#she just said I know how to be refined

[third-person-omniscient-drama]

Undoubtedly, Noble Consort Gao’s most baller move is owning her low brow pop culture tastes and not giving a flying fuck about it. 

And for this we salute you, Noble Consort Gao. You are an inspiration to us all. 

#she just said I know how to be refined #I just choose not to be #good for you noble consort #you do you #story of yanxi palace #Cdrama #rewatching for therapy purposes

[selfundiagnosed]

I cried to my mom about how i felt like i have a mental illness they havent discovered yet and she went quiet for a second and finally said “yeah you probably do”

[earl-grey-love]

I bought a blank book today and my goal is to fill it up with handwritten stories, ideas, analysis etc over the next while. I don't have a set deadline but it'd be nice if I could work on it a lil every day, even if its small.

Anyway I guess this is the part where I actually start manifesting things rather than just thinking about it but 😰 where do I start? Every single wip idea I've had in the last 6 months is flooding my brain all at once!

#theres time for it all but where do I start!? #i feel like maybe my office au with my f/os #since yknow Im obsessed with it and developed its loads even tho i never talked about it to anyone #but its so established that I wouldnt know how to start doing it justice #oh! its handwritten because I find it much easier to flow that way. #i dont obsess so much about being perfect cus I just get the ideas down #if I really like what I make I can put it onto pc or phone and refine it #but this is just for me to have fun and experiment #👉👈 #now Im nervous!! #this book has bees on it. #when I bought it the lady serving me talked me into getting a loyalty card #when she handed it to me she said ''you can use the rewards to buy even more things with bees on it!'' #that woman understood me. #sunny speaks

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

The Good Omens Musical Masterpost🎵❤

How it started :)

Some time before 2013: Vicki Larnach, the australian composer and lyricist, read the Good Omens book, imagined figures dancing on stage with brilliant music and thought, ‘Ah, I’m gonna ask Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman if I can turn it into a musical.’ and sent an email to the publishers. The next day she got an email saying, ‘We don’t want a musical but Terry’s coming to Australia, so come and say hello and tell us what you got.’

Rob Wilkins came down to meet Vicki and Jim Hare - Vicki's husband and writer - and took them to meet Terry. They spent an hour and a half with them where Terry asked ‘piercing questions’, had tea with them and they showed Terry a song that Vicki wrote (about the Chattering Nuns). Terry said to Rob, ‘Rob, write and email to Neil, “Dear Neil, this is Terry. I’m sitting in front of two hippies from Sydney and they want to make a musical out of Good Omens and I’m tempted to let them do it.”’ which was the best email they ever heard and then Terry said, ‘Okay, you have me curious.’ - it was because of the Nuns song which sounded like the book. ‘I’m gonna give you six months, come back with a first draft libretto and five songs.’

They then sent it to Terry who sent it to Neil. Terry said, ‘I really like it, you’re moving story, you’re doing all the right things, but where’s showstopper, where’s the toe-tapper, you know I need people to go to intermission just snapping their fingers with the song they just can’t get out of their head, and I haven’t heard that.’ - and they realized that they were so busy serving the story they forgot to do the wow-factor, but found it very encouraging from Terry that he wanted to make it better.

They went through the whole book again to find a centrepiece - and they found it  when Warlock is growing up and Aziraphale and Crowley are with him, and spent months working just on that one thing and called ‘All Living Things’ [the song at the start of this post :)] which is a line from the book.*’ Terry gave that song to a person he knew and asked him to play it to his wife with no context and when the next day the person said that his wife woke up still singing the song Terry said to Vicki and Jim: ‘Well, that’s what I asked you to do.’ 

* [“This here’s Brother Slug,” the gardener would tell him, “and this tiny little critter is Sister Potato Weevil. Remember, Warlock, as you walk your way through the highways and byways of life’s rich and fulsome path, to have love and reverence for all living things.” “Nanny says that wivving fings is fit onwy to be gwound under my heels, Mr. Fwancis,” said little Warlock, stroking Brother Slug, and then wiping his hand conscientiously on his Kermit the Frog overall.]

Vicki and Jim got the permission to being adapting it as a musical in 2013.

Vicki and Jim on it a couple of years ‘fumbling about’, took it as far as they could and decided to bring another person into it: Jay-James Moody

In 2015, Jay James-Moody joined the collaboration initially as a dramaturge and directorial eye, eventually evolving into co-book writer. Vicki, James and Jay have continued to evolve through countless more revisions and a number of private development readings with the support, time and talent of numerous wonderful Australian performers testing the material.

In November 2017, the musical was presented in its then-current form and entirety for the first time before an audience of over 500 eager attendees. The cast included Luke Joslin, Lachlan O’Brien, Nancye Hayes, Barry Quin, Brett O’Neill, Lauren McKenna, Nicholas Craddock, Paul Capsis, Rob Johnson, Amy Lehpamer, Debora Krizak, Blake Erickson, Nat Jobe, Ana Maria Belo, Jordan Hare, Bella Thomas, Anthony Abrakmanov and Samson Hyland.

Following a rapturous response to this reading it continued to be refined and developed.

In 2019, ten days before the show came out they did their last presentation, since then they’ve been to London and shown a videotape of that workshop to Neil and Rob which was ‘a pretty heartstopping experience’ but both Neil and Rob were ‘so lovely and very generous with their time’ and they were showing it to them and in the intermission Neil said ‘I wish Terry could have seen this.’ (see here :))

Differences between the musical and the book

The ending of the musical is a bit different, they were worried about it but Neil said, ‘I totally understand, the ending of the TV series is different, because I had something that was book-shaped and I needed to make it TV-shaped. And you had something that was book-shaped and you needed to make it stage-shaped.’

It opens with the burning of Agnes Nutter and Aziraphale and Crowley are introduced there. 

Act One ends with them ‘essentially breaking up’ because of a huge argument and they dissolve their friendship, Act Two starts with the first time they meet.

The Future?

What is the future for the musical: in 2021 they said that they need to work on some things and then they hope to do another run, initially in Australia.

There will be a CD of the soundtrack available when the show is produced in it’s full version.

Videos

Vicki, Jim and Jay talking 46min about the musical (this video was shown at the Ineffable Con 3 in 2021 :))

Sizzle Reel 6min

Anathema singing The Perfect Place

Crowley calling Dagon to check on the hellhound

Shadwell and Newt

Aziraphale vanishing Hastur 👀

Links

Webpage

Instagram - a lot of more bts videos and pics :)

How to support?

Subsribe to the instagram page and like and comment that you want the musical on posts :)❤. If you want to be a sponsor or donor, there is contact on their webpage.

#good omens #good omens musical #musical #masterposts #terry pratchett #neil gaiman #fun fact #:)

[serpentandlily]

Sly Fox, Dumb Bunny II

Sly Fox, Dumb Bunny II - Eris x Archeron!Reader

Summary: You find yourself ensnared by a sly, cunning fox. A very handsome, irritating one.

Warnings: none

a/n: sorry for the long wait with this one! Hope you guys like it!

Part I

· · ─────── ·♡· ─────── · ·

You slipped into the private library in the House of Wind, humming slightly to yourself. The faint scent of crackling embers and something else indiscernible met your nose as the door slammed shut behind you but you brushed it off, figuring it must've come from the fireplace on the other side of the large room. 

You meandered to the section that was filled with romance books—the ones Nesta had made sure to stock up on ever since she became the owner of this place along with Cassian. You brushed your fingers against the spines of the books, pulling out some that had interesting titles and stacking them in your arms. 

A Heart Ablaze.

The Prince of Fire.

Your skirt flitted against the tops of your boots as you walked. You bit your lip, pulling out another book. This one titled, The Flames that Bind Us. You’d read it before but it was one of your favorites. 

“You should be a bit more aware of your surroundings, bunny. You have no idea what sort of monsters are lurking around.”

You gasped, jumping in fright and dropping your stack of books to place a hand on your chest. You whirled around with a wildly beating heart. 

You had recognized the voice immediately but you were still taken aback to see Eris lounging in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. He was sprawled out in the chair like it was his throne, a glass of whiskey in one hand and his other lightly stroking the soft velvet of the armrest. His red hair gleamed the same color as the burning flames behind him. 

Your gaze dipped to his chest, to his cream colored tunic that had a few buttons undone, exposing the silver layered jewelry resting against his chest. He wore dark brown breeches, perfectly tailored for his long legs and brown riding boots. How he managed to make such casual clothing look elegant and refined was beyond you. 

When you met his eyes again, those devastating amber eyes, Eris gave you a fox-like grin that looked anything but friendly. 

“What are you doing here?” you asked as you bent down to pick up the books you had dropped. You held them against your chest like a shield. 

“That is no way to address a Lord,” Eris purred. 

You huffed, fighting the urge to roll your eyes.

“Apologies, my Lord,” you replied, sarcastically. “What a delight it is to see you again. What brings you to our humble court?”

Eris’s eyebrows rose in amusement. 

“If you must know, I’m here for a meeting with your High Lord and Lady,” Eris said. “Pray tell, what are you doing here, bunny?” 

His eyes darted to the books in your arms and you blushed, trying to discreetly cover the titles. Eris didn’t need to know your reading preferences. 

“If you must know,” you said, mocking him, “I live here.” 

You split time between here and the River House. Mostly because Nesta had once accused you of favoring Feyre. You hated nothing more than to be used as a pawn against your sisters. But being the youngest, your role in the family oftentimes required you playing mediator between your siblings. Sometimes, messenger too. 

“Poor little bunny,” Eris teased. “Locked up here in a cage.” 

“Stop calling me that!”

You glared at the handsome Lord, hating the way that made him seem even more amused. 

Eris said nothing, just twirled the glass in his hands as his eyes assessed you. You felt the hairs on your arms stand up, felt a chill run down your spine at his look. His smirk never left his face. You were quite sure he had been born wearing it. 

“Don’t you normally meet with Rhys and Feyre in Hewn City?” you asked, unable to take the silence. You should probably leave, but something kept your feet glued to the floor. 

Eris shrugged. “Sure, when our business involves Keir.” 

He spat out the older male’s name with disgust. 

“I’m surprised they didn’t order you to stay in your room knowing I was here,” he continued, his amusement back once more. “Can’t let the little bunny be ensnared by a fox again.”

His grin was more of a display of teeth. It did nothing to quell your nerves. 

“They never tell me anything,” you murmured, annoyed.

Your lips slammed shut when one of Eris’s eyebrows raised, like you had just unknowingly passed along information you shouldn’t have. 

The doors to the library slammed open and you jumped, sucking in a breath at the sudden noise. Azriel stormed in, his eyes narrowed at Eris. You suddenly felt tense, sensing the way the energy seemed to shift in the room. He stopped once he was in front of you, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

“What are you doing here?” he hissed at the redhead. “You’re supposed to be waiting for Rhys and Feyre in the war room.” 

Eris didn’t seem frightened in the slightest, unlike most fae did when staring down the shadowsinger.

He plucked a piece of lint from his tunic, unbothered. “Apologies, shadowsinger. I got lost.” 

You doubted that and by Azriel’s growl, you realized he did too. He turned to look down at you, his lips pressed in a straight line with a stern look. 

“Go,” Azriel barked, nodding his head towards the door. You bristled at the command, as if you were a dog he could order around.

But it was Eris who stood to his full height and snarled, “Don’t speak to her like that.” 

Your eyes widened in surprise. You stepped out from around Azriel to see Eris staring down the shadowsinger. You swore the flames in the fireplace grew, the crackling of the wood the only thing breaking the tense silence. 

You shifted on your feet, clearing your throat as the temperature rose—Azriel’s shadows growing with it. You placed a hand on Azriel’s shoulder, trying to calm him.

“I’ll leave,” you said softly, glancing up at Eris but his focus was on your hand touching Azriel, a muscle in his jaw ticking.

“It was lovely speaking to you again, my Lord,” you said, sarcastically, bowing your head at Eris. At the sound of your voice, you watched as Eris’s mask slipped right back into place, all the tension leaving his body. 

His gaze met yours and he shot you his infamous fox-like grin. “Indeed, Lady.” 

Azriel growled, lowly, and that was your sign to leave. You scurried out of the room, ignoring the butterflies in your stomach—the ones that had been there since the moment you laid eyes on the handsome Lord of Fire.

· · ─────── ·♡· ─────── · ·

It had taken a lot of persuasion on your part, but you had finally talked Rhys and Feyre into letting you have more of a role in their court. They had decided to let you shadow Lucien as an emissary, but so far the only place you had gone with him to was the human realm—not that you minded.

You were currently in the deserted manor that Vassa, Jurian and Lucien were now living in since the end of the war. You had just had a meeting and dinner with them, but out of politeness, had offered to clean up which left you in the kitchen alone, scrubbing dishes. You supposed you could’ve used magic, but decided on doing it the only way you knew how: the human way.

“I thought I smelt a bunny in here.”

You let out a squeak of surprise, dropping the plate you were drying back into the filled basin. Water and soap splashed all around you, speckling the smock you wore over your dress and the counter. 

You yanked a small hand towel free and began to blot at the water spots as you whirled around to face Eris. The grin he wore only infuriated you even more. 

“Must you always sneak up on me?” you grumbled, tossing the towel back on the counter. 

“You need to be more aware of your surroundings, bunny,” Eris purred. 

“Oh, for Gods’ sake, stop calling me that!” 

“Perhaps when it stops to suit you so well.”

“It doesn’t suit me now,” you argued back. “I am not some little bunny.” 

“Are you sure about that?” Eris took a step towards you but something about his demeanor made you mirror his step backwards, your backside hitting the counter behind you. His grin sharpened at your movement.

