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[delicatetrashtree]

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[delicatetrashtree]

Poetry

Fred Weasley x FemGryffindorReader

Ginny is upset about Harry’s reaction to her valentine poem, and y/n assures her a poem is a very romantic gesture, When Fred hears this, he gets an idea.

———————————————————————

The Gryffindor common room was still bustling at this time of night, excited girls giggled with their friends as they flashed roses and secret love letters they’d received. The boys were congratulating each other on jobs well done. A few people were moping at their efforts having been rejected.

You were curled up in one of the armchairs closest to the fire, legs tucked underneath you, your Potions homework long forgotten on your lap. Ginny Weasley sat beside you on a pouf, small shoulders hunched, eyes suspiciously shiny as she poked at the fraying edge of her sleeve. Fred and George Weasley were sprawled on the floor in front of you, an Exploding Snap deck crackling between them as they launched teasing insults and dodged bursts of smoke.

Ginny sniffled. “I just thought…maybe he’d like it. I worked hard on it,” she mumbled, blinking quickly and avoiding your gaze.

You reached out, brushing a strand of her fiery hair behind her ear with a gentleness that made her eyes glisten even more. “Ginny, it was sweet and brave. You poured your heart into it. If he didn’t get it…well, that’s his loss.”

Fred, from where he knelt by the fireplace, let out a theatrical groan. “You mean that poem? The one with the ‘hair as dark as a blackboard’ bit?”

“Yes, personally I don’t know how being told his eyes were ‘as green as freshly pickled toads’ didn’t immediately win him over.” George howled with laughter.

Fred dodged an Exploding Snap card and stuck out his tongue. “Oh yes, I’d love it if my eyes were compared to a disgusting, slimy animal, Gin.”

Ginny’s face went crimson.

“Hey!” you snapped, frowning at them both, even though you found it hard to reprimand Fred. The boy was your soft spot. Three years of friendship and you’d fallen for him hard. It was your little secret. “She was being honest. That poem was really romantic. At least she had the guts to say what she felt.” You glanced at Ginny, smiling warmly. “I wish someone wrote something like that for me.”

Fred paused, a Snap card hovering just above his hand. His eyes flicked to yours, sharp and curious.

“You do?” he asked lightly, but the tone was wrong. Equal parts careful and doubtful.

You laughed, not noticing. “Of course. Who doesn’t want someone to write a poem for them on Valentine’s Day?”

George snorted. “I’d write one, but it would be about myself. Bit narcissistic, but the rhymes would be top-notch.”

You rolled your eyes as Ginny giggled beside you. The moment passed, the twins went back to their game, but Fred didn’t look away from you right away. His eyes lingered on your profile as you smiled down at Ginny - soft, thoughtful, distant.

Little did you know, a plan was already forming.

———————————————————————

The next morning dawned pale and cold, but there was a strange excitement in the air, as though the castle itself had picked up on the undercurrent of mischief.

You yawned your way down the girls’ dormitory stairs, tugging your jumper over your head and dragging your bag behind you. The common room was quiet save for the fire.

As soon as you cleared the bottom step, a booming voice rang out, startling you so hard you nearly rolled your ankle.

“GOOD MORNING, SUNSHINE OF MY SOUL! LEND THINE EARS TO A MESSAGE MOST BOLD!”

You froze.

There, standing in the center of the common room atop a side table was George Weasley.

Dressed in a white tunic. Wings. Tights. And - yes, unfortunately - a golden bow slung across his bare chest and a quiver full of heart-shaped arrows. He looked like an off-brand Cupid who had raided Professor Trelawney’s tea cupboard.

“Oh no,” you whispered, stepping back.

He cleared his throat dramatically and struck a pose. “Ahem. From a most secret admirer - though, really, he’s as subtle as a Bludger to the head - comes this ode of undying affection.”

You raised an eyebrow. “George…”

And then he sang. “O fairest flame with lion’s pride, who walks with stars and does not hide. Thy laugh outshines the morning light, and makes the darkest dungeon bright.”

You slapped your hand to your mouth, stifling a laugh. You instantly remembered your conversation from the night before and quickly came to the conclusion that Fred and George must be pranking you for your comments to Ginny.

“With eyes like firewhisky’s gleam, you haunt the corners of my dreams. Your wit as sharp as cursed blades, you set my quiet world ablaze.”

George twirled, nearly falling over. “I see you there by candle’s gleam, the queenly heart in crimson seam. And if I dare, I’d say it true, I’ve gone and lost my mind for you.”

“So if you laugh, or think it jest, know that I still feel so blessed. To see you smile just once a day would chase the lonely nights away. George bowed low. “Signed, with excessive admiration…your mystery poet.”

The common room erupted in laughter and applause.

You couldn’t help it - you doubled over, guffawing like a hyena. “Okay, nice one, George, but tell Fred his lines were a little cheesy for my tastes.”

George gave you a weird look but bowed and strutted out of the room like a peacock on parade.

You smiled to yourself, still giggling. You never noticed Fred watching you from the boys’ staircase, face unreadable.

———————————————————————

By the time you got to Charms that morning, you sensed something was wrong.

Fred wasn’t talking to you. At all.

In fact, he wouldn’t even look at you. Every time you made a joke, he turned away. When you nudged him with your elbow, he shrugged it off with and focused on his wand movements. Even in Transfiguration, where you normally passed notes or teamed up on McGonagall’s trickiest assignments, he kept his distance.

You stared at his back during lunch as he talked to Lee Jordan, heart sinking. What did you do? Was he mad at you?

“Oi.” You turned to find George flopping into the seat beside you, plopping mashed potatoes on his plate with alarming speed. “Why’s Fred mad?”

“Bit dense today, aren’t you?” The younger of the two twins shot back.

You blinked. “Excuse me?”

He leaned in, dropping his voice. “That poem I sang this morning?”

“…Yes?”

He looked at you like you were the slowest Hippogriff in the stables. “Fred wrote it. For you. And you laughed. Did you expect him to take that well?”

You froze, fork suspended mid-air. “Aren’t you supposed to laugh at jokes and pranks?”

“Except it wasn’t a joke,” George raised an eyebrow. “Ge was being serious.”

“He…what?!” you whispered.

George nodded. “Wrote it last night after you went up to bed. Told me not to tell you if you laughed. But honestly, I hate watching him mope. So I’m telling you anyway because I’m pretty sure you like him back.”

“What? No, I…Why would you think that?” You face flushed red and George looked at you with a pointed expression. “Okay, fine, maybe yu’re right.”

Your stomach twisted. You’d laughed. You thought it was a prank. And Fred - Fred Weasley, joke master extraordinaire - had written you a poem. A romantic, vulnerable, real poem.

You were an idiot. No. You had to fix this. And you had an idea of how.

“Hey George…”

———————————————————————

The sky above the Hogwarts pitch burned with the pale gold of a winter sunset, streaked with long violet shadows. The crowd was electric, banners fluttering, red and blue scarves waving like flames. Lee Jordan’s voice rang out above it all, his commentary full of jokes, cheers, and the occasional scolding from Professor McGonagall.

You stood just behind him in the announcer’s booth, eyes locked on the game below, though you could barely concentrate.

Your heart wasn’t in the match. It was in the air with Fred.

He soared like he was born to the skies - spinning through Ravenclaw Chasers, dodging Bludgers from their Beaters. His hair was a glint of auburn flame in the air, his movements all effortless grace and mischief.

And you had laughed at his poem.

You still felt sick about it. You hadn’t known - it felt like a prank, like one of those over-the-top stunts the twins pulled every other week. But you should have known better. Fred could be loud and wild, sure. But when he was serious, when he meant something, he meant it with his whole heart.

And he’d meant it for you.

Below, Angelina Johnson caught the Quaffle mid-air, curled her body into a spin, and slammed it through the center hoop. Lee shouted the score - Gryffindor now leading by twenty - and the pitch trembled with applause.

You took a deep breath and closed your fingers around the parchment in your pocket. It was creased and smudged from how many times you’d opened and reread it today.

“Looks like Harry’s about to end it. Ready?” Lee murmured, smirking as he took the enchanted microphone from its hook.

You nodded.

“And Harry Potter has caught the snitch! Gryffindor wins!” Lee bellowed, his voice echoing over the loud celebratory cheers.

“You’ve got five minutes,” he said to her in a lower tone as he covered the mic before handing it to her, stepping aside.

The final whistle blew, echoing across the pitch like a gunshot. Red and gold confetti burst into the air from somewhere in the stands. Gryffindors leapt to their feet, screaming in victory. Fred pumped a fist into the air as George collided with him in a midair hug, both of them laughing madly.

Now or never. “Hi! Um, wait! Everyone, can you just stay where you are for a minute?”

The students turned in confusion. Some of the professors - McGonagall among them - raised eyebrows but didn’t move to stop you.

Fred, still hovering just off the ground, turned toward the podium, brows knit in curiosity.

You swallowed. Your stomach was full of pixies and nerves, but your voice was steady. “I know today’s supposed to be about the match,” you began, heart racing, “and Gryffindor absolutely crushed it—” (that got a round of cheers) “—but I have something to say. Actually, I have something to fix.”

You could feel hundreds of eyes on you. Your palms were sweaty. But all you saw was Fred, hovering alone above the pitch, motionless, staring.

“I messed up. This morning, someone sent me a Valentine. A really beautiful, clever, heartfelt Valentine.” You looked down at your parchment, unfolding it with shaking hands. “I laughed at it. I thought it was a prank. Because the idea that someone like him could like someone like me just felt impossible.”

A few oooohs and whispering spread through the stands.

Fred’s mouth parted just slightly, as if he’d forgotten how to breathe.

“So I’m doing the only thing I can think of,” you said. “I have one last valentine that needs to be read.”

You took a breath and began to read, your voice loud and clear. “To the boy who plays with fire and air, whose laugh is a dare and eyes soft with care, who flies like chaos with lightning breath, and stole my heart like it was an easy theft. You wrote me words I didn’t deserve, and I met them with the wrong kind of nerve. But now I see what you were brave to say, and I hope I can say it back today.”

Fred hadn’t moved.

“Because when you laugh, the world feels bright. And when you tease, it somehow feels right. And if I’m bold enough to speak this true, then yes, I’ve fallen hard for you.”

Your voice cracked a little on that last line. You glanced behind you. George gave you a wild thumbs-up and struck a match.

The fireworks exploded into the sky in a blast of scarlet and gold, showering the pitch with glittering stardust.

They twisted and turned midair, forming letters.

Be mine?

The crowd erupted. Cheers echoed off the towers, louder than the final whistle. Even the Slytherins clapped, impressed by the theatrics. Somewhere in the stands, a Hufflepuff was sobbing into their sleeve.

And Fred…Fred had tears in his eyes. He rocketed forward on his broom, landing with a soft thud in front of the podium. You stared down at him, every nerve in your body alight.

He didn’t say a word. He just jumped onto the podium, grabbed you around the waist, and lifted you clean off your feet.

You shrieked in surprise and then laughed, clutching his shoulders as he spun you in a circle, his forehead pressed to yours.

The crowd was deafening.

When he kissed you, it was all warmth and relief and pent-up joy. The world seemed to fall away - the stands, the cheers, the snow melting into the grass - and all you felt was Fred, grinning into your mouth like he couldn’t believe this was real.

He set you down gently, cupping your face with both hands, his voice soft just for you. “You weren’t laughing at me?”

You smiled through the tears threatening your lashes. “Not even a little.”

He kissed you again.

“All right! That’s enough, Mr Weasley, Ms y/l/n!” McGonagall finally cut in but even that wasn’t enough to stifle your joy.

———————————————————————

Later that night, long after the pitch had cleared and the sky returned to quiet stars, you sat by the Gryffindor fireplace, curled in one of the squishy armchairs. Fred sat beside you, legs stretched out, one arm lazily draped behind you. The party was still going strong in the background. Seamus was singing off-key, someone had conjured rose-colored fairy lights, and a plate of Chocolate Cauldron Cakes was making the rounds.

But all you could think about was the warmth of Fred’s hand slowly playing with your fingers.

“You know,” he said, glancing at you sidelong, “I was going to ask George to perform another verse.”

You arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

He nodded seriously. “Something about your laugh sounding like a singing Fwooper.”

You couldn’t help but giggle and he snapped his fingers at the sound. “That’s it! Just like that!” Fred’s smile turned tender. “You looked beautiful up there.”

“I looked like I was going to vomit.”

“And yet, still beautiful.”

Your cheeks went hot. He leaned in a little closer. “I’ve liked you since the start of the year,” he murmured. “You were always hanging out with Ginny, even though she’s three years younger than us. And you look so pretty when you’re doing your homework, the way you chew on your lip all thoughtful like. And you’re always making those ridiculous puns in History of Magic…”

“They’re very good puns,” you countered.

“They’re so bad they loop around to genius.”

You laughed again, and Fred’s grin softened into something almost shy. “I wrote that poem because I didn’t know how to say it plain. I was scared you wouldn’t feel the same, and that I might make things weird or awkward between us.”

Your fingers brushed his. “I’m sorry I laughed. It’s been years of me waiting for you to finally notice me as more than your friend. I guess I got to used to waiting It didn’t occur to me it had finally happened.”

“Years, you say?” Fred tilted his head, eyes glinting with something mischievous.

“Oh, shut up,” you nudged his side with your elbow, face flushing pink.

“Maybe next Valentine’s, we both skip the poetry and just snog behind the broom shed?”

You feigned outrage. “That’s terribly unromantic.”

“Fine,” he said, leaning in so his nose brushed yours. “I’ll bring you chocolates and then we’ll snog.”

You pretended to ponder it. “Deal.”

He kissed you again, slow and sure, and for the first time all day, your heart was completely, utterly still.

You were his Valentine. And he was yours. And that’s how it would stay.

[delicatetrashtree]

Stupid, Bloody Beaters

pairing: fred weasley x reader

synopsis: in which your sudden, unwilling participation on Gryffindor’s quidditch team leads to a connection you didn’t know you needed with the only person you never expected to fall for

warnings: umbridge being umbridge, r is female and gryffindor, unjustified hatred, slight anger issues, cringey dracotok pickup line (please tell me someone will understand), slightly suggestive at the end

word count: 8.1k

masterlist

a/n: This is my contribution to the fandom in hopes that there will be another fic boom, I miss my ginger boyfriend. Consider it the first of many as I have literally thousands of WIPS for him, I just never finish them. I also read in the official Quidditch manual that boys are often preferred over girls for the Beater position due to their 'strength' and I think that's just another stupid example of smelly Rowling's disgusting gender ideology so this is sort of a response to that... Here you go Fred army, be fed!

When Hermione had worn you down enough to finally agree to attend that morning’s quidditch match with her, never in your most unprompted fantasies would you have guessed how horribly it was destined to end.

It wasn’t worth her satisfaction nor the high mark on your upcoming potions paper that she promised to help you with. But you’d agreed, defenseless against her constant harping until you couldn't take it anymore. You figured there’d be no harm, only unfathomable boredom. Merlin had you been wrong.

You were reluctant to go for many reasons. Even if the overstimulation of the roaring Gryffindor crowd alone wasn’t enough to deter you, as a skilled flyer yourself, you didn’t find any of the plays in the slightest bit remarkable. There was no move performed in a simple Hogwarts game that you couldn’t conquer on a slow, windy Tuesday at your house. However, you commiserated with Hermione’s wishes of supporting your mutual friend, Ron, in one of his first games on the team as the boy bore the habit of unbearable nerves.

You’d known Ron and his family for longer than you had even studied at Hogwarts as many warm summers at the Burrow supported your deeply founded friendship. The Weasley’s home was always buzzing with life, much preferable over your own lonesome home where your parents, busy Muggles, worked day and night. There was just one notorious foil in your perfect paradise and his name was Fred Weasley.

It didn’t matter the length of your relationship with the Weasleys, the twin never showed any promise of getting along with you. Perhaps if he possessed more qualities that likened him to George, who possessed the capacity for occasional compassion and some level of benevolence, there may be more common ground to trod on. But he wasn’t, Fred was conniving, cruel, and always conspiring on how he could milk more galleons out of the Hogwarts student body. Sure, some of his inventions could be considered useful (like the delightful daydreams charms that you had enjoyed more times than you were willing to admit), but most proved to be a money making scam in your opinion. And after more than a decade of knowing Fred, you had found nothing in the slightest bit redeemable about him. You had been victim to too many of his pranks as a child.

And you hated him for it.

By no means was this your first quidditch game, but it was your first attendance in a long while especially considering the absence of games the year before due to the failed Triwizard Tournament.

With all the action on the field, it was difficult to focus on one player. You tried to watch only Ron, but your wandering eyes couldn’t resist the action around the tall hoops he was guarding, moving with the Quaffle from robes of scarlet to emerald and back again. Then there were the Beaters who’s sharp blows could be heard roaring from each side of the pitch. They swooped in and out of the mass of brooms that guarded the main ball, protecting their own colors and striking the opposite.

You were so transfixed by them, like an avian dance, you didn’t realize you were only following Fred for several minutes until Hermione broke you out of your trance. She pointed towards the Slytherin crowd, mumbling about a chant that had broken out in the stands with the most atrocious lyrics all attacking poor Ron.

The tension came to a head when Harry at last found the Snitch, narrowly avoiding a Bludger to win the game, but the song only gained volume and intensity. You were dragged by Hermione out of your seat to console your friend, chasing after her as she flew through the stairwell to the center of the pitch. Neither of you made it in time to hear what Malfoy, no doubt the leader of the chorus, was spewing to Ron. It wasn’t just him anymore as Harry and the twins were in the midst of the scene.

You couldn’t hear anything the boastful blonde said, but you knew very well after four years sharing a castle with him that Malfoy never gave up the opportunity to make your lives miserable. So as George’s fist suddenly collided with his pale sneering grin soon joined by brutal hits from Harry, you could only assume it was a strike well deserved. In all honesty, no amount of violence was enough compensation for the suffering he had caused you and your friends.

You noticed Fred wasn’t far behind, only missing the action by force as it took restraining by all three Gryffindor Chasers to keep him out of the fight. Even then he was making gains on the turf, inching forward with his hands set on strangulation.

You wished it had only been Madam Hooch and McGonagall to break up the fight. At least they would’ve been fair, perhaps a brief suspension and a week of detention. But of course, enabled by the misguided authority of the Ministry, Umbridge inserted herself into the matter.

That’s how you ended up on a bench outside her office, nestled between Ron and Hermione as you waited for the final verdict of how the involved should be punished. Hermione had offered to walk you back to the tower, but you insisted on staying for support. Frankly, your curiosity overpowered your desire to leave and you figured Hermione would appreciate having someone other than the boy she was mad for, not that she’d ever admit it.

“And that’s when Malfoy started talking absolute filth, saying rubbish about my parents and Harry’s mum. So they pounced on him, Harry and George. Only way to shut him up really,” Ron wrapped up his explanation of the event, filling in key context where it was missing. “I reckon they’re getting the whole team suspended. That Umbridge doesn’t give a damn about quidditch. It already took us ages to register.”

“Let’s hope all they get is detention.” replied Hermione.

“I don’t see what she had against Gryffindor anyway. Other than Harry, of course, but why should our whole team have to suffer?” 

“You do know she was a Slytherin, right?” you informed.

Ron only gave a low moan, shocked, but not at all surprised. He believed more than anyone that all evil is born in Slytherin house and Umbridge was more evil than most billionaires. There was no telling as to what punishments her sadistic mind could come up with. You were left only to speculate.

Many minutes ticked by before the grotesquely pink door that guarded Umbridge’s equally intense office creaked open, spitting out Harry, Angelina, McGonagall, and the twins. By the melancholic look on each of their faces, you could tell Umbridge decided on the worst possible scenario.

Before any of you could ask for an explanation, McGonagall rushed ahead of her students and much to your surprise as well as your dismay, she turned directly towards you.

“Am I correct in assuming you have a broom and ample flying experience?”

You froze out of utter confusion, unsure of why the Head of your house suddenly cared about your flying skills after three of her most valuable players were likely up for expulsion.

“Come on,” she chided, scolding you by your last name. “I haven’t all evening.”

“Uhh yes, Professor,” you sputtered. “but I don’t-”

“Good.”

There wasn’t any time for inquiry as the infamous Dolores Umbridge slithered from her office not a moment later, her plump face complimented by her signature smug grin. She exuded an air of satisfaction as if pleased by her decision and much to your horror, she looked directly at you.

“Congratulations on your new role, my dear. I do hope you’ll be prepared for next week,” she smirked wickedly, providing absolutely no context. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find Kirke. Let’s hope he’ll be an adequate replacement.” though by the insincerity in her tone you could tell she was in fact against whatever she had claimed.

You felt your breath again return to you as she sauntered off, disappearing into the next corridor.

“What’s she on about?” Ron asked what all of you were wondering once he was sure the woman was long gone.

“Well,” Harry began, unsteady as he met your anxious gaze. “There’s been a certain adjustment… to the team.”

“What kind of adjustment?” Hermione repeated.

It was George who spoke now, each word dashing from him in a frustrated explanation.

“That bloody woman banned us from flying the rest of the season! Locked up our brooms and everything.” George complained.

“Actually, she banned us from flying for life and gave us a week detention, but yes. That is the general gist of it.” corrected Fred who was actively concealing his own anger much better than his twin.

“And since we had to register each player with that old hag,” Angelina rolled her eyes as she gestured towards Umbridge's office. “we don’t have a reserve team to pull new players from.”

“Who’s in then?” Ron asked.

His question was met with silence and it didn’t take you long to notice why. Heart beating wildly within its cavern in your chest, you realized in horror as each person who had been forced to meet with Umbridge, Angelina, the twins, and even McGonagall.

“Why are you all staring at me?” you asked.

But it was obvious. Deep down you already knew. You shook your head before anyone could answer you, denying your fate as if it hadn’t already been written for you.

“No!” you cried as your professor stepped forth to lay a hand against your shoulder. “I can’t play!”

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, dear,” she informed you with a lament. “Umbridge threatened to suspend the whole team if we couldn’t name anyone. And I’m told you're the best flyer left in Gryffindor.”

“What about Ginny? She’s much faster than I am.” you suggested, though you had a sinking suspicion it wouldn’t matter.

“Ginny will be taking Mr. Potter’s place as Seeker.”

You’ll be replacing Fred.” interjected Angelina and of all the news you’d been told in the last five minutes, her statement alone had to be the worst of it.

In place of a response, your eyes widened and you had to focus in order to keep your jaw closed. Gryffindor giving away the cup altogether was a preferable alternative to relying on you as Beater, though both would have the same consequences.

“I’m aware of your lack of expertise in the position you’ve been assigned,” McGonagall began, her tone changing to one of comfort. “But I’m afraid you’re the only student in Gryffindor who’s close to qualified for playing in our match next week. That is if you’re truly as talented as Mr. Weasley had implied…”

Of course. You should’ve known it was Fred who dragged you into this mess. You searched behind your professor to shoot him a confused glare, one that he dodged. Despite her attempt at consolation, no comfort could slow you’re spiraling as the words drifted out of your scurried mind and into the world.

“But what if I can’t? I’ve never even held a bat! And I’ve never played with a real team, only in scrimmages.”

”Fred’s agreed to help you adjust before you start with the team,” answered Angelina, elbowing the twin as she spoke. “I'm sure you’ll be just fine once you get the hang of it. At least I hope so.”

“But-“

“I’m sorry, but we can’t debate this unless you want to go up against that awful woman,” McGonagall nodded towards Umbridge’s foul pink door. ”It’s been decided. Now if you excuse us, Ms. Johnson and I need to find poor Mr. Kirke before Umbridge can break the news to him.”

Then they were off, hurrying away in the direction Umbridge had gone in only moments before, Angelina only pausing to shout at you over her shoulder. “Training on the pitch, ten o’clock tonight. Be there.” And then she was gone.

Fred stepped forward as you turned back to the group, red from what you could only assume was guilt. Not for what he was putting you through, but most certainly because he got called out for it.

“I-”

“Don’t.” you snarled before he could spew any insincere garbage, wrapping your arms around yourself. “I guess I’ll see you on the field.”

With nothing more to say, you set off for the tower. And no one tried to stop you.

Now with practice, you only had a few hours to chisel down your very real and growing pile of homework before your mandatory training with the only person you wouldn't choose to be around even if you were paid in Honeydukes vouchers. And you knew he felt equal disdain towards you.

Despite assurance from Hermione as she brought you back a plate of supper, you couldn’t accept that everything would work out for the better. You couldn’t even enjoy one of your favorite meals at the Gryffindor table seeing as you were preoccupied with the final draft of your herbology thesis and ridded of any appetite.

“Listen, it’s really not that bad,” Hermione tried, taking your plate after you swallowed the only morsels you could stomach. You supposed the rest would go to Ron being the bottomless pit that he was. “At least it’s with Fred and not someone like Cormac McLaggen.”

“Honestly, I’d take McLaggen,” you argued. “I’d take anyone over Fred.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I absolutely do.”

In lieu of proper wear, you pulled a simple outfit out of your closet, just enough to keep you warm in the night air. You weren’t trying to look impressive.

“Try to remember what the goal is,” suggested Hermione. “You’re doing this for Gryffindor and for Harry and George. Don’t let your feelings prevent that.”

“I’m doing this because of that devil woman ruining our school, Hermione,” you seethed, frustration pouring out of your. “Now I have to deal with him on top of it all.”

“I know,” she empathized. “Trust me, I hate Umbridge as much as everyone else, but you just can’t think of it that way. It’s easier to see it differently.”

“And how am I supposed to see it?” You were flipping through the contents of your trunk now, searching frantically for your favorite jumper.

“You don’t have to admit it, but I know how badly you’ve been wanting a place on the team,” Hermione smiled knowingly. “Ever since 2nd year and now a spot’s been practically gifted to you.”

Without any sort of rebuttal, you turned to face your friend who was holding your jumper out for you. Of course it was out of your trunk.

“He’s gotten better since you guys were younger,” she explained. “Who knows, he might even be nice to you.”

“I really hope you’re right.”

Unsurprisingly, you were forced to wait on the field for several minutes before Fred arrived. Seconds ticked by as you leaned against one of the towering goal posts and fiddled with the splintering tip of your broom. It was a quarter past ten by the time his figure formed through the distant fog and his familiar smirk came into view. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he called, hurrying over to you. “Detention ran over, brutal by the way, and I had to find a spare broom since mine is chained up in that old bat's office.”

