#I decided to steal his wings because | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fatesundress · 1 year

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical tombs 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, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ 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? Why don’t 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’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, 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.

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle fluff #tom riddle smut #tom riddle angst #(the trifecta)#tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world #ftltutbh

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narumi-gens · 5 months

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yandere!morax/zhongli x adeptus gn!reader note: takes place in the aftermath of the archon war

morax finds you where he always does on the few occasions he allows you time to yourself, kneeling in the garden with your hands folded in your lap and your head respectfully tilted down. it's been only a few decades since he took you for his own, a self-reward of sorts for a still freshly won war.

and what are a few decades to the immortal?

he supposes you spend so much time here because the gardens are so wide and open that they make the high, stone walls that keep you caged within his grasp seem slightly smaller by perspective.

there's a soft, spring breeze in the air, which picks up for just a moment as he chooses to sit on the grass directly in front of you with his legs crossed before him and his wrists casually resting on his knees.

your head remains down and your eyes stay closed, choosing not to acknowledge his presence.

"have you not grown bored after spending so much time alone with nothing but your thoughts?" his deep voice and teasing tone shatter the garden's tranquility, yet still you refuse to look at him. "I'm happy to provide you with whatever book you would like. all you need to do is ask."

"my prayers keep me occupied."

it's a dangerous admission on your part. as liyue's archon, he hears every prayer his people make yet he's never once heard yours. which means that your prayers aren't to him.

but he'll indulge you and play your game – for now at least.

"what do you pray for?"

"for liberation." your answer isn't a surprise. what else could you pray for?

"oh? and to whom do you pray?"

finally, you open your eyes and lift your chin to meet his gaze. there's a hardness in them that reminds him of the jewels the people of liyue put so much time and effort into mining. even the warm, gentle wind and the smell of blooming flowers it brings are incapable of softening your demeanor.

"the archons."

any trace of amusement immediately vanishes as his eyes flash dangerously. his pupils morph into the slits of his true, draconic form.

"I am your archon."

he doesn't mention the contract you signed during the archon war in concert with the other adepti, agreeing to protect liyue. he doesn't need to.

although with your powers now sealed away through his own means, there's little protection that you would be able to provide should you ever actually be called upon to do so. the only part of the contract that still pertains to you as you are now, as he's made you now, is the provision accepting morax as liyue's archon.

it's a provision that he worded carefully in the specific contract he offered you, where you not only accepted him as the prime of adepti, but also swore eternal subservience to him as part of it.

"you are one archon," you remind him coldly, raising an eyebrow in challenge, daring him to contradict what is fact. "one of seven."

he offers you a patronizing smile in return.

"tell me, then. which of the remaining six do you think would be foolish enough to answer you?"

he only decides to humor you because he knows the answer is none of them. no archon would risk upsetting the peaceful but precarious balance they had just spent centuries, more than a millennium, fighting for.

and to break this unspoken contract amongst the seven in order to steal his greatest treasure right out from under him wouldn't just be foolish. it would be reckless.

but then his sight turns a pure, blood red that he hasn't experienced since the final days of the archon war. his fingers begin to elongate as they transform into claws. his horns make a grotesque cracking sound as they emerge from his skull. his teeth sharpen as he bares his fangs openly.

because a sudden divine energy has appeared between you and you open your clasped hands to reveal a glowing, teal-colored gem bearing a pair of spread wings.

"the god of freedom, it would seem."

#tumblr is really making me work in order to post my first genshin fic #tumblr is a genshin gatekeeper!#tw yandere #zhongli x reader #morax x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #zhongli #genshin #genshin impact #mel writes #yandere zhongli

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seichira · 2 years

Text

door into your heart.

haitani ran has never had to fight for a girl’s attention. well, at least before you came along and changed the game. it is his first time trying to win someone’s heart, and he’s getting more desperate the longer you keep him on the ledge.

pairing : bonten!ran haitani x college!reader

content : mostly fluff, kinda angsty, swearing, mentions of violence, and basically ran just trying to get the girl.

ran thinks it’s absolutely insane that a girl has got him wrapped around her little fingers, and he knows it, he just willingly submits himself to it.

let’s start from where all the glitches in the universe as he calls them, started. meeting you.

you see, ran haitani is used to women throwing themselves at him. the man can get whatever and whoever he wants at a snap of a finger.

his childhood was rough and all he had was rindou—and he’s not a saint not to enjoy all of life’s perks now that he’s reached the top, isn’t he? admit it, he has been through enough shit to take it easy for once.

they started off ruling ropponggi, having a bunch of men do whatever they command. they lived off the glory of winning street fights and taking down gang leaders after gang leaders.

it was cool, alright. but looking back, that place seems to be just a playground compared to the chokehold they have on the entire country. japan is essentially theirs.

when a person is on top of the world, no words could possibly describe the feeling of being a king. ran haitani himself found himself at that position.

however, the thing about reaching the top is there is nowhere else to go. what follows after is boredom, ennui, and just… rotting away in the repetitiveness of the days. killing, manipulating, torturing, stealing.

he was getting sick of it.

at the height of his much-too-early midlife crisis that he believes came early because he is going to die earlier than everyone else, he flew back to tokyo in hopes that he can drown himself in alcohol at some bar that has no connections to bonten.

he hops out of his ferrari that he parked on the other side of the street adjacent to the local bar, and he is just about to cross it when he hears an exasperated grunt and a loud sound of metal nearby.

the first instinct was ignore it, but another grunt came and he finally snapped his head towards the direction of the disrupting noise in this peaceful part of town.

there, ran sees you struggling to pull the storefront rollup gate down. judging by the apron you seem to forget to remove, it is easy to deduce that you are a barista at the coffee shop you’re currently trying to close for the night.

being the brute that he is, ran keeps his distance from you and remains standing near his car, leisurely watching you struggle.

he chuckles to himself. that shit is cute, he thinks.

it is your first time having to work the closing shift and you had no idea how heavy these things were until you tried it. when all hope leaves you, you groan and sit on the pavement to wait for some energy to come back before trying again.

that is when ran haitani finally decides to spread out his imaginary angel wings and come to your rescue. he approaches you slowly and his footsteps make no sound at all, making you flinch in surprise when the gate suddenly closes and locks on where it is supposed to be.

you look up at the man who just saved you a ton of energy and time, and you stand up to face him. it takes you aback, though, with the way he towers over you. people can be this tall?

but if you were taken aback, the man in front of you is completely blown away. your hair is messy probably because you just finished a shift, you are wearing a simple polo shirt beneath your dirtied apron, paired with skinny jeans—and the man thinks, what a fucking beautiful woman.

this man has seen all kinds of women in the fanciest of outfits, and yet, here he is, totally mesmerized by an obviously exhausted girl trying to make money.

“phew. thank you! you totally rescued me because i was just about to run away and possibly get fired for leaving the coffee shop open overnight.”

he shrugs at your gratitude because he literally did nothing. the gate weighed like paper to him. not only is he not used to saying you’re welcome, he also does not really do much things to receive a thanks.

still, he says, “you’re welcome.”

“have a good night, mister!” you say to finally walk home since it’s a fifteen-minute walk from there.

you work two jobs to get yourself through university after deciding you won’t ever burden your parents anymore, so it is justified how you just want to lay down on your bed on a friday night.

ran finds it too much of a waste to let such a pretty girl go just like that, which is very uncharacteristic for him because he never does that when he knows there are others out there in his disposal.

but he can’t let you walk away.

“wait, miss.”

you turn back to look at him, “hm? yes?”

fuck, even her voice is cute.

“this… coffee shop. why’d you have to close it yourself? you don’t have security guards or something?”

you shake your head like it’s the most normal thing ever, “nope. the owner can’t afford something of that sort. the business is financially tight after the new coffee shop nearby opened.”

“which one?”

you state the name of the coffee shop that almost put you out of a job. thankfully, your boss liked your work ethics enough to keep you in their staff.

“thanks again, mister. i have to go home—”

ran scrambles his brain to find another excuse to keep you for longer. at this point, it is already unusual to him how you still haven’t asked his name. he cannot believe that he’s doing so much just to continue talking to you.

“you’re walking home?”

“yep! it’s good exercise, you know?” you giggle before pointing at the black ferrari just a few steps away. ��i believe that’s yours?”

he nods. “looks sick, doesn’t it?”

“looks like someone’s got trust funds,” you joke. it earns a laugh from ran haitani, a man who hasn’t laughed in ages. holy shit, he utters in his head.

“not trust funds, honey. i don’t have a rich mommy and daddy. worked like hell to get that shit.”

your eyebrow raises, and you smile. “well, something must be very wrong with this life because i work like hell and i’m nowhere near affording that!”

it intrigues him, how you talk like you’ve got nothing on you but be lighthearted about it. when he had nothing, he was miserable. how could you smile like that? much more so, smile so beautifully?

“want me to drive you home? it’s dangerous in this part of town. don’t want you to go missin’ on me before you get to afford a ferrari.”

you are quick to turn him down with a flick of your hand, “oh, no thanks. i’m grateful for your help but who knows if you’re the dangerous part of town?”

he laughs again because you are absolutely right, but you have no idea that no harm will ever come close to you when you’re with him.

“you can call anyone and give them all my cards so they’ll know who took you home. safely.”

“i appreciate it, but really, it’s fine. there are some catcallers here and there but believe me, i can trashtalk them just as fine.”

his brows furrow at the thought. it makes him uncomfortable knowing you have to go through that, and you’re used to it.

“you sure?” he asks again but does not impose because he understands your doubts. it truly is hard to trust someone nowadays.

“i am.”

you walk home after waving goodbye to the tall, handsome, purple-haired man with a clean cut—ready to forget him.

with all the good intentions left in his heart, he waits a few seconds for you to be at a safe distance before he quietly follows you home. just to make sure you get there safely.

true enough, there are a few men loitering along the streets. when they call you names and shout lewd remarks, ran is just ready to intervene.

but you flip off the men and shout, “you filthy fucking pigs! this is why you lead such petty little lives without a wife to love you!”

once he sees you get inside the apartment complex, he shoves his hands in his pockets, approaches the men and gave them a few threats and injuries. afterwards, he walks back to his car.

you were right—this was good exercise.

ran abandons his earlier plans and heads home for the night. and if it isn’t clear, he thinks about you the entire drive home until his eyes drifts off to sleep.

that was how you met ran haitani.

the next events were just batshit crazy. the nearby coffee shop closed down and business was back as usual. your schedules were changed into something that will allow you to have some time to study and even rest. in the blink of an eye, as if something shifted, everything was suddenly convenient for you.

but behind the scenes is ran haitani.

alongside all of the crazy happenings in your life, ran haitani never leaves you alone. literally the next day after your first encounter, he shows up at the coffee shop you work at with an irritated look on his face.

“what’re you so grumpy for? where’s the smile you had on last night? didn’t expect to see you here, mister. would you like to order?”

“why did you arrive just now?” he looks at the nameplate you just clipped on your apron, and it wasn’t there last night. “y/n.”

“what do you mean?”

“been waiting for you here for two hours already, thought i’d come by and see if you were able to make it home alive last night.”

you stifled a laugh, “obviously, i did. and i only start here very late at night. it’s a part-time. i study in the good part of the day and i work a waitressing job at a pub, then this one.”

his eyes widen, and the one thing he immediately thinks of is how you do not have to do all that if he just gives you what he has. he has more than enough money to last lifetimes. giving you some wouldn’t hurt, right?

he is not even surprised when you turn that offer down. he’s disappointed, but he saw it coming.

after months of clinging to your side like a leech, the man is irrevocably in love with you. like down bad. like there-is-no-getting-out-of-this in love.

seriously, how could he not?

he sees you work so hard, so independently, and face so much shit the world throws at you and still have the will to be fucking smiling at him?

when he told you about his work, which took him about three months to finally confess to you, your answer was, “i stand corrected. that is good exercise.”

the man was BAFFLED. you accept it, just like that? no judgments? no shouting? no cursing? no condemning him for all of his sins?

you continued, “i know how hard this life is and i won’t blame people for doing what they have to do to survive. i’d rather not get involved with that, ran, so keep me away from it… but as for you, i don’t mind.”

you said all that but when he confessed his feelings for you the very first time, you turned him down. it was for a good reason—you had to graduate and earn a degree so you can finally have a good-paying job. being in a relationship with anyone is putting that at risk, and it was a risk you couldn’t take.

he understood.

the second time he confessed, after a year, he was at your new apartment that you purchased all on your own. it was small, but it was yours, so he loved it.

this time, he was sure that you loved him too. the problem is, you told him that you want him to court you first. until you give him your sweet yes, every interaction has to be friendly.

ran didn’t understand, but it was what you wanted, so he courted you in ways that he absolutely had no idea how, but had to try anyway.

