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kiwi-bitchez · 2 months

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The Girlfriend Experience

Eddie Munson x Reader

Summary: Eddie doesn’t think he’s cut out for dating. Self-resigned to a life of one and done hookups, you’re determined to make him see that he has the capacity to be a worthy companion… for when the right girl comes around. Fake Dating AU, classic corny fic for a fav corny troupe, Stranger Things canon divergent ofc, 18+ smut (see warnings below), big dick energy but also slightly emotionally unavailable!Eddie, yada yada yada, you know the drill.

Content warnings: AFAB reader with she/her pronouns, use of y/n, alcohol, smoking the devil’s lettuce, mention of panty stealing, food consumption, semi-public sex, fingering, PIV, Dom-ish!Eddie, oral (m and f receiving), pierced dick Eddie because I said so!, unprotected PIV sex, hair pulling, mild angst but nothing too angsty just like one heated conversation and Eddie feeling a little worthless but happy ending I promise

Word Count: 20k ahhhhhh!!!

A/N: Thanks to all those who comment and reblog! Your feedback and engagement makes my heart soar and keeps me motivated to write this filth! Sorry for the gargantuan length, in very-me fashion I always ending up writing one behemoth fic every so often rather than just separating it out into chapters. Also, realizing after the fact that I use the brand name ‘Goodwill’ a lot in this fic, which maybe not everyone might know is a thrift store, not sure if that’s just an American thing or not but figured it was worth noting.

“I guess I’m just not boyfriend material, ya know?” Eddie shrugs.

“Don’t say that, Eds,” your eyebrows pinched together, “different qualities are important to different people. Not everyone is looking to date a Steve, or a Brian, or a whoever. I’m sure someone is out there looking for an Eddie.”

“It’s not that,” he shot a look towards Steve, who, despite your analogy, was unfortunately everyone’s type and the textbook definition of boyfriend material.

“I just don’t think I’d be very good at gooey romance stuff, or even like, passable boyfriend behavior. I mean, look at me, I hardly take care of myself, I’m loud, I have no money, I’m basically every dad’s worst nightmare, do I need to keep going?”

“The nightmare thing can actually be a bonus,” Steve chimes in, “the whole bad boy persona can be a huge draw for most girls.”

“Sure Steve,” Eddie’s voice grows exasperated, “I’m the mysterious bad boy until they realize I’m a huge loser who runs not one but two dungeons and dragons groups. Real fuckin’ attractive I’m sure that is.”

“Shows you’re committed to something…” you trail off when his eyes tell you to stop coming up with a positive spin for every excuse he gives.

This whole discussion had started because of something that happened at the bar last night. A small group of you decided to meet up for drinks, your usual group of pals. It was a Thursday, so the bar wasn’t too busy. Your friends all squished into a booth in the corner, chatting and catching up over a plate of shared nachos, when Robin started making frantic gesture at you and Steve.

“Please just say what you’re trying to say instead of this elaborate charade,” Steve makes a few mocking hand signals back at her.

“Okay, one at a time, and keep it subtle,” her voice lowered to a whisper, for some reason, “over at the bar, some girl is totally flirting with Eddie.”

You and Steve both turn around. “I said not at the same time!” She whisper yells.

There was, in fact, a pretty girl with shiny hair and glossy lips doing a half fake laugh and pressing her manicured hand to Eddie’s bicep. You whip back around to find Robin with her mouth hanging open in a “can you believe this is happening” way.

“Good for him,” Steve swivels back around too, “She’s pretty hot.”

You return to your nachos, pretending there wasn’t a ping of jealousy in you. Eddie was your friend, that had been made abundantly clear.

When Robin introduced you to all her friends from high school, you had easily gotten along with all of them. You especially got along with Eddie. He was funny, authentic, abrasive at times, but a truly good person at his core, creative, protective, you could go on.

After getting to know him a bit, and developing a budding crush, you had made a few passes at him. Nothing too forward, just small compliments here and there, open ended offers to hang out that never lead anywhere.

It’s not like he flat out rejected you, but any feelers you were putting out to see if there was potential there were met with him looking past your flirtatious intent and just being his goofy, friendly self. He treated you exactly the same way he treated everyone else, which was awesome, except for when it wasn’t.

“Oh no,” Robin’s gaze was not subtly fixed on the unfolding scene at the bar, you and Steve watched her face drastically shift from confused, to a cringe, to an eye roll.

Still half whispering, as if Eddie could even hear your corner of the bar, “He’s totally blowing it. DON’T both turn around at the same time again.”

“Okay, so,” she starts before either of you can even confirm that you want to know, “she was totally laying it on thick, like you could see it from all the way back here. And he must have said something off putting, cuz all of a sudden she like went cold on him and pranced away. Shhhhh, okay okay, he’s coming back.”

She was acting as if she wasn’t the only one gossiping. You and Steve were innocent bystanders in all this.

“WHAT was that?” She immediately blurts out when Eddie returns to his seat, fresh drink in hand.

You and Steve share a side glance to sigh at Robin’s inability to be subtle, god bless her. Eddie shifts around awkwardly and lets out a forced dry laugh, taking a long sip from his drink before facing the wrath of a curious Robin.

“Oh, that,” he gestures to the bar as if she could be asking about anything else, “some girl. Not sure.”

“Not sure? Eddie she was FLIRTING with you,” Robin all but yelled, causing Steve to scan the bar to see if the girl in question had landed somewhere within earshot.

“I know that,” he hisses, “She just… wasn’t my type…”

“Okay sure, hot girl in a tube top and no bra isn’t your type, riiiiight,” Steve rolls his eyes.

“It’s just,” Eddie was so over this inquisition, “she asked if I wanted to get coffee.”

You, Steve, and Robin all give him a blank stare, trying to decipher what he could possibly have against getting coffee with a hot girl.

“That’s like,” he gets defensive, detecting the wall of confusion facing him, “something people do on a date. Coffee is serious, and I’m not a very serious guy.”

“What do you mean ‘coffee is serious,’ coffee is like, as casual as you can possibly be?” Steve’s tone now emulated Robin’s from earlier, half whispering, half yelling, all scolding towards his friend.

“That’s just not really my speed. Coffee dates and flowers and hand holding and all that,” he was avoiding eye contact with all three of you, “Yeah, she was hot, sure, and maybe if she had been like ‘hey lets go fool around in the bathroom’ then I wouldn’t be here having this lame ass conversation with you three. But I don’t do coffee dates, so I’m not gonna waste her time and pretend like I’m that sort of guy when I’m just not.”

“Well good on you for not leading her on, cuz I’m sure you could have agreed to the coffee date and still gotten lucky in the bathroom,” Steve mumbles, and you smack the back of his head lightly to scold him.

“So you only date girls who’ll fuck you in a bar bathroom the first time you meet?” You redirect your now equally scolding energy to Eddie.

“No!” He runs his hands through his hair, “I don’t date. Anyone, really. At all. Ever.”

“Oh,” you think for a minute, realizing in your few years of friendship you never had seen him with anyone, or heard him mention a romantic interest of any sort.

Leading you to your present conversation, you and Steve continuing to question Eddie on his decision to reject the hot tube-top girl at the bar and why he felt like coffee was such a scary commitment.

“You guys know me,” he continued to defend his stance, “If I took that girl out for coffee she probably would have picked some fancy hoity toity place and I wouldn’t know what anything on the menu meant, I’d probably spill something or like, get crumbs everywhere, and the bill would be way more than two coffees should be. It would have been a waste of both our time.”

He was staunchly refusing eye contact with the two of you, knowing he’d be met with something along the lines of pity.

“Fine, we’ll drop the subject,” you shoot a look to Steve, “but I just need to make sure you understand that not every girl likes expensive coffee, or flowers and handholding, or whatever your expectation of girls and dating is. There’s plenty of girls who have similar interests to you, who feel the same way about PDA and mushy romance stuff that you do. You do know that, right?”

“Of course I do, y/n,” you could practically feel his eyes rolling at you, “but girls like that sure as fuck aren’t here in Nowhere, Indiana. Even if she was, I’m sure I’d still find a way to fuck it up given that I’ve had exactly zero serious girlfriends and the closest thing to a date I’ve ever been on is when you me and Steve pooled our ski ball tickets to win that ugly stuffed turtle.”

The memory of what you had all agreed to be the world’s ugliest stuffed animal caused all of you to crack a smile. Steve had silently agreed to change the subject, not wanting to dig Eddie any deeper into his pit of self despair.

Steve’s mouth was half open, about to suggest that the three of you have a smoke and watch one of the rental movies he brought over, the words just about to escape him when you harshly cut off any chance at ending the pity-party.

“Date me!” You exclaim, without much thought. The shocked look from both boys caused you to rapidly back pedal , “You can date me, as practice!” You said it as if it was the simplest concept in the world.

When met with gaping mouths and confused stares you continue on, “You and I can be fake boyfriend-girlfriend for like, a month, and I’ll tell you everything you do wrong, and like generic do’s and don’t’s, so that way the next time some hot girl hits on you, you can be all like ‘Coffee isn’t really my thing pretty lady, but I’d be down to get drinks sometime’,” you did a silly impression of Eddie’s voice, and then switched to a high pitched one to impersonate what you assumed the girl at the bar sounded like, “and then she’d be all like, ‘Oh yeah that sounds greaaaaat, getting coffee is just like, a generic catch-all thing that most people say when they want to get to know someone better, but you can buy me a drink’ and then the two of you will ride off into the sunset and it’ll be great.”

Still no reply.

“It won’t be all romantic and gooey, I promise I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to. It’d be a way for you to get some honest feedback and catch up with the stuff most people have to learn the hard way.”

“I suppose you are the most brutally honest person I know,” Eddie doesn’t sound convinced.

Steve just looked between the two of you with eyebrows raised, not knowing if giving his opinion on the matter would be appreciated or not. “I guess I would’ve appreciated someone telling me that most girls don’t want to be asked out with a pickup line from a John Hughes movie, would have saved me a few dozen rejections.”

“I’m pretty sure Robin did tell you that…”

“I don’t know y/n,” Eddie scratches his head.

“It’ll be easy. Ask me out.”

“Huh?”

“Ask me out, for practice, ask me out on a date like I’m a pretty girl you met at some metal show or a DnD convention or something like that,” you stand in front of him with your hands out as if to prompt him to say something.

“Will you go out with me?” He sounds more like he’s asking himself if he even wants to be asking the question.

“No.”

“What the hell!” He throws his hands up.

“I said no because that wasn’t a very good effort. Go out where? To do what? You’re asking me, a pretend stranger, out on a date Eddie, not if I want to go have a smoke with you.”

“Ughhhh,” he spun around and tried to get some sympathy for Steve, who unfortunately was on your side with this one.

“A compliment or two doesn’t hurt as well,” Steve added, deepening Eddie’s groan.

“Hey pretty stranger lady,” his voice was laced with sarcasm, but at least it wasn’t disdain, “you seem really…” he hesitated to find his words, “cool? Would you like to come see my band play this weekend at The Hideout? We-“

“No,” you cut him off.

“WHA-“

“Eddie, you can’t ask a girl to watch Corroded Coffin play for your first date with her, that’s like date four or five material, no girl wants to go sit by herself at a bar to watch some guy she just met play an hour of heavy metal. She would have to know you a little bit more for that to feel organic. Pick something more generic, like coffee.”

“I think you seem cool, would you like to get coffee with me?” it all came out as one monotone mumble from him.

“Sure,” you wait for him to lift his head up to make eye contact with you, “But coffee isn’t really my thing, maybe we can go out for drinks?”

“Oh fuck off,” he flopped back onto the couch next to Steve.

“See, now we have our first fake date, and then you can ask me to be your fake girlfriend, and then you’ll be so comfortable with emotional vulnerability that you can find a real girlfriend to take on real dates.”

“Yeah, I suppose it could be beneficial,” Eddie was slowly coming around to the idea. He knew that he was oddly charismatic at times, but he was just always too self conscious to follow through with the whole romance thing.

This maybe wasn’t a bad idea, because he knew you weren’t the kind of person who would make fun of his hobbies, or put him down if he slipped up, the sorts of things he was always afraid of girls doing. Sure, he’ll agree to the girlfriend experience.

After a night of movies and pizza with Steve fake-third-wheeling, you made sure Eddie knew that the fake-date was actually happening, that the two of you would go out for drinks this weekend as your first official practice date.

After giving it a bit of thought, you realized that you and Eddie had never hung out alone. In your feeble attempts at flirting with him all those months ago you had invited him to have movie nights or grab a bite to eat, but he always showed up with Steve and or Robin in tow.

As the night of the fake-date rolled around, you’d be embarrassed to admit it to him, or Steve, who didn’t care to hide how skeptical he was about this whole idea, that you went through your normal pre-date routine. You took some extra time on your hair and makeup, exfoliated in the shower, chose an outfit you felt confident in, added a few spritz of perfume for good measure too.

Eddie rolled up in his van, only a few minutes late, but a few minutes was very impressive compared to his typical chronic tardiness. The two of you agreed to just grab some food and drinks at your usual spot, considering you and Steve openly agreed that it would be a good first date spot in theory.

“Hey,” he reaches across the center console to pop the door open for you, “you look nice.”

It took you a second to register as you settled into the passenger seat, and then whip around with your arm outstretched to give him a high five. He scrunches his face at you.

“High five me Eddie, that was really good! I know you usually open the door for me anyways, but the compliment right away, A+,” you flop your hand down to gently slap his, still gripping the steering wheel.

“Don’t patronize me, y/n,” deep down he knew you weren’t trying to talk down to him, and deep down he hadn’t even given complimenting you a second thought, he really did think you looked great in your date get-up.

On the ride over to the bar, the two of you discuss some logistics. Considering all of this is just practice dating, you don’t expect Eddie to pay for you, but you explain that in theory if he had been the one to ask you out then he should be the one to pay for the first date.

“To me it’s less of a gender thing and more of a who asked out who thing, but I know some people would abide to the stereotypical ‘the man always pays’ standard, which is why you’d just have to be honest on date like two or three about what you enjoy doing and what sorts of things are in your budget. You can still have fun and be thoughtful without spending a lot of money.”

He asked a few questions, like if he should have gotten you flowers for a first date, or what he should do if someone asks to go to a fancy restaurant that he surely couldn’t afford. You tried your best to give solid advice, but always reminded him that every person is different and every relationship is different, so all he can do is be honest.

You take up a spot at the bar and both order for yourselves, splitting some fries and slipping into some easy conversation.

“Am I supposed to, like, beat someone up if a guy tries hitting on you in front of me or something like that?” you nearly choke on your drink at his question.

“Eddie, no,” you answer, also questioning, “why the hell would you ask me that?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “My buddy Jeff was with his girlfriend at this punk show before they were even together, and some guy made a creepy comment to Amanda and Jeff just decked the guy in the face. He say’s that’s what made her want to date him, cuz he defended her honor or whatever.”

“I guess that’s sort of circumstantial, but I prefer my dates to not engage in any sort of violence,” you sip your drink, “even if it’s for my honor. I’d like your face a lot less if you were all bruised up.”

“Well I never said I would get hit,” the two of you were laughing a bit now.

Over a few cocktails you went over some first date etiquette with him. PDA and being touchy, how to follow her lead and gauge if she’s the type who wants everyone at the bar to know you’re together, or keep it strictly platonic to start. How far of a grip on the leg is too far up, that sort of thing.

“So if she does something like this,” you fake laugh a bit too loud and, lean into his personal space, and then run your hand from his slender down his arm, “that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to fuck you, but it’s pretty close. You’ve at least got a green flag to get a little closer to her, tell her she looks nice, maybe offer to buy her a drink.”

“I know how to tell if someone finds me attractive, y/n, I’m not stupid,” he said casually, “obviously that girl the other night was hitting on me, I’m not blind. I wasn’t going to ask to buy her a drink or try and get lucky in the bathroom because I was out with my friends. I can find a quick fuck in a bar on my own time. I was having fun with you guys, I wasn’t going to abandon all of you to talk to some stranger, even if she was hot.”

“Oh,” you processed his comment, “Steve would be happy to know he ranks above tube-top girl.”

“Steve would be happy to be above tube-top girl in any context,” he jokes.

“You really just find random girls in bars to fuck?” You question, not in any sort of judgmental way, just curious.

“Not specifically, I guess I did make myself sound like some serial bar-bathroom type of guy. I never really had girls interested in me when I was in high school, at least the first four years of it. Then when we started playing regular gigs at The Hideout it was a little easier to find girls who were interested, but it was always that they were more into fucking some guy who could play guitar and was in a band, so it usually just always happened on-site, probably cuz they had an actual boyfriend or husband to go home to. Girls think I’m fun. Which isn’t untrue, I do enjoy a romp in the Hideout bathroom, or the back of my van, or wherever we end up.”

“So that’s what all those blankets are back there for,” you say with a fake scowl, referring to his van set-up.

“Not exclusively! They make a cozy nest for smoking blunts and listening to tapes too!”

You return to your drink, trying not to think too hard about the girls that Eddie brings to bar bathrooms or his van or wherever.

“I just find the energy of those situations very different from like, talking and getting to know someone. Fucking is easy. I’m not interested in ruining that by adding emotions and the looming feeling like sex is contingent on me acting a certain way or checking a certain number of boxes for someone.”

He shrugged, and you could understand where he was coming from, sometimes a quick fuck or hookup could be cathartic and easy. But it also saddened you to think that Eddie believed he had to get in and out before the person on the other end got the chance to know him.

Moving away from the subject of his inability to be emotionally vulnerable, the two of you practice some cheesy ‘first date’ questions as you had called them. As your drinks started to settle into your system you were having more fun being silly with him, pretending to be a stranger on a first date.

“When’s your birthday?” You ask, twirling your drink straw with your finger and making some fake flirty eyes at him to accentuate the facade of asking him a bunch of questions you mostly knew the answers to.

“August 9th,” he flips his hair over his shoulder, joining in on your fake ostentatious flirting.

“Oh my gosh, a Leo! This will never work out, cuz I’m an asparagus…”

The two of you nearly fall out of your bar stools laughing, realizing you meant to say Sagittarius.

“Okay, let’s get you home Asparagus,” he helped you up, having kept his drinking to a minimum so he could drive you home.

“Wait, wait,” you grabbed his arm as the two of you exited the bar, “can we go back to your trailer?”

He raised an eyebrow at you, “that’s a little presumptuous for a first date missy.”

“No, no, this isn’t girlfriend y/n asking, just regular friend y/n, who thinks it would be a lot of fun to smoke and watch a movie without Steve there spewing all his annoying fun facts, like, we get it, you read the little insert inside the tape while you were bored at work!”

Eddie did agree that the idea of packing a bowl and watching a few movies with you didn’t sound too different from what his plans would have been otherwise, so he agreed, as long as you promised not to give him any dating advice while hanging out as friend y/n and not girlfriend y/n.

Although you promised to try your best, you immediately started lecturing him on t-shirt borrowing and the potential weight that could hold in a relationship when he offered to give you some more comfy clothes to change into.

“It’s important to know!” You emerged from the bathroom in one of his oversized shirts and a pair of boxers, “Some girls are very touchy about it. Any shirt you lend her to sleep in, you have to be willing to sacrifice for life.”

“For life?!” Eddie finishes making a bowl of popcorn for the two of you, swallowing his words when he sees you in his clothes, an unidentifiable emotion rising in him at the sight of you so cozy and integrated into his space.

“Well maybe not life,” you plop down onto the couch, “but do NOT ask for it back. Most girls will give it back once it stops smelling like you.”

“If she gets my shirt, can I have her underwear?” He asked without thinking, the weed he had just smoked with you hitting him a bit too hard in that moment.

“Oh my god,” you squeal and bury your face into a pillow, “la la la la, pretending like I didn’t hear that!”

“I’m just saying!” He laughs at you, now curled up into a ball, “fair is fair, right?”

“I guess it depends on the girl,” you mumble.

“So I’m guessing not you, by your reaction.”

“Eddie!” You smack him with a pillow, “I don’t know, no one’s ever asked!”

“If my girlfriend isn’t going to ask before stealing my shirt for an indefinite amount of time, I think that gives me panty privilege.”

“Wow Eddie, if I had known you were such a perv I would’ve reconsidered being your fake girlfriend,” you say sarcastically, with no real judgement behind it. The idea of him wanting to steal your underwear dampens them ever so slightly.

“Don’t worry babe, I won’t do anything pervy to you unless you ask nicely,” he shoots a wink at you, which you meet with an eye roll and a turn away to hopefully hide the heat rising in your cheeks.

The two of you carry out your platonic movie night as planned. You suppressed any urge to note on his actions from a romantic lens, and he ignored the itching desire to sling his arm around your shoulder or pull your legs into his lap to get more comfy on the couch.

“Can I sleep here Eddie,” you ask after movie two, “too sleepy to move.”

“Sure, I can take the couch and you can have my bed. It’s been a minute since I washed the sheets but it shouldn’t be too bad…”

“Nonono,” you mumble, “Your legs will totally hang right off the end of this thing. I’m conked out anyways, I can crash right here I promise.”

“Ignoring that you’re my fake girlfriend, I’m not letting you sleep out here on this lumpy thing. You’re taking the bed, no arguments.”

He helps you up from the couch, letting you keep the blanket that’s wrapped around you, snaking his arm underneath it and pulling you from the couch by your lower back. You were slightly taken aback by his assistance, body still limp from your relaxed state, your torso easily arching into his. Your arms fly up to grab his shoulders, steadying yourself with an awkward giggle.

“In the real world, a time like this would be good for a first kiss,” you make note of your closeness, the way he swept you up off the couch and held you steadily as you made your way to your feet.

“I know that, y/n,” his face was closer to yours than it had ever been, making your words hitch in your throat.

“Well, I’m just saying,” you turn your head to avoid the tension, “I’m sure the way you kiss your bar-hookups isn’t the way most girls who’re looking to date you long term want to be kissed for the first time.”

‘Oh yeah? And how do you presume that goes?” He kept his hand planted on your lower back.

You pretend to act wildly drunk, throwing yourself at him and letting your limbs go a bit heavier than they already were. “Ohmygod guitar man, I’ve had like, six dirty Shirleys, please finger bang me in the bathroom,” you slur your words and let your tongue loll out the side of your mouth as if to lean in for the world’s sloppiest and most uncoordinated kiss.

“First of all,” his voice was very serious, “I don’t hook up with girls who are too inebriated to stand, let’s get that straight. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even have our first fake kiss like this on account of the drinking and smoking, gotta make sure you’re in the right headspace. Secondly,”

He spins you around and quickly backs you up against the wall that stood a few feet behind the couch. His hand sliding up in between your shoulder blades, blanket now slumped around your waist, his other hand suavely cupping the side of your cheek, His hips angled into yours, pinning you back against the vinyl, almost collapsing back into it.

He pressed against you, not aggressively, but enough to let you know that if you were to try and squirm away he had the capacity to keep you right where he wanted you. He accomplished this all in one elegant motion, leaving you a bit dazed.

As you started to snap into reality, he moves his hand from your cheek down to grab your chin in between his thumb and the knuckle of his pointer, angling your face directly up at him.

“If you were some girl in a bar, it would be like this.”

The moment before your brain turned to absolute mush, you silently cringed at the thought of what you must look like, mouth hanging open, eyes glassed over, body instinctively sinking into his touch. Pathetic, you were sure of it.

Sure, Eddie did think you looked a little helpless, but he also thought you looked perfect. Exactly as he had imagined you to in this situation. Of course he had thought about you before, like that.

Of course he had felt an immediate spark with you when you had first met. But he never flirted back, or lead you on, because as much as he was attracted to you and enjoyed your company, he knew that it wouldn’t work out. He wasn’t relationship material, and you were the picture perfect girlfriend that he didn’t deserve.

He spoke directly into your parted lips, mouth hovering just far enough away to toe the line of ‘holy shit, is he going to?’ But no, as he made very clear, he wouldn’t kiss you under these conditions. He had made his point, and slowly backed off and let you find your footing.

As soon as he was sure that you were steady, he backed away and started down the hallway.

“I might have an extra toothbrush stashed away somewhere, let me look…” he ducked into the bathroom, leaving you stunned in the kitchen, head swimming and your stomach traveled up into your throat.

He was teasing you, he must be. That was his little way of getting back at you for thinking you could give him dating advice. If he was unsure about his capacity for romance, he was going to make sure you knew he was more than capable in other ways. Understood.

You shook your head, weeding through your inner monologue of how he could possibly look at you like that and then just walk away. Your shock gave him just long enough for you to to not notice him splashing cold water on his face in the bathroom while he “looked for a toothbrush.”

The two of you decided to ignore the lingering tension from the events in the kitchen, not a peep of fake-girlfriend talk from you for the rest of the night. He did find you that toothbrush, and the two of you moved through a too-easy domestic routine of getting ready for bed.

You told him that you wouldn’t be able to sleep if you knew he was cramped on that couch, and that you were fine with sharing a bed. You mumbled something about getting around to bed sharing etiquette at some point anyways, and sleepily pulled him into being your little spoon.

Eddie lay there, trying not to twitch or fidget, relaxed as best he could into your cuddled form thinking about how horrible of an idea all of this was. He was convinced all it would take is roughly ten more minutes of you burying your face into his hair and making cute little sleepy noises for him to fall irreversibly in love with you.

But what was he supposed to do? Move and wake you up? Never.

You rolled around enough in the night to wake up in a less intimate position than when you had fallen asleep. You knew Eddie was a deep sleeper, and took it upon yourself to creep out of bed and back into your day clothes, make a pot of coffee, and watc a bit of TV before he roused and joined you in the living room.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” He rubbed the crust from his eyes and was pleasantly surprised to see you had brewed a whole pot of coffee to share.

“You looked so peaceful and cozy,” he shook his head at you, as if that was no excuse for letting him sleep an extra forty minutes.

After a slow morning, he agrees to drive you home.

“So this is the part where I say ‘Eddie, I had such a wonderful time on our date. I’d love to do it again sometime.’ And then you agree and tell me when you’re free. It’s best to be super direct and make plans to get together again soon, cuz then it’s not an awkward who’s-gonna-call-who-first sort of thing.”

“Uh-huh…” he stares at you blankly.

“But for our sake, let’s just agree that I’m in charge of planning our next date. Okay? I’ll do it from the perspective of what I think most girls would enjoy, so you can steal it for the future. I’ll call you later.”

You hop out of his van before he can agree, and leave him with a “Thanks for letting me stay over!” As you bound away from his view.

He squeezed his eyes shut the moment he caught himself checking your ass out as you walked away, and let his head rest down on the steering wheel. He was fucked. How the hell was he supposed to tell you that you needed to stop being his fake girlfriend without disrupting the homeostasis of your friendship?

On one hand he could lie and say he doesn’t want your advice, making you think he didn’t enjoy your company, which was entirely untrue. On the other hand he could tell you the truth, and you would never be friends the same way again.

He drove home with the music too loud, and patiently awaited your call later that evening to iron out the details of your second fake-date.

Per your instructions, he let you pick him up this time with the argument that you were the one taking him out this time. He didn’t know what you had planned, but let himself fall to the mercy of whatever you had decided was an exemplary date fore him to ‘steal in the future’.

You picked up two coffees and rolled up to the trailer park, popping a mix-tape he had made you ages ago.

“Hey, I thought we said no paying for each other with fake-dating,” he objects to the coffee sat in the passenger cupholder, some abomination of mostly cream and sugar, the way you know he likes it.

