#like everything else of theirs that I've read

[phdmama]

I don’t typically read a lot of A/B/O or zombie apocalypse fics...

...but I have to say, Come with Me and Walk the Longest Mile by @devildoll is absolutely the exception to those rules. The writing is fantastic of course, but there are so many little moments of humor that make me laugh, none more than this one. (Sterek, E, 39275 words)

The road into Salt Lake City is marked with signs warning travelers to go around, but that isn't necessary anymore. In the early days of the sickness the city was briefly the headquarters of a surprisingly popular doomsday cult that believed the world was ending and the only way to find eternal salvation afterwards was to become a zombie now. Anyone with a lick of common sense got the hell out of town, and the cult died out pretty fast, because eventually everyone in it was a zombie, and zombies aren't good at grassroots organization.

#devildoll #can't tag them!! #this fic is fantastic #like everything else of theirs that I've read #zombies #a/b/o #zombies aren't good at grassroots organization

[tiger-moran]

When people are unironically using the terms TMEs/TMAs or AFABs/AMABs or 'men, women and enbies' or fucking 'theyfabs'

#yes this is most often to try to deny some group experiences any abuse or oppression #some people need to be barred from ever talking about gender #until they learn about nuance #and to stop trying to reduce everything and everyone #down to a binary or *maybe* a trinary #also to stop trying to reduce everything down to a binary that's like #'the most oppressed ever can never have any privilege' and 'oppressors with every form of power and privilege' #also to learn to care about people whose experiences are even slightly different to theirs #I've even seen this on some post which was demanding 'TMEs' read it #as if it's about something that anyone deemed to be a 'TME' can't experience #and what is the post actually about? being misgendered #because absolutely nobody else can ever be deliberately misgendered #by someone who's meant to support or help them /sarcasm #I am sorry I truly am for everyone else going through any kind of shit like this #but your experiences do not give you any right to be bigoted or hateful or invalidating #or to try to deny the oppression of anyone else #and no this is not just about criticising trans women who do this so many people do this #trans people of all genders do this cis people do this #and I'm fucking tired of it

[melannen]

How To Make Your Own Fanfiction Archive, In Just Ten Easy Steps

As the go-to "person who knows about AO3" for quite a few people who read fanfic but aren't really linked-in to wider fandom culture, I've fielded a lot of questions about how to do certain things on AO3 to which my best answer is "you should really start your own archive!" I think, in general, more fans starting their own small archives would be a net good for fandom. AO3 was never meant to be the only archive for all fandom, or even the main archive, and the more spread out and backed up we are the more resilient we are.

But of course I have to be reminded that a lot of fans these days don't really have any idea how little "you should start your own archive!" really involves. (Also, that I should practice what I preach.) So I am now making my own fanfiction archive, and writing up this post as I do it to tell people how to make theirs!

Go to https://neocities.org/ and sign up for an account. It only needs a username (which will also be your website address), password, and email. Pick a username that will be related to your archive's title!

Choose the free account option (if you ever need more than what the free account offers for a text-only archive, you should probably look into graduating from neocities.) This should take you to a menu of "how to make a website" tutorials. You should do them! They're useful skills. But let's get your archive running first.

Hit the big red Edit Site button, or open the menu under your username and select "Edit Site".

Select the "Index.html" file to edit. You're now in an HTML Editor. Congrats, you're a web developer c. 1999!

Find where it has text between the < title> tags. Delete the filler text, and put in the title of your new archive. This text will be what shows on the tab when people go to your archive.

Find where it has text between the < h1 > tags. This will be big header text at the top of your page. Put the title of your archive here again. If you have no experience with HTML, you should read over the other sample text. It covers the basic basics very well! Once you've done that, you can delete everything else between the < /h1> tag and the < /body> tag. Save your index.html file.

Get an HTML file for a fanfic you would like to add to your archive. If it's on AO3, you can use the html download option built into AO3. If you have it as a word processor/google docs file, you should have the option to save as an html file. Save that html file to your computer.

Go back to Edit Site on Neocities and go to "upload". Find the html file you saved and upload it. (You can also drag and drop files to upload.)

The file you uploaded should now be showing with your other neocities files. Right-click on the title and select "copy link".

Go in to edit index.html again. Under where you put your header text, type < br> < a href=" . Then paste in the link you copied. Then type "> Then put in the title of the fic. Then type < /a> . Then save the index page again when you're done. You can do this for every fanfic you have.

Congratulations! You now have your very own personal private fanfiction archive that you are 100% in charge of and make all the rules for. It's at least as good as half the ones I was reading on when I started reading fanfiction and will serve its function well as a way to let people read your fic. You can link to it from anywhere you want! (Including your AO3 profile.)

Blogpost version, with FAQs and discussion

Anyway, here's my beautiful new fanfiction archive made using this tutorial:

Melannen's Fanfiction Archive

(I am honestly way more disproportionately proud of finally making that than I expected to be. It's nice to have your own archive.)

If you make one, share it here ! I want to see!

#ao3 #archive of our own #fanfiction #fanfic archive #how-to #tumblr what are you doing to my angle brackets #why would you do that what's wrong with you

[fatesundress]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a month you remain innocuous as can be. You browse through rare historical 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

[mindofadoll]

A fantasy I had based on a fan fiction I read :

I begin to wake up. I feel groggy as push myself from my bed. Except I couldn't for some reason and then I look up and my hands are cuffed to my bed. Except it's not my bed it's someone else, I quickly look around the room for some kinda indication of where I am. Theirs nothing thats familiar. The room is pained a light purple with fluffy fixtures everywhere and nice tv but no windows, only a fake projection of one. As I look around I recognize some stuff bits of my things placed neatly around the room. When I shift around I start to hear foot steps. I try to wiggle out of the cuffs before the door opens but its no use. A woman walks through the door with a soft smile on her face.

"Hello, love. Did you sleep well? I made sure to have everything how you like it down to rain sounds. "

I pause and realize there is a sound machine playing rain sounds just like the one I have at home.

The lady continues " I hope the cuffs weren't to tight, once we get you your ankle bracelet we won't have to fiddle with those things. "

I stare at her for a moment before asking where I was and how I got here. Some how very calm about the matter.

"Oh that's right you wouldn't remember. Well this is your home, not just this room of course you're free to explore the whole house once your ankle bracelet comes in. For now you stay here; but don't worry I'll keep you company. As for how you got here well you were at your old home and I put something in your glass of water to make you extra sleepy. Sorry it was just a formality and I won't do it again. "

As she talked the panic began to set in. I ask her why she did this.

With a smile she begins to play with my hair. "I love you, for a long time now. I know you don't remember but I used to see you after middle school walking to your house. I think the first time I saw you I knew this was it. As the years went by you confirmed to me that this is it. Watching your highs and lows have been truly beautiful. I knew I must have you in my life but, I don't want to share you anymore. You know you sleep beautifully, I mean I've seen it before but this is my first time seeing you sleep up close and personal. What were you dreaming about? "

I can't even take it all in, this lady I've never seen before is making all these claims and I'm strapped to her bed. I then look down to see I'm in pink lace lingerie. I freeze and she notices.

"Oh yes, I thought you'd look lovely in these and you do honestly. " she says as she drags a hand up my body.

"Your just so pretty. " she says as she leans in and begins to kiss my neck. At this I snap at her to stop and to uncuff me. She sighs and begins to nibble on my skin.

"Bear with me love, I must learn your body. " I shake my head as she shows no signs of stopping. I tell her someone is looking for me. "And may they never find our home" she breathes into my skin like hymn. She then moves on from my neck to my shoulders leaving long kisses on them. She then begins to trace my collar bone with her finger ever so gently. Upon tracing it she moves here mouth to the top of my chest. In to my skin she whispers "Allow me to take my time little dove, I want to savior this for both of us".

I try to pull away as she sucks dark marks into my skin ending the ministration with a small kiss. For a moment she leans off of me to admire her work. She let's out a moan as she looks. " Your breath taking. I've had only a little and I crave more. " I begin to lightly sob as she takes a nipple in her mouth sucking it through the lace. It feels disgustingly good. Everything in me is screaming to reject the pleasure, but my body won't listen. I let out a soft moan causing her to stop and look up at me.

"Little dove. " she says as she begins to kiss me on the mouth despite me backing away from it. She continues until a headbutt her mid kiss. She grips her head, but it seems my resistance only spures her on more. As she cups my face with her hands this time and she takes another kiss. And then she goes back to nipples this time nibbling at the other. She then looks up at me as she sucks the already sensitive bud. I accidentally let out a whine as it's just too sensitive.

Which sends a shiver down her spine. She lowers her head to my stomach before continuing to kiss it and litter the skin with little marks. She then traces the more sensitive skin with her tongue. As she goes lower I feel something hot grow in the pit my stomach. Especially as she gets to where my pelvis and my stomach meet. Nibbling on the line between the two. Unexpectedly she then moves over to the top part of my thighs. The bit of pudge that peeks over the lace stocking. Before going on she looks up at me again.