You looked at the worn broom in his hands, almost sorry that he had to go to all the trouble for a lesson you didn’t see as necessary. No one deserved to suffer under the wrath of that woman, but perhaps if anyone did, you would want it to be Fred.

“Whatever,” you shrugged, unyielding to any empathy that tried to force itself up to the surface. “Let’s just get this over with. You have the stuff?”

“What am I, your Alihotsy dealer?” he chuckled, though you had no amusement to spare for his otherwise pathetic humor.

Your silence washed over Fred like a blanket of bluntness and he immediately grew more serious.

“Angelina said she left a couple paddles and a bludger for us to use over there.” he pointed behind you where as promised, a box was poorly concealed behind one of the thick poles. You weren’t sure how you hadn’t noticed it before, but you watched closely as Fred retrieved it, popping the lock as he dove into explanation.

“From what she told me, Ange wanted me to go over everything, but I’ve seen you play a mean chaser more than once at the Burrow, so I know you already understand the basics.”

He bent down to pick up one of the paddles, twirling it around his fist as it fit comfortably in his perfect grip like the right ring around a finger. His experience was evident in the way swung it, every move precise after years of playing.

“I’m just going to refresh your Beater memory, maybe help you hit a couple since it is a partner position.” he stated, tossing you the other paddle.

You caught it easily, ignoring how unnatural it felt in your own hand before mounting your broom with impatience.

“Yeah yeah, let’s just get on with it so I can go to bed, okay?”

You took off from the turf before Fred could protest, circling above him as you soared to level with the hoop of the highest goal. You couldn’t see it through night and fog, but he shrugged as he released the squirming bludger out from its bindings and hurried to meet you in the air.

Though it sprung on you without warning, you were quick to hit the vicious ball away as you slammed it into what you realized too late was Fred’s direction. Luckily, he dodged the hit with ease.

“Woah, careful,” he chided. “The point is to send it towards the other team, not your partner.”

“I get it, Weasley, just hit it back. Spare me the lecture.” you glared. It was an accident, afterall.

Fred sighed as he waited for the ball to return and struck it his expert way, without the need to look at it. Instead his eyes were focused on you. The Bludger flew upwards and bounded towards you on its descent and while your deflection wasn’t quite as effortless as your companions, it was decent enough to send the thing away. Only for a few seconds.

“Always try to hit with the inside of the paddle,” Fred spoke, jumping into another lecture. “A backswing in the air is too hard, even for the most experienced and especially if it’s a windy game. Instead, try to reorient yourself so you can-”

“I GET IT!” you shouted, fed up with the unsolicited explanations. You were successful at so many other positions in Quidditch, you didn’t think you needed it. You narrowly avoided the next attack as the bludger sped towards you again. It was a miracle that you could lift your paddle in time to slam it away, the force sending a sharp pain through your arm. But it wasn’t enough.

“Woah!” Fred shouted, eyes wide. “Careful, look out!”

You were adjusting to the blow when disaster struck. You couldn’t see it, but it hit all the same as the bludger struck your side with such a force that it knocked you from your broom and sent you spiraling towards the grass far below. You didn’t even have time to scream.

You could faintly make out a shout of your name as Fred flew straight for you, catching you just before you could splatter on the ground like a ripe watermelon. You clung to him instinctually, holding back tears and heavy breaths. You leaped onto the turf the moment he touched down on solid ground sulked away trying to shake off the fall.

From behind you, the snarling ball sank into the grass, dirt flying, and was soon caught by Fred before it could rebound and cause anymore destruction. He held it tightly in the crevice of his toned arm as if it weighed no more than a snitch.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Rendered by some form of speechlessness from the descent, you didn’t respond. Your face was turning red with frustration that only worsened with every word that left Fred’s mouth. You knew he didn’t care, so why was he pretending to?

“Maybe we should take a break,” Fred suggested, hoping to elicit any kind of a response from you. “Or we can move this to tomorrow? Clearly tonight is not the night.”

“No,” you refused, waiting for your broom to fall and catching it by the handle. “I want this to be over.”

“I know, but maybe we’ll be more productive after some rest.”

“I don’t need rest,” you scowled. “Just need you to tell me what I have to do so I can be done.”

“Hey,” Fred exclaimed. “I’m just trying to help you.”

“Maybe I don’t want your help!” you shouted. “Maybe after years of suffering from your stupid pranks, I don’t think you have the ability to be helpful in ANY capacity and I would much rather you go back to leaving me alone!”

Silence.

It was a rare occurrence in the presence of a Weasley twin, but your harsh words had accomplished it.

You almost felt sorry when Fred turned from you, sure that your outburst had driven him away for good and that he was walking out of the pitch and forever out of your life, but he only made it to the goal posts. He leaned his brom against the center post and quickly secured the Bludger back into the box before making his way to the edge of the pitch where the stands were draped in Gryffindor scarlet and gold. He lifted it, ducking a shoulder under before he turned back to nod you over.

“You coming?”

You hesitated, wondering if you were really welcome after your fit, but after a second of deliberating, you nodded and followed ashamedly. Fred waited for you to set your broom beside his and held up the fabric for you as you dipped inside.

You were bewildered.

You’d never thought of what the underside of the stands looked like, but if you had, you would’ve pictured dusty wood frames and darkness. The setting that lay before you couldn’t be more of the opposite. Nothing short of a scene from one of those old, famous Muggle Hollywood movies you tried to watch whenever you could access a television. Though there indeed stood wooden frames, moonlight coated each block and illuminated the space. You were shown to the center where grass grew to the perfect length despite a lack of trimmings.

The change in your mood was instantaneous and suddenly your frustration melted into tranquility as you started so much calmer than before. As if the very sky soothed your fury.

“I come here a lot during Quidditch season, or I guess I used to.” Fred began, sensing your change in mood as he offered you something much more valuable than a taunting smile or a playing tip. An explanation. He gazed around the space as if it was his first time seeing it too.

“Is it allowed?”

“Probably not, but as you know, rules aren’t often a factor in my decision making. Sometimes I just needed to get away from it all, just for a moment. There's so much bloody noise out there, especially when Wood was captain, being in here blocks out the rubbish. Helps you remember what’s important.”

It was hard to picture Fred as someone who needed a break, who had a breaking point of his own, but under the fabric you could feel it.

“It's perfect for games too,” he grinned, pointing down a line of wood towards where you knew the Gryffindor pathway lay. “The entrance into the field is just over there and no one ever thinks to come under here so it’s nice and private.”

Silent seconds ticked by steadily as you continued to observe the area, spotting a marking on one of the tallest wood beams. You reached out for it, slowly tracing the carving of Fred’s name and a #2, his flying number.

“It’s helping isn't it? Or did I just give away my favorite hiding place for no reason?”

You turned to him, looking him in the eyes for the first time that night.

“No, I feel better now.” you agreed, taking in a steady breath. “I’m sorry about what I said.”

“I only want to help, you know? I swear I’m not trying to talk down to you.”

It hit you then, how all this must’ve impacted him. You knew Fred didn’t want you to replace him anymore than you were willing to and from what you’d see of Harry’s lacerations from lines with Umbridge, you couldn’t imagine punishment was easy for him. But he showed up anyway and was happy enough to help you in any way he could.

“I know,” you agreed. “I’m just so frustrated by this - this whole situation. And I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“It’s alright,” Fred smiled. “I didn’t take it personally. You’ve always done that when you get angry.”

You often forget how long you and Fred have known each other, how many times you’d stayed over at the Burrow, in most cases for weeks at a time. Of course you were only there to visit Ron and Ginny, but it was his home as much as theirs. Years speed by when you're busy hating someone. But you weren’t sure you hated him anymore. And if he had enough heart to show you his secret serenity space, he certainly didn't hate you.

“I bet you even like my pranks sometimes.” Fred smirked.

You rolled your eyes, refusing to admit though you had a feeling he wasn’t asking you to confirm. You were sure he already knew.

“Sometimes I thought you were just being mean. But I don’t think you’re really like that. I just never took the time to understand.”

“I think we’ve been off on the wrong foot all this time,” Fred smiled, as if he hadn’t revealed that he understood you almost as well as you understood yourself. “Maybe it’s time to start the night off fresh?”

“I think I’d be okay with that.” you chuckled, growing fond of this new, reimagined version of the boy you’d always loathed. Clearly you had mistaken him.

“Great well,” he extended his hand. “I’m Fred.”

“Lovely to meet you, Fred,” you felt silly as you met his grip, shaking his hand as you re-introduced yourself.

“I think it’s time to practice some Quidditch.”

“Alright,” you smiled. “I think this time, I’m open to listening.”

“Good,” Fred beamed. “And don’t think I underestimate your skills. I was there when you broke Ginny’s nose with our Quaffle.”

“That was an accident!” you exclaimed, in disbelief that he even remembered the incident from many summers ago during a good old fashioned Weasley match.

“Well, regardless, that’s exactly the energy I want you to harness for beating. As long as you're okay with me giving you some pointers?”

You nodded, crawling under the fabric again and back out into the night to continue your training, the rest of which went fairly smoothly considering you had been set on despising Fred only minutes prior. With every piece of advice, every slightly helpful hint, and especially every encouraging compliment when you were able to learn and adapt quickly, he started to win you over. And you started to see him in a completely new light.

Suddenly, all the annoying characteristics about him became only charismatic. His jokes were no longer cruel and insensitive, but hilarious to the point where you had to cover your mouth to prevent laughing so hard. New traits that you hadn’t bothered to notice before shone through like his familial loyalty and pride. And deep, deep under his surface, you saw a certain kindness in him that you wouldn’t have believed existed days ago.

It was only an hour before the two of you could successfully pass a Bludger back and forth across the entirety of the field, hitting objects in place of players and diving to save them from enemy blows just as you would be required to in a real game. Fred was undoubtedly impressed.

“You’ve still got some Chaser in you, but I think you’re ready to play. That’s all I have anyway.”

He flew to the ground, dismounting smoothly and holding up a hand for you to follow, but you were still adjusting to this new perspective and you didn’t want to head into the castle just yet. More accurately, you didn’t want to walk alone with him.

“I think I’m going to stay out for just a while longer.”

“Sure, right,” Fred chuckled, lowering his hand to scratch the ginger hair on the back of his neck instead. “I don’t think Angelina needed us to do this again, but if you need some extra practice with a decent partner, I'm always available.”

“You sure you can fit me in your schedule with all your detentions and scheming?” you grinned.

“Absolutely,” he laughed. “I doubt Umbridge would miss an evening with me. I don’t make them easy on her.”

“Thanks,” you smiled. “I’ll think about it.”

“Right well, I’m off to bed,” Fred waved, warranting your send off. You shot up into the night, not wanting to stare at him a moment longer. “Just be careful of Filch when you come in!” he shouted up to you, unsure if you had heard as you looked very preoccupied flying about. He grabbed his broom and idly stalked away, sliding off of the field and in the direction of Gryffindor Tower.

Little did he know how your eyes followed his every move as you watched him go, so utterly conflicted and unfocused. In all honesty, you didn’t need to practice any more, in fact, you felt too exhausted to even go through another exercise. But you just couldn’t leave with him, not when you could feel the warmth of attraction blooming in your chest. The world as you knew it was starting to spin the wrong way and all because you discovered Fred Weasley was a decent human being. More than decent really.

The rest of the week prior to your first match was a nervous blur. While classes were the same as always if not more unbearable, your life had been flipped in every possible way. You spent every waking minute on the quidditch field whether it was practicing with the rest of the team (and earning Angelina’s respect when you picked up the sport so quickly) or flying around on your own and trying not to think about Fred.

Oh Fred. He was another problem all on his own. The energy between you shifted so rapidly, it started to become obvious to everyone else. You tried to go on as friends, as if everything was exactly as it was before, but you weren’t fooling anyone. Especially not each other.

You could feel his eyes on you during every meal in the Great Hall, catching his gaze as easily as catching a Quaffle and much more frequently. He started talking to you more, nothing grander than a hello when passing you in busy hallways or snide comment about Umbridge after a rough class with the witch, but it was always pleasant and each time he earned a smile.

You found yourself avoiding him the moment Hermione finally broke her silence on the matter, asking if you two had finally gotten over your years long battle.

“It was always one-sided, you know,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I’ve talked it over with Ginny. He’s never felt the same disdain towards you.”

“Nothing has changed, Hermione. He just helped me with one little thing, that’s all.”

“If you insist…”

All your worrying and hard work made a week feel like only a couple of days. And suddenly, before you could summon the wherewithal to mentally prepare for competing in front of the entirety of Hogwarts, game day was upon you.

Dressed appropriately and grounded on the field, you looked up to the sky as various moving shapes of red and royal blue soared high above before the official commencement that was to take place in minutes. You knew you could do it, all of your training had far prepared you for the task at hand, but you were unbelievably nervous. There was always the chance of messing up and those voices in the back of your mind were impossible to quiet. Not wanting to over exert yourself, the thought of a break popped into your head. Somewhere where no crowd could watch you and you could be on your own for a while.

You noticed the edge of the field, the portion where Fred had taken you under the fabric and just when you were sure many of the spectators were focused elsewhere, you made a run for it.

The space was even calmer in the daylight, bright and airy and utterly empty. Exactly what you needed. You slumped against a wooden beam, reaching up to trace the inscription of Fred’s name, grateful he had revealed this little sanctuary to you.

“Game day nerves?” a voice rang from behind you. You didn’t have to turn to know who it was. Only one person could’ve known where you were.

“A little,” you admitted. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to live up to expectations.”

“It’s not you we have to worry about,” Fred assured. “I’m more anxious to see if Kirke can play. I reckon he’s not half as good as you are.”

“He’s not all bad,” you defended your Beater partner. “But there’s certainly some truth to that.”

“I brought you something,” he smiled and your eyes travelled down to his hands which you realized were clutching something behind his back. “It’s just a little help, if you want it. Thought you could use some confidence.”

You shot him an inquisitive look.

“That's suggestive.” you teased.

“Nothing like that, get your head out of the gutter.”

You watched as he revealed his gift, pulling out a familiar scarlet cloth that shone with promise.

“Here.”

He handed it out to you, an offering you simply couldn’t refuse, purley out of curiosity if nothing else. You plucked the fabric from his hands, letting the cloak unfurl from a wrinkled blob into a magnificent robe, his own Quidditch wear you realized. Last you’d seen them, he had been wearing them proudly while trying to kill Malfoy. You fingered the small embroidered number two on the chest.

“Is this-”

“You bet.” 

“You’re giving me your number?”

He shrugged as if it was a small favor rather than a grand gesture. He didn’t need to admit it for you both ro know how much it meant.

“It’s better than 18, innit?” he referred to your current, less than ideal robes. “I’m never going to need them again and I figured they’d fit better than whatever Angelina could scrounge up.”

He was right. The only robes available to you were far too big as they slumped off your shoulders and pooled at your feet. Angelina had claimed that it wouldn't make a difference in the air, but all the extra fabric felt heavy, leaving a burdensome strain. But your Captain had enough stress weighing on her shoulders. So you didn’t make a fuss.

You raised Fred’s robes to your nose, taking in the nostalgic smell of the Burrow, hints of Molly’s baking taking you right back to summers with the family and a new spice that must’ve been Fred’s addition. Cinnamon and firework powder. You refrained from grinning as your nose inadvertently scrunched in delight.

“It’s been washed, I swear.” he promised, worried that your reaction was out of disgust.

“I know,” you acknowledged. “It doesn’t carry any kind of hex though, right? I’m not going to be blown off my broom in midair?”

“Not this time, no. Unfortunately, I care too much about the outcome of this game, but thanks for the idea.”

You rolled your eyes, turning it over to find that his name was still sewn into the back just above his former number.

“This is my favorite addition,” he beamed with excitement, inching closer to adjust your hold as he tipped the fabric into one of the red tinted rays that managed to slip into your hideout. Suddenly, black letters began to form in inky black magic and spelled out your last name atop of the maroon sewed, making it the only readable name.

“It’s a sunny day outside. I thought everyone should get to know who they’re rooting for.”

“Thanks.” you mustered, though it didn’t capture even a fracture of what you were really feeling. So many conflictions fluttered around at once as you fought off your feelings for him before they could invade your mind. It scared you, even more than the impending threat of the game just ahead.

But you could tell he felt it as silence fell upon the two of you. A comfortable understanding of finally being on the same page only now you wanted him closer.

A sharp whistle sounded in the background as Madam Hooch signaled for the game to begin. You didn’t have any more time to spare as you were expected on the field.

“I better let you change, unless you want to go through with your first offer or you’ve become unnaturally attached to those giant things-”

“Get out of here.” you chuckled, pulling on the length of the strings that held up your current attire. Though you had on other clothes, Fred turned as the old robes slipped off you easily, pooling in a pile by your shoes. Stepping out of the mess, you pulled on Fred’s and though it took some adjusting as they were still bigger than your true size, they served as a much preferable alternative to the spares, lighter and exceedingly more breathable.

“They look good,” Fred admired, turning back to face you one last time before you had to leave. “You don’t look like you’re playing dress up anymore.”

“I’ll try to live up to the name.”

“You will. You’ll make your own.” he promised, slipping under the fabric in the direction of the spectator area. “Good luck.” he wished, and then he was gone.

You grabbed your broom and headed for the opposite end, waltzing to where the rest of your team was waiting to make their entrance. Though it took some effort, you were sure to rid your step of its gleeful skip by the time you reached the public eye.

“Looking good, Weasley.” Angelina joked, no doubt already aware of Fred’s surprise. “Nervous?”

“No.” you lied.

“Good.”

“And here I thought I would be the only remaining Weasley on the team.” Ron interjected, stepping up to stand beside you.

“That was presumptuous,” Ginny laughed from behind the two of you, clad in her own Seeker gear.

“You aren’t,” you stated, placing an encouraging hand on your friend’s shoulder. “But you are the only Keeper. So do the best you can.”

Another whistle blared outside in the center of the pitch and soon enough you were up in the air, one hand clinging to your broom and the other wrapped tightly around your bat. It didn’t take long for you to find Fred in the crowd as your eyes searched the stands for him and your other friends. They all sat nestled beside one another, lost in a sea of scarlet. You resisted the urge to wave at him.

Instead you met his gaze and gave him a subtle nod, warmth blooming in your chest again as you swore his smile grew wider. You had to force yourself to snap into focus and avoid looking at the Gryffindor section as other flyers spread out all around, readying themselves for the first play.

“And also new to the team,” your name was started by Lee Jordan who despite being barred by McGonagall in years prior, was acting commentator. “Though she’s a different number than what Captain Angelina Johnson informed me, don’t be fooled folks. I’m told she’s very good for a newbie. At least I hope that part is the truth.”

Each second felt like a millenium before the game had finally kicked off, you were suddenly much too caught up in the action to give any thought to the stirring feelings inside, batting each Bludger like your teammate’s life depended on it. In some kinda way, it did.

All those hours spent refining your skills were now out for everyone else to see and you were absolutely magnificent. Saving every teammate that required assistance and scoring every Bludger that threatened to disable your Chasers, you swiftly became a crowd favorite and the ultimate replacement for the usual spectacle of the Weasley twins.

“There she goes, a near hit from lucky number 2 against Ravenclaw Chaser - Blimey - and a brilliant save as she dives to protect Chaser Alicia Spinnet! And Spinnet scores a goal!” Lee exclaimed, shouting into his mic. “That’s 10 more points to Gryffindor. She really is good! Maybe even better than the twins - whoops - never mind. I’m getting dirty looks.”

As the game went on, you proved yourself as a worthy opponent time and time again, even stealing saves from the other Beater when he could get to where he was needed in time. Though Kirke was a decent partner as you learned in practice, he wasn’t nearly as experienced as you and much less able to adapt to his new position (you felt you had Fred to thank for that). But it all worked out as you were quick to compensate for all his losses, fast and strong enough to erase all his mistakes before they could cause a problem.

“Looks like new Seeker Ginny Weasley found something, she’s descending into the center. This could be it ladies and gentlemen, the tie breaker and oh no! Looks like Ravenclaw is having a go!”

You watched as it happened, heart sinking as one of the Beaters in blue sent a Bludger straight for Ginny and you didn’t even have time to think before you rushed to save her. You had to dodge several players, weaving between them like wool on a loom as you hurried towards the center with the speed of a Chaser. You soared past Ginny, rearing up to hit the Bludger and sending it spiraling downwards with so much force, it sank into the dirt.

But it wasn’t over yet.

Sneaking towards you like a torpedo, you didn’t have time to listen to the warnings of the crowd or more of Lee Jordan’s before you could sense another Bludger aimed at you. Swinging with all of your might and praying you could sense its position, you successfully backhanded the attack and spared yet another life.

The Gryffindor stands roared with excitement.

“Impossible move by 2! A fully backhanded save. I’ve never seen anything like it, at least not in a school league. And what’s this? Ginny Weasley’s got the snitch! Gryffindor wins and the game is over!”

You landed, exhausted, but beaming with pride as the stands screamed, but when you looked for him, the only person you wanted to see cheering for you, his spot was vacant. Lee spoke over your thoughts.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen her smile since she started playing.” he joked, though it was true.

A sudden applause broke out from behind you as a figure emerged from your special place, his special place. Your smile widened as you met his proud stare, clapping for his brilliant protege. Fred smiled at you and instant warmth returned to you and forced your feet to move and your grasp to release your equipment. You couldn’t stand it any longer. All you knew was how badly you wanted him, so you ran straight into his open arms.

“Woah, where’s she going?” Lee questioned into the mic, not that you could give a Devil’s Snare. You were laser focused. “Has all that flying made her mad? Her team is the other way! I wonder, oh, OH! Well, that explains it. In case you’re wondering who she’s tackling folks, that's ex-Beater Fred Weasley. Or is it George? Nope, definitely Fred. I don’t know what the rules are on kissing on the pitch, but those late night tutoring sessions are starting to make a lot more sense….”

“JORDAN!” McGonagall scolded, tugging at the mic.

“That’s all from me I suppose. Here’s to a new game and a budding romance!”

“I thought she hated him.” Harry leaned to whisper to Hermione as they stood from their seats, making their way down much slower than Fred had. They didn’t have the same kind of motivation.

“She did,” Hermione shrugged, although she had long ago figured that with the right push, the two of you would eventually collide in such a manner. “But things change. She got to know him.”

It felt like hours before you and Fred finally pulled apart, but you hadn’t gotten your fill when the moment finally came. Lips twisting into a bashful smile, your arms clung to his neck while his hands curled around your waist. Dizzy from the rush of the game and having him so close, you found yourself leaning into him. His freckled face flushed as he grinned at you like he had just pulled off the proudest prank of his whole life, finally getting to kiss you.

“I take it you liked the robes?” he smirked.

“I hope that wasn’t too forward,” you uttered, though by the way he pulled you closer, you knew it wasn’t. “I’m really glad we decided to start over.”

“Actually, I’ve sort of been waiting for this,” he admitted. “Been mad for you for ages, you know.”

“I’m starting to understand that.”

Noses brushing, you were set on leaning in again until a throat cleared from beside you as other spectators started to flood onto the turf. Your friends and George had joined your side and much to your chagrin, Umbridge had taken hold of the mic.

“A reminder that girls and boys are not to to be within eight inches of each other!” she shouted, her voice booming inside the pitch as if she had forgotten that it was already amplified.

You reluctantly removed yourself from his grasp, not wanting to get yourself banned from playing though you wanted nothing more than to stay in his arms. He bent to whisper into your ear.

“Lucky for us, I have nin-”

“No,” you cut him off. “I've heard that way too many times since she instilled that rule.”

“Fair enough.” he shrugged, relishing the delighted look plastered on your face as he moved with you to join your loved ones.

It wasn’t until much later during the peak of celebration that you were able to reconnect.

The night had long taken over as the twins threw one of their famous Gryffindor parties in your honor, setting the common room ablaze with drinks and music and a bustling, eager crowd. You bid your time, taking in the praise and celebrating with all of your friends, but as soon as you were sure no one would miss you, Fred managed to smuggle you away into his dormitory where he held you as his willing captive.

He pressed you against one of the sturdy stone walls, lips slotting together behind closed doors where no prying Dolores Umbridge had any chance of forcing you eight inches apart.

“You sure you don’t want to miss the party?” you gasped through shallow breaths between kisses, eyes fluttering shut as Fred moved to your jaw.

“Are you serious?” he chuckled. “And miss my one shot with the girl of my dreams? Not a chance.”

“It wouldn’t be your last chance.” you assured him, but you were grateful he wanted to stay. You weren’t anywhere near ready to stop as your fingers twirled into his bright hair. You weren’t sure what you would do if he had never brought up your name as a replacement and you were glad you’d never have to find out.

“And to think last week you hated me,” he muttered, raising his head back to brush his lips against your own, words slipping in between kiss after fervent kiss.

“Shut up, Weasley,” you retorted, melting into him as he obliged, allowing the night to take its pleasant course.

[delicatetrashtree]

aftermath / f. weasley

fred weasley x reader

summary: after the battle of hogwarts, st. mungos is left in chaos. you -amongst your other duties- are tasked with taking care and rehabilitating your former classmate, fred weasley. a/n: i got carried away with this one. i'm sorry. i cornered my med-friends, and made them tell me everyhting about how their internships work. this might be the last fic out for a short while. idk. also, for the sake of any misunderstandings, i want to say clearly that there is in fact no beauty in war. the beauty is found in the humanity regular civilians show with each other (and not the polititians who do not care about the people). warnings: not proofread. no use of y/n. 11k words.

There was no beauty in war.

Most people could agree on that.

You however, found that, whilst this was true, there was a twisted sort of beauty in how it pushed people to be better.

Better for the sake of others.

You found it ironic how in such desperate times, St. Mungos was flooded with speeding healers. Not to get out, but to get to the people that need them.

You felt it in the air, amidst all the despair and sadness. Something full of light, heavy and somehow the lightest thing emerging from all of this. A sort of energy that propelled you forward. 

To keep on giving even when you thought you were empty yourself. 

No one gives what they don’t have, you had to remind yourself as you rushed through the halls of the hospital to attend to the newly ingressed patient.

After the attack on Hogwarts, St. Mungos had become a center for chaos. Injured people were being rushed in like ants to a nest. Rooms were at double their capacity, and some of the halls had been closed off so that the healers could work on the patients lying on makeshift stretchbeds.

You were not a healer, not by any means. You had been studying to become a healer for barely two years, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

No one can give what they don’t have.

