#more of the birdies | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

crushribbons · 2 months

Text

𝖇𝖎𝖗𝖉𝖎𝖊, 𝖕𝖙. 𝖎𝖎𝖎

summary: Sebastian Sallow is an unusually skilled legilimens, it turns out. (series masterlist)

cw: 5.3k words, S M U T (18+ ONLY), implications of dub-con!, on that inception-type shit, penetrative sex, oral sex (f receiving), sebastian sallow i know the little shit you are, fem/afab reader. requests open

a/n: alexa play it ain't over by the black keys cuz.........xx laney

There was nothing else to be done.

At least, that was what Sebastian told himself. It had reached a point of total hopelessness.

There was nothing else to do except take her to bed.

He was already being driven mad by love and lust in equal measure when he ran into her outside the prefects’ bathroom, and the sight of her exposed, flushed chest when her dressing gown slipped down had sent him over the edge. Barreling along the corridor after she ran away from him with a cry of disgust and frustration, he hoped against all hope that his pajama pants weren’t putting his achingly hard cock on too much of a display. He pressed his towel over his waist and sprinted past the fifth year that was lamely scolding him for not heading back to his dormitory at this hour.

The library wasn’t open to the general student populous at night, per se, but Sebastian had always found limitations like timetables and hours of operation to be, well, limiting. He cast the charm for disillusionment over himself and strode past the two prefects who were flirting in front of the quietly splashing fountain.

He’d clocked the book that he snuck out of the library with only minutes later’s existence a few months earlier, on another nighttime venture through the Restricted Section. While running his fingertips idly across the spines that made up the Legilimency section, the shining foil on one tome had made his hand freeze. Legilimency and the Dreamer: Infiltrating the Sleeping Mind, for the Beginner.

When he’d first seen it, a pang of guilt and shame had shot through Sebastian as his mind immediately conjured up one perfect use for the lessons taught in that book. At the time he’d fled the library to stop himself from picking it up, proud of himself for exhibiting self-control and respecting the friend that plagued his own dreams. He had resolved with solid determination to never remove that book from the library or read its contents.

But then she’d gone and worn that dressing gown.

Faded, old cotton sliding off her perfect, porcelain-smooth shoulders while he gaped at her newly-exposed chest; the encounter hadn’t gone quite as he would have liked, but it was still causing blood to rush southward in his body as he exited the library wing and wove downstairs to the Slytherin dormitories, the book heavy under his arm. He tried to hide the title with his sleeve. The common room was blissfully empty, save for a few stragglers hunched over parchment and scribbling the tips of their quill down to the blunt. He ran up the stairs, pushing the door to his shared bedroom open quietly so as not to disturb anyone that was already asleep. The only sound was soft breathing, sighing, and snores, so he exhaled a small puff of relief and stowed his towel back in his trunk.

Curtains slid shut around his four-poster bed, Sebastian relaxed against his satin pillowcase, propping himself up on his elbows. The dormitory was darker than usual, as the moon that always filtered in through the windows was obscured by clouds tonight, so he muttered, “Lumos!” and opened the book that he’d expressly told himself he should never pick up. It would be wrong. She can’t control what happens in a dream. It’s a violation of trust. I should wait until the perfect moment and just tell her. I should not read this book.

But, there really was nothing else to be done.

Sebastian had to have her, he was sure of it, or he’d die. Until their awkward, semi-nude encounter in the Slytherin corridor, he had never seriously considered anything happening between them. But since then, she’d been behaving strangely around him. Ominis was convinced that she was attracted to Sebastian, but the latter knew better than that.

“She’s just embarrassed about seeing me in a towel,” he told Ominis as the two brushed their teeth two mornings after the incident. “You should have seen how she laughed at me.”

Ominis leaned over the sink and spat toothpaste into it. “Sure she wasn’t all…flustered about it?”

“Flustered?”

“You know how girls get.”

“You sure you do?”

The next time he saw her, Sebastian was quick to joke about the situation and set everything as usual once more. When she wiggled her eyebrows at him while Amit Thakkar burst into an unnecessarily-lengthy explanation of Gamp’s laws of transfiguration, he thought she seemed grateful for the normalcy between them. Grateful, and beautiful.