“court me, and i’ll see if you deserve me.”

well, no shit. he has been courting you for a year now.

everything is slowly falling into place. your job is getting stable. your apartment is getting filled with more upgrades. you don’t have to live off cup noodles anymore (although ran made sure you lived well with all the help you accepted from him after he met you). the bills are paying themselves.

but you won’t give ran the time of day. you were such a tease. brushing your hands with his but never truly holding it. hugging his huge figure but never fully embracing him, except on your graduation when he was the only person who went to congratulate you. speaking with your lips close to his but never kissing him.

being with him but never telling him you love him.

but you are. you are in love with ran haitani. you are aware of the things he does for you, and they do not go unappreciated.

the flowers he casually gives you even without an occasion. visiting your place just to cook your meals when you are too lazy to feed yourself. taking care of you when you are sick and even when you aren’t. spending all his money on you albeit discreetly so you won’t scold him. quitting the vices you hated. being your personal driver. leaving important work behind when you need him.

basically being there.

being present.

being your person.

you finally decide that it is time to give in to what you want. to love him without inhibitions. life has been hard enough and it is about time to just… give in to all the things you were deprived of.

ran is an impatient man, and you think it should be humanity’s greatest feat that he was able to wait for you this long.

you know better than anyone that he can wait for as long as you need him to, but the wait ends now. you cannot wait anymore, and neither can he.

sitting inside the car, stopping at the basement parking, ran waits for you to step out first because you made it clear that while you two are just friends, he will never be allowed to open doors for you.

“ran?”

“yeah?”

you unbuckle your seatbelt to lean forward and kiss him on the lips. he freezes at first, and the thoughts wilding inside him screams, what the fuck?! is this really fucking happening?!

when he recovers just as you pull away, he pulls your nape and deepens the kiss. he pours out all the years he spent waiting to cross this line on this kiss.

and you return all of them.

he pulls away to rest his forehead on yours, “what’s the meaning of this? are you… what is… is this what i think this is, baby?”

you nod with tears on your eyes.

“you can open my door for me.”

#⏳ — lumi’s fics!#OH MY GOD WHAT DID I JUST DO #tokyo revengers imagines #tokyo revengers fics #tokyo revengers x reader #ran haitani fics #ran haitani imagines #ran haitani angst #ran haitani fluff #ran haitani x reader #ran haitani

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doki-doki-imagines · 5 months

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Heyy can you do more of those angel reader with the mk1 earthrealmers? Pleaseeee they are so good!!! Maybe this time they are all down bad for the reader and the reader feeling very tempted? 😍😍😍🥹🥹🥹

previous part

Johnny Cage: -Every time he looks at you, he bites his lower lip and eyes close a little; his gaze is so intense… -You are not used to being desired, and you know what he feels for you is sinful. -But DAMN, sin never looked so appetising for you like right now. -You tell Johnny about this. It's all nice and hot, 'till your position isn't at risk. -He understands, or at least nods his head. You aren't sure he really understood anything. -The real question is: for how long will you be able to resist his tempting gaze?

Kenshi Takahashi: -Kenshi is gonna pull out all the rizz power that he has hidden for all this time. -He has been young and extremely confident, breaking more than one heart and stealing others. He can do it. -IF ONLY IT WAS THAT EASY. -His palms sweat, and more than once, he stuttered in front of you like a teenager in front of their first crush. -You find him so cute that you decide to kiss his cheek, your wings protecting you both from unwanted eyes. -You kiss him near the corner of his lips, his stubble scratching you a little. -Kenshi blushes immediately, stuttering without being able to say a word. He really is a cute man.

Raiden: -He blushes every time you get near him, but his body always searches for yours. -Raiden hopes that the light coming from your wings will hide his "dumb fool in love" expression. -They don't, and you find him more adorable each day. -It's after a long day at the fields that you decide to visit him, droplets of sweat running down his forehead. -"I think you need to refresh." Raiden doesn't even understand what is happening, your lips on his own, something like a flow running in his soul… -"See? Good like you just woke up." You pinch his cheek before going back to your room. Raiden actually refreshed, no sign of sweat or tiredness. -But damn, his heart is running kilometres.

Kung Lao: -He hates how you made him blush like a kid last time. It's time for revenge. -"Good morning, Lao!" You smile at him, waving from the window of your room. "…" Doctor, we are losing him!! Bring the defibrillator!!! -He has no chance against you, but Lao has no desire to throw in the towel. -"Don't try to be a sour fox, angels dislikes it." You tell him before your lips brush against his ones. -A punishment after one of his pranks. Is this the punishment for naughty kids? -Lao isn't sure he wants to stop.

Liu Kang: -He was already down bad he can't get worse. -As much as Liu Kang has to look like a respectable leader, he'll always try to sneak away to be next to you. -"Liu Kang." "Yes, dear?" "You like me, right?" "Yeah, you are amazing with all of us." "You know I don't mean it in that way!" -Making an angel lose patience isn't easy. Good job, Liu Kang! -Now it is a game of soft gesture and teasing glances! Who will lose first?

Geras: -He goes straight to the point. "I like you more than a friend." "!!!!!!" -You are mostly worried for your position, not sure angels are allowed to have relationships. -"I know what you are thinking. I checked, nothing bad will come from our union." -That's why you fell for him. Geras makes you always feel secure.

Bi-Han: -He fights you because he doesn't know any other way to get close to you. -But it's when you put him back on the ground, wings spread wide and flaming swords pointing at his throat, that Bi-Han understands that maybe you aren't that bad. -He always wants to train with you, nagging and nagging 'till you let go and do as he asks. -"If you want to go out with me, you should take me to a date." "Why when I can get you and improve my technique?" "Because if we keep fighting, I'll cut your throat open before we can kiss."

Kuai Liang: -He is so enchanted by you that Liang just lose the ability to speak. -So he spars with you, muscles going by memory so Liang doesn't need his brain. "Your scar-" "It reminds me of terrible memories." "It gave you a beautiful new light. Be proud of what you've become." You say, thumb brushing his scar near the corner of his lips. -He'll nod and blush. -If only this light gave him the courage to ask you out…

Tomas Vrbada: -He goes straight to the point! Well, Tomas stutters and blushes but won't wait much before revealing his feelings. -Also, because he was totally obvious. -Tomas grips your hand and tells you his feelings, a guy so big looking like a puppy while revealing his feelings. -He makes you blush… -"Will you go out with me?!" "Yes!" Your wings spread at your reply, white feathers surrounding you both. -You both look like fools in love.

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ratatouillewastakendammit · 1 year

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I just KNOW hawks has the most sensitive wings. Like you grip them? Eyes rolling, head spinning. He would whine so cutely too and then be all blushy about it because he didn't mean to whine like that you just caught him by surprise!! I would LOVE to see a hawks fic with focus on how sensitive those chicken wings of his are 😌😭 bonus points if he subconsciously grinds against whatever he's on top of everytime you play with them. Head. Empty.

This is so canon it's not even funny

Sensative

Pairing: Hawks x reader

Warnings: Smut, feather play?? idek but enjoy

Word Count: 1.7k

The first time was an accident.

It had been a long day, nothing out of the ordinary from Keigo's career as a pro-hero, but long nonetheless.

Over the course of your relationship, you have come to find that the average workday in his employment field was not only physically draining, but mentally as well.

And there were some days when the duties were just extraordinarily taxing, fatigue weighing on even the most durable of mindsets.

So when your boyfriend trudged through the door and met you in the kitchen, slumping into your arms with a short hum to complete the certified routine he had adopted at times like this, it wasn't that much of a surprise.

What was surprising was his reaction to your touch.

The oven sounded and you slipped your arms from under his, offering a quiet laugh at his mumbled protest. You reached to push him away to get to the food in the oven, hand accidentally brushing past the base of his wings instead of that of his back as he moved as well.

Initially, you hadn't really thought much of it.

But just as the tips of your fingers were leaving, you felt it; a slight shiver trailing down his spine, one that would've been left unnoticed if you hadn't been internally complaining about the summer heat moments ago.

You paused, opening your mouth to ask if he was alright when the stove interrupted you once more, stealing your attention and capturing the unanswered inquiry.

So yes, the first time was an accident.

But the second?

Not so much.

You were both settled on his couch, some Food Network channel buzzing in the background. With his arm draped over your shoulder, Keigo's wings encircled your bodies from each side, relaxing in the absence of his work's constant demands.

In your defense, it wasn't as if you had been actively searching for trouble. In fact, you hadn't thought of the occurrence since it happened.

But as your body sunk into his, your mind decided to conjure the memory, luring your line of sight to the red fluff underneath your body.

Without thinking, you reached out and trailed your hand through the scarlet plumage. The feathers rippled in the wake of your touch like a fiery sea. You had never really contemplated how soft and delicate they felt when in their unhardened form, much less how pretty they were.

However, these facts definitely weren't captivating enough to distract you from the way Keigo stiffened next to you.

"You okay?" You asked, surprised at the sudden tenseness.

He nodded, but you knew him well enough to tell that it was distant, almost like he was trying his best to avoid acknowledging it.

Mirroring his actions, you settled back into the faux-leather, silently awaiting for a chance to test your curiosity.

Guy Fieri had come on and was raving about a fried chicken sandwich, efficiently ensnaring Keigo's attention between a potato bun.

Thanks, Guy.

Raising your hand as discreetly as possible, you quickly drew your fingers down the side of his wings, skimming the ends with the tip of your pinky.

And then you heard it.

A whine, so quiet that it would've went unheard if the television's volume was increased a few notches, but heard nonetheless.

Your gaze shot up to his face, which seemed to slowly be taking on the same shade as his feathers. "Did you just-"

"No!" He crossed his arms.

Eyes wide, you attempted to pry them open, crawling on top of his lap like a child that had just discovered some new toy. "Yes, you did!"

Regardless, he held firm, averting his line of sight from yours. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Brows furrowed, you mimicked his closed position for a few seconds before allowing a playful grin to spread over your face. "Alright, let me show you then."

You reached out, but he caught your wrist with expert speed, just centimeters away from your target. With a surprised yelp, you were tugged underneath him with your back on top of the sofa's padding.

Obviously, his quickness wasn't unknown, but the soft tint of pint coating his cheeks definitely was, at least to you. It drew a curious grin on your features.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's embarrassing." He mumbled, jutting out his lower lip.

Moments like this were few and far between, especially with someone possessing a naturally cocky attitude such as Keigo's. As of now, you were giving a valiant attempt to quietly observe the unfamiliar behavior.

But his sulking expression drew a bubble of amusement from your chest. Despite your best efforts, your laughter only grew at the visible tic-mark across his forehead.

"See? You're laughing!" He pawed at your face, trying to quell your snickers in a way that only made it worse.

"I'm not trying to be mean, I promise." Grabbing his hand, you laced it through yours, letting it rest there until your giggles died down. "You're just cute when you pout."

Letting out a huff, he buried his face in your neck. The warmth of his skin against yours wasn't surprising, especially with the reddish hue still coating it.

"'M not cute." He muttered, peppering kisses past your collarbone, bringing another chortle from your lips from the ticklish feeling.

"I think you're very cute, especially now that I know you're so sensitive.."

Leaning back, he offered you an impish grin that had your heart flutter. "You think I'm shy?"

You nodded, letting your hand hang from the back of his neck. "Mhm. I don't think I've ever heard you whine before."

He scoffed. "You caught me off guard. It won't happen again."

Rolling your eyes, you dropped his arm. "I'm sure."

This time, when you reached out, he didn't stop you, allowing your hand to stroke the end top ends of his wings. The gesture did more than usher a quiet shiver, you observed, as he began to roll his hips into yours.

"Shit." You breathed, recognizing the shape of his hard-on pressing against you through his sweatpants.

"You really are such a brat." He let out a low groan when you gripped the outer edges just behind his shoulder blades.

"Arguably one of my best qualities." The statement was meant to be witty, but your tone wavered at the soft tickle of his erection brushing against your clit.

"Oh, definitely." Seeming to have noticed the tiny falter as well, he allowed a mischievous grin to ink across his features. "Gives me an excuse to fuck it out of you."

Keigo slipped a hand under your shirt, continuing to grind down as he began to rub at your breasts. You squirmed underneath his touch, releasing a soft sigh when he rolled your nipple between his fingers.

"Too bad you can't take it like you dish it out, though."

Of course, he didn't mean it. He reveled in the way he made you feel, whether it be the way you would avert your gaze in embarrassment or the not-so-subtle shift in your thighs at his degrading words.

Warmth was beginning to spark in your abdomen and you slowly lips your hips to meet his, an act as unconscious as his own.

Still, the friction wasn't enough, especially with the layers of fabric that were acting as a barrier in the most perturbing way possible. You moved to touch yourself, but he quickly caught your wrist, guiding it upward to grasp the other covert of his wing.