"Your delicious my love, I don't know how I have claimed to live before I tasted your skin. " after she sinks her teeth in to the pudge a action that causes me to yelp as its unlike every thing she did before. Of course she watches me as she does the same thing to the other side. As she released the meat from her teeth she then uses them to bite the edge of stocking before pulling them down and off. She does the same to the other side before returning to the first and laying a kiss on the knee she then bites around on the lower part of my thigh take her time to leave more dark marks. She ends it by laying several light kisses on my ankle. Before for repeating the same action on the other leg as she presses the last kiss into my ankle she breathes a sigh of relief.

"I'm sorry dove, I don't mean to be a tease I've just been dreaming of this for so long. Longer than you could know. " she says placing her head near my crotch as I shift away. She simply holds my hips before placing a kiss on my clothed pussy. She then begins to suck and lick through the panties. All while starring at me watching every quiver and gasp. She begins to pay attention more to my clit as I whine and with shaking hands she removes the panties and just stares at my cunt for a minute or two. I hear her moans the words "fucking gorgeous".

Before ducking back down and tasting me from the source. I feel as she moans against me and grinds into my legs as she takes my clit into her mouth causing me to shake and shrink away. "Don't, run away from me baby. Hear me, never again. " she says eyes very serious. She then leans in and starts slowly pressing her tongue into me. Rubbing my clit as she does. She then holds my thighs as she goes deeper, fucking me on her tongue. She eats me out with focus and dedication for what feels like hours before pressing a finger in along with her tongue. The two move in sync as she loosen me before adding another finger and after time another. Until I'm crying on 3 of her fingers and a tongue.

She then pulls out and grabs something from the night stand. I look as she pulls down her pants to reveal a throbbing cock. She then squirts some lube onto it and my cunt before pumping it in her hand. There is absolutely no way she wants me to take all that. But as I look in disbelief she lines her cock up with my cunt but before she presses in. I say wait what about protection. She looks up at me with a soft smile "It's okay, I'm the only one that's going to be taking you for now on so we don't have to worry about that. "but before I can exclaim that it's not okay she sinks in.

With a breathy "Fuck" and fuck is right her cock is thick and just keeps going as she sinks into me as I whine and squirm. It takes a minute before our pelvises kiss but as they do she let's out long and loud whine. And I just stare at her, she fucking came inside of me, she came inside of me with no protection. What if I ... I begin to really sob as that thought crossed my mind. She on the other hand is still with embarrassment.

"I'm sorry love, it's just been so long. But don't worry I can keep going. " she says before sliding out and slamming back in. Causing my head to fall back. "See, I can give you pleasure too." She says voice still breathy as she pounds into me. The room begins to fill with the filthy noise and whines. I want to run away but theres nowhere to go. I just have to lye their and take it as she fucks her cum back into me with haste. She continues to thrust as she sucks more marks onto my neck and under my jaw. Then the worst begins as I feel my body try to tense up. Absolutely not, I tell myself but she seems to notice as she begins fucking speeding up and rubbing my clit. "Good ahead cum for me love, make a pretty mess of yourself. " I shake my head in refusal. This is not about to happen I'm not going to cum on her cock I refuse.

"Baby please stop being so stubborn, just do it it'll feel so good. " I keep starving it off despite her words until she wraps her mouth around my clit while still pounding . Sending me tumbling over the edge hard without out any way to catch myself. I close my eyes hard and begin to shake. It feels like an eternity and when I finally am able to open my eyes I hear a low ringing and my body is still tingling as she is still fucking me through it before cuming again even deeper this time. I feel tears continue to roll down my cheeks as she pulls out and her cum drips down my legs. As I stare at the ceiling completely stund I hear her whisper

"Welcome home, little dove! "

#wlw nsft #wlw ns/fw #sapphic ns/fw #lesbian smut #lesbian ns/fw #sapphic nsft #lesbian nsft #wlw noncon #wlw concepts #sapphic cnc #queer cnc #cnc wlw #bottomposting

[cy-cyborg]

Hi, I was wondering what sort of leg prosthetic would work well in a fight? I'm designing a magical girl OC with a prosthetic leg and want to incorporate a rather more pink and sparkly one into her magical girl form. I know you can get blades for running, but would those be better than a normal prosthetic for running and leaping around while bonking monsters with a magic stick?

Hey there, I think I remember seeing your question on my old account right? I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you!

So a blade probably wouldn't be ideal, but a hybrid might.

Blade prosthetics are very good for running, but are absolutely terrible for literally everything else, including standing or walking. Essentially, blade prosthetics are modeled off of digitigrade legs. For the non-furries on my page, digitigrade legs are what cats and dogs have on their back legs where it bends at the knee, then bends back the other way at a second joint before their feet.

[ID 1: A pair of black running blade prosthetics with yellow edges. Their wearer is out of frame but we can see they are running along a track. /end ID] [ID 2: A photo of a cheetah from the side. In the photo we can clearly see the structure of its legs, as described above. /End ID]

This is actually their ankle, and their "foot" is their toes. This arrangement makes these animals really fast and nimble, but it comes at the cost of lower balance. That's not an issue when you have another two legs to help keep you steady, but when you put that onto a human we start having issues. This is why if you watch any races where the competitors are using these prosthetics, they almost always fall over, especially the double leg amputees. Essentially, the shape and springiness of a blade gives you a massive speed advantage (so much so that amputee runner Oscar Pistorius had to be given disadvantages in order to compete in the Olympics with able-bodied runners) but it essentially moves the ankle joint and heel - the one our brains automatically know to weight bare through - up off the ground. The closest an able bodied person could get to the feeling of running on a blade would be to wear a pair of stilleto heels with the heal removed, and a spring on the bottom.

Hybrid feet though are a combination of blade feet and the regular feet amputees usually get. They are like tiny blades, but they usually have a foot-shell on the outside so you don't see it. These hybrid feet give you some of the extra padding and suspension you'd get from a running blade (which makes running/jumping etc more comfortable) as well as a bit of a speed boost, though not as much as the big ones, and they don't come at the cost of your balance, which you'r character will need when fighting.

Ossur's Flex foot range are a good one to look at for refeance, I used them when I was doing martial arts, as do a few friends of mine who are still doing it. This is a link to their website, it's got pictures of what they look like both internally and when people are using them, and I beleive theirs a booklet you can download on the page as well if you want to read into them a bit more. This isn't the only one of course, but it's the one I've used before:

I'm planning to do a breakdown in a little bit more detail about the different types of prosthetic feet and what they're good for eventually, but for what you described, I think this is what would work best.

#disability #disabled #writing #writeblr #writing disability #designing disabled characters #amputee #amputees #leg amputees #prosthetics

[ejunkiet]

can I come home to you?

i've had porter brain rot this week, and I wanted to explore Porter developing feelings for his new lover. >:3

redacted porter/treasure, rated teen.

cw: messy emotions, blood drinking, it's vampires okay.

“I like the glimpses I've seen of you, the real you. And I want to know more.” He holds their gaze for a long moment, an intensity there that steals their breath away, before he finally breaks the contact and looks away. “I’m not sure you’d like what you find.”

READ IN FULL ON AO3

--

can I come home to you?

“What do you see when you look at me?”

His voice is a low murmur, barely audible over the sound of the water, the glide of his hand along the skin of their naked back. They’ve been soaking together long enough in the deep seated bathtub that they run the risk of the water growing cold, but neither of them make any move to leave, lingering in the warmth of their shared body heat.

They can hear the slow, steady beat of his heartbeat through his chest, a familiar rhythm, reverberating against their cheek. It had surprised them to feel it that first night, the thrum of it beating beneath their palm through the silk blend of his shirt.

Expecting something else? His silver eyes had glinted as he asked the question, a sharp smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Don’t believe everything you read, my dear.

A lot of time has passed since then, and they know better. Vampires weren’t like the stories.

“Why do you ask?” They say instead of answering his question, twisting in his arms until they can meet his gaze. The water swirls around them, the cooler currents sending a chill across their skin, but they don’t mind it, watching him as they settle against the otherside of the tub.

“It’s just a question. Call it… curiousity.” He watches them back, a smile curling up the corners of his mouth. They can’t help the way their eyes are caught on the soft plush of his lower lip. “It’s been a while since I’ve had an arrangement like this. Indulge me.”

When he speaks, they can see the sharpness of his teeth.

It’s a symptom of the hunger. His eyes are darker than usual too, and they can see flecks of crimson in the halo of his iris, stark against the winter storm harboured there.

He hasn't fed from them yet. He’d hesitated when they’d opened the door to their apartment, the dark, sleek lines of his dinner jacket blending in with the shadows of the hall, his eyes sharp as he took them in, head to foot. They could feel every inch of their exhaustion as if it were a weight, dragging at their body. He could sense it too.

At their invitation, he’d crossed the threshold and taken them into his arms. You look exhausted. Let me take care of you.

And true to his word, he had.

“I see a beautiful man with striking eyes and a sharp smile. Intelligent. Charming. Devious.” He tips his head in acknowledgment, a smile curling his lips, pleased. “You know what you want, and aren’t afraid to ask for it. And I think that most of the time... you get it.”

