#MWAH i'm kissing you all on the mouth

[laesas]

I love having like 8 and a half followers due to my rent lowering gunshots (being insane in the tags) because the elite ones that stick around ensure the notes on my posts are from only the hottest correctest bitches alive

[witchwhaat]

DON'T BE ABOUT IT SPEAK ABOUT IT

[sashiavi]

HEAR ME OUT HEAR ME OUT!!.....Big voy Zhongli...I MEAN-- THE Geo archon? Morax? Come on! He has to be a big boy, after all he shaped Liyue's mountains!!

♡ Genshin Impact Big Boys ♡

You're so righttt omg BigBoy!Zhongli/Morax my king ♡ I'm writing this in his prime Morax era I hope that's okay mwah ♡

My fave genre of Zhongli cough I even have two fics about it cough ◇ ◇

Warnings : 18+ Smut | Morax!Zhongli | possessive | dumbification | dom/sub & master/pet | abuse of power dynamics | Size Difference | monster cock - knotting - belly buldge- breeding | God/Mortal | potential dubcon | the more I write the more warnings come up | 'cunny' as a descriptive word for afab anatomy |

→ᴰᵃʳᵏ ᶜᵒⁿᵗᵉⁿᵗ ᵂᵃʳⁿᶦⁿᵍ←

♡Be in charge of your own reading and look after yourself♡

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BigBoy!Morax who towers over many. Easily over twice the size of an ordinary mortal, effortlessly tall, thick, strong, with heavy muscles coursing with omnipotent power. Carving and shaping the mountains of Liyue, with the effort of a minimal wrist flick.

BigBoy!Morax who lazes on his throne, heavy robes draped off of his body, legs spread apart, cheek pressed into the palm of his hand. His body absolutely dominates over your own, dwarfing you while you rest in his lap. His other arm practically cups you, coddling, with you napping away, head agaisnt his chest, your own pretty peppery floral robes water-falling off of his throne.

BigBoy!Morax with the sheer power of a mighty Dragon, supreme, pre-eminent, forced to take extra care and precaution with you; His pretty little pet.

BigBoy!Morax with a hand easily over twice the size of your own. His thumb longer than your jaw, swiping over your cheek and ear. He practically engulfs your face when he cups the side of it, fingers cradling the back of your head, thumb gently dancing over your closed eyelid. The soft core lapis glow of his hands illuminates your pretty, soft features, allowing him to admire you for hours on end- chanting sweet praise and compliments over and over.

BigBoy!Morax who's hands absolutely shrink your stature. Curving over your waist, gripping your hips, fingers effortlessly wrapping themselves around for frame, tickling at the soft bumps of your spine.

BigBoy!Morax who eyes you from above when you walk by his side - On the rare occasion he allows you to walk, much rather opting to carry you everywhere you went - height barely grazing up to his waist, your hand wrapped around just a few of his fingers.

BigBoy!Morax with his even bigger bed, covered in waves of soft silks, the space around dazzling in pretty little things belonging to his hoard. Archons, the treasure-hoarding being marvels at the prettiest little thing in his collection, all splayed out just for him.

BigBoy!Morax with a thick, forked tongue, perfect for hot, spitty kisses, barely battling for control, relishing at how his pretty pet just submits to him. Archons, the feeling of your little tongue sliding over his own, suckling on him obediently.

BigBoy!Morax and his appetite. Eagerly licking and lapping, tongue fucking that sweet little spot inside your cunny, swallowing down all those sweet juices. His large mouth practically engulfs you, thick fangs pin pricking gently into your cunt, lips suckling on your achey clit. His massive hands wrap around your waist, pulling your pretty self into him, forcing his lips to smush, fangs to bite, tongue to curl over and over.

BigBoy!Morax with claws all too sharp to press into your prefect pussy, forced to tongue fuck you into your first orgasm, stretching you out for him.

BigBoy!Morax with a heavy, thick cock. Standing tall despite its size, holding its own, drooling agaisnt his stomach. It was almost otherworldly, ever so slightly unhuman, with ribs and ridges, a pointed tip and a thick, fat knot right on the base of his length. He's always marvelled at your silly reaction, the awe in your eyes, swallow of your throat, eyeing the dribbly tip of his pudgy cock with a look of unease. He laughs, almost purs, soft in his chest, hand on your cheek.

BigBoy!Morax who has to go slow. Just the tip, juuust the tip. Circling your sticky clit with his thumb, rough, slow rubs forcing your cunny to gush, wetting his cock, letting him slide in bit by bit.

BigBoy!Morax who bottoms out in your cunt, cock pressing into your tummy, bulging up into your guts, leaving the lovliest indent of his cock on your front. He cuddles you, coddling his pretty pet, hushing and soothing away all the tears and hiccups with kisses and licks to your face. Oh, you're so full, aren't you? It's not easy taking the cherishing gift of a God, pretty pet doing such a lovely job.

BigBoy!Morax absolutely relishes in the sweet squeeze of your cunny on his thick, bullying length. Hugging him tight, drooly, sticky pussy lips kissing agaisnt the knot on his base, poor pink little clit grinding on his pelvis.

BigBoy!Morax who is not at all afraid to manhandle your body, giant hands latching to your waist, fingers almost intertwining with themselves over your back. Up your hips go, only your very upper back and shoulders lay on the bed as Morax sinks you down on him, himself. You're forced to wrap those legs around him, barely managing to properly anchor yourself, obediently taking him in like a perfect, little, fuck doll.

BigBoy!Morax watches that fat bump in your gut press up over and over, his thick pudgy head soothing under your belly. He can't help but press a thumb into it, massaging over that spot, listening to those insolent little whines and begs your dumb little mortal brain spews at him.

BigBoy!Morax who was still a merciful God, spitting hot globs of spit on to your cunny, keeping it nice and wet for his cock, letting that knot slip in just for a moment. His other thumb comes down, down, down, rubbing large and slow circles into your clit, forcing out those little gushes and squirms.

BigBoy!Morax, gentle as he is, still managing to to fuck you silly. Long, rhythmic slides of his cock, hands guiding those pretty hips, lifting and pulling in delicious motions- Tip to knot, thick inches squelching in and out, filling up that pretty cunny, little Pet so full, pretty dolly servicing his weepy cock.

BigBoy!Morax who can only last so long with that tight gushy squeeze on his length. Poor Morax who looses himself a little. Prettiest cunt sucking him in so, so well? Can't just dangle that sweet, juicy forbidden fruit in front of him and expect him to not take a bite.

BigBoy!Morax who let's his hips fuck into his precious, darling Pet's cunt. Meeting those hips he forces into his own, thick and slippery knot edging, pressing, slipping- The God growls, capturing your lips with his, thick tongue swirling around your own, forcing you to suckle and nip into him.

BigBoy!Morax hums low when he finally slips that thick, swollen knot into your dumb little mortal cunny, fat tip squirting and oozing thick spurts of cum into your tummy. Oh, he needs to be deeper, nestle his breeder cock up in your gut, paint your cervix white with seed.

BigBoy!Morax eggs his lovely pet on, those hands pulling your hips into his still, now grinding that juicy abused clit on his lower tummy. He feels that pretty cunny squeeze, hears those cries and moans, feels them vibrating agaisnt his tongue. He thrusts as much as he can with that locked knot in your pussy, clicking wetly with the hot pressure of him all stuck in you. His heavy balls continue to squeeze, bursting hot ropes of heavy, thick seed into you over and over. Slow and drawn out, his orgasm could last for minutes on end.

BigBoy!Morax who finally, finally gets that sweet cunt to squirt, making a mess all over his lap, gushing and pulsing, letting that buldge press in, impossibly deeper. Another hot weep of cum, milked out by that heavenly squeeze of you wrapped around him.

BigBoy!Morax laying peppery kisses over your face and neck, maneuvering your smaller-than-his frame around, hushing your sweet mewls when your poor body quivers. Poor, poor overstimulated little you, body reacting to the slighted of touches.

BigBoy!Morax who has you laid on his chest and tummy, thick cock stuck in your cunt, nestled and still drooling. His massive hands soothe over your thighs, massage into your back, pat your hair and caress your teary face. Awh, sweet girl. His lovliest, prettiest little doll. It's alright, your God is here, he'll soothe those aches and kiss away the pain. In the meantime, take a little rest, right on his chest, nice and comfy. Poor little mortal, always so tired. Keep him nice and warm now. Just like that.

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I may have gotten carried away.. but I hope you enjoyed regardless ♡

A Small Risa Message: You are loved, you are appreciated and you are allowed to enjoy this kind of fiction ♡

Property Of; SashiAvi

[he-calls-me-kitten]

Recently got busy and haven't had time to be around at all .. I just skimmed through whatever I have missed while I was away and I realized how badly I missed your writing style... It's just so ue2ge8eh27db❤️❤️⁉️⁉️ I can't really explain it.. its scrumptious, very very yummy... So I come with a little request... We know the obey men are quite and as a short girlie that's just like so fucking attractive like?????????? Sirrrr???? 😖😖

Imaginee... getting picked up by them and quite literally hanging off their cock as they just dangle you in the air, your feet not touching the ground as they just fuck yiu silly, watching your writhe and sob as their cock leaves a bulge on your stomach as you claw at their arms. They don't even gotta be trying, your just go dumb on their cock, crying how it's too big and having them bully themselves in you...

Basically that prompt with barbatos, Simeon and beel

I'm a very horny Tumblr user as you can tell LMAO

Love you though, take rests, eat, drink, stay healthy, darling. Mwah 💋

-M. 🪭🪷

Oh my god look who's back?!!! Hey M!!! Missed you loads, hopefully life eases up on you, busy little thing! Thank you for checking in, it means the world ❤️

And your ideas...just *chef's kiss*. Here's another treat for the short AFAB folks with size kink out there!!!

Little Body Big Heat

Afab! MC x Barbatos, Simeon, Beelzebub

Barbatos mock apologizes as you pant and plead him to stop. But he's barely even doing anything really. All he's doing is just standing there, carrying you in his arms, holding you so close.

You're the one struggling and twitching to take him in more or push him out. The way you are writhing - he genuinely cannot tell but he sure is enjoying the show.

"MC, use your words, won't you? I'm sorry I can't understand you when you're like this, my love." He coos, brushing hair away from your face.

"Mhhmm- B-Barb please.... please it's too much. Please ....just... help me move..." You struggled to string a sentence together.

And he finally the gracious butler takes pity on you. You're asking so nicely after all.

"Is this better?" He moves so painfully slow, you whine into his ears. "Oh? Would you like me to be... faster?" He kisses your neck, feeling the vibrations of your delightful complains, which soon would turn into delightful screams. And he wants everyone to hear them too.

Simeon's angelic side simply ceases to exist when it comes to his desire for you. Honestly what were you thinking falling asleep, sitting on his lap. Don't you know he already has a hard time behaving himself around you?

"Did you have a good sleep, MC?" He threads his fingers through your hair, pulling you closer for a kiss. "As you can see...I've run into quite the problem. I can't go home to Luke while I'm like this now, can I?"

You take some time to come to your senses. After all, it's not every day you wake up with Simeon's erection between your legs.

"Would you like to use me...to calm it down?" You gingerly try to hold him down there, it took both of your hands yet he was still much too big for you. He made a low groan at the contact.

"Really, you wouldn't mind?" He asks even as his fingers are already touching your waist, slowly pulling off your top.

"Your sense of duty is really admirable, MC." He chuckles as he pulls off your shorts, now undoing his own pants. "Now then, where would you like me?"

"You...can choose." You let him feast on you with his eyes and hands, enciting soft whimpers and moans. His fingers delight at the wetness pooled between your legs, toying with you before pressing his erection against your puffy clit.

He pushes into your hole, stretching you out but before you can't even let out a sound. His tongue is inside your mouth devouring your screams. You've taken him in so well. He can feel himself bulge out your stomach. "Does that feel good, my little lamb?"

You nod even tears collect at the corner of your eyes. "So good..so... full... It's toobiigg... you'resooo big S-Simeon... please..." Oh how he loves doing this to you.

Beelzebub's length is only the second most dangerous thing about him. The first is his stamina. You realise this now as you have been pressed against his lockers for what feels like hours. Your feet haven't touched the ground in so long.

