#this fic was born out of me revisiting old threads and being sad that we never got to play them out until the end so. here are my feelings.

[swanqiu]

rift.

----a parallel dimension travel, slow burn, gnawing-at-my-mind-plot-bunny appreciation gift for @fallenmulciber

the first time she finds herself in his universe, she tells him that she’ll be out of his hair as soon as she figures out how to leave, promise.

...so the second time, now, that she’s ended up back in his world, he realizes that maybe her promises aren’t worth very much.

(even so, he lets himself believe her this next time.)

It’s a Friday night when it first happens.

To Mulciber, Friday nights are for smoke-filled bars and throat burns by firewhiskey and just the occasional hope-- when he’s had enough to drink-- that somebody gets shitfaced enough to start a fight with him. He thrives on the taste of blood in his mouth, on the cracking of bone beneath his fist.

Friday nights are for brooding and boozing.

Friday nights are most certainly not for confused, wide-eyed babes and twenty fucking questions. (Not enough weekends exist in the year, as it stands, for him to get his fill of anarchy, of evenings where he can just let himself be.)

So when the girl with the long, dark hair and the lips-that-frown-too-much comes out of nowhere and demands answers about where she is (something about not being where she’s supposed to be), single-handedly throwing all of his Friday night plans into oblivion? A sure warning sign to stay the fuck away, if he’s ever seen one.

He doesn’t run into her again after that night, and that’s fine, he thinks, because the less mind-dizzying and intrusive women he has around to fuck up his lifelong pursuits of misery, the better. Mulciber knows he should stay away.

—

The trouble is, she’s the one who keeps coming back.

—

The first time she finds herself in his universe, she tells him that she’ll be out of his hair as soon as she figures out how to leave, promise.

He believes her. With a smart girl like her-- probably always good to her word, undoubtedly gifted in the way that all swots are-- he doesn’t doubt that she’ll be gone before he can even save to memory the surprising number of faint freckles dotting the bridge of her nose.

—

...so the second time, now, that she’s ended up back in his world, he realizes that maybe her promises aren’t worth very much.

—

Her eyes, when they focus, are dark and wide and clouded with what Mulciber immediately recognizes to be fear. His grin stretches, gleams, almost tauntingly.

“Good morning. Never took you for the breaking-into-strangers’-houses sort of girl.”

She scrambles to situate herself into a sitting position, and her gaze darts around the room, taking in her not at all familiar surroundings as Mulciber straightens to his full height. “Where-- but I was back already-- how am I--”

Spluttering is, unquestionably, not a look that suits her.

Mulciber shrugs and grabs his leather jacket from the coat rack. “I don’t know why you’re here, doll,” he remarks, standing in the doorway to look at her, “or how you even got in.” He eyes his still-bolted padlock and frowns. “But you really meant what you said last time, huh? About being... not where you’re supposed to be.”

He watches her close her eyes; watches her inhale, exhale, repeat, before she leans over and holds her head in her hands.

“I’m... I’ll be out of here soon,” she mutters determinedly to the floor, her words still carrying the last fleeting bits of sleep. “I just... I just have to figure out what happened, and I’ll be gone for good.”

—

Even so, he lets himself believe her this next time.

—

She-- Cho, he commits to memory; her name is Cho-- finds a way back to where she’s supposed to be, soon and sure enough. Finding one’s way out of a parallel universe is, apparently, quite easy to do. Something about a precisely timed complex spell, a modified Portkey, and a sure determination to not be here.

(No offense, she’d added quickly with a tight and barely-meant smile, at the far end of his couch, with her knees drawn up to her chest.

None taken, he’d replied with a shrug, from the other end, with his feet crossed at the ankles and propped up on his coffee table.)

Anyway, once more left to his own, he goes out for a drink that night; some shitfaced guy does end up picking a fight with him, and Mulciber wins easily-- of course he does; he always wins-- but he only fights out of defense this time, and not because he particularly enjoys it. Over the last few weeks, he’s started finding routine and fistfights and predictability boring. He's started craving something different. Starts craving a challenge, kind of like puzzles or the Daily Prophet’s weekly riddle or some shit. Or like an alternate universe’s sad-eyed woman who really shouldn’t even be possible, whom he still can’t be fully convinced even exists, but she does, and Mulciber’s already worked his brain ten times over trying to understand where she even fits into all of this.

