#the implications are there and intentional

[acid-ixx]

— related post !

socialite! (secret himbo/bimbo) reader who takes one look at bruce wayne in a gala and you decide you'll use your (dumbass) alluring charms on the man to spend a night with him and it ends up successful. you had the best bed-breaking sex in your life, never once questioning all the taut muscle underneath his polished thousand-dollar suit; now crumpled by how handsy you were taking off his clothes. he was great with aftercare, too, carrying you off to one of his luxury bathtubs to bathe you and leave even more marks on the expanse of your back whilst massaging your naked body (you didn't even think for a second at the romantic implications his actions had).

then you're at one of luthor's galas the next time, being interviewed by this cute man with eyeglasses, who calls himself clark kent, with the cutest country-boy accent, who looks too tall to act all lanky, but you're not one to judge. you take one look at his baggy suit, ignore the pen and paper in his hands and drag him off to one of the spare janitorial rooms to have, quite possibly, the most pleasurable quickie you've ever had spent inside a cramped closet, your sweat sliding off each other as your bodies move in a harmonious tandem. you give him a kiss on his collar right after the momentary sex, and giggle at the skittish blush dispersing on his face, as if he didn't just give you a reason to go home early due to the limp on your step.

after everything, they were buried in the back of your mind. they were great fucks, yes, you never had a moment of horny zenith not until you met them, yes; but your relationship (if you could even call it that) with both men were purely sexual and a one-time thing. you never really thought of them, you prioritize your social life and reputation above all else, not your coster of other rich people you've slept with.

but one day, you see both in the same room as you in another gala. you're oblivious to the sets of eyes hungrily taking you in, or how quickly they shove off other people just to move closer the moment their attention land on you. you take a look at the two men, biting your lips whilst your eyes devour the memory of their muscled pecs squished between your index and middle finger, and their thick thighs pistoning you back and forth, all hidden under all the clothes covering their body; and whisper not-so silently:

"i can take them both, not in a fight."

sadly, you'll never know that they're both at each other's throats after hearing your confession, ready to take each other in a fight if it meant having you in their arms once more. you'll never know just how bruce managed to throw in a microchip in your bag before you're escorted home by his limousine, or how clark watched your sleeping body in your apartment as superman just to make sure you slept well after he pounded you to oblivion in that closet.

all you'll know is that you're going to score them into fucking you once more either way. after all, if they're both the best choices when it comes to pinning you down and going crazy on your body, then you'll do anything to achieve that aching goal with the both of best worlds.

you're unaware that they'd do the same thing for you, though. but it's not out of the intentions to merely sleep with you, no. they're also planning to find a pathway into your heart while at it.

so... welp, guess that's just an added list of all the other suitors you had fighting over the chance of having another night with you.

a/n: gender-neutral reader. no bodily gender mentioned at all. this is purely sexual content with some plot. i blame my irl best friend for this (the single dialogue was me thirsting over the characters through our chats). yes, i post this after posting angst. am i shameless? also yes.

[sundrop-writes]

Downhill

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader

I’ve never spent a moment loving anyone but you.

And maybe that’s just something people say - but I hope it’s the truth.

Summary:

Draco knows his place in the world. He is a Malfoy, he is Pureblood. He is supposed to marry, carry on the Pureblood line. He is supposed to do everything that his parents would - including killing, if it's what his Dark Lord wishes.

Draco Malfoy is not supposed to hesitate. He is not supposed to feel fear. He is not supposed to have room in his heart for fondness, or even love. Not even when it comes to his bartered and bought fellow Pureblood fiancee.

Love is nothing but a weakness. And Malfoys are not weak.

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Reader. Arranged Marriage/Hesitant Lovers. Emotional Angst and Smut. Set during Half-Blood Prince.

Word Count: 20,100

Harry Potter Masterlist | AO3 Link

This is meant to be a standalone oneshot, but it was written as a prequel to the fic My Bleeding Heart. Because the other fic is chronologically second, you won't be missing anything if you read this one first, but if you have read it before, then this one ties in nicely and informs more of the emotions between the characters.

Full list of warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: this fic is equal parts smut and emotional angst; this fic does technically take place around Christmas (with the Slug Club Christmas Party being the biggest signal of that), but Christmas is not a huge overarching theme or presence in the fic if you don't celebrate or don't like Christmas; the reader uses she/her pronouns and has a vagina; implications of the reader being fat/plus-sized (which happens with a lot of my fics); it is mentioned that the reader is wearing a dress and high heels to the party; the reader is a Slytherin; the reader is a Pureblood (and for the sake of the fic, I made up a random 'important' Pureblood family that she is from, but because she wasn't raised by them, she goes by a difference surname that can just be your literal actual surname); the reader is an orphan and never actually knew her Pureblood parents; this fic DOES use Y/N; the reader is called 'brilliant' and comes off as very intelligent and skilled with magic (skilled enough to get into the Slug Club); Draco and the reader are in an arranged marriage for the sake of carrying on the Pureblood lineage, and it is discussed that the reader was 'bought' for Draco (a very large dowry was paid) (during the course of the fic, they are only engaged and not yet married); most of this is written from Draco's perspective and features self loathing, emotionally stunted Draco; jealous!Draco - Draco hears that the reader was talking to Harry and gets upset; mentions of the reader being left to the Malfoys by a neglectful godmother; I know there is debate about whether it's canon or not, but in this fic Draco's parents are abusive toward him - his father much more so and his mother is more of a neglectful bystander, and there is a lot of themes in this fic about Draco's trauma surrounding that and how he starts taking his first steps to break free from his abusers (this fic implies that Draco has been physically and emotionally abused by his father, as well as being severely emotionally neglected by both his parents); the reader character in this fic is also abused by the Malfoys when living with them - including an incident where she is hit by Lucius Malfoy and has her hand smashed into broken glass; an incident is described where Lucius casts a spell that chokes Draco (briefly) with the intention of physically punishing him, and the reader stops the spell; Lucius calls the reader 'slut' and 'whore' as insults; mentions of house elves and elf 'slavery' (feels like a warning I'm putting in here specifically for Hermione but I know people get upset about this stuff now lmao); descriptions of dead animals - a bird is killed while being transported through the not yet working Vanishing Cabinet; mentions of canon deaths (Cedric Diggory); mentions of 'Death Eater culture' - discrimination, violence against muggleborns, blood purity, etc.; discussion of Draco's mission to kill Dumbledore (and his mission to help the Death Eaters break into Hogwarts) and the stress that it causes him.

In his internal narration, Draco calls the reader 'naive' and 'innocent', but this is not a statement about the reader's level of sexual or romantic experience (the reader character is NOT A VIRGIN in this), this is a statement about the reader's level of experience with violence and death (and how Draco feels a need to protect her from being corrupted by the dark forces in his life); Draco grabs the reader's arm (in a slightly painful way, while arguing) - but they don't have a major physical confrontation and it does not escalate (their relationship has slightly toxic vibes, but they are forced to depend on each other); mention of Draco being 'thin'/losing weight due to not eating properly (due to the stress of a life or death mission hanging over his head); for the actual smut section - Draco has a kink for the reader wearing stockings/tights (don't ask me where I got this idea from, it just feels like it would fit Draco really well); the tone of the whole thing is very sweet, affectionate, passionate love-making; Draco calls the reader 'darling' and 'love'; oral - reader receiving; Draco fingers the reader while eating her out; a lot of passionate kissing and body worshipping (towards the reader); multiple orgasms/overstimulation (reader receiving); squirting (not played up as a major kink, but it does happen); Draco is anti-breeding kink (I know this is a new one, but try to stick with me) - Draco knows that the only reason for their engagement is to carry on the family blood like (to breed) and he is against that (because it means carrying out his parents' wishes and putting the reader in danger) so he refuses to fuck her because he doesn't want to get her pregnant, because he thinks that it will be cursing her with an attachment to him and he still wants to give her a chance to bail, so he specifically avoids PIV sex for this reason; the ending of the fic has some slightly dubious consent - because Draco starts thinking about the fate of the arranged marriage and feels self loathing but continues with the encounter anyway (he is romantically and sexually attracted to the reader, and there is no force, and the reader is enthusiastic about her consent the whole time, but Draco starts to withdraw his consent and is slightly unsure - it's adult and realistic and complicated); Draco masturbates while sitting on top of the reader to avoid having sex with the reader (in a way, this could be considered 'forced orgasm' because Draco is having a lot of complicated emotions and literally forces himself to orgasm to end the sexual situation); Draco cums on the reader's thighs; Draco cries after sex because of all his complicated emotions; Draco and the reader do talk about their feelings and (mostly) work things out; the ending skews toward light-hearted/sappy.

A/N: This fic is titled after the song Downhill by Lincoln - and I actually had a really hard time choosing which lyrics to go at the top, because I genuinely believe that all the lyrics from the song are so, so fitting here. So I do highly encourage you to go and listen to the song while you read this!! I actually started writing this fic many months ago when the idea came to me, and I got stalled on it, and then I randomly got inspired to finish it around mid-October, but I wanted to wait to post it until it was closer to Christmas because it is so rare for me to have a seasonally accurate fic on my hands so I actually wanted to post it during the seasonally accurate time lmao. I had a lot of fun writing this and exploring the relationship between these two characters, and I do want to write more for them in the future - especially because I am obsessed with the arranged marriage concept. (I feel like I need to write more fics with different characters that use arranged marriage as a trope because writing this just showed me how much fun it is.) Anyway, for now, I hope you enjoy this, and please let me know what you think of it in the comments.

...

Moving from the bustling atmosphere of the Slug Club Christmas Party into the cold, empty corridor was certainly a drastic shift.

It felt like stepping through a curtain that drained all happiness from you, even if that happiness was only temporary, feigned, and fueled by the jovial holiday atmosphere rather than coming from anywhere true inside of you. It was a show you had put on for the sake of the social occasion. As an automatic response, you felt the fake smile fall from your face as the last murmurs of the guests and the last echoes of Christmas music disappeared faintly behind you. You were then fully flipped from the warm, welcoming environment of the party to the cold shell that was Hogwarts in the dead of winter as the cool air coming off the stone kissed against your skin. 

You couldn’t resist the need to hug yourself in order to cover up your bare arms, sharp gooseflesh already forming there. Such an occasion insisted upon something showy rather than practical, and with the December weather, you were finding it chilly. 

As you walked a few steps down from the entrance to the party, you found that a certain cloud of darkness began to consume you - even with the Christmas trees glistening brightly at either end, reminding you of the supposedly cheerful season. 

You walked toward Draco, where he was waiting for you, just as Snape had promised when he had come up behind you like a looming storm cloud and pulled you away so suddenly, so rudely from the rousing conversation you were having with Harry and Slughorn. But you had to turn your mind off from any showmanship that you had been forced to put into those conversations, and turn your mind onto something else now - someone else. 

Draco had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his expensive suit, a stiff posture that could be seen even through the matching, all black attire. He was pacing along the mouth of the hallway rather frantically, threatening to wear holes in the soles of his custom leather shoes, muttering under his breath to himself. 

So far, this was the worst you had ever seen him. And that worried you greatly. 

“What’s wrong?” You asked, the question naturally on your tongue. 

The sound of your voice in the otherwise empty corridor pulled Draco’s eyes up from the floor, snapping his attention toward you in a way that stopped his pacing in an instant, causing his posture to stiffen up tall as he turned toward you. It was an ingrained instinct - facing someone, giving them your attention when they spoke. Well trained unconscious physical etiquette whipped into a boy who was often very rude and careless with his words. 

For a moment, his fist tightened in his pocket, and you knew that he was clutching on his wand instinctively, his eyes flickering around, looking for an intruder - so perhaps, not entirely ingrained etiquette. Perhaps quite a lot of unconscious physical panic living within those muscles as well. Fight or flight instincts that never got a chance to turn off. 

When his eyes fell on you, recognition flooded his features, and his stiffness relaxed - even if only slightly. 

“Draco, what is it? Why did you pull me out of the party?” You prodded further, your curiosity growing into annoyance when he took too long to answer you. 

“Trust me, I wouldn’t have called you out here if it wasn’t important.” Draco sighed, shifting from one foot to the other, not looking at you. 

“Well isn’t what I’m doing supposed to be important too?” You snapped back. 

Truthfully, you didn’t care about your ‘mission’. You knew that there would be consequences for you if you failed - but at this point, you weren’t all too afraid of being killed. 

When Draco’s parents had discovered that Slughorn was once again teaching at Hogwarts, they had sent you a letter asking to join his ‘Club’, telling you to get close to him. They knew that because of your brilliance, he would already be interested in you joining - and he certainly was. But you had turned him down multiple times because you found it to be an annoyance, and you didn’t want to have to worry about attending ‘club’ meetings on top of everything else going on in your chaotic life. 

Snape was the one who had explained to you why they wanted you to take him up on his nagging offer. The Dark Lord, who used to be known as Tom Riddle, was also once a part of that Club. And they needed to know how much Slughorn remembered about him, and if he was spilling any of the Dark Lord’s secrets to Harry Potter. They needed to know if Slughorn was revealing anything that might make The Dark Lord vulnerable towards Potter. 

Truthfully, you had been grateful towards Snape, and towards Draco for pulling you out of that social hell of fake laughter and performity and into the cool relief of the corridor. You had been dreading the thought of going to the party since Slughorn had first informed everyone about it, and you were grateful to escape it. Even if it gave a chance for the general darkness that Draco carried with him to begin biting at your sensitive heart. And even if it left Harry alone with Slughorn and his endless yammering in your wake. (You pitied him slightly, but you knew that he would be fine on his own.) 

You were mostly irritated with Draco because you hadn’t seen him in days. You felt that he had been strategically avoiding you. Somehow, even in the Slytherin common room or even when you looked for him in his own dorm, he never seemed to be there. And now, he was interrupting you during a crucial moment, daring to show his face when you had spent the better of the last week alone. 

You had invited him to attend the party with you. You thought that you would look like a fool, showing up without a date. And you had. Especially when nearly everyone at Hogwarts had your engagement as hot gossip on their lips just a few months prior. 

“Yes, but-” Draco began to explain himself, but you cut him off, your bubbling annoyance overtaking you in the moment. 

“I was talking to Slughorn when you so rudely interrupted me.” You said, emphasising the words in a way that made Draco childishly roll his eyes. “He was just about to invite me and Harry to look at some of shitty old mementos from previous class years when you had Snape pull me away-”

“Harry?” Draco repeated the name back, mouth gaped as his face twisted in disgust, getting far too caught up on the way you referred to his once rival - now someone who was very background to the rest of his problems. “What? Now you’re getting all cozied up with Potter, are you?” 

At the end of the day, Draco knew that you didn’t owe him anything. 

Essentially, his parents had bought you for him - just like they would have a new racing broom or a fancy set of robes. Since then, you had been nothing but kind to him. Well, aside from your mouthy attitude - which Draco actually found to be refreshing a lot of the time. And he wasn’t even sure how much of it was genuine kindness and how much of it was putting on a show for his parents in order to demonstrate to them that you were a good purchase - that you weren’t something to be disposed of. 

You had held his hand, been cozy and complimented him. He had been surprised the first time you kissed him - surprised by how genuine it felt, and how much he felt himself getting sucked into the emotions of it. But he knew that it was all just for show. 

Because at the end of the day, he knew that no amount of money could force him to own your heart. If you fell in love with someone like Potter, then he could do nothing to stop it. And frankly, he wouldn’t blame you. The heroics, and the genuine kindness, the niceties, the softness - Potter could offer you everything that he couldn’t. 

And in all honesty - something that Draco would only admit to himself deep within the confines of his own, quiet, quaking soul - that thought utterly terrified him. 

“Seriously, Draco?” You barked back, absolutely insulted at the insinuation. At the idea that you had been having fun at the party with Harry when it had been a pretty miserable time for you. “What kind of person do you think I am? I wasn’t there to flirt. Especially not with Harry Potter.”

“Yeah, that’s an awfully convenient story, love.” Draco scoffed, his voice brimming with disgust. 

When you made no further moves to defend yourself - when you didn’t beg for his affection or further insist that what you and Draco had was truly genuine and worth fighting for, it only filled Draco’s mind with more doubt. It only further inflated the idea that indeed, you liked Potter as a romantic partner. And you liked him better. 

“Fine then.” Draco sneered, turning on his heel and marching away, his shoes clacking loudly against the floor as he walked, creating an eerie echo in the empty hallway. 

You hated that your stomach curled with dread at the sight of his quickly retreating back. It had been a long, lonely week without him, and you hated to think of how much longer he would isolate himself if you didn’t take the chance to snag him now. 

“Draco, wait!” You rushed to stop him. 

He was the only person that you truly knew at Hogwarts. 

Yes, he had introduced you to his friends. Pansy Parkinson was nice enough, and she always tried to make girly small talk with you, which you usually returned. Often, her problems about which outfits to wear and how to do her makeup seemed insignificant compared to the literal life and death that Draco faced. But you could always go to her for a conversation that was distracting, a good mental escape. 

Blaise Zabini was more of the strong, silent type. Sometimes the two of you discussed books you had read (when you weren’t feeling too stressed out to read). You usually ended conversations with him early due to colliding opinions on such books. Naturally, he sided with the rich oppressors and you found yourself rooting for the underdogs in every single story. 

Somehow, out of everyone you found yourself surrounded with, Draco was someone you considered a friend. It was difficult not to after the summer the two of you had spent together. 

When your godmother had told you that some ‘old friends of your parents’ were interested in meeting you, you had been surprised. She had always been good to you - she had been friendly, always given you the basics and more in terms of what you needed. She was a very work-minded woman when it came to her job dealing with cursed objects, so she travelled often and left you to be watched over by the Muggle neighbours. Those were experiences that you treasured and often found to be fun. 

You had always grown up with the underlying knowledge that your godmother was not your ‘real’ mother. She always had you call her by her first name - never ‘Mama’, or ‘Mom’. Occasionally, you were mocked in school (because she had enrolled you in Muggle school for a basic education) because you were ‘adopted’. One day, this had led you to asking your godmother where it was that you had come from. 

She told you that your parents were from England, and they died fighting in a war against a terrible dark wizard. They had named her as the person who would take care of you in the event of their death, and though your godmother barely had any traces of an accent left, she told you that she once went to school with your parents at a place called Hogwarts in England. 

Your whole life, all you had known was Muggle New York City. When you turned ten years old, you knew Salem’s Academy for Fine Young Witches, which sometimes had social events (like Quidditch matches and weekend outings) with a brother school, Magorium’s Institute for Upcoming Magical Men. You had dated boys before, but you had never experienced anything too serious. You were a social butterfly well into your magical education who rode the subway during your summers and spent your time going to concerts, enjoying the Muggle library, watching television, going to the movie theatre. 

Even though you never knew your parents and you mourned the dreams of a life you could have had - your life was simple, and you liked it that way. 

Until your godmother took you on a trip to England, promising that it would be a pilgrimage to know more about your heritage, and nothing more. And then - over one dinner, she sold you out to the Malfoys for a dowry of two thousand Galleons. 

Apparently it was enough for her to retire so that she could write a book, as she had always dreamed of. And she was more than happy to be rid of the responsibility of a child that she did not birth. Something that you had heard her whisper to Narcissa when she thought you had not been listening. Up until that point, the only thing binding her to you had been a magical contract that she had signed with your parents before you were even born, naming her your carer in the event of their untimely death. 

The moment she signed a new contract - bidding you to the Malfoys as Draco’s future wife - she was completely free of her responsibility. The new contract that she signed dictated that the Malfoys would have to be responsible for you now. 

So - what you had thought would be a nice visit to explore more about the two dead people that you had never known quickly turned into a permanent relocation with only a small suitcase full of personal belongings, and little clue what the future held for you. Suddenly, you were in a brand new country, living with people you had never met before, betrothed to someone who seemed to hate you. 