“Yes, that’s true, but you smoked me up the other night, and this coffee was like a dollar fifty, so don’t worry about it,” you give him a look that tells him to drink the damn coffee and not sass back, to which he complies, even though he smokes you up expecting nothing in return about every other weekend.

The two of you sip away and listen to Eddies ‘must-know-to-be-my-friend’ mixtape and arrive shortly at the strip mall across town. This was a regular weekly stop for both of you, the strip of connected stores containing the Goodwill, a pet store, the pharmacy, and grocery. A pretty mundane collection.

“Okay, what are we doing at Greg’s?” Eddie gestures to the grocery store, the back of his mind running through the grocery list he’s been making for this week anyways.

“What’s the perfect date?” You ask, and answer for him, “a romantic picnic. But gathering supplies is half the fun. Picnic food supplies at Greg’s, some pills to get fucked up at the pharm, some turtles or something to let loose into the wild from the pet store, and then hats, cups, blanket, etcetera from the Goodwill.”

He turns to you with the most bewildered stare, which sends you into a fit of giggles.

“Okay, I’m joking about the pills and the turtles,” you nudge his arm, “but won’t it be sweet to get together some picnic supplies and then drive out to lookout point? We can still swing by the pet store to check out the ferrets though.”

To Eddie, the idea of a date involved him doing something he didn’t want to do, some awkward small talk, and spending money on shit he truly thought was useless. This didn’t sound half bad. You would “work backwards so the food purchases come last” according to your reasoning, and he followed you in tow without any arguments into the Goodwill.

“So I’m thinking…” you start to wander into the aisles of used clothes and knick knacks, “maybe a blanket? A basket would be sort of corny, but if we find one for cheap I don’t see why not. Surely two glasses for drinking, and maybe some sun hats?”

Swiveling back around to see a half stunned Eddie, who was still processing how in the hell this was your idea of a romantic date, you grab his hand and pull him to the bric-a-brac section.

After it got through his thick skull that the same place he had uncomfortably tried on new pants throughout his growth spurt, and picked up his daily-worn leather jacket, had the same potential to provide some silly, cheap, used items to add some flair to this picnic.

Silly and cheap was right up Eddie’s alley. The two of you picked out mismatched champagne glasses, one with the engraved name of a couple who got married in 1943 and the other a flashy rose color with baby angel carvings dancing around the sides.

You luckily find an on sale beach blanket, and the two of you pick out some very goofy sun hats. A floppy farmers hat for you, and a bedazzled trucker hat spelling ‘hot mama’ for Eddie.

Through the midst of your giggles and debate on whether you should buy a wooden bench to bring out to your picnic destination, Eddie found himself having a really good time with you.

As promised, you visited the pet store and checked out the ferrets and fish and geckos.

“If you could have any pet, what would you want?” You asked him, noses pressed against the chinchilla enclosure.

“Jaguar,” he said, a little too quickly.

“For real, dummy,” you knock your hip into his.

“I don’t know, we never had enough space or extra money for pets growing up, so maybe someday if I had enough room for it to run around I’d like a dog or something,” he tells. Eyes still transfixed on the chinchilla behind the glass.

“I can see that,” you imagine Eddie with some mutt from the shelter, wrestling around and giving it lots of scratches behind the ears.

Skipping the pharmacy, you pop into the grocery store and assemble what may be the world’s most eclectic picnic.

“That’s the definition of a picnic, I’m pretty sure,” you explain after Eddie insinuated that the gingersnap cookies you grabbed, along with grapes and a block of cheese, wasn’t exactly a meal, “you know, just a smorgasbord of whatever we want!”

Admittedly, Eddie had considered a handful of pretzels and a beer to be dinner on more than one occasion, so he couldn’t argue with you. Quickly catching your drift, the two of you picked out an assortment of snacks and some ingredients for pb&j sandwiches.

“I thought picnics were supposed to be classy?” Eddie holds up the Wonder bread and bag of potato chips with a look that suggested his question was rhetorical.

Your response was simply to raise the, admittedly cheap, bottle of champagne you grabbed to accompany with your meal, more for the irony of drinking the bubbly liquid out of your new used glasses with your sticky sandwiches than anything else.

You pack your supplies into a tote bag, not having found a suitable basket at the thrift store, and drive across town to a dirt paved road that leads to a nice lookout point with a view of the lake.

“Let’s walk down the path a little bit, but not too far,” you grab the blanket and tote bag from your trunk, motioning for Eddie to put on his ‘hot mama’ hat and carry your other auxiliary supplies, “I do not fuck with bugs.”

“I’ll protect you,” Eddie puffs out his chest, making you both giggle.

“From bugs?”

“Yeah, I’ll punch a mosquito right in the face, to defend your honor and all that.”

“I know I told you not to do that, but a mosquito might be the exception to the rule.”

You found a nice little clearing not far from the car, a spot that still had a nice view but was a bit more secluded. Eddie sat pressed right up next to you, making your sandwich ‘to be a proper gentleman’ but simultaneously spilling a glob of jelly onto your leg.

“Shit,” he doesn’t think twice before leaning down and slurping the grape flavored blob off of your bare knee, tongue poking out and licking the spilt jelly from your skin.

“Eddie!” You squirm away, barking out a surprised laugh.

“What! Your knee is clean, wouldn’t want to waste perfectly good preserves, or a napkin.”

You feel your skin tingle where his lips had touched you, for only a moment, but you still felt it. He was so confident and casual in his movements, not having any hesitation to grab your hand or brush your hair out of your face. It wasn’t under the guise of fake romance, he had always been like that. Not touchy, per se, just sure of himself. You’d never seen Eddie do anything half assed, that’s for certain.

After the conversation you shared the other night, you were unable to stop your mind from wandering to thoughts of what Eddie does with those girls in bars, if he touched him with the same confidence and sureness he put into everything else he did.

It was wrong to let your mind go to such dirty places about someone you considered a friend, but you couldn’t manage to feel any guilt. He had offered that information freely, so who were you to punish yourself for staring a little longer at his fingers, conjuring up the context in which he’d bury them inside you against some grimy bar bathroom.

The date was all peanut butter smiles and bubbly laughter that floated up into the trees. Silly, yes, but neither of you could deny there was something sweet, maybe even romantic about it. A cheap meal in the woods shared between two friends in ill-fitting fifty cent hats, but an undeniable touch of romance lingered nonetheless.

Eddie started to realize that maybe the whole dating thing wasn’t as uptight and scary as he had initially thought. It could be easy and fun, with the right person. And fuck, if he could even imagine doing this with anyone but you.

Like most things Eddie did, he did not consider any potential consequences before acting. You looked so pretty sitting there in the sunshine, sipping from your cheap ‘Martha & Dave ’43’ glass, a few sandwich crumbs dotting the corner of your mouth.

What else was he supposed to do other than lean over and wipe them away with his thumb, stroking your soft cheek and feel the warmth of your skin beneath his palm.

“You had some,” he uses his other hand to motion at his own mouth, “and I suppose this is the sort of moment where I’d ask if I can kiss you.”

You find yourself a bit dumbfounded, his big stupid hand on your cheek and those big stupid puppy dog eyes unrelenting in making everything he says seem so genuine.

“Are you?” You find your voice, only half embarrassed at how shy it comes out.

“Am I what?”

“Are you asking me?”

“Yeah,” his answer comes out in a way that insinuates that he never meant anything other than that, that he was always asking to kiss you, he wasn’t asking in theory, in another universe, in the context of advice.

“Okay,” you found yourself behaving like Eddie, not really thinking of consequences before your words and actions spoke on behalf of your instincts.

Everything so far had been so easy. Your fake first date at the bar, curling up next to him in a haze, making up stories about what sort of people donated the fake palm tree or the Garfield mug at the Goodwill, imagining Eddie running around a yard with a puppy, lounging in the grass and eating your assorted picnic snacks. It was all effortless.

Suddenly, being kissed by Eddie sucked the ease from your lungs and sent your mind spiraling into a cacophony of bells and whistles and giant swirling red flags. If this is how he kissed you, casually across some half eaten peanut butter sandwiches, you’d spend the rest of your days yearning to know how he kissed someone with true intention.

Of course, his intentions were all there, but the lingering knowledge that all of this was happening under the umbrella of “you giving him advice” or “helping practice for the next girl” poisoned any true feeling he poured into it. He cupped your cheek, soft, let his lips press into yours delicately for a moment before he felt your breath hitch, opening his mouth just enough to deepen the kiss and capture your lower lip fully.

He was more careful, gentle, methodic with his movements and so receptive to every little signal your body gave him, it was unlike any first-kiss, heat-of-the-moment-kiss, in-the-throws-of-passion-kiss, any of it. Like hell you’d ever tell him that, inflate that big ego that fuels his snippy comebacks at you, but Jesus, was it remarkable.

While at war with yourself internally, your heart was on the precipice of exploding in your chest from the way he snaked his hand into your hair and pressed his forehead against yours to catch a breath. You suck in a sharp breath and feel that stupid cocky smirk creep up onto that pretty mouth of his.

“’S that sufficient for a first kiss?”

“Fuck offfff,” you were still a little out of breath, smacking his chest and flopping back down onto the picnic blanket, throwing your arms up and rolling your eyes at him, “if you’re so damn confident, maybe we just should fake break up, cuz you don’t seem like you need my advice.”

“Nooooo,”he slumps down next to you, burrowing his head under your arm so he can pop up right next to your face, “I’m learning a lot, I promise! This date was so fun, and cheap! I would have never thought any of this could be remotely romantic. I’m hopeless, y/n, look at me.”

He wriggles around and gives you a big fake pout, “If left to my own devices I would probably do something horribly embarrassing or off-putting, like…” he digs his head into the crook of your neck and blew a fat, wet raspberry right into your skin, making you yelp and squeal, but his position half on top of you pins you down.

“See!” He pulls up for air, you were in a fit of screaming giggles, “I’d go right in for a kiss and just,” and he does it again, leaving you gasping for air, trying your best to tickle his ribs to get him off of you, but not minding the close contact by any means.

“Now I’m not so sure,” he pulls back to give you a minute to catch your breath, “it seems like you enjoyed that, so maybe survey says I should pull that move on the ladies.”

Your airy laughter subsided, but he stays half pinning you down to the blanket and the lumpy grass underneath.

“I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I’m not grateful for your help,” he says earnestly, catching your gaze, “it’s just… this isn’t what I need help with.”

As his statement is processing, you find his lips back on yours, his torso pressed flushed with yours and his wild mane of hair coming down to curtain around your head. He doesn’t take it too far, but kisses you as earnestly as he had before, giving your lip a slight drag with his teeth and running his hand up from your hip up the side of your ribcage, leaving you arching slightly into him by pure instinct.

Before your head got too dizzy again, before you could really throw yourself into it and say fuck it and kiss him back the way you secretly wanted to, he pulled back.

“That.” his voice was even, you hated how needy you felt and how even keeled he could be milliseconds after stealing the air from your lungs, “It’s the rest of it,” he threw his hands up and gestured to all the food and knock knacks around you, “it’s this stuff that you make seem so easy, so forgive me if I lay it on a little thick when we get to the parts I’m actually good at.”

“Just,” you sat up a bit, grounding yourself and formulating a response despite your brain looping the past twenty seconds back infinitely, “don’t do that again.”

“Okay,” he sat back and popped a grape into his mouth, “sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” you knocked his knee with yours, struggling to articulate how you felt without showing too much of your hand, deciding to just be candid, “I just- I liked that a little too much if you know what I mean. And this is strictly business, or education, maybe?”

“You liked it when I pinned you against the wall the other night,” he said matter of factly, “I think you liked that a little too much too, and you still took me on this fake educational business date.”

“Yeah, well, you caught me,” you threw your hands up in defense.

“Which one is it though?” He asks and you don’t quite understand, “are you a sweet kiss on the picnic kind of girl, or an up against the wall kind of girl?”

“That’s none of your business, as far as fake-dating is concerned,” you say a little too quickly, “and no you can’t have my panties.”

You say it with a smirk, but he doesn’t press any further. He turns and does that Eddie-thing he’s so good at, just changing the subject and shifting the vibe completely away from what might have been a stale moment or awkward pause. He starts asking if you like green or purple grapes better, going off about how he used to put them in the freezer as a kid.

The remainder of your date went without a hitch, of course. You picked away at your picnic until the sun started to set, and once the sky started turning purple you made your way back to the car. The drive home consisted only of easy conversation and no further mention of the kiss, well, kisses that had transpired. He hopped out of the passenger seat with a ‘thank you’ and a ‘see ya later alligator.’

A scalding hot shower, a restless night of sleep, and too many cups of herbal tea the next morning did nothing to quell the noise in your head that blasted those moments over and over. You couldn’t stop picking apart whether he had thought about it for even a millisecond, and felt embarrassed that you could think of nothing else.

It was simply an amplified version of what your whole friendship had been up until this point. You silently admiring him and wishing he would look at you the way you looked at him, and settling for friendship over heartbreak.

Pushing it aside to the best of your ability allowed you to get through your week, but you had the lingering feeling that the next time you saw him would strike you with warm cheeks and a scrambled mental state.

Guilt had started to seep in at the corners of your mind, but you reminded yourself that you shouldn’t punish yourself for having romantic or sexual thoughts about someone you simply found attractive and compelling, it was your actions that would determine the validity of your guilt.

“Long time no see, loser,” Robin hollered from the pool table across the bar, where she was likely kicking Steve’s ass.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” you shrug off your coat and plop down at their regular booth, knowing her jabs were entirely empty. You notice Eddie’s leather jacket hung up by the wall, and scan the bar to find him ordering a drink.

There was a silent mutual understanding that you’d keep the fake dating thing to a bare minimum when out with your friends like this. Even though Steve was well aware, and therefore Robin was too, you figured tainting your social time with the performance of romance is the exact reason Eddie turned down the girl at the bar in the first place.

“For the lady,” Eddie waltzes over and hands you a drink.

“Oh, thanks,” you take it with a confused smile, “you didn’t have to do that.”

“You bought me coffee last weekend,” he sat across the booth from you, “plus I’m trying to get better at buying drinks for pretty girls, right?”

You remind him that he doesn’t have to keep tabs on things like coffee, but you appreciate the gesture regardless. As per the past few times you’d been out with your friends, you expected him to put a pause on the flirting, but it seems to be bubbling over tonight. You weren’t complaining, but admittedly the arm around your shoulder or the noticeable way he checked you out when you got up to refill your drink took you by slight surprise.

Sneaking in to claim the always occupied dart board for a challenge against Eddie while he uses the restroom, you keep your eyes on the corner of the bar to signal him over once he returns.

“You need a partner?” A man suddenly appears behind you, a little closer than you’d like but the bar was crowded, so you’ll let it slide.

“Oh, I was just waiting for-“

“Let me fill in until your friend gets here, we can get you warmed up, yeah?” His tone wasn’t too pushy, but you didn’t love the look he gave you when making that comment.

Awkwardly staggering for a second, unsure weather to just agree or tell him to fuck off, “He really should be just a minute-“

“Or maybe less,” Eddie comes up right behind you and pulls you possessively into his side.

Your head whips up to see him with a devilish smile, his hand on your waist and the fire behind his eyes telling his guy to get lost.

“Oh, sorry man,” the guy starts backing away with an apologetic look.

“Yeah, better luck next time, pal,” Eddie snakes around to take the guy’s spot in front of the dart board.

He had his darts in hand and took his stance to start the match, gesturing for you to do the same.

“What was that,” you ask with a slight joking tone, but seriously curious.

“What?” He doesn’t make eye contact and instead throws the first dart, “I’m not allowed to get fake jealous?”

“You’re allowed to feel any fake emotion you want, I guess,” your tone is somewhere in between a joke and a question.

“You’d feel fake jealous if I was getting blown in the bathroom by some chick rather than playing darts with you, I bet.”

“Okay,” your tone shifts to defensive, “getting blown is very different than some guy asking to play darts with me.”

“I didn’t like the way he was looking at you,” Eddie turns to face you, having thrown all his darts, “for real.”

A moment lapsed where you didn’t register that your mouth was hanging open in disbelief, the look in your eyes Eddie immediately clocked as lust and bottled up to store away for a later time.

“I knew the scary dog thing would work,” his ‘i-told-you-so’ tone rubbed you the wrong way, but he wasn’t wrong, “you said girls weren’t into that, but you totally looooove that I defended your honor.”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit, I said girls wouldn’t be into it if you punched him,” you rolled your eyes.

“I don’t know, babe, I think you liked the whole ‘back off of my woman’ act.”

You mumble out a ‘whatever’ and let him have this win, which he was clearly reveling in, trying to focus instead at beating him at darts.

“Just don’t pull shit like that on a first date, acting too possessive off the bat is a huge red flag for a lot of women.”

“I thought we weren’t doing dating advice tonight?” You don’t even have to look at him to know he’s got that stupid sarcastic smile.

“Yeah I thought so too,” you fail at your attempt to beat him in darts, as well as your attempt to not flirt back with him.

He insists on collecting all the darts, picking up the ones haphazardly strews across the floor from failed attempts to hit the board.

“I’m no pro or anything, but I think you’d hit the board a lot more if you fixed your stance.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” you flip him the bird and take back your red tipped darts.

As you steady your arm to aim your first shot he comes up behind you and grabs your hips, causing you to let out an unexpected squeak. He adjusts your stance, not aggressively, but with some force, twisting your hips and using his big combat boot to sweep your foot around so you stood more sideways.

“You’re standing straight on,” he backs up, allowing you to secretly catch your breath, “and all your shots are veering to the right. If you plant your feet more angled you’ll hit the board.”

You wanted to roll your eyes at him, miss on purpose to show him he’s full of shit. You flippantly toss the dart, not trying particularly hard, and it hits. Not a bulls-eye or anything like that, but a lot closer than your previous attempts had been.

“Good girl,” he comments, leaning in to breech your personal space just enough to make your blood boil.

You drop the remainder of the darts in your opposite hand onto the floor and whip around to face him, half jokingly smacking him on the shoulder.

“Oh my god, fuck off!”

You’re met with his trademark shit-eating grin.

Truthfully, Eddie hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off you all night. He’d spent the night after your picnic date with his hand in bis boxers, squeezing his eyes shut and remembering the little gasp you had made when he grabbed your waist, the hum in your throat that bubbled up when he kissed you pinned against the blanket, that night and every night since.

“Oh, you don’t like that?” that joking tone he uses to cover up what he actually wants to say.

“Shut up, you know I do,” you didn’t even try to stifle your reaction, knowing it was his intent to get under your skin.

“How would I possibly know that,” he playfully looks up at the ceiling and around the bar, hands clasped behind his back now, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“You better cut that shit out, unless you plan on doing something about it,” you manage the most assertive tone your wobbly insides could muster, a little shocked at yourself for actually saying what you were thinking.

“I’m not much of a planner,” he gracefully takes a stance next to you and rips all three darts, not great shots, but all hitting the board, “I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of guy, you know that.”

“Well your pants better make up their mind if you’re playing boyfriend tonight or not,” your insinuation was heavy but you had fumbled your hand, and he had already seen all your cards at this point, so there was no reason to bluff.

“The real question is,” he leans in, his imposing figure crowding your space in a way that made your head spin, “do you want me to play boyfriend? Or do you want me to play guy who fucks your brains out in the bar bathroom?”

Your eyebrows pinched together for a millisecond, and before he could decipher your expression you grabbed his hand and started storming through the crowds hoarded by the bar. Why the hell a seedy downtown bar has a single stall family bathroom with a changing table is beyond you, but you drag him inside and slam the lock down behind you.

“You’re not allowed to treat me any differently after this,” you start to fall into the sinkhole of oh my god what the hell is about to happen, but are cut off by him pressing you against the closed door the exact way he had handled you against his kitchen wall that night weeks ago.

“Not unless you want me to,” he doesn’t hesitate to get his mouth on yours, immediately pulling your mind from wondering what the vague sticky substance on the door pressing into your back could be.

“I mean, you’re not allowed to fuck me and then never talk to me again,” you say in between moving lips and tongues, giving him a moment to bury his face in your neck, "Promise me."

“Oh don’t worry about that,” he pulls back, “we can go get coffee tomorrow and you can give me a full performance review. Promise.”

Your annoyed eye roll quickly turns into them fluttering shut as he licks a stripe up to the junction behind your ear that has you melted into a boneless puddle between his pressing hips and the door. He drags his teeth across your lobe while leaning into you with a black denim clad thigh.

“Why don’t we make a deal,” you let out, voice breathy and unfocused. Before he can even pull back to reply you continue, “if you’re half as good at this as you claim to be, and can make me cum in this dingy bathroom, I’ll let you take me back to your trailer and you can do whatever the fuck you want to me.”

He was leaning in to seal the deal with a kiss before he could even process your request, because yes of course, a million times yes he’s taking this deal. Despite the rouse of you playing bar hookup for the night, and despite the idea of bringing you back to his place and finally doing what he’s wanted since the day he met you absolutely terrifying him, he nods and kisses you.

It’s electrifying. His confidence only spurs you on to kiss him harder, grip his hair a little tighter, say the things you would only imagine in the deepest parts of your mind. The feeling of his grin against your lower lip and his fingers quickly unbuttoning your jeans fuels your fire.

“You sure you know what you’re getting into,” he mumbles playfully, pulling you away from the wall with a gasp and leading you over to the tiny built in counter against a mirror by the sink.

“Well I’m certainly not letting you fuck me against any of these sticky surfaces,” you note as you’re lifted onto the counter covered in mystery substance, “and I think you need to earn it.”

Of course it was no surprise to you that Eddie was good with his fingers. You probably could have told anyone that long before this impromptu bathroom hookup. Egging him on and challenging him in a way you were sure he wasn’t used to was well worth abandoning your assumptions.

“Oh yeah? I think, if you’re lucky, I’ll earn it more times than you can count before the night’s over,” he positioned himself in between your legs, pressing your torso into the mirror behind you as he leaned in for another heated kiss.

He pulled your ass to the edge of the counter, and looped his thumbs into the waistband of your unbuttoned pants. You were quick to assume that he’d yank the fabric right off your legs, preparing to lift your ass from the counter to assist.

Eddie paused, pulled back and gave you a look that asked ‘you’re sure about this?’ and when a dreamy smile spread across your cheeks he melted into you with a kiss that turned your stomach inside out and made your pussy flutter.

He snakes a hand from its grip on your torso down into your unbuttoned pants. You arched up into his touch, wanting to urge him to get on with it and get your pants and underwear out of the way, but appreciating how much he seemed to be reveling in feeling you for the first time.

“So fuckin wet,” he mumbled against your lips, his fingers only feeling up your cunt from outside your underwear. He pressed the fabric into your slick center, following the path up to your clit and then teasingly back down to where your panties were soaked through.

“You weren’t lying when you said you liked this a little too much,” he’s rolling his hips ever so slightly against your spread thigh as he rubs your clothed pussy, his teeth sinking into your lower lip as he moves the material aside and sinks two fingers right into your wet cunt with ease.

You were sure that you’d retrospectively have a million quippy compacks that come to mind, but in this moment it was impossible to come up with words when his fingers were buried inside you, still, just letting you squeeze around them, and his hard cock straining against his jeans nestled against the inside of your thigh.

He slowly drags his finger’s up from your hole to your clit, and you let out a whine of desperation as he fully removes his hand from your damp underwear.

Before you can manage the breath to tell him to please, for the love of god, get on with it, he brings his fingers up to his lips and gives them a long suck, never breaking eye contact with you.

“Yeah,” he sighs out and presses his forehead against yours, “I might like that a little too much too.”

Protests and urging words catch in your throat as he yanks down your pants and underwear with one quick pull, not even needing you to lift your ass off the counter more than it already was. He was methodical and moved with intention, folding up your pants neatly and shoving your soaked panties into his back pocket, shooting you a wink.

“Eddie, please,” your overdue complaints are finally bubbling over. You hardly finish your plea before his face is buried in your neck, and his fingers are sliding right back into your needy hole.

The top of your head rests against the mirror behind you, exposing your neck and arching your back into his touch. He sucks and nips at the soft skin between your collar bone and ear, all while letting his two middle fingers pump slowly into you.

“Mmmm,” he mumbles into the crook of your jaw, “such a good girl for me, perfect pussy squeezing my fingers so tight, can’t fuckin wait to feel you soak my cock.”

Nearly orgasming at his words alone, your eyes flutter shut and you let out a moan of his name as he lets his thumb drag circles across your clit. “Eddie, please, just like that, I-”

“Oh, suddenly she’s not questioning my abilities?” he says with a biting smirk, “What was that about me not being half as good as I think I am?”

“Fuck,” you want to raise an eyebrow and shoot something back, hold out and make him work for it, but after hardly two minutes of his fingers rolling inside you, hooked up to drag along that perfect fucking spot, you had no choice but to feed his ego and let him win.

“You wanted to make your little deal,” he pumps a little faster, making your head loll to the side and mouth hang half open, “I’ll sweeten it for you, babe. I say we can get this pretty pussy to come twice all over my fingers before anyone even knocks on this door.”

“Yes,” is all you can squeak out, “yes, please.”

If Eddie was being honest, he was a few half-thrusts into your thigh short of coming in his own pants from how hot you looked. Your eyes glassed over, pretty lips parted and gasping his name, perfect cunt sucking his fingers in.

The hand not occupied by your gushing cunt slid up to cup the side of your cheek, forcing you to look into his fiery eyes. “Feel’s good?” he questions, knowing the answer and not expecting a verbal response.

He drags the pad of his thumb up to your parted lips, running it along your plush bottom lip and dragging it down a bit, relishing in how under his spell you were. His thumb slips into your mouth and you immediately wrap your lips around it and suck.

“Good girl,” his thumb on your clit is rubbing more focused circles, “suck on that and keep your voice down, don’t want the whole bar knowing what a good little slut you are for me.”

Jackpot.

A muffled moan around his thumb and the spasming of your inner walls signaled that you were hitting your peak. He drags the spit slicked digit from your lips and quickly replaces it with his lips and tongue, kissing you with fervor as he feels you ride out your orgasm on his hand.

“Mmmmmmm” you moan, somewhere between a pleading whine and a sigh of satisfaction into his lips as his fingers don’t let up.

Under different circumstances you would tell him to slow down, give you a minute to catch your breath. Eddie was stubborn, this you knew, and he had already made it abundantly clear that one orgasm wasn’t going to be enough.

He pulls back from your lips, loving the sharp intake of breath you swallow as your cheeks continue to flush and eyelids keep fluttering.

“So fucking good, came all over my fingers,” his gaze locks in on where his hand was buried into your cunt. “Gonna give me one more?”

Of course you would, whether it was up to you or not. He did slow up for a second, just enough for you to regain your grip on reality before he started curling them up again.

“Eddie,” you whine out, eyes nearly crossed and unable to focus your attention on his face, hands, anything other than his boner poking into your inner thigh, “wanna feel you.”

The hand formerly gripped tight onto the edge of the counter snakes forward and pulls his hip into you, a permanent indentation of his stiff cock molding against your skin.

“Not yet baby,” he rolls his hips forward, giving you a delicious feel of how it would be if he was inside you, but instead pushing his fingers a touch deeper and then pulling his hips away, “one more and then I’ll take you home. You’re gonna let me ruin that perfect little cunt, right? That was the deal?”

