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fatesundress · 1 year

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I wonder why.”

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

“What, Tom?”

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

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

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

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

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Curiosity—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

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

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

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

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

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

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

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

“A professor?”

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

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

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

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

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

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

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

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

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

“So?”

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

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

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

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

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

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

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

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I —”

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

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

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

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

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

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

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

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

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

“Tom.”

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

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

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

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

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

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

The day everything changes starts the same as any.

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

Tom has cracked the book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have no need.”

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

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

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

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

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

“Why would he lie?”

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

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

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

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

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

The adder points its beady gaze at you, and Tom whispers something else in that strange language before it retreats in agreement or compliance or whatever could come close to expression on the face of a fucking snake, and maybe you’re dreaming this despite your pinching. Maybe you’ve lost your mind.

“Hope you didn’t just tell it to bite me,” you try, and it comes out half-choked.

He smiles. It’s partly for you and partly for this venomous little thing on his shoulder, and that’s a bit startling. Tom Riddle smiles for adders and you and not much else.

“Should I?”

And all you manage, for whatever reason, is, “Don’t be like them now that you’re not like me.”

It’s out before you can stop it, welling from a small, scared place that embarrasses you to return to. A hospital bed when you were eleven. The walls of a bedroom ravaged by bombs.

Tom’s smile fades. “We’re nothing like them.”

The thing is, neither of you know that’s the day that changes everything.

You celebrate your fifteenth birthday in the Deathday ballroom with Tom, a stolen dinner pastry, a green candle, and a few sad ghosts. You try to learn how to dance. Tom thinks it’s silly. You tell him that’s only because he’s upset he keeps stepping on your toes.

Summer blisters when it comes.

Some of the children take jobs as mail-sorters and steelworkers and you clasp for whatever you’re (one) allowed and (two) capable of, which isn’t much. You’re both old enough at the end of the day to explore London on your own, opting to spend as much time away from the orphanage as Mrs Cole allots, but you only have knuts and pennies and you warn Tom it would be unwise to swindle muggles and risk a letter from the Ministry. So you work where you’re needed and you eat the rationed nonsense you always do and you miss Hogwarts terribly. It’s much the same: you’re together, you’re hungry, and you’re nothing like them.

And then it’s different: Tom makes Slytherin Prefect, is suddenly tall, and you wonder in fleeting moments if his face has always suited him this well.

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

Fifth year begins and you have almost the same number of electives as you do core classes, Tom has duties in his new role that take much of his spare time, and despite popular belief, you and him are not a mitotic entity, so this splits you up more often than it had in previous years. Which is fine. You still have plenty of things to talk about during meals and between duels, and you reckon you’ll share DADA until you graduate.

But in his absence, your attentions are forced elsewhere, and you should be grateful they land on something potentially promising.

It’s like Transfiguration just clicks for you this year. You’ve never been the greatest at Transformation (importantly though, you’ve also remained far from the worst), but fifth year launches you into Vanishment and something about that feels like a perfect equation. There are no complicated half-numerals and objects stuck between inanimacy and being — just unmaking the made. Nothing or not. You’re fucking excellent at it. You glean the theoretics fast and then the practise comes like breathing. Even the purebloods struggle as you Vanish Dumbledore’s Conjured garden snakes in brilliant tendrils of light. You exult unabashedly when you brush past them on the way out of class — who was it that didn’t belong in Slytherin?

You say the same to Tom and he rolls his eyes, but the amusement is there.

“Think you can talk to my snakes for me?” you tease, nudging him on the path to Hogsmeade.

“If they’re yours, I doubt they have anything worth discussing.”

And Dumbledore is… a hue nearer to the man you remember from first year. He praises your improvement and smiles when you can’t hide your giddiness as if equally impressed.

He doesn’t shelve people the way Slughorn does (you’re dismayed to find Tom has been invited to join the Slug Club and you have not) but you think if he did you’d be rapidly climbing your way to the top. Maybe get put in one of those neat little repositories he keeps all his best treasures in.

Dumbledore does, however, offer additional assignments for those who are interested, and tasks you with a few if you’re up to the challenge.

You always are.

The Tom-Dumbledore-Encyclopaedia debacle is apparently either resolved, or your part in it forgotten.

Tom humours you when you’re both singed at the fingers from duelling, yours dipped in the lake while he buries his in the cold moss, about how Abraxas takes the seat beside him at every Slug Club dinner. He tells you he pretends to be very interested in the Malfoy’s business affairs and their stock in the Bulgarian Quidditch team’s win this coming spring. He tells you he finds it amusing to let Abraxas think he can make Tom his pet. Tom says he considers searching for Salazar Slytherin’s fabled Chamber of Secrets and showing Abraxas what a real pet looks like. You smack him in the arm.

He’s had an ego forever. He just has a few too many reasons for it now.

And maybe that’s why you push harder in Transfiguration, dedicate the majority of your studies to it, spend your Saturday nights scrutinising advanced techniques while Tom makes nice with Potions experts and politics with people who don’t even know what he is but like him anyway. It’s patronising, of course — borderline fetishistic; not a real like — but it scares you. Tom Riddle would not allow himself to be anyone’s pretty mudblood show pony if he didn’t have an ulterior motive.

Everything changes but the observable truth that he is still insufferable.

You’re lucky to see him twice a week if it isn’t in class, and the way it starts is so slow you don’t even fully understand what’s happening until Christmas break when Abraxas stays a few extra days and leaves by Dippet’s Floo instead of the train.

You don’t dare ask where Tom has vanished to in that time or why the hell Abraxas Malfoy would willingly subject himself to unnecessarily extended time at school with all his lackeys gone, and it isn’t because you don’t want to. It’s because he won’t tell you himself. It’s because you’re terrified the answer will feel like a broken promise, and you’ve come to realise (it’s been there for so long; such an obvious, tiny thing that you’ve never stopped to really dissect it) that it’s quite difficult to know someone at every atom and not love them a little bit.

You’re suddenly aware of the risk of it: you love him like an inextricable piece of yourself, and, well, you’ve seen war. You know what amputation looks like. You’ve seen the remains of structures designed to stand forever, and you’re strong like them — casts and gauze in all the weak spots because you remember the pain of breaking them — but those were blows dealt without the complication of loving the bombs behind them.

Tom is the green on your robes, the dragon pox tinge you sometimes think never truly faded when you look in the mirror too long, and all the shades you never imagined. Apple, jade, moss. The beginnings of emerald. (No, he couldn’t be that.)

You wonder what the world would look like if he stole those colours back, and it’s much worse than some brutal decimation; it would leave you with too much. You would just be you without him.

So you love him into June like you always do, and you pluck his Prefect badge off on the last day of school and tell him it makes you jealous like a joke when it’s half-true.

It’s raining when you walk to the train together, miserable for what should be summer but not at all remarkable in Scotland. Tom wipes it from your cheek. Your wrists are sore from vanishing bits and bobbles all night while you still can, never truly prepared for three months without magic, and you curl into your seat as soon as you’re in it. Tom wakes you up when you arrive back in London, startling you to find that you fell asleep at all.

It rains a lot that summer. There’s nothing much to see in the city and you can’t get anywhere else (you note: the Trace cares little about broomsticks but you can’t afford one of your own and flying might be the only thing Tom is bad at) so you’re stuck to the library again with a noseful of old paper and a certain prose that magical literature cannot replicate. You theorise a lifetime of reckoning with the mundane forces one to be more creative.

Perhaps it’s the cold that makes you sick. Perhaps it’s the state of your meals. Either way, your final weeks before sixth year are hell. Biblical, blazing hell.

The nurses aren’t sure what it is — another influenza epidemic you’re the first in the orphanage to catch — but they isolate you immediately and there’s not much care they can offer.

You hear Tom arguing with one of them outside your door but can’t make out the words. Everything is dizzy, sweaty, halfway to unconsciousness but without its relief. You’d take dragon pox over this.

Some days later (though you can’t be sure because it feels like bloody centuries), he’s at your bedside, and you think even if you were lucid enough to ask what horrible thing he’d done to change the nurses’ minds, you wouldn’t.

But you know he’s not beyond breaking wizarding law, because he’s muttering healing spells with a hand to your damp forehead, and you hazily find yourself reaching for him, trying to shake your head no.

“Not allowed,” you mumble. Your throat is sore and your nose is stuffy. You sound terrible and you probably look worse.

Tom is slightly blurry but you think he’s staring at you. You know if he is it’s with the utmost incredulity.

“Not allowed,” he repeats slowly. It’s very easy to picture him clenching his jaw. “I wonder, if the Trace is so exact that it can detect all forms of magic, it can’t also detect malady. You’re burning — and I’m to consider whether saving your life might be illegal?”

He’s angry. He’s angrier than you’ve seen in a long time; and you can actually see it now. His magic courses through you and your vision clears, bit by bit, until your depth perception steadies and you realise he’s closer than you thought. His jaw is, in fact, clenched.

You move to catch his wrist and manage it this time. “Tom.”

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

His face is far too neutral for the way his fingers stroke your damp cheek. “Hm. Then it’s a good thing you’d break the law for me too.”

Of course he’s right — you love him. Which makes it a good thing he doesn’t get sick.

Some of the younger children do. The fever comes overnight for a girl who wasn’t in the orphanage last year, and it takes her by the next.

When you get back on the train to Hogwarts, the virus is circulating Britain and you’re livid.

What Tom said is true; you consider the Trace’s precision and the details of the laws on underage magic — how one of the technicalities is that a young witch or wizard may be absolved of the consequences if the circumstances are life-threatening. You think about how it supposedly doesn’t care about broom-riding or Portkeys or Floo travel, and if the Trace is that complex, surely it understands sickness.

You only wonder if the Ministry would understand it. There haven’t been any epidemics in the wizarding world since Gorsemoor cured dragon pox in the sixteenth century, and when there isn’t healing magic there are antidotes and Pepper-Ups and herbs that muggles simply don’t have. The fatality of a fever of all things is not something you imagine could be comprehended by the sort of people who sent you and Tom back to London in the wake of the Blitz.

Of course, the Ministry hasn't written to you, you haven’t been forced in front of a representative from the Improper Use office, and you have no real reason to be upset.

You are regardless.

It shouldn’t even be a thought: you immolating into oblivion protesting rescue because one of you might get in trouble for it.

A world you’ve never much cared for is blanketed in ash and its people are dying and you can’t help them. A girl is dead. You’ll return next summer and there will certainly be more.

Life is for the magical, you find. The muggles can burn.

It’s what makes you start to panic this year, knowing you’ve only got one more after it. You have no idea what you’re going to do after school, and it doesn’t help that Tom doesn’t appear to share the sentiment. He’s got Head Boy in the bag and when he isn’t with you he’s with Abraxas, who can surely provide him connections if whatever game Tom is playing at works (and you have no doubt it will), but it’s like you said in third year: that isn’t enough for you.

You remember with a small ache that you no longer means you and him.

And then — it makes sense. You feel incredibly stupid.

“You told him, didn’t you?” you ask Tom the first opportunity you can get him alone, in the glum blue light of the Deathday ballroom on your way back from supper.

He sighs like it’s a conversation he’d hoped to put off for longer. “You’re referring to Abraxas, I presume?”

“You’re referring to — yes, you prick, I’m referring to Abraxas. Of course I’m referring to Abraxas, or are there others? Dolohov and Nott seem unusually enthralled by you, now that I think about it.”

“And for a reason I’m supposed to be aware of, this is an error on my part. Should I be apologising?”

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

You throw your hands up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Shall I provide you with my itinerary as well? Would you accompany me as I tour the third-years around Hogsmeade? Or can you do me the favour of trusting me to make my own decisions with the nature of my ancestry?”

“You’re keeping something from me and there’s a reason,” you say, stepping closer to him, “and forgive me if I want to know what it is when you were willing to tell me you’re the Heir of Slytherin and you can talk to snakes. What — what could possibly be bigger than that?”

Tom returns your approach with one of his own. His eyes are steady, dark, thick with lashes and you can’t reminisce on the details of the rest of him because that would be strange for a friend to do. Stranger to do it now, when you’re angry with him and there’s two sleeping ghosts in the corner and he’s framed by deep indigoes like the ripples in the Black Lake and — you’re doing it anyway.

To be short, he’s close, he’s very beautiful, and sometimes you despise him.

“Trust me,” he says again, without the derision of the last time. “This will change things for us.”

You frown, but it’s a weak upset in contrast to the explosion you came in here willing to make. There were at least twenty questions you meant to ask and you only managed one.

You are not his keeper. You know that.

“Change them for the better, Tom,” you say on a sigh.

He blinks, and you think he’ll respond with a nod or a slightly offended ‘of course’ but he does not. He blinks and he just keeps looking at you. It’s disarming. It probably resembles the way you often look at him. There’s a rationale somewhere; you never see each other anymore, life is so incredibly busy, maybe he’s forgotten what you look like.

And he does nod, finally, but he does it with his thumb brushing the corner of your lip.

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

He pulls it away like he’s heard you. “You had something.”

You’re almost positive you did not.

Transfiguration this year brings Conjuration, which is an advanced and welcome distraction, and even more exciting when you consider no longer having to Vanish things you have no idea how to bring back. Dumbledore’s is one of three N.E.W.T classes you’re taking — Defence Against the Dark Arts and Alchemy besides. It’s easily your favourite.

You share it with eleven other Slytherins and twelve Ravenclaws. Four of them are muggle-born, and it’s hard to describe the ease you feel among them because you don’t think you’ve ever had anything resembling ease with anyone but Tom.

Your schedule is more crammed than it’s ever been, but it’s good. Two of the Ravenclaw girls invite you to Hogsmeade every other weekend, you share butterbeers when you can afford one, you study until you collapse, you take Dumbledore’s extra assignments and consider trying out for Chaser on one of your more restless evenings before waking up in the morning and resolving there is such as thing as too much of a good thing. Best not to get ahead of yourself.

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

Someone is found unresponsive in the dungeons. Dippet makes an announcement at breakfast that the boy isn’t dead, rather, petrified. No one is quite sure the cause, but the Headmaster warns a few minor precautions, suggests a buddy system, and says that after dinner studying should remain in everyone’s respective common rooms rather than the courtyards or library.

You know next to nothing about petrification, but the victim is muggle-born, and you suspect it was the result of a poorly performed statue curse by one of the many blood zealots in your house. The whole thing makes you hold onto your wand a smidge tighter, but you’re adamant not to let it drive you to paranoia like it would have a few years ago.

Tom nods at your theory when you manage to escape to the Black Lake together in November.

“That isn’t unreasonable,” he says. High praise.

You sink into the moss, sighing. “Do you think there’ll be more?”

He looks out onto the lake, the lapping waves, the crystalline beads that furrow them, midnight algae and flotsam you don’t think you belong to anymore.

You peer up at his silhouette in the dark. “Do you think whoever did it will do it again, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” he says finally, and after another pause: “but I don’t think it would be you.”

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

And he sinks beside you with that, breath shaping the cold in steady, rhythmic clouds while yours are scattered. His robes brush yours and you take his arm with a sleepy hum, tracing patterns in the stars until your eyes feel heavy and he insists on taking you back to your dormitories.

One of the Ravenclaw girls, Marigold Wright, distracts you with a spare blue scarf and an invitation to her next Quidditch match. You watch from the stands and cheer as she catches the snitch to beat Gryffindor.

It’s a bit strange — having a distraction — having a friend. Mari is kind, smart, a good study partner who’s as keen on stepping into the advanced theoretics of Human Transfiguration a year early as you are. She’s funny in a vulgar way, introduces you to all her friends, shows you the best way to sneak into the kitchens, and you sometimes wonder if she was sorted wrong, but — her methods are creative, and she’s definitely intelligent. She’s also definitely not Tom.

You see less and less of him and more of her, Dumbledore, the Ravenclaw common room and the pages of progressive Transfiguration methodologies. He sees less of you and more of Abraxas, Dolohov and Nott and all the other purebloods, Slughorn’s soirées and Prefect meetings that cut into meals.

It happens again.

Second floor lavatory. A girl called Myrtle Warren. She isn’t petrified.

There’s a vigil the following week and her parents are there, two muggles whose sobs wrack the Great Hall even as the students clear out. Flowers descend from the charmed ceiling, little bluebells and white chrysanthemums.

You cry that night. You can’t remember the last time you cried.

This time, you don’t have to seek Tom out. He catches you on your way back from Alchemy and brings you to the Deathday ballroom with a melancholy glance in your direction that you don't hesitate to follow. You realise it’s an odd place to continue to end up in, but no one else goes there and you suppose that makes it yours.

You’ve seen Tom skinny and sickly and olive green, but today his eyes are circled with veined violets and the lack of summer sun this year has whittled him grey once more. He’s still beautiful. He’ll always be beautiful. But he’s tired and — sad — and for the six years you’ve known him you aren’t quite sure what to do with that.

You don’t spend too long pondering it. You just hug him with the dawning newness of a thing like that; a thing you’ve never done, and never really thought to do. (You ask yourself in bewilderment how you’ve never thought to do it before.)

He’s warm. He’s uncertain. He doesn’t reciprocate immediately.

And then he does, and you understand without caveats or concerns that you stopped having a choice in your destruction the moment you chose him. He’s home, and that’s going to ruin you one day.

Your arms tighten around him and his around you, the rhythm of his breath holding you to earth when you begin to float away. Nothing makes sense in this moment but the mercy that in all the death you’ve seen, you swear to God you’ll never see his. As long as you’re alive, he must be too.

And there’s something to be said about the innate self-slaughter of loving a person (of loving Tom Riddle, especially): that it’ll cleave you in two, that you’ll say feeble things in his embrace that you should be above saying, like ‘I’m scared’, that his hand will find the back of your head and he'll tell you he knows, that that should not feel like enough but it will be. You’ll clasp your hands under black robes and hold this singular embrace together by the faulty adhesive of your fingers. Maybe you’ll cry again, like your body can suddenly comprehend its capacity for it and is making up for lost time.

The first sign that something is wrong, more than the obvious grievance of the death itself, is the Ministry’s happy acceptance of Rubeus Hagrid as the culprit.

The boy is maybe fourteen years old, half-blood — half human, mind — and no one has a bad word to say about him other than he likes to keep eccentric pets. Which leads you to wonder what pet he possessed with the ability to petrify one student and kill another and what cause he’d have for it in the first place besides two terrible, miraculous accidents.

That question draws an even stranger path. Mari says over butterbeers (on her, bless her soul) that she read somewhere years ago that Gorgons can induce petrification, but that she doesn’t remember much else.

One of the boys in DADA says that his father’s an auror, and heard from him that Hagrid’s pet was some sort of arachnid. Tom deducts five points from his house after class with a scowl on his pale face, muttering about conspiracy.

The second sign that something is wrong is that only one of those things would need to be true for the entire case on Hagrid to be called into question. If Mari’s memory serves right, how the hell did Hagrid come into ownership of a Gorgon? (Could Gorgons even be owned?) If the auror’s son is worth your credence, then what species of arachnid is capable of petrification?

You take to the library.

Unsure of where to begin and hesitant to draw attention, your research lingers into Christmas break and stalls some of your extracurriculars in Transfiguration. Tom is busy enough not to notice the new step in your routine, and you’re grateful not to have him breathing down your back, telling you you’re looking in the wrong places or you shouldn’t be looking at all.

The third sign is the end.

You wish to retract it all. There are time-turners and memory charms and potions that could dizzy you enough to manipulate the truth; there is anything but this. You’d suffer the consequences for the bliss of loving him with one more day before the ruin — you’d write it down to remember through the fog: look at him, duel him without wanting to hurt him, kiss him to know that you did it at least once, have him, be had. You never will again.

He’d shown you the adder. He’d joked about the Chamber of Secrets. He’d spent months disappearing with Abraxas, earning the trust of the sons of the Sacred Twenty Eight.

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

So it’s statue curses and Gorgons and Tom — speaking to serpents when no one else can, buttressed by pureblood boys who want people like you dead.

Don’t become like them now that you’re not like me.

He’s something else entirely.

What do you do in a moment like this? Panting into an empty library at a revelation you wish you could unknow, fingers digging into the hickory of your desk — another memory carved among the initials and hearts; how do you stand from your chair and leave like the world outside this room is the same as it was when you entered? There’s nothing to orbit. You are cosmic debris, tea dregs in a barren cup, flotsam.

You stand; and you tell no one. Not even Tom.

His presence in your life is so infrequent that you don’t even have to come up with excuses for your distance until three weeks after your discovery when you’re paired together in DADA to practise stretching jinxes.

You almost laugh. He’s standing beside you, tall (lanky like he was when he was a boy if you look long enough) and serious, and you love him without knowing who he is anymore. You’ve skirted corners to avoid him and sat with Mari during lunch and breakfast like he’s some scorned lover to escape confrontation from and not someone who held you through a grief inflicted by his hand.

“You look tired,” he says, inspecting the daisy you’d been tasked to elongate.

You glance at him. You are tired. It’s exhaustive, bone-deep, aching like nothing you’ve ever known, and maybe that’s why you can look at him and smile sadly instead of thrashing against his chest screaming for what he did. You suppose it happens enough in your head to satisfy. When you can sleep, you sleep to the thought of it. The waking moments are just blank.

“Mhm,” you hum, transfiguring the daisy stem back to its regular length.

Tom observes it with curious eyes. “You’re getting good at that.”

“I’ve been good at it.”

His lips turn, a small frown before he puts it away. You make the observation that he’s tired too; there are still bags under his eyes and his hands tremble ever-so-slightly with his wand when he loosens his grip on it.

His own doing and still you flicker with some relentless hope that he's drowning in regret.

“Sorry,” you say. A ridiculous thing. Do you intend to slowly push him from your life with weak disinterest and diverging academic avenues? As if he were something extricable. He’d never let you.

You’ll have to confront him, and that’s a revelation that holds its weight on your chest until you think you'll suffocate under it.

You’re in the blue light of the Deathday ballroom with a face you've never worn before when it happens, deep into spring, and you know then that you were wrong all those years ago.

He sees all of you.

Takes you in in the flash of a second and maybe it’s your quivering jaw that reveals you or the flint of betrayal in your eyes waiting to be struck and lit. Yes, you were wrong — Tom Riddle knows you at every atom too.

“Are you going to let me explain?" he asks before any hello. His jaw is tight but there’s nothing else to go on to judge his disposition. He's settling into impassivity like an animal drawing its shell. You will not be allowed in if you're going to make it hurt, and you might be the only one who can.

“Explain," you copy with a hard exhale, “Just tell me it wasn’t you. That’s all there is to say."

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Your breath catches on an automatic please but you don’t want to offer him that.

“I cannot.”

Then make me forget, you want to scream. Let it be summer. Let us work for pennies and breadcrumbs and be no one together.

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

“If I told you I did not wish for it, would you even believe me?”

“What are you… so it was an accident?”

“There was — an opportunity presented itself that may never have come again; that does not mean I don’t find the nature of it regrettable.”

“Regrettable.” You’re laughing or crying or both, and you must look unwell. Halfway out of your mind.

He’s so composed in the face of it that it only makes you more incensed.

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

“You nearly died,” he hisses, “and if I am to apologise for recognizing it only as the first of many times, I will not. If I am to apologise for doing whatever is necessary to prevent it, I will not. The hand we were dealt will not be the hand we die to — so yes, I understand it. And one day so will you.”

“Don't," you spit, and your anger must look pathetic under your welling tears. “Don't you dare tell me that this was for me.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“What could her death possibly bring me, Tom?”

“Her death is the first step to —”

“God, stop dancing around the fucking question!” Both hands have wound their way to your head, clutching at your skull like the brain matter might spill through one of the cracks he’s wearing down. “Just… tell me.”

“You recall Godelot's work," he says stiffly. The question of it takes you by surprise, peels the moment back like the rim of a fruit and you're left uncertain.

All you can do is nod, arms falling to cross over your chest.

“There was one form of magic he refused quite concisely to impart. I searched the Restricted Section for days, and under Dumbledore's watch that was not an easy thing to do."

You stole from him, you're urged to remind him, but it's something you'd say with a nudge of annoyance and a roll of your eyes. Such admonishment is small and far away.

“I found it at last in one of the repositories," he goes on, “Secrets of the Darkest Art."

“...What?"

“It's called a Horcrux,” he says. “Murder, by nature, splits the soul. The Horcrux simply makes use of the act; puts the soul fragment into something imperishable so that it is protected, rather than abandoned. In turn, your life cannot be taken. By malady, by magic, by sword — the vessel is destroyed but the soul lives on.”

You blink, feeling dizzy. “Myrtle was the sacrifice.”

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

“The circumstances could be ameliorated if one were to be made for you. I would have preferred it be someone who deserves it.”

“For — you’d do it again? Again, Tom?”

His brows crease, and even his upset seems contrived. There’s this barricade he’s placed that you, in all your infallible knowing of him, cannot puncture. It’s agony to begin to question what he could possibly be keeping from you in a confession like this.

“You killed someone, Tom. You — I would never ask you to do that. I would never live at the cost of someone else."

“No, you would not,” he agrees, though he shakes his head like it’s incredulous of you. “Do you think, even if I knew it were certain, a summons from the Ministry would have stopped me from saving you this summer? Do you suppose the threat of punishment would cause me to waver at that moment? I know it would not hinder you. So, you have your lines and I have mine — you never needed to ask.”

And now it hurts. The emptiness clears and you can't stand yourself for crying, but you do. It comes out in ragged, breathless sobs, clasped behind your palm as you turn away from him.

You've loved him since you were eleven. It's always been you two — it was always supposed to be you two. What is there to say to him? He's blurring in your periphery like in the midst of your sickness, and there's nothing he can do to heal you this time. Your vision will clear and Myrtle Warren will still be dead. He'll still be a stranger in the face of the boy you love.

“Why," you whine, a wet, hollow stain in your voice you've never cried enough to hear before. “Myrtle was — wasn't — uh —" You swallow, hysterics severing your words. You can't really think right now. Your body wobbles and your head feels puffy and hot. This might be shock.

Tom scowls like it irritates him to watch you push yourself, like this is just the unfortunate effect of you depleting your energy in a duel, not eating correctly, treating yourself carelessly.

Of course you can't stand or talk or think. You're you, contemplating a life without him.

“Sit," he says in frustration. You smack his hand away when he reaches for you, but the world has turned a shade darker and you're slipping into it.

He tugs a chair towards you with a silent charge and a reprimand, and your body doesn’t possess the wherewithal not to collapse into it the second it’s under you.

After a moment you can speak again, shaking hands steadied by your knees. “Did you… did you think I wouldn't find out? You know, the only thing that can petrify someone besides a serpent is a Gorgon. And — where would Rubeus Hagrid have found one of those?"

“I thought I would have time.”

“To come up with a good lie? Something I’d sympathise with?”

He bites his cheek. “Evidently the particulars matter little to you.”

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

“No, fuck you, Tom. We could have — we only had a year left and then we could — we could've done anything we wanted." You're crying again. You don't have the energy to be embarrassed. “And you chose this."

He’s indignant as he steps closer. “With what money? For what life? We are better than all of them and it’s never mattered. It never will; you know that. You told me that. You’re angry now, but you must know the truth of it. I would not forsake you. I would not lose you.”

You blink up at him, mouth stuck with some cottony feeling and cheeks stiff from crying.

“You have lost me, Tom."

He stills as if suspended. Some maceration must follow but it doesn’t.

You stand on weak legs to look him in the eyes. You wonder if he can see the love in yours. You wonder if he knows you will walk away despite it. (Of course he does. You’ve never lied to him.)

You think about how his fingers seem to always find their way to your cheek and you put yours to his. The bone there is sharp, but the skin is soft. Boyish.

There isn't a word for a goodbye like this. It shouldn't exist and so it doesn't. You just leave.

You fail your N.E.W.T courses. Quite spectacularly.

Mari sits beside you on the train with a soothing hand on your shoulder, and doesn’t ask what’s rendered you into a comatose husk since March. There’s no crying. You chew numbly on soft caramels from the trolley and stare out the window onto the hills.

That summer is spent in your bedroom unless you’re forced elsewhere. A new girl with skin so white it’s nearly translucent sleeps in the bed beside yours, taking meals on trays like you did in your first days here, tracing the cracks in the tiles, humming to herself in the dark. She makes you feel less pathetic for doing much the same.

You’d been right in your assumption that there would be more dead upon your return, and wrong that there would be more empty rooms. There are always more orphans being made.

And then you receive a letter. It isn’t delivered by owl (only for secrecy, you assume, because there are no muggles who’d be writing to you) but it’s stamped with a vaguely familiar crest. Not Hogwarts’ waxen seal, but something undoubtedly magical. A cockroach and a cup, you think, squinting. Transfiguration.

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

It’s from Dumbledore. Some of it melds together, but the key words stand out.

Spoken to Dippet… Exceptional promise… N.E.W.Ts… May be reconsidered… Upon dispensation… Be well.

Be well.

You are not. You are something half-drowned and half-burned, never enough of one to quell the effects of the other. Sunlight is sparse through your side of the orphanage. On the radio, they warn a pattern of one bomb every second hour. The only other warning is the sound when they fly overhead, and if you can’t run fast enough —

You write your answer in a crowded tube station with a spotty ballpoint pen. Tom is there, looking between you, the dust, and your shaking hands as if to say: tell me I was wrong.

Some of your letter melds together but the key words stand out.

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

It’s a shock that you live to seventh year. It’s a shock that you do it without him — though he watches, and in his gaze you feel regressed. You’re alive, yes, but there’s something there… his dead weight, death-grip; his haunting. They always speak of the dead as something heavy. Something that holds onto you even after it’s gone.

You find that to be true.

Dippet’s condition that you remain in Dumbledore’s N.E.W.T class is that you achieve more than the standard requirement. Essentially, your final exam will be much harder than everyone else's: Human Transfiguration, mastery of petty Transformation (through the means of Wizard’s Chess pieces), Conjuration and Vanishment of various delicate objects — all done nonverbally.

Even Dumbledore seems sceptical, but it translates to more rigorous practise rather than resignation, assignments he doesn’t even task to Mari, though she’s just as good, and you can’t begin to understand why he cares so much.

“I’ll entrust you with these while I’m away,” he says before Christmas break, sliding a sheet of parchment your way with a flick of his wand.

You frown, unfolding it. His instructions are always short now — you’ve learned to decode his meaning well enough without much exposition.

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

Inanimatus Conjurus spell (cockroach and cup, as instructed) to be Vanished when perfected.

Study Antar’s Doctrine. Miss Wright will act as your partner.

Due February.

It’s far too much to be done in that time. “Sir?”

Dumbledore lugs a messenger bag over his shoulder that appears small, but he carries it in such a way you suspect it’s magically extended. He smiles wistfully, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “You know, I often regret how much this war asks of me. A consequence of my own doing.”

Right — Grindelwald. Sometimes you forget between awaiting the next muggle paper. War is everywhere.

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

Another half-smile as he twists open a jar of Floo Powder, and then he shakes his head with something you almost decipher as amusement. A brittle sort. Tired. “Good luck to you.”

And then he’s gone, in a swath of green flames that do nothing to inspire any desire for Floo travel in you.

Antar’s Doctrine is simultaneously prosaic and grandiose. They read like excerpts of a journal and you yawn into them over your morning tea, stirring amongst the first-years, who are the only people at the Slytherin table you can stand to sit with. Your blood status is apparently nullified by your age, and the worst they do is look at you funny. You aren’t sure what Abraxas’s — Tom’s (the new hierarchy never fails to stagger you) — lackeys would do if you sat with the other seventh-years instead. A part of you longs to know. They certainly don’t bother you in class the way they used to, you aren’t tripped in the corridors, but you wonder how far Tom’s influence can stretch. He is the Heir of Slytherin, and he’s earned them. But you are nothing.

You’d like it if he would let them hurt you. You think the incentive would be enough to hurt him back. And God — God, you want to. You want to hurt him almost as much as you want him.

You practise through the doctrine with Mari, as Dumbledore directed. When you’re able to sever Antar’s egotism from his abilities, you can see why Dumbledore would recommend his book to you. It feels like slipping through a crack in glass without shattering the whole thing. You weave in and back out, and Mari grins when she returns from the shape of a teapot to her body without you needing to utter a word to do it.

In the back of your mind, you’re aware what you’re doing is nearly unprecedented. It’s spring, you’re months away from eighteen, muggle-born, and mastering nonverbal Human Transfiguration like it’s a Softening Charm. Mari tells you you’re the smartest person she’s ever met. It makes your cheeks go hot to hear such open praise, worse when you snap out of the thought that you believe her.