And the more the Malfoys talked about The War and told stories of your deceased parents, the more you realised - your parents had died fighting alongside the terrible dark wizard, and not against him. But still, Narcissa and Lucius spoke about your parents as though they were heroes. Valiant heroes who had died at the hands of Aurors, protecting Voldemort’s cause. 

At first, it felt instinctive to hate Draco Malfoy. 

You wanted so badly to hate him. 

He was your betrothed, and though he was very handsome, he had been bitterly rude to you. It seemed that the forcefully polite kiss on the hand that he had given you upon first meeting - something that had given you butterflies in your stomach - had been nothing more than a front, a show he put on for his parents. Because he quickly soured towards you after that. 

He made it very clear that he was not a fan of the arranged marriage either. Even when his parents continually tried to pitch the idea to him and fluff it up for him - as much as they acted like you were a present being given to him on a silver platter (something that only made you feel more isolated and empty). 

There was a distinct point that made you come around to Draco Malfoy. 

The night when you had found out that it wasn’t just a visit, that the idea of the marriage wasn’t just being ‘floated by’ your godmother, but in fact, it was set in stone and you were being left at Malfoy Manor while she silently escaped in the middle of the night with her bag full of gold without even saying goodbye to you. You had sat on the edge of the guest bed they had you in and simply sobbed. You had never felt more alone in your life, never more abandoned, and all you could do was cry your eyes out. 

Draco’s room was across the hall from yours, so naturally, he heard this. It had been a purposeful move from his parents, putting the two of you in close quarters in the hopes that you would talk and interact more, wanting the two of you to at least like each other before getting married. After a few hours of being forced to listen to your chest-racking sobs, you heard a knock. You had been expecting it to be Draco, telling you to shut up so that he could sleep, but instead, a tiny voice asked permission to enter. 

It was one of the house elves - one you later learned was called Pippy, and when you gave her permission to come in, she shuffled along with a large tray in her hands and placed it on the nightstand. A teapot and an empty teacup. She poured you the cup of tea, and after she handed it to you, she patted you on the knee and said: 

“Mister Draco says peppermint tea is good for the bad days,” 

You took the cup in two shaking hands, thanking her meekly, enjoying it as a small comfort. When you watched the tiny elf shuffling back toward your door, you caught a glimpse of a bright blue eye peeking in through the crack, clearly trying not to be caught looking in. 

Even if he would never admit it then, he was growing soft toward you. 

And he had spent the next three months, the entirety of the summer, fighting with that softness as it grew within himself. He constantly battled between pushing you away with feigned annoyance and coldness and wrapping you in warmth, a wordless care. 

He would spend some of the nights in your bed cuddling you while you cried, staying completely silent as to dare not let any fond words slip out. He would defend you against his parents when you didn’t participate in their properly deemed etiquette (such as when you treated the house elves ‘too nicely’ or when you spoke about Muggle technology a bit too much). And yet, he never brought himself to say more than a few genuinely nice words to you. 

He was holding you at arm’s length. He was trying to be some snide, petulant boy toward you in the hopes that you wouldn’t like him. But truly, he was the only real kindness, the only real friend you had in this lonely new world. 

Draco stopped in his tracks at the sound of you calling out his name. As much as he would never admit it, he was a puppet to your call. 

He heaved out a sigh and turned back around, so utterly drawn to you. He hated to see your eyes coated in glass - fear and sadness, the ache that you had disappointed him bubbling to the surface as he stared you down with a sour face, his hands still in his pockets, his entire body still stiff. 

Even though a sad face didn’t suit you, you were still beautiful. So damn beautiful. He hated that he had been so stupid as to miss accompanying you to the party. But he likely would have just been a grey cloud hanging around you, preventing anyone from talking to you and socialising with you. He would have been a roadblock to your mission. 

You were wearing a dress made of a fabric that looked like liquid silver melted down and poured over your body, so sparkling and flowy that you looked like a star that belonged in the night sky alongside the beauty of the moon. It wrapped around your body gracefully, with a tie to emphasise your waist and a low neckline that showed off your cleavage. He was only human - he couldn’t lie in how it appealed to him. Sitting in the middle of your cleavage was a necklace - it was an ornate ruby beetle, the sigil of your Pureblood family. You were the last remaining member of the Scaraflos house. 

The necklace had been handed down to you from your mother - literally the only thing you had from your parents. You had worn it for years without ever truly knowing what it meant. You had told Draco that when Narcissa showed you pictures of his parents and your parents from their school days and pointed out how your mother was wearing the necklace in those pictures, it was the only time you had ever felt truly connected to your Pureblood heritage. And you had no clue if that was a good thing or a bad thing. 

Anytime in years previous, Draco would have jumped to say that it was a good thing. Now, though - he wasn’t entirely sure. 

You were shivering slightly due to the fact that it had such short sleeves, but you were wearing black stockings on your legs (something else that Draco found irritably sexy, even though it covered more of your skin) and you had on a pair of simple, but elegant silver heels. 

Silently, unable to stand the sight of goosenips forming on your skin, he took off his blazer and took the few steps back toward you to wrap it around your shoulders. With his thinner build, it wouldn’t fit you well - but at least, it would shield you from some of the cold air in the castle. As he draped it around you, his eyes caught a glimpse of your hand as you reached up to hold the edge of the coat on your shoulder, clutching onto the fabric so that it wouldn’t fall. 

Draco couldn’t help it when his eyes fixated terribly on it - that damn engagement ring. 

It was something his parents had purchased without him ever knowing, and they had him present it to you as a form of ceremony. As if either of you had any choice in the matter. As if it was supposed to be romantic. As if you could have said no. Later on, behind closed doors, you told him that you would wear it proudly and he scoffed. He thought that the moment the two of you got to Hogwarts, when there were no more prying eyes on the two of you (because Snape certainly didn’t care) - that you would take it off and resign it to some jewellery box, or perhaps even throw it away. 

But you kept wearing it. 

When you thought Draco wasn’t looking, he sometimes found you twisting it between two fingers, looking down at it with an odd kind of fondness - or perhaps, even love. Always a deep, dizzying array of complex thoughts floating through your mind. 

He had no clue that you wore it because you thought of Draco as your family now. He was the only person you had in the world who hadn’t done you some kind of injustice. And you wore it to show loyalty to him. You wore it because it meant that you weren’t alone. You were an abandoned orphan, sold and bartered like livestock - but as long as you wore that ring, you belonged to someone. Someone who, despite his best efforts to appear cold and uncaring, did take care of you. 

“Draco, why did you come here?” You asked again, much gentler this time, lowering your attack for now. 

You stared at him expectantly as you clutched his blazer around your shoulders, trying to steal the last bits of his warmth out of the fabric before it faded away completely. 

He sighed, hating to admit that he needed help. He was stubbornly, bitterly independent, just as his parents had taught him to be. It was one of his biggest flaws. 

“I’m having issues with the Vanishing Cabinet.” He told you quietly, hesitant to admit it. Hesitant to admit failure. 

“Show me.” You told him, and he nodded. 

He led you to the blank wall on the fifth floor that somehow caused a door to appear. The first time you had seen it, it had astounded you. Even in a world of magic, some things still managed to surprise you. 

He had originally brought you there at the beginning of the school year when he had explained to you that he had been tasked to fix up The Vanishing Cabinet. He had called it The Room of Hidden Things. He had explained to you that any time someone wanted to get rid of a dangerous object, for that object to never be found again, they disposed of it within this room. Sometimes it was also a dumping ground for common junk, he had theorised, and he heavily believed that items that were hidden within other places within the walls of Hogwarts - a book tucked away in a random cupboard, a potion bottle hidden under someone’s mattress - somehow, those items ended up here if they were hidden with the same intention of disposal. They were all pulled here by the room’s strong magic. 

You found it to be hauntingly beautiful, like many other places within Hogwarts were. You couldn’t help but to enjoy the sense of mystery as you walked through the isles of piled up furniture, seeing all the strange items that you could barely put names to - things like dragon skulls, murky old potions rotting away in dusty bottles. Even a few trolls that had been killed and stuff (taxidermy style) that had startled you upon your first visit to the room because when you had first looked at them, you thought they were alive and waiting to attack. 

Draco brought you to the back of the large room, and you saw that he had already pulled the tarp off the overwhelming tall, ornate Vanishing Cabinet, so the dusty cloth was sitting in the pile at the cabinet’s feet. Without a word, Draco walked up to the cabinet, moving in stiff mechanical motions as he pulled open the doors. You took a few steps closer to get a better look, realising that he was trying to show you whatever was inside - that must be where the primary problem was located. 

You couldn’t hold in the gasp that broke out of your throat when you saw a dead bird sitting in the bottom of the cabinet. 

A bright yellow canary laying against the dark wood, belly up and completely still with its soft feathers rustled, a few of them missing. You had seen very few dead animals in your lifetime. Aside from the occasional New York City pigeon, laying on the sidewalk in a similar fashion after running itself into one of the hyper reflective windows of the tall buildings. You couldn’t even stand to look at those for too long. You still felt the same deep heartache while looking at it that you had for the poor pigeons. 

“Oh - oh my.” You gaped quietly. 

Draco was entirely surprised when you shouldered him out of the way, letting his ill-fitting borrowed jacket drop off your shoulders onto the dusty ground without care as you crouched down in front of him. You then scooped up the small bird in your hands, cradling it gently as though it were entirely precious. 

He thought that seeing the state of things, you might start suggesting spells, telling him ways that he could fix the obvious problem. But no - you were soft-hearted. The true problem hadn’t even occurred to you yet, because you were so caught up on the sight of a dead bird. You were emotional, struck by the shock of an innocent animal having its life prematurely ended. 

Draco envied you quietly for a moment as you sat on your knees in front of the cabinet, looming in his shadow as you held the bird in your hands. He realised that in order for you to be so startled over this, so heartbroken - it must be one of the first times you had been brushed with death. Draco envied that naivety. 

He wished he could rewind to the version of himself from a few years ago. A version that thought not being able to join the Quidditch team because of an age restriction was the worst tragedy in the world. A version that thought he got everything he wanted because he was genuinely deserving of it. Someone who couldn’t see that he was simply a spoiled brat. 

He wished he could go back to a version that hadn’t seen Muggleborns slain in his family’s dining room, begging for mercy where there would be none.  

When he had first seen that bird sitting dead in the cabinet, a frighteningly still, dead body draped in yellow - for a moment, he had been reminded of Cedric Diggory. Someone so undeserving, lifeless before their time. Used up and gone. 

But now, seeing the way you cradled it, fussing over something already dead and unable to benefit from your care - Draco was distinctly reminded of himself, withering and undeserving in your arms. 

“Draco, do - do you think we should bury it?” You asked, the gentle croak of tears in your voice as you considered a pointless funeral for the small dead thing. 

You suddenly rose up to your feet then, walking around Draco to look for something among the junk in the room, something to wrap the poor bird in - some kind of cloth, or perhaps a small box to place it in. 

This caused something inside of him to snap. The way your sweet demeanour ground against his nerves - his worry, his anxiety about everything mounting suddenly as you fussed over a tiny thing that truly didn’t matter. 

Eventually, your good intentions would get you killed. That gentle touch, that willingness to help - it would get you on the wrong end of a Killing Curse one day. (Especially if he didn’t protect you.) 

“It’s not about the bloody bird, woman!” He growled out, entirely frustrated with your delicate ignorance, your lack of seeing the true point. 

Draco turned to you, and grabbed your arm so viciously that your palms jerked apart and the small, lifeless body dropped onto the floor without a single bit of grace. The bird dropped against the cold stone so carelessly, as though it were an object that had not once had any life in it at all. You let out another gasp at this, and looked from the dull tuft of yellow feathers at your feet up to Draco’s face. 

“Draco!” You cried out sharply, protesting against his careless nature toward the innocent creature. 

His fingers were gripping your forearm fiercely, blooming small bits of pain - but you didn’t care. You felt a clench in your gut, distinct guilt overwhelming you. You told yourself that his anger was misplaced. You had to guess so. You didn’t have words, especially not while he stared you down so coldly. All you could do was stand tall, and stare right back, even while tears formed in your eyes. 

He tightly clenched his jaw. 

You were surprised when he spoke again. 

“How can you be so daft?” He said, almost choking on the words. 

That was when you knew for certain that all his bubbling anger was truly misplaced. He had called you brilliant before, and often made ‘jokes’ about how much you outsmarted him. It was one of the only things he had said about you that wasn’t sarcastic or backhanded in some effort to deter you. He didn’t think that you were stupid, not one bit. 

“Look, you know if I don’t get this thing working-” Draco couldn’t even finish his sentence before his throat closed around the words, threatening harsh sobs that he was desperate to contain. 

Instead, he turned abruptly, letting go of your arm - now completely uncaring of the misplaced conflict. You felt a wave crash into your chest as you realised it. He was right - how could you have been so stupid? 

Of course, he had no care for a small animal. 

It was about what that animal represented. His failure. Death looming over his head. 

The bird had obviously died in the cabinet, which meant that a living thing had yet to survive the transition from Borgin & Burkes into Hogwarts. If Draco couldn’t fix that problem - if there was some sort of problem when the Death Eaters tried to use the cabinet to get into Hogwarts and one of them died, then Draco would be on the line for it. 

They would kill him if he couldn’t get this right. 

Draco moved slowly, putting a hand on each of the cabinet’s doors and closing them. The harsh squeak of the old hinges resonating through the otherwise silent room spoke volumes. 

Then, for a few long, painstaking moments - neither of you said a thing. 

Your chest ached. You wished that you could find something comforting to tell him. For some reason, you knew that simply telling him ‘it’s going to be okay’ wasn’t going to cut it. You muddled in the silence and you hated it. 

He stood with his back still turned to you, with his arms outstretched, leaning on the tall, imposing wooden object. It felt like a shadow of death looming over the two of you. His shoulders held nothing but pure tension, even as he used the object for support. Soon, he took on a very unnatural, un-Malfoy slouch as he allowed his head to so tiredly droop down between his spread arms. 

After a few moments of that terrible silence, with you staring at his back, tossing your mind for something helpful to say as you chewed at your own lip - Draco took in a shuddering breath. Though you knew he was trying to hide it: he began quietly sobbing. 

You couldn’t help yourself then. 

It was something you knew that he pretended to hate, but you did it anyway. He could pretend to be annoyed with you if he wanted, but you both likely needed it right now. You stepped forward, over the dead bird, your shoes quietly clacking against the stone - and you settled yourself right up against his back, tucking your body tightly against him in a hug. You nuzzled your face into the tense muscles of his shoulders, and as you wrapped your arms around his waist from behind and squeezed him tightly, you felt some of the tension melt away as he unconsciously relaxed into your touch. 

You did worry about how much thinner he felt in your arms than the last time you had done this - obviously, he hadn’t been eating properly. But you didn’t bother to bring it up, not wanting to start another argument. 

Draco felt a grateful warmth spread over him. Still, he refused to touch you back. He couldn’t. At least not yet. 

He kept his hands on the wood of the cabinet, almost like a bold surrender, silently remarking that he would give into your touch, to your softness, but he wouldn’t return it. He couldn’t. He let out another shuddering sob - a sound he couldn’t contain now with the feeling of your warmth at his back. It was something he hated himself for. 

You hushed him gently. And then, miraculously, you found words. 

“We could leave.” You said quietly, turning your head so that your cheek sat parallel with his flesh, muttering the words against the fine silk of his button up shirt. “We could just… run away together. We don’t have to stay here, Draco. We could get to a fireplace and Floo out of here, or-” 

“We can’t.” Draco easily cut you off, stamping out the idea, his voice just as quiet, throttled by tears. “You know that we can’t.” 

You wanted to argue the point more. Obviously, he didn’t hate the idea. He just thought it was illogical. Likely, he thought it was too dangerous. But what was the alternative - possibly being killed anyway? Being tortured and then killed if he failed his mission? 

“If we leave, they’ll kill my parents because I couldn’t complete my mission.” Draco sniffled quietly. “At the very least, they’ll haul me in and have my head for being a traitor.” 

Draco straightened his stance then, taking his arms off the cabinet. You thought that he might remove your arms from his waist, finally rejecting your touch. But instead, he began tracing fingers from his right hand along the forearm of his left sleeve, almost scratching at it like it was a terrible itch. 

You had been there on the night when he had gotten the Mark. 

You had been brought into the room and forced to listen to his screams of pain before you even truly knew what was happening. When you had tried to comfort him about it, he had pushed you off so roughly that you had almost smacked your head into one of the walls - but you couldn’t bring yourself to be angry with him. You that he was taking that fear and pain out on you in that terribly misplaced way. 

Later that night, when he had been crying - sobbing harshly and running the freshly scorched skin under cool water - he let you run him a bath with soothing soaps. The two of you discussed Shakespeare’s plays (which you were surprised that he had read) while you washed his hair for him. 

“Now that I have the Mark, I can’t run anywhere.” Draco muttered quietly. “I can’t go anywhere that I won’t be found.” 

That part had never truly occurred to you before. 

You knew that the Dark Lord used the Dark Mark as a way for his followers to show their loyalty. The magic behind it also made it a way for him to summon them or even for them to summon him. Hearing his words, you guessed that Draco having it meant that he could be ‘summoned’ at any time as a part of the loyalty he had so unwillingly pledged. 

Even if he betrayed the Dark Lord morally, mentally, emotionally, and tried to do so physically by running away, as long as his arm was attached, he would still be in service to that horrible man until he and his followers decided otherwise. Especially because you couldn’t imagine Draco wanting to part with his arm anytime soon. 

“We’ll figure something out.” You told him, having little faith in those words yourself. You knew it was a truth that you had to speak into existence - otherwise, you were doomed. 

You laid a gentle kiss on his shoulder through the fabric of his shirt, spreading more warmth through him. He clenched his fists at his sides, highly resisting the urge to reach for your hands, but silently hoping that you wouldn’t pull away. 

Draco resented your sense of hope. A lot of the time, he couldn’t help but to think that it was stupid - just your naivety poking through in a different way. Though, truthfully, in a lot of ways, he knew that your hope was the bravest thing about you. And these days, that hope was the only thing keeping him afloat in the chaotic sea that his life had become. 

Draco, unlike you, was a coward. 

He could come up with all the excuses he wanted not to run away, but truthfully - he was terrified. And every single day, his fear put you more and more at risk. 

… 

Draco thought back to a night at Malfoy Manor, when you had been having dinner with him and his parents. A night when, for the first time in his life, that streak of cowardice had somehow been broken. 

“Can you believe it? It’s completely ridiculous. A proposal to convert the entire Ministry from intern-departmental memos to this - this telephone nonsense!” 

Lucius ranted on as he cut into his food, taking out his aggression on the piece of meat in front of him as he recounted something that had happened a few months previous that still brought him particular frustration whenever he remembered it. 

“That Arthur Weasley is a stupid old bat, downright mindless, but even I can’t imagine where he gets theses ideas from-” 

“Telephones can actually be quite useful.” You piped up, interrupting his father’s ranting with a quiet, but polite comment. 

Without a word, all three others at the table stared at you as you continued to mindlessly poke at your dinner. Lucius glared daggers at you, his expression full of bitter venom, while Draco and Narcissa gave you the same distinct expression of shock - deer in headlights, mirrored over both their faces. Over the years, they had learned to simply be quiet and ‘listen’ to the rantings of their patriarch, especially if it was about the goings on at the Ministry, Arthur Weasley, or any number of other subjects that he knew he was right about. 

While at his own dinner table, Lucius Malfoy was not to be interrupted - much less corrected. 

You had just broken the golden rule twice over. You had interrupted him in the middle of speaking, and you had contradicted what he was saying. 

Draco’s gut clenched as he realised that he should have warned you beforehand to avoid such a faux pas. He should have told you that the dinner table was a place for quietly eating and answering direct questions in as few words as possible - not an open forum. 

Before he could apologise on your behalf, you opened your mouth again - doubling down on this accidental, horrible mistake. 

