#sometimes you write a fic very specifically for one person
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Stella.
Stella.
This response is such an incredible gift! I can hardly begin to express how much it affected me to relive this chapter with you, and with such thought and insight! 🥹
Are we harboring perhaps a little crush here? + she’s not just starstruck or someone easily swooned by celebrity status.
Right on both counts! How could one not harbor a bit of a crush on America's golden "boy" but who is so clearly grown into being a man?! Especially after his nomad period and aging up like fine wine after. BUT she also has a level head on her shoulders.
I immensely enjoy writers working with all the things that the Blip would cause...
I would say that while it wasn't the first thing I knew about the Reader, it was in the first ten percent of things that I mapped out. There are a couple of major plot points that it will tie into later in the story, so I won't say anything about those, but one of the reasons it really felt like something I wanted for this Reader's backstory is that it gave a balance to Steve's other half if HE stayed and SHE blipped. As a unit, they could carry both persepctives and experiences together.
I love how competent we see Pepper be here, how she’s been so good at putting this team together.
...I forgot I put Maria Hill on this team.🧍🏻♀️ This chapter was written when I was verrrry deep into my rewatch of The West Wing and the presidential candidates were getting security/military briefings. At least I was thorough then! But I also didn't have any major plot points planned for international/military things to be affecting the candidates during the campaign, I just wanted to be thorough. AND I also remember when I wrote her onto this campaign team, I felt a very strong YEAH, BECAUSE WE DO NOT ACCEPT HALF OF WHAT HAPPENED IN SECRET INVASION!!! It just felt right hahaha.
After all, he is from a world where marriage wasn’t so focused on romantic love. But since he is a romantic, I’m definitely looking forward to them falling in love.
The reasoning Pepper lays out also has some elements of my own views of marriage - in that it HAS TO BE more than only romantic love, because marriage is hard work (as is anything worthwhile/that you invest in/that can grow). AND ALSO that married women should never be relegated to being only a trophy wife or a house wife (and I say that very specifically in that if those are roles that women want to have, then they should, but they should hopefully not be boxed into a corner).
I'M SO GLAD YOU LOVE HER! And not just this moment, but the other moments you mentioned that I was stitching little bits of character into her. Partly for Steve to fall in love with, but ... partly because in a lot of my Readers, I want it to feel like clothes that the person reading it can put on and wear for a while. Sometimes a costume, sometimes to deal with a complex issue, sometimes to have a wild time/experience something we otherwise never would... But when I write confident and driven readers or readers who are direct, I put a lot of what I would aspirationally hope that I could be into those characters, if that makes sense? I don't want them to be perfect, but I want them to have backbones and dreams and ambitions and reason and logic and real feelings that motivate them. For me, it's empowering - and if fiction gets to be an escape, sometimes I want to escape into healthy leading lady energy, and hope that that's what others reading this story can feel, too. 🥹
Oh, I’m intrigued by this. Is she a widow too?
🤐😏
This isn’t even a thirst trap, it’s a heart trap, and that’s worse.
this has the delightful found family vibes – which are definitely highlighting some major loss in First Lady’s background, I mean, she has to have a hint of craziness and not a lot to lose to jump into this headfirst – that I always enjoy in fic.
BINGO! Part of Reader's wiliingness to agree is the nature of being untethered to the life she was living.
But oh! Sam just! Sam is such a fantastic character/figure in the MCU, and I wanted to give him some good moments + parts to be part of this story, because Steve has strong ties to the important people in his life, you know? And so this story ending up having a strong inclusion of side characters started in this chapter, and although it's Steve x Reader, they couldn't be in a bubble - especially not given the campaign story shell, so I wanted to make everyone around them count/have significant roles to play.
"He might look like an all-American boy scout, but there's a lot more going on under the surface." + this is definitely hinting towards how he’s not just the perfect soldier or the good man but human and I am always here here for it. And we love Sam for recognizing all this in his friend.
It's so important to me to have characters that feel real, and I think... well, I think there can be this tendency around SOME people in MCU fandom (not all, but some), who hate and dismiss Steve's character for just being this perfect paragon boy scout idea of Captain America, and he's so much more. If we go to the Cap v. Iron Man, I think we see the same dismissal over Tony is just selfish but these are both only ASPECTS that they present, pieces that they struggle with, and when they're further and further explored, we see the complex layers. The complex Steve is the one I love to read and strive to write. And Sam giving a briefing here to our Reader about his character gave me the chance to put the marker in the sand and say it's the kind of Steve I was hoping to put in here, too.
And....also....
Sam - to be frank - is doing some damage control.
Because it sucks that Steve didn't come to this breakfast. THIS BREAKFAST WHERE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO MEET HIS WIFE FOR THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE THEY ARE GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW.
Reader is being very optimistic still, not letting it get to her, and definitely GENUINELY enjoying this time with Sam, but.... it still is what it is. Sam: not lying about anything, but definitely hyping his boy up so you don't resent Steve or feel defeated or insecure.
I know it's the delicious sort of slow burn when they don't even lay an eye on each other in the first two chapters.
BURN, BABY, BURNNNNN! IT'S GONNA BE SUCH A BURN, STELLA!
And, as I said in the very beginning of my response, this was such. a. gift. Doing basically a close re-read of this with you/through your comments also comes at SUCH an opportune/unique time because I just posted chapter 11 last Friday and I think I now have it tied down to just four more chapters, and it's reminding me of some of the key things that I had planted seeds for in the beginning, and some of them I know I've got strong threads that have already wrapped up, some I still need to wrap up but are on track, and some that I can circle back to that I forgot (like, oH HEY, WE'RE PROBABLY GONNA SEE MARIA HILL NOW because I did forget her 😩).
You are a goddess.
I'm sorry to hear that 2024 ended in such a drain and strain on your energy, and so I hope that 2025 can be a gentler and kinder year for you! Sending you so much 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻 both for spending so much time on this commentary and just for you in general.
Red, White & True: Manhattan & Brooklyn (1/?)
Characters/Pairings: Steve Rogers (future x curvy Millennial Female!Reader), Pepper Potts, Sam Wilson Word Count: 4k Summary: "There was an idea..." Words at the heart of what brought the Avengers together. Pepper Potts has persuaded Steve Rogers to step up and help again - but this time in a battle to The White House. She invites you to consider a key position.
Content/Warnings: none
Notes: This takes place in a post-Endgame scenario where Steve stays and generally most of TFATWS happened.
Prologue | Series
↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest
[MAY 15 - Manhattan, New York]
You try not to hold still while you wait in the lobby, but you’re nervous and the longer you sit, the more difficult it is to resist drumming your fingers, tapping your foot, jiggling your right leg as it’s crossed over your left, or even just chewing on your bottom lip.
You’re not anxious at all over meeting with Pepper, but what has you on alert is the possibility that you could theoretically meet Steve Rogers, former Captain America, today.
You take a deep breath, trying to calm your nerves. The lobby of Stark Industries is immaculate, all sleek lines and modern design. The large windows let in plenty of natural light, making the space feel open and inviting despite its corporate purpose.
Your mind wanders back to your college days when you’d walked into a different Stark Industries lobby for the first time, a hopeful intern wanting to make a difference at the then-new Stark Foundation office. Pepper had been very involved in building the Foundation at the time, and had become a key mentor and - as the years passed and you left Stark Industries - a dear friend. She had helped fuel some of your late-night study sessions through grad school. Living in a new state, she had shown up and seen you through breakups, family drama, and the stress of putting together your thesis. Even when your paths diverged, you'd managed to stay in touch.
Back then, she’d become like the older sister you never had, seeing you through some of the difficult years figuring out how to be a real adult. Now, here you are, waiting to potentially join a presidential campaign she’s orchestrating for none other than Steve Rogers.
The receptionist's voice startles you out of your reverie. "Ms. Potts will see you now."
You stand, smoothing down your carefully chosen outfit - professional, but not stuffy. As you follow the receptionist down the hallway, your mind races with possibilities. What position could Pepper have in mind for you? Your background in political science and your years working in non-profit management seem like they could be useful, but you can't help feeling a little out of your depth.
As you approach Pepper's office, you take a deep breath to steady yourself. The door opens, and there she is - Pepper Potts, looking as poised and confident as ever in a crisp white blouse and tailored navy suit. Her strawberry blonde hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail, and her smile is warm and welcoming.
"It's so good to see you," she says, embracing you in a quick hug. "Come in, please."
You step into her spacious office, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows with a breathtaking view of the city skyline. Pepper gestures to a comfortable-looking chair across from her desk, and you sit, trying to keep your nerves in check.
"I appreciate you coming on such short notice," Pepper begins. "I know it's been a few years since we’ve been able to catch up - even before the Blip.”
You were among the half who disappeared - still such a strange concept to grasp though you were supposedly settled back in. “I was happy to come! And of course I don’t mind a trip on the Stark Industries dime,” you say with a grin.
"Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?"
You shake your head. "I'm fine, thanks."
Pepper settles into her chair, folding her hands on the desk. "So, I know I told you we’re putting together the campaign team for Rogers for America, but I'm sure you're wondering more specifically why I called you here."
You nod, leaning forward in your chair, eager to hear Pepper’s vision.
"We're putting together an incredible team," she begins, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "I've been reaching out to some of the brightest minds in politics, economics, and social justice. We have former White House staffers, grassroots organizers, and even a few unexpected faces from the private sector who are eager to contribute their expertise."
You are instantly intrigued, trying to imagine the caliber of people she's describing. Your mind races with possibilities - perhaps that brilliant campaign manager who orchestrated the upset victory in the last Senate race, or the economist whose revolutionary ideas about sustainable development have been making waves in academic circles.
"We've got strategists who are anticipating every move our opponents might make," Pepper continues, "and communications experts who can craft messages that will resonate with voters across the political spectrum.”
You listen intently, trying to pinpoint where you might fit into this powerhouse group.
"There's Maria Hill," Pepper continues, "who's handling security and intelligence briefings. She's got connections that'll be invaluable. Then there's Peter Parker - you might know him as Spider-Man - he's officially our youth outreach coordinator, but he's also got a brilliant scientific mind that we're tapping into for policy development."
Your eyebrows raise at the mention of Spider-Man.
Pepper leans forward, her eyes locking with yours. "But here's the thing - we're not just assembling a team of political operatives and policy experts. We need people who understand the heart of what we're trying to do, who can see the bigger picture and help keep us grounded in our core values."
Your heart begins to race as you start to realize where this might be going.
"That's where you come in," Pepper says, a warm smile spreading across her face. "I've watched your career over the years, how you've navigated the non-profit world, building coalitions and making real change happen. You have a gift for bringing people together, for seeing connections that others miss. Your experience gives you a unique perspective that we desperately need."
Your heart races as you process her words. You had assumed you might be offered some kind of advisory role, perhaps in fundraising or event planning. Maybe even appearance management or offering occasional input on strategy. But from Pepper's tone, it sounds like she has something more substantial in mind.
"Where do you see me on this team?" you ask, trying to keep your voice steady.
"I've been putting a lot of thought into this," Pepper continues, her voice filled with conviction. “You know we’re doing something unconventional. Did you read the presidential plan?”
You nod. Steve’s bid for President of the United States was still technically not public knowledge. You had signed an NDA - being told only that you were receiving a proposal Pepper wanted your input and consultation on, with potential to join the team if you supported the initiative, and just silence if you didn’t.
“It’s bold, idealistic, aspirational; but it’s also unapologetic, has clear plans of action, and could be transformational in ways we haven’t seen in living memory,” you give your assessment.
“And it’s something you could see yourself being a part of?”
You take a deep breath, but smile genuinely. “I couldn’t sleep the first night after you sent it over. I couldn’t stop reading, hoping, re-reading, imagining possibilities!”
“Good,” Pepper responds. “Perfect.”
“Put me to work wherever you need me!”
“I was hoping you would say that because I have a very specific position I need to get filled, and you’re my first - and only - pick for the job.”
“Pepper, stop holding out!” A nervous and eager laugh escapes you. “Tell me!”
Her response slams into you like a freight train, knocking the air from your lungs.
“Future First Lady.”
You feel your jaw drop in shock, almost hitting the ground as your mind races with disbelief and anger. The room feels like it's spinning as you struggle to process the weight of her words.
"What?" you gasp, your voice barely above a whisper. "Pepper, I... I don't understand. First Lady? But that would mean..."
Pepper holds up a hand, her expression serious. "We're not just running a campaign here. We're trying to redefine what leadership looks like in this country. Steve is an incredible man, and he needs a partner who understands the complexities of modern America, not just a trophy wife, someone who can connect with people from all walks of life."
You shake your head, still reeling. "But I'm not - I mean, Steve and I aren't even - we've never even met!"
"I know," Pepper says softly. "That's part of the plan. We want to show that leadership isn't about who you're married to or what your last name is. It's about vision, compassion, and the ability to bring people together."
Pepper leans back in her chair, her expression at least revealing some concern over your reaction. "I know it's a lot to take in."
"A lot to take in?" you interrupt, your voice rising. "Pepper, it's insane! It’s May, and the election is in November. How could I possibly be the First Lady?"
Pepper holds up a hand, trying to calm you. "I know, I know. Let me explain."
But you're on a roll now, your initial shock giving way to indignation. "Explain what? How you thought it was okay to offer me a position that requires me to be married to a stranger? Use me to score points?”
"I understand your reaction," Pepper says calmly, "but please, hear me out. This isn't about scoring political points or creating some sham marriage. We're trying to redefine what leadership looks like in this country."
You take a deep breath, trying to calm yourself. "Go on," you say, your voice tight, “because you’re still trotting out marriage.”
"We can’t outright ignore traditional expectations and polling numbers. If Steve were running as the nominee for either of the major parties, we could probably win without him being married, but since he’s running as an independent, he needs a wife. That being said, we want to move away from the traditional concept of the First Lady as just the President's wife," Pepper explains. "The vision is a First Partnership. Two people who work together. There’ve been a few First Ladies who have done more with their platform and position, and that’s what we would want for you, too.”
You chew on your lip, not persuaded yet, but a little less angry.
“We have an opportunity to show what a healthy partnership in marriage could look like to new generations. You’re my first and only choice because of your skills, experience, and the vision I know you would bring to the table. But you’re also my first and only choice because I think you two are well-suited for each other.”
You open your mouth to protest, but Pepper raises her hand to stop you.
“You and Steve don’t have to put on a show and be madly in love - that’s not what I want, that’s not what he wants or expects either.”
You frown. “What does he expect?” you ask. And then you perk up even more. “Has he agreed to this? Shouldn’t he at least be here to make the offer himself?”
Pepper sighs. “It was easier for me to convince him to run in the first place than to agree that he needed a wife.”
“But you’re telling me he did agree?”
Pepper nods. “He did.”
You unconsciously rub the empty space on your left ring finger. “Couldn’t we just get engaged and leave the question of a marriage for whether or not he wins?”
A soft laugh falls from Pepper’s mouth. “He actually asked the same thing.”
“And…?” You raise your eyes expectantly.
“The public would rake us over the coals and accuse us of only doing it as a publicity stunt. The campaign would become a gossip column on your relationship status and nothing more.”
“But isn’t it a publicity stunt?”
“We can spin a marriage that seems to appear out of nowhere. Steve’s always been a private person when it comes to his personal life. We will tell people you met through me - which is true. I thought you were well-suited for each other - which I do. When people asked why the wedding just before announcing his bid for the presidency, we tell them you two didn’t want your relationship status to become the big question on everyone’s minds so they can focus on the platforms and policies instead and that every marriage takes work regardless of the length of the courtship.”
You sit in stunned silence for a moment, trying to process everything Pepper has said. The idea of marrying someone you've never met, let alone becoming the First Lady of the United States, seems utterly surreal. And yet, there's a part of you that's intrigued by the challenge, by the opportunity to make a real difference on such a grand scale.
"I need some time to think about this," you finally say, your voice barely above a whisper.
Pepper nods understandingly. "Of course. It's a lot to take in. But I want you to know that I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't think you were perfect for this role. Not just as a political partner, but as someone who could genuinely connect with Steve."
You raise an eyebrow. "You really think we'd be well-suited?"
"I do," Pepper says with confidence and warmth.
You rub your ring finger again, but this time you see Pepper’s eyes drop to watch your unconscious action, and you quickly stop. Her eyes, when you meet them again, are full of sympathy. You both lost husbands, but you don’t want to talk about it, yet again, and you don’t want to bring up a painful subject for her either.
She can read that in your tight-lipped smile.
So instead she says, “I can give you three days to think it over.”
You sigh and rise from your seat to go. “I don’t know if that’s long enough, but if you give me three days or three weeks, I don’t think it will change my decision I’ll land on. Give me the night to sleep on it. I think I’ll know by tomorrow morning.”
[JUNE 4 - Brooklyn, New York]
Three weeks later, your life has been packed up and put in a truck on its way to the new brownstone in Brooklyn that’s been acquired for you and Steve to move into, and you’re sitting at a table in a café a few blocks away, waiting to meet your future husband for the first time over breakfast. Every time the bell rings over the door, you dart your head to see if it’s him, but he’s evidently running late.
As you wait, checking to see if you have any messages on your phone, the bell over the door chimes once more. This time, when you look up, your breath catches in your throat. A tall, athletic man with dark skin and an easy smile has entered the café. You recognize him immediately as Sam Wilson, the new Captain America. Your heart sinks a little as you realize Steve isn't with him.
Sam spots you and makes his way over, his stride confident but casual. As he approaches, you notice the way his eyes scan the room, a habit born from years of military training and superhero work. He's dressed in civilian clothes - a leather jacket over a simple t-shirt and jeans - but there's no mistaking the aura of strength and capability that surrounds him.
"You must be the future Mrs. Rogers," Sam says with a warm smile, extending his hand. "I'm Sam Wilson. Steve asked me to come apologize and explain - and to have breakfast with you, if you’ll have me.”
You nod, forcing a smile, and shake his hand. "Of course. I understand.” You motion toward the chair across the table from you, inviting him to sit. “I know campaign prep must keep him incredibly busy."
Ever since you’d accepted the proposition to marry Steve Rogers and join him on the campaign trail to the White House, your own life had turned upside down, giving you hardly any time to breathe, and you’d been told this was only a mild version of what your own schedule was going to look like once Steve formally announced.
“Former President Bartlet agreed to meet with him, and the schedules ended up aligning this morning for Steve to go up to New Hampshire for a sit down,” Sam explains.
“President Bartlet?” you can’t help the awe in your voice. “I’d skip out on breakfast with me, too.”