“Are you scared of me, bunny?”

Your cheeks flushed, your heart skipped a beat in your chest. 

“N-no,” you stuttered. 

He took a step closer, that fox-like grin still on his face.

“Really?” Eris mocked. “You seem quite scared.” 

“You tend to have that effect on everybody.” 

“Do I?” 

You knew he was teasing you, but it didn’t stop your heart from pounding nor did it do anything to quell the butterflies in your stomach. He was close enough now that you had to tilt your head back to look up at him. You had almost forgotten how tall he truly was.

You nodded, losing your voice as he took another step closer.

“And why is that?” 

You cleared your throat, your hands finding the edge of the counter behind you so you could brace yourself. “It probably has to do with your reputation.” 

“I have a reputation?”

The question sounded more like a joke on his tongue. Eris raised his eyebrows at you in suggestion and you swallowed audibly. 

He took another step closer, now easily within reach of you. The hairs on the back of your neck stood up, a small tremble shook your legs. But it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. It was more like anticipation. But for what? That was the part you couldn’t figure out. 

“You know you do,” you said, narrowing your eyes. “You’ve gone to great lengths to make sure of it.” 

Something inside of you could see the mask Eris liked to wear. Another step closer and you could feel the heat coming from his body. It seemed to reach out to you, like standing near a warm fire. Your body softened in response. 

“You’re right. I have,” Eris cooed. “But I don’t care about everyone. I want to know if you are scared of me.”

He was so close now, only inches away from you, his handsome face looming over you. The sun setting caused a golden hue to stream through the window, making his crimson hair shine like molten metal.

“No,” you whispered, your head now fully tilted up to look at him. “But I think…I think I should be.” 

Based on everything you had been told about him, at least. 

Eris’s eyes darkened as he gazed down at you. The silence was thick, the tension in your body heightened. You were captive to his stare—to those whiskey amber eyes. Something ached terribly in your chest. 

Eris reached out a hand, hooking some of your hair behind a pointed ear. He leaned down, resting his hands on the counter behind you, caging you in. It almost seemed as if he was going to kiss you but instead his mouth landed by your ear.

“You’re right, bunny,” he purred. “You should be.” 

A chill ran down your spine as Eris stood back up. He seemed to relish in the way your body had responded to him, his grin turning smug and haughty. You should step away from him. Logically, you knew you should move. But something kept your feet ensnared—just like that day in the library. 

His stare held an intensity that made your mouth dry. Something loomed beneath–the weight of all the secrets he seemed to keep. Your eyes were a stark contrast to his. Wide and full of every emotion that ran through you, no deception to be found. 

Footsteps coming towards the door to the kitchen broke whatever spell you had been under. In a blink of an eye, Eris was almost on the other side of the room, his back resting against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

The doors pushed open and Lucien walked in. He paused on the threshold, his eyes narrowing on his brother before they drifted to you. He looked you up and down, as if he was inspecting you for damage. Seeming content that you were in one piece, he glanced warily at Eris. 

He rolled his eyes at his brother’s grin. 

“Leave Y/n alone,” Lucien grumbled. “She doesn’t like your little games. Come, you requested a meeting with me. Let’s get this over with so I take her home.” 

He nodded his head towards the door before leaving Eris to follow him. Eris gave you one last parting look on his way out. A look that would linger in your mind for the following weeks. 

· · ─────── ·♡· ─────── · ·

The Dawn Court was radiant and you couldn’t stop spinning in circles, taking in the opalescent golden stone palace, grand staircases and ornate archways. Morning glories wrapped around pillars, drooping wisterias hung from every railing. It was beautiful, breathtaking. You could hardly believe your eyes.

You smoothed down the skirt of your midnight blue ball gown, feeling slightly out of place amongst all the pretty pastel colors of the Dawn Court. It was the first time you’d been out of the Night Court, besides that slight, accidental trip to Autumn. 

Later today, you would be meeting with the rest of the High Lords, as well as Vassa and her court to discuss a peace treaty. Rhys had insisted on bringing you despite Feyre’s hesitation. But he had made the point that the humans might take more kindly to someone familiar, someone who used to be like them. 

Nesta had been the first choice, but she and Cassian were still away on their mating vacation. Elain had been set to come today instead of you until Rhys had found out that Lord Nolan and Graysen would be attending the meeting and thus, Elain was spared the uncomfortable reunion and you were put in her place.

Not that you were complaining. You were excited to finally be involved.

The courtier from Dawn led your group to the suite your court would be staying in. It was carved from sunstone, with a lavish sitting area and private dining room—all decorated beautifully with jewel-toned fabrics and cushions stacked along the thick carpet. Bird cages hung from the ceiling in the corner of the room, right next to a large window that overlooked the countryside.

Once the courtier left, Rhys was quick to throw up several wards around the room. “Don’t get too comfortable yet. Eris is slipping by to meet before the official gathering.”

Mor groaned and plopped down on a settee, throwing her arm over her eyes. 

“Perhaps you’d like to go rest for a spell in your room, Y/n?” Your sister suggested.

You saw her words for what they were though. They didn’t want you around when Eris came. You might’ve tried to argue against it but decided to not push your luck today. They were already letting you come to the meeting.

You gave her a small nod and disappeared into one of the rooms. Still feeling a bit nauseated from all the winnowing, you laid down on the soft bed and drifted off into a mid afternoon nap. 

It only felt like a second had gone by when you eventually woke. You cursed as you looked out the small bay window, seeing the sun far lower than it had been when you had fallen asleep. You rose quickly and smoothed out your hair and dress. 

You sat down at a small vanity and touched up your makeup before finally leaving your room, not even checking if they were still in a meeting with Eris or not, not wanting to be late.

Your door creaked open and several heads twisted your way—including a very handsome one with flaming red hair. You blinked in surprise, your cheeks turning a bit pink at the sudden attention.

“My apologies,” you murmured, embarrassed. “I didn’t know we still had company.”

Your eyes darted to your sister, hoping she wasn’t upset with you, but Feyre’s face didn’t falter. Her eyes only softened as she looked at you. “It’s okay, we’re almost done here anyways.” 

Eris shot up suddenly, knocking his chair back.

“What is she doing here?” he hissed. 

Your eyes widened in shock, taken aback by both his words and his tone. Rhys’s eyebrows raised and Feyre frowned at the redhead.

“What does it matter to you?” Rhys asked, his face carefully blank. 

Eris scoffed and straightened out the sleeves of his coat. The frazzled look in his eye flickered away and his perfectly crafted mask was back in place. “It matters little to me. But considering you’ve gone to such lengths keeping her hidden, I’m surprised you’d allow her here knowing who will be at this meeting. My father is going to be displeased to know that you have not three but four Made females residing in your court now. It might make him…less agreeable.”   

“You think having her here is going to cause problems with your father?”

“I know having her here is going to cause problems with my father.” 

You bristled at the way you were being spoken about as if you weren't standing in the very same room as them. 

“Why should we care about your father’s feelings on the matter?” Azriel spat out, crossing his arms. 

“You want him to sign your little peace treaty, do you not?” Eris sneered at Azriel, his tone full of condescension. 

“We also need the humans to agree upon the treaty,” Feyre cut in. “And Y/n has been working with your brother as an emissary to gain their trust. Since Lucien cannot be here, it is vital that she is present at this meeting.” 

“You're delusional if you think it’s going to be harder to get the humans to sign the treaty than my father,” Eris said in that haughty tone of his. “He still thinks about that kernel of power you took from him. Power is all that matters to him and having all four made sisters in your court is going to be an issue in his eyes.” 

“We have other ways to entice your father,” Rhys said with a shrug.

You were still taken aback, unable to even form words to leave your mouth. You hadn’t been aware that your presence would cause such drama. You were nothing. No one. Just another Archeron sister. You didn’t even have powers outside the normal High Fae ones, like summoning things and winnowing. 

You didn’t miss the blink of fear that passed through Eris’s eyes, but no one else seemed to catch it. He still stood, his palms now pressed against the table separating him from the rest of your court. 

“Why is it that no one knows about her, anyways?” he asked. “Why is it that all reports only mention the other two sisters being put in the Cauldron and not Y/n?”

A shiver ran down your spine at the sound of your name on his lips. But whatever feeling that was passed as a memory of that horrid day came at the reminder of the Cauldron. 

“Put the little one in first,” the King of Hybern ordered, smugly, as he kept eye contact with Feyre. She was pleading with him to let you go. Pleading and begging with her own life. You knew why he chose you to go in first. He knew that it would cause Feyre more grief, more stress.

The feeling of hands all over you as you fought against your binds. Hands that were dragging you closer and closer to the huge Cauldron that sat in the middle of the room. You were screaming through your gag. Tears were streaming down your face. 

You could even hear your sister’s ex lover demanding the King put a stop to this. 

“She is just a girl, a child,” someone in the room hissed. “Stop this!”

And you supposed you were—especially to the fae. You were almost seventeen, your birthday falling on the Autumn equinox, when both day and night were equal lengths. It was all you kept thinking about as you were dragged to the Cauldron.

Four months.

Four months until Autumn. 

And then you had been pushed underneath the dark water and your humanity had been stripped away from you.

Your heart was pounding at the thought of that day, of everything that had happened afterwards. Eris’s eyes flickered to you for a moment and you got the sense that he almost knew where your mind had drifted. Feyre gave you a look of concern. 

It struck you now that it had been three years since that day. 

Three years.

Three years since your life had been forever changed.

“Your contacts must not be very good at their jobs,” Rhys said in answer to Eris’s question. But you were also pondering it. Why is it that most of Prythian did not know of your existence? Why is it that the reports of that day only ever mention Nesta and Elain?

Eris didn’t look like he believed Rhysand either. 

“Fine, whatever, I don’t have time to argue with you. My father is expecting me back any moment now,” Eris finally said, standing to his full height. His gaze drifted to you for a second before he glared down at Rhys. 

“Send her away,” he spoke through his teeth and then he winnowed away, leaving only crackling embers in his wake. 

· · ─────── ·♡· ─────── · ·

a/n: I got a lil inspired by that tiktok audio that’s like “I’m spooky? Do you think I’m spooky?” or whatever for the kitchen scene if you couldn’t tell haha. I hope this second part did not disappoint! So sorry for how long you guys had to wait to read it!

Tag list: @dwkfan @pinksmellslikelove @vellichor01 @whatdoyxumean @minnieoo @hnyclover @daughterofthemoons-stuff @ferrarisbitch @thaynarajejheje @honeysuckle-daydreams13 @the-sweet-psycho

*If you asked to be on the taglist and you don't see your username, tumblr wouldn't let me tag you for some reason :(

#acotar #acotar fanfiction #acotar x reader #acotar x you #eris fanfic #eris x y/n #eris x you #eris vanserra #eris x reader #eris acotar #autumn court #archeron sisters

[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

[littledollll]

Her favorite dancer

Ballet teacher!Larissa x ballerina!reader

A/n: I started watching Black swan in the living room tv today and was quickly humbled by the amount of sexual scenes, quickly cut that out.

Warnings: unhealthy teacher/student relationship, sexual undertones, condescending, manipulation, slightly mean Larissa

____________________________________

“Perfect.”

You lived to hear her utter those precious words. Every second of every day revolves around it. Around seeing that proud smile that would reach her eyes, her chin tilted up as she, admired you.

She, the one who should be admired.

The soft, recorded piano music played, surrounding the empty room with its beauty. An unplanned choreography, you were instructed. The music played and you were to follow, let your creativity and desires use your body as a vessel.

Larissa admired the way you moved. The fluidity of your movements. How every muscle tensed and released with each movement. And as you stepped into an arabesque, the dreadful word came out of her mouth. “Hold that.”

You sighed, your position wavering. Larissa tilted her head, stepping behind you.

“You can do better than this. Your leg goes up to your ear, there’s no reason that leg should be so low to the ground.” Her hands found your waist and thigh, fixing your position.

“I want a your leg to be at chest level, minimum. But I know you can do better.”

“Your body was built for this. Your legs are strong, your back is flexible. Use this to your advantage.” She spoke into your ear. “Have you no idea how many girls would kill to have your body?”

“Lean. Feel the weight of your body on your toes, focus the pressure on your hallux. You should know all of this by now. I haven’t been teaching you for months, only for you to still need my corrections.”

“It hurts.” You uttered in a small voice. Larissa chuckled. “Aww it hurts.. are you just a fragile little girl? Is that it? Are you weak?” Her hands tightened around your waist, fingers digging into your skin painfully.

“The stage is no place for weakness. Nor is my studio. If you think you can’t handle it, I encourage you to leave.”

“Beauty hurts. Art hurts. That is no excuse. I say you’re simply being lazy.” You went to speak, defend yourself but she was quick to shush you.

“Silence. You know better than to speak during my class. I don’t need any more words from you.”

There was no softness in her voice. None of the usual smoothness she spoke with. Larissa could be strict when she needed to, truly she often was. But not to you, for some reason.

“I believe I’ve failed you then. Is that what you’re saying? Are you showing me that my teachings have been ineffective to you, girl? Have you managed to learn nothing in all this time, nothing?”

No no no. She couldn’t think that. Not ever. You owe everything to her. Every bit of your talent has been expanded and bettered because of her.

You whimpered, taking a deep breath in and tightening up your position. She nodded approvingly.

“Good.. you wouldn’t dare make me have my very first failure of a student. You won’t tarnish my reputation like that, would you, my beautiful girl?” You shook your head as best as you could without moving too much.

“You should know I expect better from you, little girl.” She sighed.

“Stretch those lovely arms of yours, aligning with the tip of your nose and your ear.”