“Do you just find it confusing because you don’t know how they work?” You posed, reaching out to grab your glass for a sip of water, looking right at Lucius as you posed the question. “I know that a lot of Wizards who were born in the magical world can find Muggle technology strange and confusing, but-” 

Before you could finish speaking, Lucius reached off to the side and grabbed his cane, and brought down onto the centre of the table with an intense silent fury. He smashed your hand down into the glass that you had been holding, shattering it to pieces underneath your palm. Draco and Narcissa flinched at the sound and Narcissa backed her chair away slightly - but neither of them dared to speak, neither of them moved to confront him. In fact, Narcissa was very intentionally looking away, her eyes now glued to the floor. 

Draco could see blood pooling against the emerald green table runner, could see your flesh quivering in pain underneath the silver snake’s maw - but you stayed completely still, your eyes coldly locked on Lucius’ glare as he hovered out of his seat. Even with tears of pain dotting your eyes, your throat trembling as you held back cries - you kept a stiff jaw and refused to back down from the confrontation. 

It was braver than Draco had ever been, and he silently admired you for it. 

“If you think that stupid, filthy Muggles are so brilliant, then you can die like one.” Lucius ground out slowly, pure rage on his breath. “While you are living in my house, you will learn your place. You filthy, blood-traitorous slut.” 

Draco held his breath. He knew that if you backed down, if you shied away and admitted your wrong doing with silence or even an apology, then his father would let you go easily and then this would all be over. 

But of course - you weren’t going to back down easily. Not you. 

“And what place is that?” You remarked, pure snark in your tone. 

Draco’s throat clenched up. His father wouldn’t like that. 

Lucius lifted the snake’s bite off your hand, only for a second, and then - after placing down the cane, he sharply backhanded you. Draco knew that he wore thick, heavy rings on his hand and he worried for you - especially when you swayed on your seat for a moment before falling to the floor. The heft of the hit was enough to dizzy you, make you unstable and send you to the ground. 

“Your place is to be silent until I call upon you.” Lucius announced, seeming very satisfied with himself. 

Narcissa refused to look in your direction, and Lucius moved to sit back in his chair. For once, going against everything he had been taught since childhood, Draco rushed to get out of his. He knew that it would have been expected for him to ignore you. For you to be isolated in your pain. But he couldn’t help himself. 

Draco rushed to your side, collapsing onto his hands and knees before you - instinctively, he sheltered you in his arms, trying to get you upright again. 

“Y/N?” He croaked out quietly, only now realising how close he was to tears. 

“I’m fine, Draco.” You quickly lied. “I’m fine.” 

“Draco.” 

Lucius’ tone was entirely dead, almost calm, and somehow menacing in the same breath. Draco looked over your head, your slouched, defeated posture making you too small in his arms as he held you against his chest, and he caught his father’s eye as the man glared at him with pure violence dancing in his cold eyes. Any other time, Draco would have folded to that silent threat so easily. But with you there - with the feeling of you quivering against him, clearly holding in sobs - it truly injected boldness into him in those moments. 

You were such a fragile thing. For once in his life - something he needed to protect. Something only he could protect. 

“Draco, sit down.” His father ordered, clearly annoyed when Draco took too long to move away from you. “You haven’t been dismissed from my table yet.” 

Draco laid a gentle kiss on your forehead, and somehow, entirely against his own will, untangled you from his arms. When he stood, everyone in the room thought for certain that it was to comply with this order. But instead, he moved toward his father’s chair with sharp footsteps, putting on his best faux confidence and standing tall as he spat out his next words. 

“I swear to Merlin, if you ever put a hand on my fiance again, I will end you.” 

Naturally, Lucius didn’t find this threat to be the slightest bit intimidating. 

His father let out a dark chuckle, clearly amused by seeing Draco posture as a man when he knew that his son was nothing more than a spoiled, cowardly child. 

“Let’s not forget who bought you the little whore.” Lucius laughed. “There’s no need to get sentimental, Draco. You should be paying attention. Learn how to train up your wife now, before she becomes a disobedient brat. You should never let anyone talk to your father like that, remember, loyalty comes-” 

Draco took out his wand then, much to his father’s surprise. With it poised in Lucius’ direction, he received a sharp glare. 

“I understand loyalty perfectly well. Father.” Draco said, his voice short. 

“Incarcerous.” Lucius hissed sharply - then, as if out of nowhere, a thin black rope appeared and whipped around the middle of Draco’s neck. In an instant, it began tightening, choking him. 

Immediately, Draco dropped his wand and fell backwards, landing beside where you were still kneeling on the floor - you panicked as you watched him choking and gasping for breath. 

“Lucius!” Narcissa cried out, begging for the end of the conflict. 

The man ignored her. 

“You will learn to respect me in my own house, so help me, if I have to-” 

“Finite.” You held your good hand above Draco’s gasping face and muttered the counter curse, releasing him from the rope, performing an impressive feat of wandless magic to get him free.

Lucius glared at you once again, locking you and Draco in a harsh stare as you helped him sit up while he struggled to catch his breath. 

Before any further words could be said, Lucius pushed out his chair and stomped out of the room like a child having a tantrum, obviously upset that his intimidation and abuse had not gotten him the result he wanted. Narcissa said nothing, only giving you the saddest eyes as you helped Draco off the floor. The two of you left to go clean the glass out of your palm, spending the rest of the night locked in Draco’s room, licking your wounds in the relative comfort of each other’s silence. 

… 

That had been the first time Draco had ever properly stood up to his father. 

Draco still wondered if that was a good thing or not. 

Before he could venture any further into that very dangerous can of worms, you pulled Draco back to the present when you stepped back from the hug. Draco resisted the urge to pull you back, to steal more of your warmth. 

You noticed something out of the corner of your eye that caught your attention. 

A mattress laid out on the floor. 

It could have just been one of those random pieces of stray ‘junk’ furniture, but something about it caught your attention. For one, the fact that it hadn’t been in that position the last time you had been in this room. And two - there were a few random, stray blankets placed on top of it in what was very clearly an improvised sleeping area. As though someone had gone through the random objects in the room in order to compose a makeshift bed. 

With Draco’s bookbag sitting beside the mattress, open - you quickly clued into the truth. It was absolutely no trouble to figure out why you hadn’t seen much of him over the past week. He had been sleeping here. 

It was a revelation that shocked you. 

Especially considering that this looked quite shabby in comparison to the comfort of the Slytherin dorms. And you knew that at home, he was used to being spoiled with a thick, three foot tall mattress on a four poster bed and goose feather down pillows. So - why would he choose to camp out here? Why would he want to be closer to The Vanishing Cabinet - something that was actively giving him stress? 

“You’ve been sleeping here.” You said, disappointment ripe in your voice as you walked over to the mattress as toed at one of the blankets with your shoe. “Why?” 

“Why does it matter?” Draco huffed, picking up his jacket that you had dropped onto the floor and tossing it into the middle of the mattress. “Can you help me with The Cabinet or not?” 

“I can help.” You answered simply. “But I want to talk about this first.” You said, motioning toward the area where he had slept. 

Draco let out a sharp breath and turned around, rubbing his hands across his face in sharp frustration. 

For a moment, you thought that he was simply going to leave again, forcing you to chase him, trying to outrun the conversation. It had been a favourite tactic of his when the two of you had been living at his parents’ sprawling estate, a place that he knew much better than you did. The second that things got a bit too personal, he would slip into some random hallway or sneak off around a private corner, and it was like he had Disapparated - with how quickly he had moved, disappearing into the bowels of the house so that he could escape talking to you. 

You wouldn’t let him escape this time. 

You stepped up to him and put your hands on either side of his face, and he closed his eyes at the gentle touch. 

“Draco, please don’t hide from me.” You told him quietly. “You don’t have to be alone in all this. I know… I know I’m just some stupid girl that your parents bought for you, but I want to be a good wife for you. I want to be the person that you can come to with your problems.” 

Draco didn’t think of you as just some ‘stupid girl’. 

He didn’t think of you as a gift, as a purchased object that he could throw away like he had with every other toy that he had carelessly broken in his life. 

Honestly - you were the first real friend he ever had. You were the first person who was truly honest with him, calling him out on his bullshit, barring any consequences of his reputation or anything that his parents might do to you. You didn’t flock to him for popularity or status. You were forced to be near him, but you didn’t always act polite toward him by force. When your sweetness came to him, it was in waves. And it came along with sour notes and rudeness and harsh honesty that he needed. 

That kind of honesty was something that he had never experienced from anyone else in his life. 

And all of it was so incredibly genuine. 

You were someone who should have hated him, but you always smiled at him; someone who said his name with nothing but pleasantness in your tone, where others said it with venom or coldness. You were one of the first people he felt like he could open up to, and that was dangerous. 

Of course he was hiding from you. He needed to hide from you. 

He was a coward. And lately, the thing he feared most, even above losing his own life - was losing you. You were probably the only good thing he had ever possessed that was actually irreplaceable. If he lost you, he knew that he would never recover. He would actually willingly fling himself off the Astronomy Tower if he was somehow responsible for getting you hurt. 

That was what kept him at a distance. Hoping that he could actually grow cold toward you. Hoping that he could learn to genuinely hate you if he escaped from your sweetness. 

He also hoped that you would grow to hate him so that you could simply detach and go off on your own. You didn’t have The Mark, you could still run. At least before making your marriage vows, you could. But no - you were too good. You were too kind hearted to truly abandon him. 

And every time Draco saw you, he only became more nauseated with the realisation that he was becoming more and more fond of you. He would always look for your face in the crowd at the Great Hall, he would always wait for that smile to come across your lips when you locked eyes with him. 

And he couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t handle you. He couldn’t handle being the one responsible for the destruction of your life. 

So he spent more nights, longer nights in the Room of Requirement, slaving over The Vanishing Cabinet, writing down increasingly stupid plans for how he could kill Dumbledore without actually waltzing up and just murdering the man. He had to complete his mission if he was going to keep you safe. 

“Draco, please-” 

He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t listen to the sweet sadness in your voice curl around his name like a canary’s song, another sweet little bird ready to die by his hands. He couldn’t stand you talking to him like you actually cherished him - like he was actually something worth having. 

He reached up and gently cupped the side of your face, tucking his arm inside of yours to do so where you still held onto his cheek, the two of you becoming so entangled, just as he had feared. 

Then - he pulled you into a kiss. 

It was an addition to only about a half dozen kisses that the two of you had shared before this. And in an instant, this was the most desperate - emotions that he desperately wanted dampened off and hidden wringing through his lips and into yours. Entirely against his will, another hot tear escaped, and he let out a small gasp when you were quick to thumb it away. 

You wanted to cheer at the feeling of his lips against yours. You knew that before this, he was actively pulling away from you, putting himself in isolation, marching in his suffering alone because he thought that he had to. Or simply because he was used to it, from what you had seen of his home life. 

You knew what a horrible curse loneliness was, and you never wanted him to suffer through it. Especially not on top of everything else he was already going through. If he had to suffer through everything that his parents had put onto him, then at the very least, he didn’t have to suffer alone. 

Having his lips pressed so tightly to yours - it felt like progress. Feeling the whimper that echoed out from his throat as he held your face so delicately, like you were a perfect, soft doll - like you were something so precious - it felt like you had broken down a wall that he had been trying so hard for so many months to keep up as a barrier against you. 

This felt like saving him. 

It felt like doing what little you could within your limited power to create light in the darkness he was trudging through. Or at the very least, it felt like you could assure him that he wasn’t stuck in that darkness alone. 

After a few moments, Draco pulled away from the kiss. When he reached up to pull one of your hands away from his face, you worried that he might just shove you away and walk away altogether, finally coming to his senses against the affection. You worried that he would suddenly become cold toward you as he had done many other times, in an effort to turn you off. 

Instead - he surprised you. He did one of the most endearing, heart-melting things that he possibly could have done. 

He clasped your wrist gently between his cool fingers, thumbing along your pulse in a way that made you hold back a moan, and then he raised the heel of your palm up to his lips. With his eyes gently closed, refusing to look at you, he kissed along the fading scars that had been left there when his father had smashed your hand into a wine glass over dinner. 

The marks were something you didn’t pay much mind to these days, especially not with the ornament of your engagement ring as a much more pleasant distraction on that hand. But feeling Draco’s pillowy, light kisses grazing across your skin in the best, deepest apology he ever could have offered you - it made your stomach clench with overwhelming emotion as tears formed in your eyes. 

“Draco-” You choked on his name this time, and he moved your hand to sit on his shoulder as he turned his attention toward your face. 

Glassy, tear-kissed eyes faced your own, and you knew that there were no words for it. 

The universe had brought the two of you together in the strangest way and drowned the two of you in the most unpleasant circumstances. But you couldn’t help thinking that this is exactly where you were meant to be. 

“Hush now, darling.” He told you, his voice whisper-quiet, not daring to get much louder lest he risk breaking those tears in his throat. 

Darling. It was the first time he had ever called you that. He had thrown out the occasional snide ‘honey’ or ‘wifey’ in front of his parents or even behind closed doors, very rudely playing on the fact that he was supposed to treat you like a girlfriend, like his beloved. He thought it was amusing to taunt you with the sarcasm that he never actually would hold any true affection for you. 

This was the first pet name he had given you out of genuine affection. 

He pulled you back in for another kiss, and the moment his lips touched yours, Draco could feel himself losing it. The softness of your pillowy mouth against his, the way your fingers curled into his shirt, holding onto him like you truly needed him as an anchor. The little moan you let out - making him desperate to chase more of those sounds from you. 

All of it was slowly driving him insane, leading him further astray from his goal of detaching from you. 

He should have tossed you out into the hallway. He should have yelled at you, called you horrible names. He should have pulled out every single rude, bratty thing in his repertoire to make you absolutely hate him. Instead - he found himself getting lost in you more by the second. He found himself letting your softness roll over him in waves, turning him weak. 

Draco held the back of your head with one hand, pinning you into the kiss, holding you against his mouth like a dehydrated man would so desperately hold onto a decanter of water. You let out another sweet moan, louder this time, and he didn’t hesitate to shove his tongue past your lips, dizzy and needing to drink right from the source, wanting to devour you whole. He needed to see if he could taste the light that radiated out of you. He needed to see if he could find that fatal thing inside of you that made you have a fondness toward him. 

This was nothing like snogging random Slytherin girls out of boredom.

In that moment, Draco felt important. He felt needed. He felt like he served some grander purpose of good in the universe because you held onto him tighter, because you pulled him closer, because you kissed him back with ferocity and sucked on his tongue. Because you wanted him. He felt that if your attention shifted from him for even a moment, he would wither away and cease to exist because he only mattered under the warmth of your gaze. 

Draco felt like he was tempting fate when he moved his hands down your shoulders, down your back, daring to touch more of you - daring to ask for more. That he was playing with fire, letting his well-ingrained greed get the better of him once again. But he couldn’t help himself. 

He cradled his flat-handed touch across you with the intention to feel you in a way that he never had before. Yes, he had held you before - hugged you, pulled you close to him when he was stuck for words and wanting to comfort you, especially seeing as comforting words had never been a skill taught to him. But other than a few grazing touches against your hands or your cheeks, he had never dared to invite himself to the rest of your body. 

Before this, he had never touched you with lust on his mind. 

He had never truly thought of you as his property, something he could possess and own and take. He thought for certain, at any moment, you would push him away for being so brazen - and he would simply have to add this rejection to his pile of heartbreaks and move on. 

Instead, he felt something inside of him ease with relief when you sighed with delight - one of the most beautiful sounds he had ever heard. And then, in a moment so perfect, you leaned into his touches. You kept one hand tightly gripping the fabric of his shirt and the other reached up and wound into his neatly slicked hair, instantly messing up the tresses and making them wild at the back. 

But he couldn’t care, not for a moment - especially not when you let out another sweet moan into his mouth and leaned your whole body into him, pressing against him so that he felt every inch of your gorgeous curves through the thin fabric of your dress. 

Draco had felt you pressed this close against his body before, but it had never been like this. 

Before it had been like a delicate bird being held in a cage - like some sweet, innocent thing he was trying to protect. 

But now, it was like a man truly feeling a woman. It was a potential husband truly seeing his future wife for the first time, and his body responded in the only way he could. He let out a shuddering moan and he felt his cock hardening up. Of course, he didn’t want you to feel it. He didn’t want this to happen. He shouldn’t let this happen. 

He was supposed to be distancing himself from you, not letting you dizzy him like he was some stupid lovesick fool. He was supposed to be severing these ties, not burrowing himself further inside of you. (And just that thought sparked a certain imagery in his mind that made his cock twitch and swell to full mast. Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant. He was a fool.) 

Draco pulled back from the kiss and you let out a disappointed sound - like the creek of an old door, tired and waning. 

Draco forced his hands back to his sides, despite how fantastic the warmth of your flesh felt under his touch. 

When he tried to step back from you, you refused to let him go. The grip you had in his hair caused a small twinge of pain across his scalp, and he was forced to open his eyes. The look on your face - kiss bruised lips, eyes still closed, a quiver across your chin, filled to the brim with disappointment, likely knowing what was going through his mind - it made him weak. It gave him pause. 

He was too damn weak. 

“Y/N-” He said your name in a whisper - about to tell you that the two of you shouldn’t be doing this, but you cut him off. 

“Draco, please.” You whimpered quietly. “Please, don’t push me away right now.” 

He reached up and gently gripped your forearm. He should have used the touch to untangle you from him, but he found that he didn’t have the strength to. Whether it was a mental strength or a physical one, he wasn’t even sure. 

“I need this.” You whispered, your voice hoarse and strained, and for the first time that he had ever heard - desperate. “I think you do too. Please.” 

He was a horrible, selfish man - but he told himself that a good husband would never deny you of your needs. 

Draco swept you into another kiss, wrapping one of his arms around your back, firm and protective as he always had been, determined to serve your needs with more ferocity than ever. While you moaned into his mouth, he guided you backwards until your ankles hit the edge of that mattress. The one he had been sleeping on to flee from this big, horrible thing that had been building between the two of you that had now crashed down upon his head with inevitability. 

Even dizzy from the feeling of his lips on yours, you instantly understood the wordless signal. He laid you down on it as gently as he could, taking the gravity in slow pauses rather than simply letting you fall backwards, and as he fixed some of the blankets under your head like a makeshift pillow, you felt like a queen, being treated with the highest affection and handled with the most gentle hands that her beloved could muster. 

Part of you yearned for a rougher touch, to see Draco let loose on you - but you knew that this was what he needed. He needed to treasure something. He needed to know that he could have something good that wouldn’t end up dead or broken because of him. 

Draco paused above you for a moment, holding himself there with a hand beside your head - he felt a pure, stabbing pain in his gut when he looked down at you and all he could see reflected back up at him was pure, shining, sickening love. Your eyes practically glowed with it in the dimly lit room. He didn’t want to admit it then, but he knew he was so utterly fucked. 

He felt a curse curling up inside him - the urge to mirror that back to you but the inability to proclaim it. Feeling like he was some filthy dead thing that would never truly mean anything to you while wanting so badly to be the solid earth beneath your feet that you needed to function, he wanted to be your everything. His voice became strangled in his throat and instead of making that impossible proclamation, his body moved frantically as he began kissing down your neck. 

It was a worship - it was a proclamation in silence. It was all he could muster, but he hoped that it would please you nonetheless. 

Please. 

He whispered wordlessly against your skin, tonguing along the planes of your neck as you moaned for him so beautifully. 

Please, notice me. Find me worthy. 

After lavishing gentle attention across your neck and your clavicle, coating you in salvia that cooled across your skin and made you shiver, he reached your bust line and easily buried himself there. He nestled along the skin so tenderly that you found your heart wanting to burst out of your chest to reach his lips, your hands coming up to cradle the back of his head in what you hoped was an equally tender gesture while he laid the sweetest, simple open-mouthed kisses in your cleavage. 

