#they keep stealing my stuff. which is fine

[allroseshave-their-pricks]

My roommates keep stealing my tools because they don't have any, so I'm curious

[oshaviolater]

i feel like i need to set boundaries. for my own sake.

[vanishingcherry]

YN YLN and Charles Leclerc Take a Couples Quiz

pairing: charles leclerc x reader

author's note: this has been in my drafts for wayy to long, so ive decided to just finish it off and post it. im sorry lmao but i just couldn't watch this rot away in my wips any longer.

masterlist

๑ ⋆˚₊⋆────ʚ˚ɞ────⋆˚₊⋆ ๑

The video cut to you and Charles, sitting opposite each other in front of a yellow to red gradient, smiling at the camera.

"Hi! I'm YN", you say cheerfully.

"And I'm Charles"

"And we are here to take a couples quiz!"

You are handed a stack of questions from a person off screen, and turn towards Charles.

"Are you ready?"

"Is that the first question?" he retorts.

Your face drops, now showing slight annoyance but there is still a small smile you try to hide. "That's it. Minus 1 points."

"Oh c'mon! That is not fair."

You turn to argue but the video cuts to a different scene in which you ask the actual first question.

"What things do I have, of yours, that are my favourite?

He looks up in thought before chuckling and replying. "Theres a lot, you steal my stuff all the time."

You grin. "Yes, but what's my favourite?"

"My shirts? No wait! My bracelets?" He asks.

"Yeah!" you exclaim. Turning to the camera you add. "He gets so many bracelets from fans and they are all so pretty. We keep them in a bowl on our dresser so I like to take a few whenever I go out."

Looking back at Charles, you add. "You didn't know the answer, but you still got it right so I think you deserve half a point." The staff behind the camera gives you a thumbs up, noting it down for when they would edit the video.

"Ok! Next question- which song of yours is my favourite?"

He looks at you, his eyes widening with a confused expression on his face. He looks at the camera crew and then back at you.

"C'mon, I only have 2 it's not a very hard question."

"Then answer it." you reply, looking at him with a small smirk.

"Fine. Uh, AUS23."

"Wrong!" you exclaim, laughing at the way his jaw drops in surprise.

"Then what? I know its not Miami."

"Its the one you wrote for Baku." you slyly say, knowing fully well that he hadn't released it and you were possibly the only one other than him to have heard it.

You look down at the cards you had been given, reading off the next question. "What is the first thing I eat in the morning?"

You see his smirk growing in your peripheral vision and cut in before he answers. "If you dare make a joke, I will murder you."

He laughs at that, chuckling as he looks up to think. "Um. Breakfast? It's different things every morning, but if I wake up before her then I make cereal."

Noticing the evident confusion on the faces of the cameramen, you elaborate. "It's the only thing he's allowed to make without me present. The last time I let him cook alone, he burned the pancakes and half our kitchen."

Turning red at the story, he interrupts. "Okayy, next question amore."

"Which side of the bed do I sleep on?"

"Left."

"If I could get a tattoo of something, what would it be?"

"A bouquet of flowers. The flowers would be your favourite and my favourite together."

You are shocked at his response. "How did you remember that? I told you that ages ago!"

He smiles slyly to the camera. "That is why I am the best boyfriend, there is no need for these silly questions I am already the best. She told me so in be-"

"Right. Next question." You cut him off, eyes widening as you figure out where he was going with the statement. "This is the last one. If I could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?"

"Oh this is easy. Italy. You are always talking about how much you love it. But you also love Monaco and France so depending on how you feel, one of those three."

"Well.", you look at the camera, "I think that answer deserves 2 points." Handing your questions off to the side, you turn to Charles who has started reading the first of his questions.

"If I had a ticket to anywhere in the world, where would I go?" he reads. "This is similar to yours", he mutters.

"Home", you say confidently. "He's a mama's boy, tries to go back home as much as possible."

He blushes slightly before nodding to the camera. "Yup, 1 point."

"What was I wearing on our first date?"

You reply quick as lightening. "A shirt and pants. Very gentlemanly, I remember thinking, probably the best first impression I've had of a guy."

His eyebrows raise at the confession, cockily tilting his head in the direction of the camera. "You heard her! Next, what is something I hate?"

"A lot of things, Char."

"Is that your final answer, cherie?"

"Um." you pause. "Oh I know! When manipulate stuff that you say. It makes me really mad too. It gets really tiresome when they take stuff that Charles has said that turn into into a different story altogether."

"Thats true, I do hate that." He smiles at you, reaching over to squeeze your hand once to say thank you.

"How many kids do I want?"

"3, because you have 2 siblings. But, you said you want as many as I am comfortable with!"

"Of course, amour. You're the one whose going to be carrying them, your choice is more important here. What is something I get annoyed about?"

"Oh, when Seb and Carlos beat you at those Ferrari games you play."

His jaw drops in faux offence, shaking his head as he reads out the last question on his cue card.

"What is one my hidden talents?"

You look straight at the camera, not dissimilar to The Office. A smirk grows on your face and the lens zooms in. In the background Charles can be heard complaining.

"Oh I see! You can make these jokes, but I cant?"

The video cuts to the wider angle once again, you and Charles wave at the camera.

"Thanks for watching our couples quiz! I think it's clear that I've won."

Charles rolls his eyes, eyes shining with admiration and love for you. "Bye everybody."

Comments:

charleslover: OH MY GOD!! THEY ARE SO IN LOVE IT KILLS ME

ynandcharles: their facial expressions always kill me

username89: where do i get a charles leclerc bcs i will willingly offer all the money i have

doratheexplorer16: their love for each other hurts

[fatesundress]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He evidently does not.

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

You narrow your eyes. “‘Scuse me?”

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

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

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

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

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

That decides it. Flotsam still floats.

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

…It’s just that he’s insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I wonder why.”

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

“What, Tom?”

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

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

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

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

“Well, they’d be out of his quill.”

“Oh my God, Tom, shut up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Curiosity—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The worst of the world has impeccable timing.

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

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

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

BOMB’S HAVOC IN CROWDED PUBLIC SHELTER

MOTHERS AND CHILDREN AMONG THE CASUALTIES

DAMAGE CONSIDERABLE, BUT SPIRITS UNBROKEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An altercation.”

“Very good, that is what I said.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Perhaps someone else has,” Tom suggests.

“What? Malfoy?”

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

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

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

“A professor?”

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

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

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

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

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

You consider it a warning.

Tom does not.

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

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

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

“So?”

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

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

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

“Are you stupid, Tom?”

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

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

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

Tom acts stupid.

Dumbledore knows.

It all happens very fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I —”

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

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

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

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

“So nothing novel then.”

“D’you want me to blast you again?”

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

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

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

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

“Tom.”

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

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

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

“I am half-drowned, dickhead.”

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

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

The day everything changes starts the same as any. 

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

Tom has cracked the book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have no need.”

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

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

“You’re not muggle-born.”

“No, I’m not. And Dumbledore knows.”

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

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

“Why would he lie?”

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

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

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

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

“Are you trying to murder me?”

“I might.”

“You’d be the first suspect.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Tom.”

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

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

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

“Should I?”

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

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

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

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

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

Summer blisters when it comes.

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

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

A stupid remark. You fervently ignore it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You always are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t argue,” he says thinly.

“You’ll get sick.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are regardless. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why did you tell him, Tom?!”

“Why?” he deadpans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are not his keeper. You know that. 

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

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

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

What? Sorry. What’s going on?

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

You’re almost positive you did not.

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

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

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

Your contentment is remedied quickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s that?”

“No one would be senseless enough to try.”

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

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

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

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

It happens again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You take to the library.

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

The third sign is the end. 

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

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

And he’d killed Myrtle Warren.

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

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

He’s something else entirely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve been good at it.”

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

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

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

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

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

He sees all of you.

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

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

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

He stares at you. There’s nothing there.

“Tell me, Tom.”

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

“I cannot.”

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

It’s late winter and it’s too cold.

“You killed her,” you say quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

“You told me to change things —”

“You killed someone! Can you understand that?”

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

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

“Do you want me to lie?”

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

“Her death is the first step to —”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“...What?"

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

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

“Myrtle was there,” Tom remedies.

“How lucky for you.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought I would have time.”

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

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

Fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Very cogent.”

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

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

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

“You have lost me, Tom."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You tear the envelope open and pull the letter out.

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

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

Be well.

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

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

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

Thank you, Sir. Whatever you need.

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

You find that to be true.

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

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

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

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

Teacup to gerbil — to cat, and inverse.

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

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

Due February.

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

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

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

You nod. “I hope… Good luck, Sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You drink, and don’t look away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ministry worker swallows. Dumbledore smiles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I take that back.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indifferent it is. 

“Can I help you?”

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

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

“Am I?”

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

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

Indifference effaced. You’re angry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is Mari?

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

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

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

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

“Well then —” 

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

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

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

“That would be wise.”

He’s still looking at your lips.

No one else is looking at you at all.

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

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

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

“I haven’t protested.”

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

“But you will.”

His lips touch yours. “Yes, I will.”

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

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

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

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

“You still lost me.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

He pauses for a moment. “I know.”

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

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

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

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

“My door is always open,” he says.

He lets you go.

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

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

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

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

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

My door is always open.

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

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

It’s a tempting door.

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

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

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

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

The Ministry job is truly, infinitesimally, insignificant. 

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

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

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

My door is always open.

Then you’ll slam it bloody closed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Renauld?”

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

“Well, yeah —”

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

“But McCormack sent him.”

“Where is it?”

“I… McCormack said that —”

“Where is it, Flack?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God! Fix. The muggles.”

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

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

“Heal their wings,” you say without greeting.

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

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

“Who authorised you?” he hisses.

“I did.”

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

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

You were completely out of line and utterly right.

It isn’t something people like you are allotted.

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

And… he does.

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

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

There’s really no choice but to promote you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emilia punches Renauld in the arm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Alves, I’ll have you know —”

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

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

You roll your eyes, taking a drink.

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

But something about it itches.

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

You are green, through and through.

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

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

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

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

That makes it much worse when you sleep together. 

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

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

“Yes.”

“Right.”

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

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

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

You’re incredibly daft about it.

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

The itch exacerbates.

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

You wake up and he isn’t there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

R.R

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

You return to Hogwarts posthaste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” she hums. “Oh…”

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

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

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

But you do, because he told you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought your door was always open.”

You see his posture change from just his silhouette.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes."

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

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

“I earned this,” you hiss.

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

“Fuck you.”

He smiles. “There you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d need a Vow for that.”

You laugh. “I’m not that desperate.”

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

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

“A Vow.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tea, then? Biscuits?”

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

“Hm. Terrible shame.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Scout’s honour, Riddle.”