You shifted as told, of course. But her body against yours wasn’t helping. It was harder to balance with her pressed against your back, making your body subconsciously support itself against her. “Very well done.”

Larissa knows. She’s been teaching for decades, of course she knows that she’s only making you struggle more. Not that she cares. She’s refining you. Making your practice harder only so you can come out on top. That’s what you tell yourself anyways.

“I will not let your talents waste away simply because it ‘hurts’, my dear. The more it hurts, the better you’re doing.” She said as she stepped back, allowing you to find your balance on your own.

You quivered for a moment but didn’t let yourself fall.

“If you fall from that arabesque you will not like the consequences, my beautiful girl.”

You tightened up in a second. You didn’t want to know the consequences. And you surely didn’t want to disappoint her.

You found your center. The raised leg lifting, ankle height going past your shoulder. Your face spotted, unmoving from one of the walls of mirrors.

“Look at that line.. you’re stunning. This, this is why I work on you the most. You have so much potential yet so little dedication. You need me to guide you. One day, you’ll become my prima ballerina. But only if you put your life into this. Into me.”

Yes, you could do that. You could do it for her. You wanted to hear that word again, to hear her smooth voice call you perfect in that proud tone. You wanted her to show you off, be her model student, her star.

“Give me a nice lift, I want to see that knee in line with your head.”

She watched you through the mirror, as you lifted your torso, rib cage tight in its place and slowly lifted your leg as high as you could. “Hold that.”

Part of you wanted to turn around and slap her every time she said those damned words. But you held. Your supporting leg was cramping up already, your calf feeling that painful strain. Your back felt like needles being stabbed all over and then her hands were on you again. One placed at your knee and the other a little too close to your chest.

She supported your torso as she forced the leg up further, further, further until you winced in pain. “That, is your line.”

“Look at that beauty, look at yourself from this mirror, beautiful girl.” You did. It truly was impressive, but you couldn’t reach that without unbearable amounts of pain, and even less without her hands forcing it. You couldn’t do it on your own.

“One day, my star. Very soon, this will seem like nothing to you. You’ll be able to do it all on your own.” She murmured, dropping your leg but not moving her other hand from its position.

She watched your leg drop in the slightest, you not being able to hold it as she had it. “We’ll work more on this, don’t you worry, little girl.”

“Drop.” She commanded, and you couldn’t stop yourself from falling into the ground, smacking your supporting leg in hopes to ease the cramp. “A little more graceful than that, next time.”

“Yes ma’am.” You said with a shaky breath, looking up at her. A sliver of tears were gathering in your eyes.

She loved it when you called her that. That sweet voice of yours, a little pained and shaky. “Oh it’s alright.. stretch that leg sweetheart, I’ll help you.”

She got on her knees before you, taking off your points shoes and rolling up your tights on that leg before she began to give you a gentle massage. “The trick is to do it in the opposite way you put pressure on it. So up, instead of down. Smacking never really helped me, plus we wouldn’t want to bruise that pretty skin of yours.”

“Thank you..” you said quietly, and Larissa looked up at you with a sweet smile, bringing a hand to caress your cheek. “Of course, my beautiful girl.”

“Did- did I do good?”

“You did wonderfully today. My favorite little student, you’re always a good girl.”

You blushed, resting your head against your knee as you looked at her with a tilted head. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Larissa nodded, patting your cheek. “You may leave now, sweet girl. Don’t practice at home tonight, okay? I don’t want my favorite girl straining herself. I’ll be seeing you here tomorrow.”

#larissa weems #principal larissa weems #larissa weems x reader #gwendoline christie #principal larissa weems x reader #larissa weems x female reader #larissa weems x f!reader #wednesday larissa weems #larissa weems wednesday

[katieaki]

My post-apocalyptic Lesbian Cowgirl Mailman choose-your-own adventure has just updated! Read it here, for free on my Patreon! This is only the third installment of PART TWO, so it's still a great time to hop on board!! I just made a summary of the first part, here, which tells you basically everything you need to know about Lou, her unrequited(?) love, and the ill-advised journey she is beginning as of this update.

In the previous update, we found out (kind of) what the object of Lou's affection wrote to her in that heavily, heavily perfumed letter. In this update, she has to deal with what she learned. Her traveling companion/special delivery, Holliday, is being... quite nice? At least, comparatively? They have a bit of "And There Was Only One Bed" going on, in that they're sharing a tent made for one. That's fun, right? Sleepover!!

Excerpt under the cut!

“I’m sorry to have been the bearer of such bad news, Lou, truly I am,” she said. She stroked the back of Lou’s hung head. Lou was surprised to find she found the gesture comforting, not condescending or overly familiar.

“It’s not all bad,” Lou said, her head still resting face-down on her knees. Her voice sounded pinched and nasal to her own ears and her throat felt almost too tight to speak. The knees of her jeans were thoroughly soaked through with tears. “She said she loves me.”

“Oh,” Holliday said, her brows knitting together. She held her other hand to her chest. “Oh, you poor thing.”

“She said. Right? That she loves me back?” Lou said. “She did say.”

“Oh, honey,” Holliday said. She cupped Lou’s chin and tilted her face up, searching her face for something, but Lou didn’t know what. Her hand was not as soft as Lou had expected it to be since everything else about her was so refined. “Bless your heart.”

Something about having to meet her eye made the tears start back up with renewed vigor. It hurt. It hurt bad. She wanted to say that it wasn’t fair, but that wasn’t how these things worked and frankly, Venus was right. That only made it hurt more. She couldn’t even gnash her teeth and wail against the injustice of it all. Venus was right, she was never around. She was always away. She was unpredictable and unreliable. She’d been so happy to be a rolling stone, gathering no moss for so long and now it was biting her in the ass. Turned out, girls liked when you were a little mossy.

#Wasteland Pony Express #katieakipresentsthewasteland #original fiction #original content #oc #Lou #Louetta Primrose #lesbian fiction #interactive fiction #choose your own adventure #queer western #western romance #cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other #lgbtq fiction

[ilongfor-the-arts]

Hi! Can I request a Carmy fic? I would love a confident reader who is maybe Sydney’s friend who comes to visit her at the restaurant. Asks her “who’s that?” when she sees Carmy in the background and tells Syd she has a hot boss (and Carmy overhears and likes her too). You can take it from there (with hopefully some smut)….I think Carmy would be emboldened if he knew that someone clearly liked him

More Than Friends

Pairing: Carmen Berzatto x fem! Reader

Warnings: language, talking about sex, smut, oral (m! Receiving), office sex

Summary: *in req*

Word Count: 2.8k

When I heard Sydney had gotten a job at "the best restaurant in the world," I imagined something a little more refined than The Original Beef of Chicagoland. Standing in front of the filthy sign, cluttered windows, and peeling facade made me question my decision to meet Sydney's "friends." I can only imagine the types of people who would gladly work here.

“Alright, I know it doesn’t look like much. But I promise, once you taste the food, you’ll never wanna eat anywhere else.”

I dragged my gaze across the unassuming appearance of "the best restaurant in the world." I'm not one to pass judgment based on appearance, but a dirty facade is not something you want to see in a place where food is being prepared for your consumption.

"Alright, Syd,” I say with a sigh, “I’m choosing to trust you on this one.”

Syd grasped my hand, tugging me through the threshold.

“Great! You won’t regret this Y/N.”

I permit Sydney to lead me into the restaurant. My nose was immediately filled with wonder. Considering the facade, the smell was impeccable.

“Woah.”

I said, staring aimlessly at the unkempt kitchen because the smell didn't match the appearance.

“What?”

Syd asked, worried something was not to my liking.

“I just- wow, it smells unbelievable in here.”

Sydney’s face broke into a pearly white smile.

“I know right! God, I was so worried you were gonna hate it!”

I looked all around the restaurant. It was shabby, dirty, and a little stuffy. In the corners of the room, the paint was beginning to peel. On the counter, a thin film of dust had accumulated. However, there was something that was quite adorable. For instance, it seemed as if this would be a great place for a first date. It appeared to be a location where many happy memories were stored.

“Hm.”

I hummed, crossing my arms over my chest.

“I don’t wanna speak too soon, but this certainly feels promising.”

“Oh my God just wait until you meet the crew! They are gonna love-”

“Sydney?!”

A moving figure that appeared behind the counter caught my attention.

Oh my God.

“Who is this?”

He pointed towards me.

“This is Y/N, the friend I was telling you about?”

His eyes landed on mine. He was gorgeous, God. I was almost angry at Sydney for failing to inform me about her sexy coworker.

“Oh, this is Y/N?”

Alright, now was the time to take command.

“Hey, I’m Y/N.”

I strolled over and optimistically extended a hand for him to take. His shocked gaze lingered over my friendly gesture.

“Oh- Um, hi Y/N, I’m Carmen…”

As Carmen clasped my hand in his, his voice drifted off. He had a powerful handshake. We were off to a fantastic start.

“But, um-my friends just call me Carmy.”

I grinned, shoving my hands in the pockets of my jeans.

“So, is it alright if I call you Carmy?”

He raised his eyebrows in surpirse.

“Well, I mean-um-that depends? Do you think were gonna be friends?”

I scoffed, my grin morphing into a subtle smirk.

“Y’know, I don’t know if I wanna be friends.”

It took a minute for him to get it, but once he did, the reaction was instnat. Carmen’s lips parted, a faint shade of pink creeping onto his cheekbones.

“Well, um-”

He looked to Sydney for solitude. She chimed in.

“Hey, um, Y/N, we only have about an hour until we open.”

She came around to my side, wrapped her arm around my shoulder, and led me to the kitchen. She was directing my attention away from Carmen.

“How ‘bout we take a look around and then I can make you some food to take home?”

I nodded.

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

I removed myself from the uncomfortable blanket of awkwardness once we were in the kitchen and a considerable distance away from Carmen.

“Okay, what the hell Syd? Why didn’t you tell me you had a hot coworker!”

Sydney pressed her finger to my lips, hushing me. Her face was filled with fear. Was my flirtation really that petrifying?

“Sh! Y/N, he’s not just a coworker he’s my boss!”

My jaw dropped to the floor, my eyes widening.

“No way in hell! He’s your boss?! The man I just talked to is your fucking boss?!”

“The man you just flirted with is my fucking boss!”

I scoffed loudly, my tone creeping well above a whisper.

“Sydney you have a hot boss!”

“Y/N!”

She exclaimed sternly.

“Please! I beg of you! Try to keep the flirting to a minimum!”

I rolled my eyes.

“Jesus Sydney why don’t you just cut off my leg while you’re at it!”

I flung myself atop a kitchen coutner playfully, dangling my legs.

“I mean, you have this absolute hunk of a man bossing you around and hanging over your shoulder 24/7. You are lucky!”

Sydney crossed her arms over her chest, her lips pursed.

“Please, can you just not flirt with my boss.”

I groaned.

“You are no fun.”

I gnawed on my lower lip, staring into the nothingness past Sydney, letting my mind drift. When a burning question popped into my head, I quickly jerked back into reality.

“Alright, but, can I just ask one thing?”

Sydney sighed.

“What?”

She inquired, exasperated.

“Have you ever tried to-”

She waved her hands through the air, hastily dismissing my question.

“Oh my God please no more of that! No! The answer is no!”

I held my hands up in defense.

“Hey! Don’t attack me! I was just asking!”

Sydney rolled her eyes, her annoynace bubbling within her.

“Look Y/N, Carmen is a really lonely guy. He isn’t like one of those jocks you’re used to flirting with-”

Sydney's tone was tinged with judgment. I had to chime in.

“Woah, okay, when did this turn into criticizing my romantic choices?”

Sydney shook her head, restarting her thought process.

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying you are a confident girl and he is very much so a not confident guy. And, I know you’re just screwing around, and even though you might think he knows you're screwing around, I promise you he does not.”

I stared off into space, appearing to carefully consider my next ideas even though I was only messing with Sydney. I mean, really? Don't flirt with her hot boss? Was she for real?

“Alright, so what you’re saying is make it obvious I’m not screwing around before I fuck him?”

Sydney groaned, her eyes virtually rolling to the back of her head.

“That’s absolutely not what I’m saying!”

“Sydney! Get your ass over here I need your help with something!”

Another voice, not Carmen's, reverberated around the kitchen walls. Sydney raced over to me, her voice barely above a whisper. I recoiled, surprised at her sudden closeness.

“I’m saying don’t fuck him! Please!”

She took a step back, placing distance between us. Sydney took a deep breath, steadying herself.

“Now, I gotta go. Are you okay hanging here for a second?”

I nodded, trying to conceal my annoyance.

“Sure. I’ll be okay.”

“Hands to yourself!”

Sydney exclaimed before vanishing from sight. I assumed she'd only take a few minutes, but after about ten minutes of waiting, I decided to go exploring. I stumbled upon an appealing door that was closed off from the rest of the restaurant. I glanced from side to side, ensuring no one was around to witness my snooping.

I flung open the door, eager to discover the secrets of the hidden room. What I didn't expect to find was Carmen hunched over a desk, scribbling on a scrap of paper. When he noticed I was in his office, a look of shock wafted over his features. He blushed.

“Oh! Um, Y/N, what are you doing here?”

I shut the door behind me. Now, it was just me and him, in his office, alone.

Perfect.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, I was just exploring and this door was closed so it excited me.”

I motioned to the door behind me.

“Huh. Do-um, do things that are off limits entice you?”

I strolled over to his desk, trying not to overwhelm him with my seductive attempts.

“Yes. When someone tells me I can’t have something, it makes me want it real bad.”