It was like a mantra, repeating in your head over and over again. You would keep giving, until you were physically unable to. You gave what you could. Your hands. Your focus. Your body, moving even when your mind lagged a half-step behind.

“Room 9,” your supervisor barked beside you, brisk and commanding in that no-nonsense tone she had adopted since the war began. “Critical injury. Blunt force trauma, internal bleeding, possible paralysis. Triage reports loss of consciousness, delayed pulse. You assist, I lead.”

You nodded once, not trusting your voice.

As you reached the double doors, you could already hear it — the noise.

Voices. Too many. A sharp argument. A stifled sob. Shuffling feet. Someone swearing softly under their breath.

You pushed into the room and stopped dead.

Red hair.

Everywhere.

A sea of it.

Some standing, others pressed tightly together in the corner — pacing, holding hands, murmuring prayers. One woman, pale with grief, clutched the arm of a man whose eyes were red-rimmed and hollow. A girl with hair the color of flame had blood on her shirt. A boy with wide shoulders and a trembling jaw stood guard at the door like he couldn’t move if he tried.

Your stomach dropped.

You recognized them.

The Weasleys.

Your supervisor didn’t falter. She pushed through the gathered crowd like a current, cutting straight to the center of the room where a stretcher floated — and on it, barely conscious and covered in dust and blood, lay Fred Weasley.

You froze. Just for a second.

The air around him buzzed with unstable spellwork — holding charms layered clumsily by field medics trying to keep him together until someone more experienced could take over. His shirt was soaked dark at the ribs. His legs hung limply. Blood trailed from his temple into his ear.

He looked nothing like the boy you remembered from Hogwarts.

And yet, it was him.

Fred.

You could still hear the echo of his laugh from the back of Charms class. Still remember how he used to lean back in his chair until Flitwick told him off. Still remember him and George — always George — like a matched set.

George.

Your eyes searched the crowd — and landed on him.

He was standing near the stretcher, face pale beneath the grime, a hand braced on the edge of the bed as if holding his twin there by force of will.

And as soon as he saw you, he stilled.

Recognition flickered behind his eyes.

You hadn’t spoken much at Hogwarts — but enough. Enough to know you were in the same year. Enough to know what Fred’s absence would do to him.

And George must have known you were here to work, because his eyes widened and he mouthed one word:

Please.

Your throat tightened, but you nodded. Then turned to your supervisor.

“I’ll clear the family.”

“Do it fast,” she replied, already lighting the tip of her wand and muttering diagnostic spells. “He’s bleeding into his abdomen. If we’re lucky, the lung’s only partially collapsed. We need space.”

You moved quickly. Efficiently. Gently laying a hand on Molly Weasley’s shoulder. She flinched, eyes wet and wild.

“I need you all to step into the hallway,” you said, your voice low and firm. “We’re going to take care of him. I promise.”

Arthur helped his wife up. Ginny followed, reluctantly. Bill put a hand on Ron’s shoulder to guide him out. You murmured reassurances, not lies, but not quite truths either.

George didn’t move.

“George,” you said firmly, stepping close. Your eyes said everything your mouth didn't have time to. 

We’ll do everything we can. 

His jaw clenched.

“You need to let us work.”

His gaze flickered to Fred. Then to you.

You didn’t say anything else — you just looked at him, steady and calm and holding your fear back because he couldn’t bear yours too.

Finally, he exhaled shakily and let go of the stretcher.

And as he walked out, his fingers brushed your wrist. A silent plea. 

Then the door shut behind him.

And you turned back toward the stretcher.

Fred lay deathly still, face slack, breath shallow.

Your supervisor was already working, wand moving in tight, efficient arcs.

“Hold this,” she ordered, conjuring a steadying brace over Fred’s side.

You moved forward — and didn’t hesitate.

Fred Weasley was bleeding.

And you were going to make sure he didn’t die.

The days that followed the battle blurred together like smoke.

St. Mungo’s never truly slept anymore. The halls remained full, even as the chaos started to ebb. Some patients were discharged. Others were moved to long-term wards. The air still buzzed with grief, and those who worked there, yourself included, were stretched thinner than a helping flashcard for a final exam.

Healers walked like ghosts between rooms. Some hadn’t changed robes in days. Others wept silently into their sleeves when no one was watching.

You didn’t cry. Not because you weren’t exhausted. Not because you weren’t grieving. But because you couldn’t. There was no time.

After the surgery — after the bleeding was stopped and the enchantments sealed his ribs — he had been placed in a shared ward, but eventually moved to a private recovery room. Too many people knew him. Too many stared.

It became your job to monitor his potions. His pain levels. His progress.

And his silence.

He hadn’t woken up in the first three days.

His vitals were stable, but his body was worn down — more than you’d realized at first glance. When you changed the bandages across his chest, you saw the bruising from the wall that had collapsed. You saw the way his legs twitched when touched, like the nerves weren’t quite reconnecting properly.

You wrote down everything. Monitored spells. Adjusted doses. You were careful. Steady.

You also started talking to him.

Soft, pointless things. How the tea was always too bitter in the staff lounge. How the lift on the east wing kept jolting between floors. How the portraits in the hallway outside his room complained about the groaning at night.

You weren’t sure why you did it.

Maybe because silence made the wounds feel bigger. As if they hadn’t closed yet.

You were also the one who received the Weasleys when they came to visit. You kept them informed. Made sure they had water. Chairs. Tissues.

Molly Weasley cried every time she saw him. Arthur held her hand like it was the only thing anchoring him. The others came in shifts. Bill brought books and read aloud. Ron sat with his head in his hands. George never stayed long.

He lingered outside the room more than inside it. Sometimes you’d pass him in the hallway. He’d look at you — hollow-eyed — and nod. Not with familiarity. Not even with trust. Just… desperation translated into hope. The silent plea that you wouldn’t let him die.

And you hadn’t.

Fred Weasley didn’t wake on the fourth day either.

You checked his legs for movement, gently rolling the damaged joints. You administered Skele-Gro and Stabilizing Draughts. You wiped the sweat from his brow and replaced the charm on his sheets to keep them cool.

You didn’t expect the change when it happened.

It was early morning. You were doing your rounds, charting his numbers on a clipboard. Your fingers were halfway through counting his pulse when you saw his eyes flutter open.

Just a sliver. A twitch.

Then more.

He blinked blearily up at the ceiling.

You froze — your breath caught somewhere between shock and relief — before leaning forward immediately.

“Fred?”

He blinked again. Swallowed. His voice rasped like it had clawed its way out of gravel.

“...Great,” he said with effort. “An angel.”

You let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a sob, your hand pressing lightly to your chest as your heart knocked against your ribs.

“You’re awake,” you said softly, as if saying it too loud might undo it.

“Only halfway,” he croaked, squinting up at you. “The ceiling’s still spinning.”

“It’s your brain. And the concussion.” You smiled in spite of yourself, voice tight as you checked the charm readings again. “Don’t try to flirt.

He closed his eyes, a pained crease forming between his brows. “Shame.”

That was enough to do it.

You turned your face away, biting down on the sudden stinging in your eyes. It wasn’t the flirting — not really — it was the life behind it. The voice you hadn’t heard in days. The tone that meant he was there, even if battered.

“Don’t go anywhere,” you said quickly, the words leaving you in a rush as you turned and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind you with trembling fingers.

You heard him mutter something along the lines of “funny”.

You didn’t make it far. Just to the alcove near the nurse’s station — barely out of sight. You pressed the heels of your hands to your eyes, breathing through it. You gave yourself sixty seconds. No more.

And then you wiped your face, straightened your robes, and floo-called the family.

When you stepped back into Fred’s room a few minutes later, he was still awake — barely — and trying very hard to sit up with a determined frown on his face.

“Oh, no you don’t,” you said, sweeping forward to place a firm hand on his shoulder. “If you strain the spellwork on your spine, I’m going to put your bed on a permanent incline.”

You noted the tension immediately — the way his fingers twitched against the blanket, the way his head turned slightly, looking for you. Like he was trying to catch his bearings through a fog. “You’re cruel.”

“I’m doing my work,” you replied.

Fred narrowed one eye at you, already slipping lower on the mattress. “You always this bossy?”

“Only with idiots who have the patience of a tea kettle.”

You could tell he was trying to suppress a smile as he turned his head away from you. 

“You got a name, or should I keep calling you ‘angel’?” he said after a while.

You raised an eyebrow despite yourself and moved to the side of the bed.

“You should try resting instead of flirting,” you said, voice neutral but not unkind. “The nerve damage in your lower back was extensive. You’re straining already.”

His smirk cracked for just a second. You saw the flicker of pain behind his eyes before he blinked it away.

“So angel it is?”

You didn’t answer, instead you checked his vitals in the silence and gently charmed his pillow higher so he could lie at a better angle.

That’s when the yelling started down the hall.

You didn’t need to look.

You met them in the hall before they could burst through the door. Loud. Red-haired. And utterly frantic.

“Is he—? Can we—?” Molly Weasley’s words tangled together.

You held up a hand gently, but firmly.

“He’s awake. Talking. A little weak, but aware.”

The hallway seemed to exhale.

You continued quickly, before the relief turned into assumptions. “But—he’s not ready to go home. The impact did extensive damage to the lower part of his spine. He… can’t feel or move his legs right now.”

Silence.

You gave them a moment, then said gently, “He’ll need extensive rehabilitation. Magical therapy, possibly nerve regeneration. It’s going to be a long process.”

Arthur nodded, face pale but steady. Molly clutched at his sleeve.

You looked toward George last.

He stared at you. Jaw set, unreadable.

“Is he in pain?”

“No. We’re managing that.” You paused, then added, “He’s in good spirits.”

George swallowed. Then gave the smallest, sharpest nod you’d seen all day.

You turned to the door and opened it, stepping aside so the family could filter in.

And for the first time in days, the room wasn’t quiet.

It was full — of laughter, of tears, of hands touching shoulders and kisses to foreheads and Fred’s voice muttering, “Bloody hell, stop fussing, I’m not dead.”

You stepped back into the hall and let them have their moment.

But even as you turned away, you felt eyes on you.

And when you glanced back, Fred was looking straight at you over the shoulder of his mother.

He smiled.

You didn’t smile back.

But the tears still came.

You waited until his bruising had faded.

Until the swelling in his ribs had gone down and he could sit up without gritting his teeth. You waited until the bandages were gone, until the spells holding his bones in place no longer hummed faintly beneath his skin. Until his vitals held steady even when he laughed too hard at something George said.

And only then did you bring up the next step.

“So,” you said one morning, casually flipping through his chart. “I had a chat with your attending healer. We’re ready to begin rehabilitation. If you’re up for it.”

Fred, who had just finished muttering something rude about the texture of his breakfast porridge, perked up immediately.

“Rehab?” His eyes lit. “As in — out of this bed rehab?”

You nodded, lips twitching. “That’s part of it, yes.”

He beamed like you’d just told him the Canons were naming a stadium after him.

“Well, then what are we waiting for?”

You took a small step back as he hastily shoved aside his blanket like he was about to sprint a marathon. Of course, his legs remained stubbornly still beneath him.

He caught the look on your face and sobered slightly. “Right. Okay. Bit overconfident. But still—anything’s better than being trapped in here.”

You hesitated.

“It won’t be easy,” you said carefully, gently. “The spell damage to your spine was severe. The initial stages may not feel like progress.”

Fred gave you that same lopsided grin he’d been perfecting since he was fifteen. “I’m stubborn by genetic design.”

You arched a brow. “That’s not a medical trait.”

He winked. “It’s about to be.”

The first few days were surprisingly smooth.

He cracked jokes through the posture tests. Mocked the magical resistance bands. Named the spell-laced chair that helped him sit upright (Bertha).

You helped guide his hands when his grip shook. Stabilized his torso when he swayed too far to the left. Every time the faintest spark of sensation returned to his feet, you both looked at each other like you'd just seen magic for the first time.

But then came the harder days.

The ones where nothing changed. Where the spells didn’t tingle. Where the potions tasted metallic and useless. The days where Bertha wouldn’t budge no matter how hard he strained.

By the second week, the shine had dulled.

“Is it supposed to feel like this?” he snapped once, his voice uncharacteristically sharp as he flung the charm-assisted brace to the side. “Like I’m trying to move a mountain with my bloody eyelids?”

You didn’t flinch. But you didn’t reach for the brace, either.

You just said calmly, “Yes. That means you're doing it right.”

He exhaled hard, head falling back against the cushion. “Then why does it feel like I’m going nowhere?”

He didn’t look at you when he asked. That was new. He always looked at you.

You watched him closely. The sweat on his brow. The tension in his jaw. The way his hands — the parts of him that still worked — kept curling into frustrated fists.

“You’re not going nowhere,” you said softly. “You’re moving. It’s just slower than you want.”

“That’s rich,” he muttered. “You try sitting still for sixteen hours a day while your body forgets how to function.”

Your mouth opened — then closed again. You didn’t say anything. Not about your own long shifts. Not about the way your legs shook sometimes after standing too long in surgery. Not about the ache in your own spine from sleepless nights bent over charts.

Because that wasn’t what this was about.

This was about him.

So instead, you bent down, picked up the brace, and set it gently back on the table.

“I’ll come back in an hour,” you said, voice neutral. “We can try again. Or not. Your call.”

You turned to leave, hand on the doorknob.

Before you stepped out, his voice caught you — a little hoarse, a little small.

“I’m trying,” he said.

You looked back.

“I know,” you replied.

The next few days were measured in breaths he didn’t want to take.

Fred was trying — he was — but trying meant facing failure every morning and calling it progress. It meant forcing himself to smile through clenched teeth. It meant hearing his own voice crack when another spell failed to stimulate the nerves in his legs. It meant pretending it didn’t matter when it did. So much.

You never pushed. Not once.

You offered, instructed, encouraged — and when he got short with you, snapped at his own body like it had betrayed him, you simply nodded.

You were kind.

That made it worse.

He would’ve rather you yelled. Got mad. Shoved it back in his face that he was being impossible.

But you never did.

One afternoon, he threw the cane you’d helped him balance with across the room. It hit the far wall with a clatter and dented the plaster. He didn’t say anything after. Just stared at the space where it had landed, jaw locked, chest heaving.

You crossed the room silently, picked up the cane, and leaned it against the table.

Then you walked out.

Not angrily. Not in defeat. But like you knew — finally — he needed a moment where his failure wasn’t seen.

He hated it.

He hated how empty the room felt when you were gone. How quiet everything became. Not the good kind of quiet. Not peace.

Absence.

When you came back twenty minutes later, he didn’t look at you right away. Just muttered, “Sorry.”

You paused at the door.

“I know you are.”

That was all.

You didn’t ask anything of him. Not even an explanation.

He didn’t mean to say it — he really didn’t — but it broke loose before he could swallow it back.

“I don’t want you to leave.”

Your eyes lifted, surprised, but you didn’t come closer.

He leaned back against the padded chair, exhausted and sweaty from a session that had ended in nothing but anger.

“I know I’m being… hard to work with,” he muttered, lips twisting bitterly. “And you shouldn’t have to put up with it. But you being here—” He broke off, swallowed. “It’s the best part of my day. The only part that makes me forget I can’t bloody walk.”

Silence.

He had never been a fan of silence, but he hated it now.

You walked over — not with pity, never with pity — and knelt in front of him. Carefully, deliberately. Not looking away even when he did.

“I’m not leaving.”

He looked at you then.

“I was never going to,” you said. “But I’ll give you space if you need it. You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to feel this.”

Something flickered in his eyes. Guilt. Relief. Something close to breaking.

You reached for his hand — not in sympathy, but as an anchor.

“I’ll stay,” you said. “If you keep trying.”

His fingers curled around yours, slow and tight.

“I will.”

You smiled.

“Deal.”

It changed after that.

Not all at once. Not with any dramatic shift.

You started staying longer.

Not just for rehabilitation sessions or medical charts. Not just for leg stimulations or potion rounds. You came by in the late afternoons too — when the ward had quieted and the other healers were in the break room, feet up and heads back. When the sun filtered through the windows, making Fred’s bed feel less like a sickbed and more like a quiet place to sit. To talk.

Sometimes you brought your lunch and sat cross-legged at the end of his bed. He made a game of guessing what you’d packed.

“Leftovers,” he’d say without even glancing. “Smells like disappointment and cold peas.”

You’d laugh, show him the curry your father had made the night before.

“Wrong. Smells like love and spices. Try again tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow I’m bribing someone in the kitchens to sneak me biscuits. I can’t keep living like this, angel.”

Once, you caught him staring at your sandwich until you tore it in half and offered him a piece.

“I don’t need charity,” he said, but took it anyway. “But I will need your father’s recipe.”

“Don’t push it, Weasley.”

Some days you’d come in later, after shifts, just to sit for a few minutes while the potions settled in his system. He noticed the lines under your eyes then. The way you stood like your spine was one wrong move away from collapsing. The way your fingers ached as you rubbed your temples.

“You’re working too hard.”

“Says the man who got crushed by a castle.”

He didn’t laugh — not right away. But his eyes crinkled. The corner of his mouth pulled.

Touché.

You told him once that your parents were worried. That your mum had written three letters in one week, asking if you were eating, sleeping, “seeing anyone — not romantically, just to talk to.” You rolled your eyes and said you were fine.

Fred looked at you for a long moment.

“You can sit with me,” he said eventually. “Whenever you need to not talk.”

You blinked.

“I mean, I’ll probably still talk,” he added, teasing again. “But you can ignore me if it helps.”

You didn’t ignore him. Not once.

He started keeping track of things. Not medically — emotionally. Like how many cups of tea you’d had that day (he scolded you if it was more than four), or what color robes you wore most often (he claimed blue made you look intimidating, “but in a hot, terrifying way”).

You began bringing small things to help pass the time.

A deck of cards. A soft, squishy ball you could toss back and forth. He caught it with both hands at first, awkward and slow, but determined.

He missed often.

You didn’t laugh. Just tossed it again.

After a few days, he got faster. Grinned when he caught it one-handed and tossed it right back with a bit of flair.

“Finally,” he muttered. “Some dignity.”

“Don’t get cocky.”

He started calling it your game. Insisted no one else was allowed to play it with him.

“It’s catch Fred. I’m pretty sure everyone has played it at one time or another.”

“When I get out, I’ll patent it and it’ll be our game.”

You showed him how to roll his shoulders without straining the rest of his torso. Sometimes, while you were talking, you’d adjust the pillow behind his back or check his leg splints mid-conversation — like it was second nature now. He’d murmur thanks, barely even noticing.

Sometimes he did notice. Like when your hands lingered a second longer than usual, or your eyes lingered on the way his freckles crept over his collarbone.

He’d glance at you.

You’d pretend not to see.

Once, during one of your evening check-ins, you found him asleep. The ball you’d brought rested at his feet. Your book — the one you’d been reading aloud on breaks — lay open beside him. His head lolled slightly toward the light, mouth parted just slightly.

You didn’t wake him.

Instead, you sat beside him in the darkened room and read aloud anyway. Just a page or two. Quiet and slow.

When you marked the spot and stood to leave, his voice broke the stillness.

“Keep reading.”

You froze.

Turned.

He didn’t open his eyes, but there was a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I sleep better when I hear your voice.”

You sat back down.

You kept reading.

And slowly, day by day, the ward stopped feeling like a ward.

It became a halfway place. A sort of purgatory between what he’d lost and what he was still learning to become.

You were part of that, now. The part that tethered him when nothing else did.

“I think if I ever walk out of here,” he said one rainy evening, as you were playing chess, “you’ll have to come with me. I would have left a part of me here if not.”

You didn’t answer right away.

He turned his head then, eyes meeting yours.

You stared at him for a moment, his gaze unwavering. 

“Check, Weasley,” you said finally.

He grinned, staring at you through squinted eyes. 

George came by more often, now.

Not regularly. Not in any predictable rhythm. But he would appear — sometimes at dusk, sometimes midmorning, sometimes at the tail end of visiting hours — like he was still trying to get used to the idea that his brother was here. Alive. Whole in ways that defied all logic, and broken in others that logic couldn’t mend.

You always tried to give them space when he came.

You’d tidy up, pretend to be busy reorganizing potions or updating charts that didn’t need updating. Sometimes you’d quietly excuse yourself — “I’ll just step out,” — but Fred would shake his head lightly.

“You don’t have to,” he’d say.

But for George, you did.

At least at first.

The first few visits were painfully quiet. George would sit by the window, arms crossed tight across his chest, as if keeping something inside from shattering. Fred would make a comment here or there — light jokes, like pulling thread through scar tissue — and George would answer in monosyllables.

Once, when Fred made a joke about his potions tasting like troll sweat, George huffed a laugh.

It startled both of them.

Later that week, you came in to find George already sitting at the edge of the bed, one foot bouncing, staring at the game ball in his hands.

You opened your mouth to quietly leave, but Fred’s voice cut through.

“Angel,” he said simply. “Stay. Don’t ruin my progress.”

George looked up at you then. There was something almost unreadable in his expression. Like he was trying to figure out what you were to Fred, and what Fred had become since he last saw him whole.

You offered a small nod and sat in the chair across the room. Didn’t say anything. Just watched.

They talked.

It was light, and strained at times, but better. George complained about the shop. About how everything felt wrong now — too quiet, too easy, too hard, all at once.

Fred asked if he’d replaced him yet.

George rolled his eyes. “You’re irreplaceable,” he muttered. “Unfortunately.”

Fred grinned.

You looked away after that. Not because it hurt — but because it felt like something sacred.

But George noticed. He turned toward you after a pause, his voice low.

“He talks about you a lot,” he said, almost like it was nothing. “Says your tea’s awful. But you make up for it with good aim.”

Fred scoffed. “Don’t let her ego inflate. She already thinks she’s smarter than me.”

“I am smarter than you.”

George chuckled — a sound more whole than the last.

He came back more after that.

He started bringing things from the outside — magazines, Honeydukes bags, ideas for their next invention written on scraps of parchment…

You still gave them space. But less now.

Sometimes, George would stay while you worked on Fred’s stretches. You’d press on tight muscles while Fred tried not to flinch, as George recounted his day at the joke shop whilst bouncing the foam ball against the wall.

You always stayed a bit later after his visits. Not because Fred had asked you too. He wouldn’t, not knowing how thinly you were spread. But you knew he needed it. He never said anything, but the way he looked after you was confirmation enough. Eyes tired but steady.

“Thanks for staying.”

You shrugged, not looking up from the chart. “He’s your brother.”

“He’s half of me,” Fred said, and the weight of those words settled in the room.

You looked up then. You nodded, once. 

George started talking to you more.

It was subtle at first — a nod that lasted a little longer, a quip aimed your way instead of just Fred. He didn’t speak to many people at the hospital, and you knew why. The weight of everything sat on his shoulders in a way that no one else could truly understand.

But he spoke to you.

“You always come back,” he said once, catching you outside the room as you wiped your hands on your robes after a shift.

You glanced up, startled. “Would you prefer I didn’t?”

George tilted his head, thoughtful. “No. I just… don’t know how you do it.”

You offered a tired smile. “I ask myself that every day.”

His eyes flicked over your face — searching again, the way he always did — before nodding once, as if satisfied.

“Fred’s different with you.”

Your stomach fluttered, unsure of how to respond.

“I mean that in a good way,” George added, shifting on his feet. “He’s... lighter. You’re good for him.”

“I don’t know if I’m good for anyone lately.”

“Tell that to the guy in there who throws a fit when you’re ten minutes late with his lunch.”

You snorted. “He’s dramatic.”

“He’s a Weasley.”

Fair enough.

After that, George started sitting closer when he visited. Sometimes he’d bring two coffees instead of one — and hand you one without comment. Other times, he’d walk with you partway through the ward when he was leaving.

You never spoke about Fred directly. But it was understood between you.

Then one day, you walked into Fred’s room late.

Only by fifteen minutes. But late nonetheless.

You looked like a wreck.

Hair half-pulled back, smudges beneath your eyes, and your usually straight posture had curled in on itself like a wilted stem. You didn’t even try to smile when you walked in — you just dropped the chart on the side table, rubbed your face with both hands, and sank into the chair by the window.

Fred watched you from the bed, eyes narrowed slightly.

“Rough day?” he asked gently.

You made a sound — not quite a laugh, not quite a groan.

“My mentor snapped at me in front of the full staff. One of my patients yelled because the bandages were too tight. Another cried because they didn’t want to do another round of physio. And my parents floo-called to tell me they think I should take a break. For my ‘sanity.’” You mimed air quotes. “And then I spilled pepper-up potion on my sleeve, so now I’m itchy and jittery.”

Fred raised a brow. “That’s it?”

You let out a shaky breath, a helpless smile threatening your mouth. “That’s all before lunch.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Fred reached to the side of his bed, fiddled with something out of sight — and produced the little foam ball you two used for catching practice.

He lobbed it gently toward you. You caught it on instinct.

“Ten points to the decaying healer.”

You looked up at him — half annoyed, half charmed. “You’re a menace.”

He shrugged. “Your words. Personally, I think I’m a delight.”

You tossed the ball back at him. “You’re lucky I’m too tired to hit you harder.”

“I’m lucky you come here at all,” he said, quieter this time.

And something in your chest pulled tight at that.

Fred watched you for another second, then patted the bed beside him.

“Come on,” he said, “five throws each. Winner gets bragging rights. Loser has to admit I’m objectively better looking than Lockhart.”

You snorted. “I’d rather be hexed.”

But you joined him anyway — perching at the foot of the bed, legs dangling, tossing the ball lightly back and forth. The rhythm settled something in you. Predictable. Easy. Safe.

After a while, your shoulders started to loosen.

You didn’t win the game — mostly because he cheated with a well-timed distraction — but you didn’t care. Not really.

And later, as you leaned back in the chair with your eyes half-closed, Fred watched you.

You didn’t see the way his expression softened. How his smile dropped into something quiet and sincere. How his thumb absently traced the edge of the ball in his lap, like he was holding something fragile. 

He didn’t say it yet.

But he was starting to fall for you.

Perhaps he had been falling for a while now.

Hard.

Rehab had been brutal.

Fred had tried to put on a brave face. Had thrown out his usual snark when the mediwitch asked him to try the support bars again. But he’d barely lasted a minute before the tremble in his arms turned into a full collapse, knees buckling beneath him as his legs gave way.

You’d caught him before he hit the floor — arms tight around his waist, easing him back into the chair. But it had taken everything in you not to show what it felt like to watch him fall.