Fuck. It appeared his crush wasn’t going to be tempered by mere humiliation.

And now, the sight of her sweet skin peaking out at him as she blushed so prettily had pushed him to the brink. If he’d been struggling to be near her the past few weeks, it was nothing compared to the raging maelstrom of sexual tension he’d been weathering since passing her in the hall. He was taking her to bed. One way or another.

Lust flooded his brain as he flipped through the pages of Legilimency and the Dreamer. The book was dry and dull, and Sebastian felt his eyes drifting closed even in the wake of his impure thoughts. History and theory, two of his greatest adversaries, were abundant throughout the first few chapters, and he had almost given up, when his eyes fell upon the title of chapter five: Entering the Sub-conscious.

When planning a sub-conscious infiltration, it is important to understand first whether or not you have been given consent by the sleeping party.

Sebastian swallowed, guilt thick in his throat.

"If you have obtained consent, then you are ready to follow the simple guidelines outlined here to decipher and demystify the nightmares of your clients. First, and most crucially, your subject must be sleeping in a place they find comfortable. This author recommends conducting a legilimency session from the safety of the dreamer’s own bedroom."

He thought of her, sound asleep by now in her dormitory, that same angelic expression she’d had on her face when she slept on his shoulder through an entire Transfiguration class in place. She smiled, just a hint of a smirk, when she slept.

"Next, physical contact with the dreamer will aid you in your attempt to penetrate their thoughts. The sleeping mind, though at rest, utilizes just as many defensive tactics as the awake. If a session must be conducted remotely, a physical token of the dreamer’s or portrait of them can act as an acceptable substitute. The legilimens may still encounter difficulty, however."

Well, he certainly did not have a portrait of his desired stuffed into his trunk. Sebastian glanced bleakly at the sheets around him, hoping a sock or shoe of hers would appear by magic. No such luck. He almost returned to reading when he remembered what was currently sitting in the drawer of his bed-side table, tucked with care into an empty chocolate frog box. Sticking his head out of the curtains for a moment, he rummaged around in the drawer until he felt the box and pulled it open to reveal the tiny note she’d sent him by owl on the night the entire fiasco began.

A little birdie told me he liked cherry tart, so I saved him some. I’ll bring it to you in a bit.

He closed his fist around the parchment and shut himself up in his bed once more. Birdie. He couldn’t bear to hear her call him that anymore. Not when the only way he could fall asleep now was to wrap his hand around his cock and huff her name under his breath. Not when all his dreams lately ended with her weeping out the nickname he used to love as she came undone around him. Not when–He realized as he leaned back over the book that he was panting a little. In anticipation or triumph, he wasn’t sure.

"It is important to note that, just as a legilimens can manipulate the content of the dream they enter, so, too, can they manipulate their own appearance. Consider taking a form or otherwise altering your appearance in a way that will put the sleeping subject at ease. If the sub-conscious detects an unfriendly presence, it may block itself from you entirely. When you are ready to begin your dive into the sub-conscious, situate yourself somewhere comfortable and close your eyes, picturing the face of the dreamer and pointing your wand at them (or at the object you are using in place of physical contact).*"

The asterisk at the end of the sentence drew Sebastian’s eye to the bottom of the page, where the author had left an aside:

"Author’s note: As already discussed at length here, legilimency is a difficult and fickle art for most to grasp. Without a natural proclivity for it, the aspiring legilimens may find themselves frustrated by lack of progress. Use consistent practice to improve your infiltration and dream-deciphering skills."

He laid down in his bed, pointed his wand at the little scrap of paper pinched in his fingers, and said “Legilimens.” His eyes flew shut of their own accord and the image of her face swam before him, all watercolors and sparkling eyes and sunlight filtered in through stained glass. Even through his intense concentration, Sebastian couldn’t help the small smirk that pursed his lips.

There’s natural proclivity for you, you ancient dust trap.

She was sleeping in her bed, just as he’d pictured, but her expression as he watched her, seemingly through a thick, glass porthole in the ceiling above her, shifted to one of anxiety as she thrashed gently side to side. The sheets were twisting around her limbs and sweat was beginning to glisten on her forehead. He desperately wanted to leap into bed next to her and wake her, smoothing hair off her hot face and kissing her awake from the nightmare. This would have to do, for now.