“Yes,” you gasp out, his other hand moving from your hair down to rub fast tight circles on your clit, the other hand still pumping steadily inside you.

“That’s right, I know this pussy is gonna take me so well. You’re already drooling for my cock, so fucking perfect.”

You feel it building up again, that sacred double orgasm that only ever came during your alone time in the shower or when you were so desperate for release that your hand didn’t stop after the first, but never with another person, never like this.

His smile nearly touched his ears at this point, pulling back to take in all of you as your eyes screwed shut and thighs threatened to break his wrist at how fast they snapped together.

Hitting you like a punch to the gut, your abdomen tightened and released rapidly, air sucked from your lungs and his hand working you through it between your clenched thighs.

Yeah, maybe this was a bad idea.

If you were in a cartoon, stars and chirping birds would be swirling around your head as you slowly came back to reality. He gave you some space, and begrudgingly gave you pack your panties after you hand out your hand and gave him a stern look.

“I’m gonna go tell the others that you aren’t feeling great and I’m taking you home,” he makes sure you’ve pulled your pants back up before unlocking the door, “Take your time, and I’ll meet you at the van, okay? I’ll grab your stuff.”

“Yeah,” you still feel a little flustered, looking back into the mirror and smoothing down your hair, “thanks.”

He shoots you a wink before slipping out, giving you a moment to collect yourself and splash some cold water on your face. Okay, so you’re doing this.

Any nagging feelings that this might ruin things or that he’s only teasing you because of your arrangement are quickly squished down into a deeper compartment of your brain, overtaken by the post orgasm bliss and wandering thoughts of what might happen next.

You peek your head out of the bathroom door, and slink your way to the back door without passing your group table or a stray Steve or Robin. The fresh air equalizes your buzzing thoughts, and you spot Eddie, already in the driver’s seat of his van.

“You good?” He asks as you hop into the passenger seat. You won’t let him have the upper hand, just because he made you come twice in under ten minutes.

“Yeah,” you gather as much assertion as your voice will project, “You good?”

“F’course,” he starts backing up, you internally roll your eyes at the way his outstretched arm muscles and curved neck make your stomach flutter, “Just wanted to make sure I passed the test.”

You sit in silence, not wanting to give into the cocky game he clearly wants to play, yet know that he’s entirely correct in his assumption that he’s driven you completely crazy. Once he’s on the main stretch of road, finally rolling to a stop at a red light you let your hand migrate across the center console, dancing its way into his lap.

As you hoped, his cock was still half hard and apparent underneath his jeans. You let your hand draw circles next to it, loving the little twitch you get when you run your nails against his thigh.

“Easy there, tiger,” he lets out a huffed laugh, with just an edge to his tone that suggested you were getting yourself into something you’d soon regret.

“C’mon Eds,” you let your head fall on the corner of the headrest, gaze angled over at his tight grip on the steering wheel while your hand dancing around the bulge in his pants, “you’ve been pushing this thing against my thigh for the past twenty minutes, forgive me for wanting a better feel.”

You put on a pretend pouty face and flash him your best puppy dog eyes to ward off any incoming snippy comments from him. He rolls his pretty eyes at you and silently bites the inside of his cheek as you feel up and down his lap, grazing his growing cock with each pass.

“Forgiven,” through gritted teeth, he squeezes his eyes shut as your fingers circle around his head, now taking visible form beneath his black jeans. He internally reprimands himself for losing focus on the road, and zeroes his concentration on getting back to his trailer as fast as this van can take him.

You have your fun watching him wiggle in his seat, feeling his thigh muscles clench under your palm every so often. You weren’t full on jerking him off over his pants, but you were certainly relishing in the feeling of his dick getting harder and harder with each occasional pass of your hand.

He parks diagonally across the lawn in front of his trailer, not giving a shit where the van ends up as long as it’s stopped. He wanted to dash around the vehicle and scoop you out of your seat, throw you over his shoulder and take you inside to continue with whatever this evening had in store for you.

The second his hand stalled on the clutch, shifting the van into park and taking a moment to let his mind wander to what would happen once he got you inside, you were already halfway out the van and skipping up the steps to his front door.

Entering his trailer, you start taking off your coat and shoes, trying to act as normal as possible. Your facade of keeping it cool entirely shatters when he enters behind you, calmly clicking the door shut and patiently waiting for you to finish unlacing your boots.

You remain crouched down, darting your eyes up at him, deciding against being a brat and undoing your laces as slowly as possible to keep him waiting. Any caution you had was long swept away by the wind, and he’d taken control in your little bathroom tryst, so it was your turn to say fuck it and just do what felt right.

And in this moment, there was only a few quick movements and about six inches of space between you and Eddie’s semi-hard dick. One shoe was only half off, haphazardly kicked behind you as you pivoted onto your knees and had your hands moving eagerly up his tensing thighs.

“Can I?” Your question was half formed and he was already nodding.

You’d teased him enough on the ride over, you wanted him, now. Pants quickly unbuttoned and blue checkered boxers pushed down to his knees, and you were about to go feral and just go for it when a silver glimmer adorning his thick cock caught your eye.

Your mouth was already half open, but your jaw nearly unhinged and hit the floor when the pierced head of his dick falls out of his boxers and lands at your eye level.

Unmoving, mouth agape, you look up to make eye contact, ripping your eyes away from the shock of two silver balls on his cockhead. He knew it was nice, he wouldn’t have bedazzled it if it wasn’t, but the look you were giving him sucked all the unwavering confidence from his body for a split second, suddenly feeling weak in the knees at the sight of you slowly sicking your tongue out, not making any contact but waiting.

He took the base of his dick in his hand and gave it a few precautionary strokes before angling it down and slapping your wet tongue with the tip a few times.

You were two and a half seconds away from being entirely fucked out. If he pulled away and asked you to crawl on all fours to him, you’d do it without a second thought.

You let him slide his cock gently against your outstretched tongue a few times before coming to your senses and wrapping your lips around him, moving your hand to replace his and move against the length that your mouth couldn’t yet reach.

All it took was a few steady bobs of your head, hand twisting and eyes still focused upwards on his face, to have him biting his knuckle and looking up at the ceiling to ground himself to try and not bust on the spot. You love this, of course, seeing him visibly spiral paired with the salty taste of precum already leaking from him.

The hand not jerking him off comes up to the back of his hip, gently pushing against him in tandem with the movements of your head, encouraging him to shallowly thrust into your mouth.

“Jesus fu-“ he grunts out, not wanting to overestimate your encouragement, but unable to keep his hips from rolling forward slightly with the push of your hands and the bob of your lips.

After an unexpected snap of his hips that sent his cock sliding into the back of your throat, making you gag slightly, a pang of guilt struck through him for pushing too hard. That was, until you let your head pull back a touch to catch your breath, but a long string of spit connected your lips to his cock, and a wild smile broke across your face that nearly sent him to the moon.

You dove back in and pushed his cock all the way into the back of your throat, going so far that your nose pressed into the patch of dark curls that sat above his perfect dick. Focusing your breathing through your nose, you make a point to constrict your throat a few times until you feel him twitch inside you.

Pulling off with a gasp for air, you notice his eyebrows pinched together and gaze locked on you.

“I like how these feel,” you comment, letting your pointed tongue dance around the metal balls on his tip.

He shudders and you clench your thighs at the sight of his stomach muscles tensing up when your tongue makes contact with the underside of his head, right where it meets the shaft.

“If I let you fuck my mouth until you come, are you still going to be able to give it to me in a bit, or are you a one and done kind of guy?” You ask with a playfully teasing tone, but genuinely want to know if you suck him off to completion if the night will be over or not.

“Fuck,” he spits out, more blood rushing to his cock at the idea of coming down your throat, “I’d fuck you all night if you’d let me babe.”

Half a second doesn’t pass before his cock is back in your mouth, hips shakily moving forward with your movements, gaining confidence as you flicker your eyes up at him through your lashes, the glimmer in them telling him he can take what he wants.

“Fuckin’ look at you,” he comments to himself, “takin’ it all.”

“Mhmmm,” you hum around him letting your tongue roll around his tip each time before he pushes his cock back down your throat.

“You think you can get away with teasing me like that? That shit you pulled in the van back there, you think it’s cute to try and get me all riled up?”

You nod, tongue out and saliva coating your lips and chin. You could tell he was close by the way his words came out staggered, and his hips started snapping towards you in a new tempo, like his body was chasing it.

Grunts and moans pulled from his chest fill the space mixed with the hums of satisfaction you let out while you take him deeper and faster. Moving in for the kill, you carefully slip your hand up in between his legs, cupping his balls, trying your best not to startle him.

“Oh fuck,” it was a pitch of his voice you’d never heard before, a new tone especially reserved for the moments before orgasm, “you’re gonna make me fuckin come, y/n, y/n, I’m…”

The feeling of his balls constricting in your hands cues the warm wash of come sputtering down into your throat.

Getting the feeling he’d appreciate a bit of a show, you continue to jerk him off and pull off his cock slightly, letting the tip balance onto the tip of your tongue and the rest of his load spills out into your open mouth, some landing around the corners and onto your lips.

“Christ, y/n,” his chest is heaving, his eyes finally pulling from you to squeeze shut for a moment.

Once you’re sure he’s looking at you again you swallow down the salty white substance and lick the excess off your lips. You take his head back into your mouth, sucking just enough to clean off the tip and lap up any stray drops. He’s sensitive, you can tell, so you stop torturing him and place a final kiss right in between the two metal balls.

You thought of asking him if the piercing hurt, or maybe make a comment about the two matching tattoos on his hipbones, ink of his you’d never seen until now. Before your brain can jump from swallowing his come to making post-nut chit chat, he’s yanking you up off your feet and wrapping you in a searingly passionate kiss.

In your past experience most guys wanted you to drink some water or brush your teeth after they came in your mouth, at least before kissing you. Not Eddie. The way his tongue immediately slipped into your mouth, you almost believed he was trying to get a taste for himself.

“C’mon,” he whispers in between slotting his lips with your, “Bedroom. Now.”

He takes your hips in his hands and spins you around, causing a surprised yelp to bubble up from you, making him chuckle behind you as he walks you down the hall, keeping his hands on your sides.

You knew where you were going, there were only so many doors in his tiny trailer, and you’d been here plenty of times before, but you liked the feeling of his hands pushing you forward, guiding your movements and steering you down the hallway into his room.

Before your knees can hit the bed he spins you back around and captures your lips in another heated kiss. His hands trail up your sides, letting his fingertips slide beneath the hem of your shirt and push it upwards until your ribs were exposed. He pulls away from your face, leaving you leaning back into him, not wanting the kiss to end.

“Up,” he pinches the sides of your shirt in his hands, and signals with his chin that he wants you to lift your arms, which you comply.

It slides up and off of you, his hands quickly darting back to unclasp your bra, seemingly without even trying. This makes you roll your eyes, but the realization that you’re bare before him eclipses the thought of making a snippy remark about what a man whore he is.

Flat palms caress your sides and move up to cup your breasts, his tongue pressing into the side of your neck.

“These too,” his thumbs dip into your pants, managing to wiggle under the waistband of your panties as well. You’re going to do it yourself, but he gently pushes you back onto the bed, letting you flip back into the unmade blankets.

“I wanna see you,” he pops your pants button and waits for a nod before sliding your pants and underwear down your legs.

In between the blowjob and now, he’d tucked himself back into his pants, pulling his boxers and jeans back up, still unbuttoned, but covering him back up as his cock returned to a half hard state, unlikely to stay that way for very long considering how things were going.

The scene of you now sprawled out onto his bed, naked and needy for him, and him standing above you, basically fully clothed, had a flood of lust traveling south between your thighs.

“So fuckin’ gorgeous,” you burned under his intense gaze, raking down your body and soaking in the image of your skin laid out against his flannel plaid sheets.

He crawls over you, letting his body melt into yours, the center seam of his jeans pressing against your soaking core, just as it had when he had you pressed up against the door of the bar bathroom.

Rocking gently against you, you feel his cock already starting to harden again. His tongue moves against your neck, hands roaming freely against your skin, arching into his touch.

His breath was heavy against your lips, he was already starting to lose himself, and he knew he wanted to make you come with his tongue at least once before his dick came back out, but it was already pulsing between his legs, growing rock solid with every little whimper that came past your lips.

Your fingers intertwined themselves into the tresses of his long, messy hair. You use your new grip to pull his face as close into yours as your bodies will allow, smushing his nose up against your cheek and foreheads plastered together. The weight of his body on yours, and the lovely rocking motion of his hips against yours stopped as he pulled away and hooked his arms under your knees.

He slides off the side of the bed, feet returning to the carpeted ground and yanking your body to the edge of the mattress. You let out an unexpected giggle, body limp like a rag doll, moving wherever he wanted you.

He leans back over to give you another deep kiss, teeth dragging against your lower lip and tongue sliding gracefully against yours, before he slides his mouth down, stopping to lap up at your nipples for a moment, not letting any part of your skin go untouched as he takes his time moving down to where you want him most.

Wiggling around on his mattress, your body is begging him to get on with it, but he loves to make you squirm. He takes his time licking up your hip bones, kissing from the innermost part of your thigh all the way down to your knee, and then back up the other side. He even takes a long moment to suck a dark purple bruise into the meat of your thigh, biting down on the flesh and licking over the skin to soothe it, noticing how your back arched a little when he bit down harder.

“Please Eddie,” your voice is hardly above a whisper, whimpering and whiny.

“All you had to do was ask nicely,” he has that too-cocky tone again, but it’s long forgotten once his tongue is buried in between your thighs, lapping up the excess of wetness already pooled there.

“Ohhh,” you let out a moan, sucking in a sharp breath and allowing your body to relax under his focused touch.

His hands push up from your ass to the crooks of your knees, moving your legs back to either side of you, strong palms finding their resting place on the backs of your thighs, keeping your legs spread wide open for him while he buries his face deep in your cunt.

“You-“ the start of a compliment, or maybe a request, escapes your lips but the sudden harsh suck of your clit into his mouth has you speechless and moaning, “Mhmmmmm, uhhhhhhh.”

The sloppy wet sounds of him making out with your pussy are enough to drive you wild, your hands originally balling his sheets in your fists quickly move to the top of his head, resting atop his mop of messy curls.

“Y’can give it a tug,” the first half of his statement spoken directly into your pussy, “I don’t mind a little pain.” He shoots you a wink and keeps his eyes locked on you as he lets his tongue lap a fat long lick up your slit, and then leaning back down to encourage you to tangle your hands into his hair.

Coming to either side of his head you grab two points of purchase, locking your fingers in at the roots and feeling him hum into your cunt when you grabbed it a little tighter.

Your hips start to quiver, so he brings one hand from your thigh up to your lower stomach, pinning you against the bed, and still keeping you spread open with the other.

Working a steady rhythm against your slick center with his lips and tongue, he can tell he’s found the spot you like most by your open mouth and tight eyebrows.

“Ohmygod,” your chest starts moving with heavy breaths, you can’t bear to keep yourself up any longer and flop back down flat onto the mattress, eyes screwing shut in pleasure. He lets go of his anchor on your tummy and returns his hands to your thighs, allowing your hips to wiggle and wriggle against his face to chase after your own pleasure.

“Pleasepleaseplease,” one glimpse of his big brown eyes looking up at you and his nose pressing deliciously into the spot above your clit has your head reeling, “please don’t stop, fuck.”

Rather than reply, he just continues to devour you at that steady pace, your thighs almost snapping shut around his head .

“Uh huh, right there, oh fuck Eddie I’m gonna-“

A strangled moan rips from your throat and your back arches off the mattress, his hands quickly come to wrap around your thighs and keep your center held closely against his face. He’s pulling your hips flush with his face, despite your spasming torso and gushing core.

As your orgasm peaks, your hips angle themselves to push up deeper into his face, and he uses his leverage against the backs of your thighs to lift your ass, the entire lower half of your body now off the mattress and sliding backwards as he keeps his moving tongue glued to your clit.

He climbs up onto the mattress as you slide back, the grip he had on your legs was sure to leave a sore memory of him unwilling to let your coming pussy away from his face.

When he finally pulls away, your hand pushing at his forehead to prevent overstimulation, both of you gasping for air, his knees are propped under your thighs, and your hips are propped up right at perfect level with the bulge in his pants.

“Fuck me,” you say through catching your breath, not as an expletive but rather a demand, “Eddie, I need you to fuck me,” your voice was whiny and desperate.

“This okay?” he starts pulling his dick from its constraints in his unbuttoned jeans, not even shoving them halfway down his thighs before he had that pretty pierced dip dragging through your open and ready folds.

“Yes, inside, please,” you were chasing after his length, while he tossed his shirt off. He teasingly ran it up and down your slit before sinking into you, collapsing down to press your lips into a kiss to swallow your moans as he slid the whole thing in slowly, making sure to take his time and fuck you right.

He grabbed the back of your neck and pressed his forehead to yours, finally sheathed all the way inside you and stilling for a moment to relish in the feeling. Pulling back so he can watch your face as he pumps his first few thrusts, he knows he’s beyond fucked.

“So fucking good,” you slur out, eyes almost crossing from how deep his cock was hitting your insides.

“Yeah? This pussy’s god damn perfect, fucking made for me,” he articulates each thought with a snap of his hips, “suckin’ me right in.”

“Wait, can we,” your voice had a little more weight behind it unlike the airy moans he’d grown obsessed with in the past forty minutes.

He pulls back, and rather than finish your thought you slip him out of you and roll over, shuffling up the bed and positioning yourself face down ass up, knees spread and back arched.

“You think you can handle it?” he asks jokingly, swatting your ass playfully and then landing a second, harder smack on the flesh when he notices you pussy clench around nothing at the sensation of him spanking you.

“Want you to fuck me hard,” you mumble into his pillow, wiggling your hips a little bit to jiggle the fat of your ass, “I know your cock is gonna feel so fucking good in me this way, wanna feel that fucking piercing back in my throat from the other direction.”

“Jesus Christ, y/n,” he was genuinely a little shocked at your words, slowly learning that your freak side might match his.

You expected to feel his cock slam into you once his hands came to spread your ass apart, but instead the mattress dipped and he was licking another fat stripe from your clit all the way up past your second hole, running this back a few times until you were moaning into the pillow and thighs were tensed up from the attention he was giving you.

“Sorry babe, just needed another taste,” he pushed the head of his dick into you, and moved the first few inches agonizingly slow into your soaked hole.

“Eddie please, need it, need you,” he loved that his sheets were balled up in your fists, using the tension of the material to bounce yourself back onto him. You only manage to slide back down about three quarters before he’s tightly gripping your hip and pulling out half way again.

“Tsk tsk tsk, you need to learn to be patient, pretty girl,” he’d thrust it an inch of so, and then slowly pull back, making you whine and start to feel tears bubble up in the corners of your eyes.

“Want it so bad,” your cheek laid flat against his pillow, and you could catch a glimpse of him behind you out of the corner of your eye if you craned your neck a bit. You sounded so desperate, but you knew he liked it, liked hearing how badly you craved him.

He starts moving in and out of you, firm grip on your ass never wavering. Restrained grunts left his mouth as he fucked into you, causing your eyes to practically roll into the back of your head. He leans down to place a soft kiss on your shoulder blade, despite how viciously he's pounding into you. His head cranes down to your shoulder, his hand coming up to brush your hair out of your face.

As his long fingers move your hair away from your eyes, you push your head back into his hand, not wanting to lose contact. He tentatively runs his hands up into your hair, taking a soft grip on your roots.

“Is this what you want?” he whispers, “you like it rough?”

“Yes,” you manage to squeak out, “fuck, pull my hair, spank me, do whatever the fuck you want to me, please.”

His vision practically goes black with this new unrestricted passion, allowing himself to thrust into you as hard and as deep as his hips would propel him, twisting your hair in his grip and pulling you up from your laid position, quickly letting your hands jump to his headboard to support you as your head was pulled back.

You tried to bounce back onto his cock, wanting to feel him as deeply and wholly as your bodies would allow, but you could hardly keep up with the pace he had set.

Your ass bouncing against him and the occasional glance he caught at your fucked out expression spurred him on to fuck you even harder. He had your hair pulled back so tight that your back was pressing flush up with his chest every so often, and he took the opportunity to snake an arm around you and hold your chest up flat, his other hand moving down to rub frantic circles on your clit.

“You’re gonna make me come like this,” you manage to croak out, voice hoarse from the harsh bend in your neck.

“Nuh uhh, no,” his voice was gruff and commanding, right into your ear and sent a shiver down your spine.

He pulled out of you fully, and had you flipped around flat on your back again before you could even open your mouth to complain.

“Need to see that pretty face when you come on my cock,” he lines himself up with you again, pushing into you and making a mental note of how the bulge of his cock looked pressing up from the inner part of your lower stomach.

And of course, your face screwed up in pleasure, puffy lips and sweaty brow, slack jawed and panting his name would be something Eddie wouldn’t be able to forget even if he tried.

His thumb found its way to your clit to pick up where he had last left you, steadily building to an earth shattering orgasm. Talking you through it, knowing you were close by the vice grip your walls had on his dick, in between grunts he spilled out some “good girl”’s and “right fuckin there, that’s it.”

When he felt your thighs tense up, and the muscles in your neck strain against the soft skin he’d previously had his lips all over, he knew you were nearing the finish line.

“So fucking perfect, feel so good wrapped around me,” he managed to sweet talk you without altering the pace of his hips, “That’s it, come on my cock, give it to me.”

With that, your body can’t help but throw itself over the edge of pleasure. A deep grunt rattles in your chest, and you lose all sensation other than the wild pulsing in between your legs. You can’t be bothered to worry about what your face looks like, or if your thighs are squeezing him too hard, you only feel the riptide of an orgasm shattering through you.

The animalistic noise that Eddie grunts out, his wild gaze locked on your face only makes your body shake with pleasure even harder. He had that instinct that most men lacked, to keep the exact pace and motion when your orgasm hit rather than speed up or slow down, it was a gift, a talent.

Of course he wasn’t going to change a thing about what he was doing, look at you. You were so fucking perfect, shaking and coming all over him, those sweet noises and the beautiful squelching between your thighs. He’d rather die than change a single thing about this moment.

He stilled only when you paused to catch your breath, and within seconds was flipped over by the power of your thighs onto his back.

Unexpectedly, you began to ride him, trying to match the pace he had earlier set. The aftershocks of your orgasm still washed through you, but you seized the moment to get him right where you wanted him. This angle was different, deeper and more connected. You roll your hips and bring your hands up to his hair, foreheads pressing together once again.

“You’re making me feel so fucking good,” you manage to breathe out into his lips, he quickly comes to the realization of what’s happened and shifts the angle of his hips to hit you even deeper.

“I’d give you everything, if you’d let me,” he doesn’t let a single thought pass in his mind before the words slip out, “always.”

Your lips capture his in a kiss that has far more emotion behind it than two friends play-dating and fucking for fun. His hands come up to grasp your cheeks, your hips continue to roll down into his with purpose.

“I’m- Where-“ his words are hardly intelligible in between breathless kisses, but you know what he means.

“Inside, please, need all of you inside me,” you try to keep your voice steady so he hears you loud and clear, wanting to give him the exact attention he had paid to you, “Please Eddie, come inside me.”

His hands travel down and guide your hips to fuck down onto him one, two, three times before he’s groaning in your ear and letting out the prettiest and most vulnerable sounds you’ve ever heard form him.

The swell of his cock inside you makes you drape your head into his neck, focusing on riding out his orgasm and making sure he was twitching in the aftershocks of his orgasm before you let up.

When you felt his grip on your hips tighten, signaling that he’d had too much, you sink all the way down one final time and let your body lay limp on his, pulsing cock still filling you up.

His chest rose and fell harshly with his recovering breaths. You could feel his heartbeat pulsing up through the spot on his neck where your ear laid on his sweaty skin.

Silently awaiting the inevitable tap on the shoulder, the slow pull out and post-sex cleanup process, you try to savor every passing moment. But it doesn’t come. Eddie wraps his arms around your midsection and holds your limp body close to his, letting his cock start to soften inside you.

You nearly fall asleep like that, all wrapped up in him, until you recognize that you should pee and clean up to avoid a UTI. You slip off of him, and hear a disappointed groan from him. He makes cute grabby hands at you as you cross the room, making you roll your eyes, but something deep inside you flip flops with how sweet he’s being, so caring, so unlike the picture of himself that he had painted for you.

You give him a wet hand towel to clean up the remnants of your activities, and slip back into bed with him per his insistence. You doze off for a while, until the rising sun peeking through his blinds catches your eye, striking you with the sudden decision to stay and face the music or leave and let it settle.

You’d already regretted it, but weren’t ready to have the “hey, so I know we had fake boyfriend-girlfriend sex, but I actually really like you so what should we do about that?” conversion with him, so instead you take the cowardly path and tiptoe out of his room in the early morning hours, leaving behind your underwear on his nightside table with a scribbled note saying to call you. Hopefully that was enough of a signal.

Apparently not,

Days pass, and no call.

It was all starting to get to your head. While you had gone through the stages of being nervous that you had done something wrong, that he was avoiding you to spare you the rejection, thinking he regretted what had happened and didn’t want to face you, who was so obviously into him it was painful, you’d just now turned a new leaf. Fuck that. If he was too much of a coward to call you, you'd hope he'd at least give you the decency as a friend to tell you the truth, you deserved to be angry, and you deserved a response.

After stewing in your feelings for longer than felt healthy, you just get in your car and start driving to his trailer. If this all blew up in your face at least you wouldn’t have to keep biting your nails and waiting for the phone to ring.

Three deep breaths, and a quick moment to gather your thoughts, and suddenly your body acted on instinct, putting the car in park and walking up to pound three concise knocks on his trailer door.

“Just a second,” he hollered from inside, giving you a few seconds to be stricken with regret for showing up unannounced without a plan on what exactly to say.

“What do you- oh, y/n,” he was in a pair of plaid pajama pants that hung low on his hips, shirtless and hair still damp from a recent shower, “uh, hey?”

“Oh, hey,” your tone was laced with annoyance, “I left something here last week and I’m here to get it back. If you don’t mind.”

“What- oh,” he’s a second too slow to realize you mean the underwear you had purposefully left behind with that note. The note telling him to call you. Which he never did.

You were left standing on his porch steps, arms crossed and shooting daggers out of your eyes while he stood there in the doorway, an apparent guilty expression plastered on his face while he rocked back on his heels to buy some time to figure out what to say.

“You don’t have to invite me inside, if you can just grab them and give them to me, and I’ll be out of your hair,” you say flatly, recognizing if he does as asked then this might be the last time you speak to Eddie Munson.

“No, no, uh, you should come in,” he steps aside to let you in, “we probably shouldn’t have this conversation on my front steps.”

Avoiding eye contact, feeling an overwhelming mix of anger, confusion, and betrayal, you step inside and don’t make any effort to move into the space. You just stand by the door and give him an expectant look. Either he could go get the underwear, or he could grow a pair and say something to you.

“I, uh-“ he looked so defeated you started to feel bad for using such a pointed tone, but then you remembered the days and days that passed without hearing from him, “I’m sorry, that I, y’know…”

“Yeah, well I don’t really care if you’re not looking for any post sex recap conversations, because you’re obviously pretty sure of yourself in that department,” the words flew out before your mind could even conjure them up, “but you fucking promised me that you wouldn’t do this, so can I please just have my underwear back and I won’t bother you again.”