"Beel...a-are you still.. not done..." You watched him pant, looking at you with a frenzied look in his eyes. When you told him you'd help him get his mind off food, this is not how he thought it would go.

"Beel! I-I know you're really famished ..but ...but you can't... keep...doing this...ahhhmn..mnhn Beel I'm about to...cum again...stop please..." He kept sucking your slick up, right through your orgasm. Talk about overstimulation.

He already tormented you with his tongue down there till you were leaking through your underwear. And now that he was too aroused to calm down, you simply had to let him fuck you. "Just...one last time, MC. I promise."

Yeah sure. He said that two rounds ago. Seriously you wondered how you had not passed out yet. But then again, everytime he moved - you swear he kept discovering a new pleasure point inside you.

"MC your face right now...you look so cute...I'm sorry I couldn't stop myself...and you feel so warm..." He plunged in and out of you again, bouncing you on his dick effortlessly. Of course he hasn't thought about food, he's been too busy devouring you.

[suntoru]

─ ✰ WHIPPED 4 U!

─ SYNOPSIS: gojo satoru's a whiny baby when it comes to you.

─ WARNINGS: pure fluff, kissing, whiny gojo, suggestive at the end but not smut, cat being gojo's biggest hater

─ AUTHOR’S NOTE: this is canon GIGGLES I HOPE U LIKE IT!! cool people reblog n comment if u did <3

you're wholeheartedly convinced that gojo satoru, without a doubt, is the embodiment of a five-year-old child trapped in the towering physique of a grown man. "babeeeeeee..." he melodically whines, storming into the room with a cascade of faux tears threatening to spill from his mesmerizing teal orbs, each blink carrying the weight of dramatic distress. in a display of sheer drama, he clutches his finger as if it's a dire injury, letting out exaggerated sighs that could rival the most skilled actors.

his 6'3 frame drapes itself dramatically into your arms, and if you didn't know any better, you'd swear he's reenacting a tragic scene where his body had been sliced in two. (haha get it i'm sorry please don't come for me) theatrical whimpers escape him, each one carefully crafted to tug at your heartstrings, and he lifts his pointer finger, presenting it to you with the utmost flair. it's a spectacle that could put any tantrum-throwing toddler to shame, yet in the midst of it all, there's an undeniable charm to the childish antics of gojo satoru.

"milkis scratched me," he huffs, his gaze a glaring accusation directed at the unbothered pearly white cat adorned with a delicate satin pink bow. the feline culprit merely licks its paw, an image of serene innocence, blinking up at you with adoration as it meows and gracefully rubs against your leg. "see? a demon." he declares, shoving his wounded digit in front of your face, revealing a tiny cut barely grazing his skin.

you respond with a nonchalant sigh, seemingly unimpressed by the ordeal. gojo, however, wears a visible frown, his hands finding their way to your face as he squishes your cheeks with playful exasperation.

"so ya don't love me anymore." he pouts, his lips forming an exaggerated puppy dog expression, his wide, pleading eyes boring into yours. "you're choosing him over me??" a soft giggle escapes you, a teasing melody that only deepens the lines of his pout. in retaliation, you playfully flick his forehead, and he lets out a broken whine, nuzzling his face into the comforting crook of your neck.

"meanie." he murmurs against your skin, his voice muffled by the closeness. you playfully ruffle his hair, a mischievous smile dancing on your lips. deciding to indulge him in this lighthearted moment, you gently grip his chin, lifting it to meet your gaze. cooing as if he were a child, a teasing glint sparkling in your eyes as you play along.

"aww... my precious baby... whatever shall we do?" he willingly sinks into the warmth of your palm, lifting his injured finger for emphasis.

"kiss." he pleads, his bottom lip jutting out in a display of drama. obliging, you lean in, planting a sweet peck on his finger, accompanied by a playful 'mwah!' his initial pout falters slightly, basking in the attention you're graciously bestowing upon him. "better?" you ask, tilting your head, a playful smile lingering on your lips. but gojo has more demands, pointing to his forehead with a childlike innocence. without hesitation, you plant your plush lips right where he's pointing, barely holding back a giggle at the adorable display.

"you forgot here." he points to his cheek, and you humor him once again, planting a smooch on the designated spot. "my nose needs loving too." he whines, and with an eye roll, you indulge him, giving his nose the attention it apparently craves. "i think i need one more to be all better." he declares, this time pointing to his lips. his eyes close, anticipation written across his face as he puckers up, awaiting the sensation of your mouth against his.

"you're so greedy, 'toru." you complain, yet you succumb to his wishes, wrapping your arms around his neck. standing on your tippy toes, you feel his hands snake around your waist lovingly as you deliver the requested kiss on his lips.

his are buttery soft, radiating pure unadulterated warmth as gojo smiles against your own. the kiss is a gentle exchange, soft, sweet, and wrapped in an aura of innocence that makes you reluctant to pull away. after what feels like an eternity of shared breaths and lingering closeness, he eventually releases you, both of you left breathless and slightly dazed.

"s-satisfied?" you huff, your cheeks now tinted a rosy pink. with that signature mischievous glint in his eyes, he grins, and you can feel something twitch in his grey sweatpants. "if you're handin' out free kisses, i can think of something that needs a little lovin'."

© KAEFFEINEE 2024. do not copy, repost, or translate any of my works on any platform.

[lunarmoves]

"can i have a kiss?"

you abruptly choke on the sip of water you'd been taking, your free hand coming up to cover your mouth as you cough roughly and loudly into your palm. it's enough to make your throat ache, and you barely register a large hand patting you on your back as you do your best to clear your windpipe.

"pardon?" you eventually force out, voice scratchy as you look up at sun through watering eyes. "what did you say?"

sun's head tilts to the side slightly. it's difficult to parse out what he's thinking with those blank eyes of his. "can i have a kiss?" he repeats for you in the same tone and inflection—light and casual like he's simply asking about the weather.

you blink owlishly at him, then glance around the empty daycare. maybe as an excuse to not look at him. everything was cleaned swiftly today, leaving you with some free time before you had to clock out. you just hadn't expected it to be spent like this, however. you clear your throat and look back at sun. his fingers curl and uncurl at his sides, barely noticeable had he not been standing stock still.

"...what's brought this on?" you ask after a short moment of silence. you're stalling, you know, but you're genuinely curious.

his head tilts the other way, a quiet click coming from his face plate. and then—like he hadn't just been standing before you, still as a statue—he jolts back into an amiable sway.

"oh, you know!" he gushes out, clasping his hands together and making the bells attached to his ribbons jingle with the motion. "we just see the way parents kiss their children at the door! and, well, those kids love to play house a lot too, you see. it's difficult not to notice it when it happens all the time! we are simply..." he trails off, as though searching for the right word. "...intrigued."

"right..." you're not quite buying what he's trying to say. hell, your ears are likely still tinged red from the initial embarrassment of his question. "you give kisses to the kids all the time, though," you point out. they aren't kisses so much as they are little taps of his static smile to their boo-boos or foreheads when they ask. you only know they're intended as kisses because sun lets out an exaggerated mwah every time.

sun only looks at you, something tense along the line of his thin shoulders. you wait, in the silence of the too large daycare, as he seems to ruminate upon something. and when he speaks, it makes something curl tightly in the deepest pit of your stomach.

"that's different," he replies quietly. a pin drops in the far distance.

your tongue suddenly feels too thick for your mouth and you swallow before you reply. "how so?" you find yourself asking. you... you don't quite understand. or maybe you don't want to. maybe you're looking for an answer you're not quite prepared to hear yet. maybe you are ready and you just don't realize it yet.

"they're not you." it's said simply—like saying the sky is blue or grass is green. your lips purse together. you refuse to admit how that makes you feel—how it makes something hot flood throughout your body.

"...there are cameras," you say weakly, trying to fight down the flush crawling up your neck and into your cheeks. was this really happening? was he really asking you this? it's just a kiss, you scold yourself. you're overreacting. he's a robot—it's not like it means anything to him. right? "i'm on shift. i could get fired." it doesn't matter if it's a friendly little peck—anything seen like that with a robot on cameras after the daycare has closed will be detrimental to your career.

"don't you worry your silly little head about that!" sun waves a hand in dismissal, his eyes upturned slightly into white crescents. there's a curve to his smile that you're only minutely wary of. "we've taken care of it!" ...whatever that means. you eye one of the cameras positioned near the ceiling of the daycare, the small red light on it frozen. you... aren't going to question that. you internally sigh.

sun's always curious—always pushing boundaries. always seeing how far he can go with you before you take a step back.

it seems like you'd taken too long to respond. sun closes the small distance between the two of you with a single, long stride, standing before you in a way that makes you crane your head up. your personal space is wiped out in an instant. he bends down until his face is mere inches above yours. and then he waits.

"don't be shy!" he tells you brightly, fingers flexing by his sides. one of his rays twitches atomically. "put 'er right here!" his face plate spins slightly as an indicator.

he's really not leaving you much room for choice here. you huff at his persistence, giving him a small roll of your eyes. and with a deep breath to help ground yourself—keep your head clear and look at this all from an objective standpoint (robot, he's a robot, he's curious, it doesn't mean anything)—you eventually raise yourself up on your tippy toes.

a kiss—as small and feathery as a wisp of wind on a cool, fall day—is pressed delicately to the plating of his forehead. the metal is cool under your touch, a contrast against the warmth of your skin. you don't let yourself linger, dropping back down onto your heels as you clear your throat and force yourself to look at him. he's still watching you—with that too large smile and too squinted eyes.

"there you go," you force out as casually as you can. there's something swarming in your gut and you're not sure if it's a good thing or not. "happy?"

sun's rays spin around once, but he doesn't move away. his smile stretches wider—thinner like a blade. and when he speaks, there's a faint depth to his voice that makes you think of the way moon speaks.

"you missed." he bends down closer to you, the shadows of his lithe form casting themselves across your face. he lifts a hand to tap once against the metal of his smile and the sound seems to echo through the daycare. you stare up at him with wide eyes, a cool prickle making its way down your spine. sun's face plate makes another sharp click. "do it again."

you mouth opens, then closes, until you finally muster up the will to let out a little laugh—albeit a slightly shaky one.

"c'mon, dude, i gave you a kiss." you let out another chuckle and find yourself leaning back just a tad. "i should head out now anyways, it's getting lat—"

before you can even finish your sentence, sun's hands dart out to grip you tightly on your upper arms. trapping you within his hold as he draws you closer. you're forced to look up at him, all tense lines and twitching metallic parts.

"you misunderstand, friend." sun grins wider, the gleam of his teeth sharp in the daycare's lighting. you take the smallest step back. "i wasn't asking."

moon

[sceletaflores]

can you write a smut fic with mike x reader where he eats you out?? thank you!!

Eating In (It's good for you)

pairing: mike schmidt x afab!reader

summary: mike is a munch always why would i write anything else???

warnings: 18+!!! NSFW!!! MDNI!!! oral sex (f!receving), fingering, squirting (kinda?)

word count: y'all already know 1.3k

authors note: you guys really speak my language. the beginning of this got a lot fluffier than i was expecting lol still filthy though. 18+ content mdni!!! hope you love it anon mwah <333 also pretty sure i flipped flopped between perspectives sorry babies i'm dumb

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it's no secret that mike lives for eating you out. he could live between your thighs if it was up to him, spending hours drawing out those desperate noises from your lips when he does that thing with his tongue that you love.

the feeling of your hands tugging his hair and your thighs tightening around his head because you just feel so good make his eyes roll back in his head every time he thinks about it.

tonight was no exception, but it was a little different.

as soon as the two of you put abby to bed he was on you. pinning you to his bed as you lazily made out, grinding against each other in slow relaxed motions.

“baby,” mike breathes between kisses, “can you do me a favor?”

you hum in acknowledgement, not wanting to pull away from kissing mike enough to reply.

mike chuckles against your lips, breaking the kiss to nip teasingly at your lips. “i want you to ride my face.” he whispers dirtily, licking a stripe over your lips.

mike watched as his request sinks in, your eyes widening and mouth dropping open just a bit. “mike…” you whisper, he can hear the hesitation in your voice. he can’t have that.

“come on baby, please?” he pleads, moving his hands to rub soft circles into your hips. “you’ll love it, baby. i’ll make it so good for you.”

mike can see the moment your pupils completely dilate, fully swallowing your iris’. your chest heaving as your adrenaline kicks up.

after a beat, you nod slowly. your soft “okay” barely audible, mike grins like he just won the lottery.