"I got ya, Sweetheart. Just don't stop, yeah?"

You nodded, trying to keep your hold steady even as he snaked a hand under the hem of your shorts, his thumb brushing against your clit.

Two fingers pushed into you, prompting a gasp that had you involuntarily gripping his feathers. He groaned when at the action, the grind of his body into yours increasing in speed.

With one final thrust he pulled away, linking his arms under your thighs to carry you towards the bedroom.

"So dramatic over one little whine." He grumbled, peppering your neck with his mouth.

If you had half a mind left, you would've made some snarky comment about the blush still covering the tips of his cheekbones. However, your conscious thought was already thrown out the window, replaced by physical desperation.

"Doesn't matter." He placed you on the mattress, tugging down your shorts as he fiddled with his own sweatpants. "I'll just have to make sure you do it louder."

He brought his thumb back to your clit, stroking the over-sensitive nub until you were squirming under him.

Gently prying your fingers from the sheets, he led them to grip his wings once more. "Hands up, lovebird."

They were nothing short of magnificent, you realized, fully extended to reach past the ends of the bed. Each scarlet feather seemed so delicate and flawless, hung over the sharp lines of his shoulder blades like a blazing cloak of satin.

The soft squeeze that you issued to them had his eyes rolling back, an act followed by a coarse grown on his part. You weren't even sure he fully realized what he was doing as he bottomed out, drawing a pleasured cry from your throat.

He took a moment before leaning down to allow you more access to the appendages, beginning to thrust into you as your hands trailed out from the muscles of his back.

Placing a kiss against your lips, he continued to fondle your clit, synchronizing the motions he made with each stroke against his wings.

The sounds he brought from the both of you reeked of carnal hunger. They matched his eyes, the bronze of his irises practically glowing in desire.

Similarly to his feathers, you had always subconsciously admired their beauty, especially when they were hazed over, trained on you in adoration and lust.

He leaned down, breath warm against your ear that sent a shiver down your spine.

"We'll see who's the sensitive one."

#was watching triple D when while writing the first half #mha hawks #bnha hawks #hawks x reader #hawks smut #keigo takami x reader #keigo takami #bhna smut #mha smut #bnha #hawks x you #keigo x reader #keigo x you #mha #bnha imagines

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anxiousnerdwritings · 1 year

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Spider-Man!Reader x Gotham City ??!? like the poor reader just being a kid when they’re exposed to some sort of radioactive spider by one of the Joker’s schemes and begins being the friendly, neighbourhood superhero. some of the baddest of the baddest have watched this kid help old people cross the street or carry groceries home or help kids out with the most miscellaneous things and just declared them “off hands” in some sort of weird immunity thing as they just let him do his thing whilst taking turns watching over him. one time the Joker tried fucking with him and he ended up being jumped by life fifteen bad guys and one good guy all because they knew something was wrong when he didn’t show up for school.

All the big baddies and heroes alike know the Reader’s true identity but they keep their mouths shut and just leave them be like they aren’t any the wiser and totally haven’t stalked the shit out of the poor kid in their extremely invasive way of keeping an eye on them.

I love the idea of the villains going out of their way to tell their respective heroes about the Reader and getting them to take the Reader on as a sidekick. This way they can ensure their darling is in good and capable hands while also getting the best training possible to become an even better hero then they already are. Like, I could see all of the rogues (excluding Joker) pulling up on Batman along with a very nervous and shy Reader, telling Batman that he needs to take this kid under his wing. This totally backfires on them though and Batman and the batfamily grow extremely attached to the Reader.

Also, I totally see the big baddies taking it easy on the Reader whenever they have to fight (that is if the villain even decides to ‘fight’ the Reader), even Deathstroke is pretty chill and holds back on them to an extent. Although, the reactions to the Reader being able to hold their own no matter who they’re up against is great though, the amount of pride and

No doubt that other villains and heroes outside of Gotham come to learn about the Reader. Especially the fact that their apparently ‘hands-off’ to any and all villains. It definitely results in other big baddies testing the limits regarding the Reader and being the one to actually get to them. Meanwhile, other heroes are definitely forming their own attachments for the Reader. Especially Clark and Diana, they definitely want to steal the Reader from Bruce and the batfamily.

I could totally see the Reader given how pure and just overall optimistic and hopeful they are being able to convert quite a few villains into becoming more good than bad or full on rehabilitating them. Whether the villain is actually rehabilitated is debatable and depends on the specific baddie but at least they’re trying to go along with it for the Reader’s sake.

God forbid anyone hurts the Reader or worse, they will come to regret the day they were born if any of the heroes and villains have anything to do about it. It’s one thing for them to do something to the Reader, the baddies have an agreed on line they don’t cross no matter what regarding fighting the Reader but anyone who does cross that line, whether on accident or not, is in for a real painful experience they’ll never forget.

#anxious answers #yandere dc villains #yandere batfamily #yandere justice league #yandere dc #yandere dc villains concept #yandere batfamily concept #yandere justice league concept #yandere dc concept #yandere concept

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wandixx · 3 months

Text

Ghost of fries and Hero of cookies

All work words count: 14 593

Words in this part: 2 224

Summary of whole work: Duke wasn't expecting to wake up from his quick rooftop nap to some meta kid with fries. He also wasn't expecting kid to stay Or Danny asked Dani to stay safe while she was in Gotham. Where would she be safer than under the wing of local hero? And he looked like he needed bad day combo anyway

This part summary: First meeting and training discussions Beta read by @audhumla-sailor though English is second language for both of us, so proceed with this in mind. I also know all of the charaters through fics alone, so probably ooc. Stay catious if it's something you don't like

Duke was running out of fumes to run on. Last few days would be exhausting if it was just vigilante or just civilian stuff but no, he had to have it both. Because of Arkham break out he had been called in three nights in a row, not for a whole patrol but he couldn't exactly sleep it of during the day like others did, especially not in a week when every teacher decided they need to have test or quiz or what not. Naps meant he wasn't as sleep deprived as he could be but he needed far more. But he couldn't because crime in Gotham never sleeps so he had normal patrol to finish and there were about two ours left.

Would something bad happen if he just stopped for a moment and laid on a roof? Ten up to fifteen minutes. It was a slow day too...

Yeah, no, he deserved a moment to rest and if something disastrous was to happen in the meantime he would shame other Bats for not giving him enough time to sleep.

It certainly said something that he found gravel covering this roof to be quite comfortable. He set a timer for ten minutes and let himself close his eyes.

When loud screech of timer jolted him awake, he was suddenly fully aware that he wasn't alone anymore. He sat up a little too quickly.

"Oh, you're awake," white haired girl around Damian's age chimed, sitting cross legged just few feets away from him. She wore something that could only be described as an unholy mix of lab safety hazmat and skintight workout jumpsuit, white and black. When had Gotham gotten a new vigilante? "Good, I just returned from snack hunt," she added, gesturing at a big textile bag lying next to her. Duke didn't have enough brainpower to do anything more than ask.

"What?"

Girl shrugged, take out from BatBurger in her hand.

"You look like you have a bad day if not few days, so I've got you my cousin's bad day combo or at least closest thing I could. BatBurger burger isn't as good as NastyBurger but you certainly have better fries," as she spoke, second take out bag, 1 quart bottle of energy drink, juice bottle of same size and pack of convenience store brownies joined greasy paper bag sealed with a sticker.

"Is your cousin a speedster?" Excuse Duke, it was a totally valid question, he saw with his bare eyes both Wally West and Bart Allen when they visited Manor. Noone else would be able to stomach the amount of food they inhaled during their stays.

"Nah, we're not that fast or that hungry. Though I think I may get closer to speed of sound," So, clearly a meta if white hair and weir aura that let his eyes rest weren't enough indication "My cousin when he has bad few days he often forgets to eat so this combo has to help with there too. But I'll steal your fries of course."

Duke was not going to look gift horse in teeth, so he grabbed one bag and tore it open. There was classic combo with bigger fries and NightWings inside.

"Thank you..." he trailed off, hoping that girl would take a clue and introduce herself but she didn't. She just drowned her fries in ketchup and started munching. She had her own juice.

"My cousin always said that each part of this combo has different purpose," she explained instead, slightly muffled because of fries in her mouth, "This" she gestured towards fast food meal "is to sooth your stomach. This "she tapped energy drink "is to sooth your brain and kick it back online. This "she raised bottle of juice, "is to sooth your taste buds because energy drinks are war crime against them and this "she nudged brownies "is to sooth your heart because Ancients damn it, this day is awful and you deserve it. At least that's what he told me when I had day bad enough to deserve that," she shrugged, licking ketchup of her finger. Suddenly she froze "You aren't allergic, are you?

"No, I'm not," he confessed bewildered.

"Good"

For a long moment they sat in silence, devouring food the little girl brought. Duke distantly wondered if this was how night shift spent their snack breaks. It felt nice.

He was finishing his part of brownies when girl spoke up again.

"Do you feel better now?"

"Yeah" he was a little surprised to realize that it was true. He'll have to note down what she put in this 'bad day combo'. "Thank you"

"Don't mention it," she shrugged with general gesture of dismissal, "You're one of my cousin's favorite heroes because you're vaguely his age and handle Gotham alone during the day and I quote, "she did honest to God air quotes at that" 'As only hero in Amity-' which is a lie by the way, Val is doing great and even if he suddenly got problem with how she feels about his alter ego, he still has Sam and Tuck even if they're usually more of moral support. And I helped when I visited, so no, he isn't only one. Anyway as he said 'As only hero in Amity, my heart goes out for anyone who deals with this type of bullshit so Dani if you absolutely have to prank heroes, leave them out of it, especially Signal, he can't be older than Jazz, he doesn't need any more mess to handle.' All aliens and lanterns are also off limits because he is a space nerd. But you aren't space related so I'm like 80% percent sure he has celebrity crush on you," she slurped more juice, unbothered.

Duke was thankful he wasn't swallowing anything because for sure she would choke. He took split second to consider addressing... this whole situation and choose not to. He was not ready to be anyone's celebrity crush.

"Your name is Danny?" he asked instead.

"Dani" she corrected" with an I"

"Ok. It's nice to meet you Dani-with-an-I," She giggled, nodding her head slightly.

"It's nice to meet you too Signal"

Duke stood up, stretching a little. Dani joined him after hastily putting all the trash in her bag. She was a little higher than expected.

"I have to get back to my patrol"

"Cool," she drifted back a bit, making him realize that she was floating a few inches above the ground. She fixed her bag on her arm.

"Hey, can I hang out a little bit more? My cousin will go green out of jealousy when I tell him," she added with a mischievous smirk but Duke could tell there was more to it. He took a moment to consider it, which apparently made girl nervous "I can be invisible the whole time, like before," she offered, disappearing in the meantime. He could still tell where she was, because of her heat signature and other waves she excluded but for regular people she would be no different than surrounding air.

"Yeah, you can hang around and you don't have to be invisible. Just don't get in my way when I have to actually do some fighting."

She popped back to visible spectrum and pouted like Damian whenever he got benched.

"I can fight, y'know? I stopped mugging on a snack run."

It was ten god damn minutes, how could she get so much food and stop mugging in such a short time?!

Oh, right, superspeed. Still, impressive.

"I haven't seen it-" he started, channeling all Dick-trying-to-wrangle-Damian-into-socially-acceptable-activity energy he could muster "-so I don't know how you fight or even what powers do you have. If we tried to fight together we would trip over each other" It was a bare faced lie, Bat training made sure of that but he knew for fact that if he said anything else, the girl would be mad and probably did her own thing.

Was that what Bruce thought about all of them?

Oh no.

Dani still looked displeased but after a moment of consideration she nodded with a defeated sigh.

Suddenly she straightened like she got struck by lightning and whipped around.

"Wha-"

She just shushed, raising finger to her mouth. Duke did indeed quietened.

"I have enhanced hearing," she whispered "There is a mugging somewhere this way."

"Let's go then," he shot his grapple, waving his other hand at Dani to come with him before he jumped off the roof. He heard the girl giggle as she flew right after him.

"After this you'll show me the coolest gargoyles, okay? Sam asked for photos"

"Okay"

It seemed that the end of this patrol wouldn't be as bad as the start was. Hopefully.

And afterwards he was going to lock himself in his room until sky falls down or he was well rested.

Yeah, that was a good plan.

********

"Hey kid," Signal started, dropping from fire escape to cuff weirdo in clown mask who Dani just fought. He did it deliberately slowly to show her how to do it like he always did. She choose to not be to annoyed at being called kid again and noted to herself to come up with good codename later. All her previous ideas apparently weren't cutting it and she couldn't keep going by Dani because reasons.

"Yes?"

