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ja3hwa · 23 days

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♡ 𝐌𝐫 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐲 | 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐇𝐰𝐚 ♡

【Synopsis】 : You haven't seen your friends in years given you had been overseas studying. Now that you're back, you've noticed how much they've all grown. And what better to celebrate your return than an innocent party.

『Word count』 : 6.66k

-> Genre: Smut. Dark Romance.

Pairing: Childhood friends!SanHwa x Female!Reader

[Warnings] : Swearing. Alcohol. Cnc themes. Dark themes. Mentions of Fucking in the woods. Mention of rough sex and wanting to be manhandled. Predator/Prey Play. Rough play. Name calling. Pet names, bunny Doll.. Slight dubcon. Strangers-friends-lovers?? Mention of unprotected sex. Photographs. Mention of Mingi and the others joining in. Wearing masks during sexual activities. Pervi mingi, hehe. Breast play. Dirty talk.

Note: Thank you, my darling @itsnotmydejavu , for reading this and giving me some feedback, hehe. Couldn't do it without your help.♡♡

Networks: @newworldnet

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The party was loud and crazy. Not your type of scene at all. But your best friend, Yunho, threw it to celebrate him and his dance crew winning their first competition and, of course, celebrate you finally coming home. At first, you pleaded with Yunho, not wanting to have the attention put on you, so this was the best alternative.

A joint celebration.

Getting ready for this stupid party got you anxious beyond knowing. It had been years since you’d seen them. You were close with all of them as you all basically grew up together in your teen years. But when you went to college overseas for a couple of years. It was like meeting different people when you had graduated and came back home. They had all grown so much, and since you were out of the country, it was hard to keep in contact with all of them. All of them except Yunho, who even flew over a couple of times to see you.

But you were back now and hanging out with eight grown-ass men that still act like children has become increasingly hard. Most of them act as if nothing changed and as if you weren’t gone for over six years. But then there was Seonghwa and San. They were different. Not in a bad way, of course, but still… strange. It's like they were more touchy. San’s hand would linger longer on your lower back when you were all out heading to a restaurant when you first got back. Or when you were over at Yunho’s place getting ready for said night and you couldn’t get your dress zipped up, and luckily Seonghwa just happened to walk past Yunho’s room and spot you struggling.

His finger gazed over your long back tattoo you had gotten while away, whispering so softly that it was beautiful and how it suited you. For a moment, you swore he was going to zip it down instead of up just so he could get a peek at your soft plump ass. Cause you see both San and Seonghwa liked you—a lot. Ever since you were teens, both men had a crush on you. They loved spending time with you, listening to you laugh, and they loved how you were always comfortable around them. Freely snuggling, late-night chats.

But they needed more.

San used to sneak into Seonghwa’s room and chat about all the filthy things they thought of about you. And god, the shyness you had just made them know that if they were to say those things aloud, you would certainly freak. No, they were both under the assumption you were too innocent to know how much you affected them. You tortured them. Like the way you cuddled up to San on his couch, acting all sweet with your tits pressed firmly against his side and your head resting on his chest while you watched movies. Or when you had asked Seonghwa to spoon you sometimes cause you were stressing about work and your soft ass would be pressed so nicely against his lap. Just inches away from his aching hard cock.

Oh, the way he would imagine shoving his cock between your thighs fucking them roughly. San would continue saying he sometimes pictures coming deep inside your pussy, claiming you as his. Both of them were drugged on the idea of you. And as years went by and you disappeared for six years, it broke them. All the others went on to dating and enjoying life but the two of them were stuck on you. Like they were unable to move on from you.

And then you came back. You were just as beautiful. More even, as the day you left. You were a grown woman with lustful desires. And they were just the men to help you.

They got their friends to help them get out of the friend zone, getting plenty of suggestions for cute dates and lovey-dovey confessions. But San came up with an idea that Seonghwa knew would be even more perfect than their friend's proposals. Now, all they needed to do was play their cards right, or risk ruining their friendship and / or coming off as a creep.

“Come on, yuyu, I already agreed to this party. What more do you want.” You laughed, sipping on your drink that Wooyoung had fixed for you. It was just you, Wooyoung, and Yunho sitting on the couch in the boy's house. Yunho was trying to get any gossip out of you about your life away, but you really had nothing to say. And then he asked about any special someones. “I’m not about to let you play matchmaker. Last time you tried, you set me up with a skittish boy.” It wasn’t like that poor boy wasn’t nice at all, but he just wasn’t exactly your type.

“Oh, so who would you prefer? Mingi or San, perhaps? Oh, what about Seonghwa,” Wooyoung chuckled, entering into the lounge with a tray of snacks. Your face became flustered all too quickly, hearing Wooyoung call out a bundle of his friends' names, but who really caught your attention was San and Seonghwa. They were both so sweet, like true gentlemen, and they were very attractive, but there was always something missing.

“I mean… They are hot and all.” You trailed off feeling a wave of embarrassment. You’ve never been one to talk about your love life, especially to your friends. You looked briefly around the room, staring at the hallway for a moment, making sure there was no one else in the room. But little did you know Seonghwa and San were in the kitchen getting their own drinks to come and join you. They had asked Wooyoung to slip in the idea of the two, curious of what your answer might be. They had both realized you had never really called them attractive before, let alone something like hot. San gave the other man a surprised expression at the sheer thought of them being good-looking in your eyes. Like a hint of pride burned in their chests. But something got stronger... A feeling... a worried feeling.

“I think there’s a but…” Seonghwa whispered to the younger male.

“I just… I don’t really know..” You rubbed your thumb against the cold glass.

“Let me guess,” Wooyoung tucked his feet under his ass before taking a quick sip of what you assumed to be Soju with some strawberry soda mixed with it. “You are worried they are gonna be too much for you.…” His words made you spit out your drink.

Then Yunho continued, “They probably want to fuck you like a whore.” Yunho cackled making you slap his shoulder almost making him spill his drink. You felt so embarrassed but it wasn’t because you were worried they’d fuck you like a slut. You were worried you’d like it too much if they did. So you had to correct them.

“They are sweet guys. Gentlemen. They wouldn’t do such a t-thing.”

“No, no, I get it.” Wooyoung chimed in, wiping his tears from the corner of his eyes from laughing too hard. Frustration built up in the men that stood in the kitchen, San even going as far as mouthing ‘what the fuck’ to Seonghwa as he began to pace around the room. That was the ultimate reason you never really showed them they had a chance. You thought neither of them could fuck you properly? They were too nice for you? All this time hiding their secret desires from you, being too worried they’d scare you off cause you were such a shy little thing. They never even thought that you were just as sex depraved as them?

Seonghwa and San decided to sneak back to Hwa’s room in order to complete their plan now that they know about your secret desire to be fucked like a bitch in heat. They were going to have fun and this party was going to be the perfect cover for their sinister plan.

So this brings you back to the present. Wandering through crowds of people dressed in various stage outfits the boys had performed in. Most of them dressed at these people called "evil ones" or as fans started to call them "halateez." The clothing was cool, Gothic cyberpunk. Something you've never really worn before. You decided on one of their more light-hearted dance costumes. It was during when they first started doing competitions, and someone had suggested white outfits for one of their performances, and luckily, they all agreed. So here you were in bunny ears like Seonghwa had and a white knee-length poofy dress with a sweetheart neckline, and instead of a silver puffer jacket you opted for a silver shall.

To say you stick out like a sore thumb was an understatement.

But you tried to enjoy yourself nonetheless. Wooyoung had dared you to sleep with someone, and you now being a full-grown adult able to make perfectly reasonable decisions, of course, took up Wooyoung’s stupid bet even though you were freaking out about it. This wasn’t something you would normally do. No, you are someone to stay home, cuddle up with your favourite plushie as you friend the filthy dark fantasies no one knew about. But here you are, scanning your eyes around the first floor of the house from just standing in the doorway of the lounge room, looking to see if anyone caught your eye and let's get this straight, proving Wooyoung wrong was something you too great pride in...

The whole house was open and lively. The large living room had all its furniture against the wall, making room for a dance floor and table with a huge speaker set, blasting loud music.

You had to shake your head at the fact you were actually contemplating Wooyoung’s stupid idea. The said man and one of his friends found you. They linked their arms with yours, leading you down the hallway to the kitchen where your best friend and host, Yunho, was hanging out. He was dressed like a pirate—completed with a hat and sword— and held himself with the confidence of one. You took in all the other boys, seeing all their various spectator costumes. Hugging each of them, you notice Mingi and his open vest outfit with big round shades on the top of his head. He finished his fit with a cane. Kinda making him look like a sexy version of Willy Wonka.

"Where's San and Hwa?" You asked, well half-shouted in Mingi's ear as they all went back to chatting amongst themselves. The only two boys that weren't present were the two you were hoping to see. You had to brace a hand on Mingi's shoulder, going up on tiptoes to make sure he heard you.

Mingi just smirked at you while you leaned in close to him. He gazes down your body as you speak, letting him see perfectly down the dress you're wearing. "They seem to be running late, Princess. Something about missing a part of their costumes." Mingi answered sweetly, turning his head so his jaw rubbed against the soft skin of your cheek, making you hum slightly, all the while he eyed your plump chest without being too obvious about it of course.

Your whole body shuddered at the feeling of Mingi so close to you. His hand snaked around your waist so he could support you up. You tried to ignore the rush of thrill he managed to send through your body. Opting to pull away and pout at him for what he said. Trying to shake any lusting thoughts that started to appear. "Damn, who's going to look after my purse while I dance then?"

You hummed, holding your purse tightly in your grasp as you gestured to your dress not to be very accommodating for your little purse and phone since there were no pockets. Mingi had to sigh, letting his eyes now freely rake down your body. Taking in your outfit that besides being a knee-high dress, it matched Seonghwa's stage outfit to a tea. He was kind of jealous that you dressed like one of his members instead of him.

You could tell Mingi was bluntly checking you out, playing it off like he was just simply looking at you. Redness appeared slightly on your cheeks, feeling a sense of pride mixed with shyness. The beefcake of a man grabbed your stuff before you could say anything else;

“I’ll look after it, princess. Don’t you worry your pretty little head,” He gave you a charming smile watching him slip your stuff into his large pant pockets before zipping it up, making sure it wouldn’t slip out. You murmured a little flustered thank you having no idea how Mingi could have possibly heard it over the music, but your hand on his chest let you feel the little hum he made, making you know he heard you. And for just a moment, it lingered. Your bodies close to one another. Mingi smelt like fresh pine, musk, and wine. The scent etching in the back of your brain making you dizzy. You needed to pull away from him now before you do something stupid.

“I-I’m going to go find the others now.” Your eyes caught his in an intense gaze, making you feel hot and bothered. A smirk curved on his full lips while his tongue poked out to trace them ever so slightly. You hadn’t realized you were fixated on them until someone shouted, getting your attention.

“Have fun, princess. If you ever need something, come find me.” He brought your face only inches away from his so he could whisper in your ear, making sure to linger there for a moment before letting you go entirely.

After you left, most of the other boys flaked, heading to the dance floor or to mingle with whoever else was invited. Mingi and Yunho, on the other hand, stayed in the kitchen, watching all the chaos unfold as they took another round of shots together. That was when San and Seonghwa finally showed up, walking swiftly through the halls towards the other men. Mingi had kept his eyes on you the whole time, seeing you were now standing and chatting with some old high school friends near the dance floor. His stare dragged from your ass to finally look at the men of the hour, seeing San and Seonghwa were definitely dressed to impress.

“You’re girl is already here.” He said while Yunho nodded in confirmation, pointing in your direction so the two men who were dressed head to toe in black tackle wear, and scream masks hanging off their belts could take a look at you. Both Seonghwa and San glanced in your direction, seeing the outfit you were wearing. The way the bottom hem of your dress was fluttering while you swayed side to side, clearly deep into whatever conversation you were having. And the way you were dressed looking like Seonghwa’s stage fit in particular got Hwa’s cock thickening in his pants. He wanted to bend you over where you stood and shove his cock deep in your pussy, claiming you for everyone to see while you squealed and squirmed under him. See if you call him a gentleman after that.

Shaking himself from his thoughts, Both men turned back to Mingi, who held out a phone for him. “She gave me this to hold on to,” He explained and for a moment, jealousy brewed in both San and Seonghwa for a moment at the thought of you letting anyone but them hold onto your things. Mingi could sense the shift in their eyes, only smirking at the thought of successfully getting under their skin. And the worst thing out of it all, the two men weren’t oblivious to the way their friend looked at you. Heck, they all looked at you just the same. Seonghwa and San had planned to get to the party before you to ensure the others didn’t get any ideas towards you. But deep down they knew, none of them would encourage you or give you any offer you wouldn’t like.

“I’ll be taking that.” San grabbed the phone before slipping it into his large pant pocket by his knee. All the boys then gazed back in your direction, spotting you were now dancing with some random people you most likely knew from school. Both men got a better look at your outfit this time. How soft and shiny the material of your flowy dress was that sat beautifully on your body. How your breasts swelled at the top, or how your ass was perfect enough to grab.

The cherry on top was how your legs looked, plump thighs on display for everyone to see. When you twirled again both San and Seonghwa watched the way your tits jiggled with every move you took, and bit back a groan at the realization you weren’t wearing a bra or you were wearing a loose-fitting one. They wondered if you were wearing panties under that pretty dress too. They wondered if you were dancing with the fear of flashing your pussy to every guy in the room with each twist of your hips. What a fucking slut, San thought, sexual frustration and affection creating an intoxicating haze in his mind. The urge to make you his slut was almost overwhelming.

“She’s needy tonight, by the way,” Mingi’s words caught the attention of the men. Mingi then glanced quickly around the room, making sure no one was eavesdropping, noting Yunho had gone to get refills. “She was practically ready to kiss me before shying away and running off to the dance floor.” Mingi then chuckled, seeing the shock on their faces, getting up from the bar stool he was sitting on so he could pat their shoulders. “You gonna be, you know, able to woo her? She’s not gonna come quietly or rather confidently.”

Both San and Seonghwa smirked, not letting themselves be anything less than self-assured that you’d end the night begging them to let you out of the friend zone. They were going to make it their mission to get you outta your shell and make you confess your deepest, darkest secrets. Neither of them could wait any longer to watch you come apart on each of their cocks, bent over with your face down and ass up while one pounded your pussy. And then pining you so the other can fuck your mouth until you were crying through your release. Although San and Seonghwa have clued in their friends to their plan to fuck you, they hadn’t told the extent of the rough plan they had to completely ruin you for any other man.

“Oh don’t worry, we have a plan,” Seonghwa answered confidently, flicking his gaze at San with a knowing expression.

“Why, you want a piece of her or something, Min?” San cocked his brow, making Mingi give his friend a long firm look, trying to work out if the question was a trap or not. But he just shrugged, downing the last of his drink as if to say he’d fuck around and find out.

“Hey, man I’d be more happy to dick her down.” He said smugly. “But you know you probably gotta take what’s yours first before you go around offering.” Mingi shot a cheeky look before disappearing into the crowd without another word.

You started to feel a sense of loneliness filling your emotions as you too amongst sweaty bodies and loud beats of music. you had explored the second floor and most of the rooms on the first, but you could seem to find San or Seonghwa. You were starting to think they weren’t going to show. You had to shake your head in embarrassment thinking about what if Wooyoung spilled the beans about your stupid plan to seduce them. Let's face it you weren’t cut out with all this flirting and wooing and blah blah. You weren’t cut out for anything, but your alone time.

You turned to look back into the kitchen to see if any of the boys were still there, but then an overwhelming presence caught your attention that loomed against the wall of the large hallway. Your breath hitched seeing the two very tall men standing out in the crowd. Even though you couldn’t see either of their eyes, you knew their intense gaze was on you. They were both dressed the same head to toe, and their ghostface masks matched except one was the original mask, and the other was a shiny red style. Your eyes trailed down, finding their t-shirts were tucked into black cargo pants that hung low on their trimmed waist, the bottom of their pants both disappearing into black combat boots.

You shook your head, trying to shake the idea of any other men other than the ones you wanted. So you turned and almost blotted towards the garden, hoping to see if the boys were there. The two men looked at one another, knowing they both had a confused expression. This was going to be harder than they expected. The shyness was going to be harder to crack than they thought.

Standing out on the patio, you see partygoers dancing and cheering on the deck. Your eyes once again met one of the masked men. And even though their faces were covered, you knew their gazes were constantly fixated on you. There was no doubt they were grinning like Cheshire cats. You needed to know who these two men were. But more importantly, needed to get away from the loudness. You noticed the fire pit down the small hill of the back yard, and if you stretched your stare further, it led to forestry. a forest that just so happened to have a clubhouse you and your friends built way back when. No one knows about it other than the boys and you.

I wonder if it's still up? You thought, quickly forgetting about the two men that you have been coincidentally running into the past hour, but yet neither of them made a move to talk to you. You noticed fewer people milling about the further you walked. Some still circled around the fire pit while others were making out behind oak trees. You ignored them all, heading down the slow-sloping grass hill. The sound of the party and the thumping ear-bashing bass grew distant the further you walked.

Once at the edge of the trees, you dug your heels into the soft earth so you would stop yourself for a moment. A strange feeling circled you at the thought you were being watched. Looking around, you saw nothing, which in toe, made your gut twist further. You looked back at the house and spotted Mingi standing on the deck, leaning on the wooden railing while smoking a cigarette. Though It was too far to tell exactly, you had a feeling Mingi had been watching you the entire time. It doesn’t appear to ease the jitters in your gut thought, but you decide to keep going, shaking the walking red flag that seemed to loom over your body. For some reason, you had become desperate to see the old little clubhouse. See if it’s still standing. Maybe it was nostalgia or just the alcohol running through your veins. Whatever it might be, you pushed past the feeling of having eyes on your back as you finally spotted the old rustic tree house you came all this way out for.

Opening the latch with a little tug, you managed to climb the wonky stairs that led into the old oak cabin-like structure. It was built around the trunk of a large old elm tree, so the trunk went straight through the ‘living room’ as you and the boys called it. The rusty creak of the door catches your attention, and your heart jumps out of your chest suddenly spinning back to where the gate is. “I’m losing my mind...” You shake your head, pinching the bridge of your nose. Maybe you shouldn't have had those shots of soju with Yeosang before heading down here.

“I wouldn’t sell yourself short their sugarcube.” Your head snapped in the direction of the voice, and if it wasn’t for the full moonlight shining through the plastic-covered windows, you wouldn’t have seen the man who owned the said voice. He was one of the men wearing the Ghostface masks. Unlike the other male who wore the traditional one, he wore a red one with little devil horns on the top.

“W-Who are you.” The two men had been following you all night, and it's only now come to your attention that they were the eyes you felt while you walked through the woods. They had followed you here. To sacred ground. You and your friends hide away from the real world. But what really started to cloud your mind was the fact you couldn’t help but notice his voice. Without the loud music and wasted people around you, crashing into you every time you moved. You sensed a hint of familiarity. You tilted your head to the side as you gazed at his full figure. Now that you thought about it, his whole demeanour was familiar.

“Pick a safe word.” you were starting to wonder where the other man might have been given these two had seemly always travelled in pairs from your knowledge. And though his voice startled you, you were not surprised to hear it.

“What?” You replied to the white Ghostface.

“Pick a safe word, bunny. And whatever we do stops the moment you use it.” he urged this time, a thread of desperation in his tone. You felt your head spin at his tone, wondering just how you managed to end up in some kind of dark fantasy of yours. Not that you were complaining. His voice began to bug your brain, too. You knew you recognized it, but you just weren’t sure who it belonged to. But your curiosity was officially piqued, and even though you were throwing caution out the window. You knew if there was any true danger and you no longer wanted to do anything, Mingi would most likely stay on the patio until you showed up again, so he would come running if you screamed loud enough.

“Purple.” You murmured in a short hum.

His shoulders relaxed and you could hear the grin in his voice as the red ghost face replied, “Purple, it is sugarcube.” He held his black-gloved hand out to you.

For a moment, you just looked at it. Your eyes trailed up his muscled arm to the devilish ghost face mask and then over his shoulder to the pitch-black woods beyond the window. You weren’t sure what he had planned for you, but the way your cunt began to leak at the thought of being fucked in your high school hangout had you thinking about bad decisions. As you come face to face with a red ghost face mask you slowly let out a shaky breath, feeling his body heat consume you. Maybe you should be scared. Maybe you should just use the safe word or try and run back to the party and forget about everything. But with their sinful aura and their lingering words, you pressed closer, “A-are you two gonna fuck me hard enough to make me scream. Sirs.”

“Oh, Bunny.” The white ghost face man growled, tugging your waist from behind until you were turned around, facing him. He slowly walked you back until you were pressed firmly against the thick tree trunk. Your shall luckily protected your shoulders from the itchy bark and with a rough grip on your thigh, he lifted one of your legs up to hook around his waist, stepping in between them, successfully pinning you to the tree. You could feel the man's massive bulge in his pants against your dripping core. You shivered at the feel of him, wondering for the first time whether you had really, in fact, lost your mind. “we’re gonna fuck you until you scream your throat raw.”

With that lustful whisper hanging in the air, your mind went blank. The red ghost face reached down and shoved your poofy dress up so it could sit around your hips, showing off your frilly black panties with a cute little bow on the front. This adorable piece of fabric was the only thing protecting your sweet pussy from these two very large men’s eyes. The white ghost let out a deep, sadistic growl at the sight, while red whistled, “Fuck sugarcube, ain’t these the cutest darn things.” He muttered, his black-gloved fingers tracing the side of the garment. In a quick movement, he twisted his fingers around the fabric and, with a sharp yank, he easily ripped it away from your body. “Too bad I had to do that.”

A harsh gasp was pulled from your lips and you jerked in red’s arms at the feel of your panties being ripped off you. No one had ever done that to you before and it made your mind a little hazy. You could feel a warmth drip down between your thighs. Good god you’re enjoying this a little too much. The man pulled your ruined panties away from your body, the fabric clinging obscenely to your soaking wet cunt. You could suddenly feel the cool night breeze against your most sensitive area, making you whine. Goosebumps raising all over your body sweet painful chill played against your drenched pussy and slick thighs, highlighting exactly how messy you were already to the world... pathetic really.

Not a moment after, the whine from the cold air changed to one of pleasure as you felt white this time, sliding his gloved fingers between your folds, pushing lightly against your clit. You couldn't help but buck your hips at the feeling, trying desperately to get his fingers inside you. You were so wet and needy already, feeling woefully empty, every nerve in your body demanding you be filled and fucked by the men caging you against the tree.