He didn’t say anything as you helped guide the chair back into the room.

Didn’t look at you when you adjusted the angle of his brace.

Didn’t thank you when you handed him water.

So, you gave him space.

You finished the notes in silence. Asked if he needed anything. When he shook his head, you stepped out — quietly, gently — and told yourself it was what he wanted.

You didn’t expect him to knock on the ward’s glass an hour later.

It was late. Past curfew. Most patients were asleep, and the halls had gone still.

You looked up from the chart you were reading and blinked in surprise.

Fred was sitting in the wheelchair at the door to the staff wing. Alone. Slouched slightly, with a blanket thrown haphazardly across his lap. He looked tired.

“I told the nurse I had to pee,” he said when you opened the door. “Then I bribed her with a Honeyduke’s chocolate bar from my drawer.”

You stared at him. “Fred—”

“I know. But I needed air.” His eyes flicked up to yours. “I needed you.”

The breath caught in your throat.

You stepped out into the hall.

The light was dim. The usually fluorescent lights, now a bit softer on the eyes. 

You sat on the floor across the halfway, knees pressed up to your chest. He wheeled his way next to you.

He rested his forearms on the armrests, silent for a long beat.

“I’m not angry at you,” he said quietly.

You blinked. “I didn’t think you were.”

“I wanted to be. When you stepped out earlier.” His jaw flexed. “It’s easier to be angry at someone than it is to admit I’m… failing.”

You shook your head. “Fred—”

“I know. I know it takes time. I know I’m lucky to be alive. I know it could be worse. But sometimes I sit in that bed and I feel like… like my life has been cut in half and I’m meant to smile through it.”

He swallowed hard. His hands were clenched tight in his lap.

“And then you walk in and ask me what kind of soup I want, or throw a bloody ball at my head, and for a few minutes, I forget how broken I feel.”

You didn’t say anything. Just watched him.

“I don’t want you to go when it gets hard,” he continued. “I know I’ve been an arse. And I’ll probably keep being one. But if you stay... I’ll try. Even when I want to quit.”

You moved then — slowly — standing from your chair and walking the short distance to him. You crouched beside the wheelchair, resting your hand lightly on his.

“I’m not going anywhere,” you said softly.

His hand turned beneath yours, fingers curling around your wrist.

You stayed like that for a moment — quiet and steady — before you stood up and opened the door to the healer’s ward once again.

“Tea?” you offered with a small smile.

Fred snorted. “You’re an angel.”

You didn’t feel like it, not with the heavy bags beneath your eyes. “Your words, not mine.”

He drank. You did too.

And when you finally escorted him back to his room, he didn’t ask for help to the bed. He shifted himself, slowly but determined, and gave you a look that made your chest feel too full.

“Sleep well,” you said at the door.

“Only if you promise to come back tomorrow.”

“When have I not?”

You hadn’t slept much.

The night before replayed in your mind on a loop — the words he said, the way his voice had cracked just slightly, like he’d been holding that weight in his chest for too long. The way he’d looked at you like you were something steady. Something safe.

It haunted you, in the best and worst ways.

You’d turned it over again and again in your head — what he needed, what he wanted, what might help even if it didn’t feel like help at first.

By the time morning came, you’d made up your mind.

You found your senior healer in the apothecary wing, elbow-deep in the delicate task of rebalancing nerve-healing draughts. You waited until she was done pouring and cleared your throat softly.

“I think Fred Weasley might be ready to go home,” you said, voice quiet but certain.

She looked at you over her spectacles. “You think so?”

“He’s physically ready. The wounds are closed, and he’s managing his pain. The paralysis won’t change overnight, but he’s stable. Emotionally…” You hesitated. “He needs to be around his people. Somewhere familiar. I think it’s the next step in his recovery.”

She was silent for a moment, then gave a slow nod. “Bring it up. If the family agrees and we can organize home support, I’ll sign off.”

And just like that, the idea was real.

You had no idea how Fred would take it.

He’d said he wanted you to stay. That he didn’t want to face the hard parts without you. And yet… you couldn’t ignore the spark that lit in his eyes whenever George showed up. Or the fact that no matter how steady you were, there were things family could give that you couldn’t.

So, you walked back through the familiar halls, ready to talk to him.

You didn’t expect the smell of burning toast.

The closer you got to the room, the clearer the sound became — clattering, muffled curses, and something that suspiciously resembled a pan hitting the floor.

You paused in the doorway.

Fred was sitting in his chair, grinning like a madman, a lopsided apron tied around his waist. George was by the counter in the little kitchenette of the room, waving a dishrag like a flag and coughing dramatically.

“I said keep an eye on the toast, not burn it!” Fred barked, laughing.

“I was multitasking!” George wheezed.

There was a bowl of eggs that had definitely once been scrambled, but were now a strange rubbery texture which you were sure was not edible to anything with a pulse. A pan full of what may have once been tomatoes sizzled on the stovetop, and there were suspicious splashes of something orange on the wall.

You couldn’t help it — you burst out laughing.

Fred looked over and caught you in the doorway. His eyes brightened immediately.

“Just in time for breakfast!”

“Did you set something on fire?” you asked, stepping in and surveying the kitchen.

“Technically no,” Fred said. “Everything was contained. There was a brief emotional fire when George forgot the salt—”

“Emotional fire?” George scoffed. “You threw a spoon at me!”

You were still laughing as you shook your head, brushing a stray curl back from your face.

“I was actually coming to talk to you about something,” you said, glancing toward Fred as you moved to open the window and let some of the smoke out.

Fred turned toward you, wiping his hands on the apron. “This sounds serious.”

“It’s not bad.” You leaned against the windowsill. “I think you might be ready to go home.”

George froze, halfway through peeling a very sad-looking banana.

Fred’s smile faded. Not immediately, but gradually, like sunlight slipping behind a cloud. “Home?”

You nodded, keeping your voice steady. “You’re strong enough. We’d set up home care, rehab would continue with a specialist visiting daily. Your family’s willing. It’d… be a change of pace. Maybe help.”

Fred was quiet.

You could see the gears turning behind his eyes.

“I thought you said you weren’t going anywhere,” he said, not unkindly.

Your throat tightened, but you managed a small smile. “I’m not. You are. And I think it'll help you. You need a familiar space. A burnt breakfast every morning if that’s what it takes.”

He looked down at his hands.

You didn’t press.

Instead, you gave them a soft nod. “I’ll let you two talk. Take your time. I’ll check back in later.”

You stepped back, gently shutting the door behind you.

You didn’t go far — just outside the room, where you leaned against the wall and tried not to feel like the rug had been tugged from beneath you. It had been your idea. You knew it was right. And yet… it ached.

Inside, you could hear their voices, lower now, more serious.

You couldn’t make out the words, but you could imagine.

And still, even through the ache, a small part of you smiled.

Because for all the setbacks and scars and late-nights… Fred was alive.

And he was loved.

And you had helped him get here.

That, you reminded yourself, was more than enough

The last night in the ward was a quiet one.

Too quiet.

You had made your rounds as usual, marking notes on your clipboard, double-checking potion times, restocking bandages. Most of the long-term patients were asleep or sedated. Those who weren’t were staring blankly at the ceiling, or out the windows, waiting for morning.

Waiting for something to change.

Fred was scheduled to go home just after breakfast. You were told the Weasleys would be arriving early. Arthur had insisted on it, claiming Molly wouldn’t sleep a wink until they had him under their roof. George had promised pancakes. Ginny had apparently insisted on bringing tea from her personal stash.

You’d smiled when you heard all of that.

You weren’t smiling now.

You stood outside Fred’s room with your hand on the door for a good thirty seconds before you pushed it open.

He was already awake.

Sitting in bed, propped up on one elbow, staring down at his lap. His hair was slightly damp from a recent wash. The tray of food you’d left earlier sat untouched on the small rolling table near his side.

The air felt strange. Still, but tense. Like a storm brewing in reverse.

You tried to keep your voice light. “That porridge must be particularly bad today for it to be untouched.”

He didn’t answer.

You stepped in, setting your clipboard down gently. “Mind if I do your check-up now?”

He just shrugged. A single shoulder, lifted without effort or interest.

You moved quietly. Checked his vitals. His pulse. Asked if he’d been feeling lightheaded, any sharp pain, nausea. He gave one-word answers or nodded. Didn’t meet your eyes once.

You tried again, a little smile tugging at your lips. “Tomorrow, first thing, you get to breathe real air. Try not to miss the smell of antiseptic too much.”

Still nothing.

You exhaled softly. “Alright. I’ll just—”

“I’m angry.”

The words came suddenly — not snapped, but solid. Firm.

Your hands stilled over the cuff you’d just fastened around his arm. You looked up, heart slipping sideways.

“I can tell,” you said quietly.

Fred’s jaw tightened. “You didn’t even ask me.”

“I talked to my senior. I had to—”

“I didn’t say ask her. I said me.”

The silence stretched.

You straightened slowly, lowering your hand and giving him your full attention. “My work is to take care of you. To do what’s in your best interest. You’ve been needing this — your family.”

He finally looked at you. There was no humor in his eyes now. Just something sharp and tired and burning underneath.

“I meant what I said,” he told you. “About not walking out of here whole.”

You tried to diffuse it with a small smile. “Technically, you're not walking anywhere. Not yet, anyway.”

But the moment the joke left your mouth, you wished you hadn’t said it.

Fred didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smirk.

Instead, he turned his face away. “You always do that.”

You blinked. “Do what?”

“Make it easier for you. Easier for me. Like if we don’t say it out loud, it won’t hurt as much.”

There was a long, full pause.

You crossed your arms, pressing your lips together for a moment. Then said quietly, “I am sorry you’re angry. But I’m not sorry for doing what was best for you. That’s my job, Fred.”

He let out a humorless breath. “I don’t need a specialist. I don’t need more strangers in white coats. I need you.”

You looked down at your hands. “I can’t be with you all the time.”

“I’m not asking for all the time,” he said, frustrated now. “I just don’t want it to be work for you. Because it sure as hell was not just rehabilitation for me. ”

You felt your chest tighten.

“I don’t want to go back to waking up without anyone to talk to,” he went on, voice quieter now. “Or being told how to feel about everything. You… you just sat with me. Even when I was a mess. Especially when I was a mess.”

“I only did what anyone would’ve done—”

“No, you didn’t.”

The words cracked like a whip.

You looked up. His eyes were glassy, but there were no tears. Just weight.

“No one stayed the way you did,” he said. “George tries, and I love him for it, but he’s grieving too. My mum walks in and sees me as a boy again. The rest of the world looks at me and sees someone who should be dead.”

His hand clenched on the blanket. “But you… you looked at me like I was still me. Even when I wasn’t sure I was.”

You didn’t know what to say. So you didn’t. You stepped closer, sat gently on the edge of the bed.

“I’m scared,” he said after a moment, the anger softening into something quieter. “And I don’t want to be scared alone.”

You reached out and, for the first time that night, let your hand rest on his.

“I’ll visit,” you said. “I’ll owl before I come. I’ll check in. I’ll bring that ridiculous throwing ball if you want me to.”

Fred sniffed. “I hate that ball.”

You gave a small smile. “I thought it was supposed to be our game.”

He chuckled. “Alright,” he said. “But I’m holding you to it. You’ll come by.”

“Regularly.”

“And you won’t make it weird.”

“When have I ever?” you replied, though you avoided his eyes as you smiled.

Fred laughed again, for real this time.

You sat there in the soft glow of the moonlight slipping in through the high window, your fingers still resting against his knuckles.

You’d get up in a moment. You’d finish your rounds. He’d leave in the morning.

But just for a moment longer, you both let yourselves sit with the anger. With the ache. With whatever was happening between you two. With this thing that didn’t demand answers, just presence.

It took you two weeks to go.

Not for lack of invitation. Fred had owled the day after he left St. Mungo’s — his handwriting barely legible, the ink smudged in spots like he’d pressed too hard. He said the house was loud, chaotic, smelled like cinnamon and broom polish. Said George had already stolen his pillow and Ginny threatened to hex his tea if he kept bossing people around.

He signed it simply: "Still waiting for that visit. Don’t make me throw the ball at myself."

You had smiled, reread it three times, then folded it neatly and tucked it into your coat pocket like it was something fragile.

But still, it took you a week.

Because seeing someone in a sterile room under white sheets was different from seeing them home.

Because something about crossing that threshold — stepping into his world instead of him being tucked away in yours — felt… enormous.

But you went.

The walk up to the Burrow was just as strange and crooked as you remembered from childhood stories. Smoke curling from the chimney. Gnomes scampering under hedges. Someone laughing somewhere near the garden.

The front door was already open when you reached it.

You raised your hand to knock anyway.

“I was beginning to think I wouldn’t see you again.”

Fred’s voice floated from the sitting room.

You turned, startled, and there he was — wheeling into view from the corner, dressed in a soft jumper, his hair slightly mussed like he’d been trying to fix it and given up halfway. He looked better. Healthier. Not completely healed. His movements were still stiff, one hand resting over his leg like it didn’t quite belong to him, but the color in his face was warmer. There was light in his eyes again.

“Still dramatic, I see,” you said.

He smirked. “Only on Mondays.”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Then you’re lucky.”

You stepped inside slowly, blinking at how the house seemed to breathe. It wasn’t just lived in — it was loved in. Blankets strewn on couches. Socks tucked half under the coffee table. A plant hanging sideways from a bent curtain rod.

You smiled. “It looks like it’s about to collapse.”

“It almost has. Several times,” Fred said cheerfully. “Mum says if the magic ever gives out, we’re going down with it.”

He motioned to a chair. You sat, smoothing your coat. He watched you carefully, without saying anything for a minute too long.

Then, “You look tired, angel.”

“Work didn’t stop when you left.”

“I’d like to think I was more than work.”

You smiled, then looked away, your fingers curling together in your lap. “I wasn’t sure if I should come. I didn’t want to… overstep.”

Fred tilted his head. “Why would you think that?”

“I’ve seen people leave St. Mungo’s and never want to look back. Sometimes they don’t want reminders. Or… witnesses.”

Fred’s expression softened.

“You’re not a witness,” he said. “You’re a person I want around.”

Your throat tightened slightly.

Before you could answer, the sound of heavy footsteps echoed on the stairs.

George appeared, hair damp from a shower, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He paused when he saw you, one brow raising like he wasn’t expecting you so soon.

You waved. “Hi, George.”

He gave a nod that wasn’t unfriendly, just slightly cautious. “Hey.”

Then he looked at Fred. “Mum’s finishing lunch. You want to come into the kitchen?”

Fred glanced at you, then back to his brother. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

George didn’t say anything for a second, but then he nodded again and turned to go.

“See? I’m a reminder.”

“He’s just figuring you out,” Fred said. “You scare people. In a good way.”

You huffed. “I’d say the ward lights wash me out. Make me look sick rather than scary.”

“Intimidating,” he deadpanned. “Truly terrifying.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then, softer: “I missed you.”

You looked up, your throat suddenly thick again. “It’s only been two weeks.”

“I know.” Fred gave a small shrug, his fingers picking absently at a loose thread on the arm of his chair. “Still felt too long.”

The moment hovered before you offered a soft smile, one he returned, a little lopsided, a little shy. For all his wit, for all his easy humor, Fred could still be earnest in a way that tugged at something deep beneath your ribs.

You leaned back in your seat. “The owl helped.”

“Yeah?”

You nodded. “I kept it. It’s still in my coat pocket.”

Fred leaned back on his chair. “I knew I would grow on you eventually.”

“Hard not to, Weasley.”

There was a pause, but this one was comfortable — filled with the low hum of magic in the walls, distant clinking from the kitchen, and the occasional thump of someone moving overhead. You watched as Fred’s gaze drifted to the window beside him. Sunlight spilled in, catching the faint auburn in his hair and warming the pale skin of his cheek. He looked peaceful, or as close to it as you’d ever seen him.

You opened your mouth to speak — maybe to ask how he’d really been sleeping, maybe to admit how strange it was to be here and feel like you’d never left — when George’s voice rang out again.

“Oi, you staying for lunch?”

You startled slightly, blinking as you registered the words.

Fred looked smug.

“I was getting to it,” he called back.

There was a muffled snort, followed by the unmistakable clatter of a spoon hitting the floor. Someone — possibly Ron — swore loudly in the background. You could just barely hear Molly’s exasperated “Language!” echoing from the kitchen.

Fred turned back to you. “So? Are you staying?”

It was a loaded question, as if there was more on the table than just food. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

Fred’s eyes didn’t waver.

“You know you’re not.”

You glanced toward the kitchen, where you could still hear soft chatter and the scrape of chairs.

“I didn’t bring anything,” you said, a little lamely. “Not even dessert.”

The Burrow became a second home before you ever realized it.

At first, you had thought your visits would taper off — that Fred would settle into his recovery and you’d fall back into your usual rotations, long days at St. Mungo’s, long nights collapsing into bed. But somehow, your feet always found their way to the crooked path leading to the Weasleys’ door.

The first time you arrived uninvited — with an old book under your arm and half a plan to read it in Fred’s room while he ignored the pages and made sarcastic commentary — no one batted an eye. Molly had handed you a mug of tea, murmured, “You’re in time for supper,” and Arthur had already started setting another place at the table.

From then on, it just… kept happening.

You were there for Ginny’s birthday in August. She roped you into a backyard Quidditch match you had absolutely no business participating in, and you nearly tripped over a garden gnome during takeoff. Fred hadn’t stopped laughing about it for a week. You threw cake at him in retaliation. George joined in for the second round.

You were there when Bill brought his daughter to visit and introduced her to the whole family for the first time. Fleur had insisted on brushing her hair while you held her, and Fred had whispered, “You’d be terrifying with one of your own.”

You’d arched a brow. “That sounds dangerously close to a compliment.”

He’d shrugged, trying not to smile. “Blame the baby. They bring out my softer side.”

And then there was the summer afternoon that stuck in your mind long after it ended.

It was late July, the sky a pale, hazy blue, and the garden buzzing with lazy bees and bursts of laughter. Someone — likely Percy — had enchanted the radio to play soft jazz, and you were lying on a blanket in the grass with your shoes off and your head tipped back to soak in the sun. Fred sat a few feet away, sketching patterns in the dirt with his wand and occasionally flicking it toward unsuspecting gnomes. His legs were stretched out in front of him, slightly stiff but stronger — the kind of stronger that came from months of stubbornness and sheer grit.

“Reckon I could walk to the shed,” he mused aloud.

You turned your head toward him. “That shed is a death trap. Pick a different goal.”

He looked over at you. “Fine. Walk to you, then.”

You raised a brow, amusement curling in your chest. “That the new benchmark?”

He tilted his head thoughtfully, then grinned. “It’s always been the benchmark.”

You rolled your eyes but didn’t deny it.

That was the summer you started leaving a toothbrush at the Burrow.

You stopped knocking when you came in. Molly started calling your name when she needed help peeling potatoes. Ginny nicked your nail polish. Arthur grinned every time you brought up something Muggle-related just to watch his eyes light up with curiosity.

And Fred… Fred started asking if you’d be there tomorrow before you’d even said goodbye for the night.

By autumn, your jumper was hanging on a hook by the kitchen door. Halloween arrived with carved pumpkins bobbing in the orchard and enchanted skeletons that chased Ron around the kitchen. You helped Molly string bewitched cobwebs over the windows while Fred supervised from just outside the kitchen, providing you with the most useless kind of commentary. George charmed every apple in the bobbing barrel to shriek like banshees, and you caught Fred watching you laugh.

Somewhere, as the weather became colder, the space you took up in the house shifted— from guest to something else entirely. Not official or labeled. But known. When Fred was too sore to come down for breakfast, you were the one Molly handed the tray to without being asked.

When Christmas came, you received a handmade jumper with your initial stitched in gold thread.

When New Year’s arrived, they asked you to bring your family.

You hadn’t expected it, honestly. You’d mentioned your parents once or twice, but never in detail. Still, the invitation came in the form of a cheerful note from Molly, complete with a floo address, a time, and a subtle but unmistakable, “We’d love to meet the people who raised you.”

Your parents came. It was awkward at first, your mother clutching a tin of biscuits like a peace offering, your father blinking at the enchanted cookware, but quickly swept into the warmth of the Burrow like they belonged there. Arthur cornered your dad to discuss plug sockets. Your mum helped Ginny in the kitchen and was thoroughly impressed by her wandwork with icing.

And you?

You found Fred near the edge of the living room, watching the chaos unfold with a fond sort of exasperation.

“You made it,” he said, straightening when he saw you.

“Of course I did,” you said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

He was standing — with a fair bit of effort — but standing nevertheless. He leaned slightly against the frame of the door, a cane in one hand and something careful in the way he held himself. 

You blinked at him, taking it in. “Fred…”

“It’s New Year’s,” he said casually. “Figured I’d start it standing.”

You didn’t answer right away.

Instead, you crossed the room slowly, until you reached him. Your hands snaked around his waist, steadying him without making it obvious. 

He glanced down at you, expression unreadable for a moment, before a quiet smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Hi,” you said softly, tilting your head up to meet his eyes.

“Hi.” His voice was warm. Steady, despite the cane in one hand and the slight tremor in his knee.

For a moment, neither of you moved. You could hear George laughing behind you, the low thrum of the wireless switching into something slow and familiar. Fred’s fingers twitched at his side, his eyes flicking briefly toward the center of the room where Arthur had just pulled Molly into a waltz that was more affection than grace.

“Dance with me?” he asked.

You blinked. “Are you sure?”

He tilted his head, mock-offended. “Are you saying no?”

“I’m saying your Healer’s going to be very cross with you if you faceplant into the soup.”

Fred snorted. “Good thing she’s off-duty tonight.” His voice dropped just a little. “And mine, apparently.”

You stared at him for a second longer, then held out your hand.

He took it without hesitation.

You helped him into the center of the room. His free hand found your waist with surprising familiarity, and your arm curled lightly around his shoulder, careful of the still-healing muscle beneath his jumper.

The music was slow. A string-heavy tune that didn’t require any real movement, just soft swaying and shared breath.

Fred leaned in slightly. “You’ll have to do most of the work.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” you murmured.

That earned you a grin.

You swayed together, the world narrowing a little. Not in a dizzying way, but rather in a peaceful one. Like all the noise of the Burrow, all the flying candles and floating paper stars and loud Weasley laughter, had dropped to a quiet hum.

“This is nice,” Fred said eventually, his chin brushing your temple.

“It is.”

“Mum’s probably getting suspicious.”

You blinked, drawing back just enough to see his face. “Suspicious of what?”

He smirked. “That you’re not just performing healer duties anymore.”

You laughed, quick and involuntary, your forehead pressing briefly to his chest. “You think?.”

He hummed.

“What makes you say that?”

“You keep showing up for one,” he whispered back.

You laughed and carefully ran your fingers through his hair. You decided against reminding him how he would owl you every time you went more than two days without visiting. 

“I think the way you kept making mistletoe appear under every door during Christmas and kissing me, might have tipped her off as well.”

He grinned down at you. 

You bit back a smile. “You’re lucky I like you.”

Fred pulled back just enough to meet your eyes. “I know.”

The music faded, replaced by a more upbeat tune, and someone behind you — George, by the sound of it — whooped loudly and dragged Percy into a clumsy two-step.

You started to step away, but Fred’s hand held firm at your waist.

“Don’t let go just yet,” he said.

“So you like me too,” you teased, but didn’t pull away.

Fred gave you a look, one of those crooked, lopsided half-smiles that always seemed to undo you a little. Mischief around the eyes, affection under the surface.

“I’ve been told it’s fairly obvious.”

You raised a brow. “Oh? By whom?”

“Mum. George. Ginny. That one weird mirror upstairs that whispers truths when you walk past it too fast—”

You snorted. “That thing’s cursed.”

“Cursed and correct,” he said, grinning.

Your heart tugged, just a little, at the ease of it all. The comfort. The slow, stubborn way he folded you into his life and refused to let you back out.

“And here I thought you were just using me for my medical expertise,” you said lightly.

“Oh, absolutely,” Fred said, mock-serious. “The way you check my bandages? Riveting. Can’t get enough.”

You stayed there with him in the middle of the room, just swaying a little to music that no longer matched your pace, his cane braced lightly against the side of your foot, your arms looped around each other like muscle memory.

And then, with the timing of someone who’d clearly been lurking and waiting for it, George called from across the room: “Oi! Should we start planning the wedding now, or are you still pretending this is about physical therapy?”

Fred didn’t miss a beat. “It’s intensive therapy, George. Leave us be.”

You giggled, pressing a hand against Fred’s chest and helping him reach for his cane.

“Do you see what you’ve done?” you murmured.

“I do,” he said, clearly pleased with himself.

Fred took the cane from you with practiced ease, but didn’t move right away. His hand lingered at your waist, thumb brushing a small, absent pattern against your side.

“C’mon,” he said at last, nodding toward the doorway. “Let’s go before George ropes Percy into a conga line again.”

You smiled and moved with him, matching your steps to his pace without thinking. You’d long since stopped counting it as effort.

Just as you reached the edge of the room, he paused, fingers still laced loosely with yours.

You turned to look at him.

He was already watching you.

“Thanks for showing up,” he said. 

You tilted your head, sneaking your arms around his waist once again. This time, stepping on your tippy-toes to press a chaste kiss to his lips.

“When have I not?”

That made him smile. He pulled you closer by the waist and pressed a kiss on your jaw, which tickled you.

“Happy New Year, angel.”

You didn’t say anything back. Not because you didn’t have a thousand things you could’ve said, but because in that moment, none of them needed saying.

[delicatetrashtree]

I feel that this is a good time to bring this back lmao. Incident v.2

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But seriously holy fucking shit. what a race.

The Mario kart comment though hahahahaha.

Also Nico as commentator was phenomenal I'm always stoked to hear when he's commentating.

And a Sauber passed Hamilton??? What is the world coming to. Jk congrats to Hulkenberg.

[delicatetrashtree]

https://youtube.com/shorts/OxG82DQBKa8?si=lsDgy2ofYmHi6dJG

I feel that this is a good time to bring this back lmao

[delicatetrashtree]

Max committing track terrorism and getting dotd at the same time. absolutely deserved. support drivers rights and wrongs when they bring the drama.