Grindelwald falls. The school celebrates in whispers until the evidence is in front of them — Dumbledore, returned without a scar, a new wand in his hand — and then they’re cheers. The feast that night is a great one, and he toasts to you from the end of the staff table, a discreet tilt of his cup before he takes a sip and returns to converse with Professor Merrythought.

You take from your own, and your eyes land on Tom, spine of his goblet tight in his hand. He’s looking at you like you’ve affronted him somehow. You could laugh — by choosing Dumbledore. Of course. As if it was a choice at all.

But if it bothers him… if it feels anything at all like the betrayal you felt, then — good.

You drink, and don’t look away.

By the time your N.E.W.T.s arrive you have a renewed confidence that you’ll succeed, even with the obstacle of performing each exam wordlessly.

There are only twelve students who came out of your sixth year class, so to divide resources for the tests is no grand task. You’re given a Wizard’s Chess set, a desk with assorted vases and goblets, an intricate epergne (you had to whisper to Mari to learn its name), and a Ministry worker borrowed like some laboratory mouse. You suppose it makes sense, though — you’re all capable enough of Human Transfiguration not to mutilate anyone, and performing on a classmate could obfuscate the results. It’s far easier to Transfigure someone you know than someone you don’t.

You start with the chess set, Dumbledore and the Ministry worker observing you as you turn pawns to knights and rooks to kings, the minutiae of the pieces drawing sweat to your brow. They change, and change, and change, and you don’t mutter an incantation once. The Ministry worker puts the set away and directs you to the glass. You Switch the vases with the goblets, Vanish them, and Conjure them again. The Ministry worker takes notes. Dumbledore nods affirmatively at you and you can exhale. The epergne is the hardest; so kitschy and elaborate you don’t know where to start when you’re tasked to Transform it into an animal.

An animal — like that isn’t the vaguest instruction you’ve ever received.

You look at it on the desk, mirrors and glass and gold on protracted arms, and you go for the first thing you think of because the Ministry worker is staring at you like you’re inept and you see it in his eyes — this is the muggle-born one, this one can’t do it.

You’re better than them. You can do it forever.

The epergne spins at the dip of your wand, and emerges more than an animal. A big glass tank appears in its place, round and gold-rimmed, water lapping at the sides. Inside it is a jellyfish. Emerald green, bobbing, tentacles and oral arms coiling against the glass like the limbs of the epergne had spanned its centre.

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

“And — and back?” the worker says, like that will be the thing that stops you.

You point again, mouth tight with irritation, and reverse the Transformation. A droplet of water smacks your face and you’re lucky to be so hot you can disguise it as sweat. You suspect even an error that small would cost you a mark.

You wipe it away. A strange thing happens; you imagine Tom brushing the water from your cheek at the Black Lake. You imagine his fingers in the rain.

The Ministry worker steps closer with a shameless frown. He tells you to turn his hair red. You do. He regards himself in the mirror and scribbles something down. He tells you to turn it back. You do. To grow him a beard, to change his clothes, to make him taller, shorter, this and that — all read from a list he does not appear enthused to recite. You do it all.

He shakes Dumbledore’s hand when it’s done, duplicates his notes for him to keep, and follows the other Ministry workers through the fireplace when everyone’s exams are finished.

You find out you’ve passed with an Outstanding on your birthday.

Mari drags you to the Three Broomsticks to celebrate, butterbeers on her. (They always are.)

“Can’t believe we’re about to graduate,” she says into her cup, froth on her upper lip.

You sigh into your own, partially giddy and mostly nervous.

Mari squeezes your face between her thumb and finger so your frown is puckered. “Chin up, genius. You’ll be excellent.”

You push her hand away but can’t help a small smile. “Outstanding,” you correct.

“Outstanding!” She bursts out laughing. “Bloody ego on you now…”

“Well, I am the smartest person you know.”

��I take that back.”

She pushes out of her chair with a slightly inebriated wobble. “Going to the loo. Don’t touch my chips.”

Your hands raise in surrender, and you steal only one when she’s gone.

You aren’t the only ones here to celebrate. (Your birthday and your mutual achievement, yes, but the Three Broomsticks is filled wall-to-wall with seventh years drinking their final nights at school away.) There’s music charmed to reach every corner, even yours at the little alcove hidden from plain sight. It’s nice to watch from here — the stumbling, the kisses meant for mouths that land drunkenly on cheeks and noses, the barkeeps that roll their eyes as soon as they turn away from all the newly adult customers, not yet learned or careless in their drinking manners.

It is not nice to be occluded from plain sight in such a way that you don’t notice Tom Riddle until he’s inches away from your table. It is not nice that no one else notices either.

On instinct you don’t make any impressive exit. He slides into the booth next to you and your brain short circuits for a moment at the warm familiarity of his presence beside you. Then it occurs that it’s been more than a year since this was remotely commonplace — that you cannot forget the reason why.

There’s not much time to decide whether you want to be vicious or indifferent or to debate on past precedent which would bother him more. You haven’t attacked him despite being concealed enough to do it unnoticed, and you haven’t shoved furiously out of the other side of the booth.

Indifferent it is.

“Can I help you?”

“You’re causing quite the stir,” he says, taking one of Mari’s chips.

You’re allowed. It’s infuriating when he does it.

“Am I?”

“It’s enough to fail a N.E.W.T level class and be expressly petitioned back, but to have a special criteria set for your exams and manage an O on top of it all…” He inclines his head as if to appreciate your face so close after so long. You should not let him. “You are incomprehensible. It terrifies them.”

“They’re afraid of the wrong mudblood, then, aren’t they?”

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

He seems to have come prepared, and shrugs your scorn off like a scarf you would have forced him to wear winters ago. “Of course, they have no reason to suspect Dumbledore might have ulterior motives.”

Ulterior — you certainly hope he isn’t suggesting this is based on anything but your merit, but then — you couldn’t begin to understand why Dumbledore cared so much, could you? You’d made brief inspections of his disdain for Tom in second year, his waning shades of kindness and the matter of his stolen encyclopaedia, but you hadn’t… you hadn’t thought at all about how his dedication to your progress only begun after you’d stopped sharing a class with Tom, how it had developed as you began to drift from one another in fifth year and accelerated in sixth after the first petrification and Myrtle’s death. How Tom had worn you down with a weighted glare at Dumbledore’s little toast.

It wasn’t because you had chosen Dumbledore, you realise. It was because Dumbledore had chosen you.

“Why don’t you worry about your pets, Riddle?” you snarl, “I’m sure there are bigger problems with your lot than my exam results.”

Something in his face shifts at the name. You swell with distorted pride.

He mends the reaction by looking you over in more detail, his features schooled into something he must know you can’t deduce. You try not to squirm under the intensity of it.

He reaches almost mindlessly for your collar (there is nothing mindless about it, you’re sure) and smooths the fabric gently with his fingers. “I always liked you in this colour.”

You blink. His thumb just barely brushes against the skin of your neck before retreating, and your mouth falls open.

“Don’t do that,” you say. Truly a sad attempt. Your repulsion is more with yourself than him, and that’s not at all right.

Where is Mari?

“Your friend was at the bar, last I saw her.”

You stare at him with wild eyes. How the hell — ?

“You were always easy to read,” he supplies, and leans in so you can follow his line of sight to the tiniest sliver of the bar visible between two columns, where Mari looks deeply engaged in conversation with Leo Ndiaye, one of the Gryffindor Chasers.

You take a sharp, exasperated breath at her antics. She might be more in love with the competition than the boy himself. They’d never last without Quidditch to bind them, but you can’t fault her for wanting a bit of fun.

“Well then —”

Right. Tom hasn’t actually moved away. You turn and his face is just there.

His eyes dart forthwith to your mouth, and — no. No, he won’t be doing that and neither will you.

“...I’m off to bed.” Stop talking to him like he’s your friend, you think miserably. Stop looking at him like he’s your —

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

It could exist in just this moment, you deliberate; separate from everything else.

Except nothing about Tom exists in its own moment. He’s all over you all the time, skin and bone and soul. You hope you still have a place in the broken fragments of his.

“So I’ll be going now,” you say again.

“I haven’t protested.”

But he’s leaning in, and he has to know that’s impedance enough.

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

You grab him by his shirt and you’re kissing him. You’re kissing each other like either of you know what the hell it means to kiss anyone, but you’ve learned the rest together, haven’t you? Your noses bump and you don’t care. You just need to kiss him, and — God, you make some noise against his mouth and the hand cupping your face spreads to capture more of you, greedy and wayward — he needs to kiss you too. It’s a horrible thing to know. It leads you to pose too many questions.

The need must have begun as want, and when did the want begin? How long has he looked at you and wondered what you’d feel like to kiss, touch, mark? (He’ll never have the latter. You swear that.)

You’re pulling away in intervals. “You don’t have me, you know.”

“I know,” he responds, lips on the corner of yours.

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

You kiss him again. Long and soft, memorising his cupid’s bow and the tip of his tongue, and when one of his hands moves to your waist you part from him like you’ve been burned.

“I —” You resist the urge to touch a finger to your lips, standing abruptly from the table and adjusting your shirt. Your body feels like an evolutionarily faulty vessel, too easy to please, though you can’t imagine it responding to anyone else this way. Or perhaps your mind is the problem. Not wired well enough to resist an evidently bad thing. “Goodnight, Tom.”

You thought there wasn’t a word for your goodbye, but that’s it. So simple it sinks you. Goodnight, Tom. I’ll dream of a morning where I wake up beside you, but you won’t be there.

He grabs your hand before you can go, licking his lips and it haunts you to think he’s savouring you. It stings a place deep in your chest you’d spent all year trying to heal.

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

You graduate with Mari’s hand in yours, and you aren’t afraid.

Dumbledore requests that you stay for the summer to help him prepare for the first year’s curriculum in the fall. It’s a ridiculous opportunity for someone your age — free lodgings and a stellar impression on your resume, and — you can only accept it with an ire you haven’t felt since the spread of influenza in muggle Britain.

If he’s offering you lodgings now, he could have done it all along.

It sends you down a horrible train of thought while you move your things from the Slytherin dormitories to a little chamber a few doors down from the staff room; Tom will be removed from Wool’s this year. Will he stay at Malfoy Manor? But Tom is still publicly muggle-born — Abraxas’s parents would never allow it. Will he find a job, a flat? Will he swindle muggles once he turns eighteen and the Trace is no longer an obstruction?

You think of him often. You think of his offer.

My door is always open.

Plenty of doors are open to you now. Why should you want to go back to his?

Still, the Second World War ends in November and you feel like you can breathe at a depth you never could before. The school doesn’t celebrate like it did with Grindelwald. No one but you seems to care at all.

It’s a tempting door.

The year passes in a blur of graded papers and lessons Dumbledore sometimes involves you in and sometimes does not. Most of the first-years care little for you, but there are two Slytherin muggle-borns who look at you like a new sun to orbit. Everything is worth it for that.

You see Mari when you can, and find she’s training with the Italian Quidditch team, who apparently are smart enough to care more about skill than blood. She says she misses the complexities of Transfiguration, but any career in it was always going to be yours. Smartest person she knows, she reiterates. Biggest ego too.

The next summer Dumbledore informs you of a posting at the Ministry. Something small with a smaller wage. He emphasises the weight of his personal recommendation, but that you won’t be respected unless you claw tooth and nail for it. You don’t take long to consider a chance to make an actual income with an actual career doing something muggle-borns simply don’t do before you’re nodding assuredly and asking him what you need.

Better clothes are first, and all you can afford until further notice. You take to Gladrags with intent to purchase for the first time in your five years of wandering in the shop with eyes bigger than your wallet, and the owner looks at you with distrust when you slide her your sickles.

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant.

It’s far down in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. You’re a glorified secretary, and you recall the few times you’d worked as a mail-sorter during the war. It’s some sick irony that you’ve landed yourself in a pile of paper once more.

But the money, though offensively scant to someone with better options (and it’s infuriating the options you deserve), is more than you’ve ever had, and within the next year you’re able to leave the castle and take a cheap room at an inn in Hogsmeade. You’re close enough to Dumbledore to aid him when he needs you, but far enough to feel like your school days are departed, and you need not worry about memories lurching unexpectedly at every corridor.

A sick part of you still reaches for your mouth sometimes to remember what it felt like to be kissed. That part of you wishes for Tom. You could kiss him into oblivion. You could find a way to make it hurt him back.

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

Mari invites you to her first professional game and you cheer for her in the stands, a green, white, and red scarf around your neck in place of her old blue.

She wins and you get drinks in a muggle pub. You kiss a man at the bar. You go home with him. His hair is dark, but not dark enough. His lips are soft, but the shape is wrong. He makes you feel good, but you wonder if in another life, the dream is true; you roll over in the morning to Tom beside you, and he makes you feel better.

When you can find time between the monotonous demands of your job, you’re in the Transfiguration classroom, staying behind to help the Slytherin muggle-borns with their Switching spells.

It’s one stupid accident the next fall that changes things.

A muggle bank has been robbed, and whatever idiotic, panicked witch or wizard was behind it apparently found themselves incapable of getting the deed done with a simple Imperius Curse (you can’t imagine, based on the scene, that they’re above Unforgivables), and somehow ended up leaving the building half-charred and teeming with at least six bank tellers Transformed into birds, two chirping into the floor tiles with broken wings.

“Renauld’s on it, though,” your coworker says when the news finds your department.

“Renauld?”

He’s a year older than you, a pureblood with parents in high places, and endlessly fucking hopeless.

“Well, yeah —”

You push out from your desk, files fluttering behind you. “Renauld will expose the whole damn wizarding world if he touches that building.”

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

“Um. Um, near King William, I think. Moorgate or, um —”

That’s good enough. You toss the Floo Powder into the fireplace and go.

The place is a mess. You don’t even have to look for it. There’s some ward around the street, bouncing muggles away like an invisible end to a map they don’t even register is there. At least that’s handled right.

But you slip through it and curse under your breath at the muggles trapped inside the wards. They’re like fish prodding at the dome of their bowl, and some run up to you demanding explanations when they see you unaffected by it. You brush them off — Obliviation is not your strong-suit — though you do shout at a pair of DMAC wizards uselessly standing guard outside the bank.

“What the hell are you doing?” you ask on approach. “Renauld’s supposed to handle the inside, yeah? You deal with fixing them.”

You point toward the frantic muggles, and the officials just regard you with vague confusion at your presence. “Renauld said —”

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

You afford nothing else before pushing past them to enter the bank.

It’s quite impressive, actually; Renauld, the result of generations of foolproof breeding, is waving his wand around like he’s just stepped out of Olivanders for the first time.

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

Renauld jumps. “What? What are you doing here?”

“Heal their damn wings. They’re easier than human limbs and healing magic’s the only thing you aren’t completely shit at.”

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

In hindsight, it should have gone horrifically wrong. Your wand could have been taken and your life might have been over in all ways that matter, flung back into the muggle world where you’ve always been told you belong.

But Renauld vouches for you. You Transform the walls, you fix the burns, you mend the bank to something presentable. A muggle robbery — dangerous, financially tragic, but believable. And your suggestion to heal the injured bank tellers in their animal forms might be the thing that saved them. When Renauld mends their wings and regenerates their blood, you Untransfigure them, and the other DMAC officials alter their memories with haste.

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

Your probation period is dreadful. You hide in your room at the inn most days, Vanishing little stained panes on your window to feel the warm breeze of air before you Conjure them again. You help grade papers, though Dumbledore is displeased with you and the night is a silent one. He assures you curtly that he’s doing his best with the Ministry to amend this.

And… he does.

With Renauld’s help and the corroboration of the other DMAC officials, you’re back at work by the start of the school year.

It’s a slow process — almost eight months of meaningless paperwork — before the next incident occurs and you’re hectically ushered to the scene like a belated understudy. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

Your heroics are torn from a Gryffindor cloth, so says Flack. You urge him never to say such a thing again.

By your twenty-first birthday, you think about Tom almost exclusively in your sleep. You’re much too busy to think about him anywhere else.

The summer is warm and Hogsmeade is lively. You’ve vacated your room at the inn for a little house on the outskirts of the village, decorating it how you like — discovering what you like. You’d never had a chance to find out before.

Mari visits when she can once you have your fireplace connected to the Floo Network (you yourself prefer Apparating) but her name is slowly working its way from the Italian papers to the British ones, and she has so much to tell you there isn’t possibly enough time in her days to tell it. There’s also the matter of Leo Ndiaye, who has, recently, gotten on one knee and proposed to her. If there had been a bet on them ending up together, you would have been out enough galleons to put you in debt.

After especially gruesome days at work, you and a few colleagues make a habit of getting sherries at the Siren’s Tail, complaining that sometimes the nature of your work is akin to an auror’s but without the notoriety and pay.

“Oh, please,” says Emilia Alves, twirling her straw, “have you seen the shit the aurors are up to lately? I’d rather be a blimmin’ Unspeakable.”

“You’d have to be able to keep your mouth shut for that, Alves.”

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

“What are the aurors up to?” Flack asks.

“I dunno much. There was a murder all the way in Albania, s’posedly. Reeked of dark magic.”

“Nothing new,” you join, and then frown. “Why’s our Ministry dealing with it though?”

“I dunno. I got word from Hillicker that the Albanians didn’t know what to make of the mess. They’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Hillicker’s not a source,” Renauld scoffs.

“Yeah? Why don’t you ask your daddy for something better?”

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

You lean in over the counter. “What do you mean they’ve never seen anything like it?”

She grins. “Why? Storming a bank robbery wasn’t exciting enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

That ought to be the end of it. One extraordinarily lucky incident to push you up the career ladder was rare enough — there is absolutely no way digging around a case that has nothing to do with you or your department could ever end well.

But something about it itches.

You make nice with Hillicker. She’s a year younger than you and far too kind for her own good, and she gushes freely about her husband’s work as an auror (they must be a perfect match for him to gush freely about it with her). It’s a bit manipulative. You have no excellent excuse for it, but… ambition, and all that, you suppose. Flack’s Gryffindor theory is studded with holes.

You are green, through and through.

Emilia’s updates are meaningless when you garner so much information that you’ve already heard everything she has to say over drinks, and at this point her and Hillicker might be a step behind you. Emilia still only knows about Albania; peppery little details of half a story. Hillicker discusses an assortment of murders with no real string between them, and Dumbledore regards you with cool heeding when you bring up the matter with him.

You see him little nowadays but you’ve never been close in any true sense, traces of resentment budding over the years like rainwater collects on glass until the stream finally slips.

You visit Hogwarts mostly for your Slytherins, fourteen or fifteen now, unafraid of the distinction of their blood.

And then there’s one night after you turn twenty-two where drinks take place at yours for a change, Mari and Leo included and happily wed. You have no sherries but your ale is just as well, and it’s only you and Renauld who are sober by the time everyone else is vanishing into the fireplace and going home.

That makes it much worse when you sleep together.

There’s no excuse of having had a glass too many — so sorry, I’ll be on my way then, and him stumbling over his trousers to get out of your hair. Of course, he does that anyway, scratching the nape of his neck when he reaches your doorway in the morning.

“Thanks for the — well, you have a nice home — I do think I should —”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“Oh!” He turns around at the last second. “Er — I know you’ve become a tad obsessed with… Hillicker mentioned another, anyway. Hepzibah something. Killed by her own elf, the aurors suspect.”

“Oh,” you echo, sheets pulled up to your shoulders. “Thanks, Renauld.”

“I thought you might like to know. Don’t be daft about it.”

You’re incredibly daft about it.

There’s something reminiscent about Albania in this case that wasn’t there with the others. The tide of dark magic ebbing across the scene, the cherry-picked information released in the Prophet, the claim of an old, dumb House Elf who poisoned her mistress like the Albanian peasant killed in some insoluble accident.

The itch exacerbates.

You see him in your dreams again. He peers over Runes in a stolen encyclopaedia, he whispers to an adder on his shoulder, he kisses the corner of your mouth and it isn’t enough. He kills you, again and again. You kill him too.

You wake up and he isn’t there.

It’s a new low when you’re invited to the Hillicker’s anniversary dinner and you end up digging through the drawers of their study halfway through the night.

The Albania file offers nearly nothing. There was the charred residue of dark magic imprinted on a hollow tree in the fields of the peasant’s hamlet, but nothing detailing more than a blank imprint of the Killing Curse in his eyes. Still, you tuck the knowledge away for the file of one Hebzibah Smith, whose tea did indeed have traces of poison, but whose den was also ripe with a layer of darkness that didn’t line up with the Ministry’s tale of senile elf.

And then there’s the forgotten matter of her being a purveyor of ancestral artefacts. The file doesn’t recount whether any are missing, since the woman was wise enough not to proclaim all her possessions to the world, but it’s something. A scratch.

You travel to Albania that Christmas. The neighbours in the peasant’s hamlet have skewed memories, so they provide little help, but the man’s house was left almost untouched.

You tear the place apart and Transfigure it back together when you’re done.

All you find, in the end, is a scrap of an old envelope in a suitcase.

R.R

It could be that it’s old. The cursive seems ancient enough. But you swear the letters have the distinct shape of quill ink — too artful for any pen — and maybe that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for half a wax seal stuck to the torn edge of the envelope. Stained but silver, the barest hint of two ribbons, a crest, and the letter H.

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

It’s snowing in the courtyards and you waddle with a duotang under one arm to pretend you’re here for something scholarly, an array of excuses prepared in case you run into Dumbledore, but you don’t.

The Grey Lady is as beautiful as she’s rumoured to be.

You ask her about her mother, and she’s silent, an expression on her face like you’ve struck her.

“Is it found?” she whispers. The snow floats through her.

Your heart hammers as you consider how to approach this. She thinks you know more than you do, which means there’s something to know.

“Yes,” you say. And you dare further with the context you know, “In Albania.”

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

And if she means to say more she doesn’t seem able, washing away through the balusters, then the walls. You think of your house ghost and what he did to her, and you feel sorry for a second.

Madam Palles expels you from the library the moment you find what you’re looking for, and you rush past a throng of staring students to the staff room fireplace. It’s too far a walk to the border of the castle wards to Apparate. You bite back the preemptive sickness, get swallowed by the flames, and go home.

There are blanks to fill in but you do it easily. Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem. Hepzibah Smith and her assortment of unregistered artefacts. The stain of dark magic. Something so rare not even the aurors recognized it.

But you do, because he told you.

You wonder on your search to find him what object he used when he killed Myrtle Warren. Nothing special, you think — maybe even the closest thing he could find. These murders involved more preparation. He got to mark them however he wanted.

It’s almost disappointing to find him here. In a little flat over Knockturn Alley with a view of charmed coalsmoke and the brick wall of another shop.

It’s as tidy as his room at Wool’s, the only dirt the irremediable age of the building itself. The whole place looks almost slanted, large enough only for the bare necessities; a kitchen, a toilet, a bedroom that looks more like a closet, and a study/dining room/den you can’t imagine he hosts many gatherings in. You rescind the mere thought. Whatever gatherings Tom Riddle is having these days, you’re sure you can’t begin to imagine at all.

You wait, legs crossed on an old loveseat, fiddling with your wand.

The door clicks open when the snow has turned to hail and there’s no light but the few scattered candles you’d lit on the mantelpiece.

It strikes you only when he’s standing before you that it’s his birthday.

You’re in Tom Riddle’s flat, on his birthday, adorned by the orange glow of half-melted candles, and you know everything.

He eyes you carefully, a hint of surprise at the sight of you after four years that even he needs a second to recover from. And then he's even, inscrutable Riddle again, and you dare to think, come back.

“I placed wards," he says, hanging his bag on a rack by the wall.

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

“Wards never work in Knockturn,” you offer additionally, “not really. There's too much conflicting magic; one border cuts into another; leaves a little sliver behind if you’re smart enough to find it. You should know that."

He turns to you. You take in a moment to acknowledge how he's changed. It's hard to see in the curtained moonlight, and it seems unreasonable to imagine he’s grown, but you think he has. An inch taller, perhaps. Two. Maybe the dress shoes. His arms are bigger under his button-down, but not enough to consider him muscular. His black hair isn't as perfect as you remember, and you suspect a long day of work undoes his curls. You always liked him better that way in school, after a night duel at the Black Lake, his robes askew and his hair a mess. Evidence that you were the only one to dishevel him. Now you were — what? Did he even think of you anymore? Yes. You'd always think of each other.

“Duly noted. What are you here for?” He tries your surname like a foreign language.

You cross your arms, and you're acutely aware that he's observing your changes too. You're not the matchstick witch he once knew. Your emotions are cultured now, taut to mirror his. You wear dull, formal grey, and that glowing green tinge that should be gleaming on you is under a thick carapace. That’s for Mari, Flack, Emilia — even Renauld. Not for Tom.

You wonder if he knows it was Dumbledore who put in the word that got you this uniform. You wonder if he resents you for it.

“There’s been talk at the Ministry," you say finally, “A string of murders. Whispers of something — some dark magic they don’t understand. And you know they're careful about things like that after Grindelwald."

“A string of murders... Hm. That might imply you understand a connective thread. Is there some sort of accusation being made?”

“Oh, I'm sure you'd be flattered by accusations. There’s not enough there, as it stands. Just whispers." You sink more comfortably in the seat and the springs make a concerning sound. “But I know you."

His hard, sharp gaze falters for a moment. You watch the flames dance behind him, the firelight playing against the lines of his shoulders, and feel your heart skip a beat. “Who else is speculating?"

“No one." Your fingers brush over the book spines on the coffee table. “I guess their attention hasn't been drawn to a book clerk yet, even if you have taken residency... here." You say it with no shortage of disapproval.

Knockturn was never where Tom belonged. You'd once imagined a flat together in muggle London, taking the telephone booth to the Ministry together, changing the world together. It's a wish that's a lifetime away now.

“Is this a warning? I assure you, I don’t need the condescension.”

“I'm not warning you," you scoff, “I — I'm seeing you. God knows I'll probably never get the chance to do that again once you get yourself locked up in Azkaban, which you will."

You sound exasperated. You sound half-pleading. “What are you doing, Tom? Is this — this is really what you want?"

“Yes."

You shake your head. “I don't believe that." And then some of that fiery spit returns to you, and you feel like a child again, stuck in the London tube stations holding his hand at every plane that flew overhead, scowling that you needed his reassurance. Scowling that you were afraid.

“Well, your conjecture is ever-appreciated. Shall I lend you mine? Shall I congratulate you on your revolutionary position at the Ministry? Or is it Dumbledore I should afford my thanks?”

“I earned this,” you hiss.

“You deserve it,” he amends. “But do not lie to yourself and pretend that’s why you have it.”

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

“I don’t need your congratulations, Riddle. Dumbledore doesn’t need your damn thanks. But,” you say, biting back the snarl that wants out, “you could thank me. After all, I could turn to the Ministry any minute with the truth of your heritage. I could tell them about Myrtle, the Horcrux — Horcruxes.”

The humour dissolves from his face and you despise the immense glee it brings you.

“Oh, did you think I didn’t know? Didn’t understand the connective thread? You are sentimental under all that… fucking posturing, you know. I’m sure it’s all very romantic to you — making Horcruxes out of Hogwarts artefacts. Shame it’s such an insult to your intelligence.”

“Very good,” he says after a long, terse silence. You’re sure he’s thinking just the opposite.

You hum, meddling with your nails. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

“You’re also not an auror, are you?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “And yet you’ve found your way here.”

“How many do you plan to make? How many people do you plan to kill?”

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I read in the paper the other day about a poor old woman who had her tea poisoned.”

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

Your fist clenches around your wand. “Is it paying off well, Riddle? It must be a good life if you’re willing to split your soul to hell and back to have more of it.”

He smiles at the barb in your words. “You never were good with subtlety.”

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. This place is horrific.”

“I was referring to your inability to see more than what’s directly in front of you.”

“Oh, really? And what more should I see than a boy who’s very good at getting weak men to bow and do very little else? I’d try to see the bigger picture, but I reckon it wouldn’t fit in here.”

Tom regards you colourlessly. You are slate, Ministry-grey, impermeable like palace portcullis.

“I suppose I should have killed you.” He says it with the nonchalance of a forgotten chore. He says it like you’re a stain.

He doesn’t say it like he feels any terrible urgency to remove you; and you think, this time, you’d feel more powerful if he did. You think it’s far more debilitating to sit here and be looked at like he regrets wanting you alive more than he wants you dead.

“Yes,” you concur, “I suppose you should have.”

You place your wand down on the table and scoot your chair away for good measure. “It’s never too late to rectify your mistakes.”

Tom, for a moment, looks surprised. That makes you feel powerful. You’d take more of that.

“You have wandless magic,” he tries. A weak recovery.

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

He doesn’t move for a moment, then fixes his wand in his hand and rises, doused in the same inscrutable calm that always used to drive you mad. Now something in you gleams with the knowledge that he only ever looks like this when he’s trying not to look like anything at all.

He steps closer and it gleams brighter. It trembles inside you and you know, distantly, that this is insane. You’re weighing your life on a childhood trust that was shattered years ago, and you don’t think you’ve ever been that good at faith, but he’s approaching you and that gleam you feel is reflected in his eyes and you just… know. Your spilled blood once crawled with his. There’s no undoing that. Half of you is made of the other.

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

It’s a murmur. Stilted. Angry, even. Angry that you made him this and there’s no fucking rectifying it — what a joke that is. What an immensely you thing to suggest.

“Yes,” you agree.

It’s a breath. Low. Proud, even. Proud that you’re his only mistake and he’s going to make it again.

Tom kisses you. It’s a murder of its own kind. You kiss him back, and — you were always going to kill each other like this, weren’t you? It’s you and him whether you like it or not.

There should be no love in it. You know that. Love is far behind the both of you, stifled in a gasp at the back of your throat on your eighteenth birthday and the soft, selfish hands of a seventeen year old boy. This is mutual destruction. Spite and teeth and skin that’s cold under your fingers.

He was your first in everything but this.

You push back at him and feel the hunger, the need in him, like a flame as he kisses you deeper and harder, and you find yourself losing yourself to it all over again, like you're back in the dark alcove of a pub where you told him goodbye, pushing to extend the juncture. And then he lets out a hitched, gravelly sound; not a moan but enough to make you shudder.

You pull him onto the sofa and crawl onto his lap.

“How long?” he asks thickly.

You don’t have to ask what he means. You bite against his neck, nails under his shirt as you struggle to pop the buttons open. There must be a violence in all your want for him because if there isn't it's just loss. It's just another thing you'll give him without taking anything back.

“Sixth year," you pant, “in the Deathday ballroom when we fought for the first time. You — ah — you put your thumb on my mouth. Since then."

You hear a sharp intake of breath, and his hand moves up your back to pull you impossibly closer. His voice is ragged. “Should I tell you how long I’ve wanted you?"

You shudder a breath. “Since —" And it's a bit hard to talk with the way he's rolling your hips — “Since when?"

His lips twitch into a mirthless smile, hands spanning your thighs as you start to rock against him. “When you burned me, and I sent you into the lake."

You swallow, agonised by the slow pace his grip forces you to keep when all you want to do is go faster.

“Your uniform was terribly wet,” he says, mouth tracing your jaw. “Did I ever apologise for that?"

“N-no.”

He tuts, the hushed sound warm and deadly on your neck. “Bad manners. I must have been distracted."

Oh. Oh, you think. It seems pointless to flush in the position you're in now, but the knowledge that he wanted you then and you hadn't even known is... all the more devastating.

But you shiver at the question of how he’d wanted you, in what amount of detail, in what precise way. You almost want to ask. See it for yourself.

You don't think you'd manage the words. He’s hard underneath you and your head wants to lull toward his shoulder but a big hand holds you from one side of your jaw down the length of your neck, his tongue laving up the other. Instead you’re balanced only by his hands and his mouth, rolling against him because it’s all you can do like this.

He’s marking you, you realise with a gasp, and your fingers bury in his hair to remove his mouth from its descending assault on your collar. Not that. You’d sworn against that.

Your fingers return to his buttons and he copies you by finding yours, pulling at the fabric tucked into your trousers until it’s discarded entirely. You press your hands to the planes of his chest and watch him, your mouth agape as his eyes linger on your chest.

His heart is pounding and he must know you’re about to comment on it because his lips are on yours again and he adjusts his position and your fingers dig into his shoulders at the delicious new feeling of him pressing into your thigh.

You move for his belt. He moves for your zipper. It’s some sort of race, whatever you’re doing, and you’re at an unfair advantage when you’re still fumbling with his buckle when his hand is already carving a slow path to the band of your underwear. You're scalding under the journey of it, little stars pricking you under every new inch he explores.

He dips in and your eyes wrench shut, grasping frantically for his wrist.

“Shh,” he says softly, caressing your cheek with his spare hand, thumb finding your mouth how it did all those years ago and you want to curse him. The fucker knows exactly what he’s doing.