“Such a needy fucking thing,” Red, or was that white? Gritted his teeth like he was clenching his jaw. Whites fingers pinch your clit making you cry. He couldn't get enough in his sight if only he didn't have this fucking mask on. they both craved the way your body responded to them, their sweet little friend, practicality begging for them to fuck you. "She's so fucking wet and warm. it's like this pretty cunt is just begging for our cocks, isn't that right bunny?"

“fuck, yes, please,” you answered on an exhale, your voice high-pitched and shaky with need. “Need you both, please.” You tried to reach between your bodies and tug on White's belt to slide it open, but he batted your hands away, making red laugh.

The red ghost face gripped your face in his hand while the other teased the top hem of your dress. he brought his masked face close to yours like he was getting an up-close look at your expression. “I don't think you sound nearly as desperate enough just yet for either of our cocks, hmm?" you could basically hear the sharp grin in his voice.

A large hand is placed upon your chest, making you hold your breath. You can feel the heat radiating from just a simple touch. You swallowed thickly as Red gripped the front of your dress, pushing white away so he could pull you off the tree and tug you towards the floor. You can’t help but cry out as you land onto one of the old long floor cushions in the clubhouse. He’s so lucky it was there otherwise this entire thing would be over. You blow out a huff of air as you look at both men with a devious smirk. You can feel how intense both of their gazes are. Looking you up and down and taking everything in. If this is how they want to play, then….

“If I knew this was how my night was going to end. I would have spoken to you two sooner.” You giggled, opening your legs, your dress hiked up your thighs to reveal yourself slightly on accident. But both men growled either way…

Red quickly dropped down to you a little too eagerly. His hand placed firmly on your navel, pushing a small amount of pressure. The touch itself left you breathless. White joins your side, and his hands are quick to your breasts. You grab his wrist, a little hesitant. You meet his gaze under the mask, and he waits for you. Biting your lip, thinking, and wondering, you venture and guide his hand under your dress to your bare breast. You hear White shakily breathe out a quiet ‘fuck’ which goes straight to your gut. He flicks a thumb over your nipples before giving your breast a firm squeeze.

You whine softly as two fingers easily slip into your slick cunt. By instinct or just by pure need, you go to close your legs in order to gain friction but a strong hand on your inner thigh stopped that. Giving you a light tap to keep them open. You find yourself breathing heavily and lost in thought. God is this really happening? You thought, arching your back upwards.

The white ghost-faced man pulled your dress down from your breast, revealing them to the cold air. Your nipples harden and white runs his thumb over them again, fixated on the way your body responds to his delicate touch. If only you could kiss him, see who was exactly gifting you the pleasure from your fantasy. You felt a slight guilt twinge inside you, swearing at yourself for imagining your friends, Seonghwa and San. Would they ever do this to do? That was the thought that mixed with flashes of their face as white leaned closer to you, letting his mask almost touch your cheek. You reach out for the mask on the man’s face, your hand shaking from Red’s fingers fucking into you at a slow but brutal pace. But white’s hand comes flying up and grabs your wrist, moving your hand back away.

“Not now, bunny,” He chuckles lightly. His voice was so familiar, but it was becoming very hard to concentrate when a third finger was added amongst the others. The stretch has feeling dizzy, but with how wet you are, it’s an easy fit.

Your protest died on your lips as he let go of your wrist. You felt Red shift your legs up to his waist so he could dig something out of his pocket with his free hand, "I think we should record this, don't you?" he asked, but not to you, no, he asked his friend that was sitting so patiently next to the two of you. Your pleasure-filled brain was too far gone to understand his meaning either way. Not until you heard the flicking of a camera sound and a flash being turned on. The bright light shone in your eyes for a second before he moved it down your body to where his glove-covered fingers were still, deep inside your pussy. Awareness shot through your nerves at the realization he was taking a video of what he was doing to you. It also occurred to you that you could very well use your safe word right now, but as you looked down to see his fingers playing with your cunt for the camera, it felt hot.

He could see the way your clit throbbed in pleasure and the was your clench around nothing. You never knew you’d be into being recorded but here you are, feeling a sense of desire from just being on display for these two men. You rolled your hips for him, watching how his shoulders visibly shifted with a groan following. He watched intensely through the phone alone with white as his fingers slid in and out of your soaked hole. “God, I��m gonna save this so we can watch it over and over again.” He punctuated his words with short, quick thrusts of his finger, making you cry out.

“Please,” you begged wanting to feel stretched out by their cocks already, but unable to form the words as Red fucked you. It was so good but not nearly enough, and yet, you could feel an orgasm building slowly in your gut.

“Fuck, you’re so fucking wet, Bunny,” White groaned, watching Red fuck you harder with his fingers. “Can you hear the sounds of your pussy from here.” he laughed, leaning over to grab the camera off Red so he could continue recording while Red used his now free hand to circle your clit while he continued to assault your hole. You could feel a sense of humiliation mixing with the blissfulness of pleasure Red was giving you as your body told him exactly how turned on you were. Even with your heart pounding in your chest and both men’s harsh breathing in their masks, you could still hear the lewd sounds that came from fingers pumping in and out of you.

He fucked you faster. The sounds only grew louder with your moans as each thrust sent your mind into a day a daze. His palm slapped against your wet folds, and the tip of his thumb rubbed your clit with a sharp tug. “More, please,” you begged breaking into a sob, feeling tears pool against the corners of your eyes.

“Mmm, that’s it Doll, beg for me,” Red growled, shoving his fingers out of you to give your pussy a harsh slap before plunging his fingers back inside you. You choked out a ragged moan as your head thrashed side to side against the old cushion with your hips writhing against his body.

“Please. I’m gonna cum. Please, I need it so badly.” you chanted, begging. You could feel yourself hurtling toward the edge, you just needed a little more. But a little push. Red seemed to know exactly what you needed and when he whistled over his friend, that’s when you felt a hand cover your eyes and then a wet sensation met your nipples. It was white's mouth, suckling on your tit with a sharp inhale. Your back arched at the feeling followed by the most degraded sound you’d ever heard left your own lips.

“Good girl, take my fingers. Come all a strangers fingers,” He praised, his voice raspy and muffled through the mask. “Need to stretch you out so you’re ready for our cocks,” He continued with a sly giggle. The way he was so consumed with your body was almost insane. Something about the way he said the word ‘stranger’ had alarm bells going off in your head, but they were so distant with your mind too consumed by the pleasure he was giving you. You were too focused on chasing your release, a whine rising in your throat as your arms braced against the man next to you as you fucked yourself on his fingers. You were so close. Pushing against white more, tugging on his bicep, you felt his hand slipping from your face. The alarm bells that were going off before were even louder now, trying to warn you about something. About them? With fumbling, eager hands, you curled your fingers around the edges of white's shirt before tugging one last time. His hand slipped completely off your eyes, what you were faced with left a loud, sharp gasp to leave your lips.

”Seonghwa!? San?!”

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Part two

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fatesundress · 11 months

Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I wonder why.”

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

“What, Tom?”

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

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

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

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

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Curiosity—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

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

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

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

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

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

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

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

“A professor?”

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

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

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

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

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

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

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

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

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

“So?”

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

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

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

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

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

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

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

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I —”

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

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

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

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

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

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

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

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

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

“Tom.”

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

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

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

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

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

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

The day everything changes starts the same as any.

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

Tom has cracked the book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have no need.”

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

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

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

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

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

“Why would he lie?”

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

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

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

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

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

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

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

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

“Should I?”

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

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

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

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

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

Summer blisters when it comes.

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

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

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You always are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are regardless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are not his keeper. You know that.

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

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

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

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

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

You’re almost positive you did not.

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

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

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

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

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

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

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

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

It happens again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You take to the library.

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

The third sign is the end.

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

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

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

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

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

He’s something else entirely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve been good at it.”

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

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

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

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

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

He sees all of you.

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

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

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

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

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

“I cannot.”

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

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

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

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

“Do you want me to lie?”

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

“Her death is the first step to —”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“...What?"

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

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

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought I would have time.”

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

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

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

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

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

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

“You have lost me, Tom."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

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

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

Be well.

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

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

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

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

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

You find that to be true.

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

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

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

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

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

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

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

Due February.

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

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

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

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You drink, and don’t look away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I take that back.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indifferent it is.

“Can I help you?”

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

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

“Am I?”

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

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

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is Mari?

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

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

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

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

“Well then —”

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

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

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

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

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

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

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

“I haven’t protested.”

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

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

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

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

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

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

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

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

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

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

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

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

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

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

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

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

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

My door is always open.

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

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

It’s a tempting door.

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

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

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

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

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant.

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

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

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

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Renauld?”

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

“Well, yeah —”

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

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

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

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

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

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

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

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

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

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

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

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

And… he does.

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

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

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

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

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

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

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

But something about it itches.

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

You are green, through and through.

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

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

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

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

That makes it much worse when you sleep together.

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

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

“Yes.”

“Right.”

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

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

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

You’re incredibly daft about it.

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

The itch exacerbates.

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

You wake up and he isn’t there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

R.R

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

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

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

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

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

But you do, because he told you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes."

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

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

“I earned this,” you hiss.

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

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

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

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

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

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

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

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

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

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

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

“Yes,” you agree.

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

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

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

He was your first in everything but this.

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

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

“How long?” he asks thickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“N-no.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A finger presses inside and you moan.

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

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

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

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

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

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you give me more?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe you already do.

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

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

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

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

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

You whimper.

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

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

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

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

“You can — uh — you can — ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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igotanidea · 19 days

Text

We'll make it: Jason Todd x reader

Warnings: 18+, MDNI!

So, she got accepted to that one Univerity faculty she wanted to attend since being a teen.

It was a dream come true, except for one tiny detail.

She was leaving.

For 3 years.

A thousand miles away from her boyfiend Jason.

And he never explicitly said it, but his eyes, his face, his entire posture that shifted from relaxed in her presence to terrified at the thought of loosing her, were speaking volumes.

And no matter how much she tried to assure him the two of them will survive it, regardless of the strength she put on for both of their sakes - nothing could ease his worries.

How would he survive without her by his side?

Who would he come back to after patrol to hold and love and snuggle with?

Whose laugh and tears and words and touch and humor and moodiness would fill his days?

But he knew he had to let her go.

It was her dream after all, and who he was to ever stop her from fullfilling it...

Nothing.

Just an outcast, outlaw, vigilante casted away and abandoned even by his own family.

He never deserved her in the first place and it was time to deal with it.

She were too good for him.

But that was never what she thought.

So the last night before the departure, when she was finishing packing her bags and he was keeping his distance, leaning on the doorframe trying to act casual and happy for her?

She couldn't stand it.

She hated the fact that he seemed to just ... give up. Let go of the fight. Surrender.

Red Hood would never surrender.

And Y/N Y/L/N wouldn't either.

"So, are you excited for tomorrow?" he asked with a fake smile

"I'm actually feeling a lot of things at the same time" she sighed heavily zipping her suitcase.

"I think it's pretty normal." Jason shrugged taking a step forward putting her luggage up to make it ready for the morning and that little, somewhat helpful after all, gesture made her mad.

Mad like he has never seen her before.

"What is wrong with you?!" she yelled but all she got in response was a surprised, indifferent look on his face.

"What do you mean?"

"what do I--?" she stuttered, her eyes widening in shock. Was he for real? He didn'd care at all? "WHAT DO I MEAN?!!"

"Stop yelling princess, you're acting crazy."

"CRAZY!? I'm acting crazy to you?!"

"Ok, seriously, what the hell do you want from me!?" he spat back, getting annoyed by her behaviour.

"WHY WON'T YOU FIGHT FOR ME?!"

"Fight for you?" his eyes glistened with rage, but also something more, something she couldn;t quite decipher "you want me to fight for you, huh? Well be careful what you wish for cause if I start doing it--" he gritted his teeth stopping the sentence in the middle.

Y/N took a single look at his face. Narrowed eyes. Pursed lips. And then other telltales. Hard breathing. Rapid chest movements. Clenched fists.

"Jason..."

"FUCK!" he yelled, grabbed the back of her head and pulled her to the kiss that was as intense as if he was trying to swallow her whole. His lips moving against her with the power and stoutess that resebled the fire consuming everything that happened to be on his path. Nothing else mattered in this moment, except for her.

His girlfriend, his lover, his babygirl.

Who just finished collecting her things before flight.

Jason groaned grabbing her waist, squeezing her body in an iron tight grip, her whimpers only spurring him on, making him want more, making him want to tear her clothes off, pin her to bed, take her like an animal, make her stay.

Make her fucking stay.

But he couldn't.

And it made him stop and pull back in shame.

"Jason..." she gasped, feeling the emptiness when he moved away. Her hair were messy, eyes glassy, lips already swollen.

"I'm sorry princess..."

"Oh fuck you todd" she groaned rushing to his arms again, wrapping herself around him like a glove, needing his touch, his love, his lips, hands, everything.

She started the fire in him.

The fire he was trying so hard to contain while withdrawing and keeping his cool.

He wasn't anymore.

She was going away. There was no denying the reality. So if anything he could give her something to remember him by.

To rememeber them by.

"I got a little surprise for you..." she whispered pulling back to the point where he let her. Her hands locked with his, guiding them to the hem of her shirt signalling to pull it up.

And when he did?

The view that came to his eyes counldn't be compared with anything else. The sexiest, the most turning on, cock hardening red lacy lingerie made her look like a goddess.

"Fuck, Y/N." he tore the shirt off completely, tracing over her soft, warm skin, caressing her breasts through the thin lacy material.

"Say it..." she gasped feeling his kisses on her neck, his hands on her ass, pulling her closer.

"I don't want you to go."

"Show me."

"Oh I;m gonna show you."

Her pants were gone in a second, his fingers dipping under the material of her panties, feeling her wetness, going lower, depeer, harder...

"But not like this." Jason grabbed her waist and carried her to the bedroom.

Layed her down.

Kissed her enitre body.

Slowly unclasped all those tiny buckles, untangled all the strings, making sure that she felt each caress, each kiss, each sweet word whispered in her ear.

Moved slowly and tenderly.

Made love to her with so much care and intensity without going rough.

Looking straight into her eyes with each thrust.

We'll make it.

That was the message his gaze was conveing. One simple sentence that never had a chance to leave his mouth.

We'll make it.

"Yes..." she gasped tightening the grip of her legs on his waist, running hands down his back, pulling him closer, and they both knew that she didn't just refer to sex.

We'll make it.

And when the first rays of sun shone on the horizon....

When her lips brushed his forehead till the next time they were going to see each other....

When the doors closed quietly to not stir him awake...

Two hearts were still beating in the same rythm,

We'll make it.

#jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #jason todd x y/n #red hood x y/n #jason todd smut #red hood smut

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fourmoony · 3 months

Note

hi, I just wanted to let you know that reading your writing brings me so much comfort and joy. Today, I found out that the person I’ve liked for the longest time has a girlfriend, and it’s been hard to say the least. It also didn’t help that I read an unrequited love blurb featuring remus as soon as I got home 😭 I was just wondering if you’d be willing to write something where the reader assumes that remus doesn’t like her because he seems aloof, but is actually just nervous because he likes her so much. I am so appreciative of you and your beautiful work, as always 🤍

this made me tear up. your words are so kind, and are the push i needed this week to keep writing <3 never in a million years did i think anyone would think this about my writing. thank you.

i'm sorry to hear about your crush; unrequited love is a tricky and heavy feeling. i have no doubt you'll find your person, though. as someone who's had my fair share of heartache, i promise, it won't hurt forever. my friends think i'm crazy because my advice is always to just let it hurt. but one day you'll wake up and you'll have run out of hurt. and you won't even remember what you saw in them, anymore. sending love.

P.S. i suck at writing shy remus so this is more like silent, unreadable remus. idk i'm tired. hope this is okay!

---

remus lupin x f!reader - masterlist 1.2k words

cw - implied self esteem issues, smoking, drinking

Remus' thumping steps carry up the staircase only seconds after you call on him. You're facing the mirror when he arrives in the doorway, hair clasped to the side in one hand, and the other reaching aimlessly for the zip half way down the back of your dress. His eyes find yours over your shoulder in the reflection, a fond smile passing over his features when he steps through the threshold into your room.

"You look lovely." He comments, voice warm and smooth in the way that it always is.

Warm Remus, smooth Remus, so fond and kind, feels like home and everything familiar. His fingers are warm as he tugs gently at the zip, one hand placed on your shoulder for leverage. His touch is gentle, like he's afraid he might break you, and it lingers for only a moment when he's done. You swallow around the lump of want in your throat, the want for it to have lasted longer, the want for him to touch you and have it mean something. It doesn't do any good to want. Because you can't have, and you've had to deal with becoming okay with that fact.

"Thanks, Rem."

He nods, lips curled in on themselves like he wants to say something, a look in his eyes you've never been able to read. He says nothing, and he retreats with the promise to wait on you with the others in the living room. Remus does that a lot - refrains from the things he wants to say, stops himself short. You wish he wouldn't.

You're always wishing, wishing, wishing.

He keeps true to his word. Remus is waiting in the living room with Sirius, James, and a rather flustered looking Frank when you descend the staircase. It's only now you realise how lovely Remus looks in his suit. Partly because of how Sirius is wearing his - like he had a fight with it and lost. Remus stands when you appear, as if on instinct, and takes a step forwards. You smile, eyes catching on Frank who's looking at the clock like it's stealing time from before his very eyes. You suppose, in a way, it is.

"You okay?" You feel the need to ask, hint of a smile playing on your lips.

Frank looks alarmed by your question, a grimace on his face, "She's going to be there, isn't she? She's not going to, like, do a runner? Have you spoke to her today?"

James huffs a laugh, pats Frank on the shoulder rather heavily. The whiskey in his crystal tumbler splashes over the side and onto the rug. "Last I heard, Mary and Marlene had her pinned down in the make up chair, she tried, but they wouldn't let her."

Sirius barks a laugh. Frank scowls. He knows you're kidding. Alice Fortescue has been absolutely smitten for Frank Longbottom since she was thirteen. There's absolutely nothing that could stop her from walking down that aisle, today. Frank knows that as well as you do.

"Not helping." James decides, passes Frank a cigarette.

He mumbles something about not wanting to smoke inside and makes for the door. Remus gives James and Remus a pointed look, "Better make sure he doesn't do a runner, yeah?"

They're quick out the door like they actually believe Frank would ever do something like that. The only place he'd ever run to is Alice. And she'd have his balls for seeing her in her wedding dress before the ceremony. Remus gives you a familiar smile, a knowing smile, a smile he saves for you and you only. It feels like he's in on something you aren't when he smiles like that. Heat crawls up your neck, flowers wrap their way around you rib cage.

"You scrub up well, you know." Is all you manage to say, rather breathless.

Remus rolls his eyes, "I try."

A minute of amused silence, Remus passes you the glass of wine in his hand. The glass is warm from being in his clutch, but you drink from it anyway.

"I thought after the catering disaster this wedding wasn't going to happen." Remus admits, looking out of the living room window at where Frank paces the length of the front path, working his way through his second cigarette. Alice will have your head for allowing such a thing.

You hum a disagreement, eyes roaming Remus' face, it's so soft, so beautifully shaped. You've no idea why he hates his scars so much. They only outline his best qualities. The one over the bridge of his perfectly sloped nose, the one under his beautiful amber eyes, the one along his sharp cheekbones, and your favourite one: the one across his cupids bow, defining his soft, pink lips. It's a shame, really, that Remus Lupin thinks so little of himself. You'd give him the world should he only ask.

"I think nothing can stop a love like that," You murmur, soft and quiet, voice thick with something, "Not even a shoddy caterer."

Remus' eyes leave the front garden, meet with yours in a way that always makes heat explode in your chest. He's too much to look at, sometimes. It physically hurts.

"You always have such a positive outlook on life."

You laugh, shoulders shrugging, "Suppose it's habit."

"From?"

"Keeping you miserable lot from giving up all together?" You offer, smiling over the rim of your wine glass.

Remus laughs, genuine and unashamed. "Tell you what, at our wedding, I promise to be the one keeping everything together, how about that?"

He seems to flinch after that, like he's physically pained by the words coming out of his mouth. You flinch, too. The flowers around your rib cage wilt and pull tighter all in one go, a frown pulling at your lips.

"I wasn't aware we were getting married."

Remus smiles like he's in pain, "Yeah, well, step one would actually be asking you on a date, but I'm a right twat who's mucked all that up."

There's something self deprecating about him. You don't like it. Remus Lupin deserves the world. You'll give him the world. You didn't think he wanted that from you, though. But you smile, gentle and sweet in a way you hope he'll like. It feels like something shifts. Maybe the stars begin to write a story about you both. Maybe the sun stops it's rotation just for a second to watch you both.

The wedding car pulls up outside and Remus, seemingly eager to back away from the situation he's created, slams his own drink down on the table and makes for the door.

"Remus," You call after him, he turns, "I'd marry you."

You offer him a lopsided smile. His eyes search your face for any sign of a joke. He finds none. You hope he understands what you mean.

"How about a date first?" He asks.

You release a breath, a laugh, a smile. It feels like you're floating.

"Sure, yeah. That first."

The front door swings open and Sirius barges his way past Remus, panicked and disheveled, "I've lost the fucking rings!"

Remus sighs, hand in his pocket, hands Sirius the red velvet box, "Here."

You're laughing all the way down the path, shoulder brushing Remus', the start of something new.

#fourmoonys asks #marauders #marauders fic #marauders oneshot #remus lupin #remus lupin imagine #remus lupin x reader #remus lupin oneshot #remus lupin angst #remus lupin fluff #james potter #james potter imagine #sirius black #sirius black imagine #frank longbottom #alice longbottom #mary macdonald #marlene mckinnon

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egcdeath · 1 year

Text

kith and kin

pairing: joel miller x f!reader (pairing from the soccer parents AU)

summary: your parents finally meet joel in the midst of celebrating your daughter’s birthday.

word count: 8.3k

warnings: brief mention of past abuse, a little tough love from reader’s mom, no use of y/n, cursing, alternate universe: no apocalypse, angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, joel is a little anxious, your daughters are sassy, very lightly edited

author’s note: i’ve had the worst writers block recently, but i love this pairing too much to let them go. feel free to send me any requests!

previous part / series masterlist

Joel paced back and forth in your bedroom, the padded sound of his socks hitting the floor pleasant at first but was becoming a bit of an annoyance by the tenth consecutive minute of the sound of pacing.

Chloe’s birthday was in just a few days and your parents had rented out a cabin on Canyon Lake, inviting you and one of her friends to come along. Seeing as you’d been together for around a year now and that there was no better time than the present, you figured it was probably about time for Joel to meet your parents.