He runs a hand through his hair letting out a deep exhale and searching the ceiling for words, “I know, I-“

You cut him off, your thoughts were ripping through you now and you were going to say your piece whether he asked for it or not, “You said you wouldn’t pull this shit with me, but I guess our friendship isn’t substantial enough for you to see me any differently than you do every other girl you throw away after you’ve gotten what you want. You clearly don’t want any more advice and you clearly don’t want to be my friend, so please, just give me my shit so I can go.”

“That’s the fucking thing y/n, of course I don’t want to be your friend,” his gaze still fixed on the ceiling.

At this point you were seconds away from just storming out, letting him keep your underwear as some twisted little trophy for breaking your heart.

“Yeah, crystal clear Eddie.”

“Being your friend is already hard enough, and I knew this shit was a bad idea, the whole trial-girlfriend thing. But how the fuck was I supposed to say no to that? The girl of my dreams offers to do all this no-strings-attached romantic shit, I’d be the dumbest man alive to turn that down.”

You just give him a blank stare, your scalding anger twisting into a more confused frenzy of bees swarming in the pit of your stomach. Eyebrows pinched together, you just stare at him until he finally makes eye contact with you.

“And yeah,” he goes on, letting all his words out like a big exhale in the same cadence that you had just hurled all your angry words at his, but his tone was filled with guilt as opposed to rage, “maybe we let it go a little too far, but I would never say no to you, I couldn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t know what the fuck to say to you after, but that’s exactly the reason I’m not good enough for you. The more we kept that fake dating shit up the worse it was gonna get, so I’m sorry, but I can’t keep spending time with you like that, because it’s starting to fucking hurt.”

“Hurt,” you say with a dry laugh, which almost scares him, “YOU’RE hurt? Give me a fucking break Eddie. I know you don’t see me that way. So what, you’re too scared to hurt my feelings? You’re doing a wonderful job, keep it up.”

“What the fuck do you mean, not see you like what?”

“Don’t pretend to be dumb Eddie. When we first met I tried so hard to get your attention, asking you to hang out, and you always blew me off. It’s fine that you don’t want to date me or whatever, but at least just tell me that, don’t fuck me like I’m special or something and then toss me aside. I deserve better than that.”

“Yeah, y/n, you do,” his voice was no longer guilt stricken, and was on the same straightforward plane as your last responses, “you deserve so much fucking better than me, that’s why I could never let anything between us happen. I don’t call girls back. I’m rude. I don’t take care of myself, let alone others. I like to smoke, and drink, and get head from girls in bar bathrooms and never learn their names, and that’s not the kind of person that a girl like you dates. I’m a fun quick fuck. You’re the kind of girl that after three dates he’ll already have a ring picked out. You’re everything, and I’m nothing, so forgive me for sparing you of that.”

Your bones are frozen and the beat of silence gives him the opportunity to spin on his heel and start down the hallway, presumably to get your panties.

Snapping back into it, you let out a louder than expected, “Hey,” and you start following him, not taking long to catch up to him in his bedroom.

“You,” you point a finger at him, and start to feel the rage bubble up again, “don’t get to decide that you’re unloveable. And you don’t get to tell me what kind of girl I am. Have you ever considered that maybe the reason you’re so lonely and miserable is because you choose to be? You don’t get to decide what I deserve, I do. And I really fucking like you Eddie, so forgive me for acting like it.”

You snatch your underwear off his bedside table, and give him a look, not fueled by anger or resentment, but empathy.

“I’m going to leave. And if you don’t want to see me again, that’s fine, but if you do, you can call me. Goodbye Eddie.”

You feel out of your own body, floating above it all and rewinding the conversation over and over, body on autopilot taking you home while your soul stayed behind and relived his words over and over, unsure if you feel better or worse than when you showed up.

Days pass by again, and you take his silence as more of a response than anything he had said to you during that conversation. You try not to wallow, but you feel scattered and distraught, at both the prospect of losing Eddie and having to deal with your shared friends, would they allow you to dance around each other, or would they flat out choose him and shut you out? Would group nights out bowling suddenly just turn into the occasional one-on-one coffee with Robin?

Until suddenly, on a random Tuesday afternoon when you've gotten home from work and are relaxing on the couch in your pajamas, three knocks are at your door.

At this point you figured it was over. He hadn't called and he'd made no effort to continue the dialogue. So a thought of Eddie doesn't even cross your mind in between the couch and opening the door.

And there he is.

In a suit, slightly descheveld in Eddie fashion, and holding a slightly wilting bouquet of flowers. Posture straight and brave face, but expecting your brutal edge upon answering the door nonetheless.

"Hey?" you're somewhat at a loss for words answering.

"Hi," he seems like he's running lines of a play in his mind, "I was hoping we could talk."

You reluctantly let him in, and he hands the flowers to you, as if it was a normal occurrence for him to bring you such a gift.

"First off," he starts, hardly breaching your living room entrance before starting his apology, "I regret the way we last left things, and I'm sorry for leaving you waiting for a response."

He flicks those big brown eyes at you and you can't help but give him the benefit of the doubt, he always was so sincere with his words.

"You're amazing. And although I'll remain adamant that I don't deserve someone like you in my life, I've been thinking a lot about what you said, and I'm sorry that tried to tell you how to feel."

You remain stoic at your seat on the couch, watching him shift his weight and bare his soul to you.

"You're perfect. Nice, funny, sexy, brave, all of it. And if you're willing to give me a chance, I don't know why the fuck you would, but if you are, I want to put aside all my bullshit and try this out, if you'll have me."

He stood there for a moment, letting you take in his request, bouquet in hand and suit adorned.

"And I owe you a few dates, for real."

As hard as you want your exterior to be, a smile cracks through.

"Okay, but know I don't fuck until the third date, at best," you jab, breaking his nervous exterior and visibly relieving the tension from his shoulders.

"I'm somewhat of a refined gentleman myself, so that won't be an issue," he bows and extends a hand to you.

You pull him down by the hand onto the couch with you, wrapping him up in a deep kiss. He was worth it, and you both knew it was worth the shot to try.

#eddie munson smut #smut #eddie x y/n #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson imagine #Eddie Munson smut #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things smut #eddie munson fem!reader

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rrickgrrimes8 · 1 year

Text

Your Bear

summary: Joel Miller doesn’t just lose Sarah that night but his other daughter too. but maybe you can still be found. (part II)

Joel Miller x daughter!reader -- she/her pronouns used & AFAB

warnings: guns, violence, angst, mentions of death, birth, hurt/comfort, happy ending ;) (kinda), no spoilers for part 2/canon divergent

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requests are open!

word count: 3.2k

Joel Miller was always a good father - no matter what he thought. He cared for his girls more than he cared about anything in his damn life. So when they were both taken from him... there was nothing left to care about.

It was Sarah first.

He held Sarah as she died. His shirt was still stained with her blood. The watch on his wrist shattered by his failure.

But his other daughter, you, looking back he can only imagine the worst.

It all happened so fast. He had Sarah in his arms she gasped for air that was growing distant by the second, while Tommy watched with a pained look.

You, however, no one was watching you. Only 5 years old - you didn’t understand a thing. And so when you heard a loud noise. When you saw your sister go down and hearing the cries of both your father and her you panicked.

You thought you were getting help. That’s what’s your dad always told you to do if something bad happened. “Find the nearest phone or adult. Call me or Tommy or this number, okay? 911. Remember that number babygirl.”

And you did.

You ran as quick as you could, which wasn’t all that impressive but it was fast enough for them not to notice you had gone.

By the time you had found your way back into town, Tommy had noticed. “J-Joel,” His voice wavered, fear taking hold. Tommy searched the clearing, calling your name.

Joel looked away from his limp daughter then. His heart was thumping in his chest. His ribs ached as did the wound on his side but nothing compared to the terror that tore through his whole body.

“W-where is she?” His eyes darted over the area but you were no where to be found.

“No, Tommy,” He sobbed already fearing the worst, “T-tommy not her, please.”

Tommy shuddered. This couldn’t be real. This wasn’t real. You were just here. Sarah was just here.

“Joel,” He began until he heard shrill, painfully familiar scream from off in the distance.

“No,” Joel cried looking down at Sarah, hesitating just for a moment before setting her down, “I’m sorry baby.”

Tommy was already running at that point, hoping not to be late, not like he was for Sarah. Joel screamed your name as he sprinted - he couldn’t lose anyone else. He couldn’t lose you, his babygirl.

When he got there he saw Tommy knelt beside a bloodied teddy bear.

Your bear.

He collapsed. Knees giving way. He pulled the bear of the ground, its white fur tormented by the red hue.

Tommy shouted your name a few times. Joel didn’t have the energy to bother. His answer was here.

You were only five. You’d never have survived on your own.

And he would never survive without you, without his girls. He hugged the bear as if it was your body and he never let go.

“Why’d you have a bear in your bag?” Ellie teased as she caught sight of an fluffy ear sticking out.

Joel clenched his jaw, stuffing the teddy back inside. “What?” She laughed innocently, “Is it for your bad dreams? Chase the monsters away?”

The man grunted, discarding the bag on one of the chairs - away from Ellie’s view, “None of your business.”

Ellie frowned as she caught his eye. The brown was darker than usual, which was really saying something. They were empty, hollow but at the same time watery. Like he was one step away from crying. She shook the thought off - this was Joel she was talking about. Joel never cried, not in front of her - not really... She didn’t even think he could cry. But his eyes told her something else. They told an unspoken story. One she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But one, at the same time, she needed to hear.

“Sorry,” She mumbled, moving into the living room of the house Tommy and Maria had given them.

Joel sighed as she did, guilt running through his veins. “Sorry,” He called out, gruffly, stopping her in her escape. Ellie turned back waiting for him to continue. “it was...” He cleared his throat roughly, “The bear was my daughters.”

“Oh,” She whispered, looking up at the man with sympathy, “If i had known it was Sarah’s... i wouldn’t have said anything.”

Joel sucked in a breath, turning towards the cupboards behind him, grabbing a cup. “Wasn’t hers,” He corrected trying not to let his voice catch on the lump forming in his throat.

“What?” Ellie dared a step closer, “But Sarah was... is your daughter.” Joel bit his tongue, forcing himself to face her again. “Joel?”

He let out a watery sigh, eyes set on the ground, “I had... i had another daughter.” He spoke your name softly but with fear. He hadn’t said it in years - he couldn’t. He hadn’t spoken about you in nearly 20 years either. He hated to talk about you. It was hard enough letting Ellie in, letting her know about his past, about Sarah. But it was too hard to say your name. You were only a baby. His baby.

“I didn’t know. You never mentioned her,” Ellie almost felt guilty asking - like this was something she should’ve known. That she should’ve known wasn’t something you just bring up.

“Yeah,” He scrunched his face a little, the feeling of your loss rushing back.

He thought and he believed for a time that if he didn’t talk about you, about the way he failed you then all that hurt would go away. He was wrong. He saw you every night in his dreams. He saw the woman you grew up to become. He saw your smile and heard your laugh. But then he’d wake up alone. He was always alone.

The worst was when the dream felt real. You were a baby again, Sarah was young too. It was just the three of you. You’d be doing something mundane - watching TV, eating dinner, whatever. He’d have conversations with the pair of you, forgetting that none of it was real. He’d hold you to his chest, sing to you, make you laugh. He’d dance with Sarah to their beat up radio in the kitchen. He would watch you take your first steps, say your first words, form your first smile.

But he’d always wake up. He hated waking up.

“How old was she?” She dared to ask.

Shakily he replied, “Five.”

She fell silent after that. Five. Five years old. Joel lost a five year old - no wonder he didn’t want to talk about it, idiot.

Ellie thought for a moment, a question daring to fall from her lips. “But she’s wasn’t on the memorial at Tommy’s.”

Joel’s head snapped up, anger residing in his chest. Who he was mad at he didn’t know. Himself? Tommy? Ellie? You? “Tommy... he,” He huffed, “He doesn’t believe she’s gone. Holds out hope on that fucking plaque - fuckin’ delusional.”

Ellie leant against the countertop, eyes not leaving the man for just a second, “Why would he think that?”

“No body,” His voice was cold all of a sudden as if it meant nothing at all. As if he wasn’t talking about the body of his five year-old.

“But then she could be-“

“Don’t,” He snapped, “Don’t say another word.”

Ellie rolled her eyes but complied. Joel turned back to his cup, filling it with coffee he had just traded for. He didn’t speak until he was finished and even then he wished he hadn’t.

“We heard her scream... And we found-“ He grimaced, gesturing to his bag, “And we found that damn bear.”

“But,” She tried again.

“Ellie-“

“No, seriously, if all you found was a bear she could still be-“

Without another word, Joel stormed past her, ripping the bag open, slamming the bear onto her chest.

Ellie saw it now.

She understood the haunting look in his eyes. She understood the story it told. It was matted, showed its age. What once was white was red now.

All of it.

Not just a patch here and there.

Everywhere.

It reminded her of Joel.

“That look like she could be alive to you?” He shouted.

“Fuck,” She felt sick just looking at it let alone touching it.

“You kept it?” A voice called from behind her.

Joel met his brothers eyes. “‘Course i did,” He spoke defensively.

“Joel,” He simpered. They stared at each other for a while. Almost like they were having a silent conversation.

Until Joel spoke, “It’s all i have of her left.”

And there was nothing else to say.

Years had gone by since they had gotten to Jackson. And things were surprisingly good. Eerily good. It was the type of good that Joel knew deep down wouldn’t last. It was the type of good that only existed before this mess.

Every morning he would wake up here he had a weight on his chest. A feeling that something was going to happen. This was the calm before the storm, he’d remind himself.

He didn’t tell anyone about it. He couldn’t. He’d just sound paranoid.

Him and Ellie were on a run. It was simple - it always was. The people in charge at the commune never liked to overstep - go to far. Never liked to do what Joel craved.

All they had to do was scope out a few cabins that were spotted deep in the woods. Ellie had jumped at the proposition as soon as Tommy had suggested it. She hated being cooped up for so long - Jackson could only give you so much freedom.

And just because Ellie agreed he knew he had to as well. There was no way in hell he’d let her go out risking her life when there was no way he’d be able to save it.

Getting there was the easy part. The horses at Jackson were a godsend. When they got there the place was still. Ellie gave Shimmer a soft pat before joining Joel who was stalking up to the door. He knocked first - not out of curtesy, just to attract any infected that it may hold. Because that’s what they expected. But Joel should’ve known better.

Joel should’ve thought about their biggest threat - people.

They had only cleared two rooms when Joel felt the cold sting of mental on his temple.

Ellie gasped but kept her gun up, eyes trained on the figure that held Joel’s life in their hands. “Put it down,” The voice ordered.

“Like hell I will,” Ellie retorted, finger edging closer to the trigger.

“I said put it down or the old man gets it,” She forced the barrel against his head - so hard he was sure it would bruise.

“Jesus, fuck, okay,” Ellie mumbled, slowly setting her gun on the floor infront of her, “Just let him go?”

The woman laughed, “So you can kill me, yeah, no thanks.”

“We can work this out,” Joel tried, hands raising to show he was unarmed but it only aggravated her more. Her arm wrapped around his neck, making him stumble back into a chokehold.

“Hey!” She yelled at Ellie as she reached for a gun. The teen stopped, taking a few steps back.

“Just put it down. We can work this out,” Joel proposed, gasping as she applied pressure to his neck, “We don’t want to hurt you.”

“Bullshit,” She spat, breathing heavily, “What the fuck else are you here for then, huh?”

“Supplies,” Ellie told her, “We’re from a commune-“

“Ellie-“

“We can take you back there - help you. If you just put the gun down.”

“Bullshit,” The woman removed the gun from Joel’s head aiming it now at Ellie, “You’ll kill me the first chance you get.”

Ellie shook her head, going to respond before Joel gripped the woman’s arm flipping her over. She gasped as she forcefully hit the ground, splinters from the wooden floor embedded into her spine.

Her breathing picked up, hand scrambling to get to the gun he had knocked out of her hand but a foot stopped her.

Joel’s boot pressed harshly against her wrist, “Don’t.”

“Christ Joel,” Ellie huffed, “You scared the fuck out of me.” Joel watched her as she reached down to get her discarded gun. Ellie laughed as she caught her breath, “Where the hell did that come from? You’re like 80.”

“Ellie,” He scolded with a strict look.

“Right, sorry,” She chuckled.

“So this is when you kill me then,” The woman heaved, chest rising and falling rapidly.

Joel turned to her then, catching her eyes for the first time. He faltered, boot leaving her wrist as he took a step back.

She was a spitting image of... you.

No.

“Shouldn’t’ve tried to kill us, i guess,” Ellie retorted humourlessly.

“You came into my house,” She shot back.

“This is your house,” Ellie muttered, “Needs some work. Right, contractor?” She shot a look over her shoulder at Joel. The man was pale, breathless. His eyes were trained on his attacker with a foreign look she couldn’t decipher.

“Joel?”

“Name,” He ordered, gun pointed down at her but both of them could see it shake.

“What?” She coughed, struggling to understand the strangers.

“Your name, what is it?” He yelled.

“Jesus,” She almost let herself laugh - she would’ve if she wasn’t so shit scared.

Joel gave her a stern look so she said it. She spoke your name.

Ellie’s lips parted, confusion leaving her face, “Holy shit.”

Joel’s expression crumbled as did the grip on his gun, which now hung loosely at his side. “Last name?” He asked, voice a mere whisper.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Answer.”

“It’s Miller, Christ,” She answered, “What the hell is the matter with you people?”

Joel’s knees felt weak, his breath caught in his throat. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. You died. You were gone.

“Joel is she-“

“Stand up,” He told you.

Hesitantly you did as he said, struggling slightly as your injuries caught up to you. Seeing this Joel stepped forward, hand outstretched. With an odd look in your eye you took it - ignoring how the mans eyes lingered on it for a second too long.

“Are you alone?” Fearfully you shook your head. “Where?” He ordered.

You shook your head again, “Please don’t- You can’t. I was just trying to protect her.”

“Who?” Ellie spoke up, despite it not feeling like her place to be in this conversation.

“M-my,” You started but a cry interrupted, echoing through the cabin.

You didn’t think for a second before you ran out of the room. Joel cursed as you did, going to rush out after you before Ellie spoke up, “What are we doing here, Joel?”

“I-“ He paused, shaking his head and leaving the room.

“Is it her?” She questioned, following closely behind him, “Is it really her?”

He gave her stern look as he entered the room you escaped into. His eyes blurred as he saw you with a baby to your chest.

“Please don’t,” You held up your free hand, stopping them, “You can’t- not her.”

“Holy fuck,” Ellie gaped, “You have a fucking kid!”

“Ellie!” The baby fussed in your arms, cries escaping despite your comfort.

“Please leave,” You beg, “Just let us go. I know i messed up. I didn’t want to hurt you guys but i- i couldn’t let you find her.”

“It’s okay,” Joel spoke softly, a type of softness you wouldn’t expect a man like him to be capable of. He holstered his gun, carefully and moved his hands where you could see them.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” He told you, “Ellie, put your gun away.” Ellie did as he said.

“So leave,” You pulled your child closer to your chest.

“We can’t do that,” Joel said.

“Why?”

“Because he’s-“

“Ellie, don’t,” He cut her off, turning back to you, “We weren’t lying before. We have a commune - it’s safe. You’ll be safe there. You both will be.”

You furrowed your eyebrows, repeating the same question, “Why?”

“B-because you’ve got a kid,” He lied, “We can’t leave you here to die.”

“I don’t trust you,” You frowned. Joel mirrored your action, looking around the room at the makeshift cot you had constructed. He felt his heart ache when he spotted a blood stain on the carpet in the corner - you had given birth here, alone. You went through that alone.

“Please,” Ellie spoke up, “You won’t survive out here. You need somewhere safe. And maybe you don’t trust us, that’s okay but we’re honest. We want to help you.”

Hesitantly, you nodded after a few minutes, anxiety building in your chest.

Joel’s eyes were still stuck to the bloodied patch and he was reminded again of how he failed you. How he failed Sarah. He thought about that damn bear. The bear that he thought was the last part of you he had. And despite the pain in his chest and the ringing in his ears he was so glad he was wrong.

“What’s her name?” Ellie asked as she took a tentative step forward.

You didn’t flinch, you wanted to but a part of you, a naive, childish part, wanted to believe them. “Sarah,” You returned, pinching your girls cheeks causing her to smile.

Joel’s eyes filled with tears, tears he had been trying to suppress for the past 20 minutes. For the past 20 years.

Sarah. His Sarah. Your Sarah.

Ellie’s eyes snapped to Joel. He almost felt embarrassed, showing this side of him. Showing his weakness.

“She’s beautiful,” He whispered.

You smiled as he spoke, kissing the side of Sarah’s head. “She is,” You kissed her again before whispering - more to her than them, “My babygirl.”

#joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #joel miller angst #joel miller imagine #joel miller x daughter!reader #joel miller x platonic!reader #tommy miller x platonic!reader #the last of us #the last of us imagine

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fatesundress · 1 year

Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I wonder why.”

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

“What, Tom?”

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

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

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

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

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Curiosity—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

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

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

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

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

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

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

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

“A professor?”

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

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

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

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

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

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

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

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

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

“So?”

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

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

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

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

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

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

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

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I —”

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

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

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

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

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

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

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

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

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

“Tom.”

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

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

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

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

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

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

The day everything changes starts the same as any.

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

Tom has cracked the book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have no need.”

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

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

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

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

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

“Why would he lie?”

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

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

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

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

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

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

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

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

“Should I?”

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

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

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

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

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

Summer blisters when it comes.

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

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

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You always are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are regardless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are not his keeper. You know that.

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

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

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

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

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

You’re almost positive you did not.

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

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

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

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

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

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

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

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

It happens again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You take to the library.

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

The third sign is the end.

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

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

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

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

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

He’s something else entirely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve been good at it.”

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

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

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

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

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

He sees all of you.

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

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

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

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

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

“I cannot.”

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

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

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

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

“Do you want me to lie?”

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

“Her death is the first step to —”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“...What?"

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

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

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought I would have time.”

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

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

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

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

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

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

“You have lost me, Tom."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

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

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

Be well.

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

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

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

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

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

You find that to be true.

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

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

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

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

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

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

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

Due February.

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

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

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

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You drink, and don’t look away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I take that back.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indifferent it is.

“Can I help you?”

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

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

“Am I?”

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

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

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is Mari?

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

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

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

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

“Well then —”

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

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

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

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

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

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

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

“I haven’t protested.”

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

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

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

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

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

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

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

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

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

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

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

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

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

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

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

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

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

My door is always open.

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

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

It’s a tempting door.

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

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

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

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

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant.

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

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

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

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Renauld?”

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

“Well, yeah —”

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

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

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

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

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

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

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

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

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

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

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

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

And… he does.

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

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

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ Unspeakable.”

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

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah? Why don’t you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

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

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

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

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

But something about it itches.

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

You are green, through and through.

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

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

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

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

That makes it much worse when you sleep together.

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

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

“Yes.”

“Right.”

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

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

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

You’re incredibly daft about it.

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

The itch exacerbates.

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

You wake up and he isn’t there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

R.R

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

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

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

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

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

But you do, because he told you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes."

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

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

“I earned this,” you hiss.

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

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

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

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

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

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

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

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

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

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

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

“Yes,” you agree.

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

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

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

He was your first in everything but this.

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

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

“How long?” he asks thickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“N-no.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A finger presses inside and you moan.

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

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

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

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

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

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you give me more?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe you already do.

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

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

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

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

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you.

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

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

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sundrop-writes · 4 months

Text

The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes

Spencer Reid x BAU!Fem!Reader

Summary:

While undercover inside the Separatarian Sect, you and Spencer realize something important: you can’t live without each other.

Spencer Reid x BAU!Fem!Reader. Co-Workers to Lovers. Fake Dating. Hurt and Comfort. Set during Season 4, Episode 3.

Word Count: 8,200

Criminal Minds Masterlist | AO3 Link

THIS IS A RE-POST. This is a fic from my old blog (a blog that was shadowbanned, forcing me to move). This fic is not stolen, it is completely mine, and I am just re-posting it to help people find my new blog, and to make my masterlist complete when I post new fics for this fandom.

Detailed warnings and author’s notes below the cut.

Warnings: Lots of spoilers for the canon episode - so if you haven’t watched Season 4 of Criminal Minds yet, steer clear of this fic for now (especially because watching the episode provides some context for this fic/makes things make more sense); the reader uses she/her pronouns and has the ability to get pregnant (she is not pregnant during the fic and there’s no smut, but due to discussions in the fic, it’s not unreasonable that she could get pregnant); fake dating in the form of a fake marriage - the reader and Spencer pretend to be married under the Christian religion to ‘appeal’ to Cyrus; because of the fake marriage, Spencer uses the term 'my wife’ to refer to the reader; lots of mentions of religion (Christianity), religious extremism, mentions of pedophilia/child brides (in line with the canon episode); mentions of systemic sexism and gender roles enforced by cultures of organised religion and religious extremism; use of y/n and l/n (in this case meaning 'your last name’); the reader pretends to follow the Christian religion while undercover but I never stated if she believes in a less extreme version of these things or not (the reader’s true religious beliefs are never stated); protective!Spencer, possessive!Spencer; mentions of Spencer being taller than the reader (which, again, I think he would be taller than most people) - the reader’s body/body type is not described in any other way; mentions of guns and gun violence (not described in deep detail) - in line with the canon episode; the reader and Spencer fear for their lives; dangerous/live-threatening situations; the reader and Spencer are threatened with a gun; Cyrus is just generally creepy and sexist toward the reader; Spencer is pistol-whipped and the reader is threatened with sexual assault (it does not happen, Spencer protects her); mentions of pregnancy/the reader being pregnant (she is not pregnant during the course of the fic); mentions of the reader being a mother/having kids (Spencer makes up fake kids to sell their fake marriage story); the reader realizes she might actually want to be a mother because of Spencer’s fake kids story; mentions of an explosion (as in the canon); love confessions; angst with a happy ending. Hopefully that is everything.

A/N: The title for this fic comes from a Fall Out Boy song of the same name. The theme/lyrics of the song don’t really fit the fic, but I love the way that this title fits - how everyone in this fic is lying in some way but Spencer is someone with good intentions while lying. Making him the Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes. I love how it fits. I wrote this while suffering with heat exhaustion so idk if it’s good or even makes sense. I rewatched the canon episode and it doesn’t 100% align with what happened in the episode in terms of the timeline and stuff, and I am too tired to rewrite the whole fic to make it align with the episode. So uh - alternative canon? But I really love the basic concepts and I do really love how it turned out. I hope you guys like it too!

...

You thought it would be an easy day.

Maybe that was foolish on your part. So far, you hadn’t seen a single ‘easy’ day while working with the BAU. Between chasing down scumbags and then reliving every single gory detail while doing the paperwork - none of it was ‘easy’. It was worthy, accomplished work - making the world a safer place to live in. (At least that’s what you told yourself.) But it was never easy.

There was always someone who made the job easier. Someone who made you smile every single day - especially on days when you didn’t think you were even capable of feeling a tiny shred of joy. Someone who made you feel safe, who you always felt had your back no matter what. So you were glad that he was by your side today, along for the ride.

“Tell us about Cyrus.” Reid prompted.

