#this has been a year in the making but i was too scared of jinxing it to say anything directly lmao

[ooklet]

TITS GONE.

[running-in-the-dark]

got a new hard drive (had to, no space left 😔), so I'm using that as a reason to completely reorganise my files (mostly shows, movies etc)

I'm having such a good time 💖

[ccccatttta]

this is a random thought bc i got angsty, so!

walburga, who —in a mad attempt to stop regulus from becoming like sirius after he runs away from home—, obliviates regulus.

not completely, of course, but he makes him believe that he never had a brother in the first place. regulus is now the sole black heir and that's everything he knows; i don't put it past her to erase most of the abuse she caused, but still left enough to make him scared to disobey her.

and, like, it takes everyone too long to realize it.

first, sirius is not surprised his brother doesn't look at him anymore and pretty much pretends he doesn't exist, their bond has been severed completely to him, even if it hurts. and, well, he sort of wanted to get rid of his last name completely, so he pretty much asked everyone to not call him 'sirius black' ever again. so, how could regulus suspect anything.

then, everyone in slytherin knows not to talk about sirius in front of regulus (because he used to jinx them almost to death for that), and, sirius was officially disowned by the black family, so they do speak about regulus as the sole heir, as if sirius wasn't ever in the picture.

it's maybe pandora who finds out first.

barty and evan aren't sirius' biggest fans, and they don't like to confront regulus about how he feels, unless he's the one who wants to vent. they think that his way of coping is pretending like nothing happened, and while that's not healthy at all, regulus looks fine, super fine, even. so why would they want to interrupt his peace.

dorcas has been distancing a bit from them, because of the whole voldemort situation. she's no longer with them enough to realize regulus has been acting strange.

and pandora was a bit like evan and barty, at first. especially because, she knows regulus doesn't keep anything that's really hurting him for long. not to them. they just like to give him enough space to process and cool down. they let him come to them, and they will be waiting.

but then, regulus doesn't.

so, after a while she decides to ask him about sirius.

when regulus just answers "who's sirius?" with the most genuine and confused face on earth. she knows exactly what has happened.

i haven't thought further into it, maybe evan, barty and dora argue about what to do. the right thing would be to help him get back his memories. but regulus looks so much better without the heartbreak sirius has been unintentionally causing him since first year. and sirius seems to love his new life as the potter's ward. maybe that's the right thing.

but also, they know that, even with all the pain that he has caused him, regulus loves his brother more than anything and wouldn't want to just be forced to forget about him.

yeah. that was my random thought of the night. toodles!

[angelltheninth]

Arcane Characters Hand Headcanons

Pairing: Jinx, Vi, Caitlyn, Maddie, Ekko, Vander, Silco, Sevika, Viktor, Jayce, Mel x Reader

Tags: fluff, size difference, hand-holding, scars, bruises, hand comparison, cuddles

Ko-Fi | Rules | Fandoms and Characters | Commissions

A/N: I remember there was a post where an artist drew the hands and made some headcanons in their drawings but I don't remember who the artist was. But that was my inspiration for this.

JINX

Long and skinny fingers

Lots of calluses from tinkering with her weapons

A strong grip because of the Shimmer

If looking at her hands in the dark you can see Shimmer running through her veins

Has to constantly be told to be careful when working because she has no concept of safety and has come close to losing more fingers

VI

Her hands are really rough all over

bruises on her knuckles that never seem to heal because she's always fighting

A few bones have been broken over the years and healed haphazardly

Gets the biggest puppy-dog eyes if you take her hands and kiss each finger paying special attention to the bruises

You're the only one she trusts to help her wrap and unwrap her hands every day

CAITLYN

A lot of calluses on her hands, especially her fingers

She's been shooting with a riffle since she was young so the pads of her fingers are tougher than the rest of her hand

The skin on the pads if her fingers is hardened

Likes to wear gloves, which you will say is a shame

Knows you like her hands a lot, but she has a better grip on her guns with the gloves on

MADDIE

Her hands are dusted with little freckles

A bit small, perfect for hand-holding actually

Can crack her knuckles and she doesn't even realize she does it most of the time

Many faded scars from her time growing up and training in Noxus

Refuses to elaborate when you notice how scared her hands are, but if she gets to know you well enough and trusts you she might share a story or two

EKKO

Because he's always working his hands are really rough and even have a few burn marks

There are more than a few broken bones in his hands

Never healed well because he refuses to take Shimmer and it's a bit difficult to find good doctors in Zaun

Habit of tapping his fingers against surfaces, even your arm or back while you cuddle

To keep your relationship on the down-low he often holds your pinkie finger with his

VANDER

His hands are huge compared to yours, you have to use both to hold one of his

The strength he has could crush a man if he tried

Definitely a working man's hands, you can tell he's never skipped a work day in his life

Long faded scratches on his arms and wrists

Still enjoys punching things and has a big punching bag in his room, but he often forgets to wrap his hands, which makes them a bit bloody after

SILCO

For someone in Zaun he takes pretty good care of his hands

Cold compared to yours, like his body temperature isn't quite where it needs to be

Skinny, long fingers but he will paint his nails if you or Jinx ask him to

Takes care of himself so he never has dry hands despite how they look

Always places his hand over yours, it's a protective and possessive habit

SEVIKA

She only has one human hand left but she's reckless with that one too

Always fights so you always help her patch up the bruises and clean the blood

Marks from tearing off scabs or making them bleed again

Usually has a hard grip but softens it for you

Has a few ash burns from her cigarette, she doesn't always move it away in time

VIKTOR

He grew up in Zaun and then threw himself in lab work so he's not the best at taking care of his hands

Skinny, almost boney hands

Has a habit of biting his nails when he's thinking about something

Broke his fingers and wrists more than a few times

You always tell him to wear gloves but he never does, not because he doesn't think he shouldn't but because he doesn't remember

JAYCE

Big, meaty, rough hands, very strong

He always wears gloves when he works, be it the lab or the forge

And yet he still gets that slightly rougher skin, not fully though because he's really careful

Uses hand lotion when he finishes working, it's what makes his skin extra soft

Won't admit that he does it but when you hold hands he's doing math in his head and comparing the hand sizes

MEL

If she didn't tell you then you would have never guessed she grew up in Noxus because her hands are so smooth

Her hands are delicate, with really well manicured nails

Only when you look really close can you see just a few, very tiny cut marks but they're almost completely faded away

Enjoys getting hand massages from you and you complimenting her hands

Tickles you when she runs her nails across your skin

[archangeldyke-all]

Omgggg I love Sevikas and readers little found family with Jinx and Isha. Do you ever think that, over time, Jinx and Isha would pick up on some of their mannerisms, especially Isha 'cause she's so young?

I can just imagine reader having this face she shows when she's disgusted and then one day they're all hanging out and Isha sees something she thinks is disgusting and can copy the face almost exactly.

this is so cute

men and minors dni

even before isha joins your little family, there are certain quirks in jinx that you can easily identify as sevika's. as much as they claim they hated each other before silco's death, sevika was still a pretty big influence on jinx during her formative years.

jinx has learned how to scowl the same way sevika does, and she's nailed sevika's annoyed eye rolls.

the two both refuse to open packaging with scissors or knives-- both tearing into food packages with their teeth.

and, over time, jinx has taken on sevika's eating habits-- swirling all the food on her plate into one mass of mush before eating, claiming 'it helps mix the flavors.' just like sevika does.

but then isha joins your little family, and both her and jinx start picking up on more and more of you and sevika's quirks.

sevika sneezes loud as hell. like, scare the shit out of you loud. it's one of the most annoying things about her, and she can't control it no matter how hard she tries.

so when isha starts sneezing like she's being punted in the stomach, a loud, guttural "AAACH!" coming from the little girl-- you can't help but cackle each and every time. (especially when she manages to scare sevika, because it's so satisfying to watch your wife be on the receiving end of being startled by a loud sneeze.)

every morning, the first thing you do once you wake up (and give sevika her good morning kisses and cuddles) is some quick yoga in the living room. it's nothing fancy-- it's just ten minutes of stretches and yawns-- but it always manages to help you feel awake and ready for the day.

lately, jinx has been joining you.

you'll wander into the living room rubbing sleep out of your eyes, only to find jinx there, sipping a cup of coffee and soaking up the rising sun. you're both wordless as you sit on the floor, stretching and waking up together. jinx copies your movements sometimes, but sometimes she just stretches the way she feels like she needs. the best part is at the very end when you do partnered stretches, the pair of you taking turns to pull one another's arms and stretch each other's legs. it's nice.

isha being nonverbal means she communicates mostly through facial expressions. sevika being a woman of few words also means she communicates mostly through facial expressions. sometimes, it's a little uncanny how similar isha's 'you've got to be shitting me' face is to your wife's. or her 'i'm so excited but i'm trying to play it cool' face. or her 'i'm hungry and tired and unamused.' face.

and one night, as you're drifting off to sleep, sevika leans forward and kisses your forehead. "love you." she whispers. you sleepily scrunch your face, and sevika chuckles. "isha makes the same face when she's sleepin' and i tell 'er that. first time she did it i almost cried-- it's so you."

you force your sleepy eyes open to stare up at your smiling wife. "i really like our family, sev." you mumble.

sevika grins and swoops down to kiss you. "me too, baby." she giggles.

taglist!

@fyeahnix @lavendersgirl @half-of-a-gay @thesevi0lentdelights @sexysapphicshopowner

@kissyslut @chuucanchuucan @badbye666 @femme-historian @lia-winther

@lavenderbabu @emiliabby @sevikasbeloved @hellorai @my-taintedheart

@glass-apothecary @macaroni676 @artinvain @k3n-dyll @sevsdollette

@ellieslob @xayn-xd @keikuahh @maneskinwh0re @raphaellearp

@iamastar @sevikitty @mascdom @nhaaauyen @annesunshiner

@mirconreadzztuff22 @veoomvroom @lushh-s3vik4s @katyawooga @lesbodietcoke

@strawberrykidneystone @sevikasfan @fict1onallyobsessed @greenhazes @dvrkhcld

[itneverendshere]

wait , pouge! reader not coming to work after a huge storm and rafes worried he hasn’t seen her or heard from her in a while, so he goes to checks and o maybe she’s been trying to fix something that happened? like a fallen tree in her driveway, or no electrician has come to help her turn the lights on

scared of nothin' & i'm scared to death - r.c

pairing: rafe x pogue!reader (bartender!universe) word count: 2.9k

Rafe Cameron rarely felt scared. 

He hardly knew what that meant. He knew anger, violence and gut-wrenching pain, but never fear.

Storms were common in the Outer Banks. He never gave them a second thought; his house was more than equipped to handle them.

But last night, as he stared out at the growing storm from his mansion's balcony, something in his chest tightened. He couldn’t stop imagining the image of you—you, living in a run-down house on the edge of The Cut. The wind picked up, howling through the trees as the sky turned darker by the minute. His knuckles went white against the balcony rail.

He was scared.

Somehow, the pretty bartender from the country club had nailed the final nail in the coffin. He was smitten, there was no way back. He'd been a goner since the first day he drove you home.

So, when you didn’t show up for your shift earlier this morning, he panicked. He hadn’t seen you or the beat-up car you’d recently started to drive to work. He hated that stupid car with all his power, but you’d looked at him so happily that he could hardly scold you for driving around a safety hazard on the nights he couldn’t get you home.

He had called you nine times already. Each time, it had gone straight to voicemail. His texts were left on read—or maybe not even read at all. He couldn’t tell. He knew the power was probably out in half of The Cut, and maybe that explained why you hadn't answered, but it didn’t ease the knot of panic growing in his gut.

The storm had been a beast—trees were down, power lines were tangled. There was no sign of you and that fear just wouldn’t leave him alone. 

By lunchtime, he was freaking the fuck out.

He knew you didn’t always have a reliable ride, especially with that piece of shit thing you called car, and he had promised himself that he would always be there to make sure you got home safely after your shifts, as often as he could. But now, with no word from you and no sign of you at work, he was convinced that something had gone wrong.

“Rafe, you alright, man?” Topper’s voice cut through his thoughts as he sipped his beer at the Wreck. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He looked up, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah, just—uh, just worried about someone.”

Topper raised an eyebrow, “Anyone I know?”

“Mind your fucking business.”

"Alright, chill, man. Just asking."

Where the hell were you? His phone buzzed on the table, and he snatched it up, hoping it was you. It wasn’t. Just another useless notification that only made his frustration grow.

“Dude,” Topper started again, this time more carefully, “is it her? The girl from the club?”

Rafe stiffened. He hadn’t told anyone how deep this thing with you went. He wasn’t going to jinx the best thing that had happened to him in years. But he was on the verge of losing it. 

“Yeah,” he finally muttered, “It’s her.”

Topper nodded slowly, “You want to go look for her?”

Rafe hesitated. He hated the idea of any of his friends having the pleasure of meeting you, you were too good for any of them, himself included. But he was running out of options.

“Yeah,” he said it more firmly this time. “Let’s go.”

He stood up so fast his chair nearly fell over. He had to find you, and he had to find you now. Topper downed the last of his beer and followed him out of the Wreck without another word. 

The drive to your house felt longer than usual, even though he was speeding through the roads, having to swerve around fallen branches and debris scattered across the asphalt. The closer he got to your place the more scared he felt.

When he finally pulled up to your driveway, his heart dropped to his feet.

A massive tree had fallen across the entrance, blocking any vehicle from getting through. Your car was nowhere in sight, and the house looked scarily quiet.

“Shit,” Rafe muttered under his breath, slamming the car door behind him. Topper was right behind him as he made his way toward the house, climbing over the fallen tree with ease.

He knocked on your front door, first gently, then with increasing force. 

“Sweetheart? You in there?” he called, his voice louder than he intended. There was no answer. It wasn’t helping his nerves at all. He wasn’t about to wait around, though. He tried the door handle—it was locked.

“What if she’s not home?” 

“I’m getting in there one way or another,” Rafe snapped, his patience completely gone. He circled around the house, looking for another way in, when he noticed a side window cracked open. He didn’t think twice before pushing it up and hauling himself through it.

“Dude, seriously?” Topper groaned from outside, but he ignored him. He landed in what looked like your living room, immediately taking in the mess of scattered items, likely from the storm. He’d never been inside your house before. 

“Sweetheart?” He called again, moving through the house with long strides. He could feel the panic rising higher in his chest.

And then, he heard it—a faint noise coming from down the hallway. He followed it, his heart pounding in his ears. When he reached your bedroom, he found you sitting on the floor, trying to untangle wires from a flashlight, your phone dead beside you. The relief that took over his entire body was so overwhelming he nearly collapsed. 

“Rafe?” you looked up, confused, not expecting him to be there. Your face was smudged with dirt, and you looked exhausted.

“What the hell are you doing?” He dropped to his knees next to you, ignoring the way his voice sounded a little strained. He crouched closer, beside you, brushing a strand of hair out of your face.

You let out a shaky laugh, “I—I’ve been trying to get the power back on. The storm knocked out everything, and the tree in the driveway…I didn’t know who to call, and then my phone died.”

Me, he wanted to scream. You should’ve called him. He wanted to be angry at you for not picking up, for not letting him know you were okay.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked, his voice all rough around the edges. The thought of you here, alone was going to send him into a spiral, "You should've called me," he reached for the dead phone beside you. "You know you don’t have to deal with this shit alone."

"I tried, but then everything went out. I didn’t want to bother anyone. I figured I'd just wait it out."

Rafe shook his head, his hand still lingering on your cheek for a moment before he pulled it back, resisting the urge to drag you into his arms. Bother anyone? He wanted to laugh. Didn’t you fucking know by now? He would drop everything the second you needed him.

“Really, didn’t want to bother you,” you admitted, feeling a little silly now that he was here.

“Bother me?” He echoed in disbelief. “I’ve been worried sick.”

“I didn’t mean to make you worry. I just didn’t think—”

“That’s the problem,” he cut you off, “You never think about yourself. You’re always so damn worried about everyone else, but what about you?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just—don’t do that again,” He nearly pleaded, pulling you into his arms. He held you tightly like he was afraid you’d disappear again if he let go, "You scared the hell out of me," he confessed, "I thought something happened to you."

You weren’t used to someone caring that much, and especially not someone like Rafe Cameron. 

You leaned into him, finally letting go of the tension that had been knotting in your stomach all day. “I won’t,” you promised, closing your eyes.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he murmured into your hair. “You’re staying with me until this place is fixed up. No arguments.”

You blinked up at him, not sure how to respond to that. He was a complicated guy—intense and often described as a little scary by most people—but in that moment, you could see the truth in his eyes. He wasn’t leaving.

You were too tired to argue, and honestly, the idea of not being alone sounded amazing, “Okay.”

Topper peeked his head in the room, awkwardly glancing between you two. 

"Everything cool in here?"

"Yeah, Top," Rafe said without looking back, his focus solely on you. "She's fine. We’re heading out.”

Topper nodded, “You want me to drive? There’s not much room up front with all the stuff you’ve got in there.”

Rafe’s eyes narrowed slightly “Nah, you’re sitting in the back. She’s riding up front with me.”

“In the back?”

You looked between the two men, amused by the way Topper seemed slightly offended yet intrigued. 

“It’s okay, I can sit—"

Rafe cut you off, shaking his head firmly. “No fucking way. You’re sitting up front with me. End of discussion.” 

There was a certain protectiveness in the way he spoke, like the idea of anyone else being close to you right now was simply unacceptable. Top, always sensing when to stay out of his way, just shrugged and backed out of the room, leaving the two of you alone again. 

He needed you close. Needed to make sure you were okay, even if you didn’t have a single scratch on your body. You felt a smile tug at your lips at Rafe’s insistence. He was so endearing to you. You knew he’d find you critically insane if you said it out loud. 

“Come on,” he stood up and offered his hand to help you off the floor. His touch was firm but gentle, his fingers lingering against yours for a second longer than necessary.

You glanced around your room, realizing how much of a mess it was—the scattered clothes, the tangled flashlight that was still not working, "I should probably clean up first," you muttered, feeling a little embarrassed by how little you had.

He shook his head immediately. “No, not now. You can come back later. M’ not leaving you here alone tonight, again.”

You wanted to protest, but something about the way he said it made you bite back your tongue. You quickly learned there was no point in fighting him when his mind was set like this.

"Okay," you agreed quietly.

His jaw unclenched slightly at your compliance, and he helped you gather a few things—a change of clothes, your phone charger, and anything else you might need for the night. Once you had everything packed, he led you back out through the house. The debris in the hallway didn’t seem as overwhelming with him by your side.

You climbed back out the same window he had crawled through earlier, and Topper was waiting by the car, kicking at a loose rock with his shoe to pass the time. Rafe guided you to the passenger side. He opened the door for you, his hand brushing your lower back as you slid into the seat. As soon as you were seated, he leaned over, his hand brushing against your shoulder as he grabbed the seatbelt. 

