love!” Taehyung’s footsteps were heavy behind you, following your figures through a narrow hallway, “No part of Jeon is impressive enough to get you. Did he bribe you? I’ll pay the ransom.”

You giggled as Jeongguk paused around you, sucking in a breath through his teeth that materialized into a whispered, “If you ignore him, he goes away. Eventually.”

Your nose wrinkled, turning to look at the red-faced man pressed against your back, “But he’s funny.”

You’d paused in front of a doorway, one Jeongguk pushed open and glared pointedly at you. “Don’t encourage him. Go.”

Jeongguk’s room was wide, a contrast to the narrow hallway lined in creaking hardwood and paneled walls. It was open concept, not much furniture aside from a few dressers and the bed. Blacks, whites, and greys told the story with color sprinkled in from accented belongings, like a collection of keychains hanging off a billboard in the corner, the cork material of the wall hanging filed with various photographs pinned up by neon colored tacks. A string of lights hung above his headboard, polaroids dangling from the wires, similar ones pasted in a haphazard pattern on the same wall.

“You like photography?”

He watched you step to his corkboard, delicately sliding your fingers underneath a photograph so as not to touch the ink on the front. It was a picture he’d taken of Taehyung at a surfing competition, purposefully edited to look straight from a vintage yearbook.

“A little. Filming too....”

You nodded, letting the photograph flutter back against its board. Pivoting, slow steps carried you toward his slumped figure standing rigid in the center of his room, sliding your palms over his shoulders when you got close enough.

“All of these talents and you can’t dye your hair by yourself?”

Jeongguk’s fingers fell into the fringe hanging over his eyes, now blonde with hints of pink clinging to the ends of certain strands. A pout materialized but he didn’t whine, just leaning closer to you with tendrils of hair still secured between a hand behind his head.

“Just because it’s your first visit doesn’t mean I won’t subject you to Taehyung’s three hour lecture of proper surfboard waxing techniques.”

“Stop threatening me with a good time and lead me to the hair dye.”

His bathroom was as small as the hallway and you found yourself seated on the edge of the vanity with Jeongguk crushed between your legs. He didn’t seem to mind, fingers twitching from their place beside you to creep up to your thighs as you squinted at his head, plastic covered fingers globing harsh red through his hair.

“What’s your natural hair color?”

“Brown.”

You tapped at his roots, taking a glob with the crook of your fingers. “Why don’t you leave it at that?”

“Because red is cool.”

“Who told you that?—” You pulled your hands into your lap, careful to hold the stain away, “—Your girlfriend?”

“Don’t know,” Jeongguk leaned close enough to smear red on your forehead with his bangs if they weren’t pasted to his forehead, “Is my hair color cool?”

A playful look of disgust wrinkled at your nose, “Only half of your hair is dyed right now.”

He glanced behind you in the mirror, eyeing the glob of dye on one half of his head to the straight blonde on the latter. “So?” He blinked back to you, “Is it cool?”

“I don’t know,” You began to peel the gloves off, “Wash it out and we’ll see.”

You sat cross legged in the center of Jeongguk’s bed when he returned, half of his hair back to the vibrant red it had been when he nearly impaled you with a pool net, half the blonde it had been trending toward when he asked you to entertain his affections for a month more. He didn’t give you an option of a yes or no, flopping at the foot of the bed to press his cheek against your ankles, arms stretched out across your thighs.

“Hey,” He said after a moment, muffled against your jeans.

You tested the waters of placing a hand against his scalp and when he cuddled into your affection, you softly ran your nails through his hair. “Hey, what?”

“I let you read my things—” Jeongguk shifted to place his chin on your naval, blinking owlishly up at you, “—my things about you. When do I get to read part of your novel?”

“Hmm, when it’s finished and published and available in bookstores.”

“Is that soon?”

You shot him a look but he didn’t seem to be kidding. “No. Probably not. Especially since I’ve made virtually no progress.”

“Well,” He pecked your belly button over your shirt, snuggling back against you again, “I’d love to read an advanced screening version.”

You’d deleted the four paragraphs you’d completed in three weeks. Zero paragraphs in five weeks.