He looked to the woman driving, your new companion for the day - Nancy Lunde, someone who worked with the state department and had set up the interviews with the children at the Separatarian Sect.

“Benjamin Cyrus. No criminal record. In fact, there’s no record of the guy at all.” Nancy explained.

“That’s odd.” You commented. “Usually someone being accused of something like this would have some past offenses. Especially because it would give him a reason to move into isolation to continue the criminal pattern of behavior.”

“Well, I couldn’t find anything on him.” Nancy shrugged.

“What about the 9-1-1 call?” You asked.

“A fifteen year old girl called in saying that a man was ‘laying with her’ and claimed it as ‘God’s will’. I believe the ‘he’ referred to is Cyrus.” Nancy explained. “The age fits with Jessica Evanson, but I’ve managed to negotiate interviews with all the children, just to be sure. It wasn’t easy.”

“They’re incredibly weary of outsiders.” You commented. “Our boss warned you not to identify us as FBI, right?”

Nancy nodded. “I got you some spare credentials, just in case.”

She took one of her hands off the wheel and reached into her pocket.

“You’re going to be using your real names. You’re going in as Child Victim Interview Experts working with Child Protective Services. No association with the FBI.” Nancy explained, handing Reid your fake credentials.

He nodded, inspecting the IDs before handing you yours where you were sitting in the backseat.

“Oh, before I forget.” You noted, reaching into the pocket of your cardigan. “The rings.”

You pulled out a small plastic bag that Hotch had given to you before you left. It was a bag containing a fake diamond ring in your size and a fake golden ‘wedding’ band for Spencer.

Reid reached over the seat to grab his ring from you, and Nancy gave the two of you an odd look.

“Rings?” She questioned.

“Fake wedding bands.” You explained.

“It was our Unit Chief’s idea.” Reid added on. “He believes that presenting us as a ‘godly’ married couple to Cyrus will make him more likely to open up to us. He’s less likely to see us as hostile outsiders if he believes that we share a similar system of beliefs.”

“It could also have a calming effect on the teenagers we have to interview or the kids there who have had more time to go through indoctrination at the Sect.” You continued to explain. “Even if their parents are hesitant to let the kids speak with us, they may be more willing to have their child speak with us or even leave them alone with us if they believe that we’re fellow Christians, rather than hostile atheists there to poison their children’s minds.”

Reid nodded at you through the rearview mirror.

“Make sure you put on the left hand.” He told you. “That’s the position for marriage.”

You nodded at this.

You placed the ring in the appropriate position, and you couldn’t help but to take a moment and stare at it. It was jarring to have a wedding ring on - especially with the thought that it represented you being married to Spencer. But you supposed, of all the people to call your husband, he would be one of the best. He was honest, intelligent, kind, and… if you were pressed, you would definitely say he was handsome.

But you couldn’t get too caught up thinking about all of that. Because it wasn’t real. It was a false projection you were wearing for the benefit of a self inflated sociopath.

Spencer liked the feeling of the ring. He didn’t take too long to stare at it after he had put it on, because he knew his mind would wander if he did. When Hotch had first proposed the idea of the two of you pretending to be married, Spencer had almost tripped over himself to oppose it - mostly because he didn’t think that he would be able to handle simply pretending to be your husband for the day. It was just too cruel.

Having something he wanted so badly dangled right in front of him and knowing that it was all just a farce - it bothered him, but he delighted in the play nonetheless.

When he caught the fake gold glinting in the light, Spencer had to remind himself that it was fake - that you would just be playing his wife for the day. He had to push back any internal glee that he felt at the idea that he got to be ‘taken’ by you while wearing that ring. It wasn’t real. It was just for the day.

“Isn’t that deceptive?” Nancy asked. “Won’t Cyrus be even more angry if he finds out that it’s not true?”

“He won’t find out.” You replied confidently. “And besides, we use deception in interrogations all the time. It’s a very basic tactic: align yourself with the suspect. Make them think you share the same beliefs, that you’re on their side.”

Reid grinned at this. He always loved it when you spoke so confidently.

…

“We’re looking for Mr. Benjamin Cyrus.” Nancy announced as the three of you got out of the car.

“Then you’ve found him.” Cyrus announced confidently.

He was pretty much what you had expected him to be - dressed informally, slouched over, faking meekness, holding a bible near his chest as though it were a shield. He had planted himself there purposefully, wanting to be the first person to interact with the outsiders as three of you came into the Ranch.

You hovered back near Spencer, letting Nancy make the first introduction.

“I’m Nancy Lunde.” She said, giving a small nod toward the man. “We spoke on the phone regarding the allegation.”

“‘Savages they call us, because our manners differ from theirs.’” Cyrus rhymed off a quote, obviously positioning himself and his group as martyrs being attacked for having ‘different ways’ that the world simply didn’t understand.

“We didn’t come here to hear you cite scripture, Mr. Cyrus.” Nancy reminded him, hoping to keep the religious zealot on track.

“Actually, it’s Benjamin Franklin.” Reid corrected her, talking about the quote.

That did surprise you, but you didn’t find it surprising that Reid knew this fact right off the top of his head. It was just one of the many amazing things about him - his perfect memory and his ability to use it.

Of course, him saying this immediately drew Cyrus’ attention toward the two of you. So Spencer stepped up to introduce you.

“Hello, I’m Spencer Reid, and this is my wife, Y/N L/N.” He said motioning toward himself and then to you as he introduced the two of you. Hearing him refer to you as his wife - you hated to say it, but it caused a jolt through your system. Almost as if you had been waiting forever to hear him say those words and hadn’t even known it yourself. “We’re Child Victim Interview Experts, here on behalf of Child Protective Services.”

Of course, you couldn’t get too caught up in deciphering how those words made you feel, because you had to focus on the task at hand. The job that you were here to do.

“How far from God’s word must we have strayed for there to be a need to invent a job called ‘Child Victim Interview Expert’.” Cyrus said, his tone even, quiet.

You knew that covertly, it was his way of saying that the two of you didn’t belong there, because he ran the Ranch with God’s word, so nobody had actually been harmed (in his opinion). He believed that he had done nothing wrong. Obviously, he thought your time and resources were better spent with ‘actual’ victims who didn’t have his power wielded over their lives.

“I can assure you, Mr. Cyrus, we try to bring God into our work.” You told him, trying to appeal to him. “The children we visit usually need prayer and God’s light the most.”

Spencer gave you a sideways glance, clearly holding back a grin at how thick you were pouring it on - how much intense, feigned passion you said these words with.

“Well, I can assure you that a lack of prayer and God’s light is certainly not an issue for the children here.” Cyrus said, giving you a clever little grin. He thought that you would simply interview the children, praise him for what a good job he had done, and then leave. “You can go and see the children whenever you like. They are up at the school, as I indicated in our phone call.”

Nancy walked toward the school, and you paused before you followed.

Before you walked off, you looked to Spencer. In a completely silent conversation that only worked so well because the two of you had been in so many tense situations before, thinking around UnSubs and planning miles around them before they could even know it, he gave you a small nod and you instantly knew what it meant. He had established a small bit of trust with Cyrus, so he would stick back and see what else he could get out of the man.

You nodded back, and then - completely surprising yourself, you leaned in and kissed Spencer on the cheek. You were just playing the part, you told yourself. It’s not that it felt entirely instinctive to say goodbye to him with some kind of affection, like the many hugs you had given him before. It’s not that you felt so entirely scrutinized with Cryus’ piercing eyes on you, and you needed the anchor of Spencer’s touch.

You were just playing the part.

Spencer tried not to get caught on being kissed on the cheek like he was some blushing virgin, and instead, focused his attention back on Cyrus instead of watching you walk away. (Even though every single one of his instincts told him that he needed to keep a more careful eye on you because you both had to leave your guns in the car.)

He took a step closer to where Cyrus was leaning on the concrete, and easily picked a topic of conversation.

“Solar panels.” Reid said, motioning to the large devices sitting behind Cyrus on the grass.

“Yes.” Cyrus nodded. “We’re completely self-sufficient here. Food, electricity, water. Benjamin Franklin said ‘God helps those who help themselves’.” He explained. “You look surprised.”

“No, uh, impressed, actually.” Reid easily lied, trying to appeal to his ego.

“Thank you.” Cyrus said. “Most men wouldn’t admit that.”

“Well, I suppose that I’m not like most men.” Reid shrugged in return.

“How long have you been married?” Cyrus asked, motioning toward Reid’s ‘wedding ring’.

Reid panicked slightly, knowing that the two of you likely should have coordinated this story during the plane ride to Colorado so that your answers to these simple questions wouldn’t be different. But he just made up an answer and hoped that nobody else would ask you the same question and find out the deception.

“Three years.” He said. “I’ve been very blessed.”

He used the language purposefully, knowing that the simple phrase could get him on Cyrus’ good side. That, and he hoped it would draw the attention away from any possible signs of his blatant lie.

“Your wife is very beautiful.” Cyrus commented.

He gave a wicked smirk as he said this. It was a simple, fairly ‘innocent’ comment, but it was immediately off-putting to Spencer. It took everything in his body not to glare daggers at Cyrus or throw out some protective comment in return. He could only imagine what was going through Cyrus’ mind as he thought about you, and he hated even imagining it.

Reid knew that it was a basic logical good, the instinct to protect you because you were his partner on this case and he was supposed to have your back. But it was also something more. Something in every fiber of his being that screamed you were his and no man should ever be thinking of you that way except for him.

“Has it been a godly union?”

He was lucky when Cyrus spoke again and distracted him from his mounting rage.

“We try to be as godly as we can be.” Spencer took the simple, diplomatic answer.

“Your wife didn’t take your last name.” Cyrus pointed out.

Nancy had used your name on your false credentials because Hotch had only come up with the fake marriage idea the day before. There hadn’t been time to inform her about it and have ‘Reid’ put on your ID as your ‘married’ name. So he had introduced you by your name to keep everything consistent with the reuse.

It did make Spencer wonder if you would keep your last name if the two of you ever did get married. It made him almost dizzy, thinking about you as ‘Mrs Reid’. Thinking about your kids having his name. Or your name, if that’s what you wanted.

But naturally, he pushed past all those thoughts and formed an excuse.

“Typically, married women aren’t very well perceived in our line of work.” He quickly excused. “She doesn’t even get to wear her ring that often. She couldn’t change her name on paperwork at our office because a working married woman… it’s heavily frowned upon.”

“Well, I’d have to agree.” Cyrus grunted. “A woman shouldn’t be out working. A woman should be at home raising a family.”

“I - I suppose you’re right.” Reid agreed through gritted teeth.

He walked away toward the school before he got too angry again.

…

A few hours later, everything had gone to hell.

Some authority - the police, the military, you didn’t even know - had charged into the Ranch shooting. In response, Cyrus and his followers had come into the school toting large semi-automatics asking you and Spencer if you knew about a raid.

You didn’t. You wish you had known about a raid. You would have warned Hotch and gotten them to call it off. You certainly would not have been there while it was happening.

When they had pointed those guns in your face and forced you into the tunnels - it wasn’t very difficult to pretend to be Spencer’s wife then. Cowering in the bunker, confused and scared, you flung your arms around his waist almost instinctively, and he buried his nose in the top of your hair as he wrapped his arms around your shoulders like a shield, promising you that everything was going to be okay.

Whispered to you like that, coming from him - it was almost easier to believe. Even with the chaos going on around you and the fear pumping through you in response.

Nancy had run off trying to get them to surrender and did not come back. You had a feeling that you knew what that meant.

And now, with the kids from the school ‘evacuated’ into the church, you were being held in the cellar at gunpoint. They had forcefully separated you and Spencer, making you sit in chairs at opposite sides of the room.

Spencer was fidgeting. His eyes kept flickering from the door, to you, to the man standing beside you holding the very large gun.

You knew that you had ugly tear tracks down your face, and oddly enough - you wanted nothing more than to be back in his arms. As you were forced to sit there, just a few feet across the room away from him - you ached for it.

There was a very large possibility that you were going to die today. And you selfishly needed the comfort of being in the arms of someone familiar - someone safe. Someone you knew would never hurt you. Someone who had made you laugh with dumb science jokes and puns for the last five years that you had worked together with him.

When Cyrus charged back into the room with two men flanking his sides, you and Spencer stiffened up once again.

“God will forgive me for what I’m about to do.” Cyrus announced to the room, presenting a handgun from his belt.

Your insides quaked, and Spencer’s eyes grew wide.

You couldn’t contain the fearful whimper that erupted from the back of your throat when he raised that gun and placed it near the middle of Spencer’s forehead. You clasped a hand tightly over your mouth to keep yourself from crying out in protest, knowing that would only make things worse.

“Which one of you is the FBI Agent?” Cyrus asked firmly.

Which ‘one’?

So he knew that you were undercover, that you had lied about your job titles - but he thought that only one of you had done so. Where the hell was he getting his information?

“I - I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Spencer told him quietly, looking him in the eye the entire time.

You hoped that his stutter could be passed off as nervousness from the gun being pointed in his face, and wouldn’t be pointed to as deception.

“Which one of you is it?” Cyrus pressed.

“We are not FBI Agents.” Spencer said, more confidently this time. “We are Child Victim Interview Experts. We were only sent here to ensure the wellbeing of the children. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Well, that last part wasn’t a lie.

“You’re lying.” Cyrus told him, entirely confident in this. “God expells those who lie, devils in sheep’s clothing.”

There was a tense moment, and then Cyrus cocked the gun.

Spencer didn’t flinch. You resisted the urge to scream.

“Proverbs 12:22 says: ‘The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth.’” Cyrus said, actually citing scripture this time.

He was giving Spencer one last chance to tell the truth. As if using the bible verse to say that his punishment would be lesser if he simply told the truth now.

Spencer didn’t take the bait.

“I’m not lying.” Spencer said firmly. “What? You think I wouldn’t know if - if my wife was an FBI Agent? This is the woman I wake up next to every single morning, the woman I go to sleep next to every single night, we work together every single day, we-”

Cyrus interrupted Spencer’s ranting with a sharp hit to the face, pistol whipping him across the cheek.

This caused Spencer to go flying off the chair, and you couldn’t help when you let out a wounded cry. It took everything in you not to jump out of your own chair and rush to Spencer where he had collapsed onto the ground, clutching his cheek.

“Someone is going to tell me the truth.” Cyrus said gruffly.

“It must have been Nancy!” You said, the idea finally popping into your head.

You seemed to be more clever with the pressure of Spencer’s life being threatened. Cyrus stared you down, turning his attention fully toward you now. You caught Spencer’s eye for a moment and he gave you a small nod - as if to say ‘yes, keep going with that’.

“The woman we came in with! Nancy!” You reasoned, continuing to point the finger at the woman you had to assume was dead. “We - we just met her today. Our boss introduced us to her, but we had never met before that. If she was FBI, we had no clue. We swear.”

Cyrus turned to you then, and tightly pressed the barrel of his gun into your forehead. You could feel the imprint of it so tight in your skin that it hurt, and you could only lean away so far before threatening to knock the chair backwards.

“It’s very convenient to pin this crime on someone who isn’t here.” He grunted at you.

“It’s the truth.” You sniffled out quietly.

“Hmm.” Cyrus hummed thoughtfully, and then, much to your surprise, he removed the gun barrel from your forehead.

You barely had a moment to breathe in relief before he began skimming the gun down your neck, touching the metal whisper-gentle across your bare skin - clearly taunting you. It was something that made your whole body stiff with alarm, and caused Spencer’s eyes to go wide once again.

“Perhaps I should strip you naked to ensure that you’re not wearing a wire.” Cyrus said, teasing the gun along the buttons at the front of your cardigan.

You held back a sob at the thought of it - at the idea that he could make you do almost anything for the fear of you being shot. Truthfully, you were more afraid of what he might do to Spencer if you didn’t comply, but it was all the same in your mind now. His life was just as valuable as yours, and you would do whatever it took to protect him.

Before Cyrus could take these threats any further, a heroic voice intervened.

“That’s enough!” Spencer yelled.

He gathered himself off the floor and oddly enough, none of the men moved to stop him as he came to stand beside Cyrus. Perhaps they didn’t see him as a threat. Perhaps it was because Cyrus didn’t bark any orders at them to stop him. He was entirely unflinching, keeping his focus on you and keeping his gun held between your breasts as Spencer crowded into his personal space, trying to press himself between you and the awful man.

“We’ve told you everything that we know.” Spencer told him lowly, his voice heaving with well controlled anger. It was something that you had rarely ever heard from him.

Cyrus kept his eyes locked on you, so Spencer continued.

“We don’t know anything about the FBI - we have a simple job advocating for children who have been abused. That is it. We came here to investigate a most likely false claim against someone in your community and we truly didn’t mean to get caught up in all of this.” He said firmly, clearly trying to appeal to Cyrus. “So I suggest you get that gun away from my wife before you and I truly have a problem.”

Spencer’s voice was dark, so thick with rage. More pent up rage than you had ever heard from him when he was talking to any suspect, people who had done the worst of the worst. Something about Cyrus threatening you had truly boiled his insides.

The way he said the words ‘my wife’ - growling it out like he was a feral animal and this threat to you had activated every single one of his protective instincts. Hearing it made something inside of you yearn for him on such a deep level that you didn’t know was possible. You wanted to feel that kind of protection cast over you every single day. It made you feel invincible, having Spencer watch over you like that.

Cyrus lowered the gun then, and Spencer grabbed your arm as you dissolved into hysterical tears. Instinctively, he lifted you up into his arms. You thought that you heard Cyrus mumble out ‘my apologies’ as he left the room - but he was barely on your radar. Your entire world became narrowed down to nothing but Spencer, your safety net as he built a wall of protection around you.

He used his height to block you from seeing anything but him, letting you push your face into his chest as you cried. He wrapped you in his arms once again, letting you feel truly safe for a few moments as you sobbed into the fabric of his sweater. Your arms clutched desperately at his waist, needing to keep a hold on him - needing to ensure that he didn’t leave you.

“Hey, shh. Shh. It’s okay.” He said, leaving gentle kisses on the top of your forehead and your hair, rubbing across your back with one hand, comforting you in the only way he could in those moments. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Of course, he wanted to break down too. But he had to be strong for you.

“Spencer,” You called his name in an utterly wounded voice, pulling away from his chest to look up at him.

When you saw his injury up close - a sharp, purple-red bruise that was blooming across his cheek, it looked so utterly painful. Your insides ached at the thought that he had taken a blow for you. You hated to imagine what more they could have done to him if they had not believed your lies.

You instinctively reached a hand up to touch it and he caught your fingers halfway, instead, gently grasping your hand and laying it on his chest. The intimacy felt so oddly rehearsed - so worn in, so ‘normal’. It felt like you had been married to Spencer for years. Like it wasn’t a play at all.

Your two souls had been calling out to each other for years, just waiting for the dam to break. But you couldn’t quite put it into words - not like that.

“It’s okay.” He said quietly, knowing you were horrified by the injury.

He was so gentle, so comforting, so calm. Everything the men pointing guns at you were not. Unlike Cyrus - Spencer Reid was a true blessing from God.

You couldn’t hold yourself back then.

You surged up and kissed him, fully embracing his mouth with yours in a kiss. Though it was so sudden, it was something he easily returned. The kiss so full of urgency, so needy, so passionate. Like he was trying to tell you that it was okay, that he would protect you no matter what.

He would protect you because you belonged to him.

In those moments, the two of you were basically alone. One of Cryus’ men was guarding the door, watching on boredly. But Cyrus was off in the church, funneling people in to prepare for his ‘loyalty’ test. It didn’t matter if he saw you kissing or not - it wouldn’t have sold the reuse of you being married any better.

This was just for the two of you. This was comfort.

When you pulled back from the kiss, Spencer looked stunned, almost as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. You didn’t give him time to question it.

“Thank you.” You said quietly.

It was twofold:

Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for giving me comfort.

Spencer didn’t have too much time to marinate in the meaning of the kiss before Cyrus’ men came back and fetched the two of you, wanting you to observe the loyalty test.

…

After the mock poisoning (which Spencer figured out rather quickly, making you admire his cleverness once again), Cyrus kept you and Spencer in the church with a few of his closest, most loyal followers while all of the low level followers dispersed back to their homes.

You and Spencer were lingering in the back quietly while Cyrus was on the other end of the room, talking to his men about how to proceed. The plans for their ‘final stand’.

“We need to get some kind of signal to the others.” Spencer whispered quietly. “Maybe they’ll take pity on you and let you go if-” He swallowed sharply, cutting himself off abruptly. Oddly enough, he didn’t want to voice whatever was on his mind.

“If what?” You probed. You wondered what the hell you could possibly be thinking.

“If we tell them that you’re pregnant.” He said, whispering so lowly that you almost didn’t catch the words.

You rolled your eyes sharply at this.

You had gotten married and had kids all in one day. What a miracle.

(In those moments, clouded by fear, you couldn’t see it for what it truly was - Spencer blatantly revealing his unconscious desires to have a baby with you.)

“We could convince them to release you. As a show of good faith. A pregnancy would be good leverage in that. You know how religious people are about fetuses-” Spencer reasoned.

“Yeah, and what if they give me a test?” You probed, punching a large hole in his logic. “We don’t know what kind of infirmary they have here. They obviously believe in modern technology. What if they want to give me an ultrasound to check on the fetus after the stress of the day? To prove that they did no harm to the precious unborn child,”

Spencer was easily caught on this point. If they examined you and found that you weren’t pregnant, all the lies would fall apart.

“Well… what if we tell them that you have a baby at home that you need to get back to?” Spencer reasoned, jumping to the next logical conclusion in his mind. “It’ll likely garner the same level of pity.”

“Your imaginary sperm is powerful, isn’t it?” You whispered back sharply. Spencer rolled his eyes this time. But he didn’t redact the plan as unreasonable, so you continued on. “Okay, what do I even do when I get out there? I’m not gonna be of any use to the tactical team. We don’t know what Cyrus’ final play is yet.”

Truthfully, you couldn’t bear to be separated from Spencer. Knowing that he was inside, potentially being beaten up more, potentially being shot and bleeding out from a wound without you knowing - it would kill you with stress. You need to be by his side. You needed to know that he was okay.

“Has God blessed your union with any children?” Cyrus appeared behind you suddenly.

You wondered if he had heard you say the word ‘pregnancy’ or if this was just a random topic that had come up in his mind.

His sudden appearance behind you caused you to whip around and crowd into the comfort of Spencer’s arms again because you were frightened. Naturally, Spencer wrapped his sheltering touch around your shoulders. Your back was gently pressed into Spencer’s front, his arm shielding you protectively as it was wrapped around your chest, holding you with his hand on one of your shoulders, unconsciously stroking his thumb across the fabric of your cardigan. The position had you both facing Cyrus, watching the fan in an offensive way.

And of course, Spencer didn’t miss a beat.

“Yes.” Spencer answered easily. “We have two kids at home. A boy and a girl. Iris and Hugo. Iris is almost three years old and Hugo is eleven months. His first birthday is coming up in June.”

You knew that Spencer could be very good at talking off a suspect’s ear under pressure, but when you heard him rattle off these ‘facts’ so easily, it hit you.

This wasn’t simply statistics or physiological knowledge - this was a very elaborate backstory for your supposedly real marriage. Perhaps he had thought about all of it on the car ride up (which was odd not to share it with you, in case Cyrus asked you a similar question and your answer didn’t match up with Spencer’s).

But if you weren’t mistaken, this wasn’t simply a backstory for your fake marriage during the undercover mission. This was a fantasy of his. Those were names he had lovingly chosen for your imaginary children - kids he had dreamed up in his head and wanted to be real.

Your heart ached at the thought of it. You found yourself missing a set of children that weren’t even real. (And distantly, wanting to jump his bones to make it a reality.)

“Tell me, Mr. Reid, would you find it so shameful for your daughter to marry young?” Cyrus asked.

You found it odd to hear Cyrus call Spencer ‘Mr. Reid’, but you realized that he hadn’t introduced himself as ‘Doctor’ in this setting. You held your tongue when you felt the need to correct him as you had so many other people, wanting Spencer to receive his proper title.

Your mind almost couldn’t focus on the question that Cyrus had asked. Of course, he was trying to get Spencer to stroke his ego once again. Basically admitting that the whole reason the two of you had come here was true - he was being vastly inappropriate with a young member of the church, and getting away with it. And he saw nothing wrong with it.

And he was trying to get an outsider to admit that he saw nothing wrong with it too.

When there was a moment of silence - Reid obviously torn on how to answer the question, Cyrus continued.

“Is there really something so wrong with a blooming young woman marrying a man who will protect her under God’s laws?” He probed, his voice so entirely confident. Clearly confident that he was right.

“Well, I’m not sure if I would let my daughter get married so young.” Reid said, finally speaking up. “I just know that I would want her to marry a man that would protect her, and be the best possible fit for her. Someone who would cherish her and be good to her no matter what.”

His answer made you swoon. You reached up and gently gripped his forearm in response, giving a light squeeze to show your approval. He leaned in and kissed the back of your head - dizzyingly, you were imagining him walking your imaginary daughter down the aisle before you had even gotten married yourself.

Maybe it was being so close to death, being threatened in such dangerous territory that was causing your life to accelerate at light speed in your mind. If you were going to lose everything, you might as well enjoy the escapism of a fake life with a beautiful man in your mind instead of being stuck on the heart pounding terror of being held hostage, right?

Surprisingly, his words drew a smile from Cyrus.

“You’re a protective father, aren’t you?” Cyrus asked.

“Of course.” Reid confirmed.

“I can always admire that in a man.” Cyrus nodded. “A man should always pride himself on protecting his family.”

There was another moment of pause, and you were hoping that the topic had been dropped completely.

“Do you have a picture of your children with you?” Cyrus asked.

You wondered if - in a different version of reality, where you and Spencer really were married, where Hugo and Iris really did exist - if you had a picture of them in your pocket, would Cyrus only be asking this so he could use the picture to taunt the two of you? What other purpose would he have for knowing what your children looked like?

“Unfortunately, no.” You answered. “I keep my family pictures on my desk. In my office. We - we’ve just been praying to get back to them safely.”

Cyrus seemed perturbed at you mentioning that you had an office. Something dark flickered over his features for a moment and then disappeared.

“Well… if it is right, God will grant you that safe passage.” Cyrus said.

Just when you truly thought the conversation was done, he said something to you that entirely grinded under your skin.

“I find it entirely odd that a mother of two young children spends her days working a job where she takes care of other people’s children, rather than staying at home with her own youngins where she belongs.”

He said, using that same entirely confident, righteous tone that he always did. Even though you were not really a working mother, you had a hard time not boiling with anger at the sexism ripe in his statement.

“How much must you be missing of your sweet angels lives to instead partake in the horrors of devils you shouldn’t have to witness.”

Of course.

You had a hard time not rolling your eyes at this or saying something harsh that would set him off. Instead, you reached up to Spencer’s arm around your shoulder, squeezing his fingers, trying to keep your patience.

“I’ll have you know that Y/N is an amazing mother.” Spencer piped up, knowing that Cyrus respected him enough as a man that he wouldn’t beat him simply for speaking up. “Her nurturing and caring makes her infinitely better at her job.”

Again, you knew that there was so much personal truth in Spencer’s words. He thought that you would make an amazing mother to his children - at least theoretically. He was entirely firm in that conviction. And he thought that your natural caring made you amazing at the job you did as a Profiler. He knew this from the quality of work he witnessed you doing every single day.