He watched her for a few more seconds, then remembered what he was supposed to be doing. The physics of the whole situation threw him off as he tried to get his bearings. He felt like he was moving through cold water trying to reach her, and just as he figured out how to put one foot in front of the other, that foot tripped him up and he fell forward. He clenched his teeth and tried to stick out his arms against the stone floor, but instead, he found himself tumbling head over heels through a massive void. Just as he started to panic about what he’d gotten himself into with this idea, his feet hit solid ground once more. Though not quite stone…and not quite ground.

Sebastian looked at his surroundings. It was some sort of corridor; all he could make out were several dozen imposing doors and the faint swirl of smoke or steam that seemed to enshroud everything. Could this really be her dream? He had been anticipating something light and peaceful, perhaps her sitting in a field surrounded by friendly kneazles (her preferred way to die, she had told him many times). This setting looked far more nightmarish.

“Shit shit shit,” he muttered to himself, his voice reaching his ears, wobbly and distorted, after several seconds. He was still stuck in the thick fog of her subconscious. Regret that he hadn’t read more of the book before attempting this little nighttime visit was clawing at his ankles nervously. What had it said?

Suddenly, the witch of his wildest dreams dashed right in front of him, ignoring him entirely and sprinting at top speed but pausing briefly at every other door to yank it open, taking note of its contents, and wailing in despair.

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” she was moaning in terror, her dressing gown flowing behind her as she checked two more doors. The thin linen of her nightgown underneath the robe was sticking to her sweaty torso and showing far too much skin, even through the dark haze of fog obscuring Sebastian’s sight. He watched her mutter “Late! Late! I’m going to be late!” under her breath in a frenzy, and he couldn’t help but chuckle just a little at the sight. What was that Muggle book she’d read to him by the lake that one afternoon? Something about a little white rabbit that was always running late? The comparison was too perfect.

The white nightgown disappeared around a corner, and Sebastian remembered with a jolt that he was supposed to be following her. He glanced around himself one more time and determined that he needed to be more focused. He pressed his bare feet hard against the ground and his fingertips against the wall, grounding himself, and everything came into much sharper focus as he took a deep breath. Her subconscious let its guard down with noticeable haste, accommodating him with torches along the wall that lit the corridor and banished the fog away. If he hadn’t known better, he could have been in any secret passageway that Hogwarts had to offer.

He took off down the hall after her, his limbs no longer encumbered by the heaviness that had impeded them before. At the end of the hall before he could turn the corner, he came upon a huge, ornate mirror hung on the wall. It was scratched and spotted with age, but he could very clearly make out his own face, pale and desperate, chest heaving. A line from his guidebook poked at him: “Just as a legilimens can manipulate the content of the dream they enter, so, too, can they manipulate their own appearance.”

Put her at ease, put her mind at ease, he thought, What would she li–

Then he remembered, with almost a shout of triumph, her expression when he’d come back to school after the summer holidays at the beginning of seventh year. Living at Feldcroft alone during the summer made Sebastian prioritize the work of the estate over his own physical needs, and he’d forgotten to attend to a fairly large physical need before returning to Hogwarts. On their first evening back, his sweet witch had greeted him in the Great Hall with her mouth agape and eyes raking over his entire head. “What?” he’d asked hesitantly, running a hand through his hair. “Is there a grindylow hanging off my back?”

“Mm-um, no,” she replied. Her voice was a croak. “Your hair just looks…different.”

Sebastian swore. “I forgot to cut it before leaving! Shit! I always try to make sure it’s clean cut before school.” He knew he must have looked crazy, disheveled, unkempt, but he couldn’t understand why her eyes were still the size of the dinner plates on the long tables behind them.

“It–you shouldn’t, um, it–it looks really good, Seb,” she had rasped.

It looks really good, Seb.

With a smirk, he looked back in the mirror on the wall and saw that his hair was now just as it had been that very enlightening day, waves turning into full curls around his temples and brushing the bottom of his neck. He couldn’t even deny the little prick of ego that told him he did look really good. Perhaps he’d lose his shears after this. Some of the color was returning to his face, too, as he set off after her with more confidence this time.