“We’ll see…”

You printed your outline in three separate copies, each one with their own unique set of markups of various color pens and pencils and highlighters, colors born out of your tiny sparks on inspiration that you tried to hold onto like a the end of a rope, one that would pull you to the surface for clarity, creativity, anything. But each time the trill of your red pen reached the end of the page, transferring over to your fingers on the keyboard, the half an ounce of rope had slipped through your fingertips, leaving you to tread underwater.

Those stapled pages were spread across a table on the patio area of The Dusty Dolphin, half sandwiched between your laptop that was attached to an extension cord. Jeongguk had hijacked both the Wifi password and an extra long cable, seating you in the far corner of the deck area and keeping you stocked with fresh water and samples of mozzarella sticks.

It was the third time you’d marked through and rewrote a certain bullet point, the result a smear of dying highlighter in neon yellow that you could barely read. You capped the highlighter and the open pen rolled to the center of your keyboard, turning your attention instead to the goosebumps that had appeared across your bare forearms and Jeongguk’s figure as he jogged out onto the patio deck.

“That my hoodie?” He questioned as he approached, your head halfway through the black fabric you’d had tied around your waist for the duration of the day.

“Could be Taehyung’s. I stole it from your laundry room.”

Jeongguk placed the new glass of ice water down, avoiding your papers and electronics to wrap a hand in the collar of the hoodie to tug your mouth to his.

“Nope,” He teased with a nip to your bottom lip in a whirling departure, “Mine.”

“Wait!”

He turned, nearly colliding with a high chair protruding out into the walkway.

“Come back, waiter.”

The pad of paper was drawn from his apron, just to appease the look the child’s mother shot him as he moved to stand next to you again. “Yes, paying customer?”

“Can you bring me real food, please?”

He began scribbling something before you could talk, mirroring your sentiment the same time you uttered it.

“The shrimp pasta?”

A bashful smile sunk your chin into your shoulders and you nodded. “Yes, please.”

“Course,” Another chaste peck on your lips that turned into two, then lingered on the third, only for heavy footsteps and a rough voice to have him jumping away.

“Jeongguk…” A figure was leaning out of the doorway dressed in an ironed white button up and black slacks, the tiny gold nameplate advertising manager first reading Yoongi. “Stop kissing customers, please.”

This time a horrified gasp from the mother in question, one that caused Yoongi’s eyes to widen as he moved for the table, shooting you a comforting wink as he began to explain the concept of a joke while Jeongguk disappeared back into the depths of the restaurant.

You managed to hack out two paragraphs while Jeongguk put your order in with a handful of dialog sprinkled within. His kiss was to the top of your head when he slipped the plate in front of you, careful to avoid your twitching fingers over the keys as he hummed.

“Any progress?”

Your response wasn’t a total lie. “A little bit…”

Two paragraphs and useless dialog tagged with edit later in six weeks.

You’d managed to catch a handful of the rope promising to pull you ashore, one you clung desperately to while your fingers, coiled equally as tight, wore the letters on your keyboard to nothing, backspace barely a factor as you left in typos and grammar issues and a myriad of useless punctuation. The lines from where your laptop sat in relation to the cover your swimsuit bottoms provided was of little concern, just as your hair tied messily on the nape of your neck and the lack of towel underneath the bare parts of your stature not covered by the swimsuit you’d stumbled into in route to reach the rope.

The paper outlines sat somewhere inside but you didn’t need them anyway, the digital copy enough to mark off pieces from as your word count skyrocketed, pages clicking over and over the hump you’d previously been stuck on, the rope dragging your belly first over but getting you there nonetheless. You typed until your mouth begged for the ice water you’d left inside and one of the two cookies of Jeongguk’s left, but you powered through into another page, giddy with the possibility but more focused on the emotion somewhere between determination and greed.

You heard the gate open but ignored it, you heard a call of your name but ignored it, and you felt the splash of water hit your ankles and glared at it.

“Hey!” Jeongguk resurfaced on the side of the pool. He’d fixed his hair, vibrant and red against where he brushed it out of his eyes. “Come in for a swim?”