You didn’t know it - but it was just one of the many things that had caused him to fall in love with you.

Oddly enough, Cyrus’ words prodded at something deep inside of you. It made you imagine a life for yourself where you weren’t spending your days witnessing horrors from unspeakable devils - but instead, at home, looking out for Spencer’s imaginary children.

You would have said it was the fear of the day, clouding your mind. But maybe it was the clarity of being so close to death that made you realize what - and who - you truly wanted out of life.

…

Hours later, after some of the hostages had been released (the ‘non-believers’ who had failed the loyalty test), Cyrus had requested that some food be sent up. Spencer gave you a sharp look when he saw the message written on one of the takeout lids.

The team would be storming in to end the hold-out at 3am. You had to somehow ensure the safety of the hostages by then.

Obviously, the fake pregnancy idea was still warping through Spencer’s mind, but you had come up with some much better.

“Cyrus,” You called out his name gently, getting his attention. “You said that you have a nursery here?”

It had come up, during his long winded bragging about how perfect the Ranch was. Something about how mothers didn’t have to raise their children alone. The children were raised as more of a ‘group effort’ and women took ‘shifts’ in the nursery, allowing the women to rest or get chores done in the interim.

“Yes, we do.” He nodded.

Spencer stared at you with his jaw set, wondering what you were doing but not daring to speak.

“I - I’ve been missing my children dearly. I was wondering if I could go to your nursery and see if they need any help? It would do my soul good to be around young ones right now. After all the commotion of these days.” You spoke meekly, trying to play the part of the shaken up, dainty woman well.

Which was too difficult, seeing as you were playing up the fear you had already experienced.

He grinned. It was a rather menacing smile, and you tried your hardest not to show any further fear, or disgust.

“That sounds like a splendid idea.” He nodded. “Christopher, why don’t you escort her down to the nursery and then come back? We need you here for our final preparations.”

You were finally falling to those gender roles that he had been pushing on you since you had arrived. He didn’t suspect a thing. He simply thought that you were a God fearing woman falling to your natural womanly instincts, needing to care for children lest your womb shrivel up and you die.

Spencer rose from his seat and Cyrus stopped him.

“Just your wife.” He said, putting a hand in front of Spencer’s chest to stop him. “There are still some things you and I need to discuss. Man to man.”

You went over to Spencer and didn’t hesitate to plant a kiss firmly on his mouth, which he returned with vigor. This one lasted only a moment - it was something precious for the two of you. You didn’t need to put on some pointed show for the men in the room.

“It’s okay.” You told Spencer quietly, brushing your fingers gently over his uninjured cheek.

You could tell that he was dying to ask you what your plan was. But he kept the words trapped in his throat, unable to speak in front of the many temperamental villains lurking about.

“Come on.” Christopher grunted.

Spencer gave you a longing look as you left. He didn’t want to think it, but as he watched your figure retreat out the door, he feared that it would be the last time he ever saw you.

…

Your plan worked flawlessly.

Getting to the nursery meant that you had unsupervised access to the women and children, especially away from Cyrus’ prying ears. Because you were a ‘delicate’ woman, nobody suspected you of having ulterior motives. You easily found a crack in Kathy, Jessica’s mother. You spotted her as the one who had made the original 9-1-1 call, wanting to get her daughter away from Cyrus. You convinced her to help you get everyone out, and you felt intense relief when you were met with a familiar face in the cellar as everyone escaped through the tunnels.

“Where’s Reid?” Morgan easily asked you, glancing behind your shoulder as if waiting for him to appear.

“He’s still up at the church.” You told him. “I had to separate off to help get the women and children out-”

“Go on, we have to get you out!” Morgan urged, trying to gently usher you along.

“We have to go get Reid!” You argued, trying to turn around.

“Go, go on, I’ll go get Reid!” He told you.

You were about to argue back, but you were cut off by a scuffle behind you.

Jessica was yelling about Cyrus - how her mother had betrayed her, tricked her.

Morgan pushed Kathy toward you and ran off screaming for Jessica. You took Kathy’s arm, gently convincing her that everything was going to be okay as you guided her the rest of the way out. You had to focus on this, convincing yourself that everything was going to be okay. You had to tell yourself that Derek was going to get Spencer out - that they were both going to be okay.

When you got outside, you were hyper focused on marching away, taking a path away from the church as directed by the officers in charge. You froze in your tracks when you heard it - an earth shattering boom. The ground beneath your feet shook. You felt a puff of hot air swell to touch your back.

You let go of Kathy’s arm and whipped around, and you couldn’t even pay attention to where she went. You almost thought you heard her weeping, but your mind couldn’t process it as your eyes were glossed in bright orange flame.

It was the church.

“Spencer?” You gasped quietly. “Spencer!”

You couldn’t help it, but you began to run toward it. Your feet carried you faster than you could think, and before you got more than a few feet across the ground, you felt a sharp grip on your upper arm.

“L/N!”

Hotch’s voice, sounding far too distant for the position he held right behind you, viciously gripping onto you as you fought against him, trying to get toward the fire - trying to get to Spencer.

“Hey! Hey! Stop it!” Hotch tried to order you around, tried to get you to stand down.

He got a hand around your waist, and you continued to kick like a wild horse, fighting against his grip as hot tears poured down your face.

“He’s in there!” You sobbed. “Spencer is still in there.”

“Calm. Down.” Hotch ordered sharply.

You collapsed back into him sobbing, all of the fight leaving your muscles at once. You couldn’t fake the reality in front of you.

“You running in there and getting hurt isn’t going to change anything.” Hotch told you quietly, a somehow distant murmur into your ear.

Through the blur of your tears and the sharp orange glow, you saw the shape of two bodies. You heard coughing as someone emerged from the blast, hobbling down the stairs at the front of the church. You forced your eyes open wider, trying to see who it was, and then:

“Y/N!” Spencer called out your name gruffly through the smoke he had inhaled, and you easily shucked off Hotch’s grip to race up the stairs to get to him.

He was leaning on Morgan for support and you were worried that he was hurt. But the moment you were close enough, he tore himself away from Morgan and the two of you met in the middle. In a pattern that was easily developing, you fell into the safety of his arms, holding him tight enough to bruise him - never wanting to let go.

“You’re so stupid, you’re so stupid! Why would you do that to me?”

You sobbed out, gripping both sides of his face, staring into his eyes, needing the recognition that he was right there, right in front of you.

He stared back with glassiness - intense fear, adrenaline, and something small that told you he was thankful for you, and needed you now more than ever.

Of course, your words were simple anger at the situation, not at Spencer himself. The terror of thinking that he was dead still pumping through your veins, causing you to shake.

“I know.” He said quietly. “I love you.”

His voice wrapped around the words so tenderly - it was the most sincere declaration you had ever heard from him. As if to say ‘I know how much that scared you. I know what this ordeal has done to us and I only meant it more because of how scared I am’.

“I love you too.” The words flew from your lips so naturally it hurt. You took a moment to recover, entirely shocked by your own lips. And then, you only found the need to say it growing more inside of you. “Spencer, I love you.”

You pulled him toward you with the grip you had on his face, and he easily met you in one of the most earth shattering kisses you had ever experienced.

It was no longer a show, it was no longer about displaying the fake marriage for someone else’s benefit - if it had ever been about that in the first place. It was about the two of you. It was about feeling that comfort, that safety. It was about the fact that your two souls were drawn together since the day you had met. The fact that you had always felt safe with each other. You had always been the other person’s shelter from the storm.

And you poured every ounce of those feelings into that kiss.

You combed your fingers through Spencer’s hair, taking a harsh grip on the back of it, holding him there so he couldn’t pull away from your lips. He wrapped his arms around your waist, fisting the back of your sweater. Both of you entirely refused to come up for oxygen, not even caring who saw the epically passionate, public display of your love for each other.

Unbeknownst to you, Morgan and Hotch exchanged a look with raised brows as it happened. You and Spencer didn’t care. You were barely perceiving the world around you as the two of you kissed.

“You know if you’re not careful, people are actually gonna think you two are married.” Morgan said, being his usual sarcastic self.

Rather than pulling away from Spencer’s lips to sass him back - you simply flipped Derek off over Spencer’s shoulder.

On the ride home, JJ handed Derek five dollars. He had the over/under that the two of you would get together before the end of the year. JJ said that it wouldn’t happen for another five years, at least. Derek handed the fiver to Emily when she reminded him that the ‘fake marriage’ bit had actually been her idea.

When Emily and JJ relayed the story to Penelope, she squealed so loudly into the phone that JJ dropped it.

Hotch pulled you aside later and warned you that the fake rings were just cheap costume jewelry that Garcia had gotten and they would tarnish soon if you kept wearing them. He also recommended that you and Spencer put in the paperwork with HR if you were ‘serious’ about the relationship. You knew that it was him wishing the two of you his best.

A few days later when you came into work and found the HR request for an update of relationship status sitting on your desk, already signed by Spencer, you couldn’t help but to smile.

...

A/N: This is a oneshot, so there will not be a continuation or a sequel to it. If you are going to comment, please comment about the body of work that I have written, rather than asking me to write 'more'. If you want to see more things that I have written about Spencer, feel free to check out my Criminal Minds Masterlist.

#sundrop writes #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds #criminal minds fandom #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fic

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kikyan · 7 months

Text

Confession

CW: Yandere content means yandere content y’all, stalking, dub-con/non-con, masturbation, disgusting themes, panty stealer, fingering, oral (receiving), overstimulation, breeding themes(slightly?), creampie, power bottom Idia, slight masochist Idia, kidnapping, shit ass writing, I think that’s all, etc…

Fandom: Twisted Wonderland

Character: Idia Shroud x GN! Reader

Word Count: 7.2K words

A/N: This is a birthday fic for one of my IRL besties, an Idia simp. Another thing, this is a yandere blog so it’s not canon to their personalities at all but more my interpretation of them if THEY were yanderes. So take that as you will! This is with a GN reader so there is no anatomy assigned or pronouns other than they/them (I did proofread it but lmk if there are any errors!)

‘ Click’

Yellow eyes darted across from the screens as he was looking at the contents. Classes were over and his homework was completed quicker than he used to have it done. He was still a housewarden with duties and responsibilities after all, besides he needed the rest of the day free to partake in his favorite hobby. Stalking [Reader] of course. He could access several cameras from different angles as he attempted to track them down.

‘ Where are they? Their class ends around this time and they usually stay a bit longer in the classroom to wait for the freshman and Grim. They’re taking too long. . .shit! Did I miss them? Did they already leave?’

Idia frantically typed away at his computer to try to locate them. After a couple of tries, he found [Reader] and Grim, with the freshman of course, walking out of their classroom. Sighing in relief, he continued to observe as normal. Unfortunately, these cameras were limited as they had no audio but it would do for now.

‘ So they DID stay longer in the classroom. Phew, good thing nothing has changed so far.’

The screens were the only source of light in his room as his lights were turned off. He didn’t have any club activities today so he there was no need to leave his room. He sat on his desk chair while holding his knees to his chest. Raising his thumb to his mouth, he bit down on the tip of his nail. How did it come to this?

“We’re going to be late! Crap, where is the housewarden?”

“Doesn’t he have his club? Do you think we can leave it with Ortho?”

“Uh maybe. . .man why did Professor Trein dump this on us? If only Idia attended in-person classes, but oh well. Oh, wait-[Reader]!”

[Reader] was walking through the hallways, but turned when they heard their name was called out. There were two students, from the Ignihyde dorm looking stressed.

“Yes?”

“Sorry for this, but could you do us a huge favor? Professor Trein asked if we could drop these papers with Houseward Idia, but we can’t find him! Not to mention, we’re already late for our club activities enough as it is! We’ll make it up to you, promise!”

“Hm, sure I don’t see why not. Not like I have anything better to do, give them here.”

Sighing in relief, the students wasted no time in handing the documents over to [Reader].

“Gosh, you’re a lifesaver! Thank you so much, both Grim and your meal are on us!”

The students turned and ran off to their club. Leaving [Reader] alone.

“Grim would appreciate that, it sure saves me money for one day knowing his appetite. Anyways, just where is Idia?”

[Reader] debated going over to the hall of mirrors and just entering the Ignihyde dorm but they decided against it. It would be too much work if Idia were still on the main campus grounds and they were in their dorm. Was Idia even in a club? If he was, it would be worth it to check some classrooms in case he was. Thinking back on it, it wouldn’t seem likely but it didn’t hurt to check. [Reader] had been walking for about 20 minutes, popping inside classrooms just to survey the area. To no avail, Idia was not in the classroom.

“Just where could he be? Maybe I should head over to his dorm. Oh, hey Azul!”

Azul was walking on the opposite side and [Reader] ran up to meet him.

“Ah, [Reader]. What a coincidence, I would have figured you had returned to your dorm by now.”

“Normally I would have, but I’m helping some classmates drop off some documents. Hey, this may be a stretch but by any chance, do you know where Idia might be?”

“ Idia? Oh why, yes I do. He’s still in the classroom. We just finished up our game board club meeting. He lost to me so he’s staying back to finish cleaning up. Why?”

“He’s the one I’m dropping the documents off to. So, where is the club room?”

“ Down the hall, turn right and it’s the second door on your left.”

“ Thank you, Azul! I’ll see you around, kay?”

“Of course. If you however require my services sooner, you know where to find me.”

“Nice try, but at the moment I’m not interested in making a deal right now. Maybe later if I forget to study for an exam.”

“But of course, take care.”

Azul left back to his dorm, leaving [Reader] to seek out his directions to the club room. When they arrived, they opened the door to see Idia sitting at the desk on his phone.

“Oh hey, Idia-”

Idia jumped in his desk, whipping his head around to stare at [Reader] in a frazzled state.

“W-what a-are you doing h-here!?”

“Calm down Idia, not here to hurt you. Anyways, someone asked me to drop off these papers to you. One of your housemates. Anyways, what are you doing?”

“You c-can leave them on the t-table.”

Idia’s eyes avoided [Reader’s] and he ignored their question. [Reader] walked closer, leaving the documents on the table as asked. They turned to look at his screen, looking at all the graphics displayed on the screen.

“That looks interesting, what’s this about?”

“It’s a game. . .”

“Right, I can see that. What is it about?”

Idia continued to advert his gaze, muttering under his breath under the assumption that [Reader] could not hear him.

“Like you would care. . .”

“I would actually.”

A snarky and slightly offended response left [Readers] unamused face. Idia let out a squeak, he didn’t think [Reader] would hear that. [Reader] let out a huff, pulling a chair out and sitting across from Idia.

“Idia, you know I’m not from here right? I don’t know much about media and franchises here in Twisted Wonderland, but I was interested in content like this back in my world. So humor me, what is this game about?”

Though he was still unable to look them in the eye, not that [Reader] minded, he continued to explain the game franchise.

“It’s an adventure-based role-playing game following an adventure party on a mission to take down the demon king. The party consists of characters that you get to pick, unlike most games where you’re given a party member. This game is different because it relies on your choices to advance as well as you making your combat type distinct. It has an online server where you can complete side quests while the main story updates.”

He spoke fast, never sparing a glance at [Reader]. He was just waiting for them to become uninterested or to look at him in annoyance. He was waiting for the insults and the questionable glances of ‘you’re weird’ and ‘fucking loser’.

“Hm, so it’s a fantasy-based combat game. Does this mean that all the party members are different fantasy races? I’d like to see the party members that you can pick, or do you get to customize them as well?”

“ O-oh u-uh. . .”

Idia has always seen the negative side of everything, but being realistic he didn’t give you enough credit. Sure, most people stop listening after that initial description but a few brave soldiers still stick around until he continues. He’d surely lose your interest with his extensive knowledge of the game's lore.

“Well, not exactly. You can make your character, but the other party members are already designed and have a story to go with them. All you do is equip weapons and artifacts to strengthen them.”

“Oh, I love customizable characters. Can I see yours?”

Alright, so you’re one of those few brave soldiers who may be interested in a nerdy ramble. Idia began to click and swipe at his screen, eventually passing it to [Reader]. [Reader] began to inspect the character, looking at all the features that Idia placed on them.

“Woah, they look badass. I like your character’s style, but it looks like they aren’t human-like. Are they fantasy-based characters? What kind?”

Idia couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but his face softened and went from stoic to a more relaxed one. His eyes began to shine with passion as he began to talk about his character, gaining [Reader’s] undivided attention. [Reader] nodded and paid attention when he spoke, asking questions about the game’s lore and characters. Idia answered all their questions with a more enthusiastic chirp, throwing some jokes here and there. The atmosphere changed from tense to a more comforting one as they continued to speak losing track of time.

“. . .but you don’t meet this fantasy race until act III in the game, even then they’re an antagonistic species until you clear the next three acts, that’s when it clears up. Eventually, you can add this character to your party or can update the way your character looks after-”

The sound of the classroom door opening snapped Idia from his daze, and he turned to look at the door.

“Idia, here you are!”

“Ortho. . what are you doing here?”

“Idia, it’s been three hours since you were supposed to be back. I came to see where you were. Don’t you remember, the new update for the game was dropping later tonight?”

“Three hours. . .?”

[Reader] and Idia panicked, both scrambling up from their chairs,

“ Oh my gosh, I had no idea time went by so fast. I need to get home and do my homework!”

“I forgot about my game! S-sorry, I probably bugged you with my spiel-”

“Not at all, Idia! Honestly, this game sounds cool I might check it out. Well, I wish I could considering I don’t have a platform to play it. Crowley is very stingy with what he gives out. I don’t even have a phone to use, or else I would have asked for your contact info. I’ll catch you later, hopefully maybe one of these days I can see you in class. Take care, Ortho!”

[Reader] patted Ortho’s shoulder before leaving the classroom. Ortho nodded enthusiastically, wishing [Reader] the same. He turned around to where Idia was standing. Idia was quiet, his eyes wide, and on his face was a dopey grin. His cheeks were lightly flushed, adding color to his pale skin.

“ Iida? What’s wrong?”

“Ortho, I’m going to class tomorrow.”

It had been roughly two months since that encounter. Idia never expected it to get this bad. They kept their promise, and [Reader] continued to talk to him even if it was after class and in private. He knows they didn’t mean anything bad by it, but he loved the idea of being their little secret. Held occasional yet school-related conversations in public, but the moment the class ended [Reader] and he would talk for hours. Sometimes, they would come over to the Ignihyde dorm to play games with him or indulge in certain content and media. Ortho was very excited, not only was he able to see his brother form a friendship with someone so close instead of online, but he could also see his brother having a slightly more positive outlook on life. However, he remained haunted by the grim reminder that he would be head of the S.T.Y.X organization and wouldn’t be able to enjoy the luxuries he was experiencing now. Despite all that, he was smiling a lot softer and looking forward to the next meeting. So in other words, everything was content and alright. There was no need for him to hijack the cameras to stalk [Reader], but he did it anyway.

“Well, no matter. What’s done is done. Now I need to make sure they get home safely.”

Idia softly smiled at the cameras, looking at [Reader] talking to Grim. They had a smile on their face as well, no doubt teasing the poor kitty.

‘ They’re so pretty. . .hopefully they like my surprise.’

[Reader] was walking with the freshman to the Ramshackle dorm. They were going to drop off some stuff before heading out to the hall of mirrors. As they arrived at the entrance, they were greeted by a ghost.

“Good afternoon, [Reader] and Grim! How were your classes?”

“ Afternoon! Nothing too busy, but we just got assigned a major project.”

“Man talk about annoying, Riddle kept reminding us how important this project was for the freshman.”

Ace complained with Deuce sharing a similar face of dismay, clearly stressed about the project itself.

“Vil was the same, he said that I could not afford to get a low score and tarnish Pomefiore’s reputation. This must be a pretty serious project.”

Jack rubbed the back of his head, “Leona hasn’t mentioned anything yet. If all your housewardens are saying something no doubt when I get back to Savannaclaw he might mention it.”

“If the project must be this serious, then I cannot score anything but the highest marks! The pride of Diasomnia, no. . .the pride of Malleus-Sama rests on my shoulders!”

“Cool, anyways. . .”

The rest of the group disregarded what Sebek was spouting about. The ghost chuckled, before leaving to the living room and returning with a package in hand.

“Someone came by to drop this off. We don’t know what it is or from whom. There was no name on the package.”

“Oh, for us?”

“Seems like it.”

Curiosity spread among them as they were all devising in their heads what it could be.

“You don’t think it’s a. . .no it couldn’t be!”

“But it might be. . .”

“It might be a what?”

Grim turned to Ace and Epel who shared mischievous smiles, “Oh you know. . .”

“Pay them no mind, Grim. They’re just trying to scare you.”

Deuce waved the two off and reassured Grim that it was all right. [Reader] examined the box, shaking it a little. It felt heavy, but there was no sound with the shake. It might either take up the whole box or it might be very secure. They walked inside their dorm with the others following suit. They sat on the couch and proceeded to open the package. Ripping open the box, they turned to see that it was a new phone.

“A phone. . .?”

“ WOAH! NOT JUST A NEW PHONE, IT’S THE LATEST MODEL!”

Everyone exclaimed, eyes wide as saucers.

“It is. . .?”

“Hm, you don’t suppose Crowley got it for us do you?”

Grim turned to look at [Reader] who scoffed at the idea,

“Hell no, since when has that man cared for us?”

“Fair enough, but who do you think it was from?”

“ Not sure. . .”

“ Well whoever it was, they must be loaded!”

Ace pointed out, [Reader] looking up at him.

“Surely it can’t be that much... could it?”

“It’s over 200,000 Thaumarks!”

“THAT MUCH!?”

Grim and [Reader] turned to each other in shock. There was no way Crowley would cough up that much money for them, surely this was a mistake.

“ Do you think they maybe got the wrong address?”

“Nope! The postman that delivered it said the package was addressed to a [Reader].”

“So who could be this generous patronage?”

“Who knows, but whoever it is. You better take care of that as your life depended on it!”

“ Got it, maybe I can ask Idia how to set it up. Surely it can’t be too different than the models back in my world, but if it is that much I can’t risk it. Alright, let us go now.”

“ Do you guys want to go to Monstro Lounge to eat and talk about the project?”

Sharing nods, everyone set off to Monstro Lounge. Idia was observing through the cameras, looking to see everyone entering the Octavinelle dorm. The moment he saw [Reader] enter, he stood up and made plans to leave his dorm. He closed off all the cameras and locked his room to be safe. He turned to the door, preparing to enact his plan. He left the Ignihyde dorm, turning to the path to the Ramshackle dorm. He walked at a brisk pace. It was the perfect time, no one was near or around to see him. Upon arriving at the dorm, he turned to peek inside the windows. Luckily, the ghosts that were occupying the house didn’t seem to be near. He pulled out a key and swiftly unlocked the door. He remembered one time when he swiped their keys and made a copy of them. Casually returning them to [Reader]. He climbed up the stairs and entered their room. Looking around, he could see a very plain room. Nothing too out of the ordinary but he didn’t mind, he knew that [Reader] was hardly getting any funds from Crowley. That was why he gave them the phone, something to be able to reach them faster. Though the room was plain, there was something that did manage to catch his eye. [Reader’s] used clothing hamper. His breath hitched, slowly and carefully making his way to it. Fear that the slight movement could alert someone, even though he was alone(or was he?). Once he made it across, he peered inside. Just normal clothing, sleeping garments, and so forth. The one thing that did make him turn red, was the sight of [Reader’s] used undergarments.

His throat was dry as he debated reaching in and taking. What would they think of him? Would [Reader] look at him in disgust? Here he was, a pervert thinking about taking the used underwear of the one he loved. Who knows what he was going to do with them? Idia shook his head, reaching in swiftly and swiping the used underwear. He shakily raised them to his face, placing the crotch area close to his nose. He inhaled deeply, [Reader’s] scent quickly invading his mind. His pants began to feel tight and his dick was hard. He was lost in a trance until he heard a voice come from the living room.

“I wonder who could have gifted the phone to [Reader]. Do you think they have a secret admirer?”

Idia’s eyes widened as his body temperature rose. He was horrified, beyond terrified. Tears began to well, he was going to be caught! Idia quietly scrambled to the hallway but skillfully remained undetected as he peered over the stair railway. All the ghosts were in the living room, but they weren’t near the front door. If he played his cards right, he could make it out of the dorm without bringing too much attention to himself. Idia began to walk down the stairs, luckily the ghosts were too into their conversation to hear the creaky stairs. Idia shoved the used garment into the pocket of his jacket.

“ If they had a secret admirer, do you think it might be that fae boy who sometimes comes here at night?”

‘The WHAT!?’ Idia internally screamed. Fae. . did he mean Sebek? Sebek knows better than to appear at night, so was it the devilish third-year Lilia Vanrogue? Sure he was an eccentric one, but even he would have morals. Idia was close to the front of the door. Idia was so into his thoughts, that he failed to notice the ghost that was standing near the gate. The ghost turned around, with a surprised look asked,

“Are you here for [Reader]?”

Idia let out a squeak, holding both his arms in a defensive stance. The ghost noticed this and quickly assured him that he did not mean any harm or to spook him.

“Didn’t mean to scare you, but [Reader] isn’t here right now. They’re at the Monstro Lounge working on a project with some peers.”

“O-oh. . .I see. . .”

Idia knew they weren’t here, but couldn’t raise any suspicion. The other ghosts soon came to the front door, staring at Idia.

“Oh, what’s this? Are you a friend of [Reader]?”

“I-I u-uh. . .d-did [Reader] get the package?”

“ The package? Oh! Are you their secret admirer?”

Way to go Iida, he was digging a deeper hole for himself.

“A-a friend of mine a-asked me to make sure they got it. . .”

His gaze was adverted to the side and his fingers were twiddling.

“They did it! By any chance, can we know the name of your friend? Tell us, do they like [Reader]?”

“ Y-yeah s-something like that. T-they’re a little shy so. . .well then, that’s good. U-uh, I’m going to leave n-now. . .”

“ Take care, be safe walking back to your dorm!”

The ghosts all wished him safe travels. Idia nodded and began to walk slowly, once he was away from the ghost’s sight of vision he scrambled back to his dorm.

“You don’t think he was. . .?”

“Maybe, but wait. . . isn’t he the one [Reader] likes?”

Idia managed to make it to his dorm without being spotted. He entered his room and locked the door. Once he caught his breath, he made it to his bed and plopped down. He was tired, hopefully, the ghosts didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes and remained still for a brief moment before he turned, feeling the fabric of his pants rub against his hard-on.

‘Oh’

His cheeks reddened and his hair changed from a blue to a purple shade, close to pink. He reached into his pocket, taking out the used underwear. His other hand went to his pants, slowly freeing his hard cock. His breath hitched, he placed the used underwear up against his nose and inhaled deeply. His eyes rolled back at [Reader’s] scent and his free hand went to his dick, wrapping around it. Pre was already forming at the tip, he rubbed his cock up and down slowly, starting a soft pace.

“Fuck. . .”

His lidded and glossy eyes stared on, he slowly opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out. He gave a long striped lick, tasting whatever remained on the underwear. Whatever little control he had broke, he began to gradually fist his cock as he inhaled and exhaled. He was constantly giving licks as well, his body was moving on his own. He rolled over and entangled his legs with his bedsheets. He let the underwear fall on the pillow and dove nose-first into it. With his right hand, he began to grip the sheets. He rutted into his fist. His mind wandered to [Reader], how would they feel. If they saw him right now, what would they say? Would they call him a disgusting pervert? How dare he get off on your used underwear. How pathetic he is, rutting into his hand thrusting into his bed trying to find the right pace and friction to get off. Fucking pathetic, look at this loser jerking off to the idea of even being able to touch you.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck-oh fuck-!”