When he next caught sight of her, she was pulling open yet another door, and he ran forward to try and catch up with her, but felt his heart drop when she smiled in relief and entered the room. “Wait–!” He reached out a hand, but he was still several lengths down the hall from her, and the door was quickly shutting behind her. In one last blind attempt to not lose her, he dove forward and, carried by the illogical nature of her dreamstate, landed directly behind her and wrapped his outstretched hand around her ankle.

“It’s me!” He tried to say, but his mouth wasn’t producing any sound. His vision swam and the torches behind them flickered low, threatening to blow out. She was scared. He tried again to reassure her, to relinquish her ankle and stand, but he was frozen, paralyzed by her mental defenses. Recalling the earlier technique that freed him, Sebastian pressed his face against the ground and breathed deeply, righting himself. The torches blazed back to their full flame.

Before he could do more than shakily climb to his knees, still using her ankle as support, the two of them were thrust backwards, away from the open door and hurled down the hallway they’d just run down. She shrieked and clawed at the ground while Sebastian tried frantically to yell her name to calm her, though he was close to a panic attack himself. Her subconscious must not have been completely fooled by the “friendly presence” of the unexpectedly skilled legilimens visiting it for the evening.

Finally, they slowed and slid to a halt, but when Sebastian looked up to take in their surroundings, he found them no longer in the torch-lit corridor, but in…

Fuck, Sallow, come on. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to visualize any other setting than his own bedroom at Feldcroft. She had never seen it for herself before, and would surely be suspicious if it suddenly made an appearance in her dreams. Perhaps the hair had been a bad idea.

But then he saw that she was still heaving shallow breaths, hunched over on the floor, and he ran to her. Kneeling in front of her and grabbing her face in his hands, he cooed, “Hey, hey, it’s alright, love, it’s alright! You’re safe, I’m here, everything’s alright!” He’d never meant for all of this to scare and stress her so badly. It was supposed to be a tranquil dream that he infiltrated, one so lovely and bubbly that the mere suggestion of a fuck from her dashing friend would be enough to send her into fits of rapture. Clearly, she was carrying some sort of tension with her throughout the day, if her dreams drifted to such harrowing places at night.

“B-birdie?” she sniffed as she gazed up at him, properly realizing who her captor/savior was for the first time.

“Yeah, it’s me, baby, you’re okay,” he murmured, smoothing a thumb over her cheek and catching the tear that hung there and wishing his cock hadn’t stiffened. She dug her fingers into his pajama shirt and tried to gain control of her breathing. She looked so tiny, so fucking vulnerable, that he couldn’t believe he’d ever thought about–

She launched herself fully into his arms and kissed him. Sebastian’s eyes flew open and took in the Slytherin Quidditch team poster that he had stuck to the top of his canopy in second year. “Fuck!” he yelled, and one of his roommates snorted in their sleep, disgruntled. The shock had shot him straight out of her dream and back to the real world. Before he shut his eyes once more, he cast silencio over his bed, lest he wake up and scream again.

When he next opened his eyes, she was still kissing him. Oh, what a lovely night to discover that he had impeccable legilimency skills.

He recovered himself by pressing a hand into the stone of Feldcroft’s floors, and he felt everything sharpen and come into clearer focus again, including the little sounds she was making as she licked his bottom lip.

“Oh, God, sweetheart,” Sebastian groaned, taking her face in his hands again and making sure her lips stayed pressed against his forever. It was every bit of the heaven he had envisioned. Three years of pining after this woman had set a lot of expectations in his head that he was sure were unrealistic. But she felt just as good, hell, fucking better than he had ever imagined.

He stopped caring about maintaining his composure when her wandering hands slid down his front and came to rest on top of his painful erection. “Fuck, wanted this for ages, fuckin’ love you,” he grunted, embarrassment a distant memory. Why had it been so awful that she’d seen him close to naked? As she unbuttoned his shirt and shoved it off his shoulders, he found that he couldn’t recall. Seemed like she wanted to see him naked very badly, now.