“Yes. When someone tells me I can’t have something, it makes me want it real bad.”

Carmen scoffed.

“What? Like your friend's hot boss?”

Oh my God.

He heard that?

His cheeks flushed an even brighter shade of pink. He was taken aback by his own self-assurance.

“I mean, um, I didn’t-uh, I-I wasn’t eavesdropping I promise.”

He averted his gaze, suddenly becoming preoccupied with the numerous bills on his desk. I shrugged casually.

“It’s alright. Honestly, I don’t really care. It’s your restaurant after all. You have a right to know what’s going on.”

Carmen scoffed.

“What? Like your friend's hot boss?”

Oh my God.

He heard that?

His cheeks flushed an even brighter shade of pink. He was taken aback by his own self-assurance.

“I mean, um, I didn’t-uh, I-I wasn’t eavesdropping I promise.”

He averted his gaze, suddenly becoming preoccupied with the numerous bills on his desk. I shrugged casually.

“It’s alright. Honestly, I don’t really care. It’s your restaurant after all. You have a right to know what’s going on.”

Through his lashes, he looked up at me. Except for the soothing hum of the air conditioner, there was complete silence. The dim lighting created an intriguing ambience in the space.

“Uh-well, I’m still sorry.”

I grinned, his awkwardness was incredibly adorable.

“Did you happen to hear what Sydney said? Yknow, about the whole…”

I waved my hand through the stuffy air, hoping he'd finish the sentence for me. If Carmen was as unaccustomed to female interaction as Sydney suggested, I would not bring up the subject of sex.

Carmen raised his eyebrows.

“Uh-yeah, I-um, I heard most of it.”

He laughed awkwardly.

“Please don’t fuck my boss.”

He tried to mimic Sydney's tone of voice. I laughed, delighted by his attempts at humor. I trailed my finger down the uneven wood of the desk, attempting to appear nonchalant as I entered unfamiliar terrain.

“Yknow, we can still have fun and not fuck.”

Carmen shifted in his seat, tightening his grasp on the armrests. His knuckles had turned a pale white.

“We don't-y’know-we don’t have to do anything.”

I nodded.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do. But, honestly, do you think I’m attractive?”

The breath hitched in Carmen’s throat.

“Yeah, I do.”

He said, voice cracking slightly. I smirked, fluttering my lashes suggestively.

“Good, cause I think you’re attractive.”

I moved my gaze down his body, enjoying the sight of his toned torso being softly hugged by a white shirt. God, his hands, what I’d give to have them around my neck.

Baby steps.

Baby steps.

Carmen shifted once more in his seat, the bulge in his jeans becoming increasingly more difficult to conceal.

“And, if you’ll let me, I’d love to take care of that for you.”

Carmen’s eyes widened.

“Oh-um, you don’t have to-“

“Well, I’m aware I don’t have to. But, yknow, usually when two people are attracted to each other they act on it.”

I slowly dropped to my knees in front of him, staring at him through my lashes. I shuffled closer, settling myself between his spread legs. The gentle smell of sweat and smoke wafted through the air.

“I mean, what’s the point of being attracted to someone if all you do is beat around the bush?”

God, this angle made me want to fuck him even more. He looked extra sexy when he was all hot and bothered.

“Yeah-um, I guess.”

I reached for his jeans, slowly unbuttoning his fly.

“Is this okay?”

Carmen gulped, his lips falling open as his breathing became audible.

“Yeah, this is okay.”

I tugged his jeans down his thighs, exposing his black boxers. Carmen’s erection was growing with every subtle touch.

Jesus, he was big.

I hooked a finger in the waistband of his boxers, pulling them down to join his jeans in a pool on the floor. His cock sprang free, beads of precum already collecting on the swollen tip.

“Oh Jesus.”

Carmen murmured under his breath. His knuckles were white. I playfully cast a glance upwards as I wrapped my hand around his length. Carmen shuddered. His entire body convulsed as I began to pump his erection. A few stray curls fell onto his forehead, and his chest heaved with each strangled breath.

“Try to be quiet, alright? We don’t want Sydney to think I’m fucking her hot boss.”

With that comment, I slipped the tip of his cock into my mouth. Carmen grit his teeth, suppressing the noises that threatened to spill past his lips.

“Does that feel good?”

I asked before hastily resuming my previous actions. Bit by bit, I took Carmen’s thick cock into my mouth. But he couldn’t help himself. Carmen thrusted his hips forward, his tip slamming into the back of my throat. I gagged, his visceral reaction was incredibly unexpected.

“Shit,” he whispered, “I’m sorry. Uh-yeah, yeah, that feels really good. Please, please don’t stop.”

Oh, I was not stopping.

Carmen's tanned body was covered in a thin mist of sweat. Moisture had adhered to the loose curls on his forehead. His pupils had been blown, and his dreamy blue eyes had turned nearly entirely black with passion.

Carmen's chest continued to heave as he attempted to recover control over his own body. He threw his head back, his Adam's apple now exposed.

God, he was sexy. I wanted nothing more than to place a hickey on that lovely neck of his.

The sound of footsteps hurried past the office door. Carmen's eyes widened in disbelief. He placed his fist in his mouth and bit down hard to conceal his desire.

Oh God, the thought of Sydney bursting through the door to find me on my knees with Carmen’s cock in my mouth frightened me. So, I gently took Carmen’s free fist and placed it in my hair, hoping he would take the hint and manipulate me to his liking.

Thankfully, his desire was so prominent that he pushed away his apprehension. He quickened my pace, moving me along his cock more rapidly. I relaxed my body, allowing myself to become a tool to help him achieve his release.

Carmen gripped my roots with such force that I feared my scalp would be pulled from my skull. Nevertheless, I pushed past the pain and discomfort in my knees and worked to bring him to an orgasm.

Carmen instinctively bucked his hips into my mouth, his cock twitching on my tongue. His salty precum coated my taste buds. I dragged my tongue over his swollen tip, his length now twitching more rapidly.

“Fuck! Jesus, I’m gonna-“

Carmen’s voice morphed into a pornographic moan as his hot cum coated my throat. He released his death grip on my roots, taking a few loose strands of hair with him. I gently dragged my lips along his cock a few more times in order to bring him down from his high. When he grew completely soft in my mouth, I removed my mouth from his length with a subtle pop.

I stood, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“You alright?”

Carmen hastily shoved his cock back into his boxers.

“I’m uh-I’m great.”

He threw his jeans over his hips, tattooed biceps rippling as he redid his fly.

He has nice arms.

I bet he could throw me around really easily.

“I just-um-we open really soon and I-um-I need to get ready there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

Carmen pushed past me. Before he could throw open the door, I placed my palm atop his hand, halting his movements.

“Would you wanna get dinner with me sometime?”

His eyes had returned to their lovely blue.

“Sure, um… I’m super busy but I think I can make something work.”

He grinned softly. He had a beautiful smile. God, this guy needs to get laid.

“Sounds good.”

Carmen and I crossed the threshold into the now-busy front of the restaurant. Employees rushed back and forth. A crowd had gathered around the front door. Carmen tapped my shoulder to attract my attention.

“Could I, um, maybe get your number?”

He asked, chuckling. I crossed my arms over my chest. I grinned devilishly.

“Sorry, I don’t have my phone on me right now,” I began, “oh! But, Y’know who does have my number who you could ask?”

Carmen tilted his head to the side, intrigued.

“Who?”

My eyes crinkled as I grinned sincerely.

Oh, this was gonna be fun.

“Sydney.”

#carmen berzatto smut #carmen berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto #jeremy allen white x reader #the bear fic #the bear fanfiction #the bear fx #the bear #the bear season 2 #carmy x reader #carmy smut #carmy berzatto #carmy the bear

[a-small-writer-in-a-big-world]

Gossip: knight!price x princess!reader

The joust had been such a horrible mistake and you were paying the consequences, even if it was your mother’s idea.

The fact that your mother had started up another round of trying to find you a suitor added to a growing anxiety that hadn’t left you since you turned of age to get married. It made everything harder; your studies, your mood and everything else suffered and on top of it the joust added more to it.

You didn’t care for any of the lords who had competed that day, especially the one who had practically begged you for a gift that you felt pressured into it. Neither of them were particularly good men, you knew how much they jumped around from woman to woman from your ladies in waiting, and they only sought after you because you were a princess.

They didn’t like anything about you, saw you only as a pet or a prize to win to make themselves look better because they didn’t know you.

They would never know you so they would much rather beat on each other in the name of winning you over, when you would never watch it willingly.

“The captain is back to training today.” You heard your ladies in waiting behind you and you frowned. “I havent seen him in action yet.”

That was another reason why the joust had caused issues.

For the past week Sir John Price had been the talk of the court. He was the best knight in the kingdom, everyone knew it, but he had never performed in front of others, only fought in battles. His performance brought an uproar of affection towards him but you couldn’t see it.

What good was senseless violence? Especially in the name to impress you, as if you wanted to see people hurt each other for your entertainment.

You wanted to be impressed but you just couldn’t. It looked bad on him, the violence for sport rather than need, it was beneath him in your opinion.

He was much more refined than that. Much more chivalrous and mature, which is why you couldn’t hold your tongue.

Barbaric may have been a little harsh but you didn’t like to see him act in such a manner.

For some reason you didn’t want him to be like everyone else, you wanted him to be different.

“He trains the other knights so well.” Another lady swooned and you rolled your eyes.

You couldn’t escape him, not when you wanted to leave the castle to find alone time and now when he was gone. It was like he was tormenting you without him being here.

“And he’s incredibly disciplined.” One do your ladies in waiting, Katherine, said and you clenched your jaw.

Katherine was one of your closest friends so you knew that she was fond of your knight for a couple months now. She was beautiful and very high in nobility but she was well within the range that Sir John could marry her if he was interested in that.

They could be wed as soon as they both deemed it the right time, if he showed interest, and they’d be the most beautiful couple in the court.

The thought made your chest oddly tighten.

“Katherine, if Sir John were to propose to you tomorrow, would you accept?” You wondered and she immediately became flustered.

“Well…I think I’d ask him to court me first but I wouldn’t say no.” She explained and you hummed.

Would she say that if she knew him as well as you did? If she spent so many hours of her day with him as he stubbornly refused to give you space or become irritated when you teased him too much?

It shouldn’t matter to you. If they wanted to be together, they should be together. It wasn’t like you could marry a knight and it wasn’t like you wanted Sir John Price specifically.

Yet the thought…the thought hurt.

“You should speak to him soon, then.” You suggested with poise.

“Your highness, you flatter me.” She laughed and you smiled. “He’s married to his sword and his oath to you, to get in the way of that would be a disservice to the crown.”

“I implore you to please take him off my hands.”

You all laughed together and tried your best to ignore the rest of the conversation about him until you parted ways with the ladies.

For once you managed to get into the garden by yourself and though the idea of running into the nearby forest crossed your mind you didn’t moved from your spot in front of the pond.

Your mind was plagued with problems. The Queen’s pressure for you to get married, the countless suitors who treated you like an object, your lack of freedom, the weight of the crown and the country on your shoulders, the fact that your mother had told you she was the one going to choose your next suitor with or without your input.

Your life had never been in your hands but now it was being played with by everyone else.

And now the added grief of Sir John Price being married? Why did it bother you so much…?

“Should I be worried you’re still here?” Price’s voice caught your attention.

“Worry if you must, I’m just thinking.” You told him absentmindedly without looking at him.

He was worried. He had noticed the entire week that you had been more quiet and reflective than usual. He noticed the way your brow was constantly knitted and the way, despite the many years of practiced etiquette, you digested with your hands.

You were anxious and stressed, and while you were able to hide it from everyone else, he saw it. He had a few thoughts about what it may be but he never voiced it.

“You and Lady Katherine,” you said and he raised an eyebrow.

“What about her?” He wondered and you eyed him carefully.

“Tell me what you think of her.”

Price have you a confused look. He didn’t think about her, not really. Of course he was polite to her and had spoken to her on many occasions but it was never anything he would call personal.

Was she becoming an issue? Did he need to step in on behalf of the crown?

“Not much.” He said truthfully and regretfully that gave you some relief. “Is everything alright between the two of you, your highness?”

“Oh yes, everything’s fine.”

You hoped that your friend would find a better man to pine over, one that would be interested in her and treat her fairly.

It cleared your mind a little mc the fact that he wasn’t interested and you were able to focus yourself better. You took a deep breath and composed yourself.

“I won’t be needing you much for the rest of the day, I’ll be in library.” You told him and he gave you a look.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” He shot back and your eyes narrowed.

“I am not in the mood for your scrutiny, take it elsewhere.”

You walked away from him without letting him argue further because you were going to spend the rest of your day in the library.

Who would ever see anything in a man like him?

A/n: had to balance it out with jealous reader lol

@deadbranch @makayla-666

#knight!price #captain john price x reader #captain john price x you #price x reader #price x you #john price x reader #john price x you #call of duty #captain john price #princess!reader

[oceane4loveu]

What would Blair Waldorf do?

Aesthetic

Blair's aesthetic is dark academia. She loves classic books, pays attention to details, prefers classics and luxury and respects the rules of high society. Its look symbolizes refinements, culture, elegance and classic charm with a chic and timeless touch.

Style

Blair's style oscillates between light feminine and dark feminine depending on the occasion. She likes dresses and skirts, light prints and delicate textures like lace or satin. But she also knows how to adopt a more sophisticated attitude thanks to materials like tweed or leather.