"Who gave you a combat training?" he asked getting up from a crouch and gesturing towards roof. So it's going to be longer talk, okay.

"My cousin," well, Flashes in Central taught her some stuff but it was more rescue and reassure type of deal not punch and kick, Sam tried to get her through basics of psychological warfare in activism, Tucker sweared he would teach her some programming and hacking but never got around to it, Jazz did some emotional training and Val offered to teach her Red Huntress skills when she got back, but yeah, all in all, Danny was the one to show her how to punch people. Even though it was more of 'shit we have to fight, observe maybe, idk' most of the time. She picked some tricks from Vlad too now that she thought about it, not that she planned to give him any credit for it, like, ever. "Why?"

"I have a bone to pick with him," vigilante announced, melting with the shadows. Dani sped as much as she could to beat him to the roof. She was competitive spirit like that.

Unfortunately he was first. She made another note to herself (she was so going to forget them in next five to ten minutes) to train her speed a bit more. She got tips from the guy with the title of The Fastest Man Alive for crying out loud, she shouldn't loose with the person who technically doesn't even have superspeed!

Signal sat cross legged on the gravel and tossed her a healthy granola bar. He kept doing it for some reason.

"I'm sorry to break it to you, but almost everything in your fighting technique is horrible. Your cousin did shitty job as a teacher" he started in warm slightly teasing tone. Dani felt attacked anyway.

"It's not like he has any sort of training either," she started, trying to sound nonchalant, rolling her eyes. "Cut him some slack," She bit a snack in attempt to cover her furry. It had chocolate and raspberries, was quite tasty and she was kinda hungry anyway. She wasn't sure she wanted to know how Signal knew it though "Everything he learned is from the trial and error by crashing through a few walls. Quite hard to care about 'technique'. I at least got his mistakes to learn from so don't you dare to speak about him like that!" alright, she lost it, she can admit it. But, Signal might be cool and Danny may or may not like him (she hoped he didn't, Val was much better option) but Gotham's hero had no right to say anything bad about her template. He didn't know anything. He didn't understand.

Signal looked like he was going to say something so she put her ghostly vocal cords to use and growled.

Don't-harm-family/will-fight/ protect-mine/don't-you-dare

She didn't stop to consider how unlikely it was for him to understand her. She crossed her hands on her chest, glaring.

Turned out, growl was enough of the warning. He carefully picked his next words.

"Sorry, it's not the way I should've phrase it," he started, his mouth doing the thing it did when people were embarrassed with themselves but in an uncomfortable, a bit angry way. He understood his mistake, good. She calmed her glare a bit. "I wasn't aware of you circumstances. If you want, I can show you some tricks, Batman is very throughout with his training"

"No, thank you, I'm good" she was still mad. So mad. And she was not pouting.

"Of course you're good but you can be better, more efficient."

"No." Whatever Signal would propose to her, she wouldn't agree. He said mean things about Danny not even a minute before. She couldn't let him have it on a principle!

"I'll give you a cookie after every training," he pleaded "The homemade, tasty one"

Well, that changed things. A lot of things.

"Yes please!"

He apologized anyway.

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

Second part

I know democratic winner in poll for now is "publish all at once" and believe me, I respect democracy, especially now that I finally have rights to do things, but Tumblr wouldn't let me. Too long or something. So, it'll be in parts, sorry guys. I'll try to post all of the parts this weekend though (or one each day, I'll see).

Yes, I didn't have a name for this fic until five minutes ago, how did you know? It's quite alright though, I think. If you have better idea I may reconsider

#dpxdc #dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp #dani hangs out with duke #signal got new sidekick and he doesn't even know it yet #not fully at least #Dani: I'm going Goth(am)#Danny: Maybe don't?#Dani: Nah #Danny: Stay safe?#Dani: Alright *imprints on the first hero she sees*#this random mugger Dani stopped: Last thing I saw was feral racoon child #police officer: what?#almost mugging victim: I was saved by said feral racoon child #police officer: What?!#Dani: Alright. Good deed for today done. They're calling my name in BatBurger to get my stuff. See ya!#Dani: I hope I can make it back before Signal wakes up #Police guy&mugger&victim: Did she kidnap our hero???#Dani: *fights*#Duke: With all due respect. How did you survive this long?! *died inside a little bit from stress*#wandixx writes #ghost of fries and hero of cookies #have a nice day dear stranger who got to this part

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f1fantasys · 2 months

Text

Finally mine <3

Summary - Y/N and Charles started off as work colleagues, soon became friends, and now the continuous back and fourth continues between the two. Will you end up together? Of course you will.

Warnings: mild angst. 18+ smut. p in v. dirty talk. unprotected sex.

Being an F1 journalist had its highs and lows. The highs being that you could chose which races to work at and the fact that you had become friendly with most of the drivers, the lows being you were away from home a lot, and had become too friendly with one of the drivers.

Charles.

When you first started your job two years ago, he was one of the first drivers you were introduced to. His deep dimples and green eyes were what took you aback. He was friendly, kind, and hot. So hot. But you kept that fact to yourself. He became your friend first and foremost, as he had a girlfriend back then. You also became close friends with Lando, Carlos, George, and Alex, as well as their better halves (well, those who had a better half). You'd go on holidays together, go out clubbing together, celebrate birthdays. Everything.

It was no secret that Charles definitely felt something towards you, from the beginning, even if he had a girlfriend. He would send lingering glaces towards you, among other little things that gave you butterflies. But - he was with someone, and he wouldn't hurt her.

During the course of the two years, Charles had broken up with his girlfriend. You won't lie - your crush on Charles started pretty early in your friendship. But you too would never do anything to jeopardize his relationship. You were just content that you had him in your life. When he broke up with her, it seemed like you were the last of your friend group to know. That came as a surprise because Charles almost always told you everything first. You let it slide and tried not to read into it too much.

It's now been 3 months since the breakup and you won't hide the fact that you and Charles have definitely become closer. You haven't crossed any lines, yet, but you texted everyday and face-timed every other day. He also became a lot more touchy on nights out but you never backed away from him. He would often rest his hand on your thighs, or you'd end up grinding him on the dance floor.

Of course, Lando and George would always call you guys out, but the both of you always made a joke of it.

This week though, while spending a week in Ibiza, the sexual tension has reached new heights. He was always touching you. Whether it was resting a hand on your back while you were walking, arm at the back of your chair (of course you were always seated next to each other), rubbing sunscreen on your body - or you on his, stealing bites of food or sips of your drink. You never spent a minute away from each other.

Last night, or early this morning rather, after a boozy dinner, you'd all decided it was a good idea to jump into the jacuzi - at 2am. Being a small jacuzi, it meant not everyone would get a place to sit - and naturally that meant the girls all sat on their boyfriends lap. Lily had to forego this trip, but there was no way in hell you were going to sit on Alexs' lap. The next best choice - his.

He smirked as you took your place on him. You were sure he could sense your nervousness and flustered state. But at the same time, you were thanking the heavens. It felt so good, so good to feel his arms encircle your waist and pull you closer to himself. He played with the ends of your hair, while chatting to Lando, while you tried to keep up a conversation with Carmen. But really, all you could think about was the fact that your ass was sitting on his dick, and boy was he getting hard underneath you.

''Y/N, its been a while since you've hooked up with anyone. Maybe I should be your wing-woman tomorrow night as see who you can fuck. You seriously need it’

‘Oh my god Carmen’ you squealed as you immediately felt Charles tense under you.

To be fair, it has been a long while since you’d fucked anyone. You often pleasured yourself, thinking about a certain someone, more so in the last few weeks. You’d imagine what his lips felt like on yours. On your most private parts. What he would feel like in your mouth.

God, you really needed to get laid.

As you all stayed in the water, Charles’ hands found their way to your back, drawing circles and playing with the string of your bikini top. By now, it was just you, Charles, Lando and Luisa who were still out. Even with all the new space, you still kept your place on Charles lap. Your hands found his and you sat hand in hand drawing circles on each others palms.

It was nice, being this close to him. No tension. Just being in the moment.

As the Jacuzzi seats were a bit deep, both your shoulders were under the water. At one point, you felt him untie the strings of your bikini top.

Too shocked to say anything, and not wanting the break the moment, you went with the flow.

He was deep in conversation with Lando and you with Luisa. You felt his thumbs brush the under side of your boobs. It took everything in you to not take his hands and put them on top of your boobs.

He was playing you, and he enjoyed that you knew he was.

Some time later, he decided he was ‘tired’ and slowly lifted you off his lap, careful not to life you above the water so as to expose you, and got out the water himself and walked away, leaving you a little antsy.

By the time you woke up this morning, around 10am, it was a quick breakfast before the group had split up to do some sightseeing. You were to spend the day with George, Carmen, and obviously, him.

You’d taken a boat out and ended up by some beautiful waterfalls, all the while feeling his deep green eyes on you every minute of the way. You blushed when he caught you already staring at him, and tried not to think about how you relieved yourself after last nights activities once in the confinement of your own room. He played you dirty last night, and now it was your turn to give it back.

You made sure to wear your skimpiest and sexiest red bikini that barely held your boobs in place.

‘Hot mama’ Carmen all but screamed at you when you removed your sundress. You gave her a little shimmy and twirl around.

Charles hoped you wouldn’t notice him shift in his seat at the sight of you - but you did. And you sent a smirk his way.

‘Charlie, I need you to put some sunscreen on my back, please’ you fluttered your eyelashes at him as you laid down on your tummy on one of the sun beds.

‘Fucking hell’ you heard him mutter, more to himself.

For the second time in less than 24 hours, Charles untied your bikini top strings and applied sunscreen. He went as far low as he could, his finger brushing over your ass.

What was supposed to be a quick application, turned into something that lasted at least 15 minutes. By now George and Carmen were already in the water, so the two of you didn’t have an audience. Which was a good thing.

You felt Charles climb onto the sun bed and gently rest his ass a top of yours as he continued his application-turned massage. He bent down lower as he traces his fingers along your spine and you felt his hot breath fanning across your back.

You could already feel your core start to drip just by what he was doing to you.

Suddenly, he stopped. Got up. And jumped into the water. Leaving you breathless again. Leaving your hornier than ever. Again.

The afternoon was spent stealing glances at his naked torso while sunbathing, applying sunblock on him this time, and lingering touches here and there.

You were now back at our villa and getting ready to go out clubbing. You'd opted for sheer black mini dress that hugged your curves in all the right places.

''Y/N, what'' going on with you and Charles?'' Luisa asks. ''You've been dancing around each other for a long time now. Don't you think it's time to figure out what it is? There definitely is something pulling the two of you together, and for fucks sake- the sexual tension? It driving us mad! You need to jump him already!'' she continued.

The last bit made you blush.

''To be honest, I don't know what's holding us back. I mean, we are both single, and no denying there are some sort of feeling involved, from my side at least. I just don't want to give in, then find out he just wants me for the sex and then nothing at all.'' you ponder.

''I highly doubt he wants you for just sex, Y/N'' Carmen pipes in. ''He shows in awful lot of interest in everything about you. He's always making sure you're okay. And more than once he's foregone drinking when you're plastered, just to make sure you get home okay. Trust us, he definitely wants more than just sex.''

''I don't know. Lets see how it goes'' you ponder, more to yourself.

The night was going exceptionally well. You and Charles were glued by the hip for the most part. Drinks were flowing. Easy conversations about everything and nothing were had.

''You look really good tonight'' Charles whispered in your ear at one point.

''Thanks, I made an effort just for you Char'' you thought, but obviously didn't tell him. ''Thank you Char. You look quite good yourself'' you smiled at him.

You were all a few drinks in, Charles included, and he was getting handsy. The lighting was dark, so no one really knew what was going on between the two of you. Not that you and Charles knew either. Your hands were around his neck, pulling him close, taking in his scent, while his hands found their way to your ass. His face is nuzzled into your neck and he is slowly but barely leaving a trail with his lips.

You want to tell him you want more. You want nothing more than to feel his lips at full force, his tongue, on your neck. But you don't dare. Is one night of sex worth it? If that's what he is after, things surely would be awkward after, and you'd risk losing one of your best friends. You definitely were not ready to take that risk.

So after some time, you pushed yourself away from him and went to dance with Luisa.

As the night drew to a close, somebody, being Lando, decided it was a good idea to do some body shots. When it was your turn to lie down, Charles helped you onto the table, and of course the others chose him to do the shot off of you.

It was probably the large amount of alcohol in both your systems that gave you the confidence to go ahead with this. Luisa placed the shot of your belly button and Charles, not to subtly, licked a strip from very low down, up to your belly button and swooped the shot up, while everyone was cheering.

It felt amazing to finally feel his tongue, even if was wasn't exactly where you wanted to feel it. Needless to say, it was another night of fantasizing about him, getting yourself off. Little did you know that on the other side of your wall, Charles was doing the exact same thing. Jacking off to the obscene visions of you.