“I hope I’m not a disappointment of a substitute,” Sam teases. “Since we’ll be working together as part of the senior staff, I volunteered because I was eager to finally meet you.”
His smile is genuine, and you feel the absolute truth of his sentiment. It melts away some of your disappointment and worry.
In return, your smile becomes a little warmer and easier. “I can’t help being a little disappointed - since I was hoping to finally meet my future husband - but he’s unemployed and you’re technically Captain America, so I guess it’s really an upgrade.”
Sam laughs. “Oh, I’m going to love you, I can tell.”
“Just promise me he’ll actually be at the ceremony tomorrow?” you ask. Your tone is light, but Sam calls your bluff.
His laughter fades, replaced by a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, he'll be there. Wild horses couldn't keep him away. Or androids. Or aliens. Or wizards. Or..." He trails off, realizing he might be overdoing it. "You get the idea."
You nod, appreciating Sam's attempt at humor. "I hope so. It would be pretty awkward to explain to the press why the groom was a no-show at his own wedding."
"Trust me, Steve takes this very seriously," Sam says, his tone becoming more earnest. "He may not know you yet, but he respects you and the commitment you're making. He's not the type to back out or let you down."
You nod, feeling a mix of relief and nervousness. "I suppose I should get used to schedule changes and last-minute adjustments," you say, trying to keep your tone light.
"It's part of the package," Sam agrees. "But so is having a team of people who have your back, no matter what." He leans forward, his eyes meeting yours intently. "I want you to know that includes me. We're not just colleagues in this; we're family."
His words touch you deeply, and you feel a bloom of warmth in your chest, the firs time you’ve felt grounded since you agreed to do this. "Thank you, Sam," you manage to say. "That means a lot."
The waitress approaches, he orders coffee, and you both order breakfast.
As she walks away, you take a sip of the drink you’d ordered while you were waiting before, mulling over Sam's words. "Can I ask you something, Sam? You know Steve better than almost anyone. Do you think...?”
You hesitate, uncertain if you should voice your doubts to Sam. But his open, friendly demeanor encourages you to continue, and you’re going to need to learn to trust this new circle of people you’ll be surrounded with.
"Do you think this is crazy?" you finally ask, your voice barely above a whisper. "Marrying someone I've never even met, maybe becoming First Lady... it all feels so surreal."
Sam leans back in his chair, considering your question carefully. "Crazy? Maybe," he admits with a small smile. "But then again, I've seen a lot of crazy things in my time with the Avengers. This? This actually feels like one of the more normal things I've been part of."
You can't help but chuckle at that, some of the tension easing from your shoulders.
"Look," Sam continues, his tone becoming more serious. "I won't lie to you. It's not going to be easy. The scrutiny, the pressure, the constant demands on your time and energy - it's going to be a lot. But if anyone can handle it, it's Steve. And from what I've heard about you, I think you're up for the challenge, too."
Sam pauses as the waitress returns with your breakfasts and his coffee. Once she's gone, he continues, "Steve doesn't do anything halfway. When he commits to something, he's all in. And he's committed to this - to you, to this campaign, to trying to make a real difference."
You nod, appreciating his honesty. "And what about... us? Steve and me, I mean. Do you think we can make this work? Not just for the campaign, but as a real partnership?"
Sam's eyes soften. "Steve's one of the best men I know. He's loyal, compassionate, and has a moral compass that doesn't quit. But he's also been through a lot, and he can be... guarded. It might take some time for him to open up fully."
You absorb this information, feeling a mix of apprehension and curiosity about your future husband. "I appreciate your honesty, Sam," you say softly. "I guess we'll both be navigating uncharted waters."
Sam nods, taking a sip of his coffee before responding. "True, but you won't be doing it alone. Not only do you have the support of the team, but I think you and Steve might surprise yourselves. You both have a strong sense of purpose, a desire to help others. That's a solid foundation to build on."
You pick at your breakfast, mulling over Sam's words. "I just hope we can find some common ground beyond the campaign," you admit.
Sam leans in, his expression earnest. "Like I said, when Steve commits to something, he gives it his all. That includes relationships. He may be reserved at first, but once he lets you in, you'll have his unwavering loyalty and support."
You nod, feeling a bit more reassured. "I appreciate that. I’m not some hopeless romantic, I’m not looking to be swept off my feet, but I just hope we can find some chemistry, some spark beyond just being political partners."
Sam chuckles. "Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Steve might be from the 1940s, but he's still a red-blooded man. And you," he gestures at you with his fork, "are definitely his type."
You feel your cheeks flush slightly. "His type?"
"Smart, independent, passionate about making a difference," Sam lists off. “
Your work in non-profits, your passion for social justice - that's right up Steve's alley. Plus, you've got that whole 'take no crap' vibe that he needs. I have a sense about these things, and you have it.”
You laugh, feeling some of the tension dissipate. "Well, I'll take your word for it. Though I have to admit, the idea of being Steve Rogers' 'type' is a bit surreal."
Sam grins. "Trust me, once you two actually meet, you'll see what I mean. Just don't let that 'aw shucks' routine fool you. He might look like an all-American boy scout, but there's a lot more going on under the surface."
You raise an eyebrow. "Oh? Do tell."
Sam shakes his head, still smiling. "Nah, I'll let you discover that for yourself. Where's the fun if I spoil all the surprises?"
You roll your eyes good-naturedly. "Fine, keep your secrets. But seriously, Sam, thank you. For breakfast, for the pep talk, for everything. I'm really glad I got to meet you before tomorrow."
"Me too," Sam says, raising his coffee mug in a mock toast. "To new beginnings and unexpected partnerships."
You clink your own mug against his, feeling a surge of warmth and camaraderie. As you finish your breakfast, the conversation flows easily between you and Sam. He regales you with stories of his adventures with Steve, carefully omitting any classified details but painting a vivid picture of the man you're about to marry.
You learn about Steve's dry sense of humor, his unwavering loyalty to his friends, and his surprising skill at sketching. Sam describes missions where Steve's quick thinking saved the day, but also quieter moments - movie nights with the team, intense debates over board games, and Steve's ongoing struggle to catch up on pop culture.
As Sam talks, you find yourself leaning in, captivated by these glimpses of reality, getting to know more about the man behind the myth. And even if the next twenty-four hours will be a whirlwind of you choosing and getting fitted for your wedding dress; interviewing candidates that have been vetted for your personal staff - assistant, pr strategist, stylist, initiative director; and a bachelorette party; you feel like you’ll be able to face it all with the bit of reassurance you’ve gained by spending this time with Sam.
next part: LAS VEGAS & CLEVELAND
↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest
I do not do tag lists, but FOLLOW @buckets-and-stories and TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS to be updated any time I publish a new work!
This story will have 3-4 chapters, depending on where I split up the narrative. I anticipate about a chapter a week, usually posted on Fridays.
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I wrote a thing for @cloud--atlas which was meant to be my last fic of 2023 and instead is my first fic of 2024!
Retail, Love, and Other Festive Poems
Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff, Background Steve Rogers/James Barnes; Teen & Up (no archive warnings apply); 3382 words
Summary: A December day in the life of Clint Barton - poetry lover, Assistant Manager at Ex Libris bookshop, and Natasha Romanoff’s partner.
Set the morning after Ex Libris by CloudAtlas, and towards the end of the remix Anthology by inkvoices. This will make much more sense if you read those first!
#fanfic#clintasha#clint barton#natasha romanoff#hawkeye#black widow#bookshop AU#poetry#sometimes you write a fic very specifically for one person#and when they like it OH MY HEART#YES YES YES
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most of my AO3 comments are really amazing but every now and then i'll get one that is just wildly entitled
like someone just wrote a comment on ch38 that's like "please have them get together soon i don't want to wait. also [x] needs more character development." ??? bitch i'm not a menu why are you out here trying to order
#i wrote like 3 different replies and then deleted them all bc i realized theres no point#like if they dont reply then what's the point and if they DO reply then it's not like they'll spontaneously change their ways#it's best to just let them be mad#like if they end up liking what happens then it solves itself and if they don't then that's karma#but it's like. unless otherwise stated. writers are not DJs and we don't take requests#i've gotten a few of those — kind of weird entitled asks that are like “could you write [this specific premise]?” and it's like#uhhh#that's not... really... a service that i offer...#i don't... remember... offering to do that....#my tinfoil hat theory is these people come from the Reader X fanfic communities where you just ask writers to do something#and they'll do a little ficlet for you#and they don't realize that most traditional fic spaces are not tailored in that way#for their personal enjoyment#like sometimes someone will ask me “would you want to write X?” and that's totally fine!! and flattering and fun!#but that's a very different question from “please do this enormously labor intensive activity for my personal enjoyment thank you.”#oh and that one AO3 comment? TEN CHAPTERS AWAY FROM THE END OF THE FIC#HADN'T EVEN FINISHED IT and was already tryna stick their finger in the pot. lmao. bruh.#fandom takes all kinds for real.
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the vast majority of fanworks are bad, and that's fine, actually. they are bad for the same reason that the average number of legs for a human person to have is less than two: statistics. like with all endeavours and especially creative ones, most people who write fanfiction or draw art of their favourite characters are bad at it. if you line up all the crochet projects in the world, most of them will be, well, bad. some are bad because they're the first thing a person ever made, or the second or third or tenth, and this kind of thing takes practice. others are bad because the person who made them is just not very good at it. maybe they just learned how to make granny squares and they're perfectly happy to never expand or improve on that. most people who dance or bake or garden or braid hair are not amazing at it! and you'd never go to your kid's dance recital or eat your friend's homemade carrot cake and expect the same experience as you'd have at a professional ballet performance or award-winning bakery. And that's if we assume there is an objective measure of Good Art, which there isn't! Some art is just "bad" because you don't like it!
I think though that specifically with fanfiction, we sometimes forget that when we read a book or watch a movie, dozens of people have looked at it and given feedback and made changes and done quality control before the final product reaches our shelves or screens, and that's not counting the original writer's learning process and past experience. A published book is not anyone's first crochet project, even if it is their debut novel. But with fanfiction, the barrier to entry is so low (on purpose! this is a good thing!) that we do get to see a lot of wonky granny squares, and on sites like AO3 they're sitting on the same shelf as the hand-made silk lace wedding dress and you can't always tell just by looking at it which is which. The consequence of this is that we encounter fic that we think is unpolished, has bad punctuation, is out of character, and we are tempted to think "well, this is awful! how dare this person put this wonky granny square on the same shelf as the lace wedding dress!" But that's not how fandom is supposed to work! That wonky granny square is somebody who is really excited about this TV show they just watched and they are reaching out into the void to share their excitement with you. To scoff at them for not making a lace wedding dress is really, really rude. Even if they did make a lace wedding dress, maybe it's just really not your style, or you think they should have used a different pattern, and it's still their wedding dress. You don't have to wear the dress and you don't have to read the fic.
We all know that there is some fanfic out there that is incredible. I think it's important to talk about that! But the vast majority of people who post their writing online are just sharing their little hobby projects that they make for fun and I also think it's important to remember that.
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How to make your writing sound less stiff part 2
Part 1
Again, just suggestions that shouldn’t have to compromise your author voice, as I sit here doing my own edits for a WIP.
1. Crutch words
Specifically when you have your narrator taking an action instead of just… writing that action. Examples:
Character wonders/imagines/thinks/realizes
Character sees/smells/feels
Now not all of these need to be cut. There’s a difference between:
Elias stops. He realizes they’re going in the wrong direction.
And
Elias takes far too long to realize that it’s not horribly dark wherever they are
Crutch words are words that don’t add anything to the sentence and the sentence can carry on with the exact same meaning even if you delete it. Thus:
Elias stops. They’re going in the wrong direction.
I need a word in the second example, whether it’s realizes, understands, or notices, unless I rework the entire sentence. The “realization” is implied by the hard cut to the next sentence in the first example.
2. Creating your own “author voice”
Unless the tone of the scene demands otherwise, my writing style is very conversational. I have a lot of sentence fragments to reflect my characters’ scatterbrained thoughts. I let them be sarcastic and sassy within the narration. I leave in instances of “just” (another crutch word) when I think it helps the sentence. Example:
…but it’s just another cave to Elias.
Deleting the “just” wouldn’t hit as hard or read as dismissive and resigned.
I may be writing in 3rd person limited, but I still let the personalities of my characters flavor everything from the syntax to metaphor choices. It’s up to you how you want to write your “voice”.
I’ll let dialogue cut off narration, like:
Not that he wouldn’t. However, “You can’t expect me to believe that.”
Sure it’s ~grammatically incorrect~ but you get more leeway in fiction. This isn’t an essay written in MLA or APA format. It’s okay to break a few rules, they’re more like guidelines anyway.
3. Metaphor, allegory, and simile
There is a time and a place to abandon this and shoot straight because oftentimes you might not realize you’re using these at all. It’s the difference between:
Blinding sunlight reflects off the window sill
And
Sunlight bounces like high-beams off the window sill
It’s up to you and what best fits the scene.
Sometimes there’s more power in not being poetic, just bluntly explicit. Situations like describing a character’s battle wounds (whatever kind of battle they might be from, whether it be war or abuse) don’t need flowery prose and if your manuscript is metaphor-heavy, suddenly dropping them in a serious situation will help with the mood and tonal shift, even if your readers can’t quite pick up on why immediately.
Whatever the case is, pick a metaphor that fits the narrator. If my narrator is comparing a shade of red to something, pick a comparison that makes sense.
Red like the clouds at sunset might make sense for a character that would appreciate sunsets. It’s romantic but not sensual, it’s warm and comforting.
Red like lipstick stains on a wine glass hints at a very different image and tone.
Metaphor can also either water down the impact of something, or make it so much worse so pay attention to what you want your reader to feel when they read it. Are you trying to shield them from the horror or dig it in deep?
4. Paragraph formatting
Nothing sticks out on a page quite like a line of narrative all by itself. Abusing this tactic will lessen its effect so save single sentence paragraphs for lines you want to hammer your audiences with. Lines like romantic revelations, or shocking twists, or characters giving up, giving in. Or just a badass line that deserves a whole paragraph to itself.
I do it all the time just like this.
Your writing style might not feature a bunch of chunky paragraphs to emphasize smaller lines of text (or if you’re writing a fic on A03, the size of the screen makes many paragraphs one line), but if yours does, slapping a zinger between two beefy paragraphs helps with immersion.
5. Polysyndeton and Asyndeton
Not gibberish! These, like single-sentence paragraphs, mix up the usual flow of the narrative that are lists of concepts with or without conjunctions.
Asyndeton: We came. We saw. We conquered. It was cold, grey, lifeless.
Polysyndeton: And the birds are out and the sun is shining and it might rain later but right now I am going to enjoy the blue sky and the puffy white clouds like cotton balls. They stand and they clap and they sing.
Both are for emphasis. Asyndeton tends to be "colder" and more blunt, because the sentence is blunt. Polysyntedon tends to be more exciting, overwhelming.
We came and we saw and we conquered.
The original is rather grim. This version is almost uplifting, like it's celebrating as opposed to taunting, depending on how you look at it.
—
All of these are highly situational, but if you’re stuck, maybe try some out and see what happens.
*italicized quotes are from ENNS, the rest I made up on the spot save for the Veni Vidi Vici.
#writing#writing advice#writing resources#writing a book#writing tips#writing tools#writeblr#for beginners#sentence structure#book formatting#literary devices
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I love your Homicipher hc, they are so good! Would you be willing to do some N/ SFW for Mr. Chopped too? Like you did for some of the others? I understand if you don't want to or if it makes you uncomfortable, thank you anyway!
MR. CHOPPED N/SFW HCS
a hc list of Mr. Chopped x reader {an: SORRY GUYS IM POSTING MAINLY HCS RN,,, fics for me take a lot longer than usual so im just posting hcs to atleast get some reach.}
warnings! : smut, cunnilingus/blowjob, idk,,, cuckhold
{an: freaky shit,,,, like hes just a head so its kinda hard to fuck. did give him a section for IF he had a body.. MAINLY HIM GIVING HEAD,, i didnt rly know how to write this im sorry!! def will write more tho,,, im into him ngl}
SFW
what it would be like to be in a relationship with Mr. Chopped.
it would be relatively hard to be in a relationship with him for obvious reasons, though not impossible!
the thought of you makes him happy, and especially when you hold him.
he would have Mr. Silvair help most of the time. usually for the romantic aspects of things though.
while Mr. Silvair doesnt quite understand the relationship, he is glad to help.
being a talking head will obviously raise a few insecurities, so just reassure him that you indeed do love him! he gets his feelings hurt easily.
he absolutely loves when you play with his hair. if you put bows in it or decorate it, that will make it all the more special for him.
the first time he bit you when he was sleeping, had him crying for hours. he felt so bad that he harmed you in any way, and it took a while for him to "recover"
he loves kisses! he always shouts things like "Up, Up" or "Desire, Carry!" just so he can kiss you.
if you manage to get a hold of make up or something, he would absolutely love for you to do his makeup. {he likes to feel pretty}
he is a very sensitive boy, also a crybaby. how cuuuttteee...
if Mr. Silvair gives him a body, {ignore that one ending... we dont talk about it} then he wpuld be even more excited to see you.
the moment he gets a body would mean so many hugs and affection as a thank you for saving him.
he gets picked on a lot by the others so he usually tries his best to come to you.
NSFW
sex...?
sex is definitely a hard concept with him.
while yes, it is possible, just not in the way intended.
you could see him more as a pure object for your pleasure honestly, and he wants that.
whether you are amab or afab, he is perfect for the situation.
ive seen this referenced by another writer, but he would be like a "rose toy" or a "fleshlight" as people call it.
its a secret pleasure to watch you go at it with someone else. {ex: Mr. Silvair or someone.}
if he is gifted a body though, he definitely will pay you back for saving him in the first place.
personally he would be a soft and sensual lover with his new body, rarely going rough unless specifically asked to.
he is more of a giving top. definitely not dominant but is a top. he cares more about your pleasure than his. though, he does get all giddy when you wish to go down on his or something.
he is open to literally anything you want, he would have very few limitations on what he would do, but everything is open for discussion.
again, definitely either wants to watch you have sex with someone else, OR wants someone else to watch you and him go at it. {he would prefer Silvair.}
he definitely likes when you pull his hair or use him. will be submissive sometimes.
he is the type to cry during sex...
omfmg i love him sm
{ made by @whokilledsamara }
#homicipher#smut#homicipher x reader#mr chopped head#mr chopped x reader#mr chopped x y/n#mr. chopped#mr. chopped x mc#mr chopped smut
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congrats on 5k queen! you’re writing is so brilliant beyond belief and you deserve all the love and support this site has to offer. can i request lando+angsty smut (the best combo)…prompts along the lines of “i don’t think im ever going to love anyone the way i love you”//“i don’t think i want to love anyone else”
how did it end?
ln x famous fem!reader
in which it ends, until…
i love this fic with my whole heart. thank u sm for this request, anon, and for being so absolutely for gorgeous and kind <3 kicking off the 5k celebration with a big, sad, sexy bang! lemme know what you think, hugs n kisses
songs to set the mood: how did it end? by taylor swift
warnings: 18+!! minors dni!! smut, angst angst angst, fluff, happy ending! exes to lovers, just. a lot going on. sad!lando, sad!everyone, so many feels, r is a big deal model, alcohol consumption, mentions of smoking
4.1k words
one gasp, and then…
“how did it end?” the woman strokes your arm, soothing, tentative.
you don’t know her all that well, she’s signed to the same agency as you, you see her in the halls sometimes and sit next to her in makeup chairs.
you stare blankly at her, registering. news travels fast apparently.
you smile, small, fake, tilting your head to the side. you mumble something about different schedules, timezones, right person, wrong time. she watches your face intently, with sympathy. you want to throttle her. she’s being kind and you despise her for it right now.