His smile widens, an amused glint in the silver of his eye. “You wouldn’t be wrong.”

They return his grin, resting their arms against the side of the tub and tilting their head, considering him from under their lashes. “I… also think there is more to you than meets the eye. You hide behind your charm, but you’re not as slick as you think you are.”

Slowly, carefully, they shift in the water, drawing closer until they’re crouched between his legs, the subtle contact of skin on skin sending a thrill through them. His eyes don't leave theirs, dark pools so deep they could drown in them.

“I like the glimpses I've seen of you, the real you. And I want to know more.”

He holds their gaze for a long moment, an intensity there that steals their breath away, before he finally breaks the contact and looks away.

His voice is soft when he does speak again. “I’m not sure you’d like what you find.”

“I think I can be the judge of that.”

Reaching up, they cup their hand to his face, letting their thumb trace the soft curve of his cheek until he turns back to face them. He parts his lips, his eyes dark, the heavy weight of his pupils swallowing the iris, and he looks - hungry. On the edge of his control.

“You don’t scare me. And I want to help.” They offer him a soft smile, before they press the base of their thumb to the sharp point of his canine, applying pressure until it slices through.

A soft, broken sound escapes him as the blood reaches his tongue, before his mouth seals over the wound, sucking hard. His tongue laps at their skin, and they feel the edge of his teeth, before he reaches up to grip their wrist, his grip tight, but not tight enough to hurt.

Slowly, but firmly, he draws their hand back, the red of their blood staining his lips. Holding their gaze, he tilts his head to press a kiss against their thumb. Their skin tingles like pins and needles, before flooding with a rush of warmth. When he draws back, the cut is gone.

“You really are sweet,” he says as he lowers their hand, adjusting his grip until it’s clasped between them. His palms are soft, warm to the touch. “But you don’t need to do that.”

Their heartbeat skips inside their chest. “But you’re hungry.”

“I am.” When he meets their gaze again, his eyes are black as pitch, none of the iris remaining. His voice is soft, removed of inflection, and it’s hard to read his expression like this, caught in the dark well of his gaze. “But I didn’t come here for this.”

They’re not sure they believe him. It’s not as if they minded, either way. Their blood is a gift they offer to him freely. But… there’s a tension in him now, tightening the line of his jaw, and they realise that maybe they’d crossed a line, overstepped a boundary.

They take their hand back as that thought sits in their gut, the guilt a sudden, heavy thing pooling like lead in the pit of their stomach. “I’m sorry. I should have asked first-”

“None of that,” He cuts them off with a shake of his head, the dark strands of his hair curling around his face. “You did nothing wrong. Look at me, treasure.”

He waits until they do, his dark eyes steady on theirs, but not unkind.

“You’re kind, and generous. Perhaps… too generous.” He releases a soft breath, a smile curling up the corners of his mouth. “But that isn’t a bad thing.”

He holds out a hand, and after a moment, they take it, letting him draw them back towards him, lifting their hand until he can press a soft kiss against their palm. His eyes are silver when he meets their gaze again, the animal within contained, for now.

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m older than I look. I can control my hunger. And this…” he brushes his lips against their knuckles, “...will be enough for tonight.”

He lowers their hand gently into the water and lays back against the edge of the tub. With a twist of his wrist, the water heats again, the steam curling around them like a soft caress.

“Stay here with me a little while longer.”

–

They’re not sure how long they spend together like that, warm skin on skin, touching, talking. At some point, they must fall asleep, as they wake to find themself in his arms as he carries them to their room, dressed in fresh pyjamas and the nape of their neck still damp.

From the flash of the night outside that’s just starting to lighten, clouds stained a reddish pink, the prelude of a new day. The sight of it sends a flicker of panic ricocheting through their chest, and they twist in his arms, fingers clutching at the front of his shirt. “Porter… the sky…”

He hums as he glances down at them, before following their eyeline to the window, smiling at the first signs of the encroaching dawn. “It won’t take me long to reach my lodgings. The sun won't be able to touch me. Don’t you fear, love.”

Love. Their heart skips a beat inside their chest at the way he says it, soft, as if he didn’t even notice himself saying the word as he carries them through their apartment

He places them gently on the bed, tugging their blankets up around them, and not for the first time, they want to ask him to stay the night, take shelter with them through the day, let this be more.

They swallow down the urge and instead say, “I’m glad you came.”

He pauses beside the window, lowering his hands from where he’d been lowering the blinds, a smile flickering across his features in the dim light, softer than they think they’ve seen from him before. “I am too.”

He watches them for another long moment, before he steps back from the window and turns towards the door. “Sleep well, treasure.”

A flicker of movement, and then he’s gone.

#redacted asmr #redacted audio #redacted porter #ej writes redacted #I wanted this out before the new audio skskks #this is not my ideal posting time #and I also had a Lot of Thoughts #which resulted in a lot of different ideas in this #so likely some edits later as well #but ENJOY #writing

[frenziedslashers]

I Love You, And I Don't Say It Enough:

Pt. 2; Baby, It's Okay

Pairing: Daryl Dixon (The Walking Dead) x Reader

Warnings: she/her pronouns used, possible ooc Daryl idk, PinV sex, unprotected sex (wrap that shit 👹), rough to soft sex, canon typical violence, mentions of character death. Not proofread.

About: This is set after Season 7 (meaning if you do not know who died Season 7 Episode 1, please do not read if you do not want spoilers.) This is a little fic about Daryl returning to Alexandria after escaping from Negan. I may have gotten some of the details wrong, but this was mostly for my own enjoyment. If you have a request you want to send in for him or another character, feel free. I will be making a master list for TWD and include the characters I write for here in the next few days!

REQUESTING INFO || TWD MASTERLIST

The past few weeks had been some of the toughest of your life. Not only did you witness two of your good friends die, but you knew that more blood would be shed along the way after theirs. You just didn't think it would be Daryl. He wasn't dead, not from what you knew, at least. They just took him from you. A man who's helped you survive since the beginning. A man who you grew very fond of, and he grew just as fond of you in return. You thought Alexandria brought hope to the future the both of you could share. You were wrong. At least in this moment you were so very wrong.

You screamed for them not to take him from you. It only made them laugh. Negan made a comment about wanting to take you, too. Make you his wife and Daryl have to watch him treat you like his. "I'll be back for ya, don't cry," was the last thing Daryl had said to you. It didn't stop your tears, if anything it only made them worse. What if that was the last time he would ever speak with you? The last time you'd ever see his face. What if he ended up like Glenn and Abraham... Or worse?

It felt like months had passed without him, but in reality. It was only about three, maybe four days. Living without him was lonely. Sure as hell a lot colder at night than having his furnace of a body cooped up next to you. When you saw him get off the truck, you nearly collapsed. His eyes looked tired, but they still searched for you. They still widened and looked at you with the same love and adoration as before. Negan was quick to stop the interaction when Daryl blurted your name and the both of you attempted to run for one another.

"Well," his smile, god. You'd give nothing more than to shoot it off his face. "Isn't this just adorable? Don't you think, Lucille?" He chuckled, walking up to you with a curious gaze. "We've got little miss Jane over here, and her man of a Tarzan over there." He spoke with a sigh. "Gross." He snickered, looking back at Daryl while circling around you. Placing his hands on your hips. Watching you flinch and Daryl fight with the people holding him back. "Don't touch 'er!" "Hey now, what did I say? None of that, or else I'll shut," He held his bat up close to your face. "That shit down." He spoke, voice getting lower and more stern with each word. Daryl understood, even if he didn't want to. Looking at you with a gaze that told you everything was going to be all right.

Negan chuckled again, leaning in close to press his nose against the side of your hair. Inhaling deeply, and then sighing. "Damn! Does your woman smell nice. Bet she tastes just as good, if yunno what I mean." He told Daryl with a sly grin. "Don't talk about 'er-" "Do you wanna see her brains on the pavement? Because I sure as hell don't! I've seen too many super hot wives die. No use wasting such a pretty face when she could maybe be yours again." Daryl glared, Negan looking back at you with a sigh and pursed lips. "You should really tame your dog. He's gonna bite someone someday."

After that, you had a sliver of hope. That maybe since they were letting him go on runs with them. That maybe Daryl could figure something out and get away. Maybe you'd wake up one night to Daryl climbing into bed with you. Pulling you close to one another and not saying a word. Just holding each other in silence.

Each passing day grew harder and harder. Each day without him felt like shit. Like it was a reminder that you would be alone. You came into this apocalypse alone. Everyone you ever knew and loved, dead. Then you would die alone. Everyone that you ever knew and loved being just as dead.

But then, it happened.

Everyone else saw him before you had. Hugging and reuniting with their friend. Their family. He didn't linger with anyone too long, though. His main priority was you. It was always you, and would always be. He had to make sure that you were safe. That he knew you were safe. "She's in the house. Up in your room. I think she's reading." Tara told him, and he nodded. Giving a soft thanks before racing off in order to find you. To hold you and never let go.