[delicatetrashtree]

f1 is so unserious omfg bruv went from p3 to p10 and won dotd, he’s also still in the points 😭

[delicatetrashtree]

The quiet things that remain

pairing: Robert 'Bob' Reynolds x reader

Summary: Bob and Y/N used to be the best of friends, he went to Malaysia to be better, only to leave her just with a ghost in the past and unresponded messages and calls. And return, but never to her. Never to the love she didn't had the courage to announce.

Word count: 12,1k

warning: very angst, depression, self-esteem issues, extreme loniless, mysoginistic remarks

note: don't hate me

--

The rain tapped against the bookstore windows like a soft, persistent knocking — steady, but unwelcome. Outside, the gray New York afternoon bled into the kind of evening that came too early and stayed too long. Inside, the warmth of yellow lamplight spilled over rows of untouched shelves and dust-flecked hardcovers, curling over the edges of a place that time had gently forgotten.

Y/N sat behind the counter, elbows on the worn wood, phone resting in her trembling hands. She hadn't noticed when the tea beside her had gone cold. She hadn’t noticed much lately.

The video played quietly, but every word rang louder than it should.

“...the New Avengers were spotted again today leaving the UN compound, raising more questions than answers. Who are they? What do they stand for? And more importantly… who are they when the cameras are off?”

A sleek montage of clips rolled across the screen. There they were — the so-called “New Avengers.”

There he was. Bob Reynolds. The man she hadn’t seen in eight months.

Golden-haired, cleaner than she’d ever known him, standing straight and still beside a team of killers and misfits. No twitching hands. No darting eyes. No shadow of withdrawal in his pupils. Just… peace. Control. Power.

It was like looking at a stranger. A beautiful, impossible stranger with his face.

Y/N’s breath caught in her throat, but the video kept playing.

“Among the many questions surrounding Sentry — the golden god at the center of the team — is one persistent theory: is there something romantic between him and his fellow operative, Yelena Belova?”

Her fingers curled around the phone. No. Please.

Footage rolled. Grainy at first — taken by paparazzi, blurred by distance.

Bob and Yelena. Walking side by side. Her arm brushing his. Another clip: her tugging him away from the crowd, laughing. A third: a hug. Not quick. Not distant. Her arms around his waist. His chin in her hair. The kind of embrace that says I know what you’ve been through, and I’m not afraid of it.

“She’s the reason I’m here,” Bob’s voice said, an old interview clip playing now. “Yelena… she didn’t give up on me, even when I did. She reminded me there was still something worth saving.”

Y/N didn’t realize she’d started crying until her vision blurred and the soft hum of her own breath broke into a quiet, gasping sob. She paused the video with shaking hands, freezing the frame on a still of Bob looking sideways at Yelena during the interview — something gentle, something fragile behind his eyes.

That was the look she used to dream about. That was the look he never gave her.

She’d held his hair back while he threw up in gas station parking lots. Bailed him out of jail with money she didn’t have. Let him crash on her couch when he was too high to remember his name. He used to call her his “safe place.” Said she was the only thing in his life that wasn’t broken.

But she’d always known. Deep down, she’d always known she wasn’t enough to fix him.

But now? Now he had Yelena.

And the world. And peace.

Y/N set her phone down face-first on the counter and covered her face with both hands, her shoulders trembling with the kind of grief that makes no sound. The kind that lives in the chest like a second heartbeat, one made of rust and regret.

No customers. No noise but the rain and the old jazz record she’d forgotten to flip. Just her and the ghosts of what they could’ve been.

In the next room, a little bell above the door chimed softly — a delivery maybe, or just the wind. She didn’t even lift her head.

Somewhere, Bob Reynolds was flying.

And she was still here, crying in a bookstore he’d once said felt like home. He wasn’t coming back. Not to her.

And still, she whispered his name. Quiet, like a prayer.

The bookstore no longer hurt.

Not in the way it used to — with that sharp, stabbing grief that made her chest cave in every time the bell above the door chimed. Back then, she'd look up, half-hoping it was him. A flash of gold hair. That awkward, tired smile. His hoodie too big, his eyes too empty.

But now, months later, there was just quiet. Not peace — never peace — but quiet.

The kind that comes after acceptance. The kind that grows like moss over memories.

Y/N didn’t talk about Bob anymore. Not to coworkers, not to old friends who still asked, “Have you seen what he’s doing now?” Not even to herself, in those late hours when the ache beneath her ribs swelled like a wound reopening.

But she felt him. In the silence between customers. In the space beside her when she locked the door and walked home. In the way she looked at the world now — all those colors, all that beauty — and felt like a glass wall stood between her and everything she used to want.

She’d loved him. Of course she had.

She had loved Bob Reynolds since the ninth grade, when he punched a teacher’s car and got suspended for protecting a kid he didn’t even know. She loved him when he borrowed her notes, when he cried on her fire escape high out of his mind, when he disappeared for three weeks and came back thirty pounds thinner, shivering and hollow-eyed.

She loved him when he couldn’t love himself.

She never said it. Not really. Maybe in the way she bandaged his hands. Or made excuses to his parole officer. Or brought him dinner and sat three feet away like she didn’t want to reach out and pull him into her chest.

And when he left for Malaysia — a “spiritual retreat” — she smiled. She smiled like she believed it, even though everything in her screamed.

Still, she let him go. She let him go because she thought he’d come back. For her.

And then came the message. Just six words.

I love you. I’m sorry.

She’d stared at those words for hours. Days. Her fingers trembling over the keys, unsent replies collecting like ghosts in her drafts folder.

“Why are you sorry?” “Where are you?” “I love you, too.” “Please come home.” “Was it ever real?”

But she never sent anything. Because part of her already knew.

It wasn’t romantic love. Not for him. She was comfort. She was safety. She was the place you go when everything else falls apart — not the place you stay when you’re finally whole again.

Yelena got that part. Yelena got all of him.

And Y/N… Y/N got to survive it.

So she started going to the park.

At first, just to breathe. Just to sit on a bench with a thermos of tea and pretend she was somewhere else. Then, one day, she brought a sketchbook. She wasn’t an artist, not really. But she remembered telling Bob once that she wanted to draw people in love. “Like those old French films,” she’d said. “Where they just sit at cafés and smoke and kiss.” He laughed and said she was corny.

She went back the next day. And the next.

She sketched mothers holding babies. Old couples feeding pigeons. Young people tangled together in the grass, drunk on love and sunshine.

They didn’t know she was drawing them. They didn’t know her heart was breaking with every line.

She packed little picnics, too. Cheese and grapes and crackers in a paper box. A single folded napkin. She ate them cross-legged on a blanket alone — the same dates she used to dream of sharing with him. Her fantasies made real, only stripped of the one person they were for.

She bought herself ballet tickets. Front row. Twice.

She cried through Swan Lake because it was beautiful. And because Bob never cared about ballet. But she’d once imagined holding his hand in that velvet-dark theater, leaning on his shoulder, whispering about the dancers under the dim light of intermission.

She went to museums with an audio guide in her ears and a silent ache in her chest. They’d planned to go once, years ago. He bailed. Got arrested that night. She remembered bailing him out, hair still curled from the night she’d spent getting ready, tickets still in her purse.

Now she went alone. She stood in front of paintings for too long. Tried to feel the meaning in each one. Tried to understand why love, for her, always felt just out of reach — like art behind glass.

Bob had loved her, she truly believed that. But now she knew it had been platonic. Or nostalgic. Or guilty. Or desperate. Not the way she had loved him. Not the kind that cracked bone and rearranged the shape of her soul.

She had been there for decades. Through every overdose. Every apology. Every relapse and redemption. And in the end, Yelena — sharp, beautiful, new — walked in and took the title Y/N had spent her whole life earning.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Not really.

But it still felt like theft.

And so, every day, Y/N practiced the quiet art of living. Not thriving. Not healing. Just… surviving.

And when she walked home past flickering streetlights, past posters of the New Avengers, past Bob’s face painted in gold and shadow, she looked away.

Not because she didn’t love him anymore. But because she still did.

The sound of her shoes echoed softly against the sidewalk as Y/N walked home from the museum, arms crossed tightly over her chest. It had rained earlier. The air still smelled like wet pavement and the petals of bruised flowers that had fallen from the trees lining the Upper West Side.

She didn’t know why she kept doing this — walking home instead of taking the bus. Maybe she was punishing herself. Or maybe it was the only time she could cry without worrying anyone would see.

The tear tracks on her cheeks had dried by the time she got to her building.

She lived on the second floor. A narrow walk-up above a tailor shop, with faded red carpeting and one window that opened if you jiggled it the right way. It was small, cramped, imperfect. But it was hers.

The moment the door clicked shut behind her, the weight of the day sank into her shoulders. She kicked off her shoes — too comfortable, too wide, orthopedic even. She used to laugh at herself for that, back when she imagined someone would find her quirks charming. Now they just made her feel… old.

Plain.

Forgettable.

Y/N tossed her bag on the couch and went straight to the mirror near the kitchen. She didn’t know why. She just stood there and looked.

And the more she looked, the more she unraveled.

The dark circles beneath her eyes weren’t poetic, like in the movies. They were just… tired. Her skin was dull, pale in places, red in others. Her cheeks had lost their softness from stress. Her lips were cracked.

She tucked her hair behind one ear. Then the other. Then back again.

Too flat. Too thin. Too dry.

She didn’t look like someone you’d love at first sight. She didn’t look like someone who could fly beside gods or run across rooftops or save the world.

She looked like someone who bagged your books and forgot to put on mascara.

And the image of Yelena — always there, always shimmering just under her eyelids — rose to the front of her mind.

Yelena Belova, with her radiant, smug grin and her bite-sharp wit. Yelena, who had cheekbones like a model and eyes that seemed to challenge the whole world. Yelena, who had scars and stories and strength in the kind of way that made men look and women wish.

She was everything Y/N wasn’t.

And worse… she was the kind of woman Bob could fall in love with.

Y/N’s voice cracked in the silence of the room. A whisper against the mirror.

“Of course he loves her.”

She dragged her fingers down her face, pressing against her cheekbones, her temples, like she could reshape what was there. But no matter how she adjusted the angle, no matter how she forced a smile — she still looked like the woman he left behind.

A memory. A placeholder. Never the prize.

She slumped to the floor, back against the kitchen cabinets, knees pulled to her chest.

Her breath hitched once. Twice. And then the tears came again, full and warm, slipping down her cheeks and into the collar of her cardigan.

Why did I think I ever had a chance?

The thought hissed in her mind, cruel and sharp. She wasn’t a hero. She wasn’t someone the world noticed, or photographed, or followed online. She wore second-hand sweaters and cheap lip balm. She read fantasy books instead of manifesting a future. She planned picnics and movie nights for a man who never once saw her as the main character in his life.

Her hands had held his when they trembled. Her voice had soothed him when he couldn’t breathe. Her love had stitched him back together when he was in pieces.

But Yelena got his smile. Yelena got the storybook ending.

And all Y/N got was this tiny apartment, this quiet heartbreak, and the knowledge that she had always, always been too soft in a world that rewarded teeth.

She reached for her sketchbook on the table, flipped to a new page, and tried to draw.

Anything. Something. A line. A shape.

But all that came out were shaky outlines of a woman with her head in her hands.

She didn’t even need to look in the mirror to know it was her.

A little while later, she made herself tea. She added honey even though she didn’t want it. Her mother once told her honey was for healing. She didn’t believe that anymore, but the ritual made her feel like someone else might believe it for her.

She drank it slowly, eyes still swollen, heart still aching.

--

It had taken everything in her — every fragile, trembling piece of courage — to agree to the date.

She didn’t want to. Not really. Not when her heart still ached every time she saw a golden blur on a news broadcast, not when Bob’s voice still played like a lullaby in her most tired moments. But she told herself she had to try. That maybe the only way out of love was through something new. Something safe. Someone... nice.

His name was Daniel. They had matched on an app after she spent thirty-two minutes rewriting and rereading her bio before finally deciding on something honest but light: “Bookstore girl. Lover of iced tea, Van Gogh, and stories that hurt.”

Daniel had a nice smile in his pictures. Warm. Casual. His messages were funny, thoughtful — nothing like the catcalls or shallow conversations she was used to getting from strangers online. He liked foreign films, jazz, and pretended to know more about literature than he did, which made her smile. He wasn’t Bob. But that was the point, wasn’t it?

Their dinner was at a little bistro tucked into a quiet Brooklyn street, lit by the kind of dim, cozy lighting that made everyone look softer. Y/N had spent two hours getting ready. She curled her hair, put on eyeliner she hadn’t touched in months, and slipped into a pale blue dress that clung just enough to remind her that her body was still hers — even if no one had touched it in years.

She smiled when she saw Daniel waiting outside, leaning against the brick wall with his hands in his coat pockets. He greeted her with a compliment — “You look great” — and she had smiled too brightly in return, unsure of how to absorb kindness that didn’t come wrapped in years of shared trauma.

The conversation was easy, light. He asked about her job, her favorite books, her dream vacation. She let herself laugh, even told a few stories about her childhood that she hadn’t spoken aloud in a long time. They shared dessert. He paid. He walked her outside, his coat brushing her arm.

Then he said it.

“So… want to come back to mine for a nightcap?” He grinned. That kind of grin.

It hit her like a slap. The spell — fragile and delicate — shattered.

Her breath caught, but she smiled politely. “No, thank you. I should probably get home.”

He blinked once. Twice. Then his face changed.

“Oh. One of those girls.”

She paused, caught off guard. “What?”

“You led me on the whole night just for a free meal?”

“What? No, I didn’t—”

He laughed — a cruel, sharp sound that made her skin crawl. “Jesus. I should’ve known. I mean, you're not even that hot.”

Her lips parted, a protest caught in her throat. But he was already turning away.

“You act like you're this mysterious, deep girl, but you're just another average chick playing hard to get. It’s pathetic.”

The words hit like fists. Not even that hot. Just average.

She stood there, stunned, as he walked off into the night without another word.

By the time she got home, the tears had already started. Silent. Humiliating. Hot with shame.

She locked the door behind her and sank to the floor, still in her dress, her heels digging into her calves. She didn’t move for a long time. Just sat there, back against the wall, clutching her purse to her chest like it could hold her together.

“I’m not even pretty enough to turn someone down,” she whispered into the quiet.

The words echoed in her head, crueler every time they came back around.

Because it wasn’t just about Daniel.

It was every moment she’d spent wondering why Bob never looked at her that way. Every time she imagined what it might be like if he kissed her, only to watch him kiss someone else in her dreams. It was every second she stood in front of the mirror, wishing to be someone — anyone — worth choosing.

Yelena would never be called average.

Yelena had fire in her veins and a thousand stories in her scars. Men looked at her like she was art. Women wanted to be her. She could command a room with a glance, slay monsters with a flick of her wrist. Even in the mess, she was magic.

And what was Y/N?

Just… there.

The girl at the register who knew your favorite author. The girl who waited. Who stayed. Who believed in things long after they’d stopped being true.

The girl who had to beg the universe just to be noticed — only to be told she wasn’t even good enough to reject.

That night, she deleted the dating app.

She folded the blue dress and put it at the bottom of her drawer. She brushed her teeth without looking in the mirror. She made tea and didn’t drink it.

She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling until the sun came up, one thought pulsing behind her tired eyes:

Even if Bob had never loved her… she used to believe she was the kind of person worth loving.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

--

The air was crisp — not cold, not yet. Just enough of a bite to make the tips of her fingers shiver in her sleeves, and for the wind to carry the kind of scent that only ever belonged to October: dried leaves, earth, the distant memory of rain. Y/N had always loved this kind of weather. She used to joke that it was "main character" weather. The kind you walk through slowly, headphones in, pretending the world is some quiet, tragic film and you’re the girl who hasn’t healed yet — but might.

Only now, she wasn’t pretending.

She walked with her hands in her pockets, her scarf wrapped twice around her neck and tugged tight. Her hair was tied back loosely, pieces falling into her face with every gust of wind. Her eyes were a little tired, but soft. Distant. As if they were searching for something they didn’t expect to find.

The park wasn’t crowded. A few dog walkers. A couple of college students with coffees. Two kids kicking a soccer ball back and forth. She passed them all without really seeing them. Her boots crunched gently over leaves as she found her usual bench — the one facing the little lake with the willow trees bending low over the edge. She sat slowly, with the weight of someone who was carrying more than her coat.

She didn’t notice the old woman at the other end of the bench until several minutes had passed.

The woman was crocheting. Her fingers moved rhythmically, precisely, as if they knew this pattern by heart. A ball of pale lavender yarn sat tucked neatly in her lap, and her eyes — pale blue and clouded slightly with age — flicked up occasionally to watch the people go by.

Y/N watched the ducks. The trees. Nothing in particular. Her body was still, but her mind wasn’t.

She didn’t cry. Not this time. The tears had dried up days ago. Now it was just… stillness. Not peace. Not quite sadness. Just the absence of something she didn’t know how to name.

“Are you looking for someone, dear?”

The voice startled her — soft but sudden. Y/N turned slightly, surprised to see the old woman watching her with a small, knowing smile.

“I—sorry?” Y/N blinked.

“You’ve got that look,” the woman said, setting her crochet down gently in her lap. “The kind people wear when they’re waiting for someone they know won’t come. I used to know that look very well.”

Y/N swallowed. Her throat felt tight.

“I’m not,” she said too quickly. “Just… enjoying the park.”

The woman hummed, unconvinced but kind. “Well, if you’re going to keep me company, at least pretend to be interested in what I’m making.”

Y/N smiled faintly — barely there — and looked down at the yarn. “What are you making?”

“Scarf. For my granddaughter. She wants it to match her dog’s sweater,” the woman said with a fond roll of her eyes. “I told her that was ridiculous. Then I started it anyway.”

Y/N let out a small breath. A ghost of a laugh. “It’s a beautiful color.”

“Thank you.” The woman paused, then looked at her with a soft, mischievous glint. “You ever crochet?”

Y/N shook her head. “No… But I’ve always wanted to learn.”

“Well, you’re in luck.” The woman pulled a second hook from her bag and another ball of yarn — soft blue, a little faded. “Sit up. I’ll teach you.”

Y/N hesitated. “I… really?”

“Why not? You look like you need something to do with those restless hands. Something that doesn’t involve checking your phone every two minutes.”

She flushed. Guilty. She had been checking. Just in case there was something about him. A new sighting. A news update. A miracle.

She took the yarn.

The first few loops were awkward. Clumsy. But the rhythm settled quickly. The woman’s voice guided her gently through the pattern, her hands warm with time and patience. Y/N’s hands trembled once — not from the cold.

“What’s your name, dear?” the woman asked after a while.

“Y/N.”

“Lovely name. I’m June.”

They sat for a long moment in silence, the soft clicking of hooks the only sound between them.

Then June asked, “Was it your lover?”

Y/N blinked, the question catching her off guard. “What?”

“The one you’re looking for. The one you lost.”

Y/N stared at the yarn in her hands, her fingers frozen mid-loop. She could feel the ache creep up again, slow and sharp, like it always did when someone touched that place inside her she thought she’d hidden well.

“I… I didn’t have a lover,” she said softly.

June watched her for a moment, then nodded. “But you loved him.”

Y/N’s throat tightened.

“Yes.”

June didn’t pry. She just nodded again, returning to her stitching. It was quiet for another few minutes before Y/N found her voice again.

“What about you?” she asked. “You said you used to know that look.”

June smiled gently, the kind of smile that knew grief well. “I lost my husband five years ago. Charles. We were married forty-seven years. I still look for him sometimes in the park. It’s silly, I know.”

“It’s not silly,” Y/N said quickly, her voice breaking just slightly.

June looked at her kindly. “No… I suppose it’s not.”

Y/N looked down at her yarn, then up at the trees swaying slowly in the breeze.

“He used to walk with me,” June said, voice distant. “Every Sunday. He’d always pick up the fallen leaves and tell me which ones were the prettiest. I used to think he was silly for it. Now I wish I’d pressed them all into books.”

Y/N’s chest hurt. “I used to plan dates for him,” she said suddenly, voice quiet. “Picnics. Ballet tickets. Museum exhibits. I’d write the ideas down in a little notebook. I never asked him out. Never told him. But I had it all planned… just in case he ever looked at me like I wasn’t invisible.”

June’s eyes were wet.

“Did he ever know?” she asked gently.

Y/N shook her head.

“I think he loved me,” she said. “But not the way I needed.”

June reached over, placed her hand softly over Y/N’s.

“Sometimes,” she said, “we love the right person in the wrong way. And sometimes… we’re just too late.”

Y/N let the words settle in her chest, the truth of them ringing hollow and loud all at once.

They sat there until the sun began to sink beneath the trees, painting the lake gold. A still, shared silence. No pressure. No expectations. Just two women — one in the dusk of her life, the other trying desperately to find her dawn again — crocheting side by side on a bench in the middle of a world that kept moving forward.

Y/N didn’t find Bob that day.

But she found something else.

A moment of peace.

After that day in the park, something in Y/N shifted. Not drastically. There was no revelation. No thunderous change. Just… a quiet pivot. A small crack that let something new inside.

She began crocheting like her life depended on it.

At first, she was terrible. Her stitches were too tight. Then too loose. Then tangled. She dropped the hook more times than she could count. But she kept at it with the fervor of someone clinging to a lifeline. Her apartment — once tidy, minimalist — soon became littered with yarn. Pale blues, deep burgundies, soft browns. She never made anything useful. Her scarves were too short, her hats too lumpy, her attempts at socks made her laugh through tears.

But the point wasn’t to finish. The point was that it occupied her hands. It kept her from refreshing news sites. Kept her from scrolling past video edits of Bob — or Sentry now — lifting cars, flying above cities, standing beside Yelena like they were sculpted from the same stone. It kept her from reliving every memory with him, over and over, until her mind bled from it.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, she met June in the park. Rain or shine. They’d sit on the bench, often in silence, crocheting while the world passed them by. Sometimes June talked about Charles. Sometimes about her grandchildren. Sometimes they sat in companionable stillness, the weight of their grief stitching them into the same quiet rhythm.

June started calling her “kiddo,” and Y/N didn’t have the heart to admit it made her cry once she got home.

She started dressing differently too — without realizing it. Her clothes became… comfortable. Long skirts, oversized cardigans. Scarves that didn’t match and boots with scuffed toes. She looked like the kind of woman you’d see sipping tea alone in an empty café window, with a novel clutched tightly in her fingers and a look in her eyes that said she once believed in love like fire — and got burned.

She began frequenting thrift shops, telling herself it was for the coziness. The earth tones. The way old clothes felt like they had stories. But deep down, she knew it was because she didn’t feel beautiful anymore — so why bother trying?

Gone were the days of her cute lipstick, her floral dresses, her perfectly winged eyeliner that she wore just in case Bob stopped by the shop. Gone were the silly hopes that he'd see her in some new outfit and forget Yelena’s warrior smile.

Now, she was the soft ghost behind the register at the bookstore — the one who remembered every customer’s favorite genre, who stacked romance novels with tender reverence even though she didn’t read them anymore, who crocheted during lunch breaks and smelled like old paper and lavender.

Customers called her “lovely.” Never beautiful. Never striking. Just lovely.

A kind way to say forgettable.

To fill the quiet, she started a book club. Thursday nights. She pinned up a flier at the front counter and expected no one to come. But a few people did. A teacher, an elderly man with too many opinions on Hemingway, a lonely college student who needed an excuse to leave the dorms. They talked about stories, argued about endings, brought snacks. And for one night a week, Y/N had plans. A reason to change her clothes. A reason to stay awake past ten.

They all liked her. They said she had a soothing voice. That she picked good books. That she made the bookstore feel like home.

None of them knew her favorite book was the one Bob borrowed and never returned — spine cracked, margin scribbled with his half-legible notes. She kept it on the shelf behind the counter. Just in case.

Sometimes she wondered if Bob would even recognize her now. If he passed her on the street ?

Would he see the girl who held his head in her lap during withdrawal? Who bailed him out of jail with the last of her student loan money? Who made mix CDs and planned imaginary dates and waited three years for him to say I love you in a way that wasn’t a goodbye?

Or would he just see what everyone else saw now?

A sweet, quiet, unremarkable woman who smiled too politely and went home alone.

She never told June about him. Not really. She never said the name. She just said, “There was someone. And I wasn’t enough.”

June had squeezed her hand. “He wasn’t ready, love. There’s a difference.”

Y/N smiled at that.

But she didn’t believe it.

Not anymore.

Some people are stars, destined for legend, brilliance, and heroes who fall from the sky. And some people are just… soft spaces. To be landed on. To be left behind.

Y/N had accepted that she was the latter.

And so, she crocheted. She read. She sipped lukewarm tea in the evenings and wrote little notes in the margins of her books just to feel like someone might find them one day and know she existed.

She was no one’s great love story.

--

The loneliness had begun to settle like dust — fine, weightless, but everywhere. In the corners of her apartment. In the extra teacup she always poured and never used. In the quiet moments between sleep and waking, when the stillness felt too heavy and too permanent to bear.

Y/N had always loved silence. But now, it gnawed at her.

Her routine no longer offered comfort — only proof of how much space one person could take up when no one else was there to see it. She could go days without speaking to anyone outside of work. Her coworkers were kind. Customers smiled. Book club was a nice reprieve. But when the door shut at night behind her, the echo always sounded like grief.

It had been weeks since she’d cried. Not because she was healing — she’d simply dried out. The tears had gone somewhere deep inside, too tired to keep trying.

That Sunday, she woke up to an apartment that felt too quiet. Too cold. The kind of cold that seeps through your skin and rests in your chest. She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, watching the morning light slide across the floor. The feeling was familiar. A soft, aching hollowness. The same she’d felt after Bob left. After she realized he wasn't coming back. After she watched a video of him calling Yelena his reason.

She wasn't trying to fill that hole anymore.

She just wanted… something warm.

So, she walked to the animal shelter.

It was a rainy morning, one of those gray, drizzling days where the whole world looked washed out and blurry. Her umbrella was cheap and kept folding inward, so by the time she got to the shelter, her coat was soaked through and her fingers were stiff.

Inside, the building smelled like wet fur and pine-scented cleaner. The fluorescent lights hummed faintly overhead, casting everything in a sterile yellow tone. A volunteer greeted her with a practiced smile and showed her to the cat room, explaining the basics — litter habits, vaccinations, temperament ratings. Y/N nodded politely but didn't really listen. Her eyes were already scanning the room.

Dozens of cats.

Some curled up in boxes. Others pacing. A few meowing with hopeful desperation.

But none looked at her.

