i think i'm gonna love you (for a long, long time)
Pairing: Sebastian Sallow x f!MC
Word Count: 3.2k
Rating: E
Warnings: 18+, aged-up characters, explicit sexual content, oral sex, unsafe PIV sex, enemies to lovers, rivals with benefits, love confessions, slightly sentient Room of Requirement
Summary: request: "what if seb and reader have been academic rivals since they’ve started hogwarts, are basically enemies, and seemingly can’t stand each other. meanwhile everyone knows of their rivalry, BUT what they don’t know is that the two take their aggression out on each other by sleeping together … and maybe seb eventually admits his feelings when someone tries to flirt/sleep with reader and seb gets pissy and jealous…"
But not even three days had gone by before you were at it again – this time with Sebastian lifting you onto an unused potions stand and burying his face between your thighs. Afterward you heard yourself saying filthily enticing nonsense to Sebastian to coax him into pressing inside you, fucking you so hard that a whole stack of empty cauldrons next to you tipped over – and even then you didn’t stop.
You have not and will not talk about it.
"Take out your wand," you growl.
"Take off your clothes," he counters.
To this day, neither you nor Sallow will admit which one of you found the Room of Requirement first.
If you ask him, he’ll swear up and down that he found it first. As his story goes, he’d been wandering the Astronomy Tower in a frenzy, pacing back and forth in front of that batty tapestry with the dancing trolls and thinking that he desperately needed somewhere where he could grow magical plants with the same kinds of results he would get back home in Feldcroft.
Sebastian isn’t exactly a green thumb, but he’s nevertheless determined to excel in Herbology, just like he does in all his classes. Magical plants are overflowing with life and therefore especially challenging to someone like Sebastian, who firmly believes that he can track down a book that will help him solve just about anything. But to succeed in Herbology, he needed planters, and good soil, and most of all a consistent climate like the temperate hamlet in which he grew up.
Then the Room of Requirement appeared, offering a spacious greenhouse-like room full of empty planters, limitless fertilizer and a shelf full of books on Herbology.
You, on the other hand, contend that he’s utterly full of it.
You had obviously found the Room of Requirement first because Professor Sharp had specifically mentioned its existence to you. (Of course, it was an attempt to stop you from lingering in his potions classroom at all hours trying to improve your brewing skills.)
When you had entered, you were greeted by an array of squeaky-clean cauldrons, a dozen potions stations, shelves of exotic ingredients in glass jars – even a hopping pot!
Neither of you had known that the other was aware of the Room’s existence until one late autumn evening in your sixth year when you’d both arrived at the same time to do some after-hours studying.
To say that you and Sallow had a complicated relationship is a severe understatement. Academic rivals, occasional friends, frequent adversaries… no one really knew where the two of you stood on any given day. By your sixth year, you both were competing to be at the top of your class and your friendship was extremely tenuous at best. The stress of your upcoming N.E.W.T. exams was tangible, and while neither of you said anything to the other, both of you felt overwhelmed – and you needed that Room.
You’d nearly dueled for it right there in the hallway, but then the door to the Room quickly appeared and inside you’d discovered that it had efficiently rearranged itself to suit both your needs.
You made a pact that the east wing full of bubbling potions and self-cleaning cauldrons was to be your domain, and the west wing’s long rows of planters bursting with plant life would be Sebastian’s. For the rest of the year, you’d simply tried to avoid each other as much as possible.
—
“You’re a right foul prick, you know that?” you tell Sebastian as the door to the Room slams shut behind you.
“What is it this time?” he asks lazily, trimming a few leaves off of a dittany plant without sparing you a glance.
“You cheated today at Crossed Wands,” you insist.
You shrug off your robes and drop your school bag to the floor, leaving your belongings in a messy heap feet from the Room’s entrance. As soon as Sebastian hears your bag hit the ground, he sets down his shears.
“You’ve finally gone mad,” he says simply. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
“You cheated,” you repeat. “Even Lucan thinks using Diffindo was a step too far.”
“I missed, didn’t I?” he reminds you as he turns around. “Though judging by the state of you, that’s hard to believe.”
Admittedly, you are quite disheveled. You’d practically sprinted up the stairs of the Astronomy Tower to give Sebastian a piece of your mind, and now you’re red-faced, a bit sweaty and your hair is a wild mess.