“Joel,” you finally said sternly, zipping up your suitcase and looking up at your partner. “Relax, honey. They’re gonna love you. I mean, they’re gonna have to love you since I love you. That’s how it works, right?” you walked over to him and gently grabbed the bottom of his shirt, pulling him into what you hoped would be a reassuring kiss.

“I don’t know,” he murmured, pressing his forehead against yours. “What if they don’t think I’m good for you?”

“Well, this may be breaking news to you, but we’re not living in the 1700’s. We don’t exactly need my parents’ approval to have a relationship.”

Joel walked away from you, grabbing his own bag from where it laid on the floor. “I know, it’s just… I want them to like me. I don’t want you to have to feel like you needed to choose between me and your family and secretly resent me for years over that.”

“Maybe let’s unpack that last part some other time. But you’re so likable and charming, they’d have to be crazy to not like you.”

“I admire your belief in me, but it’s been well over a decade since I’ve had to meet and woo someone’s parents. What if I’m rusty?”

“Don’t be rusty, just be yourself!” you tried, smiling at your own terrible dad joke.

“Ha, ha,” his laughter was forced and monotone.

“Not the time?” You knew it was bad when Joel didn’t even respond to one of his beloved dad jokes.

“Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. But everything is gonna go great, okay? And if not, you have a few days to make them love you, yeah?”

“You’re right,” he admitted reluctantly, seemingly just wanting to move on from the conversation. “You ready to go?”

“I am. Are you?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

When you arrived at the cabin, your parents were sat on the front porch, seemingly deep in their own conversation before noticing your car pulling up.

Chloe was quick to hop out of the car, excited to see her grandparents. Given that they were practically attached at the hip, Sarah followed close behind Chloe, with the pair receiving hugs from your parents as they greeted the girls.

Still firmly seated in the car, Joel took a deep, yet shaky breath, giving you an idea of just how nervous he was to be meeting your parents. Wanting to give the man a bit of reassurance, you grabbed ahold of his slightly trembling hand and squeezed it hard.

“I promise you have nothing to worry about. You’re gonna have a great time, and my parents are probably gonna love you more than they love me. Got it?” you asked firmly, trying to sound sure of yourself despite the minor nerves you were facing yourself.

“Got it,” Joel parroted, although he didn’t exactly sound sure of himself.

“C’mon,” you beckoned, unstrapping yourself before getting out of the car. After a very subtle moment of reluctance, Joel’s door opened and your partner stepped out of your car as well.

The moment he got out of the car, you grabbed his hand, squeezing it once again as a small demonstration of your support before leading him up to the porch.

The girls were already making their way inside when you finally reached your parents, your mom giving you a tight hug and setting her head on your shoulder.

“It’s been too long,” she declared as she squeezed you for a few more beats, finally pulling away to analyze the man you had brought with you. “And who is this?”

“Mom, Dad, this is Joel. He’s Sarah’s dad,” you stepped back to wrap your arm around Joel, a slightly territorial move to show your parents that whatever you had going on was serious. “He’s also my boyfriend.”

“Nice to meet you, Joel” your mother greeted, shaking Joel’s hand and maintaining a somewhat loaded eye contact with him. She smiled at him, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Your dad didn’t even bother with the pleasantries, giving Joel’s hand a firm squeeze and one solid shake. Both of your parents looked rather skeptical of the man, but you hoped that the stern look you were offering them was warning enough for your parents to behave around your boyfriend.

As everyone left to put away their luggage, you stayed downstairs with your mother, who indicated she wanted to have a separate conversation with you.

“What’s up?” you asked her, crossing your arms over your chest defensively in anticipation of what she might say. Based on that loaded interaction on the porch, you already had a good idea of where this conversation is going.

“Is this the Joel from Chloe’s soccer games?”

Shit. The one time your parents remember the name of someone you disliked just happens to be the one time you bring them home.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you remembered that,” you attempted to casually brush off. “It is.”

“The one you couldn’t stand?” your mother pressed, her brows furrowing as she looked at you with what seemed like disbelief.

“That was a while ago! Before our kids got closer and I got to know him better. And really it wasn’t even like I couldn’t stand him, it was more like he mildly annoyed me and we would argue sometimes. Even then, I kinda just had a crush on him. That’s why I told you guys about him in the first place. Notice how you don’t know the names of anyone else on the team who I don’t like?” you spoke quickly as you attempted to justify what you’d told your parents in the past.

“Stop. Just stop,” your mother rubbed the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. Growing up, you were all too familiar with that move of exasperation. “Why do you keep doing this?”

“Doing… what?” you said meekly, almost scared of what was going to come next.

“Finding men that don’t treat you right. Men who aren’t good for you?”

Oh. So that was what this was about. It was less about Joel, and more about your parents not trusting you to take care of yourself.

One of your biggest fears after exiting your relationship with Nathan laid in the ways that people would treat you after finding out you had stayed in a relationship that was abusive. Sure, there was the sympathy that always came with finding out about someone’s past trauma, but then there was the judgment that came with finding out you stayed. You knew people would question your ability to take care of yourself and your daughter, and you knew people would question your ability to find a significant other who didn’t end up toxic. It shouldn’t have surprised you that your mother was grilling you like this—after all, it was her that you turned to on nights where you had nowhere else to go, bringing your daughter to her home on days where things with Nathan got particularly tough.

“No! No, no, no,” you protested, emotions that had spent far too long simmering on the back burner beginning to come forward. “Joel is the best thing to happen for me in a long time.”

“Honey,” your mom sighed and looked at you with what could only be described as pity. Frankly, it made you want to crawl out of your skin. “You sound just like a teenager again, defending Nathan.”

You nearly had a visceral reaction at the comparison of Joel to Nathan. You just wished your mother could understand that even though she may have heard some of the things you’d been through, that you had lived through those things, and you would never make that kind of mistake again.

“Mom, Joel is nothing like Nathan,” you expressed passionately. “He’s an amazing partner and he may have only been in Chloe’s life for a short bit of time, but he’s a far better father to her than Nathan’s ever been.”

“I want to believe you, and I am going to give him a chance. But just know that things even seem like they might go South, your father and I will be fighting tooth and nail to keep Chloe safe. You’re an adult; you can make your own decisions, but we won’t let her go through something like that again.”

You understood the implication of her statement and frowned. You knew that your parents just wanted the best for you and your daughter, but this whole thing just made you feel like a child. Why were you being punished for being a victim? Did your parents really trust you so little? Little enough to think that you would intentionally put your daughter in harm’s way?

“Okay,” you uttered, defeat evident in your tone. “But there’s nothing to worry about with Joel.”

“I certainly hope so,” your mother said with a sense of finality.

You found yourself sitting by the lake as Joel played with the kids, deep in thought as you pondered the situation. Maybe inviting Joel was a bad idea. Your parents clearly weren’t happy and your partner certainly wasn’t comfortable. At the very least, the girls seemed to be excited to spend some time on a little vacation with the man.

Chloe ran over to you, pulling your attention away from the cyclical motion of the water as it approached and receded over and over again.

“Come look at our sandcastles! They’re really detailed,” she said excitedly, grabbing your hand and attempting to pull you up. Her excitement was contagious, causing you to completely disregard all the negative feelings you’d been stewing in after your conversation with your mother in favor of adopting some of your daughter’s enthusiasm.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” you laughed, following your daughter out to the shore as she practically ran all the way over to her creation.

You squat down next to Sarah and set your hand on your brow so you could protect your eyes from the sun as you looked upon the three sandcastles in front of you.

“Well, what do you think?” Sarah asked, her tone just as excited as Chloe’s.

“I am very impressed. Great work, guys,” you expressed, beaming at the people around you.

“But which one is your favorite?” your daughter asked, shooting you a cheeky look that you were becoming all too familiar with.

“They’re all my favorite,” you replied, evaluating the castles.

“Boo,” Sarah jeered, clearly hoping for a better answer. “Which one is your actual favorite?”

“Hmm,” you fake-pondered aloud, bringing your free hand to your chin to make you seem like you were far deeper in thought than you actually were.

“We don’t have all day, mom,” Chloe commented, setting a hand on her hip.

“Hey! Good deliberation takes time,” you replied. Given that everyone was sitting by their own castle, it wasn’t very hard to pick out which one belonged to your boyfriend. Seeing as you were in the mood to mess around, you proudly declared Joel’s castle as your favorite, despite his castle not looking so hot.

“That one,” you said, trying to hide entertainment on your face as you pointed to the least technically impressive castle. Joel’s expression matched yours as he clearly bit back an entertained smirk.

“Whaaat? C’mon, I have a moat!” Chloe gasped, throwing a hand over her heart to show just how offended she was.

“And I have a mermaid! What does his have that ours doesn’t?” Sarah protested as she gestured over at her sand mermaid.

“She’s just biased because they’re in love or whatever,” Chloe scoffed. “Don’t worry, Sare. You’re a winner in my eyes.”

“Aw, stop, I love yours too!” Sarah grinned, going in to hug her friend as the two began to compliment aspects of each other’s sandcastles.

You couldn’t wipe the smile off of your face if you tried. Somehow, being around your little found family always made you feel a bit better. Even if your parents didn’t approve and never came around to Joel, that didn’t change the fact that you genuinely were happy with the man, and even happier with the blended family you’d created.

“Girls!” your mom yelled from inside, drawing all of your attention away from the beach and towards her booming voice. “Lunch is ready!”

“I’ll race you back inside?” Sarah offered. Chloe was off on her feet before she could even respond.

You and Joel took your time getting back to the house, walking slowly as you filled him in on your mother’s one-on-one confrontation with you. Despite the joy in the moment just prior, the reality check of having to deal with your parents had brought both of your moods back down rather quickly.

“I don’t think your parents like me very much,” Joel admitted to you, a hint of shame in his voice.

“I-“ you wanted to lie to him, to at least bring a little comfort to your boyfriend who had been worried sick about your parents not liking him. “It’s not your fault, it’s Nathan’s. They think I… they basically think I have a type. It doesn’t help that they think I used to hate you.”

“Fuck,” Joel exclaimed quietly, looking away from you. “I’m sorry, I just… I want them to like me. I’m already so nervous, I feel like I’m gonna shit a fucking brick. How can I make them like me?”

“Just be yourself, okay? And relax. I’m gonna love you regardless of whether or not my parents like you. Nothing's gonna change because of what my parents think of you. At the end of the day, I’m the one crawling in bed with you, not them. Who cares what they think?”

“I care. Deep down, you care too.”

“Joel, please,” you stopped and grabbed his hands, gently tugging him over to you. “I genuinely do not care. I love you. I love our family. Nothing is going to change that, okay? Nothing.”

Joel looked at you anxiously, his eyes a bit more defeated than usual. The two of you made wordless eye contact, communicating something heartfelt without using one word.

“We’re gonna be okay, regardless of how this weekend turns out. Okay? Just be yourself and my parents will eventually come around. If they don’t, it’s their loss.”

The round table at the patio of the lake house had a shape that in any other setting you wouldn’t even really notice, but only seemed to create more tension in this particular context.

You sat next to Sarah and across from Chloe, who sat next to your mother. It just so happened that Joel and your father were sitting across from each other at the table, and you could already feel the stare down just waiting to happen.

“So Chlo, what are you wishing for for your birthday?” your mom gently asked as your daughter took a bite of her food.

“Hmm,” she hummed as she thought. “I don’t really know. And if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you! Remember, wishes don’t come true if you tell people. But I am very happy to be here with everyone. So maybe my unofficial wish is to have more family time.”

“That is a great wish, Bug,” your dad agreed. Sarah smiled mischievously at the nickname and Chloe threw her a playful glare.

“So how is school going, ladies?” your mom asked them, looking between Sarah and Chloe.

You glanced over at Joel, mostly to make sure that he was doing okay under the pointed gaze of your father. Sweat beaded at his forehead and you weren’t quite sure if it was from the dry heat or from the daggers your dad was currently shooting at him.

Thankfully, your kids seemed to be blissfully unaware of the one-sided war going on at the table. You attempted to reach under the table and grab Joel’s hand, but the odd shape of the table didn’t allow for that. He was on his own for the duration of lunch.

The conversation mostly flowed between your mom, Chloe, and Sarah, with your father occasionally butting in to comment on something. All you could do was sit and watch while your dad grilled your boyfriend with only his eyes, with not one thing you could do about it.

Finally, it seemed like everyone had finished their meals, and that Joel could finally get up and be put out of his misery. But fate didn’t seem to be on his side, as he somehow wasn’t off the hook yet.

“Why don’t you all go try out one of the trails? Joel and I are gonna stay behind and do some dishes,” your dad proposed, making pointed eye contact with your boyfriend.

The girls happily agreed with the plan, excited and oblivious of the fear that had just coursed through yours and Joel’s veins with the idea of him being alone with your father.

“Hold on, ladies. You’re still wearing flip flops. How about you go change into better shoes, then we’ll go explore a trail. Sounds good?” you asked, hoping to buy yourself a moment of time to give Joel a pep talk.

Chloe nodded affirmatively and the two of them headed inside to change. At least you could have one private moment with Joel before he had to face off your father.

You stood up and pushed in your chair before grabbing Joel’s hand and squeezing his slightly shaking palm as hard as you could.

“You’ll be okay. Just relax,” you said under your breath so that your parents wouldn’t notice. “Remember, you can’t say the wrong thing. Even if they despise you, I’ll still love you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Joel agreed, although he didn’t seem completely convinced.

“You got this,” you reiterated, letting go of Joel’s hand as the girls came back outside, talking about some show they’d been watching.

When you glanced away, your father had begun picking up plates, looking at Joel like he expected him to be doing the same. That was your cue to leave.

You mouthed good luck at Joel before your mother ushered you all away. You had no idea how your dad was going to act around your boyfriend, but you certainly hoped for his sake that he wouldn’t be too terrible.

After you and the girls left, Joel and your father picked up the dishes outside in silence, with Joel focusing on finding his composure and maintaining it, and your father being completely unreadable.

Joel politely opened the door for the man, even with his hands filled with plates, cups, and silverware. Your father simply gave Joel a curt nod rather than a verbal thank you.

He followed your father into the kitchen, trailing a few steps behind him before setting down the content of his full arms into the sink. Joel did his best not to overthink this interaction, but it was going to be his first one-on-one with one of your parents, and your father had already spent the past hour giving him a nasty glare.

The following silence was awkward and thick. Almost like those tension filled silences you and Joel had the first few times you were together with stakes that somehow felt even higher.

Joel stood at the sink, silently scrubbing away at a dish, hoping that an awkward silence would be the most of his woes that day, rather than any sort of verbal confrontation.

“You do the dishes often?” your dad asked out of the blue, breaking the awkward silence with an even more awkward question.

“Uh,” he tried not to show how thrown off he was by the question. Maybe if Joel could treat the interaction as less of an interrogation and more of a way for your dad to get to know him a little better, things would be slightly less awkward. “I do. I mean, I’ve been a single dad for almost 13 years. Someone had to wash the dishes, and it wasn’t gonna be Sarah.” Joel chuckled awkwardly, but your father didn’t even crack a smile.

“So if you had a wife, she’d be doing the dishes?”

Joel was once again thrown off, this time by the accusatory tone your father had asked the question with. Joel tried to give the man a bit of grace—your dad was probably trying to get a good read on him, so he would try not to let it get under his skin too much.

“What? No! I-I never said that. We’d probably split our house chores. I mean, that’s what your daughter and I do.”

There. That was a good enough answer. Tell the truth while explaining why him and his daughter were a good pair.

“Oh?” your father began with the raise of a brow, setting down the dish he was working on. “Well, why don’t you have a wife?”

Joel was completely taken aback by the blunt question, but assumed it was fair enough game to ask about. He would probably wonder the same if he were in your father’s shoes.

“Uh, my last long-term partner left shortly after Sarah was born,” he answered quietly, afraid of the judgment that your father may pass upon him, and slightly ashamed to admit what happened in the past.

“Oh,” if Joel wasn’t mistaken, it almost seemed like your father’s tone shifted, as if he wasn’t expecting that answer. “That sounds hard. Do you know why?”

It almost felt like that answer had humanized Joel the slightest bit in your fathers eyes.

“It’s a long story,” Joel dismissed, not particularly wanting to get into all the details at that very moment. “Leaving was better for her mental health.”

“Okay,” your father simply accepted, although Joel had a feeling that answer didn’t quite suffice.

“But things are better now, with your daughter around,” Joel added. “Sarah’s probably happier now than I’ve seen her in a long time. I can’t really speak for Chloe, but based on what I’ve been told, she’s been doing better too. It’s been really nice to finally have another parent around to be able to split duties with. I just wish I’d found your daughter earlier,” Joel gushed, hoping that your father would find his answer pleasing enough.

Your father was unresponsive to Joel’s statement, finishing up the last of the dishes before finally speaking again.

“You talk a lot,” your father said simply, turning off the water flow of the sink and turning to face Joel head on. “I’m not gonna beat around the bush here. I’m glad to hear that things are working well for you two right now. I don’t know how much you know about Nathan. I don’t particularly care how much you know either. What I do care about you knowing is that I will never see my daughter suffer like that again. Understand?”

Joel was taken aback by the abrupt change in tone, and just when he thought tensions between them were easing up. “Y-Yes, yeah I-“

“So if you ever put your hands on my daughter, or raise your voice even an octave higher than it needs to be at her, there will be hell to pay. Get it?”

“I do, uh, I get it,” Joel wasn’t even completely sure how he was supposed to be reacting to this sudden rant.

“I want you to say it. You’re not going to mistreat my daughter, and you’re not ever going to lay a finger on her. And god help you if you do anything to Chloe.”

“I swear. I swear I’ll never hurt your daughter or your granddaughter ever,” Joel’s words were rushed, and he swore he could hear his rushed heartbeat in his own ears. The sudden confrontation being jarring was an understatement, but he supposed that’s how your father intended it to be.

“Good. I’m going to hold you to that,” was all that your father said as turned to dry his hands off on a towel. “Thanks for helping with dishes.”

“No problem, sir,” Joel choked out, like his heart wasn’t still in his throat. He took that as an indication that he was dismissed, and he set down the things in his hand before walking back outside and heading straight to the lake—far away from your father.

As you were heading back from your hike, you were surprised to run into Joel. He looked slightly disheveled, but particularly relieved to see you. The girls seemed just as pleased to see him, talking his ear off all the way back to the lake house. You occasionally glanced over at your mother, trying to get some sort of read on her opinion of Joel, but it didn’t seem to be working.

“So what happened?” you asked as you stepped out of the bathroom, exchanging your towel for the soft pajamas you’d brought with you. “You seemed pretty shaken up after lunch.”

“Your dad just really grilled me,” Joel explained, turning off the lamp on his side of the bed as you flopped onto the mattress next to him.

“My dad can be an ass sometimes. I apologize,” you muttered, curling up beside Joel. “And I apologize for bringing you here. I didn’t know they were gonna be like this.”

“It’s not your fault,” Joel assured, hoping to bring you a little consolation.

“It is, though. I’m the one who suggested that you come. I wasn’t thinking,” you whispered as you set an arm and your head on top of Joel’s torso.

“They were gonna have to meet me eventually. Better now than at the wedding, right?” Joel quipped.

“Right,” you agreed, looking up from where you’d set your head on your partner’s chest. “Hold on, are you proposing to me right now?”

“No, not yet,” Joel began to backtrack.

“Good. You’ll need my parents’ blessing first,” you teased. “Too soon?”

“Maybe a little,” Joel stifled his laugh.

“Ugh, I’m exhausted,” you groaned. “I can’t even imagine how you feel.”

“Also exhausted, mixed with a little bit of defeated,” Joel sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “You meant it when you said you’ll love me even if your family doesn’t, right?”

“Of course!” you exclaimed, sitting up a little so you could make better eye contact with your boyfriend. “Of course I will love you even if they don’t,” you promised.

Joel still didn’t exactly look like he was buying it.

“Joel,” you began, tone stern and serious. “Every day, you make my life so much better. You bring me so many laughs and smiles, you’re always there when I need to rant, and you’re the most reliable person ever when it comes to parenting shit. You’re probably the best thing that’s happened to me since Chloe was born. So yes, it would be great if my parents loved you as much as I do. But until they figure that out, I could care less about their opinions.”

That answer finally seemed to resolve some of the insecurity Joel was feeling around wanting to impress your parents, as he didn’t bring it back up for the rest of the night.

It was far too early to be awake, but Joel was having a hard time sleeping. Sure, you peacefully snoozed next to him, and of course Joel was comforted by your sleeping presence, but despite the pep talk you gave him, the knowledge that your parents disliked him and that all of his fears had come to light weren’t allowing him to rest very well.

With not much else to do and an arm that was quickly falling asleep (thanks to your cuddling), Joel snuck out of bed and down the stairs. Maybe he could catch the sunrise on the lakefront.

As he made his way to the patio, he heard a few sounds coming from the kitchen, and went to investigate. He was surprised to find your mother already walking around the kitchen, seemingly making a coffee for herself.

“Morning,” Joel greeted, voice raspy as he announced his presence.

Your mom turned around and offered him a pressed smile. She clearly was not expecting visitors this early in the morning.

“Morning,” she repeated. “Would you like some coffee?”

“That would be great,” Joel smiled, sitting down at the kitchen table while your mother worked on putting together another mug.

“You an early riser?” your mom asked Joel, bringing a mug and some creamer over to him.

“Thank you. And no, not really. Your daughter and I usually trade off on who’s gonna wake up early and get the kids ready for school while the other gets to sleep in. I just couldn’t sleep all that well today,” Joel shrugged as he prepared his coffee just the way he liked it.

“That’s sweet,” she hummed, taking a sip from her drink.

Joel sipped his coffee as well, and found himself surprised at the quality of the drink. “This is really good,” he acknowledged. “Is this a pour-over?”

“It is! How did you know?” your mother sounded quite excited that you were able to identify any way of brewing coffee, let alone identifying how his drink was made from just one sip.

“I can taste the difference,” Joel explained.

“See! That’s what I’ve been telling my husband.”

“I also may or may not have seen your dripper. But from one coffee connoisseur to another, this is amazing coffee. I’ve always said a pour-over gets you the best flavor.”

“I completely agree! These new, fancy drip machines just don’t do coffee justice. Keurigs, Nespressos, they’re all hunks of junk to me.”

“Well someone gifted me a Nespresso for Valentine’s Day after seeing my dripper and calling it prehistoric. I use it, of course, but it doesn’t compare.”

“Since it was a gift, I can forgive that,” your mother laughed, taking a hearty sip. “Do you ever grind your own beans?”