This was a Draco that you had never seen before. This was not the surly-mouthed, harsh, bitter man you had come to know. And if you had fallen for glimpses of his sweetness before, then you were quickly being catapulted off the edge into full on adoration. Into something deeper and much more dangerous. 

“Draco, please.” You moaned out, pushing your chest further into his touch, somehow already breathless and beating hard between your thighs for him. 

Of course, he thought. More. 

She deserves more. 

Draco moved the hand that was supporting himself to push into the mattress beside your waist, holding his weight there now. And then, he used his other hand to reach into the front of your dress. He felt lucky when you sighed with delight rather than revoking his permission to touch you, even though his fingers were cold and icy upon your breast as he moved the fabric of your dress and the cup of your bra off to the side. 

This left the deep V of the wrap sitting at your ribs, presenting one of your breasts to the open air, an absolutely beautiful sight as your nipple pebbled up with the coolness of the room. He didn’t leave the flesh cold for long before he cupped your breast with tender fingers and fed your nipple into his hot mouth, eagerly sucking - as though he could communicate better every tangled bit of emotion he felt for you with the intricate swirls of his tongue. 

“Draco!” 

You moaned and arched up into his mouth, encouraging him further to explore the beauty of your breast with his tongue. 

You surprised him slightly when you moved underneath him, parting your legs and moving to bracket your knees around his narrow hips. He couldn’t help but to moan against your breast when he felt the overwhelming heat of your core settle against his cock. Even through his trousers, with your dress pooling up around your waist, it was like feeling the morning sun kissing your face after opening the curtains. It was a wave of warmth that threatened to overtake him. 

Draco couldn’t hold back the instinctive movement, and he ground his hips downward, seeking more of that addictive heat, needing more of it on his hard, aching cock. He felt as though he had found liquid euphoria when you let out a crackling moan in response, the sound shaking everything inside of him that made him actually feel good for once. 

The feeling was enhanced when you threaded your fingers into his hair harder, your fingernails scraping across his scalp as your body echoed a natural response to him - you clamped your thighs down on his hips, trapping him there, and you began to grind yourself into the hardness of his cock, clearly needed more for yourself. 

He knew that he shouldn’t be allowed to have this - he shouldn’t be allowed to taint something as perfect as you. But he let himself continue to selfishly take, and take, and take more. He was a greedy brat, as he always had been, and he couldn’t bear to change his ways now. 

“Oh fuck, Draco.” You moaned out so sweetly. 

Draco pulled back, and began kissing along the side of your breast. 

“Shh, darling. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” He said quietly, swallowing sharply, desperately trying to chug in more air. 

He had no clue when he had become so light-headed, but if you were the thing making him so dizzy, so distant from reality - then you were his fondest drug, and he was never going to let you go again. 

Draco descended then - he had the utmost urge to please you, to hear more of his name on your lips. 

A near feral groan escaped him when he finally caught a glimpse between your thighs. 

With that silver skirt pooled around your waist, he could see properly now - those black stockings that he already thought were too sinful now took on a whole new meaning in his realm of fantasies. You weren’t wearing any panties beneath the semi-transparent garment - the thick seam of the stockings was stuck to your wet cunt, dipping into your pussy right where he wanted to be; your wetness leaking right through the nylon and causing it to stick to your cunt, making it shiny and utterly perfect in the dimly lit space. 

Draco groaned from deep in his chest, his voice edging on whiny, even to his own ears. But he couldn’t bring himself to care about how pathetic he must have sounded. You were just too perfect. He was drawn in by the siren call of your perfect cunt, one hand with a thumb drawing circles on your hips and the other gently skimming fingers up the back of your clothed thigh as he scooted himself further down the mattress. 

He couldn’t resist the urge, when he leaned down, he latched his mouth onto your cunt through the wet, shiny fabric, unable to resist the pure need to taste your essence without taking off the stockings first. 

“Draco! Oh-!” 

You let out a needy moan, which only spurred Draco to suck harder, even tonguing sharply against your clit through the fabric. It created a sharp itch, a raging need - it was not enough contact, tedious and harsh and something that made a vicious, rolling ache inside of your cunt. You needed more. 

���Please, more!” 

Again - he would have been cruel to deny you. And though, up until this point, he had been a reluctant and unwilling paramour, he was nothing but a slave to you and your desires in those moments. 

Acting purely upon instinct, he raised his head slightly to give himself room to work and then brought fingers to the nylon fabric, trying to tear it apart. His head was filled with nothing but animal need now, bloated and high on the affection that he had been denying himself for months he had been unwillingly engaged to you. Months of denying that you were exactly what he needed, his other half - the other half of a lonely broken person clinging on that he had been so desperately trying to shake off. 

Draco let out a growl of frustration - his nails were blunt and dull and he slipped hopelessly against the wet fabric. Before it could truly be formed as a thought inside his mind, he leaned down and pressed his teeth into the stockings against your mound, right above your clit in a way that made you whimper from the contact. Then - he bit harshly into the fabric, tearing a small hole into it that he could then rip wider with his frantic hands. 

It made you gasp, being exposed to the cold air within seconds - feeling your hot, pulsing cunt quake as the cool air licked at every single bit of your wetness. It was a shocking turn-on, feeling the seam of your tights being so easily demolished, leaving you as nothing but a wanton, exposed gash from the bit of your pubic hair sticking out to the way the new edge of the fabric rubbed against your arsehole. 

Now, instead of being a gentle thing he had to protect or some stranger that he was trying to distance himself from - you were nothing but a hole for him to fuck. And you absolutely loved it. 

“Draco, please-” You gasped out again, feeling his fingers tickling against your thigh, feeling his breath still huffing out in harsh pants over your now bare pussy, waiting for him to do something more. 

You were struck by lighting when he latched onto your cunt, moaning just as loudly as you did when he was finally able to taste you, able to feel you completely unfiltered for the first time. 

You arched up wildly and your thighs quaked against his cheeks - he made little effort to hold you down, too busy selfishly enjoying your pussy now. He took in a deep breath against you, inhaling a greedy whiff of your scent so close to his nose while he gulped down a filthy slurp of your warm, wet pussy, moaning loudly from the back of his throat the whole time. You were so hot under his tongue - you were a heartbeat, a new breath, something so alive that he certainly shouldn’t have been allowed to drink from. 

But you were now his to freely feast upon, as if he wasn’t already spoiled enough by the world, tainted by the mangled silver spoon he had been gnawing on since his birth. 

“Draco, fuck! So good!” 

You wailed out, letting out sounds that Draco had never before heard, sounds he never thought you were capable of. Back at The Manor, even when you cried, you clearly tried to be conservative, stay quiet, not to be a bother. It was only now that Draco realised he had never truly witnessed you losing control of yourself. Even when you had faced down his father’s fury, you somehow stood tall and composed, an impeccable monument to emotional control. 

It was only now that he realised how truly badly he wanted to see you lose that control. 

He never thought of you as property, of course - but if you were so stubbornly intent on owning his heart, his emotions, his vulnerability - then he would get to own yours as well. He would get to own your weakness. He would get to own the single moments in life when you truly lost your composure. 

Draco set about devouring your cunt, keeping this mission in mind. He wrapped one arm around you from underneath your ass, holding you tightly to his face while he used the other hand to prop himself up slightly, pushing closer, easily getting lost in the beautiful heat of your pussy. He moaned against you as he drank you in, lavishing his tongue up and down your folds, intently focusing on the perfect little bead of your clit while it bounced and thrummed over his tongue. 

Your body sang for more of his attention, shaking like a signal for him as you were wracked with more uncontrollable moans. He heard more distant groans in his muffled ears and hardly attributed them to himself, getting too lost in you, enjoying your taste too much. He was far too intent on burying himself in the first warmth he had felt in years, now determined to shut out the cold and make a new home for himself between these perfect thighs. Especially if it meant making you moan like this more, hearing more of his cursed name on your precious lips. 

“Draco, Draco, oh, fuck! Draco, please!” 

At this point, you weren’t even entirely sure what you were begging for - for him to bring you to orgasm, for him to stop because it was so overwhelming, or for something else entirely. His name just felt so right on your lips. Somehow, he seemed to understand better, seemed to know something that even you didn’t. 

He rumbled out a hum of acknowledgement against your cunt, and then, snuck his free hand up between your thighs. He teased two fingers against your fluttering entrance, slippery and off-target for a moment with his shaking hand - making you moan out brokenly as you felt the touches not quite where you needed them most. 

“I’ve - I’ve got you, love,” 

He said, pulling away for a moment to gulp down breaths - feeling spiteful of the air, spiteful of the minimal space between the two of you; spiteful of the fact that he felt like he was drowning and somehow forcing himself further into you wasn’t the solution. 

“I’ve got you.” 

You curled your fingers into his hair again and tugged him close, pulling him back to your pussy, and he decided that he would never breathe again if that’s what you so desired. He swept a flat tongue across your pussy, eagerly gulping down more of your wetness while he gently pushed those two slender fingers forward, finally inside of you for the first time. 

Your heat was even more evident now, even more apt to drive him insane. Your pussy surrounding him turned his cold flesh warm within seconds, causing him to drive forward without even thinking, eagerly chasing more of that warmth against his touch. Part of his mind was thankful when you let out a beautiful moan in response and wiggled your hips closer to him, rather than feeling pain at the harsh, sudden, jabbing intrusion, and the other part of him selfishly didn’t care. 

You had offered this up to him, you had begged him not to turn away - and now, you would have to face the consequences of inviting a cold, dead beast into your den to feast. He was lonely, he hungered - he would consume everything good inside of you and leave you with nothing. And it would be your own damn fault. 

Draco moaned against your cunt again, feeling that hunger now more evidently than ever, and you squeaked and choked on the air as he began fingering you harshly. He was desperate to feel more warmth, to explore more of that velvet softness inside of you that he so badly wanted wrapped around his cock (nearly forgotten, throbbing, leaking into his pants and making a mess). But he somehow couldn’t think too much about his forgotten cock when your next words overtook his mind. 

“Close-” You breathed out, and then sucked in more air. “So close - gonna cum!” 

You were going to cum. 

You were going to become unravelled on his tongue. 

Draco moaned against you fervently, now wildly eager for this to happen. He suckled against your clit and harshly rubbed his tongue over that tortured little bead even more furiously. He continued to fuck you with his fingers while your thighs clamped around his head, further shutting out the world, allowing him to have a few precious moments where all those deadly responsibilities simply didn’t exist. In those moments - it was just you and him. It was just his own carnal greed, a man fucking his wife. Just the small precious world he had balanced on his bitter tongue. 

“Draco!” You choked out his name as your orgasm overtook your body. 

You arched up again, your body practically whipping to his whims, being played like an instrument that only he knew the songs to. With your fingers entwined harshly in his hair, holding him to a place he would never want to part from while he mauled your pussy - it was perfect. 

He moaned against you and nearly choked on the juices that he eagerly drank down, pumping his fingers into you with sharp jabbing motions, any effort toward technique completely gone. His mind was nothing but a pathetic soup of desperation, an animal clawing toward your warmth, determined to suck the life out of you and have it for his own. 

Your cries of pleasure turned into sobs as you were crested over the hill into overstimulation, and when Draco pulled away for a breath, you thought perhaps he might finally let up. That he might pull his fingers out of you and the two of you would simply take a quiet moment to breathe. 

But while your thighs continued to shake and you sucked in harsh breaths, his shoulders became tight with something utterly vicious, and he continued to stare down your pussy with rapt attention, some beast inside of him screaming out for more. More of the life you could give him, more warmth, more of everything he would ever demand from you that you had been so foolish in offering up. More of everything that you would never supply enough of to meet the bounds of his already dead soul. 

“Draco-” You gasped. “Too much, too-” 

“Please,” 

Draco begged in return for the first time that night, peering up the length of your body to look into your eyes with the most utterly pathetic glassy eyes you had ever seen. The moment he met your gaze, it became too much for the both of you - like a stab through the gut, a connection that had always been there being tugged in the most painful way. He quickly dropped his head, squeezing his eyes shut to further avoid this, pressing his forehead into your thigh as he continued to sharply spear his fingers into your pussy. This created sloppier, wetter sounds with each passing movement. 

“Please, please, please, please, please-” 

He pleaded so sweetly, yet so abrasively at the same time. Begging in a chant, in a way he never had for anything else in his life. 

And just like everything else in his life - he wasn’t denied of this. 

You strangled out another sound, and then you were seizing up again, squeezing his fingers tightly as you were slammed into another orgasm all too soon. You gulped for air like a mermaid on dry land, tears leaking out of the corners of your eyes due to how overwhelming it all was, feeling as though the entire world was squeezed tight around you in those moments. 

Draco held a sob tight in his chest as the unknown ‘more’ he had been looking for flooded over his palm - more of your wetness, more of your warmth. A wonderful flood of more that soaked across your thighs and made a small puddle on the mattress beneath you. He greedily dove down to lap it up, making your thighs clench around his head as he tongued your ultra sensitive entrance and even began using his fingers to drive more of it out of you and into his waiting mouth. 

After a few moments of this, you tangled shaking fingers into his hair and did your best to force him upward. Though your body was practically jelly now, almost as if you had been jinxed, and completely devoid of any strength. He did soon get the hint, and he laid a gentle kiss on your inner thigh as he slid his fingers out of you, making an oddly loud ‘squelching’ sound in the room. 

He trailed a few more kisses across your pelvis, revisited your breast, and went up your neck with his now very wet mouth before you pulled his mouth against your own. You couldn’t help but to moan quietly in satisfaction at the taste of your pussy on his tongue. 

Draco thought this might be the end of it. His own cock was even more nagging now - rubbing against the warm, inviting plushness of your thigh through his pants. It was even more annoying now that he intimately knew the warmth and wetness of your cunt. That he could so perfectly imagine what it would be like to slide his cock inside of you and feel that perfect, hot wetness surrounding him. 

But part of him, something in the back of his mind was screaming: bad idea. Something persistent and loud was telling him that he didn’t deserve to fuck you. That this should be a worship, only about you - he’d had his selfish moment, it was over now. 

An alarming clarity was rocketing back into his head as he continued to kiss you. 

It was an alarm that blared ever louder when you reached for his belt. 

He snapped away from your lips and looked down, frozen with hesitant shock now as you slipped the belt out of the buckle and reached for the zipper on his pants. When you felt him tense up, and saw the grimace forming across his features, you paused with your fingers grazing lightly over the zipper’s teeth. 

“It’s your turn now, right?” 

You breathed lightly against his cheek, your voice so sweet, so perfect. You were too damn perfect. You snuck your hand down to grope his cock through the fabric of his pants in a way that made him shudder. Oddly enough, that selfish streak didn’t creep back in. 

“Come on, Draco. I want this too. I want your cock inside me so damn badly-” 

This was about you. Your needs. Your wants. 

Draco tried his best to push aside any hesitation, trying to push the world back out again. He wished he could just crawl back between your thighs and live there. But you wanted something different now. Something that meant a lot more. Something that might have bigger consequences than simply spilling a beautiful mess on his jacket that was crumpled beneath your perfect arse. 

He sat up on his knees, shucking away your hands and replacing them with his own, getting the zipper down by himself. Finally, he got his cock out, the hard smoothness now resting against his fingers that were still slick with you. He pumped his cock a few times, almost numb to the pleasure of it - he was supposed to be enjoying this, right? Why the hell couldn’t he? 

Because his damn mind had turned back on. 

You looked up at him with wide eyes, anticipating, your skin glistening with a slight sheen from his earlier efforts, your lips kiss-swollen. And somehow, a terrible flurry of thoughts attacked his mind like the snow storm raging outside the stone walls of the castle. Horrible things all able to get in now that he didn’t have the fatal projection of your thighs around his ears, keeping the world out. 

As you looked up at him, more angelic than ever with your kiss-bitten lips, your silver sparkle dress askew, revealing your smooth skin and your goddess-like body - Draco, with his hard cock in hand, was persistently reminded of one stupid thing. The reason that the two of you had been forced together in the first place. 

The only reason any pureblood marriage is arranged: to carry on the pureblood line. To breed - to make more pureblood babies.

Draco found himself curling in disgust at the idea that this was what he was about to do. He was about to give into their whims, about to curse you even further with the evil of his name by fucking a little Malfoy into your belly. 

Somehow, out of all the evil he had so carelessly committed himself to - this was something he just couldn’t bring himself to do. Not when he would be doing it to you. 

“Draco-” 

You breathed out his name again, concerned by the clear warring on his face. You were about to tell him that it was okay if he didn’t want to continue - and you became deeply confused by what he did next. 

He gripped his cock tightly and began rocking his arm back and forth, quickly picking up an urgent, break-neck pace as he jerked his cock - his face twisting with an expression of near pain as he circled a tight fist over his cock, urgently, again and again. 

“Draco-?” You tried to question him, but he let out a groan in response. 

“Look at me.” He choked out. 

Zapped by the electricity in the air, the sharp demanding in his words, your eyes flew right to his. You found yourself almost possessed by the emotions lingering there - lust, regret, hatred. 

You had a distinct feeling that it wasn’t directed at you. 

“It’s okay.” You breathed out, reaching out to put a gentle hand on his clothed thigh. “It’s okay, Draco.” 

These simple words - this tiny pacification that Draco had never before received - he broke. Your gentleness tore through his body like a dragon tearing into a fresh kill. It wounded him in a way that insults never could. 

He let out a strangled cry, and unexpectedly, his orgasm punched through his gut - tears flooded his eyes as weak spurts of cum flowed out of his cock, making a mess of his fist as he slowed his touch. His release dripped down to ruin his pants, and weakly splashed against the bareness of your inner thighs were the hole in your tights gaped open, smearing onto the nylon in some spots. 

When Draco was sure that he had wrung the last bits of weak pleasure from his cock, he fell on top of you. It was something entirely against his will, as he was now all too weakened by your soothing words, your soft touch, your welcoming eyes that seemed far too forgiving toward him. With his face tucked against your breast, tired and unable to hold it back any longer - he began to sob. 

It was a dam broken from months, possibly years - a mask that he had been putting on long before you had ever known him. 

It was an inherent shock to your system, going from that lustful tingle to feeling nothing but shock and pity for him. But you did the only thing you could do - you cradled the back of his head, holding him close, petting a hand down his heaving back in an attempt to comfort him while he wailed so harshly. You knew that it was what he needed. And it was what he had done for you all too many times since meeting you. 

“Hey, it’s okay.” 

You assured him, not entirely sure that he heard your gentle voice over the sound of his own sobs - your throat too sore from your own previous wrecked moaning to try and speak up any louder. 

“It’s okay. Shh. Just let it out. I’m here with you. It’s okay, Draco.” 

It went on like that for what felt like hours. Your previously sex heated skin became cold in the room once again, distinctly reminding you of every single spot that was ripped open and exposed by your already weather inappropriate outfit. But instead of getting up to attend to this, you simply laid there, soothing him, trying to comfort him as his chest-racking sobs lulled down into calmer cries and then died off into sniffles. 

You thought he might say something - thank you, apologise. 

You were even further surprised when his sounds switched again, and a low chuckle came from his throat. A small sound that quickly hitched into an epic, near maniacal laughter, puffing against your breast as he tried his hardest to heave himself up on weak arms, tearing out of your comforting touch. 

He looked utterly broken - his previously near hair a complete mess, falling across his sweat streaked forehead, his teeth bared, laughing so tiredly with tears streaking down from his now red, puffy eyes. 

“Merlin - I’m so fucking pathetic, aren’t I?” He choked out. 

“You’re not.” You argued, your voice dull and hoarse but still firm in your conviction. 

You wanted him to know that it was okay to cry. That under his circumstances, anybody would have snapped a lot sooner than he had. 

He didn’t reply, but instead moved to get off you entirely. He stumbled on his feet for a moment as he stood up and began straightening out his clothes, finding his wand and muttering some cleaning spells to deal with the mess he had left on his pants. 