“well hop on baby,” mike says, pressing a chaste kiss to your lips. “we don’t have all night.”

mike pulls away, falling on his back on the bed. laying his laced hands on his stomach, waiting patiently for you to give him what he wants.

he waits as you take a steadying breath, gathering up the courage before you rise up and start to shuffle over to him. mikes hungry eyes watch you swing your leg over his lap, making your way up his body.

you stop short, sitting on his stomach with a timid look. mike places two grounding hands on your hips, squeezing them reassuringly.

“you have to tell me if i’m smothering you or something. i don’t need to accidentally kill you.” your hands fidget with the waist of mikes pants nervously.

“what a way to go.” he says wistfully, a dopey grin on his face.

you let out a small laugh, trying and failing to hide your smile. “you’re such an asshole.” you reply, pinching his chest teasingly. your tone is too fond to hold any actual malice. mike laughs back.

finally, you start to shuffle higher up his torso, but he stops you holding your hips in place. “other way, baby.”

it doesn’t take a lot of brain power to understand what he means. you let out a soft moan, a shiver wracks your body. pleasure zings up your spine at how filthy this is.

it’s a little awkward, but you manage to swing your legs around so you're facing the rest of his bedroom, not just the wall. from this angle, you can see how his dick is tenting the front of his loose sleeping pants, a wet spot forming near the tip.

you still only hover over your boyfriend's face instead of truly sitting, scared of hurting him. mike decides not to say anything, too preoccupied with the view directly in-front of him.

“fuck,” mike whispers hotly, staring up at your clothed pussy makes his dick twitch. baby pink lace darkened by how wet you are. he leans up slightly, running his tongue over the rough lace still covering you.

"shit...mike," you shudder, legs trembling on either side of his head.

mike takes his time, laving his tongue over the soaked lace a few times, reveling in your familiar taste, but his patience wears thin. soon enough he's tugging your panties aside to get at what he really wants before returning them to your hips.

mike moans at the sight of your slick pussy, already so wet from his mouth. he can't help but softly run his pointer finger through your folds, gathering your wetness and using it to circle around your clit.

you moan softly, trying your best to be quiet so abby doesn't wake up.

mike stops his fingers assault on your clit, too eager to chase the sight of your convulsing pussy with his mouth, the tip of his tongue sliding easily through your folds. he groans, rubbing his face between your thighs, no doubt covering his nose and chin in the copious amount of wetness leaking from your pussy. he quickly gets lost in the feeling of tasting you, of licking and sucking at your clit making you moan and whine.

"shit!" you exclaim, pitching forward to steady yourself with your hands flat on his chest. the rough feel of his stubble scratching your inner thighs, most likely leaving red marks on the skin there. you hope it'll leave marks, that you'll be able to feel it every time you walk tomorrow, a reminder of what the two of you did tonight.

by now you're white knuckling the front of his shirt as you frantically circle your hips against his face, the bed squeaking quietly under your movements. mike spurs you on with small smacks to your ass, groaning into your pussy with every pass of his tongue over your fluttering hole.

you can feel the vibrations in mike's throat as he fucks you with his tongue, guttural groans making your thighs shake in an attempt to stay upright.

but it's just too much, the onslaught of his tongue making you forget all about your earlier insecurity, and you fully lower yourself onto his mouth too caught up in your pleasure to even hold yourself up anymore.

mike's eyes widen in surprise at you seating yourself on his face, moaning way too loudly at how hot it is to see you lose control.

"fuck! feels so good, mike," you slur, head hanging down to your chest, hair falling around your face. "mph- mike - ah, ah, ah,"

you realize you're going to come like this, riding mike's face like you're starved for it. you can feel it, the warmth settling deep in your belly. flames licking there way up your body.

mike realizes it too apparently, because he latches his mouth over your clit and plunges two fingers into your clenching pussy, thrusting them in and out quickly.

the lewd squelching noises that fill the room make your cheeks burn in embarrassment. 

“holy fucking shit! mike fuck!” you moan, trying desperately to control your volume. “i’m gonna come, oh fuck.” mike moans in respines, speeding up both his tongue and fingers.

the combination of mike’s tongue rapidly flicking over your clit and thick fingers expertly hitting your g-spot every thrust pushes you over the edge. one final suck to your clit has you coming all over mike’s face. drenching the lower part of his face in your juices and soaking up the dirty groans mike makes as he sucks up every last drop.

mike pulls away from you clit, and takes his fingers out of your pussy to let you come down from your orgasm. kissing across the inside of your thighs as you shake and tremble above him.

after a few shuddering breaths, you lift up and off mike’s face to collapse onto the mattress next to him. the two of you lay next to each other staring up at the ceiling, panting out wet breaths as you come down.

you turn to mike, his lips are slick and red. lower half of his face shining with your come, eyes half-open and hazy. you lift your hand to trial your finger down his body, making your way to the waist of his sleeping pants riding low on his hips showing off his dark happy trail. your hand slides lower to the ever still present hard-on tenting his pants obscenely, rubbing over his erect dick with purpose.

“your turn?”

°∘❉∘° °∘❉∘° °∘❉∘° °∘❉∘° °∘❉∘° °∘❉∘° °∘❉∘° 

taglist!

@yuenity @ebodebo @mfdxz

[activesplooger]

💤Bedtime💤 + PJ Head canons! | Hazbin Hotel

featuring Lucifer, Vox, & Alastor! sleeping in the same bed with your new lover for the first time <3 cw: suggestive, fluff <3 Masterpost!

𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖋𝖊𝖗:

"I'll be there in a second!" your boyfriend called out from the bathroom. "Okay, hon. Take your time!" You sat in the silky red sheets of Lucifer's bed, patting your lap rhythmically as you waited for him to join you. This was your first time sleeping in the same bed together. Which, although it sounds like a small milestone, it was a big step for Lucifer. The two of you decided to take things slow after Lucifer confided in you that he hadn't had a partner in a looonnggg time and wasn't sure how to start things. You were happy to take things slow, it's not like you were in any rush or anything (since you two had all of eternity to progress in your relationship). Besides, it was a breath of fresh air to meet someone that didn't want to screw right away, a problem in your love life that unfortunately occurred waayy to often. But Lucifer was different, a true gentle lover who wants more than the "benefits" of a relationship. He just wants you. And he made sure to remind you of that as much as possible. The creek of the bathroom door interrupts your thoughts. You turn your head to see your boyfriend clad in apple print pajama shorts, a graphic t-shirt that said "big duck energy", calve-high apple print socks, and duck slippers. He looked dorky and somehow... irresistible...? You were always in awe at how Lucifer could be the biggest lil dork ever, yet still be the most handsome being you've ever had the privilege of seeing. You smile and bring a hand up to your mouth to stifle a laugh.

"What?" Your boyfriend questions.

"I'm sorry," you smirk, "you have big what energy?".

The blonde looks down at his clothes, a golden blush dusting his cheeks as he mutters "I'm gonna change..." He turns to leave before you leap out of bed to grab his wrist. "Nonono!" you plead "It's adorable, I love it." Lucifer doesn't look you in the eye as he speaks and instead fiddles with his hands "But you're laughing..." "I'm laughing, yes... But not because you look dumb or anything, it's cute!" You cradle his face in your hands and lift his head up to look at you "Hey, look at me Luce..." Lucifer looks up at you with his big red eyes, a vulnerable expression on his face. You smile gently and press a soft kiss to his lips. You let the kiss linger for a moment, feeling Lucifer melt into it as he kisses you back passionately. You pull back and rest your forehead against his. "You know I love you, right?" Lucifer smiles and gently holds the sides of your jaw. "I love you too, Y/N." You follow him to the bed and watch as he climbs under the covers. Without warning, he grabs your hand and pulls you into bed with him. "Ack! Lucifer!" you yelp, to which you get a giggle in response. He speaks in between the kisses he peppers all over your face. "I. mwah Love. mwah You! mwahmwahmwahmwah!". You laugh at the sudden affection and hold him close. The feeling of the small blonde envelope your body in a tight snuggle gave you butterflies, he never failed to show you just how much he loved you.

"You know," you begin "your shirt's not wrong..." Lucifer lifts his head up from your cheek and tilts his head to the side. "Hm?" "I said your shirt isn't wrong," you repeat, your tone becoming more suggestive "You have verrrry big duck energy.". "Pfttt!" The blonde laughs "You can't just say that, Y/N!" You playfully shove his face away and speak through playful snickers "I'm not the one wearing the sexy t-shirt!" The two of you share a laugh as you lay in bed together. Lucifer's head collapses in your chest and you feel the muffled laughs that tickled your skin. Eventually, you settle down and get cozy in his bed. Lucifer turns off the lamp on his nightstand and cuddles against you. You happily spoon him and intertwine your legs with his as you bask in each other's warm embrace. "Goodnight, my love." "Goodnight, Luci" That was the first of many sleepovers for you guys, and it never failed to bring you comfort and love. Who knew the devil would be such a good cuddler? You did. And you were glad he chose you to share that with you. <3

𝒜𝓁𝒶𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓇:

Alastor hums a tune as he reads in bed beside you, not a care in the world that this was your first time sleeping in the same bed. Meanwhile, you fidgeted with your hands in your lap, nervously flicking your fingers against each other as your mind was racked with anxious thoughts. 'What if I snore?' 'What if I'm a bad cuddler?!' 'What if he doesn't want to cuddle' 'Why is he just sitting there like this is a daily occurrence?!'. Your boyfriend must've picked up on the anxious energy emitting from you and spoke, eyes still fixed on the book in front of him, "Darling?". You snapped out of your thoughts and whipped your head to look at the deer sitting tranquil beside you, "Hm? What is it?". He flipped a page in the book he was reading before speaking "What's wrong?". Your eyes widen as you think to yourself, 'fuck! how'd he know?! how does he always know everything?!'. You plaster on a fake smile and speak in a cheery tone "Nothi-" "Don't lie", he interrupts, finally looking away from his book and down at you with a knowing grin. You sigh and groan, slumping against the pillows as you stare at the wall in front of you "I'm nervous, okay? It's our first time sharing a bed and I-I don't want to screw it up! I might snore, I might talk in my sleep- Or walk in my sleep! I-I could be a bad cuddler or- God forbid I drool! And you're just sitting there reading a book acting like everything is fi-". Alastor cuts in on your ramble, stopping it by craning his neck downward and pressing a kiss to your lips.

He pulls back slowly after a moment before letting out an amused chuckle, "Darling, you're in bed with a serial killer, and you're worried about drool? Haha, quite a strange one you are!". You exhale softly, maybe you were being irrational. After all, why would Alastor care? Alastor sets down his book and presses a kiss to your forehead, "I suppose it's time for bed, hm?". You nod and snuggle against his chest, the moment being peaceful before you hear the deer demon stifle a laugh. Adjusting your head upwards, you look up at him with furrowed eyebrows. The deer demon bursts out in laughter, "Let's hope you don't drool once you doze off! HA HA HA HA!" You roll your eyes and playfully slap his shoulder, joining in on the laughter "Let's hope you don't kill someone in your sleep!". A cheeky grin creeps onto your boyfriend's face "No promises, my dear~". "Yeah yeah," you reposition your head to sit comfortably on Alastor's chest, "Goodnight, Al.". "Goodnight, darling.". Thankfully, no drooling, snoring, murdering (that you knew of), sleepwalking, or any nighttime shenanigans occurred. In fact, it was a rather serene night for the both of you, with many more sleepovers happening in the future <3.