He finds himself requesting a butterbeer at the end of his tab, after he’s cleaned up, and he grimaces, first, at how predictably cloying it is. He didn’t think she’d be the type of girl to like shit this sweet.

But he can’t deny, though, the soothing warmth that lingers in the back of his throat and to his core, even hours after, when he’s wide awake. When his bandaged knuckles throb from their bruises, and the wall by his bed radiates a comforting coolness, and he realizes, as he turns onto his back and stares, that his thoughts haven’t been in the habit of making space for anyone other than himself in a long time.

His white ceiling is the perfect canvas for projecting thoughts of a face that knows how to turn pink all too quickly.

—

Twelve days later, Mulciber wakes up to a fervent pounding on his front door, and that something warm takes residence in his chest, in his stomach, in the tips of his fingers, when he peers through the peephole and sees that look of anxiously knitted brows and pursed lips that he’s come to recognize well.

—

"I think I know,” Cho prefaces, one Sunday down the road-- her second visit in a month and her sixth one overall.

She has this theory that she rifts-- rifts; that’s what she calls it, like it’s fucking diagnosed-- because she’s upset. “I show up here when I’m more, well, sad back in my world, is the thing. Easiest way to put it.”

He stares at her. Frowns. “So, what, I’m your therapist or something?”

Cho huffs, obviously distressed. “No, no; I mean, I don’t know why here of all places, or you of all people, or why this even happens.” She frowns back. “I was just pointing out the common thread between all of my unexpected visits so far.”

So she has stuff to figure out in her life. She’s not special; so does he.

“And what?” Mulciber asks, running a hand through his hair. “What’s stopping you from casting a spell, making a potion, ending up back home?”

Like the first few times. Like it’s always that simple.

The crease between her brows returns. “Sometimes I manage to get back on my own. Sometimes it just happens, just as suddenly as me getting here. But no matter how I end up going back,” she stresses, “it’s not permanent. I always end up back here, is the other thing. I thought it would stop after a while, but it’s... it’s just kept happening, and it doesn’t make for functioning in my real life any easier with everything going on--”

Cho has a tendency to ramble. It’s something he’s noticed with being her occasional host.

Mulciber cuts her off. “Sorry this isn’t your real life,” he reiterates, not quite sure where this sting in his chest comes from, at those delicate words, “but if you’re here for life advice? For me to somehow make whatever problems you have over there not so difficult?” He scoffs. Uncrosses his ankles. “I’m not that guy.”

She blinks, not having expected his sudden retort, and a blooming pink-- a trademark of hers-- rises to her cheeks. “I never asked you to be,” she finally says, slowly. “I never wanted any of this. I never chose to end up in your world, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Right. His world.

It’s a little unfair, he thinks, that she makes it sound as if he wants this any more than she does. He hasn’t asked for this either; he doesn’t want to play Healer to a girl who comes along every blue moon in search of some pick-me-up for when her life goes to shit.

He didn’t choose her to come along and fuck up what had been an otherwise passable everyday life, a life where he hadn’t had to concern himself with thinking about stupid stuff-- like if she might hate him more if she knew about his past, or if he should invest in a spare set of house keys for when parallel dimension women stay over.

Both of them opt for silence that their respective pride doesn’t dare break first, but he sees the tense setting of her jaw and the look in her eye; it’s not hurt. Or at least, he doesn’t think it’s hurt. No way-- Cho Chang doesn’t reveal her cards so easily, and especially not where he’s concerned.

This isn’t real to her, after all.

(And he still doesn’t know why that works him up more than it should.)

She gives up trying to explain her theory-- rifting, where the fuck does she come up with this shit-- and Mulciber stares at her for a bit, wondering if she might give a retort or something, to let him know what she’s thinking. Remind him again that she certainly doesn’t want this, doesn’t need him. But she doesn’t.

Bloody fine, then.

He gets up and pulls on his leather jacket, stepping out for a bit to be by himself. He’s good at doing that. He’s the fucking king of Lonely Men.