You were sad that the holiday with everyone had come to an end, but at the same time you just wanted to get home so you could properly sit down with yourself and think about what you want. You needed to tell Charles how you felt, but still was too scared to hear what he would say back to you. So, the time away would be a good thing just to refresh your mind and think things through.

You weren't going to the next two races, meaning you wouldn't see each other for a at least 3 and a half weeks. When it came to saying buy to him, your chest tightened.

''Going to miss you cherie'' he whispered as he hugged you tight.

That made you hold on to him for a little bit longer.

''I'll miss you too Char, good luck at the races.''

With that, he kissed your cheek and you parted ways.

Being away from him this time was hard with he obvious shift in you relationship-or friendship-you weren't sure. You face-timed a lot, just content to update each other with that you did that day, how his car was treating him. It was easy, just letting the conversations flow.

''Y/N, I'm flying back to Monaco after the race on Sunday night with Lando. It's Luisa's birthday so he is planning a dinner for her that night.''

''Yeah, I've actually been helping him plan it. I'm glad you'll be here too!'' you exclaimed excitedly.

''You have no idea how much I've missed you these past few weeks, amour''

The new nickname gave you goosebumps.

Luisa's birthday dinner finally came around. You were going to an luscious restaurant and had planned for clubbing at a VERY luxurious place in Monaco for the night.

You so desperately wanted to make an impression on Charles, so you chose to wear a white satin dress, holding your boobs up perfectly, and curled your hair into soft springs. You decided not to wear any panties-something you read about boosting your confidence-whatever, you just went with it.

Charles was due to pick up anytime now. You were getting nervous for sure. But you seriously wanted to try and talk to him today-see where his head it at.

Not a minute later than 6pm, he texted you saying he was waiting outside.

You grabbed your bag and walked towards his very new, and very sexy Ferrari.

He was waiting outside, as soon as you were within touching distance he pulled you in for a tight hug. Just holding you in place for longer than expected. Not that weren't enjoying it. He pulled back and kissed your cheeks.

The ride to the restaurant was filled with laughs and stories about how passionate the Australian fans were towards Charles. One of them even gifted him a bracelet that had 'daddy' written on it, and he was still wearing it, causing you to blush and give him a giggle. It was no surprise that his hand rested on your thigh for the whole ride.

The dinner was a lavish affair. Expensive wine and good food. Lando really went all out this time.

Straight after dinner, it was time to hit the club. More expensive drinks, more dancing. And more sexual tension. From the minute you started dancing with Charles it came crashing down on the two of you. This time though, his lips were actually on your neck. Peppering your skin with light kisses and the occasional suck and bite. Luckily the music was loud and the lights were low, so you could let out a moan that only Charles could hear. He smirked into your neck as his hands once again founds your ass and pulled you impossibly closer.

Your hands ended up in his hair, tangling and tugging at it and abruptly, he pulled away, looked at you in the eye, and said ''Do you wanna get out of here?''

With the way he was looking at you, air had long left your lungs and you couldn't talk. All you did was nod. And he grabbed your hand and made a beeline for the exit. As you were approaching his car, you quickly pulled back and stopped.

''Charles wait.''

He glared at you, waiting for you to continue.

''I don't just want a quick fuck, Charles. I want all of it. I want all of you.'' you all but whispered.

Then he smiled. A big, full on, dimples-showing, classic Charles Leclerc smile.

''In case I haven't mad it clear these past few months, amour, I want all of you too.''

His statement made the butterflies in your whole body go crazy. All you could do was smile at him.

He quickly took your hand again and when you finally made it to his car, you were glad it was dark out and in a secluded area. No one would see what the two of you were about to do.

He opened his door and jumped in, pushed his seat back, reclined it a little bit, and he pulled you onto his lap while shutting the door.

Finally, finally, hips lips touched yours. Not in a gentle and loving way. But in a harsh, dominating way, It was rough, and sloppy and messy but you finally felt like you could breathe again. His lips were so intoxicating. Not long after, your tongues wee battling one another. You opened up you mouth to his tongue and he quickly slipped it inside. Exploring your mouth like he was searching for gold.

All the while that was going on, his hands found home on your boobs. He almost ripped your dress open trying to free them. And once they were freed, his mouth left yours and found its way to your peaked pebbles.

''Fucking hell Y.N, you don't know how long I've waited to see you like this'' he murmured while he pinched one nipple between his thumb and index fingers and continued sucking and biting on the other.

''Char, we've waited far too long for this. Can't get enough of you'' you told him as your hands found their way back to his hair and you kissed and bit on his neck, leaving marks for sure.

Slowly, he lifted you up and pulled your dress up as well. His eyes widened at seeing you had forgone any panties.

''Cherie, is this all for me?'' he said as your juices were clearly leaking out of you.

''Fuck, only for you, Charles. Please.'' You didn't even know what you were begging for. But you just needed more of him.

His fingers quickly found your pussy and started rubbing circles on your clit. The moans you were letting out now were obscene. Grinding against his fingers, you begged him some more.

''What do you want Y/N?'' he smirked.

''Fuck Charles, no time for teasing. Please. Put them in me.''

And put them in you he did. He thrust two fingers in you at once.

''Merde, Y/N, so tight. How long has it been since you've been fucked?''

You could form no coherent thoughts, let alone talk. So he continued-

''Clearly some time ago. But i love that, Cherie. You've been waiting for me'' he said with a smirk.

It didn't take long for you to come crashing down. Your orgasm whisking through you while your whole body shook.

Charles didn't stop his fingers until you came once more.

''Charles,'' you choked out. ''Need you in me. Please.''

He unzipped his trousers and slipped his throbbing dick out of his boxers.

You took him into your hands and pumped a few times. He reached into his back pocket for what you saw was a condom. But you quickly shook your head at him.

''I'm clean Char, are you?'' you asked.

He nodded.

''Then I want to feel all of you'' you breathlessly said, getting impatient now.

He smiled and you placed yourself above him. Letting him run his dick through your folds and juices.

''Please, fuck me Char''

And immediately, he started gliding himself through your entrance as you sunk down onto him.

You both moaned in unison. You, at how large he was-fuck he was the biggest you've ever had-and him, at how tight your cunt was.

Once he entered you fully, he stayed still. He didn't want to rush and hurt you.

You also needed a few moment to adjust, when finally you told him he could move as you did as well to meet him half way.

Now the pain was fading and the pleasure was taking over.

''Y/N, so tight. Amour, you're taking me so well. So good. Letting me fuck into you like this. Riding me like this.''

To be honest, you'd never thought Charles would be one to talk dirty. But you aren't gonna complain. It's only turning you on even more.

''So big, Char'' you said in between moans, bouncing on him. ''Yes, fuck, yes.''

His mouth finds it way back to yours while his hands massaged your tits.

''Fuck Char I'm gonna cum''

''Oui. Cum Cherie, all over my dick, please''

You didn't need any more convincing. You came over his still hard cock. But that didn't slow his efforts, chasing down his own orgasm.

Your moans were getting out of hand now. You were sure people outside could hear you if they walked past the car.

''Char, people will hear us'' you tried to whisper.

''Let them. Let them hear how I'm making you feel. Let them hear you chose to ride me''

That statement very quickly bought on your fourth orgasm of the night.

2 minutes later, ''Fuck Y/N, where do you want my cum?'' he asked.

''In me, please.''

You definitely wanted to taste him at some point. But right now you needed to feel him fill you up.

Within seconds he release a warm splutter inside of you. His moans were the best sounds you've ever heard come out of his mouth.

You both slowed your motions. You slumped forward against him and just sat there. Catching your breath and your mind up to what just happened. You finally fucked Charles Leclerc. And it was the most amazing sex ever.

After a few moment you could feel Charles was softening inside of you. You moved to lift yourself up, but stopped you. He gently removed himself from your cunt and placed you back on his lap.

It's what he did next though, that left you speechless. He swiped his fingers along your folds, scooping up the mixture of cum, and brought his finger to your lips.

''Fuck me'' you squealed as you opened your mouth and took his finger in.

''I kinda just did'' he smirked as you licked his finger clean and pulled him in for a kiss.

A soft kiss this time. A loving one.

''We should get back inside'' you whispered. Although you'd much rather go home and go for round 2.

''It's going to be so hard to keep my hands off you now'' Charles said, kissing a strip up your neck.

''Just to say bye. Then let's go home''

''Fine'' and he pinched your ass.

You both had to make yourselves look presentable again. You combed your hands through your hair, as well as the mess you've made of his.

And you walked back into the club. Trying to keep the smirks off your faces.

''Y/N, where have you been?'' Carmen piped up.

''There's a hottie who's been eyeing you since we got here. You need to go talk to him.''

You rolled your eyes. '''No thanks, I'm good'' you said looking at Charles. That was probably a mistake because Carmen caught on right away.

''Oh. Ohhhh. Oh my god'' she squealed but before she could say anything further you pulled her into a corner and threatened her (not really) that she couldn't tell anyone. Not even George. She swore you to secrecy.

By the time you'd got back to the others, Charles had already told them you were tired and that he was going to take you home. By uber that is. He was in no state to actually drive, so he would get someone to fetch his car in the morning.

You said your round of goodbyes and you were soon standing on the sidewalk waiting for your uber. Now Charles couldn't keep his hands off of you. He was whispering sweet nothings in your ear and ticking you here and there.

''Can't wait to get you home and rip this dress off of you''

''Char, please.''

''Please what?'' he smirked.

''Stop. Until we get home'' you playfully pushed him away.

The ride to his apartment was eventful to say the least.

The driver recognized Charles and was a chatty one. Charles could barely keep up with the guys questions because now you were fumbling with his belt. You giggled as you eventually got his cock free and took him into your hands. You pumped him a few times until he stopped your movements and harshly whispered in your ear - ''If you want the night to end here, then carry on. If not, then let go. Because i can't hold on, Amour. You're doing the impossible to me. Let's get home then you can have your way with me'' he smirked at you in the dark.

You very quickly removed your hands. But as you did he cupped your face and brought you in for a long kiss. A proper make out. Tongues and all.

The driver then cleared his throat to tell you that you'd arrived at home. Charles apologized and made sure to leave a generous tip, before he all but carried you out the car and up the stairs to his building.

He unlocked the door and it was barely closed fully before he had you pinned against it. Actually ripping your dress off this time.

''Char! That was an expensive dress! And I've only worn it once!'' you exclaimed.

''And I'll buy you a new one. But I needed it off you as soon as possible'' he tried to justify.

''Please just come here'' you said, pulling him back to you for a heated kiss again.

''I need to taste you'' he said as he picked you up and carried you to his room.

He placed you on his bed, completely naked.

''You're still wearing too may clothes'' you made a pouty face at him.

''Patience, Cherie. First things first-'' he opened up your legs.

You should have felt conscious. He was staring at your most intimate parts. But you felt nothing but safe. You trusted him. And honestly, you'd been waiting for this day for too long.

He started kissing a trail from your knee to your sensitive bud. No teasing this time. He licked you folds - and that had you seeing stars. He continued licking and sucking and soon his tongue entered you. To say it felt good was an understatement.

''Fuck Charles. How are you so good at this'' you moaned between breaths.

He didn't answer you. All you could hear were you moans, and his tongue lapping in and out of you. Your hands grabbed and pulled at his hair, and it wasn't long until you came crashing down again.

Yes, you definitely were over-stimulated, especially having gone to long without an actual dick entering you. You weren't sure how much longer you could take it. But all you know was that you had to feel him inside of you again.

''Fuck Char I'm cumming'' was all you could say before you released into his mouth. He looked up at you and licked you clean, swallowing everything.

''So delicious baby. Fuck.''

''My turn. I need to taste you Char.'' You don't know where you got a sudden burst of energy, but you went with it.

''Let me fuck you again first, then I'll finish in your mouth. Bloody hell Y/N, you're going to be the end of me. The most amazing thing to happen to me'' he said as he flipped you over so you were on all fours.

You heard him take off all of his clothes, before lining up his dick at you entrance.

''You're ready? he asked.

''Fuck, always ready for you!'' you squealed.

And he slid into you in a single movement.

Now that you were not in public, your moans were incredibly loud and you couldn't give a shit if his neighbors could hear you.

''Holy fuck'' you squealed. This position had him deeper in you than he was when you'd fucked in the Ferrari. His cock was hitting all the right spots, and once again the pleasure overtook the pain.

''Babe you're doing so well for me. Letting me fuck you so hard. Not gonna last long like this'' he muttered while pulling you up so your head was resting against his. He tried to kiss you despite the awkward position, but ended up leaving a few hickeys on your neck.

''Char, I'm almost there'' was all you managed before he was flipping you over again and this time hammering into you while on-top of you.