You shake your head, chest rising with heavy breaths as you return to his belt and scrabble to unbuckle it.

“So tense,” he murmurs. The hand at your cheek draws over your lower lip before it falls to your back to hold you closer. “Rest now.”

And his fingers trace you where you want him most, brushing past your clit as he pulls his face back to watch you.

You sink into the feeling, still swaying on his lap, a half-efforted attempt at finding friction in the hardness between his legs that feels fruitless because it won't be enough until he's inside. Your hand just grips onto the fabric of his unzipped trousers and stays there. It’s a pause. An obstacle on your path to him that you need just a moment to recover from before you’ll make him feel just like this. Better. Worse. It’s hard to tell which is which.

He’s stroking at you now, pleased by the way you lurch against him with every touch.

You have to recover, you have to make it even, you have to… you…

A finger presses inside and you moan.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, close enough to be kissing you but there’s just the stutter of his breath. It's a fucking religious thing to say, the way he does it.

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

He shakes his head. “I know. You’ll still take it though, won’t you?”

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

Good. Fine. Your hands slip from his zipper to the meat of his thighs, pushing yourself forward so the shape of him is firmer against you, and Tom slips another finger in.

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes.

Maybe you don’t need to tear him at the seams (though you want to) to make it even. Maybe this is punishment enough. That he can have you like this and it still won’t make you his, that he��ll give you everything and you’ll lap at it with half the greed he possesses.

You ride his hand, clutching his shoulders, rocking your hips. You take all of it, and it builds something delirious inside you, that it’s him doing this, his perfect fingers, the shape of his lips, the soft dark of his hair when you find your hands in it again. The feeling makes you stutter, and he has to move you by the waist himself to keep the momentum when you can't do it yourself.

He’s painfully stiff, pushing up against you with a degree of self-control that feels like it can only end disastrously for the both of you, and you start smattering kisses down his cheek. You tilt his head back and lick a stripe down his neck. Rest now, you'd say if you could.

But he adds a third finger and your head falls, a cry planted in his collar when you come, and you don't think you say anything.

Tom holds your legs steady, guiding you through it like this is just another one of his studies. You are what he knows better than anything else, and still he wants to learn more.

“Look at you,” he mutters, dipping you back to press his lips down your chest, unclasping your bra while you’re still breaking, the sensation swelling again when he takes a nipple into his mouth.

“Tom,” you try to say. Your mouth is the sticky sort of dry that words refuse to come out of.

“Will you give me more?”

Give, not take. You fuss into a stolen kiss, grappling again with his trousers, pulling them down until you can palm him through his boxers.

He hisses, gripping your wrist like he hadn’t just done the same to you, and then he’s pulling you up and off the couch, trousers discarded with what must be magic because you blink and they’re gone. Greedy boy. (You have no room to judge.) Your back is to the wall an instant before his fingers are on you again, pushing your underwear down your thighs until it falls at your feet like they despised to ever part from you.

You arch to feel him press against your stomach, pushing off the wall so that you can meld to him but he just closes in on you to do it himself.

He goads the heat from you when his fingers push in again, still wet, coiling how you like, where you like —

“Want you,” you protest shakily, hand on his abdomen.

That must kill him a little, because he curses under his breath (a thing he never does) and the immediate absence of his touch is cruel when he goes to free himself from his boxers. You reach for him without thinking as he does, and he pins your hand beside you when your fingers so much as graze the length of him.

You sound frail, but you have to ask. “Is this how you wanted me?”

A cruder version of you would go on. Is this how you pictured it? Taking me against a wall? Have you waited for it all this time?

And you don’t belong to him but you’re so incomprehensibly, contradictorily his. You’ll want him forever. He could do anything, and you’d be his. You could haunt him into his lonely eternity, and he’d be yours. Then, you suppose — haunting him makes him yours by principle.

Maybe you already do.

Tom practically growls into your mouth, pressing against you and — God, it’s skin on skin. He's right there. You could push forward and —

He slides in. You cry out at the feel of him inside you, the angle of it like this.

“I wanted you,” he says lowly, your legs wrapped around him, “everywhere.”

You’re gripping him so tight you think he’ll bleed under your nails and somehow you still feel on the brink of collapse when he thrusts deeper.

“I thought mostly of your mouth,” he rasps. “It felt depraved to imagine it wrapped around me, but then I thought of you splayed out before me instead. That maybe you’d like it if it was my mouth on you.”

You whimper.

“Would you like that?” he asks, hands spanning your hips to snap them into his, like you are a piece removed from him he seeks to reattach.

If you wanted to answer you couldn’t. You’re clinging to him and the rising surge inside you, carved between your legs like something sweltering and unfixable. It rushes in and he pulls out of you. He pushes in and you cry for the release of it, the moment the wave lurches over the edge, but he won’t let you have it.

“But,” he says, and your eyes want to roll back at how heavy his restraint is, callous in the tone of his voice, some leash at his neck he must tug himself lest you take it from him — “If I knew how well you’d take me like this, I would have thought of it much more.”

Taking him, again — you don’t feel at all like that’s what’s happening. You feel possessed. You are buoyant in his arms: his and his and his.

“You can — uh — you can — ”

"Hm?" He brushes down the slope of your brow, your cheek, back to the edge of your mouth, wiping a trail of saliva from your chin. “Poor thing.”

And he slams into you again, drawing a mewl from you that slices your unfinished thought.

You clench around him, flames wild and fluttering at every contact of his skin on yours, and there are too many to count. Too many points where they intersect, just some blend of bodies connected at every curve.

“You’re going to give me more,” he says, like it’s an epiphany when you already told him you would.

You remember then. What you meant to say. “You can take me too.”

You feel him twitch inside you, his pace stilling for a moment, and the thumb on your lip slips into your mouth. Your lips close around him and he curses again.

He fucks you with a finger in your mouth and his teeth clamped over your shoulder, soothing the sting with his tongue. His pace is too slow when he drags his free hand between your legs, but you understand its purpose well enough that the mere recognition almost destroys you.

He’s patient in bringing you to the edge because there's time here. A slow agony that severs you from the rest of the world until it splits you down the middle. And he may not ever have it again.

You have to promise yourself he’ll never have it again.

But the movement of his fingers against the same spot he’s hitting inside you is too much at once, and you won’t last. You drool around his thumb. You let him mark you. You can see on his neck you’ve marked him too. And you hope impossibly there’s a scar. You hope the little death you coax from him claims him as yours for eternity, keeps him even when you're gone. You tighten, lurch for the edge, and make him mortal once more.

Tom holds you there, your cries reverberating as he sinks another finger in your mouth, and then he’s gasping at your neck, peeling back to look you in the eyes when he spills into you. Your eyes screw together and he releases the sounds you make by holding you by the jaw instead.

“Look at me,” he says, and for the strained need in it you do.

You come down to earth and you kiss him, wetness dripping down your thighs as he pins you to this moment. You love him. You’ll always love him.

He’s still inside you when he’s secure enough to bring you to his bed, only removing himself from you when you’re safely in his sheets, legs surrendering their grip on his waist as you pull apart. You pant into the cold linen of his pillow. Everything smells like him. There’s something empty now; the reason you came today; the reason you left four years ago.

You love him and it isn’t enough. Not even to look at him, the sleepy hint of the boy you knew in his eyes, and know that he loves you too.

“Goodnight, Tom,” you say, finding home in the warmth of his chest.

You’ll dream of a morning where you wake up beside him, but you won’t be there.

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

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eureka-its-zico · 6 months

Text

Happy Birthday, Zoro

Synopsis: Zoro wasn't much for birthday's until he met you.

Pairing: Roronoa Zoro x Reader

Genre: fluffy, friends to lovers, (Zoro and Doc)

Words: 2.5K

A/N: I had to write something for the birthday boy before the day is over. It is probably the shortest thing I've written in a hot minute, but I hope it is still enjoyable. Much love, Jenn.

He’d let it slip one night while you’d all been celebrating Nami’s birthday. Of course, she’d asked for fireworks and pretty gifts. She’d also asked to play poker, but that was something you and the rest of the crew weren’t willing to talk about.

There was no way someone won every single time.

Cheating aside, the one thing that Zoro could agree on was the booze. You’d both been sent out to pick it up. Who better than the resident alcoholic on the ship to know what a good brand was?

What you hadn’t expected was for him to basically pull you out of your reading nook in the galley. You could still feel the way his fingers had snaked around to grip the inside of your arm. Two seconds later, he was lifting you up and out of your spot with your book almost fumbling to the floor.

“Zoro-“

“Come on, Doc, you're coming with me.”

“You could’ve asked!” You huffed.

You were well aware that Zoro was still holding onto your arm. You were also well aware that he was much closer than usual making it hard for you to remember that you were mad at him. Big mad because you were just getting to the good part in your book.

“I am asking.”

Gods. He said it like a fact. His face was as smooth as stone and unblinking.

This was your Zoro. Master of having zero tact.

“Asking is with words, you ass.”

“Yeah, I don’t do that.”

“I’ve noticed.”

And with that, he took it as you conceded to go with him into town. In part, it was probably for the best. Zoro’s people skills were nonexistent and you and Sanji frequently had to apologize for him.

While the trip to town was enjoyable, what made it the best was the way Zoro changed around you. It wasn’t an astronomical change. He didn’t talk a whole lot more or say fewer things that reminded you he was an asshole (but he was your asshole so…) or be less broody. What he did was smile more.

They ranged from the small smirks he did when you were talking. Your animated hand movements with every other word as you weave a deep story for him or an excessive explanation on why using chopsticks for hair pins was an ingenious idea. You wondered if Zoro himself even realized he was doing it. But your all-time favorite?

It was when he smiled brighter than any star in the sky. His entire face lit up and chased back all the broody darkness he usually wore like armor. So, while you were upset to be torn from your book, you knew you would much rather be here in town with him.

When you arrived at the store Zoro immediately asked for samples. Two of everything. You thought he meant for himself, but felt complete terror widen your eyes when he slid one over to your place beside him at the bar. The only response you got was a raised brow and a smirk he quickly covered with the edge of his glass.

“What? Can steal a man’s glass from a dinner table but not an offered one?”

“Excuse me. I only did that because I knew you wanted it.”

“Hmmm. So, if I vocally say I don’t want you to drink with me, you’ll drink?”

You took a sniff of the amber liquid poured into the glass and felt your eyebrows curl up in retreat.

“This smells like regret,” you informed him with your eyes looking over the rim of the glass at his very striking figure.

This man was insane if he thought you were going to drink with him. You had no control over your mouth once you had one glass too many and you weren’t sure you could take responsibility for whatever your hands may, or may not, do. Especially since he was wearing another one of his gi’s, which suspiciously looked more untucked in the chest area than usual.

You were going to have to ask Nami if she might have spilled some secrets from a girls' night.

“There is no such thing as regret. Just a learning experience.”

“Yeah, no. That sounds like regret.”

He let out an annoyed sigh as he kicked back what was left inside the glass. The man didn’t even pull a face. He just casually swallowed it and placed the glass rim down first on the bar.

“That’s going to be a no.” He hummed to himself before he turned to look at you. “Look, Doc, I just want a second opinion on the booze. It’s for Nami’s special day or whatever.”

He had a point. You didn’t want Zoro picking something that was strong enough to melt the hair off a man’s chest, but you also didn’t want it growing any hair on anyone’s chest, either.

“Fair point.”

You took one last look at your glass before grabbing it and slamming back its contents. The regret was instant as it burned its way down your throat and boiled molten in your belly. You couldn’t keep from coughing as you tried to shoot daggers in his direction.

“You know what you learned there?” Zoro asked.

You were scared to ask but felt yourself coughing, “What?” regardless.

“You don’t like that one.”

Your hand lightly smacked him in the arm on a whim. You waited for him to turn and give you a death glare from the tap, but you were given a soft smile instead and was that- did Zoro just laugh?

He was already on his fifth glass and maybe that was why he was being so damn cute. Yeah, that was it. Zoro instantly became a lightweight.

You knocked back the second one in record time. This time, it didn’t burn as much as the first, but it still didn’t taste much better.

“I never understood the big deal about birthdays.” Zoro’s voice was deep in thought, his eyes roaming the inside of the empty glass of his sixth drink. “It’s just a day.”

A “Tsk,” pushed past your lips as you leaned over towards him. Your cheek rested on his arm as you looked up at him. It felt like it was taking forever for him to even glance down at you. You were about to poke him in his side to finally make him move when dark eyes fell down on your face.

Gods, you really needed to remember to breathe.

“It’s not just a day! It’s the day you were born. It’s not just to celebrate but to be grateful that you’re here. I’m grateful you’re here.”

You watched his Adam’s Apple bob in his throat. The way his eyes flashed with something you weren’t used to seeing made a question form on your tongue but before you could ask it, Zoro looked away and back at the table. His hand wrapped around a new glass and quickly emptied its contents.

“Come on, we still have a lot of booze to get through.”

It wasn’t until the two of you were squeezed into a booth, all of the booze gone, and your head resting on his shoulder, with Zoro’s head resting on yours, that he mentioned it again.

“I don’t think I’ve ever celebrated my birthday before,” he hummed. His fingers were playing with the hem of the pocket on your cargo pants. “But if I did. I want it to be with you.”

It felt silly that just a few words could make your heart race like it did. It was the booze, you’d reminded yourself. You’d both drunk enough to tranquilize a sea beast. Zoro would never just mumble things like this to you, resting his head on yours like he did.

That day Zoro didn’t say more than that and you didn’t press him. Not that you could, anyways. You couldn’t even remember the walk back to the Merry. The night of Nami’s birthday, in the middle of the fireworks, you’d both been sitting on the deck. Your eyes cast up to the explosion of color that painted the sky.

“November.”

“What?”

A finger stroked the neck of the bottle he’d been nursing. His wrist found a comfortable spot on his knee as he leaned back on his palm. It was enough to look natural - enough to not bring attention to the fact this position easily put him shoulder-to-shoulder beside you.

“My birthday it’s…it’s in November. If you are curious.”

July came and went. August and September. You practically counted each day in each month and hated how it seemed to go so fast, but not fast enough. You’d planned and had every idea of how you were going to give him one of the best birthdays ever.

You’d already bought his favorite whiskey and gave it a cute little bow. You’d even asked Sanji to show you how to make a cake. You practiced tirelessly with Sanji watching you every step of the way. So, you couldn’t understand how or why your cake looked like a deflated balloon.

“Did you overbeat the flour?”

Sanji was leaning back against the counter. A hand covering his mouth because you knew he was either smiling or frowning or a mixture of both. The towel he’d used to clean up your earlier spill rested over his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” you groaned into your hands.

“It’s alright. It’s not the time to panic-“

“It is the perfect time to panic! I don’t have time to try and redo the cake, Sanji.”

The day was almost over. Zoro had spent the majority of it out with Luffy. You’d been waiting for them both to come back and when they did, it was night. You weren’t sure how many hours were left in the day for you to do this, but you knew you didn’t have a lot of time left.

“Can you hand me a cookie cutter?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna improvise.”

You used the cookie cutter to find the best part of the cake and cut out a piece. You slammed on maybe too much frosting and quickly went and grabbed your present from your room. It might have been a good idea to change since you were practically wearing most of the cake ingredients on your clothes.

It was too late to change anything. You were already in front of his door and with the tip of your boot knocked as gently as you could. You could hear the slightest sounds of Zoro moving around inside—a groan and what sounded like a few choice words grumbled right after.

You weren’t ready for what greeted you.

Zoro swung open the door and all your brain functions ceased. He was shirtless. The scars Mihawk had given him were fully on display along with every ridiculous muscle definition known to man. His hair was haphazard from sleep, eyes still struggling to focus, with pants hung low at his hips. You weren’t sure if you should be thankful or happy. One thing was for sure. You almost dropped your cake.

“Oh, hey Doc. What’s up?”

Fuck. Was his voice always so unnecessarily rich like this when he woke up? You weren’t sure why, but you panicked and practically shoved the items towards his face.

“Surprise!”

He looked from your would-be birthday cake and the bottle of whiskey with a bow and back to you.

“What is this for?”

“Your birthday, silly.”

That seemed to wake him up and not in a good way. He quickly reached out and pulled you inside. He shut the door behind you and if it weren’t for the bit of moonlight that showed through his window, you both would’ve been consumed by darkness.

Zoro moved forward and you remembered you were in a dimly lit room with him. With a tight smile on your face, you lifted the cake and repeated, “Surprise!”

“You said that already.”

“True but this time it didn’t result in you pulling me anywhere. I brought matches too so you could blow out the candle on your cake.”

Zoro took one look at your cake and all that grumpy energy he held from being woken up disappeared. It was replaced with a soft grin as he looked from the cake to you.

“Why is it in the shape of a Christmas tree?”

“Let's not focus on the details. Oh, and this is for you too!”

Yes, you were nervous. Yes, this was the first time you’d been inside his room like this, but everything was fine. It was fine. So, there wasn’t any real reason why you almost slammed the bottle into his chest. Zoro didn’t seem to mind the small impact as his eyes landed on the label.

“It’s my favorite one.”

“I know. It took me a while to find it. Come on. Come sit.”

You moved to sit on the edge of his bed. Your fingers went to dig the matchbox out of your pocket, and as soon as you got it out, strike one to light up the candle. You carefully lifted the plate back up in your hands as Zoro sat down beside you. The soft glow of the candle made all the hardness of his jaw and cheeks appear softer and the plushness of his lips more inviting. Everything about Zoro appeared different in the soft illumination of the candle and you wished you could draw it to memory.

A smile that was big and genuine lifted the corners of your mouth. Your hands held up the plate at the best angle between you as you softly said, “Happy Birthday, Zoro. Make a wish.”

Zoro tried to shake away the smirk that started to form before he leaned forward and blew out his candle. You turned to place the plate on the barrel beside the bed.

“Are you going to ask me what I wished for?”

You froze in place. Your heart suddenly beat wildly against your chest as you struggled to swallow past your racing pulse. You hoped when you turned back around to face him you didn’t look terrified.

“It’s usually bad luck to ask,” you replied.

“Ask.”

“What did you wish for, Zoro?”

“You.”

You weren’t prepared for Zoro to close the last few inches between you. For his hand to weave his fingers into your hair while his other gripped your waist. Those last few moments of sanity you had before he pressed his lips against yours evaporated the minute he touched you.

Maybe you’d been his true present all along.

-----------

As always, thank you for reading. Comments, reblogs, and likes are always appreciated.

__________

#roronoa zoro #zoro #one piece zoro #opla zoro #zoro roronoa x reader #roronoa zoro x reader #zoro x reader #opla zoro x reader #opla zoro x you #roronoa zoro x you #roronoa zoro x oc #one piece #one piece live action #op

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ferrstappen · 1 year

Text

unscheduled school visit l Max Verstappen

a/n: hello! i got this quick idea while working on some requests/school work. hope you like it and pls pls feel free to leave feedback <3 it really motivates me <3

pairing: dad!Max Verstappen x female reader.

summary: the twins' teacher calls, the twins got in trouble. Max is in disbelief.

Max was a strict parent.

Not in the way people may think, and not in the least similar to how his dad was with him, but Max always was concerned on how the twins were doing in school, only in first grade, but still. He was always working on instilling discipline and hard work to Luca and Mila, so in the future they can be whatever the hell they want to be. Max knew money was never going to be an issue, so it was up to them to take all the opportunities that meant.

He always tried to take them to museums when they joined races, often tried to switch languages, even encouraging other drivers and people in the grid who interacted with the kids to speak in their different languages.

It was always fun to watch Charles speaking to Luca in French or Italian as Luca slowly tried to come up with an answer and was always met with a high five, or Mila asking Checo why Carlos had a different accent.

The smile never disappeared from your face when you get home from running an errand or attending a meeting that couldn’t be held on Zoom, to Luca and Mila chatting about what they learned on school today or silently doing their homework on the family room while Max watched them, himself also getting some things in the meantime.

The point is the twins were smart, both you and Max putting all your efforts to gently and effectively find what they like, what they don’t.

You know your kids. Both of you would put your hands on fire because of them. You trusted them because Max and you were raising them good and the twins were great beyond words could explain.

So when you receive a call from school telling you to come over, you quickly reached Max who was on the sim, driving through Imola with his eyes closed.

“Babe, school called and we have to go,” As soon as you announced the news Max turned around, seat and steering wheel lightly shaking.

“What do you mean? What happened?” Max was instantly on his feet.

“I don’t know, Max. Their teacher called,” You told your husband as his eyes opened widely.

“Their? Is it both of them?” Max was in complete disbelief of what he was hearing.

“It appears so. I’ll cancel a meeting and we go.”

You didn’t leave him alone for thirty seconds, you swear, but when you came back Max was on the phone, asking the teacher to put Mila on the phone.

He knew his daughter too well. She was outspoken, assertive, didn’t think twice. Luca was more cautious, wise and maybe a little timid.

“Pap, he was trying to pull Luca’s hair and stealing his crayons, and Luca was letting him because he didn’t want to cause any trouble!” an agitated Mila informed Max, speaking a broken dutch.

“Are you okay?” Max calmly asked his frantic daughter. He knew she was disquieted, trying to sound more sure of herself than she actually was.

“Yes,” she said in dutch, but in the back her teacher told her in a sweet voice to speak in a language they could all understand.

“Okay baby girl, mama and I are on our way, see you in a bit,”

During the drive to La Condamine to reach the International School of Monaco, you discovered a side of your husband you had yet to see. It was fun.

“She is not apologizing!” Max told you, eyes not leaving the narrow road.

“Max, she pulled the kid’s hair,” You reminded your husband, who softly shook his head in disagreement.

“Yes, because the idiot kid was bothering Luca and pulled his hair! If anything that kid should be apologizing to Luca, his sister just defended him!” His lisp was more prominent as you reached the parking lot overlooking the several yachts.

Max noticed the other child’s parents already walking inside the school, there weren’t many students in the Early Years building. He pressed the gas harder than necessary, making the engine of the family Aston Martin roar like they were in the paddock.

Your eyes rolled at his antics, but still it made your insides feel giddy at the thought of your husband being protective and loving.

Luca’s arms were wrapped around you as soon as you walked inside. Kneeling to reach his height, your heart broke at the sight of his disheveled hair and wet cheeks, his beautiful eyes red. Luca tried to not sniff and stop the tears, trying to be brave when he felt your hands on his cheeks and kissing his forehead, asking if he was okay.

At the same time, Max sat next to Mila whose eyes didn’t leave the other kid’s sight, whom you learned his name was Oliver. Max knew his daughter wanted to shed a tear, but didn’t let it show, so he just gave her a reassuring look before listening to the teacher who had the three of them in charge.

Curtly shaking hands with Oliver’s parents, Max politely ignoring the poor attempt of one of “the idiot kid’s” dad to start a conversation, obviously starstruck by your husband the World Champion.

Yes, it was Monaco and everyone knew each other, and it didn’t take a genius to deduce the two Verstappen named kids on the class were the children of the Max Verstappen, but he was often away and it was mostly you who attended parent-related stuff, but now there was the chance to have a conversation directly with him.

Oh well.

The four got inside the car, Max adjusting the seats before getting in the driver seat. Mila and Luca loudly sighed, knowing what followed.

“I don’t know how to address this. I’m moved and proud that you look out and defend each other, but M, baby, pulling someone else’s hair is not the way,” you softly told your daughter. “and Luca, honey, I know it’s hard but when someone invades your space and is rude, but you can tell the teacher before it makes you feel bad and leads to this,”

Max’s eyes followed the twins movements through the rearview mirror as you talked to them, soon reaching your home. You grabbed the backpacks and Max helped the twins get out of the car.

He reached Luca’s door first. When he was out, he left a kiss on his forehead and ruffled his hair, softly reminding his carbon copy that he was a little lion, still with lots to learn, but no one ever could make him feel like this.

Then he reached Mila’s door. Her eyes now were a bit glossy, but he knew she was just like him, Mila would never show weakness. He reminded her that she can take some weight off, let her guard down with her parents before kissing her hair.

You watched the scene unfold from afar, not knowing what he told them, but sure they were the right words.

Then giggles reached your ears, eyes immediately rolling.

He was fist bumping Mila, giving her a nod of approval.

For God’s sake, this wouldn’t be the first time you’re called to school, that’s for sure.

#max verstappen x reader #max verstappen fanfic #max verstappen au #max verstappen #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen blurb #dad!max verstappen #max verstappen fluff #max verstappen x you #f1 x you #f1 x reader #f1 fic #f1 fanfic #Max Verstappen fanfic

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holylulusworld · 5 months

Text

BFG (2)

Summary: He’s new to town and just your type…

Pairing: Reacher x Plussized!Reader

Warnings: size kink, flirty reader, objectification of Reacher, language, violence, flirting

A/N: Please consider, that I do not follow the exact storyline of season one. Some characters known from the show may appear.

Catch up here: BFG (1)

BFG masterlist

Reacher made himself scarce over the following days. If not for the missing pie in your fridge and the fixed sink, you’d believe Reacher didn’t come to your home at all.

You don’t know what kind of business he has to take care of in your sleepy town, and you don’t want to know. He’s the kind of person you don’t ask too many questions.

“Morning,” you chirp when you walk in on Reacher wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He emptied the rest of your orange juice, drinking right out of the carton.

“Morning,” he looks at you when you pass him by to look in the fridge. “I drank your orange juice and ate the leftovers. I’ll pay you back.”

“Nah, I’m glad you ate the lasagna,” you say while poking your head inside the fridge. “It’s great to have someone around who can eat. A big man needs a lot of food.”

“Uh-thanks,” he grins as you bend a little to look for the eggs. You stick your ass out, offering a perfect view of your ass to Reacher. “I took care of the sink in the kitchen, and I’ll have a look at the heater upstairs.”

“You earned your stay already.” You place the eggs on the counter. “Do you want to have breakfast before you go? I bet you didn’t get any food last night. No wonder you had to eat the leftovers.”

“I came back late and didn’t find the time to grab food,” he dips his head to watch you grab a pan. “I wouldn’t say no to eggs.”

“How about pancakes, eggs, and bacon,” you smirk. Reacher subconsciously licks his lips. He hums and drops his eyes to the eggs. “As long as you are around, I’ll make sure you eat well. I can’t have you starving.”

He laughs. A heartfelt laughter fills the room as you join him. It’s been a while since you felt comfortable enough around a man to be just you.

That’s why you’re single at the moment. You hate playing a role and acting like you are a different person only because a man doesn’t like your attitude or personality.

You are who you are. Nothing less and nothing more.

“You think I’m starving?” He challenges.

“A man must eat to stay as big and tall as you,” you point out while unashamedly looking him up and down. “Now, pancakes yes or no?”

“I won’t say no to some pancakes and eggs…and bacon. Can I help you? I’m not a great cook, but I know a few tricks.”

“I bet you do,” you coo, and smirk. This man is a force of nature, and you try to show him that you can hold up with him. “What do you have up your sleeve, Mr. Reacher?”

Cocking your head, you watch him wipe his hand on his shirt.

“Just Reacher, mom called me that too,” he says. “And she taught me a thing or two when it comes to cooking.” He reaches for the eggs. “I can prepare the pancakes if you want me to.”

“Your mom,” you hum. “I learned baking and cooking from granny and my mom.”

“Your door needs fixing too,” he casually says while cracking the eggs. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

“Oh?” you quirk a brow. “What’s wrong with my door?”

He sighs, long and a little exasperated. “It’s not safe. Anyone could break in and steal your leftovers,” his features darken, and he squares his jaw, “or worse.”

“I got a nice baseball bat I’m burning to test on someone’s face,” you grin, but your smile fades when he shakes his head. “What? I’m not some damsel in distress.”

“I know you are not but,” he places his hand on top of yours, “there are people out there stronger than you. Maybe even stronger than me.”

You glance at Reacher. Maybe he’s not wrong. This sleepy town used to be a safe and friendly place, but things changed.

“Okay,” you agree. “This town isn’t as safe as it used to be. If you have any suggestions, tell me. I’ll buy all you’ll need.”

Reacher and you work in silence, preparing breakfast for the two of you. You glance at him from time to time, wondering about his plans for this town. He came here for a reason. You only hope he stays a little longer than a few days…

“Coffee, black,” a familiar voice barks at Sally Ann. It could’ve been a nice day, but now it’s ruined. “Chop, chop! I don’t have all day. Move your ass.”

“A good morning to you too,” you glare at the unwelcome guest. Kliner jr. - a slimy bastard you can’t stand. He believes only because his daddy has more money than his spoiled son can count that he’s better than the other people in town. “What can we bring you today?”

“Coffee, black,” his tone doesn’t change, only the way he stares at you. He cocks his head to watch you turn around to get a cup for him. “You still got that juicy ass, huh? Did anyone already fuck it? Damn, I bet—”

His voice dies, and you hear something slam onto the counter. You assume he slammed his fist down.

You twirl around to show him the way out only to watch Reacher press Kliner Jr.’s head to the counter.

He squares his jaw and lifts his hand only to slam the bastard’s head down onto the counter again.

“No one disrespects this lady in her diner or elsewhere,” Reacher whispers in Kliner Jr.’s ear. “I want you to nod if you understood what I said.”

“Do you know who my father is?” Kliner Jr. spats. He tries to act all tough, but it takes anything in him to not wet his pants. This beast of a man holds his head pinned to the counter and he’s got no clue how to free himself. “He’ll … he’ll…”

“He will do shit boy,” you snap at Kliner Jr. “Now get out of my diner or I will let you arrest for harassment.”

“Bitch!”

Reacher grabs Kliner Jr. but his neck, ready to slam him onto the counter again. “I want you to apologize to this lady. And you better mean it.”

“Fuck you!”

“Reacher. Stop.” You shake your head. “I’d like to tell you that he got the message, but he didn’t. He’s one of these guys who need a kick in the balls to leave a woman alone. I just don’t think anything will fix the mess in his head.”

Reacher looks you straight in the eyes, silently asking you if you want him to hurt Kliner Jr. even more. “You will get out of the diner and never come back. If I hear about you harassing her again, you will wish that you were never born.”

He releases Kliner Jr. and pushes him toward the door. “You are banned from the diner. Never come back.” You yell after him.

“Your coffee tastes like sweat either way,” Kliner Jr. spats while spitting blood onto the floor. “You fucked with the wrong guy.”

“You wish,” you snap and get your baseball bat out from under the counter. “You should be thankful he took care of you, not me. Betsy my bat would’ve made sure that you’ll never have a Kliner Jr.”

“You didn’t lie about that bat,” Reacher points at the baseball bat on the counter. “I knew you were trouble.”

“I could say the same about you.” You both chuckle at your flirty banter. “How about I give you a slice of pie for your help, sweetie.”

“That pet name sticks, huh?” He plops down on his seat. “Do you want me to wipe the counter?” Reacher looks at the blood on the counter. “I can clean up.”

“You handled the bastard, I can handle a little blood,” you wink at Reacher. “What do you want? Cherry, apple, or peach.”

“You know my taste.”

“I see you are already working on my door,” you duck under Reacher’s arm to enter your house. “You know, I wanted to pay for the things you’ll need to make it safer.”

“I got it handled,” he shrugs and goes back to work. It looks like he is trying to protect the crown jewels or something. “I bought orange juice too.”

“Well, if you are done for today,” you lean against the wall next to Reacher, “I’ll make you something for dinner.”

He looks at you and smirks. “I’d like that. I’m almost finished.”

“I’ll be waiting for you in the kitchen. I got a beer for you too.”

You walk toward the kitchen, swaying your hips as you feel his eyes on you.

Smiling to yourself you decide to not let this man slip through your fingers.

Part 3

BFG Tags

@xxyaoi-nationxx, @lovestoreadfiction, @glambyk, @sonicthehedgedoggo, @thewitchesofart, @emily-roberts, @littlelearningbrat, @mcira

#reacher #reacher x reader #jack reacher x reader #reacher fanfiction #plus-sized reader #jack reacher x plus-sized reader #female reader #reacher x y/n

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fancyfeathers · 3 months

Text

What a Camera Cannot Capture (Yandere Harbinger Lyney x reader)

the inspiration for the came from the voice line from Lyney when he was talking about how he was Arlecchino’s successor. So here you go, older Lyney who has become a Fatui Harbinger.

The performance by the well known magician Lyney had just reached its conclusion minutes ago, you were now getting your coat on and getting ready to leave, the last person to leave actually. You were buttoning up the buttons on your coat and reached into your pocket to grab the scarf you had shoved in there only to find it was not there.

“Looking for this?” You heard the voice behind you, almost with a sing-song tone. You spun around to see the star of tonight’s show, Lyney holding your knitted scarf in his hand. How did he- oh wait, he’s a magician, sleight of hand was his thing. He tosses it back to you and as startled as you were, you caught it as he chuckled. “I wasn’t going to steal it, just playing with you.”