҉V҉҉o҉x҉:

"Cute PJs, hon" you taunt playfully, gesturing to his shark-themed nightwear with a wave of your pointer finger. "Oh save it, Y/N!" Vox grumbles as he climbs into bed next to you. "Rough day at work?" you inquire, expression softening as you see the bags under your boyfriend's eyes. (Who knew TVs could get eye bags anyway?). "Don't even mention it... Valentino. had another little tirade today and just thought it'd be great to ͬͩ̊m̩͈͕̗u͕̰ͦ̒ͨ̈́r̯̠̦̩͔̤ͨ̌̑̽͒̓̇d̼̪̫̙̔e͕̬͕̔͛͌̒ͨ̈́r̯̠̦ͨ̌̑ half of Velvettes staff...". You give him a compassionate smile as you softly respond, "I'm sorry, love...". You quirk an eyebrow and begin to tease him, "Does someone want attention~?.". Vox rolls his eyes and stares daggers at you, "Shut up! I've had a rough day and wanted to come home to some- You know what, why am I even fighting this... Come here!". A yelp escapes your lips as your boyfriend pulls you under the covers with him, cuddling against you as he rests his large, flat-screened, face against your chest. Your torso was almost completely enveloped with the overlord's face, and you didn't mind it. In fact, you enjoyed it. The warm heat radiating off his screen was soothing and relaxing. Feeling the smooth, silky, dark blue sheets under you for the first time was unfamiliar, but god damn it was amazing. People really weren't kidding when they said Overlord's lived in absolute luxury. The comforters were softer than anything you'd ever felt. Just simply laying in that bed was enough to ruin all other beds for you, their comfort not matching up to Vox's in the slightest. Gently rubbing the back of Vox's head, you speak softly, "Wanna talk about it, love? I know I give you a hard time but, I'm here for you.". You feel Vox take a deep breath, feeling the hot air exhale against your chest. "Thanks, Dollface... I know you are... I've had a pretty rough day, Papermint can't follow a simple fucking direction, Valentino won't stop bitching and whining, and I have to deal with it all!" "What about Velvette? Doesn't she at least help?". Vox chuckles grimly and quickly responds, "Velvette? You mean the adult screen-ager? Pft! Oh please! Whenever I complain to her she just sends me back memes and ghosts me when I ask for help!". You gently caress his antennas, "I'm sorry, honey, sounds like a pain in the ass.". The overlord relaxes into your touch, a pleased smile creeping out from his teal teeth. "Thank you, Doll... It does suck...". You continued to cuddle Vox and let him rant his heart out, until eventually, he tuckered himself out and fell asleep. You hold him close to your chest and fall asleep soon after him without realizing this is the first time you two have shared a bed for the night. Despite the impromptu event, it was sweet and you wouldn't change it in the slightest. You woke up early that morning and took the liberty of calling Papermint to cancel all of Vox's meetings for the day. He needed the day off, and despite his workaholic nature, Vox was glad you took the initiative in forcing him into a well-earned break. The two of you spent the day together, watching Vox's favorite shark movies, cuddling, making out, and getting taken out to a fancy restaurant for dinner! As night came, you didn't return to your apartment. In fact, you didn't sleep in your apartment for a long time. As time passed, the lines between your stuff and Vox's started to become blurred. One day, you walk into the apartment and find all your stuff moved in for you. You tried to act mad at Vox for making this big decision, but your joyful expression betrayed you. Vox and you were now blissfully moved in together, all thanks to that one night you spent together, the first night. <3

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Enjoyy! I hope u like this one lol i thought it be cutee <3 Masterpost!

[wifeyoozi]

Ranking svt members kissability cuz I am really bored

Jihoon : see I'm being really biases about this ik but bffr this man has gotta be GREAATTTT at kissing. His lips are a little thing but still really soft looking and plump and i just know he is great with tongue too

Jeonghan : if I made completely unbiased list I'd put him first. He's gotta be damn good at kissing. The kind that makes you chase him when he pulls back the slightest. He's the perfect amount of filthy and romantic kiss

Seungcheol : with those lips? Hell yeah he's great! A little agressive maybe? But he's just so desperate to kiss you all the time he can't control himself.

Seokmin : hot take but hes a hot hot kisser. Like I'm talking pornstar hot kisser. The sunshines are usually the filthiest kissers. Yeah he goes about pecking you with that loud mwah sound and then giggle to himself but when he's really kissing you? He's crazy about it you can't have enough of his kisses.

Mingyu : he's also a little aggressive like cheol but more like needy aggressive. Like he just can't get enough of your kisses and he needs to go in all deek in your mouth. He's a wet kisser, spit all around both your mouth but you love it like that too.

Wonwoo : kind of similar to mingyu but more dominant. Likes full on make out sesh and leaves you with swollen lips that look like they got a bee sting. Tho he has a thing for when you bite his lips

Hoshi : he's like a really sloppy kisser like just tongue and spit everywhere and he also loves giggling and whining into the kiss and murmur soft words of affirmation of how good you're doing and he sometimes can't stop till you're literally having to pull away to breathe hehe

Joshua : he's either a very gentle kisser or a every very wild one. No absolute in betweens. And he's great at both sides, just not the middle, which is mostly fine by you cuz he's mouth is delicious enough either way

The8 : he's got a great technique but he's just not a very nasty kisser. Like loves kissing you slow and steady, get in the mood. Just some times you might get impatient and he's smirking like nope you gotta sit still till I'm satisfied with kissing you rhe way I want.

Jun : he is a weird kisser but in a good way?? Like he loves doing crazy kisses like the Spiderman kiss where somehow either if you are hanging off (maybe just down a pull-up pole) and the other one is kissing or like passing drinks in each other's mouth while kissing. One may absolutely love his shenanigans or absolutely weird out by him

Seungkwan : he's not a bad kisser per se but he's kinda lost during the kiss sometimes like he's just preoccupied in his thoughts and stressed out about his schedules and other stuff idk and he's apologizing to you when you ask about it cuz he wants to focus on kissing you entirely so you just gotta kiss him again till he melts into your lips and forgets about everything that stole his attention earlier.

Vernon : it's not about the kiss but the lips like idk he looks like a man with dry lips who doesn't apply Vaseline/lip balm often and his thin lips don't help 🧍🏻

Dino : he is not a bad kisser either I think he's great actually and got that young energy but I also think he lacks experience compared to others. Like he started great but he definitely has more potential and just needs more practice/experience to get there

[pomefioredove]

mirror

summary: vil falling in love with you type of post: short fic characters: vil schoenheit additional info: romantic, FLUFF, reader is yuu, reader is gender neutral, takes place during/after book 6 author's note: vilyuu is such a good and underrated dynamic I'm never not obsessed with it. always thinking about him. holding them like dolls making them kiss mwah mwah

One might be bold enough to assume that actor and model Vil Schoenheit had been a victim of Eros before.

With the world under his thumb and millions of adoring fans at his beck and call, it was easy to fantasize about the image of a shining star that had left a string of broken hearts behind him. His persona of perfection gave off such a dazzling impression that any other truth is simply unimaginable. Beautiful, talented, devoted...

...Untouchable to such a degree that the very truth of the matter was that Vil Schoenheit had never been in love. He had no use, let alone time, to indulge himself in something that he found distracting at best and frustrating at worst. For most of his life, romance was nothing but another part to play, a frustrating rumor to dispel, a disaster to witness, something that nagged at him from the outside yet never made itself a home within him.

This idea of the confident heartbreaker Vil Schoenheit was nothing but a reflection of the image he put out, shone back at him by tabloids and fan accounts. It was a hollow interpretation, fueled by fantasies of a Vil that didn't exist in flesh and blood. And so, every time an invasive interviewer or pesky reporter inquired about the state of his personal affairs, he answered truthfully: Vil Schoenheit could easily go throughout life focusing solely on his career, on improving himself, and not miss out on anything at all.

There have been very, very few things that Vil has called himself an idiot over. That answer was one of them.

Because the very second he saw you again after being separated by Styx, the want to smack you for being so reckless in coming after him was only secondary to his want to hold you and cry until his water-proof mascara was running.

Love is such a strange emotion. Vil could never understand why Rook was so obsessed with it, how the vice housewarden fell in love with every beautiful person he saw. For his whole life Vil thought it to be painful, to be distracting, to be finite and often times nothing but a shallow reflection of all of one's ugliest traits.

And now, it made him feel weak and messy. He hated feeling messy.

...And yet, what he wouldn't do to have his lipstick smeared over your mouths. To have you see him with his hair undone and eyes bleary with sleep, and to see you in that state as well. It was not the time, nor the place, but he wanted to cradle you in his arms until this terrible, sickly feeling of longing you'd left him with went away.

For the first time in his life, Vil was suddenly terrified of being alone.

No, not alone- he was terrified of being without you.

To never see your smile again would be a fate worse than death, worse than growing old and haggard. How terrible to think that just one simple person could so easily undo everything about him, and yet, he wanted more of that very feeling. He would unwrap himself layer by layer for you if you asked, taking off all of the years of discipline and poise, and lay vulnerable before you so that you could be soft and simple together. Vil had always regarded romance as difficult, but falling in love with you was surprisingly easy.

He did not have to save Grim from the Underworld, despite what he claimed. Such a risky move cost him everything he loved, everything beautiful about him, everything except for you. And as much as he mourned for himself, he knew he would do it again and again if it meant saving the smile on your face.

And perhaps he was too wishful with his thinking, but he could have sworn he saw that same familiar glimmer of affection and admiration in your eyes when you met his gaze. As if you couldn't even see the pasty, wrinkled mess he'd turned into, and were peering at something behind it.

It made him feel utterly exposed and offered him no comfort, but the thought that you were looking at something not even he could see lingered in the back of his mind, even after his magical energy was rejuvenated.

He had become so familiar with everyone around him being a mirror, reflecting his carefully crafted image right back at him, showering him with two-dimensional praises, that being seen as an object of flesh and blood and tears was a strange notion. To behold his presence and see a person with wants and needs and flaws rather than a flat surface, a decorative magazine atop a coffee table, left him with a strange feeling in his chest. The thought both bothered and warmed him.

Vil Schoenheit was so hopelessly in love with you, and it didn't hurt. It wasn't difficult or ugly or forced, it took not even the least bit of effort. He sunk into the feeling like a warm bath which never grew colder, and he let that be his new reality. It felt strange to imagine that there was a time where he didn't love you, where he didn't look at you as if you were the moon itself, where you weren't such a part of his being that he couldn't imagine life without you.

And he never expressed these feelings in words. They existed inside of him, running through his veins like the very blood that kept him alive and warm, and they weren't distracting, just another part of him that he kept tucked away to occupy his thoughts on rainy days.

...But the best part of it was that he didn't need words. Because when you looked at him, when you saw the Vil the not even he could see, you could already tell they were there. The mirror, the pane of glass that had always existed between himself and others, was non-existent for you.

Vil thought that someday he might be able to see himself through that glass the way you did, but he was perfectly content with simply looking at you instead for the time being.

[fatesundress]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I wonder why.”

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

“What, Tom?”

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

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

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

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

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Curiosity—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

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

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

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

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

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

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

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

“A professor?”

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

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

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

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

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

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

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

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

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

“So?”

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

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

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

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

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

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

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

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I —”

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

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

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

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

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

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

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

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

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

“Tom.”

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

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

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

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

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

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

The day everything changes starts the same as any. 

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

Tom has cracked the book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have no need.”

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

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

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

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

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

“Why would he lie?”

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

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

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

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

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

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

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

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

“Should I?”

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

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

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

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

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

Summer blisters when it comes.

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

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

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You always are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are regardless. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are not his keeper. You know that. 

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

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

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

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

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

You’re almost positive you did not.

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

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

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

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

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

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

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

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

It happens again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You take to the library.

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

The third sign is the end. 

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

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

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

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

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

He’s something else entirely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve been good at it.”

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

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

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

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

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

He sees all of you.

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

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

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

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

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

“I cannot.”

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

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

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

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

“Do you want me to lie?”

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

“Her death is the first step to —”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“...What?"

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

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

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought I would have time.”

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

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

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

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

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

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

“You have lost me, Tom."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

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

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

Be well.

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

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

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

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

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

You find that to be true.

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

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

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

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

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

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

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

Due February.

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

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

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

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You drink, and don’t look away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I take that back.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indifferent it is. 

“Can I help you?”

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

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

“Am I?”

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

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

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is Mari?

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

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

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

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

“Well then —” 

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

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

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

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

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

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

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

“I haven’t protested.”

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

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

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

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

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

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

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

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

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

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

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

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

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

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

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

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

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

My door is always open.

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

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

It’s a tempting door.

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

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

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

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

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant. 

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

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

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

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Renauld?”

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

“Well, yeah —”

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

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

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

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

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

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

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

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

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

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

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

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

And… he does.

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

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

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

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

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

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

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

But something about it itches.

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

You are green, through and through.

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

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

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

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

That makes it much worse when you sleep together. 