You pursed your lips, determined to ignore him as your fingers started slow on the keys again. When you arrived at your previous speed, you huffed, “You aren’t supposed to clean today.”

He dunked his head under, resurfacing in a flurry of bubbles, “Does it look like I’m cleaning?”

“Jeongguk. I’m busy today.”

“You’re only here for another week.”

“Exactly!”

He sighed, forearms folding onto the concrete as he leaned forward, watching you, “Whatever you have is great. Better than great.”

“You wouldn’t know.”

“I have a vague idea because you won’t let me read anything.”

You were glaring at him again, the playful expression previously on his features hardened into something you couldn’t quite understand, one that softened only marginally as the seconds passed.

Jeongguk uttered your name, a gentle request, “Take a break.”

Your laptop sat open on the bare lawn chair, battery zapped the longer the heat bore down on it but the pointed stalk of your footsteps across the pool area had shoved it aside. The water was cold upon first touch but the reactions of your body didn’t show it, carrying you down the staircase until you were submerged, body crouching so that your chin skimmed the surface of the water until you were treading directly in front of Jeongguk.

“I’m in the water,” You hissed, “Is this what you wanted?”

He didn’t have it in him to giggle, a sad smile instead not quite reaching the dimples in his cheeks.

“No. I want you to believe in yourself.”

The push of your mouth against Jeongguk’s was wet, tasting of the chlorine that splattered around you when you stood to grapple for purchase on his shoulders. Strong arms encased your waist, accepting you anyway as one liquid staining your lips was replaced with something warm and tinged in salt, dripping in unwarranted streams from the corners of your eyes.

You whimpered when your back was pressed to the side of the pool, legs coming to wrap around his waist while your fingernails scraped at his back. “I’m sorry,” You gasped, his lips mouthing at your neck while he held you.

“Don’t be,” He reprimanded you with teeth on your collarbone, arms sliding higher on your waist to press you flush to his chest, “I’ve got you.”

Another miserable apology fell from your lips and your chin was jerked upward by a soft palm cupping your cheek, latter hand pressing into the concrete behind you. “I said, I’ve got you, baby girl,” Jeongguk reiterated, forehead pressed to yours. Something sad rippled in his starry irises, something that dug the dagger deeper into the hammering organ in your chest, “What do you need me to do?”

“Just, I—”

Words failed but the bury of your face into his neck, securing your ankles around his back and holding to him like he’d disappear any second, didn’t.

Jeongguk’s arms threaded around your stature again, nosing into your damp hair with a shaky sigh. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got you. Shh, it’s okay, it’ll be okay…”

Fourteen pages in seven weeks.

The weight of his palm in yours had never quite reached home, a foreign weight laced through your fingers from the hesitancy echoing a mantra in the forefront of your conscious, eerie and daunting and to the tune of your rapidly beating heart.

No obligations. A distraction. A good distraction. No obligations. Broken laptop charger. Not enough complete. No obligations. Too much dialog. Too little progress. No obligations.

Fourteen pages. Seven weeks. No obligations.

You squeezed your fingers together just to watch the joints retract under your skin, the moonlight a ghost over your knuckles. Again and it was inevitable to catch Jeongguk’s attention, his hand flexing underneath yours, smooth and gentle and waiting, accepting of the home your lost heart would need.

If you’d just let yourself knock on the door. No obligations.

“Hey.” He’d stopped walking next to you, the sand cold on your toes, the plastic straps of your sandals rubbing a blister on the soft crease between your fingers on your free hand. “Hey, can we…”

“Look,” You overlapped him, sandals falling from your grasp when you pointed instead. A small group of crabs ruffled through the sand in front of you, bumping through languidly, over and under each other. Jeongguk’s eyebrows nearly met at the wrinkled bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth slightly downturned when you glanced at him. Softly, you nodded, “Crabs.”

He let go of your hand, crouching. A cupped palm scooped through the sand, effectively excavating one of the crabs. It shook the sand from around itself, scurrying eagerly about the surface of Jeongguk’s hand as he straightened, stretching the creature out to you.