"Let me," he murmured, his breath brushing against your cheek as he clicked the seatbelt into place. His closeness made you hold your breath, but you managed to keep your composure, offering him a small nod of thanks.

He stayed in that position for a moment, his face inches from yours, searching your face for any sign of distress. You could see the gears turning in his brain. But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he gave the seatbelt a final tug to make sure it was secure, then slowly leaned back, his eyes never leaving yours. “You’re okay.”

He said it quietly, more to himself than to you, before he climbed in behind the wheel, looking over at you, one more time, like he was making sure you were really there, really safe.

You offered him a crooked grin, trying to reassure him that you were okay, “I’m fine.”

Without thinking, you leaned up and pressed a kiss to his lips—a fleeting cute peck, just enough to show him your gratitude and affection. His lips were warm, slightly chapped from the day, but they felt perfect against yours. It was quick, but you knew you’d think about this moment for the rest of your life.

Rafe blinked, momentarily thrown off, but then his lips gave in to a small, genuine smile—a rare sight for him. He liked it. He liked it more than he should. He liked everything about you since day one. It felt like you were put on this earth to be with him.

Topper, ever the babbler, leaned forward from the back seat, knocking on the headrest. “Hey, lovebirds, you planning on leaving, or should I get comfortable back here?”

“Shut the fuck up Topper,” Rafe muttered, cheeks red, his eyes not leaving yours. 

You giggled softly, the sound melting the last of the tension remaining in his body. His heart was still racing, but now for a different reason. He revved the engine, giving Topper a sideways glare before pulling out of your driveway. 

“Yeah, shut up Topper,” You snorted, finding their friendship hilarious. 

Rafe couldn���t help but grin. The way you so easily fit into his world, bantering with his friends like you’d been doing it for years, only made him fall harder.

“Oh great,” Topper sighed, throwing his head back against his seat, “There’s two of you now.”

Rafe smirked, casting a glance in the rearview mirror at his friend, “Get used to it.”

The car sped through the dark, storm-damaged streets, he kept his eyes on the road, but his hand found its way to rest on the console between you, his fingers brushing against yours now and then, whether intentional or not.

You couldn't help but sneak a glance at him, your heart doing a little flip each time. You’d known Rafe for a while now. You knew he had your heart the first day you met him, but tonight? The way he rushed to you, the way he wouldn’t take no for an answer, it was like seeing a different side of him. A side you were starting to fall for, hard.

“Where are we going?” you asked breaking the silence, though you weren’t really concerned about the destination. Being with him was enough.

“My place.”

There was always a certainty in his tone, that easy confidence that made you feel secure, like as long as you were with him, everything would be okay.

From the back seat, Topper sighed dramatically, “Man, this is some romantic shit, but I’m starving. Can we hit a drive-thru or something?”

You and Rafe exchanged a glance, both of you stifling a laugh.

“You always thinking about food, Top?” Rafe grumbled, though there was a lightness in his voice now.

“I didn’t get to finish my damn burger because someone decided to bolt out of The Wreck in a panic,” Topper shot back, leaning forward to poke his head between the front seats.

Rafe rolled his eyes, but you could tell he appreciated the distraction. “Fine. We’ll stop somewhere, you’re buying.”

Topper groaned. “As if you don’t have enough money to feed half the island, but sure, man, I’ll buy your girl a meal.”

You felt a heat rise in your cheeks at the mention of being Rafe’s girl. 

He didn’t deny it.

[babejinxy]

In love with you - part 3

Pairing: Powder x fem!reader

Warnings: friends to lovers, SMUT, kissing, fluff

Synopsis: Powder had been your best friend for years, the two of you met when she was running from the cops when she and her brothers broke into and blew up an apartment in Piltover and you helped them escape. What you never imagined, is that the love of your life was always right there in front of you…

A/N: This is a fic about Powder from the alternate universe, it has nothing to do with Jinx.

🌟 English is not my first language, so I apologize if there are any mistakes.

Part 1 Part 2

💙 @brocoliisscared @bbybubbles @cattjull

You went after Powder who was leaving the last drop, “hey Powder, wait a minute”, you called her and she stopped looking at you with a frown and crossed her arms. “Look, I'm sorry okay? I should have told you, I know you're mad but…”, you didn't have time to finish because she interrupted you, “I'm not just mad, I'm upset too… why...Why her Y/n?”. She actually wanted to ask, “Why anyone else and not me?”, but she held herself back, she wasn’t ready for that, maybe she was too scared for that.

What would you tell her? That you still loved Cait? Maybe you did, or did you think so? Would you say that you were confused and didn't really know how you felt, or would you just say that you couldn't be alone for too long? Yes, your best friend knew all of this, she knew about your potential to easily give yourself to anyone because... because you had this fear of ending up alone, this fear of not being good for anyone, the fucking fear that no one would ever be able to love you.

“I went out with her last week, we went out to dinner and then we went to her house, it’s just… a casual encounter is no big deal.” If you knew how you were breaking Powder’s heart into a million little pieces at that moment, you would definitely condemn yourself.

“It’s not a big deal?”, she said perplexedly opening her arms, “Y/n we’re talking about the girl who cheated on you, she hurt your feelings, if you don’t remember how you felt at the time I do, I comforted you… your whole life I was the one who was by your side and not her, I’m the person who would never leave you alone, never”.

You approached her and held her hands, “I know and that’s why I’m so grateful to have you in my life, you’re my best friend Pow Pow, I love you and I don’t know what I would do without you.” She squeezed your hands in hers, knowing that you loved her in some way meant a lot to her. “I just want to see you happy, I don't like Caitlyn sorry honey, but I don't like her especially after what she did to you.” You started to wonder, “why is it so hard to find someone like Powder?”, someone like her would never hurt you, she was wonderful, but she was your best friend.

“You know Y/n, you deserve someone who likes you just the way you are, someone who knows how to value you, someone who knows how lucky they are to have you, you know someone who… who wakes up every fucking day and says “holy shit, I’m dating Y/n and no one else in the world is that lucky only me”, do you understand that?”.

You felt like crying. Powder always made you feel special. She was the only person who made you see your own worth. You held back your tears and pulled her into a tight hug. You felt her wrap her arms around your waist and hold you close. She was so close to your face, she just needed to move a little more and her lips would be on yours.

You pulled away from her, “Thank you for that, sometimes I need someone to remind me of that.”

“Yes, I know… and I’ll always be here to make sure you don’t forget.” She smiled and caressed your cheek with her thumb. fuck she wanted so badly to drag you to the dark corner and kiss you right now, maybe you would kiss her back, maybe you two would reveal your feelings, then she would take you to her house and taste you, maybe she would…

“Oh there you are,” Ekko’s voice took her out of her reverie and you looked at him - who you soon noticed was sad - Powder rolled her eyes and put her hands on her waist, he always appeared to interrupt the moment and that was already making her irritated.

Ekko approached you and held out his hand handing you a piece of paper folded in half. “Someone wants me to give this to you,” he said, his voice still dejected, he didn’t look at Powder once. You took the paper and frowned, “what is this?” you asked. “I have no idea, a guy asked me to give this to you, and before you ask, I don’t know who the guy is either, I’ve never seen him around here before.”

You were a little confused, curious and at the same time worried that this could be something serious, but Powder knew exactly what it was, some guy at the bar flirting with you and wanting to buy you a drink, how she wished she could tell all of them that you were not available because you were hers. “Well, good night girls,” Ekko walked away from you two and continued on his way with his head down.

You ignored the note for a second and looked at your friend, “You dumped him, right?” You were referring to Ekko. She shrugged, “Sort of… but he wasn’t like this when we got here.” You curled your lips, “So what happened?” She had a hunch that maybe he noticed her advances on you, but she couldn’t tell you that.

“You really don’t like him, do you?” you asked curiously. “He’s just my friend, the fact that I went out with him once doesn’t change anything… wouldn’t you go out with any of your friends?” You didn’t quite understand the question, you didn’t know if she wanted you to answer or if it was just a rhetorical question. In fact this was just a way to know what you would say even though she was afraid of the answer.

You thought for a second, you never went out with any of your friends, maybe because you liked them just as friends, maybe you just needed to think a little more or just look at Powder right in front of you before saying what you said. “I wouldn’t go on a date with any of my friends, those things rub the friendship”.

Powder felt a tightness in her heart, maybe after that the best thing to do was for her to try to get over you and have you just as her best friend, but how would that be possible when you were her dream? And every day that passed, this passion for you only grew and took over her every second she spent by your side. “Well, I guess it depends on how both feel about each other,” she said finally.

“Yeah, maybe… I mean… no,” you closed your eyes, getting confused about your words, “I don’t think it’s that simple… anyway, let’s see what’s here?” you said, opening the piece of paper in your hands as quickly as possible, ignoring your heart beating erratically once again. Of course you blamed it on your anxiety to read what was written on the note Ekko handed you.

You unfolded the paper and Powder approached you to read what was written, you read it out loud, “Hey pretty girl, I've been eyeing you all night, can I buy you a drink?”, you were holding back from laughing, Powder on the other hand, wasn't very comfortable with it, “if you accept, I'm the guy sitting alone at the table on the right corner, I'll wait for you”.

You looked at your friend and laughed, “These guys don’t know when to stop,” she said crossing her arms. “Oh come on, you’re just jealous because I got the note and you didn’t,” you laughed, mocking her. “Pssh, as if,” she said, pushing your arm away slowly. “He might be cute,” you said, looking at the note. Powder felt her body boil with jealousy, but she held herself back. “Do you want to go back there and see if he’s still there? If he is, I won’t judge him.” As she said this, her eyes widened and she looked at you from the corner of her eyes, a chill ran down her spine, how could she have let that out loud?

You looked at her with furrowed eyebrows, “Of course not,” you said, crumpling the note and throwing it behind you somewhere. “Tonight I want to have fun with my best friend, without any disloyal ex-girlfriends or barflirts, just you and me… our sleepover, remember?” You held out your hand to her. Surely if she could, she would grab you and kiss you right now. But instead, she took your hand, intertwining her fingers with yours.

“Part three of the night: braids in your hair,” you said laughing. “Okay, you’re silly,” she said pulling you closer to her, wrapping her arms around your waist…

˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁�� ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁

It's been three days since the day you went to the movies with Powder and Ekko. You've had time to think about what Powder had said about Cait and you've been ignoring her calls ever since. Today was Saturday, the day of the party in Zaun at The Last Drop. You got ahead on your academy work and told your parents that you couldn't attend their party because you had work to finish.

It was night and you were finishing getting ready for the party when your hexphone vibrated and it was a message from Cait, you read it in the notification bar,

“Hey princess, sorry to be insistent, but I'm not going to give up on you... I'm sorry for what I did to you, I can fix things, give me a chance to change everything. Please give us a second chance. Are you going to your parents' party? I hope so! I need to see you! I still love you baby, don't forget that.”

You couldn’t say it didn’t affect you. Powder was right in what she said before, but what if Cait had changed? What if she really still loved you? People make mistakes and fuck things up, but they’re also capable of change, aren’t they?

For a minute you thought you could go to your parents’ party to talk to Cait. But then you looked at the picture frame on your dresser that held a picture of you and Powder and you knew in that exact moment that she was the one you were supposed to be with tonight. You didn’t know why you felt this way, or why your heart was beating so fast inside your chest. You and Powder had been friends for years and you had been with her countless times, but tonight felt different. You didn’t know why, but you felt like you had to be with her.

˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁

You went to Powder's workshop - where you knew she would be - and found her in front of the mirror grumbling about not being able to get her eyeliner right, she didn't even notice you had come in.

“Do you need help with that?” She immediately looked in your direction and glanced at your short white layered mini skirt and your low-cut silver top that really showed off your beautiful round breasts. “Damn,” she thought.

You approached her and took the eyeliner pen from her hand, “ok, head up, eyes closed,” you said standing between her legs - she was sitting on a stool in front of the mirror - she did as you said and you held her face while you applied the eyeliner to her right eye.

She was clasping her hands together, she wanted to hold your waist, in fact she wanted you to sit on her lap while you fixed her makeup, she had dreamed about this so many times. Your soft tickle on her skin, your scent taking over the entire space, fuck she just couldn't take it anymore. Then she raised her hands and held your waist and you didn't care at all.

“Ok, I think this is good, you like it?”, you got out from between her legs and she took her hands off your waist, turning on the stool to look at herself in the mirror. “I couldn’t have done it better,” she said, admiring her eyeliner—now perfect—thanks to you.

˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁

Arriving at the party, you two joined Claggor and Mylo. ​​“Hey, Y/n, I’m glad you came,” Mylo said, laughing awkwardly as he scratched the back of his neck. “So… do you want to dance? Or have a drink?” Before you could answer, Claggor elbowed him and then looked at Powder furtively. Mylo had irritated her, in every way, since they were kids. Of course she loved him, but to her he was a jerk and she knew he had no chance with you, so she wasn't bothered by his advances towards you. “Maybe later,” you finally replied.

You looked around and saw Gert passing by carrying a tray with drinks, your gaze met hers and she gave you a mischievous smile, you smiled back and looked down, you thought she was a very pretty girl.

After a while, Powder went to talk to Vender and you were alone for only half a minute until you heard a female voice behind you, “I thought it was impossible for a girl like you to not be accompanied, but since you're not, lucky for me then”, you turned around and came face to face with Gert. “Be careful, I might be alone for a reason,” you said smiling. “What reason?” she asked, tilting her head and looking from your lips to your eyes. “I might be a heartless lunatic who hurts everyone I come into contact with,” you joked. She curled her lips, “You’re worth the risk, doll,” she said, grabbing a strand of your hair.

˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁˖ 𐙚 ˖ ݁𖥔 ݁

While you flirted with Gert, Powder leaned against the counter and watched you smiling and letting Gert touch your arms, hair, hands... every party ended like this, you met someone, started dating that person and it wouldn't last more than three months and you would suffer from the lack of someone you didn't even like that much just to make up for the lack of self-love that you should have and didn't have or for the fear of ending up alone.

She wished didn't love you so much, she wanted to see you as just her best friend, but you were so much more than that and it hurt her every day. If you only knew that these people would never love you like she does...

Powder was so distracted looking at you that she didn't notice when Vender leaned next to her on the counter, but he was inside. "Why don't you ask her to dance?" he asked, making the blue-haired girl jump in fright. “What? No! Why would I do that?”, she said, frowning in an attempt to hide it. Vender smiled, “I know that look, you like her.” Powder’s heart could jump out of her mouth at any moment. “She’s my best friend, of course I like her,” she laughed nervously. “Powder…”, she took a deep breath, she knew there was no point in denying it, Vender knew.

“Is it that obvious?”, she asked, still looking at you. “Why don’t you tell her?”, she took her eyes off you and looked at Vender with a frown, “Are you crazy?” Vender she is my best friend, if I tell her she’ll get weird and we won’t be friends anymore, I can’t lose her.” Vender sighed, looked at you and then said, “Look Powder, if she really is your friend nothing will change that. Nothing is more important than a friendship and you not wanting to tell her that you love her for fear of losing the friendship between you proves that. But I still think she should know, you should know… she might feel the same way about you, isn’t she worth it? Isn’t she worth the risk?” Powder didn’t answer, she just remained thoughtful and looked back at you.

She thought that maybe Vender was right, it was time to tell you. And seeing Gert getting closer and closer to you encouraged her even more. “Vender, give me a drink,” she said without taking her eyes off you. Vender smiled and handed her a glass of alcohol. She drank it all in one gulp and then looked at Vender smiling, he patted her arm encouragingly, “now go talk to her…”

Leave comments, my loves!

Happy New Year, everyone 🌟🥂

[fatesundress]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tomes and foreign biographies that would charge more galleons than you can conceptualise, and you never leave so much as a tea stain on the parchment. You smile at the Madam when you return the key each night, and walk back to the dungeons with your hands behind your back. It is, of course, totally unrelated that a month is what it takes for Tom to master the third-year curriculum’s Doubling Charm. An entirely separate affair when you meet him in the most secluded alcove of the library, slip him the key, and stifle your grin as he duplicates it perfectly. 

You discover Christmas break is your favourite time of the year. Nearly all the purebloods go home. The Slytherin dormitories are effectively halved.

It’s two weeks of earnest, uninterrupted work and sleep without fear of waking up with jelly legs or whiskers.

Madam Palles, most nights, makes a slight, drowsy effort of searching the library for leftover students before she casts the lights out and closes the door. Then, it belongs to you and Tom.

You’re splayed rather ridiculously over one of the big reading chairs on Christmas Eve, Lore of Godelot in hand, enthralled by a chapter detailing his controlled use of Fiendfyre through the power of the Elder Wand.

Tom is cross-legged and sat straight, his brows furrowed in concentration.

“What’ve you got?” you ask, leaning over to answer your own question.

Tom as good as rolls his eyes, holding up the book to give you an easier look.

“Magick Moste Evile?” You scrunch your nose. “Bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s the stuff they’ll never teach us.”

“I wonder why.”

He steals a glance at your own book and smiles in that smug way that makes you want to slap him.

“What, Tom?”

He shrugs. “You might want to know you’re reading stories about the author.”

You look down. Lore of — Godelot wrote Magick Moste Evile? 

It shouldn’t really be surprising. Three chapters ago your book was recounting his months in Yugoslavia grave-robbing magical burial sites.

“Whatever,” you mumble, “It’s just a biography. Least I’m not reading the words out of his mouth.”

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

All good things must come to an end. Term resumes and your hackles are back up. 

Abraxas Malfoy, Antonin Dolohov, Walburga Black and the best of the worst of your house have returned, sleek-haired and insatiable and deranged, truly, in such a manner that you don’t think you can be blamed for the instinct you feel every time you pass them to lunge like a wild predator or run like wild prey. All Tom does, though (and so you follow, because he’s standing with you and who has ever done that?) is meet their gazes with equal assuredness. He never seems bothered. He never seems animal. You are still all hammering heart and heavy lungs, and you are learning not to see the world through the eyes of someone who’s only ever had their fists to fight. You have magic, you remember. You’re good at it. You could hurt them, if you really wanted.

Not much is different that summer than the last. The war is hard. The food is hard to chew. You chip a tooth. You’re too afraid to fix it with the Trace on you, but you still smile because you will, and everyone seems put off by that. What is there to smile about? 

You suppose, for them, it’s a question with few answers. 

For you — you’re back on a big red train musing about the functions of muggle warfare with Tom Riddle, chucking a useless card from a chocolate frog out the window and moaning about how you wasted the sickle you found under your seat.

He’s gotten very good at ignoring your theatrics and going right back to whatever it was he was talking about. And you note, unrelatedly, he almost looks like he’s learned how to open the windows at Wool’s. (You dare not suggest he’s doing something so ludicrous as sitting in the sun too, but this is a start.)

Dippet, or the Minister, or whoever it is that’s in charge of the practicality of the curriculum, has become fractionally less stupid in the last three months.