“I figured, but thank you for giving it back.” You replied as you wrapped it around your neck. You turned to the door once more but he called you back.

“You know, I’ve noticed you at almost every show, same seat in the front row.” He spoke as he circled around you, a skip in his step. “Don’t tell me I have an admirer, is that the case?”

“No, no, not in the slightest.” You laughed at his question, but he didn’t laugh with you, if anything he seemed sad. “I’m a photographer for the Steambird, my boss wanted me to get photos for an article covering Fontaine’s entertainment industry.”

“Well then, I hope you caught my good side...” His eyes drifted down to the camera case you held in your free hand and he smiled as his eyes drifted up to your face. He reaches over and before you knew if he was spinning you around and dipped you, his hand on your waist, his face only inches from yours. “…Like this”

He stood you up and spun you out of his embrace and you felt so flustered and your face must have been twenty shades of red. “Y-ya, exactly.”

“Well then, mon chérie, you must be off I suppose.” He walked over and opened and held the door for you. “Do consider paying me another visit at another show sometime, perhaps I could show you around backstage, the behind the scenes.”

“Perhaps, Monsieur, perhaps.”

—————————

“What do you mean your camera is missing?!” You sat in your boss’s office, feeling like a rotten child being yelled at. You had gotten back from the show last night and this morning when you went to get your camera out the case this morning to look at the photos it was gone.

“I-I don’t know, I opened it and it was gone.”

“Well you better find it because without it we lose this article and you lose your job, do I make myself clear?”

“Yes ma’am.”

After that you ran out of her office, nearly in tears as you made your way to the Aquabus Station and took the Navia Line to the Opera Epiclese. You curled up in your seat, praying to whatever god could hear you that you would not lose this job because if you do, archons know what you’ll do then. Once the aquabus reached its stop you literally ran to the Opera Epiclese, your hair getting messed up with your speed and the wind blowing against you, people probably thought someone was dying by the way you looked. You opened the doors to the opera house and rushed into the theater proper. You looked around the opera seat, scouring for where your camera may have fallen. By the time you were finished looking through the seats you must have looked like an absolute wreck with your rush, panic, and tears.

You sat down in one of the seats and wondered what you were going to do. Then you hear voices from backstage, they clearly talked like they thought no one was there. You walked up the stairs onto the stage and walked over to the doors that led backstage. The door was slightly ajar and you slipped in and ducked down under a piece of furniture and listened, call it a reporter’s curiosity.

“My Lord, please excuse me but I doubt that camera has possible evidence against us.”

Camera?

“I know but it was better to be safe than sorry.”

That voice… It was Lyney. What in Teyvat was going on?

“Shall we dispose of the photographer behind these photos? Tracking her down would not be difficult.”

Your breathing stopped… dear gods, they were talking about you.

“No no, that won’t be necessary, she meant no harm by it, besides I have other plans for her.” You heard the voice of Lyney speak, followed by footsteps approaching you but not quite near you, making you think you were still hidden. “You can come out now, mon chérie.”

You could not breathe after you heard that, it felt like you were choking on your own fear.

“Now now, don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.” You felt your shaking legs push you up for the ground and you finally got a clear view of everything. The two other people next to the magician make you feel sick, two Fatui agents. Lyney gestured you to come here and you stepped forward, every step made your legs feel like they were led. You stood in front of him, not making eye contact, you felt terrified. Lyney looked to the two agents and addressed them. “You two may leave now.”

There were mutterings of acknowledgement before the shuffling of feet, leaving you and the magician alone. You felt Lyney’s hand reach down and tilt your head so you would look at him. “Let’s get you relaxed, come on.”

He took your hand and led you further backstage until he reached a door and opened it with a key. He held the door open for you while you stepped in, it was his dressing room. Lyney slipped in after you and you did not even notice the sound of the door locking as Lyney urged you to sit down while he got some tea for the two of you. You sat down on the velvet couch in the large dressing room while Lyney prepared tea for the two of you. Your eyes drifted around the dressing room, it was so beautiful, and so many flowers that must have come from Lyney’s fans. Then you noticed as Lyney brought the tea tray over and set it between you, you saw on his mirror that it was lined with articles, more specifically photographs from the articles, your photographs you have done, even some photos of you.

“I wish my father could have met you.” He said as he handed you a cup of tea and slowly you brought the cup to your lips and took a sip. “She died before she got the chance. I always talked to her about you though.”

“…how long have you been watching me?” You questioned, parting the cup from your lips.

“Straight to the point I see.” He gave a light laugh and sighed while he counted in his head. “Six years, almost seven.”

You nearly spat out your last sip of tea at that, but forced it down as a look of shock and horror came across your face. “S-seven.”

“Just about, since I started about a year and a half before father died.” Lyney spoke as if nothing was wrong when this was clearly messed up. “I’m guessing you have quite a few questions, so please go right ahead.”

“You’re a part of the Fatui?”

“Ah, yes I am.” He answered as he picked up a macaron from the tea tray to eat, but ended up setting it on your plate. “I was raised in an orphanage run by my father who was a harbinger and I ended up joining them with my sister when I got older. Now since my father passed I have taken her place.”

“You’re… a harbinger.”

“I am, but I’m not going to harm a single hair on your head.” He spoke as you raised the macaron he set on your plate to your lips, not trying to refuse and anger him. You started to feel dizzy and almost sick, your hands started shaking so badly and the pastry fell out of your hand and onto the floor. “Oh dear, are you not feeling well? I didn’t expect it to work that fast, I guess I should have taken Dottore’s word on that.”

“W-what… what did you give me?” You tried to stand up but Lyney’s hand came onto your chest, urging you to lay down on the couch.

“Shhh, just relax, it’s a harmless sleeping drug. You’ll wake up in a few hours.” You rampantly shook your head no, you were scared earlier about your job now you’re scared for your life. “Do you have any more questions I can answer before sleep takes you, my love? If you have any when you awake I’d be happy to answer then.”

“Why me?”

“Oh mon chérie…” his hand came up to stroke your cheek as your vision started to fade. “You’re just so beautiful, your curiosity, your passion for your work. See when my father ran the House of the Hearth she had my mother by her side, albeit a bit unwillingly on my mother’s end, but they ended up being happy in the end. Now that I’m the father of the House, don’t you think I should have a wife at my side?”

Your head felt like it was full of cotton, you could not even think as your body fell limp, your breathing shallow as you struggled to stay awake.

“Just relax my love, I promise everything will be okay when you wake up.”

A photograph can capture the visual, not what disappeared. So what will happen when the magician makes the photographer disappear?

#yandere genshin impact #yandere genshin x reader #yandere genshin #yandere genshin impact x reader #yandere genshin imagines #yandere lyney #yandere lyney x reader

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fabdante · 6 months

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@zutaraweek day 3: union

a little follow up to this comic i did last year. i really liked the idea of union in a political context and this was a very round about way of that. like, a little tongue in cheek with all the different kids from different nations just sort of talking and gossiping together. teens doing teen stuff despite their high profile roles in society, that type of thing.

initially this comic was a lot more ambitious but some complications happened in my life which made me have to chip away at a lot of it. such as having it in full color, with backgrounds. there's been a lot of thought put into the world of the chief kya au, though! particularly related to yue that is not featured at all asdfghjk.

the more i worked on it, the more i got worried zuko might be a little ooc. but i was a bit inspired by crystal catacombs and the softness he had there. whenever i try to write him in this au, he's just usually just happy to be around katara so i'm just going to let him do what he wants.

Anyway, a transcript along with brief image descriptions is beneath the cut under my obligatory art links as well as in the alt text of the art!

art only blog - insta - inprnt - redbubble

Page 1: Zuko and Katara are at a gathering for those invited to the peace accords which seems to be more packed then usual.

Katara: Wow, there’s a lot of people here Zuko: Yeah. There’s a lot of people this year. K: I don’t recognize anyone yet. Z: Oh! I can help you. Z: That’s Mai. Her father is an official. Z: She’s Suki. Leader of the Kyoshi Warriors. Z: And next to her is- K: Yue!

Page 2: Katara and Yue hug and the teens (Zuko, Yue, Katara, and Suki) all chat.

Yue: Katara! K: I missed you! Y: I’m so happy to see you! have never spoken more than hellos was just trying to chat with Yue awkward turtle duck Z: So you do know someone. K: We’ve known each other since we were kids. Lu Ten: Prince Zuko?

Page 3: Lu Ten appears, Yue and Suki gossip, and Katara's a bit sad as Zuko leaves with Lu Ten to handle business elsewhere.

Z: Lu Ten? L: Sorry to interrupt, but can I steal you? Z: Is it important? L: Unfortunately. L: They seem nice. I’m happy you’re making friends.

Page 4: The girls gossip and Mai overhears.

Y: I didn’t know you knew Zuko. Suki: Yeah. Do you know anything about the scar? K: I don’t really know him. We just met. What do you guys know? Mai: No one actually knows. M: About the scar. They kept it quiet.

Page 5: There's a small flashback to Zuko at 14 after receiving his scar, the girls continue to talk, and there's a final panel of Ozai, alluding to a family secret.

M: He just went away for a while. And then he came back and there it was. M: That’s all anyone knows. Except Zuko. K: That’s awful. There has to be more. M: Well…people have some suspicions.

#zutara #zutara week #zutara week 2023 #prince zuko #katara #zuko #atla #avatar #avatar the last airbender #my art

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thebestofoneshots · 4 days

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No Sweeter Innocence than Our Gentle Sin Pt.2 | Remus Lupin x Reader

Read Pt.1

Pairing: Priest!Remus x reader

Word Count: 14 k

Prompt: You did not want to go to church that day, but your spirits are uplifted when you meet Father Remus, and your mind starts creating a mischievous scheme, to both retaliate over those years of being forced to go and take something from them.

Alternatively, R is really mad at the church and decides to steal one of their priests for it (but also kind of falls for him).

Warnings: SMUT, Non-apt for Christians(?). Reader is a little cynical (or maybe cynical Af). Suggestive talks, touching oneself, fingering, oral (male and female receiving), dry humping, P in V. Reader seduces a Priest (so whatever you might expect from that), hierophiIia, corruption!kink, praise!kink (if you squint). Consent is sexy!

Proofread by lovely @aremuslupinsimp

♡ NSFW: Smut under the cut

ACT VI: You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain

You quickly put the straps of your dress back on and wiped your hand on the inside lining of the skirt. You walked out of the door. You looked around, the church was as empty as it got, you smiled and knocked on his side.

“You may come out, father,” you said, teasingly.

You heard some adjusting, “I’m having a bit of an issue.”

You giggled. “Yeah, I’m gonna help you fix that,” you responded, opening the door yourself and taking his arm, pulling him towards you. He stood up and roughly accommodated his coat over his boner. You bit your lip as he did and he gave you a rather impassive look, as if telling you that whatever you might do, could be going overboard. “Do you have an office?”

“No.”

You hummed, dissatisfied at his answer. “A place where you guys give talks? like for people who are going to get married and stuff? I know I was in one of those when I was my cousin’s godmother.”

Remus seemed to think about it.

“We can’t go there.”

“Why not? You don’t have the keys?”

“I do! But it’s not safe, if someone walks in–”

“Oh,” you said with a smile and looked down at his boner again. “I’m pretty sure it won’t take too long.”

Remus huffed, still rather unconvinced. So you placed your hand on his shoulder and pulled him down slightly so you could whisper something in his ear. His eyes shone and he turned to you with a gulp. “Are– are you sure?”

You simply nodded in response.

He shut his eyes and sighed, “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“You’re probably right,” you agreed, condescendingly.

“That would be like crossing the line.”

“I suppose it would.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

It was Remus, that looked preoccupied but determined, who led you to the back of the church. You walked right next to the altar, your gaze lingered over it for a second before you went into one of the smaller rooms beside it, and then into another one. You knew the church was huge, but you hadn’t quite dimensioned it entirely.

He was quick to come in and he shut the door. Turning to you as he bit his lip, he was still hard, and you leaned closer to him. “Allow me,” you said with an innocent smile, dragging him closer to the centre of the room. You placed your hands on his shoulders. “Breathe.”

He did as told, a deep long inhale, and then a soft exhale, his breath smelled of mint, and a little bit of cigarette smoke. Remus had long ago stopped smoking, but since you appeared, and told him all about the things that’d happened in your dream, he’d taken up that terrible vice again, one of the few things that calmed his nerves.

“Listen to my voice, I mentioned there was a way to control it, right? That I would teach you?”

“Please do.”

“Well, It’s quite simple,” you said as you rubbed your hands over his strong-toned arms, reassuringly. You were not expecting Father Remus to be so solid under all the religious attire, but you thought it was a wonderful surprise. You leaned a little closer to him, enough for your bodies to touch. You felt his boner against your stomach and you’d swear you felt how you clenched around nothing. But it’s not time yet for that. You told yourself.

You knew it was a long game when you started and you were not about to ruin it all due to the heat of the moment, you weren’t that idiotic.

“If you want to control those impulses, then you must give in to them.”

He opened his eyes surprised when you placed your hand on him, carefully, tentatively, and pleasantly subdued. Your hand was much softer and kinder than his own had ever been, much smaller too. He shut his eyes close, his breath was ragged and looked like he might have been in pain.

“Too sore still?” He nodded. “May I?” you asked as you placed your hand on his belt. He swallowed, unsure, and you stopped moving your hands. “Do you want to?”

“But it’s wrong,” he excused.

“Remus I didn’t ask if it was. I said ‘Do you want to?’ Because I’m dying to touch you but if you don’t want to then we should end this here and now.”

“No!” he said, almost too quickly. If he’d had the willpower, that might have been the one and only moment in which things could have turned around. The sharp crossroad of decisions that would have allowed you both to choose a different result. But he didn’t want you to stop, he wanted you to do it, like he hadn’t wanted anything in his life before. “I want to,” he said in a low breath.

You smiled, innocently, and started to unfasten his belt. Then slowly you went for the buttons of his trousers and the zipper. There, straining against his boxers, you could see the outline of his cock. Your breath hitched in your throat, he was big. You had seen that already but you hadn’t dimensioned it, but now, right in front of you? It was easy to see just how big he was, how pretty, you thought as you carefully slid the band of his boxers underneath.

Remus hissed as the cold air prickled his sensitive skin, and you slid one of your hands, carefully, tauntingly, from his stomach and down to his cock. You were careful and light, you slid one of your fingers along his shaft, and you could tell he was stifling a groan. You looked up to him, he was biting his bottom lip and closing his eyes like he was really trying to concentrate. You looked at him and smiled, wrapping your hand around him in a grip so gentle it was as if you weren’t quite touching him.

“Does it still feel sore?” you asked.

He turned to you and nodded, breath ragged, he refused to look at your hand wrapped around his cock, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to forget it if he did.

“That’s okay then, I know how we can solve it,” you said and started to lean down. Remus looked at you with shock as you levelled your head with his hips.

“What are you–” he started, panic rising in his voice.

“Shhh,” you said gently. And then leaned closer, pressing a small kiss to his tip.

“Will you–”

You pressed another kiss and he let out a short, ragged breath. Then you wrapped your mouth around him, just at the very tip, and felt the slightly salty taste of him against your tongue. Precum, you realised. Remus was as responsive as it got, and you loved that in an almost deranged way. First, you just lapped your tongue around him. Slow and steady, listening in to the moans he tried to suppress.

Remus’ hand was tense beside him, he didn’t know where to touch, he didn’t know what to do with them either. He was too in awe at your actions. You looked like an angel as you peppered kisses along his shaft and then wrapped your mouth around him. Always so incredibly fucking soft, it was insane. He thought he’d seen heaven with you in the confessionary, but he had barely gotten a glimpse at the gates back then.

Eventually, you pushed yourself deeper into his shaft and started to bob your head. The sound he made was music to your ears, and fueled your determination. You quickened your pace and allowed him to push further into your throat, bordering the line between uncomfortable, but it didn’t matter, not when Remus was moaning like that. You imagined yourself with that beautiful cock of his inside of you and the mere thought turned you on even further. He moaned and cursed and kept saying all kinds of things in between mutters and ragged breaths.

“Oh, God!” he breathed, when you used your hand to jerk the section of him that you couldn’t reach with your mouth, “Oh my GOD!”

That one was by far your favourite of all his curses.

Forget about fuck, and shit, when he said ‘Oh God’ when he sinned for you, that was what you loved the most.

At some point, he started inadvertently pushing his hips into your mouth, “I’m sorry,” he said as politely as he could when he heard you cough, “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

You looked up at him and he swore he’d never seen something as delightful as your teary eyes and your mischievous little expression. Your lips, though wrapped around him, were almost curving into a somewhat smile and you winked at him as you went back to moving your head.

“Fucking hell,” he breathed, his head fell back, breath ragged and moans escaping almost indiscriminately now. Then there were steps outside, far enough but Remus had always had a keen hearing. “Someone’s coming,” he warned, as he leaned on, a slightly worried expression.

You leaned back, a line of spin connected your mouth and his cock and he felt a surge of electricity go through him at the sight. “How close are you?” you asked, panting.

He gave you an exasperated look and you smiled, “I can work with that,” you said before going back and bobbing your head and jerking your hand faster than you had previously. Remus used one of his hands to cover his mouth and you tried not to laugh when you realised it.

“I’m going to–” he started, as he tried to push you out of him, but you were reluctant and you kept bobbing your head. He was both filled with pleasure and with stress. “Angel, stop. I won’t be able to hold it,” he tried next. And then, you felt it, the first ribbon of cum crashing into your mouth. He thought you’d pull back, disgusted at what he’d done to your precious mouth. “I’m sorry, angel. I’m sorry I’m–”

He was at a loss of words, rather than stopping and looking at him with disgust –like he expected– you just kept going, sucking him off until he was empty. The steps had grown louder by now, and there seemed to be some shuffling just outside the door.

He pulled out a napkin for you to spit on it while looking nervously at the door, you gave him a smile and swallowed. “Isn’t it the almighty that says you should never spill your seed?” you said with a mischievous smile and his mouth went dry.

You pressed a kiss to his happy trail and helped him tuck back in. The knob had started to move now. “Place your hand on my head, now!”

“What?” He asked, confused.

“Say a blessing or something, whatever it is you guys do,” you added in a quick whisper. You leaned your head down, closed your eyes, and placed your hands in front of your chest as if you were praying.

ACT VII: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour

Remus started to mutter something, and you remained in your place, licking the bit of cum that had slid down the corner of your lips earlier.

The door burst open, and surprisingly enough, Remus stayed focused on his blessing, rather than turning around startled like you had expected him to. Either your little ruse had tired him, or he was a lot more scheming than he seemed. Perhaps as much as you were. Remus opened one of his eyes and looked at the man at the door, giving him a short acknowledging nod.

“Oh, I’m sorry–” the man hurried. He had a thick, velvety voice, resonant but not loudly disagreeable. “I thought the place was empty,” he added, adjusting his belt. You were not looking at him, since your back was turned, but the urgency in his voice was evident.

“I was just giving this child a blessing,” Remus said calmly. “I’m afraid her aunt is very ill, and her family is losing hope. Care to join us?”

You tried not to look surprised when he said that, you’d never seen Father Remus lie through his teeth so seamlessly. But you weren’t one to complain. You stood up suddenly, a saddened expression filled your face, “That won’t be necessary, Father. I’ve already consumed enough of your time,” you said meekly, and then, throwing him a look, you added, “and your blessings…”

He threw you a warning glance, and you just smiled, diverted, your back still turned to the other man. You leaned in and pressed a small kiss to Remus’ cheek, muttering a ‘Thank you’, just loud enough for the other man to hear. By the time you turned around, your face was solemn looking again.

You nodded towards the other father as you passed by, he had long hair and was rather good-looking as well. He eyed you with amusement. Remus cleared his throat. “Will you come back? For another blessing… I mean.”

You turned around, “Of course, Remus. However, could I go on without them?”

He nodded in return, more reassuring himself than anything. And watched as your dress flowed out of his sight.

“That’s a sweet little lamb you got there,” the long-haired man said with a mischievous smile.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Remus said and walked towards the exit. “I’ll go fulfil my duties,” he added as he walked out.

“Of course,” the other man replied, the amused smile still playing on his lips. “Have fun.”

Remus gave him a tired sort of look, something close to an eye roll, and left.

Remus had never lied as much as he had lied that week. It started with that simple lie and then it just went on and on and on.

“Father Lupin, could you take care of the Church retreat next week?”

“I’m sorry, I have a family thing on Saturday. I’m on grandma duty.”

Remus was, in fact, not on grandma caring duty. There was no grandma caring duty whatsoever in his family. Mrs. Lupin was old but held strong, and she would never ask to be taken care of, she had always been stubborn like that.

Then another time, he had locked his room door, ready to feed his delusions with the thought of you when there was a sharp knock on his door.

“Father Lupin!” an urgent voice said on the other side, “Father Lupin!”

Remus half opened his door and tried not to look too annoyed when one of his deacons waited at the door. He had opened it slightly, only letting his head through as he looked at the boy. He was the small blond-haired kid who he sometimes found amusing because of how much trouble he managed to get into. Not today though, not when it distracted him from the thought of you.

“What is it?” he asked, slightly impassive. “I was in the middle of a very important prayer.”

Yeah, right! He was definitely going to say God’s name a good deal of time but not in the way it would be expected of him.

The kid gulped, he had never seen Father Remus be so stony. He was always kind and good-natured, no matter what. Heck, he had accidentally walked in on him while changing and Father Remus –although he hated people seeing his scars– had only ushered him out with a light reprimand and instructions to always knock on the door before walking in.

“I’m– I’m sorry,” the boy staggered. “It’s just that the bishop was looking for you.”

Remus sighed, also annoyed that his plan was ruined, shut the door, put on his shoes and stepped out again, still looking cross as he followed the boy to the Bishop’s office.

“How may I help, Your Grace?”

“Ah, Remus,” the old man said when he spotted him. “I’ve been told how excellently you’ve been performing on Wednesdays lately.”

Remus didn’t speak, but he looked at the man attentively, the bishop liked to speak, and it didn’t take long for him to continue.

“The head priest was telling me how brilliant you’ve been. He’s seen you confessing, and dedicating the confessions it’s due time which can be complicated, and even tiresome. And you’ve always proved to be a very responsible young man. As you know most of the church will be heading to the retreat starting next Monday.

“Of course, the church must not be left alone. But since you are not going to the retreat, and I have not had the opportunity to attend one for some time, some of the head priests and I thought it would be a sensible idea to leave the church at your charge. I believe there are a few other priests who will stay, but you would act as my eyes and ears during the week we’re gone. How does that sound?”

Remus drew in some air, completely inexpressive as he tried not to think of all the wonderful things that could happen with the church all to himself.

“It would be an honour, Your Grace.”

“I thought you’d say that,” the man replied with an affable smile. “Thank you for your time, Father Lupin. I’m sure the church will be in good hands.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Remus replied as he nodded to the man politely and he exited the room.

That Sunday you’d gone to mass with your grandma again, she’d come back to the city and she had insisted on going to the beautiful church with her. Of course, this time around, you hadn’t been as angry about having to go to the church as before, if anything, you were excited about it.

Remus was absolutely delighted when he spotted you and your grandma. He had been dying to tell you that he’d be in charge of the church, that you could stay for longer, and not worry so much about being seen with him next week. That’s how he realised he had, in fact, no way to contact you outside of the church.

You had always been the one to come to him, like an angel, uninvited but always welcomed.

When he saw you walking beside your grandma, at a very slow pace and holding her arm as you climbed up the stairs to the entrance of the church, he was quick to excuse himself from the boring conversation he’d been having with the old lady who insisted on telling him all about her rogue godson and walked straight your way.

“Ma’am, allow me to help,” he said politely and took your Nan’s other arm. Your grandma looked at Father Remus and gulped.

“To what do I owe the honour of being helped by a Father?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s just very nice to see you, it’s been a while,” Remus replied.

“She’s not from around,” you explained. The way your lips moved, he’d dreamed about kissing them before but the need for that now was consuming him like a burning fire. He’d never thought of mass as boring or dull, today it hadn’t even started and he already wanted it to be over with. To have you, and to have you alone.

“Of course,” Remus said. “But seeing your granddaughter so often–”

“So often?” your Nan asked, surprised, turning to the man.

“Well, she’s been coming to mass, Ma’am.”

“You have?” she asked, turning to you with a surprise. “You never told me!”

“I guess I’ve found my way back into faith,” you said. “Perhaps all I needed was a good enough incentive to come to church more often,” you added, throwing a knowing look at Remus.

“Incentive, of what kind?”

“Well, how beautiful mass is given here, of course,” you lied. “Didn’t you find it delightful? The way the priests here preach? Remus is especially good at it, you should hear him say god. It’s always so… heavenly when he does.” Remus threw you a warning look, and you gave him a small, almost imperceptible smirk, and then winked, just before turning to your Nan. “Unfortunately he does not preach on Sundays.”

“What a shame,” she said. You were already all the way up the stairs and you helped her into her seat. “See you around, Remus.”

“It’s Father Remus–” your Nan started her chiding but shut up the second Remus turned to you with a kind smile and said.

“See you around, dove.” He didn’t think too much about it, not about the nickname or how softly he’d said it. How loving it had been.

“Dove?” your Nan asked you, Remus had already taken off towards the back of the church to change into his alb.

“Oh, it’s like Lamb, Remus says that all the time,” you said dismissively, although you really wanted to laugh. Your Nan wasn’t stupid, she might be able to catch on, and perhaps she would have, if she didn’t have such blinding faith in priests, and of course, in Remus in particular.

You weren’t sure you’d mind too much. Surely she wouldn’t talk about it for fear of becoming a scandal, and no matter how good she thought of you, she might take the church’s side and blame you for corrupting Remus –which was arguably right. In the end, she had already called you heathen once, it wouldn’t be that complicated for her to notice, and feel guilty about being the one to bring you into the church.

It had been, after all, her fault that you ended up meeting Remus.

But even if you didn’t mind it, you feared Remus might have, so you decided to gaslight her into believing you were the innocent angel that Remus insisted on alluding to when referring to you. It was better that way, it would be easier to continue that way. And of course, you wanted to go all the way with Remus. you wouldn’t be done until it was done. And at this point, petty revenge wasn’t the only thing driving you. You liked Remus, how innocent and forthcoming he was, you thought he was absolutely charming.

When the mass was done, you walked your Nan down the huge steps and helped her to the taxi. The church was pretty full still, but the desperate glances that Remus had thrown your way several times were enough for you to know that he wanted to talk to you. Especially that one reproachful look when you licked your lips as he gave you the host.

You walked up the long steps again and spotted him being flooded by some ladies. Three older women who were all talking at the same time and he seemed to have trouble following, a girl younger than you looking at him like he was Robert Redford –Remus was prettier than that–, and babbling something about her first communion along with one of the older ladies who shared her hair colour. And a smaller girl running around his feet and pulling on his pants aggressively every now and then while saying ‘Look at me, Father! I can twirl now’.

You gave him a short look with a diverted smile and walked towards one of the seats. He looked at you with a pleading glance, his eyes opening wider as he clearly said ‘Help me out of this’. Remus knew you were clever enough to have all the people around him scatter, but instead, you sat down, pulled a book from your bag and read while you waited.

You felt someone sitting next to you, “How’s your aunt?”

You turned around with a frown, it was the long-haired priest who had almost caught you and Remus. He had beautiful grey eyes. Now that you actually paid attention to him: he was regal. If you had seen him before Remus, things might have gone an awful lot different.

“She’s better,” you said, closing the book and turning to him attentively.

“Are you here for another blessing?” He asked, he had a shrewd, very fox-like look on his soft and elegant features, as if he knew something and he wanted you to know he did.

“Well, yes and no.”

“I could help,” he said and placed a hand on your leg. On your bare leg that is. You had worn a skirt that day as well. You looked at his hand and then back at him. If he expected you to blush, he was surprised to see the way you smiled, averted your gaze and rolled your tongue over your teeth. You would have been more than welcome to accept this man’s advances if it wasn’t for the fact that you already had another one in sight. Who was, coincidentally, walking towards you right now.

“I’m afraid you couldn’t,” you said as you cocked your head to the side.

“No?”

“I’m about to hire Remus for a hospital visit, my aunt is very fond of him.”

When Remus reached the two of you, he gave the grey-eyed Father a murderous look. You smiled and gave him a small wink. “I was just telling Father, uh…”

“Black,” the man said with a smile.

“Black, right? I was just telling Father Black that I’m here to talk to you about the thing we discussed earlier. About visiting my aunt?”

“Of course,” Remus said. The little girl had trailed behind him and was stopped by her mother right before she clung to his leg again.

Father Black laughed and waved the little girl goodbye in a rather charming way. Remus threw a look at him which he returned in an equally taxing manner, then Remus nodded to his hand on your leg. He hadn’t even gotten close to touching your velvety legs and here Sirius had his hands all over them, he was livid, although he hid it pretty well.

“Didn’t you have something to do?”

Sirius sighed, “I’ve got to visit the convent.” He didn’t seem too eager to go.

“I’m sure the Nuns will love to see you there, Father Black.”

He turned to you with a small smirk, there was mirth in his eyes, “You think?”

“Oh, I’m certain,” you said with a smile, and placed your hand on his wrist to drag his hand away from your thigh. You stood up, Father Black looked at your legs for a second before he got another murderous look from Remus and stood up himself.

“I guess this is where our paths diverge,” he said, with a slight dramatic air.

“Perhaps,” you replied. “Good luck at the convent.”

“Good luck with your aunt,” he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes and a side look at Remus, who, in turn, just stared down at him.

“Thank you, hopefully, she’ll get better,” you said, and waved at him politely.

The second the father stepped out of the way, you felt Remus take a step closer to you, enough for you to feel his heat radiating on your back. You turned to him with a smile and tilted your head to the side, he looked adorable while jealous, “Are you taking confessions, Father?”

“Didn’t you say you wanted me to visit your aunt at the hospital?”

You raised an eyebrow, “Don’t you need special permits to leave the church and so on?”

“Oh, no,” he said with a smile. “We’re not going to leave yet, first we have to make the arrangements at the office.”

ACT VIII: You shall make no idols

Remus walked you towards a set of stairs, claiming there were old offices on some of the towers that were rarely visited. As you walked up one of the towers, he lingered only a second while looking down at the stairs behind him, as if he was trying to make sure he had been followed by no one and then continued walking right behind you. It’s here, he said as he pulled out a big, old-looking key and opened one of the doors.

You expected whatever you found inside to be dirty and filled with spiderwebs and whatnot from lack of use, but it was clean. In fact, it was like a small church museum, with all sorts of church memorabilia, some even hanging from the ceiling. The walls were plastered, and white, as if they had been taken care of not long ago, and there was a desk right in the middle of the room.

“Well, this is… interesting,” you said as you leaned over the desk and looked around the room.

“It used to be a museum, got shut down a couple of months ago due to lack of visits. Now it’s a place we use to meditate and pray.”

“And confess, I suppose,” you added with a small, teasing smirk.

Remus stepped towards you, hesitant but not stopping, he was close now. Close enough for you to feel his body heat. “He touched you,” he said as his hand hovered over your leg.

You gave him a look, cocking your head to the side, “Father Black?”

“Yes,” he said, voice colder than he intended.

You tried not to laugh at his childish display of jealousness and had to remind yourself how starved for love Remus had been when you first showed up at his confessionary. How you’d had to tell him to touch himself for him to even dare do it under his clothes and how out of practice he’d been. Even then, you couldn’t help but tease him, he looked lovely when he was being teased.

“Does it bother you?”

“What right does he have? He didn’t even ask for permission, he placed his dirty hands on–”

“Right,” you interrupted. “I guess it was certainly unexpected.”

“But not unwelcomed?” he retorted.

“Not” –he looked at you as if you’d betrayed him– “if I imagined they were your hands instead.” He swallowed thickly, the place was so quiet that the sound he made, combined with the bobbing of his throat, made it beyond evident. You smiled and bit your bottom lip as you looked at him. “Jealousy suits you, Father Remus, with the slight tint of your cheeks, you look delightful.”

His gaze intensified on yours as if he was trying to look past your flirting and into your soul. Did you really think he was that handsome? With you being as beautiful as you were, he’d expect to see you with someone like Sirius, handsome, strong, pretty. Not with someone as rugged up as he was, not with someone that had scars on his entire body. “More than him?”

“Than Father Black, you mean?” you teased again, he tensed, and you placed a hand on his arm. But rather than responding, you thought of showing him. “How about–” you started, your hand sliding down his arm until you had your hand in his and pulled it towards you, “How about you touch me like he did and see how I react to you?”