He crept up the stairs. His body trembling along with his breath. Doing his best to not be too fast and startle you, but the closer he got. The more he couldn't help himself. Finally reaching the door to your guys' room. Reaching out to touch the handle but to his surprise. It turned for him. Watching with cautious and wide eyes as the door opened and he was met with you. His girl. His woman. His wife. Though the two of you weren't official, nor did either of you talk about marriage. He considered you to be his spouse. May as well be since his eyes were only ever on you since they first saw you.

"Daryl," You didn't have time to say anything else. Cut off by Daryl pulling you in for a desperate kiss. He was never good with words, anyways.

The hunter was quick to get his point across too. About how much he missed you. How he wasn't about to let you go anytime soon, either. It didn't take long for him to push you onto the bed once the door was shut, and to have your clothes on the floor along with his own.

"Daryl," you called his name out, over and over like a soft prayer. Hands roaming one another's bodies with desperation. Pulling each other as close as you both could. Hungry mouths worked at either kissing anywhere they could reach or muttering soft nothings to one another.

Daryl was fairly rough with everything at first too. Like he was trying to tell you both that this was real. That he was here and so were you. His hips were fast. Each thrust within you deep and desperate. trying to chase what you both wanted. It was rough and fast, until it wasn't.

A slight worry set within you when his thrusts slowed, finally coming to a hault. His face buried in the crook of your neck. You were about to ask if you did something wrong until you heard the rigid and quiet sob that came from your lover. Frowning while your arms reached out to hold him. One hand on the back of his head, while the other rested on his back. Rubbing with soft motions while shushing him. Peppering the side of his head with kisses.

"Dar', honey, look at me. I'm here, you're back. Please, don't cry," you lulled, your eyes watering at the sound of his cries in your ear. You hated to hear or even see him cry, but you were glad that he did every so often. He was so good at bottling everything up. It scared you a lot of the time.

"Dar', sweetheart, please, look at me. Let me see you," He listened this time. Pulling away from your neck to look down at you. His blue eyes bloodshot. He had a black eye and a busted lip, which only made you frown more. Fingers tracing his face with your eyes. "Oh baby, what'd they do to you." He grunted, turning his face to get you to stop. "I thought I lost you," he muttered, a tear rolling down both of your faces this time. Your own lip quivering at his words. Everything finally setting in with both of you. "I thought I lost you too, Dixon." He closed his eyes, resting his forehead against your own.

"Did they touch you?" You shook your head, hands still holding the sides of his face. "No, think ya scared them too much," Daryl chuckled lightly at that. Opening his eyes to look at you again. "Yeah, maybe."

It was silent again. The both of you holding onto one another while staring back at each other. "I love you," you couldn't help but smile at his words. Running your fingers through his hair. Watching his eyes flutter shut and reluctantly open once more. You could easily put him to sleep by just playing with his hair. "I know you do, you have a way of telling me with your actions, always have. I love you too, mountain man." He rolled his eyes at the nickname and you chuckled. "I don't tell ya it enough, I love you. Really do. That's all I thought 'bout, too. That I don't tell ya it enough." He muttered, and you sighed. Resting your hands on his shoulders, rubbing them slightly. "Daryl, I told you. You say it without saying it. I know you do." He sighed with a nod, smiling faintly as you leant up to kiss the side of his mouth. Wanting to continue what the both of you started moments prior, but he wasn't done with his tangent. You wouldn't stop him though, you'd let him open up anytime he wanted to.

"All I could think about in there was you. If I'd see ya again. Hear ya," he spoke. "I was scared he'd.." He paused, breathing a bit heavily for a second as he thought. "Scared he'd take ya from me." "Dar', I'd go out fighting before I let him do anything to me." He chuckled, reaching up to brush some hair from your forehead. "That's what I was worried 'bout. If I lost you," "but you didn't, and I'm here. You're here. We're safe." "For now." You didn't say anything more after that. Only wrapping an arm around the back of his neck while staring up at him.

"I love you," he muttered again, and you nodded, leaning up to brush your lips against his. "I love you too, Daryl." He closed the gap between the both of you rather quick. Humming lowly into the kiss while rolling his hips against yours. Still nestled inside you.

It wasn't long before he was rolling his hips. Rolls turning into thrusts. He didn't move fast and rough like before, though. He took his time. Letting you know how much he loved and cared about you with his actions, again. His hand coming between the both of you to run his fingers between your folds. Your soft noises you released into his mouth were enough for him to continue. Lips traveling down to your neck. Leaving soft kisses and then love marks and bites. All while his fingers rubbed over your clit. Smirking softly as your hips bucked and rolled in order to chase your high, but Daryl didn't let you. No, not at first. He was dragging this out as long as he could.

"Wanna cum with ya," he muttered, kissing your collar bone with a groan. "Then do it," a growl left his throat at your words. Hips finally picking up to the speed the both of you were wanting. His finger rubbing a bit rougher on your bud. Not too harsh, but just enough it had your back arching off the bed. Hands grasping at him to ground yourself. One hand Tangling in his hair while the other clawed at his back. His lips came crashing on yours. Muffling the noises the both of you made as your bodies met their high.

You were the first to go, Daryl following right after. He came inside of you, but you didn't care. Not right now, at least. That was a problem to deal with later. Right now it was all about you and him. Holding each other after your highs became lows and you were both back on earth.

He pulled out, slowly. Doing his best not to hurt you, or himself in the overstimulated discomfort you were both in. "Wow," he looked at you with a brow raised as he used a Kleenex to wipe you both up. "I don't think we've fucked that hard in a while," you chuckled, and he chuckled back. Tossing the napkin into the bin before crawling back over you. A hand cupping the side of your face with a hum. "Ya tellin' me I only fuck good when one's of us nearly dies?" He asked, pressing a kiss to your lips. You shook your head, rubbing at his chest. "No, 'course not, we've just been..." "Busy?" You nodded, kissing him again. "Yeah," he sighed.

He finally laid next to you after tugging his shirt back on. Letting you pull your own and your underwear back on as well. Daryl kept the shirt on so no one would see his scars beside you. You were mostly dressed so if anything happened no one would see you nude. A precaution to keep both your and Daryl's minds easy.

Daryl pulled your body close to his own. Strong arms wrapped safely around your waist. "How 'bout we blame it on Rick." he muttered, and your brows furrowed, an amused smile on your lips. "What? Our sad sex life before today?" He chuckled, pressing another kiss to your lips. "Yeah. He's always got us doin' stuff. No time for me to fuck ya." You snorted, rolling your eyes while swatting at his chest. "Shut up and go to sleep, Dixon." He smiled, pulling your closer while resting his chin atop your head. "Love you," you smiled, kissing his throat with a tired sigh. "I love you, too. I'm glad you're safe and home." "Me too, darlin'."

#daryl dixon #Daryl Dixon x reader #Daryl Dixon smut #the walking dead #two x reader #x reader #this was purely self indulgent #If you like it #that's a plus

[n0brainjustvibes]

Y'know, if I ever actually did something with Penumbra (sophia/vic), I'd take the "Steven was predatory or abusive to Sophia in a hidden-in-plain-sight way" trigger theory and run with it. I generally prefer physical confrontation trigger theories, but this gets you a Shadow Stalker based around this line:

“If it weren’t for all the crying and the complaining, I would almost be glad Leviathan had attacked the city.  Tear away that fucking ridiculous veneer that covers everything.  Get rid of those fucking fake smiles and social niceties and daily routines that everyone hides behind.”

Tear away that veneer. This Sophia interpretation would be convinced that all kindness or politeness is covering up brutality, either theirs or someone else's, and pride herself on doing away with this masquerade (read: openly being a dick). She'd also believe, from personal experience, that families and hero teams both are primed to conceal abuse.

And then you have the Dallons and New "Transparancy" Wave.

Sophia doesn't buy for one minute that they're really accountable. The more open and loving they make their public image, the more convinced she is that they're hiding something. This is kinda fun already with the Wards working parallel with New Wave, but not outright teaming up - she's keeping an eye on them, trying to justify her convictions. She's more than a little self-satisfied when she comes across Glory Girl on one of her extrajudicial torture excursions.

Now you can bounce her off Victoria in a whole bunch of ways. There's something to be done with how Vic uses makeup to hide wounds and give the illusion of invulnerability, for sure... there's also the fact that Sophia would not - having mentally categorised Victoria as "strong" - write off Vic's trigger as insignificant, even if Vic herself was writing it off as such. She'd also be puzzled as to why Victoria didn't lash out in response to her family's (cough, Carol's, cough) passive-aggression towards Vic and Amy. "I've seen you out there. You're not weak, and you're not some spineless coward. I thought you had self-respect. Why don't you do something? Throw their ugliness back in their faces, make them fucking see it."

Funnily enough, she would write Amy off as weak... that's gonna be fun, if she's still around to see the S9 arc play out in any capacity.

Anyways, yeah, I dunno. Just a fun relationship layer. I really like bumping early-Worm Shadow Stalker and Glory Girl up against one another's families.