She crouched near one particularly vocal tabby, only for it to hiss and turn its back. Another cat batted lazily at a toy when she approached but ignored her hand when she reached to pet it. A long-haired Persian stared right through her, regal and unimpressed.

Y/N stood there awkwardly, hands in her coat pockets, heart sinking.

She knew it was silly — anthropomorphizing rejection — but it still stung. She wasn’t even appealing to cats.

She turned to leave. Quietly. Without causing a scene. It would be just another thing she tried and failed at. Another reminder that even animals knew she wasn’t the one you picked.

And then — soft movement.

From the far corner, behind a scratching post and a tattered old tunnel toy, came the slow stretch of a lanky gray cat. He blinked at her, one eye slightly squinty from an old injury, and stood up.

He didn’t meow. Didn’t purr. Just padded over, tail upright like a little question mark.

Y/N froze.

He was all bones under his fur — lean and elegant in a scrappy kind of way. He looked like he’d lived a hard life. Scars on his ears. A slight limp. But his eyes… they were soft. Curious.

She crouched slowly and extended her hand.

The cat hesitated. Sniffed. And then, with a small sigh, leaned into her fingers.

Her throat tightened.

She scratched gently under his chin, and he tilted his head, pressing closer. As if to say, Oh. There you are.

Her vision blurred.

And just like that — she’d been chosen.

His name at the shelter was “Dusty.” She didn't change it. It suited him. He wasn’t glamorous. He didn’t leap into her lap or sleep curled against her cheek. But he followed her from room to room, curling up near her feet, always watching.

When she crocheted, he’d bat gently at the ends of yarn. When she cried quietly at night — not often, but sometimes still — he’d jump onto the couch and sit beside her. Never touching. Just near.

Like he knew that’s all she could handle.

She whispered to him often. About her day. About books. About the lives she imagined while shelving romance novels with happy endings. About the man she loved who forgot her.

Sometimes, she whispered his name.

Dusty never answered, of course. But he blinked at her slowly, and it felt like the closest thing to understanding she’d had in months.

She bought him a little blue collar with a bell. Crocheted him a lopsided bed. Let him sleep on the couch, even though she told herself she wouldn’t.

Her apartment didn’t feel empty anymore.

Not quite full, either.

But it felt alive.

And on some nights — when she boiled tea and read by the window, and Dusty curled beside her with one paw stretched across her foot — she allowed herself to pretend.

That maybe this was enough.

--

It had been raining the first day Y/N brought Dusty to the park.

Not pouring — just that kind of shy drizzle that left the leaves glistening and the air smelling of wet soil and faraway smoke. She hadn't intended to bring him. The thought itself had made her laugh, once. Walking a cat? That was a thing quirky people did in cartoons. Not quiet women with half-healed hearts and sensible shoes.

But Dusty had sat by the door that morning, tail flicking, eyes fixed on her like he knew she needed something.

She clipped on the little harness she'd bought on a whim — blue, to match his collar — and, to her surprise, he hadn’t fought her. He just blinked, stretched, and followed as she opened the door.

Y/N wasn’t used to being looked at. Not anymore. But she felt it that morning — soft, amused glances from strangers as she walked through the wet grass, the leash loose in her hand as Dusty padded carefully beside her. She adjusted her scarf higher on her neck and kept her eyes down. It felt ridiculous. Endearing. Exposed. Like she was baring too much of herself — saying, look how lonely I am that I walk a cat now.

But when she saw June already seated on their usual bench, bundled in a thick cardigan, her yarn dancing between delicate fingers — the tightness in her chest eased.

June looked up. Her eyes twinkled. “Well, well,” she grinned. “If it isn’t the neighborhood menace, dragging her tiger around.”

Y/N let out a breathy laugh and sat beside her. Dusty hopped onto the bench without invitation, curling beside her thigh like he owned it. His tail flicked with quiet pride.

“You brought the beast,” June said, amused. “I’m honored.”

“He needed fresh air,” Y/N murmured, brushing a raindrop from her cheek. “He gets restless when I work too long. I think he resents my job.”

June chuckled and leaned down to pet Dusty, who allowed it with his usual regal detachment. “He’s handsome,” she said thoughtfully. “Got that look of someone who’s seen things.”

Y/N smiled. “Like us.”

“Exactly.” June’s fingers scratched gently behind his ear. “You gave him a home?”

“He gave me one,” she whispered before she realized she’d said it aloud.

June looked at her.

Y/N swallowed. The wind brushed cold against her cheeks. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her phone. “I have pictures,” she said, her voice too soft. “Do you want to see?”

“I was waiting for that,” June said, settling in like it was a grand event.

Y/N flipped through photos with careful fingers. One of Dusty sleeping on a pile of books. One of him in a crooked little sweater she’d crocheted — his expression pure betrayal. One where he stood on the windowsill with sunlight gilding his fur, the city behind him like a world she didn’t belong to anymore.

June smiled at every one. “He looks like he trusts you.”

“I hope so.”

“You saved him?”

“No. I think I just… showed up. And he let me stay.”

The words felt too honest. But June never mocked honesty. She only nodded, like she knew what it meant to find shelter in something that couldn’t leave.

They sat in silence for a long time after that.

June crocheted a square for her blanket — lilac and navy, the colors of twilight. Y/N worked on a tiny blue hat, not sure who it was for. Dusty rested between them, tail curled like a comma, as if he were pausing a sentence neither of them wanted to end.

Then, softly, June asked, “Do you talk to him?”

Y/N blinked. “What?”

“Your cat. Do you talk to him?”

Y/N’s lips parted, then closed again. Her eyes dropped to the yarn in her lap. “Yes,” she said. “I think… I tell him the things I can’t say out loud.”

June nodded slowly. “We all need someone who listens. Even if it’s just ears and whiskers.”

Y/N looked at her hands, at the tiny trembling loop she was forming. “I told him I wasn’t waiting anymore.”

“Are you?”

“I think I’m trying not to.”

June set her needles down and took one of Y/N’s hands, her grip warm and soft and full of unspoken knowing. “He’s missing out, whoever he is.”

Y/N tried to smile. It wobbled. “He loved someone else.”

“Then he never really looked at you.”

“I think… I think I spent so long being someone who waited for him… I don’t know how to be anything else.”

“You’re not just someone’s memory, sweetheart,” June said gently. “You’re here. You’re warm hands and kind eyes and messy yarn and a cat who chose you. That’s a lot.”

Dusty let out a soft chirp then, as if in agreement.

Y/N sniffed and nodded, tears pricking the corners of her eyes but refusing to fall. Not today.

“I never thought I’d be the woman who walked her cat in the park,” she said with a broken laugh.

“You’re not.”

“I’m not?”

“No,” June said, eyes twinkling. “You’re the woman who brought her whole heart back to life… with a leash and some yarn. That’s something else entirely.”

--

There were things Y/N never spoke aloud — not to June, not to Dusty, not even to the ceiling fan above her bed that sometimes spun slow enough to listen.

She carried some stories like bruises beneath long sleeves. Quiet things that pulsed when touched, but stayed hidden because to reveal them would be to admit she was still clinging to shadows.

One of those bruises was Mondays.

Every Monday, without fail, Y/N sat in a small corner booth at Solstice Café — a quiet, sun-drenched spot with old wood chairs and that smell of cinnamon baked into its walls. She always brought a book. Sometimes a notebook. Sometimes just Dusty’s latest pictures on her phone to scroll through. But none of that was the reason she was there.

It had started years ago, in a different life. A warmer, louder one — where laughter was careless and hope didn’t feel like something foolish.

Bob had gotten a summer job spinning a ridiculous sign for a fried chicken place two blocks away. He had to wear a full chicken costume — yellow feathers, orange tights, a beak that flopped when he moved too quickly. He’d hated it. Said he looked like someone’s acid trip. He’d tried to quit after day two.

But she hadn’t let him. She’d shown up with lunch.

“Let the world see the bird,” she’d said, grinning.

He’d groaned. But when she pulled out his favorite sandwich and a milkshake — the one with caramel drizzle on top — he’d slumped beside her on the curb, feathers and all, and eaten in silence until he finally cracked a smile.

“Only you could make this less humiliating.”

“Maybe I just like chickens.”

“You like me in tights, admit it.”

She’d laughed. He’d turned red. And after that, every Monday for the rest of that summer — and the summers that followed, even after he quit — they had lunch together at Solstice. It became sacred. A ritual. Mondays were theirs.

Even after everything else in his life fell apart, Mondays stayed. She made sure of it.

She was the one constant. The lighthouse. The one who always showed up.

And now, all these years later, she still did.

Every Monday at noon, she left work exactly on time, tucked her cardigan tighter around her, and walked the six blocks to Solstice Café. Her booth was usually open. The staff didn’t know her name, but they knew her order. Grilled cheese. Tomato soup. And a lavender lemonade, just because Bob once said it reminded him of summer.

She never told June about it. She couldn’t. It felt too desperate. Too much like a woman who was still waiting for a boy who wore a chicken suit and laughed like he didn’t know how to stop.

Dusty would never understand either. He was loyal, yes, but cats didn’t know the ache of time or the illusion of memory that played like a movie behind your eyes.

She would sit in the booth with her book open but unread, eyes fixed on the seat across from her, and she would pretend — just for a moment — that he might walk through the door.

That maybe this Monday would be the one where time rewound and gave her a do-over. A world where Bob never left. Where Malaysia was just a made-up excuse, and he came home with feathered stories and a milkshake in hand. Where Yelena was nobody. Where his hand reached across the table and found hers because maybe — just maybe — he’d finally seen her the way she’d always seen him.

But it never happened.

The booth stayed empty. The soup got cold. And she walked home alone, every time, biting the inside of her cheek to keep the tears from falling in public.

Sometimes she hated herself for it — for being so loyal to a memory. For loving someone who’d never really been hers.

He had said “I love you, I’m sorry” before disappearing. And she'd let that echo destroy her. She'd built fantasies from it, believing for a moment that maybe — maybe — the love had been real. But now, after everything she’d seen, it felt more like a goodbye born from guilt than love.

Yelena had arrived with her sharp edges and hero’s smile, and whatever mess of a man Bob had returned as — the Sentry, the god, the weapon — he’d looked at her like salvation. Not at Y/N. Not once.

And still, every Monday, Y/N showed up like a woman stuck in time. Haunted by a love no one else had witnessed. By inside jokes that only she remembered.

The staff never asked why she dined alone.

Maybe they thought she was a widow. Maybe a creature of habit. Maybe just lonely.

But to Y/N, it was a quiet act of rebellion. Of memory. Of refusing to forget the version of Bob who once danced badly to ‘80s songs in her kitchen, wearing mismatched socks and her apron.

The boy who said she was his only real friend.

She didn’t believe in ghosts, not really. But if she did — if she let herself — she’d admit that Mondays were when she summoned one.

And she never told anyone.

Because some heartbreaks were too precious to share. Some wounds felt sacred.

--

Weekends used to be the hardest.

There was a stretch of time—long and hollow—where Saturday mornings arrived with too much silence, and Sunday nights ended with nothing but the weight of a week repeating itself. No plans, no messages, no one waiting. She had stopped checking her phone long ago for texts that would never come. The kind that once started with “you up?” or “I need you.”

But she had to fill the time with something. The ache of idleness was too loud.

So, one Sunday afternoon after wandering aimlessly downtown, she saw a flier posted crookedly on a corkboard at a bus stop: “Looking for weekend volunteers. All heart, no experience necessary. Shelter & Hope, 17th Ave.”

It was handwritten, the ink a little smudged, the edges curling like it had been forgotten. But something about it pulled her in. Maybe it was the “all heart” part. Or maybe it was just the idea that, somewhere in the city, someone needed something—even if it wasn’t her.

That next Saturday, she showed up. She wore a plain sweater, jeans that didn’t quite fit right anymore, and a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She was met by a man named Greg, who smelled faintly of coffee and wore a name tag that read, “One Day At A Time.”

“You here to save the world?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. “Just trying not to drown in it.”

He didn’t press further. Just nodded and handed her a pair of gloves.

That first weekend, she washed dishes. Lots of them. In water that was too hot and filled with bubbles that clung to her wrists. Her knuckles turned red and raw, but the rhythm of it—the simple, repetitive motion—soothed something inside her.

She went back the next weekend.

And the one after that.

Soon, she wasn’t just washing dishes. She was making coffee. Folding donated clothes. Listening.

The people who came through Shelter & Hope weren’t statistics to her. They were names. Stories. Laughter that broke mid-sentence. Eyes that saw too much. Hands that trembled when offered kindness.

She met Eddie, a Vietnam vet who spoke like his voice had been lost in smoke. He told her about a girl named Luanne who once made peach cobbler every Sunday, and how the world stopped being sweet after she died.

She met Sherry, who carried her childhood in a plastic grocery bag, and showed Y/N how to mend socks with a needle as tiny as her hope.

She met Miles, a boy barely twenty with teeth too white for someone who never smiled. He liked fantasy books—especially ones with dragons. Y/N started bringing him paperbacks from her store’s discard bin. They’d read aloud together in the corner, where the flickering light made it hard to tell when he was crying.

She brought Dusty one day, on a whim, tucked into a soft sling like a baby. The shelter had no policy against pets, and he was clean, calm, the kind of cat who seemed to know when someone needed a weight on their lap and nothing more.

The residents adored him. Even the toughest of them softened at the sight of that quiet grey tabby with big amber eyes. Dusty never hissed. Never clawed. He simply sat. As if to say, I know. I understand. And somehow, that was enough.

One woman, Clarice, who hadn’t spoken in weeks, finally did—just to say, “He reminds me of a cat I had when my son was little.”

Y/N crocheted hats in the evenings. Scarves. Ugly mittens in colors no one requested. She gave them out anyway, stuffing them into drawers and offering them with a shrug. Sometimes she stitched their initials in the yarn when she knew them well enough. Her fingers worked fast now, always busy, like if she stopped, her thoughts would unravel.

She never told anyone why she was there. Not really.

They assumed kindness. A gentle soul. And she let them.

But in truth, it was selfish. It wasn't just that she wanted to help.

It was that, in their sadness, she could bury her own.

Their heartbreaks were worse. Louder. They made hers feel manageable. Bearable.

She wasn’t the only one with a ghost trailing behind her. She wasn’t the only one who’d been left behind.

And she wasn’t even the most broken. That realization brought shame and comfort in equal measure.

One Saturday, as she read quietly with Miles, he asked without lifting his head:

“Who hurt you?”

She froze.

“What?”

“You got that... look. Like you’re still waiting for someone who left.”

She smiled tightly. Closed the book.

“I’m just trying to give something good to the world.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But the world broke you first.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

She went home that night and cried into Dusty’s fur until his little paws batted her cheeks in confusion.

But she still returned the next weekend.

Because the pain didn’t go away. But at least there, in that place of tattered blankets and borrowed names, she could pretend her sorrow was part of something bigger. Something useful.

And when she handed someone a scarf or a book or just sat beside them as they spoke of lost fathers, vanished sisters, or lovers who disappeared into the fog, she didn’t feel invisible anymore.

She felt needed.

Even if she was still heartbroken. Even if no one ever came back for her.

--

The afternoon sun poured through the tall front windows of the bookstore in long slanted beams, lighting up the dust in the air like suspended stars. Outside, it was early spring, the kind that still had a winter sting in its wind, but inside the shop, it was warm, quiet, and smelled like old paper and brewed coffee from the little machine behind the counter that had been sputtering since morning.

Y/N was kneeling by a stack of unopened boxes near the fantasy section. New inventory had just come in—paperbacks smelling of fresh ink, tight spines begging to be cracked open. She loved this part of her job. The methodical repetition of slicing through tape, peeling back cardboard, stacking new titles alphabetically. It required no smiles, no explanations. Just her and the books.

Dusty sat curled like a grey loaf behind the register, blissfully asleep, his ears flicking only when the bell above the door jingled.

She didn’t look up. Customers came in all the time. Browsers. Readers. Parents searching for a birthday present they wouldn’t understand.

But then, a low voice, gravelly like it had been dragged across asphalt, broke the soft quiet of the store.

“Any good fantasy books? Not lookin’ for anything fancy. Just... a good one.”

Y/N turned, slightly startled. The man who stood at the entrance of the aisle was older, maybe in his late fifties or sixties. His beard was thick and streaked with silver, wild but trimmed like he tried, sometimes. His jacket was old leather, the kind that didn’t just hang on your body but had a history. He wore sunglasses despite being indoors, which she found odd—and oddly funny.

She gave him a polite nod. “Sure. Do you want a classic or something newer?”

He shrugged. “Something I can disappear into.”

She tilted her head. She knew that feeling.

After a few seconds of scanning the shelf, she handed him a copy of “The Last Binding.” It was new. A hidden gem. A rich story with quiet grief buried in its fantasy. She had liked it.

He took the book from her hands, brushing her fingers with a calloused thumb as he did. “You read this?”

She nodded. “It’s about a boy who forgets everything he loves to protect it. And the people who try to remind him.”

He didn’t say anything, just held the book and stared at the cover like it might give him an answer.

They stood there for a beat, the soft music overhead almost too gentle to hear.

“You always this quiet?” he asked, voice low again, not mocking, just curious.

“I talk more when I know someone better,” she replied, organizing the rest of the books without looking up.

“Well, then I guess I’ll have to read this quick and come back.”

A ghost of a smile tugged at her lips.

He didn’t offer a name. Didn’t ask for hers. Just stood there, flipping through the first few pages with long fingers.

For the next ten minutes, he asked her a few things—what made her love books, if this was what she always wanted to do, if she believed in happy endings. Nothing deep, nothing strange. The kind of conversation people forgot five minutes after they walked away.

But she didn’t forget.

Because just before he left, as he approached the counter with the book and stood across from her, sunglasses still hiding his eyes, he tilted his head like he was studying her for the first time. And in the smallest voice, like it didn’t belong to someone who looked like him, he said:

“You seem sad.”

The words landed like glass on hardwood. Sharp. Unwelcome.

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t repeat it. Just offered a small, almost apologetic nod, left cash on the counter—exact change—and turned without another word.

The bell rang again as he left, his boots heavy and uneven on the wooden floor.

She stood there for a long time after he was gone, staring at the closed door.

“You seem sad.”

She was sad. But no one ever said it out loud. People said she was quiet. Or shy. Or kind. But not sad. Not like that.

Not like they could see it.

Y/N sat down on the little stool behind the register. Dusty jumped into her lap, purring instantly, like he knew.

Her hands shook slightly as she pet him.

Why did it matter what some stranger said? Why did those three words hurt more than the years of silence Bob had left behind?

Maybe because it meant it was still written all over her.

Maybe because no matter how many scarves she crocheted or how many fantasy books she pushed into lonely hands, it didn’t change the way her grief still bled through the cracks.

She opened the store notebook and scribbled in the margins like she sometimes did.

He didn’t ask my name. But he knew my sadness.

Then she crossed it out. Tucked the receipt from the man’s purchase into the back of the notebook like a keepsake. Just the date. The time. Nothing else.

It wasn’t a moment worth remembering, and yet—she would.

--

The tattoo shop sat at the edge of the avenue, tucked between a pawn shop and a boarded-up bakery. The neon sign in the window blinked lazily in red and blue—“Electric Rose Tattoo”—flickering just enough to make her hesitate.

Y/N stood outside, wrapped in her oversized cardigan, her hands buried in the long sleeves like a child trying to disappear. She had been standing there for five minutes. Ten. Maybe more. The sun was low and golden behind her, casting her shadow long across the sidewalk. People passed, barely glancing. A woman holding flowers. A man with headphones. A teenager laughing into his phone. Everyone had a destination. Everyone had somewhere to be.

Except her.

The idea of a tattoo hadn’t come from a bucket list or a sudden surge of rebellion. It had arrived quietly, like most of her thoughts did these days—born in the middle of an overcast morning, while folding laundry in silence, her heart heavy with the weight of being forgotten.

She had caught her reflection in the mirror and thought, I don’t even recognize her anymore.

Same eyes. Same face. Same tired hands and polite smile. She wasn’t beautiful. She had made peace with that—or told herself she had. She wasn’t anything. Not someone people remembered. Not someone who turned heads. Not someone Bob had ever seen as more than... dependable.

So what could she change?

Her face? No. Her body? She didn’t have the energy. Her soul? Too far gone.

But her skin? That, at least, was a canvas. And for once, maybe—just maybe—she could paint something of her own.

She looked down at the piece of folded notebook paper in her hand. The design she had drawn late one night. It was simple: a tiny open book, and out of the pages, a delicate stem of lavender reaching upward—her favorite flower. Her comfort. Her scent. Her solitude. The one thing she always bought fresh every week, even if she didn’t eat three meals a day.

The tattoo wasn’t big. It would sit on the inside of her left arm, just above the elbow crease, where her sleeves usually covered. Where she could see it, but others might not. It wasn’t for anyone else.

Just her.

The bell above the door jingled faintly as she finally stepped in, the soft scent of antiseptic and ink blooming around her.

The artist, a woman named Mel, looked up from her sketchpad. “Y/N?”

She nodded, voice barely above a whisper. “Hi. Sorry I’m late.”

Mel smiled gently. She had full sleeves of tattoos, pink buzzed hair, and a nose ring that caught the light. She was effortlessly cool, the kind of person Y/N would have admired from afar, thinking, She knows who she is.

“Don’t worry. You ready?”

Y/N hesitated.

Ready? Was she ever ready for anything? Ready to love Bob, to lose him, to grieve him while he lived a public life as someone else’s hero? Ready to become a ghost in her own skin? Ready to crochet her heartbreak into scarves no one wore?

But she was here. She had made it here.

So she nodded again, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “Yeah.”

She handed over the drawing with slightly trembling hands.

Mel looked at it, and something in her expression softened. “It’s really beautiful. You draw this?”

“Yeah.”

“Got a story behind it?”

Y/N opened her mouth. Closed it. Then shook her head. “No. I just… like books.”

It was a lie. But it was the kind of lie that kept her from unraveling in front of strangers.

They prepped the chair, the stencil, the tools. It all moved so quickly, like life always did now—just motion and murmurs, and time folding into itself.

When the needle first touched her skin, it stung—but not in the way she feared. It was grounding. Like she could finally feel something. Like her body remembered it was hers, not just a shell moving through book aisles and charity kitchens and empty park benches.

Halfway through, she felt tears on her cheeks.

Mel paused. “You okay?”

She nodded. “Yes. Sorry. I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t. She was crying for every Monday lunch where she sat alone. For every time she saw Yelena’s name paired with Bob’s. For every cruel whisper in her head calling her plain. For every man who saw her as less-than. For Dusty and June and the silence in her apartment after lights out. For being invisible for so long, even to the man who once told her, I love you, I’m sorry.

For still not knowing which part of that sentence he meant.

By the time the tattoo was finished, her sleeve was damp at the wrist from wiping her face too many times.

Ten minutes being obligated to lay down and wait was all she needed to spiral.

Mel wrapped her arm gently, like she was swaddling something precious.

“You did great,” she said kindly. “You okay?”

Y/N nodded again. But her voice cracked when she whispered, “Thank you.”

It wasn’t just for the tattoo.

It was for not asking more questions. For not pitying her. For helping her leave something permanent behind—something she had chosen.

She left the shop just as the sun was disappearing behind the buildings, sky bruised with color. Her arm stung, wrapped in sterile gauze, and the weight of the ink felt heavier than she expected.

But it was hers. For once in her life, something was only hers.

And as she walked down the sidewalk in her too-comfortable shoes, cardigan sleeves flapping in the wind, she felt something shift.

Not healing tho, maybe... refreshing feeling.

--

The next morning was one of those early spring days that still carried the ache of winter in its bones. Pale light stretched thin over the clouds, and the air held that soft chill that nipped at the fingers just enough to make you grateful for hot coffee. The park was quiet—the kind of quiet that settled not just around you, but in you.

Y/N walked slowly, Dusty tucked into the canvas tote at her side, only his little gray head poking out, eyes scanning the world like he was guarding it just for her. She had bundled herself in a wool coat and her usual fingerless gloves, but today she wore the new tattoo openly. The gauze was gone, replaced with healing balm and a slight sting every time her sleeve brushed it.

The tiny open book, delicate and lavender-laced, peeked out from under her coat sleeve like a secret she’d finally allowed herself to tell.

Her coffee was still warm when she reached the bench.

June was already there, of course—her skeletal fingers looping and pulling bright red yarn into rows, a soft crochet rhythm that looked more like a heartbeat than a hobby. Her white curls peeked from under a knitted hat, and beside her rested a small paper bag of crackers she always insisted on sharing with Dusty, whether he wanted them or not.

“You’re late, sweetheart,” June said without looking up, but the smile on her face said she didn’t mind.

Y/N smiled weakly and sat beside her, placing her coffee carefully on the bench’s edge and unbuttoning her coat. Dusty crawled out of the tote and leapt into June’s lap with practiced elegance, already nuzzling her side like he belonged there.

“Well, I brought peace offerings,” Y/N said softly.

“Oh? Do tell.”

Wordlessly, Y/N reached into her bag and pulled out a small bundle, carefully folded and tied with twine. It wasn’t much—just a hand-crocheted scarf in soft, dusky plum, the kind of purple that looked rich in any light. The pattern was imperfect. The stitches wobbled here and there, uneven tension in some rows. But the warmth it carried was unmistakable.

“For you,” she whispered.

June stopped mid-stitch, looking at the bundle like it was a relic.

“For me?” she asked, startled. “What’s the occasion?”

Y/N shrugged, eyes glistening. “No occasion. I just… wanted to.”

June took it gently, unwrapping the twine with a care usually reserved for something far more fragile.

“Oh,” she whispered, fingers trembling as she touched the scarf, dragging them slowly across each loop like she was reading braille. “Oh, my dear girl…”

Her voice caught.

“I didn’t think anyone made things for me anymore.”

Y/N looked down quickly, embarrassed by the tears threatening to spill again. She hadn’t expected this reaction—just a small smile maybe, a thank you. Not the way June pressed the scarf to her chest like it was a bouquet of wildflowers from someone long gone.

“I just thought it might keep you warm when it gets windy,” Y/N mumbled. “It’s nothing special. I know it’s not perfect—”

June turned to her, eyes watery but warm, her voice low. “It’s the most special thing I’ve received in years.”

Y/N looked at her. For a moment, they just sat there in silence, Dusty purring between them, the breeze tugging gently at their coats.