Remus gulped again as if he couldn’t quite process what you’d said, “You– you want me to touch you?”

“Like in my dream,” you said as you leaned on your hands and sat on the desk better, your legs only slightly parted, not enough for him to realise you’d been wearing no underwear –again– but enough for it to be enticing, your skirt had ridden up just a little bit more, almost as much as Sirius had pulled it earlier with his hand.

Remus was hesitant as he looked at you, eyes blown as he stared but his hand still held firmly on the side. Up until then, it had been you the one to speak, you the one to tell, you the one to touch him however you wanted, he had never been the one to do it. Not even as you blew him had he dared to lay a hand on you. He wasn’t sure if he could debase the holiness of your body with his unworthy hands.

You, upon seeing his hesitance, spread your legs a little wider for him, tantalising him. Remus was dithering as he leaned closer, you’d expected him to go straight for your leg, after all, you had purposefully laid them out for him, and you couldn’t help but be left breathless when he reached up and brushed his fingers on your face. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, almost in a whisper. The raw honesty he used sent a shiver down your spine, you had been called beautiful before, plenty of times, but none of them had felt as genuine as Remus’ words. As deep-rooted and meaningful. “Like an angel,” he added.

Your breath was already heavier, and he had only grazed the pads of his fingers over your cheek. He brushed his thumb over your lips for a second before he moved it to the side and dragged it under your chin. One of his fingers behind your ear, and the rest accommodating along your neck while his thumb placed circles over your throat. “And so soft,” he said then. “I’m scared to break you. Like you really are one of those beautiful saint ikons we have all over the church.”

“I’m far from being a saint,” you said in a whisper, your eyes were as blown as his. The way Remus touched you, how soft and careful he was, how reverential as if each of his fingers was laced with devotion was making you go insane. You weren’t sure anyone had ever touched you like that before, and it made you both crave more and relish in the little he gave.

“Are you?” he asked. “I always feel like I’m floating when you’re around.”

You bit your lips as you looked at him, his other hand had travelled to your arm, and he was holding it firmly, but not strongly, as if he was using it as a reassurance that you were real, that you wanted him.

You bit your lip at that, looking at his, but not leaning into them, “Remus?” You said softly.

“Yeah?” he breathed. He was enjoying the way your cheeks felt warm under his touch and the way the hair on your arm would stand on end as he traced his feather-light fingers over the back of your hand.

“Remember my dream?” Remus wanted to respond that he could never forget your dream, that he had it every night, all the different variations of it that had gone through his head were so sinful he should have gone to hell just for desiring you with that vigour. He merely nodded. “Remember what I did after that?” Remus’ eyes lost in his hands, rushed back to your face.

He hesitated, “You want me to touch you there?”

You looked down at his hands, your gaze lingering over his broad chest, and the way the tight-fitted cassock looked on him, “Please,” you sighed.

Remus, who had never touched a woman like that in his entire life, was beyond nervous as you guided one of his hands to your leg. He was hesitant, playing with the soft skin of your thigh first, softly closing his hands around them and then letting go, each time, his hand reaching deeper in, closer to your core. You were looking at him with a gaze so lustful you might have as well been possessed by one of the seven deadIy sins.

Or perhaps, it was him the one possessed. He wasn’t any better as he stared at you, gulping as he touched you, his cock straining against his pants in a way that should have been uncomfortable, but just with the sight of you embracing his inexpert touch became beyond pleasurable.

He’d become a debauchee, he wanted more of you, all of you. And here you were, giving yourself into all his lecherous thoughts, into all of yours. He was drowning in the idea of having you for himself, of making you his, vows be damned, he wanted you more than anything he’d ever wanted before.

More than God? His mind asked him. Remus stopped moving for a second, and then you placed your hand on his chest, gripped the fabric covering it, and dragged him closer to you, the question was forgotten in an instant, and his hand, almost as in instinct, went right over your slit. But he pulled it back in an instant and looked at you in shock.

“You’re not wearing any underwear.”

You took his hand and dragged it back into your thighs, “I never do when I come to see you.”

His breath was slow and ragged, a part of him was furious over Father Black touching you earlier, of you knowingly letting him touch your thigh and ride your skirt up with his unclean hands, of you feeling any pleasure at all from his attention, from knowing that under the skirt there was nothing to stop him from touching you.

But Father Black wasn’t here, Father Black didn’t get to touch you in the way he did, and you had dismissed him with a kind smile, but had never looked at him with the licentious expression you were giving him now. You were not Father Black’s, and you had never been Father Black’s. From the moment you entered that confessionary, you knew what you wanted. And you wanted him.

Remus’ hand closed the distance between it and your core. And as light as he had been earlier, he traced his fingers over your slit: Steady, kind, supple. Most men had rushed in, desperate to have you, but Remus did it with a patience reminiscent of a wolf stalking his prey. You opened your legs a little wider for him, and shuddered when his knuckle brushed against your clit.

He swallowed and placed one of his hands next to yours as he leaned a little closer to you, his forehead against yours, “Is this okay?” he asked as he repeated the action, his knuckle finding its way between your folds and brushing over your clit again.

“Yeah,” you sighed. “That’s incredible,” you reassured.

He did it again and felt his heart start to hammer against his chest when your sighs became soft, almost imperceptible moans. But he heard them, he was the one who got to hear all of those beautiful sounds of yours, and he loved it.

Eventually, Remus changed his knuckle for his thumb, figuring out a more precise pace made your moans a little louder, as he touched you, as he heard you, he stared at your lips longingly, of what he’d do to kiss your lips, to become his own breath and feel the way they shivered under his touch. But Remus wouldn’t dare to kiss you without you doing it first, he thought you allowing him to touch you in the way you did, was already so much, that he didn’t deserve to also have your lips.

If only he knew the only reason you hadn’t leaned in to kiss him was because you thought you’d scare him away, he would have closed the gap between the two ages ago.

“Remus– Rem, Rem,” you said as you placed a hand on his shoulder. The way his name had fallen from your lips, so lascivious, was overwhelming all of his senses, almost making him short-circuit just from your voice.

“Yeah?” he asked breathily.

“You can,” you closed your eyes and attempted to focus on your words. “You can put your finger inside if you want.”

He looked at you with a confused raise of the eyebrows. And then he mustered enough courage to ask for something he had only dreamed of since he saw you touching yourself in the confessionary. “How about my tongue?”

His bold question was enough to pull you back into reality, his fingers now tracing slow circles over your clit, slow and steady, as if he was trying to keep you warm as you thought about it. He’d paid attention to the way you touched yourself, he’d always been good at learning, and this was no different.

“You–” you hesitated, trying to regain focus. This was him taking control of the situation, and he was brilliant at it. Your breath was heavy as you asked, “You want to?”

“I’ve wanted to since that day you gave me your handkerchief,” he admitted. You let out a breathy laugh and used your hands to push further back into the desk, so it was easier for him to bend over you, but instead, he took both of your legs and pulled them to the edge as he kneeled on the floor, levelling himself to your core. His hot breath against you sent a shiver down your spine.

Remus Lupin had never kneeled for anyone other than God or his saints. He had never kneeled for anyone that wasn’t already a spirit in the sky or a very important church figure. And he had certainly never kneeled for a woman.

But you weren’t just any woman, you were an angel, you were his new saint, the one whose name he would repeat like a prayer over and over every night, the one he couldn’t and didn’t want to stop thinking about. So when he kneeled down for you, he didn’t repent for it. No, he adored the idea of surrendering himself to you, of giving you anything and everything you wanted.

His angel, if he could, then he’d also bring you to heaven.

Remus looked at your juicy slit before leaning in a little closer and placing a soft kiss on your plush inner thigh. You shivered as he slowly, kiss by kiss, got closer to your core. You almost unwantedly clenched over nothing. He could see your movements, your hips bending just slightly up and your back arching at the mere idea of having him where you needed, and he smiled. Positioning himself right over your slit, but not closing the gap yet.

“Are you ready, angel?”

“Yes,” you breathed, and Remus didn’t waste a second after that. He leaned down and his tongue traced your slit in the same gentle manner in which he had touched you earlier, he allowed his tongue to explore the outside, licking away all of the juices that had coated you when he used his hands to please you. He moaned when he first got a taste of you.

Remus became desperate for more soon, his hands pulling you closer to his face and then carefully pushing your legs open wider, looking up at you to make sure you were comfortable in the new position, but without taking his mouth away from your cunt. Your face, leaning down on the desk was one of pure, unabashed bliss. He was doing that, he was taking you to heaven, and he loved every single stroke.

Your soft moans when he licked, the gasping when he sucked and kissed your clit with a little more forcefulness, the whimpers you made when he brought his hand to your core, both to use his elbow to keep your legs widened and to trace circles over your clit when he distracted himself with licking some other part of you. With kissing or softly nipping at your slit.

Remus might have not been an expert, but every single sound you made was his guidance, and when you sounded the most pleased, then he knew that’s where he should stay, that he should keep going at it until you were a moaning mess, until you were pushing your hips onto him and he had to hold you back to continue doing it, since he figured you enjoyed it more than when you rocked your hips onto his face. Not that he minded it, he loved that just as much as the fact that he could touch you.

“Fuck Remus,” you breathed, “I think I’m gonna…”

Remus didn’t know much about women getting their climax, only really what his friends had mentioned to him before, and how much harder it was for them. It didn’t seem like that though, it hadn’t been all that hard to get you there, not when he had enjoyed every single second of it thoroughly.

Remus knew though, that you would need a little extra stimulation to get there, so he switched his fingers from your clit towards your entrance, and his mouth back at your clit. He was soft and slow at first, only teasing the area as if to find it. And then he remembered the way you had done it inside the confessionary and dug his finger in. You gasped, and he did just the same. He didn’t know what the hell to expect it to feel, but it was tight, and soft, and slippery and he couldn’t help but imagine his cock inside, and how the warmth and the pleasure would feel. Divine, you were beyond fucking divine.

You moaned his name and he curled his finger inside of you, causing you to gasp as he continued to suck at your clit, and then he massaged, softly but purposefully, curling and sliding his finger until you were trembling, one hand gripping at his shoulder and the other one curling on the side of the table, your nails scratching onto the soft varnish coating of the wood. As he looked at you, he realised just how turned on he was himself. He was throbbing behind his trousers, rocking his hips into nothing as he kept kissing you, the slight friction from his underwear was enough to make him want to tremble as well.

Eventually, you stopped trembling, your breath short and eyes closed as you panted. Your legs, which had been tense with clenching muscles, had relaxed into suppleness. He slowed down his movements when you did, easing you out of your high in the most tender way you had ever seen anyone do. Massaging your tights until your panting turned into a softer and more toned down breath, and just when he was sure you were relaxed, he pressed a soft kiss to your slit, as if he was thanking it for letting him touch you in the way he had. Like you would kiss a saint ikon or the feet of the Jesus statue themselves.

Then he leaned his head on your thigh, and pulled a handkerchief from his trousers, passing it slowly over all the areas he had licked and sucked. Being careful when he got to your slit and noting how much more sensitive you were than at the beginning. When he was done, he pressed another soft kiss, this time to your inner thigh, and then closed his eyes as he enjoyed your warm soft skin pressed onto his cheek.

You pushed yourself up by your elbows, and your heart fluttered at the tenderness of his expression. It was like a spell had been cast on him, where he looked so soft, like the pure, holy man he was and not like the lust-driven one you had turned him into.

After looking at him for a minute, you pushed yourself into a sitting position and placed your hand over his head, he looked up at you like you were the most divine thing he’d ever experienced. Almost purring into your hand as you allowed it to brush over his head and neck. “Let me help you finish,” you said softly and slid from the desk, you were right in the middle of him and the piece of furniture, so close to him you could feel his breath on your face.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

You frowned as you pressed your hand to his lower abdomen, you thought he said it out of shame because he wanted to make you the one blessed today. But you knew that the poor man, starved from touch and probably love, deserved to come more than you who had touched yourself whenever you felt like it for years now.

So you dug your hand in his trousers, but he was soft, and there was something sticky all over your hand. You pulled your hand out of them and stared at it in shock. “You came?”

He was looking at you, neck and ears red with shame. Breathing in before nodding. He couldn’t quite decipher your gaze, but he knew enough about sex to know that when a man came early, it meant he was precocious, overly eager and childlike. Remus despised the idea of not being good enough for you, “I’m sorry.”

“God, don’t be!” you replied. “Did you– were you touching yourself while you…”

“No,” he said a little too fast.

“So this” –you moved your hand, looking at his glistening cum on it– “this was just from giving me pleasure?”

“Well, I’d never–” he started, trying to find an excuse that would make him feel less shameful.

You just smiled and pulled him into a reassuring hug, leaning your head on his shoulder as you rubbed your hands over his back. “That’s okay, darling… It’s just, I never thought a man would feel such pleasure from doing that to me that he came without further stimulation. If anything, I’m flattered. You must not be ashamed.”

“But didn’t you want more?”

“Oh, Remus,” you said as you pulled your head up and leaned close to his ear, enough for your lips to brush against his still-red tips, “I always want more.”

The way you were wrapped around him, the soft way you spoke, it was strangely reminiscent of the serpent tempting Eve. Wanting him to bite onto the forbidden fruit, the fruit that would be having you in the way he so intensely wanted –needed– to have you.

Atonement, penitence…. Could he even have one when he didn’t regret any of his sins? When rather than feeling remorseful, he wanted more, more of anything you’d give him, more of you. You were delightful, stunning, and warm and perfect all over, he wanted to kiss you so bad, but he didn’t know if he was allowed. The image of your lips against him might have been more tantalising than the image of his cock inside you.

Satisfying his carnal needs wasn’t enough anymore, he wanted to appease his mind too, and the only thing that had that ability was you. You felt like peace and tranquillity. Like you were his sacred place, more holy than the very walls surrounding the both of you. But above all, he wanted more, he wanted to be able to touch you again, to feel you so close to him again that he could almost touch your very soul.

“I’m gonna be in charge of the Church during the retreat,” he blurted out.

“Congratulations, Father Remus,” you said with a bit of a smirk, still hugging him as you did.

“What I mean is– the Church, it’s going to be lonely. Probably just me and a few others who will be too busy studying the scriptures for the Pope’s visit next month.”

That’s when you pulled back to look at him, a mischievous expression on your face, “Are you inviting me over for the night, Father Remus?”

“I thought,” he started, and then smirked. “I thought you might want to confess again.”

ACT IX: I am the LORD your God; you shall not have strange gods before me.

The priests were meant to leave by midday. At 9 in the evening, by the time you were set to arrive, the church looked almost deserted. The people from de Diose that would always be walking around in their robes were nowhere to be seen. In the chairs, there was nothing more than dust. You had seen the last person walk out as you walked inside.

She stood right at the entrance when you were walking up the stairs and then did the sign of the cross as she looked up at the altar. You looked at it as well, the altar at Saint Gryffin was beautiful. Made of marble and carved with a design so intricate it could have belonged to a museum. It had golden touches, that you suspected were not made of paint but rather real gold, and right behind it, a little on the higher side, there was a stunning round, stained-glass window that reflected its colours all over the church when the light hit it a certain way, or so you’d heard a woman claim.

You took a deep breath as you looked at it, outside of the church being the oppressive organism that you disagreed with, there was still beauty to be appreciated. But that was the thing about the world, there was something to appreciate even in the most wretched of things, even the most wicked being in creation, had something to be said for him. They had a huge painting of god casting Lucifer down to Earth near one of the walls, and there always seemed to be people who insisted on drawing the Devil as the most beautiful of men. That had been described in the bible of course, but it was very Wildean of the bible to have a man so corrupted be as delightful.

Or perhaps it was very biblical of Wilde to write a book where a beautiful man became corrupted, gave in to every single lewd wish they had, and yet, remained as beautiful as an angel.

As your steps echoed on the empty church, you walked straight towards the confessionary. Since both you and Remus thought it was the best place to hide while he was closing it all down. You heard the big doors of the church being closed, and Remus dismissing one of his older deacons, the one who was studying to become a priest, with the characteristic solemnity of a man of the church.

The same solemnity that seemed to leave him the minute he felt you, standing behind him. You had leaned onto him while he finished up with the locks and whispered in his ear. “Nice to see you again, Father. Will you take my confession?”

He swallowed, he knew it was your little game, and he decided to play along. “Pray tell child, what have you done this time?”

“I was walking on the street,” you said. “On a little one of those stores where they sell elegant underwear for women, or well, I suppose they really sell them for men, so they enjoy their women… I saw a little set.”

“What kind of set?” he asked, his gaze fixed on the wooden door, he pretended to busy himself with the locks, although they were all done by now, he just kept touching them with an air of nervousness that he tried to contain as he spoke.

“Well, it had a bra, one of those really nice push-up bras that make women’s breasts look delightful, and a small little thing for underwear that’s so transparent I might as well be naked while wearing it. But the best part, Rem, oh, the best part is the matching transparent little robe that came with it.” His breath got stuck in his throat, he resisted the urge to turn around as you pressed your body to his back, leaning so close he could feel your lips touching his earlobe. “Would you like to know the colour?”

Remus gulped, so loud it almost made an echo in the church. “Yes.”

“Then turn around and see it for yourself.”

He did, and there you stood, wearing the exact clothes you had described. He imagined the colour you’d chosen had been forest green, like the girl from his magazine, but he never imagined how absolutely enchanting you’d look in such an outfit.

“Your little story inspired me, thought you’d like it,” you said with a smile, and then you looked down at the visible bulge in his pants. “I gather you did?”

Remus was speechless as he stared at you, he was never expecting anyone, let alone you to put such an effort for him, to dress in such a scanty little outfit just to please him. A part of him was dying to take it off, like he’d dreamed with that girl from the magazine, the other part of him, wanted to let you keep it, to have you like that forever. And then, there was the desperate part of him, the one that he couldn’t keep under control as he leaned down and kissed you. His mouth was in yours when he realised he hadn’t even asked if he could.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he pulled apart. “I’m sorry I didn’t–”

You smiled and placed your hands around his neck, “I thought you’d never do that,” you breathed, and pushed him back into the kiss. His lips were soft, and gentle, and it was you the one to press your tongue against them. He complied with your wish, and suddenly your tongues were dancing with each other, deepening the kiss.

Remus’ hands found their way to your waist, and he pulled you closer to him, your stomach pressed against his boner, and he almost flinched when he realised and tried to pull his hips back, but you didn’t let him. “I want to feel it, Rem,” you whispered in between kisses. “I like to feel how good I make you feel.”

“You make me feel better than anything and anyone has ever made me feel,” he retorted. “That’s nothing, that’s just collateral.”

You could have drowned in his words. But instead, you decided to drown in his lips, returning to kiss him with an even more ardent fervour. You somehow got Remus to sit on one of the benches and he pushed his head to look up at you while you kissed him. His hands had gotten just venturous enough to touch thighs, and the idea that he could was only making him harder. The strain of his cock on his trousers was almost painful at this point. You figured when he had to move one of his hands to adjust himself and hissed at the contact.

That was enough for you to climb on top of him. “Sweet thing, what are you–” he tried to ask in between a kiss, but you were already rocking your hips against him before he continued, and his words were interrupted by a moan.

You pulled back and smiled, “Helping you with that tension.”

He stared at you, the way your swollen lips moved and turned upwards into that very like you smile, and he tried not to eagerly jerk against you the next time you leaned your clothed sex closer to him.

“This is the first time I ever– fuck…” Teasing you was hard when you were so damn incredible at making him feel in heaven. “I ever see you wearing knickers.”

“Perhaps your goodness is rubbing off on me,” you replied with an equal smirk.

“That’s not the thing that’s rubbing onto you,” he somehow managed to joke, and you laughed. A laugh so angelical it might have as well come from heaven altogether, it echoed against the vaulted ceiling of the place and then came back to him in a lower, softer tone that made him smile, and drag you back into a kiss. He was clearly much more confident –or perhaps just more eager– today.

“Father Remus,” you said as you pushed your hips on him, he struggled to get a grip on reality as he focused on what you were saying.

“Mhm?”

“I want to confess.”

“Right now?”

“It’s a very sinful thought I’ve had.”

Remus arched an eyebrow and then moaned when you rolled your hips against him again, making sure he was turned on enough to comply with your, actually very sinful little wish.

“Then tell me, dove. I’ll absolve you. I’d absolve you from anything.”

“But I don’t want absolution, Father,” you said and let out a shaky breath. “I want you to sin with me.”

Remus laughed, “Anything you want.”

“You haven’t even heard my request.”

“My answer remains the same,” he said solemnly.

You smiled and leaned closer to him, making sure to lean your hips on his, feeling how hard he was on your core making you so wet you were sure your new knickers were already stained. You whispered what you wanted in his ear. Low, steady, as if you weren’t alone in the church. Then you pulled back to look at him, “So?”

He gulped and looked behind you as if considering your request, there was a nervous gaze on him, a small frown, and you worried your request had been out of line, “I’m sorry,” you said quickly, and pulled from him, leaning on his thighs instead of his hips. A worried expression plastered your features, terrified you might have killed the mood. “If you don’t want to then we don’t have to, we–”

He pulled you into a kiss, he thought it was lovely how quickly you had changed your mind for him, but his words carried meaning, and when he said ‘anything you want’, he really meant it. He pulled his lips from your and pressed kisses all the way to your ear and then whispered “I was just thinking how to get us there.”

You were thrumming with excitement by the time he dragged his hands to your thighs and pulled himself up with you wrapped around him.

“I won’t let you fall,” he said as he noticed you steadying yourself.

“I know,” you said with a smile and pressed a kiss to his neck that made him falter. “I may have my doubts now.”

“I would never let you fall, darling, not without going along with you,” he whispered and started walking towards the chancel. He looked at the Bishop’s chair and imagined having you there, but that wasn’t what you’d asked for.

When he reached the altar, it was easy enough to lean on it and let you sit, the height was just about perfect for him, with how tall he was, your faces were levelled with each other. Remus had been taught to care for the altar, to kiss it, to worship it since it was the symbol of sacrifice, the symbol of God, the cynosure of all eyes during any Eucharistic celebration. He thought it rather proper to place you there, since to him, you were the real cynosure.

And he would treat you like such, he would kiss you, and worship you, like you were God yourself. Because at this point, you might as well have been.

The altar was bare except for a few candles that he hastily pushed to the side as he stared at you, sitting there with your profane little clothes while still looking as holy as an angel. He had been behind the altar perhaps thousands of times, yet he had never felt nearly as illuminated as he had that moment.

“What?” you asked as you tilted your head to the side, a small smile playing on your lips.

“Just admiring how incredibly stunning you look,” he said. And then he tilted his head, his tone changed, “I think I need to confess.”

You smiled, you loved it when Remus joined your little game, you bit your lip and placed your hands on each side of his flushed cheeks. “Speak, dear one, I will absolve you with a kiss.”

“I want to sullen this sacred table by worshipping a different god on it.”

“Different? To him?” you asked as you nodded towards the cross in the back. “A better one?”

“A much more tangible one,” he said. “One that dresses in beautiful lingerie and steals his priests.”

“Just one,” you corrected. “I only want one of his priests.”

He chuckled, “Just one then.”

“Come, I’ll absolve you,” you said and leaned closer to him, pressing your lips on his again.

There were warning signs all around Remus’ head. Red flags telling him to stop, voices calling him a harlot, weak of mind and body, a heathen and a pagan. His reproaching father telling him how much of a disappointment he was, the elder being disappointed at his lewd actions, and the part of him that was still a priest telling him to stop before it was too late, before he wouldn’t be able to do it, but that line had long ago been crossed, and all of those thoughts were the easiest thing to ignore when your sweet lips were in his.

You had to be an angel, there was no other way you could make him feel as incredible as you did. And if not an angel, then you really were a god, his Goddess. And so he would venerate you and worship you on the altar like he’d learned to worship his previous god.

ACT X: You shall not kill

Remus stopped kissing your mouth and started placing soft, feather-like kisses all over your face until he got to your neck, gently moving the thin, translucent fabric of the little robe to the side so he could kiss the skin of your collarbone. Open-mouthed kisses and soft licks that felt desperate filled your senses as he pressed his face to your skin and breathed in your smell.

The slight scent of rose he particularly enjoyed when the church was filled with them for a wedding that the soap you’d specifically bought for today had tainted your skin with, the smell of the city air where you had commuted, and the ridiculously delicious natural smell of your skin. He kissed again and again, slowly letting his hands wander through your body, digging them down to the robe until the small bow that tied it was undone and he pushed it off your shoulders and allowed it to pool down on your hips.

He pulled back to look at you again, lips swollen and red from how much he’d kissed you, lustful gaze lost on you, pupils blown out and softly panting as he regained his breath from the previous kisses. He bit his lips as he stared at your breasts. He’d seen them, but he’d never touched them, you weren’t even sure if he’d ever actually touched a pair in his life, and he had been purposefully avoiding them altogether as he kissed your neck.

You smiled, “You want to take it off, or do you want me to do it?”

He swallowed thickly at that, looking up at your eyes as if trying to make sure you were serious about your words, you raised your eyebrows at that.

“It might be tricky, but I’m sure you’d manage, you’re a clever man, after all.”

He wrapped his hands around you after that, first on your shoulders, and then he got closer, slotting himself even deeper between your legs as he allowed his fingers to delicately brush over your shoulder blades as his eyes were focused on your neck. You looked at him while he did, your own breath nervous and as slow as you could make it. The way he touched you, the way he revered you with every brush of his fingers against skin was almost overwhelming.

You bit your lip as his fingers found the clasp, and tightened your grip on the edge of the altar as the anticipation ate you up, his hands were slow, as if he was trying to figure out what the mechanism was before actually undoing it. But once he did, he didn’t take long, with one hand he pressed one side to your back and with the other he undid the clasp. After that, he placed his hand flat on your back and allowed you to rest there for a second before travelling back to your shoulders and playing with the straps.

He gave a questioning look and you nodded, he didn’t waste time as he slid them down your arms, while carefully removing the green item from your breasts. He saw the way they bounced slightly down and stared at them solely as he removed the rest of the garment and threw it backwards. He got to see the way they perked with the chill air of the night and he stared as if it was the first time he ever looked at them. Perhaps it felt like that since the last time it had been through the confessionary, and he hadn’t even had the time to touch them.

His hands hovered over your breasts before you gave him an approving nod and he leaned close enough to touch them. He went back to kissing your neck as he brushed his thumb over your lower breast and only after he’d felt how soft, and sensitive they were –due to your reaction to his soft touch– did he dare to cup them in his hands.

“Is that okay?” he asked as he tightened his grip on the one he was holding. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

“Not at all,” you responded and leaned closer to him, your other breast brushing against his cassock. “Can I take this off?” you asked as you gripped his shirt.

“You may do as you please to me,” he said honestly. You allowed your hands to travel to his white necktie and pulled it off as you too found a way to kiss his neck. He was pressing kisses to your hair as he delicately brushed his thumb over your nipple and moaned your name from the way you kissed him. It was a little complicated to find the buttons of his shirt at first, but when you did you were quick to undo them and shrug his shirt off. Above it all, you wanted to feel his skin against yours.

You allowed your hands to brush over his scars, you hoped one day he’d tell you why they were there, but for now you did nothing more than admire them as you kissed from his neck all the way to his shoulder. He sighed your name as he delicately pinched your nipples, and then he allowed his hands to travel to your back and push forward, holding you as gravity pushed you down, allowing your back to rest against the cold marble of the altar.

“You’re the prettiest thing my eyes have ever laid upon, you know that?” he asked as he looked at you. At your breasts, at your hands, at the curve of your neck and at the way your hair had sprawled all over the marble. The place had been designed so that the light from the stained glass window fell over the altar at certain moments of the night and day, and at that precise moment, it was reflecting all over you, tinting your skin with infinite colours. The light from it was casting a halo around your head.

If Remus hadn’t realised by then that he would not only break his vows for you but do anything you asked, be it eat from the forbidden fruit or kill a man, he knew it when he saw the way you leaned over your elbows and cocked your head to the side, looking at the way he stared curiously. Remus had already forgone his god for you, and he was ready to forgo himself if you asked.

“Will you kiss me again?” You asked, voice soft, almost innocent.

“I’d do anything you wanted,” he said honestly and leaned into you, pressing kisses to your neck. You felt his skin against yours, rough and soft and you sighed at the blissful feeling his kisses gave you. His kisses went from your neck to your collarbone and then he tentatively brushed his nose over the valley of your breasts, looking up at your reaction before pressing a kiss to one of them. A soft and innocent sort of kiss, before he actually opened his mouth and sucked on one of your nipples, nibbling on it when he realised you shivered at the grazing of his teeth.

Then he continued going down, and slotted himself between your legs, feeling how wet you were over your thin lingerie. He teased you by pulling on the elastic of the knickers, and slid them down your legs before he pressed a kiss to your thigh; and while you were dying to feel his lips on your clit again, there was something else you wanted, something neither of you had dared to try with each other, and if things went anything like they had done the previous time he’d gone down on you, he would have been too spent to do it.

“Not–” you breathed. “I want to do something else today.”

He looked up at you curiously, his hot breath against your core sending shivers down your spine, “Yeah?” he asked, he was clearly as much in a haze as you were, absolutely and irrevocably drunk on you.

“I want you inside me,” you breathed out. He looked at you as if your request was alarming. “Please.”

There was nothing, not in heaven, not on earth, and certainly not in hell that would have made him deny you. He pressed another kiss over your thigh and then he moved you a little further up into the altar, climbing up himself so he had at least a little more leverage. “I’ve never–” he hesitated. “You’ll have to teach me, angel.” The smile you gave him was the most devilish one you’d ever given anyone, but to him it was nothing short of angelical. “Will you?”

“With pleasure,” you retorted, pushed yourself up and turned the two of you around, now his back was on the altar. “It’s quite simple Father Remus, I’m sure you’ll master it in no time like you’ve done with everything else I’ve taught you.”

He just stared at you, eyes filled with lust as he nodded in acknowledgement. You tilted your head forward and let out a soft sigh, lips curved into that same smile as before. You placed your fingers on his collarbone, “I assume you already know the way it works,” you said as you allowed your hand to lay flat against his toned chest, and then dragged it down. “Should I teach you that as well?”

“If it pleases you,” he answered.

You looked at him with a teasing grin and then pushed yourself up to straddle him, knees on either side of his thighs as you slowly undid his trousers and pulled them down. Once they were out of the way you went for his boxers, allowing your hands to brush over his thick-length just to hear his reaction, the groan he tried to suppress was nothing short of thrilling. You didn’t waste much more time before you too pulled them off. His cock sprang up, thick and proud. You bit your lip and dug your nails in your tight before you reached for it.

Remus was sensitive, and you did not want him to come before he was inside of you, so instead of teasing him further with your hands, you accommodated yourself right on top of him and pressed yourself over his cock. Your folds wrapping themselves around it as you rocked your hips back and forth to coat him with your juices. You heard him curse and groan, and you were trying really hard to hold yourself together, but you couldn’t help the mellowing sounds that escaped your mouth as his cock brushed against your clit. He thought it was heavenly, he thought nirvana was at his reach and he wasn’t even from that religion.

“So what you have to do,” you breathed.

“That wasn’t it?” he teased as he saw you attempt to raise yourself from his cock and fail, he placed his hands on your waist to help, but when he figured how good that particular position made you feel, instead of raise he pushed you down on him again, moaning at the way your folds made the skin of his cock pull back.

“Well, that’s great for me,” you said as you leaned towards him and rocked your hips again, your lips so close to his that they brushed each other as you spoke again. “But I can make it better for you.”

Remus wasn’t sure that was possible, but he had thought there was nothing better than touching himself with the thought of you and you had proved him wrong with your sweet lips around his cock. “I wouldn’t mind it if we stayed like this.”

You rolled your hips again and he moaned, “Bet you wouldn’t,” you laughed. And then raised your hips again, his cock sprang up again, and you bit your lip as you looked down and reached for it, accommodating it towards your entrance. You brushed his tip against your clit a couple of times and moaned his name before slowly letting it find your entrance. His breath got caught in his throat as his tip entered you, “Is that okay?” you asked softly.

“Fuck– yes…” he let out. You smiled, and continued with your task, slowly sinking in deeper. Remus was moaning your name as he felt your walls stretch around him. “It’s… really fucking tight.”

“If it’s too much I–”

“Don’t dare stop!” He rushed out. You smiled and continued your careful descent until he was completely inside you. Your head was laying on his chest as the two of you panted, getting used to the intoxicating feeling the other brought. He was filling you up and making you feel things without even having to move.

“How’s that?” You asked as you clenched around him.

“My god, did you just–?” You clenched again and he groaned.

“Gather you liked it?” He gave you a look. “Tell me when you’re ready for more.”