“Do you want to hold him?”

Thoughts of your novel and the overwhelming overhauls it’d endured in your eight weeks, the first a modest to a beachfront neighborhood, from a grocery store to a beach, from a bouquet of flowers the boy had been clutching onto for months while you worked on the details around him to a tiny crab who lasted long enough for you to hate the idea.

The tiniest of smiles made it to your lips, “Is there anything you can’t do, Jeon Jeongguk?”

He crouched again, releasing the crab in a flurry of sand dusted from his fingertips before returning to you. Curled fists made it into the pockets of his shorts, foot nudging into the ground below him as he shrugged. Wide eyes lifted from their spot at the tips of his toes to yours, the same sad smile lacing his features, “I can’t figure you out, apparently.”

“Can we...can we talk?”

He nodded, slowly at first and then all at once. A hand stretched in your direction again, fingers wiggling, the smile on his features a step closer to genuine. “C’mon, let’s go sit down.”

You followed Jeongguk up the beach, finding a space just in front of where the long grasses began, fluttering gently in the night time wind so much so that their soft ambiance almost outweighed the ripple of the ocean from farther up on the shore. Your hand retracted from his, sandwiched between your thighs but your shoulders still touched, sitting side by side as the moonlight crawled up the waves to be deposited onto the coast.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” You said after a moment. Features scrunched to the breeze, eyes shutting as you sighed, “I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

He hummed, “Do any of us?”

“You seem to,” Your cheek pressed to your shoulder, offering a smile when he glanced at you, “Mister gorgeous pool boy who can sing, play guitar, write poetry, bake, and catch ghost crabs without blinking.”

Jeongguk hummed once more, a lower sound this time, nose pointed toward the breeze. “If you think my ambitions in life stopped at tourist neighborhood groundskeeper and a waiter at a place named The Dusty Dolphin, I must have done a really shitty job at letting you get to know me over these couple of months.”

“I know that,” You nudged him, “but how are you content with your passions just staying passions? How can you not want more?”

“Let me ask you a question,” He nudged you back, chin meeting his upper arm to peer at you under vibrant bangs, “Why do you write?”

“Because I want to have a published novel.”

Jeongguk quirked an eyebrow, “Why do you want to have something published?”

“Because I’ve put years of work into the idea. I’ve drained my soul to invest it in this project.”

“Do you love it?”

You blinked, “My novel?”

“Your novel, your column, the newspaper, writing,” Jeongguk shrugged, “Any of it.”

“I did…”

“Did?”

“I’ve always been in love with the craft of writing—” Softly, you amended, “—my writing. My creations. And I’ve had slumps, I’ve endured writer’s block. I’ve gone past deadlines and I’ve scrapped entire plots, ideas, paragraphs, sentences. But never this bad. Not to the point where I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Why I even started writing the piece in the first place, what the end goal. What it was even supposed to be about, let alone anything about it.”

Jeongguk nodded, nose pointing toward the breeze again, cheek lulling to his arm, “Why did you come here, of all places?”

“I was sent here. Work leave.”

“What’d you do?”

“Told a nine year old that, not only are Disney princesses not real, but not a viable career option.”

He chuckled next to you, legs stretching out in front of him. “Harsh.”

“What about you?” You nudged him again, “Why do you write?”

“Because I love music and words are the language of music,” Jeongguk’s finger dug into the sand, absently drawing geometric shapes before brushing them away with the heel of his palm, “Even instrumental pieces can be described in words. Whimsical, haunting, pretty. That kind of thing.”

“I didn’t have to ask you if you loved it…” It was a rhetorical sentiment, trailed off as you stared at the nudge of his fingernail into a crooked rectangle.

“Can you do me a favor, when you go back home?”

“Please don’t tell me not to forget you. We live in the twenty-first century. I expect a picture of Seokjin with his shrimp magazine once a week.”

He was smiling when his hand slipped to your cheek, turning your gaze to his. “I’m serious,” His eyes flicked between yours, dizzying you in a mess of stars that never seemed to blur with the speed of his insistent gaze. “Scrap your entire novel. Start over.”