You don’t have to rely on nights in the Restricted Section or weekends at the Black Lake to actually learn something anymore. Of course, without the assistance of those illicit extracurriculars, you wouldn’t be able to match up to your peers the way you are this year, but it’s nice to duel with dummies instead of motioning your wand vaguely over a desk, and you and Tom still climb the notice boards in rapid succession. 

They hate you for it. One of your roommates makes a pointed effort each night to glare at you from her bed like those jelly legs are back on the table, Orion Black (two years younger but just as nasty as his cousin) nearly trips you on your way to Divination, Abraxas Malfoy develops what you think borders on obsession with Tom, and for once it feels almost offhand to not care about any of it.

You’re beginning to think even at its best, Hogwarts is remarkably insufficient. This leads you to books mercifully unrestricted so you can read about a few of the other magical schools for comparison. Beauxbatons is renowned for providing most of the worlds alchemical developments, Uagadou’s early propensity for wandless magic makes it unfathomably more practical than Hogwarts, Durmstrang (though you scoff at their violent anti-muggle sentiment) teaches the Dark Arts as something beneficial rather than unforgivable, and — what do you learn here? Even with the hair’s-breadth of magical leniency you’ve been allowed this year, it’s no surprise so few recognizable names in wizarding history are Hogwarts alumni.

“Let me have a look at that,” you say to Tom one evening, when he’s peering once more over the pages of Magick Moste Evile. He’s a purveyor of knowledge in all forms, but he always seems to come back to Godelot in the end.

He raises a brow, handing it to you like your intrigue doubles his. “No more reservations?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m only curious.”

“Curiosity—”

“Killed the damn cat, I know.” You glare at him through the pages. “I think that’s you, in this case though, since you’re the one in love with the bloody thing.”

He shakes his head as he reclines in the low light of the Restricted Section, muttering something that sounds like “ridiculous,” or “querulous,” or something else unimaginably fucking annoying.

You might be wrong. Retract your last quip and expunge it. If Tom’s in love with any book, it’s the behemoth dictionary he’s been spitting stupid adjectives out of since he was eleven.

But Godelot’s musings on the Dark Arts are fascinating enough that you can understand the appeal. He’s no wordsmith, and you appreciate that in a way you’re sure Tom deems regrettable, but his points are straightforward but thoughtful in such a way you can read in them how he was guided by the Elder Wand through everything he did. There’s a stream-of-consciousness to them. Something doctrinal you’re surprised to enjoy for all the obligatory English creed they washed your mouth with at the orphanage.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Tom asks, combing with little interest through the tomb you’d put down in favour of his.

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just…” You sigh. It’s almost painful to say. “I think you were right, and — oh, shut up, don’t look at me like that — I don’t think we’re learning anything here. Not really; not as much as they do at other schools.”

“Of course,” he says blankly. “Hence this.”

This — restricted books and furtive duels — should not be necessary. 

“You know that’s not gonna be enough. For the rest of them, maybe, but not us.”

He tenses how he always does at the reminder of his difference. And you get it. Sometimes in moments like these you forget the reason you’re here in the first place. It isn’t just the rebellious divertissement of two academically eager students, it’s… survival. What future do you have as a penniless orphan in wartorn London? What future do you have as a muggle-born Slytherin who’s apt with a wand when there are a thousand more your age, just as skilled and twice as pure? 

It isn’t enough to be as good as them. You have to best them, and you have to do it forever.

The night stumbles into an exhaustive silence because you both know it’s true and it’s a bit too heavy right now. The answer isn’t in this room. Just you. Just him. So you sit in the dark and you stare through that muffled nighttime noise playing tricks on your eyes. The worst of the world can wait until morning. 

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

A fault of both sides of the coin; the muggle world is a travesty and the wizarding world is just a bit fucking late, really.

So there’s the newspaper. It’s October first and the date reads September tenth. School owls are a joke and you can’t afford anything better.

And it’s a dirty, ashen grey. It smudges your green if you ever had it at all. You were born to this and you will return to it always.

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

All you can hope to do is pass the paper to Tom and wonder without words what you’ll go home to.

The answer is very little when the summer clouds your vision with dust and you stand dumbly with your suitcase in front of nothing at all. You’d tried your best until your departure to keep up with muggle news, but it had remained, routinely, a month behind with the owls. By the time June arrived you were still holding your breath through May. Tom had attempted to reason with Dippet for summer lodgings at the school but you were both denied in light of the exquisite mercy — the bombs have stopped! The Blitz has ended! Go back to the aftermath and make do with the craters.

It’s a bit ironic that Tom’s orphanage survived and yours didn’t. At least you can finally see what all the fuss is about.

In truth, it’s more strange than anything. You feel unreasonably like you’re impeding on a part of him that has never belonged to you (if any of him does); that place where you intersect but never draw attention to. You remind yourself you had no choice in the matter. The system puts you where it wants to, and these days the options are slim. But it’s — the walls are amber-black tile and plaster, lined with sanitary-smelling hospital beds and a cupboard per room. Per room, you think; you’ve got one of those now, and with only one girl to share it with. 

You figure the reason for the extra space is probably not one you want to know.

Anyway, you don’t actually see Tom for two days. The caretakers bring you a tray of dinner that’s vaguely warm and a bit too salty and you sleep off the debris you think you breathed in that morning, half-sated and sun-tired.

But then you do see him, and he’s in these funny uniform shorts and a thick blazer and your greeting is an offhand joke about the scandal of his knees that he doesn’t seem to appreciate. He eyes your muggle clothes while you wait for your own set and you know you really don’t have any room to judge. 

He doesn’t, or at least doesn’t say he minds your relocation.

You spend half the summer waking up in the middle of the night to acquaint yourselves with the London tube stations, and the other half in whatever crevices of the orphanage you aren’t harangued by Mrs Cole every five seconds, which are far and few between. She seems to have decided fourteen is old enough an age to worry about your intentions unchaperoned, like it’s the bloody 1800’s, and admonishes you and Tom relentlessly despite only ever finding you quietly buried in useless books. 

You begin to miss Madam Palles and her invaluable pity. Everyone’s an orphan here. No one’s sorry.

“What’s his deal?” you ask one stuffy afternoon, reclining in your creaking seat to prop your legs on the desk.

Tom knocks them off (he’s so well-mannered that you sometimes push these little gestures of impropriety just to bother him) and glances at the target of your question. Some broad, blond boy who skitters down the corridor a shade paler than he arrived. You’ve yet to properly introduce yourself to anyone you don’t have to, so names are muddy when you try to apply them to faces.

He shrugs, but there’s a flash of something in his expression you’re fascinated to realise is unfamiliar. “He’s an imbecile.”

“...Riiiiight, but that isn’t a proper answer.”

You smile. Legs return to table. Timeworn Oxfords muddy the surface. Tom scowls. 

“There was an altercation last year,” he says tersely, “he’s rather fixated on the matter.”

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

You narrow your eyes and he sweeps your legs off the desk again, gaze catching the unmistakable ribbon of an old bullied scar on your shin. 

“And I suppose you’re above such incidents,” he muses.

You cross your arms and huff. He always wins games like these.

You’re grateful when you return to Hogwarts in one piece after your final night of summer is spent underground, and the certainty of knowing where you’ll rest your head for the next ten months cannot be understated. 

But the worst thing has happened, and you blame it on the flicker of a moment where you missed Madam Palles like it was some jubilant, accidental curse to ever miss anyone. A foreign thing you remind yourself never to do again. 

She’s only gone and jinxed the locks to the Restricted Section so they cry like newborn Mandrakes when Tom’s replica key clicks in place.

For a second you both stand there looking stupidly at each other. Getting caught was a fear two years ago; you’d almost forgotten it was still possible.

Tom is quicker to collect himself. He grabs you by the arm and casts a Disillusionment Charm, and you don’t burst running out of the library like two blurry suncatchers reflecting the candlelight as your instinct heeds; you cling to the shelves and you slither silently to the door. (You’ll make a joke about it when you can breathe.)

Madam Palles the Traitor comes heaving into the library in her nightgown, a blinding blue light baubled at the end of her wand, and it’s really just theatrical at this point to use Lumos bloody Maxima when the basic spell would do the job just fine.

“Has she suspected us the whole time?” you say on gasp once you’ve made it to the dungeons.

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

You think it’s a good first guess. It could have been any of the Slytherins, upon consideration, but Malfoy seemed most fixated on Tom last year and it wouldn’t surprise you to learn he’d been observant enough to follow you to the library and notice you don’t leave with the other students.

But Tom quashes the idea. “I’m doubtful. Malfoy is attentive, but Madam Palles is hardly partial to him.” (He had, in second year, set one of her books on fire while studying offensive spells.) “I suspect it was someone with more influence.”

Only no one has more influence than Abraxas Malfoy. The rest of the Slytherins follow him like lost pups. But then Tom might mean —

“A professor?”

“It may be.” He says it like he’s already decided his suspect.

He is, as always, and ever-infuriatingly, correct.

It’s that file you tucked away for later, reoccurring when you return to Transfiguration in the morning like a second epiphany: Dumbledore.

He assigns the term’s seating arrangements, which he’s never done before, and there’s something in his tone when he pairs you with Rosier that feels intentionally like not pairing you with Tom. You don’t think it’s paranoia clouding your better judgement, and by the way Tom’s gaze hardens as he takes his seat beside Malfoy, neither does he.

Dumbledore is suspicious for a number of reasons. He disappears for weeks at a time. The Prophet writes articles on his sightings in Austria and France like he’s an endling beast. He’s being sighted in Austria and France — two notable countries in Grindelwald’s ongoing war. Perhaps ancillary, you’ve decided the charmed glass repositories he uses to hold his old artefacts are the same ones encasing the least permissible books in the Restricted Section. And if that isn’t paranoia (which, you’re willing to admit, it may be) then you assume he has them so proudly on display because he wants you to know.

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

“Just give it up,” you hiss over a game of wizard’s chess, “I bet we’ve read every book in there twice already anyway.”

His jaw ticks as the sole indicator of his annoyance, and he takes your rook. You scowl.

“Tom, that man thinks you’re devil-spawn. You know he’s just waiting for an opportunity to catch you doing something wrong.”

“So?”

It sounds so petulant you think he’s been possessed by his eleven-year-old self. Then you think he was a lot wiser at eleven.

“So?” You make an aggressive move with your knight. “So don’t give him one!”

He stares at the board and his breath is just a trace sharper and you hate that you know him like this and no one else. You wonder if he knows you like that too, but resolve with ease that he does not. You’re hard frowns and lewd jokes and trousers torn at the knee to bare scars with stories you wish you could forget. There’s no mystery there. Tom is nothing but — gordian knots and fixed expressions and little patterns to learn like the rules of this stupid game between you. You must know Tom Riddle by every atom or not at all. And that isn’t a choice, really. You’ve never known anyone else.

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

You glance at the board. He’s got Check. A terrible, true answer.

“No,” you finish. “Then don’t act like it.”

Your king glances at you and you nod. He falls. The game is resigned.

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

You strike Tom harder in the arm with Confringo than is likely necessary that night, and he returns the favour with a Knockback Jinx that thrusts you into the shallows of the Black Lake.

You gasp. The cold water feels like it’s swallowing you whole when it strikes, an envelope sealed around you and licked shut for good measure. Everything holds to you, and it’s fucking November. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you forget to murder Tom the instant you sink in. You forget to do much of anything.

You wade trembling out of the lake when sense returns and Tom huffs, peeling off his robe to treat the burn on his arm.

“You—idi—iot,” you mutter, trying to find the incantation for a warming charm but the words get stuck between your chattering teeth. “You stole a re… stricted book.”

Tom glares daggers at you between his poor healing job and you scowl, mincing through the grass and grabbing his arm. “Fucking imbec-cile…”

You’ve done enough damage that if he were anyone else you’d be proud of yourself, and somehow, simultaneously, if he were anyone else you’d be able to manage a pinch of guilt. But he’s Tom, and you know him by every atom, so you cannot be proud, and he’s Tom — he retaliated by tossing you in freezing water and now your clothes are clinging sodden and heavy to every inch of you, so you certainly can’t be guilty either.

“I borrowed it,” he says tightly. As if that means anything at all. And then he takes his robe and drapes it spiritlessly over your shoulders. “You could attempt communication before curses.”

“I could attempt communication,” you scoff, uttering a charm to partially close the gash on Tom’s arm, “Fucking h-hypocrite. I did communicate. You lied.”

“I —”

“Omitted information? Withheld the truth? Watch your mouth or I’ll steal your fucking dictionary, Riddle.”

You swear a great deal when you’re cold and mad, apparently.

“I won’t be caught.” His calm is infuriating. “It would hardly earn expulsion regardless.”

“It doesn’t matter! He knows it’s you! He was staring at you all class!”

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

His lips form a flat line. No. That’s what you thought.

You sigh, clutching his robes in your fists to quell your trembling. “What’d you take, anyway? We never touch the encased stuff.”

That is, you assume, why Dumbledore was vexed enough about the whole thing to mention it in class today. A highly valuable book has gone missing, from a repository you dare conclude belongs to him, and he has to pretend all the while not to know it’s Tom who took it. You are out of the question. Theirs is some delicate vendetta you can’t begin to unfurl.

“Nothing anyone should miss,” Tom says, a complete non-answer as he stops to murmur a warming charm you could probably manage yourself by now.

“Tom.”

“It was an encyclopaedia. It’s entirely in Runes. I suspect it will take months for me to decipher.”

“God’s sake,” you groan. He really is exhausting. “I think Dumbledore’l take his chances and loot your dorm before that happens.”

Tom wipes a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His fingers are soft. “We should return. You look half-drowned.”

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

And you accost him in hushed tones the whole walk back. Runes, Tom, really? Threw me in the damn lake over a Runic Encyclopaedia? He accosts you just the same; You burned me first.

It does, in fact, take Tom months to decipher the Runes, and he’s quite secretive about it. He won’t let you see the book, won’t tell you what it’s about, won’t indulge your queries on how far he’s gotten or if it’s worth the way Dumbledore bores his eyes into the pair of you in the Great Hall with nothing but the glass of his spectacles to soften his censure. You consider — well — you consider taking your chances and looting his dormitory.

The day everything changes starts the same as any. 

You muse over breakfast about muggle news and how the way Tom holds his wand when he casts defensive spells is too sharp when it should be circular. He argues. You soften the criticism by telling him his offensive magic is stellar but you’ll always beat him in defence if he doesn’t swallow his damn pride and listen to you for once. (So, really, you soften it very little.) He doesn’t take Divination so you don’t see him until Herbology that afternoon and he’s silent enough during the hour you share with your wormwood plant that you know he’s done it sometime between breakfast and now. 

Tom has cracked the book.

It’s late spring and the night takes longer to settle than it did in the winter. Errant sunbeams still sparkle on the water when you meet him by the lake, and it’s warm enough to forgo a coat.

“Are you going to tell me what it’s about now?” you ask without preamble, arms crossed over your chest as he approaches.

He hands you the book like it’s worth something to you without his explanation, but you’re intelligent enough to gather something from the illustrations of two twined snakes embroidering the cover.

“I should have suspected it sooner,” Tom says before you can comment. “By the way Dumbledore acted when I told him… I should have known he would have wanted to keep it from me.”

“Tom, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s an Encyclopaedia on Parseltongue and its known speakers.”

You flip through the pages and none of it means anything. “Parseltongue?”

“The language of serpents,” Tom supplies, and the two of you walk along the edge of the forest. “It’s almost exclusively hereditary.”

“Okay, so, what — you’re trying to learn it anyway?”

“I have no need.”

You frown. “You… you already know it.”

“I always have,” he says, and there’s something almost unrestrained in his voice. He’s proud in a new light, and it takes you a moment to understand and you’re not sure why exactly it makes your heart sink, but —

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

“So, he —” You try not to sound crushed because why should you be? Why should it matter that he isn’t some exact reflection of you? He’s at your side, he’s still there, he’ll always be there — “How does he know?”

“When he came to Wool’s to inform me I'd been accepted at Hogwarts. I hadn’t known anything, certainly not that speaking to snakes is emphatically rare, so I asked him. He said it was ‘not a peculiar gift.’ Perhaps to keep my interest at a minimum.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Because it isn’t just that I’m of magical blood. I’m a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.”

You can’t be faulted for laughing. It’s not often Tom makes jokes, let alone funny ones.

“That’s good, Tom. Morgana used to have tea with my great-great-hundredth-great-grandmother, so that works out nice.”

He sighs, taking your hand and leading you further into the woods.

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

“No, I wouldn’t. You’ve far too many enemies.”

Not by choice, you start to scold, and then he stops, not so far into the Forbidden Forest that you’re afraid, but far enough you understand this is not something he’d chance showing you in the open.

He closes his eyes and whispers, and it’s — decidedly not English. And you know the sound of a few other languages, at least; this doesn’t sound like words at all. His consonants are pointed, his S’s stretched, the syllables repetitive but separated by a difference in cadence someone less perceptive might not notice. 

It shouldn’t be surprising; it’s exactly what he told you, but it startles you how much it reminds you of a snake.

“Tom?” you murmur, unsure at the prospect of speaking some ancient, unknown language into the air of the Forbidden Forest, and, underneath that, still reeling with the knowledge that this is real at all.  You’ve pinched yourself a few times to make sure.

There’s a low susurration in the grass, wet with dew that catches the moonlight, and you gasp, clinging to Tom’s arm when you see the blades part in helices for the space of an adder.

“It’s all right,” Tom says softly, almost elsewhere, his eyes zeroed in on the snake. “It won’t hurt you.”

You’re still by the balance of his arm and some petrifying awe as he extends a hand to the grass and the adder coils around it, weaving upward to his shoulder.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else. 

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them. 

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten. 

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.) 

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true. 

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer. 

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t. 

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid. 

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless. 

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that. 

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately. 

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end. 

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight. 

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes. 

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand. 

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain,  a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him. 

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love. 

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock. 

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly. 

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it. 

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.) 

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish. 

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same. 

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much. 

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition. 

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal. 

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it. 

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

“I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is. 

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —” 

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant. 

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor. 

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “You seen the shite the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a bloody Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? How about you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together. 

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident. 

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be. 

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop. 

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece. 

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that." 

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval. 

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will." 

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis. 

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain. 

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.” 

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back. 

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake." 

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster. 

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating. 

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself. 

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh. 

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes. 

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he’ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.

You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you. 

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He brings you to his bed after and you let him, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

[divinegrey]

𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 / 𝐜𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐲𝐧 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

hi folks! it's good to be back and stretching my writing legs again. starting off with a caitlyn prompt! this could be read as a stand-alone or as a continuation of another caitlyn fic, broken pillars.

prompt: heyya! i'm absolutely in love with caitlyn AND your writing, so i was hoping we could combine the two :DD maybe something along the lines of cait x reader, a continuation of "broken pillars"? reader was injured in the blast, and Cait helps them/her (whatever you prefer) recover. maybe reader sees how much ambessa is manipulating her, and they end up getting into a fight over what's right?

words: 1162

warnings: mentions of violence, light angst, happy ending

“Caitlyn, this crusade is only going to end in more violence. You can’t possibly not see that!”