You sat up then, your back now quite sore from the poor quality of the abandoned old mattress. And from having Draco stiff on top of you for so long, and you began doing the same to yourself. He watched quietly as you righted your clothes and did a few simple (talented, wandless) cleaning spells of your own, and then finally, he spoke. 

“You should leave.” 

He said quietly, moving to turn away from you completely as he tucked his shirt back into his pants. He was likely going to slip into the confusing maze of furniture that he knew better than you did in order to lose you - to avoid further conversation. 

“No.” 

You baulked out defiantly, making an effort to heave your stiff body up to standing level in order to look him in the eye. 

“You can’t keep doing that!” You shouted at his back, growing frustrated once again. “You can’t keep running away from a conversation every time it gets a little too serious for you!” 

“What do you expect that I do, then?” Draco asked, his voice strained with fatigue and heaviness, his throat worn out from the tears, his eyes still red and exhausted when he whipped around to face you. 

“Stay.” You offered weakly. 

You knew that in one simple word, you were asking too much of him. You were putting such a grand task onto him that he could barely surmount to. 

His chin quivered as he bit his lip, swallowing down the weakness of the confession: 

I can’t. 

He wanted to be good enough for you. 

But he wasn’t. He just wasn’t. 

He wasn’t some perfect harbor you could cling to in a storm. He was a heavy iron anchor sinking you to your drowning death. 

Feeling all of his bitterness swelling in the air, something truly defiant came up inside of you. A deep urge to defy everything he thought he was, everything his parents had painted into him that made him run from you the moment you treated him like a person. 

You would not have a marriage where your husband held you at arm’s length. Even if you had to strangle him, smother him with your good intentions in order to get him close. 

“Draco, please, I lov-” 

“No.” Draco choked out, cutting you off, dreading hearing those words. “Don’t.” 

It wasn’t true. 

You were tied to him by force. 

You were someone bought into his life through gold and cruelty, someone forced to be by his side. 

If you loved him, it was as a prisoner loves their cell. 

He wouldn’t let you waste those words on him. 

You let out a harsh sigh and shook your head, wanting to scream. But you knew that he was far too used to screaming - used to harshness, frustration. He wasn’t prepared for the thing you needed to give him most. You swallowed thickly around the lump in your throat, and whispered your next words as a cursed promise into the chilled air: 

“I love you, Draco.” 

He sucked in a rattling breath, and it only took him a moment to find the strength to fight back. 

“You don’t mean that.” 

He said, shaking his head forcefully at you, once again resisting the urge to turn around and slink off. He wanted to slither away and hide from you like the serpent that he was - cold blooded, alone, a creature of the shadows who previously never needed your warmth. 

“Shut up!” 

You barked back, surprising him with the passion, the fury that lit up your face as you rambled into your next declaration. 

“Draco Lucius Malfoy - you may think that you know everything, but I can assure you, you do not.” 

He wanted to argue, even opened his mouth to do so, but you rolled right over his breath, speaking in such a powerful way that demanded he quiet down and simply listen. 

“Your family may have bought me to marry you like some kind of broodmare, you may be rich and respected, you may be some fancy highborn pureblood - you can tell me what to wear, when to speak, where to go, but you certainly cannot tell me about my own thoughts and intentions. You cannot tell me what I feel.” 

You spoke sharply and firmly, your words tearing right through him, causing goosebumps to light up all over his skin. 

“You cannot tell me what I do and don’t mean. And I mean this: I love you.” 

The radical truth behind your words shook Draco to his core. 

Since he had known you, it had always been the truth. When you cried, it had always been with your own honesty. When you smiled at him, it had never been as some kind of act. When you called him an asshole during your private conversations - it was nothing but your own honest feelings coming to words. 

He could never control or dictate your feelings, and it was one of the things that he liked best about you. 

So why did he so badly want to control this? 

Perhaps because… when you said this, it sealed your fate to his in the worst of ways. 

It meant that even if you had a chance to escape this life… you wouldn’t take it. 

It was so much easier when you didn’t like him at all. 

Love was such a foolish, difficult thing to sever. 

You saw the pain and hesitation written all over his face, and you stepped toward him, putting a gentle hand on his cheek. Oh-so-gently you sealed your lips against his in a sweet kiss that evoked nothing but more tears from him. 

“I love you.” 

You whispered against his mouth, now much more certain in your declaration. 

“I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you,” 

Your throat clenched with your own tears, clearly waiting for him to say it back. 

His fingers shook as he brought a gentle touch to your cheek, wiping away a tear that had fallen. Sullenly, all he could offer you in return was: 

“Are you sure? Are you sure that you can love someone like me?” 

You were entirely certain in your answer. 

“Yes.” 

Draco itched with the urge to run away again - but instead, he leaned back in and kissed you. 

That night, the two of you fell asleep together. You were huddled into each other for warmth, cuddling on the thin old mattress that he had been sleeping on for the past week in order to escape you. It was the easiest that sleep had come to him since the days during the summer where you had crawled into his bed, looking to be just a bit less alone. 

… 

Ironically, Draco woke up alone. 

Sunshine was flooding the room - he wasn’t entirely sure how a room that technically didn’t exist within Hogwarts could have windows, but he didn’t care to think too much about it. Especially because it made him feel slightly less disoriented to have the bright morning sun flooding the room. Though the sunshine warmed up the room slightly, he still felt a bitter coldness in not having you beside him. 

Perhaps you had finally realised what a stupid mistake you had made the night before. Perhaps you had taken your own advice - taken up on your own plan and gotten to a fireplace to abandon Hogwarts altogether. With any luck, you were far away and would never be seen again. Not by him or anybody else associated with the Dark Lord. 

Draco felt a pinch of disappointment when he heard footsteps - calm, certain, someone walking a path among the furniture to be somewhere. Not someone wandering with curiosity because they had just discovered the room. It had to be you. 

He sucked in a harsh breath and let out a groan as his tired body stretched, his muscles protesting the shabby sleeping arrangements as he forced himself to sit up. Surely enough, as he blinked through the sharpness of the morning light, you rounded the corner. 

You were dressed much differently than the night before. Your previously neat hair was now a half-picked apart and messy style, your make-up mostly smeared off or intentionally wiped off in a haste. You were wearing a thick woollen jumper and a pair of comfortable looking loose pants, along with your favourite slippers - a pair of very fuzzy boots that he had laughed at you for wearing before, called them dead Puffskeins attached to your feet. 

You looked tired, but comfortable as you came to sit on the mattress at Draco’s hip. 

Somehow, with the golden light dancing on your skin, you looked more beautiful than ever. Perhaps it was a testament to the nature of your beauty, how sought after you would be if you weren’t already betrothed. Or perhaps it was that petulant withering thing inside of him that was starting to wane in the name of your death sentence of love. 

(Draco didn’t want to think about the fact that you likely were sought after, despite the fact that you were engaged and it was widely known. He just didn’t have his head in the Hogwarts gossip enough these days to notice if anybody was talking about fancying you or trying to ‘steal you away’ from him. He didn’t want to think about the prats he would have hexed to hell and back if he ever heard them daring to want you.) 

You took something out of the pocket of your jumper - a napkin, and unravelled it in your lap. Draco saw that you had come back with a couple of pumpkin tarts, likely from the breakfast table. It was only when you brought it up to your lips to take a sip that he also noticed you had also been carrying a large mug of steaming tea. 

You offered him the mug silently over your shoulder, and he couldn’t deny how appealing it was. Though he wanted to scoff at the softness, the domesticity of sharing something off your lips, he welcomed the heat and the familiarity. He couldn’t reject it in the wintery coldness of the room. 

Of course - English Breakfast Tea with just a bit of sugar. No milk. You had started drinking your tea the way he liked it. Probably because it was the way he always made it for you when you were silent and stony in your pain and he had no other choice but to be just as silent in his caring toward you. He always made tea for you this way because you never told him how you liked yours. Every cup of tea you drank at The Manor had been like this. 

It was an odd, comforting habit that you had picked up from him. 

“I fixed it.” You said quietly, nodding toward The Cabinet as you broke off a piece of one of your tarts and chewed it. 

You offered him a piece and he swapped it for the tea mug. He chewed the small piece of tart slowly while his eyes studied the tall, dark, imposing Cabinet, wondering what you had done to it. His gaze migrated over to something new in the landscape of junk - a bird cage sitting on top of a small wooden table. 

Within it, there was a live, seemingly content, purring white dove. In front of the cage, you had perched up a piece of paper. Even from a few feet away, Draco recognised the curls of the handwriting as belonging to his mother. 

‘Well done.’ 

He wanted to ask in detail about what you had done to The Cabinet in order to fix it. But he knew that would be beating a dead horse. It was another problem off his plate, and he should be relieved. 

He wouldn’t burden you with any of his other problems. 

“I miss coffee.” You remarked, looking down into the mug with a sodden kind of resentment. “British people are all about tea, tea, tea… you can’t get good coffee anywhere here.” 

Distantly, Draco was reminded that you had been cursed with more than a marriage to him when your godmother dropped you off with the Malfoys and left you without warning. Your entire life, everything you had known, everything you had grown up with - it had all been ripped away from you. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he had to be pulled away from his parents, plopped into the middle of Muggle America and forced to live there. 

He knew it wasn’t just coffee - you likely missed so much more. 

“Should we release it?” You asked, taking another sip of the tea. 

You held out another piece of the tart to him, and reluctantly, perhaps not even knowing how hungry he was, how much the anxiety and worry had blocked him from feeling it - he took it. 

“What?” He muttered out, unsure what you meant. 

“The dove.” You clarified. 

Yes. Of course. You still had pity for the small creatures. It had been meant as nothing more than a test subject for his family’s greater plans, nothing but a pawn to them. But you still saw it as a precious life. 

“No, it-” 

‘It’ll die out there in the cold.’ 

Draco cut himself off, knowing that such harsh words would have hurt you. Any time before this, he would not have cared about how his words hurt you - he would have simply told you the truth. But for some reason, now - it felt wrong to be so bluntly cruel. 

“Too cold.” He muttered, accepting the tea from you again. 

You stared him down during this passing of the mug, and he was fully able to see that pain glinting in your eyes. Clearly, you knew that ‘disposing’ of the bird might be the only humane thing to do. Draco scrambled for something more. Something to make you happy. Damn it. 

“Bring it to the giant.” He remarked, swallowing down a mouthful of the hot tea. “He’ll care for it now, and he can release it in the spring.” 

The smile that graced your lips was small, and fleeting - but it made him feel as though he had accomplished something worthwhile for the first time in a long time. 

“Do you think he will? It won’t be too much trouble?” You replied, hopeful. 

“He has to. It’s his job.” Draco bit back firmly, his voice swelling full of his usual entitlement. 

Before - when you had been helping him clean up after he had gotten The Mark, you had discovered one of the fading scars he still had from the feathered beast’s claws slashing across his arm. When you had asked him about it, you had clearly been expecting some story of his father’s abuse, or a tale of something else attributing to Draco’s twisted internal torment. 

But Draco’s father was always smart enough never to leave marks. 

When he told you what had happened - how he had rushed upon such a gentle creature, reeking of entitlement and landed on his stupid idiot brat arse - it was the first time in years that he had truly reflected on what had happened. It was the first time he had come to realize that he had gotten the beast killed. Even back then, he was unsure why his father had caused such a fuss over the accident. Someone who called Draco useless and disposable behind closed doors and publicly claimed that a single mark on his arm was a world-ending tragedy. 

At the time, it was just another thing about reputation that Draco had yet to understand. 

“And - he likes those things. He likes his little creatures.” He added on quietly. 

(And, his big awful ones - Draco resisted the urge to amend.) 

Draco couldn’t take your bird there himself. Hagrid owed him no favors, that much he knew. But the man - or, half-man - certainly wouldn’t turn you down. Nobody would say no to your sweet voice and kind eyes when you asked them for something. 

You nodded, content with this answer. You took another sip of the tea before you put the cup down on the floor beside the mattress, and shoved a large piece of the tart into your mouth before you put that aside too. 

“For now, I have to bury this one.” 

You said, your words slightly muffled as you chewed, getting up to grab a small wooden box. In a moment, Draco realised that it must have been the dead canary that you had fussed over the night before. 

Now, you were telling him that you intended to bury it, rather than asking him. 

“I’ll do it.” He said, standing up to come beside you, holding out his hand so that you might offer him the box. 

You looked him up and down with suspicion, like he was trying to trick you. Although, as much as your relationship had been filled with bickering and discontent, he had never been dishonest with you. This just seemed strangely out of character for him. Before you could fully question it, he provided an explanation. 

“You’ve been awake all night fixing my problems,” He said, motioning toward The Cabinet. “So let me help you with yours.” 

He could see that you had barely slept. It was written all over you. 

“Let me do this for you.” He insisted, holding his hand out once again. “And you go to the dorms and get some proper rest.” 

You nodded, finally surrendering the box. 

“Come find me when you’re done, alright?” You said, not entirely posing it as a question. “Don’t disappear on me again.” 

Draco nodded, and you sealed this deal with a kiss. 

…

He intended to walk you back to the Slytherin commons before he went outside, perhaps he would even get himself a thicker jacket from his dorm. Your path took the two of you past the Great Hall. 

Draco felt a pang on one of his last nerves when a very familiar voice called out your name. 

“Y/N! Hey, wait up!” 

Potter. Of course. 

You turned to meet Harry as he ran down the corridor toward you, and Draco slinked back to lean against one of the nearby walls - waiting for you. He hated that he felt the need to stick by you, to watch over you. But something nagging in him wouldn’t be satisfied until he knew that you were tucked into bed, resting. 

Potter jogged to meet you, wearing full Quidditch gear, carrying his broom - clearly set for an early morning practice. This caused an odd pang of mourning within Draco, yearning for a time when he used to be competitive, for when he used to actually care about the outcomes of school Quidditch games. Back when his life was so simple. 

“Morning, Harry.” You greeted him quietly, dully, obviously still tired. 

“Hey, good morning.” Harry said, nodding at you with a smile - a look way too fond for Draco’s liking. “You left the party so suddenly last night, and Slughorn was asking after you. Nobody knew where you went, and I was just wondering - are you alright? Did something happen?” 

Harry eyed Draco sharply, a sideways glance, just for a moment. Clearly, he was suspicious of Malfoy and his presence around you. Clearly believing that he was the problem in your life. 

Draco resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course. Saint Potter. Checking up on you. 

Part of Draco itched with jealousy, knowing just how utterly desirable you were, and another part of him said that it was a good thing. That you should have somewhere safe to fall when you inevitably realised a life with him was a short, unlivable one. When you wanted out, when you wanted to run. 

Hopefully, sometime soon. 

“I’m fine.” You easily lied, forcing a smile. “It’s just - um,” You struggled to think of a convenient lie for a moment, knowing that you couldn’t tell Harry the truth. “My pet canary died very suddenly. And Draco came to get me to tell me about it. And I’m sorry, I must look terrible - I’ve been up all night crying about it,” 

Draco wanted to commend you for the brilliance of your lie. Something sensitive enough that Potter wouldn’t question it - something that easily explained the small box in Draco’s hands and explained away your tired appearance. And it more than explained why you had left the party so suddenly and not cared to return. 

“Oh.” Harry said, clearly unsure how to respond. His eyes flickered from you to Draco, taking in both of your messy appearances, clearly wanting to question it as something more, but having absolutely no grounds to do so. “I’m so sorry to hear that.” 

“Thank you.” You replied quietly. “Draco actually offered to bury him for me. So, he was just going to do that.” 

“Let’s get you to bed, first, love.” Draco said, pointedly steering you away from the conversation - banishing Potter off with this final thought. 

He put a hand on your shoulder and steered you down the hall, away from Harry, and you began slowly walking away, believing that he was right behind you. But Harry stayed firm in his footing, and soon, Draco became captured in his fierce gaze, challenged in an all too familiar way that he was far too tired to truly engage with. In a kind of well practiced routine, he lingered back for a few moments. 

“Malfoy,” Potter said sharply. “If you do anything to hurt her, I will end you.” 

It was his usual hero routine. Intimidate, swell with confidence, over-inflate to seem bigger than the bad guy. It would have worked, if Draco hadn’t already been so terribly small. 

“Promise?” Draco croaked out quietly, tears dancing in his eyes. 

He could think of no better end than one of vengeance in the wake of your pain. He could only hope that if he did ever hurt you, he would be met with a clean, swift end. One where you would then get to run into the arms of a man much better than him. 

Potter gaped with confusion, and Draco turned, walking in quick steps to catch up with you. 

…

You and Draco stayed at Hogwarts that Christmas. 

On Christmas morning, you did not expect to receive anything. Pansy gifted you a set of new quills in pink with a set of pink glittering inks and a fluttering giggle about being able to write ‘proper’ love letters to Draco. Blaise gifted you a history of all the Pureblood families in Europe - for ‘proper’ education. One that you had never been ‘privileged’ to have before. 

There was another package, delivered by a gorgeous white snowy owl - a book. A basic guide to Quidditch with a handwritten note that said it was from Harry, remarking that you should come to his next game and ‘check it out’, in order to see if you truly liked the sport or not. 

At the party, you had told him that you probably didn’t like Qudditch because you didn’t understand it very well, hoping to get out of a long conversation that he and Cormac were rambling on - which only led to him trying to explain the rules to you in a toddler-like fashion. You couldn’t tell him the truth, that when you had been at Salem, the Quidditch games between the two sibling schools usually led to a lot of loud parties and drunken hook-ups that made you mourn for the simplicity of your old life now. 

Draco resisted the urge to throw the book into the fire. 

(You gladly would have let him.) 

There was a final package. One wrapped in gorgeous emerald paper - with your name on it, written in Draco’s handwriting. Oddly, not signed from him. When you opened it, you found a bag of very expensive looking coffee beans, a grinder, and a French press. Draco would forever deny that his joy was directly tied to the look of awe on your face as you discovered the gifts, and the tiny moan of pleasure you made when you sipped your first cup of freshly made coffee. 

He didn’t love you back. 

He couldn’t. 

No.

...

A/N: This is meant to be a standalone oneshot, but if you liked this, then feel free to go read the chronological sequel My Bleeding Heart. I do have more ideas to add more to this by writing more oneshots in this universe between these two characters, but this is all for now. If you are going to comment, please comment about the content that has already been written instead of asking for more. Happy reading, and Merry Christmas!

[avichor]

“[insert animanga here] has more men than women so ofc ppl are gonna focus on the men!!!!” what if i kicked u. what if i pulled out each of ur eyebrow hairs individually. what if u shut up.

[bunnwich]

Why Leona Gave Himself The Bad Ending

Leona Kingscholar Analysis

Usual disclaimer to say that these are just my thoughts and you don’t have to feel pressured to agree. This was my thought process as I played through the parts of Chapter 7 Parts 212-226, featuring Leona’s dream triggered by Malleus’s magic.

--

I wanna start off by saying that I believe all the dreams are a mixture of Malleus’s magic and the dreamers themselves. 

Idia theorized that Malleus is sort of “setting up the parameters” in a way, then each of the dreamers' personalities and imaginations affect the dream in different ways. The emphasis of this has been brought by Idia several times that it’s the strength of imagination that determines how complex dreams are. Which is maybe why in the first years dreams seem so basic? They’re young, their magical abilities are still new, and their magic is no match for Malleus’s magic. That and, to be fair, most of the first years don’t have the same amount of angst and turmoil as some of the other second years and third years have.

With that being said, I believe that because of his high intelligence, magical prowess, and his hyper-vigilance, that is the main reason Leona’s dream was so…different than the others.

But let's get into it!

There are a lot of Lion King references in this dream, and it’s very clear the writers wanted to play around and show this off. I feel like they did a good job of integrating the themes of the movie into Leona's dream. It does give me a little validation as I feel Leona’s struggles and personality are closely linked to his great Seven Counterpart, Scar. More so than any of the other overblotters. When I analyze Leona I sometimes I do use Scar as a starting point to understand his intentions.