''Let go for me, Cherie.''

And you did. You saw stars. Your mind blank and your body limb. But then you heard him - ''Y/N, I'm going to cum, sit up'' and you obeyed.

He pulled out of you and you took him into your hands. Pumping him a few times and finally took him into your mouth. Your hooded eyes looking up at him.

''Fuck I can get used to this view'' he moaned.

You could taste yourself on him and within seconds he was emptying himself in your mouth and across your tits. He tasted delicious. The only word you could use to describe the taste of Charles Leclerc.

You made sure to swallow every last drop and you licked him clean. You took a minute to actually take a look at his dick. Could you say it was beautiful? Yes, you could. So big and a hot vein on the one side. You already felt turned on again, but your pussy was telling you no.

''Wow, sweet, pretty Y/N, my dirty girl'' he smiled at you.

The butterflies in your tummy awakened when he called you 'his girl'

''Char, I could say the same thing about you and your dirty mouth!'' you squealed back to him.

He leaned down and locked his lips with you once more, before pulling away.

You pouted, ''where are you going?''

''Just to get a towel to clean up'' he smiled back. ''Oh, and it goes without saying- please spend the night here? I want to cuddle''

''Of course Char, I'd love that too.''

After cleaning up and putting on one of Charles' old Ferrari T-shirts, the two of you lay in bed. Your head was resting on his chest and he was drawing lazy circles on your back.

''You're such an amazing person Y/N. I know we've been back and fourth a lot these past few months but I am so happy to finally have you in my arms. I don't plan on over letting you go, by the way'' he smirked at you as you leaned on your elbow and pecked his nose. ''Please be my girlfriend?'' he asked with the biggest boyish grin.

''I'd want nothing more right now, my Charlie'' you gushed at him.

''Fucking luckiest man on the planet, I am'' he whispered before capturing your lips in his for the umpteenth make-out session of the night.

You both started to doze off so got into a more comfortable position. You were little spoon, of course, and he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you impossibly closer and leaving fluttering kisses in your hair.

When you awoke the next morning, it took you a few seconds to remember where you were. Then all the images from last night flashed in your mind and you couldn't stop a smile from forming on your face.

Charles' arm was still wrapped around your waist and his face was nuzzled in your hair. Something that caught you attention though, was something poking your ass- his boner.

You could still hear he was in a deep slumber so you decided to tease him a bit. You wiggled you ass against his crotch and immediately heard him grunt in his sleep.

Slowly, you turned your body so you were now facing him. He looks so devilishly handsome. His face was a perfect contour, and even in his sleep, his dimples could be traced with your fingers.

His eyes shot open and before you knew it his lips were on yours.

''Am i dreaming? Are you really in my bed, in my arms?'' he asked when he pulled back and closed his eyes again.

''I'm really here Charlie'' you said as your hand grabbed his boner through his boxers.

His eyes widened in surprise and he let out a loud laugh.

''Okay, yep, you're here'' he said as he climbed on-top of you to kiss you properly.

''My girlfriend'' he looked at you with heart eyes before kissing you again. His lips moved from your mouth, down to your neck, biting occasionally and then soothing with his tongue. When he reached your boobs, your nipples were swollen with the amount of tugging and sucking he did last night. They were sensitive so he played nice, just licked around them and suckled on them lightly.

You hands found their place in his hair again as he made his way down your tummy, spending a few seconds on your belly button, before placing himself on where you craved him the most.

He licked a stripe up your cunt, tongue quickly finding your clit, and now his fingers were swiping along your folds.

And your moans were getting louder. ''Óh god, yes, please yes!''

''I don't think I''ll ever get tired of hearing you beg for me. Fuck. The things you do to me'' he whispered loud enough so you could hear him.

Soon he thrust two fingers into you at once. It felt mind-blanking. So incredible. He was proper finger fucking you now. Not letting you breathe, just going at you nonstop, while his mouth was also working a number on you.

''I'm close. Please. Merde'' you couldn't hold off for much longer.

''Ask me''

''What?'' you looked down at him.

He wore a smirk. ''Ask me if you can come''

''Fuck Charles'' you moaned. But you needed to come, like right now, so you played along.

''Can i cum? Charles please let me cum''

''Who's making you want to come?''

You won't lie. This new dominant side of Charles was getting you to reach new heights. It was sexy as fuck.

''You Charles. Only you''

''Fuck baby, cum for me. Let me taste you''

And you didn't need to be told twice. You came crashing down, barely able to breathe, seeing stars once again.

Charles worked you through your orgasm, slowing his actions down.

''You are my new favorite flavor'' he whispered before letting you taste yourself on his lips.

''Hmmm'' you hummed into the kiss.

Th hour was just spent cuddling and talking sweet nothings until your stomach growled.

''You need to fuel up, store some energy for later'' Charles whispered in your ear.

''I'm starving. You definitely wrecked me Char'' you replied.

''Come on, let's get us something to eat''

There was something so domestic about watching Charles cook you breakfast. You could so see yourselves spending lazy mornings in like this. Shut out from the outside world. Just the two of you.

You'd talked some more and had decided to keep this new relationship just to yourselves. Of course your close friends would find out soon enough, hell they already suspect things, but you wanted to hide away from the rest of the world. Just be in your own bubble for a while.

After some heavenly pancakes, Charles decided to drag you to the shower.

No prizes for guessing what went on in the there.

The two of you fucked. Fucked harder than last night, harder than you've ever had before.

You back was against the cool tiles while Charles slammed into you. Hard and rough. His lips were on yours. Not really kissing you, but rather biting you. Tongue exploring your mouth again.

You could hardly even hold your body up when he made you come. Your legs were shaking to a point where they felt like jelly. But your Charles was strong. He held you up as he chased his own orgasm. You were both sweating from the heat of the water plus fucking each other. The moans you were sure could be heard by the neighbors were obscene - filled with grunts and french swear words. It was like a scene out of a porn movie.

You came twice more before Charles was grunting in your ear, literally breathless. You felt his warm liquid fill you up as he chanted your name repeatedly.

''Y/N, Y/N, fucking hell how are you so amazing at this. I've never had it so good before''

Breathlessly, you replied ''Likewise Char, but you're the amazing one. Fuck your dick is incredible. It feels incredible inside of me. Like it was made to fit into my cunt only''

After some more kissing and giggles, you washed each others hair and your bodies before climbing out of the shower.

You wore some of Charles' joggers and a T-shirt, which were obviously too big for you, but so comfortable.

Just as you settled onto the couch to find something to watch, the doorbell rang.

Charles pecked your cheek before going to the door to see who it was. In strolled one Lando Norris.

His eyes widened when he saw you. More so when he saw what you were wearing.

''I fucking new it. The two of you are fucking!'' he got all excited.

''I don't now what you're talking about'' you smirked at him, as Charles cuddled you to his side and kissed your lips.

''Blood hell, get a room'' Lando squealed.

''Mate, you are in my house'' Charles joked.

''No seriously, how long has this been going on'' Lando asked, pointing to you and Charles.

''Less than 24 hours'' Charles smiled at you.

''Like shit'' Lando replies.

''No seriously, last night, at the club'' you remarked.

''Fuck me. I thought that has been since Ibiza'' Lando says.

''Hmm'' was all you said back.

''Well, I will leave you two love birds. I just came to check if my thoughts were true, and now that I see they somewhat are, I'll be on my way. Oh and drinks on water tomorrow sunset?'' he asked.

''Ouais'' Charles replied before basically shoving Lando out the door to return to his spot beside you.

The day was spent just lazing around and cuddling. Charles took you back to your place at some point so you could get some clothes and toiletries. He demanded, in a playful manner that he needed you to stay with him for the week until you were both due to fly out to London for F1 shooting.

Going into the next day, it was as if your bodies were starved of each other. It was endless amounts of sex- literal fucking, and slow 'making love' sex.

Later in the day you met up with your friends on Lando's yacht. It was a beautiful day.

As you stood beside Charles, watching the sunset, he said it.

''I love you, Y/N. I think I always have, and I always will'' he said as he kissed your cheek.

You really couldn't believe where the two of you had ended up. Yes, you only properly started dating less than 2 days ago, but feelings started well over two years ago. You knew each other inside and out.

So you looked at him with glossy eyes as you tightened your grip on his hand.

''I love you too, so much Char'' and he immediately locked his lips with yours for a gentle kiss.

''You're finally mine'' he whispered.

#f1 #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #f1 x reader #f1 smut #charles leclercxreader #charles leclerc #charles leclerc smut

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lazycats-stuff · 10 months

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Batfamily

Batfamily & male!reader, part 2, part 3, part 4 - platonic

talia and bruce having a older son who “went missing ” but actually joined the court of owls . he’s become friends with a bunch of rouges and two face is like a dad to him. he lives with harley and ivy and sometimes selina and they just chaos. but he runs into batfam and damian just wants to kidnap him so he can have his brother back - REQUEST

Batfamily & male!reader, PART 2, - platonic

Hi! Sorry I don’t know if you’re st ill taking requests but if you are, can I request a male!vigilante!Y/N. he’s likes 13-15 (younger than Tim but a older than Damian). He’s a orphan and been the infamous vigilante who goes by Jinx. He’s like super duper smart and knows martial arts and overall a total badass. The bat family has been trying to catch him for a couple of months now since he’s been like stealing their missions. Y/N just finished stopping a drug dealing near the docks. He’s about to leave when night wing and Robin (Damian) jump in front of him. They fight and robin kicks him in the ocean, knocking him out. When nightwing sees he’s not coming back, he goes and rescues him. So like they take him back to the bat cave and they put him in a cell and interrogate him, they find out he’s just a kid, a orphan and knows their secret identities (cause like I said, he’s super smart) Bruce decides to adopt the kid saying something like that it’s ether being adopted or going to jail. And Y/N and Damian aren’t happy about but have no choice and yeah that’s it. Sorry if it’s complicated or long - REQUEST

Batfamily & gn!reader - platonic

Can I request a gn!reader x batfam? The reader is in the batfamily business and is the 2nd youngest. They’re on a mission with the others, when they get hit by a alien tech which turns the reader into a toddler (2-3 years old?)😱 so the batfamily had to take care of the reader till they find an antidote. You can end it with the reader being turned back to their original age? - REQUEST

Batfamily & male!reader, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4 - platonic

can i request a scenario where the reader, who has been trained as a weapon for most of their life, struggles with expressing their emotions. The reader has been adopted by the Batfamily and is injured during a mission. They try to hide their injuries, but Dick or Jason (or both) find out and scold the reader for keeping it a secret. The reader responds by saying that they didn't think it was a big deal. it was a big deal. So it’s fluff and angst. The scenario can end with the Batfamily having a movie night after patching the reader up to help them feel better. If the scenario crosses any boundaries, please feel free to change anything necessary.

Batfamily & male!reader, GENDER NEUTRAL VERSION - platonic

Hi! If this makes you uncomfortable writing, you can choose to ignore it. I was hoping you could do male!reader, who was on patrol and the reader is kidnapped by a villain, and once the batfamily find them its to late and they were brainwashed and was now under control of a villain. (Bonus points if the villain, is actually their biological father who trained them to be a weapon before the reader got saved by the batfamily) Once they like have a fight and the batfam knock ‘em out they bring him to the cave and try to bring his memories back. It takes a while to get his memory back since the reader is not trusting them and doesn’t talk to them because they were brainwashed to think the batfamily is bad but after a while something happens and their mind snaps and they’re back to normal and they get all emotional because they hurt their true family??

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

May i request a baby bat (preferably male) that's left at home with a babysitter (it was after Alfred's surgery or he could just be sick but he's resting) while everyone is out on missions and the babysitter is completely ignoring the babies cries for food and a diaper change while titus is trying to comfort him (btw i noticed that you write titus as doberman even though he's a great dane? Please don't take offense i didn't know if this was on purpose or not so i just thought I'll point it out!) baby ends up crawling out of his crib, out of the doggy door and into the streets in only a diaper and shorts and of course titus is right behind, every time baby tries to go into traffic titus is gently nudging him away with his snout , every time a random person tries to pick up the baby and take him to the police titus is not having it, until eventually word reaches the batfam about this and they go to investigate and the unbelievable anger they felt after watching the camera footage of inside their house, you can choose what happens to the babysitter but family fluff with the baby please! Sorry if this is long i just heard from other writers that the more details they have the easier it is to write, thank you!