The Kiramman library has become something more of a battleground, in recent days. You were finally discharged from the hospital after extensive care to the leg you lost in what has been dubbed one of the worst terrorist incidents of Piltover’s history. And in those days since you’ve been home, you’ve become privy to every single thing that happened, everything that Caitlyn went through in her attempt to find Silco. 

Now Silco’s dead, and the whole of Zaun is in disarray. It only took one woman stepping in at the right time for Piltover to begin mobilizing; Ambessa Medarda. 

“It will be necessary for the safety of Piltover, our safety that we find Jinx and put her into Stillwater. She cannot be allowed to remain free for what she did to you,” Caitlyn says, standing at all too far a distance from you. She’s unreachable, has felt utterly unreachable ever since the explosion. Between tending to you, you know the gaps of time when she wasn’t at the hospital was spent sitting beside the famed warlord of Noxus. 

You’ve seen the change happen before your very eyes. It makes you scared. 

Pushing your hands on the wheels of your chair closer, you try again. “Cait, please, just listen to yourself. You’re suggesting arming an entire battalion of Enforcers and leading them into Zaun will fix the problem. You tried the strike team, it didn’t work the way you wanted it to, but that doesn’t mean—” 

“Until Jinx is behind bars, we are not safe.” Caitlyn’s stare is steely, but therein lies the exhaustion found in the bags of her eyes. Neither of you have been sleeping all too well; she comes into bed late at night when you’ve tired yourself out trying to stay up, and she rises before you have a chance to kiss her good morning. Caitlyn turns, hands on her hips. “You are not safe. I cannot stand for it.” 

“So, what? You slap a gun into every willing hand and shoot every Zaunite that gets in the way?” You sigh, leaning back against the cushion with a sigh. “And you’re fine with that? I know you, you’re smarter than this.” You wheel yourself closer to her side, taking her hand. “I know that this has left you distraught. Your mother in a coma, me in a wheelchair, but we are both still here, Caitlyn. An eye for an eye. You took Silco out, the Undercity is in chaos. People down there are scared. The Caitlyn I know and love wouldn’t be putting together weapons; she would be putting together aid, a plan to unite Zaun peacefully as possible.” 

Caitlyn doesn’t look at you. Rather, the fire that burns in the library hearth, the flames reflected and dancing in her eyes. She squeezes your hand, the callouses from shooting for so many years evident on her fingertips. Her throat bobs with a swallow. 

“It makes me scared, Cait. To know that Ambessa is saying these things into your ear and it feels like I can’t even get through to you,” you start, rubbing your thumb over her knuckles. “I’ve been friends with Mel long enough to get a sense of what her mother is like, I’ve studied enough politics to know what Noxus prioritizes. Strength and power. They see that in Hextech. That is all they want. They don’t care if they have to start a war to get it, because that is what they’re good at.” 

Caitlyn blinks, and for the first time in days, you see a tear fall from her eyes. Her chest rises with a heavy breath. “I failed to keep you safe. I had an opportunity to pull the trigger on Jinx. Vi, she— she weakened me. I wanted so badly to believe there was a way to end all of this with everyone alive, and the cost of believing that was nearly losing you and my mother.” A small scoff. “If my mother will ever wake up.” 

“Look at me.” You tug on her arm, and only then does she turn to you. You make a gesture for her to sit down on an armchair and she follows, slumping with an exhaustion you both feel in your bones. You take your hands and hold them tightly. “You can’t burden yourself with every ounce of responsibility, Caitlyn. You are one of the strongest people I know, but even you will crack under that pressure. Please, just give yourself some more time, give Mel and I some more time to try and put together a plan. The Council is angry. Ambessa has power enough as it is, but what she sees in you is someone to exploit. Grief is a powerful motivator; all I ask is that you don’t let it motivate you into something you’ll regret.” 

If it weren’t for you holding her hands, you might not have noticed the shake in her fingers. You know your girlfriend well enough to understand that the shaking only comes when the stress has built up so much that it reaches her hands; a sharpshooter can’t risk shaking hands when they need to take the shot. With something of a forlorn smile, you bend your head, trying to catch her eyes. 

“Love, I promise, you didn’t fail me. Nor your mother. I’m still here, and I still love you so, very deeply with everything I have in my heart. So please, if there is any guilt or grief you carry about me, drop it. Because I am with you, until the end of time,” you say, pouring every ounce of devotion that you possibly can into your words. What you see in turn is the exterior of Caitlyn’s armor cracking, the tears falling, and you cup her face within your hands, bringing her eyes to yours. “I love you, Caitlyn Kiramman.” 

Her hands hold your wrists tight; it’ll take time for her to lay down her guilt, and you’re happy to stand beside her in the meantime. You kiss her, soft and tender, the salt from her tears on your lips but you couldn’t care less. You survived death and lost a leg, a grief that will settle, but you count your blessings where you can find them. Your family is still alive, Caitlyn is still alive, and her parents are still alive. 

It will have to be enough. 

“I love you,” Caitlyn whispers into your mouth. “I’m so sorry.” 

“Your heart is safe with me, and mine with yours. There is a light at the end of this tunnel; we need only find it, okay?” You stroke her cheekbone with your thumb, wiping away the tears as they come. She nods, resting her forehead against yours. 