#sophia hess #shadow stalker #victoria dallon #glory girl #wormblr #penumbra #I prefer this as a platonic ship but that might just be me being aro

[sevencolorsatlast]

Reverse Isekai SAGAU - Your Favorite Character Misses You (Part 1)

Part 1 (You're Here!) || Part 2

Edit 1: Added more headcanons! I've missed some details I had on mind ;w;

This wholesome idea came up out of nowhere after reading a bunch of Imposter SAGAU reverse isekais whereas a bunch of characters yeet themselves into the Creator's/Player's world to apologize for killing them at the first place.

What if, by chance, they ended up in your world while you were away for a very long time? Not really you being an Imposter or anything; it’s like the game telling you “Remember your favorite character you often play as? They actually miss you a lot. I’m gonna send them to you pronto!” then they just appear out of nowhere and scare the living shit out of you as they land in your house.

Other Notes: Default SAGAU / GN!Reader / Headcanon / +400 Words

Due to the sudden teleportation, they usually have items on their hands (an open book, a pen, a musical instrument or even their weapon) or look like they are going to who-knows-where, frozen in mid-walk/mid-run. 

It’ll take them a while to get them accustomed to the modern world. Now, there will be a lot of room for creativity here!

Examples: they call you "Your Grace/Your Excellency, etc." and you keep correcting them to call you by your name because you know people will give you weird looks if you and your fave are in public; teaching them what an internet meme is; they can practically borrow your/your old relatives' clothes (if it fits them) or outright steals from someone else if they are cunning enough that can get you into trouble; asking what are the names moving vehicles and you can (1) tell them what they are called (2) troll them by calling it something ridiculous and they repeat after you with a puzzled look on their faces. Be creative! :D

(forgot to add this detail oops) Depending on how high your friendship level is with your fave. If it's between Level 1-5, they are powerless as heck but will help you whenever they can.

But if you have Level 6-10 Friendship, they can summon their weapon out of thin air to protect you even if they don't have their Vision powers with them.

Poor Catalysts users. Depending on who they are: throw their weapon at someone's face as distraction / use their martial prowess (aka beating the living daylights out of a person) / use their galaxy brain intelligence to get you both out of trouble / grab your hand to run as far away as possible to get you to safety.

However, their stats/artifacts are still on effect so imagine your fave getting into a fight and won the 50-50 Crit Rate/DMG with their hit / whatever weapon they are using.

When you finally open the game, you see an empty space in your roster/character menu but displays their name and everything like before - their artifacts you gave them, same weapons and talent levels too. 

For them to get back, this is silly but very wholesome - you need to make their favorite/specialty dishes and they eat it. Simple, right? Probably yes for some characters, probably no with most… as you tried to rack your brains on how to even properly cook, replicate the look/design, AND how it tastes.

Wait, have you ever tasted similar dishes to theirs beforehand? And what if you have allergies to a certain ingredient? They will/can help you but where on earth would you find that one ingredient exclusive to a certain store? 

Also, good luck not setting your kitchen on fire because I assume all of them haven’t seen a modern kitchen before.

Once you miraculously successfully replicated their dish in real life, they can go back to their world and you can play as them in the game as usual. They can basically go back and forth by making their specialty dish and offering it to your shrine whenever they want to see you again.

#genshin impact #genshin impact sagau #genshin sagau #genshin brainrot #sagau #sagau x reader #seven's tag

[twig-tea]

Only Friend Finale Reaction

I want to write this down now because I suspect my feelings on this will change over time. In this moment, immediately post-finale, I am satisfied. I feel happy. I am glad this show got made, and that I watched it.

Only Friends was billed as the messy gays show. I went in expecting something close to Friend Zone but with more gays, and that's what we got. Not a Warped Effect with explicit morals and lessons about sex, consent, sexualities, kinks, etc., not a GayOK Bangkok which is grounded in realism.

And because this was Jojo and Ninew and Den and Best, it's still more realistically queer than any GMMTV BL to date, and there were some absolutely stellar moments that stand alone as moving, and powerful, and beautiful, and genre-changing. And so near the beginning of the show airing, I raised my expectations; maybe this show was going to do more.

But was clear by the penultimate episode that it wasn't. I wrestled a lot on here with my need for this show to be the one that finally broke up the mixed pair expectations, and let sluts be sluts, and finally showed a threesome, and maybe even gave us consensual non-monogamy. It didn't go that far in any of those realms, but it took a step closer on many of them, and considering where BL has been to date that's still pretty huge for GMMTV, and I don't want to lose sight of that or judge it for what I wanted it to be instead of what it ultimately was.

The other thing I wrestled with a lot in this show was what other people were seeing in it, and my frustration that people were taking away moral lessons that the show wasn't giving. I think I was successful in that I watched this finale with satisfaction for what I was getting, even though I know a lot of people won't see what I saw (and btw I'm not even claiming that what I saw was what the creators intended! I am not claiming superiority here, just bias lol). So I watched this finale deciding to take what I wanted from it, rather than what I thought it was actually trying to say, and for that reason I enjoyed the hell out of it.

So. Here are my takeaways from the Only Friends finale:

We got a three-way kiss, even if it didn't lead to a threesome, after teasing us all series that was still satisfying and we got it as part of a branded pair in a GMMTV show. It was fun, and messy, and I loved it. I appreciate that it was also...maybe necessary is too far lol but it was actually in service to the plot--we all knew Sand still had feelings for Boeing, or else he would not have still been so mad at Top that he was willing to use Nick and Ray to get his revenge. Not every emotional loose end needs to be resolved with kissing, but it was kind of fun that they tried (and I also really appreciated that it didn't work lol).

I loved that Mew and Ray talking as friends got them to compare notes on and eventually team up to take down Boeing. Their friendship really is the backbone of this series, and I'm glad it survived everything. Mew is so relieved to have someone else taking care of Ray because he never wanted that role and wasn't good at it, but he does care about his friend's happiness and is more than happy to step in when there's drama. I appreciate that he made really clear to Sand that his feelings for Ray are platonic, in the bar, that's the first time I've really seen him be truly supportive of Ray, and it was nice to see.

The Mew and Top scenes were fascinating. I think this is where I'm going to differ from the bulk of the audience and I've made peace with that. I do not find stories like theirs romantic--where both partners need to be in control and play games to stay in control the whole time--so for me, the fact that these power struggles were still present in all of their scenes satisfied my desire to see them stay together, happy but on edge. So. That scene with Mew and Top in which Mew agrees to live with Top but then asks him to apologize to Sand right afterwards; I read that as pretty manipulative on Mew's part, and Top's uncomfortable face at the end means that he felt it too. Maybe I wasn't supposed to read it that way, but that's why it worked for me. The ring, too, "now or never", it's not a promise of forever, it's a promise of the present [such a strong ephemerality statement]. The conversation in the bath in which they outline their needs and identify that they have contrasting needs, and say "I'll work on it / we'll deal with it when it comes" is exactly what I was expecting of this relationship. They're not perfect for each other, and they're going to continue to push one another. Right now they're agreeing to try, without a guarantee that it will work. Talking about their needs is good, but we don't actually see them trying, so it didn't hit as romantic as it would otherwise for me either. And Mew daring Sand to kiss Top in order to get them to be chill was such a Mew power move I loved it. He asked Top to apologize to Sand, and then forced them to be in close proximity before getting confirmation that Top was ready. Top apologizing to Sand in that last second before they kissed was him clinging for power while Sand was hovering over him, and it was a perfect Top volley. Constant power struggle, that's how I read these two. Mew teasing Top with whether or not he's slept with anyone else was so interesting considering their history around that--I was probably supposed to see it as growth in their relationship that they can joke about it? Or maybe they were trying to undo some of the sexual morality nonsense that made its way into this show by pointing out that actually it doesn't matter if Mew had been with anyone before? But what I saw was Mew still struggling to have a power foothold over Top now that he's moved in. I will admit the fire scene, at first, I was so confused by. Were we supposed to be moved by Top getting past his trauma? What was that scene even about? I think, in the context of Mew's struggle with his place in Top's life, and his power in this relationship, it was about Mew understanding the invisible support he provides for Top, and why he's important to Top. Mew watched Top be competent and collected in the face of a triggering event, and was impressed at how Top had it all together, but Top credits Mew's presence for that. I think it helped Mew start to actually see a future with Top, because he understands his place in it a bit better. Even if he feels like he's not doing enough, Top sees his presence as strength, so maybe he doesn't need to worry quite so much about keeping score. But that's honestly me reaching, I struggled with that scene and think it was the weakest in the finale [and @lurkingshan I read your post and could believe that your read is true, that it was there to prove Top did have trauma].

Can I tell you how much I love how this show ended, with Mix's character smiling at Mew, and Top's nervous look? Because I think we've wrestled with Mew's confidence in this relationship for the whole show, but it's clear Top still feels unsettled/uncertain in this relationship and I love that we ended with him feeling threatened. This for me was the perfect ending for this couple, and what I've wanted as their ending all along--they're happy right now, they know there are potential bumps on the road in their future, and they're not certain they'll make it through, but they're willing to try--but the threats are real, and present, and not going to be easy because this relationship is not solid.