This is how I came to the conclusion long ago that being king would never make Leona happy because it's not what he truly wants.

We start with the dream back in the Sunset Savanna. It’s VERY interesting to see that there is hyena prejudice right off the bat as a woman flees from Ruggie while he attempts to buy food. 

Right off, everyone can tell something is…off about the city. Especially coming fresh from Ruggie’s dream where everything was idyllic and happy for hyenas BECAUSE of Leona.

Grim hits us with the: “I laugh in the face of danger!” line. We even get the three hyenas referenced and the “love for you to stick around for dinner” line. The once proud lioness-dominated palace guard has been taken over by hyena “ruffians” (interesting choice to portray a disenfranchised group being given jobs as the new guard as a negative thing, but moving on.)

The first interesting thing we get is that the palace is somewhat rundown and empty? The group makes comments of how dark and dreary it is, and how few people are around. Is there an implication that the servants fled at some point after Leona became King or did he replace them? This further shows me that Leona for whatever reason has chosen to isolate himself. To me, it's most likely that he already feels isolated by his country and those in the palace.

From the looks of it “Malleus’s magic” has given Leona the one thing he has always wanted, but has he? Leona seems less than thrilled and genuinely upset by the fact his whole family is...gone. As I mentioned in my Leona relationships post, I think that he holds a complex relationship with his family, and while he resents them, in no way can I see him wanting them to be dead. 

It’s now I started to think that Leona’s magic was overriding the simple “let them eat cake” logic of all of the happier dreams. This dream feels TOO real, dark, dreary, and…sad. Could it be Leona’s intelligence or cynicism, ruining what’s supposed to be an idyllic scenario?

Why is even in his WILDEST dreams Leona is still miserable?

Hmm.

A lot of people have talked about Kifaji and their thoughts on his presence. It’s strange to see people praise him as “a loving parental figure” as if he’s really there trying to help Leona. But, Kifaji is not there. This Kifaji is a manifestation of Leona’s mind and I’ll get to why that’s interesting and what I think he represents. Remember, that often in other dreams we’ve seen of loved ones or rivals and they can act normal, out of character, or even cruel. Vil and Neigie come to mind and Neige turned out to be the blot keeping Vil asleep.

Kifaji is a bit different. He actively tries to help the group wake Leona as opposed to encouraging the twisted dream logic. For this reason, to me, Kifaji represents Leona’s conscious and the Dream!Leona we see represents his shadow self, like the dark side of the moon. AKA, the Leona we meet in Chapter 2. In fact, this whole dream feels like a rehash of Chapter 2.

We get the outdated Leona that dumbs himself down and settles for less, cloaking himself in his pride and believing that everyone is below him. An idle king while he lets others do his dirty work. (Scar basically.)

Leona asks Kifaji to sing (another Lion King reference) and it plays out how you would think. Leona tells Kifaji that he is the only competent person in the kingdom. And he argues that the kingdom is in shambles, not because of his choices as King, but because everyone else sucks basically.

Hmm. 

Kifaji reminds Leona that while he is clever and his plans are grand, that he can not treat people like human chess pieces. (Can I just say I love when chess is brought up to us because I find that when people analyze Leona or his thoughts they often forget how much he uses chess to process his thoughts. We saw that plenty in the Tamashina Mina event!) I think it helps him sort his thoughts and emotions which he can have a hard time doing.

I think Kifaji represents Leona’s mindset post Chapter 2 and because Kifaji in his real life is one of the only people who probably stands up to Leona, he has placed him in this antagonist role in his mind. (but not really) Plus, it’s not far off from Kifaji’s actual treatment of Leona in the Tamashina Mina event.

So yeah, Leona acts more like he does in Chapter 2—he's the player or the king even and everyone else around is just lowly pieces.

Just like the scene from The Lion King, Scar and Leona are not happy. Even though they are supposedly getting their deepest desire, they remain bitter and…alone. 

When I first began to read into Leona it was quite obvious to me that the whole “I’ll never be king" thing was just a front for something else. What I think Leona truly craves is approval and acceptance.

Being king, especially of a broken kingdom that despises him, will never make him happy. But, why do the people not love him? This is supposed to be a fantasy right?

There is this interesting layer of how he became king too. Instead of Cheka or Falena simply not existing, like I thought it might be, they are dead. That is…so much more tragic than it needed to be. As if deep down Leona believes the only way he can become king (his dreams to come true) is if tragedy happens. This reminds me of his bitter view/the symbolism of his unique magic. That he can only bring misery wherever he goes—everything he touches turns to sand. 

I also think that Leona is afraid of failing and much of this dream is his anxieties and insecurities that linger from all his past failures.

Though interestingly enough, I sense that in the dream, as implied later by Idia, Leona has implemented an “over-exaggeration” of his policies and plans for the kingdom. It was almost like he purposely ran his resources dry and gave up trying to compromise with anyone for the sake of “progress.”

Why, though?

It’s very masochistic in a way. It’s almost like he wanted to prove himself right. Everything he touches will turn to sand eventually and his grand plans will fail even if he claims they are “perfect.”

That’s why this dream is probably the most masochistic and self-deprecating we have seen. I think what initially began to draw me to Leona’s character is because of the hidden pain he holds. He is by far one of the most easygoing, and lackadaisical acting of the cast, but…he cares, he cares so, so much about how he is perceived and his haunted by his hopelessness about his future and the failures of his past.

I think the pain of never feeling good enough, causes his mind to be unable to “play nice” with Malleus’s dream magic to even manifest any sort of positive future. One where he holds a position he wants AND is loved and respected. it’s just impossible that he could ever have that, even in his wildest dreams. 

He’s too much of a “realist.”

Side tangent, but a frustrating take is to see was the: “Oh yeah, see? He would have sucked as king.” tinged comments after this came out.

 I think it’s more complicated than that. 

This isn’t me trying to defend him necessarily, but to be fair, all dreams tend to be over exaggerations by the dreamer. Plus, I think the fact that Ruggie HATES Leona in this dream and is suddenly in favor of Falena, is a sign right there we can not trust Leona’s interpretation of the people he knows in his dream. He is sort of an unreliable narrator that way. 

Besides, like in The Lion King, why would all the water dry up, just because the hyenas over-hunted? 

A big theme in Lion King and even The Lion Guard TV show is "the balance of nature." The blight upon the Pridelands when Scar takes over feels more like symbolism of the “unbalance of nature” caused by the tragedy of Mufasa’s death. Which makes me again, connect that Leona feels the only way he can succeed is by inflicting misery on others. Like his magic, perhaps a part of him believes he is a curse. 

I theorized in my Tamashina Mina review, that maybe Leona feels like an outcast himself, and the separation he feels from his country is showcased in how he blames the citizens for the decline of the kingdom, rather than his plans. He feels isolated from them.

By this point, I was having flashbacks to Chapter 2, where he got a whiff of his plan failing and he still pushed through even though he knew it would fail. At first, he may have started doing okay as king, but maybe when he came upon too many obstacles or pushback, He just gave up. Because he was not instantly loved by the people, who probably already feared him, he’d rather not even try. Suddenly, they are “not worth his time”, and he can’t help them because they suck.

Leona’s problem has always been his pride. I think he has to put it aside to genuinely help people reach their potential and learn to collaborate with others more. Part of how this dream plays out, is him realizing that maybe some criticisms Kifaji had about his pride all along may be true. Leona refuses to play nice with others. 

That’s why I think Kifaji represents a more sensible and lucid Leona. He is in a sense, talking to his past self, and trying to shake himself from the dream and his outdated ideals.

Ortho even points out that Ruggie is not really the Ruggie we know but rather a part of Leona’s imagination. Again, which puts emphasis on how the characters in his dream are more indicative of his mindset as opposed to being “in character”. Maybe Ruggie hating him in his dream is his inner anxieties about him and Ruggie post Chapter 2 fallout. He feels like Ruggie could never forgive him for what he did. He let him down. And Leona being bad with people and feelings, doesn’t know the proper way to apologize.

Kifaji (woke Leona) says that the state of the kingdom is a result of him “pursuing efficiency over all things and disregarding other people's feelings.” It really feels like he is calling himself out here. Does he REALLY wanna help people? Or is it just Leona’s selfish pride who wants attention for just being smart?

Dream!Leona complains about the protesters interrupting his nap which is another sign for me of the exaggeration of the scenario of Leona being the king. Like...did he not criticize Falena for having the same carefree and laid-back attitude? And yet here he is...complacent in the same behavior he once criticized Falena of. 

Interesting.

Ortho mentions that Leona’s dream is clearly a more complex situation than the other dreams.

I think there is a key implication we are missing here too, that I haven’t seen many mention. There is a throwaway line that Jack mentions that Leona has not attended school and is king instead. And he doesn't seem to know Dream!Ruggie either. Nor Ruggie him.

There is no doubt his time at NRC has shaped him to be the Leona we know now. Someone who has at least somewhat benefited with the connections he made at school. It does seem like this Dream!Leona is regressed. And because he never attended school, he is a much colder person who has no regard for others' feelings at all. He is even more socially inept.

I feel like this is a common theme to show us that despite the independent nature of most of the students at NRC, that it can still be “the friends we made along the way.” trope.  These connections do matter and especially to Leona. He mentions this in his post-overblot monologue in the light novel. He found his pack at NRC.  This time with his dorm members affected his personality for the better. It's kinda sweet when you think about it!

Ortho mentions Dream!Leona appears DEEPLY absorbed in the delusions of his dream. This means that even though he has the lucid failsafe of Kifaji, Leona’s self-deprecation, despair, and pain are still overtaking his logic. That's what's crafted this nightmare. (And he later references it as such.) 

Everyone acknowledges that he can’t possibly be happy and looks EVEN MORE miserable than at school. It can't be a silly happy fantasy, but a grim dark reality of what he thinks of himself. 

That's why he gave himself the bad ending.

I love the double entendre of Idia saying Leona is building his dream like a “sandbox” game. Lots of Minecraft references. (Leona Minecrafter confirmed? Or hear me out…Leona playing King Crusaders or Civilization V FGHJ)

Anyways, Idia or Ortho, (I forget) suggests that perhaps he has run out of ”simulations” for his dream playthrough. And being an intelligent person his mind tends to overthink naturally and this caused his dream to have a more realistic tone. Plus, I theorize that because Leona is powerful and his intelligent, his magic and imagination was almost able to overwrite Malleus's, a standard happy dream formula.

Ortho suggests Leona chose a more “realistic mode “on purpose.” Perhaps like I theorized earlier, it is almost a masochistic test to see if he could have everything he wanted? Leona is a very analytical person who enjoys games. It makes sense, the way he often plays chess alone to practice “strategies.” But as I mentioned before, I think he just genuinely believes it's not possible. Ortho mentions he thinks Leona’s the type to understand that an “aggressive urban development” would come with risks.

Jack asks “If Leona knew this was a bad plan then why would he make the citizens suffer and be hated?”  (Sheesh, now we know Leona really is the type to play pretend and get a lil too real with it.)

Ruggie adds that Leona may be “doing something he knows he shouldn't be on purpose.” Like maybe he did it to be dastardly and maybe he just wanted to “feel the rush” of being a ruthless and hated king.

When Azul asks Ruggie if he thinks Leona takes pleasure in immoral things he says that he can't say for sure, only that he is a prince that no doubt can take pleasure in “bad things”.

To me, however, it feels like a masochistic move to prove to himself his happiness is unattainable. 

Then Sebek chimes in: “How could he go so far to kill his family only to abandon his responsibilities as a king and become a horrible one?"

No one seems to know for sure. Everyone in the group has their theories but the consensus in the group is that - nobody fuckin’ knows why this guy intricately carved himself such a miserable fantasy for himself. Very masochistic for a guy who appears to be so proud huh?

Idia continues to mention that Leona’s imagination is so vast compared to everyone else's. It fills out a whole “world” completely and the mechanics of this world must make sense. He's playing on hard mode. In Leona’s brain this seemed to manifest as if he is to “get what he wants” it can't be serendipitous or through triumph, IT MUST be through tragedy.

Can we lighten up a little?

Again, he may have started to do “good work” but quickly realized that keeping up with all to create a perfect kingdom was waaaay over his head. Maybe he was afraid to give it his all, because he knew everyone would still hate him anyway.

Another reason I think Leona thrives better as a “big fish in a small pond” so to speak. Like his dorm leader role where he can interact directly with his cute (this man used this word a lot for some reason) froshes, make tangible make things better for a small group or community. 

But as we saw, even with his dorm Leona began to feel overwhelmed with the pretty promises he made to his underclassmen in Chapter 2 about the Spelldrive tournament. He like…wants to be wanted but he’s terrified of people actually relying on him, because trying your best and then failing anyways is the most painful thing to him. His instinct when he gets too frustrated with something is to act like he never cared about it in the first place or anyone. AKA “I did everything right and it's THE REST OF YOU who are incompetent.”

That’s why I personally think that in the future Leona working within a small community might be a better fit for him, using his skills to see potential in others as a way to connect with them and teach them how to thrive. 

So yeah, needless to say the group is stumped on analyzing Leona’s intentions and Azul hilariously notes that Leona is just…a complicated person. 

What an understatement.

The group hatches a silly plan to have Ruggie puppet a Cheka hologram and yeah obviously it didn’t work.

This is where it started to get interesting again.

Dream!Kifaji said he’s been “waiting for the day Leona would wake up from his bad dream” and joins the fight against him to wake him. It’s like Leona telling himself that it's time to let his original dream go.

Ortho is surprised Kifaji is on their side, that he should be the darkness pulling Leona back in, but like I mentioned I think Kifaji is actually a “fail safe” Leona created to stay lucid or...maybe the little bit of hope he has fostered now that he has grown from Chapters 2’s events.

Since Kifaji is the one to normally call him out, maybe he's Leona’s way of processing his relationship with him. And that maybe…sometimes as annoying as Kifaji is, he has a point. Kifaji is the one who is implied to have raised him after all, so it's no surprise Leona sees him in a father-like role more than his own father.

“No one understands me, it's not my fault.”  Leona laments running away, running away from himself.

Reminds me a lot of Chapter 2 Leona where he began to feel sorry for himself instead of actually trying to fix things. It's clear that no matter how smart and mature Leona is…is that he still has a lot of growing to do. And that his relationship with his family and country are complex. There is not a black and white or good and bad with this situation and I feel like this is important when talking about him and his relationships with his family.

He was very much ostracized and probably neglected to some extent by his real parents but at a certain point, Leona decided to give up on improving himself just because he didn't achieve the results he wanted to. It's one of his biggest flaw.

His complacency is what drags him further into the darkness. Not Kifaji.

Sitting and stewing in his despair and how unfair his life has been instead of reaching out. Rehashing all thise chess strategies alone on his chess board until his brain hurts. Making grandiose plans instead of actually working hard toward a realistic goal. 

The idle king. A king with naught. (Nothing.)

I am now realizing that in a way (because Ruggie and Leona are so similar) Jack is Leona’s foil; he is the determined and earnest one who admires Leona at his best. He still holds the innocence and the idealism of working hard.

The group jumped through the darkness with Leona and we are replaying the events of Chapter 2 once again.

Ruggie and Jack watch it go down in dismay. Ruggie addresses that he once did think Leona’s way of thinking/plan was good and it’s cool to see he clearly regrets it now too.

They watch the drama play out as if Leona’s plan in Chapter 2 actually succeeded and see that he craves more. More ways for Savanaclaw to get ahead by unsavory means.

Jack says even if Leona becomes king there will be no end to his dissatisfaction. BOOM, there it is.

That is why Chapter 2 is so mind boggling.  Leona’s whole speech was about being king and second. But it’s clear now, it's not what he truly wants. I think Leona is afraid to admit what he really wants. Because that takes vulnerability and then comes the possibility of being rejected.

Jack also notes that, despite Leona getting “everything he wanted” he seems more grumpier and dissatisfied than usual.

“Leona is not your King, hes’ our Dorm Leader,” Jack growls. They fight and we get a nice callback to Lion King here. “Remember who you are.”

As Leona wakes up from his dreams he straight up says, yeah the scheme from Chapter 2 was…stupid. (Nice.)

Oh and we finally get some acknowledgement that Ruggie feels like Leona abandoned him in Chapter 2 which SHEEEEEEEESH. This is a deep cut for me, considering Ruggie’s real dad abandoned him. And it really confirms the fact he sees Leona as a father/big brother figure.

But, Leona doesn't, he sacrifices himself for Ruggie as the whole group tries to escape the crumbling dream. And while Ruggie cries out for Leona, Leona goes down smirking not knowing what will happen to him.

It’s time for him to face himself, his blot monster.

Blot!Leona wants them dead, all of them. Cheka, Falena, everyone. The real Leona finds it kind of pathetic. Because, in reality, I don't think Leona hates Cheka or Falena and he doesn't want to be alone anymore.

Leona admits to his blot that yeah, no he can’t do the job. He can’t be king. And instead of it being a negative it’s more a relief? Maybe he is incompetent too. He is addressing himself and his previous grandiose illusions. He hasn’t done anything worthy of being king.

However, he will not give up. He’s finally living up to Savanaclaw’s motto of perseverance (which he sorta laughed off in Chapter 2?)

This next part is what struck me the most because. He just lays it out so simply, finally saying it out loud.

Self awareness!! Like he finally said it!! (And I felt very vindicated in this moment, NGL) 

What he desires most is the approval of others.

Ah, and Blot!Leona responds with the fact he can't earnestly try, it's too painful to think of failing. Props for Leona acknowledging his flaws! Just like with the other overblotters. But I'm especially floored here because of how PRIDEFUL he is all the time.

In order to have better relationships with people, he has to leave that whole “they all hated me” shit behind. Because in reality, there are people who care for him despite his flaws. There are those who look up to him and admire him, for him.

But, the idea of that I think is so…crazy to him that he tends to deny its very existence. Then when he is genuinely complimented on his leadership or whatever skills he brushes it off.

He calls himself disgusting which feels kinda sad but it’s proof he has moved on from his previous way of things. What did I say earlier? Leona is afraid of failure. 

Giving being a king a earnest optimistic go is too painful for him because ultimately he is afraid of failing. Like he was happier to play the role of tyrannical king than to bother to build relations with the citizens of his kingdom.

As his blot self withers away it’s almost…sad compared to the previous blot monster showdowns we’ve seen. It mentions something about “his friends” (A reference to Scar’s final words.) like he’s reaching out for Leona so it's not alone anymore. And Leona almost embraces his monster? It’s clear he feels pity for this thing…him. His pain, his depression, his loneliness. Maybe a step in the way of self-love? He acknowledges (almost as to soothe it) that it will always be with him, clawing from inside. Except now, he won’t give up.

He vows that he will get what he wants one day, for both of them. He’ll have his “own throne and pride” instead of wanting for someone else’s. He’ll find his place to belong through his own merit.

It reminds me of that expression “find your own tribe” which is an expression that those who are not close to heirt families understand all too well.  He wants to find satisfaction outside his desire to rule and maybe because we know he prefers NRC to home, this confirms his fondness for his dorm life. (Savanaclaw found a family dorm.)

When he returns to his original dream of being king Kifaji is there as they look on at Pride Rock. The fact that it is raining is telling that hope has returned. (Just like at the end of Lion King) and that by accepting that “being king” is not what he really wants now “all things are balanced again”.

They have a nice moment here. Leona acknowledging that he has been given the tools to do good things by Kifaji’s training is a big mature moment for him. (Especially how they acted toward one another in the Tamashina Mina event)  And Kifaji praising him, since this a dream, could be a testament to what he wishes would happen between them.

AKA Leona finally feels more, “at peace” with himself.

As Leona destroys this false kingdom with his sand he seems reserved, it’s almost bittersweet as it all settles over him, his new found aspirations, letting the old ones go. He's letting the past go. A big theme in Lion King. (I really feel the writers must be fans of the movies.) 

Kifaji says: “Go to the place you really belong.”