“More?” he asked confused, and you rocked your hips forward, he moaned and felt himself throb inside you, “Okay,” he breathed. “May I?”

You nodded, he placed his hands on your waist again, helping you move your hips on him, and cursed, eyes closing shot as he got used to feeling so overwhelmingly good. You smiled and rolled your hips as you pushed yourself up, resting both of your hands on his chest and using them as leverage for rolling your hips even more.

He accidentally pushed his hips into you, “M’sorry,” he muttered.

“No, that’s good,” you encouraged, and he did it again. “You feel incredible,” he said, almost to himself. “You look incredible,” he added, looking at your face, brows slightly furrowed as you bit your bottom lip and rocked your hips on his, at the way your breasts bounced with the rolling of your hips.

You would be lying if you said you didn’t love his praises. He was always so adamant with them, and they always made your stomach flutter, even now, as he was inside you. His thrust got more desperate, and you realised your weight was making it harder for him to move freely.

“Let’s– Let’s switch,” you stammered. “Take the top so you can move better.”

“You sure?” he asked hesitantly and you nodded. He placed his hands on your back and carefully flipped the two around without disconnecting your bodies and started pounding into you with a little more urgency.

You smiled, and allowed him to rut into you, as he leaned closer to kiss you. “I like this position too,” he said with a smile.

“Mhm?” you asked as you looked into his eyes.

“I can kiss you as much as I please like this,” he said and closed the gap between your lips, biting on the bottom one as he pulled back to look at you again. You clenched around him in retort and he moaned. “When you do that…” he breathed, his forehead pressed into yours.

His thrusts started to pick up the pace as if he was losing control over himself, you instantly knew he was close and dragged your hand down to your clit to rush your own climax.

“What are you?” He asked and lost his trail of thought after you touched your clit and let out a soft mellow moan. Your knuckles brushed against his cock with each rut and he was quick to drag his own hand down –the one he wasn’t using to hold himself above you– and push yours out of the way to draw circles over your clit. “Good?”

“Mhm…” you moaned, eyes shut and completely lost in the feeling of his hands on you. He pounded against you again and somehow reached that spot inside that made you squirm. Your panting increased, and your heartbeat quickened even further. Remus, who was adamant on seeing every single reaction his touch made you feel, decided he had to do it again to hear that sweet sound of yours and soon enough he had you melting for him.

Now he had been the one to take you to heaven, so perhaps he had, in a way, converted you back, since you once again believed such a place existed, even if it was just for a second.

“I think I’m going to–” he cut himself off when he felt cum shut out right inside you. “Fuck. I’m sorry,” he said as he tried to get out. But you were faster, gripping onto his neck and dragging him to a kiss.

“It’s okay,” you clenched around him, feeling yet another ribbon of his warm cum inside you. “Please do it inside.”

Remus tried not to moan at your request and hid his blushed face in your neck as he continued to thrust inside you, movement erratic as he milked the rest of himself on you.

When he was done, he fell on top of you, his head beside yours as he breathed thickly, his weight crushing you in a way that you thought was insanely pleasurable. After a few minutes, you tilted your head to the side and reached your hand up to play with his hair as leaned your lips close to his ear. “So, how was it?”

He scoffed at your question, you definitely knew how insanely good it had been for him. “As if it weren’t obvious.”

“I’d still like to hear you say it,” you said with a wicked smile.

“Insane,” he said and turned to look at you. “Absolutely, and undeniably mental.”

“Yeah?”

“I thought I was in heaven.”

“Maybe we both were,” you said honestly. He pulled from you and allowed himself to lay beside you, not missing the way his cum slid down your folds. You slotted yourself in between his arm and his chest, and brushed your hands over his toned chest.

“Father?” you started.

He turned to you, “Don’t call me that anymore. I’ve broken my vows, I’ve killed him.”

You looked at him with a sort of forlorn expression, “I’m sorry,” you said honestly. You had wanted him so much, that you hadn’t thought of how your wishes would affect him.

“Don’t be,” he said with a smile, “I am not.”

Even if he had shattered his vows, even if he had broken most of the church’s rules, he’d had seen heaven, and he did not want, and wouldn’t want to go back from it. Remus recognized every single thing he’d done wrong, he’d seen his vileness, but he decided he’d go on with it.

Because how could it possibly be wrong to kiss you? How could it be wrong to touch you and to feel himself inside you when it felt so good? There were no righteous men and no catholic god that could have convinced him that what’d he’d done with you was wicked, not when he saw your smile, and not when he looked into your hypnotising eyes. Every single thing about you was perfect, and he wouldn’t have changed a thing of what he’d done.

Remus had decided to switch religions, he’d decided to get a new creed, he now fervently believed that you were his everything.

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a-polite-melody · 2 months

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“Omg the transandrobros trying to make autoandrophilia (AAP) a thing are so transmisogynistic. They see the transmisogynistic theory of autogynephilia (AGP) and say ‘how can I make this about me?’ There’s nothing here to reclaim for you, you’re just stealing valour from transmisogyny.”

Way to just make a bunch of assumptions.

There absolutely is a concept that’s been weaponized against gay transmascs from medical bs around transition (it was basically impossible for lesbian transfems, as well as gay transmascs, to transition in the US at least until the 1980s; look up Lou Sullivan for more on that) to social media callouts, dogpiles, and doxxings. It is a concept that doesn’t have a formalized name like AGP (though a quick google search shows that prominent people who speak about AGP have been using AAP in conjunction with AGP since 2009) but is a concept which is similar to that of AGP and used in some similar ways against transmascs as AGP is against transfems.

One place you can very easily find this attitude (to go back to the stuff about social media, though there are implications beyond the scope of just social media here) is baked into the transmed “criticism” of gay/mlm transmascs/AFAB nonbinary people which featured (unfortunately) pretty prominently in the tumblr trans world for a long time, and while it may not be nearly as prominent now, it’s still around and easy to find if you look specifically for transmed stuff. Hell, it moved out of transmed spaces and became a tumblr-wide phenomenon of harassing (and worse) the “fujoshis”—these gross women who were so fetishistic of gay men and into gay fanfic and bl manga they deluded themselves into thinking they’re the gay boys in their favourite anime—in the name of protecting the trans community and the gay community from these infiltrators and walking conversion therapy fakebois.

I denied that I was transmasc for so long because I was worried that this “phenomenon of delusional women tricking themselves into thinking they’re men to absolve themselves the guilt of being fetishistic creeps toward gay men, reinforced by encouraging each other into the delusions” was an actual, real thing I needed to worry about, and that I might have been falling into this trap.

I worried, because the world was telling me that this (though not called the phrase) AAP phenomenon existed at the same time as when I had to actually like… actually fully delve into learning about the LGBTQ+ community after realizing I was bi to even know that being trans in a way that was something other than MTF even existed. It made more sense to me that I, while actively trying not to, was actually internally fetishizing gay men and falling into delusions than it did for me to be transmasc, because being transmasc seemed like hardly even a thing while the problem of these “fujoshis” seemed like something huge.

But yes. Absolutely nothing to reclaim here. Only wanting to steal valour from trans women and be big huge transmisogynists by making trans women’s problems into our own, not talking about any actual problems transmascs actually have because we don’t have those kinds of problems because some dumbass on the internet says so. (/this whole paragraph is sarcasm)

#my post #transandrophobia #transmisandry #anti transmasculinity #atm #autoandrophilia #more people being horrible in the transandrophobia tag #how you know I just blocked someone: I make a huge post like this #lol

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punching-pentagrams · 1 month

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Stolen Away

Here is the one shot for my first giveaway winner @hawke1917 ! Enjoy!

Lucifer x fem sinner reader

Word Count: 4.6 k

CW: Trauma, Anxiety, Kidnapping, Fluff, Fear, Hurt/Comfort, Angst Depictions of Violence, Torture

It was a relatively peaceful morning in Hell, you stood out on the balcony of your room that you shared with Lucifer and watched the residence below as you brushes out your hair. At some point you feel a hand on your arm, and you turn to she Lucifer smiling at you with loving eyes.

“May I?” he said, holding out a hand for the brush. You smiled and handed the brush to him, you loved how much he loved brushing your hair. You never wanted to make him feel obligated, but he always seemed to find you when you were brushing your hair or he would find times to play with it. And you were never upset by it because his touch was to die for.

Lucifer started to brush, “How are you this morning, my love?” he asked.

“I am doing well, it’s nice today, I like people-watching on days like this,” you smiled and sighed at the blissful sensory of Lucifer brushing through your hair. He blushed to see you so content at his touch. After a few minutes, he too looked out over the city.

“It is nice, isn’t it? Would you like to go out shopping with me in the city today?” he asked.

You turned and pulled him into a tender kiss, “Yes! I would love to. Let me go get ready.” You ran off to your closet, leaving Lucifer in a lovely daze on the balcony with the brush in his hand. He set down the brush and get himself ready as he waited for you. Along with his usual outfit, he also put on a necklace that you had gotten for him a few months ago as pet of a matching set. He wasn’t much of a jewelry guy but he loved matching with you or wearing things you got him.

You came out in a nice top and skirt with comfortable shoes for walking the city in, as well as the necklace than matched his own. Lucifer looked you over as you came out and gave you a dopey smile, “Hells you are beautiful.”

You giggled, “I feel a little underdressed next to you though,” you said, flicking the tip of his hat.

He looked down at himself and then as your sheepishly, “Is it too much? I can change!”

You took Lucifer’s hand, “No no! I was just teasing you, Luci. You look wonderful. Come on, let’s go out!”

You give him a kiss and start to pull Lucifer towards the door. You knew you had to get him going or else he would overthink that comment into an oblivion, you loved him so much but his anxiety and depression could just engulf him sometimes if he couldn’t get distracted fast enough. It was getting much better over time. But you still worried about it at times.

Before long, you and Lucifer make it down to the shops of the entertainment district of the Pride ring. It couldn’t be helped that you too would attract the stares and comments of the people of Hell, mostly people gawking and wanting to talk to Lucifer, which you understood, he was the King after all!

Some people also wanted to talk to you though, wondering how you snagged the King, some weird comments about you stealing him from Lilith, and then every once in a while you would get someone who just wanted to tear you down. Today was one of those days, because it wasn’t someone you could identify, just every once in a while you would hear a quick word or phrase. “Fake”, “sellout”, “homewrecker”, “slut”. They were all so spread out over the day that you didn’t really notice a pattern, Lucifer noticed one of the words on a more quiet part of the walk and got angry, shouting towards the sound, and you wrapped your arms around him to calm him down.

“Sweetheart, it’s ok, don’t feed into it, they just want to get a rise out of us,” you said calmly, holding his face.

“I know… I just hate that they are going after you. Lilith and I had an amicable split and she knows that I’m with you now. That should not be anyone else’s business,” he pouted.

You gave him a soft smile, “We are in hell baby, this is going to happen. Come on, let’s go get some food.” He sighs, tucks a stray hair behind your ear, kisses you, and then takes your hand as you walk together down towards a favorite food place of yours. On your way to the restaurant, you saw a store on the was that had the most adorable little circus clown rubber duck in the window, you almost pointed it out to Lucifer, but then you realized that you would rather it be a surprise, so you kept quiet and had a thought to come back for it later.

You two arrived at your favorite lunch spot, and of course one of the staff scrambles seeing the King of Hell at their front door. Lucifer tries to help the poor sinner remain calm and you get set up at a table. Lucifer reaches over to hold your hand during most of the meal, partly because he was romantic like that, but also because all of the attention was starting to make him feel nervous. He liked being out with you but fuck, these sinners sometimes made it really hard to be out. You tried to sooth him by rubbing your thumb on the back of his hand, and you watched him relax a little. He sighed, maybe he should have dresses down a little, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten as noticed then.

Food came and the both of you ate and chatted, giggling and having fun. At the end, Lucifer went to go pay for the meal. You told Lucifer then that there was a store you wanted to go to by yourself really quick and that you would be right back. Lucifer gave you a quick kiss before you walked out and down to the store. You tried not to run, but you were just so excited about this duck, it just fit his vibe so well.

You walked into the store and saw an imp in a cowboy hat and bright yellow eyes at the counter. They saw you approach and gave you a big smile, “Welcome in! It’s an honor to have you in your highness!” he said with a a southern accent and a wide sharp smile, a smile that almost felt a little forced.

“Oh… hahah… oh no I’m no royalty,” you added.

The imp laughed and walked around the counter, holding a glowing white lasso, “Haha, oh I know.” He quickly tossed the rope and caught you in it, spinning you in tightly before you can get free. You try to scream but he uses his tail to hold a knife to your throat, and not just any kind of knife, one made of angelic steel. You went quiet.

“Ahh, a smart one I see. Figured you may have been at least a little familiar with this metal. Seeing as how you and your Princess’ little friends seemed to be dripping in it several weeks ago,” he sneared. So… he had been watching you?

“What do you want from me?” you asked quietly.

“I want you to come with me,” he said, tugging the rope tighter, “we are gonna go someplace where your little King will never find you.” He laughed and you felt a sharp pain in the back of your head before everything went dark.

Over near the restaurant Lucifer waited for 10, 20, 30, minutes, and you never returned. He started to get nervous. He sent you a text or two and you didn’t respond. This was not like you at all. After the half hour, he decided to just call you. There was no ring, it went straight to voicemail, a chill ran up his spine. He called again, voicemail. And again, voicemail.

At this point, Lucifer was starting to panic. He took off and started to fly up and down the streets, most were just marveling at his wings, but a few called out to him. “My girlfriend, (y/n), she was just with me and now I can’t find her. Has anyone seen her?” He gave your description, showed a picture of you to a few people, even showed the necklace to see if anyone had seen someone with the same one. One person pointed him towards the shop that you went into. He went towards it and landed, seeing the circus rubber duck in the window, is that what you had come here for?

He walked in but saw no one there, “Hello!” he called out, still on guard. He heard a noise from a hall closet. He carefully went and opened the door, and a young imp woman tided in ropes tumbled out. Lucifer got her free of the ropes quickly.

“What happened?!” he said to the woman.

“Your majesty! I… I don’t know! This man came in, an imp, cowboy hat and yellow eyes, southern accent. He tied me up and shoved me in here! I heard someone else come in, a woman that he called “your highness”. I think he took off with her.”

“Where?!” Lucifer yelled.

The woman pulled back, “I don’t know! He didn’t say! Please don’t hurt me, your majesty!”

Lucifer took a breath, realizing he was scaring an innocent woman. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to yell at you… I have to find her.” He ducks out of the shop and takes to the air, looking to find and signs of you or the imp the woman had mentioned. But this man was quick and he had gotten you out of there quickly, there was no trace of you or him.

What could he do? Where was there to start looking for you? Who could he call? One of the Sins? He thought quickly, thinking about who would be the best to call. Then he remembered that Ozzie had told him about his boyfriend Fizz getting kidnapped several months ago, maybe he would have an idea of where to start. From the skies, Lucifer started a video call with Ozzie.

Ozzie’s face showed up on the screen, “Hey Luc, not like you to call out of, ohhhh noooo, Lucifer what’s wrong?” Ozzie said after seeing Lucifer’s face.

“It’s (y/n), I think she’s been kidnapped. Please I need help and I don’t know where to start,” Lucifer wailed into the phone.

“Oh shit! Uhh… ok, hang on.” Ozzie’s faces move to look at someone off screen. “Fizzy? Do you have the number of that old friend of yours?” Muffled response from Fizzaroli. “Ya, Blitzø.” Muffled response. “Shit.” Muffled response. “Stolas? Ok.” Ozzie looked back at the camera, “Do you mind if I add Stolas Goetia to the call? He has a… friend of sorts that can help. He has saved both Fizzy and Stolas before.”

“Anything, I’ll take anyone’s help. I just need to find her!” Lucifer panicked.

“Ok ok! Try to stay calm Lucifer, we will find her. Try to find a place to land for now. I don’t want you flying while you are panicking.”

Lucifer nodded and landed on a nearby building roof while Ozzie got Stolas on the call.

“Well hello Asmodeous! A pleasure to hear from you, and… my stars, is that Lucifer?” Stolas asked.

“It is, he has a bit of a problem, we are wondering if you can help connect us with the person that saved you and Fizzy, that… Blitzø? Lucifer’s girlfriend has gone missing.” Ozzie said.

“Oh my! Has she been taken from you, my dear King? I would be happy to connect you with my Blitzy, him and his friends are very good at finding and saving people,” Stolas said with pride in his voice.

“Yes! Please! I need someone to find her!” Lucifer said, pulling at his hair. How many more people would he need to get on the phone before he could find someone that could help? As many as it took! He kept anxiously fidgeting with his necklace.

Stolas added Blitzø to the call, and Blitz chaotically picked up the phone ”What the fuck do you want Stolas? I’m in the middle of a meeting right now! Also video call, that’s bold of… whoa. Holy shit is that fucking Lucifer?” Lucifer awkwardly waved. “Whoaaa, Moxxie, Millie, Loonie, look it’s King Lucifer!” Lucifer watches as the faces of the other three squish into the video and wave, Lucifer gives another awkward wave back.

“Wait,” Blitz said “this isn’t some weird sex thing, is it Stolas?”

Stolas waved a hand, “No no no darling, this is a matter of the utmost importance. His majesty’s girlfriend has been kidnapped and I know you are just so talented at finding things, he needs your help.” Lucifer caught some flirty undertones in Stolas’ voice towards Blitz but he chose to ignore that.

Blitz blinked, “The King of Hell needs our help, this is fucking awesome! Alright, lay it on me, Luci, what’s the sitch?”

“And you uhh… trust this guys Stolas?” Lucifer added.

“With my very life,” Stolas said, putting a hand over his heart.

“Mine too!” Fizz called out from behind Ozzie.

Lucifer nodded and told Blitzø everything that had happened with you leaving to go get something, no response on phone calls or texts, and the reports from the woman.

“Wait… run that guy’s description past me again?” Blitz asked.

“Imp, short white hair, cowboy ish hat, yellow eyes, a kind of southern accent?” Lucifer said, “I didn’t see him but the woman at the shop did, she was tired up with rope.”

“Kinda like she had been lassoed?” Blitz said flatly.

“Ya!” Lucifer said.

“Fuck! Not that god damn prick again, why does he keep fucking kidnapping people?!” Blitzø said as he set down the phone and started to dig for tools.

Stolas gasped, “You don’t think it’s that Striker now, do you Blitz?”

“Oh I know it’s fucking Striker, he has such a signature style I can practically fucking smell it at this point,” Blitz added.

“Who is Striker?!” Lucifer asked.

“He is an Imp who is a sort of bounty hunter of sorts, he kidnapped Fizzy, Blitz, and Stolas before. He almost kicked Stolas before!” Ozzie added.

Killed? “Wait… does that mean he…” Lucifer said.

“Has access to angelic steel? You bet your fucking ass he does, and I have a fucking score to settle with him,” Blitz picks the phone back up, “but that also means I know exactly where he is. The Wrath Ring.”

“What? But… mortal souls don’t leave the Pride ring?” Lucifer added.

“That wouldn’t stop him from finding a way to smuggle her into the ring, also you would be less likely to suspect him there with a mortal soul. Trust me your majesty, I have this covered. Anything else you need me to know?” Blitz asked.

Lucifer sniffles, “No, just bring her back to me. Please.”

Blitz salutes Lucifer, “We will get her back sir” Blitz puts on some sunglasses, “Alright, bitches. Saddle up, we are heading to Wrath!” Then Blitz hung up on his end.

Lucifer took a deep breath and sighed, he was so worried about you. Worried that this “Striker” guys was going to harm you. Was it to get to him? Or something else?

“It’s gonna be ok Luci,” Ozzie said.

“Yes, and is there anything else we could possibly do to support you, Lucifer?” Stolas added.

“I… I don’t know… I wanna go back home but I don’t wanna be alone right now. I’m so scared for her. If I knew where she was I could take care of it myself… but tracking is not one of my strong suits…” Lucifer said.

“They have a hellhound on their team, she is good, she found my daughter when she got lost on Earth one time. They will find her, Lucifer,” Stolas said.

“How about you come over and hang with me and Fizz, Lucifer. Stolas can come too if you want that,” Ozzie offered.

Lucifer nodded, “Be there in a sec.” Then he hung up. Lucifer opened a portal and stepped into the lobby of Ozzie’s residence, and a second later, Stolas opened his own portal and stepped in, right as Ozzie rounded the corner with Fizz. Ozzie sighs and puts a hand on Lucifer’s shoulder.

“I’m just so worried about her, especially if he has access to angelic steel… oh… my darling girl…” Lucifer started to cry. Ozzie and Stolas looked at each other, Stolas was thinking back to his own encounter with Striker, but he was not going to share that with Lucifer now, it would only worry him.

“Nothing we can do now besides wait Lucifer, I’m sure once they find (y/n), Blitz will be calling us so that you can swoop down there and take them out yourself,” Stolas said.

“Until then, come join Fizzy and I for food, we just finished making lunch,” Ozzie said leading them further into their home. Lucifer had still recently eaten and was not feeling like more, but he was willing to be with them while he waited for the results of the search. Fizzaroli chanted “Burger time, Burger time,” as they walked to the kitchen, which at least got Lucifer to crack a small smile. But seeing Ozzie with Fizz and Stolas talk about Blitz made him feel your absence even more. He held onto the necklace that matched yours, and thought, ‘We will find you, Sweetheart, I promise.’

———————————————————————————————————————

Your eyes opened as you came back to consciousness, the only thing you could see was the white glow of the rope around you, and two bright yellow eyes, that were looking at you from several feet away.

“Aww, so the King’s pet is now awake. Welcome back to the land of the dead… for now,” the man said and chuckled.

“Who are you? What do you want from me?” You asked.

The eyes squinted and moved up and then slowly towards you, “Name’s Striker, not that it will matter soon. and I’m here to torture you, maybe kill you.” He gave an evil chuckle, and as he grew closer, you saw another light start to shine silver about a foot below his eyes, in the shape of a blade. You froze, remembering that he had angelic steel on him. One wrong move and you would be dead for a second time, no Lucifer, no hotel.

You swallowed hard, “I’ll do anything you ask, just tell me what you want.”

He continued to walk towards you and held the angelic blade to your chin and lifted it up, you could now see a little more of his face, and it was the same man who tied you up.

“Smart girl,” he growled, “But I didn’t drag you here because I needed something from you, although using you to get to that royal family would be pretty nice. But I know I can’t take him on. No… I’ve been hired to kill you my wanna-be royal.”

You scowled, “I am not a wanna-be royal, I love Lucifer despite him being the King, and I care about what Charlie is doing despite her being the Princess!”

Striker flicked the blade across your check and you gasped as you started to feel blood drip down your face. “Pitiful that you would believe your own lies, anyone that chases a blue blood is always wanting what they have. Even if you do care, there is something someone wants out of it. And the people that want you dead, don’t like that some sinner got to be by his side. What makes you so special that he chose you above anyone else?”

You breathed heavily, “There… there are other sinners that want me dead because I’m with Lucifer?” This comment earned you another flick of his blade, this time on your arm, then he kicked you over in the chair you were in and glared over you.

“More than just sinners, baby cakes,” he glared down at you. “I’m personally a fan of all the royals and their mates being dead. They treat us like scum!”

“No! Please! Striker I don’t want anyone to feel that way! Let me talk to Lucifer and we can try to fix things!”

This response ended with the knife plunged into your thigh, and you let out a scream.

“Oh see! Now that you are at the end of my knife, you are willing to reform things. Well it ain’t gonna work this time! I’m not listening to blue bloods, or their lying simps!” Striker yelled.

Tears started to stream down your face. All you could think about was Lucifer, how scared he probably was, and how he was going to find you in this cave, dead. You dare not make any more comments, hoping that maybe your silence will buy you more time for… something, anything. You didn’t know if anyone was going to save you from this, but you wanted to hope.

Striker continued to walk around in the darkness for a while, leaving cuts or jabs into your body with his knife, leaving you screaming as he tormented you. You secretly hoped your screams would tell someone, anyone, that you needed help, but who in Hell would come save you other than Lucifer and the hotel crew? How would they know where to find you.

A while later, you heard something that sounded like a motor and a light, showing more of the area round you, and showing that you were in a cave of some sort. Striker was distracted by the car as it came closer until it came to a screeching halt as three imps and a hellhound jumped out.

“There you are you fucking psycho! Nice job finding a different creepy ass mine shaft in Wrath, how many of these places are there!” The tallest of the imps called out.

“Blitz?! What the hell are you doing here?!” Striker asked as he moved into a more aggressive stance, pulling out a gun.

“Ahh, well you see, you pissed off the King of Hell and uhhh… he has contacts. And unfortunately for you, you are so fucking bad at your job that you practically leave a calling card at this point! An imp with yellow eyes, a cowboy hat, and a southern accent that loves kidnapping royals or there bitches? That just screams “Striker” pal.” Blitz started pulling out his phone as he talked.

“What are you doing?” Striker said.

Stolas picked up the phone, Blitz smiled and just said, “Oh nothing, just tell my friend where we finally found you sick fucks with King Lucifer’s girlfriend, at the middle part of the eastern mineshaft in Wrath by the way, so that he can come take care of you.”

A moment later, a red portal opened up above you all and Lucifer flew out, all six wings flapping furiously, full demon mode out on display. Lucifer saw you, and then locked his eyes on Striker and dove at him. Striker was able to narrowly miss Lucifer’s first lunge, but not the second as Lucifer swung back around and grabbed Striker, taking him to the ground and knocking the weapons out of Strikers hands, and holding him down.

“WĦÄȚ ŤĦĘ FŲĆĶ ÐÍÐ ŶØŰ ŤĦĨŅĶ ŶØŮ ŴĚŘÊ ÐØÏŃĞ ĶĪÐNĄPPÌÑĞ ĦĚŘ?” Lucifer roared at Striker below him. Striker was now shaking.

“Please! Ahh… My King… it was a job, a good paying one, I just take what I can get,” Striker stuttered beneath Lucifer, now fearing for his life.

“ŴĦØ ĦĨŘĘÐ ŶØŮ ȚØ ĶǏŁŁ HĘŘ?!” Lucifer roared again.

“Just this small group off pissed off sinners! Fan girls of some kind, I don’t know! They had crazy money to pay me!” Striker pleaded.

Lucifer was about to start swinging when he heard your voice.

“Lucifer, stop,” you pleaded in a pained whisper.

Lucifer turned to look at you, bloodied and beaten in a tipped over chair. Millie and Moxxie ran over to untie you and put on some basic bandages to cover open wounds.

“Bū�� ŵħŷ, mŷ løvę? Łøøķ ãț ħøŵ ħę ħåş ħůřț ŷøù?” Lucifer said calmer.

“Yes… but he says the imps suffer… and are treated poorly… worse than sinners… I want… to figure this out…” you slowly said through a rasp.

Striker’s eyes went wide, was this bitch for real? He looked up at Lucifer, who looked down at him. “Ïş țħâț țřüę?”, Lucifer asked down at Striker, who nodded. Lucifer then looked over at Blitz, Millie, and Moxxie, who also nodded.

Lucifer sighed, and referred back to his normal self while still holding Striker down, “Fine. I’m sorry you have all had that experience, I will work on seeing how we can do better with that. But if you come for me and my loved ones again, it’s gāmė øvęř for you pal, ok?” He said looking down at Striker. He nodded again. Lucifer got up and released him, and Striker slinked away.

Lucifer then ran over you and looked you over, cupping your face in his hand, “Baby… oh fuck…” He almost started you cry seeing all of your cuts. He started to heal you, and it sort of worked, but heeling does not work as well again wounds made with angelic steel.

“Sweetheart, it’s ok… I’m ok. I’m sorry I was so stupid,” you apologized.

Lucifer shook his head, “No… this isn’t your fault my love. There are some crazy people in hell and… I’m sorry. I should have known better.”

“Sounds like we just need to be more careful going out,” you added.

“Well… as touching as this love fest is, can we get the fuck out of here? One of your little portals would be killer for getting out of this shithole… ya know, if you don’t mind… your majesty,” Blitz said, realizing throughout the statement that he should probably talk to Lucifer with a little more respect. Lucifer lifted an eyebrow, but sighed and picked you up, and opened a portal back up to the Pride ring, not far from the hotel, and everyone went through, even Blitz’s car.

Lucifer and you then took your leave of the others and he flew you over the hospital, even though you insisted that you were ok. You were patched up and sent back home a few hours later. Once at home, Lucifer continues to fuss over you until you asked him to just lay by your side. Eventually he did lay down next to you and calm down a little, holding you close to him but being careful of your wounds. Every shift and groan made him look at you with fearful eyes still.

“Do you need anything? Do you need me to move?” He asked.

“Luci, it’s ok, it’s gotta hurt for a bit but I’ll live, I promise,” you stroked his hair, “What would help the most is if you don’t panic with every move I make. I promise if I need something I will tell you?”

“Ok…I just don’t understand how you can be so calm after all of that,” Lucifer said setting his head down of the pillow and looking at you.

“I’m not calm… but I’m not scared either… I’m home save in your arms. I know I’m safe with you,” you said.

“I’m the reason you got hurt,” he said sadly.

“No. You are not responsible for what sinners do or how imps act. I left myself in the open. Shit happens. I just know that I need to protect myself more in the future. Ok?” You said, moving a hand to cup his check.

He nodded, and he snuggled in close to you as you both drifted to sleep after a long, chaotic day.

#hazbin hotel #lucifer morningstar #hazbin hotel lucifer #lucifer hazbin hotel #lucifer #lucifer magne #fanfic #fanfic writing #lucifer x reader #fanfiction #angst with a happy ending #angst #hurt/comfort #asmodeous #stolas #blitzø #hellaverse #punching pentagrams

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yelena-bellova · 1 year

Text

Twenty Years Later: Joel Miller x F!Reader - Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten: September 26th, 2003

Plot: There are very few tragedies in life that come with warning.

Word Count: 12.8k (longest chapter yet)

Warnings: tlou ep.1 spoilers, language, canon-typical violence, gore, blood, guns, death, loss of a child, injuries, implied smut (16+)

A/N: Well, we’ve arrived at that fateful chapter…this took so long to even be emotionally able to write. There are so many small details that I hope people catch, and plenty of things to remember for future chapters.

As always, this series is 16+ and I will not be adding anyone to the taglist unless your age/range is specified in your bio. Gotta look out for younger eyes 👀

I hope y’all enjoy this one, and thank you so much for all the kind words, theories and general love I receive throughout the week 💞

————————

September 26th, 2003. Austin, Texas.

There are very few tragedies in life that come with warning.

Families of the terminally ill are given a vague timeline of when they’ll lose their loved one.

Soldiers are told before marching into battle that they may lose their life.

But a car crash does not announce itself before causing the collision.

A heart attack doesn’t prepare its victim before it steals their breath.

Nor did Cordyceps feel it owed the world any notice before it arrived.

On the morning of September 26th, Y/n was awoken by strips of sunlight coming through the blinds of Joel’s bedroom window. She was the early riser out of the two and she never minded, it gave her more time to admire the handsome lump weighing her down.

Y/n brushed a strand of hair off her boyfriend’s forehead and pressed a feather light kiss to it. Joel didn’t wake easily, but she liked to say she at least tried the sweet way before having to go nuclear. She gently rubbed his back, running her palm up and down the warm skin, but it only made him settle deeper into her chest. Y/n smiled and shook her head, knowing that in mere seconds….

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

It truly was miraculous how deep Joel could go into his rest. Y/n rolled her eyes and tried to reach across the pillows to switch off the clock, her fingers wiggling in the air as she strained. With his arms firmly wrapped around Y/n’s body, Joel didn’t even budge.

Finally, salvation came in the form of Sarah banging on the bedroom door, jolting Joel awake.

“Alarm,” the girl called, raising her voice the second time, “Alarm!”

“Thank you,” Y/n called back.

Joel rolled over, barely aware of his surroundings, and switched off the clock. He pushed up on one arm and turned back to his girlfriend, watching him with a smirk.

“What?”

Y/n shook her head, “You must be great in emergencies.”

Joel rubbed at his eyes, “Maybe I’m a little tired because someone wore me out last night.”

“Oh, don’t blame me for this,” Y/n laughed, “A year and a half and I’ve never seen you wake up when your alarm goes off. Not once.”

Joel looked down at her, squinting from the sunlight, a small smile playing on his lips, “Maybe I hear it, but there’s a more compellin’ reason to ignore it.”

He slipped back down into the sheets, resting his head once again on Y/n’s chest.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Y/n began to shimmy out of his arms, “We gotta get up.”

Joel tightened his hold around her torso, “My birthday, I make the rules.”