He imagined if [Reader] was into it as well. Would they step on his disgusting dick? Would they tease him, call him all kinds of names? Would they make him fuck himself before he even had the chance to fuck them? Idia was thankful for his pillow, other than being able to rest the used underwear so that he could smell and taste as much as he wanted. He was also able to hide his pathetic moans and whines. He was drooling, eyes rolling back and tears welling up.

“Fuckfuckfuck, I’m gonna-shit I’m gonna come-”

How their warm insides would feel. How their hole would clamp and clench around his dirty and pathetic cock. Imagine how it would feel to relentlessly fuck them.

“W-wanna touch them, w-wanna fuck y-you, [R-reader]!? W-wanna c-come i-inside you-ha fuck!?”

Would they let them come inside? How it would feel, leaving his warm thick sticky cum inside them. When he’d pull out he’d see the thick glob that left their used and abused hole that was stretched out just for him.

“C-Cumming!??”

Idia’s eyes rolled back as his back arched, his right hand gripping the sheets and his knuckles turning white, blowing his load into his hands. His cum shoots out to stain his bedsheets. His cum was warmer than average, how would they feel? Would they feel warm and satisfied? Sweat was coating his skin and he struggled to catch his breath. His left hand released his now limp dick and his right let go of the bedsheets. He lifted his body, getting on his knees and he looked at the pillow and [Reader]’s now soiled underwear.

“I l-love you so much. . .[Reader].”

[Reader] kept true to their word and turned to Idia for help setting up their phone.

“Oh, okay so I do this right?”

“You’re no better than a noob finally learning how to use a handheld console.”

[Reader] sent Idia an unamused look, but let out a laugh. Idia smiled, but changed his face the moment [Reader] turned to look up again at him.

“It’s standard, it’s similar to most models back in my world though some features are completely new. Hey Idia, can I ask you a question? Is this really the latest model and worth 200,000 thurmarks?”

“It’s the latest model and now it’s super rare. Those who preordered one when the sale dropped months ago were 100% guaranteed one with a small percentage that they would be sold in stores. They only released a few in-store ones so if you didn’t get one then, it’ll be months before you get one.”

“Woah, so it’s that special? Ace was telling me all the new stuff it was supposed to have but I just nodded and went with it.”

“Here.”

Idia handed [Reader] their new phone back, stuck on the contact screen. The contact read his name, ‘Idia Shroud’, with his phone number saved on it.

“So now you can reach me. M-maybe play the game now. . .”

“Thank you Idia, I was going to ask you about that too by the way. Do you mind if I lie on your bed?”

“Hm, no I don’t-WAIT YES I DO!”

Idia’s scream rang through his room. [Reader]’s eyes widened as they backed away from his bed.

“S-sorry, my bed is. . .messy.”

“Oh, I really don’t mind but if you do that’s fine. I can just sit here unless you don’t want me to?”

“N-no no, there is fine.”

Idia calmed down, scooting over to [Reader] to explain how to download the game and how to set it up.

It was like that, consistently for another two months. Idia wasn’t sure what to do, he had planned on confessing but how. Every time he thought it was the right time, someone just had to take [Reader’s] attention or ruin it for him. They could never understand them the way he did. After months of observing [Reader], playing games with them, and sharing deep meaningful conversations, Idia was the only one who could understand them. That’s what he believed, so why was it so hard to be able to confess them? No one was able to understand them to the capacity that Idia could and certainly, no one was worthy of them. Granted Idia himself didn’t feel worthy, but if he was the worm crawling underneath their shoe the other’s were the smears on the concrete. Idia huffed in annoyance, he was typing along to his online friend, Muscle Red.

Gloomurai: Can I vent to you about something happening IRL

Muscle Red: Of course, what’s wrong?

Gloomurai: How do you confess to someone you like?

Muscle Red: Oh, relationship issues?

Lilia scratched his head, geez. This was an awkward situation, it’s been a while since Lilia courted someone. He wasn’t sure how to proceed with the conversation but he was young once so it couldn’t be too hard.

Gloomurai: Not really considering there is no relationship yet, it’s more like I like someone but can’t bring myself to confess to them.

Gloomurai: When I want to, something always happens like the universe doesn’t want us to be together.

Muscle Red: I don’t think that's the case. I think you may need to set up a scenario where you are completely alone to confess, so you don’t have any interruptions.

Lilia winced a little when he read that back, it didn’t sound okay at first. Hopefully, Gloomurai doesn’t look too into it.

Gloomurai: It’s a little hard, they’re quite social. Almost everyone wants to talk to them.

Muscle Red: I’m sure if you asked to speak to them about a personal matter, they might set time aside to hear you out. Maybe that is when you confess?

Gloomurai: I’d probably stutter over my words to get it out, they’re just too cool. . .

Muscle Red: How did you meet them? Is this a close friend or?

Gloomurai: You could say that. They like the same stuff I like, we became friends with mutual interests.

Lilia let out a breath of relief. Unlike back then where you either knew the person from growing up together or being interested in them because of one interaction, common interests bonded people. So this should be easy.

Muscle Red: Hm, so then they probably know you and will feel more comfortable being near a familiar face. When trying to court someone you may want to start with a small gesture of kindness and trying to find time alone to be able to confess to them. That was how most of the time it worked then, but since this is a close friend they might already be able to pick up signs. [MESSAGE UNABLE TO SEND. TRY AGAIN.]

Muscle Red: You may have to be bold. Do something that they might never expect from you. Try to get them to see you in a different light than just a friend. If you’re able to do that then surely you can win them over, who knows maybe they’ll fall for you just as much.

Muscle Red: Do something that still falls within their comfort level to show that you still care and know certain things about them. I think once you’re able to show them how you care for them but also make them see you, I think that helps a lot. They already like spending time with you and enjoy common interests, so really, it shouldn’t be too hard. [MESSAFE UNABLE TO SEND. TRY AGAIN.]

Gloomurai: So try something bold, something that makes them notice my feelings for them?

Muscle Red: Exactly.

Gloomurai: Hm, thank you. I think I know what I should do. Thank you for this, really :)). Thank you for helping me defeat the boss too lol. C U!

Muscle Red: see you!

Gloomurai left the chat.

Muscle Red left the chat.

Lilia looked to the bottom right screen on his PC, looking at the symbol representing the internet.

“My, of all times it seems that the internet went out. Hopefully, they were able to read my messages and understand what I was trying to say. Oh well, they seemed to understand so hopefully it helps. Ah, young love certainly never fails to move my heart. Now, onto the internet.”

And so, that is where we find ourselves now. Idia was pacing around his room, biting his nails and muttering to himself.

‘Shitshitshitshitshitshit, what do I do? What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?’

[Reader] was sleeping soundly, snuggling into the bed. Clearly, this wasn’t their room and if they were to wake up, surely they would panic. The last thing [Reader] remembered was resting peacefully in their bed with Grim cuddling next to them.

“I did use a pretty strong spell, hopefully, they wake up soon. . .”

Idia peered over to see [Reader] they were still unmoving. He nervously made his way to them, getting on his bed and slowly crawling to them. The bed sank with his added weight, but nonetheless, they did not waver. He eyed their body, their features. Their chest was slowly rising with their steady breathing. Idia swallowed hard, his fearful expression didn’t leave his face either while he shakily extended his hand to touch [Reader]. His hand grazed their skin and his cold fingers met their warm skin. Tracing his finger from this shoulder to their forearm, touching their forehead and caressing their cheeks. He stopped breathing, afraid that it would ruin this soft moment for him. His eyes trailed down, to their chest. He removed his fingers from their cheeks and instead began to trail from their collarbone to their chest. With deep breaths and a flushed face, he started going lower. From their chest to their stomach, to their hips, and eventually, their crotch.

“You’re so pretty. . .wanna see you more. . .”

Idia lightly rubbed at their crotch, lazily stroking up and down. He didn’t intend to do anything and he certainly didn’t expect to hit any major pleasure zones. Idia continued to touch, not really doing much. He wondered if they were awake, what would they do if they saw him like this? Surely they would scream, be disgusted, and threaten to hurt him.

‘Be bold’

Idia nervously looked over to [Reader]with their eyes still shut. He looked over at their legs, placing his hands in the middle and prying them open. His head peeked up again, no movement. He got on his knees at the foot of his bed, dragging [Reader’s] legs down too. Idia placed his hand on their bottoms, dragging them agonizingly slow. He managed to take them off without stirring them and he left them in just their undergarments. Idia began to drool at the sight but he knew the surprise was waiting underneath the undergarments. Reaching above, he pulled them down swiftly and looked. [Reader’s] sex was exposed and visibly aroused. His cold fingers went to touch their most sensitive bit, lightly tapping it. Trailing their finger up and down, they noticed their hole clenching around nothing.

“What I would give for you to think of me touching you in your dreams.”

Idia shakily moved his face to their sex, giving it an experimental lick. Trailing to their hole, licking around the area. He removed himself and began to such on his fingers, once they were coated with his saliva he moved them to their hole. Inserting his middle finger inside. Idia let out a soft squeal when he felt their hole clench around his finger.

“F-Fuck. . .y-you’re so tight. . .”

Inserting his finger in and out, creating a soft pace and causing enough lubrication to insert another finger. Idia let out a small chuckle,

“It’s like you’re greedy hole is devouring me. . .I wonder what you’re dreaming about, [Reader].”

As Idia continued fingering [Reader], they turned to their sensitive bits and began to lick up and down, pressing light kisses on them. He continued to do this for a bit, lightly teasing them and pumping his fingers inside them. He began to suck and that’s when he noticed it, their body twitched. Thinking it was from pleasure, he continued to tease and explore their body. Their sensitive bits were being toyed with, sucked, licked, pinched, and stroked while he fucked his fingers into them. He didn’t notice the noises they were making as they were stirring, but his heart dropped when he felt his hands wander into his hair.

“[REA-]!?”

“D-don’t stop. . .p-please Idia. .m’feels good.”

He had to be dreaming! There was no way this could be real, but he didn't care. If it was a dream, then what a lovely dream it was. He nodded and returned to abuse their sex.

“F-fuck, right there-!”

Idia was overheating, he was eating them out with such intensity. Drool covers their sex and mixes with their juices. His fingers continued their assault, stretching them out in a scissoring motion while also reaching even areas they couldn’t with their fingers.

“M’ feels g-good, f-fuck g-gonna cum Idia-!”

[Reader] was coming undone, the feeling of Idia’s long tongue playing with their sex, sucking and kissing along with his fingers was a pleasure overload. When Idia’s fingers reached that soft and spongey spot inside them, curling his fingers to hit, they came. Grabbing his hair and pushing his face against their sex and bucking their hips, riding out their orgasm as they came on his face.

“C-Coming!”

Once they came down from their high, they released his hair. [Reader] raised their forearm to cover their eyes as they worked to catch their breath. Idia got up from the floor and got on the bed, crawling to them.

“[R-reader]. . .I-I-I-?!”

[Reader] removed their forearm, looking at him with glossy eyes. Idia could only gaze upon them with such love. Their body was covered in sweat, their skin was warm to the touch and their post-orgasmic face was divine. [Reader] propped themselves on their elbows, struggling to sit up on the bed. When they managed to, they turned to look at him with a dazed-out expression.

“Idia. . .wanna make you feel good too. . .can I?”

[Reader] asked in a slightly whiny voice that made Idia’s rock-hard cock strain against his bottoms. His breath hitched,

“E-EH? I-I N-NO Y-YOU DON’T M-MEA-EEP!”

Idia shrieked when [Reader] pushed him down on his bed, straddling his hips and rubbing their exposed sex on his clothed crotch. [Reader] raised their arms to remove their shirt, turning to remove his bottoms. [Reader] was able to pull down his bottoms and remove his boxer, exposing his dick. Idia’s hair turned into a pinkish hue with the rest of his skin burning up. He was embarrassed that his crush who he went down on, got to see him in a similar position. [Reader’s] hands were warm to the touch and they began stroking and rubbing his cock, jerking him off. Idia threw his head back, moaning uncontrollably and gasping as he felt their fingers play with his tip, rubbing it back and forth. Their free hand began to fondle his balls, creating a feeling of immense pleasure. Tears began to form and Idia looked at [Reader] with a face that was begging for mercy but at the same time, more.

“O-Of fuck! F-feels so fucking good! H-having my disgusting cock t-touched by you, [Reader]! F-fuck me, please I want it s-so badly!”

Before Idia could come, [Reader] let go of their dick. They went to their sex, rubbing their hole and inserting their finger, making sure they were stretched well. They leveled themselves to Idia’s cock and began to lower themselves down. Idia closed his eyes at the feeling of their hole clenching down hard on his dick. [Reader] was struggling themselves too, Idia managed to stretch them out pretty well. After a while, [Reader] began to move, slowly creating a slow pace while riding Idia, Their hands went underneath his shirt and to his nipples, playing with them. Their fingers caught them and began to pinch them.

“Fuck! H-ha…f-fuck, so tight!”

“Y-you’re so big, Idia. Feels so f-fucking good!”

Rolling their hips to meet Idia’s small thrusts to reach that deeper part within their insides. Idia’s hands went to grab and hold their hips, keeping them steady. Idia’s left hand went to touch their sex, rubbing and stroking to make them catch their high. Both their bodies were covered in sweat and their moans echoed throughout the room. [Reader’s] movements were getting sloppy, the feeling of their climax was right around the edge. Idia could feel it too, he wasn’t going to last long but he wanted to. He didn't;’t want this moment to end.

“I-Idia, hm feel’s so good, feel so full! W-wanna c=come. .-ha!”

“F-Fuck [Reader]! C-Come, please c-come!”

Relief was granted when Idia thrust one last time, spilling his seed inside them. [Reader] threw their head back and ended up cumming all over Iida. The room smelled of sweat and sex. Idia and [Reader] were both trying to catch their breath, until Idia began to thrust again.

“W-wait I-idia! I can’t, it’s t-too much! S-still sensitive-!!”

[Reader] placed their hands on his stomach, steadying themselves and that’s when they saw it. Idia’s glossy eyes, tears staining his face but his face was red. He looked like he was ready to cry again from the overstimulation.

“P-please, w-want more of you. W-want to feel you-!”

Idia began to relentlessly thrust upwards, hitting their deepest spots and continuing to play with their sex. It continued for a while until Idia had his fill, pushing [Reader] until they were no longer able to form coherent words just mindless babbles of their pleasure spilling out. Idia finally finished and managed to release inside them. He let [Reader] lie on the bed to rest, but never pulled out of them. They stayed connected even when Idia was no longer hard. [Reader] looked over at Idia who was avoiding their gaze. [Reader] smiled, breathing out before speaking,

“I love you, Idia.”

“H-HUH!? N-no, surely you’re just pulling my leg-”

“Idia, we just fucked. I’m not pulling anything, you think I don’t know that you were stalking me?”

Idia let out a whine, diving headfirst into their chest to hide his embarrassment. Wrapping his arms around their waist, pulling him closer to them.

“I know you’ve been stalking me around. I also know you were the one who got me the phone, the ghosts told me you stopped by my house.”

Idia peeled himself away enough to look up at [Reader] who looked at him with adoring eyes.

“ You probably hate me, you must think I’m disgusting aren’t I.”

“I don’t hate you, but I do think you’re pretty disgusting. I don't mind, I like how disgusting you are about me.”

Idia gazed into their eyes before shying away, continuing to shove his face in their chest. His pink hair was a dead giveaway that he was completely enamored and not okay with that response.

“ Oh, and I also know you jerked off to my used underwear.”

A sob left Idia’s lip.

Bonus:

Muscle Red: Hello, it's been a while. So, how did it go with the one you wanted to confess to?”

Gloomurai: Hello. It went well, I went bold as you said. I kidnapped them and I guess they were into that lol. Thank you for your advice. Now, do you want to do that quest?

Gloomurai: Muscle Red? [MESSAGE COULD NOT BE SENT. USER MUSCLE RED IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE]

Gloomurai: Muscle Red? :(( [MESSAGE COULD NOT BE SENT. USER MUSCLE RED IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE]

A/N: I have no words because I lowkey hate the writing because I split it up into several days of work so it’s not only consistent but I think I cannot write smut to save my life as well I used to and well yeah. Happy birthday IRL bestie.

#yandere twst #yandere twisted wonderland x reader #yandere twisted wonderland #yandere idia #yandere idia shroud #yandere idia shroud x reader #yandere idia x reader #idia shroud #twst idia #twisted wonderland idia #yandere x darling #yandere x y/n #yandere x reader #yandere #yandere smut #idia smut #twst smut

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coralinnii · 1 year

Text

forgetting your jacket and wearing someone else’s feat: Sebek · Rook · Idia · Kalim genre: fluff, jealousy note: not gender-specific reader, no pronouns used (except maybe gendered French words in Rook's part but unsure), established relationships, reader is not part of Scarabia in Kalim's part, reader is implied to be smaller than Jack in Rook's part

I'm not sure how satisfied I am with this one because this was honestly quite a challenge for me. I haven't read book 6 yet so Idia may not be too accurate to his canon character? But still, I hope you guys enjoy it

Would definitely scold you for forgetting to wear your jacket. No matter how warm or how cold, Sebek always wears his school uniform neatly and with pride, his honour as Malleus' guard on the line. A sloppy appearance reflects a sloppy character, he believes.

You didn’t feel too bad when he was reluctant to give you his jacket upon request. You shouldn’t force someone just because you’re a little cold.

Fortunately for you, a classmate of yours noticed your shivering and offered his own for the time being, saying he has a spare for Flying class. You thanked your good luck as you graciously accepted. Now Sebek won’t feel bad about not giving you his jacket, right?

With your newly acquired jacket, you managed to survive the first half of the school day and went to find Sebek in the cafeteria during recess. You waved at him happily as you approached his table but he did not return the greeting.

He felt a sense of bile in his throat when he saw you in a jacket that did not fit you at all. The shoulders were too wide and the sleeves engulfed you. Sure, you looked cute but he doesn’t like it. He initially thought that it was because he didn't like how unfitting it was on you.

“Human, where did you acquire that jacket? It doesn’t suit you at all”

When you answered how someone offered his jacket to you, the bile was more prominent. The way you snuggled into another boy’s jacket, the oversized fabric enveloping you like a warm cocoon. Sure, he was hesitant over handing you his jacket before, but knowing someone else provided for you hits him in a sore spot as your boyfriend. He wants to be the one to take care of you, to be your ever reliable knight.

Quickly, Sebek stood up from his seat and started to remove his own jacket. Without looking at you, he asked you to remove the jacket you have and put his on.

“But I’m comfy”

“Please, I…I beg of you”

You did as he asked and after quickly putting away his lunch tray, he escorted you back to your dorm to get your own jacket and to quickly return the jacket of that generous classmate of yours.

“The idea of seeing someone else take care of you… as your boyfriend, I will not stand for it!”

A masterful huntsman, Rook Hunt is not an easy man to track. Not to mention the fact that he’s a third year and Pomefiore’s vice Housewarden, you figured that searching for him this early in the day would be a fruitless endeavour.

Luckily, you did find Jack who, despite his grumbles over your absentmindedness, offered his jacket to you. Happy, you promised that you returned it with a favour to the beastman.

However, the atmosphere around you seemed odd to you as the school day went on. Other students, particularly the beastman students, were busy whispering and gossiping behind you which confused you and honestly got a little bit on your nerves.

All those unpleasant feelings quickly disappeared when you spotted a familiar feathered hat in the distance. Without a word, you quickly rushed through the crowd to give your boyfriend a hug from behind.

Or least, that’s what you planned if it weren’t for Rook quickly turning to encase you in his arms instead.

“I thought I heard your adorable footsteps running towards me. What a wonderful surprise!”

You laughed, thinking you should have known nothing gets past Rook. You tried to step back but realized that Rook maintained his grip on you, inspecting you with a look of curiosity.

The hunter looks over your newly acquired jacket. The shoulders are much too bulky to be yours. He noticed the Savanaclaw emblem on the sleeve which would explain the jacket's size considering how the majority of those students are. However, he caught the scent of something - of someone - familiar. A certain tall, gruff beastman to be precise.

“Mon amour, is this perhaps… Jack Howl’s jacket?”

“Oh, how did you know?” You exclaimed as you told Rook how you were cold today and Jack offered his jacket to you this morning.

“So that explains the whispering I’ve been hearing” Rook thought as he carefully traced the lapels of the jacket clearly not tailored for you. There’s a charm to see you in a new look like this but the hunter himself is experiencing a new emotion, a burning feeling in his chest that compels him to rip away the offending fabric. Is this jealousy? Perhaps a possessive urge to reclaim his spot that feels threatened by a newcomer?

Oh, what a beautiful new experience you have given this admirer of beauty. Rook happily revels in this feeling he has never experienced before until meeting you.

“How wonderfully kind of him. Let us find him, I must share my thanks for caring for my beautiful trésor~”

There’s a part of you that feels like it would not be a good idea to bring Rook to your friend, but you decided to brush that anxious feeling away. After all, the smile on Rook’s face convinced you that there was no harm (poor choice, really).

Hidden from your sight, Rook’s fingers slightly twitched in anticipation as the two of you went to look for the white-haired freshman. Rook truly did want to offer his thanks to the beastman…with some helpful tips for surviving a hunter.

“One must be very careful in the wild. It is not smart to leave marks near a hunter’s territory”

You didn't even bother to try asking him, this man isn’t even on campus. Even if he was, you doubt he would give you his jacket, probably claiming it’d be “such a normie cliche”, leaving you to find other means to find warmth.

Thankfully, you found the kind-hearted Silver who was gracious enough to lend you his school jacket for the day. With all the interesting types of students you have encountered on this campus, your flame-haired boyfriend included, Silver is odd himself for simply being such an outlier case of a typical student here.

The day went off normally, and you decided to visit Idia in his room before heading back to your dorms. You hope you could spend some intimate time with him, some cuddling and perhaps a kiss or two.

Too bad your boyfriend had other plans, which was apparently playing video games while purposely ignoring you. His back is turned towards you and every time you get close to him, the gamer has the audacity to scoot AWAY from you.

“Idia, please tell me what’s wrong before I actually get mad”

“...that jacket” You heard him mumble which confused you further. You asked to repeat himself.

Which led your introverted boyfriend to yell out, surprising you. “You're wearing that jacket! And it had to be that guy who’s practically an otome game target!”

Idia was sulking the entire day as he saw you through the security camera accepting Silver’s jacket. He wanted to scream and call foul-play on that but instead he reluctantly faced reality. Of course, Silver will be that type of guy. The mysterious but kind knight archetype with good looks to boot. Idia wouldn’t be surprised if he was some kind of long lost prince.

“Well, I would love it if my boyfriend would give me his, if he wasn’t allergic to coupley stuff” there was some snark in your tone but you never really want to pressure Idia to do something he doesn’t want. You would love to show off your relationship with Idia but you wanted to respect his comfort.

Idia knows that, and he’s grateful for you for not pushing him too far out of his comfort zone. But still, knowing someone acting like that with you, all sweet and caring, leaves a sour taste in Idia’s mouth.

There was a short pause between you two, letting the mood settle before saying anything else. Then, Idia quietly asked, “Do you want to share jackets…with me?”

“Absolutely” you gasped excitedly and without another word, Idia turned to his computer and started searching the Internet for worthwhile jackets in his sizes and yours. If you have more jackets then you won’t have to go around asking for someone else’s.

Also, even he can’t resist the giddy feeling of seeing his amazing lover wear something that’s special only to you and him, not that he would admit it out loud. Too cringe.

“If we’re doing the lame normie stuff, we’re doing it our way. And no sharing with anybody else, right??”

Kalim would absolutely offer you his jacket, his vest, his shirt, heck even his pants without question. Whatever you want, he would give it up no questions asked. But you were surprised how you couldn’t find your boyfriend at first, until he texted you he had to be called in for a Housewarden meeting with Crowley which leaves you to wait for him in the cold.

Luckily, a classmate of yours from Scarabia saw you shivering and offered his jacket to you. Afterall, you were his Housewarden’s beloved so he wanted to make sure you’re warm for Kalim’s sake. You were touched by this sentiment and accepted the jacket, promising to return it after meeting with Kalim.

Kalim ran to hug you as soon as he saw you as he left his meeting, enveloping you in his warm embrace with a grin on his face. In his excitement, it took a while for him to register your slightly new look.

“Did you join Scarabia? Are we in the same house now?!” Kalim excitedly asked which you laughed at his silliness.

When you explained the story about the jacket, Kalim was really glad. He thought about how lucky he is to have such kind people in his dorm that was so happy to help out his beloved, he must reward them later! The white-haired man was happy that you were cared for in his short absence.

But, what is this other feeling in his heart? This heavy feeling in his chest that slightly aches when he saw how you adjusted the jacket on you, bringing it closer to your body like a comforting blanket. He felt unsatisfied, almost fearful of your attachment to this jacket.

Was he jealous?

Kalim shook off his thoughts as he removed his soft beige cardigan and the jacket you have. You watched him confused as he draped his cardigan over you, replacing the heat from your classmate’s jacket to his.

“Kalim?”

“I just thought you’d be comfier if you had my cardigan instead. It’s really soft!” he grinned as he pulled the large cardigan to wrap around you like a cute burrito.

And to be fair, Kalim’s cardigan WAS comfier. Probably made with the highest quality and taken the best care by you assume Jamil. You happily snuggled into its warmth, reveling in the cloud soft coat, missing the loving looks from your sunshine of a boyfriend.

Yea, he definitely likes seeing you in his clothes better.

Don’t be surprised to see packages of luxurious coats and sweaters from yours truly. You two can match!

“If you’re ever cold, you can always come to me first! I’ll make sure to keep you warm!”

#disney twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland headcanons #twisted wonderland imagines #twst scenarios #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #twst imagines #twisted wonderland scenarios #twst fluff #sebek zigvolt #sebek x reader #rook hunt #rook x reader #idia shroud #idia x reader #kalim al asim #kalim x reader

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routeless-writer · 7 months

Note

Adored your lilia smut

can I request body worship and breeding link with lilia??

ANON YOU ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE RN. Thank you hun! I’m so glad you and so many people liked it, I honestly didn’t expect it to blow up like it did! Happy to write for my favorite old man.

MC pronouns: GN/NB (no pronouns used, implied they/them)

CW: NSFW, breeding kink/breeding talk, pregnancy talk, excessive praise/body worship, Lilia being a brat dom, Lilia also being filthy, mod mezzo ALSO being filthy, oral sex mentions (reader receiving), marking, blood/biting/vampirism mention (it’s Lilia, so), light light LIGHT possessiveness, the slightest degradation (I use slut like once), i say he’s a tits man and then clarify that the tits are gender neutral and just mean your chest.

Listening to: Casket – Ren Zotto

Now Lilia is a dom that’s heavy on praise

He will absolutely degrade you if you ask for it, but his favorite thing is watching you squirm from even the smallest of compliments. He wants his baby bat to know how much he loves them!! Especially when you have just the cutest reactions to it.

Think Gomez Addams if Gomez was a switch leaning dom (because Mr. Addams is like, canonically a sub lol)

He follows you around a lot, even more so when he’s horny or finds himself having…baby fever, shall we say?