“i won’t tell anyone.” she affirms, her fingers still smoothing over the skin of your arm.
yes you will, you think. all of her friends, the rest of the building will know exactly what you’ve told her by the time you get to your meeting. you don’t begrudge her, though, that’s the nature of the industry.
“well, it was good to see you.” you nod, even go in for a quick hug, and then you speed away, beelining for the elevator. the ride is short, your managers office somewhere on the third floor and you shuffle down the corridor, ready to be informed of what your life will look like for the next three months.
fittings, shoots, paris trip.
mhm.
swimwear season, charlotte tilbury, meeting with the vogue journalist.
cool.
week off, few days in london, monaco grand prix.
no.
“what? no.” you splutter. out of habit, you reach for a necklace, frown when you realise it’s no longer there.
“what do you mean, no?” she narrows her eyes at you.
“i can’t go to the race. no.”
“girl, i love you, but did i ask?”
“you know i can’t-“
“you won’t have to see him.” she reasons.
“but what if i do? he’s obviously gonna be there, and the events before and after- no. no.”
“lando norris is not gonna be the end of you.”
you stifle a laugh, one that sounds more like a strangled cry.
what if he already was?
-
look who we ran into at the shops,
walking in circles like he was lost
lando stares at the shampoo.
specifically, the one you use. used. he can’t be too sure anymore, he supposes.
he’d popped out for a loaf of bread, about an hour ago. he didn’t want to acknowledge how long he’d been staring at the women’s toiletries section.
you seemed to live on, everywhere. lando could see you in his apartment, the passenger seat of his car, the back of the garage. even the fucking supermarket wasn’t safe. you were very much alive, moving on with life, and yet you haunted him like he’d killed you himself.
perhaps he had, in a way.
the basket grazes the outside of his leg.
that’s the shower gel he’d buy for you, the one you only used when you stayed with him in monaco.
there’s the tampons you asked him to buy, crying back at home on your- his bed.
oh, and there’s the shampoo that you made him buy, the one that you told him made his curls feel extra fluffy when he was between your legs-
“lando?” a voice calls, drawing lando out of the mist.
“oh, alex. hey.” lando croaks. he hasn’t noticed the lump in his throat until now. he clears his throat, running a hand through his hair.
“what you doing, mate?” alex asks, eyebrows furrowed. he scans lando’s face, puffy eyes, watery.
“shopping.”
“for women’s shampoo?”
“no, no, just… looking.” lando stutters.
“when was the last time you slept?” alex’s voice is laced with concern, apprehensive. he doesn’t know what to say to his heartbroken friend.
lando smiles weakly.
“i’ve been sleeping.”
alex sighs.
“okay, when was the last time you slept properly, then?”
lando’s shoulders visibly sag.
“about a month ago.”
-
we hereby conduct this post-mortem
“we can’t do this anymore.”
the words fall from your lips in a whisper, but they reach him like you’ve screamed them at him. he sits opposite you, in the arm chair, so far away, only a metre or so.
“i know.” lando breathes shakily.
“i don’t want this but…”
“yeah.”
it’s been such a good year. you’re in love. it’s not enough. there’s too much distance, too many outsider opinions, too much longing for someone who’s on the other side of the world.
he’ll be in london. you’ll be in brazil.
he’ll be in australia. you’ll be in amsterdam.
it’s too much.
“i love you, though.” you remind him meekly.
“don’t know how to not love you.” he sniffles.
your heart shatters, the pieces flying over the room, spilling across the floor. they mix with the splinters of his, painting the room red. all you feel is blue.
you cry in his arms when he takes you to bed, his own tears spilling over your collar bone when he buries his head in your neck, licks over the marks he’s left there. to remember me by, he’d muttered dryly.
when you’re both finished, he lays there for a moment, still on top of you. damp with sweat and tears, the taste of one another still lingering on your tongues.
“how is it possible that i miss you already?” he pants, lips grazing just below your ear.
“i get it, lan. i’ve been missing you for a while.”
you’re gone when he wakes up.
and so, a touch that was my birthright became foreign
-
come one, come all
it’s happening again
the empathetic hunger descends
there are about six cameras pointed at you when he asks the dreaded question.
you’re in new york, sat on a talk show hosts sofa, lit by stage lights and his inquisitive eyes. two hundred people sit in the audience, on the edge of their seats waiting for you to spill your secrets.
“so, what happened there, with lando?”
you plaster on the fakest smile to date, crossing your legs anxiously.
“we’re both just so busy, you know? he’s doing amazing things in f1 and i’m all over the place with work.”
“we love both of you over here, it was sad to hear.” he sympathises, adjusting his tie and leaning back in his chair. his fingers drum over the wood of his desk, waiting for more.
vultures. everyone is a vulture.
“and we still have a lot of love for each other. he’s a wonderful person.”
there are tears in your eyes and bile rising rapidly in your throat when you shake hands with the crew, the host, and retreat to your dressing room. you stumble into the en-suite and throw up. then, you fall onto the sofa and cry. you fix your makeup at godspeed and reply to the text from your team, inviting you to drinks at some rooftop bar, promising to meet them there. you punctuate the text with one too many exclamation marks, feigning excitement.
“we still have a lot of love for each other.”
translation: i can’t understand: how did it end?
-
lando watches your interview. of course he does. he watches everything that you do, watches the way you set the world on fire.
he can’t help himself where you’re concerned, like an addict craving the next hit. you look so pretty on tv, glowing. you look fine.
god, why do you look fine?
he hates himself for hating just how fine you look. he is not fine.
“he’s a wonderful person.”
your words ring in his ears. they anger him, because if he’s oh-so-wonderful, why aren’t you here? why isn’t he there with you, waiting backstage? why can’t you just hate him? why can’t he just hate you? maybe you will, if he shows you just how not wonderful he can be.
he gets drunk that night. forces max to hit the clubs with him. sticks his tongue down a pliant woman’s throat. doesn’t ask her name. let’s her invite him back to her place. it has to be her place, he can’t fuck someone else in your bed, the one you used to share. he leaves minutes after he’s pulled out. he’s sure she’s lovely, too good for him and his bitter fucking heart. he feels utterly disgusting.
lando goes home, scrubs his skin red, and then does it again. he doesn’t go to sleep, watches from his balcony as the sun begins to rise over the sea. he hikes to the highest point he can reach in monaco, where it’s quiet and there’s no one to judge him, or worse, sympathise with him.
he stands at the edge of the cliff. screams once, twice. he sits on a rock, and lets himself cry.
the deflation of our dreaming
leaving me bereft and reeling
my beloved ghost and me
sitting in a tree
d-y-i-n-g
-
your stylist is plying you with options.
you can wear the denim with the cream OR you could do the red and white? or we can go full glam! or! or! or! we could-
you drown her out. you don’t give a fuck. not a single one.
what you wear to the monaco grand prix is quite literally the least of the your problems. your biggest problem, of course, is that you have to go to the fucking thing.
visibility is important, get people talking! the words of your manager ring in your ears until you have a dull migraine brewing behind your ears.
you leave the fitting not entirely sure what you’re wearing, but your stylist will be sending the clothes over so you can pack.
when you land in all too familiar nice, there are cameras. when you get to the hotel in monaco, you and lando are already trending on twitter. well, at least he knows you’re coming. when you’re getting your makeup done before your first event, you get a text.
i’ll try and keep my distance.
try.
try is such an interesting word. the fact that he has to try to stay away makes your belly flutter with embarrassing, self loathing butterflies. don’t try too hard, you want to respond. you don’t.
should’ve told you i’d be here you shoot back.
you think i didn’t already know?
of course he knew. he’d probably asked god knows how many brands to invite you. you try and feign an illness but your team drag you kicking and screaming to the event.
-
there are no two ways about it: you’re drunk, on a tuesday night, somewhere in the principality. a few cocktails with a jewellery brand turned into a night on the town, bar hopping with people you hardly knew and barely recognised.
you’re shaking your ass in jimmy’z, pretending to have fun when you see him.
lando stands at the bar, watching you, jaw tensed, eyes solemn. you exit the club faster that his car down a back straight, stumbling into the smoking area. you bum a cigarette from a guy who tries really hard to convince you that he’s the son of a british lord, and sink into the corner, ignoring the people recording you.
depressed model shame smokes outside monaco club because she is fucking pathetic, the headlines will read.
“thought you quit that shit.” his voice washes over your body like you’ve been set on fire, smooth tone, ambiguous accent making you ache.
“i did but then i got forced to come to monaco, so.” you shrug.
“forced?”
“‘m here for work.” you sigh.
“i guess i am too.” he mumbles. you raise an eyebrow.
“you live here, lan.” you tease. lan rolls off of your tongue too sweetly.
“doesn’t feel like it anymore.”
how can it, without you? he wants to scream at you. he can’t, you don’t deserve it.
“how are you?”
you want to touch him.
“shit.”
he needs a taste.
“yeah.”
you put your cigarette out. it tastes like shit, half smoked.
you stand there, stare at each other.
take me home, you want to beg.
come home, he clenches his fists, trying not to grab you and remind you how you’ll always be his, right here, up against the side of the club.
“good luck, if i don’t see you.” you whisper. you linger, praying that he’ll beg you to stay so that you can crumble into his arms, without having to make the first move.
lando ponders his options. his head and his heart wage a war.
logic wins, unfortunately.
“thank you.”
you take that as your queue to get the fuck out of there, and disappear into the night.
-
it’s raining on sunday. the dreary weather seems to perfectly sum up what has been the worst week of your life.
you’ve seen your ex boyfriend more times than you can count, ended up with about four hangovers as a result, and with a pounding head, you have to sit in the paddock club and wait for the sound of engines to split your head in half. it was your own doing, so you’d suck it up, recognising that you were a disgustingly privileged bitch, and there are people who would sell their kidneys to do what you’re complaining about.
you never complain, not usually. but your heart hurts and your body hearts and your mind hurts and it’s just not fair. lando is gorgeous, and you miss him so badly, and your shoes are digging in. who the fuck thinks it’s a good idea to wear heels to an f1 race?
you see him before the race, mouth good luck from afar. he winks. it’s something you used to do before every race. old habits die screaming.
the rain falls harder, the track slick. you say a prayer and take your seat.
“norris has this in the bag, he’s bloody good in the wet.” you hear some old guy say behind you. you are cursed with the knowledge of just how good in the wet he is, and you end up flushed.
he wins. his second one in three races. you pray that no one notices the way you weep. everyone notices.
you make a mistake and rush for the podium, your pass giving you access. he graces the top step and you sob, grinning like a fool, soaked through with rain. the anthem plays, the champagne pops. he finds your eyes in the crowd. your hair falls, stringy and curled, mascara smudged. you are the most breathtaking sight. he stands still, washed with an onslaught of champagne, watching you like he’s scared to take his eyes off of you. his boyish grin and hopeful eyes render you weak - you’re there for him, after all - and he can’t help but bask in that little fact.
dangerous territory. you break, and disappear.
-
say it once again with feeling…
the photographers barely get a second to snap a picture of the top three, because lando is gone. he takes the stairs two at a time, descending from the podium and throwing his pirelli cap and a shaky apology at his pr rep. the adrenaline spike makes his blood rush; he needs to find you and stop you and tell you that he will never be able to stop loving you.
the exit is the natural assumption, and he nearly slips a thousand times as he sprints through the paddock. the ground is wet, but he figures that if his car made it, so can he. the gates are in sight, and so are you, your clothes sticking to your shivering frame.
he calls your name, thunderously travelling towards you, his voice hitting your ears like a sonic boom. you freeze, turn slowly until your facing him. the rain splashes around you, not letting up.
you’re within his reach, and he pulls you in, hugging you tight. you melt into him, clinging like he’s a life force. he inhales you, your scent that he’s missed so horrifically. you crumble, and so does he, pieced back together as one.
“i can’t do this, i can’t.” he kisses the words into the cold skin of your neck.
“no, neither can i.” you choke wetly with emotion.
“miss you too much. it’s too hard, it’s stupid, it’s-“
“wrong. it’s wrong. ‘m sorry.” your breath fans his face, breathing life into him, life that he’d lost four months ago.
he grabs your shoulders, lowering so that his eyes are level with yours. his curls fall over his eyes, sodden from the rain.
“i don’t think, no, i know: i’m never gonna love anyone the way i love you.” lando speaks slow, convincing. your chest is tight.
“i don’t want to love anyone else.” you croak, the lump in your throat making it hard to breathe.
“come back to me.” he mutters, pleading.
“don’t think i ever left.” you breathe, hushed.
your lips slot over his easily, it’s like breathing. the kiss is messy, helpless, and he engulfs you whole, his body wrapping around yours like a blanket. you latch onto his race-suit, drawing him in, and then you both seem to remember where you are.
lando norris caught kissing ex like horny teenager in monaco paddock!
you pull away with breathless chuckle. the air is fresh, and you feel alive. he steals another peck.
“wait for me at home. i’ll be quick.” his hand finds you ass, just for a second and you scold him playfully.
home.
yeah, home.
“don’t make me wait.” you grin.
his brain short circuits.
“do you still have your key?” he splutters, refocusing.
you scoff. “never took it off the chain.”
-
you pace the apartment, taking in the space. it hasn’t changed, but it’s messier, a visual representation of lando since you left. the pit of your belly swirls with anxiety, anticipation. he’ll be back soon, and he’ll kiss you, make love to you, remind you that you’re home and that it’d be stupid to leave again.
you’re still damp from the rain, shedding layers until you’re left in your vest and jeans, ridiculous heels kicked off by the door, your jacket airing over the back of a chair.
he hasn’t taken down the pictures of you together. he hasn’t moved your ugly collection of magnets from the fridge. he hasn’t changed the blinds that you chose, but he didn’t really like. your candles sit on the bookshelf half burned, the teddy he’d won you at a fair sits neatly on the sofa. the L pendant and it’s chain is strewn over the coffee table, right where you left it the morning after it ended. your breathing is heavy.
the front door opens behind you.
you don’t move, your eyes still fixed on the silver chain, overwhelmed by how empty your neck feels all of the sudden. he comes up behind you, his head resting on your shoulder, arms finding home around your waist. you often used to find yourselves in this exact position; while you brushed your teeth, made coffee. the room is deathly silent, breathing and the distant buzz of post race festivities the only thing you can hear. lando follows your gaze.
“kept it. knew that one day, you’d come back for it.”
“i came back for you.”
“and that necklace will stay with you when i can’t be there.”
you nod. he kisses your neck.
“missed you so bad.” you gasp. he licks your skin, bites down softly.
you spin in his arms, his hands pawing at your hips and everything blurs when he kisses you.
-
shaky fingers work over zippers, buttons, clasps, and then you’re both bare. you sink into the mattress that you missed so much, his body moulded with yours when you both tumble into the sheets. this is messy and frantic, utterly lovestruck. the lightning strike of his touch has you keening, sweating beneath him already.
“missed you. missed this.”
“do something, lan.” you cry, quiet against his shoulder.
“missed my perfect girl.” he grunts, lips working your chest while his fingers leave a trail of goosebumps over your inner thigh.
“please.” you sigh when his fingers dip between your folds, sliding over your wet flesh. his lip catches between his teeth, eyes fluttering shut at the feeling of you.
he thumbs at your clit, stroking over you in slow, firm swipes, and then he’s sinking a digit into you, slow and steady. your toes curl, tears pricking your eyes at the intrusion, but you don’t have much of a chance to adjust, a second finger joining the first. he fucks you full, the stretch of just two fingers making you whine, one hand threading into the sheets while the other slams over your mouth. you want to hide, the pleasure rendering you a mess across the pale grey linen.
“no, let me look at you.” lando rasps, spare hand tugging at your wrist. you whine, writhing when he curls his fingers. “why are you hiding?”
you can’t hold back the choked cry that sounds from the back of your throat, his palm bumping your clit as he grinds his fingers deep.
“gone shy on me, baby? where’s my good girl gone?” lando coos, moving so that he’s leaning over you. the angle change sends your legs flying, kicking out at the sweet torture. “‘s because you haven’t been fucked right in so long, hm? can’t remember how to behave?” he’s smirking down at you, scanning the changing lines of your face.
“need it, need-“ you stutter, the words dying on your tongue.
“words, pretty girl, words.” lando encourages, false sympathy dripping from his tongue.
“need to cum, want you to make me…” you trail off.
“was that so hard?” he tuts, and everything speeds up.
the sound of him working you so sweetly makes you shake, your thighs clenching tight around his hand. the wet squelch hits your ears and you blush, cheeks coloured deep with embarrassment, awe, desperation.
your mouth drops open, screaming silently when it hits, your thighs slick. you drip down his wrist, his hand covered in your release.
“there’s my girl.” lando sighs, diving down to kiss you hard.
you can feel the damp press of his fingers as they dig into your thighs and you squirm beneath him, finding your way into his mouth.
“fuck me.” you slur, teeth knocking with his. he swallows you whole, groaning into your mouth.
“not so shy now, hm? been dreaming of hearing you beg for it.” lando shudders, shifting between your legs.
you can feel the press of him, thick against your cunt and you wiggle your hips, pushing to meet him halfway. the stretch burns deliciously, and you grab at his shoulders, dragging him in.
“fuck, baby.” he breathes, sinking into you slowly. “feel like heaven.” disbelief coats his voice, like he can’t reconcile that this is real; you’re back here, his, in the bed you were always supposed to share.
“it’s so good. feel so good for me, lan.” you whisper, lacing your fingers through his hair.