“When I can,” Joel replied, thinking about the fresh bag of beans he had sitting on the counter back home.

“Ah! Good boy,” your mother exclaimed, clearly pleased with Joel’s answers. “You do any other special things in the kitchen?”

“Eh, not particularly. I do enjoy being in the kitchen, though. I mean, being a single parent, I didn’t really have many options but to learn how to cook since I didn’t have anyone else to carry me in that area. I will say, we’ve been baking more often. Turns out, I can make a pretty mean focaccia.”

“Baking? With my daughter? You sure you’re talking about the one upstairs? I swear I’ve been trying to get her to bake for years and she just… hates it! What’s your secret?”

“I don’t know. The honeymoon phase, maybe?”

Your mom laughed aloud at Joel’s joke. He had to hold himself back from beaming with pride. He could barely speak to this woman the day before, and now he was making her laugh?

“Whatever it is, bring some over next time. I need to be the judge of this ‘mean focaccia’.”

Next time? Thank god for not being able to sleep.

“Of course!” Joel said with what may have been a little too much enthusiasm. He sipped some coffee from his mug while he thought about something else to say to fill up the silence, but your mother began to speak once again.

“So Joel, I want to know more about you. Other than the fact that you raised an adorable kid, like coffee a lot, and used to argue with my daughter during the soccer season.”

“She told you about that?” Joel asked, unsure of how to react. He wanted to laugh at the fact that you’d shared that with your parents, either before your relationship began or recently as some sort of fun fact, but he was still walking on eggshells around your parents.

“Yeah,” your mom acknowledged. It almost seemed as if she wanted to be casual about it, but also was curious for a bit more context.

“It was a long time ago,” Joel explained as if he could make it better. “It was never anything serious.”

“Well, how did you go from arguing every week to… this?”

“After the girls became friends, they kept setting us up to do things together. After that, things progressed pretty naturally. I think we just clicked. Realized we’re a good team and like each other’s company. I mean, I really love her and Chloe. I’m really happy with our little family.”

“Family?” your mom questioned with raised brows and a tilt of her head.

Joel wondered if he’d said the wrong thing or overstepped some sort of boundary. “I mean, I guess. I would say we… function as a family?”

“So there’s no secret engagement or secret wedding I need to know about,” your mother probed.

“No! Not at all,” Joel confirmed, hoping to quell some of the concern that had seemed to find itself on her face.

“And you didn’t come here to get a blessing for an engagement?” she implored.

“No! This is only my first time meeting you guys. I mean, I’m more worried about making a good impression than getting your approval on our potential marriage. Besides, I’m not really sure she’s interested in marriage after…”

Your mother nodded as Joel trailed off, not needing him to finish his sentence to understand where he was going.

“How much has she told you about Nathan?” she queried, seeming to be even more curious about this question than she was about some of the previous questions.

“Bits and pieces. Some things I’ve inferred,” Joel answered.

“Yeah. It was pretty bad for her and Chlo,” your mother simply stated. “Maybe we’ll talk about it some other time. It might help you understand why my husband and I have been the way that we’ve been towards you.”

“No, I get it. If anyone I loved had to go through those things—let alone my daughter, I would react the same way. I’d probably be worse,” Joel stiffly chuckled into his drink. For a moment, Joel thought about punching Nathan. The perfect cathartic moment for hurting and harassing the woman he loves. He’d do it again. And he’d do it to any person who even attempted to hurt you, Sarah, or Chloe.

“I just want to wrap her up in bubble wrap,” your mother admitted. “I never want her to be hurt again, and I know it isn’t possible, but I just want to be so sure that she’ll never be hurt in that way again. I apologize for being hostile, but you understand, right?”

“Of course I do,” Joel said earnestly. “And if it’s any consolation, I would never, ever do anything to intentionally hurt her. I know what it’s like to have a wall built around your heart and to swear that you’ll never let anyone in again. Your daughter let me in, and I’d never want her to regret that.”

Your mom seemed to think for a moment, getting up and setting her mug in the sink before sitting back down across from Joel.

“Either you’re really manipulative, or you really love her. I’m gonna hope for all of our sakes it’s the latter.”

“I can guarantee that it is.”

“I’m gonna believe you. But only because I want to try that focaccia.” Though your mom stated that with the cadence of a joke, Joel couldn’t help but feel that there was some hint of truth behind her words. Sure, this conversation hadn’t fixed everything, but it seemed like she trusted him just a bit more.

You crept down the stairs, clearly trying to be quiet, but failing at doing so. You approached the kitchen and yawned aloud, attempting to alert Joel and your mother of your presence.

“Good morning,” you greeted the pair. “You better not be interrogating my boyfriend,” you told your mom as you sat down next to the man of the hour.

“Nothing of the sort. We were just talking about baking. Why didn’t you tell me you bake now? And why haven’t you baked with me?”

“I guess I just didn’t have the right pastry chef,” you chimed, stealing Joel’s mug and taking a sip of his coffee. “Did Joel tell you that we’ve been working our way up to sourdough? I just ordered some starter the other day.”

“Oh wow. You’re like a completely different person. I don’t even know you anymore.”

“Sorry,” you apologized insincerely.

“Does this mean you’ll start baking with me when you come home?”

“Sorry mom. I’m loyal to my pastry chef. Has he told you about his focaccia? It’s really good. We’ll bring it next time you invite us over.”

You pulled your chair a little closer to Joel’s and held his hand under the table, a simple reassurance that you were there, and you weren’t going to let your parents treat him any way he didn’t deserve to be treated.

“You are breaking my heart,” your mom said, clutching her chest jokingly. “Although you mended it when you mentioned bringing bread.”

Luckily, it seemed like this day had started off far better for everyone—but particularly your boyfriend and mother. The two of them were getting along swimmingly, working together to whip up breakfast, carrying the conversation throughout the meal, and even going on to converse while the girls played at the beach.

If nothing else, you were glad that Joel was growing on your mother. You still couldn’t really get a read on your father’s opinion of your boyfriend, but hopefully with your mom now on his side, she would be able to talk some sense into your father.

It just so happened that your parents had planned to set up a few things around the house in preparation for the birthday festivities for the following day, and your mother had somehow managed to talk Joel into helping them out with their preparation. Since your boyfriend would be setting up, you were tasked with distracting the girls with a day out on the town, leaving your boyfriend alone in the lake house with your parents.

As things seemed to be going well between your mother and Joel at the very least, you at least weren’t too worried about your parents shredding your partner to bits while you pampered the girls and took them shopping.

Despite this fact, you still checked in with your partner multiple times throughout the day, getting updates about things he was doing with your parents, or any particularly interesting conversations they’d had during the day. For the most part, things seemed to be going well, but as the evening began to come in, you began to hear less and less from Joel, making you the slightest bit worried.

Once you got back to the lake house, you were pleasantly surprised to hear the sound of laughter coming from the back patio, paired with the familiar scent of a bonfire. The girls seemed more than pleased to go straight to the backyard, walking off far ahead of you.

By the time you reached the patio, Sarah and Chloe had already found spots to sit around the fire, and Joel was tossing some more firewood into the pit while seemingly laughing at a conversation going on between himself and your father. Although you couldn’t have seen the evening going this way when you initially came the previous morning, you couldn’t have been happier that everyone seemed to be getting along.

You found your own seat by the fire and Joel came back to sit next to you as your mother began to ask the girls a few questions about their day.

After getting as comfortable as you could on what was essentially a rock turned into a bench and leaning onto your partner, you and Joel quietly roasted marshmallows as your daughters excitedly chatted away, just happy to be able to sit and relax after a busy day. You were curious to hear all that occurred between Joel and your parents while you were away that had made them open up to each other more, but you could certainly wait.

“So girls, what was the highlight of your day?” your mom asked, turning to face your daughters.

“We had really nice manicures. The woman who did my nails was so much better than mom is. No offense, mom.”

“None taken,” you laughed at your daughter’s blunt statement.

“If it makes you feel better, you can’t be any worse than my dad,” Sarah offered, only contributing to your laughter.

“You’re probably right,” you agreed, playfully nudging Joel.

“I thought we understood that anything regarding my artistic ability is a soft spot?” he attempted to defend himself, but it was already too late.

“Sorry, Joel,” your daughter giggled, encouraging Sarah to giggle along with her.

“I also really liked our manicures, but we went to this really cute café with really good pastries and drinks!” Sarah exclaimed, gratefully accepting the slightly burnt—and just the way she likes it—s’more that you passed her.

“We only got decaf drinks, don’t worry,” you explained as you watched Joel hand Chloe a s’more of her own. “But everything was really good.”

“You would know, since you tried everything,” Chloe teased.

“Thirteen-year-old Chloe is even more sassy than before,” you teased right back. “It’s called the mom tax. Since I was your chauffeur all day, I got to steal a little nibble of your pastries. I think that’s fair.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Sarah added in, grinning mischievously at you.

“I would probably do the same,” Joel interjected, coming to your defense.

“See? This is why I keep you around,” you squeezed his arm and grinned up at your partner.

“Ugh, you guys are always being so gross,” Chloe laughed. “Do you see what we have to put up with?” Chloe directed at her grandparents.

“You know, one day you’ll find someone that you want to be gross with too,” your mother explained.

“No way,” your daughter giggled, standing up and stretching. “Do you wanna go get ready for bed, Sare?”

“Sure!” she said cheerily, popping up and heading inside with her friend.

“Seems like they had a good day,” your father commented once the pair were gone.

“I think so. I hope so. Chlo was pretty bummed when she found out her dad was going to be out of town during her birthday, but I’m pretty sure this has made up for it. Thank you for putting this all together,” you acknowledged.

“Of course! Anything for our girls,” your mom said, smiling softly at you as she reached out to put a hand on your knee.

“Well what did you guys get up to while we were gone?” you asked, hoping to get a little insight into what you missed while you were gone.

“Joel and I did some baking, then he helped your father put together some decorations. Speaking of which, you’re gonna have to help me put up some final touches before the big day.”

“Of course,” you agreed, happy to do anything that would make your daughter’s special day more special.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I can finish up and help you with whatever needs to be done,” Joel offered.

“You’ve already worked so much today, Joel. We couldn’t possibly ask you to do anything else,” your mother practically gushed. Joel seemed like he was going to protest, opening his mouth before your mother cut him off. “I insist.”

You couldn’t believe that just the previous morning your mother was lecturing you over this man.

“Well, I’m not gonna argue with that. But if you need any help at all, I am more than willing to be there,” Joel reiterated.

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” your mom stretched her arms behind her head and yawned. “I’m getting a little tired. Would you like to go set up now?”

You were getting the feeling that the question was less of a question and more of a direction, but you agreed regardless, pressing a kiss to Joel’s cheek before you went back inside with your mom to help set up the last few things for Chloe’s birthday.

Setting things up was about as eventful as you thought it might be, other than the absolute raving your mom was doing over your partner, and the occasional sound of muffled laughter coming from the patio.

“I’m starting to think you like my boyfriend more than you like me,” you commented offhandedly as you tied off a balloon.

“Oh I do,” your mother agreed. “You think I’m bad? You should see your father. Yesterday he was so wary of Joel, but today those two have just been giggling and bonding all day. I should’ve known it was a wrap after your boyfriend made a stupid dad joke,” she glanced over at the glass door leading to the backyard.

“So what changed his mind?” you asked, setting down the balloon. “What changed yours?”

“After talking to him for a while, it was just very obvious how much he loves you and the girls. He also just happens to be a very likable guy. I don’t know how you ever managed to hate him before.”

“I already told you, it was like we were flirt-arguing!” you insisted.

“I know, I’m just teasing. I’ll still be a little cautious, but he seems like a good guy. Now, after he and your dad got over their little awkward thing, they absolutely hit it off. Just started bonding over everything under the sun. Their love of guitar, their love of DIY projects, their love of you…”

You smiled to yourself as you listened to your mom. It was great news that Joel had been able to bond with your parents, despite whatever feelings they’d had towards him previously.

“That’s good to hear. I’m happy you both finally came to your senses. He was worried sick about you guys not liking him.”

“Well, he’s got nothing to worry about now,” your mom flashed you a smile that matched yours as she finished off the balloons. “I think that’s all we needed to do. I’ll wake you up in the morning if I need any extra hands then.”

“Please don’t,” you groaned, pulling yourself out of your chair and glancing back over at the back door, where Joel and your father still seemed to be having a great time. When you looked back over, your mother was approaching you with open arms.

“I’m sorry, honey. I know you’ve already been through so much, and you wouldn’t purposely put yourself through that again,” she began as she embraced you. The apology was like music to your ears. You just hoped that Joel had also received some form of apology from your parents, as he was the one receiving the majority of the pushback. “I’m proud of you. I’m proud of you for leaving Nathan, and I’m proud of you for focusing on yourself, and I’m proud of you for finding someone good for you when you were finally ready.”

“I love you. I’m pretty fond of your boyfriend, too. Goodnight,” your mother bid you farewell, and you couldn’t even think of a proper response before she was already going up the stairs. You had much to process tonight.

Long after you’d fallen asleep, you woke up to the feeling of the mattress shifting its weight. When you turned over onto your side to see what the disturbance was, you just barely made out your partner in the dark.

“It’s just me,” Joel whispered as he settled in bed next to you. Like you were a magnet, you found yourself clinging onto him almost automatically.

“Hi,” you mumbled, voice thick with sleep.

“Hi,” he repeated, settling his arm on your hip.

“How was today?” you asked, nudging Joel over enough for him to be on his side so that you could spoon him.

“Really good, I think. I think your parents kinda like me now,” he yawned, relaxing into your touch as you held him.

“Kinda?” you muttered sleepily. “What did I tell you? They’d come around eventually.”

“You were right. I should’ve listened earlier,” he confessed as he fell into a more and more relaxed state.

“Maybe. I could care less about their opinion of you. That’s what I wish you listened to earlier,” you explained. “But I am happy that they like you so much.”

You were up bright and early to put the last little finishing touches on Chloe’s birthday decorations. You and your father taped up a few ‘happy birthday’ signs, while your mother and Joel worked on decorating Chloe’s birthday cake. Not much longer after you came downstairs, Sarah found herself downstairs helping to put her own creative spin on the cake as well.

After some discussion of when it would be acceptable to wake up Chloe, you all headed upstairs to her room to wish her a happy birthday.

As her door opened and everyone began to sing slightly off-key rendition of ‘Happy Birthday,’ Chloe slowly began to sit up as she grew more and more awake before she broke into a fit of slightly embarrassed laughter.

It was quite the scene, and probably not the most ideal wake-up call, but your daughter grinned and expressed her gratitude regardless, getting out of bed so she could attempt to pull everyone into a big group hug.

“Ugh, I love you guys so much,” she sighed fondly. “How did I get the best family ever?”

You were starting to wonder the same yourself.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x you #joel miller fluff #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller angst #the last of us hbo #the last of us fanfiction #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #joel miller imagine #soccer parents au

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leclsrc · 10 months

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hi audreeey!!! could i get a drabble where charles and reader are on a basic (not "basic" but u get me) dinner date and they're just all capital F Fond... like maybe even pretending theyre married bc they love the other's company sm... I LOVE U

begin again – cl16

Tonight is different. Tonight is special. title from this

auds here... my quasi-apology for being mia-ish. also i am writing a long form fic it's just taking agesss as i'm traveling rn (its nearly done) but know that I LOVE U ALL... like crazy. this is p long for a drabble but i missed writing them a lot! love u guys n i hope i did this adorable prompt justice

He says something in French, pointing at something on the menu. Then he flips the page and points at a bold red image of a bottle, mouthing its name in perfect fluency. Two glasses, he adds. One for the entree, another for dessert.

“Red wine?” You ask, smiling. Charles doesn’t usually order wine.

“Well,” he says, beaming at you and then the waiter, “tonight is special for us.”

You have to wrestle with the grin that fights its way onto your lips, but you admit valiant defeat. “Very special indeed.”

The waiter departs and you recline, mind still racing. It’s only halted by a polite voice from your left—the girl at the table beside yours, asking with meek timidity: wedding tomorrow? She has this giddy smile on her face, like it’s her wedding or her dinner; her husband-or-boyfriend across her just smiles sheepishly. Sorry. I’m curious.

“Oh,” you say quietly, humming. “I got promoted.”

“And…” Charles says, lookin at you like you share a lovely little inside joke.

Your lips grow. “And?”

“This lovely girl doesn’t remember, but I proposed to her this time last year.” He gestures to your left hand. A ring, blending in with the others you usually wear, sparkles in the low light of the restaurant.

Proposed. Your eyes stay on him even as he looks away, devoting his attention to the conversation at hand. Then you nod, a few times, soft bobs of your head. “We’re having a June wedding,” you say fondly to the girl at the table adjacent. You love the way she lights up at the mention of it, at the added detail—she asks for more in accented English.

“How did you propose?” She turns to the guy in front of her, who’s smiling dopily. “We’ve been together a year, so he could use some ideas for the future, if you know what I mean.” They both share a laugh.

Charles hums, recalling the plan he’s thought of a million times over. He conjures the images of it, the memories of mapping everything out, perfecting every last minute detail. “I did it at our house. We live in Monaco, in this, ah—this nice, wide place on a hill.” You remember seeing the house for the first time, from Charles’ car. “I did not want a big fuss around it. I knew I wanted it to be just us.”

“Just us,” you murmur along, nodding. You’ve always known it’s what he wanted for both of you. Just you two against the world.

“So I bought her flowers, lit some candles, and we sat on the couch.” He pauses, like the next few moments are so sacred and so lovely that they deserve to be heard by nobody but you two. But if Charles is anything, he’s loud—loud when he talks, yells; loud when he loves. “And I played our favorite song, Harvest Moon,and I sat next to her and just talked, and I said it. I know it doesn’t sound romantic—”

“—but I cried,” you cut in, looking right at him. Cut off, his eyes flit to you, softening when they see your smiling expression. “I cried like a baby. He was… he meant every word he said. And I was lucky, I guess, that he knows me well enough to, you know—know exactly what I want.” The conversation ebbs into quiet a little bit after that, but you catch bits of how adorable and a June wedding from their own talk.

You eat in relative peace afterward—he talks about a funny story involving Carlos and stolen underwear from the gym locker room. You laugh, bubbling up your champagne, and Charles zips through two glasses of his own drink. Tonight is special, and warm, and you’re in France, and wine seems to be synonymous with the country, and everything, if just for now, makes perfect sense.

In between finishing dessert and the bill’s arrival, when the couple beside you have said their goodbyes and congratulations, and the restaurant has begun to quell its general noise, he takes your idle hand on the table. You look up from where you’d been staring at the puddle of tiramisu filling on your plate.

He’s staring. Charles is always aware of how often and how long he stares, extended gazes of your beautiful features. The awareness does not, however, cause the frequency to wane in the slightest. He still finds himself constantly enthralled by you. And even when he’s away, in a car going a million miles a minute, he finds you in his daydreams. That smile.

Nothing, he says with a quaint smile. I love you.

The bill comes and he, of course, covers it—before you even get the chance to slide your card onto the table. You fuss over it. He stares at you like you’re worth everything and more and goes, with a little laugh, I just need a kiss.

His car is parked outside, valet this time, but the cobblestone is so inviting and quiet that he pays an extra few euros to let you both walk around first. You’re not the only couple along the Seine—in fact, you’re one of many, but your shared, hushed laughs make you both feel like you’re by yourselves. Charles knows all the detours, can pinpoint buildings from different vantage points, takes you on a voyage of Paris all his own. You will look back on this one day and think—your maps of cities, your maps of places, they’ve all been charted by him.

He keeps insisting tonight should be special, like he’s trying to convince you. But you know just as well how special tonight is, how different it is from all the nights previous. You’re just quiet, you suppose, because you’d prefer to bask in this specialty, in Charles. You’re quiet because if you open your mouth for more than ten seconds, you’re going to spill your entire self out to the city. Tomorrow night will not be tonight, just as yesterday night was not tonight. This is just tonight.

You’re guided through the cobblestone streets, arm around your waist. You’re so overcome with love you feel like hugging him, just now, just here in the middle of the street, breathe him in and sigh out little I love yous until somebody has to pass through, grunting about how PDA has gone too far.

“You know how…” he starts, and every time he starts a sentence that way, it’s almost always followed by something fairly nonsensical. You know how turtles can fly? You know how Van Gogh was in an affair with Mona Lisa? You know how the latest episode of The Kardashians had Kim and Kourtney fighting? You smile, laughing already, gesturing for him to proceed. “How we see the stars nearly every night?”

You hum.

“So sometimes, we forget they’re pretty. We think, oh, bah, stars. And then a few weeks, or months, later, we look up on a random evening and we’re shocked again. We go, wow, stars. They are beautiful.” He clutches at his heart to convey the emotion he’s describing.

“Yeah, what about?” You ask amusedly, turning slightly to him.

“That is how I feel when I see you. Every time. That feeling when you see the stars after weeks.”

You breathe one, slippery inhale and then it leaves you shaky, wet, trembling. Your eyes tack themselves onto the stars. A chill rolls through you at the knowledge that you remind him of something so confusing, so beautiful, so strange. “I—God. I love you, you know.”

“Did you like my story?” He asks. He maintains his smile, his attitude, his goofiness. His little attempt to make you feel better. Unfortunately, it works every time without fail. You sniffle and roll your eyes, thankful that you haven’t devolved into a sobbing mess.

Then for the first time tonight, he breaks the precarious, near-perfect illusion: “You know, that is how I would really propose to you if I did it. I did give you that ring, remember?”

“I know,” you whisper, trying to fight tears. “I remember.”

“Don’t cry,” he quells softly. You keep freezing to dab at the corners of your eyes. He responds by pulling you into a side street so you don’t block anyone’s walk, allowing you to lean against the lamppost so he towers above you, eyes etched dark, saturated with genuine concern. “Come on, darling.”

“Charles,” you say thinly, and you’ve gone from coherent sentences to weak pleads.

“Don’t cry.” It’s all he can say, gentle and loving and Charles. “It’s a special night.” It is a special night. It’s the night before your first day at your job across the globe.

It’s your last night in Europe, your last night before you leave, your last night before Charles becomes nothing but an apparition of your past. You’re beginning to realize how foolish this plan was, this wrecked and stupid plan, but God if you didn’t love how real it all felt. It felt like bliss, being a great big pretender.

It was—it should be a month ago now, give or take. You’d gotten the offer, accepted it, told Charles about it, and then you both had to sit with the idea of living across the world from each other. You’d wrestled with plans vis-a-vis your relationship, with timezones and the demand that came with the first year on the job. In the end it was something amicable.