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

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

“I should have killed you,” he repeats.

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

“Yes,” you agree.

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

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

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

He was your first in everything but this.

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

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

“How long?” he asks thickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“N-no.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A finger presses inside and you moan.

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

“Doesn’t make me yours,” you breathe.

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

Oh, fuck.

He makes a sound of approval. “Good.”

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

You’ll take it, won’t you? Yes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Will you give me more?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe you already do.

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

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

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

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

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

You whimper.

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

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

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

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

“You can — uh — you can — ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[dcxdpdabbles]

Danny and the Fan Blog part 2

Danny is trying to get a picture from the Gotham Bridge of its sister city, Bludhaven. He has dropped his invisibly, sure that being on the edge of a dangerous out-of-the-way ledge will keep unwanted mugging away.

He had flown down to the bottom metal part of the arch right smack in the middle- still far from the water but lower than where the cars and people were.

He sinks to his knees, hoping the bridge's light can get his shadow against the waves for an epic piece. Danny aims his lens, adjusting the focus again, and then presses the button.

At the exact moment, he does, a boat out rushes from underneath the arch of the bridge, and a body flings itself off the bridge's edge above him. The person twists masterfully midair, landing on the boat's deck with a soft thump and not a wasted movement.

Danny's mouth drops open, watching the boot disappear into the horizon before scrambling to see the photo.

It's gorgeous.

The water is highlighted by the golden glow of the street lanterns, and they bounce off the sleek black boat, with the skyscrapers of Bludhaven painting the perfect drop back. But what ties the picture together is Red Robin mid-fall, half twisted and arms above his head that its hard to tell if hes a fallen angel or a rising one.

He's got a half smile on his face, black hair blowing in the wind and Danny breath catches.

It's the best picture he's ever taken.

He stares at the screen of his camera, wondering how he could have been so lucky to have captured the perfect moment. Danny won't even have to do too much editing. It's ready to be posted right now.

He was so excited to share it that Danny abandoned his place, turning invisible and flying back to his apartment. He arrives to find Jazz working on her homework on the kitchen table, but her hand rests on a ghost gun until he drops his powers and becomes invisible.

Her face lights up at once, and her hand lifts from her weapon. "Danny! How was the photos tonight?"

"Only got one." He admits, sprinting forward to show her, "But look at which one!"

He brings up the image from the memory card, displaying it proudly. Jazz mouth slacks. "Woah, Danny, that's amazing! He looks so good in it! How on earth did you manage to get this?"

"Luck, really." He grins, reaching for a plate with apple slices and peanut butter that Jazz likely set out for him. It is his favorite snake.. "I was at the right place at the right time."

"And where exactly was this place?" He winces at the tone, he knows she doesn't like him taking too many risks, but it's not like he's in any real danger. Even the Meta collars that canceled people's powers would never work on him. Danny is a ghost, and no one has the technology for that unless someone finally starts taking his parents seriously.

Vlad has been fine since Jazz convinced him to see a therapist. He is currently in the ghost zone at some mental hospital retreat that has been doing wonders for him. They visit whenever chance they get.

"I may have been under the Gotham Bridge."

"Trigate Bridge or Brown Bridge?"

"There is more then one bridge?"

"Danny," Jazz sighs. "There are four bridges."

Danny shrugs, taking a bit from his snack, and starts his laptop. He's sending the photo onto his blog from his camera, watching the photo download with anticipation. "I don't know Jazz. I ignore stuff like that."

"Well, maybe you should. You have yet to learn how important it is to pay attention to the things around you in this city. Danger is around every corner. Just this afternoon, someone tried to steal my phone!"

Danny's head jerks up. "They what?"

"I know! I was just minding my business reading a fascinating article on child development in the tablet era when some thug walked right up to me with a gun. I would have handled it trust me, his stance was pathetic at best, but Red Hood came to my rescue." Here Jazz's face reddness and Danny has a moment to wonder if he could take Red Hood in a fight. Maybe. He's sure he would win but it would be a close call.

He would do it, too, anything to keep no good punks away from his sister.

Jazz sees the face his making and rolls her eyes. "What? I'm allowed to drool over boys every once in a while. Just like you do."

"I do not droll!" Danny shouts offended.

Jazz gestures to the laptop screen, uploading the photo onto his blog. "Sure. And you just happen to stare at Red Robin's photos for the artistic application."

"I-I do! I took them!" Danny shutters, watching his sister's face break into a teasing smile. He feels his own lips pull upwards against his will and suddenly, they are laughing. It's strange, how at ease they both feel here.

They were never this carefree back at their parent's home. The realization makes Danny feel slightly guilty for noticing- because it wasn't like his parents didn't love him- but there was always tension at home. Even before the accident, he knows now that it wasn't healthy.

Jazz must have felt the change too, because before while she was racing towards adulthood- always strung so tight and nervous- she missed out on being a typical teen. Danny never had a chance to sit down with her and gush about boys, nor had she ever prioritized making friends.

Sure, Jazz was pretty, brilliant, and basically the pride of Casper High, but Danny never noticed she had no friends. She never hung out with people at the mall, she never got invited to go out, and she never texted funny memes to others back home.

In Amity, people knew of and respected her, but no one was close to Jazz. Maybe that's why she got so excited to be part of Team Phantom when she first found out.

Jazz Fenton may have been the intelligent sibling, but Danny Fenton was the social one, leaving her feeling crippling lonely while he had his two best friends.

He knows that now.

"Speaking about drolling over boys- how's Jason?" Danny teases just as Jazz's phone buzzes with a new message. The notification displays Jason's shy smile before Jazz yanks it protectively close to her face.

Jason Peter is someone Danny can approve of instead of that thug Red Hood. Jason and Jazz met at one of their classes at the beginning of the semester when Jazz was still unused to the city. She always went to class ten minutes before it started and read to pass the time instead of speaking to her college mates.

She had been reading Pride and Prejudice- one of the fancy covers kind Vlad had gotten her- and Jason had practically teleported to her table gushing about the artwork. Then, when he sat down, the two broke into a healthy debate about the characters.

Jazz admitted to him later that she was surprised by a man in a leather jacket with a white streak in his hair and multiple piercings in his ear having such in-depth character analysis of her beloved novel.

They've been hanging out ever since.

"He is fine, thank you." She huffs, typing a response to the text. Danny places his chin on his hand, smiling as her eyes soften. "He asked me to see a play this Friday. Or, well, he said he was going to one and wanted to know if I wanted to come along."

Danny perks up. "Like a date?"

"I don't know. Maybe?" Jazz nervously plays with her hair. "He made it sound like we were just hanging out. Do you think he meant it like a date?"

"It could be either way if he didn't clarify," Danny admits, then smiles to settle her sudden anxiety. She always doubted herself about spending time with people outside the family or Team Phantom. Doubts that were the result of her upbringing. "But why don't we go shopping tomorrow? Get you a nice dress, and I'll do your make-up. Once we're done, he'll wish it was a date!"

Jazz's smile may be wobbly, but it was there, and it was real. They chat more about the play and what she should wear. Danny forgoes any black, claiming it's too fancy for a first date, and trades ideas for her outfit.

Neither notices that the photo has finished uploading or that people are already commenting and losing their minds.

Nor did they notice a particular hacker with the handle- Oracle- attempting to break into his computer only to be booted out by Technus' system. It flings Oracle to the closest computer system that is close to his.

Somewhere deep underground under a particular mansion. Oracle panics, thinking that Phantom piggyback rides her signal to the cave and quickly shuts everything down. She bites her lip before picking up her personal phone and calling Bruce.

"We have a problem."

Else where Tim is helping Dick with an out-of-control gang. He isn't aware that a photo of him has just circulated through Gotham nor of the sudden new simps awaiting him.

(Lady Gotham laughs)

[n3rdy247]

HELLOO!!

can i just get a john dory x female reader! headcanons!

john dory met while crashing the wedding and immediately started to flirt with dispite just meeting her. 🫣

THANK YOU!!

HIYAAA!! CAN YOU??? 🤔🤔🤔

girl be so fr OF COURSE YOU CAN!!!

ALL ABOAAAARD THE JOHN DORY X FEM!READER HCS!!!!! WOOOOOOOOO

Okay, so, you know the whole 'watching a cute, romantic ass wedding' plans everyone had for today? Just...watching two bergens have a nice, uninterrupted marriage?

"STOP THE WEDDING!!!"

well fuck those plans. ★ Starting off the bat, when he was literally parkouring his way down that building which just happened to be the MOMENT he noticed you from the crowd, he couldn't help but throw a wink your way right after (even though he had his goggles on, that stupid mf) which led to him face-planting to the floor because his ass was NOT paying attention to stick the landing. YIKES. ★ He also DOES notice when you are at the edge of your seat to hear what the hell is going on. Apparently, he was Branch's brother (figures since both are fine ash, MUST be in the genetics), he was in a band, and his other hot brother was in danger?

remember the wedding? yeah me neither atp

★ He can't help but steal occasional glances at you when the others talk, and when he does, his smile almost seems to widen, even if it's just for a split second. He just saw you, yet look at you go! Making him all giddy and shit inside 🤭 ★ And whenever Poppy and Branch turn their backs to discuss the whole situation, you just KNOW he would be smirking at you with a smug-ass grin, trying to strike up a conversation. Keyword? TRYING.

"Soo...come here often?" lord almighty sir THIS IS A WEDDING.

"Damn, I could really go out for some fresh air right now, because I think you took my breath away." SIR WE ARE OUTSIDE WHAT

Needless to say, this man does NOT know how to strike up a convo.

★ If you do end up getting flustered about his horrendous pick-up lines somehow, he will be so fucking proud of himself for getting a reaction out of you, and WILL keep going at it. What a charmer. (Unless you are uncomfortable with that of course, he might not know how to talk to people, but he has human (troll???) decency.) ★ I'm talking him leaning slightly closer to you with half-lidded eyes, a huge smirk plastered on his face as his voice gets lower and lower, though internally I feel like he'd be going 'LET'S FUCKING GOOOO I STILL GOT IT' since he would be a bit unsure if he was doing well in the first place. It's probably been years since he had any sort of interaction with anyone other than Rhonda so it's understandable. ★ Not to mention BROZONE. MY GOD. If you know about his band? NICE! If you don't know anything about it? NICE! Either way, this man will absolutely brag about it to you. Even if it has been AT LEAST 20 YEARS. He will absolutely talk about 'the good old days' as if it was just yesterday. Bro would probably talk about how he wrote the hits "Girl Baby Baby" and "Baby Baby Girl" on the same day. ★And who knows? Maybe at the end of the wedding when sadly he has to go to save his brother with Branch and Poppy, you'll end up getting a way to contact him after the whole thing ends. You will see him sooner than you think, that's for sure though!