—

By the time he returns and calls out from the entryway, his flat remains silent.

Mulciber tries to smother the royal tendrils of what feels suspiciously like disappointment creeping into his cold, hard heart.

—

A month passes, and he figures she's finally done it.

She must have finally figured out how to keep her ass where it belongs.

Maybe he'd made her up this whole time, imagined her into existence on a particularly good (bad?) trip.

He comes home buzzed one night and thinks about how he shouldn't smoke right now, but he’s been good at keeping off and thinks he deserves it this one time, but he's been smoking the same strain and wants to change things up, so maybe he should try to pull a few strings with Avery first--

His thoughts quiet and he sobers up the moment he spots her sitting outside of his apartment complex.

—

“Look, it’s fine for you to take the bed from now on; I don't mind the sofa,” he calls out to her. “Unless,” he adds aloud with a smirk, “you want to share a space with me. I’m fine with close quarters.”

When she doesn’t reply, Mulciber frowns and pads down the hall, mentally kicking himself. “I’m just joking. But look, if you want to wash up, washroom's available,” he offers instead, reaching the living room.

He stands awkwardly in the doorway, one hand jammed into the pocket of his jeans and the other hand thumbing over his shoulder to the other end of the hallway.

Cho looks up at him, and the redness around her glistening eyes are enough of a hint. Immediately, he clams up.

Ezra Mulciber is not the comforting type.

“Oh,” she murmurs, voice thick, quickly moving to wipe away her tears with her sleeves. He almost doesn’t recognize the pursed-lip, steel-eyed woman from earlier. “Thanks,” she adds, rising to her feet, and as she walks by him she ducks her head, dark hair shadowing her face.

He’s not the comforting type, but he’s not completely insensitive.

“Whoa, uh, you good?” Mulciber inquires gruffly, reaching out to take hold of her shoulder. She bristles at his touch and turns toward him, visibly not good, but also caught off guard by his gesture. He retracts his hand and rubs the back of his neck. “If you... if you need to get it out of your system, whatever it is,” Mulciber continues lamely, hoping he at least looks sincere because his words are probably failing his expression of sympathy-- which he’s clearly not used to giving, ever, “uh... or if there’s anything I can do, just... just let me know, yeah?”

Cho blinks. The tears that had pooled at the bottom of her eyes glint as they fall, one after the other, to the floor.

His head hurts.

“And um... it’s okay if you wanna crash here whenever you end up here and need to wait to get back,” he continues rambling, suddenly hyper aware of how long she’s been staring at him. “Like, it’s no problem at all, but listen-- I don’t have any of that...” Mulciber motions broadly with his hand, toward her abdomen and pelvis area “... any of that time of month stuff if you'd ever need it, so...”

He trails off, not really sure what else to say (because, like, he really doesn’t have any of that stuff and wouldn’t know where to get it, anyway).

She blinks again, and he half expects her to just quietly nod or sigh or scoff, like she always does. Or just walk right past him, which also seems pretty on brand.

But here’s the thing-- she laughs. It’s not a full laugh, not like one that she would probably have if she were back in her other world and not stuck here, but it’s soft and unexpected and somewhat strangled, caught by the lump in her throat, and it makes Mulciber feel... good.

“Thank you,” Cho breathes as she winds down from her laugh, eyes still wet, and she offers a halfway smile. He doesn’t know what she’s thanking him for, but nevertheless, it makes him feel really good. He’ll take it.

—

She slips back into the living room after her shower, and when she settles into her seat on the couch, opposite end of Mulciber, he doesn't show his surprise. Just moves his legs some so that she has space to bring up her legs and stretch out and face him. Which, also surprisingly, she does.

Cho doesn't bring up any of what they exchanged last time (he hadn't expected her to), but she does comment on a new scar he has, and he grins, telling her all about one of the many idiots that tried to fight him. She tells him about one of her scars, from when she first started riding a broom, and he's taken by the way her eyes light up. (If he were his younger self, he might have been more drawn to her porcelain sadness. Might have wondered what it would take for her to break, and if he might be the one to do it. But given who he is now, and that small light he sees catching in her eyes? That’s what fucking spurs him to intoxication.)