“love you so much.” he kisses you like he means it, rocking into you with purpose.
“can’t believe i lived without this.”
“can’t believe you’re all mine.”
the release builds, every thrust reminding you of what you could have lost for good. there was no lack of love, in fact you were starting to wonder if you had loved each other too much before.
“never losing you again. can’t live without you. my beautiful girl.”
your tummy grows tight, and he finds your clit when he feels you clamp down on him. he pulls you through the pleasure, guides you to your orgasm and you blindly follow him. you’d follow him anywhere, you decide.
you tell him you love him when you let go, spilling all around him, warm. he’s panting, kisses your forehead gently. he rolls off of you, and you feel the slow drip instantly, but you curl into his side and he wraps around you.
home.
“promise me something.” he whispers. you feel the way he shakily inhales.
“hm?”
“don’t leave again. you belong here, too. with me.”
your eyes are watery.
“i’m staying. ‘m yours.”
“about that…”
lando springs from the bed, naked, disappearing from the room. you watch, confused, cold all of the sudden.
you can hear his footsteps padding through the hallway, and then he’s back, his figure in the hallway. he runs, jumps, lands gracelessly next to you. endeared, you laugh softly.
“sit up.”
you do, leaning up to sit next to him. his fingers skim your shoulder, pushing your hair out of the way. cool metal dances over your skin.
“back where it belongs.” lando smiles at you, eyes wide and stunning.
you toy with the L. something heals in your chest, right around where your heart is.
“the sweetest boy.” you shake your head in disbelief, grin up at him like a fool.
“bath?”
“you know me so well, noz.”
come one, come all
it’s happening again
-
oh, my heart. there is something deeply wrong with me
-
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Advice for writing smut???
gonna do bullet-points of things i tend to live by when it comes to smut (this is just my opinion):
don't switch styles: the way you write the smut has to be consistent with the way you write the rest of the story, so if your story is more comedic or romcom-y in nature, the way you write the smut should have those stylings. i personally find it very jarring when authors decide to break the format for the smut, almost like the story has to stop for the sex intermission; if you're writing a horror story, the smut must be informed and influenced by that genre, and if you are breaking genre for the smut portion, tell us why you're suddenly switching gears (it has to be an aesthetic choice you're making on purpose). likewise, if your style in that story is more lyrical, the smut has to be somewhat lyrical too, or if your story is more cormac mccarthy-esque-cut-and-dry, the smut can't suddenly involve an effluvia of purple, sappy prose. integrating the smut in the story and treating it like any other part of the story is key to me. too often i've seen ppl switch to this anonymous pornified style when they get to the smut
which brings me to specificity. i'll talk about het sex, since that's what i tend to write most: not all men are going to be fingering or eating pussy the same way, not all dicks are big and they shouldn't be, not all women immediately get excited by fingering, not everyone moans the same way or makes the same sounds. you're writing about particular characters so it has to be particular to them. i know this is very old advice, but i think it bears repeating
there isn't an exact formula or sequence you have to follow, there aren't precise steps, you don't have to go "well, first he has to kiss down her neck, then reach the boob area, then play with the nipples, then put the nipple in his mouth, then slowly go down on her, then prepare her for entering her etc. etc. etc." this can get boring and repetitive and you start thinking of your characters as these mechanical dolls who have to fuck for your audience. and that can be a vibe too, if you do it on purpose. but sometimes you can get stuck in a porn routine (and ofc, having only the guy show initiative can also get boring)
in order to break that, insert some character moments. what are the characters thinking during this? sometimes they might be thinking of something completely unrelated on the surface, but which has a thematic relevance that can make the scene hotter. likewise, maybe they're doing smth that seems unsexy on the surface, but which, within the context of the story might be really hot. sex doesn't just involve, well, sex, but so much weirdness and humanity and creativity. two bodies (usually) are trying to do this really awkward thing together and they might have a lot of baggage and history to inform it. there's a lot you can do with that.
don't make it glossy and clean, where everyone smells of strawberry shampoo and there is never anything out of sync. the most boring smut tends to be the kind where no one makes any mistakes and everything is super efficient. i imagine it feels like using an industrial pump to milk various farm animals.
and you know what? you can make that hot too. you CAN write a kind of robotic efficient smut and make it really interesting based on the context. let's say you're writing a 1984 AU fic where ppl are forced into intimacy only to procreate and their sex drive is diminished. you can play with that premise and lean into the dehumanizing industrialization of sex, but you have to mean it, aka your narratorial voice must be conscious of these factors.
if you're writing dubcon, make the dubious part present, make sure you draw out the ambivalence and ambiguity. if you're writing noncon, the character whose consent is being violated has to be transformed by this in some way. it can be forced pleasure, for instance, but not only. it has to be a journey for them too, some kind of spiritual pit, or a form of access to terrible knowledge. i know this is a personal thing, but noncon doesn't work for me if the character being noncon'd is just sort of *there*, suffering passively. i think that sort of dead passivity can be done very well too, but the narratorial voice has to persuade me.
that being said, don't be afraid of fear in consensual sex. terror and vulnerability are a part of consensual sex too, imo, and again, depending on the story and the characters, there's a lot you can explore there
i personally find it really hot when the narratorial voice starts discussing some of the ideas that the story wants to convey during the smut. so like, you can characterize person A and outline their worldview and their plans while they're ramming person B, and the thinking & fucking are thus entwined. idk, i dig that
speaking of which, smut can convey world-building details and social/philosophical ideas, not just emotions and character beats
not all smut has to end with mutual orgasm or even one-sided orgasm, it depends what you want to do or where you want to go. again, you don't have to follow a sequence. plus, it's fun (and hot) to write about frustration and failure too.
if you want to mix up the descriptions, resort to the story & characters. you'll find it's easier to describe someone fondling a boob in a new or at least interesting way if you're thinking about that particular character in that particular story, and not just Man X from planet porn (sorry to be snarky, but mainstream erotica is soooo guilty of this)
screaming & really intense reactions are cool but they have to match the characters and the situations
sometimes, it's hotter if an effect is mild or negated, if the usual outcome doesn't happen; mix up the order of events, toy with the usual reactions. it's not about being original, it's about finding out what works for your characters. writing about sex is, in a way, a performance of it, an attempt to go through the sexual motions, to find out what works and doesn't, to engage with the erotics of text (roland barthes entered the chat)
if you are bored by your own smut, that's a problem. i know we all talk about how hard we find writing smut, and IT IS hard, and sometimes it's not enjoyable, because writing itself is often not enjoyable, but even when it's painful and annoying, it gives you that little intellectual kick like "huh, i'm creating this and making these people do this, and ohh look, i can maybe put this unnamable thing into words". but if you become bored, that's a sign you have to look at the language & characters and figure out what's not working for you
last thing i'll underline: pay attention to your narratorial voice. in this ordeal, you are the seducer. not the characters. you have to seduce us with words and context. your voice matters the most. you can persuade us of anything. but you have to be confident in your weirdness and particularity. this is your bedroom (so to speak), so invite us in.
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okay so I just wanted to start by saying I love you're moonwater stories so much.
Ive been thinking about this like paring ig for a bit and your recent moonwater story when r gets home from girls night just made me think of it more so if you're interested id love for you to do it.
Basically its like poly moonwater plus Barty ive been calling it moonwaterkiller in my head (idk if its already a ship or already has a name but I haven't been able to find anything) but basically I feel like r and Barty would be like a chaotic duo and reg and rem would just be like wtf a lot idk... I just think it has some potential and I just love your writing so fucking much.
(I also just love how you write Barty)
so if you're interested I think it would be cool
much love :)
I love the way your mind works babes. thanks for your request! (it's almost two am where I am so please forgive any awkward sentences or spelling mistakes). also, if I didn't completely lose everyone with my DeathStar fics - this may very well do it. && this was written with the help of our fabulous @unstablereader
poly!moonwater x chaotic fem!reader + Barty Crouch Junior
Regulus didn’t know whether to be concerned or slightly aroused at the slightly deranged way that Remus was stalking the halls in search of you and Barty.
You and Regulus had both at one point or another been in a friends-with-benefits situation with Barty (albeit separately) during your time in school, before you and Regulus went and fell in love with a Gryffindor.
Regulus still wasn’t quite over the humiliation; both of falling in love and falling in love with a Gryffindor.
Of course, you and Regulus both stayed friends with Barty; Regulus mostly because he couldn’t shake him (ignoring the fact that Regulus really was quite fond of his maniacal friend), and you because the two of you really were sort of two sides of the same hyperactive galleon.
And though Remus (and sometimes Regulus) liked to pretend that yours and Barty’s friendship caused them grief, they couldn’t deny how much they valued Barty’s loyalty and devotion to his friends; specifically you.
Regulus’ new favourite thing was easily Remus’ new found appreciation for Barty.
Up until this point, Barty had been his notoriously flirty and salacious self when it came to the likes of Remus, who wasn’t yet accustomed to Barty’s unique…personality.
However, once Remus realised the history between his two partners and the other Slytherin boy, he quickly came to appreciate the kind of pull Barty could have on people.
So, Remus had started flirting back.
Barty hated it.
Regulus loved it.
You started keeping track of the number of times Remus reduced Barty to a blushing and stuttering mess in your notebook.
Barty hated that too.
It was nearing curfew and Remus and Regulus hadn’t seen you all afternoon.
Usually that was fine, considering you were a bit of a free spirit. What was concerning, however, was that they hadn’t seen Barty either.
Regulus watched as Remus checked the stupid map that his brother and their friends had created when his brows furrowed in confusion.
“What? Don’t tell me they’re in the middle of the Black Lake again?” Regulus asked quickly, moving to stand over Remus’ shoulder to peer at the map.
“Again?”
“Don’t ask.” Regulus muttered.
“But…doesn’t Barty not know how to swim?”
“I said don’t ask.”
Seeming to know better, Remus turned back and pointed towards the Ravenclaw common room on the map. “It says they’re up in Ravenclaw tower?”
“For fuck’s sake.” Regulus muttered, dragging a hand over his face.
“How’d two Slytherin’s manage to get into Ravenclaw tower?” Remus asked bemusedly, earning him an unimpressed glare from Regulus.
“Remus, I love you, but that was perhaps the dumbest question you’ve ever asked me.”
Remus rolled his eyes as he closed the map and tucked it back into his trunk.
“Come on, we might be able to catch up to Pandora on her way up and have her help us in.”
They had indeed caught up to Pandora, and Pandora had indeed helped them in, though it seemed to be for naught.
“I thought your stupid map said they were here.” Regulus muttered as he surveyed the common room, unable to spot a single lick of green and silver.
“It’s not stupid and they are in here.” Remus muttered back, moving to stand in the dead centre of the room.
“How do you know they’re here if you can’t see them?”
Remus glared at Regulus before looking around to ensure no one could hear them. “I can smell them.” He whispered.
Well Regulus just didn’t know what good these wolfy senses were if they were still out two Slytherin’s.
“Shit.” Regulus heard whispered suddenly as a quill fell from the air and landed beside his foot.
Remus and Regulus both looked up to see you and Barty casually lounging in the chandelier above them.
“Are you sodding kidding me!?” Regulus shouted.
“I think our cover’s been blown.” You said simply to Barty as if you didn’t have two fuming and fretting boyfriends standing nearly forty feet give or take below you.
“Pity.” Barty responded as he peered down. “This was a nice refuge.”
“How’d you even get up there?” Remus cried, pacing like he was getting ready to catch you should you fall.
“Magic.” Barty taunted from above.
“Junior, so help me gods if that witch falls I-”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Lupin. I resent the insinuation that I would ever let anything happen to our sweet angel baby.” Barty bit back immediately.
“Okay, okay. Fair enough.” Remus acquiesced as if he were negotiating a hostage situation. “Why don’t you both just come down here, nice and slow, okay?”
Both you and Barty leaned forward to look down at the two boys, causing the chandelier to swing precariously.
“Fucking hells! Stop moving!” Remus shrieked, causing the attention of the few Ravenclaws sitting in the common room to look over.
“Such a worrier.” Barty muttered as he stood and started manoeuvring himself to the edge of the chandelier - you following him over and causing the chandelier to tip to a nearly 90 degree angle.
“I’m going to be sick, I’m actually going to throw up right here.” Regulus muttered mostly to himself whilst Remus tried to stand directly underneath you lest you need to be caught.
To Remus and Regulus’ absolute horror, Barty launched himself away from the chandelier, grabbing at the billowy banners hanging from the ceiling causing the chandelier to swing away from him like a pendulum.
“JUNIOR!” Remus shouted, causing Barty to momentarily look shamefaced as he looked below him.
As the chandelier swung towards the opposite wall, you too launched yourself at one of the billowy banners hanging from the ceiling and began monkey climbing down them.
“Can you make sure she doesn’t fall, please.” Remus barked at Regulus as he made his way towards Barty.
Barty let out a high pitched screech and began hastily making his way down the wall. “Run Treasure! Save yourself!” He shouted dramatically.
You turned quickly at that and saw Regulus making his way to you.
You let out a surprised squeak and hurried down, and before Regulus realised what you were doing, you had used your wand to open one of the windows and were shimmying out.
“Oi! What the-” but before Regulus could even shove his torso out the window, you’d managed to shift into your animagus form - a mink, which Regulus felt was very fitting considering what a sodding cheeky minx you were being right now - and began scaling your way down the side of the building.
Regulus was interrupted by the sound of a squeal - Remus’ squeal - and turned to see Remus hanging halfway out of the window in much the same fashion that Regulus had been.
Unlike Regulus, however, Remus had been successful in his capture of Barty and had him hanging from the tallest tower at Hogwarts by one of his arms.
“Junior! Are you trying to sodding kill me!?” Remus barked angrily at him, trying to pull Barty up without any help from Barty himself.
Barty looked up at Remus with all the innocence he could muster (read: none) and winked.
“Catch me if you can, Mr. Wolf.”
And Barty shrunk into his own animagus form - an osprey - and let out a cry before swooping down to pick up something that looked suspiciously like a mink from the eaves of one of the lower towers and took off towards the grounds.
“Fucking son of a bitch.” Remus cursed as he tried catching his breath, still sitting half out of the Ravenclaw window. “Why do we put up with those two?”
Regulus shrugged with all the nonchalance he could muster. “‘Cause they’re cute?”
Remus sighed and hit his head against the windowsill. “They’re so sodding lucky that they are…”
“Come on.” Regulus said, offering Remus a hand and helping him out of the window. “Unfortunately, I know exactly where they went.”
Barty loved nothing more than the feeling of his feet sinking into the sediment of the Black Lake below his feet. He also loved the feeling of being near you, his Treasure. He also loved the idea of two handsome men frantically searching for you, and him by proxy.
All this to say, Barty was having a really nice night.
“Junior!”
Barty’s face morphed into a Cheshire cat grin as he turned towards the voice of the man and his boyfriend as they stormed towards the waters edge.
“Well hello, Lupin. How nice of you to join us; care for a dip?”
“Get out of the water.” Regulus drawled in a bored tone.
“Why would I do such a thing? The water’s lovely, I’m in wonderful company, and we’re going to feed the Giant Squid.” He argued.
“Barty.” Remus barked with all the severity he could manage. “You don’t know how to swim.”
Barty scoffed indignantly. “Yeah, well…neither can Reggie!”
“That’s why I’m standing on the shore you absolute bell-end.” Regulus countered quickly.
Remus turned his furious gaze into a bemused one as he took in Regulus. “Do you really not know how to swim either?”
“None of us can!” You shouted from your disturbingly deeper place within the lake as the gentle waves nearly lapped against your skirt.
“Oh, for the love of- you know what? This summer, everyone’s getting swimming lessons.” Remus proclaimed.
“Ou, does that mean I get to see you in your swim trunks, Lupin?” Barty called.
Remus, without missing a beat, started towards Barty, walking into the lake in his shoes and all. “You could see me right now, in less, for free, Junior. You only had to ask.”
Barty let out a screech and tried running towards you, albeit in slow motion on account of the water’s resistance. “Y/N! Treasure! Help! Make him stop!”
“No can do, bubs.” You called back in monotone, still throwing chunks of bread towards the middle of the Lake in hopes of eliciting the company of one Giant Squid.
“Dove, you’re going to catch a cold; get out of the water.” Remus called to you, pants soaked up to his knees after giving up on chasing Barty in the water.
“We’re trying to make friends!” You whined.
“You cannot make friends with a squid, amour. He will eat you.” Regulus explained from the shore.
“He wouldn’t eat his friend.” You scoffed.
“Dove.” Remus barked again.
“I want to see the the big water kitty!” You whined again, turning towards the boys and offering the most pathetic pout you could muster.
Regulus scoffed from his place, still dry on the shore, Remus let out a pained sigh, and Barty all but skipped towards you.
“A valiant death it will be!” He cheered before he felt the fabric of his jumper being summoned by an accio, dragging him unceremoniously through the water towards Remus.
“No! Ah! AH! STRANGER DANGER. STRANGER DANGER!” He shrieked as Remus threw him over his shoulder.
“Okay, well, now you’re just showing off, Lupin.” He muttered, crossing his arm petulantly as Remus held his free hand out to you.
“Dove, please? Come inside with me?”
You looked distressed at this and moved obediently towards Remus. “Are you mad at me?” You asked timidly.
Barty could actually feel Remus’ body soften beneath him as he allowed some of his tension to dissipate. “Of course not, dovey. I love you.”
You leaned over and pecked a kiss to the corner of his mouth before turning into your animagus mink and swimming to the shore, crawling up Regulus’ pant leg (who admonished you in faux contempt for ruining his trousers), and allowed him to carry you back to the castle.
Barty was feeling petulant about the whole matter of being chased and chastised so decided then that he was going to force Remus to carry him all the way back to the castle in silence.
Unfortunately for Barty, he hated silence.
He was at least proud he’d made it to the dungeons before giving up on his vow of silence.
“You’re really not upset with her?” Barty asked quietly from his current prison. He could feel Remus’ head tilt in confusion, though his steps never faltered.
“Of course not?” He responded as a question.
“Hmmm.” Barty said, racking his brain for something to upset or fluster this man.
“Oh! What about me having slept with both your boyfriend and your girlfriend?”
“What about it?” Remus asked plainly.
“Well…aren’t you upset about that?”
Remus scoffed and adjusted his grip on Barty, hand’s migrating none too innocently up the back of his thighs. “Junior. The only thing I’m upset about is that you haven’t slept with all three of us. I don’t like feeling left out, you know?”
Barty made a strangled sound as he struggled in Remus’ grip to no avail, causing you and Regulus to chuckle from a few strides ahead as you all stepped into the Slytherin common room.