(please keep in mind this is the first time I've written any serious headcanons like these and not just stuff like 'he would be a great hugger' or 'he was a 7.5-inch haver 🤯🤯🤯')

GRAAAGH I'M STILL SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO WRITE THIS THOUGH, I STILL HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE IT EVEN IF IT IS SHORT AS HELL

[supernovafics]

The I’ll be there for you series is ace! 🥵 I’d love a funny blurb about Steve walking in on reader and she’d just go out the shower! Steve would be so flustered. Kinda reminds me of when Chandler saw Rachel naked 😂

𝐋𝐄𝐓’𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐓

"i'll be there for you" universe masterlist

pairing: bestfriend!roommate!steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 702 words

warnings: explicit language

summary: in which a very awkward moment occurs when you’re late for class 

author's note: thank you for the request!! i loved this idea lol

general note: everything in this universe/series can be read as standalone oneshots but to understand the full “lore” it would prob be best to read the other stuff too<333

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Fall 1985

You were already running late for your nine-thirty class, so you thought you might as well make your lateness worth it. 

You decided to actually put an effort into picking out an outfit for the day before taking a longer shower than usual because why not?

Twenty minutes later, you were pulling your towel from around you and starting to wipe the mirror to clear the steam from it, when the bathroom door abruptly opened.

Steve started walking in, gaze first meeting your immediate confused one. His eyes then glanced down for the briefest of moments before he quickly jumped back and slammed the door shut. “Oh. Fuck. Shit.”

“What the hell just happened?” Your bathroom door was now firmly closed, but you were still staring at it with wide eyes as you wrapped your towel back around you. 

“I’m sorry.” You heard Steve’s voice. “I thought you weren’t here because you’re usually gone and headed to your nine-thirty class by now. And I ran out of body wash, so I was coming in to steal yours. It’s nine-fifteen, why aren’t you at class right now?”

He was rambling and you didn’t have to actually see him to know that he looked so flustered right then. If you weren’t still completely thrown and in shock by the entire current situation, you might’ve laughed. 

“I woke up late and decided to just take my time instead of rushing,” You explained, making sure your voice was loud enough as you went back into the shower to grab something. “This professor is barely ever on time anyway.” 

“Oh, okay.” 

You opened the door and Steve immediately turned around. “Don’t worry, I have a towel on now.” He faced you again and you handed over your body wash. “I hope you enjoy smelling like lavender and vanilla for the day.”

“Thank you. I will,” He said, evading your eyes and keeping his gaze fixed on your bedroom floor. You could still see how red his cheeks were. “Once again, I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” You told him. In that moment it didn’t necessarily feel fine— your best friend had just seen you fucking naked for goodness sake— but you knew that it would eventually feel fine, and you didn’t want to make things weirder than they were. So, you instead decided to make a joke. “I’ll just have to see your little Harrington one day to make things even.”

Somehow, Steve’s face turned an even brighter shade of red. 

“Steve, I’m kidding. Obviously,” You said as you readjusted your towel a bit, holding it firmly shut around you with just one hand so that you could use the other to poke your best friend standing in front of you. “Stop being weird and awkward about this. You saw me naked for a second, whatever, that’s okay.” You thought about your words for a second. “Okay, it’s not “okay,” but it will be. Let’s just forget this ever happened.”

He nodded after a second and you let out a happy sigh in relief, muttering out a quick, “Great.” You were about to turn around and go back into the bathroom but Steve started talking before you could. 

“Y’know, if seeing my… stuff is what it takes to restore balance between us, then we should do that,” He said and hearing the playful tilt in his voice made you smile. 

“I honestly think that if I saw your little Harrington right now it would just make things even more weird than they already are.”

“Okay, in that case, I’ll keep my pants on,” He told you and you laughed a bit. “It’s also not little, by the way.”

Now it was your turn for your cheeks to warm in awkwardness. You rolled your eyes as you finally turned away from him and started heading back into the bathroom. “Ew, oh God, please get out of my room. I didn’t need to know that, and you’re giving me way too many scarring visuals now.” 

When you closed the door behind you, you heard Steve say, “Oh, and we’re definitely taking this moment to the grave.”

You nodded even though he couldn’t see you. “Of course. I thought that was obvious.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

let me know ur thoughts<333

(requests are open for stuff you wanna see in the universe/series!🫶🏾)

[pinkaditty]

Hi, hi!

I loved your perverted obey me brothers and you catching them with your underwear. Will you make a part 2 with the other dateables?

If not, no worries!!

I love your work and I hope you have a nice day!

anon. did u know that ur my first ask? did u know that anon? ily. i've been thinking abt this ask since i saw i first got it. i never knew getting an ask could be so euphoric.

anyways

Pervert (Obey Me: Shall We Date) Part 2!

summary: you are suspecting that someone is stealing your underwear. it will go missing and randomly reappear like it was never gone. you pretend not to notice, but set a little trap for the culprit… and catch them red handed.

a/n: folks. wow. i did not expect part 1 to be soso popular omg!! ily guys thanks so much for enjoying my stuff waaaah! sorry this second part took so fucking long man so much shit happened. like sooo much im so tired. anyways. here. this part includes the royals, angel, and human. ill be back with the others (thirteen, mephisto, and raphael) soon! they may be slightly ooc bc im unfamiliar with them but ill do my best! also im like literally praying that the characters i wrote here aren't ooc. I tried SO hard please lmk if they are. &lt;;/3

content warning: as usual fem!mc unless you like to imagine yours as a crossdresser (mc's physical attributes are not mentioned but fem undergarments are), and suggestive nsfw content! lmk if there's anything i missed :(

read part 1 here!

AS USUAL MINORS DNI PLEASE! PLEASE RESPECT MY BOUNDARY! THANK YOU!

Intro:

For a short while, you had been reassigned to stay at Purgatory Hall/The Demon Lord’s Castle/wherever else the Dateables are due to Satan having accidentally destroyed your section of the House of Lamentation. No big deal, but all of the brothers were less than happy to see you go. It’s okay, though. You’ll be fine among the others…

The story is the same, of course. You think someone has been nicking your intimates in their spare time. Which is, of course, strange but simultaneously exciting. 

You decide to set a trap to find out who they are, leaving your hamper full of clothes in the washroom before leaving to grab some scent beads. When you return, as expected, you can hear someone rifling through your intimates, but it’s not rushed. Rather, it’s calm and calculated, as though said person was desperate to not be heard. You decide to wait outside the door for them. Once they collect the spoils of their work, they quietly slip through the door, only to find you leaning against the wall outside, looking at them expectantly. Your arms are crossed and you’re tapping your fingers on your arm. You raise an eyebrow at them, stifling the urge to cackle at their panicked expression.

“Explain yourself, pervert.” 

Diavolo:

You know, simultaneously, you expected him and didn’t expect him at all - at the same time. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Dia was fascinated with humans, especially with you, but… To such lengths? Really? If only Barbatos could see him now. 

For a man that loves to talk… He sure is speechless now.

He’s frozen. The panicked expression remains on his face, his eyes flickering from the surrounding hallways and walls to you, to the floor, and back to the hallways. If there was a way out, he couldn’t find it. Before long, he deflated, resigning to looking down, a pitiful pout on his face. You got the feeling it was partially for show, though.

He whimpered like a hurt puppy before muttering a very formal apology. Keeping his head down, he held out the panties towards you. As you watch him, you realize this man has probably rarely ever felt shame before. It's almost entertaining - watching his eyes spin as he tries to adjust to feeling this way. Though he tries to hide it, you can hear his heaving breaths from here. He was ashamed. You could tell he wasn't ashamed for his actions; rather, he was ashamed because he was caught.

The thought makes you want to laugh, and you do, snatching the panties from his waiting hand. He looks up as you laugh, confused, his lips in a soft pout. His eyes almost look teary, as though he's that sad that you're laughing at him. You stifle your laughter with a hand and wave it off, walking past him into the laundry room to put your panties back in the hamper. Once your laughter dies out, you don't face him, but you do speak to him, knowing he is listening.

"Dia, the next time you find yourself fascinated with me, you can just ask. I'll be happy to spare a worn pair for your sake." 

You hear a surprised gasp, a shuffling of feet, and a relieved exhale. You turn to him, finally, to see him bowing his head in thanks. He's biting his lip and his face is bright red. Probably too embarrassed to make eye contact. He covers his mouth with his hand, muffling his words before speaking.

"Thank you, MC, for letting this slide… And please, don't tell Barbatos…" His face burns red at his final words, and you smile, amused.

"Don't worry, I won't tell." You wink at him before returning to your laundry, hearing his hesitant steps as he walked away.

Barbatos:

He's frozen. Mortified. He stands there, rooted to the spot like a statue of stone. He stammers out your name in surprise, nervously shifting his gaze from you to your surroundings. He clears his throat, holding a hand up to his lips, and keeps it there, as though attempting to hide his growing blush. "I-I deeply apologize, MC. I should not have been here… You were not meant to see me… " He sounds out of breath, his words light and mumbled.

He turns away from you at an angle, shutting his eyes tight and keeping his hand in front of his face. You watch him take deep breaths and attempt to steady himself and regain his composure. You had to admit, watching him fumble through such an embarrassment was awfully entertaining. His chest visibly rose and fell with each audible breath. He gently teetered on his feet, as though he could fall over if he couldn't keep up. What a sight to behold, Barbatos at a loss for words and composure. 

You approach him quietly, walking slowly to prevent the click of your shoes from being heard. You know that while he can't hear you, he can feel you, and he knows you're close. He shuffles backwards shyly, attempting to replace the distance you remove with every step. Ultimately, however, he is too slow, and you manage to get close enough to him, cornering him against a wall inside the laundry room. You make no effort to cage him in, but simply watch as he continues to attempt to get ahold of himself. He swallows thickly and slowly opens his eyes, calming down. He lowers his hand back to his side, and looks at you levelly, his expression still embarrassed but not mortified any longer. You smile, raising an eyebrow.

"I'd like my panties now, thanks." You hold out a hand expectantly, and Barbatos obliges, pulling the panties from his coat pocket and placing them in your waiting hand, all signs of embarrassment gone from his face, replaced by his trademark smile instead. His ears however, were a dead giveaway, as the tips of them remained red. You simply chuckle and lean away from him, humming in thanks and placing them back into the hamper. He moves to assist you with your clothes, and does so efficiently, though you watch him carefully to ensure his nimble fingers don’t grab hold of anything else without your permission. When the task is finished, he bows respectfully.

“Is there anything else I can assist you with, MC?” 

You shake your head, smiling. “No, but thank you, Barbatos.”