Mindset

Forget boys. As Blair said: “You need to be cold to be a queen.” Forget the boys, keep your eyes on the prize. » Romantic interests are just distractions and will waste a lot of your time when you're not where you want to be. Work and ignore the noise. Blair's wisdom extends to his approach to education. Follow his example by having clear goals from a young age. Turn off distractions (yes, that includes your phone!) while studying and get your homework done quickly. In doing so, you will be well prepared for success, just like Blair on his path to Yale Law School. Don't fall into the trap of emotions, use your mind. Use your mind, not your heart. "She likes to see the best in people. I like to see the truth." Exactly, you need to start acting according to logic. Set clear goals. Maintain discipline in studies and personal life and radiate elegance. As Blair herself once said: “I am not a step on the path. I am a destination. » Focus on your goals and avoid distractions. Believe in yourself. You must believe that you are capable of doing anything others never underestimate you and always try before giving up. Once again, the world will prove that it can do anything it can. You can do better, trust me.

Hobbies and talents

Blair's hobbies and talents are numerous and reflect his social status:

Fashion and aesthetics: this has always been a clear passion for Blair. She loves creating sophisticated looks.

The organization of events: Blair excels in the art of hosting. She organizes large social evenings where all the details are thought of.

Foreign languages: she speaks several languages ​​fluently, which she learned during numerous stays abroad.

Politics: Blair is interested in world affairs.

Reading: Blair reads a lot and likes to educate her self.

༝༚༝༚ océane

#blair waldorf #dream life #dream girl #it girl #high maintenance #it girl energy #self development #self love #becoming that girl #self care #gossip girl #study tips #self health #self confidence #self improvement #clean girl #main character #makeup #romantizing school

[still-a-morosexual-help]

God, this man has the absolute worst case of nostalgia based rose tinted glasses

In nightbringer itself Asmo says the day before they Fell he was hiding from Raphael for messing with him/pissing him off

All of Lucifer's siblings (minus Levi, as far as we know) were frequently sneaking into the human world while they were actively at war with the Devildom and while it was forbidden to interact with humans

Mammon used the angels as his own giant chess set????

Mammon used to sneak into the human world to collect pigeon feathers and sell them to angels by saying they were Raphael's feathers, which is hilarious but is also A FUCKING SCAM THAT CURRENT MAMMON WOULD ABSOLUTELY PULL

The others actually thought Mammon would Fall long before he did because he was such a shit head

Asmo used to have his Asmo parties or Asmo nights or whatever up in the Celestial Realm despite Raphael saying parties are bad (I feel like the actual word he used was "immoral"? )

Asmo used to sneak into the human world to go partying with humans

It is heavily implied in s3 that asmo was fucking & sucking his way through the celestial realm (good for him btw get those sticks outta the angels' asses babe i believe in you <3 )

The twins and Lilith used to frequently sneak into the human world

Lilith started a whole ass relationship with a human and lied her ass off about it so that she could keep it secret

Lilith compared Michael to a jellyfish???? the first time she met him and that pissed him off

Lilith held a hell of a grudge

Belphie used to skip work so he could go nap

The brothers, as a team, used to catch frogs, cut holes in books, put the frogs into them and wait for Raphael to open them

The brothers, as a team, used to dig pits in the ground and cover them up so that other angels would fall into them (at least the frog thing was kinda funny this is just them being straight up dicks)

Raphael was constantly chasing them around with his spears and getting on Lucifer's ass about them because of how troublesome they were

S4 implies that the reason the brothers' pranks are more refined as demons, compared to when they were angels, is because they now have Satan

So yeah, they were always asses

But even if there is some truth in what Lucifer said about them being kind & sincere (and honestly, there is. We've seen more than enough evidence of it in the events, devilgrams, chats & s1-4) :

Levi says he was depressed in the Celestial Realm and felt like he didn't fit in.

Both Mammon & Beel didn't fit in until Lucifer found them.

Lilith definitely didn't feel like she fit in.

Lucifer, as a demon, says he'll never want to go back. Talking with Diavolo as an angel made him lose a little faith in the Celestial Realm. His greatest fear is possibly his father. Even before they Fell something in the Celestial Realm was pissing him off so much that he managed to spawn a whole other conscious life form - Satan says he gained his own consciousness even before Asmo was created meaning that anger had been festering for a long time.

As far as we know Asmo & Belphie were the only ones who were genuinely happy throughout their entire time in the Celestial Realm (and I think once Asmo gets used to his demon form he'll appreciate the freedom in the devildom over the strictness of the celestial realm)

Mammon, in Nightbringer, says that they know there's no real difference between being an angel or a demon and that they're all just labels.

Whatever sincerity and kindness they, may or may not have, had in the Celestial Realm wasn't because they were angels. Or because of the Celestial Realm.

It was in spite of all that.

It was just what they are like as people.

And of course that sincerity and kindness aren't gonna shine through right after a horribly traumatic event that killed their sister and permanently changed their bodies. And due to such an event & their Sins becoming more...more, they'll obviously be different and treat each other differently as demons.

But at the end of the day they are good, kind people, even as demons.

Like we've seen that.

#obey me spoilers #nightbringer spoilers #obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me! #shall we date? obey me! #swd obey me #swd obey me! #shall we date obey me #obey me! shall we date? #obey me nightbringer #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me levi #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmo #obey me asmodeus #obey me beel #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphie #obey me belphegor #obey me lilith #om! lucifer #om! mammon #om! levi #om! leviathan #om! asmo #om! asmodeus #om! belphie

[tarjapearce]

I wonder what mama would be like when she was pregnant with benji? Was she more active?? Anyways, have a good day/night!

💗💗💗

Benjamin's Pregnancy

Suggestive, fluff and little angst. No proofread ~ c:

After the little stunt in the lookout spot and the police officers calling out your hornytis, you returned home.

But that only had you climbing Miguel like a tree as soon as he closed the door behind you. Not that he complained in the slightest.

"W-Wait" He was mumbling through kisses as you struggled to get his damned shirt out. Hormones running in a brazen flurry all over your body. A single purpose engraved in your grey matter. Make a baby.

"Te juro que si no me haces un bebé-" (I swear that if you don't make me a baby right now)

Miguel only carried your hormone crazed body over his shoulder and gave a low whistle.

"Espérate tantito, mi reina."(Wait a minute).

He tittered as his ears turned pink, like his cheeks, "Let me get the water first."

Cause in truth, you wouldn't give him a rest. Not until your body knew that it was enough. It both amazed yet low key terrified him. He'd awake sore and stiff, spent and completely drained while the overall glow oozed from every pore of your body. Both sex's drive were high, but when ovulating, he had to acknowledge your stamina undoubtedly outmatched him. But the goofy and spent smile you'd awake with later was the perfect reward.

With a roll of his shoulders and a water pitcher on hand and some glasses, he closed the master bedroom's door and begun his work.

----

Your grip only tightened on his waist as tears flowed down your cheeks. He showered your face in soft kisses and loving praises upon watching the positive outcome in the pregnancy test.

"We're having a baby!"

God, he loved the excitement in your voice, the way your tears were out of joy, and the fact you were gonna make him a father, again. It was impossible to not feel the same amount of excitement you were experiencing.

His big hands wiped your eyes and cupped your cheeks while kissing your forehead.

"Can't wait to tell Gabi. She'll be over the moon!"

Now that the first step on his husband duty was completed, the second was just starting. Spoiling you until you were ready to pop his child.

To your surprise MJ gave her own news on the girl's chat group. It was a good distraction for a freshly broken hearted Jessica. A celebration ensued.

Peter was asking Miguel for guidance as you gushed with MJ the future changes her body would take.

Miguel's lips turned into a fond smile upon watching you. Your married ring fit perfectly in your hand, and shone brighter, like your smile whenever you rubbed your belly.

Never once the doubt of you being a bad mother crossed his mind, despite your inexperience and both being young, you had done a pretty good job with Gabriella. And this new stage in your lives would only polish some skills that needed a bit more refining.

----

His heart nearly stopped when the doctor said it was a boy. So far, as long as his kid was healthy, the rest was just a bonus. But now that he'd have a boy it both worried and excited him.

It worried him cause he had no paternal figure to grow with, but like you had told him once.

"You're not your father. You're way much better than him. Look at the wonderful child you've raised, without his help. Be proud of yourself, Mi amor."

He adored your reassurance, and now he'd teach his baby boy everything he had to learn on his own. He'd be a good father.

----

The tidal craving waves made you scourge the fridge at random times thorough the night.

The first crave was simple, jalapeños smeared in peanut butter. You didn't know how, but the flavor was way too good for you to just eat one.

Miguel would find you guzzling his own can of jalapeños while scooping up a spoonful of peanut butter.

"You'll get sick if you eat that much spiciness"

"No, Miguel, wait!"

"Uh-uh. You'll get cramps and-"

Oh shit.

Your eyes turned glossy as he placed the can above the fridge. A spot you certainly didn't reach.

Shit.

"You're so mean."

A hiccup echoed between you two, followed by a sniff.

"Mi reina" His tinge amazed and full of disbelief, "I don't want you to get an upset belly, that's all."

"But I am hungry! They're not even that spicy!"

You sobbed and half yelled. Miguel could only sigh and take the can back

"Here."

"I don't want it anymore."

You took another spoonful of the butter and walked back to your room.

Great.

He rubbed his face in defeat. Now he felt like an idiot for not giving you the canned spicy goods. And definitely that night you didn't cuddle him.

Hormones were surely making a mess out of your emotions, and it took him a bit to adapt at the quickening pace they often changed. Exercise and long walks helped you to keep relaxed and active.

The next day you were crying while apologizing, only for him to hold you and offer you a couple of jalapeños in return. He even tried the odd mix with you to try and understand why you loved that specific combo. Neither good, neither bad, like something he tried before. But glad you were no longer at odds with him.

But soon they stopped being your obsession, instead strawberries and tuna came up. And just like Gabi, you'd wake him up in the middle of the night at the devil's hours to get him to fetch you strawberries cause you had ran out of them. Or called him when he was a few blocks away from your home to let him know and God forbid if he returned with empty hands.

The dangerous months had been long gone, and seeing your baby bump growing with each passing day, made his phone to be filled with a daily picture of you, holding it. Gabi occasionally appearing it them with a goofy grin.

One particular rough day at work, had his energies and emotional reserves drained. But changed immediately when he saw you laughing as Gabi painted over your belly.

"Papa! The baby is kicking!!"

Gabriella gasped and pulled him to place his hand over the clean parts devoid of paint in your belly to feel his baby boy kick.

"Look at that." Miguel huffed in child like wonder as he felt every powerful little kick. He then kissed your belly and your forehead with new energies.

You and Gabi were the reason he'd wake up and work. You'd help him with paperwork at home whenever he needed it.

----

Hormones kicked in harder in the last trimester, everything was a trigger for tears to fall down.

You couldn't reach your toes? You'd cry. The cream cheese was too perfect for digging a spoon in it? You'd cry. Gabriella existing around you and being a happy kid? You'd definitely cry. And if Miguel couldn't find his sock in the washing machine, you'd cry harder.

It was low key funny for him, even had some compilations of you crying over the littlest things in his phone. He'd watch them over and over whenever stress was rampant on his office.

But also, would stare both in awe and hungry when he saw your body bouncing ontop of an exercise ball.

"It brings back memories." He muttered while your cheeks flushed. It was the exact way you rode him while making your baby boy.

When hormones hit between your legs, you wouldn't let him go until he came out of the room, drenched in sweat and breathless. That's where he discovered his lactation kink.

But all horny and sexual thoughts were sapped out his body when he saw you curled in bed, crying and wiping your eyes with tissues. A couple of them used and gathered before you.

"'Tas bien?" (You alright?)

Another muffled sob.

This wasn't the usual hormone craze that made you cry over dappy things, but true and unadulterated sadness. His brows creased as he sat before you.

"Wanna share what's wrong?"

"I feel so useless, Miguel."

"Useless?"

You nodded while sobbing a couple of fresh tears and covered your face with your hands, ashamed.

"I can't even put my shoes on my own. And-" A sniffle, "I feel like I'm leaving all the load to you. It's not fair."

Even in your condition, you still worried about him and his stress. It humbled him.

"Mi reina." With a gentle, yet firm voice he sat next to you and wiped your eyes with utmost care, "You're growing my child. Do you know how important that is?"

You hiccuped and shook your head.

"I wanna do more. Help you around. Not just being a housewife that leeches off-"

"No, no. Stop. Stop." the last word said with a warning tone.

How could you think of yourself such way?

"Pinguinita, mi amor, look." His shoulders slumped with a deep sigh, "For how long have we been together? Ten, twelve years now?"

You refused to look his way, but his hands gently pulled your chin towards him. Makin your gaze meet his.

"In all those years, I've worked for us cause I wanted to. And I don't want you to work because you already do more than enough here."

His lips were warm, conveying all his love in another kiss.

"You're growing my child, Mi reina. Pregnancies are hard. And look at you, doing your best. Cause that's all I could ask from you."

He cradled your shoulders and kissed the side of your head with a gentle smile.

"You've taught me how to be a good parent, even now, you are teaching me things I didn't believe myself capable of doing. I'm a better man thanks to you."

His hands rubbed your lower back in soothing yet shapeless patterns.

"And now, I'll be an even better father. All thanks to you."

His words were like a soothing balm from your doubtful and insecure heart.

"You'd still love me if I was another ten pounds heavier, right?"

"The question is offensive in itself. But yes, I would. Come here."

You basked in his affection, all you could do was let him love and pamper you.

The footrubs and backrubs were a staple on your pregnancy, like the hammock in the porch. The cotton nightgown he gave you while pregnant with Gabi had been such a wonderful gift that came in handy when the last trimester's hot flashes appeared.