In the end, it ended—but not without one last night together, stretching your dreams and future fantasies to their limit.

Charles will always love you like it’s his last chance to do so. He figures that means letting you fly, letting you pursue things that, if you didn’t, would keep you tethered to the same old things. So even if it rips him apart, and even if all he wants to do is drop everything and dance with you, to the quaint Paris traffic—he remains ever the reassuring one.

He remains, forever, the storyteller, the smiling figure that takes your hand across the table and squeezes once to say he loves you. The loud guy who would’ve, if he could, proposed in your now-sold house, surrounded by candles and music. You wish he could love you longer. You know he always will, in the same way you know the nature of his love will inevitably change when enough time passes.

“Things will change,” you say weakly.

“They will always change.”

“And will you remember me after all of it?”

“I will love you after all of it. I’ve loved you through everything else.” He says, pressing a gentle kiss to your eye. “You know that, right? I’ll just do it from afar this time.”

You swear, if love and hope and being young were ever enough to make things work, you swear—this would’ve worked. But the universe reminds you time and again that they are not.

So, when you kiss Charles for the last time, his eyes are twinkling with Paris moonlight, his lips taste like wine, and you get the special chance to relish in what once was, and what will never be again.

#f1 #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc drabble #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc x reader #f1 x reader #charles leclerc imagines

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multi-fxndom446 · 6 months

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Alejandro Vargas x Reader

Summary: you are taken into custody after working with Valeria and Alejandro practically begs for you to give him a reason why.

Warnings: angst, talk about blackmail, fluff at the end, a lil spicy at the end by not to much. my absolute shit show of Spanish (my resident Spanish speaker took 6 hours to respond and I don’t trust google.) IS THIS MILITARY ACCURATE OR POLITICALLY ACCURATE? NO BUT LEMME LIVE.

Word count: 5.1k

Also the very end was completely unnecessary and you can skip it if you want but I feel like it add another little happy ending cushion😗

Whaaaat another one so soon??? Crazy.

Genuinely this seemed better in my head but hopefully y’all still like it.

Now where did this come from? Idfk don’t ask my I was gonna write for Gaz next 😭

Your wrists hurt.

That was the only thing you tried to focus on as you stared blankly at the wall in front of you as if looking through the multiple men standing in the room with you, interrogating you.

They had your wrists zip tied together behind the chair. You couldn’t help but rub against the restraint from how tight they were, your skin becoming raw.

It made you wonder if they cuffed you tighter than was necessary. No, you knew they did. Maybe it was because it was Alejandro who restrained you and he let his anger for you bleed through slightly.

“You’re really not gonna talk?” Alejandro demanded, his hands splayed on the table separating the two of you. If you looked in his eyes you knew you’d see the anger he harbored for you but that’s not what you were scared of seeing, you were scared of seeing the confusion, the hurt that would also be there. “Why did you do it?”

He’d been asking you that for the last half hour and yet you still haven’t given him a reason for doing what you did. You didn’t give him a reason as to why you betrayed him and Rudy all those years ago. And why you did it again not even a week ago.

You were taken into custody with Valeria, who was in a separate room from you awaiting her own interrogation but for some reason they really wanted answers from you.

“Let's go. She won’t talk.” Ghost had finally said after a tense moment of Alejandro trying to get you to look him in the eyes but everytime he did it was like you were staring straight through him. “Maybe Valeria will talk.”

Maybe she would. Just to torment you further.

“C’mon Ale.” Rudy muttered softly patting him on the shoulder as he walked out of the room with everyone else.

Alejandro stared at you for a moment longer and in a split second of weakness your eyes flitted up to meet his. His breath caught in his throat but he forced himself to look away and follow the others out.

He was the last to enter the shipping container holding Valeria and after they got the information they needed from her some of the men left. Leaving him, Rudy and Price alone with her.

“Why did she do it?” Alejandro asked her but she tilted her head in mock confusion, legs crossed like she didn’t have a care in the world. “Don’t play stupid Valeria. She wouldn’t have done that on her own accord.”

Finally Valeria snapped, a humorless laugh leaving her lips. “And how would you know? You don’t know anything about her.” Alejandro just glared back at her.

“Can someone please explain to me the relationship between all of you?” Price finally piped in and it was then Alejandro realized he never really explained how he knew you.

Alejandro held his glare on the women before him for a moment longer before turning his head to glance at Price. “Y/n was part of Valeria’s squad. One of the closest friends Valeria had.” Valeria sneered in response.

“Maybe that was why she decided to join me. Ever think of that pendejo? Maybe she wanted to.” Alejandro just shook his head, he could feel his anger rising the more he spoke to her, he knew he had to calm down if he was going to get the answers he wanted. “She was practically my right hand man y’know? Did everything I asked without question.”

“There has to be a reason for it. She wouldn’t have just done that.” Rudy finally spoke up. “She was also my friend in the military. I did know her, she wouldn’t have just done something like that for no reason at all. She wouldn’t have betrayed us-“

“Twice?” Valeria finished, laughing when all three pairs of eyes snapped back to her. “You hear quite a few things when stuck in here. Did you ever think maybe it’s just in her to betray you?”

Alejandro scoffed. He clenched his jaw as he shook his head in disbelief, “no.” He stated as he slammed open the door and walked out.

Time was running out for you to confess your reasons to him. TF141 was already gathering supplies to take off shortly to go after the last missile and Hassan. He needed to know why before he put you in a prison so far away he would never even see a glimpse of you again.

You were still staring off blankly rubbing against your restraint when Alejandro came in again. So loudly it did cause you to glance at him but this time he held your gaze as he walked in closer.

“Explain to me.” He demanded his fists clenched tight. “Explain it to me! Why did you do it?” Your heart hurt at the way his voice had a hint of begging.

When once again he saw your lips were sealed tight he flung the only other chair in the room against a wall. “Puta madre!” He yelled but you didn’t move not even when Rudy and Soap rushed in at the commotion.

Soap had a hand on Alejandro’s chest to stop him from advancing which he just shook off. “Alejandro, maybe you should take a minute to calm down.” He said softly but Alejandro just shook his head.

He opened his mouth to respond when your voice stopped him in his tracks. “I won’t speak to you.” You said it with such conviction before nodding to Rudy. “I’ll only talk to Rudy.”

Alejandro looked between you and his best friend with a look you could almost decipher as hurt or betrayal. Maybe both. “What?” He muttered his gaze still flying back and forth before he took a deep breath and leveled you with a harsh glare. You wouldn’t talk to him then whatever happened to you was no longer his fault. “You don’t get to call him Rudy. Not after everything you’ve done. It’s Rodolfo to you.”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, “fine I’ll only speak to Rodolfo. No one else.” Then you went quiet again and shifted your gaze back to the wall. All three men looked at each other before Rudy looked to his friend, almost in question on if it would be okay for him to talk to you.

“Hijo de la puta.” Alejandro shoved soaps hand away as he put an arm out again. “Fuck!” Finally after a few more moments of him cursing under his breath he nodded to Rudy before he quickly made his way out, soap following close behind.

Rudy watched his Colonel go, he knew how much this was hurting him. It was hurting him as well. You and him were pretty close when you served together, you told him everything and he you, so he truly couldn’t believe you would betray them without good reason.

“Alright,” he picked the chair up from the floor and set it down across from you, almost surprised that you met his gaze head on. “Explain.”

“I already know I’m dead Rudy.” He titled his head in confusion, choosing to ignore the way you called him by his nickname. “Either i get killed or i'm going to prison for the rest of my life, I have no reason to confess.”

“Other than to give us peace of mind!” He leaned forward. Rudy was never one who was able to hide his emotions easily, especially around people he cared about. But you were honestly getting tired of the pleading that was in the depths of his and Alejandro’s eyes. “There had to be a reason. The you I knew back then would’ve never left without-“

Suddenly he cut himself off almost like a realization hit him square in the face, chest caving slighty he took a deep breath. “Y/n..”

You could see it on his face, the knowledge he had just come upon. Your shoulders sagged as your cold eyes finally broke to reveal just how tired you were. “They threatened someone I care about Rudy.” Silence engulfed the room while he waited for you to continue. “Someone I love. If I were to ever reveal their plans it’s not my life at risk it’s his.”

“After all this time you still-?” His gaze and posture both softened almost immediately as the answers were slowly being revealed to him.

“Everyday.” You swallowed thickly. “I was never worried about my own life.”

Rudy shifted slightly to bring himself closer to you as if the two of you were gossiping. “Dime.” He all but whispered “Everything.”

You shook your head, “I can’t. The ones threatening him are still alive. I can’t.” You denied, your wrists rubbing tighter against the restraints as you grew more and more anxious.

“Valeria and Graves?” You nodded “y/n. Valeria is going away and graves is dead they won’t get to him.”

You shook your head again a little more forcefully, “I didn’t see Graves with my own eyes I don’t know that he is. And you don’t know Valeria, Rudy. Not the way I do. She has people on the outside. I can't risk it. So kill me, do whatever you want to me just keep him safe.”

“You know I can’t do that.” You could see the way his heart was breaking at even the thought of killing you. “I can protect you, we both can. Just trust me enough to tell me.”

You shut your mouth tight, already making up your mind that you were done with this conversation but Rudy wasn’t going to let you do that. Not after he just started getting answers.

“Fine. I’ll go speak with Valeria, tell her you told me everything.” Your eyes shot open at his words. You pulled tight against your restraints as he stood up.

“No!”

“No?” You shook your head. “Then tell me.”

You searched his eyes to see if he was really going to do what he said but you saw nothing but conviction in them and it made you realize one thing. He had no reason to make promises to you when you broke all of yours.

Sighing, you deflated in your seat. “Valeria, that day on the mountain, already had our squad on her side. I was the last to know because she knew when I found out I would tell you and Ale. She was my best friend. I had no reason to suspect her of anything. Until she held a knife to my throat and told me she would kill him if I didn’t join her. I told her to go ahead, that I would never do it.” The pain of recalling the moments of your betrayal was almost unbearable. “The one person I loved longer than I could remember. His life was in my hands. So the choice was obvious to me. Even if you both hated me in the end at least you both would be alive.”

Rudy took a deep breath as he took in all your words. “And Graves? Why did you side with him?” You gave him a look as if telling him he should already know.

“Come on Rudy.” You scoffed, eyes burning with unshed tears. “You know why. He took me into his custody soon after Valeria and I were arrested. I had information he needed and when I refused to talk he told me what he did to you and everyone else.”

You looked at him again, shaky breaths falling from your lips. “He had him, Rudy. I couldn’t just let Graves hurt him. So yes I told him what I knew in exchange for Alejandro’s safety. I don’t care if that makes me weak, I don’t even care that it means he hates me now. He’s alive. That’s all that matters to me.”

This time when the silence engulfed the room he knew you were well and truly done speaking. Your posture straightened as you sat back against the chair, your gaze back to staring at the wall in front of you.

Rudy let the silence settle for a minute before he rapped his knuckles against the table and let out a deep breath. He pushed his chair in and left without another word, knowing you well enough to know he wasn’t getting anything else out of you.

As soon as he was out of the room, questioning eyes were on him, piercing into his very soul. “Well? Did she say anything?” Alejandro asked frantically, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. But when Rudy stayed silent Alejandro’s shoulders fell. “She really won’t talk? She told you nothing?”

“That’s it Alejandro. We have to load her and Valeria up.” Ghost muttered while the colonel stared at Rudy for another moment, hoping he would say anything. But when he again didn’t he let out a long sigh before nodding his head.

“Sí, I’ll help you.” Alejandro and soap were the ones to go in and get you. Rudy watched from the doorway as the both of you seemed to put a brick wall between you. Neither one acknowledging the other as Soap yanked you up.

You winced slightly when your wrists rubbed against the zip tie again.

Rudy was going to leave it alone. He really was. But then he saw your eyes quickly scan Alejandro as if checking for injuries when he wasn’t looking. Then how Alejandro was still gentle when he grabbed onto your arm to escort you out.

“Colonel, wait.” Your eyes shot over to Rudy who couldn’t seem to keep your gaze. “She did talk. Can we speak privately?”

“Rudy.” You gritted out roughly and Alejandro’s hand tightened its hold on you. “Don’t.”

“Please Ale it’s important.” You swear if looks could kill Rudy would be so far underground. Alejandro looked between you, Rudy and soap before gesturing for soap to let go which he did. Alejandro sat you back in your chair and the both of them followed Rudy out.

“Rodolfo! Don’t you dare!” You screamed after him as the door clicked shut behind them.

You felt like you were going to be sick, after everything you’ve done to keep it a secret it was gonna be exposed just like that because you trusted Rudy. Which in hindsight maybe wasn’t the best idea but after so many years of not seeing a face you trusted your gut just told you to speak to him.

It was so quiet now in your cell. You were so tired, there was no more fight left in you. You followed Valeria around like a puppy on a short leash, doing anything and everything she asked you even when your morals told you it was wrong. One click of her phone had you scrambling to do what she asked.

You learned very early on of all the connections she had. If she wanted something done or someone killed all she had to do was press a few buttons and things would be done.

Alejandro’s life loomed over you even after all these years. Even after all the time you started losing sight of yourself, your anchor was keeping him safe. Maybe that was why it was so easy for you to give in to Graves. Like a good puppy trained, one threat and you were spilling everything.

It made you sick. You were trained harshly in the military to not give information so easily. To either get rescued or die. But..you couldn’t even consider yourself as part of the military anymore not after going with Valeria.

You could still feel the presence of Graves like he was still right behind you interrogating you. Like your hands were still tied to the chair, breathing through any punches they threw at you until you saw Alejandro being roughly escorted by the room you were in. He didn’t notice you but you noticed him and Graves noticed the drastic change in your eyes.

It took him less then a minute to finally understand what made you tick and immediately he switched his way of doing this. Any time you refused to talk, he would send one of his men to Alejandro’s cell just a few doors down. You’d be able to hear very clearly when he would grunt in pain or when he would fall to the floor and it made your heart ache.

You lasted them doing that only a few more times before you finally gave Graves everything he wanted. Then he left you there for dead, stuck in a room in between 141 and shadow company as both sides shot at each other. The stray bullets landing somewhere near you.

You hoped that one would bounce just right and take you out. But unfortunately the world wouldn’t be so kind and in the next moment Alejandro rounded the corner, stopping short when he saw you.

He had clenched his jaw tight then and grabbed a zip tie he found somewhere. He cut you loose but immediately cuffed your hands together and you couldn’t even put up a fight as he grabbed your arm tightly and started dragging you down the halls with them.

That’s how you ended up here you suppose.

You weren’t even sure how much time had passed since Rudy decided he was going to reveal everything to Alejandro but a few minutes later the door opened quietly and the man himself walked in, lips sealed shut much like yours.

He didn’t say anything as he walked over to you and pulled out his knife. You watched him carefully as he came closer and closer and just when you were about to be worried he cut the zip tie and let your hands loose.

You immediately brought them up to your chest so you could rub away the soreness and keep a close eye on him but he wouldn’t meet your gaze instead he stopped at the door, “make sure she doesn’t do anything. We’re taking Valeria into custody. We'll be back later tonight.” He informed one of his men who nodded sharply.

“Rudy told you everything?” You finally asked and Alejandro turned his head slightly to acknowledge that he heard you but never did respond. Just continued out the door which closed softly behind him. “God damn it Rudy.”

—

When he had said he was going to be back later that night you didn’t expect that to mean some god forsaken hour of the night. You waited as long as you could, pacing your small room after finally being let free but after a while there really was nothing to do but sit and wait.

And you waited. And waited.

Until your eyes couldn’t wait anymore. You rested your head on the table for what you told yourself would just be a short nap but then your eyelids continued to grow heavier and you slept until Alejandro returned.

When he did finally return he sent his own men to bed when he noticed the tired look in their eyes. He really needed to give them a day off soon. “You want me to come with you?” Rudy asked when the last of the men were gone.

Alejandro glanced between him and the door before shaking his head softly. “Nah. This is something I have to confront on my own. Get some rest.” Rudy gave him a short nod and parted ways while Alejandro quietly entered the room, noticing your sleeping form immediately.

It made his chest squeeze to see you so vulnerable. It made him wonder how long it’s been since you felt comfortable enough to even do something as simple as falling asleep.

He quietly moved the other chair closer to you and leaned his head against the table just so he could admire you in peace for a little longer. You really never changed in his eyes.

He watched silently while your eyes fluttered open, taking a minute to adjust to what was in front of you before your eyes widened and you sat straight up. Very much wide awake.

Alejandro let out a sigh as he slowly sat up as well, the once soft expression now wiped from his face. You glanced at him every few seconds as the silence consumed you.

He just watched you and you were starting to wonder if he was ever going to talk. After a long silence that seemed almost like a challenge you finally broke first when you could no longer take his piercing eyes burning holes into you.

“Why didn’t you take me into custody with Valeria?” You knew you could usually hold out longer but it was him staring at you. It was easier to ignore when more of the men were in here because that way you could feel all eyes on you. But his alone was starting to hurt.

Alejandro crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Because I’m not taking you into custody. Rudy did tell me everything.” You looked away from him, nodding. “I can’t accept what you did even if it was you protecting someone you love.”

Your brows furrowed in confusion slightly at his choice of words. “What?” You muttered softly.

“The things you did. Do you think the person you loved would forgive you if they learned you did all of that in the name of protecting them?” Your throat dried as you stared at him. “You killed innocent people.”

“I never killed anyone.” You snapped and his eyebrows raised. He uncrossed his arms to lean against the table again, motioning for you to continue. “Valeria had men for that. I was in charge of moving the shipments. To keep her identity safe.”

Alejandro was quiet and you could see the way he was trying to process your words. “I was put on the front line, my life was at risk but I never killed anyone. How little do you think of me?” At this he glared at you and opened his mouth as if he was going to argue but he just shook his head and stood up to make his way to the door.

“I’ll be sure to let Rudy know.” He stated while he reached for the handle.

“What the hell does Rudy have to do with this?” You demanded as you stood abruptly from your seat. “Did he not tell you everything?”

He paused, “he told me you were doing it to protect someone you loved, he didn’t tell me who. But you only wanted to speak to him so I put two and two together.” You stood there in utter shock. You felt like wringing his neck.

How clueless could he be even after all this time?

“It wasn’t because of Rudy I did all of that.” You clenched your hands tightly at your sides and Alejandro finally turned to you again but didn’t say anything. Another challenging silence fell between you before your anger got the best of you. “How stupid are you Alejandro?”

“Que?” He rounded on you quickly gripping onto your wrist when you tried backing away. He cornered you against the wall closest to you, caging you there as he leveled you with a harsh glare. “You think you can talk to me like that?”

You were almost positive your heart may just stop beating all together. He had your wrist in one hand pressed against the wall and his other gripped your upper arm making sure you stayed there.

You opened your mouth to respond but no words would come out. “Come on, you had so much to say just a few minutes ago.” He sneered, bringing his face closer to yours to where you had no space left. His entire body was practically pushed against you and you could feel every muscle on his body.

You only stood in shock for a second more before you returned his glare. “Yes because what makes you think it was Rudy?!” You felt his hold loosen just ever so slightly but his glare never let up. “Why for all these years have you continued to be blind?”

“Then help me see. Just fucking tell me the reason.” He pushed against you slightly like he was trying to shove you into the wall more

“Rudy already told you everything.” You spat bringing your face just that much closer. “I can’t help you see something that’s been right in front of you this whole time!”

Alejandro tsked before his body was gone and he was already several steps towards the door again but he didn’t pause at the handle, it looked almost like he needed to put distance between you both.

“I want to hear it from your mouth!” He shouted, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Why is it so hard for you to tell me? Haven’t you trusted me before?”

“This has nothing to do with trust.” You rubbed at the wrist he had in his grasp. “I’m doing it to protect-“

“Protect who?!” He took a few steps closer to you again

“It doesn’t matter-“

“Who did you do this for?! Who did you throw your whole life away for?!”

“I did it for you, pendejo!”

Your breathing was heavy as you stared at him. The confession was like a bomb going off in the middle of a battlefield. Something that was so loud it left your ears ringing from the aftermath.

Before you could even register, Alejandro had crossed the space again in a few steps. He wrapped his arm around your waist and pulled you into him while his other hand went to cup the side of your head, hands entangling in the strands of your hair as he brought you to him.

He kissed you heatedly, keeping you tight against him when you made a noise of surprise. Even still you couldn’t help but notice how kissing him in real life couldn’t ever compare to all the dreams you’ve allowed yourself to have.

You felt the roughness of his beard against your own face as you brought your hands up to his chest where you could feel his heart beating just as hard as yours.

He pushed you back against the wall as he moved from your lips to leave heated kisses down your neck forcing you to arch into him with a moan. The hand on your waist wrapped around the small of your back to keep you in that arch against him. You could feel the heat of his palm through the layers of clothes you had on and it made you want more.

“Ale.” You whimpered and immediately felt him stop. He pulled away slowly to look you in the eyes which you were sure were hazy from the moment. “What?”

He had a look in his eyes you couldn’t place. Something so much deeper than you were expecting. He took in a shaky breath, “I didn’t think I was ever going to hear you say my name like that again.” He whispered almost breathless.

The hand in your hair moved down to cup your jaw softly while the two of you kept eye contact. “Rudy told you everything didn’t he?”

Instead of answering he kissed you again this time softer before pulling back only an inch to mutter his next request against your bruised lips. “Stay with me. We can protect you.” He felt you take a sharp breath. “I can protect you.”

“Ale-“

“Let me protect you mí amor.”

Your hands clenched against his chest and looked away from his intense gaze. “Your higher ups wouldn’t allow that to happen.”

“If you’re worried about 141 and Sheperd don’t. Shepherd is AWOL he can’t tell me shit on what to do with you.” He informed and you could feel his hand start rubbing your back soothingly. “You gave up everything to protect my life. Let me do this for you now.”

You searched his eyes looking for anything that would tell you he’s lying but there was nothing but love. “Okay.” You said softly and could practically feel his grin before he closed the gap once again and brought you to him.

Months later you would find yourself in his room on base while he was away training. He practically forced you to stay with him and by that you meant he held you tight in his embrace anytime he was with you and it made you never want to leave. And he never made you.

You found out that Alejandro loved you as well, since the beginning. You remembered when you finally broke down in his arms one night when he admitted that he never stopped loving you.

You apologized over and over but he just cradled you in his arms and whispered sweet compliments in Spanish until you calmed down and he carried you to the bed you shared and held you even closer for the rest of the night.

He wasn’t lying when he said he was going to protect you. He did everything in his power to protect you even from your own mind.