With that done, his ears still burning red and his smile faltering slightly, he moves to leave. You stop him, grabbing his arm as he passes you. He looks back at you curiously, embarrassment still painted on his face. “And, please, ask me next time.” You smile, your eyes filling with mirth. “I’d be happy to give you a pair later as thanks for your assistance.”

He swallows thickly and his eyes widen. He bites his lip before nodding, thanking you briskly, and walking away hurriedly, his face red.

You think you see a flash of lace in his back pocket as he leaves, but maybe you’re imagining it...

Simeon:

Now, this was a surprise. The angel? Really?

He yelps in surprise, fumbling with the panties and dropping them on the ground, hiding his face in his hands and backing into a wall. He’s visibly shaking, his hands trembling as he hides behind them, not even peeking out to observe your reaction. His knees wobbled and he began to shrink in on himself, eventually kneeling on the floor. You watch him wordlessly, amused. He’s unexpectedly quite dramatic. 

After a few moments, you hear him mumbling to himself. Confused, you tentatively approach him, listening carefully. You catch little bits of what he’s saying before kneeling down, to which he shrinks further and his mumbling speed increases. Then it hits you. He’s… praying.

He’s literally fucking praying. 

You are so thoroughly amused at this that you want to laugh, but you wonder if being a victim of the wrath of Simeon or the almighty was worth it, so you decide against it. You stifle and disguise your laugh as clearing your throat, doing a comically loud “Ahem” to get Simeon’s attention.

Not one to be disobedient, he stops his muttering and slowly lifts his head to look at you. You smile smugly at him, your eyes narrowing with mirth. You reach out towards him and gently touch his chin. He flinches, but doesn’t pull away, looking between your fingers and your face curiously. You hold his chin and lift it upwards, and he follows your movements, adjusting himself so it’s easier to peer upwards at you. You smile wider, even more amused than before. 

“I don’t think that’ll work down here, Simeon.” Your voice is low and taunting, and Simeon gulps, his eyes still not leaving yours. He still doesn’t say anything, merely trembles, as though he were being judged.

Maybe he was, a little bit, but favorably so. It’s not everyday you’d find an angel ballsy enough to do this, right?

You tut at him, clicking your tongue and shaking your head disapprovingly. “Oh, Simeon…” You put on a fake pout, looking at him with pity in your eyes. “Don’t you know better than to do this?”

“Ugh…” Simeon bites his lip. His eyebrows furrow and his mouth creases downwards into a pathetic expression. You continued to stifle your laughter by biting the inside of your cheek. However, you are ultimately unsuccessful and end up bursting into an amused smile and a few breathy chuckles at him. 

When your laughter dies down, you look at him, still holding his chin. “Come now, Simeon.” You smile, winking at him. “All you have to do is ask… If you‘d like another pair.”

Simeon sucks in a breath in shock, and his eyes widen as he looks at you. He suddenly scrambles to his feet, straightening up, his head still bent forward in embarrassment. 

“I-I’m sorry, MC! It won’t happen again!” He swiftly walks past you, not looking at you and barely opening his eyes enough to see, narrowly missing the wall in his rush to leave. You listen to his retreating footsteps and only laugh. Maybe you’d drop by his room later and give him a gift.

Solomon: 

Shameless. But he’s old and barely human. He’s also the worst.

He doesn’t react much besides his initial panicked reaction, which soon melts into mirth, a smug smile appearing on his face. He’s confident, but not that confident. His exaggerated smug smile twitches at the corners and his face remains flushed a deep red. He dramatically clears his throat and smiles coyly, the picture of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “Ah…” He starts, shrugging his shoulders, still smiling, the corners of his lips still twitching. His voice shakes just slightly. “You got me!”

Your face can’t seem to decide if it wants to fall into a disappointed expression at his brazen admission or burst into a fit of laughter at his obvious fear. Instead, it seems to settle on a pitying smirk, and you have to stop it from turning into a full on grin. You sigh and shake your head, not super surprised. 

You approach him, and he visibly stiffens, but his arrogance forces him to stay in place, his confidence crumbling at your certainty. When you stand just in front of him, you hold out your hand, a smug look on your face. “I’ve got you indeed! Hand them over.” Your words are quick and terse, smug smile and knowing look still on your face. Solomon swallows, and looks to the side, gently dropping the panties into your hands. He makes no move to look at you again after that, still facing you but looking away. 

You scoff as you watch him simply stand there. You find it amusing, but you are also dissatisfied at his lack of retorts. You put your hands on your hips and smirk, attempting to provoke him. “Hm. I’d expect a panty thief to be more ballsy. What, cat got your tongue?” Your smug smile only grows and your eyes narrow with mirth. His confidence almost seems to fully crumble under your gaze, and he relents, his blush spreading all across his face. Yet still, he remains silent.

You approach further, your steps slow and deliberately intimidating. He’s rooted to the spot, unable to move, still frantically finding anything to gaze at instead of you. Eventually you stand mere centimeters from him, your body just barely touching his. You smirk at him and lean your head forward, blowing on him before pulling back. He flinches immediately, startled, and bumps into the wall behind him. You giggle at him, thoroughly amused at his frantic nerves. He looks at you pathetically, lips red from worrying at them with his teeth, pupils blown wide, red blush from his forehead to his neck. 

“Aw, don’t look at me like that~!” You tease him, pressing your finger into his cheek. He watches you warily, seemingly at a loss for words. Your lips pull into a wicked smile. “How long has it been, hm?”

Immediately his eyes widen and he stammers out some indignant words, trying to deflect and explain himself. You only laugh at his stammered words, and he eventually stops, worrying at his lips again with his teeth. “Oh, don’t worry, I imagine you have plenty of escapades. But why couldn’t you just ask me?” You tilt your head at him, looking at him with hooded eyes. “Hm? It couldn’t have been that hard to just ask.”

Surprisingly, he only sighs and shakes his head, blush still present. “My dear apprentice, I am only human. Even I still don’t know how to properly act in the face of attraction.” A small, wobbly smile pulls at his lips before he purses his lips again, biting down to stifle any further words. His answer was straightforward, but you can tell he is still nervous. His breathing remains heavy, his eyes are still wide, and he’s still covered in a crimson blush. You laugh again.

Instead of teasing him further, though you really want to, you smile. “Well, now you know. Simply ask, Solomon. I am willing to help you… if you want me to.” You smile before turning away, dropping the panties into your clothes hamper, and starting the wash. It takes Solomon a moment to snap out of it and leave, but he does. You could feel his eyes on you and his magic still lingers in the air.

a/n: *super saiyan yells* thank you for reading waaaaaah! i did my best and im soso sorry if any of these characs are ooc... if they are too ooc i might actually rewrite it fr im so scared :(

anyways as usual feedback is always appreciated, and so are comments, likes, reblogs and asks! (especially asks) please show me your appreciation! i love to know i've done a good job.

@ikevampharem asked to be tagged :3!

[starry-bi-sky]

Part two of the "Clone Danny" au

The link to the first part is put above!

His friends know that he's phantom, they help him out just the same as before. Due to not having any ghost powers, Danny has to rely on tech and outsmarting the ghosts a lot more than before. He can't keep stealing tech from his parents' lab either, and he can't ask them to fix it if his stuff breaks. He teaches himself how to fix it.

(Its a lot of sleepless nights stealing his parents' blueprints and trying to study them. And a lot of late night research and talking with Tucker on how to build and understand tech. He refuses to rely on Tucker for his gear)

He talks to Sam about fashioning a persona as both Phantom and as Fenton. She's been to a lot of rich parties, she's seen celebrities and how they act. A "careless party boy" won't work for Danny. He's no A-Lister. But coward, feeble Fenton works just fine. Minus his smartass comments, which he can slowly start phasing out of his "civilian" life under the guise of there being ghosts.

He draws into himself, keeps his head down in class, wears baggy clothing. Ghost fighting at night really does a lot of the work for him, since he's so tired in class that he doesn't bother putting his hand up or participating. He can play the part of "loner, loser Fenton" pretty well, and ups the ante.

Phantom already has a small fanbase amongst the A-listers for being the strong, silent confident vigilante-hunter protecting them from the ghosts. Nothing much changes there other than a few minor things. Anyone who knows ASL knows he's a major fucking smart-ass who keeps cracking jokes and puns at the ghosts.

Danny learns self-defense after getting his ass beat too many times (he also gets Really Good at gym because he runs a LOT after ghosts. He eventually learns to make trackers to stick onto them when they fly away) and even gets a few ghosts to help him after he befriends them while they're exploring Amity at night. Its nothing professional and he still gets hurt a lot, but he knows how to throw a better punch than before. And he knows how to dodge better.

Since he's going for a "get them tfo of here before my parents get here" approach, danny takes a more of a "talk first, fight later" route. this... kinda works. mainly for the non-hostile ghosts. its how he manages to get some of them to help him with fighting.

Danny's honestly really, really clever. He largely relies on his wits since he doesn't have any powers to force ghosts back into the ghost zone.

TUE still happens it just occurs a little differently. Vlad Masters still wants Danny to be his son and Maddie his wife, etc. But he also wants to turn Danny into a Halfa like himself, since he knows that Danny has mild ghost abilities, he thinks he has the capacity to turn into a halfa.

Dan happens when Vlad manipulates a grieving danny into agreeing to become a halfa like himself. Except it kills Danny fully, and in his rage, Danny, now dead and a ghost, rips out Vlad's ghost half and merges with it and creates Dan. So not too different from canon.

….actually i change my mind. Danny’s ghost doesn’t merge with Vlad. Danny’s ghost tears Plasmius apart for lying to him. Dan is entirely Danny, just big and hurting and wanting to hurt others because of it. His emotions are big so Dan is big.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 4.5 (Dani interlude) Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 7.5 (Dan Interlude) Part 8

[zaddyneteyamlovergirl]

I’ve never requested before, so i hope im doing this right

i love your writing and your writing of jake sullys daughter! If your taking request can i suggest jake sully x daughter!reader who is dating a boy and their relationship. (daughter!reader is a strong warrior while the boy is more of a healer or smth) . How would Jake handle this, his baby girl is growing up ::(

Baby Girl

A/N: Just took a small break because my boyfriend broke up with me lol. Wanted to say LOVED THIS IDEA KEEP EM COMING INBOX IS OPEN

Pairings: Sully! Daughter Reader x Tarsem, Sully! Daughter x Sully! Family platonic!

Warnings: Slight angst, Reader uses she/her pronouns, Loak being dumb, Jake being overprotective. Not proofread lol.

Summary: In which your family discover that you are in a relationship and someone, in particular, doesn't like it.

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

“Draw it back and keep your shoulders up, pointed towards the sky.” Your mother whispers gently while observing your stance. You stood with exact precision, as she and your father had raised you to be. You don’t hesitate to send the arrow flying from your grip and towards the animal already moving quickly knowing the accuracy of your own shot. Neytiri admires for a second, a soft smile growing on her face as you send the creature back to Eywa with a prayer. You look back at her with a gentle roll of your eyes and sitting up gently wiping the blood from your hands onto your stomach. 