This line kinda got me. Because the implication is that Night Raven College and his dorm is where he really belongs. Leona is confirming that his experiences at NRC have shaped who he is SO MUCH. 

For years he accepted his life as it was, a cage, and now he is acknowledging that he has the power to break that cage and do whatever he wants. It’s a great callback to the advice he gave Jamil in Chapter 6.

This is quite refreshing as he mentioned before that it was too “late for him”. Now, he realizes it isn’t.

Back with the gang, Ruggie admits his fear that Leona will abandon him again. Leona denies it, and says somewhat casually that he is in fact a true friend of his. This feels like a clever inversion of the line that Scar says to the hyenas about being his “friends.” 

But, we know now that Leona does mean it now. And this shows Leona’s desire to finally stray from the “path”  of his Great Seven counterpart and actually like…have friends?

The reunion of the Savanaclaw trio is actually really sweet. For a dorm full of cocky jocks with strong personalities they seem to be so genuinely happy to be reunited.

Jack bursting out into tears and crying got me tearing up. Like Ruggie and Leona clearly are bit more reserved in their emotions but we see Savanaclaw really are close, despite their disagreements. They care for one another as a dysfunctional little family. 

As a dorm that doesn't get much mainstream attention compared to others it was so nice to have this little moment. It's hard to tell, but I’m 99% sure there was a group hug based on how the sprites moved and the sound effects. At least a nice back pat from Leona. (Thanks, dad.) 

All in all, I really...enjoyed his dream section. As someone who is pretty hyper-critical, for the most part, it satisfied most of the things I wanted to feel. I even got emotional at a few points! Yes, it would have been nicer to spend more time with “king” Leona and dive into it more. Or get more lore about his family. But, he admitted it FINALLY, everything I have clocked about him all those years ago. It’s very satisfying to see his growth in a tangible straightforward way, instead of just me reading between the lines.

I hope we will continue to see even more growth with his character (Like we did in the Halloween event)  and I’m excited to see the role he will play in the rest of Chapter 7, even if it’s just him being a cranky old man. (What do you expect he was raised by one?)

I'd like to end this with some positivity. As someone who deep dives into character stuff a lot I know it's really comforting to see part of yourself reflected back in your favorite characters.

To anyone reading who feels they have things in common with Leona or his despair, the truth is that you should keep going, even if it's just to spite the world itself.

Your vision and presence in this world are valid all on their own and that failing is not indicative of your value as a person. It never will be.

Keep fighting to find your place, your pack and never forget who you are.💚

--

Thanks for reading!! This one took quite a bit to edit and think through so if you like my Leona analyses, I’d appreciate a reblog or even just if you wanna share it with your friends! Shoutout to the youtuber ガスマスクゲーマー whose video I pulled these screenshots from. Thank you!

[starlightomatic]

I clicked on my christmas discourse tag and found the following post, which I'd responded to at the time. I no longer like my old response, but cannot reblog it again as I was blocked like OP promised, so instead I'll respond here. I did not waterboard the post as my intention isn't ridicule, so I've dunked it in some green elixir instead.

I think OP is missing several things.

Firstly, their premise is... bad. It completely elides the power dynamics in a Christianormative society between Christians/cultural Christians and members of minority religions.

Secondly, people being pressured or shamed for not celebrating Christmas (whether that's snide comments and disrespect, or expectations of performing Christmas at work, eg in retail), is a real thing, whereas "non-Christians being shamed for celebrating" is... not (unless OP is speaking in an intracommunal Jewish context, but I assume they are not). So we're starting out with a strawman out the gate.

Thirdly, I think it really misunderstands posts like this, whose thesis is not "people who celebrate Christmas in a secular manner are wrong and bad" but rather "please stop using 'Christmas is secular' as a means to erase its origins and pressure us about it."

And also "there is a core of this that is Christian that does not need to be an issue for secular celebrators, but is an issue for many Jews."

I understand that a lot of people are challenged by that second implication so I will attempt to frame it a little more. I am not saying that a person who celebrates only the cultural aspects of Christmas is engaging in theological activities without their own knowledge. What I am saying is that Christianity comes with a set of connotations and associations for many Jews, namely our history of persecution by Christians, as well as some deep theological incompatibilities, and from the perspective of many Jews, Christmas is not really separable from this relationship, and we don't have any particular motive to separate it.

It is not that I am attempting to assign a religious identity to every person who puts up a Christmas tree; rather, that the discussion among Jews about whether to celebrate Christmas occurs in relationship to our history not only with Christianity but with our value of keeping our culture going by not assimilating. For various reasons, Christmas specifically has become an avatar in this that other holidays like Halloween largely have not.

In light of the Christian history of violent attempts to convert us (and many other peoples across the globe), and centuries of violent and oppressive treatment as punishment for our refusal to become Christian, putting any kind of pressure on us to participate in Christian celebrations come off very badly.

Which means that the fourth thing that OP missed was that "it's bad when it gets forced on people" was not an afterthought or "bad-faith response" but rather the entire thesis of the posts they're upset about. The entire point.

So to recap: No one is trying to say that people who celebrate only the non-religious aspects of Christmas are wrong, or bad, or don't exist. If this is the takeaway it is a failure of communication. There are many secular Jews who celebrate Jewish holidays in ways that align with their secularism, so this isn't a foreign concept to us.

More under the cut:

As well, there are Jews who celebrate Christmas, but the majority of them do so because they were raised in, or are currently part of, multi-cultural homes where another family member has brought Christmas to the home -- rather than because Christmas is universal.

Now, OP did not explicitly say they are equating Christmas being secular with Christmas being universal, but they implied it in their last line. This, actually, is the main issue with their post. Because whether or not Christmas is secular actually seems to be a red herring, the question at hand is whether it's universal. They are implying that maybe it is, if 80% of the non-Christian world celebrates it. The idea here is to eschew the claim that Christmas is associated with any particular culture; no, it's not a Christian holiday, it's a humanity holiday! It's for everyone! Stop being a Grinch.

And this is why the project to separate it from Christianity becomes relevant again: It's no longer fashionable to say that everyone should be Christian, so let's instead put that idea in sheep's clothing and substitute Christmas instead. It's the same thing, but now it looks innocent.

And, wait a minute, is it even true that 80% of the non-Christian world celebrates Christmas?

I clicked through the link OP provided, and found that, first of all, it only applies to the US.

And, second of all, the number for Jews is only 32%.

I clicked through to the source on that, and it's the classic: Pew's 2013 "Portrait of Jewish Americans." I found the relevant data:

And noticed a pretty big discrepancy between those in intermarriages and those not. It turns out, only 7% of Jews who are married to other Jews have a Christmas tree in their home. Let's be clear: This post is not a judgment in any direction on the choices of who to marry or whether to put a tree in your house. Rather: I am attempting to complicate "80% of non-Christians celebrate Christmas" with the data that only 7% of households with two Jewish spouses are doing so. Which... implies that American Jews, on the whole, do not see Christmas as universal.

And what about that 29% of unmarried Jews?

Well...

25% of Jewish American adults have a non-Jewish parent. We don't know what percentage of them grew up with a Christmas tree in the house but our closest approximation is the data about Jews with non-Jewish spouses (even though both sets of data are from 2013 so we're talking about different generations), so let's assume it was 71%. That would mean 18% of Jewish adults grew up with a non-Jewish parent and a Christmas tree in the house. Which accounts for the majority of that 29%. Of the remaining 11%, we can imagine that some proportion of them are living with non-Jews in a context other than marriage (eg in a relationship and living together, roommates, etc).

What we can conclude is this: Most Jews who celebrate Christmas do so with a non-Jewish family member. Thus, I believe that the opinion that Christmas is universal is one that is not held by the vast majority of Jews. Which means the OP's 80% statistic does not serve to prove its universality.

It is of course possible that I am reading in a connection between secular and universal that OP genuinely didn't intend, and their 80% statistic is truly only about showing that the cultural aspects are adoptable by non-Christians. If so, that is better, but I still don't think the statistic is doing what they think it is. Different religious groups have different considerations as well as different relationships with Christianity, and may not see engagement with Christianity as theologically and historically problematic the way many Jews do. That is to say: it doesn't mean Christmas isn't Christian.

[sepublic]

IDW Transformers’ take on the war and the origins of the Decepticons was one of those things that was rly thoughtful and interesting to read as a kid (so as the target demographic I guess lol) only as an adult to have some rly troubling implications like the ones you pointed out. I was EXTREMELY relieved that TF One swapped it back so that the Autobots are the low-class miners and the Decepticons were the military (closer to the original cartoon anyway) while still using the IDW comics as inspiration in other ways.

Transformers One is such a strange case for me because on the one hand, it's propaganda. I'm sorry but it's transparently propaganda, it's executives embracing IDW's attempt at "maturity" that well-intentioned or not, inevitably paints the revolutionaries as villains by having them arbitrarily blow up an orphanage, because we gotta demonize revolutionaries who use violence.

We gotta warn kids of the dangers of the violent revolution, because revolution is only permitted if peaceful! Let's just ignore what we were taught about the American Revolution... Seriously, look at the elites' response to Brian Thompson's assassination!

That being said. This is like 95% speculation. But there are clear differences between IDW and Transformers One. So to me, personally, it feels like the writers —Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari— were aware of the issues of the IDW premise. They were given a basic outline by executives. And so they opted to smooth over the issues as much as they could, work with it, while still being stuck with that basic problem at the end of the day.

So as you've said, I appreciate Orion and D-16 being working-class bots, that they're both coming from the same place. I appreciate the framing of Orion's opposition coming from the concept of Anti-Death Penalty, that no government should have the power to execute people. I appreciate the implications of D-16 siding with disgruntled military soldiers, whose only idea of fixing society is to destroy enemies.

There's something to be said about people who fantasize purely on committing violence, without any of the actual work of rebuilding and keeping things running! That's why Orion's rebellion consists of his fellow miners. I can see the implication, that even if D-16 hadn't gone off, there would inevitably be friction between the High Guard's jingoism and the civilians when Orion reformats things, and bans the death penalty.

...But again, again! D-16 is a black man. Not literally but he's voiced by Brian Tyree Henry, anyone can hear his voice. And his chanting of "Rise up" is juxtaposed with Orion Pax, who is voiced by white MCU star Chris Hemsworth. It feels ridiculous how the movie bends over backwards to paint D-16 as evil with shots of civilians running away from the convenient collateral of his shots, but nothing like that is ever shown with our protagonists and their damage!

B slicing up other Cybertronians is treated as a gag, but Sentinel's life and death matters more than his guards' which is uh. A weird way to frame things. I guess maybe it's because D-16 is doing it out of "reckless anger" whereas B isn't trying to...? But ultimately, the violence of our protagonists is meant to be framed as out of strict necessity, which is something I have to acknowledge.

I can't say for sure what Pearson, Barrer, and Ferrari were thinking. I appreciate Transformers One for smoothing out the edges. But I can't help but see D-16 as a pastiche of BLM activists, of the UHC shooter, because he's willing to be angry and violent towards his oppressors. He's a black man who gets branded and his violence is treated as exceptional and unique because of his anger, meanwhile B's kills are a gag.

There's an irony in that Sentinel's higher-class life is treasured by the narrative, but the lives of his comparatively lower-class bodyguards are worth nothing. The pervasiveness, it felt insidious; It genuinely kept me from enjoying the final battle between Optimus and Megatron, how the narrative wants to be triumphant but the dark undertone can’t be ignored. Call me a buzzkill.

I know people think this sort of trope is meant to be 'nuanced', that it makes for a more 'interesting' villain, one you can relate to and sympathize with. See yourself in. But in the end, you can only go so far in "reclaiming" a stereotype. You can't be in utter denial of the subtext and intention behind it. You can't claim this is actually good writing, I thought we were liking these villains out of spite, not in support of a narrative we think is secretly on our side too!

That executives need a revolution story where the ultimate villain who causes even more violence in the long run is, GASP, a revolutionary who shows people like them no mercy, is telling. There can only be a revolution in media if it shows the elite being deliberately spared at all costs, even to the point of Orion sacrificing his own life (Even if for D-16’s soul), while their own workers like those bodyguards are just fodder.

G1 was not the pinnacle of Leftist media but it was also inoffensive and knew what it was. This is… different.

[thefadecodex]

In DATV, our understanding of spirits deepens through two pivotal quests: In Memoriam and Spirits of the Dalish. These quests portray spirits as deeply empathetic entities shaped by emotions, capable of growth, distress, and healing.

The basic 'formula' can be used to figure out if a Spirit is going to become corrupted or return to the Fade: Purpose Disrupted → Emotional Distress → Catalyst Event → Mortal Intervention → Outcome (Corruption or Return).

In In Memoriam:

A Spirit of Compassion transforms into Eulogy through an act of remembrance.

This transformation highlights that spirits can evolve when guided by mortal intention.

In Spirits of the Dalish:

An Anxious Spirit, burdened by grief over the deaths of the Dalish, risks corruption.

Bellara observes that spirits overwhelmed by negative emotions are at risk of turning into something darker.

Spite identifies the Anxious Spirit as a Spirit of Comfort.

For the Spirit of Comfort to return to the Fade, it requires action, including: 1. Gathering mementos and 2. Holding a vigil.

This concept is briefly explored in DAI, but the encounter is so fleeting that it didn’t leave a strong impression on the creator, even after multiple playthroughs. However, it seems likely that this quest was laying the groundwork for a deeper exploration of the idea in DATV

In Burdens of Command (DAI):

A Spirit of Command struggles with the physical world’s refusal to obey its directives, unlike the fluid responsiveness of the Fade.

The spirit expresses frustration at its inability to exert control in the physical realm.

The Inquisitor aids the spirit by slaying the Race Demon.

After receiving assistance, the spirit returns to the Fade with ease.

So, what does this tell us? Spirits are not static entities—they are deeply influenced by mortal intention, emotional states, and symbolic acts. Their stability hinges on fulfilling their purpose or finding resolution, without which they risk corruption or transformation.

1. Spirits Have a 'Threshold' for Emotional Distress

Implication: Spirits can endure negative emotions or experiences for only a limited time before risking corruption or transformation.

Significance: This suggests spirits have an internal tether to their purpose. When that tether is strained or broken, their identity unravels, leaving them vulnerable to corruption or transformation into darker forms (e.g., Comfort becoming Fear or Despair).

2. Spirits Require Resolution Through Action

Implication: The Anxious Spirit needed an act of closure (the vigil) to find peace, showing that spirits cannot simply "will" themselves back to their purpose—they require external, symbolic actions aligned with their nature.

Significance: Spirits rely on harmony between their emotional state and purpose, often needing external intervention to restore balance. This suggests they are not entirely self-sufficient and may depend on mortals or other spirits for stability.

3. Spirits Are Deeply Affected by Mortal Emotions and Experiences

Implication: The Anxious Spirit's distress stemmed from the violent, unresolved deaths of the Dalish, showing that spirits are deeply empathetic and can become trapped in emotional feedback loops tied to mortal events.

Significance: Spirits' emotional states are reactive and tethered to their surroundings, suggesting they can "absorb" ambient emotional energy, especially when it clashes with their purpose.

4. Corruption May Not Be Instantaneous, But a Process

Implication: Spirits do not immediately become corrupted when they encounter negative emotions. There is a window of opportunity to intervene, as seen with the Anxious Spirit.

Significance: This challenges the assumption that spirits are instantly corrupted by negative emotions.*

*Note: This is not including events where a spirit is bound against it's will and forced against it's purpose.

5. Action is Needed for Spirits

Implication: The vigil was not just a symbolic act for the Anxious Spirit—it was an anchor, grounding the spirit back to its original purpose.

Significance: Spirits often need ritual or symbolic acts to realign with their purpose after prolonged distress, highlighting their intrinsic connection to intention, symbolism, and the constructs of the Fade..

6. Time Is a Factor in Spirit Corruption

Implication: The longer a spirit exists in emotional distress, the closer they come to losing their purpose and becoming corrupted.

Significance: There seems to be an unspoken "time limit" during which intervention must occur. This "time limit" may different depending on the spirit as well--a more "simple" spirit, such as a Spirit of Comfort may have less time for an intervention vs a more "complex" spirit, such as a Spirit of Compassion.

[musingsunderstarlight]

Personally, I understand where OP is coming from, and I think there is value in wanting to make societal change regardless of separatism. But I think it's worth asking why separatism is seen as "giving up on hope" and why giving up on separatism isn't?

Putting the onus on women to make men better or saying that they’re leaving women behind by wanting to fight for separatism isn't too far off from blaming women (I know that's not OP's intention though). In my own personal life, realizing that I no longer had to waste my time, energy and emotions on debating my misogynistic brother simply about the reality of being female was incredibly freeing. Like, it's fine to fight for these things, but I think it's better for fight for separatism and female-only spaces as a priority. We have to remember that it's the systems that men have put into place that continue to disadvantage and harm us, not just male socialization itself.

In order to break free of these systems, some level of political solidarity is needed, and if our energy is diverted to just trying to quash male socialization in our society now, then we're never going to achieve what we want to achieve. I think to try and undo male socialization is a nearly impossible feat because the whole point of it is that these men have been programed to see you as subhuman. You can't debate someone into seeing your humanity. The implications of this are that you are trying to enact change within a system that is corrupt. I mean in the U.S./the West, we spent decades teaching men how to be nicer, and now we’re being punished by being told that we are not even allowed to entertain the idea of female solidarity. Let me clarify: we gained so many rights, and now you are no longer allowed to acknowledge female human beings as their own marginalized group. As soon as you break free from one kind of man, the other one will be waiting right there to take advantage. And the way feminism has been corrupted by the left after women fought to escape from the clutches of conservatism is the perfect example of that.

That said, I think I have seen some examples where women who built separatist communities and raised sons there, the boys grew up to be well-adjusted and did not inherent the misogynistic beliefs and practices and of their male relatives. There is hope, but why can't we put that hope into building a new world from scratch?

Radblr hot take here but I believe that men are capable of changing to be better. To say that they are incapable of being good is saying that they aren’t fully responsible for what they do because they aren’t capable of being better.

No. They can be better. And they are morally worse and more corrupt for it. Men can choose to fight the patriarchy and treat their female counterparts with respect and dignity. But they choose not to, because they can reap the same or more societal benefits by being misogynistic.

Baby boys aren’t born misogynistic. Sure, they may be born with whatever male hormonal differences do, but that isn’t even 1% of the reason why they grow up to be misogynists.

As they grow up they learn that misogyny is rewarded. As they grow up they are exposed to porn which they choose to use as a sexual role model. As they grow up they watch their parents model a hierarchal power dynamic. They see all of this, and they like it. They choose it for themselves.

I think that men can change for the better. People here hear this and say “you can’t teach them” or “coddling them won’t do shit” and I agree. What women need to do is stop rewarding and enabling their behavior.

We need to free women from human trafficking and exploitation, and we also need to convince women who make porn of their own free will to stop. We need to punish the men who make it. We need to help women out of their abusive marriages, and we also need to convince women who are in relationships with even slightly misogynistic men to end them. We need to have zero tolerance for casual misogyny. We need to start shunning men who are misogynists. We need to hold accountable women who are enabling the men in their lives to hurt other women. Shun men who watch porn. Shun men who say slurs. Stop having their children.

And for the men sympathetic to our cause, we need to convince them to use their privilege as men to further feminist goals. We need them to vote for women’s rights. We need them to intervene during “locker room” misogynistic talk when women aren’t around. We need them to break up the male solidarity around misogyny in a way only they can do.

But we can’t do this as individuals. Strength comes in numbers. Women do face societal consequences for standing up to misogyny. Other women need to defend her and provide for her needs. And in order to do this we need to educate ourselves. Make money. Be independent of men. Become doctors, lawyers, teachers. We need to do everything we can to support women in places where they cannot do these things.