He can’t help it! He’s been wanting to raise another kid and all, and the thought of getting to spend a domestic life with you…the thought of you carrying his child…even if you physically can’t, he still finds himself hot and bothered at the idea. Plus, adoption is always something you two could discuss if you were serious about the actual breeding portion of the breeding kink, but wouldn’t be able to have kids/didn’t want to go through pregnancy.

Unless you’re shorter than him, he’ll likely be the perfect height for him to rest on your chest, and even if you are shorter than him, I can see him being quite attached to your upper body, regardless of whether there is boobage there or not and regardless of level of boobage.

What can I say, he’s a tits man (read tits as gender neutral)

So it’s the first thing he goes for with praise

He’ll casually slide a hand up your shirt at any given time to feel you up, resting his head on your shoulder and humming little compliments in your ear about how soft your skin is, how warm you are, how he just wants to bite down on your cute little nipples and–oh, look at that! They’re already hard hehe

“Khehehe, are you that sensitive, darling? Don’t worry, if it works you up that much, I’ll make sure to take care of you. I love the way your body reacts to just the slightest touch…so gorgeous.”

Lils is an oral fiend, too, and it’s one of his favorite ways to worship you. He’d gladly get on his knees for his precious baby bat at the drop of a hat. Holding your hips in place as he nestles between your thighs and tastes your arousal, his eyes rolling back dramatically so he can show you just how sweet you are to him. Don’t move too much, darling. It’s his job to pleasure you!

“So good. So good for me…you taste perfect…such a sweet pet, all the blood rushing here…be careful, I might just devour you.~”

Obviously it’s hard for him to be vocal with his tongue on your clit/your cock down his mouth, so the heavy praise comes when he finally gets to fuck you.

Lilia typically either opts for doggy or mating press. He loves seeing you ass up, face buried into the pillow as he rams into you, but when his breeding kink flares up, that’s when he prefers the second option.

He likes to see your face when he fucks into you and talks about how cute your red cheeks are, how he wants to stuff you full and fill you up. And he talks. He doesn’t know how to shut his mouth unless he’s using it to get you off.

He’s also generally just very playful and giggly during sex. A brat dom, if you will, so expect plenty of teasing on his end about how needy you look with your legs hiked up like that.

“Pretty little thing, all folded over under me. Look at me, let me see your expression. Ah….mmnh, take my fingers in your mouth, just like you take my cock. Tight little bloodpet…you’re so perfect, little one. I want to see it, I want to see you all full and fucked out. That’s nice isn’t it? You’d love to be knocked up, you’d love to be pumped full of my cum. Awe, look at you. Look at you take it. Your hole is so tight around me, so pretty as you bounce on it. That’s it…that’s it, you’re doing so well. So gorgeous…”

He’ll drag your hips closer as he rocks against you, touching you to the pace of his thrusts, and pushing you down further into the bed with the kind of strength you wouldn’t expect someone so small to have.

He kisses and nips at anything he can get his lips on–your neck, your chest, your stomach and thighs. He’s a groper, too, so he’ll watch as his fingers sink into your skin, leaving bruises on your hips and legs.

“You’re going to be so full and sensitive, I’ll watch you get heavy with my child…you’re mine, you’re perfect and you’re mine.”

Usually Lilia’s far more focused on your pleasure than his, but something about the way you’re begging him to empty inside you is sending shockwaves down his spine. It feels like during sessions like this, he loses his well-composed nature altogether. Right before you’re about to cum, tightening up around his aching cock, he’ll lean in and sink his fangs into your neck, pressing a hand to your abdomen to feel how his dick drags along your walls.

That’s enough to do it for you, the aphrodisiac bite making you cum hard around him, and he doesn’t dare pull out as he cums with you, growling into your neck.

Lils is a fae, and faefolk cum a LOT. It’s hot and sticky as he spills inside of you, holding your hips as close to him as he can, fucking into you as you both finish and you shake. It’s enough to drip out without pulling out, much to Lilia’s disappointment. Guess he’ll just have to cum inside you a few more times to make up for it!

Lilia’s the type to make you cockwarm him after breeding sessions. He can’t have his efforts go to waste–you will be knocked up by the end of the night.

“Maybe I should make you keep a toy in overnight. I have to make sure it takes, sweet thing.”

You can expect a quick session right before class the morning after, too. He’s serious! He really wants to raise kids with you, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.

You two make quite the mess of the bed, cum and blood stains are scattered across the sheets. Lilia will handle the clean up, don’t you worry! He has to make certain that his spent little human rests after such a rough session.

Now that you’ve awakened this kink in him, Lilia’s ready for regular breeding talk during sex. Hope you like being fucked into the mattress and used for hours, cause he’s hellbent on making you his breedslut now.

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#request #twst #twisted wonderland #secret stash #lilia sin hours #lilia vanrouge #lilia vanrouge smut #lilia vanrouge x reader #twisted wonderland smut #twisted wonderland x reader #twst smut #twst x reader #twst x yuu #lilia vanrouge x yuu

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1-imaginary-girl · 10 months

Text

Wolf Bite

Klaus Mikaelson x Reader

Summary: During a fight between your friends and Klaus and his hybrids, you get bit. A certain someone appears later to help heal your wounds and complicate your feelings. Reader uses she/her pronouns.

Warnings: Violence, fluff

Word Count: 4850

Part 2

A/N: I have been obsessing over Klaus lately and thought I would share this passion with you guys. I haven’t seen TVD or TO in a while so I apologize if I get anything wrong about the lore. It doesn’t follow any canon plot, just inspired by Klaus healing Caroline’s bite.

You’re leaning against a wall in the Salvatore brothers’ house as the rest of your friends talk about their newest plan to threaten Klaus and his family. The idea seems foolish to you, but you know better than to voice your opinion. Ever since the Mikaelson clan moved to town, being a vampire has gotten a lot more complicated. You’re suddenly not so immortal when there’s a whole group of people out to get you and your friends.

You’ve also started to notice a shift in the group as Elena now has feelings for both Salvatores. You’re well aware that your presence has slowly started to go unnoticed and yet here you are again. You watch as the group argues about how to lure Klaus and co. to the woods where you’ll meet him.

“What if we send someone to his house to deliver the message?” Elena suggests. But Stefan shakes his head.

“No, it’s too risky,” he says.

“Not if we send someone with a white oak stake for protection,” Caroline says.

“That would ruin the plan,” Bonnie says. There’s a silence as the group thinks of a new idea. Until Damon speaks.

“What if we get Y/N to call him?” Damon says, looking at you for the first time today. Your eyes widen as the rest of the group now looks at you. As if they weren’t just ignoring you.

“What? N-no way,” you say, not prepared to be put on the spot.

“Come on, he’s clearly shown an interest in you. Now’s the time to use that,” he argues. It’s true. Ever since you first met, Klaus seems to have taken a liking to you. But you think the group’s making it a bigger deal than it is. You think he just does it as a way to annoy the group. Though why he chose you instead of someone like Caroline or Bonnie, you’ll never know.

“I don’t want to do that,” you say, not wanting to explain exactly why. You’re not even quite sure yourself. “Besides, it probably won’t work. I mean, I don’t even have his phone number.”

“Oh right,” Damon says, furrowing his eyebrows as you throw a retch in his plan.

“You could deliver the message in person,” Caroline suggests. Your jaw almost drops.

“Wait, so it’s too risky if someone else goes to the house, but not me?”

“Come on, he won’t hurt you,” Damon says. You’re beginning to think being a wallflower was the better option.

“We all have to help, Y/N,” Elena says. You choke on your words as you look around, seeing no one objecting to this plan.

“Wait, you guys my message spell!” Bonnie exclaims. Everyone turns to her and you are relieved to be out of the spotlight as you lean back against the wall. “I need paper, something to write with, and something of Klaus’s.”

Though you are currently mad at all of them, you decide you’re mad at Bonnie the least so you open your bag. You’re able to scrounge up the materials, even something of Klaus’s (you didn’t ask). With the necessary ingredients, Bonnie performs her spell and the written note lights on fire before quickly disintegrating. She opens her eyes.

“That should do it,” she says.

“We should go,” Elena says and everyone agrees.

†††

The group is waiting in the woods for Klaus to appear, as is expressed in the letter. Another argument broke out on the way here as to who will get the white oak stake as you only brought one to threaten Klaus with. The group didn’t want to risk any of the other stakes. In the end, Damon won the argument as he reminded Stefan his responsibility was to look out for Elena, which she did not like. The rest of you are armed with regular stakes just in case anything happens.

“When is he going to get here?” Caroline says, though no one answers as no one knows. “I mean, how can he even find us? We’re in the middle of the woods!”

“He can probably track us by seeking out Elena’s blood,” Damon says which angers Elena. Sometimes you feel bad for her being the only human amongst the group (other than Matt), and other times you envy her for it.

When the group is about ready to give up, you hear something coming. The other vampires can hear it too and you ready yourselves. Soon enough, Klaus stands before you with a smile on his face. “Well, well, isn’t this a nice surprise? I hadn’t realized we were pen pals,” the Original says. His eyes rake over the group and he perks up when he spots you. “Hello love.”

The others glance at you and, panicked to be on the spot again, you say, “Uh, hi,” with a small and awkward wave.

This causes Klaus’ smile to grow wider and seemingly more genuine, and you try to suppress the urge to blush. Although you don’t think your friends were pleased by that interaction.

“I assume you know why you’re here,” Stefan says, bringing Klaus’ attention back to the group.

“Ah yes, the cryptic message,” Klaus says. “So, what is it that I must see? Truly, I’m dying to know.” You see Damon smirk.

“I wouldn’t act so cocky,” he says.

“Oh, and why’s that?” Klaus says with an entertained look on his face. His face changes, however, when Damon reveals the white oak stake. His cocky attitude shifts quickly to fear and anger. “Where did you get that?” he growls.

“Well it turns out when your sister burned down that bridge, she didn’t realize that other things were made from your precious oak tree,” Damon taunts. He’s exaggerating, of course, as there was only one other thing made from the tree. But Klaus still looks fearful.

“So what? You really think you can kill me with one stake?”

“We don’t intend to kill you. At least not now anyway,” Caroline says.

“We called you here as a threat. To tell you to leave Mystic Falls or else,” Stefan says with a calm smile on his face.

“Oh, and this isn’t the only stake. We wouldn’t risk bringing all of them with us just for you to break them,” Elena says.

“You’re bluffing,” Klaus sneers.

“Care to find out?” Damon asks. You can practically feel the steam of anger rolling off Klaus.

“How dare you threaten me,” Klaus says, his blue-green eyes turning a deadly shade of yellow.

“What are you going to do about it?” Damon says with a taunting smirk. Klaus’ face shifts and he smirks back.

“Why I’m so glad you asked,” he says. He then lets out a whistle and some of his hybrids emerge from the woods. You widen your gaze as you hold out your weapon, trying to assess the situation. The hybrids move in closer, and you can see the others preparing themselves. “Now, let’s try this again. Hand over the stake, and no one gets hurt.”

You thought the answer would be obvious. Sure, Klaus might be bluffing but you can’t kill that many hybrids. And what’s one lost stake anyway? However, you seemed to be the only one thinking that.

“No thanks,” Damon says. You look at him incredulously.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Klaus says. As soon as Klaus advances, his hybrids pounce and the group is thrown into an attack. Your weapons will only slow the hybrids down, but your best hope is to get the upper hand and snap their necks to incapacitate them.

Damon and Klaus immediately face off. The rest of you prepare to face the small army of hybrids while Stefan protects Elena. One of the hybrids locks onto you and hisses before attacking you. You instantly try to hold the hybrid off and stab her, but you can feel her overpowering you in strength.

Still, you rely on your moves in combat to avoid any major injuries or worse, her bite. You manage to get the upper hand and stab her through the stomach, and while she’s slowed down, you move to behind her back and snap her neck, knocking her out for a good while.

You’re trying to catch your breath when you sense another hybrid coming at you too late. He pounces on you and you slam into the ground with him on top of you. You’re caught off guard and without your stake. When you try to move to fight back, the hybrid digs his teeth into your shoulder. A short scream rips through you, powered both by panic and pain.

Meanwhile, Klaus is fighting Damon when he hears the scream. He looks your way as he feared it was you, and the scene causes his eyes to widen. With a newfound urgency, Klaus faces Damon and quickly finds a way to snap his neck.

As you’re panicking from the bite, you feel the hybrid being pulled off of you and you see Klaus with a furious expression. The hybrid is very confused by his sire’s anger. You think you hear Klaus growl, “Not her,” before snapping their neck.

You’re shocked at what just happened all at once and remain on the ground, sitting up with wide eyes looking at Klaus. He looks away from the hybrid to meet your gaze and his eyes instantly soften. He looks concerned, though you’re not sure why. He makes a move to walk toward you but before you can say anything, Caroline rushes over to you.

She quickly puts herself between Klaus and you. “Stay away from her,” she hisses at him. Klaus’ expression shifts back to anger, and before you can explain to Caroline what’s going on, Klaus’s gaze flick from her to you and then he sprints away. Not just away from you, but he leaves the forest. The hybrids that haven’t been incapacitated follow.

You look after him, longing to talk to him and figure out why he saved you, when Caroline’s face comes into view. “Are you okay?” she asks while helping to pull you off the ground. You nod and you guess that’s enough for her because she walks towards the rest of the group.

You’re a bit stunned as Klaus seemed to show more compassion than your friend, but you merely shake off the exchange. From the woods, the group heads back to the Salvatore’s place. You trail behind them, your mind racing as you’re overly aware of the fact that a werewolf bit you. Not just a werewolf, but a hybrid. You haven’t told your friends about it because you don’t want to be a bother to them as that’s all you feel like you are these days.

On the way back, your mind wanders to the one person that seems to be on everyone’s minds these days. Klaus. You don’t know why he saved you, even from his own hybrid, but you want to thank him. You know you should hate him like the others do but for some reason every time that man looks at you, your stomach erupts into butterflies.

You feel awful for how you feel, you know all the harm he’s caused to your friends and not to mention the world, but you can’t help it. It doesn’t help that he pretends to be soft on you either. You haven’t told anyone about your feelings, whatever they are, for fear of persecution but you can’t stop thinking about him.

You arrive at the Salvatore’s and the group huddles in the living room for a quick debriefing of what just went down. All the while images of Klaus and your bite flash through your mind. You look at your shoulder and you can’t see the full damage as it’s covered by your shirt but you know it’s not good.

“How are you holding up, Damon?” Caroline asks teasingly. He glares at her and rolls his neck.

“Doing just great thanks,” he says.

“What the hell even happened?” Elena asks. “I mean, why did they just leave?”

“All I know is, one minute I’m holding my own against Klaus--” Damon says and to this you hold back rolling your eyes. Klaus must’ve been going easy on him, toying with him. “--and then he gets this raged look on his face and boom, lights out.”

“He went to Y/N,” Caroline says causing all of their eyes to stare at you again. You bite back your annoyance at her for bringing that on you.

“What happened?” Stefan asks while the rest of the group waits. The image of Klaus looking at you causes your face to heat up and you struggle to come up with a lie. You don’t want to tell them the truth when you yourself haven’t even gotten to the bottom of it.

“I-I don’t know,” you say. They still stare at you. “Maybe he was mad at me for harming his hybrids.”

“There were two knocked-out hybrids beside her,” Caroline adds. The group looks at you with a mix of shock and amazement.

“You knocked out two of them?” Damon asks with surprise and slight amusement. You don’t want to outwardly lie so you just kind of nod.

“And then he just left,” you say.

“It still doesn’t make sense. I mean, why target you specifically?” Bonnie asks.

“Maybe he’s miffed his lover betrayed him,” Damon says and your face turns beat red.

“W-What?! I am not his—” you burst out in surprise until someone cuts you off. No one even looks your way.

“Or maybe he’s planning something,” Elena suggests. The rest of them start diving into conspiracies but your mind is elsewhere. You suddenly feel drawn to look at your bite. The more you look at it, the more it’s like you can feel the venom pumping through your veins. Your heartbeat is suddenly too loud and you feel like you can’t breathe.

You don’t know if it has something to do with the venom or just your overall panic, but all of a sudden, the world goes black.

†††

Your eyes slowly open and your vision is blurry at first. Figures stand over you and after blinking a few times, you recognize your friends.

“She’s awake,” Elena says, as if everyone isn’t seeing it for themselves. You realize you’re lying on the Salvatore’s couch. You wonder how long you blacked out for.

“What the hell Y/N?!” Caroline instantly yells at you. You flinch at her volume but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Why didn’t you tell us you got bit?”

At the reminder, you look back at the bite only to see that its gotten worse. You wince at the sight of it and face the group. You guess they discovered it when you passed out.

“I don’t know, I-I thought I could handle it,” you say, not wanting to admit the real reason. Most of them roll their eyes at you.

“Of course you couldn’t handle it!” Damon says. “You should have told us.”

I didn’t know you cared. You bite your tongue to keep the words from spilling out of your mouth. “I’m sorry,” you say, losing interest in the conversation as you are now painfully aware of the venom from the bite.

“What are we going to do?” Bonnie asks. They begin to cut you out of the conversation even though they’re talking about you and you decide you can’t deal with this right now. You stand up from the couch, feeling a bit of a head rush before steadying yourself. This seems to draw their attention.

“Hey wait, where are you going?” Stefan asks, as they all look at you with bewildered expressions.

“I’m going home,” you say and start to walk away. Unfortunately, they follow.

“You can’t just go home!” Caroline exclaims, reacting as if you just said you were going to the moon.

“Watch me,” you say, your frustration getting the better of you. You try to make your way towards the door but a few steps in you stumble and Stefan speeds over to steady you.

“Okay, we’ll take you home, alright?” he says and in that moment, you’re grateful for him. He turns to the rest of the group. “We can regroup at her place and brainstorm ideas there while keeping an eye on her.” The rest of the group seems to agree with the idea. In separate cars, the group drives over to your house.

Soon you’re pulling into your driveway. They’ve all been invited in before so entering isn’t a problem. With Stefan’s help, you climb the stairs and soon find yourself in your cozy bed. You wish you could just sleep away this problem but a sudden sharp pain from the wound reminds you that isn’t possible.

“So what now?” Elena asks as the group piles into your bedroom. It feels weird and you’re slightly uncomfortable with it but you keep quiet and just get under your inviting covers.

“Maybe we can ask Klaus for help?” Bonnie suggests. At this, Damon instantly scoffs.

“Yeah that sounds like him,” Damon says.

“Maybe he’ll do it for Y/N,” Caroline says. “He does have a soft spot for her.”

“I don’t know if that’s enough for him,” Stefan interjects. “We all know what he’s after.”

“No,” Damon says. “We finally have a real weapon against those Original assholes and I’m not just going to throw it all away for—”

“Damon,” Elena hisses and nudges him in the chest before nodding over to you. Once more, all eyes are on you and you don’t know what to do. Damon looks away, maybe feeling guilty for basically saying you’re not worth it.

“Why don’t we continue this conversation downstairs?” Caroline suggests. You once again wonder why they’re talking about this situation without you but you’re too tired and hurt to care.

“We’ll be downstairs if you need anything,” Bonnie says and then the group filters out closing the door behind them.

Throughout the day a few of them check in on you every once and a while, barely giving you updates on if they’re going to find a cure. As your pain grows and the sky darkens, you start to think that maybe this is it. Maybe this is how you die. You never imagined it happening like this and your chest caves in at the thought of a final death but it’s looking more and more likely.

You’re not sure what time it is, but later in the night you hear a faint knock which sounds like it’s coming from your front door. You ignore it, not having the strength to answer it. You figure one of your friends will answer it. If they’re even home.

The knock sounds again, louder and more persistent, and you start to suspect that your friends have left. You take a deep breath as fear coils around your throat, constricting your breath. Your friends aren’t here and you’re going to die all alone before you even got to live. The knocking stops and you settle back into the silence.

Then a sound comes from your window. It sounds like…knocking? From your bed, you can’t see the outside since it’s too dark out. You wish your friends were here. Slowly, you climb out of bed and try to rally your strength in case you have to fight something or someone. As you walk over your confusion only grows.

There, perched on a branch from the tree outside your window, is Klaus Mikaelson. He gives you a wave and you hesitantly wave back. You approach the window cautiously before opening it.

“Um, can I help you?” you ask, trying to understand what you’re seeing. Hallucinations are a side effect of wolf venom, right?

“Well hello to you too, love,” he says with a cheeky smile on his face. His eyes roam over your body and his smile falters. You suddenly become aware that this is the closest you’ve ever been to the Original. You try not to let your cheeks flush.

“What are you doing here?” His smile drops entirely, noticing your serious demeanour.

“I’m here to help. Now if you could just let me in—”

“Help with what?” His face becomes grim as his eyes trail over to your shoulder. It’s now out in the open as you’ve changed into pajamas. You then remember that he must’ve seen the bite when it happened.

“Your wound, love.”

“Why…why would you want to help me with that?” you ask. Then a thought occurs. “Wait, have my friends spoken to you?”

His eyebrows furrow as he shakes his head. “No, I haven’t heard from them,” he says and though you can’t say you didn’t expect it, your heart drops at hearing it. “Wait, do they know about this?”

“Um yeah.”

He looks angry as he asks, “And where are they now?”

You look at the floor and try to keep your embarrassment inside. “I don’t know, I thought they would’ve contacted you.”

“Apparently not.” His face is still twisted in anger although you’re not quite sure why. Then he looks at you and seems to remember why he’s here. “So, can you let me in?”

The thought of having Klaus Mikaelson in your room makes your heart beat faster. And though you want to give in, to continue living your immortal life, you hesitate. “Why should I trust you?”

“What?”

“How do I know if I let you in now, it won’t come back to bite me in the ass?” you ask, your arms crossed.

Klaus doesn’t seem to understand your concern. “Love, you realize that’s a hybrid bite. I don’t think you have the time for this.”

“So you admit that you would use it later?”

His face scrunches up. “That’s not—no I wouldn’t do that—just please let me in,” he says, giving you a sincere look that threatens to break down your walls. Just as you’re about to question him more, a wave of pain washes over your body. You let out a groan as you slightly stumble back. “Y/N?” The pain grows more intense and you let out a whimper before you collapse onto your knees. “Y/N!” It’s as if your body is at war with itself and you can feel every impact of it.

“You have to let me in, just say the words and I can help you. Please!” You hear Klaus say from the window. But it’s hard to find words when the pain is so intense. You want it to stop. “Y/N!” You hear him bang his fist against the walls of your house.

You slowly lift your head up to see his worried face, desperately waiting for you to let him in. You no longer care if this will come back to haunt you. You take a few deep breaths before you say, “Come in.”

As soon as the words take effect, Klaus rushes into the house and scoops you into his arms. You clutch at his chest, not thinking of anything but the pain. He carries you over to the bed and gently places you down before quickly running over to the window to close it. The pain seems to be dwindling down but you know it’ll be back. Your whole body is so weak, you used the last of your strength to walk over and talk to Klaus.

Speaking of, he’s quickly back at your bedside, eyes furiously scanning you for signs of physical distress. Then his eyes lock on yours and you feel your breath hitch. “You have to drink my blood,” he says quietly to you.

You know that that’s the cure and that it will save you, but you’re still hesitant. This is Klaus you’re talking about. The big bad hybrid who’s been attacking your friends and causing chaos for weeks now. And yet for some reason, a part of you wants to trust him. A part of you wants to give in to the idea that he could be good. But how can you trust him when you can’t even trust your own instincts?

He must sense your hesitation, because he leans down to look into your eyes. When you look at him, you’re stuck by how truly beautiful he is. His eyes are a beautiful blue, but more than that, they hold a look of sincerity in them. “I know you don’t trust me, I wouldn’t either,” he says. “But this is what’s going to save you. So please, take a chance. What have you got to lose?”

He does have a point.

“I don’t want to die,” you admit in a small voice. Your breath stutters as you let the fear bubbling inside of you rise to the surface. Klaus’s look is sympathetic.

“I don’t want that either,” he whispers. Your eyes meet and you feel caught in them. “Let me help you.”

Maybe it’s because this is a different, more sincere side of Klaus that you’ve never seen before. Maybe it’s because your friends are gone and you’re feeling vulnerable. Maybe it’s because your instincts seem to have aligned. Either way, you nod your head.

He offers you a small smile. He then sits on the bed and gently shifts you so that you’re leaning against his chest. You’re too weak to move yourself. Klaus rolls up his sleeve and bites down on his wrist before bringing it close to your lips. You’re tempted but look at him to make sure it’s okay first. He nods and you sink your teeth into his wrist.

At first, you feel weird about the situation. But then you lean into it and begin to enjoy it. Klaus whispers encouragingly in your ear as his blood enters your body. You can feel your strength begin to return and the fog in your brain clear. You almost don’t want to stop, and the way Klaus is petting your hair doesn’t help. But eventually, you know you’ve had enough, so you pull away.

“Wasn’t so bad, eh?” Klaus says and you look up to see him smiling down at you. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I think so.”

“Then I guess my work here is done.” He moves you so you’re lying back on your bed, but when he moves to leave, you grab his arm. He looks back, confused.

“Why did you do that?” When his confusion doesn’t clear, you clarify. “Why did you help me?”

He looks down at the floor and his lip twitches into a smile. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, love, but I quite fancy you. Wouldn’t want you dying on me before I’ve had a chance to win you over.”

His words shock you enough to let go of his arm. The strangest part is that he looks sincere about it. “But…you actually like me? Like, that wasn’t all an act?” you ask. Both of you seem to be confused by the other.

“Why would I do that?” You start to feel embarrassed.

“To—to get on the group’s nerves? To throw us off?”

“Is it so hard to believe that I might just like you?” To be honest, the thought hadn’t occurred to you. Trickery made more sense.

“Yes,” you say and then wish you didn’t. “I—I mean, why me? Why not Caroline or Bonnie?”

“Besides the fact that you’re the most gorgeous creature I’ve ever laid eyes on?” he asks and you’re suddenly glad it’s dark because your cheeks are on fire right now. “Because you’re different.” That doesn’t make you feel so great. He must have picked up on that because he catches your eye and says, “Because you’re better.” The idea makes you flustered, that anyone would think you’re better than them, let alone a powerful hybrid like Klaus.

“I still don’t understand.”

“Hmm.” He seems to think on what to say before smirking. “Then I guess I’ll have to do a better job at showing you.” When he winks at you, you think your face might be on fire from how hot it is. Once again, he turns to leave.

“Thank you,” you call out which makes him stop in his tracks. He turns around to face you and seems confused by your words. But you mean them. He didn’t have to save you, you gave him nothing in return, and yet he did.

He smiles and you think it’s much better than the fake ones he gives to the group. “Of course love,” he says. “Couldn’t have my favourite vampire dying on me.” You give him a smile back, genuinely happy to hear someone say that to you.

Then your eyelids begin to feel heavy and you have to blink rapidly to stay awake. Klaus sees this and says, “Goodnight, my love,” before opening your bedroom window.

“Goodnight,” you say back as you watch the window close. You lay back down on your bed, thankful to no longer be dying. You guess you have your new saviour to thank for that. As you close your eyes, you can’t help but see Klaus in a different light. Not as a villain, but as a complicated man. You don’t think your friends are going to like your change of heart, so for now you’ll keep it to yourself. You’ll be content in knowing that maybe the big bad hybrid isn’t so bad after all.

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