“Mama, I still need your help skinning it that’s so gross.” You screw your face up and she giggles before moving towards you a skip in her step. 

The people part as you land your ikran on High Camp and step off. You brush the braids from your face and part with your Mother who moves to set the meat aside. She watches you walk off with a gentle scoff appalled her eldest daughter didn’t even help her begin to put stuff away. “MAMA!” Tuk screeches crawling off from her Father’s arms and running full force into her Mother who grunts and picks her up to spin her around happily. 

“Well hello Sexy.” Jake wolf whistles before kissing his wife on the lips and smacking her ass making all of his sons groan from behind him. 

“Dad that’s literally disgusting.” Kiri remarks her nose scrunching and Lo’ak agrees with a gagging noise. 

“You know what, you all literally came from me and your mother, show some love for love.” He wiggles his shoulders and everyone groans besides Tuk who tilts her head. 

“Go and find your sister, she has not finished with her hunting.” Neytiri commands her kids holding up the meat in her hands and they all agree stealing Tuk who eagerly runs down the direction that her sister went towards.

Strutting confidently down and past the tents of the people who live near your head turns from side to side in confusion before a hand reaches out and grabs your wrist spinning you into the arms of your beloved and you giggle happily sighing glad to be within his gaze. 

“My love.” Tarsem breathes out reaching out to press his hand against your cheek and you nuzzle into it staring up into his eyes. He takes a step back to examine your entire body noticing the blood on your stomach and the open cut on your foot and he tuts. He grabs the small amount of Sky Walker medicine from his side and squirts it onto the foot making you hiss loudly. 

“I am fine Ma Tarsem, no need to freet. I am only in need for a kiss.” You purse your lips at him and he wastes no time in leaning up and kissing you softly, pressing you against the tent and gently grabbing your waist. Due to being occupied with the love of your life, you fail to notice the approach of your siblings. 

“Y/N! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” Tuk screeches and points at you both making you instantly pull away and look at them seeing an extremely fast approaching Lo’ak and Neteyam, both of which have the same look of rage on their faces. 

Netetyam yanks you back while Lo’ak pulls his thumb and tucks it under his others forming a fist and punching Tarsem making them both yell out, Lo’ak being the loudest. 

—--------------------------------------------------

“What the fuck were you thinking!?” Neytiri screams at her sons pacing backwards and forwards in front of all of her kids, besides Tuk who is gently crying in your Fathers arms. His eyes never leave your face and you are unable to read his expression. Your mother sighs seeing the same thing as you do before leaning back. 

“Neteyam, Lo’ak apologize to Tarsem, and Lo’ak thank him for healing your knuckles.” 

“Even though he should’ve let them be in pain forever.” You mumble under your breath and your Mothers head snaps to yours rage very evident in her eyes. 

“Y/N te Suli Neytiri‘ite, I suggest you shut that mouth right now young lady. Now scram.” She hisses at your brothers who tuck their tails between their legs and run out grabbing Tuk to join Kiri who is eavesdropping outside. 

“Have you mated with this boy?” Your father spits out and looks at you both instantly making you blush. 

“NO DAD!” You yelp out staring at him wide eyed and Tarsem coughs making Jake look at him hostile. 

“Something to say boy?” 

“FATHER!” 

“Yes Sir, if I may.” Tarsem clears his throat before grabbing your hand ignoring the glare you are giving the side of his face. Neytiri pauses for a second her rage bubbling down while she notices something. The way you still wear the love for him in your eyes even while you’re angry. Your body relying heavily on his while trying to keep your distance. She is hit with a sense of deja vu. 

“I love your daughter like no other. I know that I come from a family that isn’t particularly high considering this clan but I truly believe I can make her happy and treat her just as she needs to be. She is my mate, chosen from Eywa herself and whether or not you accept that, I will be by her side until the day she sends me away.” Tarsem finishes and you stare at him in bewilderment and love. Your Father notices and storms out heading quickly in another direction. 

“I will be back.” You stand and follow after him quickly seeing him head off more deeper into the woods. He sees a stream and heads over flopping down with a huff. You quickly follow sitting next to him with a soft sigh. 

“What do you want me to say baby girl?” He says after a few moments in silence, continuing to stare at the fish in the stream. You sigh and rest your head on his tense shoulder. 

“I don’t want you mad at me for picking a boy who is lower in the clan.” You say quietly pulling your knees to your chest and laying your head on your knees with your ears pressed to your head. Jake’s head snaps towards you and he sighs pulling you into his arms and sitting you in a rocking position tucking your head into his chest. 

“Baby girl, I will never disrespect who you love. A man, a woman anyone. Just hopefully not a Sky Walker.” You snort at that and shake your head. 

“Then why are you so mad?” You ask and he sighs kissing your head. 

“My baby girl is growing up and getting out into the world. I always knew once your grandmother stepped down as Tsahik, you would become the new one and you would eventually find a mate worthy of becoming Olo’eyektan with you, but now that’s happening a lot sooner and it just makes me sad, because you aren’t the little girl that would never leave me the fuck alone.” He has you crying and you hug him tightly. 

“Daddy please don’t think that. I’m still 18! I have a few more years to worry about that.” You sniffle and he nods before sighing and pulling you up. 

“I love you baby girl.” He grips you tightly in his arms and you smile.

“I love you too Dad.” 

“Now let’s go meet this boy that’s so in love with you.” He teases you making you punch him and he winces walking back rubbing his arm and poking you the whole time back

[fiendishfables]

hello!! i saw ur blog and i was super excited to see another aroaceee is it alright if you do platonic adam x reader headcanons? he can be reader's friend, sibling, or preferably reader's father figure as long as its platonic, anything u'd like is fine! sorry if my request is kinda weird lol, i just haven't seen a lot of platonic hazbin hotel stuff (especially stuff with adam in it)

a/n: Always good to meet other aroace individuals, indeed. I personally love Adam, he is absolutely my favorite character. I’ve been dying to write for him more and thinking of him as a dad is just my favorite scenario-

warnings: cursing, Adam being Adam, brief mentions of sex, subtle hints at Lute x Adam (if you squint)

words: 944

additional notes: this was one of my first asks I ever got; I AM SO SORRY FOR THE WAIT. Enjoy~!

Adam as a Father Figure

Headcanons

First of all, he never expected to actually have a kid of his own, but now here he was

By the time you turned 6, you knew about every single curse word in existence, along with a (disturbingly) decent amount of female anatomy

Lute gets promoted to babysitter

When Adam is off performing with his band or needed in the council/other Heavenly resides, Lute is responsible for keeping track of his child

Even if she lost you (which she has, multiple times) he won't be that worried

You were a kid and as far as Adam knew, kids needed food

Hence how he knew you would find your way back to him eventually

Okay scratch that, maybe he does get a little worried...a lot

Starts to doubt his ability as a parent

Once he even got Sera to send out a search party for you because you had been gone longer than usual

It worried him sick whenever you went exploring, but he was almost a bit prideful that his offspring had managed to inherit his sneaking around capabilities already at such a young age

Lute has had to console her boss many times in response to your random disappearances under her watchfulness

He has legit been facedown on the couch with his head in her lap whilst he bawls his eyes out, blabbering to her about his worries pertaining to you, and then somehow that stems to his hopes and dreams in life (he doesn't wanna talk about it)

Only for you to walk in with food from some random location about 10 minutes later

You'd be on the floor as soon as you enter the domicile because Adam would have jumped on you and then proceeded to hug the very life out of you (all while stealing your bag of food in the process and running off with it)

Calls you a bitch, dumbass, and 'a little shit' for worrying him

Though he would never openly admit he had been worried

He doesn't care if you have a social life, he wants you home safe before 9pm, sharp

── ･ ｡☆*☽*☆ﾟ.──

Teaches you how to play guitar

He claims its because he wants to pass on one of his awesome talents to his only child, but he also really wants you to join him and his band on stage one day or another

You are in the starter stages of learning and are able to accurately get chords down and learn to read sheet music

A tear just may have come to his eye

The first song you two ever perform together is "Hell is Forever"

He did see someone try to give you a rose after your performance and nearly knocked them out

Trust him, he's a sex and relationship positive guy (for the most part) but he also can't help but feel like he wants to protect you at all costs

If you dare to call him over-protective, he will very gladly give you the silent treatment for a good 5 minutes

After that time mark, he will be groveling at your feet and whining about how sorry he is (rare that he actually says 'sorry')

His biggest fear is his own child having it out for him and not wanting anything to do with him

A clingy parent, no doubt

Wants to train you in the ways of becoming an Exorcist Angel

Poor guy is a bit insecure about everything and needs extra reassurance, though he would never ever outwardly ask for it

That's a sign of weakness in his eyes

Not for his child though

You come to him with even the smallest hint of watery eyes and he is already going full dad-mode

Determined to find the fucker who made you upset

Promises to give em' a good ol' kick in the balls (or vag)

Adam won't discriminate, he's just there to beat the ass of whoever hurt his precious baby

He will get in a fist fight with Sera in order to make you happy

Just expect to be the one he then blames when he gets demoted

── ･ ｡☆*☽*☆ﾟ.──

Adam totally took lots of naps before he had a child, so this just makes for the two of you ending up crashing on the couch together and creating a melodic tune out of your in-sync snoring patterns

Anything the two of you can do together without constantly arguing is a miracle, so this is to be cherished

He has definitely given you some very creative nicknames (as he calls himself 'Dickmaster')

Lute has taken many pictures

She wants to make a photo album and give it to Adam one day just to piss him off

But as she knows how much he really cares for you, she does not want to risk him growing apart from you due to something stupid she did for a few momentary laughs

Let's you two have your moments without interrupting

The two of you always fight over food and who gets to pick where you go for the evening, if going anywhere at all

Lute claims that you are making Adam all the more emotional, but no one seems to be complaining

Especially not the High Council

Its nice to have him shut his mouth for once and remotely think about his actions and who they could potentially effect

Adam has something to lose now, and everyone in both Heaven and Hell alike knew it

No demon spawn would ever get to set even a foot near you

You were the first life he felt truly responsible for

He refuses to fuck it up and lose someone else he cares about

He would protect you until the ends of time, whether you liked it or not

[suzukiblu]

currently having EMOTIONS abt your 'Billy adopts kon and it goes p good actually'. Billy's there just like oh man I'm rambling they're gonna think I'm so lame...meanwhile I as a reader (and presumably also Kon and possibly the other characters present??) are actually going 'oh my god. oh my god he's known Kon for like one singular minute and already arranged a flat according to his best predictions of Kon's needs/wants, gave Kon FIRST PICK OF BEDROOM, and has freely offered to learn how to cook AND how to drive for the sole purpose of taking better care of Kon'. like. oh my god. oh my god. Billy is so precious and I want to give him a hug. I hope Kon isn't too overwhelmed or suspicious due to Billy's enthusiasm tho lmao. (pls could there be..more? more Billy adopts kon, if possible?) anyway I love ur writing. thank you. idk how to ask from a sidelong but this is tryingahandinholdingapen btw :D

I gotchu, friend, lol. @tryingahandinholdingapen But yeah I love a good unreliable narrator, one way or the other it's just so fun peppering in all the bits of "the actual situation that the narrator is oblivious to", hahaha.