You'd sit in the tub with him, Miguel rubbed and caressed your shoulders, eased the tenderness in your breasts and helped with the sore points in your. lower back.

"What about Miguel Junior?"

He snorted while lathering your back in the lavender scented shower gel.

"No. I don't want a traditional name for my boy."

"Me neither, I mean, Max doesn't sound bad-"

"That's a dog's name, mi amor"

Your laugh was like music to his ears. He rinsed off your back with the tepid temperature water.

"Short for Maximilian."

"Junior doesn't sound that bad now that I think-"

"Wait! I know! I know. Benjamin."

"Benjamin" He tried as the name rolled off his tongue, "I like it."

He kissed your neck. Fresh lavender scent etched to your skin.

"Benjamin it is."

-----

Little Benjamin "Benji" O'Hara was born at 3 pm. Nearly putting you under a c section. Miguel had been there, cheering you on as soon as complications arrived. But thanks to yours and the doctor's efforts, his baby boy wailed healthily as soon as he came out of your womb and the touch of the nurses alarmed him. They weren't you. Benjamin needed his mama.

Miguel showered you in kisses and praises while the nurses cleansed him and dressed him up with the clothes you had provided them.

And finally, you could hold your baby boy in your arms, immediately feeding him and silencing his acute cries.

"Míralo nomas. Mi campeón. No parece que casi lo hicimos en el auto." (Look at him, my champ. He doesn't look like we almost made him in the car)

Miguel fixed the tiny hat ontop of his head, some lovely and dark chocolates curls twisted ontop and around his forehead as you tittered, exhausted.

" Stop, oh my god."

"He's definitely have your curls."

Gabi was allowed to enter a bit later and her lips pursed

"I wanted a sister."

"I know, Solecito. But we did our best"

"Still... I was prettier, right?"

Jesus. Like Father, like daughter.

"Of course you were, Gabibi."

Miguel was ready to start his lessons as a father. With a baby boy on hands, he'd be the dad he never had.

#miguel o'hara #t writes✨ #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #atsv miguel #soccer family ⚽🕷️ #gabi o'hara #miguel o'hara fluff #mama o'hara #benjamin o'hara #wife reader #dad miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara fanfiction #miguel x y/n #miguel x you

[justcallmesakira]

The reader looking so pretty at an event in the agency, co worker dazai can't help but stare at her :> make sum scenario :>

"I SEE YOUR PRETTY EYES AT MINE, MISTER~"

Sypnosis: Dazai just cant keep his eyes to himself when a colleuge of his is looking so darn pretty!

Dazai x fem! reader

Genre: suggestive, romance

Warnings: reader is sort of cheeky, suggestive as hell, implied alcoholism, author gave the reader on what attire shes wearing.

A/N FINALLY A REQUEST AFTER SO FUCKIN LONG

The agency had decided to hold another party in celebration of a huge deal which would help the agency .

And of course you were invited, almost everyone was. You decided to look extra pretty today because why not, not because of others but for yourself.

You had picked out a extravagant ebony coated frock which covered all the way up to your legs and ended with glistening white layers of laces.

The party was at 8 o clock, you had time plus what would you do getting there so early?

Gently tapping on the tubes of lipsticks you picked out a vermillion shade and smoothly applied the waxy substance on your lips. The colour suited the rose tied around your neck really well.

Finally adding some final touches you rushed out the door and walked along to the agency.

There were colourful lights and food everywhere, Atsushi teaching Kyouka how to make decorations, doctor Yosano taking a bit too much of wine, ranpo staring at powdered donuts... To think of it you remember him taking 5 of them sneakily one night and you wonder why hes so obsessed with them.

But one thing you could notice was a certain someones eyes on you... Dazai.

You walked up to atsushi and kyouka, talking to them and teaching them some tips and tricks to fit in with the agency.

You could feel at all times though, a certain pair of eyes glancing at you from time to time from the corner of the room.

"Excuse me, i will just fix my hair and come back" you politely end the conversation before walking towards the door and going outside.

Despite your heels clacking against the floor, you could feel another set of shoes following them.

"Dazai-san, may i know why i feel your eyes on my at all times?" you ask putting a perfect spot from the distance between your figure and the mans figure.

He chuckled.

"Bella, i must say your quite the smart one arent ya'?" osamu replies back with much cheekiness in his tone as yiu turned to him, he had a black tuxedo, a polished and refined one, it hugged his body quite tightly too.

You just sighed at his remark, he was a ladies man you knew but you have never seen the glint and love in his eyes on a girl ever before, it amde your stomach turn slightly in a good way, of course.

His teasing grin drops and turns into a more soothing smile as he walks over to you which makes you back towards the wall unsure whether to trsut him or not.

He lowers his head a bit to reach your face taking in all of it's features.

"Are you trying to woo me, dazai-san? It seems like it"

"Haaah, maybe. The thing is bella you just look so.." you expect him to give you some compliment like every boy does when they see a girl sitting pretty and all but instead he gently took a strand of your hair, took it to his lips and uttered every single quality and flaw about you, it was as if hes born to have a poets tongue with you being the muse.

"I just want to admire you all day, my darling. Its not lust nor a small crush, it isnt even close to love but something beyond the world and beyond the universe to attend to, i dont know i could drown in your eyes right now but i would prefer staring at them for an eternity as if its a gorgeous piece of art hung on a museum"

he said softly, oh god did this man made your heart drop down your stomach and melt into your intestines.

With each word he spoke through his charming voice, you could feel his breathe and hands going closer towards your sweating body and at last, he asked for your permission to which you only looked at him with a slight embroidery of embarrassment on your cheeks.

Dazai tenderly kissed your forehead but though it lasted short you wondered whether he tried to go for your lips instead because of the shift in his body.

"Oi, dazai and [Name] if your done with your cheesy af encounter than come back to the party! Presidents calling you two!"

Atlast after moments of intimate interaction which wasnt even intimate because of the silent yearn for something neither the two of you could preach. Both of you decided to go back to the party.

Later in the relationship you realised that your first kiss with this loverman was not the type of kiss those possessive men would do which would take your breathe away but more of a desperate one as if to reach out for something which one already got.

In the end nor dazai or you could just confess normally without making each other look like two pieces of magnificent artwork looking at each other.

A/N: i hate this more than dazai hates him self :(((((((( btw reader is wearing this dress

Divider crds! : @cafekitsune

Tags! : @inojuuy @silverbladexyz @atlasnessie @tsuunara @elizais @saelique @chuuyasboner @atzuhi @riiwrites @ruanais @biscuits-spooky-corner @rusmii

#sakira! #sakiras writing notebook!!! #bsd x reader #bungou gay dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd #Bsd fanfic #Bsd drabble #Drabbles #dazai #dazai x reader #dazai osamu x reader #Osamu dazai #Bsd dazai #Spicy

[serpentandlily]

Sly Fox, Dumb Bunny - Eris x Reader

Sly Fox, Dumb Bunny V - Eris x Archeron!Reader

Summary: You find yourself ensnared by a sly, cunning fox. A very handsome, irritating one.

Warnings: angst, attempted SA, misogynistic language/beliefs, drugging (if you'd like more in depth warnings, feel free to dm me)

➻❥ Part I ➻❥ Part II ➻❥ Part III ➻❥ Part IV ➻❥ Part V

· · ─────── ·♡· ─────── · ·

Part V

· · ─────── ·♡· ─────── · ·

“One of the stableboys told me he spotted Lady Genevieve and Lord Vaughn sneaking out of the party together last week,” Willow said in a whisper as Ivy gasped in disbelief. 

You glanced up at them from where you were sitting at the table in Eris’s common room, sewing a hole shut on the skirt you had worn out to the woods with him yesterday. Your kiss had gotten…heated and your skirt had caught on a piece of bark on the tree Eris had you pressed against and ripped. Just thinking of it made your cheeks turn pink.

“And that’s scandalous, why?” You asked, raising an eyebrow at your handmaidens. They had insisted they repair your skirt for you but sewing was one of the skills you had actually acquired during your family’s time in poverty. Who else would’ve made sure Feyre’s hunting clothes stayed intact? 

“Well because Lady Genevieve is engaged to his brother, of course!” Ivy exclaimed. 

You opened your mouth to reply but a knock on the door made you pause. The three of you glanced at each other. Eris had mentioned he would be traveling to a nearby town for some business and wouldn’t return until morning. He advised you to stay inside with your handmaidens and take dinner in your room until his return. 

Ivy rose and made her way to the door, pulling it open to reveal one of Eris’s brothers. He placed a pale hand on the doorframe and gave her a charming, but unsettling, grin. His hair was longer than Eris’s, his stature a bit shorter and far bulkier than the refined quality your mate had. 

Ivy curtsied. “Lord Reid, how may I assist you?” 

“I’m here to escort my brother’s mate to dinner,” he purred. “Since he is unable to do so himself.” 

You stood, placing the skirt on the table as you glanced at Willow with uncertainty. Ivy’s pretty face paled. 

“B-but Lord Eris requested that Lady Archeron have dinner in his quarters tonight,” she stuttered out. 

The grin slipped from Reid’s face, a more threatening look taking over. “Are you denying me my request, nymph?”

He spat out the last word like a curse, making you flinch on your friend’s behalf. You had to bite your tongue from saying anything back knowing you’d likely just anger him further.

Ivy bowed her head. “Of course not, my Lord.”

You crossed the room, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder and nudging her back. “Thank you, Ivy, I’ll take it from here.” 

That charming grin was back on Reid’s face as he looked down at you, but the look in his eyes made your legs shake. He held out his elbow like a proper escort and you had no choice but to take it, letting him pull you out of Eris’s chambers.

“Talk back to me again and I’ll have you whipped in the courtyard in front of everyone else,” Reid spat at Ivy. You gave her an alarmed look, but she shook her head at you discreetly—a warning to stay quiet. You bit your lip so hard it almost bled. 

Reid finally began to guide you down the corridor and you tried to keep your breathing under control, not wanting him to know how scared you were. Finnegan had been nothing like this, had not had that cruelty lingering in his eyes. 

“Has Eris returned?” You asked, swallowing harshly. “Is that why my presence is needed at dinner tonight?”

Reid looked down at you with a raised eyebrow, as if daring you to say more. You glanced away, not wanting him to see it as a challenge. You knew how females were regarded here. But you also wanted to know why you were being dragged down to the main dining area. 

“Are you not a part of this family now?” Reid remarked, his tone questioning but the sharpness of his words didn’t escape you. 

“Of course, my Lord,” you breathed, still staring at the floor. He hummed in response and continued to lead you down corridor after corridor until you made it to the formal dining room. 

You glanced up as you entered, taking note of who was present that you knew amongst the sea of strangers. The High Lord and his Lady, of course, as well as Finnegan and Eris’s other brother, Liam. Finn shot Reid a questioning look that went ignored while Liam sat with his eyes kept straight ahead of him. It was remarkable how alike they all looked, though none could match the beauty that Eris possessed. 

The Lady of Autumn, Seraphina, kept her eyes locked on the table—seated next to Beron who sat at the head of the table. Reid escorted you to the seat next to her, pulling out the large wooden chair for you. A feast was laid out on the table before you, empty plates set in front of each seat. A few other Lords and Ladies wandered in, taking seats at the other end of the table. You listened to their idle chit chat, clenching your skirt in your fists. 

“Why have you brought her here?” Finn hissed at Reid as the male took the seat next to him. “Eris is still in Pinecrest.” 

Reid shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure she felt included in our family. Lighten up, little brother.” 

Finn shot him a glare but Beron clanked his fork against his glass, drawing everyone’s attention. You half listened to his small speech, but focused mainly on trying to lessen the pounding of your heart. You felt so out of place, so alone here at this big table. No family. No mate. Just strangers all around you. Strangers with nefarious reputations.

Dinner began once Seraphina plated Beron his food and he took the first bite. It was like a breath of relief was let out amongst the fae at the table, their conversations picking back up. You sipped on your wine, trying not to draw attention to yourself but Reid had other plans, it seemed. 

“Have you lot had the pleasure of meeting Eris’s mate yet?” He asked, leaning back in his chair as he spoke to some Lords and Ladies. “This is her. Little thing, isn’t she? She is sister to the cursebreaker.” 

You felt the gazes of them on you as your cheeks turned pink. One of the ladies looked you up and down with a haughty look that made her face quite unpleasant to look at. 

“Are the rumors true?” She asked, her voice filled with faux innocence. “Were you truly a human before all of this?” 

“Indeed, she was,” Reid answered before you could even open your mouth. 

“How ghastly,” the female sneered, placing a hand to her chest as if she were clutching her pearls. “The Mother must’ve found it within her heart to give out some charity to those lesser the day she mated you with Lord Eris.”

Your face grew hot at her hateful words. You wished the floor would open up and suck you in whole just to get away from this table. But to your surprise, someone came to your defense. 

“Watch how you speak, Genevieve,” Finn spat. “She is soon to take the Vanserra name and if you insult her again, you'll find yourself in the position of all the others who dared to insult our family.” 

By the way Genevieve’s face paled, you could only imagine the punishment those people had faced. But hearing the familiar name caused a smile to blossom on your face. You cleared your throat and sat up. 

“Genevieve, is it?” You asked, blinking at her with wide, innocent eyes. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you, Lady, or rather how much you enjoy parties.” 

Your eyes darted to the male sitting next to her. The male who looked so similar to the one gripping her hand in his. When you looked back at Genevieve, her face had paled even more. Her lips pressed into a thin line and she focused her gaze on her plate before her.

Reid leaned in close to whisper in your ear. “So the kitten has some claws after all.” 