Then June glanced down at Y/N’s arm and narrowed her eyes.

“Now what’s this?” she said, voice lifting slightly. “Is that a tattoo?”

Y/N blushed and nodded. “Yeah. I… got it yesterday.”

June took her wrist gently, the same way a mother might hold a child’s hand, and studied the ink.

“A book and lavender,” she murmured. “You. That’s you right there.”

Y/N’s voice cracked. “I needed something that was just mine.”

June said nothing for a moment. Then, she let go of her wrist and leaned back on the bench, pulling the scarf loosely around her shoulders.

“You’ve been hurting for a long time, haven’t you?”

Y/N swallowed. Her chest ached. “Yeah.”

“I know,” June whispered. “You don’t have to say more.”

The park hummed around them—birds chirping in soft question marks, the crunch of leaves under joggers’ feet, the distant bark of a dog. And yet, this little space between them felt like a separate world entirely. A place where Y/N wasn’t invisible. Where someone noticed the cracks.

June took her hand again, this time to hold it.

“I don’t know who broke your heart, sweetheart,” she said softly. “But you’re still here. You keep showing up. You bring light. And let me tell you something—someone who shows up every day, even when it hurts, even when they feel like nothing… That’s the kind of person who carries real love.”

Y/N couldn’t respond. Her throat was too tight. She looked down at her lap, blinking furiously, willing herself not to fall apart in the park like she always did at home.

But June didn’t need her to speak. She just held her hand, the way old women do when they know silence is the only comfort words can’t touch.

Dusty nudged his head against Y/N’s leg and meowed, as if to say, You’re not alone, even if it feels like it.

--

It had been three weeks since he last appeared.

And yet, Y/N had begun to expect him.

The mysterious old man—leather jacket always zipped, sunglasses always on no matter the weather, a neat but wiry beard that made him look like he could be anywhere from fifty to ninety—had drifted in and out of the bookstore like a half-remembered dream. Never quite real. Never quite gone.

He came during the slow hours, never in a hurry. Sometimes midday. Sometimes close to closing. He’d ask for a recommendation—“Nothing fancy, just good. Something real.” Always those same words. And she always gave him something she loved or had just read, or sometimes a brand-new title no one had touched yet. And every time, when she asked if he’d liked the last one, his answer was vague.

“Yeah,” he’d shrug. “Beautiful book.”

But it was the kind of answer people gave when they weren’t really listening, or weren’t really reading. Still, he always bought the next book. Without question. No bargaining. No hesitation.

That afternoon, the bell above the door jingled, and she didn’t even have to look up to know it was him.

Same jacket. Same slow steps. The scent of cold wind and dust trailing behind him like the past.

Dusty, curled up in a sun patch near the register, lifted his head curiously. Y/N reached down to pet him, as the man approached with that familiar unspoken gravity.

“Back again?” she asked with a lightness she didn’t quite feel.

He gave a short nod. “Books are addictive. You’ve made me a junkie.”

That made her laugh—quiet, restrained, but real. The kind of laugh she only had left these days. “Well, there are worse things to be addicted to.”

He didn’t answer that.

Instead, he reached for one of the newer fantasy novels near the display. “This one good?”

She nodded. “Not bad. More whimsical than most. Dreamy prose. A bit sad.”

“Sad’s good,” he said. “Sad makes sense.”

She blinked at that, not sure why the words echoed in her chest the way they did. Maybe because they sounded like her own thoughts—things she’d never said aloud. But she smiled, quietly nodding again as she rang it up.

The silence stretched between them like it always did—comfortable, but strange. Then he glanced down, pointing at the little patch of gray fluff sprawled lazily on a cushion.

“How’s your little bodyguard?”

She followed his gaze and grinned. “Dusty’s fine. Still thinks he owns the bookstore.”

“He does,” the man said. “And probably your apartment.”

Y/N laughed, her fingers unconsciously smoothing over Dusty’s fur. “Yeah, that too.”

The man tilted his head slightly, looking at the chalkboard behind her. A few words were scrawled there in messy, cheerful handwriting:

Book Club – Thursdays at 9PM – Bring your favorite book! Open to everyone. Coffee and cookies provided.

He read it for a moment, then turned back to her. “That still happening?”

“Every week,” she said. “It’s free. You just show up and bring a book you want to talk about.”

His lips tugged upward. “Any book?”

She nodded.

He tapped his fingers against the counter thoughtfully. “Well, I happen to be an authority on Russian literature. The rest of your guests would be humbled by my knowledge.”

It was such a strange, out-of-place joke that she couldn’t help but burst into a real laugh.

He smiled at her reaction, brief but genuine, and tucked the book under his arm.

“Well, I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll come and teach you Dostoevsky through interpretive dance.”

“You’d fit right in,” she said softly. “Most of them are walking therapy sessions with page numbers.”

He paused then, head tilting slightly, like he saw something she didn’t know she was showing.

His voice, when he spoke again, had softened.

“Goodbye, Y/N.”

She looked up, confused, mouth opening—but the words stuck in her throat. “Wait… I—I never told you my name.”

He had already turned toward the door, hand on the knob, pausing just long enough to look back over his shoulder.

“Didn’t you?” he asked, almost kindly. “I must’ve just known.”

Y/N leaned to the door. "Wait what's your name?"

"Alexei." Then he was gone. The bell jingled faintly behind him like a wind chime.

And just like that, she was alone again.

Y/N crouched, hand gently stroking the cat’s fur, eyes still locked on the door.

"He's little weird right? But he seems nice."

[delicatetrashtree]

Loving You Is Easy

Pairing: Bob Reynolds x Reader

Summary:

“What are these for?” you ask, looking up at him with a raised brow. “You. I, um… figured they’d help you feel better,” Bob says, his voice dipping awkwardly near the end like he already regrets how earnest it sounds. You blink at him, eyes flicking between his face and the pancakes. Then a smile spreads across your face. Cute, and he makes pancakes? You’d struck gold. “Thanks… man!” you say, then pause, realisation dawning mid-sentence. You don’t even know the name of the very attractive guy standing in front of you. You laugh a little, embarrassed. “What’s your name?” “Bob.” “Bob,” You repeat, the smile on your face growing just that little bit more if that was even possible, “I like Bob.” Or You and Bob are indifferent to each other, never seeming to mesh. But when you lose your memory, something new blooms between the two of you.

Tags/Warnings: Fluff, angst, no smut, amnesia/memory loss, abandonment issues, pancakes may as well be a main character, hurt and some comfort?, acquaintances to lovers?

WC: 9.6K

A/N: Title from Easy by Mac Ayers. Also, the response to my last Bob fic was absolutely insane, thank you! Hope you enjoy this one, might write a part 2 later

***

Bob doesn’t particularly like you. 

It’s not like he hated you or anything; the two of you just didn’t connect. 

Conversations were always awkward and stilted, full of long silences and forced small talk. You’d crack a joke, and he’d give you a tight smile. He’d ask a question, and you’d give a clipped answer, unsure of his tone or where you stood.

It wasn’t animosity. It was worse: indifference with a touch of tension. Or maybe it was just that sometimes people don’t mesh, no matter how hard they try. So both of you stopped trying. You’d walk into the gym and see him already there, towel slung over his shoulder, sweat dampening his shirt.

He’d glance up. “No, no, you can stay. I was just leaving.” Even if he wasn’t actually done with his workout.

“Okay…” you’d reply, pretending not to feel the sting.

Or one time, you both ended up in the kitchen at 2 a.m., bleary-eyed and looking for snacks.

You froze. So did he.

“I’ll just—”

“No, it’s fine. I just needed water,” You interrupted.

You both moved around each other like magnets flipped the wrong way, close but never touching, repelling, retreating.

It was easier this way.

One day, you're on a mission and get injured after a strange encounter with an absurdly eccentric villain. He hit you with some mysterious ray that blasted you through a wall and left you unconscious. The whole team was worried about you… including Bob.

Sure, the two of you were awkward, distant, neither of you quite knowing how to be around the other anymore, but that didn’t change the fact that he still cared. 

So they brought you back to the Tower and did everything they could. Monitors, scans, and even a few calls to some old contacts who specialised in the weird and unexplainable.

As you lay still, unmoving, they waited. They took shifts, refusing to let you wake up alone, just in case.

Bob stayed longer than anyone. Even when it wasn’t his shift, he lingered outside your room. Because no matter how weird or strained things had become, he wanted you to wake up.

It takes a few days, but you wake up, your eyes blinking rapidly as you adjust to the light. The sterile scent of antiseptic lingers faintly in the air, and your body feels achy, like you’ve been asleep for a century.

And then you see him.

A random, handsome man is slumped over in the chair next to your bed. His head is tilted forward slightly, chin tucked, a book loose in one hand as he dozes. 

His lips part slightly in sleep, brows twitching like he’s dreaming. Something about the sight is comforting. 

You don’t recognise him.

But something in you wants to.

“Hello?”

You slip out of bed, groaning as you do so. You step close to the man until you’re but a few feet away, studying him with a mixture of curiosity and something deeper stirring inside.

You’re right next to him now, and suddenly your heart races uncontrollably. He’s beautiful — if there’s such a thing as love at first sight, this had to be it. You can’t think about anything else except his sharp jawline and that messy, adorable hair that looks like he just rolled out of bed.

Then, out of nowhere, his eyes snap open. A piercing blue that somehow feels like a shock and a spark all at once. He screams. You scream back, startled, your breath catching in your throat.

You stumble backwards, about to fall, when suddenly he reaches out and grabs your hand. Firm but gentle, steadying you.

“Thanks, guy.”

“You’re welcome,” Bob replies quietly.

“Where am I? What happened? Who are you?” you ask, panic threading through your voice.

Suddenly, a fog rolls over your mind, and you try your hardest to think, but everything’s blank except for your name.

“You don’t… remember me?” Bob asks hesitantly.

“No, are you…”You search for the right words, trying to piece things together. He was in your hospital room, probably stayed overnight, worrying about you. You’re not sure what your type used to be, but if you had one, this had to be it. Then the question slips out, “Are you my boyfriend?”

Bob’s eyes widen as if they might pop out of his head. He stammers, “Oh, no, we’re not… that’s not…” His words trip over themselves, betraying the panic and confusion inside him.

“We’re teammates,” he finally manages to say, and you take a step back, giving him space to breathe.

“We’re on a team? Like what? A swim team?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

“No, like a superhero team.”

You blink, confused. “I’m a superhero?”

“An Avenger, to be exact.”

“What the hell is that?”

***

Bob was pale and quiet, still reeling from what had happened to you. The medics were running tests, whispering terms he didn’t fully understand, frowns etched deep into their brows.

Bucky came out of the room a few minutes later, expression unreadable as he approached Bob, pulling him aside.

“What did they say?” Bob asked, his voice hoarse, almost afraid of the answer.

From the look on Bucky’s face, it wasn’t good. “She has amnesia,” he said softly. “Doesn’t remember much of anything right now.”

Bob felt the air leave his lungs. He looked toward the room, the edge of the hospital bed just visible through the cracked door. You, in there, not knowing him.

“Can you take care of her?” Bucky asked gently. “We won’t all be around all the time, and she’s going to need someone who won’t push. Someone who’ll be patient.”

Bob didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

All day, he deliberates on how he can help you out. They were going to let you out of the medbay the next morning, so he wanted to make sure you’d have something comforting waiting for you. After some thought, he lands on pancakes. 

Good food had always been his go-to to shake off a bad mood, maybe it would work the same for amnesia.

After helping you into the kitchen, he serves you the pancakes he prepared, sliding the plate toward you a little sheepishly.

“What are these for?” you ask, looking up at him with a raised brow.

“You. I, um… figured they’d help you feel better,” Bob says, his voice dipping awkwardly near the end like he already regrets how earnest it sounds.

You blink at him, eyes flicking between his face and the pancakes. Then a smile spreads across your face. Cute, and he makes pancakes? You’d struck gold.

“Thanks… man!” you say, then pause, realisation dawning mid-sentence. You don’t even know the name of the very attractive guy standing in front of you. You laugh a little, embarrassed. “What’s your name?”

“Bob.”

“Bob,” You repeat, the smile on your face growing just that little bit more if that was even possible, “I like Bob.”

You start digging into the pancakes and let out a squeal of happiness. “This thing is the best thing I’ve ever tasted, well technically one of the only things I remember tasting, but still.”

Bob feels a small rush of happiness that he was able to do something for you, no matter how simple.

“So, Bob, you and I are superheroes, correct?” you say between mouthfuls of delicious pancakes.

Bob hesitates; he didn’t quite have full control over his powers yet, but he was sure he’d get there one day.

“Well, yes…”

“Do you have powers?”

“I can fly, and I’m kinda invincible, and a couple of other things,” he says, looking away sheepishly. He didn’t want to sound like he was bragging.

But then he looks back and sees you beaming at him, the same way you had been since he gave you those pancakes.

“That’s awesome, can you show me?”

He hesitates, “It’s complicated. I can be…dangerous.”

“Oh, I get it, no pressure.”

He's surprised at how quickly you drop it, but appreciates it nonetheless. You take another bite of the pancakes before asking with a little smile, “Do I have powers?”

You were already thinking of the possibilities, maybe you could fly too, or teleport or even turn into a giant frog. The sky’s the limit.

“No…” he says,  and the wind is taken right out of your sails. So much for being a frog woman. But seeing the disappointed look on your face, he quickly adds, “You’re a really talented fighter, though, great shot too.”

“Really?”

Bob nods, giving you an encouraging smile. You twiddle your fingers, trying to ask more questions.

“Where are you from?”

“Florida.”

“What’s Florida like?”

He strains to think of what to tell you. Flashes of sticky summer air, thunderstorms rolling in over flat suburban streets, and the hum of cicadas come into his mind.

“It’s… hot.”

You giggle softly, seemingly satisfied with his answer. “Good to know.”

“So let me summarise. You are Bob, Florida is hot, I can shoot stuff.”

“That’s about right.”

He watches you devour the whole plate of pancakes, and he's still having a hard time reconciling the you he knows and the you sitting in front of him. For one, you were actually talking to him and talking to everyone a lot more. Your dynamic with the rest of the team wasn't nearly as bad as yours with Bob's, but now you seemed a lot more open.

It’s a trend that continues as you ask him and the rest of the Avengers questions incessantly the rest of the day, your curiosity never seeming to run out. Every new answer only sparks ten more questions, and somehow, they never seem to mind your enthusiasm.

“You can go through walls?!” You gasp, eyes wide with amazement, and you nearly pass out when you see Ava do it, your hand reaching out as if trying to touch the air she just phased through.

Or when you sat cross-legged on the floor, chin resting on your hands, listening to one of Alexei’s stories with such intent. It was nice seeing you so bubbly, laughing at his exaggerated tales and rolling your eyes when he insisted every mission ended with him saving the day. “There’s no way you took them all down yourself!”

“The Red Guardian defeated them all single-handedly, I tell you,” Alexei says, enjoying your reactions, insisting no one listens the way you do.

But there was a little downside. Now you were more eager to do things, and since you were also restricted to the tower, all that restless energy had to go somewhere. 

This morning, it was the kitchen.

The truth is, if he knew that his making pancakes would cause the mess that you unleashed, maybe he would’ve chosen something easier to make.

He walks into the kitchen to see you surrounded by chaos, flour on the counter, batter on the ceiling, and a pan smoking in the sink. It looks like a warzone.

“What is all of this?” he asks, blinking at the sight.

You glance up at him, cheeks flushed, hair a little wild, looking like you’d just gone ten rounds with your own breakfast.

“Pancakes,” you say with exaggerated confidence, like it was obvious.

“If you wanted pancakes, you could’ve asked,” he says, stepping closer with a shake of his head.

He would’ve made them in a heartbeat. He didn’t always know how to fix things, but it made him happy to be useful, even if it was hard to get the energy sometimes. 

Bob says, rolling up his sleeves, “I happen to make pretty good pancakes.”

“I know. The ones you made for me the other day were really good.”

“One of the few things I can do,” he mutters, the self-deprecation slipping out like muscle memory, automatic, unfiltered. He's been working on it, but old habits die hard.

You nudge him gently with your elbow. “I’m sure you’re good at a lot of stuff. And if not, at least you’re good-looking.”

Bob blinks at you, looking at you incredulously, like you’d just said the sky was green. His mouth parts slightly, like he’s about to argue, but then doesn’t.

A beat passes, and he gives a soft huff of a laugh, shaking his head. “You really are different,” he says, eyes full of something like wonder.

“But… in a good way.”

“Thanks…” You say. “So, about these pancakes, how about we make them together?”

“Sounds perfect.”

He’s about to start making more batter when he notices you didn’t even bother to put on an apron. He grabs one off the hook and makes his way back over to you.

“But I’m already messy,” you say, looking down at your shirt, now covered in flour.

“Better late than never?” he says with a grin.

Agreeing with him, you duck your head down as he slips the apron over you. Accidentally ruffling your hair in the process, and you let out a small noise of protest.

Then, gently, almost instinctively, he smooths your hair down with both hands, his fingers brushing along your scalp.

It makes you shiver and shake a little against your will. Your body apparently hasn’t gotten the memo on playing it cool around hot men who are weirdly good at domestic affection.

Great. Just great.

He steps closer and delicately wraps the apron ties behind you, moving with such care. You can only imagine what his hands must feel like, strong but soft, you thought.

All you can focus on is the little sensations you do get. The brief, accidental caresses against your back as he tries to tie the apron. His fingers brush your spine, light as a whisper, and your breath catches in your throat.

“Let me do yours,” you say, trying to distract yourself from the way your heart’s trying to break out of your chest.

He turns, and you tie the apron behind him. You can't help but notice how solid he feels, how broad his shoulders are. You feel that same flutter in your stomach you had when you first saw him in the med bay, those damn butterflies that show up uninvited whenever he’s near.

You step back and smooth out the fabric on his chest, trying to act casual.

“How do I look?” he asks playfully.

“Very chefy,” you reply with a grin.

You step aside, and he turns to see what you’ve done.

“First of all, what did you put in here?” He asks, looking at the strange concoction you had made up. It looked like a science experiment gone wrong, the way it was bubbling like it was about to come to life.

“Pancake stuff.”

“Why is it blue?”

“To complement your eyes.”

He blinks, fully expecting to see you grinning or laughing, but you’re dead serious.

As he chuckles and starts remaking the pancake batter, shaking his head with the tiniest smile, he says, “Why didn’t you just ask me to make them for you?”

“I, uh… was trying to return the favour.” You mumble, scratching the back of your head. “You made them for me when I needed them. Thought it’d be nice to do the same.”

He pauses mid-stir, glancing over at you. “That’s really sweet.” 

Bob is about to go back to stirring when he sees something.

“Oh, wait a second, you have a…” He says before trailing off, his expression shifting slightly. He reaches out without hesitation, fingers gentle as they brush your cheek. Your breath catches, heart thudding like it’s trying to escape your ribcage, as he plucks an eyelash off your face.

“Make a wish,” he says softly, holding it out to you.

You close your eyes for a moment, your mind blank except for the thought of him. You blow it away, your breath catching just a little as the lash flutters and disappears.

And a tiny part of you wonders if wishes like that ever come true.

“What did you wish for?”

Your eyes scan his, you know exactly what you want, what you need.

“It’s a secret.”

***

“You need to eat more than just pancakes,” John says with a sigh, arms crossed like a disapproving dad.

You shrug from your spot on the couch, hugging your knees and avoiding eye contact. “They’re comforting. And Bob makes them really well.”

“That’s not the point,” he replies, “You need nutrients. Vegetables. Something green.”

You’re finally saved when you see Bob come into the room.

“Bob!”

You scramble out of your seat the moment you spot him, excitement bubbling up as you point at the TV screen. An ad for a local pizza place flashes by, and it somehow sends you into a state of near awe.

“I know what pizza is, but I don’t remember what it tastes like.”

“Can we…?” you begin, unsure how to phrase it without sounding too eager—if you asked, would he eat it with you?

“I’ll order,” he says without hesitation.

“Pizza isn’t good for you either,” John points out, and you roll your eyes at him before throwing your arms around Bob, hugging him tightly. 

You throw your arms around him in an instant, hugging him tightly. He stiffens for a second, caught off guard, he still wasn’t used to how openly affectionate you'd become since the memory loss.

“Sorry, got a little excited,” you mumble, pulling back slightly.

Bob just smiles.

“We can eat it on the roof if you want,” he offers. “It’s a really nice view.”

“I’d like that,” you say softly, already picturing it.

When the pizza arrives, the two of you head up to the roof, scarfing it down like you hadn’t eaten in days. Bob watches you in quiet amusement, the city of New York sprawling beneath and around you. Lives moving, horns blaring, people rushing through the streets, but up here, it feels peaceful. Safe.

“This is so good, I could die right now and be happy,” you declare dramatically, a slice still in hand.

You flop back into Bob’s lap without warning, gazing up at him with a lazy, contented smile. He freezes slightly, his leg twitching with nerves. You’re too busy chewing to notice the way his eyes widen, or how he swallows hard and looks away for a second.

He’s glad you can’t hear how loud his heart is pounding.

“Hey,” you say after swallowing a particularly big bite of cheesy goodness.

“Yeah?” Bob answers, turning to you.

You don’t respond right away, just stare at him again, like you’re trying to memorise every detail. There’s something about being near him that makes everything else fade out. Being in love with him, even without remembering it, feels like breathing.

“I wish I could take a picture.”

“Of… the pizza?” Bob asks, confused. 

“No. Of you. You just… have one of those faces.”

He blinks. “What does that mean?” There’s a note of genuine concern. Was this your weird, roundabout way of calling him ugly?

“You have a face I wanna… immortalise. Is that super dramatic?” you ask, gesticulating with your slice of pizza. Cheese flopping to the side with every word.

Bob lets out a stunned laugh. He honestly can’t believe half the things you’ve said since the memory loss, but this might be the most unexpected yet. His ears turn a little pink.

You’re both quiet for a beat before you break the silence with a chuckle. “What is it? Have I grown another head?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “I just… you’re so different.”

But he doesn’t say it like it’s a bad thing.

“How so?” you ask, muffled slightly by the mouthful of pizza you just shoved in. Even that, being messy and unfiltered, was a pretty big shift. Before the accident, you would’ve never let Bob see you like this. You were all sharp edges, always composed around him. Never vulnerable. Never soft.

“You didn’t… we didn’t really get along before you lost your memories,” Bob says carefully, like he’s stepping over landmines.

“Did we hate each other?”

“No, no, nothing like that. It was just… awkward,” he admits, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Huh…” You glance past him, up at the stars overhead. The sky looks endless. “I know I don’t remember anything, but something in me tells me I liked you more than I let on.”

You turn your gaze back to him, sincere now. “It’s just a feeling,” you say, lightly tapping your chest. “In here.”

There’s a loud bang in the distance that interrupts the two of you, and it jolts you upright from your place on his lap.

You and Bob are instantly alert, eyes scanning the skyline. 

“Fireworks?” you ask, squinting toward the horizon as bursts of colour light up the sky.

The distant booms echo softly through the air, and for a second, the world seems to pause. The sky is painted in shimmering golds, purples, and reds. You shuffle closer to the edge, your mouth slightly open in awe, your eyes reflecting the vibrant display.

“This is so beautiful,” you whisper.

“Yeah…” Bob’s voice is quiet as he looks over at you. His eyes don’t linger on the fireworks, instead, they find you. The glow of the explosions dances across your face, illuminating your smile. “It is,” he says, but he’s not talking about the sky.

You don’t notice his stare, too entranced by the spectacle. “I mean, I don’t remember what pretty things I’ve seen before,” you say with a soft laugh, “but there’s no way anything beats this.”

The two of you stay there for a long while, sitting shoulder to shoulder as the last of the fireworks fade. You forgot about the pizza. It goes cold beside you, untouched. But neither of you cares. 

You rest your head on his shoulder, eyes fluttering closed despite the crackling fireworks and the hum of New York City below. Somehow, in the middle of all that noise and chaos, you find peace. A kind of quiet you didn’t know you needed. And before long, you’re completely asleep, your breathing soft and even, your body relaxed against his.

Bob glances down at you, frozen for a second, not from discomfort, but from something more tender. He doesn't want to move, not really. But the night is getting cold, and you shouldn't sleep on a rooftop. Gently, he shifts, slipping one arm under your legs and the other around your back. You barely stir as he lifts you.

He walks quietly down the stairs, careful with each step, your head nestled into his chest.

Then—

“What’s this?” comes a voice that makes him jump nearly out of his skin.

Yelena is standing in the hallway outside her room, leaning casually against the wall, arms crossed, clearly in the middle of getting ready for bed.

“She fell asleep,” Bob says, adjusting his grip on you slightly, trying to look casual. “So I thought I’d help her to bed…”

Yelena arches a brow. “That’s very gentlemanly of you, Bob.”

“She’s had a long day,” he mumbles, eyes avoiding hers as he starts to move past.

“Mm-hm,” she hums, still grinning. 

He walks into your room, carefully sidestepping anything that might creak or clatter. The last thing he wants is to wake you. But when he leans down to gently lay you onto the bed, your fingers curl tighter into his shirt like talons.

He freezes. “Seriously?” he mutters under his breath, glancing down at your sleeping form. You’re completely out cold, but your grip says otherwise.

He tries again, delicately prying your fingers away one by one, but you’re like a koala in REM sleep. “Yelena?” he whisper-shouts, trying not to jostle you too much.

After a few seconds, Yelena pokes her head around the corner, toothbrush in hand, completely unbothered. “What?”

“She won’t let go,” he says, exasperated.

Yelena steps into the room, takes one look at the situation, and her face breaks into a slow grin. “Of course she won’t.”

“What do I do?” Bob hisses.

Yelena shrugs. “Get comfortable?”

Eventually, after a few more whispered pleas and another failed attempt to detach you, she sighs and calls for backup. “Ava, we need a second pair of hands.”

It takes a combination of Bob and Yelena pulling while Ava gently works your grip free one finger at a time, to finally get you into bed without dragging Bob in after you.

By the time they’re done, Bob is sweating, slightly rumpled, and staring at you with a look that’s somewhere between exasperation and complete emotional defeat.

“She’s gonna be the end of me,” he sighs.

Ava pats his shoulder. “Not a bad way to go.”

***

Weekend rolls around, Bob had offered to help you go through your stuff, maybe handling familiar items, seeing old things, would help jog something loose in your memory.