Rich people are weird, Billy decides, then sets the swiss rolls and zebra cakes and rest of the strawberry shortcakes on the counter in case Kid Flash is still hungry or Superboy wants any of them and closes the pantry. Batman’s just doing his best, he guesses. Though Billy hopes he knows how to coupon, if he’s always buying brand-name. 

Well, he’s Batman. It’d be weirder if he didn’t know how to coupon, Billy figures.

It looks like Superboy ate all of his snack cake while Billy and Kid Flash were in the pantry, at least, which Billy hopes means he liked it. He doesn’t know how much real food Superboy’s had, but Batman’d said he should be fine eating solid stuff and not just whatever he’d been getting in his cloning pod. Though Billy’d still asked if they could get some bottled smoothies and protein shakes and stuff like that to keep in the fridge, just in case. He figured those might be easier for him to eat and digest, if it came up. Or like, maybe appeal to him more, if nothing else? 

Billy has no idea, honestly, he’s just doing his best here. The wisdom of Solomon is pretty useful but it’s not really, like, that much of a parenting guide. 

He is not going to cut Superboy in half. Like, ever. Like he understands the idea of that story but also it is an insane and incredibly freaky story and he is just not invoking it, ever. Just no way.

“If it’s alright, Captain, we should get going. We’ve got a bit of a drive to get home,” Mrs. West says, then sighs as Kid Flash empties the boxes of swiss rolls and zebra cakes in lightning-fast succession, though he leaves the strawberry shortcakes alone. Billy checks in the fridge and offers him a couple of the more filling smoothies–peanut butter and banana should be more filling, anyway, even with a speedster’s appetite. He steals those from convenience stores sometimes, when he can. He can’t be Captain Marvel all the time. 

Well–maybe he could, he guesses. But he does miss being himself, sometimes.

“Thanks, man,” Kid Flash says eagerly, then immediately shotguns both smoothies. 

“Wally,” Mr. West says in exasperation as Mrs. West sighs again. “Don’t eat Captain Marvel out of house and home.” 

“It’s okay, we’ve got lots of food!” Billy promises cheerfully. “I work with Flash, I know how hungry he gets. I bet it’s way worse when you still have growth spurts to get through.” 

“It is so much worse,” Kid Flash mutters vehemently, eyeing the empty smoothie bottles in his hands accusingly. Billy gets him another peanut butter banana one on principle. He really doesn’t want Kid Flash to be that hungry. It’s . . . not a good feeling. 

“We appreciate it, Captain, really, but we’ve got snacks and a cooler in the car,” Mrs. West says. 

“Oh, good,” Billy says, relieved. Mr. and Mrs. West both give him strange, inscrutable looks, then glance back to Superboy. Billy wonders if he likes peanut butter banana smoothies. Though if he liked the snack cakes, there’s strawberry banana ones too, so that might be better? And strawberry kiwi, but that’s probably less filling. “Superboy, do you want a smoothie too?” 

“No,” Superboy says. Billy pauses again, then gets him a strawberry banana one and tosses it over. Superboy catches it, eyes it, and then opens it and takes a sip.

Okay, Billy thinks he’s getting the hang of this. But also they should probably talk about how “no” needs to actually mean “no”. Like, for Superboy he’s sure it’s just like that phase when toddlers want to say “no” to everything no matter what, but it’s still important for him to understand. Billy doesn’t want to accidentally upset him or overstep because Superboy doesn’t know how to really say “no” to something.

Yeah, they definitely need to talk about that, he decides.

[weebsinstash]

I just have to say I'm absolutely loving your yandere Thragg & Nolan stuff! Keep it up & I hope you have a nice day!! ♡

Thank you! And, also, gonna be using this post to talk about more yandere Thragg stuff because I was refreshing my knowledge on the comics and my YTShorts feeds are now filled with Invincible lore recommendations and, jesus I forgot how fucking nasty this man is

first off I'm using this image to just help kind of visualize how much of a unit this man is. Like. He's probably something crazy like 6'6 at the very shortest, maybe like 6'8, 6'9. But. Um. He's scary. He's tough. Viltrumites get tougher the longer they're alive and he's, not THE oldest Viltrumite but, maybe he's in like the top 10? But I think there's only something like an odd, less than 50 number of pure blooded Viltrumites left anyways lmao

Which is then my transition to "dealing with yandad Thragg as his child could be an absolute nightmare especially if you don't have powers"

Dying on my hill of "even if you do have powers he's super fucking possessive over who you're choosing as a mate or even just dating" because there's layers of 1. He has his own massive ego and your actions reflect on him and anyone you bring into the family will benefit from his lineage and achievements and he's defensive about who reaps those bounties or may even be suspicious of political intentions 2. If he hypothetically does let you date he needs to pre approve them first and I'm sure you can imagine how that goes and 3. .... you're his widdle baby, can't you spend more time with dad :( shut up about finding love, why can't you crush skulls with him? "Child why can't we go slaughter alien civilizations together like we used to 😩"

The last paragraph made me think of "Thragg with a child Reader who's actually a really spunky tough kid and he like is so proud of you and you guys have like An Actually Good Relationship (for Thragg's capacity to love anyways) but as you get older you start having ideological differences and you want more freedom but he just wants you to be Daddys Favorite Little Killing Machine for the rest of your life". Like you're just giving Thragg the cold shoulder because he won't let you leave the planet without his personal escort anymore and meanwhile here's thragg hovering over you with his arms crossed, internally scowl-pouting as he remembers The Good Old Days when you were like 6 and ran up to him, "Dad, Dad, look!! this is a note from my teacher praising me for how well I beat up another student! She says I'm 'extremely proficient at bludgeoning'! Did I do a good job?" "You did an EXCELLENT job. It says here the boy needed medical attention." "Yeah, he had to be sent to the hospital! His legs were totally bent the wrong ways! He shouldnt have tried to steal my toy!" "Fine work; you should never allow anyone to take what is yours. We shall feast tonight in celebration." And he pet your hair and you flew up to his chest height to give him a crushing hug. And nowadays you're like. The Viltrumite equivalent of being in your early adult years and everything is extremely cold and impersonal and you call him nothing other than Grand Regent and he "maybe" just wants his eager confident prideful Affectionate child back because all he has now is. A child that hates him and will barely make eye contact with him and will never accept his praise or medals for your achievements.

Like imagine being a notoriously powerful Viltrumite and you're actually widely accepted but him being controlling of you throughout your childhood eventually gave you a complex. Thragg summons you to like praise you for like, subjugating a nearby galaxy, and asks what you would like for a reward, and you just coolly reply some shit like "There's nothing you could offer that I want, Grand Regent" like you hate him so much you don't even want gifts from this man

AND THE DELICIOUS DRAMA OF, imagine if he finds out that while you hate him and want nothing to do with him, maybe you've become extremely attached to Nolan or some other older father figure in his place

THE SHIT THAT GOES DOWN IF THRAGG EVER HEARS YOU CALL NOLAN OR ANYONE ELSE "DAD" like the cosmic level beef that goes on, the BLOODSHED. Jesus. Imagine being on Earth and you've got Dad Nolan or he's like declared himself your dad/mentor and he sees you bonding with another human male who's a father figure and you call that man dad, like. That man is going missing and Uncle Sam is erasing his existence from the records just, gone.

Side note actually, idea for something yandere viltrumites do with a viltrumite/hybrid reader: loving to bear hug you super hard? Like almost painfully but they won't break anything. Just. Imagine yandad Nolan or Thragg or Mark with like, a lil sibling/ child/ age regressed Reader or whatever and you're having like, hugging contests to see who can hug the hardest, and play wrestling shit idk. Imagine the infamously grumpy genocidal Thragg and then here's his like 4 year old wanting to play wrestle and trying to pin him and you're no match for him of course but like it's not, real, he's "gently" deflecting you or breaking your hold but still actually praising you in that, Thragg dad way, "your stance is too weak to take down an opponent of my size, but you're improving" " your siblings usually tire by now; you seem to have more endurance than most of my other children your age. Excellent" and then your little baby mouth gives him a kiss on the cheek and he has to go subjugate another planet to feel manly again.

I feel like yandad Thragg and Nolan are unironically those characters that are like, they could be in the middle of a war zone and they're easily winning and you go upstairs to see what they're thinking about, surely they're thinking about something serious, and it's just "I need to hurry this up and get back to my child" or "I wonder what my little warrior is doing right now" like straight up like the father from Father I Don't Want This Marriage

Yandere Thragg and Nolan are all "oh it's part of the Viltrum way to mate and procreate and boost our numbers" and Reader comes along "hey dad this is my new boyfriend--" and suddenly they turn into like, Christian fundamentalists. "Um actually that Viltrumite male is even older than I am 🤓 you are still so young and should be enjoying the fruits of your youth 🤓 you are too young to have children"

I feel like though like if you ever did manage to sneak off and get pregnant or get someone else pregnant that, specifically Nolan would adore his new grand baby and would do anything for this chubby cutie 🥺❤️ also imagine the horror if he's not even your blood dad, just obsessive self proclaimed stalker yandere shit, but you can't run away from him and he's finds you and your baby and instantly declares himself grandpa, like. Now you have to worry about protecting yourself and your baby from "PawPaw"

So like. Future spoilers I guess? Not super significant in my opinion, but, there's a period of time where there's like a truce of sorts between Earth and Viltrum, right, to keep it vague and less spoiler heavy. Imagine being like, Nolan's kid, or adopted kid, or like, neighbor who turned out to be a hybrid that he yoinked into his house or whatever, and like, after there's been some fighting, Thragg is impressed with your strength and potential and seems to be scouting you out a little. Now you've got TWO older Viltrumite males trying to father you, "my apologies Grand Regent but I was just about to take this one out to teach them how to fly better" "that is unnecessary; i shall be the one to tutor the youngling" meanwhile you're just like uhhhhh I'm not actually a big fan of how EITHER of you treat me-"

bruhhhh all hell breaks loose when you finally lose it and fly straight off the planet to try and start a new life elsewhere without them cuz then these two are TEAMING UP and they're feeding into each other, "I bet they were convinced to leave by that one male, the one who we had to warn before" "and that's why you're weak Nolan. I wanted to kill him but you didn't want to hurt the youth's feelings, and now what's happened? They're probably eloping as we speak" "no, I won't make the same mistake twice. He'll die a slow death"

You're on like some alien planet surrounded by like simple little ewoks or some shit who treat you like a water god because you dug a well for them or something and here comes Thragg and Nolan touchdown slamming onto the planet's surface and leaving craters behind, scaring the birds, the animals, your new little cute alien friends huddling behind you for protection, and you're getting SCOLDED SCOLDED. like one minute your new little like moogle friend is teaching you how to bake some kind of bread and the next minute, "AND JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOURE DOING HERE" and you're jumping to see two pissed pissed PISSED Viltrumites

"O-oh, uh, I thought I made it clear when I left--"

"The only thing that you've made clear is that you're too unpredictable and naive to be left alone"

"What were you THINKING?! You could've gotten lost, hurt, captured, or worse! And leaving Viltrum for, what?! Are these your pets? We can enslave a few and take them with us if you like em so much"

"If you EVER leave without my permission as Grand Regent again I'll reduce whatever backwater rock you stumble off to into nothing more than rubble floating through the stars, is that understood?"