Only time will tell of what happens to Piltover and Zaun, but you breathe easier, knowing you have your partner at your side. 

~~~~~

A/N: thank you for reading! anon, i hope this was what you wanted!

[aspenmissing]

ɪ'ʟʟ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ʙᴇʟɪᴇᴠᴇ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜ

ᴘᴏᴡᴅᴇʀ/ᴊɪɴx x ᴘʟᴀᴛᴏɴɪᴄ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ (ꜰᴇᴀᴛ. ꜱɪʟᴄᴏ) || ꜰʟᴜꜰꜰ/ᴀɴɢꜱᴛ

2747 ᴡᴏʀᴅꜱ || ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: ᴇxᴘʟᴏꜱɪᴏɴꜱ, ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ, ɪɴᴊᴜʀʏ, ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ

ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: ʏᴇᴀʀꜱ ᴀꜰᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴏᴛɪᴄ ᴀʟʟᴇʏ ɪɴᴄɪᴅᴇɴᴛ, ᴊɪɴx ʜᴀꜱ ᴛʀᴀɴꜱꜰᴏʀᴍᴇᴅ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴀ ᴅᴀɴɢᴇʀᴏᴜꜱ ꜰᴏʀᴄᴇ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴏɴᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʜᴇʀ ᴘʀᴏᴛᴇᴄᴛᴏʀ ʀᴇᴍᴀɪɴꜱ. ᴅᴇꜱᴘɪᴛᴇ ʀᴇᴄᴋʟᴇꜱꜱ ꜱᴛᴜɴᴛꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ꜱɪʟᴄᴏ'ꜱ ᴍᴀɴɪᴘᴜʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴꜱ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴛᴇᴄᴛᴏʀ ᴠᴏᴡꜱ ᴛᴏ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ᴊɪɴx, ᴏꜰꜰᴇʀɪɴɢ ᴜɴᴡᴀᴠᴇʀɪɴɢ ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ʟᴏᴠᴇ.

ᴘᴀʀᴛ 1 || ᴘᴀʀᴛ 3 || ᴘᴀʀᴛ 4 || ​ꜰɪɴᴀʟᴇ

ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ | ᴊɪɴx/ᴘᴏᴡᴅᴇʀ | ꜱɪʟᴄᴏ

A few years had passed since that chaotic night in the alley, and the factory where you operate has changed. The once silent, oppressive atmosphere now buzzed with a restless energy. You had seen it in the way Powder—now Jinx—had evolved. The girl who had once been scared and uncertain was gone, replaced by a whirlwind of chaos and unpredictability. Her bright blue hair had become her signature, a vibrant mess that mirrored the explosive nature of her thoughts and actions.

The soft, tentative child had grown into something far more dangerous, but something about her still carried the echoes of that first night. Even with the volatile energy she exuded, there were moments—brief, fleeting—that reminded you of the girl you had saved. The girl who had whispered she wanted to protect others.

But now, those whispers were drowned out by the manic laughter and gleeful explosions that followed her every move.

“Y/N! Come look at this!” Jinx’s voice rang out from the far side of the factory, her tone high and full of that familiar reckless excitement. You sighed, putting down the rifle you had been inspecting. It had been years, but you knew better than to ignore her when she got like this.

Stepping into the workshop, you found her hunched over a makeshift bomb, tinkering with wires and parts scattered around her. The remnants of previous attempts—some successful, others not so much—littered the floor, a trail of destruction in her wake.

“I think I finally got it,” she said with a grin, a manic gleam in her eyes. “This one's going to make a big bang. Bigger than ever.”

You shook your head, a small smile tugging at your lips despite yourself. “Jinx, you need to be careful with this stuff.”

She looked up at you, her eyes wide and gleaming with a mixture of excitement and defiance. “Careful?” she echoed, tilting her head as if the word was foreign to her. “Who needs careful when you can make the whole world go BOOM?”

Your heart twinged at the change in her. She was still your kid—your girl—but the lines between the playful, curious child and the wild, unpredictable woman were blurring.

You had become her anchor, the steady hand in the storm that was her life. Over the years, you had patched her up more times than you could count, cleaning her wounds, stitching her up, and keeping her alive when her recklessness almost killed her. At first, it had been about protecting her. Now, it was about keeping her from completely losing herself to the madness that she couldn’t seem to escape.

Her workshop, tucked away in a dark corner of Zaun, was a testament to her genius and her insanity. It was a place of creation, but it was also a place of destruction. The walls were lined with unfinished projects, the air thick with the smell of metal, oil, and something far more volatile. Jinx thrived here, lost in the chaos she created, but you were always there, lingering at the edges—watching, waiting, and ready to step in when things went too far.

Zaun had become her stage, a chaotic playground where she unleashed her madness. Every corner, every alley, every broken down building became part of her performance. The explosions and mayhem were her signature, and the city itself was her audience. What started as a few daring stunts had morphed into a city-wide spectacle, drawing attention, fear, and admiration in equal measure.

Silco had seen the potential in her madness, encouraged it even. He had risen to his position as The Eye of Zaun with ruthless determination, and now his reach extended even further, his ambitions focused on Piltover. You couldn’t help but admire his drive, but there were times when you felt like you were losing him, too, to the game of power that consumed him.

One evening, you found Jinx stumbling through the factory doors, blood dripping from her leg. The sight of her like this—wild-eyed, breathless, and covered in cuts—made something tighten in your chest. But it wasn’t the first time.

“Jinx,” you sighed, stepping forward as she collapsed into your arms. “What the hell did you do this time?”

She winced, her wide eyes sparkling with that familiar mix of excitement and madness. “Just a little… uh, explosion. You know, for the show,” she giggled, clearly high on adrenaline. “Wasn’t expecting the blast to be that big. Whoops.”

You grit your teeth, trying to hold back the frustration that was bubbling up. “You could’ve died. Damn it, Jinx.” You helped her over to a nearby table, sitting her down gently but with a firmness that only you could manage. As you cleaned the wound, your hands were steady but your words sharp.

“I didn’t die, did I?” she teased, her voice laced with a mix of amusement and defiance.

"“You’re lucky you’re still breathing,” you snapped, your voice sharp. “One day, that luck is going to run out." pulling out the needle and thread. You could hear the quiet thrum of Silco’s voice from the office in the distance, his quiet orders echoing through the factory. He had been overseeing things in her factory, his plans taking shape with every passing day.

As you stitched Jinx’s leg, the tension in the room was palpable. You could feel her gaze on you, her eyes filled with something unreadable. She trusted you, but at the same time, she hated being treated like a child. Still, you did what you had to do. You had to protect her, even if she didn’t always want it.

When the stitching was done, you finished wrapping her leg in bandages and stood up, wiping your hands on a rag. “You can’t keep doing this, Jinx.”

She didn’t respond right away. Instead, she glanced up at you, her blue eyes softer than usual. “You’re always fixing me up,” she murmured, her voice quiet, almost vulnerable. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

For a moment, you stood there, the weight of her words hanging in the air. Your heart softened, but the tough exterior you had built over the years remained. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. But don’t make me patch you up again like this, okay?”

Jinx smiled, her mischievous grin returning. “I’ll try to make it less… explosive next time.”

You didn’t buy it for a second, but you let out a short laugh. “Just don’t blow yourself up. Again.”

The dim light of Silco’s office flickered, casting long shadows on the walls as you stood across from him, your arms crossed tightly over your chest. His mismatched eyes, always sharp and calculating, never wavered from yours. He leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping a steady rhythm against the armrest, seemingly unaffected by the tension in the room.

“You’re pushing her too hard,” you snapped, the anger in your voice cutting through the silence. It had been building for days, weeks—ever since Silco started sending Jinx on more dangerous assignments, pushing her further into the chaos that she was already so entangled in. You could feel the heat of it burning beneath your skin as you took a step forward. “She’s not some pawn to be sacrificed for your war with Piltover. She’s my responsibility, Silco, and you’re putting her life at risk with every reckless stunt you send her out on.”

Silco’s gaze remained cold, unwavering. He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. His fingers continued their rhythmic tapping as he let your words hang in the air for a moment. Finally, he spoke, his voice a low rumble that matched the calm fury in his eyes. “Jinx knows what she’s doing. She’s capable. If you think I’ve pushed her too far, perhaps you’ve forgotten what we’re up against. The stakes are higher than ever. Every move we make serves a bigger purpose.”

“Bigger purpose?” Your voice cracked like a whip, your patience finally breaking. “All I see is you using her to gain ground in your war. She’s out there every damn day, risking herself, thinking she’s doing this to make you proud. You encourage it, Silco. You feed into it. You’ve turned her into a weapon—and I can’t just stand by and watch her destroy herself for your game.”

A thick silence settled over the two of you, the tension suffocating. Silco’s eyes locked with yours, still unreadable, though the tightness in his jaw betrayed the struggle beneath his composed exterior. His fingers stopped tapping, the air growing heavier in the stillness.

“She’ll get results,” he said, his voice colder now, but with something that bordered on affection for the girl he called his daughter—something deeper, even if buried beneath layers of practicality. “You don’t understand the gravity of what we’re facing. Jinx is more than just an asset. She’s the spark that will ignite the change we need. She’s the key.”

You took a step closer, your voice quiet but laced with a fierce, protective edge. “She’s not just the key to your plans. She’s more than that. She’s a person. She’s my responsibility now, Silco. You handed her to me to protect, to look after. And now you’re pushing her too far. I’m not going to watch her burn out for your damn ‘bigger purpose.’ You’re sending her into danger because you think she’s expendable. You can’t just throw her away when she doesn’t fit your plan anymore.”

For the first time, Silco’s expression softened—just slightly, but enough for you to see it. There was a flash of something vulnerable in his eyes, something that spoke of an old pain, a hidden care. His voice, when it came, was quieter now, edged with something like regret. “I know what she means to you. To me, too. But you don’t think I know what’s at stake here?” His gaze flickered briefly, and you could sense that there was more to his feelings for Jinx than his usual cold demeanor suggested. “She’s not just some tool to be discarded. I... I won’t let her become that. But you have to understand, this city doesn't give us the luxury of playing it safe. The stakes are too high.”

You could see it in his eyes—desperation, love, and determination—all tangled together. The same things you felt when you thought about Jinx. But even so, he continued, his voice still firm, though laced with the hint of something darker, something more personal. “She’s the only one who can deliver results. I won’t lose her, not again. But this war... it’s unforgiving. And so are the choices we make.”

“You’re pushing her to the edge,” you shot back, your voice trembling with frustration. “She’ll break if you keep doing this. And you’ll lose everything—her, me, everything we’ve built. If you can’t see that, then you’re just as blind as Piltover.”

For a long moment, Silco’s eyes remained locked on yours, his features hardening once again. But there was a crack in the armor. A quiet sorrow that was almost imperceptible, but it was there.

“I didn’t ask for this war,” he murmured, almost to himself. “But if I have to burn everything to the ground to ensure we win... I’ll do it. Jinx is the one who will help us change this city. I just... I need her to see that. I need her to understand the cost of it.”

You stepped closer still, until you were within reach, your hands now uncrossed and held at your sides, your voice softening just a fraction. “And what about us, Silco? What happens to us when she’s gone? Because if you keep pushing her, keep treating her like a weapon, you’ll lose her. And if you lose her... you lose me too.”

There it was—a crack in his stoic exterior. His eyes softened, a fleeting vulnerability passing through them before he quickly masked it again. He took a long breath, looking at you with something akin to regret, mixed with something more... possessive. “I never wanted to lose either of you,” he said, the words heavy, genuine in a way that only he could be.

The silence stretched between you two, not quite peaceful but laden with understanding—a truce of sorts.

"Then stop pushing her, Silco," you whispered, your voice softer now, laced with hope. "You don't have to destroy everything to win. Not her, not me. Not us."

Without waiting for his reply, you turned on your heel, your steps heavy as you stormed out of his office. The door slammed shut behind you, the sound echoing through the cold halls of the factory. You couldn’t stand to be in that room any longer. The anger in your veins simmered, mixing with the overwhelming worry for Jinx.

You didn’t stop walking until you reached the quiet bar at the edge of the district. It was always your escape when the weight of everything became too much to bear. The dim lighting and the stale air of the place offered some comfort, even if only for a brief moment. You sank into one of the stools, ordering a drink, but not bothering to touch it. The thoughts of Jinx, of Silco, swirled in your mind like a storm.

Minutes passed, and just as the silence of the bar began to settle in, you heard the soft scrape of a chair being pulled out. Without looking up, you knew who it was. The familiar scent of gunpowder and metal wafted into the air.

"You look like you’ve seen better days," Jinx's voice cut through the quiet. Her voice was rough, tired, but there was an edge of concern beneath it, the same concern that had once led her to hide behind your back when the world felt too overwhelming.

You glanced at her, your expression softening despite yourself. She was standing in front of you, her vibrant blue hair messy as always, her eyes wide and filled with that same chaotic energy that you had come to know so well.

“Jinx…” you sighed, trying to suppress the flood of emotions that surged through you. You didn’t know how to explain it, how to put into words the weight of everything you had just argued about.

"You look mad," she said, her voice teasing but with an undertone of understanding. "Did Silco get to you again?"

You didn’t answer immediately. Instead, you motioned for her to sit, and she did so eagerly, perching on the stool beside you.

“He’s pushing you too hard, Jinx,” you muttered, your voice quiet now. "Every damn day, he’s asking you to go further. To risk more. And I… I’m scared you’re gonna push yourself too far."

Jinx met your gaze, her eyes searching yours. The usual gleam of manic excitement was there, but there was something else, something softer that you hadn’t seen in a while.

"Maybe I like it when he pushes me," she said, her voice quieter now, almost hesitant. "Maybe I need to prove that I’m more than just his little girl. That I can handle it, y'know?"

You shook your head, your hand gently brushing her hair back from her face. "You don’t have to prove anything to him. Or to anyone. You’re more than enough, Jinx."

She let out a small, bitter laugh, her eyes glistening with a mix of frustration and sadness. "You think that now, but I don’t know if I believe it anymore."

You couldn’t help but reach out, pulling her into a gentle hug. For all the madness, for all the chaos, there was still the same girl you had once held in your arms when she was terrified of the world around her. The same girl who needed someone to believe in her when she couldn’t believe in herself.

"I believe in you," you whispered, holding her close. "I’ve always believed in you."

She stayed silent for a moment, before finally pulling away, a small, shaky smile playing at the corner of her lips. "I know, mom" she said softly. "You always have."

"And I always will."

The weight in your chest didn’t feel as heavy now, and when Jinx offered you a grin—a glimmer of the girl who once looked to you for comfort—you realized that no matter how far things spiraled out of control, you would always be there for her.

[dancingtotuyo]

Part III

High Infidelity | Joel Miller X Female Reader

Rating: Mature/Explicit

Summary: You and Joel hull the kids to the beach for a much needed vacation. Things begin to change.

Tags: Tommy x Reader, Joel x Reader, Tommy's Wife Reader, infidelity, emotional affair, slow burn (as much as you can get for 5 chapters), Tommy goes to jail, Reader has had a child

Warnings: Tommy being a shitty husband & father, Father's day celebration, cursing, consumption of alcohol, emotional affair/cheating, some physical boundaries crossed. Pining

Notes: Y'all know the drill by now, thanks to my loves @janaispunk for beta reading and @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin for beta reading and providing me with some authentic prison information and inspiration, and @saradika-graphics for the dividers!

Words: 5273

Series Masterlist | Author Masterlist | Daily Clicks for Palestine & Other resources

It’s June before you’re able to escape to the shore. You make it in just over 4 hours. It’s good timing considering the multiple bathroom stops you had to make. It’s a small house that probably hasn’t been renovated since Joel was there as a kid. It sits two blocks off the shore on stilts that make you feel secluded from the people that pass on the quiet street below, and when you stand on the porch, the salty sea breeze caresses your body as you let your eyes close. You can just make out the crash of ocean waves. You can feel the breeze carrying all your cares away.  

Nate and Sarah excitedly explore the inside of the house. Their muted enthusiasm floating through the walls makes you smile. You’re thankful for this, thankful for Joel.  

The sliding door opens and then shuts. You don’t move. It’s Joel. You know the sound of his footsteps, the way he moves through the world by heart. He settles against the railing, arm pressed against yours. 

A smile spreads across your lips as your eyes open, landing on his. He smiles back. “Hard to enjoy the view with your eyes closed, Darlin.” His deep baritone rumbles smoothly. You see it in him too, the way the breeze carries away the wear and worry of the world. 

“It’s peaceful out here.” 

He nods. “Yeah, it is.”

“We should probably get back in there before the kids break something.”

Joel nudges you with his shoulder. “Don’t jinx us like that.”

“Our two? Unsupervised? That’s asking for it.”

“Our two?” A playful glint glimmers in Joel’s deep brown eyes. “My daughter is perfectly well behaved. It’s your little menace that’s the bad influence.”

“Oh my four year old is the bad influence?” You cross your arms, doing your best to keep the smile at bay. 

“For sure- got his dad’s streak for mischief. My Sarah is a perfect angel.” He sticks his tongue out at you. 

You roll your eyes, slapping his shoulder, but you don’t have a good response. He’s not wrong. Nathaniel knows how to get into places he shouldn’t. “I seem to recall an incident involving a ten pound bag of flour that says differently.”

Joel chuckles at the memory. Nathaniel was barely a week old when Sarah shrieked in the kitchen only for you to find her and the kitchen dusted in white powder. You had cried upon seeing it, postpartum hormones raging. Joel had cleaned your entire kitchen top to bottom. 

“She felt so bad for making you cry,” Joel laughs. 

“I think I scared her.”

The door opens again. Sarah and Nathaniel break out, rushing for your legs and begging to go to the beach. 

You spend the next several days lazing on the sand, reading more than you have in years as you soak in the sun. The kids run around chasing seagulls and other creatures. Joel helps them catch waves on boogie boards. You both take them further out to ride the waves. Sarah’s arms clutch around Joel’s neck, and Nathaniel does the same to you. They build sandcastles and Joel digs holes big enough to bury them both. 

At night, the kids are out by 8 o’clock if not earlier allowing you and Joel to sit out on the deck and drink. Your skin is warm from the constant sun. Joel’s cheeks are tinged pink on your third evening, his chest rosier. The salty air works at his hair, bringing out curls. You like this version of him a lot. You like this version of yourself too. 

Your feet sit in his lap as he massages your legs and feet, calves worn out from lugging your belongings across the sand and back. He stares up at the sky, twilight bringing the first few stars with it. You sip your homemade margarita, Joel’s specialty, from a red solo cup. 

“I shoulda brought my guitar. Only thing that could make this moment better,” he says. 

You hum softly, shifting in your chair. “Wouldn’t be able to massage my feet if you had your guitar.”

He laughs, so easy, so relaxed. You can’t remember the last time things felt this good. “Don’t worry, you’d still get your massage.”

“Why didn’t you bring it?” You cock your head to the side. 

“Wouldn’t fit in the car, miss over packer.”

You roll your eyes softly kicking at him. “We’ve used everything I packed. Speaking of which, what do you want for breakfast tomorrow?” You take another sip of your drink. Joel finds a knot in your calf, working it out as you let out a slight hiss. 

Joel shrugs, carefully watching your reactions careful to inflict as little pain as possible. “Ask the kids.”

“It’s Father’s Day.”

“Kids like pancakes.” Joel sips from his own drink before returning to the knot.

“But you don’t.”

“Doesn’t matter what I like, Darlin.”

“Well, it does tomorrow.” You cross your arms. 

Joel sighs rolling his eyes. 

You narrow yours. “Don’t make me force it out of you. You know I will.”

He considers it a minute before deciding it’s a losing battle. “Those omelets you made for my birthday. I really liked those.”

You smile. “I can manage that.”

You sit in bed with Nathaniel the next morning to call Tommy. As early as possible is preferred, not that Tommy will care. He’s been blowing you off more, hardly talking when you call or visit, seemingly uninterested when you talk about Nate. It’s exhausting. You dread it, but you continue anyway. 

It takes a while before Tommy’s voice comes through the speaker. You force an exaggerated smile to your face for Nathaniel’s sake. Daddy is an abstract being to him. “Hey babe. Happy Father’s Day!”

“Oh… that’s today?”

You push back the annoyance rising inside you. “Nate wants to say hello.” You hold the phone up to your four-year-old’s ear.

“Hello?” he says. 

You can barely make Tommy’s pathetic response. He won’t even pretend for Nathaniel and that’s the unbearable part of all this. 

“Happy Day!” Nathaniel says, taking hold of the receiver before he dives into updating his stranger of a father all about their beach vacation. Tommy stays quiet the whole time. 

Rage begins to boil just under the surface. Before it can bubble over, Nathaniel says goodbye, shoving the phone into your chest and dashing out of the room the moment he hears Sarah moving around in the living room. 

“Tommy?”

“Look, I need to go.”

You're not sure what’s worse. The hurt or the anger inside you. “I love you.”

“Yeah. I’ll talk to you on Friday.”

“Tommy.” It sounds like a scold. That’s exactly what it is.

“I don’t have time for this.”

“Time for your wife and son?”

“You’re the one who called me.”

“Are you actually going to call on Friday? Or am I gonna end up sitting next to the phone all evening?”

You get silence. 

“Tommy?”

“I’ll call.” And then the line goes dead.

You want to scream or yell or cry or all three. You settle for throwing a pillow across the room and giving yourself 5 minutes to cry. There may only be three months of this left, but you’re not sure you’ll actually be talking to your husband at the end of it, not that the two of you do any talking now. 

Wiping your eyes, you make your way to the kitchen to start on Joel’s promised breakfast. Nathaniel and Sarah sit at the table comparing sea shells. “Aunt Bonnie?”

“Yes baby doll?” You smile, kissing her head. 

“Which one would Daddy like on his card?” She points to a collection of about 5 shells. 

“Hmmm,” you crouch down to her level, looking them over. “I think he would like any of them, but this one looks like him.” You point to a blue-grey shell. 

She picks it up, inspecting it carefully. “It does look kinda grumpy like him.”

You laugh. That isn’t what you meant, but she wasn’t wrong. “I’m making omelets. What do y’all want in yours?”

The kids are digging into their breakfast when Joel walks out of his room, arms stretching above his head to reveal a little sliver of his tummy. Sarah quickly shoves her Father’s Day project under some magazines. 

“Look who decided to wake up.” You smile over your shoulder. “Morning sleepy head.”

“One day of the year I get to sleep in.” He mumbles, shooting a teasing glare your way. He clocks your red eyes before you can turn away. 

“Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!” Sarah yells, standing on her chair to give Joel a hug. He chuckles, pulling her into his arms, spinning around, and setting her back on the chair with ease. She laughs.

“Thank you, baby girl.”

“Happy Day!” Nathaniel grins at his uncle.