“No, it’s your birthday and Sarah and I make the rules,” Y/n corrected. Joel had never been one for celebrating the day, meaning it was up to Sarah and Y/n to make the day special, “What you want actually ranks very low on the list.”

Joel was paying very little attention to his girlfriend’s words, trailing a line of kisses up the chest of his t-shirt she was wearing and across her neck. “Five minutes,” he mumbled against her skin.

“No,” Y/n denied, her pulse speeding up the further his lips travelled.

“Yes,” Joel ignored her protests, making his way up to where her jawline met her ear.

“No,” Y/n laughed, her words not lining up with her reaction as she ran a hand over Joel’s hair.

“Say it again, honey,” Joel whispered against her ear, “And mean it.”

Y/n was teetering on the edge of letting him take what he wanted, but her loyalty to Joel’s daughter won out. “Sarah’s cooking you breakfast,” she said, slipping her hand between their chests, “And I’m not gonna be the one to tell her that her dad missed out on her efforts because he was horny.”

Joel snorted, dropping his head and laughing against Y/n’s chest.

Y/n pulled his face up to hers and laid a kiss on his lips, “Happy Birthday.”

“Just another reminder I’m gettin’ old,” Joel grumbled.

“True,” Y/n smiled, taking his scratchy cheeks into her palms, “But you’re my old man.”

Joel chortled, running his hands over Y/n’s body one last time before reluctantly rolling off of her. Their day had to begin, whether he wanted it to or not…

The two got dressed for work, while Y/n hadn’t officially moved in with the Millers, it was her second home. She kept practically one of everything in Joel’s room because of how often she slept over.

Y/n was the first of them down the stairs, landing in the kitchen where Sarah was already laying strips of bacon in a pan, “Can you take this so I can get the eggs?”

“You got it,” Y/n responded, switching places with the girl.

Sarah opened the fridge doors, getting a whiff of the inside, “When was the last time we cleaned this out?”

“Uh, two weeks ago, I think,” Y/n replied.

“Well, something died in it recently,” Sarah stated, grabbing a bowl to whisk the eggs in.

Sarah and Y/n’s relationship had stayed as steady as her and Joel’s. She’d expected some sort of pushback eventually, Sarah had just hit the teenage years, but it had yet to come. Y/n theorized it was because the young girl was just happy to have a woman in her life, but she felt like that was giving herself too much credit.

With the protein cooking on the stove, Sarah started searching through the cabinets. Joel had just come downstairs, still buckling his belt.

“Where’s the pancake mix?” Sarah asked her dad.

Still groggy, Joel scrunched his brows. “Oh, I was-” he’d forgotten the trip to the store he was supposed to take the night before, “Yeah, I was. Sorry.”

“I was gonna make you birthday pancakes,” his daughter complained, marching to the fridge and muttering to herself, “I swear…”

Joel ignored the smell of the food cooking and headed straight for the coffee pot, “You know, I don’t really like pancakes.”

“I know you don’t,” Sarah replied, pouring a glass of orange juice, “It was for my and Y/n’s benefit.”

“We’ll survive,” Y/n said, working on the eggs while Sarah was away, “Though pancakes are a weird thing to not like.”

Joel bristled at his girlfriend’s remark, turning around and facing Sarah with the glass of juice extended towards him.

“Vitamin C,” she explained.

For as much as Joel took care of his daughter, the roles were beginning to shift the older they both got. Sarah could spot his bad habits and tried to fix them wherever she could, the biggest one being his lack of actual nutrition. The man existed on coffee.

Joel took the glass from her, setting his mug down and humoring Sarah with a sip.

Y/n chuckled as she watched his expression turn sour, “Look more enthusiastic. I dare you.”

Joel grimaced, proceeding to pick up the coffee as soon as Sarah was back at the stove.

“You get your, uh, homework done?” Joel asked Sarah, waiting for her smile when she turned around, “Fractions?”

Sarah laughed, it was fact not only that she was ahead of her classmates, but Y/n was her tutor when it came to math. Joel wanted nothing to do with the subject.

Y/n and Sarah plated the feast and the three of them sat down at the table, as they did most mornings. Between Y/n and Joel’s work schedules and Sarah’s extracurriculars, it was the only guaranteed time they had each day to spend together.

“How old are you again?” Sarah asked her dad.

“Thirty-six,” Joel answered with a mouthful of egg.

“Gonna have to start wearing diapers soon,” Sarah joked, her tone remaining remarkably even.

”Who says I don’t already?” Joel replied, it wasn’t hard to track where Sarah’d gotten her humor from. He proceeded to pick something out of his teeth, looking to his daughter, “Shell.”

“Calcium,” she said, grinning wide with a mouthful of eggs on display.

“Lovely,” Joel muttered, looking over at Y/n as she laughed, “You’re encouragin’ bad table manners.”

Y/n shrugged and held her coffee mug to her lips, ”I see it as supporting a potential future as a comedian.”

The truck engine in the driveway signaled that Tommy was there to pick his brother and Y/n up for the day.

“Is there enough for Uncle Tommy?” Joel asked Sarah.

“There would’ve been,” Sarah grumbled into her plate, still bitter about the lack of pancakes.

“I can whip him up something, if we’ve got time,” Y/n offered.

Joel shook his head, “Nah, we gotta get going.”

Tommy entered through the garage door, the most carefree of them all. “Ay,” he clasped Joel’s shoulder, “You’re still alive, you old fucker.”

“Language,” Y/n chastised, she’d been trying for months to curb Tommy’s soldier’s mouth around Sarah. It wasn’t working.

“Aw,” Sarah cooed to Joel, “He loves you.”

“He’s dependent on me,” Joel watched his brother begin to raid his kitchen, “Not the same.”

Sarah shrugged, “I think it’s the same.”

“It’s definitely the same,” Tommy said, examining the countertops for food, “I thought we was havin’ pancakes.”

“The age started to take his memory last night,” Y/n’s tone turned serious as she pressed a hand to Joel’s bicep, “We’re meeting him where he is.”

Joel’s smirk contradicted the glare he shot his girlfriend, letting her hand stay on his arm through the teasing. “We’ll pick you up somethin’ on the road,” he addressed Tommy, “Concrete guys gonna be there?”

“Yeah, they said maybe,” Tommy replied as he opened up the fridge.

“‘Maybe?’” Joel echoed, “We can’t frame until we pour. We’re not gettin’ paid until we frame.”

Tommy started sniffing through various leftovers, “Well, we could bring someone else on, get the job done faster.”

“No, no,” Joel shook his head and cut up another bite of eggs, “I’m not splittin’ this job, I barely wanna split it with you. We could work a double.”

Sarah and Y/n both turned to him.

“Literally?” Sarah asked, “Today?”

“Joel, come on,” Y/n agreed, “Not today.”

“I know,” Joel was quick to remedy the moment, “I’d be done by nine,” he called to Tommy, “By nine, right?”

Sarah gazed across the table to Y/n, the two of them sharing a disbelieving look.

“I’ll bring back a cake,” Joel looked between the girls, “I promise.”

Y/n sighed, holding her coffee cup to her chest. Joel had been pulling double shifts more and more recently. She’d been meaning to talk to him about it, how she and Sarah had been missing him, but she was in no position to stop him from working. Money was tight and contract work was never a sure thing.

A news broadcast broke up the top 40 station Sarah had turned the radio on to while cooking. “Continued disturbances in Jakarta…” the voice announced, the clinking of silverware against plates breaking it up, “But are advising U.S. citizens-“

“Jakarta?” Joel repeated, “Where is that? Middle East?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Tommy shook his head, holding a coffee cup, “It’s definitely a country. Or maybe a part of Asia?”

Y/n smiled and tilted her head at Sarah, who was already prepared to answer.

“Jakarta isn’t a country,” she interjected, “Being a part of Asia isn’t mutually exclusive with being a country and in fact, it’s the capital of Indonesia.”

“That’s my girl,” Y/n said proudly.

“Shit,” Tommy grinned, “Hope for us yet.”

Joel took a final sip of his coffee before slapping his hand against his bare wrist, still expecting his broken watch to be there. He, instead, dug into his pocket checked the time on his cell phone.

“All right,” he announced to his daughter, collecting his and Y/n’s plates, “Finish up quick. We’ll drop you off.”

“I’m still eating my eggshells,” Sarah said.

“You got seven minutes,” Joel replied, dumping the dishes in the sink for later.

“Your t-shirt’s inside out.”

Joel looked down, deflated at the trip he now had to make back upstairs, “Shit.”

Sarah waited till he was out of the room and cocked a suspicious eyebrow at Y/n.

“Pop that thing down, missy,” Y/n pointed downwards, “Your dad just pays shockingly little attention for someone who works with power tools.”

Tommy smiled over the wings he’d taken for himself, “He’s losin’ it.”

Y/n laughed and nudged Sarah’s leg, “C’mon, finish up.”

Sarah scooped the last bite of egg into her mouth and handed her plate to Y/n, who brushed past Tommy on her way to the sink. She reversed a few steps to get a whiff of the chicken.

“Found the smell,” she called out to Sarah, patting Tommy’s shoulder, “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Stomach of steel,” he replied, setting his plate on the edge of the sink and planting a kiss on Y/n’s cheek. The two of them had become as good as siblings.

Y/n climbed up the stairs and down the hall to Joel’s room. He emerged just as she approached, brushing his hand across her hip as they passed one another. As much as they both loved pouring out the fullness of their affection, the casual intimacies were their favorites.

Grabbing her keys and wallet off Joel’s dresser, Y/n peeked out the window and waited till she saw Joel outside with Tommy. “Sarah,” she called down the hall.

Sarah tiptoed her way in, just to be safe, “Good?”

“Yep,” Y/n nodded.

Sarah found the assigned drawer, digging through Joel’s possessions to pull out his broken watch. She’d developed the plan to fix it as a birthday present last month and had gotten Y/n in on it.

“You’ve got the money?” Sarah checked.

Y/n flipped through the bills in her wallet, “Should be enough.”

Sarah thumbed through Joel’s cash and pulled out a few extra, smiling mischievously, “Now we can be sure.”

“Sarah! Y/n!” Joel called from the truck, Tommy was honking the horn.

Slipping the watch into her backpack, Sarah and Y/n quickly left the bedroom and headed down the stairs. Y/n hung back to make sure the coffee pot and stove were off before exiting out the front door. From the porch, she could see Sarah was in conversation with Mr. Adler next door. Or rather, dodging conversation.

“Make ‘em happy,” Joel encouraged, passing Y/n to grab another load of tools.

“I could come by after school, but just for like, a little bit,” Sarah offered.

“She’ll take what you got,” Mr. Adler replied as he fed his elderly mother-in-law, “Y’all can bake or whatever. Speakin’ of,” the man held up a plate, “We got a lotta extra here, y’all want some biscuits?”

“Dad,” Sarah masterfully tossed the ball to Joel, “You love biscuits.”

“I do,” Joel replied cheerily, “But Y/n’s got me on Atkins.”

Y/n snorted, watching the exchange go down from the bed of the truck.

“On what now?” Mr. Adler asked.

“It’s uh-“ Joel stopped himself, “You know, we gotta run but Sarah’ll be by later. She’ll stay as long as you want,” he smiled genuinely to his neighbors and smugly to his daughter, “Tell you all about Atkins.”

“Great, I’ll let Connie know,” Mr. Adler called back as Joel took Y/n’s hand and led her around the truck, “Hey, Y/n, you’re invited too.”

She peeked over the truck’s flatbed, “I’ll be working, but I’ll come grab Sarah on my way home.”

“Thank you,” Sarah smiled at her dad’s girlfriend, glaring at her father himself, “Solid.”

Joel held the door open for them, smirking at Y/n. “Thirty minutes, then you can rescue her,” he instructed.

“I never suggested Atkins,” she replied, sliding into the backseat beside Sarah.

“Can’t tell you how exciting it was listenin’ to that fuckin’ conversation,” Tommy commented, his speech molding around the cigarette between his lips.

“Put that out,” Joel said, a second before Y/n could form the same words.

Tommy flicked the smoke out onto the driveway, “Happy birthday to you.”

The truck pulled out into the cul-de-sac, carrying each of them off to their separate days.

Once Sarah had been dropped off at school and Y/n at the hardware store, Joel and Tommy headed across town to their construction site.

“Y’all got plans for tonight?” Tommy asked as they rode.

“If I don’t bring a cake home, they’re gonna string me up,” Joel answered, “Other than that, nothin’.”

His brother chuckled, “Least they gang up on you together. I got a buddy who just brought his girl home, his kid can’t stand her.”

Joel wasn’t an idiot, he knew how lucky he was that his girlfriend and daughter got along. No, they did better than just get along. They were practically inseparable. He’d take as much shit as they could give him, so long as they did it together.

“When’re you gonna marry that girl?”

It wasn’t the first time Tommy had asked that question. It had been increasing in frequency over the last few months. After they’d passed their one year anniversary, it became a thought consuming more and more space in Joel’s mind. It had taken enough time to sort out his thoughts and fears on the subject of going into marriage again, but it had been something that week that had settled him on the matter.

Monday night, Y/n had dropped by after her shift to help Sarah with homework. Joel had been at work, but when he got home, he expected to see them waiting for him at the kitchen table. Finding only silence, he climbed the stairs and peeked into Sarah’s room. Y/n was sitting against the headboard of Sarah’s bed, the young girl tucked into her shoulder, the math homework spread across their laps.

In the seemingly meaningless display of affection, Joel saw so much more. He saw the rest of his life. He could finally give Sarah a crucial piece of happiness that she’d been deprived of. He could have the love he’d craved and denied himself for so many years. The three of them, a family.

He was going to ask Y/n to marry him that weekend.

“I was gonna head to that place in the mall tomorrow morning,” Joel replied, his fingers rubbing together in anticipation. The last few weeks of working double shifts would pay off if he could find the perfect ring.

“Oh, shit,” Tommy grinned, “You’re actually doin’ it.”

“No reason to wait,” he said, staring ahead as if he could see his bright future.

“Think she’ll say yes?” Tommy asked, practically bleeding from the daggers Joel shot at him. He heartily laughed, “You get Sarah’s blessin’?”

A small smile stretched across Joel’s lips, “I know I already got it. But yeah, I’m gonna show her the ring, ask her officially.”

“Girl’s not gonna say no,” Tommy replied, making a turn onto the street the construction site was on, “She’s as crazy about her as you are.”

Joel couldn’t see any reason why Sarah would reject Y/n, she liked her better than she did Joel half the time. But he’d still never make such a big decision without consulting his daughter.

“You fucker,” Tommy chuckled, smacking Joel’s chest, “Won the damn lottery.”

Joel smiled out the window, he knew it too.

——————

Y/n’s day went by as slow as possible. She kept moving around the hardware store, helping employee and customer alike with anything they needed. All she needed was to stay busy until 3PM when she’d clock out an hour early, pick Sarah up at the house and they’d head downtown to the watch repair shop.

She absentmindedly spinning down one of the aisles, passing Melinda, one of her co-workers.

“Head outta the clouds, kid,” she chuckled.

“I’m on the ground,” Y/n replied, doing another twirl, “I just need this fucking day to end.”

Melinda went back to hanging inventory, “You and Joel got big plans tonight?”

“I was gonna grill us up some steaks,” she shrugged, “Cake. He’ll get squirmy if Sarah and I spoil him too much.”

“I got a question,” Melinda rested her arm on a shelf, “And if it’s too personal, you tell me. I won’t care, but you can tell me.”

Y/n giggled, “Okay.”

“Are you two ever gonna get married?”

Y/n’s movements came to a stop in the middle of the aisle. She’d been thinking more and more about what it might look like to marry Joel. It wasn’t like she was daydreaming about meaningless details like what dress she’d wear or what color roses would serve as centerpieces. She thought about waking up in Joel’s arms every morning, cooking breakfast for Sarah, being there for every moment, big or small. That was what she cared about.

Joel had eventually opened up to her about his ex-wife and what her abandonment had done to both him and Sarah. Y/n knew it was a scar that was as healed as it could be. She would never rush Joel into making a decision about their future, but she’d have been lying if she’d said she didn’t want to eventually wear his ring on her finger.

“I’m not sure,” she answered honestly.

“Well, he needs to lock you down,” Melinda pointed towards Y/n with a hammer, “My cousin, came in last week, got one look at you, he’s been asking me for your number all week.”

Y/n laughed, “Ring or no ring, I’m locked down. This is it for me.”

The women turned their attention down the aisle to a man, taking sloppy steps down the aisle. It was barely two in the afternoon, a little early to already be drunk, but Texas took the rules of happy hour very loosely.

Melinda groaned, “Ugh, you want me to take him?”

“No, I got it,” Y/n put on her cheery voice and walked up to the customer, “Can I help you find any-“

The man spun to face her, snarling, and took a swing at Y/n. She jumped back just in time.

“What the f-“

Growling, he charged towards her again, this time using her shock against her and tackling her to the floor. Y/n screamed, shoving her hands against his chest in an effort to push him off of her.

“Fuck!” Melinda yelled, pulling at the guy’s legs, “Help! We need help!”

Y/n stared into the man’s eyes, they were glazed over entirely, filled with pure, animalistic rage. He snarled and bit at the air before wrapping his hand around her neck. She used all her strength to push him away, her breath stuck in her throat. He lunged to burrow his face where his hand lay, Y/n couldn’t get him off her, but she kept him from getting any closer.

The manager, Don, sprinted down the aisle with a few other guys and pulled the attacker off of Y/n. The man fought back, growling and clawing relentlessly at her. One of the employees dropped him on the ground and sat on him, ensuring he didn’t go anywhere.

Y/n scrambled to her feet, Don came to embrace her.

“You okay?”

She was fighting to catch her breath, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“I’m callin’ the police,” Melinda announced, rushing off to the phone at the front desk.

“What happened?” Don asked, moving to hold Y/n’s arms.

“I-I don’t know,” she ran a hand through her hair, “He came down the aisle and just lunged at me. I-I just offered to help him.”

With the man still fighting to break out of his hold, making sounds that made him seem possessed, Don pulled Y/n out of the aisle.

“I’m sorry, Don,” Y/n apologized, her voice still trembling.

“You got nothin’ to be sorry for, sweetheart,” he quickly shook his head, “Men gotta learn they can’t go gettin’ rough on a woman just cause they’ve had a bad day.”

The police arrived within ten minutes, running down the aisle and cuffing the monstrous man. Y/n stayed far away from her attacker as he was dragged out of the store, residing between Melinda and Don. She’d been asked if she wanted to press charges, but she declined. She just wanted the whole thing to be over.

“Take off now,” Don offered after the officers left.

“No, I-I’m okay,” Y/n smoothed her apron down with shaking hands.

“Don’t even try,” Don shook his head, “Get on out of here.”

Y/n took the first breath she could actually feel, wasting no time in dashing back to the break room and grabbing her purse out of her locker. She wanted to be as far away from anything about the afternoon as she could. Plus, it would mean she could pick Sarah up straight from school instead of the Adlers.

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Y/n bid her co-workers farewell on the way out.

Don rasied a hand alongside Melinda, “See ya tomorrow. Wish Joel a happy birthday from us!”

The mention of his name got a smile out of Y/n, “I will.”

With Joel and Tommy having dropped her off, she had to call a cab to take her back to her apartment. She held in her tears until the front door was locked and she knew she was safe.

Why hadn’t she fought back? Fought harder? She was great with her words, but she’d never been able to physically defend herself. In the world they lived in, it was becoming more and more necessary for a woman to be able to throw a punch. Y/n felt weak for not fighting for her safety with the ferocity that Joel or Tommy would have. It just wasn’t in her nature to be violent, even if her own life was on the line.

She managed to collect herself, drying her tears and heading back down to her car. She was determined to put the incident behind her and not let it ruin her day.

Y/n parked directly outside the front of the school so Sarah couldn’t miss her. She waited against the car door, tapping her heel against the asphalt until a barrage of kids came pouring out of the building. Sarah clocked her just before she headed for the bus.

“I thought you were picking me up at home,” she called across the street.

“My shift ended early,” Y/n explained, excluding the reason why.

Sarah opened the passenger side door and jumped in, “Can we grab ice cream or something after?”

“Nice try,” Y/n started up her car, “I’m dropping you off at the Adler’s after this.”

Sarah let her head fall against her seat, with a small groan.

“Half an hour and then there’ll be some big birthday emergency,” Y/n offered, turning onto the next street over, “Seatbelt.”

It was these small domestic moments that showed just how good of a parent Y/n would make. She still didn’t believe she was doing anything exceptional, but the smallest acts of care meant the most. Making sure Sarah walked on the inside of the street, making sure she’d eaten enough, helping her with homework…all of that equated to Sarah knowing she had someone else looking out for her.

They made it downtown to the jewelry-clock repair shop within minutes. Their part of Austin was small enough that everything was five minutes away.

The owner at the front counter examined Joel’s watch, “Twenty.”

“That’s it?” Sarah asked, surprised.

“Okay,” the man smiled, “Thirty.”

“My little negotiator,” Y/n looked down at Sarah, smirking, “Let’s stick with twenty.”

“It’s a spring,” he explained as Sarah pulled out the twenty she’d taken from Joel, “I’ll do it right now.”

Y/n put an arm around Sarah’s shoulders and tugged her into her side, the two of them absentmindedly hugging as they glanced around the store. Behind them, a line of police cars followed by a fire truck sped down the street. It pulled Y/n back to an hour before.

“All day, I swear,” a woman emerged from the shop’s back room, switching between speaking in English and Arabic, “We’re closing.”

“It’s 3:15,” the owner responded, “We close at 7.”

The woman anxiously stood at the window, staring down the street. She lapsed back into Arabic as she addressed her partner, before putting her hands on Y/n and Sarah’s arms, “I’m very sorry, he cannot finish.”

“I already finished,” the man replied, holding out the boxed watch to his wife.

She pressed the box into Y/n’s hands, “You should go home.”

“W-wait,” Y/n stuttered as the woman rushed them out of the shop, “Wh-“

“Go home,” the woman urged, staring into Y/n’s eyes with a desperation a child could never understand.

She shut the door on Y/n and Sarah, flipping the ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’ after and pulling the blinds.

“That was weird,” Sarah muttered.

“Yeah,” Y/n watched as the woman continued shutting the blinds in the windows.

Successful in their quest, Y/n and Sarah loaded themselves back in the car and headed home. On the way, they passed four more police cars and one more fire engine. Austin had its fair share of crime, especially downtown, but this was out of the ordinary.

“What do you think’s going on?” Sarah asked at one point.

“No idea,” Y/n answered, pulling them into the driveway of Joel’s home and unbuckling, “I’ll check the news. Go be a good person.”

“I’m timing you,” Sarah said firmly.

Y/n smiled, “Go.”

Sarah dragged herself and her backpack out of the car and trudged across the Adler’s lawn. Y/n watched her lovingly, she had the biggest heart of anyone she knew, it was just butting heads with teenage hormones.

Y/n let herself into the Miller’s house, her body relaxing as soon as the door shut. She kicked off her sneakers and headed for the living room, switching on the television. She changed the channel to the local news station, expecting to see a fire or mass shooting. All the anchors said was that there had been reports of heightened violence throughout the day and that citizens should avoid going downtown. That lined up with what Y/n had experienced at the store, apparently the city of Austin was acting like a collective asshole.

Satisfied, Y/n busied herself with laundry and taking care of the dishes from breakfast until she scanned the clock, seeing it was ten past the time she said she’d pick Sarah up at.

She went outside, crossed the shared lawn and knocked on the Adler’s front door. Connie was the one to open it.

“Well, there she is,” the woman exclaimed, “Come in!”

They entered into the hallway, which smelled like cookies and mothballs, and Y/n spotted Sarah sitting in the kitchen, bag packed and a barely concealed frown on her face.

“I’m sendin’ you two home with some cookies,” Connie said, bustling around the kitchen for a Ziploc, “They’re raisin.”

“Oh, yay,” Y/n feigned excitement, following her in and stroking a hand across Sarah’s hair, “Those’re Joel’s favorite.”

Sarah fought the laugh caught in her throat, Joel would’ve rather died than touch anything with raisins in it.

Connie handed Y/n the bag and took her other hand, “You tell him happy birthday from us.”

“We will,” Y/n smiled before they headed down the hall and to the door.

“Wait,” Sarah mumbled just as they were walking out. She stopped to see Mercy, the Adler’s dog, whining at Nana Adler, seated in her chair as usual.

“Dogs are super tuned into their owners,” Y/n explained, “Some studies suggest that they can sense if their person’s in pain.”

Sarah hummed and accepted the answer, exiting out the front door with Y/n. “You were late,” she stated.

“I was doing your laundry,” Y/n replied, dipping her hand along Sarah’s through a lawn sprinkler, “So I’d say we’re even.”

The sun was just setting, a warm pink taking over the sky as night’s opening act. Kids, home from school, were playfully screaming a few houses down. Everything felt perfectly in place.

An overhead thundering encroached on the peaceful scene, drawing Sarah and Y/n’s attention skyward. Three fighter jets in formation blew over their heads, flying in the general direction of downtown.

“Air Force base isn’t too far from here,” Y/n commented, it was the only explanation that made sense.

Sarah didn’t seem too concerned, cutting ahead across the lawn and up to the front porch.

Inside, Y/n busied herself with cooking dinner while Sarah sat at the table finishing up homework. The steaks she’d bought a few days prior had gone bad, and she was searching the fridge for anything she could turn into something special.

Pressing her forehead to the appliance’s cool steel, she admitted defeat.

“You know Dad’s not picky,” Sarah tried to comfort her.

“Yeah, well, I wanted to do something nice for him,” Y/n replied, kicking her foot lightly against the fridge, “But I suppose ordering Chinese is just as special.”

“We could always run by the store,” Sarah suggested.

“Mm-mm,” Y/n shook her head, digging through the takeout menu drawer, “No one’s going anywhere while there’s all those cops on the road.”

They ended up ordering enough for themselves, Joel and Tommy, if he decided to stay for dinner. As the night went on, the food grew cold, and by eight o’clock, Y/n and Sarah grew too hungry to wait and sat on the couch with their cartons.

“If he’s home by nine,” Sarah thought the next part of her sentence over carefully, “I’ll give you a whole week off of helping me with my homework.”

“Doesn’t feel like much of a win,” Y/n shrugged, picking at another piece of orange chicken. They were coming up with bets for when they thought Joel would actually return home, “I don’t mind being on homework duty.”

“Okay, fine, um…” Sarah continued drafting, snapping her chopsticks together, “I’ll do the dishes for a week. Every load.”

Y/n waved a chopstick at the girl, “Done. But if he’s home past nine, I will…get him to learn one of the Halican Drops’ songs,” she tilted her head, “That’s a win for you and will definitely cost me.”

Sarah laughed, “Deal.”

They spent the evening talking and watching tv, the later hours eventually tiring them. Sarah leaned up against Y/n, lost in a magazine while Y/n read a book she’d left on the coffee table. The television played lightly in the background, though they’d stopped paying attention long ago.

Eventually, five after ten, a pair of keys jingled in the front door lock, signaling Sarah had won the bet.

“You locked the door this time,” Joel said, addressing his daughter, “Good job.”

“Yeah,” Sarah switched off the tv and sat up, “Y/n reminded me.”

Y/n scooted over to give Joel a spot on the couch, he flopped down on the cushions, digging his palms into his eyes.

“It’s 10,” Sarah said what they were all thinking.

“I know,” Joel groaned, pulling back up to take off his boots, “They…gave us the wrong size for the headers,” he looked over his girlfriend to Sarah, “That doesn’t mean anything to you, barely means anything to Y/n. I’m sorry.”

Y/n’s fingers walked across Joel’s leg, “And dessert would be…?”

Joel slumped forward, “Shit.”

“Come on, man,” Sarah bemoaned.

“I’ll get us one tomorrow,” Joel promised for the second time that day.

“Swear,” Sarah replied, “Or you don’t get your present.”

Joel turned, brightening up adorably fast. “You got me a present?”

“Swear,” Sarah continued.

Y/n smiled, eyeing her boyfriend with the same loving frustration as Sarah.

“On my life,” Joel swore.

Deeming it an acceptable answer, Sarah rotated and dug behind a pillow. Joel slid his hand over Y/n’s, flattening it down against his knee.

Sarah presented the box, holding it out to her dad.

“Wow,” Joel said, making a theatrical face before opening it. He hadn’t expected what was inside.

“Fixed it for you,” Sarah beamed with reserved pride.

Joel ran a thumb over the watch and held it to his ear, furrowing his brows, “Did you?”

“What?” Sarah reached for his hand.

“I don’t hear anything,” Joel continued.

“It was working four hours ago,” Y/n exclaimed, adjusting herself to sit up and examine it for herself.

The two girls barely had to raise it to their ears before they could hear the strong ticking. Sarah groaned and lightly shoved Joel, who was heartily laughing.

Y/n rolled her eyes, “Screw you, man.”

“That was lame,” Sarah smiled, “You’re lame.”

“Yeah, I know,” Joel chuckled, taking another second to admire his gift, “Where’d you get the money for this?”

“Drugs,” Sarah answered, “I sell hardcore drugs.”

“It’s better than what I do,” Joel slipped the watch onto his wrist.

“It was only $20, which I stole from you.”

“Which I had,” Y/n interjected, “If you’d have given me two seconds...”

“I could have stolen $60, but I put the change back,” Sarah defended herself against Joel’s parental stare, “Because I’m an honest thief. Besides, it’s the thought that counts. And you were never gonna do it for yourself, so…”

Joel, never one to be selfish, looked on lovingly at his daughter and co-conspirator, before turning his head downward. “Thank you.”

Sarah smiled, looking to Y/n victoriously. “Oh, there’s one more,” she dug behind the pillow once again and retrieved a DVD case, “Borrowed it from the Adlers.”

Joel wasted no time in taking it from her, it was Curtis and Viper, the guiltiest of all guilty pleasure movies. “Oh, this is the one with the deleted scenes.”

“Yeah, imagine how bad those have to be,” Sarah commented, “Come on, pop it in, while it’s still your birthday.”

Y/n got up alongside Joel, “I’ll go heat up dinner and brace myself for the cinematic masterpiece I’m about to experience.”

“I showed it to you a while back,” Joel called out to her, “Remember?”

“I remember,” Y/n swung into the kitchen, “And yet I’m still with you.”

Joel smirked to himself, setting the disc in the tray and jogging off to join Y/n. “Chinese?”

“There was going to be something home cooked,” Y/n scooped some food onto a plate for Joel, “But the grocery gods were conspiring against me.”

“Kidding? This is great,” Joel replied, coming to hold Y/n’s hips and move around the kitchen with her. He settled his chin against her head, “Thank you. For all of it.”

Y/n leaned back into Joel’s chest, “I don’t see how crappy Chinese food and aiding your daughter in thievery deserves thanks but,” she twisted her neck to plant a kiss on his cheek, “I’ll take it.”

Joel absentmindedly ran his hands up Y/n’s arms, gazing down at her skin. His eyes drifted to her exposed neck, the glow of the microwave illuminating a purple splotch across her throat.

“What’s this?”

Y/n was watching the timer, “Hm?”

Joel pulled back the rest of her hair and lightly ran a finger over the skin, “Where’d you get this?”

Y/n pulled away, confusedly grabbing a spatchula out of a drawer and relfecting it back on her. Sure enough, there was a large purple bruise developing where the psycho in the hardware store had choked her.

“Hm,” Y/n thought, she hadn’t intended to ruin the levity of the night, “Uh, are we sure you didn’t put that there?”

Joel bristled at the idea, even at his most passionate, he wasn’t rough like that, “I’d never do this to you.”

Y/n sighed, pressing the ‘stop’ button on the microwave before it could beep. She pulled Joel’s food out, set it down and leaned up against the counter.

“A guy attacked me today at work,” she said softly, not wanting Sarah to hear.

Joel’s eyebrows raised two inches, his voice got low, “What?”

“He came down the aisle and just,” Y/n gestured suddenly to herself, “Tackled me to the ground. It took three of the guys, plus Don just to get him off of me.”

Joel surged forward, hovering his hand over Y/n’s neck and examining her, “How bad is it?”

“I’m okay,” Y/n gently took Joel’s hand, bringing it down to his side, “Headache from smacking my head on the floor, little sore, but fine.”

“Please tell me you called the police and pressed charges” Joel asked, fully in protector mode.

Y/n shook her head, “I didn’t wanna drag it out, I just wanted the whole thing to be over. The cops took him, they can deal with it.”

Joel braced himself against the counter to Y/n’s side, halfway-caging her in. “And you weren’t gonna tell me about it?”

“It’s your birthday,” Y/n smiled softly up at her boyfriend, “I just wanted to come home and have a normal evening with you guys. Forget it ever happened.”