“We told you he was smooth, Barty.” You chuckled.
“You should hear him in bed.” Regulus taunted, reaching over to pinch Barty’s arse, causing him to yelp and start cursing at him.
Remus relented and put Barty down, who immediately made for Regulus’ throat.
“Easy, Junior.” Remus chuckled, pulling him back by the shoulder. “You wanna keep Reg around, don’t you?”
Barty harrumphed and crossed his arms indignantly.
“We’d like to keep you around.” Remus continued.
Barty grumbled again and let out a quiet. “Fine.”
Remus beamed at him, which was very alarming if you asked Barty, as they stepped into his and Regulus’ shared dorm; Rosier and Avery were already asleep in their beds with their curtains drawn.
“Yeah? You’ll let us keep you?” Remus asked.
“I said fine, Lupin.” He bit back.
“Great. So we’re in a relationship then.” He explained simply, causing Barty to level him with a severe glare. “How dare you, Lupin. Never say such vile things to me again.” He spat before storming towards the boy’s bathroom.
Regulus groaned and grabbed his own toiletries before making his way to the washroom behind him. “I’ll go make sure he doesn’t try to drown himself in the shower again.”
Remus shook his head and changed into his pyjamas before climbing into Regulus’ bed and pulling you towards him.
“So, explain this to me, Dove. Why is Barty the way he is?”
You snorted a laugh and turned to face him. “You’re going to have to be way more specific, love.”
Remus chuckled and ran his hands up and down your back. “He likes Reg. He loves you. He seems sweet on me. We invite him to be ours and he accepts - but runs when we make it mean something?”
You smiled up at your boyfriend and booped his nose with a perfectly manicured finger - which Remus found very confusing considering you spend your spare time scaling the rafters of grand ceilings and enticing Giant Squids from their hiding places. “Barty doesn’t understand, Rem. He wouldn’t know love if it punched him right in the face.”
Remus could feel his brows furrow and he pulled you in tighter to his chest. “Dove…love doesn’t punch you in the face?”
Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say as you rolled your eyes in exasperation and threw your head back onto the pillow. “You see? That’s the kind of thing someone who grew up loved would know.”
It’s not that Remus ever really forgot to worry about you per se, but he sometimes really worried about you Purebloods.
At some point in the night, you had apparently decided Remus and Regulus’ bed was too hot and moved to Barty’s. Remus would have been slightly more petulant about the matter if he hadn’t thought you looked absolutely precious with Barty resting his head on your chest.
He looked so innocent in his sleep.
Sleep clearly didn’t know him very well.
Remus was shocked when the four of you entered the Great Hall for breakfast and Barty actually followed you three to the Gryffindor table. Though Remus was trying to play it cool, he couldn’t help but feel a flutter of hope surge within him at what that might mean for the three four of you.
Remus was just about to bite into his toast when a sultry voice sounded from behind Barty.
“Hello, Bartemus.” Amelia Bones sing-songed as she trailed a finger up Barty’s arm.
His brows furrowed almost comically from above the rim of his coffee cup before he slowly lowered it and turned to consider the Hufflepuff.
“Bones. Can I help you?” He asked, punctuating the word help as he plucked her fingers from his being between his two fingers as if he’d found something really quite disgusting on his person.
“I was thinking, you could help me, perhaps tonight?”
Barty turned to look at her incredulously.
“Help with what, Amelia? I’m really quite busy.” He spat, gesturing wildly to his cup of coffee.
“An orgasm or two? Gods, you’re pissy in the mornings.”
Barty scoffed, sounding completely scandalised as he clutched at non-existent pearls adorning his neck. “I am sitting here with my beloveds, Amelia. For shame. You see this lot? I’m theirs, capiche?”
Amelia looked bemusedly at the group of you before shaking her head in confusion. “Whatever you say, Junior.”
She moseyed on away, and Barty turned back towards his cup of coffee. “The gall of some people, honestly.” He said in exasperation, downing the rest of his still hot coffee and standing unceremoniously.
“Well, I best be off. Things to fuck up, people to scare. Tah-tah.” He called, pressing a quick kiss to your hair as he left the Great Hall.
Suddenly, realisation dawned on Remus.
“Ah, I see. So no to a relationship, but he is ours.”
You and Regulus chorused a hum of acknowledgement.
“That’s just how Barty operates. You’ll get used to it.” You explained, still not looking up from the Daily Prophet you had been reading all this time.
Remus didn’t mind getting used to that; not if it meant he managed to get everything he wanted.
#ask elle#marauders era#marauders au#marauders fanfiction#reader insert#self insert#remus lupin#remus lupin x reader#remus lupin x you#regulus black#regulus black x reader#regulus black x you#moonwater#poly!moonwater#poly!moonwater x reader#poly!moonwater x you#bartylus#poly!bartylus#barty crouch jr x reader#barty crouch jr x you#barty crouch jr#these ships are getting too hard to tag#figure it out#ellecdc fics
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⭑ for the love that used to be here. tom riddle x reader
summary. you and tom are the only muggle-borns in slytherin, until one day he isn’t.
tags. angst, afab reader who is referred to as a witch a few times and rooms with girls but i don't think i ever use she/her pronouns or say the word girl/woman, biggest warning is that this is SO long (idk what compelled me to write a year 1 – post-hogwarts fic but here we are twenty thousand damn words later), blood purity and bigotry, dumbledore is greatly offended by the bonding of two orphans until he can capitalise on it, frequent wwii mentions (specifically the blitz), book clerk tom, MURDERER TOM… ministry reader, kissing, smut once they’re 21/22 May all the minors in the room exit at once, more angst, sad ending kinda, me spreading a very personal and very nefarious tom riddle agenda that is canon to ME but probably only like two other people
note. i need a shower and an exorcism after writing this shit. i'm exhausted. i don't even remember half of it. but i'm also SO stoked, this is my little (very large, frankly) 100 followers celebration! i've only been on here for about a month and the love has been so crazy so thank you mwah mwah mwah ♡
word count. 21.8k (i know... i KNOW)
You learn quickly that your shade of green is not the same as theirs. The rest of them are emeralds, even at that age — they glitter with their parent’s polish. You are flotsam, sea-sick, envy green; the putrid boiling stuff that brews in your cauldron when you look away for a second too long, and, really, it’s more of a stain than a colour at all. There is a fraction of a second where you find something powerful in that. You are not an easy thing to remove. And then it’s gone, because they want to so badly.
You learn, with a bit less tact, that you doesn’t actually mean just you; that it’s you and him whether you like it or not.
He evidently does not.
“It has to be completely fine,” Tom says to you in Potions, his voice small then but just as practised.
You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”
“I said the powder has to be completely fine.”
“I heard you completely fine. I know how to read.”
He stares blankly at you before returning to his own station, and that’s that.
It isn’t unheard of for muggle-borns to be sorted into Slytherin, so you’ve been told, but one glance around your common room and you can see it’s pretty damn rare.
There’s Tom Riddle, there’s you, and there’s a seventh-year girl whose knuckles are always white like she’s spent so long with her hands balled into fists that they don’t know how to do anything else. Tom Riddle is a prat, the girl is too old and unapproachable even if she wasn’t, and you are very good at being alone.
That decides it. Flotsam still floats.
Everything is — fine. It’s fine for months; you have no one and need no one and sometimes you catch a jinx in the back of Charms that zips your mouth shut or bends a foot the wrong way (a cruel reminder of how much more these people know than you) and your broom occasionally pivots so sharply the Flying professor has to stop you from careening into a wall and breaking enough bones for a week’s worth of Skele-Gro, but it’s fine.
…It’s just that he’s insufferable.
The boy is eleven years old and he speaks like he’s stealing glances at an invisible lexicon between every word, more refined than any of the orphans you grew up with which makes you wonder which sort he’s surrounded by, and you take it upon yourself to theorise in passing if you could ever scare him badly enough his real voice would slip and he might just appear human for once.
Only it becomes clear when you’re stirring awake in the Hospital Wing after a mysterious bout of dragon pox (conveniently, all the pureblood children developed an immunity after catching it young) has rendered you bed-ridden and pockmarked, that you don’t think anything can scare Tom Riddle. He’s suffering just as well in the bed beside yours to keep the contagion to the two of you, and he’s all cold, eddied rage under sallow skin and beetling bones.
“They’re going to kill you,” he says after three days of silence, when the room is dusted in moonlight so thin it’s like squinting through cinema noise or mohair fluff to try to see him.
You blink at the vague shape of him. “What?”
“If you don’t hurt them back, eventually, they’ll just kill you.”
In hindsight, it’s an assumption so hastily bleak only a scared child could make it.
I want to hurt them, you try to say, but for what follows you cannot: I want to hurt them but I’m not good enough to do it.
You roll over and pretend to sleep, and in the morning, you hurt them anyway.
It’s Avery who’s unlucky enough to be the first to test you when you’re three assignments behind in Transfiguration, still a bit groggy from your last dose of Gorsemoor Elixir, and actually, physically green. He tugs your hair and stings your cheek with the promise of “bringing a bit of colour back to your face” and it’s sort of funny how banal it is compared to the other transgressions you’ve been dealt — that this is the thing that makes you bare your teeth, grip your wand in a hand that still can’t hold half of it, and send Avery flying across the room with a Knockback Jinx.
Tom sits with you in the Great Hall for dinner that night, and he never really stops.
You practise spells by the Black Lake between classes and he’s anything but kind about the ordeal, but you teach each other. You end your days with singe prints and sore wrists and you often take more damage than he does, but sometimes, as spring settles in with warm tones (apple and jade and moss — all the greens you’d never imagined), you leave with less bruises than he does. It hardly feels like friendship. It feels much more like purpose.
When summer comes you don’t write to him, and you don’t expect he will either. You don’t suppose you’ve actually written a letter in your life. Instead you try new wand movements under your quilt every night and wait for August’s departure on a big red train.
You sit together when the day does come. He asks you if you’ve been practising. You frown and tell him you’re not allowed to use magic outside of school.
Second year is nothing but monotonous, antiquated theoretics. Most everyone complains. You don’t see why they should — they’re already aeons ahead of you — but that means you finally have a chance to catch up in your less-than-school-sanctioned meetings with Tom while the rest remain practically stationary.
Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration professor Albus Dumbledore is imperceptibly less soft with you than he was last year when you make the apparently poor decision to sit beside Tom on the first day, and you file the subtle shift in demeanour into some mental cabinet to review later.
You find workarounds with the librarian, Madam Palles, inclined to sympathy for the poor, orphaned muggle-borns to grant relatively unfettered daytime access to the Restricted Section so long as you keep it tidy and none of the books leave the library. That’s where things get a bit more interesting.
For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tomes and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly.
You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.
It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.
Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.
You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.
Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.
“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.
Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.
“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”
“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”
“I wonder why.”
He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.
“What, Tom?”
He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”
You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile?
It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.
“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”
“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”
“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”
All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up.
Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.
Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about?
You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers.
For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.
He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)
Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.
You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession.
They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.
You��re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.
“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.
He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”
“Curiosity—”
“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”
He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.
You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.
But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.
“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.
“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”
“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”
This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary.
“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”
He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure?
It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.
The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning.
The worst of the world has impeccable timing.
A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.
So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.
And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.
BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER
MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES
DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN
All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.
The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.
It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.
In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with.
You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.
Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.
But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge.
He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.
You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books.
You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.
“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.
Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.
He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”
“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”
You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls.
“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”
“An altercation.”
“Very good, that is what I said.”
You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin.
“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.
You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.
You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated.
But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again.
She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.
For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.
Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)
Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.
“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.
“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.
“What? Malfoy?”
You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.
But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”
Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —
“A professor?”
“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.
He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.
It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.
He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.
Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.
You consider it a warning.
Tom does not.
“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”
His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.
“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”
“So?”
It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.
“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”
He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.
“Are you stupid, Tom?”
You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.
“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”
Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.
Tom acts stupid.
Dumbledore knows.
It all happens very fast.
You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.
You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.
You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.
“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”
Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”
You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.
“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”
“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”
“I —”
“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”
You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.
“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”
“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”
“So nothing novel then.”
“D’you want me to blast you again?”
His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.
You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”
That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.
“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.
“Tom.”
“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”
“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”
Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”
“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”
And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.
It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.
The day everything changes starts the same as any.
You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now.
Tom has cracked the book.
It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.
“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.
He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.
“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”
“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”
You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”
“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”
“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”
“I have no need.”
You frown. “You… you already know it.”
“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —
“You’re not muggle-born.”
“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”
“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”
“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”
“Why would he lie?”
“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”
You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.
“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”
He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.
“Are you trying to murder me?”
“I might.”
“You’d be the first suspect.”
“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”
Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.
He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice.
It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.
“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all. You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.
There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.
“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”
You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.
“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”
The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.
“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.
He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else.
“Should I?”
And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”
It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.
Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”
The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.
You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.
Summer blisters when it comes.
Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them.
And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.
A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.
Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.
But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.
It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?
You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.
“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.
“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”
And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.
He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.
Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.
You always are.
The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten.
Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.
He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.
And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.
Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.
You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.
You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.
You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.
Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.)
You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.
So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true.
It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.
It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.
Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.
The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer.
You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.
Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t.
But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.
“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.
Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.
“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”
He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.
You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”
“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.
“You’ll get sick.”
His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”
Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.
Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.
When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid.
What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.
You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.
Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.
You are regardless.
It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.
A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.
Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.
It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.
You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.
And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.
“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.
He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”
“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”
“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”
“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”
“Why?” he deadpans.
You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”
“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”
Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.
To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.
“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”
You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.
You are not his keeper. You know that.
“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.
He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.
And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.
What? Sorry. What’s going on?
He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”
You’re almost positive you did not.
Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.
You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.
Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.
Your contentment is remedied quickly.
Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.
You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.
Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.
“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.
You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”
He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.
You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”
“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”
“How’s that?”
“No one would be senseless enough to try.”
And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.
One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.
It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.
You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.
It happens again.
Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.
There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.
You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.
This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.
You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.
You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)
He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately.
And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.
Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.
And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.
The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.
The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.
That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.
One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.
The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?
You take to the library.
Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.
The third sign is the end.
You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.
He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight.
And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.
So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.
Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.
He’s something else entirely.
What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.
You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.
His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes.
You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand.
“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.
You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.
“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.
Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”
“I’ve been good at it.”
His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.
His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.
“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.
You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.
You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.
He sees all of you.
Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.
“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.
“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."
He stares at you. There’s nothing there.
“Tell me, Tom.”
Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.
“I cannot.”
Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.
It’s late winter and it’s too cold.
“You killed her,” you say quietly.
“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”
“What are you… so it was an accident?”
“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”
“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.
He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.
“You told me to change things —”
“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”
“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”
“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”
“Do you want me to lie?”
“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”
“Her death is the first step to —”
“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”
“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.
All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.
“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."
You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.
“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."
“...What?"
“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”
You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”
“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.
“How lucky for you.”
“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”
“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”
His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.
“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."
“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain, a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”
And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him.
You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love.
“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock.
Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly.
Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.
“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it.
He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.
After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"
“I thought I would have time.”
“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”
He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”
Fuck him. “Fuck you.”
“Very cogent.”
“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."
He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”
You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.
“You have lost me, Tom."
He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.
You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.)
You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish.
There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.
You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.
Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.
That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same.
You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.
And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.
You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.
It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.
Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.
Be well.
You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —
You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.
Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.
Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.
It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.
You find that to be true.
Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.
Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much.
“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.
You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition.
Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.
Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.
Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.
Due February.
It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”
Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”
Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.
You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”
Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”
And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.
Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.
You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.
You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.
In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.
Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.
You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.
But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.
You drink, and don’t look away.
By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.
There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.
You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal.
An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.
You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it.
You’re better than them. You can do it forever.
The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.
The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.
“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.
You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.
You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.
The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.
He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.
You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.
Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)
“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.
You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.
Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”
You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.
“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”
“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”
“I take that back.”
She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”
Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.
You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.
It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.
On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.
There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.
Indifferent it is.
“Can I help you?”
“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.
You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.
“Am I?”
“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”
“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”
Indifference effaced. You’re angry.
He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”
Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.
It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.
“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”
Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.
He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.
He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”
You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.
“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.
Where is Mari?
“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”
You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?
“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.
You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.
“Well then —”
Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.
His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.
“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —
“That would be wise.”
He’s still looking at your lips.
No one else is looking at you at all.
It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.
Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.
“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.
“I haven’t protested.”
But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.
“But you will.”
His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”
You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.
The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)
You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”
“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.
“You still lost me.”
“I know.”
“I hate you.”
He pauses for a moment. “I know.”
You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.
“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”
You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.
He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.
“My door is always open,” he says.
He lets you go.
You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.
Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.
If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.
It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?
You think of him often. You think of his offer.
My door is always open.
Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?
Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.
It’s a tempting door.
The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.
You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.
The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.
Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.
The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant.
It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.
But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor.
A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.
My door is always open.
Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.
Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.
She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.
When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.
It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.
A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.
“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.
“Renauld?”
He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.
“Well, yeah —”
You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”
“But McCormack sent him.”
“Where is it?”
“I… McCormack said that —”
“Where is it, Flack?”
“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”
That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.
The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.
But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.
“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”
You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”
“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”
You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.
It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.
“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.
Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”
“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”
“Who authorised you?” he hisses.
“I did.”
In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.
But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.
You were completely out of line and utterly right.
It isn’t something people like you are allotted.
Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.
And… he does.
With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.
It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.
There’s really no choice but to promote you.
Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.
By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.
The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.
Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.
After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.
“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “You seen the shite the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a bloody Unspeakable.”
“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”
Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.
“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.
“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”
“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”
“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.
“Yeah? How about you ask your daddy for something better?”
“Alves, I’ll have you know —”
You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”
She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”
You roll your eyes, taking a drink.
That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.
But something about it itches.
You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.
You are green, through and through.
Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.
You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.
You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.
And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.
That makes it much worse when you sleep together.
There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.
“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”
“Yes.”
“Right.”
“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”
“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”
“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”
You’re incredibly daft about it.
There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident.
The itch exacerbates.
You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.
You wake up and he isn’t there.
It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.
The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.
And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.
You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.
You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.
All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.
R.R
It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.
You return to Hogwarts posthaste.
It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.
The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be.
You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.
“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.
Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.
“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”
“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”
And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.
Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.
There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.
But you do, because he told you.
You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.
It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop.
It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.
You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.
The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece.
It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.
You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.
He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.
“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.
“I thought your door was always open.”
You see his posture change from just his silhouette.
“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that."
He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.
“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.
You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.
You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.
“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."
“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”
“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."
His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"
“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval.
Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.
“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”
“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will."