“I have half a mind to hex you right here, right now,” you seethe.
Sebastian rakes his gaze down your body and smirks.
“Did you come all this way just for a rematch?” he asks, his voice low.
That’s all it takes for the energy in the room to shift wildly.
You are not proud of this, but ever since the beginning of your seventh year, you and Sebastian have been sleeping together. It’s just a ridiculous amount of sex, really.
You can’t even remember how it started. You just remember that one day, the two of you were standing in the middle of your shared Room arguing ferociously about whether you could help yourself to some of the lacewing flies flitting around Sebastian’s Mallowsweet bushes.
The next thing you knew, your back was against a bookshelf and your arms were wrapped around Sebastian’s neck while he kissed you breathless. Moments later, your skirt was pushed up around your waist and he was pressing two fingers inside you and it was bloody brilliant.
After he’d deftly gotten you off and you’d returned the favor with your mouth, you quickly sprung apart and didn’t say a word to each other.
But not even three days had gone by before you were at it again – this time with Sebastian lifting you onto an unused potions stand and burying his face between your thighs. Afterward you heard yourself saying filthily enticing nonsense to Sebastian to coax him into pressing inside you, fucking you so hard that a whole stack of empty cauldrons next to you tipped over – and even then you didn’t stop.
You have not and will not talk about it.
“Take out your wand,” you growl.
“Take off your clothes,” he counters.
Your hands twitch at your sides as you consider your options. Wand or skirt? Vengeance, or satisfaction?
Sebastian looks entirely too satisfied with himself when you mumble a curse under your breath and reach behind you for the clasp of your skirt.
He quickly unbuttons his own shirt while you step out of your shoes and roll down your stockings. Lately whenever the two of you strip off your clothes, it turns into an unspoken race that Sebastian wins almost every time, though you insist it’s only because he doesn’t have to wear corsets.
At least he’s not too much of a prick to make you take off the offending garment yourself, even if it’s mostly an excuse to get his hands on your body as soon as he can.
Sebastian is still wrestling with the last hook on your corset when a door appears in the middle of the back wall of the Room, creaking open with absolutely no subtlety.
(You had both been horrifically embarrassed the first time the Room had offered you a bedroom, but since then you’ve grown to appreciate it.)
Sebastian roughly marches you inside and pushes you down on the bed. You snap at him to watch it, not so hard up for him that you won’t go and get your wand.
He simply raises an eyebrow at you like he doesn’t believe you and joins you on the bed, turning you over onto your stomach.
“I’m not a dog, Sallow,” you protest.
“Let me get a look at you first,” he explains. “Got you in the back at Cross Wands, I just want to check that it’s closed up.”
You fall silent at that. Rather than firing off a witty retort about how it’s so typical that he’d cast a spell at you with your back turned, you reach for a pillow and wad it up under your head, letting him trace his fingertips over a sensitive, freshly-healed burn wound on your shoulder blade.
“Are you sure you’ll be alright on your back?” he asks quietly.
“Yes,” you answer, just as softly. “Poppy put some salve on it for me, it’s fine.”
“Good,” he murmurs.
Before he lets you turn around, he presses a soft kiss over the wound. It’s unsettling at first. It feels sweet, apologetic – possibly even claiming. Those are not words you associate with Sebastian Sallow of all people, who is brash and unrepentant and certainly not dependable.
(These are all things you remind yourself daily to try to stop being so stupidly, foolishly in love with him.)
Then it’s over, and he’s got you on your back with his hands on your tits while he’s determinedly tonguing at your clit, stubbornly set on making you come with just his mouth as if to prove that he can.
—
You’re in an especially foul mood several weeks later when Leander pulls you aside after Charms class.
“Can I help you?” you ask annoyedly.
Your patience for Prewett has gone down significantly since you were younger. As a spoiled young man about to enter the wizarding world, he’s become haughty and pretentious and remains not particularly talented.
He’s nothing like Sebastian, your lovesick brain tells you, which makes you sincerely sick of yourself as well.
“Perhaps you can,” he says teasingly. “I was thinking about going down to Hogsmeade this weekend and I wanted to invite you to join me.”
“I don’t have time, I need to study,” you tell him, trying to beg off.