If we can do all of this, men will change. Maybe not the men who are already set in their ways. But those growing up will see that misogyny does not reward them in life. They will not see porn. They will not see their mothers submitting to their fathers and they will not see women submitting to men. And they will choose to treat women as human beings. Because they can.

Radical feminism is not a doomerist movement. I have a future in mind. I hope you do too.

[l00rem]

Amethio’s family rambles

spoilers below the cut

Now that we have confirmation on Crave being Amethio’s father, I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means in regard to the rest of his family. I don’t think Crave is supposed to be Gibeon’s bio child, which means it was most likely amethio’s mother instead which is pretty interesting considering she’s yet to even be mentioned.

My guess atm is that she died at some point, perhaps on a mission if she was gibeon’s child, and the grief left in the aftermath of her death is what lead to the rift between amethio and crave. I don’t think Crave doesn’t care about amethio even if him not even bothering to look at him was very cold, i think he just doesn’t want to show any interest in regards to amethio working with explorers. Definitely not the best way to convey that and amethio clearly doesn’t understand his intentions but welcome to pokemon horizons where none of the parents know how to properly communicate with their children lmao

Being in such a high position, I can only guess that Crave would’ve been pretty busy throughout all amethio’s life- there was still love there and they were closer than they are now, but I think amethio was always closer with his mother.

As to how this leads to amethio joining explorers and seeming cold towards his dad, my guess is amethio’s way of coping with his grief was to continue her work and pick up the will gibeon had bestowed upon her. Everything amethio does is still for gibeon and his approval, but there could be an extra layer of also wanting to uphold his mothers memory by filling the hole she left. Both Amethio’s pokemon have some association with death (a ghost and a raven) paired with their knightly themes I think it supports the idea that amethio is fighting in a way to remember the dead. But maybe how she died in the first place was on a mission, so Crave would be very understandably against his son going on said missions and wants to sway him away from explorers. I’m still pretty confused with the whole Exceed stuff tbh, maybe amethio thought that Crave should’ve left his job and joined explorers to continue his mothers work like amethio chose to? It does make me think about how amethio dismissed cap at first for being a cuter pokemon, now that we know his dads main pokemon was a chinchino.

This is leaning more into Liko and Amethio parallels for this part, but I wonder if Crave had amethio sent to a boarding school after amemom died? He knew he’d still be busy with work and unable to give his son the attention he needs during a hard time like this, so perhaps he thought sending amethio to a new environment where he can make friends would be for the best. But then from ames pov this was more like abandonment, that he couldn’t be bothered to make time for him and so had him sent away…

Maybe this is where Gibeon would’ve intercepted, taking amethio in and instead trying to fill the void his mothers death created by giving him a purpose? I could definitely see him taking advantage of amethio’s grief and turning him against Crave, maybe manipulating amethio into thinking Crave didn’t care about ames mom and wants to make him just forget about her. Maybe that purple crystal boetie amethio wears was passed down from Gibeon to his daughter, and then either she gave it to amethio or gibeon gave it to him after she passed… even more of a reason for him to treasure it

There is one line that’s been recontextualised a lot now and the implications are really interesting.

Most people assumed that this line referred to amethio’s dad, but now we can assume crave isn’t gibeons bio child it makes me wonder if this line was actually about amethio’s mother? Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s really weird to have a set out path for your child in law- especially considering crave hasn’t necessarily betrayed gibeon and works under him. I wonder if Amethio’s mother used to be subservient to Gibeon, but after meeting Crave and having Amethio she started to develop her own interests and no longer wanted to exist just to follow her fathers orders… we don’t have enough to go off of right now to fully speculate stuff in regards to her, but maybe we’ll get to see her by the end of this arc through a picture or a flashback. I honestly didn’t think she’d be massively important to amethio’s story given how she’s yet to be mentioned, but perhaps that’s because talking about her is still too much of a painful topic for Amethio (baby just misses his mom :(( )

That’s most of my thoughts anyway. Whilst it does seem easy to hate Crave from that scene I think there’s a lot of nuance going on there and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions on his parenting. Gibeon’s probably the problem, because he always is let’s be honest lol. He and Amethio will reconcile by the end I’m sure, they just need to be in a better place to talk about their feelings.

[dogydayz]

I stood up upon that old cliff out in the forest and looked out at the drop below. I usually wasn't so damn... Sad... back then, or at least I never admitted that I was, but... At that point I'd hit an especially low point. I'd say it was maybe a year or two ago, not super sure at this point, keepin' track of time is a fuckin' waste nowadays anyway.

I'd been... Battlin' with lotsa thoughts, thoughts 'bout where I came from, who I was. It was... At a point where I'd accepted that I wasn't meant ta be here, but I also felt super fuckin' lost all the same. I'd accepted it, but I wasn't at peace with that shit, so it made me angry and upset and I sometimes thought I was gonna just burst into tears. Fuckin' weak, if ya ask me, but at the same time... Lettin' myself cry later on was the best feelin' I'd had in so long...

But at this point, I wasn't alright with that idea. I couldn't act like that, I'd told myself. But all the same, I felt lost and confused, and useless too. I wasn't a fuckin' hero, and I couldn't even make myself into a competent adversary. I was just some guy who fucked shit up for the others, just an asshole with no place in this realm. Even at that point I was still stuck on wantin' ta be a part of shit, yet not wantin' ta become one of those "goody goody" folks, cause that shit's not me.

So I didn't see myself goin' anywhere. No buddies, not anymore, I hadn't seen those fuckers in years by then. No purpose, nothin' ta strive for or do. Bein' "above" people didn't even appeal to me anymore.... No real reason to stick around, huh?

So that's what I thought about. Would probably make their lives easier, I thought. They'd probably like me better if I took out the damn trash, I convinced myself.

But I'll admit, heights fuckin' scare the shit outta me, so I hesitated, I hesitated for a long while.

Long enough ta hear the sound of an engine, and the sounds of rough wheels digging into the dirt and underbrush, approaching, getting louder fast, before I heard the sounds of breaking and skidding to a halt. The low rumble of the motor slowly died down, and I heard feet hit the ground.

I turned my head to see who was there, then spun and tensed up, facing the familiar person.

And, as usual, he only stared back at me with a blank sort of expression, classic look for the stupid bastard huh?

Shadow... He knew me all too well. For all I knew he hated me with a passion. For all I knew he hadn't killed me yet because that blue idiot absolutely refuses to let him. Too fuckin' merciful man, he coulda avoided so much shit had he just eliminated me...

And yet, as we stared at one another, not saying a word, his expression... It... Slowly changed. Not to rage, not to hatred, not to any sort of disgust or anger.... It was... More like some weird fuckin' mix of... Empathy and... Sadness? Not... Not sadness, somethin' like sadness though. Those same vibes.

All he did was give a soft sigh, before turning away and hoppin' back on his bike, giving me one last look... One as if to say "follow, if you want", before he drove away back into the forest on the nearby track I think he'd been travellin' on prior.

Somethin' about that... How he'd looked at me and just.... Said nothin'... It got to me a lil. That shit hurt, and I still don't really know why.

He'd had every opportunity to kill me, then and there. He coulda gotten ridda my sorry ass 'n avoided dealing with my bullshit later on. Yet, despite all that... He... Almost... Seemed like he'd wanted to say somethin' to me.

And... He also didn't try ta stop me. Something about that too just fuckin'... I dunno, it... Confused me so much that... When I looked back over the cliff's edge, I... I didn't desire that anymore. I didn't feel like it was needed. I was curious, I... Had ta figure out why the fuck he'd just... Been like that to me. Why he'd looked like he cared about me. He's wasting his damn time caring about a fuckin shitfaced loser like me, but...

I can't help but want it to be true.

Maybe I am just a selfish prick, who fuckin' knows. All I know is that I...

I desperately want to have somethin' to hold onto here, in this world that's not my own... I don't think I'm ever goin' back anyway...

And I decided then that I'd... At least attempt to make something for myself. Homeless, idiotic, and, admittedly, depressed as shit... I still, in that moment, wanted ta try.

[clairesbeauchamp]

2.08 | 3.04

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

like even the non-nazi asshole reason degenerate got popular again was like. fallout new vegas. where it’s said by a bunch of fascist assholes who are unambiguously incredibly fucking terrible. and considering how that game is Political As Shit it was very much an intentional reference to degeneracy theory and Not meant as, like, a good or agreeable thing. so even people using it without being aware of its very loaded history were, even if unintentionally, using it in the same way bc like, that’s how it was used In The Video Game.

(and again fallout new vegas was Not the only reason at all. but it’s one of the ways people who had no fucking clue of its implications started seeing it and thinking it was funny)

also this is not mad either but i dont appreciate being called a degen/degenerate; that term is very loaded (literal nazi rhetoric) so as a queer jew i find it very uncomfortable

[octavianacidicbreastmilk]

asoiaf fandom still stuck in the discourse tarry pits of talking about dragons as if they are nukes, utterly ignoring the wartimes implications of robb stark using his land assault vehicle, otherwise known as direwolf. and i think that says something about society

[rmbunnie]

It's most likely just Starlin trying to get to Jason dying faster because he did not like Robin, but the whole "Jason's spiraling because of his grief for his parents" thing they were trying to spin was honestly really weird, not supported by the rest of the run INCLUDING the parts Starlin wrote, and kinda reads like an unreliable narrator situation because all of the information supporting it is given through Bruce's narration, him speculating on Jason's thoughts and actions.

The plot thread of Jason's grief for his family affecting his behavior shows up like TWO issues after Jason first becomes Robin back when Collins was writing, and gets sorted out after one conversation where Jason gets to confront Bruce about hiding his father's death from him for 6 months. After that Jason is behaving normally until they encounter three predators in a row, and each time Bruce insists that they can't do anything because of The Rules and assorted red tape/diplomatic immunity plotlines. (The sister of a woman who got dismembered actually tricked the violent-misogynist killer who dismembered her sister (and then got his serial killings dismissed through a technicality) into attacking her, and ends up killing him in self-defense, and then Jason's like "seems fair" and Bruce is like "no. it's NOT. we need to follow laws and not take justice into our own hands. which like wtf Bruce! you are a vigilante who just used a custom tank to fight an evil televangelist! who then got ripped to shreds by his followers while you watched!)

Bruce kinda just decides with Alfred that it must be grief upsetting him and not the dozens of brutally killed women and their predatory killers who the law inexplicably protected, (all written by Starlin, so retconning it for DitF like five issues later would be an odd move) but the only text claiming that's why Jason was upset is from Bruce's POV and through Alfred's dialogue. Jason himself doesn't display any signs of grief in the story itself, or even act or speak in a way that alludes to Catherine and Willis beyond looking at a picture of them and smiling fondly while he sorts through their possessions. He kinda just happens upon the box with his mother's info by chance, and is like ok i guess we're doing mom searches now. He was only going for a walk through his old neighborhood, not actively searching out info on his family. When Jason is deciding whether or not to run off without telling Bruce, he considers telling him and then goes "no, all he cares about is being Batman, he wouldn't even understand why I want to see my mom." Which, I mean, "Bruce wouldn't get it" is a REALLY odd angle if the sole motivator for spiraling, then getting benched* and running away to search out his bio-mom, was because he was mourning his dead parents, a thing he notably has in common with Bruce. That statement only really makes sense if he's thinking about a different thing that was greatly upsetting to him that Bruce brushed past, like maybe a combo of hiding the murder of his dad for half a year and allowing several cases involving sexual violence to freely develop body counts in the name of the law.

Lots of people have written about how Jason's stay in the manor might have seemed dependent on being Robin with how he was kinda just scooped up, but (if we're including Detective Comics in our characterization,) Bruce had offered to let him resign from Robin and just live with him (a little late, but still. It's worth noting Batman proper shows Jason afraid and uncomfortable at the thought of Dick taking Robin back, which lends more merit to the housing-dependent-on-Robin-misunderstanding interpretation, but canon is pick and choose anyways.) The lack of trust involved in his choice to search out his mom kinda reads like it was bred by more than that alone, and Bruce's prioritization of the law over the protection of the people it ignores is notably upsetting to him in the prior issues. tbh I really do believe the outcomes of those cases could have informed Jason's stance that Bruce's method of justice is ineffective right alongside his own murder and his experiences in Lost Days.

It would make sense for Bruce to not consider his own actions while he's thinking through things that would upset Jason, because from his point of view the things there that were bothering Jason were the criminals alone, not the way that the methods with which they were approaching their crimes continually led to the perpetrators evading actual justice. During the point in DitF where he's thinking through motivations for Jason's running away because something isn't adding up for HIM, the idea doesn't so much as cross his mind. It would also add another layer to Jason's sulkiness upon Bruce's arrival if he held the belief that Bruce is ignoring the consequences his brand of justice has on victims (and the way it's affecting him to helplessly watch it play out), starts to hope that Bruce actually can understand his thought processes/relate to him when he shows up, only to be told to his face that Bruce is prioritizing his style of justice over Jason again. With the way everything that led Jason to his bio-mom was comically circumstantial and the context of the previous issues, it's kind of the ONLY way Death in the Family makes sense to me. Tldr: I feel like the grief claimed as reasoning for Jason's actions leading up to his death is mainly speculation from Bruce and Alfred and the more textually-supported reason for his erratic behavior and lack of trust in Bruce is the lack of intervention in several sensitive cases that led them to worsen unobstructed and eventually permitted them to escalate into casualties in 2 out of 3 cases.

*Also, side note, but the idea that Jason got benched for the Filipe situation, while perfectly reasonable, is not quite spot on. The Filipe situation escalated into the fight in the junkyard where his dad is crushed by a car and Bruce is all "everything you do has consequences" which is kinda big words for a guy whose lack of action indirectly lead to a girls death earlier in the storyline, but true. Jason actally gets benched because he jumps directly into gunfire while fighting the third set of predators and Bruce starts to worry he's getting a little suicidal with it. He baits a guy into shooting at him on purpose again trying to protect mom prospect number 1 later on in DitF, so Bruce might have had a point with that one.

[khaire-traveler]

Digital Temples are really lovely, and I adore the fact that all these temples are suddenly popping up (I actually have been thinking of dedicating one to two deities as well), but the usage of the words "priests" and "priestesses" is genuinely concerning to me. It makes me feel a bit wary.

Why, might you ask, would that even be a problem? Let me explain.

These words carry a lot of power with them. With these words comes the implication of religious authority. If I went around saying that I was a Priest of Hermes himself, it asserts a sense of power and authority in a religious space. There are a lot of people who would love to use that power negatively; I have been directly impacted by this many times over. I am always wary of people who use this title as a result of what I've seen and experienced.

Those titles also carry the implication of having an established religious knowledge that others do not. It's not just a title used to identify people who are in charge of a Temple; it is a title that explicitly identifies someone as a researched, trustworthy, religious figure who is extremely experienced. This ties into how these words carry power. A lot of people I've seen stake claim to this title have also claimed to speak for the gods directly. Either that, or it is often assumed of them, and that bothers me a lot. I have yet to meet someone who genuinely speaks for the gods in every situation.

On the inverse, I'm sure some who use these titles mean it in a harmless and genuine way (I've met one before), and that's fine, but if you are one of such people, realize that these words seriously do carry immense implications along with them, and do not fall into the trap of moral superiority or dictating rules in a religion you do not own. The most genuine people I've met who identify with these titles are the ones who don't advertise them publicly. I'm not saying the use of these titles are wrong, but I am saying that people seem to be inclined to abuse them. Horrifically abuse them.

Instead, I suggest using a title such as "Cleric". I've seen another temple do this, and personally, I feel it is less intimidating and claims less power of authority. Or maybe not using a title at all. Why use one if you don't need it? Hell, you could call yourself literally anything else.

So, please, those who run digital Temples, I ask you to be aware of the power the words "priest" and "priestess" have before applying them to yourselves and ask yourselves why it is that you're choosing to identify with these titles in the first place.

[greenthena]

Very much with you on this. For me, in this context, the beard would be performative masculinity. It would signal that Aziraphale's true power, his BAMFness, is a the product of assuming a more masculine image. And by implication, maleness would be synonymous with agency and authority.

Which is not what Good Omens has thus far presented. God Herself uses She/Her pronouns, in the show at least. Mainstream portrayals of gender and naming conventions are pretty much thrown out the elevator. So to have Michael Sheen grow out his (objectively fabulous) beard to show that Aziraphale is suddenly powerful? I don't buy it. Especially since he's been quite powerful the whole time.

Had Aziraphale always had a beard, I'd take no issue. It's the idea of the beard signaling strength and power that irks me. Aziraphale has always been capable of protecting his charges (from the whole of humanity to Jimbriel), though his strength, as op points out, has usually been subtle.

The reason why I don't want a bearded Supreme Archangel comes down to how we view power in gendered roles. Historically, we've depicted masculine power as active, if not aggressive. There may be an element of protectiveness in this expression of power, but it's usually offset by some grand (and often violent) gesture. I'm thinking about the popularity of revenge narratives, and how many times I've had to explain to guys why the genre is not compelling to me. (Spoiler: it's because the acts of retribution have to do with satisfying male desire, and the inference that male desires ought to be satisfied.) This is, I believe, our socially-programmed expectation around how masculine power should be portrayed.

But Aziraphale subverts those expectations. Yes, he wields a flaming sword--and then he gives it away. (Not once, but twice. First to Adam and Eve, with the intention that they use it to defend against a harsh world outside the walls of Eden. And again to Leslie, as the unflappable messenger packs up the tools of the Apocalypse that wasn't.) Yes, he uses his halo to discorporate the demon horde bearing down on his bookshop, but only as a last ditch effort to protect those in his care: Jimbriel, Maggie, and Nina.

Aziraphale's expression of power is at once sacrificial and protective. In a word, maternal. And yet, he is still most comfortable in his man-shaped corporation. And what's brilliant is that these two facets of the angel are in no way at odds with one another. As op said, "They can act tough AND look all pretty and silly (in a good way)."

Look, if Supreme Archangel Aziraphale ends up with a beard, then so be it. (Sir Terry rocked a glorious white chin badger, after all!) But in my heart of hearts, I do hope the Supreme Archangel will retain some shadow of his silliness and some trace of his femininity. Those aspects of Aziraphale's character give him depth that would be lost by enforcing a more normative take on masculinity.

And while we wait for S3, let's see how much gender-fuckery we can all get away with, shall we?

Unpopular Opinion

(At least from what I've seen in the fandom)

Okay. It's time for me to confess. I kind of hate the idea of Aziraphale having a beard in s3. There, I said it. But I have reasons.

So, first of all, I don't really think it suits the character. Don't get me wrong, I love how Michael Sheen looks with a beard, but Aziraphale? I don't know, I don't see it going very well with their style. But this could also be related to my personal taste. I have more intricate reasons.

The thing is, every time I've read about people hoping Aziraphale will have a beard in s3, they were also connecting it to Aziraphale being badass in Heaven, taking the lead, showing their protective streak in a stronger way, having a more...masculine behaviour? Maybe? That's what I got from those posts most of the time.

And hey, I'm all for Aziraphale fighting to make a change in Heaven, but I don't really like the implication that, in order to show their protective side more, they also need to change their looks to appear stronger/bossier and all that jazz.

It would actually be kind of a comfort to me to see them act that way and still be themself, as we've always known them. Especially considering that this part of them is not new. It's true that, until now, we've always seen Aziraphale protect what (and who) they love in a more subtle way, but it's still protection and it's always been there.

That's why I think they don't necessarily need a new look. But, if we do get one, I actually hope it will be something more similar to how we saw them in the Bastille episode, or giving the same vibes they were giving in the changing room with that feathered boa. I mean, they were playing like that one second and delivered that "Aziraphale" to Furfur the next! They can act tough AND look all pretty and silly (in a good way).

With all that being said, I won't be mad, disappointed, or anything like that if Aziraphale ends up with a beard. It's not something that bothers me at such a level. What I've never really liked were the implications some people were writing around the concept of the beard. If it makes any sense.

So, that's my end-of-the-year confession. Don't hate me, please.