She tells him about stuff from her past, and how all of that still weighs heavily on her, and how she has her confusions about where she’s going or what she feels. He tells her simply that he admittedly doesn’t know a lot about her, but what he does know is that she’s fierce and brilliant and has a lot to be proud about, and that any world would be better off having her. 

She deflects by commenting on the smell of butterbeer on his breath, and he splutters, trying to fucking justify himself and how no, he hasn't gone soft, he just likes to change things up every once in a while, thanks, and she just smirks. It's infuriating. He counters that she probably still can't hold her firewhiskey.

He hesitates, but he tells her up front that she’s better off hanging around people who aren’t him; she just scoffs. Listens patiently and quietly when he tells her just a few of the many, many things that still haunt him. Cho unflinchingly considers all of this, takes it all in, and she still doesn’t leave.

By 4am, she's talking about new charms and potions she's working on, and he tells her she's a downright nerd, a fucking swot-- in the best way-- and she grins, blushing like crazy. His head still hurts.

He's never liked small spaces and being close to other people, but--

With her, he conveniently forgets his own rules.

It turns out they both fall asleep on his sofa, after hours of back-and-forth talking and rare glimpses into the other's past and friendly insults, and around 6am, Mulciber thinks he feels the weight next to him on the couch suddenly lessen, thinks the warmth of her head by his feet suddenly disappears, and when he stirs awake a few hours later, she’s gone.

And this time, when he finds his flat empty, Mulciber feels something different that springs up in the root of his chest; he doesn’t dare call it hope, because only chumps hope. Hope only leads to expectations that let him down, always.

He doesn’t hope that she comes back, but he, restless by nature and often prone to impulse, actually waits-- patiently on some days and maybe a little impatiently on others-- for her to come back (as if she has a say on whenever that happens, he scoffs to himself). But he doesn't just wait; he expects that she’ll be back, even, because broken people know broken people best.

—

A year passes.

Mulciber almost forgets what she looks like, and what she sounds like, and how she has a tendency to look troubled and questioning, even in sleep. But butterbeer still makes him think of bowed lips and an off-limits warmth, and doe eyes still cross his mind on the rare occasion.

At the end of the first few months of her longest absence yet, he thinks it’s great that she's stopped being so hung up in her feelings, really (that must be why she doesn’t rift anymore). And when several more months pass and he still isn’t blessed with her signature look of wary hesitation (always, with him), Mulciber thinks it’s fan-fucking-tastic that she’s got her shit sorted out.

He keeps busy with actually filling out his bookshelf and reading urban novels. Learns to cook (kind of) a very basic starter meal. Starts doing some small time vigilante-type stuff, like beating up punks who harass witches outside of the bar or casting semi-permanent graffiti figures on his evil landlord’s front door. He even starts keeping plants on his windowsill, a few succulents and prickly cacti, because he’s read they don’t require too much effort to maintain. An older witch he often meets on the street tells him that he reminds her of her nice nephew.

By the thirteenth month mark, he almost forgets about her.

Almost.

Because it’s an April evening when the weather throws the nastiest spring downpour in recent history, and he’s not very well dressed for it, is he, because the days leading up until had been solidly sunny and cloudless, so of course he hadn’t thought that he’d need to bring either a jacket or an umbrella today, but--

He’s shivering and soaked and miserable, as he catches himself seeking refuge under a flimsy shopfront canopy, and the owner behind the display window scowls at him and motions to the NO LOITERING sign in big, bold letters.

“I’m freezing my ass off here!” he shouts through the glass, droplets flinging from his beard as he rounds, and he’s about to motion something rude until a shadow covers him and his clothes suddenly start drying.

Mulciber peers up. Above him, a bright yellow umbrella replaces the dark red of the store’s canopy. To his right, a dark-haired woman with an arched brow and a tightly drawn raincoat gives him this look, pitying and somewhat entertained and just a bit smug, and then--

“Never took you for the purposefully-looking-to-contract-pneumonia sort of bloke.”

He tells himself that it’s the Hot-Air Charm she’s casting on his clothes that warms his insides, too.

—

She’s... different, this time around. The blunt ends of her hair just barely graze sharp collar bones. The lines around her mouth are less marked by uncertainty, less pronounced by perpetual frowns. They’re more faint. Her eyes hold that light he’d noticed before.