You had found an old teddy bear, a digital camera with very few pictures, and throwing knives. You think it’s nice to know you’re very versatile. 

You’re in your room, standing on your tiptoes trying to reach another box on the highest shelf. You stretch a little too far, fingers just grazing the edge of it, when suddenly, Bob's reaching for it too.

“Oh, don’t worry, I can—”

Your hands slip under Bob’s, and in a sudden pulse of light and warmth, the room falls away. You’re no longer in the safety of your space. It’s a hazy afternoon, the golden sunlight casting long, sleepy shadows across cracked pavement. The distant sound of a train horn echoes through the air, and there’s a soft breeze drifting in from somewhere, maybe the coast, maybe the open countryside. It smells faintly of dust and old paper.

You’re in a memory.

A small train station. Quiet. Still. You see a little child, no older than four, and a woman beside them. The child is you.

The woman bends down, brushing your hair back with tender fingers. She’s beautiful in the way only memories can be, edges blurred, features softened by time and pain. Her lips move, whispering something you can’t hear. Words drowned out by the roaring silence in your ears.

She kisses your forehead.

Then she straightens, turns, and walks away. Her hand slips from yours like sand, and you’re left standing alone.

“Mom?”

You call out for her, a small voice barely rising above the bustling noise of the trains, but no one comes. Watching the little kid, watching yourself, sit there and cry until your voice is hoarse, tears streaking down chubby cheeks. People pass. Some glance, others don’t. Looks are given, but no one stops to help.

You come to with a sharp gasp, the memory still clutching at your chest like cold fingers. Bob is in front of you, eyes wide, his hand gently on your shoulder as he steadies you.

“Was that my memory?” you ask, your voice faint. You’re still there, in that memory, like part of your mind is dragging its feet back to the present.

“I’m so sorry, I… I didn’t mean to do that,” Bob says, his expression crumpling with guilt.

You blink at him, really seeing the way his hands are trembling slightly, his face pale. He looks visibly shaken. Like he’s taken away your clean slate. And now the only memory that’s surfaced from your past is that of being left behind.

“That’s the first thing I remember,” you whisper. “That’s the only thing.”

Bob’s throat bobs, and he steps back slightly, like he’s not sure if you want him near anymore.

“I—” he tries, but the words falter.

There’s a thick tension in the air as you try to come to terms with what just happened.  You’re uncertain, scared, and hurting in a way you don’t fully understand. But through it all, the only anchor you have is Bob.

You reach for him instinctively, like your heart knows the way before your mind catches up, but he flinches. It’s a small movement, but it cuts deep. Not because he’s afraid of you, but because he’s terrified for you. Of what he might do, what you might see again, what memories might bleed through just from a touch.

“Please?” you whisper, voice trembling. “I just… I need you.”

You hold your hand out, palm open and steady despite the way your insides shake. Like you’re telling him: It’s okay. I trust you. I’m not afraid of you.

He hesitates for a beat, long enough that you can see the storm behind his eyes. Then slowly, cautiously, he reaches out. His fingers curl around yours, and the moment they connect, you don’t wait. You step into him, into his arms, burying your face against his chest. His arms come around you like instinct, and you finally feel like you belong again. Like his arms are exactly where you’re meant to be.

He thought you wouldn’t want him anymore. Thought whatever pain you’d seen in that memory would make you run.

“I feel safe with you,” you murmur, your breath warm against his neck. It was like you could read his mind.

You sit there until you feel normal again, breathing in sync with Bob as you toy with his shirt and he pets your hair.

“Why were you so scared?” You ask suddenly.

“The last time I used my powers, things got out of control.” Flashes of what happened appear in his mind— the darkness, the destruction. 

“I read about it. What happened that day…”

Bob looks down, jaw tight, the guilt still weighing on him.

 “Where’d you hear it from?” he asks quietly.

“I’ve been trying to get my memories back,” you say. “So I’ve been reading my diary.”

Bob’s eyebrows lift, surprised. You didn’t seem like the type to keep a diary.

“I write about you quite a bit,” you add, offering a small smile.

His breath catches slightly. “Yeah?”

You nod. “I don’t seem to understand you. Every other entry is me trying to figure you out, analysing the interactions we have. One minute I think you hate me, the next I think you’re just… scared.”

He doesn't answer right away, just looks at you like he wants to say something but doesn’t know where to start.

“I think I was scared too,” you admit. 

“The way I write about our relationship in my diary seems sad. Like there’s so much I wanted to say to you, but couldn’t for some reason.”

You twiddle with your fingers for a moment before finally saying what's on your mind.

“I think you should read it.”

“Your diary? That's crossing a boundary. When you get your memories back, I don’t think you’ll appreciate it.” 

The tone of his voice told you he was resolute in his decision, but you wanted to leave the door open.  “If you want to read it, it’s in the top drawer by my bed, in the very back. I think it’d clear a lot of things up between you and her, or I guess me. I don’t know how to address myself.”

He looks at the drawer and thinks of what might be inside your diary, which you wanted him to read so badly. A few moments later, you get up off the floor and offer him your hand again, “Let’s go, I think Yelena’s making dinner.”

***

Waking up to you was disorientating as fuck.

Since you lost your memory, you’d been clinging onto him like a lifeline. Sure, you followed the rest of the Avengers around like a lost duck, trailing behind their conversations and mimicking routines, but with him… with Bob, it was different.

You didn’t just follow him, you stuck to him like glue. Something about him made you feel safe.

“Sorry! I wasn’t watching you while you slept,” you blurt suddenly, catching yourself as he looks over at you from his bed. “I mean—well, technically yes, I was, but not for a long time... just like a minute because I didn’t want to wake you, but—”

Bob doesn’t respond, just blinking at you.

“I really didn’t mean to overstep, it’s just—I came in to see if you wanted to make breakfast together, and you were asleep and you looked so…”

You stop yourself as the words threaten to spill out. If you didn’t stop, there was a solid 90% chance you’d end up professing your undying love for him, and maybe even proposing marriage right there.

“It’s okay, I get it,” he says gently, cutting in before you can spiral any further with embarrassment. “Let’s just go make breakfast.”

You exhale a laugh, relieved, your nerves settling just a bit.

You both go to make breakfast and settle on grilled cheese sandwiches. You watch as he takes a bite and melts, visibly softening.  He looks so cute, and all he was doing was chewing. You loved all the little mannerisms no one would notice unless they looked closely. The way his nose would scrunch up when he laughs, how he'd caress his hands to soothe himself, or how he makes eye contact when people are talking so intently to make sure that they know he was listening. You take out your digital camera that you had found in the box in your room, angling it just right.

Click.

When he realises you’re taking a picture, he freezes mid-bite, eyes wide.

“I’m making memories,” you say simply, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“I’m just eating a sandwich,” he replies, baffled.

You shrug, grinning. “Exactly.”

He rolls his eyes, but there’s a shy smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Alright…”

He tries to look unaffected, but you can see it. His shoulders relax, and his cheeks flush ever so slightly. All of a sudden, you have this unexplainable power over him. He wasn’t used to someone looking at him like that, like they wanted to remember him.

“I’m sure you could find more interesting things to shoot,” he teases, raising an eyebrow.

You shake your head, smiling softly. “There’s something special about you. You look so real when you think no one is watching. I can’t help but want to capture that.”

“You mean that?” Bob says, traces of doubt leaking in.

“From the bottom of my heart.”

He chuckles, the sound warm and a little surprised. “Still… I think you should explore other things if you want new memories. Let’s go somewhere today.”

You grab his hand gently, excitement bubbling up inside you.

He takes you to a park, but all you can seem to focus on is him, how he moves, how he laughs. So you keep sneaking pictures (not so sneakily), desperate not to forget a single moment. 

“There’s a whole park to take pictures of, you know?” he says, grinning as he lowers the camera.

You glance around, finally noticing the trees, the sunlight filtering through the leaves, the vibrant colours all around. But you quickly look back at him, your smile soft.

“Yeah, but you’re the best part of the view,” you admit quietly, making him blush just a little.

Bob clears his throat, cheeks warming as he tries to shift the attention away from himself.

“Okay, okay…but you should let me turn the favour. Give me your camera, I’ll take some pictures of you,” Bob states, holding out his hand with an easy smile.

“Oh no, that’s fine. I doubt I’m that photogenic,” you say, laughing nervously. “You don’t really want pictures of me.”

Then with a sudden surge of confidence, he says, “I don’t think you realise how beautiful you are.” 

Bob doesn't know where it comes from; he wasn’t one to say something so bold like that, but he couldn't stand hearing you downplay yourself. 

He says it so softly and genuinely, you swear you heard your heart skip a beat. Your eyes meet in the silent pause, but it isn’t uncomfortable like awkward silences tend to be. It’s warm and cosy like one of Bob’s many sweaters. 

Feeling like he was staring for too long, he clears his throat before adding, “Plus, all your memories can’t be pictures of me.”

“R-right,” you stutter as you hand over the camera, your fingers brushing his. The touch is brief, but it leaves a spark, a lingering warmth that settles somewhere deep inside.

“Say cheese.”

“Cheese!” you grin, striking a playful pose.

The rest of the day is spent taking pictures as you wander around New York, basking in the warm sun, laughing at everything you see, carefree and lighthearted.

“We should get ice cream!” you declare suddenly.

He buys it for you without hesitation and snaps a candid photo as you dig into it with delight.

“This is heaven,” you sigh dramatically. “Second only to your pancakes.”

He takes another picture, catching you mid-bite, and you catch him smiling to himself.

You notice and nudge him, “How do I look?”

He looks at the screen. Your eyes are closed in pure bliss, a little smear of vanilla ice cream on your lip, with the brightest smile on your face.

“Perfect,” he says, and for a second, you’re not sure he’s talking about the photo at all.

Eventually, after your long day of wandering around, the two of you get on the subway to head back home. It's packed, shoulder to shoulder, a blur of strangers and noise. You manage to find two seats side by side, squeezed tight among the crowd.

Sitting next to each other, you're pushed up close, legs touching, shoulders brushing with every lurch of the train. The warmth of him seeps through your clothes, and you’re suddenly all too aware of how close you are.

“I had a lot of fun today,” Bob says, leaning in so you can hear him over the rattle of the subway.

“So did I,” you reply, smiling. “You know how to show a girl a good time, Bob Reynolds.”

The train jerks to a stop as it pulls into the next station. The doors slide open with a hiss, and a few people step off, thinning the crowd a little. You glance up and notice an older couple standing nearby, gently swaying with the movement of the train.

You and Bob exchange a look, then both rise at the same time.

“Please, take our seats,” you offer warmly.

They smile gratefully as they settle down, and you both step back to stand nearby, holding the pole for balance. It’s quiet for a moment, and you watch as the elderly man gently brushes something off his wife’s shoulder, then takes her hand in his. The tenderness in his gesture makes your chest ache. It was simple and sweet, watching him dote on her like she was still the only girl in the room.

“You two make such a cute couple,” the old lady says suddenly, looking up at you both with a knowing smile.

You both blink, completely caught off guard. 

“Oh, we’re not…” You start to say, but your voice trails off when Bob nudges your arm gently.

“Thank you,” he says to her, still smiling, then glances at you.

“How long have you been together?” The two of you weren’t anticipating any follow-up questions, so you had to think on your feet. It was time to put your non-existent acting skills to the test.

“A yea–” You start, but seeing the look on Bob’s face, you morph it until you say, “Month. A month.”

They both smile, clearly loving young love because old people do that. 

“And how did you two meet?” She asks, and you’re starting to see why the Avengers get annoyed with you.

“We met at…” You start looking for Bob to save you, and he does. “Hospital.”

That wasn't where you were heading, but technically it was true. “Yes, I was hit by a… bike.”

Their eyes go wide with shock. “Yes, it was an awful affair. Bike messenger gone rogue.”

“When I heard what happened, I rushed over to see her and I slept by her side,” Bob adds, which was very close to what happened when you got hit with the ray.

“When I woke up and saw him there waiting for me to wake up, I fell in love with him on the spot.”

They both swoon at your story, and when it was said like that, it did sound quite romantic, Bob realised. 

“You take care of her,” the old man interjects, his voice gravelly but kind. “Girls like that, with that light in their eyes… they don’t come around often, trust me, I’d know.”

Bob swallows hard, his gaze softening as he looks at you. You had a light—a spark about you—that he’d be crazy to deny. But the two of you were just becoming friends, finally finding solid ground; how could he risk messing that up?

Still, for the old man’s sake and maybe a little for himself, he says quietly but with conviction, “I will.”

Even if he didn’t mean it in the way the old man intended, he would take care of you.

“And keep her away from bikes. They’re trouble,” the man added, and Bob gave him an affirmative, “Of course.”

He’d protect you from bikes too.

You both watch as the couple get off at the next stop, but what they said sticks with you for much longer.  

As you walk away, you whisper, “That was… something.”

Bob glances sideways at you, amused. “You didn’t correct them.”

“You didn’t either,” you shoot back, cheeks flushing.

“I didn’t want to.”

The train buckles a little, making you lose balance and stumble, but he catches you instantly, his hand wrapping securely around your waist.

“Trying to sweep me off my feet?” you joke, but if you’re being honest, you’re just trying to hide how breathless you feel. His strong arms are around you, keeping you upright without effort. It’s enough to make your pulse stutter.

He smirks faintly, eyes flicking down to meet yours. “If I were, would it be working?”

You look away, flustered but smiling. “Shut up.”

But you don’t pull away. And neither does he.

“The next stop is ours.”

The two of you break away almost reluctantly. By the time you get back to the tower, you feel like your heart has been racing nonstop.

Once inside, you both go your separate ways, he finds his comfy spot by the window while you wander around, looking for an Avenger to follow around and maybe learn from.

A few hours later, he hears you come back into the room. You’re following behind Bucky, asking questions, and he wonders how, in the two or so weeks you’ve been like this, you hadn’t run out of questions. 

“Is it wrong of me to want to know how many pushups you can do?”

Bucky sighs, running out of words to give you. Fortunately, he’s let off the hook when you catch Bob’s eye and bound over to him.

“Meet me on the roof in 10?” you ask, leaning in close.

“Yeah, sure,” he replies, smiling.

You stand looking out at the sunset, waiting for Bob to show up.

A moment later, he appears, turning toward you and noticing you’re still holding the camera.

“I just realised we didn’t get any pictures together, so I figured…”

You stand at the edge of the roof as you sidle up next to each other, sharing the warm glow of the setting sun.

“Ready?” you ask, lifting the camera.

You snap a picture of the two of you. The flash flickers briefly.

The two of you turn toward each other, the space between you suddenly feeling electric and full of possibility.

You glance down, checking the picture on the camera. A small smile tugs at your lips, and Bob watches you with quiet intensity.

He told himself he just wanted to be your friend, and he was. He was your friend now. But being this close to you, when you looked like a daydream, it was hard to think of anything else. He liked seeing you happy. He liked being the reason you were happy. So this just felt like the natural step; he wouldn’t be afraid anymore. 

“Can I kiss you?” He utters so softly that you might not have heard it if you weren’t so dialled in to him.

“Yes.”

It was the easiest question you’d ever had to answer. 

The moment is instantly electric. It was love at first sight for you, like fate had placed him in that chair just for you. His hands gently cup your face, drawing you closer as he leans in to kiss you.

The moment your lips meet, you melt into it.

It’s easy, it’s natural. But it also feels like you’re walking on air.

Your lips melt together as the kiss deepens, slow and sure, like you’ve both been holding your breath for days and finally found air in each other.

Then, suddenly, you feel the ground vanish beneath your feet. It takes a few moments to realise what’s happening. You're both slowly lifting into the air, weightless, like the kiss has broken gravity’s hold.

You pull back, breathless, eyes wide. “We’re flying.”

Bob’s eyes are glowing, soft gold, like sunlight through clouds. And to make it that much more perfect, he’s staring at you like you hung the stars.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper, “we are.”

***

The world feels light. You feel like you could do anything. Bob kissed you, and somehow, that made everything else fall into place, like that one moment was enough to ground you and lift you all at once. You kissed him so good, he fucking flew! That was something to be proud of. 

“Morning!” you greet cheerfully, practically floating into the room.

“Well, aren’t you in a good mood?” John comments, raising an eyebrow at your brightness.

“I am. Quite literally nothing could ruin my day.”

You look over at John’s plate filled with all things healthy and not a pancake in sight, and sneer, “Not even whatever is going on over there.”

“You’re going to die if you keep eating the way you do.��

“At least I’ll die happy.” 

And probably in Bob’s arms, but you’d keep that to yourself. You keep flitting around the kitchen, flashes of Bob popping up like you had a gallery in your head dedicated to him.

Then, of course, that’s when Bucky and Yelena appear, both standing stiffly in the doorway. Their faces are unreadable, but it’s clear they’re not here to chat.

“Can we talk to you?” Yelena asks, her voice calm but firm.

Your smile falters. The tone in her voice doesn’t match your mood. You glance between them, a nervous flutter stirring in your chest. They lead you to another room, and your heart pounds with each step. Once you're face to face with them, you let out a breath you didn’t even know you were holding. 

“Just tell me,” you say, steeling yourself.

Bucky steps forward, voice gentle. “There’s a way you might be able to get your memories back.”

Your heart nearly stops.

“They’ve made a device,” Bucky says carefully, “to counteract the effects of the ray you were hit with.”

You swallow hard, your lungs suddenly tight, like the air has turned to cement.

“Will I remember what happened these past few weeks?” you ask, already bracing for the answer.

“They’re not sure,” Yelena replies gently. “There’s a chance you won’t.”

The rest of the day blurs. You wear that carefully constructed smile while inside, everything feels like it’s unravelling. You laugh at jokes, eat meals, and talk to the team, but every time you look at Bob, it’s like looking at a sunset you might never see again.

Because what if you disappear?

What if the version of you that exists now—the one who fell in love, who made pancakes, who learned to laugh again—vanishes?

What if all of it was just borrowed time?

You’re curled up on the couch later, trying not to let the weight of it crush you, when Yelena finds you. She pauses, studying you quietly.

“You okay?” she asks, snapping you out of your spiral.

You glance up at her with a weak smile. “Yeah,” you lie. “I’m… I’m great.”

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Yelena presses gently. She sits beside you, eyes focused and unwavering. She sees right through you.

You hesitate, then finally let it slip out like a confession you’d been clutching too tightly.

“What if, when I get my memories back… things are different? What if you guys don’t like me anymore?”

Your voice cracks on the last word. It’s not just about them, and you both know it. It’s about him.

Bob liked you now. The person you’d become. The version of you without all the baggage, the walls, the defence mechanisms. What if the old you came back and pushed him away again?

“We’ll like you regardless,” Yelena says, firm but kind, leaning forward, her words meant to stick. “All of us.” She emphasises that last part, not missing the real question behind your fear. You and Bob haven’t exactly been subtle, floating around the Tower like someone told you the world was ending and you decided to fall in love anyway.

“You think?” you ask quietly, hating how small your voice sounds.

“I know,” she replies without hesitation. “Bob isn’t the type to run. He’s not just here for this version of you. He’s here for you, full stop.”

The thought of him leaving still prickles, sharp and cold. But there’s something warm in her certainty that you cling to. You want to believe her.

“Thank you,” You whisper with a small smile. But there’s still that little piece of doubt lingering in the back of your head. 

***

You spend all night worrying, your mind running in circles while your body stays perfectly still, tucked into Bob’s arms. His breath tickles the back of your neck in soft, steady waves. You can feel the quiet thud of his heartbeat against your spine, a rhythm that grounds you more than anything else ever has. This feels like happiness. This feels more right than anything you’ve ever known.

And nights like this… how could you give it up, when you had just begun to have it?

The thought won’t let you go. So, when you’re sure Bob is fully asleep, you carefully slip out of his arms. You sneak out of bed, heart pounding with every silent step, padding your way barefoot down the hall to the lab.

The room is dim and still. On the central table sits the device. The thing that could give you everything back and take everything away.

You stare at it. Your reflection glints back at you in its smooth surface. What would you really be giving up? The person you were before. Aloof, guarded, and apparently barely connected to anyone. No warmth, no laughter, no Bob.

Your fingers close around it. Maybe this was the price of keeping what mattered. Maybe this version of you was the better one. Maybe memories weren’t worth more than love.

You raise the device in the air, prepared to end it all before it can change you back—

Then the door creaks open behind you.

“Hey,” Bob’s voice is low, thick with sleep but steady. He stands in the doorway, his eyes not on the device, but on you. “What are you doing?”

His eyes widen in alarm. “You need to put that down. Without it, you can’t get your memories back.”

You stare at the small device in your hand, the one meant to unlock everything you've forgotten. Everything that’s been haunting your dreams and slipping through your fingers like mist.

You’re so close to throwing it on the ground, your grip tightening as your voice shakes. “Maybe I don’t want them back.”

He goes still. You can see the panic in his face, but it’s laced with something else too. Pain.

You’re biting back the heat behind your eyes, the pressure building in your chest, like red-hot guilt piercing through you. Because it’s not just about your memories, it’s about him. The fear that if you remember everything…you might lose this. Lose him.

“I don’t want to remember a world where you’re not in it,” you whisper, your voice cracking. “What if I get it all back and I’m not me anymore? What if I’m someone who doesn't love you?”

Bob takes a careful step closer, like you’re on the edge of something fragile. “Then I’ll help you fall in love with me all over again,” he says quietly. “No matter how many times it takes.”

What if you don’t love me anymore? What if getting these memories back means you lose me…?” Your voice is shaking now. “What if who I am is just… broken? I mean, my own mother didn’t—”

You stop yourself, the words dying in your throat.

Bob takes a step closer. He feels that pang again, deep and aching, like something in his chest is being pulled taut. Not just because of what you said, but because he’s watching you unravel in front of him, and he never wants you to feel like this, like love is conditional. 

“The person I am now… I want to be that person. I don’t want to be the girl you think of as a stranger. I want to be the girl you love.”

Bob’s eyes are soft, full of a sadness he tries to hide, and a depth of affection he doesn’t bother to. “I’m telling this to you because I love you. If you don't get your memories back, you'll always be left wondering who you were.”

Your hands are trembling when you finally set the device down on the table. You throw your arms around him and hug him so tightly he thinks he might break apart, and he doesn't mind it especially if it meant being held like this by you.

“I love you too,” you murmur, burying your face in his shoulder.

You both freeze for half a second, the realisation hitting you at the same time, how easy it was. How natural.

You pull back just enough to look at him, wide-eyed, a smile tugging at the corner of your lips.

“You said it.”

“So did you.”

And then you’re laughing softly into each other, that weight between you gone, just you, him, and the now. “I love you. No matter what version of you I get.”

He kisses you lightly, your lips moving in sync with one another. It’s more than a kiss, it’s a promise that no matter what, you’d fall in love over and over again, no matter how long it took. 

You pull him flush against you, the feeling of his shirt beneath your fingers keeping you in the moment. Like you were scared it would slip right through your fingers. You pull back and look at him; his eyes are full of desire, and so are yours.

You jump and he catches you, wrapping your legs around his waist. Your lips reconnect as if they were magnets. The kiss is more fast paced, filled with passion as you who each other just how much you need one another. He places you on a counter, his hands roaming your body as the need to explore every part of you becomes too much to bear. 

Both of you stop suddenly, your foreheads against each other as you breathe heavily. Your chests rise and fall in sync, hearts thudding loudly in your ears. You wanted to go further, God, you both did, but you knew you had to stop. 

“When you get your memory back,” he whispers.

You nod. As much as you both wanted this…you couldn't yet. Not while you weren't whole.

“When I get my memory back.”

***

“So this is it?” you whisper, voice barely steady.

You’re sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, the sterile smell of the room thick in the air. You can feel your heart pounding harder than it should.

Bob is standing beside you, his hand tightly wrapped around yours, thumb running slow, comforting circles over your knuckles. 

You glance up at him, eyes searching. “What if everything changes?”

Bob is the first thing you see when you wake up. You’re sleepy and groggy, and he’s sitting there, book in hand.

“You’re awake,” he says softly. You nod, your eyes slowly adjusting as you take in your surroundings. “Maybe I could make you some pancakes,” Bob says, trying to see if you remembered. 

“Why would you do that?” you ask, letting out a confused laugh.

His face falls, hands tightening around the book. “You don’t… remember?”

“No, sorry. Did I miss something?” you say, blinking at him, genuinely puzzled.

“I’m sorry, I… I was just—” He stammers, trying to backtrack. “It’s nothing.”

“I should let you rest,” he adds, sensing your discomfort.

Bob gets up and walks to the door, and he’s about to leave when you stop him, your voice softer now.

“Thanks for being here when I woke up. It’s very kind of you.”

He musters a small, genuine smile and replies, “Anytime.”

In the days that passed, it was hard mourning someone who’s still alive and technically shouldn’t have existed. But deep down, he knew it wouldn’t be the end. The person he fell in love with was gone, but maybe he could fall in love again, with the person you are now.

One morning, you’re sitting by the table, scrolling through your phone, when Bob quietly walks in and slides a plate of pancakes to you.

“What are these for?” you ask.

“Just felt like it,” he replies, watching your eyes light up when you bite into them despite your best efforts to hide it.

You’ll fall for each other again; it’s only a matter of time.

Masterlist

[delicatetrashtree]

Gang of Youths - Achilles Come Down

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nothing on my mind but this. on a loop. 24/7. banging around my skull like the dvd logo.

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The origin of the manspread

The Barberini Faun, 2nd-century BC Hellenistic or 2nd-century AD Roman copy of an earlier bronze Barberine Faun in the Glyptothek Munich

[delicatetrashtree]

[delicatetrashtree]

Love Bug | M.R X Reader Masterlist

Summary : Robby slowly grows to like the ICU's head doctor. Running the ICU isn't an easy feat but not as tough as being a single mom to "lovebug"

Loathing, loathing you my whole life long

the beginning of our sunshine ICU doctor and the grumpy ED doctor. 2.2k

What is this feeling?

robby begins to realize how much the ICU sunshine saves him; a bit of her past comes to light. 2.7k

Little Lady

robby gets to meet a bit of sunshine's family. 2.8k

more to come...!!

[delicatetrashtree]

Georges-Louis de Berghes Monument, 1743 Luik, Wallonië, cathédrale St.-Paul

[delicatetrashtree]

when i talk shit about golfing, please know that none of it is about mini golf. it could never be about her. she's done nothing wrong in her entire life. god's perfect little putt putt.