It’s all you could think about as you roamed his room, wearing one of his shirts while you cleaned. You were so lost in thought you didn’t hear his door open and close softly until arms wrapped around you and you were pulled into a sturdy chest.

“Hola, mi amor.” Alejandro kissed your neck softly, smiling when he felt you melt into his arms. “Is this my shirt?”

You felt his hand grab onto the hem of the shirt while he continued kissing you neck. You titled your head away to give him more access and gave him a small hum in confirmation.

“You should wear it more often.” He murmured against your neck while he laid his palm flat against your stomach to pull you closer to him. His lips traveled up to the shell of your ear where he whispered, “come to bed with me. I’m so tired.”

You laughed softly. This whole thing felt like a dream. You didn’t know how you got so lucky for him to let you stay like this.

Though it was a slow process and he was still working through forgiving you for everything and you were working through everything you had been through you truly don’t think you have ever been happier.

“I’m cleaning.” He groaned when you started unwrapping his arms but he just grabbed your waist and twisted you around so you were facing each other. “Ale.”

“I’m just relishing in your presence Princesa.” He smirked while trailing his fingers down the side of your bare thighs.

You chuckled again and kissed his lips shortly, smirking when he chased after your lips for more. “Well you can relish in it still by helping me.” You stepped away and he groaned.

“Okay okay.” But he still couldn’t keep his eyes off you the whole time.

#cod x reader #alejandro vargas x reader #alejandro vargas imagine #call of duty x reader #call of duty imagine #colonel vargas

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ahlaway · 7 months

Text

Okay, but real talk, if Tubbo goes Federation informant for real / hard manipulation, the other islander's will be at fault.

Hear me out:

From the beginning there has been this like. Really unfair view on Tubbo. His chat is scolded for metagaming (as it should be) but he's also talked down to a lot for not just accepting things.

He won't just accept they're trapped because the older islanders say they've tried and failed. He won't just trust islanders who've been trustworthy in the past (ex Bad) who are no longer acting trustworthy. He's trying the same methods other people have tried because he wasn't there for it.

Any nerfs happen? That's Tubbos fault. Never mind that they were bound to nerf create the moment another big create member joined because how they were using it to break puzzles instead of doing the puzzles.

People are constantly picking and blaming him for things and then saying his suspicious because the federation doesn't do anything about him. Despite the fact that the federation does not give that boy a moment of peace, and have not since he arrived.

Meanwhile people like Bad and Pierre have only just begun to experience the horrors, despite how long they've been breaking the rules and causing trouble.

Then you look at interactions he's had and BOI. From his POV alone I wouldn't blame him if he didn't trust any of these people.

(mandatory this is only referring to RP characters.)

Tubbo is an adult. However, he is BARELY and adult, and that is something that is important to note, and I don't mine saying with his "i'm minor coded" joke. Like, as someone approaching 30 I can't imagine interacting with a 19 year old the same way I would someone near my age. So keep that in mind for my thinking going forward.

He's pulled from the ice and a few days later he's approached by a crazy bear with a gun and the power of create that tells him he HAS to do a task. One that will betray someone he's made friends with and an egg. He tries to refuse and the bear starts shooting.

So he does it, thinking he has no choice.

Then two men, who are like, MVP, highly respected, defenders of the island, tell him he should have just died. In fact, he was selfish for not dying on that hill, and that the father of that egg is going to be FURIOUS with him.

To the point that Tubbo is freaking out when Fit catches him trying to fix what he had to break for his task, and make things right.

Is it any wonder he thought he was capital D dead when he "lost" one of these men's eggs?

Now jump cut.

Boy is pressured by men into spinning a wheel that, lets be honest, probably only had bad outcomes, and then is told it's his fault. HE killed the eggs.

Which leads to local teen burning in lava in a breakdown.

And don't even get me started on the drama that was two men who live in a different zip code losing their minds because local teen does yard renovations.

One of which being someone said teen is convinced kidnapped someone, and has tried to gaslight him about it.

Like, outside of the morning crew, Fred is kind of the best relationship Tubbo's got going for him at the moment.

#qsmp #this is a mess #it's kinda just word vomiting my thoughts #qsmp tubbo #tubbo is both an adult and a teen which makes the treatment he's gotten weird to me #I have many thoughts

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heavyhitterheaux · 5 months

Text

Thankful For You

First Lady of Private Garden Fic

Synopsis: A nurse who has been taking care of the triplets ever since they were born has a surprise for you and Jack in your first holiday season as parents and you realize the amazing tribe of people that you have behind you want nothing but the best for the both of you

Pairing: Husband!Jack Harlow x Wife!Reader

First Lady of Private Garden Masterlist

Warnings: mention of d*ath

Please Do Not Repost My Content Anywhere

Your hands were shaking as you were trying to zip up your coat and they were soon covered by Jack's who simply held onto you for a second before leaning down to kiss your forehead.

“I got it, baby.” He told you as he finished zipping it up and wrapping your scarf around your neck.

“Thank you.” You quietly said, attempting to not burst into tears.

Thanksgiving was going to look a little different this year seeing as Axel was still in the NICU and Ivy and Autumn had come home a month earlier. It was still very touch and go with him and your only wish this holiday season was to not have to bury your second born.

“You're welcome. You know I got you.” He replied before leaning down to kiss you.

While the two of you went to the hospital to spend time with Axel, your mom offered to keep Ivy and Autumn and the two of you promised that you would be over later.

You and Jack obviously weren't in the mood to celebrate the holidays or be around anyone, but you thought that it would be a good distraction from everything else going on around the two of you.

Jack held your hand as the two of you walked to his jeep and helped you inside while he jogged around to the driver's side. The radio was on a low volume as he started up the car and headed towards the hospital.

The two of you were riding in a comfortable silence as Jack reached over to take your hand in his and bring it up to his mouth so that he could place a kiss on the back of it.

You looked over at him and gave him a small smile.

“You know what I'm thankful for today?” He asked you as the two of you finally pulled up into the hospital parking lot.

“Hmm, what would that be?” You asked as you undid your seatbelt and looked over at him.

“That I can wake up every morning and still see my beautiful wife next to me. I really thought that I was going to have to live without you and I don't know what I would have done if that became a reality.”

“You know me better than that. I wasn't leaving without putting up a fight and I'm definitely thankful for that too. I feel for the mothers who don't even get to see their children after they give birth to them. My heart just breaks knowing that could have been my reality. I didn't even see Axel, they immediately took him.”

“I know. But if he's anything like his mother, which I know he is, he's still fighting because he wants to be here.”

“I feel that I don't sleep well at night because I am so on edge. I just wait for the phone to ring and…” You started to say as you felt the tears coming on and Jack immediately reached across the console to bring you into a hug as you cried into his chest. Jack didn’t really sleep at night either, not since the night that you came home and the nightmares started up again.

He soothingly rubbed your back as he comforted you the best he could.

“He's being strong for us so we need to be strong for him. We made some amazing kids who I know are going to go on to do amazing things. This is only a setback and not the end all be all.” Jack said as he looked down at you to wipe your tears as you nodded and he kissed your nose, making you smile.

“Let's go see our son, he's waiting for us.”

Once the two of you got to the unit and washed your hands, Jack was the first one to pick up Axel who was still wearing oxygen since he had gotten extubated two days before.

You and Jack had lost count of how many times this had happened since he had been born and the crazy thing was that he had only been alive for three months.

“Hi baby boy, it’s daddy.”

Axel immediately perked up from hearing his voice and opened his eyes to look at him which immediately made you smile.

Just then, Cara, who was a nurse and had taken care of all of the triplets numerous times since they had been born, came over to the three of you and smiled. Her sister was actually the nurse who had taken care of you when you had first woken up in the ICU.

“He had a really good night and today is going well for him. When he goes into a deep sleep, we're going to try and turn down his oxygen a little bit more and mom, if you want to feed him while you're here, by all means.”

You immediately nodded and smiled as you stroked his cheek as Jack was still holding him.

“How are my other two doing? Ms. Ivy and Ms. Autumn?” She curiously asked as she adjusted Axel's oxygen in his nose.

“They're fine. Even if they've been home for a month we're still trying to adjust to everything.”

“It'll take time, but you'll get there.”

As Jack was still holding Axel, he immediately took hold of his finger and tightly held onto it.

“He looks like you.” You whispered as you were admiring the two of them.

“You think so? I think he looks like you.”

“Yes and now I'm understanding why I had so much heartburn. Look how much hair he has and he definitely got that from you.”

“He's definitely going to get all the ladies. He already has all of us wrapped around his finger.” Cara said as he ruffled his hair.

“Even though technically you two are the celebrities, he's a celebrity here in our unit.”

“I believe it.” You answered as Jack handed Axel to you to feed him.

“I swear you get cuter every time I see you. Jack, we made cute babies.” You told him and all Jack did was smirk.

“Yeah, he got that from me.”

“Jackman, don't start.” You said while laughing and starting to feed Axel.

“Well, did I lie?”

All you did was look at him and shake your head.

“You don't have a serious bone in your body.”

“You've been with me since you were fifteen, and you're just now noticing?”

The two of you stayed with Axel the entire morning and majority of the afternoon when Cara came up to the two of you as you were getting ready to leave.

“Hey, I wanted to catch the two of you before you left.”

“Yes, what's going on? Everything okay?” Jack asked her as he was zipping up his coat.

“Everything’s fine. Follow me and I can show you.”

Walking hand in hand behind Cara down a few long hallways, you both finally reached one of the family rooms that they had that the two of you had come to know all too well in the last three months, but before Cara opened the door she turned back to the two of you.

“I just wanted to say that I know that this hasn't been easy for you and there's been a lot of uncertainty and I just wanted to tell both of you that you're doing an amazing job and those three have some amazing parents. I know the last place you want to be on Thanksgiving is in a hospital so I got a little help to do this for the two of you.”

Once Cara opened the door, the two of you saw both of your families surrounding a table full of food as well as Maggie holding Ivy and your dad holding Autumn.

“Cara… this is…” Jack started to say, but all she did was smile.

“It was both of your parent's ideas so I just made it work.” She said while shrugging.

“Well we appreciate you either way for everything that you’ve done for us.” You replied as you and Jack pulled her into a hug.

“Thank you for taking care of our babies as well as you have.” Jack added as you were attempting to not to cry for the third time today.

“You're welcome. Now let me get back to your little man and you two try to enjoy the rest of your day. Just bring me a slice of pie.”

“You and the unit are definitely getting more than just pie.” You said as she brought you into another hug.

“Go and enjoy your family while I take care of your smallest one.”

Cara walked back to the NICU as you greeted your parents, your in-laws, Clay, Dani, your grandparents as well as Jack's grandparents, both of your aunts, uncles, a few of your cousins and of course the triplets godfather who takes his job a little too seriously, Urban before you were ordered by Maggie to sit down.

“You guys didn't have to do this for us.” You quietly said, but Maggie immediately shook her head no.

“Yes we did and we wanted to. A lot has happened this year and it was only right.” She quickly answered as everyone began to fix their plates.

Dani came up and hugged you from behind and kissed the top of your head and squeezed you tightly as you held onto her.

“I love you so much and don't you ever forget it. I'm so happy my baby girl is still here. I don't know what I would have done if I had lost you.” She whispered in your ear and you were doing your best not to cry.

“I love you too.” You answered as Urban then came up to you.

“My best friend in the entire universe.” You said as you held your arms out towards him and he quickly reached down to hug you.

Since Urban had been the person that you had told about the letters that you had written before they did your c section, when he showed up to the hospital and saw Jack’s face full of tears, he immediately knew that Jack needed to read the letter you wrote for him.

Urban obviously took it extra hard and didn’t want to believe that anything bad had happened to you, but when it was just you and him in your hospital room as you were intubated and Jack had gone to see the triplets, he promised you that he would do his best to look out for him and the triplets like you asked even if the last thing he wanted to think about was being without one of his best friends.

“Lil Bit! And I know what you’re about to say, I saw my family earlier, but I knew my second family needed me too and I wanted to see my mini me.”

“Well your mini me is doing amazing according to Cara. I just hope we can bring him home soon.”

“I’m thankful that you’re still here because I have no idea what we would have done without you.” Urban whispered in your ear and it took everything in you for you not to cry.

“Urby.”

“You don’t even have to say anything, but just so you know, I would have kept the promise that I made you and the rest of PG are on their way as we speak since we didn’t get to do our friendsgiving this year.”

All you did was nod towards him as Jack placed your plate in front of you along with your drink before kissing your cheek which instantly made you smile.

You told him thank you as everyone began eating.

Ivy was asleep in your arms since Maggie had handed her to you and she was content as you were eating your food while Autumn was wide awake in Clay's arms looking around to see what was happening. She was nosey and you knew that she had gotten it from you.

“How is Axel doing?” Your mom asked the both of you since the last she heard was you crying on the phone a few days ago because he had to be intubated again.

“Better. He's on oxygen and Cara said they might be able to turn it down later depending on how he does and he's feeding really well.” Jack answered as Ivy began to shift on your arms. You began to rock her back and forth and she settled back down.

“One step closer to coming home.”

“And that is literally all we want and all we could ask for.”

“You two are doing an amazing job and you know that we're here for you. Anything that you need, all you have to do is tell us.”

“We appreciate that.”

Everyone had finished eating as you were simply laying your head on Jack’s shoulder who had your hand in his and was rubbing small circles on the back of it as Ivy and Autumn were being passed around and being admired by your family members how much Ivy looked like you and how much Autumn looked like Jack.

“Now you know what we have to do. Go around the table and say one thing that you're thankful for.” Maggie said and Jack volunteered to start.

“I already told her this earlier, but I'm thankful that I still have my wife. I know that I have a tribe behind me and the babies would have been fine, but I know my life won't be the same without you. So thank you for fighting as hard as you did so that you could live and see our babies grow up.”

“You're going to make me cry for like the millionth time today, but I'm thankful for you too. Despite all that happened, we beat the odds and we're still together and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you for all that you do for me.”

“My parents!” You heard Urban say and all you did was laugh.

“But you know where to find me once you drop him.”

“Oh lord. Here we go.” You heard 2fo say over his plate of food and you were wondering when he had come in because you hadn’t seen him or the rest of PG for that matter who was sitting next to him.

“Since when did yall get here?!”

“A few minutes ago and we see Clay is still being the annoying little brother who takes his role very seriously.” Quiiso added which made you stifle a laugh.

“CLAY! Just because it's your birthday doesn't mean I won't kick you into next week.” Jack exclaimed while glaring at him.

“Will you really hit me while I'm holding my niece?”

“Hand her to Dani and meet me outside. I don’t want her to witness this ass whooping you about to get.”

You simply shook your head at the two of them going back and forth and realized how thankful you were for your amazing friends and family that would do anything for you, Jack as well as your triplets.

The road ahead was probably going to be anything and everything but easy, but as long as you had them in your corner there was nothing that you wouldn’t be able to achieve.

Once the two of them were done arguing and glaring at each other, you tugged on Jack’s hand and told him that you wanted to talk a walk and just have a few minutes with him without anyone interrupting and he immediately nodded.

The two of you were just taking a stroll around the perimeter of the hospital hand in hand when you finally broke the silence.

“Baby?”

“Yes, mamas?”

“I love you and would do anything for you even though I have already told you that a million times today, I just….. I know that I haven’t been the perfect wife and have a lot to work on but….”

“There’s still no one in the world that I would rather do this with. We both have a lot to work on and I love you too. All we can do is take it one step at a time. It’s going to be okay and our triplets will be okay.” Jack answered you as you brought him into a tight hug, thankful that you were still able to do so.

“So, when can we make another one?” Jack asked you while smirking and all you did was playfully hit his arm.

“Talk to me in about four years and we’ll see.”

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#jack harlow #jack harlow fic #jack harlow fanfic #jack harlow x reader #jack harlow x black reader #jack harlow imagine #jack harlow concepts #jack harlow fluff #first lady of pg

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short-honey-badger · 4 months

Text

Peppermint Tea 14

Yaaay. A new part! This one was hard. It goes into our readers backstory so I really hope that you all enjoy the way I've taken it!

Warnings! NONE!

Masterlist

It’s two months later when Mihawk decides to tell you about his charge, for lack of better wording. Perona had shoved her way into his life, and for some reason, Dracule had let her stay. The pink ghost girl drove him crazy, with incessant questions and ridiculous demands, but…it made Gloom Island far less lonely. Maybe that had been why he had allowed Roronoa to stay and train.

The warlord huffs at himself. Look at him, lamenting like a sentimental old man.

Anyway, Dracule could tell how happy you were when he spoke about her, so he started to pay more attention to the other occupant of the castle. While Perona was loud and obnoxious. Mihawk also found that the young woman was kind and wasn’t above helping someone in need. She had been the one to nurse the green swordsman back to health after all.

Since then, Dracule has been debating with himself. It would be a compromise to your safety, but the thought of the look of delight on your face was too good for him to pass up. Not to mention, he had come to tentatively trust Perona in her stay with him. He would have her swear to him not to tell a soul about your existence.

Dracule sighs and shifts to plant his feet on the ground from where he had them kicked up on his desk. He refills his glass of wine and takes a deep sip before calling for Perona.

“Ghost girl! Come here, bring your animals, and shut the door,” Mihawk doesn't need to speak very loud. Her room was right down the hall from his study.

Perona floats inside not long after, a massive scowl on her face, “What? What’s so important for you to be making so much noise?” She demands but does as Mihawk had instructed and shuts the door behind her.

“Stop complaining and sit down if you want to know where I keep disappearing to,” Dracule snaps at her and has never seen Perona move so fast in his life. She zips to her usual armchair across from his desk and tucks her feet under her body as she sits down. Her eyes are wide and expectant, waiting for Mihawk to finally tell her his big secret.

Mihawk looks at her, tone deadly serious when he speaks, “You will swear that you will not speak about this outside of this room,” He demands, and Perona looks shocked at the demand. He watches her gulp and looks up at the two ghosts that float above her. They disappear with a soft pop, and Perona grows seriously.

Whatever this is, it has to be super important. Perona was good at keeping secrets, so she could definitely keep this for Mihawk.

“I swear I won’t say anything outside of this room,” Perona repeats diligently.

Dracule gives her a long look, studying the young woman and hoping that he is making the right choice here.

“I met a woman,” He begins and before Perona can get anything out of her open mouth and demand questions, Mihawk holds up a finger and glares at her, “You will let me speak, or I won’t say a word.”

Perona snaps her mouth shut and crosses her arms with a pout, “Fine.”

Satisfied, Dracule continues, “She lives on an island, just herself and a mutt she found. His name is Hank,” He licks his lips and locks eyes with the enraptured Perona, “I helped destroy her home.”

Perona sucks in a sharp breath. What? Had she heard him right?

“Twenty-two years ago, there was an island in the New World, the Nammu Isle. It was on the outskirts of Big Mom’s territory and was rumored to have connections to Ohara. Charlotte wanted the island gone, and what a Yonko wants, a Yonko gets. The royal family begged her and offered their youngest daughter up as a bride for one of Big Mom’s sons. She pretended to accept the deal, and on the day that they were to come and get the princess, they attacked in the night instead. We attacked.”

Perona doesn't recognize the name of the island, and it makes her wonder why it was such a problem that a Yonko wanted to destroy it.

Dracule pauses to take a deep drink of his glass of wine, licking his lips of the dark liquid, and then picks his tale back up, “I was young. Twenty years old and still dumb enough to be influenced by others. Big Mom promised anyone who would listen to her a good fight, that _’s family was filled with fierce warriors itching for one. None of it was true. We slaughtered the entire island, but somehow, her older brother caught wind of Charlotte’s plans and got his sister out in time. When I overheard plans to send her crew out to look for them, I volunteered and made sure that they got away safely. Went about my life after that, until around half a year ago.”

Perona swallows harshly. Had Mihawk really done all of that when he was younger? While a pirate, Perona thought of the older man as very honorable, not someone who would willingly partake in others' pain.

“Why did you change your mind?” She asks him softly. She needs to know. Why would he be so for the destruction of this girl's home only to change his mind at the end?

“Inside the castle, I caught sight of a portrait of the princess, and she was beautiful in every sense of the word. Looking at her made me feel… guilty for the first time in my life.” The emotion coats his voice, and Perona feels her heart reluctantly go out to the warlord.

“What about _,” Perona presses and frowns harshly when Mihawk looks away from her, his own mouth screwing up in a deep scowl, “You haven't told her, have you?”

“No, and I don't plan to either.” Dracule snaps lowly and then snatches up his glass to drink deeply from it, “I did not tell you all of this for you to judge me, Perona. I told you because _ deserves to know someone other than me.”

The pink ghost girl blinks rapidly. Did she hear him, right? She casts off the doubt and quickly takes it in stride. Of course, you deserved to know someone as fabulous as Perona and not just dreary old Mihawk.

“Well when do we leave?” Perona demands and stands from her seat. Her mind is a whirlwind of plans and things that she could bring to show her new friend. And damn it! She was determined to make this mysterious woman who had captured Mihawk's attention her friend. She could guarantee that _ would like Kumae!

“Sit back down,” Mihawk snaps at her, though a smirk has curled his lips. He is glad to know that his charge had taken everything in stride. “I'll phone her later, and the three of us can have a quick chat. She's very protective of her island, and her devil fruit isn't something to be trifled with.”

Perona promptly pouts and turns her nose up at him. “What's her devil fruit?”

“She ate the Yuki Yuki fruit. She's a logia type.” Dracule says, and the two fall into conversation. Perona is curious and asks all sorts of questions about the lost princess, Mihawk finds himself smiling as he speaks of his angel. It has been a week since he was last in her calming presence, and he longs for you the more he speaks of you.

“You really care for her, don't you, Mihawk?” Perona points out several hours later. She'd gone and fetched them some lunch at some point and helped herself to a glass of rosé as they ate. Dracule glared at her over his own glass of red wine and said nothing. Perona grinned at him, “Aweee come on. You can admit you love her.”

“I do not love anything,” Mihawk snaps harshly and swirls the glass of red, “If anything, _ Interests me. Her kindness, her beauty. She is a hidden bloom in an arctic landscape. She deserves to be protected, and I will be the one to do so. I owe it to her.”

Perona gives him a look of disbelief. How in the world could this stubborn warlord not admit that he loves this mystery woman. She had never once heard him wax poetry before, but she'd heard him recount how lovely this woman was at least three different times in the past four hours.

“Sure, Dracule. Keep telling yourself that,” Perona sneers and takes a big bite of her sandwich, not flinching when Mihawk sends her a scathing glare.

“We'll go make that call when you're finished stuffing your face.” The warlord grumbles and then stands to retrieve the snail phone he inherited from the castle.