You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"
“Yes."
You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.
“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”
“I earned this,” you hiss.
“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”
“Fuck you.”
He smiles. “There you are.”
“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”
The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.
“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”
“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.
You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”
“I’d need a Vow for that.”
You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”
“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”
“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”
“A Vow.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Tea, then? Biscuits?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”
“Hm. Terrible shame.”
Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”
He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”
“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”
“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”
“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”
Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis.
“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain.
He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.
“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.”
You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”
Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.
“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.
“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”
He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.
He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.
“I should have killed you,” he repeats.
It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.
“Yes,” you agree.
It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.
Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.
There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.
He was your first in everything but this.
You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.
You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.
“How long?” he asks thickly.
You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back.
“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."
You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"
You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"
His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake."
You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster.
“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"
“N-no.”
He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."
Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating.
But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself.
You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.
He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.
Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.
His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh.
You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.
He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.
“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.
You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.
“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”
And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.
You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.
He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.
You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…
A finger presses inside and you moan.
“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.
“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.
He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”
Oh, fuck.
He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”
Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.
You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes.
Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.
You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.
He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.
But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.
Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.
“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.
“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.
“Will you give me more?”
Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.
He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.
You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.
He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —
“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.
That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.
You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”
A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?
And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.
Maybe you already do.
Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —
He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.
“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”
You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.
“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”
You whimper.
“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.
If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.
“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”
Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.
“You can — uh — you can — ”
"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”
And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.
You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.
“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.
You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”
You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.
He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you.
He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.
You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.
But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.
Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.
“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.
You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.
He brings you to his bed after and you let him, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.
You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.
“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.
You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.
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On Writing Rio Vidal
So @trickofthelights did a great post on things to take note of when writing Agatha Harkness in fic and I figured I could do one for my girl if some folk are interested.
Now I do see that getting a handle on Rio can be tricky because she only has so much screentime and every time she pops up we see a different side to her character. That said, here's some fundamentals I see for portraying Rio:
Disclaimer: I'm not a cop. Fic writing is for fun. This is entirely about canon-consistency, which can also apply to AUs. If you want to write an original romance novel inspired more by the actors than their AAA characters, hey you do you.
Rio is powerful and knows it
Canonical Rio literally embodies power. She's Death and even gods die. She is one of the most powerful entities in the universe and she knows it. It's essentially who she is. Power is part of her being.
In non-magic AUs where Rio is human, the show literally serves up Special Agent Rio Vidal as a handy reference point to work with. She's an FBI agent with the power of a higher authority, amazing at her job, and she owns it.
I find it quite jarring when AU fics have Rio set up as someone needing saving, or someone seriously lacking in confidence. Even if you're doing a high school or coffeeshop AU, Rio Vidal needs to know she's hot shit in some domain. She doesn't need to have her life together but you gotta have that sense of power and self-assurance somewhere in her life.
Because when it comes to writing canon-consistent Agatha/Rio, this is fundamental to Agatha's attraction to Rio because Agatha is attracted to power.
Like yes, I know it's Aubrey Plaza but it is essentially Rio's power that compels Agatha to give her a second look. Canonically, it's Rio's inability to die that allows them to have a relationship. Not beauty, not a winning personality. They're able to match each other’s energy, to clash and survive each other.
Rio is lawful first, chaotic second
An all-powerful character who can do anything is pretty boring, which is why when it comes to Rio "with great power comes great responsibility" but in her case it's literal and on a cosmic level. Canonically Rio's power is limited by certain rules she has to follow.
The whole tragedy at the crux of Rio as a character is that her identity is her purpose is her function is her duty is her job. As unpredictable as she seems, Rio literally describes herself as "the natural order of all things".
It's interesting that in the Zoom call interview Plaza mentions Puck when describing how Rio acts in the show because I find the fey a helpful reference when framing Rio as a character. Yes, Rio can cause lots of chaos but she has very specific rules she's obligated to follow. Everything beyond that however is fair game.
In non-magic AUs, this doesn't have to mean Rio has a literal job or profession that she values highly (although it can). It could be a personal mission, a set of principles, a duty to certain people or an organisation. Regardless there should be a method to Rio's madness.
And when it comes to writing canon-consistent Agatha/Rio, this is a delightful contrast because Agatha's such a rule-breaker ("So you broke the rules, big deal!") and a cheater ("You can't cheat Agatha / Says who!").
There are sharp edges to Rio's character
I sometimes joke that in AU fics the best way to help ensure canon-consistency is to give Rio a knife. It's funny because it's kinda true?
There is a darkness to Rio as a character that if ignored, I think does a disservice to her. Canonically, she's the balance of life and death, the cycle of decay and rebirth, the ugly and beautiful, violent and soft.
I think very romantic or domestic AUs do come with the risk of making Rio too soft, too patient, too kind. Which is not to say she can't be those things—you could argue that anyone who chooses to put up with Agatha Harkness certainly has those qualities in no small amount—but it's the contrast that I think makes Rio interesting as a character.
Consider Rio's capacity for love contrasted with her viciousness, her patience with her pettiness, her restraint with her rage.
There's probably more where this came from, but these ones seem to the main ones that stick out. And look, I'm a fan and I get that it's tempting to pull from the other roles Plaza has played, and we only see so much of Rio (I mean, consider how much of Agatha we got to see from Wandavision before AAA) and AUs are meant to be a playground—but there does come a point where a character just doesn't seem like Rio Vidal.
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Gentle dom! snape headcanons
Hi im procastinating the number of requests in my inboxes so until I get around to them, have another headcanon post to tie you over.
warnings: NSFW, smutty, minors DNI, mentions of kinks
I've written quite a bit of sub!snape fics that now I'm starting to miss dom!snape.
I'd like to preface this by saying that these are obviously just headcanons. Personally, I think severus is likely very sexually reserved, due to both trauma and honestly, isolation. I don't see him as being this overtly sexual person, as everything within him from canon, in books and the movies, shows him as very conservative and reserved. His clothing, his skills in occlumency, his facial expressions... everything about himself is very, reserved and controlled.
So I find that important to preface this by saying, that anything specifically kinky, especially dominant, would take a lot of time and patience coming from sev. I think at first, sex would definitely be more gentle, passionate, loving thing, if not a tad bit submissive.
However after awhile, once he becomes more comfortable, I can see him beginning to get more confident with his sexuality and more sure in the fac that you really want him. I can see his nerves slowly fading away into that kind of repressed longing and desire that he's denied himself for so long. I can also see him enjoying this because his whole life, he was so powerless. I mean, constantly being used as a pawn in a game that was bigger than him, obeying a different master.. I think it would be nice to be the one with the control for once.
Also this is specifically for gentle dom! snape, so there will be another one for hard dom! snape. Anyways enough yappin, here are the headcanons.
~
The first time he doms
I need to write a fic on this tbh, but I imagine it starts off by him relising how much you actually need him
The concept of you, needing him; of someone needing him that way, craving him?? Insane. he craves it. he wants it. he wants to hear it. see it.
I think something would have to happen for him to really realise this, either you admitting that you've masterbated to him... or maybe even him accidentaly catching you in the act.. Picturing/seeing you touching yourself, you wishing it was him, moaning his name, drives him wild
Something switches in him, where as before he might be flustered, embarassed, even ashamed. now he simply stands there.. watching, still... until he moves approaches
Then I imagine he's asking you if you were thinking about him.. and then specifically what you were thinking of...
And then he gives you exactly what you were asking for.. Or tells you to keep going while he watches
Once he's more comfortable... here are my headcanons about
Kissing
When he's in a dom mode, making it just does something to him. I mean in general, any sort of touch does something to him; but french kissing, hearing you moan into the kiss?? Gripping the back of your head?? Your throat?? That man kisses you like he's drowning.
Kinks
Names: I think, as a gentle dom, he wouldn't like to be called any names other than his name. I think the big part for him, is that much needed ego boost that you need HIM
I think he's very big on you saying his name, making you say it again and again, asking you who you belong to, who's making you feel that good, etc
Speed? I think it's usually a steady pace, depending on the day and what you need/want. I don't think he's afraid of going fast or rough, but not slapping, choking, or heavy degrading.
Bondage: I think he would however, be into being on top of you, pinning you down with his body in some way. Restraining you, with himself. Perhaps sometimes, using something to tie you up or tie your hands behind your back, but for the most part I imagine he likes using his hands, holding your wrists behind your back, pinning them above your head, beside your head, pinning your hips down to stop you from squirming, that sorta thang
Praise: especially as gentle dom, he loves to praise you. I don't imagine he's very vocal, but I do imagine he talks you through it. Praising you as you take him, as you orgasm. I don't think as a gentle dom, he would be interested in degrading you
Begging: slight begging, I think he more so wants to take care of you as a gentle dom, make you feel good. I think he'd find it attractive, once again as an ego and control thing, that you're begging for him, but I think he'd give in quite easily as a gentle dom
Idk what this is called but instructing you how to masterbate? Him sitting on the edge of the bed, or standing across the room... Telling you exactly how fast to go, how many fingers to use, how to touch yourself etc.
Positions
Missionary: gentle dom sev LOVES missionary and you can't convince me otherwise. He still gets all the fun parts of being dom, being on top of you, being able to pin you down, but he also gets to see ALL of you.. Your reactions, your body, your eyes
Doggy: I think this is more for hard dom snape tbh, which is a whole other post of its own. But I really, truly think he'd love this one. Pinning your shoulders down, leaning over you, taking you from the back... Or pinning your wrists behind your back while he yk.. Gripping your chin, whispering praise in your ear.. Yeah
Spooning: I also think he's like this one, especially as a gentle dom, cause it's still dominant for him, but you also both get to be comfy and in bed. And he gets to wrap his arms around you, hold you. It's romantic, dominant, gentle, all in one
Oral: As a gentle dom, I can see him liking recieving oral more than him being a switch. I still think he prefers to give, but I imagine that he likes to have you on your knees, his hand in your hair, just gently guiding your movements, praising you the entire time
Misc
Clothing: I think he loves being clothed while you're naked, not only does it make him more comfortable, he also gets to see all of you and it kinda adds to the power vibe. However, seeing you in any type of slightly revealing clothing does something to him. Even if it's just a little tight, or if your shirt is a little low.. He's spent his entire life ruling with an iron fist over his emotions and now somehow its crumbling all because of a damn scoop neck t-shirt. Mans could fight voldemort but not the power of tiddies. Also really loves nightgowns.
Moans: He loves hearing you. any type of sounds at all, even the slightest gasp to you crying out for him. It makes him want to hear more. especially if you're moaning his name. I don't imagine he moans much, more so small grunts and groans
He's a boob guy. For sure. That's it.
Aftercare: He is very, set on aftercare. Always. Especially after he has been dom. Even if he hasn't been rough, he knows aftercare is important. Brings you water, makes sure you drink it. Makes sure you use the washroom after. Holds you, praises you.
And i think thats it, for now, though I'll probably come up with more eventually.
Cheerio
xx
#severus snape#snape fandom#pro snape#professor snape#snape fic#severus x reader#severus#snape x y/n#severus snape headcanons#snape headcanon#snape smut#severus snape smut#smut#severus smut#snapedom#hp fanfic#hp#snape fanfiction#severus snape incorrect quotes
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Fanfic Plagiarism alert!
Attention, especially for the people in the following fandoms: Mission: Impossible (specifically Benthan) and Top Gun Maverick.
It brings me no joy to say that we have a big problem in these fandoms - a shameless serial plagiarist who copies other people's fanfics from other fandoms, changes character names and sometimes a few desciptions of the settings or adds a few sentences or paragraphs when they feel generous, and posts them as their own. It is literally Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V type of thing.
My friends and I have reported this person repeatedly on ao3, but we still have not received any response from the staff.
Seeing posts from fellow Benthan fans who are excited about the fact that we are getting close to having 1000 Benthan fics on ao3 makes me sad because of this, because I know quite a few of them are just not legit, and, since ao3 has not responded in months, I guess I have to do a good old public call-out.
This person is known on ao3 by the pen name rosexpetals. If they are reading this, I can only recommend them to delete the stolen works (not just the ones listed in this post, if more are stolen, they can be found later anyway) and take a long look at themselves and reflect on their actions. I wish for them to discover the actual joys of writing something of their own, of expressing their own feelings instead of hijacking other people's.
Below the cut are the links to the works and their sources that I and a couple of friends were able to find using just a simple quick Google search. Out of their 96 published fics, at least 29 are provably stolen (and those are just the ones we were able to find via simple searches), which gives off a strong feeling that none of their work is really original. Some of them were copied from the same source twice. 9 more fics are copies of each other, but in different fandoms (very likely just copied from the same sources). As you will see below, sometimes they didn't even bother to change the title of the original fic they were stealing from or its summary:
Fandom: Mission: Impossible (Benthan)
Fic: where's the trophy? (he just comes running over to me) Plagiarized from: where's the trophy? (he just comes running over to me) (by riceenthusiast)
Fic: and i'll hold onto you Plagiarized from: Tender Loving Care (by as_with_a_sunbeam)
Fic: bedroom eyes like a remedy Plagiarized from: Keep Me Afloat (by Atalia_Gold)
Fic: i'm sinking, our fingers entwined Plagiarized from: Kisses to Make it Better (by steviewashere)
Fic: the way you hold me (is actually what's holy) Plagiarized from: scars. (by letthesongtakeflight)
Fic: call it what you want to Plagiarized from: care & feeding (by glim)
Fic: my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand Plagiarized from: Their Fingers Run With Blood (by FoundInTheStars)
Fic: cause saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts Plagiarized from: Shrill Wails That Steal The Air (by Metalbvcky)
Fic: wherever you stray, i follow Plagiarized from: the fate of a con (by shrewritesall)
Fic: fall into me and i'll catch you, darlin' Plagiarized from: Safety II (by zozofia)
Fic: i hear the sound of my own voice, asking you to stay Plagiarized from: ['til you sizzle, what a lovely way to burn] (by tacos_are_tasty)
Fic: all's well that ends well to end up with you Plagiarized from: would it be enough if i could never give you peace? (by playthetyrants)
Fic: this most assuredly counts Plagiarized from: Must've Done Something Right (by fides_rationem)
Fic: something to rely on Plagiarized from: Unguarded (by trufflemores)
Fic: your string of lights is still bright to me Plagiarized from: your string of lights is still bright to me (by blueberriesandcream)
Fandom: Top Gun: Maverick
Fic: bigger than the whole sky Plagiarized from: Bigger Than The Whole Sky (by catrasredemption)
Fic: look at this godforsaken mess that you made me Plagiarized from: for you i would ruin myself (by mraudersmoon)
Fic: i love you, i adore you (i lay my life before you) Plagiarized from: All That I've Been Yearning For (by Sokkas_First_Fangirl)
Fic: starry eyes sparkin' up my darkest night Plagiarized from: Of Speeches and Sofas (by as_with_a_sunbeam)
Fic: i don't wanna lose you (that's the kinda heartbreak time can never mend) Plagiarized from: would it be enough if i could never give you peace? (by playthetyrants) - yes, same fic copied again
Fic: you can see it with the lights out Plagiarized from: Tender Loving Care (by as_with_a_sunbeam) - yes, AGAIN
Fic: and i'll forget you (but i'll never forgive) Plagiarized from: Hold Me Closer (by sweet_symphony0)
Fic: you can hear it in the silence (you can feel it on the way home) Plagiarized from: I'd search you in all of my lives (by sunflwrs)
Fic: and my destination (makes it worth the while) Plagiarized from: Pushing Through The Darkness (Still Another Mile) (by Sokkas_First_Fangirl)
Fic: give up on you, my dear (i will never) Plagiarized from: I Lay My Life Before You (by Sokkas_First_Fangirl)
Fic: as if you were a mythical thing Plagiarized from: The Ghost in the Attic (by as_with_a_sunbeam)
Fic: you drew stars (around my scars) Plagiarized from: Value (by trufflemores)
Fic: in my life (i love you more) Plagiarized from: Whistle, I'll Be There (by lovetheblazer)
Fandom: The Beatles RPF
Fic: can't ignore the rest of the world; can you stay and make me feel better? Plagiarized from: love me, always (by darkdisrepair)
Self-copied fics posted by the same person in different fandoms (possibly copied from the same sources)
Benthan fandom: sit with you in the trenches Top Gun fandom: you're all i want, i'll never let you go
Benthan fandom: i vowed i would always be yours Top Gun fandom: standing at the crossroads, no desire to run
Benthan fandom: can we always be this close? Top Gun fandom: in all your pain (i will carry you, always)
Benthan fandom: i know you're scared (and your pain is imperfect) Glee fandom: i'll never let you go The Beatles fandom: my pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand
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Just Tell Me When | Vi x fem!reader
Listen while reading - The Christmas Song: Nat King Cole
Summary - A cozy night in with Vi leads to you both deciding to take a big step in not only your relationship, but your life.
Word Count - 1,778
CW - Modern AU, very self indulgent, so fluffy your teeth are gonna rot, the smallest sprinkling of angst (if you squint), reader is a bit shorter than Vi, no use of 'Y/N', written in 2nd person
A/N - It's been snowing in my area the past week or so and when I was admiring the beauty of it this fic idea hit me and I just had to write it down. I almost want to make this a part of a collection of one-shots, as I have a lot of motivation to write for Vi right now. Anyways... I hope you enjoy, because I'm so so happy with how this turned out! <3
Modern Chef!Vi Masterlist
~❅❆❅~❅❆❅~❅❆❅~❅❆❅~❅❆❅~❅❆❅~❅❆❅~
It’s a perfect night, fat snowflakes falling softly from the heavens, blanketing the rooftops and the calm street in a soft embrace. Every house is set alight by Christmas lights of every hue. The sun has long set and everyone has found themselves settled comfortably into their homes, spending the evening with close friends and family. But for one specific couple, it’s a very special night. Even if they don’t know it.
In one particular house at the end of the street, this one too set alight by light blue and white Christmas lights, a freshly baked pan of cinnamon rolls sits warm on the kitchen counter, accompanied by two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. The only sounds throughout the home being the soft crackling of the fireplace and gentle humming of a familiar Christmas tune.
Vi padded into the kitchen, her fuzzy socks muffling the sound of her steps as she strides up to you and sneakily snakes her arms around your waist, her chin resting on your shoulder.
“Whatcha up to, angel?” Her voice is soft as she eyes the pan, inhaling the sweet scent of the icing.
“Thought I’d make us a sweet treat,” you smile as you feel her begin to sway the both of you back and forth, hands resting over Vi’s on your abdomen. “I know how much you love these.”