“What? Do you understand—”

Jeongguk’s lips felt like home. You hadn’t placed your guard around those. “I don’t understand. You won’t let me read it,” His forehead pressed to yours, “but just try it.”

“But Namjoon—”

Another kiss, gentle, a brush of your mouths together, just enough to swallow your insecurities. “The new one will be just as great. Better. More than enough to send to Namjoon.”

“How do you know?”

His thumb brushed against the apple of your cheek, eyes following the movement, “Would you allow him to read your current draft in its entirety? Not just what you’ve gotten finished while here.”

You hesitated long enough for Jeongguk to kiss you again, lingering enough to properly swallow what you were going to say. No, absolutely not.

“Might as well try—” His cheeks dimpled and it was the first genuine smile you’d allowed yourself in days, “—right?”

“Can you do me a favor?” You asked after several seconds of indulging in each other’s affections, lips swollen and brushing against his mouth.

“I won’t send you shirtless pictures every morning, no—” He shifted enough to shed himself of the pink checkered flannel on his shoulders, wrapping it to your shoulders to pull you against his side, “Taehyung already thinks I’m vain.”

You smacked Jeongguk’s shoulder and he giggled, leaning forward just enough to brush the tips of your noses together. Once. Twice. Four times.

“No,” You tilted to squish your noses together, locking his gaze to yours, “Try to pursue something with music. I don’t care if it’s DJing at that shitty club Taehyung was trying to get us to go to last week. Or maybe busking on the weekends. You can set up in front of the pond as you enter the neighborhood.”

“I don’t…”

“Try it,” You punctuated it with a hard kiss to his lips, “What can it hurt?”

You’d shifted to lay between his legs, cheek on his chest, kisses shifted to his chest over his shirt, his sprinkled to your forehead, cheeks, nose. He hummed into the ministrations, nosing over your hairline.

“Theoretically, if I were to become a famous musician, would you come to my first gig? It’ll never happen, but you’re a writer. Speaking in hypotheticals...”

You settled your chin between the hard planes of his chest, “Depends. Will you buy my novel?”

“Three copies. I’ll come to three separate book signings to get personalized notes from you.”

You giggled and Jeongguk couldn’t help but kiss your nose. Twice. “Then yes. I’ll come to your first gig. Maybe two of them, if you pay for my plane ticket.”

He seemed satisfied with the answer even as an insecurity seemed to linger on the tip of his tongue, one that festered when he glanced over your head to the ocean, still as dark and thrashing as before. “You really won’t forget about me, will you? Because truthfully, I don’t think I’ll ever forget about you.”

“You’re stuck with me, unfortunately. Give me your email and we can be penpals. You can remind me not to crush the dreams of elementary students while I’m at work…”

“...but no, Jeongguk,” You squeezed his waist, pressing your lips to the center of his chest, “I won’t forget you.”

“I’ll still send you my lyrics. They’ll probably be about you for a while, anyway.”

“I’ll let you read snippets of my novel, once I restart. Actually let you read something I’m proud of.”

“I’ll send you a picture of the first dollar I get from busking. It’ll probably be from Seokjin, but it’ll count.”

“I’ll miss you. And your cookies.”

“Miss implies forgetting,” His index finger lifted to prod at your pouted bottom lip, “We aren’t forgetting.”

Another sad smile, a different type of sad, one of the up most cliche smile because it happened, adorned your features as you raised a pinky finger. Slightly crooked, open, without your guard, “Pinky promise?”

Jeongguk’s lips distracted you from the feeling of home that came with the link of your pinky’s, squeezing onto your digit. “Pinky promise.”

Zero progress in eight weeks.

Park Jimin was standing in front of your desk with a copy of your novel in hand, a nervous smile pasted on his plump lips, feet shifting awkwardly beneath him as he waited on you to finish typing. He’d told you to keep working and who were you to deny him of that request.

“What can I do for you?” It wasn’t anything work related. You’d already passed the advice column and your office down to him in exchange for a feature column and a better office with a better computer monitor. He wasn’t getting that too.