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

I'd like to request batfam x male reader, who crotchets a lot. He has some medical issues, so he doesn't go on patrol, he helps out with information gathering though. When Damian got added to the strays, the reader tried being a good older brother, and he crochets him a little stuffed animal for him as a welcome gift. Everyone in the family has one, even Alfred. Let's say, Damian had a bad day, and coincidentally the reader just finished the crochet animal and goes to his room to give it to Damian. Damian snaps and destroys the stuffed animal in front of the reader, also saying some pretty hurtful stuff. The reader cries because it took a lot of time to male it. You can end it however you want Take your time <3

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Can I pretty please request male!reader x batfam who isn’t like sacred of most things like he’s really calm during watching horror movies or if their on a mission and he sees a dead person, he might feel disgusted but like doesn’t care really. So he acts hes not afraid of anything. Anything but bugs. I mean hes AFRAID, really afraid of BUGS. Not like ants or flys or cockroaches or small spiders. no things like big and creepy looking spiders or centipedes or bugs that just look creepy yoy get what I’m saying? I kinda want this to be with Tim or Jason and the reader is younger than them

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Can I request a batfamily x male reader where reader is the youngest member(just a few months or so younger than Damien) and brings home a tiger he’s somehow managed to tame and is trying to convince his family to let him keep it?

Batfamily & male!reader, PART 2 - platonic

Batfamily x teen!reader who’s like younger than Timmy but older than dami, and he’s also a vigilante and were one before being taken in by the family. Anyways he has been with the family for a little while now and he’s close with every member, heck even he’s even close with the JL. But the batfamily doesn’t really know much about the reader’s past, and it’s a big deal if the world greatest detective doesn’t know ether. So a mission goes wrong and the reader is hurt so they obviously have to remove some of their clothing to treat him and they are shocked when they find many scars on the reader’s body. They decide to ask them about it when he wakes up. Once the reader wakes up and sees his body wrapped in bandages, he panics and has a panic attack because he knows they know about his scars now. One of the family member comes in and calms him down, and once’s he’s calm, they ask about how he got these scars. The reader knows he can’t keep lying anymore so he reluctantly tells them. His backstory is like Damians and cass. His father has a clan of his own and he trained the reader from birth to be the best assassin in the world. His punishments and training were harsher than Damian’s even. But he ran away from all that when he was 10. By the time he finishes the rest of the family is there and heard everything, he just breaks down crying again and the whole family now comforts him, telling him he’s safe now. IM SORRY IF YOUR UNCOMFORTABLE BY THIS :(

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hey, I'd love a batfam x reader fic, where the reader got mistreated by the family when they were first introduced (not by Alfred tho), they ignored here and just focused on their own shit and when the reader got older and they realized "oh shit I got another sibling" they wanna build a relationship, but the reader hates them and is like "nah, I don't give a shit how bad you feel, kys" and "Do i look like I care? Fuck off and please fall down the stairs and break your neck" or they're really overly nicest most anime girl voice to make them feel extra bad "oh my absolutely dearest brother, I would love to spend time with you, buuuut I just don't want you to waste your time on your little brother, okayyy 😚" I hope you can imagine something with this! Take time and have great day

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Baby bat who gets kidnapped by lex Luthor but has no clue what’s happening like he’s being taken to metropolis and baby bats is like are we thiere yet singing and being a menace Thiere confused on why an ugly bald guy is taking them out but Luthor gets fed up and leaves the kid somewhere and they just vibe

Batfamily & male!reader, part 2 - platonic

I hope it’s not too weird but can I request batfam a batbro!reader, older than Damian but younger then Tim that isn’t very emotional when it comes to death? Like they don’t understand why people are so hysterical over death. Maybe an animal died and they just go “oh they’re dead” like it was nothing. Hope ur doing well, I’m projecting so much with this but I can’t wait to see what you do if you do. I love ur writing, can’t wait to read more 🫶

Batfamily & male!reader, part 2 - platonic

Another request, hope it’s not bad. But batbro!reader who was raised to be perfect. Who’s older than Damian bur younger than Tim. But I was thinking maybe Bruce and readers mum have split custody and his mum is very demanding, the reader doing things like music and ballet (I just love dancing bc I was a dancer) and their mum pushes them to be perfect, in that and schoolwork and belittles then if it’s not perfect. Like they are worse than most of the family, not sleeping and always studying or pushing his body to the limits with practice. The family is going to a dancing competition for Cassandra and the reader is performing but they don’t know, reader not getting first place and they see how his mother reacts badly, maybe belittling the reader, their reaction maybe. Hope it makes sense, if you are uncomfortable with it dw🫶. I’ve seen so many assassin or killer ones.

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Oh god, i don't have any specific scenarios but i would really like to see some more babybat reader? Maybe batfam and a foodie baby? One where he's the happiest when he's eating

Batfam & male!reader - platonic

I'd like to see how batfam deal with babybat (not necessarily baby like 4 or 5) that's obsessed with video games? Like first thing he does in the morning is turn on his playstation before he even has breakfast or anything, maybe Bruce takes him out to get some outside time but instead he's just pointing out how some things look like this certain game he played etc, and basically the only way his brothers can interact with him is if they asked to play with him

Batfam & male!reader - platonic

Hey, I was wondering if you could do the Batfam with a Teen Former black Widow ( sorry English isn't my first language)

Batfam & male!reader - platonic

Can I request a batfamily discovering that Bruce has another biological son(who’s reader and is the second youngest) but also that reader is stuck in a abusive home and they go to save him from it?

Batfam & male!reader - platonic

Im so sorry ,in advance, its okey to ignore the request Batfam x child here this scenario: Batfam where on a mission catching some criminals, like usual but then hearing crying noise on the dark alleyways, when Batman or anyone in the batfamily check to see, When they looked, they saw a crying child with little bit blood on their face , they asked “why are they crying?are you hurt?” or “ are you okey? What happened?” The child pointed at darkest corners of the alley. they looked where the child was pointing at, they saw two of the parents died in the same manner like Batman backstory , when the child look up at them still crying , they lift their arms and said “ c-can I-i *sob*have a-a hug?*sob* p-please” How would the batfamily react? Or what to do to calm the child reader

Batfam & male!reader - platonic

Batfam x little bat bro The batbro is a really quiet kid, not non-verbal, just hardly ever talks. He's just quiet all around, when walking, eating, doing whatever. He also likes to stare a lot. Just imagine the kid suddenly appearing in front of Bruce's desk , you can just see his little grabby hands and the upper part of his face, and he just stares. Definitely is the one to accidentally scare them with suddenly appearing even tho he's been here the whole time. The definition of this --->●_●

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Batkids x male reader, were the reader was Bruce's best friend but due to some bad blood they kinda hate each other, but still look out for each other. Now what about Bruce having to go on a mission with the justice league, and lets just say Alfred is on vacation and Bruce just takes the extra step and let's the kids stay at the reader's place, because he knows they're safe with him. While the reader hates Bruce, he loves his nephews and he takes great care of them. Bruce eventually returns and the kid's are obs with their uncle, so now Bruce has to visit the reader more often and maybe they repair their friendship??

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hey so I was wondering if you could do a fic/head cannons of the batfamily reacting and bonding over time with Bruce’s biological son he had 20 years ago (one night stand stuff) when he was young. The son who went missing when he was 10. And he came back as a blood witch/vampire due to his mothers heritage around dicks age now and him and dick bond in specific getting together eventually also some Damian being jealous/spiteful but warming up and bonding with him happy ending if you are willing to do this I’d appreciate it and want it so much but thank you anyways If you don’t for even considering it

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

could u maybe make a batfam x male reader and where the reader is like trained to be an spy or something and their mission was to figure out what was going on inside the manor but they figured out to much and got roped into the batfams family

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Could you do one where batfam and batbro!reader are on a mission and reader gets hit with something that temporarily makes him half cat? Like ears, tail, teeth, stuff like that?

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Yk the one where batbro reader meets the justice league and the leave absolutely loves him? Could you do one with the young justice with Tim or teens titans with dick or the outlaws with Jason?

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hey I was just wondering if you’d possibly do headcannons of A fic of the batfam in specific Damian getting all of readers (Damian’s biological older brother who’s a blood witch/vampire) long decade old friends killed by accident when he slips up and tells the league where they operate from and reader cannot cope with this so he goes into the forest at night to scream and cry in private but Damian follows him one night and sees reader about to end their lives and he stops them admits the truth and expects the reader to kill him with one look but instead reader hugs him and cry’s saying he should have been a better brother and he understands it’s a mistake and Damian gets upset as well and hugs reader back just them both crying saying sorry and Bruce finds them and takes them back to the mansion, the end and if you can’t do it cause of the attempted suicide I understand it’s just a personal thing but thank you for considering my request anyways.

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Okay hear me out, reader x batfamily okay? The reader is 2nd youngest (like 14) and recently during a mission, they got sent to alternate reality where they’re a bad guy, and witnessed themself kill the batfamily? Obviously you don’t have to write out that part if it makes you uncomfortable, but any ways. Once they return they distant themselves from the family beacuse they’re scared they’re going to hurt the family and turn out like the other evil them? The batfamily has enough of this after a while and corners them and kinda pressures them into telling what’s going on with them, and the reader kinda breaks down and says what they saw and that they’re scared they’re going to hurt their family. The batfam comforts them and tells them that, their nothing like their evil self? Somethin like thattt

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Batbro rwader who gets the flu or has bad fever but refuses to rest and still wants to go on patrol? (2nd youngest like 2 years older than dami) PRETTY PLEASEEEEE

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hey, I wanted to ask if you could do a bat!bro who’s Australian? And very aussie, like they go bogan (look it up if you don’t know) when they are mad and every second word is basically just a swear word of some kind (especially c*nt) Also showing everyone Kath and Kim, it’s a classic and I recommend it to everyone.

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Heyo, can I ask for a bat!bro reader who’s around 16 or 17 and they find out that he smokes and drinks? And sometimes some drugs. And he (tries to) hide it from everyone? If not it’s ok, and I hope ur doing good. Can’t wait to see what you write 🫶

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hello I was wondering if you could do a Batfam x teen reader, where the reader is like Lara croft from Tom Raider. The reader love going on adventure to ancient ruin and collect artefacts. The story is up to you, of course! Thanks you for your amazing writing! (sorry, English isn't my first language)

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hi! Could you do a Batfam x teen reader, where the reader does illegal street race, he sneaks out at night to go those race, and the Batfam found out about it ! Thank you ;)

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Can we get fic where male batbro x batfamily, where his school is having a field trip to Wayne enterprises? I’m not sure if you watch marvel or read marvel fics but it’s basically likes the ones where peters has a field trip to go stark industry’s. Anyways, so Bruce and Tim work their right? Tim is the co-ceo and Tom is just teasing him the whole time Tim gives a tour but when they took a break for the the kids to eat and stuff. Tim walks in on someone picking on batbro reader, the batbro reader doesn’t care that much but Tim does. Tim just gets protective of him and kinda threatens the bullies with a smile?

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Can you do a batfam x baby bro reader? Where Bruce puts reader in a Batman onesie and it was cute and when they boys see it they all start fighting, which turns physical quick, over who’s costume reader should wear a onesie of next

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

My latest obsession > motorcycles ,i know so many people call them death machines but i can't help but get heart eyes when i look at them, anyways i wanted to know how would the batfam react to the youngest family member batbro reader being like that? I'm especially curious about Bruce, will he buy a whole garage for his kid? Or try to steer his interest somewhere else? Also i think Jason will try to be reader's riding buddy <3

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

How about a one of the one where the family didn't know about male reader past and found scars. Let's see the justice league/titans/young justice reactions to readers past R.I.P Deathstroke cause the moment anyone sees him there all about to jump on him🤣

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Could you do a batfam x batbro reader? Where reader is the 2nd youngest and they all accidentally forget his birthday, and they see him all teary eyed and they all feel really guilty and go to apologize to him except plot twist, batbro also forgot that it was his birthday and was teary eyed because he saw a really emotional scene in a video game he was playing and it made him tear up

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Can I ask for a follow up on Australian bat!bro reader where he gets annoyed bc they won’t let him drink alcohol or smth? Here in Australia there is alot of underage drinking. (I mean I got high and tipsy at my 17th birthday party with parental permission💀) Just thinking about the culture shock most of them would get 😭

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hey, I love your fics. I wanted to request a bat!bro reader who’s 16 where Bruce has split custody with his mum (he grew up with his mum and wanted split) but it turns out his mum was just using him to get money from Bruce and is kind of neglectful? And he always gives it to her bc he’s a mamas boy? Stay safe and don’t forget to stay hydrated <33

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hello, I was wondering if you could do a Batfam x teen reader, who does figure skating?

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hello, firstly I love your writings ! I was wondering if you could do a Batfam x teen reader, who is like the winter soldier from Marvel? He has a Metal arm and has been trained to be a weapon . Only if you want to, of course. have a good day !