I also really appreciated what was happening with Boston and Nick, even though I wish it would have been more explicit or done better; what we got was still better than I expected from a GMMTV show. I loved Boston dissuading Nick from following him, and finding the romantic asks to be too many/too much, and having a different definition of "boyfriend" (but not different enough to not like to Nick's face about where you were, Boston, I see you). I love that Nick didn't get mad at Boston for "cheating", understood what Boston was offering for what it was; I also really loved Sand's advice to Nick that just because what's on offer is laid out honestly and fairly, that that means he has to accept it if it's not what he wants. I didn't love Boston trying to backtrack when Nick decided not to take him up on it; but I did love Nick's response, telling Boston to own who he is rather than trying to be someone he's not.

I think this is where my attempts the last couple of weeks to let go of what people will take from this show has helped, because yeah, you can see this as the narrative punishing Boston for being a slut, but this has never been a morality play, and so I'm taking from it how I see it. And I see it as Boston getting a clean slate with a bit more perspective going to New York. What I would say to Boston if he were my friend: This friend group was a mess and they always judged Boston for his sex life more than was deserved; they also violated his privacy by passing around his sex audio and never apologized for it. Boston also didn't take their feelings into consideration when he decided who to have sex with, and he messed with their relationships which was not being a good friend either. Does he actually want them back, or is he just feeling lonely? My hope for him is that he takes what he's learned about other people's feelings--that not everyone sees the world he does, and he has to understand that people will be hurt by different things whether or not they would hurt him, if he wants to retain relationships of any kind including friendships, and decide whether or not they're worth making concessions for before hurting them so that he doesn't lose people he doesn't want to--and finds folks who fit better with his worldview and morals, and then is better able to keep them in his life. But also these people are hypocrites, and he should not take their opinion as a statement of fact about his worth. He didn't do anything worse to them than they did to him or each other.

I know a lot of people are going to see this storyline as a punish the slut story. I was wrestling with this two episodes ago, maybe that's why I'm willing to be chill about this now. I was hoping we'd get Boston as a reason to discuss consensual non-monogamy in a GMMTV show, but I am actually ok with Nick saying listen, I need to be honest about what I want and it's not that, and Boston you shouldn't be trying to give me what I want because that's not going to make you happy either. Boston being alone isn't a sad ending; to me it's the ending he was expecting and aiming for this whole time. The only difference is he's surprised by how he feels about it now that he's in it, and he's panicking a bit. Boston was not just a slut, he was a slut who didn't care about who he hurt; it's that latter piece that he's wrestling with in this finale, and I love that Nick told him he didn't have to stop being a slut to stop being an asshole. Honestly, he'll get to New York and be fine, I really think so. And I took the Nick/Boston goodbye conversation as Nick saying "I love you as you are, a slut, and it's ok to be that. Go be a happy slut!" Do I wish he'd said that more explicitly so that people would understand that? Yes. But I've given up on that.

Cheum not going with the group to the fireworks was so interesting in the context of our conversations about Cheum over the past couple of days. I took this to be the show acknowledging explicitly that she's not actually a part of the core friend group; she schemes to keep the group together (unsuccessfully), and we don't ever get a sense of why she cares so much about that--maybe it's guilt for helping push out Boston for something he didn't do, maybe she needs the security of the group she's got, we never get that insight and I'm still a bit sad about that. But she's not there for the big fireworks finale, so we're at least clear that the show never intended her to be a Main Character. And I was so happy we got her saying her plan worked in the pool. Maybe that still won't be enough to convince the audience that she's an unreliable narrator, but it was satisfying for me! Also loved her unwrapping the photo from Boston and the group's uncomfortable reaction to it. Maybe Chuem's going to keep pushing that they reconcile; maybe she's just delusional about how well her plan worked. Either way, the tension was fun. I didn't get the full resolution of her character that I wanted, but the show nodding explicitly to the fact that she keeps herself apart from the main group so I shouldn't expect it was helpful to me getting over that. And we got a kiss! And another tiny insight into their relationship; again not enough to go on, but i did think it really interesting that the two things we know about April and Cheum are: April appreciates Cheum's positive energy, and April has asked Cheum to be more honest and not just positive for the sake of being positive (about her films). So I'm reading this as that these two are just as messy and as likely to continue to have problems as the rest of the group.

Ending in Sand and Ray because I think this is the least ambiguous; I appreciated that Sand started doing what Sand always does and saying "yeah I"ll sacrifice all of my sources of income for you no problem" (WHAT) and Ray waiting until they're alone again to say "actually that's ridiculous don't do that". I appreciated that Sand's new year plans were all about Ray because he hasn't had anything push him into actually being more selfish, and the resolution with Boeing was done for him so he didn't have to set boundaries after all (called that one), so he's had zero character growth, actually. I appreciate that Ray pushes him to try to be a little selfish, that's the best sign that Ray is finally actually caring about Sand's needs, and that their relationship might work, that I've seen the whole series. I'm taking it with a massive grain of salt, because the plan is for Ray to constantly expose himself to alcohol and partying. I think this is set up to be just as tenuous as the Mew/Top relationship, but it reads a bit more lovey-dovey because they're in a less problematic place at the moment (where they have just resolved one of their insecurities so they're more confident in one another--but it's not clear how long that will last, especially with the threat of Sand's self-sacrifice and Ray's fierce boundary-violating in the face of any threat looming in the background unresolved). Sand expressing his uncertainty around his role in the Hostel was also perfect, because he is an outsider in this project and doesn't have a role, and it's a perfect point for tension in the future between them.

Even the way Yo warns the group of friends in the very last scene that they're going to have to be better to one another and less dramatic in the future if they want this hostel to last felt ominous to me rather than preachy; have this group learned enough to make this business work? That definitely remains to be seen.

Nobody should be watching Only Friends with the idea that it's going to give them any kind of lesson about what to do; at best it's a list of what not to do's lol. None of these characters are perfect, they're all incredibly flawed, and young. So their choices, including whether or not to stay together, whether or not to stay friends, whether or not to stay in business, should not be read as a moral judgment by the showrunners. I definitely agree that this could have been more effective as a message if folks weren't happy at the end. But I've given up on it needing to be effective for everyone; they stayed in character to me, and it was effective for me.

I recognized so much of my friends and my youth in this series, and I am so grateful to have gotten to see that portrayed in a show that felt like a rollercoaster while I was watching it; I literally screamed aloud, I cheered, I laughed, I applauded. This show had characters casually snort coke, hook up, flirt with their exes, kiss their friends, make mistakes, forgive one another heinous shit, be mean, kiss outside their branded pairs, and in some cases let one another go.

There are a LOT of ways this show could have been better. It was close, so close in some cases, to being amazing, and it's fallen short in a lot of ways. It could have been a subversive and compelling narrative about slut shaming and the toxicity of fandom branded pairs. Instead, it was just a show about flawed people being flawed. But I had fun, and I'm not taking away from this show that any of these characters were in the right, or that sluts are bad, or need to change--whether it was the intended message, I've given up on that because I legitimately can't tell and if it is the message, I don't want to know. I don't think it overromanticized these flawed characters, but I can see how folks could see it that way. I'm choosing to remember that these characters have all been flawed and shown to be flawed throughout the show, and notice the ways in which they are still flawed, and the hints that things will stay messy. Maybe this is a bit like those experiments in which they found the way people in incarceration watch Die Hard very differently from how other people do or how it was intended LOL maybe I'm working too hard to justify what was just bad writing and gross moral judgments and toxic relationships being portrayed as romantic. But it didn't land that way for me, so I'm going to celebrate that and enjoy the feelings this show gave me.

#only friends the series #only friends meta #ofts meta #only friends #ofts #ephemerality squad #long post #typed so I can stop thinking it #I said it in the post but I'll say it again here: I don't think I'm taking a moral high ground or reflecting the creators most authenticall #I'm just watching the show in a way that lets me enjoy it even though I suspect it's saying things I don't like or morally agree with #that's not always something I'm able to do so I'm enjoying it while it lasts lol

[fizzyboi-98]

Raining on the rez in forks

💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️

Rainy day Headcannons for quil, embry, seth and jacob,

~Quil ateara~

Most days raining or not are spent on patrol with the pack in the woods,

But the times he does have with you, you both sit on the porch with tea, coffee, or hot chocolate, and a blanket and cuddle, he's so warm, but if you're a wolf too then no blanket,

"I love you so much" his pretty brown eyes sparkling, he looks so love struck when he looks at you sometimes,

Sweet baby boy smiles a lot when you're with him, you cuddle and talk about everything & anything, he likes playing with your hair that lays on your back & the back of your neck or around your face,

The wolf boys love feeling their imprint's warm skin on theirs, his hand on your skin somehow, if you're ok with it of course,

Reading to him or him reading to you cuddled together for awhile.

) Jacob black (

He honestly wants nothing more than to eat dinner and take a nap with you in his dark room listening to the rain hit the roof, or take a nap midday and shut the curtains,

(he can't sleep in anything but complete darkness) he kisses you on the forehead and drifts off to sleep knowing you're safe and asleep against him, (also he snores but pretty quietly).