Apparently, she did, because his clothes were inexplicably gone before she’d even reached the last button. “I like dream you,” he muttered as he laid her back against the ground and slotted one of his now-bare knees against her hot core. “She doesn’t make fun of me so much.” He looked down at her, panting beneath him and begging him with her eyes to take care of her. She didn’t seem to be able to hear him very well, the ends of her eyebrows drawing together in confusion as she watched his mouth move. Oh, well. She was enjoying herself and he didn’t have to worry about making a fool of himself anymore than he already had.

The dressing gown that had set him off just hours ago was wrapped tight around her waist, taunting him. Sebastian did what he’d wanted to do right there outside the prefects’ bathroom and ripped it and the nightgown away from her body. They seemed to dissolve into steam or otherwise drift off her skin as he drug his fingertips down her now exposed form, which writhed with want for him.

Without a natural proclivity for it, the aspiring legilimens may find themselves frustrated by lack of progress.

Sebastian was grinning when he pulled her legs up, tossed one over each shoulder, and dove into her cunt with his tongue. She gave a positively sinful moan and wrapped her fingers in his newly-long hair. When she felt the extra length sliding through her hands, she gasped, “Oh, fuck, I love your long hair!” He bumped and rubbed her clit with his nose in response, somewhat to elicit another pornographic cry from her and somewhat to hide the idiotic grin that hung on his face, covered with her own wetness. Her taste was so perfect on his tongue, he thought he might weep.

“You taste so divine, I knew it. Better than any fucking tart.” He hoped she hadn’t clocked the “I knew it.” Given that her only response was to wiggle her hips further up his shoulders so his face was pressed more flush against her cunt, he figured that she hadn’t. The image of her, sweet and thoughtful, holding the cherry tart for him outside his dormitory, popped into his head as he ate her out. Merlin’s fucking beard, do I adore this woman, he thought happily.

“You–” She was attempting to choke words out of her mouth as it lolled open with stupid pleasure. “You kn-knew it?” Sebastian only hummed and licked his tongue in a circle in response, which made her back arch. “Was…Is little birdie that curious about me?”

“Fuck, I love it when you call me that,” he growled, enjoying the relief of unloading all his secrets to her in this isolated setting. He’d thought about getting her in his own bed more times than he could count, but it had never gone this well, even in his fantasies.

After he’d made her scream his name three times using just his tongue, he lifted her off the ground and threw her onto his bed gingerly. He climbed on top of her while she reached and whined for him, throwing a leg over either side of her waist and wondering vaguely if her physical form was reacting to this dream as excitedly as her dream one was. Then he realized that he had no idea what his own sleeping body was doing in the boys’ dorm, and was very glad for the silencing charm he’d hastily thrown up.

The sheer weight of sinking into her made Sebastian’s head sag, dropping it onto her shoulder. “Oh, goddamn,” he whimpered. His cool exterior fell away as desperation took over and he whined through the feeling of dragging his cock back out of her. She wrapped her legs around his waist tight, locking him in and making him falter a little bit. His arms on either side of her shoulders held him up, and he noticed with a momentary sheepishness that they looked a bit more muscular than they might have looked outside of the dream. Anything in the name of her comfort, he thought to himself, and a devilish little “Ha!” slipped out of him as he began moving inside her again.

He took his time. It was a dream, he figured, so there were no real-world deadlines to be concerned about while he languidly fucked her. She occasionally would dig her nails into his back and demand he go faster, but he hushed her each time and focused on the way her mouth fell open a little each time his cock brushed her limit. After a few minutes (hours?) however, he found himself unable to maintain his lazy pace, his own needs creeping up on him with wicked subtlety.

“G-God,” she hiccupped when he began thrusting hard and fast.

“No, sweetheart, it’s Seb,” he grinned.

He leaned down and licked a hot trail from her collarbone up behind her ear and she moaned, a portrait of prettiness and pleasure. Her tits bounced with each thrust and he found himself staring unabashedly at them. She was too drunk on him to even try and cover herself from his gaze, but from the way she was ogling his naked body, he figured that she was alright with a little peeping.