Perona finishes in record time, and soon she is floating beside Mihawk as he dies the number to the matching mushi that you own. It rings for a while, long enough that Mihawk begins to grow worried, before you finally pick up

Ca-lick

“Dracule? Is everything okay?” You sound concerned, and Mihawk instantly relaxes at the sound of your voice.

“Everything is fine, Dear one,” he begins and glares at Perona when she claps her hands together in obvious glee, “You remember Perona, yes?”

“Sure do. The ghost girl right? You've told me all about her. Is she okay?”

Gods, Perona could die from how cute you sound!

“She is fine. I called because I told her about you, and she wanted to speak with you.” Mihawk sends Perona a glare when she makes grabby hands at the receiver, “Are you okay with that?”

It's quiet for a moment on the other end.

“Uhm. Yeah, that's fine. That sounds nice, actually.” Mihawk can hear the nerves in your voice and knows that this is a big step for you, speaking to someone other than him. Dracule can imagine you there, flurries scattering around you, and wished that he could be there for your comfort.

“If you are sure,” Dracule murmurs and hears you hum over the connection.

“Yeah, I'm sure. It's okay, Dracule.”

Satisfied, the warlord hands over the snail phone to the overly excited Perona, “Here. Keep it short. The connection won't last forever.”

Perona lets out a squeal of happiness and jerks the phone towards her, “HI! I'm Perona. I've heard so much about you! Mihawk really doesn't know how to keep his trap shut when you're on his mind!”

The phone is silent again, and Mihawk looks murderous for half a second before laughter bursts out the other end. Perona gives Mihawk a smug look.

“Hi Perona, I'm _,” You introduce yourself, and Dracule can hear the smile in your voice, “It's really nice to meet you!”

@writingmysanity @kenkenmaaa @foggyturtleknightangel @browneyedhufflepuff @goth-mami-writer @myradiaz @fluffybunnyu @bookandstar

#fanfic #one piece #reader insert #fluff #dracule mihawk #hawkeye mihawk #mihawk x reader #opla mihawk #mihawk x you #mihawk x y/n #opla mihawk x reader #opla #one piece live action #peppermint tea #perona

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corriganatheart · 1 year

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What Could’ve Been Us- Jude Bellingham x Reader x Pedri

Synopsis: Jude was the right person, wrong timing.

Pairs: Ex-boyfriend Jude x fem! Reader

Genre: Short break up story.

You stare at your old bedroom, smiling as memories flood in rapidly. The wallpaper was still the same, filled with posters of past celebrity crushes and wall decorations that would be seen as cringe now. Your parents insisted on keeping your bedroom the same when you moved away in the hope that you’ll move back one day. And now here you are, three years later.

You put your suitcase down as you take the room in from a different angle. Your desk looked like it had just been cleaned, but the pictures of your friends and family hanging near it seemed like it hadn’t been touched for years. You smile when you see the group picture from graduation; what appeared to be the best day of your life was also the worst. It has been three years since graduation and three years since your breakup with Jude. It was a tough breakup, and both of you took it differently. What seemed to have been a perfect relationship ended when Jude said he’d be signing with Dortmund. You were shocked, to say the least, because it was news to you, but it seemed like he had known about it for months yet kept you in the dark. Jude’s reason was that he didn’t want you to drop your dream for him, but how could he say that? You were his biggest supporter, and you would’ve followed him till the end, but instead, he left you behind.

Initially, you guys stayed in contact for a couple of months, but there was a constant argument about him not calling you or being caught up in dating rumors with different girls. The breakup was finalized when you visited him. You both realized that even after seeing one another, there was no fixing what was already ruined. After the split, you fell into depression and barely came out of your room, but never once did he contact you. Words got around that Jude left you, and in a matter of time, people in the town felt sorry for you. They came up with crazy scenarios, but no one knew the truth about the breakup. It was hard to get over someone when they were always on your newsfeed, and people constantly sent you news about him and how he was at a party full of models and celebrities. You knew you needed a fresh start, so you applied for college in a different country and left your life behind.

It was no surprise that your parents still have old photos of Jude on your bookshelf, they always loved him, and everyone loved him, but that was still not enough for him to take you. It has been three years now, and you were finally starting to let go of your feelings toward him, but you would be lying if you said he doesn’t have a place in your heart because he does. Jude was your first everything, and you were the couple everyone thought would be endgame, but both of you were young, freshly out of high school, with different dreams. But he still holds a place in your heart, and you have kept up with his career, which had skyrocketed over the years, and you were still his biggest supporter.

Your parents were aware of why you were back, and they were supportive and happy that you’re finally giving your hometown another chance. England was having a friendly match with another team, and it was all your family and friends had been talking about. At first, you were contemplating whether to go or not, but your friends from college had convinced you to go, and also you had your reasons for going. Jude will be there, and it’ll be the first time you see him in person since the breakup, and although the media doesn’t know, people from the past will surely remember the two high school lovers.

Covering the jersey you’re wearing underneath, you zip up your jacket and follow your parents and friends toward the stadium. They all smile at you as you hesitantly look around for familiar faces. You recognized a group of girls you went to school with, wearing the number 22; you quickly averted your eyes and sat between your mom and your best friend. Another friend of yours came along, but she was from Spain, the team England will compete with. She is also your college roommate and one of the few who knew of your tragic breakup with Jude. “You feeling ok?” Your best friend whispered as she glared at someone behind you. You don’t have to look back to know they’re probably former classmates. “Yeah, I’m fine,” you smiled, causing your friend to nod. She had been friends with you since intermediate school and met her boyfriend through Jude. Fortunately for them, they went to college together and are now engaged. “Don’t worry; he’s going to regret leaving you,” she said, causing you to chuckle. She doesn’t know that you hope Jude has no regrets because leaving was his best decision.

“Why do you look like someone sucked your soul out?” Trent asked his teammate, whose face went pale. Jude just stared at him, not knowing how to explain this. If he were to tell Trent that he was having a panic attack because his ex-girlfriend was in the crowd, he’d be the sore loser of the team. No one on the team besides Trent knows about Y/N. The only information they have about his love life was he’s into girls; the rest is left up to their imagination. “Hellooooo, Jude!!” Trent says, waving his hand in front of his face. Jude frowns and shakes his head; he can’t believe he’s getting all scare because his first love was in the crowd. He had never been afraid of facing a challenge, and this particular one he had been looking forward to for years, yet he was nervous.

When his mother told him you were in town, Jude nearly ran to your house, but he chickened out. You guys haven’t been in contact for three years, and the last time you talked, you both were arguing and calling each other meaningless names. Looking back, it was his fault, and he regretted it. You were the love of his life, yet he didn’t trust that you’ll follow him to Germany, so he broke up with you thinking he was doing the both of you a favor. Jude was young to understand his wrongdoings, so instead of asking for forgiveness, he left you behind, but he hadn’t stopped thinking about the pain in your eyes.

“Is it because I sent a stripper to your room the other night?” Trent asked, looking embarrassed. Jude glared at him, causing the older man to nervously back away. “Damn, then tell me what’s going on,” Trent says. Jude looks around the empty bathroom and sighs. He leans his head back on the wall and closes his eyes, only to see the image of you crying. “Y/N is here,” he mumbles. Trent’s eyes widened, and he awkwardly scratched the nonexistent itch on his neck. He was aware of who you were and your past relationship with Jude. It was the first time he had seen Jude cry, and it was by accident. He remembered celebrating his birthday, and Jude got drunk and made out with a girl. The kiss didn’t go too far because Jude pushed the girl away and left to cry outside. That was the first time he had seen the young player so devastated and hopeless. “You think you’ll talk to her after the game?” Trent asked while staring at Jude’s anxious form. “If she’s willing to talk to me,” Jude says. Trent pats Jude’s shoulder and gives it a slight squeeze, “you’ve got to show her that leaving her was for the best; I’m sure she understands.”

Jude can feel Trent’s eyes on him when they enter the field. Spain's team was already lined up and waving at their fans. He recognizes the famous duo from Spain as they greet their fans. Jude glares at number 26 because even though his presence isn’t as noticeable as number 9, he is still a skilled player and a threat. “Stop staring at them,” Marcus whispers, causing Jude to face forward. He gulps as he looks around, there are numerous people, and he spots his family in the front but hasn’t spotted yours. Jude was hoping your family would sit with his family, but he knew how awkward that would be for you. “Let’s make sure we win this so you can brag to your girl,” Trent said as they jogged on the field to their position. “Trust me, I plan to do more than just win today,” Jude says confidently.

Your eyes focus on him as he passes the ball to Harry Kane, who immediately goes for a goal. The crowd erupted, and you clapped along with the England fans. Your Spain roommate grumbles something under her breath as she pretends to clap too. You’re sure this was awkward for her since she came here to support her friends but ended up sitting with the fans of the opposite team. “I swear they’ll kill me if they see me on this side,” she mumbled as she fixed her mask. You chuckled, and your eyes wandered to the Spain team. A couple of them looked worn out, and Gavi seemed as angry as ever while Pedri tried to cool him down. You laughed at the adorable duo and glanced back at the England team. Jude looked happy as one of the guys you recognized as Trent Alexander Arnold lifted him as the other players circled them. For some reason, you weren’t as emotional as you thought you’d be, but instead, it feels comforting to know that Jude is doing something he loves and is happy. “Huh, he isn’t as hot as Pedri,” your Spanish friend shrugged. “Excuse me; us Englanders find him extremely attractive,” your best friend defended. Your roommate makes a dramatic vomiting face and rolls her eyes at Jude. She isn’t a fan of him, but you’ve tried to convince her that he’s a good person despite the breakup.

“What would you do if he came up and talked to you?” Your friend asked. You rest your chin on your hand and follow Jude’s form. He was going one-on-one with Pedri, and they were fighting to take the ball from one another; Jude was dominating him, but Pedri ended up kicking the ball out, and they both glared at one another. Gavi ran up to Pedri while Trent ran to Jude; they all looked like they are about to fight. “This just got interesting,” your friend muttered as she prepared to film the scene. Your parents were frozen beside you, pretending they weren’t curious about your reaction. “This isn’t good; Gavi and Trent have bad tempers,” your best friend mumbles. You sighed as you patiently waited for the players to jump on one another. Jude was having a stare-down with Pedri while Gavi and Trent were being held back by their teammates. The referee was running towards them as he blew his whistle. “What kind of friendly match is this?” Someone shouted behind you. “Right! This is more rigged than the World Cup!” Another yelled. You chuckled and slightly shook your head; you stared at Jude as he got dragged away by Harry Kane and Marcus Rashford. The two older men whispered into his ears as he frustratedly walked away. Remembering what your friend asked you, you thought of what you would say if Jude approached you. Would you freak out and run away, or would you cry in front of him? You really don’t know.

“Jude! Where are you going!” Marcus shouted from behind. Without looking back, Jude shouted, “to beg for forgiveness!”

He was anxious but happy at the same time. England had just won a friendly match against Spain, and he also saw you clapping at his winning goal. You were still as beautiful as ever and looked happy for him. When you were apart, he checked up on your social media several times, but you went private after a while, and his brother had been updating him on your life. Jude was happy you went to an elite school and had also started an internship. It made him feel less guilty to know that you had pursued your dreams without him; like he did when he left you behind.

"Hey! Watch where you are going!" someone yelled as he entered the VIP area. His brother had texted him that your family was meeting up with his parents at the VIP lounge, and he was excited to see everyone. Your family and his had always gotten along; despite the breakup, his parents and yours remain close friends. Jude looks around the area, and there are several people he recognizes. Football players and their families, hugging and taking photos. Jude shovels around the crowd and end up at the end of the room, where there are fewer people; he was about to call his brother when he saw you walk out of a private room. You were typing on your phone with a huge smile, and he nearly tripped at how beautiful you looked. You were still the best friend he had since middle school and the girl he fell in love with freshman year. Jude smiles as he walks over to you. "Y/N," he says. Your eyes immediately look up from the screen, and you are stunned to see the person in front of you. On any occasion, you would probably jump and scream at the sight of a famous soccer player, but this was your ex-boyfriend and the guy who caused you to leave England three years ago. "Jude," you sigh, causing him to smile.

"How have you been?" he asked. You awkwardly shift in your seat as you try not to think about how handsome he has gotten. Jude had always been good-looking, but the man before you was far from the boy you knew years ago. Jude had gotten taller and more muscular; it was obvious that the training had shifted his body into a man. "Good; what about you?" you asked. Jude looks down at the cup in his hand and back up at you. "My life has been busy," he said. "But I am good." You nod and look down from the balcony. Jude had taken you to the back of the building with a balcony far from the public's eye. As a celebrity, he didn't seem to care for the paparazzi if he willingly sat with you outside. Looking back, it was foolish that you guys fought over fake dating rumors just because Jude was in the same place as the person. "I heard you went to school in Spain," Jude says, "how is it?" You smiled, and for the next thirty minutes, you told Jude about your life in Spain and how you fell in love with the place. Jude told you about Dortmund, his teammates, and all the celebrities he had met. You both talked like nothing had ever happened and were still the same people from middle school. "Are you moving back here?" Jude asked. It was a question everyone kept asking since you'll be graduating soon, but they must also be aware that you are starting an internship soon, but they just don't know where.

"I'm not sure yet, Jude," you said, "my family lives in England, but I also built a life in Spain." Jude didn't say anything; instead, he reached for your hand on the table. "I miss you, Y/N," he sighs while rubbing your knuckles. "I'm sorry for leaving you behind; I just thought you wouldn't be able to find your dream in Dortmund." You look at his hand on yours and then back into his eyes. If only he knew that he was your dream, you would've made it work wherever he was. "We were young, Jude. And you wouldn't be here if you didn't leave me behind, and I wouldn't be here either. In the end, things worked out for the best." Jude smiled and felt a breeze run through him as he remembered your time together.

You were always by his side since middle school, cheering him, and even when he was a jerk sometimes, you were still encouraging him to pursue his dreams. Jude rubs his thumbs on your hand and is about to speak when your phone rings. You pull your hands away from his and reach into your pocket to answer the call. Jude felt emptiness as he glared at his hand on the table. “I’m in the back, yes,” you say while glancing at Jude. Jude smiles and patiently waits for you to finish your call. “Oh, you’re too?” You immediately stand up from your chair and look at the entrance to the balcony. Jude examines your jacket, and he notices the collar of the t-shirt underneaths it. Instead of black, he sees the color blue, and his heart immediately stops.

Jude looks at your face, and you have the most beautiful smile while talking on the phone. He was so focused on seeing you again and asking for a second chance that he completely forgot that you’ve mentioned building a life in Spain, which also meant meeting new people. Jude fidgets with his hands as he looks up at your face and sees your eyes widen. His eyes follows yours and just as he fears, one of his rival is standing at the door, with a phone on his ear and a huge grin on his face. “Pedri!” You exclaimed before running towards the man. Jude stay in his seat as he watches you embrace the Spain player. Although Pedri had just lost, he still seemed happy and kisses the top of your head as you nuzzle your face in his chest. Jude had never been intimidated by anyone before but at this moment, so many emotions were going through his head. “I miss you baby,” he heard the Spanish player says. You giggle and that was slap in his face that you completely forgotten that he was here.

Jude stands up and clears his throat, seeing your shoulders jump. You relieve yourself from Pedri’s embrace and turn to Jude. You grab your boyfriend’s hand and guide him to Jude, who is just staring at you. “Bellingham,” Pedri said and held out his hand. Jude shakes it firmly before he glances at your intertwined fingers. “We were catching up,” you explained to Pedri, who didn’t seem slightly phased. “I heard a lot about you,” Pedri says warmly. “She has mad respect for you.” Jude nods and stares at your blushed cheek as Pedri grins at you. “I want to thank your team for the game. It was a good one,” Pedri says, and Jude can see the generosity in him. The young player was always compared to Jude, and the internet has put them against one another several times. But Jude has never entertained them, and it seems the Spanish player doesn’t care either. He wonders what you’ve told Pedri to make the stranger feel comfortable. “Your mother was looking for you,” Pedri says, causing Jude to clench his jaw. How long have you been with Pedri? The internet never mentioned anything about a girlfriend, so he wonders how secretive were the two of you. “Oh, I have to speak to Jude first,” you said and finally turned your attention back to him. Pedri nods and kisses your forehead. “I’ll wait for you in the family lounge.” He then turns to Jude and nods his head before exiting the room.

“How long?” Was the first thing Jude asked after your boyfriend exited the room. It was no surprise Pedri left you with Jude; he knew the whole truth and knew you needed this. Your boyfriend trusted you, and he had no issues leaving you with an ex. “Almost seven months,” you said. Jude nods and hesitantly reaches for your hands. He takes in your feature and recognizes the girl that he fell in love with. “I missed you so much. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for leaving you love.” You sighed and smiled warmly at him. “Jude, we were kids back then. You did what you had to, and it worked out for the best. I wouldn’t have asked for it any other way.” Jude caresses your hand and kisses your palm. “I left because I was scared you wouldn’t follow me. After the breakup, I realized I let my insecurities get in the way of us. If I could relive my life, I would.” You smile, and at that moment, you guys stare at one another, reliving high school memories.

“How did the talk go?” Pedri asked after you entered his car. You guys have just finished taking photos with family members, and your roommate went off with Gavi while your parents and best friend left in a separate car. “It was fine. We were catching up,” you shrugged. Pedri smiled and kissed your palm before driving off. “I can’t wait to see all your childhood hotspots,” he says while looking around the neighborhood. Your boyfriend decided to stay for a while to spend time with your family. It was a good decision for both of you because you needed more time to see your childhood friends and family. With a clear mind and a happy heart, you intertwined your fingers with Pedri and drove to your parents' house.

Jude looks around the old stadium as he remembers his first time scoring for his school. He then stared at where you usually sat and cheered him on. He smiles, but the heaviness in his heart causes tears to roll down. After seeing you, he realizes how much love he still has for you and will probably have forever. If he could turn back time, he would’ve done everything differently and asked you to follow him. If you weren’t already happy with Pedri, he would’ve got on his knees and begged for forgiveness. But you are happy, and that is all that matters to him. Jude wipes the tears from his eyes and smiles to himself; if you’re happy, so be it. He then turns to the gate entrance to see his brother and Trent talking before they wave at him. He smiles at them and jogs toward them.

Part 2? Should reader end up with Jude or Pedri?

Part II: What Should've Been Us

#jude bellingham #jude bellingham fic #jude bellingham fluff #jude bellingham imagine #jude bellingham one shot #jude bellingham x reader #soccer #footballer imagine #england nt imagine #pedri barça #pedri x you #bellingham #jude x reader #pedri fanfic #pedri x y/n #pedri angst #pedri fluff

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pastafossa · 8 months

Text

Happy Birthday and a merry 6 years to TRT! 🎂 🎁 🎈 🎉 🍰

🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯

Some FUN TRIVIA FACTS:

TRT's sun sign is VIRGO and its moon sign is LEO!

After 6 years, its current wordcount is 932k words. If you put that in size 12 arial font, single-spaced, this would come to about 2000 pages, and even more if the pages were the usual mass market paperback size!

TRT is now 40 in cat years!

The Man in the White Coat is my tribute to the Mad Scientist trope common in scifi, which is one of my favorite genres!

It is old enough developmentally to tie its shoes! Keep going, TRT!

Ciro is partially inspired by John Marcone from The Dresden Files!

TRT shares a birthday with literary great Agatha Christie! Maybe I'll introduce poison-based murder into the fic in her honor...

The idea of seeing threads came to me after seeing a meme about red threads tying soul mates together. Everything that came after - the other threads, the thread world, how it works, is unique to TRT!

TRT is now longer than War and Peace, and Crime and Punishment combined! So if you've read all of TRT so far, then you have the perfect middle finger to anyone who tries to say you can't focus on longer stories!

The inciting penguin documentary that Foggy drunkenly watched (which led to him declaring Matt and Jane 'penguins') was about Adelie penguins specifically!

Jane has a leather jacket because I love leather jackets and think all badass characters should have a leather jacket! And so you should you! EVERYONE DESERVES A COOL LEATHER JACKET.

The long hiatus between Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 was because I had life things pop up. During that hiatus, I realized the plotline/ending needed some work, so I spent those two years outlining, and I also wound up doing a bunch of additional novel writing classes just because I wanted to learn. A lot of this wound up influencing TRT!

The grey threads are one of the only threads that no one has solved yet!

There are absolutely some bad people working for Cyrus James. There is also a guy named Kyle. He is there not for Evil Purposes (tm) but instead because this was the only place he could work that would allow him to pay off his student loans.

When I started TRT, I thought maybe 5 people total would read it. I was told five people total would read it by some shitty people. So I wrote it expecting five total people would read it, and told myself at least I'd enjoy it, and I could use it to learn. In other words: I had ZERO idea TRT would take off like this. None. Nada. Zip. AND LOOK AT US NOW, BABY. FUCK THE HATERS, 6 YEARS AND GOIN' STRONG.

Based on my outline, we're a bit over halfway to the end!

I hope you enjoyed these TRT funfacts. And I hope you know: this fic isn't just me. It's you, too. This fic has become so much larger than just me. It's the TRT playlist you've sent songs in for that keeps me inspired when writing. It's the fanart I look at to give me a boost. It's your sweet comments and likes and kudos and messages that encourage me when I'm sick or depressed. It's the people who've made friends over this fic, or who've been inspired to write fic themselves, adding beautiful works to the community that we all use to keep going. It's all of this love for both TRT and Matt, and I'm so happy that I've been able to contribute in at least a small way in keeping Charlie!Daredevil love alive even after the show's been gone for years now. I love you all so, so goddamn much. I love this fandom. I love TRT with all my heart. Thank you so much for being a part of these past six years through cancelations, through your high school and college years and beyond, through my ups and downs of moving and sickness and fiberglass and pandemic craziness, through late night chapter drops and wild twists and turns.

And I hope the next few years as we enter the second half of this story are just as amazing!

#the red thread

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milesdickpic · 8 months

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His Little Girl | Bradley Bradshaw x Reader P.77

Click here to see the master list

Hello, my lovelies! The long wait is finally (kinda?) over! I am finally posting the next part of the HLG series. I just want to thank everyone who is still here with me and reading my fics. You are all truly the best. Thank you to everyone who has stuck around and to the newbies, WELCOME TO THE FAM! I love you all so much. ❤️ Thank you for this extraordinary journey. Happy reading and enjoy besties! 💕

A/n: The moment we have been waiting for has arrived! It's Bradley's first day back home, but that's not the only reason this day is special! There are so many things that will unload in this chapter! Get ready for another emotional rollercoaster... 🫣🫢

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: crying, cursing, description of injuries and pain, sadness, anxiousness, signs of PTSD, some adult jokes, but also so much love 🥰

Please don't take my work, I will find you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Over the next couple of days, Bradley was progressing with his mobility and his ability to do things on his own. He still needed plenty of help, but he was doing so well. You walked into his room quietly as he stood at his bed packing things into his duffle bag. His arm was still in a sling to support his healing clavicle and shoulder. You knocked on the for frame and he turned around quickly. “Hey, baby. I didn’t know you were already here.” He chuckled and turned around. “Come and give me a hug, sweetheart.”