“Father’s Day.” Sarah corrects. Nathaniel simply shrugs like he’d said the correct thing to begin with.

Joel chuckles, kissing his nephew’s cheek. “Thanks, Bud.”

You track his footsteps over to your side of the kitchen as you invest your full attention on the omelet in front of you. You know he caught your tear-stained eyes. “Fresh coffee in the pot,” You say, keeping your voice even. 

You feel his full body heat behind you, a hand falls to your waist as he reaches into the cabinet next to the stove for a coffee mug. Something settles in your stomach. 

“What did my idiot brother do now?” He keeps his voice low so the kids don’t overhear. 

You shake your head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Darlin.”

“I don't want to talk about it.” Your head snaps toward him. He’s right there, face so close to yours. Always nearby. 

“You sure?”

You bristle a little bit. He drops his hand but stays in your space. “Not right now. We’re celebrating you this morning.” He smiles softly at you. “And I don’t want to burn your omelet, so scram.” You cock your head to the side. 

He waits a second, searching for any signs he’s missing something. When he’s sure he isn’t, he gives you a soft smile and a tender kiss on the forehead, and steps over to the coffee pot, leaving you feeling warm and hazy. 

The kids help clean up after breakfast. Sarah stands on a bench at the sink to wash dishes and Nathaniel waits patiently with a dish towel to dry the lighter dishes. You and Joel sit at the table, second and third cups of coffee in hand as you oversee their efforts. 

“I think I’m going to enjoy this next phase of parenting,” Joel says with a long, content sigh. 

You feel the easiness thrumming in your veins. Why couldn’t life always be this way? “Yeah if my anxiety about broken dishes or wet feet doesn’t get the better of me first.”

He chuckles softly, sipping from his mug as an easy silence falls between you. You watch the kids and Joel watches you. Sun pours through the many windows of the beach house. You’re not ready to leave tomorrow. 

“You wanna talk about it now?”

You sigh. “Not really. We’re supposed to be celebrating you today.”

“I’ll be able to enjoy myself more if I know what’s going on in your head.”

You keep your gaze focused on the kids, rolling the words around in your head. You feel emotionally exhausted by it all and you’re not even through the morning hours yet. 

“Darlin,” Joel kicks at your foot, smile on his face. “C’mon. We can talk about it.”

You set your mug down, turning toward him. “He’s just blowing us off again. I spent more time waiting for him to come to the phone than I did talking to him. He hardly interacted with Nate this morning.” You roll your eyes in an attempt to push away the tears pressing to escape. 

Joel reaches across the table, taking your hand. He runs his thumb over your knuckles. It grazes past your wedding band, almost taunting you now. 

“I’m sorry. This isn’t fair to either of you,” Joel says.

“You’d think I’d stop letting it affect me at some point.”

Joel bites his lip, eyes pinned to your ring finger. “He’s your husband. Needs to start acting like it,” Joel says gruffly. You catch the spark of something in his deep brown eyes, but you don’t have time to place it.

“We’re done!” Sarah exclaims with a proud smile, her shirt soaked through. 

You pull your hand from Joel’s, wrapping it around your warm mug as you laugh. “Thank you for your help. Both of you.” Nathaniel puts the dish towel carefully over the oven handle, shooting you the biggest grin.  

“Can we do presents now?” Sarah asks, curls bouncing with her. 

���Presents?” Joel says. “Y’all didn’t have to get me anything.”

“Don’t be silly, Daddy.” Sarah says, looking to you for permission. 

“I think now is a great time for gifts.”

Both kids run toward their shared room. They had been very excited at the promise of bunk beds. You ease out of your chair. “Not you too.” Joel shakes his head.

You shoot him a wink. “Suck it, Miller.” 

Flashes of your delayed Mother’s Day celebration jump between you. Joel had switched up the weekends and hadn’t been prepared, but had made up for it the following weekend. You hadn’t heard from Tommy. He never even mentioned it. 

You grab the small box from your suitcase, a small white bow tied around it. The four of you settle in the living room. You sit tucked into one end of the sofa while Joel sits at the other end, a bouncing kid on either side of him. 

“Me first!” Sarah says, handing her card and hand-wrapped gift to her father. 

Joel takes care, slowly reading the card out loud. His gift consists of a souvenir snow globe and a puca shell necklace. She picked them out with great care at the beach shop the two of you stopped in yesterday. He oos and awes over both. 

“You should put on the necklace!” Sarah says, standing up on the cushions of the couch.

“Maybe I want to admire it more,” Joel says. 

You bite back a smile. He’s already lost this battle and you both know it. 

“Don’t be silly, Daddy.” She grabs it from his hand, determination, and concentration painted on her face as she wraps it around his neck.

“Yeah, don’t be silly, Daddy.” You tease, shooting him a wink. He pokes his tongue out at you as Sarah almost chokes him in the process of securing the necklace. 

“Not so tight, baby girl.” 

“Oops,” she giggles. “All done.” 

She steps back to admire her handiwork, looking quite pleased. “What do you think, Aunt Bonnie?”

“Beautiful,” You smile, laughter evident in your tone of voice. “You look ready to hit the beach.”

“My turn!” Nathaniel announces, handing Joel a hand-drawn picture depicting their day at the beach yesterday. He goes into great detail describing everything he drew. Joel’s hand rests on Nate’s shoulder blades, head tucked toward him as he takes in everything the boy says with practiced patience and intentionality. 

It strikes something in your heart, a deep longing. That should be Tommy. But it also sends a deep sense of gratitude toward your brother-in-law for picking up where his brother has failed. You swallow back the tears, losing track of how much you’ve had to do that today.

“Thank you, Bud. I love it.” Joel kisses Nathaniel's head. 

“You’re welcome, Daddy.” 

Joel freezes. Ice rushes through your bloodstream. Your eyes meet Joel’s. What do you say to that? Neither of you knows the answer. 

“He’s not your daddy, Nate,” Sarah says, pulling out her older sister voice. “He’s your uncle.” 

“Oh yeah,” Nathaniel shrugs, unbothered by his mishap as he swings his legs back and forth, hitting the couch with his heels as he does.

“Aunt Bonnie, do you have the other gift?” Sarah asks, determined to keep the morning on schedule. 

“Yeah, right here.” You fumble around, finding the box tucked between yourself and the couch. Joel keeps his eyes on you trying to figure out what’s running through your mind, but he can’t. 

Sarah plucks the box from your hands before presenting it to her father. “This is from all three of us.”

She looks very proud of herself. Joel takes it with a smile, eyes flickering back to you briefly. You give him an encouraging nod. 

He loosens the bow, pulling off the top. The kids lean over either side of his body, excited for the reveal even though they’ve both seen it. He pulls it out, inspecting it carefully. A black watch face with silver accents and an olive green watch band. His eyes dart to yours. You smile at him. 

“You’ve been talking about it for years.” You smirk, sipping your coffee. “You were never gonna do it yourself.”

“It’s exactly what I wanted.” He shakes his head, a stunned chuckle shaking his chest. “How’d you know?”

“Found an old picture Tommy had stored away last fall.”

“Look at the back.” Sarah bounces with excitement. 

Joel flips it over. His brows knit together as he catches the inscription. Happy Father’s Day. We love you. Sarah and Nathaniel. 1997.

“Do you like it?” Sarah looks up at him with sparkling excitement. 

“I love it.” He kisses her cheek, thanking both the children. He wraps it around his wrist, buckling it into place. 

“Now you won’t be late anymore,” Sarah says, making you and Joel laugh. 

“We can only hope,” you say. 

Joel looks up at you with one of the most heartfelt smiles you’ve ever seen. His lips move silently. Thank you.

You nod in response. 

You spend the final day of your vacation on the beach until the sun has disappeared. Joel ends up running back to the house to grab the car so your two very tired children don’t melt down. You hurry through bath time, trying to get all the sand from hair and bodies. You’re sure you’ll be finding sand all over your and Joel’s homes for months. 

You provide goodnight hugs and kisses, but Joel takes bedtime duties. You’re cleaning up the kitchen, and packing up pantry items when the first lines of You Are My Sunshine drift out of the kid’s bedroom in Joel’s soft melodies. The kids' sleepy voices talk him into another lullaby and then another before their eyelids slip closed and their breathing evens out. 

The door clicks softly and you’ve already pulled the margarita pitcher and new solo cups. “See they talked you into the whole set list tonight.” You smile, filling the cups with the last of the margaritas. 

“It’s the last night of vacation.” Joel chuckles. He grabs the blanket off the back of the couch and the half-eaten bag of pretzels. “They asked so nicely.”

“And you’re a big softy.” 

You grab both cups, following Joel out to your spot on the deck. It’s cooler tonight, the breeze a bit stronger. You sit across from each other, feet propped in the seat of the other’s chair with the blanket spread across your legs. Joel sets the pretzels right at your knees. 

“Did you enjoy your day?” You ask, sipping on the day-old margarita. It goes down easier tonight, and your cup is filled to the brim.

“It was a good day.” Joel smiles at you, easy and relaxed. The world and your issues feel so far away here despite the day’s earlier events. “Probably the best Father’s Day yet.”

“Oh you mean it beats the raw banana bread from last year?” You’re laughing before the sentence fully leaves your mouth. Joel’s head falls back, chest vibrating with laughter. 

His hair curls more from the salty air and fits him, tanned skin, curly hair, Puca shell necklace and all. You wonder if you look like a similar version of yourself, the relaxed beach version. 

“Sarah trying to choke me with the necklace beats whatever it was you tried to bake last year.”

You stick out your tongue. The pretzel bag rustles as he grabs a handful. You take another drink from your cup. Joel Miller makes a mean margarita. 

“What about you? Did you have a good day then?”

You take an extra second to think about it before nodding. “Yeah. I can’t complain when it comes to well-behaved kids and the beach.”

“Nathaniel calling me dad didn’t throw you off, I hope.”

Your shoulders tense a little bit. “I think I’m the one who should be asking that.” 

“Kinda surprised it hasn’t happened sooner if I’m being honest.” Joel’s pointer finger slides along the lip of his cup before he brings it to his lips. 

You bite your lips, staring at the house across the street. “Same.” 

“Sorry, that was kinda a mood killer.” Joel’s hand rests on your calf. 

“It’s fine. You’re more of a father to him than his real dad.” You try to wave it off, but the facts are reeling in your mind like a movie. “Fuck, you were in the delivery room, and coached his T-ball team, and you’ve tucked him into bed more times than Tommy ever has.” You swipe away the moisture that’s gathered in your eyes, chasing them with another gulp of your drink. 

“Hey… maybe you should slow down there.” Joel leans forward, his feet dropping from your chair as he grabs the solo cup from you and the pretzels tumble to the deck. 

“I don’t think that’s necessary.” You reach for the cup, but Joel keeps it out of reach, setting it on the ground next to his. 

“I do.” He’s firm with you, grabbing your hands and tucking them between his. You can’t meet his eyes, embarrassment flooding your body. “What's going on in your mind right now?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Darlin,” He tugs gently on your arms. Your feet greet the warm deck as you're forced to sit up straighter. The side of your knee bumps against his. “You can talk to me.”

“I just want to enjoy our last night, Joel.”

“Can’t do that if I’m worried about you.” He tips your chin up, forcing you to meet his eyes. 

The street lights flicker off his warm eyes. You feel his touch linger under your chin. Extra warmth gathers in each place he touches. The words bubbling up in you, helpless to stop the thoughts circling in your head for months. 

“I’m not sure my marriage is salvageable. I don’t know if I’ll recognize my husband when he gets out. I don’t think he’s the same person-“ You can’t finish through the choked-out sobs. 

Joel lets out a soft sigh and before you know it, he’s tugging your pliant body into his lap, rubbing your back. He kisses your head. Your head finds the crook of his neck, fingers digging into the back of it. He’s the steady rock he’s always been. It does little to soothe your racing mind. 

You have so many questions and no answers. Tommy’s release from prison always felt like a distant finish line. Now, three months away, it feels like just the start. 

“No matter what, I’ve got you,” Joel says, hand cupping your cheek. “I’m here for you.”

How much longer can you continue to find solace in your brother-in-law's arms? How much longer will Joel play the part Tommy is supposed to? Supporter, parent, partner…

You pull back, fingers still wrapped around his neck. The metal of your wedding ring presses against his skin, but he’s used to feeling it. He doesn’t even think about it anymore. Your forehead nearly touches his. The pools of his deep eyes are endless. They’re different than Tommy’s. You don’t mean to compare, but you like it, soft and inviting after sleeping on rocks for years. You think you catch the hints of desire in them. You’ve forgotten what it feels like to be desired. 

There’s a fight, a push and pull between you. Who’s going to do it. His hot breath fans across your lips. Who’s going to be the one to finally cross the line you’ve been toeing for so long and drag the other one into exile with them? It’s a lush oasis in the middle of the desert you’ve been traveling. One move and you can dip your toe in. 

Joel gives in first, leaning in. Your eyes flutter shut with anticipation, another touch of his breath. His nose nudges against yours. You catch a whiff of the salt on his skin, and then, nothing, a mirage all in your head leaving you stranded in the desert. 

Confusion knits your brow before your eyes are open. Joel is still close, closer than a man that’s not your husband should be, but he feels further away than ever. 

His thumb nudges your bottom lip. He gives a weak smile in an attempt to cover his true emotions. “We can’t…”

He’s right. You hate yourself for getting so carried away. “I know.” 

Your hand drops from his neck. You might be sitting on his lap but he’s never felt farther from you. 

“You should go to bed.”

You think to fight him on it, but you decide not to. You stand up. Joel doesn’t move, thumb playing with the lip of his solo cup. He can’t meet your eyes and it feels like you might be losing him too. 

Before you can think better of it, you lean down, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. Your fingers rake through his hair twice over. His eyes close and he lilts into you just the slightest. 

“Thank you, Joel. For everything.”

His Adam’s Apple bobs as you pull away. He keeps his eyes pinned ahead, fingers curling around the red plastic. He’s barely holding on to control. 

“Good night,” he says, voice gruff, never looking away from his fixed point. 

“Goodnight.”

Joel finishes off yours and his margarita before he falls into bed. It’s just enough to keep him buzzed as he runs toward rest. He can’t get the feel of you out of his mind, how close he was to ripping apart his whole family. 

He’s in and out of sleep when the door pops open. He assumes it’s Sarah. She probably had a bad dream, and tosses the corner of the comforter back. Except, the full size mattress dips lower than it should. He reaches out but instead of Sarah’s small frame, he gets a handful of your waist as the smell of you fills his nostrils. In the haze of sleep, Joel opens his eyes just enough to find you facing away from him. 

The bed isn’t big enough for his legs not to tangle with yours, not if he wants restful sleep. Your body doesn’t tense under his touch. You don’t say anything. Neither does he, but your body melts into him until he finds his arm fully around your middle, back flush against his front.

Joel Miller considers himself a good man, but a good man doesn’t yearn for his brother’s wife. A good man doesn’t give into the temptation to have her so close, to be with her so intimately. Tonight, Joel Miller doesn’t worry about being a good man. Maybe it’s the alcohol, but tonight, Joel Miller falls asleep with you in his arms and bed. Tonight, Joel Miller’s deepest desires come true. Just for tonight, he gets to pretend you’re his. 

You wake up to an empty bed like you have since Tommy went to prison, but something feels off about it. A familiar smell lingers under your nose, and unfamiliar warmth fills you even though the sheets are cold.

You let out a soft groan, eyes fluttering open. You stare up at the ceiling, convinced once again that something feels off. You turn to look at the clock on the bed stand but there’s not one there. The walls are a different color and you shoot up as it all comes flooding back. 

You almost kissed Joel last night. The way you tossed and turned before giving into temptation and crawling in beside him. He hadn’t fought you, hadn’t said a word but pulled you flush against him in the bed that was just a bit too small. You’d slept like a baby for the first time in years. 

Joel sits at the table with the kids as they shovel the last of the extra sugary cereal into their mouths. A special vacation treat. You expect Joel to ignore you or at least be standoffish, but he hands you a cup of steaming coffee with the same smile he always does, crow’s feet crinkling at the corners of his eyes as if nothing happened. 

You offer a smile in response. A silent agreement to never speak on it again.

You’ve been home for a week when it comes, a plain white envelope stuffed with something soft labeled with a return address you’re all too familiar with written in Tommy’s chicken scratch handwriting. 

You wait until Nathaniel is down for the night, but it throws you the whole evening. Letters from Tommy are more rare than phone calls. You’ve received one, maybe two since he was incarcerated. Considering he’d promised to call on after Father’s day and hadn’t, the mysterious letter makes you feel unsettled. What shoes are left to drop?

You run the envelope through your hands, thumb picking at the corner of the seal, uncommitted to actually tearing it open. You’re worried whatever lies within will only hurt you more. You can’t sustain more hurt. 

Finally, you dig into the corner, tearing it open. Your eyebrows knit together. White fabric is neatly folded and tucked within. You pull it out, revealing a square of white fabric, like a bandana unfurls and a note falls to the floor. As you take in the black and white drawing on the fabric, you gasp. It’s a drawing of the picture you keep on your nightstand. The moment Tommy met Nathaniel for the first time. Tommy’s arm is wrapped around you, Nathaniel in his arms with the biggest grin on his face. It’s a moment that’s seared into your memory. Seeing it portrayed like this brings tears to your eyes, the emotions from that day and the last 696 flooding your body. 

Before the tear completely blur your vision, you pick up the note. You can barely make out Tommy’s handwriting when your eyes are clear, but you manage. 

Baby,

You and I both know I didn’t draw this. My cellmate did based on the photo. You probably know that. They call them paños. I’ve seen a lot of the ones guys in here have sent to their girls. They’re pretty cool. 

I’m sorry. I wish I could be better for you and Nathaniel. I love you, Bonnie. 

Tommy. 

Tears stream down your face. Just like that your heart seems to forget the heartache of the last couple years. This proves that your Tommy is still inside him somewhere, fighting to come back to you. You’ll do anything to have your Tommy back. 

It doesn’t matter if you're grasping at threads. Your heart overpowers your mind. You’re determined that you can pull him back by those threads, maybe not now, but once he’s out. Once he’s out, you can bring him back. You’re his Bonnie. He’s your Clyde. You’re tied together. Your heart beats for him, but you don’t catch a piece of your heart breaking off from the rest. That part can't beat for Tommy. It’s attached to someone else. 

Taglist: @pamasaur @alltheotps @rizzraa @moel-jiller @misstokyo7love @justagalwhowrites @pedritosgfreal @mellymbee @sarahhxx03 @lizzie-cakes @sixhours @duckybird101 @anoverwhelmingdin @nervoushottee @caitlynsixxx @kaykay0315 @stevie75 @millercontracting @cals-laundry @jessthebaker @noisynightmarepoetry @vickie5446 @mewantpeepaw

[deathbxnny]

I’ve been busy.. but that doesnt stop me from daydreaming!

Can i request platonic Vi with a best friend that is like Wriothesley? I didnt realized how similar those two are until i saw Wriothesley’s birthday art. It’s just.. mind blowing. ALSO WRIOTHESLEY AND CLORINDE, VI AND CAITLYN. DO YOU SEE IT?! Personally, i dont ship Wrio and Clorinde but i can see why people even ship them in the first place. I see them as platonic besties who support their endeavor with their respective lover (Neuvilette and Navia respectively)

Context:

Reader and Vi met in prison and just clicked bc they just understood each other. When Caitlyn came to ask Vi for help, Vi also made Caitlyn to allow reader out with her as well. Whatever happens next is your choice to make but please also note how reader is from Piltover.

That’s all and have a good day/night!

(School is just.. really busy rn and i have my final exams next week. Im honestly scared, so i might not be active for a while here. But know that i do read your stuff to time to time to destress. Also i really like the post with my navia request, tysm ^_^)

- Flower Anon 🌸

Vi with a best friend Wriothesley-like!Gn!Reader.

Your words about the Wriothesley and Clorinde comparison have enlightened something in my mind lmao. Also, good luck with your exams, Flower Anon! I really, really hope that they go well and dw about not being active much! I appreciate your support either way and hope you'll enjoy this!<3

Content: Reader is from Piltover, past murders, crimes, platonic relationships, Vi and Reader being a menace duo, sfw

Reader has no mentioned pronouns.

((Not proofread))

You and Vi had your backs from day one after meeting in Stillwater. You were both teens then, having been imprisoned under terrible circumstances, and that made you stick together as a team. There was no one else to look out for you in that hell after all.

During your long, seemingly endless time in jail, you both got to know each other perfectly, with no details about your pasts spared. She came to know about your dark past and the murder of your abusive parents rather early on, yet never judged you for it. If anything, she may have been the only one to understand you.

This was surprising, considering your vastly different upbringings. Vi came from poverty down in the slums of Zaun, whilst you once tasted silver spoons and golden dishes on the daily. But it all faded in this hellscape of a prison, where you both endured torture and pain as equals.

You became an unlikely duo out of that, one that upheld a scary and menacing reputation amongst prisoners and wards alike. She was the more angry, violent one, whilst you were a bit of a joker, your words alone enough to send shivers down anyone's spines. It made you both feel more confident and hopeful, even if a way out was unlikely after many years spent in the prison.

Now, far into your adulthood, you decided to give up on that childish dream of freedom, accepting that your life in Stillwater is all you'll ever know. You were used to it by now and built a routine to follow and survive with. But things changed when that Enforcer girl showed up.

You didn't trust her at all, despite roughly remembering who she was. And unfortunately, she remembered you two, although for all the wrong reasons she would simply scoff at. However, since Vi decided to make a deal with Caitlyn, you decided to leave the past behind and simply accept this opportunity to finally escape this place.

And so, after what felt like endless years of fighting for your survival together, you were finally permitted to breathe, mostly, fresh air and live freely again... even with the grim mission at hand that often left you having to comfort Vi whenever things got too out of hand with her emotions. Hunting down Jinx was more traumatic than she'd let on anyways.

But alas, you eventually began enjoying your time out by trying new tea and pastries, running around your okd neighborhoods, and beating up people with Vi that wronged her in the past. It was all in good fun, even if Caitlyn had to hunt you both down every time.

You were the more calmer and gentler out of the three of you, however, as your rationality and ability to lead effortlessly often came in handy. You were somewhat of a balance between the two when things got really bad, despite your own reservations, and eventually ended up being an accidental wingman with how well you spoke of Vi to Cait. You knew firsthand how bad the prejudice against Zaunites could be and would be damned if she ever mistreated Vi because of it.

Ultimately, life turned out a lot more chaotic outside than it was outside of the prison... but with your best friend at your side, you suppose things would only get more interesting from here.