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

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

“Yes.”

“Right.”

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

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

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

You’re incredibly daft about it.

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

The itch exacerbates.

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

You wake up and he isn’t there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

R.R

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

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

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

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

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

But you do, because he told you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes."

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

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

“I earned this,” you hiss.

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

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

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

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

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

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

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

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

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

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

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

“Yes,” you agree.

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

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

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

He was your first in everything but this.

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

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

“How long?” he asks thickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“N-no.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A finger presses inside and you moan.

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

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

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

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

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

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you give me more?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe you already do.

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

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

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

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

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

You whimper.

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

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

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

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

“You can — uh — you can — ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[javierpena-inatacvest]

Melt

"And if I die because you made me melt, oh well."

Summary: You and Frankie spend a hot summer day by the pool

Word Count: 1.8K

Pairing: Husband!Frankie Morales x Wife!Reader (no use of y/n)

Warnings: SMUT (18+), oral (f receiving), vaginal fingering, semi-public shenanigans (we're assuming there's a big, tall fence around the pool lmao), Frankie being our 🐱 eating king, Frankie being the sweetest and so obsessed with you, poor Pope probably needs to clean his pool after these two leave, reader wears a bathing suit, can swim and can get sunburned

A/N: HEY HOMIES, IT'S YA GIRL!!!!! What better way to celebrate National Catfish Day than with a lil poolside Frankie 🤪 It has been hotter than Satan's ballsack out here in the midwest, so this song is dedicated to this ongoing heatwave and this song that I am absolutely obsessed with and is SO Frankie coded 😭 This is the first thing that I have worked on since May so apologies in advance for bein' a little rusty, but I'm excited to finally be back on the writing train again!!! ily all, big forehead kisses for each of you MWAH!!!! 🥹 poorly beta'd bc that's how i roll

Love it or hate it, if there was one thing that you could always count on, it was the fact that summers in south Florida were hot. 

Really fucking hot. 

So when Pope had offered up his pool for you and Frankie to use while he was out of town for the week, it was a no brainer that the two of you had ecstatically accepted his invitation. 

“We really owe Pope for this one, huh?” You smirked, setting down your beach bag on one of the lounge chairs spread across the pool deck, pulling out some sunscreen and towels for you and Frankie. 

“Yeah, I guess we do.” Frankie sighed, nodding his head in agreement, admiring the crystal blue water sparkling in the heat of the hot summer sun, hands on his hips as he looked out over the pool. 

You couldn’t help but giggle as you stood behind him, secretly whipping out your phone to take a picture of Frankie inspecting the pool before quickly texting it to Pope, knowing what a kick he’d get out of it. 

You: Thanks for letting us use the pool! New pool boy is taking his job very seriously. 🫡

Pope: Haha. Would have looked better if he showed up in a bikini. Have fun u 2. 

“What are you laughing at?” Frankie asked, turning around to the sounds of your sneaky snickers before feeling his own phone buzz in his pocket, looking down to see a text from Pope. 

Pope: Your wife thinks you’d make a good pool boy. Told her you need a bikini first. Have fun with Mrs. Fish today.

Pope: Not too much fun though. 🤨

Frankie: Sorry to disappoint. 

Frankie: What’s that supposed to mean? 

Pope: I just cleaned the pool before I left. Don’t need any baby fish swimming around in there if you know what I mean 🐟 💦 lol

Frankie: Jesus christ, Pope.

Frankie shook his head as he slipped his phone back into his pocket as he made his way over to you, wrapping his hands around your waist and pulling you closer to his chest. 

“You think I’d make a good pool boy, huh?” He smirked, planting a chaste kiss in your lips as the two of you laughed. 

“The best. But only if you give me another kiss and put some sunscreen on me so I don’t turn into a lobster.” You teased, kissing him right back before pulling away to grab the sunscreen bottle, passing it off to him. 

“Fair enough.” 

As he took the bottle from you, starting to shake it up, Frankie couldn’t help stop and watch in awe as you began to remove your coverup. Underneath, it revealed the little, strappy, bright yellow bikini you had just bought, deciding that today would be a good choice to show it off for the first time with just you and your husband together. 

“Fuck me…” Frankie whispered under his breath, his tongue darting out of his mouth and swiping over his bottom lip as he looked you up and down, admiring every sun-kissed inch of your soft skin and the way the fabric of your swimsuit hugged your curves. “Is this- fuck, is this new?” he asked softly, his sweet brown eyes just about popping out of his head, trying to use every ounce of self composure to even form a coherent question. 

“Do you like it? I got it a few days ago when I was out. Figured I could use a new one.” You blushed, biting down on your lip at Frankie’s reaction, wondering how in the world he still managed to make you feel as beautiful as he did the first night he’d met you after all your time spent together. 

“Can I show you?” Frankie asked, running his hands along your waist, gently toying with the strings holding your swimsuit bottoms together. 

“Show me what?” 

“Show you how much I like it?” He responded, his voice sending a shiver down your spine as his fingers slowly began to undo the bow tied around your hips while he gently nipped at your neck, making your stomach swell with arousal. 

“Mhmmmmmm.” You nodded, carefully backing up until your legs hit the lounge chair behind you, Frankie gently guiding you to sit down and lay back while he nestled himself between your legs, draping each one over his bare, broad shoulders, his tanned and freckled skin glowing in the blazing afternoon sun. 

Frankie wasted no time planting soft kisses up the inside of your thighs, the familiar scratch of his beard and mustache against your skin making you moan in eager anticipation as you could feel the wetness beginning to pool in your swimsuit bottoms. 

“You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that? I’m so lucky.” He whispered between kisses along the meat of your thighs before stopping at your core, letting his fingers brush against the fabric of your swimsuit, sneaking under the material just enough to feel how wet you had already become in the few short moments since you had sat down. 

“Seems like you're pretty wet for not even getting in the pool yet, Hermosa.” Frankie teased, the ghosting of his fingers along your cunt making you whine as you propped your head up to see the devilish smirk between his cheeks. 

Almost painfully slowly, Frankie untied the first, then second bow holding your bottoms together on each hip, watching your swimsuit fall to the ground, revealing your pussy, slick and puffy, worked up from Frankie’s touch. 

“So pretty…” He cooed, letting his fingers drag across your cunt, collecting your arousal and rubbing at your clit, already aching to be touched. 

Frankie was nothing if not a methodical man, memorizing every twitch and hitched breath beneath his touch, learning all the things that absolutely drove you wild.

Knowing that he could be the only one to make you feel this good got him off more than anything else ever could.

He couldn’t help but grin at the way your lips fell to a perfectly parted “O” as he pressed more pressure against your sensitive nub, and how they fell even wider as he pressed two of his fingers into your entrance, gently curling them to bump against the soft, spongy spot inside you that had you clenching around his hand. 

“Oh Frankie… Fuck…” You whimpered, your head falling back as Frankie’s fingers were soon followed by his tongue, licking a long, broad strip across your cunt, ​​putting just the right amount of pressure on your sensitive bundle of nerves as his fingers worked in tandem to make that all too familiar sweet tingling sensation to start build in your stomach. 

Frankie’s tongue danced in a swirling pattern of flicks and strokes between your folds as he lapped you up. You could feel yourself rolling your hips against his hand, whining at how thick and full he felt inside you with just his fingers. That, combined with the meticulous and skilled motions of his tongue had the coil in your belly beginning to tighten further and further. 

Your hand shot down between your parted legs, reaching to grab a fistful of Frankie’s brown, curly locks, thick and sweaty from the heat, tugging just hard enough to force his gaze up towards you, your eyes locking with his rich, brown ones. 

“F-Frankie-” Was all you were able to mutter as he continued with his fingers to press against your g-spot, slick coating his digits with each stroke. He licked one more strip along your pussy before placing soft kisses on your clit and the inside of your thighs, peeking up at you with a boyish grin. 

“That’s it, Hermosa. I know you’re close, baby girl. Let me feel you, mi amor. Wanna taste you all over me.” Frankie moaned, the low rumble of his words making your breath hitch in the back of your throat as he dove back between your legs, wrapping his free arm around one of your thighs, firmly holding you in place. 

Curving his fingers ever so slightly and latching his lips around your clit, you knew it was only a matter of moments before Frankie was about to make you fall apart completely. You could feel your legs begin to tremble as your cunt clenched tighter around his fingers, able to utter nothing but a ��F-fuck…” as you felt your orgasm rip through you, your pussy fluttering as pleasure radiated in your veins and soaked Frankie below you. 

Frankie worked persistently through your high, only pulling back after making sure that you had cum for him with everything that you had in you, sitting back on his haunches as he admired the blissed out and ragged mess you had become. Your pussy was slick and swollen as your chest rose and fell in wrecked inhales and exhales, trying to compose yourself from the way Frankie had fucked you senseless with just his tongue. 

“Frankie, holy fuck.” You whispered under your breath, still trying to regain your composure as you looked down at a satisfied Frankie, wiping the slick and juices glistening in his mustache with the back of his hand with a smirk. 

“Always taste so sweet, Hermosa. You’re so fucking hot, I swear you’d make me melt faster than the sun.” 

The two of you both couldn’t help but snort at Frankie’s cheesy comment, sitting up as you giggled to grab Frankie’s face and bring him in for a long, deep kiss, the taste of you still fresh on his tongue. 

“You are such a cheeseball, Fransisco Morales. I can’t believe that- Frankie! Frankie! Put me down! No, no, no, no, you better not-” But before you could finish the rest of your sentence, Frankie had already picked you up out of your chair, flung you over his shoulder and had you flailing your arms and legs as he carried you towards the edge of the pool, jumping in with you mid-way through your poorly fought protest. 

Your heads bobbed to the surface, still in a fit of laughter as you floated in the refreshing cool of the sparkling pool water, you wrapped your legs around Frankie’s waist, draping your arms over his shoulders while he pulled you closer to his chest. 

“Sorry, mi amor, what were you saying?” Frankie teased, raising a playful eyebrow at you as he grinned with his goofy smile, making you over dramatically roll your eyes at him. 

“One, that you are the biggest goof I’ve ever met and I love you for it,” You snickered, plating a soft kiss on his plush lips, “and two, I think I can practically hear Pope screaming at you for the fact I’m half naked in his pool.” 

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”   

Taglist

@chaotic-iguana @rhoorl @bbiophiliaa @angelofsmalldeath-codeine @pedrobaby

@fatima-marisa @beboldbebravethings @poodlebae @kittenlittle24 @3sriracha

@jungchloee @perennialdoll247 @prettyinpunk85 @partyofone3413 @harriedandharassed

@pedrohoe04 @theorganasolo @endlessthxxghts @beware-my-thorns

@missladym1981 @milly-louise @jay-zzle @the-one-with-the-grey-color

@persephone-girl @bitchesuntitled @pedropascallvr @millennial-teenybopper @nastiasnow

@vee-bees-blog @hopplessilse @mxtokko @its-nebuleuse @mandoisapunk @msmorningstaarr

@amyispxnk @honeyedmiller

@mountainsandmayhem @picketniffler @burningnerdchild @copperhalfcent @theoraekenslover

@bloodyinspirationaldemon @vee-bees-blog @samgirl4life @pigeonmama @survivingandenduring

@itsokbbygrl @javierpena-inatacvestnotifs

[cherib3lla]

“This is so wrong, Matt,” I moaned as I felt him kiss and lick on my neck. I hear him chuckle as he continues his descent down my body.

“Mmm, it's so wrong isn't it baby,” He mumbles as I glance down to see him staring up at me with a slight smirk on his face.

His hands grip my thighs as he slowly pulls them apart. Teasingly planting kisses from my ankle up to my thigh.

“Matt please stop teasi- ohhh,” I stumble out as he starts placing kisses over my clothed clit. He starts fidgeting with my blue panties, Glancing up at me, looking for permission to take them off.

I could barely nod my head before he yanked my panties down my legs, and threw them across the room.

“M’gonna need you to be quiet for me okay sweetheart,” it wasn't a request, it was a demand. I couldn't help but shake with anticipation as he got closer and closer to my warmth.

After what felt like years, he attached his mouth directly to my clit. Swirling his tongue around it while positioning his middle and ring finger against my entrance.

Slowly pushing his digits into my aching pussy. Leaving me to slap a hand against my mouth to keep the moan that desperately wants to escape, out.