Anger swelled in Joel’s stomach for whatever freak had gone after her, but his gaze stayed soft. Her pain was his pain.

“Wanna know what the worst part was?” Y/n asked, looping a finger through Joel’s and smiling sadly, “I could have fought back…but I just laid there. I tried to push him off but…”

There was no need for her to finish the sentence. Joel’s mind flashed back to the night they’d met, when that creep had laid his hand on her and she hadn’t fought back. It was one of his deepest worries, that one day someone would come at her and he wouldn’t be there to protect her.

“Can you please,” he begged, “Enroll in a self-defense class?”

“Yes,” Y/n agreed, saying whatever she could to get the night to return to normal, “I think there’s one down at the community center.”

Joel’s shoulders rose and fell with his sigh, cupping the back of her neck and drawing her into his body. She wrapped her arms around his middle, digging her face into his pec.

“I hate the world sometimes,” Joel said over her shoulder.

Y/n scoffed, “You and me both, bucko.”

They stood in each other’s arms a moment, letting the stress of the day melt away.

“Your daughter’s waiting,” Y/n smiled into Joel’s chest, “And she’s been waiting all night.”

Joel broke from her, stroking a thumb over her cheek. He was looking forward to revealing the reason for his late night hours.

With dinner in hand, Joel and Y/n headed back into the living room, where Sarah was waiting with the remote. Joel settled down in the middle of the couch, giving him room to be surrounded by his two favorite people.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he warned, as Sarah snuggled into his shoulder.

“‘Course I won’t,” she said, “It’s too riveting.”

“I make no such promises,” Y/n replied, hanging one of her legs on Joel’s knee.

Both of them were out cold within an hour.

Joel couldn’t complain even if he tried. With Sarah passed out on his leg Y/n tucked under his arm, it was the happiest he’d been the whole day.

While watching the movie, Joel’s mind kept spinning around proposal ideas. If he got the ring in the morning, he could do it that night. Or did he need to spend more time, crafting some elaborate idea involving doves and roses and all the movie shit? Y/n wasn’t fancy, she probably wouldn’t care if that was missing. All he cared about was that she said ‘yes’ and that the ring was something she could cherish the rest of their lives.

Joel gazed down at his daughter and soon-to-be fiancé, fast asleep on him. A lifetime of that was a thought he could get used to…

The vibration of his cell phone broke Joel out of his daydream. He reached forward, trying not to wake either girl, bur Y/n stirred enough to come to.

“Sorry,” he whispered, picking up the call, “Hello?”

“Joel, it’s me,” Tommy’s voice cut through, Y/n’s head was close enough to hear the call, “Uh, I’m okay.”

“Yeah?” Joel asked.

“But I’m in jail.”

Y/n sat up groggily as Joel arched back into the couch, rubbing his eyes in stress.

“Wasn’t my fault this time,” Tommy was quick to defend himself, “I was at the bar, some guy goes crazy, starts swingin’ at waitresses, I stepped in, knocked him out, cops showed up-”

Joel and Y/n shared an exhausted look, both from true tiredness and Tommy.

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” Tommy hurried, “You gotta bail me out.”

“Now?” Joel hissed.

“It’s Friday,” Tommy said, “You don’t get me out, I’m in here all weekend. It’s a fuckin’ madhouse, Joel. I gotta get out.”

Y/n rubbed the sleep out of her eye, and lowered her voice, “I’ll go get him.”

Joel’s hand shot out across Y/n’s legs, “No,” he switched conversations, “Well, which jail. Travis County?”

“Yeah, on 10th,” his little brother answered.

“Damn it, Tommy,” Joel shook his head.

Tommy took a breath, “I’m sorry…please.”

Joel waited before answering, “Okay,” he hung up his cell, “Fuckin’ idiot.”

“Joel, just let me go,” Y/n offered, gesturing to Sarah using his leg as a pillow, “You got him last time.”

“I don’t want you out this late,” Joel shot down the idea a second time, “Especially in that part of town. I’ll be back, hour tops.”

Carefully, Joel eased Sarah off of him and lifted her into his arms. He carried her upstairs to bed while Y/n stayed on the couch, trying to get her bearings.

Joel came back downstairs, grumbling to himself as he collected his wallet and keys.

“We do all this,” Y/n gestured to the empty dinner plate and gift box, “And Tommy’s still gotta one up us.”

“Yeah, well,” Joel muttered, throwing his cell phone in his pocket, “I shoulda just left him in there.”

Y/n looked up amusedly at her boyfriend, “Yeah, like you’d ever do that.”

Joel’s instinct was to protect, he couldn’t have left his brother to rot for the weekend if he tried.

Y/n got to her feet and slid a hand up Joel’s chest, bringing his restlessness to a halt. She wrapped her other hand around the base of his neck, rubbing at the permanently tense muscles.

“Happy Birthday to you,” she sleepily smiled.

Joel leaned forward to connect his lips to Y/n’s. In an ideal world, he’d carry her upstairs and they’d fall asleep in each other’s arms. But after rescuing Tommy, they’d have the whole weekend for that. Still, he poured as much love as he could into his kiss.

Neither of them knew it would be the last one they shared.

“Be safe,” Y/n told him once they broke apart.

“I will,” Joel replied, heading for the front door, “Go to bed. Be back soon.”

Y/n nodded, her eyes following him till he was out of the house. In her stupor, she wasn’t thinking of how packed the streets had been earlier in the day with cop cars. Or how the news had said there’d been increased violence in the city. Or how the story Tommy had recounted sounded eerily similar to hers. She was just tired enough that all that made sense to her was climbing into Joel’s bed and going back to sleep.

Slowly climbing the staircase, Y/n made her way down the hall. She paused outside of Sarah’s room, poking her head in to make sure she was settled. Joel had thrown a blanket over her and she was rolling over. Satisfied, Y/n pushed off of the door frame to leave.

“Mom?”

She froze in her tracks, she’d barely moved out of sight before Sarah had called for…someone. Not her. It couldn’t be her. But who else? She had no memory of her birth mo-

“Mom?”

Y/n’s chest fluttered, it could only be her. She hesitated to answer, “Yeah?”

“Where’s Dad?” Sarah asked, her eyes were still scrunched but she was looking to Y/n’s silhouette.

“He had to run by Uncle Tommy’s,” Y/n answered, saving the full answer for the morning, “He’ll be back soon.”

Sarah seemed to accept the response, nodding a little and settling back into her pillow.

“Goodnight,” Y/n wished, her hands awkwardly fidgeting against her chest.

“Night,” Sarah mumbled.

Slipping against the nearest wall, Y/n’s breath trembled with joy, shock…she couldn’t tell. Sarah had made up her mind as to what Y/n was to her…and what she was was a mother.

Feeling like she was floating, Y/n made her way down the hall to the bed that was as good as her own and slid underneath the sheets. Her smile stretched so wide, she thought her cheeks might split. She couldn’t wait to tell Joel when he got home….

—————————

First came the sirens.

Then came the choppers.

Then the car alarms.

And the flares.

Y/n was the first to wake, the sound of helicopter blades and the sensation of the house rattling waking her. She reached over in the dark for Joel and grasped air. The clock read 2:15AM, he’d left at 11.

That was enough to wake Y/n the rest of the way up.

She rolled out of bed and went to the window, peeking through the blinds to see flares being shot into the sky. Though her vision was blurred from sleep, she could see the smoke cloud in the distance. It was coming from downtown.

“Dad?” Sarah called down the hall, “Y/n?”

“In here,” Y/n said, still watching the sky as another round of helicopters flew over their neighborhood.

Sarah came through the door, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Y/n answered, her stomach twisting in confusion, “Go check if your dad’s downstairs.”

Sarah left, calling for Joel as she descended the staircase. “He’s not here,” she yelled up.

Y/n’s chest sank, anxiety beginning to creep its way up her throat. Was this some kind of invasion? It had barely been two years since 9/11, was something of that scale happening in their backyard?

“Y/n!”

The urgency in Sarah’s voice got Y/n moving out the bedroom and down the stairs as quick as she could. “What is it?”

Sarah had switched on the tv, the emergency broadcast signal was on every channel, delivering an ominous message to stay indoors and wait for law enforcement.

A thud against the window had Y/n pulling Sarah to her chest, the girl wrapping her hands around Y/n’s wrists. Mercy, the Adler’s dog, had his paws against the window and was trying to get inside.

“Stay here,” Y/n told Sarah, heading to unlock the front door. She crouched down on the porch and the dog leaned against her legs, whining. “Shh, Mercy, shh…”

“Is he okay?” Sarah asked, right behind Y/n.

“I think,” Y/n answered, clueless as Mercy panted furiously under her touch. She looked across the street, finding nothing out of the ordinary visually. Audibly, there were car alarms coming from all directions and the chopper was making another circle around the subdivision. Something felt very, very wrong.

“Stay here,” Y/n told Sarah, “I’m gonna take a look around.”

“No, I’m coming with-“

“No,” Y/n’s tone firmed up, “Take Mercy inside and stay-“

Mercy started barking as if he knew he was being discussed. Y/n knew nothing she said would get Sarah to listen, she was out of options.

“Let’s get him back home,” she said.

Sarah led Mercy by the collar across the lawn and onto the Adler’s driveway. Once he realized he was back at his house, Mercy began to whine and pull away from Sarah.

“C’mon, Mercy, please,” Sarah begged.

Mercy pulled one final time, the collar unclipping and letting him loose. He took off into the night.

“Mercy!” Sarah called, he was too far gone to hear her.

“It’s okay,” Y/n quickly tried to smooth Sarah’s heartbreak over, “We’ll find him. But first, we’re going home and-“

Clanking from inside the Adler’s home drew their attention.

“Mrs. Adler?” Sarah called, receiving no answer, she looked to Y/n to decide their next move.

Y/n was torn between following the noise and running back home to call Joel.

“Stay behind me,” she decided, placing herself in front of Sarah as a barricade.

They crept up the Adler’s porch, letting themselves in through the ajar door. The carpet runner was scrunched up, something the meticulous Connie would have never allowed.

“Connie?” Y/n announced their presence.

“Mrs. Adler?” Sarah repeated, the two of them frozen in the hallway.

Another loud sound from the kitchen, followed by a distant gunshot and chased by a car alarm.

Y/n tried to inhale steadily, but the trembling came anyway. The long stretches of silence broken up by what sounded like war were creating a steady pit of fear in her chest.

She reached backwards, pulling Sarah closer to her body. The girl was already holding onto Y/n’s hips. They took soft steps through the hall and to the kitchen.

“Con-“ Y/n held on to the room divider as she stumbled, looking down to see the slippery substance across the floor.

Blood.

Sarah and Y/n’s breaths caught in their chests as their eyes followed the trail of crimson through the kitchen…to Mr. Adler, laid against the cabinets.

“Help me,” he whispered, a particularly gory wound to his neck oozing blood down his body.

Y/n moved to help him but was yanked back by Sarah, who already had eyes on the next terror.

Nana Adler was hung over her daughter, her face burrowed into her neck.

Y/n eased Sarah back, making no sudden movements, as the elderly woman slowly looked up to them. There were strands of something springing from her mouth, it was something out of a horror movie.

Nana rose to her feet, her movements choppy and careless, and Sarah wrapped her arms around Y/n’s torso.

The woman, animalistic, shrieked and ran towards them.

Y/n shoved Sarah back towards the door, racing out of the house and onto the lawn. She was pulling the girl toward their house when the roar of a pickup truck came barreling down the street.

Tommy’s truck.

Tommy pulled the truck up onto the curb, Joel jumped out before it had even stopped.

“GET IN THE TRUCK,” he yelled at Y/n and Sarah, “RIGHT NOW!”

With Sarah in her hands, Joel grabbed Y/n and pulled them to the vehicle, “Move!”

Nana Adler came screaming out of the house, Y/n and the Millers watching the bones in her body violently crack under her skin before she fell to the ground. They waited in anticipation until she startled back to life with a gasp, stumbling to her feet and charging towards the family.

“What are we doin’, Joel?” Tommy yelled, his rifle pointed at the grandmother.

Y/n wrapped Sarah in her arms, shielding her body from any harm, but not her eyes.

Joel wasted no time in making the decision, it was either her, or the women he loved. He slashed the wrench he was clutching into Nana’s head, the life leaving her as she dropped.

After, he turned to Y/n and Sarah, their tearful eyes widened in horror. He rushed to them, bending to cup Sarah’s cheek.

“You killed her,” the girl said, unable to form a deeper thought.

Joel pulled his daughter and partner into his arms, “Baby, I’m sorry.”

“Joel, we gotta go,” Tommy warned.

“Joel,” Y/n shook, “What’s going on?”

“Listen to me,” he looked to both his girls, “It’s not just the Adlers,” he took Sarah’s cheeks into his hands, “But we’re gonna be brave, and we’re gonna get out of this.”

A flash of green to their left and Joel was covering them with his arms. The transformer at the end of the block had exploded.

“Hey,” Tommy rounded the truck, “Let’s go. C’mon!”

Joel and Y/n hurried Sarah in front of them, “Get in.”

Y/n stopped before joining her, gripping Joel’s arm, “Joel…”

“I don’t know,” he shook his head, posessing no more answers than she did, “I don’t know.”

Y/n dove into the truck, pulling Sarah into her arms the minute she was seated.

Joel slammed the door shut, his neighbor calling his name out in concern.

“Denise, you get back inside the house,” he yelled, “You lock your doors! Now!”

“C’mon, c’mon, get in,” Tommy urged.

The second Joel’s door shut, Tommy was already pulling them around the cul-de-sac. As he rounded the turn, Mr. and Mrs. Adler came across their lawn and into the street, in the same possessed state as Nana had been.

“Get your seatbelt on,” Joel told Tommy.

“Hold on,” his brother said, accelerating the engine and ramming into the Adlers head on.

Y/n tried to pull Sarah’s head into her shoulder, but the girl was too quick, already looking out the back to see Mrs. Adler on her feet.

“You take 70-“ Joel began to give directions.

“71,” Tommy finished, “I know.”

A line of police cars blew down the opposite lane, speeding towards more chaos they didn’t even understand.

Sarah’s breath had steadied enough where she could speak clearly, “Daddy-“

“We don’t know,” Joel cut her off.

“They’re saying it’s a virus,” Tommy explained, “Some kinda parasite.”

“What parasite does that?” Y/n asked, knowing none of them had an answer.

“Is it from terrorists?” Sarah asked, her voice getting watery.

“We don’t know,” Joel repeated himself, watching his brother as he drove.

“A-are we sick?” Sarah’s panic was growing.

“No, we’re not sick,” Y/n answered immediately.

Joel fiddled with the radio, getting static back in return.

“Why did things blow up?” Sarah asked.

“No cellphone, no radio,” Tommy mused, “Minute ago, newsman wouldn’t shut up.”

“They were broadcasting emergency signals on the tv,” Y/n recalled, as if it made any difference now.

“How do you know?” Sarah kept up her questioning.

“What?” Joel acknowledged her.

Sarah couldn’t hide her tears any more, “How do you know we’re not sick?”

Y/n stroked her hair, offering what little comfort she could while also sharing Sarah’s terror.

“They’re sayin’ it’s mostly people in the city,” Tommy explained, “That’s why they got the highway blocked off.”

Joel craned his head to meet Y/n’s eyes, “This what happened at the store today?”

“Yeah,” Y/n answered, flashing back to 12 hours before. Her attacker hadn’t had the strange strands hanging from his mouth, but he’d had the same animal-like rage.

The car fell silent again as they passed a house, the whole structure consumed by flames.

“It’s Jimmy’s place,” Tommy said as they drove by.

“The Adlers would take Nana into the city,” Sarah continued to try and solve the puzzle, “To the hospital for stuff.”

“That’s right,” Joel agreed, “They would. That’s probably why.”

“But…” Sarah’s brain worked double time, “You’d have to go a lot…right?”

Tommy shook his head slightly, “We’re fine, trust me.”

Through the dashboard mirror, Y/n’s worried eyes met Tommy’s. He was saying a prayer rather than stating a promise.

On the side of the road, a car was pulled over, a family standing outside it waving their hands wildly. “Here! Right here!”

Tommy began to slow down, drawing Joel’s confusion. “What’re you doin’?”

“They got a kid, Joel,” Tommy gestured to the family.

“So do we,” Joel said firmly, “Keep drivin’.”

The father panicked as Tommy followed orders, screaming for them to stop.

“We could put them in the back,” Sarah offered just as they passed them by.

Y/n’s heart sank as the father’s cries echoed in her ears, her eyes drifting to the back of Joel’s head.

“Somebody else’ll come along,” he said to the car, but mostly to himself.

Sarah, trying so hard to remain calm, let her tears fall silently. Whatever shred of reality they could make of the chaos around them was starting to sink in on Y/n too. She pulled Sarah deeper into her arms, feeling the girl’s sadness land on her skin.

Tommy sped down the lane, trying to get on the freeway, and meeting the sea of likeminded cars.

“Fuck,” he exclaimed, “Everyone had the same fuckin’ idea.

Panicked drivers were speeding towards them, the little white lines on the asphalt ceasing to matter.

“I can’t get through this,” Tommy said, dodging the cars.

“All right, all right,” Joel tried to remain calm, “Let’s think it through, we’ll think it through.”

“Tommy!” Y/n cried as another reckless driver nearly clipped them.

“All right, take the field,” Joel directed, “We’ll cut across and pick up on the-the west side.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” Tommy’s breath shook, “West, west, all right. All right, hang on.”

Sarah held onto Y/n a little tighter, bracing herself as Tommy went off road into the tall grass. The truck dipped and bounced with the land, until they met smooth dirt…giving them a view of the freeway. The military had already set up shop.

“Shit,” Tommy exclaimed, “Fuckin’ army!”

“Isn’t that good?” Sarah asked

“It’s good for them” Tommy said, “But that’s the highway we’re tryin’ to get to.”

Joel’s brain was spinning with roads, “All right, keep movin’. Head north.”

“Could be a lot of people,” Tommy pointed out.

“Well, we can’t go south, we can’t go east, we can’t go west,” Joel replied, “Hell else we supposed to go?”

Tommy hesitated, his hands nervously gripping the wheel.

“Tommy, come on,” Joel yelled, his own anxiety beginning to show itself.

Listening, Tommy turned the truck north, leading them towards the distant light of a small town.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know that place,” Joel said, “This can work.”

“Joel,” Y/n spoke up, “What then? Where are we going?”

He didn’t know, he barely could remember the numbers of the highways. All he knew was he needed to get his family to some sort of safety. “I don’t know, Mexico,” he blurted out, “Just far, far as we can,” he looked to his brother, “How much gas?”

“Three quarter tank,” Tommy answered, it was enough to make it to the border.

“Go through town,” Joel began to list off directions, “Golf course by the river, straight across, we pick up the highway on the other side of the blockade…” he exhaled, “Then we’re out.”

“Maybe it’s everywhere,” Sarah theorized, trying so desperately to make sense of what was happening, “Maybe there’s nowhere to go.”

Joel and Yn’s worried eyes met in the dashboard mirror, they were both wondering the same thing. Illnesses didn’t stay quarantined to just one city in one state, they spread like vines, reaching for any life they could. What if this parasite worked the same way?

A loud roar began to encroach on the truck from above.

“What the fuck?” Tommy exclaimed.

Sarah and Y/n shielded their ears from the noise, looking up through the roof’s glass top to catch a low-flying plane directly above them. There were a line of three more trailing the sky behind them.

“Shit,” Y/n whispered, her facade for Sarah was fading.

Down the road, the red white and blue lights of a police car became a stumbling block. “Son of a bitch,” Tommy complained, “Gotta go around. Grab somethin’!”

Joel reached an arm back, both to brace himself against Tommy’s seat and give Y/n something to hold onto. Sarah held fast to Y/n as Tommy made a hard right down the next street. The town they’d turned into had descended fully into chaos, its residents running wildly through the streets, either screaming for help or attacking one other.

“All right,” Joel talked his brother through the roads, “Keep goin’, keep goin’,” he looked to his left to see a truck barreling towards them, “Shit, Tommy!”

The tire screech had Y/n flipping Sarah’s body over hers, making herself a human shield. Thankfully, the crash never came.

The next street Tommy turned them down was even worse. People were beating each other senselessly in the street, the screams of the wounded piercing their ears.

“Tommy, you can’t stop here,” Joel said as his brother slowed the car.

He gestured to the crowds, “I can’t drive through ‘em.”

“Are you serious?” Joel yelled, “Just keep goin’!”

Up ahead, an explosion shattered the windows of a building, eliciting every person inside to run for their lives, all headed towards the truck.

“Go, go, go,” Joel urged, smacking the dashboard a little harder with each utterance, “Back, back, back, back, back, back, back!”

“I’m tryin’!” Tommy yelled back.

Y/n caught the faces of people as they ran past, the terror, the confusion in their eyes. One woman had blood streaming down her chest, the deep red turning her white blouse deathly crimson.

“Tommy, go faster,” Joel berated, “We gotta go!”

“I’m tryin’, there’s nowhere to fuckin’ go,” Tommy said, maneuvering them backwards.

“Tommy,” Y/n couldn’t stay quiet, “Fuck, anywhere!”

“Find an alley!” Joel added.

“What alley?! There’s people everywhere!”

“Roll the fuck over them,” Joel ordered, “We gotta get off this street.”

Sarah had shifted out of Y/n’s arms and was staring out the back, watching as the humanity was sucked out of her city. In the sky, she could spot bright, blinking lights headed straight for them.

She blindly reached for Y/n’s hand, “Dad?!”

Y/n and Joel both turned, their eyes falling on the same sight. One of the planes was headed straight towards them.

“Fuck,” Y/n uttered breathlessly.

“Move…” Joel managed to say, “Move!”

The plane completed its nosedive into the road behind them, exploding in a fiery inferno. Joel reached back to grab hold of Sarah, Y/n shoved her down into her lap.

None of them saw the piece of debris heading for the truck.

—————————

Joel was the first one to wake up. He struggled out of his seatbelt, dropping to the roof of the flipped truck and looking into the back.

Y/n and Sarah were out cold.

Sarah’s leg was elevated, her foot caught in some part of the truck. Y/n lay in a terrifyingly still ball.

“Sarah…Sarah…” Joel weakly called, tugging on her free leg and startling her awake, “Stay right there. Don’t move,” he looked to Y/n, “Y/n, wake up.”

No response.

“Rosebud,” Joel urged, his voice betraying him and turning to a whine, “Honey, get up.”

“Y/n,” Sarah disobeyed her father, fear-stricken, and stretched her arm out to shake Y/n.

Y/n gasped, waking up the same way she’d passed out; panicked.

“Joel,” she cried out, “Sarah?”

“We’re here,” Joel reassured her, a hand to her arm, “We’re here. Tommy? You okay?”

Tommy grunted, trying to free himself, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

With a pounding headache, and the feeling of air hitting small cuts across her face, Y/n struggled to her knees. Nothing felt broken inside her, just weak.

Sarah’s breathing began to pick up, turning her body to stare out the busted window. Twenty feet away, someone was heaving over a body, draining it of blood the same way Nana Adler had.

“Sarah,” Joel moved to the back of the truck, “Don’t look. You look at me or Y/n, okay?”

Y/n was at Joel’s side instantly, gently holding Sarah’s calf so he could free her leg. The girl winced as Joel worked.

“I’m sorry, baby, I know, I know,” he apologized profusely, letting her leg drop into Y/n’s hands.

“Come here,” he urged his daughter, “Put your arms around me. Come here, come here,” he pulled Sarah into his embrace, “I got you.”

Y/n was crawling past, into the driver’s half of the truck, “Tommy?”

Tommy was already out, kneeling down at the window, “Come on, take my hand!”

Straining to reach him, Y/n slapped her palms against his and he dragged her out. She could feel the glass scrape against her skin, trying to hold her cries in for Sarah’s sake.

Tommy and Y/n pulled each other to their feet, Tommy reaching for his rifle after. Joel and Sarah had made it out on the other side. Y/n rushed around the wreckage of the truck to reach them, grabbing them both, “What’s wrong?”

“My ankle,” Sarah strained.

“We gotta get off the street,” Tommy urged, a fast approaching siren sending him diving for the asphalt, “Shit!”

A police van slammed into their truck, creating a fire between the two vehicles. Joel and Y/n shielded Sarah from the flames, “Tommy?”

Y/n wrapped her arms around Sarah, trying to take some of the weight off her ankle and freeing Joel.

“Tommy!” Joel screamed again.

Separated by the two totaled bodies, the brothers found each other.

“Head to the river,” Tommy shouted, “I’ll find a way!”

Joel hesitated to leave his brother behind, regardless of his competency.

“Get ‘em out of here,” Tommy insisted, “Go, Joel!”

It was the mention of Y/n and Sarah that snapped him back, he immediately turned and bent down to Sarah’s eye level.

“We can’t leave him,” she argued.

“Joel-“ Y/n began.

“He’ll be fine,” Joel said, “Can you both run?”

“No,” Sarah said as Y/n nodded.

Joel bent over and swung his daughter into his arms.

“You keep your eyes on us,” Joel half demanded, half begged Sarah, “Okay?”

“Okay,” she breathed.

“And don’t look anywhere else,” he finished, his panicked gaze moving to Y/n, “Don’t let go.”

Y/n locked one arm around Joel’s shoulders, the other under Sarah’s legs, needing one hand on them both.

The three of them rushed through the street, lost as to how to get to the river. Joel stopped in fear when they found a grouping of bodies, groaning, writhing, devouring one another on the ground. He guided Sarah’s head back into his body, but she’d already seen too much.

One of the monsters popped up, eerily fast.

Y/n and Joel’s hearts collectively stopped, anxiety kick starting them to run for the back door of a building. They dove inside, Y/n running ahead to bang on the locked door.

“Move,” Joel cried, kicking down the wood and pulling them through it, “Get ahead!”

Y/n jumped in front of them, racing down the length of the diner. She could hear the frantic footsteps and growls of the monster chasing them.

Slamming her body into the second door, Y/n cleared the path for Joel, the two of them sprinting away from the encroaching death nipping at their heels. The monster snarled as it came after them, too quick for Y/n or Joel even at their fastest-

BANG!

A shotgun fire silenced the animalistic sounds, Joel spun around to see the creature laid out in the grass, blood spilling from its head.

“It’s okay, baby,” he assured Sarah, “You’re safe.”

Y/n’s hands dropped to Joel’s arm, resting her head against his shoulder in an effort to catch her breath.

“C’mon,” Joel urged, turning around for the way of the river.

A searchlight hit them.

“Don’t move,” a stern voice commanded, through the light, Y/n and Joel could make out it was a soldier.

“My daughter’s hurt,” Joel explained, “Her ankle.”

“Stop right there,” the soldier ordered, they’d barely moved in his direction.

Y/n and Sarah both trembled, in shock at the sight of the rifle pointed at them.

“Okay,” Joel backed down, taking them the slightest step back, “Easy now. We’re not sick!”

The soldier reached for his radio, reporting into it, “I got three civilians by the river, one of ‘em injured,” he waited for a response, “Ankle.”

“What about Uncle Tommy?” Sarah looked up to Joel.

“We’re gonna get you somewhere safe first,” Joel panted, “Then we’ll go back for him, okay?”

“Okay,” Sarah accepted.

Y/n rubbed a hand over Sarah’s uninjured leg. The horror still had yet to be named, but they were so close to asylum from it.

An impatient Joel took a step forward, earning another up and close look at the rifle’s barrel.

“Hey,” the soldier shouted, “No one told you to move.”

Y/n trembled against Joel’s arm as they waited, why was it taking so long?

“Yes sir,” the soldier said into his radio, his voice having shifted and making Y/n and Joel’s stomachs tighten.

The gun came back up.

“We’re not sick,” Joel echoed, knowing what was about to happen.

“W-w-wait,” Y/n’s lips began to shake, she held out a hand to the soldier, “We’re not sick.”

“Sir,” Joel urged again, his voice rising with every second of silence, “We are not sic-“

Bullets rained down on the three of them, the force of the lead sending them rolling down the hill.

Joel pushed himself off his stomach, a harsh light on him drawing him onto his back. The soldier was mere inches from him, his rifle trained on Joel’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, he almost sounded genuine.

“Please don’t,” Joel begged, raising his hands.

Y/n had rolled farther than Joel, already weak from the crash and now with a pain radiating in her side. One of the bullets had definitely grazed her. She was able to push up onto her arms, dragging her gaze across the dirt and spotting the position her boyfriend was in.

“JOEL!”

The soldier was thrown forward, a bullet from behind lodging in his chest. Joel looked up to see Tommy, marching forward with his rifle still trained on the dead soldier.

Joel hurried to sit up, running a hand his side, a bullet had scraped across the skin.

Y/n let out a breath as she watched Joel move, her eyes scanning around her for Sarah.

“Oh, God,” Tommy breathed.

Frantic breaths could be heard, closest to Y/n and furthest from Joel.

Y/n froze at the sight.

Then she was rising, racing to the spot.

Joel was right behind her. “No…” he mumbled, “Oh, no.”

Y/n made it to Sarah first, her breath catching in her throat as her eyes ran over her body. Her attempts at breath were wracking through her violently.

“No, no, no,” Joel shushed his daughter, pressing a hand to her neck, “Okay, you’re okay. You’re okay, move your hand, baby.”

“Sarah, move your hand,” Y/n rubbed the girl’s cheek, “We gotta take a look, babe.”

Sarah let her hand drop to her side, revealing the blood that covered her entire lower abdomen.

Joel felt his heart drop into his stomach.

Y/n felt her entire body lock up.

Joel was the first to move, slipping an arm under Sarah’s shoulders. She let out the most heartbreaking cry, pain flooding her body as she reached to push her father away.

“I know, baby, I know,” Joel agreed, “I know, I know, I know. I know it hurts.”

Sarah’s breaths came quicker, groans accompanying them as she strained to take in air.

“Eyes on me,” Y/n urged, taking her face into both palms and rubbing her thumbs across the skin, “Don’t look down. Look at me.”

Sarah struggled to move her lips, barely pressing them together and humming. She was trying to say something.

“Shh, shh,” Y/n tried to keep her calm, “It’s okay.”

“Come on, baby,” Joel soothed as he examined her wound, “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

Another wave of unbearable pain hit Sarah as Joel pressed down on her wound, trying to slow the bleeding.

“I know, I know, I know,” the panic finally reached Joel’s voice, “I know, baby. I know, I know. I know this hurts. You’re gonna be okay.”

Sarah’s breaths grew ragged.

“You’re okay,” Y/n fought back the relentless tears, keeping her hands on Sarah’s cheeks, “You’re okay. I promise. You’re okay.”

“All right, baby, baby, baby,” Joel tried to talk over and in between Sarah’s noises, “Listen to me, I gotta get you up, okay?”

Sarah shook her head, her eyes widened with terror she couldn’t physically put into words.

“Babe, we have to get you up, okay?” Y/n continued, “It’s gonna hurt like hell for a second, but it’ll be alright.”

“All right,” Joel couldn’t wait any longer, “You come on.”

Y/n moved around to help lift Sarah’s back, her and Joel working as a team to raise her. Sarah groaned and wept as they shifted her body.

“I know, baby,” Joel was on the verge of tears as Sarah strained to help herself up, gripping his neck. “I know, I know, I know,” his voice rose in fear, “I know, I know, I know.”

Joel turned to where he’d left his brother, “Tommy, help me!”

Tommy didn’t move, “Joel…”

Sarah’s body stopped shaking under Y/n’s hands, her chest went still.

“Sarah,” Y/n begged, “C’mon, babe.”

“C’mon, baby girl,” Joel whimpered, moving frantically to loop an arm around her, “I gotta get you up. Come on. Come on, we’ll get up.”

Rising on her knees, Y/n hung her head over Sarah’s. The girl’s eyes were blank, her lips were parted.

“Come on,” Joel sobbed, his pleas dropping off as reality began to invade his blind hope, “Come…please…”

It was too late.

Joel took Sarah fully into his arms, wrapping around her so tight, he thought he might be able to physically put her back together.

Any air Y/n still had in her chest left her body, her hands resting in midair as if she was still holding the child.

She crawled to Joel, covered in blood, rocking Sarah’s body and sobbing breathlessly over her shoulder.

It was real.

“Sa-“ Y/n whispered, tears starting to flood down her cheeks. Her voice dropped to a whimper, “Sarah.”

If the universe could grieve a human being, it was Sarah Miller’s passing that brought it to tears. No part of the Earth would be spared from the chaos that had claimed her. No corner of the planet would ever bloom and flourish as it had when she was alive. When she ascended, she took humanity and all of its beauty with her.

And the souls of the two people cradling her corpse, screaming into the night, went with her.

——————

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