[possibilistfanfiction]

arcane prompt "hospital"?

[jinx deserves the world, also it's nice to let cait use her girlboss disposition for good sometimes, yknow. ao3 here.]

///

you hand caitlyn a cup of black tea she probably thinks is beyond shitty; it's all they had at the cart in the courtyard, and you still have no idea how to make proper tea anyway. still, she smiles — small, and residually scared, but genuine — in thanks. she's been crying, you can tell: her eyes are red-rimmed and the sweater of vi's she'd thrown on in the middle of the night is rumpled around the sleeves, like she'd used them to wipe her tears.

'she's going to be okay, right?' you look at vi's still, bruised form in the bed. 'they didn't, like, tell you really bad news while i was gone or something.'

caitlyn steadies herself. 'no,' she assures you. 'she's going to be just fine.'

'okay,' you say, and you trust her because she loves vi and because she's a doctor, and mostly because at this point caitlyn wouldn't lie to you. you scoot your chair forward and lace your fingers together with vi's hand, the one without an iv taped into it, and squeeze gently, just a hello. the doctors had explained that she's on a lot of medicine to keep her comfortable, plus the anesthesia from her surgery, so she's not going to wake up until midday at the earliest. but just in case she can feel you, you want her to know that you're there. you remember coming out of the worst sedations, medication that was wrong for you or just way too high a dose, to vi slumped next to your bedside, her big, strong hand steadfast around yours. 'did you see her x-rays or medical history or something?'

'i didn't intend to,' she says in way of an answer.

'ah.' you fiddle with vi's fingers. 'gnarly, huh?'

she puts her tea down on the small table near the bed and runs a hand through her hair before she scrapes it up into a messy ponytail. 'i knew, in theory,' she says. 'we've talked about things, of course. i'm able to help take care of when her chronic back pain flares, and how she really should have a surgical repair on her bad shoulder. but, i just, well. i suppose i comprehend the breadth of it now, more completely at least, the details in a way i can understand.'

you don't know; you don't ever want to know, not like that. vi still has nightmares about prison, still doesn't eat enough sometimes, still refuses heating pads and advil sometimes after a hard shift. 'yeah.'

'and i suppose, too, that it's hard to know how much she's hurt, even if it's so much less bad now.' she shrugs, helpless, and looks at you. 'i just love her.'

it had been terrifying, to get a call in the middle of the night from the fire department: vi had been in a building when it collapsed, and she was hurt and it was, potentially, very bad. you're not sure who they'd called first — you or caitlyn — but she'd texted you a minute after and offered to pick you up so you could both wait at the hospital while vi was in surgery. it had taken two hours before her dad came out and explained that vi had some internal injuries that still needed more fixing in surgery, as well as a few bruises and scrapes, but she would recover fully with time.

'you should move in with each other,' you say.

caitlyn pauses for a few moments, but then she lets out a quiet laugh. 'how long have you been holding that in?'

you shrug. 'you guys have been together for two years. i know vi wants to.' you don't mention that you hack into caitlyn's person email on occasion, just because you like to be nosey; you don't mention that you'd seen her and vi send property listings back and forth the last few months. 'i know she hasn't said anything to me because she doesn't want to upset me, or make me think like she's choosing you over me, or whatever.'

caitlyn considers it calmly. 'she would never do that, you know.'

'yeah.' you do; it's the thing you know most in the world. 'i also know that she's scared that if she doesn't help me at much, i'll have another episode.'

that, caitlyn has no response to.

'i've talked about this a lot in therapy.' you squeeze vi's hand, just in case she's listening too. 'at first i couldn't manage any of it without her, for sure.'

vi had spent her first month out of prison visiting you in your tent in the scariest part of town, not pushing, just bringing you food and warm clothes, comfortable blankets; she'd sit with you for hours if you'd let her, even if most of the time you talked to voices only you could hear and saw things she never would. finally, you agreed to go to the hospital with her, and from there it was more months of getting clean, and trying different medications, and really lame group therapy, and coming to terms with your diagnosis. vi was there as often as she could be, clean-cut for once while she went through the fire academy. you don't remember many details, but when you'd finally gotten released, she'd brought you to this small, rundown one bedroom apartment that she'd made as nice as she could. the first night you were home, she fell asleep in bed next to you in less than a minute, a few tears on her cheeks, seemingly of their own accord. it's always been a measure of love you'll always be a little in awe of.

'but, like, i remember my meds on my own now. i have a system.'

caitlyn's smile is honest-to-god proud. 'that's no small feat.'

you try to act nonchalant, but she's right: most of your medications have side effects that require other medications to off-set, and it's a nightmare if you don't coordinate them properly. 'and, like, my graduate program is going well, and i have friends, and i like climbing. i feel, not good, i guess. maybe i'll never feel good. but i feel real, and most of the time the world feels real too.'

caitlyn lays her hand on top of yours, and vi's.

'anyway,' you say, clearing your throat so you don't cry. you run your free hand through your hair, grown out some now after your "interesting decision," as vi had said, last year during a meltdown. 'vi can move out, and ekko can move in to our apartment. he's —' your boyfriend? your best friend? your favorite person, other than vi?

caitlyn smiles gently. 'he is.'

'he knows what to do, if i need help.'

'and i know you want to live with vi, and i know she wants to live with you.' even though you invade their privacy by checking emails, you'd never spill the beans that they've both individually been looking at rings. 'i can manage, without her there as much. i don't think either of us ever thought that would be our reality, which is why vi hasn't brought it up. i know she's still scared, probably forever. it was scary.' you take a big breath and then let it out; when you'd first gotten your diagnosis, it seemed like you would never get to be a full, independent person, and then it would be a death sentence. 'but i want to try. i can try.'

caitlyn squeezes your hand, and vi's too. 'i believe you will do wonderfully, in both my professional and personal opinion.'

'oh. really?'

she nods. 'you haven't had a full blown episode in over a year. i see you manage your days, and your impulses. clinically, you're actually a great patient. personally, you're a pain in the ass sometimes, but not because you're unwell.'

'just because of my stunning charm and incredible sense of humor? my flair for the dramatic?'

'something like that, sure.'

you laugh. 'thank you, so so much.'

she rolls her eyes but she's still fond of you, especially in the early morning light. vi's eyes are both bruised blue, but caitlyn had told you that surgeons had finally fixed her broken nose after it broke again this time: you're pretty sure vi hasn't been able to breathe properly since she was, like, twelve. at the very least she'll snore less, so a win for all of you. 'we found a house we want to put an offer in on,' she admits.

'yeah?'

she nods. 'it's not too far from your place, and it's right on the park.'

you scoff, just for posterity. 'fancy.'

she's unfazed by this point. 'we — well, vi was going to tell you, but i know it's fine if i do. we know you and ekko want to keep your current place, and i'd actually like to sit down with both of you and see if there's any way i can assist with your rent or other budgetary items.'

you're definitely, 100% about to cry, all of a sudden.

'she is so proud of you, for even being able to consider pursuing increased independence.'

you sniffle.

'but, the brownstone we're looking at also has a fully finished basement, with a bedroom and a small living area, its own bathroom. we've planned for it to be your space, whenever you want it, for any reason, for however long you'd like to stay. a night, a year. you will always have a home with violet, which means you will always have a home with me too.'

you have to do your deep breathing: sometimes kindness, especially given freely, is what makes the world slide most off-kilter. there are always voices telling you that you don't deserve good things, that caitlyn, and vi, and ekko, and vander, and even caitlyn's parents, when you go over to their giant ass mansion for celebratory dinners or parties, are lying to you. but you put your head down against your joined hands and count to ten, whisper it aloud, and then sit back up. caitlyn is waiting patiently.

'how big is the house?'

she laughs, heartily, and pulls out her phone to show you pictures and specifications. it's beautiful — not that you'd ever expect less of caitlyn kirammen — but she also tells you the plans she has to decorate, and your chest aches with a happiness so tinged with grief when she casually explains things vi wants in each room too. it's a life you never dreamed you'd get to have, and you know vi has probably been having total menty-b's about all of this, but she deserves a home more than anyone you've ever met.

'it's fine, i guess,' you say, after caitlyn finishes showing you their plans for the patio and yard.

caitlyn laughs. 'up to your standards?'

'could use more neon.'

'keep it confined to the basement, and you've got a deal.'

'ugh.'

'the only request i have is that you not blow it up.'

you pretend to contemplate. 'that's reasonable, i guess.' you look around at all the monitors proclaiming your big sister's strong heart and lungs and brain, despite it all. 'vi's gonna be so relieved that we don't have to have a heart to heart when she wakes up.'

caitlyn looks at the still planes of vi's face adoringly. disgusting, still. 'she'll be difficult enough as it stands, i'm sure.'

'total pain in the ass.'

////

you spend the first night after vi moves out in your apartment with ekko, and you fall asleep with your head tucked into his chest, safe still, even now. that weekend, you haul a duffle bag of your stuff — clothes, toiletries, a quarter of your lab, a few cans of spray paint — to vi and caitlyn's new house. neither of them are home yet, vi stuck grumpily on desk duty for the evening and caitlyn's meeting running over.

but your key turns in the lock, and your favorite snacks are stocked in the pantry. eventually, they both get home, and they're happy to see you, and caitlyn laughs at the improvements you've already done to the walls of the basement. vi ruffles your hair and you bully both of them into ordering tacos like you want, even though they have plenty of things you could cook at home. caitlyn is polite enough to let you curl up with vi on the couch, just for tonight, and you fall asleep, safe and warm, there too.

[venomwrites]

Follow up to this which was inspired by the Kiramman banners because obviously I started thinking about what other angsty object inspired things I could come up with.

Vi's necklace. The answer is Vi's necklace that she wore on the bridge in S1 and we only see on Powder in the AU in s2.

Also on ao3

The door closes softly and Vi cranes her neck to watch Caitlyn come in. 

She looks awful.

Immediately Vi recoils at the thought. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter. It’s the way Caitlyn thinks about herself and Vi purposefully tries to keep the thought out of her head. Tired, exhausted, broken-down. Those fit better as Caitlyn rests her head against the door for a brief moment. That’s all she will allow herself most days. A brief press of her forehead to the wood, a single sharp breath, then she straightens up and looks for Vi. It’s such a nauseatingly robotic routine it makes Vi wonder how many years she’s been doing it for. Not the ‘looking for Vi’ part, she’s got a date on that. But the momentary respite before straitening up, Vi wonders how long that has been going on. At first Vi chalked her skittishness in the room up to her sister, but as time has gone on she’s starting to think some part of Caitlyn has never been able to relax outside of the four posters of her bed. Their eyes lock and emotion bubbles across Caitlyn’s face. 

It’s a practiced lie. 

Vi wonders how they have become so obvious. Maybe she just wasn’t ready to see them before. It’s a hard thought to stomach, but she’s grateful she can see them now. Caitlyn approaches the bed but then decides to walk around it to stand on the side. She even denies herself that comfort, though Vi knows damn well she loves laying on the bed with her. The weariness seems worse than usual. She’s torn between asking for more information and just letting Caitlyn rest without having to relieve anything, but Caitlyn makes the decision for her. She offers only a quick smile in greeting and slips off her eye patch and earrings before retreating to the bathroom. Vi hears the shower rushing. It’s been a long day, she knows Caitlyn is fading even if she’s holding it together. Vi pushes herself up nudges the bathroom door open a little, just enough so Caitlyn can hear her humming. Every so often she hears the water change as Caitlyn steps out to check. Like Jinx is going to materialize and kidnap her again. Vi misses her sister so much, most days it feels like she would cut her arm off to see her again. 

But she would never let her into this room. 

It’s weird to hold the two thoughts in the same place. I miss you, but I’m angry. I’d do anything to see you, but I’m scared of what I’d say. I love you, but I’ll protect her. A lot of the time it’s a knot she doesn’t know how to untangle. How do you know someone loved you enough to let you go but didn't think you would be broken by their actions? When she got to a point where the truth settled, the betrayal she felt was crippling. Even the poisonous voice that whispered she had left Jinx was silent for once. The thought still makes her nauseous if she thinks about it too long. Her reaction is still visceral. So she focuses instead on the humming until the shower turns off. The next step is her getting up and doing whatever she can to move about the room. Caitlyn cannot bear to come out to see her sitting there humming, even though they both know she would do it for hours. Then there’s questions of soreness, does she need tea for her throat—things Vi doesn’t want Caitlyn to think about. Not when she should be doing anything else. She can’t begrudge Caitlyn’s occasional bout of nervous energy right after a shower, but she doesn’t want to be in its path. 

Caitlyn finally emerges in her pajamas and bathrobe and smiles at Vi. This time with a hint of exhaustion. 

“Hey,” Vi says, “wanna talk about it?”

“No,” Caitlyn says and sighs gratefully when Vi nods, “thank you.”

“Come on,” Vi says, ignoring the thanks. Like Caitlyn has to thank her for not interrogating something she doesn’t want to talk about. She tugs Caitlyn over to the bed, “sit.”

Caitlyn has been on eggshells all week and Vi can’t blame her. Even though she thought they were good, the conversation about how much Caitlyn helped her during their time apart is still weighing on her. She won’t say that’s what it is, but she doesn’t have to. The number of check ins and offered explanations about literally everything are starting to drive Vi crazy. She can tell Caitlyn feels like she kept some devastating secret. Like she betrayed Vi again. And Vi has no idea how to make her see how incredibly dumb that is. Caitlyn one of the smartest people Vi has ever met, but sometimes she gets wed to an idea and no matter how wrong it is, changing her mind becomes a herculean task. One Vi hasn’t quite figured out yet. ‘I betrayed you’ isn’t as bad as ‘I’m going to hunt down your sister’ but the desperate, exhausted look on Caitlyn’s face is eerily similar. 

It’s not a look Vi ever wanted to see when Caitlyn thought of her. 

Still, Caitlyn lets her steer her to the bed and sits when Vi nudges her to her side. She’s always home earlier these days and she likes to lay on Caitlyn’s side of the bed. At first because it smelled like her, but then she learned Caitlyn that too. And the only thing she seemed to like better was when her side of the bed smelled like Vi and was warm. It’s a stupidly simple task, one that literally only requires Vi to lay there, but it makes Caitlyn lay down a bit easier. Helps her relax a bit. So Vi always tries to time it so she’s made sure her side of the bed is warm. She doesn’t know why it makes her feel equally warm when Caitlyn lays back and lets the false emotions fall away, but it does. Every single time. 

“Hang on, I gotta brush my teeth,” Vi says, fighting the urge to smile as Caitlyn’s lips come close to pouting, “one sec.”

“It should take longer than that,” Caitlyn says with a half yawn, turning to the side, “but not too long.”

Vi brushes her shoulder and makes her way to the bathroom. It’s a little adorable how it now slips out more freely how worried Caitlyn is about her ability to take care of herself. Like a cork has been pulled from a bottle. She has no idea how it took her so long to put together that Caitlyn had been looking out for her when she was in the Pits. The suspicion had been growing. It was kind of hard for it not to when she started recognizing things as soon as she started paying attention. She had been drunk a lot, but not the kind of drunk where you didn’t recognize familiar items. Weirdly it had started with her first period after the war. Caitlyn kept stuff in the cabinet above the toilet and when Vi had dug around, she realized the boxes were slightly different. The label had changed and weirdly she recognized the newer version. No-one threw out new products like that. Then there had been the chocolate bars. The way Caitlyn sometimes folded her napkin and tucked it into the cup when they went out for coffee. Really the antiseptic bottle had been the last straw. And it had still taken her a few days to work up the courage to voice the question. She wasn’t sure she was ready for the answer. 

Caitlyn cared. 

Simple as that.

Vi cleans her teeth with the familiar toothpaste and listens as Caitlyn shifts her weight and rolls onto her side. Vi listens as the sounds go quiet and spits into the sink. She cleans her mouth out quickly and just catches the sound of Caitlyn’s hand moving from underneath the pillow. She hears her sitting up and turning the box over in her hands. It’s one of hers, but it had been empty. Vi turns the water off and steps out of the bathroom. Caitlyn is sitting up in bed looking at the small velvet box with a curious expression. Her gaze lifts to Vi who folds her arms and dips her head towards it. Instead of softening, Caitlyn’s frown deepens. Vi can imagine her running down a list of things that could be in the box. She imagines her feelings of guilt that Vi got her anything and then annoyance that she felt guilty. It’s a loop Caitlyn seems endlessly caught in. Her eye darts from Vi to the box one final time. Vi watches her face fall momentarily before she holds the box in one hand and lifts the top with the other. 

The shock on her face shuts the spiral down. 

She goes pale with surprise as she looks at the contents. Her throat works and Vi watches her remaining eye fill. Vi has no illusions she’s out of that guilty spiral. But even she can’t think of a way to refuse this. Her fingers tighten around the box as her other hand comes to support it. Vi can see the white knuckled grip she has on the velvet. Even though the real treasure is what’s inside, she refuses to touch it. Vi hovers between giving her space or going over, but her feet are already caring her over. By the time she makes it to the bed Caitlyn’s brought her legs up and her knees are under her hands. All four limbs supporting one silly little box. All because she knows how precious the thing inside it is. When Vi sits, her tear filled gaze locks onto hers. 

“I can’t accept this,” she whispers. 

“Well it’s yours,” Vi says, “you can do whatever you want.”

“No,” Caitlyn shakes her head and quickly swipes at her cheeks before both hands go back to the box, “Vi, I can’t—“ she looks down and her eye presses shut, “if this is because of what I did—“

“Kind of,” she cuts in, just to see if Caitlyn will look annoyed but she gets no such look, “but not in the way you think.” 

She barely has to touch inside the box for half the thing to spill out, even though it was the biggest one she could find. 

But all of Caitlyn’s jewelry is on dainty little chains.

Her necklace is leather. 

The leather is freshly conditioned and is almost as brown as the wood of the dressing screen. She polished the beaten metal and shined the glass. It manages to catch the light of the fire as she slides the metal caps and makes the loop long. Caitlyn watches each motion as her toes curl under the sheets. One of her hands curls in it too and Vi vaguely wonders if she’s going to try and nudge her off the bed. But Vi just dangles the long loop from her fingertips and holds the necklace between them. 

“My mom gave this to me when I was a kid,” she says, “she had one too, I wanted one so badly—“ she smiles at the memory of the pure excitement, “before Silco this was the Eye of Zaun,” she explains, “it’s supposed to protect you from other’s evil intentions.”

Caitlyn listens and Vi sees her gaze going from her to the necklace and back again as it twists in the light. 

“I didn’t wear it after she died because it became his symbol. And because I had my Dad,” she continues, “but it was always in my pocket, you know? Just in case.”

“Yes,” Caitlyn says wetly, “I know.”

“Course you do,” Vi says. 

Caitlyn had been furious when she handed Vi new clothes. Furious to the point where it would have been funny if Vi hadn’t been so relieved to see her. After all, she had said she was going to get Vi’s things and vanished for a long time. Vi had been half sure she had changed her mind until she had appeared with clothes Vi had never seen before. They had been irrelevant, Vi would have walked out in her prison jumpsuit—hell she would have walked out naked if it got her out of the cell. When they left Caitlyn had given the Warden a look so venomous it had made even Vi swallow nervously. It was so venomous the Warden didn’t even think to smile at the fear on her face and that usually brought him endless amounts of delight. When she went to shove her hands into her pockets, her fingers hand connected with the necklace. Her only indication it was tied to the source of tension was when the Warden coughed and Caitlyn whipped her head around so fast and with such a look that he actually sunk down a bit in his chair and mumbled something that sounded like an apology. 

Caitlyn got her necklace back though. 

“My mom said it would ward off evil,” she repeats, “when I was a kid I thought that meant it would protect you from it,” she says, giving the leather a twist that makes the Eye rotate, “but I don’t think that’s what she was saying. It wards it off, but you need other people to protect you. And you protect them.”

She smiles at Caitlyn before she also starts crying. 

“You protected me,” she continues, “even though I hurt you, even though you were mad at me, you still did it. I know you don’t think that’s a big deal but it is. It is to me,” she says, “I want you to have this so you remember you’re not alone. Even though I know you feel that way. You’re not.”

The tears break free but this time Caitlyn doesn’t wipe them away. 

“Dirt under your nails,” Vi reminds her, futilely trying to keep them above the emotions. Caitlyn looks at her, “want me to say my arm’s getting tired?” She offers. 

“No,” Caitlyn half sobs, “that’s not necessary.”

She leans forward and Vi realizes she’s giving her permission. Vi slips the leather over the back of her neck and pulls her hair free. She slides the clasps so the Eye rests just below the hollow of Caitlyn's throat. Her fingers brush the metal and Caitlyn’s hand comes up to touch it as well. Even though it’s nothing like the jewelry Vi has seen her wear, for some reason it immediately looks like it belongs there. Like it was always meant to find it’s way to her neck. Ever since she walked into that prison and brought Vi back to life. Their fingers find each others and slot together as Caitlyn leans forward and presses their foreheads together. Even amidst the anger some part of her had been desperate to do it in Ambessa’s tent. Prevented only by handcuffs and a thousand other reasons. The second she got Caitlyn away, the second Caitlyn came into another cell and brought Vi back to life again, all Vi wanted to do was be close. To know she was never going to have cuffs or bars keep her from touching Caitlyn again. 

Caitlyn makes a sound she tries to muffle and Vi can tell it’s not a good one. Caitlyn clamps her lips together but Vi isn’t fooled. She doesn’t give a shit if the necklace makes her cry. She actually kind of prefers it. Crying means Caitlyn feels safe enough to do it. Safe and not judged, which is what Vi wants. She trades the press of their foreheads to pull Caitlyn into her shoulder and wrap her arms around her, slipping one hand underneath the collar of her pajama shirt. This time only one of Caitlyn’s arms comes up around her back, but that’s okay. Vi can feel the other between them wrapped tightly around the Eye. 