- > Embry call < -

(as I've said) he would want to go camping, you two don't even have to be far away from yours or his house,

he would put up the tent with or without your help before the rain starts (and put the rain tarp on of course)

You two would eat whatever you brought or eat inside before going out to the tent, but what he really wants is what he calls (the best sleep he's ever gotten)

If you're a shifter or not he still sleeps shirtless, if you're not, he'll keep you warm but if you are then you'll keep each other warm,

he'd honestly want as much skin content with you as you're comfortable with while you sleep, he loves sleeping in the warm tent listening to the wind and rain with you (it is the best sleep he's had) ;)

// Seth clearwater //

I feel he'd want to take a walk with you while it rains, wearing rain coats and boots he doesn't need them maybe neither do you but since he wants to walk around in public places with you it would be pretty weird to be barefoot and not dressed for the rain walking around forks,

Maybe check out some stores and/or just walk around, but holding hands is mandatory, talking about whatever's going on in yours and his busy or slow week,

Stop to eat and make a cute little date out of it (like this wasn't his plan all along)

Running into an old family friend and watching him grin sheepishly when they say how cute you two are. "ha, thanks."

Bringing back some dinner for leah and their mom, and when you get to his room he gives you the hoodie/jacket/sweater he was wearing because it's so warm and smells like him and his body wash/cologne

He puts something else on and you two watch movies with leah and his mom, not caring if you fall asleep on each other,

A/n thanks for reading ☺️🫧

🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧🌧️💧

april/21/23

#Seth clearwater #embry call #Jacob black #quil ateara #twilight #twilight x reader #headcanons #embry x reader #Seth clearwater x reader #quil ateara x reader #Jacob black x reader #Embry call #twilight wolf pack #twilight wolves x reader fluff

[moiravim]

Ominis and Sebastian comforting you when your down

A/N: I've felt so depressed all summer so here's some comfort for others who feel the same.

Written as established poly relationship, but may be read as platonic as well. Warnings: cheek/head kisses, pet names like love and baby

You were staying in Sebastian's home in Feldcroft for the summer. Ominis was staying as well.

Sebastian was lonely because Anne had moved away. You had no where to go after the loss of Fig and Ominis would take any excuse to spend some time away from home.

At first everything was great. There were absolutely no worries. You were happy to be living with the two people you love most.

But soon after you started getting flashbacks and nightmares. You blamed yourself for the deaths of Fig, Solomon, and many more.

Ominis and Sebastian knew something was wrong but they couldn't figure out what it was. "YN, really. We can't help if you don't tell us what's wrong!" Ominis pleas.

You roll your eyes before snapping back "nothing is wrong! Please just leave me alone...". Guilt immediately made it's way towards you after yelling at Ominis.

He dropped it, deciding to focus on something else instead. You walked to your bed, hoping for some privacy.

You felt horrible, your heart hurt so bad. You wanted to hurt yourself but knew it would only cause more problems. You wanted to bang your head on every wall but didn't want to pull attention to yourself.

So you just layed down, doing nothing. All day, every day. For weeks.

You knew you had summer work you were supposed to be doing. There was just one week of summer left and you hadn't even started. Both Ominis and Sebastian had finished theirs and it only made you feel worst.

They had tried talking to you, but you'd just tune them out whenever they talked to you. You could tell they were worried for you but deep down something told you they were annoyed.

Ominis walks to your bed, sitting next to where you layed. He rubbed your side and told you; "you know how much we love you. We just want to make you feel better... Tell me, love. What is wrong?".

You broke into sobs. Everything was wrong. Nothing was okay. "Shhh... Your okay, your okay" Ominis comforts. You know he's wrong but you try to convince yourself everything's alright.

Sebastian comes inside and immediately notices your quiet sobs. He runs to the opposite side of the bed and sits across from Ominis so that your layed in-between them.

"It's my fault, I've killed Fig! And I shouldn't have encouraged you to use unforgivables, Sebastian! Solomon's death is my fault too! And-and.... Everything is just my fault" you let out, causing you to cry louder.

"None of that is your fault, baby. None of it. You've done all you could. You did your best" Sebastian says, playing with your hair while Ominis hold your hands tightly. Sebastian kisses your head a few times before you continue.

"And I haven't even started all my summer work! I just can't do it! But I'll get into trouble"

"I'm just done... I'm done!" You cry out one last time. Sebastian sighs before picking you up and pulling you into a hug.

He holds you tightly and Ominis rubs your back. "We'll help you. With your school work. You'll get it done, I promise you" Ominis says, hoping to relax you.

"Come on, breathe with me. You can do it, sweetheart" Sebastian says as he takes slow, loud breaths in and out.

You follow his breaths, slowly relaxing into his arms. "We love you." Ominis says as he gently kisses your cheek.

Sebastian lays you back down and the two of them fall asleep on both sides of you. You rest your head on Ominis' chest while Sebastian spoons you.

For once you felt calm. You felt safe, and you fell asleep peacefully.

Ominis was right, you did finish your class work. They were there for you whenever you had nightmares, and were always there to comfort you when you had panic attacks.

They took care of you and helped you heal from all the stress from the year.

#hogwarts legacy fluff #hogwarts legacy fanfic #hogwarts legacy x mc #hogwarts legacy #hogwarts au #hogwarts legacy x reader #sebastian sallow x slytherin!reader #sebastian sallow x you #sebastian sallow x mc #sebastian sallow #sebastain sallow #sebastian sallow x reader #sebastian sallow x ominis gaunt #ominis gaunt x mc #ominis x reader #ominis x y/n #ominis gaunt #ominis x mc #hogwarts legacy ominis #ominis gaunt x reader #ominis gaunt x y/n #poly fic #poly fanfic #poly fanfiction #ominis x mc x sebastian #sebastian x mc x ominis

[thelov3lybookworm]

You Deserve Better (part one)

Summary: Althea is Rhysand's second sister who escaped Tamlins father and returned home, somehow escaping the fate of her mother and younger sister. She has healed from the wounds,mental and physical, with the help of her brother, father and the inner circle. But how would anyone help her when a spymaster breaks her heart and inflicts new wounds —mental, not physical– upon her?

(This is an eventual reader x someone else because az hurts her and we do not tolerate that here. Dont get me wrong, i love our original books azzy, but I've read a couple of fics which made me want to make azzy the ribbon and chop him into pieces. Also, i do not know why i have an obsession with the name Althea.)

•○🌑○•

Sunlight filtered through the halfway closed curtains as Althea groaned and stretched, which she was pretty sure were open last night. Snippets of last nights outing at Rita's and the things that came after were returning to her in bouts of throbbing headaches.

Partying and dancing at Rita's with her family. Gossiping and looking at males with her cousin, who was desperately trying to get Althea to pick one she liked. Althea pointing out females to Mor, who blushed and giggled like a schoolgirl. Feeling someone's heated gaze on her. Trying to find the source of it and realising it was the male that she always pined over. One of her brother's best friend. She'd looked away, and then the night had been a blurr before she and the Shadowsinger had stumbled into her room.

Shit.

It was the first time she let anyone into her bedroom after what happened with Tamlin's father, her sister and mother. Her father had been extremely relieved when he found out that she had made it out alive. He refused to leave her side and most of the people were shocked at his behaviour because he was known to be heartless. And then, after a couple weeks of helping her cope with the pain of everything, he and Rhysand went to spring to get revenge for the people they had lost. It had hurt her when only Rhys returned, but she had decided she'll get better. She'll get stronger and more confident. If not for not giving Tamlin's father, wherever he was, the satisfaction of knowing he had won and made her cower in darkness, then for her family who gave their lives for saving her.

But where was Azriel now? She was sure he had fallen asleep next to her. She felt a tiny stab of pain but it was gone the next moment as her head gave a hard throb. And as the headache momentarily subsided, she told herself it was for the best. It wouldn't have done them any good if Rhys or Cassian had found them together.And so she dragged herself to the bath and scrubbed herself raw before she was sure no one would smell Azriel on her. Then got dressed and hurried to training where she was sure cassian would give her a lot of shit for being late.She reached the top of the stairs and Cassian started rambling about how he will make her train extra as a punishment. She ignored him and started stretching.

•○🌑○•

It was Starfall.

It had been almost six months since she and Azriel had been having this little secret of theirs. They would be together whenever they could. But it always left Althea wondering. What were they? Friends? More?

So as she got ready for the celebrations, Althea made up her mind. She'd ask azriel today. As she finished readying, Mor waltzed in. "Would you look at that. Oh mother, you look amazing Thea! He wont be able to look away, you know?" Mor smirked. She was the only one who knew about their little fling.

"We'll see about that. Mor, I..." And Althea let it all out. Her confusion, her need to know and what she was going to do today.

Mor nodded, "Do what needs to be done sweetheart, and if it doesn't go well, make him regret it."Althea smiled at Mor and linked their elbows and pulled mor after her. As soon as they entered the party, Althea immediately started searching for Az. There. She made her way over to him when she found him lurking in the far corner of the room and looking like he would kill anyone who dared to even look at him.