“Fuck you're so wet,” he mumbles as his fingers start to slam into my pussy, the sound of squelching being heard all around us.

“Tell me how good it feels baby,” shoving his fingers deeper than mine have ever reached. “, S’good m-matt ple-please don’t stop” I whisper, uncovering my mouth, remembering that he told me to be quiet. With his unoccupied hand, he reaches up to my chest and starts to pull and pinch my nipples.

My moans get louder and I can feel the knot forming in my lower stomach. Unexpectedly I feel a rough slap (which only turns me on even more) against my thigh. “Shhh sweet girl you don't want Chris to hear, right,” he snickers.

“Matt, harder, I'm so close, please,” I say in a low, hushed tone. His fingers speed up, his tongue attaches to my clit again.

“Fuck! Ma-matt, cumming, I'm cumming!” The knot in my stomach snaps. I'm borderline screaming at this point. Neither of us cares anymore. Matt slows his fingers, helping me down from my high.

He pulls his fingers out completely and removes his mouth from my pussy. Laying his head against my thigh. “You did so good f’me sweetie,” he mumbles out of breath, massaging my thighs with his hand.

I close my eyes, trying to catch my breath. “Tha-thank you,” my mind is foggy, and my legs are shaking. “No need to thank me,” matt says chuckling slightly.

Abruptly I hear the sound of a bag collapsing onto the wooden floor. The same time my head snaps up, I feel matt lift from my thigh. My face drops and panic flashes across my features. I quickly glance down at matt, only to see his jaw clenched.

“I-i chris I can explain-” I start to stutter, only to have Chris cut me off.

“I fucking knew it”

Fuck.

a/n chat this is the first thing i’ve published on this app so this might be a one time thing, depends on how it does.

thank you for reading mwah🌀

part 2 <33

[girlygguk]

denial - jjk (18+)

➵ summary; it's been a plethora of secret meetups, quickies in the bathrooms of his award shows, and 2 am 'you up?' texts during your year-long situationship with jungkook. you both agreed in the beginning that your careers are far too hectic to commit to anything serious, but you can't shake the shitty ache in your chest every time the high wears off, or when you're crawling out of his bed in the middle of the night. trying to exile the shitty feeling of longing that you harbor for him, you spend time with another one of your guy friends. jungkook sees, and he's mad.

➵ pairing ; idol!jk x (f)actress!reader

➵ word count ; 5.3k

➵ rating ; 18+ minors dni

➵ content ; jealous (& possessive 🫣) asffff kook, mutual no strings agreement / fwb au, older (just a lil) reader, taehyung sister reader, secret-ish situashionship, smut/fluff-ish/angst-ish, this is FILTHYY i even shocked myself.

➵ warnings ; teasing, swearing, kissing, fingering, spitting, nipple play, dom!jk, oral sex (f rec.), multiple orgasms, unprotected sex (wrap it UP. don't be silly), sexy stuff starts a lil later on in the story so basically pwp.

a/n ; while i'm working on the next chap of my fic i come bearing a gift! this is a oneshot but if y'all enjoy it i have a bunch of ideas for this pairing i could work on and maybe make an additional part! thanks sm for reading, hope u enjoy <3 also this is my first time writing smut, so any feedback is insanely appreciated and encouraged! mwah

Jungkook's room was quiet, the only noise being his soft humming as his thumb dragged down the expanse of his phone screen, scrolling mindlessly through his private Instagram feed. He's already passed a few of his bandmates' photo dumps, leaving a like on a few and a teasing, sarcastic comment on the others. But, then, smirking at his remarks that he finds absolutely priceless, his thumb grinds to a halt as he comes across your latest post.

There you are, in all of your glory. You're posing prettily with an overfilled cup of ice cream from a popular parlour in Seoul Central. A spoon rests against your lips; eyes closed gingerly for the snap. The side of Jungkook's mouth pulls upwards before he can stop it, a soft, dazed smile coating his lips as he stares at you for longer than he'd like to admit. However, the daze ends as abruptly as it began when his focus shifts to the person seated on your left. He recognizes the guy sitting next to you as the leading male in your latest drama, Jae something. 

A hot, uncomfortable feeling bubbles in the pit of Jungkook's stomach as he stares at the classically attractive male in your photo. The feeling intensifies tenfold when he notices the spoon clasped in Jae something's hand, and his eyes search every pixel on his phone screen, begging to find this dirtbag's own cup of ice cream. Finally, he scoffs after scouting every inch of your photo for the third time. So you're really sharing a cup of ice cream with this guy? And it's not even for work. And you posted a picture of it on your Instagram. Your public Instagram.

Jealousy claws at Jungkook's throat with vigour, and he has to lock his phone and put it next to him on his bed before he stands up and hurls it at the wall. Of course, he knows he shouldn't and has no right to be jealous. But he can't help it. He can't control his actions and feelings when it comes to you. He's been infatuated since day one, and though you both have the mutual no-strings agreement as your blooming careers don't allow you the time or freedom to commit to something like that right now, he can't help but feel fucking sick looking at the photo of you and someone else.

The stadium is boisterous; fans hastily rush to get to their seats in the various sections surrounding the stage as if the concert would start without them. You were currently on your way backstage to visit your brother before the show began. After five minutes of weaving around equipment and dodging the stressed crew rushing around doing last-minute preparations, you finally arrived at your destination.

Knocking thrice on the dressing room door, a muffled "Come in!" has you twisting the handle and walking through the threshold with a cheesy grin. The seven men—six of which you've become good friends with since your brother introduced you—come into view as you enter the room, each of them beaming a mixture of greetings.

"Happy first show!" You exclaim as you walk towards your brother with a bouquet of mixed flowers. Taehyung takes the gift from you with a smile before placing a kiss on your forehead as thanks.

Jungkook's eyes haven't left you since you stepped foot in their dressing room. He swallows harshly, hoping to rehydrate his mouth as all his saliva has apparently decided to dissipate. Jungkook takes in your outfit, the short Chanel dress hugging the curves of your body and showcasing your smooth, slender legs. His tongue pokes the inside of his cheek as he suppresses his smirk when he sees the long-sleeved white undertop you're wearing. Images of you withering beneath him as he marked the top of your breasts a few nights ago flash through his mind, and he has to blink a few times in an attempt to return back to Earth.

Your gaze meets Jungkook's for a split second, watching him drink in your figure before you look back at the rest of the guys with a smile. Then, stepping back to your original position after breaking from the hug with your brother, your arms motion towards the man that you dragged in with you. "This is my friend, Jae Lee."

That's enough to crash Jungkook back down to Earth as his focus shifts to the tall brunette on your right. Jae Lee offers a quick bow with a smile as the rest of BTS chorus a polite greeting in return. "Nice to meet you guys; I'm a big fan." His voice is deep and rugged, just like it is in the drama he starred in with you. The drama that Jungkook binged in one sitting on release day, but he wouldn't tell you that.

"Likewise," Tae returns with a nod and his signature toothy grin before setting the flowers on the tabletop by one of the mirrors, "we're on in ten—do you know where your seats are?"

You nod at your younger brother's question, patting the pocket of Jae's faded jeans, "Jae's got our passes; we'll go there now and let you guys finish getting ready."

Jungkook is fucking fuming at this point as he watches the interaction, tongue pushing against his lower teeth to stop himself from spewing something that would embarrass the both of you.

You bid them one final good luck before spinning on your heel and exiting the room, a cloud of your sweet perfume trains behind you in your departure, invading Jungkook's senses and rendering him dazed as Jae follows you closely, shutting the door gently behind him.

"God, you guys were insane." You arrived back at your brother's apartment (that he shared with Jungkook) a few minutes ago, the three of you piling through the door as you beelined straight for the couch. "Hoseok has the stamina of a horse, I swear. I'm always shocked whenever I watch you guys perform."

Taehyung laughs from behind you as he shrugs off his jacket before jumping over the back of the couch and landing next to you with a huff. His best friend opts for a different route after ridding himself of his coat, walking into the kitchen to grab a drink of water and hopefully clear his head a bit. 

It's bad enough that he had a foggy grey cloud glooming in the back of his mind during the concert, but then he had to sit in an enclosed vehicle with you and your brother on the way home because Tae wanted to spend more time with you. Of course, Jungkook doesn't blame his friend; you have a week off before your next shoot, and you're headed to Gwacheon in a couple of days to get settled in. Usually, you and Jungkook would be utilizing this time off in a very different way, but unbeknownst to you, Jungkook is not in the mood right now. And he's always in the mood.

The bottle of water is downed in seconds, and the crunch of the now-empty plastic bottle in his hand pulls him out of his thoughts. Stepping on the pedal of the garbage can, he disposes of the rubbish and listens to the sound of soft padded footsteps entering the kitchen.

"You needa put that in the recycling bin."

Your teasing is gentle as you approach the ink-covered man, brushing past him lightly as you lean against the island opposite him. His lips pull into a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, and your eyebrows furrow, leg lifting slightly to nudge him with your sock-covered foot.

"What's wrong, grumpy?" You poke, watching as he shakes his head before pushing off the counter and heading out of the kitchen. Your hand reaches out for him a liiiitle too quickly before he can slink away, "Kook? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, ____. I'm good. Exhausted from the show, that's all." He removes his hand gently from your grasp before continuing his departure and leaving you in the kitchen by yourself. A heavy sigh leaves your lips as you head back to the living room, not surprised when your brother is the only one there.

"I'm going to go and pick up the pizza; they shut in 20, and delivery's off for the night," Taehyung informs you as he chucks his jacket back on, "Kook's headed to bed, so we'll just save him some."

You nod at him before falling back onto the couch and reaching for the TV remote. "Drive safe," you call, and he assures you he will, the sound of the apartment door shutting behind him echoing in your ears. That's all you need to hear before you carelessly throw the remote aside and scramble off the couch towards a certain grumpy cat's bedroom.

"Koo?" Your tone is soft, one hand on the door handle of his room, the other rapping gently at the wood.

His low hum from the other side reaches your ears, and you twist the handle, stepping inside quietly before closing the door and leaning against it. You're not entirely sure how to approach this situation. Most of your interactions with the gorgeous man sitting at the edge of his bed with a somber look have had quite a different vibe. Extremely fucking different.

"Tae's gone to pick up dinner, " you try, "I'd say like twenty minutes or so."

He sighs and nods at your obvious hinting, lifting his gaze from the ground and watching as you saunter towards him. The little black dress he first saw earlier today still has him rattled, and your scent getting more robust with each step you take enhances his stupor. You lift one of your legs over his thigh when you reach him, the bottom of your dress riding up as you settle in his lap. 

Shoving his dreary subconscious to the side, Jungkook leans forward into you before burying his face into your clothed stomach and inhaling as deeply as he can. Your stupifying, sweet, familiar scent invades his nostrils, and he knows he can always count on that to distract himself. You run your hands through his hair with a mewl as his head rises at an achingly slow pace before it's level with yours. 

His eyes are hooded as he closes the distance between you, capturing your lips with his own, and you drink in the soft moan that escapes him when your fingers clutch his hair tighter in your grasp. His mouth is sinful, his tongue delving deeper into your mouth to connect with your own. Instead of your usual teasing fight for dominance, you let Jungkook take control of the kiss, hoping it will soothe the unease you've noticed in his demeanour as of late.

His hands are gliding over your hips, fingers squeezing at the meat of your middle, and you can't help but purr at the feeling, almost as if he's trying to grab as much of your body in his hands as he can. Suddenly the reminder that your brother would be home at any moment returned to your mind, and you reluctantly broke the connection. Climbing off his lap, your feet shakily meet the floor, and your hands reach for the hem of your dress, ready to slip it over your head before you notice the look on his face. He's fighting another internal battle, and it makes you release the fabric in your hands, your dress falling back into place.

"Please tell me what's wrong, Kookie." You mumble, standing in front of him with your hands slumped to your side in defeat. He blows out a quiet breath, shaking his head for what feels like the fifth time tonight before he reaches out for you. Finally, you give in with a deflated sigh, letting him pull you close towards him before he continues your previous actions and clutches the hem of your dress. Dragging the fabric up slowly, he lets it ride just above your stomach before he uses one hand to slip your panties down your legs.