“You do seem particularly aggrieved today,” Leander points out. “Why don’t you let me take you to the Three Broomsticks for a Butterbeer?”
“Leander, I’m just not interested,” you insist, moving to duck around him.
“Quit being ridiculous, we’ve been playing this little game for far too long,” he says arrogantly, reaching for your hand to stop you from walking off.
Before he can touch you, a fiery spell arcs through the air and lands squarely on Leander’s palm. He yelps in pain as he pulls back his hand, cradling it to his chest.
“What the bloody hell was that?!” he demands. “Did you do that?”
“I did, Prewett,” you hear Sebastian’s voice say.
You glance behind you and notice that he’s leaning far too casually against the wall outside of class, lazily spinning his wand in his fingers.
“You seem to have a really hard time understanding the word ‘no,’” Sebastian observes. “That thick-headedness, is that something all Gryffindors have, or is it just you?”
As a Gryffindor yourself, you shoot him a look.
“Bugger off, Sallow,” Leander replies. “This is none of your business, you prat.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Sebastian says, his voice formidably even. “If you can’t keep your hands to yourself, that’s very much my business.”
“Since when do you give a damn about her?” Leander challenges. “You two hate each other, everyone knows that.”
“We don’t,” you mumble. “Sebastian, he just – we’re competitive, that’s all. But we’re friends.”
“‘Competitive?’ He’s nowhere near your level,” Leander sneers.
Sebastian scoffs, and you brace for him to go on and on about his many accomplishments – all earned, of course – but instead he says, “Obviously, Prewett, as there’s no one in this entire school who’s good enough for her, myself included. But you don’t have to try so damn hard to fall to the bottom of the list.”
Good enough?
You blink, stunned. Leander looks bewildered as well, but then he demands, “Is that what this is about? You’re in love with her?”
“What?” you laugh. “Of course he’s not.”
“Of course I am,” Sebastian says easily. “Hopelessly, in fact.”
You must have fallen and smacked your head off the statue outside of class when Leander tried to grab you, you think. That’s the only way any of this makes any sense.
“You’re pathetic,” Leander guffaws. “Merlin, Sallow, I actually feel bad for you!”
Again, you brace yourself for Sebastian to throw a litany of devastating curses toward Leander, but instead he simply shrugs and tucks his wand away.
“Go right ahead, mate,” he says, reaching for your hand.
Mindlessly you let him take it, lacing his fingers with yours while Leander just gapes. Without another word, Sebastian leads you toward the stairs up to the Astronomy Tower, the small crowd of students who’d gathered to watch the whole debacle swiftly parting for him.
“Sebastian,” you hiss. “What were you thinking back there?”
“Evidently I wasn’t,” he says under his breath.
“You have to apologize to Leander, and tell him you were just joking,” you say anxiously, fretting the whole way up the stairs. “He’s going to tell the entire school otherwise, and they’re all going to believe that you–”
“That I’m in love with you?” he cuts you off. “Good.”
“Good?!” you sputter. “But it’s not true!”
Sebastian comes to an abrupt stop feet from the room to the Door, a dumbstruck look on his face. “What do you mean?”
“You aren’t in love with me,” you say deliberately, as if you’re trying to communicate with someone who’s been concussed by a Bludger. “You don’t even like me, you can barely stand me.”
He’s wordlessly watching you pace and rant at him, his expression drawing tighter.
“It’s different in the Room, that’s not – that’s just physical,” you insist. “I understand that, Sebastian.”
“That’s what you want?” he asks, his voice sounding rougher than usual. “Just meaningless sex?”
“That’s what it’s always been, hasn’t it?” you ask desperately.
You feel like you’re going a bit mad. You never talk, you just strip each other bare and cling to each other unrelentingly like anchors while you get each other off, you thought that that’s all you could ever expect from him.
“Not for me,” Sebastian says bitterly. “Not for a while.”
“You… you never told me,” you breathe, your fingers twitching at your sides as though your hands have to reach out for him.
“I was scared!” he shouts. “I knew you didn’t feel the same way and I didn’t want to stop, I couldn’t stop, so I didn’t tell you.”
Merlin, you’re both so damn stupid, you realize.
“But you’re wrong,” you tell him, still tensed up like you’re both about to draw wands at each other. “Sebastian, I’ve been in love with you for ages.”