She hiccupped again and huffed a piece of hair that had fallen in her eyes out of the way. “No–ah!” Her hands flew to his triceps and clutched them for dear life as he drove into her steadily. “Nuh-uh. M’birdie,” she slurred. Her face and body were drenched with sweat, as was his, and a drop fell from the tip of his nose and landed on her breasts. “Dirty birdie.”

Her giggle changed course and melted into a moan as he groaned and picked up his pace even more, chasing their highs for the both of them. “Shit, baby, come for me! I’m all fucking yours,” he cried over the sound of their hips slapping against each other repeatedly. She shrieked and threw a hand out, searching for something to grasp onto, but found nothing solid. Then her fingers closed around his run-down antique headboard, and he committed the image to memory like it was a religious rite. Inane syllables were trickling out of her mouth, but for the most part, she’d been struck dumb. Sebastian indulged in the trickle of pride that ran through him at the sight.

But he hadn’t gotten what he wanted yet, not really. The image that had been plaguing him since he first started harboring this nasty crush on his dear friend. The one that got him dangerously aroused if he even dared think about it. And if this was going to be their only sexual encounter (and there was no doubt in his lovesick mind that it would be), he wasn’t leaving without witnessing it firsthand.

So, just to be safe, he begged for it.

“Let me see you cry when you come real pretty, please? Hm?” He fucked her as hard as he could, and her body shook. Tears were welling up in her eyes. “Come on, I’ll be a good little birdie, I swear.”

Her tight walls clamped around him, hard, and he gave a strangled yell, his eyes squeezing shut.

When he opened them, the blasted, poxy, stupid, goddamn Quidditch poster was staring at him, instead of the flushed and fucked-out witch that he wished were still underneath him. He was on his back, panting like he’d just run the length of the castle, the note from her still clutched in his sweaty palm and the heavy legilimency book still open atop his stomach. Exhaustion dug its claws into his racing mind. He hadn’t realized how draining legilimency would be, even if the screwing hadn’t required any real effort.

Probably should have read one more chapter. He yawned and fell into the first dreamless sleep he’d had in months.

The following morning, he plodded into the Great Hall for breakfast feeling like his legs were made of tar. The few hours of sleep he’d gotten after his little legilimency practice session had not been nearly enough to refresh him, and after he’d woken up, he found the imagery from the dream playing on a permanent loop in his mind. Sebastian realized, as he ascended the stairs from the Slytherin dormitory with a sinking sense of dread, that the dream had been a horrible idea. He knew how perfect she felt now, and nothing would ever compare, he was sure of it. And if she was as happy with the experience as she had seemed to be…

But then, he argued with himself as he poured a cup of coffee from the hog’s head pitcher on the dining table, maybe none of it had stuck for her. Maybe she had awoken to no memory of the previous night’s dream, and the idea of hooking up with him hadn’t taken root quite the way he’d hoped.

Sebastian was still lost in his own brooding thoughts when someone sat across the table from him. He grunted wordlessly at who he could only assume was Ominis, his eyes still out of focus and staring out the window as he thought hard.

“Morning,” came a squeak back, and Sebastian almost fell out of his seat when he realized it was not, in fact, Ominis sitting across from him. It was her.

She looked awful, even through his lovestruck gaze. Her eyes were bleary, dark bags underneath them that indicated a fitful night of sleeping, and her skin was an ashen shade of its normal color. Her hair hung undone around her shoulders. Even her tie was tied incorrectly and wasn’t even underneath her shirt collar.

“Did you…not sleep well?” Sebastian asked, looking anywhere except at her. The eggs and toast on his plate were extremely interesting today. When she didn’t respond, he chanced a glance up at her. Her brow was furrowed.

“Yeah, I think I just had a bad–” Her eyes suddenly widened and her entire face, neck, and hands turned bright red. Sebastian’s insides contorted, nerves on fire.

“Bad dream? What about?” He cocked his head to one side and tried to play as stupid as he felt. Could she tell? Did she know? How could she? If she’d enjoyed the dream, why did she look ready to jump from the Astronomy tower?

She was stammering. “Oh, er, no…it wasn’t…I mean bad isn’t–just kind of…weird, I think.” Then she finally broke eye contact with him and looked down at her empty plate. “And a little inappropriate,” she muttered.