She hums with a grateful smile, pressing a featherlight kiss to your neck. It wasn’t often the two of you got to just relax and spend time together like this, but the recent snowfall has proven to be an issue regarding transportation. Meaning that the both of you had scored a day off of work and an opportunity to just relax together.
You stand there for a moment, enjoying the calm atmosphere and the warm feeling of being in your girlfriend's arms. A moment too long seems to have passed in silence as you find yourself getting lost in your thoughts, it’s proven to be so when the sound of Vi’s voice startles you and breaks your train of thought.
“Y’know… you’re really good at all this romantic stuff,” she pauses, taking a deep breath and releasing it with a sigh, her arms tightening around you. “Sometimes I worry I’m not good enough for you, that I don’t do enough.”
The thought is absurd to you. How could she of all people believe she isn’t good enough? After everything she’s done for you, all of the happiness she has given you that you hadn’t even been sure was possible. It’s outrageous that she would think herself not enough for you.
“Don’t say that,” You turn in her hold, arms looping around her neck. “You’ve been nothing but perfect to me since the day I met you.” Your eyes are locked on hers, voice firm.
Vi searches your face for any sign of insincerity, even if she knows she won’t find any. Why would she? You’ve always been genuine and sweet to her, it’s why she started calling you angel. Because in her eyes, you are one.
“I just- I know I may not be as sweet or romantic as you deserve,” a deep breath “But I really do try to be everything you need.” She’s rambling and she knows it, but she wants you to understand, needs you to see how hard she’s trying for you.
Her heart stalls when you just look up at her with a smile, because you already know it. You see it in the way she remembers the little things you tell her. The way she’s always making sure you’re comfortable and happy, regardless of her mood or how stressful her own day was. She always puts your needs above her own, even if she doesn’t have to. Even if you’ve told her countless times she doesn’t.
“You are everything I need.” The words are a whisper, but they hit her right in her very soul and she can’t help the small smile that pulls at her lips when you nestle further into her embrace.
“You mean that.” It’s not a question, because she can see the honesty in the way you look at her, the gentleness in the way you hold her.
All you respond with is a smile, your head dropping to rest on her shoulder as you resume your soft humming, your bodies continuing to sway, but now to the rhythm of the melody.
It’s amazing the way you disarm her, make her feel all fuzzy inside. But she isn’t complaining, because why would she? She has everything she could ever want, all of the happiness and contentment she could ever ask for.
“I love you.” It’s hushed, whispered against your skin as she plants a soft kiss to your temple. And even though you’ve heard the phrase leave her lips a thousand times over, it will never fail to make your stomach erupt with butterflies and turn your legs to jelly.
“And I love you, Violet.” The words are spoken just as softly, like it’s the most treasured secret to ever be shared. And it might as well be, because no one else gets to know her like this. No one else will ever know what it’s like to love her and be loved by her this way. To kiss her or to be kissed by her, because only you possess the privilege of experiencing how completely unraveling it is.
She smiles sweetly against your shoulder, her fingers tracing absentminded patterns on your back as she holds you.
“Have I told you lately how much I adore you? How right you make everything feel?” Her voice is a hushed whisper, music sung only for you to hear. “Because even if I were standing out in the cold, just knowing you’re mine would make me feel warmer than I’ve ever been.”
A soft giggle escapes you at her words, your cheeks heating at her confession.
“Never like this,” You pull back to glance up at her with slightly raised brows, taking in the way her beautiful blue eyes sparkle when she looks at you. “You’re more of a poet than you seem.” The sentence is finished off with a chaste kiss to her jaw.
Your words have her face lighting up, her smile so sweet you’d have to brush your teeth just for witnessing it.
Her voice is barely above a whisper when she responds.
“I guess you bring it out in me, angel.” There’s more she wants to say, it’s evident in the way she nibbles on her lip and her gaze flickers over your features. “I have something to ask you.” She sounds almost hesitant, or maybe nervous. But either way it has you curious.
You hum, fingers brushing through the longer strands of hair at the back of her head.
“Ask away.”
A moment passes before she takes a deep breath and says, “If I told you that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, would you think I was crazy?” Her gaze is adoring, punctuated by the slightest furrow in her brows.
“No,” You pause, lips pulling into a smile. “Because I would tell you that I feel the exact same way.”
It’s jarring how fast her eyes widen and well with tears, her lashes fluttering as she rapidly blinks them away.
“You’d… really want to be with me forever? Like, get married and grow old together?”
“I want everything with you.”
Her breath catches in her throat and she can’t keep it at bay this time, a lone tear tracking down her cheek and to her chin. But she doesn’t care, because she’s cupping your cheeks like you’re the most delicate piece of art and she’s pressing her lips to yours.
Your response is instant, your fingers brushing her cheek as you rid her skin of the salty moisture, her lips fitting perfectly with your own.
It’s not long before she’s pulling back and she’s speaking again.
“Will you marry me? Like, right now?” Her voice is soft and hopeful.
When you only blink for a good few seconds, she begins to feel discouraged before your own eyes are welling with tears and you’re nodding.
“Yes,” A soft sniffle. “I would love to marry you. Not right this minute obviously but definitely yes.”
It’s then that the biggest smile you’d ever seen on her brightens her face and she’s wrapping you in a tight embrace.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She repeats like a mantra, several tears breaking her waterline and tumbling down her cheeks. “I’m gonna make it perfect. You’ll see.”
You laugh softly, your own arms banding around her and pulling her close.
“I don’t doubt it, my love.” You take a deep breath. “But I will say, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy.”
Vi pulls back, cupping your cheeks and gazing into your eyes with overwhelming love and adoration.
“That’s alright… the fanciest part is already standing right here.” Her calloused fingers tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear before lingering on your cheek.
It makes you laugh, the way she looks so proud of the comment cracking you up. But it still warms your heart, knowing that behind the cheesy jokes, it’s all said out of love.
Even as you laugh, her expression doesn’t change.
“It doesn’t matter to me if we have a big fancy wedding or we just go down to the courthouse and elope. I don’t care if we have fancy flower arrangements or if we just pick some up from the local flower shop.” She pauses, catching her breath. “As long as I get to look in your eyes and say ‘I do’, I’ll be happy.”
Your eyes widen as her words sink in, lip trembling with overwhelming emotion.
“You have no idea how much that means to me.” You whisper, taking her hand and lacing your fingers together.
Vi uses her free hand to brush away a stray tear from your cheek, her touch featherlight as she gives you an adoring smile.
“I think I do.”
With a trembling lip you press into Vi’s embrace once more, breathing in the familiar scent of her and using it to ground yourself.
It’s when you pull away that Vi smiles again.
“There’s my sweet girl.” She murmurs, her warm hands framing your face as she speaks again. “I don’t have a ring for you yet, but I couldn’t wait any longer to ask you.” Another pause. “But I’m ready, I want to be with you forever. So whenever you’re ready, whether it’s now or in a few years, just tell me when.”
#vi x reader#vi arcane#arcane#modern au#vi x reader fluff#vi fluff#arcane fluff#Vi is a lovesick puppy#vi#ugh i love her so much#this is so fluffy im gonna die
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okay this is so incredibly specific so please feel free to ignore BUT i’ve been wanting to read a fic for ages where the reader is Chase’s childhood best friend from Australia and she moves to New Jersey for a fresh start. She’s staying with Chase while she gets settled, and one day she comes to visit him at lunch at the hospital, where she ends up meeting House and he’s… intrigued by her 👀 either romantic or smut would be so very cool :^D <33 💐
YES. I LOVE THIS PROMPT IM SO SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG BUT IM FINISHED!!!
Gregory House x Fem!Chases bsf!Reader
Warnings: None really, just cussing and tooth rotting fluff >:) 3k+ words.
Chase's POV:
“Well I was just wondering if we could go out sometime, I think you're really-” My attention shifted as y/n's call lit up my phone, interrupting the conversation. It was a more pressing matter than pursuing a one-night stand.
“Excuse me for a moment.” I say walking away, the woman having an annoyed look on her face.
I answer the phone.
“Hello, y/n? Whats up”
“Chase! Long time no talk haha.”
“You called me yesterday.”
“Learn to take a joke, anyways, I have some exciting news for you.”
“I’m moving to New Jersey!!”
“Wait what? Really?”
“Yeah, I kinda forgot to tell you and i'm actually at the airport right now, so I hope you aren't busy tomorrow so you can pick me up.”
“Wow, um alright, yeah I can pick you up, do you have a place to stay?"
“Um…no…” I sigh, “Just stay at mine for now.”
“Don't even with the sigh i’ve known you my whole life you can put the nightly hookups on hold for your best friend.”
I smirk and shake my head, “Yeah yeah, I’ll see ya tomorrow y/n”
Y/N’s POV:
I smile as I hang up with Chase, grabbing my luggage and pulling it along the airport. Ahh yes, crying babies, rushed parents, annoying couples and that one insanely attractive person you see for a split second, I love the airport.
Glancing at my ticket I realize I might have to hurry to make it to the gate, speed walking I see a text from chase, “Have a safe flight.” Let's hope so.
Time skip (to lazy to write all the details about fucking airports)
Relaxing on a 21-hour flight proved challenging, especially with a toddler nearby. It was unclear whether the toddler would be a source of annoyance or just be tolerable. The flight just started. So to entertain myself I decide to do some digging about Chase's job, he brags about it all the time and the infamous Dr Gregory House. To be honest I thought Chase was gay for a little while with how much he talks about him. Still speculating.
The plane lifts off and I start my look, at first just looking up Gregory House, a surprising amount of things show up. An article titled, “Gregory House, Talented Doctor? Or a lying Narcissist?” Oh well that's a good first impression.
Scrolling down I see another article, “The world's greatest doctor, and his deepest secrets”
Now that's enticing. I click on it only to find out his deepest secrets, including using 3 in one shampoo and how his leg got hurt. I guess people hardly know anything about him. I click on the photos of him, there's only a couple, most of them blurry but to be honest he's pretty good looking from the photos I can see. I’d honestly be gay for him if I was Chase.
The toddler next to me starts giggling, I glance at her and notice her staring at a picture of House. She's kicking her feet too. That's so relatable.
For the rest of the flight I find some stuff about this guy named Taub, who somehow also figured out that he cheated on his wife which is why he had to quit. How did I find that out? I took a coding class in 8th grade. (I got lucky)
Lisa Cuddy the Dean of Medicine, unfortunately only good stuff about her, boring.
Remy Hadley, oddly, can't find anything on her.
Eric Foreman, his brothers in jail, fun.
And the others are just as boring. For the remainder of the flight, the toddler proved surprisingly chill. I passed the time by binge-watching random movies I had downloaded earlier
*Another time skip to plane landing*
Finally, 21 hours on a fucking plane is horrible.
I check my phone after I take it off airplane mode, seeing a text from chase a couple minutes ago.
“I’m at the airport, is your flight done?”
“Yep, wya.”
“I’m parked in the front.”
“That's specific”
“There's no other front dumbass”
I roll my eyes at his text, and get off the plane as soon as I can. I walk out and see Chase standing outside his car waiting for me. His eyes light up as he spots me, and a grin spreads across his face. Unable to resist, I rush forward and envelop him in a bear hug.
“Man you’re a lot uglier in person”
I say jokingly, smirking.
“Oh shut up”
We climbed into his car, and he drove us back to his apartment. When we arrive he helps get my crap into the house, before he gets a call saying he had to head to work.
Eventually a week or two passes, I've gotten more comfortable in his apartment, applied for a bunch of jobs, and looked for places to stay so I’m not invading his “man” space anymore. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of options, and no jobs have replied to my applications, which is weird since im overqualified, it's almost like they aren’t even getting my applications in the first place.
I’m doing the dishes when I get a text from Chase.
“Hey, I left my wallet on the counter, so I don’t have money for food, could ya bring it for me?”
“Nah”
“See you soon”
I breathe out a laugh and grab his wallet, putting a coat on then driving to the hospital.
When I get there I walk in, looking around before I call Chase, “Where do I go this place is huge” I can hear talking in the background, actually more like arguing. “Uhm just wait at the entrance i’ll be right there.” He says in a whisper.
He hangs up so I just stand there awkwardly waiting, that was a weird ass phone call. To be fair Chase is a weird ass guy with weird ass coworkers so what do I expect at this point.
Before I see Chase I see Dr Gregory House, limping quickly towards me. And damn he’s even hotter in person than the pictures I saw of him.
“Hey, no time to explain, you need to come with me.” He grabs my arm dragging me into the elevator. Before it closes I see Chase come out of the stairway, he sprints towards the elevator but it closes. I hear him trying to say something, but it's muffled and I can’t understand it. Wait why the fuck did I even follow House?
“You're real compliant, you’d make a great hooker.”
I turn around and side eye him.
“Thanks, so would you.” I say giving a fake smile.
“Speaking of compliant, why did you drag me away from Chase? What's going on?’’
“I made a bet with Chase.”
“That's really specific and helpful thanks”
“Oh yeah no problem”
Sarcastic asshole.
“If you don’t tell me, I'll stop following you and go with Chase.”
He rolls his eyes.
“Fine, Mom! The bet is that I can convince you to work as my assistant here.”
“Really? That's it? I need a job. Why would Chase even bet against that?”
“He thinks you’ll fall in love with me so he doesn’t want that to happen, in his words, “She has a thing for homeless looking, narcissistic assholes with beards.” So he’s trying to prevent it, and he’s sure he can.”
Damn- I feel so called out. I stay silent before nodding.
“Well to be honest he isn’t wrong.”
I see House smirk before we get out of the elevator, he hobbles and leads me to his office, locking the door then having me sit down.
As I sit down in front of his desk, he grabs a ball and starts throwing it against the wall, while sitting down.
“So are you gonna interview me or something?”
“Yeah, I’m just waiting for Chase to get back up here so he can watch me interview you.”
He really is an asshole…it's kinda hot though.
“Fair enough.”
We wait a bit before Chase comes jogging up to the door, out of breath, he’s clearly been running plenty. He starts banging on the glass door that House previously locked.
“House!! Y/N! Let me in! This isn’t fair!” He exclaims, House is grinning when he leans over his desk, crossing his arms.
“Okay! Let’s start this interview now.”
“Y/n! You traitor!”
Did I abandon my childhood best friend for some disabled doctor? No, I did it for the job. At least that's what I'm telling myself.
Turning my attention back to House instead of the Australian cry baby outside the door, he asks me, “First question, do you want the job of being my assistant?”
“Obviously”
“Great! You have the job!”
I mean, easy enough. I smile and shake my head. This hospital really has some unique people.
House shakes my hand, grinning as Chase is sitting on the floor defeated outside.
As the days turned into weeks at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, I got to know everyone. Cuddy had to actually approve of me working as House’s assistant first, but once she saw a…normal enough individual, she welcomed me into the environment.
Getting to know House better, I found myself drawn to him in ways I hadn’t really expected. The bet between House and Chase, Chase thinking I would fall for House, I took it as a joke, until that joke turned more into reality.
Despite House being a narcissistic piece of shit, there were small moments that I saw, or shared with him that made me fall for him. Ones where he seemed happy, or just easy to be around. At work he's serious but when Wilson dragged him out to bars, or other social environments, he could actually be fun. And though him being a dick is undeniably attractive sometimes, when he was…”himself” that's how I began to fall for him.
One day, after an especially tough day for the team, and being forced to go break into houses and get coffee and food, I found myself alone with House in his office. The rest of the team had left, leaving us in a rare moment alone with each other. As I glanced up from the medical chart of the most recent patient, I caught House’s gaze lingering on me, his blue eyes intense and unreadable.
“Something on your mind, House?” I asked, attempting to break the awkward silence between us.
He smirked, leaning back in his chair with a casual ease, “Oh just wondering why a catch like yourself doesn’t have a boyfriend, or husband?” He responds, his tone laced with flirtatiousness.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at his response, a faint blush on my cheeks. House and I had gained an uncanny camaraderie, made from me running around doing everyone's paperwork, being the designated “you get to tell patients they are dying!!” person. And as you’d expect people didn’t respect me a lot, but if someone was blatantly mean to me, House would step in and destroy their self esteem in a second and walk away like it meant nothing. That's another thing that I think made me fall for him.
“Believe me, I’ve been asking myself that a lot too.” I smile, placing the medical chart on his desk.
“Do you want a boyfriend? Or girlfriend, or a pet or something.” He quips, his eyes looking like they are reading me, studying my every movement and reaction to what he’s saying, it's flattering and uncomfortable at the same time.
“A boyfriend would be nice.” I say reassuringly, a laugh escaping me as I shake my head in amusement.
“Alright let's say *hypothetically* I asked you out. *hypothetically* what would your response be?”
Raising an eyebrow I ask, “Are you trying to go on a date with me?”
“I said hypothetically, now answer the question.”
A smirk plays on my lips as I roll my eyes in a mock annoyance.
“Well.” I say, “Hypothetically, I would say yes.”
“Great, meet me for dinner at (some random fancy place idk u make up a name i'm too lazy to), wear something cute.”
With that, he sauntered out of the office, leaving me to think about what just happened. Glancing at the clock, I realized I had just enough time to get ready for our “hypothetical date.”
The anticipation bubbled within me, standing outside (IDK A RESTAURANT NAME IT), waiting for House to arrive. My heart raced with nervous excitement, unsure what to expect from a…unique…guy like House. I had used all the time I had to work on my outfit, settling for a simple dress (or suit, or just anything you're comfy in :) ).
As I scanned the busy street, searching for any sign of House, I heard the obnoxiously loud sound of a motorcycle approaching. House rode in, parking his bike before getting off and walking (limping) towards me. My breath caught in my throat as I saw him, he looked impossibly handsome, in a tailored suit that made his rugged charm come out, good god he looked fine.
“Y/n,” he greeted with a warm smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners in genuine affection. “That outfit makes your ass look nice.”
I scoff playfully, hitting his arm. “So much for acting like a gentleman, at least you look like one.”
He chuckled, offering me his arm in a more gentlemanly gesture. “Yeah yeah, shall we?”
With a nod, I looped my arm through his, savoring the warmth of his touch as we mad our way into the restaurant. The ambiance was elegant and inviting, with a soft candlelight casting a warm glow over the decor.
As we were seated at a table in a quiet corner of the restaurant, I couldn’t help but feel a flutter of excitement in my chest. I’m finally going out with House, damn Chase was totally right.
Throughout the evening, our conversation flowed surprisingly easily between us. I had half expected him to be rude or stuck up, but he seemed actually interested in me, in my life. He was asking questions, laughing and joking with me. Sharing stories of his own, and treating me like an actual human. Honestly it was scaring me a bit, but it was making me fall harder for him.