"..."

"Answer him!"

'*sigh* yes, sirs"

"That's FATHER to you"

" - and Dad!"

[pitifulbaby]

spring cleaning

summary: its spring cleaning and time to clean out your closet, featuring boyfriend eddie!

pairings: Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

warnings: eddie is kinda pervy?? fluffy, playful teasing, innuendoes, hints of nsfw at the end, once again i am bad at writing out warnings

a/n: he is so boyfriend coded in this and that's all i wanted to achieve in life truthfully. 1.9k words

Spring cleaning, it wasn’t something you ever really did- till now. Hawkins had been rather cold this past winter, needing extra layers for the first time in a while. But the days were getting warmer and felt longer, so it was time to put away the heavy coats in exchange for the lighter clothes. 

While taking your clothes out of the totes you kept up in your closet, you figured now would be a good time to get rid of some of the clothing you don't wear anymore. You had been wanting to get rid of stuff for awhile, so why not now? 

During your cleaning your boyfriend had come over, claiming that he was ‘bored out of his mind and missing you like crazy.’ So now he was lounging on your bed, combat boots left at the door- leaving him in his normal dark clothing and mismatched colorful socks. His dark eyes were trained on you, watching as you folded an old shirt into the ‘donate’ pile. It wasn’t a shirt you had any fond memories with- none bad either, it was just a shirt that you didn’t care about and knew someone else would enjoy it more.

You had a good amount of piles, from ‘donate’ to ‘throw away’ which were the ones that were sun faded or had holes in them in places that shouldn't have holes. Then there was the ‘keep’ pile, the ‘put away for winter’ pile, and then the ‘I need to try this on’ pile. When Eddie found out about that pile, he was rather excited. Claiming he couldn’t wait for the personal fashion show, saying he would tell you which to keep and which to get rid of. 

With a quiet hum you grabbed a random article of clothing, it unfurls to reveal one of Eddie’s shirts. Once his eyes landed on that he let out a gasp- taking in the acid washed, baggy band tee. “That's where that went!” the male exclaimed, nearly jumping off the bed and stumbling towards you. He soon was grabbing the shirt- not in anger, just in excitement from seeing a shirt he lost. His eyes soon squint at you, holding the shirt close to his chest.

His hand shoots out and he grasps your nose between his thumb and pointer finger, giving your face a gentle shake. “And here I am thinking the dryer goblin took this shirt!” He says, fake anger lacing in his voice with a wide smile.

“Dryer goblin?” You question him, your voice all nasally from the hold he has. He lets go of your nose, placing his hand on his hip. “Uh, yeah- the dryer goblin. The same goblin who just takes a single sock, leaving you with mismatched socks.” Eddie says like its the most common thing in the world like this is something everyone should know. He motions to his feet and then once again his eyes are squinting, leaning into your face. “Are you the dryer goblin? Do you have my socks around here?” He speaks slow and low, dropping the shirt to the floor and grabbing ahold of your waist, fingers digging into the cotton of your oversized shirt as he pulls you in. 

A laugh falls from your lips as you crash into him, smile wide as you stare at him. “I always knew you were a goblin, but I never knew you were the dryer one!” He adds, his dramatics through the roof as he rocks you back and forth. “Eddie!” You exclaim, trying to pull away from his grasp, but he only holds you tighter- fingers moving against your hips as he tickles you.

“Say you are the dryer goblin and I'll let you go!” Eddie growls playfully, leaning down and gently biting the underside of your jaw all while you laugh and wiggle against his lean body. “Fine! Fine! I am the dryer goblin, I steal your shirts- but not your socks!” You managed to get out through laughter. He stops the attack on your sides, pressing a kiss to the area he was biting. 

With a hand to his chest you gently push him back, which of course he takes the dramatic route and lets himself fall back onto your bed. He lands with a soft groan, arms spread out and feet hanging off the edge of the bed. He picks his head up, a smirk on his face.

“We playing like this?” He questions, leaning up on his elbows. Which in turn causes you to lean down and pick up his shirt and throw it at him. It smacks against his face, he pulls it off his face and places it down next to him. “Okay I guess we are not playing like that.” His words are quiet this time, letting his head fall back against the pillow. 

As you get back to organizing through the clothes you hear the bed creak, the sounds of the comforter moving. You look over to see Eddie laying on his stomach, chin resting against the palm of his hands as he kicks his legs back and forth. Batting his lashes at you. “When do I get to see the fashion show?” He questions, his free hand twirling a lock of his dark brown, frizzy curls around his finger.

Eddie Munson was a weird man, needless to say. But that’s just one of the reasons you love him.

With a laugh and a roll of your eyes, you make your way to the side of the bed with all the clothes you need to try on, grabbing the first one at the top- which just happens to be a summery dress. Once in hand you step to the closet. 

You lucked out with your small house having a walk in closet.

As you go to close the door you hear a whine from Eddie, once again he is sprawled out on his stomach atop the bed, his right cheek against the mattress as it faces you. “I thought I was gonna get a show!” He drags out his words in a pitiful voice. 

You simply close the door and exchange your pajamas for the flowy dress. Once said dress is on you are opening the door, sliding your hands down your sides as you make your way to the mirror, taking in your frame. Eddie is soon sitting up on the bed, his eyes trained on your body. 

“What do you think?” You question Eddie, twirling around to see it from all angles. Eddie simply hums, moving down the bed to sit at the edge, legs spread and motions you to him. “Let me get a better look.” He says, biting back something. Though you are a little suspicious of him, you comply and stand between his legs. 

He looks at you in thought before he is flipping the dress up and blowing a raspberry against your stomach. The dress falls over his head, his hands planting themselves right below your ass. 

With a squeal you try to pull away from him, but he keeps his hands on you and pulls his head back from under your dress, smiling cheekily up at you. “I think you should keep it.” He says like he didn't just do what he did, his smile turning brighter and wider- showcasing his dimples. With slanted eyes down at him you huff, fighting back a smile as you step back from him and looking into the mirror. 

But once at the mirror you don't look at yourself, you watch Eddie, watch as he leans back against his hands and checks you out. His dark eyes trailing up and down your legs, leaning forward to try and peek up your dress. Once you catch him doing that you spin around fast, pushing the dress down lower with a huff. “If this is all you are gonna do then this fashion show is over.” With a playful grumble you head over to the pile of clothes once again, grabbing a random piece of clothing again.

“C’mon! You didn’t say I had to keep my hands to myself!” He exclaims, his smile never wavering as he watches you joyfully. “Fashion shows usually don't include blowing raspberries against the models stomach, Edward.” Your words sound serious but they are all joking, with a gasp his hand is against his chest.

“Oh! I would think a private fashion show would allow me to get a hands on experience. But it seems like this is a museum instead, all look and no touch.” He puts his hands up in surrender, lips pursing together as he watches you take the article of clothing and bring it back into the closet to change into. 

The next piece was a white jumpsuit, truthfully you don’t know how or when it came into your possession. It wasn’t something you ever wore, but you felt like trying it on before you knew you would be getting rid of it. But once it was on you realized why you never wore it. 

It was thin and see through, the black underwear and bra you wore showing right through the material. With a scrunch of your nose and shake of the head you call out, “This one is a no!” You say, going to take it off before Eddie is calling out. “Does that mean I don't get to see?” He questions, already getting up from the bed and moving to the closet, hand reaching out to open the door.

“Nope- Hey!” Before you could finish your sentence he had the door open, your cheeks heating up. It was odd to you why you were embarrassed when this man has seen almost every single inch of you. With a whistle his eyes are of course trained to the material as it stretches across your chest, leaving no room for imagination as it showcases your bra. “Edward!” Which he only laughs at your response, handing you a new clothing item he had grabbed from the pile for you.

“I am going, I’m going!” He says, turning back and sitting back on the bed. You shut the door with a laugh and shake your head, not really looking at the clothing he picked for you before you were taking off the jumpsuit and putting on the new item.

The clothing was a more formal dress, more form fitting in all the right places with a slit up the leg that stopped at your upper thigh. It was a deep shade of red, lace across the hem and across the sweetheart neckline. It was in the try on pile for the fact you haven’t worn it in a bit, not really going anywhere ‘fancy’ enough to wear it. 

After a moment you were standing in front of the mirror again, tilting your head and shifting your body to look at yourself in the dress. With a soft hum and furrow of your brows you turn to Eddie, going to question him on what he thinks before stopping. 

His eyes were wide as he stared at you, leaning forward onto his thighs as he takes you in. Clearing his throat he is soon standing up, taking a few steps to you and placing his hands on your hips. “Why don’t we take a break, huh?” He questions, hands trailing up and down your sides softly. 

“Oh, and you are definitely keeping this one- but only for me.”

[aaabsinthe]

Hi!! Can I request crushing and relationship headcanons for Junkerqueen with a fem s/o? Like how would she realize she likes them? thank you! :)

Junker Queen x Female Reader Relationship Headcanons

A/N: It's been a while y'all - boy am I glad to be back. Literally right after I posted my note about all of the stuff I'm working on, I got slammed with the biggest assessment I've had in my course so far (17 documents total once I'd finally finished it) and caught scarlet fever of all thing so it's taken a good while for me to finally feel well enough and have spare time to write - but here we are!

I'm so excited to write for my favourite built queen - this gif alone is makin me feel things. I'm going to format all of these the same way from now on with SFW and NSFW headcanons from now on. Ofc there will be warning for the NSFW section :)

I hope you enjoy anon despite the wait!