Once the rain becomes little more than a manageable drizzle, they set off down the street, quietly hunched beneath the shelter of her umbrella. That is, until Mulciber’s had enough of her damn goblin height and wordlessly plucks the handle from her grip, raising her umbrella higher above the both of them so that he doesn’t have to slouch to keep dry.

(He happens to forget that he has magic, of all things, that would allow him to fashion a cover of his own.)

Cho turns to him in surprise, and he focuses in front of him, on the droplets dripping steadily from the point of the umbrella’s frame. Her now-empty hands drop to her sides, and she’s first to speak since the shopfront.

“Been a while, hasn’t it?”

Footsteps on wet cement are louder than he'd realized.

He bows his head, a curt nod, free hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans. It’s not like he’s been keeping track. But he knows he’s had quite a few introspective evenings with a glass of firewhiskey since he’d last seen her, had quite a few changes to his life since then. He’s picked up a habit of falling asleep in his living room, in her absence.

No correlation, though, he tells himself. Mulciber screws up his face and pretends to think about her icebreaker. “Not long enough, if you ask me--” he finally says, breaking into a grin when he hears her scoff at his audacity “--but, if you’d missed me, you could have just said so.”

She doesn’t say anything-- just huffs, bites the inside of her cheek, and lightly punches his arm.

He dodges-- or tries to, anyway-- and his laugh, in return, is deep and endearing and new.

—

This time, her stay surpasses the usual day.

In fact, she’s here for a whole week before he finally brings it up.

Cho sets down the book she’d found on his desk and shrugs, tucking long bangs behind her ear. “I... found my own way back this time,” she admits, almost casually, but he sees the tips of her ears tinge red.

“So, what, did you run out of charming otherworldly men to bother?”

He’s got his arms crossed at one end of the couch and she’s at the other end with her knees drawn up, like good old times. But this time, she’s curled up less from hesitation or fear and more from a shyness he hasn't recognized on her before.

Cho rolls her eyes and fights a smile, resting her head on the curve of the sofa backs. “I wasn’t aware I’d met any charming men on any of my universe travels.”

Mulciber grins into his drink, flirting with the rim of his glass. “Might be time you get your vision checked, doll. There’s one right in front of you.”

Another scoff. A shake of her head. And then an exhale he interprets as contentment.

He finally clears his throat again, after a moment. Sets down his glass. “But shouldn’t you be getting back to your... you know... your real life?”

Cho blinks. Lifts her head. Gives him that fucking smile, the one that squeezes his chest a little too tightly. “This... this is real.”

She says it without question, with a confident sureness that can’t be restrained by the softness of her answer. She looks at him and it sort of stuns him, because she looks determined. Looks decided. She’s blushing.

"I want this, Ezra. To stay, that is.”

Oh.

His turn to blink.

Oh.

Fucking ohhh.

He can’t remember the last time he was anyone’s choice or even a considerable option. He can’t even remember the last time anyone looked at him like he’s not scum. Like he isn’t such a bad guy with a shitty past he hasn’t completely gotten over.

Cho Chang knows this, and still, she chooses this. Here. Him.

“You know... after my last visit, that space you gave me to just... process... I learned to control how to come and go.”

“Rifting, you mean?”

She beams at his use of her word.

Cho Chang looks at him like he’s complex and interesting and valuable. She looks at him like he’s worth a damn, like he’s Quidditch or the lake from her childhood or how it feels to fly on the exhilarating pull of a broomstick. Like he’s the successful golden glow from a new spell she’s made or the warmth of butterbeer on a cold day or the familiar comfort of a couch that feels the way home should feel.

A year ago, she might have been doubtful of him, and suspecting, and sad-eyed, and still looking for the next available way out. But here she is, rendering him wordless, because she happily chooses to stay here. He didn’t even need an Imperio.

She looks at him and she tilts her head, still smiling, waiting--

When Mulciber grins in return and pulls her in, breathing in her sweet citrus smell, taking in her laughter and shaky exhales and undeniable softness in his arms, he can’t help but think that she fits there, in the middle of his living room. 

In his world.