House raised an eyebrow, a playful glint in his eyes. ‘So, tell my Y/N. What’s the most embarrassing thing that's happened to you?”
I laughed, shaking my head as I thought about the memory. “Well, there was this one time in college-”
“Let me guess,” House interrupted, a smirk playing on his lips. “It involved copious amounts of alcohol and very questionable decisions?”
I chuckle and nod in agreement. “You could say that. Long story short, I ended up streaking through the campus fountain at three in the morning. I'm pretty sure Chase might still have a video of it still.”
House raises an eyebrow, an amused laugh coming from him. “I wish I could say I was surprised, oh and also. I am finding that video.” He states, with a determined and mischievous grin.
The dinner continues and our connection just seems to get stronger, fueled by shared laughter, stories of shit Wilson and him did in college, things Chase and I did in highschool. With each passing moment, I found myself more and more under House’s spell, captivated by the complexity of himself, his character. His gaze, laughter, even his personality. Maybe it was the wine or something, but House was being nice, he had charisma, and was being attractive in general.
I don’t even realize that we’ve spent almost three hours in the restaurant just talking. I check my phone seeing that it's 9:30 already. We had got and paid the check awhile ago, but had stayed to talk longer. The restaurant closes at 10, and I felt a sudden pang of disappointment that our date was close to being over with. I didn’t want it to end, I was savoring this moment I was having, this seemingly perfect night.
When the waiter arrived to take our dessert order, I couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment that the evening was drawing to a close. I wasn't ready for it to end—I wanted to savor every moment, to prolong the magic of our time together for as long as possible.
House notices my look of disappointment, “I’m aware how amazing I am, but if its up to me, this won’t be our last date.”
A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth, my cheeks heating up as I blush. The butterflies in my stomach going absolutely insane.
So with a quick glance around the restaurant, I rose from my seat, House grabbed my hand as he led me towards the exit.
Stepping out into the cool night air, I felt a sense of happiness coursing through me. This was it, the beginning of a new relationship, a surprisingly healthy one so far.
As House’s hand tightened around mine, his touch sent sparks of electricity coursing through my veins. I knew now that maybe Chase knows me better than I know myself, in all fairness he predicted this, but right now I wasn’t afraid to admit this, to admit the undeniable attraction that I had towards Dr Gregory House.
His touch leaves mine, his hand pulling as we stand in front of the restaurant, close to each other, staring in each other's eyes. I glance at his lips before leaning in, pressing a soft kiss to his lips, not sure if he expected it, but I pull back.
“Goodnight House. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And with that I walk away, to my car. When I get in my car, I look in the mirror, seeing House standing there with a lovestruck grin, one a child would have over some school crush. But it was cute, he was cute. And this was just the beginning of an annoyingly predicated relationship with a Vicodin addicted, asshole, who I suspect has a soft spot for me.
#gregory house#greg house#hatecrimes md#dr house#house md#gregory house x reader#greg house x reader#house md headcanons#james wilson#robert chase
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Hii, can I request headcanons or fic for Mitsuya with a model reader?
crush? | t. mitsuya
₊˚⊹♡ tags; fem!reader, finale timeline so spoilers? mitsuya being a absolute sweetheart as usual, also him struggling a bit as a new designer lol, this is a slowburn ngl...y/n overthinking towards the end
₊˚⊹♡ wc; 3,500+
₊˚⊹♡ a/n; this was a bit vague so I wasn't too sure what you wanted exactly, I didnt mean for this to be so long but then I just kept writing and it became a lot longer then I anticipated LOL also ill probably rename this later, i never even know what to name some of these sometimes
Mitsuya threw down all the photos of headshots his assistant had brought him to look through "This is it?" he sighed rubbing his eyes tiredly. The girl stumbled around a bit "Uh yes sir, that's all of the models...you don't see any you like?" she questioned a bit frustrated.
"I'm sorry, but no, none of them have what I'm looking for exactly..." he sighed, standing up and picking up a headshot of a young man. "None of them? Like not a single one?" the girl questioned, a bit shocked. Mitsuya only shook his head while pacing around.
"Well, I don't mean to step on your toes or anything, sir, but the show is in two months, and we need to start booking models..." she muttered, looking through her emails, hoping to see a response. You can call Hakkai, and I'll choose some of the people here, but give me a few more days to pick someone for the main piece."
Mitsuya ran a hand through his hair, softly pulling at the roots in frustration. He had someone specific in mind for the main piece of the show. Unfortunately, Okamoto, his assistant, was unable to book you. They didn't even receive an email back from your manager.
Mitsuya knew it'd be a miracle if he were able to book you for his show but he still tried. But now that the odds weren't in his favor he had to find a new model for the face of the show, he could just go with Hakkai. He wasn't too sure Hakkai wanted to sport a dress on the runway though...
You watched from the corner of your eye as your manager angrily swiped through her tablet, hundreds of emails in the reflection of her glasses. You went to say something when you felt a tug on your hair "Could you be a bit more gentle?" you muttered getting fed up, that was the sixth time this stylist had tugged on your hair in the last twenty minutes.
You didn't say anything when he softly apologized while continuing to do your hair in a crazy updo for your upcoming photoshoot. "Are you ok over there? You look like you're about to throw that thing" You call out to your manager who's now angrily typing away on her tablet.
"You would think after sending 15 emails and not receiving a single one back this person would stop emailing me about you," she muttered with furrowed eyebrows, who the hell was blowing up your manager about you anyway? You had just started seriously modeling this year and you've been very successful but you didn't think you were that desired by some people.
"Who is it? What's it for?" you question now really curious about this person's persistence while shifting in your seat. "I don't even know, it's to walk at some small runway show, nothing worth your time." She sighs lifting her glasses to rest on the top of her head.
You had only walked a few runways, and each time it was a bit chaotic but you had lots of fun "Oh really, who's the designer? I wouldn't mind doing another runway!" your manager looks at you a bit shocked while you smile at her innocently.
She quickly recuperates and walks over to you holding out her tablet "He's a small upcoming designer, Mitsuya Takashi? I've never heard of him personally but Hakkai Shiba walks at almost all of his shows." She explains while swiping through some of his designs.
"No way! I love his clothes, why didn't you tell me sooner?" you whine looking at all the emails his assistant has sent your manager over the last two weeks. You feel yourself basically shaking in excitement at the thought of walking for one of your new favorite designers.
"I didn't think you even knew who he was, I didn't until I got her emails!" she explains pointing at the tablet in your hands, and to give her credit you had just discovered the upcoming designer recently.
One of the other models at a photo shoot you were at was wearing a beautiful dress and when you asked her where she got it, she explained that Mitsuya had made it for her as a thank-you for modeling for him. Not only was the man extremely talented, but he also seemed really kind.
You had always searched for his clothing at any store you had gone to, you never had any luck though. You were thinking about reaching out to him yourself but lately, your schedule has been extremely busy. This was the perfect opportunity you were searching for.
"Tell him yes, anything he wants, yes I'll do it! If I have stuff scheduled when he needs me, cancel it!" you smile handing your manager her tablet back and standing up seeing now that your hair is done. "B-but what about the shoot with miu miu?" your manager sputtered quickly following behind you.
"Cancel it!" you smile closing your dressing room door in your manager's face.
When Okamoto barged into Mitsuya's office sputtering about booking you he thought she was crazy. But when she showed him the email from your manager stating you agreed to walk the runway in his clothes he almost passed out. He immediately started stitching together your dress, too excited to sleep even though it was already past midnight.
Now two weeks later, he was almost done with the piece just having to add the tedious details and fix some stitching here and there. But it was also the day you'd come by for the first fitting and be meeting mitsuya for the first time.
To say he was nervous was an understatement, he kept pricking his fingers while working on the other pieces for the show and stumbling over stray rolls of fabric. He didn't even realize the time until Okamoto came in telling him you'd be there in an hour, he quickly started to clean his office not wanting you to see the chaotic room.
When he finally finishes cleaning the room he looks around for any stray items lying around. Not seeing a single thing hethrew himself onto his chair when a big sigh, he knew you should be here any moment. He was so nervous he keptthinking about what he'd say to you when he finally met you.
"Thank you so much for accepting...no thank you for giving me the opportunity...no..." he sighed still not able to think properly when he heard his office door open. Quickly standing up he dusted himself off and watched as you and your manager walked in talking to Okamoto.
"Yeah I was so jealous after she told me he had custom-made it for her, I was tempted to steal it from her dressing room when she wasn't there!" Mitsuya watched you as you laughed while readjusting your purse on your arm, he doesn't think he's seen a more beautiful woman.
You were wearing a simple outfit, a black long-sleeve turtle neck, some dark-washed jeans, and a pair of black boots. It was nothing special but Mitsuya thought you looked amazing, he couldn't even bring himself to say something when you looked at him.
"Oh my god, it's so nice to finally meet you! I've been waiting for this day since Saki told me about this!" you exclaimed briefly motioning over to your manager but quickly making your way to Mitsuya shaking his hand. He could only smile in response a little too shocked to say anything at the moment.
"Really? I didn't even think you knew who I was..." he awkwardly laughed while shaking your hand "I just discovered you recently from Momo? I'm sure you remember her, you made her that gorgeous custom dress! I've been searching for some of your pieces in stores but I've had no luck"
Mitsuya was loss for words the more you kept talking, you knew who he was? And you were on the hunt for some of his clothing on your own time? Not even saying anything he immediately bowed at a 90-degree angel "Thank you so much, you don't know how much that means to me, seriously"
You immediately begin to panic "What? What do you mean I haven't done anything!" you say while bringing him up by his shoulders "You agreeing to model my clothes is good enough, you're a very sought-after model y/n. You wearing my clothes is bound to help me take off as a designer so I thank you."
You can feel your face flush a bit, you've never had someone be so sincere to you in this industry before. Now you realize you've made a great choice by agreeing to model for Mitsuya, you hope you can continue to work with him in the future.
"Ok let's get to work before you make me cry or somethin'.." you softly joke taking off your bag and handing it to you Saki "Oh I'm sorry I didn't mean to- ok yeah let's get to work!" Mitsuya stumbles putting his glasses on and grabbing his sketchbook.
"You can take a seat over there if you'd like" Mitsuya motions over to a couch in the corner of his office when he notices your manager aimlessly standing around "Oh thank you, do you mind if I make a few calls and whatnot?" she sighs taking a seat with your stuff.
"No of course not, if you need anything just ask me or Okamoto" he waves off now walking over to you "I actually already started working on the piece if you'd like to see it? Or even try it on?" he mutters flipping through his sketchbook"Of course I'd like to try it on!"
The rest of the day was spent talking and getting to know each other while Mitsuya tailored the dress to fit you better and went over the rest of the look with you. He also asked for your input and what you thought would look good or what you'd like to wear, you could help having a small crush on the man after leaving his office that night.
It's now been two months since you and Mitsuya first met and you two have gotten a lot closer since that day. Some nights after you've finished with your fittings for other designers you'd invite Mitsuya out for dinner, wanting to talk the man more.
And if you two weren't out for dinner you were constantly texting, but now that his show is this weekend you haven't heard much from him. You weren't too surprised you imagined he was extremely busy trying to finish the last details for the show and whatnot, but you had to admit you missed him.
You just finished with a small photoshoot for a magazine when you checked your phone and saw that he still hadn't responded to your message from this morning. "Loverboy hasn't answered you?" you turn to glare at Saki who ignores you while packing up your stuff.
"I told you to stop calling him that…but no he hasn't answered" You sigh grabbing your bag from her arm and begin to walk out of the studio "Do you want to stop by his office?" you almost trip when walking down the stairs "What? We can't just stop by his office like that, he's probably really busy!"
Saki only shrugs her shoulders while opening the door to the building allowing you to go first "Why not? You can bring him a coffee or something, I'm sure he'd appreciate it" You bite your lip contemplating it a bit, you really did want to see the man but you also didn't want to bother him if he were busy.
"Ok yeah let's go, but we have to get coffee from the place by his office, he really likes that place!" you explain while getting into the back of the car with Saki who playful rolls her eyes "Yeah I know you've only told me a thousand times how much he likes that place."
Now standing outside of Mitsuya's office with his and your order in one hand and a box of pastries in the other you wonder if this was a good idea. You two had hung out plenty of times but you'd never shown up at his office unannounced and you hoped your sudden arrival didn't annoy him.
Before you can even think about turning around his office door opens and you see a beautiful girl walking out on the phone. She doesn't notice you at first too immersed in her conversation but when she does she gives a look of confusion and then goes wide-eyed.
"Are you here for Takashi?" at first you thought she was one of the other models walking in his show but when she refers to him by his first name you begin to doubt it. Who exactly was she? Mitsuya never mentioned a girlfriend before or anything similar.
"Yazuha can you go to the bakery down the street and get us some stuff?" you hear someone call from Mitsuya's office making the girl roll her eyes. "Actually it looks like someone is here for Takashi" She then motions for you to walk into the office as she continues her way out the door still on the phone.
When you walk in you see Mitsuya looking in your direction with a confused face which quickly morphs into a smile "Y/n! What are you doing here?" he quickly makes his way over to you grabbing the sweets and drinks out of your hand and placing them on his desk.
You quickly glance over the man standing in what you assume will be his runway outfit and back towards Mitsuya "I just wanted to see you, plus you never answered my messages. So I thought you could use some fuel or whatever…I didn't think you'd have other people over I should've gotten more"
You begin to look through your bag for your wallet going to ask the other man what he'd like "Don't worry about it y/n, I'm sorry for not answering your messages I've been finishing up Hakkai's piece all day. I'm almost done, if you want we can all go grab dinner together or something?"
You didn't even realize he was leading you to sit over on the couch until you were seated "Oh uh- ok yeah that's fine with me" Then it hits you that you didn't even introduce yourself to the other person in the room.
"I'm so sorry I'm y/n, I guess we'll be walking in the show together it's nice to meet you" You smile up at the very tall man who just turns away from you with a blank look on his face. What the hell was his deal "This is Hakkai, he's not good at talking to girls so don't take offense. And the girl outside is his sister, Yazuha, I've known both of them since middle school."
You watch Mitsuya continue to work on a few pieces of Hakkai's suit while the boy doesn't say anything just then Yazuha walks back in "Don't bother talking to that guy, he can't talk to girls" You turn to her with a small smile while Mitsuya softly laughs "Yeah Mitsuya's already told me, I'm y/n it's nice to meet you"
Unlike her brother Yazuha has no problem talking to you "Yeah I know, who wouldn't? You're like one of the top models right now, I thought Takashi was lying when he said he booked you." she muttered while shaking your hand.
"Ah I'm so glad Okamoto reached out to my manager, it's been so nice working with Mitsuya I hope he and I can keep working together in the future!" You hear Mitsuya curse a bit under his breath "Are you ok Taka-Chan?" you turn and watch as Mitsuya nods sucking on his thumb.
"Y-yeah just pricked my finger a bit, but yeah I've really enjoyed working with you too y/n…" he smiles, and you note his ears are red. You return a bashful smile and turn back towards Yazuha who's giving you a smug look "Right…well if you start working with Takashi a lot then you'll be seeing us a lot too so let's be good friends"
You've always had after-show jitters but right now you feel like your heart is going to explode out of your chest. The show went great but before the show, you barely had any time to actually talk to Mitsuya, just a quick prep talk and good luck. But right before the show actually started he had told you to immediately find him afterwards.
You wondered the entire time what is it that he wanted to talk to you about, then you wondered what he'd have to say about your walk. What if he hated it and never wanted you to model for his clothes ever again? You didn't even notice when he knocked on your dressing room door, too preoccupied with your thoughts.
You only realized he was there when he gently opened the door "Y/n? Are you in here?" you quickly walked over to the door opening it the rest of the way "Oh I'm sorry I wasn't sure you were in here" you notice he has a big bouquet of flowers and an even bigger gift bag in his hand.
Unable to say anything you just pull him into your dressing room and close the door "Sorry I didn't hear you knocking on the door" you mutter turning to look at him. He doesn't say anything and neither do you for a while until he holds out the bouquet "These are for you…"
You take the flowers from him and notice their your favorite flowers in your favorite color. You also notice how nicely they're wrapped, they had to be really expensive "Mitsuya, these are gorgeous…thank you so much."
He only shrugs with a shy smile on his face "I wanted you to have something nice… I-I did my best to wrap them but I've never done it before so I'm sorry if it looks a bit sloppy…" He rambles while gently grabbing them from your hands and setting them down.
You couldn't believe that he took the time to wrap the flowers himself, they look professionally done. You couldn't even deny it anymore if you wanted, you've totally fallen for Mitsuya. He's been nothing but good to you since you first met and watching the way he treats his friends and other models shows that he's just a great guy.
"Mitsuya they're gorgeous, they look perfect seriously, thank you so much for these." you mutter still admiring the beautiful bouquet "Oh well I'm glad you like them, I also have this for you…" he whispers placing the huge gift bag on a chair in the room leaving you to open it.
You wonder what can be in the bag, it's massive but when you peek inside the bag you don't really see much. Turning to him to give him a suspicious look he just shrugs his shoulders with a cheeky smile "Open it" Turning back towards the bag you pull out the tissue paper.
At first, you just see some fabric but when you pull it out you notice it's a gorgeous dress. Looking at all the intricate details you're lost for words "Do you like it..?" you hear Mitsuya ask while he walks up closer to you "You made this for me?"
You turn towards him now holding the dress close to your chest as if he just threatened to take it from you "Yeah I made it last week, if you don't like something I can- No!" he looks at you wide-eyed at your interruption "Sorry but no Mitsuya it's- it's…I seriously don't have words I can't believe you made this for me?"
He can't help the cocky grin on his face "I'm so glad you like it…" Then you notice his smile falter a bit "Would you like to wear it tonight to dinner…" Was he asking you out right now? Like a real date? "With me I mean" he quickly clarified seeing your blank look.
You seriously wanted to jump for joy but decided against it to not embarrass yourself "Like just you and me…? No Yazuha or Hakkai?" you don't want to get your hopes up too soon "Yes y/n just you and me, no Hakkai or Yazuha, just us. Like a date" he softly laughed walking towards you grabbing one of your hands.
You got one little hop in before you stopped yourself "S-sorry I'm just really happy right now" you explain when he gives you a funny look "But yes, I'd love to go on a date with you Mitsuya" you mutter now too shy to look him in the eyes.
"Ok great, I'll wait outside for you then we can go" he smiles softly rubbing the back of your hand with his thumb "Ok I'll get dressed right now!" you laugh gently pushing him out of your dressing room and quickly grab your phone to tell Saki she can leave without you.
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