-Nat

SFW Headcanons

Odessa is the kind of gal that isn't really impressed by appearances.

Sure, she has her preferences and finds certain things attractive, but that isn't what piques her interest.

For Dez, it's all about personality, especially if you're the kind of person who is merciful and gentle with others.

This doesn't mean you have to be a doormat, in fact if you stand up for yourself (physically or verbally) when you feel as if you are being treated unfairly or others are being treated unfairly, that's possibly the hottest thing you could ever do in her eyes.

It's just something about the Peter Pan types that really captivates her. Not just in stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, but in being self aware of your strengths and using them to do right by those who are not in the same position of privilege.

This is how she figures out that her little crush on you was not just a little crush anymore.

She overheard you and another agent talking about life before the crisis, and found out that you used to do volunteer work every weekend delivering essentials to the homeless in your city and how much you missed your community outreach.

That and she watched you sock a guy in the face after he attempted to grope your friend at a bar.

It's healing for her and her inner child and she finds herself looking up to you as a role model - she's aware she's no angel and has done many questionable things to survive out there in the wasteland.

However she hopes that now as a part of Overwatch, she can be better and similarly to you, that she can use her position to help others less fortunate.

Dez is fine with casual or short term relationships and has had plenty in her time, she doesn't necessarily need to know someone to be attracted to them - but when she built that emotional connection with you, that's when she knew she was in for the long run.

The best part about dating Dez is that she isn't embarrassed easily - she's very open from the beginning which means conversation flows naturally with her. The downside of this is that for the first few months of being together, getting to sleep was nearly impossible, three am deep conversations just hit different.

This also means if you ever need anything, she is more than happy to accommodate.

Sick? She keeps note of the medication you need and when you need to take it so she can make sure you take it (and bring you water in your comfort water bottle to boot). That time of the month? If somehow the stash of your preferred products are out, she knows what you use - she will get you more without you even needing to ask (she will however check if you crave anything in particular on the way out).

Expect to be doing the same for her when she gets sick - she becomes the biggest needy baby when she's not feeling well.

She's stuck in bed? Yep. So are you.

Not even by choice either, she cages you with her arms and well that's that. There's no fighting this goliath of a woman.

Loves her cuddles - all positions.

Her favourite is being the little spoon though. It's not often that she gets to feel protected and cocooned (can you really blame her).

Loves PDA - particularly keeping an arm around your waist or you attached to her arm at all times, though she's known to do a casual steamy kiss in public when she's feeling particularly jealous.

If you're not one for PDA, she respects that boundary... However she will pout at you with those big red puppy dog eyes.

Absolutely hopeless at cooking and baking though not for lack of trying. Wakes you up regularly cursing about burning her toast.

Of course it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

Speaking of waking you up, Dez has nightmares somewhat regularly.

She's always so thankful to have you there to vent to if she needs it and cuddle with until she's calm enough to fall back asleep.

NSFW CONTENT WARNING

NSFW Headcanons (18+)

Sex to Odessa is powerplay, a safe space to be strong and vulnerable all in one.

Hard dom top - that control means everything to her.

This woman loves a good scrap (duh), if you choose to be a bratty sub, she eats that shit up.

Go ahead, try and buck her off of you, she's not even using half her strength. She can hold you down much harder.

Expect to be begging for mercy.

The two of you develop a safe word very early on in your relationship, Odessa would never forgive herself if she pushed you past your limit.

Definitely has and regularly uses an appropriately sized strap (ouch).

Dez has her kinks. Sex between the two of you is rarely vanilla unless other feelings are involved. She's entuned to what you need and your emotions, she knows when you need the gentler and less complicated sex or when you honestly just need someone to hold you.

That being said, she has a reasonably high sex drive. She can manage on her own if you can't or don't feel like it, but say the words and honestly she's ready when you are.

Though she really would prefer you called her Dez, Odessa, babe - really anything other than her title outside of the bedroom, call her your queen between the sheets - she'll go berserk.

Dabbles in pain play, something of an every now and then addition to the bedroom, it's not something she needs and the both of you really have to be in the mood for the more intensive side of sex. She does however love to see you take Gracie's hilt in every hole.

Unless you'd consider overstimulation a form of pain play. There is nothing she loves more than watching you struggle and beg with tears leaking from your eyes, completely at her mercy.

Light bondage when she doesn't feel like physically restraining you herself.

Claims your face as her throne whenever the mood strikes.

Speaking of claiming, your neck, collarbone and tits are never safe from her demanding mouth.

There aren't really many kinks that Dez would feel uncomfortable with, she would try pretty much anything before she knocks it.

Definite no though - I feel like she'd laugh at ironically calling her 'mommy'/'mummy', especially if you have a different accent, but considering her complicated family past, it just hits a little too close to home to take it seriously especially during sex.

Obviously amazing at foreplay, she knows what she likes which makes it so much easier from the start (not to mention her cheekily buying vibrating piercings just to mess with you) but honestly the best part is that she's enjoying herself just as much as you.

It's all give and take with Dez, you give as much as you get.

[cozage]

Hi Coza.  How are you?  I’m so happy to see request open again!  Also wanted to let you know I LOVE The Daughter’s Return and the headcanon where some of the boys teach their partner how to fight!!!  Can I please have a Zoro x female reader, where the reader is saved by Zoro and joins the crew (idk what job or dream she has but it could be anything).  Zoro decides to teach her swordsmanship so she is able to defend herself.  I don’t know if any of that remotely makes sense.  But thank you and can’t wait to see it!! 💙🤍

A/N: HI FRIEND MISS YOU HOPE ALL IS WELL AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS LOVELY DISH OF ZORO Characters: Zoro x fem reader CW: Illusion to some spicy activities but nothing crazy Total word count: 1.1k

Sword Skills

You would’ve died if that green haired swordsman hadn’t stopped those men in the alleyway. They had cornered you, and suddenly he appeared out of nowhere to save you. 

And then he was gone again, racing back the way he came.

“Hey! Let me repay you!” you shouted. “Please! You just saved my life!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the man said, still walking briskly away from you. “I just took out some trash.”

“Please!” you begged. “Let me repay you! I have a sushi restaurant, let me make you a meal!”

That made him stop. He looked back at you curiously. “Got any booze there?”

You nodded. “Please, let me try and repay my debt.”

He sighed dramatically, but he turned and walked to you. “Lead the way.”

Ten hours later, he was still sitting in your shop. You had closed down early and the two of you had exchanged stories and laughed the entire night away. 

“It sounds like you have amazing adventures,” you said wistfully. “I wish I could do something that exciting.”

“Join our crew,” Zoro offered casually, taking another swig of alcohol.

You gave a dry laugh. “I couldn’t do that!”

“What’s keeping you here?”

You didn’t have an answer. You had no family, the job you worked was menial, and even the place you lived in was far too small for how much money you paid the owner. You had a few surface-level friends, but Zoro now knew more about you than any of your friends did. 

“I can’t fight,” you admitted. “I wouldn’t have anything to offer the crew.”

“Yeah right,” Zoro scoffed. “You can make sushi. You can prepare drinks. You can do plenty of things.”

“But I’d be a liability in fights. Which happens a lot in the pirate world.”

Zoro’s eye twitched in irritation. “You don’t have to be strong to be on our crew you know.”

“But I don’t know anything! Did you forget earlier today?”

Zoro clicked his tongue in disapproval, but he had to admit you were right. “Fine. I’ll teach you.”

You scowled at him in confusion. “Teach me what?”

“How to fight. Let’s go pick some swords out tomorrow before we get on the ship.”

“I’m not carrying around three swords.”

Zoro chuckled. “You couldn’t handle three swords yet. I’ve trained my whole life for three swords. With you, we’ll start with one.”

You nodded in satisfaction, a smile on your lips. “My flat is just upstairs, if you want to stay the night.”

Zoro shrugged. “Probably better for me to stay. Don’t know how to find my way back to the ship otherwise.” 

You were going to offer him the bed, but by the time you made it and went back out to the living room, he was already asleep on the couch. 

The next afternoon, you were staring at a giant ship with a lion-sun figurehead. 

“Ready?” Zoro asked. “You’ll just have to ask the captain, but Luffy is pretty accepting.”

You nodded, and the two of you walked onto the ship. 

You instantly found Luffy, the man Zoro had said was the captain. 

“Hi Luffy, I was wondering-”

“Who the hell are you?” the captain asked, looking at you with big, black eyes.. “Are you here to steal our stuff?”

You were taken aback by his question, and it took you a few moments to respond.

“Er..no. I was hoping-”

He cut you off again. “Awesome! That’s good. So, do you wanna join my crew? I’m going to be the King of the Pirates!”

He was direct, you had to give him that. 

“I would, actually. If that’s alright with you.”

Luffy broke into a wide grin. “Awesome! Nami and Robin will be excited to have another girl on the ship! Welcome aboard!”

And then he wandered off, as if nothing had happened. 

“Told you it’d be easy.” Zoro had a knowing smirk on his face. “Ready for your first lesson?”

“I suppose.”

“Alright then,” he said. “Raise your sword.”

You tried. You had to grip it with two hands, and it was surprisingly more heavy than you anticipated when you swung it. 

“The weight distribution always surprises people,” Zoro explained. He walked over to you, slightly adjusting your grip and your stance. 

“There, try that.” He took a step away from you. “Give it a few swings.”

You swung a few times. You had to admit, this stance was easier, but it was still extremely draining. 

“We’ll work up to a real sword. The next time you touch this, it’ll be a thousand times easier. But remember that feeling. Remember that struggle.”

And then he swapped your real sword for a fake, wooden sword that was much easier to swing. 

He trained you hard, but he also made sure you understood why you were doing certain exercises. He explained what muscles you were working, showed you what moves you would be able to do, and always gave the reasoning as to why a workout was important. 

He was good at this, explaining how things worked and why muscles need to be built. He worked you hard; only stopping when you collapsed with bruises littered across your body. 

But he carried you back to bed every night. And eventually, he started carrying you back to his bed every night. The two of you would sleep intertwined, bruises and cuts intermingling with one another. 

Some nights, he gave you another kind of workout, the two of you training all night long and sleeping all day. It was a trade off you were happy to do, though you often ended the night with far more bruises than you started with. 

Other night, he whispered sweet nothings into your ear, caressing your body as if it was the most delicate thing he had ever seen. This was the duality of Roronoa Zoro, and you loved that you were able to see both sides of him like this. 

After a month of various training exercises, he handed you back your sword. 

You were hesitant to take it. You didn’t feel ready. You were still the same girl who would get beaten in an alleyway, weren’t you? Surely you couldn’t have progressed that much. But you could see the confidence in Zoro’s eyes, urging you on. 

You grabbed the hilt and swiftly pulled out the sword, ready to start your next phase of training.