Later in the glow of the fire, Caitlyn twists the Eye around with her fingers, her eyes staring upwards as her head rests on Vi’s chest.

“I think she’s going to give up the Seat,” she whispers to Vi, “she said this was futile—“ Vi raises her eyebrows, “wasting her time,” Caitlyn sighs, “wasting her fucking time with my Piltie bullshit.”

Vi strokes through her hair as Caitlyn continues. 

“It was my mother’s Seat,” she continues, “I wanted it to be used for good.”

Vi nods but Caitlyn can read through her silence and glances up at her, dislodging Vi’s hand. Vi catches her gaze and looks towards the Eye and sighs. 

“Cait that seat should be yours,” she says. 

Caitlyn’s eye widens as she looks up at Vi. 

“What?”

“You shouldn’t have given it up,” she says again, with a bit more confidence. Caitlyn is still staring at her, “Cait no-one can do more good with that seat than you."

Caitlyn looks down but she doesn’t immediately object to what Vi has said. It might be the first compliment that she’s tentatively accepted without it nearly becoming a fight between them. That alone makes hope start to burn in Vi’s chest. Caitlyn keeps fiddling with the necklace as she considers. She doesn’t say yes or no, but she does nudge closer against Vi’s chest to find a slightly more comfortable spot. And when she does finally drift off, her fingers remain around the necklace for a while before curling into Vi’s tank. While the feel of Caitlyn’s steady breathing usually lulls Vi into sleep, tonight she lingers in the haze of something close to pride. It’s been nice to just have this time to not fight for every breath. But there’s been a growing thought in the back of her head if she can still help. What helping looks like. What it feels like. 

It feels kind of like coming home. 

And for the first time, it doesn’t feel like she's doing it alone. 

[lovers-rck]

price on emotion | caitlyn kiramman x vi

okay first of all hi.

okay second of all this fic is inspired by this drawing made by @/XWilson127 on twitter. can't stop thinking about it so yeah.

i lost my ability to write so this kinda sucks

enjoy

☆

outside its raining. lightning pierces through the curtains into that poorly lit room.

vi lies on the bed. her limbs feel incredibly tense to the point that she wonders if it is possible that her muscles have contracted so much that they can never return to normal. today it was her turn to fight, at first that giant man managed to destabilize her with a punch in her chest, so hard that she lost her breath for a good ten seconds. she thinks she only got air in her lungs back just because she saw that stupid smile of victory in that man's face and she got mad.

but she had won anyway, so she went home with a taste of victory and a bottle of alcohol. loris wasn't in town today to celebrate, so now she was in her rented room, watching how the light was hitting in the empty bottles of alcohol reflecting the color in her wall, like a cheap aurora borealis.

her room is a mess. besides the bottles of alcohol scattered on the floor, vi's room is decorated with clothes everywhere; on the floor, on the door handle, on her bed. from her point of view, she can see the little mark that jinx left on her last visit made with the paint that vi uses for her fights.

jinx has been in and out for a couple months now. last time she showed up when vi was sleeping; when the pink haired girl opened her eyes to hear drawers being rattled, a pair of long blue braids greeted her. vi remembers how her first instinct was to attack her, then jinx insulted her, then left. to this day vi doesn't know how she managed to get into the apartment.

so yeah, jinx has been... there.

before vi can wander further in her thoughts, a knock on the door catches her attention. she thinks maybe it's from the heavy blizzard outside, so she doesn't think much of it; she keeps looking at jinx mark.

a clap of thunder explodes in the sky, vi feels the earth that holds her rumble. she really wishes that loris would be here tonight. he is good company, she thinks; he is quiet, so most of the talking is on vi's part, usually riddled with strange babbling and exaggeratedly pronounced words because of the alcohol.

lately, vi has noticed how the alcohol has worn off; she still can't decide if she likes it or if it scares her. her life has been all about finding options to avoid consciousness for the past few months, from bruises to the cheapest alcohol she could find at the corner store. they work for a couple of weeks, then she is back at the same spot where she started.

another knock on the door comes.

she doesn't consider herself suicidal. she doesn't want to die, for sure, but she is aware of her personality's propensity for not-so-healthy methods. or so she thinks.

it's the third knock on the door that succeeds in calling vi to the surface of her thoughts. she lets out a groan of pain as she gets out of bed, her legs dragging heavily toward the door.

vi thinks maybe it's loris, deploying a sudden apparition that manages to save vi from that boring, lonely rainy night. she also thinks it might be jinx, but jinx isn't polite enough to knock on the door.

instead, a pair of crooked teeths greet her.

"what took you so long? it's raining outside."

her body instinctively slides to the side, leaving the way clear for the slender body to scurry inside quickly. a sea-blue haze pervades the room, and vi feels like she hasn't had a drop of alcohol in years.

"yeah, hello to you too" vi mutters, closing the door.

the noise of the storm leaves the room, but the presence of water makes an appearance; in front of her, caitlyn is soaking wet. the locks of her long hair shed fat drops of water, her uniform turns a darker shade where the drops landed, which becomes tighter and louder with every step she takes, leaving an unobtrusive trail for her craft.

cailtyn's eyebrows furrow. her lips open, but no sound comes from them. vi sits on the bed, her eyes match those of the blue-haired woman; it's been two weeks.

for the past few months an unorthodox routine has been going on in those four walls that vi calls home. she doesn't remember when it started, or how it became so recurrent, but when the nights became lonely and boring, she would catch herself waiting for a knock on the door.

or at least that was two weeks ago, when caitlyn showed signs of life.

"so, you came back from the dead" vi says, her legs manspreading

caitlyn purses her lips "i was busy"

"yeah, i can tell"

"things got... complicated" her hair sheds droplets of water; vi follows the path of one with her eyes, who descends caitlyn's long torso.

vi's eyes reconnect with caitlyn's as the droplet disappears "you don't owe me explanations" vi murmurs

vi can't figure out where in the recesses of her being such hostility comes from, she feels a little stupid about it, but she can't help it. two fucking weeks.

caitlyn's eyes transform, they become harder, less bright, emptier. "you are right. i dont owe you nothing" she says, her strong accent punctuating every word.

the atmosphere feels tense. the thunder continues to make a presentation in the sky, which lights up with each flash of lightning, small rays of light among so much darkness.

"so" vi says "what brings you here?"

vi knows, and caitlyn knows that vi knows. she knows why caitlyn is there, that night, when a thunderstorm is practically tearing the city apart. she could be anywhere, but there she is, in vi's disgusting room, which smells like alcohol and something that she cannot decipher.

caitlyn's furtive visits happen on random days of the week, sometimes in her civilian clothes, sometimes in her enforcer's clothes; usually at night time, when the streets of zaun lie uninhabited, where any sound could be mistaken for the rushing wind.

vi can recite this nightly routine as if it were the anthem: caitlyn shows up at her door with an excuse of being in the middle of an investigation, vi says she doesn't know anything about it, they argue, and then they fuck.

sometimes vi thinks caitlyn's lie isn't necessary, but she can't help but feel that it adds a more interesting twist to the whole thing.

"i heard that jinx has been around lately" caitlyn says, and vi smiles.

well, she hasn't used that one in a while. it's fair.

"mhm" vi says "so that is all it takes for you to come back. jinx."

"i already told you. things has been busy."

"no, i know" vi says "since deciding which fancy restaurant to go eat at every night must be complicated" she knows that she's been a little bit to hard on her, but she can't help to care.

caitlyn lets out a snort. everything she's saying is true, or at least partially true.

normally, caitlyn's secret, spontaneous visits occurred once a week, twice a week if she was feeling lucky, but those last two weeks luck was not something that characterized them. the weight of the power that her own family name inherited from her had been stealing overtime from caitlyn's life, and she had been feeling a little bit of a struggle to take care of it. sometimes caitlyn felt as if her last name was something tangible, a solid object she had to carry all day, every day, for the rest of eternity.

but her words aren't sincere enough to tell vi is that during these weeks apart, caitlyn has been searching for vi's essence in other women.

things were never easy between them. somehow, something always got left unsaid in between them, pricking like a thorn in the prettiest rose in the whole garden, pressing the skin against the thorn to see how long it can last before you hurt yourself.

she knows. she knows all of this is pointless, she knows that sex isn't enough with vi, that somehow nothing is enough with her lately. these last weeks, she found herself daydreaming about the curvature of her nose, the ink on her cheek, the scar on her lips.

but she can't afford that. even coming from a wealthy family, caitlyn can't afford the luxury of feelings, nothing there seems to have a price for her to get it, so the closest thing she can get is the sex.

and she knows that it may be selfish, but if that is the only thing she can get from vi, she will take it.

"i don't care if you don't believe me" caitlyn says "i dont know why i even bother to tell you".

her words sound harsh, her thick accent stands out.

when vi stands up, a few inches separate them. the only source of light from a dim lamp on the makeshift bedside table illuminates caitlyn's features, a dance of light and shadow reflected on her face. vi thinks that maybe the way her face is illuminated is her favorite aurora borealis.

vi's fingertips gently brush the seam of caitlyn's skirt, wrapping the fabric around her finger and causing a slight tug. she can see caitlyn's chest rise and fall.

"what are you really here for, cupcake?"

and that is all it takes.

vi still has her fight makeup on; the black shadow is scattered across her eyelids, there are spots where the shadow has patched and left large uneven chunks. she has a band-aid over her eyebrow and the artificially dyed hair lie messily across her face, but still, underneath all that, it doesn't stop her from seeing the moment when caitlyn leaves her performance and launches into her touch.

everything feels desperate. their lips fight fiercely in an intense kiss, the sound of saliva and wet lips floods the room that was once tamed by the rain outside. vi's hands clutch at caitlyn's jaw, who allows herself to be manipulated with pleasure.

none of it is tender; it's carnal. bot of them are aware of the sound of spit and heaving breaths heard in the room, but none of them seem to care enough to stop. two weeks.

caitlyn's slender, nimble fingers drop vi's leather jacket to the floor, which falls with a thud. her fingertips touch every inch of accessible skin with desperation, trying to memorize every detail, every texture of her physiognomy, to absorb every reaction of her body and then repeat the action and get the same results. the blue-haired woman's hands slip down vi's shirt until they find her breasts, where she squeezes and rubs, pinches and plays.

she loves vi's body. maybe it's superficial, but the way her muscles contract and her skin lies so tight is something that caitlyn could swear changes her brain chemistry.

she can feel how vi drags her toward the bed with steps too clumsy that they are both surprised when their bodies collide against the soft mattress and not the cold floor. caitlyn falls on top of vi, but quickly vi goes on top, leaving caitlyn's long body under her power. vi's hands navigate the full expanse of skin, her fingers sliding the fabric of caitlyn's skirt toward her hips, leaving the flesh of her thighs exposed.

vi's lips leave caitlyn's for a new adventure that begins at her neck. vi sucks and bites lightly like a famished animal, she can feel the taste of rain on caitlyn's skin, who lets out muffled moans.

she can feel vi's fingers squeezing the flesh of her inner thighs. the touch is hard and ecstatic, and both can predict the marks that will appear in the not-too-distant future. their fingers entwine in vi's hair, who whimpers as she is tugged with pleasure.

she has missed this. no one has ever treated her, or well, fuck her, like vi does. she likes that she doesn't feel the necessity of being in control with her, that she can lay down and vi will make her feel good no matter what. with vi, everything flows.

when other women got to touch caitly's body, she often found herself being overly calculating, the need to be in control of the situation overtaking her in a way where enjoyment was the last thing on the list, focused on displaying that performance for an imaginary audience.

last week, caitlyn found herself in a brothel. when the girl was eating her out, caitlyn couldn't force herself to enjoy the moment, so when she faked an orgasm and went home, she vowed never to return.

with vi, caitlyn is stripped of this obsessive need for control.

a flash of lightning illuminates the room. vi can see the desire in cait's eyes.

sometimes vi feels like it's all meaningless; too many nights have passed where the alcohol doesn't work as intended and her mind navigates the sea of worries that inhabit her being, convincing herself that the next time caitlyn shows up at her door, vi won't open it, that she will stop satisfying the needs of a piltover enforcer who only comes to her aid when the nights seem endless and sleep is not present, when frustration and the desire to ignore the exaggerated power she possesses suddenly invades her, guiding her blindly to that dark and lonely room. vi thinks that this is the only way she can break the cycle in half.

but then, for a fraction of a millisecond, she sees that familiar look in caitlyn's eyes and vi knows that her desire has betrayed her once again.

and she hates it. she hates that when all of the sex is over, she goes back to the same place where she started; drunk, beaten and missing a warmth that doesn't belong to her. there have been multiple nights when caitlyn's face where the only thing she could see, where every tone of midnight blue sent shocks through her whole body reminding her that she is alive, and alone.

but she'd rather have a little bit of caitlyn than none of her.

one night, after vi won a fight against a fucking monster -that's what she called him-, she went to a bar with loris, with the excuse that she deserved a good drink after she was about to be beaten to death. the night went well, loris bought her a drink and they talked about the next rounds, training, among other things, but when vi turned to look at loris, a flash of blue eyes caught her attention.

her ears were deafened and loris' words were forgotten. vi could have sworn she felt her heart stop for a few seconds, her skin drained of any trace of color and a bead of cold sweat ran down her spine, paralyzing her completely in a pigsty in the depths of zaun.

it wasn't many seconds before that woman turned around and her identity was revealed; it wasn't her. of course. she took a shot after that, and ended up throwing up on some random people's porch on the way back home, with loris by her side.

but that doesn't matter at the moment, not when vi's fingers slip inside caitlyn's underwear, the fabric of the skirt covering up that indecent act taking place in the privacy of four walls.

she didn't tell violet that these last two weeks she's been away she touched herself imagining that her fingers were vi's. or that she put a handful of pillows down imagining that it was vi beside her and not her usual solitude.

she wasn't allowed to say that.

vi straightens up. look at that view; the way cait is spreading her legs, the way her hips chase vi's touch, how her eyebrows furrow and her lips search for air. caitlyn's hands tug vi's t-shirt hard enough for vi to get the message. she pulls it off and tosses it to the floor, revealing her breasts to cait, who is already drooling.

they usually don't talk when they have sex, the only things that are uttered aloud are directions, like faster or louder, or some insult when vi pushes cait too hard when she is overstimulated.

the lack of talking is not because they don't care about each other, but because they have learned each other's bodies in such a way that they don't need words. a language so intimate that there are only two speakers in the whole world.

the bleached locks fall over her face in a perfectly messy way that caitlyn doesn't know whether to run them off or leave them there for her enjoyment, but before she can even decide, vi leans over and drops a trickle of saliva toward caitlyn's pussy.

caitlyn stifles a moan, her body getting used to the change in temperature. she feels vi's saliva running down her folds.

all of it it's so nasty, but she likes it.

vi's fingers quickly unbutton her pants, revealing the strap clinging to her pelvis. caitlyn wants to roll her eyes at that.

then she thinks if she is seeing someone else.

the head of the fake penis rubs against caitlyn's entrance. vi takes the length of it and moves it up and down, spreading that whitish liquid and sending shudders through the blue-haired woman's body.

vi feels mesmerized. the wet noises make her go crazy, the way caitlyn moves her hips in desperation, her lips letting out low moans. her fingers attack her clitoris, massaging that bundle of nerves as if all the time in the world belonged to her.

she knows she can make cait feel good, and that fills her with an explosion of power that vi feels drunk.

a thunderclap explodes outside, the earth beneath the floor that holds them trembles. the whole world belongs to them.

the light in the room is not bright enough to reveal how much they have missed each other.

another thunderclap.

caitlyn loves being teased by vi, but it's been two fucking weeks, and she can't wait anymore longer.

so when vi pulls out the strap, caitlyn pulls on vi's arm until her back hits the mattress and she's positioned on top of her body, her thighs on either side of vi's legs, who lies mesmerized by the sight.

her uniform is still on as if nothing has happened, the fabric of her skirt bunched up over her hips, a wet mark revealed in her underwear where vi touched her.

vi rests her weight on one of her arms, her torso is leaning back slightly, her other hand holds caitlyn's bare thigh.

"do you need help?" vi says. she feels like she hasn't used her voice in a million times. her throat itches.

caitlyn shakes her head. her hands seek support on vi's broad shoulders, which lend themselves without complaint. her body lifts a little, vi can see her chew her lower lip hard, and before sinking into the strap, caitlyn pulls her underwear to the side.

vi thinks that was the hottest thing ever. she also thinks she can cum with just that.

when caitlyn feels the base of the strap touch her skin, she lets out a sigh. she never tried this position with vi before, or with any other women. she feels full. somehow, her throat feels full, as if a million moans made themselves at home in her throat, and that at the slightest movement of her hips they'll all come rushing out.

she goes up, and then down. she does this a few times before she can get used to. her hands never leave vi's shoulders, squeezing the tanned skin tightly as the strap hits some sensitive part inside her. quickly, caitlyn's rhythm increases, who dances her hips faster and harder.

the sound of skin colliding is as dirty as it is addictive. vi lets out slight moans, not just from the sight, but because csitlyn's thrusts cause the base of the strap to rub against her clit, making her see stars.

vi's lips find their home again on caitlyn's neck, who facilitates access. everything feels hot. the redhead's skin burns, her neck carries a flush that extends into her cleavage, a path vi has traversed countless times. the pace only increases with each second, caitlyn's hips become unruly, the movements more awkward and faster. vi tilts her hips up, and the sound caitlyn makes is one she's never heard before.

she does this a couple of times before caitlyn starts to shake. vi's lips come up, capturing caitlyn's in a wet kiss, caitlyn fucks herself into vi while her mouth is getting fucked the same way by vi's tongue, who shamelessly assaults caitlyn's mouth.

more than a kiss it might seem like an attempt to shut the other up mutually, the guttural moans die on the other's tongue, vibrating at the movement of the onslaught. vi's hand travels from caitlyn's throat, caressing every inch of her body, squeezing the flesh of her hips and thighs, until it reaches her clitoris, where it presses.

she can't kiss caitlyn no more. she can't keep her mouth shut, her legs tremble and vi knows she's on the verge of an explosion. her moans sound more like whimpers, jumping on vi again and again.

"violet" cailtyn moans, her voice is shaky and high-pitched.

her pleasure is so great that it drugs her. caitlyn feels the need to vomit all her feelings to vi, to tell her that she really is the woman she imagined every time another girl touched her, that when she closes her eyes her scar on her lip is the only thing she can see, that her heart constantly seeks her warmth.

but she can't do it, so when she climaxes and the orgasm passes, she rises from vi's lap, her legs shaky and sticky

"let me know if you hear from Jinx."

and she's gone.

[deathlylampshade]

The bitch is back!! It’s been a looooong time since I’ve written anything, and since my fics have mostly always been x reader fics, I hope you all enjoy a little something different!

This is a CaitVi fluffy blurb, less than 700 words.

Warnings: none. Enjoy!

What nobody tells you about living in survival mode, is that the urge to protect yourself doesn’t go away just because you’re no longer in imminent danger. When your childhood was a crime scene, your adolescence a battle zone, and the early parts of your life a civil war, you no longer know what it means to stop picking up the pieces.

Caitlyn watches Vi from across the room. Her pink hair still tinged black at the ends, nearly matching the color of the circles under her eyes. She fidgets at nothing, biting her nails, hyper vigilance personified. In the weeks since she was found in the tower of the Hexcore gate, Caitlyn has barely heard her speak more than a sentence. The metaphorical pieces of their lives have been picked up and put back together, but it’s not enough. Having a roof over their heads won’t bring their families back. Not having to worry where their next meal will come from doesn’t heal the physical and mental scars from the last 10 years.

Caitlyn loses herself in thoughts of her mother, of Jayce, of before. She doesn’t catch that Vi has caught her staring. Doesn’t catch the worry that cuts through the sadness on her face, before resolving into a knowing smile.

“Cupcake,” Vi whispers, snapping Caitlyn out of her trance.

“I’m sorry, I- well, I was just…” Caitlyn trails off.

“I miss them, too.”

Caitlyn has never seen Vi cry. She heard it, once, nearly a year ago, but was too caught up in her own anger to pay attention. Watching the strongest person she knows crumple into herself, Caitlyn can barely keep it together. But Vi needs her, Vi needs someone to be there. After years of being on her own, following all of the years of parenting her sister and friends, Vi needed someone else to be the strong one right now.

Caitlyn crosses the room in three strides, and settles onto the couch. Vi looks up at her, cheeks pink with exhaustion and embarrassment, and opens her mouth to protest.

“Don’t.” Caitlyn starts, “Just let me take care of you.”

She wraps her arms around Vi’s shoulders, and Vi tenses for a split second at the affection, before relaxing fully and laying her head against Caitlyn’s chest. The pair stays silent for a moment, just taking each other in.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” Vi admits. “All I’ve ever known is taking care of my sister, all I’ve ever known is war and pain. I was never supposed to make it this far.”

Caitlyn sighs, and holds Vi tighter. “I know what you mean. My entire life’s purpose was making my parents proud, and then it was avenging my mother. Now that it’s over, I’m scared I have nothing left. But when I look over and see you, when I wake up and you’re next to me, that’s what keeps me going. I love you, Violet.”

Vi stiffens in Caitlyn’s arms, and then lets out a shaking sob. Love, she thinks. Her mind races with thoughts of Powder, even of Jinx. Of Vander, of her parents. And standing at the end of her imagination is Caitlyn. Caitlyn, unwavering in her loyalty, even when circumstance drove them apart. Strong, powerful, beautiful Caitlyn. The only woman Vi has ever loved. The only woman Vi thinks she’ll ever be able to love.

“I love you, too, Cupcake,” Vi finally looks Caitlyn in the eyes. “I need you.”

It’s a powerful admission, one Caitlyn doesn’t take lightly. She grabs Vi’s chin, and kisses her, chaste and quick.

“I’m not going anywhere. Whatever happens, whatever our new normal is, I want to do it with you.”