“Yeah?” Sebastian thought his heart might give out. He darted his tongue out to lick his dry lips. “Inappropriate how?”

She scowled at him and didn’t answer. He decided to push the enormous amount of luck he’d been granted the past two days.

Sebastian leaned forward, a conspiratorial grin tugging at his lips despite himself. “Come on, tell me! I won’t ask anymore questions. I promise, I’ll be such a good little bir–” “GoodBYE!” she cried, and leapt up from the bench as if she’d been hit with a blast of icy wind.

Really must write the boring old git who wrote that book a nice thank you letter, Sebastian mused, spreading jam on a piece of toast and sinking his teeth into it as he watched her tear out of the Great Hall with one last glance back at him.

pt. 4

masterlist

#oh my gosh have you heard of ending a series lanes!!!!#there's just always room for more birdie hehe :)#sebastian sallow fic #sebastian sallow x reader #sebastian sallow x oc #hogwarts legacy fic #laneywrites #sidenote just realized it ain't over would also be a great song to listen to whilst reading......i find the bassline positively steamy

271 notes · View notes

birrdies · 23 days

Note

Sorry to give you 80 options but you know me haha 🤩🤩🤩🤩

Scar rehearsed it twelve times.

Once for each step it takes to cross the rotunda. He can’t tell if it’s the building that’s not so wide or if it’s his own desperate steps that make it seem like such an inconsequential distance. Either way it’s stuffed to the brim with people and their wandering hands, fingers loosely grabbing at his biceps and drunken congratulations on strangers lips like a baited fish hook nudging his cheek.

It’s an inauguration after all— a hard-earned, highly anticipated one at that— so Scar can hardly blame them for their excitability. Any other time, he might bite that hook, just to see what comes of it, eager to taste something fresh. But tonight is not any other night.

Tonight, his sights are set elsewhere. A clear target— albeit one that’s spent most of the night on the opposite side of the rotunda, as if keeping a thirty foot radius from Scar at all times is necessary to his survival.

Grian.

He’s standing there, tucked against a marble column with one foot propped up behind him and donning a deep maroon suit that couldn’t have fit him better. He isn’t drowning in it, nor does it dwarf him either. The tightly-tailored jacket hugs a set of broad shoulders, muscles Scar never knew existed beneath the loose button-ups and sweater vests Grian drowns himself in when he’s at the office, too busy with his nose buried in blueprints to notice Scar’s wandering eyes.

Only now his nose is tucked in a flute of champagne that makes his lip curl when he gets a taste. His hair, frizzy with the summer’s heat, curls around his face and cheeks. The bridge of his nose is covered by a black matte mask studded with feathers around the edges, like some kind of showman corvid. But even with the mask, even six paces away, Scar can’t miss the coy tilt of Grian’s head. An avoidant gesture that’s betrayed by the way he keeps his chin high, his nose upward. He must feel Scar coming from a mile away.

So, when Scar gets within ear-shot— closer than you might think, given the crowd only growing rowdier as more and more empty flutes are collected on trays and replaced with full ones— he says it. Just as he practices, the words as smooth as honey but still somehow drowned out beneath the noise.

Thirteenth try is the charm.

“May I have this dance?”

Grian doesn’t turn to him right away, but he does flinch. Like he’s trying to decide if he can get away with pretending he hadn’t heard Scar.

Luckily, he comes to his senses quick enough to jerk his head Scar’s direction. Even with most of his face covered he can feel the dubious raise of Grian’s brow— his skepticism a palpable thing.

“Why?”

Scar tilts his head. “Why else would you come?”

“I don’t want to get fired,” Grian says, grimacing after another sip of champagne from the flute he’s barely made a dent in it.

“You think so little of me?” Scar gasps, clutching his chest in a flare of dramatics that has Grian’s lip traitorously curling— this time with amusement. “I’m wounded, Grian!”

“I dunno,” he says. “the message you left on my answering machine saying that if I didn’t come you’d fire me was pretty damning. Gonna fire me if I don’t dance with you too?”

“No, but I’ll pout about it loudly, Scar says, and with the way Grian groans, tossing his head back, you’d think it was a worse threat than unemployment.