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hi! So I’ve had this idea for a while and idk why but I thought I would go ahead and request it. Batfam x Batbro reader who’s the 2nd oldest (maybe their ages range from like 25-18) and is really close with all his brothers. One night after some encouraging from Dick he decides to go out with some friends. While he is gone this villain who he’s been fighting for a while breaks into the mansion and uses his powers of mind control on the family. (the boys and Bruce, Alfred has the night off so he isn’t here) He uses them as leverage over batbro when he gets back from his night out. (Could you focus more on the scene where they break in and mind control happens? I’ve been picturing we see that part happen and then batbro gets home. Kinda like you would see on a tv show) The villain tries to bargain with batbro (maybe he has powers that villain wants?) for his family but because batbro is a smart badass he finds a way to project villain’s own powers back onto himself so batbro is able to command him to release him family and then he gets sent to jail. The brothers are very impressed with his quick thinking skills and they end up having a “sleepover” in one of their room (because let’s be honest, those beds could probably hold like 15 people) and they all fight over who gets to lay next to batbro and Dick and Jason end up winning that fight. It ends with the brothers being like “hope you enjoyed your once chance at protecting us because it will never happen again!” To batbro because they (even the once younger than him) and very protective of him. If not it’s totally ok!!! Thank! Love your work!!

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Could you do batman x son reader, where the reader struggles with an eating disorder. Maybe reader faints on a patrol or maybe he just trys to hide his Ed behaviors (like skipping meals, over exercising, purging, ect...) from the family, but one day the family just figures it out.

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hellooo, I was wondering if you could write a fic on how the bat family would react to the male reader having a mental breakdown. The male reader always acts like he is the best. And all of a sudden he just broke down and started crying and they all feel bad for him. Idk if this makes sense I'm sorry 😭😭

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

been thinking of a batbro bimbo reader who isn't yet fully aware of his family's identitys but is a vigilante too. Thinking of him getting flirted on and the other's getting protective. Especially the younger siblings (Ex: Damian)

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

hi I love your posts and I wanted to ask if you could do batfamily x newest batbro who was created to be a weapon and when bruce saves him and makes him have a childhood he couldn't make choices like the demon slayer kanao please - @elizabeth63646esangrenta

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Can I request a batfamily fic with a reader who loves reading and is rly shy but they’re trying to spend more time with them ♥️

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

I had read a fic of yours where Batson was Australian, I don't know if you have other requests like this but if you accept, make one with Batson being Brazilian and he likes football, carnival and who likes to listen and dance to music by the great diva Anitta

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Could you do batfam x baby bat reader? Where reader is a tiny force of chaos who likes to run around and cause mischief, and the only person he’s perfectly behaved with (aside from Alfred) is Damian, and while the rest of the family is trying to figure out why, Damian is just being smug cause even as an infant his little brother obviously knows who his superior brother is

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hi, this is my first time asking here I really love your work and also the whole reason me going into the DC fandom really... Anyway, back to my request can you do like a fluffy interaction with the batfamily when child (male or gn) reader told them that they had a "boyfriend" at school. Not entirely sure if this is really you're cup of tea and if not you can ignore it.

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Hello I was wondering if you could write a teen male reader with the Batfam. The reader is super into technology and hacking stuff and kinda helps the fam in the background of mission Thanks you!

Batfamily & male!reader - romantic with Bruce Wayne

Hello, I hope you are doing alright! So I can have a kinda cross over idea for a teen male reader. a mix of Batfam and star wars. The reader is a Jedi padawan that had to flee towards the Earth after the Jedi were forced into hiding and the rest is up to you.

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

Can you do a teen reader (younger than Damian by 1 or 2 years) x batfam, where he is spider man? (I mean kinda like miles morales, he has electricity powers but his webs are organic too and doesn’t need a web shooters.) he is Bruce’s biological child and his mother died, yk his canon event and what not. So he has to move to Gotham and isn’t happy about. Just distant and all. One night He sneaked out and bought a train ticket and went to New York, and was only spider man and just slept in somewhere. So the batfamily tracked him to New York, and while looking for him, they bump into him as spider man. They have to team up to find a villian but reafer gets hurt in the end and his mask fell off and they see it’s reader? They bring him and just have a talk when he wakes up and they come to conclusion for him to join the family in their fighting in Gotham?

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

Hello author. I hope your having a splendid day May I request a reader x batfamily ( a year younger than Damian) They are a Demi god of lightning and electricity. He has been having a hard time with cases and failing and stuff like that, too much pressure. And he’s kind of hitting his breaking point. So during a fight with a villain, alone. The villain corrupts the reader and makes him evil. For a few months he became a villain and barely anyone could stop him. The batfamily at first didn’t know it was him but during a mission that was orders by the villain that corrupted him, to kill Althea (your oc) but Althea got away with injures but saw his face and told her mom and her mom told bats. So with this new information the batfamily were more devastated . With the help of the justice league the batfamily are in a show down with the reader, somewhere near a cliff and they fight and while also talking about their memories together. Reader was too powerful though and restrains everyone with use his electricity. His eyes are red and with dead eyes he walks towards any batfamily member of your choice and was about to deliver the final blow before the bat member looks at them and says ‘ I love you, my son/little brother’ reader hesitates and his eyes widens and filled with tears, the red disappearing. He’s of course confused and disoriented, he steps back and not notices the cliff. His mind coming back to me as he slowly lets his restaions of the others disappear. He steps back near the cliff and looks back into the abyss and back at his family and friends. With regret and a messed up mind right now thinking he won’t be forgiven, he purposely steps back and fall down the cliff. No one was fast enough to stop his fall and he dies. They retrieve his body and they’re just depressed and stuff for a while hut Damian won’t allow his only little sibling to die and takes his body to talia and he gets revived back. when he brings unconscious reader back, the batfamily are upset at him for doing a dangerous act but happy that it went well. Sorry it’s too long.

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

HEYYY, firstly how are you! I wanted to ask if you could write about a teen male reader with the Batfam. He is kinda like the winter soldier if you know what I mean ( skilled fighter, metal arm..), since he lived with the Batfam he was doing a good mental recovery, but one day he goes back to winter soldier mode on the fam, and they try to get him back to normal again, idk Thanks you bye !

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

Ok this one is mainly for Alfred but u could add batbros and batdad if u want, anyways i was wondering what would alfred (or any of the fam) do to stop BatToddler reader tantrum? Like i imagine the setting would be grocery shopping and Alfred's only getting healthy food including boring plain cereal and BatToddler is not having it and only wants sugar loaded cereal and starts whining and tearing up right there in the middle of the store, would alfred give in to those tears or find an alternative? I imagine batdad would give in and the brothers might even encourage it giving that they probably eat the same junk food

Batfamily & male!reader - platonic

(Kind of self projecting sorry lol) SO! BabyBat has an upset stomach but Bruce's too anxious about giving him medicine because can his baby stomach handle those chemicals? Insert Alfred rolling up his sleeves "give him here master Bruce" a tired Bruce just hands him over without question and watches as alfred and baby head to the kitchen and suddenly...baby stopped crying? Bruce walks into the kitchen seeing flower stems on the counter and Alfred standing there with a sleeping baby "...How?" "Rosewater master Bruce, i made and fed him Rosewater" Not sure how to end this but basically BabyBat would only drink Rosewater from now on and Bruce has to upgrade his gardening game ,Alfred always has already-made Rosewater so his Grandson is always hydrated and the rest of batbros are just like "hell yeah my brother's too fancy for regular water" I hope you except my request and thank u! I love u

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

Remember when u wrote batbro who's Australian? Now u HAVE TO do Italian! This time with Italian toddler batbro, please little Italian people with their small hand gestures are so funny and so fricking adorable to me I'm tearing up just thinking about it

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

I remember back when i was a few months old and still using a baby walker, I'll wake up early morning but my parents will be too exhausted to get up yet so my older sister will put me in the walker in front of the TV and turn on something like national geographic or anything about animals then I'm entertained for hours(might take a stroll around the livingroom but with my eyes still on the tv) even though i understood nothing lol, can i see something like that with batfam and babybat? I feel like this is something batbros will definitely do if they're too tired to entertain their baby brother but still want to hangout with him(they just end up open mouthed staring at the tv just like the baby < Bruce's favourite site in the morning)

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

U know those adorable videos where big brothers are the most gentle and just keep picking up and kissing their baby sibling no matter if the baby was sleeping or not? I imagine babybatbro (triple B lol) will be napping next to Bruce in bed and then which ever batbro will come in and steal the baby with no explanation hehe, I'd like to see something like that with all 4 batbros please

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

Artist toddler batbro! Can't help but draw/ paint at least once a day and at the end of the day batfam is anticipating who will be the lucky family member that'll receive which ever art piece their youngest has created that day (sometimes the art piece is on the walls or floor of the mansion but no one has the heart to be angry when little batbro is just proudly presenting his art) Toddler batbro *leaves a paint covered tiny handprint on the wall* Bruce: alfred, frame that

Batfamily x male!reader - Romantic with Damian

Please write Damian x friend reader who's really shy, and they have to make a school project together, and they do so at the manor, but because the reader is shy he doesn't want to meet the family. The family (to annoy damian) want to meet this friends, but Damian actually likes the reader and tries to protect him from his brother's

Batfamily x male!reader, PART 2- platonic

What about Batfam x male reader where the reader was actually the first child Bruce adopted and he was the practice child. He hated growing io because Bruce had really no idea what to do and then the other kids came along and now Bruce kinda understood what to do. He hates family time because he never felt like family, he was just some doll the others could practice on so later they wouldn't make mistakes. And i imagine at some point they snap. I feel like what if Damian brought over Jon for dinner and Jon was like "oh I thought Dick's the oldest, you never told me about (reader)" and reader just slams down their fist and goes to their room. At this point the rest of the family try to comfort them but the reader only screams about how they never were a son or bother, they were only a practice doll for them to use and then throw away

Batfamily x male reader - platonic

Batfam x reader who bites, like affectionately bites them. The bites don't hurt, and it mostly on the arms, like when they are sitting down, the reader just goes now and lightly bites them because they have an oral fixation

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

What about male reader being Alfred's nephew who came to live with him because his parents died or were just unfit parents? Alfred isn't all too happy that he's here, but not because he hates him, no, but because Gotham isn't the safest place and the fact that he's bow living with the vigilante family isn't the greatest fact. I feel like Alfred would be very overprotective of his nephew, and just the family's reaction to Alfred's nephew, i feel like the family didn't really ask Alfred about his family and such .

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

Batfam x M reader hwere the reader is Bruce's older brother, who decided to move away from Gotham after a really big fight between him and Bruce (before Dick was adopted) Bruce wanted to reach out, but never really did because he thought the reader hated him. At some point the reader decided to come back to Gotham and meet with Bruce because he got married and had a kid, but his partner died and he needed support + his kid wanted to know about their uncle. Now total shock on the batfam part because they have an uncle??? And Bruce didn't tell them??? Now they try to build a relationship, but Bruce is still a bit distant because he feels guilty

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

Batfam at a gala with the reader being dubbed the "hearttrob", the reader is really handsome and nearly everybody wants to get into his pants. However, the reader is actually a really innocent and the family is always on a mission to stop anyone from talking to the reader who just wants to get him into their bed. They're like "nuh uh he only deserves the best"

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

What about Bruce"sneaking out" to go on date with the reader. His son's obviously follow him to see what their father is up to. When they realize that he's going on a date, they tease him the next day because 'the playboy is settling down'

Batfamily x male!reader - platonic

I hope you don’t mind can I request a Batfam x Genius child male reader like child male reader is basically smart (and comes from a wealthy and influence family) and has higher IQ for someone so young (smarter than the rest of Batfam) Bruce met child male reader in the funeral when child male reader grandparents died leaving child male reader orphan because his parents also died. Somehow child male reader was strangely attach to Bruce even tho it's there first time meeting so he just walk up to Bruce and stare at him in wonder. Which also leads everyday male reader running away from home and going to Wayne manor because he wanted to stay close to Bruce and meeting the rest of family and which leads the male reader Butler (who's taking care of reader for time being until someone or close relative steps up and takes the role to raise reader) to apologize everytime when picks reader up from the Wayne manor. Reader already knows all the Batfam especially the Justice League secret identity with just one look at them. Male reader who is shy, quite (rarely ever makes a sound) and well mannered. Male reader has a habit of touching the technology of the bat cave or the Justice league base and knows how to fix them aswell

Batfamily x male!reader

Hey can I ask for a batbro reader who begged for a bird and finally got one but the bird ended up hating everyone except for reader and Alfred (he deserves it) and is super protective of reader to the point that it bites anyone other than Alfred who gets close to him and always cuddles with the reader. Reader is a mama bird and just blames everyone but his bird,

#bruce wayne x male reader #jason todd x male reader #tim drake x male reader #dick grayson x male reader #platonic relationships #batfamily #batkids #x male reader #dc x male reader #dc comics

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