The book hit your desk and he scurried to amend the flurry of papers that kicked up around it, speaking as he shuffled through the documents. “My girlfriend, she, uh, loves your novel and I was wondering if you could, uh, sign it for me? Maybe? It’d make her day, year probably, and—”

“Yeah, Jimin,” You reached for the book, dismissing his efforts to clean your desk with a flick of your wrist and a smile, a genuine one, “Of course I can sign it. What’s her name?”

The waxy cover contained the result of your efforts, the painstaking nights you’d stayed up sobbing over your manuscript, the early symptoms of carpal tunnel from hacking at your backspace too much, your familiarity with deleting and recovering entire documents. But most importantly, the return of your passion, your love, your fears the ultimate roadblock to the end of your novel and the beginning of a new, the one currently hidden behind a couple emails and your column for the following week.

The beauty of dual screens.

“Thank you so much,” The blonde gushed, clutching the novel against his chest when you were done scrawling on the cover with a ballpoint pen, “She’ll be so excited. Thank you!”

Your phone was prepared to text Hoseok, did you pay Jimin to do that?, when you noticed another notification, red and glaring at you from your messages application. It was a familiar contact name, a message written in a font generated by something, a three step process he must have taken to type, copy, and paste it. Even through the silly font did your heart swell.

They say lest we forget, but why forget when I can be there with you, if you’ll let me.

You kicked away from your desk, propping your foot onto the seat of your chair, phone onto your knee.

Alright, Guk, what’s the significance of this one?

There was several seconds of typing, deleting, typing again, silence, more typing. Finally, a message. A single emoticon, the side eyes, the ones that knew something with a slightly upturned mouth. You were halfway through another inquiry, an okay, what the hell does that emoji mean, Jeon? when you received a picture.

His hair was brown now. Dark and fluffy and disheveled across his forehead where a single pink note was pasted to his skin. The ink was dark, prominent, like he’d sat and scraped at it for hours.

I’LL SEE YOU SOON.

You called him.

“Jeongguk, what the fuck are you talking about—”

“I got an audition.”

You paused and he continued with a shaky breath, “I got an audition. In your town. For music. Singing.”

“...so what you’re saying is you’re going to become a big superstar and I’m going to have to pay my own way to your first concert—”

“Baby,” Jeongguk whined, “I haven’t got the spot yet.”

“Yeah, but you will.”

There was another pause, some rustling in the background and then he hummed, “I’m going to sing a song about you. For the audition.”

Your cheeks heated and you rolled toward the window, blankly staring at the towering building next to the office. “Yeah? What’s it called?”

“Wonder.”

“Yeah I wonder what you’ve titled the song about me, if it’s not my name—”

“The song is called Wonder…”

There was a pause and he was singing again, just as soft as you remembered, the same lyrics he’d serenaded you with on the beach holding a different weight now, both literally without the organic strum of a guitar and figuratively to what the polished poetry did to your healed heart, open and ready.

You murmured into his soft, teasing hums, hugging a knee to your chest, “That song, huh?”

“I told you already. I can’t seem to write anything that’s not about you,” You could hear Jeongguk’s smile, “That didn’t change in the months since you went home.”

Your cheeks heated all the way to the back of your neck, filtering to the shy roll of your shoulders as you hunched over your knee, squeezing it tighter, and you reveled in that he couldn’t see you to quip, “You know what has changed though? Your jokes. I think they’ve gotten dumber.”

There was still a smile in his voice, even as he threatened, “Alright, listen here you little—"

“Watch it or I’ll sue for you using ‘me’ without my consent.”

“You based an entire character in a bestselling novel after me. It’s only fair.”

You spluttered, “I did not—”

“And for the record? Washboard abs is a lame description of my godly physique. Even I know that and I’m but a mere lyricist.”

“I’m going to kick your ass when you get here.”

“...so you’ll want to see me?”

“Of course,” Your voice softened and you watched a bird climb altitude before fluttering to the windowsill, “I have to sign your three copies of my novel.”

Jeongguk laughed, sweet in your ears.

“I can’t wait…”

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