Your eyes flutter shut as the finger hooked into the waistband of your underwear drags across your inner thigh on its journey downwards, his other hand still full of your dress, the thumb on said hand rubbing soft circles against your skin. "Are you together?"

Your eyes snap open at his question, still in a hazy fog from his touches but coherent enough to make out the undertone of his question. His hand doesn't falter in the slightest, your panties hitting the ground with a soft thud, and he drags his hand back up the underside of your thigh when they fall. "No."

So you knew who he was talking about, he thought. "Hm," is all he mutters, the hand on your hamstring bending you at the knee and pulling you abruptly onto his lap. You swallow a yelp as he guides you back over him, unable to help the motion of your hips grinding down when you feel him through his sweatpants.

The feeling that brews inside you when your now bare heat brushes against the fabric of his pants is euphoric, the small wet patch you leave behind being first-hand proof. "10 minutes," you remind in a whisper, leaning forward to attach your lips again, needing additional contact with him more than your next breath.

Jungkook ends the kiss quickly, and it has you pouting when he pulls away. He reaches between you, shoving his sweats and underwear down in one motion, his erection jutting out on demand and hitting his stomach once free. He leans back a little but doesn't allow himself to lie down entirely, and you usher him backwards before his grip on your waist tightens, and you stop your action. You look at him in confusion, his intoxicating chocolate brown eyes lifting from where you're seated to meet your gaze. "Sit on it."

Your breath catches in your throat at his demand, but you follow it nonetheless, his readjustment allowing you to plant your knees on the bed and lean forward slightly. You look down for a split second to grasp at his hardened length resting against his stomach and guide it to where you need it most. You look up before letting it enter you, your eyes flickering over his face and realizing he's already staring at you. He doesn't say anything verbally, but his features give everything away without the need to. 

Jungkook leans forward, his hands sliding around your stomach before they reach your back. The flats of his palms cover almost the entirety of your back as his head falls into the crook of your neck. He places a single restrained kiss on your sweet spot, his lips finding it easily as they've visited the area hundreds of times. "Baby," he mutters into your neck, "sit."

And you do.

You finish lining up the tip of his cock at the entrance of your hole before letting go and fully sinking onto him. The mangled breath that he chokes into the crook of your neck paints a devilish smirk on your lips, waiting until you feel his entire length submerge into you before lifting up and slamming back down, harder.

His breathing is heavy as his hands slide down your back before resting on your ass and grabbing a gluttonous handful when you rise. A strangled moan escapes your lips as he squeezes, spreading your cheeks and listening to the elicit sound of your walls sucking him in. You throw your head back in ecstasy, your clit throbbing every time it comes in contact with his balls, the feeling igniting a fire in your belly, arousal coursing through every cell in your body.

"Fucking. Hell," Jungkook curses; his eyes are slits as he glances down at his lap, watching your centre swallow him whole and mercilessly. He lifts one of his hands to his mouth, tongue swirling around his thumb before it presses against your clit, rubbing against it expertly and causing you to spew another strangled moan. "That's it, baby," his tone is low and filthy, and your hands grab onto his shoulders to balance yourself as the pleasure is getting too much.

His torture on your clit doesn't stop, not even when your hips stutter momentarily, the abuse to your cunt pulling at the rubber band holding you together harder and harder with each passing moment. "Stop playing with my clit," you cry, "or I'll fucking cum."

You almost regret opening your mouth because his hand pulls back instantly, and a soft whine leaves you at the loss of contact. You don't think twice before lifting your hips again, about to resume your action of riding him, when all of a sudden, he lifts you slightly, flipping you around until your back hits the mattress. "Wha—" your excuse of a question is cut off abruptly when he kneels down and drags you closer to the edge of the bed, mouth attaching to your clit with vigour.

"Fuck. Fuck." Is all you can mutter, your hands automatically going to his head, fingers threading through his hair and tugging when his tongue hits that part of your cunt that blurs your vision. Jungkook is lost in it, his tongue wrapping around your clit, relishing in the moans spilling from you. Lifting his head slightly, he gathers the saliva in his mouth before he spits on your pussy and dives back in. "What the fuck," you scream as he devours you like he's on death row and your cunt is his last meal, "Gguk—"

"I know, baby," he nods after pulling away for a split second, "just let go." He punctuates his words by sliding a finger, and then two, into your hole, and that's the knot in the fucking noose. His fingers are relentless, pushing all the way into you until they reach that spongey part before sliding out and repeating the same torturous routine. He knows you're close; he knows everything about you at this point. He's proven right when he feels your walls clench around his fingers and shoves his face deeper into your heat in response. His nose is buried in your cunt, tongue lapping and sucking at your clit feverishly, and you lose it. Your moans are silent, your throat not having the power to produce noise anymore as your eyes roll to the back of your head. "Baby," you manage, "I'm fucking cumming."

Jungkook moans into your pussy; its vibration is the tipping point as your vision blurs, flashing white as your orgasm washes over you. Your knees shake, closing around his head as he doesn't relent, your body convulsing and grinding into his mouth as he works you through your orgasm. 

Your head is slumped against the pillow as you crash back down to Earth, Jungkook eventually pulling away from your core as you shudder, pressing soft kisses against your inner thigh as he detaches from you. Pulling himself up, he makes his way onto the bed, lowering his strong body over you. He's hungry on his journey upwards, lips dragging against every inch of your skin, his tongue dipping out to wet them when the skin of your leg absorbs their moisture. He explores your stomach, his bunny teeth grazing against your belly button as he gets higher. It looks like he's where he wants to be when he's levelled with your chest. He pulls at the dress that you're honestly still surprised that he's left on you for this long before he lifts it over your head, chucking it to the side without another thought. A grunt leaves his lips when the white long-sleeve you had on under your dress is still there, and he rids it the same, just with more furrowed brows.

A giggle leaves your lips at his frustration before it's replaced with a content sigh as he latches onto your left nipple. Your hand runs through his dishevelled hair; lip caught between your teeth as his tongue wraps around the bud, his teeth grazing at it softly. "T-Taehyung will be back soon," you warn through a moan, "need you inside of me."

A string of spittle drags from your nipple and his mouth as he pulls back, his head tilting slightly as his gaze catches yours. "Still needy," he hums, leaning forward and pressing a sweet kiss to your lips before lifting his hips and grabbing hold of his hardened length. He drags it between your wet folds, the sound of your slickened cunt music to his ears. Your eyes flutter closed at the feeling, still sensitive from your orgasm, but the need to feel him inside you outweighs the overstimulation.

"Beg for it." He says simply, the length of his shaft still firmly in his hand as he drags it through your sticky folds. Your eyes snap open, eyebrows ruffled in astonishment as you stare at the cocky piece of shift above you.

"Jun—" you start, "beg for it." He finishes, his focus lifting from where you're almost conjoined to your face. His face is hard, and you know better than to fight him on this. Your breaths come out shortly; his tone should not be turning you on this much.

"Please." You mewl, your chest heaving once as he presses his cock deeper into folds, not quite yet at the hole you need him to fill. "Please, Jungkook. Fuck me. Fuck me. Ruin me." You spit, losing all sense of self-worth as the heaviness of his lower body against you turns you into a pathetic mess.

His smirk is taunting. It's the last thing you see before your eyes roll back to the back of your head, a disgustingly loud moan booming from your throat as he thrusts into you with one motion. A strangled gasp blows from your lips as he pulls out before slamming back into you twice as hard. Sweat is gathering at the base of his brows, a moan of his own chorusing with yours as he slams his cock deeper with each thrust. You're at a loss for words as the pleasure intensifies, the coil in your stomach bubbling ferociously for the second time tonight. "Does he fuck you this good?" He can't stop himself, the words spluttering from his lips before he has a chance to stop them.

He's leaning a little further back now, his hand pressing against your belly slightly, feeling the motion of his cock sliding into you through your fucking skin. How he expects you to respond right now is beyond you, the only noise you can possibly muster being a high-pitched screech as his pace increases. "Huh?" He spits, spreading your legs wider, lowering slightly to delve his cock deeper into your cunt.

"No." It comes out as a mixture of a gasp and a moan, "Nobody fucks me like you do." A stupid wave of relief rushes over him as he hears you speak, the sound of your squelching walls suctioning him in parading through the room. Your assurance ignites something inside him, and you're surprised you can keep your eyes open long enough to see the transformation. He secures one of your legs around his waist, his hand holding your other open as he plants one of his knees firmly on the bed. He stares at your pussy in awe, watching your clit glisten with slickness before spitting harshly at it; his thumb reaching down to spread it over you. A choked sob leaves your lips at the action before an even louder scream cuts it off; you don't even recognize your own voice.

Jungkook is ravenous. His hips are pulling back at record speed, every inch of his cock sliding out of you until just the tip remains before slamming back inside brutally. "Oh my fucking god, Jungkook!" You screech as he hits that spot deep inside you on every thrust like he's been training for this his whole life.

"You fucking love it, don't you? This what you wanted?" He spits as his cock splits you in two, "You know I hate seeing people touch what's mine. Knew I'd fucking lose it."

"He never touched me. Wouldn't let him." You choke, your back lifting slightly as you feel him push in just that much deeper at your words, "I'm fucking yours, idiot."

Jungkook's hips stutter as your words catch him off guard, cracking his cocky persona for a millisecond before he recovers and grips the meat of your thighs even harder and drills back into you. You're fucking dripping at this point, and Jungkook groans at the feeling. His cock drags the juices out of your hole, and he watches as it slides down your ass, filthily pooling at the sheets beneath you.

You can't do anything but reach your hands out, and he understands immediately, releasing the hold on your legs before leaning down and falling into your arms. Your hands are on the back of his neck as you pull him closer, needing to feel his full weight on top of you in hopes of it taking some of the pressure off your abused cunt. He doesn't stop, even when his face falls to the side of your neck, plastering soft, wet kisses to your skin and pulling a soft moan from you.

Tears are welling in your eyes as he continues snapping his hips into you; the new position you're in means he's permanently in contact with your clit, and it's brutal. The room begins to spin as the familiar feeling coils in your stomach harder than you think it ever has. "I'm so fucking close," he heaves into your neck, and all you can respond with is a nod, the tears that pool at your waterline threatening to spill.

Your hands fall from his hair to his back, fingernails digging into his smooth skin as you try to cling to the last string of coherence you have, "cum in me, Gguk. Fill me up. Fill me." You moan, fingernails dragging down his back just how he likes it, and that's his fucking end. A low growl leaves his lips, goosebumps flooding your arms at the noise. 

"Fuck." He curses loudly, hips pulling back in one final shaky thrust before he pushes all the way, your walls clenching tightly around him as he convulses, his release spilling from him and painting the walls of your cunt. He moans tenderly as you milk his cock, trying to pull every last drop of his orgasm from him.

Ten seconds or so pass while you both catch your breath, and you smile giddily beneath him; his heavy body feels comforting on top of you, like your own weighted blanket. You're ready to roll off the bed once he recovers, your hand drawing lazy circles across the expanse of his back before you hear him let out a deep, heaved breath. Lifting his hips back up, he ruts gently, resuming his movement inside of you. Your eyebrows furrow in shock, ignoring the burning feeling that immediately resurfaces as he shifts, "No, Jungkook, you don't have to—" He cuts you off with a kiss, hand reaching up to caress your cheek in a much softer manner than the majority of your night.

"When have I ever not let you cum?" He muses after breaking the kiss, his thumb slipping from the edge of your jaw to press against your lips. Your heart is beating at the fucking sweetheart above you, your lips parting slightly to take in the finger of his inked, calloused hand into your mouth. Your tongue swirls around it, gathering as much spit onto it as you can, just as he taught you, before using your tongue to push it out of your mouth. He smirks at the action, shaking his head as a train of saliva runs from his hand to your mouth. "Fucking filthy," Jungkook hums, his hand falling between you and connecting to your clit before the spit falls off his thumb.

Not that he needed the extra moisture, because you are fucking soaked, he flicks at your nub gently, satisfied as you shudder slightly at the contact. His overstimulated cock pulses inside you, the heat of your pussy making him release a strained breath before he pulls back out and begins to fuck you again. You can't even be shocked at his stamina at this point, many nights before having proven that he is fucking insatiable, pulling four of five orgasms out of you before turning in.