You wanted to roll your eyes but instead, bit your lip again to prevent you from saying something that wouldn’t be taken well. Reid leaned further into your space, causing you to press against the back of your chair with raised eyebrows. He grabbed the dish of potatoes next to you before finally seating himself correctly in his chair.

You frowned when you noticed a second dish of potatoes on his other side, closer to him, but shook it off. He was trying to rattle you—that much was obvious. 

You nibbled on your dinner, not having an appetite while seated around these faeries. You sipped on your wine, cringing a bit as the bitter liquid slid down your throat. The wine in the Night Court was far sweeter than the wine here, it seemed. 

The longer the dinner went on, the hotter the room seemed to be getting. Was it because so many fire wielding fae sat here or was this room just particularly stuffy? You fanned at your face as discreetly as you could. 

Sweat began to dribble down the back of your neck, your skin tingling at the sensation. You clenched your skirt in your fists, shifting uncomfortably in your chair. The Lady of Autumn glanced at you, taking note of your reddening cheeks and behavior.

“Are you alright, dear?” Her voice was soft, quiet, and full of concern. It was the first time you’d heard her speak. 

“It’s just a bit warm in here, isn’t it?” You replied, fanning your face again. Gods, you were so hot. It was unbearable. 

The Lady of Autumn’s nostrils flared and her eyes went wide. She placed the back of her hand against your forehead, making a noise of displeasure before pulling it away. She waved a hand towards the servants who were milling about. Ivy and Willow darted forward from where they stood against the wall behind you. 

“Lady Archeron isn’t feeling well,” she whispered to your handmaidens. “Please escort her back to her chambers for the night.” 

Both of your handmaidens sniffed before their faces paled. Ivy held out a hand to you. “Come, my Lady, let us take you to your room.”

You grabbed her hand like it was a lifeline. You nearly groaned at the feeling of her skin against yours. They ushered you out of the dining hall, hurrying you down the corridor. 

“Something’s wrong,” you moaned, pitifully. Your skin was on fire now. An ache was forming in the lower part of your stomach. Like an unrelenting itch that needed to be scratched. 

“I think someone has slipped you a breeding tonic,” Willow hissed under her breath. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, her eyebrows furrowed.

“A what?!” You exclaimed but Ivy hushed you. You spoke in a whisper, thinking of how they had sniffed you, “How do you know that? Could you smell it in my drink or food?” 

“No, my Lady,” Ivy said, hesitantly. “But your scent…it’s…Well, it’s changed.” 

“My scent? But…oh.” If your face wasn’t already red, you were sure it’d be now. Gods, they could…smell you—your awakening arousal. You were mortified. “But who would do that?” 

“I don’t know.” Willow frowned. “It’s more important we get you to your chambers before any male scents you.” 

“Why? What…what does a breeding tonic do?” 

Your two handmaidens exchanged a look before Ivy answered, “Well, my Lady, it—well it's supposed to make a female more…willing when she’s in her marriage bed.”

Your skin was itching, flushed red from all the heat you felt. You tugged at the collar of your dress. It was agonizing. “How long is this supposed to last?”

“Just a few hours,” Willow said in a soft, comforting tone. “It’s not like most males need any more than a few minutes”

“Willow,” Ivy scolded. “Now is not the time for those kinds of remarks!”

You could hardly pay attention to their conversation, your mouth drying up as the effects of the tonic worsened—causing a violent need to be touched in places you’d never been. “What will happen if a male scents me now?” 

The two girls exchanged another look. “I’m afraid some males in this court have problems with their…restraint, my Lady. And your smell right now is rather enticing, for lack of a better word. It's best not to test them when it comes to these kinds of things.” 

All the color left your face.

Willow let out a noise of distress. “Which is why we should move faster—”

“Well, what do we have here?” The three of you froze in your tracks as you nearly ran into a group of three guards coming around the corner—all dressed in armor with Beron’s seal imprinted on the center of their chests. Fuck, it was a group of the High Lord’s personal guards. “Ah, it's the little bitch mated to our High Lord’s son.” 

Your face turned bright red. 

“Watch your mouth,” Willow snapped.

The guard backhanded her before you could even blink, causing her to crumble to the floor. Ivy gasped and rushed forward, kneeling next to her. Before you could follow her, one of the guards grabbed you by the upper arm, yanking you away from your two handmaidens. 

“What are you doing? Let me go! You can’t just hit—”

“Shut up,” the guard growled in your ear. Your eyes shot to Ivy who was helping Willow off the floor, the other girl holding her reddening cheek. 

“Talk like that to me again and I’ll do worse,” the head guard snarled at Willow. “Now get lost. You’ve been relieved of your duties, ladies. We can escort the girl back to her room.” 

You tried to pull your arm free, your heart pounding in your chest. Willow and Ivy looked inclined to protest, but then they both took a step away, sending you an apologetic look. You knew there was nothing they could do in this situation that didn’t put them in risk but maybe if they left, they could go get help. You tried to convey that message with your eyes and Ivy gave you a small dip of the head, like she understood. 

As the guard began to pull you away from them, she mouthed something to you: ‘The bond.’

Understanding her message, you started to tug on the glowing gold thread in your chest, panicking as you were dragged away. The guards were snickering with each other. “Do you smell that? I think the girls in heat, Captain. Maybe we can take her downstairs for some…fun before anything else.” 

You desperately tried to yank yourself free but the guard’s grip on your arm only tightened to the point of pain. “Let me go, you sick bastards!” 

The guard that had been identified as the Captain chuckled. “Good idea. I think she needs to be taught a lesson on how to properly treat a male, don’t you think?” 

The guards laughed with their agreement and you went feral trying to break away. “If you touch me, I swear to the Gods I’ll tell Eris! He’ll kill you!”

The guards only laughed harder. “Lord Eris won’t believe you over us, girl. Keep screaming though. I do love it when they fight back.” 

You were pulled down a stone stairwell, into a lower level of the Forest House. You screamed and fought against the guards, but with three of them and only one of you…it was hopeless. You tugged and tugged on the mating bond, not really sure how it worked but hoped you had gotten Eris’s attention and that he was on his way back. 

Tears poured down your cheeks and they tossed you in what seemed to be a large storage room. Crates full of goods, barrels of wine, and shelves filled with supplies crowded the room. The Captain slammed the door shut behind him as you were scuttling to stand up. You backed away from them, your eyes darting around for anything you might be able to use as a weapon—not that you had much training.

One of the guards lunged for you and you swiftly kicked him in the groin, sending him to his knees. “You stupid bitch!”

Using the commotion as a distraction, you took off running down the shelves, trying to keep them at a distance. But one of them was much faster, grabbing you by the collar of your dress. You let out a cry as your dress ripped down the back and you fell to your hands and knees, your chin smashing against the floor. You tasted blood in your mouth as the guard grabbed your foot and started to drag you back to him but you quickly flipped onto your back and kicked him right in the nose with your other foot, hearing a satisfying crunch. 

He let out a curse, blood pouring from his nose, and you scrambled to start running away again, holding your tattered dress up. You spotted a door at the end of the room and sprinted towards it, throwing it open and darting through it before slamming it shut behind you. 

You skidded to a stop once you realized the door had only led to a broom closet. Fuck, you had backed yourself into a corner. You covered your mouth with a hand, stifling your sobs as you heard footsteps pounding your way. With nowhere to go, you backed away to the wall, facing the door. You had no option but to try and fight your way out of this. 

The door to the closet slammed open and you squeezed your eyes shut, bracing yourself for the impact of a body against yours. But after a moment of silence passed, you slowly opened your eyes. They widened as they took in the guard standing in the middle of the closet, his eyes darting around the small space, passing over you several times. 

“What the fuck?” he grumbled.

“Stop wasting time,” one of the other guards shouted from outside. “Pull her out of there so we can have our fun.” 

“She’s not…She’s not in here!” 

“What do you mean she’s not in there?” One of the other guards shouldered his way into the closet, pushing the other male out. “What—I saw her run in here! We all did. Where the hell did she go?”

“Does she know how to winnow?”

You stood frozen as the two guards discussed your whereabouts. How could they not see you? You were literally standing right in front of them! You looked down at your body and almost gasped when you didn’t see any part of yourself. What the hell? What….what was happening? You could still feel the ground under your feet, still feel the wall at your back. You tried holding up a hand but nothing—you couldn’t even see your own hand!

“She wouldn’t be able to winnow unless she could break through the wards down here,” the other guard grumbled. “Wards set up by the High Lord, himself. There’s no way a former human could do that.” 

You could feel yourself panicking even more now because what was happening to you?

“What the fuck is going on down here?!”

The voice of your mate caused a sob of relief to leave your mouth and it seemed whatever magic you had been using sputtered out, causing the two guards to whip their heads towards you. You sank to the ground, still clutching your tattered dress, kohl marking the tear tracks down your cheeks. 

“Lord Eris, it’s not what it looks like—”

The Captain let out a spine-chilling scream before a snap was heard and a thump of a body hitting the ground. You pulled your knees to your chest, crying out for Eris. The two guards in the closet with you whirled around as Eris stalked towards them. They held up their palms, beginning to plead, but the feral rage on your mate’s face shut them up. You’d never seen Eris look so unhinged. His normally styled hair was in disarray, his cuffs rolled up to his elbow. 

His heavy boots slammed against the floor until he was right in front of them. Eris’s amber eyes darted to you for a second and flames erupted from the edges of his body. Your eyes widened in shock. His eyes fell back on the guards, his anger causing fire to even dance in his irises. 

“Lord Eris, we can explain!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eris snarled before two whips made entirely of fire were summoned in his hands. He lashed them at the guards and they latched around their necks before he pulled them to their knees with it. Both of the guards started choking, trying to pull at the whips now strangling them but only burnt their hands to a crisp. 

“Imagine my surprise when I felt my mate’s terror down our bond while in negotiations with the Lords in Pinecrest,” Eris growled, wrapping the whip around his hand and yanking it tighter, forcing the guards’ faces to smash against the floor. “Only to show up and have her two handmaidens tell me three of my father’s guards were dragging her—my mate—down here to force themselves on her. Consider yourselves lucky she’s still sitting here because this death will be a mercy compared to the one I had planned for the three of you.” 

The guards started to screech in agonizing pain. Blood began to bubble out of their ears, eyes and mouth and it took you a second to comprehend that Eris was burning them to death from the inside out, boiling their blood. You whimpered, slapping a hand over your mouth and nose as the smell of burning human flesh spread through the small space. You squeezed your eyes shut at the horror happening before you. 

When the two guards finally slumped all the way to the ground, their eyes cold with death, Eris stepped over them and gently picked you up off the ground, cradling you to his chest. You clutched his shirt in your hands, crying as the adrenaline you had been fighting through wore off. 

“It’s okay, little bunny,” Eris murmured in your ear. “I’ve got you.” 

“I tried…I tried—”

You were sobbing with a flood of emotions. 

“I know, I know,” he hushed you, “you did good, little bunny. You did good holding them off until I got here.”

You were vaguely aware of him carrying you out of the basement and back up the stairs. The gasps of Ivy and Willow met your ears as he emerged with you in his arms.

“Is she okay?” 

“She is now,” Eris replied, his voice still filled with anger. “I’ve got it from here. Thank you, ladies, please retire to your rooms. I’ll make sure you face no repercussions from this.” 

“Take care of her, my Lord,” you heard Willow say before two footsteps started fading away. 

You kept your face buried in your mate’s chest until you were finally back in his chambers. Eris carried you into the bathroom before seating you on the counter. He took your face in his hand, twisting and turning it, examining you for injuries. He grabbed a small towel and wetted it, before beginning to clean the smears of makeup from your face. You sat still for him, still reeling from your shock. 

Eris’s touch was so delicate as he wiped your face, the cold water soothing your hot skin. A few minutes of silence passed as you watched him focus intently on his task, small flames still dancing in his eyes from his anger. 

“You came for me,” you whispered as he dabbed your cheek with the cloth. 

“Of course I did. I always will,” he murmured back. “I’m so sorry I wasn't here, bunny. I’m so sorry it took me so long to come back.” 

You shook your head. “It’s not your fault.”

His jaw ticked and he set the cloth down before placing a hand on your cheek, his thumb rubbing your tears away. “It is. It is my fault you are in this situation. I’m so sorry that the Gods have cursed you with me.”

“Don’t say that.” You nuzzled your head into his hand. You stared up into his eyes, now noticing how dilated his pupils were—the amber color almost gone. His hand that wasn’t on your cheek was gripping the counter so hard, cracks were appearing on its surface. You suddenly remembered what started all of this. The damn breeding tonic someone had slipped you during dinner.

The breeding tonic that still had your skin on fire, still had desire pooling between your legs. And now that Eris was here, standing so close to you…His scent of crackling embers and warm cinnamon enveloped you with his own heat. Your arousal spiked, your eyes dipping to his lips. The need to kiss him, to be touched by him, was barrelling its way through you. 

You lurched forward and smashed your lips against his. Eris sucked in a breath and kissed you back with the same vigor until he came to his senses and pulled away from you, causing you to whine in displeasure. 

“Someone drugged you, bunny,” he grimaced. “I can’t…I won’t take advantage of you while you're still under its effects.” 

“Eris, please,” you begged, clenching your thighs together as the need to be touched grew and grew. “It hurts.” 

A small whine came from the back of his throat and you watched him fight against himself. You grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back down to kiss him again. You sighed as your lips made contact with his and he kissed you back with the same hunger. You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer until his body was pressed against yours.

Eris’s hardening cock nudged at the place between your thighs that was throbbing with desire and you gasped. With your lips parted, he slipped his tongue in your mouth, groaning at the taste of you, deepening the kiss and utterly consuming you. 