Before either of you says another word, the door to the Room of Requirement swings open unprompted, and you become keenly aware of the sound of fourth-year students stomping up the stairs to their Astronomy lesson.
“Inside,” he murmurs, and the two of you quickly duck into your Room.
Sebastian reaches for you as soon as the door melts away. But this time instead of tugging off your tie or fumbling with the waistband of your skirt, he simply holds you against his chest, nose buried in your hair.
“Say it again,” he pleads.
“I love you,” you confess, lips pressed to the hollow of this throat. “I’m mad for you, Sebastian.”
“I need you,” he growls as his hands slide down from your back to your ass, easily sliding underneath your skirt. “I need you like this.”
He pulls you into a desperate kiss, and you can’t help but smile against each others’ lips when you hear that bedroom door creak open.
He marches you inside just like he had before, but this time you appreciate that his hands are gentle on your body as he maneuvers you toward the bed. You step out of your skirt and stockings and let him take off the rest, helping himself to slow, lazy kisses in between pulling garments off of you.
“Sebastian,” you eventually whine. “Hurry up.”
“Merlin, you’re still the same as before,” he laughs delightedly. “I’ll never catch a break with you, will I?”
“Never,” you grin.
Sebastian divests you of your corset and you lie down on the bed to watch him take off his own uniform. You’ve known him for so many years now, but in the past year, you’ve closely watched him grow from a boy into a man – solid, broad and deceptively tall.
“Come here,” you whisper, and he practically throws himself onto the bed.
“Can I ask you something?” he whispers against your jaw.
“Anything,” you breathe.
He pauses for a beat before murmuring, “Do you think it will be different now? Since we love each other?”
You pause to consider, but then you tell him, “I don’t think so, no.”
“Why’s that?” he asks curiously.
“Because we’ve been in love with each other this whole time,” you tell him softly. “So it’s not that different, really.”
Sebastian makes a heartbreakingly fond sound before he starts kissing down your body, single-minded in his quest to pleasure you.
You lose track of time while he’s licking you open, deliriously babbling words of praise and pleas for more until you realize you’ve both certainly missed your last class of the day. You don’t think you or Sebastian has ever missed a class, certainly not since your O.W.L.s, and now here you are with your legs spread and your love’s tongue on your clit and you can’t even remember what class you just missed.
He makes you come twice before he entertains the idea of letting you catch your breath, but he doesn’t give you much time to recover before he’s throwing your legs over his shoulders and sinking inside you, his brow furrowed and his mouth hanging open.
“Bastian,” you whine. “Please.”
He’s perhaps a touch too gentle with you at first, romanticizing your first time together as actual lovers rather than rivals letting off some steam.
But by now you’ve done sinful things in this bed more times than you can count, and you need the Sebastian who routinely whispers pure filth in your ear until you’re trembling on the edge of your climax – and he’s happy to deliver.
You’re nearly bent in half by the time he spills inside you, softly groaning your name. You slide a hand down your body to rub your clit and make yourself come one last time, desperate to reach your peak with him still inside you.
“Let me,” he grunts, nudging your hand away so he can finish you himself.
You’re completely spent by the time Sebastian pulls out of you and collapses next to you in bed. He tugs you against his chest and nudges a leg between yours, and that’s the first thing you notice that’s different than before.
You get to stay with him.
Despite knowing full well that you’ll surely miss dinner if you fall asleep, you both quickly drift off curled around each other, soaking in the peace and quiet of your Room.
—
The next morning, you and Sebastian wake up in a very different Room than the one you’ve occupied for the past two years.
Instead of a strict divide between your space and Sebastian’s, your bubbling cauldrons and bursting planters are tucked up together in thoughtful pairs — dittany next to the Wiggenweld cauldrons, knotgrass by your simmering Invisibility potions and so on.
“This is brilliant,” Sebastian observes after you get redressed and pace the length of the room together. “Why didn’t we do this earlier?”
You shoot him a withering look. “You know precisely why, Sallow.”
He laughs brightly and bumps his shoulder against yours.
“Regardless, good luck separating them now,” he murmurs. “What’s mine is yours, love.”
“What’s mine is yours,” you agree, a content smile on your lips.
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