"Hey." Althea said and he gave her a nod. She took a deep breath before continuing. "We need to talk." He stayed silent so she went on. "Somewhere private. Away from the house if possible. Please."

"Alright." He led her toward a nearby balcony. Pulling her into his arms, he flew out of the spell that prevented anyone from winnowing into or out of the house before darkness consumed them. When her vision cleared, Althea realised they were in the daisy field that she loved to visit.

He let her down and stood quietly behind her. She stared at the flowers, wonderin took a deep breath before turning to him.

She'd just opened her mouth to speak when he kissed her. She stood there, frozen in shock, but then she felt his hand on her hip, and she pushed him away. He furrowed his brows, as if confused.

"We need to have a conversation, Azriel, but not that type of conversation."

"Oh. Sorry."

She nodded. "I'll cut to the chase Azriel, as people might notice if we stay away for too long. So, what are we? Are we friends?"

"Of course we are friends Althea."

"Friends don't the things we do Az."

"What are you trying to say? Why would you ask me this? Did something happen?"

"I need to know." She shook her head. "I cant be your dirty little secret anymore Azriel. I want more."

"What do you mean more? You were never more than my friend's sister who wanted me to–" He sighed before continuing. "Althea, this was never meant to be more. This was just for fun."

"What? Then why'd you start this in the first place? You should have clarified that it wasn't meant to be more in the begging. Why—"

"Wait wait– I wasn't the one to approach you. You made the first move."

"But you were staring at me at Rita's... you weren't staring at me, were you?" When he didn't answer, she started laughing. "You were looking at Mor. And I was foolish enough to think you probably liked me back. Everyone knew you liked her."

They stood in silence for a time as Althea felt her heart breaking in her chest. He made no move to do anything as he stood studying the flowers. She shook her head and told him to leave.

"Are you not coming? Rhys will be angry. Come on. You can cry after the party."

She gaped at him. "How could you be so Heartless? Leave, Azriel. I'll see what to do with my brother."

"You're being difficult."

"I'm not. Leave."

"Fine. Whatever." And he winnowed away.

•○🌑○•

It had been an hour since Azriel had left. Althea had collapsed between the flowers and had let the tears flow. They had long since stopped.

How could he use her like that with no intention of letting her know that he had no feelings for her?

The air changed. She sighed and continued staring at the sky, not bothering to acknowledge him. A few moments passed by as he came and sat down next to her. Starfall hadn't begun yet.

"I royally fucked up, didn't I?"

"I don't think you're the one who fucked up."

She smiled. "Of course you'd say that. You're my brother. You'd always think I'm the nice one." She turned to her head to meet his violet stare, which was already fixed on her.

"Will you tell me what happened?"

She studied him. "You already know, don't you?"

"I think I've figured it out, but not everything."

She sighed. After a couple of moments, she felt his talons brushing against her mind. She let him in and showed him everything, from that fateful night at Rita's, till an hour ago, only leaving out the private moments. When he retreated from her mind, she could feel him fuming. "Don't say or do anything to him. It was all my fault. I was delusional. I'll eventually move on."

"But–"

"Please. This is my fight, Rhysie. Let me fight it."

He stared at her for a moment before turning his attention to the sky, where Starfall had started. "He had no right to hurt you like that. I still want to kill him. But because you said so, i will pretend everything is alright. He will never even suspect that i know about this." He forced out through gritted teeth. "But know this, Thea, you deserve so much better than him. You deserve someone who loves you a lot, maybe even a little too much for their own good."She grinned, pressing a kiss to his cheek and giving him a tight hug before tackling him to the ground and laying her head on his arm.

They stayed there all night, pointing at stars and giggling and laughing at the stupidest of things.And as Althea lay there with her brother, she couldn't help but feel lighter.

•○🌑○•

(I was really confused as whether to make it azriel x reader or not so I went with an original character but please let me know what ya'll think.❣️)

#acotar #azriel acotar #azriel spymaster #azriel shadowsinger #Acotar fanfic #rhysand #a court of thorns and roses #azriel fluff #acotar fandom #acotar series #Shadowsinger #spymaster #fluff #azriel fic #azriel fanfic #sarah j maas #acotar headcanon #Acotar writing #acotar fluff #mating bond #Azriel angst #acotar fanfiction #azriel x reader #azriel x you #azriel x oc

[regulusrules]

Hi! Okay so you seem like a very well-read person and I’d love to know if you have a list of your favorite Merlin fics. I just bookmarked all the ones you recommended in relation to the 10 best episodes and now I need more! I’m going on a training camp and would love to have something fairly long to download to my kindle so I can read on flights and when I don’t have data 🥰

Thanks so much in advance!

(Also, I LOVE your writing, I’m so glad to be part of this fandom with talented people like you!)

Hey! Thank you so much for your kind words! OF COURSEE I'd love to recommend you some fics! Likewise— the creativity of this fandom never ceases to amaze me :)

*cracks knuckles and pretends my eyes aren't lighting up rn because my time has finally come*

Long fic recs (50K-100K+)

1. to the world that never let you be by ImperialMint. Look. I'll hand out my own throat so willingly to any scar reveal fic. The trope is just so dear to my heart, and this one in particular was something else. It broadly covered every single feeling you might be looking for in a Merlin fic, and its characterization of both Arthur and Merlin was top tier. I basically sell my soul to any fic that does justice to their characterization, and this one did so much more than that.

2. What I'd Have Done by @flight-of-fantasy. I solemnly swear you will never read something like this fic. I read it in one day from how on edge I was all the time. I had to recount it to my friends in the timespan of three hours because of how much screaming and dramatic pauses there was. Simply, the brilliance of plot here is unmatched. Arthur's characterization as a strategist shook my innards, and Merlin's unapologetic nature was chef's kiss. It's so hard not to give away the plot while recommending this so just.. just read it.

3. Redemption by flakedice, Zerda. Soon, you will find a parallel post to the best 10 episodes with the worst 10, featuring first and foremost The Disir. Honest to God, I could literally go on ages ranting about how much agony this episode brought me. It was the blow that awoke my eyes to the possibility of fuck, this show isn't going to end well. I once thought about shitting on that episode like I did with 5×13 in My heart is readily yours, but fics like these hold me back because they already gave us everything. It gave us the ending we deserved. Gold. Everything in this was gold. The world building, the character development, the fact that Arthur has been given time. Truly a fix-it that fix-ed my heart.

4. Talking about deviations from The Fucking Disir, The World I Built for You by Fulgance is a must. It was the first fic I've read from the How They Didn't Find Out (magic reveal one-shots) series, and from then on I was * s o l d *. Whichever fic you decide to read from this, I guarantee you, you will have the time of your life. Fulgance is the one author I will always recommend without a shadow of a doubt. There is not a single work of theirs that will disappoint you. They will only break you.

5. Deep In My Heart I'm Concealing by @citharaposts. True story about this fic, I squealed when I read its summary. “I'm not standing here as a king, Merlin!” was the quickest catalyst to ever make me start a fic. I specifically wrote a spoiler-free comment for the author and left it in the first chapter so that anyone who's thinking about whether or not to go into yet another 100K fic will rest assured that it's an amazing ride. Have real fun with this one.

6. It Was One Kingdom, Once by queerofthedagger. Two things, if they happen, you leave everything behind and go thank your God for blessing you with it: @queerofthedagger posting a new Merlin fic, and it being a Royal Hanahaki AU. Like so many other tropes the author has nailed, this was the best Hanahaki I've ever read (across fandoms). It's so intricate and detailed and the world building is on another level. If our world was burning and I had only one thing to save, it'll be the works of this author.

Hope I helped, and hope you have so much fun in your camp!◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕

[Short fic recs]

#merlin fic recs #the one thing I know how to do #this fandom is sustained by the brilliance of fic writers #we redo bbc writers' shitty work #and we ask nothing but kudos and maybe a fanart every once in a while #merlin #arthur pendragon #bbc merlin #merlin bbc #merthur #ao3 #merlin x arthur #merlin fic #fic recs #king arthur #archiveofourown #bbcm #LJ recs #regulusrules answers #regulusrules recs

[clockwayswrites]

I know I'm brain mush atm, but y'all, allow me to set the scene:

It's one of those grey days. The sort that just look cold by how the whole sky seems to be blanketed in a single cloud and the grey tone of it seems to seep into the colors of everything else. I've been spending the rainy morning on the couch, well covered in cats, trying to stave off the cold and headache.

Finally, the cats scatter enough that I mange to get up. I set my phone aside from reading a fic on it and got up to get some muffins. After fending of two cats who think that my cranberry pumpkin muffins should be theirs, I sit back down and pick up my phone to keep reading.

Only to realize there's no more to read. Because the fic isn't finished.

And I can't blame anyone but myself because it's my own fic.

See, someone liked Bury the Years and I decided to give it a quick reread and then promptly forgot what I had been doing in the time it took me to get the muffins as if I was a giraffe or goldfish or some other short memoried creature that starts with a G.

Y'all.

#blathersandbits #my brain atm for real