You smiled and went into his embrace. You kissed his scruffy cheek. “You know, I’m liking the facial hair, Brad. You look good.” You raised your brows.

He shook his head, “You mean this patchy ass beard. Baby, it took me 7 years to perfect this mustache. I think it’ll take me another 7 for this beard.” He chuckled and kissed your head.

You ran your hand over his facial hair that was coming in. “I think you should let it grow. It’ll look really good on you.”

He sighed, “I guess I can try, but everyone is going to make fun of how it looks. You know how hard it is for me to grow facial hair.” He laughed and continued to put things into his bag.

“Here, let me help you.” You started to fold his clothes neatly and place them into his bag. He stood there and watched you.

“Thank you, baby.” He kissed your temple. He sat on the chair next to the bed and started to put his shoes on. “Is everything ready to go? Can I finally get processed out of here? Can I finally go home to my own privacy and bed?” He chuckled.

You zipped up his bag, “It is, baby. You are all set to come home.” You smiled and turned to him. “Do you know what today is?”

He shook his head and chuckled, “I have no idea what day of the week it is, nor the date honey.”

You walked over to him and rubbed his cheek. You lifted his chin so you could kiss him. “Happy Birthday, baby.” You smiled and pecked his lips again.

He looked at you with wide eyes, “Holy shit, are you serious. I’ve been here for that long? It’s already my birthday, sweetheart?” He started to laugh. “Holy shit.”

You pecked his lips a couple of more times. “Bradley Bradshaw you are one crazy man. I’m glad you get to come home for your birthday.”

He smiled up at you and grabbed your hip, “Thank you, baby.”

You rested your forehead against his, “Show me the way home, honey.”

You pulled into the driveway of your house. Bradley looked up at the house and sighed happily. “God, I’m so happy to be home.” He was smiling so big. You looked over at him and rubbed his knee.

“Let’s get you inside, Bradley. Get you situated and comfy.” You leaned over and kissed his cheek.

He nodded, “I can’t wait to freaking eat. I’m raiding the pantry when we get in that house, baby.” He started to laugh.

Hangman came out and greeted the both of you. He helped Bradley down from the car and grabbed his duffle from the flat. He hugged Bradley tight, “Welcome home, big boy. You’re looking finer than ever.” He kissed his cheek hard and chuckled.

Bradley leaned his body weight against Hangman so he could help him to the door. “Dude, it feels so good to be home. I hope you cook your famous ribs because I am fucking starving, man.” Bradley laughed.

“Oh man. You are going to eat good today. I promise, Bradshaw.” Hangman rubbed his back as he helped him onto the porch to the front door.

You opened the front door and Hangman helped Bradley through the threshold into the house.

“Surprise!” Everyone yelled to surprise Bradley. He looked up with wide eyes and an even wider smile.

“Holy shit!” He looked around and greeted everyone that was over to see him.

A couple of Bradley’s pilots from work were there to celebrate Bradley’s birthday and to welcome him home. Phantom and the other admirals and their families were there, Mav, Austin, Phoenix, and Leia. Bradley was over joyed to see everyone. Everyone took turns welcoming Bradley home and wishing him happy birthday. After Bradley said his hello’s and thank you’s to everyone he came over to you and kissed your cheek.

“Did you plan this, sweetheart?” He furrowed his brows at you and looked at you in disbelief.

You looked around and smiled. “I had some help. It wasn’t just me.” You got up onto your tip toes and kissed his scruffy jawline. “Welcome home, baby.”

Mav went and settled all of Bradley’s things in yours and his room. Hangman and Austin helped Bradley up the stairs to the room. You followed behind making sure they were okay.

“Aww man, it smells so good in here. I am so freaking hungry. I’m going to eat everything in sight.” Bradley started to laugh as Austin held him to lower him onto the bed. Bradley sat back as you started to undo his arm sling. He hissed at the pain when his arm weight started to settle down.

Maverick brought up his medication and some water. Bradley took it as you continued to undress him.

“All right, well let us know when you are done getting him ready. I’m going to head back down before I start to blush.” Hangman chuckled and grabbed Austin’s shoulder as they exited the room.

Bradley put his hand on yours, “Sweetheart, I can do it. I have to try.”

“Brad..” He waved you off.

“Please. I need to try. If I need you I’ll let you know.” He gave you a smile and you nodded.

Bradley’s POV

I got up and went into the bathroom. I didn’t want you to see all my wounds. I was nervous and scared for you to see it. I hadn’t even fully seen them yet. Mav assisted me as you waited out on the bed.

I started to remove my pants and Mav placed his hand on my hips. “You got it, kid?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I got it,” I grunted as I dragged my pants off my legs. “Shit. Can you pull them off my ankles now?” I rested my hand against the sink’s countertop to gain my balance as Mav started to remove the pant legs from around my ankles.

I took a deep breath as I started to remove my shirt. “Damn. I should just cut myself out this damn thing.” I chuckled as I carefully removed the shirt from my wounded arm. “Ah FUCK!” I looked up at the ceiling and then closed my eyes tightly.

Mav rubbed my back, “Hey it’s okay. Take your time, Brad. No need to rush. It’s gonna take some time. You’re doing great.” He took the shirt from my grasp and put it into the dirty clothes hamper.

I hadn’t seen myself since before the accident. My breath was shaken. I was scared to look. As Mav was in the closet getting me some clothes, I walked over to the full body mirror on the sliding closet doors. I was looking down at my feet. I could feel my heart rate picking up. I looked up slowly in the mirror to see myself. I started to shake.

“Holy Shit,” I whispered as I examined the damage. I had a huge slice that was healing across my right thigh. I could see where the staples had been, each little dot of whiter skin in a perfectly lined row. I had minor cuts that were healed but the skin was whiter than rest of my leg and still raised as it continued to heal. I had bruises all over my groin from when the chute hoisted me up before I plummeted to the water. My hips had been bruised up and were healing. My skin looked yellow on them. I looked up my torso. The by far worst part of me. I started to lose my definition. My dad bod was definitely coming in from being bed ridden the last month. My torso was still black and blue from impact. It was so tender to the touch. I traced over the sutures I had near my broken clavicle. It was still sensitive and swollen to the touch. I examined my shoulder. Staples still heavily in it, I could probably set off a metal detector when I walked through it. It was still swollen, covered in dried blood, and bruised. What the fuck. Who the fuck was this. My neck bruises and abrasions were healing and not as noticeable. My face swelling had gone down, but I didn’t look like me.

I started to feel anxious. I felt sweat break out on my neck. I placed my hand over my eyes and squeezed them as all I could hear was Phoenix yelling for me. I let out a shaky sigh. “Holy fuck.” I whined out. I felt a hand on my back and the door open.

“Hey, It’s okay, Bradley. Let’s sit you down kid.” Mav helped me over to the bathtub to sit. He held my face in his hands. “Hey breathe with me now, all right?” I nodded in his embrace. We were breathing together.

“Is he okay?” Your voice full of concern.

“I’m okay, baby.” I shot you a thumbs up. “I’m okay.”

“I got him y/n. Why don’t you go down stairs and get the guys. He’ll be ready soon.” Mav shot you a smile as he continued to rub my cheeks in his hands. You nodded and left the room.

“Bradley, Hey. You okay?”

I closed my eyes tight and nodded, “I’m pretty banged up, Mav. I didn’t think I was this bad.”

He patted my cheek, “Hey, stop that. You look great. You are doing so well.” I gulped and looked up at him. He nodded. “You’re doing so good, kiddo. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

I nodded. “All I can hear is her yelling at me, Mav.” My lip started to quiver. “How do I make it go away?”

Mav furrowed his brows, “Hear who yelling, Bradley?”

“Phoenix.” I looked around the bathroom. “She was the last person I heard over the radio before I went down. The hurt in her voice.” I took a deep breath, “And Riot, he was in a panic. He ran outta flares.” I looked up at him. “How did you get through it… when it was you and I?”

Mav stood up and started to clean up my staples and stitches. “I just keep thinking about how you’re still here. I think about you being okay. It is hard. I have a lot of dreams about that day. I think of all the different possible outcomes that could have happened if something else didn’t go the way it did. So I know. It’s hard. But the best way to help yourself, well is to talk about it. Remember they are still here. They’re downstairs right now waiting for you.” He started to help me put on my shirt. “They’re here and you’re here. Lean on everyone, Rooster. I promise it’ll get easier. I’ll be here with you every step of the way.” He stood me up to help put some sweatpants on me.

I gulped, “How’d you do it with dad?”

He stopped for a minute and sighed. “It was hard. One of the hardest things in my life. I loved your dad more than anything. He was my best friend, you all were all I had left. I had to forgive myself. It took years for me to fully forgive myself for what happened with your dad. But with a lot of help, I was able to cope.” He sat me back down and started to put new socks on me. “It won’t be easy, Rooster. But it does get better.” He patted my cheek and helped me stand up.

There was a knock on the door. “You decent in there?” Hangman called through the door.

“Yea, he’s ready!” Mav helped put my sling back on my arm.

“Thank you, Mav.” I nodded at him.

He smiled at me and strapped my sling. “Hey. I’ll always be here for you, Bradley. No matter what.”

Hangman and Austin helped me back down the stairs. Everyone was excited when I came back down. Leia came over with her teddy bear.

“Daddy look! Still has your wings!” She smiled up at me while holding the bear up to me.

I took the bear and gave it a hug. “My girl, thank you for always keeping them safe.” I leaned down and kissed her head. I gave her back her bear and she gave it a hug.

“Daddy, I made you a plate of food!” She grabbed my hand and pulled me eagerly over to the table.

“Hey, baby, not so hard with your daddy, please!” You called over to the both of us.

I laughed and shot you a wink, “I’m okay, sweetheart. She’s just excited. It’s okay.”

Leia pulled out my chair for me and gestured for me to sit. “Here, daddy!” She was so happy.

I chuckled and kissed her head, “Baby, you shouldn’t have to pull my chair out for me, but thank you so much, sweetheart.” I sat down and she tried to push my chair in. I chuckled and I helped scoot in while she pushed.

She got on her tip toes and pulled my shoulder down to kiss my cheek. “I’ll go get your plate, daddy! Sit tight!” She skipped to the kitchen. I had small talk with a couple of the other pilots that were at the house. “Daddy!” Everyone got quiet and brought their attention to Leia.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Daddy, what do you want to drink?” She looked over and through everyone to make eye contact with me. She was smiling so big. She was the cutest little babe ever.

I chucked, “I’ll just have some water, sweetheart. Thank you.”

“Yes, sir!” She came over and gave me my plate of food and a cup of water. She kissed my cheek, “There is another plate! I’ll be back!’

“Another plate!?” I was shocked and looked down at the plate already full of food. She placed the second plate of food down and she nestled herself into my arm.

“Eat up, daddy! We have to get you big and strong again!” She kissed my arm a couple of times. “Do you need help with eating, daddy?” She peered up at me through her lashes.

I kissed the top of her head and smiled. “I’m okay, baby. You’ve already done enough for me. Thank you so much, my Leia Rey.”

I leaned down to lay my head on her head when she pulled me down a little further. She pushed her forehead to the side of my head, “If you need anything else, make sure to let me know, Daddy.” She kissed my cheek and disappeared into the crowd of friends.

Phoenix reached over and grabbed my hand. “I’m glad to have you back home, Bradshaw.” She gave me a smile as we all started to eat.

After we all ate, I went into the backyard to get some fresh air and enjoy the sunset. I felt someone rub my back. I turned around and saw Riot.

“Sir.” He gave me a weak smile.

I patted his shoulder and pulled him under my wing. “Beautiful, isn’t it, Riot?” I was looking out to the sunset.

“Yes, sir. It’s a beautiful view.” He cleared his throat. “Sir.”

I chuckled. “No need for formalities, we are outside of work, Riot. You can always just call me Rooster.” I patted his shoulder.

He nodded, “Rooster, I hadn’t had the chance to thank you.” He looked at me with sadden eyes.

“Thank me?”

He stood in front of me with his head down. “I haven’t thanked you properly for saving my life.” He took a deep breath, “You could have let me meet my own faith. I was out of flares… but instead you bit the bullet for me and risked yourself.”

“Riot.” He looked up at me, “You don’t need to thank me. I wasn’t going to leave you out there like that. It wasn’t your fate. I promised myself and you all that I would get you all home safely. At any cost.”

He started to break down, “Sir. I thought I lost you. My heart felt like it was going to explode, knowing that you had your pregnant wife and daughter waiting for you at home.”

“And you have your family waiting for you at home. Your parents and your boy.”

He wiped his tears, “Sir, I owe you my life. You saved me when you didn’t have to. And well now you’re here.”

I chuckled. “Here?” I looked up and looked around me, “Riot, I’m alive and here with you, everyone, my family.” I patted his shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up please.”

“But, Rooster.”

I shook my head, “Riot. I’m serious. I’m here. You’re here.”

He nodded. “Thank you for saving my life, Rooster.”

I smiled and pulled him in to hug him, “I’d save your ass any day, kid.” I started to laugh as did he. “Let’s get back in. I think I’m ready for some cake.” I patted his back as we walked back into the house.

Leia came running to me and grabbed my hand again. “Daddy! It’s time for your cake!” She started to pull me over to the table. “Okay! Okay! I am ready for it, little Leia!”

I sat down in the chair. “Daddy, is it okay if i sit in your lap? Or will it hurt too much?” She gave me the famous puppy dog eyes.

I welcomed her into my lap, “Of course you can, sweetheart. I’d be sad if you didn’t.” Leia hopped into my lap and got comfortable. “Daddy, you’re really going to like your cake. I picked it out for you.” She whispered into my ear.

I placed my hand on her belly and kissed her temple. “Did you, baby? Oh I am definitely going to love it then.”

Mav brought over my cake it was chocolate cake with chocolate shavings all over the sides and chocolate drizzle on top. “Oh my god.” I was mesmerized. It looked so fucking good.

Leia whispered into my ear, “The inside is chocolate too, daddy.” She winked at me.

“Holy shit, Leia Rey. You know me so well, sweetheart.” I kissed her head over and over again. You came over and placed the candles on my cake.

“Damn, Rooster. One year away from 30.” Hangman laughed at me and held his beer to me. I shook my head at him.

“Thats one year less than you are.” I chuckled.

He narrowed his eyes at me, “Watch it, Bradshaw.” He started to laugh as he took a sip of his beer.

You placed a kiss on my cheek and lit the candles. “I added one for good luck, baby.” You winked at me. “Okay on three! One, two, three!” Everyone started to sing happy birthday to me. I swayed with Leia in my lap and sung it with her.

After the song was finished she turned to me and kissed my cheek, “Make a wish, daddy.”

I smiled at her, “How about you make one with me, baby. I have all that I need here.” Her eyes lit up.

“Okay…” She thought about it. “I wish for you to always be safe, daddy.” She was holding back her tears. I saw her eyes gloss over. “I love you, daddy.”

I kissed her cheek. “I love you, sweetheart.”

“Ready to blow?”

“Let’s do it, babe.” We blew the candles out together.

Everyone was cooing over Leia’s wish. I caught a glimpse of you wiping the tears from your eyes. You started to cut the cake and gave me the first piece, “Happy birthday, honey. I love you, always, Bradley.”

“Thank you baby. I love you, forever.”

Leia and I shared my piece of cake. She fed it to me. It was so good. “Leia Rey, you picked such a good cake. Thank you.”

“Aunt Phoenix and I picked it out for you.” She smiled at me.

Phoenix came to grab her piece for her and Austin, “You’re welcome, Bradshaw.” She gave me a hug.

I kissed her cheek, “Well thank you Auntie Phoenix and my little Vapor girl. It’s delicious.”

The party continued for the rest of the night. Everyone started to help clean up around 2000. After cleaning up, they all started to leave one by one. Austin and Hangman helped me up the stairs to our bedroom.

“You showering tonight, Bradshaw?” Hangman helped me sit on the bed.

“Yea. I’m gonna shower. Or probably bathe.” I sighed as I started to remove my clothes.

Hangman chuckled, “Do you need any help? Just don’t blush.”

I nodded unenthusiastically, “Yea, could you guys lend me a hand.” They started to help me take my clothes off until I was in my briefs. Austin removed my sling.

“Do you need help getting into the tub, Bradley?” Austin undid my sling and placed it onto the bed.

I gulped and looked at the bathtub in the bathroom. “I’m embarrassed for you guys to see me fucking naked. But, I do need help getting in. Please.”

Hangman shook his head, “I’ve seen you naked plenty of times. You think I care?”

I squinted my eyes at him, “You’re making me nervous now.”

Austin went to go and turn the water on. “We are all guys. No need to be ashamed. I don’t mind helping you out, Brad. I do this for a living.”

Hangman looked at Austin with wide eyes. “You what? You helped grown men get naked and put ‘em in tubs?”

Austin chuckled at Hangman’s analogy. “I’m a caretaker. Back in San Diego, I have patients that I provide at-home care for. I’m used to this.” He tested the water temperature. “It’s ready to go, Bradley. When you’re ready.”

Hangman helped me up and walked me over to the tub. I struggled to pull my briefs down. “Hey. I got you, Roo.” Hangman helped me out of my briefs and they helped me into the tub. I sat down and laid back in the warm water.

“Holy shit this feels fucking amazing. I haven’t had a proper shower in forever. Just sponge baths.” I laid my head back and relaxed.

You walked in and giggled. “You all having an after party?” We all turned around quickly to you.

“I- uh. We were…” Hangman was pointing at me and tripping over his words.

“We were helpin him into the tub, darlin. He wanted to take a proper bath now that he’s home.” Austin chuckled and wrapped his arm over your shoulders.

You nodded, “Thank you guys.” You looked at Hangman deviously, “You’re blushing, Jake.”

You started to laugh as he rolled his eyes. “How about you guys go help finish cleaning up. I’ll take it from here.” You smiled at the both of them.

“Hey, no it’s okay, y/n. We can help him out.” Hangman waved you off.

You hugged both of them and started to push them out the door, “I got it from here boys, thank you. Seriously.”

They left and you came back to me in the tub. “Baby, I can do it. I promise.”

You knelt down by the tub and placed your hand on my cheek. “I know you can, but just let me help, okay?” You kissed my forehead. “Just sit back and relax, Bradley. I’ll get you cleaned up.”

I sighed and leaned back. “I just need help washing my back, baby. That’s it.”

You giggled, “Just take my help, babe.”

“But you’re already doing so much. And you are SO pregnant.”

You shook your head, “Don’t under estimate me, Bradshaw.” You narrowed your eyes at me.

Mine went wide. “Baby, I would never.”

You grabbed a cup and started to fill it with water to pour onto my hair. It felt so good. You started to massage my scalp with the shampoo and I nearly melted under your touch. I let out a little groan.

“You doing okay, baby? Am I hurting you?” You brought your lips to my ear since you were sitting behind me.

I shook my head, “No, sweetheart. It just feels really nice.” You continued to wash my hair and then you rinsed. You added the conditioner and continued to massage my head. When you started to wash my body you were so gentle. I just wanted to fall asleep in the tub. I didn’t want to get out.

“You ready to get out, babe?” You smiled at me as you poured water onto me to keep me warm.

“No, but I know I should get out.” I started to sit up. “Thank you for helping me, sweetheart.”

You kissed my cheek and patted my face dry, “I’d do anything for you, Bradley.”

You went and got the guys so they could help me out. After I dried off you help me put my clothes on. You re-bandaged my shoulder and clavicle and helped me into bed. You set up a couple of pillows to help keep me elevated. Mav came in with my medication for the night. While I took my medicine, you went to go and get ready for bed.

“Leia is already down for bed. I put her down before bringing up his meds.” Mav smiled at you.

You kissed his cheek and got into bed. “Thank you so much, Mav. Thank you for helping out today.”

He winked at you and patted my leg, “I’ll see you all in the morning.”

I laid back and looked over at you. “Ready for bed?”

You smiled and got comfortable, “I am. I’m going to sleep so much better knowing you’re here next to me.” You inched closer to me.

“Come here. Baby.” I held my arm up and you nestled your self into my side.

“I love you, Bradley. Good night,”

“I love you, sweetheart. Good night.”

Your POV

You heard little mumbles coming from Bradley. You got up and looked at the clock. 1:30 AM. You thought that maybe he was in pain and was just trying to handle it. You sat up and placed your hand on his arm.

“Baby. Do you need more medicine?”

He started to fidget under your hand. “Riot…. Riot I got you…”

Oh shit. You started to rub his arm. “Baby. Bradley.”

“Fuck….No….I’m sorry…” He started move his head side to side.

“Bradley.” You turned your bed side light on. His eyes were squeezing and his hand balling into a fist. “Bradley. Honey. It’s okay baby.” You were rubbing his chest as he struggled in his sleep.

“PHOENIX!” He shot up hitting you with his shoulder. He was wincing at the pain he was in. He started to cry slightly as he held his clavicle and his chest.

You held your hand over your mouth and scooted closer to him. You laid your head on his shoulder and comforted him. “Hey. Hey, I’m here. You cradled his head in your arms. “It’s okay, Bradley. You’re okay baby. Riot and Phoenix are okay.”

He started to cry in your arms. “I’m so sorry baby. Did I hurt you?”

You shook your head and cupped his cheeks in your hands. You had tears in your eyes. “No, Bradley. You didn’t hurt me. You don’t have to apologize. You’re okay my love. It’s going to be okay.” You scratched at his head and cradled him against you. “You’re okay baby. It was just a dream. They’re all okay.” You placed kisses on his head over and over again. “I’m here, Bradley. I love you. I promise you are okay.”

He held onto you as he started to calm down. He was still shaking slightly in your arms. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

“Shhhh.” You shushed him and comforted him.

“Don’t apologize, baby. You’re okay. You are all safe, Bradley. I promise.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Babes! We are finally back 🥺 Thank you all for being so patient with me! I hope you are all doing well! Are you excited for Bradley to be back home? 🥹 I am! But he definitely has a long road ahead of him. #InDadlyWeTrust 🫶🏼 I'll see you in the next one, besties! 🫶🏼

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