It doesn't take long before you're teetering on the edge of bliss again; the crude sounds of Jungkook's cum inside you, squelching around his cock as he slides in and out of you, are fucking erotic, arousing you even further. "Listen to thattttt," he groans at the noise, his overstimulation long forgotten as he gets lost in you again. 

"Oh," you cry at his nasty words, "my shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!" You can't even form a sensible sentence, the pleasure becoming too much. Your back lifts off the bed slightly as Jungkook's hand follows your cunt when it tries to cower away. "God! Please!" You wail as his hand slips, the juices coming out of you causing his hand to slide around messily. He chuckles at the absolutely filthy sight; it's the best thing he's ever fucking seen.

"Good fucking girl. My gooood. Fucking. Girl." He praises as you grip his bedsheets in anguish, your body shaking, breath stuck in your throat as your head lifts toward the ceiling. Your mouth drops open as the band breaks, the tears that were sitting idle beneath your lashes finally spilling out, a loud sob spewing through your lips as you cum. Your orgasm is intense, ears ringing as Jungkook drags it out as much as he possibly can before you're shrivelling away, falling back into his mattress in exhaustion.

You groan lowly as Jungkook slowly pulls himself out of you, grabbing the shirt he discarded halfway through your activity off the floor and using it to capture the liquid that drools out of you. You giggle at the sight, swatting him with your foot as he wipes, "That's disgusting," you cry at his use of a dirty t-shirt to clean you up.

"It's clean! I chucked it on just before you came in," he assures with a smirk, continuing his action and ignoring the eye-roll you throw him. Then, suddenly, your eyes widen, and you all but scramble off his bed, diving for your clothes on the ground before shoving them over your head. He laughs softly at your haste before pulling his own sweatpants back on, minus the underwear. He's about to head to the shower, an invitation to you dangling on the tip of his tongue as he watches you fix your hair and makeup in his mirror. He watches in amusement as you manage to tame your hair but fail to fix the smudged eyeliner at the root of your waterline, giving up with a huff and looking over to him with a teasing glare, "This is your fault."

His shoulders rise slightly, and his mouth is pulled into a faux pout when you deliver a soft smack to his arm, making your way to his bedroom door. He turns to finally head into his ensuite and shower before your strangled gasp meets his ears. He spins around quickly, confusion coating his features before his eyes trail to what you're fixated on.

Taehyung is sitting on the couch, legs crossed beneath him, AirPods in his ears as he munches on a slice of pizza. Your brother looks up when he feels your presence and nods in greeting. Then, fishing one of the earbuds from his ear, he waves the piece of the pie in his hand toward you. You're frozen in your spot, every word in your vocabulary flying out of your head as you're rendered speechless. Your brother pauses the show on his phone before swallowing his mouthful, "Pizza's here."

part two out now💗: click here

[princeoftheeternalbog]

Where op characters like to kiss you :)

I'm not sure I like this one so much but I've been a little busier this week so I hope it's enjoyable anyways.

Established relationship, suggestive in some parts(Law, Kid) so mdni.

Might have some very minor spoilers if you aren't past the timeskip, in Robin's part and it's a brief mention of someone the strawhats team up with. There's also a slight reference to some details about Killer but no specifics.

Luffy

Your entire face! Especially while you're smiling, he just cant help the giddiness that bubbles up inside him when he sees you smiling or laughing...so he has to let it out by giving you lots of little kisses on your face ://). His arms stretch out to wrap around you, bundling you two together while he grins and starts his onslaught, once he's got you there's no escape.

Also when he kisses you on the mouth he always cups your entire face with his hands and pulls you into him, pressing his lips to yours in-between soft giggles.

Zoro

Forehead/temple. It's easy, it's quick, he just swoops in with a little mwah and then he's gone before you can even register it. Especially loves to do it before a fight because he thinks it's good luck. It really can throw him off if he hasnt kissed you at least once that day so usually he tries to get one in every morning when you wake up. Absolutely melts if you kiss him on the forehead back.

Once he gets used to you kissing him then he's constantly asking, but instead of asking normally he just stares at you for a long while before leaning towards you and tapping his forehead very pointedly.

Sanji

Cheek. (Not that kind of cheek...although-)

Anyways he thinks it's a very sweet place to kiss, and he likes it because it can be both chaste and teasing. For example if it's just a quick soft kiss then it'll be closer to the apple of your cheeks, but if he wants to tease you he'll kiss directly next to corner of your mouth or right by your jaw.

Sometimes purposefully teases you in front of others because he knows it looks innocent from an outside perspective so you can't tell him off for flustering you. Though it's easy to turn the tables, just wear a little bit of shiny lipgloss and he won't be able to concentrate at all, this is when you give him a nice chaste cheek kiss of your own and go on your way. He stands still for so long his cigarette ends up burning out.

Usopp

Your hands. It's subtle but intimate enough that he feels comfortable doing it in public. Usually you link pinkies while walking around or sitting together so whenever he has to let go, for whatever reason, he'll swing your joined hands up to kiss your knuckles. The way he does it is so different from how he reacts to affection normally that it makes your knees go wobbly, it's probably about the only thing he does with full casual confidence.

Eventually he notices the effect this has on you and it actually really helps him develop confidence in other areas too. And if you do it back he gives you this lovely warm smile and he's just so so pretty.

Nami

Shoulders. I'm not sure why but i can just imagine her dropping a delicate kiss to your shoulder as she walks past on deck, or her rolling over in the morning and just giving you lots of light little kisses on your decolletage. Especially loves it if she's taller than you, even if only by a few inches. She also loves standing with her arms tossed over your shoulders, torsos as close as possible while she leans on you.

She really loves to kiss you here in public too, she feels like it's not too exposing but definitely can't be mistaken as platonic, she'll have you sat on her lap in a bar or something and after every sip of her drink she just leaves a gentle but sticky kiss.

Robin

Your lips. She's a woman that knows what she wants alright, and she is highkey obsessed with your lips. She thinks they look so soft and inviting and she's constantly fighting off the impulse to kiss you whenever you converse. It was a pretty serious problem for her before you got together. She just thinks they're so pretty and your beautiful voice and smile come from there too.

She also always kisses you at inappropriate times. After the alliance with Law began, she once kissed you while he was explaining a plan and the glare he levelled you both with was unreal.

Law

...stomach. He's obsessed with the shape of your body in general but there's just something about your stomach that makes him want to bite you(lovingly). If you wear a crop top and/or low rise jeans he practically explodes, he just can't help it. Fully spends hours sucking love bites into the skin there. Loves making you stand in front of him while hes sat, hands tight on your hips, leaving a trailer of wet kisses as he gets lower. He only makes you stand because he likes to see your knees tremble.

Now he's very reserved but he will kiss you in public if he can 1. do it stealthily and 2. inconvenience you in someway like making you too flustered to talk.

Kid

BASTARD! Neck. He has no shame and his kisses are always very intense so he will absolutely give you a hickie while you're talking to someone. You've learned to ignore him but you've also learned that makes him worse. The correct route is to give him a hickey in return, his neck is very sensitive so he folds so quickly. Though he will take revenge later so keep that in mind.

Absolutely hates it when he wants to kiss you but can't, like if you're out of his reach or asleep. Will sulk until he gets the chance to kiss you again and then he's all over you, doesn't let you leave his arms until all your exposed skin is covered in his signature lipstick.

You two would so do that one tiktok trend yk the one-

Killer

Now there's minor logistics problems here so I'm going to talk about it in two ways.

At the beginning of your relationship, he absolutely adores it when you kiss his mask. Thinks the sentiment is so cute and the first time it happened he blushed so hard that you could practically see steam coming out of the gaps in his mask.

If you've been together for a really long time and he's comfortable enough to take his mask off then he loves just kissing you anywhere he can reach. He's just obsessed with being able to actually touch you when you're alone. Though the incidents in wano would set him back quite a lot in terms of insecurity, he still finds comfort in hiding away with you in his room, exchanging soft words and softer kisses.

[hanafubukki]

I binged your Lilia with a baby daughter and I couldn't get enough. Can you imagine if General Lilia gets yeeted into that timeline and he finds out that not only did his future self marry a human but also actually have a child with her. If current timeline Half Faces are already kinda rare so imagine from his time where he's at war with them. Also how Lilia's little girl interacting with her Papa (who isn't really her Papa but also isn't lmao) Also, MC who he is married to. I just wanna see his Tsun Tsun ass be flustered but confused lmao. Ok, thank youuu!

[referring to these posts: 1, 2, and 3]

Hello Anonie 🌺🌷🌻

I'm happy that you enjoyed them anonie! I had a blast writing them. 🌟💚

Ohhhh Anonie you guys know how to hit my weak spots 😂💕💜 Babies, General Lilia, time travel shenanigans oh my 🤣💚 You and me 🤝 wants to see General Lilia tsun tsun butt be flustered mwah chef kiss.

General Lilia being sent to the future is a curse and a blessing...depending on who you ask 😂 jkjk

Just thinking about it and I just?? Love the thought of General Vanrouge meeting a new born baby or up to a 1 year old. Something about him just holding her with these awkward hands just has me so soft 😩🥹

But then I also think our Lilia might be possessive and go ‘My Baby’ on him, even though that’s literally himself 🤣

I have so many thoughts sooo many on how General Vanrouge’s reaction to Malleus and Silver could go, and even Sebek. But more so on Malleus and Silver. Also his reaction to his future self too, you know??

In reverse, our Lilia’s reaction to his past self. It can go many ways as well. Depending on how General Vanrouge reacts. Papa instincts ✨

But we’ll skip that because this ask is about baby and General Vanrouge ✨✨

A part of me thinks that our Lilia is going to just yeet the baby at his past self. Deja vu right?? Don’t worry, he knows himself and knows the General will catch the little one.

After flicking Lilia on the forehead for his actions and letting Mal and Sil deal with him, you go to the General who’s frozen. He caught her of course, but he seems stumped on what to do.

You can’t blame him really. After being in war and seeing and dealing with what he has. This peace and quiet must be new, not to mention being in the future.

So you go to him and as gently as possible, making sure to not frighten him, move his hands so he’s more comfortably holding the baby.

Unknown to him, but his eyes softened as the little one curled into him while making cooing noises. You know your Lilia is taking a bunch of pictures.

“See? You’re a natural.”

He looks at you in disbelief but you can see the amazement in them too.

You tell him how he has no choice but to hold the baby now because she will cry if you move her from her new favorite spot. He flusters a bit at that.

Time goes on, General Vanrouge wears casual clothing and hangs up his armor temporarily after Lilia had a talk with him. His weapon is with him, you all understand why. His need to protect what’s his is engraved even though he doesn’t see it yet.

[Sometimes you see your Lilia looking at the armor. His eyes mixed with emotions. You simply lay your head on his shoulder; he kisses your hand]

The General gets attached to your daughter. She babbles at him and pulls at his hair. He tries not to flinch. For someone who was against raising kids, the General doesn’t say anything when your daughter stuffs his hair into her mouth or drools on him as she sleeps.

Lilia’s proud, “that’s my girl!” is often heard.

At one point, you take pity on him. You take a hairbrush, running it carefully through his hair before tying it in a high bun. You fondly roll your eyes at the pout your Lilia has before taking your daughter to feed. For the General’s sake, you chose not to comment on his flustered expression.

Our Lilia is repeatedly saying “spoilers” which irritates the General whenever he asks a question. You get why it’s frustrating but the scene is rather funny and your baby girl’s laughter agrees with you.

“I won’t have you ruining my future! I’ll have you know I wouldn’t change anything for the happiness I have now, so you have to be patient.”

Malleus and Silver both have the sweetest smile. They know exactly what he means.

The General watches how his future self acts. You can see the slight scowl and twitch of his eyebrow. He’s questioning his whole existence.

What surprises you is his question to you.

“Are you sure you want to be married to that?”

“Hey!”

You laugh softly, tenderly tucking a stray strand behind his ear, “Yes. He’s you, isn’t he?”

The smile you give him then has him falling deeper unbeknownst to him.

Anabskdkds okay, but why am I the one flustered now?? Qbskwjwjejr 😂💞🥰

Ahhhhh this was longer than I expected but I had so many ideas and I wanted to especially include that last one 🥹💞

Thank you for sending this in Anonie 😭💚 Currently screaming into a pillow and rolling in bed. Ahhhhh 💞💞💞💚💚