He huffs, a small, frustrated sound he makes so often Scar’s not convinced he’s even aware he does it. But Scar savors it, the grin stretching his face almost painfully as he holds out a hand and waits for Grian to take it.

It doesn’t take Grian long to. He abandons his glass on the ledge at the base of the column and pushes himself off of it, straightening the slightly rumpled collar of his suit jacket and tossing a hand through his hair. Only when he’s rightfully fluffed, like a bird preening its feathers, does he take Scar’s hand.

Scar leads Grian to the center of the rotunda by the hand, the curious crowd splitting to make way for the mayor and his special guest. Grian shrinks under their gaze, head ducked and hand tightening around Scar’s, a reaction Scar doesn’t fully understand because he’s never wanted to show anything off more.

Grian, squeezing Scar’s hand. No one else’s.

For a moment, when he holds Grian’s waist with one hand and folds their palms together with the other, he can almost pretend like it’s everything he’s ever wanted.

“You’re gonna have to lead,” Grian mumbles after a moment of awkward buffering, his fingers relentlessly twitching in Scar’s hold. He then adjusts the hand resting on his waist, forcing it up higher a few inches. “And don’t get any funny ideas.”

Scar chuckles and takes the first step forward, bringing Grian along with him. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Grian hums skeptically. “Yeah. Sure.”

Scar's ideas are anything but funny, but he knows Grian well enough to keep his mouth shut and not push his luck. Not now anyway, when he can feel Grian's nervous pulse all the way through his palm. Sure, Grian's always been relatively allergic to parties and sequins and general fun most days, but he seems especially squirrely now. Even as they dance, Scar leading him through the shifting tides of the crowd, it's like his mind is elsewhere. Hands jittering, eyes skirting, feet shuffling and nearly tripping on Scar's shoe every other step. It's hard to get swept up in the music when Grian keeps him so relentlessly tethered. Corporeal.

"You alright?" Scar asks after the first song, making no move to let Grian go. "Y'know, having fun is kinda a prerequisite for dancing with Mayor GoodTimes."

"I'm fine," Grian says with a small scoff, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth when he pauses his hypervigilant gaze-sweeping to glance back at Scar. "You look like a turkey."

"Peacock," Scar corrects, lifting his hand from Grian's waist to brush the multicolored feathers layered over his own fine piece of velvet. Bdubs really is a genius, coming up with this whole masquerade idea. He's always been better with a mask to hide behind. Even if he's not the other guy right now, he can pretend he is. He can borrow his strength, his confidence, his charm.

"Of course. Plumage," Grian says with an thin, airy laugh. He lets Scar pull him back in as the next song sweeps them up. A slower tune that has Scar pulling Grian closer to him.

This close, beneath the glitter of the crystalloid-diamond chandelier, Scar can't help but stare back. His usual fanning of freckles are hidden beneath that black, feathery masquerade mask.

"You know," Scar says with little thought. "You kinda remind me of someone."

Grian's paranoid eyes dart everywhere but Scar's face when he asks, absently, "Hm? Who?"

The resemblance truly is uncanny. Those dark, paranoid eyes framed by dark black fabric, making every dark or nervous thought crossing them twenty times heavier. But it's not possible, no matter how bad Scar wishes it to be. His extra-curricular coworker wouldn't come ten feet within Scar willingly, let alone let one hand hold him at the waist and let himself be lead with the other. But a man can dream. Scar can fantasize about a time or place he can reconcile the two people inside him-- the mayor and the vigilante-- and have the two objects of his affection:

Grian and CuteGuy.

Scar parts his lips to respond before he thinks better of it.

He's here tonight as the mayor. Grian is here as his coworker, a part of his campaign. Nothing more.

Though these days, the lines are getting far blurrier.

"Aw, nevermind," Scar dismisses with a soft smile as he pulls Grian closer. "Must just be a trick of the light."

#the only thing you should be apologizing for is giving me so many amazing options and not letting me do more than one /silly /silly #birdie writes #desert duo #scarian #gtws #grian #desert duo fic #scarian fic #hermitshipping #trafficshipping

55 notes · View notes