Eris kissed and kissed you—only letting up to trail kisses down your jaw and neck. You tossed your head back with a moan, granting him more access. You needed every inch of skin to be touched by him. By his fingers. By his lips. You ached, feeling terribly empty inside. His hand slipped under your skirt, gripping your thigh. 

But you could tell he was still restraining himself. 

Your own hands fell on his shirt, starting to undo his buttons.“Eris,” you groaned as he sucked on the delicate skin on your neck. “Tell me what to do. I’ve…I’ve never—”

You wished you had kept your mouth shut because Eris stopped for a second, his lips hovering over your skin. "What do you mean, you’ve never, bunny? You've never what? Never had sex?”

You nodded your head, biting your lip. 

“Fuck,” Eris groaned against your neck before sliding his nose up the column of your throat, inhaling deeply. “I’ll make it so good for you, baby. I promise.” 

You whimpered as his words, your fists clenching his shirt. But to your dismay, Eris merely pecked you on the lips before gently taking your hands and slowly ripping them off of him. 

“But not like this, bunny,” he murmured. “Not while you're drugged. Not after what happened today.”

“Eris, please.”

Any embarrassment you might’ve felt for begging simply did not exist when you felt so incredibly heated, needing him so much. Eris let out a long breath and took a step away from you, dodging your arms that tried to pull him back in. 

“Not like this, bunny,” he repeated. “Take a cold bath, okay? It’ll help you feel better. The tonic should wear off soon. I’ll be waiting for you out there.” 

“No, Eris, please—”

But he quickly left the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. You jumped off the counter and tried to open the door, but he must’ve used magic to lock it from the outside. You let out a whine, trying to tug it open to no avail. Your forehead dropped against the wood and you sighed. 

Fine, you’d take a stupid cold bath. 

· · ─────── ·♡· ─────── · ·

You sat in the cold water until your skin pruned and the effects of the tunic left your body. You rose from the bath, wrapping yourself in a towel. You noticed a pile of clothes waiting for you on the counter—a night gown and some underwear. You quickly slipped them on before finally leaving the bathroom. 

You froze in the doorway at the sight of Eris lounging on his bed, shirtless and twirling a dagger in his hand. He looked at you with a smirk and your cheeks turned bright red. Partly because he looked absolutely ravishing laying there with his toned chest and abs on display and partly because you were mortified by your behavior. 

“Don’t look so embarrassed, bunny,” he teased, setting the dagger down on his nightstand and patting the bed next to him. “Come here.” 

You shyly slid on the bed next to him, letting him take you in his arms. You let out a small breath, resting your head on his chest. It felt so right being here, in his embrace. Safe and perfect. Like his arms were the home you’d been looking for all your life. The mating bond sang in your chest. 

“Do you feel better?” 

You nodded, wordlessly. He muttered out a “good” before he started stroking your hair. You closed your eyes and melted into his arms. Tonight had been so scary. You didn’t even want to think about what would have happened to you if Eris hadn’t come in time to stop the guards. 

“I’m going to find out who drugged you,” Eris murmured. “And they’re going to pay for it.” 

“Eris, something…happened when I was down there with those guards,” you whispered, running your finger in swirling patterns on his chest. “When I was in the broom closet, it was like they couldn’t see me. I couldn’t see myself, either. It was like I had gone invisible.”

Eris hummed in thought. “Your sisters got powers from the cauldron, did they not? Did you get the same?” 

“No, I mean, I’ve never been able to do anything other than the basic stuff all High Fae can do,” you answered. “I’ve never shown any other sorts of power. I don’t think the Cauldron gifted me anything like it did with Elain. And I certainly didn’t try to steal from it like Nesta did.” 

“Yesterday, in the forest, you said something about me looking right at you and not seeing you,” Eris brought up. “I disregarded it at the time but…bunny, maybe the Cauldron did gift you something.”

“You think it gifted me something? Like what? The power of invisibility? I’ve never even heard of that!”

You hated that it made sense. Hated that, of course, the sister who had felt left behind, felt stuck in the background, unseen, would be gifted the power of invisibility. 

“Maybe it’s now finally emerging. Do you remember anything from that day?” 

You shook your head. “I remember being tossed into the Cauldron. I remember…I remember how it felt to be torn apart and put back together. But I don’t remember anything after that. I don’t even remember how I got out of the Cauldron or how I got to the Night Court afterwards.” 

“And you’ve never asked your sisters about it?”

“I did ask Feyre once she returned. But she told me I was unconscious when the Cauldron tipped me out and that Mor winnowed all three of us out that day.” 

“You know, after you left the meeting,” Eris remarked,

“Tamlin mentioned that you never came out of the Cauldron.”

“What? But that makes no sense! Why would he say that?” 

“There’s something Rhysand and Feyre are hiding. Wouldn’t be the first time the Night Court kept information from someone—especially Rhysand.”

You placed your chin on his chest, staring up at him with a small glare. “I know you don’t have a great relationship with my family, but my sister would not lie to me.” 

Eris raised an eyebrow, not looking convinced. “Maybe even your sister doesn’t know. Maybe Rhysand is lying to her, too. That kind of power…a lot of people would want to have someone like you in their court, bunny.” 

“He wouldn’t lie. Not to Feyre.”

You couldn’t help but defend your family. Eris seemed to let it go for now, pressing a kiss to your temple. “We’ll figure it out, bunny.” 

You laid your head back down on his chest with a sigh. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Go ahead.” 

“What really happened with Mor that day in the forest, Eris? I need to know. I need to know before…before this can happen. I need to know why my family hates you so much.”

Eris let out a long breath. “I knew this would come up eventually. I’ll tell you, bunny, but you have to understand something. You got a taste of some of the horrors of this court tonight. Things I’ve been trying to put a stop to and change my whole life. But I can only do so much without my father suspecting me of being a traitor. And he’s not above killing any of his own sons.” 

The idea of Beron killing Eris caused both fear and rage to build up inside of you. Your grip on your mate tightened as you frowned. Eris ran his hand up and down your arm in a soothing motion. 

“When my father and Mor’s father forced a marriage alliance on the two of us, it was, in part, a test for me on my father’s behalf. I was young and not as careful as I should’ve been and I think he could see the rebellious attitude in me. I think he thought I’d stop at nothing to somehow make them rescind the alliance proposal.”

“You didn’t want to marry Mor?” 

“Gods, no,” Eris snorted. “And Keir is just as bad as my father. The thought of those two falling into a partnership…Anyways, my father forced me to make a bargain with him. See, he thought I’d fuck it up by trying to bed her before we were properly married. Which, of course, I wouldn’t have. But I played along, not wanting him to think of other things I might do. And he knew my one weakness at the time. My Mother. He made me bargain that I would not lay a single finger on her before we were wed and if I did, he would out my mother for an affair she had and punish her with death.”

You gasped and sat up to look at him. “Eris, that’s awful!” 

“I thought so too,” Eris chuckled, mirthlessly. “So that day Keir dumped Mor in the forest, beaten to near death, I knew if I touched her the bargain would alert my father and though I doubt that would’ve counted in his eyes, he still would’ve taken her and some who knows what. I couldn’t alert anyone about her either because the guards that were with me that day were my father’s personal ones. They watched my every move and reported them back to my father. I had to make a choice, one that haunts me to this day.” 

“The choice to keep your mother safe,” you said. “And to not let your father know that Mor was there, in your court?” 

He nodded his head. “Yes. I lingered in the area long enough to catch sight of that Illyrian brute’s shadows and knew he’d come sniffing around for her. So I made sure the guards were far away so he could slip in and out without them alerting my father.” 

“And all these years,” you said, sadly, “All these years no one knew the truth of why you made that decision. No one except you and your father?” 

“The Night Court’s hasn’t always had an outstanding reputation, bunny,” Eris replied. “I didn’t know if I could trust them. And when I realized they already decided I was as much of a monster as my father, I had little interest in convincing them otherwise.”

“But Eris, you deserve better than that—”

“No, bunny, I don’t,” Eris sighed. “I’ve done a lot of bad things. I can only hope that things might change when my father is no longer on the Autumn throne.” 

You linked your fingers with his, grasping his hand. “As long as it’s you sitting on it, Eris, I think they will. You are not what people think you are. You are not a monster.” 

“I don’t care what everyone thinks. I don’t care if I’m the villain in their stories,” Eris said. “I only care that I’m not the monster in yours.” 

You folded your arms on his chest, plopping your chin on the back of your hands to stare up at him. 

“You’re no monster to me. You’re my sly fox,” you teased. 

Eris gave you his signature fox-like grin that caused butterflies to flutter around in your stomach. Your heart beat to the same rhythm of the mating’s bond soft melody. You could hear his beating too. 

“And you are still my dumb, little bunny.” 

· · ─────── ·♡· ─────── · ·

a/n: I don't normally like making characters virgins but I felt like it fit this character in particular. Hope you liked this part!!

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[severepink]

Ancient Adam! My Design and some thoughts I had about situations/his thoughts.

Kind of a ficlet!

Adam felt a deep sense of anger that bordered on resentment when Eve began crying for the small bird he'd managed to shoot with the tool an angel had instructed him to make.

Somehow, his wife just seemed lost, unable to cope with the situation they'd been forced into.

Hunger gnawed within them both, thirst was ever present, but she would waste precious waters on empathy for a singular source of food he'd managed to find and hunt to sustain her ever growing stomach.

New life. That is what the angel had told him. New life that he was expected to propagate and care fore on top of feeding and sustaining himself and his life.

This creature would hardly be enough for Eve, unless he found another creature... Unless he refined this tool given to him, a tool Eve despised, they would die.

The resentment was only held at bay, because he could not afford giving into his anger. A life alone, a life without her, wasn't one he would have any strength at all to live.

-

The smoke from the wood made him more ravenous than he thought. He'd managed to find another animal, a much, much larger animal with horns and muscle.

He'd managed to strike it perfectly, the feather's he'd added to the end of the arrow made it fly just as the bird had.

Eve was better at breaking the animals he hunted down. He enjoyed resting, after a long hunt, and watching her delicate, intricate fingers work through the flesh and sinew with the knapped rock he'd created for this purpose.

She'd come a long way. It pained him, knowing she desensitized herself, the innocent care she'd had for the animals they'd once been so like, masked and hidden as they tried to survive. While he was gone, she attempted to forage. They continued moving further and further into lands that had green, not the same kind of green as Eden had, but green enough to sustain more creatures. More water too. She'd said she watched the animals to know what could be safe, but also rubbed the flowers, bark, and roots she found on her skin just to be sure when she tasted them to find something edible.

Some of the green she found, she added to the meats he'd caught. The scent, the taste, it was all compounded. As he sat there, his mouth rested against the bow. He gnawed at it, his stomach gurgling and growling, ever persistent in its hunger, only made worse by the long and arduous task of tracking and hauling an animal back to her. The latent energy and nervousness that came from their starvation made him huff out at the same time he plucked the string of his bow. He jumped at the vibration that touched his teeth and echoed out of his mouth, his honey brown eyes widen in shock. The noise alerts Eve, who seems panicked, before he plucks experimentally again. A mischievous smile crosses his face.

-

The blood on his hands reminded him of the first time Eve gave birth. It reminded him of the wound's he'd experienced when being attacked by the lions that prowled after the same prey he needed. Sometimes he could not look away from the blood, how it reflected in his mind, that shining, gleaming apple that'd torn him from his perfect home. The same, glistening, shining red that ever reminded him that he would die. Every death of every creature he hauled back to Eve desensitized him more and more. It was beginning to become fun, hunting these creatures down. Rewarding to wrap his beautiful, perfect, precious family within the hides of these terrible, fascinating beasts. Eve looked beautiful, the leathers she stitched hugged her curves and incited the ordained directive within his loins. He wished to see her grow large. Her stomach, her hips, her thighs. There should be more meat on her bones, more children inside of her, more milk in her breasts. More, more, more.

That would require more of him. More of them both. To sustain more mouth's to feed, he couldn't do it just by his bow alone. He also couldn't do it when Cain cried loudly into the night. The sound often attracted predators, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. Still he staid alert, bow in hand while his boy cried and his wife fretted. Eve had found a crop of small seeds that she harvested many of and ground up into a paste to layout before the fire. She'd done this a time or two, mixing it with her herbs. It tasted delicious, especially when paired with the animal fat. His stomach roared almost as loud as a lion, but he focused on looking at his wife while she rocked and tutted his son. She hummed some soft tune, she named them Lilith-Bai's, much to his distaste, anger, and dismay. He complained plenty, but she persisted, claiming it would scare off his ex-Wife and her fiendish, fallen angel Lucifer, protecting their son. A chord of spite was struck in him, as she sang to quiet their son. Lilith-Bai. He would join Eve, cradling his bow to his mouth and plucked at the string, allowing the vibrations to fall into harmony with his wife's soft singing. The sound echoed into the night and Adam lost himself to the sensation and peace, the noise of his stomach quieting under his focus on creation of sounds. After a while, he realized his son and wife had both gone quiet and a short-lived panic coursed through his heart. "Adam, don't stop playing," His wife admonished him softly from across the fire. His small boy, his tiny son, had his mother's eyes. Those eyes were focused and aware of him. "Cain stopped crying... He likes your noisy bow... It seems it's good for more than just murder," No matter how tired he was. No matter how much he anguished mentally at the loss of his original home. No matter his loss of peace. No matter the shame and embarrassment he felt. The pride that was stoked in his heart from seeing his small family, made every sacrifice worth it. They made living a life outside of paradise worth it.

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